#literally what does she think of me a fucking torture subject that needs fucking torture?

[sethdomain]

Why do my mom always purposefully cook shit that i purposefully and actively say i fucking hate and make me pukes, then come at me and say im a fucking picky eater and the most ungrateful human being ever. Is it so fucking hard to not cook a literal specific food that is literally fucking hard to make and forcing me to fucking like it, i literally am not that fucking picky i just hate eating fucking liver and that stupid broth that makes me pukes

[elia-nymmeros]

Cersei and her vision of ruling

I waited, and so can he. I waited half my life. She had played the dutiful daughter, the blushing bride, the pliant wife. She had suffered Robert's drunken groping, Jaime's jealousy, Renly's mockery, Varys with his titters, Stannis endlessly grinding his teeth. She had contended with Jon Arryn, Ned Stark, and her vile, treacherous, murderous dwarf brother, all the while promising herself that one day it would be her turn. If Margaery Tyrell thinks to cheat me of my hour in the sun, she had bloody well think again.

I love thinking about Cersei and her inefficient and ultimately doomed attempt at ruling because, beyond her faults and terrible traits as a person, she simply does not offer any valuable incentive towards anyone who wishes to follow her, as opposite to other contestants (something that I think 100% comes from Tywin), and any attempt at ruling would've failed sooner or later.

Edit: added some quotes to show some examples and tweak some stuff!

From AGoT all the way through her PoVs in AFfC, one of Cersei's main characteristics both in her personal approach to other people and in the way she tackles ruling is that she believes she's entitled to power and she's entitled to be treated as superior both as a Lannister and as the queen regent of Westeros. She routinely dismiss and berates people with lesser social power and status, she despises people who try to 'take liberties' and who don't treat her as an untouchable regent, and she's willing to hurt, torture and kill anyone who she considers a threat to her claim to rule. I personally think it's understandable that she's paranoid about traitors and people who have double intentions about her and Tommen —especially considering that in AFfC she literally just saw her son die in her arms by poison— but her problem is that she's a bad judge of character, she's been flawed in how she interprets other people's actions since AGoT, and she's incapable of adequately judging who is on her side and who is a bad option for an ally (see for example her thinking that Kevan was a traitor when he made good criticism about her as a ruler).

"The next Hand will know his place, she promised herself. It would have to be Ser Kevan. Her uncle was tireless, prudent, unfailingly obedient. She could rely on him, as her father had. The hand does not argue with the head. She had a realm to rule, but she would need new men to help her rule it. Pycelle was a doddering lickspittle, Jaime had lost his courage with his sword hand, and Mace Tyrell and his cronies Redwyne and Rowan could not be trusted. For all she knew they might have had a part in this. Lord Tyrell had to know that he would never rule the Seven Kingdoms so long as Tywin Lannister lived." AFfC, Cersei I

For me, a very hard truth about Cersei is that she absolutely suffered physical and sexual abuse from Robert, and she did not deserve neither this nor her perpetual objectification by pretty much every men in her life, but this simply does not make her entitled or eligible as a ruler by default. By Westerosi laws —which are undoubtedly misogynistic and unfair to women no matter their ability to rule— her claim as a Queen regent comes by her marriage to Robert and her sons (which are supposed to be Robert's blood). Since she decided to go all girlboss about it and put the two sons who clearly did not have Robert's blood on the throne, she actively harmed their claim and her own, and she literally created a succession crisis by having the bad luck of marrying the one family with strong genes and zero chance of having blondes in their family tree.

But let's say, alright, put the clearly Lannister boys on the throne anyways, kingship is a social construction and the Baratheons didn't really have any more intrinsic claim to Westeros than the Targaryens other than military might, fuck it; the obvious question is, what am I offering my subjects so that their support is rewarded and their loyalty is secured? This is something that, in some way or another, is answered by the other pretenders in the War of the Five Kings, even if it's in a limited capacity and with very dubious intentions: Robb offers a rule from, by and to the Northern people that takes into account their wishes and reclaims, and also offers the people of the Riverlands justice and protection; Balon offers the Ironborn a new, revitalized rule over the islands and surrounding land with the Old Way which he claimed would improve the life of his people; Renly and his alliance with the Tyrells came with the prosperous wealth of the Reach and offers of food, pardons and a generous rule by a charismatic ruler mimicking Robert's long peaceful reign. Stannis, by contrast, is the one who pushes his claim solely by his rights in Targaryen dynastic succession (if the king dies with no legitimate children, the crown should go to the next eldest brother), and we see over and over throughout the saga that this isn't enough to secure his claim, that a ruler should also fulfill their rights as a protector if they wish to be followed, that he was demanding loyalty and obedience without offering something in return and that this won't give you support no matter how legal is your claim.

"If not for my Hand, I might not have come at all. Lord Seaworth is a man of humble birth, but he reminded me of my duty, when all I could think of was my rights. I had the cart before the horse, Davos said. I was trying to win the throne to save the kingdom, when I should have been trying to save the kingdom to win the throne." ASoS, Jon XI

Compared to all this, Cersei (and Joffrey by extension, because she encourages in him what she believes are good traits for a king) simply did not have anything to offer precisely because they live under the illusion —once again coming from Tywin— that they have the intrinsic right to power and ruling simply because they're Lannisters and they should be obeyed because of this. This would be a normal thing to believe in a normal, regular dynasty —for example, I doubt Aegon IV or Viserys I or Maekar I were particularly thinking about what they could offer to their subjects, they simply gained power because they were part of a royal lineage where a Targaryen man inheriting the throne was expected— but Joffrey's claim came from a break of this succession, and Robert justified his reign both by being the descendant of a Targaryen and also because he offered Westeros peace, protection, justice and mercy if you'd been in the wrong side of the war.

""It is, Your Grace," Lady Merryweather agreed. "The High Septon should have come to you. And these wretched sparrows . . ." "He feeds them, coddles them, blesses them. Yet will not bless the king." The blessing was an empty ritual, she knew, but rituals and ceremonies had power in the eyes of the ignorant. Aegon the Conqueror himself had dated the start of his realm from the day the High Septon anointed him in Oldtown. "This wretched priest will obey, or learn how weak and human he still is."" AFfC, Cersei VI

A lot can be said about Robert's rule and what he did right and wrong, but I think one can admit that he was a man capable of pardoning his enemies' lives unconditionally (think Barristan, Balon, Jaime), he put down disagreements and fights without sending someone to be tortured to death, and traditional customs in Westeros were respected —Aerys' rule was contested precisely because he broke the right of nobles to have a trial. Cersei doesn't simply ignore all this, being particularly vicious, cruel and spiteful to her enemies/rivals even after she supposedly made peace with them, but nothing about her rule is about anything except her and her wishes: if there's a scarcity of food, then she hoards everything to herself; if there's danger to the city, she hides herself and withdraws her resources and fuck the rest of the population, noble or not; if someone comes from the rival side wanting to join their cause, then they're suspected traitors who sooner or later will be put to death; if someone says a criticism about her actions, whether genuine or not, then that person is a traitor who sooner or later will be put to death; everyone is her enemy and everyone wants her power for themselves and nobody can ever be trusted because nobody is as smart, capable, worthy and deserving of power as Cersei is.

"It took the rest of the flagon before the queen was finally able to coax the whole sad tale out of Lady Falyse. Once she had, she did not know whether to laugh or rage. "Single combat," she repeated. Is there no one in the Seven Kingdoms that I can rely upon? Am I the only one in Westeros with a pinch of wits? (...)" AFfC, Cersei VII

"Taena had drifted back to sleep by the time the queen returned to the bedchamber, her head spinning. Too much wine and too little sleep, she told herself. It was not every night that she was awakened twice with such desperate tidings. At least I could awaken. Robert would have been too drunk to rise, let alone rule. It would have fallen to Jon Arryn to deal with all of this. It pleased her to think that she made a better king than Robert." AFfC, Cersei VII

Since she doesn't care about feeding her subjects, protecting them from harm, enacting fair and genuine justice to those who need it, improving the physical infrastructure of the realm, honoring debts to foreign entities and previous agreements to other nobles, or at least diminishing the economic problems left by Robert's rule, then she (and once again, Joffrey and Tommen by extension) literally has nothing to offer anyone who wishes to follow her. She doesn't make even the attempt to pretend she cares about any of this by the time we get to AFfC, like Renly once did in ACoK, precisely because she has the mistaken and very dangerous belief that she's owed obedience and deference and the right to rule over an entire continent, and that people should somehow be grateful to obey her no matter how shitty and depraved and harmful she is to them and their families.

""The realm is at war. His Grace has need of every man." Cersei did not intend to squander Tommen's strength playing wet nurse to sparrows, or guarding the wrinkled cunts of a thousand sour septas. Half of them are probably praying for a good raping. "Your sparrows have clubs and axes. Let them defend themselves."" AFfC, Cersei VI

"When the door closed behind them Cersei poured herself another cup of wine. "I am surrounded by enemies and imbeciles," she said. She could not even trust to her own blood and kin, nor Jaime, who had once been her other half. He was meant to be my sword and shield, my strong right arm. Why does he insist on vexing me?" AFfC, Cersei VII

All of this is remarkable precisely when put in contrast with Dany, because both of their ambitions to the throne come from their belief that they're entitled to the throne above any other consideration, and both of them had little experience ruling before their ascent to power and are continuously doubted/criticized because of their gender, but what sets Dany apart is her willingness to learn from others and take care of the people who follow her. Despite all the troubles that ADwD have brought her, Dany has always been characterized by someone who attempts to protect others and is prepared to hear her subject's opinions and make actual efforts to improve their lives; many of us root for her precisely because she makes a genuine effort into being a good and fair ruler to her subjects even when she fails, even when she makes wrong choices, even when she falls short of her goal. One of the main problems in her journey has been the question of how can she become a legitimate ruler in the eyes of the Westerosi people, and she rightfully understood that she needed to offer something in exchange for loyalty, just like Stannis did.

""There's much I don't understand," Davos admitted. "I have never pretended elsewise. I know the seas and rivers, the shapes of the coasts, where the rocks and shoals lie. I know hidden coves where a boat can land unseen. And I know that a king protects his people, or he is no king at all."" ASoS, Davos VI

"Why do the gods make kings and queens, if not to protect the ones who can't protect themselves?" ASoS, Daenerys III

I believe that the fact that Cersei doesn't ever comes close to this realization doesn't just steam from her natural self-centredness, propensity to cruelty and repeated trauma in the hands of the men in her life, but precisely by the vision Tywin had about himself and house Lannister. At the end of the day, Cersei mimics not only what Tywin himself believes about their house (that they're superior, wealthier, worthier and morally above everyone else, even other noble houses), but also how Tywin behaves as a political actor (making deals in bad faith and not fulfilling them, mistreating children, women and disabled peoople, using extreme violence as a form of correction and coercion, following no moral guidance or innate beliefs other than what benefits them in the short term, etc.). They're not the only ones who exhibits this behavior (Bronn, for example, is just as self-serving and violent as them), but House Lannister, and Tywin, Cersei and Joffrey in particular, are definitely some of the most powerful and influential people in Westeros thanks to their military might and economic power, which amplifies the consequences of their selfishness to... quite scary levels.

[manic-sapphic]

i'd just like to comment on the last frame of these spop stills~

ahhh i posted this as part of a series of stills but looking closer at the expression on catra's face in the last one and considering the next line is just her asking "what are you going to do with me?"

she's not clueless to this kinda vague talk where there's truly unsettling malicious intent being left in the shadows, if you will.

so yeah, the look on her face after prime calls her out for being just as emotional and "weak" as all the princess etherians she was just attempting some smooth shit talking on for their own feelings (and literally tho imo, she only tried that cause glimmer just blew up her spot in the most devastating way possible during their weird dinner w prime, telling him everything he needed to know bout using the heart and cancelling out the one advantage catra had been able to pose to him for why he needed her alive too when she saved glimmer's own neck by poppin out from behind the rubble in "destiny pt 2")

not tryna hate on glimmer tho, and i don't think catra woulda either. i definitely think she understood why glimmer caved so quick, even tho it screwed catra over.

but effectively, my point is, looking at her face in that last still when he basically confirms to her that he sees her of little more value than any other non-weaponized 'emotional' etherian but "still has big plans for her" like... it's kinda no wonder why she did what she does in corridors.

cause tbh, i think she knew she was already fucked dude. like, no two ways about it, she was trapped on the flagship of a megalomaniac creep who-knows-where in space w no way to leave. and she'd soon learn prime also had an affinity for "purification" through torture (reflected in the same idea he tells glimmer about wanting the heart cause "the weeds must be burned away so new life can flourish" it's what he attempts doing to the minds of his individual subjects basically ugh that guy just makes me feel so ill) and if adora came there, all it would mean was that catra would have to watch her suffer, too. and yeah. she just wasn't down w that ugh i just love her so much good grief.. like thank you nate & all the other writers/creators - but also damnit why tho? what did i do?? but also thank you? it's confusing lmao~

<3

[yeonboy]

𝐥𝐢𝐤𝐞 𝐚 𝐰𝐡𝐢𝐬𝐤𝐞𝐲 ♡ choi beomgyu.

He aches to be the one you would have snuck off with; to be the one you would want to share secret kisses with. He aches. And in that moment, he realizes his feelings have gone too far. They have caused him to stop being a true well-wisher to you; he is being selfish. He needs to take a step back. Or, Choi Beomgyu is head over heels in love with his best friend – and she simply doesn’t feel the same. 

❧ choi beomgyu x f. reader | 16+ | college!au ♡ best friends!au ♡ unrequited love!au ♡ angst ♡ drama.

❧ 4.7 k words

❧ warnings! profanity, an extreeeeeme amount of pining, one-sided feelings, unrequited love, jealousy, heartbreak, some self-deprication, one (1) mention of drinking and partying, one (1) mention of making out, maybe an innuendo or two! mostly just buckets full of mopey, pining gyu </3 and a hopeful (?) ending (:

❧ note! i wrote this because i was listening to m5’s whiskey and crying and thinking of gyu so take that how u will </3 please note that the lyrics are there just to set the tone, not to be taken too literally. i just love this song, man. please don’t hate me for the ending, i changed it thrice and then settled on this. it just felt perfect to me this way :”) also! pls excuse the lack of dividers, tumblr won't let me add them without hiding the post from the tags for some reason :/

❧ masterlist | inbox ⁘

i never knew that love was blind; till i was hers and she was never mine…

“So, I have a question for you.”

Beomgyu blinks at your words, letting the steel straw escape his lips as you pull his strawberry milkshake away from him. 

In fascination, he watches the way your lips wrap around the shiny tube in the exact place where his own had been. You slurp once and pull away, leaving a tint of pink – pinker than the drink, pinker than Beomgyu’s cheeks, pinker than the love-goggles that are permanently on his eyes when he’s with you – on the edge of the straw.

“Gyu?”

He wants to wipe that pink away with his lips, so bad. But your hand comes in with a tissue to clean that precious speck of your lipstick away, before he can even blink a second time.

Now he blinks again and looks up at you. God, you’re so gorgeous with your brows all furrowed and lips all pouty. He is so thoroughly ruined by you. Why does he continue to subject himself to this torture instead of keeping his distance like a sane person? 

He doesn’t fucking know.

“Y–yeah? What question?”

“A hypothetical one. Very important, nonetheless.” You stare into space with your eyes squinted, perfect cheekbones reflecting the light from the evening traffic beyond the glass walls of the cafe you’re seated in. “If long time BFFs happen to develop feelings for each other, should they confess?”

Beomgyu chokes on air, freezing like a solid block of ice.

What did you just ask?

“You know… Just imagine! Two people who have been the best of friends for ages. And then one of them realizes they’re in love with the other.” Your rounded eyes turn to him with a hint of worry in them. “Should they confess and live their dream? Or should they take this secret to their grave and protect their friendship?”

Beomgyu is a mess. 

Why the actual hell are you asking him that? Him – the one guy in your entire life that doesn’t have to imagine this specific situation because he’s been living it for years, now?

Now, he’s not panicking because he thinks you might have figured him out and are trying to pave a path to confession. No, he's self-aware enough to not be deluded. And his panic kinda stems from this very fact. 

He's self-aware enough to know that while he's looking at you and daydreaming of a picket fence and good-morning kisses, your mind is stuck on someone else. Choi Soobin. Older than him, taller than him, cuter than him. Guy checks all boxes of the type of guys you like so well, Beomgyu wonders if Soobin is the reason why you created those boxes in the first place.

So he's scared out of his mind that you're paving a road to confess to Soobin.

“Wow, aren’t you super helpful this evening?”

Your whine of frustration pulls him out of his spiral. He clears his throat and shrugs his shoulders. “I don’t know, man. That’s a very subjective question.”

“Subjective?” You tilt your head in thought and Beomgyu dreads the next words you would say before you have even formed them: “Okay, let me answer it subjectively first then! Like, imagine if you had feelings for me. I wouldn't want you to confess them to me, like, ever.”

