#not that this one is particularly egregious but it was a thought I had

[geaibleu-gaming]

Forgot I put Beckett in this outfit until I logged in today (would have logged in yesterday but the threat of a looming power cut meant I had to keep my PS4 off)

[hello-eeveev]

this twitter thread really got to me. because yeah. it is a torment and it is a blessing, and the reward comes from struggling through pinning down the vast expanse of your imagination to the written word. the self is inherent to the process. the way we experience the world influences how we describe it in language and how we organize it into something told linearly.

yeah. I care about writing stories so much. I care about how I tell them and the way I tell them because the process is what makes the story. somewhere between all the floating plot points in your head and the trying to put it into the right words in the right order, the life essence of the story generates itself.

to surrender the process to something that does not experience the magnificent struggle of being alive is a tremendous loss.

[english-history-trip]

Ever see a depiction of St. George and the Dragon? It's pretty fair to say if you've seen one, you've seen them all: Georgie on a horse stabbing a flailing dragon creature, princess piously kneeling in the background, vague landscape alluding to the homeland of the artist's patron.

The most varied part is the dragons. No one had a real definition for the thing, it seemed. For your pleasure and entertainment, I have ranked some medieval depictions based on how impressive George's feat seems once you see the dragon.

Paolo Uccello, 1456

This is a terrifying beast. The hell is that. Uccello was one of the first experimenters with perspective, so the thing also looks surreal, like it's taking place on Mars, or a Windows 95 screensaver. I would not want to fight that, I would not want to be tied to that. (Sometimes the princess is tied to the dragon for some reason.) 10/10

Horse thoughts: Maybe if I look at the ground it will be gone when I look up

Unknown artist, c. 1505

This is a rare change of form for the dragon; it's the only one I've seen actually flying (or at least falling with style). It doesn't look particularly deterred by the spear through its throat, either. Also, George looks appropriately nervous. On the other hand, it hasn't got teeth, it seems to be fuzzy rather than having scaly armor, and George is bolstered by his army of Henry VII and his children, most of whom definitely didn't actually die in infancy. Still, wouldn't want to fight it, wouldn't want my pet sheep near it. (Sometimes the princess has a pet sheep for some reason.) 9/10

Horse thoughts: I am so glad I wore my mightiest feather helmet for this

Raphael, 1505

We are coming to Dragons With Problems. This guy looks about comparable in size to George, and does have wings, but doesn't seem to be using these things to his advantage (and has he only got one wing?) And how does he deal with the neck? He does have a comically small head, but holding it up with such a twisty neck seems complicated at best. But most egregiously, he is doing the shitty superheroine pose where he is somehow simultaneously showcasing his chest and his butt, with its unnecessarily defined butthole (more on this later) (regrettably). 8/10 bc it's Raphael

Horse thoughts: AM I THE BESTEST BOI? AM I DOING SUCH A GOOD JOB? WE R DRAGON SLAYING BUDDIEZ

The Beauchamp Hours, c. 1401

We had a spirited debate about this one at work. Again, the dragon has gotten smaller, and this one hasn't got even one wing. He's basically a crocodile. So the debate became: would you want to fight a crocodile if you had a horse and a pointy stick? Would the horse trample the animal, who can't get on its hind legs, or freak out and throw its rider? Would the pointy stick be enough to pierce the croc's thick hide? In this case, George seems to be controlling his horse and putting his pointy stick in the dragon's weak spot, so we can be impressed by his skill and strategy. However, his hat is dumb. 7/10

Horse thoughts: Dehhhh

Book of Hours, c. 1480

Here we have the same kind of croco-dragon, but George's focus on his strategy has gone out the window. He's flailing around, not even looking at his target, he's about to lose his pointy stick, he hasn't got a hand on the reins, and his sword seems to only be poking the invisible dragon over his shoulder. All he's got going for him is that his hat is slightly less dumb. 6/10

Horse thoughts: Yay, new friend! Come play with me, new fr- what is happening

Final dragons put behind this Read More for your safety:

Rogier van der Weyden, c. 1432

I'm thinking this guy is at least semi-aquatic. Webbed feet, wings that seem more like fins, bipedal but top-heavy, jaws that seem more for scooping than biting. Maybe she's crawled up here from the nearby body of water to lay her eggs, and this is all a big misunderstanding. Moreover, George's dagged sleeves seem entirely impractical for the situation. 5/10

Horse thoughts: i got my hed stuk in a jar and now it is this way forever

Unknown artist, c. 15th century

I hate this. I hate everything about it. Why has it got human eyes and teeth. Why is its nose melting. Why has it got a dick on its face and balls under its chin. The fin/wings are back but they look even more useless. Also, George is shifty as hell, schlumped over in his saddle with his bowler hat thing over his eyes. The baby dragon at the bottom eating some hapless would-be rescuer is kind of metal. 4/10 at least the thing is gonna die

Horse thoughts: I Have Smoked So Much Crack

Book of Hours, c. 1450

Remember what I said about the buttholes? First, sorry. Second, yeah, we're back to that. I'll admit this one is less about the danger from the dragon itself than the very specific choices the artist has made. They didn't need to do that. It's a lizard. They don't even have. And it's like they had an orifice budget and they skipped an exit wound for the spear to focus. Elsewhere. It's so detailed. And George had an even dumber hat. 2/10 take it away

Horse thoughts: I Have Smoked So Much Weed

Book of Hours, c. 1415

This is just bullying. There isn't even a princess. That is clearly an infant. Look at that smug look on George's face as he swings his sword that's bigger than the whole little guy. This is the equivalent of when DJT Jr. hunted those sleeping endangered sheep. 1/10

Horse thoughts: ....yikes

And this is the previous one, but now the baby dragon is cute. He's chubby. He's got toe beans. He's Puff the Magic Dragon. His eyes have already gone white, implying that George is just kicking its corpse around for funsies. What's the difference between the dragon and the lamb in the background? That the dragon is dead, like our innocence. This George is truly deserving of the dumbest hat of all. 0/10 plus one more butthole for the road

Horse thoughts: Perhaps it is we who are the buttholes.

[jezabelle9299]

Missed you S.Rxfem! Reader

Overture: Spencer gets back from a long case to see you at the office, finishing your work, but you have a surprise for him.

C-W’s: mentions of not getting enough calories/ only consuming coffee. Reader is shorter than Spencer (by a good bit, he has to lean down a little), and Spencer keeps plastic forks in his desk, because he hates group utensils, because germs.

*****************************************

You knew Spencer. He knew you knew him, so he wasn’t all that surprised when you sauntered up to his desk when he got off the plane, a sight for sore eyes. He was surprised however to see you with a book he’d been wanting to read that he hadn’t had time to pick up from the library and a coffee for him from the kitchen. They’d just gotten back from another case halfway across the country and he couldn’t be happier to get back to the office to see you. He of course also had to do his paperwork, but it wouldn’t take him long. If he could keep himself from getting distracted, you two could get out of the office in time to make a late movie.

“Thank you, really, it means a lot. I put this book on hold like two weeks ago, they were just about to give it to the next person on the list. How did you know?”

“Well I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I do kind of like paying attention to you.” You laughed, and Spencer immediately turned a bright red. You’d been dating for over a month now, and you could still make him blush at the drop of a hat. He’s never going to get used to it. Luckily you shifted the subject, before he could produce enough heat to warm the FBI’s headquarters through the winter.

“So babe—“ you started, putting on the most radiant smile he’d ever seen, the one that happens when you’re leading up to something particularly exciting for you.

“You know how you haven’t had anything other than coffees all day, even though you know the precise importance of getting proper calories in a day?”

“No…?” He gave it a try. It wasn’t a good one. You just waved him off and gave a melodramatic eye roll.

“Well, I’m definitely taking you to dinner when you’re done with your paperwork, but in the meantime—” you pulled out a little plastic box, with a small cake inside, and the cake had a little chocolate heart.

“I went to that bakery that just opened up a couple of blocks away, and I got you this! It's tiramisu, so it's caffeine, but also you know—food. Because I’d love it if my boyfriend didn’t whither away because he was only getting calories from the egregious amount of sugar in his coffee. At least now you’ll get some from the egregious amount of sugar in this.”

He was so—touched?—Overwhelmed?—In love? He wasn’t quite sure how to word it but he took the little box, and as soon as it made contact with his desk, he pulled you into a hug tight enough to realign your spine.

“Oh!— I’m glad you like it. I missed you this week.”

“I missed you too.” He said, his voice muffled by your shoulder, and his posture still at an awkward angle to hug you effectively.

“As much as I love this and I do—believe me.— I really want to get you some real food tonight, so let’s finish our paperwork and get out of here?”

“Ok” you could feel him pouting into your shoulder. When he did pull away, he gave you a quick peck on the cheek before returning to his full height.

“But you’re sharing this with me while we work.” He pulled a chair from a neighboring desk up to his so you could sit, and grabbed two plastic forks from a little package in his desk while you grabbed the files you were working on. You finished your work in less than an hour and even though you told him to pick wherever he wanted for dinner, Spencer chose your favorite restaurant. He thought it was the least he could do for his favorite person.

[thelovelyruin]

𝖋𝖗𝖚𝖎𝖙.

𝖙𝖍𝖊 𝖑𝖔𝖛𝖊𝖗𝖘 : choso x fem reader

𝖙𝖍𝖊 𝖘𝖚𝖓 : he’s your ex, and he’s having a hard time moving on from you.

𝖙𝖍𝖊 𝖒𝖔𝖔𝖓: smut, angst, porn with plot, vaginal sex, oral sex, praise, love, fluff, teasing, fingering (TOXIC CHOSO SHEESH)

𝖙𝖍𝖊 𝖈𝖍𝖆𝖗𝖎𝖔𝖙 : 4K

𝖙𝖍𝖊 𝖘𝖙𝖆𝖗 : inspired by lyrics from fruit by abra.

𝖙𝖍𝖊 𝖊𝖒𝖕𝖗𝖊𝖘𝖘 : hello, lovelies, thank you so much for reading! one of my favorites. i hope you enjoy it; if so, follow me for more. au revoir!

18+ MDNI ADULT CONTENT

Tell me what you did last night.

“I don’t think so, at least not with some guy like that.”

“Believe what you want. She fucked him; couple sources tell me so.”

“The fuck are you, TMZ?”

Choso knew you didn’t, at least you wouldn’t, maybe; you’d been walking around with him, putting distance between you guys so as not to raise suspicion. But Choso knew you, probably better than anyone else. Deep down, he’d convinced himself you were still his, noticing how you’d keep eye contact with him or at the very least leave him on read, and when he asked you why you don’t just block him, you’d give him a smirk as you walked off, and damn, he loved to see you go.

Did you close your eyes and think about me like I think about you?

Choso was in love with you still, falling asleep to the thought of you. He missed your smell, your touch, your, well, you know. He knew he was a fuckin’ asshole though, saying some really rude things to you, terrible at times. But, he never thought you’d break up with him. Especially when you were a total bitch right back. Every fucked up thing Choso said, you’d follow up with some egregious shit, always looking for a low blow. Like that time you insulted him for not being able to get it up since you’d been arguing all day, which in turn, he fucked the shit out of you, getting you to shut up. For ten minutes. You’d had enough when he accused you of fucking with some guy you met at a party, conveniently the same guy you were talking to now. Which made him really fucking mad. It was one thing if you’d fucked the guy after the two of you broke up, or in Choso’s head, you were on a break, but the idea of you fucking him while you were together? That had him fuming.

Tell me why you always fight. Waiting on you to get with it; what's with the resistance, baby?

Choso wasn’t the aggressive type; as much as you’d argue, it really came from insecurity. He knew you were pretty, hot even, catching the attention of damn near every guy who walked by you. When you were together, he’d grip your ass to tell them to fuck off, but now that you guys split, they’d start approaching you, and you’d have to tell them off, reminiscent of when you’d yell at him like that. You shouldn’t have to do that, and maybe if he’d acted right, he’d be able to protect you still. When he got particularly tired of that guy talking to you, he walked up to the punch bowl. He interjected, like a shark swimming through the sea of party go-ers, pushing any motherfucker who got in his way. He’d cleared the distance fast, immediately bringing his arm around your waist.

“Sorry, buddy. She’s taken.”

You pushed Choso’s hand off, not even looking him in the face, instead pointing your attention back to the dude in front of you.

“No, I'm not. Now why don’t you fuck off so I can continue my conversation.”

“Uh, actually, I’ll talk to you later…”

Choso had scared the guy off, face bearing a shit-eating grin as you looked up at him in disgust.

“You’ve got some fucking nerve.”

“What did I do, baby?”

“You’re scarin’ the hoes, plus I’m not your fuckin’ baby.”

Don't listen to a word they say.

Before Choso could respond, you’d walked off in a fit; that made him really hurt. You’d just rejected him in front of some guy you barely even knew and brushed him off like a fly on your shoulder. You’d walked over to your friends, who, when you pointed at Choso, shot him death stares. He deserved that for sure, but nonetheless, it was insulting. He went off to meet Yuuji again, pulling the tequila out of his bag and throwing shots back like a madman. His tolerance was pretty high, but that didn’t stop him from getting dunk, probably one drink or two away from blacking out. He looked about the party, trying to find you, and when he did, you were with the fucker he’d accused you of cheating on him with again, his hand on your waist. Choso was to his limit at this point, wanting to steal you away and take you back to his apartment; he wanted to bring you home and show you just how much he missed you.

I'm in your head like every day.

Choso knew it was a bad idea, but that didn’t stop him from pulling out his phone and texting you.

“Bathroom. Now.”

You’d check your phone, looking around until your eyes landed on Choso, who was already making his way to the bathroom. He had something to prove: if you still loved him, you’d come to the bathroom with him, and if you didn’t, you’d leave him hanging. He walked into the upstairs bathroom, closing it behind him as he splashed water on his face to sober up. After a couple of minutes, there was a knock on the door. He opened it, ready to tell the guy who was knocking off. But it was you. Tits sitting pretty in that strapless dress, so fuckin’ short you couldn’t bend over at all. He pulled you into the bathroom, locking the door as he sat you on the sink.

And you deny yourself…

Choso began kissing you, using one hand to spread your legs apart so he could start to touch you. You’d thrown your head back so he could begin sucking the skin there, pushing him off of you the second he started biting you, not allowing him to leave hickies, and fuck that made him angry. In retaliation, he pulled down the top of your dress, tits falling out as he brought his mouth up to suck on them, taking extra care of rubbing your clit as he sucked your nipples into his mouth. A couple of people walked by to use the bathroom, every time pulling off your nipple and taking his hand off your clit so you’d shut up, telling them the bathroom was occupied. That was until Yuuji knocked on the door.

“Yo, Choso, is that you?”

He almost didn’t answer, coming back down to lift your dress completely up, all of the fabric bunched around your stomach until Yuuji kept talking.

“You wanted to know where she was, right? Asshole just left, but I haven’t seen her, probably left together.”

Choso looked up from your chest, smirking.

“Don’t worry, she didn’t. I’ll be out soon, had to throw up.”

“Okay, I’ll be in the car.”

With that, Yuuji walked off, leaving you and Choso to your own devices. You looked down at him with a twisted face as he slid his hands under your legs, positioning you on the counter so he could eat you out.

“Don’t you think you should leave? Someone’s waiting for you.”

“He can wait; I’ll make this quick.”

As much as he pissed you off, your pussy missed him. He’d been fucking you since sophomore year, meeting you at a car meet a month after the semester started; he ate you out the next day in the back of his S550, so you were his. It was hard to resist him a lot of the time, especially when he’d walk around campus giving you that hungry-ass look, obviously going through withdrawals. You’d heard it through the grapevine that he was keeping his dick to himself, rejecting every girl that decided to wait til you broke up to fuck him. That’s why fucking with other guys was so fun, you knew he couldn’t fucking stand it.

And then you scream my name…

Choso started eating your pussy, sliding his tongue between your lips, lapping at your bud as he moaned into you. Fuck, he looked good. Sucking your clit as you held his head up to your pussy, telling him you were ready to get this over with.

“So, that’s what this is about?”

He hadn’t lifted, keeping his face between your legs, fingering you as he spoke.

“The fuck are you talkin’ about.”

“You brought me here to eat me out because you thought I fucked him, huh? Needed to prove a point or something?”

“Maybe.”

“Well, enjoy it 'cause it'll be the last time.”

“Yeah, right. I see you still wearing that necklace I bought you.”

“Oh, don’t even-”

“Can you just shut the fuck up for once?”

Choso brought his face back to your pussy, sucking your juices up as he massaged your ass. You couldn’t lie, it felt really fucking good. You didn’t wanna cum for him, not like he deserved it, but your body had other plans. He’d been fucking his fingers into you, hitting that place he knew set you off; you hated how good he knew your body. Within seconds you were seeing stars, eyes rolling back as he chuckled into your pussy, drinking up all your cum as he slapped your ass. 

“Good girl. Give it to me, baby.”

God, you were perfect. Moaning his name as he brought a hand up to pinch your nipples, sucking your clit as he fucked you through your orgasm. When you came down, you pushed him off, fixing your dress as he licked you off his fingers. He put your panties in his pocket, kissed you quickly, and unlocked the door.

“If you want them back, you know where to find me.”

“Fuck you.”

And I can't take it.

Come chase the night with me.

You were back to ignoring him again, walking the other way when you’d see him about to walk by and stopping your conversations if he did happen to walk by. You’d been pretty dedicated to this little charade, telling everyone who asked that he was your ex, not even your friend. Which, in theory, he wasn’t, and he didn’t want to be. The only real option was to be your boyfriend, and you were giving him a hard time with that. He’d text you like he always did, telling you good morning and night, and then there were the gifts. It had always been his love language, so it didn’t surprise you when you had roses waiting for you at your door, or a bag of your favorite makeup from Sephora, or a perfume he’d want you to try. You were really coy about it, too; he’d smell you as he walked by, and you were wearing it; you’d wear the lipgloss he gave you and left the note for the roses outside your door. It wasn’t until one afternoon when he was particularly toxic, texting you to let you know he still had your things and didn’t want you to go without them.

“Okay.”

It was a basic text, which really pissed him off, but it was more than anything you’d given him since he ate you last week. You wore one of the dresses he’d bought you when you were together, wanting to get a rise out of him, and your mission was accomplished when he licked his lips the second you walked out of the building. You saw he got a new wrap on his car, the black chrome you’d encouraged him to get for the longest time, persisting that it would look great on his S550, but he insisted on keeping that deep purple wrap. He treated it like a surprise as he opened the door for you, to which you gave him:

“Nice wrap.”

Shit, he’d take it. As he climbed into the driver's seat, he placed his hand on your thigh, which you swiftly moved away. That didn’t stop you from putting your hand on the gearshift adjusting it as he pulled off. God, you were so fuckin’ push and pull. He decided to talk to you as he drove.

They say I'm bad, you say it back, but you know you don't believe that.

“So, how was your day?”

“It was good.”

“Nice earrings.”

“Thanks, they were a gift.”

“Oh yeah? From who?”

“Hm, his name evades me.”

“I see you’re on your shit again.

“The fuck does that mean?”

“It means we’ve only been driving for ten minutes, and you’re already talkin’ crazy.”

“Talkin’ crazy? That’s real rich coming from you.”

“Oh yeah? How’s that?”

“Don’t act like you’re not a piece of shit.”

“Didn’t stop you from fucking with me.”

“It did, actually.”

“Was that before after I ate your pussy?”

“Says the motherfucker still in love with me.”

Just like that, you guys were arguing again. It didn’t feel too good, but it was a glimpse into what you guys had, so he was willing to tolerate it. He tensed his jaw as he pulled up to his apartment, turning the car off annoyed, which didn’t go unnoticed by you because you scoffed at him as he opened your door. He walked behind you on the stairs, getting a nice view of your ass as you walked, and he wasn’t stupid; you’d put a lil sass to your walk.

Eat the fruit that feeds your spirit on your knees; now, baby, eat it, eat it.

Choso unlocked the door to his apartment, letting you walk in first, locking the door behind you. His apartment looked the same, but what you’d noticed was that your boots were still at the front door. Your makeup was still organized in the bathroom, and a couple of new products there, presumably gifts he hadn’t gotten the chance to give you. Your earrings were still on his dresser, along with the picture of you two at the fair a few months ago. When things were still healthy between you two.

“I see you haven’t moved my stuff.”

“Because you weren’t supposed to leave.”

“Not exactly ex-boyfriend behavior, Choso.”

“What would that be?”

“Moving on from me, giving me back my things or throwing them away, not talking to me, the list goes on. Let’s be real, you didn’t bring me here to get my shit. Why do you keep doing this? Can’t you see I'm hurt? I don’t wanna be hurt anymore; that’s why I fuckin’ left! I hate that I love you!”

