#mellow ruminations

[secretmellowheart]

I only wish you could see me now. I'm all grown up! I'm a real adult. Are you proud of me? Will you visit me in my own apartment? 😊 I've been trying my best to make you proud even if we'll never meet! I'm glad you came and with this I'll be leaving our memories behind. Or at least attempt to! 😊

[sylphidine]

Gonna keep saying it, sorry if you're all tired of hearing it, but this video pretty much cemented my gender and my presentation back in the 1980s.

NOT because Richard and Tim were tall and slender, while I am short and exuberantly figured.

It was because of their showmanship, their self-assurance-as-a-veil-for-crippling-shyness-about-a-body-that-always-hurts-and-when-it-doesn't-hurt-it-doesn't-work. Easier to hide behind theatrics when one is forced to put oneself forward in the world.

Of curse, decades later, it also comes in handy for my fanfic writing for Nightmare Dork University to use Richard and Tim here as models for Piki Black and Pitch Black.

May all of you find comfort in yourselves. You are all valid.

[tropes-and-tales]

The Softest in the World

Day 15:  Fingering (Dave York x F!Reader)

(For the 2023 Kinktober event found here! Is it April? Yes. Am I that far behind in posting that it's April and I'm still working through Kinktober requests? Also yes.) 

CW:  Smut (Fingering; talk of masturbation; oblique talk of vague future sex acts); 18+ only.

Word Count:  4102

AN:  This is a sequel to this, and it was requested for Kinktober by an anon!

AN2: Never edited, never beta'ed. I live and die by my slopping typing.

The first Christmas without Carol goes far better for Dave than he ever thought it would.  Of course he misses his wife, nearly a year out from her sudden death.  Molly and Alice miss their mother too.  But the immediate grief—that sharp, cutting pain that left them breathless and stunned—has faded into a more mellow sorrow.  Ever-present, but it doesn’t take Dave out at the knees anymore.

He knows he owes much of his family’s collective healing to you, the nanny he hired months after Carol died.  You’re the one who stepped in and took charge of their lives.  You never tried to replace Carol, but you’ve managed their day-to-day moments and their larger healing.

This first Christmas was your idea too.  A month in Vermont, away from the family home where memories may have been too thick and pressing to allow for any joy.  It had proved out to be a great idea too:  long days sledding and snow-shoeing and building snow forts leave the girls exhausted by evening, too tired to ruminate about their missing mother.

And it allows Dave more time with you.

Usually you only live at the York home when he’s traveling.  You handle their lives at home—drive the girls to and from school, to and from activities.  You handle the maid who comes in twice a week to clean.  You keep the refrigerator full, get the girls bathed and put to bed with a story and a hug each night.  But Dave is never there to see it—when he returns home from his work trips, you leave for your own apartment.

This month in Vermont?  You sleep in the room just down the hallway from him.  You share a bathroom with him, leave behind the scent of your shampoo and soap after you shower.  He hears you each night when you, like clockwork, pad out into the kitchen for a glass of water that you gulp down until you’re breathless.

More than all of that, he has front row seats to how you care for his girls.  You’re tough but fair.  You cut them plenty of slack, grieving as they are, but you don’t allow them to run roughshod over you.  You play with them, you teach them, and you genuinely seem to love them…and they genuinely love you as well.

Him, though?  Dave can’t seem to get a bead on you when it comes to him.  Your ease with the girls disappears the moment the two of you are alone.  You can’t always meet his eye line.  You flinch away from him if he brushes against you.  Sometimes he wonders if you can sense his former double life—if you have some preternatural prey response to being so close to a predator.  But more than once, he’s caught you watching him on the sly.  He’s noticed your heavy-lidded eyes, the way you pull your lower lip between your teeth.

When he cornered you in the hallway a few days earlier, he definitely noticed how your breathing quickened.

Maybe you can sense his killer nature, but Dave would also guess that you are attracted to him.  And knowing what he does of your character, you probably feel conflicted about that.  Guilty.  Maybe even a cliché, the nanny falling for the widowed father of her charges.

If Dave has taken one lesson from Carol’s death, though, it’s this:  life is short, and life can end in a blink.  Why not live while you can?

-----

The day before Christmas is spent in a nearby town.  You plan it, of course, and you layer in fun stuff with all the errands you have to run and make it a family affair.  You take the girls ice skating at a nearby pond.  Dave stands along the rink’s edge and watches you take lazy circles on the ice, Molly’s and Alice’s mittened hands firmly in yours until they get comfortable on their own.  Then you skate over to him, and the two of you watch in silence.

Then there’s hot chocolate at a nearby café, last minute presents for the stockings, and the grocery store.  You return to the cabin laden with bags, and the evening flies by.  You and the girls make flat breads for dinner, and afterwards, you put on a Christmas movie while the girls put the finishing touches on the tree Dave bought earlier in the month.

Dave helps the girls with their evening baths.  He gets them tucked into bed, reads them a story.  He presses a kiss to each of their foreheads, and they are out like a light before he’s even quietly clicking their bedroom door shut behind him.

As he’s been tending to his daughters, you’ve tidied up in the kitchen and living room, and now you’re pulling the wrapped gifts from their hiding spot in the hallway closet to arrange them under the tree.

At the sound of his footfall, you glance up and offer him a smile.

“They out already?” you ask.

Dave chuckles.  “Before I even left the room.”

You smile, brush the back of your hand across your forehead, miming hard work.  “It’s exhausting work, trying to exhaust them.”

“And you manage to do it every time.”  He joins you near the tree, kneels down beside you.

“Sometimes I make them run laps at home,” you reply with a laugh, and maybe you don’t notice your casual use of the word home, but Dave notices.

Dave notices everything.

He noticed, for example, how you stood by him at the skating rink, perfect posture and a tension radiating off of you when Dave moved close enough for his coat to brush against yours.  He noticed the way you ducked your head at the café, how you pretended not to hear the women who sat nearby and remarked on the lovely little family that you, Dave, and the girls made.

He notices now how you lean away from him just a fraction, how you start when his fingers touch yours each time he hands you a wrapped gift to place.  He notices that you won’t look at him, that you keep your gaze carefully fixed on the presents or the tree.  He crowds you closer, plays dumb about it, and he notices when the pink tip of your tongue darts out and licks a wet line along your lower lip. 

Part of Dave—the dark part of him, the predator in him—wants to grip your face between his hand and force you to look at him.  He wants to hold your gaze until it’s too much for you; he wants to stare at you until you squirm and beg him to let you go.  And then he wants to not let you go, your begging futile—he wants to hold you tighter and lean in and draw his own tongue along that bitable lower lip of yours.

He keeps that part of him at bay.  He knows he has to go slow.  Slow movements.  You freeze around him, but if he comes on too strong or too fast, you’ll bolt.  He needs to quiet that prey instinct, make you feel safe.  Alleviate your guilt, if you have any, at being attracted to a widower.

So Dave decides to seduce you instead. 

When you reach for the next gift, he instead grasps your wrist lightly.  He can feel your pulse against his grip, and he hears the breath you draw in.  He holds you like that until you have the courage to look at him, and he smiles at you to put you at ease.

“I’ll finish up,” he tells you, his voice low.  “Why don’t you go get a bottle of wine and some glasses?  We can have a drink on the couch.”

You hesitate…then nod.  It shouldn’t be a turn-on, but Dave loves the hesitancy, then the obedient way you stand up and do exactly as he says.  It’s not hard for him to imagine other things he could order you to do, the same uncertainty before you obey him.

-----

The wine is Moscato-adjacent.  It’s one of those local vintages made with fruits other than grapes, and far too sweet for Dave’s taste, but you had picked it out at the grocery store, so he sips it carefully and hides his winces when the cloying sweetness burns against the back of his throat.

You?  You nearly gulp it down, and he realizes how nervous you are to be here:  alone on a couch beside him, the room dark except for the lit-up Christmas tree and the crackling fire in the fireplace.  It’s romantic, but you’re his employee, and he swears he can feel you flailing out of your depths to find yourself in this moment.

“Easy,” he says.  He stills your hand when you reach for the bottle.  You’ve bolted down the first glass so fast, and Dave doesn’t want you drunk.  He doesn’t even want you tipsy.  He wants just the barest bit of your nerves soothed, but he wants you fully in control of yourself. 

He wants you to be completely, stone sober when you beg him.

“Slow down,” he continues.  “You don’t want to overdo it.”

You laugh, a nervous giggle that spills out of your mouth, and you start to say, “I just…” but you trail off, don’t finish the sentence. 

What were you going to say, Dave wonders?

I just am nervous.

I just think this is too much.

I just think it’s wrong.  It’s too soon.  It’s too complicated.  It’s too unseemly.  What will people think, if anyone ever finds out?

“It’s okay.”  He says it soothingly.  He eases your empty glass out of your other hand, and he sets it down along with his own mostly-full glass, but he does it with one hand—his other, he keeps wrapped around your wrist, unwilling to break his hold on you.

“Mr. York…”  You start, and he hears the nerves in your voice.  He hears the wobble in your words, the faint tremor, but he also swears he can hear desire too—a huskiness to your voice, the slightest rough edge.  And you squirm in your seat, just a bit, but you don’t try to pull away from him.

“Mister York?  Since when did I become Mister?”  It shouldn’t be so hot, you calling him that, formal with the tremble in your words, but then you breathe out his first name—Dave—and you draw it out, and that’s even hotter.

His hand on your wrist, he pulls you to him, tugs your upper body towards him, and you let him.  You go willingly, but your eyes widen.  In shock?  Fear?  Lust?

“Tell me you want this,” he murmurs, his face inches from yours.  “If you don’t, say so now, and we’ll forget it ever happened.”

The tip of your tongue darts out, licks nervously against your lower lip.  “It’s just…”  You take a breath, try again.  “It’s just complicated.”

“That’s not a yes or a no, baby.”

You huff and offer him a tremulous smile at his use of a nickname, so he adds, “it’s a simple question.”

You hesitate, and Dave wonders if you’re really conflicted about it.  If you’re weighing how your life will change depending on how you answer…

…or if you just don’t want to seem eager, because you nod, then whisper “yes, I do want this,” and when he bridges the remaining distance between you, you’re right there, ready and eager to slot your mouth over his, to part your lips to his searching tongue, to cup his stubbled face with your free hand.

-----

Other men might take you then and there.  They might claim you right on the couch, in front of a dying fire and a Christmas tree sparkling with lights.  They might rush it, make it some sweaty, sad fumble, then parting to each slink to separate bedrooms.

Dave York has always enjoyed the long game.  If he were a game hunter, he would enjoy it better to sit in a tree stand for hours before dawn.  He would relish the cool planning, the stalking, the calculating and recalibrating as needed.

Dave York doesn’t fuck you just yet.  He wants to give you a taste, just a morsel, because he wants you slavering for it.  He wants you looking at him with those wide eyes, that lower lip caught between your teeth, as you beg him for more.

So this night, he only pushes you gently back against the couch as he kisses you.  He lowers himself onto you—lets you feel the weight and heft of his body against yours, lets you feel how he can press you into the couch with his weight.  He lets you feel the length of his growing erection where it presses against your hip, and each little whimper makes him harder.

