#obvs also it was physically harder to speak for a few days

[blasphamoustraitors]

.

[shhhlikeme]

F*cked Out 💤

Ojiro Aran Domestic Smut (NSFW) part 2

A/N: I wrote this as a Part 2 to this fic, but it can be read as a stand alone!

18+, Explicit smut, praise kink, Aged up obvs, Timeskip spoilers

Tagging: @saitamastamaticsoup & @chunhua-s b/c these Aran stans found part 1 last night & their comments made me thirsty enough to write a pt. 2. Hope you like it!

also my lovely @qyuanon who I just read is back and I missed her💛

Futilely, you knocked on the door to yours and your man’s home office. Leaning on the frame, you crossed your arms. Being a literal isolationist when you had to work, you never understood why your man liked keeping the office door open. But then he told you once that he didn’t like the fact that he couldn’t hear you calling him if the door was closed. ‘What if something happened and I didn’t run to you?’ He had explained, pouting when you laughed at him. It warmed your heart, but you decided not to call his name tonight, instead opting to physically pay him a visit. You had to, because what lead you here in the first place was serious! You had just woken up in the middle of the night because his side of the bed had turned cold. Yeah, that deserved nothing less than a visit from you! 

From your spot in the doorway you could see Ojiro sitting at the grand desk, his back turned to you, the lights from his laptop playing some Team Canada highlights. The screen bluelight shone brightly on his gorgeous dark skin, the back of his head bobbed up and down as he dutifully wrote down any important plays he was seeing so that he could tell his coach tomorrow.

“Babe,” You announced your presence with a soft smile. Your man is such a hard worker and he really doesn’t get enough credit for it. You tighten the robe you were wearing because it was always kind of drafty on this side of the house. “You have a game tomorrow.” 

Your boyfriend, captain of the Japanese National Volleyball Team’s shoulders slumped when he heard you, but he didn’t turn around. 

He didn’t have to.

He never had to. Even though you’ve only been dating for a bit over a year, you two knew each other so well that you could accurately tell exactly what kind of expressions, feelings, and thoughts permeated the other without having to be vis-a-vis. When you first met, your dates were—objectively speaking—oddly silent for the most part. The waitress once asked you if you were uncomfortable through an inconspicuous napkin note, which was kind of her—but the truth was that on that date you were actually more than Okay! It might have seemed odd to an outsider or eavesdropper that no sentences were being finished, and both people on said date were constantly staring down, away, or into each others eyes in silence… but realistically, neither of them could grasp the fact that words weren’t necessary when there existed a connection like yours and Aran’s. 

‘It’s fate. He’s the one.’ You had told your friends after the second date when you realized your mind reading wasn’t a fluke. Because as corny as it sounded then and even now in your memory; it was true, tf. 

Doesn’t mean you weren’t going to kick his ass for letting his side of the bed go cold, though. You were used to Aran being gone for volleyball so you had no problem falling asleep alone, but when you were ecstatic to have him home it was important for him to REMAIN home, which means staying in bed if you fell asleep on his chest! He has never done it before, so This is not Okay!

“I know, baby, I know…” your boyfriend calls to you, scribbling on his notepad faster. “I’m almost done. I-I think their setter could be doing one of two plays to start tomorrow, and I don’t think it’s the one I was sure about before we went to bed. And I mean, we play them until 12pm, so—“

“So nothing. You still have to be up by 6. The stadium is far and knowing you, you won’t sleep on the Team’s bus, you’ll still be watching these videos even then. I’ll—“

“Please don’t tell Iwaizumi-san, he will kick my ass! We’re playing Team Canada tomorrow and they are ranked just under us but—“

“Not by a lot, I know. I understand, but you guys will still pull the win. I know it....because Your team has you.”

Aran chuckled heartily, continuing to scribble with his back still turned, but his voice turned a little more endearing. “Thank you, baby. But.... I can’t seem to sleep tonight... I just can’t. I’ve been up this whole time so I—” As your boyfriend babbled on, you quietly interjected, 

“I know a way to get you to sleep.” 

“—won’t use my laptop in bed and wake you up when you’re sleeping so….wait….what did you—?” 

You smirked, knowing that your man knew why your voice had dropped a few octaves. He knew you were up to something, not because you two could practically read each other’s minds—moreso because you two had already established that that specific tone of voice of yours made his dick hard. The pen he was scribbling with stopped moving, finally, and you could just picture the way he gulped just now. 

“I know you can’t sleep, Ar…..” You made sure he could hear you clearly now, in the voice you only reserved for fuck-me-o’clock. 

A sexy smirk that Ojiro could see without looking at you played in his mind and on your face simultaneously. 

“Yeah?” He asked, his deep voice cracking. 

You kept speaking in that voice with one goal in mind.

“Yes, baby…” You hummed thoughtfully before stating,

“So why don’t you come over here and fuck me so hard it puts you to bed, then?”

Drunk off horniness caused by the amount sex dripping from your voice, the captain of Japan’s National Volleyball Team slowly turned the office chair so that he was facing you. 

Boldly, you turned your back to him at the same time and fiddled your hands that just tightened your robe. This time, instead of tightening it, you loosened the strings fully so your robe was wide open, facing the emptiness of your house. Knowing that your boyfriend was checking out and admiring your ass in that short silk robe and desiring the shock factor—in one motion you tossed the robe over your shoulders so that it pooled at your feet, exposing your completely nude back and backside to your man. 

“🤤 Shit,” Ojiro groaned, sounding as if he couldn’t believe his eyes. You just knew your man was biting that full and juicy bottom lip of his.

Swaying your hips to give your man a tiny show, you sauntered precisely where he didn’t want you to: away from him; heading towards the master bedroom. 

You kept yourself from giggling when you heard the aggressive shutting of a laptop, a volleyball announcer being cut off, and a certain volleyball player’s stumbling and cursing because Ojiro was practically chasing you out of the office.

***

“Mmmm…. Fuck..”

A few minutes later, your mind displayed a valiant effort by attempting to guess how your boyfriend looked right now, but it would be in vain. You couldn’t picture your man like you usually could because you were currently being fucked way too fucking well. Ojiro was filling you completely with just half his length, whispering horny-nothings to help you understand his feelings anyway:

“God damn, Y/N… Every. Time. Feels. So. God. Damn. Good,”

Now, If your mind was clear you’d be able to perfectly visualize how Ojiro’s face was scrunched up in pleasure right now, a coat of sweat coating his nude dark skin, the skylight over his head allowing the moon to reflect an insanely sexy glow sheen over his muscles due to the perspiration. 

“Auuh there’s nothing better than this, baby…”

If your mind was clear you’d be able to perfectly visualize how Ojiro’s head was tilted backwards right now, his mouth slightly ajar as he focused on not cumming inside you within the first few minutes of this because he needed to feel you cum around him first. As always. 

“Not when I hitting a line shot, not when I get a service ace.... nothing feels—auuuh f-uck— better than your pussy, baby girl..…”

If your mind was clear, you’d be able to see Ojiro on his knees behind you, holding your hips in his giant hands while he drove into you from behind, inserting only half his cock in and out like a pro, then surprising you with a fully thrust every now and then when he sheathed all 10 inches inside your heat.

“Mmm, so ti-ight, always so wet… damn,”

Despite your mind being clouded by immense pleasure, however—you did know that you looked absolutely wrecked with your face pressed in the pillow, blindly reaching behind you to tap or wave or pinch or do something to him since you couldn’t speak. You could barely made any sounds other than choked out moans because it felt so spectacular… but you didn’t have to! Aran knew that you wanted your boyfriend to stop playing and give you full strokes. His half thrusts filled and pleasured you more than any one ever could because he was huge and skilled in bed, he knew just how your insides liked to be stroked, but that didn’t stop you from silently pleading to him..

Even if Ojiro wasn’t holding back like always because he was very aware of his size and girth, even if you both knew that it would hurt you the next day like after a good workout, even if you walked funny when you had to attended his Olympic game several hours from now—you fucking needed it.

HE fucking needed it!

“Harder, Ar,” You commanded, “Deeper!”

“Fuck,” Your boyfriend panted, still not giving you what you asked 7 amazing strokes later. 

“Harder, now!” You cried as if you were whispering to the fucking pillow. You hadn’t the strength to lift your head. Your orgasm was fast approaching because HALF your man’s dick was too good and there was no way you weren’t bringing him with you. “Deeper, baby!”

“Y-you su-sure?” He asked worriedly. He always did this shit 🙄. He always worried way too much about your body soreness and way too little about both of your impending orgasms tonight rocking your motherfucking worlds. 

Ugh!

Good boyfriends and their fucked up PRIORITIES, amirite?!

Needless to say, you didn’t have time for compassionate Aran tonight. You needed him to fuck the both of you to sleep the way you knew he was capable of if he stopped holding back. Besides, he should have been in bed hours ago. You had to do this for the sake of the National Team! You had to this for JAPAN! (A/N: lucky b*tch shut your horny ass up)

So that’s why, in response to his asking if you were sure or not, you responded by clenching your insides so that your slick hole squeezed around your boyfriend’s cock. 

As soon as he felt you pulsing impossibly tighter around him as he fucked you halfway, his eyes rolled back in his head. 

“Fuuuuuuuuuuck…” He moaned deeply, so of course you continued doing it.

“Shit, Y/N, Okay, Okay,”

Without having to beg for mercy, your man did as you asked him to. He moved his hands from your waist to splay them on each of your ass cheeks, spreading them apart to make more room for his member that already barely fit (with your hasty prep and not his tentative one), but especially when your pussy clenched around him like that. With a loud moan from both of you, he bottomed out and stayed there for a bit to get you used to the size. You almost passed out by how good it felt pressing against your g-spot.

When Aran couldn’t take it anymore, and he started giving it to you: hard, fast, and deep. 

“Ye, baby, make room for me just like this…..” He moaned, gripping your ass tighter. “You want all of me? You think your tight hole can handle all of me?” He asked, no growled, still giving shallow but gratifying thrusts.

You whimpered, knowing that Ojiro knew the answer to that. Even so, you egged him on, “Sh-Show me why you’re the best top,” playing into your dirty talk from the last time y’all had sex like this but he was under you. 

Your boyfriend let out a long groan in his smooth deep voice and picked up his pace in reaponse, sending a new wave of wetness to your private. You were so soaked down there that it sounded like y’all were having sex in the bath tub, fuck. 

Your man loved it. 

“Mmmm, —m’ close beautiful,” He called, snapping his hips forward to meet you g-spot again and again. “It’s you, baby, it’s you,” Your man groaned. “Your pussy feels too fucking good……. I’d never pull out if I had to co-couldd,” 

“Oh, God. Aran!" You moaned loudly due to his dirty talk and praise, teetering on the edge of your release. Knowing that you maybe had 30 seconds left if you focused, you must have decided that you didn’t want to walk tomorrow at all because being the weakness of your bf you are, from your position being pounded into the sheets, you propped yourself up on your weak arms so that you could use the fact that your elbows were digging into the mattress as leverage to push your body back so that you met Aran’s deep thrusts. 

