#it should be something totally inescapable

[returnofismasm]

I'm not going to say "Doctor Who made puppets terrifying" because let's face it, they always were (but I am never looking at one the same way again and neither is Donna)

[xbellaxcarolinax]

Futile Devices

Miguel O'Hara x civilian f!reader

Summary: The deal was explicitly no strings attached. You were finding it harder to keep up your end of the bargain. 

Word Count: 8.2k (A behemoth of a fic, I'm so sorry guys)

Warnings: FWB, language, angst, reader is totally in love with Miguel, Miguel being a bit of an ass, probably a tad toxic? SMUT, p in v (no protection), cum play, low-key breeding kink? Like super low-key. Oral (f receiving). Miguel climbing through windows. Idk why I'm obsessed with that thought lmfao I make him climb through windows every chance I get. Idiots in love. Probably a rushed ending, sorry!

Thanks to @whatthefishh for beta-reading. Partly inspired by this.

Also, this is mega ultra cliche, we all know they're gonna end up together, so just enjoy the ride! It's not the destination, it's the journey 😌 Hope you guys enjoy, and if you do, pls let me know what you think! I love reading your comments!

MDNI pls.

...

It was always a mission getting to Miguel's office.

Headquarters wasn't built to accommodate civilians, the winding pathways and corridors a danger if one wasn't too careful.

You had to be extra careful. 

You hurried toward Miguel's office, heels clicking against clean tiled floors as you dodged a fuck ton of spider people and the inescapable attention of one annoying Peter Parker.

"Come on," Peter Parker number two hundred tried his luck again, "just one date. I’ll take you anywhere you wanna go." 

"No." You rolled your eyes, swatting him with the manilla folder in your hands like you would a fly. 

“Look, all I’m saying is you should give me a shot. I’m funny.”

“So is every other Peter Parker I’ve encountered.”

“I’m different.”

“I doubt it.” 

He deflated, keeping up with your quick steps. “Who doesn’t like funny guys?”

“Me.”

“Sure,” he stretched the word out, unconvinced, "so if not funny guys then what? The ones with sticks up their asses, like Miguel?" He snorted with a shake of his head. You knew it was a sort of rhetorical question but you couldn’t help swallowing thickly, your hands gripping the folder a little too tightly. 

Yeah. Something like that.

You felt your heart drop to your stomach when Peter Parker two hundred raised his brows at your silence. So maybe he did want an answer.

"Nah, there's no way. I'll try again tomorrow." He smiled, shooting a web out in some random direction and swinging off toward the floor above. 

Fuck. That was close.

You breathed a sigh of relief, loosening your fingers over the folder before quickly hurrying toward your destination. 

You pressed your watch against the sensor outside of Miguel's office, waiting for the metal door to slide open. It didn't. You tried again. Still nothing. Again. It wouldn't budge.

"Ugh, come on, Miguel!" You banged the door with a tiny fist as if that would make a difference, "open up!" 

Lyla appeared suddenly, her sprite-like form circling your head once before she faced you.

"You probably shouldn't go in there," she warned, "he's in a…mood." 

"He’s always in a mood," your hands were on your hips now, the manilla folder crinkling further in your hand, "I need to report a couple of grievances—"

"Mmmmmm, I'm sure that's the last thing he wants to hear right now, Miss HR." God you hated when they called you that. You rolled your eyes, swatting her away with the folder which did nothing, of course, and pressed your watch against the sensor. 

"That's not gonna work, honey."

"So let me in." 

"Promise to be nice?"

"To who?" You snorted, "You or Miguel?" 

"Me," Lyla grinned, adjusting her heart-shaped glasses, "forget Miguel." 

You sighed, cracking a smile, "Lyla, would you please let me into Miguel's office?" The Ai made a noise of approval, comically saluting you before granting you access.

"Don't say I didn't warn ya." She sang, disappearing from your sight. 

You sighed. Miguel's shifting moods were nothing new to you—not anymore. Back when you both worked at Alchemax, he was passive and less quick to anger. But that seemed a lifetime ago. 

Life progresses. People change.

“Mig?” You called out, peering up toward his solitary platform. You could hear the soft hisses of machinery, the yellow glow of Miguel’s holo screens illuminating the area above like a radiant star.

He didn’t answer. 

“Miguel,” you tried again, “we have some things to discuss.” You slapped the manilla folder against your hand as if he’d recognize the sound of formal complaints filed within the last week. 

The platform began to descend after a moment, and you breathed a sigh of relief as his figure came into view. His shoulders were stiff, his body rigid as he swiped through the yellow screens.

“I told Lyla not to let anyone in.” His voice was cold, frigid even. He didn’t bother to face you, his eyes pinned to his screens as he leaned forward, the muscles of his back flexing through his suit. 

You couldn’t see what he was looking at but you could hear it: the soft giggles of a little girl, the cheers of a soccer game, the chuckles of a man now broken. It wasn’t the first time you’d heard the sounds of Miguel’s past. It probably wouldn’t be the last either.

“I-uh, got some reports to share with you.” You felt foolish. Lyla was right. HR complaints were the last thing on Miguel’s mind. 

“Reports of the anomaly on Earth 9811?” Your brows pinched in irritation. He knew those weren’t the reports you had. You were fucking HR, not on active duty, let alone a spider person. 

"No, you'd have to ask Jess or Gwen about that, but you need to listen—"

“I don’t want to hear it.” He grunted. You saw his hands form fists at his sides, the same hands that’d fisted your sheets in the throes of pleasure just days ago. 

You shook your head. It was not the time for that kind of thought. 

You carefully opened the crinkled folder, pulling out the paperwork you’d printed from your antique printer to read aloud from it.

“Peter Parker of Earth 5431-02 has formally filed a complaint,” you began, your eyes scanning the black text before releasing an exasperated sigh, “he’s saying you threw a chair at him?” Miguel grunted, the holo screens shutting off at his (Lyla’s) command.

“He’s an idiot.” Miguel snapped, finally turning to face you, his sharp features shadowed by the lack of light. He regarded you carefully, red eyes tracing your figure. You’ve grown used to the way his eyes lingered over you, especially when you were under him, his body pressed against yours, but sometimes you couldn’t help but squirm under his more severe gaze.

“Well, yeah,” you reluctantly agreed with a tilt of your head, “but a chair, Miguel?”

“It’s not like it hurt him...badly.”

“That's not the point."

“The point is that I got my point across.” Miguel snorted. 

"It's the principle. You don't go around throwing fucking chairs at the people who work for you!" 

"Mhm." 

"You're their boss! What kind of behavior is that?"

"Uh-huh." 

You were about ready to strangle him but knew your fingers couldn’t even go around his throat properly. You’ve tried before, under very different circumstances. You settled for pinching the bridge of your nose, as he often did, taking a breath to calm yourself before you completely lost your shit. "Listen to me."

"I'm listening, HR."

"Ugh, look," you pointed a finger up toward him, your brows knitted in obvious irritation, "annoying or not, he's still a member of the Spider Society, therefore, he has every right—”

“—to file a grievance under any circumstance as a result of an injustice, discrimination, or harmful behavior, and is to be given the respect to which every spider person is due as a valued member of the society. I know.” Miguel finished the legal jargon for you, hopping off the platform with an ease that’d always surprised you.

He stepped into your space, his large body casting a long shadow over you as he snatched the crinkled paperwork from your hands. 

“I’ll speak with him.” He grunted. You pursed your lips, watching as his eyes scanned over the page.

"Make it right, Mig. Apologize. Formally. Or informally. It doesn’t matter— there’s nothing normal about this place anyway.” You placed your hands on your hips as you leaned forward, aware of how he was suddenly gazing down at you. “Just be nice, okay? Compensate him with, I dunno, a minor mission. He always wants to get involved, so let him.” 

Miguel rolled his eyes, heaving a great sigh while running his hand through his hair. “Fine.”

“And no more throwing chairs to make a point.”

“Uh-huh, fine, anything else?” God, you wanted to smack him. You opted for snatching back the paperwork from his hand, smoothing out the wrinkles over your skirt-clad thighs before searching for the proper page.

“Yeah," you brought a finger down on the page, "the spiders are getting bored of the cafeteria food.” That was enough for Miguel's face to pinch in displeasure.

“What’s wrong with empanadas and churros?” He scoffed, waving his hand to dismiss the complaint, “And that stupid blue burger with my face on it?” He paused, eyes squinting for a moment, “You know what? That can go. Get rid of it.”

“Fine. Do I have permission to organize a survey?”

“For food?” 

“Yes, for food. They want options.” 

“Aye, por Dios,” Miguel grunted, waving his hand again, “Fine.” 

“Fine.” 

“Anything else?” 

“Nope.” You organized the documents back into the manila folder before handing it over to him.

“You know you could just send this electronically, right?” He looked down at the folder, his eyes tracing your neat cursive in black ink.

“I’m old-fashioned.” You shrugged, turning on your heels. You heard him snort out a laugh, a tiny thing that made you smile. He has a nice laugh.

“One more thing,” Miguel called out, demandingly. You looked over your shoulder at him as he regarded you with heavy eyes.

“What is it?” 

He boarded the platform once again, the machinery coming to life and slowly elevating him back to his preferred height. He tossed the folder somewhere over the desk, to be forgotten. It was the least of his worries at that moment.

You watched Miguel ascend above you like some kind of heavenly being, the yellow light of the holo screens illuminating his tan skin till he glowed molten gold. You waited on him with bated breath, his response sinking straight to your core.

“Keep your window unlocked tonight.” 

…

He loves it when you ride him. 

His large hands were glued to your hips as you bounced on him expertly, your cunt soaking him in your sticky juices. 

Most nights began this way—with Miguel's cock buried deep in your pussy after a long day of enduring his insufferable attitude. You'd fuck the stress out of him—fuck the astronomical weight of the multiverse off his shoulders if only for a few short hours.

"Been thinking about this all day." He groaned under you, throwing his head back over your pillow when he felt your walls grip his length viciously, fighting to keep him in.

"Yeah?" You gasped, your hands firmly planted on his bare chest as you made work of your hips, rotating them in delicious circles—the way he liked—your thighs spread wide to accommodate his massive size. "W-wasn't enough to curb that a-attitude though, huh?" 

Even amid the utmost pleasure—of Miguel's length hitting a spot that had you trembling—you found the strength to taunt him, your hazy eyes catching a glimpse of the twitch in his brow. That meant trouble.

Within seconds Miguel had you on your back, his imposing body trapping you against your mattress. His cock slipped out for a moment but he had no problem finding his way back into your slippery channel, snapping his hips strategically to reach as deep as he could.

You cried out, your hands scrambling to find purchase over his shoulders, your pretty manicured nails digging into his perfectly golden skin.

"F-fuck! Miguel!"

"Wanna say that again?" He growled, his face hovering mere centimeters from yours, "Go ahead, say it again." You did nothing but whimper as he pounded into you mercilessly, his cock stretching you open. 

"That's what I thought." Miguel chuckled smugly, delighting in your little chokes and stutters, egging him to keep pounding you relentlessly. You tried speaking—tried to articulate your words to him, but you couldn't, too cock drunk to focus on anything else but his gorgeous face twisted up in pleasure and his thick cock kissing the secret place within you.

He had you coming soon after, stars exploding behind your lids as you trembled in his arms. Your cunt squeezed him just right and he came, panting in your ear as he filled you to the brim. 

His spend stained your sheets when he pulled out, and as always, he watched it dribble out from your swollen cunt with lidded eyes. He wasted no time in taking his fingers and stuffing the mess back in.

“Keep me in there.” He muttered, swiping through your puffy folds one final time before he ripped himself from you. You immediately soured, keeping your gaze on him as he quickly cleaned himself off with a cloth you left for him on your nightstand. 

You admired his figure: the ripple of his muscles as he moved, the broadness of his shoulders, the glow of his skin in the dim lighting of your bedroom. 

Miguel was gorgeous. You’ve always thought so.

His suit glitched before coming to life, covering his sculpted body in the usual blue and red you've come to know. 

“Did…you want to eat before you go?” Dinner was on the stove, cold but still good. You sat up against your headboard, more of his spend leaking out as you fiddled with your fingers over the soiled sheets. 

Miguel shook his head, sighing as he closed his eyes for a moment.

“I have to go.” He said, stepping forward, grabbing your hand, and placing a chaste kiss over your knuckles. It was the only form of affection he’d allowed himself to give you. He’d never kissed you before. Probably never will. It wasn't part of the deal.

Your heart sunk, your skin searing where his lips had lingered. 

“I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Most nights ended this way—with your aching cunt full of his seed and your eyes wet with unshed tears as you watched him leave through your window, disappearing into the night.

…

A few days later, Peter B. Parker landed in your office. Quite literally. 

He plopped down on the seat in front of yours from seemingly nowhere, a messily packed diaper bag hanging loosely from his shoulder. He had his daughter snuggly pressed against his chest in her carrier, her chubby arms and legs flailing over his pink robe.

You yelped, dropping the pen in your hand, clutching your chest in freight. 

“Jesus! Where the hell did you just come from?!”

“Up there.” Peter pointed up. You followed his line of vision, noting the door to the air vent busted open, barely hanging from its hinges. “Sorry about the vent.” He offered sheepishly, taking a large bite of a slice of pizza he'd pulled from a greased-up brown paper bag. 

"You could've just taken the elevator!"

"Takes too long to get to the basement.” He said between a mouthful of pizza, “Why'd Miguel give you an office down here anyway?" 

"I'm scared of heights." You reminded him, watching Mayday struggle to release herself from her carrier prison. Peter snorted out a laugh, dropping the diaper bag on the floor while simultaneously taking another bite of his pizza.

“Doesn’t make sense to work in a place like this.”

“It was the deal I made when Miguel asked me to work for him. Chew with your mouth closed.”

“Have you tried the cafeteria pizza?" He asked suddenly, ignoring your demand and speaking with another mouth full of the greasy treat, "It's the new thing. Everyone's going crazy."

You smiled smugly. "I know. You’re welcome."

“Ah, I should've known Miss HR was behind this!” You rolled your eyes at the nickname, rummaging through your drawer before tossing him a few napkins.

“What can I do for you, Peter?” 

Mayday whined, crawling out of the carrier and over her father’s thighs. She hopped on your desk, scattering some of your paperwork. You quickly caught her before she tumbled off the edge, cooing at her before placing her in your lap. You squeezed her in your arms and she let out a scream of delight before squirming, reaching out in wonder at the different knick-knacks on your desk. 

“Right, almost forgot." Peter took the last bite of his pizza, wiping his face and fingers with the napkins you provided before his face morphed into something serious. "Is this guy bothering you?” He pulled out a yellow holo pad, one presumably given to him by Miguel, revealing a video of you and Peter Parker two hundred from the other day. 

You blinked, your eyes tracing the moving image carefully.

”Oh. Not really,” you finally said, ripping your gaze away from the screen, “Nothing I can't handle. Why?” 

“Miguel asked me to investigate the situation discreetly.” 

"Asked?"

"Well, demanded, you know Miguel," Peter shrugged, reaching down into the diaper bag and procuring a lollipop when Mayday began to whine, “he’s concerned. I figured it’d be easier to just ask you about it.” 

You frowned, grasping the sweet when he handed it over to you, pulling off the wrapper and placing it in Mayday's chubby hand, “That’s hardly discreet.”

“I didn’t wanna follow the guy around!” 

“He's making you do that?”

“‘Of course he is. Doesn't like the guy. He barely tolerates me!” 

You snorted. “Why does Miguel even care?”

"You know him better than any of us do. If anyone would know, it’s you." 

Well, that was true.

You knew Miguel before he created the Spider Society, before he was ever Spider-Man. You knew him before his addiction to Rapture, before he experienced fatherhood, before he lost Gabriella. 

Back when, to the world, he was just some guy in a white lab coat. 

But he was never just some guy to you. 

You’ve loved Miguel for years. You’d loved him in your early days at Alchemax, when he was fresh out of college and eager to begin his shaky career, back when you were hanging on to the corporation by a measly thread of an unpaid internship. You were a pair, stuck to each other like glue.

A few years later, when you both decided to take it a step further and mess around, well, that only ignited your feelings further. Miguel was an attentive lover. He knew your needs and fulfilled them, taking you to the heights of pleasure before humbling you just as smoothly with his strict rules about your agreement. 

He didn’t have time to cater to someone's feelings—didn’t have time for a romantic relationship when he had too much on his plate. But his sexual appetite demanded attention—and why not with someone he’s called a friend for years? 

You were just a friend. And that’s all you’d ever be. 

It was just sex. That's all it'd ever be.

“You okay?” Peter ripped you away from your thoughts, his brows furrowed in concern.

“Yeah, I’m fine.” You answered with a sigh, gently resting your chin over Mayday’s soft curls. “Is Miguel worried?” 

“You’re the closest thing he has to a friend, of course he’s worried about you. Those were his words, not mine.” Peter shrugged, putting his holo pad away, “so is there a cause for concern?” The thought alone almost made you smile. Almost. Instead, you scoffed, shaking your head.

“I’m usually the one that handles these situations, you know.”

“And who’s supposed to help you?”

“I don’t need help.” 

“Right.” He didn’t seem convinced. “Miguel doesn't seem to think so. You sure?”

“Very.”

“Alright, I did my part!” He clapped his hands as if he’d successfully completed a mission, “Time to go, Mayday!” He stood, grabbing the babbling baby from you and placing her back in the carrier.

"She's precious." You said, gently pinching Mayday's drool-covered cheek as she teethed over her lollipop.

"Takes after her dad." Peter grinned, snatching up the diaper bag, "Listen, if you ever need any help—"

"Yeah, yeah, yeah, get outta here, Parker." You shooed him away, quickly organizing your wrinkled paperwork together. You could still feel his eyes on you as you kept your hands busy, and when you finally looked at him he had a silly smile on his face.

"What?"

“You guys are idiots." He was still grinning.

"What?"

"Nothin'," he said, pressing a kiss to Mayday's red curls, "Just do me a favor. Don't mention any of this to Miguel, alright?" 

