#my severely neglected jumpsuits....

[sparklehoard]

[imagining-in-the-margins]

Do you have any or would you be interested in something where Spencer fucks the reader but doesn’t even take her clothes off all the way? Something about a hiked skirt and panties pushed to the side

Hey friend! I have quite a few fics with partially clothed sex. I've listed most of them here 🥰

Teacher’s Pet: Reader insists on being a problem for her favorite Professor.

My Boss’s Daughter: Spencer’s fling with his boss’s daughter is definitely going to get him fired.

Truce: Spencer doesn’t like his new boss.

Be Still: When Spencer is given the all clear to “exercise��� after he was shot, his girlfriend decides to go for a ride.

Jazz & Jealousy: On a visit from New Orleans, Ethan takes a liking to Spencer’s crush. He is not thrilled.

Opposing Counsel: Spencer runs into his childhood rival at trial for a case. Now that they’re older, they found a new way to resolve their differences.

I Like It Like That: Spencer is jealous after a rowdy party.

Funhouse Mirror: SSA Reader promised Spencer he’d be surprised by her costume of the Doctor for the Halloween Party. To her credit, he definitely was.

The Objective & The Occult: Reader is a witch and Spencer is a scientist, can I make it any more obvious.

“Bro Code” Be Damned: Spencer decides that the Bro Code isn’t really a code to be taken seriously when Derek’s girlfriend is feeling neglected.

Devil in the Backseat: Reader is a little too much for Spencer (and he’s into it).

Schrödinger’s Relationship (Part 1, Part 2): Reader finds out Spencer has been dating a kind and cute woman (when he’s not spending the night at her house).

Lily of the Valley ❤️ (Part 1 , Part 2 , Part 3): Unsub!Reid. Spencer was found guilty but mentally ill after the torture and murder of several men. He finds solace in his psychiatrist at the institution.

Dark Side (Part 1, Part 2): What can Reader say? Spencer in a prison jumpsuit is just too hard to resist.

As well as several chapters of my series:

[COMPLETE] Here to Misbehave: Spencer meets a girl he can’t get enough of at the nightclub, then quickly realizes she is not supposed to be there. Series Masterlist

[CURRENT] The Birds & The Bees: Prof!Spencer, Virgin!Reader. Reader interviews for a position as Dr. Spencer Reid’s Teaching Assistant, and Spencer learns something special about her. Series Masterlist

I hope you enjoy!

Thanks for reading ☺️

[frontmansbitch]

Can you please do a frontman x waitress!reader smut

His Meal (Front Man x Waitress!Reader)

♡ Synopsis || Your job is to deliver meals to the Front Man in time. One clumsy day made him prepare his own snack.

♡ Content warnings || Handcuffing, power dynamics, having control, eating out, dubious consent

♡ Author’s note || Apologies for the long, long wait (I was planning on coming back months ago oops) I would not blame you all if you have lost interest in Squid Game, but I hope you all enjoy reading this anyway if you stayed :) This will probably get a part 2 because I got another request similar to this one ;)

Tried my best to continue using genderless terminology so everyone can feel included

PART 1

The Front Man always requires his meals to be delivered straight to his floor on time. Or more specifically, to his room.

You can't even remember how long you have worked in this place, yet you still feel nervous every time you go up on that floor. Something about serving the manager of this place made you feel odd in your stomach.

Today you are late. Usually, you finish preparing lunch well before delivery time, but this afternoon you had to help clean up some of the circle soldiers' messes. Normally you work alongside the circle soldiers in helping out with domestic chores. Except you did not wear the pink jumpsuits. You did wear a mask, however, but it was not a simple geometric shape. It was to protect your identity, but it also felt to be a way to show off your devotion and loyalty to this place. You were one of a kind; your role was to be a 'waitress'.

Everyone had a hierarchical position in the facility. You were not sure what ranking you would be classified to be, but you knew that you were certainly in a more 'honourable' position than the circle guards you worked alongside. That's why the Front Man trusts only you to deliver his meals, and the reason why you – as far as you knew – were the only person that could walk on his floor beside himself and the host. For duty reasons, obviously. It's not like you could just wander around his floor as you wish.

Nervously, you knocked on his bedroom door, as that's where he usually rests around this time. A gap in between the door allowed you to peer through, making you able to have a glimpse of the back of his exposed head. You watch as he puts his mask on and pulls up his hoodie, covering up the dark hair he had. As he stands up to walk closer to the door, you take a step back and pretend you had not spied on him.

He opens the door. "You're late." The Front Man says before you could even say anything. "My sincerest apologies, sir, but there was a slight inconvenience I had to handle." "I do not care what it was, but be warier about your actions next time. You know how we must do everything perfectly, there cannot be room for tardiness." "Yes sir." The system in this place prioritises perfection. In order for the annual games to commence, you cannot afford to make any mistakes. Neglecting one small, simple thing can end everything in a disaster. That's why you always make sure to do everything perfectly, to impress The Front Man. To gain praise from the Front Man. To…

Crash!

Ironically, the platter of food fell straight on the ground.

This led to a brief moment of silence. You would expect yourself to apologise instantly for causing this disturbance while immediately rushing to action to help, like how you usually react when you do something wrong. But this time, you were too stunned to move. How could you cause this mess?

Your gaze stayed on the ground, looking at the mess you have caused. As you look up, your eyes instantly lock with the dark eyes through the Front Man's mask, unaware that he had been staring at you this whole time.

"I-" "Enough," he sternly said. "Come in here." You were guided inside the Front Man's room. This was the first time you ever placed a foot on the other side of his door, you know you have made a severe mistake.

"Sit down," he gestured as he spoke, pointing at his bed.

Slowly, you walk towards his bed and sit down. You look up as he reaches for your chin, gently lifting your mask. Your face felt the coldness of the air in the room while your cheeks burnt with red. When he completely took your mask off, his finger traced your lips, making you feel the warmth of them.

"Looks like I have to do something about your reckless behaviour today."

The Front Man pulls out a pair of handcuffs as he pushes you up to the top of his bed, making you lie down. He grabs both of your hands and cuffs them together with the frame of his bed.

He looked at your face as he tried to slip his hand under your top. You give him a slight nod of approval, and he continues to touch you like his property. That's what you were after all, a maid that left their individuality to cater to the Front Man's desires. He exposes your torso to see you better, feeling your skin. His hand gropes your chest while his fingers pinched your nipples. Your inability to do anything about him playing with you made you realise how truly helpless you were in this situation.

After having fun with toying you, he unwraps your clothes. Now you had nothing except your undergarments on… well not for long. Before you knew it, he was already sliding them off while maintaining eye contact through his mask, making sure you weren't uncomfortable. You watch as he shuffles down, lifting up the bottom of his mask to align his open mouth between your thighs after swiftly spreading your legs. Watching him position himself made you feel your heartbeat ring in your ears as you were drowned with anticipation.

At the first contact, your neck immediately flings back as a reflex. His soft yet wet tongue touched the surface of your private regions. This sudden feeling sent a shockwave internally, completely blurring your thoughts to focus on one feeling: pleasure.

His tongue poked inside your hole which made you feel all sorts of emotions. He made sure to take his time before inserting his tongue in again, allowing you to embrace every feeling while he savoured every taste. He gradually got deeper and more intense, pressing especially hard on the parts that react the most passionately to the sensitivity As you tried to recollect your breaths, his hands brushed your skin, squeezing the more vulgar parts of your body. The Front Man took complete control over you.

The intense feeling made you want to release a loud moan that you had kept suppressed in your throat. You should be the one in charge of what your own body does, right? Or so you thought. The Front Man proved to you who was really in charge; his tongue dug deeper than you ever imagined it to be, squirming around all the edges. The motion of his tongue increased pace as he did all sorts of things with it: motioning it in and out, spiralling it around. You wanted to cup your mouth with your hands. It was all too much, you had to let out your cries.

This is where you completely lost it. The sensual feeling of being eaten out had made you completely lose any power you had over yourself. Your body and your mind completely submitted to the Front Man himself. No thoughts in your head anymore, just the need to feel more pleasure.

The moans and whines from your mouth only made the Front Man get much more aggressive. He pushed you to your edge until you felt yourself reach a certain point. You couldn't keep up anymore, he was doing so well.

With one last moan, you climax onto the Front Man's mask. Your body shook from the impact as your world turned all bright and serene. How disrespectful, you thought after realising what you had done. You should have at least warned him, but you were unprepared. The Front Man looks up at you and sits up, taking off his tainted mask.

"Looks like you made another mess to clean up."

[no-droids]

Mercy, Sabotage, and Dead Space

(gif credit to @redwyyne-archive)

Part One of The Bet series

Pairing: Poe Dameron/Reader

Rating: Explicit

Word Count: 12.7K

Summary:

1. No sex.

2. No touching yourself.

3. No orgasms.

Warnings/Tags: DUBCON/NONCON elements, fuckboy Poe (OOC), Enemies to Lovers, degradation/humiliation, mentions of oral sex, SMUUUTTTTTTTT also I’m not sorry for what I did but you’re not allowed to read if you’re gonna get mad at me okay byeeee

***

This.

This shit, right here.

If the question was ever, “What’s the stupidest fucking thing you’ve ever let Poe Dameron somehow talk you into doing?” then the answer is this stupid shit, right the fuck here.  This is like.  You remember that one game, Mercy?  The one where you’d dig your nails in and twist arms and just needlessly inflict pain on each other as children until one of you cried uncle because someone somewhere once decided to turn torture into a matter of pride?

You always thought those games were fucking ridiculous.  Who can hold their breath the longest, who can handle a lit deathstick against their flesh the longest, who can take the hardest punch—who cares?  It’s child’s play.  It’s self-inflicted agony for the sake of bragging rights and even as a youngling, you refused to fall for it.

But then you met… fucking Dameron.

You know those people that… they don’t just rub you the wrong way, but literally every single aspect about their personality is sandpaper against wet skin and your whole entire being feels chafed raw just by existing in their general vicinity for an extended period of time?

You’re… you’re not usually a competitive—much less aggressive person.  You never have been.  It’s just not part of your nature.  If you ever excel at anything in life, it isn’t because of some secret, deep-seated desire to win or be better than anyone else.  You just… do you.  You do whatever you do, and if it’s good, it’s good.  And if it’s bad, it’s good.  Because at the end of the day at least it’s still you, and you’re okay with that.

But this?

This shit?  Right here?

“This is fucking dumb,” you say, because you know it’s what you both must be thinking so you may as well just get it out in the open.  “This is the dumbest fucking thing, Dameron.  What are we doing?  Why are we doing this?”

The grumpy, orange-jumpsuited figure sitting behind you just sighs heavily and slumps even further down in his bucket seat, as if it isn’t the first time you’ve tried asking this incredibly valid question (it totally is), bringing a palm down to thunk the top of the guidance controls between his legs in a quiet irritation you’re almost certain has everything to do with the very topic you’re trying to bring up. 

“Because,” comes that infuriating drawl.  You can only see his face from this angle by looking at his reflection in the transparisteel barrier directly in front of you, but even just imagining the way his mouth moves while he rounds out the words makes your jaw clench.  “The coordinates we picked up were scrambled and this rendezvous could be going down at any one of thirty-six locat—?”

“No,” you interrupt him with a scowl, “not why I’ve been floating in dead space in this Maker-forsaken ship with you for eight fucking hours a day since… fuck, what’s today?  Thursday?  Friday?  Nope, can’t be Friday, Friday’s our off-day.  Thursday, then. …Thursday?”  You shake your head.  “Ugh, see?  Time doesn’t exist when I’m not allowed to cum, life is like one never-ending nightmare.”

“Oh.”  He takes a second to think about it in silence, the calloused tips of his fingers scratching the side of his face while he considers.  It wouldn’t usually be as loud as it is right now.  Maybe it’s the haunting quiet of space surrounding the ancient powered down hunk of metal you’re both stuck in, inadvertently isolating and amplifying the sound—or maybe it’s because your copilot’s jaw is currently covered in a thick, dark beard that you swear barely took his testosterone-overloaded ass a fucking week or two to grow, if that.  Regardless, the dark bristles crunch loudly under his short fingernails and it takes you about a grand total of five whole uninterrupted seconds of the scraping sound to realize you’re grinding your teeth along with it.  “Well,” he finally says, “that was your stupid idea.”

“Hmmmmmmmno,” you contest firmly, wiggling your elbow back to poke at his shin with your index finger once, twice, thrice, until he finally slaps your hand away in quiet irritation.  To the misfortune of you both—and likely the other hundred or so pilots concurrently taking rotating shifts in these tandem x-wings in a glorified mass stakeout, the cockpit of this ship is just way too fucking small.  Your arm is squeezed uncomfortably against machinery and electronics to get to him from this angle and a light slap isn’t going to stop you now that you’re here.  “You—” (poke) “—have a superiority complex and decided to turn it into a competition, not—” (poke) “—me.”

“Oh, I have a superiority complex, okay,” he scowls and nods in vehement, fake agreement, finally giving up and letting you poke at will, but the appeal is lost as soon as you realize he’s over it and your arm eases back into your lap.  You watch his reflection look out of the viewport and scan the empty void of space for the twentieth time in the past five minutes, clearly just as desperate to get back to base as you are.  “So what is it you call saying—wait, no no, not even saying, loudly declaring—‘Of course I can go longer without sex than “wham bam thank you ma’am” Dameron, you brainless fucks, it’s a simple fact!’”

“Alright—I don’t sound like that, fuck you very much,” you return, in reference to his shrieking, high-pitched impression of you surrounded by your fellow pilots in the rec room when you’ve had a bit too much to drink.   “Also, you don’t have to finger-quote literally every single syllable of my fucking sentence, Dameron.  First and last word, that’s all it takes.  And if it’s so superiority complex-ey of me to state simple facts, then what is it you call saying ‘betcha two weeks worth of pay you can’t, pretty baby’?”

“Uh, easy credits?”  He immediately asks, side-eyeing your reflection through the transparisteel.  “ Easy credits.  Just begging for it.  Two weeks of your slutty, sexy, easy fucking credits just begging to be taken and used— ”

“You need to get laid,” you cut in to tell him bluntly, scrunching your nose in what you hope looks like disgust.  As per protocol, the power to the x-wing was cut at the beginning of your shift—what feels like a fucking eternity ago—as a preventative maneuver in case the target falls out of hyperspace unexpectedly.  Avoiding the scanners of a fleet that may never actually show means it’s cold and dimly lit in here—just starlight in front of either you, but you’re hoping he can gauge the severity of your revulsion with your back to him.  “You just turned my money into a sex object.  It was vile.  I feel violated on its behalf.”

“Sounds like you’re the one who needs to get laid,” he tosses carelessly back at you, and you roll your eyes with as much sass as you can physically muster, so tired of all the dodging.  You know this hasn’t been easy for him either, he just has too much pride to admit it.  “Besides, you’ve gotta be past the withdrawal stage by now.  Is it really all that bad?”

“The fuck you mean, ‘Is it really all that bad’?”  You snap at him, shuffling around grumpily in your seat, hating the way the bulky weapons controls sit right between your thighs and prevent you from closing them.  Withdrawal stage, ha.   “Of course it’s all that bad.  It’s horrible.  It’s the fucking worst.  And more importantly, how are you not having any trouble with this?  Oh, wait—that’s right,” you answer yourself before he has a chance to.  “Because you cheated.”

“I did not cheat,” Dameron’s reflection immediately challenges with an accusatory finger pointed at you.  “I did not.  When the fuck did I cheat?  I swapped housing assignments with your shitty roommate and slept in the bunk below yours for a month and a half—all because you don’t believe in the honor system—just so you could tell me I fucking cheated?”

You scoff, feeling your annoyance spark even more.  He’s always been able to get under your skin, but the neglect you’ve been forcing your body to endure is just throwing gasoline on an already roaring fire.  “Okay, first of all?  Rude.  I am a fucking joy to have as a roomie, alright?  I put up with your snoring, your 2:00 AM dinners, you blasting your radio while I’m trying to sleep, I barely complain about your body odor—”

“My snoring is adorable, I get snacky at night, only sad people with fucked up lives hate music, I smell amazing,” Dameron casually lists off on his fingers, the self-confidence so easy and unshakeable that you swear he’s almost preening at the compliments he just gave himself by the time he’s finished rebutting everything you can think to throw at him.  And, while you’d never admit it, he does smell good.  He smells… unbelievably fucking good.  Always.  Something dark and woodsy, you can never quite put your finger on.  It pisses you off, so much that you’ve made a habit of pulling a face of disgust whenever the warm, rich scent noticeably reaches you, hoping it deflates his ego just a little bit.  No such luck so far.  

“Whatever.  The point is I’m a good fucking neighbor, alright, I’m neighborly as fuck,” you grumble, crossing your arms over your chest defensively.  “And don’t make it sound like I’m putting a chastity lock on your balls every night, because you can fuck anyone you want.  In fact, I strongly fucking encourage it—I just want to know about it when it happens.”

Dameron smirks and you groan, already knowing what’s coming.  “You wanna hear it?”

Yep, there it is.  “Second of all—”

“Feel the whole bunk rock with it?”  He goes on, completely ignoring you.  “Use the excuse that you’re trapped up top so you can just stay there the whole time and listen?  You know you can do a lot more than just—”

“Second of all,” you project over him, “you’re seriously telling me you haven’t had any wet dreams then, hm?  No snorgasms?  Hmmm?  No happy naps?  No captain midnights?  No mattress fracking?  Hmmmmmm???”

His voice very quickly sounds… shocked.  “How many fucking euphemisms—?”

“Wait wait, one more—” you quickly interrupt, too much momentum to stop now, “—sleepskeet.”

You watch in immense satisfaction as his expression seems to progress through all five stages of grief, before he exhales a long, unamused sigh and scratches his beard again.  You want to pluck each strand of it out of his face one by one.  “Anyways.  Wet dreams are totally different and don’t count.”

“It’s not different!”  You burst out, unable to help yourself, “it’s an orgasm, and rule number three is no orgas—”

“I know what the rules were, Gold-Ten,” he returns calmly, and it infuriates you, how he’s always able to make it seem like you’re the instigator who’s overreacting.  And he knows exactly what he’s doing by calling you by your flight designation, and it pisses you off even more because calling him Black-Leader in any other situation besides active warfare just feels like an unnecessary reminder of his skills.  Why he’s currently behind you manning the guidance controls and why you’re currently stuck in the front seat with the bulkier weapons systems.  “The question is if you’re seriously that bad enough of a sport to automatically disqualify me because of something that happens to any human with a dick indiscriminately when we blueball ourselves.”

“But that’s the entire fucking point, Dameron!”  You shrill, throwing your hands in the air in pure exasperation.  “There it is!  You need it more than I do, you just said it yourself!  Not to mention I said I can go longer without sex than you can— sex , not orgasms, but as it turns out I win at both.  Now can we please call this shit off so I can finally cum?  This isn’t fun anymore.”

“Nope,” he says immediately, popping the P with a bit too much hard emphasis to be genuinely amused.  He’s frustrated, too—his voice is too pleased, too fake to not be masking irritation underneath.  “Sorry.  But this was also your stupid idea, so.”

“You’re insufferable,” you grumble, anger flaring equal to his, just way more… verbal.  And descriptive.  “Wet dreams don’t count, fucking right.  Tell that to the oceans of Kamino I got going on down there, huh?  I move on this seat wrong and I’ll slide off it—”

A loud slam of a palm against the controls suddenly echoes throughout the small cockpit, causing you to jump slightly.  

“Don’t,” Dameron snarls, “... say shit like that to me.  Not right now.  Not right now, fuck .”

You go quiet for a moment, not expecting that much of an outburst at something you considered to be a throwaway remark, but then… oh.  Something occurs to you, something… sinister.  Oh, well, now there’s an idea.

Everything inside you immediately surges up and burns at the thought—the mere whisper of a way out of all of this, quickly, without giving in and letting him hold your surrender over you for Maker knows how long.  It’s so fucking simple, you don’t know why you didn’t think of it before.  You don’t have to wait him out at all; instead, you just need to… entice him into giving in first.

Neither of you say anything for a while, and you don’t know what he’s thinking (nothing, probably—a dry tumbleweed bouncing across an empty desert landscape, you imagine) but you take the dip in conversation to consider a plan.  You can’t go at it too outright, it’ll be too big of a turnaround and he’ll see it coming lightyears away.  A halfhearted joke about your pussy tossed out without thinking is what catalyzed the most substantial reaction from him you’ve seen, so… maybe you can keep steering the conversation towards the idea.

“How many wet dreams have you had?”  You suddenly ask, your heart beginning to pick up in your chest as soon as the words are out of your mouth.

“Excuse me?”  Dameron grunts from behind you, and you catch his reflection raising a thick eyebrow at you.

You take a deep breath and disguise it by stretching your back out just a little bit, lifting your shoulder blades and arching the sore muscles there, before settling back down in your normal crappy posture once more.  “Now many times did you cum in your sleep?  Had to at least been once for you to claim they don’t count.”

“Why does it matter?”  He asks, completely sidestepping the question for the second time.  “It was involuntary.”

You shrug.  “Just so I know how many freebies I can get tonight.”

“No,” Dameron instantly counters, his voice dead serious.  “Not fucking allowed.”

“Why not?”  You ask, and this time, there’s significantly less challenge than you’d typically deliver it with.  Instead, your voice is soft, questioning.  Not argumentative, but curious, and there’s just enough of your point left unsaid that it’ll seem like he conjured the rest of the image himself.

There’s silence while he considers his response to the perfectly executed bait.  You assume you’re both picturing the same thing, because it’s what you’ve pictured almost every single night spent in this celibate hellscape.  The cool darkness of your shared quarters, the standard-issue sheets that still feel crispy and rough on your skin no matter how many nights you’ve slept in them, with one of your hands pressed tight over your mouth and two of your fingers circle your clit.

“You only get to do it if I’m in the room,”  he poses instead, and you swallow thickly, feeling your body tighten with an unintentional drop of pure heat through your tummy at the thought.  Maker, it must be really bad if Poe fucking Dameron is getting to you like this.  The bane of your existence shouldn’t make your insides twist in on themselves—at least, not in a good way.

“Not like I’d have much choice,” you eventually respond, keeping it purposefully ambiguous.  “It’s your room, too.  Unfortunately.”

Stars, it’s been so long since you’ve done this, since you’ve walked the fine line between flirtation and seduction, wanting to turn on the charm slowly—gradually ease it up like a hyperdrive lever under your fingertips so that you’re at maximum by the time he realizes you’re even there.  You take a moment to glance at his reflection, watching Dameron look back at you curiously, a flash of interest in his eyes.

“By the way, how does that one girl feel about us doing this?”  You ask out of nowhere, suddenly remembering the existence of his pretty little number.  You’ve seen her under his arm around base at least a few times, which is more than you can say for the rest of them.  “Red-Six.  Tall brunette with the tattoos—I don’t bother learning names, they all come and go.”

“Nihla,” Dameron nods with a wistful sigh, tilting his head to rest against his shoulder.  “Or, wait… Neah.  No—it was… Nalal.  Yeah, Nalal, I think that’s right…”

“Unbelievable,” you mutter.  “One of the greatest mysteries of the universe is how many people get in line for you, I’ll never fucking understand it.”

“They just want me for my cock,” he tells you without missing a single beat, sounding like he’s not joking in the slightest.  “It was starting to get obnoxious.  Glad I finally have an excuse to turn them down.”

“Unbelievable,” you repeat, stunned by how truly, mind-blowingly full of himself he is.  “You’re… fucking…”

You end up just staring at him and making a sound somewhere between a laugh and a scoff, at a complete loss for words, and Dameron eventually shrugs and continues on after you fail to form a coherent thought in the allotted time frame he provides.

“Now I can just tell them I’m in a long-running bet with Gold-Ten over who can sexually deprive themselves the longest and weirdly enough, they don’t seem all that interested anymore,” he remarks, tilting his chin up and rubbing at his beard again, and for some reason… the sound of it bothers you somewhat less now, the way he phrased that resonating deeper inside you than it should.  Lower than it should.  You blink a few times, almost shocked by your body’s unprecedented response to his admission—Poe Dameron uses you as an excuse to turn down sex with pretty girls?  Happily?—and your mind goes blank for a second while he watches you through the transparisteel.  “It’s alright,” he eventually goes on, tilting his head.  “Sometimes a sabbatical is good.  I do really miss pussy, though.”

“Well,” you finally tell him, oddly not having much else to offer at the moment.  “I’m sorry?  And… you’re welcome.  I guess.”

