#not tagging the others they r barely visible

[meowfountain]

thing i made for the jacknjellify video !

[adhdo5]

[indistinct muttering] LXC stabs JGY on pretty much reflex, the post that talks about how masks (or image compositions in this case) that conceal the eyes and leave the mouth exposed present the subject as a physical being before a person, the eyelashes are my favorite and most ~distinct part of my LXC design, LWJ’s able to forget worldly concerns which in MDZS are framed as the political concerns of the jianghu and Wangxian elope but Xiyao’s values and thus what they admire in each other are inextricable from that dust, 不欲染尘/染尘不由我, both of the previous entries in this series of doodles have LXC’s fangs while relevant mostly concealed [voice rising to full volume again] and that’s all the effort I’m putting into my Xiyao vampire AU thesis. Good night

[idkfitememate]

Hear me out but horse!creator finding out where kaeya live and just flopping on his bed and just falling asleep. I don’t know how they fit, he problem has the princess wooden bed polls on his bed frame if anything. But just horse!creator back on the bed hooves up Towards the ceiling, with kaeya coming back for patrol or to drunk and needed a nap maybe diluc has to bring him back home and they just see a horse on the bed snoozing away.

Ps I feel out of spite if not just to mess with kaeya that horse!creator likes to be with diluc

-🐎anon



Neigh

My House Now

૮���˶ᵔ ᗜ ᵔ˶꒱ა Pairings : Diluc & Kaeya x Horse!Reader

૮꒰ྀི∩´ ᵕ `∩꒱ྀིა W.K. : 592

໒꒰ྀིᵔ ᵕ ᵔ ꒱ྀི১ Tags/CW&TW : Crack & Crack

“What the…” Those were the only words that could leave Diluc’s lips.

Before him you lay in Kaeya’s bed, completely covering the spread, hooves in the air and mouth wide open allowing your demonic snores to fill the room.

Diluc huffed, adjusting Kaeya Om his shoulder while continuing to stare at you to try and make sense of the situation. While thinking, you shifted, rolling over to face the duo with a loud thump. The readheads eyes traveled to the bluehead who hiccuped in his sleep - terrifying and should’ve woken him up but didn’t so that was concerning - then to you, who snored away and twitched lightly.

For a moment, Diluc heavily considered just tossing his brother overtop your body and calling it a night - as it was cutting into his… nightly activities.

Deciding to find some mercy in his heart, Diluc gently set his brother down propped up against the bed, then walked over and started to gently shake your… shoulders??? He had no clue anymore but was a little too done to care.

After light shakes didn’t work, he moved to harsher shakes, then full on throttling, he may have even gave you a little tap whos to say.

Eventually after a few solid minutes of shaking Diluc gave a reluctant sigh, rising off the bed and making his way to pick up his brother. Once safe in his arms he turned around, only to be met with your silent, standing form behind him.

He jumped, shock clumsily hidden after a moment which led to you both staring each other down. Diluc analyzed you in the silence, noting your barely visible breathing and somehow scarily sharp eyes despite just waking up. He was again shocked when you started to walk, floorboards creaking under your weight while you shoved yourself behind him, angry curses and muttered whispered under his breath.

Once settled fully behind him - and be for r he could fully react - you grabbed the man by his scruff in your teeth. He flinched hard, immediately moving to fight back against you. You snort as you start to push him out of the room, the awkward position causing him to stumble over his own feet as you led him out.

A few long, torturous minutes later you came to the front room. You stop pushing Diluc, allowing him to take a moment to breathe. Before he could complain you snatched Kaeya out of his arms and toss him onto the couch with minimal effort.

Diluc was at the point where he couldn’t even be shocked anymore.

Then, you walked back over and gripped his collar in your teeth, and threw him out the front door.

Diluc stared at the door, looked at his hands, and simply walked off.

“I don’t have time to deal with this…”

૮꒰づ˶• ༝ •˶꒱づ ˚ʚ ꒰⁐⁐⁐⁐୨🍨🍮🍩୧⁐⁐⁐⁐꒱ ɞ˚

Kaeya woke to sun in his face and crusty and sweaty clothes clinging to his back. Something else he noticed was the smell.

The smell of eggs and breakfast.

Wicked hangover pounding in his head, the Captain walked into the kitchen to find you standing with a pan with frying eggs.

Without looking at him you plate the eggs, revealing a wide spread of foods. You snorted at his jaw dropped expression and walked over to him, hooves clicking across the floor. When you reached Kaeya you placed a hoof under his chin and closed it, the squeezing beside him and out of the kitchen leaving him to his breakfast.

“What… the fuck..?”

໒꒰ྀི˶˙Ⱉ˙˶꒱ྀིა Author’s note : I feel like Horse!Creator Reader is deadass just. The horse from Tangled. You know which one.

[the-kr8tor]

could i get garlic cloves and a ❣️ for hobie? r is trying to sneak him somewhere as a bat. or maybe sneak him out of animal control or smth? -@thesevenofstaves

YEEESSS MORE VAMP HOBIE!!! I wrote this with IPOB in mind, I hope that's okay! Thank you, bestie 🩷

Pairing: Vampire! Hobie Brown X fem! Reader

Word count: 1.3 k

Tags: No use of Y/N, no specific physical description of the reader, Set around my vampire Hobie series (In pursuit of blood), CW blood, mockumentary AU, Wwdits AU, Fluff!

In Pursuit of Blood fic

Katy's one year celebration 🎉

“So yeah, that's how I found out that my great aunt was a succubus—” you stop talking suddenly, blinking, eyes roaming around the walls of Hobie's mansion. The camera crew follows you as you look under the couch and even peek inside the grand piano. “Do you guys fucking hear that?”

The camera shakes its head. You look at it weirdly, “you could just say no, Jason, like a normal person—” you gasp, “there it is again!” You frantically move books from the bookshelves, making the crew dodge oncoming hardbounds. “Is this a prank? Am I getting punk’d right now?!” You scream, footsteps heavy as you trudge along the big living room, tossing and turning things around. “Hobie! Where the fuck did you put the speakers you mythical bloodsucking straw!”

You suddenly straighten up, finger scratching your ear, eyes turning from confusion to amusement. “Oh you fucking idiot!” You guffaw, palm slapping your knees in laughter. The crew look at each other, not knowing what to do when their subject turns cuckoo. “Okay, I'll—” you breathe for air, tears in your eyes as you laugh. “I'll save you, you big ancient baby.” Nodding, you roll your eyes, “fine, I'll be subtle. No explosions, yep…wait not even a little? I bought this new thing from amazon— yeah okay, bye! Close the fucking link I don't want you in my brain!”

Your shoulders sag, smiling at the befuddled camera crew. “Good news I'm not crazy! That was Hobie talking to me telepathically and he— you know what, I should just show you what he wants.” You beckon them over to the front door while you put on your jacket and take your keys. “It's called the mind gift,” based on the producer's eyes, you already know that she was about to ask you the question. “You get old enough, you start getting different abilities. Don't ask me how, that's just the way it is with vampires.”

The camera hard cuts to you driving in your new kia. In the corner of the shot you can see the camera man's hand gripping tightly around his seatbelt as you drive recklessly, like you just learned how to drive yesterday. Or you just knew what a car is.

“Relax,” you say, smiling sweetly at the camera even though you pass a red light. “No one's even on the road this late at night. So calm down.”

Hobie's voice once again appears in your mind, ‘hurry up, love, I think this chihuahua next to my cage wants me. And it's not the hunger type of want.’ You snort at his comment. ‘Please? I'll make it worth your while.’ he says with flirty undertones, making you roll your eyes, cheeks warm.

The camera visibly shakes. The mic picks up a faint ���I’m gonna die.’ The crew following behind you with their own van can barely keep up with you. They pity Jason right now.

“Okay, listen.” You start, the car is zooming past the road beyond the speed limit. “Hobie wanted to hunt some poor rich sap but,” there's rapid honking around you, “something happened, he wouldn't tell me exactly what, so he had to get out quickly and turn into his vampire form. Now animal control caught him at the park because he was too hungry to return to his form.” The car suddenly screeches to a halt, making Jason the camera man almost fly off his seat.

You park your car at an animal control center, the camera zooms in your determined face. “Operation: save my idiot vampire roommate has begun.” Your head quickly swivels towards Jason who seems like all the colour on his face has gone. “Don't fuck this up for us, Jason.” You point at his still chest.

You exit your car with the slam of the door. The rest of the crew follow closely behind you as you enter the animal control center with an uncanny smile that has the front desk worker perturbed.

“Hi, this might sound weird—”

“What's up with the camera crew, lady?” The man asks, blinking away the bright lights, weirded out by the whole situation.

“Oh, we're making a documentary.”

“About what?” The man brightens up, subtly fixing his hair with his hand.

“Uh…” you look at the crew for answers, they're not helping with their empty looks. “...About bats, yeah, bats. We're from national geographic actually.” You hear Hobie in your head ‘national geographic? Really, love? You don't look like the Steve Irwin type. Although, you'd look good in some khaki shorts.’ Blinking him away, you continue to convince the man. “And one of our bats escaped from their enclosure. You see that man over there?” Raising your finger to point at Jason, you accuse him as he stands there awkwardly. “His name is Hobie,” Hobie's laughter in your mind echoes. “And he's an idiot y’know, he's a nephew of our director so we just had to take him in. You get me?”

The man in the front desk nods, judging ‘Hobie.’ “Yeah, I know the type.” He whispers to you. “We have someone like him here too.”

You nod in understanding. “They're not the brightest, right?” Hobie's cackling laughter buries deep in your mind, almost making you laugh too. ‘you're making me have it, huh?’ Jason frowns at you while he zooms in your apologetic face.

Tapping the desk, you smile at the man again. “So! Our bat, please?”

“I'd ask for papers like usual but I'm too lazy.” Now it's you judging the man. “If you can get him from the back yourself without getting rabies then you're free to take him.”

“Yeah, okay.” You shrug, and you hear Hobie breathe a sigh of relief. Opening the doors, you're greeted by a dozen small animals, all angrily calling out to you. “Wow, this reminds me of my cousin's room!”

Your eyes roam over the cages, looking for a familiar bat. The producer points at a bat on your right, she has her hand on the lock but you stop her midway. “That's clearly not him. Good try though.” The bat squeaks, lunging at the cage, almost biting the producer's hand.

Hobie's voice calls out to you, then you see a black bat with large wings rattle its cage. That's Hobie alright. “Aww,” you tease, “is it just me or you look extra adorable right now?”

‘Open the bloody door!’ Hobie telepathically screams at you, continuing to rattle at his cage. Squeaking angrily. You guess that he's starving now that he has tossed being sweet.

“In a minute.” You say, pulling out your phone to take numerous pictures of him. There's selfies of you with the angry bat, and even a group picture of the crew and bat Hobie. With one final click of the camera, you finally open the cage.

Hobie comes flying off towards your face, clinging to you, claws holding on to you and his tiny bat body covering your entire head. ‘Thank you, lovie.’ He says in your mind, his tiny fanged face nuzzling you sweetly. The camera crew takes numerous angles of the whole ordeal. ‘Take me home, ‘m hungry.’

“Will you let go of my face first?” Your voice is muffled by his fuzzy bat body.

‘nah, you're too comfortable.’

“No blood for you then.” You warn, and it works as he reluctantly moves over to your shoulders instead. ‘Fine,’ he grumbles, squeaking disappointedly.

Waving goodbye to the front desk who again stares at you all confused, you have successfully rescued your idiot vampire roommate. Placing him on your passenger seat, he shakes his head when you coax him into turning back to his form.

Jason records from the backseat, eyes flicking from you and the agitated bat. He knows exactly what's about to happen.

“What am I supposed to do? Let you drink from me again?”

There's a bout of silence, and then Hobie the bat nods his tiny head.

With a huff, you give him your hand to bite into. “One sip, Hobie, enough to turn you human.” He nods, mouth opening to take a bite. You look over your shoulder towards the camera. “Cut the fucking camera, Jason.”

Hobie sinks his teeth into you just as the camera shuts off. But not the mic though.

[lottielovelace]

princess — chapter two

(ghost x könig's-sister!reader)

summary: Finally you get a chance to visit Simon. You just hope he hasn't forgotten about you. (aka two people trying their best to hide how incredibly into each other they are)

originally posted on ao3 (chapter length: 1,318 words)

Rating: M

Relationships: Simon "Ghost" Riley x Reader, background platonic relationships

Ao3 Tags FOR THE FIC AS A WHOLE, bolded is for this specific chapter: Past Rape/Non-con / Rape Recovery / Male Victim of Sexual Assault / Canonical Rape/Non-con (Simon's) / First Time / Getting Together / Manchester as a setting / disclaimer: author has not been to manchester / Simon does bare-knuckle boxing as a hobby / Sparring as Flirting / wrestling as flirting / Identity Porn / Non-Explicit Sex / reader is konig's half sister / Unmasked Simon "Ghost" Riley (while on leave) / reader knows that simon is in the military but doesn't know he’s ghost / medium speed burn

this is a part of a series and a multichapter fic (Ch1, Ch2)

Author’s Note: Happy Valentine's! I did promise more Simon this time

The next day, you headed to Stuart's bright and early. You didn't want to spend any longer in your crappy hostel than you had to.

