#on whether to do an exchange. or which one

[burning2know]

I agree wholeheartedly with OP and these tags from prev. prefacing that I will be ignoring the game that shall not be named and probably repeating some points.

There's nothing quite like the interactive medium of a video game that makes you examine your own choices and beliefs. And when it comes to politics, there's often a disconnect between ideology and lived experience. My favorite thing about DA was always the fact the it tried to bridge the two. Whether it's showing that various individuals in similar circumstances can have completely different ideologies, or it can be to explore what happens to individuals and their experiences after reshaping the world according to the player's ideology. That bridge, albeit implicit, has been formative in the way I think about my own world. When it comes to the lore and world building, it demands the player to use critical thinking, much like a historian might, to make sense of it. And I did end up feeling like I needed to make sense of the world to make my choices.

Even though DA has argued both sides, it does it incredibly well. The arguments it presents come from character perspectives that makes sense in the universe, and it makes it all feel real. I think a lot of credit should go to origin's writers for providing those arguments. It feels like the writers talking amongst themselves trying to hash out what each action means for the world and to eachother using the NPCs, and in the spaces of these discussions, I get to reflect on where I agree and disagree and what that means for me as a player. The experience reminds me of me watching Contrapoints videos in which she has a conversation with various parts of her own beliefs about her gender identity, and engaging with her inner-discourse lead me to a deeper understanding of my own identity.

That's the true value of arguing both sides. It lets the audience decide for themselves without being prescriptive. And while it does demand the audience construct their own reasons and values to explain their choices, it also provides a window into possible viewpoints that the audience might or might not agree with. And not in a judgmental way. That process shows how one character may arrive there, not through insanity or stupidity, but through various circumstances and experiences.

DA's goal was always to challenge the player. That isn't to say that there's no bias, or a particular perspective that the writers are coming from. But the point is that it opens a space for exploration. It takes a certain kind of person to be able to do that without falling into the hole of appearing contrarian or troll-ish. And to some extent the writers themselves had to treat each argument with equal respect and legitimacy to display its outcomes in the game according to the rules of the world rather than their own ideals. And that itself is not easy. It doesn't surprise me that that world view and capacity disappears when the series changed hands.

And underlying all of that is a philosophy about how individuals operate, and how they operate when they come together into groups of individuals (many different words to say power and hierarchy). And that underlying philosophy is what resonated with me so much with over time. It's very compassionate to be able to hold space for these other perspectives. Not only rare to see due to the complexity required to show it, but easy to lose and difficult to gain back once you've lost it. And at this moment in the history of DA, we have lost it.

In some ways, I think the timing of this happening Makes Sense. We live in a tumultuous time where reality is uncertain and volatile due to the nature of new modes of information exchange. We see all kinds of people sharing things on social media that could easily be interpreted as lived experience or disinformation. And more than ever, our shared reality is being shattered into a million pieces by personalized content. (I too have felt the "we live in parallel universes" thought creeping up on me). In this chaotic environment, we Need the psychological comfort of certainty, of knowing what the world is like. The easiest and most familiar way is to find an authoritative voice and trust that single voice as the guiding star. That voice is only strengthened by others' agreement, and we contribute to this strengthening with our own psychological needs for certainty and stability. And we become resistant to dissent and critical analysis, because the amount of information to sort through gets very overwhelming very quickly.

What DA does has always been the opposite of that, it demands the player to confront multiple perspectives (albeit in a much more curated and coherent way). And it is logical to me that the game goes against such a primary psychological need in these trying times, perhaps now more than ever. But this theme has always gone against the grain, and media that goes against the grain in this way is so rare and So Badly Needed. We Need people to be able to think through and cobsider multiple perspectives, because there are so many perspectives accessible to us. At the same time I understand the draw of never ever having to do that. And I also understand that a lot of people just don't think that deeply ever. And that's why losing DA hits extra hard for me. Because it is another piece of resistance swept away with the torrent of greater trends that push us away from shared understanding with the people around us.

i feel like all of my pondering and analyzing and criticizing veilguard over the past few months has actually truly given me a better understanding of what dragon age meant to me, what about it specifically was so meaningful, and why, as a result, veilguard felt so wrong. it took a while for me to figure it out. about three full months of relentless essay writing, actually. but i think if you had asked me a few years ago what the core of my love for dragon age was, whatever answer i gave would not have truly gotten to the root of it, because i think i had to experience the disappointment of veilguard to fully understand why i love dragon age. and ive realized that core is that i loved how the previous dragon age entries demand so much of the player, and deliberately prompt introspection and critical, often political, thought.

dragon age games have historically forced the player to be self-reflective and introspective about their worldview and beliefs. solas is obviously a fantastic example, as he was deliberately written to be a reflection of the player in order to prompt them to reflect on how they treat people, how our expectations of people influence their behavior, and how people are pushed to extremes and turned into monsters or saved by love and kindness. how do people become monsters? what drives them to blow up buildings or start rebellions or destroy the world as you know it? are they right or wrong? does it even matter? how did you contribute to this? are you innocent? it puts these insane, politically and morally charged situations in your face and forces you to confront them. slavery, a refugee crisis, poverty, class disparities, racism, foreign occupation, the list goes on, and you are not given the option to look away or be a bystander. you have to ACT. you have to choose, you have to make judgements, you have to take responsibility and explore your role in this world as someone with the capacity to act upon it, to make your will a reality, to fail, to make mistakes. i honestly can't think of any other video game that does this to the same extent? nor any media at all because the act of being IN the world as one of it's people through the act of role-playing is essential to how it provokes this experience in the player. its ballsy. they deliberately try to make you uncomfortable. these games are full of liars, deceivers, betrayers. the games themselves lie to you. its character try to deceive you. did you catch it? or were you fooled? what else might you be fooled by? who else might be lying to you? in the game? in real life? and then you get to play it again knowing the end, and what the game prompts changes with your new knowledge. now it asks, do you forgive them? what makes someone worthy of forgiveness? where do you draw the line? what do you think?

i dont think i realized until recently how impactful this was for me considering how i first got into dragon age at 16 years old. i dont think i had experienced anything up to that point that would put a situation like judging a war criminal who ordered the deaths of children or another war criminal who just left me to die and orchestrated a near-coup or a traumatized terrorist who just blew up a church right in my face, and said MAKE A DECISION. and i didnt know it at the time, but looking back i can see how valuable it was for me at that age to have what was effectively an avenue of exploration and self-expression of all of these moral and political issues that i was grappling with as a young adult. i played inquisition for the first time just months before i voted in my first presidential primary. i already had a political consciousness at this point, but it was nonetheless new and vulnerable and still blossoming into something more concrete. inquisition, then, almost provided a sort of political, moral and personal sandbox for me from ages 16-20 to better help me understand myself in relation to the world. the RPG-ness allowed me to put myself into these situations - like the mage-templar war and its metaphor for mass incarceration and police brutality - while i was also simultaneously grappling with and trying to understand these issues in real life. having dragon age to help me further unpack my own beliefs and conception of these issues was undeniably impactful. it provided a space, through a narrative i enjoyed and cared about, to make choices and judgement calls and better understand who i was, and what felt right to me. it asked, "what do you think?"

veilguard lacks this. completely. and lets be clear that the previous games did not always do a perfect job. many of these depictions are messy and harmful and problematic, but they at least, by extension of their own existence in a narrative that forces you to THINK and JUDGE and DECIDE, give me the space and opportunity to judge them as messy, as problematic, as harmful. i can confidently say that i think da2 is too sympathetic to the templars as an organization because the fact that da2 presents me with so many narrative conflicts regarding the templar organization allows me to not just make in-game decisions and play as a staunch advocate for mage freedom and circle abolition, but to form opinions on the game itself by extension. i can confidently say that i believe the qunari's portrayal is islamophobic because the game has prompted me so many times; what do i think about the qunari? what do i think about the oppression of the elves? what do i think about dorian being a seemingly good person but defending the practice of slavery? who should rule orzammar; the progressive asshole or the conservative traditionalist? do i forgive loghain? do i forgive anders? do i forgive solas? this in-world critical thinking about issues in thedas leads to meta critical thinking. further questions naturally follow -> what message did the writers intend to send through anders? how can i notice the echoes of how this story came into fruition in the shadow of 9/11? what do solas's endings tell me about the writers view of retributive punishment? how is bioware's portrayal of the dalish, as inspired by indigenous north americans, reflective of deep-seated anti-indigenous canadian sentiment? why did the writers stop prompting these hard questions at all in veilguard? did they only like it when it was about characters, not when it led to critical thinking about them and the company as a whole? through these processes of in-world interrogation, i am inevitably invited to analyze the effectiveness of their narrative portrayals and the writing itself. perhaps this is why dragon age is so famous for its discourse lol.

ive said before that im not sure that veilguard could ever have been as impactful for me as the previous games, partly because when you are 16 everything is more impactful because your brain is an eager sponge, unless it did something that really resonated with me as an adult. but what it should have been, at the very least, is something that could have been as impactful and formative on a current 16 year old that sees a gif on tumblr and decides to check out the game, as inquisition was to me 10 years ago. and im sure there are teenagers and younger adults out there playing this game and loving it and loving the characters and the world and thinking its great, good fun. thats great. however it fundamentally cannot have the same profound, developmentally catalytic experience it had on me because it simply does not challenge the player. it does not prompt them to question their own beliefs and the power structures within their lives. it does not prompt them to reflect on the political narratives they may have been fed all their lives. it does not confront them with the sorts of topics that get books on banned lists in florida and force them to bear witness, to think deeper, to feel guilt or horror at the outcome of your own poorly-made decision, to make moral judgements, to make mistakes, and to live with the consequences.

i think i now understand why veilguard was so disappointing to me and ultimately would be a failure in my eyes no matter if i enjoyed the combat or the exploration or whatever other shiny coat of paint sits atop it. veilguard does not ask much of you. it does not prompt any sort of introspection or interrogation of your presently held beliefs. it does not demand anything from the player except to dodge at the right moment. this is a fundamental, core departure from what made me fall in love with dragon age in the first place. if you love dragon age because you want "fantasy escapism" and fun characters to smooch, then i am happy for you. but i would remind you that can find fantasy escapism all over the steam library - farming sims, cozy games, a witch looking for her cat in the alps, etc. what you cannot find are games that are willing and brave enough to challenge and provoke the player into a better, more thorough understanding of themselves in relation to our world and it's many, complex and daunting political and moral issues. to have lost such a thing, when media like this has become so few and far between, and during a time when we need it more than ever, is a devastating loss.

[ggirlthatgotaway]

You Now Smelled of Flowers, and He Loathed how Perfectly it Suited You

summary: You had always known that, despite being wed, you and Aemond would have never gotten along, especially because none of you tried anything but staying as far as you could from one another. Weirdly enough, Aemond made your relationship changed by asking for help.

trigger warning: wrote this while on ovulation, explicit language, mention of self harm, mention of lost of virginity, sexual content, name calling(wife), pretty chill sex tbh

word count: 9.4k

supposed reading time: 38 minutes

note: BITCH THIS HAS A FUCKING VIBE. anyway, i love the dialogues in this. also, thnkx for more than 200 notes on the last one ARE YOU KIDDING. love ya

-💎

He couldn’t sleep, which was far from anything new, really. He took a deep sigh and stared at the ceiling. He could hear the soft rain falling on the stone walls outside his room, but he made no movement to check how much was entering his chambers like he normally would.

His head was killing him, and he could hear his heartbeat banging against his skull. He’d been loathing the night since the day he’d lost his eye.

That had been the fateful day that ruined his entire existence, and also the reason why he was awake in the hour of the wolf, when the entirety of King’s Landing should have been deep asleep.

He had often dreamed about cutting off his scarred skin. Surely, the action would provoke not only the risk of infection and an immense amount of bleeding, but also a wider- and so more irritating- scar on his face.

That was not what he had desired during the open-eyed dreams he’d had about slicing open his face once more, no. What currently appealed him was the tranquility that would come with the first stages of the healing process: no itch, nor irritation.

Just simple, pure pain.

He sighed and swung his legs off the bed. His eye did linger on the butter knife left on his table- it had caught the light coming from the hearth and reflecting onto the blade- but he got up and walked out of his rooms.

He wandered for a brief moment what you were doing. After all, a husband ought to worry for his wife’s whereabouts, whether he was loving or as Aemond was, which included a rather long list of disparaging adjectives- such as: abrupt, sharp-tongued, curt and cold when it came to those brief and definitely insignificant moments in which you two exchanged some words; unapproachable, uncaring and unresponsive when you needed his assistance (which happened only in one occasion, for the lesson was learnt fast); tense, silent and falsely indifferent when it came to your nearness.

Anyway, the thought of you being asleep brought an only slight sense of calmness in Aemond, for he reasoned that half of the couple- if one could call you two such- could find comfort in the confines of a bed in the darkest hours the night had to offer.

What he did not know was that you were far from asleep. Your life at the castle did not include much- quite the opposite, in fact. And you put your foot down so that you would never get used to such a disgraceful thing. You were, after all, the Rogue Prince’s daughter, and nothing in your body was ‘still’.

So, most of your nights were spent awake, walking around the interminable castle until the muscles in your legs hurt from tiredness or reading until your eyelids fell shut on their own.

Usually, the nights’ hours were not passed in the shared chambers you had with Aemond, but you found they had the perfect view of the full moon in that day’s clear night sky- despite the soft rain.

That was the reason you were there, your hands on the wet stone of the window ledge as you looked at the city below you. The rain was wetting part of your nightgown, but that was not your concern.

Rainy days in King’s Landing were not something usual this season, and it reminded you of Dragonstone in a slight way that you redeemed to be enough for comfort.

The chambers were beautiful, despite the obvious memory that surfaced in your mind: the wedding night. It hadn’t made you as excited as you and your sisters had dreamed them to be when you were younger.

You were aware that those hopes were a mere product of the fantasy of young and unaware children that loved to spend their days in the confines of the island, braiding their hair and taking about the dreams of the nights’ passed.

Still, hope hadn’t been a crime for your mind yet. You hated the mixed feelings you had felt that day. You recalled the unusual feeling of anxiety that had set into your gut in the morn and that carried through the hours of the day.

The memories of the ceremony were not many, aside from the grimace on your face that persisted through the wedding, celebrated under the Faith of the Seven and not in the tradition of Old Valyria, which you thought to be the rightful one.

What you remembered vividly, was the night. Hating Aemond Targaryen for what he’d called your cousins through the years of your childhood and early adolescence seemed nothing but rightful. And still…

You remembered his hand on your lower back as he’d walked you to your new shared chambers, and the way his warmth had seeped into the fabric of your dress.

You remembered the way he had not looked at you as you’d taken off the intricate wedding dress and left it on the floor after you’d stepped out of it.

He had put out the candles and told you to lie down on the bedding with a nod of his head before extinguishing the last source of light with a blow.

He had stripped completely before he’d also climbed on the sheets, making the mattress sink under his weight.

You had expected roughness and pain throughout the whole action, for many ladies of the court who had a friendly relationship with the Princess Regent, had told you what to expect would happen to you in the weeks preceding the wedding.

It did not come, that stinging sensation, the sharp feeling of the hardness entering you. He had worked you with his fingers the exact way you did when you were alone, almost making you think he had known your body despite having never seen it.

You had to repress your moans by biting the inside of your cheeks, and you remembered feeling glad that he could not see your face in the darkness that enveloped the chambers under his wish.

He had not kissed your lips once, but he had continued moving his fingers inside you until he had redeemed your cunt wet enough to be fucked.

That was when he had turned you around so you lied on your stomach and had pulled up your hips- the biggest contact he had offered you that night.

He had put a hand on your hip- it had been warm and comforting, despite it being distant at the same time, and it had stayed there for the whole time.

You had not come, for you forced yourself not to. His thrusts were determined: slow and steady at first, and grew faster as he continued taking your purity. But you had not finished, for the pleasure you had felt seemed so unexpected and abnormal you simply could not let your body do so.

But he had, and both of his hands were on your hips when he’d emptied himself inside of you. And then he had stilled, and you had heard his rough breathing and the sweat on his palms as he had slid them down and off your body.

He had walked out after his climax, leaving you on the marital bed, empty, still biting the inside of your cheek to withhold the moan you had let out once the heavy doors had closed behind him.

You remembered getting off the bed and feeling your legs weak. But you had still gone in front of the full length looking glass in the chambers, turned, and looked at your reflection from behind your shoulder. You had seen his seed trailing down the inside of your thighs.

You had touched yourself at the sight, thankful for being alone. You had done so many times after that night, and the mere thought sent a flush to your cheeks.

As you looked outside the window at the city below- still a number of candles burnt, but you could hold the number with your hands- and sighed, the sound of steps coming from outside made your head turn sharply to the dark wooden door.

Out of your deepest surprise, Aemond came in. He froze when he saw you, but made no move to step back, “Wife.” He greeted you, his eye falling from your face and finding an armchair.

“Husband.” you replied, tearing your eyes from what was his obviously tired form. But they found him again when you heard the sound of him sitting down. The way his hand was on his scar, the way his fingers traced it angrily, made your brows furrow. “Are you faring well?” you asked, for the silence was already starting to be uncomfortable.

Still, all he replied to your seemingly harmless question was: “Mh…” You could not resist to tut and turn once again to the sky.

Why did you even think you had the chance to have a normal opportunity for a conversation with him? Gods, you sometimes wished he were a mute, so he would have an excuse to substitute his words with those daft sounds.

You dug your nail into the skin of your finger and tried to contain the urge to walk away. After all, you were there first, and you would be the one who’d stay. What was he doing there, anyway? As far as you were aware, your shared chambers had been empty since that night of two moons ago.

Despite these thoughts, you started musing how lucky you had been to end up with someone like Aemond. He was far from the best husband, and so was clear to everyone, but he was also far from the worst.

He did not talk- even if it sometimes infuriated you; if he had lovers, his relationships were discreet; and, as he was rather far in the line of succession, especially now that Rhaenyra had birthed five children, he did not crave for an heir- testimony was the fact he had considered his duty fulfilled after taking your virginity.

“If I am correct…” His voice made you snap out of your thoughts and you turned around, looking at how his tapered fingers were still pressing onto the scarred tissue. The strain in his voice was obvious as he continued his request, “You have quite the experience with poultices?”

Your eyebrows raised at his words. How in his Seven Hells did he have that information? You may have flaunted yourself about your prowess now and then, but that had happened a long time ago, many years before your wedding.

“Y-yes.” you said, clearing your throat and turning to face him, leaning against the window ledge, “What is the matter?”

You saw how his eye avoided any form of contact, deciding to set on the stone floor instead. “I might need something to… Ease the pain from my scar.” You were extremely sure that Aemond Targaryen’s scar, in that exact moment, hurt him way less than his pride after having asked for help.

You bit the inside of your cheek to contain a grin at the thought. “Alright.” you pushed yourself off the ledge you leaned against and walked towards the door, “Come to the maester’s laboratory.”

He followed without a word, walking behind you and silently letting you know he had no intention of speaking another word for the foreseeable future. You had no intention of saying anything else whatsoever, so the walk to the laboratory was punctuated by the sound of your and Aemond’s boots on the stone floor.

His eye was stuck on your form as you walked in front of him, on your hands joined behind your back. He had not seen you so clearly since that night of two moons ago, for he had since then forced himself to stay as far from you and from the places you visited as was possible for him.

He tried not to let himself be bothered by the fact that you had decided to play his game and not try to initiate a conversation as you would have normally done. But mostly, he tried not to let his eye linger on the hypnotising sway of your hips and of your blood red skirt.

The colour annoyed him. You were supposed to be his wife, but the fabric and embroidery held nothing resembling the ones the women in his family wore, and everything to do with women he was not supposed to care about.

Once you reached the airy chamber, the rain rhythm had picked up, but the sky had begun to shift its colours to those that belonged to Dawn.

The smell of pot marigold began to fill the room once you put the plant into boiling water, and you had to gather the courage to take a small jar from a shelf and walk towards him. You did not know why he’d asked for your help when the highest maesters with the best training in all of Westeros were in King’s Landing to tend to any problem the royal family thought they had.

Also, why would he do it if, when you approached, he eyed the jar and the transparent gel it contained with wariness, his jaw tightening? And why had he said he needed assistance if he squirmed away when you raised your hand to apply the poultice on his cheek.

“Aemond-“ you sighed, but he interrupted you.

“What is that?”

His sharp tone made you bite the inside of your cheek so you did not roll your eyes at him. “Aloe. It could alleviate the irritation if you let me put it on the scar.”

Aemond had the audacity to tut at the words that came out of your mouth, but he complied and turned his head to the side. The small victory that filled your chest was shortly replaced by the need to be wary, for you had to take off his eye-patch.

There had yet to occur an occasion when he’d taken off the leather that covered his eye, and you did not know if your curiosity was strong enough to invade his privacy in such a manner.

