#i liked it and decided to Expand™

[therhythmafterthesummer]

Alpha Dog (M) ~Bang Chan

Pairing: Werewolf!Chan x Human!F.Reader Themes: Supernatural/Fantasy AU | Smut | Fluff | Roomies to Lovers | Soulmate AU? 👀 Warnings: Chris’ POV, curvy/chubby MC, pet names, mentions and descriptions of werewolf mating cycles, mandatory Christopher is Intense™ warning (it’s even worse when you can read his thoughts), graphic depictions of intercourse (smut warnings under the cut). Word Count: ~17k sobbing | AO3 Summary: Chris had a dream since he was very young. He wanted to have a pack of his own, to build a safe space for people with views just like his. Once he managed to accomplish that, he would’ve never imagined that his next dream would arrive at his doorstep in a pretty sundress.

Author’s Note: i wanted to expand Chris’ character in this series of stories, so this monster was born ! i think it could actually be a good starter piece for my WereRoomies series, or, if anything, just a good read 🤭 if you’re reading this, hope you enjoy, and don’t hesitate to let me know what you think !

Due to all the abovementioned warnings, this story is intended for an adult audience only. Minors please do not interact.

Chris’ WereRoomies Instalments:  It’s Cold Out · Rut · Alpha Dog · It’s Warm In · Love is Easy · Afraid to Lose You. For extra drabbles, check out the series masterlist.

Smut Warnings: thigh kink · possessiveness · a barely even present breeding kink · praising · oral [F.&M.Rec, but the M.Rec is not as detailed] · breast/nipple play · forced orgasm (F.Rec) · fingering [F.Rec] · unprotected penetration [piv. no barrier method, but reader is presumed to be on birth control] · cum eating · marking (as in, sucking love bites on someone’s skin) · intercrural · cumshot/cum on body. there’s just a lot going on i’m sorry or am i? 👀

Disclaimer: the story represented in this work does not represent Stray Kids in any way; anything described in this story and all actions performed by the characters are purely fictional, this was created just for good fun.

Since the moment Chris gained his consciousness when he was very young, he knew what he was. It was impossible not to know, when the dynamic of his entire family was basically ingrained in his DNA. 

Chris was a werewolf. His mother was a werewolf, his father was a werewolf, as were his grandparents, and they were all part of the same pack since his grandparents joined it before Chris’ parents were even born.

Chris’ childhood pack was big, consisting of several different blood-related families that were being led by the same alpha. Due to the numerous members of that pack, it felt like it was more of a closed off community than a family–especially considering members of the pack that weren’t blood related would often mate with each other. Even as he grew up, Chris felt as if these people weren’t really close to him, aside, of course, from his blood relatives and his best friend, Changbin.

It wasn’t as if they were all bad people, he just didn’t feel like he could be fully himself with the rest. They were often a bit close minded when it came to werewolf ‘traditions’, with deep desires to keep humans at bay, or turn them whenever it was suitable for the pack, whenever they saw fit, regardless of the human’s wishes. Some of them would even believe in the designation hierarchy–alphas over betas and omegas, always–which was something Chris never really understood, nor supported in any way.

Thankfully for him, his blood family was quite progressive compared to the rest of the pack, and even if the others looked down on them for it, his parents decided to socialise Chris with humans from a young age. They sent him to a human school, let him have human friends–with the only condition to not reveal anything about his lycanthropy or the pack to them–and that contact with the outside world simply highlighted the fact that all these archaic customs in the pack made absolutely no sense to him.

So when puberty hit him, and his alpha nature started to really settle in him, he knew that he wanted to start a pack of his own. A pack where no member would feel judged or held back by the rest, where everyone could be equal.

It wasn’t really that much of a surprise, honestly. His parents always knew he would be an alpha–based on how thick-headed he was and how he would often lead his group of peers from a young age–so when Chris told his mother about this desire of his, she immediately supported him.

His father took a bit longer to accept it, but eventually he simply understood. ‘It’s too late for us. This pack is our family, we’ve already accepted the good as well as the bad, but you’ll always be our son whether you’re a member of it or not’, which was enough acceptance for Chris.

So as soon as he was of age and he went to university, he broke ties off with his childhood pack, and for a couple of years, he was seemingly on his own.

Some people from his childhood pack would even try to ridicule him, to look down on him whenever they met him on the streets or whenever he went to visit his parents. Chris knew it was because they thought he was crazy for being out there on his own. 

What they didn’t know was that he wasn’t really alone. He had Changbin and Jisung.

Before Chris left his childhood pack he told Changbin of his idea, of his goal of leading a pack of his own, and without missing a beat Changbin immediately told him he’d join him as soon as he was of age, as long as Chris wanted him. And of course Chris wanted Changbin in his pack, he was one of the few people he trusted more in this world.

Jisung was also a childhood friend, but he didn’t belong to the same pack Chris and Changbin did at the time. He became friends with them after his pack moved away from their previous den to form a new one in the same city Chris and Changbin grew up in. His parents enrolled him in the same school as them as soon as they settled, which was how the three of them met.

As it turned out, Jisung was also unhappy in his childhood pack, he was an omega, and much like Chris’ childhood pack, omegas were viewed as of lower status than any other designation, so he was often disregarded or even mistreated. And just like Changbin, as soon as Chris told Jisung of his future plans, Jisung also decided to join them when he was of age.

So while someone outside of Chris’ circle might’ve thought he was a lone wolf, a packless misfit, the reality was that he felt happier, more at ease while he waited for Changbin and Jisung to defect, than he ever did in his childhood pack. Two years wasn’t that long of a wait–considering that was the age gap between him and Changbin–so he decided to place his focus on his studies for those couple of years on his own.

Eventually, as the three of them grew up, Chris’ pack started to take more shape. Changbin was his obvious right hand, he had this sense of responsibility and protectiveness that made him a perfect second in command. However, Jisung never even entertained the possibility of being his left hand, because, in his words, ‘I’m not cut out for that, I’d get everyone starved or killed’, which was valid in Chris’ opinion, after all, it wasn’t really in his inherit nature to lead or protect others, quite the opposite actually, so Chris let it go without much of a fight.

Jisung did offer a candidate, though. A childhood friend of his, Minho, a human turned werewolf with no real pack of his own who had no real desire to lead, but was incredibly caring and protective, and, in Jisung’s words, someone who had a heart of gold.

As time went on, as they met more friends throughout their years at university, Chris’ pack grew. With the addition of Hyunjin, Felix, Seungmin, and Jeongin his pack became a tight group of eight young werewolves who were simply trying to find their place in the world, a group of people who weren’t happy in the conditions they lived in before and wanted a change, a healthy environment. 

Since then, Chris, Minho, and Changbin tried their absolute best to keep this safe, healthy ecosystem. And in Chris’ humble opinion, they were succeeding at that. Sure, they fought sometimes, just like any other family or pack or group of friends would, but things could always be solved one way or another. For once, Chris truly felt as if he was exactly where he was supposed to be, doing what he was supposed to do–what he wanted to do. 

Aside from his supernatural condition, Chris always thought of himself as a simple man. When his mind wasn’t dominated by his wolf instincts, he’d just feel like any other dude out there. He liked to play computer games, he had friends he’d often hang out with–not only his packmates, but also people he’d met throughout his life–and he had a stable, decent paying job as a software engineer which he quite enjoyed. But he’d admit that sometimes, it felt as if something was missing… And that something was romantic love.

The topic of love and romantic relationships was quite tricky for him. He’d dated a few people in his life, but no one really seemed to stick for too long, either because he was always a bit too intense of a guy, or because they simply didn’t really understand his pack’s dynamic.

Oftentimes, especially when he dated a human, they just couldn’t really understand why his ‘friends’ were so important to him. He’d been told things from ‘you care more about your friends than you care about me’, to ‘it’s a bit weird how close you are. Y’all practically live together?’ They simply wouldn’t get it, and it wasn’t like he could reveal his condition to just anyone and explain, so those relationships would end as soon as the person showed any discomfort in regards to his pack, which was honestly for the best.

Then on the other side of the spectrum, when he dated other werewolves, it all often fell too much into the traditional dynamic of ‘you’re an alpha, I’m an XYZ, so we must be and do things this and this way’, and even if he tried to break those moulds a bit, it just wouldn’t work out.

So one day, right after another failed relationship, Chris decided to just… Let things flow. He was fine being single.

Did he have the intense need to pamper and take care of someone romantically? Yes. Did he have physical needs that he wished he could fulfil with the warmth of another person? Also yes. But he decided to bear it regardless. If he never found someone who understood him and his family dynamic then he was happy to die single. After all, his pack was, and would always be, his utmost priority.

He would’ve never imagined that it would all change once he finally realised he couldn’t live on his own.

In the very early stages of Chris’ pack, they had to decide where their den would be. Changbin’s parents were well off, they owned a handful of buildings throughout the city, so with a bit of convincing, they let Chris, Changbin, Jisung, and anyone that came after settle in one of their buildings at a discount price. 

For a couple of years, the three of them lived in the same flat, but as more people joined Chris’ pack they kept rearranging themselves to get the best comfort, leaving Chris in a flat of his own, which was great at the beginning. He had his own space and privacy, and for a while, it was fine.

But when his grandparents passed away, leaving a huge house under Chris’ name, things changed. Between the expensive utility bills of his flat, and what he had to spend upkeeping his house in the woods, he just never had money to spare. He had to accept the fact that he needed a roommate, but everyone was already settled in their own living arrangements within the den, and he didn’t want to disrupt any of his packmates with this.

One day, during a phone call with his mother, Chris told her of this predicament of his, and she offered to help find a suitable roommate–as long as Chris wanted her help, of course.

He trusted his mother’s judgement, so he agreed, and next time she came to visit him, it looked like this woman had seen an angel come down from the heavens, because her face was glowing, and she exclaimed the most overly excited ‘Oh, honey! I got the perfect candidate. Remember my coworker’s daughter I always talk to you about?’

How could he not remember her coworker’s daughter when his mother tried to bring her up at least once whenever he came to visit? Of course he remembered you. His mother had met you a few times, always described you as a ‘beautiful, sensible, young woman’, and honestly sometimes Chris wondered if she was trying to set him up, especially when she’d conveniently mention how ‘you really need someone like that in your pack, pup… A sensible, caring figure would do you all some good, especially a female one. There are just too many males at your den, I don’t know how you get anything done…’

It honestly didn’t surprise him that much for her to say that, she was surrounded by incompetent males all the time, always had to pick up their messes, so she’d gotten quite radical on the importance of female figures… Chris just didn’t really care about the gender of his roommate or his packmates at all, so he decided to follow through with her suggestion.

Apparently, you had been looking to move out of your mother’s house, or that was what your mother told Chris’ mother, so considering you were someone his mother already knew who seemed to be nice enough, he said fuck it and told his mother to give you his number, requesting for her to ‘not get too excited. I just need a roommate, mum. For all I know she might not even integrate well, maybe she’d hardly ever be home… Relax, I’m not getting married, jeez…’ Which his mother honestly didn’t look too convinced about.

He expected nothing of it, really. He wasn’t even sure if you’d call, but a few days after he had that conversation with his mother, you finally called, and you both arranged a time for you to come visit so you could see the place for yourself.

He was, admittedly, a bit nervous, mostly because he didn’t want to make his condition known, or to make you uncomfortable in any way. After all, he was just an unknown man you were coming to meet and possibly live with.

When the day finally came, the moment Chris opened his door and met you he realised three things:

One, that you smelt like flowers. And not in a perfume way, more like in your natural scent way. Everyone had a different scent, it was typically more noticeable to him in other werewolves than humans, but humans most definitely had a scent, and you smelt just like freshly picked flowers.

Two, that you had a smile that could easily outshine the sun. When you smiled your cheeks would round up, and your eyes would disappear, and it was just such an endearing gesture it was hard for him not to focus on it. 

And three, that you had the most scrumptious body he had ever seen. 

Chris often prided himself on being a rational being, with a lot of self-control even for someone with a condition just like his, but as soon as he took in the shape of your body, it was almost as if he could feel his human mind short circuit and hear his inner wolf howling in desire.

He’d never been much of having a ‘type’ when it came to his partners, at least not physically. Sure, there were certain attributes he preferred, but in the grand scheme of things he’d fancied people with all different types of looks. That day, though, as he struggled to make coherent sentences and act normal while he showed you the place, Chris realised–quite puzzled, he might add–that maybe he did have a type, and maybe that type was you.

“So, this is the living room… As I mentioned on the phone, my friends often come to watch movies or just hang out. Don’t worry, though, they’re good people and very respectful. But I could totally understand if that’s something you can’t deal with”, why did you wear a sundress? Sure, it was starting to get hot out, but did you even realise how good that dress looked on you? You must’ve, there was no way you didn’t know how good you looked… Would you notice how hard he was trying not to look at your cleavage? He hoped you didn’t.

“If they truly are as nice as you say I don’t think I’ll mind, to be honest… If I move in I’d just… Prefer if they didn’t enter my room, I guess? Other than that I don’t mind”, you sounded genuine when you said it, and that did ease Chris’ worries a bit.

He took his sweet time showing you the place, the bathroom, what would be your bedroom if you moved in, even his bedroom, the kitchen, the pantry, the laundry room… All as an easy conversation flowed between you two, all as he struggled massively to not focus on the movement of your hips when you walked, to not focus on the sudden impulse he had to wrap his arm around your waist and pull you close.

Stop being a creep, Christopher… She’s a person. A person with feelings, stop being a creep… He repeated to himself every time he caught his eyes wandering, and for the most part, he was succeeding. At least, until you sat down on one of the kitchen stools and crossed one leg over the other, making the hem of your dress rise a bit, exposing the skin of your thighs.

This must be a test, he reasoned with himself.

The universe was trying to test his self-control by presenting you to him, all pretty, kind, and with the softest looking thighs he had ever seen. Chris could feel his hands literally itching with need, wondering if you’d feel as soft all over as you looked, but he quickly shoved all these thoughts as deep as he could within himself, focusing instead on the things you were telling him.

You were so nice. Just as his mother had told him, you seemed to be very sensible, very down to earth, and those traits made it so he had no reservations about having a human like you living with him. Sure, Chris knew it would be difficult to keep his condition hidden, but regardless of that immediate reaction he had to your presence, there was just something in the back of his mind telling him that having you here would be good for him and his pack, so he decided to follow that gut instinct, telling you you could move in whenever, and in a week’s time, you did.

It was honestly a bit odd at first. Chris had been living on his own for a while, and sure, his packmates would often drop by and stay over, but having an unfamiliar scent at home was certainly weird the first couple of weeks. Even then, he’d admit it wasn’t entirely unpleasant. If anything, it just added a bit of life to the otherwise silent–and sometimes lonely–space.

You quickly got acquainted with his friends, Chris supposed it was hard for you not to when they spent so much time coming to his flat, and somehow you never really seemed to question it. At one point, you even adopted their mannerisms.

Chris’ pack was very affectionate, he’d be the first one to admit it. Pet names were a constant thing among the pack, cuddling was a must, and even if you still didn’t know about their condition, you simply accepted their loving, overly affectionate behaviour as the norm, and even embraced it.

The fact that Chris and his friends were werewolves was something he had decided was best for you not to know, at least not from the get-go. He told his packmates he just didn’t see the need, that it could be dangerous–in reality, he just didn’t want to spook you. He feared that the moment you found out of their lycanthropy you’d leave, and even if he wasn’t sure why, he just didn’t want that to happen, so he would often conveniently dance around the truth whenever their condition was involved.

A month after you moved in, Felix suggested to have a movie night, simply saying ‘we haven’t had one in a while, and I could really use one to unwind!’ It had been a really long week for Chris, too, and he figured it’d be a good way to include you in their communal activities. So, as it was customary, those who wanted to join would come to Chris’ flat.

It was just Felix, Changbin, Seungmin, you, and Chris that night, the rest of his packmates had other things to do, so they had to skip it, which maybe was for the best, that way all of you wouldn’t have to cram on the sofa.

Felix had promised to bring a big box of macarons from his workplace, and he delivered. The box was filled to the brim with an assortment of different flavours–not an elegant presentation by any means, and some of them got crushed on the way, but that wouldn’t stop any of them from devouring each and every cookie.

When he placed it on the kitchen counter and opened it, Chris spotted the pink ones immediately. They were his favourite, but there were only a handful of them in the entire box, to which Felix gave him an apologetic smile, a ‘there just weren’t enough by the end of my shift’, and a shrug when Chris looked at him with a sad pout on his lips.

Chris took popcorn-making duties, and by the time it was ready and in its designated bowls, the vacuums he had for packmates had somehow eaten almost every single pink macaron, leaving only one in the box. He saw the scene play in slow motion as you made your way into the kitchen and reached for that last cookie.

Chris liked to give things to people, he really did, but that pink macaron had been holding together his last shred of sanity that day, so he acted quickly, snatching it out of the box and giving you a “nuh-uh, cutie. This one’s for me”.

“Aw, Chris!” You tried to reach for it, but he held it over your head, as far away from your grabby hands as he could. “C’mon! Those are so good!”

“I know they’re good! That’s why I want it”, he chuckled, pulling it further away from your reach when you tried to grab it again.