You crossed your arms, leaning back against your swivel chair. "Sure."

...

"So you think I need help?"

Miguel's hands immediately stilled on your hips as you stirred the boiling pasta over your electric stove. 

You didn't hear him come in, but you had a feeling he’d show up. It had been a couple of days since he’d fucked you, and there were many stressful days between then and now.

So you’d left your window unlocked just in case.

"What are you talking about?" He muttered, his fingers lightly dancing on your waist before pulling away completely.  

"Nothing." You huffed to yourself, cutting off the heat and getting on your toes to reach for the pasta strainer on the shelf above. After a second of watching you struggle, Miguel put a hand on your shoulder to stop you, reaching forward to grab it for you.

"Doesn’t sound like ‘nothing’.” He finally said, observing you strain the pasta over the sink, the steam from the hot water engulfing you both in what felt like a thick cloud of tension. You peered over your shoulder at him, your eyes raking over his solid form.

“You know, Peter Parker two hundred?” You asked, witnessing his face contort from passive to extreme annoyance.

He sucked his teeth, pinching the bridge of his nose. He leaned back against your counter, looking so out of place in your tiny kitchen, his broad shoulders almost the entire width of your cupboard. “I told Peter to be discreet.”

“He said you’re worried about your only friend.” You continued to tease him, emphasizing the word as you lifted the lid to a pot where a homemade Pomodoro sauce was bubbling. 

“I said that?” Miguel muttered, feigning innocence, watching you take a spoon and scoop some of the red sauce for a quick taste. You could feel his gaze on you, his eyes tracing the way your tongue licked off the remnants of sauce. 

You hummed in approval before scooping up some more and turning to offer Miguel a taste. You lifted the spoon toward him, and after a moment of contemplation, he hunched forward with arms crossed over his toned chest, mouth opening slightly to allow you to press the spoon past his lips. 

His eyes fluttered as he savored the rich taste, humming his own tune of approval. 

"Is it good?" 

“Mhm.”

You beamed, eyeing how he licked his lips like a satisfied cat, his fangs protruding slightly when he ran his tongue over them. The same fangs you’ve felt over your delicate skin from time to time. 

Miguel was a biter. You didn’t mind.

Miguel grunted, using his thumb to wipe off a bit of sauce that lingered near the corner of your lips. You inhaled a shaky breath, your eyes fluttering from the heat of his touch.

"What else did he say?" He murmured, looming over you, his hand now gently cradling the back of your neck, thumb caressing your skin. 

"T-that you're worried about me?" You breathed. Miguel pulled you closer suddenly, the faintest noise of surprise escaping you. His suit always felt strange under your fingers, the digitized fabric almost slippery, like fine silk. It was ridiculous how perfect you felt wrapped up in his arms. You sometimes wished he'd show up in civilian clothes. You missed his lazy outfits when he'd throw on an old t-shirt and a pair of sweats. 

You couldn't remember the last time you'd seen him in anything other than his suit (and his naked form, of course). It meant he was always on the clock, devoting all his precious time to the multiverse. 

It meant that whenever he was alone with you, he considered it work.

And yet, the suit made you feel secure and safe—like nothing in the world could harm you. And there was truth to that, though the only thing harming you these days was Miguel himself. But that was your fault too.

The deal was explicitly no strings attached. You were finding it harder to keep up your end of the bargain. 

You gazed at his full lips. You desperately wanted to taste them, to know how soft and warm they would feel molded against yours. If you were brave enough you might have stolen a taste, might have felt those sharp canines for yourself on your tongue.

Miguel’s thick fingers trailed into your hair, gripping the roots with just a hint of pressure, his lidded eyes taking in every part of your face: your brows, your eyes, the bridge of your nose, and your supple lips—wet and swollen from biting them so damn much.

"Maybe just a little," he finally answered, his shoulders shifting in a slight shrug. You could feel his length press against your hip, hot and throbbing, demanding attention. 

It filled you with pride knowing your proximity was enough to get him excited. It shouldn't though. It was only arousal. Basic primal instincts. 

You shouldn’t be feeling pride for any of this. You had to remind yourself of that.

You closed your eyes, willing your heartbeat to slow down just a bit. Could you really be this love-sick? So hung up on a man who was emotionally unavailable? If you hadn’t fallen before, then you knew you were plummeting now, so far gone that you’d let Miguel do anything to you.

So when he whisked you away to your bedroom, dinner long forgotten, you didn’t put up a fight.

He fucked you from behind. 

It was a tight stretch, your wet cunt fighting him as he tried pressing his swollen tip in with little luck. 

"Gotta let me in," he grunted, spreading your cheeks wide to gaze down at your twitching holes, "you're too tight. Let me in." 

"I'm trying," you panted, tears in your eyes as you buried your face into the sheets, "i-it's been a while." 

"It's okay," his large hands caressed the globes of your ass in comfort, "it's my fault. Haven't been fucking you enough, hm? S'my fault." Miguel rubbed his cock through your soaked folds a few times, the obscene noises of your sopping cunt causing him to grunt. 

"Goddamn, so fuckin' wet." He muttered before lining himself up and carefully pushing in again. You cried out, fisting the sheets when he successfully got the tip in. He groaned, the guttural sound masking your tiny mewls as he pushed on, your wet cunt coating him entirely in your sticky essence, easing his entry just a bit.

"Fuck, Miguel, it h-hurts." You whined, the stretch of him both painful and pleasurable as he bullied his way in, his girthy cock plunging through your fluttering walls. 

"Shh, I know." He rarely cooed as he did now, reassuring you with gentle noises and tender touches as he eased into you, balls deep in your core, “Look how good you’re doing for me. S’good.” A fresh wave of arousal dripped from you at his praise, your fluttering cunt allowing him to push and pull as he pleased.

He began a steady rhythm, holding your hips tightly to work you over his length, muttering to himself all the while as he watched how your creamy juices clung to his cock and covered his skin.

The pain quickly subsided into blinding pleasure. Miguel had you mewling into your mattress, your eyes rolling and drool slipping past your lips, your back impossibly arched, and your swollen cunt wetter than it’s ever been. The slapslapslap of his hips against your ass was loud in the quiet of your bedroom, your moans even louder when he skillfully hit something inside you that made you see stars every single time. 

You loved the feel of him, loved the stretch of his cock, loved how your cunt would ache for days after as if to remember him. 

“Coño,” Miguel growled, keeping a large hand on your lower back to keep you steady in your arched position, “you sound so pretty when I fuck you.” He suddenly gripped your hair, pulling you up as he curved over you, continuing to spill filth into your ears.

It was too much. 

“M-Miguel, I’m g-gonna—”

“Cum for me.” 

That was it. The dam burst within you, your eyes rolling back as you cried out, cunt spasming and gushing all over him.

“That’s it,” he muttered, sloppily thrusting into your tightening core, “good girl.”

“Miguel,” you continued to whine, grinding against him, “Fuuuck, I love you.” 

You didn’t even realize what you said until it was too late, so wrapped up in the bliss of it all that your mouth worked faster than your brain could think.

You froze when you felt him still above you. He released your hair, bringing his hand back to your hips before gripping them viciously, chasing his own release. He rammed into you faster, slamming his hips against your ass one final time before letting out a guttural groan deep from within the confines of his chest. You could only imagine how he looked: tan skin glistening, chocolate hair plastered against his brow and head tossed back in pleasure. 

Miguel said nothing as he gently removed his cock from your aching sex, letting his seed dribble out from you and soak into the sheets.

As soon as you turned around he was already in his suit, pushing a few buttons on his watch before he brought his wine-colored eyes to you. 

"I have to go."

“Mig?” You whispered his name softly, your naked body burning with embarrassment, “I-I’m sorry I—”

"I’ll see you tomorrow.” It was the same thing he always said, but it hurt twice as much. It was as if he were on autopilot, disconnected from what just happened. 

You felt your heart plummet into your stomach as you watched Miguel leave through your window with a speed he usually reserved for missions.

His spend caked your thighs. There was so much of it coming out of you, more so than usual, his cum ruining your sheets enough that you’d need to change them before bed. 

You sniffled, eyes watering, tears threatening to fall. He didn’t even kiss your hand goodbye.

You ripped yourself away from the soiled sheets, stomping over to your window as his cum leaked down your inner thighs before slamming it closed, locking it for good.

...

“You made this?” Miles exclaimed with a mouth full of spaghetti, clumsily twirling another forkful over his paper plate. You were handing out some of the spiders' leftover Pomodoro pasta from the previous night. You’d lost your appetite. It’d be a shame if you let it all go to waste.

“Yeah, eat up, there’s enough for everyone.” You scooped out more pasta from a Tupperware and onto a paper plate for Gwen. The younger girl’s eyes sparkled as she grabbed the plate, immediately slurping up a bite.

“Oh my god,” she muttered, lips covered in red sauce, “why are you working at the Spider Society when you could be a chef?”

“It’s because Miguel begged her to work here,” Miles quipped, a lone spaghetti hanging from his mouth.

“And who told you that?” You narrowed your eyes at him.

“Uhh,” his eyes flew over to Peter B., who was waiting patiently for his own plate of pasta to be served. You turned and narrowed your eyes at Peter, who chuckled nervously. 

“Listen,” he began, hands thrown up in surrender, “the kid got curious, okay? He was convincing, I mean, look at those eyes.” You huffed, snatching Peter’s plate and loading it up with pasta.

“You guys are annoying,” you muttered with no bite, shifting your gaze toward Hobie, who sat quietly with his legs thrown up on the table, “Hobie, fuck the government and all that, but you need to get your dirty boots off the table if you want some food.” 

Hobie sighed dramatically, letting his boots drop to the ground.

“Fine, boss lady.” 

Satisfied, you handed him a plate.

“So, let’s talk about you being a chef?” Gwen tried again, scrapping the remaining bits off her plate. 

“It’s just pasta,” you shrugged, pulling out a chair and taking a seat, “anyone can make a Pomodoro.”

“My dad can’t.”

“…why?”

“He’s Irish.”

“And a bloody cop,” Hobie interjected, twirling his pasta with a plastic fork, “hate those.”

“Here we go,” Gwen huffed, the beginnings of an argument forming. You chose to ignore them, letting Gwen, Miles, and Hobie bicker between themselves.

You squirmed in your seat, crossing your legs to cure the throbbing within. You could still feel Miguel, the stretch of his cock, and the inevitable ache that lingered afterward. You were still full of him, your cunt wet even hours later, plaguing you with the thought of never feeling him again. 

You drummed your fingers over the messy table littered with paper plates and napkins, your body hunched forward, lost in thought.

“So…” Peter began, adjusting the collar of his pink robe, “you gonna tell me what’s going on or am I gonna have to force it outta you?” You whipped your head to look at him, brows furrowed as you regarded him.

“What makes you think something’s going on?” You whispered, hoping the cafeteria was loud enough so the rest of the table wouldn’t hear.

“Something’s going on or you wouldn’t be whispering,” Peter whispered back, his blue eyes pinned to yours as he searched for answers. 

“It’s nothing.” You answered quickly, continuing to squirm in your seat, fighting to ignore your achy cunt. 

“Did you guys finally smooch?” You froze, your hands gripping the edge of the table with a force that made your knuckles go white. 

“Peter, what the fuck are you talking about?” You hissed, watching him happily eat his Pomodoro.

“You think I don’t know?” He challenged, “It might not be obvious to everyone else but I know what’s going on.” He winked at you, dabbing a napkin messily over his mouth.

Your heart was pounding, ready to beat out your chest, but you schooled your features as best you could. You swallowed thickly, crossing your arms over your chest as if to make yourself smaller. 

“Okay, fine, you know. What of it?” 

“Miguel’s being mopey.”

“Mopey?” You snorted, shaking your head, “He’s always mopey, isn’t he?”

“This is a different kind of mopey,” Peter raised a brow, “it’s actually kind of… frightening.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s got nothing to do with us, for once. Usually one of us pisses him off enough to throw things but he’s on a mission. Said he needed to clear his head. So what happened?” You sighed, shoulders sagging.

“I might have said something I wasn’t supposed to last night.”

“What?”

“We made a deal,” you explained in a whisper, “no feelings, just…you know,” you wiggled your fingers, hoping it would be enough of an explanation. Peter nodded, urging you to continue, “Well, I messed up.”

“How?”

“ItoldhimIlovehim.” You blurted out, your hands flying over your mouth. Peter blinked with a subtle tilt of his head, before a grin stretched over his lips. You groaned, now covering your eyes, “W-what is that, why are you smiling? Stop it.”

“I mean, one of you had to say it first.”

“Peter, you’re killing me here.” He rolled his eyes, inching close enough till your knees brushed against his.

“You don’t think the big guy feels the same way?”

“No!” You squeaked incredulously, “There’s no way. You should’ve seen him yesterday. He could barely look at me!” 

“You caught him off guard.”

“I know that, but he still could’ve said something. Anything.”

“He’s a guy. Guys are stupid.” You groaned, pushing your hair out of your face. You turned to look at the other spiders. You knew they’d been listening given the way they all turned away immediately.

“Someone is stupid,” you muttered to Peter, feeling dejected, “and it’s definitely not him.”

...

You took a deep breath before placing your watch over the sensor.

The door to Miguel’s office didn’t budge, not to your surprise. Lyla must have blocked the systems again.

What were you even doing there? 

You hadn’t seen Miguel in about a week. That was ample time to inform you he wanted nothing to do with you. You couldn't blame him but still, it was…unprofessional. He was your boss at the end of the day. 

Maybe you shouldn’t have started fucking the head of the Spider Society. Your weak heart wouldn’t be in shambles if you didn’t.

It was a stupid move, you knew, telling someone you love them in the throes of passion when they clearly weren’t on the same page, unprovoked or not. He probably hates you. He must. 

You’d given yourself enough time to think it through and given yourself so many pep talks before deciding a professional relationship with Miguel was for the best. No more friends with benefits. 

No more keeping your window unlocked.

You took a breath and tried again. No luck. 

Did he fire you? That couldn’t be right. You were still in the system and able to enter HQ with your keycard just fine. 

“You’re always catching him at a bad time,” Lyla sighed beside you, whipping out her tiny little holographic phone, “he didn’t even want to take a photo! Unbelievable!” The small image on her screen revealed a snarling Miguel, clearly unamused by the bunny filter plastered over his face. It was cute, even if he looked a bit terrifying baring his fangs. 

Lyla shifted to face you, hands on her little hips as she looked you up and down.

“You look niiice,” she quickly snapped a photo of you, “no cute filter needed.”

“Uhh, thanks?”

“Now it’s your turn to say something nice to me.” The Ai grinned when you rolled your eyes. 

“You look…extra yellow today, Lyla.” 

“Thank you! I’m in default mode.”

“Okay, so I’ll just come back later then?” You rushed to leave but Lyla stopped you, zapping in front of you suddenly.

“Nah, I’ll let you in.” You could hear the door to Miguel’s office opening, “Fix him.” 

“What? How am I supposed to do that?” 

Lyla shrugged, “I dunno, I just know you’re the only one that can.” She waved farewell, disappearing in a glimmer of gold. 

You groaned, dropping your head in your hands for a moment to collect your thoughts. Your palms began to sweat—they always did when you were nervous—so you quickly wiped them over your black pencil skirt before facing the office entryway. 

It was dark as usual, the only light illuminating the area was Miguel’s bright yellow screens. They hung above him as he sat slouched in his chair, legs stretched out and crossed at the ankles. His head turned lazily to regard you. 

“I heard you’ve been mopey.” You began, cracking a smile when he snorted. He shook his head, watching you slowly approach him like one would a wounded animal.  He didn’t confirm nor deny the accusation.

“What do you need?” 

“To talk to you.” You said, finding the courage to step into his space, leaning back against his desk and blocking one of the yellow screens.

“About?” 

“Us.” Miguel hummed, running a hand through his messy hair. He sat up in his chair but said nothing else, allowing you the space to speak freely.

“I-I wanted to apologize if I made you feel uncomfortable,” you began to fumble with your fingers, unable to keep eye contact with him for very long, “I know that what I said was…crossing the line—”

“Did you mean it?” He asked abruptly, the question forcing your eyes away from your fingernails and toward his chiseled face. He looked exhausted, eyes heavy but swimming with curiosity.

“W-well, I mean, it was a moment of—”

“Did you mean it?” He repeated, his tone stern as he awaited a proper answer from you. You bit your lip, slowly nodding your head.

“Yeah. I did. Still do.” 

The silence that stretched wasn’t very long but it felt like an eternity. Miguel only stared at you, his jaw tight as he sat forward, his elbows resting on his toned thighs.

You wished you could read his thoughts, take a peek at what ran through his mind. He was always so good at hiding his emotions, never showing an ounce of what he felt. That wasn’t always the case but after Gabriella, he didn’t show much of anything. 

“I think it’s best we don’t see each other anymore,” you finally concluded, crossing your arms, “we should stop.”

“What?” Miguel’s eyes narrowed, “What do you mean stop?” He was towering over you in a matter of seconds, forcing you to crane your neck to look up at him. Your heart was pounding, your hands flying to grip the edge of his desk.

“Mig, we can’t keep doing this.”

“Yes, we can.” He caged you in his arms, bringing his face just a few inches away from yours. He never had much of a problem with eye contact, but you did. You chose to look at his collarbones and the large swoop of his shoulders. It was intimidating and arousing all at once and you weren’t getting anywhere with this speech, were you?

“We can’t. Not when we’re not on the same page.” 

“Who says we’re not?” You felt his fingers graze the side of your face, pushing a lock of your hair behind your ear. You turned away, squeezing your eyes shut, feeling the familiar prick of tears behind your lids.

“Stop playing with me.” You said, pushing him away with little luck. Miguel shifted slightly at your touch, watching you rub at your eyes. 

“I’m not.” 

“Then why have you not said anything for a week?” You hissed, the frustration threatening to boil over, “You’ve left me agonizing over this for a week, Miguel!” You wiped furiously at your cheeks, catching a few stray tears. “I’m such an idiot.” 

