#i will try to go to sleep now

[cybercritterinyourcomputer]

writing this on a whim because my brain is torturing me about it for some reason and i figured what better place to go than tumblr [this is somewhat sarcasm]. i do not particularly know why i am writing/asking this but im chucking it out there to ease the thoughts so i can go to sleep

to any systems or whatever or really anyone reading who found this through the tags i put here, how did you know you were a system. or plural or how did you start questioning it how did you figure it out. bear with me its past 2 am my writing is atrocious . how did you know if you never knew before?

i dont think im plural, but something wormed its way into my brain today or yesterday and i dont know why or when and and its not the first time this has popped into my brain i think. the thought of what if what if what if but im me. its my me it there its me its my thoughts and there is no other people in my brain just me myself and i. its not quiet it never is but it is just me

i think a clearer question i want to ask is: how can you tell if something is just dpdr[because i fear i may have that, unfortunately it is very likely] or this? this as in osdd or did or whatever

it would appear simple but unfortunately for a lot of my life my sense of self has been so broken and so messy because. fuck all everything happening i guess but its just me, truly. i talk to myself, i draw different versions of myself together, i split myself into many parts to cope with things, to highlight the different parts of me, variants. the wolf, the puppy, the robot, the hermit, the hollow, the dragon, and whatever the Me is i dont know who or what i am when im so many things and nothing at the same time. i didnt completely think about this but also how heavily i relate to certain characters in media but this may just be a nonhuman thing. i see so much of myself in certain characters and so much of them in me sometimes to the point where i dont know where i start and they end. but again i think that is just a nonhuman thing or a coping thing. because its still just me here

where does the age regression and nonhumanity start and where does it end when i rely on my creations of myself to keep me afloat. i only talk to myself through thinking and drawing, i dont talk to anybody else in my head, its all me. and unfortunately theres a pattern where i learn of something and i think about it and i go, "oh, no, no no, that is absolutely not me, never would dream of it! even thinking that i could be that is a crime to all the ones that truly have that!" and then it ends up being too true. the depression, the adhd, the age regression, the therianthropy, the hard denial of abuse, the hard denial of possible autism. my friends speculate i have ptsd or cptsd. i dont want to go down that line of thinking with this, i *know* i dont have it, but the fear

its annoying because ive never really been here present in my body im never really here and the horrors dont end and theres always been something wrong with me but i know its other things. i wont share the details, but the situation ive been in the past 8? months has been horrible horrid no good on my brain i hate being awake. and it feels like someone else took the reins but im still feeling the hurt i still have the memories but they dont feel like mine. my memories have never felt like my own but theyre mine and i have to write everything down or i will forget. i go to work i listen to family shit on me i go to work i do something all day but its not me im still in my room playing a game in my pjs but that was almost a year ago but im still there but i went to work but it wasnt me

because my mind is empty, its just me. it really truly is just me. i think im just lonely. and hoping someone could take me away from everything im always going through or for someone to be there. in my head

there was never anything to make me think this before, a couple times i have but years ago, for no reason, im quite sure its just me. i had imaginary friends as a kid which is normal for kids. i still kind of do but its just me talking to me, im saying two things. i think i just have a lot of possible trauma[i dont believe im traumatized but my friends are quite firm that my entire life has been a shitshow since i was born] and a lot of coping mechanisms plus the fact that i have to pretend for my family and me being trans and me being nonhuman and me so its mostly just that

i dont really know what exactly im even asking. i think im just throwing out a bone and praying for someone to go "yeah dude thats normal youre fine, youre normal" and for my brain to stop ruminating and its annoying. or for someone to ease my curiosity and fear and dread. im throwing out a bone, im begging for someone to glance my way, im begging for someone to tell me its okay. not the begging to be okay but to say that my brain is okay and that my life is okay

[bacchuschucklefuck]

typical tavern scene

[turtleblogatlast]

AU where Leo is trapped in the Prison Dimension for months instead of minutes and the only way he gets by with his sanity intact is through recording himself talking to his wrist comm.

When they finally manage to get Leo back and make him rest up to heal, Donnie can’t help but listen to the recordings left behind.

He’s not sure what exactly he’s expecting, only that his subconscious is screaming at him that it has to be heartbreaking, that it has to be torturous.

Instead, what Donnie is subject to is a full thousand hours’ worth of Jupiter Jim and Lou Jitsu crossover fanfiction. More than one part in the series. Spanning well over a million words.

(The worst part is that it’s actually good.)

