#it depends on who's writing it

[monstermoviedean]

NO FIGHTING. BOTH OF YOU

[corsairspade]

there are many reasons I like the "Erestor son of Caranthir" headcanon but secretly the main one is that I'm imagining all of the remaining noldo auditors sighing of relief when Caranthir dies and they don't have to try play 4d chess with multiverse time travel trying to catch this guy doing tax evasion. life is good for exilic auditors now.

and then suddenly Elrond and Elros turn up again! even better! oh who's this, Elrond? your good friend Erestor? he's helping you with your taxes? oh how swe- what is this Elrond. What is this. your paperwork for your taxes you say. not a declaration of war? because it looks like a declaration of war on the exilic auditors, Elrond.

and then all the auditors are so busy doing "extreme tax auditing���" for the first time since the second Kinslaying that they don't tell anyone they're pretty sure there's another scion of the house of Fëanor running around.

[seiwas]

suguru looks at you and thinks he could tell you everything.

it's tempting—how you hold his gaze when others normally avoid it. anyone else and their eyes dart away immediately, blurring him into the background. not with you though; with you, he exists in central focus.

there's a strand of your hair that's fallen out of place, and he reaches to tuck it behind your ear, quickly. it's a trick, a sleight of hand that conceals the tremble of his fingertips.

(your breath hitches when he grazes your cheek.)

the noise in the cafe is a symphony of indistinct chatter and soft alternative folk music, with ceramics clinking as the constant underlying beat. none of it is supposed to go together, but it carries the ambiance in its harmony.

he leans in closer when you speak.

you continue your story, off on a tangent already; his head tilts to the side, a finger to his temple as he nods along, lips curling at the edges fondly. this same look has made others nervous, flustered, but you seem unfazed; meeting him eye-to-eye overtly.

which isn't normal.

and if he's being truly honest with himself, none of this—what he's doing, thinking, how he's feeling—is normal.

suguru believes in secrets, that some things are better kept to himself.

but, it's one look into your eyes, at the way you regard him so unlike everybody else that has him wondering how you'd react if he tells you you look pretty instead of nice today—how you are pretty much a frequent visitor to his thoughts lately.

(you talk and talk and talk because you can never tell what he's thinking—mysterious smile matched with an unnerving stare is a combination too deadly.)

he doesn't do 'brunches'—it's either a late breakfast or an early lunch, pick one—yet he finds himself seated in a cafe at 10:27 a.m., having one with you.

the lock to his chest has been tampered with; if he dusts it off, he'll find your fingerprints, left behind unknowingly. you are innocent until proven guilty, but his lips, usually shut tight, are now slowly unzipping; it's you, the root of all this.

if he tells you he likes looking at you—might always want to—would you consider having another brunch with him? to stay longer in that suspended in-between of breakfast and lunch time?

(you blink, suguru still leaned in, listening.)

(if you tuck a strand of his hair behind his ear, will his breath hitch just the same?)

for @rinniessance; a lil birthday gift for you angie bby! (i might be a lil early posting this... oop!) i've never written sugu but wanted to try for you 🥹 ily you beautiful soul!! (not a birthday fic itself but i hope i gave a decent characterisation of him! 🥺)

thank you notes: @mysugu @soumies for helping me try to figure this man out 😭

comments, tags, and reblogs are greatly appreciated ♡

[14dayswithyou]

Hi, Howdy! Hey! I really love your novel!! I got a little confused by the 4 day, may maybe you help me please? who is it? why we got the bad end staying the night in Ren’s apartment and he disappear of the home screen? I can’t understand “unset memory” game, sorry if I wrote smth wrong or smth sounds rude, I swear that I didn’t mean it if happened, I’m really a fan of the novel, I’ve been playing the game since day 1 or 2 I guess, probably day 1, english isn’t my first language, but I tried lol

⌞♥⌝ I hope you don't mind me answering these as bullet points!! ^^

"It" will be revealed later in the game! So I won't reveal too much right now.

You can only get the Dead End in Day 4 by staying at Ren's apartment — the rest of your choices before that don't matter. I'd also pay closer attention to the black smoke and Ren's reaction towards it!

Ren disappears from the home screen because he promised to help the player out (and stop them from getting the Dead End again). Try replaying the game again from the beginning for a surprise!

"Unsent Memories" was another visual novel (initially being written by @10chimes / @unsentmemory, though the project has since been dropped and handed back to me /pos) and is set in the same universe as 14 Days With You. Its storyline and characters are completely separate from 14DWY, so you don't have to worry about them while playing 14DWY.

[mcflymemes]

please don't mistake silence for hatred. please don't mistake unanswered plotting messages as indifference, or a lack of enthusiasm towards you. considering the ages of most roleplayers, many of us have bills to pay, families to take care of, medical conditions to treat, appointments to make, classes to take, homes to clean, and lives to live away from the computer that are far, far more important than writing on tumblr — life has a tendency to get in the way of hobbies and fun things like this. be patient with your fellow writers. if it doesn't work out, it doesn't work out. of course you can set your boundaries, keep your space comfortable, and softblock whoever you wish, but do so while recognizing it's probably not hatred or apathy that keeps them from leaping into your dms with message after message. they probably love this hobby just as much as you... but sometimes life gets in the way.

[fatedroses]

Two former military elites taking merc jobs perform absolutely hellish battle tactics together.