You got off the tram, walked a couple blocks, and flashed a friendly—if nervous—smile at the secretary. She returned it with an encouraging thumbs up and beckoned you to enter the training area.

Only one figure stood in the ring, his back to you. The workout garb revealed so much more than the heavy winter garments he had worn undercover in the prison.

You let the door slam behind you.

He whirled around: hair rustled, undereyes dark, sweat sheening over scarred skin. God, he was beautiful.

"Hi," your voice was breathless.

“I thought I saw you earlier,” if Simon was surprised, he didn't let his voice betray it.

“Where?” you asked, tilting your head inquisitively.

“Yesterday, on the street.”

You tried your best not to visibly wilt as you began your retreat.

“Oh, I’m sorry.”

Simon squinted in confusion, “What for?”

"I didn't realize you didn't want me to— and then I go barging in on your life like—"

"No, no," Simon interrupted, realizing what you were trying to stammer out. “I wasn’t avoiding you. I just—“ he tensed for a moment, conflicted as he found his words. "The only reason I didn't talk to you was I wasn’t quite sure whether you were real or not.”

Oh. Right. You knew Simon wasn’t normal, but this was a harsh reminder that he was a soldier, with all the messiness that came along with the job title. You felt so silly for forgetting. Soldiers came with body counts. Baggage. Ghosts. You knew firsthand from your brother and Horangi that it could make things, relationships, life… difficult. Worth it, but not easy.

“Does that happen often?” you kept your voice light and airy. He trusted you enough to confide this, you didn’t want him to regret the decision or fear that he'd scared you off.

“Not when I’m on the right meds. Glad to know you’re real, means I don’t need a new prescription.”

A devious smirk emerged on your face, “Only happy at that?”

“No… it’s just—“ After all your angsting over seeing him, it was nice to see someone else do the squirming for once. It was also kinda cute. There was a power in your words having this man, this killer, damn near flustered. “It’s good to see you. Really good.”

You cocked an eyebrow, “Likewise.” You approached him slowly, gently placing your hands on his forearm. "See, real as can be."

Ghost's expression remained unchanged, but his pale face flushed.

"Good. Did you come here just to see me or…"

"Or what?" you asked, curious as to his suggestion.

"Well, I am supposed to be supervising open gym. Did'ya want to spar?"

You pondered for a moment. "I wouldn't be against it."

"Any experience with hand to hand?"

You shrugged off your sweater, "I've taken a couple of self defense classes." You kept your answer purposefully vague. He didn't need to know that you'd received many a private lesson from a former ROK Special Mission Brigade member (one who wanted to ensure no harm came to his 여동생). "But not bare-knuckle boxing."

Simon chuckled lowly, "Yeah, 't's not the most practical style."

"Then why do you…"

"On the battlefield, you do what you have to to survive. Playing dirty isn't just allowed, it's required. I'm used to taking any advantage I can. It's… nice to not do that for once. To let my skills stand on their own." A wry smile. "Make sure they haven't atrophied too much." His smile dropped, "But let's not box."

"Why not? Think I can't handle it?"

"It's not… I just, I don't want to hit you." There was something in his tone that hinted that striking someone he—well, you didn't know if "loved" was the right term yet, but someone he cared about hit a little too close to home. "Let's…" he thought for a moment, "wrestle instead. Would that be alright?"

"Sure."

"Let's try starting with a simple lockup. Normally I would try to pair you with someone closer to your weight class but," he gestured at the empty room, "not really an option right now. Don't worry, I'll go easy on you."

He wasn't lying. His grip was gentle, with no force or malice behind it. Arms wrapped around each other, he offered little resistance as you twisted, catching him off guard and knocking him down.

Simon was pleasantly surprised.

"That's good," he said from the ground, still flat on his back. "Solid form."

"Beginner's luck," you responded bashfully, bending down to look at his face. The same eyes you saw at the prison stared back up at you.

Getting to his feet, Simon ordered "Another."

While a little more cautious, he still wasn't fully on alert. This was a mistake.

THWAP!

Once again, he hit the mat first.

This time, Simon stood up with a dangerous look in his eyes.

No orders this time as he wordlessly commanded you to lock up again.

His grip still wasn't entirely engaged. You assumed that he still hadn't learned his lesson. You were wrong.

He didn't try to overpower you, use his size or use his muscular advantage to force you to the ground.

He just moved, darting with a quickness unfathomable for a man of his size. You blinked, and it was your turn to hit the floor. Looking up at the ceiling, you could see Simon's shit-eating grin staring back at you. For such a quiet man, he really did have an expressive face. You wondered how that worked on the field. Maybe he mostly did stuff over the comms.

You got up carefully, a plan blooming in your mind.

"I want to go again."

Simon happily obliged you, locking up. He gave you an opening to attack. When you did nothing, he went for a repeat of the last round.

Only this time you knew better.

This time, as your body fell, you tucked and rolled: resulting in you on top, triumphant. Simon seemed a little impressed. You were about to brag when— BAM! He used your distracted state to flip you, now pinning you beneath him. You squirmed trying to get any leverage, to no avail. His weight was enough to trap you. His unmoving weight. Simon had frozen, going deathly still.

Why— oh. Oh.

Simon was the first one to break the silence.

"Do you know how to get out of this?"

"I have a guess."

"Guessing isn't good enough," he chided. "Not when somebody wants to kill you. Or—" he inhaled sharply. "Worse."

You didn't like that you couldn't see his face right now. Using Horangi's training, you strained against him as if trying to brute force your way out—only to juke him, suddenly striking the other way, and driving your elbow into the soft of his solar plexus. He fell off you with a low groan at a timbre that made you blush.

Finally you could see his face. Despite now grimacing from the pain, he also appeared to be… relaxed by it and its grounding familiarity.

"Good practice," he declared, still a little weak.

"You're a good teacher," you sat up beside him.

"I'm afraid I didn't teach you very much."

"A good partner then,. Simon's demeanor seemed to ever so slightly brighten at your words. You laughed, leaning back. "I need a shower."

He winced.

"The ones at the gym are broken."

"Shit!"

Simon raised an eyebrow as if saying that was a bit of an extreme reaction, innit?

"What's wrong?"

"The hostel I'm staying in doesn't have a shower."

Simon's nose wrinkles, "Doesn't sound like it'd smell all that pleasant."

"It really isn't."

A beat.

And Simon spoke up, voice as fragile as his hopes.

"You could come to my place."

[merakimoonglade]

WIP Wednesday Tag Game

Rules: you will be given a word. Then you share one sentence/excerpt from your wip(s) that starts with each letter of your word.

Thank you @yourstarsmyscars for tagging me! I love these sorts of tags.

Word: Garden

G: Graysen ended their engagement after waiting a year for her to go through her heat. His reputation remained unsullied, it was considered a valid reason for an alpha to end an engagement if their omega fiancée never presented. Elain was lucky enough that it only dulled her shine a little. Alphas preferred an omega, but her family's wealth and standing combined with her beauty and comportment kept her as one of the top matches in Prythian.  (Unreleased omegaverse)

A: A blush blooms on Elain’s cheeks at their private joke. She still flushes when she serves the dish at family dinners. “Of course. Lunch is in the chilling box, and the pie should be cooled enough to eat now.”  She turns into his hand, kissing his wrist in apologetic dismissal. (Unreleased based off a prompt: kisses meant to distract the other from whatever they’re intently doing)

R: Rhys’ anger seeped through their connection like oil. When Feyre was taken, Tamlin broke into the family’s cottage in his beast form. He glamoured her sisters and father to forget him and think she was visiting a sickly aunt. Azriel jerked away from the chimney he’d been leaning against, his blood turning as cold as the winter wind as he faced north. He reinforced the walls around the space in his mind that he gave Rhys access to. It didn’t work on Nesta; she remembered everything. I thought his magic might have been strained considering … I thought it a fluke; he was below the wall and laying a complex, long-term glamour on three humans. It worked on the two more frightened and failed on the stronger willed one. (The Night They Met, part 2: The Morning After)

D: Despite the dried blood and dirt caking him it took every ounce of Azriel’s self-restraint not to rip her undergarment off and dive deep into Elain's sweet cunt and show himself as the beast she’d had to have foolishly convinced herself he wasn’t. (Unreleased AU)

E: Elain kept one eye on the large windows spanning the sitting room as she dangled a small stuffed bird on a string over her nephew Nyx. The babe cooed happily, kicking his chubby legs and swatting at the bird oblivious to the tightness in his aunt’s smile. Nuala and Cerridwen stood guard pacing at opposite sides of the room, Nuala by the stairs, Cerridwen near the glass doors that lead to one of the large balconies of the House of Wind. Their forms were barely visible beneath the undulating swathes of smoke and shadows covering them; it was the most Elain had ever seen them in their wraith form. (Unreleased HOFAS ficlet)

N: “No. Maybe the walls will sing me to sleep. I like when they do that.” (Unreleased CD)

Tagging: @ryokokicksit24, @nobibiname, @epiphany-zzz, @moonfalles, @bright-side20, @mirrorballpages

Your word is Night. 🌙

[edenscollardrawer]

Hot Singles - f!Kylar/f!PC

18+ content warnings & tags: !!SELF INJURY/SELF HARM!!, manipulation, mental illness, established relationship, delusional behavior 2018 words (kylar is off her rocker again, head the warnings)

It was a day like any other, Kylar was browsing on her ridiculous computer setup - bulky headphones blocking out any ambient noise. Crushed energy drink cans littered the floor around her, sweat clinging to her forehead as she clicked on another pornographic video of a girl vaguely resembling her girlfriend. Her hand stuffed down her pants, eyes glued to the screen - the hundredth popup of the day blocked her view. She sighed, leaning forward to click away, when she noticed - the photo… It was… you. Her girlfriend. Fully nude, hands cupping your breasts, big letters plastered in front of you - 

“Hot Singles in your Area”

Kylar’s breath caught in her throat. She pulled her pants up, straightening up in her gaming chair. Her breathing came in short, quick gasps - sweat prickling the back of her neck. She stared at the ad, hyperventilating. This isn’t real. It can’t be. Somebody is defaming you by photoshopping lewd photos of you and distributing them on porn sites. That must be it. Those… they… they don't even look like your boobs, really. Right? They don't, right? 

She pushed herself up from her chair, biting her nails down to nubs as she paced back and forth through her bedroom. Her eyes landed on the knife atop her desk, next to her keyboard. She needed to make this right, she needed to avenge you. Somebody needed to pay for this. Pocketing the blade, she frantically sent you a text with shaking hands. 

“Need 2 talk, meet @ park” hitting send, she rushed out her door, hand still firmly gripping the weapon in her sweatshirt pocket. She tried to control her erratic breathing as she descended down Danube Street. High top sneakers scuffing against the concrete, she rushed through alleyways to the town’s center. Her oversized sweatshirt hinted at her rushed arrival. She sat down at the park’s fountain, picking at her cuticles. Her eyes were fixed on the pink tulips swaying back and forth in the soft breeze, terrible thoughts overwhelming every fibre of her being. 

The soft sound of heels against concrete snapped Kylar’s attention upwards. She rushed up to you, arms flinging around your neck. 

“My love… something absolutely awful has happened…” She whispered into you, voice shaking. Pulling back to look at her with furrowed brows, tears welled up in Kylar’s eyes. Your hand raised to cup her cheek, rubbing it softly. 

“What is it? Are you alright?” you asked softly, thumb quickly wiping away her falling tears. 

“Th-there’s… photos of you…” She inhales sharply, looking down. “O-on… adult sites.” You immediately pull back, face contorted with anger.

“What are you doing on adult sites?” you spat, crossing your arms and stepping away from her. Kylar looked at you like she’d been shot, but continued talking anyways.

“I… my love, there were pictures of you! Naked! And it said…” She shivers, looking away and then back to you. “ It said… you were… single.” The words tasted like poison oozing out of her mouth, and she visibly shuddered. A panicked laugh leaving her chest as she looked back up at you. Your anger very quickly dissipated into overwhelming remorse. Fuck. Your photoshoots.

“W-who is doing this to you, my love? You know you can tell me anything, r-right?”  Every syllable that spilled from her mouth shook with visible nerves. Hands shoved into the pockets of your sweater, you couldn’t get yourself to meet her gaze. Shame washed over you in a powerful wave of self-hatred. How were you supposed to tell her that this wasn’t some attack against you? That you had willingly chosen to get naked and pose for those photos? You looked down at your kitten heels, mindlessly kicking at a rock on the ground. 

“Kylar…” you whispered, barely loud enough for her to hear over the noise of the crowded park. Her tear-filled eyes met yours, and you quickly looked away, the all-consuming shame holding you hostage. The tone of your voice snapped her out of her ranting haze. She looked to you like a lost child in a shopping mall. 

