#or is culty okay
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blitheringbongus · 2 days ago
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Does this look culty
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cultycatlady · 10 months ago
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This kingdom really do be full of tears
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ferally-ships · 2 years ago
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This is money cat. He only appears every 1,383,986,917,198,001 posts. If you repost this in 30 seconds he will bring u good wealth and fortune.
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drivemysoul · 3 months ago
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like sao is a series that has depicted racism and classism and homophobia and transphobia and misogyny and incest and has several times depicted rape (and sexual assault via coercion) and hasn’t always depicted those things well
but then my followers on that blog jump down my throat constantly like “you can’t read chainsaw man because it has rape in it so the author is a rape apologist” “you can’t watch attack on titan because it has antisemitic imagery so the author is a white supremacist” “you can’t watch black butler because one of the villains is a pedophile so that means the author is a pedophile”
like ohhhhhh my fucking god. god forbid a series depicts a fucking issue. god forbid a series introduces a plot. god forbid a series is like “hey this is a bad thing, here is my series depicting it as bad and wrong” my fucking god. but don’t dare mention any of the shit in sao because reki can do no wrong and he’s the only person allowed to write a story where bad things happen. jfc
every time i check my inbox on my sao sideblog i lose faith in humanity lmfao
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portals-posts · 10 days ago
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Do I Look Like Him?
S2!Jinx x Fem!reader(ft.Isha🩷, & Vi)
A/n: This contains spoliers to the 2nd season of Arcane( also this writing may not be 'inline" with the episode im basing this off of, S2 EP6). Use of 'Y/N' a few times!(Also this is a request from lola-hernandez-123, hope you like it!(i did my best🩷🤗)
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Summary: Reader arrives just in time to save Isha but get really hurt in the process and reveals something shes been hind from Jinx and Isha
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Just as everthing seemed to be going great. Vander's back (just not in the way you'd imagine), Vi's 'darker' than before, and Jinx and Isha are Jinx and Isha. Wondering around this place gave Y/n a culty yet cosy feel, not a dark abandond aircraft in a cave cosy but cosy. "Hey toots, whacca thinkin about?" Jinx asked before taking a bit out of the strangley tastey fruit, as she looked around with her scope. "I don't alot i guess." Y/n explain but not really. "Yeah i get it, with Vander and Vi back a-and now Isha it feels like were kinda one big family again, yeah know?" Jinx asked still looking around. "Yeah and i-i just think tha-" Bingo slippery as an eel" Jinx interupped without realising, spotting Isha hinding something in her hat. "Their ya are,i knew you could do it!" Jinx praises Isha, taking her gun out of her hat. "Hey,i'll be right back." Y/n said getting up, ready to walk out of the 'treehouse' " Huh-Oh okay toots" Jinx said, turning back to tell Isha a something.
After a short while of Y/n just walking around with now Isha tailing her, they heard a few crashes coming from where Vander was staying. And instinctivly running to it, catching up with Vi on the way. "You." They heard as Vi pushed open the door, and Y/n and Isha run over to hug Vander. "Are you okay? Wh-what happened?" Y/n ask as Jinx fixed Ishas hat. "Yeah it was nothin just a-" BOOM. A giant blue light filled the sky for a secound then. Everything seemed to go quiet, until all the 'followers' fell over and let out a horrid scream.
We all ran outside to see what was happening, it was awfull, they all seemed like they were in a painfull trance as they just stared up into the sky. There then was a low roar coming from behind us. And as we turned, we saw Vanders 'pod' glowing a bright orange. Just as Y/n and Jinx began to shield Isha. What seemed to no longer be Vander emgered for the pod, eyes and mouth now burning orange lava . "Vander" Vi questioned, slowly walking toward him, shielding everyone behind her. Vander letting a roar before puking up lava, unknowing scaring Isha.
It was a bloodbath, Vi had a deep cut to the stomach, Y/n laying on her side with mutiple deep cuts on her body, Jinx cant get up and theres no sight of Isha, untill, Jinx notices a little blue blur past by her with her gun i hand. "Y/n?!" "Isha!" Jinx yelled as she was hed back by Vi. And just as Isha's about to pull the trigger, a big, bright purple lighting struck Vander down and revealed a fully head Y/n, carring a pasted out Isha in her arms.
