#idk man. Lent is going to be rough.
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badolmen · 10 months ago
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Soldiers kill sheep in the streets and I see bison skulls piled high, the bullets are made in the United States.
Trees are set ablaze by tanks and I see Moses kneeling in fear and reverence, God does not speak from these flames.
The people starve and I see seaweed gathered in baskets on Irish shores, Dutch tulip bulbs boiled with rabbit bones.
When they said ‘never again’ it was never for love of the hundreds of millions murdered, nor fear of the systems that allowed such evil to rise. They said ‘never again’ to shipping lane inconveniences, to stock market woes, and to being seen for cowards.
At least a coward would sit in quiet fear, content in inaction. Now they sign over billions, condemning millions to the total destruction. Where is the shame? Where is the apathy? At least in that I can call them mere cowards. What else am I to call them but the evil they so long taught me to revile?
God have mercy on their souls. God have mercy on ours. For the body is doomed - the bombs will still fall, the blood will still spill, the graves of thousands will fill.
(How long is the queue to the pearly gates? Is St. Peter agrieved to see so many young faces? Are wives rejoicing or grieving the reunion with their husbands? Does the brother laugh or cry when he finds his sister among the crowd?)
From Carthage to Auschwitz we were warned. From Roman roads to shipping lanes we watched the weapons trade hands. And when we cry out to the powers that be, they turn away - unseeing, unhearing, unfeeling. Machine men, with machine minds and machine hearts.
But the horror is in knowing they are not machines. This is not their nature. They are men. Born with a love for humanity in their hearts, a desire for community and companionship and art. How did they lose such a fundamental part of their being? Was it beaten out of them by bitter men before them or did they discard it themselves, as though it were a cancer to be excised? Does it matter when they so zealously jump knee deep in blood and bone among bomb shattered homes?
And while it is troubling to consider that, being human, we too can have our hearts hardened, it is far more uncomfortable to consider that, being human, they may one day revert to natural compassion. And what does one do when the machine becomes man again? When he proves it was a choice all along? A choice he refused and snubbed until the bodies cooled and the graves grew grassy with age?
God forgive what I cannot.
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mnstcrbnll · 2 years ago
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"ONE LAST TIME, WELCOME BACK TO SECRETS FROM THE STARS!!
Eleven stellar contestants wanted to give it another shot and discover the secrets remaining... and while some did amazing, some others... not so much~!
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Now, first of all, time to spoil who sent those last few secrets... and then we'll go ahead and see who got the golden star... and who ended up at rock bottom!
" i still like a guy who cheated on me and broke my heart and idk what to do about it. i know i shouldn't be. i think i need some advice." was STRELITZIA'S SECRET, and half of our contestants guessed correctly! Let's hope someone will give her some advice after all!
"killed a man by adding 4x the spice to a chili. he never recovered." was BRUTO'S SECRET, and while the majority guessed right, plenty thought it could've been Anzu's, Lyra's or Molayne's secret as well. Guess nobody is a good cook, here!
"I ACCIDENTALLY CAUSED THE GREAT SUNNYSHORE CITY BLACKOUT AND NOBODY KNOWS. I CRASHED MY BIKE AGAINST A BIG ELECTRIC PANNEL AND RAN AWAY." was WILLOW'S SECRET, and with my surprise a vast majority thought it belonged to Mable! And while I'm at it, I want to remind our stellar audience to go visit Eternara's Rickshaw & Daughter's for all your biking needs!
" I once broke a thunderstone earing my classmate lent to me by chewing on it." was LYRA'S SECRET, and people equally guessed her and Molayne! We'll have to gift them both some high quality earrings!
" I have had done something naughty in the break room or my place of work " was MOLAYNE'S SECRET, but the majority guessed Bruto! My oh my, sooo spicy~!
"I have horrible Phasmophobia, but ghosts seem to love me anyway." was RIKA'S SECRET! She got the majority of votes, but that seemed to throw off a lot of people too!
"I've been trying to get back into drawing fanart of my favorite childhood book series, PokeMorphs. I even had a PokeMorph-sona back then, who was a Stantler, and I'm trying to redraw her. Who knows, maybe I'll have her evolve into a Wydeer or something" was MABLE'S SECRET, and much to my surprise, while the majority guessed her, just as many people thought it was Rika's secret! Maybe you too should meet for some fanfiction ideas!
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Now now now, the moment you've been waiting for! Last time, Riley ( @auraguardians ) was on top... but this test put everyone in a very rough spot, making someone even go under ZERO STARS! In fact, at the very last place, with MINUS THREE AND A HALF STARS, Volkner ( @low-charge )!! But fear not, someone did way worse: in fact, GRUSHA ( @crushed-ice ) he decided to go ahead and threaten your galactic host on camera and we decided to give a little malus ♥ This means that, at the end of the day, with MINUS FOUR, Grusha loses! ♥
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But, now, to see who became our new STELLAR GOSSIPER... with NINE STARS after she guessed every single secret of round 2 correctly, and after she oh-so-boldly went ahead and sent her guess for the first one barely five minutes after the start of our show
WILLOW ( @soardived ) IS THE WINNER OF THIS ROUND OF SECRETS FROM THE STARS!!!
For that, she's allowed to recieve... ONE WISH! Nothing too big, of course, we don't give out Mythical Pokèmon and potions of eternal youth... but after spreading your dirty laundry, the least you could ask for in return is a first class ticket, right?"
cue canned laugh
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"Congratulations to all partecipants, and I wish you all a STELLAR EVENING!"
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pink02 · 3 years ago
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Wanna piece of this?
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Carlos Madrigal x f!reader
Genre: Fluff (idk really)
Summary: You and Mirabel where walking through the roads of Encanto looking around at shops and stores while talking about random stuff. You two were too distracted from your own conversation that you didn't noticed a pissed off young man stomping towards you two. Didn't really know why but you knew he was looking for trouble, and by that he was looking for a certain Madrigal twin.
Trigger warning: A lot of swearing, cursed words, act of violence verbally and physically.
A/n: Doesn't mention any particular pronounce but uses 'you'. Put f!reader because of spanish word endearments used during the story. An idea popped into my mind when I was gonna make another Encanto fic. I would like to put Camilo in this story but I think Carlos is more fitting due to his rough behavior and attitude. Hahahahhaha.... idk what title would be fitting for this story.... oh well.
Also I'm not fluent in spanish nor is originally a spanish speaker. All words are translated in google. Excuse my grammar if there are any errors.
♡♡ Masterlist ♡♡
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Town folks and children would wave and greet you and Mirabel as you pass by while you were looking at shops and stalls. You two giggled while you were conversing about a memory you shared.
Mirabel held a laugh as you're continuing your story. "What happened to your sister after that?-"
"MADRIGAL!" Mirabel stopped when she heard her name being called out.
You both stopped your tracks turning around confusion. Looking for the source of the voice, you saw a boy your age approaching you with a scowl on his face. Flour falling off of his head as he stomped down his tracks.
As he came near, he huffed off more flour and glared at both of you. "Where is tu puto primo?!" He shouted pissed off by his situation.
You and Mirabel shared a look, completely confused and bewildered on what the boy said. Mirabel quickly adjusted her glasses and stepped a little closer beside you, looking at the flour covered boy confusingly. "I don't know where mi primos are, who are you even referring to, Alvaro?" She asked the pissed out boy.
Boy does he look like an angered toro ready to charge a red flag. You thought, almost blurting a snort but quickly turned your sniffle down as you noticed he turned to you.
"I was at the bakery asking for flour and Señor Agustin lent me some. But when he was about to give it to me, he suddenly poured the bag over my head! My eyes went blurry from the flour but I could see a red silhouette running out the bakery and there was no Señor Agustin around!" He huffed his explanation, knuckles turning white from anger.
Obviously knowing who he was referring you mentally facepalmed and faced Mirabel with a you-got-to-be-kidding-me look. The red flag has pissed off the bull... again. Shaking you head lightly and clearing your throat then glanced at Alvaro. "Look, even we know where he is or not, and obviously we don't. We won't tell you unless you calm down and talk to him in a calm and civilized way." You said with confidence and courage.
"A la mierda! Tell him to go here now so I could show him a piece of my mind!" He yelled. Completely ignoring the surrounding crowd slowly circling around you three. Ay! Don't they have nothing else to do?! Or at least take this puta out of here?! Mentally groaning already feeling annoyed by the situation.
You sighed and pulled Mirabel behind you so he won't pour his anger out at their cousin. "Alvaro, calm down, just ask nicely so we could look for him." You said calmly but looking at him with stern eyes.
"Don't tell me what to do!" Suddenly bolting towards you and grabbed you by the shirt. "Oi come out Madrigal! I got your hermosa estúpida novia!" He rang still clutching the front of your shirt.
"Stop!" Mirabel charged trying to pull you away from the boy but was pushed down and shoved away. You struggled trying to get out from his grip. "Let me go, bastardo!" You exclaimed but he tightened his grip more onto you.
"Oi Alvaro tu pollito!" A sandal suddenly went flying and hit Alvaro behind the head. He shot his head up to the direction where the sandal came and saw the boy with the red rauna. "I'm the one you're dealing with, not mi amorcito nor mi prima. So Let. Them. Go" He said as he glared down at the flour covered boy.
Finally seeing the shapeshifter, the boy in notion huffed a laugh and lets go of your shirt making you fall. Mirabel quickly came to your side and pulled you close to her, away from the boys.
"Finally!" He said fully turning to the shapeshifter. "I was getting tired waiting for el hijo de puta to show up. I was about to let it out to your sweet little amor." A smug face crept into his face and it made the Madrigal boy deepen his glare.
"Dont you dare!" Suddenly the shapeshifter threw a punch right across Alvaro's face making him fall back with a groan. "Tu cabrón!" Carlos shouted.
The flour covered boy immediately stood back up and tackled Carlos. Shocked seeing a fight is getting out of hand, you suddenly shout. "Stop! Carlos he's not worth our time! Enough!" You tried to stand up but groaned when you felt your ankle ached.
Mirabel was trying to help you up but was also afraid to interfere the fight. "I bet Dolores already told Abuela about this. Its already getting out of hand." The girl with the green rimmed glasses muttered.
Carlos rolled over and threw another punch. Shapeshifting into the boy that's under him, he smirked. "Why are you hitting yourself huh? Estúpido? Why are you hitting yourself?" The red rauna boy said repeatedly as he threw more punches.
"CARLOS MADRIGAL! ENOUGH!" An elderly woman's voice emerged out from the crowd. Alma Madrigal, the matriarch of Casa Madrigal. Alongside her was his mother and Dolores.
"Mierde." Carlos huffed looking down and jumped off from the boy who was now laying down on the ground with a bruised face.
Slowly raising his gaze, he looked at his abuela and saw the enraged disappointed look that is cast upon him. "I can explain-."
"Up! Casita. Now." She sternly told raising her hand. She turned away from the chaos then walked back up to their Casita.
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Pepa was beyond disappointed and angry when she saw his son battered and bruised. A thunder cloud casting above her frame, his husband trying to soothe her from her frustration.
"You pranked a kid and went into a fist fight?!" Pepa roared along with her cloud's thunders. As she glared at her son exclaiming after hearing the commotion from her daughter.
"Mami! he messed with me first! He placed bugs all over the flowers I was trying to grow for mi vida!" He explained back throwing his arms up in exasperation.
"And you could have talked it out on him rather than taking revenge!" His mother shot back. Earning a scoff from his son and crossing his arms infront of his chest.
"Yeah, as if that cabrón would "talk it out" when technically he ignored mi amorcito's words." He air quoting the words while rolling his eyes.
"Carlos! Don't you dare talk infront of your mother like that." His father said sternly. "Lo siento." He muttered looking away.
"Your abuela, papi and I will go to the boy's house tonight and will talk to his parents. You are not allowed to leave the Casita until I said so." His mother sternly said before storming out.
After Carlos earful of scolding, you, Mirabel and him sat across the couch waiting for Mirabel's mom, tía Julieta for her freshly cooked arepas. Technically, so you could all heal from your injuries.
Carlos sat on the floor in front of you gazing up at your eyes feeling sorry from what he have done. "Does your ankle still hurt? Are you ok?" He asked worriedly and holds onto your hands.
You looked down at him with a small side smile. You were about to reply when Mirabel groaned. "Geez mi primo, I'm fine thanks for worrying." Rolling her eyes and making you sniffle a giggle.
"Ay! You wait mi prima, I was about to get to you." The shapeshifter replied also rolling his eyes out of sarcasm.
You shook your head amused by the cousins interaction, you laced your fingers between his and smiling down at him. "Don't worry Carlito, it still hurts but I know after we get to eat tía's arepas, we'll be fine." You said calmly making him smile at you. "You're all battered up, you look like you were ran over a stampede of donkeys." You snorted and Mirabel lets out a cackle.
"Hah! Getting stampede by a hoard of donkeys! Nice one!" Mirabel laughed hard at your joke also making you laugh out loud.
Carlos just shrugged resting his head on your lap. "Mehh, got to use to it." He sighed looking up at you again.
"Sorry about that bastardo Alvaro, you two caught up from our quarrel when you shouldn't be a part of it." "He ruined my surprise for you." He said while rubbing your knuckles. Completely defeated after all those efforts on growing his own flowers for his amor.
"It's not your fault. I know you gave your full effort on them and I would appreciate it." You smiled. A little sad thinking that you didn't get to see how pretty the flowers he grew. "If you want, we could just grow our own flowers together." Said suggestively.
"That would be a great idea!" The boy beamed grinning at the incoming thoughts of you two tending flowers together. Thinking of sweet moments you two would share as you grow your flowers up until you have your own fully grown garden. Hell, he would wish to compete with his flowers to his prima Isabela's.
Mirabel fake gagged at your intimate moment and visibly cringed. Her primo glared at her which made you laugh at his reaction.
"Prepare yourself Mirabel, for the day will come when you get your own otro significativo. You will aslo experience how in love you would be. I will tease you endlessly." Carlos declared smirking at his prima.
You laughed at his determination. "Yeah goodluck waiting, Carlos." Mirabel replied shaking her head and snorts.
"WHAT DID I MISS?!" The Casita's front door opened with a loud bang making you three jump. There stood a rugged look and panting Camilo. He was sweating and breathing heavily like he ran a marathon.
You and Mirabel facepalm and shook your heads. Oh dios miyo por favor.
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hoe-imaginess · 4 years ago
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a helping hand (or two) | dabi
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Dabi x fem!Reader
summary: Dabi is suffering from an aphrodisiac quirk. Now he’s got a dick that just won’t quit, and you have to take care of it.
word count: 10.4k
contains: almost dub-con, handies, bjs, dick riding, dirty talk, slight violence, a very stubborn Dabi who has to be restrained 
a/n: self-indulgent & vaguely crack-ish. my idea of an aphrodisiac includes an overload of the five senses bc...idk I wanted to play w/ descriptive prose. my kink is describing Dabi’s horniness in paragraphs ok. meaty intro before the smut, hang in there
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Dabi entertained the alley-dweller’s angry outbursts with sadistic patience. The man yelled at him, threatened him, boasted of all the ways in which he was going to make Dabi suffer for attacking and underestimating him—
Then, finally having decided that the fodder was no longer amusing him, the flame-user extended a glowing palm in preparation to finish the job. 
When you read the intention in Dabi’s movement, you fidgeted where you stood and calculated the risk of opposing him. 
“You can’t just keep burning everyone you don’t like,” you said, calculations made, deciding that you might as well attempt to be a voice of reason while you were paired up with him on this job. 
It was a voice he happily ignored. The white-hot glare of his palm smoldered into the bursting blue of his flames as they lit up his fingers.  
“Says who?” 
Trash was trash. If you couldn’t see that, then oh well. Folly on your part for thinking the tedious task of recruiting didn’t require this sort of disposal; what better to do with underwhelming candidates than permanently remove them from the talent pool? You shouldn’t have tagged along if you weren’t prepared for his methods. 
When the alley-villain realized that Dabi’s patience for his empty, arrogant threats had been spent, his dirt-stained face colored with fear, and his wild eyes darted in every direction of the alley to seek refuge from the imminent flames. He started to plead—which Dabi found grimly amusing given that the man had been spouting insults about his patchwork skin just moments before—then he shrank back against the alley wall, sinking to the ground in fear.
“The more bodies you leave the easier it will be for the police to track us.” You’d taken to your persuasions again, fruitless though you knew it was. 
“And?”
“And you’ll be compromising the entire League.”
“If all you’re gonna do is complain then you don’t have to tag along, ya know.” He spared a glance your way, with that drolly exasperated look on his face he always gave when he felt you were speaking out of turn. 
But his diverted attention proved costly: the alley-dweller suddenly went berserk, and was rushing at him with a final, rogue desperation to escape. 
The charge, surprisingly swift as it was, was also uncalculated, and Dabi narrowly side-stepped to avoid a blow. With an indignant sneer, he rounded his hand and kindled his flames anew: no more games, it was time to kill. But before he could retaliate, the lunatic was on him again, barreling toward him. 
Though fatally seared by the sudden discharge of flame that Dabi released, the derelict’s bulk was still sufficient to topple into Dabi and throw him off balance. He might have fallen from the impact if not for the way the man gave a wailing, pained shriek and threw himself away from the flames. 
Torched and agonized as the man was, his mounted attack hadn’t been a complete failure: though Dabi’s flames had mostly protected him, there was an unmistakable sensation of damage in him which left him suddenly rigid with alarm. 
Had he been wounded?
He looked down at himself, saw no injuries from which the bodily distress might have been roused. After a few moments the distress was gone, and he decided it was just adrenaline. Then, there returned the enervated frustration. 
“Trash,” he muttered indignantly, glaring at the steaming heap of the man, who’d stumbled over a litter of aluminum trash bins and capsized with them onto the ground. He wasn’t moving. But he was still whole, and not the pile of burning ash he could have been, should have been, now, after that little effrontery—
Your arm was on him before he could pursue the murderous thoughts. 
“Are you alright?” you asked, inspecting him carefully. 
Instantly and fiercely, he shrugged away from your touch. 
“Fine,” he grunted out, straightening and stiffening his limbs to convince himself of it. But that odd feeling was still there, burgeoning slowly at the sight of the man’s body fuming on the ground, at your own body standing so close to him. “If you hadn’t been running your damn mouth—”
“Sorry,” you conceded, more concerned with his demeanor than with defending yourself. In all likelihood he didn’t even realize how ruffled he looked. “Did he… are you hurt?”
“I said I’m fine,” he insisted firmly. 
While you stared at him in doubtful concern, an energetic heat crept up his spine. Slow, like an insect bite bringing its stinging warmth to a crawl over his skin, skin both scarred and unscarred alike. 
There was a smell, then, when he took his shallow breaths: something sweet, like lingering perfume, or fragrant incense—
Fairly quickly he realized the smell was coming from you, and glared at you in puzzled indignation, like the fact that this scent was yours and that he could smell it now—why could he smell it so profusely now, when he hadn’t before? What the hell?—was somehow offensive. Worst of all it smelled damn good. Had you always smelled that good?
“...What is it?” you asked carefully, not quite able to place the look on his face, but considerably unnerved by it, nonetheless. “Dabi…?”
Your voice—it held such particular tones that he hadn’t before noticed until now, as though he’d been deaf to what you really sounded like; how sleek and enticing your words were when they came out of your pretty mouth. 
Oh, and your mouth: lips parted fretfully in preparation for another concerned inquiry on his well-being, objectively innocent but suddenly, and infuriatingly, looking very much like they were tempting him for a kiss. 
Then when your pink tongue came to wet your lips in anxious trepidation, that too he saw as a maddeningly teasing gesture that made his hands feel hot. Then it was his feet; then his whole body. 
He began to fidget where he stood. 
Then, at the sudden onset of warmth in his head, he slid over to the alley wall, a splayed hand against the brick keeping his balance while he hung his dizzy head low. 
“What the hell,” he muttered to himself woozily. 
“Dabi?” You went to inspect him cautiously. You couldn’t see his expression through the curtain of black that had fallen over his face, but you knew something was amiss. “Are you okay?” you asked again. 
“I’m fine,” he huffed out, and you’d been oblivious to his hoarse breathing up until the moment you stopped in front of him. 
“Dabi,” you begged his attention now that his eyes had closed shut, his features pinched. “What’s wrong?”
His eyes, dizzied by the heat, began to play tricks on him. Even behind the closed lids he saw sparks flying, and swirls of white-hot passion dancing.
When the heat in him turned to a near-burning sensation, he opened his eyes and stared down at his body. Was his quirk activated? he thought confusedly. Or was the heat that licked his skin just a hallucination: flames that failed to consume him wholly? What the hell was happening? What was this—
The heat finally centered—mortifyingly—between his legs, and what had been confusion before was now full-blown bafflement. 
“Dabi,” you were saying again. 
The sound of your voice inflamed him not in aggravation, but something else. 
“You don’t look good,” you said. The way his breath had thinned to long, rough pants put anxiety in you. “...I’ll call Kurogiri.” You fished your phone from your pocket with the intention of doing so. 
A grunt was his response; he couldn’t coherently pick his words. Then, the anticipation of your voice again, on the phone, speaking in those tones and that sweet melody, made him shudder.
“No,” he muttered. 
You looked at him, the phone to your ear, the line ringing. “What?” 
“Don’t,” was all he could say, lower this time, almost in a growl. 
“But Dabi, you—”
Suddenly, at the thought of hearing your voice for even another second, the fire overtook him. 
First he slapped the phone from your grip. Its screen broke against the pavement and the voice that answered the call—too late, you thought fleetingly—stuttered on the line. Then he slammed you against the wall. 
Winded and bewildered, it took you several seconds to find your bearings. In that time he’d pressed against you, his breath so hot and so angry that it flushed perspiration over your skin. 
Gaping, your lips trembled. “Dabi, what—” 
“Shut up,” he seethed quietly, teeth baring. 
You recognized the wild look of violence on his face, but the lust in his hazy eyes wasn’t anticipated. Nor was the erection you felt pressing against your leg. You stared wide-eyed as the sinking realization came over you.
In desperation you pushed at him; he pushed back, corralling you against the wall even harder. 
The air was knocked out of your lungs, and with it, a dying protest, “Wait—”
He clamped a too-warm hand over your mouth, and pressed his face against yours. His forehead on your own felt feverish and sweaty; his eyes, like blue-burned coals, pierced into yours. You could smell the heat smoldering off of him. 
He loosed a shaky, unhinged breath. “Shut. Up.” 
Unthinking, your hand tugged at the one on your mouth, inadvertently digging into his staples. But his wild passion lent him a worrisome insensitivity to the hurt, and his other hand was going for your waist, squeezing into your shirt and wrenching you impossibly closer against him. 