“Nobody…made me do it,” Your voice was meek and quiet, still hardly audible. Kylar walked closer, looking up at you with her worried gaze. Her brows furrowed as she grabbed mindlessly at the strings of her hoodie. An unsettling smile crossed over her features, replacing the previous look of distress.

“M-my love, that’s nonsense.” She grabbed ahold of your hands, squeezing with a grip that bordered on painful. “Y-you can tell me the truth, you can t-tell me who made you do… that.” Your hands flinched under the pressure, but you composed yourself, looking into her eyes. 

“Listen to me, Kylar,” you inhaled a shaky breath, holding her gaze. “I… I chose to do it.” Kylar immediately scoffed, shaking her head and letting out an incredulous laugh. 

“You…You must s-stop saying such… ridiculous things,” she smiled like the Cheshire cat, but the grin didn’t quite reach her eyes. Her grip on your hands tightened to the point of you whimpering in pain, but she didn’t let up. “I-I know y-your heart is good. You w-would never do that. I trust you.” 

The remorse you felt permeated every inch of your body. How could you even begin to explain this to her when she’s clearly made up her mind? You shuffled your feet, failing to wiggle your fingers in her iron grasp. Looking around at the swaying leaves and children playing, you tried to ground yourself before responding. 

“I love you so much. So… so much. And I am so sorry,” you began, staring her square in the eyes. “I don’t… I don’t know what I was thinking.”  Kylar let go of your hands, staring at you with a blank expression as you continued. Her hands reached into her jacket, gripping firmly around something you couldn’t see. She started to pace back and forth as you continued trying to apologize, refusing to look up at you or acknowledge anything you were saying. 

When you stopped talking, Kylar looked up at you, eyes wider than you thought possible. Her mouth was pressed into a thin line as she fidgeted in her pockets. She stepped closer, tilting her head as she stared at you. 

“Y-you’re saying that you d-did this yourself, but I know you b-better than that, my love,” A small grin spread across her cheeks, her gaze unblinking. “You would… n-never do that to me. You wouldn’t. Because if you d-did, it would be very…bad. Very bad for everybody, right?” Your expression shifted to one of pure guilt. Kylar slowly slid her knife out of her pocket, holding it by her side. Your gaze dropped down to the blade and back up at her.

“I…I’m really sorry, Kylar. I’m so-” Kylar interrupted you, stepping closer.

“P-please just t-tell me the truth, my love… I…I can’t handle these… these lies. If you d-did something like that, I wouldn't be able to live with myself,” She glances between the knife in her hand and you, suddenly shifting the blade to be pressed against her wrist. It looks like it’s digging into her skin, nearly cutting her. “If you… g-gave yourself up to everybody like that, you d-don’t know what I’d have t-to do…” Her smile had since fallen, a look of pure concern etched on her features. 

You reluctantly reached forward, trying to grab the knife from her hand. She quickly ripped her arm away, hiding it behind her back. Taking a few steps back, she put a couple feet of distance between the two of you. You looked down at your scuffed heels, trying to focus on anything but the overwhelming remorse you felt. She wouldn’t actually hurt herself, right? She’s just trying to scare you, you’re pretty sure. You needed to tell her the truth, she’d only find more photos if you didn’t. Kylar rambles on and on incoherently about how you’re perfect and innocent, pacing back and forth in front of you. 

“Listen to me!” You interrupted her train of thought, grabbing onto her shoulders and forcing her to look at you. “I…I know that it hurts you, but I… I chose to do it. I did. I can’t lie to you.” Kylar instinctually shakes her head, a high-pitched cackle leaving her lips.

“That is ABSURD!” She laughed, drawing the attention of nearby pedestrians. She held her knife out at you, waving it around as she talked, “Y-your lies are very hurtful, my love.” Stopping in her tracks, she stared up at you, knife pointing towards your stomach. Walking a step forward, the blade pressed lightly into the center of your sweater, right above your belly button. Just as the knife started pressing into you harder, the jab causing a dull pain that makes you wince, she looked down at the weapon and whimpered. Turning around with her back to you, she alternated between laughing quietly and mumbling to herself. 

When she suddenly fell silent, you reached forward and grabbed her by the shoulder, spinning her around to face you. A gasp fell from your lips as you realized she was holding the blade to her wrist hard enough to draw blood. A small trickle of the red liquid dripped down her skin, pooling in her clenched fist. She looked up at you as she pressed the sharp edge into her skin harder, blood spilling down onto the sidewalk.

“N-no! Stop that!” You tried to rip the knife away but her grip was stronger. She kept it firmly planted against her wrist. 

“D-do you see what y-you’re making me do?” Her voice was trembling, tears welling in her eyes as her breaths became erratic. Before you had the time to stop her, Kylar grabbed the knife with her other hand and dragged it up her arm, leaving a 3 inch wound up her inner forearm. The knife promptly clattered to the ground, dropping from her shaking fist. Tears started spilling from her eyes faster than before, a small whimper falling from her pouting lips. 

“Okay! Okay!” You cried, rushing forward to wrap your arms around her waist. Pulling her into your chest, you held her arm up, examining the gash more closely. She might need stitches.You left a kiss in her palm, letting her hyperventilate into your chest. You untied the jacket around your waist, fastening it tightly around her wound. Onlookers gave you wary glances as they passed by, but you held her in your arms for several minutes until she calmed down enough for you to speak again. 

“We… we can talk about this later, okay?” you asked gently, cupping her cheek in your palm and wiping away a stray tear. A soft nod and a sniffle were enough, so you wrapped your arm around her waist, guiding her out of the park. You doubted you’d be able to get her to go to the hospital willingly, so you walked her back to the orphanage instead. You pushed the door of the bathroom open, and sat her down on the toilet. She’d calmed down quite a bit since leaving the park, her gaze now fixed on her feet. As you unwrapped your jacket from her arm, you sighed a breath of relief. The bleeding had stopped on its own, and you didn’t think she needed stitches.

A soapy rag cleaned up the dried blood, and you pressed a chaste kiss right above the wound. Underneath the bathroom sink was a rudimentary first aid kit. You used a handful of bandages and gauze to fashion a dressing for the wound. She looked up at you with puffy eyes and opened her mouth to speak, but nothing came out. Her furrowed brows told you she felt bad, but you didn’t want her to. You’d never really thought about where your photos got distributed before, but now you would. A heavy silence fell between both of you and stayed there until she fell asleep against your chest in your cramped twin bed. Maybe you wouldn’t talk about this later, maybe it was better to just let her be… delusional.

[kingshai69]

its no secret im not a fan of taashs 2 special/legendary armors. other than both their legendary outfits just being recolors of 2 different LoF armors (boringgg, they deserve better) i keep saying that the bikini armor does make their body smaller n ive seen ppl say its just bcs their default armor is bulky but i looked through files to compare n im pretty sure yes it does shrink some of their muscle/make them skinnier. also if u romanced them u would know those legs were definitely shrunk (even their default armor seems to shrink them a little)

screenshots n more under cut, dont wanna clog ppls dash. also spoiler warning-ish? for taashs armors n barbie lvls of nudity (everything either cut out mesh, censored or just kendolled)

im still figuring frosty out but so far i noticed that their default, casual, blue knit + deluxe armor all export w their unique body edit, while the ones shared with other factions r all using the masculine default body (despite armor mesh still being tagged/named to be unique variation for taash) while the rivaini one is the only one using the default feminine body w a slight edit to it. also only their default armor n blue knit meshes r found directly in their character folder, the rest of the meshes r found under the same folder as the faction they share it w. guessing its bcs the rest of their armors arent unique to them but appearance variations.

it also looks like all the body meshes share the same uv map n wireframe. aka i can apply taashs body tex to the extracted default rook masc/fem meshes.

i extracted all fbxs i could find related to them/their armors so first off heres the blue knit one/rivaini legendary/default for comparison. blue knit n default armor lines up almost perfectly n the visible body/skin parts for blue knit is named tagged this

n the default armor this which matches the naming of their casual outfit too.

n then the rivanis body mesh is named this

so in order blue knit/rivani/default. rivaini one is visibly different

bit easier to see when more parts of meshes removed, but rivaini one isnt using same body as the 2 others.

n now comparing taashs rivaini armors body mesh w the default feminine n masculine meshes i extracted with the standard versions of the same armor

n if i apply taashs body tex to all the bodies its a bit less noticeable, in some areas, especially if applying all the armor, but still visibly different. n in game u can get pretty far w normal maps etc, this is just matcap+diffuse in blender

n while yes the edit used for the rivaini armor is close its visible smaller which can be seen when lining up the meshes

also i swear the belly button on rivaini outfit doesnt match up w their default bodys one it sits higher n is shorter, only rlly noticed when looking at mesh w the normal map applied (rlly hard to find example in game as its barely visible on their default armor, but very clear in blender when u compare meshes)

n bcs im not fully sure how everything in frosty works n only realized after a few hours that since the shared armor sets r appearance variations n not fully unique maybe the body meshes extracted weren't correct/lacking some settings so here's in game screenshots comparing it n its a bit harder to see since their gear is in the way but its super visible when it comes to their thighs so my conclusion is yes the armor does give them a smaller frame

now i just need full mesh replacement modding to be supported so i can try n give them a better hero of the veilguard armor that actually feels like it would fit them. literally a kitbash of blue knit, default n maybe parts of the SD n LoF basic ones they have would feel more like them than the 2 we got :c

[the-flaming-nightmare]

Seven Sentence Sunday

Thank you for the tag @anewkindofme! The snippet you gave for the next chapter of "The Little Monkey" was super freaking cute, and I'm so pysched for the full chapter! 🧡❤

I've been working on Regressuary in advance, and today I started working on day 9, so here's a snippet from that:

Sam made his way down to the hospital's emergency center. He'd been paged to reset the ankle of a Little who supposedly broke it from a nasty fall he took running around in the house. He hated having to reset broken bones on Littles. To see their innocent little faces contort with fear when he brought the needle out to numb them, never failed to break his heart in two. It was just another aspect of the job, though. He just had to suck up his feelings and get it done.

As the doctor drew closer to the closed curtain hanging from the ceiling that shielded his patient from prying eyes, he slowed his pace when he heard the conversation happening from behind it.

"What did I tell you about this, Jack?"

"Uh... um, th-that m'too old for baby things l-like lovies, stuffies and blankies."

"Stuffed animals and blankets, Jack."

"R-right. Stuffed animals and blankets. Sorry, Mr. Alter."

Stopping just a couple feet away from the curtain, Sam's brows furrowed in a mixture of unease and confusion as he listened.

That... wasn't a normal conversation between a Caregiver and Little. Like, at all.

Deciding to file that away for later, the doctor smoothed out his features into a casual smile. He grabbed the curtain and pulled it aside, revealing the two occupants. A little boy with short sandy blond hair sat on the examination bed with his legs hanging over the side, still dressed in his pajamas, ankle visible and bruised all to Hell. Standing next to him was a stern looking man just a couple inches shorter than Sam with short dark hair, brown eyes and a beard.

"Hello! I'm Dr. Winchester. I assume you're the Caregiver?" Sam asked, directing the question to the other man.

"Foster Caregiver. Michael Alter," he responded, reaching out and shaking the doctor's hand. "And this is Jack. Introduce yourself, Jack."

Jack met Sam's gaze with a timid smile. "Hi, Dr. Winchester. My name is Jack Kline."

"Hi there, Jack. It's very nice to meet you. Though, I am sorry it's only because you're hurt."

Jack shrugged. "It's okay. It's all my fault, anyway."

Sam just barely managed to keep the smile on his face. Something about the boy's response made that uneasy feeling in his gut heighten.

"Well, I'm sure it was just an accident, peanut. Accidents happen all the time. Right, Mr. Alter?" Sam looked over at the man with an expectant look.

Mr. Alter gave a tight smile. "Yes. Although, maybe next time we'll listen to the grown-up in charge when they tell you not to do something. Hm, Jack?"

A flinch. It was barely noticeable, but being a doctor for almost two decades, meant developing a keen eye when speaking and looking over patients. Maybe Sam was being overanalytical, but he didn't think so. There was just something about this guy and the dynamic he had with this kid that didn't feel quite right.

If y'all wanna do it too, I tag @angelique-of-the-volturi-guard and @thegoeticcleric

[dbgmode]

[In view of the possible/hopefully-not pending death of cohost! and the relatively low activity level of (every/relevant) tag(s) over there, I just today set up the blog I namesquatted years back today; I am now ... probably gauchely piggybacking on this second-most-popular, more relevant post in this tag to hope to give this any reach; forgive me. I started to Blaze this shit but uh that also would be unexceptable tryhard shit... and worse! ]

a close read of the lyrics/video of "Cheerleader" by Porter Robinson

... the irony of immediately, spontaneously spending several hours doing is extremely not lost on me (and crossposting only deepens)....

(a self-xpost from /r/porterrobinson: from cohost! Deluxe edition! ( peppered with a few additional links for the chosting tumbling crowd)

[...snip...]

