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stillness-in-green · 2 years ago

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Chapter Thoughts: 377 — The Chain Thus Far

Before we get into this, I should say that I’ve finally found the time to do the research I wanted to do before getting to the pile of asks in my inbox about issues with the recent chapters about heteromorph discrimination. Having done so, getting those answers out is my next priority, especially with Chapter 378 not due out for another week and a half. And then I’ll finally be getting to the rest of the inbox backlog past that. Thanks for your patience, all!

O I’m inclined to agree with @itsnothingofinterest’s take here: saying the heroes are sooooo much weaker than the villains, necessitating the divide-and-conquer tactics, just doesn’t feel accurate to what’s on the page. I mean, splitting the villains up is just a better call tactically; it’s got nothing to do with the comparative strength of either side. Choosing the grounds, choosing the combatants, getting the element of surprise: all very sound tactical calls that have had the villains on the backfoot all the way up to now. It fundamentally does not feel like the heroes were Team Underdog here, not with how stymied they’ve managed to keep the villains at every turn.

O Regarding the elderly hand on the first page, the guesses I’ve seen are All Might, Older Deku, and Shigaraki. I do think it has to be someone older—even All Might’s hands aren’t that withered yet! It certainly could belong to Older Deku—though if it does, and he’s narrating in that moment beneath the sakura, it suggests our Future Deku is rather older than I think most people have tended to assume.

If anything suggests Older Shigaraki to me, it’s not merely the general shape of the hand—Shigaraki could very well have hands like that in thirty or forty years,(1) but so could lots of people—but also the way it reaches toward the fluttering petal and then either misses it or specifically lets it pass by. I’m skeptical that even a very decrepit All Might or Deku would just miss a target like that, but a Future Shigaraki, who presumably doesn’t want to destroy absolutely everything anymore? Him, I could see reaching for a petal before letting his hand fall back like that.

O Love the way Manual and Aizawa both leap to shield Monoma. You had a good run, kid! But that said, EAT SHIT, ERASURE TEAM, AHAHAHAHAHA.

In all seriousness, I hope Monoma doesn’t get his throat cut open by razor-sharp measuring tape here, but given how eerily silent the Sad Man’s Death Parade has been thus far, one rather suspects that it is, in fact, made up entirely of Togas-transformed-into-Twice,(2) and Toga is way more lethal with a sharp edge than Twice. I doubt Monoma is in real danger, though—Horikoshi has yet to kill off a single present-day student—and as such, I consider myself free to hoot and holler for Kurogiri’s return and now two instances of the Death Parade being dropped on another field of combat. Please, sir, I’d like some more!

O I don’t know and don’t particularly care what caused the explosion here (EAT SHIT, SKY COFFIN!), save that it feels a bit like a contrivance. An explosion for the sake of having an explosion, if you will, rather than because there’s any sort of combustible or accelerant in play. And good thing an explosion that was strong enough to shatter all those concrete(?) support pillars wasn’t any danger to *checks notes* the many incredibly badly wounded combatants still on the field, like the one with the gaping chest wound or the one with all the missing limbs!

But, quibbles about the dramatics aside, the Sky Coffin was always going down because it was so obviously the wrong answer to the What Do We Do About Shigaraki Tomura question, so I’m happy to watch it fall. I will be incredibly smug if I got it right in one of my Spinaraki Week fics, that Deku will have to choose between saving the school and pressing the advantage against Shigaraki.

I have, I should note, seen a tiny bit of theorizing that Gentle Criminal’s quirk could be used to stop the island’s fall, and I would just like to say that that should never work, but also that I would laugh for days if it did, so I would forgive it far more readily than I will or have the fellow Most Nonsensical Bullshit contender that is Edgeshot giving Bakugou open heart surgery on the field with nothing but a vague knowledge of human innards and a soap bubble.

O Despite the fact that Mandalay’s run outside to confer with Aizawa a few times over the course of this arc,(3) it still took me until this chapter to connect that the control hub—at least the one Mandalay is in—was in the building Team Erasure was sitting on top of. Going back to some of the earlier chapters, I did notice, also for the first time, that the American jets were visible around the Sky Coffin for the first few establishing shots!

I maintain that they really ought to have been acknowledged earlier, rather than just remained unacknowledged until they’d already gone and come back, but it’s good to know that they were there, at least. That’s more foreshadowing than was managed for La Brava (about whom I have much more to say, below).

While I’m on the topic of Mandalay, though, man, she sure is going all in on the high-drama doomsaying this week, huh? Like, she sounds more like a news reporter making sensationalized overstatements about Events At The Scene than she does a calm and level-headed hero focused on coordination. Not saying Tomura being free of Erasure isn’t an emergency from her perspective, but, “The entire world will be destroyed by his hands,” is just a bit Much, is all.

O Kurogiri appearing right behind Tomura, bless him. I wonder if it’s just him or if he’s going to drop more Togawices, maybe Spinner? Or has he just gone to Shigaraki because that was Spinner’s request of him, as well as it being in line with his purpose, and isn’t planning to bring anyone else through? I’d think if he were that much on auto-pilot, though, he wouldn’t have spit Mic out at Aizawa, nor would he have taken the time to ask Toga what she wants. (This is all to say, I certainly hope we’re still going to see Spinner again before this fight is over.)

O The mall callback is fun, though I wish I liked Deku as much as I generally did back at the mall. It’s also telling of the shift in Deku’s view of Shigaraki—though I’m not sure how much of this is intentional—that Shigaraki’s smile here is more simply deranged than the “special guest artist Junji Ito” look he was sporting for his smile at the mall. He’s not an alien, unknowable horror movie monster anymore, and that’s reflected in the way his expressions are drawn, even his loopy violent ones!

Regarding his return, I am thrilled that it didn’t take the tone of “Deku rescues Inner Tenko; Shigaraki immediately throws himself at his savior’s feet” that so many seem to have been gunning for. As ever, the more Deku has to work for this save, the better for the story it will be.

And congrats to Kurogiri and Spinner for giving us this opening! Why do I give that credit to them instead of Deku? Well, it is true that Shigaraki’s swelling chest was already underway before this chapter’s events—it started back in Chapter 369, presumably as a result of Deku blowing through the hand armor form and throwing VFO’s mentality into disarray. Still, if that were all it was going to take, and Shigaraki was going to get this new form regardless, I hardly see the need to so conspicuously show Monoma being forced into blinking, with Shigaraki bursting free and the huge explosion following literally the exact second after Erasure cuts off.

I’d be more willing to buy it as a matter of dramatic timing aligning if it hadn’t been for the fact that we’d checked in on the ShigAFO/Deku fight once in between 369 and now. Back in 374, we saw the swelling getting worse, but still not breaking, as if there were still something in play holding it back. Jump forward to 377, Erasure breaks, and BOOM, all at once, so does the arrested progress of Shigaraki’s form shift.

I will concede that ShigAFO changed forms completely independent of Erasure previously, so there’s no particular reason he should need to be free of it to enact this transformation. After all, if Erasure were any good at shutting down vestige activity as part and parcel of its cancelation of quirk effects, VFO would have had no control until now. Still, the direct depiction of cause-and-effect on the page seems quite clear: Shigaraki did not complete the transformation with Erasure in effect, but instantly did so the moment it was nullified.

The only other dramatic possibility I see is that the point of nullifying Erasure now is that, just in time for Deku to be able to talk to the real person, Shigaraki’s got his entire suite of powers back. In that read, Kurogiri (and, in turn, Spinner) is not responsible for Shigaraki’s freedom, but rather his ability to be at his full threat level for the upcoming conversation.

Even if that is the case, though, I still don’t think Shigaraki being back in control is solely a credit to Deku. That underplays Tomura’s own resolve as well as the way Tenko’s rage was triggered by the way the heroes struggled to save Bakugou, to say nothing of the shock to the system Mirio provided. All that, and both Mirio and Nana gave Deku an answer to the, “Is Shigaraki still in there?” question that allowed him to continue to hope for an opening to save Shigaraki where, otherwise, he might have been forced to just fight with lethal intent.(4)

O Gotta keep an eye on Kurogiri so Shigaraki can’t escape, lolol, Deku, you sure do have a skewed idea about Shigaraki’s priorities here. That’s not entirely Deku’s fault, of course; he has watched Shigaraki(‘s body/team) retreat from a number of engagements in the past. But Deku wasn’t there to see Shigaraki’s tenacity against Gigantomachia or his overwhelming blood-smeared serenity at Deika, nor does he have the full perspective on Shigaraki wanting to stick it out at Jakku against VFO’s pushing for retreat. But regardless, I highly doubt Shigaraki is thinking at all about escape here.

O I wish we could get a better look at what’s going on in Shigaraki’s head than the, “It seems he’s in no position to manipulate the flesh he’s possessing,” panel. Yes, I would like to see VFO trying and failing not to drown in black gunk, thanks.

O And finally, to the big chapter end reveal…

Man, guys. I just—I’m glad to see her? I like La Brava an awful lot, her and Gentle both. But all the problems I've always had with her being used to counter Skeptic are still problems. Team Hero couldn’t have gotten her here on the spur of the moment, so this had to have been planned in advance. But if it were planned in advance—if the heroes knew they were going to have to counter Skeptic’s hacking—then why does the hacking seem to catch everyone off-guard? If La Brava’s been with Tsukauchi and All Might this whole time, why not even hint at her presence the way the war arc did Jeanist’s arrival?

(Chapter 363: Neither the reaction nor the wording I would expect from people who had a counterplay waiting in the wings for the villains’ master hacker.)

And of course, the answer to that is that this series’ lifeblood is now in dramatic end-of-chapter reveals with flashbacks in the following chapters to explain how the characters got there, rather than in intricate set-up leading to satisfying pay-off. Lots of people predicted we’d get La Brava here, but the reason people saw this coming is not that it’s gotten any set-up or foreshadowing, but because she’s literally the only good-ish hacker in the series, and so the only even semi-feasible option.

And yes, it does bother me that she’s implying some kind of deal was reached to soften Gentle’s sentence when nowhere in the series prior to this have figures of authority suggested they’re willing to make such bargains with villains. There are only two things I can think of that are even in that ballpark, but even they don’t come terribly close.

Hawks trying to plea Jin down, promising him a new start. That doesn’t come off as an offer Hawks has been cleared to make by his HPSC handlers; it comes off as him desperately saying whatever comes to mind that will mean he doesn’t have to kill a guy he personally likes and thinks doesn’t deserve to get murdered. But he never had any authority to back that offer up and I think it would have surprised no one for Twice to have ended up in Tartarus with Hawks periodically trying to visit him until the HPSC told him to get his head on straight and nixed his access.

Deku laying out terms for upholding Lady Nagant’s bargain with Overhaul. This one is even more egregious than Hawks’ case for being an offer Deku has zero authority to make, and even farther afield because Deku isn’t trying to get Overhaul to do anything practical, like surrender, provide knowledge, or aid heroes against a different villain. It’s not any kind of plea bargain or testimony in exchange for immunity; it’s only about what Overhaul wants and how he feels, with zero impact on other criminal targets.

Neither of these cases is comparable to an official deal made between a criminal and a figure with legal authority in/over the carceral system. An organized or at least precedented example of an agent of state power working with a villain in pursuit of more dangerous villains, like you see IRL in organized crime investigations/prosecutions, would have gone a long way towards making this both predictable and believable.

It’s particularly vexing that La Brava is pictured here with Tsukauchi. Tsukauchi basically comes off okay in BNHA Core, but you only have to read Vigilantes to get a look at that guy’s feelings about Bargaining With Villains—see for example that scene of him looking over the arrest warrant he requested for the main character while furiously thinking, “As the authorities, we can’t allow ourselves to rely on outlaws. To do so would be to admit the justice system has failed.”

I guess, if nothing else, at least he looks kind of put off by her, but otherwise, color me entirely unimpressed by this reveal. I’m sure we’ll get a flashback to it next chapter, so I guess we’ll see what it looks like then. I damn well hope La Brava held out for a good offer. Rake ‘em over the coals, LB!

--FOOTNOTES--

1: Assuming he stabilizes and still has the digits he’s grown back in his current form, anyway. The hand on the first page is a left hand. And yes, I am both sad and annoyed about him growing back the injury Re-Destro gave him.

2: Which, while sad, and perhaps less interesting than her being able to clone Twice for real, does make sense. Twice was said to be able to duplicate himself very easily, but needed a clear understanding of anything else he wanted to duplicate, including its measurements. Much as she loved him, I very much doubt Toga knew Bubaigawara Jin’s spatial dimensions. Thus, even if Toga is copying Twice’s shape here, producing copies of “myself-as-Twice” would presumably still come more naturally than copies of “Twice-as-Twice”.

3: I’m not entirely clear on why she would need to run outside, given that she can pick and choose targets for her telepathy and they clearly have a regular comm system running as well, seeing as she’s able to patch Deku through to Aizawa back at the start. They have been having periodic problems with static (from the barrier) and wonky signal (probably from Skeptic), however, so it could be related to one of those.

4: Not that punching a hole in someone’s chest should get credit for being anything less than entirely lethal intent, mind you, but Shonen Manga Gonna Shonen Manga.

#bnha #bnha 377 #shigaraki tomura #la brava #aiba manami #bnha star bros #chapter thoughts #my writing

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shinebox · 2 years ago

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Three. Two. One. Z-

Charlie’s head snaps up from the timer on their phone, a plume of breath rising into the night, as four men pour, laughing and potentially drunk, from a house at the end of the street. Like clockwork, that Bradley. Not a drinker, though, Charlie knew. Of course they did - no one paid attention to him like Charlie did. They make a final check of the syringe and weapon - a long bowie knife, wickedly sharp and faintly glinting in the pale moonlight - before disappearing from the street corner like the shadow of a ghost.

Bradley takes side streets home - it’s quieter that way. Less traffic, fewer stop lights, cops haven’t ran a consistent beat or speed trap out here in... well, not as long as Charlie’s been living in Itronano, anyway. Half-zipping their coat against the cold, they step out of an alley between two stop lights while peering down at a softly glowing watch face. A few minutes left. They walk up and down the block to simulate foot traffic upon relatively undisturbed snow; even if Bradley, doesn’t notice the detail, it’s better to be safe than sorry. No sooner does Charlie finish and begin leaning against a mail drop box than does the light change, bringing Bradley’s car into view - a deep blue sedan - as it turns the corner. Right on time. Lifting a fuzzy hood over their head, Charlie faces the car with a gloved hand raise out to the side, thumb up, as the headlights pass over them, and the car passes. And stops. Charlie jogs to the passenger-side window as Bradley rolls it down.

“Hey, uh, mister, can I get a ride? Just a few blocks to Baker, I’m freezing my rear off out here. I can get you the address on my phone.”

“Yeah, yeah, of course - get in back. Happy new year!”

“Shit, man, I owe you one, thanks! Happy new year!”

Charlie pulls their phone out with one hand, moving around the rear of the car to the driver’s side, and slides into the back seat behind Bradley, tapping at their phone screen.

“So, Baker, huh?”

“Yeah, I met a killer gal, visiting for tonight. Here.”

In a deft movement alongside offering the phone, now clearly lacking a map visible, Charlie pulls out the syringe from inside their coat, jams it into Bradley’s shoulder, and pushes down hard on the plunger, forcing the concoction into him. Immediately he partly screams, partly roars in pain at both the stabbing and the burning of silver coursing through him, the transformation stymied - only small, though horrific all the same, contortions of his face and hands occur, warping them back and forth like a roiling ooze under rubbery skin, though ultimately leaving him human as he attempts to both bat Charlie away and escape from the car. Charlie pulls the keys as Bradley stumbles out into the frigid street and makes a break for it.

Charlie does not pursue, only minding their watch and nursing a cheek where Bradley’s elbow had connected hard as the seconds tick up to thirty and his shouts become quieter and less recognizable as speech. Then they stroll after him, following his tracks and scent - that cinnamon again, just like when the two first met - to find the man sprawled, squirming and gasping against the drug attempting to shut his body down.

“Fentanyl. Hell of a sedative, y’know, and fast working too; if you were just a human that would have killed you pretty well right there I think, unless the internet was lyin’ to me again - I wasn’t sure what dose would keep you alive, but it looks like I guessed pretty well. How ya feeling down there?”

His only response is to half-bare his teeth in what might be anger.

“What’sa matter, Bradley-baby? Cat got your tongue?”

Charlie chuckles at their own joke, stepping over him and kneeling in the snow, straddling his stomach before drawing their blade.

“You got a favorite lung, champ? Got a preference for which one goes first?”

Nothing in return but a particularly forceful breath of air, which isn’t saying much at the moment. Charlie gives him a mocking awoo for the effort.

“How about this, we’ll play a little game. You like games? I know you do. You play poker. Every other weekend, actually. Here’s how it goes. You know eenie meenie? Sure you do, everybody does. I’ll start. Eenie. Meenie. Miney. Mo. Catch the wolf. By the throat. He can’t holler - I won’t let go,”

Every word of the children’s song is slow, spoken with equal care and venom, sadistic, as the clip point of the knife pricks the skin under the man’s sweater over each lung, left then right, left then right. For the last section, Charlie leans down closely to Bradley’s ear, as if imparting a secret for just the two of them, delivered in a whisper,

“Eenie. Meenie. Miney. Mo.”

With a great grunt of effort, Charlie rams the bowie knife into the side of his chest, sliding it hilt-deep through the ribs, wrenching, twisting, ripping the blade out before briefly admiring their handiwork: brilliant crimson gushing out of Bradley’s side, soaking the earth, as Charlie repeats the stab five more times - three to each lung in total. They sat like this for several minutes after Bradley had bled out, basking in the afterglow of the kill, absentmindedly wiping the blade down on his shirt - he wouldn’t need it clean, he’s dead, after all. Then, they removed his head, double bagging it and packing with snow to keep it chilled. A meal for the incinerator. Any body without a head is useless for attempting to commune with it, for some insurance against discovery, and proof against resurrection. Charlie contemplated hiding the body, maybe digging a grave or hauling it up a tree like a jaguar, but settled for dragging it closer to the road and kicking it into the ditch. His body crashed through the ice and brought along a thick mat of reeds and grass with it. Combined with the dark color of his clothing and the overnight re-freezing of ditch water, the body might not be found until the spring thaw if nobody noticed the blood smear on the far side, easily obfuscated with dirt and snow.

Happy New Year, Charlie practically chuckled to themself, returning to Bradley’s car to leave it farther along the route he always, always took. Charlie knew, after all - nobody paid attention to Bradley like they did.

#kill feed #the actual kill! ))#long post #I'll edit any mistakes in the morning I'm SO TIRED))#body horror #drugs #death

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dearyallfrommatt · 7 months ago

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A hole that's never to be filled.

A friend of mine's dog is dying. He and his husband are having his wiener dog put down later today as his advanced age has made his many infirmities too much to bear. It happens.

I've known this guy on the internet for as long as Waf's been in the picture. We knew each other way back in the days when blogs were the place to be an absolute asshole to people who can't slap you. Liberal politics, but we had a good bit in common. Two weirdos from the worst the rural South had to offer in the '80s.

The way my friend talks, as much as a square peg I was, his was way worse on account of being gay and I can't argue with him. He's pulled a full-on Thomas Wolfe and lives with his husband in the Big Apple. What love I have for my little village's corner of the world I do not push on him nor does he pull.

I wish I had something better to say to him. Otis was probably the last thing that kept me hanging on. He died and I quit writing my news blog, I quit messing around with harmonicas or paying attention to music, and I really quit giving too much of a shit about what previously grabbed my attention.

Namely, politics and video games. Video games became mere background noise like bad movies and Lovecraft pastiches of dubious quality, so that's a story for another time. Once I get my head wrapped around it, I'll get back to you.

As for politics, well, I'm just tired. We've had a microscope on the American Political Machine - including the media, all media, that coves said machine - and I really don't think we've learned a single thing. Not about how the government works or what the media is even supposed to be, nothing. I hate to be almost cliched, but look who's running for president come November and ponder the important issues of the day, and tell me we - as a culture, as a people, as a nation - have learned a goddamn thing.

But so much for all that. The end came and for once in my life, I didn't try to grind it out until it started to work. No one read my news blog except for my brother for news about Mississippi and my ex whenever Facebook reminded her. I never received one response and none of my visitors were able to convince me they weren't digital ephemera.

Maybe losing Otis gave me an excuse. I quit the gym not long after because I wasn't able to make myself go. I quit talking to both my therapist and the pysch doc because I'm tired of talking to people, especially about my general depression and the specific disinclination to hang around longer than necessary. Hell, it was around this time my teeth passed the point of no return. Keep up your orthodontal health, brethren.