“Don’t be mean, babe”, you were pouting and everything, which had his heart clenching a bit, but you didn’t need to know that. He had to stay strong so he could have this delicious treat. “Give it to me?”

“Say please and maybe I’ll consider it”, he wasn’t going to consider it, which was why he had the biggest shit-eating grin on his face. This was his strawberry macaron that he desperately needed, just the thought of the sugary cookie melting in his mouth had him already salivating.

However, Chris realised very quickly how ill-prepared he was for the situation he’d put himself in the moment you took a step closer to him, taking a hold of his hand that had been limp by his side, caressing the back of it with your thumb as you looked him right in the eyes with that pout on your lips.

“Please, baby… I really want it. I’ll bring you some tomorrow. Promise”, you brought your free hand to your heart, making a cross over it to emphasise that promise. “Please?”

For a second, he froze. His arm was getting tired from holding the stupid cookie over your head, and he dumbly stared at your face, shifting his focus from your lips to your eyes a few times. Did you… Did you know how cute you looked? Were you doing it on purpose? You must’ve known, right?

As soon as Chris started to feel his heart thump aggressively in his chest, he realised he had–very stupidly–walked himself into a corner. He had lost, and, in a poor attempt to not let you know how fast you had disarmed him, he sighed–rather dramatically–in what he hoped came across as annoyance.

“Alright, you can have it”, he brought the macaron down and held it to your lips. “But you’ll seriously have to buy me some tomorrow, yeah?”

The smile that came to your face made his heart skip a beat, and the second you took the macaron between your lips, lightly brushing his fingers in the process, Chris could’ve sworn his heart stopped completely. 

Before he could even register the movement, you had moved closer, suddenly pressing a quick, loud kiss to his cheek, muttering a ‘you’re the best, darling. I’ll bring you at least two dozen tomorrow!’ before you walked away and left the kitchen to join Seungmin and Felix on the sofa.

It all happened so fast, Chris could feel his skin burn where you had kissed him, and he realised too late that it was because he was blushing. Blushing! Why was he blushing? How dared his cheeks betray him this way?

“Dude…” Chris’ head snapped in the direction of Changbin’s voice, where he was looking at him from the other side of the kitchen counter, with the most insufferable grin on his face.

“Don’t”, Chris grumbled as he lifted a finger in Changbin’s direction, which only made Changbin’s grin widen. Grabbing the biggest bowl of popcorn, Chris decided to ignore his friend’s teasing eyes completely, finally leaving the kitchen to place the bowl on the coffee table and sit his ass as far away from you as possible. He could still feel his face burn, which made it all so much worse.

That night, after everyone left, after you retreated to your room and Chris was finally able to lay in bed, completely alone with his thoughts, he couldn’t stop thinking about that moment.

About the way your eyes were almost sparkling when he told you you could have the damn cookie, about the look of delight on your face when he fed it to you, about the damn kiss… It was all just a friendly gesture, really. You were just being nice, like you always were, but as his mind recounted the moment in an endless loop, he eventually realised that all those things he felt the day he saw you for the first time had just been warning signs.

He tried to push all these thoughts to the back of his mind again. You were his roommate. His human roommate who had no idea what Chris and his friends were. It was stupid of him to think about you as anything other than that, and yet, the more he interacted with you, the more time passed of you living with him at his den, the harder it became to ignore what he felt, especially whenever you went out on dates.

His logical, human side always tried to brush off the fact that you were dating people. After all, sometimes, you did come back home looking happy, as if you even had fun, which was a good thing. But his idiotic, wolf side just hated whenever you came home smelling like other men. He couldn’t–and wouldn’t–stop you because of it, of course. That would’ve been absolutely insane of him to do, but one day, when he saw your laundry hanging on the drying rack he just couldn’t help himself… 

Chris figured scenting your clothes wouldn’t hurt, right? You wouldn’t notice… And other people might not even notice, either, but he just wanted you to come home and still smell like him, and frequently, that worked. He’d admit he even grew a bit more shameless about it as time went on, hugging you or kissing your forehead before you left the house to leave his scent on you–something you never really questioned, either.

Whenever his pack members commented on it, Chris simply told them it was for protection, to keep you safe from other wolves–he wasn’t sure if they believed him, considering they wouldn’t stop teasing him about it every time they could…

By the fourth month of you living here, he was sure he had mastered the art of Ignoring His Feelings.

He would still scent your clothes, especially on nights like this one, where you were going on a date with some guy. But other than that he was doing an excellent job at not thinking about you in any ways other than platonic–or at least, that was what Chris tried to tell himself.

Truth was, he still had those impulsive thoughts from time to time. Soft. Nice. Pretty… 

He would quickly stop his train of thought whenever he caught himself, disregarding the almost instinctual way his hands flexed whenever he looked at you. Tonight, before you left, he tried his best to absolutely ignore the dress you were wearing and how good you looked in it, and how it hugged your curves so nicely, and the way your thighs looked in those tights… Would he ever be able to touch them? Squeeze them? Maybe even kiss–

The sudden sound of growls startled him, breaking his train of thought. Chris chuckled, amused by the way Hyunjin, Jisung, and Jeongin chased their tails while running in circles in the middle of his living room. “What the hell are you even doing?”

“They’re trying to see who can catch his tail faster”, Felix replied simply, taking a sip of the soda in his hand, slinging an arm over Chris’ shoulders.

“You’re gonna hurt yourselves. Stop that”, Minho grumbled from the kitchen, where he and Seungmin prepared snacks for the night.

Among the growls coming from the three spinning wolves, and the constant talking between the rest, Chris failed to hear the sound of the front door opening. It took him a second too late to be hit by the smell of your floral scent, and by the time he had registered it and jumped to his feet from where he had been slouching on the sofa, it was too late.

You stood wide eyed by the hall, looking between the three wolves in the middle of the living room. For a second, everyone froze, looking in your direction, and before Chris could even say anything, he stared in horror as Jeongin started to shift back into his human form.

“It’s not what it looks like!” Jeongin had the nerve to say to you, as if he wasn’t buttnaked, as if he hadn’t just shapeshifted right in front of your eyes.

Your mouth opened and closed a few times. Your gaze shifted from the two wolves and Jeongin to everyone else in the room, landing on Chris last. He saw your hands tremble a bit, and, in an instant, before he could even register the movement, you were bolting out the door.

Chris immediately sprung into action, chasing you, calling for you. “Wait!”

You weren’t supposed to be here. You had a date. You were even prepared in case you wouldn’t even come back tonight, or, at least, that was what you told Chris before you left earlier that day. Panic brewed quickly inside of him, he really couldn’t let you go like this.

Chris caught up to you on the stairs, right on the landing between one floor and the other. Taking a hold of your elbow, he tugged you back before you kept going on your way. “Wait! Listen–”

“What the fuck?!” You tried to pry yourself away. In a different circumstance, Chris would’ve let you go on the spot, but this was no ordinary situation, so he simply tightened his hold, keeping you in place and within reach. Your eyes widened, and he saw immediately the exact moment you realised the extent of his strength.

“Listen to me. It’s not–”

“Don’t you dare say that!” Your eyes frantically roamed his face, and the combination of confusion and fear he could see in your eyes made his heart clench. “What does it look like, then?! Huh, Christopher?!”

Chris opened and closed his mouth a few times, but the words wouldn’t come out. What should he say? That what you saw wasn’t real? That you must’ve misinterpreted it all? That would’ve been the right thing to do, wouldn’t it? But as he looked into your eyes, he just couldn’t find it in him to lie to you.

“I just saw Jeongin’s body twist and turn in ways I would’ve never even imagined were possible!” Your lower lip was trembling slightly, the words that came out of your mouth were unsteady, and your scent was starting to tint with what Chris could only define as panic, which in turn was making him panic. “What the fuck was that about?! What are you people?”

“I– We–” The words just wouldn’t come out of his mouth. He should’ve had a plan for this, it was only a matter of time for you to find out their little secret, but he truly hadn’t expected it to be so soon. 

Upon his unresponsiveness, you tried to pull yourself away from him again, and Chris couldn’t help but tighten his hold on your arm in response. He hadn’t meant to, but he was going into fight or flight and his body seemed to be trying its absolute best to keep you from leaving.

You winced, and the grimace on your face started the alarm bells in his head. “Chris… Please. It hurts”.

Chris let go of your arm as if it had caught on fire, and when you brought your other hand to soothe the area he had been holding onto, when he saw that look of discomfort on your face, he couldn’t help but feel incredibly guilty.

He’d failed you.

He hurt you, he failed you, and the amount of distress that realisation brought him was quickly taking a hold of each and every single one of his nerve-endings.

“God, I’m so sorry”, Chris took a step back, avoiding your eyes entirely. “So, so sorry… I didn’t mean–”

“What are you, Chris?” Your voice trembled again, but it didn’t seem like you’d run away.

With a deep intake of breath, Chris tried to find the courage to look you in the eyes again. “I’m… I’m a werewolf”.

You blinked, looking him up and down, looking at him like he had three heads. “A… A werewolf?”

“Mm… Only Jeongin shifted when he saw you, probably out of stress or because he panicked… The three wolves… It was Hyunjin, Jisung, and Jeongin. We’re all werewolves”.

“Werewolves… As in… Half human, half wolf? Like in fairy tales?” You sounded genuinely incredulous, and Chris couldn’t blame you.

He shrugged, tucking his hands in his short’s pockets, looking away from you again, fixing his gaze on the floor. “They’re not just fairy tales. There’s a whole world of creatures out there you don’t even know about, but it’s there”.

“Can’t believe this…” You muttered to yourself, threading your fingers through your hair, tugging the strands between your fingers.

“You… You can’t tell anyone–”

“Who the hell would I tell?!” You chuckled, a chuckle that lacked any semblance of amusement, and it made him wince.

You both stayed in silence, neither of you sure on what to say to the other. Until finally, you heaved a sigh, turning to continue your walk down the stairs. “Werewolves… This is all madness…”

“Wait–!”

“Don’t!” You whipped your face in Chris’ direction. Your hands were shaking. Actually, it looked like your entire body was shaking. “Don’t follow me”, was the last thing you told him, and he would never forget the look in your eyes that day, completely lost, void of your usual shine.

Chris just stood there for a moment, listening to the quick clack clack clacks of your heels as you walked the steps, until he finally heard the main door of the building opening and eventually slamming closed. He could feel his heart ache, just the memory of the tone of your voice and that look in your eyes made his heart race for all the wrong reasons.

Chris was at a loss, unable to comprehend how it all got out of hand so quickly. He should’ve known, this was bound to happen eventually, they couldn’t keep hiding from you forever. But what he hadn’t expected was the feeling of utter dejection the entire exchange brought him.

After a few minutes, when Chris was back in his flat, with the seven pairs of eyes staring worriedly at him, he realised he had to get a grip.

“Chris, I’m sorry. It’s my fault–” Jeongin started, looking absolutely ashamed, but Chris stopped him immediately. 

“Don’t worry about it. She was going to find out eventually”, he was honestly proud at how even his voice was coming out of his mouth, and he hoped his packmates couldn’t feel the weird emotional state he was in. He shot Minho and Changbin a quick look, and they seemed to catch onto his signal fairly quickly–if the way they stiffened was anything to go by. “You guys go on. I’m… Tired. I’ll just be in my room, Yeah?” 

No one seemed to question it, for which Chris was grateful. He needed some time alone to think, but even then the presence of his packmates just out of his door did comfort him a bit.

You were gone for a long while after that. The mood of the pack had almost reached the core of the planet by how low it was, but admittedly, Chris had taken the biggest blow. Eventually, everyone noticed, but no one other than Minho talked to him about it. ‘She’ll come around, I’m sure’, he told Chris one day, but it was hard for him to believe those words when he could still get a phantom of the panic in your scent whenever he was on his own. 

You didn’t tell her in time. You hurt her. You failed her… His brain wouldn’t stop nagging him day and night. He tried to convince himself that there was no need for him to feel the way he did, that these things happened sometimes, but he knew it wouldn’t be that easy, he had to make it up to you somehow.

He tried to text you, a ‘hey… how’re you’ that you didn’t reply to. The rest of the pack tried to as well, explaining as much as they could, but you also didn’t reply to them. No one had been able to get a hold of you, and Chris was just losing all hope. 

Until seven days after the entire thing the sound of a key going into his front door’s keyhole startled him, pumping adrenaline through his system, making him jump out of his bed. By the time you were opening the door and stepping into the flat Chris was already coming out of his room, looking at you.

“So…” You cleared your throat once you closed the door behind you, dropping your keys in their designated bowl on the bureau, and crossing your arms over your chest. “Werewolves?”

Chris nodded, staying rooted on the spot, afraid any movement he made would scare you in any way. “Werewolves”.

“Does it… Does it hurt when you shift?” Out of all the things you could’ve asked, that wasn’t exactly what Chris thought you’d ask first, not after being away for so long, but he decided to answer regardless. There was no point in hiding it now, the cat–or should he say, the wolf…–was already out of the bag.

He shrugged, crossing his arms over his chest as well. “It’s not comfortable, but it doesn’t really hurt hurt”.

“Mmm…” You stayed silent for a bit, until your eyes found Chris’, and you took a step closer. “So… You guys are like… A pack? A pack of wolves?” Chris simply nodded in response, and since he didn’t say anything else, you continued. “Why would you even let me move in?”

“You’re nice”, Chris replied immediately, maybe a bit too fast. But it was the truth, so he felt like saying it. “Very nice. At the time it just… Made sense to me”.

“So, you’re like… Their leader? What’s it called… Alpha?”

Chris chuckled. “Where did you even get this from? But yes, I’m the alpha of the pack”. 

“It’s amazing what you can find on the Internet these days”, you shrugged. “Did you ever even have intentions of telling me all this? Did you lie to me about anything else?”

Chris shook his head. “No, we… We’re exactly the same people you met. The fact that we are what we are was the only thing I didn’t…” Chris sighed. “Honestly? I wanted to tell you. But I was… A bit scared you’d get spooked and leave”.

“You don’t want me to leave?” You sounded genuinely incredulous, and it puzzled him. 

“‘Course not”, Chris said it like it was the most logical thing in the world. In reality, it wasn’t. You were a human, a human living in a werewolf den. It seemingly didn’t make sense, but to Chris, somehow, it made all the sense in the world. “Do you want to leave?”

You looked at him for a moment. Chris held his breath, watching you closely once you finally moved, coming towards him.

Tentatively, you walked into his space, wrapping your arms around his neck and pulling him close to you. As soon as your scent engulfed him fully, his body reacted almost on its own, wrapping his arms around your waist to hold you close, and heaving an almost involuntary sigh of relief.

“I don’t”, you mumbled against his shoulder, and the way your lips brushed his bare skin had his ears heating up. He should’ve put on a t-shirt before he left his room to meet you… “You guys… Are really nice, too”.

Chris hummed, hugging you a bit tighter for a while, for as long as you’d let him. Eventually, you were speaking again.

“So… If I’m staying at this werewolf den, does that mean you’re my alpha, too?”

Chris was glad you were not a werewolf. If you had been you would’ve heard how quickly his heart started to beat when you said that. The mere idea that you’d call him your alpha awoke something in him. Something he couldn’t unpack right here right now with you in his arms. 

You clearly didn’t know what that meant, you just made a logical assumption based on the little information you probably had, but if he ever heard you call him your alpha out loud he was sure he’d explode. So he decided to reach a middle ground, innocuous enough you wouldn’t be able to tell how much he was struggling with this. 

“Only–” His voice betrayed him, coming out of his mouth a bit strained. So he cleared his throat, trying to act normal. “Only if you’re a member of the pack, I suppose”. 

“Am I?” You asked, sounding genuinely curious. 

“If… If you want. Being a member of the pack… Entitles many things. if you’re willing to abide by those things then of course you can”. 

You hummed, burying your face further in the crook of his neck. 

“For what is worth, I… Already see you as one. It’s been that way for a while, actually”, Chris could’ve sworn he heard your heart start beating a bit faster after he said that, and in turn his heart started to beat faster in his chest.

“Oh?” You pulled away from his neck, finding his gaze, looking him straight in the eyes. “So I’m under the big bad wolf’s protection, huh?” 

Chris huffed out an incredulous laugh, amused by your choice of words, but he couldn’t help himself when the following words came out of his mouth. “Well, I’m not doing a good job at that, am I?”

You frowned. Smooth it out. Make her smile, his instincts told him, once again pushing to the front of his mind those impulses he so desperately tried to ignore. 

“What do you mean by that?”

“Well, I mean…” Chris suddenly couldn’t hold your gaze, but the way his eyes decided to focus on your mouth were certainly not making it any easier. Plump, soft, kiss, kiss, kiss, kiss–stop. Focus… “The day you left, on the stairs… I hurt you. I didn’t mean to, and I shouldn’t have. I’m incredibly sorry”. 

You went quiet for a moment, your eyes flickering between his, looking at him so intensely Chris could feel heat start to creep on the back of his neck, suddenly aware of how close you were. Finally, you inhaled sharply. 

“I forgive you”.