[coquelicoq]

what i like especially about the pronouns in the goblin emperor is that this language doesn't just have the T-V distinction (aka informal vs. formal second-person pronouns, in this case 'thou' vs. 'you'), it also has informal and formal first-person pronouns. having BOTH of these distinctions in the same language lets you fine-tune your tone by mixing and matching. with only one axis of formality, when you use informal pronouns, are you being familiar in an intimate way, or in an insolent or dismissive way? when you use formal pronouns, are you being polite or standoffish? you can't tell just from the pronouns; there's ambiguity. but a language where you can use a formal first-person pronoun in the same sentence as an informal second-person pronoun allows you to distance yourself (via the formal first) while also being familiar (via the informal second), thereby achieving the conversational tenor known to linguists as Fuck Thee Specifically.

[al-luviec]

something simple to try to get out of art block (it didn't work)

[trillscienceofficer]

schrödinger's military (starfleet)

[psychomusic]

oc time again! + her town & culture (heavily inspired by pre-roman italic populations)

she is suri sauthon. her story is linked to my swtor imperial agent, tar'x, but most of her life except for the one year away where she meets him, is spent in a town in the mountains of mirial.

despite mirial being cold and desert, and many cities developing underground, her town flourishes thanks to a force nexus, venerated in the form of an ancient, sacred, alive crystal. the ecosystem of that mountain depended on what "the horned crystal" was capable of giving them, but mirialans couldn't live off of that alone, so they developed trade and some rudimental technology, even if oftentimes it was bought thanks to the highly profitable trade of a plant used to make medicines that slowed down aging and had overall healing properties.

note: everything that's generated by this nexus has these healing properties BUT they have to be processed, except for those who bathed in the waters of the cavity under the crystal - the "real" nexus, but not the worshipped one. the waters were sacred but they were not thought to be miraculous, unlike the crystal, who instead was thought of as the keystone of the ecosystem: without it, everything would fall apart (and that is partially true: the cavity was the "real" nexus but thanks to the crystal, also strong in the force, the properties were spread all over the mountains). those who bathed in the cavity's waters - so, all of the town, who had a sort of baptism there - could eat the plant, make whatever food with it, and not only that plant, but everything generated by the nexus, that, again, had similar properties. this allowed people to live up to normal life-spans without advanced medicines or, much, really. to those who didn't live there, though, after the processing, had incredible effects, slowing down aging - for those who took it regularly - and making people able to live up to half a century more than the average]

originally, there were four tribes of nomads that lived thanks to horned farm animals that decided to settle down into one bigger town and other smaller settlements, to live off of transhumance. this division of the tribes stayed into the political and social organization: every person belonged to one tribe specifically, and had slightly different rituals and culture. for examples, each tribe had their own priests and healers, with different techniques and traditions. the town, tho, was guided by a group of people in the high priesthood, a position you could reach only by having earned the trust of all tribes. those high priests had many roles: they guided the people into sacred processions common to all the tribes, they managed the trading with outsiders, they did the maintenance of the temple of the summit (the one that functioned as casket to the crystal) and created a special liquid to offer the crystal that helps it grow.

this particular temple was important because 1. it was very visible, from every angle of the town, and it became an important identity symbol; 2. it stored the venerated horned crystal; 3. it had the altar where sacrifices were made for the crystals. that altar had a hole connected to the cavity, that allowed the liquids to reach the underground; 4. it had various symbols: statues representing each tribe + the high priesthood, and typical mirialan tattoos carved into the wood of the trees that served as columns for the temple, symbolizing 8 values that who dared to enter HAD to have; 5. it was on the way to an important lake (called "mother lake" because the lake the town was built around to depended on the waters of that other lake) where they traveled to in important processions; 6. it was said that a the wizard who unified the tribes made it with its magic, making the plant grow to hold the temple's roof. this wizard was, actually, a force user, obv.

BACK TO HER THOUGH: she's daughter of one of the high priests, who was in charge of managing the trades with outsiders, and lives in a house on the mountains with her mother and him. her parents are from different tribes (that's one of the things that earned him trust from the 4 tribes): when a child is born from two different tribes, they don't pick one to allign to, but they're usually linked automatically to the one with more relatives in it (in her case, the father's tribe: she had many uncles and aunts on his side while her mom only had one sister).

later, though, she got quite tied to her mother's tribe due to a mysterious illness that only her mother's tribe healer was able to cure. she spent 4 years (from 10 to 14 years old) living with the healer and learned her secrets. to better study, she wrote them down. when she returned home, she studied to become a priestess with her father. at 22 (the average age: you can't become priest before your 20s), she was supposed to take a test and become a priestess, but the healer of her mother's tribe died and the tribe asked her to take her place. she couldn't technically do that, but both tribes estimated both her and her parents and she was allowed to become both. she then decided to try to become a high priestess, and became one at 25 (a quite young age). being part of the council, she tried to convince the various tribe healers to unite their knowledges and write them down, and eventually made it. healers still remained tribe based but they now had an "upper, inter-tribe level" similar to high priesthood.

years later, the sacred horned crystal is stolen from the temple by some Hutt mercenaries looking for a profit. given the trust she has earned from all the tribes and the fact that her father is the high priest that deals with outsiders (and she's been hearing stories and advice about it since she was little), she is the one tasked with getting it back. without the growing crystal, the keystone to their ecosystem, the village would have lasted only a few years. in hrr quest, she meets imperial intelligence agent tar'x laran and, as they "solve the mystery" and fight to have it back, they get closer. they'll get married and have a daughter, Vegoia (who's the only one who actually will get to the plot of my story. this was all background)

[slowlysoluminary]

after that wack-tastic piece of media i figured we could all!! use a break!!!!!!! so!!!!!!