He kisses you deeply—tastes the glass of Moscato you gulped down, tastes the sweetness of you beyond the tart, sweet wine.  He slides his tongue against yours, licks the inside of your mouth, and he smiles inwardly when you shyly try to do the same.  You are mostly led by him but there’s little movements—your tongue pressing back against his, say, or the upward press of your hips as you search for friction—where you try to lead too.

He braces himself with one hand, which allows the other to roam free.  He cups your flushed face, feels the heat of your blushing.  He draws his hand down, traces a path down your neck, circles his palm there, feels how much he can fit in the span of one palm.  Not because he likes choking—he’s never been into breathplay or anything so risky, but he does like the tame feel of his hand partially around your neck with the feel of your pulse and the ragged breaths you pull in.

Then lower.  He grasps the softness of your breast, and even through the sweater and bra, he can feel your pebbled nipple.  He brushes the pad of his thumb over it, back and forth, and it makes your hips lift up again…and then you groan when you find nothing to meet you, no friction and no touch.

“Be patient,” he whispers in your ear.  He nips at your lobe, darts his tongue against the whorl of your ear, and you whimper at the sensation of his hot breath fanning over you.

He moves his free hand lower still.  He finds the hem of your sweater, snakes his hand under it.  Then he finds the waistband of your leggings.  He sends up a silent prayer that he gets to live in a time and place where leggings are a thing—no tricky buttons or zippers, just an elastic waistband so easy to slip his hand under, and he cups your mound through the soft cotton of your panties.  Dave chuckles near your ear, then lifts his head to look at you because you’re already wet there, the damp cotton cleaving to you as he skates his fingers over you.

“Bad girl,” he whispers.  “Getting wet for your boss.”

He’s watching you as he says it, and he sees the flash of hurt that crosses your face before your pupils get wider and your lips part, as you breathe out a heavy breath.  You’re such a good girl; Dave obviously vetted you before ever letting you into his girls’ lives.  Straight A student, honors, full ride in college.  Not even a speeding ticket in your history.  He bets you’ve never been called bad, never been a bad girl, and it seems to hurt you for a beat before you embrace this tamest step outside of your erotic comfort zone.

Dave has so many more steps he wants to lead you on.  He wants to take your hand in his and lead you into darker, deeper waters.  He imagines spanking you, binding you, blindfolding you.  He imagines twisting your innate desire to please into something sensual; he imagines training you to greet him on your knees.  He imagines rewarding you, calling you a good girl instead, fucking you senseless until you are left overstimulated and weeping, ruined for any other cock but his.

“Is this just from right now?” he continues, and he strokes you through your soaked panties, feels how they are molded to your folds and cleft.  “Or have you been thinking about this?”

“I don’t—”

“Tell me.”  He pinches you lightly—not enough to hurt, but the sensation pulls a gasp from you, and your hand flies up to grasp his bicep where his bracing arm is near your head.  “Tell me why you’re so wet.”

“I’ve been thinking about this.”  It comes out a whisper, barely audible.  Tinged in shame, and that’s the first thing Dave will burn out of you.  Guilt.  Shame.  He’ll break you down and tear those useless emotions out of you.

“When?”  Another light pinch, another gasp.  Your hand grips his arm harder, and Dave will see dusty little bruises there in the morning.

“Since….ah, since a while.”  Another pinch, and you add, “over the summer.”

The summer.  When Dave was around more due to his busy period at work dying off.  When Dave ran each morning and returned home to find you cleaning up the breakfast mess, when he shed his sweaty shirt and walked through the house on his way to shower.  When he pretended not to notice the way your eyes followed him each step, and when he pretended like he needed a glass of cold water, shirtless, that he drank down in your eye line.

Bad girl indeed.

“You touch yourself to the thought of me?”  Here he moves his hand, shifts it to slip under the lacy band of your panties, and he’s delighted to feel a strip of damp curls there, happy that you haven’t shaved or waxed yourself bare.  He drags his fingers through them, then finds your clit, slick and swollen, and he touches you lightly there.  Strums you with his thumb and chuckles at the keening whine that tears out of your throat.

“Answer me.  You touch yourself, thinking about me?”

“….yes.”

“Like this?”

“S-sometimes.”

“Not every time?”

You fix him with a pleading look, but you’re barely able to hold his gaze for long.  When he brushes his lips over your cheekbone, he can feel how hot your face is.  This is a challenge to you, possibly humiliating, but also arousing because you continue to lift your hips, chasing the touch you’re desperate for.  Such a soft little thing, the softest in the world, and yet you’ve been touching yourself to the thought of him.

Dave stills his hand, and he chuckles again at the groan of disappointment you make.  “Tell me or I stop.”

You swallow, nod.  “Sometimes I…I have a vi…a vibrator.”

He can imagine it; a sad little tucked-away piece of silicone or plastic.  You probably pull it out in the darkness of your room, ashamed at pleasuring yourself.  You probably bury it under your socks and blush when your hand brushes against it when you’re putting laundry away.

He hums, considers the mental image that rises to his mind.  Your legs spread under the covers, running the toy over your clit, maybe pushing it inside you.  Imagining it was him instead.

Not that different from the times he’s gripped his own cock, stroked himself in the shower or in his room and pretended it was you instead of his hand.

Dave could demand to know your fantasies.  He could make you tell him what scenarios you’ve used to get off to him.  Him bending you over the kitchen counter?  Him fucking you in the shower?  Him sneaking into your bedroom at night, sliding under the covers and slipping his already-hard cock into your tight little pussy?  He could make you blush harder and demand to know these things, but he wants to take this slow, so he kisses you instead, murmurs his thanks, calls you a good girl for answering his questions, and when your face lights up at the praise, Dave pushes one thick finger into you and draws the sweetest, throatiest groan from you.

Other men might take you then and there, but Dave only finger-fucks you.  He goes so slow, eases it out, pushes it back in so you feel every goddamned bit of him entering you.  He keeps his thumb firm on your clit, and just the pressure makes you whimper each time he presses a little harder.

He adds a second finger and feels the delicious stretch as your pussy cedes to him.  You’re unbelievably warm, slick, and your pussy twitches and pulses around him each time he breeches the confines of your body.  It’s tight, but you’re nervous, and each bit of praise—good girl, such a good fucking girl for me, just relax and let me make you feel good, baby—makes you unclench a bit more.  You relax, and you find the rhythm that he fingers you, and you lift your hips to meet his fingers.

When he adds a third finger, you hiss at the thickness of it, the tight fit.  He stills, watches your face for any pain, and when he doesn’t see any, he continues.

Three fingers is a good start to preparing you for his cock, he thinks.  He imagines the feel of pushing into you, mounting you, and he imagines your fingers digging into his shoulders as he bottoms out in you.

In due time.  Now he fingers you, he scissors his fingers inside you and feels the answering throb in his erection each time you whine or whimper or groan, the sweetest symphony of sounds he’s able to pull from you.  When he starts circling your clit with his thumb, when he crooks his fingers inside you, pressing gently until he finds the spot that makes you gasp out his name, but you call him Mister York again, and it unlocks something inside him, the power you’re letting him have over you.  He dips his head and sinks his teeth into the side of your neck, right at the pulse point, and you gasp again.  Your other hand flies up and cradles the back of his head, and you twist your fingers through his hair, but you don’t pull him away—you hold him there, and he licks against the dimpled marks he’s left in your skin, he breathes against the wet line on your neck, and he’ll see a lurid bruise there in the morning too that will make him instantly hard.

“You’re going to come for me,” he growls against your neck.  “You’re going to be a good girl and come when I tell you.”

And his mind boggles at the possibilities with you because you do exactly as he says.  You nod at his order, and you press your hips in time to his searching fingers, and he feels when your orgasm approaches because you lose much of your embarrassment.  You swear in a hoarse whisper against his head—oh fuck, D-Dave, fuck fuck fuck, I’m close, I’m gonna, oh, don’t stop—and you spread your legs wider to make room for his hand, and the lurid sound of his hand working against your wetness doesn’t seem to even register to you.  The entire living room smells like sex and you don’t care, and when you gasp and buck your hips up into his hand, he feels your orgasm break around you:  the pulse of your cunt gripping his fingers, the hot slick of cum that coats his hand, the way your body shakes under his.

He fingers you through it.  He draws out your pleasure until you shove at him lightly, tell him it’s too much, and he stops.  He feels the tension of your orgasm—the arching body, the trembling—leave you, and you lay underneath him, sated and heavy with your release.

Dave draws his hand out from under your clothing, and he straightens the hem of your sweater where it rode up a bit.  Then he fixes you with an unblinking stare and lifts his hand to his mouth, and he smiles at your shocked expression as he licks his fingers clean.  Then, with the taste of you on his lips, he lowers his head and kisses you again—deep and slow, so you can taste yourself too.

“Good girl,” he tells you when he breaks the kiss.  “You’re going to be such a good girl for me.”

[avantgardetheseventh]

Francesca's story has to be the most interesting of them all. The first thing she'd poured so much heart and love into - a humble piano - was all she was. Happy to be defined by her music, happy to talk about her interest. Entering into the social season, perhaps with no interest to get married on her own but doing so just to get her mother off her back - she'd just wanted someone kind who would allow her to keep her piano, practice her music. Love was a distant thought. It would be a coincidence if she were to find somebody who shared the same interests as her. Social seasons were difficult on their own. Fran doesn't go in with expectations.

Enter John. He's quiet, reserved, takes an interest in Francesca's music. She is elated. He's someone kind, someone who is willing to listen, someone whom she can just stay with, no pressure to woo them with flowery language. They're such a perfect fit - understanding of each other on such a deep level despite not having spoken to each other one bit. Francesca lets herself be vulnerable, be seen.

She loves him. It is not everyday they find someone who is able to accommodate the other's interests, let alone barely tolerate it. They carve out a space just for themselves; it is everything they've ever dreamt of. Not just a fancy house or surface-level pleasures, rather an invitation. There's no pressure to proclaim love out in words. There's just no pressure to simply exist; breathe in the same air as the other. It's wonderful, the love treats them both with so much kindness. After all, that's what they've wanted, right? Someone kind?

Francesca doesn't take John's death very well. Piano is to her as John had been to her. The things she loves snatched away from her. How long would it take before she loses her ability to play? The jubliant compositions turning slow, mellow and one day, she ends up forgetting it entirely.

She must move on someday, right? John would not be willing to keep her in one place. Where does she go? Who will treat her with the same kindness John has showed her? Who is she willing to carve out a space for - taking time and energy to just love? It was easy to love John; a slow descent into a warm embrace. Who will she ever share it with, if not for him?

Michaela is Michaela. Stubborn, daring, charismatic, social, attractive. Encouraging, perhaps. Maybe she doesn't understand Francesca down to her molecules when they first met. Maybe Francesca is a bit nervous herself - besides ruminating over her attraction to women, trying to piece together an explanation - she is scared. A little. Change doesn't do Fran much good anyway, but she's willing to try.

Michaela lends her a hand - perhaps, after years and years of Francesca adamant on going through it all alone. She accepts it. To step out of her comfort zone, but not too much as to overwhelm her. Step by step, like a waltz. Moving on, rebuilding her hands again to play her piano, to create with reckless abandon. Slowly, it transforms into love. A different kind of love without fear. A love that treats her so gently, arms tight around her but also unafraid to drag her out, let the sun on her face again. It's something kind, something new. Two sides of the same coin. And yet, there's also a space built for them to share. A love of something warm, a feeling of home and yet, a love filled with so much daring hope.