Ouch. Not that he plans to ever confess them to you, but still pretty ouch.

Slightly hurt, he drags his milkshake back to himself and slurps away the rest of it before smacking his lips and shaking his head. “Well then subjectively, it’s the complete opposite for me.”

You look at him with an extremely confused frown. “But what if I lose the friendship because you don't feel the same?” 

This hypothesis is making him lose his damn mind. 

“I… well, what if we lose the chance to be something much more amazing just because you were scared?”

Moment of introspection: he hopes to all the powers in the universe that he isn’t losing the chance to be something much more amazing with you just because he’s scared. You don’t like him like that, you won’t ever like him like that. 

He’s being smart and self-preservative. Not scared.

You're lost in thoughts for a moment, and then you suddenly get up with a jump. Grinning at him, you lean down to peck his cheek and rush out of the cafe before he can even fully absorb the warm brush of your lips against his skin. “You're the best, Gyu, thank you so much!”

In a daze, he brings his fingertips to brush against the apple of his cheek. 

Why did you run away like that? Why did you sound so excited? Fuck, are you going to confess right now? 

He pulls his fingertips away. 

They are pink.

yeah i was reckless, but i let it burn; i let it burn, yeah…

“And if they show up hand-in-hand, then what? Then what, huh, Tyun? It’s easy for you to say I’m overthinking, but you aren’t thinking nearly enough!”

Kang Taehyun, the university’s Student Council member who is in-charge of overseeing the set-up for tomorrow's inter-uni basketball game – and also Beomgyu’s best friend of fifteen years – rolls his eyes so hard, it’s a wonder they don’t fall out of their sockets.

“Why do you keep setting yourself up for more pain, man? Why don't you try to invest these emotions somewhere they will be appreciated?”

“I can't just compel myself to start or stop feeling, dude…”

Shin Ryujin suddenly appears behind the bleachers that the two of them were covering with a banner, both hands planted in the back pockets of her jorts. They should look incredibly lame, but she somehow pulls them off. 

Beomgyu looks at her with wide eyes, wondering how much she heard.

“Yo, dumbass! Are you coming to the game tomorrow?” She’s smirking at him but there's a sparkle in her eyes that makes him chuckle at the name. 

“The name's Beomgyu.”

“That's what I said. So, are you coming?”

Beomgyu has actually been trying to think of an excuse to get out his regular movie night with you - and this sounds like the perfect one. He shrugs a shoulder. “Don’t really got any plans, so… Maybe I will.”

Taehyun gives him a weird look because he knows Beomgyu always had plans on Fridays.

Ryujin grins wide. “Perfect! Well, just two requests.”

He squints with interest. “What requests?”

“Wear my jersey! And, uh, don’t bring a date, please?”

She looks extremely bashful while saying the second part of the sentence. Which is somewhat jarring. It’s Shin fucking Ryujin, she eats men for breakfast. Why is she almost blushing?

But then Taehyun is cackling, which reminds Beomgyu of the first request she made. He immediately scowls. “Hey! I’m not wearing your jersey like some groupie!

She rolls her eyes, but her lips are quirked up because he didn’t say no to the second request. And he knows he won’t; you're the only one he ever asks to accompany him to places, and he's only going to the game tomorrow to escape you. 

“Your loss. Just so you know, boys are lining up to wear my jersey…”

Scoffing, Beomgyu goes back to handing Taehyun more pins. “Yeah right.”

“What? You don’t believe me?” Ryujin scoffs. “Watch this - ayo, Heeseung! Wanna wear my jersey tomorrow?”

A screech from the Students Council’s Vice Prez is followed by a high-pitched: “For real? Yes, please, I—” 

“Sike! Haha, gotcha, little bitch!”

Taehyun is doubled over in laughter and even Beomgyu can’t hold in his chuckles at the look of utter devastation on Heeseung’s face and victory on Ryujin’s. She raises an eyebrow when their gazes meet. “See?”

“How much did you pay him for this skit?”

She smacks his shoulder with an irritated whine. “You’re way too fucking cynical for no damn reason, dude. Okay, no jersey - but get a no. 17 placard for me, at least?” 

Rolling his eyes, he finally nods. 

“Great! See ya tomorrow, loser! Bye, Tyun!”

Taehyun waves at her as she leaves, while Beomgyu cups his hands around his mouth to yell out: “The name’s Beomgyu!”

“That’s what I said!”

“Man, it’s been so long since I’ve seen you actually enjoy talking to a girl.” 

Offended to his very bones, Beomgyu gapes at his best friend. “Dude! I enjoy talking to girls! I’m straight! Or did you forget how I threw up that one time when you kissed me during spin-the-bottle in seventh gra—”

“Yes, I remember!” Taehyun smacks him with a scowl on his face. “But that’s not what I meant. Gyu, you only ever talk to Y/N. Or have you not realized that? And look absolutely lovesick and physically pained while doing that.”

“Nahhhh, untrue. It’s just—” He cuts himself off to purse his lips. Taehyun is one-hundred percent correct. “It’s just a little difficult to mask my emotions all the time, but I manage…”

Taehyun just shakes his head in obvious disappointment. Then he tilts his chin up towards the direction where Ryujin is laughing around with some girls from the cheer team. “She obviously likes you a lot. Don’t hurt her.”

“I won’t,” he mumbles, lips forming a pout because this is so confusing. “But isn’t she basically signing up for the hurt if she’s doing this despite knowing where I stand with Y/N?

“Just…” Taehyun sighs. “Yeah, just don’t give her false hope.”

Beomgyu feels like he’s giving himself false hope every single time he talks to you, but what can be done.

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

You end up texting him first, that night, to cancel tomorrow’s movie night. You apparently have “plans” with a friend. 

Bile rises up Beomgyu’s throat at the thought of you finally going on a date with Soobin. 

He can’t get himself to directly ask if that is the case, but fuck, why won’t you tell him? He goes to sleep with a pain in his chest that night.

the feeling it was bittersweet, realizing i was in too deep…

As fate would have it, Beomgyu bumps into you at the very gates of the basketball stadium, the next evening. You look like a dream in your short skirt and varsity jacket.

He feels nauseous at the thought of discovering Soobin trailing behind you with a large drink with two straws, or something.

“Uh… these are your plans?” He says in a way of greeting.

Your eyes widen when you see him, but then you pout. “Yeah! Why didn’t you tell me you were gonna be here? We would’ve come together!”

He immediately thinks of his promise to Ryujin and shakes his head. “Ah, actually… Shin Ryujin invited me.” 

Your mouth forms an O, a lost expression crossing your face. He’s never been great at reading people, but with the way his brain gets fuzzy around you, he’s doing an even worse job right now. Because he can absolutely not tell what this look on your face means. 

Right then, the girl herself arrives, a wistful smile on her face. “Thought I told you to not bring a date? And she’s wearing Chaewon’s jersey, hmph.”

“Oh! We didn't—”

You cut him off with a chuckle that somehow sounds a little strained. “Ah, I’m actually here with her sister!” 

Yunjin? He didn’t know you were friends with her… But that means no Soobin, right? Which might mean that no confession happened yesterday?

“Dude, Chaewon’s our Forward and our captain. No hard feelings!” Ryujin throws up a peace sign at you, and the two girls laugh.

After you leave to look for Yunjin, Ryujin stays back, smirking at him. But there’s a distinct look in her eyes that he can, for a change, recognize. Partly because the fuzz in his brain left along with you. And partly because he sees this look in the mirror everyday. 

“I don’t even stand a chance, do I?” She doesn’t sound upset, just… regretful.

Taehyun’s words come back to him. “Ryu, I—” 

“Nah, it’s fine. I knew what I was getting into, Choi.” She smiles, this time, pointing at the ‘17’ placard in his hands. “I’m gonna score a basket just for this, though. Cheer loudly, ’kay?”

she was a lesson – i had to learn, i had to learn, yeah…

Beomgyu had gone to the game only for Ryujin, not for you. He literally came here to escape movie night with you.

Yet, he sits in the stadium with his eyes straying from Ryujin’s great moves as Point Guard, reaching across the court, to land on you. It’s so annoying and makes him feel so helpless, he wants to scream. But there’s something magnetic about your presence that just won’t let him exist peacefully.

Is this how love is supposed to feel? Exhausting and painful at all times?

What adds to the exhaustion and pain is the way you are seated with your eyes bright and teeth on display, Yunjin on one side and…Soobin on the other. 

Though he saw it coming, Beomgyu still finds it really hard to swallow the pain that pricks at his throat at the sight of you giggling into Soobin’s side and looking at the guy with eyes full of a million stars. He tries to seek comfort in the way Soobin seems to reciprocate your happiness, but it’s really hard.

He isn’t even jealous at this point, he’s just tired. If he could stop himself from feeling so much, all the damn time, he really, really would.

The crowd suddenly cheers, drawing his attention away from you – thankfully – and back to the court. And then his eyes widen in surprise. Ryujin stands with her hands braced on her hips, gaze directly directed at him. Well – she said she would score a basket for him and she did. She lifts a hand to point at him, causing a louder cheer to roar across the stadium, and Beomgyu cannot hold back the loud chuckle that escapes him. He raises both his hands up in a double thumbs-up.

Somewhere from three rows below, Heeseung shouts out an expletive at him, but the game has resumed again so everyone around the guy asks him to shut up.

Like clockwork, Beomgyu’s gaze slowly floats back up at the stands, slowly zeroing in towards your seat – only to stop short. You’re not in your seat. And neither is Soobin.

Oh.

Oh.

Now again, Beomgyu should be prepared to face this as well. But he’s once again at a loss.

Unwittingly, his brain conjures up images of you and Soobin finding a secluded, dark corner to make out in. He envisions the brightness he just saw in both of your gazes, imagines the tinkling giggles you would release, pictures the darkening of your cheeks. 

And in that moment, he can’t find it in himself to be happy for you. He can’t pretend to like Soobin. 

He aches to be the one you would have snuck off with; to be the one you would want to share secret kisses with.

He aches.

And in that moment, he realizes his feelings have gone too far. They have caused him to stop being a true well-wisher to you; he is being selfish.

He needs to take a step back.

i used to try to forget her…

“Dude, the one thing I asked of you was to not hurt Ryujin. What the hell do you mean you’re taking her out?” 

Beomgyu pinches the bridge of his nose, almost regretting disclosing his plans to his best friend. But he needed Taehyun to be on his side to make sure he doesn’t chicken out. Although given the tone the guy is using with him right now, Beomgyu’s purpose might be failing either way. 

He puts his phone on loudspeaker, extracting a jacket from his closet to match the blue t-shirt he’s wearing.

“She was awarded MVP for yesterday’s game for the first time in this season. When I congratulated her on it, she called me her lucky charm—”

“Ugh, it’s as if she wants you to hurt her,” Taehyun murmurs and Beomgyu can hear the grimace in his voice through the phone.

“So I asked her if she wanted to celebrate the win with her lucky charm, and she said yes…”

Taehyun gives a sigh. “You literally flirted with her.”

“I did. Weren’t you the one telling me I should focus my feelings where they will be reciprocated?”

“Yes, you should. But do you even feel anything?”

“I do, yeah…” Immense sadness and despair with a brush of frustration. “I feel like I’m gonna have a good time with her.”

“Yeah, I don’t doubt that.” Taehyun gives another sigh. “Just be smart, okay? Don’t lead her on, Gyu.”

“I won’t, man.”

Settling on a black denim jacket that goes with his jeans and boots of the same color, Beomgyu leaves his dorm in the half a decade old Corvette his parents have permitted him to keep on campus. He’s meeting Ryujin at the cafe, which saves him from spending time in the car with her.

When he enters the cafe, though, Beomgyu begins to wonder if he has somehow offended some higher, superior power by some action of his, for which he is now being punished on the daily.

Because before he can even begin to look around for his date, a giggling Soobin catches his eye. He’s sitting facing the door, feeding spaghetti to his date. 

His date.

You.

Your back is to him, but Beomgyu can still see how you’ve styled your hair in a way that is different than usual. You’ve always complained that your hair is too silky to be held up in an updo—a remark Beomgyu can never understand because he, personally, loves the texture of your hair—and so this complicated bun feels so strange on you.

And the off-shoulder dress instead of your beloved full-sleeves. And the dangling earrings instead of your usual studs. And—

Holy fuck, this isn’t you.

This isn’t you.

Beomgyu is fully frozen in his spot now, stunned and panicked at the same time.

Soobin is on a date – with someone else.

Should he be happy or concerned? 

The sweat accumulating on his palms indicates the latter. 

“Gyu!”

The call snaps his attention to a corner of the cafe, where Shin Ryujin sits with a grin on her face. Pushing his lips up, he waves at her. But his eyes involuntarily swim back to Soobin once more – only this time, both the taller boy and his date, Kim Chaewon, the basketball captain, are looking at Beomgyu with matching smiles.

He doesn’t know how to respond. Or react. His smile is frozen on his lips and his hand is still up in a wave, however, so the couple take that to be his greeting and go back to talking among themselves. And Beomgyu pushes himself to finally walk towards Ryujin’s table.

“I see you already spotted what I was dying to gossip about,” Ryujin grumbles with a scowl when he settles opposite her. 

Beomgyu blinks. “Uh… Soobin?”

“Who?” This time Ryujin is the one to give a clueless blink. But then her eyebrows rise. “Oh, the boy. Yeah, in a way, I guess? But Chaewon, obviously. She’s finally on a date with her crush of a whole ass year.”

What? “O–oh?”

The waiter comes over to take their orders, right then. Beomgyu asks for a club sandwich and beer, while Ryujin chooses an extra cheese loaded pizza and a virgin mojito.

“You don’t want me drunk around you, loser.” She winks at him but her smile is forced enough to make guilt unfurl in Beomgyu’s chest. “Anyways! Chaewon! She’s finally winning at life and it’s all thanks to your girl.”

Beomgyu’s heart jumps up to his throat for multiple reasons.  

His girl? You? Who else could it even be.

He drily swallows. “My…?”

“She was so hard at work during yesterday’s match! Fuck knows what magical words she said to both of them but they finally stopped their cat and mouse chase for good.” A fond look enters Ryujin’s gaze as she peeks past him to look at the couple. “It was sickening, watching Chaewon pine day in and out. Kinda like it is to watch you.”

Ryujin is laughing at her own joke, but Beomgyu’s mind is stuck on the information she just imparted. “Yesterday’s match?”

“Yeah. She arrived with Yunjin, remember? They both sat with Soobin and talked about Chaewon the entire time. Then she said something to Chae during break, and boom – this scardy ass dude was finally asking Chae out at the end of the match!”

Oh, fuck. This is why you were sitting with Soobin yesterday.

You were setting him up with Chaewon. 

This is probably why you have been hanging out with the guy and generally interacting so much with him recently as well.

Wait, was this why you asked him that question about having feelings for a best friend? As far as his general university knowledge goes, Chaewon and Soobin have been best friends since before college.

Oh fuck, indeed.

Beomgyu really blew things out of proportion and let his overthinking mind carry him away.

“Speaking of – when do you plan to confess, Choi?”

Beomgyu scoffs at the question. “Never.”

Ryujin looks genuinely confused at the response. “What? Why?”

“She doesn’t feel the same, Ryu. And she’s my best friend. I can’t risk it.”

“How do you know she doesn’t feel the same?”

That’s – an odd question. One that Beomgyu feels like should be very obvious to answer, but when he opens his mouth to do just that, he has to shut it back again. Because ‘I just know’ is going to sound as stupid out loud as it does in his head. 

But then what else does he have? He thought you had feelings for someone else but that was obviously not the case. 

“I… I mean isn’t it obvious? She would’ve hinted at it… said anything at all if she felt anything…”

The moment Ryujin narrows her eyes and clicks her tongue, he knows he messed up. “Like you have? You’re sitting on your hands, too, dumbass. Does she even know that you don’t go on dates?”

“I’m on a date right now.”

“Keep talking like that and you’ll leave this date with a black eye.”

The waiter arrives with their food, and as Ryujin dives right in, Beomgyu takes a moment to actually think about what the girl has been saying.

You not having feelings for someone else doesn’t automatically imply that you’ve suddenly stopped viewing Beomgyu platonically. Which is why he doesn’t want to suddenly drop his plans of moving on and go back to pining over you.

He wishes for this to be a smooth transition – getting rid of his romantic feelings for you while also staying friends. But if he pays mind to what Ryujin just said, he will block this way for himself.

Because the moment he confesses, it will be a one-way street. You’ll never talk to him again and he’ll be too embarrassed to even show you his face.

Now, of course, he isn’t even considering what could happen if you actually ended up reciprocating – because he’s done enough of that for years now and he’s honestly… tired.

Loving you, as he has concluded time again, is painful and exhausting. He just wants to be happy again.

“How about you stop giving me love advice and start looking for someone new to crush on?” Beomgyu raises an eyebrow at Ryujin, who picks up an olive from her pizza to throw at his face with a scowl.