Choso walked up to you now, bringing you into his arms. You hesitated at first, then softened into it. He was always so warm, especially when he was vulnerable like this. When things were good. You began crying into his sleeve, holding on to him tighter as he brought a hand up to caress the back of your head.

“I’m sorry, baby. I promise I’ll do better to treat you the way you deserve. I know I’ve been an asshole, and I’m sorry, but it doesn’t excuse the shit I’ve said to you. Just want you back, baby.”

You pulled back to look him in the face, him wiping away your tears.

“Yeah?”

“Of course, princess.”

You brought him into a kiss, deepening it as he held your lower back, your fingers in his hair.

“Then make me feel better.”

Are you really gonna stand there staring at me all the way from across the room?

Choso let you down onto his bed, standing over you as he pulled off your heels, his shirt and pants right after. He climbed over the top of you, making out with you again as he slipped his hand behind you, arching your back as he unzipped your dress. He pulled off you, tossing it somewhere on the floor. He thought a lot of things; when he asked you to come over, he fully expected to eat you out again, but what really surprised him was your lack of a bra and panties. You’d come over knowing you wanted to fuck him, which made him even hungrier for you, immediately massaging the outside of your lips to tease you. You writhe your hips, begging him to touch you how you need him to. With soft kisses, he made his way down your body, stopping at your tits to suck hickeys into the skin there. You hadn’t stopped him this time.

Are you really gonna stand there staring at me?

Choso’s head fell between your legs, pushing your hips apart as he brought his fingers through your lips, feeling how wet you were for him. He had half a mind to fuck you right then and there, but his main prerogative was to make you cum first, prepping you for later. He’d known it had been a while, a month since you guys had sex, and he wasn’t gonna believe those rumors. Not when he slipped his tongue into your folds, making you his girl again as you moaned his name into the pillow.

“Let me hear you, baby. Need to hear how much you missed me.”

Don't listen to a word they say; I'm in your head like every day.

He was sucking with a passion, practically making out with your pussy as you moved your body against his. He needs you more than anything right now. You were his water, his food, his air. It had been a long month, unsure just how bad he’d fucked up, praying you’d come back to him. And now here you were, letting him take care of you, please you, relieve the stress of the past few months. Taking you to a place where there was no arguing, no fighting, just you and him. You gripped the sheets as you came undone, moaning his name softly instead of screaming it; that’s how he knew he really had you.

And you deny yourself…

But he wasn’t done there. He would make it up to you; so many nights you had to sleep without his touch, nothing but your pillow to sleep on. He needed you to know just how much he loved you, and you were pretty damn sure two orgasms later. You whimper at this point from overstimulation, your body giving into him despite how spent you are.

“How many times are you gonna eat me out?”

“As many times it takes for you to give me another chance.”

Choso wasn’t malicious, though, so he gently laid your legs back down, kissing them as he let your thighs rest on the bed. He kissed his way back up to your neck, sucking hickeys there, groaning as he made you his again. He massaged the fat of your ass now, naked body humping against his as he moved his hips with yours, bringing his lips to your ears.

“Can I fuck you baby?”

At that point, you needed him. Bad. It felt like it had been forever since he fucked you, making quick work of taking off his briefs, helping him position himself between your legs. Choso towered over you as he took in the sight before him. It felt like a mirage, having his girl lay out in front of him, begging for his touch as her hand pulled his wrist, signaling she was ready, the side of her face pressed into the pillow. He brought his fingers to your folds, saturating them as he put your essence on his shaft, nearly shuddering at the feeling. He brought himself down to hover over you, kissing you as he slid himself in.

And then you scream my name…

“Fuck!”

“Jesus, baby…”

You felt so fucking good. He felt like he’d been in rehab for the past month, finally getting his fix again because you were fucking addictive. He started by making love to you, holding your hands as he fucked you deep and slow, whimpering in your ear. But then, he really missed you. He picked up his pace, hips beginning to rut into yours, making you moan his name so loud, he was sure the neighbors would hear you. As he fucked you, though, his mind drifted, thinkin’ about shit he shouldn’t. Fuck, he needed to know.

“Did you fuck him?”

“What? What the fuck are you talking about?”

“Did you fuck that guy everybody’s been saying you did?”

You were pissed at him again. Here you were, blissed out, and he was asking about some fucker you only ever flirted with.

“No, I didn’t; now, please just fuck me.”

He believed you, but he wasn’t letting you off that easy. He had to make sure you didn’t get any ideas in the future. He picked your hips up as he fell back on his knees, fucking into you at a pace that made you feel so good you couldn’t even think. He was hitting you right where you needed him to, ramming that spot as he heard your moans pick up.

“Tell me, no one’s ever gonna fuck you like this.”

“No one’s gonna fuck me like this…”

“Who’s are you, baby?”

“I’m yours, Choso. Please...”

“Yeah? Then cum for me.”

 And I can’t take it.

He was fucking cocky, needing to hear you call out for him, need him, crave him. And that you did, which is why you gave him what he wanted. He drilled into that spot, and you burst like a firecracker, your body convulsing from your fourth orgasm of the night. You grip his arm, trying to hold on to anything as you give your all to him, as you’ve done time and time before. He was grateful this time; he wouldn’t take advantage of the kindness you’d shown him. That’s why he gave you all he had, too. He threw his head back as he came inside you, holding your hips close to his to ensure he gave you all of it, not missing a drop. You moaned at the feeling of him filling up, gasping at the motion of his body hovering over you again, arms struggling to stay up as he slowly pulled out of you, kissing you as you both came down from your high.

They aren't in your head like…

Fuck, he missed you. It took everything in him not just to pull you in and hold you there forever, so scared you’d leave. He knew he had to clean you up, though, so he carried you to the bathroom and held you in his arms as you took a bath together, nearly falling asleep on his chest. Then, he brought you back to the room, dressed you in one of his shirts, and laid you under the covers, coming under to hold you close. 

Like second nature, you felt yourself melt into his arms, trusting him to protect you as he kissed your forehead, whispering over and over he loved you. You drifted to sleep; all he could think about was what he would do next. He was tempted to move you in at this point, take you to class in his car every day; you pissed at the loudness of his exhaust. Pick you up and take you out to eat, bring you home to watch a movie, then make love to you. He wanted to be perfect for you because that meant you’d be his forever.

They aren't in your head like…

When you woke up the next morning, you got ready and woke Choso up to take you back to your dorm. He could tell you were a little distant; to be fair, you’d been upset with him for the past month, so he was taking what he could get. Still, you kissed him before you got out of the car and walked into your building; he left when he made sure you were in there safe.

You hadn’t really talked to him that day; when he asked you what was wrong, well, you said:

“I just wanna make sure I’m making the right decision. I wanna make sure things aren’t gonna be like before.”

He’d respected your decision; you wanted to see him change, and he was going to. But that was earlier today, and he was thinking about you now. Old habits die hard, huh?

“Missin’ you, baby.”

“I’ll be ready in ten.”

They aren't in your head like me.

♱ the song used in this story is fruit by abra. 🖤

(this was probably one of the most emotional stories i’ve ever written, but also the fastest, which is probably a red flag tbh.)

♱ masterlist.

♱ all fics playlist.

𝖆𝖚 𝖗𝖊𝖛𝖔𝖎𝖗, 𝖙𝖍𝖊𝖑𝖔𝖛𝖊𝖑𝖞𝖗𝖚𝖎𝖓.

[keresnotceres]

Say You’re Mine (Good, Good, Great pt 2)

Ghost x Fem!Reader

[nsfw] cw(s): rdr is being a slut again, jealousy, possessive undertones, SEX, rough sex, oral (m receiving), throatfucking lol, p-in-v sex, ghost getting called ‘big boy,’ unsafe sex oops.

4.7k words In honor of 200+ followers (wtf guys thank u) & by the request of many, I present to you: Good, Good, Great pt2 :) This is just shameless porn with an egregious amount of plot. Enjoy my lovely dovies <3 (Also Ghost has a short refractory period for uh,, plot reasons).

A few months after his jealousy at Myth, Ghost gets sent on leave. When he arrives home at 12 AM on a Friday night, he promptly decides to pay you a little visit at work. You, however, are once again testing his patience (and he doesn’t take particularly kindly to that).

Roughly three months later, you’re working a busy Friday night at Myth, and damn it, you’re making sure that you’re making good money tonight. Flirting was easy; men were easy. Just making them think you were the least bit interested did wonders for your tips. Sure, you didn’t make as much as the girls on stage, but it was pretty damn close to it.

You made your way downstairs after taking a few orders from assorted tables upstairs, going to the servers closet to ring them into the system when the hostess scurried over and told you about a party of 8 at Center Table 3 before skittering on back to the stand to greet another guest or five. After putting your tables’ orders, you began to prepare yourself for the nightmare that this 8-top was about to be.

It was only 10 PM, and you had hope they wouldn’t stick around until closing. As you make your way through the sea of customers on the first floor, you spot the table; even better, you spot the perfect person to flirt-till-you-die with.

He was rather young, maybe 21 or 22, and looked like he would see white if you even smiled at him. He came in with some sort of bachelor party, and you were expecting the worst sort of groom-to-be and his just-as-bad groomsmen. Your target looked the most frightened to be there, like if he said the wrong thing he would be thrown to the curb; which meant he was the perfect man to squeeze some money out of. The men around him would probably cheer him on for getting special attention.

You walk over to the table with a smile etched onto your face, swaying your hips just enough to be noticeable, and put a small bounce into your steps. You stop next to the man at the head of the table and wait for the group to quiet from their unnecessarily in-depth conversation about their favorite actresses.

“I’ll be taking care of you guys tonight,” you introduce yourself. “Can I get you guys started with a bottle or are you looking for something by the glass?” You look down at the man you’re next to, tilting your head a bit.

He looks up to you, not even bothering to hide the stare he gives your tits. “What beers do you have here?”

You nod a bit, launching into the list. “We have Budweiser, Guinness, Foster’s, Carling—” The man put his hand up to stop you, making some sort of interrupting noise.

“I’ll take a Foster’s,” he says blandly. He gestures to another one of his friends to order, head swiveling back over to the stage as a dancer makes her way on. If you didn’t want to take a glass and shove it up his ass at that moment, the following hours of their presence would definitely make you want to.

You stretch your lips into the kindest customer service smile you can muster and look at the next man. When you get to the last drink of the table, the poor man you were planning on hitting in til’ he couldn’t see straight, you step closer.

“And what can I get you?” You make your voice just a little bit sweeter and lean down a bit.

His eyes dart from your face to your breasts, then dart back up. “A whiskey sour,” he blurts out, tacking on a quiet ‘please’ as a second thought.

“Of course,” you smile at him, then look up to the rest of the group. “I’ll be right back with those drinks.” You turn away, and as you’re walking towards the servers closet, you can hear some cheers and a catcall from the table.

Once you’re in the server's closet, you drop the painfully plastic smile and fish a coworker’s Elfbar from the pile of check books and pens on the table below the kiosk. As you enter drink after drink, you take a hit from the vape, letting the nicotine take the place of smacking your head against the wall repeatedly.

You send the final drink, a fucking whiskey sour of all things, and groan. Another bottle girl comes speeding into the server’s closet, a sour look on her face.

“What’s it today, Mel?” You ask, eyebrows raised as you lean against one of the walls.

Mel looks at you disgruntled, like she was about to lose her shit. “My table just tried to order five espresso martinis and then got mad at me when I said we couldn’t do them tonight.” She taps a few buttons of the kiosk rather aggressively. “Then proceeded to ask for an extra strong vodka cran, but to only be charged for a single.”

Mel taps on the mixed drink button, then on the vodka button, then cranberry, then double. “Fuck her,” she hisses, taking the Elfbar right out of your hands.

It’s only after she takes two hits from it that she asks whose it is. You don’t know either.

The night continues like that, with Mel being perpetually pissed off at a table and you staving off the urge to bash your skull in with a vaguely blueberry smelling vape.

When the clock hits midnight, you don’t have the Cinderella moment that some part of you wishes you could have. You don’t get to rush home, fall asleep, then wake up to your prince charming searching for you. No, of course you don’t.

Instead, you get the worst hit from someone’s cart that leaves you fighting for your life and, much worse, the nightmare bachelor table waving you down.

“What can I help you guys with?” You look around the table, waiting for someone to speak up.

One of them takes one for the team, finally. “We wanted to get a bottle of something, but Nick here decided to wave you down before we figured out what to get.” He jerks a thumb in the direction of the man you decided to target.

So your victim's name is Nick, huh?

You put a hand to your mouth and force out a laugh; a man likes it when you laugh at things he says. “It’s alright, I don’t mind waiting for you to decide.” Your eyes flicker to Nick, meeting his for a fleeting second.

It was almost too easy.

You smirk at him, putting on your best charm. “Since you gave me the false alarm, how ‘bout you buy me a drink?” A few of the guys at the table chuckle, as expected. You take the opportunity to walk up to him, getting closer.

You put your hand on the back of his chair, leaning your body weight into it, your fingers facing him. Nick looks up at you like a girl looking up at some ugly guy she’s giving a blowjob to, and it takes everything in you to give him a simple, sultry smile in response instead of a fit of laughter.

You look over to the groom-to-be, waiting for him to decide on the table’s bottle. And then you see a familiar jacket in the corner of your eyes, with a familiar build and a familiar surgical mask covering half of a very familiar face.

God damn, Simon Riley might just be everything you needed tonight.

Once again, he didn’t even bother to call to tell you he was coming home. You couldn’t stay mad at him for long, though. The rational part of your brain blue-screens, leaving only the work-oriented brain and the stupid slut brain left. And the work-oriented part of your brain wants to make good money, so that’s exactly what you’re going to continue doing.

There’s something about fucking with Simon that thrills you. Maybe it’s the fact you know you’ll get something good out of it, or maybe you’re just a little messed up in the head.

You look away from Simon and swivel your head back down to the poor soul you’ve chosen to pay off your car insurance. Your hand shifts so that your fingertips rest gingerly on Nick’s shoulder, and boy does it do wonders.

His look of ‘blowjob innocence’ morphs into ‘holy shit a woman is interested in me’ and some of his friends croon oohs, another whistles. You peel your eyes away from Nick and look to the groom, “have you decided on a bottle?”

He looks over at you from the bottle menu with unfocused eyes. “We’ll do, uh, a bottle of Jameson and,” he squinted back at the menu, then looked at a friend. “What vodka did you want?”

The friend looks up from his lap, his illuminated face darkening. “Oh,” he leans over to look at the menu, then looks at you. Or, rather, he looks at your tits. “Grey Goose.” You fight the urge to raise your eyebrows and question him, but manage to smile politely and nod.

“I’ll bring those right down for you boys.” As you leave the table, you let your fingers trace Nick’s shoulder lightly. Your gaze slowly finds Simon when you turn away, and he simply stares at you, his usual bourbon nestled in a hand.

With a cheeky smile on your face, you skitter over to Simon to greet him.

“Hi there,” you croon, “what’s a big boy like you doin’ here?” Simon gives no hint at a change in attitude, you don’t even see a single hint that he’s smiling under the mask. You pout at him, “at least say hi.”

His eyes are unusually steely, like they had been months ago during his surprise visit. “Stop touching him.”

Your faux pout melts into a grin, “jealous?” You ask, stepping forward. “Again?”

He looks away from you, eyes flicking to the dramatic scene of some random movie playing on one of the bar TVs. “I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about.”

You lean into him, breasts pressing up against his bicep. “Come on, big boy,” you goad, “no need to act nonchalant.”

He lifts his arm to push you off, not even bothering to look at you. “You heard me,” he says, “don’t touch him again.” His words only push you to question him further, if anything, they make you want to get more handsy with — what was his name? Nate?

“Or what?” You press, cocking your head to the side to catch his eyes again. “You gonna kill him?” Simon’s eyes flit to you, flashing with some sort of challenge.

His eyes bore into yours, “maybe.” His gaze moves away from you again and his free hand slips up to pull down the surgical mask and take a sip of bourbon.

His lackluster response leaves you itching for more. You huff at him and slink away to the server’s closet to put the two bottles on the bachelor party’s tab. You trudge up the stairs to the second floor, eyes sweeping over the chattering people at tables.

You grab the two requested bottles from the upstairs bar before visiting a few of your tables on the second floor, checking in with a sweet smile before heading back down to the bachelor party. You give your poor cheeks a rest as you bounce down the stairs, your face falling into a bored resting face before it stretches right back into that damn customer service smile that you managed to perfect over the years.

You pass by Simon on your way back to the bachelor party, his eyes give you a brief warning before they flick back to the TV screen. It only makes you want to make him mad.

After you’ve set the bottles on the table and brought over new glasses (including a few shot glasses) for their liquor, you go right back to flirting with whatever-his-name-is. Your hand rests fully on his shoulder as you chat with the table, paying special attention to Nigel (or was it Nico?).

You can practically feel Simon’s eyes burning a hole through you as you do so, and it makes you wonder just how much he really cared about this little stint of yours. Nevertheless, you let your victim of the night continue to think he’s special, you even get roped into feeding him a shot of the Grey Goose.

Nick (you were reminded of his name by one of his friends goading him into taking shots) starts to get more handsy with you, to which you kick it up a notch. As you gently hold the shot glass up to his lips, his hands snake up and rest on your hips, keeping you in place as his friends count down until he has to take the shot.

You lean forward with the shot glass after someone shouts ‘zero,’ basically shoving your tits into his face as he took his shot of top-shelf vodka. You congratulate his semi-decent shot taking skills in an effort to make yourself seem like you really like him.

“Good job,” you purr, hand raising to stroke his hair once before falling back to your side. “Took that so well.” When you step away, the man looks like he’s in a stupor.

You turn to look at Simon with a cheeky smile engraved on your lips, only to receive a very pointed glare.

When the bachelor party finally leaves at around 1:30 AM, after what feels like for-fucking-ever, you wander over to the table to pick up the check. Your flirting really paid off.

A tip of £200 on a bill of roughly £600 — almost a 35% tip. Making money off of men was ridiculously easy. Even better, you finally get to go the fuck home! You silently thank your manager for not giving you the closing shift and get your shit before anyone can pester you to stay longer.

Simon’s waiting for you at the door, staring straight through you as you make your way to him with your work bag slung over your shoulder. He doesn’t make any effort to speak, and you’re frankly a bit too burnt out to comment on it. You pass him your car keys, unwilling to drive after your nightmare shift.

The drive home is quiet, not even the cheesy radio music breaks the silence despite the volume being on level 30.

As soon as he pulls into your parking space of the building lot, he turns the car off and flings your keys back over to you. You amble into the building,

Simon’s hands are on your waist before you can even put your keys down, you barely register that the door shuts behind the two of you as his fingers dig into your hips.

You snicker at him, “you weren't jealous, huh?” Simon doesn’t respond verbally, just hoists you into the air and puts you over his shoulder like you weigh absolutely nothing.

His reaction is nothing he hasn’t done before, but there’s a heat in your abdomen that tells you that you’re going to call out of work tomorrow. Well, that, and the fact that Simon’s had a hard on for the entirety of the drive home and you really wanted to fix that problem for him. Bottom line is, you’re horny, he’s horny, it’s going to be a long fucking night.

It’s what you needed after around 7 months without being stretched out by Simon. It’s what he needed after watching you get touchy with someone who wasn’t him. If you didn’t end up sprawled out on Simon’s bed, incoherently moaning words as he fucked you dumb in 30 minutes, you were both going to have an issue.

As expected, when he got to the top of the stairs, he turned right instead of left, going into his room instead of yours. His room was mostly untouched, the comforter a little crumpled from the time you passed out on it after taking one too many blinkers a few weeks ago (you’ve found you really like being in his room when you aren’t sober).

He shuts the door behind him and drops you on the bed on your back, further disheveling the dark gray comforter. You push yourself up onto your elbows, encouraged by the rustling of Simon’s belt coming undone.

“Get on the floor,” he tells you, “on your knees.” You make an absentminded noise in response and shuffle to the end of the bed, sliding off with relative ease. He tells you to do something else, but you’re too absorbed in your own world to hear him.

Simon walks towards you, hand resting atop your head, fingers tangling in your hair as he sits down on the edge of the bed in front of you. “Not fuckin’ listening to me anymore, huh?” His grip on your hair tightens and he moves your head back and forth.

“You’ll fix that tonight, yeah?” He eyes you like a man starved, you can’t find the words to speak, nor can you move your head under the grip he has on your hair. He seems to take your silence as a ‘yes.’

Your eyes roam to his torso, to which part of you is disappointed by the presence of his shirt. Then, you look further down to the very obvious tent in his briefs. Your head goes to move closer on instinct, but Simon holds it back.

You struggle against his hold for a few seconds before sighing and giving up, looking up at him with a frown. He looks down at you, a cocky smirk adorning his lips.

“You need to learn patience,” he grumbles, pushing your head to the side and retracting his hand to move the waistband of his underwear.

Your head returns to its original position almost immediately, anticipation coursing through your body. You’re basically salivating at the thought of having Simon down your throat.