But you reasoned it was him that asked your help, despite the truism that he did not crave for the touch that came with it. So, you took an internal deep breath and brought your hand behind his head to grab the strand of the patch and take it off.

He did not move, he seemed to be frozen with the cold of beyond the Wall. You thought his breathing had ceased, but when you saw the twitch of his jaw- which he was shutting so tightly his teeth might have snapped- you released a breath.

He was beautiful, and you had known so for a very long time, but nothing would have prepared you for the sight in front of you: the blue sapphire was bigger than you expected, and it caught the light of the few remaining candles right away, casting an eerie and soft light to his features. If anything, it made him more delightful to the eye, in a frightening way.

You told yourself to stop looking, or he would have definitely left. So you unscrewed the lid of the jar and took some of the gel onto two of your fingers before bringing it to his cheek.

His skin was scorching hot, so much so that you felt it even through the cold substance you were applying to the scar. His violet eye was fixed on the stone wall, not moving and inch, but you saw and felt the tension in his entire body, and you couldn’t help but wonder if it was your presence that caused such a reaction or the fact that you were touching his scarred cheek in a manner you had never seen anyone do, not even his mother.

You straightened up and screwed the lid back on the jar, turning swiftly around and walking back towards the marigolds. You closed your eyes shut and took a deep breath- that may have been the hardest thing you’ve ever done, on the same level of claiming your dragon.

He watched you, more insistently than he’d wished to as you strained the marigolds from the boiling water. The fresh sensation the aloe left on his cheek reminded him of your fingers, and that made him need to sink his nails into his palm. Suddenly, he felt the room was not airy enough, and he got up swiftly to walk to one of the tall and narrow windows. Taking a deep breath with his eye closed, he asked with words that came out more curt and strained than he’d intended: “What is it you are making now?”

“The poultice I was talking about.” you said quickly, your voice slightly higher than usual. It made Aemond wonder if he was what had your voice raise in such a way, if that was the effect he had on you, because the effects you had on him was making him bleed from his left palm.

Aemond nodded stiffly, letting out a deep breath and feeling the fresh air of the morning hitting the still not absorbed aloe on his scar. “And how often should I apply it?” he asked, hoping you would not notice the fact he was trying not to breathe the flowery scent anymore, because your skin definitely smelt the same way now, and he seemed unable to drift his mind to any other thought.

“As many times you feel you are in need of it.” you answered, putting the marigolds into a mortar, the action leaving a slight yellow tint on the tip of your fingers.

Why was he looking at you? When had he turned around and let his eye wander to your face? He cursed himself internally, for the only candle that was still burning- the one set on the counter where you were working- was casting a warm light across your features, making them even softer, prettier than they needed to be.

He wanted to put that fucking candle off- that was the reason why he approached, of course. “How will I know when it’s working?” he asked, uttering the most superficial and mindless question he could muster. But he forgot about it when he noticed your fingers stilling momentarily at his nearness, and when they started smashing the marigolds again, your movements were not as precise any longer, but more erratic.

You answered the obvious, “If your scar does not pain you as much…” but the softness of your voice almost made Aemond grin. He restrained himself, however, as he halted his steps and stood right behind you.

You felt the heat of his body seeping into you, and you felt foolish for the feeling your mind mastered up, because he was not touching you. “So,” he said, the leather covering his arms cracking when he crossed them in front of his broad chest, “can I come to you each time I feel pain, wife?” His tone was challenging, mocking even, but you heard the slightest bit of hope for you to accept that involuntarily slipped out of his mouth. "What if it's in the middle of the night?" he continued, stepping closer still, making his forearm brush against the middle of your back. "Will you rise from your bed and tend to your husband?"

You sighed and turned around so you were facing him. He was closer than expected, but you tried not to let the things his nearness provoked from showing on your face, despite the breath that caught in your throat. “If you so need it, husband, I will.”

You clearly saw his pupil dilate as you turned and looked up at him, making the purple of his iris almost disappear completely as it got swallowed by the purest black. The sapphire did not have any available source of light to catch, but Aemond was handsome nonetheless. You were completely aware of the blush on your fair skin, showing bluntly to his hungry gaze, but you told yourself that he was most obviously also affected by the closeness of your bodies.

“Good,” he said, almost spat. But then his hand raised and tucked a strand of hair that was left out of your tresses behind your ear. His hand lingered purposely, letting you feel the scorching heat of his fingertips as he trailed them down to your jaw. “I would hate to suffer needlessly.” You saw his eye drop to your lips.

The only occasion in which your lips had met had been the wedding ceremony, and the contact had been brief, chaste. The sudden memory made you wonder what he would taste like. You were aware that he drank green tea most morns and every evening, so that was certainly an option.

Aemond's thumb brushed your cheekbone gently, ghostly, tracing a path down to your neck, stopping just short of your mouth. He could feel the rapid beat of your heart pounding against his fingertips. "Perhaps you can apply it yourself tonight...wife." He whispered, his breath burning pleasantly against the soft skin of your cheek.

The words you spoke next made you doubt all the hatred you had felt all these years towards the man that was now in front of you, asking you to service him and making the undergarments covering your most intimate part wet. “If you wish me to.”

He stepped back, releasing you from his hold, but the heat between you remained palpable. “Yes,” he replied, his voice husky with barely contained desire. "I think I'll enjoy that."

Despite the need you now felt for his touch, you were extremely grateful when his hand fell from your face and he walked out of the maester’s laboratory, leaving you with the poultice you were making for him.

You had never felt like this, what was getting to you? Pleasing a man in such a way? Yield to his desires without hesitation? And he was not any man: he was the one who had married you against your will and fucked you from behind before leaving you alone for interminable days. And he was now deciding you worth of his attention?

You closed your eyes and took a deep breath, and opened them again as you released it. You took the mortar back into your hands and continued on with the poultice, forcing yourself to forget who it was for.

Aemond arrived at your shared chambers with fast steps and faster breath. He needed to get a grip of whatever it was he was feeling and stop acting as if he actually desired you. It was an ignoble thought, the one he’d had back in the maester’s laboratory with you. Fucking without the sole intent of procreation was a sin, and he would not inflict such a stain upon himself for someone he had not cared to know for the two decades of his life.

Still, he poured two goblets of Dornish Red and did not touch his until you came back with the poultice in hand.

His eye fixed on you until you stood in front of him, and then he gave you one of the goblets. “Thank you.” you replied as you took it, brushing your fingers against his in the motion. His skin was still hot, but not as much as before. Your eyes stayed in his as you both drank the fresh liquid quickly.

Then, letting out a breath, you unscrewed the lid containing the marigold poultice and took some on your index and middle finger, bending over towards him. He tilted his head to the side, leaving you the space you needed right before your fingers came in contact with his cheek.

His nails dug once again into his palm at your nearness, and also because he had been right: you now smelled of flowers, and he loathed how perfectly it suited you.

Even as his nails stabbing his skin did something to distract him from your perfume, his thoughts were far from calm. He couldn't ignore the way his pulse quickened whenever you touched him, or the way his cock stirred in his breeches at the mere sound of your breath, which was also not the one of a tranquil individual.

“I am done.” you said with haste, straightening up and screwing the lid back on the jar and leaving it on the table, near his goblet. His eye moved to you, taking in your flustered expression and the pink colouring of your cheeks.

Silence stretched between you two as he sat on the chair and looked up to you as you stood in front of him. You did not know whether you wished to run away from him or sit on his lap and grind yourself on him until you shivered with pleasure.

He answered the question for you when he said, “You may leave now.”

You did stand there for a moment after those words exited his mouth, looking at him as his hand fished the eyepatch from his pocket and put it back to cover his sapphire eye. You pressed your lips together with strength to remind yourself what was happening, and you turned and left.

❀❀

What had been tormenting Aemond Targaryen the most, was that he was reminded of you each time he applied the poultice to his scar. He had tried to stop, but it had become almost a drug, both because it made him stop wanting to cut his face and because he smelled you each time. It made it way easier to fuck his hand thinking of you.

A month had passed since the time he’d last spoken to you, and the contents of the jar you had given him were completely gone. It was a perfect lubricant, and it also did something for his scar, which could have been a double win for you, if he’d told you.

It was the perfect occasion to seek you out again without seeming to have interest. He had used every remaining bit so as to show you he had waited as much as possible before coming to ask for help.

He squeezed the glass in his hand as he knocked at the doors of your private chambers, and when your sweet and calm voice told him to come in, he pushed them open. You were sitting in front of your vanity looking glass, braiding your hair simply as you prepared for going to sleep.

“Wife,” he greeted you, relishing in your surprised gaze that met his in the reflection of the glass. He showed you the empty jar, “I find myself in need of your services once again.”

Your brows furrowed, and he was aware that the amount of time in which the poultice had finished must have seemed incredibly short in relation to the quantity of the product. Fortunately, you stood from your chair and relaxed your eyebrows again, approaching him and taking the jar from his hand. His hands were scorching hot once again.

“Do you wish to wait for me here while I make it?” you asked, purposefully ignoring the way his eye was burning holes into your scalp, seeking for visual contact.

“I will come with you.”

As you walked, Aemond’s eye remained fixed on the tantalising way the skirt of your gown moved, and Gods forbid the thoughts that surged into his mind while you climbed the stairs before him.

It could be easy for him to bring you into his bed and satisfy his desire, but he had a completely developed need to strain himself until he could not take it any longer. It made whatever it took far sweeter, and you would have been the most palatable thing he will sink his teeth into. Because he will sink them.

Once you reached the maester’s laboratory again, Aemond sat down on a wooden chair, crossing his ankle over his leg and looking at you while you worked. You did not glance once at him, and you were proud of that as you boiled the marigolds into the water again. That was until he spoke.

“Do you have a lover, Princess?”

That made you turn sharply around, almost touching the pot. You blocked your hand against your stomach, “I beg your pardon?”

"I merely asked if there was another man who had the privilege of warming your bed on these cold nights." His tone remained even, but there was a tightness to it that he couldn't quite mask.” he cleared himself, before standing from the chair and walking towards you with his usual slow and measured steps. “There is nothing wrong with the notion.”

Your mouth fell open at his words, and you weren’t able to answer his question but with a small shake of your head. The notion made you feel slightly out of place. You had always thought Aemond had other women, but the question he asked almost assured you he did, and it made you feel betrayed in some way, because you did not have anyone else. Or, well, anyone at all, because you did not have Aemond.

“Hmm.” was his answer, before his eye moved from you to the pot behind you, “I believe the marigolds are ready.”

You cleared your throat and turned back around to continue with your poultice, draining the flowers and moving them to the mortar to smash them. The scent filled the room again, and you closed your eyes, repeating the motion mechanically and hoping he’d turn away and go sit back on that fucking chair.

❀❀

Three weeks later, Aemond Targaryen was once again at your door, demanding more of that poultice. You wanted to ask him how in the Seven Hells had he been able to finish such an amount of product in twenty one days, but you contained yourself and sighed, walking out of your room and towards the maester’s laboratory without a word, knowing he would follow.

Your strides were faster, and you held your skirt up so as not to trip on the fabric. You wanted to get this done as quickly as possible, so you ripped the stem off the marigold petals as the water boiled, throwing them into the pot before leaning against the countertop.

You closed your eyes and took a deep breath, knowing Aemond was watching you intently. Fortunately, your hair was down that day, and it covered your face completely.

It was when a soft breath hit your bare arm that you opened them again, and, tilting your head, silver strands came into view before a black leather eyepatch.

“You smell just like them.”

You tucked your hair behind your ear, so as to be able to look at his face without obstacles. “Is it a bad thing?” you asked in a small voice, and despite wanting not to care about his thoughts for he most certainly did not know you, you cared about his answer.

"No," Aemond replied softly, his gaze dropping to your lips for a fleeting moment. His hand twitched ever so slightly, as if he wanted to reach out and brush a loose strand of hair away from your face. Instead, he clasped his hands behind his back, maintaining his usual poised demeanour. He had learned long ago to hide his true desires beneath layers of stoic indifference. "Quite the contrary," he added, his voice low and husky. "It's... comforting."

You pressed your lips together and turned your head back towards the marigolds- it was time to drain them, not time to blush for the childish words that came out of the mouth of Aemond Targaryen.

Still, how did he do that? How could he always make you feel so small and incompetent with a mere stare. As you transferred the flowers into the mortar and began to smash them, you started thinking of any way, any question that could make him as uncomfortable as he’d made you.

“Do you have a lover?”

You saw him straightening up after the words left your mouth, and you realised you had hit the spot. His hands joined in front of his lap, and he stared down at you as you continued to smash the marigolds- your position made him seem even taller than he already was. “That is hardly any of your concern, wife.” he answered coolly, turning his gaze back to the crushed flowers.

Your movements halted, and you looked up at him, an unbelieving smile on your lips, “Why are you free to ask such questions, yet when I do so you are not willing to answer?”

His eye betrayed nothing of what he felt, except for the distaste he seemed to reserve to you when you talked to him. “You chose to answer, however pathetically.”

The smile, false as it was, faded from your lips. You preferred the version of him that asked you uncomfortable questions and stared at your every move, no doubt. This version made you want to slap him across the face.

And that’s exactly why you did it. He did not move much at the impact- he almost did not move at all- but you hoped it stung as much as it did in your hand. “Then ask a fucking maester for this daft poultice and leave me be.” you spat, grabbing your skirts and walking out of the chambers.

❀❀

You had never loathed and yearned someone in such a way.

The mere sight of his walk, so rhythmic and precise, made the hairs on your arm stick up, and the sound of his steps had your ears inevitably tense up, and they made you hope that he was walking to come to you, to make you go mental again. But he never did.

Even if you heard his steps outside your chambers at night, stilling in front of the door, even if he stared at you across the table during dinner, even if you found him occupying spaces he never used to be in, he did not speak a word to you. It made you incredibly frustrated, and the desire to slap his face again made itself palpable.

It was another full moon, however, and, having lost the last one for Aemond Targaryen, you decided you were not going to cower again. You made your way to your shared chambers despite you wished not to stand in the same room as him and pushed the doors open after taking a deep breath.

You found him there, but you were not going to give him the satisfaction of having a reaction to his presence. “Husband.” you greeted him with a curt nod, your eyes not truly meeting his as you walked to the window. You lent your hands against the window ledge and looked at the source of pale light coming from the night sky.

When he did not greet you, you felt a sense of pride, for that made him a childish man, a pathetic one. Although the urge to speak to him, to ask him if the poultice the maester made was working, to ask him if he could not sleep, was strong, stronger was the need to hate him. So you bit your tongue and stared out the window.

He crossed the room slowly, his boots echoing against the stone floor, making the hair on your neck stand up. However, you did not turn around. "I see you've finally decided to grace me with your presence." He spoke, his voice dripping with disdain. "Mind telling me what's so bloody important about that window?" his sharp voice cut through what could have been a pleasant ten minutes.

“Tonight is a full moon.” you answered, not taking your eyes away from the sky, although you swallowed heavily. “And I was not trying to avoid you, merely going about my day.”

He let out a dry, mirthless laugh. "So, you're here because of the moon, not for me?" His tone was laced with bitterness. Aemond stepped closer, standing just behind you, his warm breath brushing against your neck.

He placed his hand on the window ledge next to yours, his fingers so near yours you could feel the heat emanating from them. You took your hand away, crossing your arms in front of your chest. “Bold of you to imply that I am here for you.” you said, feeling both repulsion and a strong arousal at his nearness.

“I imply nothing.” Aemond replied curtly, but his next words dripped with challenge: “These are the chambers in which we are supposed to share a bed. If you are not here for me, I do not see why you should be here at all.”

You turned to face him slowly after his words, your eyes going from his chest covered in dark green fabric to his face. “I will leave, then.” you announced.

Before you could do any move- which you were not going to, for those words were only spoken to make him react- his hand came up and grabbed your wrist. His hold was strong, but it did not aim to hurt. "No," he growled. "We are wed. You will stay." A flash of anger ignited in his good eye as he held your gaze. "If you're so determined to ignore me during the day, fine. But nights are mine." The words were spoken with a low, menacing undertone that left little room for argument. He didn't release his hold on your arm, waiting for your reaction.

But you did not give him the satisfaction, for you turned back around and faced the window, not uttering a word back to him. His grip tightened momentarily, making you feel how boiling his skin was, before he released you.

You heard the sound of his boots, and you turned around despite yourself, thinking for a moment that he was going to walk away. But he filled two goblets with red wine and brought one back to you.

“Am I to consider this a symbol of truce? Or the apology you cannot utter?” you asked him, taking the cold metal in your hand and bringing it up to have a sip.

“Consider it what you will.” he said, his tone still harsh as he did the same thing, but his eye moved to your lips, watching as the liquid slightly tinted the inner skin of your lips of a dark red.

You sighed and turned back around, keeping the goblet near your chest as you looked at the night sky with way less interest than you had when you had come in. You heard him putting the goblet on the windowsill, before he exhaled an intentionally deep breath, hitting your skin and making goosebumps rise.

He looked at the moon too, for some moments, and you wondered what he was thinking about. Then, out of the blue, he took a step forward, making his chest touch your back, and he wrapped an arm around your waist, pressing his palm flat on your stomach. “I did not realise the moon was so much more captivating than I, Princess.” he murmured in your ear, standing so close your perfume filled his nostrils.

“I will continue to pretend it is.” you answered after hoping your voice would not come out broken.

You heard the brief chuckle he let out against your neck as he leaned in closer. “Is all this because I did not answer your question the past moon? Or for the words I spoke?” he asked, his hand moving left until it rested on your hip, “I will admit it might have been a slight overreaction.”

You let out a scoff at his words, taking a big swig of wine to try and forget about his hand on you. “At least you acknowledge it.”

When his hand moved to your arse, squeezing it softly with his warm hand, you thought yourself about to drop the goblet. You were glad when he took it from you with his free hand, that touched yours extremely more than necessary, and finished the few remaining drops before settling it down the windowsill beside his. “I also said you smelled of marigolds, did I not? I said I found it comforting.”

“You did.” you said with what was your remaining voice, before stating more confidence, “You brought me the wine as an apology.”

“I did.” he blurted out, his hand stilling for a moment before it went back to your hip, as did the other one. “I am sorry.” he confessed then, making you feel far from pathetic after having Aemond Targaryen apologise with no hint of sarcasm in his voice.

But when he squeezed your hips, brought you back to reality and pressed his erection to your back, he made you suddenly realise what was happening. His breath ghosted on your neck before the tip of his nose brushed your jawline. “Does my apology satisfy you, wife?” he asked in a husky whisper as his hands roamed your waist.

The warmth of his body seeped into yours and into the fabrics you were wearing. You imagined he felt the same fires stocking his insides when he breathed out as if oxygen was just given back to him. He brought you closer still, massaging his cock with the curve of your arse, as if the mere contact was enough to fulfill his burning desire.

You leaned over the windowsill and rested on your elbows, arching your back nonchalantly and looking at him from behind your shoulder. “I believe it appropriate.”

At your actions, his mouth fell agape, and he looked down at your arse, pressed against his lap in such a tantalising manner he seemed about to rip the fabric off in one tug, letting this game you played cease. His hand moved to caress your back, and it returned to your hip when his eye found yours once again.

He pressed himself harder into you, as if to be sure you felt the extent of his hardness, the full lenght of his desire. “Do you wish for me to show you just how sincere my apology can be?”

You bit your lip, looking at his strong hand covering your hip and wrinkling the soft fabric of your nightgown, and nodded.

Aemond let out a deep breath at your consent, and he bent over you slowly, eyes closed, as he massaged your hips roughly. “Shall we move to our bed, then?” he asked, using the possessive adjective purposefully.

It made you grin, and you straightened up as he did the same, before facing him. With a hand on the side of his neck, your nails grazing the contour of his jaw, you led him to the bed, before pushing him to sit on the softness.

You reached behind your back, and undid the bow that kept your nightgown tight. He spoke when your hands moved to the button at the back of the collar, “Can I be of any-“

“No.” you interrupted him, looking at how his violet eye darkened at your firm answer. You let the light fabric glide down your shoulders before you bared your chest to his view, and then your stomach, and your legs.

You took a step forward, completely naked before him. He breathed out again, raising a hand and placing it on your hip, almost testing if you were really not just a product of his fantasies. “Devine.” he said in a whisper, genuine and unfiltered, as he ate you with his eye as much as he could, taking in everything possible in the dim light of the full moon.

Your hand found his shoulder once again as you climbed on top of him, the softness of your thighs against his sides. Your hair concealed both your faces from whatever else was in the room, and you took off his eyepatch right before it fell discarded on the stone floor.

It was obvious the slight discomfort he felt, but he did not let it linger, for his tapered fingers trailed down your waist to your thigh and felt every dip and curve in its way. “May I touch you?” he asked, the purple in his iris completely replaced by the black of his pupil as he stared up at you, his thumb tracing the edge of your pussy.

