#like the thoughts are at the normal level

[saintclay]

1) the first thing that you find strange (other than this whole dimension hopping thing) is that your chat isn't actually visible. they're not audible either (except for when someone sends a TTS message. those are audible inside your head). instead it feels like you're just... aware of everything that your chat is doing and saying.

its a strange sensation, but you get used to it.

2) from what your chat tells you, you surmise that your stream is still being broadcast. you're not entirely sure what would happen if the stream went down, but you're not super eager to find out. your gut tells you that the answer is 'nothing good'

you're not fully sure exactly where the stream is actually being broadcast from. you're also not sure if you want to know the answer to that question.

3) before you dimension-hopped your streams tended to average around 20 viewers. from what you've gathered, that number seems to have stayed the same. from what your chat says, you've deduced that they see you from a fixed point about a foot behind your head (diagonally). 4) people tend to think you're a lot more observant than you are. you don't notice shit half the time, you just have the advantage of a few dozen extra eyes on everything you're doing.

after the first few times you got sick enough of explaining it to people that you bought some costume jewellery and started telling people that it was a family heirloom, attuned to you by blood, that let you run multiple streams of thought at once. anyone who cares enough to ask normally buys that.

5) chat convinced you to join a low-level adventuring group. your cousin used to do archery professionally, so you bought a crossbow and agreed.

turns out, you were NOT cut out for adventure. like, at all. at least, not when you started. but you could cook a decent meal (thanks to chat's help), so the group let you stay until you actually got decent with your crossbow.

you still didn't like it very much. you parted ways with your group after the tavernkeeper who hired them found out that the reason his barmaid wasn't coming into work was because she got mugged. they stop by every now and then and it keeps re-affirming your decision to bow out of that whole 'adventure' thing. last you heard they were going off to fight a dragon.

6) it isn't uncommon for you to wake up and have your chat inform you that they researched things while you were asleep. it is, however, rare that you can actually do anything with that research.

you keep telling chat that it doesn't matter if they know how penicillin was made if you're not sure if penicillin can grow here. you've made trying to figure that out into a side project to get them to stop hassling you

7) your stream had (and still has) three people who have mod status; BlueLuna, Devilsound, and taiLwhip (yes, spelled like that). they're the only ones where you can tell that they're talking. the rest of chat feels almost like a single entity to you.

(you chose your mods for a reason, Luna and taiL because they're your friends, and Devil because they've been in your chat since day one. from what you can tell, they've been keeping your chat in order)

8) you want to go home you want to go home you want to go home you want to go home you want to go home you want to go home

as far as you can tell, there is no way to get home

9) someone in your chat apparently brews alcohol as a 'hobby'. they seem intent on teaching you, with the reasoning that, at the very least, fermentation can't be too different here.

you'd rather not know if there is a different way of making wine here, honestly.

10) you keep waiting for it to get better. for the homesickness to fade

it doesn't.

[shorthaltsjester]

endlessly thinking thoughts about cr characters, morality, and selfishness (likely place for me to be, given that my day job includes endlessly researching ethics and meaning of life) but in light of bell’s hells most recent illustration of their insularity and individualism, I’ve been really like. Trying to unpack why I find it particularly egregious in this party when obviously mighty nein were notoriously self-interested, especially at the beginning, and when vox machina had quite a few moments where their horses were far higher than they had any reason to be. And again, I really want to make it clear her that I don’t hold self-interest or selfishness to be some abhorrent and unforgivable thing, in fact I think its incredibly normal especially given the context of main characters in a story told through game mechanics that flourish on the interest of the individuals making the choices. I’ve written before about how one of the throughlines that I’ve seen in laura’s pcs (since I’m someone who particularly enjoys looking at the moral outlooks characters develop) is a common thread of morality that’s highly dependent on their own interests. And like, this is a positive throughline to me! Without getting into my own views on morality, it is particularly compelling to me for characters with isolated upbringing (which applies to vex, jester, and imogen, each in different ways) to develop a moral code informed by that isolation, and in vex we see her moral code is ‘anything goes if it protects those I hold dear’, in jester we see a moral code that doesn’t care about morality as much as it cares about the chance to care and be cared for, and in imogen we see a moral code developed in response to her very unique experience of hearing the darkest parts of people and judging them on those (which to be clear, i am not judging her for that fact, I think it makes extreme sense for someone who hears the thoughts the people have to be horrified by those things, but it does mean her moral system is almost completely backwards, where intention holds more weight than action, which perhaps makes sense of the popularity of defending all of her ideas and choices and the Right Ones by certain parts of the fandom that insist leftism is hidden in the dnd real play). And that’s all to say that, out of the cr parties we’ve seen, I don’t think any single member of bell’s hells is uniquely more or less selfish or more or less of an asshole than previous characters. And in fact, I tend to be quite fond of selfish characters, I have a well documented history of cherishing them well beyond the cr fandom. But the point is that my calling something or someone self-interested is not a value judgement in this context, it's a descriptive claim about the traits a character exhibited.

Imogen, who has insisted time and time again re: the values of the accord that she would not be swayed by the temptation of predathos because she recognizes the importance of this fight, only to turn around and pretty immediately open herself up to predathos to fulfil the most threatening part of ludinus’ plan is self-interested. I cannot conceive of any other way to describe her choices. And her being self-interested doesn’t mean she can’t also be altruistic at times, but I will be clear that I don’t think her risking killing herself as she attempts to bring down the god-eater that she released is particularly selfless. In my best faith interpretation I’d say she’s pretty middle of the road in that choice. But I bring all this up because a comparison I’ve been seeing is that bell’s hells aren’t as mean as the mighty nein or even vox machina in certain moments and that it doesn’t make sense for the fandom to view bell’s hells as likely to be villains when the same wasn’t true of the previous two campaigns, and I think I have to pretty emphatically disagree, and not because I don’t think there aren’t moments in both campaigns that feature extremely high levels of assholery and villainry from pcs – I mean, some of my favourite cr characters are percy and jester, both of whom i’d say are ‘good guys’ due to the pure luck of the found familys they fell in with and both of whom often suggested plans that were. Not okay. To say the least. But ignoring the difference between suggesting fucked up plans and walking your god-eater infused bestie back towards the troops sent to support you in keeping that entity contained, the other big difference I’ve noticed in my own introspection on how I react to bh vs mn and vm, as well as which things i cherish about previous campaigns that were really missing from c3 to what I think is the story and the character’s detriment (staying away from the shape of the narrative, just because others have made posts that put words together better about that than I can) is that while members of vm and mn remained self-interest to the end of their campaigns and have reasserted those habits in appearances since, the parties as entities working in exandria had both, to echo ashton’s apt suggestion to ludinus, grown up.

Like one moment I think of is beau and fjord’s convo in the nein hells episode, because beau is being her asshole self and fjord is being his ‘I care about My People and I’ll think about the rest later’ self (i say affectionately but certain parts of the fandom I recognize would view derogatorily) – clearly they’re not the kindest people as they discuss bell’s hells, but two notable things are (a) they still treat the hells with the respect and use their means to help them prepare for the battle coming, even when they hear the horrifying thought that the hells aren’t certain they’ll choose to save the gods, all the nein request is that they choose the kind option (b) they say none of their doubts to the hells themselves – likely because they have the empathy to realizes that its a high stress situation that won’t be made better by a reminding the hells how small and likely ineffectual in the universe they are – and their comments about cannon fodder are ones made in jest to each other. Even taking that in the worst faith interpretation, the jokes that beau and fjord make in a private conversation has absolutely zero influence on bh. This is quite different than bells hells, after like. as clearly betraying the accord they promised to assist (even if their intentions are ‘good’) as is possible, belittling the religious armies sent to support their endeavor to keep predathos sealed as they all feel the weight of an irrevocable change occurring in exandria, one bells hells has first account knowledge now that it IS incredibly willing to eat mortals, and laudna and ashton, the members of bells hells most often cited by certain fandom spaces as characters who have gone through so much and it only made them kind and strong, look into the faces of people facing literally existential threat and laugh and mock them. That is, mighty nein as individuals is comprised of some of the, perhaps, most asshole pcs, but The Mighty Nein as a party is committed to treating others the best they can, to leaving things better than they found them (a quote that I think is particularly exemplary of the dynamics of self-interest at play in the mighty nein, since it originated as a blatant illustration of molly’s notion of self-importance but developed to become a kind of commandment that the nein became committed to fulfilling). The opposite is true of bell’s hells, where orym and dorian at least both seem to have motivation beyond themselves, imogen’s changes but has shown she is capable of letting go of her ‘intention reigns’ requisitely individualistic perspective, and chetney plays up his selfishness but has shown himself to care quite a bit for people beyond their party but bell’s hells as an entity is uh, pretty self-interested.

To clarify some of my thoughts here in the spirit of the wicked renaissance happening rn, I’ve always felt that for good was an incredibly apt song for the mighty nein, because it really nails that feeling that perhaps they didn’t change each other as individuals to become better people on the grand scale, maybe they’ve just changed each other permanently, but they (and I would agree with this) view each other as having changed each other for the better (e.g., I don’t know if I could say whether jester is a morally better Individual at the end of the campaign, but I can say with certainty that she fulfils and makes moral choices in her work as a member of the mighty nein). And I don’t know if this can be said about bell’s hells – I think they have certainly influenced each other and changed how alone many of those characters felt, and that is not a slight on the story, it can be a great centre for a story to focus on how a relinquishment of the feeling that one is alone in the world can change them. But for the most part, that hasn’t been bh’s story, their story instead has been about validating their refusal to become anything beyond what they insist was out of their control. And not to get to annoying philosophy student about it but bell’s hells are maybe some of the most explicit examples of sartrian bad faith I’ve seen in fiction in a hot minute, because their insistence that they treat their wounds as incurable and entirely out of their hands has led to them limiting their own potential because many of them ignore their responsibility as people to make choices in their own lives. In contrast, at the end of the campaign, mighty nein are still assholes as we all like to refer to them as, but in the context of an apocalypse, I think I’d prefer the assholes like fjord – who is certainly being truthful when he says he doesn’t care about what harm comes to 200 people when jester is at risk but who also, as they traverse into aeor, is insistent that their group won’t be running away from whatever apocalyptic threat awaits them, even if that means dying in the fight – than I would an asshole like ashton – who promises to fight for the little guys but who then turns around and acts upon a philosophy that says the strongest will survive. When you look at the mighty nein, it is incredibly easy to see the fingerprints of change they’ve left upon one another, and even to see the boundaries they place on one another’s asocial behaviours through their presence in one another’s lives (more recently the group chastising jester’s fond words about ludinus is a good example, but others are yasha’s pressuring caleb and essek to move on from their wizard talks as they collect paper in aeor instead of venturing further toward the battle they have to fight, or fjord and jester’s frustrated conversation in the ukotoa reunion about how fjord made a stupid decision and he doesn’t regret but he feels dejected and jester checking him on the fact that they still need to figure out a solution). It takes some extrapolation to see how bells hells have changed each other in more than aesthetic ways, if they have at all. Because the catalyst for change is pressure to do so, and aside from moments where it was truly change or be left behind, bh doesn’t challenge each other unless forced to by morri’s trials or delilah’s interruption and on the very odd occasion an interesting game of rollies-spin-the-bottle. 

And it’s interesting because the asshole behaviour of the mighty nein, like bell’s hells, stems from being left on the outskirts of society and the mistreatment that comes with that, so seemingly the change from being alone to being with others is one that actually insists upon being challenged to grow and change. I mean, just looking at the starting points of the characters, there’s an intriguing amount of stark similarities between their pasts; jester and fearne were both people loved dearly by the family they grew up with but who were loved within the confines of a gilded cage, ashton and beau both have an glaring self awareness that their anger at the world has a very particular source (their parents) but use that as justification rather than a means of self reflection, yasha and orym are trying to navigate a world in the wake of an incomprehensible loss and a sense of duty, fjord and imogen are both seeking out knowledge of their own powers and unknowingly retreading the paths of their missing and presumed dead parental figures. The idea that bell’s hells are uniquely mistreated by society in the history of cr player characters is, politely, laughable. Absolutely they’re mistreated, and I think it could be fair to say these characters are more defined by their isolation than others but I think that has more to do with the lack of downtime rp than it has to do with the context of their suffering.

What I have loved about the mighty nein is that in their realization that the bonds they forge with each other are undermining the truths most of them had taken to be true – that they were alone and without a place in the world – they are also forced to realize that no longer being alone and isolated comes with the weight of social responsibility. And this was born out of a willingness the mighty nein had to call each other out and that the players had to allow their characters to be wrong and get called on it. Because that’s the friction of living with other people on the small party scale and the large world scale – in the mighty nein’s ability to survive as a people who cared for each other even when they didn’t agree or when they made decisions that they couldn’t understand, they were constantly developing their ability to care for the very same world that left them alone. Because in campaign two, the world as a whole had the role that the gods have in campaign 3 – why should a party of nobodies, treated like shit by the world and the people in it go through the effort of saving it?

And the mighty nein answered, in their own imperfection and assholery, that nothing is ever just one thing – one of the things I cherish most about campaign 2 is its commitment to ambiguity, allowing the complexity of the world to go unsolved because there is no solution to the fact that life is immense and sometimes incoherent. I don’t think its a coincidence that I’ve seen some of the people lamenting the idiocy of fandom members like me who think that it actually isnt a leftist win to destroy the world in the hopes of spontaneous justice arising in c3 are the same people who criticised c2’s conclusion with the cerberus assembly for not being leftist (a word which for them means . the aesthetic image of a rebellion sparked and not the unending commitment to doing what you practically can to make life more just for those around you – whether they’re particularly kind to you or not) enough. The conclusion of c2 emphasizes that the choice to make the world a better place isn’t something that can be achieved in one single sweeping action that will wipe the boards clean – there is no murder of all the members of the cerberus assembly that would’ve solved the problems that caused the assembly’s power. There is no forcing of the god’s out of exandria that will deal with the actual issue undergirding both bh and their blorbo-moralized fans' criticism of the gods, which is that mortals are cursed with the burden of free will, and being mistreated by other mortals means constantly having to try and make sense of the fact that someone chose to do something cruel to you (and, sometimes, that you made a choice that allowed that cruelty to occur) – a burden made much heavier when the person who hurt you is your cult-indoctrinated mother, or your cult leader father, or the person in the mirror. The mighty nein take up this fight, and the complexities of their individual identities begin to heal in the light of a commitment in their relationship as friends and as a team to improve the world, even on the small scale. Bell’s hells remain gridlocked and stagnant and unwilling to change in an unspoken turf war of self-interest because they’ve insisted (influenced in part by the context of the campaign 3 narrative but, as others have aptly pointed out, that narrative was much more influenced by bh’s lack of curiosity regarding anything except their own minds) upon finding a solution to a problem they’ve decided is earth-shatteringly (quite literally, to the people of ruidus) unjust based on, aside from encounters where fellow mortals were the primary oppressors, their own testimony of the god’s not listening to them and the obvious villain’s parallel testimony. Something I’ve really been chewing on lately is caduceus words to fjord about his role as a paladin of the wildmother – that maybe it just means that someday, someone will pray for a miracle, and there fjord’ll be and the weight that has given that fjord’s bond to ukotoa came from his desperation not to die and his willingness to accept whatever help would be offered, that fjord could now be the person that reaches out to someone in need, and that the hand he offers won’t come with a curse.  And I think that’s really the poignant difference between bh and mn for me, that for bh, their experiences of injustice, though did make them personally bitter, did not make them morally misanthropic.

Comparatively, Bell’s Hells chose to ensure that, because the gods never answered their prayers, they shouldn’t be permitted to answer anyone else’s. Is this an understandable position? Sure, for the walls of a preschool, not really for a group of characters that I will ever be in any way inclined to view as something close to heroes. While it’s true that there are parts of life that are beyond our control – somethings happen to us that we have no say in, and they cause injuries both physical and mental that we are left to heal without any rhyme or reason, it is still our responsibility to heal them. And if you choose not to, well, then you’ve chosen not to, and are responsible for the consequences and judgements that choice might amount to.

Anyway, sorry this is all over the place but TLDR: calling bell’s hells as a party self-interested is actually just descriptively correct – they can save members of the party made up of their close friends and still be self-interested – and while the individual members of bell’s hells actually aren’t all that uniquely self-interested in the history of cr pcs, the party is uniquely self-interested in how they’ve chosen to navigate the world an their responsibility to the people in it.