Dameron shrugs once more and makes an apathetic sound without opening his mouth, and you drop your stare down to the machinery between your spread thighs after feeling like you were looking at each other for too long.  The position started uncomfortable and seven hours later, it’s still fucking uncomfortable.  At first the discomfort twinged at your hips and lower back, but now the sensation seems to be… centering itself a bit more, finding a spot right between your legs, especially when his words echo through your subconscious and make you naturally want to push your thighs together.  I do really miss pussy, though.

You try to snap out of it a bit, try to stop hyperfixating on the way your underwear has felt sticky and wet for fucking hours now, but it’s so fucking difficult to chill yourself out when your body already went into this whole situation with a month and a half long stumbling block.  He’s not really doing anything at all—he’s leant back in his chair and staring out the window into the black emptiness of space when you steal a look once more, but something about how his casual responses are affecting you makes it seem like he’s the one currently seducing you.

Maker, you have to focus.   You have to control yourself.  You’re starting to feel a little warm in your thick jumpsuit—a particular shade of orange that does not compliment your complexion but you normally rejoice in wearing regardless.  It’s baggy and uniform and hides most of your curves and most importantly, it keeps you toasty on missions like this.  Space is cold —especially this far out in the Cauper Void, and there’s no fucking reason this powered down hunk of floating metal should feel as muggy and stifling as it does in here.

“We shouldn’t be doing this,” you suddenly hear yourself say, spontaneously, no thought put into it whatsoever.  One last try, one last attempt to avoid it, a last-ditch go at flight before he gives you no choice and you’re left with this one remaining option.  “This isn’t a good idea.  It’s… not healthy.  I don’t want to do this anymore.”

This gets a small chuckle out of him.  “I know you don’t, pretty baby.”

“Then let’s just call the whole thing off,” you propose once again, trying to lighten your tone, make it a… a friendly thing.  It sounds so fake, even to your own ears—since when would you be desperate enough to let the dreaded petname slide?—but granted, you know what they say about time and measures and all that shit.  “We can call it a tie, just go back to the way things were befo—”

He cuts you off and pins you with his gaze through the reflection.  “You realize that you begging me to put an end to your suffering is—ridiculously hot, mostly—but also only an incentive to make me keep pushing until you finally give in?”

You groan and comb some of your hair off your forehead, not liking the way it’s getting just the slightest bit damp.  “Fine, we won’t call it off, but can we at least just stop—”  You immediately catch yourself, not wanting to unintentionally push this too far too quickly, but your hesitation is clear and compelling enough for him to prompt you.

“At least just stop what?”  Dameron asks, and though you don’t think it’s intentional or even noticeable from his perspective, something about the way his voice sounds… husky.  Low to the ground.

“Stop dragging it out,” you breathe, your heart pounding.  Why is your heart pounding so fucking fast?  This is a fucking sting op, a facade, so why are you getting so caught up in the lie you’ve spun for yourself?  “Finish it.  Sooner, rather than later.  Quit being masochists about it, just fucking put it to—”

Maker, your eyes instinctively snap to his at your poor choice of wording, having almost said bed on complete accident.  Genuinely, you didn’t mean to phrase it that way, but at the same time, the thought of it almost burns you alive.  Fuck.  Dameron, and you, in bed.  It could be mean.  It could be rough.  A fight for dominance more than anything.  He’s bigger than you and he could make it fucking hurt, especially after going without it for as long as you have, but something about how double-edged that type of relief would be isn’t really sinking in for you right now.  Like a person slowly dying of thirst that’s fantasizing about drowning.  Regardless, the idea of a night with him and the sudden assortment of vivid imagery it provides is enough to get you to shut up and take a deep breath, just wait with your mouth shut for whatever his response is.

Unfortunately, you don’t have to wait long at all.

“This is cute,” he suddenly tells you, and you jerk back and sputter a bunch of consonants stupidly like he smacked you.

“Fuck you?”  Are the first recognizable words that can be heard.  “I’m not—this isn’t fucking— cute?”

“It’s cute,” Dameron repeats, hiding a soft smile from you with a few of his fingers pressed to his lips.  “You,” he says as he points at your reflection, twirling his finger around in circles, “trying to be all sneaky about it, go about your little performance.  It’s like… watching a little kid just blatantly fuck up a magic trick but they’re naive enough to think it’s working.  Keep going, I’m enthralled.”

You hold still for just a second as ice suddenly sinks through your tummy and clears away any trace of warmth you may have once felt from before.  Of course.  Stupid.  Stupid, you shouldn’t have even tried something like that, you don’t know why you thought…

Horrifyingly, you go dead silent and the lack of an immediate response from you hangs awkwardly in the still air.  You’re usually so quick with him, so fiery, letting the things he throws at you just glide right off you, but for some insane reason, you’re actually fucking… embarrassed?  A little bit?

You should say something, but your whole body is just frustratingly blank, almost buzzing in mortification, and it gets worse and worse the longer you stay quiet.  You don’t usually put yourself in a position to be compromised, and you certainly didn’t think the place he decided to jab this time had particularly thin skin.

You… you’d forgotten what it’s like to have someone laugh at you when you’re genuinely trying your best to flirt.

Well, it’s too late to say anything now, you think.  Now it’s just uncomfortable in here—true discomfort, not the typical angry silences.  You’re used to that, you’re used to huffing and crossing your arms and ticking your jaw through the breaks in conversation, refusing to say a word because you’re beyond pissed off.  This is different.  This quiet sits different in the air, this emotion hits different in your chest, somewhere vulnerable.  A crack in your armor he found without even necessarily intending to, but at this point, the stupid way you can’t seem to hide the wound from him is just as much to blame.

“So, uh…”  Dameron clears his throat as you shut your eyes tight against the awkwardness, but you can still feel a strange little shift in the air from behind you.  There’s something about the enclosed space, the quiet darkness surrounding you both, you feel… too close to him.  Sharing his air, feeling the energy when it’s cramped and you’re not able to just get up and storm away from him like normal.  You don’t like it.  You don’t like that you can immediately tell something has changed without being able to see him, that type of intimacy between you is pushing a boundary you can’t quite pinpoint but know exists.

You snap your eyes open and look over at Dameron’s reflection when he’s quiet for too long, and though you try to glare as fiercely as possible at him while you do it, the look on his face almost stops you dead.  The pure intensity raging in his expression, the way he’s got his eyes narrowed, flicking back and forth between yours, carefully studying you, wondering if perhaps he may have gotten it all wrong.  “I mean, y’know.  Theoretically speaking, and all.  If I broke, you’d let me fuck you?”

You… aren’t expecting that.

You don’t know why but your heart suddenly starts to race again, but it’s not the same as before.  Before it was speeding up and at an angle, like a rocket trying to escape a body’s gravitational pull, to go somewhere, search for something.  This time it just feels like it’s ricketing downhill, unsteady and out of control, about to break apart with every single pothole that rattles and slams through you.  Shit.  You didn’t expect the ultimatum would be presented to you so up front like that—you thought there’d be… some resistance, at least.  

Fuck, you take way too fucking long thinking about it, and your face feels warmer and warmer the more you mentally pick apart his specific phrasing, wondering where you should even begin.  You still haven’t said anything, but the damage is already done.  What should've been a firm, instantaneous go fuck yourself is left suspended, unanswered, open for interpretation.  You miss your window of opportunity to shut him down, you overshoot it by a longshot, and then you feel that spark of a what-if flare deep down once more.

No, fucking stop it.  Stop it.  Maker, your eyes do everything they can to not look at him while you concentrate and work to tap into your anger, stoking the flames of your fire to avoid feeling… temptation.  How dare he?  How fucking dare he do this to you, especially when there’s no chance to get out of here, to abort mission and cut your losses?  You clench your jaw and isolate that fury, magnify it until it’s the only thing you can feel anymore.

“My turn now,” Dameron eventually breaks the silence to clarify, blinking at you, and by this point you’re so fucking pissed off that you don’t recognize that isn’t actually a question.

“No,” you immediately snap, strung far too thin to deal with this new, treacherous territory with him.  Defaulting to normal is best, it’s easier.  “No, it’s not your turn, and fuck no, you can’t fuck me, not even if it means I win this stupid bet.  No to everything that has anything to fucking do with you, alright?  Don’t talk to me.  You’re lucky if I agree to sleep in the same fucking room as you tonight.  And—and?—I think your beard looks dumb.”

Okay, so maybe the last part was just a little bit childish, but you’re in such a bad fucking mood and you want to insult something he’s clearly just trying out for right now, hasn’t yet solidified as part of his usual appearance and unshakeable confidence in it.  It’s a downright lie—you think he might look more attractive with it than he ever has.  Effortlessly rugged and masculine, framing his face and making his eyes all the more piercing.

You don’t think it works, but regardless, he heeds your sharp words and says nothing for a good few minutes at least.  You had hoped the break in interaction would allow you the ability to reset a little bit, give yourself time to work through it, but it’s like the pressure in the air steadily increases regardless of how silent it is in here—or perhaps, because of it.

You can’t help it.  You flick your eyes to the transparisteel in front of you once more and catch his reflection staring directly at you, unmoving.  It jars you as much as it sparks your anger, and you glare down at your hands and give him a few seconds.  A few seconds of grace, of mercy, before you try again.

Sure enough, he’s still got his dark eyes pinned to you when you go to check once more, like he’s actually fucking thinking about something right now, which is just… astounding, for obvious reasons.  Mainly, the nerve of him.  The fucking nerve of him to be able to look at you like that, like he’s just entitled to study your every feature, searching your eyes for things you’ve never looked deep enough to find within yourself, making incredibly loud assumptions with his mind that he has absolutely no right to be making.

“Shut up,”  You snap at him defensively, feeling like you’re sweating buckets even in the freezing emptiness of dead space.  You can’t figure out if it’s a cold sweat or if your body is legitimately just malfunctioning under his stare.  “Shut up.”

You watch as his reflection suddenly drops his head back against the seat and rolls out the stiffness of his neck, blinking his eyes shut and raising his eyebrows like you’re completely overreacting, like he has absolutely no idea.  “I didn’t say anything.”

“You’re not that dumb,” you challenge.  “You’re… plotting.  Evil plotting.”

A thick eyebrow drops so that only one is quirked up, and a grin pulls at his lips.

“You’re right,” Dameron admits casually after a moment with his eyes still closed, his voice pitched low in the cramped ship.  “I was thinking about what it’s gonna take to get you to lose.”

You swallow against the dryness in your throat, starting to unintentionally bounce one of your legs up and down without even realizing it.  Fuck, this ship is small, it’s too fucking small in here—you gaze wistfully out at the vast endlessness of space, wanting to grit your teeth at the irony of being surrounded by the one thing you so desperately wish you had.

“I just have to find a weakness,” he shifts forward in his seat and reveals to you, bewilderingly shameless in his honesty.  Like all of a sudden you’re an accomplice to this endeavor instead of its target, as if he isn’t spoiling the secret by letting you in on it.  “Something that you like, that gets you going.  Something that riles you up, gets you all hot and bothered down there—”

“So you can exploit it,” you huff, slouching over a bit and trying not to sound like you’re pouting.

“—so I can exploit it,” he finishes happily, collapsing back into his seat like he’s glad you caught on so quick and he doesn’t have to explain further.  “Now we can do the whole routine—the bickering, the tension, the undeniable sexual chemistry we have—or we can skip all that and you can just tell me flat out what it’s gonna take to rev that pretty little engine up, because I want it purring.”

And, it’s so fucking weird, because the specific verbiage that would normally make you cringe just hearing it spoken aloud doesn’t inspire the typical response, even though it feels like it should.  It feels like you should be grossed out, it feels like a moment you should screw up your facial expression and act offended, but you’re… not.  This is actually fucking working, it’s unbelievable.  The undeniable fact infuriates you just as much as it stumps you.

“You do realize that everything you say is a game that two can play at, right?”  You point out, not really sure where you’re going with this but feeling heated about it all the same.  “What’s stopping me from exploiting something you like?”

“See now that’s a great idea,” Dameron announces, clapping his hands together happily and sending you jumping a few inches in your seat at the sudden sound, your hand automatically shooting up to rest on your thumping heart.  “I can tell you what I like, and you can just listen.”

Alright, no, wait—backtrack—

“How about I tell you what I don’t like,” you snip breathlessly, tucking your hair behind your ear and feeling all the blood rush to your cheeks.  Default to normal, default to normal.  “Your fucking attitude.  Your demeanor.  The way you talk down to me.  You don’t listen.  You walk around like you’re such hot shit just because you’re a good pilot but none of that means anything when you don’t ever fucking listen.  You’re terrible at it, doesn’t matter who’s talking—you don’t listen to me, you don’t listen to people who actually like you, you don’t listen to orders, you don’t listen to reason—”

“You think I’m a good pilot?”  He suddenly asks, and you have to take a second.  This cockpit isn’t designed for anything other than sitting, much less turning all the way around, but you’re sure you can find some way to throttle him from here.  He chuckles as you let out the loudest sigh you’ve ever heard yourself make—which, is an incredible feat you think both of you should be congratulated for—before Dameron eventually carries on.  “You could tell me that,” he admits with a shrug, a hidden smile on his face that he’s trying to bite back.  “Or you could tell me the truth.”

You shouldn’t encourage him, but you just can’t fucking help it.  There’s something inside you, something you can only compare to a morbid sort of curiosity.  Maybe you’re just a glutton for punishment, even more so than agreeing to this bet has already confirmed.  “And that would be—?”

“That you use anger as a defense mechanism because I touch a nerve you didn’t realize you had,” Dameron replies breezily.  “Have since the moment we met.  And that you maybe want me to touch something else, but you’re too stubborn and proud and committed to hating me to ever admit it.  You can admit it, it’s okay, I can touch whatever you need me to tou—”

“How about the emergency eject button?”  You hiss, finally feeling your frustration peak.  “Pop the top on this bitch.  Put me out of my fucking misery, right now.  You’ve got such a big head that the blood flow will probably keep your tiny little brain warm enough as long as you strap yourself down beforehand, I’ll wait.  And then you can go back to base, alone , and find another poor girl to emotionally torture since you probably don’t get enough of it from the ones you work your way through but can never remember the most basic things about.”

Remarkably, that actually shuts him up.  You’re doubtful the jab really hurts him, but you’re not going to feel bad about it either way.  He deserved that.  You cross your arms over your chest and don’t even bother looking at him, huffing and flushed with the climax of your ferocity, now left feeling strangely exhausted in its wake.  Eventually your breathing evens out and disappears into the silence, until nothing at all can be heard.

It’s like that for a moment—only a moment, before the loud tearing of velcro suddenly shreds through the quiet in the cockpit, completely rattling you.  Automatically your eyes shoot over to his reflection, watching large hands pull the orange jumpsuit apart at his chest and then shrug it over broad shoulders.  It’s not sexual.  It can’t be sexual, because there’s just no fucking room to allow it—it takes him forever to pull the long sleeves down his arms, but the way he drags it out somehow just increases your anticipation for an event you should have absolutely no interest in spectating.  He’s wearing a white sleeveless undershirt underneath and the jumpsuit bunches at his waist, making him look all the longer and more defined as he finally collapses back into his seat and reclines in it, the distant constellations bathing his lean torso in dim speckles of starlight.

Your gaze catches on every good part of him—it falls down the muscular lines of his neck and follows the thin gold chain wrapped around it, disappearing into the white of his scooping neckline.  His toned body finds a place to rest and stretch out without looking awkward or uncomfortable, coarse hair darkening his jaw and dusting the strong lines of his forearms—but it’s his eyes that make your heart stutter.  They’re endlessly deep and dark and knowing , and you can’t seem to look away from him, not even when he opens his mouth to address you.  

“You’re always so fucking mean to me,” Dameron remarks, and for just a split second—just a split second, you feel a stab of regret.  “I should eat you out tonight.”

Fuck, he hits the nail right on the head on his very first try, and just hearing the words come out of his mouth so effortlessly makes your pussy clench in on itself in need.  Nothing about his inflection changed from one sentence to the next, nothing in his voice made it seem like he just flipped the fucking galaxy upside down with just a few words.  To an onlooker who doesn’t speak Basic, they’d have absolutely no hint as to why your face is suddenly radiating heat at an industrial capacity, blazing hot enough to warm the whole cockpit.  You feel like you’re literally burning up with it.  You have to put a palm to your cheek to make sure it’s not actually on fucking fire.  “What— what did you just say to me?”

“That’s what you need,” he drawls, unbothered by the sharpness of your tone.  “What you’ve needed, ever since I can remember.  Should’ve done it a long fucking time ago, now that I’m thinking about it.  How long’s it been?  Tell me the truth, I know it’s been awhile.”

You feel like you’re being roasted alive like one of those hairy little Kowakian monkey-lizards that you’re pretty sure have sentient designation but are the first to be skewered and cooked over the firepit regardless.  Your heart is slamming against your sternum and you scramble to come up with an even slightly clever response after such an ambush.

“This is your plan?”  You raise an eyebrow at him, feeling a bead of sweat drop down your temple and onto the corner of your lashes.  Oh fuck, be cool, be cool.  “You think this is gonna work?  Ask me if I want a weak orgasm and rugburn on my thighs?”

“I can shave,” Dameron proposes quietly, lifting his chin and gently scrubbing the side of his cheek.  The sound of the thick bristles against his fingers makes you swallow thickly and push back very vivid thoughts of how his face would feel between your legs.  How soft and wet his mouth would feel at the center of that thick, coarse beard.  “Tonight, I’ll shave it off.  Make it nice and smooth for you.”

Something inside you surges up to assure him he absolutely should not shave, and you actually have to bite your tongue to keep it buried at the last second.  Stars, that was a close one, what the fuck prompted that?

“I don’t give a shit what you do,” you quickly return, resisting the urge to wipe your brow.  “Beard or no beard, makes no difference.  Foreplay is overrated, I’m not big on wasting time.”

“Oh, you poor thing,” he immediately laments—so quick , and the worst part is that the sympathy in his voice actually sounds sincere.  You’re having trouble looking him in the eyes right now, hearing the genuine pity come through in his tone.  “Who… who did this to you?”

“You said you want to figure out what I like, what turns me on,” you return, tucking your hair behind your ear once more and trying not to sound self-conscious.  Maker, how long until your shift is over?  You need to get out of here, this shit is… way out of your league.  “I’m not into it, so try again.”

“Really?”  Dameron takes a moment to look at you, furrow his thick eyebrows at you in barely concealed curiosity, before his head tilts sideways and drops to his shoulder.  “Normally I’d respect that, but I meant it when I said you need it.”

“We fucking hate each other, Dameron,” you hiss, a reminder to him as much as it is to yourself.  Fuck, you really don’t like where this is going.  “You don’t know anything about me, you don’t know what the I n—”

“I bet you think we’d fuck hard,” he murmurs, low enough that you have to take an unsteady breath and physically brace yourself for whatever is going to come from that dirty mouth next.  “You think that maybe I’d throw you around a little, give it to you from behind, teach you a fucking lesson for always talking back to me.  But that’s primitive shit, Gold-Ten, that’s not for you.”

Resist.  Resist .  You’re part of the fucking Resistance, for Maker’s sake, you’re taught to hold out until death in torture scenarios.  Since when did this tin can suddenly become a new POW camp simulation you have to train for?

“I want to take you apart so slow that you can’t talk at all,” Dameron continues quietly, and you close your eyes, biting your bottom lip hard enough to sting.  “We don’t even have to fuck—I mean, I want to, but mostly I just want to taste you.  Go nice and slow.  I want you on your back, so I can look in your eyes and see all that anger just… fade away.  I want to watch you try to fight how fucking good I’ll make it.  How hot it’s gonna be when you can’t glare at me anymore, when your pretty doll eyes go all soft and sweet and you finally realize that I’ve never hated you at all.”

Maker.  This is a trick.  It’s not a question, it shouldn’t be presented like one—this is a dirty rotten trick , and you’re not gonna fall for it.  You can’t fucking fall for it.  It’s a low blow, and you refuse to even acknowledge he said anything at all.  He’s lying to get your guard down.  He laughed at your flirting.  He’s a shit person, he’s using you, this isn’t real.

Real or not, you still gulp loud enough for him to hear it.

“We could go back to our room after our shift is over,” he offers out of the blue, and you have no clue why, but when he pauses and lets it hang in the air for a second, you don’t interrupt him.  You stay completely silent while he waits for you, waits for your typical snarky comeback.  You have it in your head instantly, you know what you’d normally say.  Your room.  It’s not ‘our’ room, it’s fucking your room that you’re generous enough to let him bunk in, a privilege he’s this fucking close to losing—but you can’t find it in yourself to say it right now.  Your anger is gradually losing the war to your arousal and you’re forced to watch every single small defeat inside you happen from the sidelines.

His reflection blinks at you through the transparisteel, his eyebrows raising just slightly at your prolonged silence, before he suddenly sits up a little and leans forward.

“And I could lock the door,” Dameron continues, lowering his voice, both in volume and register.  “The lights in there are way too fucking bright but I don’t want to be in complete darkness, so maybe we can turn them off and open the port shade, let just enough light come through to see.  I could turn on the radio, find something quiet, easy to listen to.  Something you like, I’ll let you pick it out.  And then… Wait, hang on, which bed?”

You clench your jaw and purposefully say nothing even as your pussy squeezes, glaring right through his reflection into the black void of space.

“Mmm.   Your bed,” he eventually decides.  “I want you comfortable.  You shower at night.  Your hair will be wet and you’ll be in those baggy pajamas that you think I can’t see your nipples through, the ones that I know you take off under your covers and then put on in the morning when you think I’m still asleep.  That’s good, I want you relaxed, so that maybe… maybe you’d let me take your panties off at some point.  And you could lay back and open your legs, and I could go down on you for a little while.  However long you need.”

Fuck.

No, this isn’t fucking happening.  Your lower muscles aren’t twisting in so hard that it actually fucking hurts, your pussy isn’t leaking through two layers of fabric under your jumpsuit, your body isn’t outright revolting against the sheer neglect you’ve put it through.  Maker, it’s fucking painful.  You have to clench your hands into fists and dig your fingernails into your palms before you can open your mouth.

“You want to know what I need?”  You nearly wheeze, a drop of sweat sliding down the back of your neck this time.  Your body feels like it’s three sizes too big for this cockpit and your skin feels like it’s three sizes too small for your body.  “I need you to shut the fuck u—”

“What you need,” Dameron purrs, sliding up closer behind your seat and sighing soft against the worn material of your headrest, “is a warm mouth to cum in.  Don’t be shy, pretty baby, you can tell me.”

You growl out his last name as threateningly as you possibly can before he purrs yours right back in your ear, and fuck, you’ve never heard it sound so sexual before.  Last names allow pilots to maintain a respectful distance from each other.  Flight designations are Resistance-wide, but last names are just… allies.  Not friends, not companions, but a vast network of people brought together by a common enemy.  It hurts to lose a first name.  But the way yours sounds rolling off of Dameron’s tongue is just too sinful, too intimate when calling you that is meant to sever intimacy by design.  He says it slow and makes it dirty, muddies it in the back of his throat as he slides up even closer to you, until his face is right next to yours as you stare at each other through the transparisteel.

“I’m really…” he pauses, before exhaling through his nose and swallowing thick enough to make his Adam’s apple drop and bounce up again, his tongue coming out to wet his plush lips as he blinks slowly at you with a heavy gaze, “… really good at it.  Call me Poe and I’ll do it for you all night.”

Shit, your pussy is just a fucking mess right now.  It feels like it’s melting sweet and syrupy all over your thighs, throbbing and pounding and clamping up and screaming at you to do something, at least press your hand down there to alleviate some of the aching tensi—

No— stars, no touching yourself is rule number two.  You drop your hands to your thighs and squeeze them, trying to reign yourself back in.

“I think you’re—just projecting,” you try, but turns out responding in general is just an all-around bad idea.  Nothing about it comes out right.  The ‘just’ sounds like your tongue is stuck to the roof of your mouth and your voice cracks on the word ‘projecting,’ but you don’t even have time to be self-conscious or embarrassed at how much you’re giving yourself away—all your energy has to go towards fighting the tightness between your open legs, how you’re so fucking turned on that you’re worried you’ll cum without even touching yourself.  Oh Maker, can you imagine?  How fucking proud of himself he’d be?  You can’t let that happen, but fuck, holding back something so appealing is so much harder than it sounds.

Tap into that anger, tap into that anger—only, you can’t suddenly find it.  Where’d it go?  Fuck, doesn’t matter, conjure it.  Quick, before it’s too late, get mad —don’t let him lure you into a… a false… 

Dameron tilts his chin down towards the line of your shoulder and then slowly turns his head towards your neck, breathing you in gently.

