#now i have to wait until new production performs...

[janeya]

wondering .. do u guys consider me the jane ceo or is that just my own wishes..

[memento-morri-writes]

It's been well over a week now (maybe two??) but I'm still plugging away (ever-so-slowly) at this vignette about Zara and Rook. Zara's POV is a lot of fun to write, now that I have a better sense of her character. Writing this has really solidified in my mind the kind of person she is and how she acted when she was Rook's captain and mentor. She's very calm and collected in comparison to Rook, even when under a lot of stress.

Anyways, have a little snippet that I'm proud of from today, featuring the origins of the coin trick!

Pacing back and forth across her cabin floor, she rolled the coin back and forth over her knuckles again and again. The motion was easy, almost mindless, more muscle memory than real intent. The coin trick had been her favorite way to soothe her nerves for years now. She’d picked it up out of idle curiosity after watching a street performer dining in a tavern in Bon Largo, who had chatted with her for over an hour as she fretted about something mundane, never once dropping the coin from their fingers. The same performer had later tried to steal her coin purse and ended up with nothing but a new scar for their trouble, but Zara had learned two important things from the encounter: Not to trust a warm smile and a pretty face, and that keeping her hands moving kept her mind from dwelling too much on worrisome things.

one-time tagging @space-writes because they commented on my tags about Rook learning the coin trick from Zara in one of my other snippets from this piece.

[defmaybe]

Party Police

ITZY's Shin Yuna x Male Reader

1.4k words

Sequel to Sticky

A/N: Let’s do a sequel!!! Again, I really love writing Yuna dominant lol, thanks for reading!!! Also, this one doesn't have the "definitely, maybe" line lol.

—

The plane croaks and cries as its wheels touch the runway. It slows down and turns a few times to park. Then, the seatbelt light above is gone.

—

Narita

As far as a company trip goes, this one should give you bragging rights over your friends until death. A spring trip to Tokyo–where every street and building is photogenic. The air is perfect (a bit cold, really, but it’s definitely better than your home).

Of course, it’s a reward from your generous boss, who fought the higher-ups to death for this trip. Your team’s productivity has soared under her reign, as she always brings snacks for your co-workers every single day. And with her bubbly, optimistic attitude, and such a level of competency you don’t dare to compete, they just had to approve this one-week trip at the price of a car.

The secret sessions between you two remain, well, a secret. Though, there has been a running rumor of your boss having a booty call with an employee, but you’re smart enough to play along with the wave, pulling out the ‘yeah, who could that be’ along with a few chuckles.

—

Shibuya, not so far from the crosswalk

The exit of the station has always been so busy, oh, so bustling in its nature. The chill air welcomes you to the afternoon of Shibuya. In front of you is the crosswalk—that goddamn crosswalk. You follow the wave of the people to the landmark, waiting to reach your sanctuary again.

The red stop signal flickers

1 2 3

You stride through the crowd—some holding their phones to capture the moment, some are just trying to reach their destinations as soon as possible.

You walk on the same path that you did years ago, just walking up north to your terminus, and there it is.

You open the glass door, and you feel another breeze from the air conditioners from inside blowing your face. It looks a bit cramped, but it’s definitely well-planned enough for you to see all the new albums. The first floor is mostly decorated with yellow and red–same as the big sign outside.

—

Tower Records

“Hmm, Alvvays, huh?” 

Yuna suddenly appears by your right shoulder, staring at their debut LP you’re holding.

Into your ears, she whispers, “You have a great taste, baby boy.” Her voice is breathy–hints of depth under it.

“You don’t have to leave. You could just stay here with me~” Yuna sings. Her hands are perching on your shoulder as she performs her little swaying with the hips.

“Forget all the party police. We can find comfort in debauchery~.”

With debauchery, her right hand trails down your lithe frame, down the sides, as you’re trying your best to stifle your own moan. The Alvvays disc in your hand is trembling.

“Oh, baby boy, I just wanna eat you right here, among these CDs,”—she continues—“I just wanna have you squirm, one hand holding on Antisocialites, another holding on Blue Rev.”

“M–Miss Shin, what are you s–saying? I d–don’t think it’s appropriate–”

“Shhh, baby boy, it’s not ‘Miss Shin’ here. You know the word, remember?” Yuna giggles at her own words, as you’re sweating at the fear of getting caught inside your own sanctuary. And she doesn’t let your body find its footing so firmly in the section either. She presses you forward, and you step back in response.

A B

“Say it, baby boy. Don’t keep me waiting~,” she teases. She presses you past Carly Rae Jepsen. Emotion runs high on you.

D E F G

“I–I can’t, Miss Shin. This is n–not the place.” You two are on Hatchie; she’s still without a blush. You must be fucking red as a tomato now, judging from how your whole body feels so damn hot.

I J K

Lorde. “Oh, baby boy, I know you wanna say it so, so bad. You just love being under my domination, don’t you?” 

But you can’t just give her a green light that easily, despite how much you just want her to pump your cock right here and now, in Tower Records Shibuya. There’s a matter of shame in play here. Your breaths are out of rhythm, unlike the music out of speaker right now.

M N O

“Ooh, look who it is here,”—Yuna picks up the Brand New Eyes box with both of her hands, pouting—“It’s Paramore! You… are… the only exception~. Am I your exception too?”

Fuck, why is she so irresistible?

Q R S

Taylor Swift appears in your sight on the left, along the steps back. “Y–Yes, M–M–” The thought sprouts in your head now, but you just can’t form the words. You’re, again, enchanted under her spell.

U V

Wolf Alice. “No hard feelings if you can’t say it, baby boy. I’ll just take the subway to Harajuku or somewhere else if that’s what you want, alone, without you~.”

X Y

“Y–Yes.”

“Yes… what, baby boy?”

“Yes, m–m–mommy. Y–You are my exception.” And on Z, you surrender to her.

“Good boy.” Yuna holds your hand, waking up a few butterflies inside you, before guiding you towards….

—

Tower Records’ Bathroom

“Umm, mmph, I’ve been dying to taste this cock for so long, baby boy.” And Yuna supports her point by dragging her filthy tongue along the underside of your length, glistening you with her saliva. And how can you not shudder with that? “I’d say… it’s worth the wait.”

“M–Mommy~,” you groan, eyes fluttering on top of the toilet.

What a sight. Yuna is kneeling on the floor for you in this stall, aiming to please you with her mouth. You can see her cleavage from the above, with her nipples still covered with the black bra. To ramp up the experience, she starts with taking in your whole mushroom tip with no struggle. God, she’s so good.

Her oral expertise continues to astound you, as she twirls her tongue around your tip, gathering any pre-cum leaking out.

“Hmm, I think I should do a bit more before you cum~,” she says, before diving onto the base of your throbbing length with ease.

“F–Fuck! You’re so t–tight, mommy,” you moan, and your hands are holding on to the lid with your dear life, not wanting to fall. Your head is basically leaning on the wall behind you now.

Yuna says nothing, but you can see her smiling on your shaft despite the cheeks being hollowed out to create such otherworldly suction. Fuck. She bobs her head up and down to bring you to the edge. Her gag reflex starts to make her tears welling up, but that doesn’t stop her from pleasuring her favorite employee with her mouth to his hilt.

Every movement of hers is considered, aiming to milk your cock just like she did that time with her right hand, the other grabbing you by your slutty waist—when you were nothing but a toy for her to play with. She hollows her cheeks, as said, to create such otherworldly suction. And that dreamy eye contact while she blows on your hardness, god, who wouldn’t cum within a heartbeat. 

“M–Mommy, I’m gonna cum,” you say, as your hips buck into her with her frenetic movements.

Yuna doesn’t relent her attempts, still gagging profusely on her baby boy’s needy cock. She makes this little whiny sound with every of your thrust, as the end of your digit reaches as far back as it can. Yet, she’s still determined—so fucking determined to please her number one employee. But now, you want just a bit more.

“M–Mommy, y–your tits, p–please.”

She gives in to your plea too easily, but it’s like you’d complain. She quickly discards layers of fabric until her bra is left. And after a few magic tricks of her hands, her last barrier falls off just for you. You savor in the moment of her bare breasts and the stiff nipples under your impending orgasm. Oh, what a sight.

And it’s there, your seed releasing into her throat.

“M–Mommy~,” you whimper.

Your length twitches inside her tight cavern, wanting to squeeze every drop out of you. She doesn’t let any drop leak out of her mouth either, swallowing any residue down to her stomach.

And as you finish, she has to open her mouth and stick out her tongue to show her clean cavern.

“F–Fuck, mommy, w–why, why are you so good?”

“Just for my favorite employee, baby boy.”

—

[littleslaywrites]

pas de deux | spencer reid x bau!reader 

summary: you’re a ballet dancer in your spare time. when you get injured, spencer is there to help you recover.

based on ask: “can i request a spencer reid x reader where our reader (who does something like figure skating, gymnastics, cheer, ballet, etc, in her spare time) gets injured on the job and realizes that also affects her hobby? and spencer helps her find a new hobby while she's in recovery and it's just super fluffy and cute” 

word count: 1.8k

cw: f!reader, basically just fluff, slight angst kinda, description of injury (knee hyperextension), boyfriend!spencer, reader is an intern at the bau and becomes a member of the team

Ballet has always been there for you, even when nobody else was. You had been dancing your whole life, from age three all the way until now, spending your time after work in the studio. Although you chose not to major in dance in college, it was your solace, always waiting after a long day.

Spencer was the first person you had met that made you feel like ballet did. When you started your internship over the summer at the BAU, he was there for you without being patronizing. He understood you like nobody else had. You felt free around him, always excited to see him when you got home. Best of all, he was perfectly fine sharing your attention with ballet. When you had your first performance after meeting him, before he even asked you on your first date, he was waiting in the front row with the biggest bouquet of flowers you’d ever seen. From that night on, he was at every opening and closing night you had.

After graduating, you were promoted from intern to an official member of the team, and Spencer promoted you from crush to girlfriend. That winter, you were doing a production of The Nutcracker in D.C. at the Washington Ballet. Every night after work, you’d make the drive to rehearsal. It was a tight schedule, but the love you had for it ensured it was never a burden. 

It was a routine case, local, so you didn’t even have to fly out. Garcia had traced the unsub’s location, sending the team to a house in some unsuspecting suburb. 

The SUV pulled into the driveway, you sitting in the passenger seat while Morgan drove. Rossi and JJ were right behind you, so you didn’t hesitate to go inside the house. As Morgan kicked down the door, you saw the unsub make a run for it. You followed, but in your hurry, you didn’t realize there was a step up into the room you were rushing into. 

You realized you were tripping as it happened, swearing internally at your mindlessness. You felt your ankle twist, and you tried to save the fall by putting your knee down. You felt it hit the ground, buckling and bending back, pain shooting through the back of your leg. Morgan was ahead of you, already taking down the unsub, so your fall went unnoticed until JJ came through the door.

As JJ came to your side, your first thought wasn’t the injury, but the embarrassment you felt. Within your first three months as an official member of the BAU, you managed to injure yourself because you weren’t paying attention to your surroundings.

Laying flat on your stomach, you heard JJ ask if you were okay. You murmured something, trying to push yourself up to your feet. You’d had little injuries in ballet, so you surely could handle whatever you just did. But as you tried to stand, the throbbing pain in your knee made itself known. You bit your tongue to stifle yourself from crying out in pain. 

Your attempt to stand failing, you rolled over to your back and sat up, looking at the damage. You cringed away as you looked at your knee, bent in the opposite direction as it should be. Biting your lip, you carefully straightened your leg back out to its regular position, sighing as the pain set it. JJ called out for a medic, and you braced yourself for the consequences of your mistake.

Spencer is trailing behind the first two cars, arriving as the unsub is being led to the police car that was waiting outside. When he hears JJ call out for the medic over the radio, he immediately panics, mind going to the worst case scenario about you. As he climbs out of the passenger seat, he sees you hobbling into the back of an ambulance, arm around JJ’s shoulder. He jogs over to you, trying to see around the EMT who’s working on your knee.

“What happened, y/n?” he asks, trying not to sound too concerned but failing. 

“It seems like she hyperextended her knee,” the medic replies for you. “She should try to stay off of it for a month. I’m getting her a brace now.”

You’re looking down at your hands, not wanting to face the concerned look in Spencer’s eyes. Of course, you’re grateful someone cares about you in the way he does, but it makes you embarrassed to know you caused the concern. 

“I have a ballet performance in two months–” you begin, before the medic cuts you off.

“Absolutely not,” the medic says. “You’ll be on crutches for half that time, and you shouldn’t put any excess pressure on it for at least 12 weeks.”

This news shatters your heart. You know the medic’s careless attitude can’t be attributed to cruelty, he’s probably busy and wanting to get onto the next job, but his words still make your eyes water. Knowing the rest of the team is already moved onto wrapping up the case, you let a silent tear fall, still refusing to look away from your lap.

When the medic leaves to fill out some form, Spencer moves in close to you, lifting your chin to make eye contact with you. The look in his eyes is full of concern and understanding, only causing more tears to come.

“Hey,” he pulls you into a hug. “I know,” he comforts as you cry. 

You’re sure your face is burning from embarrassment, both from being injured and now crying in the middle of a crime scene. You bury your face in his neck so nobody else can see you.

He knows what losing ballet means to you, especially losing your role in the show. He doesn’t have to tell you that he understands, the way he holds you says it clearly. 

“You know, just before you started your internship, I got shot in the leg and was on crutches. It’s nothing to be embarrassed about,” he comforts.

“Spencer, that wasn’t your fault,” you sigh out, “I tripped and fell. That’s all on me.”

He looks at you, knowing nothing he says can change your mind. “At least you won’t have to get on the plane for a while.” 

“What if I like being on the plane?” you ask back.

“You don’t,” he answers, a smirk on the sides of his lips as he tries not to smile at your commitment to being miserable.

You see him trying not to smile, and a laugh breaks up your crying. Spencer brushes away a tear that rolled down your face, joining in your giggles. 

“My stubborn girl,” he says lovingly, leaning down to kiss you.

The EMT clears his throat, and you take that as your signal to head back to the station.

Resting at home wasn’t easy for you. Despite your protests, Spencer got Hotch to give you two weeks off. You felt useless sitting around your shared apartment, not even able to clean with your reliance on the crutches. 

Even worse was when you had to call the company to tell them you wouldn’t be able to perform. You knew your understudy would do well, but giving up the role was heartbreaking nonetheless.

Spencer knew how devastated you were losing your passion, your escape from reality. His solution is to scour his bookshelves for whatever he thought you might like. You didn’t mind reading, but you’d lost your enthusiasm for it in college when you were swamped by textbooks and research papers. Spencer made it his mission to overcome that, knowing there had to be something you’d love.

The night before your first day alone on leave, you were laying in bed. Spencer had taken longer than usual to join you. Unable to go through the effort to get out of bed, you call out “Whatcha doing out there, Spencer?”

“You’ll see,” he replies. His secrecy makes you smile. You can tell he’s in this study from where his voice came from. Your curiosity is piqued, but you don’t want to spoil whatever surprise he has in store, so you just lay back down. Eventually, he joins you in bed, snuggling as close as he can while still being careful of your knee. The comfort of his arms pulls you into sleep.

When you wake up the next morning, he’s fully dressed, laying out clothes for you on the dresser. He helps you get dressed, even though it’s completely unnecessary. You’re not as injured as he acts like you are, which frustrates you, even though it comes from a place of love. Still, you're grateful he helps you get ready before he makes his way to the door to leave for the workday.

“You’d think I was as breakable as an egg from the way you act,” you say, crutching over to the door as he picks up his bag.

“I don’t know, y/n, you fell pretty easily,” he teases, soft brown eyes meeting yours to show that he means nothing, simply poking fun at you. You wish you could reach out and run your hands through his hair, but you’re held back by your crutches. Spencer’s probably grateful for that part of your injury, since he isn’t fixing his hair every few hours because you couldn’t resist playing with it.

Rolling your eyes at his quips, he leans down to kiss you. “I’ll miss you, Humpty Dumpty,” he says playfully. You scoff, faking insult, as he walks away and opens the door. “And, by the way,” he stops himself, “I left a surprise on the coffee table to you.” He closes the door, and you remember him in the study last night.

When you go to sit on the couch, you see a stack of books with a note on the top. Setting the crutches lazily on the floor, you pick up the note, reading:

I looked through my books and found a few I thought you might enjoy. Hopefully, they can take you to another world while you’re stuck on the couch. Love you, Spencer.

P.S. Ice packs are in the freezer.

You smile at his words reaching for the stack. Each book has a note placed inside on why you might like them. Anna Karenina because he remembered (of course he did) when you told him you performed in the ballet adaptation in high school. The Grapes of Wrath to remind you of your home state, California. Misery since you loved horror movies as much as he did, so he thought you might like a horror book. Animal Farm if you wanted something shorter but thought-provoking. Jurassic Park because, as he wrote, “everyone loves dinosaurs”. 

You smiled at the gesture, picturing him going through all of his books and choosing the ones he thought would help you forget about what your injury took away. Even with him at work, you felt his love in the stack of books, the notes he left, the coffee he left you on the table. He was your partner in crime, trusting him in the pas de deux of life.

You leaned back on the couch, picking up the first book from the stack, already anticipating discussing your readings with Spencer when he got back from work.

author's note: I absolutely LOVED writing this one. By the end it was totally self indulgent becuase I was having too much fun. It may or may not be totally based on myself. Since it’s nutcracker season I made that the show y/n was performing in. Also the books mentioned are all some of my favs. I pictured season 6/7 Spencer while writing but that has pretty much no impact on the story lol. @kakamixoxo I love you for this request and I literally had so much fun writing it!

[mrs-stans]

Sebastian Stan

Words Natty Kasambala

Beloved for Captain America, I, Tonya, and his recent Emmy-nominated role in Pam & Tommy, Stan reflects on a career shaped by diverse characters. Now, with A Different Man and The Apprentice, he’s exploring deep questions about identity, ambition, and the complexities of portraying one of America’s most influential (and controversial) men, Donald Trump

Sebastian Stan wears Rag & Bone throughout. Photography Jim Goldberg

The first time Sebastian Stan tried acting, he hated it. At 9 or 10 years old, he played a Romanian orphan in an Austrian film called 71 Fragments of a Chronology of Chance (1994). Between the waiting around, night shoots, and general pressure-cooker energy, the whole experience had been pretty anxiety-inducing. “I think the idea of a set was just really terrifying,” he recalls. The 42-year-old mainstay admits to being a Leo, but a rather reluctant one, he says, not that extroverted or hypersocial. “I know my mom always thought I was creative simply because I would impersonate the people in our family, or birds or whatever I would see around me.” Nowadays, when he does speak, it’s with the compelling ease of someone who’s spent equal time commanding impressive rooms and in their own head trying to crack the great questions of the world – sounding off passionately about the perils of social media (“there’s so much noise in today’s world”) or the last incredible film he watched (Sing Sing and it was “pure heart”).

Born in Romania and raised in Vienna until he was 12, it wasn’t until immigrating to America as a preteen that Stan found his way back to the craft at all. Attending Stagedoor Manor summer camp aged 15, in the Catskill mountains of upstate New York, his spark was reignited. “That place was really magical and made me fall in love with (acting again); I couldn’t think of anything else as exciting to me as performing was,” he says. “Some of it was about not ever being sure of what to be when I grew up. I kept thinking that you could be a lot of things if you did this.”

So far, he’s been a wayward socialite, a cannibal, a space surgeon, a ski patrol villain, a heavy metal drummer, a supernatural student and a World War II veteran turned brainwashed Soviet operative, to n ame but a few. He’s not an actor you’ll find in the same role twice. With that said, his name has reached household status through a decade-long Marvel stint, with the two films Stan finds himself at the helm of this year being his most ambitious forays yet. 33 years on from his awkward beginning, the actor’s commitment to film appears to still be very much in bloom. “I think I’m at a point in my life where I’m trying to understand things on a deeper level,” he explains. “I can’t say I know everything, you’re always growing, always having to explore. I think it’s important to stay curious, to stay in a certain degree of healthy discomfort… I want to be part of important storytelling that’s asking important questions and reflecting our time.”