(more) doodles below the cut. and some commentary! Hurray!

^^ Post game is interesting. Most of the timeloop is about figuring the deal with the memories, some of it is about sif comng to terms with the king, and the very very end of it is about everyone regaining their memories.

so i say it again post game is REALLY interesting!!! because everyone, collectively, is trying to balance their old memories and their new memories. everyone except siffrin. who is not 1:1 old siffrin but is the closest to it, considering how much loop's been through.

loop??? becomes corporeal at some point in the end.

it's very bittersweet! i think! the whole of the party does an "i want to remember!!!" sequence, fighting with their own minds to fill the gaping holes they'd always ignored.

-- loop, after realizing the extent to which they're familiar with the party, had tried desperately to get the party to remember them throughout the loops. in hopes that something would change. they never remembered.

at the same time, siffrin is talking to the king - they're fighting with eachother physically and verbally, desperately trying to get the other understand. resetfrin is not the siffrin the king hated so earnestly, not the siffrin he tried to snuff out.

over the course of many conversations with the king, siffrin caught on. the king is the major lore dump here and is who causes most of the narrative development because i say so !!!!!!!!!!!!

actually. about post game. do you know why their designs are like that

resetfrin hated the lack of autonomy he had over their own body so they decided to. cut their hair. it's a bit curlier now that there's not a lot weighing it down

they decided not to keep the star stuff the king gave them. yada yada character development or whatever.

they gave their cloak to loop!! who is. siffrin again. physically at least. both siffrins are siffrin but with clear differences! like hair length and hair texture! and ohhhhhhhh no what do you mean the universe gave them the wrong body?? what?????? how cruel!!! how blasphemous!!!!!!!

loop hated the idea of keeping her hair darkless (mirror pronouns for loop btw!!! remember that!!!). it reminded them of what it was like to be ghostloop. which they hated!!! but they couldn't have their hair be lightless because that was resetfrin's new thing, so... they just. kept dying the bottom parts of it lightless. it's a compromise

how does the party distinguish the two siffrins, name-wise? uhhhhhh. ask me that question later. idk.

if.... if i have pre-game planned out. and post-game planned out.

then the inly thing I don't have planned out is the ACTUAL time loop bit

it's quite daunting because? that's like the entire point of the original game? it feels like i hve to live up to so much and like fhe loops have to have such a packed, coherent story

though, to be fair, most of what I'm writing will just be. the time loop bit. so i guess I'm figuring it out as i go

anyway, actually talking about the two sketches above, ghostloop is for SIFFRIN'S EYES ONLY!!! she can hit things but things can't hit her and all that.

after figuring out, through past loops, that the King can't see them, they realized siffrin was their only connection to the physical world. The Last Piece Left of them, physically and metaphorically. the whole time they longed for something else to acknowledge their existence. acknowledge theyre real

they also realize they can do Fuckery

the king has a Sixth Sense for loop's Fuckery,,, flipping him The Bird resulted in a rather quick death for Siffrin. whoops!!!!!

this au is. more closely revolved around gloop than i thought. don't worry!! i have a lot of gloop content planned! but. but you need to understand the pain of resetfrin and the king. the misery snd desperation fhe king felt about his country. siffrin pleading with the king, countlessly, hoping to see some SEMBLANCE of the man he once knew. you need to know the missing pieces the party finds, a hollow feeling settling itself around their hearts. you need to know so bad.

so you'll get gloop content! i am a big fan of the little guy myself, really. but !!! this au is not ONLY about them, believe it or not! hehe. haha. giggles. ok ill stop

[yeyinde]

This might sound so cringe and cliche, but I wanna be of help in some way-

how about price faking injuries to see a specific nurse he has a crush on but won’t admit.

Cringe and cliche are quite on brand for me, tbh.

It starts as a concussion, a stiffness in his neck. A pinch in his shoulder. 

Then it changes shape, shifting, evolving, into something more. A tenuous dance held together by silken threads. He tugs on the ends sometimes, just to watch little pieces of you begin to unravel. Raw skin, untouched and new bared to his curious eyes. 

You’ve thrown him off-kilter, left him feeling strange. All asunder. 

He shouldn’t be too surprised by the way you unmoor him so easily. Your eyes swallow the atmosphere around him, eating through gravity. Weightless, he’s left to drift in the aether until you snatch him from the air, leaving him wing-clipped, and kept cupped in the soft swells of your palm. 

It’s greed, he thinks. That awful little thing that makes him keep coming back for more.

The helicopter crash did a number of things on him—mild concussion, a fractured rib, sprained wrist; it seemed to have flipped his insides all askew for a moment when he plunged to the earth before somehow righting themselves when he'd landed—but in retrospect, hindsight, whatever, it could have been a lot worst. 

A fact Gaz seemed to have picked up on quicker than he had when they'd met in the medical bay together, holding their broken bodies with trembling hands. 

(Or maybe threaded together by a statuette of Nefertem laced in the fibres of their hearts.)