Like your boyfriends does every rare time he’s able to see your glorious ass bounce on his hard dick, his eyes flew open and he felt as though he’d been transported to heaven itself. 

“Y/N—auh, s-so sexy, aah, ooh, ohhh, fuck, Y/N,”

entranced, Aran couldn’t even last another second before he was stopping your movements with his hands, sliding them back on your hips to hold you still as his orgasm took his muscular frame by storm. He saw stars.

Of course, his orgasm triggered yours immediately, and you cried your man’s name as you came on his dick. He whispered yours as your insides milked him without influence this time, effectively lengthening your man’s finish. Panting, Aran just barely caught himself before his now exhausted body toppled over you. 

His last wakeful act, being the gentleman that he is, was to roll over so he wouldn’t crush you with his body weight, pulling out at the same time. 

You wondered if he registered that he said, “thank you baby,” before he began softly snoring—a sign that he was completely worn out and sleeping.

You smiled softly to yourself when you heard his snores, finally turning when you caught your own breath, to fully see your boyfriend’s stunning face. You endearingly brushed his goatee with the tips of your fingers, turning his sleeping face to yours so you could peck his lips. Then, you just barely had the leg strength to stand up on limbs that barely worked, removing his condom for him, then using the furniture in your room to support you as you cleaned the two of you up. You almost fell asleep standing up as you used a cloth on the two of you. Five minutes later, you were back in bed, under the covers with your lover and amazing man. 

Usually, Ojiro Aran slept like the dead (when he first moved in you occasionally have to check if he was still breathing...) , but you knew now that if he snored, that was a sign that he was so fatigued. You knew about the snoring, but the talking was new to you. Ojiro was so deep in his sleep after that round, that he was talking to himself in his slumber, whispering sweet-nothings about you that you’d never let him know he vocalized to spare him the embarrassment.

Besides, he didn’t say anything too embarrassing.... and you knocked out as soon as your head met his chest, not even feeling his arm sweetly wrap around your waist to pull you closer. So, you didn’t even hear most of his sleep-talk.

And maybe you were right when you called it fate, that drove the two of you.... because if it wasn’t fate that had you place your head on Aran’s chest at that exact moment, if it wasn’t fate that made you fall asleep at that exact moment..... then, I mean, you would have heard Ojiro not a second later declare aloud that he’s hiding your engagement ring in the office’s cabinet drawer. You would have heard theis the real reason he wasn’t able to fall asleep: because he was so nervous about asking for your hand in marriage before his Japan vs. Canada game tomorrow, when you least expected it.

Cause like, well, that totally would have ruined the surprise.

But you did fall asleep. Fate did that. So him sleep talking honestly never really happened.

And you know what else never happened? 

You never had to feel the cold side of the bed again where your man should be, at least not that night, because Aran Ojiro your new fiancée’s body kept it warm all night, because you were great and helping him fall asleep like a baby....making him just that:

 f*cked out. 

[polniaczek]

jo and blair for the ship questions obviously if no one has asked it yet lol

i did get a few for them! might as well knock them all out here. ps to the anon whose ask i accidentally deleted a few days ago, i remembered that you asked for their sexualities? jo’s a lesbian. blair is bi and we love that for her.

PRE-RELATIONSHIP

How did they first meet? In the cafeteria on Jo’s first day. As the old saying goes, my Jordaches are your Jordaches.

What was their first impression of each other? Jo was not a fan of being misgendered and unimpressed by Blair's air of superiority. Blair was offended by Jo's disregard for social norms and etiquette.

Did any of their friends or family want them to get together? There were some growing sentiments of like, “Gee, they seem to have a different kind of connection than most friends.” Even without voicing it to each other, Nat and Tootie had a kind of understanding about it. Like, this probably won’t play out the way it could but I wouldn’t be that surprised if it did.

Who felt romantic feelings first? Blair. Jo was edgy and dangerous and everything Blair wasn’t. The physical attraction was there immediately (even if not recognized as such), but Jo’s also smart and sensitive and came to her rescue the day they met. Romantic attraction sort of went hand in hand.

Did either of them try to resist their feelings? Well, it was the ‘80s. That’s all they ever did.

If you had told one of them that the other would be their soulmate, what would they think? You'd get incredulous laughter from Blair unless you told her after S6, then she might consider it. Jo would have initially taken offense regardless of when.

GENERAL

Who initiated the relationship, and how did it go? Jo was never going to initiate it so it had to be Blair. It happened after Rick ended the marriage which Jo also wouldn’t have decided to do on her own. She was actually really upset about it despite them being so unhappy because marriage is literally giving someone your word and you don’t break that. Jo then chose to be the one to move out, and Blair had a large enough home that they wouldn’t be living on top of each other, so she was quick to offer her place while Jo got on her feet. Before that could fully happen, Jo and Blair fell into old routines, had late night chats as per usual, rekindled buried feelings, and Blair kissed her. It took them both by surprise and made things uncomfortable for a while until they finally talked it out and discovered they were on the same page.

Did they have an official first date? If so, what was it like? I mean technically they’ve been on several dates together over the years, so once the weirdness and stepping around each other was out of the way, their first formal date in a nice restaurant of Blair’s choosing felt surprisingly natural and not that different from the times they doubled.

What was their first kiss like? They were up late and sitting by Blair’s fireplace, drinking and discussing their romantic failures and, because they knew each other so well, how easy it would be if they could just find men like each other. The next thing Blair knew, she was kissing Jo and then looking at her terrified face. Jo was basically like coo coo cool gosh look at the time I'm going to bed now goodniiiiiight. ✨

Were they each other’s first anything (kiss, relationship, etc.)? Neither had ever kissed a woman, so.

What’s their height difference? Age difference? Jo has Blair by a few inches. Same age obvs.

What’s their relationship with each other’s families? Blair is great with parents and Jo’s parents adored her even after they got together. Blair’s parents are traditional and harder to please, but her mother comes around to the idea of ~two women together~ because she knows Jo and how good of a person she is. Blair stopped speaking to her father years before they got together.

Who takes the lead in social situations? Depends on the situation. At social functions, it’s Blair. If it has anything to do with any of Jo’s fields of expertise, she’s making that known.

Who gets jealous easier? Jo by a landslide, and occasionally Blair likes to bring that beast out just for fun. lol

LOVE

Who said “I love you” first? Blair hesitantly said it soon after they addressed what the kiss meant. Jo scares easily, and Blair learned that the hard way. Jo felt it too but wouldn’t be ready to say it until she spent weeks obsessing over the fact that she didn’t.

What are their primary love languages? Blair likes thoughtful gifts and physical touch. Jo expresses love through acts of service and quality time.

How often do they cuddle/engage in PDA? Blair’s been super touchy/cuddly. Jo stopped outright rejecting that early on in their friendship and it became increasingly natural so it definitely happened a lot once they got together. She stayed a little self-conscious about other kinds of PDA but if Blair wants a kiss, Blair gets a kiss.

What are their favorite things to do together? Jo and Blair are basically homebodies by the time they get together but it suits them. Outside of that, Blair likes fancy shit like wine-tasting and Jo likes chill activities like bowling and going to car shows. Compromise or whatever. They still have fun exploring each other’s interests and make it work.

Who’s better at comforting the other? Depends. They’re both so stubborn that it takes someone equally as persistent in comforting. Blair’s a better listener but Jo is better at rationalizing a situation.

Who’s more protective?

Do they prefer verbal or physical affection? Blair prefers physical. Jo likes physical but a compliment is capable of making her blush.

What are some songs that apply to their relationship, in-universe or otherwise? State of the Heart by Rick Springfield captures their, like, vibe yk? But these cornballs absolutely have the Righteous Brothers Essential Collection CD and they still slowdance to it. [here have another playlist plug]

What kind of nicknames do they call each other? Jo sticks to the classics. Princess and babe. Blair’s nicknames for Jo are silly and self-aware and ironic. She’d absolutely say, “Tell me about it, stud 😏” if she thought it would get a reaction out of Jo. On the cuter and more sincere end, Blair’s fav terms of endearment for both Jo and Jo’s bio daughter Jamie are darling and dear.

DOMESTIC LIFE

If they get married, who proposes? Jo. Once she was on board with having a committed relationship, she was soooo on board. They went years without a ceremony but Jo thought Blair deserved to experience marriage the right way and was all about putting a ceremonial ring on it (though not yet recognized by the great state of New York). They eventually did again when it was legal.

What’s the wedding like? Who attends? Nat and Tootie were essentially the entire supporting wedding party because J & B wanted to keep it small. Nat and Tootie argued about who was technically the best man. Mrs. G, Beverly Ann, Andy, George, and Rick were in attendance.

How many kids do they have, if any? What are they like? Just Jamie. (The movie didn’t happen but I’m cherry picking this from it.) Blair is Mom too though.

Do they have any pets? Jo is like every dad who says we’re not keeping this animal and ends up being its best friend. Blair takes in a feisty feral kitten because she has a thing for ragamuffins. If you know, you know.

Who’s the stricter parent? They both know how to take on the role of disciplinarian but Jo doesn’t play when it comes to Jamie putting herself at risk or acting out (which happens because hello she’s Jo’s daughter).

Who kills the bugs in the house? Jo, no issue.

How do they celebrate holidays? They celebrate holidays in a commercial sense and do things like hand out candy on Halloween, but Jo’s relationship with Catholicism got complicated when she found love. Her religious identity and those holidays were never really the same again.

Who’s more likely to convince the other to come back to sleep in the morning? They’re both pretty typical morning people, but sometimes Blair tries to get Jo to skip her impossibly early morning runs.

Who’s the better cook? Blair’s better at healthy meals. Jo’s better at breakfast food and grilling.

[smalltragedy]

* herman tommeraas, cis man + he/him | you know donovan mercer, right? they’re twenty one, and they’ve lived in irving for, like, four months? well, their spotify wrapped says they listened to ice boy by corbin like, a million times this year, which makes sense ‘cause they’ve got that whole fear hidden behind a stoic stare, bleeding from your nose and from your gums, and the night sky with all its stars, with all its mystery and unknown thing going on. i just checked and their birthday is march 15th, so they’re a pisces, which is unsurprising, all things considered. ( james, 21, est, they/them )

looks away as i finally post his intro after being kinda awol fr however long. i love him a lot n hes also bri’s character mercy’s younger brother so u hv to be nice to him. think abt mercy’s life. then think abt ducky. im sry in advance tht his intro’s a little longer ive hd ducky fr like. a year or two n i’ve been playing him a While <3 as always like this if u’d like 2 plot n i’ll try 2 msg u bck bt otherwise im gna just hop right into threads bc obv i need to. change my methods.

