#i never really intended on posting these but i don't want them all to just collect dust in my gallery so. here they are

[deoidesign]

One of my first digital pieces (2010) versus one of my recent ones (2024)

We all start somewhere!

[clingyduofan]

lots of old doodles

[lancestrollsgf]

# THE BETTER NORRIS ! F1 GRID X ADOPTED NORRIS! READER, SMAU

introduction master list request list

part one, part two, part three.

# WARNINGS : cussing, i know nothing about the parents of lando so everything is fictional. lowercase intended, spelling errors (english isn’t my first language). lando's actual siblings are not really mentioned in this since I don't know anything about them. reader hitchhikes. an excessive usage of emojis such as “🙄, 🤫, 😝, 😭,😊,😉”. reader is 17 in the story btw (the age isn’t really mentioned so i guess you can imagine it however you want)

# SUMMARY: the adventures of the formula one driver lando norris adopted sibling, y/n norris.

# AUTHORS NOTE : this is my first smau (that i’m posting). there’s no meaning behind this story i really just wanted to make it for fun. backstory for how reader (you) were adopted is not explained. reader is kinda of portrayed as bisexual, sorry only like three times. pretend lando is a soccer/football fan (and likes messi). some of these scenarios/comments actually happened to face claim.

# FACE CLAIM : marian guevara/theatomicbabe on instagram (i love her so much)

VOTE FOR FUTURE LOVE INTEREST (now closed)

— instagram !

liked by landonorris, charles_leclerc and 529,289 others

thebetternorris visited jamaica once again, spent every moment with the children and made memorial memories that i will remember forever, thank you @junglenonprofit for making this event happen🤍🇯🇲

landonorris: very cool hair style in the last photo is that your new look?

-> thebetternorris: maybe it is. you should also try finding a new look instead of looking like a washed up mop you have on your head that you call curls

-> carlossainz55: ay no, she got you with that one 🤣

-> landonorris: I WAS LITERALLY BEING NICE. WHY DID YOU COME AFTER ME??

landonorris: since when did you go to jamaica???

-> thebetternorris: since two days ago, man keep up with the times 🙄🙄

maxverstappen1: y/n does your mom know you’re in jamaica??

-> thebetternorris: no.. don’t tell her, she doesn’t have instagram 🤫

-> ciscawauman: y/n norris.. you said you were with friends for this week?

-> thebetternorris: hi mama 😊😊 im with bsf/n. but im on my way home! (max emilian verstappen this is all your fault, im coming after you)

-> maxverstappen1: sorry y/n.. hi mrs.wauman!

-> ciscawauman: hello max 👋 y/n please don’t threaten someone through comments

username1: y/n’s interactions with the drivers will never fail to make me laugh

username2: i love you y/n!!!

username3: will forever appreciate how y/n is not pr trained. her posts and comments heal me

-> mclaren: that will change very soon, sadly.

-> thebetternorris: @.mclaren YOU WILL NEVER CATCH ME ALIVE

lewishamilton: good work, little norris, very proud of you, keep doing good in the world 🥰

-> thebetternorris: I LOVE U SIR LEWIS

-> lewishamilton: love you too

-> landonorris: lewis please ignore her

username4: y/n’s reply to lewis’ comment is so real

username5: the third picture is so cute 🥹

view all 5201 comments

april 21, 2024 (dates are for the post above ^^)

liked by landonorris, oscarpiastri, and 661,201 others

thebetternorris 🍸🪩🌃🍾

landonorris: who is that guy in the last photo?

-> thebetternorris: i have no clue, i js chose it because i looked good. i think he was trynna lure me into a cult?

-> landonorris: WHAT?? CALL ME RIGHT NOW

username4: you can always rely on y/n to never disappoints with her outfits 😫😫

oscarpiastri: how come you never invite me to party out with you?

-> thebetternorris: because you steal all the girls and guys too 😕😕 also you’re too old

-> oscarpiastri: i’m barely 23??? and thank you or sorry idk man, you confuse me

username6: y/n’s life is so entertaining

username7: i wanna be like y/n when i grow up

username8: my goal in life is to party like y/n does

view all 6229 comments

april 25, 2024

liked by landonorris, charles_leclerc, girl3, and 786,929 others

thebetternorris no caption 🌞 👤: @.girl1 @.girl2 @.girl3 @.guy1

girl3: i had so much fun y/n see you soonnn

-> thebetternorris: me too! see you soon 😊😊

-> landonorris: y/n what is this???? what do you mean see you soon???? ANSWER MY CALLS Y/N

landonorris: who are those girls and guy on the last two photos???

-> charles_leclerc: leave your sister alone, as if you weren’t doing crazy stuff this week either 🤣

-> thebetternorris: @.landonorris they have names you know, you shouldn’t just call them “those girls”. i thought mama taught you better. 🤨🤨

-> landonorris: @thebetternorris sorry..?? but you didn’t answer the question.. also please @charles_leclerc don’t expose my doings of this week onto the internet

username9: you’re the loml in a another universe 😔

-> thebetternorris: why not this universe 😉

-> danielriccardo: damn little norris has more rizz than her brother 😭 @.landonorris

-> landonorris: why do i keep getting attacked 💔

username10: having the caption as “no caption” is having a caption

-> thebetternorris: 🤓🤓

username11: does y/n like girls cause that third photo is a bit suspicious LMAOO

-> username12: i think so, especially because of her response to oscar's comment on her previous post

view all 3620 comments

april 27, 2024

liked by landonorris, newyorkcityfc, and 887,292 others

thebetternorris thank you @.newyorkcityfc for inviting me to document the New York City fc vs charlotte game. visiting the new york city fc game made me want to try out soccer, turns out it might be time that i change career path 😝

landonorris: you’re in new york??? since when. and @.newyorkcityfc just invited you???

-> thebetternorris: since two days ago and is that an insult?

-> landonorris: who are you staying with?

-> thebetternorris: man stop asking so many questions 😕

charles_leclerc: weren’t you in jamaica like less than a week ago?

-> thebetternorris: weren’t you in china less than a week ago? why you judging where im traveling, i don’t judge you. you literally fly somewhere each week for your go karting 🙄

username13: y/n’s post are so unpredictable each time 😭 she was just helping children in jamaica and is now at a soccer game in nyc

-> thebetternorris: gotta keep y’all on your toes 🤫

-> username13: toes 🤤

-> thebetternorris: NAH GTFO LMAOOO

username14: y/n becoming a soccer player when??

username15: all of the norris siblings are so talented

view all 2928 comments

april 29, 2024

liked by landonorris, maxverstappen1, and 997,929 others

thebetternorris miami grand prix day 2 & day 3 🤙. found out some guy with the same last name as me won? idk but congrats @.landonorris

username16: dang her brother just won his first race and she doesn’t even make a post about him?

-> username17: for real, like everyone congratulated him right after but not even his own sister

-> username18: @.username17 well she is adopted 🤣

username19: it was so fun meeting you y/n!!!

-> thebetternorris: thank you pretty

username20: thank you for the water y/n 😊😊

-> thebetternorris: of courseee, had to give you that rich voss water 😉😉

-> landonorris: you gave a stranger water?? when?? you were with me the whole time???

-> thebetternorris: hey man you gotta start appreciating the people that support you, he was a worker ✊🏼

username21: hey i was the guy you were signing “way 2 sexy” with lolll

-> thebetternorris: AYY MY MANNN, i posted u on tiktok look at it 😉

jamescharles: omg i met you!! you’re gorgeous 🥰

-> thebetternorris: JAMESS HEYYY, i put you in my tiktok 🤙����

username22: omg you hugged me, remember i picked you up 😭

-> thebetternorris: I REMEMBER YOUU, that hug was great thanks man i needed that 🫵🏼 posted a full tiktok abt you

username23: your first outfit is so art teacher-coded

-> thebetternorris: is this a compliment or?? thank you though 😭

-> landonorris: @.username23 THATS WHAT I TOLD HER

landonorris: the number of people commenting that they met you is insane. @thebetternorris

-> thebetternorris: what can i say i'm js that guy 😼

view all 6282 comments

may 5, 2024

liked by landonorris, maxverstappen1, and 1,000,010 others

thebetternorris congrats to @.landonorris for winning your first grand prix, in america 🦅🇺🇸, i’m so so proud! turns out having an adopted sister isn't so bad for your racing career after all 😜. btw to everyone in the comments section getting their gears all tangled because I didn't congratulate him sooner, chill out. I was busy practicing my own racing skills. yk, just in case he needs some real competition 😴 sorry @.maxverstappen1. i’m so proud of you, i'm forever grateful that i got picked from the “bin” i was found according to you 18 years ago, and it resulted in me being your sister :) 👤: @.landonorris @.oscarpiastri

landonorris: thank you for the congratulations, but did you really have to use those photos of me?

-> thebetternorris: damn you got your congrats just be grateful man 🙄

oscarpiastri: so this is why lando was crying, btw thank you for using a good photo of me

-> thebetternorris: OSCAR ARE YOU SERIOUS. @.landonorris YOU CRIED?? LMFAOOO

-> landonorris: @.oscarpiastri YOU SNITCH.

maxverstappen1: thank goodness you’re not a f1 driver, you’d be some real competition. we need to try go karting together soon 👍🏼

-> thebetternorris: i know this is a joke but thank u max 😔 we should go karting soon so i can beat you at it 😈

-> username24: i would pay to see y/n kart against max

username25: i don't even know anything about f1 but this made me tear up

username26: y/n getting hate for not congratulating her brother is insane

username27: people getting mad about y/n not congratulating lando as if they know anything about them

username28: y/n was one of the first people to congratulate lando, yall are hating a literal kid for smth so little 💀

view all 4593 comments

may 7, 2024

liked by landonorris, leomessi, 1,102,920 others

thebetternorris pov that one unemployed friend on a tuesday (saturday). thank you @.mles for the invite and for letting me meet the goat @.leomessi 🩷🩷

joyboy: finally found someone that is everywhere like me

-> thebetternorris: paris fashion week next 😉?

-> landonorris: NO???

username29: IS THAT LIONEL MESSI??

-> thebetternorris: that’s literally oomf what are you talking abt 🙄

ueername30: y/n is literally everywhere but home

username31: y/n's smile 🥰🥰

carlossainz55: Real Madrid CF>>>

-> thebetternorris: carlos get outta here 😕😕

username32: te encantaría ser un hombre nunca lo vas a ser y eso es lo que te jode (you’d love to be a man and you’ll never be a man and that fucks with you)

-> thebetternorris: @.username32 me encanta ser mujerrr (i love being a womann)

-> username32: @thebetternorris pues lo disimulas fatal (well you hide it well)

-> thebetternorris: @.username32 que es ser mujer para ti? (what is being a woman to you?)

-> username33: SHE GOT YOU THERE 💀@.username32

landonorris: you meeting messi before me insane 😔

leomessi: gracias por tu apoyo 🩷 que chistoso la caption 🤣 (thank you for your support 🩷 how funny the caption is)

-> landonorris: oh you’re joking.

-> thebetternorris: @.leomessi 🩷🩷 (i’m so normal abt this..)

username33: i wanna be y/n's camera man

username34: who is taking these pictures of y/n

-> thebetternorris: for this game, some guy named jarvis took these photos idk but we're homies now

-> landonorris: WHO IS JARVIS???

view all 12920 comments

june 5, 2024

liked by landonorris, maxverstappen1, and 1,293,021 others

thebetternorris i look sunburnt, swear it's just the lights 👤: bustarhymes

bustarhymes: it was nice meeting you little norris

-> thebetternorris: it was great meeting you man, your music is great

danielriccardo: mate i think you need a new cameraman because most of these are blurry...

-> thebetternorris: my pictures look better than yours, you're letting your jealousy show

landonorris: nah bro how did you meet busta rhymes before me.

-> thebetternorris: because i'm better than you

username35: you dead ass look like han jisung omg

-> thebetternorris: thank you, idk who that is but i get that a lot 😭

username34: y/n looks so much like young miko it’s insane

charles_leclerc: you look scary in the first picture

-> thebetternorris: i saw your paparazzi picture from the beach, your shoulders look scarier, learn how to put on sunscreen 😬

username36: y/n’s style is so 🥰

view all 5934 comments

june 30, 2024

liked by landonorris, charles_leclerc, and 1,304,393 others

thebetternorris back at the big apple 🍎🏙️

itsyoungmiko: hi twinn

-> thebetternorris: hey twin, we should meet up soon

lancestroll: how do you travel everywhere?

-> thebetternorris: walking and hitchhiking

-> lancestroll: hitchhiking? be safe norris

-> thebetternorris: yea hitchhiking. not all of us have private planes that our daddy pays for🙄(just joking, love u @lawerence_stroll pls give me money)

-> lancestroll: your brother literally flies private. please don't ask my dad for money 😭

lawerence_stroll: hello y/n, how much money do you need?

-> thebetternorris: HI MR.STROLL, thank you for the offer I was just joking, you're so nice. see you at the next gp 😊

username37: who is that on the last photo?

-> thebetternorris: THATS ME. LMFAOOO

username38: ain't no way you're in new york city rn, you were in florida a day ago.

-> thebetternorris: that's what hitchhiking is for, duh

-> username38: you dead ass hitchhiked a ride from florida to new york city. that's like 20 hours...

-> thebetternorris: “that’s like 20 hours…” ☝🏼🤓

username39: are you gonna go to the british gp?

-> thebetternorris: yes sadly 💔 lando is forcing me against my will 😕

oscarpiastri: don’t forget my keychain pls

-> thebetternorris: ofc man ill give it to you soon 🤙

zhouguanyu24: very cool pictures y/n and cool outfit

-> thebetternorris: HI ZHOUUU, i got you something for you and sweet corn 🥰 thank u for the compliment 😙

username40: future mom lore is gonna go insane

-> thebetternorris: 😈

landonorris: y/n are you ever not in the US. come back home..

-> thebetternorris: USA 🇺🇸🦅🦅

-> logansargeant: USA USA 🇺🇸🦅🦅

-> landonorris: @.logansargeant logan please don’t lure my sister into your cult that you americans have

-> logansargeant: @.landonorris we don’t have a cult in america 😭 well… don’t quote me on that 😔

-> username41: “you americans” is crazy 💀

view all 4402 comments

july 1, 2024

comment to be tagged in the next part 🤫🤫

[badgertracksart]

Portfolio advice, from a lead who hires Concept Artists

(This was originally a twitter thread I wrote before the site self imolated, hense it's strange structure.) I wrote this after a weekend of portfolio reviews - 1. Like a maths exam, please please show your working. I want to see thumbs options, mid options and of course a final design.

2. Arrange your portfolio, I don't want to bounce about between subject matter and pipeline. Your portfolio's narrative should be as strong as your work... 3. Please make worlds that excite the viewer, make them want to go in and explore them, explain to them the interesting parts of the town, or the way the character's hat unfolds. How will this draw the viewer in? 4. As I've said before the majority of your project work is explanatory not mood, make sure your portfolio contains explanatory work. Explained here -

5. A lot of beautiful post apocolyptic paintings, , but 80% of realistic games and film, we just give the environment artists photo ref, they are capable artists in their own right. Different work in stylised where you do need to create rules for how things can be translated. 6. Production art contains call out sheets, material references and flat graphics. This doesn't have to be your final image, but it should support it.

7. Design characters on a swatch(es) of the environment they will be viewed in. Not on white. I make swatch backgrounds from screenshots, it avoids assumptions that damage readability. 8. Reverse of this, put people in your environments, show me the scale.

9. It's not a deal breaker for a review, but if you intend to get a job, please show me your work on a screen larger than a smartphone (print outs probably the cheapest option with the best battery life). 10. Please have your contact details clearly visible, and by that I mean email address, I will not pass your social media contact on, I cannot input your form into my tracking system. EMAIL ADDRESS emblazoned and bake it in, sometimes recruiters do funky stuff to pdfs

11. Your portfolio will never feel done, not to you anyway. You will have learnt from your latest pieces and want to apply it to older work. But we know art is a journey. Send your portfolio anyway. I've been in the industry 10+ years and my portfolio is still not 'finished'. 12. If you are applying to an environment centric Concept Art position then please vary your times of day! Golden hour is cool but show me some happy sunny days, looming overcast days, what about at night? Vary your weather too! Sunny snowy day? Rainy Spring day? Stormy night?

13. If you are applying for a character centric Concept Art role then please ensure your portfolio shows a variety of body types and ethnicities. 14. Designing characters for games? Please show back views and feet (!) Many potfolios contain only front views. This is a problem because:

You haven't shown you are considering the design from all angles.

In many games rear view is the main view.

Stop cropping feet.

15. If you are entry / graduating and looking at Portfolios to compare content and standard of yr own work too, look at hired grad/junior artists as opposed to seniors Seniors and leads often have old or personal work in their portfolio which isnt representative of the day job. 16a. Show clearly the intended use case for your Concept Art. Mention the game type in the description. Are these player character designs for a 3rd person adventure game? Then more back views please. Bonus points for diagetic ways of showing health / equipment / role etc.

16b. Are these designs for an FPS? Then really the player view of the gun needs to sell the player style/ choices, in an FPS your weapons are almost your character. Are these world designs? What's the view distance? For an RTS your shapes need to read from above & a distance. 16c. The lack of clarification means I am judging the design in isolation, which both harms the design (you might be considering the backview of a char as the main adventure character.) Or an NPC, their waist up expressions may be important for conveying exposition and mechanics.

16d. Concept art is not separate from gameplay, great concept art serves the game team before it is a good illustration.

17. Play games. A variety of games. Think about them. IMO to be a good concept artist you need to understand the common language & references used by your peers. Also understand the principles and common language your audience are used to. FPS design rules are v.diff from RTS.

18. There are many skills that are needed in concept art, please show them. For example: Graphic design - logos, liveries, typographic use etc. VFX concepts - Abilities, Ambience, motion concepts. Architectural knowledge - How buildings are built! & more but I'm out of space :O

[keefechambers]

I wanna be blunt about this ongoing James somerton suicide threat issue but I don't want to connect it to my IRL Twitter to comment on the dogshit takes I'm seeing there or the good and well meaning but maybe too kind takes I'm seeing here.

Obviously, I hope that this is a false alarm cry for help fake threat. Yes, it would reinforce that Somerton is a self-centered egomaniac who can't handle consequences but that's preferable to dead.

But I work in local news and let me tell you something. I've covered half a dozen family annihilating murder suicides and heard hundreds of men making suicide threats over police scanners and a huge swath of these don't happen because they're depressed or because people are mean to them on the Internet. They're punishment. A person with an enormous amount of entitlement towards people around them gets backed into a corner and they punish the people closest to them by killing themselves or threatening to kill themselves.