"What's this now," Gaz asked when he limped in, knee smarting without the surge of adrenaline keeping him upright. Mirth rolling through his teeth, ge offered Price a fractured grin that very likely might have been a grimace. "Two for two? Might be a sign, cap…"

"A sign for what?"

Gaz shrugged, pressing tender fingers against the gash on his forehead. "Stay the fuck out of helicopters. Take the bloody bus instead."

There's a retort in the back of his throat, but it's swallowed when you walk in, hands gripping a medical bag between blanching knuckles. He's closest to the door, and you turn to him with an air of pensive uncertainty that nudges the spot inside of him that preens under authority. That likes law, order, and the simplicity of life. A natural-born leader. He plays the part, of commander and captain, and dips his head toward Gaz, a silent motion meant to convey him first. 

The always in that is ironclad, he thinks. Brassbound. Even if he was bleeding out on the pavement. His men, his boys, first. 

Except, he catches Gaz doing the same thing toward him. A stalemate, then. 

You're new, he notes; ears still wet, face still green. He braces himself to step in, to lay down the authority you need before you flounder, unsure what to do, but instead of being met with uncertainty, he finds himself breathing in your ire. 

"Well, heroes," you snip, brow pinching together in displeasure. "One of you has to go first, don't you? So while I put my stuff on the table, I expect you to have figured it out amongst yourself, yeah?"

And it's—

It's something. 

A strand of static in the air. Direct current to his heart. It thuds in a strange murmuration, off rhythm, off balance. But it makes sense. You'd thrown him so wildly off kilter. 

He clears his throat of the soot that congeals the back, and nods once. Sharp and jerky. 

"Right, yeah…" 

Price turns to Gaz, brows pinched in the middle. A messy bow. 

It isn't like him to be so askew, but you turned everything upside down before he could familiarise himself with the world in its right state. He's adrift for a moment. Floundering, he notes, tasting something sweet behind his teeth. 

Gaz meets his eyes somewhere in the fog, the furrow in his brow asking the questions he won't voice aloud—you alright, cap?—but he isn't sure what he's meant to say. Everything feels like it was knocked loose inside of him, left to roll off shelves and clatter to the floor. Disorganised chaos. Awash. Lost in tangled webs. He isn't used to this. To feeling so useless, so askew. 

He later finds it just the concussion warping the edges of his mind, turning his thoughts into a slurry. That the mild part was an oversight, one that was immediately corrected by you—firm fingers holding his chin still, nails scratching against his beard as you peered into his eyes with a clinical air of detachment that shouldn't have made his heart beat as loud as it was. 

You smell of summer rain. The musk of water on a hot pavement. He breathes it in until it's clogging the back of his throat, so thick he can almost taste it. So heavy, so heady, his head swims. Ozone. Charred wood. War tucked in a bottle.

The soft fingers against his pulse was a shock, made potent by the little curl of your brow when you counted the beats per minute and found they were much too fast. He isn't embarrassed. Doesn't think he has it in him anymore to feel that way, but there's a sense of frustration in the back of his mind as you move around him, commandeering him with an ease that leaves him feeling a little breathless. 

"You're concussed," you say at last, lips pitching downward as you read his charts, the scrawl left behind by the nurse who'd seen him earlier. The one who promptly sent him to you. "And it isn't mild."

With that, and a list of things he ought to do (non-negotiable), you send him on his way. Gaz, too. Fixed up with gauze and made shiny and new. 

Soap asks why he's so quiet later when they meet for a debriefing later on (one that he knows is definitely on the list of things you told him not to do), and has to stop the rip current from spilling past his lips. 

"He's concussed," Gaz supplied, narrowed eyes clipping the side of his face when it lands; a physical blow. "Doc said he needed rest. But good luck telling him that."

"Don't need rest," he grumbles. There's a blossom of pain in his temple. A little sapling that flourishes under the waning sunlight. "'M fine."

They don't believe him, but the debriefing is too short to push him to lay down, and he spends the next hour pretending he's not seeing shadows in his periphery. That the words on the pages don't bleed together. 

(That the scent of Petrichor doesn't glue to the back of his throat.)

When the hurt in his head dims, he finds his thoughts drifting back to you. Meek and unassuming. A wolf in sheep's clothing. It lingers long after the meeting has ended and he's ushered to the barracks for rest. Home tomorrow, Gaz promises on the tail end of yawn. Gonna sleep for a whole year, I think. 

Aye, gonna head home in the morning, Soap murmurs, but his eyes don't stray from the corner where Ghost leans, chin dipped low to his chest. 

(Price wouldn't put it past him to be asleep already.)

They tell him to get some sleep, dressing the worry in their voice as a friendly admonishment, and he takes it as it is. 

But rest doesn't come. 

He's curious about you. The little hellion that managed to snatch him clean from the air, and cup him in the palm of your too-small hands. 

(He wants to feel it again.)

It begins as idle curiosity.

Price is a large man full of bulk and grit. The snarls in his throat command authority, respect. He isn't used to feeling so wing clipped, sidelined, and he blames that on why he seeks you out. 

A pinch in his shoulder. His chest feels swollen around the broken rib. His knee hurts. There's an ache in his throat. A throb in his kidneys. 

Each time is met with the same stern expression, firm hands. You commandeer him around the room, dragging out the ailments with ease that always seems to leave him off-kilter and breathless. 

