#light gallows humor?

[orangeblossomsintheair]

A LESSON ON HUNGER | SIMON RILEY

summary : You were small. He would give you grief about it until the end of time. End of story. Well end of story till the two of you started fucking in the dead of night.

wc : 5k of pure filth

an : if yall see @keen-eyed-creature suddenly in ur likes, that's me 😔

Simon knew you were small.

Hard to miss, really, when you had to tilt your head back just to look him in the eye. He was the first to admit that it was a bit of a laugh sometimes.

But it was never something he really thought much about, not in any serious way at least.

It was a detail, like the way you tied your boots or the way your hair stuck out from under your cap. It wasn’t like being short affected your ability to pull the trigger or call in air support.

You got the job done. That was what he cared about. You could be a foot shorter and it wouldn’t make a damn difference.

Still, he couldn’t help himself.

Every now and then, he would drop a jab, something about needing a step ladder to talk to him, or how he has to stoop down like he's dealing with a kid. He had a knack for teasing, and you were an easy target.

It was harmless, though.

Just some friendly fire. You took it well, knew that it was all part of the routine. Gallows humor. Good for morale, or whatever the hell Price said. Kept things light, even if it was at your expense.

You were small. He would give you grief about it until the end of time. End of story.

Well end of story till the two of you started fucking.

He first noticed it when your hand wrapped around his cock, the tips of your fingers barely brushing each other. His breath hitched, and his cock pulsed in your grip, thick and heavy in your tiny hold.

“Bloody hell,” he hissed, mesmerized by the sight. “Look at you.”

Your eyes darted up to his face, wide and innocent, as if you didn’t know exactly what you were doing to him. His chest heaved, the tight control he usually prided himself on slipping with every stroke of your hand.

"Fuckin' tiny," he muttered again, half to himself, watching the way your hand moved over him, struggling to take him all in. He hadn’t thought he’d ever care about something like that, never thought the size difference would drive him this insane, but here you were, bringing him to the brink without even realizing it.

You started slow, pressing soft, wet kisses along the length of his cock like a damn kitten, rubbing it against our cheek and spreading his pre-cum across your face.

When your lips parted, dipped your head, the first touch of your tongue against his tip had him groaning. Hot, wet, and so fucking soft.

“Jesus Christ,” he hissed, one gloved hand moving to the back of your head, the other braced against his thigh. He resisted the urge clawing at his chest that told him to shove himself deeper, to push till your throat bulged with the shape of him.

The first swipe of your tongue had him groaning, body tensing. Knuckles white, muscles straining as his hips jerked forward

You dragged your tongue slowly along the underside of his cock, the soft, wet muscle flicking over him. It swirled around the head before dipping into the slit, teasing, before tracing every vein on the underside.

Spit began to gather, dripping down his length as you worked him over, your desperation pushing you to keep going, keep pleasing him. Your doe eyes locked on his, wide and pleading, as you swallowed him as deep as you could.

“You look so fucking pretty like this,” he rasped, his voice gravelly. “Mouth all full, dripping down your chin. Bet you’d let me fuck your throat, wouldn’t you?”

You moaned around him, the vibration making him swear under his breath. He couldn’t look away. The way your lips stretched around him, your cheeks hollowing as you tried to take more of him—Ghost knew he was a ruined man.

When the blunt head of his cock hit the back of your throat, you gagged softly, pausing there, and he felt the tension in your body. His hand moved to cradle your jaw, fingers curling around it.

“Relax,” he murmured, his thumb brushing over your cheek. “Don’t fight it. Doing so fuckin’ good for me.”

You blinked up at him, tears spilling down your cheeks, and he felt his cock throb at the sight.

“Let me fuck your mouth,” he said, voice low.

You nodded, eyes fluttering shut, but he wasn’t satisfied.

“Look at me,” he barked, tone sharpening. “Need to see you mean it.”

Your eyes opened again, glassy and wide, pupils blown. You nodded again, and he let out a dark chuckle.

“Good girl,” he muttered, his lips quirking into a smirk. “Obedient when you’ve got a cock in your mouth, huh?”

The glare you shot him would’ve been more convincing if your jaw wasn’t slack, the weight of him resting heavy on your tongue.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought.” His hand sliding to the back of your head, fingers tangling in your hair. “Now, open up. Gonna make you take all of me.”

You obeyed, jaw slackening, and Ghost wasted no time. His hips rolled forward, the thick length of him pressing deep into your throat, stretching, filling.

His breath hitched as he slid deeper, the tightness of your throat trying desperately to accommodate him. He couldn’t help the groan that escaped him. A sick part of him thrilled at the way you fought to take him all the way, despite the fact that he really was too fucking big for you to handle.

He watched you for a moment, eyes fluttering as your lips met his base, tears slipping down your cheeks as you struggled to keep your breathing steady, swallowing around him.

“Shit,” he hissed, his other hand moving to cup your jaw, holding you steady. “Feel that? Feel how good you are, huh? You’re a fuckin’ mess, love. Spit everywhere, tears down your face. Fuck’s sakes, you’re perfect.”

Ghost growled under his breath, feeling you pulse around him. “..Takin’ me so well, little thing.”

He gripped your hair tighter, guiding you, forcing his cock deeper. The sounds—wet, obscene—drove him insane. You were taking all of him, your mouth and throat the perfect fit, even though it was clear you were struggling.

“Fuck, you feel so good... Perfect,” he groaned. "You're so fucking beautiful, letting me fuck your throat like this." He slammed into you again, deeper, and watched your face contort in that beautiful, desperate way, knowing you’d take every inch of him, no matter how overwhelming it was

Your hands gripped his thighs, nails digging into the fabric of his pants as you braced yourself, letting him take control. He set a brutal pace, his hips snapping forward, his cock sliding in and out of your mouth with practiced precision.

“Gonna fuck your throat ‘til you can’t think straight,” he growled, his voice dark and heavy with lust. “Gonna make you choke on it, make you feel how deep I can go.”

The words sent a shiver down your spine, and you moaned around him, the sound vibrating against his cock. His head tipped back briefly, a deep groan rumbling in his chest before he forced himself to look at you again.

“Eyes on me,” he ordered, his tone brooking no argument. “Wanna see you when I come. Wanna see that pretty little face all wrecked for me.”

You obeyed, your gaze locking with his, and the intensity in your eyes nearly undid him. He could feel the heat building low in his belly, the tension coiling tighter with every thrust.

“Fuck,” he rasped, his hips stuttering as he drove deeper one last time. “Gonna fill that pretty mouth of yours. Don’t spill a fucking drop.”

And when he came, spilling hot and thick down your throat, the way you swallowed around him had him swearing again, his grip on you tightening as he rode out his release. “F-fuck- damn it, damn it-“

When he finally pulled back, his cock slipping from your swollen, spit-slick lips, he couldn’t help the crooked grin that stretched his lips at the sight of you. Messy, tear-streaked, and utterly ruined.

“Good girl,” he murmured, his thumb brushing over your chin to catch the stray drips. “Knew you could take it.”

The praise lingered in the warm air as he leaned back, watching you catch your breath. His thumb lingered at your jaw for a moment before retreating, replaced by a hand gently coaxing you to your feet.

“C’mere,” he said, tone still rough around the edges, but laced with something terrifyingly tender.

He pulled you up until you were straddling his lap, broad hands settling on your waist. The heat of his palms seeped through the thin fabric still clinging to your skin.

“Alright?” he asked, pale eyes scanning your face.

You nodded. “Better than okay.”

He shifted beneath you, guiding you closer. “Think you’ve got one more in you, sweetheart?” He spoke against your lips, eyes searching.

You swallowed, the anticipation curling low in your stomach. “I can take it,” you whispered.

The grin that spread across his face was something wicked. “That’s my girl.

With your confirmation, Ghost moved, lowering himself between your trembling thighs. He shouldered your legs apart, spreading you wide as he settled in like a man on a mission.

“G-Ghost,” you whimpered, instinctively reaching for his head as the heat of his breath teased over your cunt.

“Shh.” He looked up. “Let me return the favor, yeah?”

The first swipe of his tongue had you arching off the bed, a startled cry ripping from your throat. He groaned against you, eyes rolling back. Always tasted so good. He could cream his fucking pants just licking your pretty pussy.

You squirmed beneath him, thighs trembling as he licked a slow, deliberate stripe from your entrance to your swollen clit, a thumb spreading you open as he pressed the flat of his tongue against the bud.

As you squirmed in place, Ghost’s hands flexed, refusing to let you wriggle away for a moment of reprieve.

“Stay still,” he growled, voice muffled against your clit. “Let me enjoy this.”

His mouth worked you open slowly, licking and sucking at your clit with just enough pressure to have whimpers tumbling out of your lips.

He moved downwards, dipping his tongue into your heat before thrusting it inside, fucking you with it in deep, deliberate strokes.

The slick muscle pistoned into you like it was a cock, curling and stroking every inch of your walls, nose brushing against your clit with every movement.

Your thighs trembled around his head, but his strong hands kept them spread wide, holding you open for him.

“Ghost,” you sobbed, your hands fisting in his hair.

“Keep those legs open,” he ordered, his grip tightening on your thighs as he pushed them wider.

Your hips bucked against him instinctively, but he pinned you down as he worked his tongue deeper, faster. “Look at you,” he rasped, pulling back briefly to catch his breath, his lips glistening with your arousal. “Fuckin’ soaked for me. S’small and tight.”

You sobbed out as he latched onto your clit, sucking gently before flicking his tongue over the sensitive bud. The sharp jolt of pleasure made you cry out, back arching off the bed.

“Taste so fuckin’ good,” he groaned, his voice rough and needy as he returned to thrusting his tongue inside you. He fucked you with his mouth like a man possessed, his hands roaming over your thighs, your hips, everywhere he could reach,

When he latched onto your clit and sucked gently, you shattered. Your cry echoed in the room, your body arching as the orgasm ripped through you, shaking and gasping for air.

“There it is,” he murmured, every line in his body thick with satisfaction as he lapped up every bit of your release.

But he didn’t stop.

He growled against you, hands sliding under your thighs to lift your hips higher, giving him better access as his tongue delved deeper, dragging out your orgasm until you were sobbing beneath him.

“Too much,” you whimpered, body twitching with the aftershocks.

“Not for me.” Ghost pulled back to look at you. His pale eyes were filled with hunger and pride as he took in the sight of you. Tear-streaked, trembling, and utterly ruined.

