#it's all gonna bottleneck

[alistairian]

Once upon a time you could just drive into our little town without encountering any traffic. Now you're bumper-to-bumper crawling at 10km/hr along a single lane highway that has a posted speed limit of 60. All lined up behind the first of 3(total) light-controlled intersections.

I think some factors were overlooked when they decided to build a bunch of new homes and condos at the end(no loop) of a highway in a town with hardly any businesses and no space to expand. It's almost as if, hm, everybody who lives here needs to commute to a different city for work? And they're all driving in the same direction on the same road? The only road leaving town?

But hey it's prime oceanfront realestate just far enough from the city to be "affordable" so fuck it I guess

[around-your-throat]

ok so like do i say it

[atomskdluffy]

I really need to get around to finalizing the upgrade to my PC, but after that last attempt I've lost the motivation to try again. I think I know how I'll find it again, and sadly it's not completely up to me: I need someone else here to supervise the process. So as I near the end of Burning Shores and start to wonder what I should stream next, I have to admit that it will not be BG3 for some time yet, not until the stars align and my upgrade is complete. I'll have to find a much smaller-scale game to play first!

[internal-bleating]

Yes I know it's kind of hard to see. No I don't care. I don't feel like changing the background color for this ONE prompt. Which I had no fuckin clue wtf to draw mind you

Prompt 15 is also finished but it would bug the fuck out of me if I posted it out of order. Prompts 13 and 14 are in the sketch stage so I just gotta squeeze in working on them with tommorow's prompt :) and THEN I can post them all at once. Maybe...

[rubys-domain]

i really hope xingqiu appears on the 4.0 banners so i can stop trying to get kokomi

[oflgtfol]

literally running into every obstacle possible when trying to bind this book

[loveinhawkins]

Every so often, Eddie will get the bus to Starcourt Mall (because what else is there to do?) and watch the world go by.

It’s not like he’s above a cliché or two—maybe he wants to indulge in being a lone figure within the crowd. Maybe he just feels like wallowing in the aimlessness of it all, damn it.

This is where Wayne would point out that Eddie is exactly the opposite of aimless, what with how he’d stormed into the trailer last month, failed test results in hand and snarled, “Next year. I’ll fuckin’ show ‘em.”

But there’s a long time between now and the new school year starting, the summer stretching out before him like taffy. He’d tried to start his reading list early again, but that’s never done him much good; this time he’d gotten through one chapter of Moby-fucking-Dick before despairing.

So. People-watching at the mall it is.

It’s surprisingly not all that terrible an activity, apart from discovering which teachers are suddenly very passionate about jazzercise—a sight Eddie could’ve blissfully lived the rest of his life without seeing.

There’s also the confirmation that the Starcourt commercial he saw was not a vivid hallucination—that Scoops Ahoy is, in fact, real.

And so are the ridiculous sailor outfits.

Well, I’ll be damned, Eddie thinks.

Robin Buckley and Steve Harrington are an incredibly unlikely duo. It’s like the universe abandoned all sense, spun a wheel and paired them up just for the fun of it.

When he joins the line for ice-cream, Eddie initially thinks he’ll find the whole thing laughable: seeing people forced to work together when usually the laws of the universe (and Hawkins High) would keep them as far apart as possible.

But then he discovers that the ice-cream parlor is packed, one hell of a bottleneck forming right up at the counter, where folks are waiting for a seemingly never-ending amount of floats to be poured.

It takes a while for Eddie to near the front of the line; enough time passes that he honestly feels kind of bad for even taking up a spot, for adding to the workload that has Robin shouting herself hoarse with every, “Next please!”

He strongly considers just leaving, but he hesitates for a moment too long, and unintentionally meets eyes with…

“Hi,” Steve says, pleasantly enough, if a little distracted as he prods at the soda machine. He smiles apologetically. “Be with you in a sec.”

Eddie almost wants to tell him you know it’s me, right? He doesn’t.

It’s not that he expects Steve to be mean, exactly; it’s just that he’s getting more than familiar with the whole post graduation routine. It’s like there’s a secret page in folks’ yearbooks, instructing them to look at anyone still attached to high school with either indifference or embarrassment—or both.

Steve must not have got the memo.

“Next!”

Robin beckons Eddie forward with a sweeping arm gesture, looks somewhere behind him and sighs in relief, puffing out her cheeks.

“Oh, thank God. You stopped the tide.”

Eddie glances over his shoulder; sure enough, he’s the last person left to order.

“Don’t think I’ve got that power, Buckley.”

Robin raises an eyebrow. “Debatable.”

Eddie almost laughs. There was a rumour in his first attempt at senior year that he could curse people: it only came about because he ominously whispered some Pig Latin he’d once overheard Robin herself use during History, and Molly Pritchard crossed herself in horror.

“I’ll have a vanilla cup.”

“Ooh,” Robin says dryly, “adventurous.”

“Nothing wrong with a classic,” Eddie says.

Robin smirks as she rings him up. They don’t know each other that well, but there’s admittedly something nice in the distant familiarity they share; at the very least, she’s not gonna add to any potential awfulness when school starts again.

While Robin hands over his change, Steve is filling up a cup—Eddie would say he’s uncharacteristically quiet, except for the fact that he doesn’t actually know what truly is characteristic of Steve Harrington.

Plus he’s stuck on the fact that he only paid for one scoop, but the amount of ice-cream Steve manages to cram in is almost double that.

And he does this ridiculous little twirly thing with the scooper before he even reaches for the tray of vanilla.

Eddie tells himself he notices just because the move is so stupid; it’s definitely not because he’s noticing Steve’s hands in general. It’s just… eyes get drawn to movement. That’s all.

“Syrup?” Steve asks, nodding his head at the dispensers.

“Sure,” Eddie says. “Strawberry.”

Steve wrinkles his nose. “Oh, don’t do that, man. Get it with butterscotch.”

Robin’s eyes rise to the heavens, as if some longstanding argument has begun once again.

“And why should I do that, Harrington?” Eddie says.

“Because,” Steve says, like he’s patiently explaining that two plus two equals four, “butterscotch is better. Obviously.”

“Obviously,” Robin parrots mockingly. She closes the register drawer and says, “I’m taking my break, Popeye. Try not to judge the customers too hard.”

Eddie’s pretty sure he hears Steve mutter under his breath as she leaves, “Seriously? You’re worse than me.”

His cup of ice-cream is under hostage, apparently. Steve still hasn’t pressed down on the damn syrup pump.

“This your usual sales technique?” Eddie says. “Browbeating the customers?”

“Only the lucky ones,” Steve returns mildly.

Eddie scoffs. “Fine. Gimme the damn butterscotch then.”

“Knew you’d come to your senses,” Steve says.

He hands the cup over without any more quips; just as he’s done with the syrup, a large family swoops in with multiple sundae orders.

Eddie eats the ice-cream while waiting for the bus back home. He grudgingly has to admit that the butterscotch isn’t bad.

But that’s not really what’s bugging him.

He has to know if it’s a fluke—if maybe, just maybe, Steve Harrington only deigned to talk to him because he was, like… delirious or something. Maybe the flood of demanding customers scrambled his brain.

Of course, when Eddie goes back to the mall, it’s purely to test his theory. Strictly observational—educational, even. Like… summer school. (Take that, O’Donnell.)

The bus drops them off a little bit before the mall actually opens, but they’re allowed inside anyway. Eddie inwardly cringes at the sight of grown adults tapping persistently on the windows of still closed stores. Jesus Christ, they’re worse than zombies.

Scoops Ahoy isn’t open yet either; Eddie’s soon witness to a very stressed looking Steve striding over to unlock the place.

He flits in and out of view for a while, taking mops round to the back, filling up the jars of toppings.

Eddie actually considers heading over to Waldenbooks to check if it’s open (it’s not like he’s coming here for one store in particular, obviously), but then he hears metal clacking against the tiles.

When he looks back at Scoops Ahoy, he spots a set of keys on the ground right at the entrance, Steve nowhere in sight.

Goddamn it. He’s gonna have to be a Good Samaritan. Ugh.

Eddie briefly looks up to the ceiling as if he can condemn the ways of the universe from here. Then he sighs, picks up the keys and steps into the store.

“Harrington, you dropped these—”

“Shit,” comes Steve’s voice from the back, followed by an almighty clatter.

Eddie hesitates before his curiosity inevitably wins out.

He goes behind the register, through the door and finds the aftermath of complete disaster: Steve standing in front of an entire vat of ice-cream that’s been dropped onto the floor. It’s splattered all up his legs, cookies and cream clinging to the hairs.

Holy shit, stop thinking about his leg hair, Eddie thinks.

Up until this point in time, he’d believed it was physically impossible to look anything other than comical in that stupid sailor outfit.

(Well. Almost.)

But right now Steve looks absolutely tragic. Like he’s a crew member on the Titanic levels of tragic, and he’s about to deliver the news that there’s simply no more lifeboats.

Steve meets Eddie’s gaze.

“That was limited edition,” he says pitifully.

They both look down at the floor.

“Well,” Eddie says. “It definitely is now. Still, uh, what’s the phrase? No use crying over spilled… ice-cream.”

“Oh, I’m not gonna cry over it,” Steve says. “I’m gonna scream.” For a moment he looks murderous. “Robin’s not coming in.”

“Is she sick?”

Steve snorts. “Sick my ass. No, she’s keeping The Hawk in business—gonna see a movie about an ice-cream parlor, something like that.”

“An ice-cream parlor,” Eddie echoes. “Um. Are you sure she didn’t just make it up?”

Steve shakes his head. “No, it’s one of those foreign—never mind.”

He cuts himself off, lifts up one foot, as if he’s become aware of his predicament all over again.

“I was fine with her ditching, she can do whatever; it’s not like we have managers checking up on us. But I forgot a huge delivery was coming, and it’s Saturday so it’s gonna be crazy, so I’m not gonna have time to put all of it in the freezer or check the stock chart, so it’s all just gonna become fucking soup, Jesus, maybe I should just throw everything on the floor and—”

“I could help,” Eddie interrupts, because apparently a little alien has burrowed into his brain and now he just says things.

Steve stares at him. “Why would you do that?”