Miguel grabbed your wrists in his hands, yanking them away from your face. His concerned eyes met your wet ones, a frown tugging at his lips.

“Stop.” He demanded, taking your flushed face in his hands and wiping the wet streaks away with his thumbs. “Don’t say that about yourself.” You glared, cheeks puffed and swollen from the pressure of fighting away tears.

“Fine,” you snapped, ignoring the way he stroked your cheeks, “you’re the fucking idiot.” 

“I am,” Miguel agreed with a sigh, refusing to release you, “I didn’t know what to say. Thought you might have been lying—don’t look at me like that.” 

“You’re pissing me off.”

“I know, beba.” The endearment startled you for a moment, your glossy eyes peering up at him as a rush of excitement settled in your stomach. He’d never used endearing words with you before. It had you stumped for a second before you remembered yourself, your brows furrowing in irritation

“Why would you think I was lying? Mig, I’ve loved you for years, you buffoon!” Miguel loomed closer with every word before he kissed you, silencing you effectively. Your eyes fluttered, your lips unresponsive at first until he coaxed you into a gentle rhythm. 

Kissing Miguel was so much softer than you imagined. 

You thought he’d be all tongue and teeth, desperate to devour his victim. His kisses were syrupy and deliberate, steady and reassuring. He was taking his time learning the shape of your lips, the plumpness, how perfect they felt molded against his. 

“I’m sorry, beba,” he said between kisses, letting you snake your arms around his neck to pull him closer, “perdoname. I’m an idiot.” You hummed in agreement, continuing to assault his lips sweetly. You couldn’t stop kissing him if you wanted to, sneaking your tongue past the seam of his lips to taste more of him. 

He growled, tightening his hold on you, allowing you to taste at your leisure. He tasted fresh, like the spearmint gum he always had on hand.

“Perdoname,” he repeated, wanting so desperately for you to forgive his transgressions, slotting himself between your legs.

“Yeah? You’re sorry?” you teased, feeling the familiar ache of arousal blooming in your core, “show me how sorry you are.” Another growl ripped from him, animalistic and provoked. He wasted no time, pushing you down so that your back was flat against his desk and your legs were wrapped around his hips. 

He pressed a button beside you and suddenly, the platform began to elevate. 

“Mig,” you sat up in a panic, but Miguel only pushed you back down, lifting your skirt up till it pooled over your waist, “w-why are we moving up?”

“Privacy,” he grunted, spreading your legs, running his thumb over the soaked patch of your panties. Your hands scrambled to find purchase on something over the desk, your heart hammering in your chest as the ceiling seemed to loom closer.

“Y-you know I’m scared of heights!” You squealed when the platform came to a jutting halt, squeezing your eyes shut. You didn’t even want to think about how high up you were.

“It’s okay,” Miguel purred, gently rubbing your clit through the fabric, “you’re safe, you’re with me, beba, no tengas miedo.” 

“M-Mig, please,” you didn’t even know what you were begging for at that point, you just needed something, and whatever that was, he gave to you. You felt him push aside your panties, and you finally spared him a glance, almost choking at the sight of him mesmerized by the sweetness between your legs.

“You’re so fucking wet,” he muttered, slipping a finger through your folds, “you dripping all over my desk.”

“Y-yeah?” 

“Mhm,” he hummed, easily ripping your panties apart before getting on his knees, “smell s’good.” He muttered, licking a stripe up with his fat tongue, scooping whatever mess you made. He moaned at the taste before completely diving in, eyes closed and large hands keeping your trembling thighs spread for him.

As always, you were a whimpering mess for him, mewling with every precise stroke of his tongue. It was the first time he’d done something like this, and god, it was nothing you could have ever dreamed of.  

He moaned into your cunt, the gentle vibrations sending shockwaves through your body. You trembled and whined with every loud slurp of his mouth over your clit, his tongue swiping over your precious bud before working his way down to dip inside your hole. 

“Fuck, Miguel,” your hands flew to his hair, your fingers weaving through the thick strands to keep his head in place. He skillfully nipped and licked the surface, lifting his face away slightly to spit into your cunt, watching it run through your puffy folds with lidded eyes before devouring you again.

“You taste fucking amazing,” he groaned, sucking your clit between his lips.

You threw your head back, letting out the prettiest moans for him. You forgot about everything, about where you were and how high up you were from the ground. You couldn’t care less as long as Miguel continued to eat from you like a madman. 

You could feel the tension in your abdomen, the clear sign that you were close. Miguel continued to drink from you, slurping obscenely at the fresh arousal that dripped into his mouth.

“Close?” He asked, giving you kitten licks, his hands squeezing your thighs encouragingly. 

“God y-yes, so close.” You could feel him smiling against your folds before starting up a vicious rhythm again with his eyes closed. 

With a loud cry, you came into his waiting mouth, your back arching and body withering over the table from the overstimulation. Miguel licked and sucked every inch of you, determined to catch every drop of your orgasm. 

“Oh my god,” you moaned, releasing your grip from his hair and draping an arm over your eyes. Miguel stood, removing your arm and leaning over your fatigued body. He looked down at you with intense red eyes, his mouth and chin completely covered in your slick. You bit your lip when a smile curved at the edges of his lips before he swooped down to kiss you.

You moaned, completely aroused all over again from your own musky taste on his lips. He slipped his tongue in your mouth, allowing you a proper taste. 

“Perdoname.” He begged again over your lips before gently brushing the tip of his nose against yours. You giggled, pushing him away slightly so that you could sit up on your elbows. 

“Mm, I don’t know,” you teased, “you’re gonna have to try again.” Miguel shook his head, tapping a button on his watch, and allowing his suit to vanish. You gasped at his sudden nakedness, your eyes glued to his throbbing erection. Miguel grinned, fangs bared, tapping his cock over your sensitive cunt.

You closed your eyes as he immediately pushed in, moaning as he worked himself into your tight channel. 

In your euphoric state, you barely registered him grabbing your hand and placing a chaste kiss over your knuckles, whispering over your skin. Your ears picked up a few words, some naughty and some sweet, but your heart fluttered and your chest tightened when you caught the last two words before he began pounding into you.

“Te amo.”

[just-antithings]

Anti-ism is psuedoscience and a moral panic rolled into one

One of the most dangerous things about therapyspeak leaving the intended audience is that now antis feel fully qualified to tell survivors how they should and should not be coping, even to the point of attempting to override/contradict the advice of certified therapists.

I've had antis tell me the fiction I enjoy writing is retraumatizing myself, that I am doing harm by writing it; when I responded that actually, my therapist signed off on the stories I wrote (even when I mentioned the specific phrase "consensual nonconsent"), they said that my therapist doesn't know what she's talking about since she sanctioned my coping mechanism and explicitly labels her practice as kink-positive. Antis are attempting to make me, a survivor with mental illness that could ultimately be fatal if I leave a psychologist's care, disregard the advice of the medical professional supervising me when they have no certification at all. This could, if I were a more vulnerable person, be dangerous for not only my trust in my therapist, but it could sabotage my treatment as well.

They are using what amounts to little more than memes, based on misinformation, that use a few intelligent-sounding phrases that very rarely apply the way they think they do, as a wedge to attempt to assert themselves as authorities who can, with certainty, dictate the appropriate course of treatment for a total stranger, including telling them to disregard the therapies administered by a trained professional.

In other words? Antis are frighteningly similar to anti-vaxxers, who took medical terminology they didn't understand, applied it to shaky cause-effect logic models, started a moral panic, used statements generated by that moral panic as a citogenesis-fueled proof their initial starting of the moral panic was justified, damaged the doctor-patient relationship of millions of total strangers, jeopardized the healthcare of those strangers who now believed their doctor to be incompetent for following accepted medical best practice, and fomented dangerous fringe political ideologies that coupled themselves to other conspiracies based on rejecting commonly-acknowledged practices.

"Vaccines cause autism! Narrative therapy that implements any form of controversial kink causes retraumatization of the writer, reader, or both, and starts the writer on an inescapable slippery slope to becoming an abuser themself! It's better to be dead than autistic! It's better to suffer feelings of shame and/or isolation in silence than it is to use fiction to put a voice to your feelings! Your child is vaccine-damaged from thimerosal and is getting sick from virus-shedding! Your fiction caused me to groom myself and you're a porn-addicted monster for not facing your trauma the proper way! Your doctor doesn't know what's good for you, I do! Only I understand how your body/mind work and what treatment is appropriate for you! Your doctor has been manipulated by Big Pharma/kink supporters! The empirical-study-informed best practices for pediatrics/psychology are what's wrong, not me, whose research is carefully informed by TikTok videos and Twitter posts carefully formulated to cause amygdalar growth to keep me afraid so I will continue to engage with fear-mongering content that causes my politics to shift towards the alt-right, who coincidentally also push narratives based in fear, not in medicine! I am being perfectly logical here!"

Antis fundamentally reject empirical medicine just the way anti-vaxxers do. They just seem to get a free pass on it since it's "only" mental healthcare they are sabotaging, and few people acknowledge it as something as legitimate and lifesaving as other medical care.

[nostalgebraist]

the end, magnus

A very long time ago, I watched the trailer for a then-upcoming video game called Baten Kaitos.

The trailer as a whole is nothing special, but one particular line of dialogue made a strong impression on me. It still rattles around in my mind from time to time.

The line is

The End Magnus? Never heard of that before.

and it's about "the End Magnus," a magical artifact of some sort in the game's setting. (I think? I still haven't played the game.)

But when I watched the trailer for the first time, I had no way to know that I should interpret "End Magnus" as part of a single noun phrase. So I heard it this way instead:

The end, Magnus? Never heard of that before.

with the speaker telling his interlocutor, Magnus, that he's never heard of "the end."

There's something weirdly poetic about this version of the line, to me. It's not just the end of any particular, named thing that this guy has "never heard of" -- it's "the end," in general.

It's as though this man is questioning some all-consuming, seemingly inescapable aspect of his existence -- one that he has so much taken for granted that it it would be unnatural to name it, one that he has conflated with life or existence itself to the point that its "end" seems not like the end of any given thing but simply like . . . "the end," full stop.

Perhaps he's an immortal being, confronted for the first time with the concept of death? Or -- is it not even the finite extent of any one vast thing like "life," but the very concept of finitude, that the speaker has "never heard of"?

This is the sort of thing that the line conjures for me.

Back in college, I used to repeat it in my head from time to time. It was one of the many semi-sensical mantras I had at the time, whose hypnotic power and vaguely reassuring connotations gave me comfort during times of stress or monotony.

I found this particular one oddly invigorating.

"Oh, you're tired of doing so much homework? You feel like the semester has dragged on too long, like it will never end? Well, imagine you're this guy: not just involved in some protracted, drawn-out difficulty, but so thoroughly psychologically colonized by it that you can't even conceive of it ending at all -- indeed, so that it is the default referent of your speech, not even needing a name -- so that, for you, 'it ending' is simply 'the end,' the capstone of what can be conceived.

See, it could be worse.

And what's more: even if you were that guy, well, what is that guy doing? He's talking to Magnus! He's being confronted with 'the end,' and being forced to consider it, to expand his mind beyond its apparent outer limit. Even a mental prison as totalizing as this one can be noticed, and eventually escaped.

(Imagine that the end will never come; imagine that the end cannot even be conceived of; imagine that you have made peace with this, already. He did it, so can you.

But remember, too, that the end will come nonetheless -- as it will, eventually, even to him.)"

[honeybunhottie]

new story idea! are yall in?

You’ve always wanted a close knit friend group. Your entire life, it seems like you’ve spent longing for one. And one day, you believe you’ve found it! Only for your world to be completely turned topsy turvy when they not so accidentally sacrifice you during a camping trip gone wrong.

Suddenly you wake up and it’s 2013 again. Flappy Bird is the hottest new game, everyone is doing the Harlem Shake, and vines and dodge memes are the pinnacle of humor. Mustaches and Chevron are everywhere, and "Keep Calm and blah blah blah" sayings are on everything.

You don’t remember much from this year, but everything seems a little off. It’s like everything is a little to the left. You take it as nostalgia clouding your memory and decide to just coast along. You'll invest in bitcoin and become a youtuber or something. Everything is going perfect, your plan aligning until your first day at your new high school that your 'not parent' parents enrolled you in. It's been a couple of months of you working non-stop at Starbucks, you're feeling established, you even got a cute owl necklace to be fashion backwards forward! The day itself was going well, until a slightly younger Sam Giddings is giving you a mini tour of the school.

Oh shit.

You were desperate for a friend group, yes. But not THAT desperate. They barely even like each other! Most of them ended up dead in your playthroughs, and it was basically at the hands of their friends! Every. Single. Time.

Well, except that one time with the remaster. You somehow managed to keep everyone alive. Not a great track record though! Especially if you somehow got thrown into this now VERY real life weird game mix.

It should be obvious how to avoid calamity here, there’s even a few options! Beg your 'not parent' parents to transfer you to another school? Okay that was a fail, its only been two days of the semester, but fear not, there’s other ways to avoid certain death! Beg your counselor to switch your classes? This one works a little TOO good, and now all of your classes have at least one cast member in them. Your last hope is to ignore and avoid them,  entirely denying their existence in the first place. You think that it'll be easy enough...

Except you never stood a chance. Not when Sam looks at you with that amused quirk of her lip when you trip over your words as her lab partner. Not when Jess hits your arms incessantly as she laughs at your sarcastic responses. And certainly not when Josh throws his arm around your shoulder, treating you like he’s known you for years despite your short time together. These guys were crazy! They were insane in the game! Why are they growing on you? This just doesn't make sense!

Except it does.

Because here’s the thing: 

If the universe was working overtime to send you here through your possibly a cult old friend group, maybe this is life’s weird way of answering your years of tears and begging for a group of people to love and be loved back by.

And there's nothing wrong with that! You're allowed to have some fun in your life!!! You can totally just cruise on by with them, go to a few parties and sleepovers here and there, then say no to the lodge hangouts. Maybe you’ll visit your 'not grandma' grandma across the country?

Except that plan becomes doomed as well. Very inconveniently, your 'not grandma' grandma dies a month before your planned visit. Your 'not parent' parents are heading out of town that weekend for their anniversary. And possibly the most damming and inescapable of all, you’ve grown quite attached to the Washington sisters.

How could you, in good conscience, leave them to their fate without at least trying to save them? These people, YOUR friends, who you’ve exchanged hearts with? You’ve got to at least attempt it. That's what friends do!

So hit the gym! And take up a weird outdoorsy sport or two. There’s roughly 6 months until the events of the prologue take place, and you aren’t going down without a fight.

[sepheray]

you should totally write finnick angst!!!! Idk if this makes sense but maybe you can write about how the reader was taken to the capitol along with peeta and johanna and when she comes back she’s terrified of finnick because she was shown and told that he was dead

Reader has trouble distinguishing what’s real and what’s not since she was told everyone in 13 was dead

But Finnick does everything he can to help her and eventually gets her back

I HOPE IT MAKES SENSE ITS BEEN ON MY MIND FOR A WHILEEE

Also you are amazing 🫶🫶

Love you better - Finnick Odair x fem!reader

summary: reader is rescued from the Capitol and brought to district 13, where Finnick lies in waiting to welcome his love back in his arms, only her mind is warped and washed and Finnick must fight to keep her.

Finnick Odair who is down in the weapons defence unit, assisting Beetee with designing a new trident when he catches word of a rescue party returning from the Capitol. Of course his brain scrambles to his love. His poor, sweet love who he let out of his sight in what he, at the time, had no idea would be the last hour of the 75th Hunger Games. When he had woken up in the hovercraft, aching all over from the electric volts, he had a bittersweet feeling nesting in his chest. Everything had gone to plan, right? But no… something was wrong. He remembered his eyes darting around the hovercraft, searching desperately for her. But his sweet girl was not here, and sitting down with Haymitch and Plutarch only confirmed his worst suspicions. The Capitol had her, she was not safe, and even worse he felt an inescapable guilt. This was his fault. Snow had taken her to use as leverage against him, he knew it. He had lost track of the days since he had lost her, lost track of the tears and the amount of times he thought of his lovely girl. His mind had drowned in a haze of the colour of her eyes and the little knots he made in pieces of rope; he made sure there was no room for anything else.

He blinked back into reality when he feels a gentle tap on his shoulder; spinning around, he’s greeted once again with Haymitch. The uncharacteristically sober man is sporting a half-smile, something that clears Finnick’s mind slightly. Surely if Haymitch is glad, it can’t be bad news? “She’s safe, she’s alive,” Haymitch’s tone is decisive as if he’s picking his words carefully, stepping on eggshells to avoid Finnick’s newfound distress. “I thought you’d want to see her.” The bronze-haired man finds himself nodding frantically before Haymitch’s gruff voice even finishes his suggestion. Within seconds, he’s panting outside of District Thirteen’s medical unit. He stood straight for a while, chest rising and falling rapidly as he prepares himself for the moments to come. Would she run into his arms? Cower away from him? He hoped not. He thought his heart would break at the sight. He pushes through the doors before he can double think it, doctors recognising him and leading him to one of the private, solitary rooms. This was it. His sweet girl was in here, either eager to see him or broken and disheartened by the Capitol. Finnick took a deep breath and pushed the door open, stepping inside as quietly as he could, and closing the heavy door. She looked terrible. His gorgeous girl with her radiant skin, bright eyes and vibrant laugh barely looked like herself anymore. Her face was almost gaunt, and her skin draped along her, now, prominent cheekbones. She looked up at him, those eyes he loved so very much miserable but with a certain curiosity that made him hope that what they had between them could still be salvaged. The Capitol hadn’t ruined them yet.