The pain which erupted from his compromised staples only fanned the flames of his arousal. He didn’t know why. Of course he fucking didn’t. He didn’t even know why his body was moving the way it was: rutting against you, seeking friction for his aching dick. 
His mouth went to your neck but applied no kisses or intimate caresses; he just pressed against the skin and breathed in pants. He put his free hand to your breast, the movement not a calculated one, more like he was seeking leverage to his imbalance. The stuttering beat of your heart was palpable under his palm. 
"Fuck,” he sputtered out angrily, disoriented, and dug his fingers into your chest. You moaned behind his palm, both in shock and pleasure. 
All he needed to hear was the latter. 
The sound made him hiss a low and dangerous curse, and when he peeked his head back up, his pulsing eyes shone with something beyond just lust now: pure hunger. 
Just as he moved his hand away from your mouth with the intent of crashing his own against you in a bruising kiss, there was a sound behind him. 
In the back of his mind he recognized it: Warp Gate. 
Kurogiri, and possibly someone else, had answered your call for aid. 
Dabi utterly ignored it. 
It had nothing to do with him. 
He was only concerned with the heat. All he felt was the heat; all he saw was your lips: parted in dumbfoundment, dry, and begging to be wetted by his tongue–
There was a commotion, and then an angry voice that Dabi distantly recognized as Shigaraki’s. 
Then a blow to the back of his head took everything away.
A subtle transformation had overtaken his body by the time he woke. 
No longer was the heat excruciating, but it was still there, nevertheless: a curling medium beneath his skin which he felt the instant consciousness came back to him. With it, the dizzy ache in his head and the haze in his eyes. Then, finally: his limbs refusing to move when he tried to stretch them. 
At once he realized he was back in the bar, confined in a chair, with people gawking at him from all sides. 
He blinked his vision back to clarity, then scowled. “The hell?”
“Do you remember anything, Dabi?” That was Kurogiri somewhere to his left. Looking, Dabi confirmed his usual station behind the bar. 
Delaying an answer, the flame-user glanced around. Not all of the League was there, he saw. Besides Kurogiri, only Shigaraki and you were audience to the spectacle. 
You tried to avoid his harsh eyes when they landed on you, when they flitted across your features as if in an elaborate struggle to put pieces of a disoriented puzzle together. Solved, apparently, as his memory came back, his confused scowl worked into a realizing frown. 
“Shit,” he muttered in annoyance. 
Shuffling uncomfortably in the chair, he surmised it was rope binding his wrists behind his back, and his ankles to the chair legs. But the movement also brought attention to the hot pressure in his gut. 
Or at the least, he thought that’s where it was—until he glanced down and realized that despite the abatement of the wild heat, his erection still peeked proudly underneath his jeans.
Now he was scowling again. 
“What the hell,” he spat out, and suddenly, with his frustration flourishing, the heat was returning in slow order. 
He cursed under his breath. He looked up and glared at the first onlooker he set his eyes upon: Kurogiri. 
“Get me out of this shit.”
“I can’t do that,” the man replied regrettably. “When I came to retrieve you from the scene we had no choice except to put you down when you refused to listen. Given the nature of the quirk that you’ve been struck with, we have to take precautions until we know it’s out of your system.”
Dabi listened with steely suspicion. “What quirk?”
“An aphrodisiac—” You almost bit your tongue once you’d started, because the quick and fierce glance he gave you suggested he wasn’t entirely happy with you, and even less happy to hear your voice. 
“It’s an aphrodisiac quirk,” you stated, more calmly now. 
Dabi blinked, brows knotting in concentration. Spoken plainly that way, it seemed absurd, stupid. 
He scoffed dryly. “You’re joking.” 
“Really fucked up this time, didn’t you?” came Shigaraki from a spot at the bar, his arms crossed. “Serves you right, searching the alleys for trash. I told you to stop doing that shit.”
“Fuck off,” Dabi spat. “How was I supposed to know the guy’d have such a stupid fuckin’…” 
Dabi tsked and shuffled uncomfortably in his chair again. The bitterness he felt for his confinement was quickly gaining, and so was the returning arousal. A sweltering, uncomfortable warmth on his skin made him hyperaware of his flushed face, and he could practically feel the sweat teeming on his unscarred flesh. 
“I’m serious,” he muttered, glaring at Shigaraki. “Get me out of this.”
“So you can go ape shit again? No. It’s disgusting.” 
“I’m not gonna do shit, relax.”
Dabi was aware then that focus was being pulled in the room, pulled directly to you: the victim of his unbidden arousal.
With a roll of his eyes, he huffed a frustrated breath and gave you what might have passed for an apology, if he’d even bothered looking at you. “My bad, and all that.”
Shigaraki’s arrogant snort derailed whatever amendment you might have transpired to make. 
“You’re lucky the guy was still alive when we got there—barely,” your leader went on. “Told us a bit about what to expect from you in the next few hours though, once we promised we’d let him go.”
Dabi gave him a flat look of doubt. 
Shigaraki scoffed. “Didn’t keep that promise, obviously.” Then he was scowling behind Father. “I don’t like having to clean up your messes. Shouldn’t have to finish off your fodder for you. You can’t even do that right, can you?”
Dabi’s frustration was in full bloom now, despite reason persuading him against it; he’d gathered enough at this point—at the expense of his own body—to know that agitation of any kind would feed the quirk’s effects. 
Heat pooled low in his stomach when he demanded again, “Let me out of this shit right now or I’m gonna get mad.”
“Supposed to be a 24-hour thing unless you take care of it, to put it plainly,” Shigaraki responded.
“I assumed as much. So get me outta this shit and I’ll fuck off for a while.”
“Nah. Don’t need you going and causing a scene somewhere because you don’t know how to keep your pants on.”
You could feel the conflagration of tension in the room. Maybe it was Dabi’s quirk, maybe it was the alley-dweller’s mixing with it, making it dangerously palpable. Regardless, Shigaraki’s snark seemed to bring Dabi’s attention back to his body, to the insufferable bulge between his legs that demanded relief.
“This is stupid,” he declared bitterly, and tugged on the knots tied at his wrists, the throbbing heat in his lower-half lending itself to his quirk as it activated in licking flames along his arms. He was tired of this shit. He lost his temper all at once. “You’re damn crazy if you think I’m just gonna sit here—”
Then there was blue flame torching the back of the chair, blackening the rope which bound him and making the tethers frail enough to tear apart under a strong tug. He was freeing himself. 
From there, it all happened relatively swiftly. 
As he went to work on the binds at his feet with newly liberated arms, Shigaraki was in a conniption of angry protests, and Kurogiri fluttered nervously between taking action or remaining an onlooker. 
Then there was you, probably the least equipped to do much of anything to alleviate the situation, but nevertheless skipping to your feet the moment the chaos ensued. There was arguing, cursing, insults—then your voice, attempting to wedge some conciliatory reason into the room.
It did the exact opposite. 
Dabi had apparently forgotten of the trigger in your voice that sent his body into a frenzy. When you spoke up, your voice just loud enough to cut above the rest of the uproar, his aspiration to free himself tapered off as his sharp eyes honed in on you. 
His arousal came back with a vengeance; in his pants, his dick twitched angrily for relief, and that frenzy took over his thought process again. 
His flames burned the rope at his feet and he came at you, so close, so very close, not knowing why he was doing it but only that he needed to touch you—
You were frozen on the spot. But Shigaraki was reaching for something along the bar, and Dabi’s world went black again soon after. 
When he woke this time, his rope bonds had been replaced for something cold and metallic, something stronger to withstand the vehemence of his flames. Even the chair to which he was bound had been swapped for something sturdier than wood.
“You fuckin’ serious?” he spat out, even before his vision had centered. He knew where he was, and why he was there. No need for context clues. 
“You gave us no other choice,” Kurogiri amended carefully, the black vapors that composed him flitting about anxiously. 
“Told you that you’d lose it,” Shigaraki said, anger having replaced all his snarky tones of condescension from before. “You’re like a damn animal.”
Dabi hissed and put his head back, feeling the soreness at his nape from consecutive blows. If he weren’t so presently occupied with the curl of heat welcoming him afresh, he might have simmered on the idea of burning his relatively recent—but entirely disagreeable—boss to a crisp when this was over. 
Then for the first time Dabi realized you were absent, and glanced around as if in search of you. Good, he thought, when he confirmed that you were missing. You just... complicated things. 
“I’m fine now,” he insisted, as placidly as possible as if to give stock to his lie. The respite had done nothing for the arousal harassing him; the longer it having gone unsatiated, even in unconsciousness, making it all the more demanding. 
Mellowing his urgency to a non-existent degree was almost impossible, however. Dabi knew the way the soles of his shoes twisted and flattened restlessly into the ground below was anything but inconspicuous. 
“Just warp me outta here, Kurogiri,” he implored. 
“No,” Shigaraki answered. “Shut up. Consider this a lesson. No more rummaging for allies in shithole parts of town. This is what happens when you go dumpster-diving for recruits.”
“You want me to burn this place down?” Dabi threatened, testing the strength of his bonds. A flicker of blue teased along his jawline. “‘Cause I got no problem doing that.”
Shigaraki shrugged. “Sure. You’ll just burn up with it, since you’ve got no way out of that chair.”
He knew it was true, and worked his jaw. “For all you know the damn guy was lyin’,” he said as a final act of contempt, and gave his leader a leery, side-long glare. “And this shit might not go away on its own.”
“Guess we’ll have to see, won’t we?” 
Dabi sneered. Foiled, but regardlessly frustrated by the truth of it, he put his head back with an angry sigh and resigned himself to an attempted calm. 
You’d lingered in the bar’s back rooms for the better part of an hour before emerging. 
Shigaraki had instructed you to make yourself scarce, but you were drafted to stay by some guilty—and admittedly curious—sentiment. 
It was awfully unfair, you agreed, to keep Dabi chained up like he was—even in spite of the danger he posed under the quirk’s influence. But you must have overlooked that danger when you decided to slip into the main room where he was being held, long after you had been assured that Kurogiri and Shigaraki were gone. 
His back to the door, Dabi didn’t glance over his shoulder at the sound of your footsteps. It seemed he was sour enough not to offer greeting, and preferred to be left alone in his turmoil. 
He especially didn’t want your company, which he made clear by way of a harsh frown when you came into his peripheral. 
He tsked and readjusted uncomfortably in his seat at your arrival. “The hell do you want?”
“How are you feeling?” 
“Never been better,” he muttered. 
You were aware of how he avoided your gaze, and couldn’t know whether it was in an effort to stave off the arousal your presence had so viciously wrought before, or because he simply didn’t appreciate your company. The latter seemed just as likely as the first, though neither stopped you from taking a seat in one of the room’s couches so you could sit across at him. 
Your eyes were trained on his face, on the agitation creased into his expression. It was almost indecipherable under his otherwise cold demeanor. Clearly, the quirk was still in effect. If his tried composure wasn’t enough, there was a subtle tent in his pants that hadn’t gone away, not since its first appearance hours ago, you imagined. 
You didn’t realize you were ogling until he noticed. He tsked. 
“Take a picture,” he offered spitefully, immediately dissuading your eyes away from him. 
“Sorry,” you let slip, embarrassment flushing your cheeks, and in response he only lulled his head back again and shut his eyes. 
All was silent for a while, and might have remained thereby, if not for the way that the curt apology brought back the weight of guilt you’d felt to see his sorry state. 
“And I’m sorry for bringing you back here,” you spoke up. “Or at least, sorry that I called the others. I didn’t realize you’d be held up like this–”
“Stop talking,” he muttered. 
Mouth opening, then closing again, you almost swallowed down your next words. But again, they refused to stay unspoken. 
“I wouldn’t have called them,” you insisted, “if you didn’t—if you didn’t come after me like that. I was confused.”
No response. Only another uncomfortable shuffle in the chair while his eyes remained shut and his mouth a thin line. 
They’d put his hands in a sort of metallic sleeve since you last saw him, to discourage any more pyromania, you guessed. Though they weren’t visible, you could see how his arms shifted, how his tendons worked, and could imagine his fingers flitting anxiously inside the restraints. 
“Is… me being here making it worse?” you chanced to ask. 
He scoffed, and finally gave you his attention. “What?” Then, fully understanding your train of thought, rolled his eyes, and resigned them shut again while he relaxed into the chair. “Sorry to break it to you, sweetheart, but that dumb look you got on your face all the time isn’t exactly alluring.”
You frowned, and it was almost with cross touchiness that you argued, “But you came after me—”
“I’m guessin’ the point of the quirk is to make anything look fuckable.  So don’t flatter yourself.”
Despite all your caution, you couldn’t help but give the man a sour look. “You’re rude.”
He shrugged, the movement impeded considerably by his restraints. “Whatever. Anyways, you just gonna sit there and watch me? I’m not exactly in the mood for company.” He moved in his seat again, fighting the heat between his legs the best he could. “Unless you’re gettin’ off on my suffering and what not. Kinda twisted of you, if you ask me. Didn’t peg you as the type.”
“That’s not it,” you insisted quickly. “I just wanted to…well—”
“To what? Check in on me? Nice of you. But you can fuck off now.” 
A sudden twitch in his legs took the tension from the repartee. You looked down at the limb as he did. 
The burning heat in his veins took away practically all control he had of his extremities, rallied them into unconscious servants of the damn quirk until they were twitching, then relaxing, then twitching again.
You noticed this, too, and though his efforts to conceal the struggle were commendable, they left you in a state of shame, as if it were you bound in the chair with your arousal on display. Seeing someone so normally composed as he was in such a state was distressing, and admittedly, absorbing.
You swallowed the lump in your throat and let your rampant thoughts form to words. “Will it go away if you…”
“If I what?” Then once understanding, the smallest of smirks twisted his scarred lips. “Rub one out? How the hell am I supposed to know?”
You ignored the heat that dropped down your spine to hear him say it so unabashedly. “I don’t have the key to your locks,” you explained. “So I couldn’t let you out even if I wanted to.”
He gave no response, just looked away from you again. 
And here now was the adrenaline pulsing nonsense out of you, making you think crazy and debauched thoughts that would in any other situation be put down immediately by rationale. 
“But…”
He glanced at you when you tapered off. “But?”
Your silence annoyed him, now that he was interested. Before he could hound you to continue, you sputtered out your proposal:
“Do you want me to do something about it?”
He looked at you, an eyebrow raised, as if demanding clarification. But you had a resolute feeling that he was toying with you by choosing silence. 
“You know what I mean,” you asserted. 
The blank, cold stare you received in kind made you wonder if he actually did know what you meant. Maybe he didn’t understand—
“No,” he then said. 
The defeat you felt was utterly uncalled for, you knew. But you felt it anyways: a wash of humiliation plummeting down your body and swelling up again in frustration. 
But you let it be, knowing anything more you had to say would probably earn you tenfold embarrassment. 
Twenty minutes must have passed—though he wasn’t counting, and he wasn’t so sure that the affliction in his body wasn’t twisting his sense of time—each entailing another dredge of painful heat in his groin that worsened the longer his arousal went unattended to.
All the fail safes he’d practiced in his adolescence to ward off unwanted arousals were utterly useless now. He might as well have been on cloud nine when he filled his head with repulsive concepts: the smell of antiseptic, the smell of fish—fucking disgusting fish—even images of roadkill and dead bodies, putrefying and blackened. 
The thoughts themselves were off-putting, as promised, but it wasn’t thoughts at all that fueled his libido: it was a completely physical and natural arousal. 
Even shuffling his legs around, as meager of friction as it gave, made his hips inch forward in search of more when the fabric of his jeans teased his hard cock. It was fucking humiliating. 
He looked at you. You were too occupied searching the floor for an answer to your anxieties to notice the way he studied you.
You weren’t bad looking, he decided. Not that he’d ever really thought of you that way before. Not thoroughly, anyways. In this little group of delinquents he’d surrounded himself with—a grand mistake on his part, he thought, especially during times like these—you were the only fuel he had for his imagination on nights he needed to let off some steam. 
There was no intimacy behind it, no real passion for you that extended beyond the time from when he shoved a hand into his jeans, to when he was cleaning thick ropes of cum from his knuckles afterwards. 
You were only ever given credence in his brain then, when he was giving his cock hard and angry tugs to the thought of you on your knees for him, or against a wall with his hand curled around your throat, and sometimes bent over his knee while he spanked your ass raw (a more recent daydream now, ever since that time a few weeks ago when you’d bent down in front of him to pick something up off the floor).
Suddenly aware of an alarming change in his body, he paused his thoughts to immerse himself back into his too-hot skin again. 
He felt a wetness against his swollen cock, and after squirming covertly, frowned, realizing with loathing that the stickiness chafing his briefs was pre-cum. 
He stubbornly decided that it was just an inevitable response to his body’s raging war with arousal, and not—not at all—because he’d been thinking of you. 
Letting his body endure until his pants were dampened with pre-cum was an unwanted solution. Or even worse, until the sensitivity in his cock went haywire and even the tiniest of movements might make him cream his pants. 
A frustrated breath whistled out from his nose and he grit his teeth. Goddamnit. This was fucking stupid. 
“Fuck,” he said aloud, shaking his head as if to condemn the words he was about to say, knowing how they would haunt his ego later, “Fine. Come here.”
You glanced up, and, unable to fulfill the request with your mind suddenly racing, simply stared. 
That insipid look of failed registry on your face irritated him, and he scowled. “Are you deaf?”
“You want me to—” A sweep of your eyes down to his crotch elucidated what you were too hesitant to say. 
“You offered,” he reminded you, and decided that in order to make this even a fraction less humiliating, he’d need to emphasize your culpability. “Kinda been thinking it’s your fault, anyways. If you hadn’t been such a dumbass back there I would’ve finished the guy off like I wanted to. But you were too busy spouting your nitpicky bullshit.”
There was a guilty look on your face now, like you’d been considering the accusation in your own time. Now having it confirmed, you were more susceptible to the reasoning, and even more willing to rectify yourself. 
Still, you struggled to swallow down hesitation. “You’re sure that you want me to—”
“You’re gonna start pissin’ me off if you get all shy,” he said, trying as hard as his dancing nerves would allow to keep the desperation out of his voice. 
Since yielding to the ludicrous idea, his body had apparently taken up a premature celebration at the thought of your hands on him. His balls were tight and his dick was throbbing hard enough to make his legs tense with each pulse. 
“I just want to make sure,” you insisted. “I mean, if you really–”
“I’ll make it easy for you then. Either get over here, or piss off.”
He was relieved, pleased, and somewhat amused when the hesitation left you and you obeyed. When you came to stand idly in front of him, he glanced up, watching your confusion. 
Your eyes flicked from his face to his crotch, where the dim light of the room caught the curve of his hard dick pressing against his jeans. 
“You gonna stare at it all day?” he asked. 
You looked at him. “What do you want me to do?”
“When you offered to do something about it I assumed you already had some ideas. You need me to give you an instruction manual?” 
Your silence frustrated him again, and he tsked, glancing away from you as the reality of what you two were doing finally set in. 
“Take it out,” he muttered. 
So you did, reaching numbly down and carefully undoing his pants. The bulge that awaited underneath his jeans gave you pause. You stared at it, and a shot of adrenaline pumped through you when it twitched in his briefs, as if feeling your eyes ogling it and begging you to give it attention.
You tried to clear your conscience. This was Dabi, Dabi who treated you with such disregard that you sometimes wondered if he even knew your name; Dabi, who was letting you even breathe next to him without trying to scorch you.
A trickling, somewhat fatally comedic thought entered your mind: was he going to light you ablaze the second you touched him? Or maybe after, once you’d relieved him, as a way to permanently silence you against ever speaking a word of this to anyone?
Shivering at the morbidity of your own creation, you reached for his briefs and pulled them down carefully until his cockhead showed itself, pink-hued and shiny with an excess amount of pre-cum. 
You worked a hand underneath the briefs instead of exposing him completely, thinking he might want some semblance of modesty during this. Your convictions were rattled from their mounts when your fingers wrapped gently around the tip of his cock and gave a firm squeeze. 
In response: silence. 
You’d thought with how viciously his arousal had seemed to harangue him that he might give a stronger reaction: a moan, a sigh, a grunt, maybe even an audible breath. 
He just stared at you, looking as utterly bored as he usually did.
Then your fingers decided to retreat, and the sound you’d been displeased to be robbed of came finally as a frustrated grunt when your grip left him. 
“Seriously?” he huffed, staring at you. The irritation left its first but considerable split in his composure. The rest was quickly chipping away. He couldn’t pretend to be aloof about this for much longer. “You got cold feet now?”
“That’s not it.”
“What then? Never seen one before?”
“I don't know… how you want it,” you explained. 
“The hell does that mean?”
“Do you want me to use my hands?” you clarified hesitantly. “Or…” 
The little huff of derisive laughter that fell from his open lips made an eerie picture of his otherwise blank face. 
“Or what?” he taunted. “You got something else in mind? You been dyin’ for a taste of it or something–”
“No,” you finished, and that flustered look of anger on your face was pissing him off again, instead of amusing him like it might have under another context.
“So then cut the shit and do whatever.”
With a frown you went to your knees, unwilling to get further embroiled. 
When you started to stroke him, more pre-cum squeezed from the tip in generous pumps. You didn’t bother asking him how hard or fast he wanted it—you started hastily, hand gliding quickly over his cock, urgently enough that pre-cum eased the motion and made wet, sharp sounds with every stroke. 
His knee twitched like he’d been checked for reflex, which you took as encouragement to keep going despite his loyalty to silence. 
The veins along his dick pulsed needily and you swore you could feel the throb under your palm. The throb became more palpable as time went on. You thought you were doing well. But apparently not. 
“Harder,” he muttered, not a minute after you’d started. 
You glanced up at him. He wasn’t looking at you, but instead had shut his eyes in concentration. It looked to you as though he was trying to find the pleasure in your pace—which was apparently too soft for his likings. 
You did as instructed, nevertheless: you tightened your grip a fraction, fingers curling and making your strokes face slightly more resistance as they worked more pre-cum from the red tip. 
Another twitch in his leg, then a deep exhale that ended in a shiver; you saw his toned stomach shudder with the motion beneath his clothes, and fleetingly considered inching his shirt up a bit more out curiosity: how far did the burnt skin go down his body?
But then he was grunting, and breathing more stiffly than before. You thought that was another sign of a job well done, when his eyes peeled open and looked down upon you with such emphasized frustration that you realized you were not, in fact, meeting his standards. 
“Harder,” he demanded again, more rigidly this time. Despite the command, your hand slowed. For that, he frowned at you. “Can barely feel that shit. You gotta do better than that. I like it rough.”