{The cheerleader archetype also steps specifically onto both American high school "teen movie" archetypes, and (given the use of mask etc.) probably the interpolation of that in anime I am less personally familiar with. [a big reach, but I would contend there is some possibility that there is an invocation here also of like ... homestarrunner absurdist prior art: teen girl squad, trogdor?]. (cohost and tumblr exclusive addendum!: also like ... the idea of the cheerleader as specifically the victim of masked killer in a slasher-film, here (probs not for the first time) directly-inverted.)}

Video "text" (scene by scene, interpretation-biased description):

Cast (in order of appearance):

frame-story fangirl (FSF) (or possibly femmeboy?) - sits alone in bedroom. implied a high school student.

we have what I'm not-not gonna call 2021 MGK Porter. Idk at this point if this is to be understood as being identically the "Porter weston Robinson" of the broader album cycle or is more constrained to this video. I also used the phrase "cringecore porter" elsewhere, and while I think that applies metatextually, not as much in text.

this is NOT nurture porter. nurture porter had long blond hair and wore loose-fitting clothes. nurture porter was into upright pianos, acoustic guitars, and wide-open spaces.

this porter is un-blonde, plays analog synths and electric guitar. he is on the floor of his bedroom or studio, and while outside is there in the window, he does not go there.

of not no consideration is whom I'd call "nurture Together porter" (also "happy fiance Porter" => the man is allowed to be a person outside of aesthetic choices, but I'm not gonna ignore it either). That man (who first appeared at Second Sky 2022) wore a lot of cardigans and cable knit sweaters, and had brown hair that he kept pretty short and neat. Who we see here is both not that guy (see all the "my chemical robinson comments" and yet is closer probably too that guy than he is to either early nurture era guy, late-worlds anime sadboi, or fuckboi [though ... ])

clothes:

His pants look kinda like his shirt in Get Your Wish, as well as somewhat like beetlejuice (... the musical?) and other ~harlequin figures.

The sweater is somewhere between the styles preferred by nurture-Together porter and late-worlds porter.

Shoes are ... kinda fancy? (cf. bare-feet in Get Your Wish).

His colors are red, white, AND BLACK. the cheerleaders for the most part are just red and white. (by contrast the porter from "scene 8" on is pointedly black and grey)

doll cheerleader. possibly specifically the sort of doll used for practicing pose drawing? or doing doll fashion?

other psudedo-human cheerleaders (whom we can probably assume include frame-story fangirl)

additional porters, introduced in scenes 5 - 8, no spoilers.

Scene 0 :

FSF sits alone in her room, doing her best to embody the cheerleader persona, but needing to remove the mask at least a bit to eat. it is unclear whether their hair under the mask is not visible or if it is also styled like the wig

[P.S. posted as reddit self-comment "I also missed the scene 0 important detail, that the candy is literally a chibi-porter-u head (gummy? gusher)"]

Scene 0.5:

hyperspace/cyberspace tunnel - "going down the wire", bubblegum pop logo

Scene 1:

Meet this porter. he jams alone in fairly-large room (synths, some guitar, room is inside but painted like sky. It is lit as fluorescent drop ceiling. Doll cheerleader vibes. You can see (cartoon) outside (invocative of some specific past work, maybe flicker, maybe easy; probs others), and you can also see [same size, eyes on him] ... bubblegum cat (FSF also has a cat).

zoom out through pixels of screen

Scene 2:

Karaoke amongst the cheerleaders. "Perfect!" and other text on screen invokes rhythm games as much as socializing karaoke. Everyone pretty much is signing. One has maracas. There isn't any food or booze.

Porter walks out of (behind) screen and seizes stage mic, at least initially the cheerleaders stop singing to fangirl instead.

Scene 3:

Someone (we can presume FSF) plays with a character creator, and creates (in miniature) dragon Porter. Next she builds a chibi doll of him. (Is this her OC/custom? or did it already get merchandised by e.g. Funko). It briefly stop-motions before exploding into

Scene 4:

Porter is very pop punk now. He has grown the dragon wings and tail. Both the makeup and the pink/silver confetti do remind me of _specifically_ "Tickets to my Downfall" MGK (and perhaps "congratulations" Post Malone?). Though with the blue of the walls (which sometimes have cliffs that are very "Language" video), also is evocative of a common color palette of nurture tour.

Scene 4.5 [intercut]:

FSF is literally playing out this scene in doll-house form, dropping the confetti on her figure. We see the city models preceding the next scene; she is taping this with a gorilla-podded point-and-shoot ; she is not in frame. Next to the porter-room is another much more "normal" doll-house, it doesn't match this room but ... it might have at some point? (it actually is the room from scene 8, but ... I didn't realize that when I wrote this, and neither can the first time viewer)

she picks up and moves figure to the city

Scene 5:

Dragon porter become Kaiju/Rampage porter. Doll cheerleader is here and hyped, and immediately gets stomped.

Scene 5.5:

Reality break. Kaiju porter has breached containment and is outside of FSF's window. She is initially ambiguously scared or excited but approaches the window

Scene 6:

Kaiju porter eats FSF (who is an even smaller less detailed doll/figure to him), this immediately makes him sick, probably dead. Intercut is cartoon chibi porteru (where? in the mouth/GI of kaiju porter? in the brain?)

Scene 7:

meet hot air balloon chibi porter. Note that there is someone in the basket. In wide, she does not appear to be a cheerleader, but also use of binoculars makes it unclear. In close up, she absolutely is.

The body of pom-pomed cheerleaders (who we did meet briefly earlier intercut in scene 4-4.5) form a landing target(?) with the pom-poms, briefly striped, but then chibi face.

Scene 7.5:

Once we have entered the mountains (of Sad Machine?), Porter of Scene 1 is running from but likely spotted by hot air balloon porter and his basket's occupant. The size scale is implied flipped now from scene 5-6. He seeks refuge in a doll-house-ish safe house

Basket radios to ground and her landing target is gone in pursuit/seige of porter

Scene 8 [bridge]:

FSF returns (un-eaten) to her bedroom and sits down on bed out of frame; zoom into new doll-house which is also interior of safe house. Mid-zoom, FSF removes their mask/wig, but we do not see them without it

Here porter sits also on bed, in largely undercoated (but for much smaller version of pink cat in frame), vaguely sky-blue (but no clouds, no cliffs) bedroom.

Arrangement of synths and guitars lightly suggests that _if_ this is understood from Porter's perspective rather than FSF's that he is maybe been sitting alone in dark-ish on bed the whole time.

Outfit is different from every earlier scene as well; fairly generic, but also (to me) kind of evocative of Virtual Self concert dress specifically

In wide shot, there is no one at window. In close up they press against it.

Scene 9 [chorus]:

cheerleader headbutts in and they precede to fuck up his bedroom, synths, one piece of art, before one of them tackles through the drywall

Scene 9.5:

One cheerleader is briefly alone in the scene 1 room, cat art becomes cartoon and jumps from frame, gives chase (to whom? the only one we saw enter this room was a cheerleader);

brief passage flanked by cheerleaders. shit gets trippier

Scene 10:

tracking shot down a sky space tunnel (scene 0.5) in which Porter of Scene 8 jams while a cheerleader (FSF?) and Scene 1 Porter both get spun around. Cat falls down center of that tunnel until camera is obscured.

Scene 11:

chibi porter (dressed like scene 8 porter but with the legs of dragon-doll-porter) is pursued by now giant doll cheerleader, while cheered on by roughly-same-scale dolls and video walls of selves. Also seemingly some holographic-projection cheerleaders who are holding a synth in way that almost suggests they might be playing it (keytar style) but its backwards so ... probably smashing.

Giant doll cheerleader catches and eats chibi porter. Whereas we saw the vore of scene 6 in silhouette, so we don't know how FSF felt about it. Here we dolly zoom on chibi porter who honestly: fuckin thrilled. (in start contrast to terrified expressions in the rest of scene 11)

Scene 11.5:

We (the camera) follow him down, but he is gone from view quickly. the gullet of doll-cheerleader is the cyberspace tunnel of scene 0.5 except that by strobe it is also explicitly the wall of FSF's bedroom. Not for nothing, but the effect is also Windows 95/98 maze screensaver at those times.

Scene 12:

Scene 8 porter crowdsurfs on the cheerleaders hands. Intercut flash jump-scare-ish (but no, cause context) face closeups including:

the pigeon from the window in scene 2

scene 8/12 porter's face

scene 8/12 porter wearing a cheerleader mask

low poly cgi cheerleader

real fast blinks on what probably is just porter's face in even closer-closeup, but might also include un-masked FSF? (I'm kinda loathe to do the frame-by-frame look that would tell me that or no)

Scene 12.5:

oops, crowd surfing porter became a chibi porter pinata, which is ripped apart by the hands of the cheerleaders, splling out hard candy and rock candy, like FSF had in scene 0.

Scene 13:

a single very quick, extreme closeup of FSF's candy bowl

So yeah... I don't want to over-explain (my over-description), but ... relative scales, who appears to control whom: you probably get it.

---

Video paratext:

The description on youtube here is extensive liner notes style credits. Contrast that to the overwhelmingly self-promotional and (few) lyrics description of last music video release ( do-re-me-fa-so-la-ti-do)

or the major credits and lyrics of most early nurture stuff.

I'll grant that this is a more involved production, probably, but also - I think taken with the late-nurture move to a live band show & what we think this album is about, it is both an artistic and a practical decision that this says

I DIDN'T MAKE THIS REMOTELY BY MYSELF

---

release context:

It's a Porter Robinson album first single. It is tone-setting intentionally. He (et al) picked "Sea of Voices" largely cause it was the furthest thing from (for example) 100% in the Bitch / the State - and indeed a big (if smaller, to me) contrast from Language, Easy, Say My Name.

Ditto "Get Your Wish" is not Sad Machine or Lionhearted. And pointedly it is less that aesthetic than even Something Comforting is (Look at the Sky ... idk)

So here, we are doing distortion, we are doing fairly simple analog synth patches, we are doing singing in largely-unprocessed voice. But hey, also, in the bridge, we are doing acoustic guitar - nurture porter isn't actually gone. [Also, while the arrangement works well, I think, there is an amped up section contrast that - in the context of the promotion so far to me - reads as "I know only one part of this is good for tiktok"]

This song is ... about the same things as Get Your Wish. It has a very different outlook on it. but its that, again.

So ... take that as you will.

🌈📣

---

metatextual P.P.S

posted as self-comment:

Not to suggest this is any more than happy/unhappy accident (or possibly emergent from user behaviors?), but YouTube does want to auto-play the most meta-textually appropriate thing next:

And the existence of that piece of ~fanon single art did at least passingly occur to me as relevant to Scene 0 / the frame-setting of this video.

[Additional context: this song, "A Sound for Lonely People" was a demo leaked following either the hacking of Porter's dropbox or the loss/theft of a laptop containing it. No finished version of the song was ever released (and its not clear that that was for lack of "done", lack of desire, or it being a mostly-for-self / private work of art)

His discouragement at this (and other?) leaks is a thing brought up both in both:

the "anachronistic video essay from 2028" about his disappearance on March 1st 2024, which he posted on February 29th. (but then instead dropped an album announcement. Whether there is any intention to go through with any back-scrub is tbd, but there has not been within the first 3 weeks. I might have over-reacted and yt-dlped 69gigs of stuff about it)

the tweet / 𝕏 post feigning(?) such discouragement yesterday

following the "early" release of the song to streaming services in only japan (and not other countries in the same time-zone) for a few hours( or less?)

a thing that could certainly have been genuine data entry confusion, etc. but also is speculated in the context of other album promotion to have potentially been intentional

The most popular youtube uploads of this use imagery of a person or people sitting alone in bedrooms, much like Cheerleader (twice) does]

❤️ 🍬 🫀

"to eat or be eaten"

Porter Robinson - Cheerleader

[aquaquadrant]

How would htp!Tango go with the bit from Limited Life episode 4 when he's running from everyone?

How would it be different from the actual scene?

(not canon to HTP ofc because the timelines don’t match up but HEY i like angst)

"tango!" skizz calls desperately, peering out over the ocean. he could’ve sworn he’d heard tango’s voice when he came this way, but the range of amplification their voices get from the proximity mod can be a little tricky sometimes-

“skizz?”

tango’s voice crackles out of skizz’s communicator; he must be in range, after all. but skizz doesn’t relax just yet. crouching by the water’s edge, he scans the waves intently. his grip tightens around his axe.

"alright, where are you, dude?" he asks, voice low. he keeps the horizon in his periphery; he can just barely make out the horde of yellow names off on the distant shore, digging and searching for tango.

“r- right below you.” tango’s voice is shaky; probably from the adrenaline. being hunted by almost the entire server isn’t exactly a picnic. “where- is impulse with you? or- or etho?”

skizz shakes his head, even though he knows tango can’t see it. “no dude, they’re running interference, okay, but it won’t be long before the others see me over here.” he swallows. “you gotta let me kill you.”

there’s a brief silence.

“okay.” tango’s voice is barely audible. the tone of it gives skizz pause; that sounds like more than just nerves. “okay, o- okay, fine, i’m- i’m fine with that.”

“are you?” skizz asks, his brows furrowing.