ABUSE, VIOLENCE, DRUG ABUSE, EYE INJURY, GANG MENTIONS TW.

mini playlist.

father ;; the front bottoms / ice boy ;; corbin / lose yourself ;; eminem / my own worst enemy ;; lit / say it ain’t so ;; weezer / maps ;; yeah yeah yeahs / star stopping ;; lil peep / benz truck ;; lil peep / trauma ;; nf / northern downpour ;; panic! at the disco / your graduation ;; modern baseball.

statistics.

full name: donovan mercer.

nickname(s): ducky.

birthday: march 15th, 1999.

zodiac: pisces sun, aquarius moon, aquarius ascending.

mbti & temperament: intp & theorist / phlegmatic.

label: the despondent.

hometown: hell’s kitchen, new york.

sexuality: bisexual (bt not out). 

pinterest.

biography.

born in hell’s kitchen to vinny mercer and a mother who ran out of the hospital as fast as she could, as soon as she was able. she’d gone so quick that she’d never given ducky a middle name - just donovan. the younger brother of mercy (shoutout 2 bri)

his father’s the right-hand man of a well known mob boss named lars amaretto, and so, you can imagine the kind of environment ducky (& mercy) grew up in. weapon & drug dealings, interrogations, violence around every corner. a brutal way of living, no place to raise two children.

implied abuse tw // their father was not kind, or merciful - and ducky was a runt compared to mercy, small and sensitive and kinder than his brother. weak, and filled with softness, with big brown eyes and a smile that should’ve been able to melt ice - but it didn’t. and it never did.

he cried often, and was punished often for it until he learned to stop crying - at least in front of their father, and mercy too, at some point. only in the comfort of his room, with doors locked and blinds drawn closed. implied abuse end of tw

he dreamed, too, dreamt often. he’d been obsessed with outer space since childhood, as long as he could remember. school had once shown man landing on the moon, and ducky wanted that. wanted to be that, wanted to be there, up with the stars, discovering the unthinkable.

abuse mention // but it was discouraged, heavily so - projects destroyed by an angry fist only to be reconstructed to the best of ducky’s ability, with mercy’s help, all throughout the night. he’d saved up for a telescope when he was thirteen, but it’d been destroyed almost immediately when discovered. not a day went by that their father didn’t tell ducky that he was, first and foremost, stupid - and would always be. end of abuse mention

to the point where he stopped trying, simply. he never graduated high school.

abuse mention // anxiety mention // anyways … at the age of fifteen, he’d have enough. he was sick of the abuse, the pain - the crying behind closed doors, the sneaking around, the constant feeling of needing to escape, impending doom, anxiety attacks in the shower and in school bathrooms and at the back of the bus where nobody sat besides him because he was - that boy, the son of that man, the brother of that brute. he’d been a teenager and he’d already been an outcast by all means - an outcast in his family, no matter how hard he tried to appease vinny, and an outsider everywhere else.

the plan took months of preparation, paper ripped out from the back of his school notebook and stuffed beneath his mattress, details of his escape from a checklist of essential items to makeshift maps of bus routes to different cities.

all for nothing, the moment vinny discovered it, the edge of a map sticking out after a rushed morning.

heavy abuse tw // violence tw // it’d been the same day he’d gotten the nickname - ducky - the way the wound wrapped below his mouth, and the way it’d begun to heal - puckered, at first, like a duck’s bill. a better name than eyepatch, at the very least. the scar’d run from the arch of his left brow, across his eye, down his cheek, and below his lip. his eye sustained injury, and not allowed to see a doctor about it, it never healed properly.

eye injury // corneal scarring, impairing his left eye. astronaut dreams destroyed, but not in a matter of seconds. in the matter of an hour, maybe more - and that’d been much, much worse. 

he stopped trying to run away after that. tried to be more like their father, more like mercy - more brutish, less feeling. spoke less, and less. spoke hardly at all, unless spoken to first.

still didn’t matter. still lived his days in fear, still knew it’d never change. nothing would ever change.

the mercer brothers have been floating around the north carolina scene for ~5ish years now, trailing after their father who is consistently chasing after their mother with no luck. they’re currently residing in palm motel. can we get a hell yeah?

personality & facts.

he’s actually very? intimidating? when you first meet him. mercy’s younger brother, with a criminal’s record almost as long as his - a scarred face and a mean resting face. it takes at least five minutes of conversation beyond small talk before it starts to weigh on your mind that maybe, he’s not as bad as he seems.

and - well, he isn’t. but he’s guarded - so guarded. more-so than mercy, because mercy’s quicker to anger, quicker to react, and ducky tries so hard to drown out the noise. but he’s not a robot, and his facial expressions can give him away in a second.

he’s seen what happened when mercy had a glimpse of something good in his life (though, it wasn’t actually good at all - mercy had someone, at least. at the very least) - and how quickly it’d all fallen, and so ducky puts a barrier between him and others. distant, as much as he can be.

it hurts, because ducky isn’t by any means antisocial. he doesn’t hate people - he wants to be normal, wants to have friends and a girlfriend - or maybe even a boyfriend, god - but he’s so afraid. ducky is, by nature, a very scared person. terrified to his very core. he knows there is always eyes on him, and mercy too, and he knows that nothing is worth getting someone else hurt.

you know him as mercy’s little brother, and he’s quiet you know that - but his name is ducky, and you think - he’s not too bad. and he knows this, knows the doubts. knows that it’ll get back to mercy, eventually, that his brother is nothing more but a pussy. so he fights more than he’d like to, against the guilt that buries itself deep within his chest with every thrown fist. he throws up, afterwards, in the garbage can outside. too much to drink, he says, rare grin - because grins are convincing, and grins with bleeding gums are intimidating. he learned that from his brother.

violence makes him sick to his very stomach. he can’t watch horror films, or even action films, without feeling queasy. there’s been more times than he can count where he’d thrown up after a fight, or after an interrogation, usually in private but in the occasional presence of mercy.

they fight, a lot, sometimes - ducky’s too soft, too weak, and it’s bad and it’s terrible and ducky knows that mercy’s afraid. for him, of their father, and his wraith. ducky knows that if mercy isn’t hard on him now, their father will be on him harder. still. there’s resentment, small but there, like the flame of a match. he doesn’t know what’ll happen when there’s nothing more to burn, but he doesn’t want to find out. he’s afraid to find out.

he’s still in love with the moon and the stars, and the planet’s - and their moons, too. its subdued, now, though. a silent passion - one that is often not watered, left for rot. he sneaks into engineering lectures at the community college, occasionally, or physics, or whatever peeks the small curiosity inside of him.

commits small acts of kindness when nobody looks. doors held open, the meals of elderly folk eating alone suddenly paid. picks up litter besides trash bins, and always cooks extra than what he needs and leaves the rest for mercy. it’s these small things that make him feel, just the slightest, better about himself.

because god - there are layers and layers of self-loathing. it’s a labyrinth, and he’d never speak of it - but he can’t stand his own reflection. doesn’t keep photos of his family, only a few sparingly of mercy.

a liar, sad to say. has little experience with. ehem. intimacy, and the bodies of others, but lies often and says that he does. mostly to his brother, but word travels quick - and he’s not nearly as much as a fuckboy as is rumored, having only been with a handful of girls, if even that. it’s better this way - if people know that he throws others away like they’re nothing.

he ghosts often, too, if he does get to talking with anybody. the moment ducky feels a spark, something pulling at his poor heart, he ghosts. he develops feelings too easily, too often than he’d like. has left many friendships without explanation, because of this. you know the priest in fleabag season 2? the scene where he comes to fleabag’s house? yeah. tht’s ducky!

has maybe half the amount of clients that mercy does, but he’s working on it.

pretends he doesn’t care as much as he does. pretends a lot, like there’s nothing soft to him. but a trained eye can see clearly through this. even so - even if you can see that there’s more to ducky than violence and drug deals - you’d still have to break through a dozen walls.

in the rare occasion you get him talking - i mean, talking a lot - he’ll talk about space. ramble off a dozen useless facts about dwarf stars and black holes and all of jupiter’s moons. about a video game he likes, about nothing and everything at all. but as soon as he begins, he stops - embarrassed. apologizes, shuts his mouth, disappears to wherever. anywhere but there.

drug abuse // has a. complicated relationship with benzos n xanax n a various assortment of painkillers. ironic bc he hates drugs due to. his chosen career n wldnt do most of what they sell, bt yknow. this ws inevitable. hates beer bt forces himself 2 drink it bc toxic masculinity probably man idk.

overall just … he’s a soft boy, with a big heart - bigger than anybody else in his family, that’s for sure, but his exterior is far different than that, and it’s hard to tell.

violence mention // purposely loses fights so that he doesn’t have to severely hurt someone. because sometimes he just - he was raised in a violent environment, and sometimes he snaps. sometimes ducky just fucking snaps. and his vision goes red, and he can’t control himself - because need to survive kicks in, and violence is all he knows. if someone pushes ducky - pushes him enough, he breaks. he fights back. it’s all he knows. it’s all he knows. it’s all he knows, and that’s not an excuse - and he knows this, and god, he’s so tired. he is so. tired.

wanted plots.

u look good tonight ... ;; wld love a connection in which he is feeling emotionally compromised n maybe kinda hs a thing w someone bt hes like. very unreliable n kinda ghosting bc he is very afraid n it wld b maybe bad fr them to b anything other than hook ups. cld apply to smth very intensive or smth very surface lvl i’ll take thousands.

palms sweaty ... moms spaghetti ... ;; ppl tht ducky just hs fkn brawled. cld b anybody fr any reason. ducky prob lost n he prob lost on purpose bt also ur muse cld maybe kick ducky’s ass? cld b a fake fight cld b a real fight. cld b a npc fight n then ur muse cn patch up ducky? possibilities endless. maybe they hv a nice spaghetti dinner n both of them r both bruised up frm their fight. sometimes fights end in spaghetti dinners. thanks eminnem or whatever.

own worse enemy... ;; ducky needs friends bt hes bad at making friends n sometimes he fks shit up by pushing ppl away n self sabotaging n being a major cunt n sometimes he just ghosts bt hes always very remorseful abt it? this cld b a very like. up n down friendship of any type its just. where do they stand. r they friends. r they enemies. r they lovers? probably not lovers. prob just platonic. but still its the thought tht counts. 

and also ;; literally just like. anything. clients who buy off of him n like. casual friends n casual enemies n casual hookups. ppl hes ghosted. ppl hes embarrassed himself in front of. maybe ur muse tries to get ducky to socialize or maybe ducky is like. u are too much fr me. n ur muse runs off crying. endless possibilities all u hv to do is call this number now. 