But then when she dissolves into giggles, sprinkling her happiness and beauty all over him, Beomgyu has to pause to wonder if she doesn’t actually need to look for someone new to crush on.

He offers to drop her off at the end of the date and Ryujin thanks him for the treat. His hands feel a little clammy when she grins at him with a tilt of her head, short hair flying up with the wind.

“Will… will I see you again?”

“Uh, yeah? You see me everyday, dumbass.” Ryujin gives a chuckle but it doesn’t sound natural.

“No, I mean – like this. On a date.”

Her shoulders deflate and her smile leaves her face. Pursing her lips, she looks at him in what could only be defined as disappointment. “This wasn’t a date, Beomgyu. And I won’t be your rebound.”

He’s not asking her to be – except, maybe he is. He doesn’t know anymore.

She seems to know more than him because she gives him another one of those wry smiles of hers and pats his shoulder. “Tell her how you feel and get out of this stupid limbo. I can be your shoulder to cry on, but not a heart to play with. Good night, loser.”

He truly feels like a loser when she walks away from his car.

but now i smile when i remember.

Beomgyu has heard people talk a great deal about ‘right person, wrong time’ or ‘wrong person, right time’, but he has never felt the gravity of it the way he does now.

You’re sitting on the bleachers with Lee Heeseung and giggling your heart away like he’s the funniest man alive. Heeseung, to his credit, is looking at you with a sparkle in his eyes that rivals the entire galaxy.

And as Beomgyu watches the scene from next to the water dispenser in a discrete corner, the bottom of his stomach feels strangely calm. 

It’s been a week since he had that confrontation with Ryujin. He didn’t exactly take her advice and run to confess to you, but he certainly did drop hints. And he certainly did observe your reactions.

At the end, he ruefully finds himself exactly where he always has been – watching you offer your affections to someone else from afar.

“How long has he been keeping this in?” he asks around a scoff when Heeseung shows you some magic trick and gloats in your excited clapping.

Taehyun hums as he screws the lid of the water dispenser tight and dusts his hands off to come stand next to Beomgyu. “Fuck knows. I think he’s always smiled a little too brightly at her whenever—oh my God, did you see that? Butterfingers! I could see that card from here. Making a joke out of the best card trick in the books!”

Beomgyu laughs at his friend’s grumbles. Then he gives a sigh. “She looks happy, doesn’t she?”

“Yeah, she does. But I don’t really think she’s on the same page as Lee. Or even you for that matter.” Taehyun settles on the ground and Beomgyu follows his lead. “She’s enjoying her college days like a normal uni student. And maybe you should too, Gyu. Enough of this pining, enough of being in love. Don’t you want to get drunk off your ass and makeout with some ditzy freshman at a party?”

Beomgyu’s horror must show on his face because Taehyun snorts when their eyes meet. 

“Okay, maybe not all of it. But… we’re young, buddy. You’ll have plenty of time to fall in love. Hopefully this time with someone who loves you more?”

Beomgyu watches the way you lean closer to Heesung to whisper something in his ear, and as the guy’s cheeks grow red in response, he frowns to himself. 

“What about all those times when she seemed jealous? Or upset I wasn’t paying attention to her?”

“Dude, for real?” Taehyun punches his shoulder. “You get like that too when I’m not available at your every beck and call.”

Beomgyu slowly exhales, leaning back on his palms and tilting his head up to let the sunlight wash over his face.

He really is stepping out of his delusions, this time.

You don't like him like that. You don't have feelings for him.

You and him are going to remain just friends.

He's finally ready to face the fact and move forward.

“Yo, loser! Wanna play catch?”

He’s smiling even before he has opened his eyes. Taehyun clears his throat in an exaggerated way with his eyebrows raised. “Never seen you grin that brightly in a while, my man…”

He looks around towards the source of the voice, his grin turning into laughter at the evil gleam in Ryujin’s eyes as she hurtles the basketball towards him.

Somehow managing to catch it with an enraged gasp, Beomgyu wastes no time in chasing the girl with it.

Somewhere in his peripheral vision, he notices the way you have cuddled up with Heesung and how the two of you are laughing at his antics with Ryujin.

When he briefly meets your eye, you give him a thumbs up with your grin.

And for the first time in years, he is able to smile back at you without an ounce of pain in his heart.

and i was so young till she kissed me like a whiskey… like a whiskey.

FIN.

© yeonboy 2023 // do not steal, copy or repost. respect your local content creators, kaythanks.

[daydreamgoddess14]

The Ties that Bind - Chapter 3

River and Seren work on avoiding each other 👀

Thank you for reading, hope you're enjoying it!

CH 1 | CH 2

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Chapter 3

Avoiding him had become torture. In reality, they were avoiding each other, which was somehow worse. Seren made sure she was gone on the evenings he was expected and tried to avoid going over during the weekends when she knew he was more likely to be around. Their previously friendly text exchanges had been reduced to a schedule of their planned whereabouts, and River’s evening calls to check in had all but disappeared. It wasn’t always possible to avoid him, but she tried. David had gone to bed early, poor sleep and his whirling mind often exhausted him, it exhausted Seren too. She slumped at the kitchen table, head resting in her arms. Just a little bit of quiet before going home. The bright lights of River’s car outside lit up the kitchen and a few seconds later, he clattered noisily through the door, bringing the cool autumn air with him. Seren shivered and pulled the hoodie she was wearing tighter around herself.

“Shit, sorry. Fucking door.”

“Keep it down, he’s in bed.”

“Already?”

“It’s been… a day,” she sighed, rolling her eyes.

“You’re here late?”

“I just needed to sit for a minute before I went.” She mumbled into her arms. 

“Beer?”

“Yeah, thanks.” He retrieved them from the fridge and sat a few seats away from her at the table.

“You ok?” He asked, watching her curiously. She shrugged. “That’s my hoodie.”

“Oh. Sorry, I was freezing and spotted it in the sitting room. I’ll leave it and bring mine tomorrow.”

“No, it’s… it’s ok.” He took a long pull of his beer, keeping his eyes on her. The hoodie swamped her, wrapped all the way around her and the sleeves far too long. “So are you?”

“Am I what?”

“Ok?”

“It feels a bit like I’m in an episode of Upstairs Downstairs.” River frowned. “The servants live downstairs while the grand family live upstairs? He’s very much the lord of the manor.” She explained. 

“Ah…. yeah. He is a bit.”

“Not always, but sometimes… I feel very much like ‘the help’.”

“I’m sorry-” He started, she brushed him off.

“It’s fine, I see it a lot. It’s an age thing usually. Don’t worry, I’m not going to suddenly go all ‘would you like to take your tea in the library, sir?’” She sniggered. When he didn’t respond she looked up sharply. “Oh shit, that hasn’t just unlocked something in you has it?” 

“Depends, is there a uniform?” Seren shook her head, laughing, and threw her bottle top at him. 

“Stop it, I'm trying to stay out of your way.”

“Same. But let’s not rule out a uniform just yet.” They drank their beer in silence. “Explain it to me again?” He asked suddenly.

“Explain what?”

“Why… this, whatever this is, is such a bad idea?”

“I don’t want to confuse him. I also don’t think he’d approve. And,” she hesitated. 

“Go on?”

“River you literally pay my fucking wages. Tell me that's not a bit weird?

“I mean… Ok I'm going to skip over the last one-”

“Convenient.” She rolled her eyes. 

“But my grandfather? It’s not up to him what happens between us?”

“No, but he’s your grandfather. And notice how you didn’t correct me? On any of my points? You know he wouldn’t approve. Like I said, I’m ‘the help’ and you're the one paying me.”

“You’re not the help.”

“I mean, I kind of am? Just in less of a Victorian sense.”

“That's-, it's not like-” He tried to find the right way to get his point across.

“See. Look, I know you don't see it like that-”

“Then isn’t that all that matters?” He interrupted. “Why does it matter that I'm the one paying you? I wouldn't expect you to do this for free.” She didn’t answer him. “I need you here as much as he does. I’m not sure how to handle it when he’s not himself, when he doesn’t know who I am.” He said, changing the subject. 

“I know. I usually take my cue from whoever he thinks I am. Sometimes he thinks I’m his wife, sometimes he thinks I’m his daughter, sometimes he’s really pissed off when he thinks I’m a total stranger.” 

“How do you get through it?”

“I just talk to him normally, try and be patient.”

“I’m not very patient.”

“I hadn’t noticed.” She raised an eyebrow.

“Well how do you separate it then?”

“6am body combat class.”

“Are you a fucking masochist?”

“A dark room, stupidly loud, brain frying music and punching shit all before breakfast? Works a treat, don’t knock it til you’ve tried it.”

“Is punching shit a technical term? Don’t think it’s for me,” he grimaced, recalling being on the receiving end of most punches.

“Throw yourself into something else then, find a distraction.”

“I just don’t know if I’m doing this right. I’m forever going to be the bad guy for making decisions he doesn’t like.” He rose from the table, adding his bottle to the recycling bin. She could feel her resolve crumbling, the urge to comfort him was overwhelming. She stood to join him and before she could bottle it, she closed the gap between them and wrapped her arms around his waist, anchoring herself to him. She felt his body slowly relax under her hold, leaning into her and bringing his arms around her. He dropped his chin down to rest on her head. His breaths deepened to match hers and as he relaxed she closed her eyes. 

“You’re doing really well.” She promised. He let go first, clearing his throat and stepping out of her embrace. Embarrassed, she moved away from him. “I’ve got to go. Combat at 6. I’ll sort this door tomorrow.” She gave it a pull as it stuck in the frame again.

“It was good to see you.” He said softly, catching her hand in his and holding it.

“You too.”

“Can we agree that avoiding each other is a stupid idea?” He pulled her gently towards him. 

“Can we agree that this is evidence enough that we should avoid each other?” She countered, gesturing to the minimal space between them.

He shook his head, “I haven’t done anything?” He leaned down, pausing millimetres from kissing her.

“Yet?” She whispered, getting there first and kissing him, her hand snaking up to the nape of his neck.

“What am I doing? Hmm, you started this.” He told her, not daring to move his mouth from hers. He kissed her back with a fierceness she hadn't realised she was so desperate for. Her hands worked fast, pushing his jacket down his arms and onto the floor with a thud, and pulling him back by his t-shirt. Seren found it impossible to disguise her reaching hands. Tangling in his hair, slipping under his t-shirt, she ached to feel his skin against hers. “What happened to this being a terrible idea?” He asked, kissing along her jawline.

“It’s an awful idea.” She moaned, her body arching to meet his. 

“So stop?”

“You stop.” She muttered, the sigh tumbling from her lips. With great restraint, he did.

“Really?” His forehead rested against hers while they caught their breath. 

“Yes,” she groaned sadly, “No. Fuck, why is this so hard?” He went to reply, “do not make a joke.”

“Wasn’t going to.” He kissed her again lightly.

“Yeah, you were.”

“Yeah I was. Really stop?”

“Yes, really stop.” She kissed him back.

“Seren,” he groaned, “I’m getting very mixed messages.”

“You’re right,” she leaned back away from him a little, “you’re right, I’m sorry. This isn’t fair, it’s not about what I want.”

“So this is what you want?” He asked.

“River,” she sighed, clearly torn.

“Fuck, Seren,” he kissed her again, “ please don’t say my name like that again.” 

“I’m trying not to, but you-, ohh-” his teeth grazed the sensitive skin under her ear and her hips canted towards him in response. “God, you are not making things easy.” 

“And you are?” He let his head drop onto her shoulder, breathing her in. “So. Are we stopping, or are we not stopping?”

“We’re stopping.” Seren said, hesitantly. “This will get too complicated, and we’re dealing with enough as it is.”

“Or…”

“No, no or.”

“Hear me out. Or, this is a distraction.” His voice was still muffled against her neck.

“A complicated distraction. River, I’m trying to keep my hands to myself but I need you to help me, please ?” She pleaded. She felt his sigh against her neck, making her shiver against him. His hands moved from her waist to take her hands, and he stood up straight, putting some space between them.

“Ok.” He acquiesced. 

“I’m going to go home now.” She said firmly.

“Ok.”

“Ok. Goodnight, River.”

“Goodnight Seren,” he placed a quick kiss on her lips. “And just so we’re completely clear, I don’t want you to keep your hands to yourself.” He smirked. She shook her head and let go of his hands. “I’ll call you tomorrow to check in.”

*

The previous tactic of avoidance had given way to pretending to completely ignore the tension between them and act as if nothing had happened at all. There were still the sly remarks he liked dropping into conversation to fluster and frustrate her. He much preferred the gentle teasing and flirting, and sharing the mental load of looking after David had helped them both lighten up. The nightly phone calls had resumed, to River’s relief. The routine of picking up the phone on his way down the death stairs of Slough house to hear Seren’s voice practically powered him through the day. He hadn't seen her since their previous encounter in the kitchen weeks previously, every time he found himself alone in there, the memories flooded his senses, the warmth and softness of her skin, the smell of her perfume, her shampoo and the sweet taste of her. He'd turned up late the previous day, annoyed and frustrated. His car had been in the garage all week so he'd suffered the bus or tube to work and hadn't faced the train to his grandfather's house until the weekend. He'd missed Seren, she'd been and gone again, leaving a note about homemade pie in the fridge. He and David had eaten the lot along with a bottle of red wine and a handful of gin and tonics. David had not only recognised and remembered him, but he'd been in the best mood River had seen for weeks. He sang Seren's praises, as did River after a few drinks, and told stories of work that River had heard a million times previously but listened as if it were the first time. He was terrified of the day David would remember the stories for the last time and they'd never be told again. 

“Car alright?” David asked. 

“Should be now, they've had it all bloody week. I can collect it tomorrow.”

“I keep telling Seren that her car is no good, spluttering down the lane. You can hear it from a mile away.” 

“I might get her to drop me at the station if you'll be alright for half an hour?”

“Of course I will. I'm no invalid, River.”

“I know, I know. I just don't want you to be pissed off.”

“Story of my life.” David muttered as the unmistakable sound of Seren's car turned into the driveway. “Go on then, I'll see you in a few days.”

“Take care, grandad.” River embraced him briefly and went out to meet Seren. She peered over her sunglasses at him, the window down. “Can I have a lift?” He asked. 

“Depends, are you going to take the piss out of my music?”

“I would never do that. Obviously.”

“Hmm. Get in then.” She swung the car around on the drive and headed back in the direction she'd come from. “Where's your car?”

“Fucked.”

“Technical term?”

“Something like that. How was combat?” He noted the gym bag in the back seat. 

“Fucked.” She mimicked with a smile. “Did you have a good night?”

“The old man got me pissed and we ate the pie you made.”

“Nice”

“It was, thank you.” 

“You'll have to let me know what you like and I'll make it next time.” At the traffic lights she shoved the car into gear and made the turning for the train station. She pulled into the nearest space. “Seems I've been upgraded to driver.”

“Not going to call me sir this time?” 

“After last time? Absolutely not.” He watched her watching people going to and from the station. 

“I'm glad we're talking again.” He told her. She turned to look at him, taking off her sunglasses. 

“Me too.” She watched his face screw up into a frown. “What's up?”

“Nothing. I'll let you go.”

“River?” He reached across the gearstick between them and weaved his hand into her hair, pulling her to him. He sighed, lips millimetres from hers and reluctantly let go. 

“I'm fine, Seren” he nodded, “thank you for the lift.” It wasn't until the car door had slammed that River let go of the breath he'd been holding. 

*

“Have you spoken to Lamb about taking more responsibility yet?” David questioned.

“No,” River sighed. “He’s not exactly approachable is he?”

“But he’s the only one who can get you out of Slough House.” 

“I’m aware of that, grandad. It’s just not that easy.”

“Nothing good ever came from being easy, boy. You have to work at it, show that you can handle the responsibility of more work, better work. Prove that you want to actually leave Slough House?”

“I am working at it. I am.” River argued. He’d been arguing for the whole weekend. Seren had walked in during breakfast, heard the raised voices and had backed out of the room with wide eyes and a questioning look to River who’d just rolled his eyes. Over twenty four hours later David was still on the same topic of River’s commitment to work, commitment to the service and why on earth he was still allowing himself to be kept with the Slow Horses.

“You need to push harder, no outside distractions. Your grandmother didn’t see me for weeks on end, she knew the toils of the job. No distractions, no half arsing it.”

“Things have changed, people don’t work like that anymore.”

“Pfft,” David countered, “of course they do. You think Jackson Lamb couldn’t put you back at the Park? Course he bloody well could, if he wanted to.”

“Well then there’s the problem. He doesn’t want to.”

“So make it worth his while. Make yourself useful. Can’t you reach out to old friends and do some work for them on the side, make Tavener see that you’re an asset?” River frowned, not sure that either Lamb, or Tavener would ever see him as an asset. Plus working at Slough House allowed a little more autonomy than he suspected those at the Park got. Some of the things he was working on were interesting because they were separate from Tavener and her ironclad grip. Eventually, worn down by criticism, River agreed that David was right. Maybe he wasn’t working hard enough? Maybe he was distracted.