“P-please,” you whimpered, tears pooling in your eyes as the overstimulation hit you like a tidal wave.

“Not done with you yet, love.” His tongue returned to your clit, circling the swollen bud with ruthless precision until you were sobbing beneath him, your hands weakly pushing at his shoulders.

“Ghost-”

Another climax built impossibly fast, and before you could protest, it crashed over you. His name fell from your lips like a prayer, your hands clutching at his shoulders, his hair, anything to ground yourself as he lapped at your release like a dog.

When he finally pulled back, his lips glistening and his chin slick with your release, he looked at you like you were a feast he hadn’t quite finished.

You barely had a moment to catch your breath before he was moving again, his strong hands gripping your waist as he positioned himself above you. The sheer size of him looming over you sent a thrill down your spine.

“Think you’re ready for me now, yeah?”

Ghost pressed you down against the mattress. Your thighs trembled as he pressed them further apart.

The sheer size of him left you gasping before he even moved, the head of his cock brushing against your slick entrance as he teased you.

“Relax,” he muttered, voice laced with a hunger that made your head spin. “Need you to open up for me.”

You whined, the sound barely coherent as he held you in place with a grip that bordered on bruising. He pushed forward, just enough to let the blunt tip breach you, and the stretch had you clutching at his forearms in desperation.

Your walls clenched around him instinctively, drawing a sharp hiss from his lips. “So fuckin’ tight, Jesus Christ..”

“H-hah.. too- too big-” you whimpered, clutching at his shoulders, nails digging into his skin as if to anchor yourself.

“Y’can take it.” His hands gripped your hips, holding you steady as he bullied his way inside your pretty cunt.

His jaw tightened, burying himself deeper, head dropping to your shoulder. “You’re gonna take it.”

You shook your head, tears welling in your eyes as he pressed further in, splitting you open inch by inch. The burn was sharp but his hands kept you pinned, leaving no room for escape.

“Stop squirmin’,” he ordered. His weight pressed you deeper into the mattress, his shadow covering yours entirely. “You’re only making it harder for yourself.”

Your sobs broke free as he surged forward, his cock sinking deeper into your heat. “I c-can’t,” you whimpered, tears streaming down your cheeks as you clung to him.

“You can,” he insisted, his tone softening but his pace unrelenting. His lips brushed against your temple, a stark contrast to the overwhelming force of him inside you. “Breathe, baby. I’ve got you.”

You tried to focus on his voice, the rasp of it grounding you even as your body felt like it was being torn apart. His thumb brushed over your cheek, wiping away a stray tear, before his hand drifted down to cradle your throat.

“Look at me,” he demanded. “Taking me so well, yeah? D’you feel how tight you are, hm? How perfect you’re gripping me?”

His words sent a fresh wave of heat rushing through you, and you whimpered as your body finally began to yield, the burn giving way to an ache that bordered on pleasure.

“That’s it.” Ghost’s lips curved into a grin as he watched you fall apart beneath him. “Knew you could do it. Knew this perfect little cunt could take all of me.”

Your sobs turned to broken moans as he pulled back, only to thrust forward again, burying himself to the hilt. The force of it knocked the air from your lungs, and your hands scrambled for purchase, gripping at anything to ground yourself.

“Feel that?” he rasped, his thrusts slowing down as he grinded against you. “Feel how deep I am?”

You could only nod, the words stuck in your throat as the pleasure began to build, overwhelming in its intensity.

“Good girl,” he praised.

The pressure inside you coiled tighter as he picked up the pace, the sobs spilling from your lips mingling with broken cries of his name.

You were a mess. Tear-streaked, trembling, utterly consumed by the sheer size and force of him.

“You’re so fucking pretty,” he groaned, quickening as he pressed you further into the mattress. “Ruined, cryin’ for me. Takin’ everythin’ I give you.”

His words tipped you over the edge, and when you came, it was with a shattering cry that left you trembling in his arms. But he didn’t stop, didn’t even slow. Oh no, Ghost dragged you through the aftershocks and straight into the next wave of pleasure.

“Don’t stop,” you sobbed, your nails raking down his back as he growled against your neck. “Please, Ghost- don’t stop-”

“‘M not going anywhere,” he promised, pulling out of you slowly and you felt an unbearable emptiness that followed his absence. Gasping at the way your walls clenched around nothing, already missing the stretch of him.

Before you could voice your complaints, his hands were on you again, lifting you effortlessly as he shifted onto his back.

“C’mere,” he ordered, his voice rough with need, guiding you to straddle his hips. The sight of him, broad chest heaving, his cock glistening and impossibly thick, standing proudly between you, made your stomach flutter with equal parts apprehension and arousal.

“Ghost, I-“ you started, but his hands ground you in place as he pressed his forehead against your trembling body.

“Be good,” he murmured, his thumbs stroking your skin in slow, deliberate circles. “Take what you need. I’ll make it fit.”

Your breath hitched, and with his steadying hands guiding you, you reached down, positioning the thick head of his cock at your entrance.

The pressure was instant, overwhelming, as you sank down the smallest fraction.

“Bloody fuck,” he growled, his head falling back against the pillow. “Look at you. So tight, so perfect-” His words cut off in a guttural groan when you shifted your weight, trying to take him deeper.

The stretch burned, his girth spearing you open inch by inch, and you couldn’t help the broken sob that fell from your lips. “S’too- too much,” you whimpered, your thighs trembling as you hovered above him, the sheer size of him making your head spin.

“Shhh,” he cooed, though his own voice was strained, his jaw clenched tight as he fought to keep still beneath you. “Doin’ s’good, sweetheart. Just take your time. Lemme fill you up.”

You nodded shakily, nails digging into his chest as you slowly lowered yourself further, feeling every ridge and vein of him stretching you impossibly wide.

He felt endless, and the way he groaned only heightened the unbearable pleasure-pain of being split open by him.

“That’s it,” he growled, his hands sliding down to grip your thighs, urging you to take him all. “Don’t stop now. You’re almost there. Gonna take every inch, yeah?”

Tears pricked at the corners of your eyes as you finally sank down to the hilt, his cock buried so deep inside you that it felt like he was in your very core.

You let out a choked sob, your chest heaving as you tried to catch your breath.

“Fuck, look at you,” he rasped, his voice thick with awe and something darker. His gaze burned into you, watching as you struggled to adjust to his size. “So fucking tight, squeezing me like you don’ wanna let go.”

You couldn’t form words, your mind hazy and overwhelmed as he filled you completely, stretching you to your limits. He let you sit there for a moment, his hands tracing soothing patterns on your thighs as you trembled above him.

“Move,” he commanded softly, voice coaxing but firm. “Show me how good you feel, baby. Ride me.”

You whimpered, your hands splaying across his chest for balance as you lifted yourself slightly, only to sink back down again. The friction was devastating, and the stretch still burned, but the heat building in your core had you panting for more.

“That’s it,” he groaned, his fingers digging into your skin as he met you halfway with a shallow thrust that left you crying out. “Taking me so fucking well.”

Each rise and fall of your hips had him spearing you open all over again, the sheer size of him filling you in a way that made you feel utterly wrecked, utterly his. Your sobs mixed with moans as the pleasure overwhelmed you, Ghost taking over to guide your movements with a possessive grip.

“Made for this,” he growled, his voice raw as his gaze locked on the place where your bodies joined, watching as his cock disappeared inside you with every thrust. “Made for me to fuck you like this. Look at how you’re taking me- so greedy, so fucking pretty.”

The sound of your sobs only seemed to spur him on, his hands gripping your waist tighter as he thrust up into you, meeting your movements with a force that left you breathless.

“Ghost,” you whimpered, your nails raking down his chest as your thighs burned from the effort, your body trembling from the relentless pace.

“Don’t stop,” he growled, his voice a low, possessive snarl. “You’re not stopping until I feel you come around me. Wanna feel this tight little cunt squeeze me, got it?”

You nodded, unable to do anything but obey as his hands gripped your waist firmly, slamming you down on his cock with a force that had you keening.

The stretch was unbearable, your body trembling from the sheer effort of taking him. The swollen ache between your thighs was overwhelming, but the pleasure sparking through you burned brighter.

“Good girl..” He guided you to ride him faster, deeper.

Your head fell back, tears streaming down your cheeks as your body clenched around him. The first climax tore through you like a lightning strike, sudden and all-consuming, leaving you shuddering and gasping for air.

“Fuck, there it is,” he rasped, thrusting up into you, dragging the aftershocks out longer. “That’s my girl..so fucking perfect when you come for me.”

You barely had time to recover before his hand slid between your bodies, his thumb pressing down hard on your swollen clit.

Your scream echoed in the room, your hands scrambling against his chest as the sharp jolt of overstimulation hit you like a tidal wave.

“N-no!” you sobbed, trying to lift yourself off of him, but his hands held you down, refusing to let you escape.

“Don’t think so.” His thumb circled your sensitive bud in maddening, unrelenting strokes. “You’re not running from me. You’re gonna take it, all of it. Gon’ make you come over and over until you can’t think straight.”

Your body jerked uncontrollably, every nerve alight as his cock drove into you, his thumb working your clit. The relentless friction sent you tumbling headfirst into another orgasm, this one sharper, rawer.

You screamed his name, your nails digging into his shoulders as you shook in his hold, but he didn’t stop.

“That’s two,” he growled, his lips curling into a wicked grin as he watched you fall apart. “Think you’ve got another one in you, sweetheart?”

“I c-can’t,” you sobbed, tears spilling freely as your body quivered against him. “It’s too much, I c-can’t-”

“You can,” he interrupted, his voice dark and commanding as his hips snapped up again, driving his cock deeper.

His thumb pressed harder against your bud. Your thighs trembled violently, every nerve in your body raw and exposed as he pushed you toward another peak.

“You’re so sensitive,” he rasped, voice thick with satisfaction as his thumb slowed just enough to keep you on the edge. “So swollen, so perfect..”

“Ghost-!” you sobbed, voice breaking as another climax slammed into you, your walls clenching around him like a vice. The pleasure was too much, too overwhelming, and yet you couldn’t stop yourself from chasing it, your hips grinding against him despite the tears streaming down your face.

“That’s it,” he groaned, his free hand gripping your ass as he guided your movements, keeping you firmly in place. “Keep going, love. Don’t stop until I say so.”