One of your hands left his shoulder to find his between your thighs, and you guided two of his fingers to your entrance, letting out a breath as he began exploring your wet folds.

Aemond’s mouth parted at the feeling of your slick cunt, testament of your desire for him, and slowly pushed inside, relishing in the tightness around his fingers. He started moving slowly, curling his fingers before sliding out of you completely and filling you up once again.

You started to grind your hips against his hand, coating his milky skin with your arousal as you threw your head back and moaned. The sound made the grip of his hand on your hip tightened so much you were sure it would have left a bruise, but you did not stop him.

Your nails scratched at the base of his neck, giving him the signal to pick up speed. His fingers moved faster, making you cry out as he leaned forward and started tasting the skin of your neck like a man starved, nipping and kissing, licking and biting.

Another moan escaped your mouth, and his fingers went even faster, fucking your tight cunt until, added to the sound of your moans and his rugged breathing, there also was that of the wetness inside of you.

Heat flushed through Aemond as you moaned on top of him, the sound alone enough to make his cock swell with anticipation. He was mesmerized by the way you responded to his touch, each gasp, each little movement driving him madder with desire. He thought he might just release himself simply from watching you ride his hand, but he fought it back. He wanted more, so much more, and he wouldn't let his own pleasure interrupt this moment. The feel of your cunt clenching around his digits, your body writhing with ecstasy, was worth far more than the temporary relief of orgasm.

In a swift move, he picked you up and stood upright, keeping his fingers inside your cunt even as he laid you on the bed. He moved on top, one of his legs between yours, and he slipped his fingers out of you.

At the missing contact you whined, bringing him closer with a hand on the side of his neck. He let out a satisfied smile and leaned into your ear, “Patience.”

His lips found yours hungrily, then, making you taste the wine you had just consumed and the fire that burned on his tongue, while his hand still cupped your sex possessively. You moaned against his hot mouth, rolling your hips to tell him you wanted more.

He grinned and broke the kiss, and before you knew, his hands were gripping your thighs, sinking into the soft skin, and his mouth hovered over your dripping pussy.

You wanted to ask him what he intended to do, but it became quite clear when he replaced his fingers with his tongue, savouring every last drop of your juices, ready to bring you to the brink of pleasure.

You moaned loudly, finding his hair right away and pulling the silver and silky locks to urge him closer to your dripping heart. Your feet lied on his back as you closed your eyes, a sensation immensely stronger than the one you felt alone started to be felt in your lower stomach.

Aemond's breath was ragged, his lust evident in every touch, every kiss, every stroke of his tongue against your sensitive flesh. As he teased your clit, his one good eye focused intently on your face, drinking in the sight of your pleasure.

Your taste was intoxicating, your cries music to his ears. He craved this, this raw display of passion and trust, and he intended to make the most of it. He slid his tongue inside of you, thrusting in and out before returning to your clit and replacing it with his fingers, relishing the way your muscles contracted around them.

He felt your body tense, your breathing quicken, and he knew you were close. He increased his efforts, determined to make you scream his name- or whatever title you chose to give him in that moment- to the heavens.

You came undone, your orgasm crashing over you like a tidal wave. Aemond continued to lick and suckle at your clit until the last tremor subsided, only then crawling up your body to claim your mouth in a possessive kiss, sharing your taste with you.

Your vision returned when his lips collided with yours, finding entrance to your mouth right away and caressing your tongue with his. You moaned into his mouth, willing your legs to stop shaking after your orgasm.

He broke the kiss, and brought his hand to his lips, tasting you on the fingers he’d used to bring you the best pleasure you had ever felt. He looked down at you as he did so, shifting position so as to remind you of his hard cock pressing against your thigh.

“Strip.” you breathed out in what sounded much like a plea to your ears, but the frantic motions in which he did what you said made you understand how desperate he was to stretch you out.

He quickly revealed his toned and flawless chest to your eyes, before taking off his trousers with equal haste. Stepping out of them, he locked his eye with yours as he slid off his breacheas. He took his hard cock in his hand, pumping it slowly as he positioned himself on the bed once again, the pressure of him on his knees making the mattress sink.

Precum leaked from his head, and you remembered how it felt to have his seed inside of you after your wedding night. He gripped your knee, spreading your legs apart guiding his cock over your still trembling pussy.

His breathing was extremely laboured as he looked down, “I do not have a lover.”

The confession made your eyes shoot up to his, wide and attentive for what he was about to say, but no other words of the matter came out of his mouth. “You… You do not?” you breathed out, needy for another reassurance.

His eye went to you, and he shook his head. Then he licked his lips and leaned down to your ear. He left a ghost of a kiss on your cheekbone, making the skin tingle, before moving to your ear. “No, sweet wife… But, if you must know, I have fucked my hand countless of times thinking of this perfect cunt of yours… And of your smell, most of all.” he whispered huskily, his hand coming to rest on your hip, squeezing the flesh.

He left you wordless and with ragged breathing as he straightened up. His hand found his hard shaft again, and he slapped it against your pussy, coating your clit with his precum and making you squirm for the touch on the still sensitive part.

He watched your reaction with dark intensity, a hint of satisfaction flashing across his features at your responsiveness. His thumb stroked the bundle of nerves lazily, even if completely aware, while his cock teased your entrance. He knew you were ready, yet he took his time, prolonging the torture for both of you. "Do you want me?" He asked, his voice low and gravelly.

“Yes!” you almost yelled, making his lips curve into a predatory smirk. With a triumphant grin, Aemond positioned himself at your entrance, feeling the wetness and warmth that awaited him. His hand left your hip, gripping your breast instead, rolling your nipple between his thumb and forefinger, teasing you even further.

When his hand moved back to your hip, but he made no sign of moving, you rolled your eyes, “Aem-” but you could not finish saying his name that he thrust into you with a ferocity that was just short of violent, and a groan escaped him at the sensation.

Despite the loss of gentleness that he offered to you as he took you for the second time, you could not deny that was exactly how you wanted him to fuck you. Your moan reverberated loudly through the walls of your shared chambers as he pounded into you with a ferocity that made your walls clamp down on his length.

His hips snapped forward with unrelenting force, burying his length deep within you, eliciting another loud moan. The sight of you writhing beneath him was enough to make him lose control, but he fought to keep himself in check.

He savoured the feel of your body tightening around him, the way your breasts bounced with each thrust, and the soft whimpers that fell from your lips. Aemond couldn't help the thought crossing his mind: she was his now. His to claim whenever he wanted, his to protect, and his to pleasure. It filled him with an unfamiliar sense of satisfaction that bordered on possessiveness. "Fuck," he growled, the sight of his cock disappearing into your depths driving him closer to the edge.

He pulled out abruptly, causing you to gasp in surprise and protest. He hooked both hands under your knees and spread you out to him. “Was I blind to wait this long to take you again?” he asked almost to himself as he drank the sight of you, glistening and trembling for his attention.

With one swift movement, he entered you again, making you feel another orgasm approach. You sunk your head on the pillows, your mouth opened as he started thrusting again, moans of pure bliss and satisfaction coming out of his mouth.

One of his hands moved to find your soft thigh, “I want you to look, wife.” he said almost pleadingly. “I want you to look as I claim you again, as my seed fills your beautiful cunt.”

You bit your lip hard but looked down at his cock as he moved fast, making you take it inside, which you did greedily. It all made your walls tighten around his length even more than before, making him grunt out a moan.

“Gods,” he whispered gravelly, furrowing his brows in pleasure but still maintaining his gaze on where your bodies joined, “It’s so fucking perfect.”

He slammed into you even harder then, but his erratic thrusts made you understand he was about to finish. “Fuck…” he grunted again, and he leaned over your leg, bending it and letting his cock deeper inside you.

Your hand found his neck, bringing him closer while applying pressure to it as your cunt spasmed around him. You closed your eyes shut in pleasure, but the iron grip on your thigh reminded you to look as he had ordered.

So you sunk your teeth into your bottom lip, feeling your throat going raw at the contained screams of pleasure while you came around him. Your grip on his throat loosened drastically, for your strength was now completely drained out of you, but then he buried himself inside your cunt to the hilt, sliding out to do it again, all accompanied by his moans into your ear as he emptied himself inside of you.

You saw the arm that he was holding upon to give up, and, spent, he lay on top of your chest, his skin glistening in the candlelight due to the sheer layer of sweat on it.

Your hand found his hair, pushing the silver strand away from his face. He sighed heavily in a weak attempt to regain his breath, and rested a hand on your ribcage, letting his thumb trace circles on the skin. “We will continue once we have rested a moment.” he announced, making you breathe out a laugh and raise your eyebrows.

“Aemond,” you said with a lingering smile, your free hand finding his back and tracing the same circles he was on you. “It has yet to pass a minute.”

“I am fully aware,” he replied, moving to rest his chin on your sternum so he could look up at you. “We have been married for five moons now, and this is the second time I have you… I need more.” he said, his eye serious as he bent to leave a kiss on your skin.

[whitedarkmoonflower]

Two lonely souls

Pairing: Sihtric x reader (female)

Authors note: I wrote part of this for the big story, still waiting editing, but then it suddenly trailed into a different direction and this didn't fit anymore so I had almost 2K words and didn't know what to do with them as to write more... 😅

Warnings: SMUT 18+, a bit of heartbreak but all in all nothing really serious. It might be a first part in a small series as I have a feeling the story still has something to give, but it depends whether it finds enough readers

Word Count: 3,5 K

Summary: it's was supposed to be just an exciting night of reckless pleasure but it seems that the Nornes have wowen a different path for the reader and Sihtric

A soft murmur rippled through the crowd crammed into the grand, vaulted chapel, swelling into a collective gasp of awe. Even Aethelwold’s grating voice faltered mid-sentence, though that might have had more to do with Finan’s whispered threat to kill him in his sleep. Yet the rest of those gathered under Alfred’s roof that day were left speechless for a different reason: the arrival of Lady Aethelflaed.

As if drawn by an unseen force, every head turned toward her, as she entered through the big heavy wooden door and with slow, deliberate steps headed toward the altar, every head but one.

Soft, delicate fingers, light as a whisper, traced down Sihtric’s forearm from elbow to palm, their touch sending a shiver through him as they wove between his own.

"I've missed you," a breath of warmth ghosted against his ear from behind, stealing his focus entirely.

He still couldn’t quite grasp how it all had happened, how he had let himself be drawn into it, but there he was, following the gentle pull of the small hand in his palm, teasingly leading him away from the gathering. 

Fortunately, they had been standing at the very back, behind the noble and important guests, making it much easier for Sihtric to slip away unnoticed, except for Finan’s questioning gaze, which trailed after him.

When he first met you, he hadn't thought much of it. In truth he hadn’t thought about anything at all. 

They had only just arrived in Winchester, exhausted and road-worn, and after a heated exchange with Uhtred, the king had begrudgingly ordered food to be served for the heathen lord and his men, along with accommodations in the servants’ quarters.

Uhtred had wanted to refuse. He would have preferred to find a few spare beds at an inn, somewhere beyond the palace walls, away from the wary, unwelcoming eyes that followed them, but his men were weary, their strength worn thin after two days of relentless riding. One glance at their haggard faces had been enough to make him swallow his pride and accept Alfred’s offer, even if unwillingly.

The meal had been better than expected, there was ham, cheese and freshly brewed ale -  things that rarely graced Alfred’s own table these days. The king had soured, as he always did, his appetite as fragile as his health. It seemed the last time he had truly enjoyed a meal had been in the marches, when Iseult’s tonic had granted him a brief respite from his pain.

Sihtric, however, had been in an even fouler mood, having drained a few mugs of ale too much, he had made himself underway to his room, trying to ignore the smug, knowing grins Finan and Clapa exchanged across the table.

He had truly believed it would be different this time, he had believed in the soft, sweet words, the sighs, the kisses, the sorrowful eyes that had looked at him as if he were something precious. He had wanted to believe. He always did.

"She's gone," he had confessed to his lord just before, his gaze fixed on the ground, arms hanging limply at his sides, shame burning hot in his cheeks. “She took everything. My silver. My arm rings. She didn’t even have to steal them. I gave them away willingly.”

Uhtred sighed. "Sihtric, I told you not to give her any of your arm rings or silver, didn’t I?"

"Yes, Lord," he murmured, his head sinking lower. Of course, he hadn’t listened, it had felt too good, to be able to give, to see the flicker of surprise in her eyes, to hear the warm laughter that followed. For once, he had been the reason someone smiled.

And now, it was all gone, his silver, his rings and the girl for whom he had so foolishly asked permission to marry, and it was not the first time. They always left, the moment things became real, the moment the softness turned to something solid, something he could hold, they slipped through his fingers like river water.

You had crossed his path just as he rounded the corner, the chatter and laughter of the evening meal fading away. A fresh breeze of rose oil mixed with the faint scent of ale and the lingering warmth of the hall wrapped around him as you passed by, your appearance so sudden that he nearly stumbled. 

“You drink like a man with a heavy heart,” you had said softly, tilting your head. “Or a man running from something.”

“I just have no luck with women,” he had muttered, surprising even himself with the confession.

Your fingers had traced a slow path up his chest before curling around the back of his neck, drawing him down until your lips brushed against his ear.

“Maybe,” you had whispered, “you’ve just been looking in the wrong places.”

It must have been the ale, or the sorrow, or the gnawing loneliness, or all of it tangled together. You were beautiful, perhaps the most beautiful woman he had ever seen, and he was heartbroken. It all just fit together, and before he could think better of it, before doubt could creep in, he let himself lean in, just slightly, just enough to test the waters. And you didn’t pull away.

That night you had fucked like animals in heat, filthy, hungry, desperate, reckless, passionate. It hadn’t been slow, it hadn’t been sweet nor soft, no whispered promises, no careful restraint. Just heat and hands, and teeth grazing the skin, leaving marks that wouldn’t fade by the morning. It had been need, pure and raw, burning through the both of you like fire through dry grass.

Sihtric had fucked you like a man drowning, grasping for something to hold on, sinking into  you with the force of a wild boar and you had answered him with the same fervor, taking his cock like you had been waiting for this all your life, your body arching to meet every punishing thrust, clawing at his skin like a lynx, as if you could tear the sorrow straight from his chest with every scrape of your nails, every wild, unrestrained moan.

You had fucked for hours, until the embers in the hearth had slowly died out, until the first traces of dawn had started to creep through the cracks in the shutters, until the urgency finally gave way to something else. Until your fingers, still tangled in his hair, had softened and your lips, still swollen from his, had lingered instead of devouring, until his hands once rough and insistent, had begun to soothe and cradle and his breathing, still ragged, had fallen into the rhythm with yours.

You had fallen asleep, tangled and lost in each other, unable to tell where one ended and the other began. 

Sihtric had woken first. He could still feel your body pressed against him, your leg draped lazily over his, your skin warm against the chill in the air. 

In the pale light, you looked untouched by the wildness of the night before, serene and at peace, nothing like the wild thing who had clawed at his shoulders, gasped against his throat and  moaned his name like both a prayer and a curse.

He had shifted, carefully, hesitantly, fingers twitching as he pondered to leave now, before you woke, before you could open your eyes, before you remembered who he was, what he was, and decided this had been a mistake. Before you could look at him with something different in your eyes – regret, distance, a polite, meaningless smile and an excuse.

But just as he moved to slip away, your hand had reached for him, brushing against his skin like you had always meant to find him there. A sleepy sigh, a shift of your body against his, and your eyes opened. You didn’t flinch, you didn’t pull away, you simply looked at him, slow and steady, and then, you smiled. 

Sihtric swallowed hard. He shouldn’t have let it happen, shouldn’t have let himself believe, even for a moment, that this could be anything more than what it was. 

So he did what he had always done. Silently, he slid the last silver ring from his finger and held it out to you. It wasn’t an offering meant to insult, it was the only language he knew, the only way to show gratitude. He simply didn’t know that love and affection couldn’t be bought. 

You only laughed, a quiet, breathy sound, your lips curling in something between amusement and disbelief. Shaking your head, you reached for his hand, wrapping his fingers around the shiny thing as if it had no worth to you at all, as if you were giving it back not because you didn’t want it, but because you never needed it in the first place. 

You had left him with a lingering kiss, the ghost of your lips still burning against his, a mischievous smile playing at the corner of your mouth.

“I’ll see you again, Sihtric,” you had whispered, before slipping through the door and  disappearing into the narrow corridors with the quiet, effortless grace of a wild creature.

And that had been the end of it, or so he had thought, until later that very same day, when his jaw had nearly dropped and he almost choked on his own breath, as Lady Aethelflaed had introduced her cousin to Uhtred.

And there you stood, his wild lynx, the very same mischievous grin dancing on your lips.

He had tried to avoid you, to forget you, to erase your image and your scent from his mind but you wouldn’t let him. 

That very same evening, he had found you waiting for him, leaning lazily against the wall beside his room, the dim torchlight flickering across your face. You had smiled, warm and knowing, your fingers had teasingly trailed up the stiff leather of his armour, tangling in his hair, as you pulled him down to your lips.

He had wanted to ignore you, to turn away before he fell even deeper into something he couldn’t control but the moment your lips brushed against his, he lost himself, the last remnants of reason, of restraint, dissolved into nothing. His arms wrapped around you as if they had a will of their own, drawing you flush against him, caging you in his hold.

And all he could think about was the sight of your heart-shaped ass moving back and forth, the way you had taken him so greedily, so perfectly, as he pounded into you from behind.

Sihtric’s heart hammered against his ribs, though he couldn’t say if it was from the rush of sneaking away or the warmth of your hand in his. 

“You’re quiet,” you murmured, glancing back at him over your shoulder.

Sihtric swallowed, his throat suddenly dry. “I don’t know where you’re taking me,” he admitted.

“Would it matter if you did?”

He exhaled sharply, shaking his head. No, it wouldn’t.

You stopped abruptly, turning to face him and placing your free hand against his chest as you guided him back, pushing him into an alcove barely deep enough to cover you both from the sight.

“You looked miserable back there,” you murmured, leaning back against the wall and pulling him closer until his body was pressed flush against yours, and your lips crashed against his.

A low growl rumbled in Sihtric’s throat as his hands found your waist. 

He didn’t understand this. Didn’t understand you. Why you had sought him out, why you had chosen him, but he wasn’t about to question it. 

Your teeth scraped against his bottom lip, and he groaned, his fingers tightening at your hips.

Your fingers trailed down his chest, teasingly grazing the laces of his armour, and a shiver ran through him at the promise in your touch.

“I want you on your knees, pretty boy,” you whispered, your voice soft but commanding, eyes alight with mischief.

Sihtric’s brows shot up, the walls felt impossibly thin, the distant hum of voices reminding him of the wedding gathering just around the corner. “Lady, what are you doing? Are you out of your mind?” he hissed, glancing back toward the doorway. “The wedding ceremony will be over in a moment, we’ll be seen.”

“Then you’ll have to be quick,” you smirked. “Come on, don’t tell me that a handsome warrior like you doesn’t know what to do with his tongue.”

A blush spread up Sihtric’s neck to his cheeks. “This is madness,” he muttered, licking his lips, his voice hoarse, but his body betrayed him, his knees bending as he sank to the ground.

It was madness, the wedding ceremony with over hundred guests was just over the corner, the corridor lay epmty for the moment but the narrow alcove barely concealed you both, anyone could walke past, anyone could see. It was reckless, it was wrong and yet neither of you was willing to stop.

His hands rested lightly on your skirts, unsure but willing, and you cupped his jaw, tilting his face up to meet yours, the hunger in his eyes sending a jolt straight through you..

“Good boy,” she murmured, leaning down until your lips brushed his ear. “Show me what you’ve got.” 

Your hands gathered the fabric of your dress, lifting it up your thighs, as you spread your legs just enough to make his breath hitch. The sharp exhale that left Sihtric at the sight of your bare center as he licked his lips, made you giggle softly, your fingers threading into his dark hair. 

Sihtric’s hands settled on your buttocks, fingers curling into your plush flesh as he pulled you closer, easing you away from the wall, and you could feel the warmth radiating from him, the subtle tremor in his grip betraying his nervous excitement. He leaned in, his cheek brushing against the exposed skin of your inner thigh, sending a delicious shiver up your spine.

“You are trouble,” he murmured, the soft sound of his voice vibrating against your skin. “Do you know that?”

“And you like it,” you shot back, tugging at his hair just enough to draw a soft groan from him, the sound sent a surge of heat through you, and you couldn’t resist a wicked smile. “Now, stop stalling.”

You barely had time to brace yourself before his lips started to press a trail of feather-light kisses up your thigh, his tongue flicked against your core, teasing, testing, savouring, and you whined out feeling your knees getting weak.