No one wants to talk about this feature of suicide because...you want to help people who are struggling and guide them away from this path and being blunt about the fact that sometimes people die of suicide as a consequence of their own shittiness towards the world does not really help actively suicidal people. But suicide rates are higher in men not just because they have higher rates of untreated mental illness (a societal issue we must address for the sake of all) but because some people, often men, use suicide (but more often the threat of suicide) as a tool of abuse and control.

I'm not saying somerton is like, an icky abuser bad guy, he's just a run of the mill grifter scumbag, but his actions in the past show a clear pattern of escalating behavior that aligns with this.

Somerton gets called out -> somerton alleges physical threats of violence against himself and his fans rally around him supportively -> Harry calls somerton out in a bigger way -> Somerton says he's hospitalized but there are inconsistencies with the story but no one wants to talk about that because you wanna be nice-ish about a guy who just tried to kill himself and now he's trying to be framed as tragic but it doesn't really stick -> somerton apologizes again but his apology is rightly called out for lies and manipulative framing as well as his continuing attempts to profit off the community he betrayed -> James posts a suicide note publicly putting the onus of his own suicide on the loss of his friend Nick who he repeatedly threw under the bus and now everyone is rallying to say nice-ish shit and wring their hands in concern over poor james -> indefinitely repeat this vicious cycle forever until he actually does die or finally gives up and gets real, intensive therapy and a day job.

Thats not to say anyone's concern is misplaced, it's 100% better for him to be a living scumbag than a dead one. He deserves the chance to grow and learn and have a life outside of youtube.

But you don't have to portray this as the action of a sad depressed man who got bullied off the Internet. It's manipulation, whether he intended to go through with it or not and whether someone intervened or not. Not denying that internet bullying is a thing, I'm sure there were some people who were shitty directly to James but he made the choice to not unplug from this and to try and keep being a public figure rather than taking care of himself. He could have deleted Twitter, blocked anyone who was an asshole, gone to therapy and tried to move on with his life but if he'd deleted his channel he'd have lost monetization... Can't have that, right? So he posts some apology videos so his channel stays active and then complains about how ruinous this is while never trying to take real accountability.

But the reality is that people would have forgotten about him so quickly and maybe his job prospects would've been impacted but...that's on him, and that's for him to figure out but it's not actually life ruining. He chose to continue to engage knowing he'd get backlash and hate and he'd feel worse and worse and things would never get better without the time and space for people to forget.

He made the choice to make a public spectacle of his own alleged suicide. That is the action of someone who wants to put the weight of their suicide on someone else's shoulders and is morally wrong. He can be held to account for that, alive or dead.

[togglesbloggle]

You Aren't Supposed to Win

There's a species of post on Tumblr that's not uncommon: explainers about neurotypical social interactions for the benefit of the neurodivergent. Others, in an adjacent genre, are vent-posts or bewildered people expressing exasperation and impatience with neurotypical social rituals. And these are usually fine as far as they go, but there's a sort of deficit or hole in them that I think tends to go un-addressed.

Basically, a lot of these explainers are very reasonably helping readers to navigate a system for some desired outcome (getting a job, finding a date, or other such things), but with the understanding that a failure to get the desired outcome is a failure of the system. And that's... only kind of true.

Neurotypical social interactions can be a very complex mix of collaborative and competitive enterprises. The ratio between those things can shift on a dime, it can be really hard to figure out where on the spectrum you are at any given moment, and this is the system working as intended. Or at least, as the players in the game intend, which isn't always quite the same thing.

I don't want to overstate this too much; standard social interactions aren't a fight to the death or anything. Typical examples are more like a preponderance of cooperation, but with some jockeying for a larger share of the rewards that follow from a shared project. Or, perhaps, attempts to spend the least effort in a group project, while receiving a full share of the reward.

The thing about this is, the presence of an antagonistic element within these interactions means that perfect legibility is opposed to most participants' goals for the interaction. There is a degree of confusion and uncertainty that is quite deliberate and instrumentally useful. If a particular partnership is going to pivot to 'pvp mode', it is absolutely in each participants' interest to be the first one to defect, and to mask that defection for as long as possible; perfect transparency prevents them from being able to do so, and they can and will interpret requests for perfect transparency as being hostile acts.

At the same time, admitting any of this is also a loss of strategic advantage during adversarial interactions, so it's one of the hardest things to get people to admit. It's even hard for people to notice that they're doing it, because evolution favors mentalities that keep as much of this as possible subconscious; it's easier to defect without warning if you never consciously think of yourself as defecting at all. So explicit discussions of this are quite rare. (There is, however, an entire genre of party games designed to bring them to the fore and let people show off their capacity for adversarial play among shifting alliances and uncertainty, so it's more 'open secret' than 'forbidden lore'.)

The upshot of all of this is, the desire for an explicit, legible system of social interactions that can be exploited for reliable outcomes- can often be a desire for power over others, in a way that I don't think the proponents fully realize. The fantasy of people just doing what you want is a powerful one for everybody, neurodivergent and neurotypical alike. And this isn't an unreasonable fantasy! it's really not fun to be surrounded by people pursuing their own interests at the expense of yours!

But it's important to realize that a lot of the hard work of aligning those values and making a system of interactions 'purely collaborative', such that everybody will be doing their best to help you succeed regardless of skill level or quirks of neurotype, is a really hard problem that nobody has yet been able to solve. And until we get there, a system in which you reliably get everything you want, and which you navigate with perfect confidence, is one that subordinates the people around you.

[thinkinonsense]

Bewitched: The Rake and The Risk

˖⋆࿐໋ james logan howlett ✦ bridgerton au series

bewitched masterlist

chapter two

cw: flirting (mix of 1800s and modern day), jealousy, old time thoughts of women and marriage, james is a slut

pairing: viscount!logan howlett x fem!reader

a/n: sorry this is later than intended! i try to aim for a new chapter every friday but college is kicking my ass right now. next chapter will be longer!! also!! if you want to be tagged for the bewitched series please comment on the original bewitched masterlist post linked above this<3 there are so many of you lovely readers who want to be tagged and i need a more organized way to find everyone to add. sorry for the minor inconvenience. i appreciate every one of you!!

main masterlist

in all the twenty-nine years of knowing james howlett, lady chamberlain never would have pictured him coming to her home to ask about the eligible bachelorettes of the ton.

"what do you want to know, my dear?" lady chamberlain asked, sipping a cup of tea as the two of them sat in the living room.

"i am coming to you because as you know, my mother is expecting me to wed sooner rather than later and i was wondering whom might be the best women to seek out this season." james said, lying through his teeth.

if james really wanted to know who the best women this season were, he would've just opened the latest issue of lady cavanaugh. both of them knew this but it was more fun for lady chamberlain to tease the viscount.

"hm.." she smiles. "anyone in particular?"

"no."

the lie falls with ease. too much ease but lady chamberlain sees right through him.

"well, i did take note last night that the only lady you danced with was lady worthington's niece." she remarks slyly.

"the french girl?" he asks, playing coy. "i think i remember her."

lady chamberlain wasn't going to play games with the boy in front of her.

"i would hope so, you seemed quite fawned of her."

"i don't know if i would say that much."

"hm, so you don't want to know who she's planning to attended the mask ball with?" lady chamberlain smirks, knowing she's got him hooked.

everyone in the ton looked forward to the queens mask ball each season. it was the perfect way to help break the usual ice of finding 'the one'. that's where most couples tend to meet for the first time.

"let me guess..." james rolls his eyes. "prince harrison?"

lady chamberlain shrugs, placing her tea cup back on the dish. "the two of them talked quite a bit after you stormed off. she seems quite smitten with him."

"it's the first ball of the season. she has plenty of time to look for a better husband." he scoffs.

"well, dear... there are people who search their whole lives for something that's been right in front of them the entire time."

the elderly woman's words rang true in the room but james was far too in denial to notice them. instead, his ego was eating him alive. why would you not jump at the opportunity to be with the viscount?

˖⋆࿐໋

this afternoon was the queen's annual tea party. all the ton's debutantes gather to make friends and share their predictions for this season. anxiously, you paced the cobblestones outside, waiting for the carriage to pick you up.

"dear, it's not lady-like to pace back and forth." your aunt calls out from the doorway.

"my apologies," you reply, not stopping your feet.

"you're snagging the hem of your gown!"

thank heavens that the carriage was approaching. she waves you off, wishing you luck on your first adventure alone in the ton, wishing desperately she could join you.

your goal today is to make at least one friend. you'll even settle for an allied.

once you arrive at the queen's castle, you step inside. covered in soft pastels, flowers, and butterflies; you immediately feel calm. everyone is chatting and sipping tea at the tables. you sit down in the first available seat.

"you're the diamond, correct?" someone whispered next to you asks.

you turn your head to see a blonde girl to the right. she's wearing a soft yellow dress that doesn't quite fit her right.

"correct." you nod, offering the girl a smile to which she returns.

"shouldn't you be sat with the queen?" she asks, nodding to one of the beautiful girls surrounding the queen.

"probably but this was the first seat i saw." you joke, sipping on your tea.

the girl laughs with a small nod and introduces herself. her name is bridget and her father is a jewelry maker for the queen.

"i saw you dancing with the viscount last night at the ball." she smiles. "do you fancy him?"

almost choking on your tea, you shake your head.

"no, no, no. i don't fancy the viscount." you state.

bridget hesitates, watching your body language closely. the pressure gets you to speak up again.

"why do you ask?"

"because the viscount is a major rake."

the word rake rolls off her tongue with pure disgust. you'd never heard someone with such respect as a viscount be called something so dishonorable. rakes were known for their ability to seduce and lead on women with no promise of marriage.

"but he talks of his desire for a wife?" you question, more to yourself than to bridget but alas, she answers anyway.

"only because his mama is practically begging for a viscountess." bridget whispers.

you suppose this made sense due to the fact that most rakes never even intend to wed and after your conversation with james last night, he made it clear that marriage was not something he craved.

"trust me, you aren't the first lady to attempt to tie down the viscount. well, at least you have a shot since you're the diamond this season and all." the blonde girl rambles.

"oh, heavens no!" you repeat.

"hm, that's sad..." she sighs. "he is quite handsome."

"most definitely but i intend to wed for pure reasons."

"if that's truly the case, stay as far away from the viscount as possible."

˖⋆࿐໋

for the rest of the afternoon, bridget's words stuck to the front of your brain. if james wasn't so intolerable, perhaps he would make a good husband to someone.

once everyone finished with their tea, you decided to go sketch in wisteria park. the weather was beautiful outside and gave you the perfect inspiration needed to work on a new piece. normally, you would only draw on the sides of the letters written to your father back home. no one was more supportive of you than your parents. in a world where women mean nothing more than their wombs to society, it was rare to have parents who let their daughters have dreams.

sat on a patch of grass near the small pond, you set up your quill, small tray of paints, and paper. in the area where you decided to sit, across from you stood a beautiful cherry tree. as you work on the outline, you can hear footsteps approaching.

"i should've known i would find you here." a familiar voice says.

you don't even glacé up at the person near you, paying no mind to the man who seeks your attention most.

"do you want something, my lord?" you ask, fighting the urge to roll your eyes.

james' head spun every time those last two words fell from your lips, sounding to pretty the way that they roll of your tongue.

"you may call me, logan." he says. "if you so wish."

"logan?" you cock a brow, finally looking up at him.

"it's my middle name." he replies awkwardly.

"hm..." you pretend to ponder for a moment. "that's far too personal for me."

" 'too personal'? how might that be?"

james stands arms crossed against the cherry tree, glaring in your direction. you don't rush to answer his question instead you continue adding details to the branches and trees. he huffs under his breath, clearly irritated your lack of interest in him.

"well, we have no intentions to be together this season and we aren't friends so, there's no need for nicknames and such." you reply nonchalantly.

"you don't know my intentions"

a sweet giggle escapes you. james brushes off the warmth flooding his chest, rather focusing on topic at hand.

"oh, i bet i do."

suddenly, you drop your quill and give him your undivided attention.

"why are you even here, james?" you sigh.

"i was visiting an old friend this morning and wanted a stroll through the park."

"an old friend?"

the words left your lips before you could stop yourself. james was quick to notice the tone shift. he smirks, walking over to you and sitting on the grass to your right.

"mhm..." he hums.

"is she viscountess material?" you scoff, returning to your scribbles.

"and why would you care?"

why did you care? it's not like the two of you really know each other; yet, something about james made your blood boil. perhaps it was how he has a near perfect life and somehow still complains. he has no issues in finding a partner because everyone wants him. if he didn't have his head up his own ass, he would realize that.

"i don't."

"sounds like you do."

james liked watching your face scrunch up at little with dislike for him. how your pressure on the quill increases. how you avoid his gaze. how you pretend he doesn't exist next to you.

"i don't." you repeat. "i just cannot believe that someone like you is complaining about having to take a wife when all the women of the ton are smitten with you."

"someone like me?" james pretends to be offended but he was too busy enjoying this riled up version of you.

"someone who never gone with unmet needs, never struggled financially, never been under minded or overlooked." your words come out sharp but james doesn't let them cut deep.

"look, sweetheart..." he squints those hazel eyes, glaring deep into your soul and leaning in closer than he should've. "you know nothing of my families struggles."

"and you know nothing of mine."

james was so close to you. your noses almost touching before you pull away. being within his close proximity made you feel a foreign warm tingle deep in your stomach.

thank heavens that the park was empty, minus the two of you. the last thing you needed was for someone to see the two of you this close and label you as one of the viscounts mistresses.

"i-i must get going." you stutter, collecting your belongings.

"where are you off to?" he asks.

"i'm supposed to be accompanying lady chamberlain and prince harrison to dinner this evening."

his face scrunches with distaste at the mention of the prince. also, why would lady chamberlain hide this piece of information from him?

"isn't it quite early to prepare for dinner?"

"i must look perfect for the prince." you smile.

but not at james. you're smiling for that no good excuse of a prince who couldn't see that you already were perfect.

"you look fine to me." he huffs.

"it's vocabulary like that, that keeps you from finding a wife."

"and to think it was my insufferable personality that kept the ladies of the ton away."

it's difficult to hide the laugh you want to let out. instead you bite down on your cheek, not giving him the satisfaction of your laughter.

"ha ha ha." you mock dryly.

"do you always have a stick up your ass?"

james question makes your jaw drop. never in your life have you heard a man speak so vulgarly.

"that's no way for a viscount to speak to a lady." you scold. he can't help but roll his eyes at your comment.

"i'm sure that a man has spoken even more colorfully to you."

"what are you insinuating, my lord?"

"that i highly doubt a lady such as yourself still has her virtue." he shrugs.

never has your head spun so fast at a single sentence. you couldn't fathom that a rake like him has the nerve to question anyone's virtue.

"excuse me, viscount howlett but my virtue is none of your business." you rage. "and you have quite the nerve to question it."

"and why's that?"

james was playing with fire but he didn't mind getting scorched by your flames.

"i've heard the stories about you."

"like what?"

"like what you do with the promiscuous women of the night." your words leave a smirk plastered on his face as he watches you intensely.

"don't act so innocent either." james hums. "i'm sure you've had your fair share of promiscuous adventures in france."

a flush of red hits at your cheeks. the last person you wanted to talk about promiscuous acts with is james. mostly because your lack there of. only your own hands have touched you so intimately.

james studies your facial expression before it clicks for him. he shouldn't ask. he really shouldn't. but come on, he has to.

"have you never—" his words come to a halt when there's a ruffled noise inching closer.

"i'm under no obligation to answer you, viscount howlett." you scold, collecting your belongings.

"hm... seems like you've already answered my question." his cocky tone sends you over the edge of annoyance.

"shouldn't you be more concerned with finding a wife rather than my virtue? this season will be over before you know it and you will need to find one sooner rather than later."

james admired the way you spoke with such sharpness. you were shy and reserved but the weight of your words were heavy. there was grace in the way you spoke and he loathed it.

he loathed how perfect you were. how absolutely perfect you would fit into his life. how perfect you would be at being his little wife. only needing to plan parties and open your womb to his child. he would never stop you from your dream of painting either. all he wants is someone who can handle the duties that come with being his other half.

by the time james snaps out of his thoughts, you are long gone. off to get ready for your date with a man who's twice as rich as him and much more likable. the only thing he could do is hope that nothing good comes from this dinner.

──★

i'll tag everyone else who commented in the morning when i wake up <3

tag list: @v3rdee @squishyfruitloop @caswithdasas2021 @espressopatronum454 @brittdead @fake-bleach @blossoming-hotch @hotbisexualmess @imaginecrushes @wh0re4steelblue-eyes @b0nes-n-all @tvdelrey @prettyoatmeal @speedyvoidlove @lunavelha @merrul @bubblegumholland @divinesols @seasonofthenerd @adoredire @gl0wingsl0wtown @imithicwolf @charityjoy22 @sun7lowxr @melsunshine @internetitgirl17 @tsumukei @dolliestprncess @st4rrlighttt @crypticcowboys @mirrorballpalo @princessanglophile @planetxella @battieshroomz @tonyhawkstits @shinyshayminflower @babey-fruit-bat @oraclic @glnnnhaps @criminaly-supernatural @pxrwinkle @im-nowhere-but-also-somewhere @tighrenicotine @midnightvitality @loonalockley @notbaldy420 @squishyfruitloop @summer-343 @reidshearts @marii-ren @fictionalmen-dilflover @brisingamenwearer @pedrohoe04 @taextannie @jrihensjd @tumharisakhi @readerofallthingss @etmoisara @paladinshenanigan-blog @hauntedwombateggmug @i-am-not-a-morning-person-83 @zaggprincess2 @atjlovverr @fallingfromjupiter @cards-and-daggers @reidsworld @imsuperbored @golden-ebony @joyfulpeanutsalad @mysticalmarvelousmagpie @thighridinglogan @pieuui @fanficcrow @alsoprettyinpink @rooroen @barbecuetiddy @potato-painter @milfhunter69sstuff @bel20blog @hypermarvellove @modicum-ofnothing @gemofthenight @laureniswolverine @d3ad2you @goldphish @mxtokko @ovohanna24 @i-voluntears @cherrypieyourface @petrichor-incorporation @csigirl3137 @justannie18 @yxtkiwiyxt @maddielovesurmom321 @madscape @mesopotamism @multifandom-boss-bitch @tecolote2755 @ririkacchi @crownofdecit @snow30285 @lenoradarkstriderr @willybillyletsgetsilly @sleepilysworld @mynatureworld @biiolumii @phantombaby @natlovesu @tumharisakhi @lokiswify @saph-cyare @burntsaltsblog @shedobeclownin @itsjuwulia @hazelwebster @cake-and-umbrellas @aureliusbrutus @loving-barnes @valorant-v @annagraceevanss @opheliaas-stuff @louisymomo @midnightvitality @ricespy123 @livingonsillylovesongs

[cryptidghostgirl]

omg omg omg totally new silly idea- human! alastor x human! reader where they meet at a party and go outside for a walk near the pier and the moon is beautiful and… they pull out weapons on each other (specifically Alastor a knife and reader a gun) and thats when they decide to form a partner in crime partnership

And in other to keep appearances they are forced to “fake date”

Mimzy: youve been spending some time with that new girl havent you, is she your gf or smth?” chuckle

Naize 20 yr old smth Alastor trying to think of a response thats not that:...