Chris blinked, and his brows furrowed. “But–” 

“What do you mean ‘but’?” You chuckled, untangling your arms away from his neck to cradle his face in your hands instead. “You apologised, and I accept your apology. Honestly, it was barely anything. I… Understand what you were trying to do. In the four months I’ve been living here you have never hurt me, not even made me feel uncomfortable, Chris. This is all insane, completely nuts, and I’m warning you right now, I’m gonna be super annoying about it, but I trust you. All of you. But you especially”. 

At that moment, Chris pulled himself away from you entirely, hopefully before you noticed how quickly his cheeks were flushing, making his way into the living room and rambling on about how you could ask him anything you wanted and offering you dinner from what he had prepared that night for himself.

It seemed like you took a lot of interest in their condition after that. 

‘So that’s why you’re so warm?’

‘That’s why y’all leave once a month? To run under the full moon, seriously?’

‘Can you eat chocolate?’ 

‘Would you show me your wolf form?’ 

‘What’s a knot?’

You were really curious, maybe a bit too much. Chris was more than happy to answer your questions, but when you started to ask about mating, and knots, and ruts, and heats, he’d admit he got a little flustered–maybe embarrassingly so. Mostly because, whenever you so much as mentioned anything that got too into the topic of sex, he’d just get waves and waves of improper thoughts. He’d wonder too much, he’d start getting worked up as if he was a fucking teenager who’d never touched a person in his life, so he tried to avoid those questions whenever he could.

The rest of the pack welcomed you back with open arms. They liked you before, but now that you knew their secret, it was almost as if something flipped in the way they interacted with you.

The first time one of them called you ‘mum’, Chris almost dug himself a Christopher-sized hole and buried himself alive. It was Seungmin who started the entire thing, because of course it was, Seungmin loved to see him struggle the most, clearly. And when you asked Chris about it, he simply told you the rest of the pack started to see you as a person they could lean on–which was half of the truth, he would’ve been caught dead before admitting to you that they were rubbing in his face how absolutely smitten he was.

He knew it before, of course. How he felt. Even if he tried to ignore it, if he tried to pretend it was all an instinctual thing because he had a pretty girl living with him, there was no way he could lie to himself for much longer. The moment you found out of their lycanthropy and you decided to stay and help, instead of running away in fear, he just couldn’t deny it any longer.

Sometimes, it felt as if the universe had taken all these qualities he could’ve ever needed in his life, all these qualities he hadn’t even realised he yearned for, and put them all in a person, put them all in you and threw you at his doorstep in a pretty sundress, as if to say ‘here, this is the one. Good fucking luck’. Honestly, in retrospect, Chris stood no chance. There was no way he wouldn’t have developed feelings for you.

Regardless of how he felt, he tried his best to be respectful, to not make you uncomfortable in any way. He really did try his best, but by heaven and hell if there weren’t moments where he almost risked it all…

Chris could still remember the first time he saw you wearing a pair of leggings. The stretchy material hugged your lower limbs so perfectly it didn’t exactly leave much to the imagination… The sight of the fabric stretched over your perfectly round bottom and your big thighs almost broke down all those protective walls he had decided to put between you and him–especially when the very first thought he had as soon as he saw you on them was to bend you over the kitchen counter, rip the thing to pieces, and dive face first into your cunt from behind.

He couldn’t help but feel guilty every time he had those thoughts about you. In his mind, you just didn’t deserve that, for some horny creep to be secretly looking at you and thinking all these lewd, dirty things about you, but the more time passed, the more he got to know you, those thoughts became more and more frequent. And the most painful part of it all wasn’t just the undeniable sexual aspect of it all.

Chris often wanted to talk to you about anything and everything, to hold you, kiss you, feed you, cuddle you, just overall take care of you, and that feeling only intensified as soon as you started to take care of his packmates, as soon as you inadvertently fell fully into the position of pack parent right next to him for real. Sure, the rest of the pack members looked up to you to some degree, and they often called you mum to tease him, but he hadn’t truly grasped the extent of it all.

Chris hadn’t noticed that was what was happening at first, but one day, he saw as you took care of a sick Seungmin so attentively it just hit him like a ton of bricks.

You were so perfect for that role in his pack, and the fact that you were doing all those things, without even being romantically involved with him made him feel both warm with love and pained with longing. He knew then that you were supposed to be there next to him, with him, but that was something he couldn’t push on you, not when it didn’t seem like you were feeling the same things towards him in the slightest.

Or at least, that was what Chris tried to tell himself, to delude himself into not overstepping those boundaries between you two. The reality was that, sometimes, Chris thought he might’ve had a chance.

Times when he hugged you tight and he could hear your heartbeat pick up its pace, or when you sent him silly memes that you thought he’d find funny, or times when you teased him, almost, almost as if you were flirting with him, or whenever you took interest in his lycanthropy, or…

He often recalled very fondly how you would snuggle into him whenever you fell asleep on the sofa while watching a movie with him. It didn’t happen often, but when it did, he’d wake up with you in his arms, with your head tucked under his chin. Those times, he’d always pretend to be asleep for as long as he could, selfishly enjoying your warmth until you eventually woke up, gave him a kiss on the cheek with a racing heart, and mumbled sleepy apologies before retreating to your room. He’d tried to convince himself that you possibly feeling the same way was all wishful thinking, so he never truly entertained those thoughts.

Even then, there were things he just couldn’t stop himself from doing. At some point, scenting your clothes just wasn’t enough for him, so he started lending you articles of clothing of his–hoodies, mostly. He would’ve loved to see you wearing his t-shirts, or his bathrobe, but hoodies were a good enough compromise in his mind. He’d always give them to you whenever you showed any sign of feeling even remotely chilly, and he soon realised that that need of having you wrapped in his scent only grew bigger the closer his rut was.

The first rut Chris went into after you moved in was, quite honestly, insane. He was able to recognise the signs early enough to leave the flat he shared with you and stay at one of the vacant ones in the building, and when it finally hit him, it hit him hard. He didn’t think he’d had such a painful rut in his life–aside from the first one, which to this day he was sure was the perfect representation of what being in hell would feel like. 

Logically, he could’ve asked a friend to help him out. It was always best to deal with these things with another person there, but, somehow, the mere thought of being with someone like that after he realised his feelings for you was… Really unpleasant, so he decided to bear it on his own.

During that rut, all his inner wolf wanted was to have you. Your scent plagued his mind, the mental image of you and your thighs and your soft body had him with his fist around his cock the entire time, but it was never enough. He yearned to pleasure you, to taste you, to make you come undone for him as many times as he could, to have you in every possible way he could, to pump you full of his cum and breed you, and the fact that he couldn’t do that had him in both physical and emotional pain.

The worst part was that Chris felt like shit not only because whenever he was able to orgasm it didn’t seem to quench his desires a single bit, but also because he was thinking of you in such a way again. At the time, he was so desperate he could hardly think about it, but as soon as his rut subsided he had this immense guilt plaguing him. So much so he wasn’t able to look you in the eyes for a week straight after, so he swore he would try his best to never break your trust like that ever again.

And for a handful of months, it worked. He’d still share his hoodies with you, still have the need to hug you, and touch you, and take care of you, but whenever his mind drifted too much he’d give himself a reality check. She’s your roommate. Your friend. You’re more than just a horny dog, Christopher, he’d berate himself often, keeping his distance however he could.

It was hard sometimes, though. You’d taken this habit of looking him in the eyes… You used to do it before, too, but somehow it seemed different lately. Your gaze would linger on his for a few seconds longer than usual, enough to trigger his primal instincts, to make him want to assert his dominance–normally, that’d mean he’d want to physically fight for it, but with you, the only way his body wanted to assert his dominance was by bending you over and fucking you stupid, which didn’t help his case one bit.

It was incredibly silly of him to think that way whenever you looked him in the eyes for too long, considering that, even if you could, he just knew there was no way you’d challenge him for his position in the pack. So he’d always talk himself down of his instinctual reaction, reminding himself of who you were, of how he couldn’t let himself hurt you, or cross your boundaries in any way.

But his resolve crumbled a little over a year after you moved in, when Chris saw your freshly washed clothes messily sprawled on your bed while you were ovulating, almost as if you had prepared a pretty little nest for him to breed you in. That, coupled with the fact that you were wearing his clothes at the same time, triggered his already upcoming rut right then and there.

His mind clouded quickly, your floral scent filled every single crevice within him, making his alpha instincts kick in. Pleasure, dominate, breed, breed, breed… The words resonated repeatedly within him as he struggled to keep it together, to not jump you on the spot and do something he would regret, to not hurt you.

When he desperately tried to leave the flat, you just wouldn’t let him, you were clearly worried about him, and if there was one thing Chris had learnt about you was that it wasn’t in your nature to just ignore a friend in need. But God, you just smelt so good… It was getting increasingly harder to not act on his impulses. 

You kept looking him in the eyes, and it wasn’t making it any easier, not when his instincts wouldn’t just shut the fuck up. Show her. Make her submit. Dominate, dominate, dominate…

‘Go lock yourself in your fucking room while I can still think and hold back’, he held to his last shred of sanity until the very last second, all while his humanity and his inner wolf fought for dominance over his actions during the entire interaction.

What he hadn’t expected, though, was for you to return his feelings, for you to want him. ‘What if I don’t want you to hold back?’ 

In a second, as soon as the words left your mouth, he finally let himself see, hear, and smell all the signs. Your flushed face, your heart thumping aggressively in your chest, the smell of your arousal lingering in the air… He simply snapped. The second you gave him your consent and he finally got a taste of you, Chris knew there was no going back for him. He was in deep.

He wouldn’t be able to get over the feeling of your lips on his, the sounds that came out of your mouth whenever he touched you, the smell of your scent laced with so much lust he was almost vibrating with excitement at the prospect of all the things he could do to you, of how good he’d make you feel.

‘Wanna be mine? Just say it, love, and I’ll make you mine. All mine’.

Claim, claim, claim… No, no claiming, Christopher. Too soon, too soon, that’s not what she needs right now…

‘Wanna be yours… Wanted to for so long, too’.

For so long, for so long, for so long… She’s mine, mine, mine, all for me…

Finally, Chris was able to let go of his inhibitions and fulfil all those desires and needs he’d had for the longest time. Not only was he able to quench his thirst with your essence on his tongue, or release all that tension that kept on building within him with the intoxicating feel of the soft skin of your inner thighs and the velvety walls of your cunt wrapped around his cock, but also he made you feel so much pleasure you were barely even able to talk and walk after he did. That simple fact had his chest swelling with pride, had him going through so many waves of his rut that by the fourth day of fucking you nonstop he could barely stand the tiniest movement around his cock.

Chris was being driven by both his emotional and physical needs the entire time, driven by his instincts to fulfil both his and your desires, but by the fourth night of his rut he had regained some of his human clarity back. It was just as you two were having a bath, as you took care of him, washing his hair–something no one had ever come remotely close to doing after he became an adult–that he came to a very important realisation.

Not only had you taken the time to understand him and the role he had within his pack, you’d taken the time to understand each and every single member in it, you supported them all in every way you could, and even though you were human, your body was able to take Chris in his most animalistic state. So it was right then, right as he looked at the soft, focused features of your face when you massaged his scalp, that he realised that the universe had really made you all for him, perfect just for him.

He’d said this to you time and time again throughout his rut, because it just felt right to say them, but only then did he realise how true it all was.

It wasn’t unheard of. It happened often in werewolves. Not to every single one, but it was often enough that he was able to connect the dots. It was said that there would always be someone out there that would be able to strengthen those areas a wolf might be lacking in. And for Chris, that someone was you. 

Even when he woke up the next day, with his mind finally clear of his more animalistic impulses and desires, he knew that to be the truth.

It was a lot to take in, and if it was a lot for him who had been labelled Mr Intense several times throughout his life by both friends and partners, he was sure it would’ve been a lot for you, too. So he decided to file this for later, for it to be discussed when the time was right.

As it was now, he felt as if everything had been done backwards, so he had to start settling the foundations of a possible relationship with you–sure, you’d let him fuck you silly for four days straight, but what if you had been influenced by his pheromones? What if you realised you didn’t want him like that? That it’d be too much?

So he asked you out on a date, he wanted to take you to the seasonal fair, and to his delight–and maybe relief…–you accepted. It was almost comical how fast his heart would beat whenever you got close to him during that date, especially so considering he had already told you so many filthy, intimate things during his rut, but as you tugged him along to rides and games and food stalls, it all felt different to him somehow. More meaningful, perhaps.

That evening, when you were both walking back home, as Chris held your hand tightly in his, right under the seasonal lights that had been placed above the road, he just couldn’t help himself when he cradled your face and kissed you. A slow, sensual kiss that had his heart doing flips in his chest, and he simply revelled in the way you moved closer to him, in the way you held his coat tightly in your hands, in the way your lips moved against his.

A motion so natural he just couldn’t believe he hadn’t been doing this since the day he met you. When he pulled back, he asked you to be his girlfriend, and the moment you said yes, his heart soared, and he couldn’t help but feel incredibly giddy.

Now, Chris could hold you as much as he wanted, touch you as much as he wanted, he could tell you everything without having to measure his words, and he was so, so ready to enjoy every second of it. To enjoy every single second he’d spend with you–even more than he did before.

You were still sleeping in your bedroom, or at least, you did for the first few days after your date. That was fine by Chris, he had been making up for the lost time at work because of the ‘unexpected sick leave’ he had to take during his rut, so he was coming home late at night, barely even seeing your pretty face before he took a shower and dropped dead on his bed until the next day. It was best for you to sleep on your own so he wouldn’t disturb you. That was Chris’ reasoning.

At least, until tonight.

“Hey”, your voice made him look away from his phone and over his shoulder, finding you peeking your head from behind the door with a shy smile on your lips.

“Why are you up? You should be sleeping, love”, Chris turned, lying on his back and fixing his eyes on you.

“I missed you”, you replied simply, making your way into the room, your words effectively bringing heat to the back of his neck.

Chris let out a content sigh, watching you get on his bed and finally straddle his hips. His hands settled on your thighs, rubbing up and down in soothing motions. If only it weren’t so cold so you weren’t wearing these pyjama bottoms… They were cute, fluffy, with doughnuts printed all over them, but he selfishly wished he could feel your skin under his hands.

“Missed you, too. So much”.

You leaned into him, resting your entire body weight on him to press a kiss to his lips. Chris could definitely get used to this. To the feeling of you pressed against him, even with the duvet separating your bodies, he just loved feeling you close, especially when you kissed him so softly, so… Lovingly.

You’d been his girlfriend for a total of three days, it had been almost an entire week since the end of his rut, and you two hadn’t had sex since then. You’d told him you needed some time to recover, which was perfectly fine. Chris himself felt like he needed a short break as well, after all, getting back into his normal rhythm after a rut was always a process.

Besides that, though, your comfort was always his first priority, it had always been that way, but even more so now. He wanted to wait until you felt fine, until you were ready for it again. 

Although, he’d admit it wasn’t particularly easy. Not when you looked Like That all the time and he just wanted to sink his teeth on your soft flesh any time he got the tiniest glimpse of your skin. 

Sure, he was no longer in a rut, he was a coherent man, with coherent thoughts, completely capable of simply enjoying your presence without escalating any further than a hug or a kiss. But tonight, as his tongue made its way into your mouth, as your hips rolled against him, as his hands started to roam your back, only to settle on your rear to fondle the supple flesh, Chris was truly starting to feel ravenous, desperate to feel you, desperate to make you feel incredibly good.

“Chris, baby…” you mumbled against his lips, resuming your motions immediately after the words left your mouth, pressing pecks on his lips. 

“Hm?” Chris took your bottom lip between his teeth, tugging gently, gripping your buttcheeks tighter, and the whimper that came out of your mouth almost, almost made him lightheaded with how fast blood rushed to his cock. 

“Want you…”

Chris’ eyes snapped open, and he pulled away from you to look you in the eyes, finding your blown pupils and flushed cheeks. Beautiful, gorgeous, pretty… Swallowing, he brought a hand to your cheek, softly dragging his thumb over your skin. “Pretty… You sure? Are you feeling okay?”

“Mm”, with a hard roll of your hips to emphasise your statement, you pressed a brief kiss on his lips. “Positive. I’ve almost forgotten how you feel like inside me, baby. That’s a crime”.

Chris huffed an incredulous chuckle. “So soon? Damn, must’ve not fucked you enough, then”.

“Oh, you fucked me plenty. I just want more”, a grin spread on your lips, looking utterly shameless, and Chris would lie if he said it didn’t excite him.

“Greedy, huh?” 

Before you could even attempt to bite back, Chris rolled to the side, taking you with him, effectively wrapping you in the duvet, like the most adorable burrito, and trapping you under him, eliciting a yelp from your lips with the movement.

“Not fair”, God, you shouldn’t be allowed to pout, it disarmed him way too quickly. Chris couldn’t help but peck your lips, as many times as necessary, until you started giggling.

“What? My pretty baby wants to be on top?” Chris placed a kiss on your cheekbone. Your skin was warm, soft, you smelt like your moisturiser and your floral scent, and he just absolutely loved it.

“Maybe”, you mumbled, sounding more distracted now that Chris’ lips had descended to your neck, now that he was kissing and nibbling your skin.