He realises what it is the fourth time he comes to your office, exacerbating some mild pain. 

You take up space. All of it. Any crevasse, or corner is immediately filled by you. You have this presence about you that is so at odds with the meek façade you carried on your countenance like an ill-fitting mask when he'd first laid eyes on you. 

You're an enigma, a paradox. A riddle begging to be solved. He wants to take you into his hands and pull you apart until your insides are bared to him, true and real, and known. 

He's met people like you in his lifetime. Leaders in roles that don't fit them. He thinks you belong in worn pages of history, tucked behind a desk as you commandeer the world around you with firm hands and a gnarled smile instead of standing before him, musing softly at whatever ailments he throws your way. 

Despite his plethora of issues, you tackle them all with an air of severity and seriousness that he finds kinship in, touching softly at the twined mass that writhes before him. The cuts in your gaze are made from the same shorn razor as his, and he wants to see what's behind that ill-fitting mask. 

He wants to see you slip. 

But you don't. 

Tongue between teeth, clenched so hard that blood blooms and swells in the tip, you keep everything locked tight to your chest, and usher him out with pantomime remedies to heal his farcical hurts. 

Price isn't sure why he keeps going—curiosity, maybe. An attraction that cracks like lightning striking through his chest. A gale of turbulence that leaves him seaswept and standing on shaking knees. He doesn’t know what to do with the kinetic energy that buzzes in his veins, begging to be free, and so he tests. Pulls and tugs at the seams that keep you spooled tightly together just to see that fissure that once split across your face, leaking fury and fire into the air until it ripped through his nerves, an electrical fire, and set him alight from the inside out. 

(He finds he likes the way it hurts.)

As much as he tugs, he finds he likes it when you pull back. 

"Should be careful," you coo, and the syrupy sweetness of your voice sparks against some dormant part of his mind. "You seem to have a lot of bad luck when it comes to ailments."

He shrugs. "Just unlucky."

"Or you're being cursed." 

"Oh, yeah?" He hums. "Could be." 

You offer a flimsy smile, but it’s enough to soothe the ruffle through his plumage. 

"What's your name?" He asks, fingers plucking at the gossamer that sits between you, unsettled by the quiver in his chest. 

The smile you flash at him is all teeth. "Sekhmet."

Laswell doesn't ask why when he requests your records, but he senses the confusion in her voice when she calls. 

"All of them?" 

He grunts in response. 

"I vetted them personally, John… but," there's a shuffle in the background. Boxes sliding on linoleum. She's overseeing the tearing up of Shepherd's office, and this minute request suddenly turns his stomach sour. "Fine. If that's what you want."

"It's just—"

He isn't quite sure what to say. He was weakened and flummoxed by the world around him. You turned the tipping axis on its head, leaving him feeling asunder. 

"Heard they were quite rough with you," she teases, an olive branch. An excuse. "Bossing around the boss. Is this what it's about?"

He scoffs, then, and only feels an inkling of pain. "No, Laswell. And I wasn't bossed around."

"Manhandled?"

It gives him pause. That feeling from before swells in his chest. Soft hands against his talons, clipping his wings. 

"No," he mutters, but the airiness of his voice gives him away. 

Laswell, in a feat of mercy, just hums. "They're good, John. Good for this team."

Good for you, she doesn't say. John thinks she doesn't have to. He hears it, anyway. 

There are cracks inside of him, ones made from the chipped clay that once concealed an unslaked black hole. 

You fill space, he thinks. 

He isn’t surprised to find you fill the gaps inside of him, too. 

He goes again, but this time it’s real. A bullet grazed his shin, deep enough to warrant stitches, and finds you waiting for him with that clipboard pinched between your hands. 

The look on your face gives him pause. It’s pulled taut, coiled like a defensive viper, but where he expects the same clinical efficiency and detached airs, he instead is met with a palpable sense of uncertainty—too much, he thinks, like the first time you walked into the room, unsure and wobbling on unsteady feet. 

His heart thunders under your prying gaze. “Need some stitches,” he says, if only to fill in the terse silence that settles over the room, hushed and aggrieved. 

“Right,” you echo, eyes dropping to the blood that runs in streaking rivulets down his leg. 

And you say nothing else after, working quietly as you knit skin back together and sponge the drying blood from the wry thatch of curls that blanket his shin. 

Price takes in the paleness of your lip, pinched tight against your clenched teeth. The deep ravine that cuts a line between your brows, heavy with shadows and flooded in some strange amalgamation of anger—potent enough that he can catch the embers in the air on his tongue—and this uncharacteristic sense of disquiet that makes your shoulders tense, your hands slacken. The firm, sure touch is gone—replaced, instead, with clouded unease—and you no longer commandeer him around the room, catch him from the air and manoeuvre him to your fanciful whims. You nudge, now. Soft utterances; requests. 

You don’t move space to fit yourself between the brackets. You linger in the periphery. 

He isn’t accustomed to this, and the hesitancy in your brow needles behind his ribs, pinching and pushing until he’s left feeling that same, strange sense of weightlessness as before. But where you led him around by the tip of his ears, he finds himself unmoored. 

(He likes the loss of control, but only when it’s tethered to your hand.)

His wound is patched up, skin knitted together with silken black lines that cut a neat crisscross through his tumid skin. There is no reason to linger, despite the weight on his tongue urging him to speak. 

But you strike first, catching him at the door. 