“Sihtric,” you whispered, your voice breaking as his lips sealed around your perl, his tongue swirling in steady, devastating circles and your knees nearly buckled, but his hands slid down the backs of your thighs, holding you steady as he obeyed your command with a fervor that left you breathless. His lips, his tongue, his mouth worked against you with sinful precision, he sucked, just lightly at your pulsing bundle of nerves, and a broken moan tore from your throat. 

“Oh God,” you gasped as his hot tongue kept brushing against your bud, diving deeper between your folds. You glanced down and another moan clawed through you from the sight of him on his knees, cheeks flushed, eyes half lidded, his tongue buried between your legs like a starved man at a feast. 

It all had started as a passionate one night stand, a meaningless adventure. Having grown up in your fathers estate far away from cities and noble ways, you still couldn’t grasp why you were sent to Winchester. 

“To learn the ways of a lady,” your father had told you.

You hadn’t wanted it, not if that meant to bow your head and accept the place in the shadows. 

After your mother’s death your father had withdrawn into himself, often neglecting his duties as a landlord. That’s when you had stepped in. The small, mischievous girl he once knew had grown into a strong-willed young woman, one who spent her time hunting, sparring, and settling disputes with an authority that overshadowed his own. By the time he finally realized how little he had shaped you into the daughter he had imagined, it was too late to change you, but he had tried anyway, and as a last resort he had decided to send you to Winchester, hoping that your aunt, Aelswith, still had a chance to mold you into something more acceptable.

“Nobody will want to marry a wildling,” he had said, and you had scoffed, marriage being the last thing you cared about. 

So you found yourself trapped in a world that did not fit you, bored of the pious, rigid life under Alfred’s roof, of endless prayers, oatmeal porridges, hushed voices in candlelit halls. The few times you could practice swordplay with Steapa were the only times you truly felt alive, until the group of warriors under Uhtred’s command arrived and you noticed him – the strikingly handsome, quiet young Dane, who seemingly carried the weight of something unseen on his shoulders. Sihtric – you had heard others call him.

That night, he had looked more than miserable. Seated at the long table in the servants’ quarters, his head rested in his hands, avoiding conversation, avoiding eye contact, as if the very air around him was too heavy to breathe.

You had watched him from the shadows, knowing full well that you had no business lingering there, but you couldn’t help it. There was something about him – the way he sat apart from the others, lost in his own thoughts, drowning in ale and sorrow that made you even more curious.

And when he finally pushed himself up from the table and slipped away into the dimly lit corridors, you had made a decision, you were going to tease him. Just a little, just enough to shake the brooding warrior out of his misery.

You hadn’t expected the night to turn into something else, something more.

What started as playful distraction quickly turned into something raw and unrestrained. The moment his lips had met yours, any hesitation melted away, replaced by hunger and need. He had kissed you like a man starving, touched you like there would be no tomorrow and when he finally took you, it had been with a ferocity that left you breathless, reeling.

By God, you had never had a more passionate lover, firm and demanding, even rough, yet so attuned to your every breath, every whimper and moan. You had never met anybody who took so much delight in giving you pleasure before taking his own, watching you unravel beneath him as if nothing else in the world mattered.

You had thought it would end there. An exciting night of reckless pleasure, a moment of indulgence before returning to the monotony of prayers and duty. Little did you know how wrong you were. 

Was it the way he had looked at you that morning, with quiet sorrow in his mismatched eyes, as if expecting nothing but rejection? Or was it the way his fingers lingered on your skin, hesitant, reluctant to let go? Maybe it was the way he had held out his last silver ring to you with gratitude in his gaze, not knowing you had no need for it. 

You weren’t sure what it was, but something stronger than reason had guided your legs back to the servants’ quarters the next evening and the moment his lips crashed against yours, the whole world began to spin. 

You had never expected to feel something like this. It seemed you were made for each other, equally eager to dominate and to surrender, to give and to take. Two lonely souls starved for  love and affection. 

And you couldn’t decide what unraveled you more – the way his touch brought you indescribable pleasure, or the way he came undone at yours. 

The game had begun, and neither of you had any intention of stopping.

You moaned and Sihtric’s lips curled into a smirk, a flicker of pride in his expression as he glanced up at you. “Is this what you wanted?” he rasped against your core.

“Yessss - ahhh, don’t stop, don’t you dare to stop,” you mewled, your voice shaking. You leaned heavily against the cold stone wall, and your head snapped back as his tongue lapped over your swollen perl, dragging you mercilessly to the edge. A wicked heat coiled low in your belly, tension building up faster than you could grasp and then you shattered.

A cry left your lips, your fingers curling desperately in his hair as waves of pleasure crashed through you. Your thighs trembled, threatening to give out, but Sihtric held you firm, his mouth never leaving your center, prolonging your pleasure until you were gasping, panting,  boneless mess against the cold stone wall. 

When you finally caught your breath, you reached for him, cupping his face and pulling him up to meet your lips, kissing him slowly, deeply, as you tasted yourself on his tongue.

"You’re far too good at that," you whispered, your heart pounding against his chest.

The moment ended as abruptly as it began, the faint creak of the main door jolting you both back to reality. Sihtric pulled away, his hands steadying you as he glanced toward the sound.

You laughed softly, brushing your thumb over his flushed cheek. “We should go before someone finds us.”

Reluctantly, he nodded, helping you adjust your skirts, but his hand lingered at your waist, his eyes still dark with longing. “You’re going to be the death of me,” he murmured, grabbing your jaw and pulling you in for another kiss. 

“And you’ll enjoy every moment of it,” you teased, stealing one last kiss before slipping out of the alcove.

Sihtric let out a slow, unsteady breath, watching you disappear down the corridor, leaving him flustered, aching, his breeches painfully tight.

And even as every fibre of his being screamed that this was madness, that it couldn’t last, that it shouldn’t last, his lips curled into a dreamy smile as he imagined you this night, your little wicked smirk fading into something darker, something hungry, you hands gripping his tights, your warm breath ghosting over his skin before your soft, sinful lips wrapped around his aching length.

He groaned under his breath, fingers clenching into fists at his sides, as he could almost feel it, your tongue teasing along his shaft, your mouth taking him deeper, your nails digging into his skin as he tangled his fingers in your hair, guiding you.

And gods, you would enjoy it, like you had done it so many nights before. The thought alone made his breeches even more unbearable, his breath coming quicker, his pulse hammering.

Gods help him, he knew he was in trouble, deep, deep trouble, but he didn’t care.

Because for the first time in his life, losing himself didn’t feel like drowning, it felt like breathing.

[the-edge-of-great]

Are there any other interesting tidbits/changes in the Sonic movie novelization?

I’ll be honest, I didn’t read the first book lol I was really only interested in whether the writers had given Tails more of a backstory (which they did… kinda), so that’s why I read the second. However! I did read reviews online that said the first developed Tom & Sonic’s relationship more than in the movie.

Notable mentions in the 2nd book:

•Sonic 2 takes place 8 months after Sonic 1

• Tails spent many months seemingly looking for Sonic… He built those weapons Maddie & Rachel used at the wedding to account for the “natural disasters, dangerous adversaries, and booby traps” he encountered. (I mean!! That’s a whole tv show in itself!!)

• He also built a gun that atomizes things and he’s afraid of it, but he keeps it in his arsenal as a last resort. The text says that he isn’t sure it should be used, which is so interesting to me.

• I think he originally set out to look for the Master Emerald, but the Miles Electric (not what it's called in this universe but that’s what it is) kept picking up its energy across different planets... and somehow he knew that energy belonged to Sonic?

• Earth is the planet the rest of the galaxy is warned about lol

• Knuckles calls Sonic a Child of Mobius. Tails says that's "the traditional home of our kind".

• Tails is looking to find Sonic before “their enemies” do (weird that they have common enemies when they’ve never met?? WHO has Tails pissed off?????? Paramount!! I need to know!!)

• He was ready and willing to prepare Wade's garage for a siege attack (in exchange for stealing the police cruiser and driving it off a cliff). So, again—who has Tails pissed off?

• Instead of "The Master Emerald? That's just a bedtime story!" "Well, he believes it's real," it's "That's just a bedtime story!" "No, it's real. I should know. I think I’m one of the few still looking for it.” (What if one of his ‘enemies’ is Rouge? 👀)

• Tails runs the red light, and Sonic takes the wheel. Meanwhile, Tails climbs in the backseat of the cruiser to build speed boosters mid-chase 'cause Sonic was complaining they were going too slow xD. (This is where the "Promise? Promise you won't go anywhere?" happens :'))

• Tradition among the echidnas was to do an organ swap to make an alliance. Knuckles just breaks Eggman's hand instead, but that's… a part of the lore now. (edit: this is in my Top 5 favorite things from this book. I can imagine someone pitching this idea & the writer’s room going “what the fuck this is a kids movie” lmao)

• Tails offered to help Sonic in Siberia. No "I'm not a field guy!" protests here!

• Short Tails vs Eggman on the mountain (with very Sonic Raised Tails vibes 🥹; the text even says "Tails mocked the villain, almost like Sonic would have")

• Sonic doesn't believe he can fight Eggman and Knuckles alone after the wedding. Tom actually gives him a pep talk.

• Eggman's full name is Ivo Gerald Robotnik (Is that canon in other sonic medias?? I tried looking it up, but I don't see his name like that anywhere, yet I swear I already knew before I read it… *Is his full name canon, I mean. Ivo Gerald Robotnik.)

• Book Sonic reminds me of Modern Sonic more than his movie counterpart sometimes tbh

• There are multiple holograms of Sonic, Knuckles, and Tails at the start of the robot fight instead of just Tails.

• Maddie and Tom literally run through fire to reach Sonic

• Tails names Super Sonic!

• Instead of summoning a chili dog to prove he's not been corrupted by the Emerald, Sonic makes a fart noise with his armpit that has the "decibel of a bomb blast"

• Sonic recreates the Master Emerald, not Knuckles

• "Gotta go fast!" (when Sonic is running across the ocean to meet Eggman and Knuckles at the temple) and "Way past cool!" (post-battle when Tails introduces Knuckles to the power bump)

[wearethekat]

February Book Reviews: Where the Axe Is Buried by Ray Nayler

I received a free copy of the book from Farrar, Straus, and Giroux in exchange for a fair review. Publish date April 1st.

I requested this book since I enjoyed Nayler's previous novel, The Mountain in the Sea. In Where the Axe Is Buried, the world is split between a Federation ruled by an immortal series of cloned presidents, and nations governed by AI. Programmer Lilia's new invention sets in motion a series of events, from an assassination attempt on the President to the recruitment of an elderly revolutionary living in the taiga, which will change the world irrevocably.

Where the Axe Is Buried is a much more explicitly political book than The Mountsin in the Sea. It's structured in much the same way, with multiple interlinked but separate POV characters interspersed by excerpts from a fictional book, revolutionary Zoya's banned text. Here, the central metaphor is the creosote bush rather than the octopus. The creosote bush forms a system of genetically identical cloned plants, following the root systems of long dead Ice Age trees. Like a flawed governing system, removing the piece of the creosote will not change the shape of the overall plant, dictated by patterns laid down centuries ago. We get the anecdote as a piece of Zoya's book on the very first page, and it recurs as different metaphors--a fungal system, a steppe tsar--throughout the book.

It's always a bit tricky to write a book about revolution. Nayler's a very good writer, and he easily dodges the trap that so many books about war and revolution fall into (ie, mouthing empty platitudes about change as the authors demonstrate that they haven't thought deeply about a complex and loaded subject). Nayler's elegantly constructed near future dystopia is split between an authoritarian future Russian regime and countries ruled by supposedly infallible AIs in a very post LLM way. On the one hand, the Federation has developed refinements that the Soviets or even Orwell never dreamed of, in a panopticon where a tiny mistake could collapse your social score and send you plummeting into a shrinking circle of restricted parole, and then to a forced labor camp and death. Or, alternatively, in the rationalized states ruled by AI, you can work in an horrifically optimized Amazon-style warehouse while your every movement is scrutinized by companies trying to sell you things, to the degree that looking at a soda half a world away for a moment with your face covered can identify you.

Whether Nayler threads the other needle and manage to not say something about revolution which the reader has a strong personal disagreement with is, inevitably, more individual. It held together well enough to be a five star read for me, even if I'd quibble with a few points. Although I do think the open ended conclusion carries a lot of the rhetorical weight here. Nayler gracefully presents you with a possibility for change, rather than attempting to answer the unanswerable question.

An ambitious and sophisticated dystopia about revolution with a compulsively readable pacing. Highly recommended, especially if you liked Nayler's The Mountain in the Sea.

[apparitionism]

Asleep 2

For the anniversary this year, I have the second “half” of my @b-and-w-holiday-gift-exchange story for @kla1991 : an involuntary bed-sharing situation that turns not sexy but disastrous. The first part took on Myka’s perspective; this conclusion is written from the other side of the bed. A confession: I find in-universe Helena’s head voice a somewhat difficult register to compose—because while she can’t be fully insane, she needs to teeter or list, sometimes more than a little (but without falling into histrionics). Which is to say that if you don’t entirely buy the turns of thought and/or coping mechanisms I’ve given her here, your skepticism is well-placed. Ultimately I hope it’s the case that a person can be broken but still want in a way that’s... pure? Justified? Sweet? Reciprocatable? Maybe just “vaguely recognizably human”?

Anyway, this is long, first because it extends well beyond the point at which the first part ended, but also because when a Bering and a Wells get to talking (as they at last do!), they need to work things out at their own pace...

Asleep 2

My arm is asleep.

Under normal circumstances, a person would, upon becoming aware of this, shift position so as to restore blood flow.

Under normal circumstances.

But very little is normal about the circumstances under which Helena’s arm is asleep.

She is in a hotel-room bed, in the dark of night, lying on her left side, with her left arm, her now-asleep arm, pinned beneath her. So ends the disturbingly limited “normal” portion of the situation.

Here begins the larger portion: she absolutely must not move.

Irony guts at her with that, a shiv-and-twist remembrance of bronze restriction—but that prohibition had involved a significantly different auxiliary verb: “cannot” rather than “must not.”

Grammatical particulars aside, her immobility now is barely less a torment. This is because her other arm, her alive right, terminates in an even-more alive sensate hand, one that now rests—but is in no way at rest—on Myka’s right hip.

Myka, too, is lying on her left side, a small distance in front of Helena, lying in this hotel-room bed. Such proximity in such a space might, under other circumstances, signify the fulfillment of a long-held dream... but here, now, it seems a nightmare. For Myka is Helena’s colleague and no more; they are in this bed for sleep and no more; and Myka is playing her part correctly while Helena is not, in contravention of what she has sworn to herself she would do no more.

Such drowsy sense the placing of that hand had seemed to make, when she had found herself facing Myka’s back. She had in the past regarded that length covetously, relishing the idea of touch both salacious and tender.

For all her coveting, however, she had in fact only once laid hands on that back, both hands with intention on the clothed blades of Myka’s shoulders: a terrifying embrace, one that was in the most basic physical manner right but overall searingly wrong, screaming bodily truth but surrounded by words that said nothing they should. A perversion of promise, like so much else that had happened in Boone.

Yet Helena had clung to its memory all the same.

She’d thought, here in this unexpected proximity, to supersede that, to touch once again, once again but brief, once again though brief. To erase and replace.

First she touched the right blade, light; yet her hand wanted stillness, more connection than a mere pat against cotton-clad bone. And there was Myka’s hip, a beckoning promontory jut... a place to rest. Rest, however brief.

Once placed, however, her hand had proved reluctant to retreat.

Brief, she reminded it.

No, the hand had responded. I belong here.

Helena knows this is true. She knows also that it cannot be true.

But she is no stranger to holding contradictory thoughts in her head. This has been essential to establishing and maintaining, in these new Warehouse days, a functional equilibrium. Functional. Indeed her goal, in this “reboot,” has been to function, which she has lately defined as something on the order of “to move through time nondestructively.”

This definition had come about due to her realization, pre-reboot, that her difference from others, her inability to fully perform a modern self—her arrogance about that inability, even as she attempted to hide both the inability and the arrogance—chipped at, chipped from, the good (the good nature, the good will, the goodness) of those around her. Over time, such chips accrued as wounds.

Nate. (Adelaide.) Giselle.

She had as a result finally understood that coming back to the Warehouse would mean, at the very least, that those with whom she interacted had already made a bargain, perhaps even a peace, with the inevitable violence of history: with the way the forces of the past could—would—affect, even infect, the present. Helena herself was, at her simplest, merely one more of those forces.

She did consider requesting that she be re-Bronzed, now absent any pretension of traveling through time, but rather as a way of neutralizing a dangerous, and demonstrably unstable, artifact. But then an image had come to her, possibly as an omen, possibly as only a desperate wish: Myka’s devastated face upon hearing such news.

Boone all over again.

Thus the reboot. Because the most significant entry under “function,” with additional emphasis on the “nondestructive” portion of that definition, was her resolution to spare Myka pain. In the past, Helena had been both careless and careful—surgically so—in her infliction of damage on Myka above all others. But she had sworn to herself that those days were done.

Done, but Helena knew she had not paid anything near a sufficient price.

So. To maintain distance, no matter how troublesomely ardent her wish to close it, was—had to be—part of her penance. And to do so decorously was—had to be—the gentlest approach. That was what Helena told herself in her more rational moments.

This moment, in this bed, is not one of those. If it were, she would simply remove her hand. Simply remove it, then roll over.

But her mind races, finding complication: She doesn’t know what sort of sleeper Myka is. Had Helena’s placing of hand awakened her? If she had awakened, has she now fallen asleep again? If she has, would she then be reawakened by the hand’s removal? Or would she, if still awake, draw some negative inference about the entire situation based on removal?

Ideally, Helena would maintain a facsimile of entirely blameless sleep while engaging in that removal, but can she make such a performance believable?

Never in her life has Helena been so concerned about her ability to mislead convincingly as when she has attempted to deceive Myka. That was the case in the past, even at her most nefarious, and now she worries day-to-day that her strictly disciplined disguise of near-constant wishing ache will slip and fail. A simple I am asleep should be... well... simple. But it is not, and Helena is reminded of Claudia’s tendency to observe, in situations both dire and banal, “Here we are.”

Here we are, because Myka is apparently indifferent to the idea of sharing a bed with Helena.

Here we are, because Myka is apparently indifferent to history.

Here we are, and that latter indifference is a surpassing irony, due to the fullness of—

Helena sees that she needs to divert her train of thought, as descending into unjustified anger will help absolutely nothing.

First, she entertains a fantasy of sitting up, turning on a light, and explaining to Myka that this entire situation is untenable, and that if they are going to share a bed, they should share a bed. But it’s true that Myka did not seem even to consider that as a possibility, which seems ludicrous, given the past... no, that’s back to unjustified anger, for who is Helena to resent what Myka wishes not to consider? And indeed, who is she to interpret the past in such a way as to believe she understands what Myka would have considered?

Focus on the facts, she tells herself. What actually happened in that nefarious past. And do so dispassionately.

Regrettably, the word “dispassionately” brings to mind another word: “passionately.”

Again. For she had thought that word not long after she and Myka had first entered this room, first entered it to find, as Helena’s unrestrained fantasies might have conjured, only one bed. That they were clearly intended to share. Thus her mind’s unruly leap to... an adverbial manner in which they might do so.

But Myka had said not one word about the accommodations, so Helena had held her tongue as well. She nevertheless couldn’t help but feel it an elaborate lack of remark on both their parts, the silence practically baroque in its fullness.

Baroque too had been the courtesy with which they jointly prepared for bed, a you-first-no-you stutter-choreography of politeness that ensured privacy, yes, but also reinforced the barrier between their past and their present.

Which Helena understood was necessary. It did nothing, however, to mitigate the breath-hold of preparing to lie down beside Myka.

Once she had managed that lying down, however (with a relative aplomb for which self-congratulation was not, she felt, unjustified), she hoped her torment might ease. A bit. If she could manage the additional task of pretending the body beside her was no more significant than any other human. Some flesh, recumbent.

But when they were situated thus beside, Myka spoke. “You seem a little upset,” she said.

Helena had barely been able to restrain a snort. Now Myka saw fit to comment? As if allowing this portion of the play to pass without remark would create some undue strain upon collegiality? As if their incongruous bonhomie might buckle under the weight of that silence? Oh, that was rich.

Bottling her pique, Helena questioned: “With?” To make Myka say it. Mere saying wouldn’t hurt. Would it?

“You haven’t been yourself since you put that camera in the static bag. Was it a problem, seeing it again?”

Helena held herself rigid so as to keep her body from betraying neither her disappointment at the question nor, contradictorily, her relief...

It was a reasonable question. A good question. Not one on which Helena particularly wanted to focus (although it indicated a certain attention on Myka’s part, an attention on which Helena suspected she should not dwell), but it did deserve an answer. “It closes a door, doesn’t it,” she told the ceiling, for turning her head to address the other body directly seemed an invitation to peril. “That one I opened so nefariously, long ago.”