[chococolte]

hello! How are you doing? Can i request for al haitham,zhongli,cyno,diluc and kaeya jealousy hcs?? Have a good day ☺️

word count. 865

୨୧ — ꒰ cw. yandere, unhealthy relationships, possessive & obsessive thoughts/behaviors, jealousy lol, g/n reader. i do not condone yanderes irl.

୨୧ — ꒰ a/n. i wrote these pretty quickly, so sorry for their quality…. but i hope your day is good too, nonnie!! ♡︎♡︎

al-haitham

Al-haitham’s jealously is an ugly, hideous thing.

It hides away, sulks with its tail between its legs. It’s abyssal, lumbering body grows stronger with ease, larger than an ox. It stays in shadowy corners, where the light withers away and is replaced only by black; there it stays, but there it hates.

Al-Haitham is not one to simply quiet and pretend that his feelings do not exist. His jealousy roars with all of the fervor and urgency of a wounded, cornered animal. His rage is unkind, ruthless and merciless. He will lash out at you, bear down at you with cold, calculated eyes.

You might think it unfair. They mean nothing, you may think. We're only friends. Perhaps you’re right. Al-Haitham is wise and intelligent; not so foolish as to believe that only he holds all the answers. But you are even less so, and whatever pause your words may have given him is thrown to the wolves.

He loves you, so, so much. It’s an all encompassing passion, an unbearable sensation— like a fire it burns, like a hunger it gnaws. Al-Haitham will not have anything, or anyone, get in his way of you. Even if you can’t understand yet, you will eventually.

zhongli

Zhongli’s jealousy writhes. It bends and squirms in his tight grasp, where he keeps it secured, hidden behind himself, hidden far beneath the earth.

You will never see it. You will never catch a glimpse of its full size, of its towering serpentine body, of the fangs the size of your forearms. You will only ever notice a whisper of its presence— the destruction left in its wake, the tracks it leaves behind. You will catch its tail wrapping around a corner, disappearing into the fading night. You will never notice it snake itself around you until it’s already squeezed.

Zhongli does his best to keep it in check. He doesn’t allow himself to ruminate on it, to doubt you. But it’s hard, sometimes— when he watches you rub someone’s shoulder in comfort, he seethes. When you smile at another, warm and inviting, the dark body underneath his feet rises. When you so much as brush your fingers against another, it’s rage coils around him.

Unfair, you might say. You’re right. Zhongli knows you’re right, and it is why he tries so hard to fight. But there is only so much he can do— so many cups he can shatter, so much wrath he can withstand before it begins to bubble.

When all the people you’ve grown so used to interacting with begin to disappear, let him comfort you.

cyno

Cyno’s jealously sears like the sun.

It bears down on you, unforgiving. It does not care what you have to say, or what defense you may have. Its rage burns like a fire, its realization of your betrayal scorches like a gods wrath.

Try to hide, and find it reaching you no matter where to go. Like the light of the sun, it encompasses all; its warmth and fury so great. Cyno will not have your desertion of him— he will not allow it.

They mean nothing to me, you will say. I only love you! Even if you’re telling the truth, Cyno doesn’t care. He shoves the happiness that threatens to burst from his chest at your declaration, and keeps hold of the rage still burning in his soul.

You were not the one who had to watch as you touched another. You were not the one who had to watch as you spoke to another— as you cared, as you loved for another.

It’s not the same, you can cry. But your tears are meaningless. He is the only one deserving of your affection. Until you can understand that, you’re not going anywhere.

diluc

Diluc’s jealously is mellow.

It’s a small, infantile thing. It burrows itself into the ground. There it resides, kept safe under the dirt. It does not move unless necessary, unless it hungers. Diluc will refute its existence, speak of it as mere myth; it does not exist, he tells you. But it does, and as it grows with age, so does its appetite.

Diluc will never let you see it. You may see glimpses of it on his expression— the slight furrow of his brow, the tremor of his chin. Ask if you wish, but Diluc will deny. There is no such thing, and he will make sure of it.

Such control is only tempered through time. Oh, it gets hungry so very easily; the slightest glance leaves it growling. So protective, but so soft. Take his hand into yours, give him the comfort he desires, satiate what’s within. If not, it grows angry. Upset. Bitter.

Such a small thing, so delicate— but it grows quickly, and it does not take long for it to loom over you. Diluc tried so hard to keep it hidden, but this time its whispers were louder than his restraint.

You do love him, don’t you? Tell him one more time.

kaeya

Kaeya’s jealousy is like a silent winter.

On the surface, it appears calm, almost tranquil. It nips at your heels with frostbite, but never too much to hurt. It licks at your face with snowflakes, desperately trying to gain your attention. Its wild wind sings a song devoted to you, soft and lulled in by you.

It is only when you continue to ignore it that it turns silent. You might not notice it at first, but the snow has ceased to fall. The wind in the air disperses, and all you are left with is the sound of the snow crunching underneath your feet. The silence is a warning— turn back while you still can, back to his arms, back so he may breathe in your warmth. To continue is a betrayal, whether you know it or not.

Every step froward is labored, your every breath like there's a pressure on your shoulders. The air around you seems to freeze, then it roars with frenzy. When you smile at another, its gentle snow turns to a blizzard. When you touch someone else, even if only for a moment, its wind turns whipping and sharp, loud like hails of ice.

You think it unfair, you think him wrong. So be it, then— suffer as he has suffered. Endure his coldness, his silent rage; do not cry for him as he did you. You will receive no answer.

[tkingfisher]

Following the monk seals snorting eels post, I’d said that it wouldn’t be the tenth weirdest thing I’d heard about mammals. And then someone in the tags asked what the ten weirdest WOULD be.

Okay, I’ll confess there was some hyperbole there, because I didn’t have ten off the top of my head, but here’s three that strike me as A Thing:

CW: Animal injury and death! Also it’s disgusting! Read at own risk!

We all mostly know about hyena genitals by now, which is pretty wild in and of itself, but it gets weirder. Given that they have to give birth through the pseudo-penis, you’d think they’d be better at it, but the umbilical cord isn’t as long as the lady hyena’s junk, AND there’s a weird elbow turn, so cubs often suffocate on the way out. This may explain why they’re born so goddamn angry that siblings have been observed fighting *while still inside the amniotic sac.*

(I once peed while surrounded by hyenas. The African bush is not an easy place for a woman with a small bladder.)

(That’s not a weird mammal fact, except insomuch as I am a weird mammal.)

Lemurs will take giant millipedes, nip them to make them secrete toxins, then rub the millipede on their fur as insect repellent. But the millipede toxins also make them High As Fuck and cause them to salivate, so you end up with a bunch of stoned, drooling lemurs passing around a millipede that probably had other stuff to do today, dammit.

Ambergris is a weird waxy mass that stinks like the devil eating sardines in hell, and so of course is used in perfume. (It mellows.) For centuries nobody actually knew where it came from, just that it would sometimes wash up on shore. Eventually it was discovered in the guts of sperm whales and some clever soul figured out that it involved the indigestible bits of squid, like beaks. “Aha!” said humanity, “it must be whale vomit!”

Humanity, alas, was unduly optimistic. See, the whales regurgitate most of the squid beaks normally—they’ve got four stomachs, like a ruminant, and since they can’t chew, the first stomach is super tough and muscular to crush their food and to resist the assault of the squid, which is often still alive at this point—and so if they barfed up the beaks, there would be no ambergris. But sometimes they swallow the beaks instead and it lodges in the softer bits of the whale intestines. And then more beaks get hung up on it and more and basically it’s like a whale bezoar, and since this is of course moderately painful, the body secrete a mucusy goo to cover the sharp edges so it doesn’t poke the soft bits, the way an oyster coats sand to make a pearl.

Except, of course, it’s a whale intestine, not an oyster, and instead of a grain of sand, it’s like the world’s most disgusting Katamari. (Okay, technically it’s called a coprolith, aka “shit rock” but it’s just sitting there hooking any indigestible bits that get hung up on it, as well as a bunch of whale poop, and getting bigger and bigger, so I stand by my simile, dammit.)

Now, if you get a whale who keeps swallowing their beaks, over time, the coprolith gets so big that it creates an intestinal blockage. And at that point, one of two things happens. Either the sheer force of liquid whale poo trying to come out dislodges the coprolith and the whale takes the sort of crap that songs are written about…

…or the whale’s gut explodes. (Well, ruptures.) And the whale expires, bloats, pops, goes through the process of whale fall (which is amazing in and of itself) and the ambergris floats to the surface and marinates in seawater for a decade or so, casts up on a beach, and gets sold for a whopping $10k a pound.

Interestingly enough, making ambergris is a very rare condition, found in less than 5% of male sperm whales. (It only happens in males. Don’t ask me why.) Hunting sperm whales for ambergris would be ludicrously inefficient, and it’s classed as a “found” object under international treaties, which means that you can sell it if you find it cast up on a beach, unless you’re in the US, which classes it as a by-product of an endangered species, although enforcement is usually a little more concerned with the people smuggling live parrots in their socks and not with your disgusting lump of found whale poop.

So, yeah. Mammals. We’re a thing.

[lackadaisy-headcanon-supply-unit]

Hello!

I would like to request a Rocky x reader (romantic) oneshot. A fluffy one with a bit of spice would be nice ;) I don't really have a specific plot in mind, but maybe something on the topic of affection? Whatever the story, i'm sure it will be amazing ❤

Thank u, and have a nice day/night!

Hello, Anon!! Thank you for dropping by!! Your request just so happened to align with an idea I've had, and... I got a bit carried away, I suppose. This is well over three thousand words.

Hope you'll find as much entertainment in reading as I did in writing, anyhow!! (I missed crafting dialogue for this silly cat, even if it's equal parts shameless purple prose fun and an absolute pain in the neck.)

“Absolutely not.”

The pose of cheerful enthusiasm he presented the idea with didn’t falter, although his grin seemed to by a sliver.

“Aww, why?”

“It’s not gonna work.”

“We can’t know that until we try!”

You’d come down before opening hour, when many of the lights framing the red-curtained stage and finely carved pillars hadn’t been ignited yet in order to lessen electricity bills, leaving the grandiose speakeasy hall to ruminate in a mellow, warm late afternoon dusk. Leaning against one of the pool tables webbed with gilded patterns on the sides, you glanced him up and down in half-lidded skepticism. It was brief, yet defeating.

“I say this with all the love in my heart,” you prefaced the ruthless confession with a teasing smile, “but you don’t look like you could lift a cornstalk.”

“And you have a point! But consider this,” he countered, gesturing passionately with his hands as if materializing a vision of success before the both of you, and that’s when you recognized this conversation was about to shimmy beyond the bounds of reality. “What wonders can be achieved through the power of love? It can avail you to weather a sea of infernal blazes, crumble ancient mounts to their innermost cores, compel the course of celestial bodies–”

“But it can’t give you muscles.”

The conjurations of poetic fancies promptly shattered, and he gave you a disheartened look.

“Oh, come on, dearest,” he pleaded, all gleaming blue eyes and droopy ears. “Have you no faith in your one and only chevalier?”

“Concerning any other situation… a hard maybe. Depends if anything flammable’s involved.”

You put a finger to your chin in lighthearted contemplation.

“But this… well, I trust you in pulling this off without either of us getting hurt about as far as I could throw you with one hand.”