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A/n: So sorry if this is a mess and a bit all over the place, i edited at like 11 at night🤫 Also if yall what a diff version of this let me know!🩷 (requested by. lola-hernandez-123)
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naneun-no · 3 months ago
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On “Insecure Jikookers”…
Alright. I might lose followers for this and that’s very okay; curate your timeline and protect your peace babes. But for YEARS, every time the phrase “insecure jikooker” has come up on my feed my eyelid has done a little twitchy twitch 🤨🤨
And I have always ignored it, because I’ve never wanted to be out here policing ppl’s language and we are literally supposed to be having fun and celebrating love, like for me that’s the whole point, but —
I’ve been seeing the phrase popping up again surrounding the release of AYS and I just gotta say it.
You guys the term seems so culty 😬🥲
Like I think I get the origin (maybe)? It probably started when some of the early jikook bloggers (if you are one I salute you, I am not worthy, trust me this is NOT a dig at anyone, jikook bloggers are by and large cool and kind af 🙇‍♀️) would get these sketchy asks that were antis or cultists in disguise just casting aspersions on jikook’s bond or being blatantly homophobic and/or in general being rude little anonymous internet gremlins. Or maybe it was people who did want to believe that jikook was real but kept nagging and begging for reassurance at every turn, which I can totally see becoming annoying as hell and prompting people to start using the term.
But it feels like it’s used now as like a catchall for anyone who expresses any doubt or asks any critical questions? Even like… reasonable ones? And I used to see a lot of “hey believe what you want to believe but this is what I believe” but now it seems like the sentiment around jikooker communities has by and large become “if you don’t believe you’re an idiotic dumb person who has never known love — you’re either a rival shipper in disguise or WORSE (dun dun dunnnnn) an Insecure Jikooker — and we don’t want people like you around.”
And idk it just feels weird for a community that has always seemed to kind of pride itself on being the “rational, fact-based” ship… like we LOVE to be smug about how jikook don’t need edits to be obvious, don’t need slo-mo zooms with red circles and arrows because their chemistry and fondness and affection is just plain to see in basic footage. We’re the levelheaded ones 😌.
But doesn’t that mean that we should always be encouraging critical thinking, and if someone comes to a different conclusion than us, so be it? Like it or not, none of us have foolproof confirmation that jikook are anything more than very close friends. That’s literally all we know. The rest is our best guess based on vibes, anecdotes, dot-connecting, subtext and body language observation, experience, perception (!!This is a big one because confirmation bias is real!!), and suspicion. That’s literally it.
Look maybe I’m just projecting 😅 but when you criticize people for expressing reasonable doubt over something that is literally not confirmed, it’s just a little too religious fundamentalist for me! (This is why I was a bad Christian, because I always raised my hand and asked questions the Sunday school teacher didn’t like.)
Feel free to ignore me. I never want to come across as pushy or trying to stir up anything, it’s just a phrase that grinds my gears and I’m sort of hoping I’m not alone in that… but if I am, so be it! 🤣 would love to hear people’s thoughts because maybe I’m missing something.
(P.S. If you’re a troll who spams jikook blog inboxes this is not me defending you. You’re still annoying and you need a better hobby. Have you tried yoga? Snowboarding? Fly fishing? Filming food vlogs and/or painting? You should try cooking. You should stop being an anonymous internet troll stomping on everyone’s proverbial sandcastles and instead write a poem. K bye ✌️ )
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copperbadge · 5 months ago
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Hi Sam! I wanted to ask if you feel lately like you've been getting anything positive out of your therapy, because a lot of your initial thoughts about it kind of mirror mine. I'm very logical (except when I'm upset at myself) and very skeptical, so I feel like a therapist either isn't going to tell me anything new, or that I'm going to just disregard it because I can't trick myself into believing things that I just plain don't believe.