[cuntyji]

THE FOOL’S GUIDE TO ROMANCE ౨ৎ GETO SUGURU X READER

synopsis: when a man loves a woman, he might bring her flowers or send a sweet text like 'i want you lol.' but if you’re suguru geto, you let a deck of tarot cards decide your destiny—and promptly shuffle your way into misery. hopelessly in love with you (and equally hopeless at expressing it), geto takes his shot which backfires spectacularly, leaving you heartbroken and him scrambling to fix it. now, armed with charm, determination, and way too many tarot cards, geto is ready to heal your heart. just watch your step—the floor’s basically a tarot card crime scene.

content warnings: female reader, suggestive content (alcohol consumption and mentions of weed), crack and romance, somewhat axed [happy] ending, college setting, geto is into tarot, strangers to lovers, he fell first she fell harder, frat parties and other college nonsense. other characters: choso, yuki, gojo, nanami, shiu, toji. 

author's note: all my love to my darling @nkopurin who helped proofread this fic for me 💘💐 and to my lovely @norikuna and @baepsays, this is for you 🙂‍↕️ lovely themed dividers are courtesy of @thecutestgrotto <3

READ ON AO3

when a man loves a woman, he brings her flowers and confesses his love to her. or, if he’s born in the modern world, he might just text her something eloquent like, “hey, i want you lol.” but if you’re suguru geto, you let tarot cards take the wheel—literally. 

allow one to explain.

see, geto isn’t exactly an atheist. he believes in higher powers, just unconventional ones. namely, the cheapest tarot deck he impulse-bought during a 2 a.m. existential crisis. initially, he thought it was all nonsense until he pulled a random card one day, and boom—it was the tower. later that week, his microwave exploded. 

from then on, he never questioned the cards again.

fast-forward to now: geto has become a full-blown tarot enthusiast. not only does he offer readings for spare cash (because be so for real right now, enlightenment isn’t free), but he also uses the cards to make most of his decisions. thinking of switching shampoo brands? better pull a card. deciding between ramen or sushi for dinner? the hanged man says to wait and order nothing—oops, now he’s just hungry. naturally, he consults the cards for the big things too—like love. and this is where you come in.

he met you at the library. a rom-com-level meet-cute where you helped him pick up the stack of books he’d dropped because he was too busy arguing with a ten of swords card about whether his day was ruined or just mildly inconvenient. from that moment on, you became his muse, his star (literally, he pulled that card the next day and nearly fainted). but here’s the catch: geto doesn’t just pine over you in the normal way. no, no. every interaction with you has to be sanctioned by the cards first.

want to say hi? better shuffle the deck and see if the lovers comes up. want to ask you out? he needs at least the sun for good vibes and the two of cups for confirmation. unfortunately, his last reading told him to “embrace patience” because the hermit popped up—twice. 

to his credit, geto is fully committed to this tarot lifestyle. he even gets creative with the interpretations. one time, the cards said he’d encounter a "pig," which he thought meant an actual pet pig was coming his way. turns out, it was just pork belly ramen.  but let’s get back to you. every time he sees you, he tries to decipher what the cards are trying to tell him. are you his queen of cups, emotionally available and empathetic? or are you secretly the high priestess, hiding mysteries he’s yet to uncover? (spoiler: you’re just a normal person trying to borrow a book, but he doesn’t know that.)

but let’s take a moment to shift focus from our friendly neighborhood king of wands (that’s geto, by the way, for the tarot illiterate) and zero in on you. because, bless your heart, you’ve got no time for the mystical nonsense of divination.

it’s not that you hate tarot or people who swear by it. it’s just… it’s never worked for you. every time a flower-crown-wearing oracle pops up on your fyp, telling you to “like, comment, and share this reading so the universe will bless you with abundance and good fortune,” you do it. and guess what? the universe does not bless you. no windfall of cash, no twin flame reunion, and absolutely no lucky day on the horizon. instead, you’re stuck in a perpetual cycle of disappointment and thinking, am i cursed? or is this just capitalism?

so, when you bump into a guy muttering about the ten of swords in the college library, the sheer absurdity of the moment almost makes you laugh out loud. you help him pick up his books from the floor (because you’re not a monster), all while internally rolling your eyes. who even takes tarot this seriously? your brain whispers. but hey, it’s not like you’re ever going to see this weirdo again, right?

wrong.

enter the house party. directed by none other than the notorious gojo satoru, who probably pulled the fool for party planning and ran with it. naturally, the entire student body is there, including you, begrudgingly clutching a cup of what is probably alcohol but tastes like regret. you’re halfway through debating whether it’s worth sticking around when you spot him. yes, him. the library lad. and if you thought he was strange before, tonight he’s decked out in what can only be described as a “witchy” fit, complete with crystal necklaces and the kind of rings that scream don’t ask me about my birth chart unless you’re ready for a dissertation.

you’re just about to turn and flee when, of course, he spots you. he lights up like the sun card upright, and you can see the moment he decides to approach. fantastic. this is your life now. “hey,” he says, and you can tell he’s trying to act cool. “do you believe in fate?”

oh, for the love of—

“no,” you deadpan, taking a sip of your regret juice. “but i do believe in bad luck, which is what brought me here tonight.” he laughs, and to your horror, it’s kinda cute. “well, maybe that’s just the wheel of fortune turning. what goes down must come up.”

you raise an eyebrow. “is that tarot-speak for ‘this party sucks’?”

“more like, ‘the spirits sent me here for a reason,’” he replies, holding up a deck of tarot cards like they’re his personal VIP pass. you groan, wondering if this is punishment for every time you ignored those scammy fyp readings. the universe works in mysterious (and frankly annoying) ways.

-

first off, geto would like to dedicate this evening’s award for “biggest asshole” to his childhood friend and eternal tormentor, gojo satoru, who claimed this was a fancy dress party. yes, fancy dress. not a house party. and like an idiot, geto believed him. hence the ensemble: the crystal necklaces, the dramatic rings, the black turtleneck that screamed “mystical bachelor #1.” he looked like halloween and a witch convention had a messy breakup and he was the collateral damage. and the kicker? the tarot cards stuffed into his bag. because apparently, those were his ticket into this party. gojo had threatened—no, promised—that he’d bar geto from entering his own damn best friend’s party unless he showed up prepared to do discounted tarot readings. because nothing screams “good fortune” like drunken frat boys demanding to know their future while spilling beer on your king of pentacles.

but before geto can fully spiral into regret, he spots you. you, across the room, holding a red solo cup like it’s your last lifeline in a sea of chaos. suddenly, the LED strip lights above seem to beam down like the sun on its brightest spring day, and he’s pretty sure he hears birds chirping (which is actually just gojo’s bose speaker blasting some god-awful remix). in this moment, geto feels something he hasn’t felt in a while: hope.

then he opens his mouth.

“the spirits sent me here for a reason,” he blurts out, voice brimming with… what’s the opposite of confidence? panic? regret? whatever it is, it’s not working.

he sees your eyebrow twitch. not raise—twitch. your eyes dart everywhere but at him, and he feels the metaphorical ten of swords stab his pride, one blade at a time. internally, his brain is screaming: really? “the spirits”? you couldn’t think of anything cooler? oh my god, you’re a loser. loser, loser, loser.

before he can even try to recover from the self-inflicted verbal disaster, the karaoke mic crackles to life, and a familiar voice echoes through the room. “geto suguru, report to the center hall!” gojo’s voice booms, loud and obnoxious. “your clients are waiting, my guy!”

clients? oh no.

geto freezes. you glance at him, your expression hovering somewhere between pity and mild secondhand embarrassment. internally, he’s spiraling: clients!? oh great. perfect. now i get to embarrass myself in front of you and half the drunk population of campus.

“don’t keep us waiting, mr. magician!” gojo cackles, clearly delighted with himself. geto trudges toward the center of the room, tarot cards in hand, sending a silent prayer to the universe: dear spirits, if you’re real, strike gojo down with lightning. or at least make him choke on his stupid mic cord. please. but no lightning comes. only more LED lights and the weight of his own humiliation.

the music screeched to an abrupt halt, cutting off mid-beat to usher in what gojo dramatically called “the immersive experience.” 

immersive, my ass, geto thought bitterly, sneaking a glare at his white-haired tormentor. to make matters worse, gojo was now skulking over by the speaker, queuing up redbone by childish gambino, apparently convinced it was the anthem for “spooky tarot vibes.” geto’s fingers itched to throw the nearest ashtray at gojo’s ridiculously smug face but, alas, violence would have to wait. he had a job to do, courtesy of said smug face.

as he settled at the glorified low-rise table-turned-“dias,” he noticed a mix of amused faces, skeptical stares, and outright curiosity from the crowd. and among them, there was you. hovering near the edge, arms crossed, your expression was a mix of intrigue and i’m too cool for this but let’s see what happens anyway. and because geto was both cursed and stupid, he immediately started overthinking: wait, why are you here? are you here to judge me? no, that’s dumb. maybe you’re into tarot. oh god, what if you’re into tarot? does that make us soulmates? focus, suguru.

“first victim—i mean guest, is… nanamiiinnn kenntoooo!” gojo’s voice boomed through the mic, dragging geto out of his internal spiral. and lo and behold, it was nanami himself. 

nanami kento, aka mr. ‘i-wear-a-suit-to-class,’ the guy who looked like he’d walked straight out of a finance magazine and into a frat party by accident. the fact that nanami was even here was baffling, but rumor had it he helped budget this whole thing. (which explained the alcohol tasting suspiciously cheap, considering half the budget went into walnuts being served as snacks.) he approached the table like he was heading into a board meeting, eyes sharp, posture straighter than an arrow. the man looked ready to audit geto’s soul. 

as nanami sat down for his reading, his usual stoic expression firmly in place, geto shuffled the deck with practiced ease. “to make this as accurate as possible,” geto began, trying to match nanami’s serious tone, “it’s best if you touch the deck briefly. it helps with energy transfer.”

nanami raised a skeptical eyebrow but reached out, his hand hovering over the cards for a moment before he placed two fingers lightly on the top of the deck. the touch was so precise and deliberate that it looked more like he was testing the temperature of a cup of tea than connecting with his fate. geto suppressed a grin. “wow, nanami, really channeling all that emotional investment.”

“i don’t make a habit of emotionally investing in cards,” nanami replied dryly, retracting his hand. “if this reading goes poorly, i’ll hold you accountable, not the deck.”

“well, if the spirits hear that,” geto quipped, starting to lay the cards out, “they’re going to make sure your future includes nothing but overripe bananas and missed train schedules.”

“you’re lucky i don’t believe in spirits,” nanami deadpanned, though his gaze flicked to the first card with the faintest hint of curiosity.

“alright,” geto said, forcing a grin as he shuffled his deck. “what can i do for you? career? love life? deep existential crisis?”

“career,” nanami replied crisply, sitting down on one of the pillows like it was a very uncomfortable chair.

“classic.” geto nodded, laying the deck out for nanami to cut. “alright, the cards are ready to speak. let’s see what the spirits have in store for you.” as he flipped the first card, geto’s brain scrambled to process the sight: three of pentacles. okay, teamwork, collaboration. he could work with this.

“looks like you’re about to enter a new partnership,” geto said, his voice smooth and confident. “something involving… hard work, shared goals… a passion project, maybe?” nanami raised an eyebrow, and for a moment, geto panicked. was this guy about to call him out as a fraud? but then, the second card came up: the empress. geto let out a quiet sigh of relief. 

“ah, abundance,” he continued, leaning into his role. “this project? it’s going to bring a lot of growth. creativity, maybe even something related to… food?” he hesitated for a split second before committing. “yeah, i’m seeing something culinary. like a bakery or—”

“a bakery?” nanami interrupted, his sharp eyes narrowing slightly.

geto froze. oh no. did he just completely miss the mark?

“uh… yes, a bakery,” he repeated, trying to sound confident. “does that resonate?”

nanami stared at him for a moment, then nodded. slowly. 

“i’ve just started working part-time at a french bakery near campus.”

the room exploded. people started laughing, cheering, and hollering like geto had just predicted the apocalypse. even you, standing at the edge of the crowd, cracked a smile. geto barely kept his jaw from dropping. internally, he was screaming: no fucking way. i pulled that out of my ass. oh my god. the spirits are real. nanami, ever composed, simply stood, nodded once in approval, and walked off like this was just another day in the life of kento “bakery boy” nanami.

as the crowd settled down, geto slumped in his seat, trying to recover. his mind raced: okay, that went better than expected. maybe i can survive this. maybe even impress you. wait, are you impressed? i need to see if you’re impressed. he glanced at you, and there it was—that little amused smile, like you couldn’t believe what you’d just witnessed. and for the first time all night, geto felt like maybe he wasn’t a total loser.

the next poor soul—or menace, really—was shiu kong. and shiu, being no better than any average man, sauntered up to the makeshift “dias” with a cigarette dangling from his lips and promptly dumped all the ash from it onto geto’s carefully shuffled deck. geto froze mid-shuffle, staring down at his now-defiled cards like they’d been personally insulted. internally, he was screaming: did you seriously just ashen my pentacles? oh my god, shiu, i hope the spirits tell you your house will get haunted.

“relax, geto,” shiu drawled, clearly enjoying himself. “it’s just a little ash. adds character.”

“yeah? well, let’s see what the spirits think about your ‘character,’” geto muttered, giving the cards a mournful dust-off before proceeding. the first card flipped: the devil. oh, the irony.

“so,” geto began, deadpan, “looks like you’ve got some… business ventures coming up. something a little… unconventional?” the crowd leaned in, murmuring in anticipation. shiu raised an eyebrow, amused but also intrigued.

geto flipped the second card: the seven of cups.

“choices,” he said, tapping the card for effect. “you’ve got a lot of options ahead of you. but, uh… not all of them are exactly moral. or legal.” the crowd erupted, half in laughter, half in knowing cheers. shiu smirked, leaning back like he was the main character in a crime drama. “huh,” he said, feigning innocence. “well, that’s interesting.” 

but when geto flipped the third card—the ace of pentacles—the room lost it. “looks like this… uh, deal is going to be quite lucrative,” geto said, trying to keep a straight face.

the crowd howled, people slapping their knees and hollering like this was the best stand-up routine they’d ever seen. gojo, however, had to be physically restrained by nanami and two others as he lunged at shiu, shouting, “WHERE IS IT, SHIU? TELL ME WHERE THE GREEN GODDESS LIVES!”

shiu simply winked, flicked his cigarette butt into an ashtray (finally), and strolled off the dias like a kingpin leaving his empire.

next up was toji zenin, a man so laid-back and unbothered he might as well have been horizontal. he approached the table with all the grace of a lion stalking prey, cracking his neck as he dropped onto the pillow like he’d been asked to fight someone instead of getting his fortune read. “alright, zenin,” geto said, shuffling the cards. “what do you want to know? career? love life? existential dread?”

“future,” toji replied simply, his deep voice making it sound way cooler than it had any right to.

the first card: the lovers.

“interesting,” geto said, glancing up at toji. “looks like there’s a big relationship in your future. something life-changing.”

toji smirked. “yeah? tell me more.”

geto flipped the second card: the sun.

“oh wow,” geto muttered, mostly to himself. “this relationship is going to bring you a lot of joy. looks like… a family, maybe? marriage?”

the crowd oohed, leaning in closer.

and then came the third card: the tower.

“oh,” geto said, pausing. “uh, okay. so, there might be some… challenges along the way. upheaval. a few bumps in the road.”

toji just shrugged. “i’ll handle it.”

the crowd cheered, someone shouting, “family man!” as toji stood, looking oddly pleased with himself. geto sat back, shaking his head. spirits, give me strength.

just as the crowd began to settle, gojo, ever the dramatic shit-stirrer, snatched the mic again. “ladies and gentlemen, we’ve saved the best for last!” he boomed, pointing a very theatrical finger in your direction. 

“YOU! come on down!”

the entire room turned to stare at you, and suddenly, you were the main character in your own personal nightmare. “uh, no thanks,” you called back, waving him off. but gojo was having none of it. “don’t be shy! the spirits are calling for you! geto, back me up here!” geto, caught off guard, looked at you and then back at gojo. “uh…” he started, scratching the back of his neck. you sighed, muttering a quiet curse under your breath as you made your way to the “dias,” your steps heavy with regret. this was going to be great.

as you made your way to the dias, geto felt his life flash before his eyes—not the whole thing, mind you, just the highlights: stumbling across the cheapest tarot deck at 2 a.m. during a sleep-deprived existential crisis, spiraling into a tarot obsession because he accidentally predicted his microwave exploding, and somehow ending up here, in this exact moment, facing you, the literal love of his life, thanks to gojo’s meddling. screw the power of friendship, he thought bitterly. his “friend” was the reason he was sitting cross-legged on a glorified coffee table, dressed like the head of a coven, with his dignity hanging by a single thread.

but then it hit him. wait… can i rig this reading?

the idea was tempting. he could just “interpret” the cards however he wanted. twist the results. make it seem like the spirits themselves were shipping the two of you.

except.

except.

he winced, imagining the sheer karmic hell that would rain down upon him if he tried to scam the spirits. knowing his luck, they’d make him the next hanged man—literally. so, when you finally sat down across from him and asked, casually, for a love reading (a LOVE reading????), geto swallowed hard and prayed to every higher power he could think of that the cards would be merciful.

the first card flipped: the knight of cups.

okay, not bad.