A false sense of…

His soft exhale makes goosebumps break out all the way down your arms.

… What?

“Maybe you’re right,” Dameron acknowledges, talking just under your ear.  You watch his eyelids dip and the dark beard brushes against your skin and you catch just a hint of that woodsy, spicy scent engulfing you.  Like… teakwood, maybe?  Stars, you don’t know, you think you’re starting to lose your mind.  What the fuck does teakwood even smell like?  “Maybe it’s just what I need.  You should exploit it, chances are I’ll still cum first.”

That rockets another painful spasm down low.  It hurts so fucking bad—fuck, maybe you could… rub yourself up against these weapons controls?  Just a little bit?  That joystick, right there, just ease yourself up against it just to nurse this wound a little bit…?

No, fucking— bad.  That’s bad, you have to stop—

“This isn’t real, this isn’t—y-you just…”  You flutter your eyelashes shut, digging your fingernails into your thighs like it’ll help break through the fog of his lulling voice, how fucking amazing he smells right now.  “You just want to win th-the b—”

“ Fuck the bet,” he tells you quietly, his head dipped low enough now that his lips brush against your neck, and you shudder so hard at the sensation that your shoulder almost knocks into his chin with it.  “You really think I’m doing all this for a fucking bet?”

Don’t trust him, don’t trust him, don’t—

Your deep breath is so stuttery and uneven that it’s technically just a series of shallow inhales all anxiously strung together, too desperate for oxygen to go about it legato.  It’s painfully obvious to him by now, it has to be, but you very quickly miss the shaky breathing as soon as he takes away your ability to do it all together.

“Let me taste you,” he whispers, his voice almost breaking with how gentle it is, how it sounds like it flips in and out of his register when he speaks this low.  “Right now, let’s make it real, let m—I know you have to be soaking fucking wet, baby, just let me try a little bit of it, please—I’m… holy shit, I’m so hard just thinking about it.”

“You c-can’t,” you stammer, reaching up to pinch the bridge of your nose in frustration.  At him, at the situation, at the painful throb of emptiness between your legs.  “Fuck, it’s not allowed, it’s against the rules—”

“It won’t be,” he assures you, and you hiccup when you suddenly feel his hand brush against your side, strong fingers branching out to curve against your ribcage.  “You don’t have to do anything, you can stay just like this.  Just a few seconds and then I’ll stop, I promise.”

Oh, Maker, it’s on the very top of your tongue, so unbelievably close to telling him something—but you don’t know what it should be.  You’re right at the tipping point, on a tightrope right between what you want and what you should want.  And, knowing you’re this close to giving in, Dameron slowly eases his hand down your side and starts to trail it inwards, and just the lightest brush of his warm tongue against your neck shatters any composure you have left.

You whimper and instinctively try to close your legs, but you fucking can’t— your knees are forced wide apart by controls and your whole body freezes when his hand slides down and folds gently along the curve of your pussy through the thick fabric of your jumpsuit.

The feeling of being held like this by him is just too good , cradled so perfectly in his palm as he opens his mouth and flutters his tongue out to taste your skin again, giving you a little more of it this time and letting you feel the roughness of his beard with the way his lips move.  Your breath catches, then he hooks his fingertips up just the slightest bit and pulls back, and you suddenly have to smack your whole hand over your face in a terrible attempt to stifle your loud gasp.

“Oh, Maker, I c-can’t,” you stammer against your fingers, not being able to trust him or your own body.  You continue to protest even after he moves back up, resting his palm low on your abdomen, letting the heat bleed through the fabric and transfer directly to your floor muscles as he lifts his head up from your shoulder.  “I can’t, we can’t, I…”

You can’t see him, but you know he’s looking at you.  He’s staring right at you through the reflection, studying the way you’re hiding your face from him, how you’re still melting, still losing your composure just from the warm palm pressed tight your tummy.

His touch leaves you for a second. But then the deafening sound of velcro ripping at the crotch of your jumpsuit has you dragging your hand down your mouth and your eyelids dipping.

“Dameron,” you breathe into your fingers, just as his carefully slip into the small opening and begin to work at the button to your pants. “Dameron, this isn’t—you don’t want—”

“You don’t get to tell me what I don’t want,” he grunts at you, and you try not to bite yourself at the sound of him unzipping things and yanking fabric to the side.  “What I really fucking want is the real thing, but I guess this’ll have to do for now.”

“I—”  Your mind whirs desperately, trying to process when his fingers wedge under your panties and down.   But he doesn’t give you a single fucking second.  As soon as the tip of his middle finger reaches your slit, he’s dropping it and sliding it through your slick, hot, unbearably neglected cunt.

“Fuck,” he spits, and you feel like you might be about to break your own fucking jaw with how hard you’re clutching it, trying so desperately not to make a noise.  The pad of his finger is rough and calloused as it drags against your clit in slow, tight circles, and you clamp your eyes shut and try to breathe normally, but it’s no use.  Fuck , it’s been so long .  You’ve been aching for it for a full fucking month and a half now and you know that even if he couldn’t feel it, he can hear how drenched you are right now.  It’s making an obscene sound as he steadily masturbates you with one heavenly finger, giving your body what it’s desperately craved for so many weeks.  “Fuck, baby’s pussy got fucking wet hearing me talk about how good I’d lick it, huh?”

That sends a bright flare launching through you and you gasp raggedly, both hands whipping out to snatch at his forearm where it disappears between your legs.  “No, shit, wait, stopstopstopstop stop , I—”

His hand slips out immediately and yet you continue to tremble like his finger is still right there, like your clit is just imagining it so vividly that it’s successfully convincing itself of the illusion.  The aching bit of flesh is burning, that good burn, the one that’s searing and bright that makes your muscles continue to chase the sensation long after the stimulation is gone.  Fuck, he almost made you cum.  He barely touched you for a few seconds and yet your fingers have to tighten into claws to slow your body down the fuck down, flexing against your thighs and trying your best to halt the impending climax.

By the time you’re able to wrangle yourself back from the edge and look at his reflection, his middle finger is already in his mouth and he’s blinking slowly at you, his pupils blown wide.  You’re breathing hard at him, staring open-mouthed at the way his lips are closed below his second knuckle, how he takes forever dragging it back out again.  You have to close your eyes.  You have to clamp them shut and keep them that way, knowing you won’t be able to look at him through whatever he’s going to say next.

Except, oddly, he doesn’t say much.

“Shit,” he breathes, dropping his mouth to your neck once more.  “Shhhit.  I…”

Your eyes snap open in sudden, blind panic when he doesn’t continue, horrified at the possibility that he doesn’t like it.  Dameron always has something to say, he doesn’t go speechless.  “Oh—Maker, is it not—?”

“Mmmfuck, just—” he grits, panting hot air against your skin, “—fuck.  Give me a second.”

You can only see the crown of his head with the way he’s angled, but you can see his shoulders a little further back.  They start… moving slightly.  Just the littlest bit, a smooth motion, like his whole body is slowly easing back and forth—

The nav controls are between his legs, you immediately realize.  He’s grinding up against them with how close he is to you and your seat.

And suddenly, it’s like there’s a light at the end of the tunnel.  A ray of sunshine that breaks through the raging storm.  Dameron might cum in his pants like this.  Which means you’ll win, and arguably more importantly, you’ll finally be able to cum.  You don’t even take a moment to consider the potential consequences—how you’re going to have to withstand the stimulation until he succumbs to it, how you’ll have to outlast—but you’re not thinking straight.  You’re not really thinking at all.

“You can…” you suddenly hear yourself whisper, and your heart pounds in your throat when he instantly stops moving.  “One… one more.  If you want.  You can put your finger inside this time, it’s where I’m the… w-wettest.”

“Fuck,” Dameron croaks into the crook of your neck, his voice scraping low and rough and sending a tremor through you.  “Fuck, okay, yeah—”

His hand slides across your hip and down, but you catch him just in time.

“But don’t touch my clit.”  You try to sound as firm as possible through the breathlessness, still trying to put your foot down even when you’re giving in, and Dameron’s teeth come out as he stifles a soft groan into your neck in response.

“Yes, baby,” he murmurs obediently as his hand sinks down once more, and so diligently, he avoids it altogether.  His fingers slide under your panties and fall straight down to your entrance, down to where you know you’re the hottest, where your pussy is flexing and pushing wetness out with a steady, wicked throb.  The pad of his middle finger presses gently against the tight muscles there, rubs just the slightest bit to feel that resistance, and then the length of it eases inside you so slowly that your knees rattle against bulky metal.

“Fucking Maker , ” he hisses as he slides it in, his body making a sudden jerk against the controls.

Your eyes roll back at the feeling of something inside you after so long, after such a torturous buildup, and you grasp at his forearm again when it curls naturally up against searing pleasure.  Oh, it’s so good, it’s so good, your hands shake while he very carefully moves it in and out, the raw sparks of heat threatening to incinerate you as your muscles cling to every ridge of his finger.  He gets it sopping wet, bathes it so completely in your slick that you’re almost certain it’ll come out pruny and drenched.

“Shit, okay,” you pant, squeezing desperately around his finger, “o-okay, fuck, that’s enough.”

His hand pulls out… slower this time.  He slips his finger out of you quick enough, but he drags the tip of it through your folds as he retreats, just barely grazing your clit and making you jolt in your seat.  Shit, you don’t know if it felt intentional enough to fault him for it—mostly it just excites you, thrills you to have him edge you like this without really needing to put any effort at all into it.

Dameron lifts his head to sink his finger deep into his mouth once more, and you tremble as you watch him enjoy it, staring at the way his shoulders seem to relax as soon as your taste is on his tongue, how his face goes soft with it and he almost slumps.

Relief.  Genuine, not embellished.  He still doesn’t say anything after he slowly slides it out and blinks at you, no sugar sweet drawl telling you how amazing you taste, no candied words to make you give in and let him have another go.  You’re both breathing hard at each other, staring, waiting to see who will break first.

Stars, you… fucking like this.  You want him to keep going, but you can’t offer it again.  It’s just too exposing, too revealing to let him you’re actually really fucking enjoying this, you can’t—

“Do you w—?”  Your voice automatically comes out through the silence without your permission, sounding just absolutely fucking wrecked by this point, but his palm is already slithering back down as soon as you speak, and you make the softest little submissive noise in your throat at him taking immediate initiative like that.  He’s not as careful about it this time—his hand finds its target with less frill, his finger slides in quicker, sinking deep into your heat with little hesitation, lighting you on fire from the inside out, and you bite the meat of your thumb to stay quiet.

“Fuck, this is so hot,” he suddenly breathes next to your ear while your legs spasm and you gasp brokenly.  “This is so—fuck, pretty baby letting me do this to her, I can’t fucking believe—”

Dameron eases a second finger inside you this time, letting you feel that delicious stretch from this angle, unable to lift your legs or shuffle around to help and subsequently resigned to simply experience it the way he gives it to you.  Your teeth have probably permanently indented your bottom lip from how hard you’re clamped down, a testament to how much you’re trying to hold back the loud moan you miraculously haven’t released yet.  Somehow it makes it sexier, not letting him hear you, not having your own noises to drown out the spark of urgency in his voice beginning to peek through.

Shit, it’s too much.  You can only let him touch you a few seconds at a time before you feel that familiar tug towards mind-numbing bliss, and the more he does it, the more appealing that feeling then becomes.  It’s teasing you, floating right in front of you and calling into question what could possibly be so bad about just reaching out to meet it?  You could.  You could cum right now.  What’s two weeks of pay?  You could cum all night long if you want, that is a thing you can do—

Quickly snapping out of your hypnotic downfall, your trembling hands snatch at his forearm once more, and Dameron, the fucker, drags his fingers slowly over your clit on the way out— so not accidental, not even close to it this time, but the sensation makes your hips stutter upwards and chase it nonetheless.

“Fuck you,” you groan at his audacity, your chest arching as you drop your head back, “I said don’t touch my—” but two wet fingers slipping past your lips and onto your tongue muffle the rest of your sentence.  Your heart does half a somersault before slamming down early, the taste of your pussy filling your mouth as you automatically start sucking on them.

“None of that,” Dameron tells you softly, massaging his fingers along your tongue before pressing a sweet kiss under your ear.  “Be nice.  I’m being nice.”

You should bite him.  Instead, you just close your eyes and mphh weakly around his fingers, your body sagging as you give into it and let him explore your mouth with them, your lower muscles cramping up in painful desperation even when he’s not anywhere near that part of your body right now.  Your tongue even comes up to lick between them, swirl around them so soft compared to how hard you’re puffing through your nose.

Dameron slowly inches his fingers out, letting the tips of them rest against your bottom lip for just a brief moment, before his hand is moving again.  Not down, but back and around, so he can open his mouth and taste you another way this time.

Shit, you feel like you’re dying.  You need air.  Your hands clench into fists and you use the back of one to wipe the sweat from the bridge of your nose while he takes his time sampling you like this.  If anything, he looks just as blissed out as before, continuing to rub his crotch up against the solid metal between his legs and teasing you with it as much as he’s teasing himself.

“Maker, let me do this for real tonight, okay,” Dameron pants after dropping his fingers from his mouth, sounding like he’s fighting for his breath while you can’t find yours at all.  Your eyes flick down to watch the way his hand disappears behind the chair to grab the controls and push his cock up against them even harder, how he drops his forehead to your neck like he just can’t fucking handle it anymore.  “Fuck, I’ll shave, I’ll do anything you want, just let me—”

“Cum,” you gasp out before you can stop yourself, and there’s a moment after it where his hips suddenly stutter against the controls, and you both freeze.

Shit.  Shitshitshit, did that actually work?

No, you very quickly realize, his body isn’t spasming like it would if he finally emptied his load after a month and a half.  He’s just… holding there, his head buried in your neck, completely still.

You didn’t mean it like that.  Well… fuck, you did, but you didn’t realize you’d be that reckless about it, that upfront about reissuing the challenge.

Dameron pulls back to look at you from the side this time, but it’s too cramped—he keeps his head turned facing you even as his eyes flick up to the transparisteel to take in the finer details of your features, the thin sheen of sweat on your forehead, and the slightly alarmed way you’re blinking back at him, worried you just shot your blaster at him in the midst of a mutual ceasefire and you fucking missed.

You see the understanding in his eyes instantly fall into place, and it’s not fucking good.  Ohhhhhh no, it’s not good.  Your chest starts rising and falling rapidly, suddenly registering the position you just put yourself in.  Fuck, you didn’t think—you saw your opening, so clearly, you didn’t have time to think about the consequences.

“D-Dameron…” you try your best to placate.

“Don’t touch your clit?”  He asks quietly, the raspiness of his voice ripping a hole through you while his hand suddenly shoves its way back down your body once more.

“Dameron,” you whimper, your heart stuttering in panic as you grasp weakly at his arm reaching between your spread thighs, “Dameron, this is—this is against the r-rules—”

“You keep saying that,” he comments, his fingers easily finding the opening in your jumpsuit no matter how hard you flex your thighs against bulky mechanics to try and close them.  “How clearly do you remember the rules?  What were the rules again?

You open your mouth to respond but his hand sliding under your panties and down just obliterates any chance you were going to attempt.  No words, nothing comes out but a shaky whine as his finger sinks into your soaking heat, going right for the kill.

“Come on, baby, the rules,” Dameron reminds you when you never give him an answer.  “Tell me.  No fucking, no jerking off, and…?”

You suddenly struggle forwards in a last-ditch attempt at preventing the inevitable, hoping you can scoot up enough in your seat to escape his reach from behind.  But fuck, your thighs have been shoved wide open for nearly eight hours—none of the muscles are working the way they should be anymore.  There’s just enough room in front of you to get there and you probably would’ve been able to do it at the beginning of the shift, even with his hand between your legs like this, but you’re sluggish and your thighs pull sharp and urgent with the movement.  The frantic maneuver enough to veer his fingers off course just slightly, moving one of your lips to the side at an angle, and you keep pushing against the pain no matter how useless it is.

“—No cumming,” he finishes for you, and his other hand is slithering up under your arm and groping one of your breasts through the jumpsuit before shoving you back tight up against your seat once more, totally helpless against it.  “Probably have another fifteen minutes or so before our shift ends.  Better hold it in, pretty baby, because this one is all you.”

“This—this isn’t fair, this is—”  The second the slippery pad of his finger presses hard against your clit, you’re biting your lip to cut off a breathless whimper that slips out.  “This is… is sab— sabotage— ”

“Oh, I know,” he moans next to your ear, mocking your high plea of distress with a fake, overly sympathetic whine.  “Feels so fucking good though, doesn’t it?”

Fuck, it does.  The build feels like an orgasm in itself, just working your way to it.  You’re already so unbelievably close after just a few seconds of direct stimulation, an obvious consequence of originally agreeing to such a hardcore edging workout.  You’re pouring sweat, so swollen and tight between your legs as you do everything you can to revolt against your body’s needs.

“Oh fuck, stop touching my clit—” you gasp raggedly, heart thundering in panic while your lower muscles start to immediately seize up, “oh—fuckfuckfuck— Poe, take your finger off m—”

Instead of doing it, his hand just slows down until the tip of his finger comes to a halt, maybe less than an inch over top of it.  You still can’t catch your breath though, not when you feel yourself throbbing against absolutely nothing, the calloused pad holding perfectly still over the bundle of nerves.  The swollen bud still arcs and flares at a steady frequency, building and building, and you choke out a wordless garble, absolutely fucking furious that this is what’s gonna make you cum.

“Don’t make me cum,” you switch up your sentence but not the terrified plead in your voice, the way it’s pitching up and out of control in the dead quiet of space.  He doesn’t even acknowledge it.  “Don’t make me cum, don—”

“Say it again,” he prompts instead, and lightning arcs up your spine.

“Poe,” you wheeze, the words coming from you without thought, your fingernails digging into his forearm even as your hips jerk up into his touch, “fuck, don’t make me cum, Poe—please don’t make me c—”

“But it’ll be so good,” he counters lowly, and your clit throbs in desperation at the richness of his voice when he speaks like this, saying things from deep in his chest.  “It’ll be so fucking good when it happens.  Stars, you’ll feel so much better, won’t you?  Cum right now and I’ll give you as many as I can until we have to go home.”

“N-No,” you whine, feeling his teeth scrape at the crook of your neck.  “No, I can’t—”

“Cum for me,” Dameron raises his voice, sharpening it into a direct order.  “Right now.  Come on— fucking make yourself lose.”

“But I—I—” you sob, starting to feel your body curl inwards, nearly about to succumb to the burning, the tightening, right on its last breath, “I-I don’t want to cum—”

“And I don’t fucking care,“ he hisses while your hands start flexing unintentionally, grasping helplessly at his immovable forearm where it disappears between your legs, the dark hair sliding under your fingertips as you claw desperately at it.  “You’ll fucking cum when I tell you to cum and you’ll like it, you disrespectful, cock-deprived, bratty little—”

And then everything goes dark.

No, literally.  The stars disappear.

The cockpit is suddenly shrouded in pitch blackness, and you’re almost certain it’s because you pass out, except then Dameron is all but ripping his hand out of your jumpsuit and cursing repeatedly in alarm.  You crumple in on yourself, eyes clamped shut and not hearing anything, right at the peak of your ecstasy and ready to soar into the light completely unassisted, your muscles doing all the work on their own—

“—shit, they’re way too close—” you hear his voice shout, “—we have to turn the engines on—Gold-Ten, baby, turn the fucking eng—”

You’re almost there, you’re almost there, you’re gonna cum, you’re gonna fucking—

Your first name, roared out in startling, blinding panic.

You don’t often hear it.  Just during roll calls mostly, but only if you’re flying with a different squadron and need a new temporary flight designation for the day.  First names hurt.  You can’t remember a time you’ve ever willingly told anybody yours.

Your head jerks up to look at his reflection but something else beyond the transparisteel takes immediate precedence.  Your brain takes about two seconds to catch up before thundering terror slams through you and halts your previously inevitable orgasm in its fucking tracks.  A runaway train about to launch off its tracks suddenly slamming directly into a megaton force-field of cold, hard fight or flight instincts.

A staggering fleet of First Order ships silently plunging out of hyperspace on all sides—your powered-down x-wing stationed right in the middle of the drop location.

***

Stay tuned for part two coming soon!!

[hopelesshawks]

Official Accounts Part 33- Trust

Summary: (y/n) was perfectly happy remaining anonymous, even if her best friends were all pro heroes and she worked under THE Hawks. Handling the technical aspects of hero work from the background suited her just fine, thank you very much. That goes out the window when suddenly her twitter blows up thanks Denki and the famed no. 2 hero is asking her to run his own official twitter as a result

If you don’t want to see Official Accounts content blacklist #hopelessoa

Masterlist

Hawks is neither dumb nor oblivious. He knows that he is not okay after learning about Endeavor. He knows that it isn’t normal to feel nauseous at the thought of using his quirk. But he also knows that you’re excited for this stupid gala tonight. So even though the very thought of seeing members of the HPSC or Endeavor fills him with quiet, fervent anger, he is determined to take you and make sure you have a good night. Mina had arrived an hour ago with a garment bag and a backpack stocked with makeup and hair products and immediately dragged you into your room to start getting ready. Even from outside he can hear the two of you laughing. So no, he is not in denial about his emotional well-being. He is well aware that he needs to shake off the anger, disgust, and heartache that’s clung to his spine since that night on the balcony. But the sound of your laughter and the sight of your smile makes him forget everything else, even if only for a moment, so if enduring one of the least heroic parts of hero work is what it takes to keep you happy then he’ll do it.

It’s almost time to leave. Hawks wears a crisp black suit with a black shirt underneath. The designer had also given him a red tie to wear but the night would be suffocating enough without a fancy noose around his neck as well, so he’d decided to skip it and leave the top few buttons of his shirt undone instead. He followed Bakugo’s advice and had run out to get flowers while you changed. Now he stands nervously clutching them in one hand while he waits for you to finally emerge.

Mina slips out first, excitement evident in her black and yellow eyes. “You’re gonna flip when you see her,” she whispers to him conspiratorially before clearing her throat and standing up tall. “Now presenting, the breathtaking and stunningly gorgeous (y/n) (y/l/n), as styled by Mina Ashido and Momo Yaoyorozu,” Mina announces with a flourish before throwing open the doors to reveal you standing on the other side. He would like to say something witty and charming but all of Hawks’ smooth charisma seems to have abandoned him, leaving only Keigo staring at the person he loves in all her beauty in a red dress that perfectly matches his feathers. “Told you,” Mina sing songs with a laugh and you think you would pay admission to see Keigo blush the way he currently is again. “These are for you,” he finally says, offering up the beautiful blooms. “Thank you, they’re perfect,” you grin as you take them and Mina is quick to take them off your hands to put them in some water. “You kids have fun! I’ll lock things up here,” Mina assures you before shooing you and Hawks out your apartment.

“Shall we?” Hawks asks as he offers you his arm. You get a flashback to that first date and part of you wonders what would’ve happened had you not bared your soul to him that night. When you look in his eyes though, and see the genuine affection in his golden gaze, you find that you truly wouldn’t change a thing as long as you could still end up right back in this moment. “We shall,” you grin, as you take his arm and he leads you down the stairs and out the door.

You blink in surprise as you lay eyes on a long black limousine. “You got a limo?” you ask incredulously. “Of course, it’s too far to walk and you deserve to roll up to your first red carpet in style,” he winks as he opens the door and helps you in. “Honestly I thought you might fly us there,” you admit. You notice the way Hawks tenses up for just a moment but when he slides in next to you he’s all smiles. “And let the wind ruin all of Mina’s hard work? She’d kill me,” he replies smoothly. You decide to drop it, after all if your suspicions about why he’s so hesitant to use his quirk are correct, then the last thing he needs is to dredge up those feelings right before seeing the very people at the center of them.

Pulling up to the red carpet is odd for a variety of reasons. For starters the idea of walking a red carpet with reporters who you can already hear clamoring outside is surreal in and of itself. But also it’s odd because for the past week or so since your kidnapping you’d been getting to see Keigo without filter. But as he turns to you and asks “You ready little techie?” you can almost physically see him rebuilding his walls. He gives your hand a quick squeeze and you think maybe, just maybe, he’s still left a door in the wall for you. So you take a deep breath to relieve your nerves, meet his eyes, and then you tell him “I’m ready.”