A soft and meek voice spoke up, dull eyes analysing him carefully. “…Finnick,” His lips curl up at the sound of his name. God, how he had missed hearing his boring old name pouring like honey from those lovely lips. He took another deep breath, desperate to not scare her into retreat. “hi, honey.” Finnick spoke carefully, his tone gentle as he stood still, the doctors who had consulted him earlier had advised him to make minimum movement as to not distress her further. She stared at him silently for a second, hesitating as her pretty eyebrows furrowed. “I thought you were dead,” it was his turn to furrow his eyebrows. Hadn’t anyone thought to let her know that he was alive and well? He grimaced at her sadly, he had no idea what to say to her. Finnick had planned out their reunion thousands of times in his head over the past couple of months, and yet here she was, sat right in front of him, and he was at a loss for words. He took a few moments to pick out his words, trying to get his point across as simply as he could without confusing her pretty little head further. The man felt his heart swell with all the yearning he had endured for her recently as she reached out for him, wanting nothing but the comfort of his touch. Finnick stepped forward carefully, taking her outstretched hand in his as he stood near the side of the uncomfortable bed. She mumbled to herself, unknowingly breaking his heart as she did. “S’confused, Finnick. Had no idea whether you were alive, all I wanted was to see you.” He squeezed her hand at her confession, wanting nothing more than to soothe her lost mind. All these months he had been so angry at the Capitol for taking his sweet girl from him. Finnick was not angry now, he knew anger had no use. He had to be tender with his love, patient especially when she could not decipher the truth.

He sat down beside her gently, still holding onto her cold hand. She brought her knees up to her chest, gazing at him as if he was the only one who could rehang the stars for her. Finnick rubbed a comforting thumb across her knuckles murmuring sweet phrases of reassurance. “You’re alright now, sweet girl, I’m gonna get you well again” he meant it. He was willing to do anything to make sure that his lovely girl would go back to the sunshine she had once been. Finnick would stand with her through what was the truth and what was the capitol’s truth, sorting through her tampered memories tirelessly. She surged forward, embracing him tightly, saying a million things and yet nothing at the same time. The embrace meant trust, meant vulnerability but at the same time he knew that it would take time to work through this, time that he was willing to put in. He snaked his arms tightly around her waist, supporting her in a fragile moment that Finnick would not let the Capitol take from them. “We’ll get you better, sweetheart. No matter what it takes” yes, he was going to fix this for her. He was going to make sure his sweet girl could bare her teeth in every smile yet again, that she could squeal and splash him, giggling all the while, as he dunked her under the sea’s surface back home in their beloved District 4. He was going to get her back.

[stonesilhouette]

Affections of an Apparition

Yandere Ghost England x GN. Reader

TW: Yandere Behavior | Character Death | England tries to kill (Y/n) more than a few times but then he becomes a simp | Magical Kidnapping | Imprisonment | Magical Induced Forgetting | idk if I forgor something

Uhhhhh I wrote this in literally a day, I don't want to talk about it okay :(

(There is technically one use of the world 'she' by another character but I'm pretty sure that's it. This was originally fem. reader and I don't want it to differ from my other publications so I'm gonna leave it)

Word Count: 5916

Perhaps you should have thought a little harder and dug a little deeper inside of yourself when deciding to buy a haunted house… But it was just so cheap!

Sure the shutters creaked during the frequent storms like a man in unpeaceful rest and the wind howled past the house, desperate to invade, but the view was beautiful… When it wasn’t completely enshrouded by a heavy mist so thick that you could get lost and find yourself in another realm altogether. But inside!... wasn’t much better; with winding corridors that created an inescapable maze and sharp corners filled with shadows. Every eave and crevice hid strange noises and eyes; some days you could swear that you heard the whisperings of a man rush by your ear, stiffening your hair to stand on end. You never found any evidence of rodents or even spiders, only a thin layer of dust that blanketed the entirety of the house.

Though there had been an attempt to add electricity to the estate, power surges and complete blackouts rendered it useless. All wiring would alight until it was charred and unusable and bulbs burnt out within days. Things often overloaded and it was a gamble whether or not the outlet you were using would choose to spark. There was a backup generator but it was in worse condition than the wiring and often didn’t work.

That meant that on nights like tonight, where the storm had knocked out your power –again– you had to rely on candles lit around the large manor. You were half sure that you contributed to most of the candle market in the small town.

The ancient Victorian home had belonged to an old noble family whose only surviving member had been assassinated. It had floated through many hands over the years, including yours. The house overlooked the nearby town, of course, that depended upon if the fog would break. The town itself was small and quaint, only a few hundred people and a few large families. Gossip spread fast and you did your best to click with the ‘in’ group. When your wi-fi wasn’t feeling spotty, you often texted with a few local people. They were in their twenties like you and were positively bored of the small amount of people that their hometown had to offer.

It was from them that you learned that the townspeople wholeheartedly believed that the restless spirit of the old manor lord haunted his home with a vengeance. At first you took it as a small town’s superstitions, nothing more than a fantasy or a spiraled rumor. You had lived there for about nine months but it was starting to get ridiculous.

Can you punch a ghost? Because if you can, you were totally going to. All you wanted was toast and tea. You were drinking tea because the ghost absolutely abhorred coffee and would spill your coffee grounds all over the hardwood floor. It didn’t matter where you put it or how tightly you secured it. Every morning you would come downstairs and find the brown powder spilled all over the floor like a crackhead had rifled through your cabinets. You thought, at first, that it might be the brand of coffee. But no, alas, it was the coffee itself. So you were now a tea drinker. Thanks, ghost.

Anyway back to the current toast issue. You had jumped back a split second before the sparks from the outlet would have reached your skin. Eyes blown wide, you could feel your entire body shaking. A second longer and you could have been dealing with multiple-degree burns. Unconsciously, you rubbed your bare arms over where the injury would have been. Suddenly the lights went out, encasing you in total darkness, save for the low silver light filtering through the windows, bathing what it touched in a blue tone.

You and this stupid ghost were going to have to have a chat.

Stomping angrily down the long hallway, you did your best not to huff the dust you were kicking up. You passed by countless amounts of old Victorian furniture, all in the same place they had been since being placed there over a hundred years ago. It was entirely in vain to try to move the furniture as any time you or any other previous owners had tried, you would just find it straight back in its spot the next morning. Save for the times that pieces would be moved just slightly so you would run into them or stub your toe.

A large portrait caught your eye even through your mad march. It was a painting of the lord of the house. Your current tormentor: Lord Arthur Kirkland. His toxic emerald eyes burrowed into your soul, curling inside and freezing you from the inside out. His shaggy blond hair framed his face, carved into a permanent scowl. Above his eyes lay two thick eyebrows. Oh great, the bane of your existence had caterpillars for eyebrows. He was wearing the ruffles and coats of the period but the tightness of the clothing had you gasping for air just looking at it.

Wait… Nothing filled your lungs when you tried to inhale. Fear struck itself across your face and you thrashed violently, scratching at the air in a desperate attempt to remove the block to your airflow. Finally, like sweet nectar, air rushed into your body and you collapsed to your knees. Tears had formed in the corner of your eyes and a single droplet fell down your soft cheek. Your face erected a scowl of your own as a strand of hair fell down in front. Okay, ghost. Now this was personal.

If this assholic spirit wanted to make your life a living hell, then you’d make its death a living hell.

“Oh it is on.” The fight had begun.

Clearly, he had a very strong hate for any change being done to his home. The constant destruction of cables and any other foreign objects made this clear. So you thought about it. What would a Victorian ghost hate more than anything to have in its house? Most of the decoration was already intricate and ornate to a slightly tacky degree. Then it hit you.

Grabbing your car keys, though quickly stopping to get dressed, you raced out the door towards the only home improvement and building store in town. It was run by a local family, as most things in town were, and you happened to be friends with the oldest son. Dashing through the front door, the brunet looked up at the sound of a jingle. He smiled and stepped out from behind the counter.

“Hey (Y/n),” he said, waving as you bounded over. “What brings you here?”

“Revenge,” you answered simply, stretching the upper half of your body to look at the wallpapers set up past him.

“Against who?” he asked, clearly not sure if he wanted to know.

“The ghost,” you responded, bouncing over to the racks of paper. “He tried to kill me and so I’m going to ruin his precious house.”

“He what!?” Ben’s face dropped. He spun you around and grabbed you tightly by the shoulders. “(Y/n) you can’t stay there anymore. If he’s actually trying to kill you…”

“Sure I can,” you reassured him, prying his arms off and patting him on the shoulder. “I’ve got it all figured out.”

He sighed, exasperated. “(Y/n) you can’t win this fight with house decor. Also if he’s hurting you...”

You ignored him and continued your perusing. “I’m hearing a lot of can’t and not a lot of can and that’s just not a growth mindset my dear Ben.”

“(Y/n) you are dealing with an angry and vengeful ghost who has now expressed interest in murdering you.” You felt the texture of an especially pink wallpaper between your thumb and index finger. “(Y/n) don’t ignore me.”

You sighed, turning back to look at the man. “If you’re really that worried” –he rapidly nodded his head like a dog– “then I guess you could come with me to put the wallpaper up.”

After a few moments of contemplation, he spoke in a defeated tone, “I’m not going to talk you out of this, am I?”

“Nope.”

You opened one of the double doors in a wide, exaggerated movement and it skidded into position with a thud. Humming, you trotted inside with Ben a few paces behind you carrying the roll of wallpaper and the bucket… and the brushes and everything else needed for this little makeover. The door slammed shut loudly after the two of you had reached the inside with no input from either of you. Though you were unbothered, Ben jumped and stood petrified like a deer for a moment. His eyes were wide but he reluctantly took another step, then another, then another and then quickly followed after you.

Hopping up the wide grand stairs, you watched as Ben struggled up the twin staircase with all of the materials. Once he reached the top, you were waiting for him and grabbed a singular paint brush daintily and then scampered into a large room.

Ben’s honey eyes went wide as he took in the grandeur of the room. The ceiling was inlaid with swirls of gold depicting handcrafted patterns that framed a large crystal chandelier. Heavy curtains hung above the imposing windows, filtering the little light that came through. Similar gold patterns continued on the wall, outlining the four walls bathed in a shade of dark, luxurious blue. That was a good word to describe the room: luxurious.

“Do you– Do you sleep in here?” Ben asked, astounded.

“Nah. I think it’s the ghost’s room and I’ve already had enough of him.”

“Then why are we doing it in here?!” You just gave him a smug look. “Right. Revenge.”

You snapped your fingers, having remembered something. “I forgot the glitter!” you exclaimed, leaping over towards the door. “I’ll be right back. Don’t have too much fun lovebirds!”

Snickering at your own teasing, you quickly hiked down the stairs and out towards your car. Left behind, Ben twiddled his thumbs, too nervous to sit down on anything for fear of offending the ghost. He chuckled nervously and swayed from one foot to the other. There was something in the room, he could feel it.

“So…” He paused, unsure of what to say. “That’s (Y/n) for you. Always running around with no sense of self-preservation.” He sighed, this wasn’t making him feel any better. “She’s like a little gremlin sometimes… an adorable little gremlin.”

You burst into the room, shouting at him, “Ben, I’m back!” He froze with fear for a second and you waved your hand in front of his face as he blue-screened. You spoke with a wispy and falsely ethereal voice, “Earth to Ben. We have revenge to do. And lunch. Definitely lunch.”

Once you got your things set up and prepared, you started to work right away. You made Ben take the high spots. He was like 6 '3, it would be a waste to have yourself do it. Standing back, you took a moment to admire your half-finished handiwork. It would be so ugly when finished. It was perfect.

“I don’t suppose I’m getting paid for this?” Ben asked, and you looked towards him.

You looked back at your masterpiece. “No.”

There it was. A full room covered entirely in four different wallpapers. On one wall, the first contender: leopard print. On the second: pink flamingos with googly eyes. On the third: something that could only be described as Picasso meets impressionism. And the fourth and final contender, the most ugly of all: banana leaf print that doesn’t match any of the other decorations in the room. Not to mention they’re all covered with glitter so no matter how much the ghost cleans, he’s never getting rid of the memory.

You snickered evilly in the background, rubbing your hands together like an old-timey villain. Suddenly, you snapped back to normal.

“You wanna get lunch?"

The two of you sat at a table outside, happily basking in the sunlight. Behind you was the dumbass manor you owned. It was surrounded by fog and looked cartoonishly evil. You were starting to understand why the townspeople disliked it so much. It interrupted the view.

“So–” You took a moment to ravenously take a bite and swallow it. “Why did your parents stock that hideous wallpaper anyway?”

“For people like you, (Y/n). People like you.”

Because you felt bad, only a little, you decided to pay for lunch. Ben still tried to insist upon paying but every time he got close to the check, you would swat his hand away. He drove you back up to your house and the two of you ended up sitting on a porch swing. It wasn’t original to the house but it was one of the only additions the ghost seemed to approve of.

“You know,” you started, swinging the bench. Ben lifted his legs up so it could move. “I think I figured out the ghost’s problem.”

“Really?” Ben questioned, humoring you. “What is it?”

“Well, he never got married, right?”

“Yeah?”

“Given the time period, that probably means he never… you know, too.”

“(Y/n), really?” Ben face-palmed.

You argued back with impassioned earnestness, “No, no, no, no. Hear me out on this. He’s like all mad and angry and stuff because he’s a bitch loser virgin boy.”

Something cracked in the background.

Ben tried his best to stifle his laughter and push down the smile threatening to stretch itself across his face. “I’m– pfft– pretty sure that the ghost– pfft– is not upset because he’s a–” He stopped for a moment to center himself. “–a ‘bitch loser virgin boy.’” He airquoted your words and you harrumphed, crossing your arms.

“Fine. What do you think then?”

He blinked at you, almost as if asking ‘are you serious?’ “He got murdered, (Y/n). My guess would probably be that.”

“Orrrr.” You dragged out your ‘r.’ “Maybe we’re both right.”

Ben sighed, agreeing with you if not to just end the conversation before the ghost decided to kill you both. You waved him off about a half hour later and headed back inside. Though you wanted to check in on your ‘artwork,’ you didn’t really want to run directly into the spirit again.

Walking through the manor, you found yourself in front of another portrait of the man. He looked as judgemental as ever, his lime green eyes piercing even as an inanimate photo. You don’t know why you talked to it, or even why you stopped. But you did.

“You know…” you started, hugging yourself tight. “For a bitch loser virgin boy” –A ghastly hand illuminated in a cold blue glow stretched out for your neck– “You’re actually pretty cute.”

The hand froze in place. You blew a strand of hair out of your face, readjusting to take another look at the portrait.

“And for how ridiculous that clothing is, you kind of pull it off.” The hand backed away, the light dimming. “I know I keep making fun of your house but I wouldn’t have bought it if I thought it was ugly.” It was barely visible at all now. “I mean, sunshine and a working heater beyond a centuries-old fireplace might be nice but otherwise it’s actually a very nice home.”

You blinked up at the portrait. Somehow, the expression the lord was wearing seemed softer now. There was less disdain and more of a quiet loathing on his face. Nothing could fix those caterpillar eyebrows though.

“The coffee thing was annoying but I guess I’m healthier now because of it. I was really tired that first week though. Anyway…” you trailed off. “Thanks, I guess.” You sighed at what you thought was only yourself. “What am I doing? I should… take a nap.”

Soft breathing filled the room; it was utterly quiet besides the faint sound. Your face contorted into uncomfortable expressions from the rapidly dropping temperature and you curled into the heavy blankets of the large bed. Only your head remained above the covers, the rest below like a figure bobbing in the waves on the open sea. The sun was slowly sinking below the horizon, a low orange light just barely slipping through the mist. The copper colored light spread across the wooden floor and stopped at the edge of glowing, blue feet, creating a soft purple.

They stepped out of the light and into the shadow, the illumination of the azure color growing brighter with each passing step. A face appeared from the foot of the bed, slowly coming into view. Unkempt hair cut in every direction floated lightly, encapsulating the face of Arthur Kirkland, last lord of the Kirkland manor. He watched with calculating yet curious eyes, looking for any sign of guilt or deceptiveness. He found none.

Though the man walked to your side, it would better be described as gliding. The tailcoat pieces of his jacket hovered to the same slow rhythm as the rest of the loose articles on his body. He brought a gloved hand to your face, lightly brushing his fingers across your cheek. Your face contorted from the biting cold and he quickly drew his hand back.

A low thought crossed his mind. If he hovered his lips above yours, could he suck the warmth and life out of you? To make you like him? Arthur stopped himself. Those were improper thoughts. No matter the time period, he shouldn’t think that way, especially of a lady he was not in courtship with.

Still… No!

He suddenly faded out of existence, his presence slipping out of the crevices and with it, the freezing cold. The warmth had returned to the room and in response, you had pulled the covers back down to adjust to the temperature change. Thank goodness he left when he did, you were wearing a tank top. Shoulders, scandalous!

Ben called you the next day, worried about what might have befallen you and your tricks.

“So, is it still there?” he asked, voice scratchy over the phone.

“No. He took it down.” 

Ben sighed. “All that work for nothing.”

“Not nothing,” you said, sitting comfortably on the couch. “I think we finally called a truce.”

“Really?”

“Uh-huh. I guess I’m just too wonderful to hate.”

“Who are you talking to?” A third voice interjected.

“Oh I’m talking to Be–”

You dropped the phone.

“(Y/n)? (Y/n) are you there? (Y/–”

You weren’t listening, instead, you had slowly turned behind you, eyes wide as saucers and body as stiff as a board. There, in glowing blue glory, was the man from the paintings, bushy eyebrows and all. Blinking a few times, you kept expecting the visage to disappear every time you opened your eyes again. But he never did.

“Well don’t look so shocked now, love,” he huffed, crossing his arms and carrying that signature scowl.

“I– I– I–” It was your turn to bluescreen and the ghost rolled his green eyes, tapping his arm impatiently.

“I say, with how chuffed you were over that last stunt, I’d thought you’d have more to say than that,” he insulted, drifting through the couch and watching as you astonishedly followed him.

“(Y/n)?! (Y/n)?!” Ben implored through the phone.

“Oh, I recognize that voice,” Arthur answered his own question. “You can continue on with your nonsense conversation later.”