The therapist asked me to come up with three reasons to stay in this world and I could only come up with Momma and Otis. The dog, of course, is easy. I took him on a responsibility and never found anyone better to take over the job. As for Momma, well, as rough as her life has been - and rougher than it needed to be for anyone and for no good reason - I figure she didn't need to spend her declining years wondering why her eldest son and favored child couldn't stay in this life anymore and what she did to cause it. It ain't her fault, but you know how mommas are.

But that's all I've got. It's recently occurred to me that my lifelong restlessness - always stymied by my fathomless laziness - is because I've never really had any ambition or goals or, really, dreams. The whole writing thing is partly ego and mostly because it's the first thing I ever did that someone told me, "Damn, Matt, that's really good." Otherwise, man, I just like to read and thought it'd be an easy gig.

Called that one wrong. Pay attention to your Uncle Matt, kids. Always remember that no matter what you do, the bills have to be paid and they never stop. Just something to consider.

But these days? It occurred to me that I have the perfect set-up. Someone's paying my bills and I am finally free to do... what? If there was something I wanted to do, I'd be doing it. If there was somewhere I wanted to be, I'd be there. If there was someone I wanted to be with, I'd be with them.

There isn't. There aren't any stories I want to tell, either, and since there's nowhere I want to go and no one I want to talk to - and I don't want to talk to anyone about anything anyway - I'm not getting any stories to tell. I really should sit Momma down and make her tell me the History of Peaceful Valley (According to Mr. & Mrs. C. B---). If nothing else, it'd be colorful and with her, it's gone forever.

But I just don't care. I don't care what I eat for supper tonight. The next book, the next game, the next movie, the next documentary, the next bowl, it's all static to drown out the dark voices in my head. I don't care what my brother does with the current jigsaw puzzle of his life. I trust him, he's smarter than me, and he'll do the right thing for him, so luckily, I don't have to care.

I care about making Momma happy and basically, all I have to do there is be pleasant and unproblematic. That's a chore in itself, I don't know if I could manage much else. I guess I should count my blessings that no one is asking anything out of me. It's lonely but I'm used to lonesome.

#tw: pet death #tw: depression #tw: mental health #tw: suidice #fnord

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akaraboonline · 2 years ago

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How to Cope With the Breakup of Someone You Still Love

Breaking up with someone you still love is even more painful than breaking up with your partner. Every day, it feels like your heart is being ripped out of your chest. You can put it off for as long as you want, convincing yourself that things will improve if you just wait it out, but you're only making things worse for yourself. I'd like to say that once it's over, you'll feel better, but healing takes time. In the meantime, there are some things you can do to make things a little easier. Here's how to end a relationship with someone you still love and deal with the fallout. How to Cope With the Breakup of Someone You Still Love

1. Hold off on friendship for now.

Now is not the time to make friends. Make a time in the distant future to discuss it. You will not be able to remain friends. You'll either hook up again and break up again, or you'll end up hating each other. It's best to keep your distance.

2. Get rid of all reminders.

I'm not saying throw anything away, but put any pictures of him and special gifts in a box in your closet. I still have gifts from my ex, but I kept them hidden at first. It was simply too painful to bear.

3. Cry whenever you need to.

Hear a song that reminds you of him? Cry if you need to. You know how you keep a wound on your hand clean? Tears are like washing your heart, so let it all out. One day, you won’t feel like crying anymore. With each day, I felt better. I cried for several days and then only a few times the next week. Finally, about a month later, nothing was making the tears pour anymore.

4. Skip the rebound.

Rebounds are entertaining, but not after such a serious relationship. It's far too easy to transfer your love to the rebound, which will not end well. For the time being, stay single and avoid rebounds. Do you really want to start crying in the middle of rebound sex?

5. Let your friends help you out.

My friends called every day even though I had locked myself away for a few days. I went out to dinner with them after a few days. I wasn't the happiest person in the world, but having them around helped. Don't exclude them. Talk to them and allow them to distract you.

6. Mourn, but don’t dwell.

You're going to be sad. That's the way it is. Just don't linger. Looking at his picture or watching a video of the two of you over and over. Don't purposefully aggravate the situation. Play some breakup music or watch a chick flick. Just don't do anything that will stymie the healing process.

7. Know the pain will end soon.

Breaking up with someone you care about can feel like having your heart ripped out of your chest. It could feel better in a few weeks, or it could take months or longer. Trust me when I say that the pain you're experiencing will pass. You will fall in love once more. It will take time, just like any other pain or ache. Allow yourself the time you require, and you will emerge stronger on the other side. Heartbreak is never pleasant to experience, but it is something that we all have to deal with at some point in our lives. You won't be able to avoid it entirely, but you can take small steps to alleviate your suffering and remind yourself that the way you feel now will not last forever. You're going to fall in love again and be happy again. There is no doubt about it. Read the full article

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amorphousfurrysnakething · 2 years ago

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Lichdom

So, a couple of days ago I picked up Lichdom on Drivethru because it was on sale and looked vaguely interesting. It’s a solo/2-player dark fantasy RPG about being an evil sorcerer pursuing immortality and uses 2d6 and a deck of cards.

Anyway, I had writing spoons but couldn’t ADHD focus on any of my other projects, so I tried it out and the results are below.

Warnings for dark magic, villain protagonist and narrator, soul damage and destruction, diabolism, violence, betrayal, romantic manipulation, undead, starvation, slavery and heavy implications of sexual slavery. Probably other triggering content, it is the nature of this game engine that whatever happens, a lot of people suffer in creative ways.

The Journal of Turronos Spring of 777: I have managed to, finally, find a measure of stability. Kuthia is not the greatest of the city states, but it is mighty enough to keep itself secure, and is less likely to become the target of an alliance that feels themselves oppressed. It took some effort to find comfortable accomodation within the city, but not major work, 'nobles' are always looking to improve their stature, and few have the scruples their title may imply. As a result, my current host was easily swayed with a few petty tricks and the unpleasant death of one of their enemies. I shall doubtless have to occasionally proffer further services to maintain this relationship, but for now, it suits me.

Since I found the journal of Ashud, the goal of that ancient wizard-king has tempted me. True immortality. Of course, Ashud himself never achieved it, and his city is now ruin, but as his secrets allowed me to learn the principles of spellcraft, I hope that the remaining clues might allow me to exceed my long-dead teacher. From my current home, I have the freedom to work on this great project, and it is perhaps auspicious that this endeavour begin in earnest on the seven-hundred and seventy-seventh year since the Godfall, as seven is the number of the victorious Gods of Chaos, and so shall I achieve victory over death itself.

Winter of 778: Perhaps I was presumptious of the gods' favour, as the past year has proven calamitous for Kuthia, and with it my plans. The city's king died suddenly (not at my hand, the man had done nothing to displease me), and the whelp proved less wise than the sire, and sought to use the armies of the city to enrich himself. Suffice it to say, the young fool's corpse is a better general than his living self, and soon the city found itself under siege from his enraged foes. While normally the squabblings of mere mortals would not bother me, I was forced to spend much of the year keeping the idiot I have chosen to host me from following his king into ruin. I was even forced to wield certain rites that I suspected may have adverse affects on my mind, and though I appear unaffected, it bothers me to think that I am of the same stock as this crawling vermin. Well, not for much longer. The siege has lifted now, the king delivered to his foes by the so-called lords of the city after they discovered their food supplies worm-ridden and useless (a minor trick, but one well-used, personal starvation is a rather different beast to that of the peasantry), and a smarter head wears the crown. Malkin, he is called. I hope his reign is longer, if only because an interregnum is disruptive. He at least has the wit to pick his battles carefully, and enough wise brutality to put down those who might complain that they were passed over for this promotion.

Summer of 779: While my arcane research remains stymied, at least I have found a useful tool. The Circle has its knights, and I know they hunt me, even if my occultation has hidden my person, the results of my inevitable victory doubtless weigh heavily on the minds of their Seers. Well, one got lucky enough to get close, though he had not the wit to avoid the poisoned runes inscribed in the Tome of the Manticore (how I came by that text is a depressingly mundane one, a foolish assassin thought to learn new arts of death from the book, and I was able to follow the occult trail to his lair, and corpse). The freshly-dead warrior came at a convenient time for one of my experiments, and while it did not have the hoped-for outcome, the warrior's spirit and body are reunited, and bound to my will. His hatred is amusing in its impotence, I shall enjoy his service.

He tells me his name is Cole. Well, it will suffice.

Summer of 780 Another year of dead ends, but at least one proved useful. It appears some in the city are jealous of my host, and attempted to curse him. I decided to deal with them, more to plunder their secrets in hope they had something useful. Well, despite generally lacking much beyond the most basic curselore and a lot of useless lies, they did have one true ritual that they'd apparently stolen. The human-skin scroll captures the souls of those whose lifeblood is spilled upon it, and by reciting the incantation will call forth a great demon, who will bargain its services in exchange for the scroll and its contents. The cult appeared to be attempting to gather the needed fuel, the scroll is near-fully charged. Cole can easily get me some beggars off the streets to fill the remainder, however much he'll complain. Honestly, though, fuelling my ascension is a far greater fate than they could otherwise expect. They should be grateful. Maybe they will be, between torments.

I shall have to consider how best to use this find, it is not something I can repeat.

Winter of 780

The long winter is dangerous for mortals, and for as long as I still am unwillingly amongst that number, I am also vulnerable. A reminder came my way when another of my host's guests succumbed to the chill after being stranded here by the ice. A merchant of Noch, I was able to take into custody his papers, and while most of them are useless trivia of business, the iridescent steel manufactured there has many uses, mundane and occult, and the records of who was purchasing that rare metal may prove useful in future. In that, at least, the buffoon has proven useful for more than endless, useless conversation.

Spring of 781 Working through the merchant's accounts has been truly exhausting, not from taxing my intellect, but from sheer boredom. Still, I have uncovered a few leads, cults with enough lore and power to procure both iridescent steel tools and the discretion to do so secretly. A few matters came to my attention that I could not deal with, opportunities that were already thin and are now lost, likely forever. The most galling is a dream thief who bought a pick for the Doors of Sleep, and the assassin who bought a knife that named his doom, but I have not the time to interfere, and must see to the greater matters his ledgers imply.

Summer of 781 Success! I have claimed a true secret of life and death, thanks to the clues of that dead merchant. Perhaps I should call up his spirit to thank it, before silencing its prattle forever. He sold a mystic mirror to an apprentice of the Circle, one who had yet to take take their vows of sequestration, and given where I found him, maybe never would, following a path similar to mine, though with significantly less success. Such a mirror is well known to be needed to access the Necropolis of Tya, the dead city left eternally cursed by its last witch-queen, as to open its doors requires you to read the inscriptions visible only in such mirrors. Well, the mage left his path open, and I followed with curses on my lips for him. Such curses were unneeded, for he had foolishly opened a jar found in an acolyte's house, and the worms inside devoured him, body and soul. I left the squirming robe behind and instead took his books. Most of it is trivia, and needlessly bound by moral 'superiority', but he did offer a single insight, a way that the Principle of Balance can be applied: by banishing other souls from the world, indeed, far beyond the mere places of death and into the Void of Nowhere, the can counterweight another soul, keeping it from leaving the world. It appears his intent was to record the possibility without instruction, and he destroyed the book that he copied from, but lacked enough insight into the occult principles to fully delete them from his notes. The proposed rituals are maddeningly incomplete, but this is a real, tangible step! Particularly as I have in my possession a large number of souls that are ready to be offered. Maybe it would even be merciful.

What else remains of this redacted animacy does have some use, even now, as lesser applications of the Principle to soul-sacrifice. I can now far more freely use magics that would otherwise be too costly to spend on trivial matters, as a human offers more than flesh and life as fuel, but its soul as well.

Summer of 782 While, after my expedition of the previous summer, I had intended to move swiftly to another task, a stroke of luck (and a little knowledge) has brought me into the confidence and company of a gorgeous creature, a feline woman brought from distant lands. One of the king's favoured slaves (another noble purchased her an iridescent ring, and I was able to blackmail him into introductions), she is beautiful, at least until the inevitable ravages her, she has parleyed her exotic grace to make her captivity more comfortable. She is quick-witted, and I find her company more pleasing than most mortals, and it bothers me to think of her soft fur in the hands of the uncouth beast in the throne room, she deserves one who can match her. Nonetheless, her position and skill are useful, for while I am a master of manipulation, seduction eludes me, and will likely do so forever, as my arts are not conducive to charm. Still, I can appreciate it in others, for as long as it lasts. When I am immortal, I shall have to remember her as she is now, before she withers. Cole disapproves, though whether because he sees her as inhuman (while not false, all mortals are equally low to me), or because he wants her for himself, I do not know, nor much care.

Her name is Sekica. Her true name, which she has confided in me. In the court she is called by other, less fitting, titles, that I shall not dignify by their inclusion. Such things are for the weakminded who refuse to see beyond their own walls.

Winter of 782 The king is dead, long live the king. While I must lie to my host that his fall is not at my hand, for it cost him some invested influence, here I can record the truth, that Yyrkoon, a lord that suffered after the young warmonger's defeats, having gathered about him allies who similarly fell from power, came to me with an offer, that I might sow treachery amongst the people of the court in exchange for the ignoring of certain indiscretions, and the unquestioned disappearance into my labs of certain disposable Malkin loyalists. Normally, I would not have bothered with such a trifling fee, Malkin has come to irk me, and so I accepted. Dark whispers into the minds of those followers who could be swayed, and a wasting plague amongst the remainder of the threats left little resistance to Yyrkoon's soldiers. Indeed, I'm told that he was somewhat displeased, feeling that butchering a sick man in his bed was too much like a murder to be satisfying revenge. I do not particularly care, he asked for a victory, which I delivered.

Sekica remains in the court, though no longer the king's mistress. I must conceal my involvement from her too, as her position was briefly precarious. Apparently, one soldier even directly threatened her person! She remains as clever as ever, and I doubt it will be long before she has regained her power, hopefully through less distasteful means this time.

Autumn of 783 Yyrkoon has proven a useful pawn, at least in terms of the extraction of favours. He was sufficiently able to eliminate any likely threat to his current authority without my help, but in doing so has rather depleted the city's fighting men. So when nearby Phivia attempted to extort Kuthian landholders (doubtless emboldened by the depletion), he was unable to marshal the forces needed to properly protect the farmers. As I still need to eat, the matter was of some small concern to me, but I was not expecting Yyrkoon's solution to be to beg me for help! I was able to force him into certain favours that should make Sekica's life more comfortable, and after Cole was able to catch for me a scion of Phivia's royal dynasty, I was able to smelt down his soul and that of Malkin's heir (one of the inconvenient loyalists passed into my care), forging them into a curse-tablet that could affect the city. It's in a corner of my lab now, shivering in pain, and while intact it ensures Phivia will never prosper. I hear it is already wracked by famine, its farms turned to ash, and the iron mines that brought it wealth have suffered such a rash of collapses that no-one will enter them now. With wealth and food lacking, Phivia's king has no means to threaten Kuthian interests any more. Already some refugees have sought shelter from Kuthia, and Yyrkoon has the wit to accept those with useful skills, at least. Sekica tells me he intends to shelter all who might approach, apparently he feels some guilt for their situation. If he wishes to waste his wealth on useless people, he is welcome to do so, so long as it does not implicate my own research. If he proves too profligate, he will have to be replaced. That would be inconvenient.

Winter of 784 An undisturbed year! And with it, another secret! One of the most interesting of the merchant's leads was the sale of a serpent-idol to a cult in the city. Not so much for the cult itself, as it had little power, but for the implications, the precision of the demands implied they had access to a true text of Erkiss, the dreaming Serpent of Chaos, who creates and devours in equal measure. He was wounded in the Godfall, and is recuperating. The cult proved to have not merely a text, but to have found buried in the city one of the magekings of the city from the time of Ashud and his ilk. The entrance to his tomb was lost in ruin and earth, but much of the structure proved intact. Meliss, they were called, and well documented for their devotion to the snakegod, and so their tomb was filled with inscriptions of their gathered secrets. The cult themselves were unwilling to offer me access to their holy sites, and so there was a brief struggle. Their high priest was not weak, but I interrupted them during a ritual, and he was unable to escape the jaws of his god when the circles were broken. I had thought my arcane shields enough to protect me from the backlash, and never have I been so grateful to be wrong about my strength. I was cast in dream-form into the mind of Erkiss, along with the shrieking spirits of the cult that had survived Cole's blade. As they squirmed and fell into the mass of their god's hunger, I climbed upon their digesting souls and found another treasure swallowed by the snake. It appears nothing more than a bright pearl, unusually large but otherwise commonplace, but I know it for what it truly is, even looking at it I can scarcely believe it. It is the Treasure of the First, a wish conceded to the first sorcerer by the gods of order, unused, for it is a mighty and irreplacable treasure. And now it is mine, this might force that can reshape the world. Alone, it would be too dangerous to use, and even combined with the animantic arts I gleaned from that foolish apprentice I worry that the sheer might would destroy me.

But now, at least, I have a potential ritual of immortality. I shall not use it yet, for I can seek more lore, and to fail the ritual would undo me. But if crisis looms or time runs short, I have a chance.

Either way, I have exhausted what that merchant provided me. I rewarded myself by calling up his ghost, and him by burning the soul into blissful oblivion.

Summer of 785 I should not speak of the future, for whether I claim weal or woe, calamity follows. The Circle will not cease their meddling, and actually bothered to send one of their own against me. A clever illusionist, he stole into my lab and stole away precious texts, replacing them with concealed traps. The resulting curses were dreadful, and while I survived, even now the soul-poison lurks behind my eyes, ready to drive me to madness if I try to examine those impossible shapes that crawled from the pages. I cannot force them out, but I can keep them contained. I must be careful now, for those venomous sigils have turned my eyes slitted and yellow, and though I can see in blindness, to look into light risks illuminating the symbols. Sekica tells me they are a pretty match to her own, I have not the heart to tell her they are those of a lizard, not a cat.

Spring of 786 The recent crises of various kinds have driven the masses into a fearful frenzy, and as I could use mystical support for certain of my rituals, including the immortality rite, I have marshalled certain of them into my service as a cult. They believe me a messianic figure, who will save them from the coming calamity, of which the recent problems are mere foreshocks. A lie, but one they are desperate enough to believe, and believe with enough force that they will offer themselves as fuel for my schemes. Arranging their belief was surprisingly easy, I am forever doomed to underestimate the gullibility of mortals. As a sorcerer, I am already considered half-divine, blessed with power and cursed with strife by the gods. A little extra illusion and they are unshakably devoted. I did have to arrange a few more tangible rewards and threats; Cole broke the neck of a noblewoman whose charity was feeding some of the hungrier through the winter, and Sekica was able to arrange the diversion of a lord's kitchens that we might offer a feast of our own. All in all, a successful few months.

Summer of 787 My accumulation of power continues apace, if with a little disruption. While I have not managed to retrieve the texts stolen from me by that Circle illusionist, their flight did lead me to another of that meddling order, one who hadn't the power to resist me, especially when my loyal cultist turned out in force. His village is ash now, and the soul-catching scroll a little fatter. His texts have some value, but the real treasure was a gemstone in the ruin, now embedded in place of one of my teeth, and within a demon. As its liberator from the Circle's prison, it owes me a favour, and knows that while the Circle exists, they can always keep it trapped. So it will aid me in my quest, in hope my ascended power will allow me to end our common enemy. I should not trust it, but it gains nothing from betraying me.

I think I may now have the final form of my ritual, and I shall commit it to these pages as such: I shall call up the souls from the dread scroll I found. Committed as they are to demonic hunger, I must channel them through the demon now residing in my flesh and bone. I shall have Cole speak the words that unbind my inherited wish, and while the force of it will doubtless unmake him, his undying flesh will survive long enough to use it, gathering the souls that fill me and spending them, casting some into the deepest void of Nowhere, feeding some to the hungry creatures that thirst for anima, and shattering yet more into dust and fragments. Sekica shall anchor my soul. Only now do I realise I have succumbed to the foolishness of love, but it still has a use, for I can use it to bind my heart, and with that anchor to stabilise against the fall and sacrifice of the counterweight anima, ensure my soul will never descend or succumb, even unto the end of time. There are various sundry matters that must be attended to as part of the rite, but my cult shall handle them, though unknowing of how this spell inevitably ends, with their own souls dragged into the maelstrom from which I shall ascend alone.

It is decided, I shall perform the rite in the depths of winter, just as it turns towards spring, beneath the new moon.

Winter of 788

I have succeeded. I am immortal and undying. The rite proved more destructive than I had expected, perhaps a flaw in my cultist's binding sigils, but it does not matter. Kuthia will likely never recover, more than three-quarters of its population succumbing to the side-effects of the rite. I suspect what souls were not dragged in like those of my cult will haunt the ruins forever. Yyrkoon still lives, but his commands are heard only by the dead, and they do not heed him.

