#like he is working through his episodes and trying to heal

[doublel27]

Respectfully, because I feel the criticism of wealth is important: Home did do that. Multiple times.

One of the key parts of healing most of the ghost’s wounds was uncovering how they died and healing their hurts. Giving respect to the construction worker who died. Finding out the truth about the wig and punishing the manager. Fulfilling the rider’s last delivery to the woman he loved. And with each round, Home’s demeanor became more respectful and less callous. The contrast of the very fake mediums for the construction worker to Home and Peach sitting very quietly as they deliver the crispy pork house from the rider to make sure his message of love and community was received.

But they didn’t stop just with the dead.

They didn’t sell the magician’s house. They made sure he was able to stay in his home where he was happy with his daughter, regardless of him not having the money. Home and Kan put that house into a trust for him, so he never had to leave.

Home saved Chef’s restaurant for Peach to eventually take over because that’s what Chef would have wanted and is likely to have been her plan had things not gone the way they did. Part of what Home owed to Peach is the three years of misunderstanding and missed opportunities that largely stem from the hit and run. He makes up for this through the uncovering of the truth of Chef’s death, the chef’s table and eventually opening their own restaurant. It’s also why he encouraged Peach to go to Chaing Mai even if he didn’t want him to go.

When confronted with the development, Jan’s betrayal, and the broken promises to Kan’s community, Home spent the entire back 1/3 of the story trying to fix that and nearly got murdered by his family twice for it. They hunted down the contract that proved his family had fucked over the community, twice, as well as uncovered his aunt’s crimes, Uncle Somkid’s crimes and Lawyer Yai’s crimes. And in the end they did change the tenancy laws of the development to get the community back in there. They had an entire montage of it.

Ultimately, the curse was their greed and their isolationist ways. Every member of that family, including Home at the beginning, was more focused on themselves than being in actual community with each other. His aunt was full of greed, even killing her maid and binding her in chains, evoking literal slave imagery, to fulfill her aims. She stole and bribed “for the family” but it was really for her own pockets. Uncle Somkid was so focused on the money he couldn’t see what his father was actually saying or see any of the love and joy his father found in him. I think it’s very telling the only child we see Gramps gift things to without being given something first is Somkid. And he gifts something Somkid values, a place to save money. Gramps isn’t innocent here. He was so focused with the ways he felt it important to connect and how he found joy in his relationship with Somkid, that he missed that Somkid wasn’t getting any of his messages of love. Ultimately the family was so isolated and self-centered they didn’t actually see each other. They were not in community and actively worked against community, including the one Home built with his friends. They undervalued it so much, Somkid and Yai underestimate our ghost hunting crew.

Home’s journey was to learn something the wealthy often ignore: the value and purpose of being in community with others. It’s in building his relationships with Peach, Pangpang and Kan that he learns to give without taking. He risks his life in order to bring justice in the face of his family’s crimes. He takes the deserved vitriol of Kan’s community without any complaint or argument and promises them to repair the harm, and does in the end. When the family points out this will be their undoing, Home welcomes the change. He doesn’t stop Peach from moving to Chaing Mai even if he wants to, because Peach’s dreams are more important to him. It is no surprise that the people they helped in earlier episodes were brought back to support taking down Uncle Somkid and on the board in their new restaurant. They participate in community.

It may not have been in all the ways that people wanted or not centered in the way that people might have liked. And I think that’s fair. We don’t explicitly know what he does with the money, aside from a few anecdotes as well as starting a business with Peach to help people find peace in their grief. The questions about is it enough or is there more he could have done are also important.

I also think it’s necessary to examine why there are so many stories that center the wealthy and their journey, because Home uncovering the meaning of his name made him the main character who had the most to learn and grow from (peach’s journey was mostly resolved in the first half). And I think objecting to that is fair, but that’s also how the story is written. And if you don’t like the story centering a wealthy character who needs to learn how to be in community with others, you shouldn’t watch.

I feel like Jack and Joker is doing a really interesting job of telling a very different side of this story right now that has wealthy characters learning to be in community but also centers the struggles of poor people who are being exploited.

But to say Home did not work to repair the wounds his family made through greed, or give back financially I feel is not textually accurate.

Why is the curse on the rich people never that they made shitty choices and chose to hurt people with their money and use of resources and always that they hate each other too much and don't give enough money to other rich people?

I mean, I suppose the curse is that frankly the grandfather sucked at being a parent and making his child feel loved but that's a shitty curse and it's not even the real curse. Sigh.

The real curse is that these shows are so determined to make the rich boys pitiful that they forget to do the part of the story where they give back to the places they hurt or help the people their money keeps hurting because if they admit the money is what's hurting people then you have to face what that means for the wealthy as well as the poor.

[clwnpunk]

Some guys feat. Curly hair gaara propaganda <3

[irndad]

a/n: continuation to this, but you don't necessarily have to read it first! all you need to know is reader got shot protecting maeve, and both survived. spencer has been in love with her the entire time.

“Have you called Maeve?” 

She asks it on a beautiful, rainy day, about five weeks after the event in question. She’s a little too nonchalant about the whole thing, has been from the start- Spencer’s been correcting for that. He’s been treating her like something fragile, a beautiful glass figure that was almost shattered. This is something he knows irritates her, but how can he not?

He tries not to think of it, but the memory of her in a hospital bed, bandages over her abdomen, the wooziness of giving her blood. He can’t help his caution, now. People assume, quite often that Spencer was unaware of the fact he’s in love with his best friend. Like it was something he didn’t know, didn’t have to live with. 

Spencer can be oblivious about a lot of things, but being in love with the person he’s shared a desk with for 4 years is not among them. 

���No,” he replies, looking up at her as she sits down, handing him the cup of tea she made him. They’re at his apartment. She’s been cleared for desk work, but Spencer had been nervous about the whole thing. They’ve fallen into a rhythm of her going to his apartment after work, and for how determined he is to tell her how he feels, he’s not really able to pluck up the courage.

“Spence,” she sighs, “You have to call her.”

“I did! When it happened, I called her. We talked. We just don’t talk anymore.”

She furrows her brow in an adorable way, and Spencer’s heart threatens to fall out of his chest. He’s been playing a game of she loves me, she loves me not in his mind for the. Past few weeks. 

Took a bullet to see me happy. She loves me. 

She stirs her ceramic spoon, the clink of it against the mug fills the silence. She bites her lip, clearly disappointed with his response. 

Wants me to call my not but kind-of ex. She loves me not.

She’s wearing this blue floral dress, and he is trying not to stare at where the fabric has ridden up, kissing the skin above her knee. She’s got lipstick on, and he tries not to read into how she’s sitting so close to him. Except he is kind of reading into it. 

Before she got hurt, he had tried to shove this feeling down- tried to ignore the swoop of his stomach when she walked by, or when she gave him a compliment, or when she let him do a card trick for her. He tried to shove down how much he fucking hated it the one time she had a date pick her up at the office. 

She’s just easy to be in love with. She writes little smiley faces on post-it notes and leaves them on his desk, and when the whole Emily thing had gone down, she’d spent weeks taking care of him through her own grief. 

She’s sitting on his couch. Five weeks ago, she was half-dead in a hospital bed, and now she is on his couch, in a beautiful dress after returning from the job they both share. 

He does not want to call Maeve. 

The comfortable silence turns tense as the episode of Doctor Who plays in the background, and he’s still a little gunshy- she’s breathing, she’s okay. He feels creepy, but he lets his eyes close for a moment so he can hear the sound of her breath, to know it’s still there.

“Spencer,” she says, after she pauses the show, and he turns fully to face her, “I am okay.” She grabs his hand, and he takes a couple of seconds to process the touch as she places it over her own wrist. ‘I am fine. They fixed me up. You are allowed to stop worrying.”

Her tone is even, but intentional. She’s giving him permission, as if his presence is some guilt-driven notion that’s stopping him from getting what he really wants. It’s true, though, that he doesn’t always believe she’s okay. Notices how she’ll wince when she bends a certain way, and the scar by her eyebrow is healing well, but he still searches for it in her face.

He savors the feeling of the soft skin of her wrist under his touch, running his fingers over the junction of her hand and wrist with delicate affection. How she hasn’t figured out he’s in love with her is anyone’s guess. 

He wonders what it would feel like to kiss her there.

“I know I can call her,” he manages to say back, meeting her warm gaze in a maybe too honestly in love glance, “I’m where I want to be.”

“Before I got hurt, you picked out an outfit, you asked for advice on dating, Spencer. You did that. I just-“ she sighs, moving her hand from his grasp and pinching the bridge of her nose in frustration, “The piece of you that wanted that is obviously still there. You don’t have to spend a Friday night with me in your apartment because you feel guilty that I got shot.”

“You’re not here because I’m guilty-“

“Then why-“

“You’re in my apartment right now because I am in love with you, and if you’re out of my sight for more than twelve hours than it’s like I forget that you’re still alive. That you didn’t get yourself killed before I ever got the chance to actually tell you.”

He’s not yelling. Well, he’s kind of yelling. Talking loudly, anyway. Her eyes widened and he’s hyperaware of how close she already was, is. She smells like lilies and her, and it’s all so present. She could have died. She might have never heard it. 

She’s heard it now, he supposes. All the weeks of agonizing, notebooks he’s managed to fill in the last few weeks trying to figure out a way to say it to her that could charm her into loving him back- all gone. He’s told her, now. 

All the cards are in her hands.

Her doe eyes almost sparkle at him, her head tipped to the side in a fond, loving gesture, and he wants to kiss her, wants to feel her faded-lipstick pout against his mouth. He wants his I love you to turn into I can have this. 

“Spence,” her voice is a trembling, insecure thing. One half of his mind wants to rage at him- there’s no way she’s going to tell him she loves him back, that someone like her could ever want someone like him. But the other half, one that seems dangerously like hope- she took a bullet for him. She didn’t even think twice. “You’re in love with me?”

It’s like it’s not even him who replies. Some bitter thing takes over his voice and speaks for him. 

“How could I not be? It’s you.”

It’s then he notices, that oh, she’s tearing up. 

A beat passes, and Spencer sucks in a deep breath before rambling an absurd amount. 

“You don’t have to- We can still be friends, obviously, you know that. But we can, I just- I needed to tell you because when you were in that hospital bed and you’d never heard me say it, I just couldn’t live with you never knowing. But now you do, and you don’t feel the same, and that’s okay-“

He doesn’t get to keep talking, because she grabs him by the collar of his shirt and kisses him. She’s warm and beautiful and her hair brushes up against his cheek and there’s something in him that takes over when he moves to  cradle her head between his hands, both desperate to keep her in his grasp and savor the moments he gets to hold her. She tastes like cherry chapstick and something completely undefinable. 

When she pulls away after a moment that feels entirely too short, heavy lidded eyes meeting his in affection, and Spencer thinks he’d like to do that for the rest of his life. 

“I love you too,” she says back, and he commits it to memory, the sound of her so-sweet voice wrapping around the words he’s fantasized about hearing since the first time she smiled at his joke about philosophy. “I’ve loved you a really, really long time, Spence. I just thought I lost my chance, you know with- with everything. I never really thought I had one.”

He can’t even speak, really. He doesn’t think he can wrap his head around the fact that she felt like he wouldn’t like her back. 

It doesn’t feel like a concern, now, when he leans in to kiss her again. She smiles into him, and Spencer memorizes the feel of her waist encircled in his arms, when he realizes that this is the heart he is able to hold without limits. 

She loves me too, he thinks. She is safe, she is okay, and she loves me back. 

On the following Monday, when Morgan sees the two of them with linked hands before Hotch gets to the office, he doesn’t say anything. 

He does hand Emily 20 dollars, though. 