“He’s just frustrated because he’s had a rough few weeks.” Seren reassured him while he made coffee,  “he’s taking it out on you because he knows he can.”

“Does he do this to you?”

“Did you forget the whole housekeeper conversation?” She asked.

“We never said housekeeper,” he grinned. “There was definitely talk of a uniform and I was picturing more of a maid than a housekeeper.”

“Piss off. I’m being nice to you!”

“I know, I know,” he laughed, dodging the water she flicked at him from the sink.

“It’s hard for him, someone who’s used to being at the top of the tree. I don’t know what on earth he used to do for work, but I can tell it was something important. Something where he was very important. And now his mind is holding him hostage and stealing everything he knows.”

“You’re right.”

“So we just need to be there for him and ride out the bad bits. There’s still time to sign up for combat class?”

“There are other distractions I’d enjoy a lot more.” He nudged her on his way back to finish the game of chess he was losing to David. He watched her from the doorway without her knowledge for a minute, enjoying the flush in her cheeks and shy smile that lingered after she thought he’d gone. He worked hard to not let the distraction of Seren affect his work, took on board David's advice and to Lamb's annoyance, made himself overly helpful. 

“So how’s it going with your grandfather now?” Louisa asked, stirring him from his thoughts days later and handing him a cold beer bottle.

“S’good. He gets on with the woman who looks in on him so that helps.”

“And his memory lapses?”

“Happening more often, and he gets angry. Really angry, when he can't remember.”

“Shit, I'm sorry.”

“He thinks he's being watched.”

“Is he?”

“Who the fuck knows. We probably all are.” 

“Has this got anything to do with this fucking annoying mission that you're on?”

“I dunno what you're talking about?” He blustered.

“Oh don't give me that,” Louisa laughed, “you are literally the most irritating person in that building at the moment - and that's saying something! ‘Anything I can do, Lamb?’, ‘shall I collect your takeout?’, ‘any errands need running?’. It's gross. And it's not you.” She pointed her bottle at him. “You are the least helpful person I know, please don't change now.” He fell silent, peeling the label off the bottle. 

“He keeps on at me to get out. Be more helpful, no distractions.”

“There's nothing distracting about Slough House except the smell.” She watched him curiously. “Ohh. Is it her? The woman who looks after him?” He downed his beer without answering. 

“C'mon, I'll walk you to your car.” 

“Nooo, come on! Let me live through your love life!” She teased. 

“I don't have a love life, Louisa. I barely have a life.” He grimaced, opening her car door for her. 

“Fucking saddo.” She pinched his cheek and then slapped it gently. “Night night.” He watched Louisa drive off away from Slough House and then jumped into his own car. He'd already told Seren it would be a late one and though she'd offered to stay, they both knew that David was still perfectly capable of being alone from time to time. He hit redial on his car display and called her. 

“Hello?”

“It's me.”

“Good night?”

“Long day. How was he?” River could hear tinny splashes in the background. “You're not still there are you?”

“Nooo, no. I left an hour ago. I'm… y'know what, nevermind.”

“Oh.” It dawned on River where she was, the tinny sound, the unmistakable sound of water. The bath. “Oh.” He said again trying to banish the mental image accompanied with hearing her voice. 

“He's fine, by the way.” She said, her voice taunting. 

“Good. I'm on my way.”

“Don't forget, be clear about who you are, don't raise your voice.”

“Got it. I'll leave you to it. See you soon?”

“Yeah, soon. Bye, River.”

*

Seren was resilient. Able to bend and sway to adapt to the harshest conditions and people, she had no problem sticking up for herself when required. But against David at his worst, her patience was wearing thin. Since his evening with River, his cognitive capabilities had taken a turn for the worse. Seren had bared it and been his constant throughout. She picked up the phone and went to stand out in the garden while David had lunch.

“Cartwright?”

“It’s me.”

“Hi.” She could hear the smile in his voice, “Everything ok?”

“Not really. Another bad day. I need to get some more mugs. And plates. He keeps throwing them at me.”

“Fuck. Seren, I’m sorry. Are you ok?” She tried not to think about the way he said her name. How she wanted him to say her name.

“Don’t worry, I’m getting good at dodging them.” She kicked at the weeds that had taken up on the driveway, making a mental note to do something about them.

“Yeah that doesn’t really fill me with confidence.”

“At least it’s only a mug, not a gun. And when he’s back, when he’s himself again, he’s so apologetic. It’s just been a hard few weeks.” Neither of them acknowledged that this was the case for all of them, not just David. “Anyway, I just thought I should let you know before you get here later.”

“Yeah, ok thanks. Will I see you later?” He asked. The silence dragged on so long he had to check the call was still connected.

“I… I don’t know.”

“I'd like to? Might be good to catch up.” He suggested. 

“Yeah, you’re probably right.” She stared out to the open fields before her. “I’ll still be here,” she said finally. She watched a figure in the lane, watching her. “There's someone….” She frowned.

“What’s happened?”

“Nothing, I can just see someone.” A dog appeared in the lane only a few feet away from her. She flinched. “Shit!” The dog gave a short bark and ran back up the lane to the owner. 

“Seren?” She held up her hand and gave the figure a little wave, embarrassed that the dog had made her jump so much.

“It's ok, it was just a dog.”

“Sure?” 

“Yeah, course. He just came through the gap in the hedge. You sound like David, he keeps saying the dogs are out to get him. Silly sod.”

“If you’re sure?” River skipped over her previous comment.

“Yes, River, I’m sure. I’ll see you later, you can bring some dinner.” She told him, hanging up. She watched the dog walker retreat down the lane, occasionally looking back at her, and turned back to the house. The afternoon went on far longer than Seren wanted it to, the anticipation of seeing River grew by the minute. The afternoon fell away to nightfall and when River arrived with a bag of takeout, Seren and David were playing cards. 

“This is a ridiculous game.” David grumbled.

“It's a great game, you're just a sore loser.” Seren grinned wickedly as she put down another card from her hand. “Oh! Shithead!” She slapped down her last card. “Good timing, River brought dinner.” David looked at River for a long few seconds. 

“Right, I'll get washed up then,” he said, his voice small and distant. 

“Are you ok?” Seren asked, watching him carefully, cards halfway into their box. 

“Fine dear, fine. Boyfriend of yours is he? Handsome chap.” He left the room muttering to himself. Seren froze at the table. She could hear that River had stopped opening food containers and turned slowly to face him.

“I'm so sorry,” she said softly, “he was right here, I didn't think he wouldn't recognise you. We've been talking about you all afternoon.” She could see the sadness and resignation in River's eyes. He shook his head a little. 

“S'alright. I expect it now.”

“That doesn't make it alright.” 

“Dinner's getting cold.” He stated. She frowned, wanting to say more but it was clear that the conversation was over. She took over opening the food while River moved it to the table, his hand lingering in the small of her back as he passed between her and the table. “You taught my grandad a card game called ‘Shithead’?” He asked, his voice teasing. 

“How long have you been courting Seren then young man?” David interrupted, taking his seat once again.

“I wouldn't say I'm courting her, she's very stubborn.” River blushed. 

“As she should be,” he chuckled. “A smart girl like her shouldn't be won over by the first handsome man that comes along and shows an interest.” Seren rolled her eyes and snapped her chopsticks apart.

“I think you've got the wrong end of the stick here, David.” She warned, taking a dumpling from River's plate. “There's nothing going on between River and I.” 

“Oi, that’s my dumpling and you’re still wearing my hoodie.” It was true. In the last weeks and months, River could have counted on one hand the number of times his hoodie was where he left it, or available when he needed it in the draughty old house. Whenever he could find it, Seren’s perfume surrounded him.

“Ah but it's high time River had his attention caught by a pretty girl.” With a glance between them, Seren confirmed to River that David was back again. 

“Eat your dinner, old man,” River told him, Seren could see the relief in his smile. She watched the Cartwright gentlemen barter back and forth, noting how tired David looked. 

“Are you ok?” She asked him, concerned. 

“Just tired.” He admitted quietly.

“Shall I save you some food for lunch tomorrow? You could take the newspaper to bed, I saved the crossword for you?” She asked while River watched their short exchange.

“That's thoughtful Seren but I think I'm too tired. We'll do it tomorrow over breakfast.”

“Deal, I'll bring croissants.”

“She's good to me,” he told River, “I might have to admit that I'm grateful for you bringing her here.”

“I'll take that, and I won't even say I told you so.”

“See the cheek I put up with, Seren? River forgets when to stop talking sometimes, I think.”

“You're definitely right on that. Come on, time for the old man to go to bed.”

“Why do I feel like you're both as bad as each other?” He muttered but didn't argue. 

“I'll see you up there.” River offered.

“Come on then, make sure I can remember my way around my own damn house.” River followed David up the steep old stairs of the cottage while Seren packed away leftovers. 

“Need me to do anything?” River asked when he came back down. He watched Seren potter around the kitchen, making sure everything was cleared away. 

“Nope, all done.”

“And are you…” he shrugged, fidgeting with his hands, “sticking around? Or going home?” He asked, the question hanging in the air between them.

Chapter 4

[crowtrobotx]

*bursts into your inbox and chooses violence* fandom/fanfic asks 15: Fandom you find annoying and 22: Least favorite fic trope

Vodka woke up and said "Let's get Crow cancelled today" lmaoooo. No, thank you, I'm a shady bitch and we all know it. 15. Fandom you find annoying I'm sorry folks, it really does either have to be ST or OFMD. It's really a chicken or the egg situation for both of them, like did I not enjoy them first and then they both became inescapably popular which only fueled my preexisting dislike or did they become huge and taint a formerly neutral opinion? I think with the latter it's probably deeply fueled by personally spite since I find Black Sails to be the first and wildly better gay pirate show and I just kind of thought OFMD was... underwhelming in comparison. The former I actually liked for a season or two and then they just decided to have essentially the same plot beats for four seasons and I was like "wow this is boring!" I tend to just really dislike stuff centering on high school aged shenanigans as is, and then I was subjected to insane and rancid discourse on my dash every day once S4 came out and I was done lol. Of course if you are reading this and thinking "Crow must personally hate ME" then I encourage you to go outside and take some long breaths because it's literally not that deep and people can find your interests irritating without it having anything to do with you. People should do what makes them happy and I have both the tags/popular ship names blocked as best I can. Don't let my cranky ass stop you. 22. Least favorite fic trope Misogynist portrayals of women in m/m pairing fics! What the hell and fuck!!! It's always written off/defended by the worst people as somehow just not big of a deal because the female character is obviously a terrible person in canon (she is almost always at worst on par with the fan favorite male characters) or you'll get attacked for pointing it out because they just want "representation" and obviously you are a nasty heterosexual for simply pointing out that there are better ways to make your pairing happen than demonizing/killing off/torturing female characters. (For the love of God!!! Polyamory!!! For a start!!!) Look, I know these are fake people and they don't need to be defended and what someone writes is not necessarily what they condone IRL but some stuff just reeks of deep rooted issues and if your reaction to being questioned on it is to start hurling serious accusations and insults.... idk man it's not a good look! Can you tell I have been on the receiving end of this discourse a few too many times lmao.

[h-f-k]

what did you think of the album? Any standout tracks for you?

spoileeeeeeers and long ass raaaaaaaant

okay so... i have MANY thoughts and none of them make sense so i'll try my best

I liked the album. It's a vast improvement from midnights but it's just that, a small upgrade. Production wise i feel like Aaron borderline saved the album from being another midnights, ttpd suffers from what i call 3AM Bonus Tracks Syndrome which is that: Aaron providing a breath of fresh air which was incredibly needed after having jack produced 99% of midnights. I love jack and i love his solo stuff but for me the formula swift-antonoff doesn't work as well as it used to and if it does it gives one great song and the rest are just there.

There were three or four songs that really stood out for me. Florida!!! doesn't make any fucking sense to me (i literally had to ask in the gc what the song meant bc i was like huh????) but the production is extremely cool, THE DRUMS????!!!!! GIVE ME REAL INSTRUMENTS!!!!!! I really liked it, it grew on me and now it's one of my faves. So long london is another gem and i remember really liking down bad upon first listen. The smallest man who ever lived is also a song i like. But the rest is just there, my only thoughts while listening to them were "oh... this is cool. i can't wait to never hear it ever again".

Lyric wise... oh boy. Now i don't like to pretend i'm a poet (i'm looking at you taylor) or that i'm extremely well versed with words or that i have an literature degree because i don't, metaphors sometimes are hard for me to understand/grasp and i relegate that to the people who know best bUT the lyrics are all over the place. Again, an improvement from midnights but they still felt clunky and very surface level. Some of them had great concepts but terrible execution and some of them straight up suck. My main issue was that the album felt super repetitive. When i first started listening i really felt bad for taylor, it was painful even but then... the same concept and words kept popping up and it's just more of the same. like i get it, she's sad, she's depressed and i'm not expecting her to write about other stuff if the main subject of the album is being heartbroken or shit. when i started listening to the album i was like 'oh, that's sad, i feel for her' but halfway through it i was like girl if you don't shut up and stop trying to feel sorry for yourself... like there's a moment where the constant repetition of the same thing makes me roll my eyes, especially because she doesn't know how to express it in a different way. it's all pretty much straight forward "we were gonna get married" "you were the love of my life" like i know you can communicate these concepts, these words in a different way!!! why are you repeating yourself so much!!! if you remove some of the songs it makes no difference, it still gets the point across.

as a whole this is probably her messiest album, because nothing, and i say NOTHING makes sense when you put it all together. i know she's not known for making concept albums or for being a visual person, but this album feels incredibly disjointed, it doesn't feel like an album, it doesn't feel like a body of art that was well thought out. the most satisfying part about an album cycle is when you connect all the pieces like the photoshoot, the music videos (sometimes, not all the time), the art direction and overall aesthetic you create for the mkt campaign the pop up shops etc etc, the music, the lyrics, the general concept/theme of the songs and it all makes sense. it's an eureka moment, it's a moment where EVERYTHING makes sense to you, it answers every question you had, why the physical cd is blue, why the booklet uses helvetica instead of times new roman, why the color palette is dark, etc etc. tortured poets department doesn't do any of that, in fact it confused me MORE because with the album art she said one thing, in the lyrics she said another thing and with the promo videos we've seen she said another thing and it'll probably happen the same with the music videos. Which is fine i guess she can do whatever she wants but to me it feels like there wasn't a clear vision, i think it was a bit clearer than midnights but not by much.

overall it's an ok album. i'm pissed because i know she has the potential to do more, ESPECIALLY this being her 11th studio album and the insane amount of resources she has at the palm of her hand. i'm not asking her to create a new music genre, to come up with a screamo album, because that's simply not what she wants to do which i respect but it's so frustrating to see her have all this success and "power" and do absolutely nothing with it, like just call at least ONE more person that isn't from your inner circle to produce your music, at least do that!!! and this is why her last albums felt so repetitive.

idk i was hoping that this album would make me fall in love with her music again but idk, i'm drifting away more and more which sucks but i really can't help it. i might save the songs i like to my spotify and that's it.

[moonshine999]

How I would have done Wanda in the MCU (pt.3)

Note the fact that obviously everything that was going to happen to her character arc in phase 4 was not planned when she was seen in winter soldier so I do have the benefit of hindsight and this is by no means, something that should have been done or anything. 

I am not a screenwriter and this is not perfect

Okay. So this has been some time coming. In this post, I’m “re-writing” Wandavision and Multiverse of Madness. Most people have critiqued both projects as disappointing and I can’t help but agree. 

Wandavision was amazing at first but then the finale came along and the regular MCU vfx battle played out (which was unexpected given how different this show felt from the “regular” MCU) 

Multiverse of Madness was inconsistent and full of plot-holes. 

So right now, I will try my best to make her character arc flow better throughout the projects and maybe add something here and there 

Wandavision 

“ Thanks for the lesson..but I don’t need you to tell me who I am. “

As I said before, I genuinely think this show is fucking brilliant

It’s so weird and disconnected from a regular mcu project.  I love the first 8 episodes to death. But. Episode 9. That. Yeah. 

It was a disappointing finale yes. The regular cgi battle, Wanda effectively paying no consequences, the bohner thing? 

🥀so here’s what I would have done

First , to not make Agatha the main villain. 

Just to tweak ep.8 then, instead of Agatha going through Wanda’s memories and making all her comments, she keeps quiet and lets Wanda grieve. She almost says something of comfort but controls herself. If she fully needs to understand Wanda Maximoff, all she has to do is observe. 

As much as I adore Agatha All Along, it does undermine how far Wanda’s own grief has led her. 

How far her own grief has influenced her to quite literally enslave a whole town. She has no control over this power. 

How I would have done it is that Agatha finds out she is a witch and instead of becoming an antagonist, she is similar to her comic book counterpart. With her helping Wanda understand the extent of her power. 

Wanda is at a loss for words, she is genuinely confused beyond everything. Confused but angry. Angry at herself for doing everything, angry that her family can not be real, angry that she is subjected to such a fate. 

