#idk I didn't proofread

[zephyrchama]

You're watching a random movie with Mammon that turns out to have some horror elements in it. Neither of you knew this beforehand, you only skimmed the movie's description, but Mammon's not going to chicken out now. He needs to look cool in front of you. It's just a stupid movie. It's fine.

A minor jump scare halfway through the film leaves him rattled. He holds on to you tightly, quietly cursing how high quality the special effects are. It's fine, though. Really. It is.

He even offers to hold you if you're scared.

This gives Mammon an excuse to hide behind you. Perhaps this was his original aim. The two of you quickly work out a new seating arrangement on the couch. He moves you in front of him, encouraging you to lean back against him if there's not enough room to sit between his legs. You wonder how much of your head obscures the screen.

Several minutes pass in this state. You are having a very difficult time concentrating on the film. A certain someone has his arms wrapped around your chest like a flotation device.

"Hey, Mammon?" you whisper. "Yeah?" "It's really hard to watch the movie." You feel him shift a little in the seat. He asks, "Wanna turn it off and do somethin' else?" "No, can you just move your arms?"

Mammon grunts and makes no effort to even change position. There's a pause, as if he's thinking about it, before he sighs into your neck.

"No can do," he says. "Dunno what else this movie has in store, and I don't want your fragile little human heart givin' out on me if it gets worse."

Certainly, with the way his hands were gripping at you like a weak stress ball, Mammon could probably feel every pulse of your heartbeat.

"Okay, but this is a human movie. Made by humans. For humans." You really emphasize that last bit. "Yeah, but we borrowed it from Satan. Who knows what kind of sick tastes he has?"

You laugh. The way your upper body briefly swells as you inhale and then shrinks back down as you laugh, and the way he can feel every shake when you exhale, makes Mammon's heart flutter.

"Come on. I can't even snack like this," you plead. There was zero chance Mammon was letting you go after the treat you just gave him. His head is already in the clouds. "How are you gonna watch the movie if you're busy snackin'?" he counters, as if either of you still had any idea what was happening on-screen. "I just want to be able to breathe again. You're so greedy," you tell him. You would slump your shoulders in defeat if that were possible at all with Mammon clinging to your chest from behind. "Damn right I am."

[mangobug]

Alenoah is so goddamn appealing to me for the same reason i like aleheather: they're both enemies/rivals with a tension. However, what makes alenoah so much more interesting to me is the fact that Noah just would not visibly care about, or outwardly acknowledge, Alejandro's advancements. When Alejandro flirts with the other contestants, he easily throws them off or (in Heather's case) pisses them off, turning them into putty in his two hands. When he attempts to throw Noah off, though, it doesn't (visibly) have an effect on him, and it bothers Alejandro because Alejandro always has the upper-hand, around both women and men. It makes Alejandro feel almost humiliated when Noah brushes him off or shoots back sarcastic comments in response to his flirting. Noah barely even bats an eye. But Alejandro can't bring himself to stop when he finds Noah as a person so interesting. Alejandro loves debating with Noah and adores his snark and intelligence, and this adoration drives him. He makes it a goal of his to somehow really fluster Noah or throw him off his game like he does with the other contestants, which has proven to be quite a difficult task. But Alejandro isn't a quitter.

In reality, Noah enjoys the playful and teasing banter just as much as Alejandro, even if he seems uninterested, because it's entertaining to be debating with someone of similar intelligence. Alejandro's flirting, though, does actually throw him off, just not in the same way it does to other people. Noah is entirely (and rightfully) convinced that Alejandro's flirting with him is just a part of his slimy, slippery, eel-y personality, and a sad attempt to rid of Noah in order to further himself in the competition. And Noah is nothing if not stubborn, so even if he feels his stomach twisting into a knot every time Alejandro compliments his brown eyes or his hooked nose or his impressive intelligence or his interesting personality or even the peaceful, curled position he sleeps in—Noah will always just nod his head and respond with a doubtful "sure" or a sarcastic "thanks, honey."

And if Alejandro were to hear about how Noah views his persistent advances, then he wouldn't deny it, because in the beginning that was about half of the truth. He did want to use this new challenge to knock a few opponents out, and if reaching his goal would not only prove to Alejandro that the cold-presenting bookworm had a heart that could be tamed but would also get him out of the way and push Alejandro one step closer to his imminent victory, then, well, that's a win-win for Alejandro. That isn't all the reason though because, against all of Alejandro's big ego, he does actually quite like Noah. This "like" didn't mean the same in the beginning as it did in the end. Because it didn't start with Alejandro wondering if Noah had had anything to eat that day or if Noah had any pets or what Noah's favorite book was, or even if Alejandro could borrow that book Noah was reading once he was done.

Against all of Alejandro's wishes and expectations, he finds that between the two of them, he is the one who has been getting flustered. And it is downright embarrassing, because Noah doesn't even do anything. Well, except for all of the things he usually does. He makes his sarcastic comments and argues with Alejandro just as he did before, but now the details are so much clearer. It's like every feature of Noah's has been enhanced, including his features that previously Alejandro would have considered flaws. His forehead was rather larger than average, but Alejandro has decided that it fit his face and personality and that it was only natural for a head to be big enough to store all the fascinating knowledge and wit that Noah had proven to have. And that pimple just below his right cheekbone, well, that is just time's beauty mark, a proof of growth and maturity that was one feature of many on his face that showed that he was very alive. He found an adorableness in the way Noah uncurled from his sleep and rubbed his eyes first thing after a long night of rest, and he felt a burning discomfort in the unmistakable image of Noah curling into Owen's nap for a makeshift pillow later that day. Alejandro felt electricity course throw his veins and his hands become shakey and clammy at every short lock between ivy and coffee irises. He felt his heart beat a thousand miles a minute each time he stood next to the other, and he would feel it speed up ten times fast at every sarcastic comment the other would make.

Alejandro found himself staring.

Alejandro finds himself studying his face, gauging his face for reactions whenever he makes a joke, and he finds himself way too excited when Noah cracks a smile at it. One time, Alejandro had made Noah laugh. Belly laugh. Gasping for breath laugh. A laugh so full of joy that Alejandro found himself smiling. Not from the contagiousness of Noah's laugh nor from the humor of the comment he had made about Duncan, which, truth be told, he couldn't recite on the spot even if he needed to because his memory had been wiped and replaced with this. Rather, he was satisfied that of all people, he could make Noah laugh like this (and Owen.. he supposes.) That night held for him some distasteful news, because how could Alejandro be the one melted into somebody else's palms?

Noah had noticed the sudden change in Alejandro's behavior, but it'd be a lie if he said he knew why it happened. And if anyone were to tell him why, he would deny it, because not only was it obviously not true, but he also didn't want it to be. The idea of someone as slimy, slippery, and eel-y as Alejandro even daring to approach him was for one, unfortunate, for two, terrible, and for three, impossible. But he couldn't help but ponder why this change had happened. Just why was Alejandro so... fidgety? He was running his hand through his hair what felt like every five minutes (Noah heard him curse under his breath once in spanish, likely at the realization of the inevitable accumulation of grease by the end of the day due to the excessive hand-to-root action), he kept unbuttoning and buttoning the top button of his shirt (Noah heard him mutter once, "is it too scandalous undone?"), and he wouldn't stop playing with his fingers, cracking and popping them, pulling and intertwining them—not that Noah was always watching his hands or anything, because he wasn't, but it was just such a drastic change to Alejandro's usually confident demeanor that you must be a fool to not notice it.

Alejandro did not notice—how could he be such a fool? Developing a crush on an opponent with a million dollars on the line? Pathetic.

The night following Noah's laughing fit, Alejandro found himself staring at Noah's sleeping form. Alejandro had noticed the way he usually sleeps, which would be creepy if Noah didn't have such a noticeable way of sleeping. He curled up to sleep, upright or on his side, and it was pretty cute. His eyes observed the way Noah was curled up against Owen's side, face resting into the other's fat. Ah, right. Owen. Alejandro felt a scowl creep up on his face when his eyes shifted to the blond's face—only to immediately divert his eyes, because Owen was already looking at him. He heard Owen laugh, which made his embarrassment double—embarrassment? I don't get embarrassed.

"Don't worry, Al." Gross. Al. "Noah doesn't know, so your secret is safe with me."

Alejandro blinked. He looked back at Owen, although reluctantly. "...Secret?"

Owen laughed again, and Alejandro was getting worried that he would wake Noah as he watched the smallest of them bounce against Owen. "You know, Al. Your cute little crush on Noah! He's smart and all, but he kind of sucks with love. You can take as much time as you want before you tell him. But between you and me, I think he likes you, too."

Alejandro's mind blanked. Crush? "Uh. My what."

Owen's face turned confused as well. "Oh... Do you not? Oops. Forget I said that about Noah."

Alejandro wished he could think of a decent response, but, what?

"Uh... No, I wouldn't say you're wrong. I just... didn't know myself."

"You—" Owen laughed again, this time making Noah groan in his sleep.

"Ugh... Owen. Stop, 'm trying to sleep." He said, not even opening his eyes.

"Sorry, buddy." Owen giggled, "Al's just pretty funny."

Alejandro glared at Owen, and the other shrugged.

"Sure." Noah groaned, adjusting his position before quickly falling back to sleep.

"Wow! How could you not know, Al? You're always looking at him and talking to him, 'n stuff. It's like Tyler and I aren't even there! And you're so nervous around him. I didn't know someone as cool and confident as you could get nervous around anyone. It makes me proud to know my little buddy could do that."

Alejandro nodded. "Hmm. You're right... Maybe that is the case."

It was a silent agreement between the two that it was their business and no one else's, an agreement that Alejandro wasn't too confident that Owen wouldn't break, but it was enough. Alejandro couldn't decide what was more shocking, an agreement between him and Owen, or the fact that he actually liked Noah in a more than just curious way. Looking back on what Owen said though, he thinks an Owen and Alejandro alliance is much more surprising.

[seokmattchuus]

Prove It - Seok Matthew Drabble

A/n: Matthew drabble because I had a dream and I really need to get this out of my system :3 Also, might be renamed at a later date because I have no idea.

-

"I'm literally always taking care of you." He scoffed in disbelief. "Calling me 'oppa' wouldn't kill you."

"I'm older than you." You reminded him. "I think you keep forgetting that aspect."

"You had no problem calling me 'daddy'." He snicked, landing him a pillow to the face.

"It was just once." You muttered in defense. "And I was drunk."

"Keep telling yourself that." He rolled his eyes. "Besides, it wouldn't hurt to say it just once." He leaned in, his face right in front of yours. "I won't tell anyone." He said in a sing-song voice.