[dragonmuse]

Keep It In The Box : An Essay on OFMD Season 2 and the Failure to Heal

(here in is my season two reaction. It contains many many spoilers. It's also about 3k words long so you know what you're getting into.)

“See, I have a system for dealing with all the terrible things I've seen. There's a box in my mind, and I put the things in the box..” -Frenchie, Season 2 of Our Flag Means Death

…..and then he never opens it. Chekov’s locked box has no key in season two.

On first watch, it seemed clear to me that Frenchie’s declaration was a narrative plant. Clearly the whole season would be about that box of pain and trauma being opened, sorted through and at least the beginning of healing. The show had developed a reputation after season one of being kind and focused on queer narratives of healing from childhood. Ed and Stede’s parallels in their childhood traumas were frequently on display through season one and were repeated in flashback throughout season two. Jim’s season one arc about becoming someone who doesn’t think just of revenge and can now forge meaningful connections was profound, beautiful and often funny. Izzy is an antagonist because he doesn’t want Ed to move on or stop acting like the trauma-response version of himself. The antagonist wants to stop healing. The point is to grow, to change, to learn how to love. It’s one of the things that made season one work for me at the time, despite reservations about pacing and tone.

So naturally season two should follow suit. It’s a kind show! About healing and falling in love!

For the first several episodes, the remaining crew on the Revenge go through a gauntlet of trauma, forced to do and receive violence at Ed’s whims as he careens from self-destructive behavior to self-destructive behavior. This is the wounding setup. It was dark, but it seemed like it would have a payoff and at first it did.

Perhaps one of the most beautiful moments of the season comes in one of the small respites in those early episodes as Jim recounts Pinnochio to Fang to soothe him through his grief. That was the show that I expected. The kindness of that moment struck me very deeply. It gave me some understanding of Archie too, who seems to fall for Jim right at that moment.

That scene is the show season one promised. Season two led with packing Frenchie’s box full to bursting. Here is the fight to the death between lovers, there is a first mate who is mutilated and rotting in the very walls (the rot of the Revenge itself), and there is the storm of Ed’s rage and pain that threatens to consume all of them.

So surely these remaining episodes would concentrate on finding the humor in healing from those moments. That is the setup. Frenchie has a box. The box must eventually open.

Except time and again, all the characters who suffered are told that the only way to deal with what they’ve been through is to stick it in the box and never open it again.

Pete tells Lucius that he’s unable to move on and needs to let it go. Izzy has a story about a shark. Ed’s apology to the crew which doesn’t even contain the words ‘I’m sorry’ is just…accepted. I kept waiting and waiting for a meaningful apology to the people Ed had hurt the worst with his actions, but it seems all we get is Fang saying ‘eh, no problem, I got to hit you back so I feel better’.

The playful theme of ‘pirates are just violent sometimes’ from season one becomes a grinding horror machine in season two when every atrocity visited on someone is forgiven because the narrative needs it to be. Ed and Stede spend more time making amends with each other over the bloodless night on the beach than either of them spend trying to repent for their actions towards anyone else.

And let’s talk about Ed. Arguably this season pivots on his narrative, on his path to healing and growth. A path that starts at a very low point. His moment in the gravy basket, deciding he wants to live because there are still things to live for is so great! So one might assume that what would follow would be him pursuing those things, making amends, making connections. He and Stede have a wonderful moment, talking about being whim prone and how they’ll work to avoid that, build a relationship by going slower.

Yet, at no point do either of them stop following whims. They never heal or learn from what’s happened to them. They both keep running from thing to thing, particularly Ed. It’s a whim to sleep with Stede, it’s a whim to run off to fish, and the finale gives us just more of their whims. Ed drops fishing as fast as he picked it up. He finds those leathers in the ocean, murdering the symbolism of leaving them behind. Even the inn is a whim, one of those things Ed decided he’d be good at without evidence. And Stede joins him in that without a single on screen conversation about it ahead of the moment.

Ed needs to heal himself and to do that he needs to confront what he’s done and do the work to heal the wound. Instead, he doesn’t meaningfully apologize to anyone, besides Stede and Fang. Despite Izzy’s dying words (we’ll get to that), not only do we never see the crew caring about Ed, working to make him family in the same way they do with Fang and even Izzy, he also doesn’t choose to stay with them. So what is the point? Where is the healing? Or does even Ed, beloved main character, have to live with it all stuffed in a box?

He ends the season in the leathers he threw away, in a relationship that’s barely stabilized, going to live in a house which we are told by the narrative (in that they are very very clearly paralleling Anne and Mary with Ed and Stede or why do we even get that whole Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? episode) will only end in them setting fire to each other to stay warm.

But Vee, I hear you cry, it’s a ROM-COM. This is all meant to be ha-ha funny and you are taking it so seriously!

Cool beans. Then why the hell isn’t it funny? Healing is often filled with comedy because people deal with pain with humor. You can heal and laugh at the same time. The finale especially is almost entirely devoid of laughs, almost entirely devoid of joy until the last minute for that matter. The episode that should show off with a flourish how far everyone’s come, mostly serves to show that no one has grown.

Okay that’s Ed. I want to talk about Lucius next. Our former audience surrogate (that’s taken away in season two when he doesn’t get enough screen time to perform that role and no one takes his place) really goes through the wringer. He experiences many many terrible things, including sexual assault (which is made into a grimace-laugh line that doesn’t take away from it’s seriousness because oh hey, that can be done as it turns out). He’s nervous, he’s smoking, it’s clear he’s suffering.

There’s a beautiful moment where Pete tells him ‘hey, I was also in pain. I grieved’ and that’s great. It’s good that Pete sets a boundary about Lucius not obsessing over the past to the point of occluding their future.

We even get our comedic moment where Lucius pushes Ed off the boat (still not apology, but I’d lost hope for that by then) and that doesn’t help enough. So Izzy comes in with a shark and the advice that you just have to move on.

Just…you know. Play pretend. Forget.

Shove it in a box. Ed didn’t take my leg, a shark did. Ed didn’t kill you, a shark did. Live with the person that tried to murder you because it’s your fault you dangled your leg over the side of a boat. That is the show’s message. I thought on first watch, that surely this would also come back up and be explained that you can’t live that way, that that is no way to heal. That it would become clear that this was no way through. You cannot make everything into sharks.

Lucius can move forward and still carry pain. He can still want a meaningful apology and still want to talk to his lover about what he’s dealing with while moving forward toward a brighter future.

And what of the flirtatious promise of relationships and connections being the way to heal? Look to Oluwande and Jim, whose heartfelt romance from season one was relegated to the bins of history in favor of a narrative that made him a brother Jim once had sex with. They could have had Archie AND Oluwande, who in turn could also have Zheng, but that never seems to be an option. With a single short conversation, they are broken up with, despite a brief tease at the birthday that they still ‘dance’ together, it never actually manifests. Jim and Archie never talk about what they went through. It’s swept under the rug as fast as knives are lowered.

Lucius also no longer flirts with other people, the solution to his pain is to propose and get married (but not too married, lest we forget that they’re two men, they don’t even get to be husbands or even the more respectful mates, no. They’re mateys.) This season proposes that the only happy endings are monogamous ones, where no one talks about anything painful that went before.

To ensure that message, beyond assuring the success of Oluwande and Zheng’s relationship, Jim and Archie almost entirely disappear from the narrative. Sorry you guys were given layers of trauma and no growth and not even much to do this season, we need to make sure that everyone remembers Oluwande is the break in Zheng’s day so when he says that to her five minutes later we know exactly what he’s referencing. No time for Archie to learn what an apology is or for Jim to get one line in with Oluwande that isn’t affirming their newfound broship. Must do more flashbacks to things we just did two episodes ago!

The show even dangles the conversation of the Revenge being a safe space. Why would any of them ever feel safe when the man who tortured them is allowed to walk among them and they are expected to forgive and forget? What’s safe about that? The ship is never made safe for any of them, but that’s never addressed.

And Zheng! Amazing, hysterically funny Zheng! She loses her ships, her entire way of life, the kingdom she built for herself and then…she doesn’t even get to captain the Revenge. We don’t know what becomes of her fleet, of her plans, her ambitions. Don’t worry about it, she has a romantic partner and isn’t that what every lady wants in the end?

(But Vee, I hear you cry again, there will be a season three! Maybe it will be All About Zheng! To which I say: then why did they present us with the most series finale feeling episode ever? If there’s more, I have no idea where it’s going. BUT VEE: BUTTONS AS SEAGULL ON THE GR- Fine. It’s time.)

Let’s talk about Izzy Hands.

Izzy manages more healing than anyone else this season. He reaches his lowest point, suicidal in the bowels of a ship that’s become a prison (very much in contrast to Ed’s suicidal low). The person he loves most in the world has shredded him physically and emotionally (and if you’re in the camp that thinks Izzy deserves the abuse that Ed gave to him, I would really like you to sit quietly with yourself and ask why you think there is ever anything anyone can do to deserve that treatment). He’s low, he shoots Ed to protect everyone, and then seems to plan to drink himself to death, mourning his losses.

And then another beautiful moment! The crew move past their own pain to help him. They work together for the first time and it’s to give Izzy mobility back. He treasures it. He cries over it. He uses that kindness extended to him to reach a new understanding of Stede and help him succeed, doing the work to make real amends. He sings in drag, he’s vulnerable and beautiful, celebrating the side of himself that he must’ve loathed in the first season. He’s an elder queer man, coming into himself.

He never gets an apology though. (‘Sorry about your leg’ without eye contact is not an apology. There is no responsibility taking, no acknowledgement of the weeks of torture that came with it.) Izzy also never really has an honest conversation with anyone about what it means that the man he loves punished him so severely for the crime of trying to protect the crew (yes, lest we forget, Izzy lost his leg because he was trying to keep Ed from re-traumatizing the crew and himself).

Izzy does all this work, but even he’s not allowed to take it out of the box. It’s a shark, not Ed. Ed is just ‘complicated’ (the language of abuse here is so upsetting and I think not even intentional).

And then he dies. His last act? To apologize to the man who tortured him and shot at him. To have done all this work, to take on all the blame. And then die.

In a rom com.

This show ends in a profoundly unfunny moment of telling the audience: this is the one character that did the work, that made amends, that tried his hardest to accept the parts of himself that he had a hard time embracing and formerly embittered him. He’s fully accepted his queerness and turned it into beautiful music. He’s disabled, and he worked hard to accept that. The man he loves will never love him back, so he worked hard to make Stede able to meet Ed on an even playing field. The Giving Tree gave up its limbs and its trunk, and it’s not even allowed to be a stump to sit on.

Kill the queer elder, who has managed to figure out how to live and in his own way how to heal. Kill him before he manages to teach anyone else how to meaningfully move forward (he almost gets it with Lucius, almost, but it’s meant to be rule of three, you know. Cigarette..shark…and then…and then fuck it, Lucius doesn’t even get to say a word at his funeral).

The message of this season again and again is that there is no healing, just moving forward. Like a shark. Like a bird that never lands.

That is not a kind show.

Season two is not a kind season.

It splinters people up and jams them back together without purpose or reason. It tells everyone who experiences pain that they should shove it in a box and not deal with it. No one who really needs one gets an apology of any sincerity. No one puts in the work to gain forgiveness. (Ed wearing a onesie is not The Work. Ed fixing a door is not The Work. Ed broke people that the show wants us to care about. Ed never does the work of making those amends. He fires off a Notes app apology at best. After all, it’s what he told himself via Hornigold in the gravy basket: you move on or you blow your brains out! Good thing he took his own advice and therefore had to change nothing to get his just rewards.