Your hands roamed his back, making him shiver, especially so when you dragged your fingers down his spine, finally reaching his bum, and confidently squeezing. “Why are you naked?” You chuckled, clearly amused, and Chris settled his weight on his elbows so he could look at your face better.

“I was already ready to sleep, baby. You know I sleep naked”.

“You do?” You laughed, and it made him smile. “I thought the kids were saying that just to mess with you”.

“Oh, they were messing with me”, Chris chuckled. “But they weren’t lying”.

“So… If we start sleeping together, you’d sleep naked, too?” You squeezed his buttcheek again, a bit harder this time. It was barely anything, but it was working him up way more than it should have, for sure. Chris was already hard and leaking just by your presence, by your warmth and your kisses, but even then the simple implication that you wanted to share a bed with him every night had his heart doing flips in his chest, had his cock twitching with need.

“Would you mind?” He pulled away from you enough to untangle the duvet away from your body. As soon as you were released, he tugged on your pyjama top, and you let him get it off of you immediately.

“Not one bit”, was all you replied, and Chris gave you a hum of acknowledgement just as he tugged your bottoms off.

He got, admittedly, a bit distracted. Of course you wouldn’t be wearing any underwear under your pyjamas, you were ready for bed already, but it still caught him off guard.

The marks he’d left on your body during his rut were starting to fade, and all he wanted right now was to mark you all over again. Did he have a problem? Maybe he did. As his hands made their way to cup your tits, squeezing them briefly only to finally settle on playing with your nipples, the sounds that were coming out of your mouth made it incredibly hard for him to care.

“How’re you this pretty, huh?” While Chris kept softly rolling your nipples between his fingers, your hands came to hold his wrists, gently rubbing his skin with your thumbs as you arched your back, moaning oh, so sweetly for him.

“Chris, babe…” Your hold on his wrists tightened, shifting Chris’ attention from your breasts to your eyes again. The smell of your arousal had him literally salivating, had him feeling like a hungry dog, ready to devour you whole, and when you dropped the most desperate ‘kiss me’ he couldn’t help but do just that, removing his hands from your chest to hug you close.

You whined as soon as his lips landed on yours, moulding to yours time and time again, eventually pushing his tongue inside your mouth, savouring you, swallowing every sigh and every whimper that fell from your lips. He kissed you for a while, enjoying the feeling of you holding him tightly, enjoying the way your heartbeat kept picking up its pace, until the slow, deep kisses turned messier, more eager, until he couldn’t ignore just how badly he wanted to have a taste of you.

As he started his descent down your torso, kissing your clavicle, your chest, sucking your nipple into his mouth to play with the hardened bud for a bit with his tongue, he couldn’t help his hands from roaming your body. Your thighs, your hips, your sides, anywhere he could reach.

His fingers sunk on your flesh, eliciting quiet whimpers from your mouth, just as he kept licking the pebbled skin of your nipples and your hardened buds. Chris just really couldn’t help himself from kneading and squeezing your skin, tracing every dip, every roll, every curve, until his mouth finally resumed its path further down your body.

“Baby…” You mumbled once Chris’ mouth attached to your lower belly, nipping and kissing and sucking on your skin, making you squirm.

“Hm?” Chris would admit he was only partially listening, there was not much coherent thinking going on in his brain at that moment, all he could think about was you, you, you, and your soft skin, and your floral scent, and how it was all heavily tinted with lust.

You didn’t say anything, though, you simply inhaled a shaky breath once Chris’ attention was shifting again, from your lower belly to your mound, and finally, bringing his forearms under your thighs, he pushed them towards your chest, attaching his mouth to your skin so he could repaint all those marks that had started to fade.

He vaguely registered the words ‘such delicious thighs, fuck…’ coming out of his mouth, just as he vaguely registered the whimper you gave him in response. He repeated his motions until he was satisfied with the amount of freshly made love bites on your thighs, finally directing his attention to your dripping heat.

Chris truly was just a simple man.

A simple man with simple needs.

Sinking his fingers in the soft skin of your thighs, keeping you spread open for him, he finally dived, licking a slow, fat stripe from your entrance to your clit, all but moaning at your taste on his tongue, brows pulled together in bliss.

Chris got comfortable, laying on his stomach, and slurping you up. The moans and whines and whimpers that came out of your mouth with each and every single one of his movements, the way your fingers threaded through his hair, the way your hand pushed on his head to get him impossibly closer to you, only encouraged him more. Your free hand came to rest on one of his, and he wasted no time letting go of your thigh to hold your hand instead, linking his fingers with yours, relishing the warmth of your palm against his.

“Oh, fuck…” Your legs started to tremble as soon as he eased two fingers into you, and his mind raced with the feel of your heat wrapped around his digits. So warm, soft… He wasn’t sure if the words actually left his mouth or if it was just his instincts taking a hold of his mind, but he honestly didn’t care, either. 

As he started to add more and more fingers, until he was stretching you open as much as he could, your thighs clamped around his head, and Chris truly, truly couldn’t contain the literal animalistic growl that came out of his mouth, muffling against your skin as he diligently sucked your clit into his mouth and licked it with his tongue.

Letting go of your hand to grip your outer thigh, he simply encouraged you to keep that position, to borderline suffocate him with your legs, and honestly for all he cared he could’ve died right then and there, choked by the most delicious thighs he’d ever had the pleasure of touching, of kissing, of fucking–

Shit, he wanted to fuck your thighs. Would you ever let him do that again? Between the feeling of your walls around his fingers, your taste on his tongue, the sinful sounds coming out of your mouth, and the mere thought of fucking your thighs again, he could feel himself start to leak even more fluids, surely soiling his bedsheets–not like he cared much about it, to be honest.

Chris decided to ignore that thought altogether. He didn’t want to ruin the mood by bringing that up, not right now. So he shifted his focus back into the now, back to your hand tugging his hair and his fingers in your cunt and his mouth on your clit.

For a split second, he wondered if he should stop, if he should slow down to prolong this further, to eventually build you up once again and enhance your impending release. He’d been the one teasing you about it earlier, but the truth was, tonight, he was the greedy one, desperate to bring you unadulterated pleasure, so he didn’t stop.

Instead, he just sped up his fingers, thrusting harder, curling them up against that sweet spot within your walls in the exact way he’d learnt would have you curling your toes and flexing your thighs. He sucked harder, licked harder, revelling in the cries coming out of your mouth, revelling in the feel of you, all soft and warm and his.

When you came, moaning his name like the sweetest song he’d ever heard, Chris’ thoughts hazed, feeling your walls clenching repeatedly around his fingers, feeling your thighs twitching slightly around his head. And the moment you tried to pull yourself away from him, he just didn’t budge, bringing his hand from where it had been gripping your thigh to your hip, holding you tight and pinning you in place.

“Oh, fuck… Fuck, fuck, Chris, you–Shit–” Whatever it was you were trying to tell him got caught in your throat, all words replaced by broken moans and whines, which only fueled that determination that had quickly built within him. Pleasure, pleasure, pleasure, pleasure…

Chris didn’t relent until you were shaking with a consecutive high, until you tugged on his hair and begged with a breathless ‘Shit, Chris, darling, can’t handle it anymore, please…’ effectively snapping him out of it. Pulling on your thighs to get you to release your hold on him, and kissing his way up your body, Chris’ lips finally found your face, kissing away the salty tears that had run down your cheeks, only to finally find your mouth and kiss you deeply.

You let out the dreamiest sigh of relief when he kissed you, making him hum against your mouth, and as you hugged him close to you, tightly, bare chest against bare chest, his heart felt as if it was ready to burst at the seams.

“Fuck, love, you okay?” Chris wanted to check, to make sure his greediness didn’t get the best of him, and when you nodded enthusiastically, finding his lips and kissing him again, that minimal worry in his mind dissipated instantly.

“No business being that good with your mouth, fuck”, you mumbled against his lips, making him chuckle, just as you wrapped your legs around his torso, pulling him closer.

“Got a bit carried away… I can tone it down next time, if that’s what you want”, he teased you a bit with a grin on his lips, just as he held the base of his length and guided it to your entrance.

“Don’t you dare”, you replied almost immediately, pressing another loud kiss on his lips. “Want you just as you are. You always make me feel so good, baby…”

Chris hummed, content, keeping himself propped up on one elbow, kissing you as he dragged his tip up and down your folds, getting drenched in your slick. He was fully intending on not fucking you yet, on giving you time to catch your breath, he truly just wanted to feel your wetness against his cock, but when you noticed what he was doing, and urged him with a ‘if you don’t get inside of me right now I’ll cry for real, baby, please’, he simply couldn’t deny you.

Heaven, heaven, heaven, heaven, warm, warm, warm… “Fuck, it really hasn’t been that long, but I missed being inside you”, Chris couldn’t help but mumble against the skin of your neck once he bottomed out, relishing the way your walls just hugged him so perfectly, relishing how warm and snug it felt.

“Me too, baby”, you chuckled softly, threading your fingers through his hair, mindlessly playing with it. 

Keeping himself propped up enough, and once his other hand found yours, linking your fingers together, Chris finally started to move. He started slow, savouring every drag of his cock against your heat just as he kept kissing you, swallowing your quiet moans.

Burying his face in the crook of your neck, he pressed slow, wet kisses on the sensitive skin of your neck, making you squirm in his hold, and the whines that came out of your mouth as you bared your neck for him had his pace picking up just the tiniest bit, had his instincts kicking in and his lips sucking purple splotches on your skin. Mark, mark, mark, mark…

It truly hadn’t been that long, but now that he was able to feel you like this again, Chris realised he had missed it more than he thought. How could he not, when you were so warm, so soft, and just so, so perfect for him in every way, and as he whispered these things in your ear, all while bringing his hands under you, one holding your shoulder, and the other holding one of your buttcheeks to keep you from sliding away from him with his movements, there was absolutely no doubt in his mind that that was the absolute, irrevocable truth. 

“All yours, Chris”, you mumbled back to him, rolling your hips to meet his thrusts, the reassurance alone sending sparks of pleasure up and down his spine, and when you added a “just like you’re all mine, too”, emphasised with a tug on his hair, he just couldn’t hold back the sounds that were coming out of his mouth, nor the rumbling that started to resonate from deep within him. Which, had he not been absolutely drunk on your presence, would’ve puzzled him, and maybe embarrass him a bit.

It wasn’t that common for alphas to rumble outside of their rut, and Chris was no exception to this. He could probably count with one hand the times he had rumbled after puberty. But as he continued to pleasure you, to indulge in your body, he realised his quiet, slow, almost involuntary rumble was just another sign. Another sign that he was all yours, you were all his, and nothing had ever made more sense to him in this life than those two facts.

Holding you tightly, he rolled to the side, bringing you with him so you could sit on him, making you gasp with the change in angle once he was buried within your walls again.

“C’mon, pretty… Didn’t you want to be on top? Ride me”, he mumbled against the skin of your neck, sinking his fingers on the swell of your hips. “Ride me like you mean it, love. Show me how much you wanted it”.

And you did. He attached his mouth to your chest, determined to leave as many love bites as he could like he did with your thighs, just as he could feel his body burn from the inside out while you bounced on his cock. Mine, mine, mine, mine…. 

Time slipped between his fingers, his mind and body lost completely on you, just like you got lost on him, exploring one another until you came once more, until you eventually got off his lap, took him between your lips and made him come in your mouth. When he borderline begged you to open up and show him, he was sure the sight of his cum pooled in your mouth would be ingrained in his brain forever, and when he asked you to swallow and you did, showing him your clean tongue right after, he couldn’t help but feel tingly all over, so incredibly enraptured by you, and your mouth, and your body, and your mind, and your absolutely everything.

After a quick clean up and more kisses and more caring words, Chris simply hugged you close under the covers, burying his face in the crook of your neck as your fingers buried in his curls and massaged his scalp softly. The sound of your heartbeat under his ear was lulling him to sleep, and when you held him even tighter against your body and he started to rumble again, he simply didn’t question it, too tired and sleepy and in love to care at all once he finally fell asleep that night.

Starting a romantic relationship with you meant that there were hardly any reservations in this flat anymore. Chris would walk around almost naked most of the time, wearing nothing but comfortable, loose fitting pyjama shorts, just as you’d do the same. Walking around topless or wearing only your underwear under one of his oversized tees, and honestly Chris was having the time of his life seeing so much of your body all the time he had to make a conscious effort to not have his hands on you all the time–he failed miserably every time, but by the heavens he was trying.

You both had decided to keep Chris’ bedroom as your shared room, whereas your room would become a study of sorts for both, since you kindly requested ‘no work in the bedroom, darling, please’, which was perfectly reasonable. 

The dynamic within the pack didn’t change at all, you were already doing all the things the partner of a pack’s alpha would typically do before you got together, so the only minor difference now was that you and Chris would often engage in very shameless public displays of affection, eliciting a groan or two from the younger members of the pack. They’d have to endure it, because Chris had no plans to stop any time soon. And he was very unapologetic about it.

Others, though, started airing his dirty laundry to you. ‘I wish you could’ve heard how fast his heart would beat when you got close to him before. How flustered he got…’ Seungmin just wouldn’t shut up about it, and even though you were his girlfriend now and all his prior struggles were something you were very aware of, Chris still threatened to smack him with a slipper if he kept talking to you about it–a completely empty threat, but it did slow down his jabs a bit.

By the two month mark Chris was one hundred percent sure he’d never felt this good in a relationship before, and if these couple of months were an omen of how the rest of his life would be, he was more than ready for it. 

“Baby, no offence, but no wonder you had to get a roommate”, you chuckled, mindlessly playing with his hair.

Chris laid on his back with his head between your legs, your tummy posing as the softest pillow he’d ever used. Your legs draped over his shoulders, caging his head between them while he played on his phone. It was a common position for Chris and you to ‘cuddle’ at this point, just laying together on the sofa as both of you took some time to unwind from the long day, scrolling on your phones, watching TV, or engaging in conversation.

“What’d you find?” Chris mindlessly caressed the skin of your outer thigh, squeezing the flesh here and there whenever he felt like it.

A few days ago, you had offered to help organise the finances of the pack, and today Chris was finally able to send you all the documents he could find related to everyone’s income and expenses. He’d been taking care of it on his own, but he found the task to be incredibly annoying and sometimes even confusing, so he’d be the first to admit he wasn’t doing as well as he could’ve with it… Especially with his own finances.

“Well, the kids seem to be taking care of their expenses well enough… They could probably cut down on some extras if they want to have some extra money…” Chris was trying his best to listen, he really was, but he started to zone out almost immediately, distracted by the warmth of your thighs around his head.

He squeezed your thigh, inhaling sharply, getting almost overwhelmed by your scent. “But you…” His ears perked up, focusing on what you were telling him. “Do you even know you are being billed for all these things? What do you even need a scooter insurance for?”

“I’m still paying for that insurance?!”

“Mhm, look”, you handed him your phone. Chris looked at the numbers on the screen, incredulous, and slightly annoyed with himself for forgetting about these things. “Do you even have a scooter?”

“Sold it ages ago, before I even got the car”, he scoffed, handing you your phone back. “Guess it just… Slipped my mind to cancel that thing”.

“There are more like these, y’know?” You chuckled, gently tugging on his hair. “You reckless wolf, what am I gonna do with you?”

Chris simply chuckled in response, turning his head a bit to place a kiss on your inner thigh as you continued to list things he had completely forgotten about. It took you both a while to go through everything, by the time you were done, he had pulled himself from between your legs, deciding to instead sit with his back against the backrest, spreading his legs as much as he wanted, with your legs laying over his.

There was some film playing on the TV. Chris tried to keep his eyes glued to it, but in all honesty, he wasn’t watching any of it, he didn’t even know which film it was.

The way you were laying on the sofa with your legs on his lap made it so the t-shirt you were wearing rode up almost completely, leaving your thighs on full display for Chris to touch and stare at. It was nothing unusual or particularly revealing, but he’d spent the past hour just squeezing and massaging your thighs, and the motions were getting him really worked up. Maybe embarrassingly so.

Even if he’d fucked you silly and seen you naked a thousand times already, he was somehow especially affected today. Maybe it was the fact that you hadn’t had sex in a few days–which was fine, contrary to what the rest teased Chris for, you two didn’t fuck every single day. Several times a week? Yes. But not every day. Mostly because either one of you would be too exhausted due to your jobs or your studies or whatever situation you both were going through that week.

Chris had caught himself thinking about your thighs a lot lately. Whenever you sat on his lap, or when you draped your legs over him when you slept, he just couldn’t help but look at them, to touch them. It had gotten to the point where, whenever your schedules got busy and you couldn’t get intimate for one reason or the other, he’d found himself wanking one off thinking maybe bit too much about your thighs. Touching them, kissing them, sucking on them, fucking them…

“Baby…” He squeezed your thigh lightly, keeping his eyes focused on the way the skin dipped under his hold. “If I tell you something… Something slightly embarrassing… Would you judge me?”

You turned away from your phone to look at him. “Never, babe. What’s bothering you?”

Chris swallowed the saliva he hadn’t even realised had pooled in his mouth, massaging your thighs a bit more firmly. “I… Really, really like your thighs…”

“I can tell”, you tucked your phone under the cushion you were using to prop yourself up, giving him your full attention. “That’s not embarrassing, though?”