“Yeah, uh, sorry,” Eddie says. He wishes his brain-invading alien an immediate death. “Bad idea, just—”

“No, I mean why would you do that? Dude, it’s not like I can pay you or—”

“I don’t really have plans,” Eddie says—oh great, the alien hasn’t died! “Uh, you can pay me with, like, a name tag?” What? Stop talking. “Like a souvenir?” Stop! “Oh sorry,” Steve says, as if on automatic pilot. He pulls at his shirt. “We don’t have—our names are stitched on.”

I was kidding about the name tag. Actually, maybe you should just murder me instead.

By some miracle, Eddie’s expression must somehow still look fairly normal because Steve continues, deadly serious, “Munson. Are you sure?”

This is the time to back out—

“Yeah,” Eddie says. “Look, man, it’s no big deal. I can clean this up and—”

A bell starts ringing from the front, being struck over and over again in the most obnoxious way possible.

Something in Steve’s eyes flickers, a shift from panic into planning mode, and Eddie has the sudden bizarre feeling that this is what the basketball team saw whenever a crisis timeout was called.

“You sure you’re okay if I leave you back here?” Steve asks, and the gravity with which he says it threatens to send Eddie into hysterics—Christ, you’d think they were in the goddamn trenches.

“Think I’ll survive,” Eddie says. “I’m basically cleaning up, and putting everything into the freezer?”

Steve nods. “And, um, a stock check too, if that’s okay? There’s a chart pinned up, you just gotta count the flavours and put, like, tally marks next to—”

“Oh my God, not tally marks,” Eddie drawls. “The horror.”

Steve huffs. “I was just—”

The bell rings even more insistently.

“Uh, think you’re needed on the front line,” Eddie says.

He nearly chokes on his own spit when Steve turns to just march right on out there.

“Harrington, wait! Your—your legs,” he says weakly.

Steve has the audacity to look puzzled. “What about them?”

They’re very long.

Eddie gestures silently to the ice-cream on the floor, then attempts a vague hovering motion in the direction of Steve’s legs.

Steve’s eyes go wide in realisation. His cheeks turn slightly red. “Oh! Yeah, um, thanks. Um. I’ll just…”

He disappears into the world’s tiniest restroom, comes back free of cookies and cream before heading out to the front.

Well, Eddie thinks to the mop he finds, this is definitely a situation.

It’s not the worst way he’s spent a few hours, apart from having to listen to a Sailor’s Hornpipe on loop through the speakers (he briefly wonders how Robin and Steve stay sane). He cleans up, gets the rest of the delivery into the freezer, even jots down some tally marks, wonder of wonders.

Steve will occasionally slide back the shutters and pop his head in, passing over a soda.

“Employee perks,” he says, then has to hurriedly retreat to keep serving.

Eddie keeps waiting for the stiltedness to set in, but it seems Steve’s far too busy for there to be any awkwardness.

At midday the shutter slides back again and Steve says, “Hey, can you do me one last thing, and I’ll never ask you for anything ever again, I swear.”

“Harrington, you’ve technically never asked me for anything. Gimme the mission.”

Turns out the mission is just to use some employee only coupons at Burger King so Steve can take his lunch.

Eddie returns to Scoops Ahoy with two burgers to find that Steve’s strategically placed a pile of chairs and wet floor signs at the threshold to deter people from entering.

There’s also a hand-drawn sign on top of one of the chairs: Out for Lunch. Underneath, there’s a horrendously bad drawing of a ship on choppy waves.

Eddie tries very hard to not find it endearing.

He gives Steve a burger, hops onto the table in the back and starts eating his own.

A quarter of the way through, he realises that he could leave now—he’s done everything Steve’s asked, and Steve’s already said he can manage the remaining shift on his own now that the delivery’s been put away.

Huh. Well, he’s already gone to all the effort of sitting here…

Steve’s quiet for most of his lunch. Eddie doesn’t mind; he enjoys his free food, comes up with a half-baked campaign idea before discarding it, counts every tile in the room…

Looks over.

Steve’s sat with one leg hunched up to his chest, a book resting on his knee—the cover’s folded over the back as he reads, the spine broken. Eddie doesn’t know why on earth it’s attractive, but it is; he feels like some mooning middle schooler, entranced by the way their stupid crush eats spaghetti or some bullshit like that.

But then again, there’s always been an easy grace to Steve Harrington.

A beeping noise; Steve checks his wristwatch with a sigh.

“Ugh.”

He leaves the book on the table, at just the right angle for Eddie to read the title: Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.

“Is it good?”

“Hmm? Oh. Yeah, I’m only a couple chapters in, so…” Steve shrugs. “Honestly, it’s the most I’ve read since starting high school.”

And Eddie gets that: the senior years he’s suffered through have left him each time with a brain like a wrung out sponge, not even having the energy for Tolkien.

God. At this rate he’s never gonna read for fun ever again.

His face must do something because Steve opens and closes his mouth a few times before saying, a little hesitant, “Hey, I’m sorry you never, uh… made it through, y’know? You—you were so close, man.” Eddie doesn’t bother wasting time on being pissed that Steve knows some of the details: ‘test results’ and ‘confidentiality’ don’t exactly go together in Hawkins High.

“Yeah, uh. Thanks. Here’s hoping third time’s the charm.”

Steve claps his shoulder. “You’ll do it, it was just tough this year. Like, I scraped through, trust me.”

Eddie snorts—he would literally kill to have a handful of Steve’s grades.

“Think my definition of ‘scraped through’ is different to yours.”

He helps Steve disassemble the mountain of chairs, and now it really is obvious that he could just leave; he only has to take a few steps, and then he’s out of there.

But he pauses.

The store is still empty.

Eddie shuffles back from the doorway. “Ice-cream for the road?”

Steve laughs. “Sure. Least I can do.”

He doesn’t ask Eddie what he wants, just serves a vanilla cup with butterscotch syrup.

Eddie suddenly feels himself fighting a smile. “Think you’ve got an agenda, man.”

“Nope. Just giving you the superior choice, Munson.”

Then Steve picks up an empty cup and pours more butterscotch into it, nothing else. He knocks it back like a shot. “Gross,” Eddie says.

Steve flashes him a syrup-streaked grin.

It’s so… juvenile.

If it wasn’t for the fact that they’re in a mall, Eddie would almost think that he’d gone back a few years, made an unexpected temporary friend that goofed off with him in the back of the class.

He finishes his ice-cream as more people flock to the counter; in what seems like no time at all, Steve’s ushering Eddie out, pulling down the security grille.

It feels a bit like a soap bubble has burst. Like the bell’s unexpectedly rung at the end of last period, in a class he was actually enjoying, against all odds.

Steve does say, quite sincerely, “Thanks, Munson. You didn’t have to… you really saved my ass.”

Eddie’s about to clumsily work his way through some reply about how it was nothing, but then they really do have to go, because some stern-faced security guard’s staring like he might vaporise them.

It’s just one day, Eddie thinks. A… what’s-it-called. An anomaly.

But he goes back to the mall the next afternoon. He doesn’t bother to make up an excuse even in his own head.

Scoops Ahoy is somehow even more packed this time—Steve’s serving up samples while Robin’s back at the register, and when she sees Eddie coming, she points at the vanilla, mouths, “The classic?”

He chuckles, nods. “How was your movie, Buckley?”

“No idea what you’re talking about,” she says serenely. “I was very sick.” She coughs delicately.

“Praying for your miraculous recovery.”

He gets vanilla with butterscotch syrup (just because Robin’s the closest to that particular dispenser, that’s all).

It’s so busy that once Robin’s finished at the register, she starts filling orders alongside Steve. When Eddie picks up his cup, they barely look at him, surrounded by other cups and plastic bowls laid out for ice-cream.

Figures. Eddie knows it’s not personal. Just. Soap bubble’s burst, and all that.

He’s almost out the store when he hears a whistle.

“Hey, Munson! Go long!”

“Fuck off, no,” Eddie says automatically, a response drilled into him from many a compulsory Phys Ed class.

But he turns, just in time to see Steve throw something at him. He catches it—it’s plastic, round—somehow manages to keep a hold of his ice-cream, too.

Steve gives a brief thumbs up, before he’s back to scooping. He still finds time to do that stupid twirl move again.

Once outside, Eddie opens up his hand. Snorts.

It’s a shitty white badge, chipped in several places. His name’s scrawled on it in red marker, a cartoony anchor in the upper right corner.

On the bus home, Eddie mulls over the thought of flicking through a couple chapters of The Hobbit, something like that. No pressure, no notes—no imagining the year ahead, a teacher looming over his shoulder. Just for fun.

There’s plenty of time.

He puts his souvenir in his pocket, takes another spoonful of ice-cream.

And he has to admit that butterscotch is pretty damn good.

[wynnyfryd]

Trailer Park Steve AU part 7

part 1 | part 6 | chapter 1 on ao3

cw: panic attack, ptsd flashback to minor character death, graphic depictions of… food? lol

Dinner is exactly as chaotic as Steve expected it to be. He and Claudia take opposite end seats with a glass of red wine each, and the kids take the middle and start acting like a pack of caffeinated raccoons: talking over each other, scraping forks against plates, stretching their entire upper bodies across the table and dragging their sleeves through the side dishes instead of just asking someone to pass them the butter; Steve’s starting to wonder if any of these kids have ever eaten at a table before, or if they maybe just wandered in from the surrounding woods. Feral asses.

When they do start asking for things, he regrets wishing they would, because Lucas goes “Erica, can you pass me the salt?” and Erica sneers “I don’t know, can I?” and Mike jabs “Whatever; nobody says ‘may’ anymore, you dork” and Claudia gasps “Michael!” and it all escalates from there until Dustin tries to catapult lasagna off the end of his fork and hits Steve in the side of the head with a glob of warm cheese.

Silence falls around the room.

The cheese plops onto his plate.

“Sh-ii-it,” Dustin breathes, face stuck in wide-eyed shock.

Steve gives Claudia an imploring look.

“Why don’t we clear the table for dessert?”

The commotion starts up again in double time, everyone scrambling to clean up and clear the room before Steve starts bitching about them messing up his hair (and his plate, and his clothes, because the cheese splash sent a spray of little tomato sauce droplets splattering all over him, and isn’t that just perfect; he’s gonna have to hand-scrub the stain out of his khakis), so it’s just him and Dustin left when Dustin’s elbow catches and tips over his wine.