[ef-1]

look at the state of sport journalism dawg, he sucked on a lollypop with steeliness and determination??? oozing mental fortitude??? Autosport it's time to open up the schools

[screwpinecaprice]

Oh oof I slipped and hit them with dark and serious beam. 😣

[emmg]

It is no hardship, Emmrich tells himself, to wear his face. It is his, after all. The one he was born with, the one that grew and shifted under his own patient gaze, seen in puddles, in mirrors, in the glass of a carriage window as he smoothed down his hair with the flat of his palm. A face he had stared at for far too long that first time he shaved, and again a few years later when he invited that very pretty boy out for a promenade and wanted, with all the force of a young man’s vanity, to be just as pretty himself—no hair astray, the kohl at his lower lids an almost imperceptible shadow, the perfume at his neck a whisper of carelessness, though in truth, nothing had ever been more deliberate.

For a decade now, they have called him distinguished. Before that, they called him handsome. He knows his face, likes his face. Its summoning should be no trouble at all; especially now, especially like this, stripped down to something more elemental, all ivory angles and nothing more. But Rook is uneasy. She does not say so—she is all sorry, shit, don’t mind me, fuck, fuck, I’ll get used to it, I’ll get used to it—but she is not made for the sight of bone in the dark when she wakes abruptly. He has had years to come to terms with the unmaking of his flesh. She has not.

So he does not miss his face, not really. But Rook does. And for Rook, he will pretend. 

No, he tells himself again, he does not mind. He does not. 

Lichdom, as he had once explained to her, sanded down most of his senses. Blunted them, rubbed them smooth. But in their place, others have surfaced. Senses without names, without proper edges, ones that slip through language like smoke through a cracked door. He cannot smell the perfume she wears, though he knows it is dreadful, some sticky, saccharine thing she bought in Treviso with Lucanis and spilled all over her shirt. But he can see her pleasure when she presses a little figurine into his palm, triumphant and insistent. This one, she affirms, is so much prettier than the first, and most importantly, not haunted. 

He watches her giddiness churn inside her, thick and writhing. It is purple, inexplicably. It loops and knots, wriggling sideways, swelling through her veins, a restless thing. It coils, slippery, around her heart before pouring from her mouth when she speaks. When she presses her lips to what passes for his cheek, he thinks he can taste it. Or something like tasting. As if she had chewed it to a pulp, crushed it between her molars, worked it down to something fibrous and wet and pressed it into him, like carrion slipped between teeth, offered as a gift. 

He swallows it, slow. 

Perhaps this is what purple has always tasted like. 

There are other things. Other feelings. They arrive misshapen, crawling over the edges of his thoughts, curious, pestering, impossible to ignore. They perplex him. They amuse him. And sometimes—sometimes—he wishes he felt nothing at all.

Like when she cuts herself, and he watches the blood spill, a slow, indifferent line along the curve of her arm. But it is not blood, not in the dull, medical sense. Not something as pedestrian as iron and salt. It is a ribbon, impossibly red, and he can see the rest of it coiled inside her, packed neatly away, waiting to be tugged. How much could he pull free before she wavers, before her lips lose their color, before the bright, stubborn thing inside her gutters out? 

He heals her arm. Does not look at her when he does it. Says nothing of consequence. 

But he wants to take that ribbon and wind it around her wrist, knot it, twist it, pull it so tight that it ceases to be a ribbon at all. Flesh yielding to pressure, pressure forcing permanence. A bracelet of skin. A smooth, bloodless seam. A correction. 

Rook thanks him. A glance, a nod—already half-gone as she turns toward Rivain. There are things to be done there for her, and he cannot stray from the Necropolis for long. What things, exactly, she does not say, but he knows their shape well enough: dragons, impulse, the peculiar magnetism of disaster. She has always been like this, drawn to the spectacularly unwise with the certainty of a moth misjudging distance. 

He can no longer follow. 

She will return. He knows this. And yet, if his hands still possessed the capacity for tremor, he suspects they would betray him now. 

"I love you, I love you, I love you," she sings, a careless, looping refrain, a child’s chant repurposed for a woman who has never quite learned to tread lightly. She chatters as she moves; this and that, something or other, a bad decision or three. She shows him rings, delicate and stolen, lifted from a dragon’s hoard, then tells him of a strange mug found in the same place and promptly lost to someone forgettable in a game of cards. 

"Look, look," she says, because excitement makes her redundant. "I kept these for you." 

