#in a sort of weird fucked up trauma way

[solemntitty]

today I had to explain to my mother that yes words do matter, actually and they're how we communicate ideas and concepts

[nostalgia-tblr]

re: my seemingly fringe "I don't think we're meant to think Odin was a dreadful cunt" take, when was Thor 1 actually made? Like... 2010/2011? Because I think Odin is (presumably based on comics canon) meant to be "a bit distant but overall good as a parent" but 2010ish is well after the recent (historically recent, by which I mean since maybe the 1980s) shift in our culture's ideas about fatherhood and what make "a good dad" as well as similarly radical shifts in how we approach disciplining children. MCU!Odin is therefore odd because he's a couple of generations out if he's meant to convince the audience that he's A Good Dad or even an acceptable one. Even the people making the film can't have (all) thought he was any good so with this in mind I'm more open to the idea that Odin is meant to be fairly shit. (But not entirely, and certainly not to the point of him being evil - he's doing his best and arguably the issue isn't him but the culture they've all been born into.)

IDK how old the writer was but there could be an intentional generation-gap thing going on there? An "everyone thinks this is acceptable and even good parenting, but it isn't and everyone involved is getting messed up by it." You don't have to go that far back historically before failing to show regular affection to your kids wouldn't be seen as a significant flaw in a father (whereas it absolutely would be in a mother - v interesting that as the status of women in our society has increased our idea of a good dad has shifted significantly towards an ideal that would previously have been considered "maternal" and thus "unmanly." Oh hey, looks like patriarchy is bad for men too!)

I still think a lot of fanon and fanfic overstates it (which is fine until we're at the point of inventing obviously abusive behaviour and then seemingly forgetting that we made that up), and that Odin is at least meant to be 'doing his best' but yeah Them Thor Films must surely be aware that his best is nowhere near Actually Good, yeah? I mean unless they were written by a man who lives in the 1950s, which they probably weren't. (There is absolutely some generational variation in how far the social change has taken hold but you'd have to look for a long time before you'd find a man of any age who'd say "I really wish my father had been more reserved and had spent less quality time with me" rather than wistfully expressing the opposite of that.)

[i-love-love]

Side effect of watching three Mike Flanagan miniseries in a week a little while ago is I now have flanaverse dreams. The plot started and I went “isn’t this just a worse version of Midnight Mass?”

[phagodyke]

trying to watch all of us strangers and it's just making me cry really hard this is why I don't do romance movies WAH

[himbosandhardwear]

Eddie has a bad habit of picking at his skin when he's nervous. Not, like, shy nervous or stage fright nervous, but the real kind of nervous, not-sure-I’m-gonna-survive-this kind of nervous. Like while he was alone in the boat house, he'd shredded every one of his cuticles. That time Hopper caught him behind The Hawk, very obviously selling his wares, he'd bitten his lips bloody.

Tonight he's picking a scab off his knee. It's practically healed already, so it won't bleed, he just needs to feel something on his body come loose before he does.

“You good, dude?” Steve asks, so in tune to Eddie's nervous disposition. Such a good guy. What a friend.

Eddie lets his head hit his knee caps with a thunk.

“Yup.”

Steve snorts. “You don't look good. I mean… You know what I mean.”

He smiles, tilting his head to look at Steve, always happy to give him a hard time.

“Oh, absolutely. You think I look good, don't cha, Stevie?”

He gets a couch pillow to the face for that, but they're both laughing so he doesn't think he's crossed the line yet.

Yet, yet, yet.

“Seriously, what's up with you? You've been quiet. It makes me want to call the squad.”

“Har har,” Eddie mumbles, but he does uncurl himself, sitting back against the couch again. “I'm trying to work up the nerve to ask for advice but it's-” Christ, he doesn't even want to admit to being embarrassed, that's how embarrassed he is.

“It's what?” Steve asks, the picture of earnest encouragement. “You can talk to me about anything, man, we're, like, bonded in blood or whatever.”

“Right. Yeah. Except this has the potential to get real awkward, real quick, and I'm not sure we're at that level of friendship yet.”

“Well,” he drawls, “if you ask me whatever it is that's got you all flustered I'm sure that will level us up. Right?”

“I'm not flustered.” God damn his red fucking face. Steve just laughs at him. “It's just, I don't have anyone else to ask about this. Jonathan probably doesn't have this particular problem, cause he's got- Uh. Sorry.” Steve waves it away, so Eddie goes on. “The kids are too young and the band guys don't understand what we went through-”

“Eddie, just spit it out.”

“Fuck! Okay, fine! You asked for it.” He takes a giant breath, steels his spine and just says it. “The Trauma is affecting my ability to get laid and I don't know how to fix it. Every time I get close to it I freak out and have to bail.”

There. All out now.

He looks over at Steve, and it's so much worse than being laughed at or pitied. He just looks sad.

He shakes it off quickly, hair barely moving, Eddie notes. He finds Steve's hair routine both endearing and ridiculous.

“Yeah. Okay. That's super common, just so you know,” Steve assures him first. “Robin says it's all connected, your mind and your body, so trauma can, like, get trapped in weird places like that. I can't play baseball anymore. Cause the memory of beating demodogs to death.”

“As you do,” Eddie quips.

“Right. But your thing. Uh. Yeah, it took some time before I could relax enough to even attempt getting laid, let alone actually do it.”

“So?” Eddie drawls, waiting. “How did you get over it?”

Something is off. Steve's not known for being skiddish about sex, but his hesitation and his inability to look Eddie in the eye is setting off alarms.

“Hey, if this is too weird for you-”

“No, I'm good, it's fine. Just, I'm the only person you have to talk to about this, so I'm gonna try to be helpful but, uh,” he scratches at the back of his head awkwardly, “in all honesty, I haven't been laid since before Vecna either. Way before. So. Yeah. Not sure I should be giving out advice on anything.”

That's crazy. Like actually crazy. He can't even compute Steve Harrington not absolutely dripping in women. He must have some look on his face because Steve gives a dry sort of laugh, self deprecating, and leans back against the couch with him.

“Weren't you on a date with Brenda Mulligan the night- Vecna’s first attack?”

Steve shoots him a look. “Y- Yeah, but that didn't go anywhere. We weren't, like, compatible or whatever.”

Oh, yeah, it was weird that Eddie knew that at all, let alone remembered it nine months later. “That's too bad,” he replies lamely.

“Yep.”

He feels terrible for dragging down the whole night, it would've been better if he'd just kept his mouth shut. But that's never been his strong suit, as evidenced by him blurting out, “If the hottest guy in Hawkins can't find a suitable date, what fucking chance do I have.”

Steve snaps, “Don't say that. What the fuck?”

Great, now he's gone and made it weird. Good job calling your straight friend hot, you fuckin’ dipshit.

They sit in the awkward silence, out of things to say or out of useful things to say. Either way it's them breathing, the clock ticking, and the M.A.S.H. rerun playing softly in the background.

Steve clears his throat. “Whatever, let's get back to the point. You don't have to tell me if you don't want but…what do you think the specific reason is for your…issue?”

He thinks about it. Has been thinking about it, for a while now. “My dick still works, if that's what you're wondering.”

Steve chuckles, high and surprised. “Good for you.”

“Yeah. It's more like, I can't get out of my head. I start worrying about my scars, explaining them if someone asked. I think about how even though I don't want anything long-term, I wouldn't be able to do long-term anyway, because I'm a fucking mess. If it's really bad, I'll get flashes of Chrissy or Patrick's bones snapping, as a little soundtrack to the fun shit happening outside my head.”

Steve looks sad again. Maybe it is pity but it looks more turned inward, like he's dealing with his own shit more than Eddie’s.

“You hooking up with strangers then?”

Eddie blinks at Steve. “Well…duh. Right? Not like I have guys lined up around the block here in Hawkins.”

Steve is full blown scowling at the TV. It's weird.

“What if-”

Eddie waits but Steve doesn't finish his thought.

“What if…what?” He prompts, giving a little nudge with his foot.

He's still avoiding eye contact, not even turning his head to look in Eddie's direction.

In a soft voice, almost too quiet to hear, he says, “What if we helped each other out?”

He must've heard that wrong. Or he's misunderstanding.

“What?”

“What if we help each other out? Like, a mutually beneficial arrangement.”

That can't be right. No fucking way. It's a test. Like as soon as Eddie agrees, Steve yells ‘Aha! I knew you wanted to molest me! Goodbye forever!’ and runs out the door.

“What, exactly, do you mean? Like, what are you getting out of it?”

Steve finally looks over. “Well, I would think that was obvious. If you're willing.”

Eddie's legs are starting to go numb.

“Okay, so I blow you and you blow me, except when you're doing it I have to watch you take it like you're being force fed liver and onions at Grandma's house?”

Steve slowly shakes his head no.

“Oh, okay, so you're going to blow me and enjoy it,” he snaps sarcasticaly.

Steve nods once.

“You want to blow me?”

“Mmhmm,” he hums without moving a muscle.

“Since when!” Eddie brings his octave down from the upper atmosphere. “Since when, Harrington? This is insane behavior. Should I call the squad for you? I'm serious. I'll do it.”

“You don't have to say yes. I was just offering.” He says it like Eddie isn't one green flag away from stomping on the gas.

He starts nervously laughing, which makes Steve flinch unfortunately, but he can't stop.

“It's cool, just forget I said anything.” He moves like he's about to get up and leave, which is fucking insane because it's his living room. Eddie stops him with a tight grip around the bicep.

“Don't you dare. If you're even remotely serious, we have to have a much longer conversation. Sit.”

Steve drops like a sack of bricks. Which is…something.

“Right. First off, this is uncommon behavior in a straight friend. Is there something you'd like to tell me, so I don't think you've been body snatched?”

He pinches at the top of his nose, like Eddie is inconveniencing him greatly. Too bad.

“I'm probably bisexual.”

“Probably?” Eddie asks with a raised eyebrow.

“I'm an inexperienced bisexual,” he amends through clenched teeth.

“Good. Great. Happy to hear it.” His heart may explode from his torso à la Ridley Scott's Alien but sure. “Second on the agenda, what do you mean help each other out? What's on the table? Mutual handjobs and then we never talk about it again?”

“No,” Steve answers immediately. That's good. “I'm open to…whatever you're open to.”

“Steve.” He has to clear his throat. “You dont even know what you're agreeing to.”

“I trust you.”

Fuuuuuck.

“Okay, right, uh, let's circle back to that later. Third thing, what, uh, what is your level of commitment with this?”

He just stares at Eddie, all doe eyed. It shouldn't work, Eddie fucking invented that look. It's gotten him out of more scrapes than he can count. Now it's being used against him but to what end? Does Steve want to get bundled up in a blanket and tucked into bed? Because Eddie can make that happen for him.

“Whatever you want, I guess,” he finally says. “I mean, like I said earlier, friends who help each other out. Casual. I'm not interested in looking for Mrs Harrington anymore and you're having a problem relaxing around guys who don't understand what you went through.” He makes a gesture like ‘Ta da.’

He's not wrong. It makes sense. But…

“Fourth thing. Is this just an experiment for you? Cause I'm all for you exploring your sexuality but, historically speaking, friends are a bad place to start.” AKA ‘it will break my fucking heart if you decide you're not that into it and it's because it's me.’

“Eddie. Look.” He gets more comfortable, facing Eddie straight on finally. “What you're going to provide is practical knowledge on what has only been theoretical up to this point, but the theory has already been well established.” He taps his head. “Understand?”

A smug confidence melts Eddie into the couch. “You liiike me,” he sings. “You think about me naaaked. You wanna-”

Steve lands on him, lacking any elegance or grace, and nearly caves their skulls in with his Jay Garrick approach to kissing. Eddie doesn't say a fucking word. He does wonder at the fucking majesty that is making out sober. What a revelation. Steve keeps making these tiny, almost wounded noises, to the point where Eddie tries to back up and do a check in but Steve doesn't let him, he chases him down and latches back onto Eddie's bottom lip like he's Hannibal Lector. It's stupid hot.

Everything is going great until Steve lets out a sound that legitimately has Eddie worried he's upset about something.

He pulls back and asks, “Are you okay?”

“Oh fuck, I'm sorry. I just can't, I can't believe I got this fucking far. You're so hot I'm losing my fucking mind.”

“Me?” Eddie snaps. “Dude, you're out of your mind.” He pokes Steve in his meaty chest. “Literal. Prom. King.”

“Fucking stupid high school shit, are you kidding me?” He sits up, straddling Eddie's hips, which is boner enhancing to say the least; he's got Steve's thighs in his grasp immediately. “You don't get it, I'm gone on you. I've got it bad, man. I was playing it cool earlier-”

“At no point tonight were you in any way playing it cool.”

“-but, fuck it, guess I'm ruining it, cause I can't be cool about this. I don't want casual. I don't even want to date you,” and before Eddie can even worry about that, he says, “I wanna skip straight to boyfriends, man. I know you said you didn't want long term with anyone but-”

Eddie interrupts again, this time by pulling Steve back down horizontal and kissing him like he just bravely declared himself as all in.

If this is a pod-person, well, that's a problem for Tomorrow Eddie. Tonight Eddie just landed Steve Harrington as a boyfriend.

[sophiethewitch1]

What We Want - Chpt. 5 - Meet The Adams Family

In Which A Romantic Breaks The Universe

(Yandere!batboys x f!reader) 18+ MDNI!

SUMMARY

Another lonely birthday, another empty year. You miss your family. You're late for your bills and rent, and even then, you got robbed last Tuesday.

Still, you buy yourself a cupcake, because you need it. I mean, hey. What's dessert for if not to get over cheating boyfriends and dead relatives?

As you blow out the candle, watching the clock switch from 11:59 pm to midnight of the next day, you make a wish.

And because the world doesn't like to make much sense, it comes true. Your life is suddenly flipped on a dime, and you're stuck trying to catch up with it. Fantasy becomes reality. You're a Wayne now, apparently. Or you used to be. You're loved, you're rich, you're talented and powerful.

Well, sort of. Careful what you wish for, right?

(TRIGGER WARNINGS AND MASTERLIST HERE)

PREV - NEXT

The first thing you’d done when you woke up, still somehow in the Wayne manor, was pull out not-your phone and check the date. When it tells you that you are not, in fact, in some weird version of a time loop, you feel some measure of relief. The second thing you do is look your own damn name up on Google. There were over 3 million results. You have a Wikipedia page. If that hadn’t made you want to gag, the press from last night had you bumbling your way into the ensuite bathroom and puking into the toilet.

It’s still sitting on the bathroom floor, nauseous and achy and sweaty, your mouth washed out but still tasting foul, that you continue your research.

It’s just as you had suspected, your family was dead. Still dead. Well, shit. In the light of day, you supposed that made more sense. That there was no real reason to assume otherwise. You hadn’t for most of yesterday, but as soon as you’d thought that maybe there was a chance, your hopes had been dashed. Which was good, rip the bandaid off and all.

It was good. Things were good. They were fine, you were fine. You really wish you were a better liar.

Again you wash your mouth out. Root around the cabinets for some medical-grade mouthwash, do it again, and then you throw yourself into the shower. Again. You notice the soap smells like whoever’s clothes you stole. Refreshing and awakening, that mint and earth again. You think you can detect something floral in it too. It’s still masculine, but…

Wow, you are such a freak! You put down the fucking soap and manage to resist the urge to slam your head into the tiles. Your headache was bad enough already.

When you leave the bathroom, you glance at the door, and then down at your towel. Guess you’re stealing some more apparel. You find a Superman shirt, give it a judging glance, and then pick out a black T-shirt with ‘The Beatles’ across the front, and some sweatpants. You have to roll up the pant legs so you don’t trip and fall flat on your face.

One hand scrolling through Twitter and TikTok and Reddit and every single piece of social media you could find, getting the people’s source of news and you get the high overlords’ one when you turn on the huge TV attached to the wall. The remote kind of confuses you at first, but you manage to find the good ol’ Gotham news channel.

Immediately, you’re greeted by your miserable mascara-streaked face. You turn the TV off. You take a deep breath. Turn it back on. Luckily it’s not just you getting your private moment of trauma blasted open in the media. Your party had been filled with Gotham’s elite, after all. You weren’t the only rich idiot left crying by the side of the road.

You weren’t the only one who had to suffer. There had been twenty-eight casualties, in total. A small amount, considering the man behind the deaths. The Joker wasn’t known for his cleanliness. You tell yourself that, and yet still, you can’t make them just numbers. They’d been standing right next to you, after all. All in the same boat, all waiting for the axe to swing, secretly hoping you’re the one who lives to the next day. Only one of the party guests had been shot, and that’s because you think they’d personally pissed off the Joker. That’s what Twitter says, anyway. There were multiple video recordings of the altercation, and it didn’t look like he’d been the smartest banana in the bunch. The TV is a lot sweeter on the dead soul.

You feel sorry for all the dead. You still don’t think this rich heir should be the face you see, though. When you check his name, you find several forgotten assault cases. Assault, rape, just like that disappearing bastard had tried to do to you. That female janitor you’d seen shot had done more for this city than that guy ever had.

Did her family know? Did she have a family? Someone to mourn her? You’d never thought about that before. How many people out there wouldn’t have anyone to even remember them?

It’s none of your business, in the end.

After a whiles more research, you switch the TV off and tuck your cracked phone into the sweatpants. You know where your mother’s grave is, on the west side of the estate. Wikipedia knew all, which was now kind of creepy to you as it knew all about you as well. Really, you couldn’t believe it. Your mother, buried with the Waynes? You’d always thought she should find someone new, someone who’d appreciate her, unlike your father who had dipped as soon as Sam was born.

You couldn’t even remember the guy. Still, you remembered that he’d smelled bad and made your Mum do everything, and was just generally all around the worst choice for a husband.

But, Jesus Christ, Bruce Wayne? Absolute insanity. You had no idea how the two of them would’ve even met. Let alone fall in love and get married. Your mother was one of the loveliest women on earth but… they had absolutely nothing in common, other than having troublesome kids. And you hadn’t seen her getting lovey-dovey with the other PTA mums.

You walk out of the room you’ve borrowed and into the hallway. In the light of day, the Wayne manor is much less creepy, and you can find it in yourself to appreciate the antique space. Warm sunlight falls over dark oak furniture, illuminating your bare feet as you walk along the Persian rug. Your fingers trail along all the tiny little decorations, some annoying part of you demanding you leave traces of yourself behind. Your fingerprints dirty an old clock, a golden candelabra, a lamp and a tiny spinning globe.

You might’ve gotten lost in a place this huge if you couldn’t hear people’s voices floating down the halls. They were too far away for you to be able to tell what they were saying, but you could still hear them. They’re to the west, so you’re definitely going to have to go past them.

You follow the voices and eventually come to a stop in a hallway. You can smell food. Good, real food. The type that makes your instant-ramen-powered body salivate. The people are in the kitchen, right around the corner. You duck your head and quickly sneak past the mostly closed doorway. On the other side, you pause, your curious self unable to leave just yet.

“She needs help,” Bruce says, and you mentally curse. Balls. You didn’t want to hear this. You guess this was instant karma for snooping. Maybe they weren’t talking about you?

Why did that sound very unlikely…

“She went through a lot last night,” he continues, which, well, yes, you did go through a lot, “And he said that she saw a woman get shot right in front of her. It makes sense if she doesn’t want to talk yet.”

He? Who’s he? Who ratted you out? Wait, dumb question, the four other witnesses who saw the janitor get shot. You were still pretty sure the Waynes weren’t supposed to know that, but everybody knew those GCPD pigs were always just a dollar away from whatever you wanted them to do. It’s not surprising that the Waynes know details only the police should know at the moment.

…It is a bit disappointing, though. You chose to have hope in them, that they’d gotten that information legally. Your fatal obsession with the Waynes wasn’t going to disappear after one miserable party. You wished it would.

“She was acting strange before that,” Timothy Jackson Drake’s smooth voice drifts from the kitchen. You were still a little starry-eyed over him, which was… bad, you think. It’d definitely make whatever relationship the two of you had been forced into a whole lot more difficult. It did not need to be any more difficult.

“Are you accusing her of something?” Bruce Thomas Wayne’s voice is gravelly in comparison, angry, maybe. Also, ‘accusing’? What could he even be accusing you of? It was pretty obvious you weren’t capable of anything nefarious, you were far too stupid for that. You were a plastic bag drifting along the Gotham river, barely able to affect which direction you flowed in.

“God no. And I definitely wouldn’t do it with her listening, that’d be rude.”

Your breath hitches, and you push off from the wall. Busted, damn. Your face feels unbelievably hot. As you leave, you can hear Mr Wayne scolding his adopted son. You walk until you can’t hear their voices anymore, and then a little further, finding an exit door.

You stumble out onto a stone staircase, probably a servants’ one in the olden days. You move down it, hand gripping the railing. You’re barely conscious of where you’re going. There’s a path that leads away from the stone manor and further into the estate, and you follow it. When you spot a small gated area, with stone obelisks and angel statues, you veer off the path and onto the grass.

Hissing out a breath, it’s only now you realise you went outside without any shoes on. Your toes curl in the cold, wet grass. It’s a miserable feeling, and you want to walk right back inside. And then you think about the awkward conversation waiting for you, take a breath and keep going. The gates swing open easily under your hand, the golden embossed ‘W’ glinting in the light.

A guardian angel stands before you. Its stone face is disapproving, glaring down at you from above. ‘Interloper,’ it calls you, but you move past it without pausing. It’s pretty obvious which graves are the new ones and which are the old ones. They’re all clean and well-kept, but the ones to the left have dates going back hundreds of years, and the ones to the right only decades. Your eyes follow the rows of graves. Thomas Wayne, Martha Wayne…

Your breath whistles out of you, nearly muffled by the grey morning wind.