“Or—and—maybe it closes a loop,” Myka said.

Unexpected. “A loop?”

“Right after college, I went through a self-help phase,” Myka said. She paused, and Helena found herself on relative tenterhooks regarding the applicability of this (new!) information to the current situation. Which reminded her how much she had missed talking with Myka... because of the very sound of her voice, yes, but also because her conversation could range so unanticipatedly. So rewardingly unanticipatedly. Helena had known few people who could lead her on such unpredictable, yet productive, journeys.

Was Myka’s apparent willingness to begin such a journey now indicative of... anything? A softening, perhaps, of relations between them? Not a rebooting of their once-burgeoning intimacy, for that had to remain taboo, but could it be that some restoration of their previous intellectual engagement might be, at the very least, neutral rather than harmful?

Helena had moved a tentative pawn in that direction during their conversation on the airplane. Perhaps this was Myka’s answering move?

With an exhale that seemed like resignation at what she was about to say—to reveal?—Myka said, “I felt like I needed to be someone different—someone better.”

Another pause. Helena considered that such a feeling seemed very Myka (and she heard that phrase in Claudia’s voice), but also very misguided. Of course she was not at all placed to make such judgments, and even less so to convey them to Myka. Thus she said a simple, “Did you,” to encourage without prejudice.

“So I read a lot of books,” Myka said, to which Helena had responded internally, Of course you did. “One was about how to get things done.”

“All things?” Helena asked.

“Sort of.” That was followed by yet another pause. Yet another puzzle.

All these pauses. Was Myka on the verge of sleep? Helena said, soft, thinking she might go unheard, “Perhaps I should read that book. As a help to myself.”

At that, Myka had laughed, more delay, but also soft. “I don’t think it’s any kind of help you need. The guy who wrote it had a big system, all these rules, and I love rules, but these... I admit I didn’t stick with most of them. Honestly, any. But an idea that did stick was actually a pretty minor part: open loops. Stuff you track subconsciously, all the time, because it’s incomplete. How troubling that is. And what a difference it makes when you close a loop, when you each a resolution. I mean, he was talking about stuff like answering emails.”

“Emails,” Helena echoed. So far from artifacts.

“Which this is so much bigger than,” Myka said, exhibiting, not for the first time, an uncanny ability to scoop from Helena’s thoughts. “But maybe the principle holds. You don’t have to tell me. But I hope you have fewer open loops now than you did. Before.”

“Yes. The number. Fewer,” Helena said, factually.

She of course couldn’t say out loud (but it was equally factual) that Myka herself was the loop most capaciously open. The one that gaped, superseding, never mind the number of lesser.

Indeed, however, that number was now minus-one. Oscar. Oscar and his ballad... that loop closed.

Helena had in fact, while handling the camera, begun to ideate a wish that someone (Steve? Claudia?) might be persuaded to use the camera to capture her image... for it had occurred to her that a spark of art, some production on which to concentrate, might animate this reboot... something to pursue, rather than to be pursued by...

But. Lying abed, still and strangely hopeful—a state she should have known would not endure—a realization had struck her, as an open hand to the face, a realization of why Myka had brought up loops and the closing thereof: she had somehow discerned Helena’s wish, via that scooping of thought, and was discouraging her from pursuing it.

So much for any softening. This was instead a warning: Helena should not open a loop that Myka might be obligated to close. And Helena had no trouble grasping that the warning was in no way limited to the use of a single artifact... no, it doubtless applied to any burdensome loops Helena might be thinking of opening, any new incompletions that might come to trouble Myka.

“I understand,” Helena had said, regretting that pawns could not be moved backwards.

At the same instant, Myka said, “I’m glad.”

That collision had canceled communication entirely; in its wake, Myka had turned out her light and turned away from Helena.

Leaving Helena to her thoughts.

Well, fine, had been the first of those.

Next had come an equally mulish sniff of And I will have no difficulty directing any subsequent away from this shared bed.

Whereupon she had proven herself both wrong and right, thinking about history, about the fact that, whatever Myka’s commentary or lack thereof had or hadn’t signified, the fact of Warehouse agents lodging together, sharing beds completely platonically, was certainly nothing new.

This line of thinking had enabled Helena to distract herself by recalling a mission with Steve and Claudia, one in which Steve had announced, after checking in at their hotel, “Bad news. Just a king room left, but they said they’d bring up a cot.”

He had then immediately assigned Claudia to said cot, prompting her to protest, “No way! This situation screams rock-paper-scissors tournament! Loser gets the crappy night’s sleep!”

“No way,” Steve protested back, far more mildly. “The father of science fiction gets first dibs on the lumbar support, and my back’s got a decade on yours, so I call second. If that father agrees.”

Helena had. Sharing with Steve had been fine.

Sharing with Myka should of course have been no different.

Should of course have been...

But now, here in the impossible present, as Helena’s left arm slumbers and her right hand sparks, what should have been? Isn’t isn’t isn’t.

She needs further distraction, so she casts her mind again to Claudia and Steve, to the compensations they have offered her during this strange and estranging reboot: at first Claudia, who had welcomed Helena back so unreservedly and continues to offer wholehearted allyship; and then Steve, who had quickly become an unanticipated boon companion, a partner upon whom Helena has felt increasingly, and increasingly exceptionally, lucky to be able to rely.

And yet these compensations, though Helena hopes she conveys all appropriate gratitude for them, are never sufficient, for Myka—necessary yet unreachable—is always present.

She’d been so, even during that cot-delineated retrieval. Its aftermath had (so much for distraction) involved a significantly Myka-related incident, for Helena had dared, as she, Steve, and Claudia were relaxing in the hotel lounge prior to retiring, to broach Myka as a topic of conversation. As one might do, she’d thought: speaking about a colleague.

“I have an inquiry,” she’d phrased it. To make the ensuing question sound... scientific?

Dispassionate, she jeers at her recalled self.

She jeers also at what she’d said next: a too-bald, “How is Myka?”

She had known, even at the time, that what she had truly wanted was to say that blessed name, to speak about that blessed person. She could not speak to Myka in any meaningful way, and she was starving.

Steve and Claudia had then shared what seemed an extremely charged glance, so Helena hastened to dissemble, making sure to use questions so as to prevent Steve from finding her immediately untruthful: “Given that her liaison with Pete ended? They’ve... recovered, as it were? Both faring well?”

But her tone had struck her own ears as too bright; a desperation rippled behind it, and Helena knew from experience that behind that tiptoed a still deeper threat of rupture, which required work to be kept at bay. As Helena had been instructed by her most successful therapist to do when such awareness overtook her, she began to breathe with attention.

Neither Steve nor Claudia spoke as she did so.

When the danger passed, she smiled, as best she could, to signal to them her appreciation—and to herself, her success.

Steve then said, “You’re not asking about Pete.”

Helena valued—as a personality trait—Steve’s discerning willingness to push. She did not in that moment value how he thus so easily revealed a glaring flaw in her initial approach: she should have asked about Pete; with that as her entrée, the talk might organically have turned to Myka. Foolish of her to think so unstrategically... or was her failure to do so a paradoxically positive sign?

“Give it time,” Steve said, and Helena knew he was making no reference to Myka and Pete’s recovery.

“My relationship to time,” she said, with contempt. Time: she’d taken it. Now she had to give it? A forfeit. Well, that was fair.

Claudia said to Steve, “Speaking of, we’re wasting it. Are we gonna do the thing?”

“Only if H.G.’s on board,” Steve told her. It was an unexpectedly mind-your-manners utterance.

“What is the thing?” Helena asked.

“Claudia’s trying out alcohols,” Steve said. “We can’t do it around Pete, obviously, which means retrievals are our—”

“So many questions to answer, right?” Claudia interrupted, her avidity increasing. “You know, am I über-suave James Bond with the martinis? Or a fights-against-my-general-cool-geek-vibe Carrie Bradshaw with a cosmo?”

Helena had had no idea what she was referring to, but the investigation seemed entirely fit for someone her age. “What have you determined thus far?”

“Turns out cosmos don’t work for me,” she said, “as the prophecy foretold, and Bond-wise, I like a martini all vodka, no gin; sorry, Vesper.”

“Is that all?” Helena asked.

Further avidity: “Oh god no. Vodka drinks aren’t perfect: white Russians are way too sweet. Also in the white family, the wine category pretty much bores me. Also there was this one time Steve ordered a gin drink called a white lady that I couldn’t even think about because it had an egg white in it and one look made me retch.”

“Quite the wide-ranging experiment,” Helena said, hoping to forestall further off-putting description. “Not conducted with inappropriate... ah... intensity, one hopes?”

Steve patted Claudia’s shoulder, at which she rolled her eyes. “I’m supervising,” he said. “No more than a few tries in one sitting, and we’re doing it mindfully.”

Claudia abandoned her attitude and nodded. “Paying attention to what I’m tasting. How to find, you know, notes and stuff. Except for the disgusting egg-white thing, it’s honestly been fun.”

“I’m not opposed to fun,” Helena said, and she was a bit surprised—but pleased, and pleased to be pleased—that Steve didn’t squint in response. “So, Mr. Supervisor, what’s next?”

“I’ve been pushing for the wide and wonderful world of beer, but—”

“Seems too jocktastic,” Claudia said. “You know, ‘Beer me, bro.’”

“I don’t know,” Helena said.

“Anyway that’s really not me,” Claudia continued, as if Helena hadn’t spoken. She did have a tendency to ignore Helena’s ignorance, a tendency that Helena enjoyed and found frustrating in equal measure.

“Her beer perspective is severely limited,” Steve lamented.

“I myself have always found a strong stout ale quite enjoyable,” Helena said: her contribution to Steve’s cause. It was also true, the fact of which he seemed pleased to affirm with a quirk of lip and a quiet “so you have.”

Claudia’s expression remained skeptical, but she shrugged weakly and said, “I guess I could give it a shot?”

“Oh, because H.G. says so,” Steve twitted.

To that, Claudia squared her shoulders. “Yeah. Don’t you know who she is?” she demanded.

“Who I was,” Helena hurried to emphasize, “and given that Steve assigned me the bed on that basis, he—”

“Who you are,” Claudia corrected, throwing the emphasis back.

“And who is that?” Helena asked. What distinction did Claudia imagine was relevant?

“The person who told me my destiny was glorious. You’re still that guy, right?”

Relevant indeed. Helena was taken aback, indeed taken back to that extremity, back in a novel way. She had been so mired in the Myka of it all in the intervening time, that she had lost her view of the bright salience of Claudia’s presence. Wrongly. “I am,” she said. She hoped Claudia believed her.

“Okay,” Claudia said. “So I’ve got this big-as-Pete’s-biceps incentive to hope the stuff you say is true. And by the way, one of you has to casually drop in front of him how I said that, because I want the points.”

Steve snickered and said, “I know my job. But in the meantime, I think I’d like to toast to all these sentiments, and to the agents offering them. With a strong stout ale.”

They tasted the three strongest the hotel bar had on offer, and Claudia pronounced that her favorite, one purporting to convey roasted notes of coffee, chocolate, and other darkness, was “way too complicated for your average broseph.” Which Steve seemed pleased by, as a judgment, so the overall experience scored a success.

There was no further talk of Myka, however, the avoidance of which topic seemed quite deliberate... as if Steve and Claudia had determined that Helena would not benefit from it.

Or that she did not deserve it.

For the best, Helena had concluded. Either way.

Now, in a similar “for the best either way” sense, she makes to raise her hand, with that intended overlay of feigned sleep, so as to shift away and at last regain equilibrium, restoring feeling to her sleeping arm and calming that oversensitive hand. But instead—in what she can interpret only as a stupidly id-driven attempt to bank some never-to-be-repeated sensation, to the memory of which that desperate id might cling in a touch-deprived future—she moves her hand, not away from Myka, but further down her leg.

And her worst fears are instantly realized: Myka’s body reacts violently, as if in revulsion at the very idea of Helena touching her.

It was only a hand at rest, Helena begs, with no conception of why or to whom she is rendering that supplication. That was all.

Alas, that was—is—not all, for in the next split second Myka is falling from the bed and crying out in pain.

Helena, at a loss, attempts a faux-innocent inquiry, which Myka answers unintelligibly. In trepidation, Helena ventures to the mattress-edge, then lowers herself to the floor next to Myka—and she is appalled, for the situation that confronts her is all debility, even more so than the absurd “my arm is asleep” with which this farce began: Myka’s shoulder is dislocated.

Further, Myka is now unconscious.

Spare Myka pain. How utterly unsurprising Helena finds her inability to obey such a dictum in even this most basic physical sense.

Unsurprising... worse, dispiriting, and it brings her low, such that again the incipient rupture asserts its subterranean power, urging Helena to give up, to run away and leave this broken Myka to someone else to bind up and save.

You’ve done it before.

That resounds in her head as both accusation and affirmation, and the voice pronouncing it might be Myka’s, or some deity’s, or that of any of the other personages who jockey audibly for primacy in that space, including Helena’s own.

She initiates breathing with care, even as an eddying undertow tempts her to entertain the notion that escape, too, might be rebooted, tempts her to entertain and revel in its ostentation as a response to Myka’s indifference, her rejection of history, even her revulsion.

Here is my answer to all that, a departure would declare.

Helena labors to breathe herself away from such perfidy, but the scenario creeps along, with an undertone of sinful relish, as she imagines leaving Myka to awaken alone and in pain.

But then—because her labor leads her there—she further imagines the various permutations of “someone else” who might be called upon to save the day in her absence. Whereupon the thought strikes her that moving through time nondestructively requires her to think seriously of, and to think seriously out, such knock-ons... how, for example, would Steve and Claudia respond to having to clean up this mess, knowing that Helena had made it?

Moving through time nondestructively. Interesting, here, the overlap with moving through time selfishly: selfishly, she does not want to destroy Claudia’s image of her as someone whose opinion matters. She does not want to destroy Steve’s image of her either, for it seems to have at least some positive components. Further, she does not want to destroy the fellowship they three are building.

If for no other reasons than those, she concludes that having caused this quite specific damage, she must fix it.

Because she can.

The fact of the matter is, Helena cannot fix most things. She has tried mightily to maintain the pretense that she can... but she has been forced over and over to confront the absurdity of that bravado. This very specific fix-it, however, she can perform. And while that performance—inconveniently, in the present circumstance—requires touch, here it can be functional. Perhaps in success she might in some way efface her earlier invasiveness...

Yet she can do nothing without two functional arms. She thumps her still-insensate left against the bed, hard—too hard, for Myka’s eyes open. She mumbles out something Helena decodes as “whatareyoudoing.”

“Preparing to remedy a situation,” Helena says.

“Okay.” Myka murmurs. She seems oddly comforted by the answer, to such an extent that she relaxes, losing consciousness again.

That’s fortunate, given the required manipulation.

Helena prepares herself to do it quickly, efficiently, as she has done in the past... rather dramatically on one occasion, as she recalls, for an agonized Wolcott... but she should not think of Wolcott. For the regret.

She sets that aside, preoccupying herself instead with the necessary activity. Her manipulation, determined and strong, is rewarded: what begins as a sluggish resistance resolves into a slip-pop of relocation, one that shudders a familiar path through her own bones. She then cushions Myka’s arm with a fresh towel and uses a pillowcase to fashion around it a tight sling.

Levering Myka up onto the bed would most likely cause further injury, so Helena sits beside her on the floor, ensuring periodically that she continues to breathe. The wait is calming, cleansing, its peace a renewal of a soothing activity of which Helena has been long deprived: observing Myka closely, at actual leisure. At no point since her return—so at no point in, literally, years—has she had such an opportunity.

She’s reminded, in that observation, of the true fundament: this precious person. Who could never be merely some flesh.

After a lengthy time, during which Helena is pressed to consider, to remember, to value Myka’s singularity, that precious person’s eyes flutter open.

That person tests her bound arm, a tentative physical investigation that approaches elegance in its delicacy.

But Myka’s delicacy and elegance, too, Helena should not think of. For the regret.

“I’m not in the hospital,” Myka burrs.

Reasonable, practical. This is what Helena should think of. “Not yet,” she says. “But we’ll go if necessary. If you’re in pain.”

Myka’s face contorts. “Not if. I am. Some. More than some. I’m sorry.”

“For being in pain?”

“That. But also, for changing this whole thing.”

Helena leaves the latter alone, for she cannot begin to interpret it. Focusing on functionality, she asks, “Can you dress yourself?”

Myka nods, but she winces far too much with even that motion, so Helena screws her courage to it and says, “I’ll change and then help you.”

Herself, fast, then Myka: Functional, she snarls internally as she addresses the situation, and even faster. She’s relieved to find that Myka’s trousers and boots are less complicated than she’d feared, and as it happens, preventing Myka suffering additional physical pain—even while undressing and redressing her!—is, paradoxically or not, far easier than navigating emotional shoals, or even hand-on-hip physical shoals. Focusing on Myka’s face for twists, listening for labors in breath, adjusting accordingly... it’s distractingly, satisfyingly concrete. Only the present moment matters.

Only the present moment matters. This is the mantra Helena iterates internally as they proceed to the nearest urgent care facility.

Yet as they wait there for attention, Helena finds herself increasingly unable to ignore why they are waiting there for attention. In the present moment, which matters. She begins—or does she intend it as an ending?—with, “I’m assuming you flung yourself to the floor in an attempt to escape a circumstance.”

Myka hiccups a laugh that makes her cringe in protection of the shoulder. “That’s weirdly accurate. As an assumption.”

Helena recoils at the confirmation, but she must acknowledge it. “A circumstance in which I touched you in a way that was unwelcome,” she agrees, with gloom.

“Unwelcome,” Myka echoes.

It’s so... definitive. It was one thing for Helena herself to think it, believe it, say it aloud. Quite another—though it shouldn’t have been—to hear it from Myka.

A punctuating end to what never truly began between them: there is some consolation, if only philosophical, in the idea that after so many starts that were false, they may at least enjoy a finish that is true.

“Of course it was,” Helena says, following with, “and how could it have been otherwise.” She puts the final period upon it by adding a bare, spare dig: “Given history.”

Myka closes her eyes... in acceptance of the cut? When she opens them, they are glistening. Tears? Helena is egotistically gratified by such a response, never mind that it means she has yet again failed to hold to her resolution.

“Helena,” Myka says, and now Helena is gratified simply by Myka’s low utterance of her name. Myka does not always use that deeper voice, and Helena does love (yes, love) the rare pleasure of hearing her name in it. “I’m so tired,” Myka says next.

That is less gratifying. It’s yet another utterance Helena should leave alone; of course Myka is tired. But in what she is sure is a mistake, Helena says, “Of?”

“Everything. But particularly, you.”

A dagger, that was. A cut back. Testimony to Helena’s concatenating mistakes.

“This you,” Myka adds.

The additional twist of blade leaves Helena unclear on the devastation Myka intends. “Of course” is all she can think to say.

Myka closes her eyes and exhales heavy, a near-sob. “Sorry. Sorry. Sorry,” she intones, but what need has she to apologize? “That was the pain talking—or, no, I still know you well enough to know you’ll hear that wrong. What I mean is, I’m saying something I could keep holding back if the pain wasn’t cracking me open.”

The pain. Cracking her open. Which would never have happened in the absence of Helena’s stupid, thoughtless touch. Which in turn makes abundantly clear that the stupid, thoughtless person who applied that touch is the “this you” Myka means.

If Helena is to remain in this situation she must take measures, so she lengthens her inhales and exhales, entirely ashamed both at needing such a crutch and at having to exhibit that need.

After a moment of silence, Myka asks, “Are you breathing differently than you were just a second ago?”

Myka isn’t Steve. Helena could at least attempt to lie about this, to cloak her shame... but it’s effort, either way. “Yes,” she says, choosing the unpredictability of Myka’s interpretation over the unpredictability of her own performance.

“Is that good or bad?” Myka asks. “Or both?”

The questions stop Helena, stop her in the same way her at-leisure observation of Myka had. I still know you well enough, Myka had said, and it is true. This is why, Helena would say if she could. Your knowing to ask that.

But she can’t say it, and, worse, she doesn’t know what she should say. What should come next.

Apparently Myka doesn’t either. That not-knowing persists, hanging, until “next” arrives, as an intrusion from outside their suspension: medical attention is at last directed Myka’s way; she is escorted out of the waiting area and taken elsewhere.

“We’ll call you when you can see her,” Helena is told.

Alone in the waiting area—for no other human seems to have suffered damage this night—and uncomfortably situated on a hard plastic chair, she tilts her head back against a similarly unforgiving plaster wall.

She closes her eyes. She’s had no rest, no rest for so long. She is drained. Physically empty.

Philosophically as well.

She imagines trying to sleep... or rather, she imagines not trying to remain awake.