“That’s not the embarrassing part…” Taking a deep breath, Chris licked his lips. He’d had a chub for a long while now, he’d been trying to ignore it, but the more he touched your bare skin, the more he just enjoyed the feeling of your soft flesh under his fingertips, he just couldn’t ignore it any longer. “I… Think about them often. Maybe too often. About how soft and squishy and big they are…”

“You do?” There was a bit of a teasing tone in your voice, but the way your heartbeat suddenly quickened was enough for Chris to know you weren’t teasing him because you found it particularly amusing, but just to get him even more worked up, to get him to react, and honestly he willingly fell for it, just like he did every single time.

“Mhm…” It wasn’t anything particularly new, not to him. The thighs… They’ve always been a part of a person’s body he’d tended to focus on, and the only time he tried to openly discuss it with someone in depth they looked at him like he was crazy, so he was embarrassed, and maybe a little apprehensive. But right now, he was just horny and in love and your thighs were just so soft, he just couldn’t contain the words from leaving his mouth. “Fuck, pretty, wanna fuck them so bad right now. Just… Really wanna come all over them…”

Chris had only ever fucked your thighs during his rut, he’d never brought that up into your day to day sexual activities. He was just convinced it wasn’t exactly common to have such cravings, considering he’d had partners tell him that before. Sure, you’d let him do it already when he was going through his rut, but there were a lot of pheromones and hormonal rushes involved back then, this was different. This was his completely coherent human self wanting to fuck a part of your body that wasn’t exactly common to want to fuck.

Licking your lips, and with a shaky intake of breath, you brought your hand to his, placing it there to bring his attention to your eyes. “Wanna do it now?”

There was no hint of judgement in your eyes, if anything Chris could see your pupils dilate, he could hear your heart beating faster in your chest, so he gave you an almost shy nod. “Do you, though?”

Your hold on his hand tightened a bit. “These are yours, Chris. I’m all yours”, your low tone, the desire coating your words, had him biting his lower lip and inhaling deeply, getting a whiff of your floral scent slightly tinted with lust, and it was honestly starting to cloud his mind a bit. “I don’t think it’s anything to be embarrassed about, baby. I actually think it’s quite hot… Makes me feel… Wanted. Is that how it is? Do you want me?”

“‘Course I do. Never not want you, pretty”, sneaking his hand between your thighs, Chris squeezed the tender flesh at the highest point, right where it met your core, making you almost squeal.

You stared back at him, in that way that almost made his alpha instincts kick in, in that way that made him want to make you submit to him in any way he could, but before Chris could say anything–or do anything–you spoke again. “Well… There’s massage oil in the coffee table…”

Of course there was massage oil in one of the drawers of the coffee table. You and Chris kept it there since before you got together, for times where the other felt their shoulders particularly stiff or for when any of the kids came over with the same problem. He’d lie if he said he never thought about… Using it in more inappropriate ways before, but it had been so long since you’d used it he had honestly forgotten about it.

With a chuckle, Chris shuffled a bit, careful not to let your legs fall out of his lap as he leaned forward to open the drawer and take out the bottle. Settling back on the sofa, as comfortable as he could, he instructed you, “scoot your legs back a bit, love. Need to take my shorts off”.

So you did, and once he found himself bare, he guided you towards him just as he slouched further into the sofa, bringing your legs back to his lap. Taking the bottle of oil, Chris took his time lathering your inner thighs with it, lightly massaging your flesh as he went, relishing the way your breathing was starting to get a bit more laboured with each drag of his hands on your skin, until finally, he soaked his cock, giving himself a couple of languid pumps.

Once Chris was content with how soaked you both were, he gave you the bottle so you could place it on the floor, just as he guided your legs to close around his length, and the sigh of relief that left his lips was honestly almost pathetic to his ears–not like he could care much about it when the most delicious thighs he’d ever seen were practically suffocating his cock.

“So good, fuck…” It wasn’t a particularly easy angle to do this in, but he was too far gone to care, so Chris simply angled his body towards you enough for both of you to be comfortable. Slowly, he started to thrust, his eyes focused on the sight of his tip popping out from between your legs, almost rubbing your core with each motion, feeling himself leak and almost drool as tiny sparks of pleasure started to travel down his spine. 

There was a voice at the back of his head telling him that he wasn’t taking care of your pleasure, that he was being too selfish by rutting himself between your thighs like this, but before he could even feel bad about it, Chris heard you whimper, and when his eyes snapped from the sight of his cock between your legs to your face, he couldn’t help but swallow. Your face was flushed, your lower lip trapped between your teeth, and your brows furrowed as you looked back at him.

“Is this how you wanted me, darling?” When the words left your mouth, almost breathless, Chris swallowed again, slowly nodding. Somehow, you looked like you were enjoying it as much as he did, and that realisation had him growing impossibly hard.

“Just like this, pretty… Seriously, these thighs of yours… They’re gonna be the death of me. So full and soft… So delicious…” Sliding one of his hands under your shirt, he found one of your breasts, kneading it and squeezing it for a bit only to finally pinch your nipple between his fingers in tandem with his cock pumping itself between your legs, relishing the soft moan that left your mouth when he did.

“Babe, I want you to… To enjoy yourself”, there was a pout on your lips, but Chris could feel your thighs twitch every time he rolled your nipple between his fingers, and he couldn’t help but chuckle.

“Oh, I am”, letting his head fall onto the backrest, Chris just looked at your face, at the way it scrunched up in pleasure and the way your eyelids fluttered shut with every movement of his, just as one of his hands kept working you up and the other held onto your thigh to keep you in place while he fucked himself between them. “You’re so fucking perfect, baby… Most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen…”

Chris had this habit of rambling and running his mouth when he was horny or when he was feeling vulnerable. He’d told you this before, so he was sure you weren’t surprised by the things that came out of his mouth when you had sex by now, but everything he said was something he truly believed, it wasn’t all just horny talk. His last statement was no exception. You were, truly, the most beautiful girl he’d ever seen, and he’d believed that since the very first day he saw you.

You just whimpered in response, clenching your thighs harder, making him groan with the motion. Pulling your tee further up your torso, you brought your hand to your other breast, kneading it and playing with your nipple as Chris kept stimulating the other, as he kept fucking your thighs, and honestly he didn’t know where to look–to your gorgeous, blissed out face, to your hand and his working your chest, or to where his cock popped out from between your legs… It was all so much, and so, so good, and he truly was almost drooling with the intensity of it all.

It went on like this for a while, until Chris felt his orgasm grow closer. He hazily reached a compromise with himself, to let himself come first, something he didn’t do often. He usually preferred to have you reach your climax and fuck your brains out while you were all sensitive and drenched and squirming, but he needed this, and boy if he was ready to make it up to you after.

With a few more thrusts, giving you a quick warning, and a garnish of your name coupled with a colourful assortment of swear words, Chris finally came. His cum quickly pooled on the valley created by your thighs and your core, soaking your underwear, a bit even landed on your lower belly, and truly, you were always beautiful, every day, in every way, but especially so when you were covered in his cum.

“Shit, look at that, huh…” Chris felt lightheaded, but that didn’t stop him from reaching out to your lower belly, spreading his cum around with two of his fingers, only to finally bring them to your mouth, and, just like you always did, your lips wrapped around his digits, licking them clean with a satisfied moan. “Like eating my cum, pretty baby? Looks like you do, you’re sucking so eagerly, hm?”

You nodded, finally opening your eyes and letting his fingers pop out of your mouth. “Love it. How could I not? When you always have so much for me?”

Chris couldn’t help but chuckle, ignoring the heat he felt spread on his face. “All for you, love… All of it. All of me”.

You chuckled, regarding him with a smile. “How’re we gonna get out of this one without staining the sofa?”

“Take off that t-shirt, let’s use that”.

After wiping you off with his tee, Chris pulled you into his lap, bringing you close to him with one hand caressing your thigh and the other cradling the back of your head, just as you settled your legs at either side of him and your hands on his chest. You kissed like this for a bit, until your lips wandered off, pressing a trail of kisses from his mouth to his neck.

When you pulled back from his neck, you looked at him with such adoring eyes Chris thought he was going to melt right then and there. “You really like my thighs, huh?” You looked down, to where he was tightly holding onto the supple flesh of your thigh, and Chris really couldn’t help the bashful smile that came to his face when you called him out on it.

“Just fucked them and came all over them, baby. Can’t hide it, I’m fucking obsessed with them”.

You just chuckled, pressing your bare chest as much as you could against his to hug him close, just as you placed a brief kiss to his lips. “I meant it earlier, babe. You can fuck them whenever you want. I like it when you do. It’s really hot”.

“Oh, pretty, love… I fucking will. Shit, how couldn’t I…” Inhaling deeply, Chris kissed you, maybe a bit too hard, a bit too eager, but he still revelled in your soft moans as he did.

Linking his arms under your ass to keep you secure in place, he stood up from the sofa, earning a surprised squeal from your lips that got lost in his mouth. He simply laid down on the sofa with you on top of him, giving you a tight squeeze on one of your buttcheeks. 

“Now, pretty baby…” He spoke between kisses, just as his hands roamed your body, squishing and kneading your soft flesh all over. “I need you to sit on my face. Want to make you feel good”.

You simply giggled in response, giving him one quick, loud kiss. “Someone’s hungry today”.

“For you? Always”, Chris chuckled. “Then, if you can still walk after, we can go stargazing tonight”, he added with a smile and a playful smack on your ass.

Chris was determined to show you just how hungry for you he was time and time again if necessary. How could he not be hungry for you? He’d realised that, for him, you embodied the very essentials of his pack. You embodied those things he so desperately wanted to have in his pack since he had decided to start one. Care, love, support, acceptance… 

Whether it be his and his friends’ lycanthropy or his kinks or his odd spending habits, you seemed to accept it all as part of him. He shouldn’t be surprised, really. He shouldn’t doubt it. After all, you were made for him, all for him, perfect just for him, and he was ready to enjoy it, to enjoy you and your company for as long as you’d let him.

Author’s Note x2: while i was writing this, i took some time to re-read It’s Cold Out again after a long time and holy shit. i hadn’t fully realised how much my writing has changed since then. to the point where to me it doesn’t feel like ICO was written by me anymore. it’s crazy lol. i’m happy i’ve gotten to expand on this AU, and i’m even happier that i get to share it with you all. if you’re reading this, thank you, you’re awesome

Tagging: @raspbinniecreme @staaa96 @oiminho @dundullresident @honey-lemon-goose @straylightdream @carefully325 @lavenderxkies @starshine-moon @biribarabiribbaem @meowmeowhoon @100layersofdaddyissues @dearalice @alexis-reads-fics @xcookiemonsteer @knowleeknow @chanlovesme @liminaldaydream @sstarryreads @svngiem @notastraykid @princelingperfect

If you want to be removed from the list (or if i tagged you incorrectly) just PM me to let me know and i'll remove you. If you want to be added fill in this form~

© therhythmafterthesummer 2023. all rights reserved. do not repost or translate my stories.

Constructive feedback (or even keysmashes, really) is always welcome :) feel free to leave your comments in the caption/tags when you reblog, or by sending me an ask !

Chris’ WereRoomies Instalments: It’s Cold Out · Rut · Alpha Dog · It’s Warm In · Love is Easy · Afraid to Lose You. For extra drabbles, check out the series masterlist.

[teruuu]

Exploring The Complexities of The Lamb and Narinder’s Relationship

Long post warningsgsgsgsgsh!!!!!! 🥺🥺

For those of you who want a quick rundown of what the AU’s about, check out the link at the bottom of the post.

Warning: Mentions of Cannibalism, Unhealthy & Obsessive Relationships, and Spoilers for The Art of Acquiring Devotion

Now, firstly, I’ll have to give my thanks to @nimbudcat for providing me with ideas as to how the relationship would function and opening the gateway for me to fully explore all the nooks and crannies of their romance.

I’m no expert on the deep complexities of toxic relationships, so I don’t have the courage to fully label the Lamb and Narinder’s love as ‘toxic’, but I know damn well that it’s not a normal love at all. Let’s think—what is a normal, healthy relationship composed of? Trust, of course. Mutual love and trust, absolute honesty... Those are the most basic building blocks of a healthy relationship. In this AU, for Narinder and Lamb, those concepts are extremely warped. They have all of those components in their relationship, but it’s so twisted that it’s difficult for me to define their romance as either healthy or unhealthy.

Narinder and Lamb trust each other, and it runs so deep that the best descriptor for that trust is pure devotion. They trust each other with their lives. This may not make sense since they are immortals, but think about it—the cannibalism that they inflict upon one another results in death for the two, each and every time, and they trust only one another for their resurrections. They allow the most vulnerable parts of themselves only to one another, and this is so incredibly meaningful because of all the aspects of their pasts. They trust themselves of course to always only tell the truth to each other, and the love that they share is simply reverent.

Now, let me elaborate on why all the things I expanded on above mean so much. Let’s start with the Lamb. I as I said in my previous post, the Lamb’s past for this AU is derived from my fanfic. We don’t know much at all about pre-sacrifice Lamb in-game, so I took the liberties to expand on their world myself. I’ll allow some passages from my fanfic to speak for itself:

It was through these traumatic experiences that the Lamb became hungry at the thought of companionship. No, the Lamb doesn’t just want some of Narinder’s Big Fluffy Gyatt™. As I’ve depicted in my other artworks, in this AU the Lamb considers Narinder as their savior, their one and only salvation, and perhaps the only person that has ever cared about them. And this is where things start to get murky—it’s because of this that the Lamb is so incredibly attached to Narinder and is absolutely insane about him.

The Lamb isn’t just attached, actually. They’re obsessed with Narinder. So obsessed that they develop a panic if they don’t hear his voice after more than half an hour. So obsessed that they begin to see any and all followers that interact with him as an enemy. This is also why I hesitate to consider this as toxic, because, see, Narinder likes it.

Moving on to Narinder’s part of the AU, it’s important to understand that, although he pretty much brought it to himself because of his high and mighty behavior, he was also quite isolated in his earlier years.

For Narinder’s side, he firmly believed himself to always be in the right. Think of it as a mad scientist whose ideas are way ahead of his generation. He had innovative thoughts and concepts in mind in the duration of his reign. He’d been supplemented by the knowledge that Shamura had provided him with, and that caused him to possess the mind of a radical inventor. Unfortunately, his ideas were less than desirable for the rest of his siblings and his own followers, so little by little the worship he received dwindled. Narinder was frustrated by this—why couldn’t anyone see the genius that he had to offer? Initially he had good intentions in mind, but he grew a tyrannical mind and eventually decided that the only way for the world to see his wonders is to force it beneath his feet.

Eons of imprisonment provided no aid for his mind. What once was a head full of wonders that could potentially change the world for the better became a twisted and cruel version of itself. Violence and revenge plagued his mind, and it became his one and only obsession. So, when the Lamb came to him, he relished in the worship they had to offer.

Their devotion for one another is purely mutual, but at the same time fully in their own self-interests. The Lamb is devoted to Narinder because Narinder is all that they care about in their mind, and they desperately require Narinder for them to continue living on. As for Narinder, he had never acquired such a passionate follower before, and he grew an addiction for the love that they have to offer. I don’t know if it’s a good thing or not.

They are incredibly violent for one another because that’s all they know. They don’t understand what it’s like to have a normal relationship. They cling to one another, kill for one another, and eat one another because they need each other so badly. The cannibalism is an expression of their eager desire to simply blend into one another because that’s just how much they want the other.

They know it’s wrong. They hate that it’s wrong. They hate each other for making each other feel so wrong and so crazy. But they so, so want it to be right.

(Okay sorry for the bad essay lmao adios)

[tired-reader-writer]

Tentatively decided to name the new OC (Shapur's former tutor who now teaches his two kids) Sadiq, meaning “true, sincere, loyal”— derived from the root صدق (ṣadaqa) meaning “to tell the truth”! I have yet to figure out his whole deal but the vague strokes are that he had probably been taught to be ruthless even against family, tangled up in a succession crisis against his brother, only to eventually go “wait, none of this is even remotely worth it” and fucked off— maybe he even tried his hand at serving at court but got disillusioned and left— probably because Gotatzes deteriorated and he witnessed again brother fighting brother and got so Tired of it all. Kinda gave up on the world, only dedicating himself to his... nephew? of a sort? He probably had blood ties to Shapur's father or something to have been able to become his tutor. I get the sense that he's mellowed out quite a bit since his younger years. Actually, why do I keep visualizing this man as Froi Tiedoll from D Gray Man????

?????????????????

I don't know if the mental image will end up sticking or not. We shall see.

(Man I need to reread D Gray Man don't I)

Some other vague stuff about him:

Has lingering regrets over broken familial bonds. Maybe he wishes he'd known better, known to have not feuded against his own brother when he was younger.

Pretty chil???? (Tis the Froi influence I swear)

(but if he's so chill how'd he produce not one but TWO very rigid students?! my dude??)

“The fact that you two (Isfan and Areyan) have never once considered it (competing against each other for the heir seat, or even feuding with Shapur for the family head and lord position) then it means I have taught you two well.”

Eternal Bachelor™

Could he possibly have been peers with Lushan and Munzhir (Zaravant's dad)? Discuss.