In all honesty, Simon should be grateful you were taught manners at a young age, because otherwise you would’ve slapped his hand away the second his head popped out of the dark fabric and taken him all for yourself.

In substitute, you shuffle closer to him, knees scratching against the carpet.

Simon pulls his cock out, finally, and gestures for you to have your way. You pounce on the opportunity, hands flying up from your sides. One settles on his thigh as a support as the other slips down, thumb pressing against the tip. You can feel Simon jerk under you from the contact, and it only makes you dart forward and press your closed lips to the side of his cock.

You part your mouth and flatten your tongue against him, dragging it upwards until you reach the head again. You let your mouth part further and take him in slowly, teasingly.

Simon’s hand grips your hair, pushing your head further down on his cock. A low groan escapes his throat as you take him in your mouth and his fingers twitch in your hair.

He bucks his hips up, watching as you take all of him in diligently without even so much as gagging. He doesn’t expect anything less from you. He keeps an even pace until the need gets to him, until the haze ends and he remembers why he has you on your knees; why he’s not supposed to be nice and even.

He picks up his pace, rutting into your mouth quicker than you can take, leaving you gagging on his cock as he holds your head in place. Your moans turn staccato, the sound of Simon’s balls slapping against your chin falls behind your stifled gagging. It’s a rhythmic disaster, but fuck, it’s music to his ears.

At some point, he stops thrusting into your mouth and simply pistons your head up and down his cock with a hand. You’re nothing but a drooling mess, looking up at Simon’s face through your eyelashes, blinking through tears. He appears to be the polar opposite of you. His eyes are calm and his lips are settled into a thin line; the only thing that lets you know he’s relishing in this is the twitching of his cock down your throat and the low groans he lets out occasionally.

That is, until his jaw sets and his grip on your hair gets tighter. His other hand takes a fistful of your hair as well and holds your head in place again, his hips thrusting forwards and retracting faster than you can even react to. Your hands fly to his thighs, nails digging into the denim as he ruthlessly ruts into you. You’ve given up on trying to breathe.

Simon’s mouth opens slightly, a shuddered breath tumbles out and your lips quirk up ever so slightly. “Fuck,” he hisses, dull fingernails scratching your scalp in a mind-numblingly good way. He bucks into you harshly, then again, and a groan feathered by pants fills the air as cum drips down your throat.

His cock is heavy on your tongue as he pulls out and you’re quick to dart back to it and lick small beads of cum off head. His torso spasms at the action and his hands yank you back by the hair. You whine, trying to wriggle loose of the iron grip the man has on you, but stop once he lets go.

Through labored breathing, he tugs you off of your knees and pulls you up to him. He falls back onto the bed, taking you down with him. You quite enjoy straddling over him, breasts dangling below you as your hands press into the mattress on either side of his head.

You give him a stupid smile, “out of breath, big boy?”

He scoffs at you, the only evidence that he just came in your mouth is his lack of a boner. “Don’t say things you’ll regret, love.” The pet name sends a swarm of butterflies to your stomach, (rather, your ovaries). His hands come out of nowhere, grabbing your wrists and holding them behind your back, suspending you in the air over him. “Don’t think I forgot what you like,” he muses, “what a slut.”

His eyes gloss over you, when he gets to your skirt and fishnet tights, he frowns. “Told you to take ‘em off,” he mutters, moving so that both of your wrists are held in just one of his hands. It’s both a blessing and a curse that he’s built like a tank. His free hand snakes down and tugs on the edge of your skirt, making you splutter out a few words of warning.

“Let me undo it,” you plead, “you’ll break it.” He looks at you unimpressed as you try to get him to not ruin your favorite skirt. He relents, miraculously, and maneuvers you to straddle over his thighs. You don't bother trying to take your time as you undo the inner clasp of your skirt before unzipping it. Your right hand grips his as you shift your weight onto your right knee while the left hand pulls the skirt off of you, then vice versa.

Simon’s patience runs thin when it comes to your fishnets, and pushes you down onto his chest by the shoulders. With your ass in the air, he simply rips the fabric until he’s satisfied. Now you’re even more horny, but you also have a giant hole in the crotch area of your only pair of fishnets.

He makes a noise somewhere between a grunt and an appreciative noise. “Better.” His fingers brush over your underwear, letting out a quiet laugh at the damp fabric. Your hips jerk against the ginger touches from his hands, making him pull his hand away.

A whine breaks through your throat, your lips pulled down into a pout. His eyes flick to yours, the look sending shivers of ecstacy down your spine.

“You don’t deserve that,” he murmurs. “Come on, you know the rules.”

You give him a pleading look, eyes straining to see his from your face-down ass-up position. “Please?” You know it won’t work, his resolve is entirely too strong to be folded by the likes of your begging.

You get your answer as he grabs you by the waist and tosses you to the side. Faster than you can even make a remark at, he’s looming over you, hips trapped between his knees, dog tags dangling down.

“Don’t try to beg,” he chastises, voice low. A hand moves your soaked underwear to the side and he gently presses his tip against your pussy. It’s nothing but a tease, but it has you squirming for more, and there’s a vicious little grin on Simon’s face that sparks something in you.

He doesn’t bother to warm you up, and, really, you would’ve been frustrated by having his fingers stretching you out rather than his dick. Is that a safe sexual practice? No; but right now, you didn’t care about that, you just wanted to get dicked down.

After what feels like an eternity of teasing (in reality, likely just about five minutes), Simon finally pushes the tip of his cock into you. He pauses, then slowly pushes inch after inch into you until he’s balls deep in you and you’re damn near rolling your eyes into the back of your head from the feeling of him.

It had been too fucking long since you felt him inside you, since he stretched your insides to fit his cock so perfectly that he mumbles compliments into your ears when he feels like being nice.

He stays buried inside your pussy and looks you in the eye, another challenge. “You wouldn’t let him do this, would you?” He asks, arms lifting off of your body to cross over his chest. “No,” he responds for you, his hands darting back down to grab your waist. “You’re mine.”

And, oh, that admission sends waves of giddy excitement through your body.

“And I’ll prove it.” It’s a rather ominous statement, but he doesn’t even give you the time to register that before he pulls out from you and slams right back in. Then again. Then again, and again, and again until a rough, even pace is set.

Even, however, is not what you wanted. You wanted rough, fast. You could mumble for him to go faster all you wanted, but Simon wouldn’t budge. If he wanted to, he could go as slow as he possibly could just to keep you frustrated.

But even Simon is only human, and he can’t resist the urge to rut into you with reckless abandon.

His hips jolt against yours, a muttered expletive turns into a pant of ‘fuck’ and barely contained groans as Simon all but slams into you. The sound of skin hitting skin accompanies the noises falling out of your mouth, Simon’s hushed tones, and the bed frames occasional creak to create a melody of pure lust.

You find yourself unable to hold yourself together any longer, thighs twitching and abdomen getting tighter as Simon continues to pound into you like there’s no tomorrow (would it technically be ‘no today?’ It is 2 in the morning, after all). You can’t even bring yourself to form the words before you’re cumming on Simon’s cock while it’s thrusting in and out of you.

A whine builds in the back of your throat, your legs tighten around Simon’s waist, trying to pull him closer into you as the heat builds in your abdomen. One of his hands lifts from off of your waist and runs through your hair.

“I can tell,” he manages to get out through almost undetectable grunts. “You’re barely hanging on, huh?” He’s taunting you. “Go on,” he mutters, shifting just enough for him to rub against you in an entirely new angle.

You make a collection of noises, a moan that devolves into a whimper, and eventually squeaks as Simon continues to fuck you through your orgasm until he eventually starts pouding into erratically, an uneven pace that only gets more and more mind-numbing until he’s pulled out of you and you can feel your lower stomach be painted with his own orgasm.

It’s just seconds later that he leans his head down and presses his forehead to your. A simple, but oh so damning gesture of intimacy. His breath puffs against your face, warm and quick, but you can’t help but lean into the touch.

🍒: @xaestheticalien @clear-your-mind-and-dream @stunkbiggu @abbiesxox @nijiru @lanu-la

[poorlittlegreenie13]

Another 'Rules For (fake) Dating an Italian' deleted scene that I promised to post: (the omitted shower scene from chapter nine)

this was gonna start where they were walking to the L after dinner... but the chapter was getting too long & it's kind of dumb & just wasn't feeling it lolll. But you can read it if you really want to! (& I didn't proofread it. sorry! Hopefully no egregious errors).

When she finally looks up again, she finds herself staring at the CVS across the street and stops abruptly. 

“Oh, come with me,” she says, tugging his hand to J-walk across the street. 

“Syd!” Carmy says, eyes widening, glancing at the cars approaching on either side of them. 

“Pedestrians have right of way!” Sydney says, pulling him quickly across before either of them can get flattened. 

“What do you need from CVS?” Carmy says, slightly breathless, as they walk in, dry heat hitting them both as the doors slide closed on the Chicago cold. 

“It’s not what I need, it’s what you need,” she says, pulling him toward the shampoo aisle. 

“Oh, you were serious about the shampoo,” he says, though he doesn’t sound particularly upset about it. 

Would she be crazy if she thought he might actually sound slightly overwhelmed by the idea? But not in a bad way. More in the way where he looks like he’s holding back his actual reaction. She wants to see it.

“I’m not letting you bald in your early thirties because you used 3-in-1 your whole life,” Sydney says, stopping in front of a shelf of shampoos and conditioners and carefully choosing a pair of bottles, which she hands to Carmy. 

“Sounds great,” he says, not even looking at them. The words have a hazy quality to them. She smiles at him, grabbing a bottle of leave-in conditioner for good measure. 

“You need anything else?” she asks him. 

He shakes his head quickly and she nods, walking toward the register, Carmy trailing behind her. 

Somehow, Sydney did not notice them walking through a section of condoms and lube on their way to the hair productions on the way in. 

She notices now though. 

There are a couple of people waiting to check out at the register, and she intended to hang back, not wanting to crowd them, but she realizes now the connotation of her pausing in this particular section of the store. 

Carmy clears his throat. She looks at him. He’s blushing. He’s so pathetic sometimes; she’s fucking crazy about him. 

“Should I…?” he says. 

On any other occasion, she might’ve teased him about trailing off instead of being able to say it out loud, but he’s already so red in the face, she decides to be merciful. 

“What, you don’t have one in your wallet?” she says. “What kind of date is this?”

“You’re so mature, Sydney,” he says, holding back a smile, shaking his head at her. “So mature.”

“You’re the one who’s blushing,” she says, and he blushes harder, grabbing a pack of condoms off the shelf and walking away from her, up to the—now available—register. 

She follows closely behind him, drunk on the ease of it all; the absurd, entrancing way they seem to be able to speak to each other. She’s never had that with anybody else before. She likes the way he smiles when she tries to make a joke. 

In his apartment—a mutually-agreed-upon destination landed on during an L-ride that consisted mostly of staring at each other—Sydney kicks her shoes off by the door and sizes him up for a second.

He fills a glass with water and sets her flowers into them. Then he empties his pockets onto the counter; keys, wallet, phone, cigarettes, then finally, he carefully sets the plastic CVS bag down next to them, looking over at Sydney with a note of uncertain expectation on his face.

“I feel like I should offer you food, but we just ate,” he says, smiling ruefully. 

Sydney stays silent for a second, wondering if she’s being like… overly horny, and weird.

But then she considers the fact that Carmy is still blushing, and decides it’s probably fine. 

“I could, uh, show you how to use that stuff,” she says, inclining her head toward the CVS bag, then, after a moment of silence, quickly adding, “I meant the hair stuff. I didn’t mean the condoms. I mean, we can… we can use the condoms. If you want. But I’m sure you’re… perfectly capable of using those yourself. No instructions necessary.” She forces an awkward little laugh. 

He smiles at her. Not patronizing, or annoyed. He smiles at her like there’s nothing more charming on this earth than her making an utter fool of herself. She watches him bite his bottom lip, trying not to laugh, and then he laughs anyway, a sweet, boyish sound. A sound that makes affection for him swell up in her chest like a helium balloon. 

She finds herself scoffing too. 

“It wasn’t that funny,” she says. 

He presses his lips together in a thin smile to stop laughing. There’s color in his cheeks; a warmth to him, underneath all the overly-formal newness of the date. 

She snatches the CVS bag off the counter, turning and walking toward the bathroom without waiting for him.

She hears him following close behind her. She kicks her shoes off, stopping outside his shower and pulling her sweater over her head (unable to stop herself from neatly folding it and setting it gently down on the closet toilet seat. Because heaven forbid it get fucked up; she loves it like an old friend). 

When she looks up, Carmy is standing in the doorway, tongue playing at the corner of his mouth, eyes fixed on her.

Jesus Christ, are they actually doing this?

Theoretically, stripping her clothes off in front of a guy she just went on a first date with isn’t really her style. 

This is different though, isn’t it? 

Honestly, she doesn’t really care. 

She’s standing in just her skirt, and the bra she picked out that morning (not a particularly nice bra, to be completely honest, she only owns four bras and they’re all the same, just in different colors).

Carmy’s eyes don’t move off her, but his fingers come to the buttons of his shirt, undoing them with absurd dexterity, until he has enough room to pull it over his head, leaving him in a white wife beater, gold chain glinting. 

“Oh, fuck you,” Sydney says. 

Carmy scoffs. “Fuck me? You’re the one who looks like that.”

“Like what?” Sydney demands indignantly. 

“Like a fucking angel,” Carmy says, a disbeliving laugh breaking through his words halfway through the sentence. 

“You look like Marlon fucking Brando,” she says. 

“You look cold,” Carmy says, smile softening. “Wanna turn that water on?”

Simple command, but it still makes her smile fade, and her cheeks heat. She nods, turning and reaching into his shower to turn the hot water on, standing on the bathmat where it can’t reach her. 

With her back still turned to him, she reaches to undo the clasp of her bra, sliding it off and letting it fall to the tile floor of his bathroom. 

She hears him inhale. 

Hears a faint rustle of fabric. 

She brings her fingers to the zipper of her skirt and pauses, looking over her shoulder at him. 

He’s taken his undershirt off. 

She stands unmoving for a long moment, stuck in the feeling of him staring at her like a fly stuck in honey. 

“Syd,” he says gently, after a moment. “You sure you wanna do this?”

“Do you want to do this?” she asks. 

He exhales a soft laugh. 

“Yes,” he says simply. 

“Well, so do I,” she says, turning back to look at the shower water, unzipping the side of her skirt. “Get over here,” she says, one hand still holding her skirt up. 

Carmy crosses quickly to her; shirtless, impossible. His eyes flick down to her chest, but quickly come back up to her face, like he thinks she might not notice. 

She did notice. She didn’t mind. 

“You first,” she says, nodding toward his pants, still buttoned. 

He scoffs, and a blush creeps up his exposed chest, but he unbuttons them anyway, pushing them down his hips and stepping out of them, left in boxers and socks. 

She lets her skirt drop, kicking it over the same way as Carmy’s pants, and without letting herself hesitate, slides her panties down her hips too and steps under the water, inhaling sharply as it hits her head, instantly banishing any hints of the cold from her body. 

She hears the curtain slide shut, and when she opens her eyes, Carmy is standing across from her, his back pressed to the cold tiles behind the showerhead, totally dry. 

She steps back so he can stand under the water too, but he makes no motion to move until she reaches out and takes one of his wrists in her hand, pulling him under the water. 

He tilts his head back, water running over his face, curls straightening out beneath it. She finds her eyes catching on stray drops of water as they trail down his chest. 

But no. She’s getting distracted. 

“Carm,” she says. “Hair.”

“Really?” he says, with a faint note of exasperation, opening his eyes and looking at her. 

“What, did you think this was just an excuse to get you in the shower?” she says, reaching out to get the shampoo and conditioner and setting them on the shelf. “I don’t joke about curl patterns, Carmen.”

“Right,” Carmy says, shaking his head slowly. “I should’ve known.”

She smiles at him ruefully.

“I still don’t know what was so bad about my 3-in-1,” he says. 

Sydney rolls her eyes. 

“God, you’re hopeless,” she says, “here, just turn around.”

She puts her hands on his shoulders, spinning him to face the opposite shower wall. 

The water hits his face and he tilts his head back to avoid it. 

For a moment, she lets her eyes wander over his back; littered with tattoos, dripping with water. 

She wants to press a kiss to the space between his shoulder blades, but she settles instead for dragging her fingers over the slopes of his shoulders, down his biceps, lingering on his skin until she pulls her hands away to reach for the shampoo. She sees him shiver. 

“I never take warm showers,” he murmurs. Maybe to break the silence. Maybe just to talk. 

“Why not?” she asks, pouring some shampoo into one hand and replacing the bottle on the shelf in the corner of his shower. 

“I— oh,” he breaks off as she brings her hand to the back of his hair, beginning to massage the shampoo into his damp curls. “I, uh, I don’t know, just never… had the time for the water to warm up, I guess,” he says, quieter. 

She drags her fingers through his hair, bringing her left hand up to join her right, working across his scalp. 

“God, that’s— that’s good, Syd,” he says, words soft.

He steps back, maybe subconsciously, leaning into her touch. His back grazes her chest and she hears his breath catch. 

“Sorry,” he breathes, freezing in place.  

“Don’t be,” she says. “Step under the water for me though, we need to wash this out.”

“Mmhm,” he says, leaning his head forward to catch under the water. The bubbles of the shampoo run down his back, following the path of his spine.  

When the water runs clear, no more shampoo running down the drain, he turns around to look at her. His eyelashes have droplets of water stuck in them. His hair is plastered to his forehead. 

“Done?” he asks. 

“No,” she says, smiling at how disheveled he looks.  “Conditioner now.”

“Oh,” he says, exhaling. 

“It’s good to leave the conditioner in for a few minutes sometimes,” she says, swallowing hard, reaching blindly behind her for the bottle, uncapping it and squeezing some into her palm. He watches her do it. “Makes your hair softer, you know?”

“Whatever you say,” he says, though he doesn’t seem particularly invested in her haircare instructions. 

She doesn’t make him turn around this time, just smooths his hair back with one hair and combs the conditioner through with the other, enjoying the way his eyes flutter shut as she drags her fingernails lightly over his scalp. 

When she’s done, he doesn’t open his eyes. 

She studies his face for a second; greedy and unhurried. 

He’s so fucking beautiful. 

“Carm,” she says. 

“Mm?” he says, eyes opening. 

She smiles softly at the dazed expression on his face, and drops her eyes to his lips. As she leans into him, she sees the tiniest flicker of surprise, and then he’s leaning back to meet her, that hungry kind of kissing that unfailingly disarms her. 

Her chest presses against his, their wet skin sliding easily together, making her body hum to life. 

She isn’t sure if she steps forward, or he steps back, but as they move together, the shower water begins raining down over both their heads. Sydney tastes flat water catching between their lips; the shock of the heat of it makes her gasp, and when she pulls back from Carmy, he’s red and breathless.

“I… think it, uh, washed itself out,” she says, glancing at his hair. 

“Yeah?”

She nods slowly.

“Smells good,” he says, running his fingers through his own damp hair. 

She smiles at him. “It’ll be soft when it dries.”

“Yeah?”

“Mmhm,” she says, nodding, becoming less capable of words as he stares at her more intensely. 

“You wanna… dry off?” he asks. “Then we can… you know. Whatever you want.”

“Yeah,” she says. 

He reaches behind him, turning the water off. 

There are towels under his sink and he tosses her one. 

“Don’t you dare towel dry your hair,” she says. 

He blinks at her. 

“Wha—how am—what am I supposed to do if I don’t towel dry it?”

“You need to scrunch it up and let it dry naturally.”

“Uh-huh,” he says. “Maybe show me that next time.”

She rolls her eyes as he towels his hair off in a way that is absolutely going to undo any progress she made. But she doesn’t really care. 

“Bedroom?” she asks, wrapping the towel he gave her around herself. 

“Yes,” he says, 

[batsplat]

This line made me sooooo insaneeeeee

BUT ITS TRUE

they did not expect it from each other

You mention that after sepang 2015 that marc refused to take it lying down and retaliated, would you say that one some level vale expected him to just take it?