And your mother. She has a different last name, now another Wayne. Your siblings don’t, which makes sense. You’re surprised to find many of your extended family also in this graveyard. Your grandmother. Your uncle and aunt. A few of your cousins.

It’s cold this morning, and you’re out here with only a thin T-shirt on. Shivering, you rub your palms against your bare arms. It doesn’t do much. Still, you don’t want to go inside yet. Instead, you crouch in front of Sam’s grave, eyes reading the tiny epitaph. It’s not the one you wrote.

‘Beloved Son and Brother.’

Simple, clean-cut, formal… unfamiliar, you suppose. Yours had been much more flowery, ‘All the colour in the world is gone without you’. It was a bit silly, but you’d never said you were a poet. You’d just known you’d wanted something that represented them, if poorly.

Sam was a beloved son and brother. But that wasn’t who he chose to be. He liked colours. He’d change his favourite every other day, so he liked everything rainbow. It made it easier to choose which one he’d like next, he said. You were always buying him more and more coloured pencils because he’d wear them all down to the tips, he dyed the cat a bright red headache, much to your mother’s horror, and considered it his personal job to make every single birthday, christmas, and easter card. He’d paint on the walls in washable markers, and you’d often been the one to volunteer to help him get it all down. In school, he always had the best art project out of the entire class, even if you were slightly biased.

He was a colourful kid. He wasn’t… a plain grey tombstone. Nothing to help remember him, because you were always losing more and more of their precious memories.

The others had similarly impersonal graves. Just what they were, not who. Mother, sister. Nothing that spoke of how they’d lived their lives, what the world had lost when they’d died. It was… you didn’t think it was right. It was a disaster, really. Even when you’d had to rely on the Wanye Foundation donations, you’d managed a better resting place than this.

You suppose you’d never gotten them into the Wayne family’s personal graveyard, though. That was a bit of an upgrade, you guess.

“You need to come back inside. You’re worrying my father.”

“Jesus Christ!” you shriek, leaping backward. Your foot catches on one of the cobblestones, and you end up tipping back farther than you mean to, your ass bruising against the ground. You bump another gravestone, and there’s a horrible moment where it gives a little and you think it’s going to knock over.

It doesn’t. A shining miracle on your day.

From your slightly wet seat on the ground, you look up, finding one such Damian Al Ghul-Wayne. His towering height is the first thing you notice, second his stunning emerald green eyes. Both were incredibly shocking in their own ways, but his height really was almost dizzying. Perfect brown skin and a stylish 'long on the top, short on the sides’ black haircut, paired with the sort of face some European model might have, all come together to make sure you feel as pathetic as possible. His posh-looking outfit doesn’t help.

Neither does the fact he just watches you. He doesn’t even pretend to bend over to help you up. Which you’re sort of grateful for, honestly. It’d just make you more embarrassed. You didn’t know if you could hold the hand of your celebrity crush and… well, be normal. Pretend to be normal. You weren’t doing a very good job of it anyway.

You have to wonder, which was the worst introduction? The drunk, the bloody, or the one where you fell on your ass? God, you really are screwing this all the way up. You wonder how you’re inevitably going to make it even worse. There’s a part of you that desperately doesn’t want to meet any of the other Waynes, even as another part of you is screaming that it needs to.

If they knew they had a fangirl in their graveyard, you’re sure they’d kick you out. That was why you were lying about everything, not because you had intimacy issues.

Stop thinking, you idiot! You’re only making things more difficult for yourself with all your worrying and fretting. And maybe you should get off the ground, you looked stupid. You push to your feet, wiping your dirtied hands on the sweats.

He still doesn’t say anything when you stand, still just staring at you. His open staring is far too intimidating, so you scrounge for something to say.

“Your father? You- Is he alright?” you stammer over your words, giving Damian Wayne an awkward smile. He doesn’t return it, instead canting his head towards one of the windows.

You look toward where Damian Wayne gestured to, find nothing but an empty window frame, and then back to the ridiculously tall man. You swear, the guy had grown like a bean pole. He had to be something ridiculous, like 6’5, or maybe more. You were fairly certain you’d been taller than him at twelve, or thirteen, whenever it was he was first introduced to the world as Damian Wayne. Now, now… not so much.

“There’s nobody in there?” you ask, like you’re questioning your sanity. You are.

“My father’s shy,” He says, coolly shrugging one shoulder.

What. Bruce Wayne? Shy? Was he joking or something?

Damian Wayne stares down at you with narrowed green eyes, and dark brows in a harsh frown. His arms are crossed over his rich kid sweater, shiny black shoes tapping against the cobbles. That’s not the face of someone who makes jokes, you think.

You swallow, mind whirring as you try desperately to fix this conversation, “Right. Okay. I’ll… I’ll come back inside, then. Sorry for bothering you guys.”

He keeps staring at you. He doesn’t seem bothered.

“Sorry for bothering him?” you correct.

Damian gives one slow, cat-like blink of his eyes, and then turns with a tsk and walks away. It takes you a moment to realise you’re meant to follow him. It takes you even longer to actually catch up with him because he’s so fucking tall.

On TV he didn’t look this tall. You feel kind of betrayed, which is weird.

As you’re walking along, getting closer back to the manor, a stick or something pokes you in the foot. You curse, grabbing your foot. Thankfully you don’t start bleeding or something. You’d already be tracking dirt all over the inside of the impeccable space, you didn’t want to bring blood in as well. It takes a moment for you to realise the sound of Damian’s footsteps crunching in the grass has stopped, and you glance up.

He’s staring right at you again. He looks even less impressed with you, raising an eyebrow and mouth ticking downward. You put your foot down and tuck your hands behind your back in a very obvious anxious display.

“You went outside not wearing any shoes?” Damian Wayne asks, incredulous.

“I was… yeah, I forgot to,” you say, shrugging your shoulders. Not your best moment, but you weren’t really having any of those today. Or yesterday. Or the day before. Maybe you should stop thinking about that, actually.

“That’s disgusting,” The young Wayne sneers, and then turns and gives you his shoulder.

You think your heart maybe cracks a little. Well, they do say to never meet your idols. Maybe whoever wrote that quote had you in mind specifically, because now you were in… this situation. Ex-step-sister. If that was a thing. Your Wikipedia page said that you said that a lot, very insistent that you had absolutely nothing to do with the Waynes.

…It didn’t really look like you had nothing to do with the Waynes, from an outsider's perspective. Which obviously didn’t make any sense, since you were… you. You were not an outsider, not anymore.

This was too complicated. You needed a coffee. With like, so much sugar it’ll make you bounce from the walls.

Damian strides up the side entrance’s staircase and through the door, leaving it open for you to follow through. You hesitate at the doorway, looking over your shoulder to the graveyard. The statue calls you names in the distance, and although you feel like a stranger who doesn’t belong here, you manage to step back into the house.

You force yourself to walk through the hallway and into the kitchen, fists clenched tight at your side and your shoulders bunched up to your ears. Bruce Thomas Wayne, Timothy Jackson Drake, and the butler from earlier. Damian Al Ghul Wayne steps around the trio, picking some drink from the counter and moving to sit at the dining table at the edge of the room. There’s an open book on the table that he starts flicking through, and well, apparently that’s the end of your first conversation with the youngest Wayne.

You did… well, alright might be pushing it. You're still going to say you did alright.

Tim Drake gives you a sweet smile, catching your attention. The silky raven hair of his heart-shaped fringe falls over his beautiful, pale face, and for a moment there you totally forget that he’d called you out earlier like that. Which was just, such an odd thing to do. His hand lifts to scratch at the buzz cut under the floppy strands of hair. The movement mesmerises you. You look away from his sky blue eyes, very quickly realising they’re robbing you of the few remaining brain cells you have. And you need those, damn it. Especially because you’d already made the decision to hide from all your problems like a baby. Negative, negative…

“How’re you doing today?” Tim asks you, giving you a friendly greeting. It’s a welcome olive branch.

“I’m good,” you lie like you breathe, eyes glancing around the space. Bruce Wayne has his phone out and a mug of coffee in his hands. He sips from the cup, his focus swallowed by the tiny screen. You glance back over to Damian Wayne. Huh, it really does run in the family.

Your neck prickles, and you glance back at Tim again. You get a brief vision of his tired, unsmiling expression, and then it’s back to the angelic and gentle smile. You smile back at him, a wretched, awful twisting of the lips that you hope doesn’t look like a grimace.

Tim’s smile turns into a grin. It’s really too pretty and makes you shift in your seat uncomfortably. Damn it all, look away!

“Would you like some breakfast, young miss? I’m afraid we’ve run out of pancakes, but I’d be happy to make some more for you,” the butler says in an awfully familiar British accent. You think you know this person, but you can not remember from where. Shit. Your memory was bad on the best of days, much less after… after an event like last night.

Anyway, the food from earlier had been pancakes. Despite the delicious scent, you really didn’t want to make him make any more food for you. You felt like you were intruding as it was.

“Do you have any toast, or… cereal?” you suggest instead, wondering if rich people even bother with cereal. The butler chuckles, and you think, ‘Oh, yeah, probably not’.

“We have both, miss. Master Grayson has a particular fondness for cereal, in fact,” he informs you, which, oh, cool. You did in fact know that, you stalker you. You’d totally forgotten about that weird fact or the weird fact that you knew that weird fact. Dick Grayson has an Instagram where he posts reviews of different cereals, which of course you have notifications on for.

“It’s more of an obsession,” Tim says, resting his palm in his hand as he… continues to stare at you. Nobody else thinks his ogling is strange, so you try to ignore it as well. Try is the choice word.

“I like cereal too. It’s normal,” you say in defence of Dick, a natural and instinctual urge.

And apparently, the fact that you like cereal is fucking shocking, judging from the open-mouth looks the group gives you. Oh no, you’re supposed to hate him, right? You’re supposed to hate them all, actually. What had you called him on your phone? Something about being annoying and a dickhead?

Swallowing your inner scream, you move around the counter and towards the cupboards. Whatever, they’ll have to deal with this new and improved version of you, which didn’t despise everyone in the room. Along with being a terrible liar, you were also pretty bad at keeping secrets.

You don’t want to think about that, so instead you turn to Alfred.

“So,” you start, “Can I see your cereal collection?” you ask, like a totally normal person. Man, this cupboard’s looking pretty head-smashable right now.

This family has more tact than yours did, because they all manage to put their eyes back to what they were doing and pretend you weren’t acting really, really out of character. Rich people. They’re good at overlooking the crazy.

“Of course,” the butler clears his throat, “In here, you’ll find Master Dick’s collection-” score! Not another fan can claim this right, “-and in the fridge a carton of milk. Are you sure I couldn’t serve it for you, miss? I understand you might still be a little…”

His voice trails off. Little what?

He glances at the others and then leans in close like he’s going to tell you a secret. Behind a hand, he whispers, “Hungover.”

Ah. Well, yes, but you were a big girl who could make her cereal, even on hangover days. Kind of embarrassing it was that obvious, though. You were usually better at hiding how much of a mess you were.

“I’ll be fine, thank you,” you say, and the butler nods and backs off. You’re pretty sure at this point that he was the one who called you yesterday morning, but you still couldn’t quite recall his name. When you were out of sight, you’d check your phone for his contact information.

See? You could do this. Stealthy.

As you start perusing through the cereal options, Tim gets up from his spot by the counter and comes to stand next to you at the breakfast bar. He heads straight to the coffee machine, and you glance at it longingly.

It’s one of those cafe-quality fancy espresso makers, with an Italian name embossed in silver on the top. Tim manipulates the machine like a master, which you’re very jealous of because it might as well be alien technology to you. You miss your shitty drip coffee, at least that dingy little machine was loyal to you. Better than George.

“Coffee?” Tim Drake offers, glancing at you. Ah, the starry eyes are back. While Damian Wayne had been a mildly disappointing introduction, Mr. Drake was just reinforcing your celebrity worship. And of course, because your brain works against you, his offer reminds you of the daydreams you’d had on your first twenty-first birthday. Coffee shop au real person fiction- a new low, even for you.

Flustered, you look up at the ceiling. The old mansion is decorated in every single available corner, the plaster above spreading across the entire surface with delicate filigree and pretty curling patterns. It’s gorgeous, absolutely entrancing. That’s what you tell yourself at least.

“Please,” you say, your voice just the slightest bit too quiet. He hears you anyway.

It’s surprisingly domestic. Of course, you don’t know any of these people past face value and Wired YouTube interviews, but… it’s quite indulgent. This is sort of your dream, isn’t it? A full house of people enjoying their morning together. Peaceful bird song drifting in through open windows. The comfort of being around people you trust, not having to perform or put on a show. Well, you are very much putting on a show right now. It’s the thought that counts, or whatever.

“What would you like in it? We have sugar, milk, oat milk, and I like having a few syrups on hand,” Tim chatters excitedly, listing off the different ingredients he has on offer. Your poor ass stares at his rich one, and you are very rudely reminded these people live in different tax brackets than you.

Who the fuck had coffee syrups in their house? You could barely afford the little treats of caramel syrup you get every couple of months. The disappearance of the middle class was one you had witnessed personally.

You rattle off a very basic, bland order. Tim looks sort of disappointed in you which… well, you could be a coffee snob. You just didn’t have the time, usually. A flat white kept you going through the day, you didn’t need anything else. And so, Tim hands you a very bland coffee, and it is god sent. You can’t imagine how good it would be if you had mustered up your courage and asked for some caramel syrup.

Huh, you could be a coffee snob. You could be anything you wanted, really. And your first thought is being a coffee snob. Good God.

“Are you going to be staying?“ Bruce Wayne asks, immediately putting you on the spot. You weren’t ready for this, you were thinking about the coffees you could buy. Oh no, you really aren’t ready for this.

“At least for now, right?” Tim Drake says, just making it all the more stressful. You let out an awkward chuckle, fingers tight around your drink.

“Oh, I don’t want to be an inconvenience-”

Damian Wayne slams his mug down on the table, so hard a crack splinters up its side. He picks the cup up, strides across the kitchen, narrowed green eyes meeting yours for a second, and then he dumps the cup in a secret rubbish can. He murmurs an apology to the butler and then is out of the room.

Okay, well, you certainly feel like an inconvenience.

The butler clears his throat, and says, “Please forgive young master Damian. He’s been having a difficult time recently, I hope you can understand.”

And you think, ‘bitch, a difficult time?! He’s not the one who almost died last night!’ but what you say is, “Of course, I completely understand. I don’t want to bother him anymore so I’d really like to leave today.”

Mr. Wayne laces his fingers together, blue eyes giving you an assessing look.

“Stay for the day, and you can leave tonight. I want to make sure you’re truly alright,” he eventually says, and the mere presence of the man has you yielding to his commands. Didn’t really matter you were an adult who’d managed to survive this long on your own, you were listening to the big scary guy when he told you what to do.

Well, that’s that! You make your cereal and have a very quiet breakfast. You can’t tell if they’re being quiet because you’re here, or if mornings are usually like this. You hope they’re usually like this. Once you’ve finished your very nice cereal (one of the highest rated on Dick’s Instagram) you place the bowl by the sink. You want to wash it, but when you ask Alfred he gives you a look like you kicked his dog. Okay, you’ll just go then.

You’re about to sneak away, when you realise Tim’s staring at you… again…? But this time he seems quite focused on your clothing. His eyes follow the double lines on the side of your sweatpants, before settling on the Beatles logo on your shirt. He hums at it. Raises his brows.

“I’m sorry, I borrowed this because I didn’t have any other clothes. Is there something wrong with me wearing this?” you ask, and then experience a moment of horror, “This doesn’t belong to you, does it?”

“Hmm?” Tim chirps, “Oh, no, don’t worry. It’s not mine.”

And then he turns away from you in a very clear dismissal. Nice, you really wanted to go hide for an hour or two. With one last awkward wave to Bruce Thomas Wayne, you scurry out of the kitchen and back to the bedroom you’d started thinking of as yours. You need to figure out how you're going to handle all this, and you're going to do it alone. Maybe with some dessert, if you can find it. You wouldn't say you think better with sugar running in your veins, but it definitely makes you more willing to deal with the bullshit that is your life. Hopefully it'd work in your new one, too.

-

Tim listens to your retreating footsteps, waiting till you’re far enough away to begin talking to Bruce. Humans were creatures of habit, so you’d probably be going back to the same room you slept in last night. He thinks Damian and him were the only ones who noticed whose shirt you were wearing, B’s off his game today. You’ve really managed to mess him up, to Tim’s delight.

“See? Dames was totally fine with her being here,” Tim says, cheerily enjoying his youngest sibling’s suffering. Bruce sighs, witheringly, lifting his hand to rub against the headache he always has. He’s probably noticed the excited, slightly fanatic gleam that’s entered into Tim’s eyes.

It was sort of obvious. This was all so exciting! You’d come back, sporting absolutely none of the defensive vitriol you usually have, and ate breakfast together. You took a coffee out of Tim’s hands. You’d willingly spoken to the devil, who everybody in the family knew hated you as much as you hated him, and even more than that-

You’d spoken to Bruce. Tim was sporting the idea that you’d gotten head trauma, at this point in time.

“Okay, fine. You get the mission, but-” Tim has to resist the urge to clap his hands together like a gleeful child “-but no extra cameras. I’m serious, Tim, if I find out you’ve invaded her privacy just after she’s starting to warm up to us again-”

“She wouldn’t know,” Tim complains, cutting the Bat off with a roll of his eyes.

“She’s smarter than you’d think,” Bruce shakes his head. Tim has to disagree, after the catastrophe that was last night. Unless of course, you were just playing with them all. So many options, it’s dizzying.

“We’ll shelve that argument for later. So, I want full control of the case, and in turn, I’ll do another two weeks as CEO,” Tim waves off Bruce’s complaints, going straight into haggling. The CEO position was tossed between the two of them like a hot potato, and it was one of Tim’s favourite bargaining tools.

“I am absolutely not agreeing to that, a month and nothing less.”

“This is why half your children don’t talk to you, but sure, whatever. Chase away your last, loyal loving son-”

“My God, Tim. Three fucking weeks, and if I hear another word I will hand this matter over to Grayson,” Bruce sighs, sounding a bit defeated.

Tim gives an offended gasp, placing his hand against his chest. And then he realises Bruce might actually be serious, and freaks out a bit.

“He’d be bad for it. Far too personally involved. You definitely don’t want to do that,” he says, leg bouncing under the table. Of course, the Bat notices, but he doesn’t mention it. He wouldn’t take this from Tim, they both knew he was getting too frazzled around the edges. He needed something to focus on, to ground him.

You were the perfect project. He loved his projects.

“I am aware. But the girls are out of town, and uncontactable. And I think if I gave Damian this assignment the two of them would kill each other.”

“No Jason option, sir?” Tim says because he’s a shit-stirrer and wants to get to work.

Tim succeeds in chasing Bruce away. He’s left to have his coffee in peace as the old man quickly flees the room at the mention of the son he's on the worst terms with. For the next few hours, Tim taps away on his computer, enjoying his time.

And when the front doors open, his ears prick, and a decidedly evil grin spreads on his face.

“I’m home!” Dick calls out, words travelling through the grand manor.

Tim gets up from his seat and wanders leisurely to the main hall, where Dick stands. He’s got a suitcase by his side, filled with all the things he’s brought up from the Blud. When he spots Tim, Dick’s face spreads in a familiar sunny smile. He quickly rushes to Tim’s side, swallowing the younger brother in a hug. Tim groans at the tight squeezing.

Despite his clinginess, it was good to see him. His tanned skin glowed healthily, and his curly black hair was messy over his brow. Sapphire blue eyes sparkled. He was happy to be home, despite everything that was going on. Dick always looked like he’d just gotten back from a run because he usually had. It was hard to get the guy to sit still for even a minute, much less stop parkouring over every imaginable surface.

“Tim! How’s it been? Ah, it’s so good to be home,” Dick starts, and again, Tim groans. When Dick starts yammering he never stops.

“I’m good, man. We can talk later, you should go put your things away before Alfred does,” Tim reminds Dick, and Dick pouts. It was a general rule that unless it was cooking, the family wasn’t supposed to rely on Alfred for everything.

“Alright, alright. I’ll be down in a minute! I have so much to tell you,” Dick relents, hand lifting to mess with his hair. Tim pushes him off, glaring at the man, and Dick laughs.

Tim gives Dick a tired wave as the gymnast bounds up the stairs to his bedroom. Tim watches him disappear down the hallways, and thinks, ‘I wish I could see this happen.’ He sighs, guess he’ll just have to hear Dick retell the story later. The distant sound of your shrieking voice has him chuckling. Yeah, he’ll hear about it later, he’s sure.

MASTERLIST - NEXT

[goldsbitch]

can I request a Lando x reader where the reader’s weakness is when people stroke her hair? Her mind goes completely blank and she falls silent immediately when people stroke her hair and Lando uses it at his advantage.

Fluffy pls and ty🫶🏻

omg, i love this prompt so much - thank you and hope you like it!!

This is one is dripping with sweetness a little too much, don't say I did not warn you. No other warning.

Lando was born a tease, oscillating between clueless and shy, to unapologetic and bordeline dickish. It all depended on the setting, his relationship to the person and how much sleep he got the night before. Sometimes your boyfriend was the sweetest little thing, giggling shyly about everything instead of coming up with an actual response, and the other times he was a walking menace actively seeking every opportunity how to get you into a flustered state.