Your body was beyond exhausted, trembling violently as his relentless pace and the constant attention on your clit drove you into the kind of pleasure that felt like madness. Every stroke of his cock, every circle of his thumb sent shockwaves through you, leaving you an incoherent mess.

“Ngh..” you whimpered, your voice breaking as your head fell forward, your hands clutching desperately at his chest. “Can’t- please-“

“But you’re being such a good girl,” he murmured, softening slightly as his hand slid from your clit to grip your waist again. “You’re taking me so well..look at how swollen and perfect you are.”

His cock throbbed inside you, and as you slumped against his chest, he leaned up to press a kiss to your tear-streaked cheek, his voice a rough whisper in your ear.

“Think you’ve got one more?”

Your body trembled uncontrollably, tears streaking down your face as you shook your head weakly, barely able to form words. “N-no more.. please, Ghost… it’s too much,” you sobbed, breaking as you slumped against him, completely spent.

But he wasn’t having it.

“Thought you wanted to be good for me?”

Effortlessly, he lifted you off his still-throbbing cock, making you whimper at the sudden emptiness, your thighs trembling as they struggled to hold your weight.

“Shhh,” he murmured, his voice deceptively soothing as he shifted you, his large frame easily maneuvering you like you weighed nothing. “You’re not done yet, baby. I’ve got you.”

“Ghost, no-” you whimpered, trying to squirm away as he laid back fully, his broad shoulders pressing into the mattress.

But he didn’t give you a choice.

His hands tightened on your thighs, pulling you forward until you were straddling his chest. The heat of his skin against yours made you shiver, your swollen, oversensitive core throbbing as he moved you higher.

“Be a good girl and sit,” he ordered, eyes locking onto yours with a predatory intensity that made your breath hitch.

You shook your head frantically, tears pooling in your eyes as you whimpered, “Ghost… I’m too sensitive, I-”

His grip on your thighs tightened, silencing your protests.

Before you could protest further, he pulled you up, positioning you directly over his face. The heat of his breath against your soaked, swollen folds made you cry out, your hands flying to his shoulders for balance as you tried to lift yourself away.

“Don’t run from me.” He forced you down, lowering you onto his waiting mouth.

The first swipe of his tongue against your overstimulated clit sent a sharp jolt through you, and you sobbed, your body jerking as the overwhelming sensation threatened to pull you under. “Ghost, Ghost-“”

But he didn’t stop.

His tongue was relentless, licking and sucking at your sensitive bud, his hands holding you firmly in place no matter how much you tried to squirm away.

“That’s it,” he whispered between long, torturous strokes. “Don’t you dare run from me. You’re gonna take everything.”

Your thighs shook violently on either side of his head, your body trembling as wave after wave of unbearable pleasure crashed over you.

You sobbed, tears streaming down your face as his tongue circled your clit mercilessly, his mouth devouring you like a man starved.

Ghost snarled, his grip tightening as he dragged you even closer, his tongue plunging deep inside you before returning to your swollen, throbbing bud. “You’re gonna come for me again, and you’re gonna let me taste every fucking bit of you.”

You couldn’t hold back the scream that tore from your throat as another climax ripped through you, your body convulsing violently as his mouth pushed you over the edge.

Your hands tangled in his hair, desperate and needy, as you sobbed his name, begging for mercy even as your hips ground against his face.

Finally, he slowed, his tongue gentle now as he lapped at you lazily, his hands sliding up and down your thighs in soothing strokes. “There you go,” he murmured, his voice softer now, though the satisfaction in his tone was unmistakable. “That’s my pretty girl.”

Your body slumped forward, your chest heaving as tears streamed down your face. He let you collapse against him, his arms wrapping around you protectively as he kissed your temple, his breath warm against your skin.

“I told you you could take it,” he murmured, his lips brushing against your ear as he held you close.

[leashybebes]

apparently i'm feeling a little angsty, cuz I'm feeling either 38...because they're running out of time or 47...out of spite. 😅

i went for 38: running out of time. thanks for playing!

"Evan - " Tommy's voice is weak, wobbly, barely competing with the ominous creaking from all around them that Buck desperately hopes isn't coming from anything that's offering tenuous support to the beam that's currently pinning Tommy's legs under the rubble. If that slips, he's screwed, he's so screwed.

"Oh, we're back to Evan?" Buck asks, as he uses the far too weak light from his torch to search for any kind of solution to this godawful situation.

"Listen to me," Tommy says, and he manages to sound a bit more insistent this time. 

"No," Buck says, pulling a length of rebar from the rubble to his left. That might help - might give him enough leverage to raise the beam just a little. It's a start - now he just has to clear the crumbling masonry from the beam to give himself a fighting chance, and figure out a way to do that which won't make everything exponentially worse. "Last time I listened to you, you said something really fucking stupid."

"I did," Tommy agrees, and that makes Buck pause. "Not stupid this time. Evan. Evan, please."

Buck turns the torch towards Tommy, forces himself to see his pallor, how labored his breathing has become, the cold sweat along his brow.

"What?" he demands, crouching down at Tommy's side, as close as he can safely get.

"You gotta get out of here - "

"No," Buck says without hesitation.

"Evan - "

"I said no."

"Baby, please. If you die in here with me I'll - "

"Shut up. There's no with me, Tommy. You're not dying."

It's awful and heartbreaking and just the tiniest bit gallows-humor funny that Tommy manages to make his best really, Evan? face even in the midst of all this.

"You're not dying. I'm not going to let you die."

"You're running out of time," Tommy tells him, and Buck knows he's probably right.

"Listen to me," Buck says, cupping Tommy's cheek in his hand and glaring at him. "We're getting out of here. You owe me a conversation."

"I'd like that. But I don't think - "

"I cannot begin to explain to you how much I do not care what you think right now, Tommy." His voice comes out harsher than he intended and he gentles it, bends down to press a kiss to Tommy's mouth. He tries not to think about the taste of blood. "Just let me work, okay?"

"I'm sorry," Tommy gasps out wetly, tears springing to his eyes. "Baby, I'm so sorry."

"Save it for later," Buck orders. He presses his radio into Tommy's hands, Tommy's own lost somewhere under the rubble. "Keep trying this, okay?"

He holds it together until he turns away, gives himself a second under the pretext of surveying their surroundings and then wipes tears from his eyes. He's got this. He can do this. He makes a careful grab for one of the slabs of masonry, tests it for stability, makes sure it isn't load-bearing. He'll drag them away piece by piece if he has to. They're not dying here. They're not. Their last kiss isn't going to be one where there's blood on Tommy's lips, and it's not going to be the one ten minutes before Tommy broke his heart, either. Buck will make sure of that.

Behind him, the radio crackles to life in Tommy's shaking hands.

and then everything was fine!!!

list of kisses is here in case anyone wants to play

[heartfullofleeches]

lampshade guy is my wife idk if he told you😔 also what kind of humor does jasper have i love them so much but i feel like they’d look at me funny the st the first “what the sigma”

🫃(mpreg anon if not taken)

He did not inform me of that, but good to know.

As for Jasper, despite being chronically online and a moderator in certain fics regarding Bunny Stream Darling, they aren't up to date on today's internet lingo. They also have a morbid/"gallows" sense of humor and will try to make light of nearly any troubling situation. They'd definitely look at you like you've frown a second head saying something like that, but once you explain they'll search the farthest corners of the web to keep up with you.

-

Jasper: That man who catcalled you dying of respiratory failure was rather "based" as people say, yes? I'm sure you'd love to give the snake who did a kiss as a reward

Jasper: Person. I meant person. Please ignore that bit in my last message. We snakes are kind and loving folk. ^^ I'd never hurt a fly.

[macabresymphonies]

Look, I'm not really on the "Smirk's 14 is back bby" train just yet, but I did notice that Alice of all people has been making some strange jokes all throughout the show so far.

Yes, Alice is like a Family Guy episode, she shoots jokes at mach speed to see if anything lands, but with stuff she's been saying there's seem to be a strange overarching theme of her referencing Entities (or avatars if you prefer). We're not the only one noticing this, Sam very much did too:

TMAGP 06 Sam: Okay firstly, this place is making you really morbid. (...)

I know that she references creepy stuff all around and with Smrik's 14 basically covering each fear on earth we might lean into confirmation bias, but it might be significant in the future so it's better to consider it now than later. With that, let me compile all of Alice's morbid "jokes" so far and how they seem to relate to Fears from TMA:

The Dark

TMAGP 01 Alice: Boooo! Your pathetic addiction to vitamin D will only make you weak.

The Flesh/The Spiral

TMAGP 01 Alice: Listen to me: bones are a lie peddled by Big Milk to keep you buying. No such thing.

The Stranger

TMAGP 01 Alice: Don’t boo me! I created you, and I can destroy you!

The Spiral (specifically mention of molding a person like clay, like in The Great Twisting)

TMAGP 01 Alice: You'll see. Anyway, hurry it up, time to mold you like clay into the perfect government drone for the Office of Incident Assessment and Response.

The Spiral

TMAGP 02 Alice (sardonic): Time isn’t real.

The Spiral (specifically MAG 74: Fatigue)

TMAGP 06 Alice: Have you considered simply bypassing your mouth altogether and injecting the beans directly into your bloodstream? Sam: Great idea. Why didn’t I think of that? Alice: Not enough coffee beans in your blood.

The Dark (very blatantly)

TMAGP 06 Alice: Oh Sam. The sun is the enemy. It rules the world of light but we who dwell in darkness feel only its wrath. Get the curtains.

The Flesh

TMAGP 06 Alice: Then we draw lots and one of you gets eaten at the Christmas party.

The Flesh (again)

TMAGP 06 Alice: “Would you like tea Celia? Coffee perchance? My heart carved from my chest and arranged on a little doily? Please, Celia, cut out my tongue so I can always be there to lick your stamps for you!”

These seem... strangely consistent, whenever she goes her gallows humour bit it's either reference to hating on the sun (light), humorous "I'm baltantly gaslighting you" stuff or reference to eating/getting eaten/cannibalism. Take that as you will, these could be "easter eggs", but they might as well be clues.

[destieltropecollection]

Destiel Trope Collection 2024 | Day 11: Enemies to Lovers

Bad Education | @verobatto Rating: Explicit Word Count: 20,061 Main Tags/Warnings: Buttler!Castiel, CEO!Dean, enemies to lovers, boss/employee relationship, character development, comedy Summary: When a multimillionaire grandfather wants to give his grandson Dean Winchester a lesson, he will search for a desperate method by hiring Dean's worst nightmare to be his butler. Will the charismatic Castiel be able to educate the most egocentric, selfish and rebellious rich dude and turn him into a perfect CEO? Or will they kill each other before that happens?