But I'm also starting to come to a realization, two years after my ADHD diagnosis and letting go (without therapy!) of most of the executive dysfunction-fueled self worth issues I was having, that I'm kind of Not Okay in other ways. I'm safe —going to work every day and doing my job so I won't lose my livelihood and have never had a self harm urge in my life— But I'm not really okay. I'm having major self esteem issues related to my personality separate from the executive dysfunction that are putting me in a bad place. I don't want to take antidepressants for reasons I won't go into but that means my other option is therapy and... I don't know if I'm a person that therapy will actually work on. I found a lot of validation in some of your perspectives, about affirmations being bullshit and "mindfulness" exercises feeling impossible and useless, about not having an inner monologue and how that might be causing issues with traditional methods. So I was just wondering, do you feel like therapy is working now that you've been in it longer?
I've wasted a lot of money on "elective" (and ultimately useless, back to square one) medical nonsense this year and I'm not eager to waste more, but I've also met my insurance deductible so it's the best time to try it if I'm going to.
I mean, it depends on the modality a little but I don't think trying basic talk therapy can hurt, as long as you find a decent therapist. And it's better to try it now when you're feeling Mostly Okay than waiting until you are Really Not Okay. But this entire paragraph comes with a lot of context so....
A lot of what I talked about in terms of struggling with mindfulness, etc. was less related to the therapy I am still in than it was to the DBT class I took at Therapist's suggestion. We were both aware that she was basically throwing stuff at the wall to see what stuck, and while it was an interesting class I don't think for me it was helpful. As you mention, I struggled with affirmations and visualization since neurologically I'm not really set up for those; I don't think they're objectively bullshit but I do think there's an assumption within the mental health industry that they will have function for everyone and that's simply untrue, and the expectation that it will is very damaging. I also struggled with the physical-intervention aspects (called TIPP usually) which didn't work at all for me and felt frankly like doctor-approved self harm. DBT can get very culty, which set off a ton of red flags for me -- possibly false flags, but they still waved real big.
And that's because I also have a lot of trust issues surrounding therapy. To the point where, the minute one of the people running the DBT class made actually quite gentle fun of me for asking a question he couldn't answer, I checked out on anything he said. We were learning about a DBT concept called Wise Mind and I asked, "If wise mind is an identifiable mental state, how do we know if we're in it?" and when he couldn't quite answer beyond "It's different for everyone" I said, "But if we know it's real there must be some kind of common denominator, a measurable data point," and he said "Well, Sam, you're not going to levitate" and the rest of the class laughed. Sorry bud, this is almost certainly an over-reaction, but I'm me and you lost me when you came at me instead of just admitting you didn't know. (Also it turns out I just live in Wise Mind like 80% of the time which is one reason I couldn't tell.)
But basic talk therapy outside of DBT is just...you talk at someone about your problems and come up with ways to try and solve them, which is a lot more straightforward and way less frustrating. You have to be an active participant, you have to both have a goal and be willing to discuss reaching it, but that goal can be as simple as just "figure out what my mental health goals should be" at first. You don't have to learn like, vocabulary for it.
The thing is, while I have seen some improvement in regulation issues, I also struggle with basic talk therapy. Most people, and this blew my mind, see measurable improvement in nine to eighteen therapy sessions. A lot of people don't go long-term, they just are having a moment and get help getting through the moment and then can disengage, with their therapist's approval.
I was in therapy consistently from the age of nine to eighteen and only stopped because I reached legal majority and physically refused to go.
Not one minute of those nine years did I want to be there. And, because none of the three therapists I saw across those years actually explained to me why I was there or how therapy worked, for me it felt like "Your punishment for having feelings is to speedrun every feeling you had this week in an hour, to a stranger." There was also what my current therapist believes to be some extremely unethical behavior going on, which didn't help.
So it has taken actually a lot of time to get to a place where I would even allow her to understand what help I need. I've been in therapy for about a year (generally weekly but there have been some gaps) and it has only recently gotten deeper than very basic interpersonal problem-solving.
Like, two weeks ago I told her, "I had a thought this week that I couldn't tell you about something I was doing because then you'd have material on me" (meaning blackmail material) "and that's a fucked-up thing to think." And once I'd actually identified it as fucked up I had zero issue telling her about it, wasn't even nervous as I did so. Who's she going to tell? She's literally legally constrained from telling.