Mimzy: OMG IS SHE?

Alastor: sureeeeee

And they aren't actually into each other until a lot later into their partnership when they’re chasing some guy and reader gets to them first and just starts going at it “hey man i think hes had enough” “YOU WANT WHAT HES HAVING???” thpe shit

and Alastor has to catch his breath and he lowkey thinks hes dying because his heart starts beating a lot, And he goes again to mimzy for advice cuz i dont think he has anu friends and shes like “oh sweetie…”

And because its quite impossible to not get attached at one point theyre in another chase and reader starts laughing hysterically like “did you see him trying to run away??? lmao” and he goes “I couldnt take my eyes off you” and then just grabs her face and SMOOCH >:)

I think its a good trope- fake dating to actual dating even if its. about. murderers- :3

A/N YOU GUYS COME UP WITH THE BEST REQUESTS JESUS CHRIST!!! Also I promise I will get to the rest of the requests this weekend, I had two exams today so this is the only thing I am gonna post. Sorry.

Cover Up (Human!Alastor x Human!Reader)

Pairing: Alastor x Reader

Warnings: uh, murder. Mild gore. Violence. Weapons.

Word Count: 4,460 (I went a little overboard with this one)

Master Lists:

Master Lists 

Hazbin Hotel Master List

"I'll walk her home, don't worry Mimzy." Alastor was saying as Y/n pulled her coat over her shoulders.

The noises of the party still raging on filtered into the grand entryway of the house, muffled through the walls. Mimzy shot her two friends a suspicious look.

"It's nothing like that, Mimz." Y/n sighed, straightening the collar of her fur coat, "I just asked cause of all those murders in the news. Kinda freaky, don't you think? I don't really wanna be out alone at night and Al here was kind enough to offer."

Mimzy crossed her arms, eyebrows raised.

"Sure." she teased.

"Mimzy." Alastor sighed in response and she put her hands up in false surrender.

"Sorry! Sorry." she hummed playfully, "I know you two free birds would never."

Alastor rolled his eyes and, turning to Y/n, held out his arm. She took it daintily, a grateful smile on her face. The pair had just met a few hours earlier but had quickly fallen into a casual camaraderie. He lead her from the house, Mimzy calling her goodnights and wishes for their safety after their retreating forms.

It was a mostly quiet walk through the desolate midnight streets of New Orleans. Y/n hummed softly, kicking a can along with the toes of her healed shoes.

"You'll ruin them that way, wont you?" Alastor asked, feigning concern.

Y/n just shrugged.

"They're shoes. Yeah, they're nice but I wont let that stop me from living. Let's stop by the water, it's so pretty tonight."

Alastor turned slightly, looking out at the Mississippi with it's slightly turbid waters reflecting the light of the stars. He tried not to smile, it was like she wanted him to carry out his intended work. She was making it so easy for him.

"Sure."

They turned towards the rail and Y/n let go of his arm, leaning her elbows against it. She let out a sigh of longing as her eyes tracked the ripples in the surface.

Alastor watched her for a moment, the moon illuminating her features. She was a handsome woman, there was no doubt about it. It had been proved to him tenfold by the amount of prospective partners she had turned down dances with at the party in favor of drinking with him at the bar. That was not what Alastor was interested in, however. Once he was sure she was distracted, once he was sure she had no intent to take her eyes from the glowing river, he looked down. Moving his coat slightly to the side, his hand quickly found its way to the hilt of the knife he had stashed in his waistband for just such an occasion.

He pulled it out, the weight familiar, almost comforting in a sense, in his hand. There was a click. He looked up, the blade pointed to its intended target.

Y/n was facing him now, a wry smile on her face. One foot in front of the other, she took a step forward. The muzzle of the gun, the cocking of which had been the source of the noise which had drawn his attention, just a few centimeters from his chest. The tip of his knife hovered indefinitely by the open center of her coat. He chuckled in amusement, eyebrows raised.

"I thought there were a few more bodies in the news than there should have been. A gun? Really?"

Y/n shrugged.

"I'm little. I don't have the privilege of being able to overpower my victims like you."

Alastor hummed softly. A slight breeze picked up, playing with the edges of their hair.

"What a shame."

Y/n laughed lightly.

"I don't think so. It works well enough."

"Those machines are inelegant, they are detached."

"And you prefer a sense of intimacy to be involved in all your escapades?"

Alastor removed the knife, holding it up to his eyes. He turned the blade over in his hand, examining it closely. Following suit, Y/n let her hand fall to her side, the gun still cocked should an occasion arise to use it.

"I have an idea." he suddenly announced.

"Oh?" Y/n asked.

She took a step back, returning to the water's edge. Alastor followed, leaning over the railing beside her. They watched one another closely, weapons still clutched loosely in their hands.

"Yep."

"You gonna tell me what it is or am I gonna have to guess?" Y/n teased after a moment, breaking the oddly comfortable silence that had fallen after Alastor's last words.

"There have been a few times, of late, where I've come a bit... uncomfortably close to being seen."

"Getting lazy." Y/n hummed, "Or maybe just cocky."

"It seems like you could use a hand, someone with brute strength in case anything goes wrong."

She scoffed, smiling just the slightest bit.

"Are you proposing we work together?"

"You're the one who said it, not me."

Y/n shook her head slightly, amused.

"How would I know you wouldn't just turn on me? End up killing me or decide not to step in if I needed help?"

"And how would I know that you wouldn't rat me out? Alert someone to where I was and what I was doing rather than telling me someone was coming? It's called trust, Y/n."

Y/n thought it over, fiddling with the gun in her grip as she did so. Alastor watched, seeing the gears turning in her mind through the light of her eyes.

"Fine." she said at last, un-cocking the gun and holding a hand out to him, "You've got yourself a deal."

Alastor smiled, slipping the knife back into his belt before grasping her hand in his. It was chilled by the air of the January night enveloping them.

"Deal."

Y/n quickly learned Alastor's preferred demographic. He had a penchant for angry men, drunks. Y/n had been a one off, a spur of the moment opportunity he had thought to take hold of. Alastor had not been like that for her. Y/n's preferred victims were also men. Anyone that showed any pressing interest in her, anyone who tried to take her home for the night, always ended up six feet under. For both, murder was a way of processing their personal experiences and traumas.

As a result of their deal, Y/n and Alastor began to spend more time together. They had to learn one another's intricacies, their ways of thinking, their nature of being. It was a necessity if anything was actually going to work. They both had rather busy work schedules, Alastor as a radio broadcaster with his very own show and Y/n as a seamstress at a local dress shop. Because of this, more often than not, the only time they had to get to know one another was through shared meals. Both of them had to eat, needed a lunch break or dinner. It was just what worked. Because of their slightly shared demographic of victim, they ended up in bars together quite frequently as well.

It was in one of these meet ups that they ran into their first difficulty. Y/n was sitting across a table from him outside a cafe, lazily sipping on a coffee as she perused the missing persons list in a newspaper. The newspaper was old, they were exchanging information about who was responsible for what. Working together didn't just mean knowing one another as they were now, but their histories as well.

They should have known not to sit in such a public place. Both had many connections in the city due to their jobs, though few friends. It just so happened on that day that the one true friend they did have in common was walking down the very street they sat on.

"Alastor?" Mimzy exclaimed, catching sight of his familiar face and moving towards their table.

Y/n folded the newspaper, placing it on the table as she turned towards the sound. Mimzy came to a stop, her brow furrowing in mild confusion as she saw her friend was not in fact alone.

"And Y/n, fancy meeting you two here."

"Pull up a chair, Mimz." Y/n smiled and Mimzy obeyed.

Swinging a spare chair from a nearby table, she quickly joined them.

"I haven't seen you two since the party! How have you been."

"Fine, fine." Alastor hummed and Y/n nodded her assent.

"And whats this with you two getting coffee?" Mimzy asked, a teasing smile slipping onto her face as Alastor took a sip of his own drink, "I'm not interrupting anything, am I?"

"No, not at all Mimz." Y/n shook her head, a slight smile on her face, "It's always a pleasure to see you."

"You sure this isn't a date or something? I mean, with the way you two left and everything... having coffee alone..."

Alastor nearly choked on his drink. Y/n and Mimzy turned to him as he put a hand to his chest, clearing his throat.

"Excuse me." he said and Mimzy's grin widened.

"Oh this is totally a date."

"No!" Alastor exclaimed, exchanging a fervent glance with Y/n across the table.

She raised her eyebrows, pursing her lips. Without words, she told him to handle it. Alastor sighed.

"Are you sure?" Mimzy asked, a suggestive tone to her voice.

"I... uh..." Alastor stuttered, his brain working in overdrive to think of anything else. It came up empty, "Fine. Yes. We're... we're on a date."

"You caught us." Y/n chimed in and Mimzy turned to her.

"Oh my stars! You two.... I shoulda guessed you'd get on like a house on fire. Shame I can't invite you to any more of my singles parties though Y/n, you are a riot."

Singles parties. A hunting ground. Y/n smiled.

"No, no, Mimz. We're not exclusive or anything."

Mimzy's eyes widened slightly at the revelation as Alastor shot Y/n a look across the table. Dating was going to be hard for them to sell but swingers too? What was she thinking.

"Really? How exotic." Mimzy hummed in thought.

"We're all going to hell anyways so, why not." Y/n shrugged.

"Oh you." Mimzy laughed, placing a hand on Y/n's shoulder as she got to her feet, "Well, I won't keep you love birds any longer. I'll see you next week for the next party then?"

"We'll see." Alastor hummed placidly.

Once Mimzy had gone, he rounded on Y/n.

"Swingers?" he asked, eyebrows raised, "Really?"

"Hey, you're the one who started the whole 'we're dating' thing." Y/n sighed, picking the newspaper back up and resuming the task at hand, "I just made it easier for us."

"It will utterly destroy my reputation if this gets out you know."

Y/n shot him a look over the top of the paper.

"Al, you got a lot more to worry about than pretending to be a swinger in terms of your reputation. Now, Marcus Alcost? Six four, buff, scar on his left forearm? Brown hair?"

"Blue eyes?"

"Umm... yeah."

"Yep, that was me."

"Nice. Musta been a tough one to take down."

Alastor would track men, following them out as they left the establishments in the small hours of the morning with the intent of returning to their families. He would stalk them, corner them, lead them in. Y/n would stand watch, alerting him at the first sign of trouble.

The moment she heard footsteps, chatter, Y/n would duck in. Grabbing Alastor by the arm, she would whisk him off in some random direction, having consistently used the time she was on lookout to scout for escape routes.

They had had a few close calls, one or two times he had had to press her up against a wall and pretend to kiss her to avoid prying eyes. They always had a good laugh after something like that. Mostly, things worked out well. They each had survived on their own for years at this point. They knew what they were doing, adding another person into the mix just made it a tad easier.

Y/n, on the other hand, didn't need to track her victims down, they did that work for her. She would dress up all pretty and the moment someone asked to take her home or something of the like, would agree. Then she'd pull them into some ally or another under the guise of not wanting to wait a second longer and attack. Alastor would stand behind her, arms crossed menacingly as she carried out her work. He threatened so she could perform and she never had any trouble thanks to him.

That was, until one night about a year into their little partnership. As the time had passed, their relationship had grown. They still held the ruse of dating up before anyone who asked why it was they each spent so much time with the other but, a real friendship had begun to blossom between them as well. As it turns out, they had a lot more in common than just a tendency to commit brutal murders. Y/n knew Alastor well by now, better than anyone else most likely, and he knew her as well. That was how he could tell something was wrong.

Y/n had given Alastor the usual signal from across the bar and he had settled his tab. As he followed the pair, Y/n and the tall man whose hand she held, Alastor had noticed something was off. Normally by this point Y/n was stumbling around, pretending to be drunk and ditzy. She was doing this very thing now but in a more halted and jagged way. The man she was with seemed more believably drunk than she was, swaying this way and that. Her movements were uncharacteristically harsh as she pulled the man into the ally about a block ahead of him.

Alastor picked up the pace, breaking into a light jog. He reached the ally and turned down it, expecting to see Y/n flirting with the man or with her gun out already. Instead, he was met with something entirely different.

At the back of the ally lay the huddled mass of the man. On top of him was Y/n. The thuds of her knuckles against his face was the only sound breaking the silence of the night. She hit him, again and again. Alastor stood there, stunned.

"Dear, whatever is the matter?" he asked at last, trying to wrap his head around the situation.

Thud. Thud. Thud.

"Y/n."

Thud. Thud. Thud.

He could see the splatters of blood now, on the ground around them and the wall behind. The thuds included the occasional squelch, the crack of a bone.

Thud. Thud. Thud.

"You'll ruin your hands for work tomorrow if you keep at this."

Still, she ignored him. There was a sickening crunch. Sighing, he approached.

Thud. Thud. Thud.

He could see it now, the man's mutilated face. Part of his skull looked like it had caved in. He had stopped moving long ago.

"Y/n, dear," Alastor tentatively reached out a hand towards her shoulder as he spoke, "don't you think he has had enough?"

Y/n whipped around to him, her eyes wild and her bloody raw knuckles raised. He froze, his hand hovering above her shoulder. There was blood everywhere. It soaked the sleeves of her collard shirt, it dripped from her fingers, it decorated her face and her bared teeth.

"What, you fucking want some too?"

Alastor's breath caught in his throat. His heart pounded against his ribcage, begging for escape. It wasn't fear, it couldn't be. He could take this girl down in ten seconds flat, blood hungry as she was.

Y/n's eyes, sharp with violence, softened slightly as she saw his reaction. She let her hands fall, resting them on the man's chest.

"He tried to drug me." she revealed, turning her eyes back to her mess, her masterpiece.

"He what?"

"Yeah." she sighed, using the back of her hand to push her hair from her eyes, leaving a residue of blood in the wake of the movement, "I caught him, switched the drinks."

Alastor shifted his gaze to the man before falling on Y/n once again. Her face was blank now, all the rage gone.

"He tried to drug me." she said again, her voice hollow.

At last, his hand found its home on her shoulder and she turned to face him once again. Alastor extended his free hand to Y/n. She examined it for a moment before daintily placing one of her own in his and allowing him to help her to her feet. Both her hands now rested in his as they looked back at the remains of the man.

"Well, he's definitely dead."

Alastor let go of Y/n's hands. Now free, he used one of them to turn her face to his. Blood spattered, wide eyed, lips slightly parted -- his heart fought for freedom from his chest once again.

"He deserved it."

Alastor let go of Y/n's chin and used the cuff of his jacket to wipe some of the blood from her face.

"Can you walk me home?"

Normally if she had asked something like that, Alastor would have teased her to no end. Why be scared of the monsters in the dark when she herself was one of them? But her voice had been small, timid. She had avoided his eyes and his fingers tingled at the prospect of her viewing him as protector.

"Of course, my dear."

They did not have another planned meeting until two weeks from that day. Y/n had a big project at work and wouldn't have any spare time because of it. Alastor, normally restless at the idea of having to wait so long to satisfy his bloodlust either by killing or seeing the show of death, was grateful for the respite. He was confused, overwhelmed even, because his strange reactions, the change in his patterns of thought towards the girl, hadn't ended at Y/n's front door.

No, she was haunting him. Like a vengeful ghost, he saw her in his mind. She took up every waking moment, he didn't know what to do. Alastor waited a day and still, it persisted. The skip of his heart, the odd slightly sick feeling in his stomach at the thought of their reunion. He waited three days and it didn't stop. By the time the end of the week rolled around and Alastor still found himself smiling at the prospect of only having to wait another week not to kill but to see Y/n again, he did the unthinkable. It was the only option he could come up with. Besides Y/n, she was the only other person in the world he even half trusted. Alastor called Mimzy.

"Alastor, darling!" she excitedly exclaimed into the phone, "What a surprise! What can I do for you?"

"Yeah, hey Mimzy. Um..." he struggled to find the words, fiddling with the phone cord as he walked to the window, looking down at the street below, "I just... I need your advice about something."

"What is it, hun?" she immediately replied, "Seems its got you in a tizzy, not a lot can do that."

"I... It's about Y/n."

"Uh-oh, trouble in paradise?"

"No. Maybe?" he turned from the window, collapsing in his desk chair, "I don't know."

"Spill."

"Well, we... I just.... Mimz, I can't stop thinking about her."

"Well I would hope not, you've been together for almost a year now."

"Yeah well, about that. It may have been a... stretching of the truth? Shall we say?"

"Al." Mimzy warned after a moment's silence, "If you are playing with this gi-"

"No!" he exclaimed, cutting her off and quickly crafting an excuse, "No. It was just to get our parents off our backs. We had a deal. They were both pestering us about when we were gonna get married, you know how it is."

"I thought your dad was dead?"

"My ma though, she really wants to see me settled down."

"I guess that explains the swingers thing." Mimzy sighed, "It didn't really seem in character for either of you. So, whats the matter?"

"I told you, I can't stop thinking about her. It's like... it's like... look, we're not dating, but we're friends, you know? And we were out at a bar together a few nights ago and she just... she did something and when I looked at her, it was like I died."

"That little minx." Mimzy laughed in glee, "What the heck did she do?"

"Just something, okay?"

"I have got to quiz her about this."

"No! Please, no. She'd... probably be embarrassed."

"Mmm... okay...." came Mimzy's doubtful reply, "So what was it you needed help with?"

"Well, that. It was like the breath had left my body entirely. I felt... sick, my chest hurt. It was so strange. I thought it would go away once I got some sleep but it didn't. Every time I think about her, it feels like there is a vice around my heart and I can't stop thinking about her."

"Al, seriously? This is what you're asking me about?"

"Yeah?" he uncertainly replied after a moment.

"What are you, twelve?"

"Mimzy, are you going to help or not?"

She sighed.

"Alastor, you have a crush on her."

A beat.

"I do not."

"Yes, you do. Maybe even more."