Agatha tries to calm her down but all in vain. She starts screaming and crying and the entirety of westview goes to shit. 

Agatha grabs onto her shoulders and tells her to stop, she’s hurting these people, she has enslaved a town, she needs to stop

Wanda rushes away and goes outside. All the townspeople are on their knees, crying out for help. Crying out for their families. Because they have them. She can’t. She can not escape the truth. Let this be a bad dream, let this be a bad dream. 

Then Agatha and Monica rush to her.Monica just needs Wanda to calm down and let these people people go so that Hayward does not issue another attack. Agatha rushes to her because she understands her power and what it can do. What if the hex extends farther, how far? Will it ever stop? Her destiny is set in the book of the damned. How long before she actually accomplishes her destiny. To destroy the world. She needs to calm down. She needs to stop. 

Then “MOM! MOM!” 

Wanda turns to see her twins. It could be the last time she does. The chokeholds around the townspeople disappear. She wants to run to them.

But why. To protect them? From whom? They easily defeated Hayward and his murder squad. The only danger here is her. She stops. 

Vision flies down next to them, after his ‘battle’ with his double.

She looks at Vision. Monica. Billy. Tommy. Agatha.The people of westview. The mayhem she has caused. The torture she has put them to. 

She knows what has to be done. But people, emotion, danger leads to chaos. 

Her power erupts once again. To destroy everything she created. To free these people. To kill her family. To free these people.  To subject herself to torture for eternity. To free these people. 

She knows what she is doing is right. But god, her own selfishness is still clinging on to the one hope she could have had. But perhaps the damned book is right. Her destiny is to destroy the world. Herworld. Over and over again. Till she destroys herself. 

The hex comes down. The townspeople are freed. They pause for a minute. Look at her. And then rush to find their families. 

Her only wish as she kneels there on the ground is that she can do the same. 

A hand touches her shoulder. Monica. She smiles. “I cannot understand the pain you feel right now. But I hope you find even the smallest glimmer of peace in knowing that you’ve freed them and done the right thing” 

No response. 

Monica leaves to handle the dazed S.W.O.R.D workers. 

Agatha kneels next to her. “Listen. I can’t change your fate. But I can help you. I want to help you.” 

They had both lost their families. They had both been betrayed. They both were shunned out for being too powerful. Accept the help.

“I don’t need your help, Agatha.” 

She knows that she should let her in. She knows more than her. But maybe it’s arrogance? Selfishness?

Wanda gets up. Looks around at the townspeople finally reunited with their loved ones. A frown on her face. Selfishness.

She shakes her frown off. Looks towards Agatha. “I’ll see you later, Agatha”. “Wanda, wait.” Both stay still. “Take this. I know you don’t need my help but you’ll need this. It’s a spell book. It can help you keep your powers in check”. In check. No response comes. She looks at Agatha and grabs the book.

She walks away.  The mayhem is over. She’s back at square 1. Just worse.

And that’s it for the main shit 

For the after credit scenes , 

 🥀Dr strange

Just show him waking up from a nightmare. Sensing something is wrong. He looks towards his watch. Then the mirror. He sits up. Then pan over to a book next to him where the runes on the cover glow red.  

Cut to black. 

🥀Pietro/ Peter 

Show him looking over some files. He escaped from the hex. No one thought to give him any mind. Thank goodness. He looks off to the side at a supposed someone. “She isn’t like us. More powerful for sure. Some other dna has influenced this.” He sighs, flipping over to another page. We pan away from him and then when the focus is not on him or the other person, we here a mumble/ whisper “Dad would have been proud,I guess” 

Dr. Strange in the Multiverse of madness 

“ It won’t be Wanda who comes for her.. It’ll be the scarlet witch “ 

Okay so some major problems 

🥀 her powers are inconsistent and all her badass moment are just created by a power that she just has in the moment and completely forgets about later 

🥀her motivations are weak 

🥀even if you watched wandavision, her arc does not flow well into multiverse of madness 

P.S I think the movie should have just been called multiverse of madness instead of dr strange in the.. 

because it is simply not a dr strange film. Both Wanda and Stephen share the spotlight and it is simply unfair to both the characters and the audience to advertise it like a sequel to a solo adventure. 

So I have thought a lot on this and this movie is mainly why I took so long to put this out. This movie has a lot of problems and inconsistencies. While I don’t dislike the movie, I can understand the argument as to why some people do. 

Okay a slight change. This changes and rewrites do not tie into one cohesive story. Rather they are just suggestions in which they could have taken the character and the plot points. So all of them don’t tie in together but are just ideas that could have been cool. 

🥀her powers 

Make them set. Telekinesis, reality warping and mind control.

Even with reality warping - give her limitations. Like it’s not under her control or it only happens in times of emotional distress (similar to Chavez) 

And then when the dark hold is involved, make their enhancement a direct result of the book. The book is not the reason she turns evil but the reason she has the means to do so. 

But then at the end when the dark hold is destroyed by her, her powers are back to where they were before. Maybe even weaker due to her not using them as often because she was so focused on the book of the damned. 

🥀her motivations 

Here, I would have bought back that idea of selfishness and her frustration that everyone around her is allowed to have a family and love. Even some of the members of the avengers have one - Clint mainly. Someone who she was so close to. Someone who she looked up to. But looking back on it, how much of it was admiration and how much jealousy.

It’s important we make her feel the absence and now that she has felt what it is like to have them, she will wreck everything in her path preventing from getting it back. Her thinking back on that day when she took down the hex to save those people. Should she have done it? Why should they be allowed to be with their families and she can’t. Childish yes but all of this has been building up since she was 10 years old. She was happy before the missile struck. She had a family before the missile struck. Why wouldn’t she retain that mentality (even if it’s small)? She was happy. She can be happy. She will be happy. She can’t suffer like this anymore and if that requires destroying the world along the way, then so be it. 

🥀her costume

So you may have noticed in the wandavision finale since we didn’t do the whole cgi battle, she didn’t get her costume. 

And I adore the wandavision costume so I do want to see it somewhere. 

So let’s trace it back to wandavision, shall we? 

After getting the book from Agatha, I’d picture she’d avoid for as long as possible. But she needs answers. She needs to keep her powers in check. She can’t lose control. Not again. 

And as she picks up the book and does a spell, Strange is alerted and his own runes book glows red. 

Then as she practices more, she gains this suit

🥀her helping Strange 

Strange approaches Wanda. He informs her that he needs her help to keep a multiversal traveller safe. The traveller isn’t capable of managing their power and the sorcerer supreme was informed of their existence due to this exact reason. Them not being able to control their power makes them an easy target for multiversal threats. So they need her help to keep them safe and track down the dark hold which the traveller requires to understand the multiverse and by extension their power. 

(Note I understand this is also a flawed narrative and excuse to ask for her help but just something like this can work) 

The concepts of the multiversal traveller and the dark hold make Wanda intrigued. Maybe if she gets a hold of them then she can finally have some way to find her family again. Her happiness. 

So she agrees to help them out.

🥀America Chavez 

The amount of missed opportunities with this character my god- 

 But okay. Wanda

One thing I would want to make clear is that Wanda does not know the person she is trying to kill and gain the power of is a literal child. She, someone who was harmed and experimented on as a child, is also on the search for her family, and her CHILDREN, would not want to willingly cause harm to her. 

Maybe for the first few scenes, she doesn’t meet her. Just fights whatever battle in whatever universe to keep her safe, or more importantly, her powers. Then when she does meet her, they talk for a bit. Maybe the conversation can lead somewhere to how they both lost their families, how they are both unable to control their powers, how they feel like a threat. Just when Wanda is starting to feel something for the kid, the realisation sets in. She has to kill her. 

The actual copy of the dark hold is no where to be found  so Wong takes them to Mt. Wundagore to finally set things straight. And when they reach, they see the statue, the throne, the beasts. All beckoning for her to just give in. Kill her. Take her power. Be happy. 

As her whirlwind of emotions occurs, Chavez can just drop in a line like “bro, you are so cool” which causes a chuckle but nothing more. 

The ending can go one of two ways, 

A previous threat (or all previous threats teaming up)  that they thought was dead tracked them here and issues and attack upon them to try and get Chavez. Wanda initially helps them or doesn’t do much to help the heroes. But then as soon as they have Chavez, something acts up. The need for the powers to herself? No. No no. How she wishes it was though.

An attack, an order to the beasts, something that makes the monster let go of America. She saved her.

(And then like everyone kicks ass together woohoo) 

gah

don’t know if I’m necessarily satisfied with m.o.m but eh. I hope you enjoyed.

[bunfart90]

Oh my god this is so true and i can't believe i came across this post.

Growing up, there were issues with my muscle growth, gait, and posture. I’m pretty sure the muscular condition has a name but I was never told, and to this day I don’t know what it is, but I have a feeling it may be hypotonia. The only thing I was told was that my muscles were disproportionately small compared to my bones, and so I needed to stretch them out.

I had a physical therapist who would call me out of class and we would go to the gym’s storage room and she would make me do exercises and stretches that were extremely painful. I didn't know this at the time but I was later told I was knock-kneed, flat-footed, I had and still have a hunch, and I struggle to hold myself in a way everyone else does, basically. I have always struggled with my posture and the best way I can describe it is like, imagine pushing your stomach out as if you were pretending to be pregnant and if you look at yourself from the side, your lower back curves? That's just always how I held myself and that’s just comfortable for me. But I looked extremely conspicuous.

My physical therapist would warn me that the bones beneath my knees were “rotating outwards” and that the exercises we’d do would help keep them in place. She said my muscles were “underdeveloped” especially in my hamstrings (legs). Basically what this meant for me (I say this in past tense like I'm any more flexible) is that, for example, I cannot touch my toes without pain so severe that my toes tingle and go numb. I am the absolute opposite of flexible, I cannot do a butterfly sit (sitting with your soles touching and knees pointed out) because my knees cannot touch the ground without severe pain, and I'm just really unfit in general. With my physical therapist I learned how to walk like everyone else, which meant that she would walk beside me around the empty halls and she would make me say “heel toe heel toe” and walk accordingly. We did other exercises too like superman (lying on your stomach and raising your arms and legs above you without touching the ground) which is absolute fucking torture for me because my body is literally unable to do that.

Because my body has so many limits I was easily frustrated by the exercises she made me do and by consequence I resented her because she made me do the most painful and challenging things that I wasn't even fully emotionally ready to endure. I don’t think she understood or cared about just the sheer amount of pain those exercises gave me.

When I told this to my therapist he helped me identify the fact that this was a major loss of bodily autonomy as I was subjected to things that hurt for reasons nobody ever cared to explain to me. So as a way to reclaim it I became sedentary and I am today. But this isn't necessarily a victory, it's more of a surrender. I feel like I've surrendered to exercise because of my trauma with it, and I'm trying to find a way to be more active especially before I age.

I think a lot of people spent their childhoods being very deliberately forced out of their comfort zones by parents / teachers / whomever in a way that was just deeply unpleasant and degrading and so, when they reach young adulthood and are finally allowed real control over their lives, become set on only doing things they know they're comfortable with forever. that's a really important thing to be able to do, especially if you're so used to having your boundaries routinely ignored that you aren't even certain what you like vs what you can bear, so I absolutely see why a person would have a negative reaction to being told that discomfort is good: it can very easily sound like being told that all that work they've been doing to prioritze their needs for the first time ever is Bad and Selfish, actually. and to that I will say two things:

one: as long as you aren't hurting or, like, being a dick to anyone, just staying in your comfort zone isn't an immoral action. if you just want to read one type of book (or just fanfiction), or just eat one type of food, or just watch one type of movie, or not go to new types of social events, you aren't being a bad person for that, and if people say that, they are soundly wrong and just trying to get a self-righteousness kick.

two: trying new things because you want to expand yourself feels a hell of a lot different than trying new things because you're being forced to. you'll feel better about trying new foods if you know you have a back up familiar one in case you can't stomach the new one, it's easier to read new books if you can experiment with audio versions or reading it in little five-page chunks by yourself, you can breathe a lot easier going somewhere new if you aren't chained there for three hours because your parent is your ride home, etc.

tl;dr: new things are good. I get why you might not want to try new things, and that's fine, but it's also more comfortable to try new things as an adult with your own agency so, yeah, what have you got to lose by trying a weird old art film?

[percontaion-points]

The Chemist chapter 15

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Chapter 15

“Who else did you have to cut ties with when you disappeared?” 

She could imagine the long array of faces parading through his mind right now. “That part wasn’t so hard for me. It sounds pretty pathetic, but Barnaby was my only real friend.”

[...]

“On the planet I come from, that kind of thing signifies romantic interest.” He leaned toward her again, his eyes narrowed. “Please tell me, what does it mean on yours?”

Exactly what part of “I literally only had close contact with exactly one person, whom I viewed as a father figure” in the past decade is difficult for him to understand? Julie isn’t thinking about making kissy face with anybody; she’s thinking about how she’s going to not be MURDERED. 

“Daniel, I roofied you. You were high on a chemical compound with manifestations similar to Ecstasy.” 

“Not then, I wasn’t. I remember. I felt the difference before and after you ‘shocked’ me. That was when things got confusing. And before the drug, I was already in neck-deep. I was trying to figure out how I was going to get off at your stop without looking like a stalker.”

LITERALLY NONE OF THIS IS IN ANY WAY ROMANTIC. 

I thought it was bad when Edward confessed that he kept breaking into Bella’s room to watch her sleep. He ain’t got nothing on Danny-boy here. 

“Well, if my idiot bully of a brother hadn’t beaten you up, you would have disappeared, and I would have had no way to ever find you again. Because of your injuries, you needed our help. You stayed with me.”

This is fucking demented. 

The entire idea of “She’s so helpless, so I’ll push myself onto her! Convince her to love me!” is simply terrifying beyond comparison. 

“Tomorrow,” he said when they came up for air. 

“Tomorrow,” she agreed.

Chapter 15 summary: Over dessert, he tells her some about how he’d studied cooking, and had even been in a chef position at a restaurant. But his ex-wife hated the hours. And this idiot would clearly do literally anything for her… Including letting her clean him out to the point where he’s currently living hand-to-mouth while she’s living it up with her new husband and baby. 

He asks about her romantic interest in Dr. B, but she corrects him and tells him that her relationship with Dr. B was more like father/daughter than romantic. She goes on to say that she had literally nobody else in her life. Hence why she was able to hide for 3 years. 

Daniel shows her an old DVD he found, which is in reference to his promise on the train that they’d go see an old movie. He then tries to kiss her, but Julie completely misreads the situation. As I mentioned, the girl hasn’t exactly had any romance in her life, so of course she’d freak out.

Julie then goes on this long rant about how, after torture, subjects seek out physical comfort. She also throws around terms like “Stockholm Syndrome”. She says that this is all that Daniel is experiencing. And since Julie is the only female around, obviously Daniel would have latched onto her. He insists that she shouldn’t speak for what he’s feeling, and that he felt like this when he started talking to her on the train. However, literally none of what he says is in any way romantic, and he goes so far to admit to thinking about STALKING HER FROM THE TRAIN. JFC. 

They then start making out, and both agree to leave the movie for tomorrow. 