His tutelage likely expanded its bounds beyond just Isfan and Areyan after the clan settles in Shapur's lands.

(now that I think of it I still haven't decided why they'd want to settle there, FUCK)

(maybe Sadiq could've helped convince them but with what arguments?)

Easygoing demeanor hides his sharp mind and eyes

Approved of Shapur trying to rescue Golnar and Isfan.

Wanted to see where Shapur would go with Ayunnen, Kashi, and Kazai, though knew that they probably wouldn't have a good time so long as Shapur's father and Jahanara still held power over the castle so he could have advised to wait until after Shapur became lord.

But then they DIED...

Could he have faint knowledge about things to do with magic? He could have been in Gotatzes' court after all— and that means magic and soothsaying and the like were more prominent during his times (and then Andragoras killed all court sorcerers upon attaining the throne, and here we arrive at Pars' current attitude towards magic. at least in the capital and among warriors?)

Like This™ about his students at all times:

Bonus round: two other name candidates that didn't quite end up making the cut!

Mehdi

Means "guided one" in Arabic, a derivative of هدى (hadā) meaning "to lead the right way, to guide".

Firouz/Firuz/Pirouz/Piruz

From Persian پیروز (pīrūz) or فیروز (fīrūz) meaning "victorious". This name was borne by Firuz Shah Tughlaq, a 14th-century sultan of Delhi who did much to build the city's infrastructure.

[aaabatteryy]

What if Bill defeated the Axolotl and Time Baby and absorbed their powers SOON AFTER destroying Euclydia?,becoming incredibly all powerful. He is now,the Almighty All Seeing eye All Powerful Triangle,or Almighty Cipher for short. Where does Ford come in when he's literally God already?,well... Bill needs a disciple,a successor,a vessel for his power,someone to channel his endless ability for him on Earth in order to expand his following and domain via a magic scepter that has an ounce of his power inside.

Why he wants a successor/vessel: With him having everything he wanted,power fame and recognition,things got REALLY boring and so he wants to shake things up a little by getting involved in Earth's affairs more,thus he decides to seek out a "genius mind every century" and he's actually being legit this time cuz he GENUINELY wants a genius mind to help him with no strings attached (sort of). And even with his literal op abilities,he's still horridly evil he still has his Issues™ and he's still very very chaotic. Almighty Cipher is literally just Bill but if you gave him the powers of a fucking god (or two. time baby is also a god),he was already powerful before,now i made him worse. In present day,Bill travels the multiverse with Ford and his family who are all now with him as interdimensional criminals but they also lead a double life back on earth as normal kids and a normal con man as unlike Ford they're not really keen on CONSTANTLY going on crazy interdimensional adventures for the rest of their lives,ALSO,Ford is a horrid egomaniacal tyrant that lives in a pocket dimension called Sixerville which used to be a peaceful farmworld dimension the Crop Colony that revolved around humble humans and the occasional anthro animal person tending to their crops until Ford came around and decided to enslave everyone because he couldn't stand watching a "bunch of useless vermin" live their lives without doing anything noteworthy like devoting themselves to research or advancing their technology,so he "fixed" them by forcing the inhabitants to serve him lest their entire dimension gets eaten by Bill who's like his fuckin attack dog/husband. Ford lives with Bill in Sixerville and also occasionally goes over to Gravity Falls to visit his family,Ford is like this because Bill kept influencing him and enabling his egotistical behavior that often makes him value his research more than his dignity (and his family),what happens when a god like being and a human that has a very strong tendency of letting his ego get to him come together?,this guy happens,ALSO ALSO,Stan and the twins are lowkey terrified of him even when his horrid behavior doesn't extend to them as well but can you imagine watching your brother/other grunkle drive whole societies to extinction via mass genocide without a care in the world for "Science"?. Also Weirdmaggedon still happens,but like,every year. It's like a holiday for Almighty Cipher and Tyrant Ford. They pick a dimension,plan out everything,and BAM, apocalypse on yet another harmless society. Ya see this is what happened instead of Ford being in the portal for 30 years. Almighty Cipher found Ford,made him his main disciple,the two build the portal with Fidds,Fidds quits because of seeing Bill eat his exoskeleton (although he doesn't lose his mind),Ford stays with his dear muse/god and ends up starting Weirdmaggedon on Gravity falls which horridly messes up the town and basically makes it a Chernobyl-esque chaos no man's land zone with how fucked up and weird everything is now,Stan visits due to the postcard (sent way later when Ford and Bill have taken over the town 10 years after) but only for Ford to have his brother join him in the chaos which he reluctantly accepts,later the two move onto conquering the multiverse which they succeed in doing but after having their fill of being multiversal overlords they decide to make a living traveling and studying dimensions,with Stan and later the twins joining them. The twins STILL go to Gravity Falls for the summer but uh,it doesn't go as planned as the place seems to be a literal war zone with weirdness bubbles constantly floating around eye bats turning everything and everyone they see into stone and the Henchmaniacs just vibin' while either torturing or killing any human they see for shits n' giggles,Ford saw that this would be a problem for the only family he has besides Bill so he decided to offer them protection in the Fearamid for the summer.

The thing i said i was gonna throw up ^^^^^

chewing on your brain /pos

fantastic au idea, and i suppose an idea like this needs sustenance to continue...... (<- wants to yap JAKAKSJSALJSJSJS)

bill being given even more power more directly after "liberating" Euclydia is such an interesting concept bc you have to think- he's gonna be so much more unstable than canon where he had millions- trillions, even, if the book of bill is to be believed- of years to cultivate and hone his power to get the tremendous amount of control he as by the time he meets ford and later by weirdmagedon. so, in theory, his power would be almost running rampant, which could explain the scepter idea you had (could be used instead of his cane? which is just adorable, really) and the need for a vessel and project to channel both that energy and bill's boredom into.

ford being coaxed into feeding his ego is so important to me, with his (rather shitty) self esteem and need to be recognized and needed, and then being able to get that recognition himself, even if it is through.... questionable means (COUGH mass genocide and inter-galactic terrorism COUGH). i really do think he could have the capacity for it, especially if not only was fidds not going mad from memory gun usage and seeing bill without his exoskeleton on while eating, but stan was called later and joined him, and bill didn't try to hide his plans for weirdmagedon from ford

TWINS! BEING! IN! THE! FEARAMID! OVER! THE! SUMMER!!

^^ very, very important, especially since that means they're fairly safe under bill and ford's protection there and we know that bill could manipulate the fearamid into whatever the kid's need or desire, keeping them, most likely, entertained for the duration of the summer. plus, i just know dipper would love to study the henchmaniacs, fearamid itself, the event of weirdmagedon, and the rift/portal while not fighting for his life

[dollsahoy]

The craft thrift store is expanding, and to help clear out the store in preparation for the construction work, they had a "take whatever you want for whatever donation you want to give" sale, which also included about 30 bins of outright "just take it" free stuff

Now, as much as I love thrifting and crafts, I know that the normal "everything you can fit into a basket for $20" and "everything in the store for $1 or less" and "teachers fill a basket for free" type sales the store has are, to put it politely, feeding frenzies, so I stay far, far away from those

My friend, however, was in the area that day and decided to stop by. They reported spending two hours digging through the free stuff (unknown how much effort was spent fending off other customers) and leaving with about 40lbs of Stuff (they did also go inside and get "whatever donation you think it's worth" stuff, for which they paid the prices on the tags)

ANYWAY

I saw the friend the other day and they gave me some stuff they'd picked out for me, which was mostly jewelry and sewing stuff. Included in the jewelry stuff was...this

Now. I do very much remember the late 80s/early 90s assortment of badly painted and dubiously sculpted resin craft heads, meant to be adorned with beads and charms and lace or Friendly Plastic™ and made into things like this

but I don't at all remember legs

so now I have legs and actually don't know how to use them

[mcchipisfried]

I'm watching Hannibal for the first time and I'm not gonna lie I had my doubts. (Currently on Seaon 2 Episode 11)

(ALSO SPOLIERS BELOW though I think I'm the last person on tumblr who HASN'T seen Hannibal)

My forefathers forgive me, I had doubts. So so many doubts. I wanted to go into this show decimating everyone's reasoning that Hannibal Lecter and Will Graham would work as a couple (romantic or otherwise). I wanted to be fed a story about murder, deception, manipulation, betrayal, and maybe even a little but of cannibalism. And don't get me wrong I have gotten this, but I've also been fed a romantic comedy.

I went into this show not wanting to find reasons to want these two together, I wanted to think "Oh the people of tumblr probably pieced a bunch of subtext together and I probably will as well but it'll hardly be anything that I could write about to my friends who haven't seen the show"

I was so fucking wrong.

Really it should have been the moment where Alana and Hannibal were having a ✨️moment✨️ while Will and Margot were also having a ✨️moment✨️ so the way the whole scene played was very. Well. Not what you would expect from a guy that should have every reason to shoot Hannibal on sight. The fucking framing and cinematography got me to send a 3 minute long vm at 2 am to my friend who really doesn't care about Hannibal.

Or maybe it should have been every single time tweddle dee and tweddle dum are even remotely alone together and decide to start eye fucking each other while also making death threats.

But no what got me was when Alana described what was done to Freddie Lounds' body the second time around as a demonstration of a courtship (best way I can phrase it without just explaining the plot that led us here)

Really, its such a small moment.

But the way the two idiots are standing there looking at each other and Alana shouldn't have been as funny as it was nor should it have instantly reminded me of an early 2000's movie where the couple is secretly dating because they just can't help it and some third party, maybe even one the main couples friends discovers them while trying to NOT make it a Big Deal��� because they are in public except y'know, this is happening over the body that Person A burned to a crisp and sent rolling in a wheelchair while Person B got said body after the funeral and made it into an effigy.

Anyways TLDR: I thought the Hannibal x Will stuff was all very insignificant subtext but actually it was just text and it was screaming. I would also like to thank my film, cinematography, scriptwriting, lighting, and storytelling college classes because as it turns out you did do something for me. You made me realize that whatever is happening between Hannibal and Will is not platonic and I will be consulting AO3 to further expand my understanding of these characters as soon as I finish watching the show.

Also yes I know at some point someone says Hannibal is in love with Will. But now I'm starting to believe that.

[hiding-in-the-vault]

I would love to know more about the cave au. Why are the cave more dangerous now? Who's death Dream managed to get safety for bringing them back?

And because I'm a huge fantasy dwarves and fallen london fan : how did the architecture change? Is it safe to build underground or is everyone nomadic now? How is the food situation?

Long post oh boy!

The cave au is kinda like taking Dream's original mention of a "world altering event" and making it very literal. In minecraft terms, I'd describe it like the cave and cliff update installed overnight except on amplified mode. All of this is because there is so much imbalance™, that's the overworld is behaving erratically.

Most of the shifting already occurred underground by the time they noticed something was wrong. But things shifted a looott to the point where what they had explored had been altered or displaced, and what now expands below dwarfs their existing tunnels in comparison. So to answer the first question, it's essentially uncharted, for one. For two, the mobs are acting as unpredictable as the earth is, swarming the tunnels en masse. But more importantly, the longer theyre down there, the longer this goes on, the more the mobs get altered themselves. (which originally was so i can say hey more things glow now :) pretty!) But now, we're talking like massive spiders in every classic work of fantasy. I'm mulling over introducing new things here too, for flavor. (like those mods with the huge centipedes ughuhg) Maybe a warden or two gets displaced and starts wandering the tunnels, who knows! On that note, sculk is probably on the rise as well and they need to be careful about keeping it from getting too close.

As for who dies-- ngl, I haven't decided 100%. For what it's worth, this is only the First death, not the only one. I've been thinking one of the teens, as they seem most likely to wander too out from camp and get Got by something. First I thought Tubbo, but I don't really want Tommy to have to ask Dream to bring him back. (not like he'd do it alone- the entire group wants to avoid casualties) Then I thought Tommy, but discduo can't hog limbo forever, right, we've been there and seen that! My desire to not repeat things that already happened in canon vs whatever actually feels most likely, FIGHT!!

I haven't put too much thought into generated structures yet, like the dungeons or ancient cities, but I would like there to be some change there as well. It'd be coooool. (shaking your hand, i loove dwarven architecture) The walls of the caverns themselves often have a stretched feel about them. A looot of stalactite and stalagmites, on massive scales. I'd say it is safe enough to build, once they find a place that feels fitting- a cavern big enough for them but not too big that they'll have to share it. Water, nutrient rich dirt, existing vegetation preferred, etc etc. But even then, the caves do still shift on occasion. Basically earthquakes that will require them to do some repairs and plan structures around, but it's possible! They think, anyway :D

And finally food. They go in prepared the best they can. A lot of them has massive farms and lots of animals, ofc. They can't drag too many animals into the caves with them, but they prepared as much food as they could before going on, with intentions to start new farms once they settle down. Lots of potatoes, yay for Dream! And Some the underground lakes have a surprising about of fish in them. In all the uproar above ground, there was a lot of flooding, but many of those bodies of water pooled underground as well, taking the fish with them. This becomes a bit more reliable as time passes as well, as the fish adapt.

I'm kinda rolling with mobs very short life cycles and using that to explain why they change so much faster. Also Magic™

[nalyra-dreaming]

Hey! Enjoyed your deep dive into Antoinette. You mentioned two interesting topics I’m curious to know about, the selected make up and your doubts that the hotel scene actually happened the way it did. Would you mind expanding on those two topics? Thank you!

Hey!

Glad you liked!

Soooo while Antoinette is mortal she looks alluring (or is told to be alluring), and unchanged. This is an expression of the vampires finding all mortals beautiful, which is book canon. She is "The Mistress™", so she is this beautiful thing that draws Lestat away (albeit with a flat ass, as Claudia denotes^^).

However, as soon as she's actually turned (and loses her "mortal" appeal)... that changes:

Very strong wrinkles at the eyes suddenly. If you zoom in in the show you can see the applied texture.

I always found this detail very interesting, because this is explicitly applied makeup. It means that either Louis' view of her completely changed... or Louis did not quite witness the years that went by as changes in her body.

I tend to lean towards a mix of these possibilities, not only because it is book canon, but also because this happened with Grace as well:

No wrinkles, she looks a bit older maybe, but she looks beautiful. This is about 30 years later, but time did not really touch her. Because she looked beautiful to Louis.

Now, in Antoinette's case I also think that... maybe the hotel scene did not happen, actually.

There's a lot that ties into this speculation, so please bear with me:

The finger

Antoinette's hand is bloody after the fight, and the glove is off. Someone, Claudia, likely, has taken her finger - maybe again.

Episode 6, hotel:

Episode 7, pre incinerator:

Like... they are not the same. That's not the same wound. (For a show with these kind of details I do not think this is an accident.) I theorized for my fanfic and in the ask here that maybe Lestat had replaced it (he's older, and he knows that limbs etc can be replaced), and that Claudia took it off again because she was (rightfully) furious at the deception, but...

Claudia likes souvenirs. She takes a lot of souvenirs. Body parts. Fingers. Jewelry. That is not the same wound. I think by now, and I align with @virginiaisforvampires here, who wrote about this just earlier, that Lestat maybe never cut off Antoinette's finger, but decided to (maybe) deceive Louis and Claudia instead. When Claudia noticed during "murder night", that obviously must have made her angry, and she took what she thought was hers (and again, she likes taking souvenirs in any case).

2. Ponchatoula

Supposedly Antoinette is "stashed away in a hotel in Ponchatoula".

Now, Ponchatoula...

1h minimum with a car. More so then. Claudia and Louis cannot fly.

Which obviously does not make this impossible, don't get me wrong here. But another thing about cars comes into play then, if Claudia and Louis really went and drove to Ponchatoula, to stand outside of Lestat's hotel room, without him knowing, and them seeing somehow inside, without Lestat and Antoinette noticing. And they are both shown not to have been able to look inside from their viewpoint, which means they could not have been able to see the finger! (Or the neck wounds for that matter.) All they would have been able to witness are the sounds.

Here is the "car post". In very short, there is no way that a powerful vampire like Lestat would not have known that Claudia and Louis would draw near. No way.

Which means... either he gave a performance there (knowing they were there), or... that scene never happened.

I think Claudia told Louis, and Louis... extrapolated in his tale to Daniel. OR he believes it happened, or was made to believe it happened. I shared an interview with Jacob just yesterday where he said that Louis... "Louis believes that a lot of this is the truth. There are other things that he knows deep down are not true. He has to tell himself a version of it in order to cope."

Now, we know they said "all of it" would be revisited.

I'm not sure they will revisit this scene explicitly, but even if they do not... *shrugs*

3. The walk

Now, this is of course circumstantial.

But Louis and Claudia walking, in NOLA, and Claudia apologizing to Louis for showing him? If this is supposed to be right after, why didn't they talk in Ponchatoula? Why didn't they talk on the drive back? They went back to Rue Royale, parked the car, and then went out for a walk and then talked about it, approx. 90 minutes later?

It just doesn't make sense to me the way it is presented.

However, it does make sense if you remember that Louis wants to protect Claudia, wants to protect her image. He wants to keep her in mind as his daughter, and not as the vicious killer, the serial killing vampire who took souvenirs and liked to collect last words. Liked to kill indiscriminately, children, dogs, whoever. Adding to that the way this show is set up, and the way Louis seems to have been influenced...