I would’ve taken just fifteen minutes of Ed trying to actually make amends. It could’ve been hilarious! Imagine awkward Ed trying to dance around what he’s doing with Jim and the two of them having a knife throwing competition about it. Or him and Frenchie attempting to make music together, writing a song about the raids they went on! It’s not just the crew robbed of their healing because of this, it’s Ed himself. He never meaningfully changes or makes amends. How is he any different at the end of the finale then he is standing on the edge of that cliff with Hornigold? He hasn’t moved on, he hasn’t healed. He tried one thing (fishing) that doesn’t fucking work and then he runs right back.

No one leaves this season better than they went into it. They’ve lost an elder queer, they’ve lost their joyous and queer polyamory, they’ve lost a chance for meaningful reconciliation with Ed and Ed lost any chance of looking like he gave shit if they did. Stede grows enough to accept the crew’s beliefs as important and then leaves them behind without a care.

Izzy gets a beautiful speech about piracy being larger than yourself. Ed and Stede, within twenty minutes of that speech, leave piracy. They are incapable of giving themselves to something bigger, apparently. They haven’t learned to be a part of a community. They haven’t healed from their childhood trauma or their fresher wounds. They are still just following their own whims.

Zheng’s life work is in tatters, but it’s fine, she has love. Oluwande and Jim aren’t together, but it's fine because they both have dedicated monogamous partners. Lucius was deeply scarred by what happened, never recovers much of his first season personality, but hey he got-well it’s not married exactly- but you know good enough!

Frenchie, who has a box forever locked in his head, is captain. Because the key to success is to lock it all in a box and never open it. What a message. What a show. Conceal, don’t feel. Smile because it’s a happy ending. Don’t mourn the dead, don’t try to tell people what happened to you (they will literally run away or cry too hard to listen and really you’re just bumming them out), and any meaningful change you make is only rewarded with death.

Frenchie is now a pirate captain with a box in his head full of trauma that’s never been opened, leading a crew with more wounds than scars. Wonder how that could turn out? Wonder how many years before he might want to retire and then happen to run across a gentleman pirate. As if no one learned anything at all.

[phantom-of-the-501st]

"I don't enjoy solitude."

I was thinking about this line and I find the context of it really interesting because on the surface it suggests that Echo doesn't like being by himself, which is true, but the conversation wasn't about Echo being alone. Omega was asking him if he wanted to join in with some meditation, and that's when Echo said he doesn't like solitude. It isn't just being by himself physically. It's being left alone with his own thoughts that really gets to him.

And it's so much of why Echo never sits still. He's always with someone or doing something because it's how he escapes being inside his own head. The only time I can think of where Echo is just sat by himself, not actively doing something, is here

And it's not exactly giving "yay fun happy Echo times". It's more "depressed and thinking about all of his dead brothers times."

This is why he's always doing something. Not just to save his brothers but because the one thing Echo can't do is sit still and do nothing. He can't retire, he can't go and live a chill life on Pabu because this man hasn't found a way to temper his own thoughts. He just keeps going and going and going because stopping means confronting what's in his head and he is undoubtedly going to spiral.

And I think that's partly why Hunter is a little hesitant about Echo staying in the Rebellion. It isn't just about the fact that the Empire is too powerful, or that Echo has a chance of being KIA, it's also about the fact that Echo will just run himself into the ground. There's only so long he can keep it up for and one day he's going to hit his limit.

I don't know what the end is for Echo. The only way he's going to kick his feet up and retire is when he actually heals enough to not go into a depressive episode or a panic attack every time he isn't distracted. Yes, Echo is better than he was when he was first rescued, but realistically this man has done almost fuck all actual processing of anything he's gone through.

Because it terrifies him.

And that's so valid. But when everyone in the fandom is trying to work out where he is or what happens to him, I genuinely don't know. I strongly believe he will stay in the fight for as long as he can. But how his story ends? I can't say.

Edit: I want to clarify that I don't think Echo is only in the fight purely as an escape mechanism. I just think it'd definitely a big player in why he never seems to stop.

[tac-the-unseen]

Hannibal Lecter x Reader x Will Graham Headcannons

Fluff, Minor edits for formatting!

Involves: Cooking, sleeping, art, tattoos, piercings, dates, funny little ideas

•While Hannibal is mostly the one cooking when you, him, and will are in a kitchen together it get a bit chaotic.

•You're decent at cooking but Will is a hot mess compared to you and Hannibal (that doesn't mean he's a bad cook, just not as good as you guys are). But you and Hannibal have no problem guiding and teaching him. It's a great bonding experience for all of you.

•When Hannibal talks in the kitchen you and Will call him 'chef'. Hannibal loves it but will never admit to it.

•All of you share a bed but you also have separate bed in another room that is used when one of you really needs your sleep or space. None of you talk about but it has really saved your relationship...multiple times.

•Hannibal mostly uses it when he has an important event coming up and needs to get a full night's rest.

•Will mostly uses it when he feels like the world is caving in on him and needs to get away.

•You mostly use it when you're mad that them or need to work a late shift.

•Hannibal loves taking you and Will to museums and art galleries. He loves digging through the layers of the art to get to its over all meanings.

•Everyone knows Hannibal likes to play the 'sugar daddy' role but he appreciates when you or Will try and contribute with the costs.

•Will isn't a fan of pet names. He thinks it's weird and kind of degrading, but if you or Hannibal use one or two, he won't complain. Especially if it's to comfort him during an episode.

•That being said if you call him William he immediately thinks he's in trouble for something. If he's not in trouble he will pout about you using his full name.

•On the other hand Hannibal loves pet/nick names. If you call him darling or love he will internally swoon.

•Will doesn't like to be touched and you and Hannibal are not expections. He can deal with touch but he's not happy about it. If you touch him while he's having a break down he with scream, shout, and cry.

•You can get away with cuddling at night but just barely. Be careful about your hand placement.

•If Will is losing an argument he'll say 'nah huh' and Hannibal without a beat will say 'yeah huh' right back.

•You and Will have woken up after a nap to find Hannibal sketching you several times. If he finds either of you asleep he'll run to get his sketch book and maybe some tea and gets to work.

•Hannibal is 10,000% a bridezilla. If you could get married he would be a nightmare to deal with. He might call off the whole wedding if he doesn't get the flowers he wants. And the catering, dear god the catering. He got so upset he thought about just making the food himself...day of...

•If Hannibal ever gets sick he feel guilty because he feels like he should be the one taking care of you two, not that other way around.

•If you have tattoos or piercings Hannibal will just and stare that them. He wants to mesmerize every piece of you. In his spare time he finds him self drawing up concept art for more future tattoos. He doesn't show you any of them,but if you find one and end up getting it tattooed on you he might just have a heart attack.

•Very Interested in the tattoos/piercings healing process. Like he knows but he just likes to watch.

•Will likes to trace said tattoos and even considers getting a matching one with you!

•If Hannibal spots you and/or will getting overwhelmed overstimulated in public he hold your hand and whisper affirmations to you two.

Thanks for reading <3

[fandoms--fluff]

Hello i know that i resquest so much but I love your work so can you do more of little Mikaelson baby sister with Hayley where yn is with her and baby hope Hayley treats yn like other daughters because she love her so much that she is sad when yn cry

If I Were Your Mother

Baby Mikaelson sister reader x Hayley Marshall (and everyone else)

Warnings: Mikael being an ass, death?

A/n: This is set during later season 2, we're gonna forget about Jackson and Hayley together. We're gonna pretend that everyone is happy and Klaus and Hayley don't fight about what's best for Hope or try to take her away from each other every other episode and are actually good together.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Mikael is back. Davina brought him back from the other side almost a year ago. You've seen Kol and Finn in their new bodies and were completely freaked out by Finn. He had tried to kill you. You wouldn't leave your brothers or Hayley's side no longer than five minutes for almost two weeks.

Mikael had boomed into the abattoir, white oak stake in his hand, ready to kill. He laid his eyes on you the moment you ran into the room where you heard a familiar man's voice yelling. You regretted it as soon as you saw your father. The same father who had been tracking you and your siblings down for the past millennia.

You had thought Nik had already killed him, he told you he had. Did he lie?

Mikael went straight to you. You loudly screamed and tried to vamp speed out of the way, but he was too fast for you. He had caught you in his arms and pressed the stake right at your tiny chest.

As soon as your loud scream pierced the walls of the old building, the room was immediately full of your older siblings; Bekah, Nik, and Lijah, as well as Marcel and Hayley, whom you'd grown really close with since she was pregnant in the early months.

"LET HER GO" Klaus bellowed, his eyes flash a striking amber. His anger is through the roof, no one touches his baby sister and lives, no one. He starts to stalk his way over, followed by Elijah.

"Don't come any closer, boys" Mikael spat at them. You whimpered loudly as tears ran down your reddened cheeks. All you want is your big brothers.

"No" You hit your father's shoulder and tried to pull away from him. All that does is make his grip on you tighten to a painful extent. Even with your vampire healing, it hurts tremendously.

Veins appear under Hayley's eyes, enraged at Mikael for even going near the poor little girl. She uses her hybrid strength and lunges at him. She knocks the white oak stake out of his hands and bites him on the shoulder opposite you. She takes you into her arms and quickly vamps you back over to Marcel before returning to Mikael, along with Elijah, Klaus, and Rebekah.

Your big sister grabbed the stake into her hand and vamped towards where Elijah and Klaus were pinning Mikael down each on one side and Hayley's arm was wrapped tightly around his neck. She shoved the stake right through Mikael's heart. Flames blaze across Mikael's body and clothing. His screams echoed through the whole compound.

They all backed away from the burning corpse of the vampire who hunts vampires, watching as he burned from the inside out.

Marcel had you tucked against his chest, hand on the back of your head so you didn't have to watch the fight going down. You sobbed into his shirt, scared out of your mind. You want, you want Hayley.

She was the one who took you from Mikael. You pull away once Marcel's grip slackens a bit after Mikael burns.

You outstretch your arms towards the hybrid. Hayley quickly comes over to you and brings you into her arms gently. She turns back around to the other three originals, Klaus has a hurt look on his face, clearly wishing you had wanted him.

Hayley feels guilty, mouthing 'I'm sorry' to him. Elijah nods in response to her before looking at his younger brother and Rebekah places a hand on his shoulder.

"She has no means to hurt you, Nik. Don't think about it too much. She loves all of us" Rebekah whispers to him. Klaus takes a deep breath before nodding in response to her. He knows he shouldn't hold it against you, you may be over 1000 years old, but you're 2 years old, with a mind and thoughts that come with it, even as a vampire. And he knows you love him, he shouldn't hold it against you.

He nods to Hayley, a smile twitching at his lips, before turning to the burnt to a crisp corpse.

"Well, we should tend to the trash, shall we, sister?" Klaus smirks towards Rebekah. "We shall" She smirks back to him.

Klaus walks over to your tiny, shaking body in Hayley's arms and places a hand on the back of your head before kissing your forehead. He then goes over to their father, putting his arms behind his back as he brainstorms what to do next.

Rebekah walks over to the two of you next and places a kiss on the crown of your head. "I love you, sweetie" She runs her hand through your soft hair before going over to where Nik and Elijah are.

Hayley walks towards the stairs, nodding at Marcel, to which he nods back before walking off to the room he was in before Mikael showed up.

She bounces you in her arms, trying to soothe and calm you down. "Oh, It's okay, Baby. He's gone. He's gone now" She holds you close. you lean into her warmth and grip your pudgy hands on her shirt.

"No need to cry no more," She says, starting to tear up herself. She walks into her room and opens the door to the nursery. She goes over to the crib where a baby Hope lays, eyes open, looking up at the mobile. And now her eyes land on her Mama and you.

You hear the tiny mewling sounds from Hope, and look up from Hayley's chest to the baby. you let go of her shirt with one hand and reach to Hope.

Hope sits up from where she was lying down, looking up at you. She has loved you from the start, even though she can't talk yet, but knows that love is returned back from you

"You want some time with Hope?" Hayley asks you. You've been obsessed with the baby girl since before she was born, you love her just as much as Hayley and Klaus. You immediately nod your head, "Hopey" you say and let out a grin even with the tear tracks on your face.