Better Than You | @verobatto Rating: Explicit Word Count: 21,950 Main Tags/Warnings: Light internalized homophobia, office au, coming out, rivals to lovers, childhood friends, fluff, angst, happy ending Summary: Dean has many goals in his life, but there's just one that bothers him to death: to defeat the perfect Castiel Novak at any cost. This is a self-discovering journey, in which Dean will try his best to win against Castiel and not to fall in love with him in the meantime.

Maybe not a comedy (according to Jack), but he likes the happy ending | @seidenapfel Rating: Mature Word Count: 67,602 Main Tags/Warnings: Alternate Universe - Space, Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Canon-Typical Violence, Angels, Demons, Angel Wings, Hell, Purgatory, Heaven, Slow Burn, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Hurt Dean Winchester, Fluff and Angst, Angst, Castiel and Dean Winchester Have a Profound Bond, Angst with a Happy Ending, Castiel's True Form (Supernatural), Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, mention of Sam Winchester/Jessica Moore - Freeform, Hurt/Comfort, possible Meg Masters/Charlie Bradbury, Additional Warnings In Author's Note Summary: Dean Winchester is dead. He died ten years ago, when he sold his soul to Demon Corp in order to save his brother’s life. He has lost everything, even his dignity. All that is left is a brutal tool to torture other lost souls on Inferno just like himself. Castiel’s orders are simple. Free one random soul from the pit on Inferno in order to bring it back to Angelus Associations’ headquarters on Paradiso. No one expects him to be successful, but, as a soldier, he never questions his orders. The moment Castiel lays eyes on the human overseer, everything changes. Castiel has found his mission, the man he needs to save. An adventure begins that takes Dean and Castiel from planet to planet, from Inferno to Purgatorio to Paradiso, and beyond. It’s a journey to find themselves and each other.

Vampirenatural: The Rebellion - Rogue | @Taymarpigeon Rating: Explicit Word Count: 225,822 Main Tags/Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Alternate Universe - Vampire, Crossover, Crossover Pairings, World of Darkness, Human Dean Winchester, Detective Dean Winchester, Vampire Castiel (Supernatural), Angst, Smut, Gallows Humor, Sexual Humor, Sexual Tension, Human/Vampire Sex, Blood Drinking, Blood Sharing, sickness and injury, Canon-Typical Violence, Implied/Referenced Sexual Assault, Recreational Drug Use, Slow Burn, Kiiiind of Mafia, Kiiiind of Murder Husbands, Russian Castiel (Supernatural), Implied/Referenced Suicide, non-consensual biting, BAMF Dean Winchester, BAMF Castiel, Top Castiel/Bottom Dean Winchester, Acts of War Summary: From clubs to underground caverns, seedy motels, haunted hotels and exclusive mansions, Los Angeles has it all. It's a place for the pretty and the hopeful, but beneath its star-spangled façade are shadowy corners harbouring the vagrant and the vagabond alike. It's a world of corruption, sex and violence, Detective Dean Winchester has learnt to navigate with ease. Eight years at Santa Monica PD could never have prepared him for the underbelly of this so-called City of Angels though. Dean knows the shadows, he knows them intimately, but is he prepared for the World of Darkness?

[rockscanfly]

Sometimes I write things! Usually if there's a fandom I love and I don't see the specific kind of stuff I'm interested in reading that's when the writing bug will hit me. Hence, a lot of rarepairs or rare dynamics. Sampler of works I'm proud of below, sorted by fandom:

Red Dead Redemption 2 (currently most active fandom. i'm engaged in an ongoing campaign to bring more bottom!Charles Smith to the world)

the stars are not wanted now: Charles Smith, Sadie Adler, and the two deaths of Arthur Morgan.

Snow Bunny: Three years after the dissolution of the Van der Linde gang, Arthur and Charles pass a long winter together. Arthur calls Charles something new in bed, to rave reviews. Later, he earns a new nickname of his own. (or, Arthur Morgan-Smith's Guide To Surviving The Canadian Winter, Cowboy Style)

Once Bitten, Twice Shy: Running it alone for over a decade doesn't tend to make you very good at communication. When Arthur's un-buried ghosts darken the doorstep of the home he and Charles have built together, Charles’ instinct to pull away ignites a conflagration that threatens to burn that home to its foundations. (or, Arthur considers reconnecting with his former mentor. Charles loses his fucking mind)

Young Justice (pretty much every fic is about Kaldur, my forever girl. My oldest and most prolific fandom, have some WIPs but TBD on if they see the light of day. )

Recovery: No one's really been okay since the invasion ended. Artemis is back on the Team and back to school in Central City, M'gann and Connor are helping the Team stay afloat, Roy's quit the business to take care of Lian, and Dick has retreated back to Blüdhaven. With all this, everyone can't help but notice how Kaldur's reacting to the last year of trauma, and to it finally being over. (Or, in better words, how he's not reacting.)

Gallows Humor: Five jokes that only Artemis and Kaldur laughed at. (or: A Treatise On the Effects of Exposure to Organized Violence in Early Adolescence)

and four a.m. knows all my secrets: (five beds Kaldur has lied awake in and one where he found rest)

Atlantean Cryptanalysis For Beginners: Concept: the little eel faces on Kaldur's hands change their expression depending on his mood (or, Artemis is great at detail, and everyone else is a moron. Nothing is new)

I Saw The Harbor Lights (They Told Me We Were Parting): It’s Kaldur’s last night before he puts his and Dick’s plan into action. And he’s going to spend it with his boyfriend. (or, In Which Kaldur And Roy Go On A Date And Everything Is Beautiful And Nothing Hurts)

I have other fics that I've enjoyed writing, but these are the ones I want to pin for easy access.

[xappetites]

one thing leads to another

Russell Adler x f!Reader (Bell) | Adler is half convinced Bell's using tenderness as a battering ram on purpose, he also needed someone to understand him more than he would ever admit, shit's fucked but that's par for the course, as always i sort of added a year between finding Bell and the rest of the game | word count: 1,672

London is a mess, but then again, all cities are. And this one has the benefit of both being friendly ground but not exactly home, in case the whole thing goes sideways. 

Besides, it’s not like Adler’s an amateur. He wouldn’t have started this game without the certainty that he’d be able to handle it, roll with all of the possible outcomes. 

No, this was calculated. 

He purposely picked the side of town where metro police drag their feet, no matter how urgent the call. And he’s carrying a trusty sedative in a hypodermic needle retrofitted into a pen, so all he really needs to worry about is Bell.

Quite frankly, Bell’s all he’s been worrying about for the past eight months, though for the most part he can justify it as just another job hazard. The rest he blames on being a sexually active human with an average libido and moderately good circulation. 

Sure, he’s seen her bleeding out, sweat drenched and bruised from several rounds of interrogation. Feverish, mumbling, staring into his soul like she could tear into him with her eyes alone. And she still slides silk soft over the ridges of his brain.

It was easy to ignore, all things considered; in that dark room with nothing but the microphone and the bell. To watch her, past whatever attraction he can’t shake, looking closely for results. But now she’s out in the world, fully convinced that she’s known him for decades; now she remembers a different Russell Adler. The one he was before the crooked line of his life proved to him that he wasn’t one for an easy ride; the man who would banter mid firefight, with the kind of gusto that makes him roll his eyes coming from Park and Lazar over comms. 

And sure, that means she’s comfortable enough to follow his instructions without much back-talk and she's amenable enough that she’ll take initiative to do what’s best for the mission on her own. She’s efficient and useful; and she claws that old playfulness out of him kicking and screaming. Even if he tries to resist, to ignore her easy jabs, the gallows humor, it’s those damn eyes and the light of affection in them that forces him to respond just to focus on something else.

It’s so obvious that even Sims commented on it, how he hadn’t heard chatter like that from him in years. So maybe that’s why Adler wanted this meeting to be private; why he asked Bell to slip away from Park when he called. Selling it as an added challenge when he dared her to find him in London with nothing to go on but the arrival time of his flight. A test of skill and loyalty.

Just as Park’s had Bell here for a week. Officially, for a briefing of the few leads MI6 has in Berlin. Off the record, offering proof of concept to the powers that be: one shining, sweet success to prove what programming can do. Work. That’s what’s behind Adler standing alone in a no name club, not the impulse to hog Bell all to himself, or the unspeakable notion that he misses her.

He’s too professional to let it show, and he knows what needs to be done, but that’s the filthy truth of him, the way his hands itch for skin on skin contact. The manufactured familiarity that allows her to touch him all the time —hands solid on his shoulders or her thigh pressed against his in the back of a cab. All the more tempting for being forbidden. More nagging in the back of his mind because he’s stealing her from the man he’s hunted for so long. 

The sensation makes Adler lay his palms flat on the bar top, check his watch. All he can do at the moment is wait. 

Two more minutes to his midnight meeting with Bell. Two minutes that are nothing in the grand scheme of his standing stakeout record of several months. Minutes that he watches tick like molasses over his wrist. Anticipation settling horrible in the pit of his stomach with the possibility that, once out of Park’s watchful eye, Bell will abscond back to Perseus. And won’t that be a fun one to explain. A betrayal he can already taste, that hurts in a way that it shouldn’t. Burning as it goes down like the whiskey that’s suddenly shoved his way over the bar. 

“I didn’t order this.”

“Your missus said you looked thirsty.”

The bartender tosses a wry smile his way too, nodding in the general direction of a very smug Bell. Who, at least, has the decency not to appear out of the smoke like this is a private eye movie, she just simply is there, close enough to touch, when she wasn’t the second before.

“You made it,” he greets her, watches her grin grow slow and tilted over her mouth. Her hips angled to squeeze in next to him, lean her weight on the bar and steal a sip off his drink. And Adler hates how proud he sounds, how his shoulders lose tension when she takes the first, poison-taster gulp of liquor like a half apology for ambushing him. 

“You doubted it?” 

“Park can be hard to sidestep.”

Bell outright giggles then, smile blinding in her satisfaction, but she doesn’t offer anything else. She won’t spoil the magician’s trick. 

“So what’s your story?” She asks instead, dipping closer still, until Adler can feel the ghostly touch of her hair against his cheek. “If this were to go tits up. Who are you tonight?”

“Well, you already told the bartender, I’m your husband.”