You and Lando were full on deep in the beginning of your relationship, the sweetest part of the honeymoon phase. To put it bluntly - fucking almost non stop. And the desire was never-ending. Blinding sunshine kissed good morning to every day you two got to wake up next to each other. Problems seem to be non existent. Bliss.

It was the way his hair curled when he got a little bit sweaty, his toned body what you were desperate to explore from every angle and the need to know every little secret trick that worked on him. It became some sort of a game, who would get better at knowing the other. Which one of you found all the buttons to push.

Lando rose up that morning and chose violence. Metaphorical one, of course. Snuggling up to you in order to wake you up as well for some morning work out, as he like to call it. Whispering sweet nothings to your ear and touching you all over your body. But you were just incredibly sore from the past few days, physically unable to keep up.

"Why don't you love me anymore," he pleaded jokingly as you murmured another weak appeal for your sleep.

"Lando, you know I love you more than anything," you replied, still half asleep. But it was hard to distinguish as reality resembled a sweet dream everyday lately.

"I remember when you used to want me, physically," he kept going.

"We literally had sex few hours ago, stop whining," you kissed him between your words. He looked at you with his incredible eyes, little devil dancing in each one of them.

"Exactly, too long ago. Wish I could go back in time when you were not sore and get inside you all over again."

You simply laughed, absolutely smitten with this lovey dovey side of him. His words made you melt like butter sitting under direct sun. You brushed your noses together and then he kissed you.

The best part of romantic relationships is the one that you cannot absolutely share with other people, the almost embarrassing pleas, desire and gross goofiness, simping at each other all the time.

"Fine, if you play by these rules, I'll come back with my own revenge," he said finally as you inevitably had to start getting ready to go to the paddock with him.

Today was the big day. You'd been spotted in public countless of times, the "girlfriend" title officially sitting on your head for weeks now. But this was the first time you were to join him in the paddock as a wag. You were trying to hide your nervousness, but he saw right through you. Before you exited the apartment, he made you stop and took your face in his hands. "I'm happy I get to do this with you. I love parading you around, for everyone to see that we're a team." You smiled, his words hitting like first snowflakes of the year. "Poor Oscar, I can't wait to finally trauma dump the shared misery you bring to our lives," you jokes and locked lips with him once again. "God, it's terrifying how much I like you," you said automatically, without having to think about it.

//

It actually wasn't as bad as you'd expected. It was definitely weird and strange, but not necessarily bad. Having Lando by your side as you passed the gates definitely helped. The photographers were lined up as people at a shooting range would and it did feel like that at first. But as quickly as you were initially overwhelmed, fatigue took over you and you blocked their ever-presence out. Trying to chat up those Lando introduce you to and memorizing the names. You knew how much some of these people meant to Lando, so you were trying to be at your best behavior. The thought that his friends would hate you in the same way as some of his fans haunted you.

In the middle of all the rush, you parted for a moment. To be honest, little peace of quiet and chill was something you appreciated. But remember, Lando woke up and chose violence this morning. And his plan was quite simple, yet bulletproof.

"Y/N! There you are, my love," you heard from coming from behind you. "I have someone to introduce to you! I'm very much sure you'll appreciate meeting him." As you turned, you saw Daniel Ricciardo walking your way with your Lando. You were a little perplexed as to why Lando was so cheerful about that. You clearly remembered him getting very upset when you admitted to him that at some point in the past, when formula 1 was a world far away from you, that you had a minor crush on Daniel. Which obviously went out of the window once you met Lando. That did not mean that Lando was 100% ok with it.

"Y/N, as I'm sure you know, this is Daniel, hell of a driver and good friend of mine," Lando continued and you knew him well enough to know he had ulterior motives. Not sure what to do, you smiles shyly and shook Daniel's hand.

"Hi, Daniel," you said, eyes flinching between him and Lando. You were full on preparing for anything. Lando's smirk almost had a life of his own at that point.

"Nice to finally meet you, Y/N. I've heard quite a lot things about you!" Daniel opened, life of the party as per usual.

You chuckled. "All good things, I hope!" And with that, Lando stepped behind you and put his arm around you.

"Only the best," he said, leaned closed and inconspicuously started to stroke you hair gently. Oh, he did not just go this low.

It was slow, yet like tidal wave. You stopped breathing for a moment. Your body relaxing, as if you'd just taken the world's best sedatives. The way his hands made you feel was etherial. It was the same sensation the luckier ones experienced when listening to ASMR and the less fortunate ones sometimes called an orgasm. Shivers slowly traveling around your whole body, every part becoming sensitive out of nowhere. You weren't able to look at Daniel, let alone continue speaking. Lando was more than aware of what touching your hair did to you. He'd discovered this trick quite early on. And it was his favorite one.

"So, where are you from?" Daniel attempted at small talk. But how could you possibly give a fuck at that moment. Not that your body would even allowed you to respond. The only thing you were able to take in from the outside world were the soft slow movements Lando's fingers were doing, blocking everything out instanteniously.

Daniel stared at you, waiting. From his perspective, this was a very awkward meeting.

Lando answered for you, with a smirk you did not see, but could feel from the tone of his voice. "You have to excuse her, she is bit shy in front of new people."

You could not give less of a fuck at that moment of what these two were saying. Your lips were starting to shiver from getting so sensitive. You took a short breath and someone who would be standing close and knew you well would know, that what escaped your mouth was not a nervous laugh, but something very close to a moan.

Lando and Daniel were saying words, but none of that was important, while Lando's fingers were working his magic. He would only leave your hair alone once he saw Daniel leaving.

You wanted to be mad at him. But you were still sort of high from all the sensation bomb Lando dropped on you. You slowly turned around to face him, coming down from your own personal nirvana.

You took a deep breath while he watched you without a blink and biting hims smile away.

"You promised," you let out air that got stuck in your lungs somewhere along the way. "You promised you would not do this in public." Your brain was slowly wiring up to normal again.

"I told you I'd punish you for the morning," he said as if it was the most amusing thing ever. "Also, if Daniel is my competition, I'm going to use all the advantage I have."

Lando had a way of looking at you that made you unravel instantaneously and there was no way of stopping it. There was just something about his smile that did it for you. As anyone who is properly in love, you could not imagine somebody being able tor resist that. In your love soaked mind, he was irresistible. To a normal mind, he was probably just a regular guy, but that idea was unfathomable to you.

"I'm pretty sure that after what I just pulled, you will not have to worry about Daniel liking me," you chuckled, having to accept that Lando won this one.

"I would never let my guard down...But yeah, I think this one is pretty safe," he chuckled once more. You kissed his overly proud face and promised to yourself to get back at him later, in the privacy of his bedroom.

[vampire-exgirlfriend]

Can we please talk about the insanity surrounding the discourse around Aemond and the brothel madame? She is not his abuser. She is a survival sex worker who was absolutely not in any position to deny Aegon when he took Aemond to her establishment for the first time when they were 12 and 15, respectively. This woman is a victim of this society in the way that all women were, except that it’s amplified ten-fold because of her profession and her status as one of the small folk. 

She’s not a predator. She’s not prowling the streets for young virgins to deflower. And it seems like this takes just reeks of ageism in a lot of ways. A member of the royal family, the potential heir, if talk was to be believed, came to her establishment with a purse full of coin. It’s transactional, yes, but are we really going to act like she, or anyone who worked there, really had the option of telling Aegon no? Would it have been less awful if Aemond was essentially forced by a family member to lose his virginity to someone that you personally found more in line with your beauty or age standards? Because that is what is comes down to. Aemond didn't want to fucking be there, Aegon thinks he's getting cool big brother points via psycho-sexual trauma, and whoever ended up in that room would have been a tool in that trauma. Would it be easier to stomach if that woman wasn't clearly older? If you found her more attractive?

And in the scene in s2 e2, it’s not her infantilizing Aemond. This is what he’s paying for! This is what he wants! This is the kink that he’s choosing to play into, and she’s doing her job and securing her safety and leaning into the protection that being a favorite of a royal man offers, however tenuous that may be. How are we supposed to fault her for doing her job? For taking her own safety and standing seriously in the face of royal patrons? We’ve seen time and again in this universe what happens to women who deny those same whims. Do we just expect her to fall on some sort of moral sword that wouldn’t have even existed then?

Like this kink of Aemond’s isn’t for everyone. You don’t have to like it, it doesn’t have to be your thing. And I get the feeling it’s unraveling a lot of head canons that have popped up over the last two years of waiting, which is why people are getting so weird over it. But to just paint this woman attempting to survive with the brush of a sexual predator is really gross. She didn’t seek him out, Aegon brought him to her, and we know from Viserys screaming at Daemon in s1 e4 that this is probably a common practice within that fucky ass family. One of the major points of this story is that the small folk have no protection, no standing, no recourse. How could she have denied them? It’s explicitly stated when Mysaria is talking to Rhaenyra that people like her, like the madame, have absolutely no protections. And that’s not even taking into account the public hanging of the rat catchers. This is what happens when royals and those in power are angry - the small folk are fodder for their power trip. This is what the entire episode was about.

You can have your icks (though I’d encourage you to ask yourself why her age and profession bother you so much), but to say the person that yucks your yum is an abuser and a predator is just way out of pocket in this scenario. 

[cursedcatvibes]

KILLSHOT!

re4r!fuckboy leon x fuckgirl reader

word count: 5.9k

summary: Leon is only really a fuckboy because of some sort of childhood trauma thing. He doesn’t want to be forgotten, growing up ugly isn’t something he wanted to be remembered by so when he got his glow up he obviously used his looks to his advantage. But what happens when he starts to hear another name other than his own making rounds, everyone is raving about this person and Leon doesn’t like this. Is he jealous of them? Or is he actually jealous he hadn’t gotten to experience it yet?

tags/warnings: Minors DNI! Smut, 18+. Complicated emotions, slight mask kink, using of drugs, drugs mentioned, alcohol slightly mentioned, college ditzy bimbo talking, fingering, cowgirl, praise, characters from other franchises mentioned, halloween party, stalking-ish.. not proof read

A/N: hello! i have not been active in a few months oh my gosh.. literally sickening but life is literally sickening in itself? so.. but anyways, i had this idea strike me and it’s taken so long for me to punch it out because i kept changing the plot and rewriting and deleting shit because i didn’t like it. sue me! but yeah i forced myself to sit and write all day, so if some of the plot is not consistent i apologize! i actually got slight inspiration from pawgleon.. like the way the characters speak. i think she portrays bimbo and ditzy talk very well! (this is me partaking in kinktober)

Songs! ^^

Killshot (Slowed + Reverb) - Magdalena Bay

Rehab - Brent Faiyaz

Yummy - Ayesha Erotica

Like a Dream - Thomas LaRosa

Poison- Brent Faiyaz

｡ﾟ•┈୨♡୧┈•ﾟ｡

Leon’s always made a name for himself ever since Junior year in highschool. He had been considered ugly up until that point, had a bunch of acne (just like a normal growing teenager would), wore glasses, and his voice was still a little high-pitched because his balls had yet to drop. So what? Most boys are late bloomers! Definitely nothing to be insecure about.

He got picked on a lot and all the girls he liked never liked him back, always made fun of him whenever they could and called him a weird freak. But that all changed one summer when he got back to school for the new year.

He had gained a skincare routine, traded his glasses for contact lenses, and even started working out. It made him feel good about himself and it gave him the confidence to say fuck you to everyone else.

When he strolled into school however, it proved to be different almost immediately.

Here he was thinking he would have to defend himself again this year but people actually seemed to like him, girls he had never spoken to in his life started coming up to him. All pretty and perky too.

Now all of the sudden everyone wanted to fuck him and he was overjoyed. He quickly lost his virginity not even a month into starting the new school year, it took him a long while to perfect his craft but soon he got pretty good at knowing a woman’s body, men too.

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A few years later and now he’s in college with a reputation of being a fuckboy. It wasn’t a bad thing for him, considering the fact that he was able to get out the pent up stress college applied onto him.

Leon always got to pick his fruit of the night daily, sometimes even more than once a day. He didn’t have to worry about girls trying to get into relationships with him because of his reputation, one, and two, he was always up front about how he didn’t want to date anyone.

He was 1000% sure that if someone could be labeled as best fuck/hookup he would qualify for first every single time.

Well that’s what he originally thought until he started hearing another name going around, almost as often as his own. He was curious about who this person was, he wondered if they were as good as him for this many people to be buzzing about them.

It only took him a couple of minutes asking around before he found out the full name of the person and what class they were in. Surprisingly they were in the morning class of the same lesson that Leon took except his was more in the afternoon.

No wonder they haven’t crossed paths. No worries, he’s sure that a person like him must be cool enough to become friends with.

Oh how wrong he was.

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You had a decent up bringing growing up, didn’t struggle academically and you weren’t bad looking but you weren’t good looking either. Just plain. No one paid much mind to you in middle school.

It was completely fine with you, no drama, no names to remember, and no one to pick on you. You could honestly say you enjoyed it.

No one bothered you up until you hit puberty, you noticed almost immediately that people started treating you differently. It was strange at first, getting used to everyone trying to butter you up for one thing only.

You didn’t see much of an issue because you didn’t care, you didn’t see virginity as a big deal either. Now you weren’t a hoe or passed around, you just had sexual relations with whomever.

You were pretty ecstatic about going to college you had aspirations and dreams, that dream job wasn’t going to be easy. You needed to have a proper education and a little experience in that field before you even tried.

It was also well known in college that you get to sleep around with whoever you want and receive no consequences.

But never raw, you definitely weren’t trying to get pregnant before your life properly started. You applauded the women who did have babies this early in life and still make something of themselves but you could barely take care of yourself on a daily let alone a whole other little human.

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You sat there in the middle row of the lecture, bored out of your mind. You stared at the chalkboard and occasionally glanced down at your notebook to doodle or something to make it appear you were paying attention. It was just an extra class you were forced to do for extra credits before the end of the semester.

Leon on the other hand was sat in the back row of that same class, he somehow managed to weasel his way into the same extracurricular as you so he could spy on you, a feeling of unease brewing in his belly as he watched you.

He didn’t trust you, he didn’t think you were a whore. That’s kinda hypocritical of him but he was put off by your presence. Maybe a little bit jealous of you and how you managed to make a name for yourself. It was almost like he was challenging you mentally. A challenge you yourself wasn’t even aware of.

He glanced up at the clock when he noticed people getting up, he collected his stuff immediately and quietly followed behind you. Leon felt like he was being a bit stalker ish but he wanted answers. Plus it’s not like he was doing it to be a pervert.

He watched as you met up with some friends to go study in the library, obviously he was still shadowing you from afar. His nose shoved inside a book in the far corner in the library but close enough to spy on you from a distance.

He didn’t gain much information, you were hard working with a flirtatious personality, it was kind of hard for him to gather anything from this. But he overheard you and your friends talking about going to a party, his head perked up a bit like a dog smelling a delicious treat.

He wasn’t sure why but he felt this strange feeling wash over him, could he confront you there? But why was he trying to confront you? In all honesty he wasn’t sure, he just knew that he was jealous and scared that he would become a nobody again.

｡ﾟ•┈୨♡୧┈•ﾟ｡

You and your friends spoke happily about the most random stuff, like who got who pregnant, followed by did you see this new show? The topics never truly stayed on one solid one unless the whole group had a deep connection to it.

So it didn’t surprise you that a party happening later that night was mentioned. “It’s a costume party?” You asked curiously and your friend chuckled and nudged you with her elbow. “Oh my god, like yeah. Obviously. It’s halloween.” Ashley giggled and the rest of them did too.

“That’s so lame.” You murmured, twirling your pencil around in your hand. “Like.. this is the start of a bad hallmark movie or something.” You said as your lips pulled up into a thin line.

Your friends shrugged and they obviously knew you would go anyways, you glanced around the library per usual. Something you did just as a random habit and you spotted someone looking at you.

You frowned a bit as you watched the guy look away and bury his face back in his book. How strange? “What a weirdo.” Your friend, Jill, spoke up and it startled you a bit. “Huh?” You turned back to her and she stared at the guy before looking back at you.

“Do you know him?” She asked and you shook your head no. “Yeah.. I thought so. He kept glancing over here and I thought it was all in my head.” Jill mumbled softly as if to keep it between the both of you. With a nod of agreement from you Jill joined back into the conversation.

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Leon on the other hand was burning red in embarrassment, you had looked right at him and made a face. Now he looked creepy. He should just leave the library now or something, anything! But he stayed glued to his seat, straining his ears to eavesdrop on your table.

After a while he watched you all get up and leave, he sighed softly and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Nice going, Kennedy. You’ve outdone yourself and now you look like a creep.” He muttered in annoyance.

He quickly packed his stuff up and exited the library, shooting his friends a quick text before heading towards his dorm. He needed a Halloween costume now.

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Halloween shopping didn’t take long for your group of friends. All of you got ready in Claire’s dorm because it was spacious and she was the one who got the best one because rumor had it her brother fucked one of the deans for special privileges and Claire used it as blackmail for herself.

Everyone in that dorm knew it was far from the truth, she was just a good student and because of that she got special treatment alongside Chris.

Ashley was busy doing her makeup when she looked over at you who was staring at the costume you had got. “You okay?” She asked and you turned around to look at her. It was obvious to everyone she would go as Harley Quinn. It suited her. Is what you thought before responding.

“I’m questioning if this is too much.” You responded and Jill perked up. “Definitely not. It’s actually beneficial because it’ll probably be super hot at that party so the less clothes the better.” She murmured mindlessly as she put on her realistic wig..

Ashley and Claire glanced over at Jill before bursting out in a fit of giggles. “This is why we keep Jill on a high pedestal. She’s like super smart and pretty. It’s a two for one.” Ashley grinned and you chuckled softly.

Claire slung her arm over your shoulder and tugged you close. “Besides you’ll be matching with me, and y’know if someone bothers you and you don’t want them Chris will stand up for us.” She pinched your cheek gently and you swatted her hand away with a whine.

“Fine, you have a point.” You relented with raised hands as if you surrender. Claire smiled and grabbed her costume to change into.

Ashley put her hair up into two pigtails and grabbed the spray of temporary hair dye. “So.. Luis is going to be there.” She beamed, and everyone in the room rolled their eyes. “Ashley, you are such a simp for him.” Claire huffed and you and Jill nodded in agreement.

“Okay well it’s not my fault okay! It’s gotta be his stupid accent.” Ashley grumbled softly, pouting as she did so. When she turned around after staring at the vanity mirror for so long she smiled seeing everyone in their costumes.

Jill is Tiffany Valentine from the Chucky franchise, Ashley is Harley Quinn from the DC franchise, Claire is Starfire, and you are Raven.

You purse your lips as you hold the cape up between your fingertips. “You know for the longest time I had no idea what she was saying.” You admitted and everyone but Jill agreed. “You didn’t watch it with subtitles?” She laughed and you shook your head no with a grin.

“I thought she was just speaking gibberish.” You said and it just made everyone laugh harder as they gathered their things to get ready to leave. “Yeah because they would make one of their main characters speak gibberish everytime she used her powers.” Claire teased and you turned red with embarrassment but also laughter as you all walked out the door.

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Leon on the other hand was pre gaming in his dorm room with his friends, Carlos, Chris, and Luis. “Dude you know how many hot chicks are going to be there?” Chris murmured as he slipped into a brown jacket, pulling gloves onto his hands while searching for his Jason Vorhees mask.

“I'm definitely scoring tonight.” Carlos said as he messed with his hair, a soft hum leaving his lips. Leon shrugged, not very interested in hooking up with anybody. He was more interested in trying to one up you.

Luis sat next to Leon on the couch and stared at him for a second. “¿Qué pasa, Sancho?” He asked, tilting his head at the blonde who seemed to be anxious. “Nothing. Just.. thinking. I guess.” He replied, rubbing his nape.

Luis cocked his eyebrow up and narrowed his eyes at Leon suspiciously. “Well, whatever it is. I’m here if you wanna talk.” He assured, placing his hand on Leon’s shoulder. Leon nodded and grabbed his Ghostface mask.

“Are we all ready?” Chris asked as Carlos was putting on his gloves with fake claws on them. He had the signature Freddy Krueger colors on while Luis had the iconic blue jumpsuit and Michael Myers mask. Once everyone was ready they set off to the party, Leon swallowed anxiously under his mask.

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The first thing you were met with when you entered the frat house was a mess, a mess of drunk and high people. You made a face at the smell of sweat and sex filling the air. Have some decorum people. You grimaced as you were dragged through the party.

Somehow ending up in the living room with everyone in your friend group. “They have coke! Oh my gosh, I’ve like totally wanted to try it.” Ashley beamed and grabbed you. “C’mon let’s all do a line, when’s the next time you’ll be offered coke or something. We’ll be all old with wrinkles.” Ashley whined, trying to convince Claire and Jill who sighed and reluctantly agreed.

“Okay but doesn’t this like burn?” You questioned.

“What? Like Molly?” Ashley raised her eyebrow.

“No—Like doesn’t it burn your nostrils?” You raised an eyebrow back at her.

Jill sighed and picked up a straw that was on the table along with random lines of coke on the glass surface while you and Ashley argued over something as tedious as whether it’ll go down smoothly.

Claire followed in pursuit of Jill and did a line too, squeezing her eyes shut as she sniffled. “Jeez, that shit is strong..” She muttered as she pinched her nostrils, Jill nodded heavily in agreement.

“I forgot you’re the fucking coke queen of America. That’s my bad.” You huffed softly.

Ashley rolled her eyes and went to reach for a straw for you only to see Claire and Jill holding them. “You guys did it without us!!” She complained and you just sighed.