“I don’t weigh much,” he perked up assuringly. “You could toss me a good few feet, I reckon.”

“So then we should try this the other way around.”

A glint of curiosity hinted he may not have been entirely opposed. Nonetheless, you could tell he wouldn’t let himself be so easily shot down in his steadfast ambitions, about which you happened to be right.

“Your suggestions are appreciated,” he placated upon your prompt sigh of disappointment, “but in the name of chivalry I must persist with my vision. Because I am certain that there is a way, as there is a will, to achieve it.”

He pondered aloud whilst leant against the pool table opposite to yours, tail swishing figure eights in the air as if stirring up the brainworks.

“Just let me think about it…”

A bit to the left, two of the local employment were spectating from their usual spots by the bar. Zib, who had draped himself half-across the counter while Viktor was cleaning it around him, regarded the scene from under his hat with a caustic glance. The smoke simmering from the cigarette he was languidly tasting occasionally wafted your way.

“Looks like chivalry’s not dead yet after all,” he grumbled, the corners of his lips teasing amusement, “but he’s about to be.”

The burly slovak continued with his somewhat menial task in dutiful disinterest, intimidating all unsightly dirt spots off the wooden surface with an effortless glare.

“Idiot vill break own spine vid effort,” he stated matter-of-factly, then after a thoughtful pause, shrugged. “Saves me the trouble.”

“Oh, such searing pessimism!”

Rocky turned to theatrically retort, rejoining your circles from the far reaches of whatever realms his mind had been venturing.

“Well I regret to inform you, gentlemen,” he gave an easygoing little smirk, “that the only sort of spectacle you’ll be getting today is the glorious display of romance’s incandescent triumph.”

“You should heed your sweetheart’s advice, kid,” Zib warned over his glassful of a somewhat suspicious golden beverage. “Artists like you and I just weren’t built for these kinds of strenuous feats. You’ll get a hernia and then the boss lady will be down one questionable bootlegger.”

“Pff… Nonsense talk!”

He waved off the notion as if swatting away a bug, and you pinched your brow in exasperation.

“Waste not such paltry concerns on me, my friend! You see, it might not leave that impression at first glance…” he flexed a bit to show off his bicep then stared at it with a blank expression once it failed to strengthen his argument, “nor perhaps second… but these spindly sinews are rife with untapped potential! Why, you think the Atlas of mythology had trained in advance to support the whole world on his shoulders? And yet, it still goes ‘round smoothly to this day. Which is to say that, hopefully helped by Fortuna’s favor, the release of a comparable innate strength shall aid me in this fated task of carrying mine.”

Despite his conspicuous lack of visible musculature he gave a grin of such radiant certainty it could’ve powered the rest of the lights. Zib blinked slowly, unimpressed in his fermentative, cigarette-stink skepticism. Viktor kept cleaning.

“Albeit I suppose there’s more point in a show rather than tell.”

Rocky stretched his arms in a somewhat comically overstated manner.

“So the old-fashionated way it is!” He then took up a stance and spread them in anticipation. “Come hither, my darling love, let’s prove those naysayers wrong! Leap into the arms of your favorite bard!”

“I still don’t condone this idea.”

You crossed your arms, resolution as hard as the wood digging into your lower back. Unstoppable force smiling baffledly at the inmovable object.

“You don’t?”

“Not really.”

He pouted. Oh, how you couldn’t stand it when those gorgeous sapphires looked at you so coyly despondent. And of course, he was aware.

“You mean you won’t even give it a chance?” he implored, tail gingerly lowering. “Not even if I’ll sooner have my organs be crushed into a fine sludge than let one hair on your head bend the wrong way?”

“Especially not then.”

Patiently, you stood, the twitch of your ears and your own tail’s gentle whipping behind your legs and brushing up to the smooth block of wood being your only movement. You watched him deflate in a slowly progressing manner not unlike that of a balloon animal leaking from a small opening; you could even imagine the characteristic sound to go with.

You tried not to laugh.

“Not even if,” he attempted once more, “it could be a most passionful pageantry of courteousness?”

“More like foolishness.”

Irritated by his snark for a change, you tilted your head in Zib’s direction. When he earned both of your attention by extension the resident nicotine eater, chin resting on the heel of his palm, flicked a huge ear and leisurely presented his back to you as though he’d never cared.

“Just picture it for a second!” Rocky suggested, snapping back to the conversation and taking your hand in his to help transmit the mental imagery through skin-to-skin contact. “A most consummate culmination of chivalrous custom!”

“Certainly,” you rolled your eyes yet didn’t resist when he snuck up close to grab a hold of your waist with an almost imperceptible delicacy.

“I’d gather you in my arms,” he narrated, “a most beauteous royal rose, pooling in your eyes the glimmers of a star-speckled galaxy, a divine black ether brimming with a variegated, dazzling cavalcade of celestial hues… oh, what fair nobility of ephemeral grace, molded in the realms above from the finest marble and ambrosia by lilium-scented, angelic hands…”

His face was close to yours, and your gazes intertwined; you could be quite sure he was just describing what he saw. You averted your eyes, slightly flustered.

“You sure know your words,” you nipped without any real teeth to it.

“I try,” he acknowledged cheerfully, nonetheless keeping proximate. “And me, no more than a humbled troubadour, a mere mortal permitted by Providence to embrace salvation itself,” you made an inarticulate noise of incredulity, “gentle tethering of your mass serving to remind that this resplendent scene is no meager illusion, a cruel trick of the light, but bona fide reality…”

You squirmed half-heartedly away in your chagrin, yet each bit of distance you created between the two of you he kept closing just as effortlessly, drinking in your expressions.

“In rapt entrancement we’d behold each other’s countenance,” you could feel his words on your whiskers, “honey-glaze lusters dancing across our lips in nectareal beckoning, your arms entangling my nape with fervor as you pull me under to merge our souls by way of osculation in the heart of the Earth–”

“Enough rhapsodizing,” you entreated with a wide, mildly embarrassed smile you couldn’t fight, “you poetaster.”

“Now, don’t tell me you wouldn’t enjoy that.”

You exhaled in a burst, gripping the wooden brim you were leant on. Tail curling and uncurling in thought.

“It sounds fine,” you emphatically minced, “but I don’t require it. You know you can just talk sweet to me like that or give me a kiss when I’m still on my feet and you’ll just as easily sweep me off them.”

“But there’s no harm in experimenting, right?”

“That’s… a very dubious statement.”

“Well, if it does work, it shall surely be memorable.”

Across the way, over ornate red carpet and leather seats, Viktor had since taken to polishing glasses while Zib ever-industriously continued to metabolize the establishment’s embalming fluid reserves in spite of the hour.

“…And if it doesn’t,” Rocky proposed the possibility with great hesitation, “as far as I can recall, bone fractures actually heal a lot quicker than you’d expect.”

With the band backstage, that’d be only two direct witnesses to your loss of dignity.

“You’re not about to let this go until I oblige,” you observed with a heavy heart and patted his arm, “so go ahead. I’ll give you a chance to enter history records as the world’s first cooked pasta-based organism to princess carry a whole person.”

You adjusted yourself in front of him at a roughly ninety-degree angle and put your arm around his shoulders. Enthusiasm flawlessly rekindled he took swift hold of your back in return, biting his lip in anticipation like a giddy kid.

“But if you sprain a muscle, I’m not bringing you the ice,” you stated firmly to his face.

“You can’t sprain what’s scarcely there,” he beamed back like it was of any reassurance.

“Well, alright.”

That obnoxious smoke hit your nose again. Beneath the golden glow of red lampshades, Zib had unexpectedly honored your ambitions by sitting marginally more erect, pushing up the brim of his hat to ensure his sight wasn’t failing him.

“Wouldn’t you look at that,” he grunted, pointy eyebrows raised. “They’re doing it for real.”

Viktor stopped in his surprisingly gentle handiwork and fixed a sharp, singular eye on the pair of you. When your clumsy preparations and nervous fidgeting painted a confirmatory enough picture, he set the glass and rag down with a thud, leisurely slapping two huge paws on the clean oak counter to lean on it.

“Dis vill be amusing.”

You gulped at the audience, blooming in your chest a severe doubt. You squeezed Rocky’s shoulder and felt the pointed conjunction of bones digging into your palm without any real effort.

“Whenever you’re ready…”

He smiled at you with those sweet blue eyes that drew your attention like a magnet, adamant on dissolving your worries within themselves. It almost convinced you that what you were about to do wasn’t both ridiculously asinine and physically unsafe… albeit still rather mild by the standards of dating Rocky Rickaby.

You looked at one of the curling, wrought iron chandeliers and sucked in a resolute breath.

“…Here goes nothing.”

In clenched-fist concentration, you jumped and threw your legs in the air for him to catch. He grabbed after them in wide-eyed startlement and as the momentum flung you at him, you prayed.

There was a grunting noise. Something in-between the squeak of a strangled rubber chicken and the aghast chuff of a scuffed, abused bagpipe as every last square inch of air is violently crushed out of it; you’d heard naught of such a combination before yet were instantly able to identify it. Arms clasped tight around his neck you hung on for dear life whilst he gripped your side and thighs in a no less firm desperation, fingers unintendedly clawing into tense flesh. He stood taut as a bowstring, you could feel as much beneath the clothes, though unfortunately nowhere near as straight and with every slight tremble and corrective squirm you feared yourselves tipping over in his direction and giving the carpeted limestone a sore greeting.

Time collapsed to a halt under the weight of anticipation. Cautious in your breaths, wide-eyed and blatantly uncomforted by his palpable quaking, you watched as his rigid expression of concentration strained on a half-hearted grin for your sake to mask what very much still was mortal terror hatching from amongst the shards of hubris.

And then… nothing.

You blinked a few times. Other than your own heartbeat, and what amounted to the whimpers of a heavy wooden chair being dragged across the floor that you soon confirmed to be coming from him instead, all sounds of impending doom receded. You took a deep inhale of the stagnant cave air and held it in bewilderment, knees squished close to one another.

Well, you’d be damned.

Flush to his torso and clutching the cheap fabric of his shirt, you stared on, trying to comprehend the situation. As was he, evidently, with how amidst his tight-lipped yet valiant bearing of the ramifications his eyes darted around the room as if disaster was running unusually late. No gears turn at such a pace however, for when at last the ice in your tendons began to melt in contemplation of asking whether he could move enough to put you down safely or if you should just jump for it, he exerted a small huff of accomplishment and it changed something, because you began to dip rapidly forward. Some indiscernible profanity escaped your mouth.

At least he gallantly broke your fall… and a rib as well, by the sound of it.

The ground was about as soft as you’d imagined when it kissed your limbs and left you with your hands splayed on velvety carpet. You caught glimpse of your audience and, lo and behold, Viktor for a brief second appeared to possess something of a smile behind the bar. Of schadenfreude, naturally. Nonetheless the witnessing of such an evanescent miracle left you nothing short of humbled.

“Well, that surprised nobody,” Zib sneered, a whiff of smoke leaving his nostrils. “We’ll hold him a tasteful funeral.”

“He’s not dead,” you indignantly countered, blowing tousled locks of hair out of your face, then turned to your knight in shoddy armor just to be sure. “You’re not dead, right?”