And also could you please recount events in which marc also waged mind warfare on other people after the divorce™ I think that the psychological aspects of his style are so incredibly interesting like how in le mans, bezzechi kind of crashed out and how viñales mentioned in post race interview how " when he heard marc's bike he knew it was over"

Thank you for your very valuable contributions to motogpblr, you enrich the experiences of all

right. right! following on from this post... fair warning: 'what was valentino's plan in sepang 2015' and 'what mind games has marc cooked up over the years' are two questions that don't exactly lend themselves to concise responses, though I've done my best to edit this down to a somewhat more palpable length. so *cracks knuckles*. let's do this

first off, sepang 2015. yes, marc did very much refuse to lie down and, yes, he did instead very much retaliate. I'm not sure if I'd say valentino expected marc to 'take it' exactly, though the hope would have been that it would a) make him more cautious around valentino, b) throw him off-balance, and c) make him more error prone. I mean, certainly you'd have to assume he didn't expect marc to react like that because.... well. otherwise, why would valentino have done it? yes, he has repeatedly alluded to having wanted race direction or dorna or whoever to step in, but those guys infamously aren't particularly proactive. and, let's just pretend for a second here that marc really had been plotting to ruin valentino's title - what are you going to do about it if you're the ones responsible for enforcing the rules? even after sepang, when it was reasonable to suggest marc had been messing with valentino in that race specifically, there was only so much they could do. sure, the main reason they didn't penalise marc was because he'd crashed and had in essence already been penalised. but if you want a more drastic penalty, then you're going to have to show that marc is doing something emphatically illegal. I mean, it's not like race direction penalised valentino when he was racing jorge in what can only be described as a cheerfully malicious manner in motegi 2010, at a time when jorge was close to sealing that year's title and the two of them were racing for *squints at notes* p3. they can't actually stop you from being a little shit, you know

this line of argument might be ascribing too much rationality to valentino's actions - maybe he was hoping race direction would do something. it's worth pointing out that one of valentino's later comments (from march 2016) to my reading suggests that valentino had already spoken to race direction several races before sepang about marc's behaviour, but they didn't listen to him. the sepang presser then constitutes an attempt to publicly force their hand... except it still wasn't enough. and a part of valentino surely must have already known it was going to go wrong after saturday's qualifying. the incidents during the practise sessions that weekend weren't particularly egregious, but they involved two riders who were both clearly willing to play games with each other (including in some towing-related shenanigans). crucially it's not really the type of thing that would happen if one rider had been spooked so badly they're making sure to ride on eggshells around the other bloke. at the end of the day, valentino thought he could unnerve and disorientate and unsettle marc - and if you're being generous you could say he at least picked the right target. marc had broadly demonstrated he could be unsettled that year, which jorge had very much not

if you're being less generous you could say 'but it's crazy he's doing this to the bloke who isn't even his title rival'. which is the whole problem from valentino's perspective - he simply couldn't engage jorge in direct combat (and again, this does make it more remarkable he even got it to valencia given one of his big big strengths in title fights was being completely neutralised). jorge has been involved in plenty of great battles over the years, but his 2015 title was won purely on raw pace and having just enough tracks where he was fast and it wasn't raining for things to work out in his favour. it was marc who valentino was continually getting into fights with, whether at argentina or assen or silverstone or... well, even phillip island, valentino fights marc a hell of a lot more than he does jorge. which makes for a weird championship in a lot of ways, but also makes it a bit inevitable that valentino ends up disproportionately focused on a bloke who isn't actually his title rival

if you want to be even less generous, you can say it was a rather radical misread of marc's character from a man who (any conspiracy theories aside) has always seemed to understand marc pretty well. like, this is the thing right, obviously hindsight is 20/20 and all that but can you really imagine any universe in which marc hadn't done something roughly along the lines of what he did that weekend? in a way, this is probably the bit that bothers me the most about the whole thing, just feels like it couldn't have ever achieved what valentino intended it to. I can excuse breaking the heart of the kid who hero worships you, but I draw the line at being kind of dumb

the way I'd break it down is by looking at why he was in a headspace in which he wasn't making good choices, and then consider what his actual thought process (however irrational) might have been. so on the one hand, you've got all the contributing factors that explain the poor decision-making process, that explain why he wasn't thinking clearly. on the macro level, you have the arc of his career and what this title meant to him and how it fits into his desire to win on his own terms and prove everyone wrong and all of that. you have the pressures of that specific season and how it had gradually gotten more and more intense post-assen, the influence of the people around him and how they had allowed/contributed to him getting increasingly distracted from the actual riding as the season went on. this factor obviously includes the man who actually presented valentino with the phillip island telemetry and had seemingly been badmouthing marc for more than two years. you have the arc of valentino's relationship with marc, his belief that marc was a sore loser who only played nice with valentino while he was winning and who valentino thought he had been more than generous to in response to marc's lack of composure earlier that season. this eventually coalesced into a mental list of all the times that year valentino felt marc had fought him differently than he would anyone else, from argentina to assen to silverstone to misano to, of course, phillip island. you have the compressed time scale - four days from the race at phillip island to the presser in sepang, at a time at which valentino will have been at his most exhausted and spent after the travails of first motegi and then phillip island at the closing stages of the toughest season of his career. it's this that creates the sense of urgency, the need to do something now to stop the opportunity from slipping away. and then, of course, on the micro level you have the actual details of the supposed conspiracy that relied on the specifics of how the race at phillip island ended up unfolding... of tyre management and seagull murder and fluctuating lap times and suspicious late race pace and a perfect last lap

which, okay, I think it's fairly obvious that valentino wasn't thinking clearly. but he still must have been intending the presser to do something, something that was different from what it actually ended up doing. now, the way this works in my head is that valentino basically did the equivalent of pressing a big red button labelled 'chaos'. if you do what he does in the presser, that's the inevitable outcome, right: you're ensuring this entire weekend is going to be a complete mess. in theory, you're the one person who's had the chance to mentally prepare yourself for that mess, because you're the person who's pressing the button. you're hoping everyone else will be off-balance, distracted... to some extent it's less about wanting to intimidate marc per se (bad idea!) and more about making sure he has other stuff to worry about. maybe you're hoping marc's going to make some mistakes, crash in ways that aren't caused by a movement on your part that looks suspiciously like a kick, be a little out of it all weekend. I mean, marc did have a tendency to hit the deck when under pressure that year. the hope is at the very least he's going to be a little more cautious, so worried about ruining his reputation that he's not going to attack you too hard. basically, hope he does anything other than what he actually ended up doing, aka throwing himself at you again and again in the race in a sort of agonised fury that paid no consideration whatsoever to his reputation, ruined or otherwise

this is where the sepang 2004 parallel is at its most instructive to me. you're giving everyone something to talk about and you know it's going to be the centre of attention that weekend and you just kind of have to hope that the chaos ends up creating an opportunity. and, for a hot second there, it did look like valentino might have been onto something. he qualified on the front row for only the fifth time that season (y'know his qualifying actually got a fair bit better in 2016, presumably because he just wanted to maximise the number of awful vibes pressers) and he outqualified jorge for only the second time that season (again I don't mean to be rude but, jorge, how the fuck did you almost lose that title what were you DOING). it's pretty unfortunate that the very start of the sepang race played out in the exact perfect way to allow dani and jorge to escape while marc and valentino started divebombing each other. this is the thing right, there are lots of ways that race could have unfolded and it basically could not have gone any worse - and it's helped make valentino's initial decision to blow shit up age particularly horrendously

the other underlying explanation is a somewhat more opaque one. people want to feel good about themselves, they want to have a positive sense of identity along several different metrics like self-worth and moral virtue and so on. it doesn't feel good to lose, and it especially doesn't feel good to lose if you've tried really, really, really hard. a lot of sports psychology is about the challenge of managing vulnerability. there is something inherently vulnerable about competing in the public eye: you are trying hard to win but there is always the possibility that you will lose. if you lose with other people watching, you are making your inadequacy public knowledge. this is why athletes search for explanatory mechanisms - maybe they make a public show of how they weren't actually trying hard, about how they don't actually care that much, or maybe there's something they can blame like the machinery or injury or the team not being on their side or whatever. maybe there's someone to blame. a narrative of sabotage allows you to preserve belief in both your own ability and your own self-worth; it is the perfect explanatory mechanism. and to some extent, this type of thing is necessary - you're not going to be able to compete well unless you have high self-belief to the point of delusion, which means you do have to tell yourself all kinds of things to keep the faith. but paradoxically, these explanatory mechanisms are also incredibly dangerous, because you cannot compete to the fullest extent of your ability if you are not throwing yourself into what you are doing in your entirety, without any restraint or self-defence. you have to be open to experiencing the pain of defeat in its rawest form to be at your best. you have to be willing to go to those infamous 'dark places' within yourself to win. the moment you are thinking about how you will explain your defeat, chances are you've already lost

but hey, I've never competed in a motorbike race before, what would I know of the psychology of it all? let's get the words of someone who should know a little more than me:

Looking back, what I said about wanting a bike that could win at Welkom, well, that was a way of boosting morale, an attempt at wishful thinking. You can't demand something like that. And even if you get it, there's no certainty you'll win. But then again, we riders always say all sorts of things. Sometimes we believe what we say, even when it sounds crazy, other times we're just being hopeful and, still at other times, it's all an exercise in self-delusion. We try to convince ourselves of something, because ultimately, every time you step on the track, words don't matter, and it's just you, the bike and your opponents. In fact, that's the only time you really have a clear picture of things. When you're actually on the track, racing against your opponents. That's when you know where you are and where the others stand. You know how your bike is doing and how those of your opponents are faring. That's the moment of clarity. Then, you can say whatever you like to everyone else: your chief mechanic, your mum, your girlfriend, the press... but, deep down, you know the truth and you know it with crystal-clear clarity. You can tell people you fell because the bike didn't follow the trajectory it was supposed to follow, or tell them that you're actually really fast, but the bike simply isn't. Inside you, however, you know the truth. You know you fell off because you made a mistake, or because your opponent is simply faster than you. And the opposite is also true. Deep down, you know whether your victories were deserved. You know if you won races on the turns, when it's down to your ability as a rider, or on the straightaways, when it's all about the power of the engine. You know the others are looking to make excuses when they say you beat them just because the bike was better. I always knew the truth behind each of my victories, and behind each of my defeats, too. I knew exactly why and how I won or lost. And so, at the end of 2003, after winning everything in sight with the Honda, I was certain I could win with another bike. But, of course, until I actually did it, I couldn't be truly certain. Thus, I set off on my journey, in search of that place where certainty meets truth.

(sidebar: I find it funny how the bit about straight line speed reads like just an extremely obvious dig at casey in his ducati days but, published in 2005, your honour he's innocent)

what valentino describes in that passage is the awful, inescapable secret at the heart of all competition: at the end of the day, you do know. you can only do so much to protect yourself from the truth. you have to tell yourself a story, even if it's crazy, engage in all manner of self-delusion to throw yourself into the field of battle again and again and again - where inevitably you are going to lose, again and again and again. any great athlete has to start out at least a little delusional, for there is something inherently insane about thinking you will be one of the very best in the world in your field. eventually, much of that delusion may turn to reality for the chosen few, but the delusion never completely goes away because there is always more to win and always more losing to do along the way. when the delusion stops, so does your career. valentino's endless capacity for storytelling and self-delusion is inherent to his success - he would not have been as good as he was if he had not found all these stories to tell himself, all these reasons to believe, to keep motivating him, to wring special performances out of himself when he needed them most. he told stories that were ridiculous until he turned them into reality. if valentino were anyone other than the person who killed his tenth title in sepang, he would not have won the other nine in the first place

and yet, chances are, valentino already had lost headed into sepang. chances are, he knew as much. chances are, he chose the kindest possible story to make sense of it all. at the very least, what he wanted to do was expose the truth as he saw it - make sure that everyone in the world knew what marc had done to him even if it didn't end up saving his title campaign. but in exposing one truth, at the same time he managed to obscure a different one. because in the end, certainty never did meet truth in 2015, because we'll always have a question mark about what would have happened if valentino hadn't said what he had said in that press conference, what would have happened if marc had reacted differently, what would have happened if race direction hadn't handed out penalty points or if marc hadn't been so hurt and angry he was unwilling to take risks against jorge in valencia. yes, of course it's likely that jorge would have won anyway, but we don't know that. it's 2006 all over again, isn't it? there's a likely winner, there's maybe somebody who should be winning, but there's never any certainty. that's why we line up on sunday, or so the cliche goes. the main lasting success of that press conference is that it has cast a shadow over the whole championship - not just in the sense of making the whole thing unpleasant to think about, but in the more literal sense of concealing the realities of that title fight, of generating ambiguity as to how it all might otherwise have played out under more 'normal' circumstances

except, of course, valentino has told us himself that he does know the truth about all of his victories and defeats. of course he knows jorge was faster than him that year, which is why he wasn't trying to win that title on pace. by any reasonable standard, there's no shame to that, not at that stage of his career and not against that level of opposition. there's plenty of ways in which valentino was the stronger rider that year, still, somehow, and enough sliding doors moments that would have given valentino just enough points and granted him a completely deserved title. but of course it was still frustrating, and it was frustrating to be reminded constantly in the paddock - including by marc - of how jorge was the faster of the two of them. valentino knew he couldn't beat jorge on pace, which is why he never tried to, but it still wasn't easy. it still required him to just... put away his ego, ignore all the snide remarks about his speed, ignore marc's digs and jorge's cockiness, and just devote himself to winning the title in the only way he could. that's the heart of 2015: it's all about valentino suppressing his worse instincts right until the moment he doesn't. it's the pressure, it's all the blows his ego has taken that year...

and of course, it's also marc. at the end of the day, it'll always come back to that - the fact that marc had made himself into someone who had the power to genuinely hurt valentino and how he then managed to make himself a target of valentino's suspicions (topic for another post). going into sepang, valentino already knew that more likely than not he was going to lose the title, and he decided he blamed marc. at the very latest during the race, he knew he was almost certainly going to lose the title, and now he definitely blamed marc. that's how it goes, isn't it... valentino's reasons for saying what he said in the press conference were complicated, but marc's actions then proceeded to simplify everything. any uncertainty, for valentino, was removed by that race. it was stripped away even further, if possible, by how marc approached the valencia race and his decision that he wasn't going to risk anything - not when it could help valentino. their whole tragedy, of course, is that if you had placed valentino in marc's shoes that weekend at sepang, he would have done the exact same thing

which is unfortunately as smooth a transition as I can come up with to stop discussing valentino's psyche and starting discussing marc's. let's talk mind games

the first point that's worth stressing is this: most of the mental pressure that riders exert on each other happens on the track. I think this is where 'mind games' becomes a bit of a tricky term, because inherently the connotation there is that you're doing something a little sneaky, a little underhanded to get under the skin of your opponent. but valentino has said it himself: you need to be performing on-track for any of this to work. and it goes beyond that - the on-track performances are key in determining what kind of psychological pressures you are exerting on your opponent. ideally, this is a symbiotic relationship where, as valentino puts it, the off-track 'work' that makes the opponents 'suffer' is used to... well, just back up what you're doing on the track, to make sure they're getting the message. to just play with them a little in a way that is conducive to bringing about further on-track success

so, in the interest of not getting bogged down in semantic debates about what exactly counts as playing 'mind games', I'm going to throw out the term for now. I think it's interesting in itself that this phrase is how people refer to that kind of behaviour, something about how it comes across as just a little derogatory, a little suspect... but we're going to ignore that. it's completely useless to discuss 'mind games' as this kind of ethereal higher-plane tactic that only happens in press conference rooms and on three hour long podcasts, as if it's somehow disconnected from the reality of what's actually happening on-track. (on-track behaviour is also at times referred to as mind games - but less frequently, and it tends to be used more for behaviour in non-race sessions.) it's also a bit of a sleight of hand: there's not anything inherently more 'honest' or 'straightforward', anything less 'psychological', about deliberately bullying someone on the track versus saying something snide about them to the media. what we are interested in here is the question of mental pressure, how riders exert it on other riders, and how riders go about working on the suppression of their rivals. basically, for a more fun term, think of anything you'd consider to be psychological warfare and go from there (the ask does actually specify mind warfare, which feels like a happy middle ground)

and just to reiterate this, the vast majority of the psychological work valentino himself did on his opponents - including in ways that marc has gone on to emulate - was done on the track. a race like laguna seca 2008, which relies so heavily on tactics and valentino's assessment of casey as a person and what message valentino decided to send casey that day... well, it may have had its effects reinforced off-track, but fundamentally that's still a heavily 'psychological' victory that enraged and unnerved casey through what valentino was doing during the race. and if you're assessing valentino's 'mental game' while leaving out laguna 2008, you really might as well not bother

so what we're looking at here isn't going to be exhaustive, but it's still going to hopefully cover most of the major aspects in a way that gives a sense of that integration between the off- and on-track. now, coming up with a list of examples isn't all that easy, because first of all... man, marc's been around for a long time by now... if we recounted every minor incident with another rider, we'd still be here by the time twenty to thirty years have passed and valentino finally gives marc a call. second of all, marc does undeniably leave less of a paper trail than valentino. partly he has objectively gotten himself involved in fewer feuds (though I'd argue there are also circumstance-related factors there), partly he's also been warier of how he approaches this kind of thing as a direct result of sepang 2015, and partly it's just a question of personal style

valentino tries to suffocate you with the paper trail, leveraging his skills at manipulating the media to make your life unpleasant, to throw distractions in your direction, at times to make sure you are overwhelmed by the frenzy and the noise and the chaos. all this, obviously, he does in addition to making your life on-track as miserable as possible. marc prefers a slightly quieter approach, maybe an indirect dig here or there, a habit of letting you know on the track if he's decided he has a problem with you. which means that a lot of what people consider marc's 'mind games' basically go something like this: a) rider does something to piss marc off (this can just be 'beating him'), b) marc does something dubious to them on-track, c) rider complains about marc, and finally d) marc goes ?? idk why they're saying all that but not really my problem :) and goes along his way

but that does make it a little tougher to actually provide a good overview of what he's doing - because, at the end of the day, I too can only be so certain that he's attempting to fuck with rivals. that's the nice effect of it, right, you get these statements from other riders where they're complaining about marc and broadly speaking I do believe them when they say he's being a little shit again... but it's a little harder to prove that this is his intention. which means they also end up engaging in a form of shadowboxing, where they think he's messing with them and they say he's messing with them but it feels kind of one-sided and silly and like maybe they're simply imagining things. which must be just... incredibly annoying. god

in a way, the best proof we have that marc regularly fucks with his opponents is that everyone in the paddock is more or less agreed in their belief that he is constantly engaging in psychological warfare. you've got other riders saying that marc is continually dabbling in 'mind games', you've got journalists on their podcasts saying that marc is always messing with people and is an awful teammate to everyone who isn't his brother etc etc, and you kind of assume they'd be the ones to know. though, if anything, this can mean they sometimes have a tendency to overshoot, which is how we got endless speculation at the start of this year on whether marc was lying to people or sandbagging or whatever when he was busy adapting to a new bike. sepang isn't irrelevant here - marc became more closed off and private and secretive and circumspect about his real feelings as a direct result of how bad that whole experience was for him. sometimes it feels calculated to unnerve his competitors, and sometimes it does seem more about just protecting himself. but that's the thing, right - if you acquire a reputation for "mind games", then people will think you're fucking with them even when you're not. which can be useful! but, as should be obvious, it demonstrates that just because somebody is accusing marc of engaging in gamesmanship, doesn't mean it's actually true (which is also of course the case for valentino)

^'who's most likely to play mind games in a press conference?' winning here! alex rins hands on hips we will get to you in a bit

all that being said, we do have plenty of fairly clear examples of the ways marc tries to fuck with his opponents, so let's get to those. here are the elements I'll focus on: 1) an explanation of how the on-track exertion of psychological pressure works, in races as well as outside of them, 2) intra-team dynamics, and 3) some specific examples of how the on-track and off-track tactics are integrated. again, far from exhaustive - the examples are supposed to be more akin to illustrating marc's approach rather than definitively listing every instance in which marc has exhibited a particular behaviour. the streamlined approach, if you will

so, let's start with the actual racing. the aspect you bring up in the ask: the intimidation. bez doing his sad little crash out of p2 in the le mans sprint, maverick thinking it's so extremely over the moment marc came too close in the main race. I've edited this section down a lot to avoid getting too into the weeds here, but let's just give the brief sparknotes version of how this intimidation works:

speed: if you are not capable of performances that unnerve your opponents, obviously you will not unnerve your opponents. no shit. marc's sheer pace is terrifying in its own right... it makes you wonder if that cushy gap you have to him is quite as cushy as it looked a lap ago. how often he seems to be able to access something special, how it piles on pressure in the context of a title battle to know that he is fast pretty much everywhere. the speed does a lot of his work for him in the intimidation department, nothing fancy required

circumstance: so, say you've got an alien behind you. not to name any names... but there are some aliens where, if they are having a good weekend, they wouldn't be behind you in the first place. that doesn't mean the alien can't still be plenty scary... but when they're at their best, they're dominating out front and so are less 'threatening' when they're sitting on your rear tyre. when things aren't going their way in a given weekend, you maybe don't have quite so much reason to be worried. marc (similarly to valentino) is a lot more flexible in how he wins his races - which might mean he's looking very ominous from say p5 at the end of the first lap. there's less possibility of respite, less chance that if he qualified badly, he has the decency to still be slow come sunday. if you find yourself on the same bit of track as marc... that's probably not great news for you in any weekend

aggression: the obvious one. marc isn't as afraid to crash as everyone else is, he's willing to go for it if he's given half a chance - which he never fails to remind people of. he said it about half a dozen times at le mans this year, including with his competitors in the same room. convenient when you have such an immutable character trait you couldn't do anything about even if you wanted to, which also just happens to make you terrifying to fight with. sometimes he mixes up this rhetoric a bit - e.g. in 2016 after his messy 2015 he did talk plenty about his newfound maturity. still, not bad if his opponents are constantly reminded of how unyielding he is... which is of course part of the reason why he bangs on about it so much