“Got you sore about that?”

There’s laughter in Bell’s voice, a tease of her fingertips straightening the collar of his jacket. Of course he’s fucking sore, with the way the thought goes right between his legs, aches in the pit of his stomach. Here with her lips on the rim of his glass, her body nudging insistently into his personal space like picking at a wound.

“Just wondering how believable it’d be for me to have a wife so beautiful.”

“Please, Russ, you’re the most attractive man I know.”

She moves, digging out a cigarette and flagging the bartender for an ashtray, and the extra inch of distance is such a deep relief that it takes Adler half a second to realize she’s smoking when they were supposed to have culled that out of her.

“I thought you’d quit,” he tries, as a thin, icy stream of uncertainty slides down his spine. He tries to be rational, smoking is the least dangerous of Bell’s old habits; complicated by the physiological dependence on nicotine to boot. This doesn’t have to be a sign of impending doom, he just has to keep an eye on it.

“In this line of work? It wasn’t meant to last,” she pauses, takes a drag and holds the smoke for long enough to notice she’s having his exact brand, familiar and comforting. “Besides, you give me cravings.”

The eyes, it’s always the fucking eyes. The way they catch on his scar, climbing along until she’s staring him down with nothing but open, honest desire, and a sort of sadness underneath. Like she’s given up on the magnetic pull she feels for him as soon as she admits to it.

Bell knows he’d put the job above anything, knows that’s what nuked his marriage. She knows because he told her, made her privy to things the likes of Sims only suspect. It was easy too, once he got started, to let the words get away from him; maybe not during the first session, but by the twentieth? The fiftieth? He’d find himself in the jungle of Vietnam and in the weeds of his personal hang ups all the same. 

We fought together, bled together. 

A mantra that to a degree poisoned him too. Enough to make him need this, once at the very least, to hold Bell steady by the back of the neck, tasting the smoke and the surprise on her lips. Then he has to do it again, since Bell’s crushing the cigarette out so she can pull herself closer by his lapels, run her fingers through his hair with a whisper of ‘fuck Russ’. And he is absolutely fucked in so many ways.

Fucked in the ease of walking beside her back to his hotel. And in how she sighs against his mouth when her cold hands sneak under clothes in the elevator. Adler feels his heart beating in double time as he finally works himself inside her, inch by inch so he can’t hide from this. He could regret it, he already does, as he struggles to make this last as long as he can, but he can never pretend it didn’t happen. 

He’ll always have the way she clings to him, his name stumbling out of her when he hits the angle that makes her melt, to weigh on his conscience. He’ll keep coming back to her shoulder, still slick from the shower as he rested his forehead on it, because that was the third time he’d come that night and it never lost its edge to feel her around him.

These are the things Adler knows will haunt him. Keep him up at night until he finds the next excuse to have her, in a different hotel and a different city, with the same burning desperation.

And it’s what he sees, clear as day, playing in her mind that night as he tries to drag Perseus’ location out of her. Every kiss and every single time he drew meaningless shapes over her skin while she was curled up against his side.

The way he demands the information but has not let go of her hand, the fact that they both know how this ends. And he can only fucking hope, with her brilliant eyes burning through him again, that she can forgive him for falling for her.

[360degreesasthecrowflies]

Many of JKR's approaches to social class seem to me to reflect precisely the same mind-set that she so loudly and shrilly denounces in her depiction of the Dursleys. People like the Dursleys, JKR tells us, are wickedly regressive -- brutish, even. They and their ilk should be scorned, as should the things that they tend to believe in. Things like corporal punishment. Things like the death penalty. Things like disdain for the lower classes. Things like suspicion of the aristocracy. Things like jingoism, and law-and-orderism, and political paranoia, and the belief that foreigners are intrinsically dubious, not to be trusted. Things like "blood will tell." We are treated to this at the beginning of each novel, almost as if JKR wants to establish her progressive credentials from the very outset. Once we move on to the meat of the text, however, it can sometimes become a bit difficult to avoid the suspicion that in some indefinable way, the spirit of Aunt Marge is pushing the hand that holds the pen. Blood really does seem to tell in the Potterverse, and foreign names do often serve as a marker of dark allegiance. The lower classes are stupid and beneath notice; the aristocracy is sinister, and very likely sexually perverse as well. Corporal punishment is precisely what children like Draco Malfoy deserve, and although Hogwarts does not itself permit this, the narrative voice positively exults whenever the little brat gets physically smacked down. The political approach of Crouch Sr. was regrettable, of course -- but all the same, you know, his son really was guilty...and besides, Fudge is ever so much worse. And Sirius Black, whom Vernon Dursley so brutishly classifies as gallows-bait, was innocent all along. Pettigrew was the real culprit -- and the narrative voice rather gives us the impression that the author believes that he really does "deserve to die." It is troubling, this, and it casts the Dursley sequences which open each novel in a strange and somewhat disturbing light. The broad slapstick viciousness of these passages—often strikingly stylistically out of kilter with the more subtle shadings of the rest of the text—almost begin to read like expressions of authorial self-hatred, or perhaps even as failed authorial attempts at self-exorcism. JKR rings her little bell and lights her single candle: she sneers at Vernon; she blows up Aunt Marge. But the values that these characters represent cannot be so easily dismissed. Their personifications may receive all manner of public thrashing in the first chapter or two of each novel, but it would seem that their spirits are lodged somewhere deep within the author's very soul. When it comes to the Dursleys, the closet conservative doth protest too much. The result—much like the homophobic rantings of those trapped in a somewhat different closet—is strangely unconvincing. On some fundamental level, we simply do not believe in the Dursleys in at all the same way that we believe in the rest of the fictive world. The explicit condemnation of their values doesn't carry the same weight as the implicit approval that these same values are granted by the rest of the text -- in very much the same way that JKR's use of stereotypes as a form of humor so often fails to quite convince readers that she really doesn't, deep down in her heart of hearts, genuinely believe the things that she passes off as "nothing but a joke." JKR wants to be a progressive. But there's a rock-solid streak of conservatism in her writing, and even though she herself seems to dislike it, she nonetheless seems incapable of banishing it even from her very own text.

via Elkins's essay on Class in Harry Potter. Notably, this was written before the last two books were released and is very insightful on things that would later be revealed both about the authorship, Rowling's views as a writer, and her general social views in the following 15 years.

[somefanficrecomendations]

December Monthly Roundup

Here's December's fic round up!

DC/BATMAN

Worlds Saddest Breakfast Club by motleyfam   (gen)7k, Hurt/Comfort, Jason Todd-Centric Following a couple of Very Bad Weeks™ (which may or may not have involved being kidnapped and mildly tortured), Jason decides the best way to cheer himself up is to break into the Manor for a 3 a.m. snack. Turns out he isn’t the only one awake.

Batstream by RandomReader13 (gen), 6k, Bats on social media, Humor   “I want it on record that I think this is a terrible idea and I’m only doing this to mitigate the damage." AKA Red Robin decides it's a great idea to livestream patrol while Batman's off-world. It goes about as well as you'd expect.

cards on the table by wesslan (gen) 67k, WIP, Fortune Teller AU, Tim Drake-Centric  Tim's parents faked their deaths and fled the country years ago, but neglected to take him with them. He spent some time on the streets, and now at 16, he makes a living as a fortune teller, stalking and hustling the shit out of Gotham's elite by telling them eerily accurate fortunes based on the information he gathers about them.  His life is peculiar but he wouldn't change a thing. When he gets booked for the big Wayne Halloween party, however, he finds himself getting all tangled up with the Waynes, and the more fortunes he tells, the tighter the snare becomes.  or: Tim just wanted to scam Gotham's elite, not end up on the Batfamily's watchlist. But it seems they just won't leave him alone..

(a not so) lonesome town by wesslan   (gen), 10k, 2-part series, Sentient Gotham, Jazz music. Two works in which Gotham City is sentient and adopts enough kids to rival Batman himself (Batman is one of them).

Banshee in a Well by liverobinreaction (bugbee) (gen), 43k, Meta Tim, Resurrection Powers   Tim is five years old when he drowns in his parents' pool. He dies quietly, waiting for parents who love him, but will never be there, to realise that something is wrong. They never show up, and he sinks into oblivion.  When he wakes up and claws his way out of the water, the sun has set, and the lights of his house are on. He is cold and wet and his lungs burn.  But most of all, Tim is alone.  (If you die and no-one is there to see it, were you ever alive in the first place?)

HUNGER GAMES

right here in the old therebefore by californianNostalgia (Katniss/Peeta) 14k, Canon Divergence, Ghosts There’s a ghost at the Hanging Tree. Katniss sees him first when she’s six, her hair in braids, the song about the growing gallows fresh in her mind. This changes nothing. This changes some things. (In which Lucy Gray killed Coriolanus at the lake.)

How Rue Became the Mockingjay by aimmyarrowshigh (multi) 5k, Different 74th Victors AU Katniss Everdeen and the girl from Eleven are ruining their best-laid plans – the Capitol’s and the Rebels’. So Caesar, they say. Announce the change. An alternate chronology for The Hunger Games.

CROSSOVERS

Annabeth and the Nine Step Career Plan by feeling_the_aster_9145 (Annabeth/Percy), 76k, PJO x DCU, Annabeth gets Lex Luthor arrested, BAMF Annabeth. Annabeth Chase does not accept limitations. Everyone knows that. If she wants something, no matter how impossible, she will find a way to make it happen. Though, perhaps she will allow Bruce Wayne and his ridiculous paranoia-induced company restrictions a small portion of the credit. Actually… now that she thinks about it, the man may have had a point in his worries. Wayne Technologies does not accept college interns. Annabeth always has a plan B.

A Lesson in Superiority by Nation-Ustria (gen), 96k, WIP, Batfam x Harry Potter, Damian Wayne is Harry Potter, Wizarding Politics “The good news is, he’s not cursed,” Constantine says. “And the bad news?” Dick asks sharply. Constantine squints. “I wouldn’t call it bad news so much as, er, news.” He turns to Damian with something like a grimace. “You’re a wizard, kid.” “...I’m a what?”