The rings slide onto his fingers—bandaged, skeletal, indifferent to the distinction. He flexes them. Smiles, because each one carries an emerald, and green has always pleased him. 

"I was meaning to ask you," Rook says. She is still holding his hand, turning it gently in her own, left, right, right, left, as though testing whether it is truly there. "You are smiling now." 

"I am." 

"Don’t interrupt me." 

"My deepest apologies." 

"It was a joke," she says, but absently, without weight. Then, again, softer: "You are smiling now. But is it real? Or do I see a smile only because I expect to? Because I believe it should be there?" 

"It is quite real," he reassures her, lifting his free hand, brushing two fingers against her cheek. "The glamour does not fabricate emotions. It is a projection, not an invention. A polished pane of glass through which I am seen, rather than a mask obscuring what lies beneath. It filters nothing. It simply allows you to perceive what is still there, as it was." 

She exhales. He watches it unfurl from her mouth, a slip of breath that curls, dissipates, wrapped in green. Relief, perhaps. 

"Good," she murmurs. "That is good." 

There are things he misses more than others. Some he had not expected to mourn, believing that lichdom would cauterize the want before it could take shape. And perhaps it would have, if not for Rook. But she exists, unavoidably, and so the loss takes shape, outlines itself, defines itself against the hollow places she touches. 

The intimacy of the body: its mechanics, its heat, its crude and glorious simplicity. He misses the way skin clings, damp and sticky, the tack of sweat drying between them. The way lips grow chapped from too much kissing, saliva sapped away until the skin cracks, until the next kiss stings. He misses the raw and graceless rhythm of it, the press of her thighs around him, the slow loss of self in the churn of it all. He misses the way he could press his palm to her stomach, still sheathed within her, and feel himself there, caged by her. 

And afterward, in the languid sprawl of spent nerves and loose limbs, the way his mind would wander, taking him by the hand, showing him its little fantasies, its secreted-away indulgences—let us get married, Rook, I will buy you so much gold, let’s get married, yes, and then let’s have a child, but not immediately, not at once, let’s linger here a while, let’s lose ourselves in this, let’s glut ourselves on one another until we are utterly ruined by it, and then, yes, then, we will have that little thing.

Now, he feels her differently. Not through skin but through something more fundamental, a closeness that eclipses anything flesh ever allowed. It is fuller, sharper, deeper than anything he could have imagined. 

But it is not the same. 

And he does not yet know if he prefers it. 

Time, as always, will decide. 

Pleasure has not abandoned him. It has only changed its nature, its source, its means of arrival. Now, it exists solely through her. He sees, now, how men dissolve into drink, into smoke, into whatever tincture delivers them to sensation. The body remembers its peaks; the body conspires to reach them again. 

"Will you come for me, darling girl?" he murmurs against her ear, his fingers curling inside her as they have done so many times before—when his hands were warm, when they ceased to be. 

And she does what she always does: she writhes, she gasps, she laughs, she moves against him with the helpless, thoughtless grace of something yielding to gravity. Her hips chase the friction, her mouth parts, her breath hitches, her lashes lower, heavy with pleasure. And he—he is there inside her, feeling it as she feels it, tasting it in a way that has nothing to do with taste, swallowing it down, letting it course through him. It is vast. It is staggering. Pleasure enough for two, for more than two, enough to fill the space where he no longer exists. 

Afterward, she is breathless, boneless, staring up at the ceiling and laughing that strange, impossible laugh. He no longer tries to make sense of it. Some things cannot be translated. She has a laugh for anger, a laugh for excitement, a laugh for surprise. He thinks he knows this one well enough by now, the one that trickles out of her in the aftermath. 

A trick, an echo, the imitation of a thing once real. He kisses her where he would have kissed her once—her mouth, the sharp ridge of her collarbone, the small curve of her breast, except now there is no heat, no wet drag of a tongue, no parted lips. Only the careful architecture of a spell, a memory sculpted into sensation, something just close enough to pass for real. He trails lower, following the old pathways, the ones his hands remember even if they are no longer the same. 

She sighs. Again. Again. Another time. 

He lingers where she yields the most, where she is all pulse and warmth, where her thighs, slick and trembling, part for him before he even touches her. Where breath quickens and thought slips away. And through it, he drinks. Draws from her as he always does, as he must, in ways he does not fully understand, or perhaps does, but has decided against understanding. He takes until she is weightless, drifting, until her voice emerges in that low, drowsy enough, enough, until she exhales, unconscious of herself, shifting, turning into him, her cheek settling against his shoulder, her body already gone to sleep.