Doubtless futile, either way.

She next imagines constructing an airtight argument that could not help but persuade all who hear it—Myka in particular, but all others as well—that this entire situation is Artie’s fault.

Also futile.

This despite its being the fact of the matter, for indeed he did bring the situation about. Perhaps not in a proximate sense, but in the ultimate... the idea of which, after a moment, strikes her as both comic and tragic: Artie as the ultimate cause? Of anything, from the universe on down? Though he would doubtless like to imagine himself so... even at the Warehouse, however, he must be not even penultimate, given the bureaucracy that sits over the entire concern...

Helena thus spends the bulk of her time in the waiting area stewing about—stewing over? stewing under?—the relative positions of god, Mrs. Frederic, and various Regents in the universe. None of it, however, requires her to alter her breathing; rather, she composes in her head the opening paragraphs of several publishable monographs on these and related topics. It isn’t restful. But is evidence of something other than emptiness.

When someone does at last call her to see Myka, everything has changed.

Well. Not everything. Helena herself hasn’t, as her bureaucracy-pantheon thought may have been philosophically valid but made no difference.

Myka, however, has changed entirely: her arm is now professionally dressed, but more importantly, the knit of pain has left her face. “They medicated me,” she says, giving the word “medicated” a rapturous cast. “The X-rays said I didn’t break anything, so we’re waiting on results of a scan to see if I need surgery but in the meantime I feel better than I maybe ever have in my life and I am so happy to see you. All these doctors were like ‘why did she think she could fix you’ but I knew why and it was because it’s you. and that scan? It’ll shout out how Helena Wells relocated Myka’s shoulder so she didn’t need surgery, and they don’t know this, but actually H.G. Wells relocated Myka’s shoulder, which is even more amazing. Wait, that’s not more amazing. You’re the most amazing when you’re you than when you’re that guy. Even though I guess you are that guy. Sort of. Wait, Claudia’s been saying ‘that guy’ a lot now. And I cut and paste from her so much, but I don’t like it. The way things are.” She heaves an enormous sigh and blinks at Helena, as if she’s just re-understood that another person is present.

Is there some ideal way to answer this flood? Helena settles for an antiseptic “I’m pleased to see you out of pain.”

Myka gasps and flails wildly with her uninjured arm, which gesture eventually resolves into an index finger directed at Helena. “That’s it exactly. I’m out of pain. All out. No more pain to give. Particularly not to you. So saying I’m tired of you? I regret it, and I apologize for it, and I promise that’s the end of it. I was wishing to get something back, and you don’t want it back, and so I have to be fine. Without it. Without you.”

Without you. Helena supposes she should be impressed by how concisely Myka can foreshadow disaster. “Should I not... be here?” She braces herself for the answer.

“Of course you should. I have to be fine without how you were,” Myka says, very quietly. The collapse of her volubility gives Helena pause.

She knows it would be better not to probe; she ought to, as Claudia says, “take the win.” But “Of course you should” is only facially a win... “How was I?” she asks. To wound herself by making Myka clarify what has been lost.

“Oh, how you were...” Myka says, her words dragging. How much—any, all?—of this might be due to the varying effects of the medication? “Putting me into this story,” she continues. “It was so big, and I didn’t understand what it was, really or at all, but it felt so big. Yearning and tragedy, and there I was, still me, but in it, so in it, all in it, next to you. Bigger than life, and I... loved it? Needed it? Something to take me over. But my wishing for any of it back, when of course you don’t?” She raises that free arm, then lets it fall. Futility, it says. “So small. Only somebody little and desperate would want to make you revisit any of that.”

Medication effect or not, Helena can’t let Myka keep on with this. “Make me revisit it? Yearning and tragedy? I’m the one who inflicted that, and with malign intent; I damaged you. And I cannot imagine a scenario in which that debt is discharged.”

Myka squints. “Debt,” she says, as if articulating a new noun, but not one that names an abstraction; no, this thing is big and blunt, a dumb object that takes up space. Unfunctional furniture. That I carry on my back, Helena moods.

“Oh!” Myka then yelps, her tone shifting to excitement. “But I just damaged myself. So now we’re even!” She delivers that last bit big and broad, for all the world as if she’s the comic lead in a panto.

Helena has not spared a thought for panto in years. “That makes no sense at all,” she says, because it’s the case, but also to scorn the memory. This is no time for that past.

“Would you like me to dislocate your shoulder?” Myka asks, as if it were a reasonable proffer. Still comic, but now strangely sincere.

Helena meets this bizarrely compelling, ridiculous combination with as much severity as she can muster. “Honestly no. I would not.”

“I see,” Myka says, and she points again, this time without preambling flail. “Some prices you aren’t willing to pay.”

Helena can at the very least be honest about this. How nice it would be if Steve were here to verify. “Willing to... in the sense of volunteering to? No. In the sense of understanding that I deserve to? Certainly. So do me damage if you must. In particular, do me damage if you think it could even the score between us. It won’t, but if you think it could? Please do.”

“That’s pretty twisted,” pronounces the only arbiter who matters.

“You sound like Claudia again,” Helena observes. To push the judgment away? Yes, and she tries to make certain of it with, “Is that another cut and paste?”

“Maybe. But now that I think about it, she sees things pretty clearly a lot of the time. Don’t you think?”

“I would like to think,” Helena is compelled to admit. Hoist by her own petard.

At this point—suspending any resolution—a doctor reenters the curtained area. “Good news: no surgery,” she tells Myka.

“See, I told you she fixed it,” Myka preens.

“You did,” says the doctor. “Several times,” she adds, dry.

Helena says “I’m so sorry,” only to hear Myka say, at the same time, “Sorry not sorry!” Another echo of Claudia... this one, however, clearly heartfelt.

The doctor turns to Helena. “Don’t try anything like this again. You got ridiculously lucky.”

“That’s kind of her M.O.,” Myka says. “Except when it isn’t.”

The doctor sighs. “I’m pretty sure that’s my point. And listen, make sure to follow up with your local doc. They’ll prescribe a ton of PT, so brace yourself.”

Myka snorts. “Brace myself? Sure, but not for the PT; my boss is going to flay me alive.”

The doctor barely reacts. “Oh, maybe this one can fix that too,” she deadpans, directing an eyeroll at Helena, accompanied by a murmured, “not a suggestion.”

“Oh, she’s in for the flaying,” Myka says, with more than a little cheer. “If not for this, then for something. Eventually.”

The doctor shakes her head, eyes unfocused. “Good news for me: I don’t have to care.” She points at Myka: “You go to PT.” Now at Helena: “You don’t try to practice medicine.” At both of them, her eyes flicking back and forth with purpose: “Got it?” Helena nods; she senses Myka doing the same. “Excellent,” the doctor says. “Or whatever. I’m done with you now.”

She conveys with her rapid exit that interacting with both of them has been a most exasperating experience.

While Helena does not appreciate being chastised—and especially not for attempting to care for Myka—she does appreciate expertise. Especially when it contributes to Myka’s well-being. It’s a conundrum. “I find your doctor’s aspect strangely appealing,” she says. “Speaking of bracing.”

Myka grins. “I was totally thinking the same thing.”

“And yet I would practice that medicine again.”

“For me that’s good news.”

As they prepare to depart, Helena says, “I confess I’m curious as to what you intend to tell Artie.”

Myka offers a slight stretch of her right shoulder in the direction of her ear: the only version of a shrug available to her, bound as she is. “Maybe I should leave that to you. You’re the writer.” Forestalling Helena’s reflexive objection, she adds, “I know, I know. The research. The ideas.”

“And yet I don’t have any. I certainly don’t see a path to inventing anything that would—”

“How about I take your photo with that camera? Think that’d help?” This is accompanied by a different grin: sly.

Whither the warning? Or is this a test? Myka isn’t Steve, yet Helena goes with truth: “It might. With any number of things.”

“If only,” Myka says, inscrutably. “Anyway I intend to tell Artie that this is all his fault, because he sent us on this retrieval in the first place. Obviously I won’t say what really happened.”

While Myka bestowing such grace is not surprising, it moves Helena all the same. “Thank you,” she says.

Myka opens her mouth, then closes it. She does it again. This wait... it’s grace too. “You’re welcome,” she eventually says. “I mean I’m tempted to tell him how you saved the day—the arm—but I know I shouldn’t, because I don’t want to draw attention to the hotel charging us extra.” To Helena’s quizzical eyebrow, she says, “For the missing towels and pillowcase. Which I tried to talk the nurses into giving back to me, but they’d already tossed them as hazardous waste. Or something. Or maybe I’m just not very persuasive? Or clear in what I’m asking for?”

Helena would very much like to explain that her own answers to those questions are negative and affirmative, respectively: no, you are persuasive; but yes, you are unclear.

“On the other hand, they did medicate me,” Myka says, perking up. “I keep thinking it’ll wear off, but not yet!”

The consolations of intoxication. “To the delight of your shoulder I’m sure,” Helena says. To my delight as well, she wishes she were free to say.

Their return to the hotel room offers another “everything has changed” hinge: no longer a stage for new and awkward performances of politesse, the space is now familiar, a place they have reentered. For the next act of the play?

Myka, who has preceded Helena in, stops and sways—just a bit, but Helena instinctively steps close, taking her by the elbow of her uninjured arm with one hand, stationing the other around the curve of her waist.

She feels Myka’s breath catch at the contact; immediately, she curses herself, loosens her hold, and says a terse, “I’m sure you want to lie down.”

“More than maybe anything. Or, wait, no, not anything.” Myka turns and catches Helena’s eyes with hers, but Helena cannot use that gaze as the basis for any inference.

She backs away as Myka lowers herself onto the bed; eventually, she backs her way into the room’s one armchair. It lacks give. It also lacks arms at a height that might provide anything resembling support. Helena slumps down, trying to be grateful that it exists at all.

Long minutes pass. As in the hospital’s waiting area, Helena imagines trying not to remain awake.

Similarly futile.

She chances a glance at Myka, who meets her eyes again and says, “That looks uncomfortable. Or what I mean is, you look uncomfortable. Which honestly is pointless, unless you’re doing some hair-shirt thing, because we’ve got this big bed. Not a lot of hours before we have to leave it, but we’ve got it for now.”

“That went poorly before.”

“I think circumstances have changed. Don’t you?” Weighted.

Circumstances are always changing, Helena could say. Usually for the worse. Instead she ventures, “You’d let me lie down with you?”

“I never wouldn’t.” Myka squints. “Wait. Did that come out right? Anyway, yes.”

Medication: not yet worn off. “You’re sure?” Helena asks.

“I’m pretty sure this bed is almost as big as a field where Pete’s favorite sport happens. It’s at least as big as an ice rink anyway, and those aren’t small.”

Helena refrains from pointing out that that was no help in the previous disaster. She doesn’t, however, appreciate being able to recline. For the first while, the fact of being beside Myka is less relevant than the slow loosening of her lower back and hips.

 “Can you sleep?” Helena asks, as they are both evidently lying with eyes open to the ceiling.

“Not now,” Myka answers, and the sentiment seems clear: not after all of this. All of this with which we must deal.

The bed first, perhaps.

She turns to look at Myka, if minimally. “Did you request a cot?” she asks, because she doesn’t know. Because the answer might reveal... something?

Myka’s eyes widen. “Oh my god I should have,” she says. Stricken.

“Why didn’t you?”

“It didn’t even cross my mind.” She’s talking more to herself—or perhaps to the room at large?—than to Helena. Is this continued evidence of the medication?

“And do you know why that is?” Helena asks, hoping for that revelation, even if drug-induced.

“Honestly I think I thought I was being given an ultimatum. Like it was something I had to be fine with or else.”

“Fine with ‘or else.’” Helena means the echo as rueful agreement.

But: “Sharing a bed with you. Platonically,” Myka says, taking it instead as a request for explanation.

“Platonically,” Helena scoffs, unable to avoid the idea that agreeing to accept that adverb would, paradoxically, usher in others. (Passionately.) (Speaking of paradoxically.) “That word is so often misused.” It’s a push-off. A push-away.

“But I’m using it correctly.” Myka sounds not offended, but rather self-satisfied.

Fine. Harden the position. “You are not referring to our consciousness rising from physical to spiritual matters.”

“Well... but how about love for the idea of good? As a path to virtue?”

Myka is well-read. In this moment, that fact is not entirely pleasing. “I suppose we were both attempting to be courtly,” Helena concedes.

“I mean I’ll grant you that nobody ended up transcending the body,” Myka says. Helena is about to agree, to snap away from churlishness, to express regret and apologies, when Myka exclaims, “Hey! I just had the best idea for a joke. So you’re not a hologram anymore, right? So you know what you were trying to be? Last night, in bed?”

Jokes. They confound Helena nearly as completely as metaphors do Steve. “I have no idea.”

“A Platonic solid,” Myka declares, triumphant.

Helena is mortified to find that in this case, she “gets it.” “Myka,” she sighs.

“Too soon? But come on, it’s not bad!”

“Alas, it is.” This quality, Helena can recognize.

“Right, but the good kind.”

Helena is not made of stone. Or bronze. How much easier everything had been then, sans choice and sans reason... and most importantly, sans the near-irresistibility of this one human. “I did always enjoy the word ‘icosahedron,’” she tenders.

“See,” Myka says, now in indulgence rather than triumph. “Pretty sure you have more than twenty faces though.”

“You do as well. Some revealed only under the influence of opioids.”

“Here’s one I don’t think I’d have the guts to use otherwise: my explain-it-to-you-using-words face.”

“Explain what to me?” Helena asks. It’s a surrender. She should better have said she did not wish that face revealed, but that would never have stopped a determined Myka.

“Why I flung myself to the floor.”

“I thought that had been explained? You were attempting to escape a circumstance.”

“First, the flinging was more involuntary than an attempt. And second: your hand.”

“Perhaps you don’t remember”—a strange thing to say to Myka—“but we had this conversation previously.” Helena does not want to have it again.

“Not this conversation. In that one, you drew the wrong conclusion. Or relied on an invalid assumption. Actually both of those. Anyway, your hand.”

“Please stop saying that,” Helena requests. Begs.

“Fine, I’ll finish the sentence: Woke up every nerve in my body,” Myka says, causing Helena to cringe and wish she could this very instant construct a truly useful time machine so she could fly backward, overleaping this latest passage so as to muzzle Myka before she could say that, because she believes it but knows it leads nowhere functional. To her continued mortification, Myka carries on, “Woke them all right up.” This, she says rhapsodic. Helena feels that tone in her gut, a hot twist of something she deserves as pain, but that manifests, shamefully, as pleasure. “Then your hand moved, and it shorted out the system—my system—and I fell out of bed, and the rest is history.”

“On the contrary, the rest is quite present.” Helena tries pushing all of it away, striving for detachment. For function.

“So, your hand,” Myka says again.

Helena raises the offender. “Also present.” Detachment. Humor, even; pushing, pushing, pushing. Trying to maintain.

“No, I mean why,” Myka pushes in turn.

Helena bats back, in faux innocence, “Why is it present?”

“Why was it present. On me.” Low now, her voice, just as compelling as, and even more commanding than, when she uses it to utter Helena’s name.

“I have no excuse,” Helena says.

“I don’t need an excuse. I need a reason. Do you have one?”

“It isn’t exculpatory.”

“As long as it’s explanatory.”

No escape now. No excuse, and no escape. “Here is my reason: I wanted to touch you. So against all better judgment, I did. Intending only that, nothing more.” Myka’s response to these words is an exhale. Loud. Unlike the hospital sob, however, this is slow and controlled. Helena allows a decorous pause, but no words ensue, so she goes on. Myka deserves an explanation that is complete. “But then I found myself unable to... un-touch you. Competently. And the rest will at some point be history, upon which I will never cease to look back and berate myself.”

Waiting for whatever may come next, Helena feels exhaustion inch through her, infiltrating her eyes, limbs, brain, sapping every vestige of energy... her surrender to the creeping leach is imminent when Myka says, “I like that reason.”

All right then. Awake and aware. “You do?”

“You really can be impossible to talk to. Listen to me: if I did that—touched you—I would find myself the same. Unable to un-touch. Do you understand?”

What would be the cost of abandoning her resistance? “I don’t know...” she begins, then reverses course and begins again. Truth, never mind the cost. “Yes. I do understand. But I don’t know what to do about that.”

Myka turns her head full toward Helena, twisting her long neck. Helena turns her own head, but that isn’t enough, so she shifts onto her side—her left side, punitively aware that it will be weeks before Myka can turn in such a way.

They look at each other, Helena both knowing and fearing how her guilt must freight her gaze. Regarding Myka so close, looking now into eyes that are open, is a boon she does not deserve.

After a time, Myka says, “I know what I want to do.”

Her intent is abundantly clear. The entirely of Helena’s being balks, stranding her again in Boone: if she makes a move for the momentary better, it will most likely end worse. She cannot find the... courage? or is it foolish disregard for consequences?... to reach for that moment of joy. Neither, however, can she find the discipline to dismiss its possibility.

“But I also know I shouldn’t,” Myka says, breaking with clarity into Helena’s indecision.

Well. Helena can certainly see the wisdom of that, so perhaps at last they are approaching a real accord that will render all hopes and wishes moot, so that neither courage nor discipline features in the—

“I can tell the meds are messing with my head,” Myka says, “and if there’s one thing I want to remember in picture-perfect detail, it’s this.” She moves her right index finger near to Helena’s lips, then withdraws it.

Unable to un-touch. That withdrawal reaffirms that Myka believes what she says. “This,” Helena echoes, mesmerized.

“So I’m going to wait till tomorrow to—listen to me saying it out loud—kiss you. For the first time. I want to be all there when it happens.”

There is a practicality to Myka’s thinking, and to Myka, that Helena worships. She tries to match it with a bit of her own: “If it happens.”

Myka’s jaw drops. “Come on! I said it out loud! It’s real now!”

“It’s been real for some time, hasn’t it? But I’m being realistic about the circumstance. You might not remember that you wanted to.”

“Seriously? I’ve remembered it since we met.”

Helena has remembered it just as long. She has. Denying it is pointless. But she has a larger concern, and though this is the wrong time to address it, perhaps medicated Myka will afford an unfiltered read...

“Or you might think better of it.”

“Of kissing you? I don’t think so.”

“Of what could ensue. The possibility of a... relationship. Between us. What if it doesn’t work?”

“Relationship.” After she says the word, Myka’s lips part and close, as if the very word is savory. “What if it does?”

It is savory. However. “I’m asking as a practical matter, not philosophically. I’m constrained: I can’t leave again. That’s why I came back.” The thin strand to which she is clinging... refraining from attempting to rekindle an intimacy hasn’t been only to keep Myka safe. It has also been to keep the Warehouse safe for Helena herself to inhabit.

“Then don’t leave again.”

“But what if that means you do?” This is not philosophy either. This, too, is history.

“If I do, then I do, but I’d like to think I won’t. We’ve both had our walkaway crises, and they didn’t take. So if it doesn’t work, we put it behind us like adults. If Pete and I could, then so can you and I. But I’d rather not have to. So let’s be careful.” She pauses. “Breathe however you need to.”

The words are an embrace. A physical clasp might be more galvanizing, but right now, Myka is managing just fine with words. “If this works, it will be because you say things like that.”

“Good news, because I mean things like that. And I intend to keep saying them. Hey, speaking of saying, do me a favor and write down what I said just now, about the adults and the careful, because I want to remember it.”

Sluggishly, Helena ideates rising, going to the room’s desk, finding logo-bearing paper and pen, writing...

****

Helena and Oscar are in a salon. They are engaged in a dispute regarding choices and consequences. Helena is standing at a lectern, and Oscar is reclining on a lavishly upholstered chaise longue, kicking his right leg such that its calf bounces in a languid little rhythm against the low cushioned edge.

Kick. Kick. Kick.

“The choices that create a circumstance will not, repeated, resolve it satisfactorily,” Helena says. Is she reading from a monograph? “As we see in the case of your own Ballad of Reading Gaol, do we not? And yet injury need not lead inevitably to future debility, so clearly some choice in the matter is—”

“Helena,” Oscar says, interrupting her monologue. “Helena,” he repeats. He sounds nothing like himself, but rather someone else, and Helena is straining to connect the voice to the correct person.

Kick. Kick. Kick.

“Time to wake up,” Oscar-as-someone-else admonishes. Encourages?

“I know,” she tells him, hugely frustrated, fighting. “I’m trying.”

His impassive mien is no help. It never was.

Kick. Kick. Kick.

Trust Oscar to cast some part of himself as the pendulum of a particularly annoying clock—

“Seriously, wake up,” Helena hears, and consciousness jolts at her: Myka’s voice.

Oscar dissolves. Into laughter or tears, no doubt, as he was wont to do...

Helena’s eyes open, meeting Myka’s, and she is brought back to it all: the hotel, the bed; the shoulder, the hospital... then hotel again, bed again... and finally words, as if for the first time.