The liquid spills onto his plate: dark, and red, oozing into the uneaten scraps of sauce and cheese and pasta to form a viscous, fleshy sludge. Red like his dad’s office, like his father’s mangled thigh, and it’s just food it’s just food it’s not blood it’s not blood but he can’t fucking breathe, can’t hearing anything beyond the wet, gasping sounds his dad made the night he died, and then he realizes that he’s making them, mouth moving fruitlessly around air that won’t pass, trapped in the bottleneck of his choked-off windpipe.

“Steve?” Dustin asks, and his voice sounds far away. “Shit, shit, Steve! Can you hear me? Are you choking? I know the Heimlich, just- just hold on!”

He snaps out of it when Dustin pulls him halfway from his chair, gets his fists under his ribs and all but punches the air from his lungs. It sets off a nasty coughing fit that leaves Steve snotty and ready to hurl, and he braces himself with his forearms on his knees and stares hard at the ground until the hacking finally stops.

There’s a scuff on his sneakers.

He can’t replace them any time soon.

A moment to catch his breath, and Dustin’s shaking him by the shoulders. “Are you okay??”

Steve keeps his head bowed. “Yeah.” He needs to get the fuck out of here. “Yeah, I’m good.”

He rises from his chair, grateful that everyone else already cleared out before they could witness his little moment, that the blare of the TV from the family room covered the sound of his retching coughs; more grateful still that they won’t notice him now, scampering out of here with his tail between his legs. “Hey listen, man, I’m not feeling so well,” he says absently, fishing his keys from the pocket of his jeans. “Can you get your mom to drive everyone home?”

“Shouldn’t you stay?” Dustin frowns in concern. “If you’re sick? You can go lie down in my room or something, it’s—”

“—Nah, man; I mean, thanks, but…” His hand trembles around his keys, the muscles in his calves screaming bolt, bolt, bolt. “I just- I gotta go.”

He makes a break for it, rushing out the side door so no one else will see him leave (and he knows it’s fucking rude to head out without saying goodbye, but he’s also pretty convinced he’s going to combust if he doesn’t go right now.) “Tell your mom I said thanks, okay?”

“Tell her yourself!” Dustin chases after him, clumsy and slow across the darkened yard. “Dude, will you slow down? Talk to me!”

Steve throws himself into his car like there’s a demodog on his heels. “I’ll call you!”

“What the fuck!” Dustin shouts, but Steve’s already gone.

—

part 8

tagging a few people i know have been following along 🩷 @slowandsteddie @paintsplatteredandimperfect @stevesbipanic @pennyplainknits @ledleaf @hellion-child @formosusiniquis @missjashin @runninriot @xpaperheartso @steddieas-shegoes

[horsefigureoftheday]

Wow. Okay so... Friesian horses nearly went extinct in the 1910s and 1960s, which means they've been through not one, but two severe bottlenecks. All friesians are extremely inbred.

According to one study of Dutch friesians, the mean inbreeding coefficient was 0.126 in 2010, with the highest inbreeding coefficient being 0.38. If you mated a sire or dam with its own foal (and they started out with an inbreeding coefficient of 0.00, which is what everyone should ideally have) their offspring would have an inbreeding coefficient of 0.25. The average friesian horse is about as inbred as an uncle-niece mating and an alarming number of them are more inbred than a father-daughter mating.

This leads to a ton of severe health problems. For starters, the average lifespan of a healthy large breed, like an ottb or quarter horse, is about 25. Meanwhile, a study of 200 friesians (admittedly a small sample size), compared with 4000 horses of other breeds found this result:

This friesian study is based on individual owner report, so it may include more backyard-bred friesians than registered friesians - but most of the friesians you're gonna meet are backyard-bred, so the numbers are probably not too far off.

It's commonly said that the average lifespan of a friesian horse is around 16 years, though I haven't found a source for this claim. It's hard to get real statistics on friesians because of how indiscriminately backyard breeders keep producing more of them without registering them with a friesian studbook.

Friesians are simultaneously the pugs, the poodles, and the french bulldogs of the horse world. They're inbred and full of health problems, people keep crossing them with every other breed imaginable, and for some unfathomable reason everyone thinks they're the cutest prettiest bestest thing in the world and they just have to own one, even if they can only ride it for a year or two before it keels over from colic or aortic rupture or choking on its megaesophagus.

I also don't think a horse shaped like a club-footed pigeon-breasted giraffe, whose every movement looks painful and strained, is beautiful, no matter how long and wavy its hair is. But that's just my personal opinion. If this is the kind of animal you advertise for stud, I do not wanna see your culls.

But yeah, google their health issues, then google friesian partbreds and see how many horses now have those health issues because the owners just had to know what a friesian/shetland cross would look like.

[yeeterthek33per]

You'll Bounce Back (Caitlin Foord x Steph Catley x Reader)

*In the spirit of the world cup and because I felt like it, this immediately came to mind*

Slight adulty warning*

Despite your best efforts, watching your team crumple against Nigeria wasn't the easiest thing to do. Considering you were currently on the sidelines watching on as Caitlin so desperately tried to push for every last chance to score, you knew she wouldn't take it well. She played her best out there, and all you could do in the moment the final whistle blew, when the celebrations of the Nigerians started, was resist the urge to hang your head in disappointment.

You knew the moment you went down during the Ireland v Australia game, that this was it for your journey through the group stages, the trainers having informed you that you would need a minimum of 2 weeks or more to recover.

So, sitting on that bench beside your best friend, who no doubt was taking it just as hard (being one of the many faces of this tournament), and despite not being on the field, you stood tall and walked (hobbled) out onto the pitch, to pick up each and every one of those girls.

Steph, you knew, like Caitlin, would take it hard, but she tends to bottle the loss more, and being impromptu captain only pushed it further into the bottleneck.

So when you spotted her standing, hands on hips, head tilted downwards, you knew she needed to let it out. Both of your girls looked defeated, and you felt helpless, knowing that if you hadn't gone for that tackle, you might've been on that pitch tonight. You should've been able to make a difference.

You should've been out there.

The thought has been burned into the back of your brain since the start of warm-ups. And yet, you push it back and begin to walk to Katrina, who was making her rounds. The older woman having become something of a mentor to you and the younger girls. She hugs you, only for a second as you pat her on the back, "You did great Min', I'm so proud of you."

Mini nods at you, despite not quite being able to meet your gaze, feeling she herself had failed you. You place a reassuring hand on her shoulder, "C'mon, we've still got a chance at this. You've got this. Play it for Harps." You give her a goofy smile to pair with your words, and you see her give a little, her own lips tugging upwards. "Thanks, Rocket."

You chuckle and proceed to go around the pitch as everyone slowly returns to the change rooms, though keeping an eye on your defender and striker, watching as they interact with some family and a couple of the fans.

Steph and Caitlin eventually make their way into the corridor and down the stairs, finding you waiting for them, leant against the wall, your crutches beside you.

They both hug you, although it's brief and there's no words exchanged and you know they won't be talking for at least a couple hours, they know they did what they could, played their best game, or at least best as they could given the current team status.

It just wouldn't settle that way in their own minds.

Caitlin leans into you for a moment, pausing to allow just a moment of your warmth to envelope her and pulls away to go shower. Steph keeps hers briefer, leaving a peck to your temple as she pulls away to do the same, and you sigh softly.

You follow, and Sam's already began her post game speech, knowing all of the girls would need that leadership and guidance to begin to help them pick themselves back up.

"C'mon girls, you've done so much today. You all pushed yourselves so hard, and you all made me proud tonight, we've got one more go, Canada doesn't know what's gonna hit them, we're gonna come back, hard and strong, like we always do. You've all played your hearts out, and I'm so grateful to call you guys my mates and my family."

Sam claps her hands and gestures to the door, "Now let's get showered and get out of here, get recovered and rested, and get ready to push harder than we've ever pushed, because I will need every single one of you here, we all will."

"Yeah, Sammy!" A couple cheers come from within the group of Australians, one from Mackenzie in the back, another from yourself standing next to the door to the changeroom.

Your teammates and yourself load up onto the bus and begin the journey back to the motel. Caitlin and Steph have sat themselves in a seat towards the back, Caitlin leaning into the defender, head on her shoulder, as she contemplates her night, a frown deepset on her face.

You find yourself watching over them as you joke with some of the younger girls, despite the dead silence that would normally come with a loss, they're up and energetic, even after a long 90 minutes. Even going so far as to let out a "C'mon hops, get off the bus, everyone wants to be in bed soon!" Coming from who you found out to be Charlotte, and vowed to give her the biggest noogie of her life when you got off the crutches.

You crutch slowly up into the elevator and make your way into your room, which you shared with Katrina, the woman already having put Harper to bed now that she was staying in the team hotel.

You let out an exhausted sigh and plop onto the matress with a small thud, rubbing at your face. You hear footsteps pad over to your side of the room and sit next to you on the bed, a warm hand rubbing gently at your back.

"Thanks Min'."

Mini hums in response,

"You wanna know something Rocky'?"

You peak out up at her and give a small nod, rubbing harshly at the threatening to spill tears.

"I'm so glad you came out there today, I really needed that, I think all of the girls did. You've given them something to think about, and no doubt Sammy has as well."

You nod softly, tilting your head back to fight off crying. She pulls you into her immediately, her holding you tight as she rubs your back.

"There's nothing you could've done, darl', all you should've been doing is resting, and you're doing that."

You shake your head slightly, "I should've been out there out there with them, Mins', I should've never made that damn slide. At least then I would be out there."

"Hey Rocky', shit happens, you do what you gotta do, you throw yourself into the game, you give it your all, sometimes that means we get knocked around a little, that doesn't mean you failed us. It means you gave it your all and helped us secure a win."

Honestly, she was right, but getting that niggling feeling in the back of your head to go away was a momumental task in itself, so despite your best efforts, you only nod and pull away.

Katrina gives you a look, like she knows you don't quite believe her, but she let's it go for now. She instead nudges you and urges you to go see Caitlin and Steph, citing that they probably need to see their girl after a night like that. You perk up a little, your lips tugging up at the sides as you stand and hop over to your crutches to exit your shared and go and find Caitlin and Steph in their room.

Rapping on the door quietly, knowing the others have probably knocked out by now, you wait until you hear quiet pads on the other side.

It's Steph who opens the door, being the late sleeper of the two.

"Hey puddin'." It comes out as a soft sigh, if anything, exhaustion clear on her face, but knowing her, she was probably struggling for sleep anyways.

You shuffle into the room and pull her down into you, arms wrapped tight around her neck as she buries her face into yours.