And he wonders—if he did not stop, could he empty her? 

What is it that they share, exactly? What does she give? What does he take? Is it taking at all? Perhaps she is feeding from him just as he feeds from her.

He could ask. He could go looking for the answer. It is what he has done his entire life. 

But he does not. Because the answer, whatever it may be, does not matter. Because, at his core, he knows this much to be true: 

He is an empty thing now. 

And all empty things must be filled. 

It is a dreadful experience, watching her get hurt. Dreadful in its predictability, in the casual inevitability of it. Rook, as he has come to understand, is the sort of person who leaps from a cliff first and wonders, mid-air, whether there was perhaps a gentler way down.  

He saw it in Hossberg—how she, in some fit of blind fury over a slight he can no longer remember, kicked a blight boil with all the grace of a petulant child, only for the thing to rupture, spraying its filth over her boots, her legs, her hands, her face. Later, when he spat out his anger—you could have infected yourself, and then what? Where would the Veilguard be without their leader?—she had, without hesitation, lifted her middle finger and held it aloft, like a banner, like a flag planted firmly into the dirt, a gesture so profoundly Rook that it settled the argument before it could begin.

She returns from Rivain with a sprained wrist and, predictably, does not acknowledge it until he gestures toward it, a quiet inquiry rather than an accusation. 

So he buys her things. Things with weight, with shimmer, with the ability to distract. A bottle of wine she favors, a dress the precise shade of blue that once made her pause in front of a shop window, jewelry that catches light and throws it back in a thousand fractured directions. Loud things, bright things, expensive things. The kind of things a magpie would die over. Because Rook—misnamed, mislabeled—is no rook at all, no solemn, shrewd thing perching in the rafters. She is a magpie, ever in pursuit of the next gleaming fragment, the brightest piece of a broken world. That is why she is away, isn’t it? Always away. Always chasing.

But Nevarra has more gold than the Rivaini coast. 

He wants to say—won’t you stay? Won’t you, at last, stay longer? But there is something perilous in the asking. The wrong phrasing, the wrong weight to his voice, and she will fold up like a map, unreadable, distant, already turning toward the door.

She lifts a necklace, lets it spill through her fingers, a thin chain pooling in her palm. "Ooooh," she hums. "What’s the occasion?" 

"I have missed you terribly," he says. "You were away too long." 

"I missed you too." 

"Then stay. My townhouse is yours, of course. It is in the heart of the city—" 

"But you won’t be there," she interrupts, without sharpness, without accusation. A simple statement of fact. "You’ll be in the Necropolis."

"Then stay with me in the Necropolis," he says, more softly. 

She looks at him. Long enough for him to grow aware of the silence. Long enough for him to think he ought to say something more, to fill the space with some innocuous remark, something to break the weight of it—a comment on the weather, the slow drip of rain against the windowpanes, the scent of damp stone, the candlelight shifting across her cheek, the peeling corner of the wallpaper he has been meaning to mend but never does. 

Then, at last, in a whisper, as if she is considering each word before releasing it: 

"I'm trying." 

A breath. 

"I'm really, really trying. I love you so much. This frightens me, but I love you, and I'll stay longer, I promise, and you needn’t hide your face, no, no, you can stop hiding it now, but it is so terribly cold here, and I can smell the bones, Emmrich, did you know one can smell bones?" 

Senseless, rambling little words, leaving her mouth with no regard for order, no real expectation of being understood. He listens anyway. He nods as if these words, specifically, are the ones he has been waiting to hear. He holds her hands, pressing his fingers lightly over hers, as though reacquainting himself with the shape of them, the bones beneath the skin. And this time—this time—she stays.

He does not move. Does not speak. Instead, he lets the moment settle around him, lets it press in from all sides, cautious and weightless, as if sudden motion might send it scattering. A trick of the mind, surely, nothing more than habit, the vestigial longing of a body that no longer exists. And yet—something, something faint and absurd and wholly impossible—something like warmth uncoils in the vacant spaces of him, and for the first time in too long, he allows himself to believe in the illusion. 

And he is happy, so terribly, foolishly happy, until she steps where a step should have been, onto stone that no longer exists, because the Necropolis, fickle and treacherous as ever, decides to shift beneath her. One moment she is there, cursing the cold, flicking dust from her sleeve, and the next she is gone, swallowed into the dark, falling before he can reach for her. Then—impact, the sound of something snapping, something that should not snap. 