In A Different Man, an A24 production directed by Aaron Schimberg, Stan takes on the role of an aspiring actor called Edward with neurofibromatosis, a genetic condition that results in the extensive growth of benign tumours. He undergoes a clinical trial that cures him of his physical symptoms, but his new life turns out to be far from what he dreamed for himself. It’s a winding surrealist investigation into the social impacts of disability, alienation, representation and self-image: its gaze is unflinching, its narrative self-referential and its humour pitch-black. Stan has already won the Silver Bear for Best Leading Performance at the Berlin Film Festival for A Different Man.

The second release, The Apprentice, follows a wildly different arc. Directed by Iranian-Danish filmmaker Ali Abbasi, it tracks a young Trump as he falls under the nefarious mentorship of infamous legislator Roy Cohn. Dubbed ‘an American Horror Story’, it’s a sobering yet deeply entertaining snapshot of the making of one of America’s most influential men. Yet even within the dynamic, prescient story, the actor’s take on Trump is subtle and human, and the tone of the film is less moralising and more matter of fact.

Though the narratives of these two projects are starkly different, you can’t help but find the common threads. Both are set in New York and document a transformation, and both centre a feverish pursuit of some ideal imagined self. A Different Man was filmed back in 2022, and The Apprentice only wrapped in February of this year, but Stan agrees it’s a curious double-header. “I’m weirdly finding parallels between them that I never thought I would. Identity, self-truth, self-abandonment. This idea that we’re always chasing in America, whether it’s image or status or an inability to accept failure and to take ownership over mistakes.”

For the Trump film, that real-life denial was almost the ending of their work of fiction. After years of false starts, Trump’s legal team attempted to block the film’s release in the US altogether and they struggled to find a distributor willing to take on the risk of pissing off a potential President. “For to edit it and get it to Cannes in some finished version itself in five months was just insane. There was no idea if the movie was going to come out,” Stan says. On an individual level, the task felt equally murky and intimidating at first. “You’re trying to tell a story about somebody that’s so famous, who everyone has an opinion about: either extreme love and adoration or hate and animosity. And everyone’s got a version of the guy, so you think, well what do I…” he shrugs, “how do I find my way into it?” Ultimately, they landed on this film as a means of peeling back the layers of one of the most polarising figures of our time. It’s less caricature and more character study as it explores his relationship with his father, his ambitions, the man he was before the slogans and affectations.

Executive producer Amy Baer has spoken about the choice to call on a non-American director to provide a new lens on the intricacies of American culture, propaganda and patriotism. With Stan’s own immigrant story, his perspective adds another dimension to that prism too. Memories of walking down Fifth Avenue in awe and wonder as a kid, staring up at all the big buildings – he tapped into a hunger and drive to portray early Trump as a young man desperately trying to be a part of The Club. “I guess with my experience coming to this country, it was communicated to me even from Eastern Europe that this is the place where you can make something of yourself, you can have a good idea… and you could just succeed,” Stan says. The Apprentice asks, “but at what cost? What happens to a person’s humanity?”

Throughout the film, you witness Trump espousing about “bringing back New York”, even remarking on Reagan’s campaign slogan ‘Let’s Make America Great Again’ towards the end, an ideology he would go on to repurpose for his own candidacy. It’s a fascinating yet depressing origin story of a nationalistic rhetoric that echoes today as a Trojan horse for corruption and greed. “It’s complicated. That’s why I think there’s value in exploring it,” Stan urges. “This American Dream idea is a really powerful driving force that also comes with consequences.”

Perhaps the most complex part was the toxic relationship with his sometimes-partner-in-crime played staggeringly by Jeremy Strong. “I think he was the best partner I’ve ever had in anything I’ve worked on,” Stan declares with a smile. “You know when you’re standing in front of a fire and you feel the heat of it and there’s crackling in the air? That’s how it felt.” Amidst quite a gruelling, isolating filming schedule, it’s the aspect Stan speaks about most fondly.

Clothing Fendi, Necklace & Bracelet Cartier, Boots Givenchy

Swinging between dominant and intimate, transactional and paternal, from comical to devastating, both stayed in character throughout the shoot and undertook a colossal amount of research to be prepared for infinite possible improvised routes. “Creatively, makes things interesting is when you’re not in control. You do all this preparation to be prepared to be surprised,” Stan says. Shot documentary-style in moments, Abbasi might give each of them notes in private to shift the tone of a scene, and they’d find themselves responding instinctively within their roles. “The only way you can achieve that is if, to some degree, you find that person in you. And I can certainly tell you,” he pauses briefly to consider his landing. “There is a version of Trump that existed in me. And I’ll make the argument that there’s a version of Trump that exists in all of us. And that part of our job, part of our interest, should be figuring out what that is. I think we have to acknowledge and expose the things in us that are not so easy to admit, in order to further protect the things we need to fight for. You can’t ignore it.”

In that moment, it’s clear that it’s an argument as true of our discourse on Trump as it is of Stan’s other role in A Different Man. His character Edward is driven to obsession and madness when he witnesses the thriving life of a person with the same disfigurement he was quick to shed, the very thing he believed to be the root of all his misfortune. Right before his transformation, Edward has been ignoring a leak in his ceiling for weeks, and the damage is getting worse. When he’s finally forced to call for a repair, the super arrives and is appalled at how bad he’s allowed it to get. He tells Edward frustratedly, “you should have fixed this sooner”. In that moment, it feels as though he’s talking about a hundred things at once. From Edward’s own issues with doubt and self-acceptance that cling to him even when he is no longer ‘different’ to our own society’s discomfort with, and the misunderstanding of disability altogether. We cannot be afraid to look.

“Edward makes a decision that he thinks is going to improve his life, but he’s not making it for himself. He’s making it because he’s watched other people and he’s grown up in a society that’s told him this is what works,” Stan explains. “Essentially, he abandons himself and he spirals down trying to further live with that painful acknowledgement. I think we have to be conscious of when we’re making decisions that go against who we are and what we truly want.”

In true indie style, squeezing in around the schedule of their makeup artist who was on another project at the same time, Stan had some hours to kill most mornings in prosthetics before filming which he’d spend navigating the city he calls home: “one of the gifts that I was given which I’m very grateful for was the experience that I had walking around New York City as Edward.” With reactions to him ranging from invisibility to hypervisibility, it shifted his entire understanding.

“I’ve been there like everybody else thinking, oh, if I had that. Or you see someone on Instagram and you’re like, oh my God, look at that life, they have the best life; you get caught up in these things.” It’s both reassuring and a little disheartening that, unlike his superhuman alter ego, a star like Stan is still not immune to the very human insecurities us civilians face of joy-stealing comparisons. “There’s this idea I’ve been thinking about a lot with my therapist actually,” he laughs. “He was saying ‘I am me and you are you.’ I was like… yeah! But you forget. We have to understand our own experience and then understand someone else’s. But we have to try to understand it not through our own emotional… vomit.”

When I ask Sebastian what he does for fun, to unbecome his characters and shed their existential weight, he cites reading (mostly non-fiction) and travel (to see other cultures). “I always feel like I’m not learning enough,” he laughs. You get the sense that this year is a juncture for Stan, always revered for being grounded and likeable, but perhaps waiting for opportunities like these to enrich and express other sides of himself as an actor and voice within culture. “Both of these films came at an interesting time where I’m thinking about if I’m at mid-life, this second half of my life. What is it that I want to be a part of and one day look back and be proud of?”

And that’s not to say fun is off the table for Stan. He’s passionate about laughter as a release in a difficult world. “I think it’s just as important, we have to protect humour,” he tells me with an urgency. “I love comedies, romantic comedies, action.” In fact, there’s a top-secret action movie passion project that he has in the works and hopes will come together in the right way. “There are also things in Marvel I want to do and explore with ol’ Bucky Barnes,” he smiles, presumably in reference to the new Marvel film Thunderbolts, slated for a 2025 release, in which he stars alongside Florence Pugh, Harrison Ford and David Harbour. “Otherwise I just want to keep learning how to be a human being. I’m telling you,” he laughs, “I feel like it’s pretty hard.”

Photography Jim Goldberg Styling Reuben Esser Production Hyperion LA Hair Jamie Taylor using Augustinus Bader Hair Erica Adams Represented by A-Frame Agency

[beesspacedotorg]

abo skz and their song double knot... just feels like that makes a lot of sense

why else would they have made that song?!? 👀

- 🌵

there's no sex in this, sorry for taking so long bro. there is bang christopher chan though. sorry for the double knot/side effects slander. also this isn't part of the dibsverse

When you first hear the song, you spend the whole of it staring right into Chan’s skull. His ears are bright red and his face is heating and he resolutely avoids your gaze as he stares at the road.

“Christopher,” you start.

“Baby.” “Don’t ‘baby’ me. You did not just make this song.”

“But, did you listen to the lyrics? It’s about finding our own way and-”

“The title of the song is Double Knot, Christopher.”

“It’s about shoe laces!”

“Yeah, I bet it is.”

They don’t perform the song often, they don’t perform songs pre-God’s Menu often, so after a while you let it go. You’re here now, sitting between the Rock Star comeback and whatever comes next, more excited for Nayeon’s new album than anything else, when someone reminds you of it.

“I’m a Double Knot defender,” one of your friends says.

“Do you have ears attached to your head?”

“Yeah, which is why I’ll tell you that the song is straight bars.”

“Yeah, straight un-bar-able.”

“You take that back right now. What next? You don’t like Side Effects?”

“Oh buddy, just wait until you hear this.”

You get back to your table with the drinks when it hits you.

“I fucking forgot about Double Knot.”

“See! Bro’s literally in love with the members and doesn’t even remember the song.” Your friend says. The other one rolls their eyes and starts talking about the amazing production quality in the two songs, you only chime in to stir the pot.

-

“Christopher!” You’re calling through the house when you get home, kicking off your shoes and throwing your bag haphazardly in a way you know is going to get you scolded later.

“In here!” He calls from his room. Your phone’s been blowing up, so he might be flirting with Stays right now. You hope they won’t mind if you steal him away for a bit.

“Chris, Chan, Channie, you’ll never believe what I was just reminded of.” You flop down next to him, bouncing the two of you a little as his mattress recoils.

“That you need to get the oil changed in your car?”

“What? No. You did that for me last month.”

“That you forgot shampoo at the grocery store?”

“Stop guessing, you’re bad at it.” He huffs and rolls his eyes, setting his phone down to face you fully.

“Well, what is it then?”

“Chan. Channie, Chan. I was reminded,” you stop to giggle, “of Double Knot.” He groans and shoves a pillow onto his face.

“I already told you that-”

“That it was about persevering and shoelaces, I know. But,” you giggle, “Channie, do you know what?” He lifts the pillow just enough to squint at you with one eye.

“What?”

“You can give me your double knot.” He hits you with the pillow.

“That doesn’t even make sense.” The pillow is still over your face but you know better than anyone that he’s bright red and smiley right now. Flustered in that way he always is when you flirt with him.

“Yeah, it does.” You shove the pillow down to look at him, you were right, his face is flaming.

“It most certainly does not.”

“It most certainly does.”

“How?”

“It’s very simple,” you lift your finger beside your face and tilt your head up, putting on a terrible British accent to sound smarter than is necessary for the situation. “One must simply fuck me hard enough that-” He hits you with the pillow again.

“Shush!”

“If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you’re a virgin.”

“I’m just shy.”

“You weren’t shy last night when you-” The pillow hits you a third time.

“Shh, shh. No more speaking from you.” His hand gently covers your mouth. You stare at him with wide eyes before biting his palm.

“Channie-”

“Ow? What the fuck?” He’s cradling his hand and inspecting it for marks. You didn’t bite him that hard.

“Channie, listen to me-”

“You just bit me-” He stops when he looks back up and gets an eyeful of your chest.

“Channie,” you coo at him, honey sweet, “don’t you wanna fuck me?”

“Jesus.” You smile at him as you can smell his cinnamon get sharper, turning sweet, like an overseasoned latte. He told you once that Koreans don’t use a lot of cinnamon in their foods, so he was worried people wouldn’t like the way he smelled. You told him you want to cover him in sugar icing and lick it off. He called you deplorable.

“You’re insufferable, you know that?” He shoves the shirt off your body and lays on top of you to attack your mouth.

“You like me anyway.”

“Love, unfortunately.” You smile at him and throw your arms around his neck.

“So, about those double knots?”

[neoflect]

sharing some of my disorganized jojo musical thoughts now that ive had a week to sit on it and ive rewatched it several times over. i intended to wait to publish something like this until a subtitled version was available, but im not seeing any indication that thats happening any time soon so for now youll have to deal with my loose interpretations from my extremely rudimentary and rusty japanese… so take what i have to say about the finer points of characterization with a grain of salt. gratuitous spoilers below obviously, both for the original source material and the changes made in the stage production

my feelings are OVERWHELMINGLY positive. of course there are things i can criticize or that i would have personally done differently but oh man… i have literally not thought about anything besides this fucking show for a week. im 100% confident in saying this is a better adaptation of the source material than the tv anime. sorry to the davidpro staff, i respect their hard work and their love for jojo and their dedication to what is by any metric a pretty difficult property to adapt off of the page, but i dont know if i can ever forgive them for leaving half of the first episode’s storyboard on the cutting room floor in order to fit a standard half-hour tv slot, especially considering that what they cut is some of the really crucial character-building stuff. happily those scenes are not only reproduced in the stage version, some of them are expanded upon!

with the quick disclaimer that i’ve only managed to get my hands on the final 4/14 performance with shotaro arisawa and yoshihisa higashiyama, from what i’ve seen the casting is perfect. i’m sure there’s a rip of the 4/13 performance somewhere (i’ve seen clips) but i haven’t been able to find one… every single performer knocks it out of the fucking park, the cast chemistry is incredible and even the minor characters are loaded with charisma. and mamoru miyano… my god… mamoru miyano i owe you an apology. i was not familiar with your game. of course hes been killing it for decades at this point but i had soured on him a little bit recently because i felt like he was overcast in everything and i just didnt connect with his dnt reinhard at all, so when the casting was initially announced back in august i was underwhelmed, and of course my standards for the dio role in particular were astronomically high… i’ll go more into detail later in the post because i have so so many things to say about dio’s characterization here but mamoru miyano’s performance is like, life-changing. i had impossible expectations and he exceeded them.

sorry if im gushing. i am a hater by nature. its unusual for me to be so thoroughly pleased with something. im not even a musical theater guy. these are strange new feelings for me.

just to balance things out i’ll talk about a couple of the things that didn’t really work for me: first of all, the music is just ok. my initial draft of this post called the music “bad” but three additional viewings later i have warmed up to some of the songs. i don’t know if this is a shortcoming by dove attia as the composer or if it’s just me, as i said i’m not a musical guy and a lot of the genre conventions of musical theatre are not really the things i look for in music that i enjoy, but like… even at their worst they are serviceable. nothing here is sonically unpleasant to me. high points are “resolve of the ripple” (zeppeli’s hamon training song, a jazzy swing number - it’s simply catchy and fun to listen to) and the closer “phantom blood” (a sweeping ballad that reprises the earlier “light and darkness”/”golden spirit” leitmotifs into an epic duet between jonathan and dio as they join hands and walk off into the darkness together… made me cry! i wont lie! on every single one of my numerous viewings this one got me misty eyed!)

wait i forgot this is supposed to be the part where i’m being critical. ok my most loathed song in the musical is “dio’s world”. sorry dio nation. it doesn’t really work for me. i think this might be a case of my standards/expectations being too impossibly high because it’s not even really the worst song in the whole thing. and of course miyano eats it up so it’s not really his fault. i just find it kind of underwhelming… i find the melody a little grating, it’s kind of just a generic rock number, it’s just missing a particular je ne sais quoi…. the essence of dio isn’t there… lyrically though i am obsessed with the premise of dio recruiting his minions by selling himself as a kind of social revolutionary who is upending and inverting the brutal hierarchy of post-industrial victorian society with zombie blood magic. you win some you lose some.

the second sticking point for me is the costumes. they’re perfectly serviceable… adequate… but i mean when it comes to jojo “serviceable” and “adequate” costume design obviously falls well below what’s expected, right? a lot of the outfits have kind of a boxy, almost flat-looking kind of unflattering fit on the actors, which if i wanted to be generous i could attribute to the challenge of bridging the gap between these frail slender musical theater twinks and the two-meter-tall 250lb roided-out beefcakes theyre meant to be embodying. (bearing this discrepancy in mind a lot of the insane martial arts stuff in the second act doesn’t really land with the oomph that it should, but i also understand logistically why this kind of casting is not practical, and all things considered i think shotaro arisawa does a really incredible job of embodying jonathan joestar even though he kind of looks like i could snap him in half over my knee like a twig. he’s very cute. so i’m not mad about it.) of course, again, logistically, i understand that in a stage musical production, where actors only have minutes to complete costume changes, some sacrifices have to be made to the creative vision in the name of practicality. nevertheless this is jojos bizarre adventure!! i want to see some fucking baubles!!!!!!

which is all to say that… after carefully considering it for some weeks… i still have extremely mixed feelings about dio’s grink ass feather bathrobe look. it’s not that i dont think its something he could wear (the concept of dio lounging around in his gothic vampire palace doing re-animator style body horror experiments on the local wildlife in this “officer i have no idea what happened to my husband”-ass nightgown is nothing short of hysterical to me) but then he wears it into combat and i felt a little disappointed… it has the same unflattering fit issue as the other outfits in the show, and it is just such an un-araki-like design… where are the gaudy color combinations? the bizarre geometric patterns? the tease of an exposed boob/thigh/midriff? erina gets a stage-original dress design that i have fewer issues with because the excessive pleats and ruffles have more of an araki-esque sensibility, but every time i look at dio’s robe it feels like there’s something missing.  i’m going to choose to be nice about it because it’s not at all a deal breaker and, again, mamoru miyano devours the look. it’s fine. it’s always fun to have a new dio outfit. if anything, the fact that the blu-rays are being marketed as “2024 cast version” gives me hope for the possibility of a future production with a new vision for the costume design. (although the fact that this was such a difficult production - with stunts and pyrotechnics and moving setpieces - that its entire first week was cancelled indicates to me that the prospects for a future production from a different company are impossibly slim. i guess there’s always hope?)

in terms of the writing and the changes that were made from the original narrative, honestly i don’t really have an issue with anything that was cut. sorry if there are any diehard stans of Poco’s Unnamed Sister out there who are steamed that their favorite minor late phantom blood character got the axe, i kind of understand how you feel because i’ve been malding over david pro cutting the Danny Lore for eleven years, but i think it was the right choice and the story flows so much better. the real juicy meat at the core of phantom blood as a narrative and the thing that brings it head and shoulders above so much of the rest of jjba is the character-driven drama - that deliciously pulpy victorian gothic family tragedy - and the relationship between jonathan and dio. the musical beefs up the character drama and slims down the action-driven second half by trimming out the extraneous battles. the only real downside i see to this is that the absence of tompetty and his prophecy makes zeppeli’s arc and death feel INSANELY abrupt, but tbf that’s not a deal breaker for me. sorry zeppeli. you were born to die.

okay. okay. i think 1500 words into the post is enough fucking around so let’s talk about the real reason why you and i both know we’re here

musical dio is SO fucking sad. he’s positively wretched, you guys. he was born in a wet cardboard box all alone and forced to eat cement when he was six. he cries even more than he does in the source material and even when he’s not crying he frequently delivers his lines as though he is moments away from bursting into tears. back when the musical first opened i was snooping on the reactions on jpn twitter and one commenter said they could see miyano’s tears and snot from the nosebleeds even without opera glasses, a remark i initially assumed was hyperbole but that i now think probably was not. araki’s dio is certainly tortured and a deeply pathetic crybaby beneath all the cruelty and posturing, but changes in the musical and miyano’s embodiment of the character bring this pathos to the fore. he is literally haunted: dario’s ghost lingers, a manifestation of all of dio’s traumas and insecurities that emerges from the recesses of his memory to taunt him with the reminder that he will always be his father’s son, all the way up until the very minute that jonathan breaks down the door to his vampire lair. i am OBSESSED with this - not only for the obvious reason that i delight in dio’s suffering personally but also because kong kuwata is a delight and he fucking kills it every time. also lends itself to a category 10 leitmotif moment at the top of the second act when dio emerges from the charred ruins of the joestar estate singing dario’s theme and calling out to jonathan - if i had to pinpoint this is probably the moment when this musical stuck for me as the Real Deal. they Get It.