The flashing cameras are overwhelming at first but Hawks finds your hand and quickly squeezes it, immediately grounding you. He lets go just as quickly, after all he had promised you this was strictly platonic and the press would surely latch onto any sign of affection as proof of a relationship. He’s pleasantly surprised to feel you take back his hand and intertwine your fingers. He needs the grounding too. He turns to you and you both share a private smile before he slides back on the infectious grin that all of Japan knows him by. Reporters are shouting his name left and right as he leads you towards the entrance. “Hawks! Hawks! Who’s your date this evening?” “Hawks! Are the rumors true about your Twitter fling?” “Hawks! Over here! When will you be returning to hero work?”

Finally you enter into the building and both of you breathe out a sigh of relief as you finally put the reporters behind you. “You said there’s free booze here?” you ask slightly out of breath as your heart returns to its normal cadence. “That there is,” Hawks replies before smiling and pulling you to the elevators up to the banquet hall by your still intertwined hands.

Several tables are set up around the hall and there’s a stage where presumably there will be a few speakers once everyone gets more settled and has had some time to mingle. The two of you spot Mirko in a purple jumpsuit standing with a dark haired woman with wolf ears dressed in a black gown. “C’mon let me introduce you,” Hawks encourages as he leads you to their table. “You already know Mirko, this is her lovely girlfriend Olivia. Olivia meet (y/n),” he introduces. “So you’re the infamous (y/n). I see what all the hype is about,” she says as she gives you an appraising look. “Oh infamous, huh?” you ask already smirking. “Oh yea. Can’t tell you how many times this one has whined to me about Hawks pining over you,” Olivia laughs, revealing her sharp canines in the process as she pulls Mirko in tight to her. “I do not whine!” Mirko says with a roll of her eyes while Hawks protests “I wasn’t pining!” You laugh as both women give him a skeptical look. “Ok if I’m going to be attacked this way I’m going to need a drink,” Hawks sighs, “want one?” “Sure I’ll take-“ “White wine work?” he cuts you off. “You talked to Katsuki,” you laugh. “I have no idea what you’re talking about Dove,” he grins walking backwards away from you before finally turning to head to the bar.

“Two glasses of white wine,” Hawks asks of the bartender. “Put it on my tab,” a gruff voice says coming up behind him. Hawks feels his entire body stiffen. “It’s an open bar Endeavor, there are no tabs,” Hawks says without turning to look at his former hero. “Hawks we need to talk,” Endeavor insists. “I’ve got nothing to say to you.” “I am trying to do better.” “That’s great and all but it doesn’t untraumatize your kids. If you weren’t a high ranking hero you’d be rotting in a cell right now.” “You cannot tell anyone. The fate of hero society-“ “You think I don’t know that? I’m not an idiot.” “I never said you were.” “Then don’t lecture me old man.” “I have saved so many lives. And thanks to my training so has Shoto.”

Hawks whips around to stare at the man he once idolized and is shocked to see Endeavor genuinely believes what he says is true. As if his hero work somehow undoes his crimes. “First of all, Shoto is a great hero in spite of, not because of you. Second of all, if you really want to take credit for the lives he’s saved then you also have to bear the responsibility for the lives Dabi has taken. How many is he up to now? 30 something? Not counting the death toll from Kamino Ward,” Hawks bites out, his wings expanding instinctively to make himself larger in front of the other man. “You know my father never laid a hand on me. No he was neglectful and cruel in other ways but never physically abusive. I once wished you were my father instead. Now I know I would’ve just been trading one monster for another.” “Hawks I-“

“There you are! I was wondering what was taking so long,” you interject as you slide between Hawks and Endeavor, facing your date. “Ease up a little bird brain, it’s ok,” you whisper in as calming a voice as possible. Hawks hadn’t even realized how worked up he was getting until you intervened, but he’s grateful now that you’re here to ground him. You spin around to address the number one hero directly. You should probably be scared, or at the very least nervous, but instead you stand up tall, chin raised defiantly, and bring your quirk to the surface just enough for your eyes to glow as you make eye contact with the man in front of you. “I don’t care what the rankings say, Hawks is a better hero than you’ll ever be,” you declare unflinchingly. Endeavor opens his mouth to respond but you continue before he can, “I think it’s best you leave him alone now. We have an evening to enjoy.” With that you grab Hawks’ hand and spin on your heel before marching off.

As you’re walking back to the table where Olivia and Mirko are waiting, the lights dim and one of the members of the HPSC takes to the stage. It only takes one quick glance at Hawks’ face to confirm this is the last thing he needs to sit and listen to right now. So you bypass the table entirely and keep moving. “Where are we going?” he asks as you drag him to the first emergency stairwell you spot. “The roof. It can’t be that many more flights up and you look like you could use some fresh air,” you explain.

It takes four more flights of stairs for the two of you to reach the roof and you’d had to pick the door lock to get out, but it’s worth it for the view. Lights twinkle in all directions as the entire city stretches out before the two of you. “It’s beautiful,” you gasp as you take it all in. “It is,” Keigo confirms, although there’s a sadness in his voice. He sits down on the concrete and stares out across the view and so you take a seat beside him. “What’s up?” you ask gently. It breaks your heart to see the way he merely shakes his head with watery eyes. “It’s just me Kei. The roof isn’t even supposed to be accesible, no one is gonna bother us up here. What’s wrong?” you insist. “I’ve spent my whole life trying to outrun my father and be something better. Only to find out that something better was the same thing in prettier packaging,” he admits. “You are nothing like Endeavor. I meant what I said inside.” “I want to believe you but how can I when that’s the model I’ve been striving for since I was a kid?”

You stop and think for a moment as you try to figure out how exactly to word this. “Remind me who was it that called out Endeavor for being number one hero and yet ranking considerably lower than you in popularity polls? It was right after All Might retired,” you respond. Keigo rolls his eyes, “It was me but-“ “That doesn’t sound like something a dedicated disciple of Endeavor would do to me. You’ve always been able to acknowledge the flaws in the system. You don’t give yourself nearly enough credit and I’m sure if you asked any of the heroes here tonight they’d agree. I would trust you with my life Kei. I’m serious,” you insist. “Fine, fine. You’re so dramatic,” Keigo laughs but you know him well enough to know when he’s deflecting.

You rise up from your position and casually move towards the edge of the roof, keeping your eyes trained on the city. “You really are an incredible hero,” you say into the chilly night. “So you keep saying,” Keigo laughs ruefully behind you. “Hey Keigo?” you ask as you step onto the edge of the roof and turn back to face him. “What?”

“Think fast.”

You step backwards and then you’re falling.

Author’s Note: First before I forget, shoutout to @oliviasslut for letting me use her oc Olivia for Mirko’s girlfriend. I was low key stuck on that so letting me swipe your oc was a huge help. Anyway, THIS GOT SO FAR AWAY FROM ME WOW. I didn’t think this would be where I ended the chapter but it felt right and opens the next part up for more details which hopefully will be a good thing lmao. I will mostly likely be releasing a SFW and NSFW version of the next part, hopefully I don’t fall behind schedule and can continue the daily updates through to the end 😅 we’re in the home stretch guys.

Taglist [open]: @cathy8taffy @katzurras @grumpyfroggies @captaincyberqueen @itskindofafairything @420-uwu @someweirdshitman @oliviasslut @the-adzukibean @a-fucking-sero-kinnie @ladyzayismultifandom @pixelwisp

[ask-them-bois]

Ancient Sounds 2/5

AS.pt1

Oliver took a deep, steadying breath, running his tongue over his lips as he waited. The chill of the ice rink slipped under his clothes and ghosted over his skin, making him shiver. He adjusted his stance, his bloodpumper thudding against his thoratic cage. He never felt blinder than when he was on the ice; the cold negated every scent, and at the moment the rink was dead quiet. His cane was sat on a bench outside the field.

Yet, with the anticipation turning his blood hot, he’d never felt more alive. The music started with a burst of fanfare over the speakers, and Oliver shot off across the ice. One moment he stood near the wall, the next he was gliding halfway across the rink. The music thrummed in his ears as he spun about and leaped like a ribbon dancer, coming down cleanly on a practiced, one-footed landing, only to bend back further than should be natural.

She laughed, unbridled glee shaking her apart as she threw her arms up, reaching for the invisible audience in the empty stands. She went with the momentum she’d built, flipping onto her hands. A twist, jump, and she was back on her feet, dashing forward and spinning. The music swelled as she reached behind herself and grabbed her leg.

She stopped in place and spun, spun, spun, one hand up, palm raised to the ceiling. As the music crashed into its climax she crouched and threw herself skyward once more, arms spread like she was flying, before she rolled forward into a flip and landed once more on her feet.

She couldn’t see it, but she could imagine her cape flowing out behind her, glimmering like fire as the warm colored glitter caught the spotlights. The gems and sequins on her uniform sparkled, setting her limbs aflame like the wings of a phoenix.

The music began to fade as they soared in circles, until the track stopped completely. They stopped, too, panting, and lit up at the scattered applause to their right.

“Well done, master Maddel, as always!” One of Oliver’s entourage called; the goldblood, from the sound of it. Oliver flashed her a charming smile and skated towards her voice, one hand out. Their fingers tapped the low wall around the rink and they grabbed it, coming to a stop.

“Thank you, darling, did you like that?” He purred, leaning his elbows on the wall.

“Yes, ma’am, that was spectacular.” Another troll chipped in.

“Thank you so much, my dear. It’s a little more basic than the dance I did earlier, but it won me a competition a few sweeps ago. Could one of you hand me a hydration cylinder, pretty please?” Oliver purred, her voice giggly and sweet. She heard a flurry of movement, then the cool metal of the soda can was pressed against her arm.

She took it with another sugary, “Thank you, darling!” and cracked the tab before taking a sip.

“When’s your next performance, master Maddel?” The goldblood asked.

“I’m afraid it won’t be for a while, my sweet, I’m all tied up in some other business at the moment.” Oliver told her forlornly, setting his soda down. “Speaking of, what time is it?”

“It’s just past midnight, sir.”

“Ah, then I’m afraid I need to get going, I’ve been practicing since the sun went down, and I have a video date with my precious morail I don’t want to be late for.”

“How will you video date if you can’t-” The goldblood began, only to be abruptly cut off; by the ‘smack’ sound, Oliver could guess someone had covered her mouth.

“Can’t see?” Oliver finished for her, before he chuckled, turning and skating for the nearby gate, “I don’t need eyes to hear my beloved’s words, do I?”

“N- no, ma’am, I suppose not.” The goldblood said meekly.

Oliver only chuckled again. The gate beeped, signaling he’d arrived next to it, and he pushed it open. Stepping out onto the rubbery ground, he carefully and somewhat awkwardly walked to the bench across from him. He sat, easily untying and removing the skates.

She flexed out her toes, relieved, and felt around. On the bench next to her laid her cane and purse, both of which she scooped up, along with her skates. “Good night, my loves!” She said cheerfully, shouldering her purse and headed for the locker rooms.

When they shouldered their way into their VIP locker room, they tapped their way towards the showers, stripping down as they went and dropping their purse and skates on a chair. A quick rinse, and they stepped out, grabbing a towel from the waiting pile.

He toweled off as he headed for his locker, scooping up his uniform as he went. He pressed his thumb to the scanner and it popped open, and Oliver traded their skates for their street clothes.

Binder, jumpsuit, cape, and white band were traded for bra, a band shirt, and skinny jeans. He tied an olive green band around his eyes before slipping a pair of pumps on his feet and brushing out his hair.

She sighed, relieved to be out of uniform, and pinched the collar of her shirt, pulling it up to her sniffnub and inhaling deeply. The shirt smelled like her morail’s cologne and detergent; probably because she’d stolen it from him. With a laugh, she grabbed her purse and cane and headed for the door again. She slipped out the rink’s front door, in time to hear the scuttlebuggy pull up.

“Good evening, master Maddel.” The driver said as they emerged from the buggy and walked around to open the door.

“Good evening, darling.” Oliver replied, hand out. The driver took his hand and helped him into the carriage, before shutting the door and walking back towards the front seats.

“Where to, sir?” The driver asked as they got in.

“Home.”

“Yes, sir.”

The scuttlebuggy started up and began to move, and Oliver opened his purse and dug out his palmhusk and a pair of earbuds. He slipped them into his ears and turned the screen on.

“Home screen.” The buds informed him, “Two new messages, four missed calls.” With practiced fingers, Oliver pulled up Trollian and pressed a button. The buds promptly began reading out the messages:

-HeavymetalMeowbeast began trolling SightlessFirebird!-

HM: HEY BABE!!!! HM: GUESS WHAT?!?! I FOUND SOMETHING I THINK YOURE GONNA LOVE!! MESSAGE ME BACK ASAP!! LOVE YOU!! <>

-HeavymetalMeowbeast is idle-

Oliver smiled softly, thumbing the speech-to-text option. They raised the palmhusk closer and began to speak.

SF: Hello, sugargrub~. What is it you want to tell me~?

They waited, and were not disappointed by the swift response, which the buds quickly read out:

HM: OKAY OKAY OKAY SO!!!! HM: YOU KNOW YOUR ANCESTOR, THE DEADSCAR DUDE?!?! FUCKING EPIC NAME BY THE WAY!!! ANYWAY, I DECIDED TO DO SOME DIGGING ABOUT MY OWN BLOODLINE AND YOULL NEVER FUCKING GUESS WHO MY ANCESTOR IS!!!!!!!

SF: Hmm~. You’re right, darling, I can’t guess~. Do tell, though~.

HM: HIS NAME IS DMITRI “THE HIEROPHANT” AKSHAI, AND HE WAS THE FUCKING FOUNDER OF THE BLACK HAND!!!!! HOW FLIP FUCKING COOL IS THAT?!?!?

SF: Very 7lip 7ucking cool~. Did you 7ind out anything else~?

Oliver smiled softly to herself; she knew her morail’s ancestry already, she’d just neglected to mention it to him. Why else would she have chosen him as a morail? As her second in command at the Black Hand? Well… that’s why she chose him at first, but he’d grown on her exponentially since then. Not that he needed to know that.

HM: YEAH I DID!! I FOUND SOME CONNECTIONS OF HIS!! GOOD NEWS FOR US, MOST OF THEM ARE ALREADY BACK!!! MAYBE WE CAN TALK TO THEM, SEE WHAT THEY KNOW??? OR, I GUESS YOUD HAVE TO, SINCE IM ON TOUR!! YOU DONT HAVE TO THO!!

SF: Well, it depends~. Who are his connections~?

HM: OKAY GET THIS!! I FOUND RECORDS OF NONE OTHER THAN HOUNDING, BLUEGILL, SOME GUY NAMED BRIGAN, A DUDE CALLED THE IMPERIAL ENFORCER, AND A DUDE NAMED BLADEPEN!!!! HOW FUCKING COOL OF A NAME IS THAT?!?! HM: ANYWAY, COULDNT FIND MUCH ON THE LAST TWO, THEY WERE BARELY MENTIONED IN THE RECORDS I FOUND!!! SOME KIND OF COVER UP??? NOT TOTALLY SURE!! HM: ANY OF THEM RING A DONGSHOUTER??

SF: Hm~… Yes, I believe several o7 those ring a dongshouter~. Well done, BB, I’ll dig around and see what I can 7ind~.

HM: OKAY!! WE STILL ON FOR DATE NIGHT LATER???

SF: Absolutely, my love~. <> You’ll see me in a 7ew hours~.

HM: LMAO, OKAY!!! PALE FOR YOU OLLY!! TTYL!! <>

-HeavymetalMeowbeast ceased trolling SightlessFirebird!-

Oliver purred, raising his head as he felt the scuttlebuggy come to a stop.

“We’re here, sir.” The driver said, parking the vehicle and getting out. Oliver nodded, gathering his things and getting out of the buggy with the driver’s help.

“Thank you, dear.” They told the driver, pressing a few bills into their hand before they tapped their way to their hivestem’s front doors.

He pulled a card from his purse and took a moment to locate the scanner, before pressing the card against it. The scanner beeped, and he heard the doors swish open in front of him. He headed for the vertical ascension box, thumbing the button.

His fingers drummed against the head of his cane as he waited, humming to himself. When the box pinged, signaling the doors had opened, he ducked inside. He felt for the panel and ran his fingers upwards, until he felt the correct number under his fingers and pressed it.

The doors shut, and the box began to rise. As she waited, Oliver clicked her tongue against the roof of her mouth, thinking. Finally, the ride ended, and the doors opened. Oliver stepped out, into her own hive.

Oliver’s hive was a vast, penthouse apartment near the top of the hivestem. From what he’d been told, it had a lovely view of the city on one side, and the mountains on the other. He had everything, from a large mealblock to a hot tub on the balcony, to an entire block converted into an aviary for his pets and lusus.

After dropping his purse on the loungeplank, he headed to the mealblock and dug leftovers out of his mealvault. Thin slices of sashimi, cooked just enough to sear a crust of spices along the edges, and a bowl of sugar-glazed scarabs.

Oliver hummed, carrying his dinner to his studio slash office, and set it down next to his husktop, which he boot up. Popping a scarab in his mouth, he picked up a small remote and clicked it. He heard a beep, and his audio-crate began playing music at a low volume; it was thundering, screeching heavy metal, with intense bass and drums. A moment later, Oliver’s morail’s voice started howling out lyrics.

Smiling to themself, Oliver heard their husktop beep to indicate it was on and ready. With the screen reader as a guide, they located the desktop Trollian and opened it.

-SightlessFirebird began trolling TheDecaying!-

SF: Hello, my lovely dear Brigan~! You do not know me, but I am a 7riend, in dire need of your assistance~. I need in7ormation~.

There was a pause, before the husktop pinged.

TD: Wh_ is Brigan?

Oliver frowned.

SF: You are, my dear~.

TD: I am wh_?

SF: You are Brigan~!

TD: I am?

Oliver sighed, beginning to wonder if this was a good idea.

SF: Yes, my love, and I want to know- have you ever heard of a man called the Hierophant~?

TD: Wh_ are y_u?

SF: I am a 7riend, as I said~. Do you know the Hierophant~?

There was another pause, much longer than the first. Oliver began to get concerned after several minutes ticked by; he’d nearly finished his plate of sashimi by the time his husktop pinged.

TD: I d_ n_t kn_w y_u. Th- magg_ts whisp-r y_u ar- n_t t_ b- trust-d. A blind bird dr-ss-d in flam-s will _nly b- c_nsum-d by what mak-s th-m pr-tty. Fir-s di- wh-n th-y ar- suff_cat-d. Th- Hi-r_phant fl-w _n wax wings, t__ cl_s- t_ th_ flint and st--l that lit y_ur f-ath-rs, and n_w h- burns.* *(I do not know you. The maggots whisper you are not to be trusted. A blind bird dressed in flames will only be consumed by what makes them pretty. Fires die when they are suffocated. The Hierophant flew on wax wings, too close to the flint and steel that lit your feathers, and now he burns.)

Oliver sat back, surprised, before he scowled.

SF: So you *did* know him~?

TD: Knew who?

Oliver took a deep breath, a frustrated growl rolling in her throat.

SF: Thank you for your help, Brigan~.

TD: G__dbye, Blind Ph_-nix.

-TheDecaying ceased trolling SightlessFirebird!-

-TheDecaying has blocked SightlessFirebird!-

That was a waste of time, Oliver thought bitterly, mentally scratching Brigan off their list. They tossed another sugar-scarab into their mouth and chewed on it ruefully, thinking.

“An evil god nestled somewhere in time, A bloody spider- no warnings, no signs. Judgement day and the rotten child arrives, Eventually, laid bare are his crimes.

The records went up in flames, no turning back, ‘Cause I just had to see, was the spider’s bite watching me? In the mist, the facts twist, and bones do snap, as I lay on your altar, bleeding, bleeding, bleeding.”

Oliver’s morail’s voice cut through their thoughts and they turned their head towards the radio, which was still playing one of their morail’s albums. Oliver knew that album; Spades of Revolution, their latest release.

“A bloody spider…” Oliver repeated aloud, tapping their claws on the desk, “And a rotten child…” A wicked smile crawled across their face and they turned back to the husktop.

Dismissing the failed conversation, Oliver pulled up a new chatroom.

-SightlessFirebird began trolling WacobaRanchOffical!-

SF: Hello, Mr. Bluegill~. My name is Oliver, and I am a huge 7an o7 your work~. I was wondering i7 I could ask you a 7ew questions~?

Oliver sat back and waited. Having cleared her bowl and plate, she picked them up and took them to the mealblock sink. She stopped by the aviary to feed her birds and lusus, giving them each a minute of attention- they’d get more later, before sunrise- before heading back to the office.

She tapped a button on the side of her mouse, but the screen reader only read back the message she’s sent. She frowned.

SF: Mr. Kappal~? Are you there~? I don’t mean to be a bother, my dear man, I’m just very curious about a 7ew things~.

Still, no response came. Oliver waited several minutes, which stretched onto hours. He went and showered, did his entire hair and skin treatment routine, and got changed into a comfy robe.

When he checked again, nothing, and the clock informed him it was nearly time for his video date with his morail. Nibbling on his lip, he sent a final message.

SF: Well, just get to me when you can, sir~! I hope to hear 7rom you soon~!

No response ever came.

Somewhere, far away, in a hive by the seaside, a husktop pinged three times over the span of several hours. Only one of the residents heard it.

But he couldn’t stop staring at the blood on his hands.

[ladyfogg]

May I? - 16/?

May I? - 16/?

Fic Summary: Ensign Faith Diaz struggles to hide her mental illness from her fellow shipmates aboard the Enterprise until an intrigued Data goes out of his way to try to understand her behavior. At his insistence, Faith tries to figure out what she’s truly passionate about and eventually seeks the professional help she needs. Fic Masterpost.

Fic Rating: NC-17

Pairing: Data/Female OC

Warnings: tw: depression, tw: anxiety, fluff, friends to lovers, eventual smut

Screenshot by @tinakolesnik​ 

Faith was distraught.

One minute she's curled up beside Data, falling asleep and the next she woke up groggy and disoriented in a strange room. 

It was a surprisingly nice room, with a large bed and all the furnishings of the guest room on a starship. Faith could see the blackness of space outside her window.

As her mind began to clear, she realized with a stab of fear that she was alone.

"Data? Data?!"

She tried to stand but her world spun and she fell back down onto the surprisingly comfortable bed. 

I've been drugged, she realized with a start. 

The after-effects were clear. Her brain felt like it was surrounded by fog and lifting even her hand was a chore.

"What is going on?" she asked herself, trying to remain upright. Even her words were slurred. 

She had to get out of there and find Data. He'd know what to do and more importantly, seeing him would let her know he was safe. She could feel the onset of an anxiety attack, but she pushed it down, repressed it because now was not the time.

The door to her room opened and a man marched in. He was clearly Zibalian and wore expensive-looking clothes, along with an expression of pure delight. He was shorter than her but held himself with such authority that she didn't realize it at first. 

"Hello there. Have a nice nap?" he asked, chuckling at his own joke.

"Who are you and where the hell am I?"

"My dear, I am the Kivas Fajo, at your service." He extended a bow her way as if waiting for recognition.

"Is that supposed to mean something?"

"I'm sure Mr. Data has spoken of me before."

Faith felt a sense of dread when he mentioned Data's name. "Can't say that he has."

Fajo paused. "Really? Not once."

"No." Faith forced herself to stand. "Where is he? What did you do to him?"

"Data is safe and sound, for the time being," Fajo said, folding his hands behind his back. 

"I don't believe you."

"Understandable. I figured you would need a visual."

He removed a remote from his pocket and pressed a button. The wall behind him changed into a view screen and Faith sighed with relief when she saw Data. He seemed unharmed and even turned towards the screen.

She couldn't hear him but the way his lips moved, she knew he had said her name. She made a move towards the screen when Fajo stopped her, throwing his arm around her waist and yanking her to his side.

"See? Completely unharmed. And both of you shall remain that way so long as Data does exactly what I ask of him."

Faith pushed Fajo away. "You have no idea what you've done! When Starfleet hears about this…"

Fajo groaned and waved his hand as he wandered away from her. "You sound just like Data the first time I collected him. Starfleet this and Starfleet that. Let me save you the trouble: they don't know where you are and aren't even looking for you. Neither of you is going anywhere."

"What do you want with us?"

"Nothing with you. Well, almost nothing. I didn't realize how important you could be."

She didn't like the way he sounded or his smirk. Her eyes went back to Data who watched them with his usual unreadable expression. Though his eyes tracked Fajo's movements. 

"See, Data and I have done this dance before. Since he failed to educate you, let me. I am a collector of rare, one-of-a-kind things. I tried to add Data to my collection three years ago and he managed to get me arrested. My collection was seized and I was thrown in prison."

His voice lost its amusement and his expression turned cold. When he looked back at her, there was anger in his eyes.

"Thankfully, it helps to have friends in high places. Well, one friend. I told Data that he would become part of my collection again and I've finally made that possible."