"Oh, for fuck’s sake," she spits, voice sharp with pain, her frustration seething through clenched teeth. "I hate this fucking place. This miserable, shifting, plague-ridden, necrophiliac fucking mausoleum. This—" she swallows, gasps, rage momentarily overtaken by the white-hot shock of agony, then forces the words out, savage and breathless—"this godsdamned, dusty, corpse-stinking labyrinth of a tomb. Fuck this place. Fuck you for living in it. Fuck this floor for moving. Fuck my fucking leg." 

She hisses even as she cries, squeezing her eyes shut as if trying to will the hurt out of her body. He sees, at last, what has happened. A break, and not a clean one: bone slick and white against torn skin, jutting through muscle, her blood already thickening where it pools on the stone. 

And then—something strange. A pull, an unraveling, something unwinding before him, leading away. The ribbon again, unspooling, slipping from her, stretching outward, as though guiding him somewhere he does not wish to go. His vision narrows. He follows it. He follows it because he cannot help but follow it. 

"Emmrich?" Her voice has changed. The heat is gone, as is the anger. She sounds uncertain now. She sounds concerned. "Emmrich, are you—?" 

But he is looking at the ribbon. Watching where it leads. Watching where it ends. 

And he would weep if he could. 

He has spent his life in a state of want, always reaching, always grasping, always aching to be something necessary to someone. And now—now, at last—he has what he has longed for. Rook, quick and wild and untouchable. Rook, who was born lovely and careless and beautiful, who could have wrapped herself around anyone she pleased but chose, instead, him—old and grey, and then, simply, bone. Rook, with her hands always outstretched, her eyes always searching, who once told him, so offhandedly he almost believed she didn’t mean it, that she would have given him a child.

Now—now, she sits before him, cursing under her breath, her leg twisted, her blood sliding across the stone, and he understands, too suddenly, too clearly, that he cannot keep her. 

One day, that ribbon will slip from her entirely. 

And he will be wanting again, except this time, there will be no remedy, no second chance, no indulgence to dull the ache. 

Because she—she—the only thing that has ever fit the hollow inside him, will be gone.

A year. Ten. Twenty. Perhaps less. Perhaps more. 

She will be gone. 

Gone, gone, gone. 

"It will not break again," he tells her.

"Really?" she asks, pale from hurt.

"Truly."

He stands, glances over the chamber, and selects a sconce, its veilfire guttering weakly within its iron frame. He snuffs it out with a flick of his wrist, wrenches the metal free from the wall, and lets it sag into liquid in his palm. The Necropolis will not miss it. It devours offerings every day; what is one more? The molten iron shifts, pulses, rolls like living mercury as he shapes it between his fingers. She watches, suspicious, wary, but when he takes the pain from her, she sighs, slackens, her body a thing that yields, a thing that trusts. 

Bone is simple. A structure, a framework. Break it, mend it, break it again. He has done this before, he will do it again, and the body always obeys in the end. With a slow push, he sets her leg back into place. Crack, crack, crack—shattered edges realign, splinters withdraw, raw ends fuse like wax pressed to wax. He sees the place where the bone has chewed its way free, white and wet against the torn meat of her calf. 

He presses his fingers into the wound, past the sealing skin. The iron above them stirs at his will, stretching like a cat in the air before obeying, flowing down, clinging to the surface of the bone. Not inside it, no. That would be crude, inelegant. Instead, it forms a layer, thin but solid, a second skeleton over the first. It cools as it settles, solidifies, binds itself to her as if it had always belonged there. He guides it lower, shaping it over her tibia, letting it follow the curve of her ankle, turning his wrist slightly to direct it sideways, until the fibula is covered as well, safe beneath its new armor. There.

The final shreds of her wound pull themselves shut, sealing over his work, concealing what has been done. 

She shifts her foot, tilting her head, considering. "Oh," she says. "I suppose I'll be heavier now." 

He kisses her cheek and feels the faint shift of muscle beneath his lips, the small, secret curve of her smile. This time, for once, her happiness has no color. Not gold, not red, not that strange, shimmering violet he sometimes sees curling from her ribs. Just happiness, unembellished, undisturbed. And because she feels it, he believes it, and because he believes it, he takes it for himself, drawing her close.

"I am so, so happy that you are safe," he hears himself say, a confession with no real shape, a drunken speech without the mercy of intoxication. "I worry when you are gone, and I worry when you are here. It seems that no matter what I do, something always finds you first." 