With a wave of his cerulean hand, you watched in horror as your phone short-circuited, sparked and then burst into flames. It was the threat of fire that knocked you out of your stupor and you quickly ran to the kitchen to grab the nearest fire extinguisher. The white foam drowned your phone but also safely put out the fire. You dug through the froth to find the piece of metal and silicon, uncaring for whether or not it got on you.

As soon as you got it, you dropped it again, the heat from the searing flames had left the metal as hot as if it had been outside on a summer’s day. The ghost seemed oblivious to your plight and as you shook your hands off, he waved one of his own and the floor returned to how it had been before. He looked towards you, cradling your steaming phone with a pair of oven mitts you had grabbed. You felt like crying and clearly the blond could tell.

“Oh don’t cry over spilled milk. You can just get another one.”

No. He was wrong. You couldn’t just get another one. Sure you could get another phone but you hadn’t backed up any of your pictures or videos or documents and there was no way in hell you possibly remembered all of those contacts. From the sorry state the melted rectangle was in, you could pretty much guess that the SIM card would be unsavable. Years worth of memories; gone.

The spirit looked down at you in slight curiosity; you weren’t usually this quiet. He watched as you silently stood up, solemnly placed the phone into the sink, removed and put away the mitts, and then quietly walked up the stairs and back to your claimed room.

You didn’t come back out for dinner. Or for breakfast the next morning. He hadn’t even blown out a fuse this time. By lunchtime, he could feel himself starting to get worried. Well not worried, because he couldn’t possibly be worried about you but simply concerned what your mental state might mean for the physical state of his house. You had lasted the longest out of his tenants because that's all you were: tenants. You didn’t own the house after all, he did. And he was quite sick of people thinking otherwise.

Suppertime rolled around and he still hadn’t seen you. Usually, you’d be trying to figure out how to make the microwave not explode or trying to watch the ‘television’ while you ate. He always knocked out the power when you did that. Dinner should be eaten at the table. He looked towards the kitchen. The one you had chosen as your primary was a servant’s kitchen and so was relatively smaller. It happened to house one of the few things he allowed to work in his house: the refrigerator. Even he could see the usefulness of such an advancement.

Arthur impatiently tapped his foot, it was now eight p.m. and this was around the time you liked to watch a movie or a television show. He didn’t enjoy having the loud television in his home but the drawing room you had chosen for it was far enough from the main foyer. Besides, sometimes you watched this ‘Dr Who’ story and he quite liked those nights. 

There was no one present to change the candles and it's not like the lights were in working condition so Arthur sat in darkness. He forgot how empty this felt. At nine, someone knocked on the door. He –invisible– watched as you slowly trudged down the stairs. You were wearing the same clothes as when he had last seen you and your hair was a mess. There were bags under your eyes but it was the kind from sleeping too much. You pulled open the door and looked up at Ben. The concerned look on his face became even worse as he watched you blink out of sync.

“(Y/n), are you okay?” he asked frantically, pulling you into a hug.

The front porch light flickered in and out.

You shrugged your shoulders, feeling the empty lightness of your stomach now that you were awake. Ben pulled apart from you, grabbing your face to look into your eyes. He rubbed his thumb over your eyebags and pulled you inside, uncaring for the ghostly apparition. After placing you on the couch and throwing a blanket over you, Ben ran to the kitchen to find some kind of food. His eye was temporarily caught on the burnt sockets all over the room but refocused on his mission. Though he wanted to make you something, he’d heard tales of the terror of the appliances in this place. Instead, he rifled through your cabinets and eventually just brought you a bag of marshmallows. He watched as you slowly chewed on the sugary fluff, stopping to take a sip out of the iced tea he brought you.

“What happened?” he finally asked, scooting closer. “I heard a voice and then you cut out.”

Instead of speaking properly, you pointed to the kitchen and mumbled out, “Sink.” 

Then you continued to gnaw on a marshmallow. Ben walked over, took a look inside the sink, stared with wide eyes for a moment, and then walked back to sit beside you again. The two of you stared ahead, not saying a word.

“Ghost did that?”

“... yeah”

“(Y/n) I think you should come live with me.”

You looked up at him with tired eyes.

“I–I mean.” He sighed. “I just really don’t think it’s safe for you here. And besides” –His cheeks were alight with a pink glow– “Would staying with me be so bad?”

A picture frame crashed down from the wall. 

Your heads snapped toward it and Ben pulled you closer unconsciously.

“I… I think you’re right,” you agreed with him, standing up to pack your things.

“I told you; this house is a lost cause,” Ben said, moving to help you.

The crystal chandelier high above glinted threateningly.

The two of you walked close together and as you walked under the hanging tree of diamonds, the strange shaking suddenly stopped. You didn’t take much so it didn’t take very long to pack. You insisted that you would be back after you gave the ghost time to ‘cool off’ but Ben seemed hesitant. The door closed with a creak and with it, the light.

From the shadows glowed a brilliant blue, forming into a humanoid shape. There, in all of his ghastly glory was Lord Arthur Kirkland. Alone again. A window cracked and he fixed it using magic with little thought.

As soon as you were gone the lord sank down. Past the servant’s quarters, past the locked doors and into the passageway that not even any of the other supposed ‘owners’ of the house had the key to. That’s because this door didn’t unlock with a key. Whisperings of Latin slipped out of his mouth and the runes in the door glowed and spun, turning until they clicked into place and the door slowly opened.

His magic may not have been as strong as it had been when he was alive but that didn’t mean that he didn’t still have deep and rooted connections to the ley lines that had been passed down through his family heritage. Books and papers flew open and danced around the room as he rushed through. He searched through ancient tomes until he found a heavy book covered in a thick layer of dust. His ghostly breath blew the grime away, revealing a brilliant ruby-red cover.

Arthur had never seen the point to attempt this before but now you had given him a reason. He was going to perform a resurrection spell.

On himself.

You couldn’t say that you hated the last couple of days. It was nice to be able to use modern appliances without the fear of them blowing up on you. Ben had taken time off of work to take care of you and you could feel the guilt piling up. You didn’t deserve him. Not to mention you were pulling possible profits away from his family’s store. They just gave you cheeky grins before poking and teasing you about a wedding. Small towns are just like that.

After literal hours of begging, Ben finally agreed to let you work with him in the shop. It allowed him to keep an eye on you and for you to feel less bad. Many of your friends stopped by and they were almost as bad as Ben’s family. It was still far more relaxing and less stressful than fearing that your phone charger would suddenly spark and electrocute you. You hadn’t gotten a new phone yet. You knew you needed one but it wasn’t exactly on the top of your priority list.

At the end of the week, you had been reorganized and shelving a collection of nails. Your ‘shift’ was almost over, which meant that Ben’s shift was almost over and you were positively buzzing with excitement for movie night. The bell jingled and you leaned over to shout ‘coming’ before shoving the last box of nails in and racing over.

Putting on your best customer service face, you spoke to the person who had come in, “Hi! Welcome in! What are you looking for–”

You stopped. Standing right there. In front of you. In the flesh was Arthur Kirkland. It couldn’t have been him, but it was. Who else would have that shaggy blond hair? Those horribly maintained eyebrows? Those piercing green eyes? You stuttered and buffered and the man just smiled amusedly at your short-circuiting.

“Why I’m looking for you of course,” he answered, taking a step forward.

You took a step backward. “You– you’re– you’re alive…” you gasped out, staring at him, completely stunned.

He wasn’t wearing the period clothing anymore, though what he was wearing still looked quite old. Instead, he had on just a dress shirt, black pants and similarly black shoes. When he grasped his hand around your wrist, you visibly shuddered from the cold but could not break free. You were locked in a staring match until Ben came to find you.

“Hey (Y/n)–” He froze.

“Oh good. I was looking for your dimwitted friend too,” he admitted, pulling you closer.

“Are you–” Ben stopped, looking on in disbelief.

“Goodness, you peasant people are just as slow as a hundred years ago,” Arthur huffed, rolling his emerald eyes.

Somehow, the next time you blinked you were back in the manor house. Ben was there too but he was knocked out and you couldn’t move to reach him. Arthur looked towards you, somewhat surprised to see you awake.

‘I guess my magic is still weak. It won’t matter after this,’ he thought, walking towards you.

More than anything, you wanted to struggle, you wanted to cry, you wanted to scream. But all you could do was watch. The blond snapped his fingers and you unfroze, becoming limp. Your limbs were still useless and Arthur seemed well aware of this as he carried you up the stairs. The two of you went past many rooms, including your own until you reached the site of your former masterpiece.

The door swung open and he waltzed in. The deep blue walls had returned to their normal extravagantness and there wasn’t a speck of glitter in sight. He gingerly placed you down on his bed, the soft mattress bending to your weight. You could do nothing but have your eyes reflect terror as the man manually tied your limbs to the bed. Finally, he placed a soft gag in your mouth and with it, you could feel the strange enchantment break. It wasn’t like your struggling could do anything anymore.

“Sorry, love.” He placed a kiss on your forehead and ran a hand through your loose hair. “I’ll need all the power I can get, so I can’t be expending it here.”

He walked away from your struggling form and quietly closed the door. None of your screams would make it through the walls of that room anyway. Arthur regally walked down the stairs to find his other captive missing. Instead of searching, he chose to stand completely still, hands crossed behind his back.

From the shadows, snuck a disoriented Ben, carrying the only chair he could lift. He smashed it into Arthur’s head, the impact shattering the wooden chair. The brunet expected to see blood and bits of gore. Instead, he came face to face with glowing green eyes, full of rage and jealousy. His jaw was slacked the wrong way but a simple movement clicked it back into place.

Ben dropped the remaining chair legs he had been holding onto and began to back up like a frightened deer. Arthur followed, slinking after him like the apex predator he was.

“You see,” Arthur started, stepping closer. “I’m not exactly alive per se. At least not yet. I’m on borrowed time, unfortunately.” He cornered the man. “Lucky for me, so are you.”

The next time you saw Arthur he looked different. He looked alive. His chest moved up and down, he blinked at regular intervals and you could see blood flushing through his body. Most of all, he was warm. So comfortingly warm.

Eventually, those thoughts faded and you laughed internally at ever thinking that Arthur could have been dead. He looked like a distant relative who had once owned the manor and shared a name. But he wasn’t. He was a different Arthur Kirkland, one who had come from London to learn that he should have been entitled to the estate. That’s when he found you, the person who had recently bought the house. That’s when you fell in love and… there’s something you feel like you’re forgetting.

There was always someone you felt like you were forgetting. No one in the town knew either so you had always assumed it to be a bad dream that stayed with you. Arthur had always encouraged you to forget and move on, but it always stuck with you.

Arthur had helped you properly install appliances and electricity in the house that wouldn't almost kill you and/or burn down the house. Well, he hired someone to make that happen but it was close enough. It always felt so nice to be able to flip a light switch and watch the room light up in a comforting yellow glow, though there were some days where the blond man did insist upon candles. You didn’t know why you flinched when the lights flickered or when the fire on the stove got too hot but Arthur was always just around the corner to watch you. He seemed to enjoy doing that.

You rested your head on his chest, listening to the sounds of his heartbeat and feeling the movement of his chest. The constant fog that surrounded the manor finally dissipated and the two of you were peacefully watching the sunset on the porch swing. Arthur was rocking the bench lightly and the gentle swaying movement threatened to put you to sleep.

“Don’t fall asleep now on me, love,” he laughed lightly, lifting your head to look at him.

Grumbles came out of your mouth instead of words and you burrowed yourself back into his warm chest. He just shook his head and looked towards the fading light.

“Do you still think I’m a ‘bitch loser virgin boy?’” he asked in a teasing tone, running his hand through your hair.

Stretching, you readjusted yourself to situate your head higher, closer to his shoulder. He took in a deep breath, smelling the (smell) shampoo you had used. After yawning, you gave him an answer.

“Hmm... Yes,” you answered tauntingly, closing your eyes again.

He chuckled, continuing his brushing motions through your hair. “Not for very long, love. Not for very long.”

[lo1k-diamonds]

Soul Palette Series 💜

In this soulmate alternative universe, there are no marks, no strings, and no traces to guide them to their other half. But if they listen carefully, destiny is just around the corner patiently waiting to mix them in the soul palette and create universes - together.

PAIRING: idol!BTS member x (f)OC

GENRE: Soulmate AU (s2l)

RATING: R (for the most part)

Crossposted on AO3 | Should be read in order 💜

✔Carnation

PAIRING: idol!Jin x OC

SUMMARY: In early 2018, BTS were at a crossroads: after working so hard to set foot in the music industry of South Korea, their sudden jump into stardom became something they never anticipated. Jin believed in his dongsaengs but was just as lost as them when his soulmate entered the picture.

WORD COUNT: 25.3k (total)

WARNINGS: mild angst for talks of disbanding, burnout, financial struggles, sickness, society pressures, low self-esteem

The corners of his lips rose the second he predicted she would crash into him, which he absolutely wanted for some reason, but she subverted his expectations. His features went from cheeky to slumped when she dodged him expertly and just walked right past him without even looking up. He turned to widen his eyes at her in a complaint, but she was walking steadily and quickly away without looking back. Well, he scoffed, how could she just focus so hard on her call or whatever that she didn’t see him standing right in her way? One should pay attention to their surroundings instead of— He gasped, Wait!

AO3 | [1st Chapter - Tumblr]

✔Seeking the Sunrise

PAIRING: idol!Hoseok x OC

SUMMARY: Haesun was adrift, her life was happening but she had no idea where she was going. Finding her soulmate was on the wishlist, but it was by no means a priority. Cue in the cutest guy who happens to be a household name in the music industry with his whole life figured out. He's her soulmate, isn't that great? If only he wanted to find love like she did...

WORD COUNT: 32.1k (total)

WARNINGS: angst, tragedy, comfort, minor character death, sickness, grief, tension, smut (in the last chapter: dry humping, oral (f receiving), unprotected sex)

If he was unavailable, why did he yearn for her? Hoped to see her? Was done early just so he could go to her earlier and wait for her with a smile on his face? Went out with his friends at the same time she was at a soulmating party so that he wouldn’t think about it? Wanted to touch her all the time? Stared at her photo and tried to remember her laugh, sighing at the memory of it? Looked at her jaw and wished to brush it softly with his thumbs? Looked at her gorgeous lips like that? Why did he wonder… about what her lips would say next? Or how they felt? Or how they tasted?

AO3 | [1st Chapter - Tumblr]

🚧Monochrome

PAIRING: idol!Namjoon x OC

SUMMARY: ...

WORD COUNT: ? Outline 🚧 15 chapters

WARNINGS: ...

...

AO3 | [Tumblr]

✔Call You Mine

PAIRING: idol!Yoongi x OC

SUMMARY: Freya despises everything soulmate-related, but one day her soulmate shows out of nowhere and turns everything upside down. A slowburn rejection soulmate story to make you fall in love with Min Yoongi (again).

WORD COUNT: 297k (total)

WARNINGS: angst, huge ass story that is an emotional rollercoaster, rejection (happy ending), OC has a strong personality and flaws (all my characters do really), desperation, explicit sexual content, soulmate bond is inescapable and shit happens

She turned around like a tornado, “Why the fuck would I change my life for you?!” He nodded, looking at the floor while choosing his words carefully. “Well… it might be a little selfish of me, but—” “A little?!” “— there isn’t another way, not that I can see,” he finished stubbornly. That stunned her for a moment. She stared at him in utter disbelief. The audacity—! “We don’t have to be together. We don’t know each other!” She closed her fists, voice shaking in anger. “Why should I have to move across the world for you? Why! Cause you’re famous?”

AO3 | [1st chapter - Tumblr]

🚀To Blossom

PAIRING: idol!Jungkook x OC

SUMMARY: ...

WORD COUNT: ? Writing 🚀 Chapter 17/62 (~90k) ➡ snippets

WARNINGS: ...

...

AO3 | [Tumblr]

🚧The Shade of the Cosmos

PAIRING: idol!Taehyung x OC

SUMMARY: ...

WORD COUNT: ? Outline 🚧 9 chapters

WARNINGS: ...

...

AO3 | [Tumblr]

🚧Choice and Destiny

PAIRING: idol!Jimin x OC

SUMMARY: ...

WORD COUNT: ? Outline 🚧 10 chapters

WARNINGS: ...

...

AO3 | [Tumblr]

The Tapestry of Fate

PAIRING: each couple from the previous stories

SUMMARY: ...

WORD COUNT: ? Oneshot

WARNINGS: ...

...

AO3 | [Tumblr]

[beetlejuice-maitland]

🚨OBX SEASON 4 SPOILER🚨

I’m just starting to finally accept and analyze JJ’s parentage reveal, and something totally random hit me: What does JJ know about his name?

Think about it—we had our theories (John Jacob, Jesse James, etc.) but now we know that legally, it’s Jackson. There was never any mention or slip of his full name at any point before. Why? Because even he doesn’t know.

Just imagine little JJ Maybank growing up not knowing what his name stood for.

Imagine an 8 year-old JJ meeting 8 year-old John B. Routledge, learning that the B stands for Booker & not being able to answer when John B. asks what the two Js stand for. Imagine JJ asking his dad what the letters stood for after learning his name should only be a nickname and going to bed with a swollen lip and more questions than answers.

Imagine a 12 year-old JJ snapping back at the secretaries in the office of Kildare middle school when they inform him his dad hadn’t filled out his registration properly, and they need a legal name, not a preferred one. Imagine JJ meeting Pope Heyward and Kiara Carerra, refusing to tell them what JJ stands for because ‘that unlocks at a level 10 friendship’ and certainly not because he doesn’t have a single clue.

Imagine a 15 year-old JJ sitting in the Kildare County Sheriff’s office, all deep scowls & snide remarks & dark bruises, only hearing the sneered ‘Maybank’ coming out of every officer’s mouth and silently wanting one person to treat him like a regular person for once & just tell him what the Js stand for.

Imagine a 17 year-old watching his dad drive off in a stolen boat and only realizing hours later that Luke Maybank never coming back means never really knowing what his true name is because he’s pretty damn sure his dad either lost or sold his birth certificate. Imagine JJ coming to on a boat with a massive headache and blood dripping down his face, learning he was only the wrong end of a machete away from dying without ever knowing his first name.

