#no sign of mal

[jomiddlemarch]

Though it to body first repair

“I think you must carry the entire weight of the world on your shoulders,” Alina said, resting her hands lightly on Aleksander’s broad back. He’d finally acquiesced to the bath after a solid hour of her cajoling after the solid hour he’d had to spend with Chief Healer Nevena following his return from the Fold, a journey Alina had tried, unsuccessfully, to keep him from undertaking. This wasn’t the first time he’d gone, bringing his darkness into the darkness, in a ritual that did not make sense to her but which she still somehow understood as a process of restoration and redemption. The volcra had killed fewer travelers since he’d begun and more nights had held only silence, instead of their piercing cries. But it cost him dearly, the passage through and the return, merzost spun and unspooled; he would not say how he got the wounds he carried back, but Nevena shook her head before she began healing him and was spent and trembling when she finished. Even so, he came to their chambers pale, his gait uneasy, and when he spoke, his voice was low and rough, as if he’d worn it out in prayer or trance-song.

Alina had plied him with honey. She stoked the fire in the hearth, lit candles beside their bed. She read aloud to him from the latest volume of The Princess and the Barbarian. And tonight, she had coaxed him into a bath, settling herself behind him, and laid her hands on his shoulder blades, where a volcra’s wings would sprout.

“Not the whole world,” Aleksander said. “Only the Grisha.”

“And their families. And anyone who comes to you seeking your help. Anyone you think you might owe a debt to, however far back you can construe your accountability,” Alina said. She pressed her hands more firmly against his skin, let him feel the light that seethed within her. He sighed, the breath a mixture of exhaustion and relief, the faintest hint of pleasure.

“I have much to answer for,” he said. She stroked her hands up and then down his back, then again, when he let his head drop down.

“I won’t tell you to stop, you know, Sasha,” she said. She might want to, did indeed want to, but she knew better, even without the conversations she’d had with Ivan, who accompanied Aleksander on his journeys, or the ones she had with Fedyor after he’d convinced his husband to go to bed instead of attending training with Master Botkin.

“I would tell you to, if the situation were reversed,” he admitted. She smiled and reached over to the low table that stood beside the bathtub, scooping up a dollop from the dish of creamy, golden unguent she’d left there, then coated both her palms with it. She began where the water crested below his ribs and let her hands move up and over his skin, feeling the terrible tension start to ebb.

“I know. We’d have a Saints-forsaken fight about it. And then I’d go and you’d wear a hole in my favorite carpet from Ketterdam pacing until I got back,” Alina said, her hands steady, the scent of the herbs the apothecary used eddying about in the steamy air. It smelled like a summer garden, so that she expected a bee to land on the lip of the tub, and like the kitchens during a feast, like the forest in the autumn, and somehow, like the moment he’d first cut her with his silver ring and the moment they’d cried out together consummating their marriage.

“I’d replace the carpet,” he said, some humor in his voice and then he made a sound between a sigh and a moan, a most luxurious tone that spoke of the easing of pain and the marvelous anticipating of exquisite pleasure. “What’s in that, what you’re using now? It feels—I’ve never—”

“That’s a secret,” she said, continuing the massage, now using the heel of her palm, then the very tips of her fingers. “A woman does like a bit of mystery.”

“I’ll get the Healer who made it to tell me,” he said, the threat a feint, as sweet as kiss.

“Good luck with that,” she replied. “I am the only Grisha involved in creating this. I went to an otkazat’sya for assistance. And don’t worry, I had Genya Tailor me and I wore a matron’s ordinary cloak over my kefta.”

“I’ll only enjoy it then,” he said. “There, oh, just there, milaya, that’s so good, don’t stop, don’t—”

“I won’t,” she said softly, letting one hand slip to his chest, pressing her thighs a little closer to his, resisting the urge to close the small distance between them, her breasts against his back, her cheek laid upon his nape. “As long as you want, Sasha, whatever you want—”

“The water will get cold,” he said. She shut her eyes, thought of the sun at a midsummer high noon, and around them the water became wonderfully warm and silky.

“As long as you want,” she repeated.

For @vesperass-anuna​ who asked for Darklina + back-rub and any other Darklina fans who need something very tender and fluffy right about now, but still using a gif from Season 2 because WE ARE NOT BOUND BY CANON!

[malacandrax]

im fine, totally neurotypical.

[suntails]

⚔️🐙

[quess-art]

『O spinning wheel of fate, spin the thread of disaster. I, the King of the Abyss, bestow it upon you.』

THE TIME I TOOK TO GET HIS STUPID DETAILS CORRECT

Yes, I gave him a lace BACK and I do NOT regret it

[stromuprisahat]

Malyen spent his life around sickly, physically fragile Alina, yet he shoves and drags her around without a second thought. Shouldn't he be used to be especially considerate of her?

This has my inner alarm going off, because even though he should logically treat her as an easily breakable piece of pottery, she's more of a donkey. She can stand a slap over her ass.

Mal hooked my arm and turned me around roughly.

[diathadevil]

Ohhhhhh that ending so solidified the anime adaptation in and of itself and made it very complete as a story (a little bit saddened since it doesn't feel like there might be season 2 with the way the ending changed from the the manga's plot points, at least not anytime soon until we get to some other arcs in the manga!)

Also ngl I kept re-watching some of the sign language scenes with Yuki and Itsu just because of how PRETTY the animation was for it. This anime honestly impressed me with the details in animation.