[dreadfutures]

last night I dreamed that I was back in the hyper specific manor that I MUST have visited on some history or religion related trip when I was younger. dark, dangerously smooth wood furnishings. red velvet carpet on the stairs. A secret basement. A wet garden surrounded by willows. There was a beautiful vampire in the basement in this dream. I was visiting him, as a friend; he was an amalgamation of hookups from college, and he was the only person left who remembered me as I was then. He genuinely wanted to know how I turned out. I left college on speaking terms with only two people from college. I genuinely want to know how the rest turned out.

recently i dreamed of a New York city that is real but shattered. mismatched fragments of subway rides I never kept track of, leaving our journey in the hands of my eccentric uncle in his slick black coats. His dry, deep voice cracking our gallows humor and witticisms leading me on through dark nights lit with neon signs that are somehow not as bright as they should be. A city of queer people and many cultures, calling out to him as a member in many languages, and to me too. An easygoing stroll down one block turns into a breakneck run to catch the next train. A cold winter night turns into the sweltering stale air of a summer subway, broken by the miraculous breeze brought by a new arrival to the station. In the dreams we jump from one train's opening doors into another's as they close, clamber out again onto a street close or far, I don't know. The drip from window AC units and the drip of rain is indistinguishable in the dark. It had been a while since I had that dream. It had been a while since that uncle texted me. Recently, everyone is reaching out. It's hard to remember the freedom and joy that New York brought me as a teenager, and I think they've all forgotten, too.

a while ago I dreamed of the bridge across the ocean. An amalgamation of Dumbarton and San Mateo. Its spine undulates over the glass surface of the water, high as a terrifying mountaintop, then low, level with it. I'm a passenger but there is no driver of consequence. Whales breach in the distance when we are high up, but every time we reach a low point, they're nothing but shadows under the surface. The water is grey like the sky on one side; on the other, the golden hour sun lights up salt ponds full of scarlet algae. Egrets and herons glide alongside the car. There is a toll booth, still manned, even though we are the only people on the road. Everything is so quiet in the bridge dreams. The destination is far away, and always will be. I only started dreaming this place after my grandpa died. After we stopped driving across the bridge.

I haven't dreamed of the glass house in a few years, but I can feel the old anxieties blooming again, and I know it's going to come back. Billowing curtains, darkness outside the sliding doors that my family refuses to lock. I haven't dreamed about it since I identified what it was trying to tell me, so I wonder how I'll handle it when it appears again. I don't think I'm as ready as I want to be, to open the curtains and see what is trying to look in, and to let it see me inside.

[harocat]

Finished ep one! Very fun and light so far, with a bit of well done gallows humor. Dylan is clearly having a blast with this role, and he is cute as can be. Another transmigration story!

I’m glad they’ve leaned into comedy with him, because that really might be where he shines most. Even with DFQC, I don’t think he would have exploded in popularity as much if it weren’t for how FUNNY he was in the role (as both DFQC and XLH). It’s nice to finally watch a new show with him. He didn’t have the most appealing repertoire of dramas before LBFAD, and after all we’ve had is… Only for Love. 😭

[scotianostra]

Happy Birthday Scottish musician and singer Alastair Mcdonald born 28th October 1941.

Alastair is primarily a Banjo-playing folk/jazz musician, probably most famous for his recordings of Jim MacLean's folk songs, such as The Barras and The massacre of Glencoe, but also for some humorous songs, such as the jazz comedy song Sam the skull, about a Glasgow cat.

McDonald has mainly recorded songs written by other songwriters, for example Robert Burns and Jim MacLean, but has also written songs himself including Culloden's Harvest and The Village Green at Gretna and more reworked traditional songs, The Bell Rock Light, Mingulay Boat Song among others.

Though quite well known – he has toured US, every state except Hawaii and Alaska, also touring Canada, Israel, Denmark, Thailand and several more countries – not much is spoken of him in media.

Much of his work in recent years has been political song, usually socialist and/or republican, such as his tribute song to John MacLean.

At 83 Alistair is still performing, the multi-talented musician will appear at the Abbotsford Hotel in Ayr on Novemer 5th courtesy of Ayr Phoenix Folk Club.

I’ve chosen one of Alistair's more patriotic songs, this is about Sir William Wallace and is called The knight of Elderslie

When Scotland was in darkness and at English Edward's heel

There rose a lad to lead us and to make the tyrant reel

He raised up his arm for freedom showing nerve and Scottish steel

William Wallace, the knight of Elderslie

Sing now of Wallace, the knight of Elderslie

Guardian of Scotland, of truth and liberty

With the loyal Andrew Moray how he danced the English down

At Berwick and at Stirling, he provoked a royal frown

And mercenary traitors from Carlisle to London town

Knew of Wallace, the knight of Elderslie

Sing now of Wallace, the knight of Elderslie

Guardian of Scotland, of truth and liberty

But the skies grew black at Falkirk as the English arrows sped

And many a mother's son did lie among the bloody dead

And when tithe took Judas' money that was placed upon the head

Of Wallace, the knight of Elderslie

Sing now of Wallace, the knight of Elderslie

Guardian of Scotland, of truth and liberty

Then the noblest heart of Scotland was revealed for all to see

When they hacked him into pieces underneath the gallows tree

But the butchery and slaughter cannot scar the memory

Of Wallace, the knight of Elderslie

Once again, the land's in darkness as we hang our heads to mourn

And remember how the Braveheart caused oppression's tide to turn

But Scotsmen, aye, stand ready and prepared for Bannockburn

Thanks to Wallace, the knight of Elderslie

Sing now of Wallace, the knight of Elderslie

Guardian of Scotland, of truth and liberty

William Wallace, the knight of Elderslie

Guardian of Scotland, of truth and liberty

[thana-topsy]

Hey so no pressure whatsoever to answer this sleep-deprived ask but I have (once again!!) been reading Breathing Water for that Comfort Fic dopamine, and I realised that to travel from Winterhold to the Nightgate Inn they would have to pass through my absolute favourite location, the Wayward Pass shrine!

It's an interesting little shrine to Arkay and I was wondering what kind of reaction you think Teldryn and Neloth would have had to it? I can imagine of course as more daedra-leaning worshippers they might not look twice but it's always where I take my OCs and wondered if you had any thoughts

Hope life's treating you kindly <3

Thank you SO much for this lovely ask and this interesting prompt! Idk if you meant it as a writing prompt, but that's where I took it. (I love that BW is a comfort fic for you, that is such a high compliment). But anyhoo, I even fired up Skyrim to go wandering around the freezing north to get a feel for the area. So here you go! Please enjoy a retroactive cut scene of this leg of Neloth and Teldryn's journey.

---

“Admit it, we’re lost.”

“We most certainly are not.” Neloth cast a guidance spell, the snaking purple light fettering out a few feet ahead of them. He dropped the charge and pursed his lips. A sweeping gust of wind rolled up the mountainside from the sea and nearly pushed him over, adding insult to injury. 

“I told you to buy a damn map from the innkeeper!” Teldryn said, holding a fireball in his palms for warmth. “But oh no, of course the Great and Powerful Master of House Telvanni is beyond something as tried and true as cartography.”

“Will you shut it,” Neloth snapped. “I need to concentrate.” The cold was getting to him—a deep, bone-numbing cold unlike anything he’d ever felt—creeping death at its worst. He cast a quick flare of his warming spell, reserving his magicka while briefly returning feeling to his toes and fingertips.

“That looks like a pass over the mountain,” Teldryn said, his voice weak beneath the howl of the wind.

Neloth squinted through the snow. “Where?” 

“Up there, look where I’m pointing.”

Neloth stepped beside him to follow the line of Teldryn’s finger. Sure enough, there appeared to be a gap in the mountain’s sheer rock face. 

“If we hike all the way up there and it’s a dead end, then I’m–”

“Yes, yes,” Teldryn interrupted, waving him away as he began to trudge forward through the deepening snow drifts. “You can eat me first when we run out of food.” 

“Gallows humor!” Neloth called after him with a humorless laugh. “At a time like this?” When no response came, he began to follow silently in the path Teldryn had carved through the snow.

It took them an inordinate amount of time to reach the top of the mountain, battling against the growing blizzard the entire way. By the time they reached the pass, Neloth had moved beyond the point of shivering, frozen to his core. They paused in the shallow grotto, panting and regaining some of their warmth. 

“Oh,” Teldryn said with quiet surprise, prompting Neloth to look up. 

Seemingly cut into the rock, partially hidden from the elements, a single skeleton lay in front of a shrine along a stone slab, carefully arranged, accompanied by various offerings—a longsword, armor, dried herbs, bits of gold and jewelry. 

“It’s a shrine,” Teldryn said. 

“Obviously.” 

“To Arkary, it looks like.” 

“Which one is that?” Neloth asked, and received a withering look from Teldryn in response. 

“You’re joking.” 

“Partially, yes,” Neloth said with a twitch of his lip. “God of cycles and death and what-have-you. I’m not that out of touch, Teldryn, please. Have a little faith.”

“Faith, right,” Teldryn grumbled. He brushed some of the snow off the statue at the center of the altar, then picked up one of the pendants that lay by the skeleton. “They say a body that’s received the proper blessings of Arkay is immune to necromancy,” he mused to no one in particular. “Seems useful, honestly.”

Neloth pursed his lips, eyes narrowing. Yes, he’d heard such things, but never had he been presented with the opportunity to test the theory. Purple light swirled into his palm, a micro-rift into the realms of Oblivion, and with a small push—subtle enough that Teldryn wouldn’t immediately notice—he directed the rift into the skeleton that lay across the altar.

The rejection was strong and immediate, like a door slamming shut inside of Neloth’s head, followed by a wave of nausea that he only barely managed to swallow down. He dropped the spell and turned to brace himself against the opposite wall, taking deep breaths through his nose.

Teldryn set the amulet down then turned slowly towards him, expression hidden behind his chitin helmet and goggles. “Tell me you didn’t just do what I think you did.”       

“The opportunity for an experiment presented itself,” Neloth argued through the taste of rising bile in the back of his throat. “All in the pursuit of knowledge.”

“And did you come to a conclusion?” 

There was smugness there that Neloth didn’t appreciate one bit. He hoped his scowl conveyed as much. “Let’s just keep moving. At this rate we’ll be corpses ourselves, and I don’t see a priest of Arkay anywhere to lend a helping hand.”

“Whatever you say,” Teldryn said, still far too smug. “Lead on.”

--

Shoutout to @paraparadigm for the "door slamming shut" imagery inspiration from her fic "Always Read the Fine Print".