“so,” geto began, trying to sound confident and not like he was screaming internally. “the knight of cups suggests a romantic figure in your life. someone… sensitive, charming, maybe a little dreamy. they could be coming towards you—or they’re already here.” he glanced up at you, hoping for some kind of reaction, but you were too busy looking over at…

wait a second.

you weren’t looking at him. you were looking at… choso.

his heart sank. oh, you have got to be kidding me.

to be fair, he sort of understood the confusion. both he and choso had long dark hair (his sleek and tied back, choso’s styled into two distinct buns that somehow worked), and they were both tall with a quiet, brooding vibe. but choso? really?

before he could process the betrayal, he flipped the second card: the star.

“ah,” he said, forcing himself to focus. “the star indicates hope and inspiration. this person might bring healing into your life. they’re someone who stands out, who you’re drawn to in a special way.” again, your gaze flicked to choso, who was sitting across the room with his arms crossed, looking like a goth prince brooding over an edgar allan poe poem.

dear spirits, are you messing with me on purpose?

and then came the third card: the two of cups.

geto’s hands nearly slipped. oh, come on.

“the two of cups,” he said, clearing his throat. “this is… uh… a card of partnership. mutual feelings. a connection that could grow into something deeper.”

your eyes lit up. “wow, that’s so accurate!”

his heart soared for half a second before you turned to your friend and whispered, not so quietly, “do you think he means choso?”

geto’s soul left his body.

what part of ‘sensitive and charming’ screams choso?! he wanted to yell. okay, sure, the guy had his moments, but choso’s idea of romantic charm was probably something like offering someone his last cup of ramen without saying a word. to make matters worse, choso, sensing the attention, looked up from where he was sitting. his head tilted slightly, a single brow raised in confusion, and—oh, god—he gave you a small nod.

no, no, no, don’t encourage this! geto thought, panicking.

“well,” he said, attempting to recover, “the cards are open to interpretation. sometimes they’re symbolic, pointing to qualities rather than an exact person…”

but you weren’t listening anymore, too busy whispering excitedly to your friend about how much sense this all made. meanwhile, geto sat there, defeated, mentally drafting a resignation letter to the spirits. dear divine forces, i quit. i can’t do this anymore. please find someone else to deal with my romantic disasters. sincerely, suguru geto.

the next morning felt like the world had been retextured to ultra-HD. the sun was shining like it got a promotion, the birds outside your window sounded like they’d formed a symphony orchestra, and even the butter on your toast tasted like it had been hand-churned by angels. why was everything so ridiculously perfect? simple: for once in your life, a tarot reading seemed to have gone your way. your love life, once a barren wasteland of missed connections and unrequited crushes, was now looking up—looking up directly at choso kamo, the brooding star of your medieval and renaissance literature class.

sure, you’d had what the kids these days call a “hallway crush” on choso for a while. the kind of harmless admiration where you’d see him across the hall, brooding next to a window like he was in a gothic novel, and think, huh, i wouldn’t mind being the mysterious backstory to his tragic antihero arc. but a relationship? oh no, that felt too bold. too ambitious. 

and yet here you were, butter molecules dissolving on your tongue, entertaining the idea that maybe this could be something real. it’s fate, you thought, smiling to yourself. the cards said so. who am i to argue with the universe?

your mind briefly flickered to last night. specifically to geto, who had looked like someone had popped all four tires on his emotional vehicle. his expression after your reading had been a mix of “i just dropped my ice cream cone” and “my goldfish got flushed before i could say goodbye.”

but that wasn’t your problem, right? he probably just felt left out or jealous that your reading turned out so great. or maybe he was tired from all the readings he had to do. surely it had nothing to do with you personally, right? 

…right?

right.

well, no matter. you couldn’t spend your morning thinking about someone you weren’t even going to see again. which is precisely when karma, fate, or the universe—take your pick—decided to slap you across the face with irony.

enter medieval and renaissance literature class.

you strolled into class, head high, already composing your imaginary meet-cute scenario with choso. maybe you’d bond over the syllabus. or he’d compliment your handwriting. or he’d drop a deeply intellectual comment about milton that you’d piggyback off of. but then you stopped dead in your tracks because sitting in your lecture hall, wearing the exact same hair tie he wore at last night’s party, was none other than suguru geto.

oh no.

you blinked a few times, hoping he was just a hallucination brought on by too much optimism at breakfast. but no, there he was, slumped into his seat, looking like a ghost of his usual self. his hair, usually neat and tucked behind his ear, was now lazily hanging in front of his face, and his eyes were half-lidded with exhaustion. he didn’t even bother pulling out his notebook—what was the point when he could barely stay conscious?

since when does he take this class?

you quickly scanned your mental archives. how did i not notice him all semester? was he new? was he a ghost? or worse—was he always here, and you were too busy daydreaming about choso to notice?

you slid into your seat, trying to shrink yourself into invisibility. maybe he wouldn’t see you. maybe he wouldn’t even recognize you. except, of course, the universe wasn’t done laughing at you.

“hey,” came his familiar voice.

you turned your head slowly, like a rusty robot, and there he was, smiling faintly at you like the human embodiment of the “this is fine” meme. 

“fancy seeing you here,” he said, his tone a little too casual for someone who probably still wanted to jump out a window over last night.

“uh… yeah. small world,” you replied, giving a very forced, very awkward laugh. meanwhile, in your head: oh my god, oh my god, oh my god, why is he here, why is he smiling, why does he look like he knows something i don’t?

“enjoying the afterglow of your reading?” he asked, raising a tired eyebrow. “sure am,” you said quickly, pretending to scribble something in your notebook. anything to avoid prolonged eye contact.  “good,” he said, leaning back. 

���because i’ve been thinking about that reading a lot.” 

you froze mid-scribble. “oh? really?” you asked, trying to sound casual. emphasis on trying. he sighed, rubbing his temple. “yeah. not your reading, though. all twelve of them. from the party. last night.” you blinked, caught off guard. 

“...you did twelve readings?”

“yup.” he let his head fall onto his desk. “i think i aged five years in one night. and gojo was the worst. again.” you couldn’t help but snort at that, some of the awkwardness ebbing away. “what did he ask this time?”

geto turned his head just enough to side-eye you from the desk. “wanted the cards to tell him who’s going to steal his sunglasses next.” you pressed your lips together to suppress a laugh. “did they?”

“it’s nanami.”

that was enough to crack you, and you laughed, loud enough to earn a few curious glances from your classmates. geto’s lips twitched into a small, tired smile. you placed your pen down and tilted your head. “so, is this why you look like you got hit by a train today?”

he groaned, cracking open an energy drink from his bag. “it’s not just the readings. it’s this class, too. pop quiz vibes are strong in the air today.”

oh no. oh no no no.

the silence between you both started to feel heavier. your brain, helpful as ever, decided to go on overdrive again: what now? do i keep talking? does he think i’m weird? why haven’t i noticed him in class before? god i’m the worst—focus, focus, focus!

you glanced at him, and he glanced at you at the same time, which immediately triggered the universal law of awkward eye contact. you both darted your eyes away—him, to the blank notebook page in front of him; you, to the random doodle you’d been half-heartedly scribbling. “so,” he started, clearing his throat, his voice softer now, “what’s today’s lecture about?”

you stared at your notes like they might give you the answer, but all they offered was a series of lines that could maybe pass as a badly drawn cat. “uh… poetry analysis, i think?”

“right. poetry,” he said, nodding like he hadn’t just forgotten the subject of the class he was literally sitting in. he flipped open his notebook, which was suspiciously empty, save for a solitary doodle of a fat cat in the corner. the professor walked in then, saving you both from the growing, almost tangible awkwardness.

you turned forward, suddenly very interested in the lecture, clutching your pen like it was a lifeline. from the corner of your eye, you saw geto doing the same, pretending to focus, though his hand moved so slowly across the page that you were certain he wasn’t writing anything at all.

the silence stretched, and though you were no longer speaking, the air between you was thick with unspoken words and stolen glances. by the time the professor started droning on about rhyme schemes, you were convinced you could hear your own heartbeat echoing in your ears. and yet, there was something oddly comforting in the shared awkwardness. something almost warm. but you didn’t dare look at him again. not yet. not while your face still felt embarrassingly warm.

-

if the spirits were going to turn geto into the hanged man for tampering with the cards, maybe he should’ve gone ahead and done it. at least then he wouldn’t be sitting here feeling like the hanged man, every second of this medieval and renaissance literature class stretching on like a medieval torture session.

you were right next to him. close enough to tap on the shoulder, whisper a joke about the professor’s outdated slides, or just breathe the same air while he attempted to craft a coherent sentence to get your attention. but no—at this very moment, your eyes were glued to the door, scanning it like a hawk waiting for its prey.

or, in this case, waiting for choso.

oh, choso, with his eternal frown and hair that looked like he shampooed it in the tears of the damned. what was so special about him anyway? geto could brood too. hell, he could brood with tarot cards and deep existential questions about life.

as you continued to ignore him, geto ran through his increasingly desperate options:

act like a monkey and perform an interpretative dance of his love in front of you.

risk incurring the wrath of the spirits by doing some very questionable card tricks.

drop to his knees and just beg you to look at him.

...or—and this was a truly radical thought—he could just talk to you like a normal human being. with great effort, geto willed his hand to raise, aiming to gently tap your shoulder and finally say something. hey, what’s your favorite renaissance play? wanna talk about the tragic themes in marlowe’s works? wanna skip class and—

but before his hand could make contact, the door opened.

and in walked choso.

with yuki tsukumo.

geto’s hand froze mid-air, and his jaw dropped like a drawbridge at a medieval castle. he wasn’t the only one either—your reaction was just as dramatic, except yours was tinged with the sound of your heart shattering into tiny, pulverized shards. shards that were promptly scooped up, shoved into a blender, and liquefied by the sight before you.

because while you were looking at choso, choso was looking at yuki.

and geto? geto was looking at you.

this tragic little love triangle—or maybe square, if you factored in the spirits hovering over geto like disappointed parents—was the tragic renaissance play no one asked for but somehow everyone got.

as yuki giggled at something choso said (giggled??? choso kamo has a sense of humor?), you slumped back in your seat, the light in your eyes dimming faster than the candles in a poorly ventilated cathedral. meanwhile, geto stared at the side of your face, willing his brain to think of something, anything, to say that could somehow salvage this situation.

but all he could think was: what is love?

followed closely by: baby, don’t hurt me.

-

you wanted to die. not in the "clutching a vial of poison in a tragic shakespearean way" kind of die, but in the "husband went to battle and never came back" kind of die, except your so-called husband wasn’t even yours to begin with. you were in a one-sided relationship so intense it deserved its own jane austen adaptation, except instead of a romantic ending, it seemed like you’d just be crying into your embroidery hoop.

and honestly? you got it. you saw why choso was acting like that around yuki. the guy looked like he’d seen heaven for the first time, smiling at her like she’d just invented fire or something. for choso, whose default setting was somewhere between “terminally annoyed” and “what’s the point of existence,” this was monumental. so, like any reasonable, heartbroken woman, you didn’t turn to another potential suitor for comfort. no, no. you sought out something far more powerful. solace. clarity. divine intervention.

...in the form of tarot cards.

you turned to geto, sitting beside you in all his slightly disheveled glory, and the look in your eyes was nothing short of pleading. you didn’t need to say anything for him to understand. you wanted answers.

"do a reading for me. right now."

your voice was low, but it carried the weight of a thousand broken hearts and at least two adele songs. you probably sounded like a woman on the brink of asking to see the manager of the universe.

geto blinked at you, taken aback. he hadn’t even had a chance to process the spectacle unfolding before you two—choso cracking a smile at yuki, yuki leaning in closer—before you demanded spiritual insight like you were trying to summon the oracle of delphi.

"a reading?" he asked, cautiously, like you’d just asked him to perform surgery on a grape.

"yes, a reading. right now.” you punctuated your words with a look so intense it could’ve melted through the linoleum floors. "i need to know what the spirits have to say about my love life because clearly," you gestured dramatically towards choso and yuki, "i’ve been living in delusion."

you were not joking. in fact, you were about two seconds away from rummaging through geto’s bag yourself to pull out the cards.

geto, to his credit, did his best to keep a straight face, but internally he was screaming. this was not how he imagined getting your attention. where was the romantic small talk? the flirty banter? instead, he was being asked to summon metaphysical clarity in the middle of a lecture hall. “you realize we’re in class, right?” he asked, gesturing towards the professor, who was obliviously droning on about chaucer. 

“what’s more important—canterbury tales or my rapidly deteriorating sense of self-worth?” you deadpanned, arms crossed.

he sighed, already regretting his life choices, but reached into his bag anyway. this was going to be a very, very long class. as he shuffled the cards, you leaned in closer, practically vibrating with desperation. geto thought for a second that maybe the spirits would smite him for doing this, but at least he could die knowing he was, in some absurd way, your chosen source of comfort.

the reading became, as irony would have it, your single biggest source of suffering. every time geto pulled out a card, it felt less like a reading for your love life and more like an unwelcome live commentary on choso and yuki’s blossoming connection.

“all right,” geto muttered, flipping over the first card, “three of pentacles. this suggests an opportunity to collaborate or share.”

you nodded eagerly, until your eyes betrayed you and drifted over to the sunlit corner where choso and yuki were seated. and oh, what was that? choso handing her his highlighter? a stabilo one, no less? lending stationery wasn’t just helpful; it was practically a love confession in academic circles.

your stomach dropped. “okay, that’s a fluke. what’s the next one?”

geto hesitated but drew the next card. “uh, ace of cups. could mean new opportunities for emotional connection. an offer, maybe.”

you turned back to look at choso just as yuki reached out and flicked a piece of lint off his sweater. his vintage, thrifted sweater.

your jaw tightened as your sharp eye for fashion immediately clocked every detail of the piece—the carefully worn texture, the faintly faded yet intentional color palette, the hand-stitched hem that was too perfect to be mass-produced. vintage. thrifted. possibly one-of-a-kind.

and there was yuki, just casually touching it like it was some department store clearance item. your fists clenched around your pen as you sat there, practically vibrating with indignation. next to you, geto raised a curious eyebrow. “you okay?” he whispered, leaning in slightly.

“i’m fine,” you replied through gritted teeth, though your gaze was still locked on yuki and the sweater. “it’s just…some people don’t understand the sanctity of vintage clothing.”

geto blinked at you, then at yuki and choso, his expression half-amused, half-confused. “right… the sanctity.” you ignored him, seething quietly as yuki smiled, entirely unaware of the silent judgment radiating in her direction. flicking lint off a thrifted piece? unforgivable.

“all right, one more card,” he said, trying to keep you from spiraling. “the sun. it’s a positive sign. it means there’s hope, clarity—happiness at the end of the road.” you weren’t sure what you expected, but it wasn’t to glance back at choso and yuki basking in literal daylight streaming through the classroom windows. 

meanwhile, you and geto were shivering in the poorly heated corner of the room, shrouded in cold shadows, and probably misery.

"well," you muttered, shoving the cards away from you like they were personally responsible for ruining your day. "thanks for nothing, spirits."

“don’t blame the cards!” geto whispered, as if the spirits themselves were about to jump you in the hallway after class. 

“oh, i will blame them. i’m blaming all of it—tarot, the universe, my horoscope. even you.” you jabbed a finger at geto. he raised his hands defensively. “me? i’m just the messenger!”

“yeah? well, tell your spirits to pick someone else next time,” you snapped. “preferably someone not already taken.”

you turned back to your notebook, seething quietly, while geto, to his credit, really did try to make it right. he wasn’t about to charge you for what was basically a tarot drive-by, especially not one that seemed to have single handedly ruined your faith in divination, fate, and possibly humanity. as class ended and you bolted for the door, he scrambled to follow, shoving his cards into his bag haphazardly as if they might somehow soften the mess he’d unknowingly made.