[panharmonium]

this is legitimately one of my top five favorite kakashi scenes.

i love seeing kakashi break the rules in the name of doing the right thing, and this scene especially is particularly satisfying to me, because his moment of defiance here is, to my mind, long overdue.  

one of my eternal frustrations in early naruto is how the leaf village administration gives kakashi the job of caring for a group of super high-needs children and then continually makes that job as difficult for him as possible.  they task him with being solely responsible for the development and well-being of three twelve year-olds - a group that includes naruto (a walking disaster with a god’s power trapped inside his body) and sasuke (a genocide survivor fixated on killing his own brother), BOTH of whom are being hunted by different groups of supercriminals - and then the village keeps getting in kakashi’s way or dropping the ball or actively ordering him to prioritize other things.  

so much of what goes wrong with the kids in this period is the result of other people interfering with kakashi’s work or being negligent or endangering the kids/putting kakashi in impossible positions.  team 7’s first big mission sets the tone for everything that comes after, with someone else’s lie putting kakashi in a situation where he has to single-handedly protect not just the client who deceived him, but the three children who were supposed to be the clients’ other protectors.  and after that, the list just multiplies:

ten anbu operatives can’t manage to protect sasuke’s hospital room from orochimaru’s minions, so kakashi has to do it himself and then whisk sasuke out of the village for a month, leaving naruto in the hands of a substitute and sakura with her parents

genma orders sasuke to chase after gaara when the chunin exams blow up, saying “you’re at chunin level already,” which forces kakashi to immediately dispatch more kids to bring him back, because “ffs NO i do NOT want him out there doing that why the fuck would you tell him to do that?!” 

aoba runs his mouth off about itachi when sasuke is standing RIGHT THERE, instantly undoing all the work kakashi just did to prevent itachi and sasuke from coming anywhere near each other (and thus sending sasuke to that disastrous first encounter, the outcome of which ultimately leads to sasuke’s defection)

jiraiya decides he should let sasuke try to fight itachi himself, “out of respect for the boy’s feelings,” leading to sasuke ending up in a tsukuyomi coma

tsunade orders kakashi to drop his teaching work and leave the village on a mission even though a) he’s just gotten out of his own torture-induced coma and b) sasuke is having a crisis that kakashi is trying to manage

and then when kakashi gets back from that mission and finds out that surprise, all of this meddling has led to a disaster, tsunade tries to order him away AGAIN

but this time - he just says no.

he walks right out of her office.  he turns his back on her.  and there is NOTHING i love more than seeing kakashi embody the philosophy that he’s chosen to adopt as his guiding light: those who break the rules are scum.  but those who abandon their friends are worse than scum.

it’s not that he doesn’t understand where tsunade is coming from here.  but he knows she’s wrong.  she’s making her decisions based solely on concerns about the Leaf Village being in a tight spot - feeling like they can’t turn down missions because they’ll appear weak and thus become vulnerable to attack when they’re already operating at half strength.  she sends a group of twelve year-olds to bring sasuke back because supposedly the village can’t spare anyone else, “even if it means letting the sharingan fall into orochimaru’s hands” - but like.  it’s not the sharingan.  it’s a child.  sasuke isn’t just a repository for his hereditary jutsu; he’s not a pair of eyes to be passed around from one wielder to the next.  he’s a human child.  

tsunade doesn’t know sasuke.  she’s new to the situation and doesn’t know enough about it to understand how serious it is.  i don’t even think she was still in the village when the uchiha massacre occurred; the timeline makes it sound like she left long before that.  she doesn’t really understand who sasuke is or how much trouble he’s in - she makes her decision because she feels like her first priority has to be the well-being of the Leaf as a whole, not the individual people who comprise it.  kakashi, though, who a) lives his life by a very different philosophy and b) does understand sasuke’s situation, would not have dealt with the issue like this, and if the village had let him do his job from the beginning, things wouldn’t have gotten to this point in the first place.

kakashi is horrified that tsunade sent a bunch of twelve year-olds out to fight orochimaru’s ninja, and i think he’s also probably angry and/or frustrated about having been ordered out of the village in the first place.  he was dealing with the situation before tsunade sent him away.  he interrupted the fight between sasuke and naruto even though he himself had literally just gotten out of the hospital, and then he continued addressing the issue with sasuke privately (unlike jiraiya’s non-attempt to address it with naruto, when he said he was going to give naruto a talking-to but actually flaked out).  kakashi knew sasuke was struggling, and he was doing all the things a teacher is supposed to do to address it, but then he was ordered away, and even though it was just for two days, it was enough time for everything to go to hell.

if people would just let him do his job - if the administration would let him focus on the task they themselves assigned to him - things would be different.  but everybody wants him to do everything.  they want him to be everywhere.  they want him to protect the nine-tails jinchuriki (who is also kakashi’s dead teacher’s son), and train the last surviving uchiha (which is a task only kakashi and his sharingan can perform), and give equal attention to a third kid, for good measure, and they want him to do it without stepping away from any of his other burdens, all while other people around him constantly frustrate the progress he makes.

so this time, when tsunade tries to send him away, he refuses.  he disobeys her orders and walks out of the room.  he doesn’t care about the rules or what he’s “legally” obligated to do.  he knows what the RIGHT thing to do is, and so he rejects his new mission in favor of rescuing the kids.

i love these moments.  i love when we’re shown so clearly the person kakashi has chosen to be - someone who does what’s right, not just what he’s told.  he made an active choice many years ago to adopt that philosophy, and he’s been living by those new rules ever since.  he's wiser now than he was when he was a child - sometimes you have to break ranks to do the right thing.  sometimes you have to buck the system, even if it means you might face severe personal consequences.

he had one of two choices: either save the mission or his comrades.  of course, according to the law of the village, you cannot abandon a mission.  but to save the life of his comrades, he put the mission on hold.

kakashi may have spent a good chunk of his childhood trying to reject everything the subject of that story stood for, but none of his attempts to harden his heart ever stuck.  he is, in the end, his father’s son.

[merrysithmas]

If you don’t mind be asking I have a bit of a steamy question.

Why do you think people see Anakin as a submissive? Like a guy who is characterized by his desire to possess the people he loves? A lust for power? An almost consent need for control? Slaughtered the sand people for killing his mom? Just is rather irreverent? A rebel who does things his way fuck the rules/orders? Dude who becomes DARTH VADER? I mean I know there’s that whole moment when he kneels to Palpatine but I don’t think that’s at all reflective of him in the grand scheme of things you know? My guy was at the end of his rope. 

Also, Obi-Wan couldn’t dom his way out of a paper bag and I say this as somebody whose best friend is a domme. I think people see him as the older and perhaps more masculine looking (the beard) but that doesn’t actually mean anything. Like my man has an inadequacy complex 10 miles wide and is in a consent state of self criticism. Sticks to the code and Jedi teachings to the point of orthodoxy like it’s canon that he takes pleasure in not only following the rules but following them well and to a T. And I say this lovingly but Obi couldn’t control Anakin to save his life. I see fans say that Obi-Wan needed to force Ani into submission and like tame him but our dude told Anakin no like everyday of his life but Ani just wasn’t having any of it. Anakin isn’t a brat that needs to be tamed he’s a super powerful demi-god with mental health issues.

I’m sorry if this is like super random and it’s way longer than I intended but it’s just wild out here in these fanfiction streets. It blows me away how popular this specific characterization is. 

i think that characterization is popular bc a lot of ppl have never watched TCW, haha. IMO you can't watch TCW and be convinced of the above dynamic. as Anakin grows he changes from a terrified brat pseudo-orphan into a wild, charismatic, headstrong young man, & Obi-wan's inexperienced bossy controlling unease in AOTC mellows to a soft, loveable refinement.

basically i have NOTHING ELSE TO ADD to what you said because I agree completely. I do not see the "daddy wan" pov personally haha. and frankly i don't like that dynamic between them. in my point of view, i don't like it at all and i don't think it does anything to express the immense and equal partnership between them. that's just my take and everyone has their own preferences.

i think a lot of people see it this way because Anakin, as a demi-god, is riddled with confusion about his place in the universe. it's why it's so obvious to people that he "badly needs a hug" that Obi-wan is too debilitatingly perfectionist to give him (or Padme for that matter - she just stares at him blankly whenever he confesses something painful or terrible LOL, thanks George).

via the nature of being borne of the Force itself (and born into slavery), he is always looking for a "master" - which is another thing that I think gets people on that track of thinking. he goes from slave, to unusual Padawan (he never had to learn with other Padawans in the temple) who understandably sometimes sees the Jedi order as a type of servitude, to dark side slave. a hallmark of anakin's character is that he NEVER has complete control over his destiny, which i'd argue is one of the main elements that drives him mad - and a fascinating and delicious literary foray into the subject of "destiny" and Star Wars at large,

he is tortured, actually tormented, by this lack of mastery over himself. he can NEVER HAVE mastery over himself as an agent of Fate/the Force which makes him so tragic. and that line of thinking seems to drive some ppl down a certain kink road LOL which is fine, but just not how i see it personally. he is always looking for direction in a mortal world that quite literally CANNOT understand him at all.

in a way he reminds of an animal starving for affection, a man dying for water, a forest fire burning its own body to ash. but in my opinion this DOES NOT lend itself into a traditionally submissive dynamic with Obi-wan "man of the cloth" Kenobi of all people. he loves pulling on Obi-wan's pigtails, causing him trouble, destroying everything he holds dear... Anakin is the classic "mean kid on the playground" to Obi-wan and adores him, loves him, and constantly bothers him.

as for Obi-wan he has a refined, gentle, self-assured, particular masculinity to him just like Anakin has an obvious "angelic" beauty. they both have masculine and feminine traits, which is awesome. but Obi-wan is harsh towards himself, judgmental towards others, insecure, perfectionist, and chained by his orthodoxy. Anakin, for all his beauty, is angry, rough, feral, unintentionally mean, brash, brave, and selfish.

Anakin is controlling, expressive, emotionally wild, untamed, and possessive. On the other hand, Obi-wan is paralyzed by his need to control himself, frequently behaviorally corsetted, unlearned in emotionality, and interpersonally anorexic.

basically, Anakin rails Obi-wan into oblivion and they both release their worst behavior on each other. they switch when they want to. they are often soft and sweet to each other because they're both saps (and in a war, and miserable, and alone, and in love). but also, consensually, Anakin chokes Obi-wan and spits in his mouth and Obi-wan slaps Anakin across the face making his ears ring lmao. Then Anakin leaves him a note the next day on his dresser when they're on leave from the warfront at the Temple:

Sorry I choked you and spit on you and called you a bitch. Liked the hair pulling thing. You look nice when you're asleep and not thinking so much. You are a bitch, though. Yours, A.

Same time tomorrow, right??

And Obi-wan does the same from Anakin.

Apologies for slapping you in the face and then calling you a psychopath in the middle of it. Seemed like you liked it. I saw the gleam in your eye. I have no further comment on that particular matter. -Obi

P.S. Yes. I'll be there early.

[etz-ashashiyot]

I try really hard to educate people patiently when I can, so please take this in that spirit - because this response of yours is kind of the Platonic ideal of a specific genre of post that keeps getting lobbed at Jews from people who seem to think it's totally reasonable without ever stopping to consider how it sounds to us. I somehow doubt you'd say these same things to another persecuted minority, and if you did, I'd expect you'd get called out for it. Unfortunately, the left has decided that antisemitism is praxis, so the only way I think I can get through that particular haze is to rewrite this as if it were talking about another minority whose oppression you choose to see.

Hopefully you will take this as a moment to reflect on your privilege and work on yourself. However even if you don't, you've at least provided me with the perfect example to help those who will listen.

I am going to address this line by line:

I would like it on the record that not all (and certainly not all, as far as who I know) supporters of [legitimate cause] are sexist.

Do you like how that sounds? Forget about the specifics and just imagine yourself telling a woman talking about the sexism she experienced from a particular political group that Not All Men are sexist. Would you say that? Really? Even if you thought that, would you actually type those words out, or would you expect blowback? Be honest.

I would also like it on the record that supporting [legitimate cause] does not make you racist. The two do not negate each other. They can coexist, and for most of us, they do.

How does that sound to your ear? Raise some red flags? Would you feel comfortable writing this statement in response to someone talking about the racism they experienced from that political group? Or would it sound patronizing and/or like apologia?

Whether or not a certain type of people are using this revolution to preach [transphobia], I do not know for sure. I would hope not but I am sure they do, because bad people will use any excuse to preach their hate.

Would you feel comfortable making this statement to a trans person talking about the transphobia they experienced from this "revolution"?

What I will not tolerate, however, is to see the person I am literally talking to right now turn the absolute revolution that is currently happening on college campuses around the world into an Islamophobic or even hateful thing. The protests currently happening are about obtaining peace. That is their purpose.

Do you see how your framing here inherently delegitimizes the oppression being discussed, as if it itself is not actually a real type of hatred? Do you see how you're framing anyone raising the idea that there are legitimate issues with this "absolute revolution" that need to be checked as being inherently opposed to peace and progress? Do you understand why that's fucked up, when it's aimed at someone besides Jews?

If your view is too subjective or narrowminded to realize that what is happening currently goes way beyond what happened when 1200+ of your people were raped, tortured, sadistically murdered in front of their families, and/or taken hostage (an international war crime) and over 100 are still being held prisoner under inhumane conditions six months later i will urge you to visit the UN official website, which will suppply you with all the information you need.

Would you seriously direct this at anyone else? Would you snidely tell this to any other marginalized group - hell, even just any single small ethnic group, marginalized or not - that their concern for their family, friends, and/or community members makes their views "subjective" or "narrowminded"? Even if the issues are bigger than the issues of one side (which is true in any conflict ever) you understand how that's enormously pompous, condescending, callous, and unproductive, right? Right??

I am sick and tired. Sick and tired of being told I am against an indigenous people [by members of that group] because I am against them having self-determination in their ancestral homeland. I am sick of tired of being told I am racist because I am against the war crimes the state of that indigenous group is currently committing against the citizens of another group with legitimate ties to the land. [No mention, acknowledgement, or concern about the war crimes committed by this other group, or the fact that their governing entity started this most recent round of violence.]

This one speaks for itself, I think.

Indigenous political self-determination for a particular marginalized ethnoreligious group is extremist religious beliefs. I do not believe in or support any type of extremist religious beliefs because why on earth would I? If you have the audacity to tell me that your god is the only one that exists in the year of 2024 where we are suffering around the globe then first of all, you should be fucking ashamed of your god, and second of all, you should be ashamed of yourself for claiming him.

This one does too, actually.

Would you seriously feel comfortable directing this ignorant screed against, say, members of the Baha'i faith? Zoroastrians? Sikhs? Kurds? Literally any other indigenous ethnoreligion? Or just Jews? Why do you assume you know what we believe and what our religion is about? In any event, it's painfully obvious from this post that you don't know the first thing about Judaism.

I believe in the right to religious freedom. I believe in the right to political freedom. I don't believe in religion but I will fight for other people to retain the right to believe in theirs.

Okay, and?? That allows you to say fucked up things about a marginalized group and their beliefs? Did you even read your previous paragraph after typing it?

Please stop making The Cause into something it isn't. I cannot speak for everyone in the world, but I can speak for the movement i support, which I have already personally handwaved away and absolved of all wrongdoing and bigotry because I willed it away with my good intentions, and what we want is The Cause. We want freedom and equality for all people, People we nominally support and people we have shown nothing but contempt and callousness towards alike. We want General Statement #1. We want General Statement #2.

I stripped this down as much as I did, because there are a lot of specifics here that are factual disputes and right now I'm not arguing the questions of fact but rather focusing on the question of how you are treating us in this discourse. There are real discussions that can be had (and are happening with trustworthy people, actually) but you have to actually approach us as human beings and back up the fact that you give a shit about us with more than just "I'm not [__]ist, but," - a thing leftists seem to know about other marginalized groups but not Jews. And the reason is because the Western left has made antisemitism literally part of its praxis.

I'd include your last paragraph, but honestly it's just more of the same platitudes. Your intent matters, but it's not a magic cure-all. It doesn't automatically fix the harm you caused, nor does it absolve you of the need to be accountable to the people you hurt and learn to do better next time. This is something I'm sure you know about other marginalized groups, when you or your comrades misstep, intentionally or not.

What makes Jews different from all other marginalized groups in your mind? Why are we a stumbling block for you? These are the questions you should be asking yourself and working to correct if you do, in all sincerity, care about not spreading anti-Jewish bigotry. If you choose not to do this work though, your true intent is clear as day.

I sat next to the protest today.

I wrote fan-fiction about two gay jewish dads raising children to the play list of the chant- "No peace on stolen land!" on an American college campus. It isn't a name brand one either, nor does it have any legitimate ties to Israel. The anger is just there- it has rotten these future doctors, nurses, teachers, and members of society.

I don't even know what to call their demonstration- it was a tizzy of a Jew hatred affair. At points, there were empathetic statements about Gazans and their suffering. Then outright support of Hamas and violent resistance against all colonizers. Then this bizarre fixation on antisemitism while explaining the globalists are behind everything.

"Antisemitism doesn't exist. Not in the modern day," A professor gloated over a microphone in front of the library. "It's a weaponized concept, that's prevents us from getting actual places- ignore anyone who tells you otherwise."

"How can we be antisemitic?" A pasty white girl wearing a red Jordanian keffiyeh gloats five minutes later. "Palestinians are the actual semites."

"there is only one solution!" The crowd of over 50 students and faculty cried, over and over.

"Been there, done that," I thought, then added a reference to a mezuza in the fourth paragraph.

Two other Jewish students passed where I was parked out, hunching and trying to be as innocuous as possible. We laughed together at my predicament, where I am willingly hearing this bullshit and feeling so amused by this.

"Am I crazy? For sitting here?" I asked them. My friends shook their heads.

"We did the same last week- it's an amazing experience, isn't it?”

We all cackled hysterically again. They left to study for finals. Two minutes later, I learned from the current speaker that “Zionism” is behind everything bad in this world.

Forty-five minutes in, a boy I recognized joined me on my lonely bench. He came from a very secular Jewish family and had joined Hillel recently to learn more about his culture. His first Seder was two nights ago.

He sat next to me, heavy like the weight of the world was on his shoulders. There was just this despondent look on his face. I couldn’t describe it anyone else, but just sheer hopelessness personified.

“They hate us. I can’t believe how much they hate us.” He said in greeting.

And for the first time all day, I had no snarky response or glib. All I could do was stare out into the crowd, and sigh.