“i…” there’s a shuddering exhale. “i don’t- i’d rather it be you, if- if i’m honest. the others, they might…” he breaks off, making a distressed sound in the back of his throat. “y- you know.”

there’s definitely something wrong. skizz’s heart is starting to pound, but he keeps his voice steady. “alright, yeah. this is gonna stick it to them so bad.” he lifts his communicator up and peers through its lens. “can you give me a quick tag, buddy?”

tango doesn’t reply, but skizz sees the flash of a gamer tag beneath the ocean before it vanishes again. tango’s not taking any chances, apparently. not that skizz can blame him.

“you’re pretty deep underwater, dude,” skizz informs him regretfully. “and i don’t- ugh, i don’t have my stupid shovel.”

tango inhales sharply. “i- i can’t- uh, can you…?”

“okay,” skizz murmurs. he knows tango won’t be harmed by water like a real blaze, but it’s uncomfortable even on the best of days and that’d be a lot to ask of him right now. “alright, i’ll come to you. stay put, okay?”

“okay,” tango whispers.

“there a hole for me, buddy?” skizz asks, putting his axe away.

“yes.”

“alright.” skizz straightens up, folding his wing tightly against his body. even one wing will cause a lot of drag underwater and he’s already not looking forward to soggy feathers. “i’m on my way, just hang on.”

taking a deep breath, skizz dives into the ocean.

salt stings his eyes as he swims towards the sand at the bottom. it’s darker down here than he’s expecting for midday, only the faint glow from his halo allowing him to see. he starts digging as soon as he reaches the bottom, hoping he’s in the right place. he’s acutely aware of how long he can hold his breath for and the last thing he needs is a stupid drowning death to steal even more time from him-

a figure enters his field of vision, making him jolt. it’s scott, his freshly yellow timer barely visible in the deep. still holding his breath, skizz equips his axe.

scott actually rolls his eyes. “i’m not gonna kill him, don’t worry.” his voice carries well underwater, and he doesn’t seem to have trouble breathing. must be due to those recently acquired gills of his.

well, that’s fortunate. skizz nods quickly and puts his axe away before resuming his digging. to his surprise, scott floats down next to him and starts helping, his webbed fingers making easy work of the sand. after a couple seconds, they’ve cleared enough sand for skizz to see a hold in the underlying stone, with a faint light beyond it. lungs burning, skizz dives for it.

he makes it through right as the first damage hits him, head breaking through the water with a gasp. kicking against the current, he finally emerges from the ocean. gravity once again takes hold of him. he flops onto the damp stone floor quite ungracefully, his wing heavy and pulling him slightly off-balance.

skizz hauls himself to his feet, dripping wet and catching his breath, and looks around the cave tango’s carved out for himself. it’s tiny, with just three blocks between them, and lit only by the glow of tango’s blaze rods. they’re redder than usual and roaring with flames, whirling above his head in agitation- the way a blaze spins before it starts shooting fireballs.

tango himself doesn’t seem to be doing any better. he’s crouched against a corner, his arms wrapped around his knees, claws digging into his skin. his pupils are blown, so much so that it almost makes his wide eyes look completely black. his chest is rising and falling rapidly, and the noise that comes with each breath sounds disturbingly like a blaze. his mouth hangs slightly parted as he pants, lips drawn back to show his sharp teeth- like a wolf does. but there’s no ferocity in his expression; just sick fear.

altogether, the sight sends a chill down skizz’s spine. it’s like he’s looking at an animal; a cornered, terrified, wild animal. there have been things in the past tango’s reacted strangely to, sure, but skizz has never seen it this bad before. god, he wishes impulse was here.

“hey, tango,” skizz says softly.

for a moment, tango just stares at skizz. then his eyes dart to the side, to the hole in the stone. belatedly, skizz realizes what’s got tango so concerned.

“scott,” he calls carefully, keeping his gaze on tango, “just uh, just stay out there, okay, dude?”

a dark shadow passes by the hole before vanishing. “you’re fine, just get on with it!”

skizz swallows. he stays where he is. “tango, buddy, you okay? talk to me.”

tango’s gaze cuts back to skizz. “is martyn…?”

“no, no martyn,” skizz assures him.

tango takes a shaky breath. “i killed him,” he says hoarsely. “he- he’ll want revenge. and- and the other yellows- you have to kill me, before they find me. skizz, please.”

“hey, hey, hey, it’s alright,” skizz soothes, despite the way his heart feels like it’s twisting itself into a knot. he never thought tango would fear the other players so badly; these are his friends. “you got it. what do you- uh, how do you want me to do it?”

“TNT?” tango asks quietly. “if you light it…”

“alright, yeah, i got some TNT,” skizz says, rummaging through his inventory and pulling out a block of it. “here, uh- you wanna just take that?”

warily, tango teaches a clawed hand out and takes the TNT. he sets it down right in front of him, flush against his folded knees.

“tango?” skizz prompts gently, pulling out his flint and steel. “i need to hear you say it, buddy.”

tango shudders. “do it,” he whispers, turning his face away. “you can kill me, you- i- i just want it to be over.”

“okay, thank you,” skizz murmurs, taking a cautious step forward. “that’s right, dude. after this, it’ll all be over. i’ll come find you at spawn, okay?”

“okay."

“i’ll see ya there. now, count to five for me?"

tango swallows. “one…”

skizz lights the TNT. the sound of sizzling fills the air as the TNT starts to flash.

"t- two..."

putting the flint and steel away, skizz turns and dives back through the hole, into the ocean. tango's voice still sounds from his communicator.

"three..."

kicking madly, skizz swims towards the surface, where scott is waiting.

"four-"

BOOM.

skizz breaks the surface, gasping for breath. he glances back down and sees a new crater at the bottom of the ocean, water and sand churning into a froth. treading water with one arm, he holds his communicator up and looks at the chat.

Tango blew up.

scott gives skizz a sidelong look. "i know how hard it is to let a teammate kill you," he says, his voice low, "but that seemed..."

"scott, buddy," skizz says tiredly, heading for the shore, "keep this between us, will ya?"

~

[cinebration]

The Darkling’s Shadow (The Darkling x Reader) [Part 3]

After days of waiting, you are finally sent on a mission—alone with the Darkling.

Prologue | Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Epilogue

Tagged: @don-daygamerz​, @weallhaveadestiny​, @kaqua​, @sinful-wxrld​, @ashdab2611​, @ultarviolence​, @chodingcreature​, @demonenotturno​, @crowssixof​, @mxacegrey​, @dreamlandcreations​, @s-r-reads​, @byulsrecs​, @peleksstuff​, @seraferna​, @imtherain​, @vexedvalerie, @rayrlupin, @peakyispunk​​​

Warnings: mention of blood and gore

Gif Source: chailame

Boredom set in quicker than the mud could dry on your boots. Five days had passed since you had last spoken to the Darkling, let alone glimpsed him in the camp. No new orders had been issued, not even from the Darkling’s right-hand Heartrender, that dour Ivan. The disdain rolling off the man had hardly concealed his fear when showing you your new quarters, his eyes glancing furtively at the white embroidery on your kefta.

At the edge of camp, your tent could only accommodate one person and their bare necessities: an elevated cot and a desk that doubled as a chest. A small wash pot perched precariously on the table beside a lamp low on oil.

“Such luxury,” you had muttered, earning a venomous look from Ivan. He left before you could dismiss him.

Stripping out of your soiled kefta, you washed your hands and forearms in the bowl until the water turned pink and bits of gore floated in it. Dumping the bowl outside of your tent, the water splashing more mud onto your boots, you seized the first person walking past, a woman approximately your age but visibly older from years of war.

“Who do I speak to about washing?” you asked.

The woman gestured in the direction she had just come and hurried off.

Retrieving your kefta, you strode through the camp until you located the washing station. Several Grisha worked diligently around a large pot of water, scrubbing furiously at blood-stained keftas and clothes. They glanced up as one as you approached, took one look at your kefta, and immediately stepped back to make room for you.

You took your time washing the kefta, allowing everyone to gawk at you. You hadn’t yet washed your face or changed out of your clothes, displaying the blood prominently for passersby to see. Whispers swelled around you in a wonderful chorus of fear and disgust.

The soldiers only glimpsed you at meal times in the days since.

Less is more, you reminded yourself each time you collected food. You refused to sit with the other Grisha, keeping to yourself and your tent.

By day three, you caught whispers of the Bonecrusher.

A vicious grin split your lips.

~~

Grisha abilities dictated that you must, at the very least, see a person to apply your power against them. Your training, however, honed over years of concentrated practice, allowed you to sense the bone structures of people beyond your visual capabilities. You could not affect their bones, but you could sense them, could visualize the person’s movements.

Lying on the cot on day five, staring up at the canvas ceiling of the tent, you passed the excruciatingly slow hours sensing the presence of others scurrying past the closed flap of your abode. Red, blue, and an occasional purple flitted across the thin gap revealing the world beyond your quarters.

The Corporalki were braver than their Etherealki comrades, venturing close to your tent in an attempt to glimpse you. Their skeletons moved furtively but with intense curiosity as they skirted past. One had an old injury in their femur where an inexperienced or perhaps poorly trained Healer had clumsily re-stitched the bone together. Another suffered from a hairline fracture in their collarbone.

A new figure several tents over strode toward you with purpose. After the fourth step, you recognized it as the Darkling.

A thrill shot down to your toes.

Throwing an arm over your eyes, you feigned sleep until the entrance to your tent flapped open, a dark form silhouetted in the entranceway.

“Come,” he commanded.

Unfolding yourself from the cot in no great hurry, you plucked up your kefta from its place across the desk and slipped into it as you followed the Darkling out into the cloudy morning.

All eyes tracked you both as you returned to the Darkling’s tent.

Again it was empty.

Pleasure unfurled in your chest. You wrestled to keep satisfaction from showing on your face.

Sweeping around his war table, the Darkling plucked up a map and spread it out atop everything else. You drew near, scrutinized the map’s depiction of Northern Ravka.

He tapped a fort along the Fjerdan border.

“Ulensk,” you murmured. “I know nothing of it.”

“I expected as much.”

The faintly smug note of his voice pricked you. “If I had grown here in Ravka, I would not have the ability I now possess.”

“You could have been with my army ages ago.”

“As a mere Heartrender with no greater skill than those here.” Shaking your head, you let slip the iron control in your vice, allowing scorn to bleed through. “How you teach Grisha here is abominable—keeping them constrained by senseless ideas of division. Do you think the Black Heretic thought along the lines of convention? No. How else could he create the Unsea?”

You glanced up to meet the Darkling’s gaze, expecting to see displeasure writ large on his fine features. Instead, something inscrutable livened up his eyes. The tendons in his neck were taut, as though his throat strained against him.

You frowned, unsure what to make of it.

Swallowing thickly, he forced his attention down to the map. “The Lantsovs believe the fort is sufficiently defended, but I have reason to believe there are weaknesses there.”

“Structural or…personnel weaknesses?”

“You and I shall find out.”

Quelling the excitement blossoming in your chest, you mused aloud, “If this is meant to be a stealth mission, how many soldiers are we taking with us?”

“None.”

You fixed the man with an incredulous stare. Rising to his full height, he met your gaze levelly, eyes slowly arching in challenge.

“The forest,” you muttered, sweeping your hand over the map, “is an ideal place to ambush and hide a body.”

“Yes, it is.”

You let a smirk pull at your lips, opting for silence. The Darkling’s gaze lingered for a moment longer on your face before he snapped up the map, rolled it into a tight cylinder, and made a sharp gesture of dismissal as he turned his back to you. “We leave at dusk.”

And travel under cover of darkness, you thought, heart hammering deliciously in your chest.

[the-kr8tor]

yk that post about reader babying hobie? can you write it the other way round too?

YESSS part two!!! Ly thank you for requesting! ❤️

Pairing: Hobie Brown x fem! Reader/ Spider-Punk x fem! Reader

Tags: Use of Y/N sparsely, no specific physical description of the reader, R is wearing makeup, CW suggestive, CW food mention, FLUFF.

ʕ⁠·⁠ᴥ⁠·⁠ʔ

You come home to a dark flat, save for a lamp in the doorway, you can barely make out the shapes of your furniture. Bones aching, muscles screaming out from fatigue, you trudge the small space towards your shared bedroom. Not even bothering to put your shoes in their proper place, or even turn on the lights. Shoes haphazardly tossed somewhere, you leave it to future you to take care of.

Wondering where Hobie is, worry is etched on your face with the tiredness from today. But the emotion is washed away when you spot him snoring on the bed. A singular sock on his foot, you see your oversized jumper on him with the words that says ‘I survived London!’ on it. Checkered pajama pants on his legs, arms hugging your pillow and his cheek squished in between. His comfortable attire makes you jealous while you're still in your work clothes, all grimey from today. You could kiss his sleeping face but the heaviness in your bones says otherwise.

Blinking the tiredness away, you stand on the carpeted floors, wondering if you should even dare to wash up before slithering under the covers and over to his arms. You could go shower but you're afraid that you might collapse on the tiled floors with how your legs are about to give out from under you.