"I..." his brow furrowed, his breath left his body.

This was bad. This could be dangerous, detrimental even.

"Are you sure?"

"Butterflies in your stomach? Pains in your chest? Can't get her out of your mind? You're even breathless for christ's sake Al. It's textbook first pangs of love."

"Fuck."

Mimzy laughed.

"You're already pretend dating, what harm would asking her to do the real thing with you do? My bet is, she's probably been feeling the same thing about you. That tends to happen in cases like yours, I've seen it before. The whole 'fake love turns real' trope. It's overdone if you ask me."

"Mimzy, this isn't one of your trashy romance novels. This is my life."

"So live it radio man! Go get that girl."

Alastor was nervous, trembling even as he sat at the bar. His glass of whiskey had gone warm on the table as he watched Y/n dancing and having fun in the crowd. This was how it usually went when it was his turn to hunt, she'd have fun and he'd find a target. Once the target left, he'd grab her and they'd move out.

Tonight he was distracted and it showed. The man had nearly given them the slip. With Alastor's knife still sticking out of his shoulder, he had ducked away and started running. Of course that meant Alastor and Y/n had to give chase. They ran after him through the streets of New Orleans as he screamed bloody murder and Y/n's heels clicked definitively on the ground. He was thankful that the hour was late and no one was out and about, thankful the man was so drunk his words came out closer to garbled singing than pleas for help, thankful he was slowed by his consumption.

When they at last caught up with him, Alastor grabbed his second knife from his belt and, taking the man's hurt shoulder in his free hand, buried it deep in the man's back. He fell to the floor, sputtering, coughing up blood. In a few moments he was still. Alastor turned to Y/n, panting.

Her pretty eyes traced a path between murderer and victim a handful of times before a smile broke out onto her face. Before he could really register what was happening, she was doubled over in laughter, clutching her stomach.

Alastor watched Y/n, eyebrows raised as they both caught their breath. After about a minute, she straightened up and turned to him, wiping a tear from her eye.

"What?" Alastor asked with a wry smile, "What is so funny about a dead man."

"He..." she broke out into laughter again, "He... the way he ran! And we almost lost him?! Oh my god, Al, that coulda been so bad."

"The way... he ran?"

"He... didn't you see it? Oh my god, it was so funny. Like he was running in a three legged race with an invisible partner." she wheezed.

Alastor felt the heat pooling in his cheeks. Mimzy was right, it was time for him to live his life. A normal existence could coexist with his hobby, Y/n had already proved that to him.

"Didn't you see?" she asked again.

"No." he shook his head, "I was... I was watching you."

"You were... Al, theres no way you were." Y/n scoffed, "No way. If you were watching me, he would have gotten away. If you were watching me, it would meant that you were unconcerned by your oh-so-precious reputation being ruined. If you were watching me, it would mean..."

She trailed off as he took a step closer to her, his gaze flicking between her eyes and her lips. Y/n's cheeks flushed pink.

"Alastor."

Her voice was a dying prayer. Reaching a trembling hand up, he laid it on the back of her head, his fingers tangling with her hair as she looked up at him with wide eyes. Alastor closed the gap.

He had been so scared. Scared she would push him away, that she wouldn't kiss back. Even a little bit scared he'd just become the next name on her list of degenerate men she'd killed.

There was a moment, a split second, where his fears were realized. Then, she washed them all away. Hands buried in the lapel of his jacket, she pulled him closer, Y/n leaned in.

They broke apart after a moment, their cheeks flushed and utterly breathless.

"I-"

"Would you like to go on a date with me, Y/n?"

Her eyes narrowed in suspicion.

"Are you going to try to kill me again?"

"Oh please, I thought we'd moved past that darling."

Y/n smiled, still holding him close. Alastor let his hands fall onto her waist as they swayed slightly under the light of the moon.

"Yes Alastor. I will let you take me on a date."

"We will not be swingers."

Y/n laughed.

"Just had to make that clear."

"No, Alastor. If I am going to get you, I want you all to myself. Now, what are we going to do about that body?"

----

Next Part -> Cover Up pt. 2

[sugawhaaa]

ATEEZ SMUT REACTION

Catching them watching porn + porn they watch

Warnings:: smut

Pairing:: ateez x fem!reader

A/N:: hey sugababies 🥰 I am currently working on my kinktober like all day every day (not really) so that's why I haven't posted since 1969 😬

Extra note:: San, and Wooyoung get a little snappy and defensive but it's not too extreme.

Ateez h/c masterlist ⊹ ࣪ ﹏𓊝﹏⊹ ࣪

Taglist:: @cloudy-lilly @dwaekkii

Hongjoong

Hongjoong was cuddled up in his blankets, very late at night, with his phone screen lighting up his face. He had one arm beneath the blankets and the other shakily held up his phone in front of his face. His eyes were fixated on the way the woman's body jerked with each thrust from her partner. It made his body warm and tingly and his cock wouldn't stop twitching as he held it in the palm of his hand. Soft whimpers and breaths escape his lips as the woman's moans grow louder.

Oh how he wishes he was doing that to you. Pounding into you until you cried from how good you felt. He turned to look at you, peacefully sleeping next to him. Now he felt bad but he couldn't stop his fingers, rubbing his cock as he palmed at his aching balls, begging to be emptied. He let out a soft whine, louder than intended.

"I'm sorry Y/N, I'm so dirty," he sighed, frustrated at himself. You turned to him with a soft smile, your eyes partially opened.

"No you're not," you lazily rub his cheek and he's frozen in place. His hands freeze and the video keeps playing at a low volume. "You may be a little...slutty but I like it," you smile. "There's nothing wrong with that," your eyes flutter back shut. "If you want help you can just go ahead right now...I'm not very awake but I still have a pussy for you to use," you chuckle and Hongjoong finally unfreezes.

"R-Right uhm," he looks back at his phone as the video comes to an end, the lovers kissing before the screen goes blank. "You don't have to baby I can...help myself," he nods and you shake your head.

"I'm already naked anyways, cmon,"

Seonghwa

He was going all out. He refused to hold anything back mainly because he physically couldn't. He had never been such a mess, he was a straight-up mess. His entire body was soaked in sweat despite the fall weather outside, his hair clung to his face in wet strands, his lips were swollen and red from biting down on them, and his hands were soaked.

He couldn't even tell what his hand, cock, and balls were soaked in anymore. Sweat? Spit? Lube? Cum? He didn't know or care. On his bed where his head craned down to look was his phone, playing porn. He didn't bother to put headphones in for the first time in his life because he was just too horny. He knew you'd be home soon but he didn't care.

A drop of sweat falls from his nose onto the screen of his phone. "Shit," The droplet fell right where he could see the woman's pussy being spread open by her man's cock. He growled to himself, momentarily pausing everything. He wiped the sweat off his face with the back of his arm and took a moment to look at himself. "Disgusting," he said to himself out loud before taking a deep breath and continuing.

As he continued to try and get off the door opened to his lover, you. He sighed as you opened the door, knowing his fate. "I'm sorry, I know you were trying to work,"

"No baby I was worried about you," you say as you go over to him. Upon seeing the state he was in, you felt you were in the right for being worried. "Do you need help? You seem very frustrated sweetie," you put a hand on his shoulder and he turns off his phone, not bothering to pause the porn.

"No. I'm just tired," he sighs before grabbing you in his arms and laying down. "Sorry I know I'm sticky and sweaty but I just wanna cuddle," he nuzzles his face into your neck as he holds you on top of him.

"It's okay," you pat his back and he lets out a sigh.

Yunho

He thought he'd be home alone for the entire night so he brought out all the lube and sex toys on the couch and turned on the TV with some porn. He kept himself entertained for quite a long time. He started by watching some hentai and rubbing himself through his boxers but as he fell into a rabbit hole of intimate sex sessions recorded and uploaded onto pornhub he got too into it.

He found one video of a couple at a hotel just going at it so passionately but still very rough. Yunho continously jerked off to this video on loop until there was a puddle of lube and cum beneath him. Just as he was at the end of his session, the last final surge of energy, he heard the door open. He panicked and scrambled to find the remote only to find it had lube on it.

He tried to press the pause button down but his finger kept slipping off. "Shit shit shit shit," he then noticed you walk into the room. "Y/N! Y-Youre home early!" He proceeds to jam the button in an attempt to get the porn to pause.

"Are you watching porn on our Tv?" You had to slightly raise your voice above speaking level for him to hear you due to how loud he turned up the volume.

"Yes! I can't get it to stop!" He cried out before burying his face in one of the pillows, the video still playing. You calmly pick up the remote, dry it off and pause the video before sitting next to Yunho.

"I'm not mad baby," you put a hand to his back and he just whines into it. "Are you embarrassed?"

"Mhm," he says into the pillow and you rub his back.

"Why? What part is embarrassing?" You tilt your head and he finally turns to look at you.

"The fact I was watching it on our TV, it was really loud and you walked in. And I also couldn't get the video to pause so you saw the kind of content I watch..." he holds the pillow up go cover himself.

"That's all nonsense," you giggle. "You didn't expect me to be here and if doing something like this gets you off, who cares?" You shrug and tuck some of his hair back. "And trust me, I watch all kinds of porn, this is nothing new to me," you kiss his forehead and you see his body instantly loosen.

"Really?" He blushes softly but he feels much better now, excited that you're here now.

Yeosang

You step out of the shower and dry yourself off. You dry your hair and wrap it up in a towel before doing your skincare. As you apply your moisturizer you hear sounds from the room next door. You assume it's nothing but the sounds persist and it sounds like Yeosang crying. You unwrap your hair and use the towel to cover yourself lazily. You rush into Yeosangs room only to find him doing pretty much the opposite of crying.

He had his legs spread as wide as they could. He was furiously jerking himself off as his hips bucked up. His opposite hand held his phone and the wires tangled around his body before reaching his ears. Out of the entirety of the sight, the most lewd and exciting part was his facial expressions. He looked so pathetic like he was about to cry because he wanted to cum so badly.

"Yeosang," you say softly but it seems his headphones were a little too loud and he didn't notice you there because his eyes were squinted shut. "Yeosang," you say louder as you come to his bedside. He opens his eyes and jumps back from you. He yanks the earbuds out of his ears by the wires.

"Y-Y/N, I thought you were still showering," he looks at you wide-eyed.

"I thought you were crying so I came to check on you," you explain and he sighs, leaning back. You noticed his body shine as he moved, the light showing off his sweat. "I'm sorry I just...wanted to make sure you were okay," You put a hand to his shoulder as he covers his face with his hands.

"I feel so bad," he whimpers and you tilt your head.

"Why baby? This is all normal," you pat the back of his head and he looks back down at his cock, still hard and throbbing.

"But I'm not normal about it," he sighs and runs a hand through his sweaty hair. "I do it in weird places and in weird ways, and I watch weird porn," he sighs and shakes his head. "I just hate when I get like this," he explains and you pat his head again.

"No baby, there is no such thing as weird ways to masturbate," you rub his cheek and he sighs. "Trust me, and porn it doesn't really matter at the end of the day. If it gets you hard and makes you cum who cares," you explain as you sit down next to him. "Trust me baby, you're healthy," you kiss him and you see a smile creep on his face. He looks at you and then nods. He picks up his phone and pauses the hentai he was watching, now not afraid to admit he was even watching porn in the first place.

The two of you snuggle up and chat about sex and your desires a little more, trying to comfort him and show him that he was healthy.

San

San was sitting in bed with his hand in his sweatpants, pumping his cock aggressively as he groaned loudly. His eyebrows were furrowed as he shakily held his phone. "Fuck I'm gonna cum," he groans out as he throws his head back. When he picks his head back up to see the mess he has made in his pants he meets eye contact with you. "Y/N!" He jumps and tosses his phone to the side while trying to turn down the volume. His cock still strained against his pants as cum spurted out of it onto his pants. You stare at him for a moment watching his face turn red before quietly approaching him.

"Hey, are you okay?" You ask softly as San keeps his head down, pretending to be preoccupied by cleaning himself.

"I'm fine," he says slightly frustrated as he wipes off his pants. You put a hand to his back and rub it softly.

"It's just...I've never seen you masturbate so aggressively," you stroke the back of his neck, putting his hair down as you do so.

"I'm fine," he growls back again as he clenches the tissues in his fist before throwing them out. As you watched him toss it into the trash can you noticed it was overflowing with tissues and your worry grew.

"San I'm serious, how long have you been doing this for?" You say worriedly and he sighs before finally looking at you. His eyes were watery and red, puffy around the edges, his lips were red and swollen, he looked a mess. "Oh San," you put a hand to his cheek and he sighs in frustration.

"It's been at least...four hours," he looks down again and you kiss his cheek softly. "I don't know why but I just can't stop, it hurts," he whines softly, suddenly clinging to you now. "Please Y/N, please help me," he wraps his arms around your waist as he turns his desk chair to you. He looks up at you with puppy dog eyes before kissing your stomach. "I'm sorry for snapping at you," he nuzzles the side of his face against you as he speaks.

"It's okay, you were just frustrated," you pet his head and he nods glad that you understand him.

Mingi

Mingi had his blanket stuffed in his mouth as he used your panties to jerk himself off. He knew it was gross but he couldn't help it. After having a wet dream he saw your panties in the laundry basket and couldn't not use them. Next to him he had his laptop playing porn at a rather high volume as the girl on the screen got pounded into the bed. "Fuck Y/N," he groans. "I wish you were here right now," he whines softly.

More groans and chokes escape Mingi's lips as your pink panties wrap around his cock. "I'm cumming, fuck!" He growls as cum overflows from his cock, staining your panties with his sperm. As his body relaxes he pulls the panties away from his cock and strings of semen pull from it. He moans softly at the sight before continuing to use them. Just as he started fisting himself again you walked into the room.

"Mingi?" You say softly and he jumps. He scrambles to pause the video and accidentally puts cum onto the pause button.

"Y/N! When did you get home..?" He blushes. You were supposed to be at a friend's house until after lunch but apparently plans changed.

"Well my friend had to take her cat to the vet so I decided it was best for me not to stick around," you then notice what Mingi had been using to fuck himself. Your panties. "Are those my...?" You come closer to him and Mingi is all around flustered.

"Y/N, I promise it's not like that," he covers himself with a blanket but you simply brush it away.

Wooyoung

Wooyoung always struggled to stay quiet. He'd bite on his knuckles, the bed sheets, his lips, his pillow but nothing worked. He just couldn't help but moan and whimper as loud as possible. So when he was furiously jerking himself off to the point his balls hurt from being squished so aggressively by his hand he couldn't possibly keep his mouth shut.

"A-Ah! Fuck, mmngh yes yes yes, I'm gonna cum!" He cried out as his fist moved at an insatiable pace as he watched the man on the screen getting pegged. Oh, how he wishes you were fucking his ass or squeezing his cock with your tight pussy walls ugh he needed you right fucking now. Just as he was about to cum you walked into his room.

He didn't stop his hands though, how could he? He was just about to have the most insane orgasm of his life. His head was throbbing from the tension. "I can't stop," he groaned out before exploding into his orgasm. Cum shoots out from his cock onto his chest as he gasps for air and all you can do is just stand there. He's left panting, his hair in his face, the sweat making it stick to his face.

"Wooyoung are you okay? You look...a little rough," you come over to him and notice the dark circles under his eyes and his red lips and eyes. "Were you crying?" You tuck the hair out of his face and he grumbles, turning his head away from you.

"N-No," he looks away from you before looking back at his cock, standing flat against his stomach. "Fuck," he growls and sits up. You look at him confused before noticing he was still hard as a rock. However, his cock was bright red all the way through, his balls too. His tip was slightly purple as well. Even after just cumming so much he was still hard?

"Is everything okay?" You ask again even though you knew he wasn't fine.

"I'm fine," he says before tearing up slightly. "God damn it, I'm not okay," he sighs and leans back. "I've been jerking off for fucking hours and I'm still so hard it hurts," he says as he brings his hands down to touch himself again.

"Wait," you take his hand softly and he whines softly. "You're hurting yourself Wooyoung, you should take a break," you pull his wrist and place his hand in yours. He looks at you desperately before sighing. He nods and lays back. You gently touch along the base of his cock and he winces slightly. "were you up last night too?" You ask and he nods.

As you touch him, even the slightest touch makes him jump but not in a pleasurable way. He seemed in pain. "I'll get you a cold cloth to ease the stinging a bit. I'm guessing it's sort of like a friction burn," you say as you stand up and Wooyoung just lays there defeated, clearly absolutely exhausted.

Jongho

He was always sneaky when he'd watch porn and anytime he got walked in on with his fist around his cock. He always hid it very well. However the one time he had to let loose his when he got an unexpected visitor.

He was curled up in his bed to the side. He held his phone up with one hand and the other was rubbing his cock. That's when you walked in. You came over to him and wrapped your arms around him. "Hey baby~" you cooed and he froze in place. The screen of his phone was in your line of sight and when you finally noticed you couldn't help but blush. "What's this now," you tease as you reach for his phone. He quickly pulls it out of your reach however.

"Nothing," he says as if you didn't already see the big "Pornhub" font.

"C'mon baby, it's fine~ I watch porn too~ I wanna see what you like," your words instantly shift something in Jongho's brain. He looks at you with wide eyes as he no longer tries to hide his phone. The kind of porn he had been watching came as a surprise to you. It was basically lovemaking. There was no heavy dirty talk, loud sounds or moans, it was just pure natural love making. "Oh," you say softly as you watch it.

"Is it weird?" He asks shyly with a slight smile.

"No, no, just not what I was expecting from you," you smile and pause the video, setting his phone to the side. You crawl on top of him and trace your hands down his biceps as you lay on top of him. You could feel his wet boner throbbing against you and you chuckle softly. "Did you get to cum yet?" You smile and he can't help but smile back.

[a2zillustration]

Farewell

Not "farewell," but "see you later."

| First | | Previous |

[[ All Croissant Adventures (chronological, desktop) ]]

[[ All Croissant Adventures (app) ]]

...Time to blather on under the cut. I've got thank yous, some notes about potential future comics, and if you scroll to the end of the post, I've decided to compile Croissant Adventures into a physical book. It's mostly for me, so I can hold all TWO HUNDRED AND FIVE of these strips in my hands, as a brick, but if you'd like to own a copy as well, I'll have a link to the preorders down below. If this is where you're going to stop reading, I'll extend a quick heartfelt thanks to you for joining me on this adventure!

Thank you, reader.