"Hi gorgeous. I'm so proud of you for tonight. You both played so well." Steph squeezes you a little tighter at that, and you shift your arms so your hands settle on her shoulder blades to rub at her back gently as you look up at her.

You can tell she's trying to meet your eye, but it's not quite working. You knew she'd struggle to be able to let today go.

"Look at me." Your hand on her jawline tilts her head towards you, "You did everything you could, baby. You fought so hard today. You gave everything you could."

"And it still wasn't enough." Steph's head is turned to the side as she fights her own tears. "There were so many challenges that I missed that I would've gotten any other day of the week. I missed so many tack-."

You interrupt her, "Hey now, you know damn well that you couldn’t have stopped that, sometimes you don't meet tackles where you need to and that's not on you, sometimes, stuff happens, and you aren't quick enough to meet it there."

There's a soft grumble behind the two of you, the striker stirring slightly as you both turn to watch her. Steph's expression softens slightly.

"I mean, even Cait missed some stuff, doesn't mean she could do anything else about it."

She lets out a light huff, sniffles lightly as she turns back to look at you finally. Your thumb caresses her cheek and you give her soft cheeky smile. She looks down but her cheeks crease as she grins all the same, knowing she couldn’t deny you a smile if she tried. The look in her eyes has you swooning, and she leans down to take your lips with hers.

You hum softly, hand coming up to grip her neck and keep her pressed against you. Her hands find their way to your hips, gripping them and pulling you as close as possible.

You gasp into the brunette when she reaches to pull you up into her arms by the thighs, your legs wrapping around her waist, careful not to jostle your ankle too much. Steph's hand comes to settle under your shirt, her hips pressing up into yours, holding you in place.

The way she kisses away from your lips and down to your collarbone has you whining, although her hand is quick to silence you, not wanting to wake your other girlfriend who most definitely needs to sleep. She nips at the skin, grinning as you shudder softly. Her lips are hot on your collarbone, your skin radiating its own heat, and your insides buzz when she reaches to push your shirt over your head.

A whimper coming from Caitlin as she stirs makes you both pause, and you have to hold in a laugh when Steph groans and her head drops to your shoulder. You run your hands through her hair, which is let down for the night, and rub at her shoulder before she gently sets you down. You kiss her softly, getting ready to slip back out of the room.

"I'll let you sleep, sweetheart."

Steph is quick to protest, though, grabbing your hand to pull you back towards the bed. You giggle as clings to you the moment you're both settled.

Another body lands on the bed behind you and startles you slightly. Caitlin, now having fully woken to the noise, wraps herself around you sulkily. "Hey puddin'."

It comes out as more of a grunt than anything, the words pressed into the back of your neck as she leaves soft kisses on the skin there. "Hi bubs, sorry we woke you, go back to sleep." Your hand grips hers softly. She grumbles slightly, "You should've woken me sooner."

You chuckle and shift in their arms to face the striker, kissing her as soon as she's in reach. She sighs softly into your mouth, fingers tangling with Steph's as their hands rest against your side. Caitlin pulls away, and she curls her leg over yours to rest on stephs ankle, gently rubbing it.

You loved seeing them so affectionate with each other. They were best friends before they approached you when you got together, but they'd never been touchy. So seeing them that way now meant more than anything, knowing they were just as in love with each other as they were with you. It only made you smile more.

"God, I love you both so much."

"We love you too, pretty girl." Steph mumbles the words into your hair. Caitlin hums her agreement as she kisses you again.

"Now you both better sleep. We've got recovery time to make tomorrow."

They both whine at you, finally having you in their arms, and you want them to sleep. You laugh, "C'mon, now you two, you have a game to prep for, and sleep deprivation does not make that better, you guys will do better, you'll bounce back, you always do."

You were right. They always found a way to bounce back. All they had to do was play their best game.

Canada wouldn't know what hit them.

[sicklyseraphnsuch]

You know, actually this makes me wonder how Aeor learned about Predathos in the first place.

Because I was gonna say - yeah they werent exactly "curious" about the gods in the sense that they wanted to better understand them. But likewise, wanting to know an enemy is a form of curiousity. The desire to learn is not always for benign purposes.

And well that oddly enough got me wondering how they got to learn about Predathos - theyd have to investigate the gods in search of weakness and that would make them curious.

That aside, I would like to direct attention towards that one moment in Downfall between SILAHAS and Selena which I think was the penultimate decision that doomed Aeor. Prior to that point, the knowledge of the factorum was confined to a few mages. But when Selena distributed that knowledge, Aeor became doomed. And Selena only did that because she threw a tantrum from being denied Corellon's light.

There's also the moment when Cass pointed out that the gods dont mean for them to understand - and that Cass, a devotee from the get-go was never going to get answers despite her clear confusion about what the fuck was going on. (And notably Asmo took control of that explanation wherein he goes "you cant help us - we're not friends like that" - us and we referring to the gods). But thats less important in the grand scheme of the plot.

Ultimately, I guess what I'm trying to say is: the best case scenario was if Selena full stopped the factorum schemes. I think that she would have been okay dying but she asked that One Thing of Corellon. If she had just kept her mouth shut and repented without question, Aeor could have kept the disaster to a minimum - only a few mages would have been executed. But she had to ask - she had a desire to know ("I wish to know your light"). And Corellon had to deny her. And that... that feels like it encapsulates the problem that goes All the way back to Avalir.

"What makes the gods so much different than us?" which got expressed in two different ways: "why cant we put ourselves where the gods are" (Laerryn - which was primarily bred from jealousy and resentment) and "why cant the gods die like we do" (Aeor - which was primarily a question bred from resentment and fear)

Could Aeor Have Saved Themselves?

I think the fundamental conflict between divinity and Aeor was that divinity was never going to explain themselves (this is just who they are) and Aeor was never going to stop asking (this is just who they are). As long as Aeor asked questions and probed at the nature of divinity - the same questions that the Matron asked, then they were never going to get along with gods leaving the gods no recourse but to destroy them.

Personally for me, the defining moment of Downfall was the exchange with Corellon and Selena - SILAHAS and his mortal creator. At the end, Selena was repentant - fully aware that she had done something wrong by creating a god killer. EXCEPT she wasnt rendered so submissive, that she could accept the gods' denial without asking for something.

When a criminal is going to jail, they dont get to make requests at the judge. So even though she pleaded guilty, that doesnt mean she gets to ask Corellon for a boon. But she did anyways. She had to see Corellon's light - she had to Know. Corellon denies her this bc again criminals dont get to ask boons from the judge.

In being fundamentally incapable of accepting that denial - by virtue of being who she is (an Aeorian wizard and curious to a disastrous fault), she in turn sheds her light on the world. She chooses to share her knowledge when knowledge was denied to her as this final petty act of retribution.

Because mortals dont get to know. The only reason that the gods are "relatable" now is because Aeor kept a record that rendered them as such, not because the gods intended to be perceived. To this day, the average person doesnt know why Aeor fell and they dont get to understand the gods and this is entirely by design.

Which, you know... boundaries. If someone doesnt want to tell you their tragic backstories etc, you dont get to know. This goes doubly so for Aeor, which is not something the gods volunteered to let the masses know. Its only because Aeor built a massive invasion of privacy panopticon that BH gets to see this side of the gods. Again, the fault lies in Aeor for going against the gods desires.

That circles back to could Aeor have saved themselves? No. The gods set up strict barriers to being known but Aeor intentionally broke those barriers because they felt entitled to knowing the gods. Hacked into their data and breached the firewall so to speak.

So they get smacked down and to their dying day, they (and most other mortals) dont get to know why they were smacked down which in turn gets construed as a punishment regardless of intent. Mortals are left speculating as to why the gods Did That and without an explanation, the common understanding becomes "wizards punished for their hubris" not "gods saved the world".

Tl;dr Aeor is curious. The gods are private. They were never going to get along.

[alpaca-clouds]

BELLE and the fantasy of a non-corporate internet

Just a little thing I kinda want to end out this week speaking about democratized media on. Because there is this little thing in Mamoru Hosoda's newest movie BELLE... I am honest: I am not entirely sure whether it is something Hosoda and his team thought about when making this movie. But... this movie has this wonderful little anarchist moment.

BELLE is all in all not really an anarchist movie. Nor is it Solarpunk. But it picks up this theme, that goes through several movies Hosoda has done. His "internet triology" how I like to call it:

Digimon Adventure: Bokura no Wargame

Summer Wars

BELLE

Three movies that are not only connected in aethetic, but also in theme. All three of them having a plot that takes place online for good chunks.

And that theme is of the internet connecting people all around the world. Of allowing people all around the world to connect.

The Digimon Adventure movie focuses on the idea of the young millennials in that movie having access and understanding of this new virtual world, that the older generation lacks. In the Japanese version of the movie there is a prolonged gag sequence of Yamato and Takeru trying to get access to the internet with a lot of confused adults thinking about whether or not they have this access.

This shifts in Summer Wars, where the internet suddenly is a place that everyone uses over a lot of different access points. In the finale we see people use the internet via phones, laptops, high end computers and video game consoles. Though it also gives a warning of us not relying on it too much.

And then we have BELLE, which focuses on the internet as a place where people can truly be themselves and connecting with each other, while being unable to connect in the real world (partly because of distance), as well as the internet of a place to rediscover yourself and as a medium to help each other.

But all three movies kinda have one scene in common. There is a scene towards the finale where all seems lost and the character outmatched by the antagonist. (I am gonna say something about the antagonists in a moment.) And then... everyone gets together. And by everyone I mean everyone. In Bokura no Wargame it is the emails of encouragement and the spirits of all those kids and teens watching the battle that allow War Greymon and Metal Garurumon to fuse into Omegamon. In Summer Wars it is the fact that everyone risks their accounts by handing them over to Natsuki that allows them to beat the AI in hanafuda. And in the finale of BELLE it is everyone banding together to sing and no longer supporting the self-appointed moderators that allows Suzu to make Kei hear her voice. It is the connection of people via the internet that allows people to succeed in these movies.

But there is one thing in which BELLE differs from the other two movies - or rather all three movies differ from each other.

Bokura no Wargame still very much is set in Web 1.0, before social media and the bottlenecking of the internet. Again, the movie makes this big thing out of the internet being a thing for the youth.

Meanwhile Summer Wars is set within a very corporate "everything platform". And while this movie does have some message about "yeah, maybe having all that data within one system is a bad thing, actually", there is not really a comment about the company running OZ and whether maybe one company should not own the one platform that in this world basically IS THE INTERNET.