(on the flip side, while it is obviously in his best interest to barely say a word against hard racing because it would make him come across as a massive hypocrite, marc has this nice little habit of reframing his opponent's moves as just not being particularly sensible in that situation. look at how he talked about the pecco portimao crash this year - sure, it's a racing incident, but it also wasn't "necessary" to fight like this for fifth/sixth place given pecco had a championship to consider. pecco's move was "too optimistic" - and, my favourite bit, he would "learn" from what had happened. which is nicely condescending, and a good way for marc to criticise aggression in a more circumspect manner: don't call your opponent dangerous, call them an idiot instead)

tactics: linked to the second point - part of the reason why valentino instantly recognised himself in marc and has always acknowledged what a clever and tactically astute rider he is. the other aliens to varying degrees tended to prefer the 'start fast and fuck off' approach to winning races. by contrast, it's hard to really pinpoint what an 'average' race win would look like for either valentino or marc. they are capable of the 'dominate out front' victory (marc historically more so than valentino), but they also have a bunch of other ways of winning races that all produce their own psychological effects on their opponents. to give a few brief examples, you've got the 'stalking and studying' approach, closely tailing opponents and gradually ramping up the pressure while you analyse where they're strong and where they're weak before eventually making your move. you've got the 'comeback ride', which is frustrating in how it means the field is basically never guaranteed a break from these assholes - this is all about relentlessness and generating a sense of inevitability. you've also got the 'fucking around before fucking off' approach, where you get involved in a scrap for much of the race and it looks like you and your opponent(s) are on equal footing... before suddenly pulling the pin and disappearing off into the sunset. there might be good reasons for marc and valentino to stick around that don't just amount to 'playing with their food' (though there is that too) like tyre preservation or figuring out grip levels in the wet or whatever. nevertheless, it's intensely demoralising for the competition, because it almost feels like the whole thing was a lie, an illusion of a fair fight... they've been tricked into thinking they had a hope of emerging victorious. obviously, all these different ways of winning are also investments for the future, so that next time your opponents are in xyz situation you generate uncertainty and doubt and preemptive frustration in their minds, as they wonder whether they can really get the better of you this time

now, obviously a lot of this is just about marc's natural strengths as a rider - but the point is that these operate on the psychological level as well... and you can gently encourage this with a little bit of extra off-track 'work'. what you say about your own aggressive riding, what you say about your opponents' aggressive riding, any impression you want to reinforce in the minds of your competitors. there's a lot of long-term reputation management involved here. (a little more about these reputations in the context of argentina 2015 in this post.) most of the 'intimidation' happens on-track, and it's also a result of deliberate riding choices that aren't just about winning any given race. of course, it's helpful if you are particularly adaptable to different race situations, if your flexibility allows you to reinforce the impression that you are always a threat. if successful, you can make sure your opponent is already mentally beaten by the time they know you're coming for them. (I'm not personally massively a fan of the term, but this kind of thing is what generally counts as the 'aura' an athlete has.) ideal, really - to be so intimidating your opponents can't even put up a proper fight

then, of course, there's the stuff that happens outside of races but in practise and qualifying instead. a perfect opportunity to be a dick to others on-track without the stresses of a race. which means... well, look, we can't ignore marc's habit of sitting on other riders' rear tyres when they're attempting to hook together a fast lap. the towing thing radically escalated when the honda was at its least competitive post-2020, but marc was definitely very much already at it before that. (incidentally, one of the cuntiest things he has ever said was when he pointed out in 2019 that he was leading so many laps in the actual races that he wasn't getting much chance to study the other riders there.) nobody really needs me to list every single towing-related controversy marc has involved himself in over the course of his career, but it might be a good idea to get the thoughts of somebody who knows a thing or two about fucking with his rivals. valentino himself has gotten the towing treatment a few times over the years courtesy of marc, and both pre- and post-sepang his stance has generally been 'listen it's a dick move but smart play, gotta hand it to him'. take this from catalunya 2019:

and y'know, he gets to the heart of the whole matter rather nicely -thanks to the local marc marquez understander for logging in years before the discourse about it became such a big thing. marc follows other riders around because it's a great way to study them and he also does it because he knows it's extremely annoying. it's annoying both because you know you're helping out another rider who you don't want to be helping out, and because it is just quite distracting to have someone that close to you, being able to hear their engine, etc etc. one thing that changed after 2019 was how necessary it was for marc to do this... marc went crazy with it at a time when it was often the only way he could put together a decent lap (and also because it played into the strengths of the honda, for a given value of the word 'strengths' - he's spoken a fair few times this year about how he finds it harder to follow other bikes on the ducati) (not for lack of trying). but valentino is also spot on in that marc is excellent at choosing his victims, how marc understands you have to pick someone who needs to put a good lap together and has no choice but to drag you along with them

I mean, think about why he just couldn't seem to leave poor pecco alone for a while there. first of all, pecco is fast, and marc clearly feels quite comfortable following him around. secondly, pecco tended to put himself in positions where he really needed a good lap because he'd gotten himself stranded in q1 or only had one more shot at a lap or whatever. plus he was fighting for championships, so he couldn't afford to fuck marc over out of sheer spite. thirdly, pecco has been fighting for titles for the past few seasons, making him one of the riders to beat. which means that marc was motivated to a) study him, and b) fuck with him - both of which were investments for a future in which he could fight pecco properly. makes complete sense! insanely irritating if you're the victim, which is half the point. also helps that pecco very obviously found the whole thing frustrating and tiring and really hated being asked about it, but also was equally obviously adverse to kicking up too much of a fuss about it for various reasons. the perfect victim

on the flip side, marc has been known in the past to be quite careful about who he is giving a tow, like for instance this from brno 2014 (ironically the first race that year marc did not win):

The two front row slots for the Ducatis were a problem for Rossi, dropping the Movistar Yamaha rider down to seventh, and the start of the third row. Rossi joked darkly about Marquez’s strategy, claiming that he was giving the Ducatis a tow to put them in between him and his main rivals. “For sure he is clever,” Rossi said. “He doesn’t pull Jorge, me or Dani, always a Ducati.” Marquez laughed at the suggestion, admitting only half of Rossi’s accusations. He certainly didn’t look for Ducatis to give a tow, but he would not give one to his rivals, he said. “It’s your decision to close the gas,” Marquez told the press conference. “If it’s Dani, Jorge, or Valentino behind me, for sure I will close the gas, but if it is another rider, it doesn’t matter.” That is in itself an admission of just how little competition Marquez sees. He is prepared to give anyone a tow, except for the other factory Honda and the two factory Yamahas. In effect, he is dismissing the threat from any other riders. Harsh, but fair.

and, y'know, if it were so easy then everyone would do it. you need a certain level of skill to actually pull off the towing bit, which marc is clearly very good at. you also need to have a good feel for picking your moments, who to bully, when to slot in behind them, all that kind of thing. and, lastly, you also need the sheer power of shamelessness on your side. which, that should more or less cover it... there are some real gems like mugello 2019 where marc accused ducati of ordering pirro to shadow him and then played a complicated game of chicken to catch a tow from dovi and snag pole, or mugello 2021 where marc was so determined to follow vinales through q1 that he was even alert enough to dive back into the pits with him as vinales tried to get rid of the small train of guys following him... but overall, I think valentino did a pretty good job at summing up the main points for me, so let's leave the towing discourse at that. returning to catalunya 2019, obviously it is also extremely valentino that he then had a sneaky little look at the honda's dashboard 'just out of curiosity'. truly a meeting of the greats, those two, we'll never find their like again

let's move on to intra-team fuckery - which is all about suppression of rivals. your first job is to beat your teammate, and the first arena of trying to fuck with your opponents is what happens within the team. my general assumption here is that marc's particular approach is less inspired by valentino and more just the result of his natural competitive instincts (which, to be clear I do think is true for much of the tactics described in this post). it's also not something... I know the ask specifies post-2015, but I don't think it's something that changed after sepang, except insofar as marc had won the most important teammate war of his career and didn't need to be quite as aggressive towards dani any more. given the continuity between the intra-team situation pre- and post-2015, I'm not going to make much of a distinction here and just rattle through some details about the intra-team dynamic from the start of marc's time in the premier class

so, the first bit of context that has to be acknowledged: a lot of the dani/marc war wasn't really fought between the two of them directly. both of them had... well, rather drama-happy managers, who a) were willing to do a lot of the mudslinging on the behalf of their charges, and b) were pursuing agendas of their own to establish themselves within the honda hierarchy. I think it's fair to say that not all of what they were getting up to was necessarily just about acting in the best interest of their riders - and it is an internal power struggle that could've had pretty disastrous consequences for marc in particular. here's a longer write up I quite like about the situation within honda in 2013, which came to a bit of a head with the phillip island fiasco (when marc was disqualified as a result of failing to change bikes early enough). just a few excerpts (though again I'd recommend reading the whole thing):

(gabbarini is pecco's crew chief these days by the way, small world.) so obviously a lot of this is kind of dumb, not least because marc came very close to losing that year's title to a yamaha rider as a result of all this behind the scenes bullshit. it also is just the kind of thing that happens when you lock a bunch of big egos into a small space within a competitive environment - and is a nice little insight into the early year machinations that were going on as marc and his team attempted to establish themselves within honda. which they did in part by pushing through key personnel changes that replaced anyone too closely associated with the old regime... and there's also the less pressing but interesting question of whether (as casey believes) marc's team pushed casey out the door because they felt 'threatened'. this sort of backroom manoeuvring is part of the game, albeit an unsavoury one, and great athletes do have a tendency to be ruthless in asserting themselves within team environments

of course, by 2014 marc was asserting himself ever more on the track. dani might not have yet fully accepted the number two status, but he was increasingly pushed into a position where he knew he had to play along, to not kick up too much of a fuss in his own best interest. did that perhaps play a role in how all those 2013 complaints about marc's aggressive riding - not least when it caused dani to crash in aragon and effectively ended his title bid - died down a little in the following years? who's to say! of course, marc has been pretty open in admitting his abrasive approach to the teammate dynamic, which he was kind enough to shed some light on more recently in marc marquez all in. I assume pretty much everyone reading this will have watched marc marquez all in, but for reference I've still included a transcript of the relevant bits of marc marquez all in. here's marc talking about the teammate relationship:

Dani and I, now we get along great, and he's an amazing person. But in 2013, 2014, there was a lot of tension. He was the king, the number one. People listened to what he said in the box. Everyone expected something from him... The team was focused on him. And out of nowhere comes this kid. A kid in his first year after Moto2. And well, first race and... boom. Second race, boom. And it's a hard pill to swallow. [...] I've never been a nice teammate. I've always liked to... You've got to make your teammate's life impossible, if you can.

and dani's take:

Those years there was a lot of tension because we were fighting for the same thing. He knew about my potential. That's why he always tried to stick to me, so I had no space to really take off. [...] He's very competitive. That's his strong suit, how competitive he's always been with everything.

and then at the end of that segment, marc says the following:

It is true that after 2015, 2016, everything calmed down, and we had a good, normal teammates relationship. After a while, I think you learn to accept the situation, right? It happens, and I'm sure it'll eventually happen to me too.

which I suppose is a fairly diplomatic way of saying the relationship got better when marc had won the war and dani had to 'accept' his lot in life. the king is dead long live the king, etc etc. intra-team competition is perfectly natural, but of course that doesn't mean all riders approach that dynamic in the same way. dani's "I had no space to really take off" is a nice way of putting it I feel, how he talks about marc 'sticking' to dani, marc's determination to just continually work away at his teammate... to suppress him, to smother him, to ensure that not only was marc winning the war but he would keep winning the war. marc made that team his own and he ensured that dani's continued presence in that team was happening on marc's terms. a job very well done

marc is also remarkably open in describing one of the specific tactics he utilised to achieve the desired effect in suppressing his teammate. in marc marquez all in, he admits to intentionally giving misleading bike feedback when it could give himself an advantage over dani:

But back then we had a great bike, everyone worked well. So if a replacement piece worked for him, I didn't like it, "This doesn't work. I want this one. I want this replacement piece, since I'm leading it. I want it. Don't give him this." "You want to try it?" "Yeah, sure." But I didn't want to.

now, listen, I'm sure this kind of thing does happen. that being said. marc, come on, not everyone is engaging in this degree of underhanded behaviour wherein you're intentionally hampering your teammate's efforts to improve the bike just to ensure you continue to have an edge over them. let's make a casey stoner comparison, given that I am legally obligated to mention him in most of my posts. he is actually relevant here though, as dani's pre-marc teammate and the bloke who would have more likely than not been marc's teammate if he hadn't retired. casey talks a bit in his autobiography about working with pedrosa at honda, mentioning how it was nice to have a teammate with a similar pace so they could actually develop the bike together. he also says this:

I never felt threatened by a teammate because I have never had one that I felt was consistently quicker than me and throughout my career our biggest competition always came from outside the garage. Still, I have great respect for Dani, our partnership was a fruitful one and I think we worked really well together to help Honda build their best ever bike in the RC213V.

while I do quite like the implication that casey would have felt 'threatened' by any teammate who could match him, I think it's fair to say that this is a pretty different approach from what marc's describing above. of course, casey could be misleading us... but, call me naive or gullible or whatever, I really just don't think casey was pulling that kind of shit on his teammates. I'd go so far as to say that this kind of thing is maybe not quite as widespread as marc portrays it as being. it might also be worth quickly bringing in casey's thoughts on such a combative style of teammate relationship (from 2009):

probably for the best we never got to see how that particular teammate dynamic would have played out! also, luckily enough, we do actually have somebody who can corroborate that casey and marc behaved differently as teammates. let's get the thoughts of dani himself (april 2023, so after marc marquez all in had been released):

“At least in the team we were in, HRC, it was like this: the one who goes the fastest is the number 1, the one who chooses the parts and the one who determines the direction a bit. “When [Marc] arrived, I was in that position and with the races and the championships he took that position and decided in his own way. When I was directing more the evolution of the bike I had the parts first and I never thought in [my] own way.  “My way has always been to do the best for the team, and if I have the best parts to make the bike the best, I'm not thinking about my rival right next door, but about Yamaha, Ducati... whoever the rival was, because I consider myself part of the brand. Later he had that other way of doing it.  “I don't think I was missing [the same way as Marquez], because my way of being was that one. For example, before Marc came in, with Casey Stoner, he never played that game either."

so, yeah, maybe not completely universal behaviour. I don't know, I do find it kind of charming that marc has this very 'ah well everyone does it' attitude. now quite honestly I personally would not admit to this sort of behaviour even in confessional amazon prime documentaries - and it's fascinating what kinds of things he has a filter about and at what times he just decides to be, uh, very candid. I mean, I suppose this is a nice way of publicly forewarning any teammate who isn't your brother that you're going to try and make their life miserable. so that's something. anyway, marc did obviously win the internal war - which is the kind of thing that does matter if you're trying to impose your will on bike development... even if you're just doing so to fuck with your teammate. so by 2016 you reportedly had a situation where marc's direction was being followed to the extent that it harmed all the other honda riders:

But Pedrosa claims he had no input in the decision, and is now paying the price of having to compete on a bike built around Marquez’s preferences. The 30-year-old also said that he knew he would be in for a difficult time in 2016 as early as the Valencia test last November. "In the end we didn't have many specs [of engines], but out of the ones we had I wouldn't have chosen the current one,” Pedrosa admitted. "When we picked the bike I already knew things would be very hard. I already knew how the bike handled in November. But it is what it is. The choice of bike that we have was [Marquez's], I had nothing to do with it. For the moment, he's ahead and he deserves to be. He likes the bike, he adapts better to it, while I struggle more. That's obvious, you can see it in the results and in the way we ride." Pedrosa said the poor performance of Honda’s satellite bikes this season in comparison to previous years was yet further evidence of how the RC213V has been designed around Marquez’s needs. Cal Crutchlow’s sixth place at Catalunya has been the best result for a Honda rider besides Marquez and Pedrosa of the campaign so far. “You have to think of the team, not only about yourself,” Pedrosa added. “If you look at the rest of the Hondas, they are a lot further behind than two or three years ago, when you had [Stefan] Bradl or [Alvaro] Bautista finishing fourth or fifth. Now they are 10th and further [back]. So we have to try to get the other teams to work too."

obviously, to some extent teams following the lead rider and prioritising their feedback is completely natural and even wise - they're the one who is winning for you. it does also end up being a bit of a self-perpetuating cycle that makes the rider already winning more likely to continue winning, which helps explain why these riders are even so invested in their internal bickering. all that being said, of course it's worth noting that different riders conceptualise that teammate relationship differently, and the extent of intra-team cooperation can vary drastically. marc has a very particular understanding of that relationship when he is paired with anyone who is not his brother - one that is generally speaking pretty far along the combative end of the scale

unfortunately, we never really got to see how bad the whole marc and jorge (also not the easiest of teammates) situation could have gotten. in 2018, their relationship was definitely better than say 2013, but also jorge was still perfectly happy to criticise marc - whether after argentina, or that whole aragon incident they had

(marc did call jorge afterwards to check in on him, which jorge did appreciate.) but jorge never had the pace in his honda days to threaten marc, so nothing really got going between the two of them. if memory serves, the closest we ever got was catalunya 2019, where they had a bit of a coming together in practise - incidentally the first (and in retrospect only) weekend that season where jorge had potentially dangerous pace

But Lorenzo’s apology seemed to clear the air. Marquez explained that once he “was calmer” and the fear of dropping outside the all-important top ten had subsided, he could see the #99’s point of view. Marquez also noted how he was twice penalised in 2018 for similar actions to Lorenzo’s in FP3. He then pointed out how neither his team-mate, nor Joan Mir, who blocked the reigning world champion at one point during the Mugello weekend, were punished. Speaking to Spanish journalists after Saturday’s press conference, Marquez, said, “He [Lorenzo] apologised to me, because he was in the middle of turn three. While people can say it's only free practice, it was the third one, in which the last laps are like qualifying. “I was so angry because I knew that my lap was the one to enter Q2 directly. In the end I finished ninth, the worst classification of the year. It’s clear that last year I was twice in the middle of the track and on both occasions I was penalised. At Mugello I came across [Joan] Mir, we touched and everything and then at the end of FP3 it happened again with Lorenzo. But this happens... When it does everyone has to be judged equally. There is no difference. He simply apologised. Logically [after the session finished] I was calmer and I understood, because no rider waits in the middle of the track – or at least I hope they don’t."