“hey, wait! i’m sorry!” he called out, weaving through the crowd of students like a man on a mission—or, more accurately, like a very apologetic cat chasing a laser pointer. you knew you should’ve stopped. you knew he wasn’t at fault—how could he be? he didn’t control the cards, and even if he did, it wasn’t like he made choso and yuki sit under a literal beam of sunshine together like a rom-com poster come to life. but pride is a tricky thing, and yours had dug its claws deep.

“it’s fine,” you muttered through gritted teeth, speeding up to create distance. but geto, persistent and well-meaning as ever, wasn’t giving up. “no, it’s not fine,” he said, keeping pace with you. “i didn’t mean for it to—look, it wasn’t about you. well, it kinda was, but not like—ugh, just let me explain!”

you stopped abruptly, and geto nearly tripped over his own feet to avoid crashing into you. your chest was tight, not from running, but from the mess of feelings swirling around: anger, hurt, and worst of all, embarrassment. you turned to him with a glare sharper than it had any right to be.

“i don’t need an explanation, okay? i get it. it was stupid of me to think it was about me in the first place,” you snapped, and the second the words left your mouth, you regretted them.

geto blinked, taken aback, and for a split second, you caught the way his expression shifted—like he’d been hit with a blow he hadn’t expected. his shoulders sagged slightly, his usual calm demeanor faltering. “that’s not what i meant at all,” he said softly, voice barely audible over the buzz of students passing by.

the pang in your chest deepened, but before you could give it more thought, you turned and hurried away, leaving him standing there in the hallway. you didn’t look back, even though something in you wanted to. pride won again, as it always seemed to. but as you walked off, the image of his expression stayed with you, burned into the back of your mind like a guilty little ghost you couldn’t shake.

-

later that evening, geto sat at his desk staring at his tarot cards like they were a cheat sheet for life that had suddenly decided to go blank. the spread in front of him was chaotic at best: the tower, the three of swords, the five of cups. if the cards were trying to scream “you fucked up,” they were doing a great job. he sighed, dragging a hand down his face as he considered reshuffling for the fifth time that hour.

but then it hit him—like a very literal sign from above. a chunk of plaster from his dorm ceiling detached and bounced right off his head, leaving him rubbing his scalp and glaring up at the offending crack. “perfect,” he muttered. “thanks, universe. really appreciate the symbolism.”

it was then, mid-reckoning with gravity, that geto realized something important: this was not how tarot worked. it wasn’t a tool for undoing mistakes or bending the will of fate. if higher forces played by human rules, they wouldn’t be higher forces; they’d be coworkers who ignore emails. so, he did what any reasonable person would do when their usual method of problem-solving failed—he decided to reach out to you. to check if you were okay. rejection, even one involving misplaced feelings and stabilo highlighters, was a bitter pill to swallow, and he wanted to make sure you weren’t stewing in it alone.

but then another realization hit him, thankfully not a physical one this time: he didn’t have your number. or your social media. or literally any way to contact you that didn’t involve smoke signals or breaking into your dorm like a lunatic. waiting until tomorrow felt wrong, so he did what any unhinged-but-earnest guy would do.

he opened his email.

geto scrolled through his inbox with the dedication of a scholar deciphering ancient texts. his literature professor had this habit of sending class-wide emails—updates, reminders, existential musings, you name it. surely, somewhere in that chaotic thread, your email address was lurking. “ah, here,” he whispered triumphantly when he found one, squinting at the long list of recipients. his finger hovered over your name as if clicking it would summon you like a genie.

now came the hard part: drafting an email that didn’t sound like a confession of a crime. he typed furiously, deleting sentences almost as fast as he wrote them.

Subject: just checking in hey, i hope this doesn’t come off as weird but i wanted to check if you’re okay after class today. i know things got kind of intense and i just wanted to make sure you’re doing all right. if you need someone to talk to or even rant at i’m here. seriously. sorry if this email is out of the blue but i couldn’t wait till tomorrow to say something. take care, s. geto

he stared at the draft like it might sprout fangs and bite him. “is this too much? not enough? why do i sound like an HR rep?” after a moment of panic and one deep breath, he hit send before he could overthink it further.

leaning back in his chair, he stared at the ceiling (or what was left of it) and muttered, “smooth, geto. real smooth.”

meanwhile, back in the academy award-worthy drama that was your life, you paced the length of your dorm room like the unhinged protagonist of a spy film—except instead of planning a heist, your master plan was not having an emotional breakdown. and frankly, it wasn’t going great.

why was this such a big deal anyway? choso wasn’t the love of your life. you didn’t have pictures of him taped to your wall like a deranged scrapbooker. sure, he had great bone structure and an aesthetic that could front a band no one’s ever heard of, but did he own your heart? no. 

so why the hell was rejection stinging like you just got voted off a reality show? oh, right. because it wasn’t just choso. it was the whole concept. 

the idea that maybe, just maybe, for once in your life, the stars or the cards or something might give you a break. but nope. no knight in shining armor, no grand declarations of love, just... lint-flicking and stabilo-sharing with someone who wasn’t you.

and, of course, because the universe has a sense of humor, guilt was there to crash the party, too. poor geto. you practically bit his head off in class, and for what? doing his job as the accidental harbinger of bad news? great job, you. what’s next—yelling at the weather? just as you were about to descend into yet another spiral, this time brought to you by regret and self-loathing, your phone pinged obnoxiously loud. you froze mid-pace. that sound? that horrible custom sound you set for college emails? you grabbed your phone like it was a live grenade and squinted at the screen.

from: sugurugeto@gmail.com subject: just checking in

your mouth hung open as you stared at the preview. the email equivalent of puppy eyes. of course. because why let the guilt marinate quietly when it can now come with words? opening the email, you read through his message, and something in your chest twisted. he wasn’t even being dramatic. no passive-aggressive digs, no over-apologizing, just... concern. genuine, sweet concern. “ugh,” you muttered, flopping onto your bed as you thought about how to respond without sounding like you were unraveling emotionally. you began typing, deleting, retyping, then deleting again.

Subject: re: just checking in hi, thanks for reaching out. i’ve been better. today was a bit of a mess, but that’s not your fault. i shouldn’t have snapped at you earlier. it was unfair and i’m sorry for taking my frustration out on you. ig i just got caught up in the whole idea of things working out for once yk. and when it didn’t, it stung more than i expected. but seriously i appreciate you checking in. it means a lot. take care, [your name]

you hovered over the send button for a second before hitting it, then tossed your phone onto the bed like it had personally wronged you. 

“great,” you muttered to yourself, staring at the ceiling. “now i just look emotionally unstable and like a bitch.” but deep down, there was a strange kind of relief. maybe, just maybe, you hadn’t completely burned the bridge with geto.

maybe life didn’t feel like dolphins and rainbows with symphony by zara larsson playing in the background, but at least you woke up without the overwhelming urge to set your entire life on fire. progress. 

you had come to terms with the fact that you weren’t mad about choso being taken. honestly, good for him and yuki—they had the chemistry of two hot protagonists in a slow-burn drama anyway. and hey, you weren’t mad at yourself anymore either. growth, right? but of course, the universe always had one more plot twist up its sleeve.

you walked into the supervised study session later that day, fully expecting to slink into your seat, avoid eye contact with choso and yuki, and pretend you were a background character in your own life. instead, you were greeted with... a display. there, right in front of your usual spot, stood geto with what could only be described as a care package for someone emotionally devastated—or recovering from surgery. maybe both.

a soft, ridiculously fluffy blanket was folded neatly on your desk, next to a neck pillow that looked like it could cure insomnia. there were snacks—chips, cookies, even a little bag of trail mix because apparently, he cared about your protein intake. and drinks, plural, including tea, juice, and water, because hydration was key, obviously. oh, and let’s not forget the vitamin gummies.

vitamin. gummies.

“uh...” you managed, staring at the scene like it might morph into something less... earnest.

“good morning!” geto beamed at you, his expression the human equivalent of a golden retriever wagging its tail. “i, uh, thought you might need a little pick-me-up.” 

you blinked. “a little? what, are you preparing me for the apocalypse?” 

he laughed, a soft, sheepish sound as he scratched the back of his neck. “just thought it might help. you know, in case yesterday was still... lingering.”

you glanced at the pile of comfort on your desk, then back at geto, who looked so genuine it made your chest ache a little. sure, he could’ve just emailed back with a “glad you’re okay,” but no, he’d gone all in like he was running a wellness retreat. “this is... wow, geto,” you said, unsure whether to laugh or cry. “you really didn’t have to.”

“i know,” he said, his tone almost shy. “but i wanted to.”

and that’s when it hit you. as your eyes flickered to choso, who was scooting his chair closer to yuki with the subtlety of a rom-com lead, your gaze naturally found its way back to geto. the ridiculously awkward, long-haired boy in front of you, who apparently thought vitamin gummies were the solution to all of life’s problems, was now the one pulling at your focus.

ah, drat.

“well,” you said, sitting down and letting yourself sink into the cocoon of comfort he’d assembled, “you better not have used up your entire snack budget on me.”

“nah,” he said with a grin, pulling a pack of tarot cards out of his bag. “besides, i’m saving my budget for these bad boys.” you groaned, but it was accompanied by a smile. yeah, maybe life wasn’t all dolphins and rainbows, but it wasn’t so bad either.

respectfully speaking, geto was shit scared when he got in all that stuff for you. sure, in his mind it had seemed like a good idea—people liked snacks, right? and blankets were universally comforting. vitamin gummies? maybe a little overboard, but hey, health was wealth. but now, watching you actually use the stuff, munching on a strawberry-centered wafer like it was your job, he felt a wave of something dangerously close to relief. you didn’t think he was weird. or at least, not weird enough to ignore free snacks. small victories.

still, the nervous churn in his stomach hadn’t entirely gone away. because what was this, exactly? a gesture of kindness? a peace offering? a declaration of love wrapped in a fleece blanket and stuffed with gummy vitamins? he had no idea. but if this was what it took to see you look this relaxed around him, he’d happily bankrupt himself. and then, just as he was settling into the warm, fuzzy feeling of semi-success, you hit him with the question.

“so,” you said, pausing mid-bite of a wafer, “what got you into tarot in the first place?”

oh no. oh no no no.

he froze, a deer in the headlights of your curiosity. because what was he supposed to say? the truth—that he bought a deck at 2 a.m. because it was on sale and looked cool? that he’d learned most of it from random youtube videos and a couple of moderator banned reddit threads? or should he go full storyteller and spin a wild tale about a mysterious mentor who handed him a deck and told him his destiny was written in the cards? you tilted your head, waiting for an answer, and he realized he couldn’t bullshit this. you didn’t seem like the type to fall for theatrics, and even if you did, he couldn’t bring himself to lie to you.

“uh, okay, so, it’s not, like... that deep,” he began, scratching the back of his neck in the universal gesture of please don’t judge me. “basically, i was scrolling online one night, super late—like, 2 a.m. kinda late—and i saw this tarot deck on sale. it looked cool, so i bought it.”

you raised an eyebrow, and he scrambled to elaborate.

“and then i figured, y’know, i should probably learn how to use it, or else it’d just be, like, fancy cards lying around. so i watched some videos, read some guides... and, uh, here we are.” you stared at him for a moment, wafer halfway to your mouth. 

“so, let me get this straight. you became the campus tarot guy because of a 2 a.m. impulse buy?”

“...pretty much, yeah.”

and then you laughed. not a polite chuckle or a restrained giggle, but a full-on laugh that made his chest feel like it was doing somersaults. “oh my god,” you said, shaking your head. “that’s so lame. like, impressively lame.” he grinned, the tension easing out of his shoulders. “yeah, well, lame seems to be working for me so far.” you smirked, popping the rest of the wafer into your mouth. “fair point.” and just like that, the awkwardness melted away. geto might not have had a mind-blowing origin story, but seeing you smile like that? yeah, he didn’t need one.

-

as time went on, you didn’t even notice how seamlessly geto had woven himself into your life. it wasn’t a dramatic shift—no grand confessions or pivotal moments—but more like the slow, steady filling of spaces you hadn’t realized were empty.

it started with sitting together in every class. at first, it was coincidence—his seat just happened to be free. but then it became routine. he’d drape his bag over the back of the chair next to him, a silent reservation just for you, and you’d slide into it without a second thought.

then came the library sessions. you told yourself it was practical; after all, two heads were better than one when it came to deciphering medieval metaphors. but somewhere along the way, practicality blurred into something else. the quiet companionship of those shared hours, the way you’d nudge his shoulder when he started to doze off, the small, secret smiles exchanged over the tops of textbooks—it all felt intimate. you thought about bringing it up, that the library was where you’d first met, but the idea felt too sentimental, too vulnerable. surely he didn’t remember that tiny detail. 

little did you know, geto did remember. it was one of those memories he kept tucked away, revisiting it like a favorite line in a book.

of course, studying with geto came with its quirks. like the way he couldn’t resist pulling out his tarot deck every chance he got. 

“do you really think the cards are gonna tell you if you’ll pass this exam?” you’d huff, grabbing the deck from his hands before he could shuffle it. “well, they’ve been right before,” he’d tease, leaning just a little too close as he reached for them.

“maybe if you spent half as much time studying as you do asking the cards, you wouldn’t need to worry about passing.”

he’d laugh, the kind of laugh that made his eyes crinkle at the corners. “yeah, but where’s the fun in that?” you’d swat his arm, and he’d pretend to be mortally wounded, clutching at the spot like you’d struck him with a sword. but secretly? that little bit of contact was enough to make his heart race. every single time.

and then there was the way you challenged him—gently, but firmly—to rely less on his cards.

“tarot’s supposed to guide you,” you’d say, flipping through his notes while he doodled idly in the margins. “not run your life.”

he didn’t argue, mostly because you were right. and slowly, he started to take your advice. he still used the cards, of course, but not for every little thing. he began to let the unpredictability of life happen, unfiltered by fate or forewarning. and you know what? it wasn’t all that bad. in fact, it was starting to grow on him—this strange, chaotic, beautiful mess of living. because somewhere in the middle of all the unpredictability was you, and that made it more than worth it.

-

you know that sinking feeling when you realize your phone is low-key betraying you? yeah, that’s the exact sensation creeping up your spine as you sit cross-legged on your dorm bed, thumb mindlessly scrolling through reels. your current mission: find the perfect meme or video to send to geto. because yes, somewhere between tarot readings and shared library snacks, you two finally exchanged instagram handles. a milestone, honestly. but of course, the universe has other plans. 

as you scroll past a cat dancing to eurobeat, your screen flashes with a promoted ad: “astrotalk – find the answers to life here!” 

right. because you were definitely talking about astrology out loud earlier. thank you, zuck.  just as you’re about to swipe away, your phone does what it does best—it lags. your double tap, meant to like a reel, somehow registers as download app. the ding of success seals your fate. 

“oh, for fuck’s sake,” you mutter, staring at the app’s cheerful icon now grinning at you from your home screen. you consider deleting it immediately but curiosity gets the better of you. besides, it’s not like anyone’s here to judge. so you open the app.

bright colors, cheesy taglines, and a cartoon moon with a winking face greet you. honestly, it’s a little cringe, but who cares? the app boasts a free love consultation for first-time users. after that? a steep $45 per reading. capitalism at its finest.

“might as well milk the freebie,” you mumble, tapping through the options.

it asks for your star sign first. easy. you enter it. then it asks for your potential match’s star sign. you blink.

why… why is geto’s sign the first one to pop into your head? you tell yourself it’s because his birthday came up recently, and you remember him casually mentioning he was an aquarius. totally not because you’ve been secretly keeping tabs.

you type it in and hit submit.

the screen takes a moment to load, suspense building as though the app is calculating the mysteries of the universe instead of running a basic algorithm. then, the results flash on the screen:

“YOU AND YOUR PARTNER ARE 90% COMPATIBLE! STRONG BOND POTENTIAL!”