It was your turn to snicker now.

"Since you want it so bad," You paused, watching his expression turn expectant. "What do I get if I do it?"

His eyebrow twitched as the latter of your sentence came out.

"How about a bet, then?" He smiled as he climbed over you. "If you can keep quiet until I'm done with you, I'll drop it."

His arms were caging you in and you could feel his thigh pressing between your thighs in an attempt to open them.

"But if you can't." He smirked, his head dipping down so his lips were brushing lightly against yours. "You can't call me anything else."

His thigh had succeeded in passing your thighs and you let out a shaky breath at the contact. His eyes flicked towards yours and you saw the corner of his mouth curve into a smirk.

"Deal?"

It wasn't like you to give in so easily, even if you looked like you would.

"We have a deal." You mimicked his smirk as you toyed with the top button of his shirt. "But what do I get if I make it?" You tilted your head slightly as you freed the top button, working your way down.

He closed the gap between the two of you, his lips working gently against yours as he let out a shaky breath from your cold hands grazing his upper stomach.

"You're already losing." You smirk as you gave him your most innocent gaze. "So much for being an 'oppa'." You whispered the last part.

His thigh pressed firmly against you and you stiffened, but stayed quiet.

"It's a matter of pride at this point, baby." You smiled sweetly as you pulled his shirt down his shoulders, your fingers softly running over his arms in admiration. "If you want to be an oppa so bad," You paused as you licked your lips.

"Prove it."

[ancientbygone]

bygone lore: Sleep

finally found it in me to write my thoughts/worldbuilding on Sleep in one place. this is taking so much courage to post this to the public, no joke, so i hope it's entertaining! not sure how much sense it all will make, but nevertheless.

okay, so. i just don't think Sleep is any sort of sleep/dream deity. not for any solid reason, just because 1) the only descriptions we get of it are secondhand from what Sleep has told to Vessel & i personally have no reason to trust Sleep with how manipulative that shit is and 2) i think it would be more fun that way, especially taking the first point into account. i legit just think that Sleep lied to Vessel about its nature to further whatever goals it had and Vessel passed the information onto us oblivious to the truth. i still think it's a relatively powerful supernatural force though. easy enough for a human like Vessel to be convinced that it is a god. more of a feeling than an actual entity, but still with its own sentience and wants and goals. could be whatever makes the most sense to anyone, but my personal take on what Sleep is instead of a dream god (what it is in my version of the lore) is that it's all the desires of every living thing congealed into a single being with a mind of its own. 

[cont. under the cut]

i think that works well personally! the lyrical themes of give/take and longing and Wanting from both sides make sense with it. even the "i want to want to live, and so do you" in Fall For Me. Sleep is driven by wanting, and being made from wanting itself, when it gets what it wants it just continues to go further, to the next step of its desires, ever insatiable. it becomes entwined with Vessel because when they meet for the first time, they want the same thing. they're both dying, and still they want to want to live. to be more precise, Sleep wants fuel; its existence relies largely on humans, and it needs someone who feels strongly and passionately (please don’t ask me why it’s dying, i don’t even know and don’t want to look too much into it). Vessel, on the other hand, wants a way to turn around his life that he may or may not have driven into the ground, and he believes that it cannot be fixed by any existing means, which is why he's lost all hope in living anymore. but those two desires perfectly coincide, do they not? they can help each other get what they want. so they try. 

it doesn't work out. it backfires horribly, in fact. i've talked about it before, but i think it's very important to mention regardless. Sleep, being pretty much desire incarnate, may have harbored certain negative feelings of its own towards humanity, but they never would've become anything if it were not for Vessel. Vessel's anger at the world around him, the way he believes he has been wronged by everyone, is palpable, and with Sleep having to draw on Vessel's emotions to survive for the time being, that anger infects it, too. the passive unnamed negativity becomes a strong desire to take revenge. with all of it combined, Sleep's supernatural power and Vessel's uncontrollable rage slowly takes over both of them, and Him is born, a despicable thing. it's all-consuming blind rage taking on a mind of its own, much like how Sleep came to be but so much more unstable and volatile. the revenge on humanity doesn't go further than a single person torn to bits with bare hands and teeth, both too dull to be effective, but that thing is nothing it not fucking determined. it does fall apart immediately after, though, because it was barely together as is and killing someone was the tipping point for Vessel's consciousness somewhere deep in there. plus Vessel’s body honestly couldn't sustain Him for much longer. sorry for the tangent, i really love talking about that fucked up abomination.

but yeah, this experience changes both of them forever. Sleep gets a taste of feeling human emotions to a full extent, arguably even more so because of just how much Vessel feels; Vessel gets a taste of wielding inhuman power and releasing his emotions through it. Sleep's usual straightforward path of progression (just gaining more power, more control over more things) diverges as it realizes that it needs to feel like humans do again. Vessel, on the other hand, is fucking terrified of Him or something similar coming back, so he closes himself off and tries to repress his feelings back down again. he won’t let Sleep in again no matter how much he wants to be able to express his emotion with the same intensity as he feels them again. Sleep is well aware that Vessel wants that sort of relationship back, too. Sundowning is essentially Sleep trying to win Vessel back over and convince him to “help each other” once again, and realizing by Blood Sport that if Vessel doesn’t think he can handle it this time, he just needs to be made better suited for it. unfortunately, Sleep finds that breaking Vessel’s spirit, making him entirely emotionally dependent on it, and practically isolating him from the only people he interacts with on the daily (his bandmates) by stripping away his humanity in their eyes is very much a working strategy for getting him where it wants him to be.

Sleep’s tactics of manipulation are… algorithmic? for the lack of a better word, in the way that it doesn't really have a reason why exactly it's doing things other than that they're what's worked on Vessel so far. no real understanding of human psychology and whatnot, only trial and error until it pushes the correct set of buttons in the right order at the right time. it does learn more and more as their relationship progresses. Sleep also doesn’t exactly lie; it’s shapeless by nature & only able to embody what others put into it, and even then to a certain extent. it only really talks & shows itself to Vessel at any point because of their connection, and it’s able to draw from all of his emotions instead of just desire like any other human for that same reason. no matter what form Sleep takes, it’s always akin to a shadow, although the exact way the shadows look depends on who Sleep is showing itself to - drawing (pun intended) from Vessel’s artistic heart, Sleep looks to him like pencil on paper. Sleep does distort reality much in the same way that any emotion might - it pushes things to their extremes, makes them seem larger than life to get a response. as it grows and becomes more powerful in itself, it stops being able to appear as something smaller than it is, so pretty much any form it takes is an exaggeration of what it’s imitating. this ties directly into the mimics (see this (tmbte) and this (sundowning) for context), but also just. anything that Sleep appears as to Vessel. during TPWBYT, Vessel feels like his emotional repression is suffocating him, and Sleep’s most commonly assumed form during that time is a literal ocean that Vessel is often trapped in, drowning. during TMBTE, Vessel feels like he cannot escape his situation no matter how miserable it makes him feel, and Sleep appears to him as a reaper, taking that thought to its extreme conclusion that Vessel's only salvation might as well be death. even though Sleep isn’t a dream deity, its appearances still function on dream logic somewhat; it invokes the feeling of something in one’s subconscious that what they’re seeing is the actual thing Sleep is imitating, even if the actual visual resemblance is minor (that makes sense right please tell me it does).

what happens to Sleep once Vessel breaks free from him for good… i’m not entirely sure, honestly. it’s definitely not going to just disappear; a being of desire is going to exist as long as we still feel it. it isn’t gonna chase after Vessel, and i’m not really sure if it’d try and seek out another person to form a similar connection with. maybe we, the audience of Sleep Token living and feeling through Vessel’s music that has come from all his pain, sustain it well enough now. i don’t think it matters that much anyhow; Sleep is entirely unscathed either way afterwards, unlike Vessel. maybe i’ll figure out a little more eventually.

[storges-oranges]

Feeling insane about the hound origin again

Warnings: LI death mentioned, "Hound" title is treated rather literally as in; very doglike devotion, mentions of blood and injury. Please tell me if i should add anything else.

Title: by Leah Horlick

Image description: A black and white line drawing of a dog on a pink background. The dog is facing to the left. The quote "YOU'LL NEVER RECOVER FROM THAT KIND OF DEVOTION" by Leah Horlick is written across the dog's body.

There is something to be said about Vere and the hound. Something about being collared or abandoned on a road after playing fetch. Something about looking at everyone distrustfully, despite knowing that absolute loyalty is the only thing you were made to feel. Something about remembering where that loyalty got you. Something about wanting help, needing help, but the only thing you can do now is bite.

The hand that seeks to harm, the hand that seeks to help, the hand that seeks to comfort, they all feel the same against your teeth don't they?

How does a fight dog love another fight dog anyway?

Ais loves you the way a nature reserve worker loves the beasts under his care. You bite him and look up, his hand still in your jaw, expecting anger. Expecting him to strike you for daring to betray him like this.

He smiles and pats you on the head. When you release his hand, he offers you tea. He keeps you around. He is so patient with you. Others would've left you. You can feel yourself getting attached. Again. You hate yourself for it but you stay.

Because you never leave first. That's not allowed for you.

You spend your days visiting him and joking around, wrestling his attention away from the soulless or Vere. When Vere pisses you off, you make a show of holding Ais's injured hand, with your teeth marks still visible on his skin. Ais chucles at your possessiveness.

The first kiss you shared started off as a bite, too.

Before he dies, you drop to your knees and hold his hand. He's looking up at you with an unbearable gentleness, and his body is getting colder.

Without thinking, you bite. 'How stupid' you think. 'He is bleeding to death already' But he understands you better than you do yourself, so he pats you on the head, and tells you it's going to be okay.

You clamp down on his hand harder, because the only things that stay are the ones caught between your teeth. Because that's the only thing you know how to do.

You never told him you loved him. You never showed him in the tender way you dreamed of. You wail into his open wound.

But it's ok. Ais understands. You know it by the way he tenderly holds the back of your head, by the way he smiles at you. By the ways he tells you to be good and take care of yourself after he's gone.

Kuras got used to seeing you sitting front of the back-door to his clinic. You're there in the acidic rain of Eridia, you're there in the suffocating sandstorms, you're there in freezing winter storms too.

You're there when he comes back from another harrowing experience that chipped away at his faith in humanity. He sees you right as his guilt and hopelessness threaten to swallow him whole.

You rise to your feet upon seeing him. You ask to open the door to escape the apocalyptic weather.

He is taken aback by... your continued presence? Your optimism? He doesn't know. But you are there, like you always are. You both get in, like you always do.