obviously, this isn't like, a big deal, but in the moment it was one of those 'oooh maybe this'll go somewhere' incidents and the eternal drama enthusiasts in the commentary box were talking about it at the start of the race. like I said, that was jorge's first honda weekend where he was showing actual pace, so it felt like this might be building to something. except then, uh, jorge decided to skittle all of marc's rivals in one go in the race itself and somewhat hilariously managed to just miss marc. and then jorge got injured again the next race and it all just kinda fizzled out after that, so we never really got to find out what dramatics could have been possible there

and that's it as far as teammates prime!marc had in the premier class go. childhood rival pol espargaro took on the mantle for two years in 2021-22, at a time in which there was much kerfuffle about honda's development direction and whether they'd followed marc's path for too long. espargaro did attempt to assert himself in that team and they did try to develop the bike in a way that suited all the riders better rather than just marc, which *gestures at honda post-2020* worked insofar as marc also ended up in the trenches. that being said, pol was never a particularly serious threat to marc - aside from that one race to start off 2022, which maybe prompted a little bit of needle from marc (based on what the podcasts™ were saying at the time in any case) but nothing dramatic - so, y'know, that was kind of that. in those two years plus the year where marc had joan mir as his teammate, of course you can go into the weeds and dig out minor disagreements... but apart from the conversations around development direction and how marquez-centric honda should be going forward, it's just a bit of a different vibe when you're beefing for pee one million or who gets to be the leader of that year's crash rankings. of course, if you really want to stop marc from tormenting you, maybe you should just try being his literal brother. pecco, if you want any more useful advice like that: I offer very reasonable rates, just give me a call and we can hash something out

so, we've covered how the on-track stuff works and looked at the intra-team dynamic - what's next? time to explore a little more how marc goes about unsettling his rivals, how he attempts to give himself the decisive edge over his opponents... and also, what purpose this all serves when it comes to his own psychology. intimidating rivals typically has another underlying goal: it's about motivating yourself. it's about proving to your rivals just how far you'll go to beat them while proving as much to yourself in the same breath

again, at times we're a little light in terms of an actual paper trail of this intimidation... given that marc does like to take on the role of the aggressor in on-track disputes, often he doesn't even have to be the one to comment - and instead the onus is on his rivals to voice their dissent. there's also the issue that marc did have a paucity post-2015 in terms of 'serious title threats over the course of multiple seasons' - which, I don't know, this does feel like a thing somehow, you just don't really build feuds in a single season. even valentino, known feud enjoyer, always needed a little longer to really get something going. looking at marc's career, obviously you do have dovi, with whom he had a very cordial rivalry between 2017 to 2019... but the only year in which dovi was a serious title threat was in the first year of that rivalry, in 2017. after dovi's poor results in the first half of 2018, that title bid was essentially dead on arrival, and the 2019 title fight generously lasts until catalunya when jorge skittled the field minus marc. there's a couple marc rivalries with young challengers that looked like they were just about to kick off after 2019... but, well, we'll never find out how those would have played out. and it might be worth pointing out that in his prime, valentino's disagreements with riders who weren't serious threats to him winning titles didn't really go beyond what marc had going on with assorted other riders from 2016 to 2019. it's a bit of an open question if you want to attribute marc's lower number of feuds primarily to his actual personality and how it differs from valentino's, or whether you think it just reflects their respective competitive situations. the boring answer is that it's probably a combination of both of those things

that being said, obviously you can engage in a wee spot of psychological warfare without it escalating to feud level. now, let's get the obvious out of the way: marc and valentino were still very much at it post-2015. of course they continued to be deeply invested in their attempts to undermine and mess with each other. but, let's be honest, they're their own special little thing and it's just going to derail this post if I pay too much attention to them. there's a certain level of feuding where it becomes increasingly detached from any sort of actual competitive calculus and is more about a fraught relationship between two people who have managed to severely hurt each other. that being said, it's worth pointing out that marc was perfectly capable of using that feud to spur himself on. for the easiest evidence of that, just look at some of his misano performances... in 2017, valentino had just nerfed himself out of the title fight, whereas in 2019 he was no longer a serious threat to marc on-track. and yet despite how valentino wasn't the on-track rival marc should be concerning himself with, in both cases marc ended up using his valentino-related rage to find that little bit extra within himself in order to steal the victory

^from the marc (+ dovi) race rec post

there's plenty to be said about the misano 2019 qualifying incident, but let's set aside the specifics for now (though, speaking of towing-related drama, marc had again during fp3 shadowed valentino around the track, which... why are you hounding this man in misano of all places, marc). the whole kerfuffle certainly didn't hurt marc's race performance, and it's fair to say he seemed particularly thrilled with that victory. obviously, these were pretty pointed celebrations, very in your face, big fuck you to the nation of italy and valentino rossi specifically. celebrations like this are important in both what they're signalling to the enemy and what they're signalling to yourself. if there's one thing you can learn from valentino, it's that a celebration is a public message, and can function as a statement of sorts about what the victory 'meant'. what's the story you're telling with your victory? what do you want to take away from this race? what do you want your opponents to take away from it?

misano that year had come after marc's struggles in last lap duels, with the two races directly preceding it featuring last lap losses to dovi and alex rins respectively. now, on the one hand it's not always catastrophic on a psychological level to be constantly losing last lap duels... because in marc's case they did help reinforce just how dangerous he was, where even at his weaker tracks he would hound his rivals until the very end. on the other hand, obviously it's preferable to have a reputation for winning last lap duels as opposed to losing them - not least because it adds to how intimidating you are when you are locked in another last lap duel. valentino of course had a reputation for being lethally effective in that sort of situation, and it's nicely helpful if your enemies assume they're fucked when you're in their postcode with around three laps to go. I discussed this dynamic a little bit in how it relates to the sete rivalry here and here, which links back to the discussion of how you exert psychological pressure on the track. some relevant excerpts, plus some of my race notes:

marc is obviously more than capable of adopting similar tactics in his racing, but the sete rivalry still holds up as a really good demonstration of the kind of rewards you can reap through a steady diet of psychological intimidation. this is why it's so important to keep an edge over your rivals: you want them to be haunted by the ghosts of all your past on-track encounters whenever you're fighting to the point where it's detrimental to their actual riding. anyway, let's quickly check who marc was actually fighting with during the last lap of misano 2019, and whether that might have had anything to do with why marc was so thrilled to get the victory. oh, the rookie revelation of 2019 and the guy marc quickly identified as the big big threat of the future, you say? poor little fabio quartararo who still hadn't won a race yet, but who marc managed to dramatically deny on two separate occasions that year on the final lap? getting in early on the mission of building up some crucial psychological baggage, are we now?

obviously, and pretty tragically, this future investment on marc's part has ended up being completely irrelevant (unless yamaha wants to do something so so crazy for me and build a functioning bike before marc's hair goes grey), but equally obviously none of us knew that at the time. and fabio was able to take away some positives from the misano experience:

“I knew he would try something, but you never know with Marc,” said the Frenchman. “He can overtake and pull away because I really don’t know if he really saved his tyre. “The good thing was I could overtake him back, and this going home gives me a lot of confidence, to say ‘he’s a seven-time world champion, but we can overtake him’. So, he’s a human like us.”

because that's what it's all about, isn't it. giving the opposition the impression that you're not even human - and, even if fabio is saying the experience gave him 'a lot of confidence', imagine how much more confidence he would've gotten if he'd won. also, check out fabio's comment about not knowing whether marc had been saving his tyre. that's why the 'fucking about before fucking off' approach to races is so effective: because of how it generates uncertainty, it generates doubt, it makes your rivals wonder even during races whether there's a chance you're just toying with them

we do have a bit of a sample size issue here when it comes to assessing marc's celebrations, in that his two last lap duels with fabio came a) in valentino's backyard, and b) when marc sealed that year's title. it means that if the celebrations seem excessive, there's still other plausible explanations for why marc was so happy to get one over the rookie that aren't related to trying to bully fabio into submission for as long as he still could. did marc really use them as a way of reminding everyone, including fabio, including himself, of who's really in charge? again, you'll have to draw your own conclusions

I'm doing my best not to cover anything that's happening this year too much, since this is the stuff I'm assuming people reading are basically familiar with. but of course, if we're talking 'pointed celebrations' then there's also a few from this year that stand out. this isn't to say that marc's joy at his ducati successes have been anything other than genuine, that he isn't happy or relieved or revitalised by his current season... but, well, part of being revitalised is also being back in the game where fighting for titles is concerned. take the jerez celebrations, ecstatic in spite of losing a tight battle, openly loved and adored by his home crowd. look at how he's done his thing repeatedly this year of engaging with all these crowds, getting them to celebrate with him specifically. a cynic might say it's a way of reminding his opponents that they might be winning right now... but they should never forget who the crowds have really come to see. which would be charmingly valentino of him. while marc (probably wisely) never went too far in mimicking valentino's unique style of celebrations, he is an avid enough student to understand the importance of the theatre of victory. like in his third ever premier class race (from the jerez post):

racing is one thing, but it's always important to consider how you're reacting in both defeat and victory. like valentino before him, marc prefers not to openly show his rage. like valentino, more often than not he will be publicly magnanimous in defeat. like valentino, he's not adverse to twisting in the blade a little further in victory. like valentino, he's very much aware of when a camera is watching him. with marc, you can also observe how determined he is to appear unaffected and unbothered by the effects of sepang 2015 on his public image (except in displays of very carefully managed vulnerability like marc marquez all in). there's plenty of examples of this, but most relevant here is how marc concerns himself with not being openly affected by fans booing him. take blowing kisses to the misano 2017 crowd after his warm up crash... which, looking at his post-race presser comments, whatever he may say clearly (and understandably) did bother him. likewise, see the glee of the misano 2019 celebrations. with those celebrations, he's trying to tell you that not only does it not bother him that they're booing, but instead he relishes it. the more they do this, the more he will win

one more case study before we wrap this post up, this time using a specific rival to illustrate some of his more common tactics and how the spats he gets himself involved in generally play out. said rival is alex rins, who especially in 2019 had emerged as one of marc's prime challengers. now, before we talk about any disagreements between those two, I do have to mention that rinsy has a bit of history with the marquez family (this from 2016):

in the end, dani stayed on for another year and was replaced by another ageing spaniard marc felt confident he'd have the measure of while rinsy signed for suzuki - so it's very unlikely marc had to play any active role in blocking him from taking the seat. that being said, obviously the main takeaway is the bad blood stemming from alex marquez's moto3 title campaign and how alzamora organised that team around the younger marquez. god knows how rins felt about this by 2019, but I doubt he'd just forgotten about it. there's also this from 2020, which to me reads as a little dismissive about someone who was your teammate in moto3? I don't know, judge for yourself:

anyway, back to marc. the 'biggest' incident between the pair of them was a coming together in qualifying at brno 2019 (one of the all time great qualifying performances from marc by the way, well worth a watch):

During qualifying at Brno, cameras picked up the end of a tense tussle between MotoGP champion Marc Marquez and Suzuki's Alex Rins. The pair were caught putting some close passes on each other before pulling into pit lane, where they continued to 'duel' - until Marquez reached out with his arm to put some space between their machines. Marquez then over swapped to slick tyres and romped to pole position on the drying track, with Rins claiming sixth on the grid. "It's a tricky thing because for sure [Marc] is now one step in front of everybody. He put the slick tyres and he was super-fast. But I think he has no respect for the other riders. He is riding on his way," said Rins. "I will explain to you what happened: On Corner 5, he went a little bit wide and behind him was Miller and me. When he went wide, he looked back and saw Jack and me. Jack passed him, but then he went back onto the line and sincerely he disturbed me. I was pushing. I was not super-fast, but I was pushing. "So on the next left corner I tried to do my line. He opened a little a bit the door and I go in. I touched him, but I think it's his fault; if he is riding slow he needs to open the door and that's it. But anyway, then on the last corner he braked super-hard to overtake me [back]. Then when we were coming into the box I was in front of him and I go straight and he has no space to go by my side. If I was him, I would cut the gas…" "I ran wide at Turn 5 and Jack overtook me because I checked behind and I only saw him, so I tried to follow Jack because I know he had good pace. Then I went a bit too wide and there was a small space, but enough and [Rins] ran into me…" said the Repsol Honda star. “The funny thing was when we entered the box and the tyre wall was there [in front of me] and I didn’t have the space [to get through] because he was going that way. I don’t know if that was intentional or not, but for me it wasn’t important. I lose zero time on these sort of things.” Told Rins had said he had no respect for other riders, Marquez responded: “Of course I don’t agree with this, it is his opinion." "It's not the first time," Rins had explained earlier. "Everybody knows Marquez and everybody knows that he has an incredible talent, but also what happened in FP1 with Vinales was more-or-less the same. Marc loves to play this game and try to get in the head of other riders. But in my case I'm really calm. I just tell the truth and that's it." Asked if he thought he needed to try and get into Marquez's head, Rins responded: "No, I don't think so…. For sure if I'm fighting for the world championship with him I will try to do something, but he's 80 points in front of me - maybe he's scared, I don't know!" Austin winner Rins, who has fallen in the last two races, is fourth in the world championship.

their most significant race clash was in silverstone 2019, where alex got the better of marc in a very dramatic last lap duel. I've heard journalists make vague reference to marc not taking that loss particularly well, though... again. hard to actually pin him down on a lot of this! but we do have more extensive comments rinsy provided in early 2020 to work with, and he at least seems to agree with that assessment:

"Marc is so good at these mental things, he plays a lot with all the riders," Rins told the official MotoGP website. "For example in Brno last year, I was on a fast lap, he looked behind at me and opened the line a little bit, but not too much. I was on the dry line and I touched him. I lost my lap, but I continued pushing. Then in the last chicane he overtook me so closely, we were so close to a crash, and then he went into pit lane. From that moment, I said to myself, Marc is considering me as a rival." Rins - who declared "Marquez has no respect for other riders" immediately after the incident - got his revenge in the form of a thrilling last-corner victory pass on Marquez a few weeks later at Silverstone. "Marc is the man to beat and the rivalry is so high," Rins said. "More in 2019, because I shared more moments on track with him. For sure whenever he finishes just in front of me, I'm a bit angry, I want to beat him. But also for him. I remember when I beat him in Silverstone he was so, so angry." Rins added: "I like this because it means that I'm doing a good job. Marc is an incredible rider, winning a lot of races and championships, and if he thinks of me as a rival, it means I'm there fighting him." Rins took two wins on his way to a best-yet fourth in the 2019 MotoGP standings.

now, yeah... the problem is that this is all very much hearsay (but no more so than plenty of similar comments valentino's rivals made about him!) and rinsy could just be lying about this or misinterpreting it or whatever. we are very low on actual evidence for the stuff he says here. if you watch silverstone 2019 and the aftermath, you will not see a marc who visibly looks angry - of course you won't, because he almost never looks visibly angry. unfortunately, we don't have the chance to grill alex on why exactly he was left with this impression. at the end of the day, like with valentino, when it comes to evaluating the honesty of a lot of these character references you will just have to make up your own mind. like with valentino, some of these men will either be exaggerating the extent of the harm or just straight up making shit up. then again, like with valentino, the number of people who do seem to have the impression marc was fucking with them maybe suggests that there is something to these allegations

just a few things to note here... to highlight some of the common features that tend to crop up in these marc incidents:

there's the accusation of lack of respect towards other riders - valentino is the one who most infamously made that accusation in the aftermath of argentina 2018, but of course he's far, far from alone in making comments along those lines. marc certainly has a tendency towards being... uncompromising in his approach, shall we say, which can at times lean towards treating his competitors mainly as obstacles and inconveniences

the anger that's being attributed to marc. which he doesn't tend to directly express towards his competitors off the track! but if he is angry, it may instead... seep into how he approaches instances where they share space on-track, as well as affect his general demeanour towards them

there's rinsy suggesting marc is known for playing these games, that he does it a lot, and he's also known for being very good at them... which again is often something we only hear about indirectly, but of course it's interesting if that's the general paddock consensus

there's also rinsy's insistence that marc's games don't bother him at all - he's just calmly noting that marc's engaging in them! again, it's quite hard when you're familiar enough with valentino's oeuvre to not be slapped in the face with the similarity in some of the rhetoric their rivals use. doesn't mean all of these different dynamics are directly analogous, but it does speak to how determined the rivals in question tend to be in... y'know. telling themselves that they're above the whole thing. unfortunately, sometimes it is just very, very hard to be unaffected... and sometimes you're already losing by talking about it, because it shows you've been thinking about it

which, check out marc's response. 'oh, obviously I don't agree I lack respect' 'ah, I lose zero time on these things' (for another example of him using similar language, you could of course look to his comments about bez last year in valencia). this is marc's go-to - he generally quite likes to deny the existence of a problem, makes it sound like the whole thing is very one-sided... he keeps his distance and can maintain his poise and this veneer of neutrality, where he is not causing any drama. maybe the other guy's just imagining things! that's really not marc's problem, is it now

lastly, you've got this notion of marc messing with other riders selectively, and specifically doing it when he's identified you as a potential threat. again, maybe you think alex is reading too much into it! but equally, it's worth noting that we have as much evidence for marc messing with rinsy as we do for, say, valentino messing with casey in practise sessions in 2006 (as casey's autobiography claims). it would have been completely competitively reasonable for marc to identify alex rins as one of his primary threats in the future... and it would also not be hugely surprising if marc wanted to maintain a psychological edge over him

incidentally, at 2020 jerez rins and marc had another little run in during a practise session - where alex was left 'visibly frustrated' after marc was slowing down on the racing line while rinsy was completing a flying lap, which he ended up having to back out of. this denied rinsy direct entry into q2 (though marc didn't end up being penalised for it). of course, marc's jerez race reached an unhappy conclusion and rins was too injured to even start it, and after that they've never been even remotely close to fighting for a championship. though there's still a little bit of needle between the pair of them, mainly resulting from how rinsy ended up joining lcr honda in 2023 after suzuki departed the scene. there's marc's reasonably innocent comments in 2022, on a day in which rinsy won another last lap duel for the victory in phillip island:

"I will not give any advice," said Marquez. "For me it is another opponent. It’s good that joining Honda is one world champion [Joan Mir] and one rider that is winning races with another manufacturer.  "Like this we will see exactly the level. I’m working really hard for the 2023 project with Honda and they are working really, really hard too. I don’t say I wish [him] the best. Let’s just go and see. He is another opponent, if not it would be fake’."

or here, take this from before mugello 2023, again mostly innocuous:

By contrast, Marquez believes Mugello is one of Rins’ best tracks and he wasn’t surprised to see the COTA winner at the sharp end. “No [I’m not surprised], because Rins, even with Suzuki, had 5-6 circuits where he is very fast and then others where he struggles more. Normally here with Suzuki, he was very fast and very consistent,” said Marquez, whose only premier-class win at Mugello was back in 2014. “He is really good in fast corners so, for example, in Le Mans he was struggling more than me and here he is very fast. It is good for Honda and Honda riders that someone is faster because like this you have more chance to look and compare the things.”

love being told I have "5-6 circuits" where I'm very fast. or take rinsy's innocent surprise that marc didn't end up winning at the sachsenring, and how he suggests it was maybe because of all the pressure marc had been feeling:

"It's hard, it tastes very bad to me because Marc has a fucking talent and it's not being easy at all,” Rins was quoted by DAZN. “But hey, in the end you have to turn the tables, you have to win, you have to build a winning bike. "Damn, I thought that Marc would also win in Germany. What happened? I don't know, I have no idea. Pressure, extra pressure, I have no idea.”

and then, of course, there was always that little hint of tension that came as a result of rinsy being honda's only race winner that year, at marc's beloved cota of all places... which became a bit of a discourse point (not always propagated by rinsy) to say that, hey, maybe the honda wasn't so bad after all... anyway, here's what marc said when rinsy signed for yamaha:

Repsol Honda rider Marquez was asked about Rins’ departure and answered: “I had an interview, they asked me about this rumour. I said ‘I don’t think so’ because Rins won a race and he said ‘it’s a good bike’.  “So I didn’t expect this move. But then the day after! I’m happy for him, it’s a good move, he’s moving from a satellite team to a factory team. Yamaha has power and energy from the past.”

marc had said 'surely not' but then the very next day he was left shocked and taken aback! he'd thought rinsy loved the bike so much! he'd thought rinsy felt it was actually a good bike! he'd thought rinsy would never want to leave! how unexpected this whole thing was to him!