With that, you recognized that the reason your posterior ached less than the rest of you was his organs still being smushed under it, so you hastily clambered off. Sweetly enough, he hadn’t mentioned, though it may have just been that he’d yet to recover from getting the wind knocked out of him enough to form a sentence.

“Never felt more alive,” he wheezed in affirmation, clutching his torso. “I’ve come to sense fibers of my physique I didn’t know existed.”

“No wonder. Did you dislocate something?”

Crouched over your boyfriend on all fours, you scrutinized him whilst your tail lashed back and forth in acute concern regarding his lack of attempts to get up despite having him practically caged under you. Considering his talent for looking pathetic while curled up on the floor, you couldn’t be blamed.

“Well, all of my bones are still inside,” he tilted his head without raising it to look over himself. “That’s their designated place, I believe.”

“You’re such a twit.”

Bright blue eyes flicked up at you innocently, arms clasped together in a protective self-embrace. Your features softened with a sigh.

“I heard a crack,” you explained, gaze lingering over his ribcage. “I thought I’d hurt you.”

“Oh, that was just my pride,” he dismissed jovially. “Nothing worth the bewailment. Poor thing wasn’t about to survive the winter anyhow.”

That restless, puffy tail of yours came to a tentative pause upon his knees, drawn only halfway up to accomodate your presence as he squirmed lightly in his restricted position. Though the barely lit murk of underground, his grin still shined as disarming as any other.

“You couldn’t hurt me if you tried.”

Whether he meant that remark as a pacification or a challenge, you preferred not to dispute. You let go of the tension in your shoulders however, easing off to settle down next to him and allow him some space to do the same.

“Well, this was just stupid,” you concluded, listlessly examining your bruised appendages. “I have no idea what drove you to something so pointless.”

He carefully rolled up off the ground then simply sat there, blinking at you in a way that betrayed neither any particular discomfort nor the absence of it. You observed him in ponderance. Due to the lack of any concrete signals from upstairs you decided you’d just have to assume the best.

“Unless,” you teased with a squint of suspicion, minding your volume, “you just wanted me on top of you that bad.”

Now that definitely reached the headquarters. When it did, he responded with one of those downright sinful grins that made the notion of punching him in the face sound vastly appealing.

“It wasn’t according to my plan, per se,” he gestured in a sly manner, “but it’s certainly not a development you’ll catch me complaining about.”

“You cad.”

You regarded him with a scolding glare you didn’t really mean but perhaps should’ve. He stood or, well, sat his ground, and it didn’t take a medium to guess anymore what newfound visions might’ve been stirring on behind that striped forehead of his; you only hoped he wouldn’t start waxing poetics about it.

“Could’ve just asked me nicely,” you murmured with a smirk.

You noted the proximity all of a sudden; his nose couldn’t have been two inches away from touching yours. He peered down at you in awareness, chuckling.

“Ah, but the overture's half the merriment.”

“This place has marvelous acoustics, by the way,” Zib spoke out of nowhere and made every bone in your body flinch, “so you might wanna consider taking this somewhere else before our sparse patronage arrives–”

“Oh, shut it, Zibowsky.”

You snapped at him, ears pinned, feeling rather deserving of some soap in your mouth. Rocky got over the interruption with a more careless ease and disregarded the air of awkwardness he helped create in favor of lighting up in triumph.

“But our labour for love wasn’t in vain, after all!” he exclaimed over your shoulder. “We all saw it, right? My romantically inspired exhibition of unprecedented prowress? I must’ve held on for a good minute there!”

“How long did it last, by the way?” you inquired, watching as Viktor continued cleaning glasses. “I was too busy panicking to count.”

“Two seconds.”

Your face stretched in astonishment. Zib took out a lighter.

“You’re pulling my leg.”

“No, really,” he reiterated, igniting another cigarette with a series of clicks while the previous butt laid crumpled beside him on the counter, “two seconds. I was just about to congratulate you.”

You stared on at the sprawling carpet, befuddled, yet the intricate patterns held no explanation for this anomaly. Time does simply happen to slow to a crawl when you’re fearing for your life, as it turned out. Rocky slumped in dejection.

“Ah well,” he lamented, bushy brows descending. “It would appear that my hopes to beguile you with a debonair display could not come true after all.”

His tail gingerly curled around him, saddened to an equal degree. You pouted along in playful endearment.

“You’re so silly,” you ascertained. “I don’t mind that you’re a weakling.”

You took his hand balled up on the ground, enveloping it with your own. He watched in slight trepidation.

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah.”

The two of you locked eyes amidst the magnificent cavern of bygone extravagance; the ‘heart of the Earth’, as he’d put it. Decked in hues of crimson and gold and marinating in a mystiqueful twilight, a regrettably vacant wonder of architectural design honoring the arts décoratifs, all the dazzling sights of the establishment couldn't have hoped to draw you away from the one instrictic extension of it you delighted in looking at the most.

“And I wouldn’t trade you in for the brawniest of gallants,” you pressed a tingling kiss on his cheek, “my noodle-limbed prince.”

[selarina]

Ghosts in Love

-> Suna Rintaro x Reader

Chapter 1: In the Meat and Dairy Isle

Summary: Amidst shared streets and familiar alleys, chance encounters with your ex at grocery stores or parks evolve into shopping together and sharing park benches.

Loosely inspired by the poem "Ghosts in Love" by Carl Sandburg

Chapter Warning: exes, domestic angst lmao

Words: 1k words

Taglist: Open

Read on AO3 | Series Masterlist

You and Suna Rintaro have purchased tickets for a concert that is almost a year away.

Neither of you have canceled the booking for those tickets. Neither of you have tried to sell it off. It just lies there in the pile of your dusty emails. No attempt is made to delete it. You just let it make a home there, catching dust until you decide to reopen and read it again. And again.

It’s been 7 months since the two of you have broken up and you're wondering if you really need to get rid of them. You only mean, things have significantly mellowed down to a point where you go grocery shopping together, in a manner of speaking.

You still live in the same neighbourhood as him, so days of running into him at the grocery store, the park, or the laundromat have turned into days of shopping together, sharing a park bench, or using the same washing machine if there’s room. Cheaper that way, the two of you reason out.

So you've decided to bring it up at your next weekly run-in.

Except, you don’t see him all week. Or the week after that.

It’s odd but you don’t ruminate, you don’t have the time to. It’s the end of the month and you have deadlines that keep swamping up all over your calendar. And you also have a company ball to prepare for.

"Hey," he says, bopping your cold nose. You think that must have been instinct, because he brings his hand back down almost immediately at the touch. Like it stung to you, or that he's simply repulsed.

But you see him again, on a gloomy day. It’s raining on and off and everything is sticky. You’re sweating but you’re also cold as you stand opposite him in the meat and dairy aisle of the grocery store. His hair has grown a little, and it cascades across his face like a flood of dark water.

Your gaze is now drawn to the yogurt section as you look for the brand you usually use. A soft pink package. He lingers behind you through this, and you’re conscious of his movements. You wonder if he can see right through you, but it's a thought that only lasts for a split moment. He never really did understand you that well, you think.

"Haven't seen you in a while," you remark glibly as you toss a can of milk into your basket.

But it's a lot more intense in your head, and you find that your defences are back up. Why? You aren't sure, but you strongly believe that you will find out today.

“Yeah,” he says. You wait for a moment until you realize he isn’t going to explain himself. He doesn't have to after all.

“How have you been?” you try to change the topic.

“Fine, a bit restless. We haven’t had practices for a while,” he says. You proceed to basket the yogurt, along with some cheese.

You’re both sitting in a park now, just about to part ways before he says, “I went on a date.”

You hum in response.

—

The evening passes by as the two of you slip into the inevitable flow of a conversation.

You’re finally grateful you braced yourself for the inevitable.

You can’t say it doesn’t hurt, but it only hurts like a sting, rather than a typhoon. Right now, you’re too muddled with questions. Questions you don’t have the right to ask.

You don’t say anything.

A beat later, you ask, “Why are you telling me this?”

“I–I really don’t know actually,” he chuckles, and for the very first time, you hate it.

You hate the way his cheeks hollow into soft undefined dimples, you hate the crinkle at the edge of his eyes, and most of all you think you hate him in this moment.

“What?” It comes out before you can stop it, and nurture it into something more mellow — but right now, your anger seeps through your mouth and spits onto his face.

“Okay. Um, I really did need to leave so,” you say, and with a swoop you push yourself up.

This time you move quicker, walking away to leave but he stops you. His hand comes up to clutch your wrist. It's not tight enough for you to not walk away but you stop.

“I’m sorry,” he says and he seems genuine, which makes you hate him even more.

“It’s okay, Rin.” You say, because you could nurture your anger into something different. You’re definitely not okay, but you can pretend you think. For a bit, until you no longer have to pretend.

“Please, ca—just sit with me.” He says, and the wind blows, sending a chill down your back but you sit down anyway because you’ve never truly been good at telling him no. Not when it mattered, at least.

“Thank you,” he mutters.

You don’t speak for the rest of the time. The two of you just sit there, and your anger dies and it dies, and you almost forget about all of it, because this is nice right?

This is comfortable and familiar, and it makes you wish you could turn time back, at least in your head. But it’s abruptly met with a stop, when he speaks again, “It was bad.”

“I figured,” you say.

You hum, urging him to continue. Reluctant but ready.

“The date, I mean," he elaborates.

“I don’t think I’m over you yet,” he says. “It’s killing me just a bit, I think.” He tries to soften the sentence with a chuckle.

“I think that would kill me more,” he says soft as a whisper, you could barely hear it. It almost made you assume it was just the wind playing tricks on you.

“Want me to change neighbourhoods so you can move on then?”

Your words come out sounding a bit condescending but you have a soft edge to your voice, a lilt of humour if you will, like it’s amusing that you would ever do something like this for him. Would you?

“Anyway, it should be you if one of us is moving,” you say.

“Well, I was here first. It’s only fair,” you say, firmly.

“Me? No way,” he says, his pitch rising. “It’s closer to practice, and the home office."

He doesn’t say anything for a bit. You were here first, you were more in tune with this area than he was. Most of his favourite things about this neighbourhood are borrowed, he realizes. They're all yours.

At that, he feels a bit empty, “That’s actually fair.” He adds, “I’d rather neither of us have to move. I’d rather us be friends.”

“Me too, Rin.” You smile at him.

Only you can’t help but think about how it sounds like a distant fantasy, reminiscent of dream-addled childhood dreams where you thought of driving yourself across the country. You reassure yourself because you can drive now at least.

[miss-tc-nova]

And You'll Miss It - Leona Kingscholar x Reader

Hey! Remember this? Have some pain to go with that fluff! Because I can't help myself.