I think well over half of what she does is either validate that whatever emotion I'm having is normal, affirm my reactions so I don't keep believing I behaved weirdly, or praise something I've done that was a positive act. Does this work? Not always, because I'm unfortunately very aware that it's part of her job to do those things. But yeah, sometimes. Even if you don't fully believe it, "Hey that was a really smart move" is nice to hear. Sometimes she helps me come up with a plan for stressful future events or (rarely) behavior modification, and sometimes she either provides me with research or points me towards research I can do on my own. We don't do meditation or affirmations or stuff like that.
Like, last week I brought up the fact that I hadn't really ever thought about how if I have a disability that causes emotional dysregulation and I got it from my parents, they also likely had undiagnosed emotional dysregulation when raising me. So she said I should look into research on children with emotionally dysregulated parents. I was pretty annoyed by what I found (the ONE TIME adults are the focus instead of the kids is the ONE TIME I needed to learn about the kids, really?) but it led to something that was both informative and upsetting, so we discussed that. And when I was stumped about how to move forward with the information, she suggested that my general coping mechanism of writing about it was probably a good plan.
(At which point I just silently advanced my powerpoint presentation to the next slide, where I had a series of quotes from the Shivadh novels where Michaelis, acting as a parent, repeatedly does the exact opposite of the upsetting thing, because I realized even before the meeting that it's an ongoing theme in my work whenever I deal with people being parents. It's a good thing she has a sense of humor and also that I do.)
So yeah. Going into therapy you have to be ready to reject a therapist if you don't like them or if they get weird and pushy, you have to be ready to be a self-advocate, but you are the client; it shouldn't be super difficult to find someone who can at least walk you through what you want from it and agree not to do the stuff you don't want, and if you want to stop going you just...stop going.
Good luck, in any case! I hope you get what you need, whether or not that ends up being therapy.
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charlesoberonn · 5 months ago
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just saw your cult post and i wanna add something a bit controversial? (probably not for this website tho but yk)
im from a religious country in the middle east, and until i was like 16 i hadnt heard the word "cult" and i had no idea what it was.
when i looked into it and read about it tho, i realized that islam (the religion of my country) IS a cult. and then i went around online asking my other ex-religious friends about what they think and some also told me that they think their religion was a cult too. and no im not talking about like obviously culty religions (mormons, evangelists, etc), im talking about whats considered the norm for a religion to be practiced. whether it be islam, christianity, or any other one.
i started wondering why not ALL religions count as cults when they literally fit the bill to a tea, and tbh the best explanation i found was that, they ARE cults but they are so old, have so many members, and are so entangled with our cultures that people just accept them.
i told this to someone who was an atheist herself and even she got defensive and said that its not okay to call peoples religions cults "if its not hurting anyone" so i dont say it to anyone because i dont want to be an asshole and i accept everyone no matter what religion yk?
but that all being said, i still wholeheartedly believe that ALL religions are cults (im talking about organized religions tho btw. like native people having their religions is a completely different thing that i cant comment on because i dont have enough information about those)
i think that if you are in any religion then you are in a cult and you should leave, i know its controversial, but it is what i think yk?
I see where you're coming from but I think this is dangerously reductive.
The problem is that you're thinking in terms of a 'cult-not cult' binary that doesn't work to describe the nuance of real life groups.
What makes a cult are the methods of control they use on their members. A cult, or high-control group, will use extreme and predatory methods to try to control their members as much as possible.
The difference between a religious cult (for there are non-religious cults) and religion is the level of control and the harmfulness of the methods the group utilizes.
I don't know about what religion is like in your country, but not all religious groups are high-control groups. Many of them don't try to control or exploit their members.
By equating all religions to cults you're not only making accusations of harm against groups that don't deserve it, you're also muddying the distinctions for people, allowing actually harmful groups to pass themselves off as harmless.
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tekumaniac311 · 6 months ago
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Rider Rescue: Search
Dogbite steered his ship down towards Xuacury, as they flew over the land into the desert environment, Lean Lemur walked over to ask.
"Captain?" Lemur asked "Yo?" Dogbite replied, without looking back. "How come your so excited for this mission?" Lemur asked. "Glad you asked little buddy. As you know he's my older brother, and i've not seen him in years. So i've been aching to find out what he's been up to and what kind of crew he's got."