[wyldlittledog]

15 Random Headcanons

Repost, don’t reblog, 15 random headcanons about your muse.

Tagged by: @moonoverbourbon

Tagging: @fvckthegods, @provemyselfalone, @agonymasked, @thepocketqueer, @xmythikosx, @thewillfulones, @heartoftherhine and anyone else who wants to! Tag me so I see it!

I’ve talked about some of these to some of you before, but here goes. Also, I’m putting this under a cut because I can’t stfu about my child and got wordy (sorry, mobile users).

I headcanon him as largely illiterate in his canon verse. His dominus didn’t need him to be smart, just pretty and obedient. This is one of about two things he has a bit of an inferiority complex about, and one of the reasons he feels he would not be a good leader, though he would never say any of that out loud.  (His reading level obvs varies by verse, but even in his modern college AU, he’d rather do something physical/athletic than read a book he doesn’t have to.)

In spite of the above, he is very intelligent. He’s just far more people smart than bookish. He speaks German conversationally by WotD (my headcanon) and is extremely observant and intuitive.

Spartacus recognized his observant nature early on (probably when he noticed the Roman saw he didn’t have his collar on and immediately took steps to keep them from leaving), and this is one of the reason he seems to often be used as Spartacus’ eyes throughout the series. He’s very often on the wall, or the one who comes running to Spartacus with news about some bullshit or another. lol

He assisted the medicus after he healed from his injury after almost dying on the way back from the mines. This one is actually canon based, because I like to analyze tiny details no one else gives a shit about sometimes. When Oenomaus rises for the first time after they rescue him, Nasir is the first person to greet him on his feet and they share a very warm smile and handshake/arm clasp. Nasir would not have even known Oenomaus prior to him being brought to the temple unconscious. I headcanon Nasir HAD to have assisted the medicus (to pay back the care he was given, imo) to have formed any kind of bond with Oenomaus at all. (Give me an Oenomaus, someone, please.) I also figure he continued to assist the medicus when he was able throughout the war, thought that became less and less as he rose up among Spartacus’ strongest. Still, when Laeta gets speared fleeing Sinuessa with Gannicus and Sybil, it’s Nasir that assesses her wound and says she will live if treated. (Give me Laeta as well, I want her.) He is probably not stitching wounds or preparing concoctions, etc., but he’s got some very basic medical skill/knowledge.

He became the leader of the rebels after the war (post-canon), in spite of not believing he’d be good at it or wanting it. Agron was still badly wounded, and never had the temperament for it anyway. Nasir’s own morality more closely follows Spartacus’ than Agron’s as well. I think leadership defaulted to him, and he likely enlisted the aid of Laeta, and he fucking rocked it. He makes a good leader, if an initially reluctant one. But honestly, aren’t the people who want power the least probably the ones we should be putting in power?

His attack on Spartacus when first freed was as much a suicide attempt as an attempted homicide. He never expected to live through that. He truly believed his life was over, and I headcanon that he spent at least a few days to weeks trying to provoke others during training until someone (probably Agron) said something to him to make him realize his thinking was wrong.

He can’t cook to save his life in any verse (even vamp Nasir, with all that time to kill, just NOPED at me). He’s not a great hunter either, as he’s not great with ranged weapons. But he can skin, clean, and gut any animal you bring him (canon verse).

He’s artistic in every verse (he falls in and out of practice in vamp verse). In modern verse, there’s probably paint on him somewhere at all times. But even in canon, verse? Who do you think painted that serpent on Agron’s shield/sword thing? Not to mention, even coming up with the idea for that weapon was creative af. After the war, he and Agron built him a forge so he could continue the metal work he’d learned, and he took up blacksmithing, both for practical and artistic reasons. He always smells vaguely of smoke and heated metal in my post-war headcanon.

Yes, he and Agron have a goat farm post-canon, but the goats are largely Agron’s. Nasir has his forge, and that’s his domain. He likes the goats, of course, and seeing Agron with them amuses him and makes him happy, but he sometimes threatens to eat them just for shits and giggles.

NSFW-ish: With two exceptions (vamp verse and sex worker verse), he can be extremely modest about sex. That doesn’t mean he won’t be a freak in the sheets with someone he trusts by any means (if he’s allowed you to touch him, don’t ever stop, ffs). It means he requires privacy. He doesn’t want people in the next room to hear him. He can get very flustered if people try to talk about his sex life or the sex life of say, his brother (or, I’m sure, anyone he considers kin). He was basically a sex slave in his canon verse, and as a result does not wish to be “on display” in any way with people he’s not actually intimate with, even just talk. It bleeds into most verses. Though he might occasionally send his girl friends sexual-ish texts (like telling them he’s scrap booking dick pics, for example) if he’s high in modern verse, and Naevia can get him to say stuff he wouldn’t with most. ;)

In any verse Mahdi (@agonymasked) exists in, Nasir has a bit of an inferiority complex about him. It doesn’t matter how much I tell him he’s wrong, he’s pretty convinced Mahdi is the smarter, better brother, even if it’s unlikely he will EVER say those words to any other living soul. It’s probably why he’s so stupidly overprotective (and probably overbearing, sorry Mahdi). He must protect his precious baby brother, and fuck any consequences that come his own way because of it.

He’s never learned to handle his drink. Even in verses where he’s done much harder drugs (sex worker and vamp verse--those are usually he outlier verses lol), he just gets drunk pretty easily. He blames his size, but he knows smaller women who can drink him under the table.

He’s great with kids in every verse. In canon verse, I like to think of him and Agron adopting war orphans when they are ready (or reincarnated versions of siblings, or children from their fallen brothers, lol). I LOVE papa!Nasir plots. Throw them at me, if it makes sense for our muses! Just be aware children’s language can become colorful around Nasir after a while.

I think it goes without saying that I don’t think anything happened between Nasir and Castus. There was no cheating. Nasir probably enjoyed the flattery more than he wished he did, and that was the extent of it. I feel like Nasir defended Castus as hard as he did because he saw something of himself in him. Nasir was once the outsider that Agron and Crixus both wanted dead. Not only was defending Castus the right thing to do, but Nasir had learned from his own experiences about second chances, and about not judging people from where they came from. (More about that in the link for #15.) I can absolutely imagine shipping Nasir with Castus in a world where Agron is not around (for whatever reason), or as a poly ship with Agron. I think there was enough evidence to suggest Agron was coming around where Castus was concerned in canon.

Here’s a long ass meta I wrote ten months ago about Nasir’s relationship with Spartacus.

*collapses*

[pashpops]

PASSION POP

Members: Sunghoon (leader), Jamie, $ticky, Kiwoo, Wooshik (maknae)

Fandom name: Fruits

Stage Name: Sunghoon Birth Name: Kim Sung Hoon Position: Leader, Main Vocalist Birthday: March 29th, 1994 Zodiac: Aries sun, Scorpio moon, Leo rising Height: 178cm Weight: 68kg Blood Type: O Favourite Colour: Red, black Favourite Food: Steak Least Favourite Food: Fish, especially tuna Hobbies: Singing, dancing, acting, photography

Sunghoon Facts: - Born in Seoul, but lived for 5 years in New York City. - Speaks Korean and English. - Only child, mother and father are also both artists. - Classically trained tenor who graduated from The Juilliard School with a Bachelor of Music (Vocal Arts) at age 20. - An accomplished musical theatre actor. Surprised everyone in his local troupe by suddenly becoming an idol. - Called “Explosive Sunghoon” because of his powerful vocals and hot temper. - Very strict, but emotional and easy to play tricks on. - Will not answer what his ideal type is, hates the question, will complain any time it’s brought up.

Playlist: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6mEBzMfTUi56Ebk6Sf5lkh

BEHIND THE SCENES DATA: - heavy cocaine and xanax user. “Not addicted” and “can quit at any time”. - former alcoholic, has slip-ups now and then but quit because it was affecting his physique, which he works way too hard on. - exclusively gay, was out predebut and had to go back into the closet to debut, so his predebut socmed has been completely wiped and there’s very little to find about him predebut that isn’t old cast bios from his acting days or group pics with old friends. Very into pretty twinks. - previously dated Minseok of B.A.D.D. while they were both in the same company in their teens, both were kicked out for constant verbal and physical fighting. - currently in a relationship with Jamie, but it’s kept very much on the down-low for obvious reasons. - undiagnosed, but probably has bipolar disorder alongside diagnosed (and again secret) panic disorder.

Stage Name: Jamie Birth Name: James Choi Position: Visual, Rapper Birthday: June 21st, 1996 Zodiac: Cancer sun, Leo moon, Pisces rising Height: 163cm Weight: 59kg Blood Type: B Favourite Colour: Electric pink Favourite Food: Everything, loves food, especially sweet, salty or spicy snacks. Least Favourite Food: None Hobbies: Video games, partying

Jamie Facts: - Born in Los Angeles, California, only moved to Seoul recently and is still a little bad at speaking Korean. - Speaks English and Korean. - Only child of a very wealthy single mother. - Member with the least amount of training, was only a trainee for a few months before debut. - Called “Crybaby Jamie” because despite having a flirtatious playboy image, he’s actually very sensitive and complains a lot. Got into a lot of trouble predebut because he’d run off to sulk without knowing the area around the company dorms very well and would get lost and have to be picked up. - Secret dance machine of Passion Pop. Can twerk and do the splits. His audition was a (pretty impressive and very jiggly) dance and (pretty impressively bad) rap cover of Nicki Minaj’s Pound The Alarm. - Ideal type is “a vampire-like person” who’s sexy and a bit cruel. Answers with a different cartoon villainess every time he’s asked.

Playlist: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5ngCFTz2DTPpZfJ4TDA9yH

BEHIND THE SCENES DATA: - diagnosed ADHD combined type, but was always bad at taking his meds in the US (often sold them as party drugs instead) and can’t legally get them in SK anyway. - total stoner, though obv it’s harder to get weed in SK than LA lol - party animal and frequent user of party drugs like molly and special k, tries to keep away from harder stuff and worries about Sunghoon. - hates the taste of alcohol so doesn’t get drunk much. Total lightweight who only drinks wine coolers. - HUUUUGE mommy issues, the joke is that he’s “sensitive” and “a crybaby” but ADHD rejection sensitive dysphoria + lack of any close familial relationships (doesn’t know his dad, mom is a wealthy socialite who works almost as much as she parties) means he’s left with poor communication skills, a huge fear of abandonment and disappointing others, very low self-esteem and needs constant reassurance. - due to spoilt upbringing, is very careless with his belongings, especially electronics and clothing. - doesn’t really see why people keep telling him he’s attractive, but his desire for being desired outweighs his low self-esteem. Plus he just likes being touched and kissed and fucked, so... - pansexual and very into older and more powerful types. Was very relieved to discover that Sunghoon was not only gay but also into him, because he’d been worrying about what he’d do if they debuted together and if he found out that he had a crush on him for months.