Premise: It's time for you/Yuu to go, but Leona's been missing all day

Words: 602

Warning: Kinda sad

~~~~~

               Jack’s arms are crushing as he holds me tight. I can feel my ribs bending.

               “Jack!” I pat uselessly at his back. “Too tight, buddy!”

               Instantly, he lets me fall back to the floor. Ears pulled back, he holds me steady. “Sorry!”

               I laugh. “It’s okay.”

               Looking at his face, I can see him fighting his sad-puppy expression. Reaching out, I wrap my arms around his neck and, this time, he holds softer.

               “I’m gonna miss you too,” I murmur into his shoulder.

               Stepping back, I turn to the hyena. As always, he’s much more mellow though there’s still traces of sadness there. There’s no hesitation though when I open my arms to him.

               “You keep yourself out of trouble, okay?”

               “Sheheh, I should be sayin’ that to you.”

               Our heads bonk together playfully as we part. Once again, my eyes scan the room and my heart sinks. “No sign of him?”

               Ruggie’s head shakes. “I haven’t heard anythin’ from him all day.”

               “I see…”

               Though my heart aches, there’s not much time to ruminate on the man that stood me up. Heartslabyul flat out tackles me to the ground in a mass of sobbing embraces.

               Today is the day I leave Twisted Wonderland. Honestly, I never thought this day would come. I’d become so accustomed to living among the students of Night Raven College that I kind of forgot that I had a life elsewhere. But Crowley finally kept his word and I was heading home.

               But there’s one person I haven’t gotten to see one last time.

               Grim’s forehead rubs against mine. I can see the tears in his eyes though he tries his best to put on a brave face. When he leans back to look at me, I can’t help the blink I give him. In return, his eyes close and he gives me another enthusiastic nuzzle.

               It breaks my heart to let Deuce take him from me. “Take care of him for me, okay?”

               “Of course.”

               Ace, eyes somewhat teary, places a hand on the cat’s head. “We can’t just let him run amok on his own, right?” His attempt at laughter his shaken by a sniffle.

               Reaching forward, I bring them all into a hug. “I love you guys.”

               I almost don’t want to let go, but Crowley gives me one last warning, so I step away from the mass of student. Climbing the few steps before the Dark Mirror, I pause and look back. These are the faces I will cherish forever—we endured hardship, had adventures, and grew together. I will never forget them.

               I just wish I could’ve seen…

               At the far end of the hall, there’s one last person, leaning against the door. I’d been searching for him all day and dreaded to think I’d leave without saying goodbye. He was the biggest reason I was reluctant to leave. I spent so many hours with him beneath the greenhouse trees and cheering through Spelldrive games. At first I thought we could never be more than strangers, but he proved me wrong a thousand times over. If he just asked, I would probably agree to stay in a heartbeat.

               He probably knows that.

               That damn cat is always a step ahead of me.

               A weary smile pulls at my lips as I meet his chartreuse eyes. There’s a soft one in return.

               And then slowly, he blinks.

               A sleeve drags across my watering eyes. Still, a breath of a laugh escapes me, glad that we could have this one last exchange.

               I blink back.

               I love you too.

[secretmellowheart]

I could certainly use someone to hug on Sunday evenings :')

[deadboyfriendd]

Sovereign Creatures: The Triumph Of Death

Summary: You plan on reanimating your lover piece by piece, today, you are in search of his eyes.

Warnings: Fem!Reader, Mermaid reader, Plague Doctor!Steve Harrington, based off of The Salt Grows Heavy by Cassandra Khaw, period appropriate violence, gore, blood, self mutilation, surgical instruments

My content is 18+ Minors DNI

The bezoar sits encased in a glass cloche, its ruminating pulse the only thing to remind you that he was once alive, too– and that he may be alive again one day. 

The bezoar of your dead lover– a bolus of broken-off teeth and snarled hairs, fingernails, caked dirt, curds of mummified gray, colored glass. Over it all, a lettering of fine blue veins, like an alphabet that only muscle can decode – incubated his dwindling consciousness. You dreamed of the day this organ would pulsate behind flesh once more. 

You knew nothing of his pilot existence, where he learned his kindness. You did not know of the life he lived with a mother and father, where he learned to speak and run, where he felt the weight of the earth in all of its glory. Where the warmth of the sunburn overcomes the sting and the weight of existence is a beautiful one to bear. 

Instead you knew of his last existence. This one stunk with the morosity of being reanimated but never fully alive again. You’d wondered if his first death had been as painful as his last, even though you knew it would be foolish to assume that it hadn’t. Creatures of his nature rarely harbored peace in death. The weight of this existence was bruising– crushing, even. 

You knew this existence would be beautiful– almost as beautiful as he had been.

Your boy would be beautiful again, made in the image of your own ideal of it. 

Your finger traced over his notes, scared to smudge to ink despite its age. You felt the embossing against the parchment and tried to feel his hands against your fingers like reeds, blood flowing under his skin in its inky black beauty and pulsating through the ruminants of his inkwell heart. 

The study felt more like yours than his own now, though he had inhabited it for years before your existence. You were merely a vessel for his findings. A piece plucked and carved from this rib of his essence. A slave to the bezoar behind a glass cloche. 

It still pulsated its erratic song in a fleshy waltz. You looked for the hum of his voice beneath it, not quite able to remember its exact pitch. You listen to it again and again, the mellow drone of it a backing that fills your studies. Sometimes you listened for a whisper, sometimes you listened for permission to continue. 

There were more pieces of you covering this place than there were pieces of him, it felt like. You could no longer differentiate your books interwoven with his on the shelves– the lines between your handwriting and his becoming one blurred entity, the line where your being ended and the pieced-together formations of where his new being began intertwined as one desolate, threadbare creature. 

The human hands can be differentiated by the presence of an opposable thumb, made different from the other phalanges marked by the absence of the middle phalanx… the metacarpal is the connecting factor to the smaller subset of carpals within the wrist. 

This you knew was his writing, and you were thankful in the beginning for how thorough he had been in his studies. You allowed yourself the pleasure of feeling the ridges of his writing:

Trapezoid, trapezium, capitate, hamate, scaphoid, lunate, triquetrum, pisiform. 

You try to feel them in your own wrists, try to feel the sutures in bone and the roll of ligament over them. You tried to feel the feeling of being alive once more, differentiating it from what– you weren’t quite certain. You tried to remember a time in which he had been alive. 

“That’s it.” He would have whispered to you, through a velveteen smile, his own gentle fingers wrapped delicately around your wrists– feeling the roll of ligament over bone the way you tried to feel now, “So Long To Pinkie, Here Comes The Thumb.” 

Scaphoid, lunate, triquetrum, pisiform, hamate, capitate, trapezoid, trapezium.  You jotted down alongside his writing. 

His hands were one of the few things remaining after the day of the saints– your body seethed like the embers that remained of him. You watched them settle low against the glass in their formaldehyde home and wished desperately that you could pull one out to cradle your face just once– the way he had. 

You wished that you could trail your fingers over the hills and valleys of the soft plush of his hands in search of the canyons between his fingers in which yours would seek solace just once more. You wished to feel his thumb run rivers across the crest of your lip, pilling downward over the plush and settle in the crevice between there and your chin. Just once do you wish to  feel warmth behind flesh. 

It had been years, now. More than you could remember. 

His existence, the way he was before the only remnants of him you had were his studies, seemed blurry now– a far off memory in which you could not quite soft through. But you remembered the warmth that radiated from him like the sun. You do not remember who he was, yet the remnants of his previous existence consumed your entirety. 

The violence in which he gave his life for you no longer stings, but fills you with a hot, blinding anger.

His existence was violent and painful, manufactured to be that way, yet nonetheless beautiful. Sometimes you believe he does not want to live again, but you are selfish. You will show him that there is existence without pain. 

You press tender fingers, cold and aching against the glass cloche. A promise to him that you will return in due time. That you will come bearing gifts. That you will hold each other once more. 

The air is clammy this time of year, salty on your tongue when you inhale and chilled from the sea air. The cobblestone is right beneath your feet, and you walk with more caution than you typically would during the day. A fire burns in the distance, woolen-cloaked bodies stand around it in a horde in silence, staring into its molten nucleus. Humans were like that, you found, drawn to warmth. Maybe you had lost your edge. Maybe the frailty of humanity was contagious. 

Maybe a part of him had stayed human. 

He had been drawn to it as a moth to a gas lamp, quick to release his body to her thrashing, ravenous hands. Had the fire been the cause? Or, perhaps, the warmth in which death held him delicately between her fingers. He had held you the same way. You would hold him that way again. 

The first doctor was one that he was close to in his reanimated life; they had been brothers in death, harvested and reanimated at the hands of The Saints. They had passed years of orphaned childhood by playing kill the pig– a sickening game it was, even to you. Swine to slaughter, children for sacrificial youth. The saints plucked pieces from their bodies like ripened fruit, replaced them with other displaced pieces, ugly shows in sick theaters under the guise of ritualism for the other children to watch– until there were no remnants of them to be left. A quilt of leftover parts and shells of children that once were and would never be again. 

The woods that congregate like hooded men at the mouth of where river meets ocean are deep. His house is hidden deeper within them, not unlike your own, a dry thatched roof and stone walls. Solitary, with sea salt tears brimming cobblestone eyes. Yet, somehow warmer than yours. It felt like the depths of the ocean in which you resided. The part of you that human-adjacent held it close to you. 

His name is Edward. It was one of the few things he kept for himself in his old life, along with his eyes. When you would ask why, he would say:

“The Saints preferred colored eyes, my dear.” 

You’d figured that was why you were searching for your own pair now. Green, like the moss that covers the dirt in a spongy expanse in the spring.

You knock on the door and he is warm in greeting– almost as warm as it is within his house. 

“Ah, you’re here for them.”

There is a code in the way the plague doctors speak, they are warm to each other, but speak around the visceral topics of what they are actually doing. The world still feared them. In your bluntness, you had still not mastered the art. 

“The eyes, yes.” 

His back is to you. Even with his figure cloaked, you can see the misshapenness flex and roll beneath a linen sea. There is a tincture clinking as the jars bounce off of another in a song as he picks each one up and examines it– contents dancing formaldehyde dances. He is a creature in his own respect. You feel a solidarity to him despite the sovereigness to your creation. 

Your hands were not warm, not like his were. Skin rubbery and catching along itself in a tacky half-dryness as you reach to your back. Scales lay there, green and blue like the refraction of abalone. Sharp against any flesh that dare come close. The skin there is raised where you had done this before. 

It stings less for this time, but the dull ache pulsates beneath the skin where the pockets still remain. Your fingers bleed from the grip, and a deep blood seeps from the wounds like outstretched arms that reach for the scale. 

There is an infatuation that resides within the plague doctors with your existence. These pieces of you had proven incredibly valuable to them in the past. 

A book on the shelf calls to you– bound in leather and charred to an inky blackness around the edges. Necromantia. 

An old magic. Older than your lifetime. 

“What will that cost me?” You asked, Edward, who, in turn, pulls the book from the shelf. 

“We will settle that in time.”

You aren’t quite sure what it means, regardless, you tuck the book into your cloak– near your chest. It ruminates its own pulse, respires its own breaths– much like the bezoar. 