"Is there a problem?" You ask, words stripped bare, and masticated between clenched teeth. Reluctance is a heavy weight on your brow when he turns to you, as if you don't want to ask, but are compelled to. Forced to. 

It's the first time he's felt any sense of control around you. He stretches his wings. 

"Problem?" He echoes, and tucks his hands beneath his arms. Steadying his stance. Preparing for the fight. 

You mimic his pose, but grab the knobs of your elbows between tense fingers instead. There's fire in your eyes. The room fills with smoke. 

"You asked for my papers."

The meagre file tucked away in his cabinet spoke of your accomplishments in the same detached, clinical distance as one of the many façades you adopt. It listed your education, your former employment, and your accolades in Times New Roman, all standard affairs. Impressive, of course, but he found it all to be quite lacklustre. 

It didn't mention the firmness of your fingers when you take his pulse or commandeer him to your liking. It said nothing about the paralysing weight in your gaze, vipers tucked in the corners of your eyes when he meets your stolid authority with his own fiery wrath. 

(Or the softness of your cheeks when you try to hide a smile. The admonishing pinches made in jest when he says something that distracts you from your task.)

"I did."

"Okay," you breathe heavily through your nose. "Why?"

"Is there any reason why I shouldn't?" 

"You just—" another breath. He has the peculiar urge to syphon the next directly from your lungs, to taste your air on his tongue. "You come here, week after week, with some—illness, and just—"

"Just what?"

"If you have a problem," you say at length, eyes flashing. "You could have come to me? One on one. I would have—"

"A problem?" He singles the word out, tossing it back at your teeth. “I don’t have a problem.”

You laugh, but it's scathing. "Are you undermining me? Is this—hazing?"

“Hazing? No,” he shakes his head, chasing the tail end of your derision. “Consider this vetting.”

And there it is—that fissure. Heat pops from the lavascape, spilling down the split of your lips. 

“Right.” You snip, shaking your head. “Well, I hope I met your expectations, Price.”

He huffs, then. The noise is a broken facsimile of a laugh forced through crooked teeth. “Of course you do.” The pinch in your brow wobbles. “Wouldn’t be here if you didn’t, love.”

He rents the air with his admission, splits the seams of this tenuous dance you make each week he shows up, speaking of some phantom pain ripped the pages of the textbooks that sit, worn and well-loved, on the shelves behind your desk. 

You say nothing when he leaves. 

(Or when he rests a piece of himself on the doorframe—a glossy feather from his primary remiges just for you.)

He doesn’t go for the next three weeks, but it isn’t cowardice that drags him away from this oddly shaped choreography. He’s caught in a storm halfway across the world with sand in his hair, and the curve of your confusion nudged between the fibrils of his chest. 

In the softness of night, he wonders what you've done with his clipped feather. 

Price meets you at the beginning, but this time, he stands in the medical bay with firm knees, and a clear head. Searching, seeking. 

The thread vibrates, and he finds you with your back to him, doling out gentle, firm, commands to the medical staff congregated around you. Clinging to your breathy orders with the same listless uncertainty that makes his chest swell with the urge to lead whenever it's rested on his shoulders. 

He isn't sure if you can feel the reverberations through the thread, the leftover sutures from when you weaved a needle over the cut on his forearm, and accidentally sewed a piece of yourself into his skin, or if it's just the heavy weight of his gaze burning brands into your back that draws your attention. 

(It certainly garners enough from the staff around you, their flighty eyes flickering from the mountain of a man seething at your back, to you—feigning obliviousness as he strips you bare beneath his glacial gaze, cutting a path to your membrane where he knows he'll find the piece of himself that you snipped off months ago.)

When you finally turn, you give a peculiar look over your shoulder, eyes clouded over, gaze inward. He watches you for a moment, taking in the curve of your cheek, the slope of your nose. Foreign, of course; but familiar under the cloak of darkness and the hail of gunfire. 

The fire still burns in your unreachable depths, but the embers are smouldering. He feels the heat even from this distance, but when you return from whatever thoughts were racing through your head, he finds the look that fixes itself there to be strange. Pensive. 

A quiet contemplation as you take in the length of his shoulders, the width of his chest. 

His heart hammers against the cages of his sore ribs, leaping to the base of his throat where it pulses like a raw wound. 

The whole of his body smarts like a massive contusion—muscles bending at odd angles, bones brittle—but he knows in an instant that he won't mention it to you. He'll tuck the hurt aside. Let it moulder. Let it rot. 

This thing between you—crafted from the design of his heart—has been pulled and pinched, flexed and stretched too taut. It's ready to snap. To break. 

He waits for that moment, bracing himself for the inevitability of the recoil clapping him against the chest, but it doesn't happen. 

You give a small dip of your chin. 

Then, you're gone. 

You've been moulding him between form hands since the beginning, moving him around however you please. 

So, it just feels natural when he follows. 

This time it's his chest. 

You go through the same dance, steps known. Ingrained in muscle memory. Your hands are firm, authoritative as you lead him on this little chase, pushing and pulling, tugging on the threads that keep him sewn up and whole. 

But an incipient path is born. A new routine. The hand on his cheek, as you read his temperature, lingers, thumb brushing over the dividing line that separates skin from wry curls. 