Hayley lowers you into the crib with her daughter and watches how you immediately get into a silent conversation with her. You both giggle and play together with the small toys scattered in the crib.

She watches as you both play, a smile on her face. If she could adopt you as her own daughter as well, she would have no second thoughts and do it in one fell swoop. But she knows that your family loves you a great deal.

If she were to be your mother, she would love you so much. She would give you the childhood and life you deserve. She would care for you as a mother like she has been for over a year. There's no way she can express just how much she loves you.

"I love you both so much," She tells you both, watching as you cuddle with each other into the soft blanket. Hope has two pacifiers in her hands. She hands one over to you the best she can and you take it in your tiny from her just as tiny hand.

Hope puts the other in her mouth, just as you put the one she handed you into yours. You both suck on the pacifiers, tiny suckling noises filling the room.

Hayley tries not to physically aww at the action. Both of her babies sucking on soothers. She knows you're older than a normal age of a 'baby', but you're just as a baby as Hope is in her eyes. And the same goes for the eyes of your big siblings.

Klaus walks into the bedroom not long after you and Hope doze off, curled into one another. He looks around the room, "Where's my baby sister?" He asks, worried about you after the event of earlier in the day.

"Shh" she holds a finger up to her lips before nodding down at the dark wooden crib.

He follows her instructions and looks down at the crib, his face softening right away. He watches as his two baby girls sleep, sucking on the pacifiers.

Hayley pulls him into the other room, closing the door so she doesn't wake you two up.

"Is Mikael dealt with? Gone for good?" She asks him. "Yes, he shall not return, never again. the look on her face, I- I froze, he was going to kill her. And it was my fault" His voice wavers.

"Hey, it's not your fault, and nothing happened. That asshole deserves what he got and everything that's coming his way in hell. You're her big brother, Y/n loves you so much" Hayley pulls the elder into a hug.

Klaus stiffens at first before melting into her arms, breathing in her scent. After ten more seconds, he backs away, looking into her eyes, vulnerability shining through them. He covers it back up before his eyebrows scrunch together and a glint in his eyes.

"Was Y/n using a pacifier?" a smile plays on his lips. "Yeah, our daughter thought she would want one and gave one to her.,. Obviously, she was right. I have a feeling they're not going to allow us to separate them for a while" Hayley chuckles lightly.

"I assume that's the same for you with her as well" He crosses his arms, eyebrow raised in amusement.

"Fair enough" Hayley smirks back to him.

You don't leave Hayley and Hope's side for a little while. You love it when you're all having a cuddle session with Hayley or Klaus, or both of them. The pacifier also is starting to seem like a constant. The only one to have a bad word against it is Elijah, saying that you don't need to develop a bad habit of always wanting one. But that's quickly stopped when Rebekah dragged him out of the room and nicely explained how their baby sister using a soother is at the bottom of the list of their concerns.

You love Hayley, Hope, and your siblings to the moon and back.

[zukosdualdao]

just… the absolute trust between zutara in the finale is unreal. after zuko’s impromptu training attack session, yes, katara is surprised and even somewhat angry as she confronts him, but when she says “you could have hurt aang!” all it reminds me of is the fact that just a few episodes ago, she literally threatened to kill him if he ever gave her a reason to think he might so something to hurt aang. but here, now, even as she’s confronting him, she just… waits for him to explain, and she actually sees and agrees with his point once zuko tells the gaang about ozai’s plan.

there is also the absolutely, 100% synchronized way they fight during the simulated training session, something that calls back to their synchronization and teamwork in the southern raiders, and that inherently shows a lot of trust and understanding between them.

katara is the one who initially asks zuko what they should do after aang disappears. everyone else agrees, but it's katara who trusts him enough to position him, not just to herself but to everyone else, as someone they should listen to because of his history, skill, and experience, especially noteworthy because the reason she gives—“you are sort of the expert at tracking the avatar”—is what used to make him untrustworthy in their eyes. they’ve come such a long way.

then katara notices zuko freeze and sit in front of iroh’s tent, and when she asks if he’s okay, he just… completely trusts her with exactly what he’s feeling, and if he’s even a little worried that what he’s saying might cause her to act derisively, because what he’s referencing here is also what katara was angry and hurt about, he doesn’t show it. he just so completely trusts her with it, and her insistence that iroh will forgive him is born from her own trust of zuko, and she's able to tell him what he needs to hear because she was once in iroh's position and zuko proved his genuine remorse and care to her.

then, of course, we've got zuko not missing a beat as he asks katara to be the one to come with him to confront azula, and her ready acceptance. they make a good team, and they know it.

but when they get there and azula challenges zuko to an agni kai - though she initially has misgivings, katara ultimately trusts zuko when he says he can handle it and understands that he doesn't want her to get hurt if she doesn't have to. (an aspect of zuko's "i can't explain it, but she's slipping" line that i think gets underexamined, btw, is that that's not an inherently good thing for them. yes, maybe that means zuko will be able to take her, particularly because he knows azula and her fighting style well. but someone who is "slipping" is also, in this case, desperate, and more prone to being reckless with people's lives. zuko tries to mitigate that by fighting her alone, but it doesn't work because azula can't follow the terms she sets when she realizes she's losing.)

the lightning scene is a really interesting example of trust as it relates to zuko and katara, because to me, the emphasis there isn't quite so much on zuko and katara trusting each other. there's barely time for katara to think through what will happen to as azula aims for her or wonder what zuko will do, after all, and zuko is probably in too much pain and too out of it to think about katara coming to try to heal him. (though if they did have the time and mental faculties to think it through, i think they would both 120 percent trust the other to help them.)

instead, the emphasis is on the audience trusting the characters. from the moment zuko sees where azula's aiming, he doesn't hesitate, doesn't even think about, just. immediately jumps in front of the lightning before it can reach katara. i've said this before, but as soon as he understood what was happening, there was just no chance of that lightning ever getting to katara and that's the point. we've seen what zuko looks like when he's hesitating or conflicted, and the difference is stark. the show never wants you to question exactly what zuko will do, that he refuses to let katara get heart, that he'll save her.

and for her part, katara immediately runs to try and save zuko despite azula still being around and attacking, and tries again before realizing she needs to defeat azula in order to do so. but the entire scene of katara's defeating her, while obviously heroic and emblematic of katara's power and the culmination of her arc as a girl whose culture and identity was nearly stripped away from her to being a master waterbender, is also framed as katara defeating azula so she can get to zuko. she would have done it anyways, yes, but in this context, right now, she is fighting azula so she can get to zuko to heal him.

here, in the narrative culmination of their arcs together, it shows not just that they trust each other, but asks the audience to not doubt the development of the dynamic that’s been built, to trust that they will take care of each other. and they do.

[iouinotes]

Show-off | Mike Ross

pairing: Mike Ross x female!reader

show: Suits

genre: smut word count: 2,9k

summary: you and your co-worker Mike dont get along very well. But when you have something that he needs, suddenly everything is different.

a/n: Just watched the first two episodes of "Suits" and something about Mike is really attractive-

Working in a well-known office as a lawyer has it's advantages. Such as being respected by business people or being able to afford a lot of things, you spend all your evenings analyzing documents rather than meeting actual people.

Nevertheless, sometimes there are also negative factors. For example, my co-worker Mike, who really believes, that he is with his ridiculously skinny tie and sarcastic humor better than the others. Or right now, better than me.

"God, I cant believe you. Can you behave for once?" I use my fingers to push my hair back in frustration, noticing how my head starts to hurt. Its 10 pm and I'm currently trying to stay calm, though because of one man in particular, my nerves seem to be getting thinner within seconds. Valuable time is wasted that I could spend somewhere else instead of with him.

"Now it's my fault, that you don't have the documents with you? Sorry, I can't help you being organized in your own workplace." His voice irritates me. Everything about him is so frustrating.

"I told you, I didnt get the message! How am I supposed to know, that you need something, when you don't tell me anything about it? Maybe you should stop being so childish and ask me in the first place, instead of running to Rachel!" If our job had nothing to do with justice and we werent literally standing in a law company right now, I would kill him. And then I wouldn't hesitate to go to court and say it was self-defense, because I didnt want to hear any of his miserable excuses anymore.

"So what do you think, I should do? I need these documents for tomorrow. Please, I know you don't like me, but it is really urgent." Why does he has such blue eyes? The look he is going me is even more irritating than his voice.

I sign, exhibit my laptop and try to put the pens back, that are laying all over my desk.

"Okay, fine. As I said, the documents are at home, so-" I don´t even get to finish my sentence.

"Great, so I'll meet you there. And I wont even tell anyone, if your place is a mess." His eyes wander over my messy desk, and even If I don´t like to admit it, it's a bad habit of mine. But, he shouldn't make any assumptions about the neatness in my apartment.

"I hope you loose the documents on your way home." At my words, he grins smugly.

"Well, then I could lie and say you didnt found them anymore and I hadnt had the chance to go through them." He leans towards me.

"I'll run you over with my car." He raises his eyebrows at my threat.

"You sure should do something that makes you smile more often. Is that even something you know how to do?" I show him my middle finger and turn to left my office. When I close the door, I hear the laughter in his voice.

"The next storm should be named after you as quickly as you left the room." He follows after me.

"Can you shut up for once? Oh, I forgot. You don´t last one second being silent. Thats a shame, the world could finally heal." His hand rests on his heart, his features fake a hurt expression.

"Ouch. You really don´t like me that much, huh?" His eyes try to search mine.

"You get on my nerves on purpose every fucking day. Should I thank you for that?" I turn my head to look at him.

"Yes, you should. Your life would be so boring without me." He grins at me again from the side, that typical grimace that is always adorn on his face.

"You wish." When I tell him my address, he raises his eyebrows, but before he can make an unfavorable comment, I get into my car.