You must've been standing for a while since Hobie sensed you. He sits up, one eye open, sleep still clinging to his lashes as he scrunches his nose at your weird stance.

“Are you my sleep paralysis demon?” He jokes, voice deep and hoarse from sleep.

“What?” You barely understood his words. “Hi,” tone wavering, you still smile at him. “Sorry I woke you up, go back to sleep.”

“You just got home?” You sluggishly nod. Hobie's already standing up to meet you on your rooted spot. Hands rubbing softly on your arms, he's jolted awake when he sees your heavy eyes fighting the urge to stay open. “Go to bed—”

“I need to shower.” You whine, not from what he asks but the annoyance that you still have something to do before you could melt into the covers.

“Do that tomorrow, I don't mind.” Hobie reluctantly releases your fatigued form, footsteps quiet as he opens your drawers for fresh clothes. “Change into these and get into bed.” When you don't move to take the pajamas, he guides you gently towards the shared bed, hands slowly making you sit on the soft mattress. “I'll take care of you, please? Do it for me, yeah?”

You almost falter at his sweet words, he knows exactly where to pull your heartstrings. “You'll be sleeping next to a smelly me.”

“I always sleep next to a smelly you.”

“Hey—” you say with a weak laugh.

“Kiddin’” he squishes your face in his warm hands. “change and lie down, I'll handle your face.”

“What's up with my face?” You touch your oily cheek, “do I look that bad?”

“Never, love.” Hobie presses a careful kiss on your forehead. “Never.”

You hum into the kiss, eyes closed, you barely register the fact that he has left your side. The bathroom light almost blinds you, the rushing of the water from the tap is a lot louder at night, making you huff quietly at the sound.

As you change into clean clothes, Hobie readies everything he needs to take care of you. He was ready to tuck you into bed but he comes back to you with the blanket drowning you. Your eyes are the only thing visible, nose kissing the fabric, fighting the urge to sleep. You blink rapidly, fingers waving at him.

“You look fuckin' adorable.” He says into the dark room, save for the lamp on the bedside table. You look like you're about to meld into the bed.

“Hmm, even though I smell?”

Sitting next to you, he lifts the blanket away from your face to get a proper look at you. “Let me check.” Suddenly leaning down, he sniffs dramatically at your neck, the tip of his nose tickles your neck. Giggling, you weakly push him off. He raises his head with a lopsided smile. “Nah, not really.”

“Really?”

“Just a bit.” He clearly jokes.

“Aww, maybe I should just shower.” You begin to sit up, faking that you took his words seriously.

“Y/N.” With gentle hands, he lays you back down.

You laugh, “I'm also kidding.” Spotting your makeup remover wipes next to his leg, your heart grows a hundred times bigger. “Oh”

Hobie takes the crinkling packaging, opening the sticky flap before he grabs a wet wipe. You watch him do it all with a soft smile and tender eyes. Hand splayed on his thigh, you let his warmth seep through you as he gently and expertly wipes the makeup off your cheeks.

“You're a natural.”

“I've got a good teacher.” He says, breath fanning your moist cheeks as he leans closer to you. “‘sides, I started using them too after a show.”

You fake a gasp. “So you're the one using them all.” Poking his pajama clad leg, you press and push until his smug smile turns into a playful grin. Hands warm, he rubs the wet wipe near your eyes, careful of poking you. “Wait, I don't remember showing you how to use them.”

“Why do you think I watch you do your routine every night, hm?”

“Because you love me, dummy. And you're smitten.” Your voice is hoarse but saccharine. He taps your eyelids, prompting you to close them. The wet wipe is cold against your skin but his warm palms grant you reprieve.

“That too,” Hobie confesses like he hasn't a thousand times before. “I was also curious about all the goopy shit you use.”

“Hmm, yes, goopy shit is the right term.” You relax fully, his free hand cages you in, it's placed on the side of your head for leverage. “Make sure you get my eyebrows.”

“Of course, love.” He indulges you, lips quickly pressing sticky kisses on your now clean cheeks. The tender act has your arms inching closer to his waist, enveloping him. “Just close your eyes, I don't look good from this angle.”

“Impossible. You know that's impossible, right?” You crack one eye open to see him tilt his head like he's chastising you, but his smile says otherwise.

“Close your damn eyes.”

“No.” You giggle out, closing your eyes. He pretends to rub harshly at your brow bone.

“Brat.” Hobie sighs, not from exasperation but from the sheer sweetness in his chest.

“Love you too.”

He hums before whispering back an ‘I love you’ that's only for you to hear. Your ears pick up the sound of the package crinkling. A new wet wipe is now gently being rubbed on your soft lips.

“Your lips are dry, did you drink any water today?”

“Mm-hmm, does tea count?” You pout so he could properly clean your lips. He's concentrating, eyebrows knitted, tongue poking out from the seam of his lips.

“I'm guessing you didn't eat much today?”

“I did,” you pop one eye open to see him frown slightly. “I really did! I ate a sandwich.”

“Just one? For the whole day?”

“...yes.” Your eyes glaze over from the sheer sleepiness.

Hobie cradles your moist face, his own incredibly close to yours that you grow cross eyed at his big brown eyes. “I'm gonna make you breakfast tomorrow. A big fuckin’ one that’ll have you full until the weekend.”

“I thought you were about to take a bite at me.” You chuckle, hands holding his face, nails gently cleaning the sleep off the corners of his eyes.

“Keep doin' that at work and I'll actually take a bite out of you.”

“Don't threaten me with a good time, Hobie.”

He rubs his nose to yours, the makeup remover rubbing off on his skin. “Sleep, or I'll take a bite right now.”

“Lay down with me?” You ask quietly and sweetly whilst patting the space next to you.

“Love, I have shocker’s gun in my workshop, the day I say no to that grab it and shoot me because that ain't me anymore.”

“So dramatic—” Hobie plops himself atop you. “Next to me not on top!”

“You weren't complainin’ last time—”

“Hobie!”

[ikehoe]

Play with me [Clavis Lelouch x Reader][Smut]

Characters ↬ Clavis Lelouch x Reader 

Rating ↬ Explicit [Smut – mdni]

Tags ↬ Smut, just pure Smut 

Warning ↬ Thigh-riding, Fingering   

A/N ↬ In celebration of Clavis’ English Route release, here’s some straight filth for ya’ll.  

Disclaimer ↬ I do not own the rights to Ikemen Prince or any of the Ikemen series games. 

Wordcount ↬ 1.5k 

Tag List ↬ @and-then-she-died-tm @kpop-and-otome @curious-skybunny @lordsister @aquagirl1978 @kleeps @ikesimp100 @chaosangel767 @rhodolitesroseforclavis @themysticalbeing @violettduchess @atelieredux @dazais-baby @devildomwritersposts @otomegameinlove @randonauticrap @queengiuliettafirstlady

Please fill out this form if you'd like to be included on my tag list. 

The tips of your fingers flittered across the aged parchment as you continued reading, utterly captivated by the book lying before you. A small gasp escaped from your lips as the heroine of the story narrowly avoided death at the very last moment, managing to swing herself up from the jagged cliff with the help of the wild male lead. That’s why, to Clavis’ sheer delight, you didn’t notice when he made his way over to you in the middle of the library, steps light as a feather so as not to draw any attention to himself. Of course, it helped that he had a light tread in the first place, having been so used to sneaking up on innocent residents of the mansion for the sake of his tricks for years. With bated breath, he slowly inched closer and closer to you until his lips were mere millimeters from your ear.

“What’cha reading, Belle?” He murmured, his hot breath ghosting the shell of your ear and causing you to leap nearly three feet in the air. 

“What th--, my God, Clavis! You nearly scared the living daylights out of me,” your eyes were aflame with fury as you glared at the third Prince of Rhodolite, trying your hardest not to let his dashingly handsome looks get the best of you like usual. It was hard. More than hard. His eyes were like pure liquid gold, and that devastating smirk that so often adorned his face captivated you. What made it worse was he knew it. He knew the effect he had on people, especially you. 

How would you describe your relationship with the hellcat of Rhodolite? Well, since you’d arrived at the palace, the Prince seemed to take a strong liking to you, going out of his way to irritate you, pull some (mostly) harmless pranks on you, and order you around like you were his own personal maid. You’d spend the first couple weeks refusing him with the resolve of a stubborn bull, but gradually he’d worn you down. The way his gaze would turn so forlorn when he admitted a deep-seated secret, how lonely he was that none of his other brothers seemed to enjoy his company, how he was secretly terrified that nobody truly liked him. You were almost sure it was all an act, but that almost was how he roped you into being his unwilling partner. In fact, that’s how he ended up inviting you to bed and having you accept a mere week ago. The memory of it still ran through your mind at all waking hours of the day. Despite your attempts at avoiding having to talk about what happened, it seemed like you couldn’t avoid him forever. 

He gazed upon you with feigned indignation and gasped, dramatically clutching at his chest. “Me? Scare you? I would never dare to. I merely wanted to spend some time with you, especially since you’ve been so busy lately.” Something in his eyes shifted as his gaze dragged up and down your body, lingering at the bare skin visible above your neckline. His soft lips quirked downwards as he disappointingly searched for the faded mark he’d sucked deep into your skin only a week prior. It was like his eyes were boring holes into your body, and you felt your face heat up with embarrassment. 

“What are you looking at?” You asked, hands flying up to cover the slight swell of your breasts resulting from the tightness of your corset. Then, all at once, the memory of his lips, suckling pretty rose-toned bruises into your skin, rushed through you once more. The way he caressed your skin so gently, so carefully as though he might break you apart, so unlike how you thought he’d be. 

When you came to, it seemed like the third Prince knew what you were thinking about, too, as his signature smirk reappeared on his lips. In one swift movement, he pulled you up from your chair, spinning you around so quickly that when you finally landed on his lap, sitting sideways against his muscular thighs, you had absolutely no idea what had happened. You let out a shriek of surprise and grasped at the nearest available thing, Clavis’ gloved hand. 

“A little eager, are we?” He chuckled darkly as he brought your hand to his lips, gently pressing kisses along each of the digits and swirling his tongue around your fingertips. “How is it that you still taste so sweet, even when you’ve been poring over those books?” The sensation of his tongue had you praying that he would lavish you with the same attention elsewhere, and before you could stop it, a soft moan slipped from your lips. You felt his mouth form into a smirk against your hand, and he let your hand slip from his as he nuzzled his nose into your neck, inhaling deeply as he began to unlace your corset. 

“Play with me a little, hm? I’ll be worth your time,” he whispered, trailing his lips from your bare shoulder to the now-exposed swell of your breasts, nipping gently at your skin in his wake. Your hand grasped desperately at Clavis’ arm as he trailed his tongue down your chest, lavishing the taste of your peaks against his mouth. It was heaven for him, being so close to you like this. This was what he wanted since he first laid eyes on you in the town square, skin glistening and eyes sparkling with determination as you protected that boy from the drunkard. It was captivating, and he found himself captivated by you, again and again, each day. 

Your hips began wriggling desperately against his muscular thigh, every part of your body seeking the friction that would satisfy that deep ache in your core, the one that you couldn’t fix yourself ever since you crossed that line in your friendship. A deep groan rumbled from his throat when he noticed your fervent rutting and ripped off his gloves, eager to feel the wetness against his fingers. As his hands made their way underneath your ruffled skirt, his eyes widened momentarily, realizing that you weren’t wearing anything underneath your dress. 

“Naughty, naughty girl,” he murmured, trailing one finger along your core, mouth practically watering at the pool of slick that had gathered along his hands with just one touch. “So wet and eager for me, hm?”

Your face had turned a deep shade of crimson at his lustful words, and as much as you wanted to deny it, he was right. There was a part of you that was waiting for him to find you, to show you that it wasn’t just a one-time thing. But hell would freeze over before you gave in that easily. “N—no, I just… I forgot…” You trailed off, hiding your face in the crook of his shoulder. 

Even that made you all the more endearing to Clavis, and he once again trailed his finger along the seam of your wet core, smirking as you trembled against his body. “Girls that lie don’t get rewarded, Belle,” he whispered, tongue trailing against the shell of your earlobe as you jolted once more against him. Again, the way his fingers would ghost over that spot you needed him most, missing deliberately, once, twice, and on the third pass, you gave in.

“Please, Clavis, i—it wasn’t an accident. I need you,” you begged, eyes widening in shock as his free hand gripped your chin firmly and turned your face towards him, those beautiful golden eyes gazing into the most vulnerable parts of you as he held your gaze with such intensity you thanked the heavens that you were already sitting, as your knees immediately turned weak. 

And there was no way he could deny you when you were begging so sweetly, not when your desire was covering the fabric of his pants and your eyes were so hazy with desire he could reach his own climax from the sight alone. “Good girl,” he murmured, slipping one finger into your needy cunt with ease and capturing your lips into a messy, wet kiss as he swallowed your moans. His fingers thrust against your core, coaxing relentless noises out of you that you were sure to regret when you came back to your senses. Your body was overheating, and that familiar, fluttery sensation deep within your belly was starting to roar to life once more. 