He offers you food, real food instead of the atrocities you got from...where did you get that exactly? Why can't you buy normal food? "The wet wick doesn't have anything edible" And that is better? You shrug. Doesn't Leander pay you for your services? "Its late this week".

You follow him around. As always. Until you both sit by the fire, plate in hand. Kuras watches the flames dance absent-mindedly until he feels you shift closer to him.

"Long day, huh?" You say, mouth full.

Your eyes are so pretty, illuminated by the fire as they are. He knows you went through alot , but they are still so pure, so full adoration. You look at him with so much adoration. He is an old being, he knows what adoration looks like in humans. He is unsure if he deserves it.

The day left him feeling like it was all for naught again. That really, he should just step back into the shroud and let history take its course. But he looks at you, at your worried face. He thinks of you sitting on the porch of his backdoor, waiting. Waiting in the rain , waiting in the sandstorm, waiting in the cold. For him to come back. To let you in. To come in with you.

He knows you would stay there for an unreasonable amount of time. Alone. Faithful.

He cannot bear the thought.

His hand finds your cheek before he knows what he is doing. Before he can take it back, you nuzzle against it, grinning.

Its like a weight is lifted off of his shoulders. If its for you, he can make it another day. If you're waiting, he will always come back.

[lottieurl]

please ignore this if you disagree. this is just me thinking out loud but i keep coming back to this impulse shauna had to EAT the ear and of course there's been all this talk about how she wants to consume jackie. how it's wanting to destroy her how it's wanting to be as close to her as possible. but i'm interested in the physicality of it. like there is the metaphor of cannibalism and then there is the REALITY of it

i read about mortuary cannibalism in the past and i believe it wasn't even the close loved ones eating the dead usually because often it would be too hard for them and even those who weren't as close and were the ones to consume the dead would sometimes throw up while eating. like let's put aside for a moment everything this means narratively and metaphorically. there is the physical act of putting a real uncooked half frozen eat into your mouth and the fact that that's the ear of a person you LOVED. the ear you may have whispered secrets to during class and one you felt against your cheek when the two of you hugged. and shauna does that after gently caressing the ear in her pocket for an entire day

i think there's an interesting component to how she's interacting with dead-jackie. some part of her brain acknowledges that jackie is dead while a much larger part of her refuses to. and i think at least on some unconscious level she's aware of the way the cold preserves jackie's body. after the initial shock of finding jackie when we see her sit in the same room with her now she's keeping her distance. there's this feeling people usually get from seeing their dead loved ones especially if it's been a little while since they died - a feeling of alienation. the muscles are no longer animated, the skin no longer warm. a feeling of this person being foreign to you in some way suddenly. and so a part of me wonders if on some level she wanted to stop the ear from rotting now that it's not frozen, warmed by shauna's hand and safe in her pocket. i don't think it would be a conscious thought but it's just. walking around with that ear in your pocket. not wanting to part with any part of jackie. wanting to consume her yes but also wanting to preserve her in a very physical way in a sense

[parkitaco]

The sun is warm on Mike's face, and Will is warm against his side.

As far as dates go, Mike has to admit he did a pretty solid job with this one, even if he can already tell that his skin is going to be sunburnt tomorrow and Will won't stop whining about the little pebbles digging into their backs, and yeah, maybe bringing a picnic blanket might have been helpful, but- whatever. He's pretty proud of himself, both for finding this abandoned field on the outskirts of Hawkins and correctly pegging it as a good evening hangout spot, and for managing to get Will out here with him in the first place - it's been a bit of a chaotic summer so far, with the Party preparing to go into their senior year and Hopper and Joyce planning their wedding and Nancy and Jonathan and all their dumb friends visiting from college.

Anyway. The point is that evenings like this are far and few between, and have been for a while, because if the summer has been chaotic, the months leading up to it were nothing short of hectic. The SATs and AP exams and final projects had been brutal, and, like, yeah, the Party is together constantly, and Mike and Will have been joined at the hip since far before they started dating, but it's- nice. That's all.

Will shifts where he's pressed against Mike's side, head tucked against his shoulder and fingers tracing a gentle pattern over his chest. "Ow," he mumbles into Mike's neck, wincing as, presumably, one of the ever offending pebbles digs into his back.

Mike smiles, wrapping a gentle arm around his boyfriend's shoulders as Will wriggles around, trying to get comfortable. "Too many rocks?"

"Yeah," Will huffs, squinting up at Mike accusingly, "Are you sure we can't sit in the car?"

"We're experiencing nature, Will," Mike says for the third time, exasperated. "Plus, I told you, my A/C is broken. We'd overheat and die."

Will rolls his eyes. "You're so dramatic," he grumbles, rolling over onto his back and gazing up at the sky. Mike smiles, letting his head fall to the side so he can watch Will's profile, lit up by the golden glow of the sunset.

He's so beautiful, looking happy and flushed despite all his griping, the sun casting dramatic shadows over his cheekbones. It's stupid, but Mike's missed him these last few weeks, where they've had less time to see each other, lost in the shuffle of visiting family members and summer jobs and everything else. He misses Will a lot, which is stupid and ridiculous, because they've been dating for a couple months now and had been dancing around it for a few months before that, but it's true. He'd missed out on time with Will, that year that he was in California and the months leading up to it, and it had been his fault and he knows it doesn't matter anymore, but it's just- it's something he thinks about, sometimes. How easy it would have been to have lost Will completely, and how lucky he is that he didn't.

Plus, Will is just- nice to have around. Objectively speaking.

Whatever.

"You're staring," Will says softly, and he doesn't look at him directly but his mouth tilts into a small, wry smile. Mike flushes, and is entirely uncompelled to look away.

"What are you gonna do about it?" he teases, nudging Will gently. He scoots closer, lifting his hand from where it rests in the grass to brush lightly through Will's hair, and Will hums appreciatively.

He reaches up and catches Mike's hand, pressing his lips to Mike's fingertips, soft and feather-light. Mike's heart flutters, and he rolls over, leaning over Will and staring him down with a goofy grin on his face.

Will meets his gaze, one eyebrow quirked. "You're pretty," he sing-songs, grinning all teeth, and Mike laughs even as he feels heat rush to his face.

"You're a dork," he returns, and dips down to press his lips to Will's before Will can argue. He can feel Will's smile against his lips, sweet and summery, and it makes something click into place in his chest. I missed this, he thinks hazily, which is still stupid and ridiculous because he sees Will every day, gets to kiss him like this basically whenever he wants, but it's true. This need inside of him runs deep and terrifyingly intense, and he'd always sort of thought it would mellow a little once he was actually dating Will, but apparently not. He just wants- needs Will here with him like this, all the time, forever.

Jesus Christ. Mike can never say any of that out loud. He'd die of mortification on the spot.

But if the way Will is kissing him back is any indication, the feeling is at least halfway reciprocated. His hands are pressed firmly into Mike's back, pressing him lower as he kisses him carefully, slowly, like he's relishing the feeling of Mike against him like this. For someone who, at least as far as he's told Mike, had had little to no experience with kissing before they got together, he's learned far, far too quickly. It's a little unfair, in all honesty, that Will can be so effortless like this, matching every ounce of Mike's crazed intensity with his own.

They even each other out. They work, like this.

After a long moment, Mike pulls back, nuzzling his nose into Will's cheek before settling back down into the grassy slope of the field. Will smiles, slinging an arm over Mike's stomach and returning to his original position - face pressed into Mike's neck, curled around him with their limbs hooked around each other.

He's so warm, rivaling the sun itself, and the air smells like freshly mowed grass and flowers and the faint traces of Will's shampoo from where his hair brushes against Mike's cheek.

And there's that other thing, the thing that occurs to Mike in moments like these, the reason for this deep-seated neediness and want in him, the thing he's known for years now, since before he could even properly put a name to it. He's been thinking about that thing a lot lately, because he's known it all this time, sure, but there's a big difference between keeping something like that tucked away in the back of his brain with the vague idea of getting around to dealing with it some day, versus knowing it with such constancy, with such regular reminders, now that he actually gets to be with Will in this way.

Will shifts against Mike again, pressing a light kiss to his collarbone, and Mike- might as well admit it, at this point.

"Hey, Will?" he asks softly, dragging his fingers through his boyfriend's hair again and turning his head, nosing against the side of his face and kissing his jawline lightly.

There must be something in his tone, something that gives him away, and he kind of figures Will knows what the- that the thing is anyway, but it still manages to settle his nerves when Will tilts his head up to look at him, smiling sweetly.

"Mike," he replies, lightly teasing and honey-sweet, "I know."

Thank God, Mike thinks, and his face splits into a smile. "Can I," he says, swallowing back the unwarranted nerves that are still humming through his veins, "Can I say it anyway?"

Will's eyes widen just slightly, and he flushes, looking embarrassed and a little shy. "Y-yeah," he says, his easily confident demeanor slipping a little, and he looks endearingly nervous, biting his lip and nodding once.

It's this, combined with the sun on their cheeks and the warmth between them, that makes the words slip out. "I love you," Mike whispers, heart beating fast in his chest and a giddy feeling overtaking him. He dips down, presses two quick kisses to Will's cheek, and a slightly hysterical giggle escapes him. "I love you so much," he whispers, face tucked in beside Will's and lips brushing his jaw.

Will's eyes flutter shut, and a smile steadily spreads across his face as Mike continues dropping little kisses to the side of his face and neck. "I love you too," he hums, as Mike ducks his head lower and kisses his neck, "I really- Mike, that tickles!"

"Don't care," Mike murmurs, kissing the junction between Will's neck and shoulder. "I love you, I love you, I love-"

"Okay," Will cuts in, laughing, "I get it, Mike."

Mike reluctantly detaches himself from Will's neck, nuzzling his face against Will's one more time before rolling over onto his back and bringing Will with him, an arm around his shoulders and pulling him closer. Will laughs again, quiet and warm, and his head settles heavily onto Mike's chest. "I love you too," he says again, and Mike's entire body floods with warmth. "I really do, Mike."

This, too, Mike had known - almost in the same way he'd been aware of his own feelings, a quiet sort of knowledge that he'd been putting off confronting. "I know," he hums, just to be annoying, and Will reaches up with a lazy hand to flick the side of his face. "I'm- stop it, I'm just saying."

He can't see Will's face, but he'd bet good money that Will is rolling his eyes at him. "Yeah, yeah," he grumbles, and then, voice softening as his fingers find their way to Mike's waist and he begins tracing gentle circles into the exposed strip of skin there, "I missed you, you know."