“Ash, we can just do a line right now.” You murmured which seemed to calm her down enough to keep her tantrum at bay. She holds your hand and leans down in sync with you as you both snorted a line.

At the same time you both did, Leon and his goon squad arrived at the party and everyone started cheering. Garnering the attention of all of you kneeled at the table.

You wiped away the residue on your nose and sniffled, narrowing your eyes at Leon for a second as he put on his Ghostface mask and his face was hidden again. He looked.. familiar.

You tried to ponder where you saw him at, but you just shrugged it off. Whatever. Probably nowhere.

Jill glanced over at Chris a few times while Claire was eyeing Carlos. Ashley immediately bounced up and was about to scurry over to Luis. You grabbed onto her wrist before she could run off.

“Ashley! Are you seriously ditching us for Luis?” You stared at her, trying to gauge her reaction.

“What? Noo—I would definitely not. ‘M just being friendly. I’ll totally come back.” She replied in her usual manner, which gave away that she was lying. You reluctantly let her go and she scurried off.

You sighed heavily as you watched Claire and Jill give each other a knowing look. “You guys too?!” You groaned out and they gave you a sheepish smile. “We’ll come back, we have our phones on sound and we’ll all go home together.” Jill assured, placing her hand on your thigh.

“You guys hate me.” You frowned with a slight pout and Claire pressed a kiss to your cheek. “Pinky promise we’ll come back.” She whispered and you took her pinky in your own. “Okay. Promise.” You sighed out.

Then you watched Claire and Jill disappear, probably to go curl up with Chris and Carlos. You weren’t very amused, the only reason you came was to hang out with them but Leon and his stupid friends came and ruined it.

Whatever. Least you had some entertainment, the coke on the table and the promise of alcohol.

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Leon smirked as he entered the party, he knew he was hot shit. But that lingering fear that he would be some name in the past still brewed within him. Which is why he agreed to tag along. The only question was where were you?

He sauntered deeper into the party with his friends until one by one they were plucked away by girls he recognized from your friend group. He pursed his lips beneath his mask, his tongue flicking out to wet his lips as he glanced around.

It’s as if fate itself had its way of showing itself as you stumbled into the kitchen, not dressed in much. His eyes widened in surprise as you walked to the punch bowl that was probably spiked by now and got yourself a cup of juice.

He watched from the corner of his eye in awe as you licked the rim of the cup to clean the few drops of juice you got on the side of the cup. He gulped and chastised himself, no he wasn’t supposed to be staring at you like some lovesick maniac. He was trying to prove himself tonight.

He would plow through so much pussy tonight it would leave you behind in the dust. Or at least that’s what he hoped.

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As the night lingered on you got more wasted to forget about the fact you got ditched for some dick. You couldn’t say you were surprised and honestly you were contemplating getting laid. But there was something uneasy about tonight.

Every room you slowly made your way into you saw some guy in the Ghostface costume making out with some girl, borderline groping each other over their clothes. At first you thought it was different guys until you got a good look at the face of the man behind the mask twice to realize it was the same guy with different girls each time. Weirdo. Is all you thought but you were smart enough to remember some guys have a game to see who can get the most kisses, hook ups, blowjobs in one night.

Leon on one hand was shocked each time you walked past him like it was nothing, like you just didn’t care. He was sure he could fuck some girl in front of everyone and you wouldn’t pay them any mind. What the hell?

With a growl he was determined to get your attention somehow, it didn’t even register that he was doing all this for your attention. His body reacting on pure instinct as he broke away from the kiss with the girl. A brief apology as he excused himself. Chasing after you as you drunkenly stumbled back to the kitchen.

He stood at a distance watching you rummage through the fridge. “All my friends hate me, oh my god.” You mumbled under your breath as you found nothing to satisfy your hungry belly. A soft pout on your expression until some guy pressed up against you from behind.

You paused for a second before you stood up straight and turned around to see some random guy in a batman costume staring down at you. “Uhm, hello.” You say as he leans down to inspect your costume. “Oh okay. Just go on ahead—“

“Raven? From Teen Titans?” He asked as his eyes met your own again.

“Oh yeah, my friend and I dressed as Raven and Starfire.” You slurred a bit as he rubbed his thumb over your chin. “Oh—Hellooo.” You giggled as the guy placed his other hand on your hip.

“We’re from the same franchise. I think your costume looks really cool.. I’m Brandon” He uttered softly, leaning down to brush his lips against yours and you eagerly reciprocated, whispering your own name into the kiss. You had plans starting to form in your head to go back with this guy to his dorm and hook up with him.

Well, you did at least plan to leave with him. But no way in hell was Leon going to let that happen. He stormed over, his angry expression hidden behind the Ghostface mask, he cleared his throat and tugged you away from the guy.

He glanced between you and the guy in his stupid batman costume. When he realized what he had done he immediately lied on the spot, blurting the first name of your friend that came to mind. “Ashley! Erm—Ashley asked if you could come help her with something.”

You blinked a few times as you processed what was said, realizing that the guy behind the Ghostface costume must know Ashley, which didn’t surprise you. “Oh.”

You bit on your bottom lip and glanced at Brandon. “Sorry. My friend needs me.” You replied and latched onto Leon’s arm. “Lead the way.” You hiccuped.

Leon immediately walked off with you, feeling a sense of pride at the knowledge he ruined that moment for you. Yet when he looked down at your face you didn’t seem to mind, in fact you seemed more worried about your friend.

Leon guided you out the party, letting the fresh air overcome him and you. He didn’t realize how hot it was inside until he stepped outside with you.

“Wait. She left the party?” You stopped in your tracks and gently tugged on Leon’s arm.

“What?” He said, confusion laced in his tone before he remembered the lie he uttered. “Oh yeah—yeah. She uhm, left to go with him but she told him to tell me you needed her.”

You didn’t seem to question him any further, which was a relief for him because he wasn’t sure how much more he could lie as he guided you back to the dorms. More specifically his.

What the fuck am I doing?

Why did I care so much that she was going to kiss some random dude?

Why am I taking her back to my dorm?

I should’ve been on my fourth hook up tonight and yet I haven’t touched any naked body yet.

Leon’s mind raced as he unlocked the door and guided you inside, closing the door behind him and locking it as you called out for Ashley.

“Ashley! Ugh I swear if it’s not something important and you made me miss out on the opportunity to get laid I’m gonna murder you!” You groaned out as you stumbled in your platformed boots; which in theory are horrible to wear while being wasted.

Leon pulled his mask off and tossed it onto his couch, wiping the sweat from his brow before he followed after you, grabbing hold of your wrist to turn you around towards him gently.

“Ew your hands are like.. gross and sweaty.” You made a face of disgust and his nose scrunched up in annoyance.

“Okay that’s a bit rude.” He huffed and looked at you, he would finally be able to see you for you at this moment. It suddenly hit him.

You’re not competition, obviously not if you’re not bragging about your hook up to him, rather your friend who definitely isn’t here.

Hell, you’re just a girl. A girl who he’s jealous of for no reason.

A girl who’s.. really fucking pretty?

His eyes widened as he came to the realization that it wasn’t anger at being replaced, it wasn’t jealousy of hearing your name being uttered time and time again instead of his.

No, that's stupid. I’ll see if she’s really as good as everyone says she is. He was determined to see what was so special about you.

Your nose scrunched up as if mimicking his own expression as you could see different emotions ran across his face. “Uhm hello?—“ You went to wave your hand in front of his eyes when he tightened his grip on you and pulled you in for a kiss with force. Such force that you stumbled.

A quick lie running out of his mouth smoothly as he cupped your face in his hands. “I lied, Ashley didn’t call you here.. I just have such a big crush on you and didn’t know how to express it.” He breathed out as your tongue ran over his bottom lip.

You, to his surprise, didn’t fight back or protest the kiss. You seemed to encourage it more than anything.

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s kinda sly of you..” You remarked as you pulled back from the kiss, your lipstick smeared on his soft plump ones. You brought your thumb up to his bottom lip and wiped away as much as you could.

“So what’s your name you big stud.” You teased in a drunken tone, Leon bit his bottom lip and ducked down to capture your lips again. “Leon.” He muttered into the kiss, slowly guiding you to his room with careful steps.

He could tell you were getting tired of how slow he was moving so he patted your thigh to encourage you to hop up. Once you did he grabbed the back of your legs and held you firmly against him, your lips not parting from his own as he stumbled into his bedroom.

He dropped you down onto the bed and finally pulled away. “I have to turn on the lamp..” He mumbled quietly as he reached off to the side to flick the light on. The moonlight helped to illuminate the parts of the room the light didn’t reach fully.

When he looked down at you he felt his heart rate increase. “Fuck.” He cursed and you just smiled at the sight above you.

You reached your hand up to move his hair out of his face. “What? Think I’m pretty or something?” You asked and he nodded, a soft giggle leaving your precious lips.

So precious. He thought as he pressed his left palm above your head against the bed while his other hand came up to cup and fondle your breast above your costume.

You managed to kick your boots off somehow, leaning back against the bed comfortably. “Well that’s sweet of you. I think you’re quite handsome.” You replied as your hair laid spread out behind you.

Leon hesitated for a second, what does he do now? He’s been hooking up with people for awhile now and for once in his life he’s stunned on what to do next. He opens his mouth to speak but all that comes out is a soft moan as you drag his hand up to your mouth to suck on his thumb.

“Hah.. you’re good at that hm?” He cooed, pressing his thumb down against your tongue. With a soft hum from you he adjusted the way he was hovering above you so he could use both hands instead of one.

He dragged his left hand down your torso right down to your pussy, he could feel the heat radiating off of such an intimate part of you. This made his cock throb with want as he pushed the crotch of your costume to the side.

“I guess this costume is pretty much easy access..” He spoke his inner thoughts aloud, watching you blush beneath his watchful gaze before his fingertip brushed against your clit.

You mewled softly and brought your hands up to paw at his chest, wanting his costume off but he clicked his tongue. “Patience. Good things come to those who wait.” He scolded you lightly and gave you a shit eating grin as you frowned.

“You’re like a delicacy.” He explained, rubbing his middle and ring finger through your folds before prodding them against your hole. “You must be handled with care.” He punctuated his words by shoving his fingers inside of you.

You gasped and your back arched off the bed a little. “O-Oh fuck. That feels good.. your fingers are so thick.” You whimpered around his thumb, he snickered softly and pulled his thumb away from your mouth, pressing the wet digit against your clit to rub hard and fast circles against the sensitive little bud while his other hand moved in tandem by fucking his fingers in and out of you.

A slick squelching sound resounding through the room followed by lewd moans coming from you. Who would’ve thought having sex while being high on coke made everything feel ten times better?

“Leon.” You whined softly as your walls clenched down tightly around his fingers. “You’re g’nna make me cum..”

Leon just shrugged and leaned down to nip at your neck. “And? That’s what you want, right baby?” He whispered directly in your ear, sucking on your earlobe. He let out a low chuckle as you cried out a soft yes.

He doubled down on his efforts and you swore you saw stars, definitely. You squealed softly as your orgasm crashed down onto your body like a truck, your cheeks and the tips of your ears turning red and hot with arousal.

“There’s we go. That’s my girl.” He lapped at the pulse point on your neck as you settled down from your high, he took the opportunity to strip himself of his clothes but not before getting a taste of what he was going to be indulging in.

He brought his fingers up to his mouth and swirled his tongue around his own digits, sighing softly as he tasted the sweet essence that he had coaxed out of you.

“God. That shits perfect.” Leon bit his bottom lip as he began to remove his clothes, eyeing you hungrily as his cock sprung up into view.

You mumbled something before sitting up on your elbows, your mouth almost instantly watering at the sight of his dick. “Woah.” You blinked a few times before reaching out to touch.

Accidentally grabbing it too hard made Leon hiss in pleasure. “God damn. Easy baby.” He groaned out, and you winced out a soft apology, letting him guide your hand to be the perfect pressure and pace for him to get off on.

“Wait..” You said suddenly which made Leon pause, staring down at you questioningly. “Can you get your uh.. the mask.” You asked coyly, twirling a strand of your hair around your finger slyly as it registered what you wanted in his head.

“Sure thing.” He chuckled and patted your cheek, disappearing for a second before returning with the mask on his head. You grinned wickedly as he stood near the edge of his bed.

“How do I look—“ He was cut off by you yanking him down onto the bed, straddling him as you smirked. “I’m gonna absolutely ravish you.” You sighed out softly, having already removed your clothes when he stepped out the room.

Leon was quite stunned at the 360 shift in attitude. You were just crying on his fingers a few seconds ago and now you’re practically pinning him down. He placed his hands on your thighs, gently rubbing his thumbs against your soft skin.

“Yeah? What if I want to ravish you?” He retorted and you leaned down to press your bare chest against his own, “You could try.” You slurred quietly, but as the hours went on the more you slightly sobered up.

“Guess I’ll have to try super hard then.” He whispered softly as he grabbed his cock, rubbing the tip of it through your folds with a soft hum. You bit your bottom lip as you eventually sank down on him, the two releasing a soft moan in sync with each other.

It didn’t take long for Leon to start bouncing you on his cock as you rode him with an eager pace, it seems the mask was doing things for you that you yourself weren’t even aware would do.

The wet sounds between the two resounding through the room as skin on skin slapping against each other blended into the mix. “Fuck, you’re so tight.. ‘n wet.. ‘n warm.” He whined, fingers digging into your plush thighs as he bucked his hips up into you.

You nodded in acknowledgment. Your eyes fluttered shut as you could feel that coil in your gut tightening with each thrust and bounce. You knew you were close and so did Leon. “I’m almost there.” He panted out, gulping beneath the mask which was starting to prove to be extremely hot. He was sure he had sweat all over his face and head, if he was to remove the mask he was 99% sure that his hair would be thoroughly damp.

Yet if he could get girls to ride him as crazy and as good as you do he would wear it for every hookup encounter he ever had.

You reached your hands up to start punching and twisting your nipples, fondling your tits to tease him. He grunted loudly as he watched you with bated breath. “Fuck, keep playing with yourself like that. Touch that pretty little clit of yours too.” He gritted out as you did so, causing your walls to clamp down tightly around his cock.

Your jaw dropped as his cock brushed against that spongy spot inside of you that never failed to give you chills. “I-I can’t hold it..” You cried out, hand still moving quickly against your clit. Leon could see your chest rising and falling quickly and he was just a few seconds away from spilling his own seed.

“I know. W-Where do you want it?” He uttered aloud, squeezing his eyes shut and throwing his head back against his bed. “Mm. Inside, please.” You whined, bucking your hips eagerly.

Leon's eyes shot open and his head shot up to stare at you. “Fuck.. that’s so hot. Are you sure?” He was a bit nervous and didn’t want to cum inside of you if you weren’t 100% sure.

With an eager nod you spoke once more. “Yes! God, please! Inside of me, Leon.” You insisted, throwing your head back in pleasure as he thrusted a couple more times before pulling your hips flush against his own, he came before you did and it only took a few quick rubs from you before your orgasm hit you once more.

You practically collapsed on top of him with a heavy breath, resting your head on his chest as he moved his hands up to pull the mask off, finally being free of the sweaty contraption. He wrapped both his arms around you as his cock started to soften within your warm wet walls.

Fuck. He had to admit that the people were right about you being a good fuck.

Especially when you looked up at him with that soft smile but your eyes told a different story as you wiggled your hips a bit, it’s as if he didn’t even start to soften to begin with as he was fully hard within seconds.

Guess he was in for a long night, just as long as you don’t hear the incessant buzzing coming from your phone that was discarded on his nightstand haphazardly from your friends.

[havenotwillnotreadthebooks]

Hello! Back at it with a kidnap fam headcanon, except this ones about Earendil.

Consider; Maglor is so awkward around Earendil in Valinor. Earendil is good-natured about Stuff™️ but also awkward.

Anyway, at one point Earendil comes to Elrond’s home straight from his ship and Maglor accidentally brushes against him, only to find out Earendil’s skin is ice-fucking-cold.

Maglor instantly enters some sort of trauma response from the E&E twins’ childhood and starts lecturing Earendil on dressing properly for the weather and doesn’t he know Peredhel get cold more easily than elves? What if he got sick?

Maglor emerges from his parent haze to find Earendil has been wrapped in a sweater, two blankets, and one of Maglor’s outer robes.

Earendil is kinda just chilling. Like, he hasn’t been smothered like this in literal Ages of the world and its sorta nice to be cared about since he doesn’t get a lotta social time (touch-starved Earendil headcanon insert)

Anyway, the awkwardness has broken because Maglor is a bard, you best bet he is gonna commit to this bit. He puts a beanie hat on Earendil the same way he did for Elrond and Elros. Earendil is real quiet and just basking in the attention.

Elrond thinks this whole thing is fantastic. Slightly weird, but fantastic.

The meme format for this goes;

Earendil, fresh from the sky: heyo *COLD TO THE BONE*

Maglor, feeling Every Peredhel-Parent Instinct Reactivate: Where is your coat.

Yes this is inspired by RaisingCaiin & Jaz-The-Bard’s fics about cozy peredhel. No, I am not ashamed of anything.

Maedhros, if he’s around, is worse about it. Because Mae is used to getting the “baby is cold” instinct around grown adults (e.i his brothers) so that, combined with his Peredhel Is Cold instincts is just a recipe for disaster.

Maedhros has the thought peredhel is shivering, and next thing anyone knows there’s a blanket on Earendil. They both blink owlishly at each other for a moment, but Maedhros grew up with Feanor and he will Not Back Down.

Earendil gets another blanket.

Elwing, when she learns of the Cold Peredhel Instinct is…temped, to see what happens if she shivers near them. Because she is an awful seagull elf with an awful sense of humor. But there’s still too much tension between her and them for the joke to be funny yet. So she waits until she can look at them without flinching, and they can look at her without stiffening.

Then, and only then, does Elwing shiver around Mae&Mags and subsequently get blanket bombed.

[little-annie]

Gareth's POV

---

Eddie was acting weird.

And not his normal, kind of flighty, maybe a little sleep deprived thanks to childhood trauma and nightmares, weird.

No. He was weird in the sense that he hadn't quit smiling. And not in the sort of sinister, sort of menacing way he did when he was going to do something stupid or get into shit. No. He was smiling like Gareth had never seen him smile before. All dimples and fluttering eyes, catching himself with a giggle and turning away to shake it off as if it'd ever actually go away.

He looked happy, smitten if Gareth really had to put a word to it. Twitterpated, Love-Struck, Infatuated; if he had to put a few more.

It's a look Gareth had only ever seen in a smaller multitude when Eddie bought his Warlock those few years ago. And now, holding that same guitar, plucking mindlessly to a fucking Tears For Fears song, Eddie smiling like that, but ten fold.

Gareth has his suspicions, one much more likely than others. Maybe Eddie's high, maybe he finally passed Mrs. Click's class and hasn't told anyone yet, or maybe, the most likely of the three because Gareth might be just a touch dumb like any other teenage boy, not blind; Steve Harrington.

Steve "The King" "The Hair" Harrington.

Steve "who was never really a problem but still kind of a douchebag" Harrington.

Steve "who Eddie never shuts the fuck up about" Harrington.

Steve "who just so happens to be coming to their band practice today" Harrington.

Steve Harrington, Gareth's 99% sure.

As much could be proven by the way Eddie slips up on his cord and blushes the deepest shade of red upon Steve's arrival. 

Not to mention the fact that Harrington's sporting a Black Sabbath t-shirt Gareth knows to be Eddie's because they went to the fucking concert together. 

Well, then there's the hickeys that suspiciously match between the pair and the way Steve's eyes rake with a disturbing sort of hunger over Eddie's body. 

It's then that Eddie's change in the flavour of weird he's giving off today makes sense. That dopey smile, those heart shaped eyes and the way he just seems blissfully happy; it all makes sense.

[wilwheaton]

When you watch The Curse, you are watching two children who were abused and exploited daily during production. No adults protected us.

This was originally published on my blog in August, 2022.

I had a wonderful time at Steel City Comicon this weekend. It was my first time at this particular con, so I didn’t know there was such a huge contingent of horror fans, creators, and vendors who attend.

I love horror, and I was pretty psyched to be in the same place as John Carpenter and Tom Savini, across the street from the Dawn of the Dead mall. Pittsburgh feels like one of the places horror was invented, at least to me.

A number of these horror fans came to see me, and asked me to sign posters and other things from a movie my parents forced me to do when I was 13, called The Curse. I had to tell each of these people that I would not sign anything associated with that movie, because I was abused and exploited during production. The time I spent on that film remains the most traumatizing time of my life, and though I am a 50 year-old man, just typing this now makes my hands shake with remembered fear of a 13 year-old boy who nobody protected, and the absolute fury the 50 year-old man feels toward the people who hurt him.

I told this story in Still Just A Geek, and I’ve talked about it in some podcasts I did on the promo tour, but I’ve never put it out in public like this, in its entirety.

I suspect someone at the publisher would prefer I tease this and hope it drives book sales from people who want to read all of it, but I honestly don’t want to have another weekend like this one where everything is awesome, except the few times people who have no idea (and why should they) put that fucking poster in front of me, and all the fear, abandonment, and trauma come flooding back as I tell them that I won’t sign it, and why.

To their credit, each person was as horrified as they should have been, told me they had no idea (if they didn’t read my book why would they), and quickly put the poster away. They were all understanding. I am grateful for that.

But I really don’t need to tell this story over and over again, so here it is, with a child abuse and exploitation content warning, so I can just tell people to Google it.