I think that Claudia told him, and Louis knew Antoinette was somewhere in a hotel (given the hate-sex scene was at her house that in and by itself is interesting, too!). I think that walk happened in a similar fashion as shown, but not the same.

But I don't think Louis ever saw that finger (stump). He expected it to be there though, because Lestat had brought them a burnt finger.

And so all of this is shown to us as he tells it. Probably as he remembers it, right now.

"Let the tale seduce you", right?

We'll see how it will fit together after season 2^^.

[uncleasad]

So @unsiredtribrid had this great post last night that started with Josie x Finch but went much deeper to the real point, and I had a few thoughts.

There are so many great threads there I want to tease apart a little and expand upon.

I

First, the show’s handling of Josie’s love interests or possible love interests; the show had a terrible track record of taking Josie’s love interests and casting them aside.

In S1, her ex was Penelope, we didn’t learn much of anything about when they were together, and she left before the end of the season. Josie was crushing on Raf but Lizzie got to him first and “ruined” him for both of them, and even he ends up leaving at the start of S3 (the end of S2 as it was conceived). And of course the crush on Hope that we learned about and kind of simmered right up to the end, when Josie physically felt Hope being erased from her life.

In S2, Josie started the season with Landon, and he dropped her like a hot potato as soon as he remembered Hope (and then ran off on both of them, because Landon the Leaver™). There was the brief thing with Jade post-prison world/Dark Josie, and then Jade, too, left at the start of S3 (the end of S2 as it was conceived). And the crush on Hope (the Pig telling Red Riding Hope to kiss sleeping Princess Josie). Noticing a pattern?

Then in S3 we got Finch, who was extremely jealous and possessive and didn’t want Josie to help her friend [Hope] who had saved Josie (and her family and friends) over and over in the course of the past two years…and they fought over that often. Then, in a twist, Josie left her to go help Hope.

So the show had a bad habit of bringing in a random character (almost always recurring) that we never learned much about and then casting them off. Contrast that to Lizzie’s ultimate endgame, MG, who was a regular who lasted the entire series, and, at least for the first parts of the series, we saw some manner of development and character growth for both of them in conjunction with that potential relationship (MG liked Lizzie in S1, Lizzie didn’t reciprocate until S2 when he was with Alyssa…); it wasn’t super, but it was something.

II

So in the context of the first two seasons, fans were rightly upset about the unfair handling of Josie’s love interests? What was it about her that always made people want to leave? 😢

And, also in the context of the first two seasons, the writers had set up this long arc pulling Josie and Hope together. The mutual attractions, the close and intimate moments, the saving, Hope always choosing Josie/the twins over Landon, Pig!Josie asking Hope to kiss her (sleeping Princess Josie), and so forth. When S2 had its truncated ending with Josie’s fairytaleland mindscape…if you couldn’t see the Hosie of it all, well…what the hell are you doing reading this post anyway? 😂

And then, inexplicably, after setting up two main characters of Hope and Josie to have a romance, the writers decided to address their flawed handling of Josie’s past love interests by…bringing in yet another side character that we never learned much about (and checked that “person of color” brownie-points box while they were at it) and almost immediately putting them together. And the showrunners were somehow shocked by fans’ dislike of the resulting pairing.

You’re cooking a filet mignon for two seasons, and instead of giving us that prime, tasty, meal, you cut off the fat and toss it at us and want us to be happy about it? Are you fucking kidding me?!

It’s cool for Hope to have a long-running romance with another main character…if it’s a man. It’s cool for Lizzie to have romances with 3 main characters [Raf, Ethan, MG] as long as they’re men (only Sebastian was here and gone). But heaven forbid Josie get another main character for a fully-developed romance! Or Hope and Josie to get the romance the writers set up and teased across two seasons! This is where people rightly get upset about queerbait and scraps and just checking boxes…

I always go back to Buffy when I’m thinking about things, and (it’s been a while) there was a build-up with Tara. We learned about her. She supported Willow. She helped her grow. (Once again, they had the “luxury” of 22-episode seasons to develop things…) And even Tara’s death, as horrific as it was, kicked off an important arc for Willow and resonated long after. Finch was nothing like that for Josie. If anything, Hope was the Tara-esque person to Josie’s Willow.

So there’s that.

III

On the other side of things, as soon as Finch showed up on screen, I immediately said this is exactly the kind of person Josie would date in this situation (given the bizarre situation we had been forced into, with Josie and Hope going from almost kissing to not interacting for half a season). Because Josie Saltzman Has. A. Type.

An outsider, brooding, somewhat-dangerous, loner?

Hope Marshall, anyone? Our archetype.

Penelope’s a bit of a tougher fit, because we know so little about her, but she’s got the dangerous part, and she’s (when we meet her) on the outside of Josie’s social circle, at least.

Raf checks pretty much all of those boxes at the moment Josie meets him, especially as he’s separated from Landon at that point.

Landon’s another weird fit, but he’s been mostly an outsider, and the two are both “alone” when they get together. And maybe killing yourself repeatedly for glimpses of someone ticks brooding and somewhat-dangerous?

Hope Mikaelson…I mean…!

Jade’s a bad girl (maybe with a good heart) and an outsider at the point they get together…and she has clear echoes of someone else.

And then Finch, check, check, check, check. Josie’s type.

As much as I disliked Finch’s jealousy and controlling nature, her badmouthing Hope (whom she didn’t know, nor did she know Josie’s history with her), her unwillingness to fight for Josie, and the ultimate lack of chemistry when they were together, and in general her arrival/presence in the series as part of this bizarre hard-right turn in Josie’s behavior…

As much as I disliked all of that, I could have lived with the run of Josie x Finch that we endured if Legacies had gone on for another season—or Kaylee hadn’t felt the need to protect herself and leave—and we had seen Josie find her way back to Hope. People have bad, inexplicable romantic partners in the real world. Hope had a couple. Lizzie (Sebastian) and MG (Alyssa) had one. But you move on.

And when the writers have set up this epic love, one where they each go to the ends of the earth to support and save each other…and instead we’re left with a box-check-only relationship that feels like it has no chemistry…no, I won’t let people keep trying to gaslight me into believing table-scraps of fat are a five-star dinner when the writers repeatedly not only put filet mignon on the menu but also brought out samples and encouraged me to order it.

[7grandmel]

Rips of the week: 09/09/2024

Float Islands (Kirby 64 Arrangement) and Aqua Star (Kirby Super Star Arrangement)

Season 3 Featured on: SiIvaGunner's Highest Quality Rips Volume A

Ripped by alan

Season 8 Featured on: The Joke-Explainer 7000™'s Highest Quality Rips: Sunrise

Ripped by alan

Requested by Fezaki! (Request Form)

There are few things I love more on the SiIvaGunner channel than the phenomena I like to call "call & response" rips. These are, put simply, rips connected to one another through a sort of dialogue - an obvious example of this is with He4rt4che and 4SGOR3, two intertwined projects by the same ripper released right alongside one another. Yet these projects have also be used to, in effect, pay tribute to the works of other rippers on the channel: Shiny Smily TALE, for instance, saw Ellie53 pay respects to a rip made four whole years prior by Sarvéproductions. There's also one of my all-time personal favorites for silly sentimental reasons, Violet Snow Memories, which remakes and expands upon a relatively obscure rip made *SEVEN* years prior by a ripper who's no longer actively part of the team. Without having any knowledge of the behind-the-scenes behind their production, these rips end up feeling like true expressions of love between rippers, being creatively fulfilling projects in their own right whilst directing attention toward rips and rippers that they cherish.

Yet with the two rips featured today, Float Islands (Kirby 64 Arrangement) and Aqua Star (Kirby Super Star Arrangement), we run into a somewhat unique scenario, that I haven't personally seen all too often on the channel: a sort of combination of two of the example scenarios described. These two rips were both made by the same ripper, Alan, who's both a friend of the blog and has been contributing on and off for the channel since late into Season 1, still being active today eight years later in Season 8. And therein is what makes this pair of rips so interesting: Float Islands (Kirby 64 Arrangement) released all the way back in Season 3, while Aqua Star (Kirby Super Star Arrangement) came out just shy of three months ago back in June of Season 8 - yet are both playing off of the same core idea. Even six years after its release, the core idea of Float Islands (Kirby 64 Arrangement) seems to have stuck with the guy, and all this time later he finally decided to expand on the concept further, out of no other reason than his own personal investment in the concept. Six years of waiting, six years of experience gained - let's see where this all takes us.

The soundscape of Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards is one I've made no secret of my affection for, most notably with Aquadial just outright being an all-time favorite rip of mine, but even with more out-there bizarre projects like Kirby Joins the Circus!, they all manage to have an indescribable appeal that comes just from how beautiful Kirby 64 as a whole sounds. The channel and internet as a whole is filled with tributes paid to the game's soundtrack, yet Float Islands (Kirby 64 Arrangement) takes a direction similar to the previously covered Mt. Dedede (extended) - choosing to inject Kirby music, into other Kirby music. The Kirby franchise is itself already filled with homages paid to its legacy music, endlessly rearranging its past work, and so Float Islands (Kirby 64 Arrangement) fits in with the rest of the series' soundtracks like a glove. Float Islands in particular is a pretty crucial piece of music for the franchise, originating from the very first game in the series, being remixed in countless games, and most notably laying the groundwork for the franchise's beloved Rest Area theme, later arranged and reused for the Super Smash Bros. series and itself featured in beloved rips like Me and the rest area of the melee here, singing, "Where'd you go​?​". It's Jun Ishikawa's knack for catchy, soothing and high-tempo composition distilled into just one track - the kind of song that just SOUNDS like Kirby ought to sound, no matter what form it takes.

It should come as no surprise that Alan knocks the arrangement out of the park with Float Islands (Kirby 64 Arrangement) - Aqua Star, the track being used as the basis, already takes cues from Float Islands in certain snippets of its arrangement, and Alan is able to leverage that connection into a sound experience that sounds damn near effortlessly like an authentic Ishikawa arrangement. The lead instruments chosen follow along with Aqua Star very nicely, the brass sounds as authentically "Kirby 64" as always, the percussion is as lovely as Float Islands' arrangements always are - it's an incredibly solid rip, that even back in 2018 turned some heads with commenters denoting how surprising it was to see just outright wholesale remixes put onto SiIvaGunner. Of course, this was not something new - we've had rips like Turn On Your SEGA Genesis and Just Enjoy Yourself as far back as Season 1 - yet to see a ripper like Alan play along with Kirby series' tradition of celebrating past music so authentically was no doubt part of what made this rip stick out so much - many didn't even recognize that Float Islands wasn't originally in Kirby 64 and just thought the rip was an unedited reupload of music from the game!

Of course, this was nevertheless a rip from Season 3, six years ago - the channel was still somewhat undergoing growing pains, shedding the anything-goes wild west of Season 1 and gradually turning into something with a higher bar of quality. Despite my love for it, there are still some slight oddities present in Float Islands (Kirby 64 Arrangement), indications of its status as, ultimately, a hobby project for a shitpost channel. And that's why I find Aqua Star (Kirby Super Star Arrangement) to be such a cool release - it saw Alan return to this old rip idea, now within the context of SiIvaGunner in 2024, part of this team that's learned so much about ripping for so many different games, that continues to find new ways to impress with every passing month with everything from Last Freight-train Night to Thwâmpröck Desert. In my eyes, Aqua Star (Kirby Super Star Arrangement) is right at home here - instead of rearranging one of Kirby's oldest legacy songs into the soundscape almost impossible to make sound bad, the rip feels like a far more daunting task in doing the opposite, taking a song built upon that distinct soundscape and attempting to recreate it within the confines of a far older game, in Kirby Super Star for the Super Nintendo.

Yet Alan pulls this endeavor off with flying colors! The thing I immediately noticed, compared to Kirby Super Star's take on Float Islands, is the percussion: in Aqua Star (Kirby Super Star Arrangement), it sounds ever so slightly...dreamier, less heavy - perhaps that's my ears playing tricks on me, but I get the sense whilst listening that Alan put in a hell of a lot of effort to recapture the magically sparkly feel that Kirby 64's music so often holds. You hear this in the lead melody instruments used as well - the primary lead is the same beautiful one used as the lead in Super Star's Float Islands, yet it's occasionally swapped out for a less-used instrument from that same track, there only used for accenting the end of certain segments, but is used here for a wonderful back-and-fourth sound throughout the rip's runtime. On the whole, it's just a wonderfully tasteful, well-rounded arrangement without twists or surprises - a perfect response to the call placed back in 2018.

As I led this post off with, it's that back-and-fourth dynamic between rips that I found so utterly endearing about rips like these two. Yet the additional wrinkle that both works here were made by the SAME ripper gives it a distinctly different flavor, it goes from viewing two rippers pay each other loving respect to seeing one ripper grow in proficiency and ability over many years of honing their craft. As a result, while I find Float Islands (Kirby 64 Arrangement) to be an absolutely wonderful piece in its own right, it was Alan's work on Aqua Star (Kirby Super Star Arrangement) that enamored me - to see that progression of a ripper in such a direct, yet at once indirect, way, was an incredibly fascinating listening experience. Alan shows no sign in slowing down in his contributions to the channel, and with rips of this caliber, I can't wait to see what the future holds for the guy.

[ramenhue88]

Something about cheese 🧀

I love the designs of witches in Madoka Magica. Gekidan Inu Curry, the designer for the witches, is a GOAT. Witches all have that paper vibe going on with them. So, let's list all the witches that appeared in the anime so that you can see what I mean by, "Paper Vibe™" (Also note I'm going by the wiki) + Gertrud

+ H.N Elly (Kirsten)

(Side note for Elly is that we actually see her 2 different forms [Should I call it forms? Idk]. The picture above is when Sayaka killed her and the other one is when she's inside the television. Also, the picture above only shows up for about a second.)

+ Gisela

+ Elsa Maria (Poor her, got murdered by Sayaka)

+ Oktavia von Seckendorff (Seyiku.....)

+ Izabel

+ And of course, Walpurgis!

But wait a minute.... I feel like I'm forgetting someone.... OH RIGHT! + Charlotte!!

[Steppy steppy Homu] See those images? Now those are the #PaperVibes™ I'm looking for! Well except for Walpurgis who has 3D cog wheels instead of a paper vibe™. All witches look like this paper vibe™ but for the one I almost forgot; Charlotte, why is she the only exception to this rule? She's entirely animated like everyone else in the series. No other witch is drawn like this. She's the only exception when it comes to this rule. Well, the only NORMAL witch that is exempt from this rule. Ultimate Madoka's "witch" also doesn't follow the paper vibe™.

It's more drawn than paper bashed. And that's ok since Madoka is the most powerful magical girl thus making this one, the most powerful witch. So of course, it's gonna break the rules, same with Walpurgis. It's also drawn with its difference having 3D rendered cog wheels.

So why does a normal witch get the animated treatment? By Goddess Madoka, EVEN HOMURA has the paper bashed witch.

(Thank God Homura got the paper bashed witch treatment, I am gonna throw hands if she didn't. Look how beautiful that is...)

So why in Goddess Madoka's name does Bebe get the animated treatment, when we consider her, a normal witch? We can chalk this up to the animation team just wanting Bebe to stand out from the rest (Because she's the witch for the #IconicSceneAlert) and nothing more. Buuuuut... That's boring. So let me try to reason out why Bebe looks different from every other witch.

[Let me yoink this witch]

Ok, so about Bebe.... Well, what about her? We have nothing to go on if we're only talking about the main series. We don't know anything about her apart from her personality and design. Her wish? Nothing. Her past? Nothing. So how do we talk about someone who doesn't have anything? Well, we go to another universe silly! Magia!~ Record!~ (Cue the SONG)

Not that universe but another another one!

There we go. MAGIA~! RECORD~! (NOW cue the SONG) The game one.

In Magia Record they expanded much more on Nagisa, giving her an event titled: Nagisa's Wish! (If you want to watch it)

(Me and Nagisa have the same reaction after finding out the event is literally named Nagisa's Wish)

So, let's go back to her witch appearance for a moment. In Magia Record you fight her and EVEN in this game, they decide to make Charlotte look "normal".

Most, if not all, witches still look papery even in the game. I say most and not all because of the NA shutdown and I have no idea of anything past Arc 1 Magia Record (I'm still finding free time to catch up to Arc 2). Doppels and Rumours ALSO follow the papery rule.

There is one exception to Bebe's appearance and that is Nagisa's doppel.

[Now that's the papery vibe™ I'm looking for!]

So why does Bebe have a different art style than ALL of the other witches? Let's go to her MGS in Magia Record (Metal Gear Solid!? No, Magical Girl Story)

So, in her MGS we see that she's being followed by a Pink Kyubey which we can safely assume is Goddess Madoka. Why can we assume that? First, her transformation (when you get her in the gacha). It starts with the symbol of the law of cycles.

Second, it's literally Goddess Madoka pulling for her in her transformation.

[Go get that 5-star girl]

She's also putting make-up on Nagisa and making her look human.