“partner?” you scoff, a little too loudly for the empty room. “calm down, bro. we’re not even… ugh.” but you can’t help the heat creeping up your neck. because why does this feel so validating? like the app just confirmed something you weren’t ready to admit out loud. you toss your phone onto the bed, trying to ignore the way your heart flutters a little. “it’s just an app,” you mutter, flopping back onto your pillow. but as you stare at the ceiling, you can’t stop wondering. 90% compatible, huh? maybe the universe isn’t entirely out to get you.

the party was already in full swing by the time you and geto arrived, the unmistakable thrum of bass-heavy music vibrating through the walls and into your chest. the house, courtesy of everyone’s favorite socialite, gojo satoru, was packed wall to wall with students desperate to blow off steam after a particularly brutal exam season. the air was a heady mix of sweat, cheap booze, and cigarette smoke, oddly comforting in its chaos. fairy lights were strung haphazardly across the ceiling, casting a soft, golden glow over the sea of bodies swaying in time to the music. 

as you stepped inside, your senses were immediately overwhelmed. the sticky heat of too many people crammed into one space hit you first, followed by the sharp tang of tequila and the smoky haze from a makeshift smoking area in the corner. the living room-turned-dancefloor was packed with a crowd that was equal parts gyrating and stumbling. “guess we’re really doing this,” you said, glancing at geto, who had already started scanning the room like he was bracing himself for impact.

his expression faltered for a moment before he shrugged. “it’s either this or another night of staring at my tarot cards, and they’re tired of me asking if i’ll pass my exams.” you laughed, shaking your head. “let’s get some drinks before this place gets even worse.”

before you could make it to the kitchen, a whirlwind of energy that could only be gojo grabbed geto by the arm. "hey, suguboo! come join the crew—nanami’s actually drinking tonight. it’s a miracle!" geto shot you a quick, apologetic look before being dragged off toward a cluster of familiar faces gathered near the makeshift DJ setup. you waved him off, muttering a quick "have fun" as you made your way toward the kitchen.

it was just as packed as the rest of the house, though marginally quieter. bottles of every cheap liquor imaginable lined the counters, accompanied by mismatched plastic cups and a suspiciously sticky floor. and that’s when you saw them—choso and yuki. 

yuki’s bright smile was the first thing to catch your eye. she had that annoyingly magnetic energy, the kind that made it impossible to dislike her, even if she was spiking your drink to make it strong enough to knock out a small horse. “hey” she greeted, her voice cutting through the noise with ease. “you made it! here, have a drink—trust me, you need it after those exams.” you watched as she poured a generous amount of something clear and suspiciously strong into a cup, topping it off with a splash of what you hoped was juice.

choso stood next to her, his usual brooding aura softened just slightly by the festive atmosphere. he gave you a polite nod, but his attention was mostly on yuki as she handed you the drink. “uh, thanks,” you said, accepting the cup with a wary glance. it smelled potent, but the night was young, and if there was ever a time to throw caution to the wind, it was now.

as you took a sip—too strong, just as you’d expected—you couldn’t help but glance toward the living room, wondering how long it would take for geto to escape gojo’s clutches. something about the night felt charged, like the universe was waiting for something to happen. and for once, you weren’t entirely sure if you were ready for it.

you had barely processed yuki excusing herself to the ladies' room when half a cup of whatever unholy concoction she poured you started working its magic. stars were dancing in your vision, and your internal monologue was a mix of “am i drunk, or is this enlightenment?” and “what if i just lay down on this sticky floor and let the universe take me?” choso, ever the picture of stoic composure, stood by sipping his own drink, completely unaffected. in your infinite drunken wisdom, you decided now was the perfect time to recount the tarot reading debacle to him. because why not relive your most embarrassing moment at a house party with the person who unknowingly kickstarted it all?

“so, ya know,” you started, gesturing dramatically with your cup, “there was this thing that happened with geto's reading. you were there! nodding at me like i’d just won the love lottery or whatever. and i—oh my god, i thought you were into me.” choso blinked, unbothered as ever, though you noticed a faint crease of amusement in his brow. “uh-huh,” he said, taking another sip of his drink.

“yeah! and then i find out,” you continued, pointing at him accusatorily, “that you were actually into yuki, and i was out here thinking i was the main character in this tragic medieval romance novel! turns out, i wasn’t even in the prologue.” choso raised an eyebrow. 

“to be fair, it was obvious you and geto would make a good match.”

the words hit you like a brick. you and geto?

“wait,” you said, staring at him like he’d just spoken in tongues. “me and geto? suguru? you’re telling me all that nodding and cryptic behavior was because you thought we’d be a good match?”

he nodded. “you both have this... thing. sensitive, charming, dreamy—”

“don’t,” you cut him off, holding up a finger, the fog in your brain clearing so fast it was dizzying. “don’t you dare finish that sentence.”

“healing,” choso finished anyway, unbothered by your rapidly spiraling state.

you stood there, frozen, the memory of that reading slamming into you like a wrecking ball.

was he sensitive? yes. charming? puppy-eyed charm for days. dreamy? don’t get me started. healing? in the most absurd ways possible. mutual feelings? please, universe, say yes.

“oh my god,” you muttered, dropping your drink on the counter with a thunk. “oh my god.” choso sighed, shaking his head. “you’re really dense, aren’t you? no offense.”

“offense taken!” you snapped, already spinning on your heels. “but also, thanks, i gotta go.”

“what are you—?”

“find him!” you yelled over your shoulder, already weaving through the sweaty bodies on the dance floor like a woman on a mission. behind you, choso sighed dramatically, swirling his drink like he was in a shakespearean tragedy. “'tis true, love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind.’”

"stop quoting a midsummer night’s dream!" you shouted back, not even turning around.

you were a woman possessed as you weaved through the chaos of the party, dodging sweaty couples, discarded cups, and one guy inexplicably attempting to juggle shot glasses. where is he? you muttered under your breath, your eyes scanning every corner. 

finally, you spotted geto sprawled on a couch in the corner of the room, looking like he was having an existential crisis at a house party—one leg thrown over the armrest, his hair half tied and half rebelliously escaping, his long legs stretched out like he owned the couch, and his expression screamed, "why am i here and how can i leave without offending anyone?" apparently, gojo and the gang had taken off to drunkenly compete in a swim-to-the-other-side-of-the-pool-without-drowning race, and geto, the only one with common sense, had respectfully declined.

your heart did a weird little flip-flop at the sight of him, though whether it was from nerves or the bacardi yuki had spiked your drink with, you couldn’t tell. however, had bigger problems. like the fact that your heart was about to stage a mutiny and jump right out of your chest. how were you even going to start this?

hey, i realized i love you the minute you showed up to class with vitamin gummies for me.or maybe it was when you emailed me, “just checking in” like a gentleman from the 1800s. or maybe it was every time you did something ridiculously thoughtful like it was nothing.

you took a deep breath, but all that came out was, "hey."

geto looked up, blinking at you like he wasn’t sure if you were real or just a figment of his daydreams. "oh. hey."

good start, you thought. very articulate.

you shuffled closer, ignoring the pounding in your chest. "uh, so... how’s the couch treating you?" he blinked again, a small smile tugging at his lips. "better than gojo’s swimming plans, i can tell you that much."

"right, yeah," you laughed awkwardly, standing there like a statue while your brain scrambled to form coherent thoughts. geto tilted his head, a soft chuckle escaping him. "you okay? you look like you’ve seen a ghost—or yuki with another drink for you."

"ha, funny," you said, before blurting out, "actually, i’ve been running around looking for you." his eyes widened slightly, and he sat up straighter, suddenly looking both amused and terrified. "oh? should i be worried?"

"no! no," you said quickly, waving your hands like you were fending off an accusation. "i just... there’s something i need to say, and, uh—look, i swear it’s not the bacardi talking." geto raised an eyebrow, clearly unconvinced. "you sure? because venus is in retrograde right now, and it’s messing with everyone’s feelings."

you froze. "wait, what?"

"venus. retrograde," he repeated, gesturing vaguely like that explained everything. "you know, the planet of love and all that? it’s doing its thing, so if this is about some cosmic realization—"

"no!" you interrupted, louder than intended, earning a few glances from nearby partygoers. "this isn’t about venus or renegades or whatever. this is about me. and you."

that got his attention. his smile faltered, and for a moment, he just stared at you, eyes wide, lips parted like he was afraid to speak.

"look," you continued, words tumbling out faster than your brain could process them. "i don’t care if mercury’s in gatorade or saturn’s doing cartwheels—i like you. no, wait, i love you. i love you because you care about things that no one else notices, because you do the kindest things without making a big deal out of it. because you..." you hesitated, your voice softening, "you make life feel... lighter. and if this ruins everything, then fine. but i needed you to know."

poor geto looked like he was experiencing every emotion known to man simultaneously. he let out a shaky laugh, running a hand through his hair. "are you sure you’re not drunk?"

"i love you," you repeated, because apparently, one humiliating confession wasn’t enough. "i mean, who wouldn’t? you’re... you’re geto! you bring vitamin gummies to class, you email me just to check in, and you—you just do these little things like they’re nothing, but they mean everything to me. and i—god, this is so embarrassing. i probably sound insane, don’t i?"

"no," he said quickly, his voice soft but firm. "no, you don’t. i—"

"oh my god," you cut him off, suddenly burying your face in your hands. "this is the bacardi talking. forget i said anything. or—or don’t forget. i don’t know. i’m spiraling, suguru. help."

"hey, hey," he said, leaning forward, his hands hovering awkwardly near yours as if he wanted to comfort you but didn’t want to scare you off. "breathe, okay? it’s fine."

you peeked at him through your fingers. "it is?"

he didn’t say anything at first. instead, he reached out, gently taking your hand in his. "yeah," he said quietly. 

"for the record," his lips twitching into the faintest of smiles, "venus retrograde has nothing to do with this. i’ve been in love with you since the first time you helped me with my books in the library."

you blinked. "wait, what?"

"yeah," he repeated, scratching the back of his neck sheepishly. "honestly, i’ve been in love with you for ages. i just—i didn’t think you’d feel the same way. you’re kind of out of my league, you know?"

"me? out of your league?" you laughed, the sound a little wobbly but genuine. "geto, you’re literally the human equivalent of a prince. you’re smart, you’re sweet, you’re ridiculously pretty—"

"okay, stop," he said, his face turning pink.

"no, seriously!" you insisted, a grin spreading across your face. "i’m half-convinced you’re not even real sometimes."

"well," he said, finally letting himself laugh, "if i’m not real, then who’s been buying you vitamin gummies and writing you sappy emails?"

"touché," you said, smiling back at him.

"love is a silly thing," he added, smiling softly. "but with you? it’s my favorite thing."

and just like that, your heart found its home.

thank you for reading till the end 🙂‍↕️ this is probably one of the shortest fics i've ever written LOL, the more i look at it the more unsatisfactory it gets.....but erm anyways blame that on the burnout 🕺!! i hope you liked reading this regardless, the concept has been on my mind for a while now ☆⌒(*＾-゜)v as usual, my "which reader are you" quiz has been updated with this fic as well, so be sure to take it and let me know if you got this fic or not! <3

[ceilidho]

fear of god

There's someone outside the spacecraft. You don't remember them being part of the crew. Part 9 masterlist

-

Knock until something answers or until your knuckles pass straight through. 

After Gaz leaves your lab, you spend the rest of the afternoon working on your research, doing your level best to ignore the blood samples sitting in the refrigeration unit on the other side of the room. You normally wouldn’t have to wait very long before running your tests, but you do because you can’t shake the feeling that you are on the threshold of some atrocious becoming, the bloodletting preceding destruction. 

You hadn’t thought of your life up to this point as some prelapsarian time, but the fall seems imminent. 

The tedium of day gives way to the disquietude of night, when all else settles down and the ship hums itself to sleep. You skip supper and head back to your room instead, whittling away the hours with a word search book that ends with you circling the same word over and over again like you can’t find another one. You find yourself writing it even in the margins of the book. 

Alien. 

And it is a whisper quiet thought because you know that if you look at it too hard, you’ll only end up doubting yourself. Write off all of the strange occurrences happening around you as coincidence or all in your head when you know that they are not.

There’s no chance you’ll sleep with the worries weighing on your mind, so instead of trying, you slip out of your room when the ship slips into the deepest part of its night cycle.

The door to your room slides shut softly behind you. It is quiet in the hallway. 

For as many times as you’ve been in space, it’s never felt as alien as now. Perhaps because you’ve always regarded the inky darkness surrounding the ship with a careful, neutral ambivalence. Also perhaps because, consciously or not, you’ve always assumed that there was nothing else out there.

But in the days since Gaz first knocked on the porthole and asked to come inside, your perspective has shifted. 

One of the lights flickers on your wall down the main corridor and you pause for a moment to watch it flicker. It goes out entirely for a handful of seconds before coming back on.

Down the hall you go, the long isthmus between bow and stern, stopping every once in a while to examine the walls and metal flooring. You even sit on the staircase leading down from the orlop deck to the cargo hold to stare at the rusted metal grates. When you test it with your finger, the rust feels real enough. It has that rough, grainy texture, and when you pull your finger away, a faint residue transfers to the pad of your finger. 

Strange. All this time you’ve lived on the ship and yet not once have you noticed anything like this. 

The stairs aren’t rusted enough to warrant reporting it this very second, but you make a mental note to mention it to someone in the morning. 

In the cargo hold, you crouch behind a pallet stacked with crates of supplies on the far end of the hold and stare at a corner of the wall. The interior panelling has started to chip away at the bottom of the corner, chunks of it flaking off when you dig your fingers into the hole. You find more as you scan the hold, even the fire baffles on the ceiling looking a bit rusted when you squint your eyes. 

You wrack your brain for some memory of ever noticing these defects before but nothing comes to mind. 

It’s almost as if, in small, nearly imperceptible ways, the ship has been slowly starting to corrode. The materials themselves seem to be breaking down at an exponentially increasing rate, as if something were sucking the vitality from them. While you can’t deny that the ship is still as functional as the day it left Earth, the longer you stare at some of the finer details, the more things that you remember previously looking adequate enough now seem to be on the verge of decay.  

Can you trust what’s in front of you though? You press harder into the gouge in the wall with your finger, wincing when it slices through the skin and a bead of blood wells up. Can you trust what you’re looking at? 

And what does it mean if you’re right? 

The longer you stare, the more your head hurts. The bubble of blood on your fingertip swells when you press your nail into the skin beside it. 

It would be better for your sanity if you could stop questioning everything, but you can’t change what you are. You exist in accordance with your nature like all things do. 

Another time around the cargo hold before exhaustion starts getting the better of you. You won’t find anything that you haven’t already found.

The walk back to your quarters feels twice as long, winding through dimly lit corridors that echo with the sound of your footsteps. 

Your footsteps echo behind you for a beat too long, as if the ship were bigger than its true size, or as if there were someone following behind you, beat for beat except for the occasional slip.

When one rings a bit too loud, you stop and turn on your heel, staring into the darkness, waiting for something to emerge or the footsteps to keep following you down the hall. 

Apart from the ever present hum rumbling through the ship, the corridor stays quiet. You let out a breath. Everything seems menacing at this time of night. Just the mind playing tricks on itself. 

You keep walking towards your room, ignoring the way your footsteps echo behind you again, just a beat off.

In the morning, you run Gaz’s blood through the centrifuge and wait for the solid and liquid components to separate while you putter around on the other side of the room. Your coffee is cold before you manage to take your first sip. 

Nauseous from skipping breakfast, your empty stomach grumbles, hunger pangs shooting through you. Better that you don’t eat though, for fear of losing the contents of your stomach at a moment’s notice. That’s the overwhelming feeling that you’ve been carrying with you since sneaking back to your quarters early in the morning—that anything might make it all come up. 

The coffee goes down bitter and ice cold. It makes your mouth taste somewhat stale, thick on the back of your tongue no matter how many times you clear your throat and swallow. It might’ve tasted better had you lingered a bit longer in the galley to find the milk capsules, but you’d been in a hurry to rush back to the medbay, not interested in running across Gaz or anyone else.

Then the centrifuge beeps, and you realize that you can’t get up from your chair. 

It’s not that you can’t physically get up, it’s just that every molecule in your being is fighting the urge to do so. All of your anxiety is pressed right up against your sternum, gathered tight beneath your bones; a terrible sense of foreboding that accompanies everything you do these days. 

Eventually, you summon the nerve to rise to your feet and cross the room, hesitating in front of the centrifuge for only a moment before opening the lid. 

It looks normal from the outset, the liquid and solid components separated in the tube with the platelets forming a layer between the red blood cells and plasma. You carry on with removing the supernatant fluid with a pipette and transferring the liquid component into a new test tube, getting everything ready for your tests. 

Under the microscope, you look at what seem to be normal, human blood cells.  Biconcave discs; mostly red blood cells, with a stray neutrophil floating around under the topmost slide. They behave and move so normally that at first you just observe them as you might anyone else’s blood sample, checking for any abnormalities or deficiencies. 

And then, you find them. 

It isn’t easy to make sense of what you’re seeing at first, and the longer you look at it, the less sense it makes. A neutrophil with a fat nucleus swims leisurely around until it encounters a group of red blood cells. The blood cells, stained in order to make them visible, swarm and then part, behaving perfectly normal until the second they don’t. 

You can’t make sense of what you’re looking at because what you’re looking at defies sense. It almost looks like cells cannibalizing other cells, but not quite, the cells not quite consuming one another so much as amalgamating and disappearing entirely. Warping into increasingly strange shapes. 