After Stand by Me, everything changed. The attention from entertainment journalists, casting directors, and especially teen magazines came pouring in. The movie was a generational hit, beloved by critics and audiences alike, and every single one of us could pick anything to do next.

River’s parents and his agent got him Mosquito Coast, with Harrison Ford, as his next movie. I also auditioned for the role, but I knew even then that River was going to book the job. He was perfect, and I’d have to wait a little bit for my opportunity to come along.

I went on a lot of theatrical auditions after Stand by Me. I had tons of meetings with directors and the heads of casting at every major studio. It was all a very big deal, and I felt like we were all looking for something really special and amazing as my follow-up to Stand by Me.

At some point, a couple of producers contacted my agent with an offer to play one of the leads in an adaptation of H. P. Lovecraft’s “The Colour Out of Space.” The script was titled The Farm. (It would, of course, be changed when the film was released).

I read it. I did not like it. It was a shitty horror movie, and I saw that right away. It was the sort of thing you rented on Friday when the new release you wanted was already out of the store.

My mother, already an incredibly manipulative person, used every tool at her disposal to change my mind. My father threatened me, mocked me, told me “It’s your decision” when it clearly wasn’t. It was all so weird; I didn’t understand why they cared so much.

I told my parents I didn’t like it and didn’t want to do it. I clearly recall thinking it was a piece of shit that would hurt my career.

It wasn’t the first thing that had come our way that I wanted to pass on, and every other time, it hadn’t been a very big deal.

Sidebar: I was cast in Twilight Zone: The Movie, in 1983. The film tells four stories, and I was cast as the kid who can wish people into cartoonland. It was a GREAT role, in a movie I still love. (Note that Twilight Zone had four directors. One of them got three people killed. The segment I was cast in was not that one. I mention this because too many people zero in on this to deflect from what this whole thing is actually about.)

But I was CONVINCED by my parochial school teacher that if I worked on The Twilight Zone, which she had determined was satanic, I would go to hell. (This woman and her bullshit played a big role in my conversion to atheism at a young age, but when she told me that, I was all-in on the supernatural story they taught us in religion class.) I was so scared, more scared than I’d ever been to that point in my life, I cried and wailed and begged my parents to not make me do the movie. And I never told them why, because I was afraid my dad would laugh at me for being weak and afraid. My agent tried to talk me into it, and I wouldn’t budge. It’s the only thing I deeply and truly regret passing on, and I really hate I made that choice for such a stupid reason.

Okay. Back to The Curse.

This time, when I told them how much I hated it, they wouldn’t listen to me. My mother, already an incredibly manipulative person, used every tool at her disposal to change my mind. My father threatened me, mocked me, told me “It’s your decision” when it clearly wasn’t. It was all so weird; I didn’t understand why they cared so much.

That is, until they made me take a meeting with the producers of the movie, in their giant conference room on the top floor of a tall building in Hollywood. All I remember about this place was that it was huge; the table was way too big for the five of us who spread around it, and there were floor-to-ceiling windows on three of the walls, but the room was still dark. There was a weird optical illusion in the center of the table, this thing they sold in the Sharper Image catalog, made from two reflective dishes with a hole in the top of one. You placed an object in the bottom of the bottom dish, and it made it look like that object was floating above the whole thing. They had a plastic spider in it. What a strange detail for me to remember, but it’s as clear in my memory as if I were sitting in that room right now.

One man, who I presumed was the executive producer, was European or Middle Eastern (I didn’t know the difference then, he was just Not Like People I Knew), and I was instantly afraid of him. He was intimidating, and seemed like a person who got what he wanted.

So we sat there, my father who didn’t give a shit about me, my mother who was cosplaying as someone with experience, and me, thirteen years old, awkward as fuck, and scared to death.

I don’t remember what they said to me in their pitch or anything other than how uncomfortable and anxious I was to even be in that room. I tried so hard to be grown up and mature, but I — and my parents — was way out of my depth. I’d done one big movie and that was it. We didn’t have my agent with us, who had lots of experience and would have known what questions to ask.

No, in place of my experienced agent, my mother had decided she was going to be my manager, and she tackled the responsibility with an enthusiasm that was only matched by her absolute incompetence and inability to go toe-to-toe with producers the way my agent did. She was outwitted, out-thought, and outmaneuvered at every turn.

“You don’t have a choice,” my father commanded. “You are doing this movie.”

So we sat there, my father who didn’t give a shit about me, my mother who was cosplaying as someone with experience, and me, thirteen years old, awkward as fuck, and scared to death.

At some point, this man, who is represented in my memory by big Jim Jones sunglasses under dark hair above an open collar, said, “We are offering you a hundred thousand dollars and round-trip travel for your whole family. We will cast your sister, Amy, to play your sister in the movie.”

It all made sense, now. I was only thirteen, but I knew my parents were pushing me so hard because this company was offering me — them, really — more money than I’d ever imagined I’d earn in my life, much less a single job.

I knew that the right thing to do, the smart thing to do, was to say no. There would be other opportunities, and it was stupid to cash myself out of feature films for what I thought was, in the grand scheme of things, not very much money.

It’s incredible to me that I knew all of this. It’s incredible to me that I could see all these things, plainly and clearly, and my parents couldn’t (or, more likely, chose not to).

So after this man made his offer, all the adults in the room ganged up on me, selling me HARD on this movie.

My mother said, “Don’t you want your sister to have the same opportunities you’ve had? Wouldn’t it be fun and exciting to go to Rome? Think of all the history!”

The experience was awful. It was the worst experience I have ever had on a set in my life, by every single metric. The movie is awful, and it is the embarrassment I knew it would be.

I don’t think about this very often, because it’s super upsetting to me. Right now, I’m so angry at my parents for subjecting me and my sister to this entire experience. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

In that moment, I felt bullied and trapped. All these adults were talking to me at the same time, and I just wanted it to stop. I just wanted to go home and get out of this room. I just wanted to go be a kid, so I did what I’d learned to do to survive: I gave in and did what my parents wanted.

The experience was awful. It was the worst experience I have ever had on a set in my life, by every single metric. The movie is awful, and it is the embarrassment I knew it would be.

But here’s the thing: when you watch The Curse, you are watching two children, me and my sister, who were abused on a daily basis. The production did not follow a single labor law. They worked us for twelve hours a day, on multiple film units (while I work on First unit, second unit sets up and waits for me. When I should get a break to rest, they send me to Second unit, then to Third unit, then back to First unit. I was 13.) without any breaks, five days a week. I was exhausted the entire time. I was inappropriately touched by two different adults during production. I knew it was wrong, but I was so scared and ashamed, and I felt so unsupported, I didn’t tell anyone. I knew my dad wouldn’t believe me, and my mother would blame me. Anything to keep the production happy, that’s what she did. That was more important to her than the health and safety of her children. The director was coked out of his mind most of the time, incompetent, and so busy fucking or trying to fuck one of the women in the cast, he was worse than useless. He was a fading actor who was cosplaying as a director, as in over his head as my mother. My sister and I were never safe. Instead of harmless atmospheric SFX smoke, they set hay on fire in barrels and blew actual smoke onto the set. They took buckets of talc, broken wood, bits of wallpaper and plaster, and threw it into my face during a scene inside the collapsing house. My sister is in a scene where she goes to get eggs from some chickens, and they attack her. So they hired Lucio Fulci, the Italian horror master, to direct her sequence. His idea, which everyone was totally on board with, was to throw chickens at my sister. Live chickens, live roosters, live birds. Just throw them at a nine-year-old girl. Oh, and then tie them to her arms and legs so they’ll peck her. All of this happened under my mother’s observation, and with her full participation.

Everything I need to know about who my parents are is wrapped up in that experience: the total lack of concern for my safety and happiness, treating me like an asset instead of a son, lying to me, manipulating me, and using me to get things they wanted, and then gaslighting me about it.

If just ONE of the things I can remember happened to someone I loved, I would have grabbed my kids, gone to the airport, and flown home. Fuck those abusive assholes in the production. Let the lawyers sort it all out. Nobody hurts my children and gets away with it.

My mom says she “had some talks” with the producers. She claims that, once, she wouldn’t let us leave the hotel. (God, what a fucking dump that place was. It was just slightly better than a hostel.) I have no memory of that, but honestly the entire experience was so traumatic, I’ve blocked most of it out.

The movie was the commercial and critical failure I knew it would be. My parents spent the money. I don’t know what they spent it on. I got to keep fifteen cents of every dollar, so . . . yay?

My sister and I hardly ever talk about this. I suspect it was as upsetting and traumatic for her as it was for me. I told her I was writing about it, and asked her if she remembered anything. She told me she’d been lied to her whole life about this movie. Our mother let her believe she had been cast on the strength of her audition. “I was excited to work with you,” she said. She reminded me about some stuff I’d blocked out, including a scene where my character’s older brother (played by an actor named Malcolm Danare, who was kind and gentle, and made both of us feel safer when he was around) shoves my character into a pile of cow shit. When it came time to shoot the scene, the mud they’d put together to be the cow shit looked an awful lot like cow shit. When Malcolm pushed me into it, we all found out it was real cow shit. I was FURIOUS. The director had lied to me and had allowed me to have my entire body shoved into an actual pile of actual cow shit. I don’t remember what I said, but I remember he treated me the exact same way my father did whenever I got upset: he laughed at me, told me I was being too sensitive, reminded me that he was the director and he wanted to get a “real” performance out of me, and concluded, “If it bothers you so much, we’ll get you a hepatitis shot,” before he walked away.

My sister also recalled that, after she survived the scene with the chickens, it was the producers’ idea to give her one as a pet.

Okay, let’s unpack that for a quick second: you’ve been traumatized by these birds, so we’re going to give you one as a pet. That you’ll somehow keep in your hotel, and then will somehow get back to America. It will shock you to learn that neither of those things happened.

She remembered, as I do, the huge fight I had with my parents in our kitchen, where I told them I hated the script and I hated the movie. I didn’t want to do it, and I hated that they were making me do it.

“You don’t have a choice,” my father commanded. “You are doing this movie.”

“This is the only film you are being offered,” my mother lied to me. She made me feel like, if I didn’t do this movie, I would never do another movie again in my life. I had to do this movie. As my father bellowed, I had no choice.

Both of my parents denied this argument ever happened. Can I tell you how reassuring it is to know that my sister, who was also there, remembers it the same way I do?

The makeup department decided they would literally cut my little sister’s face with a scalpel, in three places, and put bandages over them.

But one thing she told me, the thing I did not know, the thing that makes me so angry I want to break things, actually managed to make the entire experience even worse than I remembered it.

There’s a scene after her chicken incident where I check up on her in her bedroom. She’s got cuts and bruises, and I guess we talk about it. I don’t remember and I can’t watch the movie because I’m terrified it will give me a PTSD flashback (I’ve had one of those and I recommend avoiding it). Here’s the thing about that scene: she has some cuts on her face, and those cuts are real. They are not makeup.

I’m going to repeat that. My nine-year-old little sister had actual cuts on her face that were placed there by an adult, on purpose.

The makeup department decided they would literally cut my little sister’s face with a scalpel, in three places, and put bandages over them. My sister told me our mother wasn’t in the makeup room when this happened — honestly, it seemed like our mother was strangely and conveniently absent when most of the really terrible things happened to us on the set — and when my sister told her what they’d done, she “lost her shit” at the production. She was pissed, I guess, which is appropriate and surprising. I wonder what would have to have happened for her to put us on a plane and get us home to safety? I mean, her son being abused daily didn’t do it, and her daughter being CUT IN THE FACE ON PURPOSE didn’t do it.

I just . . . I can’t. I can’t understand or comprehend allowing your own children to be physically and emotionally abused. They were literally selling my sister and me to these people, like we were some kind of commodity.

This was a tough conversation. My sister’s experience with our parents is very different from mine. My sister and I love each other. We’re close. I know it’s hard for her to hear that her brother, who she loves, was so abused by her parents, who she also loves. I was really grateful she made the time to talk to me about it, and grateful the experience wasn’t as horrible for her as it was for me.

As we were finishing our call, Amy also remembered one man, a young Italian named Luka, who was our driver for the movie. I haven’t thought about him in thirty years, but I can see his face now. He was kind, he was friendly, he taught us how to kick a soccer ball, and in the middle of an abusive, torturous experience, he stood out as a kind and gentle man. I mention him because she remembered him, which made me remember him, and goddammit I want at least one small part of this thing to not be awful.

The Curse remains one of the most consequential times the adults in my life failed to protect me. I’m 50. I still have nightmares.

Ultimately, as I predicted and feared, this piece of shit movie cashed me out of respectable films forever. I got offers for movies, but they were always mindless comedies or exploitative horror films. They were never the serious dramas I wanted to work in after Stand by Me. The industry looked at me and River, wondering if one or both of us would become a breakout star. They quickly saw that River was doing real acting work, and I was in this piece of shit. For River, Stand by Me was a beginning. For me, it would turn out to be pretty much everything, at least as far as film goes.

There are thousands of reasons film careers do and don’t take off. Maybe mine wouldn’t have taken off anyway. Clearly, it’s not where my life ended up, and I’m super okay with that now. But when all of this happened, it hurt and haunted me.

The Curse remains one of the most consequential times the adults in my life failed to protect me. I’m 50. I still have nightmares. Everything I need to know about who my parents are is wrapped up in that experience: the total lack of concern for my safety and happiness, treating me like an asset instead of a son, lying to me, manipulating me, and using me to get things they wanted, and then gaslighting me about it.

This annotation is the last thing I wrote before I turned this manuscript in, because opening these wounds is hard and painful. I put it off as long as I could, and I feel like I’m still holding back, because just this small glimpse of the experience has taken me a week to write. I can’t imagine trying to go back and unpack the whole thing. (Note that is not in the book: I’ve made an EMDR appointment to work on this because the nightmares have come back after the weekend).

Fuck The Curse, and fuck every single person who exploited and hurt two beautiful children to make it. You all participated in child abuse, and you all knew better. Shame on all of you. I hope this follows you to the end of your life. I hope that living with what you did to innocent children has been as hard for you as it has been for me, because you deserve no less.

[hiding-in-my-blanket-fort]

Soap is THE BEST at healing any social trauma you might have.

He adopts you instantly and he's not shy about it. Slinging an arm around your shoulders as if you've been best friends forever. Sitting next to you and leaning back against you with a big yawn. "What a day, eh?"

Maybe physical contact is a mystery to you because you just...haven't experienced much of it before. With Soap, he acts like it's as easy as breathing.

When you enter the cafeteria, or meet up for lunch, he raises his arm and shouts, "Get over here. Saved a seat for ya."

Steals your fries/chips. Partly because he's a pain in the ass and it's his weird way of showing his affection. Partly because he's challenging you to play along with some friendly banter.

"Are ya just gonna let me rob ya blind without sayin' a word about it? Come on. Let out that mean streak. I know you've got it in ya."

Eventually, you become so comfortable with each other, that when Soap tries to steal a fry/chip, you elbow him away. He elbows back. And it becomes a shoving match (you will lose).

In group settings, Soap has a tendency to get caught up in the moment. He's an adrenaline junkie so he'll get a social buzz pretty quick. But he won't let you get lost in the mayhem. He bounces back to check in with you, or pulls you into the fray (if you're up for it).

Hypes. you. the fuck. up. Oh my god. This man is so damn proud of you just for existing????

Even when it confuses you and you're like, "I'm really not all that."

Doesn't matter. Soap is proud of you for being you.

If you have a personal challenge that other people have deemed "small" or "irrelevant", i.e. anxiety around ordering food for yourself, Soap recognizes the effort it costs you, and he celebrates with you when you conquer it.

Say goodbye to your personal space. Soap doesn't know the meaning of that term.

Big enthusiastic bear hugs that make your ribs creak and your toes lift off the ground.

On movie nights, he flops down onto the couch practically on top of you, pressed shoulder to shoulder, and flicks popcorn at you.

Makes a little smiley face on your knee out of M&Ms or Skittles.

When you have plans for the day, he's an obnoxiously early riser. So he'll just barge into your living space, annoyingly cheerful. If you don't respond quickly enough, he'll pummel you with a pillow until you get up.

He talks over you and interrupts, but it's because of his ADHD brain kicking into overdrive, not because he's ignoring you. Sometimes he'll catch himself doing it and curses himself for not letting you get a word in edgewise.

When you get really comfortable with each other, just punch his arm and tell him to shut the fuck up, I was talking, dumbass.

Sometimes, Soap runs his mouth. And he says shit without thinking it through. It hurts you, even though you know he didn't mean it.

But he's a really good friend, and you don't want to mess up your friendship by saying anything. So you just get really quiet and try to cope with it on your own.

Soap doesn't always notice that something is off at first. When he catches on that you've been out of sorts, he pulls you aside and he's genuinely serious when he asks what's wrong.

You expect him to laugh it off when you explain that he hurt you. Soap is rarely serious around you, right? But he's instantly apologetic and it kinda throws you for a loop because he's not joking around like he usually is???

He tries to make it up to you, typically through food, or letting you win at your favorite game. Anything to lighten the mood and get things back to normal between the two of you.

Then he'll ask, "Are we good?" with the most earnest look. It knocks the breath out of you because you're a traumatized little bean. People don't usually take your feelings into consideration like this.

If someone in the group makes a joke at your expense, Soap has zero problem calling out that shit. He'll tease you, but he won't tolerate anyone putting you down.

Because Soap is so friendly, you really have to TELL HIM that you don't feel like coming out of your shell sometimes. He wants to see you thrive, to show you off, and get everyone else to see how awesome he fully believes you are.

But there are times when you're just not up for it.

Soap is more than happy to accommodate you though. If all you want to do is stay in and watch movies, he'll build you a gigantic blanket nest or a big blanket fort, with plenty of snacks, and settle in for the night.

Masterlist

[whumpshaped]

tw past trauma, conditioned whumpee, dehumanisation, de-conditioning (gone wrong?), manipulation

“I… I’m not sure about this. It feels kinda mean.” 

“I’m literally asking you to do it,” Whumpee said, rolling their eyes a little. Despite their attempts to seem nonchalant, though, it was very clear that they were nervous about this. “Please. I can’t live my life like– this. If I’m outside while some fucker is training his dog, I– it’s embarrassing. I need to do something about it.”

“And you think re-triggering yourself is… the way to go.”

“It’s exposure therapy. I don’t get why you’re the one being so weird about it. You’re not even the one who’s about to do the heavy lifting.”

Caretaker sighed, still uneasy about the concept. “I just don’t want to hurt you. I don’t want to make you uncomfortable, I don’t want to be rude, I don’t want to do any of that. I want you to be okay.”

“Well, I need this to be even remotely okay.”

Caretaker bit their lower lip as they thought about it, trying to convince themself this was fine, and they shouldn’t be making a fuss about it. Whumpee was right, they had to get over it at some point. It was just… Caretaker didn’t imagine they would be the one doing any sort of therapy. “Okay,” they said softly. “Um… then, uh, do you wanna start on the floor, or–”

“No. Come on. Tell me to– say the command.”

Fuck, this was so uncomfortable. Caretaker took a deep breath and closed their eyes. “Alright. Kneel.”

The sound of Whumpee’s knees hitting the floor followed just a few moments after. It wasn’t really a conscious reaction, from what Caretaker understood. It was instinctual. Reflex. They opened their eyes to see their friend looking at the carpet, flexing and unflexing their hands that were resting on their thighs. 

“Can you get up?” Caretaker asked gently. 

“I… Of course…” Whumpee swallowed audibly, and made no move to actually get to their feet. “I just need a moment…”

“This was a bad idea.”

“No! No, I can do this. This is so stupid. I can do this. I need you to repeat the command whenever I start getting up, though. Please.”

“I shouldn’t–”

“Can you just help me for once? Instead of coddling me endlessly? I want my fucking life back!”

Caretaker flinched a little at the yelling. “S-sorry. You’re right. Um… Go ahead, then.”

Whumpee slowly took their hands from their lap and placed them on the floor, then made an attempt at pushing themself to their feet. Caretaker hated to do this. They hated seeing their friend on their knees, they hated ordering them around like an animal. But what else was there to do? Whumpee had asked them for help.

“Kneel,” they repeated quietly. Whumpee’s resolve crumbled immediately, and they sat right back down: back straight, hands in their lap, perfect as ever. They seemed embarrassed by it. “If at any point you’d like to stop–”

“I can do this,” Whumpee insisted. “I can do this. They’re just words. Stupid words.”

They tried to get up again. Caretaker sent them back to the floor with a single word. They tried to get up. Caretaker told them to kneel. It was awful. It was so bad. Whumpee started crying after the fourth time, and Caretaker just couldn’t take it anymore.

“I’m done,” they said, tears in their eyes. “I’m not doing this to you.”

“What the fuck?” Whumpee snapped. “You said you’d help!”

“And I said I didn’t want to hurt you!” they yelled back. “You’re sobbing! I’m not doing this. I want you to get better, and I’ll pay for as many therapy sessions as I can, but I’m not doing this.” They turned around and stormed off, wiping their eyes as they went.

[itsmarsss]

Scandalous (Blitzø x Fem!Succubus!Reader x Stolas) [Helluva Boss] pt. 3 - The Imp

How the mighty do fall. (Getting into a weird three-way situation with an imp and a succubus isn't exactly considered classy, Stolas)

He's not just a bitch! He's a bitch with a backstory.

pt. 1 | pt. 2 | pt. 3 | pt. 4 | pt. 5 | 1st bonus | pt. 6 | pt. 7 | pt. 8 | pt. 9 | 2nd bonus

Word Count: 3,140

Warnings: a lot of trauma related stuff, a lot of self-deprecating thoughts, some things are canon-compliant and some are my own, i think that's it, also hey look it's the reason blitzø wanted to sneak into ozzie's so bad!