Myka is lying on her right side, facing Helena. Her eyes are bright, her gaze intense.

“Are you in pain?” Helena asks.

Myka leans forward, as if that were a signal. The signal: for Helena is the astonished, grateful, transported recipient of a kiss, a first kiss—the first kiss—one that is swift but soft, gentle, genuine. Like morning... “Better now,” Myka says when she pulls back. “I’m going to brush my teeth. Stay there.”

Better now. Not lost on Helena are all the ways that signifies, including: better that this happened now than at some point in the desperate past. Then, such a kiss would have been a tragic wish for all they would never have. Now, instead, it can stand as a reward for having survived all of that, as well as, universe willing, a mark of embarkation.

By the time Myka returns, Helena has sat up, stationing herself on the edge of the bed. She has also realized that she must apologize—for they should not embark on this new voyage with yet another of her many faults unaddressed. “You charged me with writing down part of our conversation. I didn’t. I fell asleep instead.”

Myka hesitates before joining her on the bed’s edge, clearly considering which arm should be next to Helena. She chooses the functional right. “It’s okay. Even if I don’t remember exactly what we said, I remembered what we needed to do.”

“Needed to,” Helena reprises. She could supply words of her own, but why? Myka is saying the ones that matter...

“Needed to,” Myka affirms. “So where were we?” She raises her useful hand to Helena’s cheek, cradling. Helena leans into it, saying nothing, because silence now says everything.

This is a longer kiss, more wandering, more suggestive of possibility, more likely to lead to such possibility... Helena is the one to this time pull away. “A place quite new,” she says.

“And yet I’m pretty sure we’ve been headed here all along.”

“It wasn’t inevitable,” Helena says. She is thinking now of dream-Oscar, who is slipping from her mind, dropping, like a poorly initiated painting, but he must have obstreperously been maintaining something about inevitability. He always did.

“No,” Myka agrees. “And it still isn’t. So let’s be careful.”

“You remember that part? Despite my stenographic failure?”

“Even if I didn’t—but I do—I’d know it’s important.”

Helena turns and touches her right hand to Myka’s right hip. She would certainly not be able to do this now if she had not done so in the night... the night’s ontogeny recapitulating the phylogeny of their shared history. Myka covers Helena’s hand with hers, and there is healing in the simple fact of their sitting. But eventually that is not enough, and another kiss ensues, longer still, and lips outweigh quiet hands—or no, lips add to quiet hands, but hands are not content to remain so calm, and so this continues and might continue—

Myka makes a noise that is clearly not of pleasure; she moves entirely away, her right hand pressing protectively at her left shoulder. “We’re going to need to be careful about this stupid shoulder too. I’m so, so sorry.”

“You’re sorry? I’m the one who can’t keep my hands to myself.” Ontogeny, phylogeny.

“It’s not like I’m some paragon of self-control... and I am sorry, because I’d like to be able to participate fully. But also I’d like to not have to hurry on account of catching a plane. In good news, eventually my shoulder will heal. I know we can’t stay here till then, but...”

“It would help,” Helena supplies.

“If only because we have to come up with how this supposedly happened. I still think maybe I should take your picture. Or you could take mine? Because by the way, here’s a funny thing: I was trying to write a novel.”

“You were?” More that is new... “Speaking of icosahedra,” Helena notes.

“I want to tell you about it.”

“You do?” Trying to convey her incredulity. That Myka would allow her such... access.

“I want to tell you everything. But in the meantime we have to tell Artie something... I guess we’ve got both flights plus the layover in Denver to get our story straight.”

Stories. Narrative. Novels? “But we’ll tell Steve the truth. Won’t we?”

“Of course we will. And Claudia, right?”

“Also necessary. Although most likely mockery-inducing.”

Myka smiles. It’s a sunrise. “Stress testing. If we can take it from her, we’ll be fine. Then again we might need the time on the planes to rest up for that.”

“Weren’t you able to sleep, this past while?”

Myka shakes her head, and just as Helena opens her mouth to express regret and apologize again for her own sleep, Myka silences her with a kiss, one that lingers, lingers, lingers... still half against Helena’s lips, she says, “The un-touching part really is difficult. But don’t worry about my not sleeping: for the first time in a long time, I was happy to be awake.”

END

[faaun]

ok let's catch up quickly

[terrorbirb]

Monday my coworker cleared his throat on me when talking to me for 3 minutes, and I immediately put on a mask, disinfected and moved everything I had to the conference room because he obviously had something. I also immediately told my boss who "was wondering if he should send him home". All of that, but apparently that was enough to get me sick.

Here's the thing, and I know this isn't how it works, I got it from a coworker at work and did EVERYTHING in my power to not get it so i could continue work, so I should get my sick days paid even though I don't have any more PTO. I'm still going to work with a mask on in the warehouse because I, specifically, am needed to complete physical inventory which is incredibly important, but I had to go home at 3pm because I was on the verge of fainting. If I cannot complete these last 2 weeks of work, my company will fall apart, which is why I gave a 5 week notice instead of 2 and delayed starting my new job. I know "fuck this company", but I have enough pride to not want things to be worse than they already are because I Built This Place. I want all the systems I designed to work.

Tldr if a coworker got me sick because my boss didn't send him home when he knew he should, and I took measures to limit my exposure right after being exposed, then I should get my sick hours paid.

[kerra-and-company]

You reblogged "tell me about your toons" post so here I am, about to spill the beans :3c

Airell doesn't refer to himself as a sylvari nor mordrem. He always corrects people who call him that. "Not a sylvari", "not a mordrem", etc. In my writing I avoid using these terms either until Airell's identity as a dragon scion/dragon is fully established to the characters around him and the reader.

I sure did!! :D And hell yes, please always feel free to spill beans if you want to!

Ooh, interesting interesting!! That's very fair, and I love how you handle it in writing too. I imagine he has to make that correction pretty often as well, which has gotta be a little unpleasant for him. Hope he hasn't run into too many people who are insistent even after he corrects them.

[luulapants]

25 ways to be a little more punk in 2025

Cut fast fashion - buy used, learn to mend and/or make your own clothes, buy fewer clothes less often so you can save up for ethically made quality

Cancel subscriptions - relearn how to pirate media, spend $10/month buying a digital album from a small artist instead of on Spotify, stream on free services since the paid ones make you watch ads anyway

Green your community - there's lots of ways to do this, like seedbombing or joining a community garden or organizing neighborhood trash pickups

Be kind - stop to give directions, check on stopped cars, smile at kids, let people cut you in line, offer to get stuff off the high shelf, hold the door, ask people if they're okay

Intervene - learn bystander intervention techniques and be prepared to use them, even if it feels awkward

Get closer to your food - grow it yourself, can and preserve it, buy from a farmstand, learn where it's from, go fishing, make it from scratch, learn a new ingredient

Use opensource software - try LibreOffice, try Reaper, learn Linux, use a free Photoshop clone. The next time an app tries to force you to pay, look to see if there's an opensource alternative

Make less trash - start a compost, be mindful of packaging, find another use for that plastic, make it a challenge for yourself!

Get involved in local politics - show up at meetings for city council, the zoning commission, the park district, school boards; fight the NIMBYs that always show up and force them to focus on the things impacting the most vulnerable folks in your community

DIY > fashion - shake off the obsession with pristine presentation that you've been taught! Cut your own hair, use homemade cosmetics, exchange mani/pedis with friends, make your own jewelry, duct tape those broken headphones!

Ditch Google - Chromium browsers (which is almost all of them) are now bloated spyware, and Google search sucks now, so why not finally make the jump to Firefox and another search like DuckDuckGo? Or put the Wikipedia app on your phone and look things up there?

Forage - learn about local edible plants and how to safely and sustainably harvest them or go find fruit trees and such accessible to the public.

Volunteer - every week tutoring at the library or once a month at the humane society or twice a year serving food at the soup kitchen, you can find something that matches your availability

Help your neighbors - which means you have to meet them first and find out how you can help (including your unhoused neighbors), like elderly or disabled folks that might need help with yardwork or who that escape artist dog belongs to or whether the police have been hassling people sleeping rough

Fix stuff - the next time something breaks (a small appliance, an electronic, a piece of furniture, etc.), see if you can figure out what's wrong with it, if there are tutorials on fixing it, or if you can order a replacement part from the manufacturer instead of trashing the whole thing

Mix up your transit - find out what's walkable, try biking instead of driving, try public transit and complain to the city if it sucks, take a train instead of a plane, start a carpool at work

Engage in the arts - go see a local play, check out an art gallery or a small museum, buy art from the farmer's market

Go to the library - to check out a book or a movie or a CD, to use the computers or the printer, to find out if they have other weird rentals like a seed library or luggage, to use meeting space, to file your taxes, to take a class, to ask question

Listen local - see what's happening at local music venues or other events where local musicians will be performing, stop for buskers, find a favorite artist, and support them

Buy local - it's less convenient than online shopping or going to a big box store that sells everything, but try buying what you can from small local shops in your area

Become unmarketable - there are a lot of ways you can disrupt your online marketing surveillance, including buying less, using decoy emails, deleting or removing permissions from apps that spy on you, checking your privacy settings, not clicking advertising links, and...

Use cash - go to the bank and take out cash instead of using your credit card or e-payment for everything! It's better on small businesses and it's untraceable

Give what you can - as capitalism churns on, normal shmucks have less and less, so think about what you can give (time, money, skills, space, stuff) and how it will make the most impact

Talk about wages - with your coworkers, with your friends, while unionizing! Stop thinking about wages as a measure of your worth and talk about whether or not the bosses are paying fairly for the labor they receive

Think about wealthflow - there are a thousand little mechanisms that corporations and billionaires use to capture wealth from the lower class: fees for transactions, interest, vendor platforms, subscriptions, and more. Start thinking about where your money goes, how and where it's getting captured and removed from our class, and where you have the ability to cut off the flow and pass cash directly to your fellow working class people

[anistarrose]

Please don't tune out when you get to the non-partisan section of your ballot this November. First off, where state Supreme Court justices are elected, Republicans are trying their darndest to elect candidates who will destroy reproductive freedom, gut voting rights, and do everything in their power to give "contested" elections to Republicans. Contrast Wisconsin electing a justice in 2023 who helped rule two partisan gerrymanders unconstitutional, versus North Carolina electing a conservative majority in 2022, who upheld a racist voter ID law and a partisan gerrymander that liberal justices had previously struck down both of.

Second, local judicial offices will make infinitely more of an impact on your community than a divided state or federal legislature will. District and circuit courts, especially, are where criminalization of homelessness and poverty play out, and where electing a progressive judge with a commitment to criminal justice reform can make an immediate difference in people's lives.

It's a premier example of buying people time, and doing profound-short-term good, while we work to eventually change the system. You might not think there will be any such progressive justices running in your district, but you won't know unless you do your research. (More on "research" in a moment.)

The candidates you elect to your non-partisan city council will determine whether those laws criminalizing homelessness get passed, how many blank checks the police get to surveil and oppress, and whether lifesaving harm reduction programs, like needle exchanges and even fentanyl test strips, are legal in your municipality. Your non-partisan school board might need your vote to fend off Moms for Liberty candidates and their ilk, who want to ban every book with a queer person or acknowledgement of racism in it.

Of course, this begs the question — if these candidates are non-partisan, and often hyper-local, then how do I research them? There's so much less information and press about them, so how do I make an informed decision?

I'm not an expert, myself. But I do think/hope I have enough tips to consist of a useful conclusion to this post:

Plan ahead. If you vote in person, figure out what's on your ballot before you show up and get jumpscared by names you don't know. Find out what's on your ballot beforehand, and bring notes with you when you vote. Your city website should have a sample ballot, and if they drop the ball, go to Ballotpedia.

Ballotpedia in general, speaking of which. Candidates often answer Ballotpedia's interviews, and if you're lucky, you'll also get all the dirt on who's donating to their campaign.

Check endorsements. Usually candidates are very vocal about these on their websites. If local/state progressive leaders and a couple unions (not counting police unions lol) are endorsing a candidate, then that's not the end of my personal research process per se, but it usually speeds things up.

Check the back of the ballot. That's where non-partisan races usually bleed over to. This is the other reason why notes are helpful, because they can confirm you're not missing anything.

I've seen some misconceptions in the reblogs, so an addendum to my point about bringing notes on the candidates: I strongly suggest making those notes a physical list that you bring polling place with you. Many states do allow phones at the polling place, but several states explicitly don't — Nevada, Maryland, and Texas all ban phones, and that may not be an exhaustive list. There may also be states that allow individual city clerks to set policies.

You should also pause and think before you take a photo of your ballot, because even some states that don't ban phones still ban ballot photographs. But whether it's a photo, or just having your phone in general — in an environment as high-risk for voter suppression as the current one, you don't want even a little bit of ambiguity about your conduct. Physical notes are your friends.

[chocolilies]

( ୨ৎ. husband!nanami kento x wife!reader. . .ᐟ

◟ꪆ୧ nsfw (afab!reader, fingering, teaching a lesson through sex, ditzy reader) - also on ao3!

nanami kento, who wears his wedding ring everywhere.

he never takes it off, he doesn't dare to. why would he? 

it symbolises the promise you two made to each other, the love you have and continue to share— of course he wants to show it off to the whole world.

you’ll never find him without it, golden band always snug around his ring finger when he showers, when he cooks, when he cleans, when he works...

which is why he's so disappointed to find yours teetering on the edge of the bathroom sink.

steam sticks to the mirror, blurrily framing the disappointment on his face as he picks up your ring, turning his head to look at you, watching you ransack your shared wardrobe for clothes to wear tonight.

"darling, are you forgetting something?"

he watches you snap your head around, drops of water still dripping from your recently showered body, mouth forming an 'o' out of shock as you realise what he's holding.

"oh!" you rush towards him, outstretching your left hand once you reach him so he can slip the ring back onto where it belongs, smiling bashfully up at him. "sorry, it must've slipped my mind."

you don't miss the frown that deepens on kento’s face at your careless gesture, placing your hands on his cheeks and pulling him down for a sweet kiss, your way of apologising for the mistake. "don't be upset, ken. it won't happen again."

oh but it does, and even though kento knows deep down that these are simple mistakes, he can't stop the pit that forms in his stomach whenever he finds your ring abandoned at your work desk, or the kitchen counter, or even slipped forgetfully into your bag.

he tries his best not to let it irk him, instead resorting to reminding you each time he finds your ring somewhere other than on your finger, making sure to slip it back where it's meant to be with as much love and care as the day you first exchanged rings and vows.

his resolve crumbles the moment gojo opens up his stupid mouth.

“woah, trouble in paradise?”

kento’s shoulders stiffen at the light-hearted way your coworker comments on your lack of ring, standing at your doorway holding lunch for the both of you as he watches you laugh it off with a wave of your ring-less hand, explaining your forgetfulness and immediately starting to look for the tiny trinket.

“darling,” kento speaks slowly from the other side of the room, announcing his arrival at the same time he flashes you with the item you were looking for. 

you don't seem to notice his clenched teeth and narrowed gaze as you happily walk over to him, allowing him to slip your ring back on before placing a kiss to his cheek in thanks, the maximum amount of affection you dare to show in your workplace. 

it hadn't dawned on him until then that he wasn't the only one that would notice your missing ring, wondering nervously as he finished up that day’s work just how many of your friends had noticed, whether the girls you normally went out and drank with assumed that he was a terrible husband, that there was indeed some trouble in paradise, that you were stuck in a loveless marriage instead of the obvious: that you were just forgetful.

he tries not to show his upset later that night when he finally arrives home, but as the dutiful and perfect wife you are, you notice immediately. you ask him what's wrong, offer to cook him his favourite dish, hold him in bed like you usually do whenever he feels down, tell him you’re there for whatever he might need and want…

“but… what I need… is to remind you how important this is to me,”

you watch as he catches your left hand in his, bringing it up to his face and pressing a chaste kiss to the warm metal, amber eyes staring deep into yours during his action. 

you smile, moving said hand to cup the side of his face, running your thumb over his sharp cheekbones. “I know how important it is, ken…”

despite your sweet coo and love-filled gaze, kento knows, deep down, that you need a reminder. 

“of course you do, angel,” he sighs, leaning closer into your space as his eyes trace your unforgettable features, drinking in your lovestruck expression. “but I feel that lately, it’s been slipping your mind. don’t you think that, as your husband, it’s my duty to make sure you never forget?”

your husband's ring feels cold against your flushed skin, a sharp contrast to the warmth his fingers are radiating as they slip through your sopping folds, collecting your dripping essence like a prize as his chapped lips press sloppy kisses all over your neck.

you can't stop the noises that leave you at the teasing, fleeting touches, eyelids drooping closed in pleasure as his other hand plays around with your chest, nimble fingers grabbing and tugging at your nipples in tandem with his other hand’s movements, sending rushes of overstimulating pleasure throughout your tired body. 

you're unaware of how many times he’s made you cum so far, the towel he’d oh so graciously placed beneath you thoroughly soaked thanks to his continuing ministrations, yet all you can focus on is the strange but welcome feeling of his ring pressing against your most intimate parts, bumping against your clit with every movement from his nimble hand and sending jolts of pleasure through your spent self, though you assume that this was your husband’s desired effect all along. 

“you’re doing so, so good, angel,” his voice rasped against your ear, harmonising with the squishing sounds your poor cunt was making, every touch to your clit making your body lurch and quiver, the feeling overwhelming. “c’mon, one more, alright? or have you already learned your lesson?”

lesson? you think as you feel his ring finger slip into you along with his middle and index, cunt loose enough to accommodate all three and hopefully his cock after this “lesson”. 

“w- won't take it off again, ken, pr-promise,” you gasp out, arching your back against his chest and pressing your rump against his very hard erection, which he'd been neglecting in order to get you to this point. 

you feel his fingers curl, hitting your g-spot perfectly like they had times before, but he didn't relent like you'd expected him to. 

“k-ken?”

“that's not all.” 

you whine out in confusion, hips moving along with his fingers despite the need to give your body a break, chasing the high that your mind oh so wanted but body couldn't exactly reach. 

“b-but-”

“it's not just about wearing the ring, darling,” kento started to explain, showing off his amazing dexterity by continuing to play with your tits with one hand while still fingering your pussy with his left, pressing a sweet kiss against your tear stained cheek. “no, if it was about that, this would've been over way more quickly.” 

you can feel a different sort of pressure start to build up in the lower parts of your tummy as he paused, legs shaking from the disturbance and in warning of what was to come if kento keeps doing his thing, though by the looks of it, he was nowhere close to stopping. 

he stays silent, allowing you to realise that he was really waiting for you to answer, as if you were both immersed in a casual conversation and he hadn't just melted your brain with just his fingers, and you force yourself to speak despite the mind numbing pleasure. 

“wh- oh god! what's it a-about, ken…?” you mewl, hips raising each time he pumps his fingers inside, almost like you were trying to ride him since his cock was still tucked away inside his slacks, his palm rutting deliciously against your clit with every movement. 

you hear him stifle a groan as your hips start to move, torturing himself as well as you by not bothering to help himself, too focused on your pleasure to act on his own, pressing his lips to the spot under your ear in an attempt to muffle the whimpers that were threatening to escape him. 

“k-ken?” you half-questione, half-moan, letting your head fall back onto his shoulder and focusing your blurry gaze on your husband's flushed face, drinking in the gorgeous expression he was sporting. 

“darling,” he lets out breathlessly, brown eyes darting down to meet your own, hands still not relenting in their attack despite his pause in speech, trying to compose himself before speaking once more. “it's- fuck, I… I want you to remember why you wear it, honey. who put it on your finger, who you belong to...”

he shudderd as one of your moans rings out throughout the dark room, not helping him in the slightest as he tries his best to fight against the urge to flip you over and fuck you like the both of you deserved. 

“who I belong to,” the strokes of his fingers grow deeper and more attentive, attacking your g-spot relentlessly as you writhe in his arms, his loving yet possessive words sending tremors throughout your body. 

“oh, kento…”

he exhales shakily at the moan of his name, letting his head fall forwards to rest on your shoulder in an attempt to ground himself, sinking his teeth into your shoulder with a shudder. 

“you're not going to- fuck, let this go, a-are you?” you manage to whisper out cheekily, hips and body still moving subconsciously on his fingers. 

“not a chance, my love,” 

kento moves slightly, adjusting your body so you're pressed even more impossibly closer to him, ass still perched against his hardened cock, member twitching and spitting out pre against his dampening slacks with each movement from your almost drunk body, high of pleasure and doing whatever it can to reach that high kento had seemed to have promised before. 