Cells merge with other cells and then split again, trapped in an endless cycle of death and rebirth, and the only thing you can think of is a tesseract folding in on itself. You’re losing something crucial, something invisible to you—invisible because it transcends your ability to perceive it. A shape turning in a higher dimension. 

The dread builds the longer you look. Your excuses keep piling up—bad samples and lack of sleep—but they feel flimsy, even paltry in comparison to the larger suspicion that has been hounding you these past few days. 

You push your chair away from the table and back up as far as you can until it hits something behind you. Short of breath. Heart pounding in your chest, but this time it’s almost painful. You’re not strong enough to stand at first, at least not without holding onto the back of your chair. 

The medbay door glides shut behind you as you leave, slowly breaking into a run as you head down the main hall, looking for someone else to verify what you saw under the microscope. The mess and galley are empty when you check them, much to your consternation, but you find Hadir in the tiny fitness area a few minutes later, sweating through a round of overhead presses. 

“Morning,” he greets when he spots you from out of the corner of his eye. “You’re not working out in that are you?”

He’s referring, of course, to your lab coat and uniform pants, which are hardly appropriate gym wear. Your ability to joke around is nonexistent though. Hadir must register that from the look on your face though because his arms slowly come down to his sides, a sweat-drenched brow arching in question. 

“Hadir, you went to med school, right?” you ask him.

“I was in nursing school before I dropped out, but—” he corrects, only for you to cut him off before he’s able to add anything else. 

“That’s fine—I need you to look at something for me. Do you have a sec?” 

He goes quiet for a moment and then nods, racking the weights before following you out of the gym. 

The walk back to the medical unit feels like a death march, with you leading the way. Your steps echo through the hall, each one louder somehow. Deafening. The pit in your stomach is bottomless—no matter how far down you go, you keep falling. You’ve done this with Hadir before, leading him towards something that you know in your gut is wrong without the confidence to call it what it is.

The microscope is still there on the table when you walk back into the medbay. The hair on the back of your neck lifts when you lay eyes on it. 

“There.” You point towards the microscope, not taking a step towards it. 

Hadir’s eyebrows furrow. He looks over at it and then back at you. “Okay.”

He crosses the room silently and pulls up a stool, settling in before adjusting the chair and microscope for his height. A tense few seconds pass while you wait for him to adjust everything to his measurements before he leans in to look through the eyepiece.

Then all is quiet.

You don’t know how long it’ll take for him to notice what you noticed, so all you can do is wait anxiously until he does. Or until he doesn’t—another possibility that hangs over you like a guillotine’s blade. 

Hadir looks through the eyepiece for what feels like an hour, so focused on the slide in front of him that you can hardly even hear him breathe. 

“What are these?” he asks when he finally pulls away from the eyepiece, looking at you from over his shoulder. 

“Blood cells.”

“You’re sure these are only blood cells?”

“Yes.” You don’t make mistakes, especially not with a simple procedure like this. 

“These…these don’t look like blood cells.” He bends his head to look again, staring more intently this time. “I mean they do, but… Where did you get these, doc?”

“I pulled those from Gaz yesterday during his physical,” you admit quietly. 

Again Hadir pulls away from the eyepiece to look over his shoulder at you. The look on his face is inscrutable, much like his sister. You wish you could see behind it and read his thoughts somehow. If only you didn’t have to guess every time. If only his gaze didn’t make you feel so raw and vulnerable, exposed belly ripe for vivisection.

“This is Gaz’s blood?” 

“Yes.”

Another prolonged moment of silence. 

“Doc, I don’t know what this is, but this can’t be someone’s blood. I may not actually be a nurse, but I’ve seen enough blood to know what it should look like.”

“I promise you it is. I drew those yesterday and no one’s been in here since.”

Hadir rolls away from the table, turning to face you fully. “What’s your opinion then? Why’d you ask me to come look at this?”

Here’s where it gets tricky. Because coming to the conclusion that you have internally already come to is one thing, but actually putting it to words is a much more laborious task, one requiring a kind of delicacy and cunning that you have never exactly possessed. 

“I think—” you start, struggling to get the words out. “That if…that if that is inside of Gaz…we need to start having a different conversation.”

“Doc, if anything, I think maybe he’s just sick.” There it is again. That whisper of condemnation. A glimmer of suspicion so faint that you would almost doubt yourself if your mind wouldn’t stop screaming why can’t you open your eyes? Why won’t you just believe me?

“You know that’s not true,” you snap, too severe. “He’s not sick—I’m not even sure he’s a person. This is—this is beyond fucked up. Those cells aren't human.”

He just stares at you, deeply unnerved by your outburst, like his fear is stretched so thin that he can’t see it for what it is. 

“At least let me—can you at least just—” The right words keep slipping from your grasp, too slippery to catch them. “Can you—…just…I need you to just believe me this time…” You trail off completely as it gets harder and harder to breathe. 

“Hey, hey, okay, take it easy,” Hadir says soothingly, getting to his feet, his hands outstretched like he means you no harm.

He moves until he’s right in front of you, hands braced on your shoulders to centre you. Whatever his intention, it doesn’t help. 

“He’s doing something to us,” you breathe, throat so tight that your voice breaks on multiple words. 

“Doctor, he’s not doing anything to us—he just looks sick. Or there’s just something wrong with the blood sample.”

You shake your head. “No. No. Hadir, it’s not just this, it’s—it’s everything.”

“What do you mean ‘everything’?” He sounds almost baffled.

“How he got here—the tests—his smell—the way everything’s like…fucking falling apart. Even Farah promised to keep an eye on him.”

He blinks. “Farah said she’d keep an eye on Gaz?”

You know you promised to keep it between the two of you, but you can’t help blurting it out when there’s a chance it might make Hadir take you seriously. “Yes! Because she knows there’s something wrong with this. We shouldn’t have found a man out in the middle of space when there’s no one else around for millions of miles!”

And you can’t understand how no one else seems at all suspicious when every single thing about Gaz’s sudden appearance on the ship is making alarms go off in your head. It’s like you’re inhabiting a separate reality from everyone else and perceiving things that aren’t really there. Like you are being pried away from their world. 

Hadir’s hands tighten around your shoulders. “Let’s just—let’s take a breath, okay?” 

You’re reluctant to acquiesce, but the look in his eyes tells you that it’s not up for negotiation. He leads you through a simple breathing exercise. Four seconds in, hold for seven, and then exhale for eight. You repeat it until the room stops swimming. 

“We both agree that there’s something wrong with those samples,” Hadir finally says, trying to reassure you. “I’m on your side, okay, doc?” You nod, swallowing. “Why don’t you just redo the test then?”

“But I didn’t do anything wrong,” you whisper. 

“I know, but things happen, right? Maybe the lid wasn’t sealed properly or you didn’t swab Gaz’s arm before taking his blood—”

“I did swab his arm,” you object, but your throat is too tight and the words come out too soft to make an impact. Hadir breezes past like you didn’t say anything. 

“The point is—it’s not your fault. It’s completely normal to make mistakes. Just destroy these samples and ask him to come back so you can take new ones. I can even help if you want—I’ll be your second pair of eyes.”

You want to protest. You want to take Hadir by the shoulders and shake him until he admits that what’s in front of his eyes is actually there—that you can’t keep pretending like everything’s normal. It would be a pointless battle though. He simply doesn’t believe you. 

The worst part is that you’re grateful that at least your eyes haven’t failed you. At least Hadir saw what you saw, his own conclusions aside. At least you have that reassurance, despite how hopeless everything else feels. 

You take a step back, his hands falling from your shoulders. “Fine. I’ll get a new blood sample and run the tests again.”

“Doc—”

“No,” you cut him off, forcing a tight smile. “It’s fine. You’re right. I’ll let you know when I have Gaz come in again and we can look at the new sample together. Sorry to pull you from your workout.”

Hadir’s lips flatten as he stares at you, searching for something to say that never materializes. Maybe he sees the pointless battle in your eyes as well. 

“Okay…ping me when you do,” he says, letting it go. “Remember, I’m on your side.”

There’s a fine tremor in your hands when he leaves. And though embarrassment keeps you from meeting his eyes on his way out, you tell yourself again that he’s done you a service in confirming what you saw, that at least this has given you new footing to stand on. 

You remind yourself of that as you feel your feet begin to slip from under you.

[bobothetalkingclown]

This advice of "put dark stuff in kids media" has always rubbed me the wrong way, but I think I've found a way to make it make sense to me, so I'll explain it here.

I hated scary stories as a kid, and avoided them at all costs. The sort of spooky kids stories that are supposed to reassure children? I hated them! I couldn't stand the thought of them.

I also had a strange sense of what "scary" meant. I read history books that dryly recounted some truly terrible things (nuclear war, Holocaust, that sort of stuff), to the point where I was confused by America's reaction to 9/11. Wasn't "thousands of people die a violent death" a normal occurrence?

I even read a children's bible that had some pretty typically brutal old testament stories in them. And yet, I could barely watch Disney's Cinderella without wanting to leave the room when the cat chased the mice! It took me till I was a teenager to tolerate "normal action movie" levels of drama, and until I was an adult to actually tolerate horror.

The thing is, I didn't want to read stories that had peril in them. As in, I didn't like it when a character was like, chased or captured. I hated suspense. This story isn't me criticizing OP, it's mostly to point out that the stuff kids find off-putting or scary is frankly just as untethered from convention as they stuff that they crave!

The idea that a child has a conventional idea of what is "acceptable" and "unacceptable", and then recoil from the unacceptable is frankly ludicrous. They don't know those rules, so they don't know how to apply them.

That's not to say there's nothing inappropriate to show a child, or that it's impossible to scare or traumatize them. It's more to say that you need to understand that "kids" isn't a single, unified category that behaves predictably. Understanding them as individuals with different comfort levels about different stuff is critical to treating them as, well, people!

It is vital for kids shows to have the horrors in them. The children YEARN for the horrors. They CRAVE the horrors. I craved the horrors and so will the next generation. And so will the next. Years and years and years of craving the horrors. Which is why you gotta put scaries into the kids stories.

[arc-misadventures]

A Mother's Desire

Jaune: You okay, Nora? You're buzzing about more so than usual.

Nora: Ohhh! I'm just so excited to meet my mom again?

Pyrrha: Your mom? Wait, didn't your mom abandon you during a, Grimm attack?

Nora: Huw? Oh, no that was my birth mother who did that. We're going to see my adoptive mother! Also my true mother, and maker of the most glorious pancakes there are!

Oscar: I thought, Jaune made the best pancakes ever?

Nora: He makes the best blueberry pancakes ever! Mom makes the best pancakes ever!

Oscar: Does that count?

Jaune: Yes, but actually no.

Oscar: ...

Oscar: Nora logic?

Pyrrha: Nora logic.

Oscar: Okay.

Nora: Okay everyone, behold my home, and my mother!

(Knock knock knock!)

Nora: Hi, Mom! I'm home!

(Click.)

: Nora? Nora~!

Nora: Mom!

: Oh how long has it been, it feels like it's been ages since we last met!

Nora: I missed you, Mom!

: And, I missed you too my little lighting bolt~!

Nora: Now then, I want to introduce my teammates!

Nora: First we have, Pyrrha Nikos.

Pyrrha: Hello, Ma'am!

: Nikos? Are you, Athena's daughter?

Pyrrha: Athena Nikos? Yeah, that's my mom!

: You mom, and I are great friends, we have tea together every other day.

Pyrrha: Oh, she never mentioned this before.

: It was after you two left for, Beacon Academy.

Pyrrha: Oh. Maybe the four of us can get together for tea one day.

: I would like that~!

Oscar: Hello, Ma'am. My, name is, Oscar Pin, I'm...?!

Nora: He's my boyfriend!

: Oh really now~?

Oscar: No we're... We've only gone on a few dates... well... This isn't how I wanted to be introduced to your mother...

Nora: Shut your cute face! This is always how it was going to happen!

Oscar: Yeah, it probably was how it was going to happen...

Nora: And, last but not least!

Jaune: Hello, name is, Jaune Arc. It's nice to meet you, Ms...? I'm sorry, but I didn't get your...

Jaune: Name...

: Oh? How rude of me I didn't introduce myself! Hello everyone my name is, Ann Ren, Nora's adoptive mother. It's a pleasure to meet you all!

Jaune: The pleasure... the pleasure is mine, Ms. Ren.

Ann: It's mine as well, Jaune~!

Jaune: O-Okay...

Nora: Ohhh~?

Ann: Well, I was about to make supper, would you care to help me, and then we can all enjoy supper together~!

Jaune: I'll help you, Ms. Ren! You doubt know, Nora shouldn't be allowed near the kitchen.

Ann: Indeed I do...

Jaune: But, Pyrrha is just as bad as, Nora is. Actually she's a little worse than, Nora actually.

Ann: Really? Does she cause electrical surges with her semblance too?

Jaune: And, rip them out of their electrical sockets.

Ann: Wait, really?

Jaune: Her semblance is polarity. You can guess what can happen when her semblance goes haywire. Especially when she has a cold...

Pyrrha: I'm sorry!

Jaune: Oscar could help, but...?

Nora: Hey, Ossie~! You want to see my bedroom~?

Oscar: Uhhhh?!

Ann: Oh?

Jaune: So, yeah, I'll help you make supper.

Ann: Okay then. Hey, Pyrrha sweetie?

Pyrrha: Yes?

Ann: Why don't you invite your mother here? She can join us all for supper, I'm sure she would love that~!

Pyrrha: She would love that! I'll go call her now!

Ann: Wonderful~! Now, Nora sweetie come here.

Nora: What is it, Mom?

Ann: Now, I know you're planning to enjoy some time alone with your boyfriend in your room for some... Snu snu~!

Nora: Major levels of Snu snu~!

Ann: Okay, normally, as your mother I would be against you sleeping with your boyfriend in my house.

Nora: But~?

Ann: The way, Jaune was eyeing me... Is he... Is he single...?

Nora: Single, ready to mingle, and as hung as a horse~!

Ann: Oh~? In that case, watch closely. Mama is about to snares herself a man~!

Ann: Jaune~! Are you ready to start cooking?

Jaune: Yep, just let me take off my sweater, I don't want to get it dirty.

Jaune: ...

Jaune: There, ready to cook, Ms. Ren!

Ann: Ara ara, Jaune~! You look like your already cooking~!

Jaune: O-oh... t-thank you, Ms. Ren.

Ann: Remember, Jaune I asked you to call me, Ann~!

Nora: Oh... so that's how you seduce a guy... I was just going to flash, Oscar my tits...

Oscar: C-Can you still do that...?

Nora: ...?

Nora: Ah-Hehehe~! I can do a whole lot more than that, my little pookie~!

[postoctobrist]

Echoing the nervous egg from a couple weeks back: How nervous do you think trans people in the US should be? The Internet being what it is the takes from normally sensible trans people seem to vary wildly from "This is all unconstitutional" which, lol, to "They are going to fucking kill us". What do you think is the reasonable level of terror for a trans American to be living with at the moment?

Also aside unrelated to the horrors: I've thought you were *attractive* before on the KJB live vods but when you're dressed very casually like for the WTYP you're also *very* cute.

okay so you can’t control the bad things, nor your level of fear of the bad things, but you can control your plan and actions in response to the bad things. so I think best to focus on that. and that’s always going to be an individual determination with a lot of different risk factors going into it. I do not think they are going to kill all of us imminently, and what you need to do for yourself and your community (and I am asking you to proactively look for ways to help other trans people and make and keep those connections) look very different depending on where you are and your own circumstances. so I don’t think panic is useful - but all the same I’m not going to judge anyone for over-preparing, whether that means moving internally or leaving the US or buying pepper spray or buying a gun or stockpiling HRT or taking self-defence classes or doing voice training or literally whatever. you just have to try and make those as sober calculations as you can, knowing that these people want to frighten you out of public life and knowing that they cannot succeed, that it is a dangerous but futile effort and that we will keep ourselves and each other safe

[rec-flies-away]

The 0-10 pain scale us relative, though. A pain that makes you cry and struggle to think isn’t a 2, it’s 6-8 somewhere.

0 is when you feel like you have no pain. If that sounds hard to conceptualise, you might always be in pain.

1 is a faint background pain that you only notice when you think about it, and that’s really easy to ignore. A lot of you wouldn’t call this a pain. At 1, people might use words like ‘uncomfortable’ or ‘a bit annoying’ instead of pain.

At 2-3, it gets harder to ignore, but it’s still tolerable. You can still think normally and go about usual routines, but it’s more mental effort to ignore the pain.