Man the anime did such a lovely job with its adaptation. I'd love to see at least an ONA or something with Yuki and Itsu and the gang giving us sign language lessons. I need to see more of them ughhhh.

I love A Sign of Affection sm y'all. This is my 10/10 anime this year.

[iamthecomet]

"The MountainDew make up you all want....or is it?"

Com don't do this to us (pls do it to us)

Oh it's gonna be....SOMETHING. I'm excited about it, which is never a good thing for you. A teaser under the cut, because I love you ♥

He wants to go home. To his greenhouse, and his plants, and his strays. He wants the smell of evergreen instead of gasoline, and he wants to rest. 

There are moments where he feels alive again. Sitting up there at the start of a show. Hands on his sticks. Sock clad feet pressed to his pedals. Drums around him, in front of him, as grounding as earth itself. 

Those few breaths before everything starts are his favorite. Charged. Heavy. The crowd amped up, waiting, suspended just before the first notes fall. He likes rest too. The joy. It’s pure, unadulterated. It’s easy to forget every other thing plaguing him when they’re in the middle of it.

And then, when it’s over, and they stand for bows, it crashes down again. He stands where he always did, but the ghouls around him are different now. And he loves them, all of them, he does. 

But it’s not the same. He’s not over the shock of seeing Copia where Terzo should be. Of seeing Dew with Ifrit’s guitar. He feels uprooted, toppled. He wishes it was easy for him. That he could just deal with it, go with the flow. Everyone else seems to be able to. Aether seems fine. Dew seems…better at least than he did. But Mountain is still stuck back on the night it all happened. Grappling with it. 

So many things have changed since then and he doesn’t know how to accept them when he’s still standing in a dark hallway listening to Aether tell him what happened. Listening to Dew scream and rage in pain. 

[yibeimolihuacha]

My problem is when I fall in love with a fictional character I can ship them with everyone, because if I fell in love with them then certainly so can everyone else, right?

Right?

[taffetastrology]

The signs as Lise tutus from La Fille Mal Gardée

Aries

Taurus

Gemini

Cancer

Leo

Virgo

Libra

Scorpio

Sagittarius

Capricorn

Aquarius

Pisces

[cuntylouis]

Lestat automatically assuming that Louis will move into his house and Lestat will handle the finances and provide for Louis from now like it's the most obvious and natural thing in the world is such a telling moment

[pvtchurch]

2022 malevolent be like:

Arthur: I use they/them pronouns

Person: you're non-binary?

Arthur: No it's for me and the guy who lives inside my head

[jesncin]

More Sons of Mars preview panels~ almost half way there! (20 out of 40 pages) things are getting tense in these ooh~

[capesandshapes]

I constantly mention tricyclics and really old medications just because I had epilepsy when I was really young and took keppra for a prolonged period while my brain was developing and like fun fact, they still don't know a whole lot about what happens when you're on these medications long-term and you're really young, because the primary concern is stopping seizures and then everything else is kind of like a "in the search of a greater good" type of thing

So like I get really sick on anything that affects my serotonin levels, to the point where I just leave vomit profusely and am actually just extremely miserable and they were like "eh, could be the keppra thing" and recorded it for future reference but like now I take like primarily super old medications from before ssris were popularized

So if y'all ever think you might be the same possible brand of fucked up as me and ssris and snris make you really sick there's your little possible reasoning??? Idk but shout out to the shitty old antidepressants, they've literally saved my life.

[finitevoid]

evie has social media but shes like. an influencer. she runs a brand account on like . magicam kingstagram etc whatever we’re calling it. every post is a carefully planned ad made to boost engagement and get eyes on her work. she’s already in the pocket of half the young royals of the country but she does not care, she wants more money and she can get it through online branding #girlbossing

jay has social media but rarely posts. its only there so that when evie posts pictures of the core 4 modelling her stuff she can tag him. his pfp is a beautiful photo of him shot and edited by evie and every post is a blurry, half obscured picture of like, a cool rock he found or a bird perched on a tree with a completely unrelated caption thats like “water is wet”. he has thousands of followers due to sheer proximity to evie. he likes to incite internet arguments on purpose just so he can watch people argue

carlos has social media but he’s like, deeply pretentious about it. he refuses to make an account on any “popular” social media sites and instead spends all his time on insular communities dedicated to increasingly niche topics on half-dead and user-run blogging platforms. he learns html for the express purpose of making his blog dedicated to a thirty year old video game that nobody’s ever heard of appealing looking. if anyone has even slightly differing opinions on said video game than him he will engage in long, vicious arguments with them in order to prove his superiority. give him 5 years and he’s gonna end up in one of those “fandom retrospective” youtube videos about niche drama. he’s doxxed someone before.

mal doesn’t know what an email address is

[jessmalia]

i will not stand for anyone bashing friedrich in the scene where he critiques jo's writing partly because he's 100% right in everything he says but mostly because he reminds me so much of my dad in that scene

my dad would say "i don't like them... i think that they're not good" after reading someone's writing (and he has to me lmao) and he would say "oh, i'm sure they will" when someone says that people will forget he ever lived without an ounce of resentment in his voice because he truly doesn't care about being remembered and he's one of the most beautiful people on earth so if you hate friedrich then you can just fuck right off this blog

[creampuffqueen]

GUYS I JUST REALIZED THAT I POSTED THE 8TH YANGVIK FIC ON AO3 AND 8 IS MY LUCKY NUMBER LMAO