He missed me too, Mike thinks, wildly, and it shouldn't please him so much, the knowledge that his boyfriend is just as deranged and insane and nonsensical about this relationship as he is, but it's oddly gratifying. He hugs Will closer, enjoys the steady weight of him against him as he asks, voice warm, "When did you miss me?"

Will shrugs, the grass shifting beneath them as he scoots closer and continues tracing his fingertips into Mike's skin. "I don't know, just- recently. It's stupid, I know."

"No," Mike says quickly, pressing a kiss to the top of Will's head, "No, I know what you mean. I- I miss you too, sometimes. Whenever you're not around."

Will lifts his head, peeking up at Mike with a shy smile. "Yeah?"

Mike laughs, a little incredulous and a little giddy and a lot in love. "Will, I just told you I loved you, like, ten times-"

"Three and a half, actually," Will points out, and Mike giddily thinks he's counting, "And- I mean, that's good. Not that you miss me, or whatever, but. Just, sometimes I think I'm going crazy about this, about you, and it's just nice that you-"

"Crazy together," Mike interrupts, reaching for Will's hand where it's still pressed against his side and lacing their fingers together. "Right?"

Will laughs, settling back into him and squeezing his hand. "Yeah," he agrees softly, the sound reverberating through Mike's ribcage where Will's face is pressed into his t-shirt. "Yeah, crazy together."

Mike smiles, running his free hand over Will's back and letting his eyes fall shut contentedly. It'll be dark soon - the sky is turning a fiery red color as the sun dips lower still in the sky, and Mike had sworn up and down to Hopper that he'd have Will home by ten, which is a ridiculous curfew but tolerable for the simple fact that it's Will, and Mike will take whatever snatches of time with him that he can.

"This was nice, by the way," Will murmurs into his shirt, as Mike's hand brushes through his hair again.

"What, the date?" Mike asks, and he feels it rather than sees it when Will nods, cheek brushing against him.

"Mhm," he hums, sounding just as contented as Mike feels. "Thanks for- yeah. Thanks."

"Anytime," Mike says warmly, as Will's breathing evens out and both of their eyes flutter shut again.

The air is warm and alive with the sounds of birds and crickets chirping. Summer is just beginning, and Mike, for the first time in a while, feels like he has time - time with this beautiful boy, and his friends and everything important to him. Here, in this empty field at dusk, everything has come to a standstill, and the neediness and desperation that's constantly clawing at him has subsided, overpowered by the feeling of Will wrapped around him.

Mike breathes a soft sigh of relief, and the sunlight washes over them.

[doctorbrown]

MCFLY JULY ‘24 ⸺ 「 24 / 31 * OUT IN THE DESERT 」

January—March 1943

From the moment he’d been visited at the university by Oppenheimer with Groves in tow, the latter a looming, intimidating presence towering over him in his uniform compared to the amicable and even friendly disposition of Oppenheimer, he’d felt the cold bite of the Sword of Damocles pressed against his neck, digging deeper and deeper with each day he’d been left in purgatory, waiting.

He feared he’d lose his head before ever hearing the official outcome of his new employment.

When one of his colleagues had approached him about a week and a half after their departure, informing him that he’d received a call from the FBI asking some questions about him, Emmett’s heart stopped then and there and he was absolutely positive he’d seen the moment his head was severed from his neck, rolling down the hallway.

Twenty long seconds later, when his senses had returned to him, he learned that the sensation was just dizziness and he was still firmly intact.

Three weeks later, the hell had ended. To say his official acceptance onto the project was a weight off his shoulders would be an understatement. Emmett breathed a long sigh of relief, nearly giddy with the excitement that he’d come through the process relatively unscathed; his frayed nerves were the only real casualty of his stint in purgatory.

Why the outcome should have been anything other than this, he couldn’t say, but that didn’t stop his mind, already having latched onto the mystery and thrilling scientific intrigue that Oppenheimer had offered, from conjuring up the what-if possibilities while unseen hands manipulated the course of his life. He’d never been in legal trouble, no criminal record, his father was an incredibly prominent and well-respected, if feared and disliked, member of the community, and his academic achievements had been exceptional.

But now it was official and the part that should have been the most daunting brought him the most joy. Two months was more than enough time to wrap up his affairs in California nicely.

His courses at the university would be discontinued and his students would be disseminated out into the other professors’ courses. The small home he’d been provided here would go back to the university and whatever he deemed unimportant to take with him to New Mexico would be discarded. The head of the department wished him well, and after a brief exchange steeped in rumour and hearsay, he’d left, returning home to pack up the last of his things.

How fascinating that an entire life could be stuffed in a couple travel bags.

—

When Emmett returns to Hill Valley, tugging the last twenty-three years of his life up the pathway to the mansion he hadn’t seen in almost five years, it is his mother’s joyful cries that greet him, her hands that all but pull him through the door, and her voice that fills the living room as she sits down, harmonising with the song of time played by his favourite Grandfather Clock.

Emmett, the doctor. Emmett, the scientist. Emmett, her son, doing his part for his country, whatever that meant, because it was secret, secret, secret—all so very secret all he could say was “I can’t talk about it but I have to travel to get there”—and while she looked ten years younger, radiant with motherly pride, his father scoffed and harrumphed, making his opinion known in no uncertain terms.

You would’ve done better for the war as a soldier, not some damned-fool scientist.

‘But at least maybe you’ll have a chance to be useful. Do something good.’

This time, his father’s barbs do not sting. They strike at him from all angles, jabbing at his skin but never piercing, and he lets them fall to the ground at his feet, unwilling to have this argument again, as they did for so many long nights in his youth. With the prospect of unforetold scientific progress right there at his fingertips, he could find it in himself to forgive his father without a fight. He didn’t understand. He wouldn’t let him spoil this.

Science—science was the future. And they would see.

His departure comes as quick as his arrival, his mother asking when he thinks he’ll be back in California.

“Soon,” he says, unable to give her any definite number, pulling at the hope this project is supposed to bring. “When we’ve won the war.”

Alone, he arranges to have himself and his entire life brought to San Francisco, where he’ll meet the train that carries him to the future.

—

San Francisco to Santa Fe.

Emmett spends most of his time in comfortable silence, watching the touches of humanity upon the land slowly and slowly being stripped away. Pavement gives way to dirt and grass and unsullied earth and the towering buildings of the cities sprout leaves and stretch up to the heavens, basking in the afternoon sunlight.

He remembers the itinerary—cryptic instructions written on a packet of papers shoved into his hands and the explicit instructions to allow nobody else to see the contents of this folder. Emmett doesn’t think he could forget it if he tries, burning a hole in the inner pocket of his overcoat, searing his chest even through his clothes.

More often than not, he tries to imagine the stage that will hold what is supposed to be the greatest scientific advancements of the last three centuries—what we’ll be doing here will be the culmination of the last three centuries of physics. Don’t you want to be a part of that?—I want to take on this challenge—only to imagine something even more fantastical than its predecessor every time he tries.

A fully functioning laboratory and city do not just spring up overnight in the middle of the desert, but Oppenheimer had said it would be ready in time, and Emmett found himself almost immediately assured by that, half-convinced that Nature itself would bend to that man’s charm.

Perhaps, Emmett thinks, a flutter in his stomach equal parts dread and excitement, it just might.

What else would require some of the greatest scientific minds to gather in one remote location under the strictest security imaginable?

The possibilities lull him into a dream-filled sleep.

—

They’re waiting for him there, just as they said. Two large uniformed escorts that Emmett easily has several inches on tower over him, usher him into an ordinary old car—grey, unassuming, rather mundane, actually, but when discretion is key—and expertly fit an entire life into the boot.

As if they’ve done this before.

Clement and Rosario, Lieutenant-Commander and Lieutenant, respectively, as he’s come to learn from the intermittent conversation, were the ones assigned to bring him to the site, get him through security, and make sure everything went off without a hitch.

Emmett watches, his face all but pressed against the window in the back as the landscape overrides the thoughts about this project that have been playing on a loop since he first alighted the train back in California. The desert is beautiful, nothing like the views in the city, and maybe he views the wide open area through the tinted lenses of lingering boyish romanticism for such an environment, but there is a rough, rugged beauty to it all in reality that Emmett is pleased to know for himself is not just a result of the films.

He must have said that out loud, because the younger of the two—or the one Emmett assumes is younger, given the softness still present on his face that looks out of place with the gun strapped to his hip—Rosario, says, “Yeah, isn’t it? Beautiful place out here. Shame we went and ruined it.” Before Emmett can ask what that means, he just says, “You’ll see.”

He does see, almost immediately.

This complex—‘Welcome home, Doc,’ Clement jokes in that gruff voice of his—looks more like a prison dropped in the most remote location they could think of, where they’ll work and torture them until they get what they want or die trying. That fence must be ten feet high, topped with barbed wire, and Emmett wonders how many scientists they know of that are athletic enough to even attempt scaling a wall like that.

They preferred to scale theoretical hurdles, not physical.

The cold feeling of dread slithers up his spine. He dismisses it the moment they reach the security checkpoint, telling himself he’s being foolish—the military is involved; everything with them is cloak-and-dagger.

Processing takes an eternity, and Emmett feels a rush of dizziness he can’t quite explain when a thick set of papers are pressed into his hand, followed by a white identification badge that has immortalised his awkwardness in a frozen snapshot of time.

“Housing information’s on the first page. You’ll get used to the layout. Keep that badge with you at all times, Doctor Brown.”

[vllergy]

emerges from the ether for 5 seconds before vanishing again--i don't post here often i go through phases, the moon has phases i have phases whatever but i've been playing a lot of b@lders g@ate and while i don't think i'll ever feel comfortable writing canon character content (maybe h@lsin??? g@le??? who knows) this one NPC interaction had me by the throat. feat: tw: canon courtesan/sex worker NPC, kink!reader, second person narration since the game is like that, hunky sneezy drow man, honestly a lot of build up for little payoff im sorry idk what happened. i also don't know the word count im useless (dialog is in-game dialogue up until the lil time skip to his room, then it's all me baybbyeee)

The drow is one of the most handsome you’ve ever seen. Not that you expected him to be ugly, of course. The fabled drow twins of Sharress’ Caress are known far and wide for their talents as well as their beauty. Its just, seeing them in person is quite different from sustaining on mere rumor alone. Sorn Orlith, as he introduces himself, is rather muscular for a drow. He stands nearly a good head taller than you with a broad, brazenly defined chest. His outfit is nothing more than a metal cage topped over his heavy shoulders and flared out down his sternum like witch’s fingers, pointing towards an abdomen taut with muscle.