This is undeniably the largest project I've ever tackled in my art career; it was never supposed to be this big, and I expected maybe a handful of people to read it, at most. Instead, it became this massive project that I've been working on for ten months straight, and in the end these characters meant so much to me. I'm incredibly grateful for everyone who's bothered to read my little comic strips, whether it was just one or two, or if you've been here since the beginning, following Croissant's adventure from the minute they plummeted off the nautiloid. Thank you so much for being here and supporting this project. Thank you to everyone who left kind words and comments, sent me asks about Croissant, liked or reblogged these posts, or just read these and enjoyed them! While I was determined to finish this project no matter what happened, you certainly made it all the more fun and kept me excited to tell you the next part of Croissant's story.

Thank you, Larian.

If by some chance someone at Larian ever happens to see these, I also want to give an immense thank you to everyone who was a part of making this game. I don't play that many games these days, but BG3 rocketed to the top of my all-time favorite games almost immediately. (It was also the game that made me feel the most out of anything I've ever played; I got legitimately depressed for a few days during my run don't worry I'm fine now we're all good haha). You can tell there was so much work, and so much love involved in this game's development, and I'm so happy the studio has been rewarded with multiple awards in recognition of that dedication to making a fantastic game. Thank you again for sharing this story with us, and I can't wait to see what the studio does in the future.

Is this goodbye?

I'm hoping this is less of a "goodbye," and more of a "see you later." I'll probably take a bit of a break, since I've put off other projects for months, and art fight is happening, but I have many more things I'd like to add to Croissant's story! I have yet to play the epilogue, and I intend to illustrate parts of that depending on what happens. I also have a handful of comics for post-game Breadweave, in addition to some scenes I thought would've happened in-game but weren't canon so I left them out of the original story. (If I haven't gotten to these in a few months and you find yourself wondering about Croissant again, my ask box is always open, feel free to give me a good kick to get me back into their story, lol).

...A book?

I said I never intended this project to be so large, and I meant it. But now that I'm sitting here with two hundred and five Baldur's Gate 3 Tav comics, I really wanted to compile them into a physical book for me to hold. This is mostly for me, but if you'd also like one, I'll have a preorder available in my shop until the end of July.

✨✨✨ Croissant Adventures Preorder ✨✨✨

If you made it to the end of this post, I can only thank you again, from the bottom of my heart. I hope Croissant's story brought you joy, and if you're able to play BG3, I hope that you're having just as much fun in your own tavs' stories.

[junnieverse]

DRUNK - DAZED ➳ ENHYPEN

➙ enhypen's reaction to you not recognising them whilst you were drunk

pairing: enhypen x gn!reader

genre: crack, very little fluff

request: " so yk the series u did with the drunk enha not recognizing their partner… u should write about the roles being reversed and their partner is the one that can’t recognize them "

warnings: lowercase intended, mentions of alcohol/drinking, not proofread, jake swears once in his drabble

a/n: thank you for the request anon, here it is! this was a cool idea too so I hope you liked it :)

a/n (2): I also wasn't sure on whether or not to add riki into this one as well but I decided to go for it but riki is not drinking and the reader is legal to drink in the drabble

a/n (3): you can also find my post on enha not recognising their s/o whilst drunk [ here ]

🖇️ — 양정원 ; JUNGWON !

you had been out celebrating with some friends and jungwon had been their too to make sure you didn't go overboard

what he wasn't expecting was for you to claim to not know who he was when it was time to leave

he wasn't suprised by your drunken behavior but he was taken aback when you asked him to prove he actually was your boyfriend

"If you're really my boyfriend, tell me something only he would know about me?" you interrogate him raising an eyebrow

"You once farted in front of my friends and blamed my dog." he says shaking his head

immediately covering his mouth you shush him feeling embarrassed at the revelation

"I can't believe Jungwon told you, he swore never to say anything." you whisper pouting as he gently removed your hands

"That's because I am Jungwon, now let's get you sobered up."

despite having already known this little secret you still couldn't seem to look Jungwon in the eye until you ran away into your room to go sleep to avoid him

🖇️ — 이희승 ; HEESEUNG !

you had a night out with some friends and your boyfriend was always the go-to person to call when you got hammered

tonight was unexpectedly different when you saw riki and pushed him away

even your friends would try telling you to sober up so heeseung could take you home but you argued that you didn't know him

"I DON'T KNOW THAT MAN! DON'T FEED ME TO THE WOLVES YOU PUNKS!" you yell out to your friends

he was shocked to say the least because you've never acted this way around him

soon your boyfriend had to step in and he carried you over his shoulder whilst you hit his back

"LET GO OF ME YOU CREEP BEFORE I CALL THE POLICE BECAUSE IF I CALL MY BOYFRIEND HE WON'T GO EASY ON YOU!" you fight as your words came out slurred

despite your pretty weak defence, he oddly found this entertaining

he makes sure to help you sober up and feeds you until you fall asleep

🖇️ — 박종성 ; JAY !

you were a mess

jay got a call from your friends that you were crying saying you missed him and so he came over to get you

turns out you were just incredibly drunk and rambling over how perfect your boyfriend was and you 'didn't deserve him'

"I'm right here darling, wanna leave?" jay says rubbing your back as you look at him dazed

"Who are you sir?" you ask sniffling softly as you wipe a tear

he was left too stunned to speak

thought it was just you messing around with him but after he laughed and he say how stoic you were, he realised you were serious

"What, I'm literally your boyfriend, it's me Jay." he says pointing to himself as you shake your head

"No, my boyfriend is way cuter, no offense sir." you tell him taking another sip of your drink

he wasn't sure whether to take your words as an offense or a compliment but he still couldn't believe it

🖇️ — 심재윤 ; JAKE !

jake got a little pouty seeing as you couldn't recognise him

all he wanted was your affection but you wouldn't even touch him, CUDDLE THE MAN BEFORE HE DIES STARVED OF TOUCH

to make matters worse was you tried everything in your power to avoid him thinking you were in danger

poor guy had to chase after you trying to calm you down but to no avail

you'd tried hiding, screaming and even running away but he always came back

"Baby please stop, it's me, Jake. Layla's dad." he tells you making you go into shock

"HOW DO YOU KNOW MY BOYFRIEND'S DOG YOU STALKER?!" you yell at him as you hiccup slightly still drunk

you still didn't believe his words so you decided to call jake for yourself and somehow the phone in the stranger's pocket rang

"YOU ATE JAKE!!" you accuse him pointing at him in horror

"Oh for fucks sakes." he says done with your drunk self

🖇️ — 박성훈 ; SUNGHOON !

he was offended to say the least

"But (y/n) it's me, you're handsome and funny boyfriend. Snap out of it." he says shaking you lightly with his hands on your shoulders

you on the other hand was ready to fight because you couldn't believe this 'stranger' just laid his hands on you

"One more word buddy and I'll throw my shoe at you!" you warn your boyfriend slapping his hands off as you turn to leave

sunghoon was very adamant to get you to recognise him because he was your designated ride home anyway

"Sweetheart it's me, I'm Sunghoon!" he says again getting aggravated

true to your prior warning, you indeed took off your shoe and threw it at him

hoon woke up the next morning with a huge bump on his forehead and you couldn't remember a thing

"Where did you get that bump from baby?" you ask handing him an ice packing having no idea

he still wonders how someone so incredibly drunk had such great aim

🖇️ — 김선우 ; SUNOO !

"CAUSE IIIIII KNOW WHAT YA LIKE BOY!" you sing (more like scream) Hype Boy at the top of your lungs as sunoo directed you into the house

you had a few glasses of wine earlier on after working and sunoo was left in your care having picked you up after a karaoke night with friends

"Thank you for the ride mister taxi man." you tell your boyfriend getting out of the car

he was left very confused because he'd thought it was a joke at first when you got into the backseat and told him your address but he didn't pay much mind to it

"Sir why are you coming into my house." you ask trying to stand up straight to only lose your balance but sunoo was quick to catch you

"I live with you silly, I'm your boyfriend." he explains realising you didn't recognise him

"I already have one, his name is Sunoo, see." you tell him showing him your lockscreen of you and sunoo together

"Okay how about you go to sleep and your boyfriend will be right next to you once you wake up." he tells you gently brushing your hair

true to his words, you woke up to your sweet boyfriend right next to you still not realising he was with you the entire night

🖇️ — 西村 力 ; NI-KI !

as hurt as he was seeing you fail to recognise him, part of him also found it adorable

he knew he should've tried to help you sober up but watching you was like watching a patient who'd just gotten their wisdom tooth out and the gas had taken over

"Did you know I'm actually a secret spy, it's a secret but I'm telling you even though I've never met you before." you whisper looking around as if not wanting anyone to hear you

he would simply play along because he found this extremely entertaining

and this would be great content as birthday exposure

"And I have this super tall boyfriend, he's nine feet tall now." you say proudly not realising how ridiculous you actually sound

"You kinda remind me of him, only difference is you're much shorter... and he's way more handsome." you tell him mumbling the last part but riki caught on

it stopped being funny after you had made fun and complimented him at the same time and he realised you needed to stop with the drinks

he couldn't believe you were complimenting another man right in front of him... it was him but that's not the point-

[mailuvsjayke]

Listening and watching the no doubt mv, that hyung line might be into semi public sex LIKE THEY BE UP DOING THE NASTY AT WORK 😭😩

18+ mdni

note: mmm nonnie just think about it!!!!

imagine being hyung line's higher up, often looked with admiration and respect by others in the office because of your position, but what the employees don't know is the fact that each of them like to fuck you real good in your office !!!!!!!

Heeseung is like a partner to you, your right hand man, the person you'd go to when you need to deal with heaps of documents and tasks to at least keep you at bay.

And in return you'd let him fuck your throat real good and make sure his cock memorizes how it feels being wrapped around by your warm cavern, dripping with saliva and drool, somehow finding a way to force your throat deeper down his dick so good you dont even know if it's possible. He'd make sure to fuck it real hard you'd be hoarse during your next group meeting just to poke teases and fun at you afterwards.

Jay, more firm, and definitely sharp, rather wanting to express his appreciation silently through acts of good workmanship, such as bringing you coffee and offering to take over charge for other employees to keep you on your feet during busy weeks.

And in return you'd let him fuck you onto your work table, legs mounted on his shoulders without bothering to put important documents to the side, making sure he'll cum over and over inside you until your belly bulges against your high waisted pencil skirt. Your company had soon complained to you in the future about how much paper has been wasted, probably from you having to secretly reprint several documents due to both of your juices ruining them.

Jake's like a typical golden retriever, open to obeying you, not hesitating to do tasks when told, and his attendance is nearly perfect, as well as helping others around him no matter the status. And he never forgets to greet you or give you a short relay of everything you need to do for the week.

In return you'd let him eat you out, stuffed up in some random room in the building, the more you cum the deeper he burrows his nose into your poor and abused cunt without pause. His whimpers and pants turning you on and sending your already overstimulated cunt a new bolt of pleasure and wetness. Even when you're crying and thrashing against his face, he just won't let up, only looking at you with that grin, only to plunge back in to fuck you with his tongue a little harder. Janitors have been complaining about odd sticky stains around random rooms, though you don't dare address it.

Sunghoon, one of your younger employees, despite not being so engaging and rather silent, he's sharp and gets his work done without struggle, submitting his tasks to you earlier than intended and seeing his gaze linger a little too long on you before he quietly offers to take over other people's unfinished tasks to get closer to you.

In return you'd let him in, letting him fuck your holes for every task he'd finish, making sure to get the chance to cum anywhere in or on you to grab what he can when he knows the others are doing the exact same. He's watched you fucked them, memorizing what pleasures you the most, and whispering how he'd do so much better than them, how you only need him and he could fulfill every part of you. Employees have started to question why tasks are suddenly being dismissed from them, not knowing you secretly allow sunghoon to accomplish them all just to get a chance to fuck you in that lust filled office room of yours.

After giving them back what you owe all the time, coming into work so sore and so open, your mind riddled with thoughts of all four of them, you wonder if they'd be willing to fuck you all at once.

Yet you know how taboo these work dynamics are, are you really willing to put your career on the line for some quick fucks?

-------

i was just gonna post this by itself until nonnie said this and decided to just answer their ask with the little drabble i made for no doubt

bro jake and heeseung were so insane i literally busted a nut

sorry i went mia for a bit luvs</3

[dandylovesturtles]

Using a random number generator for the angst prompts: 20 Starved + 30 Dangerous Temperatures

... and Leo, of course.

OH GOD OK

uh so. I had an idea. and I decided to write it for this ask I got forever ago. And then, uh.

it really

really got out of hand.

This is a pretty dark fic (even for me) and at the current moment in time it is hurt/no comfort. I do intend to write a part 2, probably tomorrow, but as of the time I'm typing this author's note I've been writing for around 5+ hours straight and I need to take a break! So please, if you don't want to read all this without the comfort included, feel free to wait for the next part before reading! I'll link it and the end once it's posted.

Content warnings: Kidnapping, confinement, psychological torture, nonconsensual voyeurism (I guess this is the best way to put this; Leo isn't doing anything sexual but it's still violating), mild violence, HEAVY ANGST, Leo just having the shittiest time possible.

I HOPE?? YOU ENJOY??? hahahaha....

btw this is set between S2 and the movie (though tbh its canon compliance is... /waves hand)

-----

When Leo imagined himself getting captured by some kind of shady, quasi-governmental agency intent on imprisoning mutants, it was never anything like this.

When he let his mind go there, he always pictured that he would be strapped to a table. Maybe muzzled. That scientists would stand over him, scalpels and drills in hand, and start to take him apart. That they'd examine him piece by piece, and wouldn't give him any anesthesia while they did it.

But there is no table, no muzzle, no restraints at all. He's just in a room.

Well, a cell, technically - the steel door is locked, and there are no windows, no furniture but a bare cot in one corner and a lone toilet in another. But it doesn't really look like a cell. It looks like a room.

A very, very white room. White walls. White ceiling. White tiles (with white grout, even). The toilet is white, a roll of white toilet paper on the floor next to it. The only things that aren't white are the cot and the door and Leo himself.

They took his gear and his weapons, because of course they did. Since the door is steel, he already knows he's not breaking it down; he gives it a half-hearted slam anyway, just to say he tried. He should be able to just portal out, except he hasn't learned how to use his portals without his swords to channel his ninpo through, and there's nothing in here with him that he can use to make new ones.

So he's stuck. He's going to have to wait until someone opens that door for some reason. Or, of course, until his family swings by to pick him up. Though, if possible, he'd like to escape before that happens. The image in his mind, of sitting outside his cell and grinning at them as they arrive to rescue him, is too cool to pass up.

He's not sure how long it's been already. He knows that they knocked him out after ambushing him, and he doesn't know how long he was unconscious. The heavy molasses feel of his head and arms when he woke up suggests that he was drugged. It's wearing off now, though, which means he has a clear head to take in the all of nothing that's in the room with him.

He sits on the cot he woke up on and waits for something to happen.

There's no way for him to tell time, but he thinks it's an hour or so later when there's a sudden beep, and then the sound of a metal panel sliding up. It's a slot near the door that has just opened - inside the revealed alcove is a bottle of water.

He comes to it curiously, taking a long look around the bottle. The slot doesn't open straight through, and even if it did, it's not big enough for anything more than his arm or a foot to fit through. He thinks it must function like an airlock, or maybe they slid the bottle down from somewhere above - he feels around just in case, and finds that the slot is enclosed on all sides but his. Probably his airlock theory, then.

As soon as he removes the bottle, the panel slams shut again.

"You're really determined to keep me in here, huh?" he says to whatever hidden cameras are watching him. He carries the water bottle back to his cot, but doesn't open it, instead setting it down on the floor by the wall. The paranoid part of his brain, the one that doesn't miss a trick, is reminding him that drinking the water is probably a bad idea. Who knows what they might have put in it?

He sits on the cot for awhile longer. Still, nothing happens.

"I'm getting pretty bored in here," he says for the audience that must be somewhere. "Come on, you have a one of a kind turtle in here, and you don't even want to talk to me?"

Time passes, slow and quiet. Leo goes through periods where his anxiety spikes and he starts to wonder if he's been abandoned by whoever brought him here, before the boredom eventually numbs the anxiety back out. Another bottle of water is eventually delivered, and this one he keeps in his hands after retrieving it. It's completely unlabeled, not even a "Use by" date printed on the bottle itself, so it doesn't provide much mental stimulation. He spins the bottle to make little whirlpools inside, because it's something to do.

He's trying to make the fastest whirlpool he can when he hears a sudden click, different from the beep of the water bottle hole, and he looks up just in time to see a large section of the wall in front of him turn black, and then light up to show the room beyond his cell.

He jolts, setting the bottle aside. He knew they must be watching him, but somehow he didn't catch that part of the wall was a whole window.

His audience isn't very large - five people, unless there are others he can't see. Two wear lab coats, two wear fatigues... but the one who comes to stand directly in front of the window is wearing a black suit, with steel rimmed glasses. He leans forward, and speaks into a small microphone.

"Inmate 24365," says the suited man. "I am Agent Bishop, of the Earth Protection Force. My subordinates tell me that you can speak and understand the English language. Is this correct?"

"Qué?" Leo asks.

Bishop does not look amused. "Inmate 24365," he says, "you have two options. You can cooperate with me, answer my questions, and we will make your stay here more comfortable. Do not cooperate, and we will make your stay uncomfortable. Do you understand?"

Leo pretends to hem and haw over this. "How comfortable are we talkin'?"

"I'm sure you would like some dinner."

"You know, I'm not really hungry." He says it to be difficult, but it's actually true - the uncertainty of the situation has put his stomach in too many knots to want to eat anything. "Maybe if you offer me some comic books? Or a TV?

To Bishop's credit, his face doesn't so much as twitch. He keeps his steely eyes locked on Leo. "Answer our questions, and you will receive food. Do you understand?"

Leo stays noncommittal. "What are the questions?"

He's expecting Bishop to ask about his family. He's not expecting what comes next.

"How many gateways are there between New York City and the hidden yokai enclave?" he asks. "How are these gateways accessed? What kind of defensive capabilities do the yokai have?"

Leo keeps the surprise off his face. Bishop thinks he's a yokai.

This is, overall, a good development. Bishop might not know about Leo's family, then, or at least not know that they live on the surface. This means the Earth Protection Force likely isn't pursuing his brothers, which means they will be safe until they can help Leo get out of here.

He doesn't let the relief show through, either. Bishop doesn't know anything, and now Leo just has to ride out the next few hours until the calvary arrives.

"You know," he says, "I think I'm good with my current levels of comfort."

If Bishop is mad or frustrated or dismayed by this choice, he doesn't show it. His expression stays stony as he stares in at Leo, sizing him up.

"Very well," he says after a few more seconds. "I will see you tomorrow, then."