"How? I don't understand."

Fajo clapped. "That I am quite proud of. See while you were all busy searching the Enterprise for whatever was going on, you neglected to search the shuttles. My little friends were able to make some modifications to bring you to the right place at the right time. Then once the backup life supports kicked in, sleepy time for you. It was just lucky Data was powered down at the same time. Although, I've had a string of good luck lately."

"Friends? What friends?"

Fajo smirked and pressed a button on the comm panel on the wall. "Enter."

The doors open, an alien shuffled in carrying a tray. It was the same type of alien they had found aboard the Enterprise, though this one seemed more docile and subdued. 

"Faith, meet the Oz'ods. One of them at least. There are only a few left in existence. They were never really able to sustain their numbers and all but six perished. Their natural cloaking ability makes them hard to detect but I managed. And now, they serve me."

The Oz'od placed the tray of food down on a small table by the bed and remained there, waiting for further instruction.

"Thank you, that'll be all." Fajo waved them off.

The Oz'od shuffled out of the room.

"There's nothing impressive about keeping people as slaves," Faith said angrily. 

"Not slaves, servants. And sometimes trophies."

"Whatever you need to tell yourself so you can sleep at night."

"I sleep very well, thank you. Now, as I was saying, the Oz'ods are fantastic creatures. In exchange for their continued existence, they do as I say, including infiltrating the Federation's flagship. At first, it was purely to gather information and watch Data." Fajo paused his monologue to smile at Faith. "And then you came along. It was too perfect! I thought about trying to manipulate him into thinking you were working for me all along. But he's too smart for that. This way, I finally had a bargaining chip that would ensure Data did whatever I asked of him."

He began to circle her and Faith remained frozen, arms wrapped around herself. 

"So what? We've just supposed to do everything you say and stay here with you forever?"

Fajo smiled brightly. "Great, you get it."

"That's not going to happen. We're going to get out of here, with or without the Enterprise."

"I doubt Data would even try." Fajo got closer, reaching out to tug on her long braid. "Not if he wants to take care of you."

Anger welled in Faith and she couldn't contain it. The audacity of that man was overwhelming and she threw her elbow back, connecting squarely with his nose.

"Bold of you to assume I need to be taken care of," she snapped.

Fajo swore and drew out a phaser. The next thing she knew a searing pain ripped through her hip and she flew across the room, hitting the soft carpet before rolling into the wall. Through the pain, she lifted her head to stare at the view screen but it had been turned off.

Fajo wiped the blood from his nose, pointing the phaser at her again. "You get one of those," he growled. "Next time I won't be so lenient."

He left her there, curled in excruciating pain. 

Faith was in tears, both from emotion and the physical injury she now had. Every time she tried to move, it got worse and she fell back with a yell. It was like an electric heat coursing through her torso. Carefully, she peeled back the torn part of her jumpsuit to examine the wound. 

The second-degree burn made her panic return. All she could do was lay there hyperventilating. Try as she might, she couldn't take a deep breath, not until she shut her eyes and imagined Data was there with her, talking her through her attack as he had many times before.

The doors opened and the Oz'od from earlier shuffled back in with several items in their hands.

When they approached her, Faith tried to scramble away.

To her surprise, they spoke. Their voice was stilted and raspy, uncomfortable with English. "No harm. Help." 

He reached for her again and Faith fought her instinct to pull away. The Oz'od was surprisingly gentle as he placed a small bowl next to her along with a cloth bandage. In the bowl was a green paste which he began to apply to the burn.

It hurt at first but then it began to cool, easing the pain. Faith relaxed with a sigh, face streaked with tears.

"T-Thank you," she croaked.

"Me Soshi."

"I'm Faith."

He finished putting the paste on then sealed it with a bandage. "Fajo fine if you no fight."

"Fajo needs a fucking dose of reality," Faith said, smoothing her torn jumpsuit over the bandage. "How long have you guys been with him?"

"Two years. We would die alone."

"Starfleet can help you. And you wouldn't have to serve anyone."

Soshi hesitated, looking around as if they were afraid Fajo was watching. Faith wondered if he was somehow. "We like Fajo. Fajo protect Oz'ods."

Faith made a move to stand and Soshi helped her. "It's not protection, it's exploitation." It was a painful trek across the room back to the bed. When she finally made it, she eased herself down, wincing as her hip ached.

Soshi gathered their first aid supplies. "Eat food. Soshi made. Good and fresh."

They then left her alone. Faith poked at the tray but didn't feel even remotely hungry. She had no idea how she could escape her room or get to Data. She doubted she'd be able to overpower Fajo again. But Data could. She imagined he hadn't to spare her any pain from their captor.

If I could just get to him…

After her little stunt, that would probably be impossible.

Faith laid down on her uninjured side, watching the stars outside her window. If he really wanted Data for his collection, he wouldn't do anything to him. She had to believe that. The only thing she could think to do was nothing.

Literally, nothing. She wasn't going to eat anything they brought her and if Fajo came in, she wouldn't even look at him, let alone talk to him.

Eventually, she dozed off. 

It was a long time before anyone came to see her again. Soshi brought her another meal to replace the one she hadn't touched but did not say anything. When they replaced that meal as well, they spoke up.

"Faith must eat."

"I'm not eating anything."

"No like food? Want other food?"

"Fajo can force me to stay here but that's it. I'm not eating or drinking. He thinks I'm a bargaining chip, fine! Good luck trying to get Data to do what he wants if something happens to me."

Soshi looked scared and hurried out of the room. She suspected they had to report back to Fajo. She hoped he wouldn't take it out on them.

After the fifth untouched meal, Fajo stomped into her room. "Why must you both make this so difficult?" he asked, hands on his hips like a petulant child.

Faith could see his reflection in the window. She did not answer.

"I know you're not asleep. Answer me! What's wrong with you?"

Her only response was silence. 

"Oh for goodness sake!" Fajo moved to the other side of the bed, snapping his fingers to get her attention. "Earth to the human!"

She flipped him the bird.

"Oh, that's nice. Very lady-like." He softened his tone. "Come on, eat something. Pretty please?"

She turned her back on him. Fajo huffed and walked around the other side of the bed again. "You two are so damn difficult!"

"Because you're keeping us against our will, you jag!"

He reached for his phaser and despite herself, she flinched. "Watch it," he warned.

"How do I even know Data is okay?" she asked, heart aching for the android. She had been so worried about him. "You showed me one image and nothing else. For all I know I'm all alone here."

Fajo took a deep breath as if to recollect himself. "Lucky for you, I'm a merciful man." He walked over to the door and opened it.

To her relief, Data entered. He wore a hideous purple jumpsuit which obviously wasn't by choice. Regardless, when she saw him, Faith felt her body release its tension. She forced herself out of bed, stumbling as they hurried to embrace. 

"Thank the stars you're alright!" she said.

"I am fine. Are you?"

"I am now."

Data looked at Fajo. "May we have privacy?"

Fajo put his hands up as he backed out of the room. "Five minutes. We have that dinner with the Vangar delegates and we have to go over talking points."

Data nodded in understanding. As soon as Fajo left Faith asked, "You're going along with him?"

"For now," Data said, stroking her cheek. "I do not wish for him to hurt you again. Striking him was not a smart idea."

"I know. But it felt really good."

He gave her a small smile before hugging her once more. "Please do not attempt to harm him again. He has a personal force field activated that will harm you significantly. I suspect he did not think he would need to use it around you."

"His mistake. I take it that's why you haven't overpowered him."

"You are correct. Why will you not eat?"

"Passive resistance."

"Please eat. You will need your strength if we are to plan our escape."

"Data, how the hell are we going to get out of here?"

"I do not know yet. But I will find a way. In the meantime, do not underestimate Fajo. He will not hesitate to harm or kill. I have seen him do both."

A shiver ran down Faith's spine and she suddenly realized how lucky she had been to only receive a blaster to the hip.

"I'm scared," she admitted. "I'm trying to be a brave Starfleet officer but deep down I'm terrified."

Data cupped her face. "I will not let harm come to you. I will do as he says in the hope he leaves you be. However, I do not know if Fajo will allow another meeting between us. He only allowed this one when I negotiated for it."

"Kiss me then. I need to feel your lips."

He did, deeply. Faith kissed him back, not knowing when or even if she'd see him again. She couldn't bear to let him go.

"Alright, alright, break it up." Fajo's voice ruined the moment. "You'll decrease his value."

Faith glared at him but Data's hand fell to her lower back which calmed her down.

"Actually, Fajo, I believe Faith would only enhance my image to your friends."

Both of them looked at him in confusion. Though, Fajo looked entirely too interested in the notion. "How so?"

"I am the only sentient android in the galaxy. I possess no emotions and yet have found myself a romantic partner," Data explained. "I believe some would find that interesting."

Faith suddenly realized what Data was doing. He was trying to devise a way to satisfy Fajo's weird fixation while also keeping Faith close and extend their time together. 

She loathed the thought of having to sit through a dinner with rich creepy people she didn't know. But if it meant she could remain at Data's side, she'd bite her tongue and force a smile.

Fajo pointed at Data. "I see what you're trying to do," he said. "Oh, I forgot how clever you could be." He pondered Data's suggestion, looking Faith up and down. Finally, he clapped excitedly. "This will be so much better! Yes! Let's get your little girlfriend all gussied up for dinner. You two are going to make a splash!" He went to the door and waved Data over. "Come, Data. Let's go find something for her to wear while she washes up. She clearly needs it."

Faith took an angry step towards Fajo but Data held her back. 

"Perhaps I should stay to ensure she is made aware of her expectations," he suggested.

Fajo's smile faded. "I am being very generous, all things considered. Do not test me."

She could sense Data's disappointment but he didn't seem to want to push his luck. Not after seeing how Fajo hurt her so easily. 

"Very well," he said.

Fajo was delighted. "Had I known you would be so agreeable this way I would have kidnapped someone close to you the first time! Now, when we meet with the delegates, remember to tell them how we first met…"

Data followed him out of the room, casting Faith a reassuring nod before the doors closed. 

Thrown by the turn of events, she shuffled over the end of the room which had a partition for privacy. Behind it was a toilet, sink, and tiny shower stall that she could barely fit into. She turned the shower on and tested the water. Thankfully it was hot.

She peeled her torn clothes and bandage off before stepping into the stall. The water felt wonderful and she washed hours worth of sweat and tears away. The paste on her wound washed off as well, leaving smooth, fresh skin with no burn in sight. Her hip still ached however and probably would for a while.

Once she had washed up, Faith stepped out and wrapped a towel around herself. 

There was nothing for her to change into yet so she tried to comb her hair out with her fingers as she waited.

By the time they came back, her hair had dried into its natural thick waves. 

"Wear this," Fajo ordered, handing her a folded gown of deep purple. It complimented the jumpsuit Data wore except it was made of soft silk. 

Faith stepped behind the partition again and slipped into the dress. It was far too tight and showed too much skin for her liking. Her cleavage was on full display and the skirt's slit went almost to her thigh.

The shoes were worse. God awful heels that hurt her feet. She'd rather be barefoot. But she had to play her part just as Data played his.

When she stepped back out, Data's eyes went wide. He seemed to eye her with appreciation which did make her feel a little better. Only a little.

"Marvelous, breathtaking," Fajo said. "You clean up well. Data was sure you'd protest showing so much skin but we want to really wow everyone. Come come, give us a spin."

Faith clenched her jaw and spun in a slow circle. 

"Wonderful. Now, we mustn't keep our guests waiting for too long. Data remembers quite clearly what happened the last time he failed to entertain my friends. Come along you two." Fajo made a move to leave before turning back. "Oh, and if you could smile, Faith, you'd look so much prettier."

If Faith could rip out his throat she would. 

She slid her arm around Data's as they followed Fajo out of her room. "Imma kill him. I swear," she muttered so softly only he could hear it.

Data leaned in close. "Starfleet officers do not condone homicide."

"This one does."

Data sighed, bringing his free hand up to rest over hers. "Faith…"

"I know, I know. I was kidding. Mostly."

"No whispering you two!" Fajo barked over his shoulder. 

The halls of the ship were more standard than Faith expected. Clearly, Fajo liked the finer things in life. She expected his ship to reflect as much. But it seemed to be made more for function than comfort.

They arrived at the dining hall and he led them in with a bright smile.

"Kornok, Dulcer, Enil! My friends!" he greeted the three slender looking aliens with comically large round eyes and squared heads.

"Fajo!" The shortest of the three, Kornok, said as he approached the other man. "It has been far too long!"

Data and Faith hung back as Fajo made his greetings and small talk. The Vangar kept looking at them with interest until the female Dulcer pushed past Fajo and approached.

"Now what have we here?" she asked, circling the couple.

"My dear friends, meet the first in my new collection," Fajo said proudly. "Lieutenant Commander Data, the first and only sentient android in existence."

"Fascinating!" Kornok exclaimed and Dulcer continued her scrutiny. 

"Hello," Data said dutifully. "It is a pleasure to meet you all."

"My, how well he speaks!" Dulcer exclaimed. 

Faith clutched Data's arms tighter when she realized Enil was staring at her in an almost leering way.

"And the girl?" Enil asked.

"Oh, you'll get a kick out of this," Fajo said. "Faith is Mr. Data's girlfriend."

The Vangar began whispering excitedly in another language and suddenly all three were circling Faith and Data with rapt attention.

"A girlfriend? The android has a girlfriend?"

"Fascinating! But he doesn't have emotions! How does that work?"

"Is there an intimate nature to the relationship?"

Faith was already hating everything about the situation. The last question was asked by Enil and made Data speak up.

"That question is inappropriate," he said. "I do not mind answering questions that do not pertain to the intimacy of my relationship with Faith."

You tell him, babe, Faith thought to herself.

"Modesty! I love it!" Kornok laughed. 

Fajo laughed as well. "Come now, let's eat! We can discuss more over food. I'm sure you're all ravenous."

The three wandered away from the couple, firing all sorts of questions at Fajo as they took their seats.

"This is going to suck," Faith muttered as she and Data followed.

"Yes. Yes it will."

[gally-hin-phantom]

Tutorial/Step-by-step/Tips

I’m not a pro nor my art is perfect But if you are interested or just curious by my coloring process and way to think

Step-By-Step and several tips bellow with my last “Maddie & Danny motherly love” drawing :)

(warning: bad English because i’m not a native) (warning 2: i’m an art nerd so when I begin don’t know when to shut my big mouth, so very very long post and quite messy)

xxx

I use Procreate, but this could work with most software like Photoshop/Paint tool Sai/Clip Studio maybe Krita too Some tips could also be use in traditional arts

Basic knowledge needed: color theory (warm|cold, saturated|desaturated), one digital software Step 1: Sketch Tips: Don’t be shy to try different compositions first and choose the best idea, at first I wanted to draw Danny viewed from above and Maddie looking at the sky hiding the gory parts but it’s didn’t work well, sometimes simplicity is more efficient Tips: Maddie is here right in the middle, looking at the spectator, this composition in general is bad/uninteresting because the dynamic is weak, and the feeling it’s strange and unsetting But it’s very efficient in horror and spooky stuffs where this feeling is wanted (like in the famous “Shinning” ‘s scene with the twins sisters), it’s uncanny I could have draw Maddie very straight and symmetrical to really insist on this unsetting feeling (something way too perfect to be true), but I wanted her to be sultry (like in the song), not looking "death inside" The square format help to insist on this strange feeling too

Tips: Composition is all about contrast, here Maddie is standing up and is build with curvy line of actions, in contrary of Danny who is lying down, and their bodies joined in a cross shape I planned to draw her very cleaned and mocking while a gory scene is behind, I abandoned the « guts out » idea because it was too just distracting, we should see Maddie first and not what on the table Tips: A quick way to check big anatomy problems is to flip your canvas with horizontal/mirror flip, on traditional medium you could flip your paper on a sunny window or a lightbox

Step 2: Lineart Tips: I planned to do a very dark ambiance with little lights, so with my lineart I added heavy/dark shadow on Maddie’s hair, clothes, and the table I don’t recommend it for light or pastel scene

Tips: Often in art, people talk about line weight, but something effective I find is to use thicker (green) line where the shadow will be, and thinner (red) where the light will be

Tips: Avoid joints and interference We tend to do that naturally, but better be conscious of it If your lines are crossing more that 2 times (here on Maddie’s sleeves) or barely touching (Danny’s shoes) the line could be odd and heavy, try to do this as little as possible

Step 3: Base colors Tips: I already have a Maddie’s palette, but here I really want to give this drawing a cold feeling, so I desaturated her hair and her skin which were warm colors, for her jumpsuit  and eyes to really pop out Danny is hidden in the back and is a “furniture” so his colors are very dark, almost blending with the table

Tips: The lineart is painted in dark blue and parts hidden by the black part of her jumpsuit are painted in turquoise

Step 4: Shadows Tips: I use a new layer for the shadows often on multiply but not always (play with your layers modes to find your wanted effect), please try to not use black because nothing in real life is pure black Here I used a dark green shadow, for a cold feeling, if your drawing is warmer use a warmer tone like red or orange You could add a secondary more saturated shadows inside the main shadow, but hey I'm lazy Dark red shadow

Dark green shadow

Light pink shadow (pastel vibes...)

Step 5: Light Tips: Similar to the shadow try to not use pure white and play with the modes, here I use a cold turquoise light A warm light like yellow/orange/red will give a total different feeling My tips for really making light pop is select shadow layer>invert>fill with light color>mask or clipping mask to set it on the subject>change the layer mode Red light

Turquoise Light

Pink Light

Step 6: Additional contrast Tips: The most important in a drawing are eyes/faces/hands/gestures/light People are naturally attracted to eyes and face, and light It’s one of the reason why I didn’t draw Danny’s eyes (even closed) Gesture and hands give life to a drawing, hands are like a second face so don’t neglect its Tips: I just add a dark layer between Maddie and Danny to make her pop even more, the viewer should see her eyes first and Danny after, like a bad surprise

Step 7: Additional effects Tips: I just play here with layers modes, hue, and general shadows until I have what I wanted Tips: It’s always interesting to give your drawing some texture, a paper-like texture is very common To give is a shaking effect I use here a noise layer (black layer>noise max>overlay mode>blur if necessary

Step ?: Composition - Silhouette Tips: To create strong characters in character design with unique body shape and body languages, professionals fill all the characters in black If a composition is strong, being all black should be enough to understand who this character is, and the story you want to tell Illustrations don’t go as far as characters design art where we really try to make one single character to shine, but this could be useful to check if every elements/characters is interesting enough

Step ?: Lights - Black and white desaturation Tips: Colors are a combination hue, saturation and light To check the lights, I use a black layer set on hue mode on top of my drawing to desaturated it all, and hide/open this layer regularly This way I could check if the lights are right, if not I adjust the layers (colors, shadows or lights layers) The lights are good when the drawing is self explanatory in B&W, when the parts aren’t blending together in weird way, and when the drawing converts the same feelings as it’s were in colors Bad, her face and Hair are blending together, and her jumpsuit and her belt too

Better

Step ?: Let it’s matured Tips: I always let my drawing several days before posting it on socials medias This way if I’m too tired after finish it, the days after with cleaned eyes I could spot errors easier and corrected its before it’s too late Furthermore you always make progress unconsciously each day by simply living and observing For example I let this drawing 3 days before posting it, but maybe I should have wait 1 week...

Final words: As I said, I’m not a pro, it’s just some useful tips I learned in my art journey and from experience, none of this is « rules » and I don’t use all of these each times (sometimes I forget some tips, sometimes I’m just lazy and don’t want to put too much though on it)

Try, experiment, breaks rules, and be curious Sorry for the big post, like I said I’m an art nerd and I never know when to shut my mouth Hope it could help and have fun \( ^ ▽ ^ )/

Bonus: Step-by-Step gif

[bellatrixobsessed1]

Femslash February day 23

Prompt: Glass Fandom: Voltron Pair: Acxa/Allura Summary: Cinderella AU with Acxa as Cinderella and Allura as the prince.  

Once upon a time in space a baby was born. A baby of half blood; one part human and one part Galran. The babe had delicate skin of a soft blue hue and a sweep of hair the color of sapphire. She peers at her parents with eyes as soft blue as her skin. Regardless of blood, the babe grew up loved and cherished. The child loved watching the stars twinkle and blink and would often sit under them with something to read. The child grew up kind and caring with a mother who was just as so.

It wasn’t until the child turned thirteen that her life seemed to shatter. For their house nestled in a hidden corner of Daibazaal had been found. For the crime of marrying a human and birthing a halfblood, the child’s mother was killed.

Only after serving ‘justice’ did the crowd leave. In their wake was left a grieving husband and a timid child. The man thought that he wouldn’t know happiness again. Desperate was he, enough to fall for a cruel, cold Galra woman who had no love for a lowly half-breed. In his anguish, the man was blind to the mistreatment of his daughter.

The man was a trader and as such he was prone to travel for extended periods of time. During his travels, his daughter grew lovelier still. She was small for a Galra but it suited her well. At thirteen years, her horns had grown in, elegant and cut like polished obsidian. Mostly they were buried under waist long locks of deep blue. Her eyes were as warm and kind as her complexion was cool. For it, her stepmother and sisters hated her twice over. When the girl’s father was gone, the last scraps of false kindness fell away. They dressed the girl in rags and exposed her to various cruelties and neglect.

Mostly, they made a slave of the girl. They shut her away from the stars that she loved so, confining her to the dark and dusty underbelly of their home where the life and hope in her eyes diminished. And where her health deteriorated.

It became a pass time for the eldest sister to fling one of her opulent rings or ornate necklaces into a particularly large pile of comet cinders and have the girl sift through them to find it. So she was nicknamed Cometcinder.

More often than not, her complexion was blotted out by splotches of comet dust. “You should thank her, Cometcinder, she helps you cover your halfbree’s skin.” Says her step mother.

But Cometcinder feels no such gratitude.

On a night where the cosmos were particularly spectacular, Cometcinder could bear no more. The constellations were enticing, beckoning her outside. So she answered their call. In the cool night air, her heart fluttered with the joy of finally having a serene night, free of demands and demeaning words.

The best night of her life was followed by the worst. For her misdeed of skipping chores could not go unpunished. Her step mother dragged her by the hair into the house where her step sisters waited, sneering. “Maybe we should make her sleep outside.” The youngest suggests. “Since she likes it out there so much.” That night, they took a pair of scissors to her long locks, chopping away at them until her hair was fashioned into a scraggly and uneven bob.

They kicked at her and spat on her and stole the compass from her pocket. She’d fought furiously to keep her cherished item--the one thing that truly belonged to her--but they had pried it from her fingers. They crushed it before her eyes, so taking from her, the last thing she had of her mother.

But they did not take without giving. That night they gave her the news that her father’s craft had been blasted by the ray of a weeblum.

Even still, the kindness didn’t flee her soul. Though terribly shrouded in sorrow and reduced to finding companionship with space mice, she maintained generosity and patience.

Days turned to weeks and weeks into months, before news came of a gala. A supposedly flashy ball to celebrate the auroras and the birthday of the young princess Allura.

Meek and quietly, the girl inquired if she could attend. “Looking like that?” her mother sneered.

“You can dress me nicely and…”

“You’ll embarrass us.” The younger daughter commented.

Cometcinder swallowed, her belly tingling with heartache and yearning. Just this one night, she only wants this one night. As her step family departed, their space pods the girl hugged her knees to her chest and fought back tears.

If only to occupy her mind, she took to polishing the houses metallic floors and upkeeping and managing the data on the house’s computer.

With most housetasks aside, the girl wandered out to view the night sky. It must have been an hour before a voice like an electrical hum sounded in her ear. “You’re going to be late.” It commented.

The girl tilted her head and tried to find the source.

“Over here.”

She turned to face the computer. It had taken to projecting a hologram. An image of a small, iridescent orb that flashed softly and occasionally shifted color. “I have run through various simulations of realities and have decided that it is most optimal that you meet the princess Allura.” The robotic voice declared. The orb drifted nearer and Cometcinder took a reflexive step back.

“I’m mean only to help. I will make sure that you will impress.” The orb made its staticy promise. It hovered over to a dressing pod. “Step in please.”  

Reluctantly she does so. The machine whirred to life a soft green light scanned her up and down, taking in her measurements before producing an outfit for her. Replacing the rags was a slee one piece suit of midnight blue latex, outlined in vivid neon blue. She barely had time to appreciate it before the orb said, “now let's do something about this.”  In a series of zippy motions, the orb singed off locks of her hair until it fell evenly. The orb halted before shedding small beads of electric blue light. It fixed them into her hair and accented her horns with them. At the ends of her hair they dangled like glow-worm threads. It completed her look by placing a glass helm over  her head.