Stage Name: $ticky Birth Name: Jung Sung Ki Position: Vocalist, Rapper, Dancer, Composer Birthday: October 13th, 1993 Zodiac: Libra sun, Virgo moon, Virgo rising Height: 181cm Weight: 70kg Blood Type: O Favourite Colour: Yellow, sea green Favourite Food: Anything sweet Least Favourite Food: Greasy/oily food Hobbies: Dancing, DJing, cooking

$ticky Facts: - Born in Gongju, but has lived in Seoul since leaving high school. - Has a younger sister and an older sister. His older sister and parents worked a lot, so he’s used to taking care of his little sister. - Completed his military service straight out of high school. - Almost always wears big circle lenses. - Mother of the group. - The only one whose “image colour” (purple) is not one of his favourite colours. He accepts it because it matches the feeling of the group well, but he doesn’t think it suits him very well, and wishes he could swap colours with Wooshik (yellow). - Called “Softie Sticky” because he’s gentle, kind, and, despite being the eldest member, a pushover who just goes along with what everyone else wants to do. - Chose his stage name himself, based on the Japanese word “suteki” and because he thought it sounded cute. The dollar sign is because he is a Ke$ha fan. - Doesn’t have an ideal type, thinks the question is a bit shallow.

Playlist: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/59AorKrFqYSzCvfK4iES7V

BEHIND THE SCENES DATA: - genuinely has nothing to hide LOL - ok maybe he’s a bit more of a hoe than his kind and caring image lets on - ok a LOT of a hoe but in a sensual and adult way, not the desperate-for-attention way Jamie is. - open-minded about gender and sexuality, but doesn’t think much about his own identity and his flamboyance and feminine-coded behaviour is never really questioned given that he’s an idol and a tall and muscular one at that. “Doesn’t everyone just like what they like?”

Stage Name: Kiwoo Birth Name: Hwang Ki Woo Position: Main Dancer, Vocalist Birthday: April 14th, 1996 Zodiac: Aries sun, Aquarius moon, Sagittarius rising Height: 165cm Weight: 47kg Blood Type: A Favourite Colour: Neon green Favourite Food: Sour candy, fried chicken Least Favourite Food: Boiled vegetables Hobbies: Dancing, makeup, video games

Kiwoo Facts: - Born in Busan, moved to Seoul by himself at age 16. - Middle child of a large family (younger brother, younger sister, older sister, older brother). - Family owns a fried chicken shop, so he knows how to make really good fried chicken. - Fake maknae, always mistaken as the youngest because of his small frame and energetic personality. - Called “Smile Fairy Kiwoo” because of his ever-present smile and playfulness. - Big makeup fan, does a lot of his looks himself and sometimes does makeup for the others too. - Very stubborn, the “secret power” in the group. - The member with the most public recognition predebut, had won many dance competitions and had one of his dance videos go viral. - Ideal type is someone kind-hearted and taller than him.

Playlist: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0RQittX0WgAmbB0rG9PWOr

BEHIND THE SCENES DATA: - fairly obviously got his jaw shaved, as he had a heavy social media presence before debut and there’s lots of old and embarrassing pics online. - pretty much fine with showing his old pics because they’re basically unrecognisable and pretty funny but would rather die than be seen without his hair and makeup done as an idol. - has a LOT of connections within big companies like SG due to his audition blitz. - genuinely is just very skinny due to a natural high metabolism, natural high level of energy and intense dance practices, but has friends, some debuted idols, who struggle with EDs so he’s VERY bitter about comments implying that he has an ED, especially if they’re joking about it. - had serious issues with Jamie predebut and in their first year of promotions, but they get along now after having a heart-to-heart about their less than ideal childhoods.

Stage Name: Wooshik Birth Name: Kim Woo Shik Position: Main Rapper, Maknae Birthday: March 13th, 1999 Zodiac: Pisces sun, Capricorn moon, Taurus rising Height: 185cm Weight: 82kg Blood Type: A Favourite Colour: Anything pastel Favourite Food: Chocolate, pasta, beef Least Favourite Food: Winter melon, raw eggs Hobbies: Bodybuilding, dancing, drawing

Wooshik Facts: - Born in Incheon. - Has an 8 years older brother who helped to raise him as both his parents worked long hours. - His brother is a personal trainer and owns his own gym, so Wooshik started working out at a young age. - Called “Tofu Beast Wooshik”. Tofu because of his pale skin and soft and round face, Beast because of his massive and muscular physique. - The only member not intimidated by Sunghoon’s hot temper. - Has a lot of natural aegyo, but finds it hard to act cute on demand. - Total meme sense of humour. - Hasn’t thought about his ideal type, like Sunghoon and $ticky, he dislikes the question.

Playlist: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2Yl2LwrVijEwajWqO1NhN5

BEHIND THE SCENES DATA: - a little embarrassed about his muscular body, it wasn’t such a big deal when he was in the gym surrounded by other way bigger, older, and more ripped guys, but it’s very noticeable around slim idols. - also a little hurt by the “beast” nickname, as he’s really very gentle and friendly, even if he is a bit single-minded at times. - many people see him not being intimidated by Sunghoon as not respecting him, but he actually looks up to Sunghoon a lot, and as more than just his group leader.

[eksbdan-blog]

New Post has been published on https://passingbynehushtan.com/2019/10/23/how-sacrifice-sins-of-the-world/

How Can a Person Atone in a Sacrifice for the Sins of the World? Only One Way. Part 1.

Hint about the title. If you are thinking the answer that is God is the person, so he is. But not “God,” only God. It’s really not confusing at all. Ideas like “God” are not our problem. It’s their meaning when it’s not something that we want to hear. Then the idea becomes a problem. Here is the real meaning for “God,” and is perfectly and conservatively Christian, but still not something that you may want to hear.

Sacrifice for the Sins of the World? Why can’t religion be simple?

Well, actually it’s very, very simple. It’s just that kind of simple we don’t want.

When I was growing up and attending church, I increasingly realized the central theological message of Christianity as the sacrifice of the Son of God for the sins of the world. How does belief in this act affect the redemption of the individual? As time went on and I could reflect on a proposition deeper, this seemed harder to accept than presented.

Now the forgiveness of sin comes from more than the belief in Christ’s work on the Cross for your sin. That is a belief about your work, too, namely, that your sin keeps you from God, and if there is not a solution to this, you will die in your sins. 

In penal substitutionary atonement, why you repent is that you realize that you can’t save yourself, that God has to do it for you, by offering Himself as your substitute, taking your sin on himself. John McArthur puts it this way:1

“The Lord has caused the iniquity of us all to fall on Him. The Lord God Himself chose the sacrificial Lamb, the Servant, Messiah, the sacrificial Lamb. The Servant Messiah was voluntarily willing to submit Himself to become the vicarious substitute. God caused Him then to pick up all the guilt that belonged to us and take the full fury of divine wrath. Five different ways in Isaiah 53:4-6, five different ways it speaks of the vicarious, substitutionary provision of Jesus Christ, dying in our place. This is the heart of the gospel.”

Now, for those that affirm it, everyone seems very possessive and insistent on a certain formulation of atonement. Still, no one seems eager to explain how faith comes into this, thought essential for salvation no matter to what version you subscribe.

Are your sins the issue? Why, and what is to compel you to think Jesus’s solution is better than anyone else’s version of the operation of transcendence?

Well, obviously it’s about a better miraculous event proving his is a real operation. But not a real one, as I had come to believe, only because of inference from a stand-alone miracle that only God could perform such as the empty tomb. Not better because of the kind of miracle assumed to be manifest because this kind of sacrifice is unique. Real because something else happened that makes it true, but not that it makes more sense and appeals to reason on its own. My thought became that it was better, and perfect, and real, primarily because of a miracle in our mind, triggered by one that God performed in the world, of its description of something in the mind of God.

A miracle is God’s calling card. A miracle is an overt display of God’s existence, nature, and mind, which is so overpowering to the senses that it is accepted as such without meditation. But I think that if this miracle can happen in the outer world, it can also occur inferentially in the subjective world. This miraculous occasion has just as much power coming through spiritual senses and the physical senses. If that is true, then it is also a miracle that Christ hung on a cross for the forgiveness of sin. Although not a miracle in the objective sense, I expect it to be itself the wonder of a divine concept expected to change us once seen for what it is.

Why is this an important consideration? Because no one thinks the Parable of the Sower is a miracle meant for our spiritual awakening and then our salvation, only that of things such as Jesus’s healing ministry and the resurrection. Then, few are as impressed with Isaiah 53 as a miracle to write sermons upon as they are with Jesus’ ethics in the calling the little children for a blessing, or his washing of the disciple’s feet. And then, we look at Jesus on the Cross and think that this represents only what he had to go through to secure our forgiveness, while never so much as having heard of Daniel 9:26. There is a working assumption in our theology and the human heart that what we have of evidence of transcendence that is clear is fake, because it’s too good to be true, and only fit for the naive religionist. What is not so clear, and looks more mundane, but while still being also a product of the agent of transcendence which produced that clear view, is also not worthy of the remarkable either, but only of an uncommon morality. Viola, religion!

What is left, on the one hand, is an evidential sideshow of curious and eyebrow-raising unsolved mysteries of Christian religious literature called apologetics. On the other side, a revival tent of swooning and sweating enthusiasts in which everything that we need to or happen to feel at a given moment is granted the most serious respect as sincere moments of truth-seeking. Still on the other side of the Christain compound is the dimly lit hall of writing and reading desks, over which hover the innumerable bald heads of the scholars, deep in the patristic fathers for the discovery of the 2nd-century kerygma. But with all that brainpower never divinely fired, they never do know how to use that knowledge to bring up a revelation about what really changed from the 1st century. Our Christian experience and expression of faith is a mosh-pit of brains and bodies thrown against each other and never against any other, which is not a body and not in a mosh-pit. We have the truth, but what we really love about it that it allows us to use it and feel good about having it while not having it at all.

What this comes down to in this mediation of Jesus and the Cross is if we are practicing His Christianity or some chimera of our own making. Then, by that, whether we are saved or damned. I think it a pretty important topic.

I think that the teaching of Jesus is supposed to be a transfer of knowledge from the otherwise impossible source of God’s mind. There is not supposed to be in Christ’s action of the raising of Lazarus a disconnection to any other truth that God communicated. Isn’t the acceptance of a greater truth and a greater miracle manifest to our spiritual senses not supposed to be its point? Is not the teaching of Jesus in his words and actions the inducement of such a miracle, to open us up to the understanding of spiritual, otherworldly truth? Arent we saved through the hearing of the Gospel, presumably, as we think of commonly it, not an overt miracle?