(there was also talk about rinsy's unhappiness at how honda treated him and his development feedback - but as there is less than zero evidence marc had anything to do with that, let's leave it there)

did marc really behave differently towards alex rins because he saw him as a threat? probably! possibly? probably! but he hasn't really felt the need to say as much. sometimes, you can fuck with people by staying silent, and sometimes you can fuck with them just because you have a reputation for mind games - which marc, like valentino, has acquired over the years. ideally, your on-track plus off-track presence gets to the point where you don't really need to do anything and can let your opponents engage in shadowboxing while you can spend your time in more useful ways. think of that excellent clip from motogp unlimited where poor joan mir complains about marc's towing, freaks out when he realises the press has said he's complained about marc's towing, and then goes to explain to marc how he hadn't actually complained about marc's towing. and marc, with the air of a man who has been high on painkillers for the past week and hasn't given joan much thought beyond contemplating how well he'd pair with potatoes, graciously accepts this explanation - which joan is painfully, obviously relieved by. marc wasn't playing any 'mind games' in this clip, he was just standing there. but sometimes that's all you've got to do! call it a good return on prior investment. (partly this is also just a result of the status the sheer extent of marc and valentino's successes provides them and, relatedly, their power and influence within the sport.) here, from one of oxley's books:

Once you've established a reputation for trickery, you can confuse people without doing anything. At this year's [2009] German GP Casey Stoner accused Rossi of attempting to confuse his rivals by scrubbing the white sidewall paint from his front slick; the paint denoting Bridgestone's softer compound tyres. In fact Bridgestone had run out of white paint (no, really), but the reality didn't matter because Stoner was sat on the grid, convinced Rossi was playing tricks when he should've been getting himself in the zone, focusing on his race.

that's the ideal, right: you don't even have to do the dirty work yourself because it's the reputation doing the work for you. marc inspires a similar effect on riders, where he just gets them to the point where they're spending way too much time hyper-analysing whatever he's doing at any given moment. which means that he doesn't actually need to be trying to fuck with anyone for the effect to still be the same. free and easy, what's not to love

so, that's it, more or less. all the on-track stuff, from 'how to build up an intimidating presence 101', to just being extremely annoying in non-race sessions, to trying to mess with your teammate, to more generally how you go about handling disputes with other riders. managing your motivation, their motivation, everyone's motivation. of course marc's not quite scaled the heights (yet) of cursing another rider to never win another race again - which, hey, nobody's perfect, but I think he's built together a fairly decent resume for himself! there's plenty more stuff you could get into here, c.f. 'everything that's been going on with ducati internal politics this year'... but this post is more than long enough, and you can follow all that stuff while it's actually happening. a few more related topics I've deigned outside of the scope of this post include how he generally manages perceptions of himself and his performance potential in ways that aren't targeted at any specific rival, for instance how he talks about his injury and has a tendency to change his tune depending on what's convenient at any given time, or how in the past he managed perceptions of the competitiveness of his honda package. likewise, I also haven't discussed the actual success rate of these tactics: let's not forget that trying to fuck with your rivals doesn't... always produce the effects you want it to. (sometimes just in kind of dumb ways, like I get messing with the rookie sensation but please try not to crash when catching a tow, marc. "marc clearly tried to get into fabio's head and I think he hit his head himself quite big." "so, I think it's karma. fabio's on pole and I hope marc is uninjured of course. but he tried to get in his head because he knows fabio is fast." not ideal!) but, hey, the most important thing is he's trying hard and having fun. or something

because that's the thing, right. when you are attempting to exert psychological pressure on your opponents, when you're trying to weaken your rivals, inevitably this also has an effect on you. there are athletes who prefer to completely ignore their opponents and act as if they are essentially competing on their lonesome. neither valentino nor marc fall into this category. as a result, how you behave towards your rivals inevitably also becomes at least in part about motivating yourself. you are attempting to focus your mind in some way - whether it is to see your rival as an enemy or to simply distance yourself from them or otherwise. you may even be minded to treat your rival particularly warmly, knowing they are less likely to give you grief if you have ensured the interpersonal relationship has remained amicable... maybe even looking for a slight psychological edge if they are not sufficiently motivated to beat you. maybe that too is about managing your reputation and drawing a line under past unfriendlier rivalries, to distinguish your most beloathed rival from all the others. you may need to find a way to keep the fire within going, to reinvigorate yourself even in periods of relative competitive tranquillity by giving yourself something to be angry at, a reason to fight and to win out of spite... finding reasons to care, again and again and again. celebrating with exuberance not just because you are genuinely filled with joy but also because you need to be filled with joy - so that you can find it within yourself to keep fighting. there's never just one brain involved in the arena of psychological warfare. to succeed in sports the first person you have to play mind games on, after all, is yourse- *gets taken out by sniper rifle*

[ingravinoveritas]

I've been seeing posts about some replies from AL on Twitter tonight, and wanted to share some of my thoughts. For those who might've missed it, Anna replied to the below thread--not once, but twice--despite not being tagged or mentioned anywhere in it:

The fanart above is based on an Ineffable Husbands AU fic that is currently published on AO3 and has nothing to do with Michael other than using his face for the character, which makes AL randomly leaving those inane comments an obvious bid for attention, as she would've had to be stalking fan accounts to find that tweet. To make matters worse, however, someone in the comments on one of the replies sent her a link to the fanfic in question. Particularly egregious is the fact that the person who sent the link was not the author, and the author is now (quite understandably) pissed off and upset about this.

I know there have been multiple discussions about this in the past, but apparently it needs to be repeated: It is absolutely NOT acceptable to send fanfic to creators/creator-barely-adjacent people, especially without the author's knowledge or permission.

Yes, we know Michael enjoys GO fanfic. Yes, we know he has read and likely written GO fanfic and probably RPF. That still does not make it okay to send him fics--at all, for any reason, but most significantly because if anyone knows where/how to find fics if he wants to read them, it's Michael. Also worth noting is that Anna is not Michael. Anna could dislike or be entirely disgusted by GO fanfic or AUs...in which case she could have commented on the photo edit as a way of making fun of it, thereby potentially setting the creator up for ridicule and/or harassment.

It's also distressing to see people in the comments on Twitter encouraging this behavior/cheering AL on while seemingly not caring one jot about the actual creator's feelings (especially when I know that several of the comments are fan artists themselves). I had honestly thought fans knew better than that by now, but it seems not, and to say that all of this is infuriating is an understatement...

EDIT: It's been brought to my attention that it was the person who created the Professor Fell AU/made the photo edits who was upset at Anna's comments, not the fic author (who linked their own fic, rather than someone else's). My apologies for any confusion...

[sotwk]

The Best Gift (Legolas x unnamed OC)

Summary: Legolas wishes a "dear friend" a Joyous Begetting Day--but anonymously.

Dedication: For my dearest @quickslvxrr, who has been such a constant and patient supporter. I'm so sorry it took forever to grant such a simple fic request from you. I hope this brings you some joy during rather difficult times. <3

Word count: 1.3k

Rating: General Audience

Content: Fluff, comedy, romance, shy young Legolas, secret pining, brotherly banter, OC Son of Thranduil (Prince Gelir) 

Warnings: None

To Read on AO3: LINK

The Best Gift

Third Age 556 June 26th

The Woodland Realm

“What in Araw’s name are you doing?”

Legolas gave a muffled cry and stumbled back a couple of steps, but caught his balance before he could crash into the shrubbery outside the small kitchen window. 

“Get down!” he hissed at his brother Gelir, grabbing the older ellon’s sleeve and yanking him down to the dirt beside him.

His heart racing like frightened deer’s, Legolas listened carefully for changes in the movement within her cottage, any sign that she might have overheard his dolt of a brother’s voice and sought to investigate. Mercifully, the melody of her sweet humming continued to float uninterrupted from the open window. 

“Oh, are you the only one permitted to wish our dear friend a Joyous Begetting?” Gelir smirked and punched him on the shoulder. “If I too had a gift I wished to present to her for the occasion, would you pound me?”

“No!” Legolas blurted out quickly; too quickly. “Wait--have you brought a gift for her?”

“I have not, because I had assumed your answer to that question would be yes. And as little as I fear your wee hits, honeg, I do not particularly enjoy being on the receiving end of them.” 

Gelir shoved the younger prince aside, leapt lightly to his feet, and crept over to peer above the windowsill. Legolas held his breath, despite knowing Gelir would never be seen or heard by any elf, man, or beast if he did not wish for them to. The worrisome issue was the great pleasure his brother seemed to derive from embarrassing him at every open opportunity--something one might assume a grown elf would grow weary of after two and half centuries, but it had yet to happen. 

Thankfully, after an agonizing few seconds, Gelir dropped back down to their hiding spot. “I see you opted for the purple night lilies.” He cocked an eyebrow at Legolas. "I seem to recall Ammë setting certain conditions on the use of the rarest blooms from her garden."

"You recall correctly," said Legolas tersely. All four of his elder brothers were frustratingly knowledgeable of the details of his personal business--a result of the powerful bonds that linked them. But Gelir was easily bored, and the only one to actually stick his nose in for active meddling. "She did not set a time by which I am required to make myself known."

"And is Ammë also aware you have spent--on my guess--at least the last two hours sitting outside this unwitting maid’s window hoping that she would come to some sort of epiphany?”

Legolas thought about the smile that lit up her face so beautifully his entire chest ached, and the way it had stayed on her face the entire time he waited there, content to just observe the joy he had caused. 

“I believe she knows. Or is close to discerning it.” 

“You are right. She must realize eventually that a plant so rare and valuable could only come from a high lord or prince.” Gelir snapped his fingers. “Perhaps I should walk in there and take the credit and her fair heart to boot!”

Legolas jerked his head suddenly. “You wouldn’t!”

“You are right. I would not; that would be wrong.” Gelir leaned in closer, his expression suddenly stern. “But it is just as egregious to carry on as long as you have, making veiled overtures to this lady rather than mustering the courage to speak the truth of your feelings plainly to her face.”

“The pursuit of someone’s affections must be like hunting. When you hunt an animal, you go with the focused intent of finishing the job as quickly as possible. You do not toy with the creature to scare or confuse it and cause it needless pain.” 

Gelir clamped a hand on his younger brother’s shoulder. “I may not know what it is like to lose my heart in this manner, little brother. But I know it is unfitting that I show greater respect to animals I stalk than you do to someone you profess to love.” 

The sudden outpouring of wisdom from his wise-cracking brother rendered Legolas speechless.  But something on his face must have quelled Gelir’s baser instincts to tease and mock him. 

“Explain your struggle. Where does all your hesitation lie?”

“I…she…” His brother seemed so genuine this time in his desire to help, that the words broke through Legolas’s reluctance to expose his vulnerabilities. “What if she does not feel the same way I do? What if she will not have me?”

“She does and she will.”

“How do you know for certain?”

“Because I have two eyes and I use them,” Gelir said flatly, his patience already worn thin. “Unlike the both of you, evidently, who cannot gaze directly at each other's faces long enough to notice how nauseatingly smitten you are with one another.”

Legolas’s hands curled into tight fists. Against his better instincts, he wanted to believe it. What maiden could refuse a son of the Elvenking if he offered her his heart?

Well, she could, in all likelihood. For what was his title against true beauty and grace such as hers? Why should he be her first choice when she could have anyone in the entirety of Eryn Galen?

“Bah! Enough of this tragic nonsense.” Gelir’s hand around his arm easily tugged the dazed Legolas to his feet.  “I will not let you waste any more time squatting here like a toad. And even toads have the sense to croak and announce their intentions.”

Gelir hooked his arm around his brother’s hunched shoulders and gave him a firm shake. “Perhaps a few bottles from Ada’s cellars might rally those nerves, eh? Come. With any luck,  you can make another go of it before the day’s end.”

As they trudged around the hedges to start the trek back up to the King’s palace, Legolas wrestled with the sense of failure at his retreat. Why could he not be more like his brothers, if not like their father? Afraid of nothing, brimming with confidence to speak their mind to anybody. What was stopping him?

Nobody. Nobody but himself. 

Legolas froze in place so suddenly that Gelir nearly lost his balance. “What--?”

The younger prince turned to squarely face the pathwalk leading back to the cottage, glaring at the bright green door with the intensity of one about to leap across an impossible distance over a deadly chasm. 

“Yessss. Go on!” He distantly heard Gelir hoot as he began his determined stride up the path. 

But then he heard something else. Footsteps. A doorknob turning. 

The color drained from Legolas’s face and his legs turned to lead. He twisted about to scurry away and out of sight, but a pair of powerful hands suddenly seized the back of his tunic, lifting him so that his boot soles left the ground. 

A hard, rough toss pitched the helpless elf to the cottage just as the door swung open. He flailed his arms out to regain his balance and avoid face-planting on the stoop, but not quickly enough to avoid bumping against the maiden that had stepped out of her home. 

“H-Hello.” He gulped down the panic that rose up his chest, as the nearness of her, such as he had never experienced before, enfolded him. Her scent, her warmth, her…touch? Legolas realized that she had raised her hands and planted them firmly against his chest, likely to help break his ungraceful fall. 

“I… uh, I came to wish you… that is…I-I just wanted to say…” Valar, did Gelir’s shove knock his tongue loose from his mouth?!  

“I wished so badly for it to be you!" she suddenly blurted out, and stuck forward her chin in her willful defiance of protocol.

“R-really?” Unexpected joy and relief burst out of Legolas’s chest like a flock of sparrows exploding from a bush.

The sweetest blush rosied her cheeks, but she still had not moved her hands from the front of his tunic, he noticed. “The flowers are the most beautiful present I have ever received, but knowing that what I had hoped for is true, that they came from you… that is really the best gift.”

“I do not believe there is anyone gladder about your begetting than I,” the elf prince avowed.

And as her whole face lit up brighter than Gil-Estel, as she slid her arm through his and guided him into the cottage, Legolas felt the nudge of a distinct sound inside his head: the chuckle of an older brother whom he had just given yet another anecdote to refer to the next time he wanted to crow over being “always right”. 

Elves HC Tag List: @a-world-of-whimsy-5 @achromaticerebus @aduialel @asianbutnotjapanese @auttumnsayshi @blueberryrock @conversacomsmaug @elan-ho-detto-elan-15 @entishramblings @fizzyxcustard @freshalmondpandadonut @friendofthefellowshipsnerdblog @glassgulls @heilith @heranintomyknife23times @ladyweaslette @laneynoir @lathalea @lemonivall @LiliDurin @quickslvxrr @ratsys @scyllas-revenge @stormchaser819 @talkdifferently6 @tamryniel @tamurilofrivendell

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[bsof-maarav]

I just talked to one of the handful of friends I have left from my former community and found out that a specific former mutual friend, one who particularly prides herself on being a feminist, is straight up denying the hamas rapes, demanding "forensic evidence" and claiming it's all "Israeli propaganda."

I just have no more words left. I knew it was bad and I left behind what little social media I had in the first days after October 7th because I saw enough to know that I wasn't going to be able to be in this community anymore, I saw enough to know that I wasn't going to be hanging out with this crowd ever again. But I didn't stay long enough to watch every particular individual do and say the monstrous things that it turns out so many of them have been doing and saying.

I just left. And for a lot of them, I deliberately didn't look. I deliberately didn't look too closely at anything this woman was doing, for example--I thought it would hurt too much if it was bad. I thought it was better to just consider this part of my life over, to remember these people as they were to me before. I didn't want to know. I was leaving anyway.

Piecemeal, I saw some egregious things from some of my former friends. Glorifying self immolation...calling for the genocide of Jews...Holocaust inversion...claiming the hostages deserved it...denying that Jews are indigenous to anyplace on this earth...people who have utilized our words and symbols for their own liberation movements, wholesale denying the humanity of the people who made those words and symbols in the first place.

Every new piece of news I learn about who is dehumanizing us and with what rationale is just profoundly dispiriting.

No matter how many ways these people should be able to relate and make a human connection, they refuse to. Everything in their supposed values should enable them to hold the truth of what is happening to us. But it doesn't.

They're willing to treat Jews, especially Israeli Jews, in a way they would never accept for anyone else, in a way they would strenuously resist for anyone else--in fact, they strenuously resist much less serious things for anyone and everyone else! and that just breaks me. It means they never had the values that I thought we shared. It's all been a lie.

I froze things in time for some months, to some degree, accepting it was bad enough to be over, but not wanting to know the details. But with every new detail it's undeniable: there is no moral compass there. That world should have been a home for me and for years, I felt it was, but this hate was there the whole time. I never understood the conditions of my "belonging."

I can never forgive them. Not least because they'll never stop feeling righteous about their evil.

[shadowtriovibes]

Hi, I’ve never requested before so hope I do it right. Can I get an Ominis x F!reader where he discovers he has a biting kink? Thank you!!

take a bite

Pairing: Ominis Gaunt x f!MC

Word Count: 2k

Rating: E

Warnings: 18+, aged-up characters, explicit sexual content, unprotected PIV sex, references to oral sex, slight #dominis, biting kink

Summary: sequel to "take my hand" in which you and Ominis play around with his biting kink, this is just pure smut with lots of teeth xoxo

“The other girls are starting to worry about me,” you joke. “Yesterday Garreth even asked if I’ve been garroted by an Ashwinder.” "What? Why?" he asks, sitting back so you can see the puzzled frown on his lips. "Because I’m positively covered in bruises,” you remind him, taking his hand and pressing it along your neck. “And not small ones, you cad." He at least has the decency to blush while he ducks his head.

If you’d thought that you’d created a monster out of Ominis after that first time, you were in for the shock of a lifetime at what he’s become.

You think his desires might even put Sebastian to shame, and that’s truly saying something. He wants you always – in between classes, late at night (when he can distract you from your studies), and even in the mornings when you stay overnight in the Room of Requirement.

After that first time, he can hardly think of anything but his hands on you, or yours on him, or your mouth… Merlin, your mouth.

Despite how game he’s been to try new things, you note that one thing about that first time has remained the same, and that’s Ominis’ oral fixation.

However, you come to realize that perhaps it’s not just about using his mouth. In fact, it’s mainly his teeth.

If you didn’t know any better, you might wonder whether Ominis is at all vampiric. Admittedly, you know very little about vampirekind having missed your first few years of Defense Against the Dark Arts classes, and they aren’t common in the Highlands.

But you aren’t the only one who has had that thought. You know your classmates have remarked on his pale skin, his preternatural ability to hear and perceive the world around him, and, despite his enduring kindness, his family’s reputation for abusing the Dark Arts.

However, you know he’s much too sweet and loving a man to be anything but human.

So, not a monster, you think. Just a biter.

It’s not that you mind. You can’t help but shiver every time he nips at your bottom lip while he’s kissing you, or when he makes his way down your neck and starts to work bruises and bite marks into your sensitive skin.

The other Slytherin girls in your year had quickly taught you how to make use of a scarf to hide any particularly egregious marks, giggling about how your Ominis must like to mark you up to let the boys who glance your way know that you’re utterly taken.

But that just makes you wonder… is it about the bruises? The ones he can’t even see?

Or is it about the act?

“Ominis,” you breathe one night, your head tipped back against the headrest of the plush armchair you conjured by the fire in the Room.

“Yes, love?” he mumbles into the hinge of your jaw, where he’s currently hard at work marking you up further.

“The other girls are starting to worry about me,” you joke. “Yesterday Garreth even asked if I’ve been garroted by an Ashwinder.”

“What? Why?” Ominis asks, sitting back so you can see the puzzled frown on his lips.

“Because I’m positively covered in bruises,” you remind him, taking his hand and pressing it along your neck. “And not small ones, you cad.”

He at least has the decency to blush while he ducks his head.

“I didn’t know they were that bad,” he counters. “You should have told me, I can stop for a while and let them go away.”

“Don’t blame me, cheeky,” you croon, gently cupping his chin to pull him in for a kiss. “I could tell you liked doing it, but I didn’t realize just how much you like it.”

“It’s just – a nice feeling,” he admits.

You’ve been resolute in insisting the two of you talk about what you enjoy together and what isn’t your favorite, because despite his protests Ominis is a bit too proper to easily tell you what gets him off.

“What is?” you encourage him. “Using your mouth on me?”

“Using my mouth,” he agrees, leaning in to press an open-mouthed kiss to your neck. “And my teeth.”

“I wondered,” you whisper, trying not to talk much to preserve his canvas for him as you lean back again. You gasp when he bites over the column of your jaw – softly, but enough for you to feel his teeth leave indentations in your skin.

“I don’t know why, it’s just… I can’t help myself,” Ominis tells you, his hands on your hips gripping you tighter. “Do you dislike it?”

“Does it sound like I dislike it?” you quip, pressing down against his lap to let him know just how much you do not hate what he’s doing.

“Just here?” he asks, tugging the already messy collar of your shirt further to the side. “What about the rest of you?”

“Why don’t you find out?” you challenge him.

Wordlessly, he traces his lips along your skin until he finds your collarbone and bites down, and you whine out loud, grinding down hard against him.

He curses softly and bites again.

“Ominis,” you whine, tangling your fingers in his tousled hair. “Keep going.”

“Take off your clothes first,” he counters, and you quickly start undoing the buttons on your school shirt while he takes care of his own, tugging his tie loose and tossing it over his shoulder. Then he helps you tug your skirt off, smirking dangerously when he runs his hands up and down your sides to discover that you’d foregone underclothes.

“Were you expecting something, love?” Ominis asks you knowingly.

“Just trying to be efficient,” you breathe, dropping yourself back in his lap.

You arch your chest toward him so he’ll keep going, and he’s quick to put his mouth back on you – this time at the curve of your breast, where he’s usually so careful.

“You can bite,” you murmur.

“But you’re so soft here,” he says, tenderly kissing your skin and gently dragging his thumb over your other breast, teasing your nipple with his thumb.

“So be careful,” you tell him, tangling your fingers in his hair. “I want you to, Ominis.”

You both know that there’s very little he won’t do if you use those words on him.

Carefully, he nips at the curve of your breast and then a little harder when you hum, pleased. He’s so tender with you, listening intently for any discomfort while he buries his face against your chest and gives you bruises to match the necklace he’d already given you.

By now you’ve ruined the front of his trousers and Ominis can hardly take being separated from your bare core by the layer of his uniform pants anymore. He pauses his work on you to pull his cock out and trace the tip of it along your slit, feeling for himself just how wet he’s making you.

“Want to stay in my lap like this so I can keep going?” he offers, one hand sneaking behind you to your ass as if to help lift you up onto him.

“I have a better idea,” you offer. “Come with me.”

Raising his eyebrows, Ominis takes your hand as you climb off his lap and walk him over to your bed. You make no move to push him toward it, so he waits as patiently as he can while you murmur a quick modification charm to raise it up a little higher.

Then you lean onto the bed, resting your head on your forearms with your ass on full display, and call him toward you.

“I rarely get jealous of sighted people anymore,” Ominis murmurs as he lays his hands on your curves. “But I really wish I could see you right now.”

“You can touch me,” you say softly. “And you’re the only one who can do that.”

“That’s certainly better,” he agrees.

Taking his cock in hand, he slowly presses inside you, earning a desperate moan from you as you force yourself to relax for him. In this position, he feels impossibly long.