the first solo number in the show is dio’s disney princess I Want song (amazingly, simply titled “dio”) where he weeps for his late mother and his wretched lot in life, and then - in a creative decision that made me clap my hands and hoot and holler at my screen in real life - there is a reprise of this number (delivered, naturally, through tears) when dio is almost arrested for murder and decides to become a vampire instead. so there’s this amazing hopeful uplifting inspirational orchestral music accompanying the onstage action of dio ruthlessly slaying jonathan’s dad and then getting pumped full of lead by a bunch of cops. it is brilliant. 10/10 no notes. it’s moments like this that i think really sell the “softening” of dio in the stage version for me, even though i am historically Not A Fan of fanworks that take a similar angle - like, yes, he is sad, but specifically he is narcissistically obsessed with the spectacle of his own suffering, he is boiling over with bitterness and rage for everyone around him who (by his own estimation) could never hope to have suffered as much as he has. this sensitivity and self-pity he wallows in are not expressions of a guilty conscience or a desire to change - they’re entirely the opposite - every cruel and monstrous deed dio commits is always justified to himself because he is simply the saddest little boy who has ever existed. he has been done wrong by the world and so there is no limit to the depravity he may reasonably respond with. i’ve seen several commenters describe this as a drastically different interpretation of the character from araki’s dio (and someone told me on twitter that mamoru miyano himself has also said this, but i cba to go digging for an actual source so take it with a grain of salt?), but i… dont think thats the case! dio’s obsession with his own weakness and his self-perception as the eternal underdog (as compared to jonathan) are certainly more exaggerated in miyano’s performance, but i don’t think this is an angle to the character that’s been manufactured out of whole cloth. the genre conventions of the stage musical force the melodrama up to eleven and dio’s incredibly repressed angst is the most rich vein to mine for that. hair-trigger sadist dio is still here, it’s the same guy, he’s still killing people mercilessly, you’re just getting to see him sing a big ballad about his feelings instead of confining those to an internal monologue.

if anything, the exaggeration of dio’s pathetic/cowardly/crybaby traits combined with his megalomaniacal aspirations and bottomless well of cruelty is just right. it’s perfect. fucking around, finding out, and then trying to weasel his way out of the consequences with crocodile tears just so you don’t see him drawing his knife to cut you clean open… yeah. thats the stuff. thats my one true blorbo. sad to say i will love him for ten thousand years.

i think that might be all i have to say… or at least all i feel like saying here… most likely ill come back and edit this post later. i certainly have some additional thoughts and some more esoteric/controversial takes but they’re not suited for a public blog. real ones will understand. im keeping my eyes peeled for somebody to translate this thing but to be frank i am kind of enjoying this little corner of fandom as it is right now: just the asians and the true hardcore phantom blood phreaks. i have not had this much fun in jojo fandom in almost a fucking decade. as soon as somebody publishes an english version my timelines going to get flooded with all the most deeply annoying “kono dio da” “speedwagon waifu” reddit guys and 15 year olds and my suffering will proceed. unfortunately this is my lot in life and i am doomed to be here forever because dio put a worm in my brain

[luvymelody]

todoroki shoto - for the first time : mac demarco

todoroki never really understand why he his face seemed to feel more hot as one of his classmates walked into the room. just one specific classmate.

y/n l/n.

she was a pretty girl no doubt, there would be people from business classes to even the hero classes coming to the 1-a classroom everyday just to have a glance of y/n walking out. todoroki found her pretty but he didn't really pay much thought to it.

aizawa had planned a hero exercise where the class were put into a pair or a trio and they were to retrieve the hostage that was kidnapped and bring them back outside. the kidnapper was going to be aizawa and the hostage was just going to be a mannequin.

partners and groups were going to be made by a wheel a day before in homeroom. everyone got their respected partners or groups and then that left todoroki and y/n with no group or partner.

"so that leaves todoroki and l/n together."

"aww no fair i wanted y/n!"

kaminari called out, yelling out as he got shoji, one of the biggest guys in the class and would probably be seen in a second, shoji's face grew red under his mask.

y/n walked up to todoroki as her seat that was on the right near the middle section while todoroki was in the back left of the class.

"hi todoroki! let's try our best okay!"

y/n exclaimed, her fists above her chest and clutched inwards and having a smile on her face. todoroki didn't understand why, but his face grew hot again.

"of course, l/n."

-

the exercise went off without a hitch, no problems whatsoever. some pairs passed the course and some failed. todoroki and y/n were last to perform.

"you sneak though the left side and i'll sneak though the middle corridor. if i get caught you help me and if you get caught i'll help you-"

y/n was explaining on what they should do as their plan but todoroki was too mesmerised the way their lips moved, noticing the new shade of lip product that they had. it wasn't like a lipstick it was more of a lip tint.

"did you get a new lip product?"

y/n paused and took a double take at todoroki's words. then smiled,

"you noticed? isn't it cute! it was only like 1000 yen, but the cashier was looking at me funny so i don't know if he was scamming me or-"

todoroki's heart thumped faster, feeling like it was beating out of his chest infront of the h/c coloured haired girl.

"anyway do you like it?"

y/n asked, her lips puckering up and she closed her eyes in a pose to show off her lips. he stared hard at her lips and he nearly held up his hand to touch them, if they felt as soft as they looked, but she opened her eyes once more, and his hand retracted quicker than ice can melt under the sun.

"yes, it looks beautiful."

y/n blushed and todoroki noticed that that was how he looked at her when she walked into a room. did she find him pretty?

-

todoroki held onto the mannequin as he looked for y/n, he didn't see her as he went down the left hallway, he didn't know if she got caught or was just in hiding.

todoroki walked fast and noticed a noise behind him, trying to shoot off his ice immediately towards the noise but nothing came out of his hands.

"good try, i have your partner by the way."

todoroki whipped his head around and saw that aizawa was holding onto y/n was his rope that was wrapped around his neck, his hair floating and the yellow goggles on his face onto. y/n nervously smiled and mouthed out a 'sorry' towards the heterochromia eyed boy.

todoroki noticed that y/n was growing a thorn out of her hand, noticing the plants and flora that grew out of both, as aizawa didn't notice and just thought that she wouldn't be able to get out of his scarf grip.

y/n mouthed a 'now' as the stem of the flower bent and grew, hitting aizawa in the face as he grunted into surprise. todoroki immediately froze out a large block of ice towards aizawa, freezing him in place and y/n got out of the rope, making a run towards todoroki.

"let's go- todoroki!"

todoroki waited until the girl was next to him, reaching out for her hand and gripping onto her hand as they exited the building. the class outside cheered as they noticed the two coming out.

"good job! you guys made it!"

mina called out, running over the y/n and hugging her tight as the warmth in her right hand left, the one parallel to her was todoroki's left side.

"thanks!"

the girls crowded around y/n, they whispered a few words and that made y/n the same red as before that todoroki saw that mimicked his face aswell.

"why were you guys holding hands?"

midoriya asked, as he walked up to todoroki next to iida.

"the pair of you did a fantastic job!"

iida said, todoroki gave a small smile with the corner of his lips turning up.

"thank you."

-

the class went back to the dorm rooms, they were settling in for the night and todoroki lied in his bed, hands intertwined on his stomach as he thought about the day.

he was so curious about his temperature rise that y/n and him were feeling, so he got up, walking towards y/n's dorm room. he knocked on the door, as it was opened, no surprisingly y/n opened it.

she was doing her skincare and had a headband to hold back her hair and two eye masks under her eyes. she blushed to see todoroki, she thought that mina was the one knocking as she said that she was coming over.

"oh! hi todoroki, this is kinda embarrassing for you to see me like this.."

"it's alright, you're always beautiful in every way."

y/n grew even more red than before.

"that's really kind of you todoroki-"

"i need to ask, why does your face turn red when i compliment you? because it happens to me when you walk into the same room as me and i notice you. i notice you everytime you do and i've always questioned what this meant because i didn't understand. when i was looking at your lips my heart was beating really loud that it felt like it was coming out of my chest and i don't know what it means and i'm nearly desperate to know what it means."

todoroki summarised, y/n took it in slowly and her face still remained red, she reached down to grab onto todoroki's hands and held them between her and todoroki, then it was todoroki's turn to turn red.

"it.. it means that you like me, todoroki. like, like like me, you like me how a couple would love each other but just a little less."

todoroki listened to her words and gripped her hands tight,

"i understand now.."

todoroki stared into her eyes and glanced at her lips once more.

"may i kiss you?"

todoroki questioned once more, y/n's lips started to tremble under her nerves, uttering a quiet yes as todoroki slowly leaned in, closing the gap between the two of them. he finally understood the feeling and emotion that he felt for y/n. love.

[invisibleicewands]

If you missed Tom Holland’s starring turn in “Romeo & Juliet” on the West End earlier this fall, now is your chance to get a taste of British theater — this time, for free and without leaving your home.

Enter London’s iconic Olivier stage with a viewing of Michael Sheen-led Welsh fantasia play “Nye” via National Theatre at Home (NT at Home), a streaming service designed to offer theatrical plays to viewers globally. “Nye” will stream for free on the National Theatre YouTube channel from 7 p.m. GMT on Thursday, Nov. 7 until Monday, Nov. 11.

Per the show’s description, in “Nye,” “Michael Sheen plays Nye Bevan in a surreal and spectacular journey through the life and legacy of the man who transformed Britain’s welfare state and created the NHS. Confronted with death, Aneurin ‘Nye’ Bevan’s deepest memories lead him on a mind-bending journey back through his life; from childhood to mining underground, Parliament and fights with Churchill.”

The stage play, which is written by Tim Price and directed by Rufus Norris, will be the second annual title offered as a free stream from the National Theatre.

“I can’t wait for audiences worldwide to watch this incredibly important show,” Sheen told Variety. “It feels particularly appropriate for this play to be available for free as it follows the founder of the National Health Service, Aneurin ‘Nye’ Bevan through his life and fight to make healthcare free at the point of access. The free stream is a brilliant opportunity for theatre lovers and skeptics alike to tune in, be inspired and learn something, too.”

After its free-streaming window, “Nye” is set to join more than 80 titles in the National Theatre at Home library. In a promo tied to “Nye,” NT at Home is offering new subscribers access to their streaming selection for half off of their first two months with the code “NYE50.” The service is currently priced at £9.99 per month (around $13) or £99.99 per year (around $130).

“I’m thrilled that audiences around the world will have the chance to watch ‘Nye’, not just for free, but from the comfort of their homes,” Norris, “Nye” director and co-chief executive of the National Theatre, said. “NT at Home was born out of the restrictions Covid created, when the National Theatre hosted weekly free broadcasts of productions, garnering 15 million viewers. The platform now has subscribers in 184 out of 195 countries. We’re thrilled to be able to continue to make theatre accessible worldwide with the annual ‘Take Your Seats’ free stream initiative, breathing new life into and building new audiences for productions we’re incredibly proud of.”

Callum Stewart, head of National Theatre at Home, explains NT at Home was born out of a desire to make theater available to locked-down viewers during the pandemic. “It comes down to accessibility and it comes down to affordability,” Stewart says. “Theater is for everyone.”

Stewart credits Sheen’s performance in the titular role and Norris’ directorial capabilities with making “Nye” resonate with audiences to the level that NT at Home decided to give it a free window at launch.

“It is almost like you’re in the hospital with [Nye] and you’re looking into his soul,” Stewart says. “The real human emotion when people don’t have long left…It’s touched a lot of personal points.”

For the 60th anniversary of the National Theatre in 2023, the streamer released its first “Take Your Seats” initiative, which was viewed by over 180,000 people, per the organization. “Nye” will mark the latest edition of “Take Your Seats.”

The show will be available with both audio description and British Sign Language on NT at Home. Stewart says that 85% of current titles offered on NT at Home come with audio descriptions and that the streamer is on track to bolster British Sign Language offerings in addition to starting trial runs for Spanish subtitling.

According to Stewart, telling these stories to global audiences is particularly important and filming this production on the National Theatre’s Olivier stage adds extra magic.

“When people go to the theater, it’s a moment in time. You’ve got to be in the play, almost with the actors. You’ve got to be in that story, in that moment,” Stewart says. “It’s so powerful you don’t have anything else like it. It beats absolutely everything.”

[devsgames]

Open-World AI Design: On The Conflict Between Systemic and Scripted Behaviours

I've been playing Skyrim recently, and having not played it for over a decade one thing that has really been standing out to me is how painfully stilted the scripted NPC interactions are in the game. Seeing just how rough these sequences are reminded me of my own experiences designing non-systemic moments in primarily systemic-open world games, and I wanted to reflect on that.

Disclaimer: I recognize that "Why does the AI in this open world game suck?!" is a common complaint The Gamers have and that it's not a new observation by any stretch, and please don't misconstrue me as bashing A Thing You Like. You can still like it. It's fine. I just think it's interesting how the needs and philosophy of open-world AI often encroach upon and affect the execution of highly scripted sequences in open-world games like these.

THE PROBLEM: SCRIPTED INTERACTIONS

Here's a clip of a sequence from my playthrough of Skyrim that illustrates part of the problem. For context, this sequence occurs at the end of a quest chain wherein you help an old and sick alchemist and his apprentice create an ancient artifact he's been trying to make for his entire life:

I think there's a lot of things that are incredibly lifeless (haha!) in the execution here:

The apprentice is standing at the foot of the bed and not next to it, while the mentor is sleeping on his side and not even looking at him.

The transition from Sleeping -> Ragdoll death when the mentor dies looks REALLY goofy.

The phial the apprentice explicitly mentioned as 'filling up' isn't visible anywhere in the scene at all.

The sudden transition from death -> NPC approach -> conversation leaves no room to organically breathe.

The narrative feels incredibly serious and sombre, but the execution is so hard to take seriously.

The ambient music is jaunty and heroic, when tonally the interaction is very sad.

The player doesn't really have much to do here, aside from stare in the corner while waiting for two AI to talk.

The narrative feels incredibly serious and sombre, but the execution is so whiplash-y and abrupt it's hard to take the outcome seriously.

Now first I want to preface that there's a few obvious causes for some of the awkward 'genericness' of this scene, much of which is rooted in more standard production/resources issues with any AAA open-world game. For example, creating an animation of someone holding the phial in question while it fills up would be too expensive to justify creating for just one side quest, only for it to never be used again. While it certainly doesn't help the sequence, I think there's always varying degrees of 'eh whatever it's a video game' plausible deniability that happen here among players too, and it's always understandable that elements like these might fall absent from this scene as a result. It's also a dang video game from 2011, so that certainly doesn't help.

Aside from that, I think a big issue in realizing scripted sequences in open world games like this stems primarily from open-world AI and interactions are often fundamentally at odds with these types of scripted scenes, which in turn reflect poorly on the implementation of the latter.

WHY SYSTEMIC AI?

To understand why scripted sequences can easily feel stunted it's helpful to look at what an AI in an open world context is most frequently expected to do, because it's the baseline of how an AI performs in an open-world game.

In a traditional game a "bandit" AI might only really need to do basic behaviours that have concrete and easily-defined outcomes, such as search for a player and attack them until they die.

In an open-world game like Skyrim an AI primarily has to act believably in an open world where almost anything is liable to happen. A "bandit" in an open-world context would need to keep a running track who is hostile and who is friendly (based on a variety of different changing parameters), pick and choose different locations to travel from organically, travel to potentially unknown locations across a persistent world, use modular systemic behaviours in a way that still appear organic and unique, remember which points it needs to be travelling to and from, what areas it can and cannot go, flee from combat, understand what objects in the world it can and can't interact with, and a lot lot more on top of that. What's more is every AI in the game have to run these same calculations themselves at all time about everything around them - there's a ton of moving parts and AI with different objectives and executions operating at the same time. This is also why systemic AI in open-world games tend to suck - because an open world is inevitably going to write realism cheques that no AI can feasibly cash because there's so much going on in an open-world game.

However there's also good reason why all this complexity is necessary! Killing a bandit who is stationed idly at a guard post in his camp is passable encounter, but killing a bandit who accidentally draws aggression from a patrolling sabre cat from the forest nearby his guard post creates a story out of what was otherwise just an okay encounter. These systemic behaviours are often what people like and expect to see in open-world games to give the world flavour.

On Far Cry there was a name for this sort of concept: the "anecdote factory" - the idea that any sort of emergent experience should make up a fun 'anecdote' for people to talk about and reflect on afterwards, and this approach to AI design is usually built to supports those systemic and organic narratives. This systemic-first AI design is a large draw of what makes open-world games what they are - without this the whole world easily can feel rigid, predictable, and lifeless.

Now this is all well and good, I hear you say, but weren't you just complaining about scripted sequences? Why are you talking about systemic AI? How are these two even related to each other?

Well herein lies the issue: what happens when your immensely systems-based AI needs to do one hyper-specific thing exactly as you planned?

THE FRICTION: SYSTEMIC VS. SCRIPTED

Scripted AI design is often a philosophical counter to systems-driven AI - while a systemic open-world AI needs to calculate many different elements and act out generic AI behaviours on the fly, scripted AI often needs to successfully do a sequence of bespoke behaviours the same way every single time, usually in relation to a larger narrative or sequence.

This causes friction - potentially a lot of friction, depending on the implementation.

The initial assumption most people would have is that if a designer really needs an AI to do one thing perfectly, then they should just force the AI to do it! After all, if it's that important, then why not make absolutely sure it gets done? However, the problem with this approach is that forcing an open-world AI to do just one thing actually makes the AI less realistic in context of an open world game.

In the above scene lets say the player hates the apprentice and decides to blast the apprentice with a fireball while he was speaking to his master. They'd then logically expect the apprentice to react to being hurt by the player and become hostile (as anyone would be, if hit with a fireball). This would be expected to break the sequence as combat would ensue as the apprentice tries to get revenge. This is believable, as it would make the apprentice feel more like an actual human being with the desire to not die. If by contrast the apprentice was forcibly scripted to perform his lines and execute the behaviour like nothing happened, it would feel even worse! This is why most open-world games will actually almost never force AI to perform scripted behaviours if they can help it, because it usually reflects poorly on the intelligence of your AI should anything else happen during the execution of the event.

Unfortunately, the tradeoff to ensuring scripted AI still abide by systemic rules is it means that scripted AI are now expected to perform actions are now operating at the whim of systems, which may choose to override it at any time. For example, if the systemic AI overrides the scripted component of the AI, the apprentice may get distracted by something (a passing enemy, a wandering animal, a stray arrow from nearby combat, etc.) and not complete the sequence as it was intended. This might not seem like a major issue, but keep in mind that a scripted AI failing to perform a task usually results in a sequence break - which in terms of scripted sequences can break a player's entire playthrough. It also reflects poorly on narrative, when scenes of narrative importance might be undermined by systemic nonsense that may happen.

Whenever mission designers witnessed these sort of behaviours on Far Cry the inside joke was that we were just abiding by the "anecdote factory" philosophy. After all, the AI was acting systemically by-design - it just so happened that the anecdote was that a systemic behaviour distracted them. :)

In fact on the production of Far Cry 6 I spent actual months troubleshooting and wrangling AI that just would not adhere to scripted sequences due to the overriding of systemic AI behaviours. For every minute you spend in a scripted sequence you can bet there was hours and hours and hours of unseen troubleshooting behind it!

Now what does any of this have to do with how awkward this conversation looks?

The philosophy of your game design extends downward, and systems-driven is no exception. Instead of using special, bespoke behaviours in quests it becomes cheaper and safer to bank on existing systemic that are widely tested instead of trying to push the limits of what an AI can do. Remember that a sequence failing to execute can block a player's progression entirely, or alternatively result in a ton of work or additional bugs for a level designer putting them together. Safe execution is usually the #1 priority, and that's a tough thing when lots of your scripted implementation is relying on the tech equivalent of shoestring and bubblegum holding it all together.

Even this small scene reflects the drawbacks of a systems-driven philosophy. A good example here is when the mentor dies - he doesn't smoothly transition into a 'death' state, or lie still with his eyes closed, or something more appropriate. Instead, he pops into a ragdoll and plays his generic death sound effect, because his AI is adopting the same generic systemic 'death' actions any AI in the game would. It's how an AI was designed to die from the ground up across the board, so this AI has to die like that for the rest of the game's systems to properly work around it. It could look cleaner, it could look nicer, but for a scripted sequence in a system-driven game it just needs to work.