Blitzø has been called many different things throughout his life. 

Most of those things have been insults but, hey, who’s keeping track? 

From an entitled prick to a selfish asshole to shit-for-brains to imp scum to… well, you get the gist of it. You name it, he’s been called it. And he was perfectly fine with being all of those things.

He’d decided very early on that he would own any titles he was given if it meant he had any sort of control over how they affected him. 

And it worked. If he was going to be called useless, or selfish, or a low-level regardless of what he did, he was just going to let himself become all of those things. If no one expects anything good to come from him anyway, why should he even care to try? This wouldn’t help stop them saying all those awful things he hated to hear about himself, but at the very least he’d be at peace knowing he wasn’t spending his entire life humiliating himself for the off-chance that someone would see him the way he wanted them to.

That way, he’d always have the upper hand.

Growing up in the circus, Blitzø learned at a very young age that he was no more than a collateral to his father. ‘Useless’ at being sufficiently entertaining, as he always heard he was, Blitzø understood entirely too well that he was only kept around for the simplest of all things he was: unpaid labor and an obligation.

At times, in his teenage years, he’d start to wonder if he would ever have been kept around at all if it weren’t for his mother.  

And sometimes, well into adulthood already, Blitzø would find himself hurting people. Really hurting people. Sometimes even on purpose, without ever fully understanding why he did what he did. Most of the time he would try and ignore it, or pretend not to care, try to convince himself it was for the best that he kept his distance from people. 

But, at certain times, thoughts of his mother would consume him. Would she be proud of who he had become? 

He hardly thought so. 

There were times when he would even find himself wondering who he could have grown up to be had she stayed around for longer. Would he be nice? Kind? Caring?

Would he be loved?

But she wasn’t around, and that was his fault, he kept reminding himself. And that wasn’t fucking fair. 

His mother was always kinder than his father ever was. She was sweet and caring and always made sure to check on him. The moments they spent together were always his favorite as a kid. 

When she was with him, it almost felt like nothing else mattered, as if her presence could shield him from anything- he always blindly believed her when she told him time and time again that everything would be okay. It was a nice feeling. 

She was always full of life, always the soul of every room she entered, always cheering Blitzø back up when he was down. She was always pure light.

Except when his father was around. 

Blitzø loathed the way her demeanor changed around him, how she minimized herself to be next to him. When he was young, he’d always toyed in his mind with the idea of her being two different people who shared the same body: there was his mother, and there was his father’s wife. 

His mother was kind, compassionate, caring, free. His father’s wife was cold, quiet, dull.  

Fizzarolli entered his life really early on. 

At merely seven years old, he was taken into the circus after losing his parents in a freak accident, and Blitzø remembers the day they met clear as day.

Fizz was small. At the young age of eight years old, Blitzø vividly remembers his mind conjuring the term ‘fragile’ to describe him. 

Scared and vulnerable, Fizzarolli was an emotional creature, only a kid, after all. And that demanded care. At first, Blitzø really didn’t enjoy having to share his mother as a caregiver in the slightest. He was also only a kid, after all.

As time passed, though, he grew to quite like Fizz’s presence. He’d never really been much too surrounded by other kids, as it’d always been only him and his parents, and now he had a best friend! Someone to talk to and play with all the time, and who was as eager for a friend as he was himself. 

A couple years later, at ten years old, Blitzø received news from his parents: he was going to be a big brother. His father didn’t seem to express too many feelings about that- he never really expressed much other than disdain when it came to him, for the matter, but his mom seemed excited. 

Blitzø wasn’t exactly sure how to feel about it. Sure, he got used to sharing his life with Fizz, but that was enough, wasn’t it? Things were good as they were, why mess it up with another kid?

When Barbie was born, Blitzø made it his personal goal to express just how much he disliked the idea of having a sibling- but that only lasted a few weeks. A few weeks of being rude and purposefully stubborn were enough for him to notice how hurt his mother was that he was acting that way, especially when she was already clearly overwhelmed with taking care of the baby along with himself and Fizzarolli. 

Being the reason for his mother’s tears was the thing he hated the most in the whole wide world.

And so he stopped. It took him many months for his feelings about his sister to really change, but he decided he wouldn’t be so mean about it anymore, for his mom’s sake. And, with time, he grew used to his sister too. Sure, she was annoying and extremely clingy, as all babies and younger siblings are, and yes, he’d still act annoyed at her, but he started to not mind it as much.

He started to care.

At ten years old, too, on a random day, something rather unusual happened: his father came looking for him after a show, prompting him to stand up from the floor where he’d been playing with Fizz and their balloon horses, because he’d been… sold?

Yeah, that’s right. His dad told him, normal as ever, that apparently one of the Goetia princes had seen their part of the show earlier, and his father wanted to, quite literally, purchase Blitzø for the rest of the day. 

“Ew. Why?”

“Because money!” That always seemed to answer plenty when it came to Good Old Cash.

He was dragged to the Goetia palace with a purpose: to steal everything he could. That didn’t feel right nor did it feel safe. After all, who knew what sort of bad things could happen to him if he got caught stealing from royalty? He was young, but he knew they weren’t demons you wanted to mess with. 

He was scared. 

But they needed the money, and his dad had pulled the card that could get him to do basically anything he was asked to: ‘don’t you want to help your mother?’

Of course he’d do anything to help mama. 

Getting back home, he felt bad. Because the prince had been kind to him the entire time. Because the prince was naive, clearly not even having considered the possibility of Blitzø having been there to do what he did. Because everything his dad had told him about the big bad royals seemed to fall flat with Stolas. 

Getting back home, he still struggled to understand why he had been the one chosen to go, and not Fizz, when Fizz was clearly a better… well, everything… than he was. 

It was all too confusing, growing up with Fizz. As much as he loved him, there would always be a part of him that felt jealous, insecure around him. Because, to him, it seemed his best friend was everything he wanted to be and everything he wanted to be seen as. A better entertainer, a better friend, a better kid to his parents. Everything Blitzø could never live up to.

But, as he grew older, he came more and more to the realization that it wasn’t Fizz’s fault. It was all his parents. Or, rather, it was mostly his father. He was the one who put the two against each other, when, time and time again, they showed they only wished to work together, to be kids, to be friends… or more, maybe?

On the day of Fizarolli’s 17th birthday, Blitzø had been set on confessing the feelings he’d come to nurture towards the boy. Never used to this sort of thing, the only person he’d told about it was his mom, who had smiled oh-so-sweetly at him and hugged him as he let out tears, assuring him that it was okay for him to feel that way, even if it was scary. He’d prepared a badly rehearsed but well-meaning speech, written something for him in a birthday card, and even gone as far as stealing a rose from someone’s backyard to give him too.

Fizzarolli would have never even dreamed he’d have ever done all that for him, because he didn’t give him the card, and he didn’t give him the rose, and he didn’t tell him how he felt. Because there Fizz stood, laughing with his friends- friends! Friends who looked better and acted cooler and who were so, so much more interesting than Blitzø could ever be. He wasn’t a kid anymore, but he was still young. He still let his jealousy get the best of him, still let the frustration of feeling pathetic for even considering the chance that his best friend could feel the same way he did consume him.

But, as angry, as frustrated, as sad as he was, he never meant for it all to happen.

The fire changed everything.

His mother was gone because of him. His best friend almost died because of him. Barbie only went unharmed in sheer, dumb luck. Everyone’s lives were ruined, and it was all his fault. 

And so he decided he’d be better off far away. Not forever. Not for long. But, for now, everyone was sure to be better off without him near. He’d caused enough destruction already and he’d forever have the scars to remind him.

So he left. Simple as day, he told a crying, barely eight-year-old Barbie he’d be back soon and left a note for his father to find and give Fizz when he recovered. 

Not forever. Not for long. 

The next time he saw his sister again was nine years later. And he tried. He so desperately tried to be present again. But Barbie didn’t seem to think it was fair of him to go no-contact for so many years. Yes, their father sucked- but leaving meant he left her to grow up alone with him. She lost a mother too. He wished things were different, but couldn’t blame her.

Two years later, at nineteen years old, was the first time Barbie had to be checked into rehab. Blitzø went there to visit every week, of course, but she never let him in. 

Just like Fizz, no matter how many times he tried, she simply didn’t want to see him.

After the fire happened, Blitzø decided he wouldn’t work as a clown ever again, cutting short his own big, flashy dreams.

 But that was the only thing he ever learned to do, and that made things difficult. For years on end, he had to jump from one job to another, trying to find anything he could to make a living for himself. 

He was never all that eager to admit to this part of his past, but there were times during which he’d slept on the streets or forced himself onto one one-night stand after the other just to have a place to crash. At some point, he found himself gambling the little money he got from working here and there. 

That’s how he met Verosika Mayday, anyway. At a cheap, dark, dirty club in Lust, as he tried to drink his sorrows away and let his luck decide whether he’d be able to pay for his stay at some gross little inn room down in Greed for the night or not, and she tried to kickstart her singing career, standing on the poor-lit makeshift stage with her electric-pink electric guitar and singing something barely anyone was paying any attention to.

A few years later came Loona. And Loona was love at first sight. At first, he wasn’t looking for a hellhound like her to adopt. He wanted a pet. 

But she looked so scared and angry, and so, so much like himself. She was about to be thrown out of the system into the streets to fend for herself at only eighteen. He knew what that was like entirely all too well, and he knew it wasn’t pretty. He wasn’t exactly the most sensitive person ever, but if only he could be something like a family to her, if only he could help her in any way so she didn't have to be all alone…

He adopted her immediately. 

It was a crazy idea, for many, very obvious reasons. First off, he’d just started making enough to make rent for a one-bedroom apartment in a shitty side of imp city. Second off, even though he was doing slightly better, he still barely made enough to feed himself alone. Third off, he had no fucking clue how to be a parent. Much less how to parent a teenager. 

But he made it work. He promised himself he’d make it work. He worked everywhere he could find, doing anything he possibly could (and, in hell, that meant anything), at any crazy hour, to make enough to support Loona. He bought books about parenting that he couldn't really read much of because most of them were targeted to soon-to-be parents of… well, babies, and included nonsense, fancy-pants words he didn’t have the patience to try and understand, but he tried his best to be a good parent to her. 

He never forced her to call him dad or anything of the sort, because he could understand how that was probably hard. He still couldn’t stop himself from shedding a few emotional tears when she did, even if most times were slip-ups. 

About a year or so later, he was set on a goal: he wanted to make a living for himself. Really make a living. Blitzø was tired of putting himself through every single job he could find just to barely make enough for him and Loona.

Well, it’s not exactly like he’d be the winner in a competition for the best morals in hell.

He started stealing. What? This was hell! 

The lifestyle went surprisingly well for him. He wasn’t making bank, but it beat working like 24 hours a day to barely survive. As time went on, though, he started getting more and more confident. Stealing more, from wealthier, more influential people, pushing himself to do better each time things went well for him, having fun with letting things get more violent and subsequently bringing attention to himself. 

He was bound to steal too close to the sun someday. After a particularly… well, greedy robbery down by the Greed ring, things went south quickly, resulting in his arrest. 

Jail sucked, but honestly, he’d had worse. And, hey, his cellmate was sufficiently cool. 

Moxxie wouldn’t tell him much about his past or how he ended up there, but that wasn’t to worry when he didn’t particularly want to do the same either. What mattered was he had a plan to escape and a plan for after that and Moxxie could be of assistance. 

Escaping wasn’t easy, and the two of them didn’t leave exactly unharmed, but it was successful. 

The grand plan for after that was to start a company that specified in hired assassinations. Moxxie wasn’t perfectly happy with the idea, but damn was he good with a gun. 

But two not-even-that-much-experienced assassins didn’t really make a company, did they?

After a lot of convincing, even though they didn’t even keep in contact quite as much as they used to anymore, he somehow got y/n, a succubus he’d become friends with about a year before, to agree to work with them. 

Okay, three’s a crowd. 

Millie joined in not long after. 

Four’s a party. Or, well, an assassination company.

They worked phenomenally well all together as a team- even Loona was brought into the business, though Blitzø never really let her participate in the killing. Business went okay… until it didn’t. Things didn’t work as well in reality as they did in their minds- not for very long, at least. 

And so Blitzø had to bring back into light the same dumb, far-fetched idea he’d had a year earlier.

“What if we could kill humans?” He blurted out during a meeting in which the point of discussion was how to increase business.

You made a face at him. “What the fuck are you talking about?” 

“I mean it. Like, imagine how many of these sinners are walking around here just double-dying to have someone that they hate up there dead too. We’d have clients like forever!”

“If that were possible, Blitzø.,” Millie chimed in.

“It is possible.”

“Boss, no offense, but did you hit your head again?” Moxxie questioned, understandably confused.

“Y/n knows what I'm talking about!”

“What? No I don't.”

“Yeah you do. Your best friend Ozzie-boy has something that could let us do that.”

“Are you- wait.” There’s no fucking way. “When we met- were you- were you trying to steal an asmodean crystal?”

“I was not not trying to steal an asmodean crystal.”

“Uh, what is an asmodean crystal?” Loona asked, and you were surprised she’d even been paying attention.

You sighed. “Asmodeus has these enchanted crystals that can be used to create portals to the living world. We- uh- we get to use them at times. When necessary.”

“See? It’s perfect! He’d totally give you one.”

“Not for this. I think you forgot Fizzarolli hates your guts. Ozzie’s not gonna give me a crystal so I can help you with something. Really what the fuck did you even do to this guy?”

Blitzø ignored your last question completely. “He let you work with me,” he commented, matter-of-factly.

“He’s not my owner, asshole. But no. It’s not happening.”

Well, he'd really hoped it wouldn't have to come to this, but… he did know someone else who had a little something that could grant access to the living world.

A/N: I bet with so much complaining yall werent expecting this to actually come out huh expect the unexpected

[pparacxosm]

sigh like a chime

(postcanon!patrick zweig x infant halfsister’s au pair!reader; idk either man; came to me in a dream; title from the sound of music let’s all act shocked; major tw for suicide talk; tw depressive behaviour; tw disordered thoughts about eating; tw vague implication of alcoholic dependency; patrick zweig is generally not doing so hot; like at all; tw strained father son dynamics; tw grown adults projecting childhood trauma onto a baby; warning you now: this is a long one !! ; make a day of it; atp coexisting; lily donaldson being a weird little girl ™; tw airports during holiday season; whoever came up with the headcanon that patrick was late for his circumcision and it got cancelled i owe you a kidney; so cw smut obviously; cw religious ((Christianity, specifically Catholicism + Judaism briefly)) motifs; tw splicing of said motifs with the aforementioned smut; tw vomit)

“It’s not that I’m not happy for him,” Patrick tells Tashi, “I really am, you know I mean that.”

He paces her kitchen impatiently, running fingers through dark, dishevelled hair.

At such times, he still looks like the boy wonder sprinting carelessly across electric blue asphalt, eyes shimmering, as if he were part of that riot of colour. Some of his athletic maturity is replaced with the facetious, callow mannerisms of a hungry novice who wants to skip the necessary steps. Who wants to swallow experience and spit out the bones.

Tashi straddles a stool at the vast marbletop island. She’s pattering away like bulletquick rainfall on her MacBook. She doesn’t even spare him a glance.

Patrick makes an effort to rein in his temper. He drops into one of the stools. He swivels left and right and cranes his neck, staring up at the coffered ceiling moulding.

“It’s almost Christmas, Patrick. Go home.”

I am home, he wants to say, but that would be revolting and stupid and he doesn’t even really mean it. Art and Tashi aren’t home for him. Nothing is. And he likes that, he likes being a nomad.

Lily clicks in like a pony. Lily—well, Lili, Lieselotte—is also the name of his little sister. He likes the coincidence. The trick of the mind he can perform, imagining an alternative family. 

Family is just being nomads together.

“Hey, I told you no tap shoes inside,” Tashi says, eyes still swimming through the pixelmire of her computer screen.

Perhaps Patrick ought to feel flattered by her attention at all. His familial woes are just as perturbing to Tashi as Lily fucking up the flooring with her ball changes.

Patrick’s still quashing his irritation. She doesn’t even fuck him, anymore. He actually doesn’t fuck much of anything at all, of late. What with how tired he is all the time, how his flesh and bones deplete with each exertion. In a way, that’s her fucking him. But it’s also just the scorn of getting older.

It gets harder to shoulder things. His patience corrodes quicker. He should lean forward, take that laptop, and lob it across the room. She’s not even wearing those stupid bluelight glasses she’s supposed to be wearing.

“Do you just not care about anything?” It’s a petulant attempt at stoking her, but it’s too meandering and abstract to really matter, let alone take effect.

She doesn’t respond for a whole five seconds, still typing, and when she does, it’s a distracted whisper of, “What?”

Her power over him is such that she can afford to be so blindly condescending. But it still stings.

He groans into the air, and it’s such a thundering sort of noise that Lily spares him a weirded out scowl on her way to the pantry. “Do you really want me in Germany? I’ll sit on my ass and start drinking beer again all day, Coach.”

Three years into their partnership, he often uses her title to signal his annoyance.

Tashi sighs like she’s disappointed. Not disappointed that he’s trying, but the fact that he’s making such meaningless, childish stabs at it. Instead of just going for it. As in, yes, smashing her MacBook over his knee and yelling pay attention to me! She’d respect that more and he knows it.

But, anyway, she lowers the screen halfmast and looks at him. “Are you jeal—”

“I’m not jealous of the baby.”

“Okay…”

“But he’s sixtyfive, Tashi! It’s ridiculous.”

Tashi does something between a scoff and a laugh, shaking her head. She rolls up the sleeves of her sweater and narrows her eyes at him. “And how old did you say the new wife was?”

“Thirtytwo, Tashi.”

Tashi laughs properly now, dropping her head and dragging her thumb and forefinger over her lashes. Patrick smiles at her amusement, albeit at his expense.

“That is pretty ridiculous.” She looks up at him again, clearing her throat, “Don’t try to bullshit me and pretend you don’t still drink beer.”

He wants to contradict her, but he decides he wants to make her laugh more. “He met her because she was his masseuse for a hot stone treatment.”

Tashi sputters, her giggles spilling everywhere, and she’s waving her hands like she’s calling timeout.

“And then he calls me,” Patrick continues, before miming a phone to his ear and straightening and dragging his voice down like an anchor with an affected distinguished rumble, “And goes, Son, I am moving back to Germany. I have love again.”

“I have love again!” Tashi wheezes, her elbows thunking on the marble and her face falling into her hands. Her shoulders are shaking with laughter.

“Like it’s a fucking disease.”

“It is.” Art’s voice still manages to quaver delivering a glib oneliner. Maybe because he doesn’t mean it. Patrick’s willing to chalk it up to his brisk stride as he enters the kitchen. Always a fucking pep in his step these days, the fucking asshole.

Patrick doesn’t turn his head. He feels a sharp instance of vertigo when Art’s hand lands on his shoulder. But both the touch and nausea are gone as soon as they arrive, and he passes off the motion of his own hand going to grab Art’s fingers as a scratch to his nose. Tashi’s too busy wiping her tears away to have noticed that, thank God.

“Oh my God, please tell him,” Tashi cackles, still gathering lost breath as Art slides her bluelight eyeglasses onto her face and enswathes her body with his, caressing her arms with his knuckles.

“He knows,” Patrick says dismissively, even though that’s a lie. He hasn’t told him.

“What do I know?”

Tashi recounts the story with the engaging enthusiasm of what Patrick is beginning to recognise as schadenfreude. But even that is still a salve, and he feels a little foolish for forgetting its effect. Not just the laughter, but all of this. He wishes they would just throw him a bone and let him stay for Christmas. He feels like a dying dog made to live too long. He offered to dress up as Santa, but Lily herself informed him that she’s far outgrown such folly and resents his assumption otherwise. She’d kicked him in the shin with the metal plate of her tap shoe. He’d let her.

Art’s smile quirks up at the image. Mean old Mr Zweig laid nude across a spa bed, cock jumping for the meek masseuse.

“Bet he slipped her eight grand to fold the towel a little lower,” Art mumbles into Tashi’s hair, the strands buttery against his lips.

She makes a face at this. She raises her hand to swat his arm reproachfully.

But Patrick only chuckles. Spares a glance over his shoulder to where Lily is sprawled on the couch, gripping the handles of her shockproof iPad case with the focus of a pilot at the yoke of a plane, her little head swallowed by a pair of AirPod maxes. Turns back and looks up at Art with a conspiratorial smirk.

“Probably had her stroke his dick with two hot stones,” he murmurs.

Tashi thinks that’s even less funny. But Art thinks it’s even more funny.

He laughs very loudly and does a less than polite impression of an old German bastard wincing and coming.

“Ah—” he hisses, “The next one up my bumhole, yes?”

It sounds like a botched Hitler lampoon, and it’s ostensibly a caricature he’s done many times before. Sometimes, they spend whole days just wading through their ancient morass of shared memories and inside references and running gags. Sometimes, even now, it's just easier that way.

Patrick laughs so hard he falls out of his chair.

They do let him stay for dinner.

It feels like they’re mocking him, but he’s hungry. So he stares into the middle distance and listens to Lily spiritedly declaim facts about deep sea turtles. She keeps surreptitiously slipping Brussels sprouts from her plate onto his. It wouldn’t be his place to mention it. And, for her part, she quaffs down her mashed potatoes like an endurance test. He tells her they’re not going anywhere. She kicks his shin again and he’s pretty sure she should have taken those shoes off by now.