Imagine 19 year-old JJ Maybank, on the run from the cops for the 100th time, clutching a letter containing a damning family secret, and begging his father to tell him what the hell is going on. Imagine JJ Maybank frozen on the top of a lighthouse, sirens ringing in the air and the words “I ain’t your blood father, Jay.” ringing in his ears, realizing that everything he thought he knew about himself was a lie, that even the last name he’s always loathed for trapping him in an inescapable legacy of alcoholic, salt-lifer, smuggling Maybanks is a lie, that he’s never known what JJ stands for and now he’s not even sure that he really exists.

[nightcolorz]

Something I can't stop thinking about when it comes to book vs show is that in the book Louis doesn't really blame Armand for Claudia's death, sure he killed her but he was just upholding The Rules™

The Rules™ say a vampire shouldn't kill their maker and it was Claudia's idea to kill Lestat

The Rules™ say children shouldn't be made vampires and Claudia was made very young

Therefore according to The Rules™ Claudia should die

Armand was just following The Rules™ (and the specific kind of trauma he has doesn't allow him to even consider bending The Rules™ even for someone who wasn't aware of them, if anything Claudia's ignorance is another reason she has to die, someone who is ignorant of The Rules ™ will sure put them all in danger)

So Book Louis doesn't hate Armand, but he does hate The Rules™

The Rules™ cost him Claudia, The Rules™ are awful and unjust, The Rules™ just suck

So when he finds Daniel and the opportunity to tell his story, her story, to have it all published, that's just the opportunity he was looking for to get back at The Rules™

He can't bring Claudia back to life but he can expose all vampires and The Rules™ which say he shouldn't can go to hell

So it's a bit disappointing to me that the show has decided to remove those layers of complexity and made Louis blame Armand instead and simplified Armand's reasons to kill Claudia too

(Also what are Louis reasons to tell the story in this version?)

I was expecting Armand to double down on his reasoning for doing it (she had to die, I was just the executor not the reason she had to die, she wasn't going to make it anyway, all vampires made that young go crazy and are a risk that can expose us all, she would have killed herself soon anyway, she broke The Rules™) I thought that was what Armand's "I could not prevent it" was getting to and was disappointed when he showed to be apologetic to Louis instead

ooooo yes this is so interesting I totally agree with this. In the books Armand and Louis make it very clear that Claudia’s death was the consequence of an abusive fucked up institution (vampirism) that Louis and Armand r bound to + victims of, and the show def misses that. What I like about the vampire chronicles is how vampirism is portrayed as this abusive cycle in a way that binds all characters to the same loops of inescapable abusive patterns, and what’s interesting about that also is how all the characters r aware of this and forgiving of each other in ways humans would never be bcus they know “vampirism just does that to u”. It’s such a unique premise, and it’s unfortunate that the show seems uninterested i. exploring the “vampire culture” aspects of Anne rice world that I’ve always really loved. Sometimes I get the impression that they’d rather make the characters have more generic human responses to their problems so that it can appeal to a broader audience (which is disappointing for a tv show adaptation of a book series that is iconic for how it’s shaped what being a vampire is in pop culture)

[timetravelstudies]

a meandering post about transmasculine aesthetics (or lack thereof)

i was thinking about how in both big and small, common and niche/micro ways, when youre transmasc you kind of have to resign yourself to the double bind of both always having to borrow the language of other people and groups to describe yr own experiences and simultaneously being accused (though not always so directly & in so many words) of stealing valor.

this i think applies across the board in a variety of cases but specifically i was thinking about victimization/victimhood, including but not limited to sexual victimization. and ofc victimization is not all there is to being trans &/or queer but as i said a while ago in a post re: that one girl raised by gay dads who was complaining about how lgbt culture is "too focused" on homophobia, victimization (& ostracism, & aggression, & in general adverse social circumstances) is an inescapable part of the queer experience so i feel like this is an especially apt case study.

like (and now im gonna go so micro and niche this probably wont be recognizable outside my very specific sphere of mutuals & inlaws but its the example on my mind rn) i have often seen tboys etc. on here for lack of a better word romanticizing a certain kind of sexual abuse & exploitation that is commonly associated (socially and artistically) with boys and young men who are "too" "feminine" and thus attract the attention of adults esp adult men. and like even once we go past the whole "are you allowed to (fantasize/post/make art/romanticize/jerk off/...) about X thing, do you have the correct trauma, i want an itemized list of everything bad that's happened to you on my desk by tomorrow or i unleash the mob" and we get to people who correctly see that type of thinking as always anti-victim and inherently deleterious (as well as anti-art but thats another post entirely), there are still plenty of instances of in this case transfems who have this...... disdainful and almost condescending tone of "actually what youre sexualizing is MY experience, MY oppression, MY victimization, /I/ and/or people like me were the ones who were abused for being boys who looked like girls, NOT you" which ..... i dont even really want to disprove or anything like that bc im not particularly interested in that, and tbh i get how it can be extremely annoying and frustrating for a general group of people to not give a fuck about your extremely real and continued oppression and/or contribute to it only for some of them to turn around and also aestheticize some aspects of that experience. like i totally get where the girls are coming from on this mostly.

but what i want to draw attention to is something else which....... ok let's say all the guys immediately drop the ganymede/painting of isaac/takemiya bpd shota/whatever posting tomorrow. let's say that is a transfeminine or queer male experience the tboys have no claim over or whatever. the alternate pool of imagery & psychosexual landscape to borrow from is that of female victimhood. which again a lot of guys do draw from. but as soon as a tboy gets on some ldr coquette dollette traumacore shit he gets accused of holding onto his white female privilege of being presumed harmless and ontologically innocent and so on. so what then?

to be clear, im bringing up these criticisms which are most commonly levied at transmascs by transfems not because i want to criticize transfeminine people or transfeminism especially but because i see this stuff as the most poignant and relevant commentary on transmasculinity that exists in the contemporary discourse as of 2025, and im including academic & adjacent writing in that statement. (for instance, a cis feminist critique to the ldr shit would be that trans guys are trying to escape sexist oppression while stealing its valor, as i was saying at the beginning of the post. i think that statement is erroneous and dumb for reasons that should be self evident and if they arent then this post isnt for you.)

anyway. my aim isnt really to debunk these transfeminist criticisms or even put an asterisk next to them and say in which exclusive cases they are applicable. the transfeminist theory answer to these qualms is obviously that there is overlap btw the experiences of cis women, trans men and trans women because they all occupy a minoritary (in the deleuzian way) position in the hierarchy of power founded by and based on cis masculinity. but the point im trying to make, or rather the issue im trying to discuss, isn't one of power politics. it's one of language, or more specifically symbols, or more specifically aesthetics.

there is no such thing as a transmasculine aesthetics, and yes, this is most likely because of discrete sociocultural historical reasons and was probably in no small part spurred by a transmasculine desire for assimilation into one group of cis men or another at all costs or at least for blending into the background as "just a regular guy" (this was a really interesting post touching on this topic. i havent done the reading myself but it's a credible account that makes perfect sense to me). but again, im not interested in a social and historical account. What im interested in is aesthetics: how people internalize, digest, express concepts on a sensorial and pre-verbal (or non-verbal or quasi-verbal) plane.

regardless of the reasons, we are here now: there is no transmasculine imagery of sexual victimization. there is no transmasculine imagery of much anything. this is especially true the more "queer" you get in an academic sense, i.e. the further away you go from a type of (trans)masculinity that is as close to hegemonic as you can get without cisgenderism (strong, in control, buff, facial hair, capable, handy, butch, a top, dating a woman or someone unambiguously more feminine...). there is no transmasculine aesthetics of gender non conformity, of artsiness, of etherealness, of fragility, of madness, of gayness & bisexuality, and yes, of sexual victimization - or rather, there are aesthetic languages for all these things that transmasculine people understand, appreciate and engage in, because we are people in the world like everyone else, but none of them are recognizable as transmasculine.

if youre wondering, why do you really care that much about aesthetics? arent there real, material problems in the world? id say yes, and we face those too. however. i am a big proponent of the importance of aesthetics as a mode of analysis because i believe human beings perceive, interpret and digest the world largely (though ofc not exclusively) through aesthetics. but even if you dont agree with me on the general plane, please look at the world around you. in the 2020s aesthetics are everything. all of our culture, all of our thinking, is done through imagery first and logic and words second, if at all.

in fact, though it is almost certainly just a coincidence due to the unprecedented exposure transgenderism is having right now (which i dont count necessarily as a good thing but not the point rn) a kind of explicitly transmasc aesthetics IS being born through what some have jokingly dubbed the "sweatermuppet industrial complex" - you know, the st sebastian with top surgery scars, png of a syringe, dog poem, richard siken quote collage type shit. ive criticized that stuff before and i'll do it again, not only because i find it corny, but also and especially because i feel that not even a few years since its inception have passed and already it has become a self-referential, sterile vein only good for selling lame sweatshop tshirts. but thats what happens when you scold every other type of expression out of existence: at worst it simply never gets made, or at least shown, again, and so it doesnt get to inspire the next thing, at best its edges get sanded down into something inoffensive if not exactly excellent and you get the doglamb with two heads again. and at this point it feels important to restate that any representation of queer & trans existence, ESPECIALLY the negative aspects of it (which again, are an inevitalbe and intrinsic part of it) will necessarily be offensive or even repulsive and yes, problematic, to some.

anyway. it all pisses me off and makes me sad for so many varied reasons. because i love aesthetic and artistic expression - not even just art, but every kind of utterance that is done on an aesthetic level - and i want to be free to do my own & also i want to see those of other people who are similar to me in some ways but different in others and let that inspire me to create, think and live in new ways (as indeed i already do with stuff mostly made by non-transmasculine people). because those of us (transmasculine people, trans people, gnc people, queer people) who are marginal and specific and weird even within our already small identity-groups deserve to express ourselves and be understood rather than languish in unsayability. because any of these experiences - queerness, transness, sexual abuse - is painful enough already when you CAN talk about it. because transfeminine people are lowkey carrying & saving art, culture and cultural discourse in this century even more than usual and i believe and feel in my bones transmascs as a group can give that much more if not to the mainstream at least to the community. because i believe the only thing that can save us from hurtling past the edge and down into the void is an aesthetic revolution and i also believe that only queer people can bring that about. etcetc. and yes tumblr is a very bad place to have any sort of conversation bc youll get into fights anywhere but tumblr is also soooo irrelevent. but also i feel like this is the only place where we can have this sort of conversation at this (extremely granular, specific, sophisticated) level where you need to have understood a bunch of shit beforehand already. theyre still doing pronoun circle type shit on ig. anyway. that was my post thanks for reading. shuffles off my soapbox

[some-teeth-in-a-trench-coat]

3 things:

What's a song, band, album, or playlist you want to shout out?

What are your opinions on pets (dog, cat, neither, other)?

Finally, what's a boring fact about you?

Cheers, have a good one.

Oh yes!

Shoutout a band? SEEMING, SEEMING, SEEMING BABY! They're even on tumblr: @seemingmusic

Their music is great and the lyrics are freaking phenomenal poems and I have no idea why they're not among tumblr's favorites like? "The future will be borderless, and red and queer and bold, for I was born to make my kind extinct" (End Studies) "Dreamt of gutting billionaires... But when I woke, blood was gone" (Go Small) you've got the eat the rich be queer do crime philosophy all over it! "Like a tall tree, I am pining to be taken up by the lightning! Strike me! I dare you! I dare you! Heaven, hear me! Like a mantis, I am praying, out of habit, without saying anything, for the bloody sting of a kestrel come to snatch me" (Remember to Breathe) it's got puns it's got self destructive thoughts it's got vague religious implications which I'm not a fan of personally but you guys seem to love it when it's Hozier. And who can ignore "To the gunmen who guard against all of the starving: God will bury you, nature will bury you [...] To the terrified rich man: God will bury you. To the killers of animals: nature will bury you." (The Burial) like don't tell me that doesn't go hard. (Personally I like to think of The Burial as not a threat but a loving promise. It continues "To the worshipper of justice, the reliance on reason, and the fire in your eyes: God will bury you, nature will bury you, time will bury your bones unseen. Total and absolute. Infinite amplitude. Till all the black is ripe and green." and because honoring the dead and burying them is an important act of kindness, I like to think of this as a promise that no matter who you are, no matter who you leave behind to mourn you, you will be buried. You will die and you will return to the Earth and you will be lovingly welcomed, it is inevitable and inescapable, I promise. I know I already rambled about this when I reblogged that worm poem post but I will keep talking about it because I love it and I don't know how many people actually read it.) There's so much more I want to say but I'm on mobile in bed hours past bedtime and this paragraph is probably already way too long and disorganized so like maybe tomorrow but! Regardless of whether you can listen to the music I highly recommend reading some of the lyrics here: https://seemingmusic.tumblr.com/text

Anyway moving on from minor infodump, I'm not entirely sure what you mean by your second question like are you asking my opinion on pets as a concept or my preferences for having pets or? I think humans love to pack bond with things that are not humans and as long as the human is able to meet the needs of an animal to create a mutually beneficial relationship that's a good thing, but ideally you should opt for domesticated animals (animals that have been our companions for so long they are genetically distinct from their wild counterparts) since they are best adapted to living with humans. I was practically raised by cats living with my workaholic single mom and our cats so personally I love cats and probably have a better time connecting with them than I would other common pets like dogs. Currently mom and I are sharing two cats, brothers, but one rarely visits me while the other is obsessed with me but I suspect this is because a) I always have his favorite snack available (potato chips. yeah I don't think he knows he's a cat) and b) I pet him the way he likes best (which is a lot of rubbing and scratching his spine by the tail intermittent with chin scritches, but he wants you to be firm with it as though he were a dog... again this man is not aware he's a cat).

A boring fact about me... Well easy mode is just "I have two feet" or "I ate a sandwich for breakfast today" but let me try to think of something a bit more personal yet still uninteresting... I have watched less than one episode of Supernatural. Yeah that's boring yet specific.

Thank you so much for the ask sorry my reply is a little messy I was already in bed when I got this!

[algolagniaa]

am i just getting more aware of it or is gender stuff going fucking balls to the walls crazy + extreme recently....... like is it because there are more detransitioners now that a certain subset of people feel the need to be more rigid in their genderificy?

tbh it's hard for me to judge bc I came out as gay as a teenager in California with a social circle of shut in nerds (homeschoolers) and rich white art kids (private school) so i've been entrenched in this shit for 10+ years against my will. my girlfriend lives in a small town in the midwest and has told me that it's only just creeping into her real life but for me it's been completely inescapable since like 2013.

I will say it's been harder for me to go along with it in any capacity. for a long time a large part of my social circle has been made up of trans people and so I've taken a tactic of.... not hiding my beliefs exactly but going along with surface stuff, using people's pronouns and going oh yeah you're the authority on yourself so if you say you're a man you should totally have that respected! but also uhm *bats my eyes and looks confused* what's gender exactly? bc to me the way I see gender is I just am a woman no matter what because I was born that way so I don't know what "gender" is the way you describe it, nothing you describe is something a woman can't feel like etc. and lately I just cannot do that act I get so frustrated with how sexist it is and have a hard time controlling my anger surrounding that. but I'm not sure if that's a change in how gendery everyone is getting or just a change in me.

[fanfoolishness]

a rain that sounds like home (6/8)

After the destruction of Tantiss, the Bad Batch is safe at last. As Crosshair begins to recover from his injuries, it becomes apparent that not all of his scars are physical, and that guilt and grief are wounds that cut deeper than any blade. His family is determined to be there for him -- if only he can let them in.

Canon-compliant, focusing on PTSD, amputation recovery, and sibling grief, with plenty of whump, hurt/comfort, and emotional catharsis. Set shortly after the return from Tantiss and my fic Breaching the Wall. 43,000 words total.

Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 | Chapter 5 | Chapter 7 | Chapter 8

Chapter 6: Night Terrors.

Crosshair and Omega struggle with nightmares, and Crosshair finds a new motivation to try and take care of himself. ~6600 words, Crosshair and Omega POV. Warnings for emetophobia and brief gore.

This chapter also includes the @summer-of-bad-batch prompt, "Get out of my room!"

---

He was back on Tantiss again.

Crosshair paced his cell, panic rising within him, his breath rapid and ragged.  Two point five meters across.  Two meters deep.  Four tall.  His feet traced a familiar cramped circuit, hand brushing against the wall, the cutouts in the door.  

His hand.  He looked down at both of them.  Something wasn’t right, though he couldn’t place it.  He flexed the right, a tremor cresting through it, flexing fingers and thumb in a tense spasm.  He glared at it, furious with his own weakness.

He had to get out of here.  Dread filled the core of him, suffusing him with an agitation that bordered on panic.  He had to escape.  Before Hemlock called for him to resume his CX “training,” before they plied him with the sedatives that made it impossible to keep his meager meals down, before the gas burned his lungs.  The world blurred around him, memories fading and flickering.  

Remember your name.  Remember your name.  You have to --

His fingers scrabbled at the walls like claws until they bled.

“Crosshair?” Omega asked, her voice shaking.  He whirled to see her curling her fingers through the door.  She was smaller than she should be, dressed as a Kaminoan lab assistant, her hair short, eyes wide.  She was so fragile.  That wasn’t right either.  He took a step back, his heart pounding.

“You shouldn’t be here,” he hissed.  His hand twisted and shivered, and he growled, slamming it down to his side with his other hand.  He looked at her desperately.  “Get out of here.  You have to go.”

She was so small.  Had she ever been so small?  He was torn between wanting to reach out to her, torn between screaming for her to go away.  

Her brown eyes filled with tears.  “Crosshair, I have to tell you something.”

No.  He knew what she was going to say, knew with a terrible certainty.  He’d been in this moment before.  He turned away, wrapping his arms around himself.  “Don’t say it.  Stop.  Go away.”  His stomach twisted, bile rising in the back of his throat.