The touch is familiar. You’re no strange to feeling around the phantom aches and pains he presents to you, but this is an electric shock that rattles through his nerves. The trail your thumb leaves behind as it strokes idly at his skin prickles and burns. Goosebumps rise, creating cresting hills and peaks along his topography. You map it all with nimble fingers, firm and sure. 

You take the thermometer out of his mouth after a moment, not even pretending to read the results (thirty-seven degrees, always), and it’s tossed back on the tray quickly before your hand returns to his skin, drawn there by that same innate pull he feels in his iron bones. The warmth of your palm threatens to suffuse his skin, mated together in ferromagnetism. 

His chin rests, plinthed in your palms, and there’s a sudden swell, a rush, that gorges on his heart. The façades fall, clattering to the ground. The broken pieces lay in remains by his feet. 

Price doesn’t spare them a glance. 

Can’t, maybe, because in azimuth he finds that solidary feather he plucked for you resting between your teeth. 

Wonderment. Awe. He feels the surge of something ripping through his body—a paroxysm—but he can’t look away from the shapes of your bare face; the imperfect asymmetry, the wrought iron lines, the convulsing atoms. It’s mesmerising. 

And maybe it’s an electrical phenomenon—no let go—but he doesn’t spare it a single thought, even as the current burrows deeper into his chest, igniting his tissue until red-hot, blistering, charred. Even then, even with the scent of smouldering, necrotising flesh brimming cloyingly into his scenes, the absolute apathy he feels for himself at that moment is a testament to the unshakeable draw, that primal magnetism that glues him to you; met in perfect equilibrium in the middle.

It’s you who moves, who splints the poles until they fall apart when you let your hand drop.

But you’re not finished. The tips of your fingers move, a long peregrination down the twisting, sloping topography of his visage; snaking down his temple, the dip of his nose, the rough bushel of curls, the soft pout of his lips, the ulotrichous hair along his cheek and jaw, the long decline of his check, the ridged of his collarbones, the swell of his chest. It’s there where it lingers, fingers spreading like webs along the birdcage of his thundering heart. 

Price watches you, rapturous and nearly choking himself on the avarice that spills from his heaving lungs. 

You rest the flat of your palm there for a beat; lost in perambulation. Feasting on the thud of his heart. 

He thinks you’ve had your fill. Quenched yourself. 

But when you look up from the slight tremor of your hand, pulsing in time with his hurried beats, the look in your eyes is distinctly unslaked. 

(—and he can’t stop the rumble from spilling out of his chest at the sight.)

Price isn’t sure how long you stay like that. Minutes, seconds, hours. Aeons might have passed since you let your mask slip. Since he plucked at threads keeping it upright. But he shakes back into cognisance when you pull away, cutting through space and time, and filling the gaps once more with the heavy weight of your presence. 

“You’ll be fine,” you say over your shoulder, reaching for your clipboard. “A little rest is all you need, captain.”

There’s an insurmountable number of things he can say, but you press on his throat, and he swallows them down, nodding at your back instead. 

The cloven strands fall around him, broken with distance. There’s an urge in his bones to sew back into his skin, to press them like drying flowers into the folds of his heart where they’ll say, nurtured on his blood and suffused into his being. He rests his laurels on it for a moment, feels the weight of his want, his desire, and compares it to the fraying wisps dragging along the linoleum. 

But he doesn’t reach for them. 

He is wing clipped and flightless. You hold the only feather that gives him lift between the monoliths of your teeth. 

A fine place to keep it, he thinks and turns around, ready to leave on unsteady feet, but—

"Seven," you say, firm and sure. No nonsense. But when he turns, he catches the pallor of your knuckles gripped tight around the clipboard. You hold it to your chest like a shield. The vipers in your eyes quiet their hissing, tongues lashing out to scent the air. "There's this place in Manchester that makes the best Beef Suya."

You're not asking him. 

(But you don't really have to, do you?)

His lips pull up. He catches the drifting threads in his bare palm. "Manchester, mm?"

"I hope you like a little bit of spice."

"I can handle the heat." 

You swallow thickly, and he thinks the action on anyone else might be easily mistaken for nerves, but the livewire that pulls taut between you thrums with a heavy sense of anticipation. 

"I hope so, John," he startles at the mention of his name. It makes your lips curl back, and he shouldn't find it so mesmerising when can't tell if it's a smile or a sneer. "Otherwise I'd be quite disappointed." 

His chin dips to his chest. It renders his voice to little more than smoke and ash, but you shudder from across the room at the growl. 

"Wouldn't want that, now, would we?" 

It isn't breathless when you speak, but he licks his lips and tastes the pulsing excitement that sparks in the air. It curls in his lungs. Saltwater on burning coals. 

"Don't be late." 

It's a promise, he thinks; a warning, too. A threat. "Wouldn't dream of it, love."

He turns away from you, shielding the growing smile from your searching gaze, but your voice stops him short at the door, fingers curled around the frame.

“And Price?”

“Yes, love?” He calls, featherlight in a way he hasn’t felt since he was eighteen and free. Ready to soar, to fly.

"You know," you say, brows knotting together. Despite the severity of your expression, there's a note of playfulness between your teeth. "If you wanted to see me, you could have just asked." 

After dinner, they fucked so nasty that Qadesh could be heard gagging across the aether.

[imbecominggayer]

What Makes A Disabled Character "Good"?