[writefightandflightclub]

I really enjoyed your Nathan fluff 🥺 we love this angry peach fuzz king 👑💖 would you ever write him being comforted after having a nightmare? 💕

First of all, LOL @ “angry peach fuzz king” 🤣🤣🤣

Second of all, here you go! 🧡 I will warn you - I think I forgot the fluff a little bit though. It became more hurt / comfort? More angst than expected? It ends nicely though and comfort is given to Nathan - but only after I’ve subjected him to rattling around in his own head and house for a bit.

Through the looking glass (Nathan Bateman x GN!reader)

Summary: Nathan has nightmares after The Incident. After so long alone, he doesn’t realise how badly he needs a little comfort - and maybe he doesn’t believe that he deserves it.

Author’s note: hopefully this isn’t too similar to All Better. I know they both take place post-stabbing, but I tried to give this a different focus. I know I could have made the nightmares based off of anything given the ask, but this timeline / focus seemed most sensible to explore the character.

Warnings: nightmares following traumatic incident (a stabbing); mentions of blood and injury - not graphic. Self-harm (punching the bag until injury); Body horror if you squint (some gruesome descriptions occurring in-dream, but fairly abstract); swearing; implied alcoholism recovery if you squint; mentions of therapy; Nathan mildly injured in fic; reader offering comfort.

Rating: MATURE for themes mentioned above.

GIF: by @santiagogarcia (this whole gifset is magic- check it out + reblog!)

Nathan wakes up breathless, plastered to the covers by a sheen of sweat - and not in a good way. On instinct, or out of habit by now, or maybe somewhere between the two, his palm slides over his body to the site of the wound.

He is so slick that he half-believes he is soaked with dank, deep blood again, until his fingers trace over nothing more than a half-concave, half-ridged scar. The lack of searing pain is the next point of evidence leading him towards an alternative conclusion. He’s not dying (again).

It’s just another gruesome nightmare.

Although… there is nothing “just” about it.

The nightmares are pretty brutal. Brutal enough for him to wake with ragged breaths and a hammering heart, his sheets dampened and coiled up around him. Enough that it takes effort to sift through the layers of terror and distinguish reality.

With what can only be described as a whimper, Nathan swings his legs over the edge of the bed, bringing himself into a seated position and bracing his head in his hands until his racing heart levels.

In his mind, he’s telling himself to be logical about this. That Ava hasn’t truly arrived to finish the job she started; but logic is not the safe haven it used to be.

She could come back.

She’s still out there, somewhere, and Nathan distinctly got the impression, last time, that she was vehemently not a fan of him.

His hand trembling, Nathan reaches for the glass of water by his bedside, glugging it down so eagerly it spills into his bushy beard.

Since the… accident? Malfunction? Functioning just fine, actually? Failed experiment? Greatest achievement known to man? Attempted murder? (Truth be told, Nathan isn’t quite sure what to call it, so he simply calls it The Incident.)

Since The Incident, Ava has begun to regularly visit him in his sleep.

The visitations are not waning with time. In fact, they are happening more often, not less. They are happening more since you moved into the house.

It’s a bad fucking time to have quit drinking.

You’d been sent by the board. Something about Nathan taking “tortured genius” a slice too literally. Something about him being in isolation too long and needing another human around in the compound.

Well, that’s not technically true, is it? The shit all started when he opted to get social, after all.

Fucking Caleb.

Before that, he was doing just fine.

Nathan doesn’t like it at all - having you here. Being watched. Observed. Having someone monitoring his actions. Waiting for him to either fuck up or prove himself.

Ironic really, considering where he kept Ava. The experiments he ran on her.

She’d probably find it poetic, if she could truly understand such a concept.

At the thought of her, Nathan physically shudders, and reaches for an old vest to haphazardly mop the excess sweat from his skin. Then, he balls up a change of clothes and tracks nude to his wet room, feeling relief as the luke warm water sluices over his skin.

He watches himself in the mirror as he stands there naked. It’s not a vanity thing - at least not any longer. These days, he examines the way his form has changed since it happened. He lost some of his muscle and bulk during recovery, whilst unable to exercise, his arms slightly smaller and his abs softer. His stomach a little more rounded.

There’s also the puckered scar, of course - that permanent reminder of where he was skewered through the chest like a piece of kebab meat.

His gaze travels up over his body, until his eyes settle on his still haunted face. He doesn’t have his glasses on, and somewhere between the blurred vision, misted mirror, clouding steam and sluicing water, his reflected face distorts. It transforms - for the briefest of moments - into her.

Still amped with adrenalin from his harsh awakening, this briefest flash sends a surge of panic zipping through Nathan’s chest, his heartbeat racing so hard he can feel the pounding of blood in his ears.

Fuck, he curses, reaching his arms out to brace himself against the shower wall above him, his body trembling and his head dipping down between the cradle of his broad shoulders as his legs threaten to buckle.

He turns the water cold, until it is practically glacial and thundering on to the back of his neck, subduing this spiking heat.

She really did a fucking number on me, didn’t she?

It’s true though.

Ava is haunting him. When he sleeps - and at other times too.

Nathan didn’t know robots could do that. Didn’t know they could spawn ghosts.

Nathan doesn’t believe in ghosts, of course… but he does believe in trauma and its effect on the brain. He at least concedes that it is natural to continue to feel afraid; but this?

Being dogged by the spectre of her taps into Nathan’s deepest insecurities.

After all, there is nothing a genius fears more than doubting his own mind.

Nothing a God fears more than his own mortality.

And the man? Turns out, there is nothing he fears more now, than dying alone.

With a ragged breath, Nathan towels off and pulls on his grey sweatpants, tugging on his black zip-up hoody over his bare chest. And then, keen not to return to his damp, tangled sheets, he tracks towards the kitchen - mainly for want of any more favourable option.

Of course, he had returned to the compound after The Incident. Something about that many fibre optic cables being a bitch to lay down. Sunk cost fallacy and all that - too much already invested.

But it possibly wasn’t the best choice for his recovery.

Nathan has certainly gotten more used to walking down that hallway since he returned from the hospital, and yet he still finds himself holding his breath until he is free of it. Still finds his pace is just a little faster as he passes through. His gaze deliberately averted from that spot.

Once, you’d found him lying in it.

Lying in that exact spot, his body arranged like a crime scene photo, his eyes closed.

Hey, it’s hardly his least healthy coping mechanism, is it?

What in the fuck are you doing, Nathan?

Re-enacting my death, obviously.

Uh-Kay…. A beat. A devious smile. Shall I get some popcorn?

Absurd as it was, he had laughed. Laughed for the first time since it happened, and, with an extended hand, you had helped him up off the floor.

Still, now that he’s alone, he does not dwell in the corridor, colder and darker as it is without your light in it, and he tries not to think about your face or hers as he pads to the kitchen.

When he arrives though, he bypasses it entirely - heading out on to the decking, the crisp night air soothing his hot skin.

He wants to be outside.

There are too many ghosts in his house now.

He has tried to shake it. Tried to desensitise himself to Ava’s face. Spent longer than strictly necessary poring over footage of her.

He built her. Shouldn’t that take the fear out of things? Not to mention the fact Ava’s face was simply a composite of some manipulable nerd’s wank bank browsing history.

Fucking Caleb.

Still, once Nathan had looked her in the eyes and seen a rage that was all too human, things seemed a hell of a lot different.

Nathan crosses to the punchbag on the deck -lit by creeping dawn- on instinct, or out of habit, or maybe some combination of the two, his unease riling him enough to sock some punches at its midsection. Right at the equivalent site of his corporeal puncture.

He punches so hard that the skin on his knuckle splits, but Nathan doesn’t stop. He throws punch after punch until his hands are scathed and bloodied, and a trail of spit hanging from the corner of his mouth. Until he hugs the bag - the closest thing he has to a warm body to hold - and slides down it, coming limply to his knees, wiping his face on his sleeve.

He stays there, dead eyed and still for some time, the pain in his hands raw and singing. Unpleasant, but better. Better than what he was feeling, and worse all at once.

He considers his tired, cumbersome body, and contemplates remaking the world one more time. Uploading his mind into a machine or some shit, so that he doesn’t have to contend with the fragility and failings of his own existence.

He stays there, until some motion in the interior of the compound causes the light and shadows to dance differently over him, and he looks up to see your figure there, cast in a soft halo of yellowed light.

He tips his head up slightly, opening his mouth as though he might cry out to you for help, but no sound comes out - only a thin, dry croak.

So, instead, Nathan watches you for a moment, moving seamlessly around his kitchen as though it is your own. Maybe it is - more yours than his now.

Observing you like this, through the tall, cinematic windows, it is as though he peers in on another world entirely. Something less resembling a nightmare.

Lighter than that. Something more like a good dream, albeit a good dream that Nathan cannot be part of. One he can only ever watch, from the outside looking in, always fated as he is to be on the other side of the glass.

Truth be told, you haunt him too. You represent everything he could have and yet doesn’t deserve.

You appear in his nightmares and his dreams, in various terrifying and beautiful incarnations. Many variations of which his therapist would have a field day with, he’s sure - or, she would, if he’d ever fucking call her.

When you first arrived here, he was plagued by grotesque visions of you. Grotesque visions of the skin being peeled back from your body. Sometimes, circuitry beneath, and other times, muscle and bone. Sometimes, Ava’s face was buried beneath the chilling slip of your fleshy mask.

Sometimes it is a better dream. Sometimes you save him. Sometimes he saves you.

Sometimes it is a good dream. Ava isn’t there at all. But the good dreams never seem to last for long. 

Sometimes you kill him, and sometimes...

The glass door slides open.

“Reenacting your own death again, are you?” you tease, though not unkindly, interrupting the spiral of Nathan’s incessant thoughts.

A lump forming instantly in his throat, Nathan swallows thickly, and looks up at you helplessly with a thin, joyless smile. He snorts as though it’s funny, but it really isn’t. “Over and fucking over.” 

You nod once, and, without hesitation, you extend your hand towards him. Your gaze cuts through him as you search his face and he feels suddenly see-through, as if he’s about to be hit with some Shyamalan-esque twist. Was he the ghost all along? Did he die here after all?

If so, is this purgatory because Ava is here too, or heaven, because you are?

Christ. So fucking schmaltzy, Bateman.

After hesitating, Nathan takes your hand and you yank him to his feet, drawing him inside, through the looking glass.

The room seems warm on the other side. It feels… safe.

“What happened?” you ask, as you look down at your joined hands, your thumb painting a smear of red across his split knuckles. 

You mean now. What happened now, but Nathan’s mind harks back further than that. In his mind, everything is connected. Every thing threaded to another. This one smear of blood to that weeping flower of red.

The thought -the thoughts, all of them- halt him in place, his feet firmly planting on the ground. Nathan’s hand clenches tightly around yours as though it is a lifeline, as he is cast adrift on this familiar crimson tide, his face growing increasingly angular and stern.

“She...” He swallows, unable to complete that precise thought, his eyes dropping down to his feet.

You turn your body towards Nathan as he croaks, still not letting go.

Your eyes flitting around his face, attempting to search his eyes, you tentatively step closer, sliding your palms slowly over his tense shoulders, feeling them rise with an uneven, stuttered breath as you do so.

He’s so tired. He’s so very, very tired.

And it happens all at once on the exhale.

Suddenly, your arms are tugging him closer, and his face is contorting as a violent smattering of tears beads in his long lashes. You are encasing his body in your embrace and rubbing circles into his back as his buzzed head sags all too willingly toward the junction of your shoulder, your fingers splaying along the smooth flesh at the nape of his neck and pads dancing over the gentle prickle of his hair. You are shushing and soothing and reassuring and squeezing and smoothing and cradling and Nathan can feel it. Can feel his heart race in his chest and…

Finally.

Finally, his heart is not pounding because he is reliving his death.

It is pounding because he feels alive again.

When was the last time he cried, even? The last time someone really hugged him? He doesn’t remember the last time. The serendipitous combination of Nathan willing to be vulnerable, and another being willing to hold space for his pain is an all too rare thing.

There’s a reason -or several - he’s so emotionally constipated, after all.

Fuck. I’m taking a huge emotional shit right now.

Nathan remains in the welcome circumference of your arms longer than is strictly necessary - until the tear trails over the bridge of his nose begin to feel cloying. Until his breaths steady, and until his thoughts and ego creep back in. Until he notices the way his hands are clasped at your waist like claws, fingers sinking into your softness, and he thinks to release you.

Then, he leans away, a weight on his brow making his expression stern.

He waits for you to judge him, another swallow trailing thickly down his throat.

However, your eyes are kind and level, dancing with soft concern. Not with judgement or satisfaction or pity, or with anything he fears.

It is refreshing not to feel so afraid.

Finally.

“She…” Nathan begins again, finally finding courage. All at once his eyebrows shoot up towards his hairline. “She fucking stabbed me.”

You take his words in. You listen.

His “reveal” is simple. Plain and factual. A little indignant. Kinda salty. It’s not overly emotional, or articulate.

But it is enough.

Your eyes narrow, and you nod slowly, trying to understand the true meaning beneath his words.

You even reach up to cup Nathan’s face, his springy beard a cushion beneath your gentle palm as you hold him. “Yeah, genius,” you tease, with a tentative, lopsided smile, dropping your arm all too suddenly, perhaps as you catch yourself. “I got that from context.”

In response, Nathan chucks air from between his teeth, bringing his hand up to comb through his beard - perhaps to obscure his involuntary smile, or perhaps chasing your tender touch, the impression of it left warm on his cheek.

As he brings his hand up, your brows draw together, and you hook his bloodied paw delicately in yours, examining the wound, and leading him gingerly across to the couch as though his whole being might be hurting along with it.

It is.

You order him to stay put while you fetch the first aid kit, and then, in stages, Nathan watches you with fascination as you painstakingly clean and tend to his wounds, without ever being asked to.

He watches you carefully swipe the angry red away from his skin, and, to his overactive mind, it’s all connected. This red is one and the same with the flower of blooming red from The Incident.

Ava hurt him then, and she is hurting him now too.

And you…

“Going to tell the board about this?” Nathan asks, his voice weak and scuffed.

You search his eyes, holding your words back for a moment before answering. Then, you launch them on a big breath. “Fuck the board, Nathan. I told those assholes to stick it.”

Nathan blinks in confusion, shaking his head, his hand flourishing emphatically through the air. “Then… what the fuck are you still doing in my house?”

“Well. I’m… here for you,” you admit, sucking in air through your teeth, your voice shrinking. “If you want that.”

Well, that’s news to him.

Welcome news, perhaps?

You’re not watching him at all, are you? Not observing. Not asking him to evidence his humanity. Not waiting to see whether he fucks up or proves himself.

Instead, you’re seeing him. You’re seeing him and you’re not running.

Nathan had begun to think that maybe he was the nightmare. He’d begun to think he might always be haunted.

Always alone. That he might die that way; again.

And now, here you are.

Nathan thinks about that. He could so easily revert to his old ways, in this moment. Of pride and ego and stubborn independence.

But, perhaps those assholes from the board got a few things right - he’ll admit.

Maybe he had been in isolation too long. Maybe he didn’t need to take “tortured genius” quite so literally.

And so, Nathan almost protests. Almost rejects your presence and your comfort and pushes you away. But the truth is, he’s just so… tired. He’s had so many nightmares, and this time, he’d like to be on the other side of the glass. He’d like to step into that dream.

Nathan takes a deep breath, and releases on the exhale. Releases more than air.

He slowly, ever so slowly, shifts towards you on the couch, angling his body until he can safely dip his head towards your lap, his nose pointed in towards your abdomen and his knees curling around you.

“Th.. this okay?” he asks weakly.

You throw your splayed hands up into the air in surprise as the weight of Nathan settles there, but as he curls his arms around your middle and shuffles closer, you ease into it. You snake your fingers in intricate caresses over his head and neck and shoulders.

“Yeah, Nathan. This is okay,” you soothe gently, voice taut with emotion.

You comfort him.

And finally, Nathan does not need to peel your skin back to know what’s underneath.

He knows you’re not a robot, and that, as your kind touch finds him corporeal, that he is not a ghost.

He closes his eyes. And this time, when he next wakes, he knows that whether the dream is bad or better or good, it doesn’t matter. Because you will be there with him.

He wants you with him.

It’s not at all natural to him, to have you around. For the longest time, he didn’t like it. It didn’t come instinctually, and he has formed no familiar habits.

It isn’t easy - he doesn’t make it easy.

But he wants it to be.

And, in your arms, he can finally dream that it will all work out. What’s more; he can dream he deserves it, too.