“You know,” he begins, eyes somber and black against the golden glow of the fire light, “the saints had a way of resurrecting us, of sorts… bringing us to life without actually killing us–”

“Rebirth without death.”

“Yes, so it was.” His eyes have become pits, swirling blackness of eternal oblivion. A rift in the seams of this world that points you toward his damnation. 

They had only been children. 

“I know this may be difficult to hear,” He says, voice low– you cannot tell if it for preservation of your emotions or for caution of violence, “but it may be best to let the dead be dead.” 

You assumed his resentment towards the saints was a mirror reflection of Steven’s. A fiery hatred that burned like embers deep within his chest– the lifeblood in which kept him alive for so long. He fed off of this hatred, he burned his own body to ash in search of it. He wanted The Saints dead– so much that he would offer himself to this hatred, too. 

This resentment burned in your throat tonight. It burned in choking sobs and hot tears that rolled down your rubbery flesh. It clouded your vision as you splayed ocular nerves. It burned your nose in tandem with preserving fluids. It burned in your chest as you took a step back, admiring his beauty in anatomical pieces. 

He isn’t dead. Just incomplete.

You should let him be dead, but the pulsating of the bezoar pleads to stay alive. 

When he opens borrowed eyes again, would he resent you too?

[sednonamoris]

arsonist’s lullaby

Pairing: John Marston x gn!reader

Summary: With Sean dead and the Confederate gold nowhere to be found, the Braithwaites learn exactly why boys are off-limits.

Warnings: Canon-typical violence/gore, canonical character death, arson/fiery deaths, angst, kidnapping, toxic loyaltyyyyy

Word count: 2,777

A/N: Emerging from my absence to post this chapter and fade back into the ether ✌️

Series masterlist • AO3

—

In the end, it’s a perfectly ordinary day when things come to a head.

Midsummer sun has beat down all day, only just now mellowing to a deep orange, early evening glow. Standing halfway up the path to camp on guard duty, nothing remarkable has happened at all, except maybe the number of deerflies you’ve had to fend off. Like the heat alone isn’t enough.

Micah and Sean and Bill rode into town on business earlier. Sean jabbered something about meeting up with Arthur and that Gray sheriff, but he was insistent on keeping the rest a mystery. High profile stuff, you know. Not for old-timers like you to worry about. You just rolled your eyes and sent him on his way.

Other than that, it’s been awfully quiet— Even after Karen and Bill and Lenny and Arthur hit Valentine’s bank the other week. If you were a more suspicious person you might call it too quiet, but it’s been nice to have a bit of a break. You and John have hardly spent a moment apart. Camp chores go quicker together, you tell everyone, but it hardly takes a genius to see you’re more attached at the hip than ever. Moving sacks of cornmeal and haying horses and chopping wood doesn’t usually result in the lovestruck looks stuck on your faces, after all.

Arthur, too, has enjoyed the down time. If he isn’t sharing a cup of morning coffee with his wife then he’s reading storybooks to his surrogate son, complete with ridiculous voices. He puts on a deep, gruff baritone for the bad guys, then pitches higher for a hero that sounds suspiciously like Jack. It’s sweet. The mantle of secondhand fatherhood fits snugly across his broad shoulders, and you can’t help but feel that if anyone ever deserved a second chance at all this, it’s him.

John’s been watching them with the strangest mix of joy and wistfulness and regret and shame. It’s always gone in a blink. You never quite know what to say.

But there’s no time to ruminate further when a slow, steady, thumping lope comes within earshot. You almost miss it, lost in thought.

“Who goes there?”

You’re not sure why you bother asking; the footfalls are too heavy to be anyone but Bill on Brown Jack. When they come into view there’s a tense set to Bill’s shoulders and unease in the whites of Brown Jack’s eyes. You see something slung behind the saddle, unmoving.

A body.

You only register it as Sean when he slows to a stop beside you.

It’s jarring to see the lively young Irishman so horribly, deathly still. His clothes are stained with blood and singed from bullets, but the gaping hole in his head is what turns your stomach and raises your hackles as well as the hairs on the back of your neck. Pulpy brains. Shards of skull. A once-bright eye bulged, crooked and unseeing. A damn good headshot.

Who would be gunning for him? you think. But really, after all the trouble you’ve been stirring down here, who wouldn’t? It’s only been a matter of weeks since you and the boys stole those horses. Less since he and Arthur burned the tobacco fields.

You look up at Bill after a long moment.

“Wanna tell me how the fuck you got the kid killed?” you say, voice low. Simmering. Seething in the summer heat.

Bill’s expression is caught between guilt and resentment. “It was them Gray boys.”

“Them Gray boys?”

“They were waitin’ for us! Arthur… well, he reckons they figured us out. Talked to that Braithwaite woman, I mean.”

“Where is he? Alive?”

“He and Micah ain’t far behind. Don’t expect they’ll be comin’ together.”

You don’t know what to say to that, so you just shake your head and try to think past the blood pounding through your eardrums. Ringing in your skull. “We gotta bury him.”

“I know,” he snaps.

Where would Sean want to be buried? With a view of the water? In the shade of the trees? Certainly not alone, but there’s little choice there. “We gotta— He deserves someplace decent.”

“I know.” Softer, this time. “...There’s a quiet spot up the other side of the path.”

You nod. “Don’t let the girls see.”

—

The air is thick and stagnant even as the afternoon fades into evening. You’ve always hated digging graves, and this heat only makes it worse. Cicadas hum. Flies buzz. Bill picked a good spot out of the dying sun, but sweat still pours down both of your faces and necks, soaking through your shirts. Salt stings your eyes and the tip of your tongue.

Once the hole is deep enough, Bill does his best to arrange whatever’s left of Sean with some dignity; arms crossed, a coin over his intact eye. It’s still a sorry sight. You take the pistol from his holster to give to Karen and let its dead weight rest in your belt while you and Bill get to burying. When the work is done, he stutters a few insufficient words over a yet-unmarked grave. He looks to you, then, and you fish your flask off your belt and take a strong swig before pouring a generous amount over the freshly turned earth.

“Cheers, brother,” says a hollow voice that sounds like yours. “Save us a seat.”

You don’t bother saying where.

—

Karen hits you when you tell her. A full arm swing. Open-palmed. Then again when you hand her the pistol.

You let her.

Feels like the least you can do.

—

The evening passes in a haze of numb grief. You don’t know what to do with yourself, so you hide, only emerging from your tent when you hear raised voices outside Dutch’s.

“Where’s my goddamn son?” Abigail demands. “They took him, didn’t they? They took my son!”

And Jesus if this day couldn’t get worse. Your eyes scan the camp, like you’d be able to spot little Jack where his mother couldn’t. The sick feeling that’s been festering in your stomach since Sean’s burial twists and writhes and weighs you down like lead. Everyone knows missing is about as good as dead these days, but you don’t dare say that to Abigail.

“Where is my son, Dutch Van der Linde?!”

More and more begin to crowd around the commotion. The girls lay consoling hands on Abigail’s shoulders that quake with anger and fear. Arthur’s face is grim and drawn beside her. John’s is shadowed behind them, torn between guilt and anger. Hosea pushes past the throng to lay blame on the Braithwaites— at least, he says Kieran saw some boys what looked like Braithwaites not far from camp earlier. After what happened in town today, you have to admit it makes sense. Both families have you figured out, and they’re out for their pound of flesh.

As if Sean wasn’t enough already.

“We will find Jack, we will bring him back to you, and we will kill any fool that had the temerity to touch one hair on that boy’s head,” Dutch vows in answer to Abigail’s frantic questioning. “Right now.”

And he turns on his heel and makes toward The Count to do just that. Everyone follows. Bill calls out asking about extra guns that are accepted readily. Micah and Kieran are ordered to protect the camp while you’re all away. Weapons drawn, eyes blazing, you mount your horses and make off into the night.

This is the warpath. The beating hooves and rushing blood. Moonshine canters steadily beneath you, keeping stride with Old Boy and Arthur’s mount on either side. It’s been a long time since the whole gang has ridden out like this, chomping at the bit for a bloodletting.

“I swear, I’ll kill everyone there!” John snarls. He’s settled into his anger now, quicker on its draw than his pistol.

“Easy, Marston,” Arthur says. His voice is low and dangerous like how he warns off strangers. Not family. Not John. “You don’t check your shots, Jack’ll end up dead too.”

“Don’t tell me to take it easy! That’s my—” but John chokes on the word before he can get it out.

Son, he was going to say. That’s his son.

But Jack is as much Arthur’s as he is John’s anymore, and right now neither one can stand it. You can’t bear to look at the fear nor the anger nor the burning blame in either of their eyes.

—

The oaks that line the path to Braithwaite Manor are always imposing, but here in the dusky nighttime you swear you can feel their ancient eyes watching. Bloody roots gorged on bloodstained grounds; twisted, gnarled branches grasping for a Heaven they’ll never reach. There are few stars that shine through the scattered clouds in the early night sky, but you wish upon every one that Jack is safe, and you vow that no one will make it out of here alive if he isn’t.

Everyone dismounts at the gate. Beside you John and Arthur are tense. Mouths set, trigger fingers twitching, eyes aflame with a primal sort of anger and fear that can only come from losing a child. Dutch, too, is furious. The fact that anyone would touch one of his own is normally enough to have him ranting, almost frothing at the mouth, but he must sense that Arthur and John need him calm.

Calmer than them, anyhow.

Ahead, the manor house is lit with a warm orange glow from its pillared porch. The moon casts strange light across the shadowy night, flickering in and out of cloud cover. There is only the sound of gravel beneath your boots and anticipation.

“Get down here now, you inbred trash!” Dutch bellows at the first sight of the Braithwaite boys.

“What the hell do you want?” they call back, like they don’t know.

John makes to aim his gun and you brush against his shoulder as a comfort and a warning. He snarls but doesn’t shoot. Not yet.

Dutch continues, “We’ve come for the boy. You must’ve known we would.”

Arthur is little better off, glaring holes in the heads of every Braithwaite son and cousin and uncle and friend that emerges from the looming house. There’s more of them by the minute. You feel everyone tense around you. Their guns aren’t lifted - not yet - but all it will take is a sign from Dutch.

Not yet.

“That is a young boy. That is not the way you do things. Hand him over.”

“Get the hell off our land!”

Not yet.

Dutch’s eyes darken in challenge. He doesn’t so much as turn his head toward any of you, but the shift in energy is electric. The whole world holds its breath.

“If you ain’t gonna be civilized about this…”

Now.

All at once everyone opens fire. It’s a symphony of gunfire, bullets screaming by from every direction. You pull John behind a crate just as one grazes his ear. He snarls out a curse while you kill the man on the balcony who shot at him. The body tumbles over the railing and stains the steps red with blood and brains.

Dutch calls out marching orders, but through the din he’s nearly impossible to hear. John heads inside. You follow suit. The manor doors swing wide open like the unhinged jaw of a snake, welcoming you into the belly of the beast.

“Jack!”

“Where are you, kid?”

“Jack!”

His name echoes off expensive oak floors and through lofted ceilings. You tear through the lower floor like someone possessed, ripping open mahogany chests and finely stained china cabinets and the couch cushions of richly-rugged sitting rooms. Anywhere a little boy might fit. Then plenty of places he wouldn’t just for good measure.

Somewhere in the rush you lose John. Over the gurgling rasp of a Braithwaite son’s last breath you hear him shout something from upstairs. You make to run up the winding staircase but stop dead in your tracks when you see Catherine Braithwaite being kicked down them.

Dutch sneers, his lip curled with generational distaste for a man who preaches against revenge. She’s sobbing, spewing vitriol with every shaky breath. All her sons are dead now. You can see it in the gape of her burnt ash mouth. In the flames that lick the polished wood floors from their dropped torches. In the fire reflected back in Dutch’s eyes.

—

Jack isn’t there. Catherine Braithwaite uses her last breaths to gloat that he’s been sold to a man in the city.

Sold.

You watch Dutch let her go, then watch still as she runs screaming into the flames. The house collapses over a shrieking phantom of the Deep South with a groan and a sigh. By the color of the flames it’ll burn for hours yet.

The trees stare as you leave, gorged on blood and ash.

—