"He also hates him." Drago told Lemur, crossing his arms. "He left home to join the academy in a flash, leaving me to fend for myself, and I hated him for that." Dogbite explained as he steered the ship down.
"Hey..Captain?" Mammoth said as she checked the radar "I've detected the other Riders ship down below, no cultists though." She explained to him "Okay, we'll land there." Dogbite said as he took the ship down and landed beside it.
Dogbite, Drago, Leopardaisy and Berserkerine activated their black suits and headed out. "Okay, here's how it goes." Dogbite said to the other four who stayed behind. "Pretty, you patch up any wounds the other riders may have once we've recovered them. Lean, your on tracking and keeping us posted. FixFox, you check out my brothers ship, look for damages and irregularities. Mammoth, stay on comms."
"Right!" The four replied, as Dogbite and his three fighter riders ventured further around the abandoned town, listening and looking for anything, that was when a black space-cycle flew over them and landed in front, Dogbite couldn't believe it, HE was here?
Dressed in black, with only his ears and tail as evidence, he stepped off his space-cycle to look around before facing Dogbite's crew.
"Z, the Rouge Rider?" Leopardaisy asked the figure, intrigued. Dogbite shoved her aside and aimed a solar ball at him "Halt it right there, fake rider!" He barked.
The black clad rider just casually raised his hands "At ease, I'm just here to rescue some friends." He said calmly, Dogbite wasn't buying it. “Could fool me, hands behind your back” he added.
Z shook his head and looked back at Dogbite “I assure you, I’m a rider just like you. And I’m here to help rescue Dogday and his crew.” Drago stepped in “I say he comes along, we might encounter heavy resistance from the cult." Dogbite just scoffed "Hmph, fine. But we're detaining him after this job!"
Together the five walked on, Leopardaisy's ears flicked, hearing the sound of distant church organs "You hear that?" Drago looked around "I hear it to." Z looked in the direction of the sound "It's coming from over there, that abandoned church."
"That must be where the cult is keeping them. Come on!" Berserkerine growled, together the five headed off towards the church.
Meanwhile inside...
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One of the cultists was indeed playing on the abandoned church's organ as the cultists danced and cheered around like lunatics, all while Dogday and his crew were still tied and strung up. The High Priest...rather creepily stroked Dogday's chin "Smile, Rider! You are all soon going to understand true joy, and help us spread it!" He boasted.
Each rider just looked SOOOO done with the cult, as the organist continued playing, the riders just rolled their eyes. "I hate this." Crafty spoke, need she say more.
Meanwhile, entering the church and walking down the halls was Dogbite, Drago, Berserkerine, Leopardaisy and Z. "This should be a piece of cake." Berserkerine spoke grinning. Z then turned and pointed at a cracked wall, generating a sniper rifle via his wrist gadget. "There, we can take a vantage point and scope out what we're dealing with."
Dogbite however pulled Z back "I'M the leader of this team, so therefore I make the orders." He then points "We will take a vantage point at that cracked wall." He then moved ahead
"He's always like this.." Drago told Z. They then headed up and peaked behind the wall, the five then peaked to see the crowd of cultists and their High Priest, preparing the ceremony.
"And now my fellow cultists, in honor of our great god who blesses us with JOY, we shall envelope these heretics with the truth about our cause and then..they will understand true HAPPINESS!!!" The High Priest cackled, with the 8 riders looking unamused and so done.
"Time to crash a party." Dogbite says to his team.
TO BE CONTINUED
Space Riders AU belongs to @onyxonline
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thewolfruns · 1 year ago
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it's not like rhiannon was bullied in school or anything. she'd always been naturally likable--the kind of girl who could get away with being an atheist because she still had a jansport. the kind of girl who was still popular somehow despite listening to her parents weird old music. she didn't have some old association, but some things still made her uncomfortable on a good day. being dependent for survival on a bunch of people who seemed like they played soda pong in their youth group didn't sit right with her at all. at least dovid wasn't an asshole.
"fake it?" she laughed mirthlessly. "isn't that like ... blasphemy or something?" not that it mattered. they were already in hell. "do you think we can just avoid the subject entirely until we're rested enough to lea--" she dropped the rest of the word suddenly, hearing a knock, but unsure if it was at their door or somewhere else. "that wasn't our door was it?" she whispered loudly.