You'll also notice the apprentice doesn't have any particular uniqueness to his behaviours around the master. He doesn't kneel next to the bed, or do much else for that matter - he just plays his idle on a point until the scripted sequence tells him not to. In fact outside of combat in Skyrim you'll notice that most NPCs use these generic animations because they're built into the AI and are the most likely animation to work in the widest number of cases. In fact, I could probably list the most commonly used animations in Skyrim based on how many times I saw them while playing. A Quest Designer could try to spice a scene up or add variety, but most of the time that would create unnecessary risk around these sequences, so in most instances safe and universal generics are the way to go - which unfortunately limits visual interest because they don't adapt well to unique contexts (like the death of a loved one).

Even something seemingly small like changing music - if we ignore the cost of creating new songs - can bring unnecessary risk. Music is also handled systemically by the game's systems, transitioning based on environment and combat with different enemy factions, so overriding that to play unique songs brings even further risk on a scripted setup - what if combat breaks out during the sequence? Or if the overridden music isn't correctly reverted back by the system? The safer option is to work closer to the bare minimum (i.e. leave the music as-is) than it is to actually push the envelop a bit and bring on further risk.

Conclusion

Thanks for reading! Hopefully this sheds a bit of light on how scripted interactions are uniquely affected by systemic design philosophy and some of the drawbacks surrounding it. I feel fairly confident that any open-world game has had to deal with the friction between these two approaches and needed to meet an awkward middle ground as a result. After all, it's sorta an inevitability when you're making massive games intended to mimic a believable world.

[sunshine-overload]

[BSTS] Kei Fear Not Reward 5* Card Story

Chapter 1

-rehearsal room-

yakou: Kei, do you have a moment? I want to know why the standard members for our new show are the same as ‘During the demise’.

kei:  Are you unsatisfied with not having a role?

yakou: …Yes. Last time we did a revival performance of ‘During the demise’ I was double casted. You explained that the standard members of 'existing works’ would not be changed however this is a completely new show. There is no existing lineup. I’d like you to consider me for the role of Ortrud.

kei: Yoshino is playing Ortrud. I determined that that would be best for this production.

yakou: ……

gui: Are you ok, Yakou?

yakou: Sorry, Gui. I’m fine, it just hasn't sunk in yet.

-yoshino appears-

yoshino: Sorry I’m late.

yakou: (glaring at yoshino)

yoshino: Hm? What is it?

yakou: Nothing.

gui: Yakou told Kei that he wants to play Ortrud.

yakou: Gui!

yoshino: Were you talking about the standard members? I’m not surprised you’d want the role, however I have no intentions to give it up. Sorry.

yakou: I never said you had to give it up. I just can't accept this.

yoshino: Accept? What, you can't accept that I was given a role instead of you? That's not a very nice way to put it.

yakou: That's not what I meant…

gui: Don't fight.

yoshino: We’re not.

gui: But you're both upset. That's how it looks to me.

yoshino: I got a little heated, sorry, Yakou.

yakou: Me too… Sorry.

kei: Have things been settled? Then, get into your positions, let's take it from the top.

–end

-

Chapter 2

starless hallway-

ginsei: Hm? Someone's here already.

-peeking into rehearsal room- 

sotetsu: It's Kei.

ginsei: …He sure is concentrating deeply.

sotetsu: What’re you doing? Let's go in already.

ginsei: I wouldn't want to interrupt him. We should wait until he stops for a break..

sotetsu: It's fine. He’s definitely heard us by now anyways.

-ginsei and sotetsu walk into the room-

kei: ……….

sotetsu: Now that you mention it, isn't it kinda rare to see Kei practicing this seriously?

ginsei: Our schedule is also more focused on individual lessons rather than team ones. I wonder if this show has been difficult for Kei as well.

sotetsu: It's not like the show's overall difficulty level is that high though. 

ginsei: Not on a technical level, no. But facing the roles is what’s hard. I know it’s a script that was written with the actors in mind, but even then it suits our situation a little too well. Having to show your true feelings like this is tough.

sotetsu: Oh?

ginsei: For me, the scene where the king tries to take back his kingdom only to be imprisoned is really tough. It reminds me of when I’d hit a wall with my directing…

Say, who do you think it was that wrote this script? There's no way someone could write this unless they knew our current selves really well.

sotetsu: Wasn't it Aki-san and Haru-san? Remember they sent us a new work for our 4th anniversary too?

ginsei: No, the style is similar to Akito-san’s but something’s off. Not to mention, Kei has said before that Team K won't use productions that are made by the Miki-san’s.

sotetsu: I can always trust your script sensor, Ginsei. Your accuracy every time is a huge help.

ginsei: Excuse me? Are you making fun of me?

sotetsu: I’m complimenting you. When it comes to this sort of thing your opinion is always reliable.

–end

-

Chapter 3

-break room-

gui: Saki, Yoshino. Have you seen Yakou?

yoshino: Nope, I haven't seen him yet.

saki: I haven't seen him either. Is something the matter?

gui: I told Yakou I’d practice with him. He’s been practicing all of our roles.

yoshino: Is that so? Yakou’s really amazing to be able to do that sort of thing.

gui: Um, Saki… Yakou said that he wants to stand on the stage. So should I swap positions with Yakou?

saki: Huh? Are you saying you’ll step down from the stage in this show for Yakou-san?

yoshino: What makes you say that, Gui?

gui: Because Yakou is our number 3 and I’m number 5. So.

yoshino: If that's what Yakou requested then… I still don't like the idea though.

gui: He didn't tell me to do it. I was just thinking that Yakou’s position is higher than mine.

saki: Is giving up your position what you want to do, Gui-san?

gui: I… I want to stand on the stage.

yoshino: Then don't back down. That is your position.

gui: I see… This ‘doing what I want’ thing is complicated.

saki: Practice makes perfect. I hope what it is that you want to do will take shape, Gui-san.

yoshino: Before that we have to get to rehearsals though.

-rehearsal room-

yoshino: Oh, Yakou. You're already here.

yakou: Yeah, I figured I’d start early. Ah, sorry, was Gui waiting for me?

saki: We met with him in the break room. He told us that you’ve memorised everyone's parts.

yoshino: That was Kei’s part you were practicing now, wasn't it? It's great, you've really captured it.

yakou: Not yet, I still feel like I’m just going through the motions.

gui: Yakou, your performance smells like Kei.

yakou: Huh? What's that supposed to mean? I don't think it's a compliment either way. Well whatever, join me for this scene, Gui. My balance isn't very good on my own.

gui: Ok.

-gui and yakou walk off-

yoshino: ……..

saki: What's wrong, Yoshino-san?

yoshino: Oh, no it's nothing. It just feels as though we've returned to right after our renewal. Back when Team K had just been formed and we all weren't used to working together yet.

Maybe it's because of all the individual rehearsals… I wonder what Kei’s thinking. I’m taking to the stage as a performer and not a singer too.

saki: I’m sure there's a reason for it.

yoshino: Yeah, I think so too. And I’m the only one who can find the answer. Plus, not everything is the same as it was back then. Because compared to then, I now have so many precious things that you've taught me.

–end

-

Chapter 4

-starless lobby-

saki: (Ah, it’s Kei-san. But his expression, he looks kind of… down?)

kei: Thank you for coming, Saki. We’ve made it to the closing show, I hope that you’ll enjoy it. Allow me to escort you to your seat. Come this way.

-starless restaurant area-

saki: (He was wearing a gloomy expression before but he seems fine now…)

saki: Um, Kei-san, are you feeling ok?

kei: Does it look like I’m unwell? I wouldn’t want to cause you any worry, but the cause is likely the fact I did not get to see you as often throughout the duration of this show.

saki: Huh?

kei: In order to make this show what it is I needed to reevaluate myself and reaffirm who I am. The strength and determination that is needed to protect what I must— I needed to face myself in order to find it. 

-kei kneels and kisses the back of saki’s hand-

kei: Though, to me, you are the one and only thing that I must protect.

saki: W-wait a moment Kei-san, what are you doing…!

kei: Did I get too close to you? My apologies.

-kei steps back-

kei: Seeing you here tonight caused my heart to grow impatient. Despite not being on the stage yet it’s as if I allowed my role’s feelings to seep into me.

The Kei that stands before you right now is not a team leader, but instead a single performer. Each and every member of Team K will stand before you as individual performers. So, I will try my hardest in order to be the one that you deem to be the most impressive.

Though it may be far from perfection, I will still try to get as close to it as possible. I’ll put on a performance so great that it will dispel any worries you had earlier. As well as allow this nameless and foolish knight to be pardoned by his precious Princess. Until the day that you decide to part with me, everything that I am belongs to you.

—Please enjoy the show.

-stage-

-bloomed cg

kei: “Princess— You must not ask me a thing. You mustn’t even think that you wish to know. Where I came from, my lineage, even my name, you must not know.”

“However, when you ask me with such conviction, then I have no choice but to respond to your resolve in kind. Please, keep that name locked away within you, as my true name already exists within your beautiful heart.”

—end

[mysteria157]

Chapter 14

Pairing: Nanami Kento x Black Fem Reader

Word Count: ~13k

CW: explicit sexual content (oral sex), profanity, childbirth.

Summary: A birthday, a confession, and a new baby.

Notes: No more angst for awhile! Thank you to all who have been supportive. It means a lot. Reblogs, likes, or comments are always appreciated but not necessary <3 I hope you enjoy reading!

Divider: @cafekitsune

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It Had To Be You Masterlist

Kento, despite all attempts to prove you otherwise, was a snorer. It was never loud and boisterous as you probably made it seem, but he was never silent when you would wake up to him next to you. It was a common occurrence, a section of your bingo card that you had scratched off with glee, storing it in your memories forever.

During the week, you normally woke to the sound of the shower or him in the kitchen, a product of waking before the sun rose to go for a morning jog before he got ready for work. But you caught him in the act on the weekends and on days where he just didn’t feel like it going a jog, or when you would find him leaning his head back on the couch, legs spread and mouth shut tight, you could hear the almost silent rise and fall of his chest, his breath rubbing against his throat, throwing off almost quiet snores into the air.

You had joked that he snored as if he hadn’t slept in weeks, just to see the flicker of annoyance color his features before they were smoothing away and he was throwing you a dramatic eye roll.

But since that day he had finally given in, the day he had pressed his forehead into your skin and collapsed silently for most of that morning, his morning jog schedule became lax and he chose to sleep in as much as he could. Catching up for lost time you supposed and if that is what he needed to heal, you would never question it. Only two weeks of neglect and lack of sleep and it had torn him down until there was nothing left. So he chose to hit snooze on his four am alarm almost every morning, grumbling into his pillow before he would wrap his strong arms around you and pull you further into his chest, burying his face into the soft skin of your neck and sleeping until it was time to get ready for work. He needed the time, needed the peace. Craved it but denied himself for so long and now he was finally giving in.

Including sleeping in on his birthday. With your due date right around the corner, he had finally taken advantage of his gratuitous amounts of PTO and once the baby was born, he would go on paternity leave. Kento never worked too hard because he didn’t need to; he was good at his job, competent and intelligent to the extent that gave him his position that he has today. And while he did take time off occasionally to do what he wanted; he never felt the need to do so for his birthday until this year.

He pulled in a deep breath before exhaling a eucalyptus tinged grumble into the skin on the back of your neck, weaving his much longer and thicker legs in between yours and yanking you closer. You still hadn’t gotten over just how clingy he can be; always wrapping his arms around you in the kitchen. Pulling you flush against him on the couch as you both caught up on The Kardashians. After sex when he performed his vigorous after care routine of pulling you in the shower with him, moisturizing your skin, braiding back your hair before throwing on your bonnet, and massaging the muscles of your body until you were passing out against him in bed. For as quiet and introverted as he was, his hands were always reaching for you.

You felt one of his large hands pull you closer to him, his long fingers splaying along the skin of your lower stomach, cradling the baby that was practically knocking at the door to come into the world.

The first time Kento felt her kick, he had pulled you to bed, yanked your shirt up and spent almost an entire night splayed on his stomach, both of his large hands cradling your belly and his eyes unblinking as he waited for it to happen again.

You didn’t mind really, at the end of the day, you were content to play Animal Crossing on your Switch to entertain yourself while he stroked the skin of your stomach. He had only gotten another kick or two before he began to speak to her, just small things about his day; what he ate for breakfast, musings on what her favorite foods would be, what books he had ready to read to her. It was the low timbre of his voice against your stomach that had your daughter outright extending her legs, pressing against the sides of your stomach and stretching the skin. While it was mildly uncomfortable for you, Kento had widened his eyes in equal fascination and amused horror, concerned for your wellbeing but also hesitating with the urge to see it again.

As he slowly came out of the fog of his grief over the last three months, he found himself immersing more and more with preparing for the baby. He ignored all of your protests of trying to help with the technology that would be needed. He picked and installed the most expensive baby monitors, put together the baby rocker and bouncer, baby proofed the entire house and scoured every crevice of your abode for any signs of contamination or security breaches. It was his own form of nesting you wanted to guess.

He was protective of her just as he was of you, especially considering you had been on bedrest for the past month. You should have known that it was a possibility. You were tiny; only an inch below five feet and with your history of ligament pain, Dr. Williams issued the bed rest order to you for the last month of pregnancy as a precaution and a threat for you to stay off your feet. Kento was the perfect type of person to make sure you complied. He made you take breaks from throwing, ordered you to lay down a few times a day and outright refused for you to be on your feet for more than thirty minutes.

You had tried to rebel at first, the stubborn part of your brain planting hard in your years of independence as you refused to take a break from your throwing the first day of the order. Kento didn’t argue with you, didn’t glare and didn’t pester and it was only forty minutes later when you were wincing in pain and hobbling to the couch, ignoring his knowing looks that you realized he wanted you to learn the hard way.

You hated it but you knew it was for the best.

It was because of the bed rest that you had planned his special day ahead of time.

You rolled over to face his sleeping form, practically plopping over from the heavy weight against your ribs. His eyes were hazy with sleep when you looked up at him, eyelids heavy as he blinked blearily in your direction, his blonde hair disheveled and plastered on his forehead and temple.

“Sorry, I’m sure me moving my large and swollen form woke you up.”

He hummed in reply, the sound deep and gravelly with sleep and warming the place between your legs instantly. You groaned internally, no matter how horny you had gotten recently, you just couldn’t have sex. The bed rest was one thing but with your swollen body the thoughts could be as lewd as they wanted, you hadn’t been in the mood. You both had tried before and the second you hissed in pain from sudden discomfort, he had been too terrified to try again.

Kento stroked a thumb along the skin of your cheek, lifting a sleepy brow before he rolled his eyes and exhaled further into his pillow.

“Stop lying, it’s too early.”

“It’s nine am.”

He threw you a silent glare before shutting his eyes and burying further into his pillow, his blonde hair sliding against the soft skin of his forehead.

“You need to get up anyway.” He grumbled into his pillow in reply, unmoving and refusing to listen, his naked chest rising as he pulled in a breath. “I have things planned for you today…special things.”

Even though his eyes were still closed, and he offered no response, you could tell he was listening, refusing to entertain you in a growing common display of playfulness, but still listening.

You bit your lip, gathering a small bit of courage, your small hand spreading on the hot skin of his chest. The freshly manicured nail of your pointer finger pressed into his skin, pillowing around the relaxed muscle as you dragged it slowly down his chest. You watched with delight as the muscles of his abdominals twitched from the stimulation, your finger sliding along the wispy blonde hair of his happy trail before playing with the hem of his pants. You slid your eyes up to his face, containing a giggle from his already heated and even gaze.

“Are you gonna go back to sleep?” You purred up at him, your fingernail dancing along the thin skin above his hem, slow and teasing, reveling in the sight of his almost unblinking eyes and steady rise and fall of his broad and muscular chest.

Kento had long ago stopped being ashamed of his reaction time to you; only a few seconds of your hands on his skin and he was hard in his pants and ready to get it in whenever you would let him. He could last only a short time before he was perverted and grabbing at you, licking at your skin and reveling in the way you sounded for him.

You hummed at his lack of reply, using your finger to lift the hem of his pants and slide your hand inside, wasting no time fisting his already throbbing cock. You watched the slight twitch of his eyelids as they slowly began to droop, the rising and falling of his chest picking up in speed as you pumped him languidly, the pads of your fingertips sliding along the large vein on the side of him.

Suddenly you were sitting up and climbing off the bed with a pillow, his heart dropping just a little in disappointment from the feel of you leaving him and then picking up again as he watched you gently and carefully sag onto your knees on the floor, the pillow cushioning your knees. You lifted a brow in his direction, beckoning him toward you silently as you threw off your bonnet and let your curls cascade down your back. He followed your call without complaint, scooting to the edge of the bed and allowing you to settle in between his spread legs. You slid your hands up his clothed legs, digging your fingernails into his skin as you trailed them up his shins, around his knees and up the muscular meat of his thighs.

“How about you slide these off for me, hmm?”

He was obeying you almost instantly, the throbbing of his cock pumping all the blood from his brain and taking over all decision making as he watched you throw his pants a few feet away from you and eye the length of him between his legs. It always astounding to you every time you saw his cock, thick and the perfect length, a pronounced vein along the side, connecting to a man who knew how use it to make you a begging, sobbing, moaning mess.

But you had never gotten this far. He never let you even get your mouth close enough.

“Why is it that you never want me to suck you off?” You found the question leaving your mouth as you thought it inside of your head. You slid a finger along the vein of him, reveling in the sight of his abs bunching in response, his fingers digging into the sheets behind him. “You don’t think I’ll do a good job? That’s a little insulting.”

You wrapped your hand around him, your fingertips barely able to touch each other as you stroked him slowly, squeezing just a little and making him shake out a breath, his stomach curling in heat.

“While I love head, I like to give more than—” his voice caught in his throat as you pumped him with a firmer grip, twisting your wrist along his head and bringing a bead of precum down with your hand, lubricating the glide. “more than I receive.”

That wasn’t the complete reason. Kento did love to give, loved the taste of your pussy any day of the week, loved to feel your gummy walls around him and milking him for all he was worth as you dug your fingernails into his back and moaned without abandon into the air. Watching your face pull and twist in pleasure, your back arching and hands digging into the sheets as you took everything he willingly gave you…that brought him the most pleasure, got him so turned on that he had to think of the most boring things occasionally just to keep himself from blowing his load too early.

But as much as he loved to give, he knew his nature. He knew the minute you got your mouth on him, he would be hooked, captivated with the sight of your lips wrapped around his cock and struggling to take him with teary eyes as he came down your throat. He couldn’t handle the thought of it so he tried to keep you away as much as he could. It made no sense, he felt like an addict when it came to you. Even with a normal tryst in the bed, he could get nasty and salacious fast.

He loved to fuck you nice and sweet and slow, loved pulling you apart by the seams as he poured every ounce of himself into the slow thrust of his hips and the heated touch of his lips on your skin, even if the words he whispered in your ears had you blushing red all the way down your neck, shaking your head in embarrassment even though you loved every minute of it.

But he also loved to fuck you rough. Loved to hear you moan without restraint from the force of his thrusts, loved to watch your beautiful brown eyes glaze over as you became delirious from pleasure. It always mystified him with how much you just didn’t care when it came to sex. You could throw that clouded and fierce gaze his way, demanding he fuck you harder, dig into your hips tighter, fuck into your pussy deeper. Or you could gaze up at him filled with unashamed innocence, giving up all control and letting him yank your hair back and dig his teeth into your skin, make you blush and your eyes fill with tears of pleasure as he praised you for being such a good girl, taking this cock just like I knew you would.

Some days he hated just how depraved he could be, but you loved it. And it only made him throb harder in your hand at the thought of knowing this was you while you were pregnant. As soon as you were free of pain and discomfort, as soon as you were a little more relaxed and you had both settled into a routine and your daughter was at a good enough period of development to be babysat, he would take you on a proper date, wine and dine you like he’s always wanted, and then bend you over every surface of the house and show you just how much he thought about you.

And right now, you were right where he wanted you, so close to unlocking a side of him he had tried so hard to keep away.

“I already know you’re a nasty man, Kento. No need to be so coy.”

You stroked him a little faster, collecting each bead of precum to make your grip on him slicker and more wet, the obscene sounds and his heavy breathing carrying through your large bedroom. You caught the slight pinch between his brows and the subtle twitch of his eye, his fingers tightening into the sheets as he leaned back on his hands.