Well not literally making her look human. You can read this as Goddess Madoka, preparing her to blend in because you know. She's half magical girl half witch already at this point. So of course, you gotta blend her in. So, we've made it clear that the Pink Kyubey is Goddess Madoka, watching Nagisa from afar. How important is Nagisa that THE Goddess Madoka, THE concept would get you to do work for her instead of another magical girl. Well firstly, she can't choose any of the 5, because Goddess Madoka is essentially killing the Magia Record version of them by putting another version in their body. Nagisa is the closest choice for Goddess Madoka because.... Because.....

[LMAOOOOO I HAVE NO IDEA WHY. SAME MAMI, SAME. Look I get that Bebe is the closest to them because she killed Mami?? I mean you could say that to Gertrud, Esla Maria, Gisella. Every other witch could have fit the Bebe position. But I'm not complaining that they used Nagisa btw.]

But this does bring up the fact that Nagisa is special in one way or another.

Ehemm... Back to the topic at hand.

So why does Bebe have a different art style than all the other witches. One theory I have is that Charlotte, the witch, has more control over their witch body compared to other magical girls. Like she's more accepting of what happened to her compared to other magical girls. She succumbed to despair, just like any other magical girl. But unlike the others, she chose to bathe in despair. Enjoy it.

[From Magia Record - Nagisa's Wish]

Other magical girls wallowed and grieved in despair. Not Nagisa no. She accepted this despair because there was nothing more she can do, there was nowhere for her to go anymore. She lost everything. So, when she became a witch, she was more in tune with it. She was more welcoming of her faith than other magical girls. (Ehem Homura, ehem...) Can you blame her though?

If everything in your life went wrong and then suddenly for a moment. Everything went your way. Would you not want to stay in that moment forever?

In her witch labyrinth she could eat all the cheese she wants.

For her, cheese was equivalent to her mother's love.

I mean, her mother loved cheese.

She on the other hand, didn't. After becoming a witch, she began to see cheese as a symbol of her mother. She loved chasing cheese; she loved eating cheese.

For her, chasing cheese began to symbolize her wanting to get her mother's love. That is why she's so obsessed with it. All she wanted was to go home with her mother.

Her life was a tragedy and she saved herself from it. By ending her tragedy of a life, she began a new and better life.

She could eat all the cheese she wants.

She could have all the snacks she wants.

She could choose from the varieties of cheese in the room!

This is the HapPiEst she has ever been!

Why would she deny herself this happiness?

The princess has finally found a place where she can happy! The End

Bonus!! So, while I was looking for a screenshot for the end of my post. I saw this happy Nagisa. And I thought to myself... "Wait a minutos, why is she happy? Shouldn't she have memories of everything that happened?" Well, for a fact she does. I mean, Sayaka remembers everything, she just forgot because Homura made her forget. Homura didn't do it to Nagisa. So, it's safe to assume she does remember. So, she's happy because Homura won? Not exactly. In rebellion the scene with Sayaka and Kyoko where she interrupted them, she said.

So, if we go by what she said. We can assume she doesn't care about the Rebellion event. She's just happy that she gets to exist again. Back in 2015, the Madoka concept trailer.

The happiness Nagisa wants is not in Heaven. It doesn't exist there. So, when Homura to dragged Madoka down, she destroyed Madoka's "Heaven" where Nagisa lives. She now lives in reality again. Where she can eat cheese again and experience all the things she never got to experience. So, for her, what Homura did is something that actually goes for her favor. We love a selfish cheese loving character.

[paracosmicparadox]

So, I'm falling back into the FFXV kick, and I have decided that I disapprove of how little complex character development Square Enix has given the guys?? Like where is the emotional depth beyond surface-level cutscene angst?? So I took matters into my own hands and have compiled a handy little list of headcanons / expanded canons that I think make sense.

Noctis: Has clinical insomnia and frequent lucid dreams (sorta a given, but bear w me bear w me)

Feels the weight of having to take so much on from such a young age much, much more than he lets on

Loves to argue

Would've been happier if he and Luna stayed as childhood best-buds rather than betrothed fiancés (controversial, ik, but it just didn't seem like he cared that much for her romantically to me?? Like he obviously cared about her, but it seemed like a really strong penpal vibe rather than a "We're-gonna-get-married-and-be-the-next-hotshot-couple" vibe. If you disagree, coolio, I'm not gonna debate w you on this one)

Has a natural sadness to his eyes regardless of what he's feeling

Went through an anime phase (possibly still in his anime phase, idk)

Social anxiety for the win

Severe RBF

Prefers tea over coffee (black tea is best---particularly lavender earl grey)

Can play the cello (practicing tho?? Don't know her)

Writes the most beautiful poetry when The Motivation™ strikes him (usually when he's home sick and half-delirious)

Prompto: Has ADHD and clinical anxiety, but is undiagnosed and doesn't take any meds for either of them.

Is legit like SO SMART, but can never focus, so not many people take any notice

Wears contact lenses (he had glasses as a child and I refuse to believe he had some high-tech corrective surgery to eliminate the need for them when lenses are cheaper and less risky)

Doesn't drink caffeine because it makes him jittery

Doesn't drive the Regalia when the guys are around because having other people in the car distracts him from the road. Also he tends to drive like a speed demon, which worries Ignis to no end.

Sunburns insanely easily

Could legit become a hitman if he wanted to with the amount of gun-knowledge he has. It doesn't matter what firearm you put in this boy's hand---pistol, SMG, sniper, rocket launcher, you name it. He can and will hit the target every single time.

Addicted to adrenaline

Pansexual

Has a lot of self-loathing (we see a bit of this in Ep. Prompto) and talks with an online therapist about it via text whenever his lows hit him. He's making great progress in learning how to heal and how to accept himself for who he is beyond the mask he wears for others

Ignis: More than a little bit of a control freak, and works very hard not to be too overbearing or critical about his friends' misgivings

Hypochondriac

Wants to protect everyone all the time and mentally kicks himself when he doesn't get there fast enough

Is SO PROUD of Noctis's journey and felt a stronger hatred towards Ardyn than anyone else in the group for what he forced Noct to go through (he stayed up at night sick to his stomach with hollow rage and baked nonstop to take his mind off of it)

Can verbally obliterate a man, but only rarely chooses to do so bc he's classy like that

After losing his eyes, he notices so much more beauty in the world than he used to (the sound of rain on the Regalia's roof, the specific gait of each of his friends, the smell of salt on the wind in Galdin Quay, the flawless feel of one specific silk tie he has in his repertoire, etc)

His internal compass is never wrong

Regularly takes antacids for his stomach

Has the straightest teeth you've ever seen

Demiromantic

Gladio: Hates being wrong: it's his way or the highway

Actually so much smarter than the musclehead jock front he puts up

A little vain and easily jealous (this man has a Jealous Face like no other)

Thunderstorms are his favorite; his ideal place to be is at a campsite, during a storm, with a well-worn book and a mug of Irish coffee in hand

Would throw himself in front of a bus for any one of his friends

Would beat up kids for the folks he cared about in middle school and spent the time he wasn't training to be a Crownsguard sitting in detention with the most unrepentant, smug, and-I'd-do-it-again look scrawled across his face

Can make a better smoothie than anyone (except maybe Iggy)

Spotify junkie

Had a dinosaur phase as a kid and can still name random facts about them whenever the opportunity presents itself

Avid technology-hater and only has a phone to make calls and join the others in playing King's Knight since they begged him so profoundly (he's sure the thing's going to be his downfall)

Gets most of Prompto's pop culture references

[occasionally-victor]

bwaah ghost au spiderbit; you can see i kinda lost motivation on this one a bit lmao welp

in this au people that die peacefully leave like. normal ghosts. the "transparent floating person maybe with some quirk" type of ghosts. idk whether make them move on to some Otherside or are they just still hang out in normal world - probably a bit of both (alive people usually can't see those tho). the people who die from some sort of cruel death or at the moment of death have A Lot™ of negative emotions? their ghosts are Fucked Up and Kinda Dangerous™ and less person looking. the nature of it is Unknown™, but those ghosts considered "cursed" - which entails that the curse can be lifted and the ghost can be granted peace. those ghosts behaviour is in fact totally targeted towards ridding themselves of that curse HOWEVER it's usually slow. have i mentioned those ghosts are Fucked Up and Kinda Dangerous™? yadda yadda there are people who specialise in helping those ghosts get rid of their "curse" because otherwise they can do a lot of damage before doing it themselves.

this au was kinda born after thinking what would the actual ghosts of cubitos look like, and then deciding to just make a seperate thing from it

!roier was still abducted, but here it's by some fucked up people who wanted to experiment on humans - he just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. take a wild guess how he dies (idk body gave up after weeks of horrifying experiments or something). ghost!roier is surprisingly Not That Dangerous™ - mostly scares encountered people and also seems to bring the rat infestation to every house he is seen in. barely floats, in general looks like a walking corpse that slightly glows, rarely seen on street as seems to hate light (most of it, at least), rats do follow him a lot. doesn't seem to talk and in general also feels constant sickness and disorientation. moves between places a lot, so not many actually seen him. the commonly used name in reports is "Blinded man" (as his eyes are very much hidden behind the cloth constantly)

spiderbit were very much married in this au and well, you could have guessed, !cellbit didn't take the news well at all (authorities eventually found whatever that underground lab was and yknow the bodies). mans left his work at flower shop, became basically a complete shut in and then one day theirhis apartment was on fire. the fire part actually nor because someone set it in fire or whatever - it's because some ghost can be "born" uhh with very real impact on normal world let's just say, and in this case the very first thing ghost!cellbit did was to set the place on fire👍 not cool, because the fire was white, which is very notoriously very hot actually (the whole thing was brief tho - the only thing affected was the apartment) (the cause of death is very much grief induced heart attack btw). the heat from ghost doesn't appear right until the flames themselves are touched - while the burn itself is nonexistent, the pain is very much is. moderately aggressive, seems to have a soft spot for kids (as in, avoids them and in general seems calmer around them). often noticed around various flower shops and other flower related placed (looking for something?) - in a places where his sightings were reported often found ashes of already burn flowers (a specific flower does seem to be burnt much less tho-) (flowers actually can completely distract him - seems to be stuck in place until they finish burning - ideally not be there when that happens). the blood is real, but it vaporises before it hits the ground most of the time. the common name in reports is "Whiteflame ghost"

the way to lift their curse is for ghosts be reunited - the nature of their curse does kinda force them to be "physically" inseparable as to not return to their cursed selves, but it's not like an issue for them at this point.

will i ever expand this au? probably not tbh, but maybe.

[turtles-allthewaydown]

Angel's boss has a new business partner he's sleeping with, some guy with a television for a head. When Angel finds Vox with a broken screen he realizes he and the overlord have more in common than he thought.

---

Chapter One of My Body Is An Orphanage (We Take Everyone In) is newly edited and back on AO3. The Angel/Vox trauma-bonding fic nobody asked for is back and better than ever.

In case you missed the mini-drama, it was brought to my attention there were some unintentional similarities with sherwoodfox's magnificent High Clientele series (if you haven't read it, I highly recommend it). Regardless of whether I meant to do it or not, I felt the best thing to do was take the fic down while I re-write those sections. I also decided to take the opportunity to correct some other errors, like inexplicably describing Vox as not having eyebrows (I... truly have no explanation for this). Some scenes are also being expanded on. Chapters 2 & 3 should be back in the next couple of days barring Real Life Chaos™ (lemme tell you, today has been a day)

tl;dr same fic, some changes and minor improvements. If you were subscribed or had it bookmarked before, you will have to do so again.

If you're new to this fic, it's a hurt/comfort (higher on hurt than comfort) fic about Angel and Vox and their parallel relationships with Valentino, as told from Angel's perspective. This fic deals explicitly with abusive relationships, including sexual abuse, and also features a fair amount of content about drug addiction. Detailed warnings are provided at the start of every chapter.

Speaking of, Content Warnings for Chapter One: explicit sex, dubious consent, sex work, alcohol & drug use, addiction & withdrawal, Val's pheromones, brief mention of homophobic violence

[s-ephiroth]

ranting on here for once instead of twt (which is back for me!) because i'm too lazy for the thread format and i must yell A LOT

it's about cid, and angeal deniers in ec...

like, i'm absolutely hating the lengths some people have to go just to be all "cid will come first" or "i would prefer if cid came out first"

you can just say you prefer a character over another without dissing one of the characters, saying shit like "oh but he's just a bad zack clone/bootleg so he's not important the way cid is", "you're doing selective reading on the interview", "i'll quit the game if angeal comes first", "what's there to explore anyway," etc.

like excuse me if maybe i'm biased towards the guy, but being someone who does have some impact in sephiroth's life, i think angeal is much more important than "guy who has a beef with shinra over the space program and drives our airship"

sephiroth is a driving force of the main ff7 plot

if not for cloud chasing after sephiroth around the world, cid would stay in his near backwater rocket centered town yelling at shera and not going anywhere (aside from maybe driving the bronco around, if you consider rebirth additions and the implications of him owning the bronco in og)

sephiroth, cloud and aerith are the driving forces of the ff7 story and anything directly relating to them in any way will be always more important

angeal is sephiroth's friend (and if you read into it, sephiroth's anchor). sephiroth's behavior through cc is impacted by his friendship with him and genesis both; showcasing that sephiroth's loyalty is not fully shinra's, that he's willing to ignore orders, dump missions on others and make his own rules if that means possibly helping both angeal/genesis survive

hell, after angeal dies, before nibelheim and with genesis possibly still alive, sephiroth has enough of a wake up call and decides he'll abandon shinra depending on the circumstances

cloud's sword was angeal's before it was zack's, and aerith was there when zack mourned the loss of the guy by his own hands

cid's character arc is mostly done in og; he goes through the domestic violence arc and "i'll join you because that's dumb as fuck, i like that plan" to "oops, the woman i yelled at and scared and blamed all these years for something that i chose to do was actually right". he gets a few extra tidbits in the extended compilation (i.e: marrying shera, naming an airship after her, working for wro now, having met ifalna in the past) but they're afterthoughts. the character was already explored

all of this to say that people saying angeal has no/lesser importance to the narrative than cid is fucking insane shit

i get people not liking him (it's not easy to because we're given crumbs of character exploration and also the way people behave towards mentally ill characters not acting 100% as they claim their moral code to be), i get people not wanting to play as him for the possibility of Yet Another Sword User™, i get people liking cid for whatever reason

but the fact that they feel they're obliged to jump into the discussion whenever someone shows the slightest amount of angeal hype in the chat to go "but naaah, cid is in the data, so cid gotta be first uwu" or "cid superior" or some other crap? it's driving me nuts

like imagine being so against the exploration of a character who needs it because he got crumbs in canon that need expanding to also further the main antagonist's tale, to the point you have to use other character already being in the data as justification

just say you're an og purist and go at that point, smh

"oh, i'll quit if angeal is first"

it'll be fucking hilarious if that happens, would love seeing that kind of person quit so much

[stacotto]

Ok, wow, that episode was soooooooooo fucked up™ and I have so many thoughts™.

First off, absolutely heartbreaking to see Suletta throw herself into The List and taking care of the Greenhouse to cope with the fact that she just lost everything and she blames herself for it all (which hits really fucking close). She thinks she deserves it and I just wanna reach through the screen and tell her it's not her fault at all.

Lauda is still emotionally constipated and can't express gratitude without insulting someone in the process.

Shaddiq really out here proving why the emblem for Grassley Defense Systems is a snake, the bastard. Really hope he dies at Guel's hand, the Akihiro vs. Iok vibes are strong here.

Schwarzette was a Jeturk machine to no one's surprise, origin is cool though, Vim making it behind the scenes (likely ever since cutting a deal with Prospera all the way back in episode 2). I get the feeling Suletta's going to be the one fielding it first.

So two things that really stuck out to me during the Backroom Trio scene, 1). the fact that Peil has an AI decide who's who gives me such Destiny Plan vibes and makes the four CEOs that much creepier, and 2). El5n and Norea need to just bang already.

On Mio's plan to use Aerial as a symbol of de-escalation, I think Luke Skywalker said it best: "This is not going to go the way you think"

And of course, the big reveal: Suletta, and the eleven other consciousnesses inhabiting the GUND bits, are all clones of Eri - the bits to expand her consciousness and autonomy, and Suletta herself to act as an interface to the physical plane. It was legitimately heartbreaking to see that Suletta was effectively "born" the day Eri "died", which horrifyingly reveals that Elnora didn't suddenly just snap the moment Eri's body gave out - she saw it coming and prepared ahead of time. Jesus fucking Christ.

I have thoughts about Eri rejecting Suletta. She's clearly coming from the same "cruel to be kind/break her heart to save her" place as Miorine - she never wanted Suletta to be an accessory to Prospera's revenge from the get-go - but y'all keep throwing her out without a lifeline, and banking on someone else picking up the pieces. I am curious though, to see exactly how much Eri cares about revenge; we know she's in on it - again, she just doesn't want Suletta involved - but from her PoV back in Cradle Planet, she made it seem like she had no choice but to go along with it, so that may provide an interesting turning point, we'll have to see.

There has to be a reason Secilia is on the other side of the confession booth therapy room, hopefully for more than just comedy.

That came out a little more rambly than I anticipated, but man, this episode was a wild ride.