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conversely, religion had always been part of dovid's life. judaism, that was, but still. he wasn't uncomfortable with the idea of organized religion, though perhaps not all that comfortable with christianity. again, he wasn't, like, an asshole about it though. "hey, i mean... fake it 'til you make it, y'know?" he attempted to assuage rhiannon's fears. it was worth suppressing himself, maybe, for shelter. she wasn't exactly wrong, however. they did seem a little creepy, all wearing khaki pants and a button down, like they were cape cod business men lost in the country club. "we don't have to stay for long. or at all. we can head out together again. i won't leave you here by yourself, i swear."
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theplottdump · 28 days ago
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𝗠: Okay, How does that feel? 𝗣𝗼𝗽𝗽𝘆: It's serving Cult. Very Culty. 𝗠: I actually meant your wire.
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𝗩𝗲𝗿𝗮: You don't think it's a little - on the nose do you?
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𝗠: When in Sim-Rome- 𝗣𝗼𝗽𝗽𝘆: Stab Caesar?
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𝗞𝗮𝘁𝗲: Stabbing's too much paperwork. Easier just shoot cleanly- that's only a three page disclosure.
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𝗠: Speaking of paperwork- 𝗣𝗼𝗽𝗽𝘆: For me? Aw pookie, I knew you liked me!
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𝗠: Just be careful, we still don't know what exactly we're dealing with here.
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𝗣𝗼𝗽𝗽𝘆: Fire it into every townie with bad hair I see- got it. 𝗞𝗮𝘁𝗲: Time to move Angels. 𝗠: Good Luck 009.
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𝗣𝗼𝗽𝗽𝘆: What? Antsy to meet up with your new boyfriend? 𝗞𝗮𝘁𝗲: 009- shut. 𝗣𝗼𝗽𝗽𝘆: // 𝘥𝘪𝘴𝘵𝘢𝘯𝘵 𝘬𝘪𝘴𝘴𝘺 𝘯𝘰𝘪𝘴𝘦𝘴 //
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𝗩𝗲𝗿𝗮: Uh- I hope you have a good day? 𝗠: // 𝘱𝘶𝘳𝘱𝘰𝘴𝘦𝘧𝘶𝘭 𝘢𝘯𝘨𝘳𝘺 𝘤𝘭𝘪𝘤𝘬𝘪𝘯𝘨 // What?! That's horseshit! - No Jay, I'm not overreacting, you're overreacting!
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𝗩𝗲𝗿𝗮: Cool Beans.
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agent-cupcake · 10 months ago
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Flashbang
Chapter 6 - Howl
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Spotify Playlist / All Chapters / Chapter 1 / Chapter 2 / Chapter 3 / Chapter 4 / Chapter 5 / Chapter 6 /Chapter 7/ Chapter 8 / Chapter 9 pt.1 / Chapter 9 pt.2 / Chapter 10 / Chapter 11 / Chapter 12
Pairing: One Piece Live Action Buggy x f! Reader
Synopsis: A night of several firsts.
Warnings: Explicit smut, violence/death, dub/noncon, consensual drug use
Word Count: 13.5k
Notes: What do you get when you cross a mentally ill reader with a society that abandons her and treats her like trash? I'll tell ya what you get! You get whatcha fuckin deserve [weird culty clown porn]
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“Now I wait as love and fate Echo from your lungs Do you, do you, do you want me, babe?”
xxx
A blood red sun set upon the sea, shining a single golden spotlight across the water as pirates rallied for the Final Call. Not even the wind could cut through the kinetic mist of untapped aggression. The pirate ship was a powder keg of violent energy and artistic ego, pressure building and building for this very moment. The crew was ready and the tides were right and the prey was chosen. All they needed was for the curtain to raise.
When the bell finally rang, it would be a lit match into an oil drum. 
Not that you stayed around to appreciate any of it. You were safely stowed below long before the first cannon was fired. Like everything else on the ship, the brig had once been a neat, utilitarian holding cell. Time had worn the wood and metal, lending it a creepy, haunted atmosphere, the cramped space a graveyard of abandoned props. The scent of rust and aging wood and thick salty stale rot was borderline suffocating, the air holding you in a shivering cold vice. 