A flush of humiliation put purpose back into your rigid fingers, and you were moving your hand again, albeit slowly as you tested the new grip, this time with such purposeful pressure that you were tugging his dick now more than stroking it. 
“I thought it might hurt,” you started meekly.
“It doesn’t. Keep going.” 
You did, picking up speed again. The adrenaline put some more initiative into you, and you made a purposeful attempt to drag your thumb down hard on his swollen cock with every jerk of your hand. 
A croaky hum from his throat brought your attention to his face; his eyes watched your hand stroking him with fuzzy scrutiny. 
“Yeah,” he breathed thinly, his eyes fluttering closed again, finally satisfied. “Just like that.” 
That made your chest tight with excitement and your legs fidget beneath you. Your own arousal was wetting the inside of your thighs by now, but you were able to ignore it momentarily in favor of serving his.
At some point his hips stuttered up to start meeting your hand, but in a much slower rhythm than you were stroking; lazy pumps up into your grip. Every synchronic motion when you jerked up and his hips rolled down, there was an amazing tightness on the head of his cock that made his breath catch every time. 
You decided on using both hands (he was big, unexpectedly big, so much so that it was staggering and you decided you would think about that later when he wasn’t filling your palms so generously) and started twisting your grip in time with your strokes. It was then he finally loosed a low and breathy groan. 
Then his hips were pumping into your hands roughly, fucking himself in slow but hard thrusts—so hard that you had to steel yourself and tighten your grip to keep from getting bucked off. 
Another low moan from his throat. “Shit…” Then, when a surge of confidence urged you to quickly run your tongue along the head of his dick, his breath caught in a hard grunt.
“Shit,” he hissed out, and spread his thighs wider, pushing them up eagerly in demand that you give him more. 
To the best of your ability you tried, spreading your tongue underneath the head and rapidly swiping it back and forth. That got his hips stuttering, and his body jolting in its confines. 
“Fuck,” he bit out. “Yes, fuck.... Just like that.”
Without prompting your lips came into the fold, closing tightly around the tip and sucking in time with the hands that fisted his cock until you were lavishing every inch of him in some way. 
The feeling alone was ridiculously good, but watching you made his jaw go slack and mouth open as he panted. Maybe it was just the stupid quirk making him delirious, but you looked a hell of a lot hotter doing this than what his fantasies had led him to believe. Fuck. You weren’t half bad. 
A particularly hard thrust into your mouth had one of your hands slipping loose, and his next thrust, unimpeded by the length of one your fists around him, shoved his dick to the tight heat at the back of your throat.
He grunted hard, “Fucking shit—” Then arched up quickly, jumping at the opportunity to sink his cock deeper. 
Without a pause to steady yourself you had little choice but to oblige, and his cockhead shoved in, cramming itself against your hot tongue, pumping farther back inch by inch. 
The hand still jerking him off covered what your throat was too inexperienced to swallow down, and the rhythm of your tight mouth and vice-like hand made him moan deeply. 
But it might have been too much, and a strength lent to him by the quirk’s desperation made his hips lift off the chair forcibly, driving his cockhead to the very back of your throat until you were sputtering and choking. 
“Fuck.” It made him dizzy with pleasure, and he shut his eyes to keep them from rolling as he frantically pumped his hips upwards to get you gagging on him again. “Yeah, fuck, fuck, fuck–”
But then you were pulling off completely with a gasping breath.
His eyes opened, wild with exasperation. “The hell–”
You coughed wetly and started to plead, “Don’t choke me–” 
“Fine—fine. Hurry the hell up.” His hips jutted up impatiently in search of your mouth again, his swelling cock bouncing and twitching urgently. “Put that fuckin’ mouth back on it right now—” 
You obeyed, and his hips shuddered down into the chair, following the motion of your lips as they tightened over his length—only to start thrusting up into the hot and wet cavern again once his cockhead hit the roof of your mouth. 
It was like a fire had been kindled underneath him and was rapidly boiling all his thoughts to a vapor. It was stupidly good, so damn hot and tight and wet he couldn’t remember a mouth on his cock ever feeling this amazing. He wished his hands were free so he could fist them into your hair, so he could push you down more, get you gagging and sputtering on his cock. 
His eyes squeezed shut, face flexing with occasional twitches. His lips pulled back into a desperate grimace and long, shaky breaths whistled out through his clenched teeth. 
With his vision released of the sight of you on your knees, his mind was free to give the hot wetness on his cock another name, and he instead imagined that it was your pussy he was shoving into, gripping him nice and tight. 
He felt his quirk stirring underneath the pleasure; every vein in his body warmed at the mere thought of shoving into you raw, and until that very moment he hadn’t itched to break through his constraints like he did now, hadn’t wanted to be free of them so he could wrestle you to the floor and fuck you like he needed to. 
You were doing something particularly creative with your tongue on the underside of his cock, and a full body shudder brought him back to present. He watched you in your task: your eyes were shut tight in concentration, your brows furrowed as you struggled to accept his dick while it rammed against the back of your throat. Even your hand’s grip on his cock was a little tighter, he noticed appreciatively. 
It would have been fucking fantastic: a real goddamn sight to see that he might have honestly applauded you for later—if he wasn’t suddenly so absurdly enraptured with his fantasies. 
Dabi wanted more. Something deeper and hotter, something to bury his cock into and relish the velvety grip, something he could ravage and fuck away the ache in his body—
The thought of pounding his dick inside of you suddenly encompassed all other thought; it wasn’t a notion his frenzied mind would let remain as a fantasy. He wanted nothing else. Your mouth on his cock, your throat curdling around him, choking on him in a way that made his legs shake...
It was all insufficient now. He needed to be inside of you. As soon as fucking possible. 
“Shit,” he spat out. It was a curse different from the others, not breathed on arousal, but frustration. 
You looked up at him, and read him to be just as disgruntled as he sounded. 
“This ain’t doin’ it,” he said, and slowed his thrusting hips, which was a more hard-fought task to complete than he imagined; he may have been getting greedy with his fantasies, but his cock was still more than happy to use your mouth as a warm sleeve.
When you slipped off, you must have been giving him one of those dumb looks he hated, because he frowned. 
“You hear me?”
You nodded, licking the wetness from your lips as you caught your breath. You were lightheaded. The taste of him lingered on your tongue, and you swore you would smell the smoky salt of his skin on you for days. But now there was more? 
The heat pooling in your thighs demanded your attention again, and you fidgeted on your sore knees. “Well... what do you want me to do–”
“Sit on it.”
You gawked at him. “Sit on it?” 
That got him smirking just a little, his tongue peeking out to wet dried lips as he slowly panted. He cocked his head. 
“Worried it won’t fit?”
Your body surged with wild ambition. “That’s not it, but—”
“Bet you’re nice and tight, but you can work it in. I’d offer to stretch you open a little, but my hands are tied.” He flexed his fingers and arms in his binds for show, then grinned to see how flustered his words made you. “Besides, looked like you were enjoyin’ yourself. I’m sure you’re wet enough.”
God why couldn’t he shut up and let you think for a second? The teasing was horribly nauseating; his voice even worse, spoken with his smirk seeped into it. You realized the very sound of it would probably make you shiver now in all the wrong ways after this, even in casual conversation. 
“I… don’t have condoms,” you said by way of reply. 
He shrugged, the gesture lacking his usual languor now that he’d been worked up without release. “Me neither. They’re annoying.” 
He noticed you were frowning at him, and scoffed. “What, not on the pill?” He didn’t wait for a response; maybe that was the heat making him forgo on better judgment. “Well, guess it’s a good thing they got me pinned down, then. You’re free to pull off when I’m about to bust.”
The way in which he spoke it made your stomach queasy, and the first true lick of doubt ruined your mood as you stood up. “Fine. Just… tell me before you’re about to.”
He grunted in response, inwardly absorbed with impatience. 
You took off your bottoms and pushed your panties—yes, very wet, you confirmed—down, then hiked a leg over and climbed somewhat clumsily onto the chair.  
Only when you’d awkwardly positioned yourself over him did you notice that his eyes were fixated down below, where your hands steadily worked his dick against you. A raspy sigh passed his lips, and it was then you noticed his body teeming with eager spasms. 
Awkwardly, you sank down onto him, staring between you two the whole time and watching his thick length press tightly inside. 
The binds on his feet jabbed sharply against his ankles as they shuffled for leverage, desperate to rut up into the tight heat that welcomed him—but your legs resting on his thighs kept the movement to nothing but shallow thrusts. 
Whatever this fucking quirk was had a ridiculous effect on his sensitivity. You felt good—fucking amazing, even—though he couldn’t decide if that was just the quirk deluding him into thinking your cunt was the best he’d ever had, or if it really was: if you really were just that fucking incredible. 
Normally he would have managed that with stilled hips and practiced control; just sat back and enjoyed the ride. But shit it took a monumental effort not to fuck up into you, especially with how damn... slow you were going. 
Your pussy was gripping him so nicely, and that tight look on your face as you seated yourself onto his lap, accepting him fully and staggering from the size of him, was thrilling. But when you finally started to move your hips, you were going about it so cautiously, so boringly, that his patience all but thinned in a matter of seconds. 
“Could you go any slower?” he muttered. 
The words guilted you. “I thought it might… hurt?” you explained.
“How many times do I have to tell you? I’m not in pain, dumbass. I need to cum. Which ain’t gonna happen if you keep this up.” He shuffled his legs, widening them so he could better press up into you. The pressure made him grunt, and you shiver. “C’mon, you were putting on a real good show before. Ride me like you mean it. I know you can.”
And there it was again, the words and the voice that threw repose out the window and made you all the more eager to see this through. 
With arms linked around his neck you started to roll your hips. He didn’t seem to mind the contact, helpful as it was in balancing yourself on his lap. 
You weren’t entirely surprised when the first sighs and grunts came from your own lips. Every time you thought a new angle of your hips or a quick thrust of his own had finally hit that one pleasurable spot inside, you would sink down harder on his cock and gasp when his thickness dragged over another. 
It made you go faster, turned the fluid rolling of your hips into quick grinding, then finally when you’d adjusted to his size, a steady bouncing on his cock. 
“Fuck yes...” he muttered, then moaned low, licking his lips; that was what he needed, feeling you sink down over and over, lifting yourself a little higher each time then dropping so hastily that his hips started jutting up to meet you. 
“Shit.” Lolling his head back he breathed heavily, deeply. “Ah shit...”
It encouraged you to circle your hips with every motion, which garnered a throaty growl in response. A string of curses under his breath accompanied it, and you pressed your face into his shoulder, keeping careful of his staples, and moaned along with him. 
Only when you started getting noisier did you think of anything except what you two were doing: what if Shigaraki or Kurogiri were to come back now? What if any of the others decided to waltz in? 
You bit your lip to keep your next few moans low, but you swore Dabi must have had a sixth sense for your timidity, and didn’t at all appreciate the way you were holding back. 
He shifted his hips on the chair in a precise motion, and suddenly his cockhead shoved against the right spot over and over again as you bounced on top of him. All your logical thoughts were fucked into the back burner immediately.
All you could hear was your own panting and the slap of your thighs against his. He would give his heedy approval in an occasional growl or moan, rasping it against your ear. It made you shiver uncontrollably. 
You lost rhythm soon enough and took to grinding again, the chair scraping along the floor beneath you. His thick cock drove you crazy, until you were panting and moaning and whining. If that wasn’t enough to signal an orgasm, he could feel it, could feel your pussy gripping him in a desperate flutter. 
“Oi,” he got your attention, turning his head, his breath thin at your cheek, “You serious? Are you actually gonna–”
And you did, legs stretching and contracting, tightening around his thighs as you came hard. He cursed and dipped his head low when you squeezed around him, panting through the ridiculously good pressure on his cock. 
Your body jerked and shivered in any way it could, anything to expel the white-hot pleasure that shot up your spine and then back down again. You couldn’t breathe, shaking on top of him so violently he was sure you were going to keel over at any second and start convulsing on the floor. 
“Hey shithead,” he snapped after he’d let your shivers die down. Using what little leverage his tied legs allowed him, he pushed his shoes off the floor, bouncing you impatiently in his lap and jarring you back to awareness. You gasped in hypersensitivity, his cock digging against you.
“I’m flattered you like my dick that much,” he went on, your body languid and slouched against him. The heat was nearing again; his cock twitched miserably inside of you, desperate for release and so damn close to getting it. “But you’re not the one in need of attention here, in case you forgot. Keep it up. I’m close.” 
With a moan you pushed yourself up, sucking in breaths of renewal through parted lips. Legs tensing and aching, you tried your best to grind on him again, but the task left you oversensitive. 
He needed to finish, you reminded yourself. He needed to cum, like he’d said. You were sure, so blissfully sure you might be rewarded with more of his unhinged reactions that you forced your muscles to be ignorant to their ache, and started to ride him in earnest.
That was when you noticed it: the heat wracking you wasn’t just your own, it was his. His skin too hot, too hot to be normal, furnace-warm to the touch. 
You lifted your head from his shoulder and peered over at him. His eyes were screwed shut, his lips pulled back into a tense snarl. Perspiration dewed on the portions of his untainted skin, dampened his brows and fell in droplets along his temple. 
You felt his body heating rapidly against yours—the clothes keeping your skin apart might as well have been paper-thin. His chest, rising desperately with heavy pants, was concerningly feverish. He felt it too. 
Fuck, he thought. Not fucking now. 
“Damn it—” he sputtered out, body going suddenly rigid, craning his neck away from you. “Move,” he warned you.
“What—”
“Move your damn head—”
Just as you did, your eyes stretched in shock as flames broke out from his jawline. Their angry blue reflected threateningly in your eyes, made you come to a shivering slow on his cock as the dry heat blistered out over your skin. 
The fire was out in a second, forcefully extinguished with his frustrated grunt; smoke puttered out from beneath his staples instead. He breathed out an angry sigh from the effort of combating his own quirk.
You hesitated to put your hand out and touch him, hovering over his face. “Dabi, your skin—”
“Shut up it’s fine,” he breathed raggedly, turning his head away from you. When was the last time that had happened? Fuck. He made himself believe it was just the quirk. Just the quirk. And not you. Not because you felt so fucking good. 
His legs jolted up in desperation to make you move on top of him. “Don’t you fuckin’ stop—shit—I’m almost there—”
You didn’t know whether to be frightened or exhilarated by the display of fire, but you were moving again regardless, bouncing on his lap for all you were worth until your legs were begging for mercy and your lungs ached. 
He sucked in tight breaths through his teeth, then exhaled them as gravelly moans. You pressed against him, arms wrapped about his frame, ignoring his sweltering skin and abandoning any fear that his quirk might disobey his control again. You bit your lip and whined excitedly when you felt him bow his head against your shoulder and pant heavily against the clothed skin there. 
The heat was fucking blinding now. And it was loud: a numbing and seductive beat in his chest that made his heart stutter to keep up. Every slam of your hips down onto him, and every one of his thrusts up into you in turn, made the heat louder, ache more, and burn.
“Now,” he grit out against your ear, body seizing in warning. In his enclosed binds, his fingers clenched into fists, so hard that the joints popped in protest.  
A whine in your throat was the response. You were ignorant to much else except the wetness making a mess of your thighs, of his searing skin against you and his belt buckle digging harshly into your legs. 
“Right now,” he sputtered hurriedly, hips rising from the seat. All he could do was shove up into you once, violent and hard, digging his way as deep as he could as his balls went tight and fiery pleasure raced up his body. “Right fuckin’ now move, I’m gonna—goddamnit… fuck!” 
He wasn’t prepared for the way you slammed your hips down as you came again with a cry. He stiffened hard, body bowing down into yours as much as the restraints allowed, shoving his face into your neck.
“Holy fuck,” he gasped out, “fuck—” You shivered wildly around him and in an instant he was cumming hard, legs jolting in their restraints, shaking under your thighs. 
“Fuck!” he shouted again, the exclamation muffled against your skin. “Motherfucker—fuck—” His voice puttered off into a series of strained, frantic groans. Unthinking and delirious on pleasure, he closed his mouth around the soft flesh of your neck and bit hard. 
You gasped, tried to wriggle free, but his hips were desperately snapping up into you, effectively throwing off your balance. 
Your hips hadn’t stopped their determination either. They had a mind of their own, rutting fast to squeeze him dry. All the while, he growled hotly against your skin, teeth leaving deep marks, sucking blemishes into the flesh despite all restraint that told him otherwise. 
After the last, hard spurts inside of you, he sank back into the chair, utterly wasted. Little spasms harassed his body and made him shiver weakly. Only his mouth persevered, teeth still digging into the soft flesh of your shoulder.
The pleasure ebbed into raw sensation, and you could feel the marks his incisors left in you, the heated metal of his staples singeing you.
“Dabi,” you stuttered out, a shaky hand coming to push at his forehead in protest. 
It shook him back to reality. He brought his dizzy head back to look at you through hooded eyes, then down at the wound he’d left on your neck. 
Shit, he thought fleetingly, but not very regrettably. That was gonna bruise. 
He put his head back against the chair and heaved, shutting his eyes to dispel the lightheadedness. 
“Told you... to get off,” he muttered. 
You knew it was a mistake you would dwell on later, but you could barely move now, let alone think. 
When you shifted your legs, wanting to move and put some blood back into your limbs, it set off a chain reaction of oversensitive-pleasure; dwindling sparks went off inside you and you shuddered, making him jerk and grunt in tandem. 
“Don’t move,” he chided, his head still bent to the ceiling. “Just gimme a minute... Fuck...” he breathed. “You fuckin’...” He shook his head, in disbelief of the pleasure, even more so that you’d been the one to give it to him.
Then he thought: he wouldn’t need to conjure up fantasies of you anymore when he was getting himself off. He could go by memory now. 
Once he’d regained partial composure, he shifted, glad to find his dick was going limp—fucking finally—inside of you. 
“You got a way to take care of that?” he asked, leaning back and looking down at the wet mess between both your thighs. 
You blinked, hazy. “What?”
“I’m not tryna knock you up just ‘cause you’re too horny to listen,” he said disdainfully. “You on the pill? Gotta get one of those morning-afters otherwise–”
“It’s fine.” You nodded. “Don’t worry.”
It was easier said than done, he thought to himself sourly. But he was having trouble thinking of much else besides how fucking fantastic it was to feel the arousal leaving him in blissful waves.
He took a heavy breath. “Now get off and get me outta this shit.”
“But you might still be…” You wriggled a little on top of him, felt him soft inside of you. It was uncomfortable, but even if you’d wanted to move, your muscles were spent. “What if you’re still… ”
“Still what? Still horny? Bet you’d like that, wouldn't you?”
You wouldn’t let the comment fluster you, and obeyed as a way to prove him wrong, slowly lifting yourself off of him. The ache of your insides as he slipped out was raw and hot and wet, but unmistakably satisfying.
“Let me out,” he demanded again. “Now.”
“I told you I don’t have the key.”
He sighed in frustration, blinking sweat from his eyes. “Then go get Kurogiri. Go get someone. And at least be nice enough to cover me up. Don’t want my dick hanging out.”
It was shiny, wet, and red from stimulation. When you went to tuck it back in his pants, it twitched.
“Oi, clean it first,” he snapped.
You glanced around. “With?”
“Whatever the hell’s lying around. Shirt, rag, your mouth.” He scoffed when you put on a frown. “Don’t give me that look. This is your mess on my dick, ya know.”
With barely contained insolence you went down shakily on your knees, ready to go about the particularly humiliating task, when he laughed dryly under his breath. 
“You’re a real slut,” he muttered, looking down on you with a cheeky smirk, “aren’t you?”
That guaranteed your spite, and you stood up just as quickly as you’d gone down, then nudged his still-messy dick into his pants and zipped them closed. 
“Oi, oi—” The wetness squished uncomfortably underneath the fabric and he shifted awkwardly, glaring at you. “You fuckin’ serious?”
“You’ll be fine,” you muttered, turning away from him in search of your clothes, hiding an indulgent smile. 
As you redressed, he sneered and pulled at his bindings. “Don’t get smart with me.”
“Or what?” 
You were too exhausted to wrangle with his temper, or your own self-preservation; you knew it was a dangerous game to tease him. But you couldn’t help it. Your mind was foggy, your body teeming with giddy pleasure. Not to mention, you were free. He wasn’t. And that was remarkably funny. 
Now he was scowling. “You little shit. Letting it all go to your head now, huh?” When you didn’t answer, when he caught a flash of your teasing smile, his frustration started to run rampant. “Not gonna be so funny when I’m out of this shit—”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
In response, he just glowered, and despite the front you were trying to put up, it threw an excited shiver down your spine. You were perilously tempted to egg him on, but decided against it.
You pulled your shoes back on and breathed, looking at him with something that resembled soft smugness. “I’ll go find Kurogiri.”
“Yeah, you fuckin’ better,” he muttered under his breath, keeping his critical eye-contact with you up until the very moment you disappeared out of his line of vision. 
When he heard your footsteps finally dwindle down an adjacent hall, he let out a long-suffering sigh and tilted his head back. “Fuck.”
The quirk had gone, the heat and arousal with it. 
But what hadn’t gone were the thoughts of you. 
Angry thoughts, confusing thoughts, and most of all, intriguing thoughts.
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felassan · 4 years ago
Text
Some DA trivia and dev commentary from Twitter
There’s a lot of different tweets, so I’m just pasting and linking to the source rather than screencapping them all or making several different posts or something. Post under cut for length.
User: Was dragon age 2 your favourite in the franchise?
David Gaider: DA2 was the project where my writing team was firing on all cylinders, and they wrote like the wind- because they had to! Second draft? Pfft. Plot reviews? Pfft. I was so proud of what we all accomplished in such a brief time. I didn't think it was possible. [source] DA2 is, however, also where the goal posts kept moving. Things kept getting cut, even while we worked. I had to write that dialogue where Orsino turned even if you sided with him, because his boss battle had been cut and there was no time to fix the plot. A real WTF moment. >:( [source]
Mike Rousseau: I remember bugging that! And then being told it wasn't a bug, and being so confused. Doing QA for DA2 was an experience. Trial by fire. [source]
DG: So I think it's safe to say DA2 is my favorite entry in the DA franchise and also the sort of thing I never want to live through ever again. Mixed feelings galore. [source]
User: (I personally blame whoever it was for ruining most romance arcs in other games for me; they don't live up to Fenris's romance storyline)
DG: I wrote Fenris, so uh - me, I guess? Or maybe his cinematic designer, who put in the puppy dog eyes. [source]
User: If DA2 had just been an expansion, do you think it would have been better received? There was a lot of great stuff in there, and I think my initial dislike of it was because of the zone reuse. If it hadn't needed to be a full game, would that issue not have arisen?