He held his breath as you stuck out your tongue, long and wet and flattening against him as you slid the wet muscle up his cock from base to tip, gliding along his thick vein and moaning softly against him, his head falling back as he hissed harshly into the cool air of your room. You pressed your tongue along the underside of his mushroom tip before you were licking along the top and dipping your tongue into the slit of his cock. He grunted harshly in surprise, his head snapping back down to watch you stroke his shaft and kiss along the underside of him. His eyes were half open, blonde hair from his head shadowing them as he looked down at you, thighs and biceps jerking with barely contained restraint, stomach bunching with every teasing touch as he begged you silently for more.

You answered his plea, giggling softly as you hovered over his cock, extending your tongue and letting saliva slide down the wet muscle and drip onto him. It was absolutely vulgar, the nastiest thing he had ever seen you do, his eyes widening just a little in disbelief. The thought that this was you had him throbbing to the point of pain and groaning long and deep as you finally wrapped your lips around him and sliding down in one smooth motion.

He thought you would need a minute to adjust to the girth of him, even when fucking you had to adjust slowly. But not now. There was no buildup or need to inch your way down, you were opening up your throat and burying your nose at the base of him like a pro, transfixing him and making him think desperately about marketing templates and content schedules just to keep from shooting too early down your throat.

Your mouth was everything he dreamt it would be, hot and wet, your tongue sliding along the underside of him as you worked him in and out of your mouth, your fingers on his thighs jumping from the feel of him twitching beneath you. He fought the nasty thoughts, pushed away the urge to run his hands in your hair and hold you in place while he fucked your throat. But you were making it so hard, moaning against him as you worked him for all he was worth, digging your fingers in his thighs, never faltering as he felt the tip of his dick hit the muscle of your throat over and over.

He moaned softly from the back of his throat as you pulled up and off of him, his cock leaving your mouth with a pop and the saliva from your sloppy work dripping along his shaft. He couldn’t help carding a hand through the soft tresses of your loose curls.

“Keep your hand there.”

You left no room for argument and he tightened his hold in response, squeezing a little more as you smacked his cock against your tongue and went back to work, a hand reaching to grip at the lower part of his cock and twist with each upward stroke, your mouth moving in the opposite direction as you sucked him off.

The pleasure was pooling at the base of his spine, boiling slowly from the wet and sloppy glide of your mouth on him.

“Fuck, yes.”

You let his words wash over you, ignoring the pulsing heat between your legs as you worked him faster in your mouth and deeper down your throat, moaning against him and relishing in the sound of his panting above you, his abs bunching with each stroke. His eyes were locked on you, soaking in the sight of your lips stretched wide around him, the shine of spit along his shaft and down your fingers, the sheen of sweat on your forehead and the baby hairs along your hairline sticking to your skin.

You pulled your hand from him and slowly slid back down to the hilt, peering up at him through thick lashes as you swallowed around him and pulled a sharp groan from his throat as he looked down at you, marveling in the feel and sight of you on him, eyes misty from the stretch, throat closing with every downward stroke, taking him as if you did it every day.

You pulled off of him, using one hand to fist the top of him while you kissed down the rest of his shaft, turning your head and wrapping your tongue around the side of him. He moaned softly at the sight of you, unashamed of how he sounded as his eyes watched your pink tongue wrap and slide down his thick cock.

He was losing his mind, his stomach squeezing, pleasure scorching his veins, mind clouding to the point of delirium as he felt the embers of his orgasm begin to roar to life. He should have done this sooner, should have never smacked your hands away every time you tried to grab at him. He was such a fucking idiot.

You knew your panties were soaked and even from the view of him above you, panting with ruddy cheeks, blonde hair fluttering in front of his eyes from his breath, eyes heady and low, steely and locked on yours, you could probably cum just from his cock down your throat.

You pulled away from him, using the small lapse in time to catch your breath, your hand stroking him at a steady pace as you looked up at him, your chin a little wet from your saliva, tendrils of your curls sticking to the sides of your face, a seductive glint in your eyes that had him pulsing against the quickening stroke of your hand.

“Am I doing well?”

You truly wanted to know. Even through the haze in your mind, you craved to hear the praise that naturally fell from his lips.

He groaned in the back of his throat before smiling down at you, reeling against the feel of you pumping him as he leaned down to kiss you deeply, sliding his tongue along your bottom lip before making a home in your mouth and pulling away with a hot smack, the hand in your hair sliding down to stroke the side of your cheek.

“Doing so well, angel. You’re a natural.”

You pressed your free hand against his abdomen, pushing him so that he was leaning back on his hands again and looking down at you with his overwhelming gaze. You slid your tongue back down his shaft, tantalizing and slow before you were teasing a heavy ball and sliding it into your mouth.

He cursed harshly into the air, his eyebrows furrowing sharply and stomach pulling taut as the fire in his veins licked down his spine, the blood pumping hard and fast in his ears, his chest panting harshly down at you as the pleasure had his hands clenching hard and shaking from the force of the orgasm pressing against his lower abdomen. He was almost there, so close, so fucking close to being submerged in ecstasy.

You chuckled as you licked back up and slid him back in your mouth to the hilt, pouring everything you could into what reserves you had left, using the twitch of his muscles, the shake of his arms, and the dark look in his eyes to bring him to the edge that you could practically feel in your mouth. You were unhinged, bobbing up and down his thick length, ignoring the pain in your jaw as you kept gagging from the feel of him deep in your mouth, the tip of his cock bruising your throat.

He could see spots in his vision, his heart thrashing in his chest, blood roaring in his ears and drowning out the sound of you moaning and gagging and slurping. You reached down, using one of your small hands to fondle the balls that had drawn tight against him, ripping the seal off the bag that was holding his orgasm in as he groaned hard and loud into the air.

“Yes, yes, yes—oh fuck!”

You watched with barely concealed delight as he drew taut against you, practically freezing for a second before his stomach was drawing impossibly tight, his thighs spasming and his eyes rolling into the back of his head before he was throwing it back, groaning harshly towards the ceiling as his cock twitched violently in your mouth and he was spilling down your throat. You moaned through it, swallowing every last drop, sliding him out of your mouth and using your tongue to lick any remains off him.

He was still reclined back against his hands, panting up at the ceiling and shaking as his orgasm faded away and the sensitivity of your tongue had him looking down at you slowly. Even with your curls pressed into your sweaty skin, the trail of spit along of your chin and the crease of the skin on your cheek from sleep, you were beautiful.

Absolutely, undeniably beautiful and all his.

You pressed against the bed and carefully stood up on your feet, ignoring the pain in your lower back before you were wiping your chin with the back of your hand and leaning forward to press a soft kiss to his lips.

“Happy Birthday,” you purred at him, relishing in the open aired chuckle that pressed against your skin as he smiled softly at you and pecked your lips in return.

“Thank you, angel.”

***

“It’s been half an hour, time to take a break.”

You rolled your eyes from the sound of Ome in your ears. Your hands were wet and covered with clay, pressing against the side of what would soon to be a vase of your own creation. Your first client, Hina, had thankfully given you free reign of her commission. She only asked for a vase she could have in a minimalist living room, not too big to be overwhelming, but prominent enough to make a statement. You had spent the past three months working through countless iterations, using the opportunity to pull a still grieving Kento into the studio with you to get him out of his thoughts and within your field of vision while you worked. He was a great sounding board, even with his lack of experience with the nuances of ceramics, he was able to point out the finer details of texture and size in a way you were thankful for.

Kento was currently out for his birthday, a plan of your own design that allowed him to enjoy his day with his friends while you rested and used what little time you were allowed to be on your feet to finish your commission.

But that was proving to be incredibly difficult thanks to the narc in the form of your best friend, arms folded across her hoodie covered chest, a curvy hip resting against the door of your home studio. She lifted an elegant brow, silver liquid eyes matching your intensity as she gave you a knowing look.

“Put everything down and take a twenty minute break off your feet. Get up before I come over there and make you.”

You whined at the honesty in her words as you stood slowly from your cushioned stool and made your way over to the sink Kento and Yu had installed.

“It looks really good.”

Her tone was impressed, deep and raspy but you could practically feel the corners of her lips curve into a gentle smile as you washed and dried your hands and waddled behind her out of the studio and to the living room. She helped you onto the cushions, cradling an elbow as you sank down and sighed almost instantly at the release from pressure in your lower back. She tsked, clicked her tongue against her teeth as she fussed over you.

“I know you want to finish this before she is here, but I need you to actually be able to deliver her.”

“Ome I—”

“You wanna have her in the hospital? You want to have those people poke and prod on you, downplay your pain and practically walk you into a coffin? Because if your placenta detaches because you failed to obey Dr. Williams orders, I will kill you myself.”

You sighed in defeat, your eyes misting from her words. You weren’t really that upset with her, you had practically grown up with her way of talking. Direct and blunt was all Ome knew, and while she never intended to hurt, she relied so much more on her ability to cut straight to the point to make people see reason. Especially with you. But the influx in hormones over the past week and the growing, swelling and pain and general anxiety…you were incredibly uncomfortable and ready for her to be out. You loved being pregnant, truly you did. But you had finally reached the stage where the discomfort had outweighed the joyful feeling of bringing life into the world.

“I’m sorry. You know I don’t mean it. I just…I worry and I don’t know what I would do if you weren’t here.” Ome rubbed your shin absentmindedly, her eyes on your leggings as she thumbed and stroked the fabric. “Just thinking about it makes me nauseous so—so I need you to stop fucking around.”

You snorted in response, rubbing the side of your stomach as you felt your daughter kick a little harder than usual. You groaned softly in reply, ignoring the admonishing gaze from the woman across the sofa.

“Why don’t you go check the guest room? Make sure everything is together for me, please?”

You watched her leave, ignoring the urge to groan again as you felt your daughter land another kick to your side.

When you began to really nest, you spent the better part of a week turning one of your guest rooms into a birthing suite. A bed with absorbent sheets, an inflatable pool ready to be filled with water, a kit of medical supplies for emergencies, receiving blankets, clothes for yourself, snacks and even a space for the midwives to relax, you felt as ready as you could be. You had opted to not have your doula at the birth. Two midwives and Kento would be more than enough support and people that you could handle.

It was odd to think about, in only two weeks—if everything went according to plan—you would be a mother. A part of you ached at the knowledge that you had no role model to build anything from. Your mother was excellent at giving you the best money could buy as long as it strengthened your chances of status, wealth, and a man who would give you a child to carry that on to the next generation. You had learned how to work hard, but she never taught you the ability to set healthy boundaries.

She had yet to call you since that day you left Sendai. Had yet to text you or even pass a message through Rory. It hurt. It hurt more than you thought it would at the fact that your daughter would probably never know her grandmother. But it gave you the strength and resilience to realize that you would never leave your children around her. You would never allow her to expose your children to the trauma that you suffered.

But even with the absence of your own, you gained a mother through Chiyo. She was everything you had always wanted, and it brought you peace to know she would at least have one grandmother and grandfather to show her nothing but love.

The vibration of your phone, pulled you from your thoughts, blinking down at the device and smiling gently at the name of the contact. Your greeting was already queued up when you answered the phone.

“Kento, I’m fine. Please no more calling unless you are dying.”

The quiet huff through the phone had your stomach fluttering in response, your chest warming on its own.

“What a very crude thing to say—”

“So you’re not dying then? Impaled on a stick? Your pants fell down and now you’re about to stroke out from the mortification?”

“You’re insufferable.”

You giggled softly, absentmindedly rubbing your stomach as the sound rumbled up your throat and out of your mouth.

“I’ll stop teasing. I promise I’m doing well. Are you having fun—”

“Nanamin, get off the phone!” Gojo’s voice called from the background. Kento sighed deeply into the receiver, his annoyance permeating through the speaker and onto your cheek and ear. He muttered a quick and solemn goodbye, asking you to call the police if he did not return tonight, before hanging up the phone.

***

“How much will you charge for this?”

Ome watched in fascination as you pressed the wooden rib against the side of the wet and quickly spinning clay. While it was marvelous to sit and rest your body every forty-five minutes, it had proved to be a chore that only tired you out. You refused to acknowledge the heaviness in your eyes, even more so when Ome threw more knowing glares in your direction. You had to finish this commission today or you probably wouldn’t have the strength to do so before the baby came.

“I worked out a few quotes with Hina. I’ll make a pretty penny but nothing excessive.”

The low tones of R&B played through the small speaker on your large concrete table in the middle of your studio. Your belly was full from miso soup and egg rolls that Ome had practically dragged you from your stool to eat. The night was drawing to a close and Kento would be home soon.

“I haven’t received one text from Gojo. Kento must actually be having a good time.”

You threw her an eyebrow from her words, smirking softly as you pressed a wet sponge to the side of your clay, the grey brown color shining slowly with each pass.

“Are you going to finally tell me how things are going? I’ve been trying to remain respectful but—”

“Things are going well.”

Her interruption made you look up at her. Her eyes were locked on your spinning work of clay, silver irises watching each rotation and trying not to look up at you. You held back the quip on your tongue as you really took in her expression. For the first time in a while, she looked vulnerable. It wasn’t as if it was rare from her, at least when it came to you. Ome had no problem expressing how she really felt around you, her honesty was the one thing that would never fade or change with time. But when it came to men, that was a different level of openness that was hard for her.

She despised them; she hated their manipulative behavior, the nonchalance to take and take from women who were largely preyed upon and taken advantage of. She hated that every man she had given a chance in her life had stepped on her time and time again. It made it hard to trust them. It made that wall she kept around her heart icier and only fueled her hostile behavior towards them.

And it wasn’t as if they didn’t deserve it. In your honest opinion, men never deserved much. But a part of you had always felt that Ome deserved to be happy, deserved to have a happy marriage and maybe a few children if that’s what she wanted. She was doing surprisingly well, until her ex decided to cheat and cheat and cheat some more without any regard to the world around him.

The back and forth that you saw from Ome and Gojo was comical at best, but deep down you could see that twinkle in her eye grow with each day, with each insult she threw up at him and with each laugh he shot down at her.

So to see her react so strongly, to not even bark at you with an insult with no heat to it, it was unexpected.

She cleared her throat, pursing her lips before flickering her eyes up to you.

“It’s going really well, actually. He’s been—he’s proving to really be someone I can depend on. As obnoxious and fucking annoying as he is, he cares about the people closest to him.”

You hummed softly, caressing the makeshift vase with both of your hands.

“So…do you think he will live up to the mark? For you?”

You kept your eyes on your work, watching the clay bend as a response to the press of your fingers on its sides. The music played softly between you both, gentle notes floating around the room and settling on both of your shoulders.

“Yea…I think he does. Or I think he will.”

“Hmmm, Ome Gojo. That has a nice ring to it—”

“I give you an inch and you take a fucking mile!”

Your giggles pealed through the dense room, ricocheting off the walls and hitting Ome’s back, the force of it causing her own shoulders to shake as her raspy giggles joined yours.

You had used the wire cutter to separate the bottom of your work from the wheel when you heard the lock of the front door turning, the door swinging open and Gojo’s loud voice tearing through the calm atmosphere of your home.

“The birthday boy is here!!!”

Ome rolled her eyes as she washed the remnants of clay from your throwing wheel, loading a curse on her lips as his tall form sauntered into the room. Even disheveled and windblown, his beautiful white hair made him look like the hottest catalog model you would ever see. Round sunglasses had been pushed up, bringing his bangs with it and casting alien blue eyes about the room as he loomed over you and leaned down to press a quick peck to your cheek.

“Beautiful as always, how are you doing?”

You rolled your eyes in reply, a smirk splaying on your face as your eyes took in Yuji and Geto as they walked into the studio as well. Yuji’s already large eyes seemed to bulge from their sockets as he took in your studio, not even offering a hello as he began to walk around the room, pulling a softly chuckling Geto with him as he began to throw out a barrage of questions.

“I’m doing well. I’m sure Kento made you ask me.”

Gojo scoffed playfully, a hand pressing to his chest in dramatics as he spoke loudly.

“Can’t I care about my friend and godchild? Who do you take me for?”

“A whore.”

Gojo gawked down at you, face red and mouth curling into a devious smile as Yuji’s chuckles rang from the background.

“I’m not a whore. Ome wholeheartedly believes in castration as a punishment for insolence. And the last thing I need is someone trying to cut off my hefty, throbbing, veiny co—”

“Finish that sentence and see what happens.”

You heard his voice before you saw him, deep and low, wafting into the room and wrapping around your body. Your eyes caught his form, tall and imposing as he walked into the room and leaned against the door frame. He looked incredibly relaxed, even the threat that he had thrown Gojo’s way was surprisingly without bite. His blonde locks were windswept and carded out of his face, loose tendrils falling from the hold to rest against his forehead. A pair of black jeans and a nice short sleeved shirt that hugged his shirt in the most delicious way, his Cartier watch shining against the bright lights of your studio, the smell of his cologne not even strong but still seeming to drift through the room and slide up your nostrils, and brown eyes filled with a heavy look had your heart picking up in speed.

God he looked good.

Gojo rolled his eyes theatrically, turning around to stick out his tongue at his friend before he was strolling over to Ome to hound her instead.

It only took a few minutes of pestering from Gojo and relentless questions from Yuji before Ome and Geto were ushering them out, wishing us both a goodnight and Kento a happy birthday before the house was empty besides you both.

You were beautiful. He probably said it to himself at least twenty times a day but right now it hit him harder than before. You were washing your hands at the sink, your heavy curls pulled up into a messy bun, your body dressed in black cotton overalls and a white short-sleeved shirt, your throat humming a tune to the song playing through the speaker. He recognized it, a song he had heard in passing once years ago that had made him buy the entire vinyl not even an hour later. You turned toward him as you dried your hands, a smile growing on your features as he walked closer to you. The shea butter from your cinnamon skin wafted up his nose, making him a little more lightheaded than what he already was. Your cheek had a smear of clay, something that he was surprised you hadn’t noticed but had his chest thumping in an almost uncomfortable way as his heart soared in his chest.

“Did you have a good birthday?”

Gojo, Yuji and Geto had shown up at your house that morning, dragging a more than reluctant Kento out of his house to at least do something for his day. A small hole in the wall bakery that you had found a few weeks prior and had remained untouched by Kento was his first stop that morning. His eyes displayed his excitement almost as soon as he saw the bread behind the thick glass windows and he showed his enthusiasm by getting more than one melonpan, smacking Gojo’s greedy and sticky hands away at every second.

He was shocked but filled with warmth when he had been surprised with a private tour of a whiskey distillery from his favorite company. An entire hour drinking different notes and tastes of his favorite alcohol had his stomach fluttering and his cheeks tinged pink. His words were a little looser as they dined at the best Korean BBQ establishment in Nakameguro. He had been treated to a private booth for him and his friends, away from the loud and yelling crowd of people but still immersed in the atmosphere of good food, excellent service, and the best whiskey he had ever had. Gojo had been less obnoxious than usual, Geto more boisterous as a way of universal balance, Yuji more loud but always respectful of his sensei. Always questioning, always curious, always loving to everyone and the world around him.

His day had been spent around people he loved doing the things only he enjoyed.

You had planned it all for him, content to make sure he spent his day loved and happy.

By the time he had walked through the door of your house, he was confident and finally accepting of that weird feeling in his chest that he had spent months trying to either decipher or push away.

“I had an excellent birthday. Thank you for treating me to a great day.”

You shrugged in nonchalance, your smile growing and then faltering as he pulled you close to him with what your stomach would allow. He brought your hands up to wrap around his neck, his own falling into the soft flesh of your waist and his feet falling into a step that you realized was a gentle sway to the music in the background.

You looked up at him in denial, an eyebrow throwing up to your forehead as you settled into step with him.

“You know this song?”

“Yes. In fact, I happen to like this song.”

You couldn’t help the bark of laughter, the sound heavy with disbelief. He hummed down at you, playful admonishment rolling off his shoulders and onto your face.

“Why must you be in denial when you find out trivial things about me? As if I am some creature that walks your halls.”

“You’ve always been such a mystery to me.” You giggled to yourself, ignoring his questioning look. “I do this thing when I find out weird things about you. I treat it like a bingo card, each new block is a trait or quirk that I never would have expected. Reality television, your R&B collection, your love of romcoms, and even the fact that you snore. All of those things that would seem ‘normal’ to any other man have always been odd when it comes to you. You carry yourself in a way that makes you a man who likes to stay in the background, but who you are only makes you stand out more. You’re unique and compiled of a web of ropes and knots that would take only the closest to you to help unravel. So no, you’re not some creature. You’re just a man I never expected to know, let alone be with.”