She hums, arms looping around him, her fingers idly mapping the planes of his back, tracing aimless patterns into the fabric of his robes. "I don’t know what to say to that," she admits, her voice softened by exhaustion, by the slow retreat of pain. "But I am so, so happy with you too. And it’s all right, it’s all right. Every time I break, you can repair me." She pauses, then adds, utterly deadpan, "Guess that makes you my skele-tonic."

It is an objectively terrible pun. 

"Until you stop breaking altogether," he murmurs. 

Another hum, vague, thoughtless. 

He draws from her as he always does: pleasure, warmth, something deeper, something without a name, though it must have one, must have been cataloged somewhere, written down by some scholar who spent his life studying things that could not be grasped. He has never fully understood what it is he takes, only that it belongs to her, and that, by some quiet, unspoken permission, it is his as well. He wants to love her forever. But more than that, he wants to ensure that forever remains within reach, that it does not remain, as so many things have, just outside his grasp, dissolving the moment he closes his fist. 

He has spent too long watching what he yearned for unravel before he could fasten it down. This, he will not allow. It will take gold, it will take iron, it will take something far stronger, something absolute. Until she ceases to break. Until breaking is no longer a possibility, a concept, a word that has anything to do with her. 

He does not yet know how. But he has time—too much of it. More than she does. And he has always been a man of precision, of hypothesis and proof, of elegant solutions to insufferable problems. He will find a way. Through metal or magic, through that ribbon of red that keeps slipping from her, unspooling itself in slow increments, always trying to get away. He will take it, force it back into place, stitch it to the marrow, fix it with something incorruptible, something permanent, something that cannot be unwound without unmaking her in the process. 

He presses a kiss to her temple, then to her forehead, and speaks of flowers. The new blooms in the Memorial Gardens. Hideous, by all accounts. She will adore them. She appreciates beauty, certainly, but she loves foolishness even more. He kisses her cheek, the tip of her nose, her small, stubborn chin, and feels it again—that bright, quiet thing. Happiness. 

And, miraculously, when he takes a piece for himself, it does not feel stolen. 

"Enough, enough," she murmurs at last, the same word twice, as she always does when she needs a break from him, when she has given too much, when she feels him pulling, drinking, taking in excess without meaning to. Laughter ghosts beneath the words, thin but present, a reminder that she is still here, still whole. She taps his wrist with two fingers, light, quick, final—a gesture that, for all its carelessness, feels uncannily like closing a book. 

[s0fter-sin]

trans!soap taking his baby and running away from his rich abusive husband

(cw angst, financial abuse, single threat of child abuse, single mention of transphobia)

he's owned soap for years, since he was a teenager; paid for his medication and all his surgeries and tied them so deeply, soap’s lost hope of ever getting away. he gets even worse when soap falls pregnant. he was always controlling; blowing up at him if he spent too long out of the house or did something without telling him. but he becomes utterly possessive during the pregnancy

soap knows it has nothing to do with his safety or the baby's

he knows he sees his baby as an investment; another being he can control and hold over him

he gets worse and worse but there’s nothing soap can do. there's been nothing he can do for a long time. then a few months after the baby is born, soap doesn’t watch his tone closely enough and his husband threatens to drop his baby in punishment for it

soap doesn't think. he doesn't plan

he takes his baby and runs

he sneaks out of the servant's quarters of the sterile mansion he's been forced to live in for almost a decade and walks down the street without a backwards glance; his baby the only thing in his arms. he knows all of his husband's cars have trackers, all of them in his name since he never lets soap drive or go anywhere by himself, so he walks far enough to be out of view of the mansion's cameras and steals one. it doesn't have a car seat and all he can do is clutch his baby to his chest as he drives

he doesn't know where he's going beyond away

he doesn't know what he's going to do; he doesn't have any money, no supplies for his baby, he doesn't even have water for himself so he can reliably breastfeed him. he's terrified his husband will find them; he’s always felt omniscient, always everywhere and seeing everything he did. if he didn’t have eyes somewhere, he paid someone who did and they always dutifully reported back to him

soap just keeps his eyes forward. just keeps driving and driving, lost to the road and numb until the low gas light pops up on the dash and it all hits him at once

he turns into a gas station he can't pay for, in a car he stole, and parks behind it and his baby immediately starts getting fussy

he can't even call him by his name sometimes; too afraid to get attached, too afraid to lose him. as if he doesn’t love him more than life itself