Ok then, we know that the function of these external displays of God’s glory is for stopping our selfish mouths and brains from thinking our thoughts and replacing them with God’s. I believe that the real miracle that we have to witness is a miracle of the content of God’s thoughts in ours: an exclusively miraculous content.

If the image of Christ on the Cross will not be one of these, is it no wonder why we think it’s possible, and normal, for a saved person never to have seen or understood it as anything more than and OT act of religion replaced by a universal one? That it does not have any other symbolic theological significance past “propitiatory atonement by sacrifice”? Not a wonder that Christ on the Cross becomes to the unbelieving world a mere creative religious notion intrinsically no more ingenious than those of any other religion? That the suspicion that it has a unique divine intrinsic power, far beyond its ability to inspire a common emotional response to any such scene, like pity and love for someone suffering in our place, is lost? Is it no wonder then if we were to denigrate and dismiss any inference from it that would suggest that its signification denotes a disclosure about a kind of crucial sin to which we are addicted? That we would sell our souls and re-crucify Christ again if its transformative power were to be thought possible of exposure and judgment of us?

Please go to the next page…

May I make a prediction? Before this article ends, you will for the first time in your life of faith become something of the mind of God new to you, if I can successfully convince you that the Cross means is nothing less than your death or your life in a way that is miraculous. You have not heard of this before, because it’s unconsciously a closely guarded secret of the Christian consciousness. In normal consciousness, and even in normal evangelism, its a truth not entertained and uttered openly as an article of faith. You are not supposed to be fed the answer to a question that God wants you to discover on your own, but only by the motivation of your love of truth. Nevertheless, how you handle this truth, whether aware or unaware,  whether by agreement in words or practice, will determine your end. How you respond will decide whether or not you are playing around in mundane world religion or a simple manifestation of divine Truth, because this is the very function of the theological significance of the scene of Christ dying on a Cross.

Its the one truth of the faith that you could say is universally hated and actively shunned, but also the one truth about he faith, and about the Bible,  that is the least deniable.

I do this because there will come a day, which I believe will come shortly when we will have nothing left to inform our faith than the recollection of this real miracle of theological formation of which I speak. After the withering assaults from more carnally seductive alternatives, we will want to go back to the real fundamentals of our faith, and it’s not what we think they are.

Restating the Obvious

Let me reiterate the preceding in a variety of ways.

Now, I’m jumping into my early twenties in my quest to solve something about Christianity and its message confusing to me. I was not capable of this kind of question early on.  Why is it that the act of dying on the Cross is a less powerful revelatory element to faith than the empty tomb when they are both supposed to be supremely revelatory? This question bears not on the initial place and route of the miraculous into the spirit, but the final one. Some of the considerations toward an answer to which I deal will seem pedantic, and I apologize for that. But go with it. It’s necessary because when this subject opens up, it touches upon so much of what and how we think by cultural Christianity that, as powerful as this truth is, that firewall is constructed as its sufficient counter at every turn.

Where do miracles occur? I mean miracles that are demonstrably and rationally exposable and examinable to all. Not only personal subjective experiences. Is there today a change in emphasis from the time of the 1st century? If Christ as a sacrifice for world sin is important, and supremely so, and is the most important miracle, this question we have to confront this hard and early.

Must our most essential and objective demonstration of God for which our spirits are responsible only be in an overt miracle, whether seen or reported? Is a miracle not also an alien knowledge? Do wonders that show an impossible exception to the laws of nature has a more important counterpart in those that only occur in the spirit as a response to divine knowledge? Can’t this abstract miracle, just as examinable and open to scrutiny as to its validity, which occurs in the spirit and processes in the spirit to the spirit, not carry the same epistemic weight as an objective miracle which occurs within the physical world, processed within the spirit and to the spirit?  Can you then call it a Christian belief which asks one to believe in a sacrifice for sins which is no more remarkable than any other religious concept? A belief thought not having a miraculous and intrinsically transformative signification for which any sincere seeker would be responsible? Finally, it is not a symbol, which appears not as a miracle but a common act or word, which is hidden by God as to its intended meaning, that which becomes a miraculous instance of God’s power and nature in the spirit after it we know the knowledge it carries? This symbol essentially becoming within that space every bit a theophany of God to the spirit as if God appeared to the eye, which secures a substantive relationship with God that we can profess but can never have otherwise?

Is this subjectivism?

It may seem like I’m saying that experience of faith within your heart and mind is just as valid a proof of God as a miracle within space/time, but this is far from what I’m saying. You will think this because we are trained to think, as I said, of faith as not necessarily grounded in facts and the “spirit” as emotion.

I ask again, must the Christian message not be that there must be an appearance of God to the mind and heart with as much epistemic weight as that which occurs to the five senses? A presentation, in the form of knowledge, which has just as much power to influence the people around you to God’s reality after being reported by you? It would seem that what happens in space/time, brought into the spirit for processing, which is a demonstration of the presence and power of God, will be powerless and puerile until this miracle of its meaning occurs.

I say that Jesus on the Cross is one of them and the greatest of them all. Not that it is a miracle in the material world. An exception to the laws of nature. But a miracle in the spiritual world, through thought, that is every bit as palpable there.

I think we have to keep in mind that if you repent of your sin, your sin first needs representation and a solution by the sacrifice of Jesus before forgiveness. Or else you are repenting for your sin for the same reason a person repents who knows nothing about or does not believe in Messiah’s work on the Cross.  And your sin is found, and its cure rendered, not by a creative religious idea for which you believe and repent, or by no spiritual knowledge at all. By a miracle within which is fundamentally a revelation of his Person. An indispensable miraculous predicate. One which all religious ideas are to sign and represent in an inferior but essential capacity, but in an unbreakable relationship. What you believe and the reason you believe it has to be the equal of God’s revelation, and that revelation of Messiah on the Cross should be every bit as much of one as your kind of understanding and belief in it.

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Faith and Practice: Words Mean Things

There seems to be a disconnection between Christian faith and practice, but in a way in which those words as defined culturally have lost their meaning in Christian theology. Is “faith” only faith, and is “practice” only practice, to be used thus in the same flattened way that other religions use them? I don’t believe Christian faith should not be “faith” in the world’s estimation, and “practice” should not either.

If Christianity is the religion of miracle and demonstration, and not merely of wish-casting, “faith” needs to be faith in and because of a divine phenomenon that occurs in the spirit and the epistemic equal to any divine phenomena that trigger it that occurs in the mundane. It needs to be a miraculous knowledge and radical. To the natural noetic senses crazy radical, and demonstrably so, to show all those not accepting it are crazy. Following as an effect, “practice” can then essentially only be a personal spiritual demonstration of that faith in reaction to the divine phenomena in which it shares space, which is equal to an outward movement of the body in which are the content of speech and the motivations for actions. If not, it is easy why you can think you can believe Christ atoned for your sins but need not think you must know, understand, or become inspired by a provable miraculous act in the Crucifixion, death, and resurrection. You believe in miraculous Christian conclusions, like talismans, not miraculous Christian predicates.

The one verse that always came back to haunt me, beside and above all these other concerns was

John 8:24: “I said therefore unto you, that ye shall die in your sins: for if ye believe not that I am he, ye shall die in your sins.”

Here is contained the essential religious faith and practice, but to natural sight, it sure does not look that way.

Again, How does Faith Work in Redemption?

Well, it’s a little too early for that. But I will tell you this.

This question was becoming a key, because the identity of Jesus, required for us to confess, is the identification of him as Messiah Savior through his apparent, miraculous acts that stand alone as products of the exclusive power of a God of transcendence.  But also those which he performed that are not so plain to see casually, but plain only through honestly, mentally, connecting the act to a prediction that only God could make. If the case, the Atonement must have a far deeper meaning regarding the operation of our salvation than it presents on the surface.

Whether we are speaking of how the atonement works with faith or how faith works with the Gospel, we have the same question: How does Christian faith work in redemption? We will get around to the Gospel. But since, in my view, the sacrifice of Christ on the Cross is such an integral and powerful symbol of what God did to secure our release from the penalty of sin, I could not get it out of my mind when thinking about this.

Now, when I was busy being bewildered over so many questions and with no answers forthcoming, my first thought was that there must be something wrong with me. Maybe I have a spiritual block about spiritual things. Perhaps the whole proposition was a sham, this atonement of a Man-God by sacrifice for the world’s sin. Maybe this Jesus and his followers just invented a novel way of explaining how God’s plan of redemption fulfilled the Law and ended by their chosen religious leader, through which all need to join through them. When the possibility that the Church might not be teaching this correctly came up, I interpreted the word “correctly” here according to one of the choices given by the church and not by the Bible. “Correct” or in “error” according to Protestantism, catholicism, secularism, philosophy. Perhaps its only my Church that is not correct, joining something like, by Catholic perspective, the Protestant heresy of “justification in a moment,” where the real answer lay in adding works to faith in a progressive redemption. Maybe I need to shut my mind up and accept the “Christian” version of the truth, placing my “heart” needs over my “head,” and the church defines them.

In retrospect, although all these alternatives were confronting me in my lack of understanding of the theological formula, and should have weakened my resolve to push through it, I became more determined. Unlike any other religion I knew, Christianity seemed in some strange way to invite this examination, this struggle, deep introspection, just because it did not appear in a hurry to proclaim any more truth than it asked the hearer to admit of himself. It seemed to ask a lot of questions instead of only telling the answer to spiritual matters. This seemed strangely honest. Maybe this Christianity was perhaps more than it appeared above both the pedestrian and scholarly elucidations, and perhaps we are fundamentally ignorant about it.

Sacrifice for the Sins of the World. Christ on the Cross.

Again, asked am I to believe the imputation of Christ’s righteousness defeats that sin that keeps me from God. This result is by the belief of Christ’s sacrifice in my place. How does this operation work?

Knowing Christ’s heavy symbolic strategy of communicating what seemed for the pedestrian senses hard things but also axiomatic truths to those looking for them, was not this symbol of the crucifixion intended to mean something more than “sacrifice” or “death?” Should not the symbol of the crucifixion, knowing Christ’s methods, designed by him as a mirror image of the theology of salvation that he taught? And should not each one, the image and the theology, be as something as unique and surprising as we would expect to have come from transcendence? But here’s the kicker.  Should not the kind of faith that he asks us to have then rendered as foreign and unwanted to the Street as his intended meaning of the Cross is known and becomes paramount in his religion?