Darkness surrounds me and when I see him going away, I lower my head to the steering wheel. He really is the best at confusing my emotions.

~~~~~

I turn off the lights of my car and get out of it, so I can finally make my way to my flat. Its not something special, I mean I have a living room, which is quite big and connected to the kitchen, a bedroom and a bath. But I am very lucky, because I have a small balcony, from which I can watch the stars at night. But I usually only do that when I can't sleep.

So, when I enter my apartment, I let my eyes wander over the manageable mess, I put some clothes back in the closet and the dishes in the washing machine. The place almost looks decent, when I hear the doorbell.

As I open the door, I'm nervous for some reason. I let him in and turn to my office drawers, looking for the document.

"Nice place. You live here alone?" His fingers trace my bookshelf, I see him reading the titles.

"No, my wife is still at work." When I look at him dead serious, I see him laugh in surprise.

"So, you do have humor. I thought, you were one of those exceptions that wouldn't be able to do that." He means it as a joke, but something in my chest hurts.

When I reply with a monotonous voice, I see his eyebrows pull together. "I live here alone. That's what you wanted to hear?" I'm getting more frustrated again with every second he's around me.

"No- I didnt mean it that way. I'm sorry. My intentions were good, I promise." When I look at him for a moment, I see his honest expression.

It would be so easier for me to hate him, if I didnt know, he was a good human. Well, most of the time.

We are silent for a moment, but when I hear his footsteps, I tense up.

"What are you doing?" He's now standing right next to me.

"Helping you. You seem a little, tense?" I glare at him for a moment and he raises his hands in defense.

"Just pointed out the obvious. But dont worry. You still look lovely." I stop in my movements at his words.

"Thats such shock for you?" His voice shows surprise and a certain curiosity.

"Only that you say it." I look into his eyes.

"Well, you may think I'm dumb, but I'm not blind."

He just called me beautiful, sort of. It´s confusing me.

When I finally find the documents, I hold my hand out to him.

"I don´t think you are dumb. I think you're annoying. And a show-off. I don´t like that." His eyes follow me.

"What do you like then?" His question surprises me. He slowly takes the documents out of my hand, his finger gently brushing mine.

"I don´t think that is any of your business." I try to clear my voice. His touch makes me shiver.

"Come on, tell me. Would that be so bad?" His whole presence is making me nervous and I feel my hands start to shake.

At work, I can always hide behind a mask, pretend that nothing he does affects me. I can act like I truly hate him, even though I catch myself looking at him, from time to time. Especially when he shows off his intelligence without realizing it, impresses his clients and -I would never admit it- me too. It's a certain charm about him, the way he always knows how to answer, while being mischievous and clever about it.

But now, that he's in my apartment and so close to me, it's suddenly different. And I don't know how to react to him being nice.

"I look for someone who isnt afraid of commitment. Someone who is honest and kind, but who also challenges me. I want to feel safe, so I can put my trust not only in myself."

He nods and is quiet for a moment, I begin to feel stupid for telling him all of that, when he responds.

"I get that. Someone whose shoulder you can lean on when things get too much. Someone who meets your needs, who wants to be in your life. For longer than a one-night stand." He smiles at me and I see for the first time, why I possibly could like him.

"Also, statistics show higher rates of being robbed or kidnapped, when you have one-night stands." This remark almost makes me laugh, even though it's frightening.

"Well, who would even notice, if I would disappear? Probably only my clients, because they need me." I lower my head, being completely honest with him for the first time.

"I would notice."

When I look at him, he takes a step towards me. His fingers gently slide over my shoulder and brush my hair aside, the touch makes a warm feeling bloom in my chest.

"I couldn't annoy you anymore. My life would be pretty boring without you. And it's not so bad to be able to look at such a pretty face every day, even if it always looks at me annoyed, like all the time." I quietly laugh at that, feeling surprisingly good because of his compliment.

We look at each other, now being really close. My eyes travel to his lips and I don´t even know how it happens, but suddenly he is all over me. His lips on mine, his hands on my waist, lifting me up to sit me on the desk. I moan softly when his hands tangle in my hair and he pushes himself closer to me, so that he's standing between my legs. One of his hands gently wraps around my neck and I feel my loud pulse.

My hands move too, stroking his back and holding him closer to me by his tie. As he pulls his lips away from me, he lifts my chin with his finger. Now, looking down at me with widen pupils. I hold his eye contact, forgetting all about my issues with him, when he speaks to me with a deep voice (which I suddenly don´t think sounds irritating anymore).

"Be angry at me tomorrow and mine for tonight. I bet, all your frustration from work and your thin nerves can catch a break, what do you say?"

Not much. Because I pull him towards me by his tie and kiss him again. I don't want to stop at all anymore. He returns the kiss with the same enthusiasm and his hands find their way to my waist again to lift me up again. When he crosses the living room with quick steps and lays me down on the sofa, I already feel out of breath and clearly turned on.

His kisses become more intense, his lips move from my mouth to my neck, leaving marks there. But it feels too good to make him stop.

"I will gladly hear your excuses, when someone asks you about your hickeys tomorrow. Because you will be all flustered, when you think again about this moment. Where you are ready to be fucked by your colleague, who you despise so much." I whimper as he pushes up my dress and his hands pull my tights down to my knees. The cold air hits my skin, but I don't really notice it, because his lips are on my neck again and his fingers connect first with my stomach and then further down. I hold my breath as his lips touch my ear and his fingers stroke my folds.

"So wet for me. Didnt think, I would turn you on this much." I kiss him to shut him up.

"You are-" I moan, when he finally puts a finger in me. "-so annoying." He laughs at me.

"Am I? But you seem to like it." I feel myself getting wetter, his fingers feel so good as they move gently but firmly inside me. One of his hands moves to push my dress further up and somehow, he manages to pull it over my head. Now, I'm lying in front of him in just a bra, his hands slowly find their way over my body and to my back, which I lift slightly so that he can open the clasp.

When I lie naked in front of him and he massages my breasts, his lips touch mine and his fingers stimulate me, I feel like I'm in heaven.

He breaks apart, so he can look at me and I draw my eyebrows together, when his fingers increase in speed. My mouth opens and the sounds that escape me echo in the apartment.

"I'm- god, I think I am going to come-" at that he starts to tease me, going slower but a lot deeper. My eyes almost roll back as he hits a certain spot inside me.

"That feels good? What do you say, when you want something?" You stupid idiot.

"You stupid-" I begin to say as his lips graze my nipple and his finger scissor and stretch me out further.

"One word, darling. Say it." And because I feel this knot inside me (and maybe this side of him turns me on, like a lot), I finally open my mouth to please him.

"Please, Mike. I-I need to-" My sentence is cut off as his fingers speed up and I moan loudly.

"Thats a good girl, you can be so good to me, if I make you." His lips search mine as I finally come. My breathing is heavy and when I come down from my high and look at his face, I see the satisfied expression.

"You are done-" I can't maintain my strict facial expression and suddenly have to start smiling. His eyes widen in surprise and I raise my eyebrows, still smiling softly.

"What?" I quietly laugh at his expression.

"Nothing, its just- I have never seen you smiling so happy." I roll my eyes gently. As I look at him closer now, I see the bulge in his pants and the loosened tie. As I lean forward, his eyes shift to my body.

"You still are fully clothed. A bit unfair, don't you think?" I watch him swallow and my hands move to his chest to slowly unbutton his shirt. As I also remove the tie and slip the shirt from his shoulders, I sit myself on his lap. Rocking my hips forward and seeing his eyes close. His hands move to my hips and begin to control the movements, my eyes close too and my head leans into the crook of his neck as the movements become faster.

Sighs and heavy breaths leave his lips and once again, one of his hands moves to grab my breasts, lightly grazing the nipples.

I look at him, noticing his swollen lips and his flushed cheeks. His hair is a mess and his forehead is furrowed, but he tries his best to pull himself together.

I groan as I look at him and suddenly think back to todays afternoon, when he was on a phone call and I heard how he listed one reciting fact after another, without any difficulty.

"What are you thinking about?" His voice pulls me out of my thoughts.

"N-nothing" I'm definitely too embarrassed to admit how much his intelligence and the way he seems to know everything, turns me on.

One of his hands moves to my entrance and teases me by just circling around it. When I try to push myself down, he pulls his fingers away.

"You tell me, whats going on in that pretty head of yours and you'll get me." My body feels so hot, I can't think properly anymore.

"You where on a phone call today and you just- you listed without any effort every single point that will help you win the case. You just said it like- it's nothing."

When his fingers dig into me again, I bite my lips. I try to control my moans and not pay attention to the fact, that I just gave him every opportunity to make him be more complacent than his usual self.

His fingers pump into me and I feel slightly overstimulated. But I wouldnt want to stop now.

"You get off by the thought of me, saying memorized facts? Who would have thought that my intelligence would turn you on so much." God, his ego probably doesn't fit in this apartment anymore.

"Don't think too highly of yourself, you still annoy me." Now I'm really just trying to get myself out of the situation. I lean towards him, so he can't say anything anymore and pull on his blonde hair to distract him.

Moans escape my lips and when I notice that his noises are also getting louder, I pull away from him. He looks at me confused.

"I want you inside me." Thats all I say, but he quickly complies with my request. I slide off his lap and wait for him to take off his pants and boxers until he's finally on top of me again. His fingers find my bottom lip and while maintaining eye contact, I open my mouth so he can insert a finger. My tongue brushes against his and after a few moments of him pressing on my tongue, he lets his fingers move back to the spot that needs him the most.

He stretches me for a few minutes until he finally guides his cock to my hole and slowly penetrates me. My eyes close and I hear his breath in my ear as he pushes further.

"You are so tight- good thing finally someone fucks you." I nod without thinking and hear his laughter in my ear.

"You think so too, huh. Would you let anyone fuck you then?" My stomach tenses, I feel the pleasure growing again and every movement of him. This feels so good-

I try to shake my head, but I'm too lost in the sensations to pay much attention to his words.

"No? But I thought, you hate me. Why would you let me fuck you, if you don´t even like me?" His thrusts become faster and more uncontrolled, I feel him getting closer to his own high.

"I-" I try to stutter "d-don´t hate you." I feel myself getting closer and reach into his hair, pulling at the roots and feeling his lips on my shoulder. His thrusts become more powerful and as he moves his hand and massages my clitoris, suddenly everything goes white in front of my eyes and I come.

I feel every inch inside of me, feel his fingers brush over the visible bulge in my stomach and think to myself: god I feel so full

When he comes too, I moan so loudly that it's impossible that my neighbors didn't hear me. His hand finds its way around my chin, he slides a finger into my mouth and I feel my vagina tighten because of it.

He hisses and his thrusts slow down until he finally pulls out of me, trying not to fall on top of me. As I give him some space next to me, he falls halfway on me, but pulls me on top of him in the next second and I can hear his strong heartbeat. With his outstretched hand he pulls the blanket over me, that had fallen to the floor.

We both try to catch our breath and as the minutes pass, only the wind outside is heard. He is the first to break the silence.

"So, you don't hate me?" I lift my head from his naked chest to look at him.

"Only sometimes." He shakes his head and smiles, gently stroking my back.

The evening went by quickly, we ordered a pizza and ate it (clothed) on the terrace. We were going over his documents for tomorrow, I blushed at the thought that this was the real reason he came here, but he just hugged me from behind after we finished and continued watching the stars.

It's not really clear what this evening means for us, but I don´t want to get into that, not yet. Because I'm not sure what it means anyway.

Because now, I have to get used to the fact that his voice no longer irritates me, that his jokes no longer annoy me and that he as a person, is actually not as bad as I imagined.

"Who thought, I was the one to get you relax."

But he is still a show-off.

[housethemd]

So in the episode where House is on methadone

Everyone is trying to figure out what’s going on with House, why he’s being nice, etc etc and eventually Wilson is just like “he’s on heroin.”

The surety with which Wilson says this really struck me. Like Wilson doesn’t just suggest House must on drugs that aren’t Vicodin, doesn’t even merely suggest House could be on heroin. No he says with absolute certainty that House is on heroin.

The only way Wilson could be so sure, would be if he’s seen House on heroin before.