“I’m so sorry --” 

He turned around, and she had grown.  Hair long enough to reach her chin, the Tantiss uniform slightly too big for her, brown eyes that were far wiser than they should be.  Eyes that had seen grief.  Tears streaked her face, and the pain there tore at him, lodging in the beat of his heart.  

“Get out of here, Omega,” he whispered, backing up until he hit the bunk.  He stumbled, falling back onto its firm surface.  His hands gripped the edge of the bed, shaking badly.  “Don’t say it.  Don’t say it.”  His voice cracked, pleading and desperate.  

He’d played the words that were coming over and over again in his head.  He didn’t need to hear them, not ever again.  He stared into her face, the faded overhead lights of the cell block glimmering in the tears in her eyes.  The dread grew, suffocating, smothering, inescapable.

Wake up, wake up --

“Crosshair, Tech’s gone --”

“No!”

He was awake in the dark on Pabu, staring at the ceiling of the bedroom he shared with Hunter and Wrecker.  Wrecker’s steady snores were a soft drone in the background, a bass note underlying Crosshair’s own ragged breathing.

He took a deep breath, trying to quell the racing in his chest.  He wiped his forehead with the back of his stump, and it came back damp with sweat.

Just dreams.  They don’t mean anything.  Let it go.

A dark shape in his peripheral vision shifted, a form rising up.  He could see Hunter sitting upright, propping himself up on his arms, his head turned toward him.  He resigned himself to a conversation he didn’t want to have.

“Cross,” Hunter said quietly, keeping his voice down to avoid waking Wrecker.  Crosshair risked a glance at Wrecker, realizing he was sleeping with his good ear down; he probably wouldn’t hear them.

Crosshair tried to keep his voice steady, struggling to keep it sounding calm despite the way his heart still bounded painfully in his chest.  “Just a dream, that’s all.”

“Third one this week.”

Crosshair stayed silent.  It was the fifth, but he’d managed to keep quieter the other two times.

“You want to take a walk?” Hunter asked.

A walk would mean talking, Hunter prying and trying to pretend he wasn’t.  It would mean thinking back to his dreams this week, and the week before, and the week before that.  So what if he’d been having them more often?  With Tantiss well and gone, the dreams were just an echo, nothing that could really hurt him at this point.  He didn’t want to talk about it.  Didn’t need to.  

Dwelling on it -- all of it -- wouldn’t change anything.

“No.  Sorry to wake you.”  Crosshair rolled over, turning his back to Hunter and drawing his blanket up over his ears.  He closed his eyes tightly, curling his arms against his chest.

The ghost of his right hand ached and shivered, phantom pain sparking up again, and he rubbed the scar at his wrist until he fell back asleep.

---

In the morning neither of them talked about it, which was fine by him.  He passed Hunter in the hall on his way to the ‘fresher, and neither said a word, though Hunter’s concerned look wasn’t lost on him.

Crosshair let Batcher out onto the patio, bringing a blazing hot cup of sweetened caf with him.  The idea of food right now turned his stomach.  He looked around the little patio, breathing in the morning air, trying to ground himself with the here and now.  In the distance the ocean shimmered, glassy greens and blues and grays shifting beneath a clouded sky.  He caught a fresh scent of greenery mixed in with the smell of caf, noting Hunter’s vegetables in the little garden starting to leaf out and grow stronger.

It still took him by surprise, that this house was theirs, that they didn’t have to keep running.  Even more surprising was the way the community had embraced them after everything their presence had brought down on the island, the destruction from the Imperials, the influx of refugees. He hadn’t believed it at first; it took some getting used to, people wanting them to stay.

He took a seat on the bench, watching the hound explore the bushes at the periphery of the patio.  She knew somehow to leave Hunter’s plants alone.  She nibbled on a blossom experimentally, then snuffled loudly and shoved her head deep into the whole bush, following a little bird in reddish brown that was flitting about the branches.  Crosshair chuckled slightly.  At least the hound was in a good mood.

The door slid open and Omega stepped outside, still wearing her sleeping clothes.  She let out a towering yawn, squinting her eyes shut, rumpling the blond hair that seemed to be getting longer every day.  

Then again, his hair was getting longer, too.  He’d given in once so far to Wrecker shaving it for him, a week or two ago, but clones’ hair grew quickly.  He knew it wasn’t something he could handle asking for often.  It was already getting scruffy once more, and he resigned himself to keeping it longer, at least for now.

He scratched at his chin.  He did, begrudgingly, start asking Wrecker to help him shave about once a week.  It had gotten too long and scratchy otherwise.  But every time, he averted his eyes, tensed up, and waited for it to be over.  Just another thing he couldn’t do properly now.

Omega nodded to him, sitting beside him on the bench.  She leaned against him, and he shifted to adjust, his arm sliding around her shoulders like it belonged there.  She rested her head against his shoulder.

“Morning, Crosshair,” Omega said warmly.  She leaned forward, greeting Batcher with a fierce scratch on her massive head.  Batcher groaned in appreciation, then flopped over to her side and wagged her tiny tail furiously.  Omega curled back up against him, hugging her knees to her chest in the slight morning chill.  “You sleep all right?”

Crosshair gave her a suspicious look, taking a drink of his caf.  “Why, did you talk to Hunter?”

“Well, yeah,” she said, tilting her head at him.  “Why wouldn’t I?”  She sighed.  “Another nightmare?”

“Still getting used to the new place, that’s all,” said Crosshair warily.  “‘Home’ isn’t something I thought I -- we’d -- ever see.”  He shrugged.  It wasn’t a lie.  It just wasn’t the problem.

“Sometimes I worry it isn’t real,” said Omega quietly.  “Like maybe the Empire will come back and take it all away.  But I don’t think they will.  Everything feels different now. It feels real.”

“They won’t come back,” Crosshair said, steel edging into his voice. “We’ve made sure of it.”

”I know.”  She rested her chin on her knees, watching as Batcher dove back into the bush with her tail whirring.  “Hey…  What do you think about meditating again with me?”

“You keep asking.”  He took a drink of his caf, staring down into the cup of half-drunk caf.  

“Well, I still think it’s a good idea,” Omega said stubbornly.  “So yes, I keep asking.”

“What would it help now?” he asked.  “No hand?  No tremor.  Problem solved.  It’s healed.”  He kept his gaze on his cup, not wanting to see the disappointment on her face.

“I don’t think it works like that.”

”And how do you know how it works?” he asked acidly.  

She looked back at him, her gaze unflinching, but the corners of her mouth twitched down.  Hell.  He’d hurt her feelings.

He took another drink of his caf, then set down his mug, sighing.  ”That wasn’t fair,” he muttered.  

“No, not really,” she agreed.  She looked… resigned.  Resigned to the fact that he was a constant frustration.  He knew that look well.

He pulled his arm away from her shoulders, rested his stump in his lap, looked out far to the horizon.  “I don’t know why you bother with me.”

She rested her hand on his knee.  “I’m just worried about you, Crosshair.  I don’t know what’s so hard to understand about that.”

“You shouldn’t have to worry about me,” he said.  Guilt unfurled within him, cold and furtive.  “I’m fine.  But you have a chance to be a kid now, and you should take it.”

”And you have a chance to take care of yourself,” Omega said plaintively.  She swallowed.  “You’re not fine.  I know you’re not sleeping right, ever since we came back from Tantiss. Hunter told me, but I hear you too sometimes. They must be bad dreams. Maybe you should talk about it?”

His cheeks flushed.  She could hear him, too?  These walls were thinner than he thought.

Crosshair blinked, crossing his arms over his chest.  “What good would it do?”

“Maybe a lot.  I don’t know.”  She stretched out beside him, then looked deep in thought.  At last she said, “Fine.  No meditating.  You want some breakfast, at least?”

His lips thinned.  “Nuh-uh.”

Omega huffed.  “Well, don’t forget to eat something.” She got to her feet and headed back inside, clearly aggravated, her well of boundless optimism apparently exhausted.

He frowned.  Maybe he wasn’t the only one who was still feeling off.  

Or maybe he was just that hardheaded.

He leaned forward, closing his eyes and letting his arms rest in his lap.  Batcher sniffed his right arm, then rubbed against him, gently huffing.  He patted her with his stump, her short fur soft against his skin, and he kept his eyes screwed shut.

Severe and unyielding.  

You cannot change that.  He cannot change that.

He mouthed the words, some of the last he’d ever heard Tech speak, and he tried to remember how Tech had sounded, the look on his face, where he’d been standing in the wreckage beneath Kamino’s waves.  

But the memory was uncooperative, Tech’s face blurry in his mind’s eye, and he balled his left hand up into a fist, breathing hard.  

---

“No luck, huh, kid?” Hunter asked, serving Omega a bowl of fruit and some pastries leftover from yesterday.  She glumly leaned on her elbows, kicking her feet under the table.  

“No.  He’s all closed up today,” Omega said, reaching out for a piece of aloogai fruit.  She picked at it with her fingernails, fiddling with the rind.  “I don’t understand.  I know it’s been hard with his hand, but I don’t think it’s just that.”  She bit her lip.  “I mean -- I didn’t mean ‘just’ that.  Ugh.  It came out wrong.”

Hunter sat down beside her, giving her a tired half-smile.  She stifled a yawn.  Crosshair’s yell had woken them both up.  She didn’t know about Hunter, but the way Crosshair had sounded so scared had made it hard for her to get back to sleep.  

“I knew what you meant, Omega,” he said, tearing off a piece of golden pastry.  Bits of crust flaked onto the plate in front of him, and he wiped his mouth.  “It takes time to get used to an injury like this.  I think that’s part of it.  But I don’t think it’s everything.  It does worry me that he’s not talking to you at least about it.”  He frowned.  “I get why he doesn’t want to talk to me, but I thought he had opened up more to you.”

“I don’t understand.  I thought he was getting better,” Omega said.  “And he talked so much at first.”

Hunter shrugged.  “AZI had him on some powerful medications in the beginning.  It’s a lot easier to talk like that.  But since his arm has healed, he hasn’t needed them as much, and he’s stopped talking.”  He shook his head.  “But talking about the kind of things he’s gone through… that’s never come easy.  To him, or to any of us.”

“He never did talk to me about Tantiss, not really,” said Omega, shivering.  She knew that their experiences on Tantiss had been very different; she hadn’t been blind.   “But things were better before the Empire came here.  He would meditate with me then.  I asked him again just now and he said no.  Again.”  She stared down at her fruit, remembering how flat his voice had been when he told her no hand? No tremor.  

But you still have bad memories! she’d wanted to shout.  That’s what the meditation was for in the first place!

Her brother was incredibly, irritatingly stubborn.

“It’s not your job to fix him, Omega,” Hunter said kindly.  “All you can do is offer help.  It’s on him to take you up on it.”  He sighed.  “I keep telling myself that, too.”

“So what do we do?” Omega asked, glancing toward the window that looked out onto the patio.  She couldn’t see Crosshair from the table, but she wondered if he was still out there, thinking about… she wished she knew what he thought about.

“We let him know we’re here, when he’s ready,” said Hunter.  He took another bite of his pastry, looking past her as if focusing on something.  Maybe he could hear Crosshair out on the patio.  She wondered, not for the first time, what it would be like to have senses like him.  “And in the meantime, we try not to worry until he gives us more reason to.”

Omega heaved a deep sigh.  “Argh.  It’s hard to train for this kind of mission.”

Hunter reached out, brushing some of her hair behind her ear.  She smiled at the touch, closing her eyes and leaning into his hand.  

“We just have to make it up as we go, Omega.  We’ve improvised before.”

She cracked a smile as he withdrew his hand.  “True enough.”

Hunter leaned back in his chair, considering.  “And how are you, kid?”

“Me?” she asked, taken by surprise.

She was fine, of course.  She was safe.  She’d fought back against the Empire with all of her training, and together she and her family had won.  She was going to class with the other kids on the island, and running and playing and exploring when she wasn’t reading things for fun.  Why wouldn’t she be fine?

But she had laid awake for hours this morning too, ever since she heard Crosshair crying out in the other room. I was just worried about him, that’s all.

She looked down at the table.  She still hadn’t answered the question.

“Omega?”

“I’m okay, Hunter.  Just worried.”

“Hm,” he said, but he leaned back, studying her face, and she had the feeling he knew more than he was letting on.

---

Hunter sprung his trap later that afternoon.  Wrecker was sitting at the kitchen table, weaving another net.  Crosshair was chewing on a toothpick on the couch, staring out the window and watching the clouds drift by.  Hunter had seemed engrossed in cleaning up the kitchen, but he left his post at the sink to stand in front of Crosshair and Wrecker, arms crossed. 

“House meeting,” Hunter said gruffly.

“The what now?” Crosshair asked, raising his eyebrow and pulling his toothpick from his mouth.  At the table, Wrecker set down his net, nodding, and pulled his chair over.  Hunter took a seat across from both of them.

“House meeting,” Hunter repeated.  “Where we talk about things that have come up.  Like a battle plan breakdown, except… about the house.”  He shrugged, looking a little sheepish.  “Shep recommended it.  I thought we could try it.”

“And what were you talking to Shep about?” Crosshair asked shrewdly.  

“He asked how we’ve all been adjusting.  He’s a good man, Shep.  I told him we’ve been happy here, but… there’s been some rough patches.”

Wrecker gave Hunter a look.  “Omega’s still figuring things out,” said Wrecker.  “She and I were talking, and… I know she’s happy, she loves things here, but I think she’s having a tough time, too.  I think she’s still scared of the Empire.”

“Omega?  The kid’s tougher than all of us put together,” Crosshair scoffed.

“She might be tough, but she’s been through a lot,” Hunter said.  Something sad crossed his face.  “You would know better than anyone.”  

Crosshair stared down at the floor.  He could feel the ghost of his hand, trembling slightly though there was nothing there.  “We got her out of there.  She’s fine.”  But he remembered the way she’d come out of the Archium a few weeks ago, tear-stained and quiet; how she didn’t always seem to sleep through the night, either; her insistence this morning on trying to take care of him.  He hesitated.  Maybe they had a point.  

“...what did you talk about with her?” he asked.

Wrecker showed his teeth in an awkward look.  “Well, uh, she talks a lot about you, Cross.”

“Yes, she does,” Hunter said.  “She’s worried about you.”

So that was all it was.  Crosshair relaxed.  They just needed to find something else for the kid to focus on, and then they’d all move on to something else.  “I know,” he blustered.  “I keep telling you all --”

“You’re fine, yeah, yeah, yeah,” Wrecker said.  “Look, you went through hell.  I know it.  Hunter knows it.  Omega knows it better ‘n all of us.  So stop pretending already.”  He lifted a hand, gesturing at the home around them, the beautiful view out the window.  “Look around.  It ain’t  life and death anymore.  We can… I dunno.  There’s space to deal with stuff like we couldn’t before.”

“So you’re ganging up on me,” Crosshair said, glaring.  “What’s it going to take to get you all to leave me alone?  So I don’t want help.  That can’t be a surprise.”

“No,” said Hunter.  He took a deep breath.  “I think you’re doing the best you can.  I do.  But if Omega’s got her own memories of Tantiss to work through, and she’s still worrying about you -- it makes it harder on her.  If you don’t want to deal with it for your sake, that’s one thing, but we have to think about her, too.  We might not be a squad anymore, but we’re a — a family — and when one of us has a problem, it gets all of us. ”

Crosshair leaned his head back against the couch, gazing up at the ceiling.  I know you’re not sleeping right.  Her face had been so earnest, so full of care -- and he’d pushed her away, the person he trusted more than anymore.  He let out a long, shaking breath, hating that what Hunter said made sense.

“So if there’s somethin’ we can do,” Wrecker said, “something that helps you… maybe it’ll help her.”  

“Have you talked to Echo lately?” Hunter asked.  “Maybe getting a replacement for your hand would help.  How’s the pain been?”

“It’s been getting better.  Fewer episodes, or maybe I’m just getting used to it,” said Crosshair, looking back at him.  “But I -- I don’t want Echo to waste his time.”  It’s not worth it.  And what if it -- if it doesn’t work --  

Better not to get his hopes up.  Better not to try.  Easier.

“You know that’s not how he sees it.  He asks after you, you know,” Hunter said.  “Look.  I -- I don’t know what it’s like.  I don’t know what I’d choose, if it was me.  To get a prosthetic, or not.  I’m sure you’ve thought about it a lot.  You don’t have to, if you don’t want to.  But that might be one thing you could at least try, if you don’t want to meditate with Omega.  Or… you could talk to us.”

“Those are my choices?”  He gave them a faint grin.  

“Got any better ideas?” Wrecker asked, reaching over and nudging him in the shoulder. 

“Not really, no.”  He hung his head.  If it’ll help Omega…  “I’ll -- consider it.”

“That’s all we’re asking.  And in the meantime, if Omega tries to talk to you -- talk to her, too.  Maybe she just needs more time to decompress from Tantiss.  Maybe she’s still missing Tech, or Echo.  Or missing those kids she met while she was a prisoner.  It could be a lot of things,” said Hunter.

“Yes,” Crosshair said softly.  “It could.”

---

His fingers throbbed, frozen over, blue and stiff and painful.  He ducked his head against the howling winds, pressing his cheek against the frozen material of Mayday’s helmet.  

“I’ve got you,” he whispered through chattering teeth that made his skull rattle.  He hunkered down against the mountainside, every part of him begging for the agony of the cold to stop, for a hint of warmth, for the slightest scrap of relief.  He shuddered against the other clone, clinging to him with both arms, the Firepuncher a shelter instead of a weapon.

“I’m sorry,” he breathed into the howling wind.

But Mayday did not answer.  He only clung to Crosshair more tightly, hands grasping at his armor.  Crosshair leaned into him, wrapping his arm more tightly around the other clone.  Ice and snow limned his glove and gauntlet, but even through the blue and white discoloration, he could see something wrong.  A hint of a red stripe, painted on the dark gray gauntlet beneath the icy coating.

He blinked.  He was with the Empire.  The gauntlet should be black as night.

He glanced painstakingly to his left, and saw a sniper pauldron, red against the snow.  Clone Force 99 armor.  It didn’t make sense.