BELLE is different in that regard. Because BELLE makes a point out of the fact that U is an open source platform that was created to... basically run anarchical. There was not supposed to be an central control. That the users were supposed to have control over their experience on the platform. But because the creators also did not want to have "control" over it, big companies just took over and devided U up between themselves, creating that moderation team that is seen as the antagonists within the movie. And here is the thing: That big scene of everyone coming together and singing? Yeah, that is the scene in which the users take the control over the platform back from the companies. And since U is basically the the internet in this world... Part of the finale is basically the users taking back their control over the internet.

And... I don't know. I have not seen people talk about this so far. But to me it is the nice and utopic part in this movie.

The internet is such a great thing to connect people. And that is something that Mamoru Hosoda has definitely understood better than many other film makers. And we just... should not let big coorporations take this from us.

[ohnococo]

Right On Time | Takuma Ino x F!Reader

Ino chuckles, blushing a little as he looks over at you, “Aww, you still wet?” You nod, slightly less willing to just let the heat in your core wither away to nothing. He had been spoiling you for far too long for that.

You get stuck in traffic with your boyfriend, Ino, on the way to his mentor's birthday dinner. It's not the right time or place, but you just can't keep your hands to yourselves.

Warnings: Fingering, Semi-public

“Is the card in here?” You push the colourful tissue paper aside in the gift bag between your legs, finding the envelope just as Ino responds.

“Yeah, it’s in there.”

“Nice one,” you put the gift bag on the car floor between your feet then buckle your seatbelt as Ino starts the engine, “ready to go then!”

You could see how excited your boyfriend was, having spent a long time carefully selecting a birthday gift for his beloved mentor. It meant even more that he’d be able to celebrate with him on the day itself as well. Usually Nanami chose to spend his birthday on his own, phone off and unable to be bothered by the world you all had to work in. This time, he’d actually agreed to let everyone treat him to a birthday meal, and Ino was grateful he’d give everyone some of his time on his special day.

Carefully laid plans often go awry, though, as is the case when you find yourselves stuck in slowly crawling traffic, miles upon miles behind an accident that had bottlenecked the highway’s many lanes down to one. You can see Ino trying not to panic, leaning closer to his windshield and trying to squint at what couldn’t be seen from so far away, leg jiggling nervously as you’re stuck moving so slowly he has to put the car in park.

Nanami would understand your being late of course, but Ino felt like it was important to be there and be there on time. You put a hand on Ino’s thigh, squeezing as you reassure him, “The traffic report said it should only be a 20 minute delay. We’ll be cutting it close but we’ll get there.”

He leans back in his seat, resting a few fingers of one hand on the bottom of the steering while, and squeezing your hand with the other. “You’re right…”

You were, but you can see it doesn’t entirely help his worries subside. Then, just as all of the many cars inch forward between yours and the single lane the traffic was all being funnelled towards, Ino puts the car back into drive, slowly rolling those several measly feet forward before he has to stop and put the car into park again. Then he’s right back to leaning forward, squinting to make out what was happening in the far distance.

“Ino, baby, it’s not gonna help you to worry.”

He looks at you, giving you a lopsided smile and a nod, knowing you’re still right. “I can’t help it, I just don’t wanna show up late.”

“I mean, I can suck your dick while we wait if it’ll get your mind off of it.” You’re joking, but you’d be lying if you said you wouldn’t do it in a heartbeat if it made your sweet boyfriend relax his furrowed brows.

He laughs, leaning back and relaxing into his seat, nerves already dissipating slightly from the distraction of your voice. He looks over to you, smiling, “Aww, don’t ask me that when you know I should say no.”

You throw him an exaggerated pout, glancing out of the front to see you had a while yet before he had to inch forward, “At least let me give you a kiss then.”

“Well damn, I’m not gonna say no to kissing my girl, am I?” He’s already leaning in to meet you in the middle, elbow resting on the centre console as he turns his head to slot your mouths together perfectly.

It’s a chaste kiss at first, closed lips lingering on each others before you’re both pulling back just a little at the same time. Then, he’s bringing his hand off the steering wheel to rest on your jaw gently, thumb stroking your cheek as he deepens the kiss. It has your stomach doing backflips the way Ino’s kisses always do, and when he leans forward and tickles the tip of his tongue against your lips you’re parting them for him without hesitation. His tongue swipes against yours, slow and light, and when you match his movements he’s pulling away, drawing you into his mouth as he smiles into your kiss.

Your head is spinning already, your panties wet, and Ino’s kisses have you ready to throw caution to the wind like always as you move your hand up his thigh to settle on his already hardened cock, gripping at it and letting a little moan travel from your mouth and right into his.

Then, you jump slightly, eyes opening and head snapping towards the back as a car behind you lets out a long honk.

“Shit.” Ino’s glancing back as well, then forward to see that traffic had begun inching along while you’d been distracted by each other. The car behind you was apparently not going to let a few feet of space between Ino and the vehicle before him stand, so he sits back, puts the car in drive, and closes the gap.

He puts the car back into park and his leg is back to jiggling again, and this time your pout is genuine, “Ino… I don’t want you to be all anxious…”

“It’s okay it’s not that,” he gives you a half smile, as if excusing himself, “I’m just trying to make it go down.”

“Oh.” You accept his reasoning, not wanting to risk the car behind you honking again because of your distractions.

You wait, only a few minutes, but those few minutes are an eternity to the impatient Ino who just wants to get moving already, and an eternity to you now that you’re left wanting.

“You still hard?” You ask, unable to stop dwelling on the effect you have on your boyfriend.

“Nah.”

You let out a little groan, feeling slightly frustrated that you were still so needy after just a little kissing. “Well that makes one of us…”

He chuckles, blushing a little as he looks over at you, “Aww, you still wet?”

You nod, slightly less willing to just let the heat in your core wither away to nothing. Ino had been spoiling you for far too long for that.

He looks back out of the front of the car, biting his lip and thinking as he notes how close the cars shuffling forward were to his. He waits, then when it’s his turn he moves forward, then puts the car back into park, turning to you excitedly, “Pull your panties down for me, baby.”

You raise your brows, surprised at the proposition despite knowing very well that he wasn’t going to leave you high and dry once you’d said something about it. He catches your expression, assuring you as though you were the one that was being convinced to do him some favour, “I can watch the road while I do this.”

This, he says, as he rests his elbow on the centre console again, bringing his other hand over to cup at your pussy through your panties. That alone has you clenching your thighs around his hand, happy for the touch already, and he’s drawing a long breath through his teeth at the feel of your wetness soaking through the fabric.

“Shit, I got you wet like that?”

You give him a look that says ’duh’, and tug his hand up and just out of the way enough to pull your panties down to your ankles, spreading your legs for him to have access underneath your skirt. He’s quick to have his hand back where you need it, middle finger sliding through your wetness, and this time his brows are furrowed for entirely different reasons as he caresses the place he loves best.

You’re wet enough that he doesn’t need to waste time building up to working you just right, able to coat his fingers in your slick and slide two in right away. He only pumps them in a few times, fingers dragging along your walls with perfect firmness, before he’s pausing and looking at you with worried eyes. “Better pull your dress up or you’ll leave a wet patch on the back.”

Takuma Ino, always the considerate boyfriend. You lean over, both to give him a quick peck for saving you the embarrassment at this special birthday dinner, and to listen to his suggestion, pulling your dress over your ass and sitting back so it’s bunched up and out of the way as you spread your legs again and Ino starts pressing and swiping at your sweet spot properly.

The rolled up and tinted windows, and the sound of music on the radio, gives you enough comfortable cover to leave your moans unrestrained, letting Ino know just how fast he was getting you there, and when his thumb joins the fray to rub tight circles on your clit the only thing stopping this from being perfect is the fact that Ino has to constantly glance forward instead of watching you come undone for him like he so loved to do.

As you watch him glance back at you, eyes lingering longer and longer, pressure building in your core, you note that worried expression bubbling up in his eyes right alongside your orgasm, and he starts moving faster, trying to make you cum quickly. Just as you find it in you to take your eyes off your boyfriend’s handsome face, you see a gap already there between his car and the one in front, and this time several cars behind you honk, pulling up dangerously close to bully you along.

Ino pulls his fingers out of you and you’re both whining: you whining out his name, and him giving you a, “Sorry babyyyy…”

He’s quick to move along, park again, and just as you’re going stir crazy from your orgasm subsiding so suddenly, his fingers are back inside of you. This time, Ino takes a chance at kissing you again, his soft lips adding to the hurry to make you cum hard to make up for tearing it away from you before. He knows how to do it perfectly, of course, having been in a rush to make you cum for him before, but never quite like this.

It makes your blood flow faster, your cheeks hot as you tangle a hand in his hair, arching your hips up and closing your eyes as your orgasm appears yet again hot and fast on the horizon. It’s interrupted only briefly, as Ino lets out a sigh of frustration. You join his gaze out the front this time to see the mass of cars starting to move much more quickly and Ino gives you a kiss of apology, not exactly able to hold up the now steadily moving traffic on the highway.

He’s apologising aloud too, even as you whine for more, “Sorry… I guess they cleared the road. This is terrible fuckin timing…” he glances at you with sad puppy dog eyes before looking back to the road to switch lanes as you get nearer to your exit.

“Inooo…”

“I’m sorry.” He means it, you can hear it in his voice. And you know if he could he’d pull over somewhere to take care of you then and there, but today was important to him.

You feel like you’re going to go crazy, but you still know you two have somewhere to be. So you make a selfish but measured choice, lightly tugging at one of Ino’s hands.

He takes it off the steering wheel once you’re off at your exit and back on the main roads, and starts to lace his fingers with yours, thinking that’s what you were after as you so often were. It’s not what’s on your mind at all, though, as you pull his hand between your legs, your fingers over his to guide them back into your needy hole.

“I need to cum.”

His shoulders slouch, and he looks over to you for a second before his eyes are back on the road, and his face broadcasts all of his momentary guilt. Like he’d been heartless to deny you and a fool to not realise he could provide just like this if he really tried. “Of course, baby, lemme take care of it.”