A disabled character shouldn't be judged as a failure when they need caretakers and other reliances for the important stuff in life no matter their age

A disabled character shouldn't be mocked as weak or spoiled when they refuse to break their boundaries or be happy

A disabled character shouldn't be shamed when their medical problems impede on their sex capabilities or hygiene or anything else like that

A disabled character shouldn't be celebrated only when they do break the impossible odds since most characters never break the odds

A disabled character shouldn't be dehumanized when they act cheerful

A disabled character shouldn't be treated like a child when they aren't a child

A disabled character shouldn't be forced into leading an "idealic" life that wasn't built for individuals like them

A disabled character needs to be accepted by the author when they fail to thrive, to die, to succeed.

A disabled character needs to be created by an author who understands that life is complicated and that the things they think as "necessary" to leading a fulfilling life may not be in the cards for certain characters

A disabled character needs to be understood by the author as a disabled character who can't do everything an able-bodied character can do.

And when a disabled character is not fully independent, self-sufficient, and thriving, an author should know that even in these circumstances, fulfillment and joy can be found. Disabled people do it all the time.

Many people aren't breaking odds, being fearless activists, and thriving. They struggle. They break sometimes. They succeed sometimes. But in this life, they can find the ability to be content.

[lilacthebooklover]

me, looking at the most toxic, awful, horrendously unhealthy fictional relationship in the world: why can't i have what they have? :(

[peachesofteal]

In one of my many cooked up Simon-verses, he lives to take care of you. He cherishes all the sweet, lovely parts of you that need care, the fragility of your entire existence allowing him the freedom of doting on you endlessly. Your willingness to let him take over, let him take care of you satisfies his intense need for control, it satiates something that burns within his heart, and soothes a deep, buried fear of being abandoned.

brief 18+ content and mentions of depression, eating issues beneath the cut:

Your back hurts from sitting at the desk all day at work? He’ll work his thumbs into the knots of your spine until your bones turn to mush. Too exhausted to cook yourself dinner after a meeting runs over and you get home late? He’s already got it handled. Headache behind your eyes from staring at a computer screen for hours? He’s got Tylenol and water ready when your key clicks into the lock. Your brain won’t turn off, overloaded and overwhelmed by whatever’s going on in your life? He pulls orgasms from your body until you’re babbling incoherently, the tears tracking down your face and your voice raw from crying his name, your worries and troubles long forgotten. Your shoulders tight with stress, frown lines etched into your face like they’ve been sitting there all day? He bends you over the kitchen counter as soon as you walk through the door, stripping your work pants to your ankles and spreading your legs for himself, his body eager to deplete yours of the stress that you’re carrying so heavily.

You’re strong, so bloody strong it amazes him, strong enough to stand without him any time you want, so it honors the hell out of him when you allow him to care for you, when you allow him to shoulder your burdens.

So… he doesn’t mind, that you’re not like everyone else. It doesn’t bother him that sometimes you forget to eat your lunch, or drink your water. Of course he worries when food has no appeal to you, but he takes it slowly, bite by bite, holding your hand until you’ve finished half a plate, pulling you into his arms afterwards for gentle encouragement. It doesn’t grate on him when you can’t get out of bed on your day off, body exhausted, mind spiraling into the darkest depths of hell. He wants you to feel better, feel good, absolutely, but to take care of you in these moments doesn’t scare him, or fill him with irritation. It’s selfish of him and he knows it, to look at you like a gift, but he can’t help the primal feeling that overcomes him when you ask him to draw you a bath. He knows, your brain isn’t wired like other people’s, just like his isn’t, and he tells you often, he doesn’t mind that you require a little extra care. After all, doesn’t he require that too? He’s not exactly the easiest either. You’ve given him everything, an opportunity to be needed by you, to care for you, to love every piece that may or may not be perfect, to press his lips to the scars that mirror his own.

You’re soft, and kind, and gentle, all the things he’s not, and all he wants to do is make sure you can stay that way. He has to make sure nothing can darken your sweet smile, nothing can ever hurt you, or twist you into something unrecognizable, something more like him than you.

He buries the fear of abandonment, it’s darkness that sits in the pitch of his heart, the fear that thumps in chambers of the muscle, the terror that burns in his blood. You need him, you need him, you need him, he says over and over, assuring himself that you wouldn’t leave, that you’re here with him. He pushes it all down, pushes it away while he curls his body around yours, pressing his face into your neck and whispering soothingly to you until you’re asleep in his arms.

This is 1000% the Simon (and reader) in Dead Disco. Having both you and Johnny to care for, watch over, be with, completes him in every sense of the word. He clings to Johnny so desperately when they’re away on Ops, just as hard as he clings to the two of when you’re all home together, safe. Having Johnny under his command, being able to care for him so completely, on and off the field is something he’s only ever dreamed about, the reality of it feeling more like a fairytale than reality. His Johnny, his Sergeant, his partner. His Johnny, on the comms, his Johnny working in lock step alongside Simon, his Johnny safe and secure every day after an engagement.

His Johnny, his Darling. Safe in his arms, cared for by him. Loved by him. Needing him.

[sforzesco]

CAESAR AUGUSTUS AND MARCUS LICINIUS CRASSUS

this is about the spolia opima that crassus was robbed of lmao. like, yeah okay octavian could've asked him not to claim it, but nevertheless. a kind of theft happened there.

Fact and Fiction: Crassus, Augustus, and the Spolia Opima, Catherine McPherson