Sekica played her part perfectly, though I am now unaffected by her love. She still loved me, and thought we might be together in some way, with those who enslaved her dead. A mistake, for as an immortal I would inevitably watch her fade, and she deserves better than that. Fortunately, one of the city's premier furriers survived with his skill, though not much else, and before I gave his maimed soul mercy he made of her a cloak, one I have already ensured will not decay as living flesh must. Thus, her beauty will last forever, as I will.

My studies have only just begun.

#Lichdom #lich #my writing #liches #dark fantasy #writing #journal #journalling #This lich ended up with weird luck #got three separate Crises #but only one actual Challenge #(though perhaps that's for the best #they only just succeeded that one)#I like the system #might try it again at some point or try and wrangle a friend for the 2-player mode #villain #villain protagonist

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stegrossaurus · 2 years ago

Text

Free

by Reese

I stare hard into the mirror. I’m a little surprised by what I see: myself. I guess that part was wrong.

I’ve had plenty of reasons to hate my own reflection in the last 29 years, but quite a few of those reasons are fading. Teeth that have resisted two rounds of braces have slid into their proper places. The receding hairline that my dad had graciously passed down to me is beginning to fill back in. The extra pounds I’ve been carrying around have...not budged at all, but there’s some muscle growing underneath.

But the biggest change is the neck. And the long jagged scars on either side. They’re wide and thick and at least a centimeter deep, unnervingly close to my carotid. My donors must have been very hungry. But as nasty as they are, they’re better than Bridget Dearbon’s.

I slowly reach my hand to the shaft of sunlight in the hallway. The news hasn’t been very clear about this part, but I have to try. The light touches my fingertips and I brace myself, but it doesn’t hurt. It feels a little uncomfortable, like I’m being dried out, but there’s no pain. Anywhere, in fact. The back-aches and headaches and joint pains and sinus pains that have wormed through my body since high school are all gone.

I step fully into the light and adjust myself to the harsh winter sun. It still doesn’t hurt, but I need my glasses again, my newly perfect vision failing in the brilliance. I step outside. The dried out feeling is a little stronger, but the 30 degree cold doesn’t raise so much as a goosebump.

Back inside, I feel my heartbeat, slow and quiet, but still there. I feel scared, but with a pulse that can’t seem to quicken, the fear can’t evolve into panic. So instead, I just look at the note again.

Hey, Dumbass, guess what! You Try and hang in there, Reese. Your life’s about to get a lot better! I guarantee! Just keep your head out of the oven and we’ll see you soon, buddy.☺️

I’m not sure how to feel about this. Bridget’s life certainly didn’t get better, and most of the other people who were bitten have died, too. That should be a good thing, it’s why I went to the Blood Moon Circus in the first place, but still…

I look into the mirror again and try to imagine what I’ll look like if I have Bridget’s luck. Her picture on the news almost made my mom throw up and if I had eaten anything at the time, I’d have been right behind her. The twenty-year-old’s lower jaw was stretched to nearly twice it’s size, with fangs as long as plantains pushing her original teeth out of her gums. Blonde hair had fallen out and sparse, black fur had started to grow. Her nose and left ear were shaped like garden spades when they finally fell off and her enlarged, blood red left eye hadn’t been far behind. The world’s first conclusive encounter with vampirism was a nightmare. And it only ended when the girl’s father burst into the hospital with a wooden stake and sobbingly put her out of her misery.

Is that what Mom’s going to have to do?

I don’t want to think about this, any of this. I can’t hyperventilate and my heartbeat is still unmoved, but the fear doesn’t dissipate; it just curdles in my brain. My muscles lock up and suddenly I realize that I’ve been standing still for 20 minutes. I hadn’t moved or even blinked.

The nation’s been on the hunt for vampires for the last week, but I decide to risk it and go for a walk.

I’m glad the sun stymies my new superhuman senses. I don’t think I can deal with smelling and hearing all of my neighbors right now. At the house, the familiarity stopped all of the smells from becoming overwhelming. I’ve lived in that house for 25 years and scents of crumb-filled carpets, rusty tools in the spare room, and unwashed bathrooms are almost comforting. I can even smell every pet we’ve ever had since we never quite got around to cleaning their fur out of the chairs. Out here, smelling every dog that’s relieved itself on every lawn might be a bit much.

As I keep walking though, I almost want a distraction so I don’t have to think too much. There are almost no people out today, but then again, they probably have jobs. And I don’t.

No job, no friends, no lovers, a metric fuckton of student loan debt, a family that thinks I’m a retarded failure, and the knowledge that they’re probably right. Suicide attempts weren’t exactly something new for me, they were just another type of failure.

The Blood Moon Circus had been in town for about a week by that point and there had already been quite a few disappearances. Half of the missing people had turned up dead although no one could prove that the circus was behind it. Then the news report on Bridget Dearbon showed everyone what was going on under those red and black circus tents. She could just barely talk during her first hour of hospitalization. After that, all she could do was screech and foam. I was so scared I almost threw away my plan. But I reminded myself of the particularly shitty year I’ve had and how many times I’d promised myself that I would end it. I reminded myself that I was a few months from thirty and I still lived with my mother who always looks at me with disappointment.

So I went to the circus that seemed to churn out death on what was certainly going to be its last day before the police shut it down. I wandered around, waiting for the worst part of any suicide attempt: when I chickened out, lied to myself about how it was going to get better, and went home to suffer for another year.

The last thing I remember was taking a rest on a bench on the edge of the circus grounds. Despite the Bridget story there was still a decent crowd. People who hadn’t seen or didn’t believe the story or people whose curiosity outweighed their fear. Maybe even a few who wanted to die but were too afraid to do it themselves, like me. I munched on some red-colored popcorn and watched people spin themselves sick on a red Tilt-a-Whirl.

“They really went for a color theme here,” I’d muttered to myself, wondering if this was a mistake. Maybe this was just an ordinary circus with vampire window dressing. “Guess I’m not dying tonight. Yay for me.”

I was going to get another black coffin-shaped cheesecake-on-a-stick when I felt a cold hand on my shoulder.

“Don’t be so negative,” a voice croaked wetly. “It’ll make you taste sour.”

I woke up on the beach next to the Circus, my insides churning and my neck sore. And here I am a day later, walking around the neighborhood to distract myself from the fact that I’m at least semi-dead. And I still don’t know if I should feel relieved, ashamed, terrified, or what.

I don’t know what the bitten were feeling before they mutated and died. Maybe they thought they were fine, too. The only ones to survive didn’t develop any kind of power, just rabies. And if I do survive, does that mean I’ll have to eat people?

Forever?

I head down the forest trail, which might have been a mistake. Between the canopy and the clouds beginning to cover the sun, it’s dark enough for some of my senses to return. The smell of rot comes first; there’s always something dead in nature. Decaying stumps and logs, a carcass being picked at by something, those are the things that I start to smell. My mouth starts watering. Fear is next. I can hear the animals closest to me seize up, quicken their breathing, and scurry away. I think I can smell adrenaline and maybe even feel their movements.

When a squirrel darts out of a bush and heads for a tree, I realize that I haven’t tested any of my other new abilities.

In a split-second, I make a decision and jet forward. The big, soft body I’ve always felt trapped in moves with more grace and speed than I ever thought possible. I overshoot the squirrel and slam into the tree it was going for a second before it touches the trunk. Bark splinters out from the impact and creatures already living in the branches quickly evacuate to neighboring trees, but my shoulder doesn’t hurt.

The squirrel looks at me with terror. I can feel it’s mind spinning, flooding its body with stress hormones and forcing the heart to beat faster. My heart’s beating a little faster, too. It wants to run, but it can’t. I won’t let it. Some part of my mind is clutching the squirrel’s and it can’t command its legs to move.

I didn’t want this. I just wanted to test how fast I am now. But I didn’t realize how hungry I am. What happened next wasn’t pretty, but at least it was quick. I finish licking the blood off my fingers and sit. And think. And worry. And remember the feeling of something dying in my sharp teeth.

“Pathetic.”

If I could jump in surprise, I would. But my heart’s slowed down again and won’t pick back up. So instead I just turn my head around slowly and face the man behind me. He’s a tall man completely surrounded by his black clothes and a severe expression just barely visible under his wide-brimmed hat.

“Slobbering on the ground like an animal,” he continues in disgust. “You look like a toddler with all of that on your face.” I guess I still have a little gore on my mouth. “You’d better shape up, boy. Fast.”

“Who are you?” I ask dully. The fear I’m feeling doesn’t creep into my voice but neither does any confidence.

“If you do any of that in front of or to a human, I’m the last thing you’ll ever see,” he sneers, pulling a crossbow off of his back for me to see. “Do you understand?”

I nod. Satisfied, the man turns and leaves. I wait a few minutes after he’s gone before I get up to leave myself. I want to cry on the way home and that in and of itself makes me want to cry more, though I don’t think I’m capable of that anymore. A 29 year old vampire and I’m still getting bullied. Maybe I really am pathetic.

Once I’m home, I sit down on the bed I’ve had since childhood and think. No good thoughts come to mind; only failures and regrets. Being surrounded by old toys and books and smells reminds me of how little I have to be proud of. I feel like I’m made of dust, hollow and meaningless except to show how stagnant and unmoving something is. Gloom and self-loathing build in my chest and I begin to wish I could cry. Maybe I can force it, but I don’t think it would be the same.

I hear Mom pull into the driveway and look in the direction of the sound of rubber on gravel. Even through the various walls and doors, I can see as much as feel a blob of electricity walking towards the door. It’s just like in the forest, but stronger.

She enters without saying hello and spends the next hour without acknowledging that I’m in the house. I spend that hour staring off into space and stewing in my misery. I wonder occasionally if I should talk to her, but I nix that idea each time. Mom can get a little abrasive as fall ends and winter starts. The end result of a year full of stress and disappointments, I guess. Or maybe it’s just another year of me that she's sick of. Either way, I don’t blame her too much for her coldness, but I don’t think it’s something I need right now. I could call Dad or Ryan, but I don’t want to bother them. So in the end, I just sit in my dark room, listening to the bugs crawl in the wall and the neighbor kids playing next door.

Until my stomach starts to growl.

Hunger seems to be able to bridge the gap uncoupling my emotions from my body. Suddenly, the bugs, the kids, and the blob of electricity downstairs all look rather tempting.

Once I’m sure Mom’s in the living room, I hurry down the stairs and into the kitchen. Mom’s a vegetarian so I don’t need to worry about sharing the hamburgers or chicken. I shove some nuggets down my throat as I start pre-heating the toaster oven for the patties. When I feel the nuggets heat up and dissolve in my throat, I forget the oven and unhinge my jaw so I can shove the beef down as well.

I’m surprised to feel my stomach rumblings lessen, but unfortunately, the smell of the warm body in the living room behind me still makes my mouth water. Is this how it’s going to be forever? How long before I finally snap? Who will be next to me when it happens?

“Reese?” Mom calls from behind me. She’s standing in the doorway, looking irritable and put-out. “Are you using the oven?” she snips impatiently.

I shake my head and back away so she can prepare her own dinner. I should tell her. I know that. But I don’t know if that’s a good idea. As embarrassing as it is to admit, she holds a lot of sway over me. This current cold shoulder treatment has lasted over two months and there have been far longer ones. The same woman who told me that I was handsome no matter what my size would drag me in front of the mirror to talk about how ugly I am. The same woman who said she’d support any decision I made laughed at me when I applied for college. The same woman, my mother, who told me that I could always come to her when I was having suicidal thoughts didn’t notice or care when I didn’t come home that night. Or that I have scars on my neck now.

“Mom?” I venture. She turns, annoyed. “We haven’t really talked in a while. I just wanted to see how you were.”

She sighs. “What’s there to talk about, Reese? Have you found a job? Are you going to move out? Are you going to do anything?”

I’m quiet for a bit before I can respond. “No.” My body freezes up and I feel...dead.

“I thought not,” she snaps. Another sigh. It’s an ugly sound. “It’s just-- You’re not even trying anymore, are you? You don’t even care if you ever succeed so why should I? I’m tired of it. I’m tired of you.”

She almost looks sorry for a second, like she understands how much that stung. But then she sighs a third time and gets back to her dinner. I walk upstairs without so much as a shiver, but my insides feel like tar.

Once I’m sitting on my bed, I let the black feeling inside of me fester for a few minutes. Then it starts coming to the surface. Maybe there’s too much to keep inside or maybe I’m willing it to emerge, but either way, I start to cry.

My first assessment wasn’t far off; my tears are thick and black and pungent like tar, but they taste salty. And there’s a lot of it. My vision sharpens further and my teeth begin to lengthen as the same brackish ooze drips from my mouth. My skin thickens. My face widens and my lips shrink. My attempts to sob or say, “You’re such a bitch, Mom” come out as rasps and croaks. And now the walls seem a little too close.

Before I can talk myself out of it, I jump out of the window.

I land on my back in the grass with a thud but no pain. The dark, cold, and open space feels lovely. And the sky; so much more color and depth than I ever saw as a human! I can feel my heart slowing back down and my face going back to normal. As the change reaches my eyes, the sky’s new galaxies and nebulas begin to fade. I can still see smatterings of their pinks and oranges and the stars and moon still shine brightly.

I stay on my back and stargaze for what has to be a half hour. None of my problems leave my mind, but they feel...smaller? Less pressing? More manageable? If vampires really are immortal, it’s not like I won’t have forever to solve them. But I’ll need to get used to being around people. So I get up and walk to the town.

The downtown shopping center is a few miles away. I’m almost halfway there before realizing that I don’t have or need shoes. The gravel tries in vain to jab into my feet. Just like the snow, I can feel it but it can’t hurt me. The closer I get to the glimmering Christmas lights of the shops and restaurants, the more I feel like that applies to all of my problems.

I know this is just the upswing of my depression; first I’m miserable, then I’m hopeful, then I’m suicidal, then I’m ecstatic, around and around. But I don’t want to feel the way I was just feeling at home, so I let myself ride the endorphins and enjoy the sights and smells.

The buzz of electric lights and living bodies is a little overpowering, but I just slow down a bit as I walk. All the colored lights shine so much brighter than they did with my human eyes and the smells or gingerbread and chocolate mix mouthwateringly with the smell of human flesh.

My heartbeat starts to speed up again. This time, I try to hold back the change, just to see if I can. And so I don’t get staked in the middle of the street. It feels like holding back a smile, when something is ungodly hilarious. My face twists a bit, but I keep the change from happening. Mostly.

I keep walking, a little stiffer than before, until the sound of the river overpowers the sound of the Christmas carols. Not that it’s louder, I just hate carols. I cut through an alley to get to the river. It will be easy to tell if anyone approaches so I’ll know if I can give my new form a whirl. I might even test that whole running water theory.

Before I clear the alley, one of the three people lurking there steps forward. I’m sure he thinks he’s being spooky, but I already knew they were here. I thought they were just vagrants or something, but now I can see the knife in his hand.

“Hey, boy. Where you off to so quick?” he rasps through chipped and yellowed teeth. His cohorts, a man and a woman, advance behind me.

I point to the river at the other end of the alley, glad that I can’t show how scared I am. I don’t know how much damage a vampire can take and I’m certain that guy from earlier wasn’t bluffing. So whether I can or can’t beat these guys, I might be in a lot of trouble.

“A little late for a swim, isn’t it?” the woman sneers. She glances at my bare arms and feet. “Well, give us your wallet first, darlin’. Then you can go freeze yourself all you want.”

The man next to her doesn’t wait; he lunges forward and tries to shove me up against the wall with his hands on my pockets. He doesn’t succeed in finding anything or moving me more than an inch. The fear is starting to reach the surface and the hunger’s rising even faster; I won’t be able to hold either of them back for long.

“Where the hell’s your wallet?” the attacker snaps.

“At my house,” I say evenly. “I don’t take my money when I’m going for a walk.”

Any hope of that dissuading them faded when the first man held his knife to my throat. The other man and woman held my arms.

“Don’t fuck with us, son. Just give us your money and you can go.” He didn’t sound like he was joking.

Fear and hunger begin to spill over. I feel my heart pound and my face change. This time, I don’t try to stop it.

The knife-wielder’s electric signals flare up like a firecracker and the man goes down, struggling to howl in pain through clenched jaws. The other two back away from my monstrous face, but I force my arms out before they can get clear. The woman hits the wall so hard, I hear a crack and feel her life start to ebb. The man hits the dumpster, smearing its sharp corner with blood. I grab him with stiff, meaty claws as he starts to get up and bring his face to mine. My mouth feels like it’s more teeth than throat or tongue, but there are enough tastebuds to detect the difference between his skin, hair, eyes, and brain. Once I’m ready to finish the knife guy, I can tell something’s wrong. My vision’s as sharp as ever, but the alleyway starts to blur together. The whimpering mass of meat completely catches me by surprise, stabbing me in the stomach. Or at least he tries to; the blade bounces off my new thick skin. I’m pretty sure it’s dented when it hits the ground.

I crunch the man’s entire head between my jaws and have a feast. I can’t believe how much this fills me up compared to the chicken and beef. The changes in my vision don’t reverse, but I’ve adjusted enough to see that there’s someone in front of me in between the alley and the river. Someone who doesn’t show up on my electric sense.

Without his hat and jacket, the man from the forest doesn’t look like the dangerous and cool vampire hunter from before. He almost looks scared.

“What the fuck are you?” he asks dully. I can tell his emotions have been dampened just like mine, but his fear is surfacing. “We don’t do that. They never said we could do that.” he’s stuttering now. He grabs his crossbow and fires. A bolt bounces off my shoulder. “No no no. That’s not right! We’re not supposed to-- Stay back!”

I’ve started walking forward on feet that gouge into the pavement. The man drops his weapon and transforms. His bare arms thicken with muscle and cover with gray fur and his shirt rips to let a patagium spread between his sides and his arms. His head expands into that of a bat’s, with a deep red shadow occupying the otherwise empty eye-sockets. His wide snout opens as broadly as mine and a stream of grey wind jets out between his fangs. It hits me like a punch and would have knocked me out of the alley, but something braces against the ground and keeps me upright. It’s a tail.

My vision fractures and so does my whole face. I’m barely aware of my clothes ripping as something builds in the left part of my throat. When I choke it loose, a stream of fire streaks through the alley and hits the vampire’s side.

He screams and lets up his attack. I take my chance, charging even as I try to get used to my new vision. I manage to catch his ankle in my claw as he tries to fly away and I squeeze. My hand and arm are covered in a thick craggy armor and my fingers look more like crab claws. I throw him to the ground and roar, hiss, and foam with three distinct mouths. A second pair of arms sprouts through my shirt. The scars on my ever widening neck split open and air from my mouths flaps through my new gills.

I don’t think I’m a vampire.

“Wait! Please!” the bat begs, trying to pull his foot loose. He probably could if he kept at it, but he’s more interested in capitulating. “I wasn’t actually going to hurt you. They just wanted me to keep an eye on you. Just to make sure you weren’t too...uncontrollable.”

I try to ask who “they” are and what being “uncontrollable” would have resulted in, but none of my mouths can speak well.

“They want all of the new vampires watched,” he pleads. “I was just turned a week ago. Please don’t kill me.”

I consider it. I still don’t know what he would have done if I was deemed uncontrollable. But he looks really pitiful right now. As I mull it over, something catches my eye that makes me forget all about the miserable bat, who quickly uses the distraction to escape.

A broken mirror at the end of the alley shows me what my right head looks like. An eel’s snout filled with barracuda teeth and topped with glowing yellow toad eyes. Yeah, definitely not a vampire.

After about a minute, I know where I need to go. I sink into the river and let the water tingle my scales. Then I turn right and start swimming upstream to where the beach is a few miles away. If the Blood Moon Circus is still there, then that’s where any answers are.

On the way, I swivel my right head on my thick, flabby neck and look at the rest of my new body. My left head looks like a slender gold-scaled dragon, no eyes, but strong teeth in my snout and a big, well-developed nose with sensitive barbels surrounding the nostrils. They tickle a little when I exhale fire. My middle head is the shortest. The serrated teeth and electrosensitive organs of a shark surrounded by the black armor of a crab. Four beautiful navy colored eyes rest on the top of the head, constantly gazing at the stars. My legs and back are covered in the same armor as my middle head and top arms. My more flexible lower arms are covered in indigo scales with fins that shimmer tropical pink and green, as are my chest, stomach, and tail. And I’m large. Very large. Super-glad-this-didn’t-happen-in-the-house large.

When I get close to the clearing where the circus was, I can only find one electric signal. Still, vampires don’t register on my electro-sense so I decide to lumber out of the water and check it out with my own various eyes.

I lope over to the signal, hoping to scare away whoever it was before they got caught in something. Then I recognize it; the bench I was sitting on. That shouldn’t be a big deal and it wouldn’t be if the young man sitting on it wasn’t waving me over. I’m a little unnerved. But I’ve come too far to back out, so I follow him as he jumps off the bench and over the railing to the beach.