He simply hummed beneath his breath, his lips pursing as he swayed with you.

“It’s a compliment, Kento. So take it.”

“Ah yes, anything you wish. Please forgive me.”

You giggled into his chest, pressing your cheek into the fabric of his shirt.

“I hope you realize that I feel the same when it comes to you.”

You didn’t respond to his statement, choosing instead to listen to the rumble of his words in your ear as his chest vibrated with sound against you.

“You were a mystery to me. I could never understand how a woman as hardworking and as kind and caring as you could have a mother who could never acknowledge your existence. I could never understand how someone who could take command of almost any conference room she walked into, secretly loved to be covered in clay and paint and create the most beautiful things with her hands. You insert yourself in everything you do, and you have an innate talent to always hit the mark.” He chuckled to himself absentmindedly, his eyes flitting about the room as he took in all of your work. “I have this theory…similar to your bingo card. In my mind, I only have a certain amount of chairs for the people in my life. My intern, Kugisaki actually thinks the same way…The seats are already predetermined by me, already situated in my head and dusted off for those to sit. My parents, Aiko, Kaya, and Yu were automatically given those seats. Yuji enthusiastically asked for his and while it took me awhile to accept, I gave him one. Gojo and Geto and Shoko demanded their seats, shook and pestered and annoyed me to the point where I couldn’t deny the care and love they had for me and I relinquished my hold just to appease even though I secretly was happy with my decision…But not you.”

The song had faded away and been placed with another, equally as soft as you both disappeared within each other.

“You pulled up your own chair. It was your own, crafted of your own design with a simple cotton cushion and sleek mahogany corners. You drug it across shiny hardwood floors, scratching the surface and plopping down in front of everyone. In front of my parents, Aiko, Yu, Geto, Gojo, Shoko, Yuji, everyone. You sat right in front of me, demanding my attention—commanding it and only promising me wonderful things if I accepted you. The more I denied, the more I was mean and indignant, the more you backed away and the more I hated how it made me feel. But I’m glad I stopped fighting.”

He exhaled softly against you, your head rising with the movement of his chest.

“You are the very best thing that has happened to me. You love those around you with every fiber of your being. You are the smartest person I have ever met. You have such a beautiful talent that I’m only lucky enough to witness. You are the first person in my life that has made me laugh this much…and—and I think what makes me pull you closer the most is that you’ve made me…decide to finally be me. That night when you yelled at me, when you were so angry and desperate for me to acknowledge myself, I don’t think I’ve ever had someone actually see me. I’ve never had someone force me to eat, force me to bathe, force me look at my grief and my flaws and show me that I could take control of it. It was an overwhelming feeling and you are the only person who has been able to make me see that. I’m sure I sound very sappy saying this but, you mean everything to me. And to know that you also are giving me a child that I’ll soon get to meet…I am unbelievably lucky.”

You were quiet as you let his words soak in, as they fell from his lips and leeched into your skin, making your blood pump faster and your stomach flip and twist in a manner that had your heart racing.

“Careful Kento, such strong words. You talk as if you love me.”

You had meant for your words to be lighthearted, to serve as a distraction as you tried to calm the frantic beating of your heart which was only increasing in pace the longer he didn’t answer, you both still swaying to the music around you.

“What if I do?”

Your heart took a sudden lurch, flipping in your chest painfully as you pulled away to look up at him, your nerves a live wire as you took in the implication of what he was saying. Even though his eyes were dilated from a slight buzz and the ruddiness of his cheeks made him seem more playful than usual, you couldn’t deny the fierce seriousness in his gaze. It was unmoving, unyielding, completely honest and locking you in place. The corners of his full lips curved just slightly.

“What if I am talking as if I love you? What would you say then?”

You opened your mouth to speak, your mouth gaping like a fish as you realized that yes, yes he was saying exactly what you thought. There was no denying it now. There was no need to. Over time, Kento had slowly began to cut himself open for you, letting bits and pieces of himself fall at your feet until only the most personal and vulnerable parts of him were left.

Love.

Your mind was reeling, struggling for the right words, your ears throbbing with the sound of blood thunderous through your veins. You slid your hands from around his neck, trailing them down to rest on his pectorals as you bit your lip harshly and ignored the sting of tears in your eyes. You cleared your throat, relaxing further into him.

“I…I would say—I suppose I would ask that you look at me and say it again. Just so I can determine if you’re truly honest.”

A chuckle; deep and gentle against you, mirth and warmth suddenly pungent and heavy between you both as he silently commanded your attention by placing a finger beneath your chin and tilting your head up to look at him.

“I love you.”

It was effortless. Without nervousness or anxiety or tension. Three words that fell from full lips like water, simple and common place as breathing but still carrying the intensity and deeper meaning of them. You expected it to hit you like a train, to shock your system with force and cold water and make you rigid and anxious against him.

But you found yourself exhaling softly, relaxing further into the gentle hold he had on you, your eyes fluttering as you tried desperately to stop the tears as quickly as they were coming.

“You do?”

The words had slipped out before you could stop them, the last bits of your nerves falling from your lips and down to the floor. He didn’t offer a different reaction to your response, the serious and vulnerable expression on his face had remained unchanged, resolute, and firm.

“Very much so. Do you doubt me? I’ve told you this so many times, you shouldn’t say things that do not make sense.”

The wet giggle shooting from your mouth shook your chest, rattling loose those tendrils of anxiety that had plagued you for years and for once letting them dissolve away to be ignored for hopefully a long time. You shook your head, sliding your arms back up to wrap around his neck and meeting his gaze again. Your real response was surprisingly sitting comfortably on your tongue, ready for what felt like months. However, he interrupted before you could speak.

“No teasing remarks? Quips about my words? I’m shocked, truly.”

You couldn’t help the way you laughed again, the sound wet with building tears as you sniffed softly and gently pinched the skin of his nape.

“I love you too.”

He pulled the words in, let them collect in the back of his throat before sliding down to his belly and settling in a delicious way that had his cheeks a little warmer than before. The corners of his smile grew just a little bit more, hints of pearly whites flashing before he was bending a head down to press his lips to yours, sealing the connection between you both. He had thought it would be incredibly dramatic filled with tears and nauseating and continuous professions of love.  But the interaction was something special that could only represent you both. Simple with a hint of nostalgia, a small trace of teasing to bring you a little closer to him.

“Let’s get you off of your feet. I’ll rub your back, I’m sure its hurting. Would that be alright?”

You bit your lip, your eyes swimming with tears again as you began to realize he had probably felt like this for some time. Every day, every interaction that he had given you had always been filled with care, protection, and just a little bit of love. At first small but still there in his own way until it was everywhere all at once.

You blinked quickly, clearing your vision just a little so you could see him better as you nodded up at him.

“Yes please.”

He pressed another smooth kiss to your lips, the smell of his cologne settling in your bones and reaffirming your tiredness. He pulled away from you and made his way for the door, lacing his fingers in yours and taking you with him.

***

She knocked at your door a day before your due date, an intense contraction that pulled you from your sleep in the early hours on July 14th that grew and grew until you realized there would probably be no stopping it.

The first midwife came when your contractions were pretty far apart and your water had broken, helping Kento fill the birthing tub and get general supplies ready for you as you did your best to breathe and distract yourself from the pain. The contractions weren’t too painful at first, almost like a very intense period cramp that you had familiarized yourself with at a young age. They were manageable, annoying but manageable.

Kento did what he does best, love and support you. He didn’t hover, didn’t obsess over you even though you could tell every flicker of pain made him feel more helpless than ever. He rubbed your back, helped you through each contraction by talking and breathing with you, brushed the curls over your shoulders when they got in the way and even made sure you were walking and moving when you could.

He was spiraling. On the outside, he was cool and collected, offering you every bit of support you needed without being too much. But every grunt and moan of pain, every squeeze of his hand as your face contorted into expressions he never wanted to see, every continued flicker of pain was enough to have his stomach in knots. He knew you wanted to do this unmedicated. In fact, he completely agreed and respected that decision. But he hated that bringing life into the world had to be so much, so hurtful, so risky. He would do anything to take the pain away.

But he had to be strong for you. Because right now, the fact that you were going through immeasurable pain to bring an actual human into the world, you were the strongest of anyone in the room.

By the time your contractions were almost three minutes apart and his hand was almost broken, the second midwife showed up. They took control of the room, offering you the right guidance without overshadowing Kento’s presence as well.

“Kento.” You had practically groaned out his name, your face covered with a light sheen of sweat as you sat in the warm tub of water with only a loose sports bra on. He was already next to you, rubbing your shoulders intermittently as you groaned low and long into the air. “Maybe we can…maybe we can go to the hospital. Ask for an epidural? Ask to be admitted?”

He hummed against your temple, kissing the skin.

“Is that really what you want? We can try, but is that what you want?”

You knew he was right. For as much pain as you were in, you refused medication, refused to have doctors you didn’t know touching you, refused to be neglected. You moaned softly in acquiescence and listened to him chuckle softly as you felt him pull your curls into a high bun and wipe the sweat from your neck.

You were at your wits end, your body riddled with pain to a degree that it was hard for you to even comprehend. Your lower stomach ached, your back was on fire, your thighs felt as if they would fall from your body, you could feel your resolve and strength slipping as you gripped one hand with a midwife next and one hand of Kento’s as he sat outside of the tub on the other side, praising you softly in your ear.

“I can’t. I can’t, I can’t I’m sorry, but I can’t.”  

You shook your head frantically, looking over at Kento with tears in your eyes as your body worked of its own accord. You could try all you wanted to make it stop, she was coming one way or another.

“I can’t Kento—”

“You can. You’re doing so well, angel. So, so well. You’re almost there.” You shook your head in reply, breathing harshly as your muscles began to bunch and twist with what you knew was another god awful contraction. “You’ve spent almost a full day, working hard to bring her here. Don’t you want to see her?” A harsh nod. He smiled softly at you, his own eyes filled with exhaustion and excitement as he wiped your forehead again. “Almost 24 hours and no medication, no hospital intervention, just you and trusting your body. You’re so much stronger than you think. I’ll be right here, I promise. Through every step. Just focus and breathe and she will be here soon. Can you do that for me?”

A wet exhale and moan, your eyes filling with tears as you nodded softly at him and turned back to the second midwife at your waist, her eyes assessing every contraction.

It was probably another hour when those contractions began to shift into the need to push. But you were there now, you could almost feel the end in your body, could practically taste new life in the air even though you were sweating out of this world, shaking in pain and squeezing Kento’s hand in a way you were sure would need a brace later.

“Keep breathing with me, baby.”

“Your hand—”

“Is perfectly fine. The only thing I’m focused on are you and her. My hand will survive.”

You were a sobbing mess, pushing again and again with the midwife’s instruction and growing more desolate as it felt like you were making no progress. You knew you were; the midwife had kept you updated enthusiastically with every push. But god did it not feel like it.

“We’re in the home stretch now. Give me more pushes but bear down a little more, give it your all for me. Nanami, keep doing what you’re doing. Keep her focused for me and she will be here soon.”

Just those last few words seemed to be the motivation you needed, the pain still there but instead fueling a strength you were surprised began to bud in your bones. You listened to each instruction, bore down with every contraction, soaked in Kento’s words in your ear as you got closer and closer.

“She’s right there! Give me one more honey!”

Kento gripped your hand tighter, kissing your temple before you were moaning harshly in pain and bearing down with all you had without forcing her out.

The feeling was odd, an intense pressure and burning that caught you by surprise and only spurred you on further as you practically felt her leave.

At 12:25 pm on July 15th, she was born.

The first thing you felt was oddly empty, a connection and warmth between you and her almost severed instantly. You collapsed against Kento, crying as you loosened your grip on his hand, your lungs burning as you caught your breath. You could hear the praise against your temple as he kissed it, his words uncharacteristically wet as your mind quickly snapped to the thought of her.

“You did so well. So, so well.”

He pressed a kiss to your shoulder, your neck and then the side of your cheek, his own emotions raging and out of control as he tried and failed to blink away the wetness in his eyes.

The second thing you felt was pure, overwhelming and unbridled happiness as the sound of her cries filled the room. Your eyes darted down to the midwife at your waist, wide and transfixed even though you were still crying as she nestled the screaming baby onto the skin of your chest. You were instantly alert, quickly forgetting about the sharp aches of your body as she wiggled against you.

She was a little pale, her entire body practically wrinkled, but her face as smooth and expressive as ever. She had what looked to be his nose, buttoned and a little blunt at the tip. Her eyes were closed but the eyebrows were long and faint. And her hair, so much hair splattered to her head, wet and damp but still light enough that you could tell would be a lighter brown than yours.

Even screaming, with a set of lungs you were sure would be you and Kento’s downfall, she was everything.

You looked up at him, your eyes filled with tears before offering him a shaky smile. His eyes were locked on her, misty with a large smile on his face before he looked to you and smiled further.

“Look at her, isn’t she perfect Kento?”

He pressed a soft kiss to your lips before he was reaching down to wiggle a soft wet toe on her feet, her cries dying down, only offering a disgruntled whimper every now and then as her senses were overwhelmed with the world she had been thrust into.

“Absolutely perfect, she’s beautiful.”

They let Kento cut the cord, his face the most unguarded you had ever seen as the scissors cut through the umbilical. You had pulled off your bra a while ago, using any opportunity to hold her close and get her as much skin contact as you could. Once the afterbirth was delivered, you gave her up to be assessed and cleaned up, and one of the midwives helped you into the shower. By the time you were clean and wearing a long t-shirt, the pool had been emptied and put away and Kento was waiting for you to guide you back to your room.

You were unbelievably tired. So, so tired. But the pull of her kept you going, kept you walking down the hall and crawling into your bed before a midwife was nestling her now bundled form into your chest, congratulating you softly on a healthy and strong delivery.

You hadn’t realized the midwives had gone until Kento was sliding into the bed next to you, pulling you both close and resting his chin on your shoulder, his brown eyes looking down softly at his sleeping daughter.

“One of them will be back tomorrow to check on you but they left their contact if anything comes up for the rest of the day.”

You were humming in reply, not really listening as you stared down at her, tracing a smooth and chubby cheek with one of your fingers. Now that she was dry you could really see the light brown color of her hair, so much of it that poked out from under the sage green newborn beanie and curled just slightly at the ends. Her skin color probably wouldn’t settle for a few more months and when she did open her eyes, there was no mistaking the deep brown that looked at you. She was you and Kento’s daughter in every way.

“Are you sure you would like them to come see her? You’re not too tired?”

“I am, but I want them to be here.”

You turned to him, offering her silently and watching warmly as he wrung his hands and opened his arms, letting you set her gently in them. He exhaled instantly; his eyes locked on her as he took her in. The sight was almost comical, a baby so small nestled in the muscular arms and large stature of her father. You would probably have to fight the mothers off with a stick if you let him out in public.

“Oh she’s wonderful.”

His parents were the first to show up, tiptoeing into your room quietly and Chiyo’s eyes immediately filling with tears when she saw the bundle that was still in her son’s arms. They washed their hands without you asking, and even Santo was filled with excitement, his odd green eyes practically dancing as he looked down at her. Chiyo walked over to your side of the bed, pulling you in a gentle hug that was warming you instantaneously.

“I’m so proud of you, honey. How are you feeling? Can I get you anything?”

You blinked away the tears again, soaking in the maternal aura from her and nestling it deep inside before you were pulling away and shaking your head.

“I’m tired, but I feel okay. I need nothing I promise.”

You watched as Santo cooed at her from over his son’s shoulder, a large smile on his face as he soaked in the sight of his granddaughter. Santo spent almost twenty minutes holding her, rocking her around the room and talking absentmindedly as Kento collapsed against you, resting his head on your shoulder—a growing trait of relaxed nonchalance that you hoped would follow into fatherhood—as he talked to his mother.

Chiyo was patient through it all, but you could feel the impatience radiating off of her as she glared at her husband. You held in the urge to laugh as you watched her eyes tic before practically holding out her hands and beckoning him to her. Those brown eyes were misting immediately as your daughter whimpered a little in her arms, opening matching eyes to look up at her grandmother before closing them and falling back into slumber.

“Oh my, oh honey she’s beautiful. She’s so beautiful. Of course, she would be. Have you thought of a name?”

Kento elbowed you softly, burying his face into your neck. He had given you full control over her name, content to agree with it no matter what.

“Ulani Chiyo Nanami.”

His mother widened her eyes and looked up at you, shock coloring her features as she took the name in.

“African American families and most American families have a middle name. And…you’ve been someone in my life that has shown me nothing but love and belonging and a care that I should have had from my own mother. I want my daughter to have a name from someone who means a lot not only to me but to others around her and who cares about everyone.” She was silent as she took the words in, the growing silence making you nervous and antsy. “I hope I didn’t overstep—”

“You didn’t. It’s…it’s perfect. I’m honored and so, so happy.”

She chuckled and reached a hand over to stroke the skin of your cheek before pulling away and looking back down to your baby. You felt him bury his nose further into your skin, breathing the natural tones in deeply as his heart swelled in his chest.

Your friends had thankfully not crowded around you when they made their way in your room an hour after Kento’s parents had departed. Yuji, who’s expressive eyes had remained locked on the bundle in your arms, remained quiet and frozen as Ulani was passed around and cooed to. Gojo was practically fighting off a tantrum as Geto talked softly to her, his calm deep purple eyes watching the slight pucker of her lips with a smile.

“You’ve held her long enough, Geto. It’s my turn.”

Geto ignored him, instead walking over to set Ulani back in your arms.

“She’s wonderful. I’m a proud uncle.”

You thanked him, your eyes still on Yuji’s frozen form against the wall. After a little encouragement from Kento at his perch next to you, Yuji made his way over slowly, sinking onto the bed at your side. He held her carefully, stiff and ramrod straight as Ulani nestled further into his chest. He relaxed quickly against her, rocking her small form before he began to shoot off hushed and random questions about her measurements to you and Kento.

Gojo was practically in shambles by the time Ome had walked into your room. Everyone had a turn with her, everyone was able to hold her and gaze down at her softness, but by the time it was his turn, everyone else had gone and only he and Ome remained.

Her eyes were already swimming with tears as she sat down by your waist. Uncharacteristic tears making her silver eyes already luminescent as Gojo sank down next to her, looking over her shoulder as you handed your daughter to her. Ome’s eyes fluttered happily, a large smile breaking on her face as she chuckled gently down at Ulani.

“Look at you…so lovely and you’ve only been here a few hours.”

The pure adoration in her eyes was hard to miss and even Gojo found himself soaking it up as much as he could.

“Kento and I thought…we were wondering if you both would like to be her godparents?”

Ome’s eyes widened to a degree you would have never expected, her soft expression already vulnerable and only beginning to crack more as she shook out a small sob, nodding profusely and unable to produce any words.

Gojo however held a look of confusion, his cheeks rosy in surprise.

“I don’t understand…I’m sure you would have wanted Yu to be the godfather. I’m not upset, I expected you to always choose him. But I know you are only choosing me because Yu is gone.”

Ome threw him a vicious glare but Kento spoke up before she could chastise him.

“While that may be true, the fact of the matter is that Yu is gone now. Even when he was alive, I wanted you to be in her life. But besides Yu, as much as you drive me absolutely insane, I know you would do anything to protect and love her. I understand if you are upset, I can’t take away that feeling. But I want you to know that you are the next person I would have chosen to step up to the plate. If you do not want to, then of course we both understand.”

Ome finally slid your daughter into Gojo’s arms, her small body practically eclipsed by his tall form. His white hair fell down from his face, casting a shadow over his eyes as his full lips grew into a wide smile. He stroked her chubby cheek with a long finger, trailing it up to circle a light brown curl before he was giggling softly.

“Of course, I would like to be her godfather. I know I was only joking before when y/n was pregnant but, I think secretly I wanted to be tethered to her in some way. I’m honored. And Nanamin, I’ll do a good job, I promise.”

“I know you will.”

Ulani chose that moment to yawn, her small mouth opening wide and stretching her squishy face, a whimper and babylike noise gurgling from her throat before she was nestling further into her blanket and falling asleep.

“Obviously I’m the best choice for the job.”

Kento rolled his eyes harshly, shooting him a small noise of indignation.

“Give me my daughter and get out.”