DG: Hard to say. It was either going to be an over-scoped expansion or an under-scoped sequel. If it had stayed an expansion, it might never have received the resources/push it DID get. [source]
User: I'd love to visit the universe where you had an extra year or so to work on it. You did a very good job as it stands, but it definitely had rough edges. Not just the writing team either. The whole game had hit and miss moments, that just a little more dev time could have fixed.
DG: On one hand, DA2 existed to fill a hole in the release schedule. More time was never in the cards. DA2 was originally planned as an expansion! On the other, if we had more time, would we have started doing that thing where we second guess/iterate ourselves into mediocrity? [shrug emoji] [source] 
Jennifer Hepler: This is what I love about DA2. Personally, I greatly prefer something that's rough and raw and sincere to something that's had all the soul polished out of it. Extra time would have helped for art and levels, but it would have lost something too. [source]
DG: Right? I think we could have used some time for peer reviews (and fewer cuts), but I think the rawness of the writing lent a certain spark that we usually polished out. [source]
JH: Definitely. I think the structure (more character-driven) and the tightness of the timeframe let each individual writer's voice really come through. Polish can be very homogenizing. [source]
DG: I should add I'm not, by any means, against iteration. Some iteration is good and necessary. The problem that BioWare often had is that we never knew when to stop. Like a goldfish, we would fill the space given to us by constantly re-iterating on things that were "good enough". [source]
Patrick Weekes: I appreciate your incredibly diplomatic use of the past tense on "had". :D [source]
User: DA2 was my gateway into the series and I’m so happy it is. I love the game the way that it is. It’s one of my favorites of all time. But I am also aware of everything that was said here. If it were remastered, do you think it would change?
DG: I'd be surprised if it was ever remastered. If it was, do you really think they'd change things? Do remasters do that? No idea. [source]
User: Both sides got undercut as I recall. Didn't that whole sequence also end with the mage leader embracing blood magic? It was very much "a plague on both your houses" moment, at least for me.
DG: Yep. Orsino was supposed to have his own version of Meredith's end battle, which only happened if you sided with the templars. That got cut, but the team still wanted to use the model we'd made for him. So... that happened. [source]
DG: I would personally say that DA2 is a fantastic game hidden under a mountain of compromises, cut corners, and tight deadlines. If you can see past all that, you'll see a fantastic game. I don't doubt, however, that it's very difficult for most to do that. [source]
PW: I love DAI with all my selfish "I worked on this" heart, but DA2's follower arcs and relationships are probably my favorite in the series. [source]
User: As I've expressed many times, I love the game, especially it's writing and characters but, for me, the most impressive aspect of it, in consideration of it's lack of time for drafts and revisions, is the 2nd act with Arishok.  What amazingly complex character and fantastic duel
User: Just played it again and I have to agree. Though he is bound by the harsher tenants of the Qun, he makes valid points about free marcher society. Though it is obvious that he and Hawke will come to blows eventually, the tension builds gradually and understandably
DG: Luke did such a fantastic job with the Arishok I found myself sometimes wishing the Qunari plot had just been THE plot. [source]
User: What do you think would have changed, story wise, if you had more time for DA2?
DG: I would have taken out that thing where Meredith gets the idol. It was forced on me because she needed to be "super-powered" with red lyrium for her final battle. Being "crazy", however, robbed her side of the mage/templar argument of any legitimacy. I hated hated hated that. [source]
User: I deeply lament that there wasn't/couldn't be some sort of DA2 equivalent of Throne of Bhaal's Ascension mod.
DG: I'd have done it, if DA2 had allowed for anything but the most rudimentary of modding. ;) [source]
User: I mean, and I think I understand where you were trying, but how much legitimacy did the Templars and her as top Templar have after they're keeping the mages locked up against their will in the old slave quarters? Feel free to not reply.
DG: I think it's the kind of discussion which requires nuance, and which discussions on the Internet are not prone to. [source]
User: Was a compromise that the quest lines don’t branch? It felt like it was supposed to be that way but then you end up in the same place later regardless of what you pick. Like I hoodwinked the templars so good to help the apostates escape but in Act II they were caught anyway.
DG: I remember us having a lot more branching in the initial planning yes. Most of this got trimmed out in the first or second wave of cuts, in an effort to not cut the plots altogether. [source]
DG: "If you could Zack Snyder DA2, what would you change?" Wow. I'm willing to bet Mark or Mike (or anyone else on the team) would give very different answers than me, but it's enough to give a sober man pause, because that was THE Project of Multiple Regrets. [source] I mean, it's the most hypothetical of hypotheticals. It's never gonna happen. I wouldn't be surprised if EA considered DA2 its embarrassing red-headed stepchild. We'd also need to ignore that in many ways DA2 was as good as it was bad BECAUSE of how it was made. But that aside? [source] First, either restore the progressive changes to Kirkwall we'd planned over the passing of in-game years or reduce the time between acts to months instead of years... which, in hindsight, probably should have been done as soon as the progressive stuff was cut. [source] I'm sure you're like "get rid of repeated levels!" ...but I don't care about that. All I wanted was for Kirkwall to feel like a bigger city. Way more crowded. More alive! Fewer blood mages. [source] I'd want to restore the plot where a mage Hawke came THIS close to becoming an abomination. An entire story spent trapped in one's own head while trapped on the edge of possession. Why? Because Hawke is the only mage who apparently never struggles with this. It was a hard cut. [source]
User: I would LOVE to hear more details about this! I don’t suppose there’s any chance of a short story?
DG: I don't even remember the details of the story, sorry. There was a fight, and you caught the bad guy and then realized none of it was real and woke up idk [source]
DG: I'd want to restore all those alternate lines we cut, meaning people forget they'd met you. Or that they knew you were a mage. Or, oh god, that maybe they'd romanced you in DAO. So much carnage. [source] I'd want to restore the Act 3 plots we cut only because they were worked on too late, but which would have made the buildup to the mage/templar clash less sudden. Though I don't remember what they were, now. Some never got beyond being index cards posted on the wall. [grimace emoji] [source] As I mentioned elsewhere, I'd want to restore Orsino's end battle so he wouldn't need to turn on you even if you sided with him. And I'd want an end fight with the templars that didn't require Meredith to have red lyrium and go full Tetsuo. [source] Heck, maybe an end decision where you sided with neither the mages nor the templars. Because it certainly ended up feeling like you could brand both sides as batshit pretty legitimately, no? That was never planned, tho. No idea how to make that feel like an actual path atm. [source] Maybe an option to go "umm, Anders... what are you DOING?" 👀 [source] And, of course, a Varric romance, because Mary took that "slimy car salesman" character we'd planned and did the impossible with him. I can feel Mary glaring at me for even suggesting this, tho. [source] Lastly, the original expanded opening to the game which allowed you to spend time with Bethany and Carver BEFORE the darkspawn attacked. And, um, that's about it off the top of my head. Zack Snyder, WHAT PANDORA'S BOX HAVE YOU OPENED. [source] Shit, I remembered two more things: 1) Restore the "Varric exaggerates the heck out of the story" at the beginning of every Act, until Cassandra calls him on it. Yes, that was a thing. 2) Make DA: Exodus. Yes, I am still bitter. [source] God damn it, I meant "Make DA: Exalted March". The DA2 expansion, NOT Exodus since that was DA2's original name and makes no sense. Because the expansion ended with Varric dying, and that will always be on my "things left undone" list. [source]
User: Whaaaat?
DG: Well, you know that scene in Wrath of Khan where Spock goes into the dilithium chamber because he's a Vulcan? Well, imagine that but with Varric and red lyrium and because he's a dwarf. ;) [source]
John Epler: I distinctly remember referencing the bit from MGS4 where you crawl through the microwave corridor in the split screen, while cinematic battle rages on the other half. [source]
DG: It would have been glorious, John. Glorious. [source]
JE: I don't think I've ever been so certain what a shot should look like as I did Hawke coming in and finding Varric in the broken throne, just like when he was telling Cassandra his story. [source]
DG: It would have come full circle! Auggghh, it still kills me. [source]
User: Lord, you folks are a little too good at this.
JE: The true secret behind videogame narrative is knowing how to make yourself seem a lot more clever than you actually are. [source] 'Oh, we TOTALLY planned that.' [source]
User: Ok, this thread [the DA2 regrets thread, which is the big chunks above] but Inquisition.
DG: My regrets about Inquisition are, more or less, the normal kind. Nothing so dramatic, I'm afraid. [source]
User: You can keep your Varric romance, I want a Flemeth romance goddamnit!
DG: I would allow for one flirt option, and then a recording of Kate Mulgrew laughing for three minutes straight. [source]
User: I had a hypothesis about the repetitive caves in DA2. They're repetitive because it's Varric telling the story and he didn't consider them important.  They're like sets in a play.  (Okay, I really suspect it was a time/money/resources thing but I like my fake explanation better.)
DG: Hang a lampshade on it, maybe? Cassandra: "But that's the exact cave you were in last time?" Varric: "Whatever. They all look the same, I'm not THAT kind of dwarf. Can we move on?" [source]
User: that makes sense, hypothetically to make Varric romanceable and keep his arc—that had to happen for the main plot—I imagine you would have to make double the content (or more)? which would've been a tall order given the time/budget constraints the game was under
DG: Right. When it comes to "romance arc" vs. "follower story arc", we generally only had time to do one or the other. Never both. Romancing Varric would have meant not getting the story of his that you did. [source]
Mary Kirby: The one exaggeration I really, REALLY wanted, that we never got to do was Varric narrating his own death scene with Hawke weeping over him, then cutting to Cassandra's pissed off glaring at him. [source]
DG: Haha! The one I wanted was Varric's plot where he takes on the baddies single-handedly, sliding across the floor like Jet Lee, action movie-style, until finally Cassandra gets irritated and he has to admit Hawke & the rest of the party showed up to help. [source]
MK: We did that one! (He didn't do any Jet Lee moves, though.) Jepler gave him letterboxing to get The Good, the Bad, & the Ugly showdown vibes while he shot a ton of mooks single-handed. [source]
DG: Wow. Shows how much I remember. [source]
JE: I found it! I remember seeing this sequence as my treat for doing a bunch of much more challenging work. It was fun to see how far I could push our limited library of animations. [link] [source]
DG: Heh awesome. I could have sworn it was cut, honestly. I think I was even in that meeting. [source]
User: no disrespect but that’s surprising and rich of Mary “Hard in Hightown” Kirby to think DA2 shouldn’t have had a Varric romance when she wrote an entire book of Varric’s self-insert character pining over his Hawke insert character… HIH is the reason we had VHawke Summer 2018
DG: I can't *really* speak for Mary, or how she feels about it now compared to back then. I only know how she felt about it back then, and I'm not sure it was as much the concept of the romance but that Varric's entire story would be bent to "romance arc" ...a very different thing. [source]
JH: I remember pushing to have the first DLC start with Hawke having an option to ask Varric, "Did you tell Cassandra about us?" and if you picked it, Varric would answer, "Of course not, baby. I told her you were sleeping with X..." and then proceed as if you had had a full romance. [source]
DG: I still wonder how that would have gone over. x) [source]
JE: Okay, one more DA2 thing. Putting together the cinematics for this scene was a blast. [link] [source]
MK: These lines are my greatest legacy. I want "Make sure the world knows I died... at Chateau Haine!" inscribed on my tombstone. [source]
JE: I was so glad no one said 'no' to the crane shot. [source]
MK: It needs that crane shot. It's the perfect icing on that cake made from solid cheese. [source]
DG: The designers were all "we need more combat" and I think we were all "I think you underestimate just HOW interesting we can make this dinner party". [source]
JE: And finally. I think @SherylChee wrote the one-liner. I think we had a collection of like, 20. [link] [source]
Sheryl Chee: Yeah! Something like that! I remember submitted a whole bunch and Frank said you only needed one. Wish I'd kept the other fifteen. [source]
JE: A random chooser where, each time through the scene, you get a different one-liner. [source]
JE: DA2 is the project I'm the proudest of. I also absolutely get that it didn't land for a lot of people. But I don't think it's inaccurate to say that, in a lot of ways, DA2 defined my career. [source]  Everyone spent a year working at their maximum ability. I was a fresh cinematic designer and was given all of Varric's content, as well as the Act 1 Finale mission. It was a lot for someone who had been doing the Cinematics thing for literally 6 months. [source]  There's some stuff in there I can't look at without wincing. And there's some stuff I'm genuinely proud of. Not to mention, it was my introduction to most of the writing team. Several of whom I'm still working with today! Albeit in a different capacity [source] Also, weirdly, one of my most enduring memories of Dragon Age 2 is how much Bad Company 2 we'd play at lunch. It was a LOT. [source] Every game I've worked on has a game I played attached to it. ME2 is Borderlands. DA2 is Bad Company 2. DAI is DayZ. I, hmm. There's a progression there. I don't know how I feel about it. [source]
User: Is DA4 going to be tarkov then?
JE: I've kind of churned out of Tarkov for now. Probably Hunt Showdown, at least right now. [source]
User: I think people also don't take nuance into consideration -- like I FULLY acknowledge the flaws in my favorite games and will openly criticize them, but that doesn't mean they're not my favorite games anymore??? You can like and thing and still be critical of it.
JE: A lot of my favourite shit is deeply flawed! I acknowledge it and I think it's interesting to dissect the flaws. [source]
User: I still wish Justice was an actual character in DA2 rather than a plot point.
DG: There was a moment during DAI where we *almost* put in you running into Justice with the Grey Wardens, and he's all "Kirkwall? I never went to Kirkwall" [source]
User: Does that imply that Justice was shoehorned in to DA2?
DG: Nah, it was an in-joke where we thought it'd be fun to suggest that "Justice" was simply some demon that tricked Anders in DA2. Wooo those tricky demons! We didn't do it, though. [source]
User: [about templars]  except, I don't think it had very much legitimacy to begin with. keep in mind, we interact with other characters with the same argument. The one that comes to mind is Cullen, a sane templar in power. The templar's side of the argument is inherently flawed.
DG: I don't doubt that many people agree with you, and yet people can and do argue on behalf of the templars as well. My place isn't to pick a side, but to provide evidence that players can interpret for themselves [source]
User: Can you shed some light for us on how DA was able to do multiple same-sex romance options for different genders but the Mass Effect team treated them like the plague? What process existed for your team that just wasn't their for the other tentpole franchise?
DG: Different people making the decisions, almost different cultures. I don't know what it's like now, but for many years the Mass Effect team and the Dragon Age team were almost like two different studios working within the same building. [source]
User: It truly boggles the mind. Kudos for doing demonstrably better on consistent queer representation than the ME teams. Y'all never needed us to make petitions to try to get the studio's attention and ask them to do better by us. That's the fight we're once again embroiled in now.
DG: Honestly, I don't feel like tut-tutting the Mass Effect team. They did their part, and if they were a bit later to the show than the DA team they certainly did more than almost every other game out there -- and willingly. [source]
Updates begin here
User: So what was the reason for naming Dragon age 2 "Dragon age II" and not using a subtitle?
DG: As I recall, that was purely a publisher decision. I think they wanted to avoid the impression it was an expansion. [source]
User: Is there no chance of ever remaking DA2 under better circumstances? -Somehow remove the repetitiveness of gameplay by making changes and updating the tech and adding much more to the storyline. It could almost be a new very exciting game.
DG: I'd say there's zero chance of that. Let's keep our hopes up for the next DA title instead. [source]
User: I am a little confused here, help me out here please! How exactly was the cut boss battle with Orsino supposed to work out? How it would've kept him from turning against the player?
DG: It means that, if you sided with the templars, the entire boss bottle at the end would have been against Orsino and the mages. No fight against Meredith. The end decision would have been more divergent. [source]
User: I do remember that one of the reasons going around for that, was that resources were going to the transition to Frostbite. I'm still not fully sold on that having been a good choice. I felt that more time should have been given for that transition considering it was made for FPSs
DG: We didn't transition to Frostbite until DAI. Given our time frame for DA2, I don't think we *could* have transitioned to a new engine. [source]
User: Since your talking about the what could have been for DA2. Could you say what your script was for Anthem? Cause I remember reading that you wrote the plot on that game.
DG: I created a setting for Anthem and scripted out a plot - but, as I understand it, almost none of that ended up being used. So it's a bit pointless to talk about what I'd planned, as that'd be for some completely different type of game. [source]
User: [in reference to the exchange above where DG said “Being "crazy", however, robbed her side of the mage/templar argument of any legitimacy. I hated hated hated that.” re: Meredith] except, I don't think it had very much legitimacy to begin with. keep in mind, we interact with other characters with the same argument. The one that comes to mind is Cullen, a sane templar in power. The templar's side of the argument is inherently flawed.
DG: I don't doubt that many people agree with you, and yet people can and do argue on behalf of the templars as well. My place isn't to pick a side, but to provide evidence that players can interpret for themselves. [source]
If I missed a tweet, got the wrong source link or included a tweet twice, feel free to let me know and I’ll correct.
Edit / Update: Post update 22nd April
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butwhyduh · 4 years ago
Note
Hello! idk whether requests r open, but hope they r. just feel like reading a random damian wayne x reader where reader is his best friend. Any horror will do. Thx!!
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In the Darkness
Damian Wayne x BFF!reader
Warning: scary stuff, blood, horror
It was a dark stormy night in Gotham. That terrible temperature that hovered just above freezing until almost morning where it dipped just enough to make an awful icy morning commute. Normally you would be bracing yourself for your next morning trip to school. And forget about being warm, your apartment could barely keep up with being above freezing.
But this night you sat on plush velvet with a roaring fire in a gigantic stone fireplace at one of the Wayne’s penthouses in the city. The wall sized windows showed Gotham through streaming water. It almost looked peaceful.
Breaking you from your revery was a bowl of popcorn being plopped in your lap. You looked up to see Damian with a half grin before he sat down beside you. Titus sat down on his other side.
“We have that film you wanted to watch in theatre,” he said grabbing the remote.
“D, it’s still in theatres,” you said surprised. “How did you get it?”
“A, my father is Bruce Wayne. I could probably buy it. And B, I saved a certain theatre from being robbed and they owed me one and they lent me the film. You’re welcome,” he said, still looking at the screen. For Damian, that was practically the biggest compliment, that he thought about you.
“Thanks. Yeah, I usually just block out the fact that your dad is Bruce Wayne to be honest,” you said eating the popcorn.
“Be less honest,” he said with a gentle shoulder shove. “Let’s watch the film. I have to train tomorrow.”
It was a good movie. Scary with a bit of gore, though you weren’t prepared for Damian to tell you how blood patterns worked differently.
But with only 10 minutes left and the killer almost revealed, the power went out. You groaned and moved to grab your phone. Damian stiffened and looked around.
“Great, my phone is dead,” you said rolling your eyes. Damian quickly looked at his, dead too. At this point he was tense and Titus was on alert.
“Nothing should be out,” he said quietly.
“It’s a big storm, dude,” you said about to ask about flashlights.
“We have 2 main power supplies and 3 back ups. There should be no outage. And my phone was fully charged before the movie. There was a power pulse. This is a Wayne Enterprise owned building and we are in the penthouse. This could be an attack or coop,” he said standing. Titus stood by him and you couldn’t help but stand.
“There’s 2 ways to this floor. The main elevator and the service elevator that is in the guest bathroom,” Damian said. Knowing your location could save your life.
“You think someone is coming up here,” you said quietly. He nodded and moved over to the wall and grabbed a sword from a stand on the wall. You had thought it was decorative. Of course it was real. It was Damian’s.
“Here,” Damian said, reaching in his pocket to grab a large pocket knife. You blanched. “Worst case scenario only. You could hurt yourself before someone else because you aren’t trained. But if your cornered, this could save your life. Only open it if you really need it. Got it?”
“Yeah, D,” you said with frown. He stood a few feet in front of you and Titus was a safe distance away on alert. Your heart was pounding. You really regretted not taking Damian up on the offer to teach you some self defense. At the time the idea of bruises all over your body was the last thing you wanted.
The elevator dinged. It shouldn’t have. You needed a passcode and finger print to operate it. Not to mention, the power was supposed to be out. The door opened and a green mist wafted out and Damian stepped back to avoid it. Gotham villains loved toxins and he didn’t want to be under the power of fear toxin or pheromones or something. Titus got a dose and began barking wildly.
Damian pushed you back with his arm not holding the sword. “Try not to breath it,” he said as the mist filled the apartment. He could make out the shape of a person but couldn’t identify them. Within a minute, Damian realized that they were just some poor victim of whoever set up the toxin. They were screaming silently while their eyes darted around the room. Great, it was probably fear toxin.
Damian pushed a panic button he kept in his jacket pocket at pretty much all times. Hopefully the energy pulse didn’t affect the button. You shoved your shirt over your nose but it was futile. Damian stood in front of you looking around wildly. His eyes were dilated and his breathing was rough.
“Don’t move. It’s all fake! Don’t fall for it. It’s all fake!” He yelled and swung his sword away from you at nothing. Your vision blurred.
Damian and Titus fought some invisible monster in front of you. You turned to see the windows melting. You gasped loudly as the glass slid down like wet gelatin. The floor grew heavy. You weren’t even facing the same direction as Damian any more. You heart thumped painfully in a hard slow rhythm.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
You heard screaming laughter. Was the fucking Joker here?? You looked around to see no one.
“It’s in your head,” Damian yelled. He was still fighting an invisible foe. “It’s fake!”
The wall began to cave in. You could feel your body slide slowly towards the gaping window. You grasped at the couch but it too began to slide towards the edge of the wall. You were 50 floors up. There was no way to survive it. You shrieked and grabbed at the slick tile floor. The cold marble bit at your hands.
You could see your blood stick to the floor before defying gravity and floating to the ceiling. It pulsed with your heartbeat. You could hear the laughter in your head. It was so loud. You grasped at your skull. Your bloodied fingers left little streaks of blood all over your face.
Damian was calling you but he was the most dangerous one in the room. He was wildly swinging a sword and he and Titus were furiously fighting a battle. Was he fighting a past foe? The man in the elevator picked the wrong moment to move because Damian came closer and closer to him.
You watched as Damian killed him. His sword sliced the man’s arm first and he barred his teeth before growling at Damian. His eyes were wild and movement was more like an animal over human. Damian slashed him, this time in the abdomen. Dark red blood pooled from the wound and the man bellowed in pain. You cried and rocked. The world was collapsing.
The man was like a wounded beast and he tried to gnarl and slash his hands at Damian. Damian jabbed quickly, almost faster than you could see, and the man breathed his last breath as Damian’s sword pierced his heart. Blood pooled out almost lazily post death. The man’s eyes froze wide and terrible. You cried freely. Damian didn’t stop. He clearly was fighting another foe in his mind.