He watches every gentle graze of Art and Tashi’s limbs and shoulders.

He sighs and chews his sprouts until his jaw aches.

There are worse things in his head to beat himself up with than wishful thinking.

“What’d Sassy say?” Art asks as he uncorks a Montrachet.

The corner of Patrick’s mouth quirks up almost imperceptibly. Like the reflexive twitch of a bad muscle. But he can tell Art discerns it by the way he starts to chuckle preemptively. That grin that spreads across his face like fire on dry grass.

Patrick huffs. “She said she hopes the baby chokes and dies.”

“You’re killing me, Sas.”

It’s December eighteenth at JFK. Patrick feels like a fucking sardine. Everyone is everywhere. The emetic odour of tarmac and jet fuel embues him. His fingers are red and stiff and so tightly coiled around the stainless steel handrail of the escalator that he thinks they may just pop off like caps. There’s an acetous chill to the nighttime air, and he probably should’ve worn more layers, but the sweat on his back is already soaking through the thin fabric of his shirt. He doesn’t mind. It’s better than being late.

Patrick’s dad used to enforce punctuality like a jailhouse warden. Saskia knows that.

He has his phone tucked to his ear against one shoulder.

His sister’s voice across the receiver sounds warped and liminal. His stomach is grumbling.

“You’re fucking me, Sas, you’re fucking me right over,” Patrick says. “What’s in Brazil?”

“Well, warmth, for one.”

“What about me?”

Saskia laughs. That loud, tocsin laugh she used to do when he’d wet the bed. “You boycotted the christening, Brutus.”

“Why would I fly to Germany to watch a baby take a bath?”

“Why are you flying to Germany now?”

Patrick’s teeth are on edge as he schleps his weighty duffel toward the terminal. He fishes a cigarette out of his windbreaker pocket and shoves it through his lips. He wants to spark it, even though Tashi’s psychologically tortured him into quitting, and he’d get thrown out for sure. There’s a line of security guards at every corner, and he’s seen the German Shepherd sniffer dogs.

He chews on the cigarette instead. Grinds the tip between his molars to get that stark jounce of nicotine even if it’s mostly tobacco and paper.

Saskia is saying something in his ear, and he’s only halfpretending to listen. His eyes are fastened straight ahead, singeing holes into the back of a woman’s head. Her hair is pulled into an absurdly tight ponytail. And he is so taken by the movement of the strands as it bobs with each step that he is only dragged back to reality when Saskia says his name loud enough to stab his eardrums.

He blinks. “What, bitch?”

“Paddy, I’m sorry, but I can’t do it. I don’t wanna throttle the little shit. I’m pushing forty and I cried because he bought it a fucking babysize tiara.”

Patrick closes his eyes, inhaling deeply through his nose. He swallows a bit of that tobacco wad on his tongue. He nearly gags. He belatedly catches that a couple of security guards are looking at him with some suspicion. He holds up a finger as if to say, sorry, and turns around to walk away.

Saskia’s still on the line, and she starts singing something, though he doesn’t understand why. He has to hold the phone a good foot away until she shuts up.

“Wh—” he scoffs, pinching the bridge of his nose. “What am I supposed to do?”

“Hey, maybe you’ll get along with it.”

“Unlikely.”

“Maybe you’ll get along with dad.”

“Un—fucking—likely,” he retorts.

He ducks into a corner of the empty terminal and drops inelegantly onto a hard plastic seat. He is hyperaware of the sweat fumes under his arms, the way his track pants cling too snugly to his thighs.

“Actually, hey,” Saskia says, and he can hear her perking up. He imagines her in a hammock in Rio. She’ll burn so bad. No earthly SPF could ever keep her from shedding like a crimson serpent. “She has this au pair.”

Patrick glances up at the TV monitor over his head.

Departures to Berlin 23 30, it reads, flashing jarringly in red LED lettering, accompanied by a blinking graphic of an airplane taking off.

He makes a noncommittal grunt. “That tracks,” he mumbles.

“I’m saying you don’t have to be lonely,” says Sassy, “Make friends! She’s nice. Bit young.”

“Reckon dad’ll try to knock her up next?”

Saskia laughs herself to piggish snorting. The bigeared little boy within him, tugging at the pantleg of his sister’s pyjamas for attention, is vaguely mollified by that laughter. Albeit at his expense.

He should spend the flight feeling guilty for not getting a gift for the baby, but he listens to a true crime podcast instead.

They’re talking about a young girl who was found unconscious by the side of a road. The truck driver who spotted her was a little drunk at the time, and he was afraid that if he called the cops he’d lose his job, so he just moved her body further up the road where someone else could find her.

Apparently, she was still alive, but the truck driver thought she was already dead.

It’s not certain if she would have made it, had he done The Right Thing, but maybe it would've made a difference.

“He should've just called the cops and driven away,” one of the hosts says.

“If you’re reporting an accident, you can’t just remove yourself from the premises,” the other one replies.

“Well no, but if you report a homicide—“

“Same thing. Also, how can you just leave a person bleeding by the side of the road?”

“Was she visibly bleeding?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

Patrick closes his eyes and leans his head back. The clouds roll by like lambhide.

He can picture it clearly, driving away from this fucking mess, leaving a body by the side of the road. He’d do it if he could. But he thinks he’s the body.

He shudders with a pang of cold. He doesn’t know why this image sticks. It’s like ghosts, floating in between the clouds.

Saskia texts him. Suffocate the baby with a pillow. Also delete that text. And that one.

And he, the body by the side of the road, doesn't say anything.

The plane jostles a little in a patch of turbulence. They descend into Berlin at eight in the morning.

His knees hurt from keeping them bent at an angle for so long, his ass is going numb. He should feel sorry for himself, being alone like this.

As he deplanes, a few fellow passengers glance in his direction, their noses wrinkling. He can’t tell if it’s the bitter rot of cigarette between his teeth or his sudor stench or his mouldering heart.

People converge in the baggageclaim like a throng of cattle. Patrick shoulders through. Swallowed up and spat out and alone again.

No one pays anyone any attention. Everyone is hurrying to make this flight or get to the next. When Patrick finds a men’s room, he realises he should be glad for that. In the reflection of the large mirror above a long stretch of white porcelain sinks, he can see shadows like cosmic abysses under his eyes. Some of the veins in his arms—which are sticking out from under his sleeves like pythons—are slightly swollen and purple.

His duffle bag bangs against his hip as he shuffles onto the tarmac and joins the taxi queue.

Berlin greets him with an onslaught of sleet.

His bones rattle like clicking spoons in the cold. He’s cursing under his breath and trying to remember the last time he was sincerely back in Germany.

Not just a brief cut across for a match, a layover, a hamfisted excuse to see his sister.

He was probably nine.

Patrick lumbers up the walkway to his father’s home. It looks like it’s been shoveled already today but has endured several hours of snowfall since. That and—well—he guesses his dad’s playing humble now.

Sas had dubbed it a latelife crisis. But it’s not shabby. In fact, it’s nice. It’s no limestone portico. Far cry from the august Georgian Revival mausoleum he and Sas gleaned their nascent wounds in.

Lili gets a Hallmark ass two story colonial, strung with Christmas lights. Deep green door, ornate bronze knocker, festooned with a wreath. The doorbell echoes through his empty bones like a deathknell.

His teeth chinkle like coins as he waits.

When the door opens, he releases a protracted, puerile whine. “Fuck.”

You’ve never been cause of such overt disappointment.

It’s almost flattering.

But your smile quickly metamorphoses into a grimace.

His shoulders are drooping and he looks liable to topple facefirst to the snowswathed gravel at any moment. His eyelids keep fluttering, like he’s fighting a losing battle against the urge to just shut down.

“Is this the right house?” he groans, pained and shivering.

You’re marginally certain this is your boss’ son and not a homeless vagrant.

Either way, you’re nodding emphatically. “Of course it is.”

In the kitchen, he stands in the corner like a newly housed stray. Hands tucked into his armpits and chin touching his chest as he watches you spark up the cooktop through snowdappled lashes.

The powdered creamer, as you pour it into the teacup, reminds him, too, of snowfall. You keep flicking him conspicuously concerned glances.

“So you’re Patrick…” you say, spooning sugar.

He clears his throat and hums in a way that says, yeah, I’m not too thrilled about it either. His head is bowed, his eyes fallen shut, and he’s swaying vaguely on his feet. He looks like he’s making devotions. The kettle sings.

His fingers are bonetight around the cup and saucer. He lifts the cup and presses it to his cheek, like leaching the warmth from the ceramic. When he sips, you’re reminded of cats lapping milk.

There’s a moment of silence, and it’s awkward. And then he sneezes—once, twice. His throat clicks.

“Uh… tennis,” you try, folding closed the box of Five Roses.

The steam plumes up and curls around Patrick’s face, flushed and sallow. He clears his throat again, his eyes unfocused. He glances toward you and knows he should reply, but the only thing that comes out is a damp, congested sniff.

He wipes his nose on his sleeve. “Tennis,” he repeats, the word muffled by the cup still pressed to his lips.

You nod slowly, rapping your knuckles rhythmically against the counter. “Wimbledon,” you say then.

Patrick scrunches up his face as if he’s in pain. He’s trying to force some simulacrum of synapse action in the conversational skills faculty of his brain.

“Yeah,” he manages. He takes another gulp of tea and tries to clear his throat again. It hurts. Everything hurts. He hurts.

You nod some more. You can’t help but think that this feels a bit like a tennis game. You and he, volleying oneword utterances back and forth. “Impressive,” you offer, cocking your brows at him.

“Thanks,” Patrick mutters.

He does actually want to be witty. And he does actually want to be charming. And he wants to make a good first impression. But right now he wants to sleep, preferably through a few decades. Certainly, the last few of his father’s life. Which, speaking of,

“Hey, where is the bastard?”

He glances around, as if to see his father lurking in a crevice somewhere. You raise a brow. Could it be an affectionate nickname? Perhaps. But you’re starting to connect some dots.

You smile like you’re trying not to provoke a sabertoothed creature. But Patrick can see in your eyes that he’s amusing you, which he doesn’t mind. Of course he doesn’t mind.

There’s a vast window above the counter, pictureframing an expansive, snowshrouded back garden that, knowing his dad, is probably a rigorously manicured viridescent green in the warmer months. How warm do things get in Germany these days?

He squints against the luminous white splay as you point beyond the glass. There’s a distant brown pinprick that lets him know this property is larger than it seems. Larger than it needs to be. But the kid needs frolicking room, he guesses.

“He’s in the den,” you say.

Patrick throws the rest of his tea back like a shot, placing his cup and saucer onto the counter with a twinkling thunk.

“Alright, then let’s go.”

“My balls are gonna freeze off before we even get there,” Patrick hisses.

Every step forward sends his feet an inch deeper into the snow, and you watch him shake out his running shoes with displeasedness. You laugh at him, and he turns back to face you, and he makes this face that could either be a smirk or an indication of great turmoil. You are struck by his ability to wear that lopsided grin in his current circumstances, to look at you like that. Well, like what? You don’t know.

It’s just that the scarf and wool peacoat you’re wearing make you look like a well-loved heirloom doll. He can see the faintest wisps of your breath in the bitter air. Your smile is so kind and so warm, he thinks, smiling wider.

He appreciates you joining him on his doormat pilgrimage. A better guy would tell you that, but he just turns around and keeps footslogging.

Together, you trudge forward across the sprawling, sleety landscape.

The door to the den is unlocked.

Patrick casts a glance back at you before he pushes it all the way open, hitting the opposite wall with a hollow bang.

It creaks a little on its hinges as it opens into a long corridor. He takes a step in first.

“Hello?” Patrick yells, his voice lilting. “Armed robbery. I have guns and knives and… bombs. Got your pretty nanny.”

You feel the little smile on your face quavering with amusement as you close the door shut behind you.

The floors are clad in dark oak panels. The walls are lined with copper sconces. There’s an ostensibly hideous and probably hilariously expensive rug in the middle of the floor and Patrick makes a show of wiping his shoes clean on it. 

“Sure as fuck not taking this thing,” he mumbles, digging his hands into his pant pockets. 

He glances toward a long sideboard on the side of the corridor. It’s laden with antique trinkets and mahoganyframed pictures, and he reaches out to prod at an ivory figurine sitting at the edge.

You stay in silence for a few moments, looking at him. 

Then, the faint creak of footsteps comes from upstairs, and you both look up at the ceiling. Seconds later, it fades to your right, and, soon enough, there appears Rupert Zweig. Cashmere jumper, tapered joggers.

There is no denying the family resemblance. And if the way Patrick’s eyes narrow as his father descends the staircase is anything to go by, he is not gonna wanna meet—

“There you are,” says Rupert, corners of his eyes crinkling. He stops at the end of the hall, hands in his pockets. The two regard each other like snipers. You have the sharp sensation you shouldn’t be here, but where would you go?

Patrick clicks his teeth wryly. “Here I am.” His hands are also in his pockets. Their deportments are uncannily kindred.

You think Patrick shouldn’t be so putout by that. Rupert Zweig is a handsome sixtyfive. Tall and broad and still in trim, despite most his days being ornamented by cognac and cigars. His silvery hair sheens like tinsel, and has not thinned much to speak of, if at all.

You figure maybe they’ll hug, as Rupert approaches. You know Rupert to be a hugger. But he only claps Patrick’s shoulder, and Patrick’s bones look like they’ve been swapped for concrete, and he watches his father give him a once over, like surveying an old car.

“I hope things are well with you,” Rupert says. Which isn’t strange paternal commentary. But his voice is tinctured with a concerned edge at the overall impression that his only son has been dragged along the pavement by the tail of a motorbike and then beaten with sticks to boot. I thought things were better, now, he’s really saying.

You think it’s concern, anyway. You, too, know Rupert to be quite concerned, and caring. But Patrick takes it as scorn.

He wears a bitter smile. “Things are peachy, Pa.”

His nostrils flare, he shifts his shoulders. Like he wants to shrug his father's hand off, but is keeping still for the sake of seeming mature.

And then it happens. A pule from the ether like the resounding stroke of a viola.

You perk up. “Oh! I’ll go—“

“Yes, dear, she’s with Giselle in the drawing room.” Rupert’s eyes crinkle, a kind brush of his fingers to your elbow.

Patrick—you glimpse, as you shuffle past him and out the passage—looks furious. And a bit queasy.

In the drawing room, Patrick stares at Giselle’s hands. She’s twisting her emerald engagement ring around her finger. The stone is big as a pebble, its facets winking.

He doesn’t let himself look to where you are. On an ivorycoloured foam playmat on the ground, doing something that is causing the baby to squeal and giggle like a strident string of bells and clap her pudgy hands together. He can hear the yarn of drool gurgling from her gummy mouth.

An angeltopped pine tree scintillates with fairy lights in the corner.

Giselle is slender porcelain. White sweater, skinny jeans, milkblonde hair. She crosses her legs at the ankles, knees to the side, like she’s the fucking queen of England. She is polite to varying degrees of genuineness.

“Lili’s so happy to see her big brother.”

Patrick’s knee shudders violently. Cut the shit, Giselle, he wants to spit.

But he knows he won’t. He doesn’t feel he can. Maybe it’d be easier, if she really was just some nympho naif. Then he could call his dad a perv and move on.

But no. Giselle is three years his junior but tenfold his put-togetherness. There are two infants in the room, and neither are her.

The room is so warm and well lit. There are bookshelves teeming with hardcover tomes whose rapiersharp corners look ostensibly untouched. A globe of the world, a framed Picasso original. Baroque vases and potted ivies and the permeating waft of jasmine and rose and leather.

It’s an intimate microcosm of his father and Giselle’s interwoven lives. Their very fumes amalgamate. And then there’s that puny thing, gossamer flesh, babbling like a brook. He doesn’t look. He can’t.

When his dad walks back in, Patrick is on his feet like a springing coil.

“You’re welcome to stay here,” says his dad, handing Patrick a set of keys.

Patrick shakes his head and feigns remorse. “Nah, Sas asked me to water her plants, so.”

Rupert looks like he’s going to say something, but decides against it.

“Right,” he nods and reaches into his pocket, retrieving a slim silver case. He flips open the lid, revealing a neat row of hand rolls. He plucks one between his long fingers. Patrick would say no, if he offered, but resents his father’s lack thereof enough to head for the door.

You think he’ll say bye to you, or maybe offer just a parting wave, but he doesn’t.

You hear him and his dad at odds like a cobra and a mongoose in the hall. You daub tender kisses onto the fleshy pink soles of Lili’s feet. You discern misty fragments of Patrick’s scathing whispers.

“... newage, hippie bullshit... nice guy act... fucking sweatpants... —christen the baby! What the fuck are you doing christening the baby? You never even took us to temple!”

However Rupert responds, on the other hand, is vaguely inaudible. It’s just a deep, cautiously placating rumble of syllables. 

You hear a bit more mumbled venom before the door creaks open and slams shut.

“He thinks he’s got everyone fooled, but I’m fucking onto hi— where is your alcohol?”

Patrick’s disembowelling every cabinet in his sister’s kitchen. On all fours like a hound rooting in the snow. He can hear the hot waft of tropical winds from Saskia’s end of the receiver. Crash of surf. Squawking birds. The staticky tempo of Brazilian phonk in the background.

“Ugh, Paddy,” Saskia mumbles like she’s disappointed.

He tears the fridge door open so fervently, the cord comes loose from the socket. There’s nothing there but bottled water, yoghurt, and salad dressing. He makes a strangled noise of agony into the ear piece.

“Saskia May,” Patrick groans with a sonnet’s desperation, resting his head against the icy fridgeshelf, between the organic grassfed butter and the handcrafted balsamic glaze, “I know you may be in a fucking beachside cabana right now, dipping Portuguese cock into your piña colada with the little umbrella in it and then sucking it off, but it is late here, and it is winter, and I am dying.”

“What do you mean you didn’t see the baby?” she asks.

“No, well, I saw her, just…” Patrick’s withdrawing all her earthenware now, “I just didn’t look.”

“What, like the fucking Basilisk?”

“Sassy, for the love of God, tell me you’ve left even a drop of liquor in your home.”

Saskia laughs, and he can hear the chime of ice. “Did you meet the au pair?”

Patrick stumbles back to the stillopen, halfway gutted fridge. He identifies with it. He sticks his head back in. “She thinks I’m a mess.”

“Wow, what a stupid whore,” his sister laughs. As everything, it is at his expense. He’s in emotional arrears, but it’s okay. It’s all okay.

He hears Saskia’s inbreathe. Marijuana? Probably. He doesn’t mind her lungs. He doesn’t mind that she’s always been more beautiful than him. He doesn’t mind that she’s warm in Rio. He knows it’s harder for her. She never got to be Rupert’s little princess. He wants to protect her in that asinine way baby brothers think they can protect their sisters. In that asinine way Patrick Zweig thinks he can protect everyone.

“Have pity on me, Sas.”

She directs him blindly like a game of Marco Polo. He wades through the ransacked bombsite he’s made of her kitchen. Avocados rolling across the slate floor. Spilled milk, which feels symbolic.

He unearths the bottle of Gordon’s dry gin from under the sink. Holds it aloft like a holy grail.

Patrick can’t remember the last time he set foot in a church, if such a time has ever occurred. Part of him expects the parishioners to take one look at him and know he doesn’t belong, for them to demand he leave.

For the things he has done, the things he has felt, the things he has wanted. Certainly for the things he cannot bring himself to believe.

He is struck by the towering stonework of the cathedral. The wooden cross in the apse is immense. Behind it, stained glass windows paint the icedover morning in vivisected coloursplays. Soft motes of sunlight waft in shafts from the ceiling.

He never thought he’d see the day—the Zweigs done up in their Sunday best. His mother would laugh herself to tears.

Rupert’s broad shoulders are ramrod straight, his argent hair slicked back handsomely. Giselle is wearing a ribbed knit dress in eggshell. Princess Lieselotte—finally, a worthy heir—is wearing a knit tunic dress embroidered with blooms, a scallopcollared ivory shirt underneath, and a crocheted woollen baby bonnet.

They look like an affiche for Norman Rockwell.

At first, he’s still trying not to meet the Basilisk’s gaze, but then he gets this disarming glimpse. The peonypink hue of her. Her comically outjutting little ears. Gibbous blue eyes, lapping up the world through cornyellow lashes. Those are Giselle’s. But the rest…

Unlucky little shit, Patrick tells her telepathically. And now he is looking straight at her, like the spell has been broken. He needs to let her know he’s onto her, and her bullshit doting father. You look like dad.

But what that means is she looks like Patrick, too.

He watches you hold her in your arms, rubbing your nose against hers.

Giselle had had you press Patrick’s shirt—his father’s shirt; of course he didn’t pack a buttonup—for him this morning. He was only kind of embarrassed. But he sat carefully in the car, leery of creasing your hard work. 

The linen of your skirt reaches your ankles. You’re wearing this creamcoloured slouchy knit turtleneck, and you’ve got a little lacy chiffon infinity veil halfway canopying your hair. Patrick is pleasantly amused by all this fabric. All the things he cannot see. Because of God, or the cold, or God and the cold.

The Zweigs find their pews, stopping frequently to greet their fellow churchgoers, and whisper inquiries after names Patrick doesn’t know. He shakes half a dozen hands if he shakes one, introduces himself as ‘Rupert’s son’ more times than he can count.

You, too, are pleasantly amused. Because Patrick is notably discomfited. You fish your little pewter cross necklace from beneath your collar. You hold it between your fingers and out toward him like an exorcist.