Gojo stuck his tongue out at his friend, choosing instead to look back down at your daughter and disappear into atmosphere of her for the time being. Ome used to lapse in time to fuss over you, fixing your bun, picking at your clothes, and asking if you had eaten. She rejected all words from Kento, insisting that she wanted to help at least a little before leaving and disappeared into the kitchen to make you both lunch.

You weren’t sure if it was from the sudden movement of the bed, the slight increase in volume of voices, or just mother nature’s timing, but Ulani instantly began to fuss in Gojo’s arms. She wiggled in her blanket, whimpered until she was outright crying in his hold. You felt your body instantly react, your stomach twisting and chest practically pulsing in discomfort as Gojo opened her blankets to check her over.

“She’s wet. Let me go change her and I’ll be right back.”

You held back the urge to protest, whining softly in your spot as he disappeared out the door with your crying daughter.

“He’s trying to butter me up.”

You smacked Kento’s chest in response, snorting up at him before shaking your head in admonition. You knew he was joking, could practically feel his euphoria and happiness radiating from him and seeping into the pores of your skin.

By the time Gojo returned with her, she was still crying but not as intensely as before. He brought her to you, gently setting her in your arms.

“Thank you, Gojo. She’s probably hungry.”

“I’ll go help Ome in the kitchen.”

Kento helped you situate yourself in the bed as you pulled out a sleeve and helped her latch onto you. Your midwives had truly thought it latching for you would be a little bit of a struggle, but Ulani of course took to it like a pro, catching on instantly. You relaxed into Kento’s chest from behind you, his warm muscles cradling your back as his large form hugged you closer, molding you both together as your daughter nursed in your arms.

Her expressive eyes shined up at you, trying to make out what she could see in front of her as her eyelids drooped occasionally from being fed.

“We did good, huh?”

He chuckled softly, pressing a smooth kiss to the crease of your neck and resting his chin atop of your head.

“We did great. You did great.”

You scoffed softly, your eyes still locked on the deep brown of her irises as you spoke.

“I suppose your seed helped. Even drunk and wrapped in a condom, you somehow got through my IUD and knocked me up. Your father says that strong sperm runs in the Nanami line.”

“He is as crude as you are.”

You tried to hold in as much of your giggle as you could, careful not to jostle her.

“Thank you…her middle name. My mother is over the moon, as am I. When did you decide on it?”

“I knew her first name after only a month or two. I had an urge to give her your mother’s name as well, but I didn’t actually feel confident until the baby shower. She’s the best mother I could ever have and she’s a wonderful woman. A strong woman. To give that to Ulani was something that felt right to me.”

He hummed appreciatively against you, a large hand coming up to caress the light brown curls that poked from under her beanie. She reacted to the touch, her eyes shifting over to look up at her father, lips puckering quickly as she nursed from you. She probably couldn’t see much, but the thought of her recognizing him had Kento smiling down at her, his heart growing ten times in size as he cradled you both closer to him.

[sandbees]

I don't know if you open, but I love. No. I adore your house of mouse au, I've seen most of it but I wonder, what if the ob gang see Yuu and the great seven chatting then Yuu saw them, pull them and say 'this is the guy I told you back then', now I probably already read one of ask that contain this, but I wanna see only overblot's first reaction that probably quite fascinating

:0 alright!

It's already been a few months since Yuu has introduced their friends to the House of Mouse. Honestly, they were fine with that, until there was a planned Dorm Leader meeting. Sadly, their usual spot was taken by the teachers for another meeting, but hey, the House of Mouse is always there! So Yuu invites them for a meeting.

Thankfully, Mickey was glad to give Yuu time off ("I wouldn't want you to be focused on work all the time! It's important to keep your social life back at home healthy. Enjoy the show! :)")

So, they wait for the other Dorm Leaders before they take them to their mirror upstairs.

Kalim: Oh! Are we having a sleepover!?

Yuu: No, we're going to my workplace. They're giving me time off so we can have a meeting and enjoy their performances!

Riddle: Well, as long as it doesn't distract us from the meeting...Why are we even in your room to begin with? Yuu: 'Cause we can't get in without using my mirror, duh. *Pushes Idia into the mirror*

Idia: WHY ME-

They go through the mirror, and the others are pretty impressed with Yuu's personal dressing room.

Yuu: Yeah, my boss is the best :). Oh, btw, don't be surprised to see the Great Seven.

Azul: Hahaha, WHAT?

As they walk out, Minnie personally greets them and leads them to a table. Goofy comes by a minute later and takes all of their orders. As they wait for their orders to come, Yuu gauges everyone's reactions.

Azul is, unsurprisingly, writing things down, muttering about "new ideas for Mostro Lounge. Kalim is looking around the whole dining room, his eyes sparkling. Riddle and Vil are talking quietly, commenting on the decor. Idia was grossed in his video game he brought, glancing at anyone who passed by the table. Leona was messing with the center piece, looking absolutely bored. And Malleus just looked happy to be there.

The meeting went well, actually. With a lively atmosphere, the Dorm Leaders were able to have some productive conversations. Yuu was especially happy to be included in future events run by the Dorms. There were a few interruptions, though.

Of course, it was pure coincidence that the Great Seven were also having a get together. But the oddest thing was that THEY WERE AT THE TABLE NEXT TO THEM??? If that isn't planned idk what is. Yuu introduced the gang to one another.

Riddle is all red in the face, probably very embarrassed to meet the Queen of Hearts. He certainly didn't expect to meet her in person! Though she's pretty impressed by him. He knows all 810 rules by heart. What a good Dorm Leader, remembering all the ruels and making sure the rest remember them!

Leona and Scar didn't talk to each other at first, but when the topic of siblings came around, YOU BET THAT THEY WERE TALKING SHIT. Honestly the funniest thing for them to realize this and begin gossiping about the dumbest things people have done in front of them. It's very sweet to watch them vent out their frustrations to each other.

Ursula talking with Azul and giving him tips on how to blackmail convice people to sign his contracts. Maybe even answer his questions about herself or giving him ideas for his business. A magic item made by the Sea Witch herself? For a price, of course~

Honestly, I can only see Jafar tolerate Kalim at best. He sees Kalim as a foolish kid. Though maybe Jafar slightly warms up to him??? Yuu is probably the one to mediate between the two, honestly.

VIL AND QUEEN GOSSIPING ABOUT BEAUTY TIPS. VIL WOULD TOTALLY TELL HER ABOUT MODERN BEAUTY TIPS. They would be the mean girls of the group tbh. I think Queen would also give tips on being a better leader, because despite her vanity, she was probably a good ruler if the kingdom didn't go to hell in the movie.

Idia would 100% be dying inside at Hades' extrovertness. Hades would be very excited to learn more about his dorm honestly. (Wait no Hades would joke about them being related, and Idia would sink into his seat further). The conversation was awkward until Hades asked about the video game Idia brought. Idia would not SHUT UP ABOUT IT-

Malleus and Maleficent would have a lovely chat over teas and biscuts that they ordered. Maleficent would 100% give Malleus any and all advice she had gained over the years. (Maybe advise Malleus to snag Yuu before anyone else got them). They would totally have conversations about the use of gargoyles and how spot a wild one.

It's getting late at night, and the meeting was over, but Yuu convinced everyone to stay. The show began, and it was one of the best Yuu's seen in awhile (to be fair, most of the shows were sabotaged by Pete, which they helped stop).

The night ended with a bang, and all the Dorm Leaders agreed to hold another meeting at the House of Mouse some time in the future.

[invaderhogtwopointohno]

What Extraordinary Beings We Are

Summary: Qimir is the hottest pop star on the planet right now with a new album, awards and a movie, he is enjoying himself until he suddenly gets attacked outside of a club. His manager, Mae, arranges for her sister to become his protective agent until they can get more permanent security but there is something about Osha that just has him in awe. Based on a Tumblr prompt by @flythesail

Find on Ao3.

Chapter One

The stadium was packed full of screaming fans, mostly girls and women in anticipation of the concert. The roadies and techs running back and forth to get everything going, the massive screen on the backdrop showing an image of a countdown to the concert’s beginning. The band was sitting in their positions, listening to the stage manager in their ear pieces. The backup dancers were jumping up and down and stretching, ready to go out.

The only one missing was the star himself.

Mae knocked on the door.

“Qimir, hurry your ass up,” she said, looking at her phone. Mae Anaseya had been Qimir’s manager for the last three years and she had been the only one to stay by his side that long because she didn’t put up with any of his bullshit- of which he had plenty. She looked at the time. They were minutes away from starting, opening the door before he could answer her properly.

She walked in to find him sitting in front of his vanity, looking at his phone and generally ignoring the woman who was working on his hair.

“Come on, you need to get out there,” she said and he looked up from his phone.

“Mae,” he said in mild annoyance, the woman putting his microphone around his head and taping it into place. “I thought we said we weren’t going to come into rooms without knocking first.”

“I did. You are going to be late, let’s go,” she said, shooing the woman away as she dragged Qimir from his perch and shame walked him down the hallway. The roar of the crowd filled the stadium and shook the walls. They were like wild animals out there.

“Where are we going next?” he asked, looking at his phone, scrolling through Instagram to see if any of the BTS guys had hit him up.

“Jacksonville, and you need to actually remember this time. Saying thank you to Boston when you were in New York did not go over well,” she said, shoving him along the path to the stage. He didn’t pay her to be nice, that was for sure.

“Thanks for the tip,” he muttered and fixed his black jacket.

“The movie is wrapping post production so you’ll be going on a press tour starting in two months, you have six more stops on this tour and you are done until Feburary next year,” she said, looking at her phone. She had been hired because she had been the only one who had gotten him where he needed to go and doing what he needed to do without much of a fight. Everyone was always letting Qimir do whatever he wanted, as long as he gave them a wink and a smile, but Mae was immune to his stupid charm and instead focused on their working relationship- she was his annoying sister who kept him on the straight and narrow.

Qimir was ushered onto the stage and in front of thousands of screaming fans, Mae standing off to the side, looking at her phone. She returned to the green room, answering calls and e-mails as the concert went on for three hours and finally he came back, sweaty, laughing and looking like he had been having fun. He showered quickly in his dressing room and they were on their way out to greet fans out front.

“We’re heading back to the hotel, your fans have twenty minutes,” Mae said, the stadium security escorting them through the hallways, leading towards the front of the stadium where fans were spilling out of the building, waiting to get a glimpse of him.

Qimir pushed his black hair back, thinking about the evening’s performance when just as they were going through the doors, a shot rang out and everyone screamed, fans running in different directions, everyone dropping down and the stadium security grabbed him, taking him back inside.

He didn’t know what was going on when there were more shots and he was forced into a side hallway and into an elevator.

“What’s going on?!” he asked, looking at Mae, who had also been grabbed.

“I don’t know!”

The security team took him down to the basement and shoved him into a car before he had the chance to ask what was happening and they were off.

“What is going on? What happened?” Qimir demanded of the driver. They made it back to the hotel and heard the news that someone had been shot outside of his concert. A fan had tried to bring a gun into the building but she had been stopped by security and the cops had talked to her. It was a legal handgun that she owned and she had been told to leave, apparently she came back after the concert and had starting shooting in Qimir’s direction when she had seen him coming out for fan photos. She was shot and in critical condition in downtown.

“Well, this isn’t good,” Mae said, looking around the hotel room. The crew and roadies had been escorted back to their hotels by stadium security, but already everyone was on edge because of the incident. Qimir had been popular but since his album release a few weeks earlier and being nominated for Artist of the Year, he had moved to a super high status in the entertainment world. That kind of attention came with all kinds of threats. They had never had serious security before and this was making her nervous.

“We are going to have to get you personal security.”

“Personal security? Mae, there’s no need for all of that,” he said, looking skeptical and she shook her head.

“With everything going on I think we need to be more careful. With the movie coming out, the concerts and the public events, you are extremely exposed, you need someone to watch out for you.”

“Yeah, but I don’t want someone who is going to stand out, that’s boring. Can you get someone who does like undercover work? Like a cool spy?” he whined and she rolled her eyes. This guy was so annoying. She looked at her phone and saw that her sister had finally texted her back.

Are you okay? I heard about what happened. Call me!

“Hold that thought,” she said, stepping into the hallway and calling her sister. “Hey, Osha, I am okay, I promise.”

“Mae! What on earth happened?”

“Well-”

She explained the situation and then finally made her request, “Hey, do you think that Sol would let you come help us out for a bit?”

“You want me to come be security for your client?”

“Qimir is not going to let some guy in a suit and sunglasses protect him, I need someone who can handle all of his annoying,” she explained, thinking of the many times he had gotten into trouble with the paparazzi in the past by making a scene. “We need your help, Osha.”

The Republic Knights were a very effective personal security team that had been formed many years earlier by Osha and Mae’s mentor, Sol. When Mae and Osha were younger, they had been enrolled in self-defense classes by their mother, and Sol had taught them how to take care of themselves. He had moved into private security after several years with the FBI and had offered Osha a job when she was in college. She had been working with him ever since.

Private security was never really Osha’s original interest, but she did get to travel a lot, help protect people and enjoy the added benefit of getting to go to some really nice places. The hotel in downtown where Mae was staying was far more luxurious than Osha was used to.

She had been working personal security for a trading group that had ships going in and out of Africa for the last several months when she got the call about Mae and went to Sol to ask for the security evaluation. Mae was insistent that the Republic Knights be the ones that provide the security service because she could trust Sol. He had a small but dedicated team that had not lost a client the entire time he had been in business.

Sol had insisted that he take the meeting in person, bringing Osha, Jecki and Yord with him to assess the threat level.

“This is a nice place,” Osha muttered to herself as they looked around the hotel lobby, waiting for Mae to come to them. The place was high dollar and they had never worked for someone at this level before.

“Not very secure,” Yord muttered and Jecki looked at him.

“It’s a hotel, idiot, not a Marine Barracks, they’re hiring us to secure it,” she said, rolling her eyes. The two had been working with Sol for about a year now and they were constantly getting on each other nerves.

“Enough, all of you, we have to look professional,” he said, fixing his suit jacket.

“What’s so special about this guy anyway?” Jecki asked, looking at Osha.

“My sister is his manager, he is mainly a singer, but he’s been doing TV shows and movies, he has a new movie coming out and the threats have been getting worse and worse. He is a big deal, I guess,” Osha said, though she had never met him before. Qimir was the thorn in her sister’s side, she was always complaining about what a pain in her ass he was, but she had liked the job and they had a good working relationship.

Mae appeared at the elevators and thanked them for coming, shaking Sol’s hand and they went up to the penthouse to meet Qimir.

“Qimir was discovered by a modeling agency about five years ago, he started singing too and that’s when his career took off with his first album, The Stranger. Since then he has been super popular. We’ve been on tour for the last two months. We wrapped his movie a month ago and it’s in post production so soon we will be doing a press tour. After what happened, I realized that we need to come up with a better security set up because we’ve been relying mostly on security at the venues and the movie lots.”

“We are more than happy to oblige, but this is a big ask, Mae, we have never taken on such a big client before.”

“That’s why I thought of you, with such a small operation, you would be more dedicated to his security than a bigger name. Besides, he’s an annoying pain in the ass and handling him is going to take a full team.”

“What about your security?” Osha asked, looking at her sister. She had been there when the woman had shot into the crowd.

“If you keep me from getting hurt too, that’s a bonus,” she said, as they reached the floor where the room was. They entered the massive penthouse to find that it was only decorated in the finest. Qimir was a major client. The most security that they had done the past few months had been escorting and trade route protection, not a single client that came with a big name. But Sol was excited for the new challenge and the higher rate of pay for his employees.

And he trusted Mae, she had been a good kid since he’d known her and Osha. They had been a little at odds because Osha had decided to keep her training under Sol going when Mae moved on to other things, but this was a chance for them to all work together.

“Qimir! Get out here, the security team is here,” Mae said, leaving them standing in the sitting area to hunt him down.

Yord took in the room, searching for all exits and being mindful of the massive windows that looked out on the city. Jecki helped herself to a spot next to Sol on the couch and Osha looked at the large painting of a lion on the wall.

“This is ridiculous, I don’t want some random people hanging around me like this,” Qimir whined as he followed Mae out of the bedroom, looking at the pair on the couch. “This is bullshit, I don’t need some suits hanging around telling me what to do.”

Mae looked at him, shaking her head.

“Qimir, I trust Sol, we’ve known each other for years, he will make sure that you are safe and that’s all that matters to me. I can’t lose my meal ticket now,” she said and he rolled his eyes, looking over and spotting Osha standing next to the massive painting and he stopped, taking her in.

She was wearing a black suit and white button up shirt and stiffened at his sudden attention. He looked her up and down and turned to face her.

“Hello,” he said, smiling at her and she looked at Mae.

“H-Hi…” she replied and walked right up to her, looking her over.

“Hi,” he said again in a much lower voice and got extremely close to her. She stiffened, looking up at him.

“Qimir, this is Sol, he’s the one who you’re meeting with today,” Mae said, looking annoyed and Sol stood up. “This is my sister, Osha, I’ve told you about her before.”

“I remember…” he said, not taking his eyes off of Osha as he completely ignored everyone else in the room. “How are you doing today?”

“F-Fine,” she said, looking at him, confused. What was his deal? She was used to being generally ignored and pushed aside. Sol was a great mentor, but he always maintained professional distance with her. Yord was the king of following the rules so he was no fun and Jecki was great, but she was not great at getting close with people, making Osha tend to stand off on her own. Her profession also made her more of a wallflower than a conversationalist.

“Qimir,” Mae snapped, grabbing him by the collar and pulling him towards the couch, forcing him to sit down. She shook her head, looking at Osha. “Sorry about him.”

Osha recovered quickly, but Qimir had yet to take his eyes off of her.

“I understand you were hesitant about having a security team around,” Sol said, trying to gain control of the meeting, “And I understand that you want to go about your life normally but-”

“No, it’s fine- I want Osha to take care of me,” Qimir said, finally taking his eyes off of Osha and looking at Sol.

“Excuse me?” Sol asked, surprised.

“Sure- yeah, if she is the one who is my escort, I am more than satisfied,” he said, smiling at her. “Mae trusts you, so I trust you, and I want Osha.”

“Uh- I don’t think-” Osha tried to interject, but Sol reached out a hand to Qimir.

“We are happy to do business with you!” he said a little too hastily. A client like this with this kind of money was going to get them more team members. Sol looked at Osha, smiling at her in reassurance.

Qimir looked at Osha, sitting back on his couch and she felt like this was a big mistake.

______

@flythesail bruh you did this to me, now I can't be stopped

[void-ink-studios]

Traitorous Cockroach

I wrote that idea I had about Orbo!

It was fun, writing from a bastard's perspective. Orbo is simply the worst, unapologetically so. He's a narcissist, and I will not say sorry for writing him as such.

So enjoy Scarab putting him in his place!

Word Count: 4,100

When Orbo got to roll back out into the light for the first time in... what, 5,000 years, he thought he'd finally be allowed a bit of peace.

He thought he'd have his rad office back, he could find someone to get rid of this fucking snake, and he could spend the rest of eternity not thinking of two certain gods ever again.

He gave the Organizer nothing more than what was strictly necessary in terms of a farewell. He listened to the Judge prattle on about how they hoped Orbo had seen the error of his ways or whatever.

It was all worth it for when he'd get his office back.

Until the Organizer handed a piece of paper with a new room assignment.

"Demoted?!"

The Organizer gave no verbal reaction to the Star Core's indignation.

"Hold on, wait, I served my time! I want my office back!"

"Did you expect to be granted your old position back after what you were in trouble for in the first place? Do I need to go over everything you were found guilty of again? What were you honestly expecting?"

Orbo sputtered for a second, feeling himself shrink a moment at her harsh tone.

"Orbo, you stand before the Judge to answer for several egregious violations of Judgement Hall conduct and ethics. Organizer, please read the charges."

Orbo couldn't believe this was happening. Just a few days ago, he was about to get his buddy the Wishmaster back from whatever spell that bug put on him and now... Now he was standing in the Judgement Hall like some kind of criminal?!

"Yes, Judge. Orbo, you stand accused of abuse of Judgement Hall resources, repeated instances of abuse of power over subordinates, failure to respond to reported threats in a timely or appropriate manner, and inappropriate enactment of punishment outside of your authority and jurisdiction."

"Orbo, how do you explain these charges?"

"I... They're not true! None of that is true!"