Satisfied and having completed its task it buzzed, “follow me.”

The girl nodded and allowed it to lead her down the hall to where her family stored their spare parts and discarded devices and machines. “Do you prefer a V-style craft or would you like a more classic spherical model?”

“Something simple.” Cometcinder answered.

The orb grew in size and flitted about, moving pieces and parts until an elegant black craft shaped like a jagged triangle sat before her. “I implore you to enjoy your ball. But my power has its limits.” The orb paused. “The system will glitch and shut down at precisely midnight. For an optimal ending, I advise that you leave before then.”

The Galra stroked the craft’s steering wheel, still skeptical of its reality. She smiled to herself; she will meet the Altaen princess after all.

.oOo.

The ballroom was nothing like she had ever seen. Vast and made of black titanium, UV veins of purple streaked the walls and ceiling. The floor glimmered and sparkled with chips of amethyst. She saw all manners of dress from simple one piece jumpsuits like her own to elaborate gowns with glowing hems and tall collars lined with LED lights. Hues popped and flashed from all ends of the color spectrum.

But most eye catching of all was the princess herself. She stood in a tiered white gown. Each layer had a ring of magenta light outlining it, creating glowing halos on the layers below. Her hair was fashioned in an updo adorned with various crystals in shades of violet and pink.

For as much as Cometcinder was compelled to strike up conversation, she couldn’t bring herself. It had been years since she’d spoken to anyone save for a space mouse and she feared for her social competence and mannerisms. All in all, the setting and its extravagance overwhelmed her.

She met the princess’ eyes and she flushed. The noise in the room seemed to swell as Allura broke away from Cometcinder’s eldest sister. She found herself shaky with nerves and her nerves whisk her abruptly away from the jubilant chaos of the ballroom.

Palms still shaking, she sat beneath the silently enchanting bursts of the auroras. She wished that she weren’t so terribly shy.

“Hey!” A voice greeted. “I was hoping to catch you!”

Cometcinder took to staring intensely at the back of her hands.

“I’ve never seen you at any of my balls before.”

“I don’t get out much.” She confessed. An understatement, considering that she hadn’t been beyond her yard in several years.

Allura laughed. “Well, welcome to the outside world! You picked a great time to see it.” She gestured to the sky and its drifting, dancing splendor.

“I’m more taken by you than the auroras.” Cometcinder admitted.

Allura smiled. “You have a name?”

She nodded. “I am Acxa.” It was weird on her lips, for it was the first time she had said her name since her mother died. Somehow, saying it made her feel less like an object.

:”That’s a pretty name.”

“Not as pretty as Allura.”

This time the princess blushes. “Hey, you’ve never gone to a ball before, does that mean that you’ve never danced?”

Acxa’s face grew hotter still. “I have not.” she confirmed.

“Can I teach you?”

“Yes please..” She paused. “Can we dance out here, away from everyone?” It would certainly make her feel less nervous.

“Dancing under the lights does sound nice.” Allura nodded. The princess walked her through the steps of The Weeblum’s Waltz and The Daibazaal Ditty.

As she did so she told Acxa of the bustling spacecraft travel center and of her favorite places to stray to when running a kingdom become too heavy a burden. In turn, Acxa spoke of her father’s ventures as a tradesman and of the cute space mice.

“Oh! You’ll have to show me one day.” The princess gushed. The way her eyes lit up almost caused Acdxa to forget the orb’s warning.

“I would love to show you them.” Acxa said as the half hour bell chimed.

“Can I?” Allura asked, her fingers traced over Acxa’s glass helm.

Acxa didn’t know what she was asking until she began lifting the helm. Acxxa curled her fingers around her slender wrists. The bell chimed again and that tiem Acxa jerked and sprung to her feet. Her sudden movement caused the glass helm to fall to the floor. She heard it crack but she had no time to be embarrassed, much less to mourn the semi-shatter of her beautiful helmet. She didn’t stop to pick it up.

“Wait!” Allura’s calls grew distant as she sought out her craft. “I’m sorry! I thought that you wouldn’t mind.”

Acxa’s mind spun, through her jumbled thoughts, she felt horrible for departing so hastily and without explanation. She couldn’t even say why she was so eager to get home when there had been a perfect chance to find freedom from it and from her tormentors. She took a moment of pause, considering letting the system shut down. But she couldn’t imagine that Allura would be captured by her scruffy and unkempt appearance. She wished that she hadn’t looked back. Allura stood in the vacant spot where Acxa’s craft had been, with her head hanging low.

By the time she made it home she was in rags again and her craft crumbled into trinkets and spare parts. There was no glamor in that house. It was empty and silent.

.oOo.

“She is smitten with you.” Acxa’s stepmother says to her eldest daughter. “You are going to be a royal”

It was all Acxa hard in the next several days.

“She’s smitten with a stranger.” The youngest scowled.

“Who abandoned her.” The stepmother reassured. “I can’t imagine she still has any love for the stranger.

Acxa’s eyes burned with tears for her lost opportunity and chance at love. Confined to her room for disopadiance and negligence of her duties, she was only able to get snippets of rumors regarding her rude departure. From them, she assumed that the princess must not think fondly of her anymore.

She thought it cruel that she had been given a taste of freedom, at what life could have been, only to have it so rudely yanked away from her.

“The princess is trying to find the stranger.” The youngest informed glumly.

“Then your sister shall try on the helm and insist that it is hers.

Acxa bunched her fists.

“She should be here soon, so get yourself ready, Ethnor.” Ethnor nodded. “Dress yourself well.” She turned to Acxa. “And you keep out of sight. We can’t have anything unsightly just prancing about.” Her demand came just shy of a knock at the door. The Galra woman cursed. “Stick to the kitchen she hissed. “And keep your ugly, half-breed mouth shut.”

Acxa sighed. “As you wish, mother. The word sat ill on her tongue.

The girl made her way to the kitchen as the door opened.

“Good evening princess!” Her stepmother greeted her with a false sweetness. It sickened and unsettled Acxa. She yearned to scowl and out the woman for the beast she was. And what was stopping her? Decidedly, she was a coward.

“Oh thank you, princess! I didn’t think that I’d find it again!” Ethnor exclaimed. She could practically see her fitting the helm over her bulbous head. A moment’s pause. Following it was a forced and gritted toothed, “I can’t get it on.”

“She is not my love.” Allura declared.

A warm tingle of hope swelled in Acxa’s chest.

“Give her a moment.” Her step mother hissed. And then, “are you sure that that’s not your sister’s? Give Ragna her helm back.”

Acxa couldn’t hold back a small snicker as she listened to the girl struggle. Her embarrassing predicament gave Acxa just enough courage to step forward. She lingered in the doorway fighting her brain for words. They didn’t come so she only stood there dumbly.

“Who is that?” Allura asks.

“Oh that’s just Cinder.” Ragna dismissed. “Our servant.”

Acxa bit her lip. “It’s a pleasure to see you again.” She said at last.

“Again?” Her step mother asked.

Acxa nodded and reached for the cracked helm. “May I?”

“Please.” Allura said as her stepmother cried, “absolutely not.”

Acxa closed her eyes and pulled the helm over her head.

Allura looked as cheery as her step family looked outraged. But that time they had no power to act on their simmering wrath. Acxa stepped forward and wrapped her arms around the small princess, taking comfort in her warmth. “I apologize for leaving so abruptly, I had to make it back home before they did.”

Allura nods. “It’s alright. But a goodbye would be nice next time.”

“If you will…” She stammered. “If you will have me back at the castle, you won't’ have to worry about a next time.”

[trans-son-of-perdition]

Why I relate the Trench album to my own personal life and struggles.

A couple things before I begin. I am aware the true meaning of this album relates to Tyler Josephs career and struggles with mental health. However, art is subjective. It’s meant to be interpreted however you want. I’m not trying to invalidate his experiences, this is just how the album helped me and how I related to it in a way that made it important to my life and my coping with realizations I had around the time Trench was being teased and released. This post is not meant to attack a specific faith, however given my own opinions and viewpoints this post could be uncomfortable for current believing members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. If you are uncomfortable with exmormon viewpoints, this might not be the post for you, and I would like it if you didn’t try to force your views onto me as a result of this post. I will also give warnings for abuse mentions, cult mentions, mentions of suicidal thoughts, and mentions of transphobia. 

In this post, I’ll go through each song in the album and explain what it relates to in my life. I’ll also go into the lore of Trench and how I relate to the Clancy letters, as well as explaining why my icon and blog banner are what they are.

If you have not heard this album, I recommend it entirely. And even if you have, I recommend listening along to this post. You do not need to be a fan of Twenty One Pilots or the album to read this, however, and you do not need to understand the deeper lore or know about the Clancy letters to read this post.

With that being said, this will be a long post, so I’ll put the rest under a read more. 

Let me begin by briefly introducing myself. I am a 22, nearly 23 year old Exmormon who was born and raised in the church near the heart of Salt Lake City, Utah. I was a devout member of this church until I was 15, which was when little things started to not make sense anymore. This was when I was shown that it was okay to feel differently about my gender and sexuality, when I started to realize there were words to describe why I felt so weird about the concept of being a girl, etc. In a lot of ways, 15 was when my faith started slipping. There are journal entries from then where I’m crying about how I didnt want to feel the way I did, it was kind of the usual young mormon kid has a crisis over their sexuality and gender and tries to pray about it over and over but nothing changes. I even had a moment at 17 where I found a place to hide where my family wouldnt hear me and prayed for about an hour because I was questioning if the church even was true. I got no answer to this.

By the time I was 18, I no longer attended church. I still called myself mormon, and was actually kind of an apologist for years. It was only early last year that I started realizing something didn’t seem right, which was what led to a very long beliefs crisis and eventually me formally resigning from the church. It was also the year that repressed memories finally started to surface, and the true extent to which I had been abused and neglected started to show. Near the end of 2018, one of my best friends helped me escape Utah and get far away from my family, and currently I am living happily in Arizona far from the church’s influence.

Now enter the Trench album.

Instantly, when the Jumpsuit video was first released, something felt comforting about it. And every song since has been extremely comforting to me because of how I have related it to my life. Here is how each song ((and even the videos and extra lore)) have helped me and have related to my life as a secret exmormon who felt trapped in Utah.

Jumpsuit

This song actually came out just as I was questioning the church and realizing some things that were very long. With every little thing I found that was wrong, it was like my life crumbled a little more. I’ll admit, the “spirits in my room” lines I took much more literally, having lived in a very haunted house in a very haunted part of Utah, but the lines “Felt it in my youth, feel it when I’m old” also felt like a reassurance to me that the doubts and feelings I had in highschool when I was just beginning to question myself and my life were valid. Like they weren’t just a passing phase, this was something that had been going on my whole life. And then we have the bridge. 

I'll be right there But you'll have to grab my throat and lift me in the air If you need anyone, I'll stop my plans But you'll have to tie me down and then break both my hands If you need anyone

My life up to this point had been manipulated by those around me. My parents controlled my actions, I sat there and let them abuse and disrespect me. If any of them needed anything, I jumped to help. This had spread into my other relationships as I felt the need to be there for everyone, be the personal therapist to everyone, try to fix the emotions and problems of everyone I knew because my family had made me think thats what I needed to do. Like in the video, I was very much stuck under the spell of the “smearing” of the bishops. My family knew how to manipulate my emotions into feeling like I was in the wrong, like I inevitably had to love them and follow them no matter what. Which was why the “Cover me!” screamed at the end makes my heart beat faster. In his “Cover me!” I felt my heart scream it too. I couldn’t out loud, because my family would have yelled at me and made my life hell, but I could scream inwardly with him. I could feel myself running from the bishops with him. That song felt more joyous, more releasing, and more moving to me than an LDS Hymn had in years. Even as I’m writing this, the “Cover me!” makes me feel deep and strong emotions that at one point I would have called “the spirit” or “the holy ghost” and its stronger than any feeling I attributed to those things from talks or lessons in the church.

Levitate 

This song actually gave me courage to be more openly myself again. To stand up for myself and look for other options. To admit that the way my life had been was fucked up and that there were better things out there. The line referencing Car Radio was cool to me, because Car Radio was a big song for my depression and dysphoria. I wont go into it too far, since I’m focusing on Trench music, but I’ve always taken Car Radio as a good way to describe how I felt about my life, the world, and my own dysphoria and struggles with suicidal thoughts. And so having this song tied to rebellion against how my life had always been reference another song that had helped me with coping was so encouraging to me and honestly really cool!

This culture is a poacher of overexposure, not today Don't feed me to the vultures, I am a vulture who feeds on pain.  

I mean. Come on. I lived in Utah. Utah culture is oversaturated in the church. Its in the politics, in the laws, in the tv shows and on the radio. There’s a ward building everywhere you go. You cant do anything without seeing it somewhere, at least not in big cities ((or at least not living as close to downtown Salt Lake City as I did.)) Admitting to being exmormon while there felt like I was risking being separated from the rest of society. While this isn’t entirely true, I grew up seeing how my family treated exmos. The way they treated them like poor misguided souls that would eventually have their “sins come crashing down on them and turn their hearts back to the church”. 

The next few lines are kinda self explanatory. “Sleep in a well-lit room, don't let the shadow through,” both refers to the whole “haunted house” thing I mentioned ((a story I wont go into here tbh)) as well as me using my room as the one place I could hide and be more myself, discuss the things I believed and thought. “And sever all I knew, yeah, sever all I thought” has to do with the slow realizations of the lies I had been taught by the church my whole life. The next few lines refer to what sounds like him asking for help to keep away from the ledges, which both feels like my reaching out to online friends for support both to reassure me that I wasn’t crazy as well as their help in keeping me away from my increasing suicidal thoughts.

The video actually felt like my chosen family in general, them getting me away from these ideas and worries I had had burned into my brain at a young age, pulling me out of this DEMA and into their Trench, where we all could support each other and help each other realize that the false things of our past didnt have to shape our futures for us. And much like Tyler, I was still struggling with my parents pulling me back in by tugging at my emotions, making me feel guilty for my rebellion.

Morph

Lets be honest, in order to explain this one I need to post the whole song. It feels like a mixture of my beliefs crisis and dealing with an abusive and transphobic family, to be honest. 

Can't stop thinking about if and when I die For now I see that "if" and "when" are truly different cries For "if" is purely panic and "when" is solemn sorrow And one invades today while the other spies tomorrow We're surrounded and we're hounded There's no "above", or "under", or "around" it For "above" is blind belief and "under" is sword to sleeve And "around" is scientific miracle, let's pick "above" and see For if and when we go "above", the question still remains Are we still in love and is it possible we feel the same? And that's when going "under" starts to take my wonder But until that time, I'll try to sing this

Here we have my crisis, where I was doubting my own doubts and wondering if I was wrong and truly destined to end up in a lower kingdom away from my family and if I was sinning. It led to a fear of death, a fear of the end of the world, a fear of anything related to it because what if the mormons were right? Honestly, this is an ongoing thing that causes panic attacks to this day, and this song is where I turn to when these doubts happen.

If I keep moving, they won't know I'll morph to someone else What they throw at me's too slow I'll morph to someone else I'm just a ghost I'll morph to someone else Defense mechanism mode

A lot of people in the transgender community have brought up that this is a really relateable few lines. I’d like to add on top of it being about my gender, it also can relate to how I spent years pretending to be someone else in front of a lot of people ((and still am to some extent, I’m working on that.)) in order to keep myself safe.

He'll always try to stop me, that Nicholas Bourbaki He's got no friends close but those who know him most know He goes by Nico, he told me I'm a copy When I'd hear him mock me that's almost stopped me

This part I actually relate to my younger brother, who is almost violently abusive towards me and who I have had not only threaten harm to me, but have had mock me and tell me that nobody truly cared about or loved me, along with much worse things that were so intense and awful that when my sister ((the only family member I truly trust)) heard it and told our parents what happened, they were legitimately worried about me knowing about my suicidal thoughts and were bugging me the entire time I was at work and while I walked home to make sure I was safe and okay. My brother is a horrible person, and I honestly am afraid for whoever ends up marrying him based on his treatment of everyone else in our family. My sister and I have even shared our concerns with each other that he could one day lash out and hurt/kill one of us. Hes one of the biggest reasons I and her hurried to leave the state as fast as we could.

Well we're surrounded and we're hounded There's no above or a secret door What are we here for? If not to run straight through all our tormentors? But until that time I'll try and sing this

This again relates to my family, along with the opinions of the church towards transgender and gay people. I don’t think I need to go into what the LDS church thinks of us. 

The final part of the song, to me at least, feels like the loneliness of my situation, and wanting someone to be open with in real life that would understand where I was coming from. It also is about my reaching out online when I couldn’t find support in person.

My Blood

I actually don’t need to go into this too deeply. My whole chosen family relates to this song, and so hearing it reminds me of them. This song is how we are to each other and how we feel about each other. Pretty straightforward. Especially since this song likely is about Tyler’s brother, so the fact we all consider each other brothers and sisters works with this.

Chlorine 

Another straightforward one. It kinda feels like I’m singing this to the people of my past. My family especially, but also the friends that were part of why I hid so much about myself. They were toxic, but I made myself stay near them out of love. And as I “decayed”, the feeling of rebellion started to grow more until I found myself running for my life away from them all. 

I'm so sorry, I forgot you Let me catch you up to speed I've been tested like the ends of A weathered flag that's by the sea Can you build my house with pieces? I'm just a chemical 

This final part is more towards myself, however. How I forgot the true me, how I’ve been broken and hurt by these people, and how I need to finally build my life up again away from them all.

Smithereens

Another one that makes me think of my chosen family, and makes me think of my best friend who helped me escape Utah. I’m not a violent person, I actually consider myself a pacifist. But if someone threatened my loved ones I’d do everything I could to stop them.

Neon Gravestones

Yeah, I had to get to this one eventually. This song hit me hard the first time I heard it. If you haven’t heard any songs from this album at all, THIS IS THE ONE YOU SHOULD HEAR. It speaks very bluntly about how fucked up the media’s portrayal of suicide is, among other issues around that theme. Its beautiful in my opinion. 

Obviously yes, as someone who struggles with suicidal thoughts, this song obviously does resonate with me. But this is where I’ll go into the deeper lore for a moment.

In the world of Trench it’s been mentioned that the Neon Gravestones are one of the big symbols of Vialism- the religion in DEMA that is a religion that worships false light. In Vialism, those who have died in the name of Vialism are revered, respected, and glorified. Now look at the church. How many people have had their hardships and deaths be romanticized by the church? How often have I heard people say that if you die in the name of the church, you will be exalted? How many LGBTQ+ youth in Utah have killed themselves because they think that its better to die before they have sinned? How often growing up has the “Martyrdom” of Joseph Smith been romanticized and used to show how committed to the church he was? For hell’s sake there’s a song WRITTEN ABOUT HIM saying that he now will be glorified for eternity because he died for the church! He’s held with more respect than even Jesus in the church! I could go on for hours about how I feel about the way the church treats death and how fucked up it is that there have even been cases you can find online where people have been told it would be better that they killed themselves than be gay or be an apostate. I’ll get more into the Neon Gravestones symbolism later when I reach the Clancy letters. 

The Hype

Yet another song about reaching out for support and community as I was realizing the truth about the church. I also had a huge falling out with a close friend around the time the album released, so having this song to cope with it helped too. It feels like the acceptance of the fact I was slowly getting out of brainwashing and programming I’d had since I was an infant, and though I didn’t know where I was going in life anymore, I knew that I would have the people I trusted there with me every step of the way as I became a normal member of society and began a new, better life. 

A lot of songs in this album seem to be very chosen family oriented. This one just feels like a reminder to myself that I’ll be okay.

Nico and the Niners

This one is a little obvious. But i’ll go through it regardless. 

East is up, I'm fearless when I hear this on the low East is up, I'm careless when I wear my rebel clothes East is up, when Bishops come together they will know that Dema don't control us, Dema don't control East is up

This song was released at the same time as Jumpsuit, and honestly some of the same things apply. I realized how much this really fit my life at the time as I was working on getting out. How the literal bishops and leaders of the church as well as the figurative “bishops” of my life were who I was rebelling against. DEMA is a something I have actively called Utah ((mostly Salt Lake City and all other areas in the main valley)) before, for reasons from it literally being a city surrounded in huge walls((both the mountains as well as figurative walls)) that circled around a main central part ((Temple square)) where the bishops resided and performed rituals in the name of Vialism. The next lines mention that they, the bishops, want you to make you forget. They want you to be docile. To conform to them. Follow their rules and laws and teachings without questioning. Ignore and forget the things they don’t say in the moment are truth. In the video, Tyler is seen quietly preparing to escape, hiding in his room as yet another ritual is performed elsewhere in the city. He sneaks out of his dark room, where he meets the Banditos. He seems hesitant and scared at first, but they calm him down and welcome him.

What I say when I want to be enough What a beautiful day for making a break for it We'll find a way to pay for it Maybe from all the money we made, razorblade stores Rent a race horse and force a sponsor And start a concert, a complete diversion Start a mob and you can be quite certain We'll win but not everyone will get out

During this part, Tyler is loudly rebelling in the center of a courtyard, where all the people hiding and silently judging the Banditos from their windows can see and hear them. He sings about escaping and finding ways to prepare to run away, escaping the walls of DEMA and the watchful eyes of the bishops and those devoted to them. It’s after this that his friends, the Banditos, help him escape into the night from DEMA before he can be caught by the bishops, but leaving a trace behind to hopefully inspire the children still growing up and learning inside DEMA.

I compare my chosen family to the Banditos a lot, something that will become clear when we get to a song later on. My open rebellion, being myself and leaving the church, leaving Utah and the judgmental eyes of those still devoted to the church and their teachings... This is what the song is to me. I’ll win, I’ll escape, I will do what I can to inspire my younger brothers and sister to follow me out when they can. I’ll do what I can to help anyone still stuck in their DEMA, but in the end I had to leave. I had to listen to my chosen family and run. I had to get out of those walls before the metaphorical bishops of my life, my family, dragged me back down again into them and broke me further. In that way, Nico and the Niners is both the presidency of the church, but its also my parents. 

Cut my Lip

This one actually speaks to how I used to be, letting myself be abused and mistreated. The cycle of trying to escape but being dragged back in. Knowing I was being hurt but letting my programming and the thought that I had to love my family no matter what hurt me over and over. But though I’m bruised, I’ll keep moving.

Bandito

This is the big chosen family song. We have called ourselves Banditos a lot. I personally consider myself a Bandito. 

This is the sound we make When in between two places Where we used to bleed And where our blood needs to be

We are all in Trench right now, to various extents. I am mostly out of my DEMA, having physically left it but still dealing with the mental battles and the pulls from the “bishops” to return. Other members of my chosen family are dealing with abuse, neglect, trauma, mental illnesses, isolation, etc. We all have our own DEMA to escape, and we all do what we can to pull each other back into Trench and support each other as a family. 

In city, I feel my spirit is contained Like neon inside the glass, they form my brain

In Utah I felt trapped. Confined by what I could and could not say around my family because I was afraid of what would happen if they knew some of the things about me. About my opinions of the church. I had realized my brain had been manipulated and formed into what the church wanted, and I was starting to break free of it.

But I recently discovered it's a heatless fire Like nicknames they give themselves to uninspire

The opinions of my family and the church have begun to feel less important and the thought of rebelling against this has become easier and I have become more confidant in my beliefs. 

Begin with bullet, now add fire to the proof But I'm still not sure if fear's a rival or close relative to truth Either way it helps to hear these words bounce off of you The softest echo could be enough for me to make it through

I’m still afraid though, and I still have doubts pop up. And until I can fully break free of the brainwashing I was subject to for 21 years of my life, I’ll still have those doubts and fears. But hearing my chosen family reassure me and validate those feelings I have about the church helps me get past it and grow as a person.

As far as Sahlo Folina? We use it in my chosen family. When we see each other say it, we hurry to support each other and pull each other back from the personal bishops we have. For those who don’t know, Sahlo Folina in the lore is the call the Banditos cry out when they are stuck alone in Trench and need help. It doesn’t have a canon meaning otherwise, but many people have given it the meaning of the joy or act of creating. And my chosen family and I use this phrase to warn each other of panic attacks, or of dysphoria, or of a moment when we just need a little validation. This song is so important to us, and is one of the most beautiful songs on the album in my opinion. If you haven’t heard it, take a look at imabandi.to, its an interactive music video for the song that explains some of the deeper lore of Trench and is in general visually stunning.