His long skirt rides around his hips but you can still see the shadow of indents against bluish-gray skin there, as if they are inviting you to take a closer look. They likely are. Nothing about his appearance is not meticulously crafted to draw you in. From the slight sheen on his lips that are plush and naturally the color of ripe blueberries, to the way his wintry hair is falls effortlessly back from his face in perfect waves. He is a vision, and yet his eyes are not cold and imperious like you might expect. They’re warm. Inviting. Somehow kind, despite what kind of debauchery goes on in a place like this. 

You ask him how he ended up here in the first place. Apparently, the Underdark isn’t kind to male courtesans. Also, he was bored.

“The entirety of drow culture is obsessed with bondage beyond reason. While such activities have their charms, I yearned to reach greater depths.” He gives a dazzling smile. “And there is no society on this planet more laterally, imaginatively and confusingly depraved as that of Baldur’s Gate. Although of late, I do feel I’ve seen everything. Perhaps you’ll show me something new?”

Your throat goes dry. 

“I’m…glad you’re happy here,” you manage out. 

Sorn laughs, but not unkindly “I’d have to restrain myself far more than any play-bindings do if I worked in another field. This is a place where I can be myself boundlessly.” 

His arms widen, emphasizing the violet taut flesh of muscle in his shoulders and biceps. You do your best not to stare.

“There are so many who come to me speaking of a fixation that no one else has ever been able to share with them…” he leans close, “And never will again. 

He smells of bergamot and brandy. It’s intoxicating. “A once in a lifetime moment of passion. Every day. What could be better? Don’t you want to try it?”

You do. And he can tell. His grin widens, almost wolfish. 

“Trust me, you don’t want to miss my signature Menzoberranzan Love Trick.”

—

With the door to Sorn’s private room shut, you feel a sense of calm overwhelm you. The room is beautiful—long enough to be someone’s home, crystals and plants glowing in every corner, a bed surrounded by flowers, shadows in all the right places. It looks like it was plucked free from the most beautiful parts of the Underdark and brought here to Wyrms Crossing. It feels comforting. Safe. 

“Now, are you going to tell me about this little secret of yours? Or would you prefer to keep me in the dark?”

Sorn’s voice startles you and he slips a hand around your waist, nosing at your neck as he comes from behind you. He releases you at the reaction, but doesn’t make a show of it. He’s masterful at what he does. Reading his partner, gauging their comfort level, adjusting and maneuvering as necessary. Your blushing cheeks must give you away because he gives you an encouraging smile instead and reaches for your wrists.

“Come, let us sit first. I find it’s easier to talk like that.”

He leads you to the foot of the bed. The sheets are luxurious, obsidian satin, and the mattress sinks with your weight. He sits close, angling his body towards you, but not so close as to crowd you. Your knees touch. You can see his breath flexing the hardened muscles of his torso and chest as he lingers there, expectant but not impatient. His hands cover yours in your own lap.

“It’s perfectly all right to be nervous,” Sorn continues, “But I assure you, your secret is safe with me. And not only that, it is *treasured*. I meant what I said earlier. There is very little that surprises me these days. Should you present me with something unexpected, I will be noting more than delighted.” 

You avoid his eyes, despite how gentle they are. You’ve never said this in front of anyone. But he’s right. Odds are, there are multiple someones in Baldurs Gate who have stranger interests than you. Sorn has likely indulged them all and without complaint. As he said downstairs, he rather enjoys this aspect of his work. Still, your tongue is in knots as you work up the nerve to say it. Your eyes travel up from his chin to his perfectly shaped mouth, the cupids bow of his lips and then finally the long, aquiline shape of his nose. It’s a fine nose. Prominent on his face and somehow as elegant as the rest of him, it captivates your attention for a moment. 

When you realize you’ve been staring for a moment too long, the confession rushes out of you in a breath, “Sneezing.”

Your face feels like it might explode from the heat. Sorn blinks. You expect him to laugh, or tell you to leave the room, or some other horrible outcome but instead he merely tilts his head. His hands give yours an assuring squeeze.

“And what about it do you like, my love?”

You lean over with a groan. You truly cannot believe you’re having this conversation—but his warm chuckle sends something fluttering in your chest and you gather the courage to straighten back up again and look him in the eye.

“I’m…not quite sure, I just know I enjoy it,” you say carefully, “And when my partners do it.”

“Mmm,” he says, contemplating, “So you’d like it if I sneezed for you then?”

Your lips purse, holding the answer hostage in your throat. You nod helplessly instead. He laughs again and releases one of his hands to brush a knuckle along your cheek.

“Look how red you are, it’s positively darling. Was that all, little bird? That was what you were so afraid to tell me?”

You nod again, nearly in tears. It’s off your chest now and it feels incredible, but it’s also freeing in a way that makes you feel raw and exposed. He’s being so kind about it that you’re not quite sure how to react. Emotions clash together, warring for dominance inside the confines of your skull. 

Sorn seems to understand immediately. His hand skirts below your jaw and tips your chin up as he leans forward and captures your lips with his own. It’s a simple, nearly chaste kiss. So featherlight and innocent that it feels like the sun peeking through the clouds. “Shh, shhh,” he soothes as he pulls away, “I think it’s wonderful. I will say it’s the first time I’ve encountered it, but I think it’s quite endearing.” He pulls away a little further, leaving you breathless. His white smile gleams. “And what an exciting challenge besides!” 

He releases you fully and stands from the bed, his hands on his hips. He looks about the room, brow furrowed in concentration. You’re still a little dazed from the kiss, wondering how he manages to taste like brandy and sweetwine and smell as good as he does while also trying to get your brain to stop swimming. You blink a few times to get your bearings as Sorn stalks to one of his shelves.

“Now, the only trouble is—“ he starts as he rifles through a few things, “There isn’t much that makes me sneeze, I’m afraid.”

Your stomach wilts a bit. Perhaps it was too much to hope that this strapping drow would have a terrible allergy to lavender. Though, to be fair, he hardly looks like the type to be beset by anything so pedestrian. Sorn is so maddeningly put together. From his perfect hair, meticulous ensemble and finely crafted expressions, he is clearly a man that keeps up appearances. Decorum is important to him. Should he ever be laid low by an allergy, you imagine he would fight it with the all the dignity and stoicism he so proudly displayed. 

Still—you didn’t work up all this nerve just to get here and *not* have anticipated something like this happening. Shyly, you let your fingers linger over the vial in your pocket. 

“I…may have something that will help,” you say.

Sorn turns from the shelf with what looks like a raven feather in his hand, his eyes bright. He looks positively delighted at the news.

“Oh I love when my clients come prepared,” he says, “You are a dream.”

“We could try that first, though,” you say, gesturing to the feather. There’s definitely something to that idea and it’s already stirring a feeling in your belly that has you shifting on the bed and your heart rising. There’s no possible way Sorn can know this, but somehow you sense he does, because his eyes sharpen their focus on you and his grin goes syrupy. 

“Lovely,” he comments and returns to your side. As he sinks back into the mattress, he gestures a hand. “Is here all right? Or would you like to do it somewhere else?”

“Here is fine,” you choke out. The idea that this is happening, really happening, is making your brain turn to lightning. You can hardly wait. 

He holds out the feather to you, “I assume you’d like to do the honors?”

You nod. The feather has little weight to it, and it’s gorgeous up close. The black shimmers with hues of purples and blues in the low light, glimmering in the reflection of your eyes. You run your eyes along the length of it and then find yourself starting at Sorn again, heart in  your throat.

“Is it… all right if I touch you?” you ask. You lean forward, hand with the feather outstretched, but think you may need to position yourself a little closer and brace yourself on his shoulder to get a good angle.

“Darling,” he laughs. He suddenly seizes your wrist and brings you closer, lowering his voice near your ear. “You can do whatever you want to me.”

You gulp as he slides back, demure and innocent as if he hadn’t just made goosebumps appear along your arms and thighs with his words alone. A nervous smile paints your lips and you do finally take his shoulder in your hand. You’re kneeling almost into his lap at this point and to support you, he draws an arm around your back. It’s so intimate you’re almost dizzy with the closeness alone, and you haven’t even gotten to—

The feather brushes at the corner of his mouth and his mouth twitches in a smile. Even just that response alone makes your heart race. From there, you slowly move it up to the indent above his mouth, and then his septum. He wrinkles his nose, skin avoiding the stimulation on instinct before he wrests his control back. He smiles but says nothing, allowing you to continue. 

You draw the tip of the feather around one nostril. It quivers in response, but otherwise, Sorn’s eyes remained focused on you. You test a bit farther, drawing slow, soft circles. There isn’t anything for a few seconds, and then he starts to blink, irritated tears prickling in his eyes. He sniffs a few times and then has to cough, politely turning his head away on instinct as he does so. “Apologies,” he says and then grins, “What a strange sensation.”

“Are you all right?” you ask. 

“Very much so,” he nods, “Please, continue.”

You do, but to mixed results. You’re certainly irritating his nasal passages, but sadly not enough to make him sneeze. After a few minutes of attempting, all you’ve really done is making him cough and cry irritated tears. Disappointed, you’re about to give up when he takes your wrist again, holding the feather inside his nose.

“W-wait,” he says, “I had it for but a moment.”

Your heart stutters. Carefully, you twist the feather as you had been a moment earlier. His eyelashes, pale as new fallen snow, sweep his cheeks and a breath catches on the roof of his mouth. The hand that was around your wrist falls slack, fingers drifting down towards your elbow.

“Yes, I feel it,” he whispers. 

His grip around your back tightens and he draws in another breath. His eyebrows crumple and hoist upwards and his nose practically twitches. 

“Hh—hiiyh—“ 

As his expression snaps, you pull the feather away just in time. His head wrenches away as the sneeze whisks through him. 

“Hi-ISSHh!” 

It’s a spartan, nearly soft sound. Wet, given the amount of torture his nose has been put through for the last few unproductive minutes, but otherwise without frills or embellishments. It’s a very honest sneeze you think, but perhaps one he was not entirely prepared for. By his clenched teeth you think he might have held back at the last moment out of some sense of propriety. The way he lightly touches the backs of his knuckles to the underside of his nose in the aftermath and gives a delicate sniff further enforces your theory. 

Still, it was a sight. 

“Blessings,” you say, enraptured. 

Sorn recovers quickly and smiles at you. 

“Did you—snf—enjoy that? I am sorry it took so long.”

Your red cheeks are enough of a glowing recommendation, but you nod anyway. Feeling a little braver, and a little desperate for him now that you’ve seen him lose control the once, your hand slips down against his abdomen. The warm skin there flexes against your palm as he breathes in. He hums a soft noise of approval and clasps his hand over yours before leaning in to kiss you. There’s just the briefest moisture in the kiss, only you would ever notice it, and it sets your brain on fire. 