“I'll make sure you never want to take this off again—” he starts, and you gasp out in horror as his fingers slide out of you, lifting his soaked hand up to your chest, giving you a few seconds to panic before quickly replacing it with his other hand, nipples softening at the sudden lack of stimulation. 

to accentuate his point, his left hand, the one where he proudly displays his ring, the one that's covered in your juices and almost pruny due to the amount of time spent playing with your wetness, finds your own, carefully intertwining your fingers together and showing off both of your rings. 

“—not because you're afraid of forgetting, no…” 

you shudder as his other hand resumes the work his other had been doing, immediately feeling that intense need of release come back, biting your lip to muffle your sounds in order to listen to your husband better, not wanting to interrupt him, especially when he was like this— disheveled, flushed, with tiny whines escaping his chapped lips with every press of your ass against his crotch. 

“but, because every time you look at it—”

you can feel it building up, your release at the tip of your fingers, but not exactly like all the other times before, so you know what's coming. 

it's not the first time kento's gotten you to this point. he's exceptionally proud of it, obviously. no one before him had ever gotten you to squirt before, and evidenced by the rings that were currently getting dirty in your juices, no one but him ever would. 

his fingers quicken their pace inside you, attacking your g-spot with force before suddenly moving up to give your clit the same treatment, pinching and rubbing the tiny bundle of nerves in an expert manner, knowing exactly what to do to get you to that oh so delicious release. 

you raise your hips in preparation for it, pressure building up in your most intimate parts as you moan and cry out your husband's name, his mind crumbling with every sound you make, trying to stay on track. 

his mouth opens in awe as you grab onto his hand tighter, vision going white as you finally reach your climax, voice getting caught in his throat at the beautiful sigh of you coming undone on his fingers, love-filled eyes drinking in every single inch of your trembling bare body, release-soaked fingers still rubbing at your cunt rapidly.

he chuckles as you try to move away from his touch once it becomes too much, apologising silently for the overstimulation with a kiss to your sweaty temple, before finally finishing his speech. 

“—you’ll think of this.”

[tbaluver]

Husband/ Father Headcanons- The Love And DeepSpace Men

order: xavier x fem! reader, zayne x fem! reader, rafayel x fem! reader, sylus x fem! reader, caleb x fem! reader genre: fluff fluff a/n: hihi lovelies! i apologize that my reqs are coming supa late but i should finish and post them so soon after my school semester ends! i literally have so many in my drafts (╥﹏╥) i usually overthink my reqs which is why i take super long but here's some husband material to feed you all for now i hope ( ◡̀_◡́)ᕤ talk to you all so soon mwah (∩˃o˂∩)♡

⋆｡‧˚ʚ♡ɞ˚‧｡⋆

Xavier:

He loves doing simple things with you like going to the supermarket. He’s read somewhere on the internet that that's what married couples are supposed to do on earth.

Morning routines with Xavier are always so warm and sweet. As you both get ready for the day, he’ll take your hand, carefully adjusting your wedding ring before giving it a soft kiss.

Whenever your newborn baby starts crying just as you’re both about to eat, he always prioritizes you. He’ll reassure you that you can go ahead and eat without him and enjoy your meal, promising you that he’ll take care of the baby.

You and Xavier share a special inside joke just between the two of you about the cute sounds your baby makes. Whether it’s the random babbling or their adorable squeals, always brings a smile and laugh to the both of you.

Xavier loves hearing and seeing your child laugh and will do absolutely anything to make them smile whether it’s through tickling, playing peekaboo, pulling silly faces, or using a high pitched voice

Lots of snuggles with you and your baby. You’d have your little one nestled safely right in the middle of the two of you as you all fall into deep slumber. He especially loves having his child rest on his chest while you snuggle up beside him.

Zayne:

Whenever your baby girl starts walking or crawling, he’ll consistently clean the floors of the house multiple times to keep the floor clean for his baby girl and to also have a clean house in general.

Your daughter has her own little kitchen playset because she loves watching either of you cook. Sometimes, while Zayne’s busy with his patients reports, she’ll run up to him with a plate of her plastic food to share her ‘cooking’ with him. He loves to play along to see her adorable smile, pretending to savor it and tell her how delicious it is.

Whenever it’s a quiet time between the two of you, enjoying each other’s company and doing your own thing, Zayne often reaches over to gently rub his thumb against your wedding ring, often reminiscing about the day you two got married and a small smile curling on his lips.

Anytime you ask him to grab something for you while he’s out, he always goes the extra mile and adds a little something extra for you- and for him as well especially if it’s something sweet. If you ask for the next series of your favorite book you love, he’ll just get the entire collection so you can binge-read it right away. He’ll even pick up a copy of the book you’re currently reading so he can talk about it with you.

Rafayel:

Everyday being married to you feels like a blessing from the gods. He wakes up in the morning to see your beautiful sleeping figure right beside him, wearing the wedding ring on your finger that ties you both together forever. Rafayel always greets you with something cheesy when you wake up like, “Hello my beautiful wife.” with a big smile on his face.

Rafayel flirts with you as if you haven’t been married for a couple years now and often says “I love you” with any chance he gets. “Heyy my lovely gorgeous wife, before you come home, do ya think you can pick me up some extra brushes? I think our little glub glubs hid them again...oh and by the way I love you!”

He always wears his ring. He can’t help but fidget with the ring whenever he starts to miss you, smiling as thinks about the day you both exchanged your vows.

After a long day at work, you can always find your lemurian children running up to greet you with your husband. Sometimes they like to show off their artwork they’ve all made together and most of the time it’s all just for you.

However he can always tell when you’re exhausted and drained, so he’ll gently excuse the kids, assuring them you’ll spend time with them later. For now he’s happy to entertain the children so you can get your rest. He’ll make up a random activity to keep the children busy so he can do small things for you like running a bath or preparing some meals for you

Sylus:

Anytime Sylus and his baby girl are shopping, he’ll always ask her what she wants or what she prefers. He treats her like a princess just like her mommy.

“hmm....pink! no, red!...pink!”

“how about....we get both dear?”

and there’s something so adorable seeing her so happy that makes him feel so warm and fuzzy inside.

Sylus does not mind in any timeline or universe if you’re comfortable being provided for. He can afford it and nothing can hurt his card even if you tried.

As years go by, he’ll make sure your wedding ring isn’t getting worn out or has any chips in it. Not that it would ever get worn off from its high quality. If it does have any problems, he’s quick to get it fixed, making sure that your ring will always shine with you.

Before you both unwind for the night, he’ll gently kiss the back of your hand where your wedding ring rests, before slowly slipping it off for the night.

Anytime you’re home from a long day of work, he’s already outside waiting for you to take out things in your car so you don’t have to carry anything.

After a long shift, you can always come home to find a warm dinner waiting for you with your favorite drink. The house would be clean and your baby girl is already tucked in. He’ll sit by you at the dining table, a glass in his hand, sharing stories about his day or simply listening as you tell him about yours.

Caleb:

Caleb absolutely treasures being a father. He became the father that he wished he had, present and involved in every moment. Whether it’s cheering from the sidelines at their games or helping with their homework ( without yelling and making them cry at the kitchen table ), or just listening when they need to talk, he’s always there for his kids. He’s just as devoted to you, always making sure you feel as supported and loved.

Caleb is the type of husband that would wake up early or stay up late to make sure your lunch is ready for work the next day. He knows exactly how you like your meals, carefully preparing each dish and packing it with everything you need. He does the same for his kids, packing their lunch boxes the night before with their favorite snacks and an apple.

Playtime is a must with his kids. He believes in letting his kids experience the joy of childhood to its fullest. The living room is always filled with the sound of his laughter as he lifts them high into the air, making airplane noises or chasing them around the house from their made-up games. He would also make sure to keep track of their growth, marking their heights on the wall.

Once all the kids are tucked in bed and actually asleep, he’ll swoop you in with a kiss. His kisses were always so hungry and sweet and he seriously cannot get enough of you, always wanting more.

“We have food at home” type of father but your kids never mind because he always cooks them whatever they’re craving. His home cooked meals always HIT. The house would be filled with delicious smells that make everyone feel right at home. His love is always served in each and every dish that makes his cooking way more special than going out to eat.

Your home is filled with many memories of your marriage but Caleb has a special place for his favorites. He keeps them up in your shared bedroom so when he wakes up beside you with the cool metal ring around his finger is a reminder that brings him back into reality that he’s married to the love of his life and there is always an escape from his nightmares.

[cj-the-random-artist]

I let them get friendship married so Narinder can get his tax benefits lol

But legitimately. I mulled this one over repeatedly for literal months. Like. Do I want them to get married in front of the cult? Should they even get married? It would be hilarious if the Goat married them and then cried at the altar the whole time, but also... that doesn't feel right, so maybe I won't do that. And then once I decided it should be a personal friendship-marriage ritual where it's just the pair of them making vows to each other, I wrote four different scripts and hated them all and ended up just pulling this one out of thin air pretty much on the spot and that was that. At one point, I wanted Lambert to basically suggest this idea and then have them get friend-married on the spot, but that didn't feel right (and it was also gonna be unreasonably long) so that's why there's no context going into this one. And the actual friend-marriage ritual is... maybe not the best designed one ever? I wanted it to in some ways be similar to like, the way I imagine a romantic marriage happening in the cult- the parties exchange vows and do rings and stuff...? (If it's not obvious, I haven't been to many weddings...) But I figured they wouldn't want an audience, or to party with the whole cult afterwards, or anything like that. I also had them kiss each other's rings as opposed to like... faces... because one of the fights I had with myself in deciding how I would want this to go was whether it would make sense for them to kiss or not. And I ultimately decided that in this AU at least they just wouldn't want to. They're also wearing the rings on their not ring fingers cuz. Honestly it just felt right that way. Based on vibes. But basically I just wanted them to exchange a vow of eternal partnership in a very casual, chill setting, because I don't picture QPR AU Narilamb doing... anything other than that.

Also this is the rest of Lambert's office, which I actually had a pretty clear vision for after my last doodle but I didn't really bother to draw before starting this comic. Maybe I should've but eh it looks good enough. Interior backgrounds are hard......

Anyways. I think I'm happy with this one? I was enamored by the concept of a chill friendship marriage, so I definitely leaned into it here. As per usual, it's not perfect, I think I could've done a lot of stuff better / differently, but honestly?? If I were to ever get friend-married I would want it to go about like this, it makes my little aroace heart happy, and I spent too long on it to not show it to anybody. Thus. Enjoy, and also happy new year cuz I totally forgot to make a post individually about that...

[gfmima]

category : 米哈游 原神 work title : another woman claims to be his girlfriend?

with a subtle bow of your head, you raise the teacup to your awaiting lips, a veil of porcelain disguising the laughter that threatened to escape. how absurd… you muse, as you savor a sip of your tea.

far across — two tables away, there sits one of the new acts of lyney and lynette’s show. she was interesting, to say the least. she sings tall tales with intricate detail, weaving major falsehoods about the nature of her relationship with him.

her words describe his love confession, demanding they be together because he couldn’t bear a day without her. she didn’t fail to mention how his sister adores her and refers to her as ‘my future sister-in-law.’

the outlandish narrative lasts with an overt nudge about his frequent visits to her dressing room after every show, which you tune out due to its unsavory implications.

most women would have risen from their seats, confronting her for spewing fantasies about their lover; not you, though. instead, you stay rooted in your place, your curiosity piqued for what else she might spin.

you were engrossed, and if you were to be fully honest, you would’ve readily admit to the guilty pleasure of eavesdropping on the mundane conversations of strangers. your penchant for gossip was shared with your lover, turning it into an unusual pastime. it was a fun exchange of information over cups of coffee or tea, normally ending with one of you left scandalized by what was said. archons, were you excited to tell him about what you overhead…

“do you swear not to say a word about this to another living soul?” her voice hushed to a near whisper, but it still carries to those within earshot.

“of course! right, ladies?” one of the women quips, with the other two chiming in agreement, creating a chorus of “yes!” and “we’ll keep quiet!”

“if you say so…” she takes a deep breath, as if the weight of her revelation was a heavy burden about to be lifted. “lyney and i are dating…” her shoulders then turn slack, exhibiting the instant wave of relief that washes over her.

you couldn’t help it; a snort of amusement passes your lips. it earned you a few disapproving glances from the nearby patrons, chastising your lack of propriety in a public setting.

she embarks on an exhausting tangent, yakking on the long months she had to weather before she could have confided in her dear friends about her supposed private affair.

she emphasized how lyney insisted on maintaining it under wraps for over a year — eh, wrong! the twins met her for the first time five months ago — out of his desire to protect her from the clutches of obsessed fans and admirers.

the longer she spoke, the closer her stories cross into more ridiculous territory. at one point, she spun a yarn about his grandiose profession of love for their anniversary, including dedicating an entire routine inspired by her.

however, what left you scratching your head was the lack of skepticism from her friends. a quick read of her body language would’ve shone a light at her deception. it had you questioning whether you had somehow gone mad or if they were genuinely as dim-witted as they seemed.

“i knew it! no wonder you’ve been smiling a lot  lately!”

“ah, i’m so jealous~! sigh, he’s such a handsome man.”

“so romantic… i wish that was me!”

assessing the present circumstances, one might figure you would now reveal all of her lies. you didn’t. rather, you found yourself more inclined to watch and observe how this fiasco will play out.

you trust lyney, enough to know he loves you and wouldn’t pursue another woman behind your back, especially a woman he and his sister worked with. it allowed you to cast aside your initial worries about her and her interest in him. regardless of your opinion, she did her job well, even though you secretly wished she wasn’t so uncomfortably obsessed with him — a notion she made no effort to hide.

clearly, given what you were witnessing.

“oh, look, ladies! here he comes!” one of their voices pierces the air, overtly eager to see the ‘happy couple’ they were led to believe. conversely, lyney’s self-proclaimed lover appears to be positively distraught.

the man in question enters cafe lucerne, his gaze firmly laid on you. he shows little to no mind towards the group of women who shadow his every move. he walks by and greets you with a kiss on the cheek, taking the vacant chair in front of you.

“and how was your day, ma belle?” he removes his hat then runs his fingers through his hair — a simple gesture that left you swooning.

his charming demeanor momentarily distracts you from the comedic disaster unfolding in the background.

it was a tumultuous stir of “huh… who’s that?” and “gasp, is he cheating on you?” while the two of you converse in mindless chatter. one second, he was recounting his chores for the day; and the next, three indignant women loom over him whereas the source of this mayhem cowers in the back.

“ugh, the audacity to have a mistress and meet her in broad daylight! you have no shame!”

he glances from you to them, genuine bewilderment etched upon his face. “i beg your pardon?”

“oh, don’t play dumb! you know exactly what you’re doing!” another of the women upturns her nose at him.

witnessing the heated back-and-forth, it was remarkable to find that even arouet was invested in the drama.

it transforms into a three-versus-one impasse, but you were impressed by how gracefully he navigated through their baseless accusations. the culmination of the situation came when recognized his ‘lover’ and didn’t hesitate to call her by name, pressing answers for the lies she’d been spreading to her friends.

“i think you’ve all been misled, the only woman i’m seeing is this lovely one right here.” he turns then directs the gentlest of smiles at you.

unable to resist the itch, you finally laugh at the sudden turn of events. karma was indeed on the prowl, and to be a bystander for the incoming argument after she made a fool out of her friends, just to feed her delusion, was gratifying… for one of you, at least.

“care to tell me what just happened?” lyney tuts, his fingers extending across the table to grasp your hand in his, urging to draw your focus on him.

“later,” you mutter, absorbed by the evolving spectacle. it’s obvious you both will spend the whole evening discussing this…

from the very start, you weren’t one to rejoice in having any eyes on you. it was natural your bond with the one and only wanderer flourished discreetly.

this change in your life required no announcement. it wasn’t information that demanded broadcasting to the world; it could exist on its own if someone were to ask, you’d directly confirm the status of your relationship. otherwise, you find it irrelevant to insert this in areas where it held no relevance.

in the comfort of your solitude, you thrive, cocooned from nosy onlookers. your happiness, his happiness — these two were what truly mattered to you.

as time flowed by, your connection deepened, evolving into a union that grew stronger with each passing moment you shared. it was a sensation both of you held dear, a genuine and keen emotion that, if you dare to admit, could be called ‘love.’

of course, you weren’t ignorant to assume that your journey would be obstacle-free. beyond his undeniable intellect and esteemed role as the assistant and confidant of the dendro archon, he also began to draw attention for his otherworldly beauty.

you were aware that you might coming across his admirers one day. after all, you weren’t oblivious to the wistful glances sent his way by other women, nor the coy attempts at flirtation. still, you hadn’t taken into account the unusual lengths some individuals would go to win even a sliver of his time and attention.

it was painful to watch their efforts be met with a scoff or a withering frown. on a good day, they might receive nothing more than a mocking, “what do you want now?” from him.

on a sun-drenched afternoon, you find yourself perched on the steps leading to the sanctuary of surasthana whilst you await his return from his meeting with lesser lord kusanali.

yet, the tranquility of the sacred place was soon interrupted by an unexpected revelation — you weren’t alone. a trio of researchers positioned themselves near the entrance, their presence blends into the revered location, evoking no more notice than the everyday sights that surround you.

the sunlight dances upon your skin as you, absentmindedly, fiddle with your bracelet, a habit that had taken root over the years. the food container you had brought stays on your lap, and you can feel its warmth gradually dissipate. a frown on your face as you whisper a plea that he arrives before the snacks you prepared grew cold.

your gaze strays and locks onto one of the women standing nearby. suspicion dripped from her eyes, it lingers far longer than you liked. at first, you considered it a peculiar coincidence — perhaps she mistook you for someone else she knew?

unable to contain her curiosity, she approaches you with an air of authority, disregarding her friends’ endeavors to stop her from creating a scene.

“state your business,” she dictates, her tone icy.

you stand unwavering, refusing to yield an inch in the face of her bid to intimidate you. “if you must know, i’m here for wanderer.”

your words invoke a profound reaction within her, it coursed through her like an attack. “well, save your breath and don’t waste your time bothering him.”

“why not? who even are you to tell me what i should do and shouldn’t do?” your cadence steady and colder than hers, a testament to the time you spent with your dear wanderer — it seems to be paying off.

you expected her to either insult you or begin a monologue about her superiority as a researcher, but her reply took you by surprise.

“i’m his lover, duh! i don’t appreciate you flirting with him.” then, in a single motion, she confiscates the container from your grasp.

glances were exchanged amongst her peers, who advance to mediate the interaction. one of them pulls her away and positions himself between you. “i’m sorry for her behavior, miss. her sleep deprivation has her spouting nonsense.”

“i am not! there are clear signs he feels the same way. we’re dating; he’s just very reserved about his emotions.”

before it can escalate further, a familiar voice slices through the tension like a blade. “where have you been?” he chides, as he descends the steps.

beneath his hat, you spy the glaring discontent he directs at these strangers for taking your time away from him.

when your eyes locks, his gaze softens. the sour expression dissolves and was replaced by a flicker of warmth. you offer a reassuring smile in his direction, a gesture that noticeably eases his mind.

he was a stride away from you when she, flaunting a smirk, stops in front of him. you lay a hand over your lips to quash your laughter after spotting the look of disgust he tosses at her.

“wanderer, honey!” she tries to touch his arm but fails when he sidesteps her. “don’t worry, i already handled this pest to lessen the burden for y—”

“who are you?” he sneers, and the haughty look on her face instantly disappears. she attempts to stutter a response, an effort to remind her title as his lover, but his menacing gaze he wore silences her.

“moreso, who are you to advise my wife what to do?”

eh? his wife?

“your wife?!” her friends turn pale, realization dawning upon them. they shiver at the thought of unintentionally crossing him, all thanks to her behavior.

“i-i just thought…”

“well, you thought wrong; know your place.” in a last display of irritation, he shoots them a cutting glare. then, he seizes the food container from her grip, his fingers then intertwine with yours as he guides you away from them.

as you walk away hand-in-hand, you cast a quick glance at her and stick your tongue out to mock her.

“i saw that,” he snickers and tugs you along, nearly causing you to stumble, “and you say i’m mean.”

“don’t get all smart, you called me your wife earlier.”

“shut up! it was meant to end the conversation early.”

[culmaer]

the official currency of Namibia has been the Namibian dollar since the 1993/'94, although the South African rand is still legal tender there too

for the people asking in the notes, no, "clusterfuck" is not a translation of their currency. it just means the situation is complicated. the official currency was the Zimbabwean dollar until the 2000s when the country went through economic crisis and hyper-inflation. the Zim dollar was abandoned and multiple international currencies became legal tender concurrently (US dollar, British pound, Euro, South African rand, Botswana pula) although in practice, they used mainly the US dollar

in 2019 (before the pandemic), Zimbabwe introduced the New Zimbabwean dollar as the official currency, however this did not work out for them and in mid-2020 they went back to accepting multiple foreign currencies (but again, in practice, they use the US dollar)

Meaning of the World’s Currencies

by u/Ben1152000