Pet Cheetah

Honestly this is really just a bop, but its good for when I feel angry. Not just even at the church, in general its a good anger song because of how intense it feels. It also speaks to the isolation I felt, how I tried to calm myself down from my doubts for the longest time. It helps that the song kinda has a “Fuck it” moment halfway through.

I'm done with tip-toeing, I'll stay in my room My house is the one where the vultures are perched on the roof

The song then expresses the fear of losing everything, but its too late now. The anxiety is raising again, but I’ll do what I can to relax and keep going. 

Legend

This song actually makes me cry, because it reminds me of my grandparents. They were the two I was closer to than my own parents, and I was destroyed by their deaths. Even though I still feel them with me, I deeply miss them and I was scared for so long that I would never be able see them again because according to the church, I would have not been allowed to be near them again for eternity. “I look forward to having lunch with you again.” is the line that has made me break down crying before, because I know that no matter what happens, it’ll be okay. I wont go into my current beliefs here, but I know that my grandparents love me and that no matter what I’ll still get to see them again one day. 

Leave the City

And now that i’m crying from legend, let me personally sob for a moment about Leave the City, because this song is what I played as I finally left Utah. On my main blog, the title comes from this song. 

I'm tired Of tending to this fire I've used up all I've collected I have singed my hands It's glowing Embers barely showing Proof of life in the shadows Dancing on my plans  They know that it's almost They know that it's almost over 

This song expresses how I felt from my depression, the doubts, the abuse, the ongoing crisis as I realized more and more how much I had been lied to. I was being reassured by my chosen family and my other friends that it would be alright, that I’d get away and life would be better. Now that I’ve been out of that state for several months I can say they were 100% right, but while in the moment I was drained and tired and just wanted to be free. And the knowledge that one day I would leave was what kept me going and kept me alive.

But this year Though I'm far from home In TRENCH I'm not alone These faces facing me They know What I mean

Again, this feels like my chosen family, my Banditos. My real family, the people I trust most. The know who I am. They know where i’m coming from. And though I’m far from my end goals in life, and I’m still here in Trench, I am not alone. I have them with me, and for now that is what matters. 

Now, onto the lore and Clancy letters. Because honestly my relating to this doesn’t just stop at the music.

The following are quotes from the many “Clancy letters” that have come out sine the album was being teased.

Note 1:

As a child, I looked upon Dema with wonder, today, I am wrought with frustration, as I spend each day squinting for a glimpse of the top of the looming wall that has kept us here. It was upon my ninth year that I learned that Dema wasn’t my home. This village, after all of this time, was my trap. 

Before I became realized, I had deep affection for Dema. There was a wonderful structure to the city that put my cares to rest. Streets and locations were dependable, and the responsibilities of the day seemed to be accomplished with minimal effort. Once a task was taught and understood, we delighted in our ability to complete our obligations timely, and felt secure in knowing tomorrow's duties would be accomplished with the same efficiency. We all worked to represent our bishop with honor, and knew that each inhabitant of our region had a like-minded dedication to consistency.

Note 2:

To refer to Dema as my home has never felt accurate. Dema, to me, has simply been the place that I’ve existed, or, the 'slot' they've put me in. I've heard stories about the idea of "home," and its depiction has always seemed warm from the storyteller's description. There was a romantic ownership of the place they inhabited that I admired, but could never relate to.

Note 3:

Am I the only one who realizes that we've been lied to? Am I the only one not afraid of the notion that the nine have hijacked our trust, and extinguished the hope that once motivated our existence? We used to close our eyes and picture a better life, now this city is full of dry eyes caught in a trance of obedience, devoid of any trace of an identity.......My hope of something more is all I have in this rigid tomb, and I will not let it die.

I wanted to quote the fifth note, but the whole thing feels relatable to me as someone who left Utah. So here is the full letter:

I've made it out. I feel weightless. I know that place had always held me down, but for the first time, I can feel the unity that I had hoped for. It's been three nights now, and my breathing has changed - it's slower, and more full. It's like the air out here is actually worth taking in. I can see it back in the distance, and I'd be lying if I said that it wasn't constantly on my mind. I wish I could turn that fear off, but maybe the further I go, the less that fear will affect me. I feel betrayed by what I assumed was home. If I ever end up back there, I won't be able to look at it the same way. They are asleep. They're so sure that they know the truth, and carry on throughout their day with the same meaningless tasks. They've forgotten to look up, and to look outward, to understand that this isn't about 'in there.' This is about 'out here.' This new world surrounds me. I used to think the walls back home were massive- these green cliffs engulf me, and place me right in the middle- Trench is quite precarious at times, and it's easy to grow weary. But it's real, and it's true, and I'd much rather endure reality than to mindlessly be obedient to a life that someone else created for me. I've obsessed about this world for so long, that it feels more like home than anything I've experienced. Somehow, in this vast openness, I feel more protected than ever. The landscape feels endless, and I've found myself walking for hours without any true evidence of getting further down. But I've seen plants and colors out here that I'm not sure I've witnessed before. There's a beauty in the strangest places,- and the curiosity of what's next continues to motivate me. I wonder who else is out here. If what i assumed inside is true, there's got to be more like me. Sometimes I'll feel a presence, only to look up and see nothing. It's just another thing that I'm afraid of that also excites me. It all just confirms all of the things that I hoped to be true for all of this time. I am out here and I am very alive. I'm sometimes scared, but always discovering something new, and I will not stop. Cover me!

I’m not going to go into why these relate, it should be clear from my explanations of the songs why I can relate to these letters. If you are exmormon yourself, you might understand already anyway. 

Now finally, I’ll go into the letters in the site that I mentioned earlier, imabandi.to. These are actually where my blog icon and banner come from.

Remember when I explained Vialism? One of the notes goes further into it. 

The text reads “The necropolis glorifies the early graves of those who lost themselves along the way. Let us overthrow this concept as a symbol of dedication to and celebration of life.” and is accompanied by a caption that reads: 

STEADFAST IN OUR REBELLION AGAINST THE TEACHINGS OF VIALISM, WE TURN THEIR FALSE DOCTRINE UPON ITS HEAD. PROTECTED MORE THAN EVER, THE DOUBLE BARS ARE A SYMBOL OF LIFE AND HOPE. 

Overturning the symbol of false doctrine in order to celebrate the concept of life and being alive. This is what I want to do. Life should be enjoyed and celebrated and not controlled and given up for false teachings.

The icon for this blog is the Vulture symbol of the banditos. It comes from this note:

It reads: “The fear and pain shall not be elements that stop us, but what feeds us to persevere. The vultures above are our symbol of turning death to life.” And its caption reads:

WE ARE VULTURES. THE VULTURE SEES BOTH WORLDS, DEVOURING DEATH. A SYMBOL OF OUR RESPONSIBILITY TO TURN DEATH INTO LIFE. MAY WE LEARN FROM WHAT WE'VE LOST, AND COMMIT TO LIVING.

So another symbol of committing to being alive and to life itself. It is to me a symbol of rebellion against the things I was taught and becoming my own, free person.

Finally, the banner I use on my blog. 

This one I have compared to being an apostate. The caption reads: 

THOSE WHO SEE CORRUPTION INSIDE THE LIES OF DEMA FEEL A RESPONSIBILITY TO GET OUT, AND ATTEMPTED ESCAPE SHOULD BE HONORED. MANY ARE PUNISHED WITH THE FAILED PERIMETER ESCAPE BADGE, BUT WEAR IT PROUDLY. IT IS THEIR SYMBOL OF THE BANDITØ UNDERGROUND — THE FEW, THE PROUD, AND THE EMOTIONAL. 

The label apostate is used often by people in religions as a label meant to shame, but we use it proudly. There are posts I have even seen about how “Apostate” means freed slave, and how it is a thing to be proud of. Much like how the note above says: “ We shall call our label of delinquince by a new name. This is who we are, and let us never be ashamed by the penalty placed upon us by false authorities.” I’m not ashamed to call myself an apostate anymore. I feared it at one point, but now I embrace it. It is what I am. I am freed, I am openly defying and rebelling against the false teachings of my childhood. And seeing this note was what solidified me relating this album and its lore to my life entirely. In my opinion, I escaped my DEMA. I saw the outside of the walls and was helped by those around me to escape them and find true freedom beyond them, in Trench. And although it will be a long time before I am truly free from the trauma and leftover programming that happened to me while I was in the LDS church, I have those around me who will reassure me and support me and let me know that I am never alone.

Anyway. I’m finally at the end of the post. Thank you for reading this. Cover me!

[antiquechampagne]

Beastly Kingdom - Chapter 2 - It’s a Date

Stepping through, Nate was surrounded by raiders. All of them watched him like jackals waiting to pounce. The hairs on the back of his neck prickled with an immediate sense of danger, the only thing holding them back from tearing him apart stood before him, climbing out of her massive power armor.

“Gage, take this back to Fizztop, will ya?”

Gage eyed the outsider suspiciously. “Are you sure boss?”

“Did I stutter?” She leaned in a bit closer to him. “Besides…you’re the only one I trust not to scratch the paint!” As she strode towards the exit, she glanced back at Nate. This was the first chance he really had to take a good look at the ghoul. She still had some of her blond hair left, but most has either been lost to ghoulification or shaved off. What was left lay in a long strip down the center of her head, The ends dyed blood red. She wore a bright red and white Nuka-World jumpsuit with “Maintenance” embroidered in black on the chest. “You coming? You might not want to stray too far… These guys tend to misbehave when someone isn’t watching them too closely.”

Emerging into a wide-open courtyard, a strange wave of nostalgia passed over Nate. He had always wanted to bring Shaun here someday, back before the war tore his carefully crafted future away. Even after all these centuries, the sight of the once grand of the theme park remained inspiring. Blinking lights, cartoonish colors and happy painted smiles were plastered everywhere, decaying and perverted by years of neglect and vandalism. Slaves scuttled back and forth, dressed in rags and wearing heavy metal collars, the explosives strapped to their necks were blinking dangerously.

A woman with a metal mask made of metal straps skipped up to the Nate’s side.

“He sure is a pretty one, isn’t he?” She pinched Nate’s cheek, a creepily affectionate gesture from a stranger. Her sweet thick southern accent a perplexing and seemingly out of place in this den of killers.

“Dixie, hun, can you go and make sure Cappy’s Corner is cleared out. I need a nice quiet place to talk to our guest.”

“Sure thing.” She swung an arm around Nate’s neck, causing him to defensively stiffen. Dixie leaned in close and half whispered into his ear. “The Boss must be sweet on you, getting the star treatment and all… don’t go raising no cane while I’m off. You won’t live long enough to regret it.” Through his vault suit, he felt the tip of sharp weapon press lightly against his ribs to drive her point home. She whistled cheerfully as she skipped off.

“She’s such a peach.” Liz smirked, her sinewy lips drawing dryly against each other.

“I’m sure…” Nate was less than enthralled with the woman. He watched the shuttered vendor stalls and defunct parlor games, catching movement here and there out of the corner of his eye.

Liz noticed his diverted attention. “Yeah, don’t think for a moment you aren’t being watched.”

“Is that why you haven’t taken away my other side arm?” He retorted.

Liz nodded. “And your pair of boot knives either. I’m more concerned about that shiny Pip-boy on your wrist. Luckily, I’ve set up an interference shield around the whole park. You aren’t calling for back-up any time soon, General.”

Nate tried to mask his surprise at this new information by being suitably impressed by her tactical forethought. He wasn’t expecting to be cut off so completely from any form of rescue. He started recalculating as they walked.

Just then, something foul wafted through the air, wrinkling Nate’s nose. It reminded Nate of the stink from the zoo during the hot hazy summer days of his youth. They walk passed a bright red arch, the plywood reinforced façade adorned with wildly colored animals spray-painted haphazardly. Several similarly bizarrely dressed raiders lounged out front, barking and baying at him. They sported eye-searing neon clothes, trussed up with helmets and amour crafted to resemble various animals. The whole effect reminded Nate of the animals found on a toddler’s birthday cake.

The Overboss inclined her head slightly towards Nate, quietly instructing him that too much direct eye contact would be seen as a challenge to a Pack member. Nate took the hint, and tried to look straight ahead until they reached the aforementioned Cappy’s Café.

Dixie stood outside, leisurely leaning against one of the red tiled columns holding up the crumbling entrance, drinking a Nuka-Cola Orange.

“Everyone’s skedaddled, Boss.”

“Make sure there are no one interrupts us, hun.” Liz instructed.

Dixie nodded as the continued to drain her soda. Liz held the door open for Nate to head inside. Sure as Dixie said, the small café-turned-bar was empty. Liz sat, straddling the only chair at her chosen table, forcing Nate to scramble to find one of his own. He returned to see her studying him coolly over a blue glowing bottle Nuka-Quantum. A plain Nuka-Cola was on the table opposite her.

Slowly she put the bottle down as he sat. “So… prove to me that you are really the Nate I knew from all those years ago, and not some clever fake.”

“Sit and deliver, eh?” Nate straightened his shoulders. “Your full name is Elizabeth Rosa. You lived across the street from Nora and I. Your husband died and left you alone with your son, Louis. I helped you figure out the tricky timing on that old cherry red Corvega convertible you were restoring with him.” He narrowed his eyes a bit. “Shame you killed Codsworth. I remember you really liking the lemonade he used to serve at the summer block parties.”

Liz sat back and huffed. “You shouldn’t get so attached to things. Lemons haven’t existed for centuries now. But here you are… playing army-men again. But it is you.” Her eternally bloodshot green eyes locked onto his. “How?”

Nate shifted uncomfortably in his seat. He hadn’t prepared for this kind of interrogation. “Surely you’ve heard of the kind of stuff Vault-Tek pulled, right?” Liz nodded. Vaut-Tek’s ‘scientific’ fuckery with their resident’s lives was well known. “Well, Vault 111 was no different… only we were treated to a deep freeze treatment. They kept us on ice, cryogenically frozen, like a freezer full of frozen TV-diners.”

“So, where is the rest of the old neighborhood popsicles?”

“Dead.” Nate said flatly. “There was a malfunction. I was the only one who ever walked out of there.” Nate steeled his mind as it raced across the painful memories of waking up from cryo-sleep. She didn’t need to know there had been one other person to make it to the outside world… that his infant son Shaun had been ripped from his dead wife’s arms by Institute agents as he watched helplessly trapped in a pod. Liz also didn’t need to know that Shaun had grown up to become the leader of the same morally corrupt organization, which he had taken down a year before.

Liz read the discomfort on his face and softened a bit at the thought of Nora and Shaun. She had known them, after all. “I’m sorry to hear that… for what it is worth. War doesn’t give two shits about family.” Liz hid a distant look by downing the rest of her soda. She thumped the empty bottle down on the table.

“Now… down to brass tacks, shall we?” She focused on the man before her. “What exactly are you proposing? Why exactly would I help the Minute Men, of all people, take on the Brotherhood of Steel?”

“Because they threaten Nuka-World the same way they threaten the rest of the Commonwealth. There is a ton of pre-war tech here, whispers of unique military robots and weapon systems. Some of the traders talk of the buildings here being powered by a functional power plant. News like that makes the rounds. From the little bit I have seen so far, it looks like there might even be more.” Nate leaned his elbows on the table. “And we all know how the Brotherhood feels about those they deem degenerates. They wouldn’t think twice about stomping out a nest of raiders scum and their zombie leader.”

Liz narrowed her eyes. She lowered her voice. “I wouldn’t say the z-word around here… it makes Dixie… extra stabby.” Nate had a feeling it wasn’t Dixie she was talking about.

Liz sat back. “We can handle ourselves just fine if they bring the fight to us. What makes you think we need you?”

Nate continued. “Two reasons. First, I think you underestimate the breadth of firepower the Brotherhood has. With the Institute destroyed, they are setting their sights on the rest of the Commonwealth. It’s not just zealots in power armor wielding Gatling lasers you’ll have to worry about. Remember those news leaks before the bombs, about the government developing a giant robot?”

Liz furrowed her pocked brow, digging through her buried memories. “The one that was supposed to be in the liberation of Anchorage? There wasn’t any evidence of it’s existence, I thought.”

“I infiltrated the Brotherhood for a while… they have it. Transported the thing in pieces from Washington. Nothing is going in the Commonwealth is going to be able to stop it once it is fully operational.”

The Overboss sat silently, looking unconvinced. Inoperable prewar abandoned robots were too farfetched of a problem for her to worry about.

“Secondly, you’ve tipped your hand trying to get a foothold in the Commonwealth. Threatening farms. Trying to set up outposts. My bet is you don’t have enough food to feed your growing ‘family’ here.” Nate sat back and crossed his arms. “How has that been going for you?”

That rankled her, Nate could tell from the way she ground her teeth. He was happy he remember her tell from when they used to play cards at the Able’s place, back when she had skin. He knew exactly how well her attempts as expansion were going… the Minutemen beating them back at every turn, defending the settlers they tried to put the squeeze on and caravan routes they tried to ambush.

“But… if we came to some kind of agreement. One where your raiders stays put, inside the bounds of Nuka-World, and help push the Brotherhood out of the Commonwealth.”

“That’s your pitch? We get nothing out of that deal. No dice.” She idly played with a bottle cap with her fingers.

“Let me finish. Help us with the Brotherhood, stay in Nuka-World… and I can make sure your little slice of paradise is supplied with plenty of food. Enough that you won’t ever need to stick your nose out of your rosy red gates.”

“And you think we are just going to sit here with our thumbs up our asses, eating your food and getting fat?”

“No, but I can open up avenues to you that you would never be able to access before… things like chem trade routes that can have you rolling in caps and, with the Gunners gutted, enough blood to keep the throngs happy. You already have a small trade system in place. With the right help you can build upon it!”

Liz laughed, her hoarse voice echoing off the empty café walls. “You gotta be fucking crazy, thinking you can get these guys to go legit.” She banged her fist on the table.

Nate coolly doubled down. “I’m not. You are. You are if you want this little experiment here to survive. I’ve learned a thing or two about keeping a growing population afloat… what you have here, all these people, this isn’t sustainable. You know it’s not. That’s why you have been trying to grow beyond your borders.”

An uncomfortable silence passed between them as they locked gazes across the table. A table that seemed excessively small at that moment.

The standoff broke as the door creaked open. The Overboss had to stop herself from rolling her eyes as she saw who it was.

“Fuck off, Gage. Didn’t you get the memo? I’m busy.” Liz growled, not taking her eyes off Nate.

“I know Boss. I just wanted to let you know Damion’s gang is back.” Liz turned her head to half-face him. “They bagged her.”

[teddickjesse-blog]

How to cosplay captain marvel with cosplay costumes

If you love cosplay, you understand that it's a mix of words costume and also play. The participants, referred to as cosplayers, dress up as their favorite characters. With this, cosplaying becomes more than a pastime. If you take a look at various other's costumes, you will realize the quantity of time and effort they put in to achieve the best appearance. Whether you're attending the Comic Convention or Halloween, you ought to consider inspiration as very early as feasible. If you want to duplicate the most up to date design, you must think about the lately presented Marvel hero, cosplay costumes for women. You know whom Nick Fierceness as well as Agent Maria Hillside called for assistance prior to they transformed right into dust if you're a Marvel fan. They signaled for help by sending a symbol from his pager-- a gold eight-pointed start on a gold red stripe with a splitting red and blue history. You already know whom they requested help-- Captain Marvel. You need to know that Brie Larson will be playing Captain Marvel. It launches in March 2019. In the comics, her name is Carol Danvers, an Air Force pilot that was provided part of her powers from the original Captain Marvel. With Captain Marvel's appearance and costume, she might be as significant as DC Comics' Wonder Woman. The very best means to cosplay captain marvel with the assists of costumes Blue one-piece suit Most superhero costumes begin with a simple item-- heaven long-sleeve one-piece suit. Ensure the jumpsuit is stretchy sufficient for you to walk around in comfort. The blue one-piece suit is necessary because it will act as the base piece which you will certainly build your Captain Marvel costume. Red boots Captain Marvel wear shades of blue and red with gold accents. Like the majority of superheroes, her footwear is a traditional red boot having a flat bottom. Though there is no assurance that the lengthy red boots can stand up with the cool, they will include panache to your Captain Marvel cosplay costume. Red gloves Do not neglect the red handwear covers. When trying to find more affordable as well as more functional red handwear covers, you can think about PVC red gloves. These handwear covers will certainly help your character stand out. Red belt If you intend to include details, you ought to look for a red holster. This is where Captain Marvel keeps her tools. Check out my web page: Simcosplay If you can not discover one, you can wear a large red belt, which resembles a holster but cheaper than the actual holster. Eight-point celebrity Captain Marvel has this most recognizable symbol, which she always wears. The eight-pointed star is additionally known to appear in several customs from Islam to Chinese. For these traditions, the eight-pointed celebrity symbolizes life from birth to death. If you can find one that is already offered, it's better. You can think about sewing it unto the facility top of the blue jumpsuit if you can not locate one. When wearing a Captain Marvel cosplay costume, constantly remember that you're the most effective hero in the lineup-- about to save deep space.

[septic-dr-schneep]

Do you have any more ego sickfics?

Well, I suppose it’s time to throw my three-chaptered sickfic out here!

JSE Fanfiction - Heal Thyself (Chapter 1)

Summary: Jack has been going nonstop lately and has made himself sick. Whenever that happens, all of his Egos share the side effects. Dr. Schneeplestein has been working as relentlessly as their creator, trying to nurse all of the others back to health. He's been completely neglecting himself, however, and a certain Glitch threatens to take advantage of that.

“Bro, you look ravaged,” Chase had announced this morning, as open and honest as ever, as soon as he laid eyes on his doctor. Schneeplestein had, of course, blown off the concern, but now he genuinely wished he hadn’t.

The truth was that he felt as “ravaged” as he looked. Thanks to a series of mistakes, excruciating stubbornness, and a nasty bout of the flu, Schneep had spent four days now without sleep and he was certainly starting to feel it.

Sleep is for the weak, he reminded himself of Jack’s motto as his hands shook and cold coffee sloshed over the rim of his mug. Sleep is for the weak…

Jack had been going nonstop lately, recording videos into the early morning and skipping a few meals a day. He knew it wasn’t healthy and had insisted he was going to stop soon, but the end he had planned wasn’t soon enough. Needless to say, he had made himself sick and whenever that happened, all of his Egos unfortunately shared the side effects, though they manifested themselves in different ways:

Jackieboy Man got the worst of the headaches, to the point where he had to strip off his heroic garb and spent hours on end hiding himself in blankets, despite the fact that the others already knew every detail of his features. Schneep had been there, loyal and ready to offer his services, briskly combing a few tangles out of the older Persona’s hair before folding the mask and red jumpsuit into a nearby drawer.

Marvin’s voice completely broke, leaving him with nothing but a squeak to voice his agony as aches wracked his body. His cat mask was pushed high onto his forehead as he struggled to breathe through his aching throat; his nose was too stuffed to manage. Though he was somewhat thankful that Marv didn’t have the voice to complain, Schneep gave him some warmed potato soup to help his throat and bundled him up in his cape.

Chase, their youngest, the one with boundless energy and good cheer, became a huddled ball of misery, the vim and vigor sapped out of him as he struggled for the simplest of tasks, like turning over in bed. He was the weakest, constantly fluctuating between chills and hot flashes. There wasn’t as much for Schneep to do there but readjust the blankets and clean up the drinks Chase had spilled by losing his grip on them.

Even Anti wasn’t entirely exempt. While Schneep avoided him at all costs on a good day, he could occasionally hear a high-pitched, staticky shriek of pained rage or feel the telltale vibrations of the Glitch’s aura passing by in the lab. There would be a following crash as Anti knocked something over in his hurry to raid supplies for himself and it inevitably made Schneep jump, but Anti would blink out of existence again before he had the chance to lunge for a weapon. Perhaps that was for the best. Schneep could only surmise how dangerous Anti might be when he was ill and volatile.

Ever so slowly, they were starting to get better. Chase was recuperating the fastest, which was why he had bothered to stop by and make the observation about Schneep’s current state. With all of his time spent rushing around and tending to his fellow Personas, Schneep hadn’t thought much about himself. About an hour ago, Jackieboy had stopped on his way back from the restroom and mumbled at Schneep to “get some rest, for all our sakes”, but the doctor had ignored it until he realized that his medical notes were performing an alarming exotic dance in front of his eyes and making him feel quite nauseous.

The rest of his coffee splashed onto his desk as he tipped the mug over, but he couldn’t bring himself to care. Only just realizing how low the temperature in the lab was, he rubbed his arms against the cold seeping into them and then pressed the heels of his palms into his eyes, trying to rub away the tunnels of pressure. To make it all worse, to make it all infuriating, he was embarrassingly close to tears and he had no clear idea why.