You balance turned on you and you almost threw up as you gripped the floor. “Stop! Stop!” You yelled as Damian and Titus both continued their battle with nothing.
The floor was turning again. This time, it became sticky as the ceiling melted down towards you. Little bits of melted plaster burned the floor. You rolled away as a large chunk hit the ground. The laughter sounded again and you saw a flash of white face pulled tight in a chaotic laugh.
The second elevator sounded and you scampered away and to behind the couch. Your fingers were white as they gripped the fabric to keep from falling out of the window. Monsters, beasts, men in black suits hurried towards you. Damian screamed and slashed at the air between him and the attacker.
“Don’t touch her! Don’t fucking touch her,” he bellowed. But it was too late. A monster in red grabbed you. You screamed and fought, landing a hit to their chest and a bite to their hand.
“She fucking bit me! Goddamn,” the big man groaned. He wrapped his arms around you tightly and you bucked but it was useless. He had you and you couldn’t escape. A man in black and blue shot Damian with a taser. This was how you were going to die, in a melting building with men as monsters grabbing you. How could you possibly fight them when they took Damian down? He’s the son of Batman.
A monster with a shifting face, once a man and another a beast, came towards you with a syringe. His mouth gaped and swallowed blackness. “No! No,” you moaned. Your throat was raw from screaming. He quickly jabbed you in the neck. Before you passed out, you saw the screaming laughing face of the Joker.
—————————————
12 hours later you woke up. You sat up quickly only to see Damian’s bedroom in the manor. Your head spun for a moment before stopping. His crisp white sheets and blue blanket and red ornamental rug laid on wooden floor. You were alone. You felt a small bandage on your neck and your fingers had small scabs along the nail lines on both hands. One of your fingernails was cut jagged to the quick. You grimaced as you touched the injured skin.
The walk from his bed into the hallway showed you two things: the floor was really cold and that you were wearing Damian’s clothing. A simple grey sweatpants rolled up and black Superman shirt was not enough in the chilly manor. You opened the door to an empty hallway. The floor had a thick soft rug that covered the sounds of your feet. You heard the sound of voices from the library at the end of the hall.
“I almost killed her,” you heard Damian say. His voice sounded pained and raw.
“It was the fear toxin. You didn’t do anything,” said one of his brothers. You couldn’t tell who yet but probably the oldest.
“I almost eviserated her, Grayson,” Damian said flatly. “The fear toxin made her cry in the corner and I almost cut her in 2.”
“She managed to bite me,” said another deeper voice.
“You left yourself open to be attacked,” said a third voice.
“Enough. She’s awake,” said a final voice that you definitely recognized as Damian’s father. “Come in.”
Damian sat on the edge of a wooden desk. Bruce sat in the desk chair behind the desk. Dick sat on a chair in the corner. Jason stood by Dick’s chair and Tim paced by a bookshelf. The other bat kids must have been out working.
“Hey,” Damian said searching your face and body for injury. He almost looked... vulnerable. His eyes stared at the bandage on your neck.
“Hi,” you said and your voice felt raw and painful. You rubbed your throat.
“How are you feeling?” Bruce asked. Damian quickly got you a chair. You sat down slowly. Your head still throbbed.
“Okay I guess. What happened?” You asked.
“Someone got ahold of a new street drug that uses a certain variety of fear toxin that is fast acting but short term and they atomized it and released it into the tower. They did it through a vent from the top down so you both got the largest dose. Luckily the security guard on the bottom floor only had some anxiety and a racing heartbeat and was able to recognize the situation. Damian’s tracker was activated and we got you both out as fast as we could,” Tim said.
You rubbed your temple. That didn’t sound right. What about the elevator? The man?
“Does your head hurt? We can get you something for that,” Damian said.
“I’m okay. Thanks. How long was I out?” You said trying to put things together.
“12 hours, give or take. You should probably get back in bed until tomorrow. Your mind and body need a break,” Bruce said. You nodded. Your head did hurt and you were tired but you couldn’t relax. There was just something off about everything. Maybe a side effect of the toxin. Damian offered to walk you back into your room.
“I’ll give you some medication to help with your headache. It might make you sleepy, okay?” He said pulling a syringe from a drawer in the room.
“Okay, I guess. My head does hurt,” you said climbing back in bed. Damian smiled and injected your arm.
His face. He smiled widely. Wider than he ever had before. Wide enough to have a gaping blackness. You went to scream but you were too tired. You tried to grab him to find you were tied in place. The manor’s neat clean walls faded to dirty dingy peeling mess and you could smell must and mildew. Your vision blurred.
The sound of a screaming laugh from a pulled back face was the only thing you could hear.
Let me know what you guys think 😀
It’s a part 1 of 2. The second part might be out Friday or next Friday depending on my schedule.
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pastelsandpining · 4 years ago
Text
I’ll Be Home (Coming Home After Being Away)
The seventh prompt in 12 Days of Christmas by @zelink-prompts​ | Prequel
Prompt List
Words: 4596
Summary: So, this is actually a sequel to tomorrow’s prompt but can be read separately?? I guess?? The rundown is that Link left years ago to search for his fairy and never returned. Zelda tried not to lose hope. He made her a promise, after all.
Ocarina of Time, child timeline?? Idk how the timelines work y’all please
Zelink-mas 2020  l  Masterlist 
“Your gown is ready, your highness.”
“Thank you,” Zelda answered, nodding in the direction of her lady-in-waiting. “I’ll be there shortly.”
When the door shut behind her, the princess turned her gaze back to the long dried flower. She set it carefully onto the page with the others and slowly closed the book, ensuring no petals or leaves crumbled in the process. The book was placed back on the shelf, right next to the Ocarina of Time and a dust-covered medal imprinted with the crest of Hyrule. She had no time to gaze at the reminders of her childhood this afternoon, because there was beckoning from all directions that insisted on getting her ready in time.
Zelda stepped through the doors of the washroom, where she was pleasantly surprised to see the water was still warm. A wash of her hair and a soap of lavender scent would treat her well and be pleasant to anyone in close proximity. She could not deny her maidens the credit--they always went above and beyond to make sure she was presentable in every fashion. A grand event called for twice the effort, so the princess sat without complaint in her robe as they brushed gentle powders over her face. 
“Are you excited, Princess?” asked a maiden as she painted a color onto Zelda���s closed eyelids. “I hear there are princes from outside of Hyrule coming to get a glimpse of you.”
“Oh, is that so? I hope one takes a liking to you, Elizabeth,” she replied, folding her hands in her lap. “You would fare well with royalty.”
“You’re too kind,” Elizabeth said, and Zelda could hear the blush on her cheeks. “No man would notice me.”
“Hold yourself high,” Zelda encouraged as she pried her eyes open. “Everyone is deserving of love and happiness.”
“Do you hope to find love tonight?” asked the maiden behind her, who was busy twisting her hair into an elegant knot. 
“I believe that whatever is fated will happen in time. If that time is tonight, then so be it.” It was a far better answer than telling them she had found love long ago and had no intentions of finding it again. 
Zelda could hardly blame the maidens for their excited chatter and shared whispers. She pretended not to notice them, because their one form of entertainment was to gossip. Anyone who gossiped with ill intention was not worth troubling herself with, and while they were far from it, she didn’t pay any mind to them. It was not her business what anyone said about her, or about the anticipated guests, or about themselves. She had other matters to concern herself with.
An hour had passed by, and she was finally permitted to stand from the chair and move to the next room. A silken slip hugged her form and protected her skin from the rough edges of the corset. There weren’t many layers, but she was still grateful for the design of the dress. 
It was a soft pink, a color to match the rose on her cheeks and paint on her lips. The skirt consisted of multiple layers that ruffled out into a pattern at the bottom. There were lace and glittering jewels sewed onto the bodice that caught the light. The neck cut low, but not low enough to be anything but modest. The top of her sleeves were rather poufy and the rest poured off in pink streams, but they were transparent and light. It fit her well.
The crown on her head, golden and sparkling with precious rubies made her look like a blossoming queen. She would turn heads tonight, more so than usual, and it was all thanks to her dressmaker and maidens. But she was already exhausted, and the ball hadn’t even begun. 
Yet she was being escorted through the halls of the castle and steered towards the ballroom, which was already filling up with people. She could see that the maidens were right--there were people from everywhere, even outside of Hyrule. She wondered just how many suitors her father had contacted.
She supposed she would find out shortly, because her father had gathered the attention of the crowd and was now introducing her. With no more room to run, Zelda stepped out from the archway and down the stairs. The king took her hands and pulled her in for a kiss, and she had to fight back a smile.
“I’m not married yet, father,” she said, reaching up a hand to brush away a tear from his cheek.
“No,” he agreed and gave her hand a gentle squeeze. “You really do look like your mother.”
“So I’ve heard,” she replied with a laugh. “It’s not too late to call them off. I could refuse to marry, stay with you.”
It was the king’s turn to laugh as he leaned his forehead to hers.
“Go,” he urged. 
She pulled her hands free and pressed a kiss to his cheek before gathering her skirts and descending into the crowd. Various diplomats were on her immediately, greeting her and complimenting her and talking her into a frenzy about their own nations and accomplishments, no doubt trying to impress her. All she could do was smile and nod and pretend she was interested until another person came along to sweep her away.
“My father owns quite the bit of land,” a lord whose name she’d forgotten boasted as he twirled her across the floor. “It could be an advantage for both kingdoms.”
“Yes,” Zelda agreed, but she didn’t voice her knowledge of where this was going. The kingdoms were far enough apart that they’d try to force her to move and give up the rule of Hyrule--which was not an option as far as she was concerned. So when the next person cut in for a dance, she was more than willing to switch partners.
“I hear Hyrule has been at the edge of not one, but two civil wars within the past century. I have no room to suggest anything, but I can offer some tactics that would help convince the provinces to obey,” said a prince from a nation she’d never heard of. 
“Hyrule has managed quite well on our own,” Zelda replied, fighting to keep the bite out of her voice. “But thank you. Should we need assistance again, we will be sure to reach out.”
“My father believes in discipline. That’s the only way to make a child listen,” continued the prince, as if he hadn’t heard a word she said.
“I’ve found that competent parents can make do without the use of force,” she stated simply and used a passing server with a tray of wine to make her escape. She was not technically of age to be drinking, but no one knew that as far as she was aware, and if the night was going to continue like this, then a glass or two wouldn’t hurt.
She was happy to find the wine dry but sweet, and she recognized the danger of something so tasty. While a duke rambled away to her, she reluctantly reduced her number of glasses to one for the night. The last thing she needed was for these men to think she was under any sort of influence.
When she was granted a moment to herself again, Zelda ducked further into the crowd until she found someone familiar to her. Nabooru, the not-so-new Gerudo chief, was in attendance, dressed in glittering Gerudo jewels.
“Princess,” greeted Nabooru with her arms open for a hug. “You look as lovely as a rose.”
“It’s lovely to see you again. How is Gerudo Valley fairing?” Zelda asked, taking caution not to spill her drink during the hug.
“Very well, thanks to you. The funds your father lent us were enough to not only build a proper town, but to conduct repairs to the Desert Colossus. With Impa’s consistent transport of food and resources, we’ve managed to turn ourselves around.”
“It does no good to dwell on the past. We can only own up to our mistakes and move forwards from here. Had it not been for our mistreatment of the Gerudo in the first place, Ganondorf would never have felt the need to avenge the pride lost in the civil war.”
“Lighten up, kid,” Nabooru said with a grin. “Things are looking up. Have you found a suitor to your liking yet?”
“Hardly,” Zelda replied, leaning closer as she lowered her voice. “The men I’ve spoken to so far are so full of arrogance and a lust for power.”
“That’s men for you,” Nabooru answered as she took a seat at a table. Zelda smiled and slid into the seat across from her, setting her glass down on the white tablecloth. “Don’t let any of them fool you. Ganondorf had a winning smile and the charm of a king, but look what he truly turned out to be.”
“For all of your skill and beauty, I cannot believe you settled for him.”
“Hey, Gerudo men are in very limited supply. When you’re a naïve girl, a powerful man giving you attention is enough to cloud your mind. I’m happy you’re able to see through that.”
“I would offer to marry you if you were younger,” Zelda joked as she picked up her wine to take another sip. “If any of your warriors are available and interested, I’d be more than happy to comply.”
Nabooru laughed.
“It’s going that badly, huh?” 
“I’ve danced with at least eight men so far tonight, and I think three of them were named ‘Edward’,” Zelda whispered with a laugh of her own. 
“I don’t think you’re one to talk, Princess. Which ‘Zelda’ are you again? The thirtieth? The forty-seventh?”
Zelda rolled her eyes, but she couldn’t reply because it would seem her time was up. There was a prince who spoke from besides her with an “I’m sorry to interrupt” (oh, he’d better be) and a request to dance.
“Find your prince charming,” Nabooru said, waving Zelda away with her hand. The princess gave her friend a playful glare as she took the prince’s hand and was pulled back towards the center of the ballroom.
“Might I ask who requested my hand in dance?” she asked with a polite smile. Now that she was closer, this prince seemed younger than her. Not by much, but by enough for her to be a little taller than him.
“My name is Prince Henry of the Liles Empire, just off the north coast of Hyrule,” he replied. “It’s a pleasure to see your beauty up close.”
“Likewise,” she said, though she hardly meant it. He was not bad on the eyes, but those who approached her with comments on her appearance struck her as vain and, well, in it for just that. She could be reading them wrong of course, but she’d learned how to navigate her instincts and properly react after Ganondorf’s plan had been thwarted. 
“If I’m being honest, I do not know how to hold a proper conversation with a lady such as yourself,” stated Henry as he led them in a circle. 
“I could not tell,” she replied with a patient and gentle smile. 
“My mother convinced me to ask you to dance. She believes an alliance would benefit our kingdoms.”
“A smart lady. Many of the others here tonight have said the same thing.”
“I don’t want to marry, though. You’re beautiful and kind, but I..” 
Zelda gave the poor boy’s hand a squeeze. She knew his position quite well, if she was reading him correctly. All people had their secrets and anxieties. She would likely never see him again, so she felt she could be his peace, even if only for a moment.
“It’s an unpleasant position to be in,” she supplied, twirling him in the direction of a smaller crowd.
“It is. I couldn’t force myself to love anyone else.”
“Oh? Do you have someone in mind?” 
A blush crossed the young boy’s face, but he looked eager to tell someone. He was the first of the night not interested in her or her land, so she was more than happy to indulge him.
“A kitchen girl back in my kingdom. She came to deliver breakfast one day when my servant fell ill and spilled tea on me.”
“Ah, a fairytale meeting,” Zelda replied with a small laugh.
“She’s beautiful. But my parents would never hear of it.”
“Stay true to your heart. I was always told that those fated to be together will find each other in time. To those who won’t agree, I say if you aren’t happy, how could you ever be expected to make a kingdom happy?
“They told me you were wise, but you speak as if you know the pain yourself.”
Zelda offered a sad smile. Perhaps one glass had been too many, because she was about to bare her soul to this young prince she’d met only minutes ago.
“I love a boy from my childhood,” she told him, cracking open old scars. “A little boy from the forest who helped me catch a tyrant. He disappeared years ago and no one has seen him since.”
“I’m sorry, Princess.”
“If I may offer advice, Prince Henry, tell your kitchen girl properly that you love her. But take care of your heart. It’s the only one you have.”
She tried to spend as much time around Prince Henry as possible. She found him pleasant company and he could be quite silly, but after an hour, the young prince could no longer keep the other suitors at bay. She was whisked away again, and she was growing very tired. 
Her feet were sore in her heels, and her corset felt tighter with every tick closer to midnight. Yet she wasn’t dismissed yet, and she was determined to make it through this. No one could say she hadn’t tried.
Zelda searched the crowd for Nabooru again, longing for another conversation with a competent person, but she’d hardly taken two steps before another voice interrupted her.
“Princess Zelda, might I request a dance?”
She held back a sigh and plastered yet another polite smile on her lips as she turned, but she was not a good enough actor to keep it from slipping away. Her eyes widened and she took a step back, because she was convinced for a moment that she was dreaming.
His eyes were a striking blue, a color she’d accustomed herself with long ago. His smile was charming instead of crooked, but his dimples were just the same. He was taller now and he lacked the forest color he once ran around in, but something about him told her he hadn’t changed that much at all.
“Link..?” she whispered out, then clamped her hands over her mouth like she was afraid of someone hearing her. A breeze slipped past them when a couple whizzed by, but that wasn’t why she was trembling.
“I realize I’m six years late, and I apologize,” he replied, his cheeks reddening with shame. “But I made a promise to you, and I couldn’t bear to break it.”
“You..” For all of her wise words throughout the night, she found it very hard to speak. She took a hesitant step forward, then lifted her hand. Her fingertips brushed over his cheek and once she knew he was solid, she pressed her palm against his skin. He was warm beneath her touch. Warm enough to feel alive. “Is it really you..?”
“Yes,” he answered, his voice soft and filled with more emotion than she’d ever heard it before. He placed his hand over her own, making her skin burn under his touch, but she couldn’t pull away.
For a moment, all she could do was look at him. She looked at his eyes, took in his face and his features, and tried to blink the stinging away. 
Perhaps the whole ballroom was watching, but Zelda dropped her hand and instead wrapped her arms wordlessly around his shoulders. She buried her face in his neck and squeezed her eyes shut as the first of the sobs escaped her. His arms circled around her waist and held her close, but it did nothing to stop the trembling. He was not the child she hugged all those years ago, but he still felt so familiar.
“Can.. can we go-“ She couldn’t finish her question.
She was aware of the scene she was making, and she didn’t want to embarrass her father any further, so she bit back another sob and kept her head down as Link led her out of the ballroom and onto a nearby balcony. The fresh air was icy on her skin and wet cheeks, but he took her face so gently into his hands that she felt like she would melt.
“I missed you,” he spoke. It was no louder than a whisper, but it reached volumes that deafened her to everything else. All she could do was hug him tight and cry harder.
“Goddesses, Link, I— where did you go?” she asked when she caught her breath again.
“Termina,” he replied. “I didn’t mean to be gone for so long, but they needed help.”
She’d never heard of it before, but she didn’t care because he was here. 
“I thought.. I didn’t know if you were even alive.” But her love for adventure hadn’t changed and she sat him on a bench as she demanded, “Tell me everything.”
And so he did. He told her of the troublesome Skullkid and the malevolent mask. He told her of the overhanging moon that threatened to fall, and of the trials he had to overcome. He told her of the masks he collected and of the god he had to fight. And Zelda’s heart ached for her hero who could not catch a break. Trauma followed him everywhere he went, and he hadn’t even found Navi. 
“Link.. I’m so sorry,” she said, gripping his hands tighter. “You’ve gone through so much..”
“It’s over,” he assured her. “Or at least, I hope.”
“I couldn’t imagine. I’m so happy you’re safe. Oh, you’ve grown so much..”
“And you look every bit the princess you were always meant to be.”
Zelda laughed, bubbly and weak, and buried her face in her hands.
“Goddesses, I missed you,” she murmured and wiped at her eyes. How he could still call her beautiful when she looked a mess, she didn’t know. 
“I made a pinky promise. Besides, I recall you telling me you’d be very mad at me if I didn’t come back and I don’t think I could live with that.” 
She lifted her head and sniffled.
“Well, you certainly took your time,” she joked and brushed some hair from his eyes.
“I hope this can make up for it.” Link pulled a box from his pocket and carefully pried it open. A sparkling blue jewel in the shape of a teardrop hung from a silver chain. It was almost glowing against the black velvet cushion.
“It’s lovely,” she breathed, running her fingers gently over the stone.
“It’s a Moon’s Tear,” he explained as he lifted it from the box. 
“From the falling moon?” she asked. Link gestured for her to turn around, so she shifted on the bench and set her back to him. 
“Clever girl,” he replied. She could practically hear the smile on his face.
The jewel was cold against her skin, but Link’s fingertips brushing the back of her neck as he clamped the necklace is what made her shiver. 
“You’re quite ridiculous, I hope you know that,” she said as she turned to face him again.
“It’s no ring,” he answered and awkwardly rubbed the back of his neck. “But I hope it’ll do.”
Zelda blinked in confusion, fiddling with the Moon’s Tear as she watched him gather his thoughts.
“A ring?” she asked quietly.
“I.. promised to marry you when I got back. You’re perfectly allowed to decline, of course. I wouldn’t— I mean-.. is this weird?”
Her cheeks burned as she burst into a fit of giggles, pressing a hand over her mouth to muffle them. Link looked at her, flushed with embarrassment, and soon he was laughing too. The innocent promise of two children had lasted over years of distance, even if it was more of humor than anything else now that they were older. She leaned into him, holding her stomach as her muscles grew tighter. Goddesses, she missed his laugh so much. Six long years were not enough to change him at all. 
When their laughter quieted, Zelda lifted her head and took his face into her hands. He smiled at her, sending her head spinning.
“I wasn’t sure you’d ever return,” she whispered as she ran her thumbs along his cheekbones, relishing in his warmth and presence. The thought crossed her mind that perhaps she was being too forward—she just got him back and would rather not lose him again. So she reluctantly pulled her hands back to herself and fiddled with the necklace again.
“There were times I didn’t think I would,” he admitted. With the stories he recounted, she believed him. And she was beginning to understand the Princess’s decision to send him back in time in the first place. But it didn’t seem like he was fated to have an easy existence. 
“I’m sorry your search was in vain.” And even that wasn’t enough, but what could she offer him? What words could she say to him that could quell the sadness running deep in his veins, betrayed by his eyes despite how happy he looked to be back. For all the wisdom she held in her blood, she knew no answer. 
“I wouldn’t say that,” said Link softly, turning his gaze on her. The more she looked at him, the harder it was to maintain the poise she’d so very recently returned her hold on. So she looked away with a small smile and tilted her head to gaze up at the stars. 
“What would you say?” she asked, tracing the constellations painting the sky with her eyes. A thousand stories came with those stars, stories about their past and their future, stories about fate and things beyond their understanding. She always felt that the stars knew and could see everything, and hiding was a naïve comfort they were never really granted. Even when they were children, throwing themselves under a blanket and giggling, the stars could see everything--even the secrets they didn’t truly have. They had known all along what would become of her and of the Hero of Time. She didn’t know if she pitied the stars or envied them.
“I would say anything that leads me back to you is more than worth it.”
Zelda turned her eyes to him, where she found nothing but sincerity and a tired smile. She could remember a childish curiosity whenever he looked at her, but she couldn’t quite name the gaze his eyes held now. Heat blossomed over her cheeks again and with a laugh, she ducked her head.
“Welcome home, Hero,” she said as she shook her head. “I hope you’re able to find the life of peace you deserve.”