“Wow!” the young man laughs as I get close. He smiles with perfect teeth and looks me over with swampy green eyes. “I knew you’d be a winner, Reese. How's that better life I promised you so far?” He laughs in a perfectly normal way that shouldn’t be as chilling as it is.

I try and fail to answer. He just smiles and strokes my dragon neck.

“Don’t worry about it, big guy. You’ll get the hang of talking in this form soon enough. I’m betting this head is going to be your talking head. Has the best lips.” He pulls back and raises his palms to me. “For now, though, let’s just have a look at you, kid.”

Given that I’m just south of thirty and he looks just north of twenty, it’s a little weird to be called ‘kid’ by him. But I can sense and smell that he’s far older and stronger than he looks. So I don’t resist as he examines my fins, claws, webbed hands, even my teeth.

“You’re a little small, but I’m sure you’ll fill out more once we get you a bit below sea level. That’s where we really shine.”

If I could stand without hunching, I’m pretty sure Icould see into a second story window. I’m a little afraid to find out how big a-bit-below-sea-level Reese is. When I accidentally breathe a little fire on him, his face lights up with delight.

“Fire. Fucking fire! Can you believe it? My boy’s got fire breath! You don’t know how rare that is, kid! Erica’s gonna be so jealous she’s gonna shit herself!” He puts a hand on my middle head’s triangle shaped forehead. “And I can tell this one has electro-sense. Pretty strong, too. Bet you can fry someone’s nervous system. What about this one?” He cups my eel head in his hands. “Bet it has acid or sonic pulses or something, right? Or right, you can’t talk. Here, big guy, how about I help you back to human form?”

His hands thicken into warty green frog feet, the kind of things you’d expect to be yanking victims into murky bogs. The warts on the palms open, revealing red eyes. They illuminate with a warm, suffocating light and my body feels like it’s drying out and tightening. A few seconds later and a mostly naked but fully human-looking Reese Lorenzini. I have just enough pants left to be an inefficient loincloth.

“Thanks,” I say a little raspily. “Um, you probably explained this already but...”

“Who am I and what the hell’s going on?” he finishes cheerily. I nod. “Name’s Salem, buddy, and I’m the guy who sired you. That’s what we call it when you’re changed.” He lets his teeth grow sharp and his eyes glow red, but his smile remains friendly and his tone remains helpful. “Now ask away, Reese. I’m here to answer.”

“So what are we?” I ask.

Salem shrugs. “Sea monsters? We don’t have a proper name. And our powers and appearances are so varied, it’s hard to tell that we’re all the same species. Few things in common though: we’re big, we’re powerful, we don’t age, we live for at least a century or so, and we’re not huge fans of sunlight.” He waves his warty hands at me and I remember the warm light. “It’s a deep sea thing.”

“And the vampires?”

“Are idiots. They’ll sire anyone without checking to see if they’re compatible or not. That’s why there are so many… rejections.” Salem casts a regretful look towards the remains of the circus. “Look, kid. There’s some… stuff brewing and we’re having a bit of a recruitment drive. The sea monsters, vampires, werewolves, witches, boogeymen, even the fae and yokai tribes are all making as many extra hands as possible. And since those bat bitches have blown our cover, we’re really desperate.” He irritably exhales a puff of green gas. “Not like it wouldn’t have been blown soon anyway.”

Salem puts his hands on my newly muscled shoulders. “We can use a guy like you, Reese. The world could use you.”

I’m not sure how to respond other than staring blankly into my sire’s eyes. My heart’s beating at its standard steady rate, so no panicking, but I still can’t quite wrap my head around it. Salem must notice, or maybe he went through this once, too.

He smiles reassuringly and says, “No one's gonna force you into anything, but I’d like you to come with me. Just see what we’re about and make your decision then. No matter what you pick you can always come back here. No one’s asking you to live under the sea forever.”

Oh. Choices. That’s new. A few days ago, my choices were be miserable, kill myself, or be miserable and then kill myself. And then be miserable in death. Now I feel like I did when I jumped out of the window and gazed up at the unending sky: free.

“Alright,” I say. I let my happiness, hope, and anticipation put a real smile on my face. I’d almost forgotten what that feels like. “Let’s go.”

Salem looks relieved. “Attaboy. I can’t wait to introduce you to the others. You’re gonna fit right in.”

He shucks off his clothes and puts them in a plastic bag. Then he morphs into a train-sized dragon with lattices of coral growing out of his warty frogskin. I morph next, feeling the liberating expansion from a tiny, fragile human into a massive sea monster. Salem leads me into the briney waves. I follow, keeping four eyes on that gorgeous diamond sky, even through the foam of the ocean.

I’m sure you’re wondering about the stuff that’s brewing, but don’t worry. It’ll become apparent soon enough. Just remember while you’re loading up your armies which monsters are on your side. Anything that’s not eating you is here to help. Oh and Salem was right, in case you’re wondering. I am much, much bigger under the ocean. We all are.

Don’t worry. You’re in good hands.

Or claws.

#short story #kind_of_long #vampire #monsters #suicidal #christmas

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missgeniality · 4 years ago

Text

A Work Of Art (m)

“In our life there is a single color, as on an artist’s palette, which provides the meaning of life and art. It is the color of love.” - Marc Chagall

➺ Banner: The lovely @dee-ehn 💕

➺ Pairing: Jimin x Female Reader

➺ Genre: PWP, Smut, Slightest Angst

➺ Rating: 18+

➺ Word Count: 7.3k

➺ Summary: You surprise Jimin with his Filter outfit; and then some.

➺ Warnings: tongues get tired in this fic, dom!jimin, we talk about spit, some biting, jimin loves praise, lingerie n stuff, nipple play, oral sex (m&f receiving), we talk more about spit, some bondage is involved, degrading names, blindfolds, spanking (maybe too much, don’t look @ me), light choking, light face-fucking, cum eating, we talk even more about spit, hickeys galore, some edging?, unprotected sex (don’t do it kids, not even for Jimin)

➺ Author’s Note: (repost bc tags, you know how it is) huge s/o to @ilikemesometaetaes for making time to beta read this monstrosity 💜 thank youuuu! Also thanks to @honeiibeehobi, @kithtaehyung for helping me with the many many details & @ppersonnafor hyping up this idea or else it would have never seen the light of day ;_; lol i will come back to edit this cuz this didnt let me focus on my paper due tonight so if you see a spelling mistake or tense error umm no you didnt 👀

do let me know your thoughts!! the smallest feedback goes a long way! 💛💛

This is the first part of my Dress Down series, find more at it’s masterlist!

Y/N: soooooo, I did a thing. JM: is the dishwasher flooding our kitchen again? Y/N: -_- i’ll give you two more guesses. JM: oh no. you picked up a dog from the street again. Y/N: come onn!! JM: y/n, last time you picked one up, HE HAD AN OWNER Y/N: you’re down to your last try, or else i’m taking this off. JM: … JM: so its something you have on? 😏 Y/N: pic_210124.jpg JM: holy shit JM: wait wait fuck JM: keep the door unlocked.

“You like?”

The bob in his Adam’s apple wordlessly conveys the answer you’re looking for.

A crisp, white, button down shirt, tucked into black trousers, topped off with a panama hat that matches your top half is the view Jimin comes home to. Your dress pays homage to Jimin’s Filter outfit - actually, the exact one - the one that showcased his immaculate dance moves, the one that exposes his delicious collarbones, the one that brings the irresistible urge to bite your way up his neck - the one he eventually rids.

If you had to pick a color, he is a flustered orange, bright and blushing, turned on by the indecent implication of your very decent outfit.

You’re on the counter, one leg crossed over the other, accentuating the swell of your ass. Landing on the pads of your feet, you take a few steps towards the man with the unhinged jaw.

“Babe.” a mellow croak - Jimin can’t get a whole sentence out without saliva pooling and obstructing his speech. “You, in my clothes… fuck.”

Chuckling at his very obvious loss of words, you give him a twirl, allowing him to fully soak in your outfit.

“Was waiting for you.”

Three long strides and you were in his arms, a pair of lips desperate to invade your space and claim you. An Angel on your shoulder tells you to give in; after all, this is the end result - what you both want.

However, the Devil on the other side, no no no. It wants you to make him suffer. To get revenge for all the times you were taken control of. It remembers all the days he turned you on with shoot photographs and all the nights he brought you to the brink only to stop you from tipping over with a cocky smirk and a cheeky wink.

The Devil was created from the moments when you thought you would actually erupt, begging for release, only to be shoved aside with a single growl of ‘don’t you fucking dare.’

Your desire to please him effectively silenced the Devil and kept it at bay. But no more. All those times built up and gave your Devil the power to force its way against your will to restrain it, causing it to rise to the surface.

You will have the upper hand.

So you push him away, keeping him at an arm’s length for your safety to have him on his toes. Forlorn eyes meet your steely ones, and you physically stop yourself from giving in to his puppy gaze - those eyes can turn icy and sultry when nailing you into the bed like his rent depended on it.

“Sit there. I have a-” You turn to switch on some music, “-small present for you.”

“If the small present isn’t me folding you in half and fucking you till sunrise,” He sits with visible reluctance, irises slowly transforming into magma orbs, “I don’t want it.”

“Well, we’ll see… Depends on how you behave.”

On a normal day, this comment would have lit your ass on fire, pronto.

Today isn’t a normal day at all.

You stride on, every noiseless step you take leaving a wreckage of nerves behind, ignoring the smoldering gaze he has locked on you- you are unsure whether he is deciding your punishment or simply admiring how his clothes fit on your body.

You stand on the side, drinking him in.

From your viewpoint, this is ridiculous. Those cursed jeans, vacuumed onto his thighs, ensure your eyes don’t miss a single ridge. His legs are spread out, beckoning you to have a seat, and the Angel once again begs for some reprieve. He knows what he’s doing; knows you inside and out- knows you couldn’t miss a chance to ride him like this. The wicked smirk flashing back at you is confirmation.

But you stymy that thought at its root. Walking behind, you wrap your arms around him to faintly buss his cheek.

“Sooo I was watching Filter…”

Jimin hums against your feeble touch. He wants more. The soft wind of your breath routing through his jeweled ear sends a wave of goosebumps down his spine. From behind, you run your hands over his sinewy biceps, taut in restraint - holding themselves back against the suffering you are putting him through.

“You do know how fucking hot you looked, right?” You playfully let your tongue toy with the hanging ornament, the briefest of flicks causing Jimin’s shoulders to push back, trying to connect with your bosom.

With a crooked finger under his jaw, you bring him to meet your eyes- eyes that are adorned with layered shadows of deep maroons, a variety of colors blending into your skin tone, eyelashes piqued up and ready to reach the clouds.

“So pretty…” He whispers out as you place your hat on its rightful throne - Jimin’s head.

A lone digit traces the lines of art you etched for him, appreciating every single stroke you put in to make a memorable time. Warm merigold rays bloom in your chest in response to his gaze, with him looking at you like you invented the sky. Pupils are dilated, and the only reason you can see each other is because of the practically nonexistent distance between you.

His eyes pick up on your tapering resolve to keep him in line. A light quiver of need passing your lips as you hopelessly vie for dominance is what most likely gives you away.

Grabbing you by the neck, he pulls you into a deep kiss, plunging his tongue into you with reckless abandon like he was a nomad all this while and your mouth has finally claimed him home. Your neck strains at the awkward angle and surely even his is hurting, but the pressure of his hand is unrelenting.

His tongue searches and searches, desperately looking for a part in you he has not yet explored. You’d think the years of togetherness would have diminished this fiery attraction but no, he comes onto you like he has a mission to prove - to validate his love for you, to plead you to be his. You would happily accept this shower of affection, returning it with due interest.

With great difficulty you part, a string of spit still connecting your lips because he has not let you move far enough. “Uh-uh. Be good.” You pout a little, breaking character.

“You’re here. In my clothes. A walking dream. How the fuck am I to be good?” He pulls you back in to continue what you cut short but you break the line of spit and his intention with a hand wedged between your faces.

“I asked you a question, Mister.” Back on your cocky nature, you graze your lips against oh-so-lightly, barely giving him anything to feel, but the tingling on his skin shows he can feel it all.

The adoration moves into a competition, “You tell me, sweetness - how did I look?”

It’s always the praise. He loves it when you struggle to tell him his dick was crafted by the heavens when you’re choking on it, but he still makes you do it. You stutter and stumble your words when his lips smack against your cunt, devouvering and digging for the treasure of your cum, but he forces you to tell him. When you sit on his dick, your brain has no sense of diction or direction, only chasing the high at his mercy, but he makes you scream it out loud, letting everyone beyond the pearly gates know, between moans and wails, that only he can break you down this way.

“This shirt, sweetie.” Your nose trails the path between his collar and the ends of his hair, basking in the sweet vanilla scent, “You’re all covered. Why, pray tell,” You dig your teeth into the point where his shoulder meets his neck, “does this sole patch of skin turn me on so bad?”

He sucks in an inhale through his clenched teeth, his stunning visage devoid of any virtue. His head is thrown back, hat toppling over in the movement and giving you a larger canvas to mark, an opportunity you happily grasp. The mellifluous tones he is producing is recorded in your mind for lonelier nights to come.

“And the red suit? Fuck, your corseted waist?�� At the corner of your eye you see his fingers clenching into a fist, your lush voice making it harder and harder for him to breathe.

You slowly stride forward, painfully slow, letting him notice every single muscle of your body curving to his unspoken command, undoing one button at a time until your torso is revealed- and shows the true purpose of your scarlet eye makeup.

A deep burgundy camisole, ribbed at the waist to accentuate the way your hips flow has Jimin salivating to no end. The strappy number, with carmine ribbons flowing into your yet to be removed bottom half- a deed Jimin intends on rectifying very, very soon- calls to him sinfully. The lingerie twists and ties in incomprehensible ways, but the amount of cleavage it gives you is ungodly.

If they weren’t already, Jimin’s eyes are now wide open.

Time comes to a standstill as he checks out your whole figure, taking in every embroidered pattern on the lingerie and every embellishment on your breasts. Before, you were already a five-star meal, but now? An emperor’s feast.

The little flower right on top of your nipple has Jimin’s attention. His thumb comes up to trace the bedecked rose, following the stitched line of stem that takes him to the peak, then drawing over petal by petal. Each time he reaches close to your hardened nub, he abstains from crossing over it, making your nipple hardens imperceptibly under the presentiment of any relief and the disappointment when nothing arrives. His other hand, sitting on your waist, coaxes you to straddle him while he plays gardner on your bust.

“Jimin…” Your nipple, finally finding solace under his thumb, is not faring too well under the attention. Your plan of teasing him is slipping through your fingers like sand.

“Tell me baby, what do you want?” His finger is now tracing the seams of your lingerie cups, admiring the way they frame your ample bosom. Things are progressing too slow for your liking, and you come clean with your ignoble intentions.

“Please, I just want to suck you off.”

A wad of spit lands directly into your cleavage, followed by two thick fingers penetrating the lubed entrance.

“Nope.” His fingers continue to shallowly fuck your cleavage. Neither of you are being touched in the erogenous zone, but why does it feel so good? Your valley is inundated with his dribble, coating your ensemble and shifting shades to a deep cerise. Every pump of his nimble fingers between your breasts is like a promise of what your pussy is going to go through. Will he fuck you hard and fast with your voice echoing across the room, making every neighbor privy of your sexual escapedes? Will he be slow and gentle, penetrate you with utmost care, soft gasps and whines only sounded to the two of you? You can never guess.

In the aphrodisiac moment, you forgot that you were supposed to take charge.

“Please, please, please! I did so much,” You take the guilt route. If Jimin was anything, he was a just and fair man. “Can’t I get that much?”

Jimin’s gaze has not left your wet cleavage. A flit of his eye makes contact with yours and goes back to the fucking - that is enough language for you to understand his needs. You bend low, and spit out a fat glob onto your chest to add to the mess he has already made. The groan that leaves him is ungodly, and he licks the spit you unloaded onto yourself, spreading it all over your expensive wear. He slurps like you released sweetened water to a parched traveller, your bosom holding all the sweetness to itself.

Gathering your thoughts is more difficult than you could ever imagine. The cloth over your nipples is completely soaked, bitten into and sticking to your skin thanks to the vacuum Jimin pulled on them. Your back has had a workout, every vertebrae bent to its maximum possibility. Chiropractors are so last year, you just have your boyfriend ravish your breasts.

“Once I’m done, you can do whatever you want.”

All of your five brain cells had to be put in action to form that sentence. The moment the words left your lips, the pressure your breasts were on had been released, but you could still feel lips against you, stretching into a snarky smirk.

“Whatever?” His grip on your waist tightens, seating you more firmly onto his taut thighs.

Whatever. That stupidly amazing word.

“Saying ‘whatever’ always lands you in trouble. Have you forgotten?” His damp lips are tracing your collarbones, nibbles whenever he felt appropriate. How does he expect you to form a damned sentence like this, the Devil on your shoulder indignantly asks. The Angel on the other has gone back in time to fetch memories filed under the term ‘whatever’, strictly saved for your quality alone-time.

The first time you told him to do ‘whatever he wants’ was fairly early into your relationship. Sex was as vanilla as the ice cream tastebud-less people liked, and none of you ever pushed it too far. A happy, drunken night with a loose-lipped confession from him.

“God, the things I want to do to you…” he had muffled into your hair, maybe not even intended for your ears to pick up.

A cheeky giggle had bubbled out of your tipsy self. “Like what, tie me up?”

If Jimin then were a color, he was a pantone pink. Blushed cheeks from the alcohol and the realization that you had caught him, airbrushed with a depth you weren’t able to put in place that early in the relationship. Wide-eyed horror was shown in its place, possibly exaggerated to add to the denial he had landed himself in.

“No no, of course, I don’t mean it like that, what ar-”

“Why not?”

The animal that awoke after confirming with you fifteen times was a force to be reckoned with. Your bra had turned into rope, wrists bound behind as he roughly squished your helpless cheeks.

“You will tell me when to stop, right?” His tongue peeked lightly, brushing your top lip, taking the perspiration away.

“Uhmf-yufh!”

“God, you’re gonna regret this baby.”

But it was exactly the opposite. You got the railing of a lifetime, heard the filthiest words that could leave the lips of such a courteous man - a side you had not expected at all. You couldn’t possibly recollect every single move he made, but what you can recollect with excruciating detail is every feeling you felt that night. It was filled with lust, with revelations of the new ways your body could bend, a night of puppetry where Jimin played you like the master your body craved. The following day was Jimin taking care of you, big puppy eyes wondering whether he took it too far. In his daze of letting go of control, he couldn’t take in your lidded stare, heaving with satisfaction - so you made sure he could witness them when he took you the next time that morning.

The other time the wretched word was mentioned was during an argument. You’re not jealous of Jimin on stage - it’s his career and you were one of the girls offering one of their kidneys to be able to catch a glimpse of him.

But your workspace? That’s where you draw the line.

She was a random worker. Some third-floor low-lying soul. You were eighth-floor premium material (the floors didn’t decide shit, but no one can tell you what skyscraper semantics you can craft in your brain). A lifeless party that even Jimin’s colorful locks couldn’t color up.

This random worker was very enamored by Jimin (as she should, the man is a whole nine-course meal). Supportive fans are not what get you jealous either.

But the limit is when placed her scrawny fingers on Jimin’s hand, drawing the glass in his grip to her lips and took a sip from it. If her lashes were fanned they could blow a man away (which is probably more than what her puny mouth could possibly do). The fume exiting your ears could have been in bright red for all you care, because every office member had been rightfully annoyed.

The whole car ride back was filled with your drunken blabbers about the different ways you could skin her. The actual victim beside you was not making a nearly big enough deal out of it, intending to let you get rid of your temper.

“She fucking knew!” Your normally clean disposition had taken its leave after the fuming temper took real estate in your brain, and you aimlessly threw your heel at some corner of the house - hungover self shall have to deal with this angry mess you’ve made. Wait, you’re an angry mess too.. “The gall she had, I should jus-”

You march towards the door, in hopes of what, you don’t know. But if you didn’t take action you’ll probably explode. Any action, just anything. You never find out though, because a strong arm slithered around your waist and halted your expedition.

“Calm down, feisty. Where are you going now?” His soothing voice, punctuated with a mocking chuckle almost quelled the fire in you. Almost.

But you’re not done being an idiot.

“To go find her for you. You’d fuck the living daylights out of her, right?”

The loudest silence you have ever encountered. Jimin’s grip on your waist tightened to the point where it could have hurt. Like he was trying to push every iota of that thought out of your body. From behind, you can hear a deep breath dragging, and somewhere in your irate head you knew you had struck a nerve, a bad one. Jimin is forced to expel any anger bubbling in him, trying to use reason with an unreasonable recipient.

“Princess, you don’t actually think I’d do that right?”