That suggested that maybe, just maybe, the Street is not them, but it might be us, the professing Church. I had all these images running through my head of the Pope and his priests. A Billy Graham Crusade. My childhood Methodist church, and the vast ocean out there, the over one billion, taken for granted as “Christian” yet are almost to the man saying that God’s makes exceptions for them because of their handling of a faith symbol which need have nothing remarkable and unexpected as a transcendent signification, and which feeds, counterintuitively, what must only be called feelings of false humility and self-importance.

If you don’t like that statement, I think we can agree that if what is being communicated and received by man and not designed to be touchy-feely, especially that which is inherently foreign and only designed to illuminate the spirit’s desire for truth at any cost, is not going to be touchy-feely. If it is touchy-feely, but also miraculous for the benefit of Truth alone, there is something wrong with the way it is explained.

I wanted to give the Bible every opportunity to speak for itself. I knew that it was a very symbolic, parabolic kind of revelation that Christ presented.  Was the atonement idea represented there in any other sense than someone dying in our place who must be God? It just did not sit well with me that Christianity, on the one hand, claimed an exclusive and complete revelation of God of things kept secret from the foundation of the world and now known, while this revelation as explained to me seemed to be nothing more than what could come from the mind of a creative and ambitious spiritual man on his own.

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Not an inconsequential line of investigation, I hope you agree. Here is not some minor concern that only requires the tweaking of an error in an understanding that came from a Greek word or two.

What I found was that, yes, although I found the Atonement in the Bible, the way it was there I found different from the one they offered me in Church, and, as I said, for a long time, this brought complete terror to me before it became a challenge and a blessing. It changed my life, but not before it daily ground me to the pavement and whispered how miserably hopeless and weak I was, that this was not something that I could have thought up myself. I knew now for sure that my “sin” was not really about doing or not doing something, or about how genuinely I accepted and believed a religious idea, or how deeply I believed in God and willing to give up my life for him. These are, again, asking no more of us than the kinds of things any other religion would ask. The problem was that I knew that what stood between God and me was something supernatural, something alien to the world but a part of it. It represented the only spiritual thing that was most manifest, but also the one thing that we are least willing to accept and integrate into our lives.

Symbolic Preliminaries.

We have someone on a Cross in the process of being executed. There are two essential elements to this picture: the person and the method of torture and execution. In the method, there is this means of nailing, tying, and fixing to that which also raises that person from the ground. What does this mean?

In natural sight, this is a man, and in natural sight, this is a piece of wood and some nails. The man is slowly bled to death and asphyxiated. In that natural sight, that is all it has for you. You can see that this is not a public miracle of the supernatural, although miracles accompanied it. It was a very common sight in a 1st Century Roman province. And, also a natural thought, how easy it would have been for God to have sent an army of his angels from the sky, take him off and fly him to heaven in the sight of all the people. Boy, this would bring many people to examine the doctrine of Jesus, would it?

But, if the fundamental problem of humanity is not that he does not believe what he sees, but that he does not believe what he can spiritually see but does not, then such as act as this expectation of God to casual thought would not be respectful of our personhood, our free will, as a person like God. It would be a deletion of free will since such a supernatural act would remove the choice of whether this is the act itself is from God.

However, the supernatural is what man has a problem with and is what God wants for him to accept to be a spiritually righteous person, not just a physical one, which the fulfillment of Personhood and not only its imitation.  If this is not an overt supernatural display, how could it be supernatural in a way that is not the same as the prosaic image of a man dying on a cross to which his natural senses lead him? If this supernatural display supposed to be something like “this was a universal sacrifice for the sins of the world in fulfillment of the tribal one carried out in the Law of Moses,” isn’t that just as well a mere religious and creative mere idea?

A mere religious idea is not tracking with the fact that this Jesus is a man and God,  natural and supernatural, and together is something so unique and transcendent it/He should stand as the most unusual and earth-shattering event in human history. Not just a universal symbol, either Jesus or the Atonement, to replace/correct a Jewish Messiah or its old symbol. That would not be only God placing one thing for another, that would be the historical fulfillment of a Jewish symbol, a symbol designed by God to become miraculously fulfilled. A supernatural meaning in fulfillment of a supernatural symbol of a yet unfulfilled part of Jewish law. Yet as the realization of an Old Testament symbol in its meaning, the physical act and a unique theological message can’t be the meaning because this would say that symbols comprehensively carry and are determinative of meaning. That is precisely the opposite of divine revelation, where divine phenomena and appearances are first and our inferior but morally sufficient ideas about it second.

What kind of meaning are we talking about that aligns with the essential definition of meaning, one which is of knowledge impossible without special revelation by God?

Let us remember that a symbol or an idea is a representational device for the carrying of identification and operation of a thing in itself. It is not meaning itself, only a tool for it to appear in the world. Remember that this sacrificial act by someone who claims to be the Son of God is someone that uses miracles not to bind someone up in a decision but to help them. To point them to the gravity and importance of another one which, like the miracle, is not imminent, but spiritual and self-attesting. Jesus is then not just supposed to be the fulfillment of Elijah or Moses.  No matter how he satisfies them his mission, his mission is not only to bring their ultimate personal instances into the world. Its to deliver their final transcendent message into the world, which represents the end of a chain of symbolic assignation to render ultimate meaning, not another round of it.

Lets also not forget that a proposition is not Truth, its a symbol of truth. You can and must worship, give ultimate value to Truth, but you cant give it to a mere symbol (“mere” making it the pagan equivalent is the idol). To believe “Jesus saves” is a saving proposition, or that saying and believing the propositions “Jesus saves” or “God is sovereign,” will not save you ay more than bowing down to a carved image of Molech. These are conceptual symbols of a faith container, a placeholder for a Truth, not the God who is Truth. And so emotion does not save you, and reason does not save you, doctrinal propositions do not save you, no matter how important they are in the disgesting and understanding of revelation. Those are also only possible images of a Truth received, understood, and believed, not that truth itself or your moral acts themselves. Christ saves you, but not “Christ,” insofar as this is only a designated name and an idea for something of his which is his abstract equivalent and which is nowhere near a cultural formulation. Christ is an objective Person, and he is a revelation of knowledge. You get to use the symbol of faith “Christ” through his informational entity of miraculous knowledge. You don’t get to use the symbol effectively as if independently imbued with that divine power, which rubs off on you like an idol that you merely hold without your demonstrated spiritual connection to the declared truth it represents.

Continued here: How Can a Man Atone for the Sins of the World By His Own Sacrifice? Only one way. Part 2. The Messianic Secret

Schuurman W. Penal Substitutionary Atonement is the Heart of the Gospel: Who Agrees? | Trinity Bible Chapel. Trinity Bible Chapel. https://trinitybiblechapel.ca/penal-substitutionary-atonement-is-the-heart-of-the-gospel-who-agrees/. Published July 19, 2018. Accessed October 26, 2019. ↩

[fortheloveofpearlet]

Shea phoning a phone sex line, hearing Sasha's voice, and falling for Sasha instantly! 😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍 (PS I can't ship Shea and Sasha without including Sasha's amazing voice!!!))

Leanne I think you’ve hit your prompt limit now 😂 obvs I’m kidding, send me as many as you like (preferably more of these Sashea prompts cos I am LIVING for them!)

Send me sentence prompts and drag race pairings and I’ll write you a little drabble!

Jaren was lonely. There was no way two ways about it. He’d been single for several months now after his ex had cheated on him and shattered his heart into a million pieces. He’d been out a few times trying to hook up but he didn’t seem to get the attention he used to. He swore to god the whole time he was with his ex men were hanging off him; he practically had them queuing out the door. But since the break up he’d had no attention what so ever. And as a result, he was lonely.

His friends had told him to try online dating which he had and it had gone horribly. He seemed to only attract trade, all men so painfully far in the closet they may as well have been in Narnia and Jaren wasn’t here for that. Then his friends told him to get a hooker, jokingly at first but over time they became more adamant about him getting laid. Of course he hadn’t stooped that low, but he was getting desperate.

One of his friends told him about this sex line he’d used. You called up and a guy would talk dirty to you or whatever you were into while you got your rocks off. Jaren wanted someone to physically touch him though. But he supposed being that there was a lack of options, he’d try it. If anything it would be a slightly more creative way for him to masturbate, because even that was becoming stale these days.

His hand was shaking a little as he dialled the number on the card his friend gave him. It rang a few times before someone answered and Jaren found himself holding his breath.‘Hi, you’re through to C.L.A.T. You’re speaking with Sasha.’ The voice floated down the phone as if on a cloud. Jaren’s mouth went dry and he felt his heart skip several beats. He had never heard a voice quite like that before. It was deep and it melted in his ears like chocolate. It also sent vibrations through his body, making his dick already start to harden.'Uhm…hi.’ Jaren croaked, he had no idea how this worked.'What’s your name?’ Sasha breathed down the phone, a smirk in his voice. He has the most mesmerising voice I’ve ever heard in my entire life.'Jaren.’ He croaked again. He wanted to fuck Sasha’s voice, was that weird? He didn’t even need this guy to talk dirty to him, he thought he’d probably be able to come listening to Sasha recite the alphabet.'Hmmm sexy.’ Sasha hummed. 'I bet you’re real sexy Jaren, you sound sexy.’The way Sasha said his name made his head spin. His cock was rock hard and he freed it from his pants.'I sound sexy? Damn can you hear yourself?’ He wrapped his hand around his shaft. Sasha chuckled and my god Jaren had never heard a better sound in his entire life. He swore it vibrated down the phone right to his dick.'Well it does kind of help in my line of business.’ Sasha was still chuckling. 'So Jaren, what do you like?’'Like?’ Jaren started stroking himself. 'You. I like you. Just talk to me. Please talk to me forever.’ He was moaning a little as spoke. Sasha chuckled again and Jaren really didn’t think he was going to be able to last long if he kept that up. He took the phone away from his ear and put it on speaker.'You’re already touching yourself aren’t you?’ Sasha’s voice had a hint of a smirk to it. It made Jaren harder.'Uh…yeah.’ He couldn’t lie.'I like that.’ Sasha spoke. 'Close your eyes Jaren, picture me there talking in your ear while you touch yourself.’Jaren closed his eyes and pictured a mysterious figure at his side whispering in his ear. He imagined the person sliding their hand down his torso and into his pants. He felt a bead of pre-come on his hand.'I wish you were here. I want you to fuck me.’ Jaren panted.'Just close your eyes and imagine it. Imagine my hands running over your body, my tongue licking your tight hole. Picture my hard dick slamming into you.’ Sasha spoke in hushed tones and it was so incredibly powerful. Jaren didn’t even need to know what he looked like. The idea of this stranger and his oh so magnificent voice fucking him was making him light headed.'Make me come.’ Jaren panted again.'Oh I intend to.’ The smirk was back in Sasha’s voice. 'Are you picturing me there Jaren? Can you feel my breath on your neck? Can you feel my dick pounding into you again and again? Can you feel my hand snaking around your waist and taking hold of your dick and pumping you? Are you close Jaren? I want you to come for me.’ Sasha’s voice was just too much. Jaren moaned loudly and then he came all over his hand and t-shirt.'Holy fucking shit.’ He panted. With his clean hand he picked the phone back up, took it off speaker and and put it to his ear. 'Thats embarrassing. I don’t usually come so quick.’ He felt himself blushing. Sasha chuckled again and Jaren was sure he could get hard again.'I have that effect on people.’ He told Jaren.'I need to speak to you again.’There was silence on the end of the phone for a second and Jaren was worried Sasha had hung up. Then he spoke.'I’m not supposed to do this but I have an extension. If you dial 348 at the end of the number it comes straight through to me.’ His voice was quiet as though he didn’t want anyone to hear. Jaren guessed he was breaking all kinds of rules.'Thank you.’ Jaren smiled to himself.'I’ll talk to you real soon sexy.’ Sasha blew him a kiss down the phone and then the line went dead.