"Is it, or is it not true you sent a High Auditor on missions meant to be handled by Interns and Low Auditors? These include cases of misattribution of Judgement Hall supplies and misuse of Judgement Hall time."

"W-Well, yes, I sent Scarab on those missions. But he was out of important missions to do!"

"The appropriate course of action would be to let Scarab rest if that were the case. Sending him out on such missions is a waste of his time, your time, the Judgement Hall's time, and is taking learning opportunities from new recruits, which has lead to an overall decrease in productivity in the lower branches of Auditors. Organizer, is this assessment accurate?"

"Yes Judge."

"That is one charge you have lied about. Do you wish to revise your previous statements? If you revise right now, I will not add perjury onto your charge list. Otherwise, we can continue down the list, and I will add a new charge of perjury for every single instance we find. So I will ask again. Orbo, how do you explain these charges?"

Orbo swallowed at the memory of his... interesting trial. He shook his head, looking back up to the Organizer, who seemed to be preoccupied reading something on the desk.

"But-"

"Not to mention your... substandard performance in the Archives. No, I can't grant you your previous position at this time. Perhaps if you show improvement, we can revisit this. But for now, you are being reassigned."

He couldn't believe this.

He was a god. He was older than most of the starry-eyed dolts in the pantheon, he had earned his position!

"Let's see... Hmm, no, you've been out of practice far too long to be an Auditor again... Let's see here... Ah, here's a place for you."

She handed him a piece of paper.

"...Compiler? As in... as in the guys who sort through those endless stacks of paperwork looking for discrepancies?" She couldn't be serious. She couldn't really be diminishing him to... to a paper pusher!

"Yes, a Compiler. You'd have no subordinates to terrorize, and it's one of the only jobs in my jurisdiction that you can't fail at badly enough to cause a crisis."

"But... But that's... That's almost the bottom of the barrel! I have Seniority over everyone in that office!"

"Yes, I'm sure they'll be impressed that such an old guard is joining them. If you don't like it, you can always continue where you left off in the Archives."

The door to the side of her slid open, the dusty smelling ozone seeping into the room.

"N-No! No, that won't be necessary, mate. Compiler it is then..."

She hummed, gesturing for the paper to be returned. Orbo silently obeyed, wincing as she brought the stamp down, and handed it back to him.

"Glad we have reached an agreement. Now then, you're to report to your new office immediately. You're dismissed."

Orbo's eyes widened as the door to her office opened.

"W-Wait!"

The Orgranizer shifted a few tired eyes at him.

"Is something the matter?"

He squirmed a little under her gaze, but took a deep breath.

"Could you do... something about this?"

He gestured to the snake currently sinking its teeth deep into the side of his head. He was thankful he had no blood to spill.

"I'm sorry but curses and the breaking of them are not part of my jurisdiction. You either need to resolve it with the one who cursed you, or take it through the official channels and file a request for the Judge."

"The Judge?!" The snake snarled, biting a bit harder, making him wince. "The Judge has a waiting list lightyears long!"

"Well then. Better file one as soon as your first break starts. You might want to get going."

And so, Orbo did.

He languished in the Compiler's office. It was as dreadfully boring as he imagined. Paperwork stacks a mile tall, replaced with a new one just as he nearly finished.

He wondered if his punishment ever actually ended.

And don't get him started on his... coworkers. Nothing special, most of them not even truly immortal. Many of them were just long-lived species on the intergalactic stage. Most of them didn't even have magic, not even innately. And none of them had a remotely interesting thought to share.

Several tried to chat, but none were even remotely cool enough to dignify with a response. Eventually, they got the hint and stopped trying.

One of them even had the audacity to try and pet the snake latched onto him. Called it cute.

Until one of them, finally, said something worth his attention.

"Guys! Guys you'll never guess what just happened!"

Orbo rolled his eyes as he continued working through his newest stack. The one currently disrupting the quiet was an odd little thing, an octopus looking creature, piloting some kind of robotic skeleton.

"What happened this time, did you finally catch your lunch thief?"

Nope, because that would be Orbo.

"No, that's still a bust. No, I saw Scarab! He was here, and he even said hi to me!"

Now they had his attention. He turned to look more at the excited alien. Wait... excited? About Scarab?

"No way! And you didn't tell us the Star Auditor was here? Glorm, I will tie your tentacles in a knot, I swear to Glob-"

"I didn't know! I literally just got back from delivering something to one of the managers, and he was just... There! Just leaving the Organizer's office!"

"And you're sure he said hi to you?"

"Yes! He asked where I was coming from and said to keep up the good work!"

No, this couldn't be right. This was the same Scarab, yes? The traitorous little cockroach, there was no way he was being spoken of with... awe, right? He must be mishearing the emotions in their voice.

"Sorry you had to experience that, mate" he decided to butt in.

The office went weirdly quiet. They were looking at him now, but with dumb confusion.

"Sorry? Why are you sorry?"

"If this is the same Scarab I remember, I can't imagine seeing him being pleasant. Not a cool bone in his body." Orbo shivered just thinking about it.

"Wait... You knew Scarab from back in the day? Back when he was the God Auditor?"

"Knew him? I was his boss."

"Is it true? Is it true that he was hand-picked by the Boss for defeating a Comic threat as a mortal?"

Orbo scoffed. "He got lucky. Wouldn't have been able to without that crystal he swiped from the Judgement Hall. Look, just take my word for it, you don't wanna be on his radar. Best to avoid him in my opinion."

With that, he turned back to his desk, satisfied.

"...Where have you been for the past, I don't know, eons?"

And he stopped again.

"Excuse me?"

"I mean... Scarab's awesome! He saved his home world, like, single handedly! As a mortal!"

"Like I said, he got lucky." How did these knuckleheads not get it yet?

"He was the most effective Auditor of all time! He's the Organizer's go-to!"

"Her personal enforcer if I remember correctly!"

"Wait, what?" When did that happen?

"He's captured almost every cosmic criminal sitting in the Neo Citadel!"

"He's an inspiration! He was mortal, and he managed to do all that! Gives me hope maybe I could do something amazing like that."

"Yeah, maybe when you finally remember which stamp goes on which form, we'll talk."

They all laughed with each other like they'd said something actually witty but... Orbo was just... stumped. How is Scarab this... well liked? What happened in the time he was gone? He thought he had everyone being on the same page as him.

There was nothing admirable about a cockroach.

Looks like this place really has gone mad.

He shoved it out of his mind for now, more focused on trying to get his office back than worry about what that skittering little creature was up to.

Until he heard about it again.

"I think Scarab's going to be hosting a seminar soon, right? Yeah, for the new Interns. Maybe they'd let some of us hang out in the back?"

And again.

"You hear Scarab took down the Star Leech? Can't imagine what that battle must've looked like. Wonder what he'll go after next."

And again.

"I saw Scarab out by the gardens a bit ago. I wanted to talk to him, but I think he was meditating or something. Looked peaceful, I might try it."

Okay, what was happening?

Back when he was in charge, Orbo practically had to pull teeth to get Scarab in the Judgement Hall. Now it seemed he was here every other minute. And people didn't seem to have a problem with it. How? How did no one see the issue here?

Something was off. Something had changed. But what?

A particularly hard bite to his back prompted a potential answer.

Prismo.

Prismo had to have done something, there's no other reason Scarab had such free reign.

He was still baffled by the Wishmaster's behavior. How could someone so... so cool fall for such a repulsive little worm? He acted like... like he loved him or something.

He gagged at the thought.

Prismo had to be swaying the pantheon, that was the only explanation.

If Orbo had known that the mercy he granted the bug would blow up this badly, he'd have just chucked him in the furnace and been done with it.

Why hadn't he? He'd finally gotten what he wanted for eons, and he just... Why did Prismo stick out for him? It still made no sense.

At first, he'd been amused. Sure, let the Wishmaster "mentor" Scarab for a bit. Prismo had an annoying habit of trying to see the best in everyone. But, spend a long enough time with Scarab, and that'd be his last ally gone. He waited for the day he got contacted by Prismo telling him he changed his mind, he wanted this gross bug out of the Time Room, and Orbo would be the hero.

Except... the call never came.

A day past.

Then a week.

Then a few months.

Nothing.

A part of Orbo worried Scarab might've finally killed the Wishmaster, but that would've been instant news. No, Prismo was probably okay...

Maybe he was just too nice a guy to say anything? Afterall, he knew first hand how awful Scarab was to deal with at the best of times, much less when stuck with the one entity he hates the most.

He really should apologize to Prismo for that one.

And yet, when he showed up, Prismo didn't take the out! Despite him witnessing Scarab's creepy behavior, he was on the ceiling for Glob's sake, but Prismo seemed none to care! He got angry at him! Him! Scarab must've been saying something. Something to turn their beloved Wishmaster against them.

How else would you explain that terrifying shadow he turned into?

Orbo was getting tired of hearing about Scarab. He even saw him, once, out in the hall. Didn't even acknowledge him.

How dare he.

"GUYS!"

His manager (ugh) barged into the office, clearly excited about something. Everyone jumped as he banged the door open, a piece of paper clutched in his hand.

"What what what?"

"Guess who just got invited to a party at the Time Cube?!"

"No way!"

"What?! Jealous!"

"Aw man, lucky!"

Orbo sat there. Baffled. Prismo's hosting... parties again? And he wasn't invited???

Wait, since when was Prismo's parties invitation based?

"I know, right? I guess I really made an impression on Scarab! He got me invited! I can't believe I get to party with both Wishmasters! Somebody pinch me! I'll put in a good word for you guys, maybe I can get Scarab to come in one day!"

Wait wait wait wait wait.

"Did you just say... BOTH Wishmasters? I thought Prismo was the only one?"

Now they looked at him like he has three heads.

"Wow, you really missed a lot, Orbo. Yeah, Scarab's a Wishmaster, part of the time. After a string of big cases, the Boss gives him some time to be Wishmaster alongside Prismo. Sounds like a lot of work to me, but it seems to work for the both of them."

"Oh, it works alright. They get to smooch all they want."

"Carsinda! We don't gossip like that!"

"Since when? You know it's true, it's not gossip if everybody knows."

Okay, now Orbo's brain was broken.

Prismo and Scarab? Together?

The thought of anyone wanting Scarab like that... to say it made him retch was an understatement.

And here he thought Prismo had decent taste.

Although, from what he's heard about a connection he had to some... mortal, maybe that was an overestimation.

This entire place has gone mad, that's the only explanation. Things have fallen apart without him. People have forgotten exactly what Scarab is. What he always will be.

A dirty little traitorous cockroach.

And dirty little cockroaches don't get to win. They don't get to hang out in the most powerful spot in the multiverse, in the good graces of the most powerful gods in the pantheon. Not when awesome, true gods like him is left to languish in a meaningless office job!

No, they belong in the dirt. Preferably under a boot.

Hmm...

Maybe it was time to pay his old pals a visit. Just to clear the air.

-------------------------------------

It wasn't hard, slipping away from the office. And getting to the Time Room from the Judgement Hall was simple enough.

But... woah. Seems the Time Room's... changed a bit.

He lingered in the doorway, just taking it in, swallowing down winces and yelps from his "buddy's" little interruptions.

There were plants everywhere. Vines, ferns, flowers, even a willow tree. How they were there, he had no idea. He thoughts things couldn't really... live? Not in the Time Room at least. And yet, it looked like a terrarium in here, with strange glowing flowers to boot.

Crystals wrapped in gold filigree cast a soft light, contrasting against the strange clouds swirling at the ceiling. Throw rugs covered a large chunk of the floor, a desk against a wall, and many shelves climbing up and down the previously featureless surfaces of the Time Room. The only wall spared of strange shelves and photos was the TV Wall it would seem.

Well, at least the hot tub was still there, sitting underneath the previously mentioned willow tree. Something familiar.

An elaborate nest of pillows and blankets nearly covered up and comfortable looking seating area, so all encompassing it took up a huge corner of the room.

And it was there that he saw... them.

Prismo, holding Scarab against his chest, sitting on the couch.

Orbo had to blink a few times to process what he was seeing.

Prismo. Was off the wall. He looked strange, not just because he wasn't just a shadow anymore. His legs looked different, he appeared to be made out of gas, he had stars orbiting him, it all looked... wrong. That wasn't his Prismo.

Scarab looked pretty much as hideous as he remembered. There wasn't even the decency to wear his mask. Just his horrid face, out for all to see.

The cockroach seemed to be asleep, thankfully, tucked in close to Prismo's side as the Wishmaster browsed the TV Wall. Scarab made those odd chittering noises as he slept, mandibles twitching ever so slightly. Prismo seemed to have taken to idly petting Scarab's head. It was... sugary sweet.

Wait a second... Were those....?

Yep. Antenna. Ghostly blue antenna, but antenna none the less. Prismo curled his finger around one and dragged up, earning himself a content sigh from the bug in his arms.

How in Glob's name did he get his antenna back? He made sure they were gone, he watched them get cut from his scalp, he tossed them into the incinerator himself!

Wait, if his antenna were back did that mean...? No... No, he couldn't have those back...

The longer he stared, the more confused he became. What had happened to this pantheon?

Scarab's antenna twitched. They shivered, perking upright, making the cockroach rouse from his slumber. A nervous chitter fell from his mouth.

"Hmm? Something the matter, Lovebug?"

"...I know you're there" Scarab said, voice flat.

Well, now or never.

Orbo rolled on in, smiling.

"Ya got me. Guess who got out of prison!"

Scarab sat up, his eyes narrowed but expression blank. Prismo frowned.

"What are you doing here, Orbo?"

"What, I can't visit my favorite Wishmaster after 5,000 years? Like what you've done with the place."

Neither entity seemed impressed.

"Get to the point" Prismo growled.

Woah, tough crowd. He yelped a bit as the snake sunk its teeth into the top of his head. He missed Prismo's little smirk.

"Just wanted to confirm some... rumors I heard around the office. Scarab's Wishmaster now?"

"I am. Part time, at least."

"Hmm. So. You finally got all you wanted, Scrabs?"

"You don't have permission to call me that."

Orbo's head throbbed. This little...

"Oh you skittering little-"

The snake on his head seemed to get a bit bigger. A bit heavier, now biting over and over. Prismo had stood up at some point, leering angrily over Orbo.

"I thought I made it clear you aren't welcome in the Time Room, Orbo. I thought that maybe the Archive might've given you time to think or something. Maybe realize what a scum bag you were. But I guess not."

Scarab watched from the sidelines, an even expression on his horrid little face.

"Oh shove off you sham of a Wishmaster! You and I both know that he wouldn't have none of this if it weren't for you! He's a leech. And you're just letting him cling to your belly."

"That's it, get out-"

Prismo stopped as a hand tapped his shoulder. Scarab had stood up and walked to stand beside the Wishmaster.

"Lovebug?"

Scarab took a deep breath.

"Let me handle this, Prismo."

The dream's eyes widened, looking between Scarab and Orbo concerned.

"Are you sure...?"

"Completely. It's clear he has something to say to me. I say let him say his piece. And I'll say mine. And then I kick him out."

The two shared a look with each other, a silent conversation bouncing back and forth between them. Prismo nodded, taking a step back to observe.

Scarab turned back to Orbo.

"You've got something you want to say to me, Orbo? Now's the time. Go ahead. Nothing will leave this room. You've never held back before."

Orbo blinked. Scara had never looked this... calm before. He saw the traces of wish magic thrumming across his shell.

"You're nothing. You know that, right Scrabs? You're just a dirty little cockroach. This life ain't meant for the likes of you."

"Oh come now. Is that the best you've got?"

Rage boiled into Orbo's heart.

"You know what I said was right. This? All this? It's all Prismo. You'd be nothing without him. I'd have tossed you in the incinerator without a second thought if not for him. Just like I did with your antenna and your wings."

He saw Scarab stiffen a bit, but his expression remained unchanged. Prismo seemed to be boiling, but the cockroach seemed to be keeping him at bay.

"Yeah, there's that little mystery solved for you, mate. I tossed your antenna the second you left. I kept your wings in a drawer for a few centuries. Then I tossed those too. It's what creatures like you are meant for. You're an ugly little novelty. And if it wasn't for him trying to get some, you'd be nothing. You're built on nothing but luck and riding on someone else's coattails. You and I both know it.

"I'd do it all again. I'd just be better at training you to keep your mouth shut."

Scarab was still. Silent.

Yeah, that's right. You know I'm right, you cockroach.

"Are you done?"

Orbo's scowl deepened. He didn't step down, he never would to the likes of Scarab.

"Seems like it. You know... Everything you said probably would've... I'm not sure. Devastated me? If it were a few thousand years ago, I'd have believed everything you said. I still believe some of it. I truly believe you'd have done everything you did to me, again and again. Even after one million years in the Archive, you would still see me as nothing but a skittering little insect at your feet."

Scarab opened his elytra, letting his false wings carry him up into a relaxed hover, above Orbo.

"But... Well, we're not 5,000 years ago. I lived. I carried on. You languished. I know where you're stationed, Orbo. I know all you have is words. Empty words. You can't help but recall what happened all those eons ago, because you can't do anything except revel in the past."

Scarab took a moment to examine his talons before looking back down at the Star Core.

"I know what you are, Orbo."

He lowered himself, leaning his face in close.

"You're empty. You're sad and empty. There's just... nothing but hollow ego inside you."

Scarab raised himself back up, his expression almost softening.

"That's the difference between us, Orbo. You're nothing but ego, so what are you when you sit at the bottom of the hierarchy? I'm not interested in your politics. I'm not interested in your games. I know you only came here to play. But you're the only one at the table, Orbo. You're playing by yourself."

Scarab let himself drift into a relaxed position, even reaching down to pet the snake's head softly.

"I don't forgive you, for what you did to me. But I will thank you. Unfortunately, you have nothing else I want. Perhaps I'll forgive you, in a millennia or two. Honestly, I hope all the best for you. But... above all else..."

Scarab landed on the ground again, hands folded in front of him.

"Above all else, I pity you Orbo. I. Pity. You. Now then, this has been a good chat. Goodbye."

And with a snap, Orbo was gone. Dumped right back in the compiler's office. With nothing but a hollow anger and confusion.

-----------------------------

Scarab released a shuddering breath. Prismo was by his side in an instant, cooing and kissing the side of his head and neck, nuzzling his cheek.

"You did so good, Lovebug... Glob, I'm so proud of you..."

Scarab nodded. His hands trembled, but he made sure to get a good hold of Prismo's. He turned his head to nuzzle back. He let the Wishmaster drag him back to the couch, wrapping around him in a loving embrace, murmuring sweet nothings.

Scarab thought hard about what just happened. What he said.

That was hard. That was terrifying. But...

He purred into Prismo's sweet touched. He looked all around their little paradise, their home. He was safe here. He was loved here.

Above all, he was free here.

[fyeahaudiodrama]

Any tips for staying connected with your audience and reaching new listeners during a long break when you don't have new content to post about?

P.S. very excited for Act 2!!

Ooh, let’s see…

1. Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

It’s always morally acceptable to repost your old content again. In this day and age when social media platforms try to bury anything that isn’t new and shiny, you have no concept of who saw your new thing in the first place, or if your new followers have seen it, or if everyone who did see it even had context for it the first time. So put the things you already made out there again!

2. #Aesthetic #Goals

Keep up with reblogging things that relate to your show’s general vibes. Share gifsets from movies or quotes from books that helped inspire your show or troll through the tag of your characters favorite foods or slap some together in a moodboard. Just keep the vibe going.

3. The End

Advertise specifically based on the fact that you currently have completed season(s). Some people want to wait until there’s a whole bunch of something to binge or are more comfortable listening when there’s already a whole thing. You can also submit shows with finished seasons/series to The End to be featured in their newsletter.

4. Non-Spoilers for Fun & Profit

Get publicly excited about your own production process. Share bits from your script out of context, post a vague “I just wrote that part 😬,” keep a running total of production goals accomplished. Give both audiences and yourself a sense of how much you’ve done already, so that neither of you forget how much work goes into a season.

5. Ethical Stealing

See something fun another audio drama blog is doing? A funny joke or meme format? Do that too! People are generally cool with copying things for social media, especially if you give them a little shoutout, and you can always ask someone “Hey, is it okay if I also do this?” if you’re unsure.

6. Sharing is Caring

Try doing feed or promo swaps with other shows whose audiences might crossover well with yours! It helps keep your own RSS feed active, and helps build relationships across shows.

Okay, that’s about all for now, go support Starfall kthxbai