Now while I’m quite convinced that House was an occasional recreational drug user prior to the infarction, heroin usually isn’t a drug you might take just for fun at a party every now and again. This leads me to believe that sometime in the early days post infarction is the most likely time House used heroin.

I’m imagining Wilson showing up after work to check on House. Stacy left weeks ago and House is still dealing with that on top of healing and being newly disabled so he’s been in a pretty god awful mood that only Wilson seems to be able to tolerate.

But when Wilson gets there House is in a better mood. Not just a better mood, he’s happy. Wilson knows immediately something is going on.

“What did you do? What did you take?” He’d ask. He knows people’s moods don’t change overnight like that, so either House took something or he’s planning to kill himself. Both are equally possible given his recent trauma and mental state, and Wilson needs to figure out which.

“What? Nothing. Well Vicodin but you know I’ve got a prescription for that.” House would reply, waggling his finger in Wilson’s direction like this is all some kind of joke.

Wilson frantically searches through everything within arms reach of House. Thankfully even with his better mood House can’t move very quickly, and Wilson manages to unearth a bag, and dashes out of House’s reach to open it. It’s filled with powder and syringes and Wilson has done enough ER shifts to know what it is.

“No, House. No. How did you even get this?” He’d ask, shocked.

“It’s easy when you know the right places to go.” House would say, not looking at Wilson anymore.

“The right places to… House you can barely get from the couch to the bathroom how the hell did you get this?”

“I guess I was sufficiently motivated.”

And Wilson’s heart breaks. He doesn’t have it in him to be mad at his friend. His life is upside down and House has never been good with change. Wilson does throw away the needles and flush the drugs and it pisses House off (“Do you know how much I paid for that?”) but once House calms down he makes House swear never again, that he won’t go down that road. Wilson says he’ll do anything, even write him more Vicodin prescriptions if he just promises not to use heroin again.

And House promises.

So when House is suddenly in an unexplainably good mood years later, Wilson thinks he knows exactly what’s going on. He’s angry, House promised. Wilson held up his end of the deal for the most part, so he comes up with a plan to catch House and make him admit to it.

But we all know how that plays out.

[healmyhrt]

⌗ motion picture soundtrack, m. sturniolo

matt x fem!reader

summary: matt attempts to help while you’re going through a depressive episode.

disclaimers!: depression, self-harm, drug use (marijuana), established relationship, use of y/n

a/n: this was requested:)

i laid across the comforter, limbs spread out, with the lights all off. sitting in the dark made me feel safe for some reason. i liked the dark. i found comfort in darkness.

but sometimes the darkness can become the root to my problems.

i was diagnosed with depression when i was only 14 years old. since then, it’s gotten worse, but every now and then it gets better. and it got better when i met matt.

but now im getting bad again.

and i always get bad again.

i was high out of my mind, and getting lost in my thoughts the more the weed kicked in. i always used marijuana to cope with my problems, i know i shouldn’t, but i do.

even trying to stand up was a mistake. my body wouldn’t allow it. as soon as i raised my feet, my body sunk back into the mattress. i would have preferred to drown in the mattress, dying from suffocation.

red wine and sleeping pills

help me get back to your arms

light peers into the room as the door creaks open.

but i don’t move an inch. the weed made my body feel as light as a feather, and like it told me not to move at all or else i would ruin it.

“y/n?” matt makes it clear that it’s him. he walks over to the bed, and hands me a water bottle. “you need to drink something.” i push his hand away, and realizing how much energy it took out of me.

i ignore him, and he gets up, walking over to the lamp. “you can’t be like this forever.” he turns it on. the world that was black and empty is now filled with light.

but im still lost in my thoughts.

cheap sex and sad films

help me get where I belong

“i started a bath for you. come on.” he gently picks me up, and i feel nothing in my bones, my muscles, nothing at all.

once we reach the bathroom, matt sits me on the toilet seat, and starts undressing me. “arms.” he forms a small smile.

i try to lift my arms, but not even they could be moved. matt pulls my huge t-shirt over my head, carefully, and off of my arms.

he places his hands on the waistband of my underwear. “can i?” he raises an eyebrow. i nod as much as i can.

he slides them down my legs, and im seated on the toilet seat butt ass naked. matt picks me up effortlessly again, and gently places me in the bath water.

once im situated, he kneels next to the tub, and grabs a loofa. matt starts on my shoulders, and works his way down my arms. he turns my forearm toward him, and stops.

all he saw were scars.

I think you’re crazy, maybe

I think you’re crazy, maybe

matt sets the loofa down in the water, gently grabbing my arm. his warm fingers against my skin felt like spiders crawling all over me. he takes a closer look at them, some of them healed, some fresh.

“stop.” i mumble, using all of my energy to pull my arm away. looking up at matt, his eyes watering. “y/n, what is that?”

it felt like i was talking to my mother all over again. how she reacted when she found out i harmed myself. it was terrible, i never wanted to see her cry like that again. let alone matt.

“im sorry.”

matt holds his face in his hands. my eyes start to water, and i look at him. “matt, please don’t send me away.”

he immediately looks up, with a confused expression. “send you away?” i look at the water. “i don’t wanna go there again.”

matt’s face softens, and he leans closer to the tub. “y/n, who sent you away?” even talking about this makes me think of it. and i start crying uncontrollably. my thoughts are a parasite in my brain.

stop sending letters

letters always get burned

matt softly hugs me, and his arms around me help me remember feeling. feeling like i should have been.

its not like the movies

they fed us on little white lies

matt helps me back into bed, and i feel safer, now in warmers clothes. i lay my head onto the pillow, and stare at the ceiling, laughing. i could not stop laughing.

and then it stopped.

now all of the world was gray. and grayer. and even grayer. then it was black. pitch black.

matt lays down beside me, and i turn toward him. seeing his face made me feel some sort of comfort.

like i had been living in grayscale and matt was the first thing id ever seen in color.

i think you’re crazy, maybe

i think you’re crazy, maybe

matt leans in closer to me. “y/n, can i ask you a serious question?” i nod my head slowly. but my head pounded with every movement i made.

“are you okay, seriously?”

i wanted to sink into the pillow, letting matt never have to see my face again. and me not having to answer that question ever again.

i stared at him in silence.

my eyes started to water again, and i bit my bottom lip, trying to fight back the tears that threatened to leave my eyes. and matt just hugged me.

i will see you in the next life.

[fr33time]

Hiii (˶ᵔ ᵕ ᵔ˶), can I request for a hurt/comfort reader x Jin or Romeo fic?

✦❘༻Self care to forget༺❘✦

Divider credits: @thecutestgrotto

Pairing: Romeo Lucci x GN!reader

Synopsis: MC was cursed by an anomaly, which caused them to have one of the worst days of their life. After breaking their arm after an investigation with Vagastrom, Romeo calls MC to his private room on business, but MC is more than over with the day.

A/N: Yesss of course!! I chose Romeo this time, so I hope you’ll enjoy the idea I have for him!!! I don’t find many Romeo fics so I felt like I should fill the space with one. He’s still a tad difficult to write but I made sure to go through his in game chats, and check through the wikis to see how he spoke. I had fun writing this, and it’s interesting to try something new. Enjoy! Also sorry this took so long to release, I’ve been busy again and I have work to do so I’ll probably only get to writing on weekends. I wrote most of this late at night so I apologize for any mistakes, feel free to let me know! I’ve been waiting for episode 9 to release and I can’t wait since it looks like a Halloween special chapter. Until my next work!

Genre: Hurt/comfort, oneshot

Find my requesting rules here!

╔══ஓ๑♡๑ஓ══╗

Life did not particularly favour you at the moment. You ended up being taken to an emergency room for breaking your arm, if it had been a sort of sprain then a couple anomalous medicine packs could have fixed it, but the world loves to beat you when you’re down.

About 4 days ago you were sent to be the inspector of a mission with the Vagastrom house. They were investigating a mass wave of kidnappings that they believed to have been caused by an anomaly. This morning was supposed to be the final day of the investigation, where you and the ghouls were planning to capture the anomaly and complete the mission. The day was doomed from the start with an air of bad luck following you throughout. You fell through the floor of the Clementia house, you kept stepping in pot holes and almost spraining your ankle, when the world was seemingly trying to kill you, it also made everything very inconvenient. You were losing everything you placed on furniture the previous night, stepped on a pregnant spider, the power went out, etc.

The final straw was when the investigation was reaching its final stages. Some plans flew off the rails and you ended up being chased by the anomaly. Once it grabbed you, you managed to maneuver yourself out of its grasp, but in turn you ended up falling from the second floor of a building onto the first floor because of a giant hole in the floor. It would not have been this bad if you fell in a different position, but you fell head first and it triggered the instinct to break the fall with your arms.

You were rushed to the emergency room after the anomaly was unfortunately destroyed. Apparently, the anomaly put a mini curse on you that gave you dreadful bad luck. On the bright side, darkwick had come across a curse like this before and was able to lift it almost immediately. Your arm was patched up, and was told that it would heal in up to 12 weeks on account of the clean break, and sent you home.

You felt shitty, all you wanted was to rest and you were stuck having to deal with the ghouls in Vagastrom on the way back. Alan and Sho seemed really concerned for you, but decided to stay silent for now in fear that you weren’t into conversation. Leo on the other hand had a bitter face plastered on, it will always be perplexing how he manages to say the worst things at the worst times.

“Y’know, we could’ve captured that anomaly if honour roll hadn’t screwed up.” Alan immediately threw him a nasty look and signalled him to shut up. Honestly, you weren’t in the mood, if you didn’t feel so drained then you could’ve responded back to him but you didn’t have the heart. Soon, you were back at your dorm, once the Vagastrom ghouls dropped you off and said they would check on you later, you sat in silence for a while. You laid down on the bed and started to drift to sleep until you heard a buzzing on your phone. You could’ve ignored it but clearly someone was spam texting you to get your attention. Out of obligation, you peeked at your phone and checked the messages.

New girl!

Report to the VIP room this instant!

Are you ignoring me?!?!

This won’t be tolerated, if you’re not here in 5 minutes there will be serious consequences!

You groaned out of frustration seeing Romeo’s spammed messages on your screen. You immediately went to pick up your phone and text back, trying to explain what happened today,

Romeo I can’t come right now, can you let me off the hook this time? I’ve had a really bad day and I just want to lay down…

I don’t want your excuses, I’ll add 2 extra minutes on your clock, you better be grateful because you’re wasting my precious time!

And it’s Fico, get it right!

You guessed that there was no saying no to him. You rushed to Sinostra as best you could, but there was no way that you were going to attempt to run there. As you walked inside, the guards that were standing outside of the VIP room were greeting you,

“MC, Fico’s expecting you, head inside.” Most of the staff knew who you were by now. You had been working around Sinostra more recently due to Romeo making you do “Eyes in the Sky” surveillance for him. He was a teensy bit more lenient on you lately, you weren’t sure why but you liked to think that he was getting used to you, bit by bit. It was already later than usual, so you wondered why Romeo wanted you to come to the VIP room at 9PM. The guards opened up the VIP room for you, and stepped inside. Romeo was sitting down on the luxurious couch, sifting through paper work that surrounded his desk. The door behind you closed, and you realized that Romeo didn’t bother to have bodyguards with him. You stood in front of the table, barely keeping it together. It felt like you could snap the tiny bit of composure that you had at any time.

“I thought I told you to rush over here!” Romeo finally decided to look at you and noticed your horrendous physique. Your arm was in a cast, clothes were dirty, eyes drooped down to hell, and your posture was so unacceptable that it felt violating to his eyes.

“What the hell happened to you?”

In that moment, everything inside of your head spilled out onto the floor. You couldn’t hold it any longer. Before you realized what happened, you were on the floor, breaking down. Your chest tightened and tears streamed out on your face and onto the floor. It felt humiliating, crying in front of Romeo like this but you’ve never felt so down on your luck before. It was crushing that it felt like the whole world was against you today, it wasn’t always like that but a pile of stress was building up over the course of the mission, especially today.

“I just- I just wanted to be left alone! My arm hurts so bad- everything is so fucking- shitty!” Your brain couldn’t keep up with your words, your line of consciousness was being interrupted by your hyperventilating. Your throat hurt, it hurt so much from wanting to cry out and having to swallow everything down.

“Just leave me- the fuck alone! I want to sleep— so fucking bad- why won’t any- one just let me rest for once today!” Romeo was stunned, he sat there looking at you while your cries were the only noise echoing in the room. Your eyes were red, and puffy, you looked pitiful while sitting on the floor of his expensive private room. He got up from his couch and kneeled down in front of you, hovering his finger over your mouth.