He forced himself to look to Mayday.  Maybe he was hallucinating with the cold.  “Do you… is this real?” Crosshair gasped. 

Beneath his helmet, Mayday was trying to speak.  He couldn’t understand him.  With shaking hands, Crosshair reached to the other man’s helmet, carefully breaking the seal and easing it off.

Ruined eyes stared back at him, ringed with vicious red gouges tearing into the pale flesh of the clone’s face.  Misshapen cheeks bloomed purple from fractured cheekbones.  Blood oozed out of the clone’s nose, mouth, ears.  

Crosshair recoiled, tears streaming down his cheeks to freeze in the howling wind.  This wasn’t — this wasn’t Mayday —

The clone’s mouth moved, his voice strained, gurgling through the blood in his throat.  “You… cannot change,” Tech choked.  His broken face sank against Crosshair’s shoulder, smearing blood against the ice, against the snow, against the gray and red.

---

Crosshair jerked awake, panting, rubbing his face frantically with his hand.  The sweat-drenched sheets clung to him and he rolled out of bed, shaking, then glanced to see if he’d awoken Hunter or Wrecker.  

They were still sleeping.  Good.

He slipped out of the bedroom, his stomach churning.  It wasn’t real.  It wasn’t real.  It wasn’t Tech —

He beelined for the refresher, trying to swallow past the sudden saliva pooling in his mouth.  He leaned over the toilet, bracing his hand and his stump against his knees, breathing hard through his nose, willing himself not to retch.  Don’t think about it, don’t think about his… his face…

He dropped to his knees, vomiting up his dinner.

His body convulsed again and again, forcing him to bring up everything that remained.  At last he slumped against the toilet, gasping for breath, spitting out the foul taste of stomach acid.  He reached up to flush the toilet, then rolled to lean against the wall instead, fighting to catch his breath as his eyes watered.

I can’t go on like this.

He sat there drained, awash in memories of Mayday holding desperately to him, Tech falling asleep on his shoulder when they were young.  Except he’d done everything he could have for Mayday, and avenged him when that wasn’t enough.  He’d carried Mayday through the howling blizzard, he’d nearly frozen to death at his side, he’d held him every step of the way, he’d killed the man responsible for his death.  He knew with Mayday that he had had nothing left to give, and his loss, painful as it still was, carried no stain of guilt or shame.

But what had he done for Tech?  Nothing.  He’d turned away from him. He’d been so focused on Hunter on Kamino he’d barely spoken a word to Tech.  And it was his message, his warning, that had gotten Tech killed —

He clambered to his feet, turning on the sink for the coldest water it could produce.  He tried to cup his hands to form a bowl, then remembered, pulling his stump out of the sink.  He took a few slurps of cold water from his cupped left hand, then splashed his face, the cold water bringing him back to the present.

There. 

Better.

He took a long, long breath.  Maybe… maybe Omega had a point, still asking him to meditate.  Maybe it could do something for these dreams that were getting worse instead of better.

He left the refresher, padding back down the hallway in his bare feet.  He raised his hand to activate the door to their bedroom, but paused.  There was a sound coming from Omega’s room, something wrong.  It sounded like… crying.

He turned to Omega’s door instead.  She’d asked them not to come in without permission, but surely this didn’t count.  He raised his hand and the door slid open, revealing a soft glow from the dangling star lights.  Omega sat upright in her bed, her face buried in her hands.

She looked up as the door closed behind him.  For a moment her face twisted in anger and confusion.  “Get out of my room,” she said thickly.  

“Do you really mean that?” Crosshair asked.  He wasn’t impressed by her response.  She’d have to try a lot harder to get him off her back, and he was the reigning champion of pushing people away.

”No,” she muttered, looking abashed.  With a stab he realized her eyes were swollen, that she must have been crying for some time.  

He thought of Hunter’s house meeting.  

He wouldn’t let her down again.

”Mind if I sit here?” Crosshair asked, gesturing to the foot of her bed.

”I guess not.”  She rubbed her face, her breathing quieting, getting closer to normal.

”You, uh… you need to talk about something?” Crosshair asked as he sat down, carefully avoiding looking at her.  He studied her room instead in the dim light.  She’d really been making it her own.  Her desk was covered with tinkering, a sight that reminded him of Tech.  The shelves beneath the twinkle lights were being steadily filled in.  She’d arranged little stones and seashells on one shelf, ringing a larger seashell with interesting points and iridescence on its inner surface.  Lula rested up on the top shelf, leaning slightly to one side.  

“I don’t want to,” Omega said miserably.  “But if I don’t I — I think it’ll stick in my head.  I don’t want that.”

”What happened?”

”They’re just dreams.  They shouldn’t bother me so much,” she muttered.  

“They can feel awfully real,” Crosshair said grimly.  “I know.”

Omega sniffed, nodding.  “I dreamed Hemlock was still alive.  That he came here.  They captured the kids again, but this time they took Lyana too.  I tried to stop them but I couldn’t.  They were going to test her -- they were going to hurt her.  Then we were all on the bridge again, in the rain, and  — you and Hunter got shot.“  She froze, going pale.  

“It didn’t happen,” he murmured.  “We’re here.  You’re here.”

“I keep going back there,” she admitted.  “That moment.  I knew you and Hunter would save me, when it happened.  But I didn’t know how hurt you were.”  She reached out, touching his right arm.  Her hand was shaking.

She looked up at him, new tears in her eyes threatening to fall.  “What if you hadn’t made it in time?  What if Hemlock got away with me?  What if only one of you made it up there?  I don’t want to think like that, but it keeps coming back.  Like it did when Tech died, except in reverse.  What if — what if —“

”There’s no need for what ifs.  We know what happened.  You’re safe.  It’s okay —“  He reached out, hoping he was doing the right thing, and drew her into his arms.  She leaned against him, still trembling as he drew her closer.  He closed his eyes, and for a moment they breathed together, her heartbeat gradually calming.  

She pulled away, giving him a rueful, teary smile.  She looked better now, but still not her normal self.  “I don’t understand, Crosshair.  How can you tell me it’s okay when you’re not okay?”

”I’m fine,” he protested, and the words sounded weaker than ever, even in his own ears.

”You’re a bad liar, remember?  How can you try to help me when you won’t let anyone help you?”  She raised her eyebrow at him, looking determined.

He closed his mouth. Nodded.  That was a fair hit.  “I’ll work on it.”

”Really now.”

”Really,” Crosshair said.

”So… so what scares you, then?  You have bad dreams too,” Omega accused.  She leaned back against her pillows, pulling the covers up to her chin.

”I do,” he admitted.

”So what is it?”

He snorted.  “What isn’t it?”

Omega shook her head.  “Oh, Crosshair.”

He made a sweeping gesture with his left hand.  “Well, Tantiss.  Obviously.”  That was something all of them understood about him by now, something easier to bring up than the other things weighing him down.

”But it’s gone.”

”So’s Hemlock, but what about your dream?  Same thing.” 

“Oh.  I get it.”  She thought.  “But you were getting better.  Before.”

”Well, losing this… wasn’t easy.  Isn’t easy,” Crosshair said, holding out his stump.  It was less disorienting than it had been, something he no longer instinctively recoiled from, but that didn’t mean he didn’t hate looking down and seeing the scar or the emptiness at the end of his wrist.  “I feel useless.”

“You’re not, though.  You still do a lot,” Omega said.  

“But it’s not enough.”  He ground out the words, each syllable bitter.  “I think about it every day.  Every time I try to do something with two hands, every time I reach for something and forget, every time I have to ask Wrecker for a shave --”  He rubbed his arm roughly, as if it would bring his hand back.

He glanced at her, seeing the way his words wounded her.  He was revealing too much.  Putting too much on her.  He had to fix this.  “Maybe you’re right,” he said before he could stop himself.  “Maybe we should meditate again.”

Her eyes widened.  “Really?”

“Yeah,” he said, trying to sound convincing.  He hoped it was enough.

Omega blinked, then nodded.  “Okay then.  Do you remember the position?”

“Yes.”  He tried rearranging his legs on the bed to a cross-legged position, but found his knees were knocking against Omega’s.  He lowered himself down to the floor instead, leaning against the bed and crossing his legs there.  He glanced up at her.  ”Some of us are tall.”

She laughed a little, and some of his worry for her faded.  That was how their girl deserved to be now: smiling at dumb things her brothers said, instead of being anxious or afraid about old horrors.  He felt a tinge of guilt.  If this would help her, he should have been doing it weeks ago.  

He shook his head.  He was doing it now.

He nudged his legs into position and rested the back of his left hand on his knee.  He hesitated with his stump, but it did reach long enough to rest against his leg.  He closed his eyes, trying to forget the difference in his arms.

”Now breathe in, and out,” said Omega.  He could hear her breaths, soft and steady behind him.  He tried to mimic her.

But instead of his own breath, he heard the awful gurgling breathing from his dream, the roar of the blizzard’s winds, the rasp of Tech’s bloodied voice.  His left hand tightened into a fist, his nails digging into his palm.  

Breathe.  Do it for her.

He tried, but each breath felt like fire.  The nausea had thankfully left him, but he still felt faint, like he was half here, half lost in memory.  He opened his eyes, staring at the door, blinking back the water in them.

He didn’t manage the blankness, the calm, that he’d remembered from previous meditation sessions.  He couldn’t access that state of relief with Tech’s ruined face still haunting his mind.  But he kept breathing.  Maybe he could fake it long enough to help Omega anyway.

He didn’t know how much time passed.  His mind skittered from fear to guilt to horror.  He tried anchoring himself to Omega’s breaths, which helped slightly, but it still felt like years.

Her breathing changed, growing softer, less insistent.  He chanced a glance up at her, then got to his knees to take a closer look.  She had fallen fast asleep.

He let out a long sigh of relief and got to his feet.  He twitched the covers over her, then turned to the shelves at the other side of the room.  He retrieved Lula and set her at the crook of Omega’s arm, and she made a small noise, then pulled the tooka closer.

Crosshair smiled sadly down at her.  I tried, Omega.  

I hope it was enough.

---

Pick up, pick up, pick up.

He sat at the kitchen table at the comms, the house still and quiet around him.  Omega hadn’t woken back up again, and Hunter and Wrecker hadn’t come looking for him.  His only company was Batcher, snoring in her bed in the living room.  For a moment, all he could hear was distant waves on the shore and the pinging of the comms.  Then a holo sprang into view before him, and Echo gave him a salute.

“So you finally called back,” Echo said, smirking.

“I’ve been busy,” Crosshair said defensively.

“Busy avoiding me?  Or actually busy?” Echo asked.  Even in hologram form, it was easy to see his eyebrow lift in skepticism.

“See, with remarks like that, is it any wonder I haven’t come running for your comms?” Crosshair said, the edges of his mouth lifting up in a half-smile.

“I get it,” said Echo.  “You’re settling in.  Enjoying the island life.  Moving on.  Right?”  He stared at Crosshair, his holo-blue eyes piercing.

Crosshair looked away.  “Not exactly.”

“What time is it there?”

“Late,” Crosshair muttered.  “Very late.”

“So talk to me.  You know I can understand.”

Crosshair scowled.  “What am I supposed to say?  That everything’s perfect here?  It’s not.  I’m not.”

“No one expects you to be, Crosshair,” said Echo.  “We’re bad batchers, remember?  Being imperfect comes with the territory.”  He tapped at the implants at his temple with his scomp for emphasis.  “You were all willing to take a chance on me after Skako Minor.  What’s different here?”

“It’s different because it’s me,” Crosshair gritted through bared teeth.  “You had your scomp, your enhancements.  The squad was better with you on it.  But I can’t do the only thing I was ever good at, and I’m weighing them down.  If Omega’s struggling because of me then what good am I?”

“Hunter told me what happened on the bridge that night,” said Echo, eyes narrowing.  “You don’t think that counts for something?”

Crosshair sighed, covering his face with his hand, rubbing his cheek and temple.  “No, of course it did.  Saving Omega is the best thing I ever did.”  His cheeks burned with faint pride, the same feeling he used to get after intense shots on the battlefield, the knowledge that he’d put all of his skill and talent to bear on the battle and had come out ahead.  He would never not feel proud of that moment.  “But I -- I should be doing more.  I don’t want to drag them down.  That can’t be the last useful thing I ever do.”

“Maybe it’s useful to take care of yourself,” Echo said.  “Ever think of it like that?”

He mumbled something.  

“What was that?”

Crosshair sighed, lowering his hand and looking blearily into Echo’s holo.  “What if I don’t deserve that?”

Echo’s holo got smaller as he sat back in his chair, and for a moment he was deep in thought.  Crosshair hung his head.  He’d said too much.

“So what if you don’t?” Echo said at last.  “What if you did it anyway?”

Crosshair opened his mouth as if to speak.  I don’t deserve it because Tech should be here, not me. You don’t understand. I’ll never be able to make it up to him.  But he couldn’t get the words out.  They lodged in his throat, making it hard to swallow.

He thought of the old man mistaking him for Tech, the goggles in the living room he avoided, every day.

He shivered, trying a different tack.  “I don’t know if I can.  I tried meditating with Omega tonight… it didn’t work.  What if nothing works?”  

“Crosshair, you’re a tough bastard.  You’ve already survived the past once.  Don’t let it get you now,” said Echo sternly.

He chuckled despite himself.  Echo always did have a way with words.  “I guess that makes sense.”

“Of course it does.  I said it,” said Echo.  He grinned, leaning back in.  “Now, look… Phee found us a seller for a hand, and if you want to try it, it’s yours.  There’s a favor we can do for them that should be easy enough, and I could have it in a standard week.  Unless you’d rather I look for a scomp.”

Crosshair smiled faintly.  “Wouldn’t know the first thing to do with that.”  He let out a long sigh.  “All right.  Let’s… let’s try it.  I'm tired of not being able to shave.  And maybe that’ll make some things easier.”

“Fair enough.  And if you don’t like it -- it’s not a problem.  It’s just an option.”

Crosshair stared at the comm, then lifted his head and looked into Echo’s eyes.  “Thanks, Echo.  For hearing me out.”

“Thanks for talking, Crosshair.”

[agonycrossbow]

Thinking about the complete and total role reversal that must have inevitably happened after Leon and Ashley got home from Spain and how how quickly the fairy tale came unraveled as soon as they touched back down into reality.

Fairytale Leon: The strong, honorable, fearless knight who walks through fire and water and mud and shit with his head held high and moves forward, undaunted, towards his goal. Feels more like a force of nature than a man, as he leaves a trail of violence and chaos in his wake, with the blood of his enemies sprayed across his face and in his hair. He's in charge and inescapable; woe betide the man who crosses his path.

Reality Leon: Soft-spoken and almost demure, with his eyes almost constantly turned downcast as he walks to wherever he's told to go -- an unquestioning "Yes, sir" following every order. His body armor has been traded in for a well-pressed suit that seems almost too clean -- and despite having been tailored specifically for his measurements, doesn't look like it fits him right. Always seems at a distance, as though he's perpetually standing just out of reach.

Fairytale Ashley: The warm-hearted and free-spirited princess fair who keeps the light of hope burning and charms the honorable knight with her easy smile and welcoming personality. Her presence is like a home away from home, as she's fair-minded and treats everyone with respect. She's exactly as strong as she needs to be, as she's inspired by the strength of those around her -- which then inspires those people further in return.

Reality Ashley: Cold and closed off for the sake of keeping up appearances. Too afraid to show any emotion that's too strong or hold an opinion that's too controversial due to the looming consequence of potential backlash. Everything in her life is dictated by her station, forcing her into a selfish and self-centered lifestyle that sees her only interacting with her Equals.

Thinking about Leon and Ashley passing each other in the halls of the White House or at some official government event and only allowing themselves a quick second or two to look at the other as though they're just window-shopping for something that they know is forever out of their reach.

Thinking about the cognitive dissonance of "I know you and feel safe with you and want to be with you" lingering from the memory of their shared fairy tale being paired with the reality of "I don't really know you at all, do I?" and the forbidden longing that never gets addressed or resolved, causing each of them to have a certain level of identity crisis.

Thinking about how surprisingly and upsettingly different it feels when they finally take a second to acknowledge and talk to each other. Neither of them really knows what to say or how to address the other. The thought of casually putting a hand on Ashley's shoulder feels invasive and almost wrong to Leon, despite having held her in his arms so, so many times. Ashley wants nothing more than to reach out and touch him -- to adjust the lapel of his suit jacket or straighten his tie, but for some reason it feels like there's an invisible wall between them -- that, even if she were to reach out, her touch would never really reach him. Because they're strangers to each other now in a strange setting, and all of the rules have been rewritten, and nothing feels like it should.

[keplercryptids]

gen question: do you think its okay to *add* a joke to an image description? like saying an accurate description in a joking manner/tone

this is difficult to give a straightforward answer to, and actually brings up a pet peeve of mine in the online accessibility space. IMO, a lot of blanket statements about ID best practices really miss the mark, because the most important thing about any image description is *context.* so with a few exceptions, i almost never agree with ID tips that say you should always or never do something, stylistically speaking.

context is key. context is the most important aspect of an image or audio description.

i think image descriptions can (and sometimes should!) be playful and humorous. i think a funny description of a funny image is totally appropriate (as long as you aren't relying on a visual un-described cue to make the joke, or making the joke at the expense of making it accessible, etc). i think ID advice that says your descriptions should only be literal, objective sources of information is inherently flawed, because image descriptions are written by people. they have a point of view because their authors have a point of view, that's inescapable. and i think pretending an image description even can be totally objective is a waste of time. a hundred people could write a description for the same image, and you'd have 100 different descriptions.

on top of that, people who need image descriptions aren't a monolith. they have varying and sometimes contradictory opinions and preferences, which is of course valid, but challenges the idea there's One Correct Way to describe an image.

all of this to say! yes. i think humorous, witty, playful, and silly descriptions can be okay and are even necessary sometimes to accurately convey an image. and obviously, there are situations where adding humor to a description would be entirely inappropriate. context matters.