The window goes dark, and then turns stark white to match the walls. Leo wants to go over and tap at it, see if it feels different when he touches it, but knowing that Bishop is surely still there, watching him, keeps him rooted to the cot.

He goes back to making whirlpools with the bottle. If they aren't going to entertain him, he isn't going to entertain them, either.

-----

Another water bottle comes some time after his talk with Bishop. He finally opens this one and takes a cautious sip. Nothing tastes off or strange, so he drinks more. They don't want to feed him, but they're fine keeping him hydrated. No reason to stay thirsty, then.

He wishes the water calmed the anxiety still roiling in his stomach, but if anything it just makes him feel even more energized. He bounces his foot and surveys his room again, looking for any weak spots or access points. He can't see anything, though, other than the areas where he knows the water bottle hole and window are; even the vents that relentlessly blow cold air into the room are well hidden.

Knowing that there are people standing just outside his cell watching him, like some kind of zoo animal, puts him on edge. The window is so big that he's pretty sure the only blind spots are either directly underneath it or right by the door on the same wall. After debating it, he leaves his cot and sits on the floor underneath the window, surveying the room from a different angle now and still coming up empty. At least they're going to have a harder time staring at him.

His eyes catch on the toilet in the corner, directly across from the window. It's not in the blind spot, and realizing this makes his insides lurch uncomfortably - hopefully he has a chance to bust out before using it becomes necessary.

Though, he's not sure when that chance is going to come. If they have a slot to pass him water, they could use that to pass him food, too, so it's unlikely that anyone is going to open the door unless they need to take him out.

So maybe his fantasy of being outside when his brothers arrive isn't going to happen. Well, that's okay; he'll just be sure to make some other part of their escape totally rad. That will make up for the embarrassment of getting kidnapped a block from Run of the Mill.

(Seriously, some kind of ninja he is, to let a bunch of human soldiers sneak up on him.)

He drains the water bottle, then starts to roll it back and forth across the floor, like a cat batting at a toy. Leo's not sure what's worse right now: the worry or the boredom. There's nothing to look at and no one to talk to, just an empty room with him and his water bottles.

He's too keyed up to sleep, and the fluorescent lights are still on, anyway. He has no way of telling what time it is, so maybe it just isn't that late yet. And even sitting here, in the blind spot, the idea of closing his eyes while people are watching makes unease crawl up his spine. Staying awake is the easy choice. He'll sleep after he's out of here.

So he sits under the window and rolls his bottle back and forth, back and forth, with only the sound of plastic on tile to keep his thoughts company.

-----

The first three water bottles came pretty regularly, but now there is a very long stretch where nothing is delivered. Leo is starting to think maybe it really is night now. They don't turn off the lights in his cell, though, and he has no controls to do it himself. At least it helps with the whole "staying awake" thing.

Just in case they've decided to suspend his water privileges along with the food, he holds off drinking any more for now.

Speaking of food, his appetite has finally decided to return. His stomach starts to growl at him after several hours (he thinks) of sitting in the floor, an annoying emptiness in his stomach. Knowing there's no food accessible just makes the hunger sharper, but he puts it out of his mind the best he can with nothing else to focus on. He can eat once he's free.

Which should be soon. Seriously, his brothers have to be on their way by now, right?

He's pretty sure it's been the better part of a day, if not a whole day, since he was kidnapped. And, okay, he's willing to give them some leeway; it's understandable if they got a late start. He did storm out of the lair after his latest fight with Raph, and no one ever came to check on him when he did that. Understandably, he thinks, because who wants to be around Bad Mood Leo? Not even Leo wants to be around Bad Mood Leo!

But he'd already turned back into Good Mood Leo by the time he left Hueso's, so surely they knew it had been more than enough time. They would have noticed when he didn't come home. They would have realized something happened. They would be looking for him.

And if they're looking for him, they'll find him! Obviously.

His stomach growls again, and Leo leans his head back against the wall behind him. Maybe he shouldn't think of being at Hueso's. Now he just wants pizza. Pepperoni and mushroom, maybe, or Hawaiian. Mix it up a little with the barbeque chicken.

Another growl. He groans out loud.

He stays awake, twisting and crinkling the empty bottle in his hands, until another full one finally arrives.

-----

No chance to escape comes before using the toilet is necessary.

He tried to hold out, he really did, but he ended up drinking more water to stave off the growing hunger, and it's lowkey cold in here, which doesn't help. Still, the issue of the window sends an uneasy shiver up his spine, doubting that any people outside will feel the need to turn away and give him some privacy. Maybe he should have gone while he suspected it was nighttime.

(Maybe he shouldn't assume they ever aren't watching him.)

He stands up and walks over to the cot, giving it a light nudge with his foot. In a stroke of luck, it isn't bolted to the floor, and it's light enough that he can lift it. The black mesh it's made of is tightly woven, enough that not much is visible through it. It will have to do.

He picks it up and drags it over in front of the toilet, propping it up on its legs so it makes a small wall between himself and the window. It's hardly ideal, but the semblance of privacy makes him relax somewhat.

(He can't think about how there are surely cameras in the room watching him from all angles, making his attempt at a barrier moot. He knows better than anyone that sometimes pleasant lies are necessary.)

After he does his business, he leaves the cot propped where it is; it's not like he's sleeping on it. There's no sink for him to wash his hands, but he's never been the strictest about it, anyway (much to Donnie's disgust). He returns to his spot under the window, squeezing the water bottle to the rhythm of the first song that comes to mind.

Only two verses and a bridge later, the window above his head turns black, then goes clear. Thinking that Bishop might have been watching him just now makes a cold, slimy feeling roll down his spine. Creepy!

"Inmate 24365," comes Bishop's voice through the unseen speaker. "Stand."

Leo doesn't. He stays right where he is, under the window.

Bishop waits only a few seconds. Then Leo hears him say, "Temperature down two degrees."

He gets up at that, turning and leaning his arm against the window. It strangely doesn't feel like glass, even though it must be. "It's already cold enough in here," he says. He wonders how they can hear him, when he doesn't see a microphone on his side.

"You were told your conditions would only be made comfortable after you answer our questions," Bishop informs him. "The same as before: how many gateways are there between New York City and the hidden yokai enclave? How are these gateways-"

"How about you answer my questions first," Leo interjects. "You keep calling me "inmate," but I haven't been charged with anything. Pretty sure you can't detain me without cause."

"The EPF is authorized to detain non-human inmates for as long as deemed necessary for the security of the United States," says Bishop smoothly. "Probable cause doctrine does not apply in this case."

"That's gotta be unconstitutional."

"The constitution does not recognize the rights of yokai. You have no right to counsel, no right to a speedy trial, and no right to protections from cruel and unusual punishments." Bishop's stare is colder than the temperature in the room. "But I am not an unfair man. Answer my questions, and I will provide you with food and clothing."

Leo tosses a glance over his shoulder. "How about a private bathroom?"

Bishop's expression stays ever in place, unimpressed and stoic. "Food and clothing," he repeats.

Leo gives his head a shake. "Then nope," he says, popping the "p". "I plead the fifth."

"As I have already explained, the Bill of Rights does not apply to you."

"That's such crap." Leo bangs his fist on the window. "You can't just keep me here forever for no reason!"

"I do have reasons." Bishop leans closer to the window, his eyes narrowing. "Let's try a different question. What is your relation to Baron Draxum?"

The surprise is fast and sharp, but Leo just manages to keep it from showing on his face. "Who?" he asks innocently, even as the panic sets into his chest. If they know about Draxum, what else do they know?

"We know you are acquainted with him," says Bishop. "What is the nature of your relationship?"

Leo knows they aren't bluffing - why would they bring up that very specific name otherwise? There's no lie he can tell that won't reveal something.

So he doesn't say anything. Instead, he turns his back to the window and sits down, staring resolutely at the opposite wall.

Bishop clicks his tongue. "Very well," he says. "I am a patient man. I can wait." Then, more muffled, like he's facing away from the microphone, Leo hears him say, "Temperature down two degrees."

The window goes dark, then turns back to white. Leo doesn't move for a long time.

-----

The third water bottle arrives, so he guesses that's the end of day two.

He's shaking as he gets up to retrieve it, adding it to his growing water bottle hoard. He's gone through three and a half by now, but he's trying not to drink them too fast.

As promised, no food is delivered, and his stomach growls and rumbles in protest. The water helps, but only slightly. He needs to eat.

He also needs to sleep.

The panicked adrenaline spikes that have kept him awake this long are starting to die down, with more and more long stretches of exhaustion between them. The shaking is near constant, bringing with it the weird jittery feeling he gets when his insomnia gets particularly bad.

The window is still unnerving him. The idea of sleeping while they're watching him feels staggeringly unsafe.

But he doesn't think he can hold out now until his family gets here. Sure, they're probably getting close (they have to be getting close), but they're sure taking their sweet time. And he's just so tired.

After a long internal debate, he lays down on the cold tile floor. It's not at all comfortable, but somehow he doubts the cot would be any better. Besides, even if he moves the cot under the window, he thinks it would be easier to see him if he uses it. So on the floor it is.

He presses as close to the wall as he can, curling up into a ball for warmth. He wishes he had a blanket.

He wishes he was home.

He squeezes his eyes shut tight and forces back the sudden wave of overwhelming homesickness. There's no reason to feel this way. It's only been two days! What is he, a baby?

It's fine. It's all fine. They're definitely on his trail now. Raph is leading the team. Donnie is using some kind of invention to blah blah blah nerd stuff. Mikey is razzing his tazz. April is using her investigative journalism skills to find clues.

They're on their way. He just has to hold out a little longer. He can do this.

He sleeps, and in his dreams, something grabs him tight and drags him down and down and down where he can't escape.

-----

The same routine plays out over the next two days.

Leo gets two water bottles delivered, spaced, if he had to guess, about five hours apart. Bishop comes to visit him some time after the second bottle. Leo refuses to answer his questions. Bishop turns the temperature down and then leaves. A few hours later his last water bottle comes. Then nothing for the whole night.

They still don't turn off his lights, but exhaustion is starting to win over the brightness.

More than a few times, Leo tries to summon a portal on his own, without his swords. If his family is going to take their sweet time in coming, he might as well try to help them out. He tries to summon his ninpo (without glowing), tries to feel the tug inside of him that he always does when he teleports, tries to envision the place he wants to go and tunnel through space to get there.

Nothing. Always nothing.

(Donnie can make his constructs independent of his bo staff. Raph can send his projections away from his sai. Mikey's learning to use mystic powers without his nunchucks. So why does Leo need his katana? Why is he the only one this useless?)

It probably doesn't help that he's so damn hungry. It's a constant companion now, a low and hollow ache that chooses inconvenient times to turn into white hot stabs of urgency, into seizing cramps that steal his breath. The water only helps so much - it keeps him alive but doesn't satisfy, doesn't soothe. In some ways it just makes the feeling worse.

And he's always shaking, too, but he doesn't know if that's the hunger or the cold.

Maybe the cold wouldn't bother him so much if it were at least still. But the vents blow fresh air inside relentlessly, and no matter where he goes he can't seem to get out of the direct stream. The cold wind batters his tired body, and there's places his skin is starting to turn dry and flaky. His nose won't stop running, and he's allowed himself a small section of his one roll of toilet paper to blow it, already stiff and congealed and disgusting.

It's miserable.

And there's still nothing to do.

He stacks a pyramid out of his empty water bottles, knocks it down, then stacks it up again. He tries to come up with some new and exciting ways to demolish it, but it's only new and exciting for so long.

He spends a few hours of day three singing karaoke as obnoxiously as possible. He hopes everyone outside enjoys the performance.

He recounts every issue of Jupiter Jim he knows to himself, then the plot of every movie. Then he goes through Lou Jitsu films, then anything else he can think of. That eats up a good chunk of day four.

By the time he gets his first water bottle of day five, he's out of ideas to entertain himself. He's never been good at this. He doesn't know how introverts like Donnie can go multiple days without talking to someone.

But when Bishop comes back with his daily offer of conversation, Leo once again impolitely declines.

-----

Something new happens on night five.

It's been a long time since the last water bottle. Leo has been trying to sleep, but it's not coming easy; he's exhausted, but the floor is so cold and he's so sore from staying on it night after night. Not to mention, his nightmares have been getting worse, and he isn't eager to return to them.

Add on the hunger, and sleep is elusive.

Suddenly, there's the telltale shadow of the window above him turning dark - this time, though, it doesn't light up as much as normal. Confused and curious, Leo sits up and takes a peek.

The room beyond is dim, only the glow of a green EXIT sign and a small desk lamp lighting the space. But it's enough for Leo to see a man standing there, looking inside. It's not Bishop - in fact, he doesn't recognize this person at all. They're wearing fatigues, but it's not anyone he's seen in the room during Bishop's normal interrogations.

The man catches sight of Leo, and the grinning leer on his face makes Leo regret looking.

He beckons for Leo to stand up. Warily, Leo does, unable to help but keep his arms folded tight over his chest. Not for the first time, he wishes he had some clothes - his gear, at the very least. Anything to not feel quite so exposed.

The man reaches down and picks something up, holding it aloft for Leo's inspection. "Want a sandwich?" he asks into the microphone.

The sandwich looks like white bread and bologna. No cheese, no other toppings that Leo can spot. Maybe some mustard, if anything. Overall, the most boring possible sandwich he could have been offered.

Leo's mouth is watering.

He has to swallow hard before answering. He doesn't trust this. Even if his stomach is slamming up and down at the promise of food, food, food.

"I'm not hungry," he lies.

The man laughs. It's not a kind sound. "Sure you ain't," he says. "You spend every night curled up on the floor like the dumb animal you are. Can you even eat this?" He waves the sandwich for emphasis.

Leo doesn't answer. He takes a step back from the window, like that will put any kind of distance between them. Like that will save him.

The man watches him with a sleezy grin. He waves the sandwich again.

"You want this," he says.

Leo shakes his head.

"You really sure?"

Leo shudders. Stands tall. Nods.

The man watches him for a long, long moment. Leo fights the urge to hide.

Finally, with a shrug, the man says, "Suit yourself."

Then he starts eating the sandwich. Right where Leo can watch.

Leo's stomach growls, loud and angry in his ears, and he has to physically hold himself back from crumpling.

After several bites, the man suddenly reaches out and taps the window, indicating the cot stood up in front of the toilet.

"That," he says, giving another tap for emphasis, "doesn't do shit."

Leo wants to crawl out of his own skin.

The need to hide is suddenly too great. He rushes to the cot, grabbing it and dragging it back to the blind spot under the window. He sets it down on all four legs, so it's as close to the floor as possible.

Then he lies down on his belly and wriggles underneath. It's a tight squeeze, and the cot ends up pushed up by his shell, suspended in the air, but he doesn't care.

He curls up in his pleasant lie of privacy and bites his hand to keep from screaming himself hoarse.

After an eternity, the window above him turns white again. It doesn't matter. Leo knows he's still there. Still watching.

-----

"You look tired," Bishop greets him. Leo answers with a dead-eyed stare.

"I keep telling you, if you want your conditions to improve, all you have to do is answer my questions."

Leo says nothing. He just stares, arms wrapped tight around himself to try and keep his body heat in.

"How many gateways are there between New York City and the hidden yokai enclave? How are these gateways accessed?"

For a moment, Leo considers just... telling him.

His family doesn't live in the Hidden City. The yokai have never exactly greeted them with open arms. What does he care if these military guys go after them? At least then, maybe he can finally eat something.

That's not what a hero does, Leo! echoes Mind Raph disapprovingly. Innocent people will get hurt!

Right. He's a hero. And heroes don't give into the demands of shitty guys like Bishop.

Leo swallows hard. "No comment."

Bishop's face changes ever so slightly: his brow creases. Leo wonders if that's good or bad for him.

"You understand that Baron Draxum is a known threat, don't you?" he asks. "We are aware of his plans to commit mass murder on the human population. We also know that he has been dormant for some time, and we need information on what he is planning."

Leo thinks of Barry's ambitions to be recognized as the best lunchperson in all of America and can't help but laugh. It comes out cracked and wheezing.

Bishop's furrow gets deeper. "Do you think this is funny?"

"Little bit," says Leo.

Bishop has a chasm to rival Raph's now. Leo knows he shouldn't, but he grins. It's his one moment of triumph - only he can be this aggravating.

And then Bishop says, "Temperature down seven degrees," and that wipes the smile right off Leo's face.

-----

The plastic of the water bottles is soft and pliable and feels weirdly good under Leo's teeth.

He chews the top of the bottle, gnawing at it until it's completely flattened out, pockmarked with little tiny indents from his incisors. It's not eating - it won't fill his belly or ease the persistent hunger pains. But something about the motion is soothing. The place-bo effect.

Pla-ce-bo, corrects Donnie's voice in his mind, sounding testy.

Where are you? Leo thinks back.

There's no answer.

He's gnawed his way through four water bottles. There's eighteen in total now, two and a half still full of water. He thought about using one to wash up a bit, but decided against it in the end. He knows he stinks, but the last thing he wants right now is to be wet. Not when he's starting to see his breath.

Oh well. It's not like he has anywhere to be.

He turns his attentions to the lids next. These are harder and thus tougher to chew. Still, if Leo uses his molars, he can eventually crack the lip, and then bend the plastic in and in, chewing until he ends up with a flat disc.

It's just small enough that Leo could swallow it, if he wanted to.

He thinks he remembers watching some kind of wildlife documentary. Or maybe he didn't watch it himself, but Mikey told him about it. Or maybe April? He doesn't know. His thoughts swim in and out and get lost on the way.

Point is. Sea turtles in the wild die all the time because of plastic in the water. They cut open their stomachs and find trash inside.

Well, Leo is a turtle in captivity. Maybe that means he's immune. Maybe he could swallow this plastic lid, and then he'd finally feel full and the pain pain pain of his empty stomach would go away.

He does not swallow the plastic lid. But it's more tempting than he'd like to admit.

It's going to be okay. When his family gets him out of here, they'll have a big pizza to celebrate. Maybe he can even talk them into letting him have the last slice.

It has to be any moment now, right? It's been a week. They have to be closing in. Any moment now, the door will open, and there they'll be to take him home.

The air conditioning blows relentlessly against his skin. He sneezes, then rubs the snot on his arm. He's given up on the tissue paper.

It'll be over soon. It has to be. Just hang in there, Leon, just a little longer.

He picks up another bottle and starts chewing.

-----

He's playing a mindless little game with his flattened bottle lids the next time Bishop comes.

"I'm surprised you still have any energy at all," says Bishop, and Leo wants to punch him.