You move your hand from on top of his and loosely hold onto his forearm instead, hugging it like it made up for not being able to hug him right now. He pulls his fingers out for just a moment to caress your pussy, like a replacement for being able to rub your back in the embrace you were very much missing right now. You aren’t missing much for long though, as he slides his fingers back into your wetness and you squeeze your thighs together, trapping him there while he drives with one hand.

He bites his lip, glancing between you and the road with desperate eyes, like he was the one being edged and finally getting what he so badly needed. He’s skilled though, more than he’s often given credit for, so even as he keeps the car steady with one hand on the wheel, he fucks into your pussy with the other, fingers curling just right to leave you whining.

“Turn the radio off.”

You don’t expect the request, so it takes a minute for your brain to catch up.

“Please baby, I wanna hear it.”

It clicks then, so, with both of his hands busy, you reach forward to turn off the music playing, and both hear the sound that really moved Ino every single time. You’re soaked, squelching loudly around his fingers, and the way he sucks air in through his teeth from how much that sound does to him has you letting out a shameless moan, adding to both your feelings.

“I’m gonna fuck you so good when we get home baby, I promise.”

His words make you clench around his fingers, and his hand is tightening on the steering wheel. He’s always like this, and it always makes you just as desperate for him as he is for you, especially when his fingers are hooked inside of you, soaking his seats, tugging you back to that edge he’s pushed you towards several times before.

“Moan pretty for me? Please?” He has to hear it always, and you couldn’t dream of holding back for him so you do, loud and desperate.

It only makes his fingers move faster, palm slapping against your clit, elbow tapping at your heaving chest from the awkward angle his arm was at. You’re too far gone to hear the rest of his words as he asks you to cum for him, because you’re already there - stomach clenching, pussy pulsing, absolutely singing for him until you’re slouching back on the seat, rocking against his stilled fingers.

He pulls them out, turning into the parking lot of the restaurant with one hand, fingers still pressed to your entrance to feel you twitching for him one last time before his wet hand is back on the steering wheel so he can steer into a parking space.

You swallow hard, blinking as you take in that you’ve reached your destination. Ino takes off his seatbelt, leaning over to kiss you and look at your glowing face.

“I’ll get the towel, okay? Stay there.”

‘The Towel,’ regularly replaced in Ino’s trunk because this was far from the first time you’d made a little bit of a mess in his car and your boyfriend was nothing if not prepared for the whims the two of you often got caught up in. He tugs his shirt down over his erection as he gets out and grabs his towel from the trunk, handing it to you as he stands outside and stretches his legs, trying to make his dick soften yet again.

You glance at the time while you pat away the wetness on your thighs and then on his seat, before pulling your panties back up, and smile as you see you’re right on time.

[vertumnanaturalis]

The Exocolonists of Vertumna (tumblr edition) Part 1: The starborn children of the Stratospheric

Sooo this is something I've been wanting to work on making for awhile, a tumblr text post addon for the big chunky npc list I've had for over a year. There's a lot of data I've accumulated over time that just doesn't fit in a google sheet in a decent way, and so I've been wanting to make some text posts to cover ideas that don't fit in my sheets, or might be an easier read for people who find my documents confusing.

I try to pull from canon as much as possible, and use speculation taken from a long hyperfixation on the concept of generation ships or bunkers and love for sci-fi media about it. The idea behind this list has always been to provide people with both an accessable set of easily usable/chuckable/maimable/fuckable/killable/ect names and ideas to fluff out the background of your own stories and with an illusion of consistancy, and to offer insight into my own headcanons that I've developed, so that people can take any bits and pieces they want and re-examine or reuse or recycle how they want. As always, I'll still try to mark which info is explicitly canon, but theres a lot of blanks to be filled in and my take on how things could be explained is far from the only one.

This one is gonna be an overview of the 54 people born on the Stratospheric and some approximate either in-universe or out-of-universe explanations for why things are structured the way they are. Future ones will cover specific sub-sections of those shipborn Stratos, overviews and department-specific pages about the adults of the Stratospheric, matching pages for people of the Heliopause, the children born during the final two years of the game, and even data for the kids possibly born beyond that.

In the earliest stages of drafting the ships population, the founders had planned to have exactly 100 people on the Stratospheric when it left Earth, primarily composed of their brightest and most promising between ages 10 and 25 (in local Earth years), and that 35 children would be born in five groups of seven during its 21(e)/20 (local Vertumna years) year journey, the maximum they could have fit in that ideal situation. On launch day in reality, the ship left with only 86 out of it's planned 100. Several of their important specialists were intercepted en-route to the launch pad, and a handful of their volunteer teenagers backed out in the final days and hours, while the reserve choices they had on hand were children chosen for their genetic diversity rather than skills or potential, with Utopia being an especially young outlier at just shy of 3(e). Outside of her and their sole member of generation one, Captain Eudicot, the ships population ran from original Chief Administrator Chiffon at 33(e) down to little Jubilation at 6-and-a-half(e). In one of the final documents outlined by the Earth colony's leaders in the hours before liftoff, the plans for the third generation were expanded from 35 to 50, adjusted for the younger leaning launch population and all the changes it entailed.

Similar to the founders original plan, spacer kids were still divided into five age groups (A, B, C, D, and E), with at least a year between the youngest person in one group and the eldest of the next. Half of this was to give the ship's lone acting physician a break period where there were no fresh infants or pregnancies to worry about, and the other half was to give the ship's administration time to carefully plan out the next set of children; How many children would be in this group, who was going to gestate the pregnancies, who their social parents would be (if any), what augments Instance would give them, and, most importantly, keeping an eye on the current genetic and social diversity of the third generation, so that they did not reach a genetic or social bottleneck too quickly (ie incest in a social setting, even if the two individuals are not genetically related). All of the embryos that would become the next group of children were created in the same few month period of time and cryofrozen until they were due to be implanted in the person chosen to gestate them. There were a number of extra rules that the Vertumna Group had written out that ultimately Eudicot and the council decided to abandon to at some point in the trip, all for various reasons, and not all by unanimous vote;

That there would be no need for drastic changes in the current groups' plans once the planning stage was over.

That every pregnancy would only include one fetus, with post-implantation embryo splits being selectively reduced.

None of the children born on the Stratospheric would have any genetic relationship with one another, and parents having more than one child would be discouraged, and that in cases where siblings did occur, either each sibling would only take genes from one parent (in family units with 2+ parents) or only the eldest child would have genetic relation to their parent and any following child would be purely from donated dna (for family units with only one parent).

That, at minimum, a quarter of every group should be set asside to for children with no dedicated family attachments, both to better. adhere to the group's original idea of having no parents, but also to give the young colony a bit more padding against the looming threat of everyone being second or third cousins in only a few generations.

Another rule that, while not completely abandoned, was less and less considered as the years went on was one that mandated how many embryos of each cluster were planned to develop with a genetically likely physiology that could get pregnant, a physiology that could get others pregnant, or anything in the vast array of historically normal and genetech introduced non-reproductive physiologies. This was never intended to determine the gender of the resulting children and any gene therapy they want or require in the future, or guarentee that the embryo would fully develop in the "intended" (solely in regards to their future reproductive capibilities, without further gene therepy involvement) way, but rather an attempt to gamble that at a decent number of the third generation would be able to continue the human species in the event their genetech was lost prematurely. For the original plan with 5 groups of 7, each group was to have a minimum of 3 embryos with an expected physeology that would be able to carry a pregnancy, 3 that could sire a pregnancy, and the 7th wouldn't have any requirements. The 3/3/1 ratio was followed exactly only during the first group, while following groups would only roughly follow this plan. In total, 54 children were born between leaving Earth and arriving at the wormhole; 30 out of them having siblings of some kind, with 10 of those children being born in sets of multiples (with two sets of twins and two sets of triplets) - with only one accidental post-implanation embryotic split resulting in two of those children - with 16 of the children have some genetic relationship with one another (though, with the exception of the identical sisters, none closer than genetic half siblings); and ultimately, only 9 children were explicitly born to be raised in the creche without parentage.

The 54 children of the Stratospheric:

Group A: The oldest spacer kids, they'd be adults at landing by Helio standards but they're still minors by the culture of the Vertumna group, coddled and babied more at landing than Sol when they reach the same age down the road, even if they still have adult jobs and responsabilities.

Cosmozoa "Cosmo" - he/him - 18

Lilium "Lili" - she/her - 18

Sorrel - he/him - 18 - A canon name and job, rest of info is fanmade

Benevolence "Bena" - she/her - 18

Edamame "Ed" - he/him - 17

Malagma "Mal" - they/them - 17

Absinthe "Abby" - any pronouns, feminine formal terms - 16* (17th birthday shortly after New Year day but before landing on Vertumna)

Group B: Kom's age group, with him as the oldest of the bracket, still young enough to be discovering themselves but old enough that the adults are rapidly giving them more responsibilities than their upperclassmen were at the same age. A series of unlikely and specific events led to the existance of the ships first set of multiples, and their existance provides in-universe backstory and reasoning for why some of the following children exist.

Kombucha "Kom" - he/him - 15

Quinine "Quinni" - they/them, later + he/him - 15 - same deal as Sorrel, even being named in the same event

Thicket - Any, masculine familiar terms - 14** (15th birthday after arriving on Vertumna but before Sol wakes up in medbay)

Opulence "Opal" - she/her - 14

Vertex "Tex" he/him - 14

Tempest "Pem" - she/her + They/them - 13* (same as Abby)

Chrysocolla "Chrys" - they/them - 13

Triplets Coriander "Cory" (he/him) , Scallopini "Pina" (she/her) , and Amaretto "Ame" (she/her) - 13 - Pina and Ame are the identical sisters mentioned above, while their fraternal brother Cory is genetically unrelated to them

Falchion "Kion" - he/him - 13

Group C: Sol's age bracket, most of these kids are canon and need no explanation

Arroyo "Ary" - he/him - 11

Aspartame "Tammy" - she/her - 11

Recalcitrance "Cal" - he/him - 11

Simplicity "Plic" - she/her - 11

Peregrine "Penny" - she/her - 10

Evanescence "Evan" - he/him - 10

Philosophy "Sully" - they/them - 10

Marzipan "Marz" - she/her - 10

Solanaceae* "Sol*" - they/them* - 9** name varies by timeline, but all of my documents will refer to our player character as Sol, and primarily but not exclusively with they/them pronouns; their 10th birthday is very notibly after they land on Vertumna shortly into the new year

Anemone "Annie/Nem/Nemmie/[Determined by player choice]" - she/her - 9

Twins Dysthymia "Dys" (he/him) and Tangent "Tang" (she/her) - 9 - in all of my headcanon documents, including this one, I am going with the idea that they are planned fraternal twins with seperate sperm donors; I know the take that they were idetical twins is a common one, but it isn't actually a canon one; nothing in the game actively states this, the idea that they were identical is simply a common and very reasonable take on the information the game gives us, but it was never something I got from playing the game myself. If you're curious about all the exact reasons for this you can send an ask and I'll elaborate.