[jiminrings]

what happened to mc after that?? JUNGKOOK I WILL WHOOP YO FUCKING ASS

cold senior!y/n x stem major!koo masterlist :D

the aftermath of stem koo breaking senior!y/n's heart

"do you need anything from us?"

yoongi asks you for the fifth time in the twenty minutes you've been home, heart breaking from the inside out when you haven't moved a single inch

he is begging that the thing you need from him and jin is to go beat j*ngkook up

HE CAN'T EVEN SAY HIS NAME WITHOUT BEING ANGRY AT HIM!!!!!!!

anything. anything to atleast make you sleep in peace tonight.

or them honestly,, either way

your body's facing the backrest of the couch and maybe that's for the better, because that way, seokjin won't feel the need to cry looking at the coldest person he's known to be openly vulnerable

you're still wearing your jersey!!! your stained dirty jersey that you've been in for the past three hours and the reason that it's still wet was that you've been using it to wipe your tears all the way to the dorm

"no. i'll be alright."

you mumble for the fifth time out of the five times you've been asked, and yoongi just has to grapple at his fist because he knows that being frustrated wouldn't help

you are the fURTHEST thing from okay

to be honest, it was only a miracle that you told the two of them what happened in the first place

it was in between sobs that you asked them why they were friends with you and they couldn't be anymore dumbfounded

it was in between violent tears that you mentioned hyeji that seokjin looked for a box of tissues because you've been intentionally rubbing your eyes raw

it was in between heaving that you said that no one wants to go the extra mile for me that yoongi started holding your cheeks and trying to get you to breathe with him in his panic too

it was in between hiccups that you uttered that no one wants to walk me home and that's when both of yoongi's and seokjin's throats started tightening, the dots hazy yet aligning nonetheless

it was in silence when you told that jungkook said that no one likes me, and that's when out of the three of you in the room – you're the one who's the calmest.

"okay. i'll bring you a blanket."

yoongi leaves it at that, standing from his spot on the floor to walk over to the kitchen where the blankets cLEARLY aren't there

no one really prepared yoongs for this

no one really is

there isn't a manual on how to act when the dearest friend that you have is crying their guts out for the first time

he can't explain his close bond with you and he's always seen you as his platonic girlfriend!!! his platonic girlfriend who has a bond with him that's closer than a sister's, more understanding than a mother's, and the utter admiration more than a friend's

you r literally yoongi's (platonic) soulmate and he would die on that hill

he would rather subject himself to torture via having to stay in a freshman's dorm equipped with the de facto led strip lights everyday!!! every single day, than to see you like this :(((

"what do you have on the bitch?" yoongi doesn't spare his words when he sits on the kitchen stool next to jin's figure

the dude is sTANDING and that means business

jin doesn't feel a single ounce of regret fetching his work laptop and scrolling through the files and tabs he has on every single student on campus, eyes only looking for one lee hyeji that's contributed to your anguish rn

jungkook is atleast 3/4 in this equation and seokjin will get to him of course

no one makes his emotional support best friend cry and nOT pay the consequences for it!!!!

in another life, vincenzo cassano's character is based on seokjin and the events in his life that definitely happened >:(

"she's daddy's money. can't fucking believe that sHE'S representing the school," he sighs in genuine annoyance, but not loud enough to pique your attention as he turns the screen so yoongi could clearly see her headshots, "must be a diversity hire. every university needs a fucking bimbo, apparently."

you see,,, yoongi would've SNORTED at that but now is not the time!!! he is still planning discreet retribution to avenge you!!!!

jin lets yoongi look at hyeji's entire file, wanting to get even the smallest bits even if the information he's taking in is against his will

he'll immediately delete whatever he learns about her right after it's served its purpose

"just messaged the faculty groupchat," seokjin himself didn't imagine the words coming out from his lips determinedly, but he knows that he's willing to do anything for the sake of this, "been crushing on jeon ever since the start of last semester. philosophy professor thinks it's because he once saw jungkook lending her a pen when they were in the topic of soulmates."

jesus christ

now THAT'S just annoying ://

this

whatever this is

seokjin and yoongi don't know what they're digging all this information for

they don't know what this unspoken plan is for, or if they even have a plan in the first place

if jin were to tell the faculty gc about this???

absolute mayhem

but he knows for a fact that they'd hate star student jungkook easily within a tap of a finger

the philosophy prof would lose all sense of rationality and reasoning and INSTANTLY point to jungkook as an asshole!!! no questions asked!!!! no elaborations!!!!

"i could get jeon eliminated from all the academic listings he's in."

jin pipes in at the silence that he and yoongi share, both listless in this situation that they never expected to encounter with you

"i could always spread a rumor and make him unlikeable."

yoongi toys with the rings that he wears, a heavy exhale tearing away from him

they could think of a thousand other ways to get back at jungkook!!! they literally can

seokjin knows a contract guy who leaves shredded paper with his contract's initials written on red ink (for a base fee of three dollars, he can switch up the ink for you!!!) right next to their side on the bed

yoongi knows a guy whose modus operandi is to discreetly follow people, have subliminals playing in the background (for an extra fee of ten dollars, he'll use wireless bass-boosted speakers), and continue doing so until the desired message is achieved!!!!

none of the people they have connections to could employ the same amount of pain he's caused on you

there's literally nothing that could hit home with jungkook besides you.

but there's no way to do that and even in your state of anger and sadness tHEN utter vulnerability, you can't even really think of hurting jungkook in the way he did

because you know and yoongi knows and seokjin knows and everyone knows that you aren't the type to wish ill

you admit that sometimes you're unavailable but you don't want that to be an asshole-reason to make everyone else around you suffer in the same way you do

the people around you aren't your shock absorbers!!!! that's why you hang out a teddy bear on your doorknob when you're mad so that neither yoongi or jin would have the possibility to be caught in your rage

that's why you call for a break when your soccer team is out of their game and make everyone drink their electrolytes before they speak to you!!!!

that's why you have the old heart of your even older build-a-bear stuffie in your pocket, one of the only reminders that your childhood even happened, one that you'd squeeze between your fingers in any remotely anxious instances that you find yourself in

jungkook's words hit home and it put you into a spiral if you even had one in the first place

your parents divorced when you were young and it's just that,,, no one from the two of them wanted you because you were the reminder of the other parent

you're a place marker for when a commitment started and ended and god did it make you grow up quickly

your aunt raised you!!!! she's an angel and she's the maternal figure in your life that you'd always be grateful for

you love her all the same and as much as you didn't wanna relate yourself to your parents in the same way that they don't, the feelings of being unliked hit you ever so often

lol it's quite a dashing mindset you have but you can't see any other interpretation you should employ

you leave before they could leave you.

it's not really as dramatic as it sounds

BUT IT COULD BE

there's always obligatory groupchats for projects and you're the first one to leave it instead of awkwardly waiting out for the conversation to dwindle and then leave one by one

when you and yoongi argue, you leave before he attempts to get the last word in

when jin is about to ask if you want to split the bill, you're already putting more than half of your share on the table

it's a nagging feeling of not wanting be unwanted in every situation you're in, but you aren't all that sure of wHAT you'd do to be liked

the only thing you could think of are lunchboxes, and even that gets taken away from you.

does no one really like you??

you're shifting in your position before you know it and the lone sound makes jin and yoongs come to your side immediately, looking at you in concern

you're looking up and you could just fEEL your eyes are puffy and even the light's hurting them

"i need to sleep."

"o-oh! m'kay, sure. i'll carry you to bed, let's go," seokjin wastes no time in responding, about to hook his arms underneath you when you repeat yourself again

you only chuckle but it's the driest and most painful they've ever heard, wincing when they can hear how breathless it was

"no. i mean i need to sleep."

jin blinks once

yoongi blinks twice

OH

right

they get it now

you don't want to sleep, and you really can't, but you need it

"i'll get it!!" jin volunteers to grab what you need, leaving yoongi with you

oh god you could fEEL that he's going to cry

what a big baby ://

seokjin comes bearing the joint :D

he's about to light it for you because he knows that three specific short hits would lull you to slumber then knock you out cold for like a day lmao

he minored in chemistry actually but he cAN'T explain shit on why that's your body's reaction

you're all-good for literally anything besides three short hits lmao

yoongi was about to scold jin because he lights it and tHEN he's the one who takes the first drag, but there's an assuring wave of his hand

how romantic

jin just blew you a heart

<3

they can't get anything from you besides the slight crinkling from your eyes but they don't mind at all — your eyes are atleast one degree less sad

you take your turn and even pass it to yoongi but he rEFUSES,,,,, not the least bit dejected that he decided not to because he wants to watch over you instead and not see every inanimate object with cartoon eyes on them while watching over you

"bake her a cookie if in case she suddenly gets hungry in the middle of her sleep. sneak a carrot in it or something," jin reminds yoongi and he's sERIOUS about the recipe, holding you in tow as he makes the way to your room

yoongi's about to break out the bowls, freezing in his steps when he hears the doorbell frantically ring

oh god

the ONE time that they didn't plug the door with a wet towel and now it's probably the hall manager outside about to do an inspection

that is not..... the hall monitor

that is a fucking asshole

jungkook's been pacing on his heels, his knocking loud enough to wake up the entire hallway at this point

he's SWEATING and he's not even wearing his hoodie

the door finally opens and the words start tumbling out of his mouth

"good evening. i-i wanna explain myself and-..."

that is not,,,,, you

it's his senior that he's disrespected probably too many times

yoongi leans to the door, a sickeningly sweet smile on his face that the junior's never seen before

"you ever had a sandwich before, jungkook?"

"w-what?"

the younger boy stammers, his eyes following yoongi's actions of looking behind him out of worry and then going outside to join him by closing the door softly without noise

yoongi only snorts, not even sure if he's up for conversation

"hyeji's never packed you a sandwich before?"

jungkook pales at the mention, mouth drying when he sees yoongi bring up the soft smile that doesn't comfort him at all

"the one that's all knuckle?"

[phoenixyfriend]

That One Fucked-Up Rexwalker AU

OKAY so people showed interest in this! Cool! This is... actually you know what, yeah, this falls into dead dove territory. It's kind of angst with a happy ending? At the very least it's hurt/comfort.

Warnings: rape as psychological torture by an enemy party, later dubious consent by parties that are at least trying to make it consensual but the situation makes it difficult to navigate

This was inspired partially by the first chapter of this collection by @the-writing-mill, which features Obi-Wan getting absolutely railed by a fucking machine set up by droids who don't understand consent. I got to thinking about the set-up and slid sideways into a slightly different context.

So Anakin, in all his shitty luck, gets captured, as one does. Whoever captures him has strict instructions to avoid physically damaging him or permanently fucking up his connection to the Force, because they'd like to use him as a weapon eventually, but to play around with his psychological damage in whatever way suits.

We'll say it's Ventress, who vastly prefers horrifying physical damage for torture, or killing/hurting people's loved ones in front of them, and now has to get creative to deal with Skywalker, because for whatever reason, she only managed to get Anakin and not any of his friends.

Obviously, Palpatine is the one saying 'don't damage the good.' She doesn't know that, though, just that Dooku said His Sith Master said to leave Skywalker intact for later.

So the easy route to psychological damage is, well, rape. But she's not into him, and there aren't really any other sentients in her little torture castle, but last she checked Skywalker is really needy? She's picked up on the fact that this guy really loves Having people.

She handles it: strip him down, strap him down, and get a fucking machine involved. Naked and cold and with a pipe leaking from the ceiling. Let a protocol droid keep an eye on things so he doesn't have some kind of permanent physical damage, but basically just have him unceasingly fucked for like a week, sometimes edging and sometimes forcing and sometimes just really digging into the oversensitivity, whether he's awake or asleep or what. Nothing but air and metal, and sometimes Ventress when she comes by to taunt him. There's magic involved to up his sexual craving without making it any easier on him.

It's fucked up but he does get saved! Eventually!

Ventress did her job, didn't enjoy it, and doesn't care that he's gone. She has people to kill, okay, she's bored.

So, you know, Anakin needs time to recover. He doesn't try to argue that he doesn't, at least partly because he's having trouble standing. He'll be fine! Stop worrying, guys! It's fine!

It's not fine, everyone tells him, because that was fucked!

It takes a while to get back to Coruscant. It's normally a few days, but there's a disruption on the hyperlane they'd use, sooooooo they're stuck.

Anakin tries to make some calls to Padme. When the calls connect, she helps. Obi-Wan was part of the rescue team, so he's there to do what he can, but Anakin keeps flinching away. Ahsoka is helpful because Anakin's hindbrain reads her as Not A Threat, but nobody's telling her what kind of torture Anakin was dealing with, because she's Designated Baby.

Anakin is alternately overwhelmed by physical touch and craving it, and the fact that he just got the Force back isn't helping.

(It later comes to light that the reason he flinches from Obi-Wan and Ahsoka is because they've got the Force and a person with the Force approaching for that week meant Ventress, and that's--not great. And it's just a LOT and REALLY BRIGHT after his time in the Force-nullifying cuffs.)

So Anakin spends a lot of time alone, craving people while being deeply unnerved by the ones he's most able to ask for that sort of thing (his master and padawan). Rex is one of a handful of clones that volunteer to check in on Anakin until they get to Coruscant. He's not the only one who walks in on Anakin shifting uncomfortably and looking red in the face, but he's the one that actually asks about it.

Anakin, with some prodding, does not admit to the problem. He does, however, admit to a different problem, and asks if Rex would be okay with a hug, or maybe putting an arm around Anakin's shoulder, or--actually, no, this is stupid, forget he said anythi-- Rex sits down next to him and pulls Anakin into his side and just lets Anakin relax into him.

Anakin starts shivering. Shuddering. Crying, after a while. Rex lets it happen and tries not to panic, just rubs an hand up and down Anakin's arm.

They don't really talk about it, but Anakin does end up cuddling with Rex for a few hours a day while they try to get everyone home, and Anakin's kind of on enforced medical leave, so he can't really help until Obi-Wan comes up with a solution that gives Anakin a job directly.

Rex finally gets an answer to why Anakin keeps looking uncomfortable and close to tears but embarrassed about it. He doesn't, for the record, press for that answer. Instead, he accidentally walks in on Anakin three fingers deep in his own ass and whining into his pillow.

Which is. Awkward.

Obviously.

Turns out whatever Ventress did to him has him feeling incredibly empty without something to plug him up! It sucks! He hates it! He's been trying very hard not to submit to this need, but it's still there and he needs to be filled up and just snapped and had to do something about it!

This is, as you can imagine, not a comfortable conversation for anyone, but Rex tries to cheer him up with "Well, Jedi have stipends, right? You can probably find, uh, a toy, right? Once we're back on Coruscant? Or the Senator...?"

Anakin doesn't want Padme to know.

Anakin is also near tears but that's. Well. Rex is used to that by now.

(Anakin isn't using shipboard fabricators to make a dildo or plug because have fun explaining that on the expense report!)

So Rex is in this awkward position of having to comfort his recently-more-traumatized-than-before superior officer, whom he just walked in on furiously and tearfully masturbating due to said trauma...

And Rex is pretty much just like "Dude, please call your wife and have her talk you through the... whole... thing... I'm just, I think you'd probably feel less upset about having to fill yourself or whatever if she was talking you through it?"

They drop the subject for a bit, but Anakin is still Fucked Up in many ways, including new and exciting ones, and it turns out he hasn't been sleeping! And only sleeps if there's someone he trusts nearby!

So obviously Rex volunteers because fuck it, it's not like there's anything about his General he hasn't seen yet, right? So, yeah! Sleepy cuddles! Intended to be platonic!

Rex wakes up hard and flushed and with a very much still asleep Anakin grinding his ass against Rex's crotch.

Which, under significantly different circumstances, he'd not be upset by... But given literally everything going on, um. No?

Rex has no idea what to do, so he just kind of lays there and tries to shift away so his back is pressed to the wall and Anakin isn't accidentally trying to fuck himself in his sleep. Which works.

For about fifteen minutes.

And then Anakin is whining and shuffling back and Rex just tries to wake him up like Dude, You Don't Actually Want This, You Told Me You Don't Want This

And they separate and avoid each other and shower, and Rex leaves to go do Things while Anakin continues to try to meditate away what trauma he can before they get back to Coruscant for extremely long mandated therapy.

Rex shows up that evening to cuddle again, but Anakin tries to turn him away because He Can't Be Sexually Assualting His Friends In His Sleep, so he should honestly just sleep alone, right? Right, okay, bye Rex, Anakin is so sorry about this morning--

And Rex interrupts that he's not actually upset about it, he's just upset about Anakin being in this position, and Anakin doesn't actually want Rex so that's kind of upsetting, and Rex would be very open to this later after the war when they're not in a position to fuck up their entire legion with a change in dynamics--

And this goes back and forth for a bit before Rex realizes that Anakin does actually want him, and did before this whole Situation happened, and Anakin realizes that Rex is interested in him and NOT just trying to 'do his duty for his Jedi' or whatever.

And anyway, it turns into some very sweet lovemaking every night where Anakin gets to fall asleep with a cock in his ass, filled with cum, with Padme's blessing, until they get to Coruscant and he can find a plug for the nights they're not together (and also some therapy).

When Obi-Wan finds out they're fucking, he's actually furious and ALSO unsure of which one's taking advantage of the other.

Initially assumes Rex is taking advantage of Anakin's recent emotional traumas. Anakin protests that he asked Rex for this, and Obi-Wan is asking in horror if Anakin ordered one of the soldier under his command to do this, and it all just kind of goes very poorly.

Everyone means well. Nobody really succeeds at it.