“Shut up for a moment!” You stopped speaking but there was nothing you could do about your hyperventilation. You tried to breathe deeply, but didn’t help your uncontrollable gasps for air. You looked away from his eyes and tried to look down at the floor, it felt less shameful. Romeo sighed heavily, and got up onto his feet.

“Stand up” you followed what he said and tried to get off of your knees.

“Just looking at the state you’re in is giving me wrinkles. Don’t say anything and follow me” Romeo started walking and signalled you to come along. You followed him and ended up in his bathroom, one of the most spotless bathrooms you’ve ever seen with countless beauty products on the counters and in cupboards. Your breathing was starting to calm down but you were still in rough shape. Now you were confused, why would Romeo take you in here? He started filing through his cabinets and grabbing a few things.

“I’m going to fix you up because you look horrendous, but for now go and monitor my EITS and wait till I’m done. This just means you’re gonna work twice as hard tomorrow as payment for this.” You started to realize that he was going to take care of you when you looked at all of the products in his arms. You listened to what he said and sat down on his couch to look at the cameras in the casino. You didn’t mind staying any longer anymore, it would be nice to rest but you felt like Romeo wanted to help you in his own weird way. That’s what you wanted to believe, and in reality it wasn’t that far from the truth. It made you smile a bit, but you knew that if Romeo caught you then he would probably throw you out in an instant, so you kept it down. You were done with everything, this was the best you were gonna get out of everything. Not much time passed before Romeo set up, he called you over before you knew it.

“New girl! Get over here!” You got up and met Romeo in the bathroom, finding a chair in front of the sink, with a whole line of facial items set up.

“Sit down and straighten your back. I won’t accept sloppiness.” As you sat down, Romeo cleared space and put his laptop on the counter in front of you. It looked like he still wanted you to work, but he interrupted your thought as he spoke.

“I’ll watch it, but tell me if you see something wrong or there’ll be consequences.” Romeo turned your chair so that it was parallel to the counter. Facing it towards him, it helped him see your face better and it was easier to apply things on you. He stayed organized and started to put things on your face, first a cold compress eye mask, then a cold towel to reduce overall swelling in your face, applied a couple moisturizers, gently massaging your eyelids, it felt like pure bliss. You weren’t sure why he was doing this, and even Romeo was questioning why he did this all for you. He wanted to make you stop crying by giving you a mini facial, and registered it as wanting to get rid of your scrunched up face and out of his sight to use it against you later.

You looked in the mirror after he was done and barely recognized yourself. You were glowing, and it looked like you never even cried in the first place. When you checked the time, it was almost 11PM. There were many missed messages from Alan, asking where you were and if you were alright.

“Oh wow, it’s getting really late. I’m so sorry for taking up your time, I should be going soon!” When you were getting back up, you felt a pair of hands push down gently on your shoulders to make you sit.

“You’re sleeping here tonight, I’m not listening to complaints. You’re getting up in the morning and working all day for me tomorrow as payment. I spent my precious time on you, so you should feel indebted to me.” He folded his arms and looked at you, expecting an answer.

“Um… where would I even sleep?” You didn’t have the strength to fight, it’s not like you wanted to walk all the way back to your dorm late at night anyways. You were tired and needed to rest, it didn’t matter where it was anymore.

“On the couch, it’s high quality so it should be better than the shabby one you have. Any BFB would be able to tell the quality difference as soon as they sat down.” You were a bit perplexed by his out of place acronyms, but you had no clue what he was talking about.

“…BFB?”

“Bumbling Fucking Buffoons, it should be obvious.” All you could do was smile slightly and nodding your head to appease him. Romeo got up to set up the couch comfortably, you still had a broken arm so you needed a cozy space to be in to put your mind at ease.

“Thank you Romeo, I feel much better now. You helped me alot, and I appreciate it.” He was turned away from you, so you couldn’t see the look on his face, but a slight blush came across his face. He shouldn’t be feeling embarrassed but he did, he didn’t understand his own feelings.

“It’s Fico, you BB. I’m making sure you wake up early to get started in an organized fashion, so enjoy comfort while it lasts.” You were surprised that Romeo did all of this for you, but it was sweet in his standards. He made you feel better by giving you some self care, and offered you to stay here so you wouldn’t walk back. He did want you to work all day tomorrow, but you could make it through, he didn’t assign hard tasks to you so you weren’t worried. You hoped that you and him could have a better relationship someday, it was going to take a while, he had multiple walls in front of him that were made out of brick. But it felt like you climbed over that first hurdle.

╚══ஓ๑♡๑ஓ══╝

[qirongshusband]

Sorta sequel and "What if" scenario to the "Being Yuji's new civilian BFF", with Male!R surviving (can be injured or not) and trying his best to get Yuji to tell him what's going on while also dealing with the trauma of that night and everything that's happening.

݁˖꩜ Yuuji HC’s . ݁⊹

notes ~ this is ruining me oh my god. 😭😭 /joke

MENTIONS — slight angst, injuries, throwing up/feeling sick, crying/panic episodes, trauma, attempts of suicide,

✮ ⋆ ˚｡𖦹 ⋆｡°✩

— after the incident in shibuya..you were still alive. But no longer human..you were back as a curse. Of course you still looked like you, sounded like you, and acted like you.

— after still being ‘alive’ after what happened of course you weren’t going to be the same, you were still disturbed remembering every thing that happened. It was hard to sleep at night..what’s worse was Yuuji’s reaction when he saw ‘you’.

— his blank expression turned into shock, he was scared but happy..happy his best friend was back but he was some what..unsettled.

— of course you would try to tell Yuuji you don’t know what happened, you don’t know why you’re still alive.

— when yuuji looks at you he feels like throwing up, he cant look at you normally anymore, as the injuries you suffered from Sukunas attack..you had scars all over your body, you were missing an eye, missing an arm, burn marks on some parts of your body, and just..a mess. Of course all those scars were ‘healed’ but yuuji can’t stand the fact his body did that to you. He feels sick to his stomach.

— you’d try to reassure to Yuuji you were still you, nothing has changed. You wanted him to see you the same way as he did before but..he was terrified. Of course he’d fight back on the guilt and try to reassure himself but at times he couldn’t help but break down and sob. It hurts him to know he couldn’t control what he promised he’d control..that damned curse. Sukuna Ryomen.

— even when you’re alone, you’d look at yourself, your reflection..you couldn’t stand to look at yourself, everytime you did it could set you off into a panic attack. The memory of what happened that night sets you off, it causes you pain. Pain you don’t what to remember. He haunts you. His words haunt you. His actions haunt you. Sukuna Ryomen is stuck in your head, your thoughts, your memories.

— you’d sometimes hear him laugh in your head. you’d try and maintain your friendship with Yuuji but nothing remained the same, nor after what happened, he was still shaken up and you felt way worse than he did.

— the feelings of one of your only best friends slowly fading from you hurt, knowing you were a curse hurt, knowing things you didn’t know before hurt. It stayed with you. It stuck to you. It affected your mental horribly.

— as your mental health declines you don’t know if you want to stay like this anymore, not after your appearance, the thoughts that play back like a record, how you can’t look at Yuuji properly with out remembering him.

— you’d try to kill yourself, in many ways but couldn’t..you were a curse. And every time you tried something nothing worked, it phased through like nothing, everything you tried never worked out. But you felt the pain..it was so painful but you always tried more and more each time hoping something would rid you from everything. The trauma. The memories. Everything.

— you isolated yourself from everyone, especially Yuuji, days, weeks, even months can go by..and you were just by yourself. No one to talk or hang out with. Just you.

— of course Yuuji misses you, as much as he was bothered by what happened in Shibuya he couldn’t let that affect the both of y’all’s friendship.

— he found you, the both of you talked for some time, told him everything on how you felt and he expressed himself as well, he apologized and he was sorry..you also apologized to him. For just leaving.

— the both of you tried to make up and ended up working on each other! It helped your mental state quite a bit.

✮ ⋆ ˚｡𖦹 ⋆｡°✩

[rey-jake-therapist]

What was Galadriel's "last temptation", really?

There's been a lot of discussions about the finals, but there's one big question mark that remains : why were the tracks of the fight called "Last Temptation" and "The Fall of Galadriel" ? For what we could see, Sauron didn't really try to tempt Galadriel again, and she didn't seem even remotely tempted to join him. As for her fall... Well, she fell off the cliff, but the track covers the entirety of the fight, so surely it was meant to have another meaning than a literal fall, right ? And yet, she resisted Sauron again, she didn't fall for him, so what are these titles about ?

I think I know what this is about. I know it for a pretty long time now and have this meta in my mind for quite a while, but yesterday I had a sort of epiphany... Regarding something that Sauron said.

Galadriel's last temptation

We're led to think that there wasn't any temptation, because we expected to see it happening under the guise of manipulation. We all went into episode 8 believing that Sauron would shapeshift into Halbrand and use Galadriel's love for his past self to lure her to the dark side. Then surprise ! Sauron turned into Halbrand indeed, but only for a short while, and not even to tempt her : he wanted to destabilize her because she had just kicked his ass, he looked like an idiot and needed to find something to take the upper hand. But mostly, he wanted to give an answer to her accusation, "We were never alike, it was just another of your illusions". Shapeshifting into Halbrand and repeating what he had told her in season 1 episode 6, then into Galadriel and Celebrimbor all had the same purpose : telling her that she was wrong. They were more alike than she liked to think, and this demonstration was meant to make her accept that. Did it work ? Season 3 will tell, but I think it did.

So, no temptation here. Telling her "the door's still open" was a very vague, brief lived "temptation", but she made her point very clearly by claiming "the door is shut" (spoiler alert : it's not lol), and kicking him in the face. My point is : she wasn't tempted at all, during all this fight, to join Sauron.

So what was it ?

This. This was when the last temptation happened :

(I couldn't find an actual gif from the episode, but as you can guess, it's when Galadriel pretends to give Nenya to Sauron)

Of course ! It's difficult to see it that way because there's almost no talking here. Besides, all that we see at first view is the brutality of his act : it doesn't look like a temptation, because he's taking by force what she refuses to give him. He uses Morgoth's crown to bind her to him against her will, leading us to think that he's no longer asking, and yet the fact remain : he asks her, again, to join him here.

Now that he's bound to her, he has a direct access to his mind, and I assume, she to his. That's why he doesn't need to talk out loud to her to ask her for her ring, as he can speak directly through her mind now. As it's been observed many times, he could have just snatched Nenya from her, like he did with the Nine.

But no, he wants her to accept that his goal is worth all the terrible things he does, and he wants her to give him the means to achieve his true purpose, "heal Middle-Earth". Again, he could just take Nenya and use it; we saw Adar take Nenya by force from Elrond, put it on his finger and successfully use it to heal himself, so Sauron could have just done that too.

So here it is, my friends, the "last temptation". Now that she's bound to Sauron (and she knows she is, her face when he stabbed her told us), it's harder than ever to say no to him. He influenced her already before, but here, well... He literally wormed his way into her mind. As Adar said, "he bores a hole and the rest of him slithers him. For a while, he even lets you believe that his power is yours". I mean, this moment was foreshadowed in episode 6, when Adar warned Galadriel about Sauron's method.

It happened to Adar after he made a blood oath with Sauron, probably this day that Adar tells "Halbrand" about : "He offered me wine, red as a blood moon. He offered me wine and on that dark and nameless peak, I drank it, I drank it all.”

It was probably not wine, folks, but Sauron's blood. That's how he got Adar to fall for him.

And that's why Galadriel lets herself fall off the cliff : because it's the only way she can think of to escape him, or more precisely, to escape the temptation to trust him again, and to join him. It was a desperate act, and not necessarily useful at first view, since her death wouldn't prevent Sauron from taking Nenya and enslave her. As Gil-Galad explains, her immortal spirit would have been drawn into the shadow realm, which Sauron now controls.

It's generally admitted that Galadriel did that to protect her ring from Sauron, but I disagree tbh. I mean, she surely had the vague hope to do that, but he could have easily gone down that cliff, taken Nenya and let Galadriel pass into the Unseen world, where he would have had a total control over her. After all, if he wanted her to be his slave, eternally bound to him, not really dead but not exactly alive either, he could have just let her fall off that cliff without trying to catch her hands. If she hadn't survived the fall, her body would have died but her immortal spirit would remain; she would have been his forever, problem solved.