“To be honest, Princess, I think a life of peace would drive me to the brink of sanity. I didn’t return with the hopes of finding it. I don’t… I don’t think I’d even want it.”
There was no hiding the mix of confusion and surprise and concern that took over her features upon hearing his words. A life of peace did not interest him? She wondered for a moment whether he was already past the threshold of sanity, or if he’d simply left his mind in Termina.
“Then,” she began, treading lightly over what could possibly be dangerous waters, “what is it that you want?”
“I want a life by your side.” His cheeks were as pink as hers under the moonlight, but it could very well have been just an effect of the bitter cold. “I know we’re not kids anymore and.. and a lot has changed. But if I could be even just in your service, I would be satisfied.”
“You owe nothing more to Hyrule,” Zelda spoke quickly, taking back all sense of personal space as she held his cheek again. “You’ve done more for us than we could ever begin to thank you for. You reap scars and trauma we can’t even begin to imagine. We are happy to have you back, of course, but you needn’t swear your life to any more trouble, Link.”
“Serving you would be of no trouble at all, Princess.” His hands wrapped gently around hers, pulling it from his skin, and he brought her knuckles to his lips instead. His warm breath fanned over her skin and for the first time of the evening, she did not regret the gloveless design of her outfit.
She could hear her own words, hypocritical and laughable, pouring from her lips when she told little Prince Henry to follow his heart and to hell with those who disagreed. It was much harder to take her own advice--like it was a bitter medicine that brought her heart into her throat and made her tremble. But all she could see was the little forest boy giving her one last wave, so much alike with the man who sat before her now. Her heart lurched.
“I love you,” she said, hardly louder than the gentle breeze that circled them. “And I know that I’m not your Zelda--the Zelda you first defended Hyrule for-”
“You are every bit the same Zelda. The only difference is this time, we don’t have to say goodbye. Not if you don’t want to.”
“I don’t,” she begged, gripping his hands tighter.
“Then let me stay with you.” 
He freed a hand and cradled her face. She leaned into his touch, into the warmth that batted away the cold, into the feeling that he really was here. And then he was leaning forwards, his breath fanning over her lips, and she closed the space between them with an eagerness that Impa would refer to as “unladylike”. His lips were soft and their kiss was slow and gentle, fanning a spark so that it blazed into a flame. In the years she had spent imagining how this reunion might go, she never quite got the magic of it right. It felt strong and peaceful, like something old and practiced but new and exciting all at once. And when they parted, Zelda was quick to recall that silly little promise.
“You meant to ask for knighthood,” she stated, a giddy feeling flooding her at the idea. “But how would you feel about prince consort?”
It was Link’s turn to laugh, and she laughed too as she closed a hand around the Moon’s Tear necklace glowing against her skin. Of course, they had a while to catch up on before any official announcement could be made. They were not granted the opportunity to grow into their relationship, and now was a better time than any to get started. 
Her Hero had returned, and Zelda quite liked the idea of never having to face any of the men who tried to win her hand ever again. Apparently, it was made evident enough by their return to the ballroom floor. 
Link had asked for a dance, after all. Who was she to deny him after so long?
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obxlife · 5 years ago
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Dealing (Kiara x Reader)
A/N: My first Kiara fic! Oh God, I hoped I portrayed this correctly. As I’ve said before, I’ve never been in a relationship and I don’t know if the dynamics of a fem x fem relationship is the exact same as a male x fem relationship. I did my best here, so I hope it’s okay and accurate. Also, Lotte requested this and I just love her requests! Another thing that I need you guys to know, I have no idea how much weed costs so I’m just guessing prices here.
Pairing: Kiara x Reader
Word count: 2,060
Request: Hey! So I would love to request a Kiara imagine — where you're like maybe JJ's dealer or something and he brings her along and you kind flirt with her or something idk. x
Summary: You had been friends with Sam Maybank for a couple of years. He would usually put you in contact with clients for your business. That was how you met his cousin, JJ Maybank. He would often flirt with you (“Hot and a dealer? Perfect.”) but you were never really interested in him until he brought a friend along.
Warnings: Weed, swearing
DEALING
Sam Maybank was your friend. Probably one of your closest friends. He had always helped you out, whether it be by lending you a room in his beat-up house or getting clients for your business. That was how you had met his younger cousin, JJ. 
JJ was, seemingly, just another kid from the Cut, but he had more connections than most people. It was well known that he had a Kook friend (the daughter of the owner of the Wreck) and that he was friends with Heyward’s son.
However, he did not have any connections to weed. 
So when he asked Sam, his eighteen-year-old cousin, where he could get weed, he directed JJ towards you. He was two years younger than you, and he seemed to bring laughs anywhere he went. He was also a flirt, which you didn’t mind much because he was always respectful and a very loyal client. Oh, also, you were into girls. 
And so for a few months, JJ would show up at your house and buy weed from you. You would sometimes ask him about his day or his friends or why he was buying so much weed.
“My friends and I like to smoke,” he explained. “But I’m the only one with balls big enough to actually get it.”
You had laughed at his statement, but when you thought about his friends, you knew it was probably true. 
See, Pope Heyward was on the way for a scholarship. Everybody in the Cut knew that. He was going to be one of the few kids from this side of the island that was going to get out and actually do something. Nobody would be surprised if he came back to Kildare as a Kook.
JJ’s Kook friend was a girl that had pressure on her. It was well known around the island that Kooks put pressure on their children to be perfect, and even though she seemed to mostly escape these pressures, you could bet she would never be caught buying weed. She had to make her parents at least somewhat happy.
And John B Routledge, JJ’s best friend, just never cared enough to actually buy weed. Sure, he liked smoking it, but he just would never buy any. He would rather waste what little money he had on other things. The one time JJ had brought John B to you he had been more interested in trying to buy one of the many necklaces around your neck than buying weed. 
And so JJ would keep coming around, once a week, for weed. It had surprised you a lot, because, from his group of friends, you would have guessed he was only a social smoker. You didn’t imagine him having a reason to buy any weed.
“He has a hard home life,” Sam had told you when you asked him. “Don’t ask about it.”
You didn’t ask about it anymore. It wasn’t your business to do so. You were only his dealer and nothing more.
One day, he showed up with a girl. That had surprised you because Sam had mentioned how much of a ladies man his younger cousin was. The girl had dark skin and long, brown, curly hair. She had large eyes, also brown, but they seemed to shine in the dim light of the room you were in. 
She was way too pretty for JJ, in your opinion.
The girl seemed to be looking around the room as if trying to find something that may hurt her or be a negative influence over her. She was fiddling with the hem of her shirt. 
You couldn’t remove your eyes off her. She was wearing a crop top, exposing a beautiful midriff, and some cut-off jean shorts. Her figure was amazing, and you could almost feel drool pooling inside of your mouth.
“Hey, Y/N,” JJ said stretching his hand out to you. You did your usual handshake with him before sitting down in your chair and looking at him. 
“This is Kiara,” the blond pointed at the girl. You smiled at her as she stretched her hand out. 
“Call me Kie,” she replied. 
You began to think of what to say, wanting to flirt with her. You wanted to be able to catch her attention without her thinking you were just being friendly and complimenting her.
“I love your style, by the way,” was all that slipped out of your mouth. Why did I say that?
Kie, however, blushed and smiled at you, a small “thanks” slipping past her plump lips. JJ just looked between you two before realization flooded his face. He maintained eye contact with you, almost as if asking, Wait, you’re gay?
You nodded your head slowly while Kie wasn’t looking at you two. JJ shrugged his shoulders and sat down before you on the table. 
“Makes sense,” he whispered under his breath, avoiding the noise of his voice to reach his friend’s ears. “No girl is able to resist me.”
You laughed loudly and punched his shoulder, making him shut up and remove the shit-eating grin he had planted on his face. 
“How much do you want this week?” you asked him. 
“However much thirteen dollars can get me,” he replied. Kie took a seat beside him as you opened the drawer on the table between you three. From the table, you removed two little bags, each one containing one gram of weed. 
JJ frowned but paid you. You gave him back twenty cents and waited for him to leave. However, both he and Kie remained seated. The girl smiled at you before pulling thirty dollars from her pocket. 
“How much will this get me?” she asked. 
You looked at the money and made some quick mental calculations. “About five grams.”
Kie gave you the money, pressing it into your hands and letting her fingers linger on your skin. “I’ll take five grams then.”
You nodded and put the money away before opening a different drawer than before. Here you kept the five-gram bags. Taking one, you handed over to Kie, and she once again let her fingers rest for more time than necessary on your skin. 
After that, they left, and you went to bed that night hoping to see Kiara once more. 
The next time you saw her was a week later and she was alone. You had gone to the bathroom and come back into your dealing room to find her there. She smiled sheepishly at you before saying, “Sam let me in.”
You nodded before swallowing the lump in your throat. “How much would you like this time?”
Kie seemed to ponder on how much she wanted. 
“A gram.”
You frowned. That wouldn’t last her much at all. Why was she buying so little? “That won’t last much. You sure you don’t want some more?”
Kie nodded. “If I buy a little then I can come to see you when it runs out.”
You blushed and began to fumble with one of the drawers that contained weed. You let out a soft smile and stared up at the younger girl. She was also smiling. 
“Well, then a gram it is. That’ll be six dollars and twenty cents.”
She handed you a ten-dollar bill, and as you turned to retrieve her change from your money box, she pressed a hand to your hand. “Keep the change.”
She grabbed onto the bag and stood up to leave. Kie was almost at the door when you called out, “Wait!”
Kie turned to you, curiosity swirling in the deep brown pools of her eyes. You cleared your throat.
“You probably get this all the time,” you began to say, “but I just -- I thought you were very pretty the first time I saw you and I was wondering if you would, maybe, give me your number?”
Kie could only smile and blush, just like you had done before. “I was hoping you’d ask me that.”
She fished out her phone from her pocket and you faltered. It was a shiny new iPhone. 
If you had to guess, you would say that Kie was JJ’s Kook friend. 
Not wanting to show her your beat-up phone (although she had already seen your crappy living conditions) you punched your number into hers. 
“Text me so I can have your number,” you simply stated. Kie noticed that you probably didn’t want to take your phone out (it had been the same when she had first met John B, JJ, and Pope) and simply nodded. 
It hadn’t even been an hour since she had left when she texted you. 
Unknown number: Hey! This is Kie, JJ’s friend.
You smiled at the text and saved her contact. 
You: Hey!
Soon enough you began to have an easy-going conversation through text messages, filled with flirty remarks and questions about each other.
Her visits to you became more frequent, and they seemed to become longer and longer each time. She would sometimes show up with JJ, which was a bummer because you didn’t want to make him uncomfortable with all of your flirting, but mostly she would come alone. 
One time she came over when there was a storm outside. You had been speaking for at least two hours when she had received a phone call from her parents asking where she was. 
“I’m at John B’s,” she replied. It didn’t offend you that she had lied. You understood her parents didn’t want her to be at a drug dealer’s house. 
“Good,” you overheard from the phone. “Stay there, the storm is pretty rough and we don’t want you driving home.”
She spoke with her parents for a little while longer before hanging up. Turning towards you she asked, “Can I stay here tonight?”
You nodded.
As you got ready for bed, you lent her some clothes while you took your pillow out to your couch. 
“What are you doing?” Kie asked when she had returned from the bathroom. 
You gave her a questioning look before looking down at the sofa. “I’m going to bed.”
“Here?” she asked you. Her index finger was pointing into the ground of the living room. 
You nodded before she scoffed and said, “We can share the bed.”
You blushed at this, stuttering while trying to answer. In the end, you just shut your mouth and followed her to your bed. The both of you were out like lights.
The following morning you had woken up to find that you were wrapped around each other, her hands around your waist and your head on her chest. You smiled, feeling your heart soar at the sight of her. 
Kie woke soon after and smiled at you. “Good morning.”
“Morning.”
She lay still before adjusting her body and pulling you closer. Her groggy voice had made you smile, and she smiled back at you. 
“I have a confession,” she whispered out. You nodded, signaling for her to continue. “I really like you. And it’s weird because I’ve never been into a girl before.”
You gave her an understanding look while remembering the first time you had liked a girl. 
“I have a confession,” you repeated. “I really like you, too. And I know it can be weird but we’ll figure it out together.”
After that you both rose from the bed and ate breakfast. Then you headed outside.
Kie’s parents hadn’t been lying when they said the storm was rough. A tree across the street had fallen down and seaweed from the ocean covered the ground. Kie’s car was okay, surprisingly, and she hopped in. 
Rolling down her window, she smiled at you as you placed your forearms on its sill. You blushed as you two continued to look at each other. 
All of a sudden, she leaned up and pressed a kiss to your mouth. She smiled as you blushed even deeper than before. 
“Um -- I -- I’ll see you soon,” you said awkwardly. This rose a giggle from between Kie’s lips and all you could do was imagine what they felt like pressed against yours. 
“Yeah, I’ll see you soon.”
As she drove off into the morning air, you felt lucky. You had definitely macked on a girl that at least half the population of the Outer Banks wanted to mack on. 
The smile stayed on your face for a while.
A/N 2: I know this is really short but I just didn’t really know how to keep the story going (I’m sorry btw). It was a lot harder than I thought writing for Kie, but I hope I can write for her again soon. That way I can improve. Also, as I said in my first A/N, I have no idea how much weed costs so bear with me lol.
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surveys-at-your-service · 5 years ago
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Survey #239
i just want to sincerely apologize if my surveys take a negative nosedive again. i know this one’s kinda grim and i don’t want to make that a routine, but things are just rough right now and i’m not gonna lie on a survey, y’know.
Do you know anyone who works at McDonald’s? Not that I'm aware of. Do you know anyone who plays heaps of sports? Probably through school. Have you ever been suspended from school? No. Where do your cousins live? Aaaaaaall over the U.S. Have you met any of your second cousins? Possibly at some point? Do you like the All-American Rejects? I like "Move Along" and "It Ends Tonight" is good, but that's all off the top of my head. Oh wait, of course there's "Gives You Hell." When was the last time you wore a skirt? WOW I have ZERO clue. Probably not since elementary years. Have you ever finished a whole video game? Plenty. If so, which one(s)? There are way too many. Do you know anyone with a pet snake? Me, Sara, probably others. Which one of your friends has great music taste? Sara. Was the last person you hung out with single? That would be my young niece and nephew... so yeah. Have you ever attended a private school? I'm a private college now. Have you ever been in an abusive relationship? No, thank Christ. Have you ever cooked for anyone other than yourself? I made breakfast for Sara once. If your phone has a hole for phone charms, is it on the left or right side? I don't have one. Would you rather live in the city, the suburbs, or the rural area? Kinda like... suburban mixed with rural. I don't wanna be totally isolated, particularly away from necessary stores and such, but I also do NOT wanna be swarmed by people. Maybe like a loose neighborhood in the woods outside a small town? Do you know someone who is really ambidextrous? Sara. Did you use a pencil today? No. Are you adopted? Nope. Have you ever had your car break down on you? Never when I've driven, not that that's been much. With Mom, yes. Dad, idr. Jason's prom night, yeah; his truck broke down otw home at a stop light. Oof. Who was the last person that cried in your presence? My mom. It's the worst. When was the last time you ate at your favorite restaurant? Oh wow, probably not since my last birthday. What was the last thing someone gave you? A close family friend/my former teacher lent me a $20 just in case I needed anything while my mom was up in NY. Can you write your name in a foreign language? My first name (at least) is the same in German; even though "y" doesn't exist in the language, I guess it does for foreign names?? Idk about my last name. Who is the person you often go to for venting? Sara. Do you keep an actual journal or diary? No, not anymore. I did briefly when I had that WILD and totally random Jason obsession episode, but once I came off that godawful medicine and I went back to normal, I deleted it. Have you ever been prescribed Vicodin? That sounds very familiar... Maybe? Perhaps that's what was prescribed after my surgery? Have you ever cheated on someone without them finding out about it? Well considering I've never cheated and never would, I can't answer this. Was the last person you kissed male or female? Female. Who were you with the last time you went swimming? Colleen, at the beach. Does your dining table currently have place mats on it? No; we don't even eat at it. What was the last thing you cooked in an oven? I myself have literally never used an oven. I'm scared to. Oh wait, yeah I have... on some occasions where Mom needed me to put something in there or take something out, but idr what. But boy and I can tell you without memory that I was jumpy as hell about it. Is it hard for you to be “just friends” with the opposite sex? No. It's difficult for me to like-like people, especially men when you consider I'm generally afraid of them, on top of I'm just paranoid and don't trust easily. Do you prefer wheat or white bread? Wheat. Do you have an electric toothbrush? No, but coincidentally, I actually have that on my Christmas wishlist. Have you ever had an “exotic” or “abnormal” pet? Do you consider a Chinese water dragon "exotic?" Then I have a ball python morph. Have you ever eaten lobster? No, and considering crab is nauseating, I doubt lobster would be too different. What is your grade point average (if you’re still in school)? I don't know right now and don't know where to find it. Have you ever played croquet? Oh yeah. My sisters and I LOVED that shit as kids. Who was the last person you called? Dad. Have you ever watched Ghostbusters? No, believe it or not. When was the last time you drew a picture? Yikes... been a while. Not since I started a concept drawing of encompassing a panic attack in a meerkat form, as I tend to do. I haven't touched it in months. It's right on the second shelf of the table beside me, so... my only remaining excuse as to not finish it is that the paper is horribly wrinkled now. Are you happy? Not exactly. Should you be doing something now? I could be doing the practice exam work my math professor gave us all considering it's extra credit, but. Yeah. I'm absolutely awful at math and barely passing but I don't exactly need another stressor right now. Is there a smoke detector on every floor of your house? We only have one floor. What was the last kind of soup you ate? I tried vegetable soup anyway when I got my tongue pierced because I literally could not eat solids for over a week, but I'm a picky asshole who didn't like it so wasted the can. I had to survive almost exclusively on meal replacement shakes and popsicles. Warning from the wise: you want your tongue pierced? You better fucking want it bad because healing is a P R O C E S S. Or at least mine was, having to get it re-done and all... Have you ever had to do a class in summer school? No. Have you ever went a year without getting your hair cut? I don't think a year... but maybe? Do you think you could go a week without sugar? Considering sugar is in like... EVERYTHING, probably no? Would you be willing to go one day each week without meat? I don't really pay attention, but I probably already do. I'd like to eat as little meat as possible. Hell, I wish I could go full-on vegan. Do you feel comfortable telling people how much you weigh? NO. Do you have any talents that your friends don’t know about? No. Are you any good at sewing? Never tried, not interested. Has anyone ever interviewed you about one of your hobbies/talents? No. Would you ever consider experimenting with drugs? Marijuana for medical purposes if I didn't have to smoke it. I'm not smoking anything, I don't care what it is. What’s been tugging on your heart lately? I guess life in general. Mortality, death. Teddy died in my arms, I saw my grandmother physically ravaged by cancer, and just life hasn't been the kindest lately. I've been thinking about how time just flies, how every moment should be cherished even though it's so fucking hard, and just yeah. I don't wanna go down this rabbit hole. Are you comfortable with who you are? Have you accepted who you are? I don't know dude I shouldn't be taking a survey during like an existential crisis lol. What is the last thing you did that made you feel guilty? Decided to get some really unhealthy fries with my dinner. Would you have sex with the last person you texted? It's not a matter of "would," I want to. I may have already, I don't really know what separates foreplay from lesbian sex. Do you consider weed, marijuana, pot, etc. a drug? This isn't even an argument anymore, it's fact. It's a mind-altering substance. "Drug" does not always equate to bad, either. Are you planning on kissing anyone tomorrow evening? It'd be nice. Do you require a lot of private time? Oh yeah, but way less than I used to. I get depressed if I'm alone for too long now. Have you ever done something humiliating while drunk? N/A What is your favorite classic Disney movie? The Lion King. Do you like looking at old photographs? Yeah, usually. Do you enjoy puzzles? Yeah. Do you prefer painting or drawing? Drawing by a long shot. I'm taking a painting course this upcoming semester though, so hopefully that'll up my skill and thus enjoyment of it. Do you ever wear high heels? No, I don't have a reason to. Do you use belts? No, considering I never wear anything with belt loops. When was the last time you played Uno? Oh my fucking god, it's been forever, thankfully. When I lived with Colleen, as did her younger sister, we played Uno a lot, and then, AND THEN, came the night Chelsea dyed my hair red. Mind you, the ONLY TIME dyeing my hair had been truly successful and long-lasting. The process took hours, and we played Uno round after Uno round... and now I literally hate it. What do you like better, kiwis or pineapple? Oh man, I love both, but I gotta say kiwi. Are you trying to grow out your hair? No, I actually need to cute it again. What is your favorite perfume/body spray/cologne? Don't have one, really. Have you ever wanted to try karate? Not seriously. How often do you drink water? Ah yikes... I really fell out of my regular habit of drinking multiple bottles daily. Do you ever wear headbands? No. How many video games do you own? A lot. There's like a huge CD case in a living room drawer full of them. I've been considering making an EBay or something to sell a shitload of them as I'm sure a lot are actually pretty valuable now, but I think a lot about how I want to pass them down to my current and possibly future nieces and nephews when they get to a certain age to figure video games out or even have a console that can play PS1-PS3. Have you ever been to a casino? If so, which one(s)? No. What’s your favorite suburb in the city you live in? Why would you... name that on the Internet...? Besides that even, I pay no attention to suburbs' names I happen to pass. Have you ever visited a sex shop? No. I don't know if I could ever muster up the courage to even go in one. I'm the type that would just order online. What’s your favorite place to get pizza? I'm a basic Domino's bitch. How many times have you been to the beach? Multiple, but not a LOT. I have little reason to ever go, and it's never my idea, that's for sure. Has there ever been a fire inside your house? Tell me the story. Childhood home. Trying the Jiffy Pop popcorn that you make over the stove. Next thing y'know the thing is seriously on fire and we had to use the fire extinguisher. Fuck you, Jiffy Pop, the harbinger of the next fucking idiots moving in setting the entire house on fire thanks to the stove too. Have you ever had a scary encounter with a wild animal? No, besides like bees 'n the like being near me. Have you ever had a spray tan? No. Do you own any sports bras? Where’d you get them from? No, but I'd like at least one. Wouldn't know what to use it for, it's not like I go jogging or anything, but. I think it'd be good to have at least one. Have you ever had sex in a kitchen? No. What’s the most expensive restaurant you’ve ever eaten at? I have zero clu- no wait I'm gonna guess the Italian restaurant we went to on Sara's birthday, but that's just a guess judging by how it was fancy as fuck. Who crosses your mind the most? Sara. Have you ever been on a scavenger hunt? Probably as a kid. Ever been to an auction? No. would you ever get acupuncture? omg no Ever got stitches? At least twice. What is a must have on your french fries? At least some salt. Entirely saltless fries are boring. How do you like your meat cooked…medium rare? well done? Nothing less than medium well. If meat tastes even a little bit beneath lukewarm I can't take that shit. Are there two colors that you just simply despise? Bright yellow and puke-green. What do you usually do with recurring dreams? ... Nothing? What CAN you do? Have you ever been told you were hot by a complete stranger? I don't think someone has used the term "hot," but I know I've been called pretty, at least. Do you want to be single or with someone? I want to be with Sara. It kinda feels like we still are, like no feelings have changed, we're just not "official" anymore and not "bound" to one another. Have you ever had a sleepover with the opposite sex? I actually have twice (or thrice?) platonically with my younger neighbor FOREVER ago. We were still kids. Then there was a big (birthday?) party at my place where Juan stayed the night, and then I believe there was an occasion Girt totally knocked out on the couch so... I guess it turned into a "sleepover?" lmao Who are you closest to in your family? My mom. Who were the last 3 people to text you? Sara, Mom, and my sister. Have you ever dated someone in jail? No, and I wouldn't unless it was for something incredibly stupid or I'm aware was a false charge. What’s a movie you cannot BARE to ever watch again? Nothing's coming off the top of my head. Who got you hooked on the addiction you're addicted to (If you have one)? ... I just connected it all in my head. Jason got me into the Amnesia game. I got into custom stories for it. I was playing one one day. I got stuck. I YouTubed it for help. Guess. Who. I. Fuckin'. Found. This is a revelation; I have discovered the main purpose of my and Jason's relationship. Perhaps things do happen for a reason lmao. Are you a little bit cautious around horses? Do they scare you a bit? Not really, but I wouldn't say I'm in no way cautious. They definitely don't scare me, though. I just respect that they're very powerful animals and I'm not experienced with handling them. Have you ever burnt your tongue like REALLY bad? If so, what on? Yes, on rice that was literally right off the fucking stove lmao. LOOK I didn't know it had JUST come off and I was hungry as fuck but boy did I have REGRETS considering the burn lasted for well over a week, maybe two. Do you think having a sleepover with a guy is theoretically acceptable? Um, yes...????? Do you like to have cake on your birthday? Which kind of cake in mind? Yeah, and red velvet or chocolate frosted, depending on what I'm feeling.