“I don’t know!” Your misplaced anger had reached the rooftops. Jimin had done nothing wrong here except try to calm an increasingly livid girlfriend. “Maybe you’d love that. Her itty-bitty waist, that whore’s outfit she had on. You call me a whore right? Maybe she’s more worthy of you!”

“Y/N.”

The timbre of his voice had completely changed. The breathy, airy aura had completely departed from your name he had just called. The lack of nicknames raised some hair at the nape of your neck, but you’re a stubborn one.

“Ugh, I don’t care.”

You tried to walk back to your room, head still reeling in a palace of inferno, burning everything that dares to intrude your path - but somehow, you had been pushed to a wall, and the eyes of the man you loved had turned feral.

If Jimin was a color, he was green - igniting with fury, anger repressed in dark shadows that never made the light of the day until pushed - but you pushed all right. And now released from its shackles, it has surrounded you and slammed you against the wall - and you have nowhere to go.

“You’re my whore. Is that a complaint from my stupid, stupid whore?”

The only joint you’re free to move is your neck, and your gratuitous self decided to rebel with whatever degree of freedom you have. Turning your face away to not meet his seething eyes, you continue your rebel-without-a-cause tantrum.

“Whatever.” you carped out.

Again, with that stupid word, you had signed your fate for the night.

Usually, you can express your feelings. Be it pain or pleasure (sometimes the two packed in one), you could wail it out to the heavens and respite would follow.

Usually, you can see the torments laid out on you. Jimin’s lithe body performing every obscene spell he invoked is a treat for your eyes. He treats your body like an artisan, using any medium to paint his art on you.

But that day, you were stripped of them both, and made to realize what a privilege they were.

Mouth stuffed with your bunched up panties, eyes blinded by his tie of the evening, you could only rely on the sensors on your skin to somehow predict what was going to be done to you. And you failed. Every single time. Every thwack fell on a new area. Every teasing touch tickled you at a new place. Nothing could begin to prepare you for his next move and you couldn’t keep up with his tameless pace.

He made you beg through the makeshift gag, beg to let you come, then beg to stop coming, beg for every orifice of yours to be filled by his seed and then beg to get cleaned by him. With the first rays of morning sunlight, language was an illusion, time was an out-of-reach concept, and all you knew was the worshipping of last night.

Whatever is a word. Whatever is mean. Whatever is filthy. Whatever is nailing you into the bed and rendering you immobile for the entire day. Whatever may just be a word to anyone, but to you it is what has you losing sense of reality, giving in to a phantasm of your wildest dreams.

A wet tap on your cheek brings you back from you imagining the past - the fingers that were fucking your cleavage are squishing your cheeks, bringing your attention back from all your dirty memories to the present - to create another memory to add to your folder.

If Jimin is a color, he is the darkest of all blacks. This is where everything pious comes to meet its sordid end. His sultry gaze is reading your eyes, searching for where you got lost, which shared memories of passed time made you melt into the puddle that you are right now.

“I said, don’t you remember? ‘Whatever’?”

Let’s see. You don’t have work tomorrow. You don’t have any commitments. You don’t have to meet anyone.

So there is no reason for you to be able to move.

“Hmmmmn, I don’t seem to recall - you could remind me.”

Dark, dark chuckles from such a cherubic face. You flounder off his lap to shuck your (his) pants away, revealing the matching maroon garter belt set. The whole outfit is an ode to Jimin’s mid performance transformation, the one that made many people’s hearts skip a quick beat. His slim, cinched waist, the flared pants flowing down his frame were one for the books, and you’d like to think your rendition has its place too.

Giving him a quick spin, you attempt to get down to business - but Jimin pulls you back on his lap. Without the pants, you can feel it - his hard, thick cock straining against the tough jean fabric and still making its presence known.

“Tell me more, baby. What did you like?”

The man was a sucker for your praise.

You were a sucker for the whole man.

But the sucking will probably have to wait.

“I loved your expressions. You’re so sexy on stage, fuck. Going around and giving bedroom eyes to the world.”

His hand gripping you ass gives it a quick pinch, but voice just let out a lazy hum to get you to continue.

“The choreography,”, your whisper is strained, “you dance like you fuck baby. So sensual, so sexy.”

You lick a stripe up his neck, from his artistic collarbones to the back of his ear, the sensitive spot that makes him hiss is arousal. You stay there, wanting to whisper the next few lines. The world didn’t need to know your thirst for this.

“You know my favorite part?”

“Oh, tell me.” His voice is hitting lower and lower in pitch, much like it’s hitting you lower and lower in your body.

You place the hand framing his face on his neck - the same one you want to cover in blooms of purple and red, lightly squeezing, letting him preen under the pressure. The tightness has Jimin’s head falling back on the headrest, and you can feel his pulse hastening to accommodate for the lacking oxygen in his stream.

Letting go of his throat, and pleased to see the lightest indentation on his beautiful pale skin, you snake your hands downward.

“Na, na, na,” Inching slowly towards your end goal, you whisper the tune into his ear, “na na na, na, na na”, covering every part with an indulgent languish, “pick your filter”.

Your hand finally reaches its destination - you grab his bulge and squeeze the hardness, making Jimin buck his hips against your palm.

“Namaneul damabwa.”

It’s a low whisper from his lips, but even in the gravelly sound you can hear how melodious he is, how the song rolls off of his tongue and was made for his vocal color. The whisper is laced with lust, with want, with desire, all the feelings you portrayed for him in his performance.

That, and in life in general.

You shuffle and sit to the side, simultaneously unbuttoning his jeans to get him some relief for the ache he had going on. Finally, you acquiesce and free his dick from its cages.

Every time you see him is a wonder to you. Hard, ridged, the right amount of veins to stimulate the walls of your cunt. Head leaking from the eons of teasing you’ve been doing, right from the text you sent to seconds ago. You bend down to clean him up, tasting the saltiness of his seed that has coated the head. Jimin’s lips are facing the brunt of your deeds - his teeth have found near permanent residence in its plushness, digging deep to keep from moaning too early, from giving you the pleasure. He is going to make you work.

Well, you must get to work.

Slowly, slowly, you dip your head in further, sucking lightly with each move, tongue tracing every vein on his dick. As you move your head back up, Jimin’s hand pushes into your back, making it arch further, and then you go down on his dick. His finger lightly follows the curve of your back, from your upper back all the way to the band of your lace panties.

Hooking a finger underneath the lace fabric of your panty that had disappeared in between your mounds of flesh, he pulls at it - hard. Your throat revolts against the intrusion as you gag, and the fabric presses into your clit. The concentrated abrasion turns into pleasure - he uses it to arch your back further, and bring your ass closer so that he can-

Smack!

The spank sends you forward and you choke on his dick further, throat giving in to his hardness.

“So good for me baby. Look at that ass.” He grabs one cheek, bubbled with the way your panties are now, squeezing and testing the firmness of your glutes.

Your plans of torturing him are shot; the Devil on your shoulder is strangely mute. Awakening the brat, you slip a hand under and toy with his balls, pulling back to provide your throat some recess. Your saliva mixed with his precum is an gushing mess, glistening on his balls and now coating your palms as you play with light squeezes - the existing stiffness caused by your teasing arousal mixed with your playful fingers make Jimin buck into your mouth, releasing a delicious groan in the process.

A second spank is a warning, either you increase your pace or reap some serious consequences. You consider the consequences; they are very compelling. You could end with delicious marks of ownership from this delicious man. But he deserves the best suck of his life, and you’re going to do just that.

Hollowing your mouth, you go further down, till his head is poking an uninvaded point in your throat, and Jimin lets out a surprising note. A groan, no, a roar, but a tinge of whine mixed in it, like the pleasure is too much for him.

You continue to swallow around, hand pumping the length you couldn’t take in, interlarded with swipes on his tight balls, leaving Jimin to be a heaving mess. Your ass is not faring better, bearing the brunt of his replies. You’re positive his fingerprints are imprinted on your asscheek, and one sit on his phone can unlock it. The line of your panties is drenched with your sopping wetness and lodged between the lips.

“God, I’m so close baby, just a little more.”

You would fervently nod in acceptance to whatever demand he places; in this position, he could ask you for the world and you would have it at his disposal. But what stops you are his ringed fingers lodged in your hair, pushing you in further, determined to spill deep in your throat, to the point where you don’t even have to swallow to get everything down.

“Fuck, such a good girl for me.” Jimin appraises how deep he is going, how your throat is accommodating him and quivering around his length. Bunching your hair up into a makeshift ponytail, he stops them from obstructing his vision - the view of you struggling to take him in, toiling to keep the need to breathe at bay while you tend to his needs, worshipping his dick like its the last meal you’ll ever get - your desperate adulation takes him over the brink.

Jimin erupts into your mouth; an ungodly amount at that. It is the hardest he’s come in a while, and given your lifestyle, that’s saying something. Even a cum-hungry whore like you can’t possibly swallow that much in one go, and you are forced to let the globs dribble down his now-softening member. The two of you are heaving, catching a breath - completely different circumstances but the same result.

The way you’re looking at him right now; his dick is already twitching to go for a second lap. Dilated pupils staring back, like you were at the receiving end of the orgasm - you are staring at him like he hung every star in the sky. Strings of cum are leaking out of the corners of your lips, ones he really wants to lap up with his tongue. Instead, you daintily dab it away - as innocent as pecking stray drops of ice cream off your mouth.

You look at him with teasing eyes. “Want a taste baby?”

Running your tongue along the mess you (or he) made, you gather the remnant cum that didn’t go into you, and instead flooded his groin. Straddling back onto his lap, you go in for a kiss but stop halfway.

Jimin is looking, waiting with lust hungry eyes. Slightly pained by the pause, he whines.

“What?”

“Open your mouth.”

From a height, you let his cum and your spit drop into his mouth, a groan of satisfaction emanating as Jimin’s tongue accepts it with great delight. He tastes his juices, they somehow feel sweeter coming from your mouth. He pushes the glob you dropped on his tongue against the roof of his mouth, letting every taste bud bathe in relish. When he’s sucked all flavor out of the globule he swallows it. On opening his eyes and landing back from heaven to earth, he sees you admiring his adam’s apple, the way it bobbed when he swallowed your offering.

Jimin’s eyes trace your current state; you look beautiful. The strappy red lingerie wet from Jimin’s treatment perfectly showcases your peaked nipples, ready for another round of torture. His shirt, through all this has managed to stay hanging on your shoulders. The curves of your sinful waist accentuated by the ribbons of the wear, like roads down a windy path, every ribbon vanishing into their destination, between your curvaceous thighs.

Slipping his fingers under the band, he decides he has not played with the lingerie enough, tugging it up once again - a sharp inhale and you’re moving along with it, upward to balance between the point of pain and pleasure. Jimin makes sure you don’t tip in favor of one. Grabbing you by the neck, Jimin harshly pulls you down into a deep kiss.

He’s done waiting, done watching you take the reins. His tongue tells you that you now can only react to his doings. Deepening the kiss, you let your mind walk places. Back to his performance, his stage presence, the aura he exudes when he is in his element. His sinful body melding to the flow of the beat, like the music was made to his movement - his piercing gaze that could leave an insentient camera with blushed cheeks - but a sharp bite pulls you right back to the present to remind you that this is also Jimin in his complete element. Pillowy lips, incandescent with every brush, sucked and nipped with fervor. But it still didn’t satisfy. It wasn’t nearly enough. Starved, you wanted to scream at every imperceptible air pocket between the two of you - as if you knew in your soul they were guilty of keeping you away.

Jimin pulls away, and his words shut you down before the whine leaves you.

“About that ‘whatever’…” his sinister eyes are a window to his brain churning something unimaginable to close the night - sinister in uppercase. Make it bold. Underline that shit. That’s him.

In the bat of an eye, you are face down on the sofa - Jimin’s rock hard thighs are straddling you, making sure you can handle his weight. In all the coarseness, he takes care of the smallest of things. An untimely smile creeps up on your face at the thought, the tender show of affection amidst the rough push and pull affecting your immersion, but you can’t say you don’t like it.

Feeling a rough jerk on your shoulder, you try to look back, just in time to receive Jimin’s ravenous gaze; he looks at you like he will eat you alive, and by the end of the night you plan on having just that. Pulling back your now-unbuttoned shirt and bunching its ends, he anchors you to the position of his choice by tying your hands behind.

Smelling a line up your neck all the way up to your hair, he briefly pauses to ask “Okay?”

Your tiny nod is enough for Jimin to carry on with whatever godless plan he has chalked out for you.

“I hope you had your fun. Because I’m not going easy on you.”

Light banter could cause no trouble. Atleast, not more than you already have. “When have you ever?”

Flashbacks of the blossoming days of your relationship flicker in Jimin’s mind, their fugacious presence a telling sign of how long it has been. Looking downward, he can only thank his alcohol-induced blabbering of that night as that is the reason he can enjoy the view he has right now.

“Maybe I should take it easy?” His tongue flits across your neck, too soft for your liking, torturous like his liking.

His fingers are playing with the straps and your now exposed upper back. It’s always been a favorite place of his. The whole expanse looks resplendent when he is done tasting you. Maroon and purple florets on your beautiful, glowing skin. And then you purposely wear dresses to show it all off, to show who your heart belongs to. He loves that about you.

You gyrate lightly, snapping him out of his daze, begging him to take you hard and fast. “Jimin, please.” a low drawl leaves you as you try to not slobber all over the cushion.

Jimin shifts lower to straddle your thighs. Snaking his hand between your legs, he finds your clit and plays with it, every press releasing a different sound from different depths of your throat. A particularly low grunt appears when he slips two fingers into your channel with smooth ease, and pushes you up from the inside.

“Ass up for me.”

His fingers stay lodged inside as you raise your hips to obey him, pulling you up further and further till he is satisfied with your position. God, your pussy looks wrecked. With every pump of his fingers you gush our more liquid, and Jimin gathers the escaping drops on this tongue.

“So perfect for me, this hole.” You can feel the cold metal of his rings drawing circles inside you as he prepares you to take his cock. His tongue, drawing completely different characters is too slow for your liking - he seems to be more satisfied in drinking your cum dripping from his fingers instead of paying attention to your throbbing clit. Seconds go by, several hinting moans of dissatisfaction go by, but the Devil on your shoulder seems to have returned and is asking for more. A hip raise, that’s all. His tongue will be right where you want.

What you got instead was a sharp bite on your already battered ass - Devil, hey, where did you go? “Behave.” He grunts against your pussy, and a fresh wave of arousal escapes you with a third finger making its way in. “Don’t like it? Too,” Smack! “Fucking.” Smack! “Bad.”

The last spank hit you hard, leaving your cunt soaked to the core. He is trying to get a rise out of you, and you are falling for it. Your smarting skin is at its breaking point, but let’s not pretend like you don’t want this either.

“Baby please, I’m so close.” You’re close to tears with how long you’ve been this turned on. Maybe Jimin will have a change of heart seeing you like this.

“Don’t.”

Well maybe not.

He’s using your hole like playdough - for his fancy, with no end goal in sight. He doesn’t seem to want you to come anytime soon and it is bothering you to no end. The tightening coil in your belly is almost painful at this point - but he doesn’t seem to want to let up anytime soon.

“You taste so sweet baby, almost don’t want to let you come, so you keep dripping like this.”

His fingers curl into you to hit that spot, and God, you’re seeing stars right now. Curling up your fists into a ball and trying to keep the threatening tsunami at bay, you jerk into his mouth and continue to sway to the tune his fingers play inside you. If desperation had a poster girl, they could take your photo right now.

“If you let me come I -ohhh- I will- I will give you more.” Your words are broken, every push into your cunt halting your flow of speech.

A split second later you are empty. He’s pulled away from you, and you think the finger-fucking torture you were going through was almost better than this. Your walls flutter in empty anguish.

“Better keep your promise then.” Finally, you hear Jimin shuffling behind, but your muscles feel too alive and too dead at the same time. At crossroads, you are unable to get yourself to move, to twist or turn and witness the glory of him, the scrunch of his features, the grit of his pronounced jaw, his lips heaving a sigh as he pushes his girthy self into your leaking hole.

Jimin’s forehead is lined with sweat, jaws hurting from the tight clench he had trying to not nut into you too soon. Now they revolt in pain, ready to pass on their trouble to his dick and release into you the moment he fits himself in. But he held off; he had plans for you - long plans.

As he slowly pulls himself out, you can’t help but mewl at the pleasure your walls are feeling, with every ridge of his cock pressing all the right spots inside you, the snug fit when he’s pulled out all the way only leaving the head inside you. Then, you can’t help but yell, expressing a mixture of anguish and pleasure when his hips snap to push into you in one swoop, hitting deep inside you. With your ass high up in the air, his balls smack your engorged bud, sending shockwaves throughout your body and clenching the hold you have on his dick.

“Fuck baby, you feel fucking tight. You’re so close?” Jimin’s voice is strained as well; the lack of mocking in his tone tells you he is close as well.

“Ki-Kiss me, please.” The voice that leaves you is so foreign, so unknown. The fucked out woman speaking in your stance has no spatial or temporal comprehension. You don’t even realize how you are put on your back, now a lucky witness to Jimin’s nimble figure pushing back into you as he leaned over to slot his lips on yours.

The kiss was explicit, it was rough, it would put to any kiss you’ve shared before to shame. Deep in throes of pleasure, his mouth is chasing yours. Your hands are still bound; a light fight against the restrain tells you you don’t have a chance. Instead, you suck his plush lip in, swiping your tongue across his cherry petals that are rushing with blood because of you. Dormant volcanoes across the world could erupt with the blaze of your merging lips, it is scorching hot.

If Jimin is a color, he is a rich wine - deep and passionate. He puts his one hundred percent into whatever he does, be it skilled singing, adept dancing or simply fervent kissing. He gives it his all.

Jimin’s skillful hips move in every way he wishes - and your pussy is thankful for that. Rolling in deep, he tests the stretch of your walls, before pistoning into you with zeroed-in precision, sole focus to get you to come with him. The effort he was putting in could be seen in his abs - they have tightened with exertion, and with a light sheen on sweat, look absolutely delectable.

Letting your hands roam, you bring Jimin’s face into your neck where you can hear every single breath, every hiss, every groan - that you could record and keep in your memory. With one hand tugging his tresses, and the other hand drawing paths on his back with your nails, you hear the sounds you want to. Jimin sharply bites your ear, and the shockwaves of pleasure send you tipping.

There’s layers to the pleasure you are experiencing right now, your orgasm hitting you in ebbs and flows. Right when you think you can finally return back to ground, the high tide pulls you back into the water for another stream of pleasure. It feels like eternity when you finally hit the land, and even then the loose sand makes you falter, threatens to send you back into the ocean.

Jimin’s pace is faltering, and he spills soon after. Hot, heavy breaths tickle under your ear, as both of you feel the sheer intensity of the orgasm. Him on you, your hearts are aligned, and you can feel the beats fighting each other for dominance until they soften down.

Ripples of energy flow out of the both of you, elevating the temperature around the two of you. If you didn’t have your eyes closed you’d say literal rolls of steam are emanating from the way you both are heaving. You slowly regain your senses, twitching hands trying to remember what it is that hands even do.

A shiver runs through your spine when you hear a grunt so close to your ear, only to realize Jimin is in the same position as you are in. Even without looking, you can guess what his expression is. Void of any edge, the softness of his facial features must have made their return, with crinkled eyes and a light frown on his beautiful pouty lips, he probably looks like an innocent caricature of the man that stood behind you moments ago. Letting your palm rest on his head, you beckon him to get up.

If Jimin is a color, he is the pinkness best portrayed by his puffy cheeks at this moment. A childlike glow, a guileless visage. He looks at you with such adoration, like you are the only desire in his world, and everything else can be damned.

You don’t want to break this silence but you cheekily add, “You didn’t even get me naked. Like this a bit too much eh?”

Dark clouds mar the pink and turn it into a deep, sultry carmine - the shift in his color noticeably brings your temperature down by a few degrees.

“Cute. You think I’m done with you.”

He is the whole palette, and you can pick your filter.

Thank you for making it to the end! Let me know what you think! And you can find more of my writing at my masterlist here!

#bangtansorciere #bangtanhq #bangtancentralstation #ficswithluv #bangtaninn #bts smut #jimin smut #park jimin smut #bts fanfic #jimin fanfic #bangtanuniversity

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beautifulterriblequeen · 3 years ago

Text

The Thief and the Tinker, Part 4: Circles and Cycles

part 3

Part 4

Viren: *smirks and plinks Runaan's coin to Ethari*

Ethari, furious: You throw another Moonshadow at me and I'm gonna lose it.

Circles and Cycles

Angst rating: 8/10

Back to Ethari, because we're not done with him yet. Ethari is soft, but he isn't weak. He won't be a willing pawn for Viren. He loves Runaan to the point of invention, and his devotion is more constant than the moon itself. He'll agree to do what Viren says, and he'll be Very Sad. But his spirit is in no way broken. Viren bribing him with the coins containing his family will only have the opposite effect. It'll give Ethari something to fight for.