Dawn comes blood red and brutal, streaking through the sky with its first light warning. Dutch, John, Hosea, and Arthur are all gathered around the camp table to discuss your next moves. Whatever those are, though, you can’t imagine. John didn’t sleep a wink last night, just staring at tent canvas and stewing in blame. He looks awful. Everyone does.

You’re sat next to Abigail by the campfire. She says nothing, but the hunch of her shoulders and the blue-hot flame of her eyes tells you there’s nothing to be said. Her boy is gone. Missing.

You brought her a bowl of porridge for breakfast, but neither of you is up for eating much. She stares into the fire while it sits untouched in her lap. You push your oats around with the spoon and pretend not to eavesdrop.

Of course Marston’s scared rotten, Arthur says in hushed tones. I am too. We killed all them people— for what? For nothin’. There ain’t no gold here.

For living, Dutch corrects him, and you can’t help but think it’s a shame that not all of you got to that part. The living. Sean is dead and gone forever. For all you know, Jack might be too.

But all of that is put immediately to rest when Lenny walks into camp with two Pinkerton agents at gunpoint.

Milton and Ross, they call themselves, swaggering through the whole of camp like you’re not all outlaws and thieves. Killers. Everyone stands as they pass, slowly circling in like vultures to the promise of violence.

The matching felt bowler hats on their heads can’t hide the pockmarks on Milton’s face nor the smug, bristling mustache on Ross’. The government is surely paying a pretty penny for your capture if the fineness of their clothes is anything to go by. Their shoes are shined and polished. You can’t help but notice the way the red Rhodes clay oozes up beneath the soles and paints them muddy.

“This thing? It’s done,” Milton announces when he makes his way to Dutch.

Dutch barely bothers to turn and face him. He doesn’t stand. Everyone else slowly, slowly creeps closer. One step at a time. All coming together. Vultures. Violence.

Things like this are never just done.

Never.

Milton calls Dutch a lot of things. A shepherd of lost souls. A messiah. Sarcasm drips from the syllables, and you wonder how he might react if you told him Dutch was the only god to answer a single one of your prayers. Even Swanson lost touch with Christ long ago. Now when he falters he begs Dutch Van der Linde for forgiveness. All of you do.

“I’m nothing but a seeker, Mr. Milton,” Dutch finally says.

Milton’s eyes narrow. There's a faint expression you can’t quite place on his face when he replies, “You ain’t much of anything more than a killer, Mr. Van der Linde.”

He offers freedom, then. Three days to run and hide and live like civilized human beings in exchange for Dutch. It’s almost laughable.

Dutch steps forward and every gun in camp cocks. Agent Milton seems suddenly to remember how very much outnumbered and outgunned he is.

“I think your new friend should leave, Dutch,” Ms. Grimshaw says.

Milton calls it a mistake, calls you all fools, but the only foolish mistake you can see is letting them live.

—

John and Arthur leave together after all that. They make for a place called Shady Belle and promise Abigail it’s close to the city where her son is being held. A good spot to camp while everyone does what they can to bring that little boy home.

Looking at Karen, miserable and bleary-eyed drunk, you can’t help but think it’s awfully far from Sean’s grave.

[shuadi99]

Am I the only one who has lost the rage like interest in bridgerton s3, especially with the waiting and ruminating (over ruminating) plus all this unnecessary hating has really mellowed down my interest in bridgerton s3 which I was really excited about as I've been like Penelope most of my life. Well, maybe it's just me.

[ducktracy]

I'm sure you've addressed this before:

How come Bugs Bunny is occasionally staring me down with death eyes in the intro of a Looney Tunes cartoon? Why is he so mad?

this ask—like everything else in my inbox—has been ruminating for awhile, and part of that is because i didn’t have an answer! i truly did not know other than “uhhhhh Art Davis animates one version of it :)”. but. i am thrilled to say that i DO have some speculation! and it is complete speculation and interpretation, nothing more, but it’s something! SO

the first short to have that title variant is Tex Avery’s The Heckling Hare. it’s pretty important to note Avery’s involvement here—his Bugs was very wily and combative. it could depend on the needs of the cartoon—he’s pretty cool and calm in A Wild Hare, and at least comparatively so (save for some moments) in The Heckling Hare. Tortoise Beats Hare has him ranting and raving as soon as the cartoon starts, driven by rage and conceit throughout the whole thing; it’s been a few years since i’ve seen All This and Rabbit Stew, and i’ve only seen it once, but my recollection is that Bugs was pretty reactionary in that one too.

i think noting its attachment to The Heckling Hare in particular is also important because the cartoon’s titles follow that same principle—a confrontational Bugs looms over the typography, obscuring the audience’s view and thereby heckling even them, too. likewise, his arms are bent and on his hips, shadow cast at a diagonal angle, which immediately reads as confrontational and aggressive. i don’t think the Bugs on the shield logo was made explicitly for this cartoon and nothing else, but knowing that this short opens with a particularly aggressive tone, it does add some context as to why he behaves the way he does.

MY POINT BEING that Avery’s Bugs is much more aggressive than the Bugs we know today. thus, that was reflected in the opening titles—whereas most titles with cartoon characters in them were pleasant and amiable (Woody Woodpecker pecks holes and laughs! Popeye blows his pipe! Porky—later to be accompanied by Daffy—continually greets the audience with his happy, shining mug!), Bugs greets you with contempt and disdain. you’re intruding on his privacy; he makes a point to remind you that his time could be much better spent chewing carrots and luxuriating rather than entertaining your attention, but he’ll do it anyway.

obviously, Bugs got less abrasive as his personality was explored more in-depth. so, there comes a little bit of a dissonance when stretching into the mid ‘40s or so. that Art Davis variation (basically, the one where Bugs looks like Bugs) is fashioned after a synonymous intro that was more representative of the Bugs of its time. by 1945 or whenever the intro started appearing, he was much more mellow and less confrontational/disdainful, so having him seem so angry does kind of feel out of nowhere. but it isn’t! it just rides on the coattails of a previous variant that was more applicable for its time

[cyberrat]

Now that the dust on season 1 has settled a little bit and I‘ve had time to ruminate on my nasty headcanons, I find myself circling back to the question how a relationship between Angel and Husk would look like.

Or more precisely how it could come about in the first place.

I feel like Angel would be way less ‚Angel‘ around Husk. Like he‘ll still be hyper sexual every now and then to really get beneath Husk‘s fur, but not as obnoxious as he was before.

Husk would probably be way more mellow and reserved about his crush because he figures there‘s never going to come anything of it anyway.

Meanwhile Angel will definitely hyper analyze their interactions and get DepressedTM over his lack of clear answers.

I think they would spend night after night staying up together at the bar for way too late, gossiping about the others.

When they kiss it is because their both loopy on sleep deprivation and Husk hooks his claw in the front of Angel‘s jacket to pull him in.

[gynandromorph]

You’ve mentioned before that drake would be a far better god than jessie and would deal better with absolute power than most of your other characters, I find this incredibly interesting and I wondered if you could explain why a bit more?

yeah, sure. it's probably going to be a bit incomprehensible because it's 3 am right now (it is no longer 3 am but half of it was written at 3 am and i'm still stupid). drake's ocpd has compelled xem to feel obsessively invested in moral righteousness and to want an extreme amount of control over xyr environment. it's given xem a lot of incentive to think about what they would do differently, how they would make reality better, etc.

so, the main way that drake would be better than jessie as a god is because drake would care more about being a genuinely good god. xe is also not as impulsive or emotional as jessie; xe deliberates at length even for small interactions, and, while this can be debilitating in day-to-day life, if you were an omnipotent being totally exempt from the laws of time, this would not really be an issue. this quality also makes xem more capable of accurate insight and self-judgement.

i talked about shiloh and how as a god she would probably be a nightmarish sadist -- one might see her personality as similar to drake's because she's also more mellow and pattern-oriented. the difference between shiloh and drake (as well as jessie and drake) is that what drake finds gratifying is just worlds apart. drugs, sex, violence and power are things a lot of people find gratifying, but drake is someone who finds like... organizing books by size and color on the shelf gratifying. moving at a slower pace in general, unpredictable explosive experiences that feel exciting and interesting to the two lesbians feel overwhelming and unpleasant to xem. the avoidance of possible distress from possible mistakes is often a source of the gratification, so a lack of novelty wouldn't hit xem as hard, i think. basically being an ethical being WOULD BE what drake finds gratifying as a god because it's what xe finds gratifying already, which is a huge advantage. the fact that xyr desire for control is projected onto xyr environment is just a bonus -- since xe interprets the problems as coming from outside the house, xe's less likely to focus on inner desires for decision-making.

something drake has had to ponder more than many of my other characters is the fact that no one ever asks to be born, and most aren't entirely happy with what they're born with. i think it occurs to most people at some point that no one asks to be born, but drake has spent cumulative years ruminating on this. i find xyr take on godhood and how i conceptualize it interesting based on that even on its own, because drake wants a world where every single thing chooses to be born with an adequate amount of information to make the choice.

i've spent here or there thinking about how xe would try to go about doing this, and so far it's involved some kind of AI-like network which would approximate the entire lifespan of an individual without possessing a consciousness or emotional world of its own, then relay that in a chemical format. if the projected life is suitable for this hypothetical person and they'd most likely consent to living the life, the chemical info enters a matching receptor on a zygote and it progresses. this would happen several if not thousands of times during the process of producing a conscious being, i think. this is believable enough to me w/how much info dna itself can hold, and that wasn't designed with any intelligence. that's the best way i've come up with the chicken and the egg dilemma wrt conscious choice to be born thus far. the other component i've thought about is probably making life able to move about 4-dimensionally, essentially giving conscious beings the ability to time travel as a regular form of locomotion. i gotta imagine this isn't too big a deal when you can alter the laws of physics to your liking. i know that drake would also get rid of (nonconsensual) death not just by canceling it now, but reviving every single conscious creature that has ever died. oh, earth wouldn't support infinitely multiplying life? god can fix that. death is the only thing that makes life meaningful? no it doesn't. not in drake's world. meaning is a sensation in our heads subject to alterations, just like every emotion. some things might not want to live forever? some things might want to feel sadness, pain, anger, and suffering? well, it'd be immoral for drake to decide how they should feel by getting rid of these unpleasant emotions, so xe will give them the choice to die if they want to, and the choice to undie, probably handled by the same network that estimates if they want to be born - the choice to feel sad or opt out, the choice to feel pain or opt out, etc. to drake, this would not only resolve the "suffering gives life meaning" argument, but would also functionally prevent any given subject from forcing another subject to feel anything it doesn't want to. drake would yield a lot of power to xyr subjects, because the power differential between a god and its sims in a sandbox is inherently going to be an abuse of that power in exchanges. you could argue that xe would do well with absolute power because xe would make xyr power... Not absolute relatively quickly after some things were stabilized. given the idea that maybe they could not choose anything at all, like how a fictional character can't choose anything, i think that xe would resort to breaking up xyr infinite amount of choice into tiny pieces compartmentalized away from xem, like someone dissociating but intentionally, and putting that into the subjects instead. this would be an odd limitation, though, and would preclude omnipotence. i just think the decisions xe would make based on xyr sense of ethics would be neat because of how unyielding those moral "rules" are and other elements of xyr personality.