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monsterbychoice · 5 years ago
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hey, i am interested in a tarot reading (shadowscapes). I am not participating in lent but my favourite indulgence is weed, it is very calming and improves my mood after I come back from school.
I forgot to send a question LMFAO. Will my loan application for school be accepted?
lol!! interesting. ive never actually tried weed before
so for your reading i drew the seven of wands, the eight of wands (reversed), and the hanged man
this is certainly going to be a rough process. there's pretty fierce competition, and other people are willing to get cut throat over it. you may need to fight for this. (academia as a whole, not necessarily your application. though it does seem like you might have to fight them on this loan application as well.)
the cards caution you not to get hasty. it's fine to change your mind, but try to avoid jumping from one idea to the next without a reason better than "idk, it looks cool." plan your next steps carefully. have a backup plan. and have a backup for your backup. be prepared for this loan to fall through, so that you aren't stuck wondering where to go from here if it does.
the hanged man, to me, is the biggest indicator that the loan might not pan out. in this instance, it's saying that you're going to have to pause and reasses sooner or later; and if you don't take a break yourself, the world's going to make you. not out of spite, but so that you can see the other options that may be a better fit in the long run.
this isn't... terribly definitive. the cards didn't give a hard no, or yes. it's more of a "maybe, but you should be very ready for it to not be accepted."
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imashayne · 7 years ago
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Klance Christmas Fic.... thing
Okay so here it is, right on the dot for the final week, a fic that was supposed to be a short which is definitely not because it has two parts. Also this first part covers the first weeks, part two has the fireworks bit. So I guess I just tag things? idk how do. It’s really rough I didn’t have time to go over it or have anyone look at it. Hope someone enjoys this. I had fun writing. And it was a fun break from my main Klance fic XD. A very Klance Christmas                
Keeping track of time in space was hard. Well, of earth time specifically. But Lance would be damned if he didn’t even try.                
So ever since the first night they’d arrived in the castle-ship the blue eyed boy had done up a makeshift calendar. It was a simple thing. A piece of note book paper that Lance had found folded up in his jacket pocket. He’d made a grid on it, marking the months and days. Each night before he struggled into an exhausted sleep he made sure to X out another square.               
 Sure it wasn’t perfect. But it was what Lance had to work with. Even Lance doubted its accuracy, but it lent the boy a much needed sense of normalcy. Gave him an anchor in this chaotic mess that had become his life.                
It was because of Lance’s calendar that the three of them were at the space mall.                
Pidge picked up a bright orange streamer which had just been tossed at her feet. More decorative items flew around her in a confusing whirlwind.                The green paladin blinked in confusion. How had she ended up here? “What are you guys doing?”               
 “What about this one Lance?” Hunk called over to the other boy, holding up what looked like a banner.               
 Lance poked his head out from the pile he’d been working on. “Maybe if we can’t find anything better…” Pidge held up her hands in exasperation since she’d been ignored. The movement caught Lance’s attention and he sighed. “I know your head is in Galra space right now but focus Pidge!” His tone was flustered as he dove elbow deep into another stack of odds and ends. (Since they were the poor alien’s only customers the shop owner allowed them to look through the back of his shop)”Well since you weren’t listening before-“ he grunted, lifting up and moving bundles of fabric. “According to my calendar it’s almost Christmas! Now I’ve missed a lot of things fighting in this war. My brother’s 11th Birthday. The fourth of July… HALLOWEEN! Which is like the best in my family you know! But so help me I will NOT miss this!”                
“Your… calendar?” Pidge pushed her glasses up her nose. “You know that I can calcula-“               
 “No! No no no nu-huh nope!” Lance dropped the mass of electrical wiring that looked completely tangled beyond help and stomped towards Pidge, waggling his finger and shaking his head decidedly. “You stop right there. You don’t get to take this away with…. Science!”               
 “Anyway Shiro thinks this will be good for morale!” Hunk added in, placing another item in the sadly small usable heap.              
   Pidge picked up the banner, holding it up to inspect. “This isn’t even that Christmas-y” She muttered.                
“We’re working with what we got.” Lance snapped.               
 “ You could help us out instead of standing there like a cave bug.” Hunk added hopefully.                
“Hey I only came along to see if they had any new video games in!” 
 “Okay yeah-“ Hunk huffed as he pushed a large box to the side that looked to contain nothing but old VHS tapes. (Pidge made a mental note to dig through it later to see if there was anything good amidst the artifacts) “But was there anything new?” He didn’t even pause to wait for an answer. Hunk already knew that if Pidge had found anything that’d caught her eye she wouldn’t even care what the other two were doing.                
With a groan she stepped into the fray.
 “Fine.” 
***                
 Alteans didn’t seem to believe in ladders. So lance had to improvise. Currently he teetered upon one of the trays that had been used to serve food and beverage to the Arusians. Lance wasn’t sure how much the weight limit was or if they even had one, but it hovered precariously for him and Lance was more than thankful that he was almost done.               
 Of course Lance had done up the entire room by himself. Which had eaten up most of the rest of his day. Once they’d gotten back Pidge had muttered a swift excuse and disappeared. Hunk was already putting together a space Christmas dinner to be remembered! As he’d put it. Lance thought it was already going to be pretty memorable, being as it was in space. Shiro was busy being the leader and Allura was busy being a princess.               
 Coran had helped Lance for a bit, but the new red paladin had to send the inquisitive Altean away. Sure Lance loved to talk but not when he was trying to actually focus on something and the mustached man kept asking about Christmas! Lance had almost yelled that he’d explain later.                
It hadn’t gone unnoticed by the residents of the castle of lions that Lance’s mood had been less humorous and more sharp. Now he had never been known for an abundance of patience but the boy’s fuse seemed to be at a record short. Almost like a certain mullet haired boy who had once been a paladin. In fact this short tempered change had seemed to overtake Lance around the same time that Keith had decided to step back from team Voltron and into team Mamorites. Or whatever.                
While the rest of the paladins knew very well of Lance’s current frustrations (being as each of them had their own given the circumstances) none of them dare speak about it, or well knew how to breach the topic with their usual bright and teasing Lance.               
 But for the Hispanic it was always on his mind. Keith was always on his mind.              
  Lance gave a particularly hard tug on the streamer he was setting up above the entryway and felt the thin paper rip just as the hovering tray tipped. He only had a moment to think ‘oh quiznak’ before he felt himself falling.               
 It came as a surprise to him that he was able to stop himself, lowering his center of gravity and tilting his body to regain balance. The blue eyed boy was just congratulating himself- The training was really paying off- when something bumped straight into the tray, sending both Lance and this someone toppling to the floor.               
 “What the-“ Lance gasped as he felt strong arms circle his waste. Even as he himself threw his arms out to catch himself, and whoever had knocked him down.                
It all happened in less than a tick. Kolivan and he had just left the bridge where they’d been giving their report from the last information gathering mission. As they’d prepared to leave Shiro mentioned that Lance would probably want to talk to Keith. And before the boy could ask even so much as a ‘why’ Shiro had turned back to Allura, already the two of them back to planning out the coalition’s next move.                 
That had led him here, into the great hall, after seeking out red’s new paladin on the training deck (Keith knew it was unlikely but still ….) in Calterneck’s room and the pool with no luck. He hadn’t even been gaming with Pidge.               
 Finally Hunk, who’d been covered in some powdery green substance akin to  flower and had been found in the kitchen’s (of course) told them that Lance was….decorating? Which had of course led Keith and his superior (and mentor) Kolivan to this moment. The half galra boy’s shoulder had bumped into something midair upon entry to the room. Keith of course being Keith, was now almost constantly in battle mode and as he felt a body slam down into him, before he’d even worked through how an enemy could have breached the castle’s defenses, or who this was, he was moving. Reacting. His arms wrapped around a slim waste, readying to throw the person, only he’d not had any time at all to plant his feet and so they fell fast.                 
They never actually landed though. Not hard at least. The other had twisted their body so the impact was not fully on him, Long arms braced against the rest of the force and a voice that he recognized was sputtering.               
 “What the-”               
 A loud clang echoed as the tray came down against the bac of Lances head, “-cheese” squeaked out.               
 It was Lance that recovered first surprisingly. Since he wasn’t suddenly painfully aware of how the other boy’s body was pressed against his own like Keith now was.                
He tried to scramble away but their limbs had become tangled in the fall, legs folding around each other and arms intersected.                
 “Sorry! I  didn’t mea-“ Lance’s half formed apologies were cut short as he was lifted bodily by Kolivan. As soon as they were free of each other Lance was finally able to see who he’d fallen on.                 
“Oh it’s you-“                
“The black paladin-” Kolivan began to speak but Lance was talking over him.                
“Why don’t you look where’ you’re going?”                
Keith had righted himself and was now glowering at the other.               
 “What are you even talking about?”
“The princess requested-” Kolivan tried again to no avail. 
“ You’re the one who fell on me!”
“Yeah well if you’d been paying attention!” They continued to ignore and talk over the older Galran soldier, who wasn’t entirely sure how to interject between these two. 
Lances voice held a hard edge to it. Once Keith hadn’t heard in a while. It was so weird. They hadn’t really fought for a while. But with everything else that had been going on, namely how it was always mission after mission with the blade, Keith didn’t have patience left for Lance’s shit. His violet eyes flashed before the blue light of the castle’s torches caught against silver tinsel that was twisted and strung down from the vaulted ceiling.
The fight was instantly forgotten as Keith finally took in the room around them. It had been transformed.Different shades of red fabric had been folded and pinned in such a way as to make them look like flowers. These had been hung beneath the lanterns. Along the stairs streamers of forest green had been twisted and swirled around the banister.The arched ceiling was the true beauty. Lance had managed to find a box of simple glass ornaments, which he ‘d suspended down along with thin silver and golden threads. Everything sparkled
.“Woah…” It was all Keith was able to get out
.“What is all of ….. this?” Kolivan was apparently seeking out a word that wouldn’t insult what he could only see as useless and frivolous. Realizing that there was a moment of silence between the two of them he swiftly spoke before either could answer him. “The black Paladin stated that you wished to see us?” 
Lance blinked in confusion, catching up with the sudden switch from fighting to having to fight down his own blush at Keith’s reaction. He turned to look at the tall Galra instead. He’d wanted to see Keith, though it didn’t really matter if Kolivan was there as well. It just made sure Lance could keep himself in check.
Of course Lance hadn’t been aware of his feelings for the hotheaded mullet until it was too late and he’d already left team Voltron. Not that Lance knew what he would have even done if Keith was still around like all the time. It would still be better than wondering when…. If he’d see the other again.But no Lance was studiously trying NOT to think about all that right now! He could sort through his own luggage later.Now was the time for Space Christmas!
“Yeah!” He threw his arms open, smiling as brightly as he could in an attempt to emulate cheer he didn’t quite feel. “You guys are invited to the Christmas party! It’s gonna be the bomb… not like… bomb like the last party we had here of course.” A nervous laugh escaped him and he cleared his throat, powering through the awkwardness he’d created. Because he could already see in Keith’s posture and expression how non-plussed the newest member of the blade was. Where as Kolivan seemed simply more puzzled. “But this time there’s not going to be so many people. Just…” Lance swallowed hard past the lump that had formed in his throat. “family ya know? But since the blade is like, your new team now they’re welcome to come.” Lance only faltered slightly at the end, muscles in his face growing tense and he tried to keep the smile up and pretend as if saying that new team thing hadn’t hurt at all. As if his chest hadn’t grown tight with the words.
“I don’t know Lance… we’re in the middle of a war-“
“I won’t take no for an answer!”
Keith opened his mouth again, not even sure how he could explain to Lance that they had another important mission (weren’t they all?) that they were supposed to be leaving for right now. But he didn’t want to be the one to shatter that hopeful look. He always seemed to be after all.
“What is this Chris-mas?” Kolivan saved him. Keith snapped his mouth shut for once. The leader of the Blade could be the bad guy here.Lance took a deep breath in, readying himself to launch into an explanation when Hunk came huffing into the room, apron still in place and looking somehow messier than he had when they’d left him.
“Hey guys sorry to interrupt. I just wanted to make sure I got the taste down for these space fried plantains. I mean they’re not actually plantains but it’s the closest I could get-“
 “Plantains?” Keith asked as he watched Lance take a large bite out of …. Whatever it was, straight off the fork that Hunk held
.“From Earth- you really are an alien!” Hunk joked as Lance moaned happily, taking his dear sweet time to swallow. Keith shifted from foot to foot uncomfortably.
 “Hunk!” It was weird hearing Lance take on a chastising tone, and yet it seemed natural coming from him. But it wasn’t the yellow Paladin’s comment that had made a strange kind of heat fill up his body. “It’s kinda like a banana I guess?”
Keith had to bite the inside of his cheek as Kolivan sounded out the word silently. His stoic features not changing in the slightest as he mouthed out ‘banana.’
“Seriously you’re a genius big guy! Ellos son perfecto! Though you don’t gotta put ‘space’ in front of everything!” Lance snuck another bite. And another rolling wave of fire moved down through Keith, coming to settle in his lower abdomen. Lance needed to stop making those noises. And feed his damn self. And maybe not talk in Spanish like that again. Something else that had caught Keith off guard. “Anyway Kolivan, Christmas is an earth thing right?” Lance again turned back to the conversation, but Hunk swiftly interjected again.
 “Oh yeah! It’s the best! It’s when you get together with your family and you eat all this wonderful food-“
 “And you put up all these really pretty decorations like trees and lights and candy canes.”
“Candy canes taste so good! And Fudge and Peanut brittle!”
Watching the two of them explain what Christmas was reminded Keith of two literal children. 
“Oh and you get to open up presents! Our tree always have piles on piles of presents but that’s more because of all my siblings-“
“Speaking of presents I almost forgot about the secret Santa! Good thing I caught you guys.” Hunk pulled a small bag of folded up papers from his apron pocket and held it out. Kolivan looked skeptical as he reached in and pulled out a paper.
 As soon as Keith had done the same a heavy hand came down on Keith’s shoulder. “Well Paladin’s we shall make this…. Chris-mas. Now we must leave for another mission.”
Keith hated howLlance’s face crumpled, and how he’d swiftly pushed a smile back in place as if he’d never lost the bright expression.It pained the half galra that he’d grown more used to seeing this forced smile than Lance’s true one. 
“Really? What are you guys up to this time?” Hunk asked.
“Oh nothing too big!” Keith rushed out before he’d really thought his words through as Kolivan led him out, thankfully remaining quiet. Without realizing it Keith had curled his fingers into a tight fist. The crumple of the paper drew his attention down to the fist. Cautiously he unfolded it. For some reason dreading looking at the name scrawled across it in tiny messy lettering. He wasn’t evens sure why. He’d faced down legions of Galra! Fought Alien armies in a damn warship to free the universe!
He quickly peaked downwards, shoulders slumping.
“What is this secret Santa? What secret is he keeping? And why is the red Paladin’s name written on this small scrap of paper?” Kolivan was shaking his head, bemused by the earthlings and their traditions.
“What!” Keith resisted the urge to storm on ahead of the other. Taking in a deep breath. “no-Santa is… a big guy that gives out presents. So with secret Santa you get a present for the person who’s name you pull, but YOU keep it a secret.”
“Hmmm…. I do not know what to get the young paladin.”
“Yeah? I got Allura and I’m in the same exact boat.” Keith folded his arms.
“Would you perhaps prefer a trade? You have known Lance for longer than the princess. It will be the same to me either way.”
Keith’s head swiveled.
 “Really?” He coughed and had to keep himself from snatching the paper from Kolivan’s larger hand. The sudden excitement abated swiftly though as he looked down at Lance’s name.It wasn’t as if he even knew what the Cuban boy liked besides girls and bad humor. If he had any time he might have been able to talk to Hunk about what he should get for the other boy.
“This celebration of gift giving, the Galra do not have a day such as this. Presents are only given on the day of one’s birth. You must share with me more stories of this Chris-mas.”
Keith folded the paper back up gently and slipped it into his pocket quietly. “I don’t have as many stories as the other two. Dad…. Wasn’t around as much. Not on the holidays … or any other day of  the year.” He muttered.The silence stretched out painfully for a moment before Kolivan’s deep voice spoke through it. 
“Why did you not tell the two paladin’s of our mission? It would have been pertinent for them to know.
”“Ch-“ Keith scowled, “I just didn’t want to bring Lan- I mean the other’s down with details. They were so excited.” 
Every mission was dangerous. Some however were more so.Especially when dealing with the druids. Which was where their next mission would be taking them. With ricks such as the komar and Naxzela they had to be more prepared for the magic users. But they had told Lance that they’d make it to his party. And Keith wasn’t a liar.
 If everything went according to plan they would make it
.***
The space was dark and silent. Keith’s body swayed as the ship they stood in entered the planet’s atmosphere. The only other movement was Kolivan, who was fiddling with his blade. Keith’s fingers gripped tightly on the bar above his head. Nine other Galra waited alongside him in the hold as the coalition fought around them in the sky. Even through the metal walls they could hear the ravages of the battle. Once an opening presented itself they would be dropped down. Right into the Druid’s keep. The faces behind the metallic masks were stoic, each soldier contemplating and preparing for the task before them. 
All save for Keith who’s thoughts were a thousand light years away. Pre-occupied with what could be the perfect present for a certain perfect boy. What did Lance even like? Keith asked himself for what felt like the millionth time. Girls, obviously, but it wasn’t like the boy could get Lance a girlfriend for Christmas…. Or wanted to. No. It had to be something he could wrap right? Like maybe some sort of…. Keith would have groaned in frustration, but even in his current state he could feel the heavy apprehension in the air around him to break this silence would break the rest of his teams’ concentration. 
Keith tried to focus on the mission at hand, chastising himself.But before he could enter the same frame of mind that the other’s around him were in, ready for blood, the floor dropped out beneath his feet and he was falling, purple light rising up to meet him.A veritable river of dark quentescense snaked beneath them. The other blade’s angled their bodies. But Keith had reacted too late. If not for Kolivan snatching him he would have dove into the acidic substance. He didn’t even have time to thank the leader before they were all moving. Sprinting towards the almost medieval like castle.
His body moved automatically even as the legions of drones clashed with their meager force. The knife in his hand almost seeking out the mechanical hearts. They moved easily through this obstacle.
Keith’s mind was still elsewhere. On the gift. It was such a simple thing! And yet he couldn’t conjure a single idea. Of course it wasn’t like Keith had much practice with this sort of thing. His dad had tried…. At times. But they’d never had much money. Keith had learned at a young age not to hope for too much. And at the same time to be grateful for what little he had.The experience he did have in receiving gifts he had even less in giving them. 
Keith should have simply kept Allura’s name. That way there wouldn’t be this pressure. Getting something for a princess would be less work. Lance had probably been spoiled as a kid. He sure acted like it. So what in the world, no the universe could Keith possibly find to impress the boy. For the briefest of moments Keith considered making something. But the idea was swiftly discarded. With what time would he be able to craft something And what would he even make? At this point the best he’d be able to throw together would be the severed head of a druid… which wasn’t something he thought Lance would appreciate. 
Vaguely Keith was aware of his surroundings. When the reddish glow of the dying star that served as this planet’s sun was no longer beating down on him. When the drones gave way to live soldiers. They’d reached the stronghold. Good, that meant that their mission was almost over.Keith wasn’t sure how much time had passed but with how smoothly things were going they were definitely going to make the Christmas party. It was weird. He knew he wouldn’t have a gift prepared…. But still he didn’t want to miss it. Easily enough Keith told himself that it was because he didn’t want to deal with a pouty or angry Lance next time they ran into each other. He wasn’t going to acknowledge any other reasoning.
It was pain that brought him crashing back into reality. He felt the blistering sting flare across his shoulder. He clumsily dodged the droid’s next two blasts before smoke swirled to his right and the dark clawed hand of a druid reached forth from it. Magic lighting up the palm. A wall of power slammed into Keith and the wind from the blow screamed in his ears. His back crashed into a wall and he crumpled. Black dots scattered across his vision, but as the violet mist once again churned around him Keith rolled. A tick later there was a crunching sound. He pivoted, snapping his arm up and letting the knife fly from his grasp.The druid’s were fast and their attacks unforgiving. He was beaten back, giving more found than he wished.