We could get Focused Chaos Ethari. We could get Angery Trickster Ethari. We could get Rules, What Rules? Ethari. Let him try to steal the coins, try to break them, try to kill Viren, and be stymied at every turn, until he settles and seems cowed. And then all he does is craft his way out of the problem.

What if we are gifted with Iron Man Elf Ethari, who pretends to build a fake Key for Viren, but meanwhile he's really building a coinbuster with whatever he can get his hands on - primal stones, magically imbued gemstones, stolen artifacts, his own arcanum, his own reputation as the Master Craftsman of the Silvergrove. He'll use almost - almost - anything, to stop Viren and free his family.

Ethari may have to choose between those two things, though. And he's a hero, deep down, just like his family, just like his daughter. If he has to choose, he'll choose to stop Viren and save Xadia. He'll pay the same price as his family has if he must.

He'd let Viren think he was motivated purely by wanting his family back, but Ethari is far too steeped in the illusion and sacrifice for that to be all there is to his motives. It's a so-close-and-yet-so-far thing, how he and Viren almost embody the same ideals. Almost. Ethari would take one look at Viren, who just burnt down his whole Forest, he'd see the biggest threat in Xadia, and he'd say anything to get a chance to stop this juggernaut of destruction from getting his hands on whatever that ultimate power really is, locked behind that missing key. If he has to abandon his people and bawl his eyes out to convince Viren he's in, then he will.

And Viren wouldn't make it easy for him. He knows clever when he sees it. He went through all this trouble to persuade Ethari to work with him. He would need to keep Ethari as off-balance as possible to ensure that he keeps working as he should.

Angsty jewelry, anyone?

Viren giving Ethari his husband in pendant form to remind him what he's working for, when Viren and Ethari both know full well that only dark magic can open the hellcoins. Ethari wearing another pendant of his love, except it's not a metaphor this time. It's literally his love, in a coin around his neck.

Viren would love making Ethari stay close to him of his own free will if he ever hoped to free Runaan. Making people bind themselves to you is a big power flex. Remember that TDP stream future-season teaser note about Bait being in a creepy restraint in a future season?

This card is written on in all-caps, so that really could be "Bait" or "bait," or--knowing this show--both. Viren's been using Runaan as bait for Ethari all along. Putting his coin in a dark magic pendant casing for Ethari to wear would be a great parallel for that. Oh god. Oh man.

Maybe he'll stab the coin's scary casing right through that circle on Ethari's chest, right over his heart, make that Iron Man reference really obvious. Ethari also losing his shirt at some point, for angsty Viren-related reasons? It's more likely than you think. I mean... Ethari is literally involved in both forms of forging at this point. Shirt's gotta come off for uhhhh work reasons. And because he's hot. Because of all the forging. Mmhmm. I mean how else are we finally going to discover what his markings look like this is research I swear

I mentioned that I liked god-tier villains, right? Yeah, this is amazing. I haven't wanted to die and ascend over an idea for quite a while, but Ethari vs Viren in a drawn-out battle of wills would kill me in the best way. Especially since, while it looks like they're essentially fighting for who gets Runaan, they're truly fighting a much larger battle with much higher stakes. They're fighting for the future itself. It's an epic struggle between the Narrative of Strength and the Narrative of Love. And we've seen what happens, over and over, when the Narrative of Strength gets to call the shots.

On a meta note: If Ruthari's story arc isn't a love letter from one trauma survivor to another, and on a broader scope to all survivors who see it, I don't know what is. Sometimes life just chews us up and spits us out and we can't stop it and it breaks us. But sometimes we can reach out and grasp the chance to help each other, even after that, even when it hurts a lot, because we know what it means to be loved, and to love, and to want a safer future for each other and for people we'll never meet. The future is worth standing together for, helping each other back up for, fighting side by side for, even if you can't see how it'll end, or even how to begin. We are stronger together, and sometimes we need to fight for our "together" before we can fight for anything else. And that's worth it, every time.

This is glorious, it's beautiful, it's tragic, it's amazing, it makes me want to dance, it makes me want to scream into the void, it makes me want to slap someone with a semi truck. No, someone specific, don't worry, and he super deserves it.

Because Ethari is going to win. He was always going to win. He's soft, and he's clever, and he hasn't forgotten what love means. It's what he's fighting for. Not power, not control. Love. He doesn't want to dictate Runaan's future or anyone else's. He just wants his husband--and everyone else--to have one at all.

So he's going to win.

What thwarting Viren looks like, I couldn't possibly guess. TDP is no stranger to angst, so there will probably be a high cost involved in outwitting the dark mage. Maybe not everyone can be rescued from the coins. Maybe Ethari will lose his life, or his soul, or his vision, or something else really angsty. Viren could even kill him and resurrect him as a smoky craftsman, or a zombie craftsman, or something equally biddable but horrible. The only thing I'm sure of is that Ethari would never willingly make a working Key of Aaravos Ethari as long as there's a chance Viren could possess it. But I do believe that if he gets the right opportunity while he's busy saving the world from Viren's dark intentions, he'll break his husband's hellcoin open somehow and set him free, even if he has to smile at the devil to do it.

Ethari understands the difference between "you can" and "therefore you should." He might sacrifice his own world to save his husband, but he'd never sacrifice someone else's world. That's one of the Moonshadow cultural limits I've noticed: they accept boundaries when it comes to other people's autonomous rights, especially regarding life and death.

These limits could get pushed. Ethari will be under great duress and emotional strain if he goes through this kind of interaction with Viren. And maybe he will choose some dark things. Everyone else has. But I'm placing all my eggs in the basket labeled "Saved By Love." Either I'm right, or I'll get the best angst omelets in the universe. And I do love omelets. A villain invented them, you know. ;)

Another support for Ethari not making the key for Viren: the real Key exists!

Callum has it right now. The plot doesn't need Ethari's key (yet? ever?), but it does need Ethari to learn what he's made of, to stand up for something, or against something, or both at once. And once he learns what he will and won't do and the universe has rewarded his discovery with the return of his beloved husband then Ethari will be ready to take on whatever else the plot has in mind for him.

Depending on the plan, all of these events could happen in S4, as a setup for even bigger things to follow. Viren's wishes can be thwarted here and the show's overall tension will only continue to rise. It would let Ethari flex yes pls his skills so we know who he is, it would show how driven Viren can be for a long-term goal, it would let Claudia saunter further downwards, it would reveal some human/Moonshadow history, and it would resolve the seasons-long tension regarding Runaan's fate, allowing for the cycle of speculation, feels, angst, and Ruthari fanart to begin again. ;) Viren would need to find another way to pursue his long-term goal. And Callum's Key will get a little more clarity on just how important it is to the fate of the world - which will make everything he does, and everyone he talks to, and anyone who knows what he's carrying, intensely important.

Nyx is gonna steal it isn't she, omg chaos birb

To Viren, Ethari was a main course, meant to be devoured and consumed in his lifelong quest for something that will finally satisfy. But to Ethari, Viren was just empty calories to be passed over in favor of ordering his perennial favorite dish, one more time.

Once Ethari escapes Viren's clutches with as much of his family as he can rescue, Viren may turn back to looking for the real Key, especially if someone's seen it recently. Hunting a kid probably seems easier than hunting a full-grown Moonshadow craftsman who just outsmarted him. okay so maybe Nyx stealing it would be a good thing and save Callum's life

Ethari could go on to help repair the Sunforge, or rebuild the Moonhenge, or work on constructing Moonshadow villages in Katolis if he hasn't been ghosted for abandoning everyone after the forest fire. He might build magical devices for any number of reasons, to help all kinds of characters. Hopefully, wherever he goes, he'll have Runaan with him, in some way, for at least a little while. Cycles be like, and I feel like Runaan will not want to remain still for long, for whatever reason. Does he need revenge, atonement, justice, a new body, to find Rayla, to find Ezran? He'll be back in action as soon as he can, I think.

Okay, but, I'm so soft at the thought of a scene where Runaan and Ethari come before King Ezran. The husbands tried to save their people Runaan's way, the old way, and it only continued to endanger them. Following the cycle, as Moonshadows do, was the wrong move. But the son of the last human Runaan killed reached out with mercy and broke a thousand years of suffering and sorrow and hatred. Ezran did what Runaan couldn't: he saved the Moonshadow elves from total destruction. And that, more than anything else in the world, could soften one very broody assassin's heart toward humans again.

What would Runaan do, if his heart truly changed toward humans? What would he say to Ezran? I could see him struggling for a long moment before dropping to one knee to pledge his heart as he once had to do before the Dragon Throne. He doesn't know any other way but to serve. Ezran, reading the whole room and everyone's feelings before he tells Runaan that No, we don't do that here. That he's free, and free means free. No chains, no oaths. Just trust and friendship. He should get to make his own decisions for a change, even though that can be hard and scary sometimes. Runaan being genuinely scared, because that's too much freedom. But he's not alone. He has Ethari, and Ezran, and Rayla, and Callum, and their people, and their allies. And no matter what else happens, the people of Katolis - elven and human - will find a way forward. Together.

part 5

#tdp #tdp theory #tdp speculation #tdp parallels #tdp angst #heavy angst #viren #ethari #runaan #moonshadow elves #hopepunk #ezran #runaan's super getting a tart of jelly tm

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psalloacappella · 3 years ago

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SSM21 Day 5. Jutsu

Pairing: SasuSaku Prompt: Jutsu Title: I’m lost, so lost, I’m lost at sea you see Tags: Blank Period; Canon Divergence; Bittersweet; Fuck the shinobi state

The sun's setting - it may never rise again.

Ao3 | twt | Full series link | @ssskmonth

The only part of her returned to him are the earrings.

His handmade supplication and silent ardor he’d never had the easy ability to express, and she’d never taken them off since. In an ornate box in a small silk satchel set in a plush compartment they rest, an unnecessary labyrinth of layers for any widower to navigate.

Gleaming, the final remnants of his faithful wife. Like the Sharingan and fresh blood, not such different shades of calamity in the end, the glittered edges of them skewer his soul straight through, churning bile in his throat at the sight:

The ruby and the rust.

Knowing already they’d been torn from her flesh without ceremony, as a thief gropes for gold. He feels sick, chokes down dry heaves at the violence of it — all the ‘what if’s’ between the lines of the detached, clinical summary.

Ino had been the one to slip Sasuke the coroner’s report as Naruto sent back food and any emotional entreaties at a dizzying pace, barricaded in his Hokage office and unseen for the 48 hours since.

The photo is almost too much.

You deserve to know, she’d whispered, casting red-rimmed eyes at the closed door. In the face of her best friend’s death — and the wilting and withdrawing of a man who Sasuke suspects was more to her than just a friend, more than he might have guessed — each breath coming is a ghostly rattle, the human shell through which untenable grief passes. She was . . .

And in an uncharacteristic breaching of his physical boundaries, Ino’s face crumples and she falls into his chest, tears taking their worn fjord paths again, endless and unhealing.

She’s clutching, he’s still as stone. If he ever possessed the ability to comfort to begin with, how could he articulate that he was gutted, hollowed and scraped — had nothing left?

She was yours.

❦

A funeral turnout more beautiful and admiratory than expected. Arrangements of flowers in all sundry varieties, proper rites and rituals, tears and anecdotes from every corner, all the tiny pockets in which his wife existed to keep a hegemony well-oiled, well-healed, well-loved.

The sun’s setting — it may never rise again, and Sasuke leans into the shadowed corners of Naruto’s office as a broken, huddling animal while his best friend drinks in a way he never used to, longing for the desperate peace a substance never brings.

In between empties he tells him all of it.

“Was her idea,” Naruto croaks. “I begged her not to, Sasuke. B-believe me!”

Silence.

“Our intelligence team . . . knew the day after she left. The syndicate . . . they’d marked her. I’m sorry.”

Into his shaking hands, muffled, Sasuke speaks in a voice bland and dead. “Then why did you let her go?”

“Because she was right.” Naruto sniffles, wiping his nose with the heel of his hand. Like a child, a genin again. Both feeling useless and stymied. He laughs weakly. “She always is.”

When Naruto tells him the last bit of the mission — this plan so convoluted and shrouded in lies and kept off paper, officially unofficial, Sasuke’s insides and soul twist in protest and he thinks again of labyrinths, noiseless sinister tunnels of all the worst-kept village secrets. Wishing he were lost in them, deaf, dumb, and blind.

Naruto’s men lingering at their posts hear the end of it: Raised voices shot through with crackling pain, papers skittering, and when Sasuke kicks open the door he tucks his bruised knuckles into his cloak, gripping his secured, temporary discharge orders in his hand.

❦

Arriving after two weeks of listless travel, it doesn’t take Sasuke long to tease out the location based on a handful of conversations with some of the port city’s more loquacious characters. Worries him, but as he approaches a dilapidated beach cottage carrying a scent of neglect on the salty breeze, he begs forces unknown for a last flickering flame of faith.

Nothing in the filthy windows, no sounds coming from within. But it’s here, the lingering scent of familiar soft skin and now he’s on the back step, staring into a dank and empty den, old furniture laden with dust. He raises his fingers as if to tap gently at a door between him and this void, and now he’s feeling the skip of his heartbeat and he brushes his fingers against the air, again, some melancholy heartsick action, desperate for the sign that he can peel this illusion back.

And he falls through.

In her arms, into an embrace, and he’s letting out a burst of air against her hair and for a moment his chest caves in, shuddering with disbelief, that wounded and breathless sound of stolen speech, lost and found again.

“Sasuke-kun,” she sighs.

Taking in this cottage with gleaming wood floors, void of dirt, curtains thrown open to let the sunlight ring with impunity. In defiance of dwelling and hiding, the small resistance cloaked by the jutsu’s delusion to anyone lurking outside. Sasuke closes his eyes tightly, shuts them against this relief as if it’ll disappear the moment he lets go. She’s here. She’s real.

His hand travels down her spine, fingers memorizing each chine with the intensity of a blind man seeking purchase in lost memory.

“You’re—”

“You made it,” she says, sniffling. Prelude to tears. “I was wondering if I’d have to get on the boat myself.”

Lips in the crook of her neck, in her hair, holding her with the grip of a man clinging to life and still wondering if this is the most devastating dream, if he’s died himself.

“You’re real.” A catch in his throat. A gentle, brittle fracture in the exhaled shell of her name:

“Sakura.”

A moment, another. Then —

“We don’t have long,” she says, pulling back to look him in the eyes, dabbing away endless tears. “I’m so sorry, Sasuke-kun. For everything you had to go through, for the things you had to pantomime, pretending to grieve.”

He doesn’t tell her how the plan had been fucked up, that wires and signals crossed in the chaos of the penultimate piece of intelligence; that they’d already set in motion the plan, her plan, of faking her death to the syndicate as a feint for a larger stratagem, a byzantine game of chess; that only when Naruto had drunkenly and haphazardly explained the mess they’d found themselves in, Sakura with a price on her head and convincing them she could carry the illusion with the knowledge that they’d let her husband know, and in a timely fashion.

Sasuke doesn’t think he can process it yet, much less explain it to her now.

She’d never forgive herself.

“The ANBU’s jutsu did well,” she explains, swallowing hard, “but it won’t last. I’ve packed everything, I have the route. Disguises.” Thumbing his cheek, brushing away what might be an actual tear his buzzing skin can’t feel, she adds, “I need you with me, darling.”

Pretty words have never been her beloved’s forte. Instead he brings her hand to his mouth, pressing each finger against it one by one in quiet endearment — just as he remembers, the hum of her strength and adoration just beneath the skin.

The art of jutsu, at its roots; some form and blend of technique and magic, a pliable spectrum from love to disaster.

This unlucky fate, he supposes, is its own dark spell.

#SSM21 #sasusaku #psalloacappella:SSM21

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hoodoo12 · 3 years ago

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The Ties That Bind (And How to Follow Them) 3/?

@bunnys-beetlejuice-blog @werwulfy @mel-time @rainingpaint @infptarius @monsterlovinghours @turtlepated @strange-n-unbluusual @heresathreebee @sweetcat-666 @genderless-cryptid @fireflower1015 @go-whovian-universe

Monday at the archives went by uneventfully, though Pate did have some difficulty staying awake. She actually ended up going out to her car for her lunch hour and took a nap, the result being that she didn’t eat anything.

Pate was never quite sure these days what she might walk into when she opened her apartment door, but it was unusually quiet when she arrived home. “Beej?” she called out. He’d taken off once or twice before, taking care of she didn’t know what business she didn’t know where, but he’d usually be back before bedtime. Feeling a little more energized thanks to her nap but famished from her skipped meal, Pate changed into loungewear, scrubbed off her makeup, and started preparations for dinner. It didn’t take long, and she would ordinarily wait for Beetlejuice to return from his roaming but she was starved and quickly scarfed down her portion, keeping Beej’s helping warm with a foil tent over the plate.

Unsure what to do with herself with the specter gone, Pate curled up on the couch and put on an animal documentary to wait for him.

⁂

He worked it down to a system.

Find a crack, enlarge it enough to send a tentacle or two to start searching for the next one while he forced the rest of himself through. A few times he was slowed when the scouting tendrils took longer to find the next exit point, and once he was stymied because a crack was above the ‘window’. He had no idea if anyone on the other side of that mirror saw him, or what they thought as he shimmied up the inside of the glass like a striped spider right out of a nightmare.

As Beetlejuice expected, there was no rhyme or reason to any of this, and no way to determine where he was. He could have been halfway around the world or in the apartment next door to Pate’s. Nothing he saw when he looked out--and he looked out of every window--was familiar. Undeterred because he had nothing but time, he kept at it.

Just because he had time, though, didn’t mean he didn’t ache. He’d never worked his tentacles so long that they were sore, and his fingers felt more numb than not. He had no fingernails left and he could feel the scrapes on his face, left after he’d pushed through a hole that wasn’t quite large enough for him to get through.

Hours had to have passed. If he got to Pate’s mirror before she came home, Beej promised himself a rest. Till then, he pressed on.

It seemed a Sisyphean task, this endless clawing into the white space behind mirrors. Evilly, his brain started asking questions like, “how many mirrors were there in the world? What if he was going in a circle? What if Lillian had forced the illusion that he was making progress, when he was still just trapped in her one special mirror?” If he gave into those thoughts or despair, he’d be lost for good. Then, all at once, as he pressed his forehead to the inside of yet another pane of glass to look out, a piece of paper on the outside caught his eye. He’d been through plenty of mirrors that had photos stuck to them, but very few in a bathroom--with the same black and white striped shower curtain as in Pate’s! The photo had curled from the humidity. Around it was a smear of lipstick in the shape of a lopsided heart. She’d been so angry he’d used her favorite shade to add the decoration--with his finger, no less!--but she’d never wiped it away.

He couldn’t see the front of it, of course, but knew the photo: a spontaneous Polaroid shot on her balcony one evening during the golden hour, an old-school selfie taken just because. They’d both been laughing because it had taken time to line it up correctly and not just get hair or half of someone’s face. They’d wasted so much film trying to get a good one. The final shot was the two of them slightly turned towards each other, Pate’s forehead against his temple, her eyes closed and a wide grin on her face. His mouth was slightly open because he’d been caught mid-laugh, but he was smiling too. Both their arms were outstretched because they figured both of them holding the camera might work better. The tips of his hair were pink.

He was home.

Beetlejuice would have cried in relief if he wasn’t so tired. Now all he had to do was wait till Pate came into the bathroom, probably inadvertently scare the crap out of her, and get her to let him out.

⁂

She must have nodded off there on the couch because the next thing Pate knew she was startling awake, heart thumping in her throat. She’d been on the colorful road again in the foggy wood, running from she didn’t know what and towards she didn’t know where.

Pate rubbed at her eyes with the heels of her hands and sighed, swinging her legs to the floor. What she needed was a splash of cold water in her face. Rising to her feet, Pate stretched and squinted at the time on the cable box, noting that Beetlejuice still appeared to be absent. She frowned, slightly unsettled that he had yet to return home.

She padded to the bedroom and on to the bathroom, flipping on the lights. In the sudden brightness she was instantly aware of a figure in the medicine cabinet mirror that was not her own. The initial shock made her jump, but the oh-too-familiar green hair and striped suit made her huff a relenting half smile.

“Okay, Beej, that was a good one. You totally got me,” she said, turning to face him behind her only to find that the room was empty except for her. Brow furrowed, Pate took another moment to look around in case he was hiding and hoping for another shock but there was no sign of him. Turning back to the mirror, where his disembodied reflection still stood with a strange expression on his face, she flashed him a questioning look.

“What’s goin on, Bug?”

Looking more closely at him, Pate noticed that his already mussed hair looked even more awry than normal, and there were marks on his face. Growing concerned, Pate took a step closer, pressed against the counter to lean closer to the cabinet and the mirror with the growing suspicion that something was wrong.