And with a sudden shift of his fingers, he found that spot deep within your core, that spot that had you crying out in ecstasy against him, rutting against his fingers again and again until your slick had thoroughly soaked through any remaining layers between the two of you. His hand gently cradled your head, pressing kisses against your lips and caressing your hair until you came down from your high. 

Once your vision refocused, you shifted and looked down at the stain you’d left on his pants, absolutely mortified with what you’d caused. You were sure the Prince was never going to let you live it down – likely making you act as his personal maid for three weeks at least. “I—I’m so sorry, Clavis, I’ll wash those for you right away,” you stammered, about to get up from your spot on his lap when he forcefully grabbed your waist, pulling you close to him once more and whispering something that would seal your fate for the rest of the night. 

“And where do you think you’re going, Belle? I didn’t say I was done playing with you.” 

[multibodied]

Connor’s rig guide

Okay, in the first part I talked about some basics of manipulating objects in Blender, now it’s time to look at them again within the context of Connor’s rig.

Note: I just realised there were a minor mistake in a rig. Fixed in ver. 2.2 (same link)

Click on Main_Rig object (from outliner or directly from clicking on it in the working area), check that nothing else is selected and go to the pose mode. Here you’ll be able to finally pose the character. You can move and rotate bones around just the way you would do any other objects in blender. 

Tagging you, my dear rig-testets, here: @middleofnothing @detroitbecomeonline

How to reset position/rotation/scale

Let’s say you moved it in some ugly way and want to reset it back the way it was in its “default” position. For this you need to select the bones you want to reset (or just select everything with A) and press

Alt + G - to reset position

Alt + R - to reset rotation

Alt + S - to reset scale (although I don’t know why would you scale bones)

Bone Layers

For this specific model I used bone layers to separate bones into groups according to their purpose and/or layout. What it means is that rig is divided into a few categories that can be hidden/revealed for convenience.

Blender has a system of built-in layers for armature (32 of them in total), which looks like this

I marked “actual layers” with green, because those are the layers we actually use and so-called “pointlessly repeated layers” jare ust a mirror of those we have above for the purpose of locking them (to restrict any changes we could accidentally make), which if you ask me is fucking retarded, there are better ways to visually represent it 

Anyways, we can reveal what’s inside them by clicking on them (just ignore what’s in a purple box, pretend it doesn’t exist), we can select multiple of them by holding Sift or deselect by clicking on them again (while holding shift). White circles represent that the layer has something inside and isn’t empty. Filled white circle indicate that the active bone(s) (the one(s) we have selected atm) are inside this layer, or, if nothing is selected it means that the last time there were, it was on This layer.

As you can see, by default those layers look weird and there’s no way to name them, which kinda ruins the purpose of layers. That’s why we won’t use them, and instead use free plugin “Bone Manager”, if you have my blend file, you should have it working already and it looks like this:

You can already see right away how much more user-friendly it is, doesn’t even requires explanation, as you can see all you need to know intuitively. It’s basically all the same layers from before, but displayed like they were actually made for people. 

To see this window, you should be inside pose mode. From there you can find it in the left corner of the working area under the tab “Bone Layers” like you can see on the screenshot. If you don't see that, then hover your cursor above working area and click N on your keyboard to show/hide it (or find this small arrow and click on it)

In regards to this specific rig I used 19 layers in total, you can see all of them below. They were mostly made for my convenience while rigging although I tried to rearrange them in a way that would be convenient for posing

(you can rearrange them if you want, it doesn’t affect the way any of those bones function, it’s purely for visual representation)

About those layers in detail

“Face original controls” - as the name says, it’s face bones from original rig. Not all of them though, I put “Tongue”, “Lips Upper (orig)”, “Lips Lower (orig)” and “Eyelids_orig” on separate layers, although they are all technically just face original controls. You’ll probably struggle to see them if you try to switch to them now, but it’s because bones are displayed as barely visible wires atm, I’ll explain how to switch it to other types below. 

Other layers that contain original controls are

“Helper Deform (orig)” - those move small parts of the mesh, but I don’t think they’re really useful or helpful, more like confusing and messy. You can try tweaking them around, but I suggest to ignore this layer. This layer exists because I was afraid to delete something just to find out it was actually really important later on. Maybe those bones Are helpful, idk, try it.

"Tie”, “Jacket” and “Shirt” are also just original bones that are responsible for cloth. For now I don’t yet possess the kind of black magic wisdom it takes to know how to rig clothes in a meaningful way, so it’ll probably be a frustrating experience to try to manipulate those. 

“Some pointless garbage” - originals bones that were there, but doesn’t do shit. Ignore it.

“Face custom controls” - a set of controllers made by me in an attempt to make usable face rig. It’s not comprehensive and only have controllers for eyes, eyelids and eyebrows (I got frustrated about the state of the mouth and haven’t finished it. Eyes and eyelids requires improvements too, but huh, better than moving each individual bone from original rig, which btw you can still do instead of/in addition to using controllers) This layer looks like that:

For eye individual controllers you’d want to rotate them instead of moving (double-click R after selecting them to rotate freely)

I realise now that eyelids move a little too much along with the eyes. I didn’t know the shit I was doing when I started this mess, so I’d probably managed to do it better now if I were to do it again.

Eyelid(s) controls:

You’d think that they’re responsible for upper eyelids, but actually no, not exactly, instead they are linked to the action of closing/opening the eyes and as you can see, lower eyelid moves along slightly (just like it does in the game. I tried to replicate the way it happens)

I tried to do the lover eyelid controller at some point as well to allow for the squinting(there are also wrinkle maps for that), but it is one of those things I haven’t yet done after realising that it is easy enough to break those eyelids already as they are now...Maybe later

And finally, eyebrows, which are probably the most interesting and complicated piece of this rig as they’re the only controllers that I managed to actually link to dynamic wrinkle textures, the ones I can’t shut up about. Each of those controllers are, just like eyelids, linked to the action (frowning/rising eyebrows depending on if you move them up/down or left/right from the nose. Or you can actually do both and see in-betweens of all kind of mix of the two), you can see it more clearly as skin around the corners of the eyes moves slightly(up) as well when frowned. I can dedicate the whole other post explaining exactly how I managed to do that, there’s A LOT to say, it’s absolutely ridiculous how complex it is under the hood. I spent maybe a week researching dynamic-wrinkle concept in 3d and I still can’t wrap my head around how cool it is.

Okay, that’s all for the face. 

But before moving on, a few words about what I have already mentioned about how you can use original controls to achieve more/other face expressions and actually pose mouth that I completely abandoned for custom controls.

If you switch to one of those layers with orig. controls, you’ll see something like this:

You can see those tiny dots that indicate those controls, but maybe they’re too small to be seen easily.

For this reason, you can switch the way they look to something else, instead of wire, you can do it here (generally you’ll use Stick or Octahedral if not Wire, ignore others)

Below is an example of how it looks like when displayed as Stick. I added a custom bone for the jaw just so it’d visible at all times, so it won’t be affected.

Okay, moving on to those next layers 

Now finally about how we can move the body. For this purpose there are two different ways to bend those arms/legs and those are known as Forward Kinematics (often shortened to FK) and Inverse Kinematics (IK).

In this rig there are separate layers for them called

“FK CTRL” and “IK CTRL” , for forward and inverse kinematics accordingly.

Forward Kinematics is when you pose bones one after another in a rigid way. From bottom to the top. In this rig they are color coded with green.

Note: a little update made to the rig after those gifs were made — now finger bones are in the FK CTRL layer. Used to be on DEF layer before

Inverse Kinematic (IK) is the other way around - you move the last element of a chain and all the bones before that move accordingly. You can further adjust the position of the chain by using “pole target” (in the gif below you can see how it works. It help you rotate elbow or knee) I made IK controls yellow.

This rig is switched to IK by default, so if you try to move green bones of arms or legs it won’t move. I’ll explain fow to switch between IK/FK in a moment.

“Root“ layer contains two shapes. One of which is the circle around where the character stands on the ground - if you move that it’ll move the whole character

Another shape is the words “Some settings” above the head. If you click on those and go into item properties menu, you’ll see that there are a buch of switches there:

Eyes_Follow_Head - whether or not eyes move along with the head if you rotate it or stay focused on eye controller.

FK>IK_Hand_L - switch left hand from FK(if set to 0) to IK (if set to 1)

All the remaining ones are just the same, but for the remaining hand and legs.

Layer “Torso” is quite self-explanatory. Just move/rotate things around to understand what they’re doing and you’re good to go.

And...It seems like I’m forgetting something really important as if there’s a lot more to tell about, but HUH. I don’t remember what is it exactly and if I figure it out, I’ll update this post.

Oh, right, about other layers. Those are mechanical layers responsible for things to function properly and those layers aren’t intended to be touched so if you don’t know what you’re doing DO NOT TOUCH OR CHANGE ANYTHING in those layers. Which are “Eyelids”, “Follow-Eyelid”, “DEF”(this one contain original bones btw, but don’t touch it if you're tot sure), “MCH” and “IK”

Lemme know if you have any problems/questions/suggestions/fic recommendations or if you want me to ramble on about some specific thing in rigging(or 3d in general), like the way I made those controls for eyebrows, or how to create your own controllers. Or...you got the idea.

And if you use this rig for your renders, mention where did you get it from (I wonder who that could be about?) ;^)

[sebdoesthings]

The Knife in His Coffin (Geralt/Roche) - Full Chapter 1

Link to Ao3

Chapters: 1/21 Fandom: Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types, Wiedźmin | The Witcher (Video Game) Rating: Explicit Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Vernon Roche Characters: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia, Vernon Roche Additional Tags: Spoilers for The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings, retelling of chapter 3, Slow Burn, Falling In Love, Grief/Mourning, Canon Compliant, -Ish, small deviations from canon, Missing Scene, Extended Scene, Hurt/Comfort, Blood and Injury, Pining, Explicit Sexual Content, Anal Sex, rape mention, Not Beta Read, Hopeful Ending, Bittersweet Ending, Loc Muinne (The Witcher), Team Dynamics, R&R

Summary:

Triss was a sorceress, more than capable of escaping or killing Letho if push came to shove, and while Roche was exceptional among humans, he was, in the end, just that. Human. An ordinary human with extraordinary skills and training. But against Dethmold, well… Geralt had chosen Vernon Roche once before, and deep inside, he knew he would do it again.

In just a few weeks, Vernon Roche has lost nearly everything that was dear to him. He’s lost his king, lost his men, and is about to lose his country, too. The only thing driving him now is a burning desire for revenge, and he will cross mountains to get it. With Ves left behind for safety, there is only Geralt by his side on the arduous journey to Loc Muinne - and they are about to realise that a lot can change in a week when it is filled with nothing but silence and each other’s presence.

Full First Chapter (Continued under Read More)

The journey to Loc Muinne had something haunting about it, and it wasn’t just the importance of the summit that was scheduled to take place there. In fact, neither Geralt nor Roche had much interest in it at this point. Too much had been lost, too much blood spilled, staining their hands.

No, the ship was haunted – not literally, but by the emptiness of the space where the last time they’d boarded it, there had been if not laughter, then at least people filling all its corners. Now Zoltan was in Vergen, Dandelion on the way to Oxenfurt, and the corpses of the Blue Stripes burning on a pyre Geralt and Roche had erected. The Witcher could still see columns of smoke in the distance, but he wasn’t sure whether one of them came from the ashes remaining of Roche’s unit. Regardless, the stench would cling to Geralt’s clothes, skin and soul until his dying day.

It was only a handful of people now. While Geralt and Roche had been in Vergen, Ves had picked up a few scattered layabouts in order to man the ship, though they spoke little. It was eerie, to see a crew so demotivated and quiet when usually songs and laughter would be carried across the ship in tandem with the sounds of labour. But there was only the howling of the wind in the sails now, and the croaking of a few drowners on the river’s shores.

Vernon Roche had barely spoken a word since they’d set off earlier that day. Once so opinionated and vocal, he now stared at the horizon in the wake of the ship, even though Geralt knew the smoke must not be visible to his eyes anymore. Gone was the drive that had propelled him towards Vergen, towards that room carved into the rock. Gone was that drive that had guided his dagger between Henselt’s ribs.

Roche suffered, that much was plain to see – there was a tension to his expression that outmatched all the hardness he’d shown in the past. Seething rage and abysmal sorrow lay just beneath his skin, going deeper even than after Foltest’s death.

Geralt stepped up to the helm and past Ves at the steering wheel. She gave him a look in passing, and he didn’t quite know how to interpret it. Leaving her behind, Geralt stopped next to Roche. The man didn’t move even an inch.

“You alri—”

Geralt didn’t get to finish, as Roche abruptly turned from his spot and walked away, down the stairs and into the captain’s quarters. Geralt stared at the empty space where he’d lost sight of him, and Ves sighed.

“’S no good talking to him,” she said, and her voice was tinged with uncertainty and sadness. Geralt stepped up to her, and when he came to a halt, he could see her hands trembling as they clutched the wheel. There were glistening streaks down her cheeks, and her eyes were bloodshot. “Not when he’s like that.”