even throughout his pregnancy, as happy as he was to finally have a baby, he didn't know if he could carry to term and that fear just let his husband dig his claws in even deeper; paying for extra scans he could never hope to pay for, favours on top of favours so he would aways owe him and isn’t he such a loving husband? taking soap in when his parents kicked him out for being trans, looking after him for all these years? you can’t even take care of yourself john, you’d still be a woman without me, john, what is this tantrum about john-

soap tugs his shirt up to let his baby feed, drops his head back and cries

he can't stop it; wails loud and uncontrolled, chest heaving with his sobs enough that it sways his baby, occasionally breaking his latch and he can't even do this right-

he can't save him

a light knock sounds on the window and soap flinches, curling over his baby to protect him from his huband's cruel hands

but it's not his husband outside the window

soap blinks tears from his eyes and looks at the large stranger standing beside the car. a neck gaiter covers his mouth and it should be off-putting… but something about him stops the feeling in its tracks. the stranger takes a half-step back and lifts a chilled and sealed water bottle, pressing it towards the window

soap quickly swipes his face clean and rolls down the window. "sorry 'bout that," he apologises with a choked laugh, the careful front he’s built over the years cracked and bleeding

the stranger gives a dismissive but somehow not diminishing shrug. "long day?" he asks

"could say that," he gives a shrug of his own and pats his baby's back as he makes a disgruntled noise, unconsciously swaying him

he politely keeps his gaze up on his face. "looks like you could use a break."

soap's breath hitches, anxiously darting his tongue out over his bottom lip. "could say that," he repeats uselessly and takes the water with a quiet “thanks,”; his throat dry and screaming for it after crying so hard

the stranger hums, watching him down the bottle and soap doesn’t notice his eyes drifting to the backseat and footwell of the passenger side. doesn’t notice the slight tension in his fists at what he sees. "how long you been runnin', lad?"

soap freezes, the water settling in his stomach like a stone. he swallows thickly and the bottle falls from his lips

"not long enough."

the stranger just nods, looking idly back down the highway

"you know, this place is connected to a garage,” he starts, nodding back to a building attached to the station without taking his eyes off the road. “lotta people drift through 'ere on road trips; too many to keep track.”

soap frowns slightly, shifting his hold on his baby

“funny thing is, plenty of 'em just abandon their car when they break down. like yours,” he adds and finally turns back to him with a pointed look. “got a whole junkyard of 'em. just rustin' away. be pretty easy to convince me to trade ya one."

soap’s mouth parts in a gasp as he realises just what the stranger’s saying. "how easy?" he whispers

he shrugs and even with his face hidden beneath the gaiter, he doesn’t feel afraid. "i'd say this car'd be a good deal. would blend right in with the rest of ‘em; no one’d ever notice it. what say i take it off your hands?"

soap's breath shudders out of him, his whole body going limp with relief. his baby's eyes fall shut with a satisfied hum and for the first time he can remember, he feels the gentle touch of hope

"i think we can work something out."

🧼💀

ghost owns the service station soap pulled into. he wanted something quiet and isolated after he retired and you can’t get much quieter than a backwoods servo surrounded by forest. he hasn’t had anyone pull in in days so he’s quick to notice soap’s car. he’s also quick to notice soap's subsequent breakdown in one of the cameras. the sight of him crying, desperately clutching a baby like they’re all he has left in the world, is so familiar he felt sick with it

he knows someone running when he sees it

if he didn't check on him, if this lad disappeared one day and the baby along with him, he'd never forgive himself. the lad doesn't even have a baby bag or car seat with him, and the personalised sticker on the back window of a lady and a dog is a dead giveaway that the car is stolen

but the lad is terrified. and when he startled him, he didn't turn. didn’t lift his arms to protect himself. no

he covered his baby

like he was afraid he'd be hurt

that's enough for ghost

🧼💀

i'd wanna set this in the 80's or 90's, just to make it even harder for soap to get away from his husband. he's a trans man with a newborn; he has no one to run to and no resources to help him. his husband's bought and paid for everything for him since he was 17; a few whirlwind weeks of unbelievable dates and extravagant gifts and he was living in his mansion, getting married the day after his 18th birthday. he thought it was love. thought he was being looked after and cared for the way he’s always wanted

he was in pain and alone and naive enough to believe the first person who came along and promised to make it better. nothing's in his name, not his insurance or his meds, he doesn’t have a bank account or savings; other than a birth certificate, nothing even ties him to his baby. his husband could take his world away from him with a snap of his fingers and he made sure soap always knew it

he never had a chance of getting away

but ghost is ex-military

he doesn’t know the lad’s story, doesn’t know the details of what he’s running from. he doesn’t need to know