⁂

Time still had no meaning here. He tried the same things on Pate’s mirror that he had in Lillian’s, pounding on the glass with fists and tentacles, to the same zero effect. He even did his best to simply wrench the glass from the wall, but unlike the odd cracks he’d found that was seamless, like it was one solid piece of material. Eventually he gave up and just waited. It was like being in a tomb. He’d had plenty of practice with that, although this was unending light and he could see a portion of the bathroom. That was almost worse torture than just laying in the dark. Pate had to enter here sometime, however. When she did, looking a little like she’d just woken up, it actually startled him. The light was blinding for a moment and he jumped. Pate did too, when she saw him there, and then tiredly derided him for the scare.

He shook his head and said, “No--Pate, baby, you gotta let me out!”

She didn’t see it. She had turned to look behind her as if expecting him to be there.

When she turned back around to face him, she looked confused. She asked him what was going on.

“Pate! Pate!” he shouted, the volume in his voice increasing. “I’m stuck here! I can’t get out, you’ve gotta let me out! I went to see Lillian and she trapped me in her mirror, and then I kept moving from mirror to mirror until I found yours--how long have I been gone? Let me out!” Beej watched her gaze shift from his eyes to his mouth, and realized with growing panic that one, she couldn’t hear him, and two, he just word vomited so much so quickly there was no way she was able to lip-read everything that spilled out of his mouth. He put one hand flat on the glass towards her and licked his lips to try again. Enunciating as best he could, voice still just one notch below yelling, Beetlejuice said, “Pate. I’m stuck. Stuck! Help me get out, baby!” He put his forehead on the glass. The fingers on his outstretched hand, the one pressed palm side to the interior of the glass, trembled as well. The specter lifted his eyes back to her. “Please,” he pleaded.

⁂

Ordinarily after pulling a scare on her, Beetlejuice would be preening like the cat that caught the canary, punctuated with nuzzles and kisses to her forehead and cheeks and statements that he simply couldn’t help himself, she looked so cute when he caught her off guard.

This time, though, he looked positively frantic. His eyes were wide and desperate, his hand pressed flush against the inside of the glass. Pate’s eyes narrowed as his lips moved but she couldn't hear him. She did her best to discern what he was saying by reading his lips, but even then she could only make out a few words.

She thought she caught him say the words “stuck” and “help”. She swallowed, feeling an apprehensive flutter in her stomach. Something was terribly wrong. He was scared, and anything that could scare Beetlejuice was something to be deeply concerned about.

Questions began forming in her mind; how had he gotten himself stuck in her mirror? How could she get him out? The first thought that occurred to her was breaking the mirror, but somehow that didn’t seem like a good plan. What if it hurt him or something?

‘Come on, think!’ she told herself, reaching up to press her hand over the spot where his was in the glass.

Nothing Lillian had taught her seemed to be of any use, it was all about how to keep spirits and specters away, not letting them loose. At that thought she wondered darkly if Lillian might have something to do with this.

“Beej,” she said slowly, in case he couldn’t hear her, too. “Did Lillian do this? Because if she did, I’ll go talk to her right now.”

If the older woman somehow sealed her demon lover away, surely she had the ability to release him, Pate reasoned. And if it meant finally coming clean about having Beetlejuice around, if Lillian refused to teach her anymore because of it, then so be it. She just had to get him out of there.

⁂

Pate putting her hand against his, unable to touch, felt like they were miles apart instead of separated by a layer of glass. He swallowed and ran his free hand through his hair, hoping it wasn’t betraying his rising panic with some odd color. She must have picked up something from his spill of words, because she hit on the person who had done this: her mentor. Beej nodded at her query, but Pate’s announcement that she was going to talk to the older woman right now made him pound a fist on his side of the glass in anger and fear. “Yes it was Lillian! But baby don’t--don’t leave me here!” he shouted. “Pate--!” Frustrated and increasingly worried she was going to follow through with her idea to go to Lillian’s right now, walking away from him after he’d clawed his way and only by chance ended up where he wanted to be, Beetlejuice continued to pound on the mirror. A terrifying thought skipped through his head: What if she went back to Lillian’s and he needed to be in Lillian’s mirror to be let out?!

He’d have to get back to the old woman’s apartment. Frantically he glanced in the direction he’d entered this space and to his ultimate fear, it was once again plain unending white. There was no broken seam, no evidence he’d ever been anywhere but where he was right now. That threw him into a state of even more panic, and without warning Pate, he stepped away from the window.

A tentacle immediately nosed the spot he thought he’d come in, but found nothing. His fingers found nothing. The seam he’d torn apart was nonexistent. He’d have to find another to try and leave this mirror, and who knew where that would take him. Where would he be? Could he find his way back to Lillian’s? A whine that he now knew Pate couldn’t hear escaped his lips. Beej pushed himself back to his feet and went back to the window. “Please don’t leave me,” he whispered.

tbc . . .

#writing #fanfiction #Beetlejuice #Ties That Bind

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phoenixfeathersinfall · 3 years ago

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The Dax Debacle: Re-Imagining S7 of “Star Trek Deep Space Nine”

*This post came about after a few discussions with Lee @creativilee on how the stories of Jadzia and Ezri could have been adapted to better serve both of those characters and respect the work of both actresses! Thanks to them for all their help, encouragement, and serving as a springboard! Anything in italics is theirs!

For all of us DS9 fans, the finale season can be rather fraught for several reasons, many of the biggest revolving around the transition from Jadzia Dax to Ezri Dax, henceforth called “The Dax Debacle.” Many folks seem to love one and hate the other, which is a huge shame because both characters brought amazing potential and storylines to the table, but the writers really fumbled in some key aspects. This sure-to-be-long-winded meta is an attempt between myself and Lee to fix some of those fumbles and give both characters the storylines they deserved. So, let’s get to it!

First, a little behind-the scenes context.

Why Two Dax-es?

To begin with, it’s important to acknowledge that the Dax Debacle was largely unplanned, and the writing often reflects the ways in which Nicole de Boer was shoehorned in as Terry Ferrell’s replacement, just as the character of Ezri was deliberately put forward as Jadzia’s replacement as the next host of Dax. What happened?

It is widely believed, based on various interviews Terry gave during the show’s run, that the set of DS9 was inhospitable to her, placing her in situations of harassment and abuse. By the time of S7, due to this as well as the sheer grueling schedule of the show, she wanted to be moved from a permanent member of the cast into a reoccurring role like that of Andrew Robinson. When it proved fruitless to negotiate this, Terry decided to leave the show, though she explicitly stated she had not wanted Jadzia’s character to be killed on her departure.

Though the writers went through with the decision to kill Jadzia, they still wanted the character of Dax to remain on the crew, and due to the way Trill physiology was designed, they decided to do this with another host, similar to how Jadzia was initially seen as the continuation of Sisko’s old friend Curzon.

Enter Nicole de Boer as Ezri Dax, a young unjoined Trill who had never intended to be a host at all, and the story of her adjustment to carrying on the Dax legacy.

The Story’s Seed

It’s definitely worth noting that the initial conception of Ezri’s story, the young suddenly-joined Trill joined under trying circumstances who has to re-discover herself has a lot of potential! It could have been extremely poignant and moving, in something of the same vein as Seven of Nine rediscovering herself on “Voyager.” Unfortunately, the choices made regarding how she became the next Dax make it hard to appreciate Ezri on her own merits. Both we as the audience and the other characters are constantly seeing Jadzia in her place. It stymied who she was able to be as a character and how the audience was able to receive her. The way she was written invites constant comparisons, often to Ezri’s detriment in her initial interactions with the crew.

Lee said some things extremely well here: “Ezri as a character was hindered a lot by being made ‘Jadzia's replacement’ instead of ‘the next Dax,’ a Dax in her own right. While Jadzia definitely had Curzon's legacy to live with, it was absolutely not all she was, and she interacted with it as such, but Ezri wasn’t written with the same care. She isn't ‘Ezri Dax’ she's ‘Ezri, the one who replaced Jadzia.’ She was entirely written as a replacement, and it shows.”

Fumbles, Fumbles, Fumbles

Let’s review some things that went sideways in Ezri’s arc, so we can see it for the purposes of our rewrite.

The “I'm the new host of your dead friends symbiont" aspect is very difficult to watch. It’s hard to say if the writers wanted to lean into this aspect deliberately, but even if they did, I don’t think they ended up hitting the emotional notes they wanted to.

Ezri doesn’t seem to get much training from what we can tell, and being joined is a huge change! We learned from Jadzia’s arc that initiates often train for years. It’s wartime, but she still really did get thrown into the deep end!

The audience can’t approach Ezri on her own merits, but quite often, the crew isn’t doing that, either. There’s the caveat that they’re grieving and it’s an odd situation to be in, but! Sisko initially tries to interact with her in the same way he would Jadzia (calling her old man, which upsets her a great deal,) Julian flirts with her with the same intensity he did Jadzia in early seasons, Worf seems to only be seeing his dead wife any time he looks at her.

Ezri is given a role as ship’s counselor when she is in no way emotionally able to handle the psychological difficulties of others when she’s going through so much herself.

Her return to Deep Space 9 (the station) seems to contradict what we know about Trill culture. Joining is meant to give the symbiont as many life experiences as possible, and re-association (to various degrees) is anything from strongly discouraged to forbidden. Ezri goes right back to living Jadzia’s life in some ways, in the same place with the same people. Jadzia wasn’t able to resume her relationship with Lenara Khan, but Ezri finds herself being intimate with Jadzia’s widower.

Our alternatives and fixes for the arcs of Jadzia and Ezri fall into three broad categories, which we’ll break down here:

1. Ezri Not-Dax? (Ezri is still joined unexpectedly, but rather than the Dax symbiont, she is host to another symbiont which needed her.)

2. Where in the World is Jadzia Dax? (If Ezri isn’t a Dax, we have to figure out what to do with the Dax we know!)

3. The Legacy Question (The age-old Trill questions of new hosts, old hosts, and interpersonal relationships.)

Ezri Who? Ezri Not-Dax!

The best solution Lee and I were able to find was the idea that Ezri was joined under similar circumstances to canon, but not to Dax itself.

This is still largely workable for the story we want to tell, because, as Lee explains: “The Dax symbiont isn't key to her character, except to affect her relationships with the crew. Her main personal conflicts are about being joined before she was ready, not about being joined to Dax. She still would have worked without the Dax symbiont.”

For the sake of convenience, let’s call this hypothetical new symbiont Nal. So, Ezri Tigan —> Ezri Nal.

Where in the World is Jadzia Dax?

Theres 3 different paths we could take with Jadzia!

If Terry was made a reoccurring member of the cast, the writers could easily have put Jadzia into the position of being given a transfer assignment. Though Jadzia might initially struggle to accept this because of her loyalty to her friends, “with things picking up in wartime, it's believable that Starfleet would want the people more familiar with what dangers are on the other side of the wormhole to be spread around and maximize the number of ships and stations that are prepared for it. Maybe Jadzia acts as a representative and goes around giving lectures/debriefings on that stuff. This situation puts us in a position to get frequent updates about Jadzia, even if we don't see her again!"

If Terry did not stay on at all, Jadzia as a character could still have died, but the Dax symbiont finds a new host back on Trill, away from the station. Maybe we get updates about this Dax because Ezri trained with them for a bit, or the new Dax reaches out to Sisko from time to time, since he was well-acquainted with two previous Dax-es.

The option I like best for purely self-indulgent reasons would be if Terry stayed on for one more season and was present on the station when Ezri arrived, serving as a mentor to her.

The Legacy Question

Since the “TNG” days, Star Trek likes to experiment with Trill, and what happens in relationships between joined Trill and non-Trill, particularly in the case of a symbiont with a new host. We might assume this was part of the writer’s intent with the Dax Debacle, but it went over much better in the move from Curzon to Jadzia then it did in the move from Jadzia to Ezri.

Other options for exploring “the legacy question:”

“If they wanted to explore the whole ‘new host when the previous host was close to you’ thing, they could have had an episode that went into detail about Sisko meeting Jadzia for the first time after the death of Curzon.” Or, just having Sisko reflect more on the changes and developments in their relationship as time passes. They did this quite well initially when Jadzia first came aboard, but dropped it soon after the first season for the most part and left it to our amazing fic writers to pick it back up.

The character of Curzon is often used as a vehicle for explaining Jadzia’s connection to Klingon culture, but he also gives us access to a wealth of relationships which could be used to explore the legacy question. “Curzon had so many friends, and we see a variety of reactions from them, particularly with his Klingon friends. Some of them immediately fall back into that friendship, some of them struggle to recognize that Jadzia may not be Curzon, but she is still Dax, and has a lot of Curzon in her.” Keeping that thread going would have been intriguing also.

The Life of Ezri Nal

Here’s how some elements of Ezri’s story might look with the “Nal” symbiont.

Ezri is joined rather unprepared when a medical emergency puts the life of a symbiont at risk and the host is unable to be saved. For convenience, let’s call this symbiont Nal.

Ezri was always interested in Starfleet Service, especially in working as a counselor (which she studied on her own rather than gaining the knowledge through the memories of past hosts.) She assigned to the station by the Trill Symbiosis Commission largely because there are people there who will know how to help a newly-joined Trill; namely Sisko, Julian, and Jadzia.

Jadzia+ Ezri

Being the only other Trill on the station that we know about, Jadzia puts herself in a mentor role to Ezri, helping her adjust to her new life and consciousness. Her personality and experiences make her perfect for the job!

As a bonus, we get to see how the mentor and mentee relarionships between joined Trill and initiates work.

We also set up some fun parallels! Take Jadzia, who had to try so hard to be joined, and it was a huge goal in her life (to the point where she applied again to the Symbiosis Comission after being rejected once, which is played as something that basically never happens,) versus Ezri who was perfectly happy to be just herself and ended up taking on this responsibility without being ready and without feeling like she had much choice because of how Trill culture regards symbionts.

From the little we know about Jadzia before she was joined, she was somewhat like Ezri-bookish, shy, anxious-and she initially struggled to adjust to the likes of Curzon. But now, she’s gown so confident in who she is, for the most part, and she’d be the perfect person to guide Ezri and help her find joy in her new life.

But, she also understands having difficulties with aspects of being joined, for example, her conflict in whether she should rejoin with Lenara Khan, or how she struggled in the aftermath of the discovery of the cover-up regarding Joran.

In short, Jadzia helps keep Ezri as mentally and emotionally healthy as she can be.

Julian+Ezri

Being CMO, Julian helps look after Ezri and ensure she’s physically well; after all, it’s what he does best! “Having Julian as the Chief Medical Officer on board would be a big draw for the Trill. He's even performed a symbiont joining and removal procedure. He had to be very familiar with Trill biology, meaning a newly joined host would be relatively safe and well-cared-for on board. And, I’m sure that there's a big chemical change in Trill when the get joined, and adjusting to that would be hard!”

Julian can also sympathize having something done you didn’t want or weren’t ready for, and can help her process those feelings. “ They both have complicated relationships with their parents regarding their parents’ expectations and their own desires and feelings, which would be interesting!”

In some ways, Julian can serve as another mentor to Ezri. It would be an interesting shift to watch Julian, who is often portrayed as the the youngest or most “green” be able to mentor and guide someone else. “This is also a good way to show Julian has grown and matured, without having to have other characters just say it.”

If we still followed their romance route, having Ezri as Ezri Nal rather than Dax could have make the relationship between her and Julian sit a lot better with audiences. With a rewrite, Julian is not chasing the “ghost” of Jadzia; rather he’s meeting Ezri for the person she is, on her own terms. This also prevents a regression of his character back to the way he chased Jadzia in the early seasons, and instead honors the relationship of treasured friendship that Julian and Jadzia built.

Sisko+Ezri

As he is with many of his younger crew, Sisko takes naturally to the role of a mentor and father figure with Ezri, again meeting her for the person she is, on her own terms. He serves as a valuable guide to ship life and helps her get acquainted with station staff and residents.

Like with Jake, Sisko encourages Ezri to find herself by being her own person.

Ezri tries to take up cooking as a hobby with Sisko, but the experiences of past hosts mean her skills vary wildly depending on what they are making.

Other Relationships

Garak helps Ezri figure out how she wants to dress, often integrating different styles from past hosts. (He rather jumps at the chance.) Ezri still has her difficulties helping him as a counselor, but her additional training and the lack of complications from the Dax symbiont make things easier. They also get to know each other through Julian.

In this Ideal Timeline, Ziyal survives and meets Ezri. They relate well to each other, both of them not really knowing where they fit and grappling with someone else’s legacy, but they have each other for support. Ziyal has given her portraits as gifts.

She has a similar dynamic with Jake, who is trying to figure out how to honor his parents while being his own man. Ezri starts writing memoirs of sorts about her past lives on his suggestion.

Surprisingly, she gets on with Nog, too. They’re both doing things unexpected and feeling like they’re going to be the first in something big.

She isn’t especially close to Worf, but he assures her that the sacrifices she made for Nal are ones to be honored, and becomes rather fond of Ezri due to Jadzia’s influence.

Thanks for reading this super-long meta! Please tell Lee and I your thoughts on this rewrite!

#meta #i should start a tag for my star trek thoughts #star trek #star trek deep space 9 #star trek ds9 #fan treks #star trek crit #star trek headcanons #favorite characters #jadzia dax #ezri dax #mine

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ixellent · 4 years ago

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So in case you’re not on twitter a bunch of artists recently announced they were working with an “eco friendly” NFT company and the reactions were mixed but I wanted to put a few simple notes without even talking about the environmental impact of NFTs as a whole, like let’s just skip the whole discussion of that part for a second. It’s not that I don’t think it’s important, but it’s a little bit of a distraction on this issue because people can split hairs and pull statistics over the cost of NFT vs carbon offsetting vs how much electricity we waste vs big corporations all day. This is probably not going to be how we finally pass legislation to stop pollution and save the planet, so let’s just put a pin in that aspect and talk about ethically what’s going on.

1) Money Laundering A lot of artists were interested in NFT because they saw how much money people were allegedly making, right? We want that money, we feel that art is underpriced, undercut, underappreciated, it sucks out there! But! Why does NFT go for so much? Because it’s certified authentic ownership of digital art or whatever? We have been able to do this with digital files for a long time, quickly and easily, it’s called DRM. "Authenticity” and “owning an original” was never the reason. This has been happening in the fine art community for decades. (Rich) People use art to launder money because they can buy it for some amount of money*, insure it for even more money, have it valued at more money, and sell it to other people for obscene money and that’s a lot easier to explain than randomly paying someone thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars for doing you a favor. It also effectively “hides” money the same way real estate can. It doesn’t mean it’s easy but it’s a loophole to avoid taxes and the IRS and makes your money look more “legitimate” on paper because less of your assets are liquid, they can still “appreciate” because the object of value the money is tied to can be subjectively desirable as to make it “worth” whatever you want. * Art CAN be somewhat objectively valued by experts and historians, kind of like how comics or Magic cards can be valued, but it is a unique good in that people can decide its value based on literally whatever they want, which is to say, nothing at all. And you can be like “Well what about LEGITIMATE art sales!” I don’t know how to explain to you that most art isn’t going to suddenly be worth thousands of more dollars overnight legitimately. Like aren’t people suspicious of the fact that people would suddenly be paying a lot of money for wafer-thin ownership of an image they made? You can be like “idc where the money comes from” I guess, but then you’re probably not concerned about the issue of unregulated markets in the first place lol. Here’s some articles: https://www.natlawreview.com/article/art-and-money-laundering - This one does a great job explaining how private art sales and real estate manage this and what they’ve been trying to do to stymie it, as well as making it obvious how NFT sales are exactly the same as the warehouses people keep art in lol https://www.artandobject.com/news/how-money-laundering-works-art-world - this talks a bit about the big famous warehouse https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/29/business/art-money-laundering-sanctions-senate/index.html - I know it’s CNN but it talks a little about the red tape that allegedly exists and where it doesn’t https://news.artnet.com/market/think-artists-are-getting-rich-off-nfts-think-again-1962752 - your art isn’t worth thousands overnight lol

2) Artificial Scarcity So this is one of those things that people can come down a few different ways on. In the last few decades of The Internet, you’ll have some people who believe in a free and open internet and exchange of ideas and media, while other people want to keep ownership of the things they create and protect that ownership, and if you ask me, neither of them are wrong exactly! But that doesn’t matter because when we “mint NFTs” for art, it is artificial scarcity, because with a digital copy of work, you can redistribute, copy, paste, screenshot it as much as you want for personal use. It’s not illegal until you try to sell copies of things you DIDN’T create (and as we’ve seen with some vehement NFT benefiters, the lines for fair use, parody, and ownership are being ground into dust in order to make a buck), and it’s certainly frowned upon to repost or share it without permission. But NFTs create limited “certified original copies” or “ownership” of an image for no reason other than to give people a reason to inflate its value (see money laundering above). As a digital artist, I’m not saying I think my art is less valuable because it’s digital, but I can create infinite copies of it - the file itself is worth virtually nothing but the demand for the labor it took to create it. A limited physical run of prints of digital art has ACTUAL scarcity because it may not be printed again, or might not be printed in that way, so the price can be set by demand/by the market! There are physical costs of materials, shipping etc. The physical cost of digital goods is measurable but not as easily because of the myriad of ways it is produced. My digital commissioners actually pay for the service of art rather than a physical good, and my freelance clients pay for the RIGHT to use an image as well as my labor, because there is no scarcity of digital materials themselves. This is not to say digital art does not need preservation at some point, or that it is a zero-cost-to-produce situation, but I hope you can see why limiting certificates of ownership of a digital file in this way to do art sales is suspicious and kind of weird. We have had secure methods of demonstrating creation and ownership of a digital file for a long time if we really wanted it to be about “ownership” but it wouldn’t stop people just screenshotting all the same. That’s why so many artists will offer the option to pay for ACCESS to the files and we still depend largely on the honor system! As they’ve been saying with piracy all these years, anyone who was going to pay for it would have, and all we can do is give people convenient, accessible ways to get the content they want to try and prevent them from stealing it, and some people always will because they think it should all be free. (And I’m not here to pass judgement on that! I’ve been on the internet a long time lol.) I just wanted to get this out because people got so up in arms about the ecological impact of NFTs (and rightly in a lot of ways! Sure!) and missed the part where the fine art business is MONEY LAUNDERING. Also idk but the fact that all the NFT stuff can literally just shut down and be gone forever isn’t really secure finances. You can tell me that it’s spread out on a bunch of computers so it doesn’t just disappear when one goes down, but it doesn’t appear to be so seamless in practice, and like all currency, we have to agree collectively that it’s worth something for it to be worth anything. https://www.businessinsider.com/what-happens-to-digital-art-nft-servers-shut-down-2021-3

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wide-eyedscottishlass · 4 years ago

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Scarlett and the Professor - a lazy Sunday morn

[continued from]

moodboard by @strangelock221b 💙

Scarlett flipped onto her side, instinctively turning away from the sunlight filtering through her closed lids. The silk sheets cocooning her were slick and cool, but the sun had warmed her face enough to awaken her senses. In moments more, she breathed deeply--taking in the heady scent of all that sex, that astonishing, wicked, glorious sex--and gave out a purr of satisfaction. She was smiling before she even opened her eyes, remembering herself--happy and sappy and deeply in love.