“Might’ve figured,” Geralt mumbled and leaned his elbows on the railing overlooking the deck.

Only a handful of their sailors were at work, one busied himself with a tangled rope, another scrubbed at the planks, but the rest huddled together playing dice or chatting quietly. The wind was harsh, and the spray blowing up onto the ship cold.

Geralt peeked over his shoulder at Ves. “Anything to be done? Or is it a case of the waiting game?”

“The waiting game, most like,” Ves said. “But I’m not sure how long you’ll be waiting for. I’ve never seen him quite like… well… that. And he raged something fierce when they found you in the solar at La Valette castle.”

“Not surprised…” Geralt thought back to what they’d seen in that tent. He’d felt his own heart drop at the sight – after all, he’d made friends with the Blue Stripes. Absent-mindedly, he rubbed the tattoo on his neck. But for Roche… he couldn’t imagine what it must’ve been like for him. To see his entire unit executed while he was away, and to feel not only responsible, but downright at fault for their deaths was…

“Don’t dwell on it,” Ves said, seemingly reading his thoughts.

“Can you tell me about them?” Geralt asked, lifting his head from where it had slumped between his shoulders. “The Stripes?”

“Met them yourself.” Ves shrugged. “Fought with them, got drunk with them, went to a brothel with them. Not much more to bond over with soldiers.” The way she talked, it sounded dismissive, but Geralt could hear the tension in her voice.

“Sorry. Shouldn’t have brought it up.”

Ves didn’t respond, and after a while, Geralt turned around, leaning his back against the railing. He crossed his arms over his chest, a gesture he’d discovered came naturally to him.

“What about you?” he asked. “You holding up?”

“What’s there to hold up, Geralt? I’ve been raped, my closest friends got murdered, my king is dead, and my commander’s damn near losing his mind over all of it,” she snapped. “If those elves hadn’t ruined me as a girl, I’d be worried the only thing I’d be holding up soon would be a bastard child.”

Geralt’s chest constricted. He wondered whether she would know it was Roche who’d killed Henselt once the news of his death spread. Right away, he knew with certainty that she would.

“Right… Sorry.” he shook his head when he realised it was the second time in a very short while he’d said the word. He pushed off the railing and started down towards the stairs before pausing, half turning back to Ves, and then deciding against whatever had been on his mind and continuing on. “Gonna get some food.”

The first day of their expected three-day journey came to an end without much of a silver lining. It was dark and grey outside, and there was a light drizzle coming down. Geralt, Ves and Roche met in the captain’s quarters to eat dinner, but even though the selection was good considering their hasty departure, none of them seemed especially pleased to be there. Roche chewed his food with broiling anger, which Geralt hadn’t previously thought possible, but his grimace definitely let him know he’d prefer to sink his teeth into a certain mage’s throat instead.

Ves attempted to start a few meagre conversations, but Geralt could barely remember them the moment they slipped away.

The food tasted like ash in his mouth, and every time he took a bite, he was reminded of the funeral pyres they’d erected for the Blue Stripes. Geralt hadn’t thought Roche would want to lose any time after they’d learned Dethmold had slipped away to Loc Muinne, but he’d insisted on returning to the Kaedweni camp. In that moment, Geralt knew he’d gotten a vital glimpse at the man by his side, and it made the whole situation even more devastating.

“I’ll sleep below deck with the crew,” Geralt announced when he’d finished his food and stood from the table. Roche and Ves looked up at him with surprise.

“You can stay here,” Roche said. “There’s enough space.”

“Need some time… alone,” Geralt muttered and briskly vacated the room. Behind him he could hear Roche’s raspy voice as he walked away.

“What’re you looking at me like that for?”

“Well if you weren’t such a sulking grouch all day—”

“Oh so now it’s my fault? He can sleep with the lads if he wants, what do I care? He’s a grown man!”

Their voices, despite the increasing volume, faded into the background as Geralt descended below deck.

The Percival had once held all of the Blue Stripes and more, and was still haunted by their presence in the hammocks that hung limply between the beams, too many to occupy. Geralt stalked through the room, ignoring the sailors as he went, and flung himself into one at the very back, turned towards the curved interior of the ship’s belly. Right about now, he would’ve been glad for amnesia.

Roche and Ves finished their meals in silence once their immediate outburst regarding Geralt’s departure had blown over. Afterwards, Roche eyed the book sitting on a pile of things they’d shoved aside to make space for plates and cutlery. The History of Loc Muinne Through the Ages of the Vrani, Elves, and Humans. It was horribly dry, and so Roche turned instead to packing his pipe while Ves pored over the map she’d moved to her bed for the meal.

He took a drag, and the smoke filled his lungs, briefly dispelling the raw emotion that had been clawing at his insides all day. As he held the smoke there, the image of his Stripes dangling inside that blasted tent flashed before his eyes again. The mud caked onto the worn soles of Pinto’s boots, the hood torn from Silas’ head to fit the rope, the striped mask Finch had always worn to cover his harelip stomped into the dirt beneath his feet.

As a choked sound forced itself up Roche’s throat, he coughed, the smoke suddenly burning his lungs. He thumped his chest with his fist – more forcefully than need be – and squeezed his eyes shut, but the images would not blur and the memories not fade.

He remembered how the Stripes would whoop whenever he joined them for training; how he’d spent long evenings studying their strengths and weaknesses to build a solid formation. Experienced again the frustration he’d sometimes felt when they had turned loud and rowdy the night after a successful campaign while he sat poring over his report. Now their laughter filled up his head, but only silence met his ears.

Where he had just been clutching the medal around his neck, now his fist slammed down onto the table, rattling the plates, bowls and bottles left from their meal. On the bed, Ves flinched hard and whipped around to stare at him wide-eyed. When she saw him bent over the table unmoving, she let out the breath she’d been holding.

Roche rubbed a hand over his face and into his hair, pulling off his chaperon and coif. With a sigh, he dropped them on the chair next to his own.

“I’m… sorry, Ves,” he pressed out.

When he looked up at her, he found he couldn’t make sense of her expression. For the longest time now, they’d been able to read each other like a book. It simply came with being commander and second-in-command. And now, just as Roche realised he didn’t know what was going on in her mind, he could tell she fared similarly. And it worried him more than he wanted to admit even to himself.

Swallowing the lump in his throat, Roche took in the room. There were three narrow cots in the back, almost touching each other. They’d shared the cabin up until now, and had done so for as long as the Percival had been the Stripes’ vessel, but now the air seemed too thick to breathe, the spaces between the cots too small.

“Do you want me to leave for the night?” Roche asked, glancing at Ves.

She frowned, staring at a spot in the air just next to his face. “You’re the commander, you’ve a right to sleep here.”

“But I’m not asking as your commander, Ves.”

Finally, their eyes met, and she blinked a few times rapidly. Her shoulders slumped and she curled in on herself, forearms coming to rest on her thighs. Her gaze flickered over Roche’s face and then disappeared as she closed her eyes.

“No,” she said softly. “I don’t mind.”

Ves rolled the map out on the table and looked over her shoulder at Roche. He’d only just gotten up, and judging from the disgruntled look on his face, he hadn’t slept much.

“I’ve sketched out a potential way up to Loc Muinne for us,” she said. “Come have a look.”

Frowning, Roche fiddled with the cuff of his shirt. “You’ll stay here.”

“What?” Ves half turned towards him, one hand resting on the map, fidgeting with a corner.

“I’m only taking Geralt with me,” Roche said and finally looked at her.

“You’re replacing me.”

It was moments like these when her age really showed, and it was eye-opening each time. Roche took a step closer and clamped a hand over the Blue Stripes badge on her sleeve.

“You’re my second-in-command. No one can replace you. Which is why I need you here. Alive,” Roche said, eyes boring into hers. “The Summit is in little over a week. You’ll remain for three, and if I’m not back by then you’ll go to Vizima.”

“You can’t just expect me to sit still and twiddle my thumbs for three weeks, Roche,” Ves said, balling her fists and leaning forward, but her vigour soon faltered. She swallowed thickly. When she continued, her voice was very quiet, and she stared at the ground between them. “I need you alive, too, you know? When— when Henselt released me into that tent, I— I thought wherever you, were they’d killed you too.”

Roche’s throat closed up, and he squeezed her arm.

“I didn’t know what to do, I— it was as if I was back in the Scoia’tael camp, after…”

Her voice petered out, and a tear fell from the tip of her nose. When a sob broke from her throat, Roche pulled her close, and she fell against his chest, digging her nails into his back.

“But you’re not there anymore. And you’ll never be there again,” Roche said, and her hair swayed with his breath. “We can’t change the past, but we can change the future, Ves. Which is why I need you present to do that if all else fails.”

Ves hiccupped and wiped at her eyes as she stepped back. “What would you have me do… in Vizima?”

“If discussions at the Summit fail, Temeria will most likely be divided up, but our people won’t surrender. There will be uprisings. Riots,” Roche said. “Make sure they have a leader.”

“What does that mean, Vernon?” Ves asked, letting out a concerned breath. “What the hell are you planning?”

“Whatever it takes,” Roche said and turned to face the map. “Now show me that path you found.”

“Geralt, can we talk?” Ves asked the Witcher, who stood at the helm of the ship, leaning against the railing and doused by a misty spray of Pontar water.

He looked at her over his shoulder, but didn’t move. Behind her, Roche strode across the deck. They’d begun the day shut away in the captain’s quarters, and once they’d finally emerged onto the deck around midday, Roche had begun barking orders at the sailors to keep them busy.

“What is it?” Geralt asked and pushed away from the railing.

Ves took a glance across the ship and then motioned towards the captain’s cabin with her head. Geralt frowned, but followed her inside.

“I need to ask you a favour,” Ves said, sitting down at the table. A bowl of green apples sat on it, and she picked one after circling her hand above it in deliberation.

“Uh-huh?”

Taking a bite of her apple, Ves let several seconds run by as she chewed. When eventually, she lowered the apple and cradled it in her lap, she slumped a little in her posture. “Can you look out for Vernon on the way to Loc Muinne? I’m worried he’ll be too impulsive in his thirst for revenge, and there’s a lot of dangerous people among the nobles gathered there. He can be too trusting sometimes. Believes in promises being kept once given.”

Geralt shrugged as he stood there in the middle of the room, crossing his arms. “Know him better than I do. You’re his right hand, making sure he doesn’t do anything too stupid is basically your job.”

“That’s why I’m asking you. I’m doing my job.”

“What?”

“I’m not going to Loc Muinne, Geralt. It’ll be just you two.”

Geralt hesitated and lowered his arms. He scanned Ves, but couldn’t detect anything unusual apart from the concerned expression on her face.

“Why? Didn’t think you’d ever leave his side. Do you need a doctor?”

Ves shook her head. “I’m not sick – or pregnant, if that’s what you’re asking. Can’t. Henselt’s just another nightmare to add to the bunch, I suppose…” Geralt knew there were things she left unsaid, though he decided not to press her. “But orders are orders, so I’m to stay behind with the ship.”

“Roche ordered you to stay?” Geralt’s frown deepened.

“Mhm. This morning. Talked about defending his interests if… if he didn’t come back, I assume. He was vague. Geralt, I think he might be planning some sort of suicide mission.” When she looked up, Ves’ eyes were wide and glistening in the low light. “Just… look out for him. Talk to him.”

“No use talking to him when he’s like this. Said it yourself,” Geralt said, raising a hand in emphasis.

“Eventually, he’ll need to, and I’d prefer if you were there. He trusts you, Geralt.”

“Not so sure about that.”

“Oh, please,” Ves said. Her voice dropped, all warmth gone from it in an instant. “I’m not in the mood for rebuttal or denial. He wouldn’t have let you escape the dungeons of La Valette castle if he’d had even a shred of doubt about your innocence. He trusted you – trusted you didn’t kill his king, because it made no sense, and trusted you wouldn’t run away after leaving the gates of the castle.”

Geralt let a bout of silence pass without interruption.

“I didn’t, back then. Trust you, that is. Vernon ordered us onto the ship with no explanation, and I didn’t question it. It’s not my place. But when he revealed his flimsy plan, I told him what I thought of it. That we couldn’t trust you, couldn’t be certain of anything. I wondered whether you’d influenced him with one of your Signs, even though I didn’t quite know how they worked at the time.” Ves looked at Geralt from bloodshot eyes cast in dark shadows. “I thought he’d lost his mind, Geralt, but he was right. He saw the big picture when I couldn’t. I think… I think he might truly be losing his mind now. Don’t let it happen, Geralt. I might be his second-in-command, but you’re his friend.”

“Don’t they say Vernon Roche has no friends?” Geralt asked, and gave a grim smile when he remembered the saying he’d picked up some time ago. “And if each of his friends came to bury him, Roche would have to do it himself.”

“Apparently, it is enough to put a knife into his coffin and he will succeed,” Ves continued. “Put a knife in his coffin for me, Geralt, will you?” Geralt huffed, considering her for a moment before turning to leave. “See if I can spare one.”

Read the second Chapter on Ao3