“Perhaps we should try your method instead,” he suggests when he pulls away for a breath, kissing a line across your jaw and to your throat next, “It might be more…productive.” 

You feel dizzy. His hand skirts along your thigh and meets the joint of your hip, squeezing with enough pressure to make you moan. 

“If you’re sure,” you say, “It can be…strong.” It’s only fair to warn him, after all. Everyone reacts differently, but you’ve never not seen it work on someone.

“All the better,” he hums against the hollow of your throat, nipping softly at the skin, “I simply won’t have you leaving here disappointed.”

You shift upwards to get access to your pocket. Sorn discards the sodden feather and watches with curious, eager eyes. When you reveal the tiny glass vial, he smirks. 

“I see,” is all he says before nodding his head toward the collection of pillows at the head of the bed, “Let’s get more comfortable first, shall we?”

Moments later, you’re lying side by side, both propped up by pillows and surrounded by the soft glowing plants and crystals that make a canopy of the bed. Sorn holds himself up on an elbow and examines the vial that looks comically small in his much larger fingers. You lay your cheek against one of the pillows and stare up at him, still feeling your heartbeat pound in your ears. You’d thought this would have gotten easier after seeing it happen once, but the idea of seeing it happen again is almost worst. Now that you know the sound, know how his lip curls a little, how his eyes flutter—all you want to do is see it more, see him unravel.

“So, just a pinch of this?” Sorn asks. He seems more curious than anything. Like he doesn’t quite totally believe that whatever is in there is actually going to be able to make him sneeze.

“Mhmhm,” you say. 

He grins and sets to work. A hefty pinch between his thumb and forefinger is gathered and then quickly—and in a rather sophisticated manner—snorted up one nostril. It doesn’t seem to cause him any harm like you worried it might, and he merely clears his throat once it’s over and brushes his hands off. 

“Oh, it’s lovely,” he comments, “Almost medicinal.” 

You can’t answer him because you can’t breathe. You’re waiting for something. Anything. A flicker of his expression, a quiver of his nose, something to indicate that the powder is set to work. But nothing happens. Sorn merely looks back at you questioningly. 

“When does it start to take effect?” he asks.

“Usually right away.”

He frowns, “Oh. Perhaps I should take more?”

You saw the amount he took. It was already sizable. Any more and you’d be concerned for him. You quickly shake your head, “No, I wouldn’t. Maybe it’s just…slow to start.”

Sorn huffs, his disappointment mirroring your own. He sets the vial aside and turns back to you, pulling you flush against his body. That’s still nice, sneezing or no. Every hard angle of him presses against you and the heat of his skin makes you shudder. He kisses you deeply and you can still smell the slightly earthy scent of the powder on him as you return it. 

“I’m terribly sorry,” he murmurs close to your mouth, “I’ve done nothing but disappoint you tonight.”

You blink up at him, “That’s not true!” 

He sighs and tucks a bit of your hair behind your ear. “It is, but I promise you, I will make it up to you. We still have plenty of time, and there are other things we can do, besides.”

Sorn dips an arm under you and pulls you flat against the bed, hovering over you. He grins down at you and starts to remove your top. 

“Is this alright?” he asks softly.

You nod, nearly choking on your want for him. Everywhere he uncovers bare skin, he lavishes in kisses until you’re bare from the waist up and the two of you are flesh against flesh. His skin sears yours with warmth. He trails fingers down your sternum and then down to your bellybutton, then lower. 

“You are a delightful little thing,” he says. His voice is velvet, and his warm breath paints down your ribs as he follows the path of his hand. 

You feel the gasp as much as you hear it. It’s a sudden, reckless thing—so quick that neither of you are prepared for it. Sorn’s expression flinches for just a moment and he barely has time to turn his head to the side before a sneeze completely overtakes him—misting your side in the process. “hh-EDSHHH’iuh!” 

You’re stunned. Sorn looks like he might be too, if not for the telltale signs of another impending sneeze close behind the first. He shifts and places a hand on your hip as he sits up a little. You watch as his upper lip curls over bright teeth and his nostrils flare once before he wrenches away from you successfully this time. “hhHH’RRSCCH!” This one is stronger than the last, more voice to it. It shakes him and you by extension on the mattress.

“Bless you,” you say, but he shakes his head. His hand squeezes your hip gently as if to say ‘not yet’. “Hih-ih!”

His fist goes to his mouth before you can stop it, and he squelches the last sneeze into submission. His eyes cinch shut and he bends at the waist, shoulders trembling as the colossal sound is contained to nothing more than a whisper. “hHh-nGXST!” 

He opens his eyes, though somewhat warily. As if he’s not sure the tickle is quite gone yet. He gives a cagey sniffle and blots his knuckle under his nostrils, “Goodness.” Then, he turns to you and finds your gaze positively enraptured. He smiles. 

“I suppose it does work ah-after all!” He rubs at the tip of his nose for a moment and then flutters his eyes, “I do hope you’re ready for more because it seh—seems…” 

Your hand goes to his chest. You feel the swell of his breath deepen, the warm feeling of his skin moving under your fingers. Sorn seems to get the idea because his palm reaches up to cover yours. His fingers wrap around your palm as his breath continues to snag. You catch his eyes just for a moment before they slide back. 

“hHH’RRSCh’euh!” He trembles under your touch with the force of it. He lifts his head just barely, eyebrows canted desperately, and then pitches downwards again, spraying your arm with abandon. “hh’AEEShhh’ah!” 

“Such a tickle,” he says breathily as he recovers. He gives a wet sniffle and smiles at you, but it’s hazy, the look in his eyes already distracted by the mounting itch. But he doesn’t seem bothered by it. If anything, he’s enjoying the newness of the sensation. The break from monotony. 

His nostrils flare and he releases his hand to rub his knuckle against his septum once more. 

You feel a little bold for asking, “Are you all right?”

He nods, smiling. He tries to hold your eyes but the tickle steals his concentration once more. 

“Quite!Just—hh…sn’tsCHh’eeze-hhHH! H’RRSHC’hu!” 

You reach your other hand up to stroke through his hair and turn him a little more towards you as he prepares for another. He resists at first out of instinct alone, but adjusts in the moment it takes for the sneeze to have its way with him. As his breath snaps, he ducks his head in the space between you and releases it into your lap. “hh”hRRRASsh’chu!” 

“Bless you,” you say, smoothing back his hair. You crawl into his lap and he welcomes you without hesitation, securing your thighs around his hips even as his head tilts back for two more with barely a breath in between. He ducks them between the two of you but there isn’t much space. His hands clench against your thighs with each outburst. “hh-eHH’SCCHE’uh! h’RRSH’ue!” 

Blearily, he looks up. He’s dazed. Sniffly. His cheeks are indigo and the area around his nostrils is too. You kiss him, because he just looks so stupidly *kissable* and he murmurs a laugh against your mouth. 

“It is quite comforting thatyou find me attractive in such a state,” he sniffs once you pull away. 

“Very attractive,” you remind him.

He smiles, and continues smiling even as his expression flickers again. “Ah, one-hh more perhaps,” he says.  He raises a hand in front of his face and a rather tired sounding sneeze ripples through him. “hH’EDShh!”

“Bless you.”

“I don’t thhhink I’ve ever snhheezed so much in my life-hh!” He leans his forehead onto your shoulder and does away with using his hand to cover, opting to simply hold onto your hips and let the sensation take him. “hh’UEHDSHH’iu!” You stroke his bare back and feel his ribs expand beneath your fingers before tightening twice in quick succession. “hh’NGXT! nG’ssT!” 

He clears his throat after and lifts his head back up, adjusting you on his lap. “Ah, I should have asked, do you prefer if I hold them in or let them out? Often I don’t know which it will be until it happens but… perhaps I could try…try to—”

His eyes roll and he turns his head, giving you a clear view of his twitching profile. “If I could juhhst get through a sehh’ESsch!—sentence!” 

“I don’t mind either way, I just don’t want you to hurt yourself if you hold them in,” you say to try and spare him. 

“Oh, darling, it takes much more than that to hurt me,” he wriggles his nose handsomely and turns back to you with a devilish grin. His eyebrows raise. “And lo! A full sentence! The effects must be wearing off.” He sniffs experimentally and for the first time, his eyes don’t get hazy in the aftermath. 

You feel disappointment sink your heart like a stone. It was bound to wear off eventually. But before you can even lament the course of events, he pats your thigh and shifts you off his lap. 

“Come, where’s the vial?” 

You blink. Surely he doesn’t want to do more of that?

He seems to know exactly what you’re thinking because he taps the bottom of your chin and winks.

“Oh, we’re far from finished, love. Ready for round two?”

[lykosangelic]

not to write meta or anything, but something about delissandro's relationships to his skalds are so...tragic?

like. colin. the man he hired to protect him. the one he trusted implicitly to continue to do so, as long as it was needed. his best, maybe only friend. the one who trusted him with a secret he'd told nobody before, a secret he had seen kill his father, even after deli was needlessly harsh out of emotion. a man so deeply cautious and certain of what was right. a man who balanced and completed his strategy and planning.

karna. the girl, later woman, that he shares his secret with. who trusted him with hers first. who establishes and maintains bare minimum trust which becomes more. who allows herself to desire him more than she fears him, even as that desire goes nowhere but unnamed devotion. who tore out her eye for him. who killed for him. a woman who balances and completes his ruthlessness.

delissandro's relationships are a tangled mess of emotion and function, and he refuses to acknowledge that someone's opinion can be important to him no matter their "use". if colin was purely functional in his position, he could have been a knight or a commander of some sort. karna could have been a spymaster. but no. delissandro uses "skald." a title as unique as the people he places it upon. somehow missing the gentleness with which he says the word.

[bonitanightmxres]

not over you || r. abbott

rhett abbott x fem!reader

synopsis: years after your mutual breakup with rhett, he thinks he’s getting along fine. soon, he realizes he’s been lying to himself this whole time.

warnings: mentions of alcohol, some fluff

length: 1.1k

Some nights, Rhett stayed out until the dawn, drinking his problems away, and maybe even burying them in some blonde whose name he couldn’t remember for the night. Then, he’d go out and do it again the next night.

And that’s exactly what he had planned to continue doing tonight—well, after he changed out of his battered t-shirt. Rhett’s plans changed as soon as he walked through the front door, hearing familiar laughter. Part of him believed maybe it was time to call it a night and sober up because there was no way he actually heard your laugh inside his house. Following the sound, Rhett made his way to the kitchen where his mother sat with another woman and talked and had a cup of coffee. Frozen in the doorframe of the kitchen, he saw the woman’s back, not getting a good look of her face. If Rhett was being totally honest, he was scared to. Scared of the fact that if it was you, he’d never be able to look away and let you go again; scared of the possibility that if this woman wasn’t you, then that would just mean that his broken heart had never healed.