But I don't think that's what he ever wanted. I think he *asked* for Nenya because he wanted her to submit to him. He wanted her to understand, to validate him at last. I think he would have healed her, if she had given her the ring. I don't think that he's not interested in Galadriel's light anymore. Actually I think he craves it more than ever, and he will probably never stop. And since despite the bond he had just created between them, she still refused, he abandoned, again.

Coming back to Galadriel, if she had access to his mind, she also probably knew that he wouldn't come for Nenya if she killed herself. I mean, it's a logical assumption : if he wanted her to give him Nenya while he could have just taken it, there was no reason to believe that he would have taken it over her dying body. I think it's even possible that she knew that he would want to let her a chance to live, and for this to happen, Nenya was her only chance. It may be delulu to think that scene that way, but it's pretty much the only way for Galadriel's decision to make sense, actually. Because if she wasn't certain that Sauron wouldn't just take Nenya and leave her body to die, it seems pretty useless, in retrospect.

Whatever went through her mind, it was the right choice : he didn't come for her, but looked down to make sure she was alright, sulking like a little boy who broke his favorite toy, killed poor Glug who interrupted him (tbf with Sauron, it was the second time Glug showed up at the wrong time. Can't he ever have a bit of privacy ?!), and looked down again for her.

The "epiphany"

It's interesting that Sauron took the Nine without hesitation, but wanted Galadriel to give hers. And it's what he said that explained this difference to me : "The rings are mine". He was only referring to the Nine here, not to Nenya. Why? Because for him, while the Nine belong to him, Nenya belongs to Galadriel. Each time he refers to it, he says it : "Give me your ring, and the Nine", "Galadriel, give me your ring". Sauron wanted her to have that ring, remember ?

We often joke that since she broke up with him, he wanted "the engagement ring back", but that's not it. Galadriel giving him her ring would have been the confirmation he wanted : that she knew he wanted to heal Middle-Earth, and trusted him to do that. There was no point for him in taking it if her true owner, the one person he gave it to, refused to believe him. That's why he's so miffed at the end, after she jumps. He may even have a moment of self-awareness, where he admits he'll probably never get her back, but will it last? Probably not.

Now that she's bound to him, he will probably be more obsessed and possessive than ever. He put his mark on her, in his mind she's basically his, now.

The Fall of Galadriel

Galadriel fell of the cliff, but she also "fell" when Sauron stabbed her with a dark artefact covered with his blood. By doing so, he not only bound her to him, but he also shared some of his darkness as well. So inevitably, she's going to "fall". If you genuinely believe that her struggles with darkness and temptation for power are all behind her now, that she has "shut the door" for good on Sauron and darkness altogether and that she's ready to become 3rd age ethereal Galadriel... I think you're up for a surprise in season 3. As Gil Galad said, it's no mere wound. Of course it will influence her in the years to come.

Nenya may have healed her and prevented her immortal spirit to be drawn into the Unseen world, but Galadriel will keep carrying that wound all her life. It will damage her, physically but mostly spiritually. She passed one test : she won't ever be tempted again to become Sauron's queen. But her last test, the one that will get her the redemption she longs for, she'll pass it thousands of years later, when Frodo offers the ring and she'll refuse it... The showrunners said that she Galadriel knew that having the One ring would be dangerous, because she knew what she was capable of, and not in the good way. We haven't seen anything of that in Galadriel, yet, so believing that the dark times are behind her and that she's ready to become the Lady of Light and quietly move on with her life... Is wanting her to run before learning to walk, imho.

And don't you doubt that Sauron is letting her forget that she's forever connected to him through an indestructible bound now... He will definitely use that access. He won't just throw rocks at the window hoping she'll open. That will come much later, imho.

[fischyplier]

Misfits and Magic Season 2 Episode 2 "Magma and Mingle": My Thoughts and Analysis

So here are my thoughts on Evan and Sam. Am I the only one that doesn’t see their relationship progressing into romance? I can understand that in this season Brennan and Danielle are having more scenes together. At this point, Evan and Sam's relationship feels platonic to me, but who knows what could happen in the next few episodes. I prefer platonic relationships because they feel more interesting than just romance. Also want to take the time to say, I love and appreciate all the hard work that went into this and every season of D20. Thank you to the crew, the players and Aabria cause misfits and magic has become very near and dear to my heart!

Click below to read more, warning long post:

Anyways, Evan has gone through a LOT of traumatic experiences since childhood and continues to till this day. Evan's body is riddled with scars, broken bones that healed wonky, etc. He got stabbed on a bus at night trying to retrieve a talisman for Boodle 10 months ago. And I would not be surprised if he's been through more but hasn't had the opportunity to tell his friends or elected to say nothing. I can't help but to read too deeply into the quote "dream small". Is it cause I feel that Evan has learned to dream small in order to not get his hopes and expectations too high? Just a theory... A game theory! I'm sorry.

After 3 years of no contact the pilot project are back! But they haven't really had the time to sit down and catch up. In the video below, Sam says "I feel like there's a lot of things that when we talk you don't tell me." Which kinda leads me to believe, Evan doesn't want to worry his friends so he bottles up his feelings and doesn't open up. And when he does it's always with a smile and jokes to mask the hurt. He isn't just sad, he feels like a burden and tries to not take up space. I can really relate to this.

Even Brennan says Evan is in deep pain. The breakup he went through didn't help but there is more under the surface we as the audience still don't truly know. The experiences of being a lonely unhoused teen is the reason why Brennan chose "belonging" as Evan's ideal track. Because that is the one thing he's been deprived off, humans are social creatures and need to interact with others. What happens to a developing brain when that is taken away? When all you know is your shadow, loneliness and hunger? So when his friend says we can talk, he takes that as a serious invitation. Evan now surrounded by friends wants to do everything in his power to protect those he loves. He doesn't expect it to be reciprocal. You can see that when he says "if I've ever done a bad job about being here for you, I'm always here for you" after Sam says we can talk. When Brennan tears up with that incredible delivery of "I missed you"... I keep rewatching that part! Evan is always on the go, needs to be prepared, needs to be ready when shit hits the fan. Sam has created a safe place where he doesn't need to be hypervigilant and can relax, maybe open up and be a little vulnerable.

Sam is rightfully concerned that something deeper and terrible is going on with Evan.

When Evan continues kicking a half dead Salamander that isn't a threat to any of his friends, a darkness in him wants to kick it mercilessly for pure enjoyment. That even his eyes turns black. The first thing Sam does when she sees this is to attempt to drench it in water like Jammer did. Cause she said that this has become "unnecessarily dark" and that "this is freaking her out". That she'll even resort to spitting on the creature if it means that Evan will stop kicking that crap out of it. The water cools and stops the creature. Sam is a great friend that sees Evan do something twisted and wants to help so desperately. You do not have to be falling in love with someone to do the right thing! I still think they should just be friends.

I love that in this season we can really see their friendship blossom and not just be surface level chit chat. As they get closer hopefully they can help each other in ways they really need. In the preview for the next episode Evan says, "I don't see you the way you are afraid people see you." Sometimes it takes someone outside of your point of view to see aspects of yourself you are too close to see. And I think that's beautiful.

That leads into my next point, no I don't think the progressing of their relationship means that romance is in the air. I can't remember where I read it but another person said it best, intimacy doesn't mean romance. You can get close to someone, be a shoulder to cry on and depend on without developing feelings. You can love and respect your friend and keep it at that level but develop on that intimacy of a great friendship. I feel like it made the most sense for these two to get closer in this season because they have more in common now. Before it was just the fact that they were students learning magic at Gowpenny and being NAMPS (non magical person or let's be serious MUGGLES!). But now Evan and Sam have both underwent break ups and that's something they can really connect on. I really hope they don't get together right after cause that sounds like a rebound and to me, story wise pretty boring. And in my honest opinion, jumping into another relationship right after being with K is a little too soon. Evan needs a friend not a lover, at least for the time being. He needs to keep his inner darkness and insecurities in check. That or a therapist.

Hopefully this doesn't age like milk, and if they do get together I guess I'm wrong! :3

Thank you if you read till the very end, here is a gif of Brennan giving you a thumbs up!

Why? Cause you are pretty cool!

Please consider liking or reblogging this post if you liked what you read. And I'd love to hear your thoughts on this episode and if I should continue!

[vixensbrainrotts]

Healing slowly — Manjiro <Mikey> Sano

Content: undefined fluff

Warnings: none

Vixen‘s two cents: This has been on my mind for a while now. If you enjoy my content, don’t be afraid to let me know and remember that my requests are open if you have an idea (im having a little bit of writers block atm).

Draken has noticed that Mikey has gotten so much better ever since you came around, how much livelier he looks and sounds and how much less he feels he has to visit to make sure Mikey’s alive. Because he has you now, and Draken knows that it’s time for him to take a step back from Mikey and let him learn to love you right.

Draken has started noticing it a while ago. How much brighter Mikey‘s skin looked, how much more genuinely he smiled, how much more enthusiastic he was about most of anything, really, hell, he even smelled better now! It took him by genuine surprise when Mikey started mentioning you, speaking shyly of how the two of you met and how Mikey seems a bit fonder of you than most. Ken thought it was just a temporary crush, nothing too important, nothing too major.

How wrong he was though, seeing that it came to the point that Mikey would come late to his own gang meetings, spend his monthly allowance on things like chocolates, flowers, cards and trinkets to gift you. It was the way that Mikey seemed to suddenly care for his appearance, ditching the overgrown hair and opting for something a little shorter, more wolffish (you mentioned you liked the cut once upon a time, he remembered). It was the way that he would care that his clothes weren’t creased, that his shoes weren’t stained, that his face was in-tact and all such casualties. It’s the way that Mikey started polishing his bike even more obsessively than before, nearly burning a hole into the rag he used with how vigorously he was rubbing it.

The first time Ken met you, he was in disbelief. Mikey, Majiro Sano, that fucking dumbass bagged YOU? How. There was no way. The disbelief led to many a questions about payment and bribery, even considering intimation and threats to be the base of your relationship. But once he talked to you, got to know you, Ken fully understood. You cared for Manjiro, made sure he was on top of his tasks, made sure that he was more aware of his own needs and fulfilled those too. Mikey cared for you too, encouraged you to take breaks, to be aware of your surroundings and making you losen up a little sometimes, making your day-to-day life just a little more exiting.

You two together were like birds of a feather. A perfectly balanced scale, your relationship was tangent to perfection. This unexpected but wonderful revelation allowed Draken to spend some of his new-found free time alone. Completely alone, nobody bothering him type of alone. There was nothing in his way, no second opinion of what he wanted to do, no nagging about the weather, and no plunderingwallet for snacks and othersuch trivial things.

Draken, whilst astounded by your dynamic, was still a little skeptic. Sure you’ve stuck with Mikey for a bit now, but how would you handle the real struggles? Mikey was a piece of work, a real lot of effort, Draken had the first hand experience to back it up. Surely you would be scared off, surely you’d try your best but eventually fall flat at the overwhelming, almost overbearing nature that Mikey surrounded occasionally. But just like in terms of the first impression, Ken was wrong. You stuck with Manjiro through the depressive episodes, through the bursts of aggression, through the phases of silent treatment, and even when he pushed you away completely, claiming that he couldn’t handle being in a relationship anymore.

Whilst the two of you had rough patches, you never broke. You bother were dedicated to each other and resilient to your relationship. It was complete mutualism with you two, no amount of strain could break the bond you two built. Ken found himself admiring your relationship, silently thankful of the security that you gave one another, and of the transformation Manjiro had gone through. He was capable of his own now. Not that he wasn’t before you, but you had encouraged him to target his weaker spots, foddering growth and comprehension of mind, emotions and expression of such.

Ken was eternally thankful of you, and has recognized that he was no longer a vital part of Mikey’s survival. Manjiro had you now.