Group D - The younger kids, like Anemone's triplet brothers, half of them have their holopalms installed but still spend a lot of time in the creche when they land. All but the eldest three are kids Sol and Tammy babysit, and 100% of them are kids Sol can later tutor in school

Hawthorn "Hawth" - they/them - 7

Hyaline "Lin" - any - 7

Sepia - she/her - 7

Triplets Cirrus, Stratus, and Cumulus (all he/him) - 6** (same as Thicket) - we never get their exact age, but they're listed as being 7 years old when the game starts in an only mostly correct game file character sheet, the triplets ended up being technically 6 at the start because of an early whoopsie daisy during early npc documentation

Mistletoe "Misu-Misu" - she/her - 6

Kelvin - he/him - 6

Effervesence - he/him, later + they/them - 5

Vendetta "Detta" - she/her, later + they/them - 5

Necterine "Nena" - she/her - 5

Group E - The youngest of the generation, all toddlers and babies on arrival, space born in technicality, but children of Vertumna in every other way. The largest of the groups with 13 children included, and the group with the most imaginative and most untested augments.

Nougat - she/her - 3

Nimbus - he/him - 3 - similar to the cloud triplets, we never get his age beyond that he's "little Nimbus", but he's old enough to be in school when Sol first unlocks the tutoring job so I put him at Nougat's age

Panache "Pan" - he/him - 2

Maraschino "Chino" - he/him & she/her - 2 -while Chino does appear in game with only the he/him pronouns used, "Marachino "Chino" with the pronouns he/him"'s age is never directly given in-game, a "Marachino "Mara" with the pronouns she/her" and an age of 2 is listed in the same file that gives the cloud triplet's their approximate age and listed as a child encountered during babysitting, so I went with a middle ground of having this character use both pronouns and later both nicknames

Tessera "Tess" - she/her - 2

Macaroni "Mac" - she/her & he/him - 1 - the child with the no pain augment is refered to with he/him pronouns in-game, but I went with a similar deal to Chino for variety

Contrivance "Connie" - he/him - 1 - the child with the shark teeth augment is also refered to with he/him pronouns

Ketamine "Ket" - they/them - 1

Maxilla "Max" - he/him - 0

Twins Whimsy and Praline (both she/her) - 0 - while one of Dys's late game/high skill events has him talking about how at one point he and Tangent were "The Twins" prior to their relationship crumbling apart, I thought it would be narratively fitting to have a younger set of twins being planned/conceived/born at the same time as their relationship falls apart as Tangent gets further into genetics (where said twins were being made), making him and Tang lose their status as being "The Twins" in multiple ways

Benzodiazepine "Benji" - he/him - 0

Enigma "Ena" - she/her - 0 - the youngest child from the Strato's third gen and last one to be born in space is refered to with she/her pronouns as a baby, opted to keep those pronouns as she grows older

In total, the shipborn children and teenagers account for roughly 40% of it's landing population (39.7% when arriving at the wormhole, and 42.2% after the canonly unavoidable loss of life during it's landing). This number combined with the chaos of living on a new planet and the very likely scenario of the ship's brown dirt being lost would be a good starting explanation for some of the glaring failures in child wellfair and safety during the 10 years we see during the game, but definately not an excuse. The next post is going to be either a quick overlook of the gen 2 Strato characters or a more detailed post for one of the specific gen 3 groups, detailing things like birthdays and augments, with posts detailing the adult npcs and all the Helios and planetborn children coming later.

Also, as there was no decent way to include this higher up the list, here are the sibling sets discussed earlier;

Sorrel, Thicket, and Misu [only Sorrel shares any dna with their mother, Thicket and Misu are both entirely from donor dna]

Kom, Anemone, Cirrus, Stratus, Cumulus, and Nimbus [Kom and Anemone are genetic half siblings with 50% of their genes from Anne, while the following boys only have between 15 and 35% coming from Anne, with the rest from multiple donors]

Opal and Ves [Opal only shares her mother's dna, while Ves only shares his father's]

Tex and Ary [only Tex has his father's dna, with Arroyo's embryo coming from Earth]

Cory, Pina, and Ame [None of the trio have their mother's dna, and the embryo that became Cory shared no dna with the embryo that split into Pina and Ame]

Kion, Penny, and Sepia [One of the three is only genetically related to one of their two parents, another is only genetically related to the second parent, and the third is entirely from donor dna or an Earth embryo, but only Instance knows which of the three is which, as all three were created (or selected) at the same time for this exact scenario]

Sully and Ket [occupy a unique space as sorta step-siblings, as they both have single parents who begin a romantic relationship after landing]

Dys and Tang [explained above]

Kelvin and Pan [occupy another unique space as social half-siblings, with Kelvin being born to a single father who entered a relationship after he was born, but his father's partner is very explicitly not his mom genetically or socially]

Detta and Connie [a similar deal to Opal and Ves, but I haven't mapped out which parent is which yet]

Nena and Chino [genetic half siblings, with both taking dna from their mother and Nena taking dna from one of their fathers and Chino taking it from the other]

Whimsy and Praline [they don't share any genetic material with one another or their mom, and an in-universe rumored reason for it is that their mom had been the egg donor for one of the older children]

Also, the creche children who were born at the behest of the colony without any specific designated parents in mind

Bena

Mal

Chrys

Plic

Hawth

Lin

Nougat

Tess

Max

Side note: Canonically, Anemone's brother Kom is the oldest shipborn child we see, and while I believe Lindsay intended for Kom to be the oldest member of gen 3 after Utopia, this is never actually stated in the game, and I was surprised to see that it was the intent as it never came across to me that way during my initial playthroughs. Nothing in here explicitly ignores or goes against anything said or mentioned in the game proper, but I know that having any of the kids be older than Kom is probably the not the most canon way to construct the generations layout. One of the canonly used names in the game, "Sorrel", has been given to one of these teens, but there is neither anything for or against Sorrel being this age, as the only information we get beyond a name is a manner of death and a place of work.

[karkatbug]

🦀🕶️🫂

A tight, hot sensation works its way along Dave’s arms and sits at the pads of his fingers, which he taps restlessly against the cool, waxed wood table of their local coffee shop. He continues the motion despite his classmate’s evident irritation, hoping the contact would somehow encourage the feeling to pass through his fingers and onto the table via osmosis. It’s a familiar tension after enduring copious amounts of stress. Assignments, exams, working part-time. His social life, hobbies and habits. College had a knack for narrowing time and forcing life into a bottleneck. If you’re lucky enough to come out the other side alive, you’re left an exhausted shell of yourself, stiffly trying to relax your shoulders and convincing yourself that’s all you need and are totally fine now. Booking a back massage was pussy shit. No way in hell was he ever gonna let some man rub oil on him and get all touchy feely with his nude bod, no the fuck thanks.

Not to mention things were good. He’s quite literally in a better place. There was no reason to be rigid with stress now when he wasn’t going through anything like back then. Sadly logic did little to work out the knots in his shoulders. 

“Mind over matter my ass,” Dave mumbles to himself.

“What’s with you?” Karkat demands. “You’ve been fidgeting all fucking day. All week, actually! Usually I let your human quirks slide but at this point I’m starting to get worried.”

Dave winces at the other’s raised voice.

“I’m fine, dude,” he says quietly, hoping to lead Karkat by example. “Finish your thingy.”

“Our thingy,” Karkat corrects. Dave huffs and glances back down at his laptop screen. A word document is open, and Karkat’s cursor flashes where he stopped typing. “And I’m not writing another word until you tell me what’s wrong.”

“Nothing’s wrong, man.” Dave forces himself back into his quiet facade—fixing his calm along with his posture. They work some more. He grits his teeth when a leg begins to bounce. God how he’d love to crawl out of his skin right now. Instead, he sits up straight, grabs the side of the table and twists one way, repeating the motion as he does the other. His back pops both times. He lets out a satisfied sigh. 

It’s still not enough. 

“That’s the third time you’ve done that,” Karkat notes. His eyes are fiery despite the lack of red. Dave is one of the few who know about his blood color. He knows they’ll kick in a few years from now, and yet sometimes Dave can feel the color on him. Or maybe he’s projecting. It is his favorite, after all. The color. Not the troll.

Karkat pushes the screen of his laptop down as he points an accusatory finger at the restless human sitting across from him. “You’ve also rubbed your neck twenty seven separate occasions in this past hour. You’ve kicked me in the shin twelve times trying to stretch those freakishly long appendages you call legs. I’ve heard your back pop more times than Egbert’s fucking “grandma” and I lived with them for an entire year!”

“Why did you put quotations around grandma?”

“My point is what the fuck is happening to you? Are you about to molt? You’re acting like your frail skin is about to rip open.”

“Your inexplicable obsession with me is duly noted, and flattered as I may be that you watch me like a hawk—sorry, a talonscreecher— you can park those observations back at the Target parking lot you were at just this morning along with that awful thing on your wrist that you bought from there.”

Karkat tugs his long sleeve over his wristwatch with a scowl and flips Dave off.

“I usually exercise,” Dave explains, figuring he was one more digression away from Karkat finally deciding to kick him back for all the times earlier, most of which were definitely intentional points of contact on his end. “And I haven’t been able to for almost two weeks now because of—” he gestures to his laptop, the cafe they’re in and the campus visible outside the window they’re sitting by. “Our muscles get stiff and shit if we don’t move. It’s kind of unbearable for me.”

“Well, go! Go run a lap and come back!”

“What did we say about asking people to fulfill your furry kinks? I know our recently established friendship is cool and all but I’m not moirailling with you, dude. Next thing I know you’re going to ask me to get on my knees and bark—” Dave sucks in his breath and clenches his teeth, fighting the instinct to yelp following the sharp pain in his shin.

“Fuck off, Strider! Suffer in that meatsack for all I care.”

“I jog at ass in the morning or in the middle of the night, there is no in between.”

“Those are our peak cram hours.”