“Rhett, guess who’s finally back.” Cecilia had finally taken a notice to her son’s presence, and eagerly waved him over.

His heartbeat grew rapidly, and he felt his palms clammy because as soon as the woman turned in her seat to face him, your eyes locked with his and Rhett froze. For the first time in his life, he was quiet. He couldn’t bring himself to say anything. The words were caught in his throat like a fish in net—they tried to get loose and come out, but the more they tried, the more stuck they became.

“Hi, Rhett,” your soft voice knocked him out of his thoughts. “Care to join us?”

“I-”

“He’d love to,” Cecilia stood up from her seat, setting her mug in the sink and bringing a fresh cup to her son. “I’m gonna turn in for the night.” She gave you a quick hug before heading up the stairs, “Lovely seeing you again, sweetheart. Don’t be a stranger.”

“Can I-uh,” Rhett cleared his throat. “Can I sit with you?”

You let out a soft laugh, “It’s your house, Rhett. Sit wherever you want.”

A thin smile appeared in the corners of his lips as he took a seat beside you. It was then that the bruises and scrapes on his face were visible underneath the warm light of the kitchen.

“So,” Rhett started, trying to think of something to say. “What’re you up to these days?” 

“Oh, y’know,” You shrugged, “Graduated a few weeks ago, then decided to move back home. Now, I start a new job in a couple weeks.” As you sipped your coffee, you couldn’t help but notice the dried blood on his cheek. “What about you, Rhett?” You pointed to your cheek, mirroring his injuries. “What are you up to these days?” 

He chuckled, and became silent. Partly because he didn't know what to say, and partly because he wished he had something more impressive to tell you. Here you were, fresh out of college and ready to start a new chapter in your life. And here he was, bruised and bloody from a bar fight like he was twenty-one again. 

Running a kitchen towel under the warm water of the kitchen faucet, you made your way back to the table, dabbing it at Rhett’s injuries.

“Sorry,” you said as he winced. “That looks like it hurt.”

“You should see the other guy.”

“I’m guessing the other guy is a Tillerson?” You questioned, though you knew better than to ask a question with an obvious answer.

Rhett’s eyes watched your every movement, the way your hands moved gently across his skin, and the way your eyebrows crinkled together as you concentrated. For the second time tonight, he couldn't believe he wasn't drunk--that he was sober and you stood before him, intimately close and tending to his wounds. 

His injuries were merely scratches and bruises, and didn't need any attention at all. Really, you just jumped at the first opportunity to touch him, and of course, it would be because of a drunken fight with one of the Tillersons. It reminded you of the times you’d patch him up in your younger years after a riding competition--he never really needed any patching up, but it made you feel important and he let you do it anyway. 

Tossing the towel to the side, you got up and set your mug in the sink, “I should probably get going now, it’s getting late. Thank Cecilia for the coffee for me, please?”

Rhett shot up from his seat, desperate to think of a way to make you stay. After all this time, this wasn’t how he pictured he’d see you again. In fact, the truth was he’d pictured this moment for years--how he’d run into you, what he’d say. And now you were about to leave him again, and he didn't know what to do. “I love you,” Rhett blurted out of the blue. “I-I’m not over you. I tried, y’know, to move on, but I don’t think I ever will.” 

“Don’t. I-”

“Please,” he begged, slowly inching his way toward you, and reached for your hand. “I know there’s some part of you that feels something for me still. I felt it just now.” 

Rhett’s antics caught you off-guard, releasing emotions you had buried years ago. His hand was warm and rough, and it felt like home as you remembered your time with him. Every logical part of you wanted to pull your hand away, but the truth was you missed the feeling. “ Y’know, I tried too. To move on, like how we promised each other we would. But I looked for you in every person I was with,” you stared at your intertwining hands. “I’ve always loved you Rhett. I don’t think I ever stopped.” 

You placed your hand against his cheek, gently rubbing your thumb underneath the scratch that was beginning to scab. Rhett placed his own hand over yours, pressing it into his face, as if he could feel you closer that way. “There was nobody for me after you, darlin’. It’s only ever been you.” He pressed a kiss to your forehead, and pulled you into a hug, afraid that if he let go, you might leave again. You stayed that way for a while, embraced in each other’s grasp like there was no tomorrow. 

Many years had passed since the last time you two had seen each other, but you were both determined to never let another one go by where you weren't at each other’s side. 

[nem0-nee]

HANDS... of TIME will wring my neck.

It is 9:15 according to the watch. It was this late in the story, yet she was still in the shackles placed upon her by STYX.

How on earth did the Ramshackle prefect end up in such a predicament?

[The pages beckon you to take a peek]

Usually, she would've been back in NRC at this hour, just in time to prepare for what was to come with the Diasomnia chapter. Yet, somehow she's still shackled down in Tartarus. Why is that the case?

Guess it's because of those stones she ate, the ones Grim would gobble down in the previous timelines. This time, she was the one throwing these down the hatch.

Kyuu told her that it was necessary to swallow these blotted magestones in order to develop her UM. Each stone swallowed meant that she would get stronger and stronger.

You could say that she saw this as necessary. The ends justify the means, and it's utterly justifiable that she must get stronger to save everyone. Plus, if it meant that Grim would be saved, then she'd gladly take the fall.

And so, stone after stone did she get strong. The hour hand struck harder, and the minute hand moved faster. Each battle from each dorm got easier and easier the more she consumed a stone from the fallen phantoms.

Yet...

Of course, nothing in this world comes for free.

The night after the VDC competition, the Ramshackle prefect went rogue.

At first, Grim went missing from the dorm's premises. This greatly worried Mayuu, thinking that her efforts were futile and that he was bound to go ballistic and get captured by STYX all over again. However, this was proven to not be the case, as he eventually returned from his trip from Sam's shop with a wagon of tuna.

However, later that night, Grim woke to his tail getting stepped on by this stupid human. This would be a normal occurrence, but something about her this time seemed off.

Mayuu's motion was akin to a robot's; stiff and mechanical. The prefect definitely did a lot of strange things, but even this was an outlier for her peculiarities. What was even more strange was that she decided to take a trip outside without her weapons. Presumably, if she were to be awake at this hour, she'd go out to train.

Something was definitely up, Grim just knew it.

Thus, he decided to follow her. Better safe than to be sorry, and he didn't want to feel sorry if his human ended up disappearing just because of his ignorance.

Trailing behind the prefect, they both eventually reached the VDC stage. Everything else that happened went by so fast.

She was hungry, hungry for the magestone buried in the depths of the stage. She was desperate to get that crunch that the murky stone gave, and she was going to do anything in order to get that bite.

Grim witnessed the prefect unearthing the stage with her bare hands, causing them to wear and tear to a degree.

"M-Myaaah human!!? S-Stop it! I command you to stop! You're gonna get yourself hur-"

"H O U R H A N D"

The response Mayuu gave him for his rare concern was a punch to the face. What makes matters worse was that she used her UM against him, dealing a painful blow to the poor thing.

With this incident, Mayuu ended up being taken by STYX. There they discovered a concerning amount of blot building up in the prefect's system. Thus, she is to stay on the premises until it's deemed safe for her to return to the outside world.

To her, this is all worth it. The narrative deviated from the story she knew. Now, there was hope that she could finally change the ending of this tale.

Yet, who's to say that the route she's on would yield better results than the one she already knew?

[ - END OF CHAPTER -]

[adore-gregor]

🙄🫠

[nervocat]

omg this day might turn out to be so good actually

[un-local]

What do you think stops Rogier from being emotionally vulnerable? Do you think it’s something tied to his pride?

Hi anon!

Oooo, this is a fun question >:3

Really, it could be any number of things. This game is incredibly vague, so it’s very much up to reader interpretation/preference. Here’s my own personal read:

It’s a defense mechanism of sorts. A way to deal with the fact that no one really seems to in his corner. Fia’s using him to get to the cursemark, and D’s had a nasty falling out with him. (If his dialogue about Rogier is anything to go by.) I don’t think anyone else in the Hold even mentions him. 

Which is all to say: he’s on his own out there. He doesn’t have anyone to turn to, despite how much he may or may not need it. (And the way I write him; he needs it.)

Maybe this is a personal opinion, but the one thing that feels worse than opening up is doing so and getting something that completely misses the mark in response. God, that’ll kill ya. It’s a gut punch. As alienated as Rogier is implied to be, that kind of “misattunement” or whatever might feel even worse.

So, opening up invites the risk of an interaction turning sour. 

Given both D and Fia’s vast schisms in worldviews/values with Rogier, it might feel like a gamble to be vulnerable with of them nowadays. So, by never opening up at all, there’s no guessing game. No dice roll, no Russian Roulette. Utter Detachment = Utter Invulnerability. You can’t lose the game if you never play, right?

To quote one of my chapter endnotes: 

Rogier keeps a lot of emotion under the surface. He refuses to express it, and behaves with utter detachment in doing so. So, any interaction that could caused heightened emotion... it puts that aloof facade he clings to at risk. In a past post, I've summarized Rogier's mental state as this:

There's a fear, when you keep everything bottled up so tight. When you've never had that "safety" to be upset. That when you finally do crack, the whole dam will break, and everything will come out, and it'll be a goddamn mess. There's a fear you'll lose yourself in the flood. It'll be too much for you or anyone else to handle. Visions of avalanche. So on, so forth. [Ch 17 Endnotes Essay]

So yeah. I think it started out as a way to protect himself in his (presumed) life of nobility before. Something to keep interpersonal interactions predicable and tame; thus easy to navigate. But as time progressed, it’s something he’s become more and more dependent on. Without it, there’s a fear of losing himself in the deluge, so to speak. 

I’d like to point to Alberich here. If we want to, we might see Alberich as a sort of corrupted, twisted version of Rogier. A malicious externalization of everything he’s ever let fester inside him. Or at least, what Rogier fears he’d become should he express the depths of his “anger, grief, regret, [and] fears.” A jungian shadow, to go with Crunchy’s style of analysis. (Not that I’ve finished that video yet…)

And if you want my batshit thoughts on Alberich as Rogier’s foil… more here. Cursed art included. 

So, uh…. Yeah. I think it’s a defense mechanism, one that’s become the source of many of his problems. A vicious cycle. He can’t trust others because he’s alone; and he’s alone because he can’t trust others. 