[carnalapples]

happy dadwc friday! a kisses prompt for this week: Kisses on the back of their hand

Happy Friday!! And thank you for the prompt 💕 This week I have Sebastian/Templar Hawke for @dadrunkwriting:

When Hawke kneels by her sword and prays, Sebastian burns. His throat burns with something bitter and acrid, like a shot of heavy liquor, and the way it would sit in the mouth after, the regret. His chest burns with a low, slow flame, beginning in the stomach. He is jealous, singularly jealous, of the easy way in which Andraste’s blessing comes to her, fully realized in the glow that comes to her eyes and her sword and lines the air she breathes. 

(When he asked her why she did it, Hawke shrugged. It was efficient, she said. That much power, at a cost. He called her shallow and hypocritical, and she bared those sharp teeth and that sharper wit. Any more so, she asked, than the majority of the Order?

He had kissed her then, nothing to blame it on but his own volition. And her sharp teeth were pressing into his lip for half a second before she kissed him back. He had thought at the time, that it would make it easier for her to be so entwined with it all, his faith and his desire, to break away from her in one go.)

Despite taking on the burden of a templar, she has left behind their calling, and Hawke rarely comes into the Gallows, so Sebastian is alone when he goes to lead service in the chapel, and to meet Bethany, who attended regularly long before he added himself to the roster. He finds himself looking at Bethany on these visits, searching for any trace of resentment in her eyes, any reluctance when she lights the candles. Any hint that she too begrudges Hawke her easy answers.

She turns to him with a question in her eyes, and he looks away, shamed. He clears his throat. 

“Is everything well with you, Miss Hawke?”

“I’m Enchanter now,” she says with a soft smile. “And I cannot complain.”

“I suppose not,” he murmurs, glancing back at the templar behind her, hands twitching at their sides. 

���And you? Is all well?”

“Yes. Elthina has agreed to let me take my vows in the fall.” Bethany’s brows jump at that, and he feels a mild flare of annoyance. 

“Oh,” she says. “I had thought…” But she does not continue the thought, merely stepping aside with a sideways glance for the next penitent in the queue. No matter. They are both capable of filling in the blanks on their own.

When Sebastian becomes a full brother, Hawke comes to see it. He did not expect her to; her own vigil was a solitary thing. When she asks him why he did it, he is silent. How can he distill the essence of the answer? Because it was time. Because when he imagines her, he imagines her as the statue that looms over the chantry, and cold stone can be touched but not loved. It was a mistake, he says instead. He strayed from the path, and now he is where the Maker intended.

When it is her turn in the queue, Hawke brings her dry lips to Sebastian’s hand and places one firm kiss to the skin. And then it’s her open mouth, wet and hot, for one second, before she lets go. He barely avoids yanking his hand back, the flush already settling into his skin, as she smirks softly, out of anyone else’s view, and then straightens, offering him a shallow bow before making her way to the back of the crowd. 

He is invited to her home that evening. He respectfully declines. “You could at least make it a bit more difficult,” she says, that dry humor never leaving her voice. Before he can fully understand her, she is gone. 

She never used to come to service without her mother, but she does now, sitting in the second row, back straight against the wood, long legs slanting down to the floor. Her eyes follow him across the room and back, and every time, she is in line to seek his blessing, and Sebastian begins sweating from the moment he concludes the sermon at the thought of her mouth on his skin.  It keeps him up at night, wondering when Hawke might show up next. In his thin, hard cot, he presses his own lips to his hand and breathes in, low and slow.

Today, Hawke waits at the edge of the room for everyone else to leave. “That was a nice canticle,” she says. “I always liked Exaltations.”

“It’s fallen out of favor,” he says. 

“Yes. Not enough things to exalt.” As banal as if they were discussing the weather. “I’m having a dinner at the estate.” He’s already moving to decline, but she touches a hand to his wrist, and Sebastian falters. “It’s been a year, Sebastian,” she says, softer, dulled. 

He takes her hand and brushes his thumb over it, and she smiles. It has been months since he came to dinner at the Hawke estate. Hawke leaves and he fills the hours with empty actions, mind gone blank until it is time to dress and to make the short walk down to her home. 

It is a small dinner of her closest friends; Hawke takes the seat to the right of the head of the table, conspicuously empty without Leandra’s presence. 

“When Mother met Father,” she begins, “she knew how it would end. That’s what she told me.” She takes a sip from her goblet, engraved in the style Leandra preferred, obscene with imagery. “But how could she have had any idea?” 

They share their memories of Leandra one by one. Fenris tells a charming story about trinkets arriving on his doorstep, Isabella a remark about how well she kept her figure that has Hawke sputtering with laughter. Sebastian remembers her kindness, how she was ready to be a mother to anyone. But as the dinner winds down, all the while he is thinking: that Leandra met Malcolm and knew he would ruin her.

“Help me up, Brother,” Hawke says, and Sebastian feels an acute pain in his head. Her cheeks are flushed from the drink, and still she is sure enough to hit him where it hurts. As the others file out, she slings one arm over his back, and together they navigate up the wide stairs, each of them slowed by the other. They make it to the large doors that haunt Sebastian’s dreams and he deposits her on the bed. She makes no move to undress or to lie down, instead just looking up at him with a curious stare. The hour is too late. It’s too late for them. He should leave, but he doesn’t.

She doesn’t look chosen. She looks tired. She looks lonely. Sebastian smiles. Her hands are still where they lie in her lap. He lifts one, seals his mouth to it, over the back, his pulse strong in his lip, and she curls her fingers. Her cheeks have hollowed out, her stare hot. Even beneath the wine, her mouth tastes of lyrium, dry and bitter.

[justacanofcorn]

love confession during an actual confession for damien karras maybe? could be sad, if you want.

And it will be sad, anon. It will be.

Confessions (Damien Karras + GN!Reader)

Rated: T

Tags: religious themes, hurt no comfort, confessions of love, CATHOLIC GUILT!!!!

-·=»◆‡«=·-♡·=»◆‡«=·-

Picture it: August, 1971. Georgetown, Washington D.C.

The leaves are changing. The times are changing.

You are changed, and you don’t think it’s for the better.

A heaviness fills the hole in your chest as you pull open the heavy doors to the church, allowing the first fallen leaves of the season to tumble inside. It's late afternoon; the church is mostly empty, save for a few people praying either at pews or at candle stands. Distantly, you can hear singing in Latin as the choir practices a room over. Midday sun sends multicolored beams through the stained glass windows to catch dust in the light. The pity and hollowness of this room reflects the voided aspect of your life that is soon to come. You find some strange comfort in that.

You know he's minding the confessional. You have most of his schedule memorized, and you're not proud. You give the sign of the cross upon entering the nave, then turn to step quietly into the booth, despite the fact that the ancient wood creaks and announces your presence and purpose to the entire world.

Damien clears his throat through the partition.

"Go ahead," he instructs in that low, calming voice of his. God, you don't even want to speak. You don't want to hurt him. Perhaps it's vanity that convinces you that you'd have that effect on him at all.

"Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned. It's been...three weeks since my last confession."

Upon hearing your voice, he grows deadly quiet. And even when you're finished speaking, there is an unbearable moment of silence.

"Why the long wait?"

You fidget with your hands in your lap.

"I've been...afraid to confess my sins...here."

"This is the safest place to confess and receive forgiveness. There is no judgment here."

"No, Father. There is. Because it's here. Because it's you."

You can almost feel him stiffen. His breath is either hitched or silent.

"I will not judge you. It's not my place."

You chuckle humorlessly. "I'm pretty sure the big man upstairs already knows. Of course, I can't imagine why He'd put me in this position."

He sighs. "It's not His work-"

"I know, I know, it's the evil in the world. But still. You can't...feel what I feel, so pure, and for whom I feel it for...so kind, and not think it divine. Even if I know it's not."

"...You still have not confessed your sin."

His voice has grown thick. With what, you can't be sure. You almost don't want to know. Knowing might keep you from your purpose here.

"I love. I yearn for someone I can't have. But God has put him in my path, made him kind and close to me. Put it in my mind that he could even possibly reciprocate my feelings. But I know he can't. Why would an Evil do that to me? It doesn't make sense. Just to hurt me? I don't inflict pain."

"No, of course not," he attempts to comfort, but neither of you can stop the tears that begin to pool at your eyes. "Sins can be small. Sins can be harmless to others. By coming here, you show that your heart longs to repent."

"God won't hear me when I ask him to stop this. Maybe coming into His house, speaking to His servant..." Guilt eats at your gut. "But I know it's wrong, because I knew you'd be here. I know I wanted it to be you to hear this from me...and that, I think, is inflicting pain. Two birds with one stone, I guess," you laugh, referring to gallows humor to mask your pain.

"You consciously came to inflict pain?"

"No. I came to speak the truth, knowing it would cause pain. Which is worse? To lie, or to deliver a painful truth."

"Well, lying is a sin..."

"Then I won't lie. I'm sorry for what I'm about to say to you. I love you, Damien. I'm so, so sorry that I do. I know it's not fair to you to be the object of my desire, or to hear this. But you have to hear it as much as I have to say it. This is what I beg forgiveness for. Perhaps more than the feeling itself. I can deal with the emptiness. I can't handle hurting you."

"But you must."

"I must."

Silence. Something has dropped out of you and plummeted into hell itself.

"Well, you were right- per usual. It is painful."

Having already been dealing with the complex feelings of this reality, you're almost relieved that he's validated your fears.

"I'm sorry."

"Don't be. It's not your fault. I'm sorry if I...did anything to spur this on."

He thinks this is his fault?

"It's your existence, and that in and of itself is not bad. You help, you heal. But I think I'm one that can't be saved."

"Why not?"

My god, you think. He's crying. He's crying over you.

You'd rather burn in hell to have just spared him this.

"Because I can't stop this." You sniff, wipe the tears from your eyes, content with their perpetual presence. "I'm so sorry. You'll never see me again."

Your hand reaches for the handle but you hear him move.

"Wait-" there's panic in his voice. "You can't leave."

You heart stops. "I have to."

"No. It's not fair. There are ways, things we can do to...curb these emotions. We have to be stronger than this."

We we we we we we we we-

"No. I can't. And I don't think you can, either."

You hadn't planned on coming in here and calling him weak. But if you're on a roll of telling difficult truths...

"Please," he begs.

You can't stay here. You stand.

"I'm sorry. Please know that I've never been sorrier for anything in my life."

Before he can respond, you've left the booth, fleeing from the church and leaving him, alone to cradle his head in his hands, feeling like a damn coward for keeping his own truths inside.