At 4-5 the pain is getting distracting. Your thoughts start occasionally being interrupted or clouded by pain. You’re not really ignoring the pain anymore, just accepting its existence as background noise while trying to continue with other stuff. At this point several normal routine activities get affected, but it’s still tolerable.

6 is completely impossible to ignore, the pain is no longer background noise, but instead actively bothersome at all times. This is the beginning of untolerable levels of pain. At 6, usual activities and function is definitely impaired, but you’re not completely knocked out.

7-8 are more powerfully bothersome, impair your usual activities severely, and feel unmanageable. It’s normal to get a bit frantic at this level, whether that’s repositioning a lot to relieve it, trying everything that might help, or just having your thoughts race as your mind struggles to deal with the overwhelming pain.

9 stops all activities because the only thing that exists in your mind is the pain, what you might do about it, and immediate important basic needs/problems. 9 overpowers all other thought processes, and it usually gets harder to string words together. You might feel a bit like your body tries to move uncontrollably in response to the pain, but you can probably still somewhat control yourself if you really have to.

10 completely utterly consumes your mind, body, and emotions. If your body reacts with movement to the pain, you’re helpless to control it - you might drop to the ground, uncontrollably wither or spasm, squirm, scream, all kinds of basic body impulses can happen, and you won’t be able to control or resist them. At all. 10 dominates your whole world, there is nothing else than you and your pain. All activities are way out of the question, and even basic needs are pushed aside, not a priority. 10 is so extremely intolerable that it either passes quickly, or someone helps you - if neither happens, you’re going to either pass out or enter a very fucked up mental state that no person should be forced into.

The scale is relative.

But what about when a pain started as an 8, but over time you learnt to kind of push it into the back of your mind and go on with your day? That’s a normal process of learning to live with chronic pain, unfortunately. And some of you will hate to hear this, but that means your 8 is no longer an 8. You adapted, and the same pain that started as an 8 became a 6.

This is what adjusting to chronic pain means. Your scale shifts.

That doesn’t mean you need more points on the scale, because the scale was always subjective and relative. But it does mean you need to use some clarifying statements when advocating for yourself.

‘My 6 isn’t like your 6, when I say 6 it’s a very intense pain that most people would feel as an 8.’

‘I worked hard to learn to live with it, and my scale shifted. I still need your patience, it still takes a lot out of me.’

‘When this pain started, it was an 8 on most days and peaked at 9 during flares. While the pain feels the same still, it hits me more as a 6, with 5 on good days and flares at 7.’

‘My goal is pain that I can actually ignore, instead of living with the constant distracting background noise. My goal with treatment is getting this pain below 4.’

‘When I say my pain is a [number], what I mean is that it’s [level of distracting], [amount of inpairment], [change to thoughts and voluntary movements].’

You aren’t at 9 of you’re going about your daily routines like always. Another person feeling the same pain might be at a 9, but you’re not. Not anymore. You learnt, adapted, adjusted.

You are an amazingly adaptive being, and learning to live with higher levels of pain is an impressive feat and skill. That’s what doctors mean when they say ‘course in coping with pain’. You figuring it out on your own is a good thing, even though the circumstances suck.

Doesn’t mean you deserve intense pain living at the back of your head all the time.

You can and should ask for help to get your pain down into ignorable levels, which is 1-3.

My ignorable pain might be somebody else’s 7, and that’s just how it is. The scale accounts for that by being relative and subjective.

And if you’re crying in pain, it’s not a 2. That’s at least 6. If you’re biting your hand in despair to make a toothache stop, don’t call it a 3, that’s devalidating yourself. That’s at least 7, likely 8 or 9. If you can’t think anymore due to a pain from an injury people claim doesn’t hurt much, don’t just say that you can’t think from a 3. Find the point on the scale that fits your subjective experience.

This goes both ways, guys.

If your tolerance is low, you hit higher numbers faster.

If your tolerance is high, you stay at lower numbers for longer.

It’s inherently subjective and treating it as anything but subjective is going to get you misunderstood, and that not only sucks but also can negatively affect your healthcare.

It’s okay to have low pain tolerance.

It’s okay to cry because your pain is at a 2 out of 10.

It’s okay to have higher tolerance for certain types of pain and lower tolerance for others.

It’s okay to be upset that your pain makes you dissociate, but not know any other way to deal with it.

Chronic pain is awful, period. Everyone who deals with it deserves compassion.

[spacegyaru]

cw: michael kaiser x afab! reader. all characters are aged 21+! (in this case, they're both 23) + pls don't read this if u haven't seen the first and second part. huge angst and confrontation. make up sex in the end so minors, dni! also, i tried my best to make it in character. i personally believe that kaiser is a cocky asshole except if the person he interacts with is someone who knows him from the past, or someone he's attached to in the past. so yep, i tried making him in character! 

part 1 / part 2 / this is pt. 3!

also here's my masterlist if you wanna see more 😉

word count: 1.7k+ words

three years after separation, you meet again in unexpected circumstances. but is it too late?

it's been three years since that time you forgot about michael kaiser. you were so hurt by what happened. it's as if he just left you in the air.

because of that, you just focused on your career and in working at the bakery. eventually, you've finished the culinary program that you were taking and was able to focus fully on your family business. apparently, you had to take over because both your parents are considering retirement. so you've worked on your way to the top. 

to you, kaiser became nothing but a painful memory. you thought he would protect you, but he was the first one to break your heart that way. anyway, you got over it and eventually accepted what happened. as what people say ‘it is what it is’. 

your bakery got bigger. aside from offering bread and pastries as menu, you also started serving other delicacies like meat, chicken, and etc. you made it really big and out of the slums when you decided to level things up by adding other recipes on the menu. 

you were able to invest a lot on yourself. you brought your family out of the slums and were able to help build a house for your parents in the rural area, as what they wanted for their retirement. you were also able to buy a car, your own house (out of the slums), and the small bakery that you owned no longer sits at the downtown slum area, but it is now located in the bustling streets of berlin.

as business continued to succeed, you decided to explore the world of catering. and boi, everyone loved it! you were striving as a successful person in the business industry. until eventually, a big offer landed on you.

you were asked to cater a huge ball for german celebrities. feeling great about the deal, you immediately accepted it.

tbh, you got a lot going on that you forgot about kaiser. from time to time, you would see him on tv, and you would think of the good old times. it would make you sad how things ended between the both of you, but then again, you’ve moved on. your heart hurts sometimes, but it's okay. things happen. 

so the day came. you were at the big event, in a huge venue. your staff worked in the kitchen while you were fixing everything— from decorations, to the food preparation, and to serving the food. you were kind struck in awe as you saw loads of people around. 

the night was normal. that was until you were serving some red wine to the guests and eventually, you bumped on someone. your eyes widened and apologized immediately.

“...y/n?” when you heard that, you stopped apologizing. your eyes widened as you saw him— michael kaiser.

you did not say anything. you stood up and stared at him for seconds before awkwardly leaving him alone. you formally apologized for the suit and left. you acted like a total stranger to him. and it made him a little bit confused. 

you tried so hard to avoid kaiser the whole night. you thought you already moved on but when you saw him, you felt your world crumbled. you remember the pain of losing someone important to you, and the pain of losing a best friend. the guy who ruined the whole concept of having a first love for you. 

after the event, one of the organizers called you and told you that one of the biggest investors for the event wanted to thank you personally and is waiting in his private suite. you didn't think about it that much so you followed along. 

and that investor is… of course, it's michael kaiser. when you saw him, you sighed and attempted to walk away, but he held your wrist as if he didn't want to let you go. 

when kaiser hugged you, you just stood there, feeling his touch. he back hugged you when you were trying to leave. your hand was still on the door knob, and your urge to leave was still there. but you seem to be so weak when it comes to his touch. 

“y/n, i've missed you…” kaiser said while hugging you. you just clicked your tongue and freed yourself from his hug. you gave him a look filled with irritation.

you reminded kaiser that he was the one who left. your voice was filled with bitterness while you said it. 

his brows furrowed and sighed while he said, “i know i did hurt you but please, just give me a chance? come on, we could make it work this time.”

you wanted to be harsh on him, but you also longed for him to the point that you still stood there and gave him a chance to explain. 

and he did. kaiser said that he would be guilty if you guys actually got together and he didn't give your relationship enough time. “liebling, i was so busy that time and i was so afraid of the fact i'll hurt you if i'll always be away. you have to forgive me. it's been lonely without you…” 

you looked at him for a moment before starting to embrace him. and he did hugged you back as if he will never let go. you didn't know what to expect when he eventually planted a kiss on your lips. 

kaiser’s kiss still felt the same. it gives you butterflies in the stomach. your heart felt warm as he held your hips. you started kissing back, but you pulled away. 

you looked at him with widened eyes as you realized what you did. you gave in to him again. after staring at him for seconds, you ran away out of the room. you swear you're gonna check the guestlist before accepting a big offer like that. 

days later, you were at your own restaurant, managing things on your own. you were about to head inside after throwing the trash, when someone suddenly dragged you. the man seem to wear a suspicious disguise. you were about to scream when he took off his face mask. of course, who? it's kaiser. michael kaiser. why is he so persistent in winning you back?

after few minutes, you found yourself inside his car. at the front seat. his car was parked in an empty alley. both of you didn't talk, until you broke the silence. you sighed before speaking. 

you asked him to explain the reason why he left. and then he did try to explain himself. his football career took a toll on him and he just knew that he would never have the time for you.

“i know i screwed up, but my career really got busy so i already knew that i would never have the time for you. but now, i'd be willing to give you more attention that you deserve.” 

after saying that in a more serious tone, kaiser began kissing your knuckles… then eventually, he ended up kissing you. and you… you ended up kissing back. you can't just resist his touch. 

both of you ended up making out in his car, until he carried you at the backseat. you continued your heated makeout session with your tongues battling with each other. his hands were placed on your hips, caressing your ass, while you focused on pulling him closer to you. 

the foreplay felt really nice. his tongue was on your neck while your knee was rubbing his cock, making sure he felt good. he smirked at your actions.

“since when did my little virgin liebling learned this? were you a bad girl while i was away?” 

you shook your head. you've given your entire focus on improving your career while he was gone. you thought you've moved on but here you are. still craving for the touch you felt years ago. 

“so you were a good girl all this time? i bet you waited for me.” kaiser gave you one kiss before lining the tip of his cock on the slit of your pussy. “you deserve to feel so good tonight, so i just want you to lay there, love. let me do everything.” 

again, you felt the tip of his cock enter your pussy. it's as if you were a virgin again. it's embarrassing to admit, but the last time you had sex was also three years ago. and it's still with michael kaiser.

kaiser stared at you as your mouth formed an ‘o’ shape while he was deep balls inside you. he couldn't believe what he was missing out on all these years. he tried so much to forget you, having hook ups here and there, but you were always in his mind. 

his thrusts were sensual at first, and he as rubbing your clit. it felt like he actually wanted to make you feel good. he tried kissing you as your legs locked around his waist. kaiser tried to put one of them around his arm as he looked into your eyes and french kissed you again.

as time went by, kaiser's thrusts became erratic. you could just imagine how his car looked like while he was making you see stars. you felt his cock twitching as he began to whisper into your ears.

“how is it, my love? are you cumming? i want you to say my name. tell the world who makes you feel good.” 

you moaned kaiser's nickname ‘mihya’ loudly while he rubbed your clit more as he spurted his juices inside you. you ended up squirting on his cock too. after that, both of you looked at each other while panting. a small smirk was placed on his lips. 

when the both of you got dressed, kaiser tossed you something. you caught it with your two hands. it was a set of keys. you asked what's that for, while looking at him in curiosity. 

“in case you still don't think i'm serious, here's the key to my house. and if you're wondering about the address, check your pocket later.” 

oh boy. kaiser might've started off as rocky at first, but upon realizing that you were the only one for him and that there's no one else like you, he knew he'd do everything to win you back. there's nobody else in this world could love you like he does. 

a/n: anddd i'm done with this for now 🤭 my next one will be reo x stripper reader 💗

[quibbs126]

Another thing I was thinking about, you might be able to make something out of all the main Decepticons being artificially created/made for the war

I don’t think I articulated my thought there well, but let me explain more

Because like, some of them are a bit weird

Soundwave, as discussed prior, has a built in compartment for his Cassette Minicons, and they turn into cassettes for storage and usage inside of him. It’s very strange and oddly specific

Then you have Starscream and the Seekers, whose weirdness mainly lies in the fact that the Seekers all look almost identical outside of colors (minus the Coneheads). And it’s not just one or two, there’s like I think 8 or so of them. And unlike other characters with similar initial molds, they are all basically identical outside of color, and it’s been this way since the very beginning with Starscream, Thundercracker and Skywarp. Not to mention they almost never come alone, there’s at least 3 usually, outside of Slipstream I think

Shockwave maybe a bit less so, but he does have a weird head. Which did get its own explanation in IDW as being some sort of messed up punishment thing with the Empurata process. Granted it’s not at the same level of weirdness as the others, but it’s something

And then there’s Megatron, who honestly is probably the most normal. The only real things are I guess his giant fusion cannon, his freakish indestructibility, and the fact that he’s able to match Optimus Prime despite the other being a Prime while he isn’t. But again, there’s explanations for all of those

So basically my brain’s come up with the idea of them all being products of some sort of military experimentation, maybe for the Autobot-Decepticon War, or for something else

I was going to elaborate more, but I can’t think of anything at the moment and break’s almost over. But I thought it was neat sounding

[miyamiwu]

I thought this was common knowledge by now, but apparently some people don’t know that both Vein and Xia Fei are ambidextrous.

It’s more obvious with XF:

Xia Fei uses his left hand to draw and write in his PV:

Left hand to point, but right hand to do the shush gesture

Right hand to shake CXS’s hand and hold his beer

Left hand to pound on the table, but right hand to hold chopsticks

Left hand when on the phone with Vein/LX:

But right hand during his flashback:

Oh, and also right hand to “defend” ShiGuang

As for Vein’s hands, I’ve listed all instances of them from the show here (except for the latest episode). As many have noticed, he used his left hand more in episode 1. He prefers his right the rest of the time—except for when he flicked XF on the forehead and patted his head. He used his left hand then (his fan was on his right).

Then in Bloody Storm, we have this:

Left hand to topple the wine glass but right hand for everything else

Now, Xia Fei being ambidextrous is no surprise because everything about him comes in two’s (yellow-black hair, possibly half Chinese, his character color being the liminal traffic light Yellow, both red and green traffic lights in the ED turned on while his ad plays in the background, second survivor in a fire that was said to have only one, etc.)

As for Vein, I’m not gonna jump into conclusions since his own episode (the finale) is yet to air. However, I have an inkling that how he uses his hands has something to do with his ability (which I believe he has; it just hasn’t been revealed)

Lastly, Hands are an important thematic element in Yingdu:

I haven’t gathered my thoughts about it yet, so have my Discord rambling for now.

But bottomline is that Hands, in Yingdu, are a means of forming/rejecting bonds. VeiFei being able to use both their hands must have some thematic significance.

A reason like “Vein is actually XF in episode 1” just feels so lame, tbh. If this were a normal season, then whatever, but Yingdu has been more on Themes than Plot/Logic. Additionally, it has been focused on creating Emotionally Satisfying moments over mentally stimulating ones...

Vein/Xia Fei using their hands have to mean something on a deeper emotional level for it to align with the themes of relationships that Yingdu heavily emphasizes on

[emeraldraccoon478]

If it helps anyone contextualalize things any more I’ve got autism, sticky thoughts and need for routine, seems similar in a surface level. My whole week can be ruined by an unexpected change in plans, and a sticky thought might bother me for hours. But different

my sticky thoughts are more like sticky notes I can’t take down. A little reminder in my brain “you ate your skittles in the wrong order” or “you need to go move that pencil it’s not in the right place” it’s annoying and frustrating right? But it’s still just a little sticky note in my brain, I can generally ignore that sticky note of a thought and do other things, it’s only when I have a moment of downtime I really notice it. And they go away on their own with time

And with the routine it brings me comfort and consistency. (Things like eating the skittles in the same order every time is included in that) I get upset when routines change because it’s quickly ripping away that sorce of comfort if that makes sense? and on top of that when it comes to plans I may have been rehearsing and preparing for this Chan in normal schedule for hours, days, weeks, months sometime. I go over in my head again and again so the change is ok, so if something is cancelled I’m upset because I was prepared and now I’m not and I don’t know what to do

anyway I’m explaining this badly. But ocd and other things with sticky thoughts are very different on the inside

Idk why but as a kid I used to get hysterically upset everytime I would imagine a gif of a rotating cow because I could never stop the cow from rotating no matter how hard I tried and I would be crying and no one knew why

[charliedawn]

Sorry if this sounds odd but what if the nurse was secretly a succubus? I’m so fascinated by them i find them so cool <3

(Warning: 18 + stuff.)