He also didn’t have any clear idea where his room was, he realized with a vague sense of surprise as he stumbled down the nearest hallway. It seemed to stretch on for miles, even though he recalled that he’d crossed it dozens of times in the span of the day.

Since his wife had left him for that blasted tennis instructor, he rarely ever spent time in his bedroom. He would take a nap every so often in his office chair or on a thin, foldaway cot wedged in the corner of his office, but right now it felt like every single joint in his body was cramping at once. He needed something softer, he needed…

Leaba. Bett. Codladh. Schlaf.

Eventually he gave up on finding the right word, keeping a hand on the wall to steady himself. He had a feeling that if he fell, he wouldn’t be able to get back up without help, which would be absolutely humiliating. He was a doctor, after all, and doctors were supposed to at least look competent! As brilliant as he was, he needed to go one step further and act the part. He was in complete—

Pain. He hit a wall, his legs gave out underneath him, and even as he scrabbled for purchase, he knew he wouldn’t find any. Another second passed before he accepted his fate and landed in an ungainly heap on the floor. Trembling as he tried to rise, he did his best to stifle the instinctive sob with a whimpered curse in a mangled combination of German and Gaelic. His breath was coming much faster than it should be; if he had a panic attack now, he really would pass out.

“W̸ell, ļ̕ook w̴͢͠hat w̴͢͠e ḣ̙̩̺̯̩̰͉ave h̷̨͡ere…” an all-too-familiar voice hissed through clenched teeth. Schneep shuddered again, harder, as he jerked his head up. All he registered were torn black jeans, but that was all he needed. He shrank back as far as he could, trying to hide, trying to make himself as small as possible. Anti barely moved, watching the feeble escape attempt with a fanged sneer that stretched from ear to ear.

“N̸̴̛o weapons today,D̀oct̶ơr?” he scoffed, tension rising in his voice behind his smile. “N̾͂̍o J̶͘͟a̸̶͜c͡k to save you…Aǹd͡ none of the othersw̵ou͞l̢d̴ ̧f̸ińd ͟yo͠u  till m̨͢orning!”

Schneep tried to respond with defiance, venom, anything to force the Glitch to back off, but instead he just found himself gasping for breath when he opened his mouth and could do nothing but helplessly shake his head.

Giggling at the sight, Anti lunged, snatched the doctor’s arms and swung him upright, slamming him into the wall and knocking out whatever air he had left in his lungs. He couldn’t cry out as he was dragged along the wall, every doorknob backstabbing him, every doorframe thudding against his shoulder blades. He tried, he tried to thrash and struggle, but his arms wouldn’t obey and Anti was relentless, pulling him away from the wall just long enough to throw him against it again. Stars danced in front of his eyes, his arms slumped, he kicked weakly. He didn’t even know where his foot landed.

Can’t let him— “No…” he gasped hoarsely, the first word he could find. “No, no-no-no-no-no—”

Anti offered a full-bodied laugh at that one, hauling Schneep away from the wall again so his feet skidded out on the linoleum. “H̸͢ow does it feel, D̀oct̶ơr,” he snarled gleefully, “to be completely pǫ̵w̢͟͟erļe̷̢ss?!”

Before Schneep could answer, his feet were torn away from the ground, leaving one of his shoes behind along the way, and it took his panicked, addled mind several seconds to realize that he was hanging over Anti’s shoulder, kicking at air. His arms hung uselessly down the Glitch’s back; they wouldn’t move, they wouldn’t move—why wouldn’t they move?! The sharp bone in Anti’s shoulder gouged into his solar plexus, sending surges of pain through his chest as he strained to breathe.

A cold wash of air hit his back and he shivered violently, yelping as the other Ego heaved him away. He landed hard and hissed in pain, though he was on something softer than Anti’s shoulder. For a long minute there was silence, broken only by the occasional static burst and Schneep’s distressed gasps, and then the doctor lifted his head as much as he could, blinking back uninvited tears.

He was…on a bed, he realized in belated shock. It was his own. Anti stood at the foot of it, head cocked slightly, staring at him with pitch-black eyes.

“I could ķìll͟ ̀yo͠u here, but y̵̡͡ou’re just like him,” he growled, the static growing louder, accusing. “I̴͢͞t wouldn’t be as f͠un̸͟͡ to s̏͛laughter you if you couldn’t f̜̓̽ͤͯight back!” With those words, he leaned, planting his hands on the end of the bed. His next words were softer, colder. “S̴o rest up, Ḑ̴octor. Without you, your f͟͢͡a̴̷͝vo͡͝r̴̴i̢t͠e̷̛ ̶b̡͞͝ơy might not be so l̶ucky next time.”

Schneep blinked again, the tears spilling over. Again he opened his mouth to speak and couldn’t find any words; before he knew it, his head became too heavy, his heartrate slowed, and Anti became nothing but a blur of green and black. He was out cold before the Glitch had left.

[rosewcterdrunk]

DARCY’S WANTED CONNECTIONS | DAISY CHAINS AND SAWED OFF SHOT GUNS

“CAN YOU BELIEVE THE OUTCOME? I’M ASKING YOU GOD HOW COME” || THE BROTHER: Darcy took the brunt of the abuse against the Kazakov children, sparing his two younger siblings as best he could. When he aided their father in a bank robbery, he took the fall by force and was sentenced up to three years when Darcy was twenty-eight years old. He hoped that their father’s probation for the crime would keep them protected while he tried to get out early on good behavior, but getting caught only made things worse. Everything he tried to protect his brothers from no longer had a barrier. The middle Kazakov brother tried his best, but ultimately the abuse and neglect was too much and their younger brother succumbed to it. After their younger brother died, the middle Kazakov brother stopped coming around to visit Darcy in prison and he was left in the dark. When Darcy found out, he threw his attempts at getting out early for the sake of beating their father the moment he spotted him in the same facility. The middle Kazakov brother has severe PTSD from the abuse and it’s possible he picked up Darcy from prison after his sentence was extended by four years. [Ages 23-26. Suggested FCs Taron Egerton, Jordan Elass, Nolan Gerard Funk, and Logan Lerman]

“I’M BREAKING YOUR FALL, YOU’RE BREAKING MY ASS” || THE HIGH SCHOOL SWEETHEART: Darcy’s isn’t the type to fall for anyone, but there was one person he confessed every what if to. They were never romantically involved, but there was always something more that hung in the air between them. At some point, they agreed to be each other’s plan D.  @reagan--donahue

“DO YOU NEED LOVE, AM I ENOUGH FOR YOU? IN TIME YOU’LL FIND I’VE GOT MY BAGGAGE, TOO” || THE OPPOSITES ATTRACT: Darcy’s reputation managed to skip over this muse, whether it because they’re brand new to town or came while Darcy was serving his sentence. Somehow these two have managed to let the rest of the world fade away, and they see what the other is willing to show despite what their reputations will soon reveal. This is a flirtation that takes off too fast and is set for doom, but who knows if they’ll just be the ones that got away or another enemy for Darcy.

“YOU USED TO CATCH ME IN YOUR BEDSHEETS JUST A-RATTLING YOUR CHAINS” || THE BAD HABIT: This one can go one of two ways, and it’s the most specific thing ever. Whether it was Darcy’s friend who managed to graduate when he was held back or someone else, he started hooking up with someone in their college apartment. One night, bored, he wandered into the kitchen and unsuspectingly found their roommate. They chatted, and while his hook up was deep in their slumber, he found some humble entertainment with them. The next day, the roommate confessed but it wasn’t without twisting the truth. They said that they slept with Darcy, and it caused some strife between him and his friend despite the lie. As a way of getting back at them both, Darcy hooked up with them again and then made a note of hooking up with the roommate right after like they lied about.

“DON’T YOU PRAY TO A COCAINE JESUS, IN A BLACK FOUR SEATER” || THE NOSTALGIA: Darcy steered away from drinking and drugs most of his life, though he never turned his nose up at his friends who took their dance with it. Some of the crowds he hung around in his youth took their taste of drugs, candy, alcohol and Darcy was always the one who could get everyone home in one piece if his sharps turns didn’t take the best of him. After everything he’s been through, Darcy’s about to finally have a taste and it won’t end well. This muse is someone from his past who will connect the dots on why he’s never given in, and see partake in a downfall even Darcy didn’t know he was capable of.

“BITTERSWEET SURRENDER, EVERYTHING IS BETTER NOW” || THE OPTIMIST: This muse is the key to getting Darcy to do good. He has no intention of interacting with his father, but he knows for Tristan’s sake there needs to be some reconciliation. This muse is the push he needs to settle the bad blood, that way he can move on. It won’t come without its bumps, though, and every attempt on his behalf to anything but surrender to what has already happened.

“A CHOKING ROSE BACK TO BE REBORN” || THE ROLE REVERSAL: So far, Darcy’s been hounded about his reentry since the day he could wear denim over a jumpsuit. This muse is someone he has to look out for instead of the other way around, whether it be because it started as a second glance because they seemed like trouble or an old friend. 

"NOT A FOX FOUND IN YOUR PLACE” || THE TRAITOR: Darcy had his short lived glory in high school where he excelled at sports. When he had gifted with the chance in a scholarship to get away from Asteria, his disorder seemed to only get worse and affect his performance like it never did before. It costed his team more than one game until he eventually parted ways with football for good. There’s some that are still bitter with him to this day because of it.  

“IF MISERY LOVES COMPANY, GET THE HELL OUT OF MY HOUSE. WON’T YOU PLEASE JUST LOOK AT ME?” || THE TEMPTATION: This is your typical we shouldn’t but we can’t get enough. Listen to that song, and you’ll know the vibes. It can go anywhere from Darcy being the reason for a break up, or a new secret in what should be nothing more than a happy relationship. Gimme Darcy sleeping with a married woman, thanks.

[enibly]

DCOM and Dessert: The Cheetah Girls

here begins my livewatch of the The Cheetah Girls.

first observation: this feels like just yesterday! this movie does not look old at all

--

i would totally wear any of their outfits even today. I used to want to dress like Aqua as a kid but now I think I kinda dress like Chanel

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Raven doing a Jamaican accent, oh no

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Galleria’s mom: “comin’ up with this cheetah chatter!”

classic

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“ka ching ka ching, bling bling bling”

this movie is so quotable

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I think Chanel was my favorite character when I first watched this (which was the world premiere in August 2003!) and I think she’s still my favorite character- what a sweet kid~

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I still feel sad seeing Chanel’s mom being too self-absorbed to pay attention to her daughter :(  hits too close to home in some ways :(((

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ITS THAT LONG BLOND HAIRED GUY!!! HE STILL MAKES ME CRINGE AS MUCH AS EVER!! HIS DUMB LITTLE WALK AND WAY OF SPEAKING AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA WHAT A LOSER

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ewwww this guy is so gross (and I think Galleria knows this in her gay heart)

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ok there’s like waaaay too much to liveblog about this movie. i may have to stop just so i can watch properly. plus Cinderella is coming up!!!!!!!!!! what a jam!!!!!!!!!!

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oh my gosh, I just learned that Drinka is played by a trans actress! <3

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Galleria’s mom is such a power player, wow. i would love to have her as a boss, but damn is she intense as a mom

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ok so they’re making upside down cheetah mini-cakes for the baking portion. should... should i be making this right now?

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ad time: hmm kidz-bop must have slim pickings cause they’re releasing an all-time greatest hits cd instead of their usual kidz bop vol. 300

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galleria and her mom fighting... could use some NVC skills

reminds me of me and mom when we fight... we could use some NVC skills

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oh no Chanel’s mom just dropped the bomb of moving like that??!?!? not ok

Galleria’s award-winning solution: “tell her no chance, no dance”

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Galleria really wants money/luxury huh...

what about the art? what about the stage? i’m kinda getting the sense that what she really wants is to be a producer or agent (but she has such a talent for songwriting!)

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Galleria: “if he can’t respect my art, he can’t have my heart“

also Aqua thinks that those rival upperclassmen are “fine” which is just nonsensical

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aww Galleria and Chanel are such a cute pair <3

but will Galleria’s ambition tear them apart??!?

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Jackal wants to record the track in just a week? hm

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ok Galleria is so funny when she’s full of herself- being hilarious when being annoying is really Raven-Symone’s specialty as an actress

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does chompcheetah.com work?

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Aqua got way too mean girl when telling Chanel to reign her wife, i mean best friend, in. I remember thinking that was not good friend behavior when I was little

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ad break: hahahaha Skye Katz has a commercial with Tony the Tiger. I don’t know why that’s kinda fun

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apparently some people have gotten promo boxes for DCOM and Dessert?? how are they getting these???

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photo credit: https://twitter.com/minkus/status/1381684466150600705

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oh Galleria, if only you had better interpersonal skills...

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Dorinda dance time [music emoji]

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Chanel is a precious baby <3  stop neglecting her Mama Chanel!!

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ok, did “Breakthrough” ever get play on the radio? cause i swear i thought it was a regular, non-Cheetah Girls song cause I heard it so much. am i just imagining this? am i confusing it with those other dozens of songs like it that were on 2003 radio?

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Dorinda having a crisis about what race she is didn’t make sense to me when I was little, but I totally get what she means now

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aww, the Cheetah Girls are a chosen family <3

and Dorinda and Chanel are such a sweet pair <3

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oh my god i forgot about that cd cover BAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Galleria is so transparent

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snapshot of the music exec’s pitch: “kids love endangered species. kids wanna party.” classic

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also dude you’re an adult putting your arms around a teen girl. GET OFF HER!!!

this film is definitely missing several scenes where Galleria shoves these dudes’ arms off her

--

i’ve.

made mistakes before, but

i know i’m not perfect,

but it’s ok cause

who

could

eh-

-ver

be

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i SO wanted Aqua’s outfit in “Girl Power” when i was a kid

also, the bridges in all these rock. i mean, EVERY part of each of these songs is incredible, but i’m always amazed by how strong those bridges are in particular

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i know that “All Around the World” is supposed to be cheap pop schlock, but like, I love cheap pop schlock so I don’t hate it heh

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Aqua’s going mean girl again :/  the way she communicates really stresses me out

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I can’t believe this movie is over halfway done! it goes so fast!!!

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hmm, Chanel it’s lovely that’s you want to show that you’re grateful to your mom, but like, I think you have some problems you still need to talk about. you gotta speak your truth! she needs to hear in detail about all the things that have been bothering you!

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now everyone on twitter is getting all emotional watching the Cheetah Girls, and you know, i feel it- this movie gets really real

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wait, for this recipe for upside down cheetah cakes, are these cakes or english muffins?? they do not look like what i expected

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time for Galleria’s soulful piano ballad in the auditorium. very theatre kid of her

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ah, blond kid doesn’t like pop music, i see. he will never fit in with a gay like Galleria.

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Galleria’s talking about lipsynching like she was asked to dance with the devil at midnight

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now blond kid is trying to tell Galleria about the path of a true artist. these kids!

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the detail of Galleria’s favorite movie being The Wizard of Oz is really cute tho

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wow, they got Global Get Down to market in like, 2 days. what kind of racket is Jackal Johnson running?

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Galleria just slammed into a cop and made him drop his donut: Cheetah Girls say ACAB

--

never mind, the police are helping get Toto out- they responded way more positively to a black teen in a pink cheetah print jumpsuit than they would in real life. Cheetah Girls do not say ACAB :(

--

bahahahahahaha Sonic Chaos is on stage- white boy’s rapping. how can he say that Galleria’s pop music is fluff when this is his work???!?!?!? what a hypocrite. or... he’s trying to mess with Galleria’s head to take her out of the competition!!!! insidious

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ppppfpfpfajipfeqpsihqpeihvdapiejdvpajfiodacj the white boy’s dance moves!!!!!! SO LAME BAHAHAHAHAHAHA

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Trinka was about to tell us a story about going to the movies with the Captain and Tennille and I’m kinda curious?

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the way the power comes on and then Galleria’s face is blown up on screen is so funny ahahahaha

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all the adults in this movie are so New York heh

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hooray Toto is saved by the power of music!!

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when blond boy isn’t posturing, he’s ok actually, but he is really posturing almost all the time. also he’s supposed to be a sophomore in high school but he looks like he’s 24. ah well, whatever

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time for a ballad of sisterhood in the streets T-T

chills down my spine

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ghahahahahahaha I forgot about that guitar solo

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oh my gosh what a song to end on though!!!

and with all the smoke and lights and the choreo aaaaaaa

legendary~!

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wait i totally forgot about this dance break, except for Toto’s dance in it

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“Cheetah Girls, Cheetah Sisters” = an anthem of cross-community solidarity

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cheetah por vida indeed

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hooray they won the talent show!!! and everyone’s happy about it!!!

but guys, I think Jackal Johnson might have hung up by now

--

and what sparkly beautiful fireworks to end on <3

what a wonderful film!!!!!!!!!!!!

also i want to look up some of the other songs the music ppl on this film made cause, damn, they really did an INCREDIBLE JOB!!!!!!

(also i was hoping there would be some interview portions but it’s ok- when it comes to the cheetah girls, we’ve already got plenty of hot goss)

and that’s the end! AND ZENON IS NEXT WEEK I CANT WAIT

[wheaterz]

Little Talks

>Are you awake?

Mel heard the faint ‘blip’ of her laptop from across the dim room. It was late, raining, and cool with the wind making the house around her creak. She sat curled up in a plush quilt on an old couch with a glass of bourbon to her lips. It had been a lonely night, so she was happy to hear the message from her computer. Her roommate was out on a job and she wouldn’t be back for a couple of days. With one last glance at the water pouring from the sky outside her patio door, which she’d purposely left open a crack for the fresh air, Mel brought herself to her feet and made her way over to her desk. She could feel the cold floor underneath her socks, but she wouldn’t be long. She had every intention of bringing the laptop back with her over to the couch.

On the screen of her laptop was a small, blue square in the corner with a history of texts on it from her previous conversations with the other side. It was all very plain, but it was the simplicity that helped. Not only was it a concept she well grasped as far as software programs were concerned, but it read Aperture loud and clear with hardly any delay. With the laptop rested on the arm of the couch, she typed back.

- I’m here.

>That was a test, go to sleep.

- No.

>That was the real test, you passed.

-I’m afraid you’ve lost me, dear.

>I want to talk and I know you can just sleep in tomorrow.

Well, that was a fairly blunt way of putting it. Mel sighed, remembering that she hadn’t yet discovered a job within her new-found community, and it was becoming a little frustrating. Most things that had to do with computers she was bad at, and this new world was heavily reliant on it. Now, she was a fast learner, but when the cash register has ten-millions different options on its touch screen to go through things became a little muddled. Press AE and it will take you to the discount screen, only some discounts were only available for short times, so one would be replaced with another… Oh, did you make so many mistakes that the register locked you out? Please ask your manager for assistance.

Even with how minimalistic their town was in the sad state the world was in, cashiering somehow survived the apocalypse.

It was all very degrading. She was an Olympic Champion of her day, for crying out loud.

>You’re upset. Was it something I said?

Mel blinked, realizing she’d taken a while to respond when she was lost in thought and bit her lip.

-No, it wasn’t you. Don’t worry about it. The storm is just keeping me up.

>Okay.

>Want to talk about it?

Virgil really wasn’t the type of person for taking a hint. You really had to drill most points into him, but maybe for once she was glad for this. Giving in, her shoulders relaxed and she began typing.

-Adjusting has been difficult. I knew it would be, but I suppose no matter how prepared I was I couldn’t have foreseen the way I feel right now. Which is to say… useless. I think I finally have a full understanding of why you didn’t want to leave.

>Took you long enough.

-Be nice.

>Look, you are far from useless and you know it. I’m not going to take you wallowing in a self-pity-party sitting down.

-Excuse you, Mister, I absolutely am not wallowing in pity.

-Ah yeah? What were you doing before I logged on?

-Sitting.

>And?

-Drinking.

-Tea.

-Drinking hot tea.

>Gotcha.

Virgil absolutely infuriated Mel sometimes, but maybe that was because she knew he was right. Curling further under her quilt of warmth she glanced around the room she’d made her home and how she’d neglected to tidy up the place for a bit. It was strange how even though she was bored out of her mind and had all the time in the world, even the smallest thing seemed to be an uphill climb. Granted, she was much happier out here than she would have been stuck down in Aperture, and she was even more grateful for not just being plain dead, but it would be nice if things went a little smoother than they were now.

>Lets change the subject then.

Thank goodness for small blessings… and apparently Virgil’s newly formed telepathy.

>Things have been a little less quiet recently.

-Anything I should be concerned about?

>No, not at all. One of the other cores has pitched that we have holidays. We’re all supposed to send in ideas of what kind of holiday we’d want, since human holidays are kind of meaningless down here. Apparently we’ve reached the brim of boredom for this to be a thing now.

-Well that sounds like a bang up time, don’t you think?

>Not really? That means fun, right? Anyway, I’m not casting any votes in but I did make the mistake of offering to manage them, so now I have a whole file on my computer of different ideas that were sent my way.

-What do they say then?

>Laundry Day.

-You are the only core that has clothes. How can there be a laundry day?

>In definition, they suggested Laundry Day be when we burn a pile of leftover test subject jumpsuits for giggles.

-Ah. Oodles of fun.

>Yeah, oodles. There’s also Sleepmode Day, Rail Day, Turret Concert Day, Hide-and-Seek Day…

-There’s a Hide-and-Seek day?

>That’s actually a pretty common game down here. It takes weeks.

-That’s cute.

>My favorite of these, so far, is Explosion Day.

-Rick?

>Rick.

-Any other news?

>Um…

>Got my core shell solar power enhancements, so that’s nice.

-Very fancy. Do you still plan on returning to it?

>Honestly, not sure, but fixing all the things I disliked about myself has been a nice pastime, albeit a strange one.

-How so?

>Imagine doing open surgery on yourself.

-Oh, well, that is strange when you put it that way.

>Only an itty, bitty bit. I’ve been through stranger, no thanks to you.

-I’m honored you think so highly of me.

>I actually can’t tell if that’s sarcasm or not.

Melanie grinned, despite herself. It was strange how a little robot miles upon miles away from her could still manage to make her smile. She was glad for the conversation, and it put her more at ease than she had been a little while prior to their window chat, and the bourbon was finally setting in. Mel put a hand to her mouth and yawned.

-I feel ready to attempt sleeping again. It was lovely of you to keep me company, Virgil.

>Hey, Mel. Hold up a moment.

Normally when she said she was ready to fall asleep he was quick to let her go, so to be stopped so suddenly was abnormal. Of course she wasn’t going to turn him down, even if she was inches from slumber.

-Yes?

>Even if you don’t find anything right away you deserve some time to yourself. More than anyone. Give yourself a breather. I find it hard to believe that you survived as much as you have and there isn’t a place for you up there somewhere waiting. Just… take your time. Don’t stress it. It’ll come up eventually.

-You sound so sure.

>Really, any other way of looking at it is ridiculous. I don’t know what mighty cosmic-whatever you got on the good side of, but it would be stupid to think that you managed to make it through decades worth of croysleep and several killer robots and they just decided you aren’t going to have it made up there.

-I was in a barn for six months the last time I got out.

>We’ll just add that stupid barn to the list of things you’ve stomped into the dust.

>Not literally, obviously. Barns are kind of big.

>Obviously.

>Keep at it, okay?

-I will. Thank you.

>Do you think the storm is going to still keep you up?

-I’m not entirely sure.

>Hold on, I got something for you then.

Virgil disappeared for a couple of minutes, but the next message that arrived wasn’t text at all, but a tiny white square with a music note on it.

>Try that out. Just click on it.

Once Mel had clicked on the file another window opened that played for her a sweet little melody, though an electronic one. It sounded like one of the songs the turrets would sing in the depths of Aperture, and streams of rainbow light bobbed in time with the music in the open window. This may just do it if she kept the volume down enough, and she typed to her friend one last time.

-Its absolutely perfect. Goodnight, Virgil.

>Goodnight, Mel.

She slowly placed the laptop on the coffee table in front of the couch where she’d also lay her drink glass. It was one of the last remaining lights in the main living space, aside from a nightlight plugged into the kitchen wall in the shape of a lily and the dim glow of the moon fighting through the rainclouds outside in spotted streams of silver. Mel thought about heading up to her room, but she was comfortable here. Even with the door still slightly ajar and the sideways rain dampening the floor, Mel curled up against the arm of the couch with a cushion under her head. She could try to find her place in this world again tomorrow, or she could wait.

Even with the accomplishments Mel made in the past that she could share with no one but her one friend on the other side of her computer screen, she could still take something from them. She’d done great things, and she would continue to do great things. Maybe just not now.