“I know! That's why I haven't been able to go!” Dave exclaims. “I hate feeling watched while I workout.” That’s not incriminating to admit, right? Most people hate the gym for the very same reason. There’s no way Karkat’s tragic-past detector would go off.

“‘Cause of your Bro?”

Dammit.

“No,” Dave utters stubbornly while raising his knee for easier access to rub his throbbing leg. “Can’t a guy be a little self-conscious when asked to run around his school in tight jeans and a baggy hoodie at peak hours? Can’t a troll accept that nothing will fix me right now besides getting on my stomach, spreading my legs and praying some forklift certified fuck accidentally gets in a steamroller and runs me over?”

“Jesus, Dave. If it’s that bad… just let me sit on you!”

Dave’s mind is pulled in so many different directions that for once in his life, he’s at a loss for words. The imagery, one he’ll never admit to having, even if burnt at the stake, takes hold. It’s so vivid in his mind that he closes his laptop with an abrupt snap and shoves it into his backpack.

“I think we’re done here.”

“Humans do it all the time!” Karkat continues. “You lie on the couch and your friend sits on your back, right? John and Jade fucked with me like this all the time but they’d make me do it back. They said it feels good.”

“You have got to remember that those two are outliers when it comes to what is considered ‘normal’ by human standards.”

“Right, because you’re a sensible being and should be considered the standard life form for your race.”

“You’re not convincing me to let you sit on my back, dude.”

“Fine, but where the fuck do you think you’re going?”

“Home?” Dave shifts out of the booth and shoulders his backpack. 

“No the fuck you’re not! We’re not even halfway done with this paper!”

“I’ll bullshit something tonight.”

Karkat follows him, protesting the entire time. Dave tries and fails to shake him off. The sticky heat of the summer has yet to take hold of the city. Accustomed as he may be, Dave never looks forward to it, and the dread along with his current bodily aches makes him clench his teeth and curl his fists. He snapped at Karkat once, two years ago, in the summer. He was in a bad mood. Sweat-slicked hair framed his features. The humidity sat heavy in the air and made his clothes cling to the small of his back. He was tired, his brain had reached capacity after back-to-back lectures. The sun drained what little energy he had left, so when Karkat tried to lecture him about his romantic life, embarrassing him in front of their friends, he was genuinely mad. They weren’t close then, but were in each other’s circle. Dave had regretted it instantly. Karkat was a good dude. Sensitive in a way that made Dave cringe, sure, and outright obnoxious at times, but it was from a place of caring. He was fooled at first, with the way the other talked and typed. Karkat Vantas came off aggressive, loud and arrogant, but in actuality was all bark no bite (though his throbbing shin would argue otherwise). When he apologized, Karkat hugged him tight and everything seemed to magically get better after that. 

Dave’s pace slows to a stop once they round the corner, officially off campus and away from the crowds of students. 

“Sorry,” he blurts when the other stumbles to a stop to avoid crashing into him. “For getting all pissy.”

Karkat raises a brow and tilts his head to the side.

Dave uncurls his fists and tries to relax his shoulders. He doesn’t want to be uncool like back then, two years ago. Not to the troll he now knows well. Someone he genuinely likes despite pretending otherwise.

“It’s not anything you said or did.” Why was communicating so hard? And so fucking awkward? Why did he have to explain his feelings instead of relying on the people around him to telepathically understand what was going on in his head?

“Yeah, I know,” Karkat snorts. “You just need to book a fucking massage.”

“Phrasing,” Dave smirks.

“No, Dave. I know what I said.”

Dave flushes at the other’s nonchalance. He hates when Karkat has the drop on him. 

“I hear you can request a happy ending from some plac—mph.”

Dave gets him into a headlock with one arm, the other going over his mouth. There’s a familiarity to the action. “Be glad there’s no table to suplex you over,” Dave threatens. He releases Karkat the moment he detects the other open his mouth to bite him. Yet another familiar action. 

They tussle for a while longer until they’re giggling as they pull away. The distance between them lasts only a brief moment. On a whim, Dave reaches out and pulls Karkat back in, this time for an embrace. Karkat squeezes him tight. It knocks the air out of Dave in the best way possible. Karkat pops his back and nearly lifts him off his tippy toes. God he loved this fucker’s hugs.

“Did that help?” Karkat asks with a small smile, sharp teeth peeking shyly over his lips.

“I’m not sure,” Dave lies, chest tightening at the sight. Shit. “Can you do that again?”

Karkat embraces him with all he’s got. Shit, shit, shit. Dave fights back the groan. He’d never hear the end of it if he made a single sound in front of Karkat. But he can’t lie, this shit felt good. He wraps his arms around Karkat and hugs back. It becomes a competition. They embrace each other until Dave is certain one of them is going to pass out from lack of oxygen.

They release each other with dizzied laughs and crash back into each other, initiating another round. This time Dave reaches around Karkat’s waist, leading the other to lock his arms around Dave’s shoulders. Karkat squeezes the tension right out of those muscles. Dave strengthens his grip until that tight, hot sensation that had wormed its way along his arms and to the pads of his fingers dissipates completely. 

They stumble apart with dopey grins, wordlessly resuming their walk home with nothing to fill the air between them but the sound of passing cars and chirping birds. He should have known. All it took was Karkat hugging him tight. Everything always seemed to magically get better after that. 

[krakenartificer]

Notes on therapist selection

(From someone who is getting a good grade in Having a Therapist, something that is both normal to want and possible to achieve)

Some friends were discussing their work to find a therapist today, and I noticed some unspoken assumptions that can sometimes get in the way of finding someone who's a good fit for your recovery needs, especially around deciding what specializations to look for when no one covers the full range of your crazy. So a list of things to think about that -- as always -- may or may not be useful to anyone except me.

1) On overlapping specializations Anyone who specializes in ADHD or Autism will also have experience dealing with trauma, because every school system I've ever encountered has been traumatizing for NDs. They may or may not call it trauma in their own minds, but they know how to handle "a bad thing happened in my past and it's fucking up my present" problems.

Likewise, everyone who specializes in trauma has experience with anxiety. PTSD was, until 2013, classified as an anxiety disorder. DSM-V puts it in its own category for presumably good reasons, but everyone with PTSD has anxiety (or close enough that you can't specialize in trauma without knowing how to deal with anxiety).

That said ... 2) On picking your therapist based on vibes

Vibes are really more important than specialization. Specialization is important if, like, you have one (1) specific problem and you are looking for a solution for that problem. Like, if your life is fine except that you have ADHD and the executive dysfunction is causing you to be unable to write English essays, then you definitely want an ADHD specialist. But if your opening session is going to be

Therapist: So what brings you in? Me: Well! -straightens lapels- -pulls out easel- -pulls out prepared presentation notes- I have a list

Or

Therapist: So what brings you in? What changes are you looking to make? Me: This -gestures- Therapist: You just pointed to all of you Me: Yes.

then any generic psychologist is as good as any other. You got shit in your head and you gotta detangle it and it's all snarled together anyway, so it's a lot more important that you find someone who you're willing to be working with for years.

3) On finding "the one"

Odds are really really good that you're gonna have more than one therapist in your recovery arc. I did 2 years with one who specialized in psychological impacts on physical health, and it did so. much. for me, and I don't regret it for a moment, but also ... I reached a point where that wasn't the specialization I needed anymore, and also the shit in my head I needed to deal with was the kind of shit that (for trauma reasons) I couldn't talk about to someone in that therapist's demographic. So I left that practice, and found my current therapist.

My current therapist is great, and I'm really glad I'm working with him, but it's entirely possible that he's not going to be able to sort out this entire mess. We may reach a point where his specialties of relationships and adhd are not my bottlenecks any more, and he doesn't really have the tools he needs to handle what my next bottleneck is, and I'll go find someone else who can meet my needs at that time. This is normal and expected, and it's entirely fine to plan on it by (for example) deciding that you want a specialist in this thing right now, and you'll go find a specialist in this other thing later.

4) On Shopping

It's entirely reasonable to have more than one therapist this week. You are in no way expected or required to pick a single therapist based off of some profile pictures, a bio on the website, and a phone call, and then you're stuck with them forever. It is normal and understood that you will set up appointments with half a dozen therapists, and then pick two (or three) to do another session with, before settling into a single choice. Or don't! If you like two therapists for different reasons, and you'd rather work with them simultaneously instead of serially, then feel free to schedule with twice as many therapists, half as often. This ain't a wedding; you don't have to restrict yourself to only one.

Narrow down your choices as quickly as you want to based on your anxiety about not having a decision, based on your executive dysfunction and inability to track multiple things, based on how you feel about each one ... but don't narrow them down to one just because you think that's "the rules", somehow.

5) On Being Abrasive

If you know, upfront, what some of your dealbreakers are, just straight-up say that as you're scheduling the appointment or in the first session. My last therapist became a problem for me because she expressed empathy in a way that was too similar to the way my abuser used weaponized politeness to deny me boundaries; I couldn't talk to her about my violations because her demeanor was too similar to the person who violated me. So when I first talked to my current therapist, I told him, "I need someone who, if they think I'm full of shit, will say 'I think you're full of shit.'" He replied "One of my other clients calls me 'Deadpool'." I said, "Perfect. Let's give it a shot."

So if you really care that someone will let you schedule appointments online, or will never touch your wrist, or will treat your "disorder" as a neurodivergence to be accommodated rather than a problem to be solved, then say so. The sooner you both know that, the better: if you have particular needs, they need to know that now; and if they're not willing to meet your needs, YOU need to know that now.

(You will not, of course, always know your dealbreakers upfront. When I picked my first therapist, my primary problem was hip pain, and I didn't know it was PTSD. It was through her help that I realized that (a) I had trauma and (b) she was way too like my abuser for me to treat PTSD with her. This was not a failure. This was a massive success, because learning that was what allowed me to find someone who could help me (see point #3). It's fine if you don't know, right now, what you need -- that's part of why vibes are so important (see point #2). But whatever information you can give them, it is helpful to do so, and (despite what people in your past have implied) it is not rude, it is beneficial and desired.

6 - not advice, just a reminder

You are beautiful and brave and strong and I am so proud of you for fighting through all the shit -- both internal and external -- to get yourself help. No one ever talks about how hard it is to get to the point where you schedule that first meeting with that first therapist, and I want you to know that it is painful, it is challenging, and you're not lazy or stupid or whatever other lie your brain is telling you.