I know I kept you waiting a while on this answer, anon. Thank you for your patience! Ngl: Baldur’s gate came out on console recently, and… uh… huh? Who am I again? What day is it? I think I finally snapped myself out of it, though. (Lie)

Jokes aside, thank you for the ask anon! :D

[theflyingfeeling]

Anyone remember that Olympics AU I wrote last winter, with Joel as a hockey player and Aleksi as a figure skater? How's about a little prequel for that? No? Well, too bad, because there was figure skating on TV and I was inspired, so here's What happened in Lausanne:

(includes alcohol and mild drunkeness + pining pining pining)

~

Joel had been looking for him all day, waiting to catch just a glimpse of the black hair and the ice that were the colour of the eyes he skated on but could melt the ice in Joel’s heart with just one look. When he finally saw him, at a bar downtown Lausanne, he nearly choked on the gin & tonic he was in the middle of downing in hopes it would ease his frustration, and it was as if the game earlier that day had never happened. 

He had not seen Aleksi’s programme when it happened – he had probably been sitting in the penalty box at that time – but he had seen bits and pieces of it on Instagram. Although Joel didn’t understand much about figure skating, he was pretty sure Aleksi had not meant to land on his arse in two of his jumps and almost lose his balance during a step sequence, and seeing him fail so visibly made Joel heartbroken himself, as if it had been him who had stumbled on his own feet on ice with the eyes of thousands of spectators following his every move and witnessing his every mistake. It made him wish he could strom into whatever hotel or dressing room Aleksi would be recovering in and take him in his arms, even though it had been two years since they had last even spoken to each other and Aleksi wanted nothing to do with him anymore, which he was completely entitled to, even if Joel had no clue why.

From his hideout in between two of his teammates, Joel’s eyes followed the bush of black hair to the bar counter. The music and chatter was too loud for Joel to hear what Aleksi said to the bartender, but a moment later he was handed a glass filled with brownish liquid which Aleksi downed in one gulp. He was soon given another, and the booze disappeared almost as quickly as the first one. Joel was mesmerised by how Aleksi’s Adam’s apple bopped up and down as Aleksi absorbed the drink, Joel's tipsy brain taking him back to years ago when he had been allowed to brush his lips against that pale neck, the taste of it far from the bitterness of the alcoholic beverage he was sipping now. Joel’s palm sweated against the cold glass he was holding, his mouth felt dry and his breath became shallow as his eyes moved to Aleksi’s lips, glistening and probably as soft as they had always been, for Joel couldn’t imagine them being anything else, despite the fact he had touched them only in his dreams as of late.

(As much as he missed Aleksi, he hated those dreams, the ones in which he was Aleksi’s and Aleksi was his once again; they drove him mad with longing and lust, none of which his own hand could satisfy. Sometimes he woke up with a persistent pressure in his groin, other times with a deep ache somewhere in his chest that wouldn’t disappear, no matter how he screamed at himself to move the fuck on already, a numbing pain he would later that day try to mute with the help of a random hook-up, although he knew no one he’d find at the night club would ever compare.)

Joel sighed, taking in the sight of Aleksi staring into his empty glass before asking the bartender to fill it again. Only a few more beats of the song that was currently blasting from the loudspeakers of the bar and Joel would’ve been far down the memory lane of Aleksi’s mouth and body on his; just a few more seconds and all the music and the amusement and the general buzz of the lounge surrounding him would’ve disappeared and been replaced by the sound of Aleksi’s laughter and his quiet humming while practising parts of his choreography, the soundtrack of Joel’s teenage days. 

But there was something about that day that kept striking Joel dumb time after time, from the moment in the morning that he realised Aleksi was performing in the same city he was to play a tournament that weekend to the moment he recognized Aleksi’s face in the crowd of the bar; something that made Aleksi abandon his task of sipping down his third rum and look straight into Joel’s eyes instead.

The bar, the game, the whole fucking country of Switzerland no longer existed in Joel's mind. There was only Aleksi and his eyes, holding his gaze like the Lady of the Cold, with the solid intention to freeze him to his seat and rip what little was left of his heart right out of his chest and put it in his drink for cooling. 

“Hey,” Joonas’ voice sounded distant in Joel’s ears, but the finger that then poked in between Joel’s ribs had him realise he was still flesh and blood, even if under Aleksi’s empty stare he felt as if he hand shrunk to a mere atom. “Chin up, brother! I know you’re still bummed about missing that goal, but it’s no reason to look so out of your misery.”

“Mmh.” Joel shot a look at Joonas, then at his gin & tonic. He blamed the alcohol and his first sort-of-interaction with Aleksi in years for making him forget the skill of speech, for he just couldn’t find the words to tell Porko to shut up and mind his own business.

“No, seriously dude, you shouldn’t beat yourself up like that. It’s just a practice tournament, for goodness’ sake, not the Olympics.”

“I–” Joel massaged his forehead to see if it would help in his quest for intelligible  words, but the only one he could think of was Aleksi.

“Besides, it could’ve happened to any of us! Remember that open net I had in the last minutes of the third period? Sure it would’ve been grand to score from that, but I ain’t gonna lose sleep over it tonight. Don’t tell Coach though,” Joonas chuckled and brought his own drink to his mouth, giving Joel false hope of being quiet for at least two seconds.

“You know what I’m gonna do instead?” Joonas continued, to Joel’s misery, with new pokes to Joel’s side. “I’m gonna get laid, and to be fair, so should yo–”

“I’m gonna get a…” Joel slurred as he grabbed his glass and stood up. For the first few seconds he had to take support from Joonas’ shoulder while the bar started to spin in his eyes, but once the floor and ceiling were about where they were supposed to be, he leaped over the legs of his teammates surrounding their table and headed towards the bar counter where his first love was drowning his own sorrows. He barely heard Joonas’ are you okay? from behind him as he advanced, bumping into the elbows and shoulders of dancing strangers on his way, only to find the very stool Aleksi had been sitting on perfectly Aleksi-less.

A lump formed in his throat when he looked around himself, but Aleksi was nowhere to be seen. 

He blinked his eyes once, twice, as many times as it took to ease the burning and ordered another drink. 

~

To someone who was looking at the scene from aside, it probably looked as if Joel was making the best out of his night, just sort of flowing in the stream of people with whom he had nothing in common but drinks in their hands and the urgency to let go of their worldly worries. In reality, he was drifting aimlessly in the open water, from the arms of one stranger to another, both looking for and avoiding Aleksi, equal parts relieved and disappointed whenever he saw a mop of black hair that wasn’t Aleksi’s, or a pair of clear-blue eyes that weren’t the ones he was chasing after. A part of him wanted to go back to the hotel and pass out on his bed, so that he could stop thinking about the man at least until the alcohol-induced nightmares would take over his subconscious, feeding the wretched lobe of his brain that believed Aleksi had never loved him in the first place, but as long as he could convince himself that Aleksi was still somewhere in the building, he was determined to not leave without getting another look from him, no matter how brief and distant.

When the room around him started to rotate again, Joel was forced to stumble away from the dance floor to find something to sit on. His eyes scanned the lounge in search of an available seat, but he didn’t get far in his efforts before he froze again, with Aleksi already looking at him from across the floor, near the bathroom door. 

There was a different look in them now; the indifference Joel had detected before had given room to something more fiery, almost defiant (as if that was any better). Joel was in no charge of his bodily functions when his feet started dragging him towards the man, unhesitating even when Aleksi disappeared behind the bathroom door.

Once at the door, Joel stopped. He wasn’t sure what he should expect to find from behind it: a long-awaited reunion with his teenage love filled with tight embraces and hasty whispers and broken I-miss-yous? A cold shoulder, and icy glance that would squish him to the floor like a bug with no explanation? Or perhaps two strangers who once meant the world to each other, now politely acknowledging each other’s existence before going on to live their lives separate from each other, because time had done its job in bringing them apart to polar opposites of the world, or so it felt like whenever Joel, in his darkest, most pathetic moments, tortured himself by browsing all of Aleksi’s social media accounts he could find? 

Joel was still weighing his options when someone came out of the men’s room, almost pushing the door right to his nose, while someone else bumped into him from behind, leaving him no choice but to stumble in the tiled room. 

The door behind him closed and muffled the sounds from the lounge, enough for Joel to bring his thoughts together to understand he was standing in an empty room. Just as he was convinced his drunken mind had played tricks on him, that seeing Aleksi had been nothing but the mirage of a man at the end of his rope, one of the stall doors opened and an arm pulled him inside. 

No words of courtesy were exchanged when Joel felt his back being pushed against a wall and Aleksi’s lips, those perfect, intoxicating lips that once were the reason for his happiness, pressed against his own. He needed to only close his eyes and he was sixteen again, wrapping his arms around Aleksi in the changing room of the ice rink like it was the only thing that was real in the world he lived in.

Quiet, urgent, desperate sounds escaped Aleksi’s throat and mixed up with Joel’s own. Aleksi’s mouth was hungry, eager, unfaltering as it moved against Joel’s.  Aleksi’s hands found the exact spots in Joel’s body that had him breathless, restless, begging, and if Joel had had an inch of self-control in him, he would’ve broken the kiss to do just that, to get on his knees and pray for Aleksi to take him back to his life, or the very least tell him how goddamn much he had missed him and his hands under his shirt and his heart pressed against his raging one.

Joel almost smiled into the kiss when he noticed how his fingers found their old traces in Aleksi’s hair with ease, as if it had been mere hours instead of entire years since they had last travelled there. His nose was nudging the side of Aleksi’s like it belonged there, like Joel had naively fooled himself into thinking once upon a time. He couldn’t allow doubt and regret take over now, however, not when his whole world was right there under his fingertips again, grinding against him and whimpering into his mouth again with such intensity that it was to easy for Joel to not ponder about the reasons why Aleksi had ever left him.

Naivety and foolishness had always been, quite regrettably, Joel’s biggest flaws. Of course, Aleksi would forever remain his greatest weakness, and it was just Joel’s luck that those three seemed to walk hand in hand, as he was to notice when Aleksi caressed his chest for the last time before stepping back.

“I have to go,” he said with a raspy voice, his swollen lips full and glistening. Joel saw him touch them with his finger as he hurried out of the stall.

Joel stayed, out of breath and thoughts and understanding of what had happened. One moment Aleksi had been right there, back in his arms like he dreamed almost every night, and in the next it was as if the only company Joel had ever had in that narrow bathroom stall were the colourful stickers and the handwritten messages on the wall in front of him.

The only signs left of Aleksi were the wrinkle on his t-shirt where Aleksi had grabbed him and the 5000 volts striking his heart to ruins.