“Ah, at last,” he chuckled; she heard not only his genuine amusement, but the crinkle and flip of some large pieces of paper. Newsprint? A newspaper than. Scarlett smiled into her pillow; of course he would prefer paper over the digital version. True hedonist that he was, Hennessy would always opt for the most tactile sensations.

“There’s my little sleepyhead,” he added with true affection, so that she popped one eye open and then the other. Hennessy sat up against the headboard, a couple of pillows propped behind him, bare to the waist. His long legs stretched out before him, covered in a pair of dark grey, silk pajama bottoms, and his feet were also bare. Scarlett sighed softly; when even his feet appeared to her as sexy, it must certainly mean there was no saving her from the beautiful fall she was taking.

She reached up to check the tangle of her hair, blinking at the strong sunlight filling the room. “Mmmmm...why didn’t you wake me?”

He flicked the top of his newspaper down to the crease, favoring her above his reading glasses with indulgent mirth. “My darling Scarlett, you needed your rest, of course. My fault too, as you were rather spent by the time I finally let you sleep uninterrupted.” His grin was smug, yet still she saw his genuine fondness for her, weakening her heart all over again.

“I’m not spent now,” she urged him, shimmying close enough to lay her hand on his bicep.

He pursed his lips, his eyes widening, “Well, haven’t you learned your lessons well! And now looking for extra credit...”

Scarlett batted her lashes and replied breathily, “Extra, extra...Hennessy.” She had already come to love how he looked when she dared call him by name.

His mouth dropped open as if to respond, but he was interrupted by the loud buzz of a text alert on his mobile. “Hold that thought, little lamb,” he commanded, “And I promise to give you all the attention you so deserve.” Hennessy took a perfunctory look at his phone, them jumped up from the bed, taking giant strides to the door. He turned back her way, eyeing her as though he saw right through the sheets, while his smile grew salacious. “Mmmm...mmmm...mmmm! You could almost make a man forgo his other hungers, Scarlett. But we don’t want out breakfast growing cold now, do we?” He dashed from the room.

Perplexed and a bit stymied--god, how perfectly divine he’d looked framed in the doorway, all firm, warm flesh, so srtong and long and lanky, that all she wanted was to mold her body to his as she lay beneath him--Scarlett turned onto her back and gave a long, languorous stretch, waiting upon his return. She heard his heavy front doors close and then imagined him taking two steps at a time back up to his bedroom suite. The mouthwatering scents of fresh pancakes and bacon preceded him into the room.

“Voila! Here’s my version of breakfast in bed.” Hennessy seemed very pleased with himself and with surprising her, crossing to the bed and setting down two plastic sacks filled with cardboard containers. He put a smaller paper bag on his bedside table, which turned out to hold coffee and orange juice.

Scarlett’s stomach had begun to rumble the moment the aromas reminded her that she hadn’t eaten anything in over twelve hours. She scooted up against the headboard, keeping the sheet decorously across her breasts, while Hennessy took his place beside her and began to dole out their meal. “There’s bacon and sausage, darling. Wasn’t sure you had a preference, but there’s more than enough of both.” There was plenty of syrup and butter, too, and a container of sliced and sugared strawberries, along with whipped cream, to top the pancakes. And a heaping serving of cheese-topped scrambled eggs.

She tucked in with relish, and Hennessy laughed good-naturedly at the evidence of her hunger, the smile lines beside his pale blue eyes (Scarlett sighed inwardly; they always look so astonishingly pale in strong sunlight!) grown dearer than ever to her heart. Since the moment that he’d taken her in full, she’d already stopped herself from saying that she loved him a half dozen times--and he was making it very hard for her to continue to suppress that urge.

“What?” He asked, around a forkful of pancakes and eggs. He must’ve have seen a flicker of that thought cross her face.

“Oh...ah...nothing...really,” she fibbed, lowering her eyes so he wouldn’t read more, “I’d been hoping to make some scones this morning---but this...this is so much better...”

“It is, isn’t it!” He hummed a jaunty tune as he set himself a second serving of everything. “But please don’t be too disappointed about your scones, love. The morning paper and breakfast takeaway in bed is a Sunday ritual I will never go without, come hell or high water.”

“Of course...” The danger of him guessing how soft she was for him seemed to have passed for the moment.

“But if it would make you happy, we can have them with tea this afternoon. Or failing that, another breakfast morning. Would that work for you?”

“Oh, yes,” she nodded, happier at the implication that there were further breakfasts together in their future, than for the promise of the scones themselves. “Whatever you want...darling.” His smile was pure sunshine as he leaned in and kissed her mouth, before returning to his meal.

After they broke their fast, he had her in the shower, amid a thick wall of steam created by the dual showerheads--taking her with such a stunning ferocity that he left her filled with speechless bliss, and legs shaking so badly that she had to lean on him for several minutes until she felt strong enough to support herself. Though he was both amused---his low rumbles of laughter at her very flattering reaction had echoed all around them---and highly satisfied, he also became the soft, solicitous lover in the aftermath, smoothing gentle hands upon her wet hair and scattering loving kisses on her face, murmuring endearments against her skin.

’My darling...my angel...my lovely, little lamb. My sweet, sweet Scarlett...’ Spurring her to ask herself: how can he see to my needs this way and still not know he owns my heart?

Why, he’d even stepped from the shower first--telling her to just hold on a tic--grabbing a thick, thirsty towel to swaddle her in before he wrapped one around himself, and then had guided her to sit on the padded vanity stool next to the long bathroom counter. Never having observed a grown man in his morning ablutions, Scarlett found herself fascinated watching him run gel through his thick, dark hair, trying to get it to behave as he preferred, and then lather up and shave. Shaving with meticulous care, the quiet scrape of the razor against his skin reminding her that this was all very real. That this complicated, brilliant, perpetual temptation of a man had welcomed her not only into his bed, but into the privacy of his home and the rhythm of his life.

The air was soon rich with his scent--Bleu de Chanel--as he applied a generous dose of aftershave. When he grabbed his toothbrush, he turned to her with a grin, “I’m almost all set, love. Then you can have the room to yourself to do...whatever it is you do to keep yourself looking so...hmmm...scrumptious.”

Scarlett nodded, though she would have been just as content to simply watch her magnificent lover--her private Hennessy--in the domain which reflected exactly who he was, going about even his most ordinary tasks. Her heart was so entranced now that she wanted to memorize his every detail.

He gave her another toothy grin, then strode over to deposit his towel in the hamper, casually revealing the full glory of the form she had come to worship. He flashed her a wink when he caught her staring-- she just couldn’t help herself, and odds were he knew that. “You might want to suit up, darling. It looks to be the perfect day for a swim.” Then he was out the door, leaving Scarlett to daydream her way through her own morning toilette, wondering what new lessons Hennessy might have in store for her. Eager to learn--and even more eager to please.

____________________________________________

Scarlett had plaited her damp hair into a Dutch braid, draped across her shoulder, hoping to keep her hair tidy if they did end up taking a swim. She slipped into a modest tankini with her denim capris over that, and then grabbed her rucksack before she headed downstairs. If Hennessy was busy--she’d noted he had taken his newspaper to wherever he’d gone off to--she had a bit of actual course work to do. Sketches for a study of the natural world, prep for an end of term project--a large, landscape painting in the artist’s choice of medium, along with a portfolio of drawings and any other work she did towards the completion of the final piece. She’d found the seeds of inspiration in Hennessy’s wild-grown garden, as well as in his serene shingle of private beach, and she was keen to make a start.

She found him with his paper beneath the patio umbrella, with an iced pitcher of lemonade, one empty glass and one half-full, upon the wrought iron table. As he had advised her, he was clad in swim trunks and a matching, athletic fit surf tee. In blues and sea greens of course, the hues that not only dominated his casual color palette, but flattered him perfectly.

Scarlett set her bag on one of the spare chairs, poured herself some lemonade and then topped off Hennessy’s glass. He thanked her before turning his attention back to the crossword puzzle he was working on. “You do them in pen?” she observed.

“Is there any other way?” he had narrowed his eyes while he was trying to work out a clue, rhythmically tapping his ball point pen on the glass table top. “Six letter word ending in k-a...an exclamation...hmmmmm...”

She couldn’t resist chiming in, ‘eureka’ just as she began to set out her supplies, then pulled her sketchpad from her rucksack.

“Eureka, indeed,” he chuckled, glancing over to watch her preparations. “And what’s this, little lambkin? Another hidden talent?”

“Depends on what you would consider talent, Professor,” she stated modestly, “I draw a little, I paint a little. Always looking to improve.” She opened up to the middle of her sketchpad, several pages past the drawing she had indulged in the previous afternoon, meaning to avoid him catching sight of it.

“And what sort of things give you inspiration, my dear? People, places...things, mayhap?” Hennessy’s curiosity had been piqued, and he was craning his neck to get at least a little peek.

”Well, yes, of course,” she teased innocently, not ready to volunteer a thing, while setting the edge of her pencil onto the rough surface of the blank page. There was the scrape of chair legs dragged across the calypso coral stone beneath their feet as he drew nearer, and soon he’d made it impossible for her not to acknowledge that he was leaning in close, laying his hand on the back of her neck, toying with the few stray hairs that had escaped her braid. Scarlett turned her head slightly, just enough to see Hennessy from the corner of her eye, catching enough of him to recognize the mischievous glint in his. “What,” she asked quietly, realizing that she would accomplish nothing until she had at least humored him.

“Just curious, darling.” He ran a single finger across her bare shoulder and down her arm, a sure and pleasant distraction, softening her resolve. “I think you’d like to show me your work. Wouldn’t you, Scarlett?”

“I suppose,” she replied with a sigh, though she remained uneasy about how he would react to the liberty she had taken, of sketching him.

“Always my good girl.” He brushed a quiet kiss upon her cheek and then rested his hand on the center of her back, waiting patiently as she flipped back to the opening page.

“Some of these are incomplete,” she noted, “Mostly just for practice, or because I haven’t decided yet what other elements should be part of the composition.” Scarlett could feel his eyes study the page she had revealed, a very flawed study of the little cottage of her youth. “And of course, there’s a lot of trials and error.”

“That’s home,” he observed, sounding more fascinated than such a simple thing usually allowed for.

“Uh-huh.” Encouraged by that sign of his sincere interest, she turned a few pages more, where her work depicted rustic exteriors of her native Scotland, and several sketches of the village-side inlet that she would forever think of as her own. Next came several studies of a sunny, seaside bay, ringed to the beach’s edge with one and two story buildings set very close together. To the last of these, she’d chalked in traces of color--vivid blue for the water, pale pastels on random buildings--and had treated the sketch with a fixative to keep the chalk from rubbing off.

“These are lovely, Scarlett,” he exclaimed, absentmindedly massaging the stretch of skin between her shoulder blades. His touch felt blessedly cool on her sun warmed flesh.

“You needn’t sound so surprised, Professor,” she replied coyly, so that he chuckled and laid a kiss on her shoulder.

“I’m not, darling. Truly, I’m not.” He drew a deep breath, then added, “Though I’m curious about where these are from.”

Scarlett paused a moment, recalling those endless, sunny days and balmy, starlit nights. “They’re from my time in Mykonos, at the end of my gap year.”

“Clearly, you found the place enchanting, my dear. Why, it nearly leaps off the page!”

She watched his profile as he leaned in for a closer look. “Do you really think so?” How happy it made her to see his enthusiastic response!

“Absolutely,” he assured her, giving a low whistle of appreciation, “And if I had to guess, I’d say that you were at least a little bit in love with the place.”

“I...I was...” she breathed softly. And with a beautiful young man there. My dear Benedicktos.

Inevitably, the next series of sketches raised Hennessy’s curiosity even further. “And who’s this?” Scarlett heard a trace of judginess creep into his voice.

“Oh...um...an artist I met while I was there...” Artist, sculptor--and if only our stars had aligned properly, he would have been my first. My first lover.

“I see...” And surely Hennessy could see her true feelings for her Bene, pictured in the loving way she had drawn his lines and angles. One page was filled with thumbnail sketches of just his face in profile. She had worked a couple of those into larger versions, and chalked color onto them as well. They showed a thick, unruly crown of dark, windswept curls. Smooth, well tanned skin and a sensuous looking mouth. And eyes of pure sea green.

“I think you were at least a little bit in love with this boy, too,” he observed quietly, and he gave her a beat to respond, though she could not for the lump in her throat. “Weren’t you, Scarlett?”

She took a deep breath, gathering her composure as well as her wits; she would not share that golden time with Hennessy. Not yet, anyway. “I suppose I was, at least a little bit...but then, it’s easy to fall in love in a place like that...”

“I suppose it is, little lamb. And lucky boy he must’ve been.” To her wonder, his smile felt a little false. He couldn’t possibly be jealous, she told herself; doesn’t he realize I’m his completely?

She tried to turn rapidly over the following pages, but Hennessy stayed her hand, determined to see the full story. Scarlett had draw Benedicktos sitting shirtless and cross-legged at the water’s edge. Standing and gazing out at sea, watching the sun set. Smiling vibrantly, cheeks creased with rows of dimples, while he appeared to be laughing. The last sketch showed him shirtless again, his smile softer but no less dazzling, as he stood in the prow of a fishing boat, a tall line of verdant cliff tops in the distance, the blue of the sky just a little lighter than that of the Mediterranean.

Her teacher had gone silent as she flipped past the last page in that series and put the pad down. “Hennessy?” She placed her hand on his, where it rested on the table. “That was years ago. Sometimes it feels like a lifetime--once I got home, my mother fell ill for some time, and...and we fell out of touch right away.” He nodded and smiled, but she felt she needed to offer more. “That’s how holiday romances go, right? Golden but fleeting...” And now my heart belongs to you. Forever, by the feel of it.

“Yes,” he nodded again, and she wondered if he caught the flavor of that thought, for he raised her hand to brush his lips against her fingers. He studied her face a moment, and his sunshine smile returned. “But I want to see them all, darling. You do have quite a talent.”

And so they continued. Hennessy laughed genially at her studies of her little black kitten, Chaucer, ranging across her book shelves, warming himself on her laptop keyboard, and curled into a fluffy little ball upon her bed pillow. “I swear, he really did all those things,” she confided, glowing a little in the face of her lover’s generous regard, “It’s like he owns the place now, and I’m just the guest.”

Hennessy clucked his tongue. “Bosh. We’ll see who runs the place when I come to visit. My will is certainly far stronger than his.”

A little thunderstruck, she asked him breathlessly, “You’d come to see me at my flat?”

“I don’t see why not,” he grinned, and then seeing what it meant to her, he issued a hasty disclaimer. “Of course, that’s no promise it’ll be any time soon, my dear. Timetable to be determined.”

“Oh, absolutely,” Scarlett nodded, doing her best not to seem disappointed. It was too much, too soon to have expected, anyway.

At last they arrived at the sketch, the one over which her anxiety had been gradually growing. The moment of truth. She averted her eyes at his sound of surprise, as he stood up and took the pad right out of her hand, to finally exclaim, “Well, I’ll be damned!” In the brief silence that followed, she could hear the thump of her own heart, hoping against hope that he had meant that in a good way. “Scarlett...darling...when did you do this?”

She finally raised her eyes, to find such an open, soft expression on his features that her heart just about skipped a beat. “Yesterday. After I...left you in the study...”

Hennessy crooked his trademark, honest half-smile her way. “This...this is really good, my dear. And I have to say...quite...flattering.”

Scarlett was memorizing the look of genuine wonder in those eyes that had the power to command her and cajole her. Frighten her for breathless moments, and just as effortlessly mesmerize her. Fancying that someday soon she’d capture the chameleon beauty of those eyes in this particular moment, in charcoal and in chalk, so to frame them and keep them well beyond the days when his interest in her finally waned. “I just drew the truth, my jo,” she shrugged, “Exactly as I saw it.”

His mouth hung open as he reached to brush back some strands of hair that had fallen across her forehead, then stroked his thumb across her cheek. “You have a true artist’s eye, love.” His voice was the velvet caress she had come to crave. “And your romantic nature shines through in...all of these pieces. I am both flattered and honored by this...gentle version of me. By the beauty you’ve rendered to even my most...jarring...defects.”

She bit her lip, and could only bow her head in thanks, else her voice might break with the tenderness he stirred her to. Jarring defects. His mysterious scars. How she ached to know their origin, and to give him comfort for whatever pain he’d suffered from them--though she knew she could not, should not, ask. But at least she knew she’d touched his heart in their regard, and that would have to be enough for now.

Still tracing her cheek, Hennessy moved into a crouch beside her. The heat had brought a ruddiness to his face and the bright sunlight allowed her to study the soft smattering of freckles across his skin. Scarlett had a moment to think about how very much she’d like to capture this look on him, deciding that her Prismacolors colored pencils might be best, before he moved in close enough for kissing. “Would it be too vain of me to say that sketch is my favorite, darling?”

“No. Not at all,” she breathed, contemplating how she might express on paper, the perfection of his cupid’s bow, the temptation of his tender lower lip. Even unto the wee scar that couldn’t mar it’s beauty, and which she had already tasted countless times, and hoped to taste countless more.

“Perhaps someday you’ll sketch me with the passion you expended on your Greek boy.” He was teasing her, of course; he had to be. He couldn’t know she was thinking exactly that. “In fact, I would enjoy that very much, Scarlett. To have you ply your...talent...on me.”

Hennessy’s breath was on her lips now, the promise of his kiss achingly close. She shut her eyes, panting in anticipation. “Yes...on me, sweet Scarlett. On me, and me alone.” She whimpered beneath the searing power of his kiss, as though by accepting it, she’d made some sort of Faustian bargain--and thus he had claimed yet another piece of her soul.

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tagging: @strangelock221b @ben-locked @ben-c-group-therapy @thelostsmiles @splunge4me2art @humanbornarchangel @tsukuyomi011 @ravencatart @doctor-stephenstrange @letterstosherlock @emilyinnj4real @aeterna-auroral-avenger @frowerssx2 @groovyfluxie @candie-girl22

(And yes, my friends, I promise there will be watery fun to come in the next installment *grinning wickedly*.)

#my writing #Scarlett and the Professor #I hope you find it worth the wait!#Scarlett Cambell #OFC #her devilish lover #Scarlett's Professor #OMC #not my OMC and used with permission #as long as tacit permission remains #Professor Hennessy #Hennessy #[I have to be honest - when I wrapped this chapter up the other day]#[before editing it ofc - I felt like a 'real writer; like this could really be a book]

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