Jaren called Sasha everyday for the next few weeks. At first it was all about Sasha’s voice getting him off but Jaren soon wanted more. He was falling for that deep, melodic voice and it was killing him not to be able to touch him or have Sasha touch him for real.

One night he asked the one question he knew he shouldn’t ask. It came out before he’d meant it to.'Sasha?’'Yes Jaren?’'I know this is probably all kinds of wrong but can I meet you?’ He’d expected to be hung up on or at the very least have Sasha laugh at him and tell him where to go. But to his surprise nothing like that happened.'Yes.’ Sasha breathed. 'I thought you’d never ask.’

Two days later Jaren nervously paced his living room as he waited for Sasha to show up. He has absolutely no idea what to expect and he had no idea what Sasha’s reaction would be when he saw Jaren. What if he doesn’t like what he sees? What if he just turns and walks away? He didn’t have a lot of time for thoughts like this as suddenly there was a knock on the door. Jaren took a few deep breaths before he opened it with a shaky hand. Staring back a him was a tall, slim bald man with large eyes hidden under thick rimmed glasses. Jaren bit his lip.'Sasha?’'Yeah it’s me.’ Sasha smiled and Jaren would know that voice anywhere.'Wow.’ Jaren breathed and then they fell into each other’s arms. It was hard to say who moved in for the kiss first as lips just suddenly meshed together in the most passionate kiss either of them had ever had. Jaren pulled him into the apartment and Sasha kicked the door shut.'I need you so badly.’ Jaren panted.'Oh god, you have no idea.’ Sasha smirked at him, the smirk Jaren had heard in his voice on the phone so many times before. As Sasha led him to the couch Jaren couldn’t believe this was happening. He’d fallen in love with Sasha’s voice on the other end of the phone and now here he was, in his apartment kissing him. And nothing had ever felt so right.

[presumenothing]

flash point

for the prompt: “You are a pyrokinetic who tends to accidentally set things on fire when stressed. And today, you’re having a very bad day.”

[~1.5 hours of completely unedited writing, apologies in advance for any glaring errors]

(AO3) (FFN)

EDIT: now continued(ish?) here!

EDIT^2: ...and continued further here?

.

"Damn it," Saguru mutters under his breath, when the edge of his paper catches fire for the third time today.

Acrid tendrils of smoke curl out from where his fingers meet the paper, and he forces himself to take several deep breaths (in why was this happening, out he ought've mastered it completely by now, in just stop already) until the heat flickers and dies out again – which is when the lunch bell rings, and Saguru would've called it divine intervention if he'd been inclined to be religious in the least.

He's just about to stand and leave (to anywhere, really, Saguru doesn't usually have a problem with confined spaces but the classroom feels excruciatingly stifling today) when a voice calls out from behind him.

"Oi, Hakuba," says Kuroba, and Saguru watches somewhat warily as his classmate walks over to his desk. Quite contrary to any of Saguru's expectations though, Kuroba only looks at him for a moment, before nodding towards the desk. "You want to talk about it?"

Or – not quite the desk, Saguru realises, looking down at the slightly reddened patches on his hands. His pyrokinesis doesn't hurt himself, usually, but today had been a bad day on all fronts, to put it mildly. Saguru can't help but grimace. "That obvious, huh?"

"Unless you're blind. Or deaf. And lack a sense of smell, I guess," Kuroba adds after a moment's consideration. "So, like I said – wanna talk?"

Saguru's first instinct is to decline politely, but he forces himself to consider it seriously. He hasn't had a power lapse this bad in a long time (three years, eight months, and four days, to put it precisely), after all. But...

"Thank you for the offer, but I think I'll pass," Saguru says eventually. "I don't think talking will help in this situation, honestly speaking."

Kuroba shrugs, his expression nonchalant. "Okay, whatever you say. Offer's still open, though."

Then he walks off, and Saguru is certain that's the end of it, when –

A small jar lands on his desk with a metallic clink, and Saguru looks from it to Kuroba's oddly unexpressive face, suddenly feeling like there was a whole part to the conversation that he'd missed. "I'm sorry, what – ?"

"Burn cream," Kuroba says, interrupting the question – not that Saguru quite knew what he'd been intending to ask, anyway. "Or at least my version of it, but it should help with your hands."

"I – " Saguru blinks in surprise, and almost wonders if he heard that wrong. "That sounds useful. Thank you, Kuroba-kun."

"Don't mention it," comes the answer, almost flippantly, and Saguru belatedly realises that Kuroba is already halfway to the classroom door. "Literally."

He's still seated at his desk a few minutes later – all thoughts of leaving the classroom gone from his mind – when Aoko walks over and notices the jar on his desk. "Oh, is that from Kaito? It's really effective, I know he uses it during his own practice."

"Yes, Kuroba-kun gave it to me." And speaking of whom – Saguru turns to his other classmate, and wonders if he looks half as mystified as he feels. "Why would he do that?"

He almost expects her not to answer, but instead Aoko leans over to turn the chair in front of his around and sit down, looking pensive.

It's a few moments before she speaks, and in that time Saguru has already applied a thin layer of the cream on the base of his fingers, where the outline of the paper from earlier is still smarting ever so slightly – and Aoko is right, it does work wonders.

"Kaito had quite a lot of trouble controlling his powers when he was younger, you see. Especially after his dad..." Aoko's voice trails off – her words are soft enough that it doesn't carry, though the classroom is almost empty anyway. "Anyway, it wasn't until middle school that he really got a handle on it. So he knows what it feels like, I guess."

Saguru listens with a growing sense of disbelief, because he's seen Kuroba in ability training, and he – or, to borrow a turn of phrase, anyone with a functional set of senses who happens to be in the elemental manipulation section of the class – can see that Kuroba's control of air is basically perfect. And Saguru has been to some of the finest ability training institutions both back home and in Japan, so he knows what he's talking about.

Then Aoko adds, "So, do you want to talk about it, Hakuba-kun?"

And apparently Saguru is more tired than he thought, because the retort slips out before he can stop it. "Are you and Kuroba-kun ganging up on me?"

Aoko giggles. "Not at all, Hakuba-kun, you would definitely have noticed if Kaito and Aoko were working together on something like that!"

Which is... true, if not quite an answer he was expecting, and Saguru is suddenly and forcibly reminded of what he'd heard and dismissed as a myth back when he'd first transferred into Ekoda High – that a previous math teacher for this class had resigned in a fit of terror after she claimed that she was being haunted at school by some particularly persistent ghosts.

He looks again at Aoko, who still has the slightest glint of mischief in her eyes, and decides that (a) he really doesn't want to know, and (b) Aoko would've gotten involved only if the teacher had been legitimately terrible in her own right. Probably.

School, Saguru thinks with a sigh, had never been quite this complicated in London. "It's really not something pleasant to talk about, Aoko-kun. I was just assigned to help Division One with their caseload this week, and... well, it's been a while since I've encountered any murder cases, I suppose."

That isn't the whole story, of course – Saguru hasn't really worked on many homicides since coming to Japan, that much was true, but he'd handled them quite regularly before, enough so that he knows a murder alone isn't enough to trigger something like this. But one of the cases had been worse than the others, and –

A slight crackle catches his attention, but before the flame can escape beyond Saguru's clenched fingers Aoko conjures a little disc of water that extinguishes it with a faint sizzle before vanishing without a trace.

"Thank you, Aoko-kun," Saguru says, then adds, "Your control is very impressive as well, you know."

"Eh? Aoko's control?" She laughs, shaking her head. "Not really, Aoko is just lucky to have an easier element than Kaito or Hakuba-kun! Water has a much more physical form than fire or air, after all."

Saguru recalls several of the more disastrous hydrokinesis attempts that he'd seen with a wince. "I beg to differ, Aoko-kun. A former classmate of mine once nearly brought down a tsunami upon our heads. He had been trying to create a whirlpool, I believe."

"That sounds like he lost control of the direction vectors," she replies. "But as long as you're careful with those, water can be quite predictable. Aoko doesn't even need to worry about factors like viscosity and composition all that much, unlike Kaito."

Before Saguru can argue the point any further, though, Aoko stands up and extends a hand to him. "Oh, do you want to go to the rooftop and watch Kaito practice, Hakuba-kun?"

He raises an eyebrow skeptically. "Practice? On what?"

"On himself, of course!" Aoko says, before elaborating at Saguru's presumably confused expression. "He mentioned something about working out the buoyancy and lift forces on himself, but Kaito's never liked sharing his ideas before he's figured out how to make them work."

Saguru puts two and two together, and comes up with a short-circuited brain and the otherwise unlikely hypothesis that Kuroba is apparently trying to make himself fly, which is – 

He's halfway to his feet before he realises the obvious contradiction. "Hang on, doesn't that mean he won't want us there watching?"

"That's why we're going to be spying on him instead!" Aoko answers cheerfully, fishing out her handphone from her school satchel. "Besides, Aoko already promised to send Chikage-san a video if Kaito actually makes it work, so we definitely have a reason to be there – "

As Saguru lets himself be tugged along in the wake of Aoko's excitement, he thinks about how school had never been quite this interesting in London, either – and really, he wouldn't trade it for the world.

.

.

...no, I don’t know how this happened either? honest. the brain saw it and went, hey, that sounds like a certain Osaka loudmouth – oh no wait! why not let’s make our own lives difficult and pick the one character who’s the exact opposite!! it’ll be fun!!!

......so yeah, that happened. powers assigned at semi-random, Kaito gets air because that would be pretty neat as Kid (what with all the acrobatics and gliders and whatnot), Aoko gets water because why not (it’s a lot harder than she makes it sound obvs). not sure where Akako would be in this universe? also someone really needs to have Layla’s power from Sky High that scene was really awesome okay hush now