“Ominis,” you whine, and he pauses.

“Just a little more, love,” he murmurs, sounding just as ruined. “Please, let me? I know you can.”

“I want you to give me all of you,” you grit out. “And then I want you to bite me wherever you can reach.”

Merlin, maybe you’re the monster after all, you think.

Helplessly, Ominis presses all the way in and nearly collapses over you. You feel his lips brush against the back of your neck, his hands frantically shoving your hair out of the way so that there’s nothing between you two.

Then he bites down right on top of your shoulderblade.

“Yes!” you wail. “Move, Ominis, don’t stop.”

You hear what sounds more like a growl then a moan while he starts to fuck you in earnest, biting his way from one shoulder to the other in a way that isn’t practiced or careful but still feels so delicious.

“You taste…” he mumbles into your skin. “Fuck, I can’t stop, love.”

“Don’t, don’t ever stop,” you beg, practically delirious.

Ominis isn’t used to hearing you beg. Usually you’re the one demanding what you want from him, guiding his hands where you want them or coaxing him into kissing his way down between your thighs.

You think he quite likes that your roles are reversed for once, if the way he grinds into you a little viciously is any indication.

He fucks you deep like this, over and over while he bites all along your upper back. You’ll be covered in bruises after this, you think, but no one will ever see them.

You whine pathetically when Ominis leans away from you, but then you feel his fingertips skim across where his teeth had been as he traces the marks along your skin, examining his handiwork.

“Mine,” he says softly, and that nearly puts you over the edge.

“Make me come, please,” you whimper, feeling desperately unlike yourself in this vulnerable position, entirely dependent on Ominis’ whims to get off.

“Come here,” he grunts, and he slides his hand up your back until he can gently tug on your hair at the base of your neck to get you to arch up just a bit.

He leans down and bites teasingly at your earlobe. “Can you come like this?” Ominis asks.

“I think so,” you breathe. “Just — touch me, I need you to touch me.”

“Here?” he asks, sliding his other hand between your hips and the bed to press his fingertips to your clit.

You nearly sob, already so bewilderingly close. “Please!”

“Good girl,” he mumbles into your shoulder, and right before you tip over the edge, he bites down hard.

You shout into the mattress while you come, pinned between Ominis’ hips and his mouth. The first thing you notice when you can think clearly is that your legs are shaking, and you honestly wonder whether they’re about to give out.

“Just a bit more,” Ominis grunts, finally letting go of you so he can hold your hips steady for him. “Let me come, love, let me finish inside.”

“Anything you want,” you slur, which would be embarrassingly earnest if you didn’t absolutely mean it.

Ominis tips his head back while he comes, grinding all the way in so you’ll keep every drop he spills inside you, his baser instincts rearing their ugly heads at the sight of seeing you so filled with him.

You reach behind yourself to blindly seek his hand, sighing happily when he laces his fingers with yours.

“You are unbelievable,” Ominis sighs, still catching his breath. “How do you manage to bring out the most wicked parts of me every time?”

“Just talented, I suppose,” you reply.

He carefully pulls out, transfixed for a moment as he traces his fingertips through the mess he’d made in you while it starts to leak out. You tremble a little, still sensitive from your release.

“Care to help me clean up?” you ask, hoping he’ll fetch a wet cloth for you.

Instead, he drops to his knees.

“Ominis?” you breathe, glancing over your shoulder. “What on earth are you doing?”

“Trying something new,” he says simply, and before you can react he bites the tender spot where your ass meets your thigh.

You gasp – that stung, actually. But just as quickly, he presses a sooting kiss to that same spot, tracing his fingertips along the back of your leg apologetically.

Just before he puts his mouth back on you, he murmurs, “Let’s get you cleaned up, hm?”

[crescenthistory]

Ok not a request but I loved the recent regulus fic with “where is she?”. I can just picture snape showing up in the infirmary the next day just fully bandaged and in casts all thanks to Barty and Evan

THANK YOU i really loved writing that one, hurt/comfort is my shit, especially with someone wound so tight like regulus. something about losing control you know?

and absolutely – as soon as you are out of the infirmary, your bed is taken over by snape for his egregious crime. as is the next one over by avery, for being involved in the situation. beside him is mulciber, for trying to protect his "friends", and any others who got in the way.

regulus is barty's oldest friend; any turmoil he feels must be avenged. reader is the one barty treasures perhaps most; any violence against them must be reciprocated. as for evan, he has that quiet, simmering, unwavering loyalty, both for reader and regulus, but of course, above all else, barty. even if he didn't particularly care for you, he would have followed barty on his almost-murder spree – but when you, someone who always holds space for him and understands him, is all but gutted on school property by buffoons? and not even with a purpose or methodology, just out of pure stupidity? he is not just supporting barty nor satiating some twisted fascination, he is revelling in the opportunity to protect you after-the-fact.

say what you want about those two, call them unhinged, maniacal, disturbing, but they are and will remain pack animals. they protect their own.

they do wait, though. not with the threats, nor possibly the restraining or light maiming of the offending parties, but with any level of repercussions that require immediate medical attention. because there is no way in hell they are going to let those sods near you anytime soon.

i also think you have to keep insisting and reminding them for the next foreseeable future that you did not die:

"when snape killed treasure" is a common point of reference for barty.

"i want nothing to do with that murderous bastard" "he didn't murder me, barty" "you don't know what you're talking about"

"i'm literally sitting here, breathing, right now" "i still hear her voice sometimes"

evan would always position himself between you and snape in a room, even if he genuinely never had anything against you specifically nor would risk the injuries himself

while you roll your eyes affectionately at their theatrics, it actually does unnerve regulus

he is still largely affected by the whole thing, the thought of losing you a sore topic (sorer than it already was, that is)

only when you give evan and barty a look before nodding inconspicuously at regulus do they quiet down

though they never truly let it go

barty would definitely reference your "death" in his best man speech at your wedding sorry

[jesterwriting]

empty inbox ya say? Don't mind if I show up!

So, I am a lover of the grumpy x sunshine kinda trope, but I want to hear your thoughts of crocodile having an caotic partner? Always having some kind of prank or stupid joke, just to see crocodile crack a smirk or something, but no matter how much they try, they always fail to so. So, after one day that the little sunshine tried so hard of trying they just pout around croc, and he just to try to cheer up his darling just a little, try to crack one of his own stupid joke just to see them laugh a little and go back into being his sunshine

(if you are not comfortable/don't find the prompt as entertaining, you can skip it tho, okay?)

pairing: crocodile x gn!reader

contents: established relationship, fluff, bad jokes, sunshine!reader, crocodile and his soft spot for you, he acts annoyed but hes entirely smitten i promise

word count: 1.1k words

note: OMG this was such a cute idea!! grumpy x sunshine is one of the best tropes ever, im such a sucker for it. im not particularly good at writing chaotic reader, though i definitely tried to make them quite silly. thank you so much for your request anon <33

playlist: dance the night by dua lipa

To an outsider, your relationship with Crocodile could, very easily, be one of the most confounding relationships one had ever seen. Of course, there had been more ill fitting partnerships out there, but you and Crocodile were close runners up. He was a large, intimidating man, with a harsh expression, and an even harsher tone. When he was displeased, his words alone were enough to rip apart an idiot’s flimsy confidence. Crocodile was a man of wealth and status. The only thing that ran deeper than the promise of violence, was the sand he was made of.

You, on the other hand, were the exact opposite. Bright and full of sunshine, you practically glowed against Crocodile’s side. With a smile so wide, it almost hurt to look at you. There was a softness to you that was absent in Crocodile. There had been more than one occasion where you were seen helping a wayward insect back outside, cupped gently against your palm, or offering directions to a lost couple who ran off in terror when your infamous husband approached. The crowd watched in horror when you scolded him with an elbow to the ribs. Crocodile did nothing but roll his eyes.

When you weren’t helping the lost, with your terrifying husband looming over your shoulder, you were a whirlwind of chaos. Prank after prank on unsuspecting visitors to the casino were done in your name. Nothing too egregious, you never aimed to harm, all you wanted was to make people laugh. A task you succeeded in, at least when you were alone. Crocodile’s unamused expression as he carted you away, laughing uproariously, did little for the mood.

It was only in the privacy of your shared abode did those pranks find a target in Crocodile. You respected your husband’s boundaries. Not once did you consider making a fool of him in public — not that it was your intention, you simply knew Crocodile well enough to know that was how he would take it — nor did you even consider any pranks that involved water. It was a damn shame. A bucket of water over the door was truly the prank of all time. Just imagining Crocodile, soaked to the bone, cigar wet and limp against his lips as he stared at you with such crushing annoyance, was enough to make you snicker out loud.

However funny it may be, your bits weren’t worth losing Crocodile’s trust. Such a thing was a rare gift from your husband, very few people alive had the honor to receive it. With a hint of pride, you considered the possibility that you were the only person alive to say that Crocodile felt safe enough to confide in them. Boy, if that didn’t make your heart absolutely swell.

Your only regret was, no matter how many jokes you played, you never got Crocodile to crack a smile. Even when you covered his desk with sticky notes — “Y/N, you realize you’re cleaning this up.” — or that stupid crank call you did a few weeks ago — “No, my refrigerator is not running, don’t call this number again.” — were not enough to get the barest huff of a laugh.

That was how you found yourself in Crocodile’s office, hanging upside down in the chair in front of his desk. It was normally reserved for when he had a private meeting, but today he was stuck doing paperwork. It was silent, save for the scribble of his pen against top secret documents you weren’t supposed to see, but would be able to look at with a single ‘please.’

“C’mon, you think I’m funny.”

Crocodile didn’t look up from his work as he responded, “I think you’re foolish.”

“Yeah, but I’m your fool.” Flipping around in your chair, you swung your legs over one arm and hung your head off the other. Boredom was not an uncommon foe during quiet afternoons with Crocodile. You needed near constant stimulation to keep yourself in check, and for all the reasons you loved him, Crocodile did, in fact, have a massive stick up his ass. “You’re a king and I’m your jingling little fool. Let me tell you a joke.”

Crocodile grumbled under his breath, but he didn’t tell you to stop. With a grin, you said, “Why did the egg hide?”

With a sigh, he dropped his pen to run a hand through his hair. “Why did the egg hide, Y/N?”

Patting a drumroll against your thighs, you paused for dramatic effect. Seconds passed in silence, save for your palms’ rhythmic song against your thighs, Crocodile’s eyebrows furrowing deeper and deeper the longer you continued. Finally, you blurted,

“It was a little chicken!”

Crickets. Your husband didn’t even spare you a response before his pen was in his hand again, signing who knew what. With a roll of your eyes, you flopped from the chair and onto the floor. The carpet was soft against your palms.

“Okay, that was bad, but you could have at least said something.”

“You’re going to have to say something funny to get a response out of me,” Crocodile rumbled, not even bothering to glance at you while you laid on the floor.

This sucked. You could make everyone laugh, all except for the one who mattered to you the most. A part of you wondered why you didn’t give up. You were sure you were being at least a little annoying — though the smaller voice in your head reminded you that Crocodile was one to request time alone when he was in a bad mood.

“Fine. No more jokes, spoilsport.”

No response. Fine then, at least the floor was comfortable.

For the next twenty minutes, you kept yourself busy by counting ceiling tiles, or by fighting the urge to reach under Crocodile’s desk and steal his shoes. No more pranks, remember, you told yourself. Not until you stopped feeling like a big ol’ pile of poo, at least.

“How do you make a plumber cry?” Crocodile’s voice surprised you after going so long without hearing it. (It’d been thirty minutes, maximum, though it felt like an eternity)

You wet your lips before you responded, already feeling a giggle bubbling in your chest. “How?”

“Kill his family.”

You burst out laughing. Curling your fingers against the edge of the desk, you popped your head into his view, positively beaming. While Crocodile was never one for grandiose displays of emotion, he graced you with one of his rare, honest smiles.

“That’s more like it, doll.”

[ladywaffles]

icemav + chocolate

a discord prompt written for @nicejobkid

For all that Maverick has the need to always be moving like some kind of shark that grew two legs and two arms while developing the same amount of respect for authority as a sullen teenager, he's absolutely terrible at drinking coffee.

Remarkably bad at it, really. He has no appreciation for a finely roasted, freshly ground cup of coffee. Ice watched him drink Italian espresso once, when they had shore leave. It was a good thing it wasn't summer, otherwise his whites would've been ruined. On the few occasions Maverick does drink coffee, he takes it with an egregious amount of cream and sugar until it's almost unrecognizable as coffee.

("What's the point of drinking it like that? You can't even taste the coffee," he'd asked.

"Exactly," Maverick had answered.)

Ice takes his coffee black with one sugar. He and Maverick hate drinking the other's coffee order.

He travels a lot for work. He'd prefer to bring back locally roasted beans when he goes abroad, but he'd never be able to drink it all before his next trip, and Maverick is no help. Ice still sends a postcard or two if there's something that catches his eye, but he and Maverick mutually agreed years ago that getting souvenirs from every place they each visited would just result in an ungodly amount of fridge magnets. As it is, Maverick's hangar is covered with pictures and patches from every squad either of them flew with, and Slider, and Wood and Wolf, and Merlin...

They have their fill of memorabilia. Instead, Ice brings back fancy chocolates or expensive alcohol. There's a particular Scottish malt he always makes sure is in stock on Maverick's birthday, one of the very few luxuries that Maverick tolerates.

When he arrives home after a long trip out east, they go through their routine. Ice drops his bag in the foyer, hangs his keys on the hook by the door next to Mav's, and opens his arms to accept Maverick's embrace. They stand there for a few minutes, holding each other and simply being. The older he gets, the more he realizes that this really is all he wants, that Maverick is all he needs to be fulfilled, to have a complete life.

It's not until after dinner that Maverick starts rooting around in his go-bag for the treats he knows are in there, like a child with sticky fingers.

"Hey! You went back to that store!"

There's a chocolatier in a little town just north of NAS Jax that Maverick particularly enjoys. Ice can't always make the trip up there when he goes east, but when he can, he does. He finishes up the dishes, listening to Maverick open up his box of chocolates.

"Oh, ugh! What the hell is that?" Ice smiles knowingly, wiping his hands on the tea towel. He wanders into the living room, where Maverick has his go-bag open across the couch.

"Did you find them?"

"I thought they were chocolate covered peanuts," Maverick whines. Ice laughs and drops a kiss on Maverick's forehead. He takes the opportunity to shove a bit of fudge into Maverick's mouth to shut him up, then grabs a handful of "peanuts" for himself.

"Nope," he says, punctuating it with a crunch. "Espresso beans." Maverick pouts up at him.

Ice smirks, that same toothy, asshole grin he gave Maverick in a dingy bar in 1986. It's just the thing to make Maverick rise to his challenge, chasing him up the stairs to their bedroom. He knows he's baiting Maverick, but it's been a long three weeks.

He's missed his husband.

[demeterdefence]

time for more thoughts nobody asked for (quick content warning this does discuss apollo & sexual assault)

there's been a growing shift in lo from putting reasonable emotional response to things to "lol comedy" and it's ... not good. in all honesty the entire comic seems to have become a parody of itself - lazy sketches, exaggerated appendages, absolute godawful flanderization in character design - but one of the more egregious aspects is the downplaying of genuine anger and righteous frustration into some kind of 1-2 comedy punch.

under the cut for length and content

i won't say that rachel has ever handled nuance or emotional response particularly well, but in the earlier chapters, there was at least a semblance of effort. when depicting or discussing persephone's rape by apollo, rachel writes eros as being rightfully horrified by what happened to persephone, and while it's not great that the emotional catharsis is more on eros reacting to the rape instead of persephone herself, i'll admit that i really did like how eros responded and validated persephone. as someone who has also experienced sexual assault, the sense of grief, fear, and confusion surrounding the event often gaslights victims into being confused or mixed up over the reality of what happened. eros demonstrates nothing but support and love for persephone, evidenced first by noting how upset she is when she says she had sex with apollo, and then by realizing she can't even find the words to describe what happened. he's actually nothing but nurturing in the sequence.

eros recognizes a major component of the assault is not just the assault itself - persephone is blaming herself both for what happened to her, and for "losing" her virginity, which has been a key aspect of her identity for a long time. eros immediately puts himself on persephone's side, reassures her, and comforts her, and it's not done with comedy or hilarity. he is the god of love - he understands sex and desire, and he is absolutely correct that what apollo did was rape. the conversation is treated more or less pretty respectfully, and without any comedic punchline or distraction. it's two friends, one desperately needing comfort, another providing it.

something to note is that from this point on, eros is furious with apollo, and it shows. he is correct that apollo is the bad guy here, and he does not let up in that reaction. the next time we see apollo and eros in the same scene, it's when apollo has cornered persephone in the room where he raped her, backed her up against the wall, and manhandled her. this scene in particular has ... a lot of bad elements to it, but without getting into that hornet's nest, we see eros come upon the scene in time to see what's happening.

and he's not happy.

particular to note that all the gods get wrath eyes at some point or another - apollo's are golden, whereas eros' are blood red, and the standoff emphasizes this. eros immediately breaks into the room and puts himself in front of persephone, staring apollo down until he leaves.

the next time apollo and eros interact, it's right after pesephone has been charged with treason and is hiding in the underworld. now, i do have some problems with this interaction because, considering the last time eros saw the guy it was when he was threatening the girl he raped in the room he raped her in, and eros' reaction is ... fairly muted. but there's still clear disdain in there, and eros does not necessarily hide it.

the last time we see eros and apollo interact before the trial is when apollo gets hit with the arrow of hate and comes after psyche. eros takes it less than well.

ignoring the fight which turns into psyche and eros sidelining everything, the entire interaction ends with eros getting hit with an arrow from apollo after trying to stop him from killing daphne.

it's a good time to point out that by chapter 227 (MONTHS after their last interaction) both eros and psyche are confirmed to know what apollo did, that he's still terrorizing persephone, and that he tried to kill daphne and severely injured eros. psyche has been given the role of goddess in part to keep an eye on apollo. that's confirmed in the story. that's confirmed by rachel. that's confirmed by eros and psyche themselves. apollo nearly killed psyche when he attacked eros. there is a significant lack of love between the three of them. so how does eros react the next time he and apollo are together?

like at this point in the story apollo:

raped eros' friend and terrorized her, once in front of eros who had to physically stop apollo from continuing

gaslit artemis in front of him, emphasizing his abusive behaviour and reinforcing to eros that apollo would manipulate anyone to get what he wanted

tried to kill his wife in front of him

shot him with an arrow that made eros violently ill

tried to kill a nymph in front of him

plotted to kill eros' grandfather / king of the gods

threatened to kill an innocent woman if eros and psyche tried to stop him

locked eros and psyche in a magical jail

by all accounts eros should be seething to fight apollo. he should be rabid. he should be frothing at the mouth to punch the guy out. instead we get this

this is the sort of thing you say to the dude who annoys you or steals your girlfriend, not a RAPIST who tried to kill the KING and wants to establish a coup d'etat. it's just ... painted as comedic when it's anything but? even how eros is drawn is supposed to be caricature, it's exaggerated and meant to suggest humour rather than the actual serious issue that it is. take zeus and daphne and psyche out of the equation, eros still knows apollo is a rapist. he still knows apollo is obsessed with his rape victim. he has demonstrated MASSIVE rage towards apollo in the past, but now it's like the whole thing is a "haha gotcha!" rather than the very obvious implication that apollo is planning more sexual assault. even if he's worried for psyche in this scene, eros still has the power to attack apollo - he's done it twice before! he has the ability to defend himself, so why the hell is he bantering with the guy?

and this has become a reoccurring problem in lore olympus - the way it takes serious trauma and turns it into some kind of comedy now. hera standing up to kronos and deciding to find hebe? hestia has to make a quip about her smoking. demeter coming to terms that her relationship with metis might not have been perfect? gotta get a dig in about demeter's helicopter parenting. morpheus wracked with guilt for the sleep dive with hades? persephone has to take center stage. it's just acting like no one is allowed to be actually angry or grieving except persephone and hades. we haven't even gotten to see zeus deal with being impaled by his father during the battle in the underworld, and sacrificing himself for persephone??? it's the cheap and lazy sitcom formula - ending everything on a cheap laugh, rather than letting people sit with the emotions and frustrations of a situation. back when eros first finds out persephone was raped, the chapter ended on a soft, optimistic sequence; persephone finding comfort in her friendship, and feeling safe. you didn't need a joke, because there wasn't any - it acknowledged the pain persephone was in, but also let the reader know that hope and comfort could be achieved. you don't need to end on a joke or a pithy comment every time - sometimes it's just important to let the emotions be felt. watering down the anger does nothing but water down the severity of why the anger is there in the first place.

it's another demonstration of how rachel could not give a fuck about anything other than persephone and hades. the art, the narrative choices - the care and love for detail is gone. it's just as little effort as possible, and it shows in the most insulting ways.