(Really, he wants to do more than that. But those kinds of thoughts always make him feel weird and bad, so he pushes them away.)

"You should have learned by now," he says, pushing to his feet and trying not to show how badly he's trembling, "you can't keep me down."

"This is all unnecessary," says Bishop. "I'll feed you as soon as you answer my questions."

Leo barks out a laugh. "Sure you will."

"I will," says Bishop. He turns and says over his shoulder, "Bring it here."

One of the men in fatigues steps forward and hands a tray with a covered plate over to Bishop. Bishop uncovers the tray and holds it where Leo can see.

Baked chicken, broccoli with cheese, mashed potatoes.

Leo's stomach twists and cramps so painfully he has to bend at the hips and clutch his midriff.

"This is yours, as soon as you answer my questions."

Leo pointedly keeps from looking at the food. He shakes his head. He can't. He can't.

"Such persistence." Bishop's voice is scolding now. "You understand that you are a known accomplice to a terrorist, don't you? But if you become a cooperating witness, you will be granted some leniency."

Leo barks a laugh, lifting his eyes to look at Bishop's face, and pointedly not the food. "What's the point?" he asks. "If I'm not... protected by the constitution, or whatever. Are you going to let me go?"

"No," says Bishop. "But as I have told you, your conditions will become more comfortable." He waves the tray of food.

Leo stares at him, before a manic smile splits his face.

"You... stupid bastard. I can't even answer your questions." He slams a shaking hand against his plastron. "I'm not even a yokai! Do you get that? I'm not a yokai!"

Bishop looks skeptical. "Obviously you are."

"I'm not!" Leo rages. "I'm a mutant! I'm from New York! I don't even live in the Hidden City!"

Bishop's eyes flash. "I see," he says, "so you do know of it."

Leo falters, his body going slack.

What an obvious, stupid mistake.

(Some face-man he is.)

It takes Leo a long moment to answer. Bishop stays right where he is, holding the food so tantalizingly close and yet still out of reach.

"...I don't know about the gateways," he says finally. "I don't know about their defensive capabilities. I don't know what Baron Draxum is planning."

"Your lies are obvious," says Bishop. "You really don't want this? It's your last chance today."

Leo stares at the food. His mouth is watering so hard it might start to drip. Would it really be so bad to answer? They don't live in the Hidden City. And Draxum dropped him off a roof.

Draxum is trying to change, says Mind Raph. You see what these guys are like. You can't turn the yokai over to them. They'll hurt them!

What about me? he asks. Is it okay if I get hurt?

You're a hero, Leo, says Mind Raph. You can deal with it for a little longer. It's just a room. Just a little cold. Just some hunger.

He's a hero. He can deal with it. He can. He can.

He'll make them proud. Show them they can trust him.

It takes everything he has, but he shakes his head.

Bishop tuts. Then he throws the entire plate in the trash.

"Tomorrow, then," he says. Then the window is gone.

Leo collapses on his cot and tries not to cry.

-----

After his third water bottle on day eight, one of the fluorescent lights over his head flickers and then dies out.

It's not surprising, since they keep them running twenty-four seven. The blessedly dimmed lighting is actually nice, for once. Leo thinks maybe he could get some sleep, if the gnawing hunger and the constant shivers don't keep him awake.

He's just closed his eyes and snuggled up under his cot when it occurs to him: they may come in to fix it. If keeping the lights on day and night is part of their plan to torture him, to keep him exhausted and anxious and on edge, then they have to.

Which means his chance is finally here.

He has to be careful about this. He has to be ready to move, but he can't let them know he's ready to move. He has to let them think he's too weak, too exhausted, to make an escape attempt.

(He can't let himself think that, though. He can't give up before he tries.)

So he stays under his cot, but subtly shifts it so it won't restrict his movement. He has to be ready to burst out as soon as he gets a chance. Get past whoever comes in, then get out the door. It's after the last water bottle, so it's nighttime. There will be fewer people. He can do this. He can do this.

Find his swords. Make a portal. Get out.

Just as he was thinking, after a long time has passed, there is a loud warning beep, different from the water bottle beep. An automated voice says from somewhere unseen, "Inmates clear the door. Security personnel entering. Stay still and you will not be harmed."

Then the door slides open, and someone comes in.

It's a man wearing fatigues. Leo thinks this is the one who "offered" him a sandwich the other day. He's holding some kind of gun with a long barrel. He does a sweep of the room with his eyes, coming to rest on Leo under his cot. He gives Leo the same leering grin, and waves the barrel of the gun in his direction.

"Now you behave, and we'll get along just fine," he says.

He steps to the side, and another man enters, this one wearing the kind of jumpsuit Leo sees janitors in on TV. He's carrying a stepladder in one hand and a long tube in the other. Is that what fluorescent lights look like? Leo didn't know.

The man walks to the middle of the room and sets up his stepladder. Then he walks up and pulls off the light casing. When he unhooks the old bulb, it causes the other bulb to flicker, just for a few moments.

Leo explodes out from under the cot, grabbing the man in fatigues by the legs and yanking as hard as he can. The man yelps in surprise, and Leo hears the sound of the gun going off in a random direction. The janitor shouts and drops the light bulb - the sound of shattering glass joins the cacophony.

Leo jumps to his feet and runs out the door they had been too stupid to close, sprinting toward the EXIT sign. He's exhausted and shaky but he's coursing with adrenaline, and he leans on it hard to keep him moving. Don't stop, don't stop, get out of here. He'll figure out what to do next once he's free.

Past the exit sign there's a large open room with desks and computer monitors. Most of them are off, but one lingering woman in a lab coat, seated at her desk, screams when she sees Leo dash through the middle of the office space.

"Security!" she screams into a device on her chest. "Inmate is escaping! Inmate is escaping!"

Leo doesn't have time to shut her up, he just keeps moving. He pushes through the next door and arrives in a hallway; he only has time to glance one way and then the other before scrambling to the left, hoping it was a good choice.

He rounds a corner and sees another green EXIT sign up ahead. It's not where he meant to go - he meant to find where they're keeping his swords first. But he hears shouting behind him and doesn't stop. Fine, so no portals - he'll figure out something else once he's away from here.

He throws himself forward into the exit door, which leads him into yet another hallway. Another long sprint, with shouting and slamming doors at his heels, and then finally, finally, a third EXIT sign, and he crashes outside.

Where there's snow on the ground, snow on the trees.

It steals his breath away. There shouldn't be snow. It's May.

Where is he?

He takes a breath of air so cold it seizes his lungs, then takes a step forward. He'll worry about that-

BANG!

A piercing pain in his shoulder nearly sends him toppling over. Leo shouts, grasping for the wound and feeling something sticking out of his skin. He grabs it and yanks, pulling it free.

It's a dart.

Damn it, he thinks, before his vision goes woozy, and he collapses into the snow.

-----

"Are you proud of your little escape attempt?" comes Bishop's voice.

Leo looks up from his cot. Bishop has to get so close to the window to see him that his nose is pressed flat against it. It should be hilarious, but Leo doesn't really have the energy to laugh. Or to do much of anything.

He's hungry. He's tired. He's cold. He's still sluggish from the drugs.

And they threw away all his water bottles. Fuckers.

Leo rolls over on the cot and covers his ears.

"What a childish response," says Bishop, and that's funny, too, because Leo literally is a child. Or a teenager, anyway. He doesn't feel like it will help him much to point that out, though.

"All you have to do is answer my questions, and all this will be fixed."

That's the funniest thing of all. The idea that he spills his guts and Bishop treats him to a five course meal to make up for all the pain up till now. Hilarious.

He says nothing.

Bishop sighs.

"You are likely still affected by the tranquilizing agent. I'll return tomorrow."

Before he leaves, he says, "Temperature down five degrees."

-----

The same man is back that night. He opens the window and looks down at Leo with the same leering smile. Leo can't even take satisfaction in the bandage on the side of his head.

"Neat little trick you had yesterday," he says. "Almost got me fired."

Leo wishes it had gotten him fired. But he clearly has no luck in this situation.

"You know, I respect the attempt. And you probably would have gotten farther with a little food in your belly." The man reaches down, then retrieves a sandwich, as mouth-wateringly unappetizing as the last time. "You sure you don't want this?"

And Leo knows he shouldn't trust this guy. Leo knows he should say no.

But he's just...

so...

hungry.

So he gets up. And he turns to the window. On shaking limbs that can barely hold him upright anymore. With a body that is laced with pain and aches and cramps.

And he nods.

The man's smile gets wider. "What do you say?" he asks, in the sing-song tone of a parent scolding a child.

It makes a sick nausea rise in Leo's throat. But he wants the sandwich.

"Please," he gasps out.

"Mmm... not good enough." The man waves the sandwich. "You want this? You beg for it."

Leo stares, eyes wide. But the sandwich... the sandwich...

He gets down on his knees. Feels a searing flush of humiliation. His stomach is rolling and gurgling and cramping with pain, a hollow, empty chasm inside him desperate to be filled.

He lowers his head.

"Please," he says. "I... I want the sandwich. I'm... begging you, please."

The man laughs, loud and long. When Leo finally finds it in him to raise his eyes, the sandwich is already half eaten.

"Hey, good job," says the man, licking a bit of mustard off his thumb. "That was real convincin'."

And then he takes another bite.

Just like that, Leo forgets about the pain, the aches, the cold, the hunger. All that's left is pure, white hot, screaming rage.

Leo lunges at the window and slams his fist into it so hard it cracks. Not enough to break the glass. Not enough to free him. But enough that the man startles and steps back.

And Leo starts to laugh. High and manic and unhinged even to his own ears.

"I'll kill you," he says, and his voice sounds almost joking, and yet- "I'll kill you. You're dead. You're dead, as soon as I get out of here, you're dead, I'll kill you, I'LL KILL YOU!"

The man has dropped the rest of his sandwich. He fumbles for his gun, left somewhere on a table to the side. For one satisfying moment, Leo sees a flash of genuine fear on the man's face.

"Shit," he says, his voice far away the further he gets from the microphone. "Pretty scary, frogboy."

Then he slams a button, and the window goes black, and Leo gets a glimpse of his own reflection.

His face is gaunt and drawn. His eyes are ringed by deep circles, so dark they look like bruises. His body is shaking like a leaf.

And his stripes...

His stripes are lit up like when he uses his ninpo, but they aren't their usual Neon Leon bright.

They're almost black.

Leo gasps and stumbles back just as the window goes white. The full body quakes he feels now aren't from the cold or the hunger or the exhaustion.

He turns and sinks onto the cot. Puts his face in his hands and tries to breathe. Tries to will his ninpo to stop rolling and snapping and to go back to normal.

This isn't what he wants. This isn't him.

This place is breaking him. He's letting it break him.

He pulls his legs up onto the cot and buries his face in his knees. Wraps his arms around them and rocks gently, the way Donnie used to do when things got overwhelming. Maybe he understands that better, now.

This isn't him. He's Leonardo, Neon Leon, the face-man, the jokester! The one who's always ready with a quip and a laugh. The one who can do anything!

Except portal out of his room. Except escape from this building. Except resist begging for a sandwich like he's a dog.

Leo's breath hitches, and for once he doesn't stop himself. He knows the guy outside is probably watching. He knows there are cameras recording this. He hates giving them the satisfaction.

But he's tired, and hungry, and he...

He wants to go home.

He cries, silently, until he's completely rung out.

-----

Maybe they aren't coming.

That's the thought that pops into his head, just a bit after the first water bottle of the day.

He knew they would have gotten a late start, because he stormed out. And he knew it would take them awhile to figure out who took him - he hadn't heard of the EPF before, so why would they? And he knew it would take them time to figure out where he had been taken, which must have been pretty far out if it's snowing outside. But the EPF got him here within a night, he's pretty sure, so unless they have a super fast jet, he must still be on the continent somewhere.

So... so surely they must have figured it out by now, right? Raph is leading the team. Donnie is doing science things. Mikey is razzing his tazz. April is using her investigative skills.

Unless they aren't coming.

Maybe... maybe it's true. Why would they want him back, after all? Leo took Raph's leader position, and since then all he'd managed to do was piss Raph off. Mikey and Donnie hadn't been happy about it, either, and he'd noticed that they'd been avoiding him more and more. April claimed she wasn't taking sides, but she always seemed to be on Raph's anyway. And Dad... well, he was probably disappointed that he made Leo leader only for him to do nothing and then get himself kidnapped.

He doesn't bring anything to the team. He doesn't bring anything to the family. And no one likes his jokes.

So. Maybe they just... aren't looking. Maybe they aren't going to come.

Maybe he's held out this long for no reason. Maybe he's been cold and starving for no reason at all.

Maybe it's time to give up.

---

Don't give up, says a new voice in his head.

You are not alone.

-----

He has no energy left to stand when Bishop comes. The man looks down at him, lips pressed into a thin line.

"You don't look well," he observes.

No shit, Leo wants to say.

"This has gone on long enough. Answer my questions, and we will provide you with food, clothing, and medical care."

The list is getting longer. Leo's fuzzy eyes stare up at Bishop. Medical care. Does he need that?

"You already know what I want to know." Bishop has a furrow between his eyebrows now. "Will you talk to me?"

He could. He could do it. He could finally have some relief from all the pain. All the hunger. All the cold.

But they might hurt the yokai in the Hidden City.

They might hurt Draxum.

They might hurt his family.

And maybe, if nothing else... if Leo could just keep his mouth shut, just this once...

Maybe that would finally make Raph, Dad, and everyone proud of him.

Maybe they'd finally trust him.

Maybe, at least, he can have that much.

Leo shakes his head.

Bishop scowls.

"Temperature down ten degrees."

-----

Leo isn't shivering anymore. That's probably a bad sign.

He can still see his breath, each time he exhales. It rises like smoke, before disappearing into the air.

He doesn't have any energy left, not even to chew on his new water bottles. He hasn't even collected the last two, and they sit crowded together in the slot, untouched.

He kind of wishes they had just dissected him from the beginning. It would have been faster. Freezing to death, he's decided, is a real zero out of ten. Starving to death isn't any better. No stars.

Even though the damn lights are still on, he feels extremely sleepy. It's probably the cold. He wonders what will happen if he brumates. He's never done it before, not like his little cousins, and he has no idea if it's even safe.

Probably not, given he has no calorie reserves left. All it means is he won't be drinking water, either.

But he's so sleepy.

It's going to be time soon for Bishop to come back. Leo doesn't know what the point is anymore. Maybe he'll just sleep through it. Yeah, that would really make him mad. And making Bishop mad is all he has at this point.

And he'll get to sleep. It's a win-win.

So thinking, Leo rolls himself over onto his belly. Then, one by one, he pulls his limbs into his shell.

He doesn't do this much anymore, not since he started growing. His body just doesn't seem to fit his shell like it should - a side effect of the mutation, probably. It's not really comfortable to be inside for long.

But Leo is sleepy. And his shell feels like the best place to be.

So he pulls in his legs, then his arms, and then, finally, his head.

It's not any warmer in here. But at least it's dark.

At least he's not shivering.

Leo sighs, content, and closes his eyes, and drifts to sleep.

-----

(Outside his cell, there's a bang, and shouting, and a gunshot.

The sound is muffled, and Leo sleeps on.)

-----

Part 1 (here) | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 Part A |

[double--blind]

(SPOILERS) breaking down how obsessed Andrew is w/his sister bc he's a repressed lil liar and I'm going insane

This post got longer than I intended it to

1. He claims they don't spend enough time apart from each other to even begin missing her so he doesn't even know if he would, but just earlier in the game he was apart from her for probs like 30 mins tops to investigates some cultists and guess what???? He was already missing her 😒

2. Says "I thought you grew out of this touchy-feely crap" when Ashley asks for a hug, but earlier when he was cooking dinner, he was the one with the inexplicable urge to "pull this broody bitch into [his] arms and force her to stay until she smiles" 😒

3. Piggy-backing off the last screenshot: WHAT OTHER THOUGHTS, ANDREW??? yOU WERE JUST THINKING ABT HUGGING HER. WHAT DO YOU EVEN MEAN. THESE ARE SIMPLY INNOCENT BROTHERLY THOUGHTS ARE THEY NOT????? 🤨🤨🤨

4. Bro just can't keep his hands off her. And everyone thinks Ashley's the clingy one jeez (lol the way he springs apart from her when Mom catches them is definitely definitelyyyy not worth analyzing. nope. not even when it happens a second time on the couch. nope. nooope)

5. What. What is he thinking here. Don't think I don't see those grey lil blush lines. Is this connected to my third point somehow bc like... 🤨😬 Is "Andrew" is gonna start doing and being what "Andy" was too spineless and afraid of doing?? That's what the vow was partly abt right?? Does that include—

5. WHEWWW BOY that little flashback with his gf has so much baggage in it I just wanna dissect. His girlfriend's tryna have a serious discussion with him abt his weird sister for the sake of bettering their relationship bc she genuinely loves him, but he just gets caught up in fondly talking abt said weird sister instead??

6. He's awfully hesitant abt Ashley learning some independence, bc y'know what?? I think he doesn't really want her to stop relying on him. But what do I know y'know

6. Wants his gf to put tie her hair up in a ponytail, then when she refuses bc he'll pull on it, says it's just "how boys express their love". Well. You know who else puts there hair up in a ponytail??? You know who else's hair he's always pulling on and touching???

7. The voicemails in his gf's phone left by Ashley are heard by him in his dreams, and his dreams are a construction of his mind utilizing his memories, personal hangups, and knowledge of Ashley. The voicemails irl were left on his gf's phone, and for all we know, he never actually listened to them in person. Bearing this in mind... odds are the things Ashley's saying contain bits of truths he believes within himself, filtered thru her crude, hateful dialogue.

Here. I transcribed one of them...

"DO YOU THINK YOU'RE BETTER THAN ME!? Just because you can fuck him and I can't? You think that's love?! Are you fucking delusional?? Cumdumpsters like you are just that. He will never love you. Not like he loves me. I am the only one. I am everything. I am the secrets you'll never hear. When he lies in bed at night, and when he needs someone to hold on to… It's not you he seeks out. It is me."