Michael Myers:

Michael would remain utterly stoic, his mask hiding any potential reaction. Your seductive tricks would likely bounce off his cold, emotionless demeanor. If you tried to drain his energy, you’d find his near-supernatural willpower a tough barrier to crack. Michael might just tilt his head curiously before silently walking away—or turning violent if he felt threatened.

But, he wouldn’t let you starve.

He would wordlessly drag a victim to you, drop the victim at your feet, and walk away without any further interaction. Whether you appreciate his effort or not wouldn’t matter to him—he’s done his part.

And if he decided to feed you personally ? He wouldn’t care about the implications or emotions behind the act—if feeding you would solve a problem or make you leave him alone, he’d do it without hesitation. No romance, no words, just cold practicality. Once it was over, he’d leave without a second glance, but if you tried to drain too much energy, you’d find his supernatural endurance nearly impossible to break. *wink wink* 😉

Jason Voorhees:

Jason might be confused or wary of you. He would not really be happy with your seductive nature because it would likely remind him of the promiscuous teens he associates with his trauma. If you got too close or seemed threatening, Jason would either hide if he likes you or strike without hesitation.

Jason, fueled by his moral code however, might feed you people he deems immoral—campers, partiers, or anyone disrespecting Camp Crystal Lake. He’d silently lead you to a group of potential victims, then let you do the work.

Jason would be hesitant and confused to be feeding you himself if he decided that was the only solution. He’s deeply traumatized and has a complicated relationship with intimacy, but his protective instincts might compel him to help if he thought you were genuinely starving. Once he agreed, he’d be gentle and cautious, but don’t expect much passion—Jason sees feeding you as an act of mercy, not desire. If you pushed him too far emotionally, he might retreat, unsure of how to handle it.

Jason *whimpering while doing it because he thinks it’s wrong and he will go to hell for that.*

Pennywise:

Asexual King. Pennywise wouldn’t be interested in you as a succubus and you wouldn’t be interested in him because as a succubus you know when some people have absolutely no sexual drive—from which you feed. He would be interested in the others’ reaction to you though. He would however provide you with victims to keep you alive. He would even watch to see how you do it for his own morbid curiosity.

Penny:

Penny’s reaction would depend on his hunger level. Initially, he might find it amusing, perhaps even try to charm you back in his awkward, giggly way. But if he felt you posed any threat, his jovial demeanor would shift to cold menace, and he’d remind you that he’s no easy prey.

He’d likely however stumble upon a victim while giggling and casually offer them up to you. Because you know…supernatural freaks gotta stick together.

But as he doesn’t have actual human emotions or a normal constitution—he wouldn’t be able to feed you.

Freddy Krueger:

(Not Freddy gif. But that would 100% be his reaction.)

Freddy *running with his arms wide open while being held back by every single other slasher in the group* : "BABY CAKES ! LEMME AT THEM ! COME TO PAPA !"

Yeah…Freddy would be excited and lose his pants the moment he sees you. Freddy would literally jump at the opportunity, treating it as a twisted game. He’d taunt and flirt relentlessly, teasing you about how you’re "lucky" to get a piece of him. Freddy would revel in the idea of giving you what you need, not out of kindness but because it feeds his ego. However, if you tried to dominate or outsmart him, he’d quickly turn the tables, reminding you he’s a predator too.

Freddy would enjoy the idea of feeding you, especially if it involved mutual torment of a victim. He’d probably bring you someone he’s already torturing in the dream world and take sick pleasure in watching you work. Freddy might even joke about “sharing a meal” and try to make it a fun, sadistic bonding moment.

Bo:

Bo would likely be cocky, assuming he could handle your charms and would even try to one-up your seductive energy. He’d flirt shamelessly, but the moment he realises your intentions, his temper would flare. Bo doesn’t like being manipulated, and he’d turn violent to show you that you picked the wrong man to mess with.

"Yeah ? Ya want me ? Get on yer knees, bitch. I ain’t givin’ ya shit until you are fuckin’ cryin’ and beggin’. Now be a good slut and lemme see if ya really are as good as ya look."

He’d likely tease you at first, leaning against a counter or chair with that devilish grin, his Southern drawl dripping with mockery.

"So, darlin’, you’re tellin’ me you need me to survive? Ain’t that a hell of a thing."

He’d act like it was your lucky day, smirking as he sauntered closer, but the gleam in his eye would betray a deeper curiosity. Bo would see this as a game—a way to show off, to make sure you knew he was the best you’d ever get. When the time came, he’d take control, slow and deliberate, making sure you understood exactly who was in charge.

However, there’d be an underlying caution. Bo doesn’t trust easily, and he’d be watching your every move, ensuring you didn’t drain too much or try to manipulate him. If you dared tease him or get cheeky, he’d respond in kind, leaning in close with a grin that promised both danger and excitement.

"Careful now, sugar. You bite off more than you can chew, and I might just have to remind you who’s really feedin’ who."

Norman Bates:

Norman would be both captivated and horrified. His mother’s voice in his head would scream warnings about the succubus’s sinful nature, filling him with guilt for feeling tempted. Depending on your approach, Norman might either fall under your spell or snap and turn violent in a fit of moral outrage. He would feel incredibly awkward about the whole situation. If he decided to feed you, it would likely be after some intense internal conflict and a lot of "Mother" yelling at him in his head. He’d probably offer someone he viewed as sinful, but afterward, he’d feel guilty and regretful.

The poor man would be terrified at the idea of feeding you himself however, torn between temptation and guilt. His mother’s voice would berate him for even considering it, but he’d be unable to resist if you pushed hard enough. The experience would leave him shaken, filled with shame and confusion. He might avoid you afterward or lash out, blaming you for his conflicted feelings.

Brahms Heelshire:

Brahms would be flattered and excited at the idea of feeding you himself, though he’d try to mask his enthusiasm with feigned reluctance. He’d see it as a way to bond with you and make you dependent on him. However, his possessive streak would flare if he suspected you of feeding on anyone else. "You don’t need anyone else—you have me ! NOW COME HERE !"

No hesitation. He WANTS to feed you.

Arthur Fleck:

Arthur Fleck would approach the situation with hesitance, torn between his insecurities and his desperate need to help. His voice would crack, sounding both apologetic and uncertain, as though he was unsure if he even deserved to be in this position.

"Alright...Let’s see here. I apologise…if I do not fulfill your expectations," he’d murmur, offering a half-hearted, nervous smile, trying to disguise how vulnerable he felt in this moment. "It has been a long time…and if I am doing this, it is only to keep you alive."

Arthur’s usual self-doubt would cloud his actions, unsure of whether he could actually satisfy whatever need you have. His movements would be awkward, as though he was out of his element, clumsy but trying so desperately to ensure he didn’t disappoint.

While he might act like he’s doing it only out of necessity, deep down, there would be a part of him that wants to be needed, to feel important in someone else’s eyes. As he goes through with it, his brow would furrow slightly, unsure if he was doing it right, and there would be a vulnerable, almost childlike quality to the way he’d handle it, like he’s still learning how to interact with others in an intimate way.

He might look at you occasionally, searching your face for any sign of approval, though his gaze would quickly shift away if he felt self-conscious. His voice would falter again, though softer now, almost like a whisper.

"…Did I do okay ? Are you satisfied ?"

The Joker:

Once Arthur Fleck becomes the Joker, those same words would take on a darker, more twisted edge. His previous nervousness would be replaced by a chilling calmness, his newfound confidence creeping into his tone. The weight of his transformation would be obvious—his smile now sinister, his eyes sharp with a dangerous gleam. His voice would still carry a semblance of the original words, but it would be dripping with sarcasm and an unsettling amusement, as though he were playing with you, testing your reactions.

"Alright…Let’s see here," he would say, his lips curling into that iconic grin, the words laced with mockery. His eyes would flash with a manic glint as he observed you, amused by the situation. "I apologise…if I do not fulfill your expectations. It has been a long time and if I’m doing this, it’s only to keep you alive."

There’s a subtle but dangerous twist now to his voice—a sense of authority and power, the hesitation gone. Instead of the unsure, almost apologetic Arthur, Joker is brimming with cruel confidence, enjoying the twisted nature of what’s happening. He would say it as though he was doing you a favor, but at the same time, there’s an undercurrent of amusement at how much control he has over the situation. He might even chuckle softly under his breath, finding the absurdity of it all hilarious.

His smile would stretch wider as he leans in closer, eyes never leaving yours, as if daring you to protest or make a move. He might even take some sick pleasure in the tension of the moment, letting the silence drag on before he finally breaks it with another twisted laugh.

With Joker, the need to "keep you alive" isn't a selfless act; it’s a calculated move, part of his chaotic world view. He doesn't do things because they’re necessary—he does them because it amuses him, because he can. He sees this as another game, another way to mess with you and watch the consequences unfold.

"You should thank me," he’d add, voice laced with mock sweetness, his grin widening even further. "But then again, you’re probably not the type to appreciate a true gift, are you ?"

[pricegouge]

Uhm your last ask abt fairy reader in price’s humidor and I can’t resist

Price having his fairy warm his cigars for him between her legs

Maybe she can make fairy sparks to light his cigar (gives it the same kinda kick as the honey cause it’s got distilled magic in it). Or maybe he makes her strain to flick his table lighter. Maybe he scares her with it, holding her while threatening to burn the bottoms of her feet while she squirms.

Maybe he switches to cigarillos or hand rolled options sometimes— cause with the right finesse, those can fit in her tiny fairy cunt, her honey soaking into the paper.

And in a world where people milk fairy honey? There’s probably all kinds of tools and substances they sell to get fairies aroused fast, but price has a bit too much pride, likes to do things the slow, old fashioned way.

Nikolai who keeps his fairy leashed because he can’t bear to clip her wings. To much empathy for flying creatures— he cannot rob you of that. Or maybe he’s had her long enough to not worry— she’s fully tamed and trained. She’ll lick the powdered sugar from his fingers if he has a donut for breakfast. Price’s fairy is terrified of Nik’s— will she be like that some day? Acting like she’s in love with her tormentor?? She’s even more scared when Nik offers to train her as a favor.

And she gets this funny feeling in her belly when price laughs and politely declines. Says he likes her just the way she is.

(And if we’re talking hardcore objectification. I imagine Soap’s careless. He’s been through more than one fairy in his day. No big deal— Ghost’ll just find him another. Misfits have a knack for finding them)

I’m going a little crazzzyyy

-🦷

[reference - no longer my most recent ask, i'm slow]

i raise you: price training her how to properly hug his cock by making her work herself over his cigars. i also raise you price training his fairy to spark when he flicks her head as if she's a lighter like a fucking dog.

him dipping cigarillos in her cunt is making me severely unwell. can just see him running out of flavor half way through, patting down his pockets like she's a misplaced lighter just to freshen up his dart even as it's still smoking

okay. not particularly related to what you're talking about, but the jewelry bit added at the end of that fic was def inspired by art i found which i'm unfortunately not gonna link just cause i saw it on a repost site and i'm not sure where to find the original art cause I don't have any social media. but! the artist very clearly had a line in which they depicted fairy girls being turned into jewelry and the main link piece would often be a specialized plug their size attached to a chain which would obv be linked to the actual jewelry. i don't really have anywhere i'm going with this I just thought you should know that.

hm. i can picture nik's fairy having just as much empathy for him straight from the gate. like what do you mean this human knows what the world looks like from above better than he does from his actual (significant) level? she's easy to train because she lets herself be trained, at least a little, but price's fairy doesn't know that!! she's scared as hell to be made into some docile little creature, but price would never allow it. she'll never admit she's grateful for him but she is when he tells nik he can handle it, when he stuffs her into his pocket so she can't quite hear when he says he likes her just the way she is, teeth marks on his finger tips and all

(also also. im not normal about burning so i won't go too crazy BUT. i will say when he's training her to bahave like a lighter, he def holds the heated metal of the guard against her ☹️)

[raqi-marr]

had the thought of an affini who gets a floret that reeeeeeally likes fire; possibly they used to work as a firewoman on their planet, loved the smell of smoke and the sight of dancing flames. at first their affini feels really uncertain how to engage with this; fire is one of the few things that their species still fears at a biological level, and so even the normal affini desire to give their pets everything they could ever want is struggling to overcome that primal aversion

but she refuses to let that get the better of her, and so she goes to special courses to practise reducing the fear via exposure therapy. gradually letting herself get closer and closer to controlled flames, eventually even putting one of her vines close enough that she can feel how warm it is. in the process, she comes to understand exactly why it is that her pet is so fixated upon the phenomenon

a few months later, fear has transformed into an obsession. she's undergone surgery to replace the wooden portions of her body with sequoia-esque fire resistant portions, and she now has chemicals she can use to light a flame at will from specialised grafts. the insides of her eyes flicker like hearths, and the crackling of her bark resembles the sound of logs in a stove rather than creaking branches, and her body has become oh-so warm to the touch. at the end of a long day, she pulls her floret close to her chest and produces a little flame for them to stare at, dragging it slowly back and forth in front of their eyes, watching the reflection in their pupils and delighting as their eyelids get heavier and heavier, until they eventually succumb and fall into slumber

[radioiaci]

Alastor scoffed, side-stepping the grubby toy which he stared at with some level of disdain. He had never been one for toys anyway. He'd always preferred the more natural features of the land - the plants and animals - to anything his mother could have given him to fiddle about with in the house. He never wanted to be in the house. Not if it meant being in a position to be cornered by his father whenever he drunkenly staggered back in.

With encouragement given to him as Vox held up the lighter for him to take, Alastor assessed it briefly. No, no normal fire would do. The shack had to be entirely wiped off of the face of the Earth, and possibly the woodland in its immediate vicinity too. Never to again spoil it with wretched memories that Alastor no longer wanted to harbor. (He would. He had no choice. But, at least, the lives of the living would not be made worse for it.)

Reaching up, he lightly refused the lighter, stepping closer to Vox as he took in the other's expression - his eagerness. Their powers had always fed off of one another's for better or for worse. And though his own motivation was much more different from what he presumed Vox's to be, it could all be taken advantage of for the same end.

"Burn it for me," he murmured, gaze fixating on the other man. Human brown eyes looked much more red in the darkness of the room, the shadow elongating until it had somewhat spindly claws. Though it did not take on an expression as it often did in Hell, it was still there. Imposing.

Alastor's hand coasted up to gently brush fingers along the other's jaw, closing the distance between them bit by bit - until they were only a few inches apart, one of his hands bracing subtly against Vox's chest.

"Burn it for me and let me move on."

A mercy, maybe. For himself. Though he thought - at the end of the day - that if he had to burn it himself, he would... To have Vox do it for him... It was a comforting thing for him. To know that Vox would.

Unless he refused.

But Alastor did not think he would. Not with his shadow, grown like some eldritch beast with sharpened, waiting claws and eerie branching zig-zags of lines that might have been antlers, hovering over the expanse of the entire room with expectation.

If Vox would not, then it would step in.

Vox chucked the grody toy at Alastor when he snorted for him to either swat away dodge or catch.

“I bet that nerdy little kid in the picture loved it. Weirdo.” He teased just as flippantly as he kept searching around the room. Eventually he pulled his phone out and tapped the flashlight on. Using that to look around the room better.

Alastor admitting to murder- of what looked like a gruesome proportion was a shock… not entirely. But only in dialect. They had been just wandering around a dead house in the swamp up until now.

Vox turned his flashlight back to the deep dark stain. His first response that thankfully didn’t reach his mouth before it was edited was ‘you knew your dad?’

And he promptly strangled that thought to dust and buried it.

Vox felt the manic energy from the other- and whether or not their newly discovered channel between them was active or not— he felt it move through his skin. Contagious almost. It felt like grasping at closure while it turned to the finest white sands. Unable to be gripped or quantified but grasping at it all the same with desperation. But desperation felt like the wrong word. Energized. Inspired maybe was better.

Now the tv man had the emotional depth of a brick, but Alastor had always been the most effective on him regardless. With the charge crackling around Alastor’s frame now, metaphorically, the cops could have started banging on the door and Vox wouldn’t have blinked.

He saw the shadow. Even breifly. And it excited him. Perhaps it shouldn’t have. But maybe he missed his demon companion flexing some.

Vox moved closer again and flipped the zippo lighter around his finger once and held it out to the other.

“We should find some tinder then~ or we could always bring some power back to the cabin one last time~” he added excitedly. The blue of his eyes crackling slightly like his antenna used to do. Both overlords just simmering under the surface.