he decided he was helping him the second he pulled into his service station

[temeyes]

my cold's fucking me up, so just some quick lads for tonight

[soullessseraphim]

they're spying in town 👀👀👀

[danielsarmand]

million dollar question: do you think the general public, who normally spares absolutely no thought whatsoever to aroace people and actually doesn't even truly believe they exist, sees viktor as asexual

a) for legitimate and valid reasons

b) because he is disabled and chronically ill and therefore a sexless, undesirable being, and then they'll say it's because he's never shown an interest in sex despite one of his lines being a play on sneaking a guy into his bedroom, and even though most characters in the show never have or even think about sexual endeavours of any kind due to their storylines not really being about that, he is somehow the only one being labeled as asexual because the others are conveniently just otherwise preoccupied and would certainly entertain sexual relationships if they could

[sollucets]

aninpin + hands

[0ann3]

I saw the tsum tsum stack or whatever it is that they did, and my heart just went AAAAAAHHHH-

It's so cute and then I thought of drawing this ToT

Did it as fast as I can since I still gotta study for something-

[izuke-the-zombie]

This is a little head cannon/What if Macaque had more original powers, a little more Starry Night dreamlike powers leaning into the more nurturing kind, you know, the moon and sun kind of powers? 🌙☀️

 

Maybe in the past, he was like a therapy friend to Wukong, someone he could really be himself with, vent, and tell his secrets without being judged in the safety of his own dreams. Someone he can truly trust, and that was Macaque.

Skip to Redemption Ark for Mac

Now he's a therapy friend to the whole MK team! (Against his will) They cuddle, pet, and vent to him with their problems. He's like one of Sandy's therapy cats, just bigger and grumpier.😾💕✨ he just has this way with people I guess

Okay, this is how it starts: Macaque and Wukong's first encounter was in a dream.

Wukong would not shut up about the pretty demon in his crazy dreams, often to his sworn brothers; he talked about all the fun and crazy adventures he'd have, the long meaningful conversations and jokes, and the occasionally moving pictures of otherworldly strong magical humans with sparkly eyes and spiky hair who wield giant weapons that shoots Fire called anime, and that this had been going on for a few months now.

This annoyed and concerned them; they think it's a demon trying to take over the Monkey King's mind or trying to brainwash him somehow, so Azure Lion and the Sworn Brothers all brainstormed together to devise a plan to somehow confront this tricky dream demon. Wukong doesn't want the fun dreams to end or scare off this other celestial monkey, so he decides to talk to his friend in his dreams. Wukong casually brings up the idea that the macaque should visit Flower Fruit and meet his sworn brothers! Macaque of course hesitates, not sure of the idea of traveling to an unknown island and meeting The Monkey King's questionable choice of sworn brothers, but of course, Wukong, sad and a bit offended, but he doesn't give up.

He decides to bring upon the Ultimate Weapon, begging and whining until Macaque crumbles and gives in, which eventually does. Mac reluctantly agrees to travel over to FFM in disguise, just to be safe he tells Wukong he'll be there. Within a month, Wukong couldn't be more excited; he was like a little kid waiting for Christmas day!

So this is what kinds of powers I think he should have.

😴 the first pic is crossing over to other people's dreams and making their experience life-like he has illusion magic so this makes sense to me. Wukong and macaque would prank the Brotherhood or play tags and hide and seek in their brother's dreams. 🌸The second pic is the soothing ability to calm one's nerves if they pet or cuddle him like a therapy cat,🐈 Wukong would groom him for hours to calm his nerves. now come copes with food🍑🍔🍭

🌸🎶I saved the best one for last the cute/sad little head Cannon I have

At the end of every dream Mac visits they would end it by dancing to music Mac would bring from the future laughing and stumbling while wukong slowly wakes up, wukong has always gone to bed early But now he goes even earlier to bed. Wukong always thought he was the luckiest monkey in the world he gets to have two Adventure and one of them is with his prettiest best friend Macaque 😚✨the monkey of his dreams.

🌸 Wukong couldn't truly dream of a world without his bestest friend🥰✨

[absolute-ferret]

You can have more textposts , as a treat

First one is a reference to @interstyx 's fic, Here, Be nice

(Sorry i just ADORE their fic . Dies)

[ink--theory]

coming back home after going through unimaginable hell the squeakuel

[wishfulsketching]

I won a battle against art and anatomy, so I decided to doodle something real quickly as a treat!

Show gives me props to use to make cute little moments? Yes please and thank you.