8. Claims Ashley's the one with the jealous streak, not him, but I think he's just as bad. The only difference is that Ashley's never given him reason to act on it since all she's ever wanted was him, but at the slightest mention of her gettin it on w/someone else, even as a joke, he gets mad. "OVER MY DEAD BODY!!" he says, when she's jokingly contemplating getting knocked up via the neighbor so an ambulance would come for her. "I wouldn't let them," he says, when she's complaining abt not being pretty enough for the wardens to bang her

9. Going hand-in-hand with that fact, he's intensely protective of her. Didn't hesitate to cleaver the warden who found her in the closet (probs didn't even BLINK lmaooo he chose VIOLENCE), and when the cake-stealing cultist insulted her just once, he stepped forward just like that

10. In their apt, when they were lying on the floor talking abt jumping off the balcony, he was really caught up in the "romantic" fantasy of them committing a double suicide and dying with their bodies entwined so irreparably by the impact they form one unified corpse "never to be separated!" and they get buried in the same coffin together. UM??? Bro fr thought he was the sane one of the two. That wasn't even true before the cannibalism and demon summoning 😭😭😭

BONUS:

11. This might just be me, but his reaction to seeing the post-sex vision doesn't strike me as someone who's inherently opposed to the idea. Instead of disgusted, he was... flustered?? He acted like she walked in mid-guilty pleasure wet dream. This wasn't a "GROSS THATS INCEST" reaction which is... the most normal reaction to have. That's the face of a man that got CAUGHT bro.

He asks "we're not like that, are we?" and "why are you like this?" and questions the veracity of the vision, but he never actually explicitly denies wanting the vision to happen, more focused on Ashley and her reaction. He buries the elephant under the rug as fast as he can, bc yeah, it struck a landmine, but it probably wasn't a landmine for the reason Ashley thinks it is. I bet the vision just hit a little too close... :P

[skufdaddyswansea]

Mouthwashing, Dual Protagonists, and Captain Curly

While the vast majority of Mouthwashing is shown from Jimmy's perspective, the events leading up to the Tulpar's crash usually follow Curly. There are several interesting reasons for this, but there's one reason in particular that I'd like to focus on.

By setting Jimmy and Curly up as dual protagonists, we're invited to draw comparisons between them. Not only are they the lenses through which we view the story, they pass the role of Captain back and forth between their chapters.

It's easy to feel sympathy for Curly, given the state he spends the larger part of the game in. It can also be easy to gloss over his more subtle shortcomings when measuring him up against Jimmy.

In this post, I want to take a closer look at Curly's character. And more specifically, how he relates to one of the game's most obvious themes.

Is Curly able to deal with the consequences of his actions? Does he realize his own failures and how they harm the people around him? What does he do with the power he's granted over others?

Does Curly take responsibility?

Jimmy's fixation here gives us a good jumping-off point. It's certainly possible that he's only really been told this once or twice, but because he's Jimmy he's blown it out of proportion out of spite. It's also possible he's entirely making it up because he's projecting, but I think the former is more likely if anything.

And, if I had to take a guess where he heard it from, I'd put my money on The Pony Express itself.

In the eyes of The Pony Express, a "great leader" isn't someone diligent or able to meet the needs of his crew. The real reason Curly was able to rise to the top of the ladder and become captain is because he gets the job done without rocking the boat.

I'm establishing all this because I think it's worth examining by what metric he's being judged. Because, while it may be Jimmy who most often digs this point up, Curly doesn't disagree with him. Even in the depths of his ennui, it's important to him that not only is he the Captain, but a good one at that.

When comparing the two, that can again seem difficult to argue against. Jimmy is quick to lash out and shift blame. His resentment and insecurities often drive him to pick fights. Curly prefers to avoid conflict, but knows his position doesn't always allow him to do so. He tries to pick his battles, but when he has to get involved he focuses on de-escalating the situation.

But although their similarities are few, they do exist. And they greatly influence the narrative. Because it is from their shared selfishness, callousness, and cowardice that the entire story is born.

It's time to address the elephant in the room. We can't draw any conclusions about Curly's nature, his character, his role in the story, and his relationship to its themes without digging into his handling of Anya's assault, and the chain of events that follow.

I find it interesting that we never see the initial conversation Anya has with Curly about the assault. We simply know that she confided in him. He is the Captain, after all. The crew is his responsibility.

The thing is, we don't really need to know the exact conversation they shared, because we can imagine it went quite similarly to their conversation about her pregnancy.

She tells him how scared she is. She fears for her life. It never even occurred to him that she was upset about anything other than losing her job. He swears to her that everything will be fine. They'll fix this. All he has to do is talk to Jimmy.

He does not talk to Jimmy.

Maybe the first time he really did intend to. He just needed time. Jimmy has always had... struggles. If we want to, we can be generous to Curly, we can assume his old problems were much less vile. Otherwise, he would have never pulled the strings to get him this job, never put him in a position of power over vulnerable people. Right? But now, this was whole new beast altogether. Because he and Jimmy go way back, he had to process this, figure out what he was even supposed to say.

But at the same time, The Pony Express had just gone gone under. He'd been struggling with dissatisfaction and indecision for so long, and now his hand has been forced. He has his own problems. And Anya seems fine, doesn't she? If she hadn't said anything, he'd never have even known there was anything wrong. It just doesn't seem that important.

Anya talks to Jimmy herself.

She's scared, she fears for her life. But now she knows now that Curly won't defend her, nor give her the means to defend herself. Still, he promises her, they'll fix this. He just has to talk to Jimmy.

Things are different now. He can't sit by and wait for things to work out anymore. After all, it's not only her problem anymore.

Now it's Curly's problem too. How is he supposed to find another job with this on his record? There's only one other person on this ship who understands what he's going through.

He talks to Jimmy.

And he understands. Not that what he did was wrong, of course. Not that he'd done something horrific, irreversible, cruel. But that it now had consequences, and that he wouldn't suffer them alone.

Curly made his decision. He chose his paper-thin illusion of peace and his eroding friendship with Jimmy over the safety and well-being of his crew. And when it all came tumbling down, he decided it was better to bury them all under the rubble than to face the struggle to rebuild.

If Jimmy hadn't been there, hadn't been his co-pilot, Curly almost certainly would not have been able to bring himself to actually follow through with something so selfish and reckless.

But Jimmy was there, and Curly made sure of that.

So, it's time to ask again. Does Curly take responsibility?

Well, yes.

But it's too little, too late.

As much as Mouthwashing is about Jimmy fighting furiously against the consequences of his actions, it is also about Curly being forced to watch them unfold anyway. His silence and inaction, once a choice, are inflicted upon him by his mangled body.

Jimmy may have crashed the ship, but Curly gave him the keys. And so it's fitting in the end that Curly is made to take the full weight of responsibility by the man who he helped avoid it so many times.

[astrobydalia]

🍂Cozy observations 🎃

Itssss fall you guys!!!! 🥰🥰🥰🥰 It’s actually super hot still where I live but that won’t stop me from living my cozy era. Anyways, I want to avoid collecting posts on my drafts for centuries so here’s more general observations!

work by astrobydalia

🍂Aquarius placements are simultaneously the most understanding and empathetic people ever and the biggest assholes out there. I don't know how they pull that contradiction off but it's true (I mean this in the best way possible btw)

Moreover, I’ve noticed Aquarius placements are way more appreciative of kindness and social harmony than Libra tbh. Libra's desire for harmony can be just for the sake of keeping appearances but they are actually very judgmental. Aquarius on the other hand tend to appreciate authenticity and have a “live and let live” philosophy where they accept people unconditionally that’s why they attract popularity. Underdeveloped Aquarius tho do have a tendency to break social harmony due to pick-me behavior

🍂 Cardinal moons are serial daters. I swear every person I’ve met who had a rather active love life or were always crushing on someone was more often than on Cardinal moon

Also, Cardinal moons are always very dominant people even when don’t intend to be. They have a very summoning aura/personality that just demands engagement. They also tend to be social butterflies, even when they’re introverted they always end up surrounded by people somehow

🍂 I like to think Pisces is the final movie while Virgo is all the behind the scenes and editing

🍂I've seen this endless times where people with Mars in Libra or 7th house always end up either in law or business (mostly creating their own business, freelancers, entrepreneurs, etc)

🍂Any Venusian influence on the MC/10th house/6th house indicates a career or job where you’re required to dress up and appear very put together, having a certain aesthetic can be important in your career

🍂Saturn square or opposite MC/10th house ruler indicates the native was forced into a career they never chose/wanted in the first place or they had to wait a long time to finally have the opportunity to pursue their ideal career OR the path towards the career they chose could have been harder/more unfulfilling than they expected

🍂 I also like to think Taurus stops to smell the flowers and creates a flower bed for herself. Virgo studies the flowers and learns all about photosynthesis and shit. Capricorn creates a flower business and monopolizes the flower market

🍂 Those with Mars influence on their moon (Moon-Mars aspects, Aries/Scorpio moon) are really good at throwing shade but they’re unable to take it themselves. They don’t like to feel called out.

🍂 Mars in the 12th house people will 👏🏼hold 👏🏼 grudges 👏🏼

🍂 To be quite honest with you, every single Virgo sun I’ve met had a very standoffish personality.

🍂 Saturn retrograde individuals raised themselves. That’s why this placement is known to have issues with authority and discipline because their parents didn’t really parent them at all, so they had to set their own boundaries, rules and systems to navigate life. Getting their life together and materializing their ambitions could take extra effort for them

🍂 I usually like Capricorn Moons cause I always find that they are very loyal to everyone (friends, family, partner, etc) but honestly they are not as emotionally mature as you might think. They have a really hard time moving on from the past to the point where they can stay stuck in their wounded child self and spend a big chunk of their lives trying to overcompensate this with work, productivity and success. Tendency to depression, low emotional intelligence and being emotionally stunted. Deep down they feel like the victim of their own story

🍂 Aquarius sun+Scorpio moon: I’ve met quite a few people with this combo and with all of them I’ve noticed they always have a cult leader kinda mentality towards their friendships and connections (might apply to Aquarius+Scorpio combos in general). You’re either with them or against them. If you're not a follower they’ll hit you with the "cool kids table" attitude

🍂 My mom has Mercury in the 4th house and she once said "I don't mind moving abroad but I can't live in a place where people don't speak my native language. I need to hear my native language"

🍂 When it’s said that Venus in the 1st house people know how to make themselves look good it doesn’t mean just physically. The know how to present themselves as a more virtuous person than they actually are...

🍂Mutable risings, Mars in a mutable sign/house: their motto is “work smarter not harder”. Their first instinct will always be to find a way around challenges and difficulties. They usually aren’t the most action oriented people, but they are cunning. Their way to success is basically beating the system to make things easier for themselves.

🍂I can easily recognize Taurus Sun because they always ooze BDE. Also they always tend to have very rugged and bold physique/features

🍂From what I've seen Gemini Venus is a placement that easily makes someone stereotypically extroverted. Golden retriever energy

🍂Has anyone else noticed that succedent houses (aka fixed houses) are all related to money and wealth in some way?

2nd house: your resources, what spend your money on 5th house: gamble 8th house: shared resources, investments and debt 11th house: production of wealth

🍂All Gemini and Cancer risings I’ve met had some sort of hypersensitivity to stimuli. Gemini rising is more mental; anxiety, overthinking, information overload, etc they easily get triggered by immediate stimuli, specially noise around them. For Cancer risings this manifests more in the senses (photosensitivity, very sensitive to smells, flavors, etc) and heightened intuition just like Spiderman with spider-sense

🍂I’m sorry but why are Cancer Mercuries so elusive in their communication??? Everything they say has this "well, maybe. I don't know" or "I guess" undertone to it, they never openly say what they really mean. They are good listeners tho

🍂Underdeveloped Taurus placements feel entitled to use and dispose of people to benefit themselves. Tend to be very selfish and stingy. They do something for you they'll hang it over your head forever and act like they have ownership over you. You do something for them, they owe you nothing.

🍂Pisces Moons grew up in their own little bubble. It's very likely they missed out on 'normal' mundane experiences and this makes them feel very separated from the rest of the world and the rest of the people which is why they often come off as clueless and disconnected. They often give off the impression they've been living under a rock or a parallel universe. A perfect example of this is when Kim Kardashian said she's never been to a grocery store💀

Every single Pisces moon I’ve met never ever wanted to have kids and if they do have them they tend to not be too present in their kids’ lives. The harsh truth is pisces moons are not reliable, generally they are the ones who want to be saved and cared for

🍂I've noticed earth Venus and Venus-Saturn aspects are a little bit too good at showing contempt. To some degree they always remind me of Disgust from the Inside Out movie 😂

🍂 When I see Moon-Saturn conjunction in a chart I flinch a little tbh cause idk what’s worse the fact that their mothers couldn’t be bothered to give the native any sort of emotional comfort or the fact that these natives have normalized conditional love as the only kind of love possible. I've also noticed they grew up with strong authoritarian values and were never allowed to question hierarchies or status

Also, natives with Moon-Saturn conjunction are extremely shady people if you ask me. It's true they are insanely observant but what people don't seem to notice is that they are observant in a Joe Goldberg or Light Yagami kind of way without the murder They do be having inner monologues like that. They come across as calm, intelligent, respectful and trusted. Can use emotional expression (theirs and others') in strategic ways to influence others. Big tendency towards materialistic, utilitarian and/or elitist mindset too. I can't quite put my finger on it but I've met a lot of people with this aspect and the deeper I dig the more I keep feeling something very dark and/or disingenuous about them

🍂Venus square Neptune people and their lack of self-respect… 🙁

🍂Aquarius Moons always give off the impression of having a rather lazy or passive personality. I'm not talking about their productivity but the fact that they seem to always have a "meh" attitude towards everything to the point where they can feel a bit disconnected similar to pisces moon

🍂Virgo risings often have freelance jobs due to Aquarius ruling their 6th house

🍂People with Industria rx (389) may actually dislike their work environment even if they like their job. I’ve noticed they often find the industry they work in to be toxic, depleting or too demanding

🍂Enterprise rx (9777) might always feel unsatisfied with their position, they might be the type to always want more and more

🍂 Aries Moon women and always attracting very immature and selfish men omg I've seen this time and time again

🍂 Scorpio moon/Moon 8th house is an underrated wealth indicator imo. I've noticed they always have a "from rags to riches" kinda life story. They however often face issues with fraud or debt along the way cause they have a tendency to take huge financial risks

🍂 you ever heard about the crabs in a bucket phenomenon? Well Ive actually observed underdeveloped 4th house placements do tend to have this kind of clingy and envious behavior particularly towards people that are really close to them. You can also experience this with people you have 4th house Synastry with; you get too attached to the comfort zone they provide to the point where they stifle your growth

🍂Pisces placements 🤝 falling for people who are bluntly abusive, controlling and narcissistic. They want to believe they’re living a beauty and the beast love story when in reality they’re trauma bonding

🍂Libra/Taurus Mars people ARE problematic and petty as fuck, they’re just good at the social game and making it look like they didn't do anything. Underdeveloped Venus energy is the opposite of peaceful, it gives major mean girl vibes and Mars being debilitated in these signs easily brings out this hostile side of Venus. The type to passively instigate drama just to make themselves look better. Very hypocritical

🍂What natives with Saturn in Taurus will consider first when choosing a career is make sure that it is well payed and gives them financial status. Other factors come second

🍂Fixed+cardinal combo in the luminaries is hands down the best sun-moon combo I've seen tbh (specially fixed sun+cardinal moon), they're a force to be reckoned with. Very charismatic, outspoken and confident people with healthy ego if developed. Most people I've met with this combo were very extroverted and/or excellent leaders

🍂Sagittarius placements 🤝 this pose 😜✌🏼

🍂Libra/7th house Lilith have a tendency to judge a book by its cover all the time

🍂I've noticed Pisces MC/10th house natives aren't very ambitious. They seem to not really care about things like self-development or being on top. From what I've seen they mostly aspire to have a pleasant and glamurous life that frees them form real life mundane worries and could desire to retire as early as possible. In some cases I've seen they could want a "princess" kinda lifestyle where they literally have no responsibilities. They want a career that liberates them from any pressure of achieving material expectations and allows them to just go brain dead all the time following a higher power/inspiration/knowledge. That's why many artists have this placements and I've also seen cases of Pisces MC people who wanted to be nuns and nurses. I've noticed that when they genuinely don't care about recieving recognition or achievements but rather do things bc it aligns with their soul that's when they become successful

🍂Scorpio placements have a tendency to be very cynical I've noticed, specially mercury and mars

🍂Gemini/3rd house Lilith can spot lies from miles away and will not be sacred to call it out

🍂As per my observation the water sign that gets idolized the most is not Pisces but Cancer 100%. Yes Pisces does get idolized but I’ve noticed that’s actually very short-lived, people tend to switch up on them SO fast cause they project a deeply unrealistic image on them and eventually fall off the pedestal. Cancer placements on the other hand are not infantized like Pisces, they are consistently very sought after people I’ve observed. They always come across as emotionally reliable even when they’re not, people always go soft for them while simultaneously respecting them so they’re always seen as perfect,kind,charming,etc. Their personality naturally portrays an energy of unconditional love and understanding so people easily get obsessed and addicted to them

🍂I always find that Pisces Venus natives have a very whimsical and juvenile personality. They also have a very extravagant taste they may like anything with bright colors, glittery shiny stuff, squishy toys, etc. they have a tendency to be a bit tacky and corny I’ve noticed

🍂Every fixed moon I've seen avoided any sort of emotional rehabilitation like the plague unless it’s strictly necessary. They believe no one can begin to understand them better than themselves and they got it all figured out already. Now this is more my opinion but I feel like they low-key underestimate the amount of healing they actually need to do cause they really struggle taking emotional accountability. They have a tendency to act like their needs and feelings justify everything so there's not much to "fix" or heal

🍂People who have at least 2 out of their big 3 in cardinal signs are often seen as the golden girl/boy

🍂Capricorn/Virgo moons will be literally the best at what they do and make it seem so effortless. If you ask them how they got so successful they'll be like "idk I guess I just practiced a lot"

🍂I’ve noticed your 8th house sign(s) represent themes that people are consistently using against you as the fastest way to tear you down, so you always end up feeling powerless here at some point. That’s why you tend to resent this energy and have toxic dynamics with people who have their planets here. This house is literally the death of you (8th from 1st), but it can also be the source of your empowerment once you claim this energy so it's best that you keep this house to yourself as much as possible. Some examples:

Gemini 8th house: using what you say against you. you could have a hard time with people believing your words, what you say is always scandalous and/or rubs people the wrong way. Gossip or information that makes you look bad. People always think you’re lying or deceiving or have ulterior motives Cancer 8th house: you could struggle with getting sympathy and emotional support from people. Others think you’re just being vulnerable and complaining for clout. Any display of emotion or care will be seen as manipulative. People trying to break or ruin your relationship with your family or closed ones Capricorn 8th house: you struggle with people respecting you, others don't take you seriously and don't see you as a valid authority. Any attempt to make yourself respected will be seen as dictatorial or elitist behavior, any desire to succeed will be seen as you being power hungry. People try to dismiss or belittle your achievements

work by astrobydalia