“He can smell your fear,” you whispergrowl, fauxominous. Lili giggles all saliva in your arms. That’s the voice you use when you pretend to be the babyeating ogre. She takes the cross between her tiny teeth. Patrick watches. You smile. “And so can she.”

Patrick looks at you for a moment, feigning indifference. “They’re both smelling how little they matter to me.”

Your smile widens.

Patrick—who has never endured a mass—takes his cues from the brush of your shoulder on when to stand, when to sit, and when to supplicate himself. The priest oscillates from English to Latin and back again. Seemingly on a whim. When Patrick fumbles trying to find the right page for the hymn, you tilt your book slightly so he can read along. 

He thinks the rosary looks good where it dangles from your lithe, supple fingers. Looping and weaving through your pretty knuckles like drops of blood. 

You are flawless in your devotion.

You slip to your knees with a fluidity that makes his tummy fasten.

You sing quietly and sweetly and when you turn to Patrick to wish peace upon him, your grin is so sweet and earnest it takes a moment for him to contend with that blessing.

Everyone falls down to the hassock again and Patrick is beginning to find the rhythm of the whole affair. At least enough to let his thoughts maunder and his body be at mercy to the motions.

It’s soothing, in its way. He can almost understand it. What blessed relief in lifting your human pains to be scoured clean.

The priest closes out the sermon with a few nice words about Jesus. Guy’s birthday’s coming up, after all.

Patrick leans forward a bit to glance at his father’s fingers, tapping on the dry leather of the psalmbook.

In the photo, little Lili is wearing a white linen nightgown that mantles her whole, like a tiny tarp. His dad cradles her, and everyone’s standing around a marble pool. He can see Saskia off to the side, hosting a very conspicuous hangover behind her mask. You’re in the picture, too. Apparently, you had been Giselle’s doula, in the beginning, and you just ended up sticking around. Which he finds more than a little strange. Patrick often sees life as a series of measures to get further away from his family.

On the edge of the photo, he can see the broad back of a becloaked man, plashing his fingers the water.

Patrick feels an inkling of discomfort at the sight of that man.

“She still sleeps in that dress, actually,” you say, rocking the babe.

The wallpaper of Lili’s room is printed with pale pink linework of woodland creatures. He’s straddling the vintage nursery rocker—a plush weathered lamb; it used to be his and Saskia’s—and his knees are hiked comically high on either side of him, his slacks riding up his ankles.

Patrick stares at the baby girl in this framed photograph. She looks too small—almost tenuous—underneath the white shift. Her eyes are flushed and still wombswollen.

“What’s the point?” he asks, trying to imagine that man softly slooshing water over her boneless head.

You smile. “It’s to protect her.”

“Protect her from what?”

You lower Lili into her French Provençal style woodcarved bassinet.

You look up at him, eyes flitting over his face. “Shame, I guess.”

It doesn’t quite make sense. A fullimmersion baptism means commitment. You have pledged yourself to God. You are bound to follow His laws. Shame is essential to these laws. Isn’t it?

You don’t know why he’s still here. Giselle is taking her Sunday nap, and Rupert’s playing solitaire or reading Guy Sajer or something in the den. Lili, too, is dead to the world. You need to do the laundry. The laundry room is too strait for him to be lingering, leaning against the doorframe, interrogating you. He likes watching the linen of your skirt gather at your feet as you crouch to the floor, depositing the armfuls of bedding into the mouth of the washing machine. All that fabric.

“It’s a different kind of shame,” you try to explain. “I can be ashamed of myself, of my body.”

“Why are you ashamed?”

You roll your eyes. “I don’t know. I’m alive.”

“Alright. And this helps?”

“A little, yeah. It takes you out of your body. Then returns you to it. And you feel brand new. Like you belong to Jesus.”

You laugh a little at the concept, but he can tell you treasure this belonging, deep down.

He walks toward you, taking the empty wicker hamper from your hands and setting it aside. “You shouldn’t feel ashamed in the first place.”

You shrug, noting his proximity. “It’s probably good to feel shame from time to time.”

He doesn’t say anything to that.

He doesn’t ask you if you feel ashamed right now. Face smushed against the top of the palpitating washing machine. If you said yes, he’d be unhappy. If you said no, he’d be unhappy.

He’s happy, now, hiking your skirt up around your waist, shucking your gauzy tights halfway down your thighs. Best not to ruin it.

So he doesn’t ask if you’re ashamed. He doesn’t ask if you’re a virgin. He does ask if you’re on birth control, and furrows his brows as his strong hands caress the flesh of your ass.

“Why not?” he laughs, dragging the beige skin down his rigid cock, rubbing the deep blush head against your hirsute pussy and bending over you. “Isn’t that shit free here?”

He burrows his head beneath your sweater, kissing your back through the cotton of your longsleeve. He doesn’t search for more bare skin, just keeps a good grip on that which he has, fingertips digging into the flesh of your hips.

He fucks into you and feels your body shudder around him with the jostle of the machine.

He doesn’t ask of shame or chastity or how long Giselle and Lili usually nap for, how far his dad is into The Forgotten Soldier. He does, however, feel it necessary to ask,

“Feels good, right?” Even though you’re drooling against the zinc and your hoarse groans are rivalling the churning noises. You roll your eyes but they stay there, your lashes fluttering.

“Yes,” you pant, clutching the edge of the machine. “It feels good.”

He bends over you, pinning you, elbow to elbow, his chin resting on your clothed shoulder. Your veil slips off your head and drapes around your neck. He quickens his pace. “It’s fucking big, isn’t it?”

You turn your head to look at him. His eyes look like they want to fuck your eyes. His mouth hovers over your drooling mouth as if to kiss you. The shaggy hair of his crotch abrades your tailbone.

“Verdict’s still out,” you say, voice quavering, and you let him lave your tongue sloppily with his.

His sister has a guestroom, but he sleeps in her bed. Reads her Audre Lorde and Laurie Colwin. Uses her toothbrush. God, she’d kill him. But he likes the transgression of violating her space. He doesn’t use her vibrator, or anything. He finds it, but he doesn’t use it.

He has his few ways of having people. So he’s always taking what he can get.

That’s why he fucks the nanny in the laundry room, and lets Art’s kid bruise him with her tap shoe, and sits on the kitchen tile drinking Saskia’s gin.

He has to hold on to the granite countertop, as he straightens from his haunches. His back is a wreck, but the ache is nothing compared to the relief and vindication and victory he feels. He can’t say for sure what the prize is. Maybe it really was just your pussy, and that’s where this all starts and ends, which is fine. The feeling of winning is so rare and precious and precious and rare and, as he unscrews the cap and raises the bottle to his lips, it’s as if he’s just slain a mighty monster.

He places the little tiara he’d filched from Lili’s room on Saskia’s mantel.

He’s less than compos mentis come Christmas Eve.

He lays in Saskia's bed for a bit, inhaling lime and ambergris, trying to figure out what to do with himself. He checks his phone: No Service.

He sighs and tumbles out the sheets like a rockslide. He figures he might as well go for a run before the blizzard clocks in since there’s nothing else to do. His feet already feel numb and damp. Everything has felt numb and damp the whole time he’s been here.

Running buzzed probably isn’t his smartest idea, but it doesn’t feel like his worst one either.

Patrick frenetically tugs two pairs of thermal leggings on. The radiotor whirrs but the house is still arrestingly gelid. He pulls on his sister’s comically inflated neon orange down jacket.

He looks at himself in the mirror.

“Oh, fuck yeah,” he whispers.

He loots and pilfers some mittens, goggles, and a neck gaiter from Saskia’s closet. She could never take to professional athleticism, but she’s a reasonably devout runner, and is partial to a halfmarathon or two most years. Which means free activegear for Paddy. He walks to the front door and slips on his dank shoes.

He steps outside once he feels decently covered head to toe, a skill he’s found refining itself as the week has shouldered past him.

Patrick strides the roadside briskly for almost a mile. His legs feel halfway atrophied, so he gives them time to warm up. The neighborhood seeps into copses of snowdusted forestry. He feels the beauty of the landscape flicker through him like a spark.

He starts jogging.

He has no mapped course, no mile time to hit. He just wants to move forward. For once. His goggles fog up with entrapped bodyheat crowning the cold air but he doesn’t fix them. The compressed insulation of his clothes, the whirring thump of his shoes to the tar—it engenders a strangely hypnotic effect. He realises, only after miles have elapsed, that he's forgotten to turn any music on. He doesn’t need it now.

He comes upon a clearing in the trees that discloses a river he hadn’t recalled.

He abates to a walk before stopping completely and removing his goggles. 

He knows a breathtaking scene when he sees one. That was never his problem, the discernment of the good thing. It was never even the obtaining of it. It’s that—well—if Sas actually had left plants for him to nurture, they’d be dead by now.

But anyway. The river.

Snowfall has burgeoned somewhat, but light is still breaking through. The sun reflects tenderly off the surface of the frozen water as if it’s all being illuminated from beneath the ice.

Patrick swears he can see evidence of a current still rushing below, but he can’t be sure that’s all too possible at these temperatures.

He tries to take a picture for posterity (or Lily; she’s ‘into vistas’ lately), but all the light is so strange and coruscating. Hardly anything can be captured in earnest.

Patrick takes a deep breath and closes his eyes.

He pulls his gaiter down and doffs his hat. Allows his florid skin a few moments to feel the glacial squall, the moist sting of melting snow. He thinks he’s missed this weather, harsh as it may be.

He takes the opportunity to check his watch, vaguely hoping the GPS tracker’s been running. And hope seems to count for something here.

4.7 MILES

A surge of accomplishment and anticipation shimmers through him. He grins, breathless, at the thought of being able to tell Tashi that he’d done a cool ten miles. And the prospect of being able to eat a guiltless meal is emerging as an actual possibility. 

Patrick gears back up and begins to walk again in the direction he came. He takes advantage—always taking advantage, always taking what he can get—of the trodden path he’d made in the road. The surer grip of his shoes.

His head starts feeling strange as he’s walking. As though it’s sloshy inside, like the dirty snow he sees on the curb. But he pushes forward and chalks it up to temperature. Picks up the pace again. 

He finds himself less mesmerised by his own footfalls now and slips his AirPods in. Slips inside the eye of his mind. His sister used to have a ‘(What's The Story) Morning Glory?’ CD. Patrick’d scratched it, probably. He hopes Oasis can get back together some day. It's not so hard to reconcile. Mostly, anyway.

About a mile into the returning trek, Patrick feels his legs suddenly get heavier. He’s felt as much before. He assumes he’s just hitting the wall. It’s a little early for him, at such moderate mileage, but he knows inclemency and altitude can do things to a body.

He’s deliberate with his strides as he proceeds. He wants to be sure that his torpid legs are parting with the ground. 

It’s around the two mile mark that his spine rattles with an odd enough sensation—sharp, like an incision down the length of it—to bring him to a stumbling halt.

Patrick’s clumsily reaching around and groping at his neck and back the best he can through his layers. It feels almost like someone has poured water on his skin. Soused him like a baptism.

He tells himself he needs a second to breathe. Starts walking again. Eventually feels very marginally centred enough to pick up the pace. His knees feel like cinderbricks. Dense and angular. But he should be capable of making it home. Or at least determined enough to do so. He’s seeing houses again. He can’t be more than a mile out.

He’s thinking of raiding Saskia’s toiletries and snorting her cornucopia of bathsalts when a billow of abject nausea rolls through him. He’s stumbling again.

He moans vaguely with turnsickness. The trees are blurring together.

He sways.

Sidesteps jerkily over the curb into a stark white alloy of fresh and shoveled snow.

Doubles over.

Dissolves to his knees, bracing himself on his palms. All fours again.

He maintains this position for several minutes. He’s heaving in and out forcefully with his eyes screwed shut. It feels a bit prayerful. He’s praying to be made to vomit. Just wants to feel better and move on and he’ll never touch his dick again, he prays. Which isn’t true, but need it be?

Things go sloshy again, and warm, this time. Overwhelmingly warm, actually. He flounders in the wet, rips off his gear, and uses his bare hands to grab handfuls of snow off the ground and push it onto his face. The heat feels like bloodshed.

Patrick tears off his jacket. Patrick lays his entire body facedown in the snow. Everything is numb and damp.

“Oh my goodness, Patrick?”

One imagines the voice of God to be a little less frantic.

He’s confused by how weak his muscles feel when he tries to push himself up. How he only sees lucent whiteness when his eyes flicker open. Shit, is this it? He thought for sure he’d end up at the other place.

“Jesus Christ, I thought you were dead!”

Oh, alright. So not yet. Not yet, and certainly not Heaven. Close, though, with how relieved you sound. He is the body on the side of the road, and you’ve stopped to triage him instead of driving off. He squints up at you. Floral puffer. Scarf and muffs. You look like a fairytale illustration.

His blood’s gone cold in his extremities, and he’s mumbling, “Sorry.”

“You’re a mess.”

There it is.

For your part, you don’t sound malicious, or anything. You say it like a forgone conclusion, a fact of the matter. The way a person in an Ionesco absurdist play would say, oh, it looks like I’m wearing pants right now.

He tries to make a stab at indignity. Like maybe if he denies that he’s a mess, that should suddenly make him clean. What blessed relief. But all he manages is a whimpered grunt of protest.

“What happened? Were you attacked?”

Patrick shakes his head, suddenly aware of just how wet he is.

“Patrick, tell me.” You sound concerned, but not in pieces. He knows this is all coincidence. That you simply happened to be driving by. But the fact that you’ve found him prone in the snow, the fact that you knew to call his name, knew it was him who’d ambled to the woods and buried himself in the ground like a coldblooded mountain climber, like a defiant zealot, staring into Earth, his back to God, taunting you with his dickish solipsism—he thinks all this should terrify you. He isn’t dead. Not yet. But maybe he’d already made up his mind. Perhaps you’re just picturing him as another baby. Something small and soothable. “What happened? Do you need to go to the hospital?”

Patrick shakes his head again and takes your assistance in getting up. All his things are gathered in your arms.

“You’re soaked, Patrick. What were you doing in the snow?”

He looks around and feebly brushes some of the debris off of his leggings and thermal pullover.

“I... I don’t know? I’m pretty sure I started feeling sick, and then I got hot, so I took all my shit off,” he explains. He’s all nonchalant about it, too.

At first, he won’t tell you where his sister’s house is. You’re going all Nuremberg on him, like he really is a baby who will drop the knife if you tell him no sternly enough. But he soaks through the polyester of your passenger seat and grins and defies you. It’s like he’s challenging you to take him back to his dad’s. Like he’s a kid acting up in school for attention.

It takes a while. You circle the block twice. Then he sees the way his fingernails tinge cobalt, and thinks of how disappointed his father’d be. Concerned, you allege, but he doesn’t buy that.

Still, he confesses like a sinner.

He asks you—as you stand on the concrete steps to the quaint, Tudorstyle home, and he holds his cap in his teeth and fishes the keys from his pocket—not to hold the state of the place against Saskia. He says there’s a lot of damage he can do in a week. He’s always making a mess. Messing things up. Has he messed you up? He doesn’t ask, but has he?

He’s even sorry for fucking you. He doesn’t tell you that, either. And he’s about to do it again. But he is sorry. That has to count for something.

You stink. Not in a really bad way, not in a noticeable way, but the stale perfume and deodorant have turned into a cool film against your skin, trapping your sweat and guilt and other gross things which you’re too tired to name. You’ve been out buying gifts all day. You’re always so last minute. You feel like you might fall asleep on Saskia’s couch.

News says blizzard’s on its way. News is all choppy static pixel kaleidoscope, too. Even if you left right now, you wouldn’t make it home before the roads got dangerous.

You’ve heard enough hypothermia horror stories to know he should be taking a shower right now, warming himself up in increments. And you’ve heard enough suicide horror stories to know you’d be wrong to leave him anyway, after how you’ve just discovered him.

Was she visibly bleeding?

He doesn’t look like he’s about to call it quits.

On the contrary, he looks relaxed, calm, selfpossessed, sitting on the arm of the couch, one knee drawn up, cigarette dangling between fingers. Also his cock is out. He’s naked.

Has he already made up his mind?

How many times has he lain like that, in the snow, lucid about his slide into the abyss? 

He finishes his cig and takes a knee by your feet. Your bare feet. You shouldn’t have taken off your shoes. They stink.

You try to tuck your feet under you, but he reaches out and grabs your ankle and tugs like you’re the baby.

“What happened to your leg?” you croak, your voice a little fraught.

His thumb keeps brushing up and down the arch of your foot, like trying to ease your tension. He leans back and looks down, past the leavening weight of his dick, to the navy bruise bloomed through the hairs just below his knee.

You watch that Cheshire cat smirk spread his mouth apart. “Violent tap dancer.”

You do kind of wish he wouldn’t do the whole slapping your pussy and calling you a good girl thing. It feels weird and Freudian and it even makes you feel kind of guilty.

Not because of his stupid uncut Jewish cock all swollen against his thigh, nor the virgin’s innards mangled in a manger at this very moment two thousand years ago. You know that’s not how you measure innocence. There’s something idiotic about that, something primeval and pathetic, something no one should be proud or ashamed of.

It’s just that he doesn’t seem fully committed to the pastiche.

He spits a thin globe of saliva right onto your clit. His fingers sweep through your coarsehaired folds. Slow, methodical, like a cartographer mapping the world with his compass and pen.

Then, he raises his fingers and strikes them down against you. You flinch, you whimper. He groans straight into you.

“Good girl. Good girl.”

And it's hot, sure, but he could stand to be crueler.

You’re this nice twentysomething with no real bearing on his life. You pray. You care. You wipe his sister's shit. He suspects he didn’t take your virginity, but he could easily imagine he did, if he wanted to. That he’s teaching you something. This could all be a lot more plastic and pornographic.

But it isn’t. Not really.

He climbs over you, all over you. He’s all over you like the flu. He wants to crawl inside of you, burrow and fester. His knee is pressed between your thighs and he’s breathing into your neck, his head tucked under your chin. His nose is the colour of raspberry syrup and he drags the cold tip of it up the column of your neck.

He smells like smoke and snow. Like sweat and musk and something stale and dry.

You crane your neck with a piercing cry when he bottoms out. He cracks your hips open like a lobster claw. You feel his fevered heartbeat thumping through your body. He seems to think the heat of your flesh is enough to warm and cure him.

“You’re going to catch a cold,” you slaver into his hair.

“I don’t get sick,” he assures you, puffing throatily. “I never get sick.”

He licks Saskia’s bathsalts from the swollen underside of your tits. You gather palmfuls of warm water and pour them over his freckled skin, watching it bloom florid. Are you clean now? Are you shameless? Has the stink gone? Sort of.

Maybe, for a second there.

But Christmas day seeps in like another reek. You feel bad when you catch whiff. You feel the stroke of midnight in your bones, and you think you can hear Carol of the Bells. You feel especially bad, because you’re holding onto his shoulders and fucking yourself on his unhewn cock, the bathwater swashing tepid around you. And he licks the silver crucifix in the dewy valley of your breasts into his mouth, and sucks on it, and looks at you like he’s trying to make a point. He sees you frown.

The pendant glints between his teeth as he says, “Don’t worry, He’s not paying attention. It’s His birthday.”

And you duck your head to laugh.

The water ripples. He wraps his arms around you in a halfway embrace, halfway detainment. You can tell he is worried you will find your morals and leave him cold.

But you won’t.

He’s big enough that he won’t just slip out of you, even in the water. You’re all steamdizzy, eyes halfmast. You watch rivulets of condensation dance down the tiling.

Are you really about to fall asleep on this man’s cock in his sister’s bathtub? Perhaps. There is something grounding about his heavy presence in all four corners of you. You feel that mollifying pressure in your head. Your hands scrabble and slip all over the skin of his shoulders. You kiss all these droplets off his skin.

“I think I’m about to throw up,” he whispers in your ear.

You pull back and sigh. He does look quite waxen and wheyfaced. You feel bad. You were starting to think that you alone could break the fever.

Your knee knocks against the tub. He has to tug himself out of you. He clambers out of the water, puddles splashing everywhere. He slumps to the ground like marmalade, his arms drape the toiletseat, his head in the bowl. Runnels drip off him and sop the bathmat. He spits and heaves. Then he retches. There is nothing solid to the bile. When was the last time he ate something? His viscera slops out of him and into the water. The gin scalds twice as sore on the way up. He sounds horrifying. His lips drip with mucus.

He feels your soft, moist flesh against his back. Your arms around his toned middle. You feel his ribcage tremble against you.

He feels the bone of your chin against the crown of his head.

Patrick knows this is all very repulsive. He's not sure why you're holding him. Maybe you're picturing a baby again.

“What would you get me for Christmas?” he murmurs, his heavy breath echoing around the toilet bowl.

You can smell his puke.

“Um— well... you know, Giselle actually—”

“No,” he grunts stubbornly. “I mean, if you could get me anything, what would you get me?”

“I don’t know,” you say, pressing your wet breasts against his wet back. The humidity is starting to disperse, the trickles cooling off. You do get sick. You get sick quite frequently, actually. This will definitely make you sick. He’ll be gone soon enough, and that’s probably for the best, but who will hold you in your ailing?

“Come on, babe.”

You drag your fingertips down the hair on his abs until you reach the thatch between his legs. “I don’t know… A hot stone massage?”

And it’s cruel and stupid and funny—it’s something only a few people would ever understand. He and Art and Sas and Tash and you. Maybe Lili, one day.

You and Patrick burst into laughter at the same time. He chuckles until he’s wheezing. The sound of it catches in his throat like a fishbone. This is what constitutes a happy moment for him.

“That’s perfect,” he mumbles into the shitter.