-·=»◆‡«=·-♡·=»◆‡«=·-

I'd apologize anon, but...I think we both knew this is how it would go. Thanks for the req!!! 🩷🩷🩷

[solarpunkpresentspodcast]

Is This the Last Dance Before the Lights Go Out?

I hate to say it, because it’s not very solarpunk, but it feels a bit fin de siècle here right now. Like we’re in the last days of normality before we fall off the cliff. Every time we have a nice moment—in the late spring splendor of the garden, for instance, or even just when walking the dog through the fields—we stop, Spouse and I, and tell one another to enjoy it. Because feels like that in the midst of the cataclysms that are about to strike us, we’re going to look back at these little things and wonder how we could have taken them for granted.

And it’s not just us who’s feeling this way. Lately, when we have dinner with friends or chat with our neighbors, at some point, the group converges suddenly upon such thoughts. Be grateful for these moments, we murmur to each other, where we can relax together on our backyard patio, drinking cold white wine, and watch the sunset. Understand that they’re a luxury. Such days are numbered and once they’re gone, not all of us, and maybe not even any of us, will see their likes again.

Who can blame us for seeping in this bittersweet gloom? A perfect storm doesn’t just seem to be looming, it feels like it’s adding elements to itself all the time.

At first it was just the global warming we are still failing to address. But now it’s clear that this global warming is not just bringing deadly heatwaves, droughts, bigger and more frequent storms, sea level rise, and flooding, it’s also threatening to collapse patterns of ocean circulation within the next decade or two such that northern European temperatures will drop to resemble those in Anchorage, Alaska, Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada, and Kamchatka, Russia. On top of all the other disastrous effects this would have—including sudden massive heating of lower latitude areas along the Atlantic—just imagine what would happen if farming were no longer possible in such heavily populated places like Britain, Ireland, northern Germany (where I live now!), Poland, and all of Scandinavia. Food prices soaring all over the world, anyone? Plus widespread famine (and not just in Europe) and the collapse of major economies? If we were young enough to start over again and had the money to move, I’d say we decamp back to my home state of California before climate change turns us into actual refugees. I’m sure I’ll kick myself in five, ten, or fifteen years when saying our garden full of potatoes and the neighbor’s Muscovy ducks and alpacas will be what gets us through the winter here without starving is not just a matter of gallows humor.

Meanwhile, we’re balking at getting the renewable energy revolution going fast enough soon enough to avoid environmental disaster. And why are we balking? Because it’s “too expensive” or because we just don’t want to change anything about the way we live, although these arguments are ridiculous because the cost of doing nothing is astronomically higher and the changes are coming anyway.

We’re also refusing to reverse the widening wealth gap that’s ultimately what’s driving people into voting for the far right, neo–Nazis, and other politicians with authoritarian urges and the desire to destroy democracy… even though these people and political parties will only add fuel to the fires that need to be put out.

Then there is all that misinformation and all the conspiracy theories that seem so perfectly constructed to stop us from working sensibly together to tackle the existential environmental, economic, and social problems that are making it increasingly harder for us to thrive, or often, even to survive.

On top of all that, here in Europe, we have the added issue of the political failures of the post–Cold War period that have had us sleepwalking into a dangerous situation with a resurgently imperialistically hungry Russia. After the Wall came down and the Iron Curtain opened, European politicians thought we could just be friends and trading partners with Russia. Because Russia’s interest in selling us natural gas and crude oil would weave them into our economic world and make them value our markets enough for them never to want to wage war on us ever again. Thus would we lull them into peaceful capitalist prosperity and democracy.

Cozy in that lazy thinking, Europe dropped its guard, domesticating itself rather than its enemy. Its armies grew thin and its stocks of weapons and military machinery thinner. Today, countries like Germany would need the greater part of a decade to build up enough weapons, equipment, and trained manpower to wage even a strictly defensive war. It’s not much different for any other country in Europe. Which is not the position you want to be in when one of your neighbors starts dreaming of their glorious imperialistic past.

To hear politicians and analysts tell it, unless some political miracle convinces Putin to remove crush western democracy from his bucket list, we have three to five years to prepare for war. Such a miracle might be as simple as a heart attack. More likely it involves a sudden splurge in funding to beef up European defenses ASAP plus upcoming elections handing power over neither to the far right in Europe nor to the raging danger that is Donald Trump nor to the Republicans party that has been taken over by people who’ve lost their tether to common sense, compassion, and reality. In other words, yes, we really are talking about a miracle.

I’m no professional, but from my little perch here in Northern Germany, having as long as three to five years feels optimistic. Ukraine is all that is standing between Putin and the massive expansion of his war. If Trump and the Republicans roll into the White House, that’s got to bump up the war is coming to us timeline to... sometime next year or the one thereafter. Seems to me, anyway, because Trump & Co will pull US support out from under Ukraine faster than you can say God damn the electoral college and then she will fall.

Won’t that be the start of the wider war, for the next stops will be Baltic states, like Estonia, Latvia, Finland, Sweden, and Poland, plus neighboring countries like Moldova? Or maybe it won’t even wait that long. Knowing this danger for Estonia, Estonia’s current leader has already more or less said that, in order to save Estonia, they’ll give everything the country has, in terms of funding and military support, to stop Russia from taking Ukraine. And since Estonia is a member of NATO, as soon as they do more than send funding and equipment, doesn’t that drag a huge chunk of Europe straight into the war, even before Ukraine falls entirely to Russian aggression?

Again, I’m no professional on this front, I just live here. But likewise, it’s also hard to see how it will be as long as three to five years before we’re all at war, given how zealously Russia is working to undermine peace, prosperity, and political stability in the West and how feebly we’re counteracting this. Russia takes a mile for every inch we give them, spreading misinformation, causing destabilizing political problems, and committing not even terribly covert acts of sabotage. This sowing of dissent aims to weaken western countries and coalitions ahead of the overt war Russia plans to wage on us. We totally know this! But our politicians are too frightened to retaliate against this hybrid war against us , lest it trigger a real war between us. You can all but hear Putin laughing into our timid faces. Real war is coming anyway!

All of that (plus a bunch of other equally dismal stuff that I haven’t had room to mention) is why living in Europe right now feels like the last dance before the lights go out.

Is it any wonder my thoughts have also recently frequently turned to how such a war would unfold?

Will tanks speed down the little lane we live on? (Honestly, actually, I’ve seen that already, because I think back in summer of 2022, they were training Ukrainian soldiers to drive Marder armored vehicles around here. There was a week when every time I looked out the window, one was zipping by… and let me tell you, it’s amazing how fast these things can race by.)

Will bombs flatten our house?

What can I do to prepare for what is coming? I live in Germany, a couple of hours from the Polish border. So, there is somewhat of a buffer there, but not a huge one. It isn’t inconceivable that there might be fighting here, or that we’d be the target of drones.

I don’t mean to be self–centered about this. There’s a whole lot of destruction and carnage that has to happen to other people and other countries before battles happen here. But it’s not right to just shrug this looming war off by thinking oh, well, it won’t happen here.

I feel like, at my age, I’d make a terrible solider. Never mind that I’ve never been great at blindly following orders, I’m small, middle aged, out of shape, and full of asthma and allergies and chronic injuries, the battle scars from too much fun and soccer playing in my twenties, too much swilling of diet soda, and too much stress in my career. Yet, wouldn’t it make more sense for me to go and fight than it would for someone in their late teens or twenties (or even thirties), who has so much more of life in front of them? Spouse says, well, it would be our jobs to do all the jobs that wouldn’t be getting done if a good chunk of the young men were off fighting. We’d be farming, or helping out in hospitals, or riding around in garbage trucks. I don’t know if that would really feel like doing enough. Part of me thinks he’d be among the first to sign up if Germany gets invaded, even the current work that he’s doing would be critical to maintaining Germany’s renewable energy infrastructure.

I’ve also been thinking a lot about how we live about 100 miles from the nearest city that would likely be hit by nuclear weapons, should things get that bad. I think that means we’d be the ones to die of radiation sickness, unless we could stay in a fallout shelter for the couple of weeks it takes the most acutely dangerous radionuclides to decay away. But, of course, like everyone else here, we haven’t got one in our backyard. We don’t even have a cellar. And I don’t want to die in an old abandoned local potato cellar or in one of the dank cubbyholes that passes for a cellar under some of the neighboring houses.

So, I haven’t just started thinking, whelp, even though I finally let us work down the supplies of toilet paper and canned goods I began hoarding in February 2020, it’s time to build up the collection again. I’ve started wondering how I could maybe turn our downstairs guest bedroom into a fallout shelter. It’s already got brick walls and a concrete ceiling. They’re not thick enough, but it’s a good start. What if I bricked up the window and then lined all the walls with another layer of bricks? Would that do, so long as I solved the issue of the flimsy wooden door? Also, could we rejig our solar panels to use them as an island, isolated from the grid, so that we’d have lights and could run a pump a few hours a day to bring air in through a Hepa filter? We could pee into buckets and poop into ziploc baggies, but how would we deal with the dog? With paper, pens, pencils, and maybe even our laptops, and maybe even something as decadent as an exercise bike, at least we wouldn’t die of boredom. Oh… a radio! And batteries. I’d better add that to my mental list.

Then, the dilemma. We have our anniversary coming up. Should I buy him a Geiger counter? Or would it be better to wait until Christmas? Or his birthday early next year? Or can I put it off even longer than that? I don’t want to buy one if I don’t need to buy one, but I don’t want to wait until it’s too late and be unable to get one and then die because we left the fallout shelter too soon, or didn’t realize we had a leak that was letting in dusty radioactive fallout.

But, honestly, argh! I have never in my life been afraid of the future. I even made it through the entire 1980s without having more than the occasional flicker of anxiety about dying in a nuclear war. But now thoughts like these are tying my stomach in knots and keeping me awake deep into the night.

As much as I love solarpunk, and as much as I believe in solarpunk’s vision of a great future that doesn’t require that we go through an apocalypse first, it’s hard to be optimistic about that right now. I cannot shake this feeling that our systems have been so broken and the changes we need to make to the way we do everything are so great that the only way forward is for it all to fall apart. It is hard to shake the feeling that we truly are about to go over that cliff.

That doesn’t mean I won’t stop fighting for the changes we need to make to avoid catastrophe on our way to a sustainable future. But I’m still stuck with the melancholy of these very possibly being the last nice days I will see for either a while or the entire rest of my life.