“Luxite blades are so interesting.” The deep voice intoned. “The metal is capable of reacting to the will of the one who wields it, and yet…” One of those strong arms snapped out and long fingers wrapped around Keith’s throat, easily lifting him from the ground as if he were nothing more than a rag doll . With his free hand the druid yanked out the sharp edge of Keith’s knife from his side where it had imbedded. Holding it up to Keith’s cheek and slicing open the flesh. “It still cuts you.” 
Keith swung his legs, hooking one up and around the druid’s arm even as he felt the growing pressure close off his wind pipe. Fortunately the momentum he’d already built up carried them both over. Unfortunately the grasp around his neck was still tightening. Keith tried to keep control of his body as they fell, thinking that if he could just get enough leverage he could escape this deadly hold.The druid wouldn’t let him. He was battered into the floor. The druid’s strength and body weight driving down against the one point. Keith flailed for his blade, had seen it fly from his attacker’s grasp when they fell. The edges of his vision were growing black from lack of air, and Keith wasn’t aware that the shadow that had risen up behind the druid was Kolivan until a blade was thrust through the monster’s chest and pulled upwards. 
Kolivan didn’t say anything to Keith as he helped him up but the silence was more than enough. The deep breath that he took into center himself sent a flare of pain sizzling through his body. There was too much going on right now to properly pinpoint exactly where this was coming from but it felt like everywhere. The boy jumped in after Kolivan, his generalized agony now enough to keep him focused on the fight. 
The battle continued to go downhill. The ease with which they had fought and destroyed the droids was now the mirror opposite to their conquering of the keep itself. They managed to complete their mission successfully. However it wasn’t without casualties.
And with how long it had ended up taking them they’d surely missed Lances Christmas celebration. Keith dare not even look at the time. Simply ask Kolivan as calmly as he could if he could to borrow a pod.
“You should get rest while there is time to do so.”Keith set his shoulders, not budging otherwise. If he had been human Kolivan might have sighed, rubbed at his temples or punched his nose whenever he was faced with the young one’s stubbornness. As it stood those mannerisms were of the human variety and so he simply nodded after a short pause. “Then I shall accompany you and deliver the information we’ve gathered along with the report to Princess Allura in person.”
Keith fidgeted the entire ride there. Ignoring both his aching body and the one time Kolivan suggested that he try to sleep. It seemed to take forever to get there. Each tick another that he was late. However when the beautiful Altean space craft came into view amongst the vast darkness and distant stars Keith wasn’t ready Forget the present that he wasn’t showing up with, Lance was going to be pissed that he was crashing in battle worn and late. The half galran hesitated in the pod as Kolivan disembarked, half hoping that the Galra leader would ask for Keith to accompany him to the debriefing.
Of course no invitation came, the older male knew why coming here so quickly was important to the former paladin. And so Keith took a deep breath. Like during the battle agony set his nerve endings aflame, but this time he knew it was due to the bruising along his rib cage. As he walked it was with a slight limp. Where he’d been shot throbbed as a reminder. Keith turned his feet towards the great hall.
He wasn’t even aware that he’d made it there, and for a moment blamed the haze of pain. Realizing a tick later that it was because the room was as dark as the hallways he’d been walking through. Only the dimmed lights catching on the silver tensile as if it were falling snow alerted Keith that he’d made his destination He stopped short and looked around, hand coming up to press against his sore side. The silence was deep.
He had missed the party then. 
It was almost like nothing had been touched at all. Despondently his violet eyes scanned the room. He was about to turn and find Kolivan when a hunched form caught his gaze.It was a testament to his training that before he could even blink Keith had his blade held aloft and at the ready. His first few steps towards the figure were soundless. Until he made out the white and blue design of the armor. Keith stopped trying to be stealthy and shifted to sheath his knife. He sighed in relief, opening his mouth to ask the other what he was doing here. But before he could get a single word out the other boy spoke.
“leave me alone Hunk. I’ll go to bed when I know he’s okay.”
Keith’s eyes widened. Perhaps if he’d not been so exhausted, or injured, he might have folded his arms, allowed one of his rare smirks to grace his features, and ask Lance in an almost innocent tone, ‘me?’
But as it stood his heart jumped up into his throat, which made the single word a breathless whisper. Lance’s head snapped up and Keith felt his chest tighten when he saw the bag’s under Lance’s beautiful azure eyes. “Shit Lance I’m sorry I missed the party-“ Keith didn’t often find himself apologizing, and yet Lance was one of the only people who ever got one from him it seemed.
Lance had jumped to his feet and crossed the space between them in just a few long strides. Keith spoke faster, thinking that the paladin was angrier than he looked and that he was about to get decked in the face. “I came as soon as possible but I couldn’t think of a present for you and there wasn’t any time between the mis-“ Warmth enveloped Keith, Lance’s arms circling his shoulders, pulling him in tightly. Fire ignited all throughout him that had nothing to do with the pain that spread as Lance squeezed him. Keith tensed for only a moment before leaning into this abiding heat from the other boy his own arms coming up under Lance’s gripping against the hard armor.
“You…” Lance’s voice was shaking and Keith’s eyes widened. He’d never heard the other sound like this. “just you, home safe. That’s all I ever want. That’s all I’ve ever needed Keith.”
That same incandescent fire that had burned earlier now rushed up into his face and Keith couldn’t do anything but turn his head into Lance’s shoulder.Neither of them was sure for how long they stayed like this, but Keith could feel how hard and fast Lance’s heart was beating even through his breastplate. And though the pace didn’t slow his own rhythm began to match it before Lance finally shifted. Keith didn’t let go as the Cuban boy leaned back and their breath mingled. It surprised Keith to see that a cherry red colored Lance’s olive cheeks, which of course only worsened his own blush. Beneath his fingertips the half Galran could feel Lance trying to pull away, to take another step back. Retreating the same way he’d been doing around Keith for a while now.Keith didn’t let him. The crimson on Lance’s cheeks grew deeper and spread up to the tips of his ears. 
Since he’d noticed months ago how the red paladin had began to pull away from him Keith had been at a loss for what to do about it.
Until now.
He looked up. “Oh shit we’re standing right under a mistletoe.” 
Keith felt proud of himself for catching the notorious flirt off guard as he spluttered, tilting his head to look and stuttering out, “I t-thought Hunk couldn’t f-find any? I was gonna put so many up-“ His voice was trembling in a very not-Lance like manner
Keith’s smile grew. “you idiot-“
“-Hey!”
“You were just supposed to shut up and trust me remember?” Without waiting another moment Keith tugged hard on the front of Lance’s chest plate. The other’s lips were so soft beneath his own.
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jmlascar · 8 years ago
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long tag for the bae
I was planning to work on my fic but then @krasnyzmeya posted this tag and said she’d like to read my answers so obviously this is what my productive brain chose to do! But it was fun haha (also bby your answers cracked me up so much, especially your mom’s quote, she’s a legend) 
1. Coke or Pepsi: oh man I drink way too much diet coke
2: Disney or Dreamworks: I love Disney songs, but i’ll have to go with Dreamworks because you don’t get more brilliant than Shrek. Also How to train your dragon makes me cry and I think the internet needs to thank them for the utter weirdness that was the Bee Movie. It gave birth to some quality memes.
3: Coffee or tea: Tea, because I like just about any type, whereas I’m very specific about my coffee. But I drink a lot of both.
4: Books or movies: Books.
5: Windows or Mac: I was raised by the biggest Mac fanboy this planet ever saw, so that’s what I’m most familiar with, haha.
6: DC or Marvel: DC for the comics, Marvel for the TV shows, both for the movies. (is this cheating?) (whatever that question is cheating) (you can’t just pick one)
7: Xbox or Playstation: Nintendo DS. Tbh I never played the other two. We did have a playstation at home but it effectively became my brother’s.
8: Dragon Age or Mass Effect: I haven’t played either, but from what I’ve heard of it Dragon Age looks really cool.
9: Night owl or early riser: It is currently 2:45am. Definitely night owl. (If only for the owl part.)
10: Cards or chess: I love chess.
11: Chocolate or vanilla: Vanilla.
12: Vans or Converse: …I only wear boots? But I’ve owned my fair share of Converses in the past, so that.
13: Lavellan, Trevelyan, Cadash, or Adaar: Are these Dragon Age characters? Idk. Whoever’s gayest, probably.
14: Fluff or angst: I want fluff in my life and angst in my books.
15: Beach or forest: Forest. ‘I hate sand. It’s coarse and rough and it gets everywhere.’ –> my life
16: Dogs or Cats: …this is just cruel. 
17: Clear skies or rain: Rain rain rain
18: Cooking or eating out: Cooking is pretty nice, even if i’m often too lazy to do it properly. Cooking with friends is especially fun. 
19: Spicy food or mild food: I am so weak. Spice makes me cry. My tastes are boringly mild, lol. 
20: Halloween/Samhain or Solstice/Yule/Christmas: Halloweeen, because candy, scary movies, and cool costumes!
21: Would you rather forever be a little too cold or a little too hot (and no the winter coats and AC’s are not an option): I mean… normally I prefer cold over heat, but that’s because I get to be warm and fuzzy in my blankets. But if that doesn’t warm me up, I’d probably pick hot and drink lots of iced tea? But would the ice tea feel cool or?? idk the physics of that question hurts my brain lol
22: If you could have a superpower, what would it be: Controlling time! Or super memory.
23: Animation or live action: That’s so broad, I’m not even going to begin trying to pick one, man. 
24: Paragon or renegade: I don’t know what this is. But Renegade sounds edgy. So that.
25: Baths or showers: Give me a lavender scented bubble bath and i’ll probably ask you to marry me
26: Team Cap or Team Ironman: OH CAPTAIN MY CAPTAIN 
27: Fantasy or Sci-Fi: Sci-Fi
28: Do you have three or four favourite quotes, if so what are they? If not do you think you will in future? I’ve got sooo many, hahaha. I have a tendency to fall in love with pretty words. Let me pick the ones I can think off the top of my head:
from A Streecar Named Desire, Tennessee Williams: “They told me to take a streetcar named Desire and then transfer to one called Cemeteries and ride six blocks and get off at — Elysian Fields!”
from the Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison: “Along with the idea of romantic love, she was introduced to another — physical beauty. Probably the most destructive ideas in the history of human thought.”
from Giovanni’s Room, Hames Baldwin: “Touch, but no contact. All touch, but no contact and no light.” I asked him: “Why?” “That you must ask yourself,” he told me, “and perhaps one day this morning will not be ashes in your mouth.”
from The Lake, Alphonse de la Martine: “Mais je demande en vain quelques moments encore, Le temps m'échappe et fuit ; Je dis à cette nuit : Sois plus lente ; et l'aurore Va dissiper la nuit.”
English translation: "But I demand in vain a few moments again Time escapes and runs away from me I tell that night: Be slower; yet the dawn Will dissipate the night.“ 
from salt. by Nayyirah Waheed: ” ‘no’ might make them angry. but it will make you free. — if no one ever told you, your freedom is more important than their anger
29: Youtube or Netflix: Netflix. Their originals are the best of what tv can make, and they’ve never disappointed me so far.
30. Classic Disney, Disney Renaissance, or Modern Disney? Renaissance.
31. What would you tell your younger self? “Don’t listen to them. Keep being you. It’s going to be ok.”
32. If you could change one thing about the world around you, what would it be? I would make us all one hermaphrodite gender.
33. Make music or listen to music? @meta-duckling will tell you I’m off-tune and deprived of rhythmic sense (i’ll never forget nor forgive, nathan. never.) sooo i’ll go with listening, haha. I did play the harpsichord for a couple of years (& if you think it’s a lame outdated instrument just remember that hannibal lecter plays it, so u might wanna be careful, just saying) and used to sing kinda well but now it’s all gone
34. Slow burn or Oneshot?: Definitely slow burns. Big books and 300k word long fics with heaps of subtle character development give me life. That being said, I have a couple of one-shots I really love out there, and I think I’d enjoy writing one.
and I’ll tag @meta-duckling because i know how much you love making decisions ♡
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365-money-diary · 7 years ago
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DAYS 167 - 172
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DAY ONE HUNDRED SIXTY-SEVEN
9:00 AM - I get to work and toast a piece of bread. My colleague has been talking about wanting to split coffee with me in the mornings so we figured out that for each bag I open, she’ll pay me $6.50. She pays me through the Cash app.
1:00 PM - I do that thing where I eat too late. Fuck. I totally forgot to bring my lunch, so I just eat Subway for lunch. $5.93
3:30 PM - I download an app called Cronometer to try and track my calories. IDK if I’ll like it better than Lifesum, but it’s gotta be better than MFP.
5:00 PM - I leave work and call my boyfriend on my way home. He left work already today and has been at home for the past few hours.
6:30 PM - I make grilled cheese for the both of us. -- His has dairy and mine is vegan. I also make fries to go with it.
8:00 PM - Boyfriend curls up in bed and I hang out with him for a bit while reading Harry Potter. I am definitely getting bored of this series. Ugh.
9:15 PM - My two friends come over and drop off my PA.
9:30 PM - I take the dog for a walk around the neighborhood and bump into some friends at Casey Moore’s. Katy gets a lot of pets which means she will be conked out by the time we get home.
10:30 PM - We watch an episode of the latest South Park season. It’s so good.
11:00 PM - We get in bed and fall asleep watching the Simpsons.
DAY ONE HUNDRED SIXTY-SEVEN TOTAL: $5.93
DAY ONE HUNDRED SIXTY-EIGHT
8:45 AM - I wake up a little late and it takes me a little longer to get to work due to the ASU traffic, but at least I remember my last two twice baked potatoes.
9:15 AM - I arrive at work and make a slice of toast. I top it with nooch and Everything but the Bagel seasoning. I wash it all down with a toddy.
12:30 PM - I walk the long way to Sprouts. It’s 95 degrees which is nice! I need to find something to eat with my baked potato and I am not exactly sure what. I decide on a package of organic strawberries. $3.03
1:00 PM - I eat my baked potato and sliced strawberries for lunch.
5:00 PM - I leave work and head home. I’m super hungry when I arrive, so I eat a handful of vegan cheez its to hold me over until I take ASU Friend out for her birthday.
6:15 PM - I pick up my friend and we head to La Santisima. We get chips and salsa, and I get two tacos and she gets a burrito. I also indulge in a margarita because I am a fancy lady. ASU friend gets an iced tea. I cover it all. $32.57
8:00 PM - We head back to Tempe. I drop her off at home and am feeling pretty good but also sleepy. Boyfriend’s working a show so I have the house to myself for a bit. In preparation for my set tonight, I pull some records.
9:30 PM - Boyfriend calls and I take a couple laps around the block while I talk to him on the phone.
11:30 PM - I crawl into bed and sleep like a sweet angel.
DAY ONE HUNDRED SIXTY-EIGHT TOTAL: $35.60
DAY ONE HUNDRED SIXTY-NINE
8:15 AM - I peel myself out of bed and hop in the shower.
9:00 AM - I stop for gas super quick on the way in. $26.10
10:00 AM - Even with transferring the difference of my UTI, I am still looking at spending roughly $32 per day until October. It’s a bummer, but I’ll live. At least I have a strategy moving forward on how to overcome this issue.
12:00 PM - I eat some strawberries and the last of my baked potato. I come up with a fun plan for next week: homemade poke bowls. I just have to plan ahead and make a bunch of brown rice for it.
4:45 PM - I peace out at work and arrive home. I eat a frozen breakfast burrito and some chips, salsa, and hummus.
6:15 PM - I have all my records pulled already but I have to figure out what songs I’m playing. I rearrange some stuff to plan a “rough set”
7:45 PM - I stop at Cartel on my way out. ASU friend is working so she gives me my tea for free.
8:00 PM - I arrive super early at Valley Bar. Another staff member helps me load my stuff inside and I chat with an old colleague in the meantime.
9:00 PM - I start my set. The night is pretty slow for Valley, but I just take it as it comes. I order two ciders throughout the night and leave around last call with a check for $125. At some point during my set, the friend I lent $100 to comes back with $80 of it. Definitely not complaining!
2:00 AM - So exhausted.
DAY ONE HUNDRED SIXTY-NINE TOTAL: $26.10
DAY ONE HUNDRED SEVENTY
9:00 AM - I wake up. Whoops.
9:30 AM - I arrive at work and toast a piece of bread and pour myself a toddy. I am out of food for the week, so I make loose plans to grab lunch with my boss. (Hopefully at Taco Bell. Haha.)
11:15 AM - Boss and I eat lunch at Taco Bell. I get an order of chips, red sauce, and pintos (no cheese), and a fresco bean burrito. $3.54
1:30 PM - Boyfriend messages me online and wants to book a staycation. He feels bad bringing all of his work stuff home all the time, and we definitely could use the time to relax. He books the place but it’s $272 for one night, so we talk about me chipping in for some of the costs which we’ll talk about when his rent is due next month. I am looking forward to this!!!
5:05 PM - I leave work and head home.
5:45 PM - I’m consumed by family drama for the next hour or so.
7:00 PM - I make us grilled cheese and fries for dinner and also make spice cake with vanilla bean “cream cheese” frosting.
9:00 PM - I eat some spice cake and read Harry Potter with boyfriend in the living room.
11:00 PM - I am passed out! So exhausted.
DAY ONE HUNDRED SEVENTY TOTAL: $3.54
DAY ONE HUNDRED SEVENTY-ONE
8:30 AM - I wake up and roll out of bed for work. I feel much more rested today despite having to crate the dog in the middle of the night for barking outside.
9:15 AM - I arrive at work and toast a piece of bread and pour myself some coffee.
11:45 AM - I take a look at my finances today to figure out where I am at for pacing. I now have to chip in $136 for our hotel room, which I’m not complaining about at all.
12:00 PM - We go eat lunch together as an office at Even Stevens. I get the New Morrissey burrito. $8.29
4:30 PM - I finish everything at work and dip out for the weekend.
5:00 PM - I hang out with the dog when I get home for a little bit.
5:45 PM - I head out and pick up my friend Q. We meet boyfriend at Crescent Ballroom for dinner. I get the Cocina 10 salad with no cheese and a sangria. I chip in some cash to cover for me and Q, but it’s probably not enough. $27
7:15 PM - I’m stuffed! We walk over to Valley Bar and watch John Wiese and ZOLA JESUS. It’s super fun and there is a good crowd out tonight.
10:45 PM - We make it back to Tempe and I head home. I hang out with boyfriend for a little bit and then pass out.
DAY ONE HUNDRED SEVENTY-ONE TOTAL: $35.29
DAY ONE HUNDRED SEVENTY-TWO
8:45 AM - I wake up and see that I miss a facetime call from my sister who is in Germany. It was only 7 minutes ago so I take the opportunity to call her back and she answers.
9:30 AM - I make us toast, Field Roast sausage, and hashbrowns for breakfast. Boyfriend’s still pretty conked out so I eat without him.
10:45 AM - I hop in the shower because I am disgusting.
11:15 AM - I grab the dog and we walk to Cartel. She does a pretty good job! I only get a coffee for myself and it’s free with the gift card my colleagues gave me for my birthday.
12:15 PM - I hang out with the neighbors outside for a few minutes. They’re always excited to see KP.
12:30 PM - We arrive back at home. Boyfriend’s up and ready to take on the day. We go to the mall and I encourage him to buy a really cool adidas jacket. I almost splurge on a pair of MNDs but they don’t fit me at all, so I opt out. It’s probably for the best anyways. My wallet isn’t so happy with me this month.
2:00 PM - We stop by Tilt and play pinball.
3:00 PM - We leave Tilt and are both starving. We end up stopping at TC Taco for lunch. We split chips and salsa and I get a veggie burrito. I take half of it home. Boyfriend pays for lunch.
4:00 PM - We arrive at home and pack our bags quickly for tonight. We’re staying at a hotel in Old Town Scottsdale that’s really cute and mid-century modern.
4:45 PM - We arrive at the hotel and are super excited! Our room is perfect, but there is an annoying DJ at the pool. I do some digging on the internet and discover that they will finish at 5:30. We lounge around in our room until we hear it stop and then head outside to the pool.
5:45 PM - I order a sangria at the pool bar and charge it to our room.
6:00 PM - We swim for a while. The water is really nice!
7:00 PM - We get out of the pool and both shower. I never shower twice in one day. Feels weird, man.
7:45 PM - We are getting hungry and so we head out to grab dinner. We first try going to this burger place called Rehab, but they’re packed. Instead we end up at the Scottsdale Cornish Pasty (LOL). I get an Ace “Space” Blood Orange Cider, and the philly vegan pasty. We split oven chips and boyfriend gets a pasty too. I pay. $42.54
9:00 PM - I’m so full. I guess this is true staycation mode. I roll my bowling ball belly to the car and boyfriend drives us back to the hotel.
9:15 PM - We arrive back in our room and watch TV for the rest of the evening. It’s really nice to feel this relaxed.
12:00 AM - I fall asleep and have dreams about eating so much I explode.
DAY ONE HUNDRED SEVENTY-TWO TOTAL: $42.54
DAY ONE HUNDRED SEVENTY-THREE
8:45 AM - I wake up feeling really rested.
9:30 AM - I start getting dressed for the day and wake up boyfriend to tell him I’m going to grab coffee. I walk to Scottsdale Cartel (LOL) and get two small toddys and pay with my gift card.
10:00 AM - I arrive back at the hotel and deliver boyfriend’s coffee. It’s so nice out so I decide to read outside for a while.
11:30 AM - We pack up our stuff and are surprised to find we don’t have any additional things to pay for when we check out. I guess my sangria and parking are free!
12:00 PM - We head back to Tempe and stop at Einstein’s on the way. I get an everything bagel and boyfriend gets some plain bagels for the week and an OJ. He pays.
12:15 PM - Home sweet home. We toast our bagels. I top mine with vegan cream cheese and nooch.
2:30 PM - I do my finances for the month. I am doing “ok” and will probably try not to spend much more money today. But I know I have to buy some records next week for the MRCH set. I make a loose plan with myself today that I’ll find the rest of my tracks today and buy them all tomorrow. I’m getting down to the wire for ordering from discogs and the sooner I do this, the better. I have a goal to end up with around $100 extra for the month so I can pay off a medical bill for culturing my urine test.
4:30 PM - I start hunting for music again. I buy a Cristina record. $18
7:00 PM - I also buy a DAF record. $20
8:00 PM - I buy a Romeo Void single. My set is back up to 1 hour and 45ish minutes after cleaning it up a lot. I think I’ll be able to find the missing 3-5 songs tomorrow during work since it’s going to be a relatively easy day.  $8
8:30 PM - I walk the dog down to the end of Mill Ave.
9:45 PM - I watch the latest episode of Scientology and the Aftermath and drink a La Croix. Boyfriend comes home at some point and we finish the episode together. Then he puts on hockey and I read some Harry Potter.
DAY ONE HUNDRED SEVENTY-THREE TOTAL: $46
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