All you could do was pull your jacket closer, trying to get as comfortable as possible on top of one of the many prop chests. It was claustrophobically slotted between a barrel filled with batons and a drum that had a violent gash through the top, but it was one of the only places in the room where you couldn’t see your distorted reflection in the cracked funhouse mirror. 
Even though everyone assured you it would be an easy victory, even though you had seen Captain Buggy’s Devil Fruit ability, and even though you had witnessed the chaos of the assault on Barley Village, you worried for the crew. You didn’t know how to pray, or even what higher power might protect pirates, but you closed your eyes and hoped very fervently that your new friends and your captain would be fine.
Anything else was unthinkable.
After that, there wasn’t anything to do other than hunker down and endure the night. You thought that since you had seen the violence in Barley Village, that you wouldn’t be as affected by it now, especially since you couldn’t see anything. You thought that you were ready for the shockwave impact of cannons. You thought that it would be okay because you were stronger now. 
Maybe, on some level, that was true, but when you heard and felt that first boom your body responded with the unrestrained panic of a wild animal. If you hadn’t peed before you hid away, you would have pissed yourself in pure terror. All at once, your breathing became fast and shallow, your heart pounding in your chest, a cold sweat coating your body. Then there was another boom. And another BOOM and muscles you weren’t aware of until that moment began to tense and quiver, your lungs seizing as if in the throes of hysterical weeping, dragging in air only to regurgitate with a spasming violence. 
It was fine. It was nothing like that day. It was fine. Why would you even think of it now? It was fine. It was entirely different. It was fine.
It was fine and yet your body curled up into a ball with your arms around your head and chin tucked against your knees, your eye wide yet dry, your mouth gaping, opening and closing in a desperate attempt to suck in some air. Your brain was on fire and the only thing you could think was that you were going to die. It was as if your body didn’t belong to you, like it had a will of its own, feelings of its own, because you couldn’t understand the reaction, it didn’t make sense. 
As the assault above worked its way down, your lantern frantically swung back and forth in a smear of flame. The metal creaked unhappily, the ship complaining all around you like an unhappy beast. Part of the strategy, you knew, was to limit cannon fire. They didn’t want to destroy the ship they hoped to commandeer. But even after it seemed like all shots had been fired, your body refused to relax. Down here, you had no idea what was happening above. No idea if Captain Buggy was okay, or Crina, or Cabaji, or Pippa, or Marty. You wouldn’t know for a while. Possibly hours. 
If it weren’t for your state of hyperarousal, you might not have noticed the sound from above. A noise, and a scuffling, and then something that might have been footsteps. Was that the hatch opening? 
You held very still, listening intently. Those were footsteps. You weren’t alone. Why? It wouldn’t make sense for anybody to come down here. Not unless something happened. There were plenty of worst case scenarios that could bring somebody down here. 
Covering your face with your arm to stem the ragged gasp of your body trying to get air, you checked to make sure you had the knife Marty had given to you safely in your pocket. You didn’t know what you would do with it, but having a weapon was better than nothing.  
A man jumped down from the steep ladder with a grunt, landing hard. He stood in the shadows, making it hard to parse details, but you had a feeling. A very bad feeling. 
Then, in a moment of true and genuine surrealism, he called your name. Your real name, the one you hadn’t heard since you boarded the ship. He picked his way over to the brig’s holding cell, but the door was too rusty to close, and the inside was filled with more props. You could see him in the funhouse mirror, his image distorted into a creepy facsimile of a human being, his face stretched out and limbs grotesquely skinny. 
You didn’t move, half hoping you would be obscured by the amount of clutter that surrounded you. 
He stepped back, looking around until his eyes met yours. And still, you didn’t move, you could hardly believe it was real.  
“Easy now, I don’t wanna hurt you,” he said, stepping into the light with his hands up. “I’m looking for a girl. A hostage. Real short, one eye.” 
You didn’t say anything, didn’t move, just looked up at him. Your mind screamed run, but your limbs locked up.
The man squinted, leaning forward to get a better look. “Holy shit, it’s you, isn’t it?” 
A little spasm made your body jerk awkwardly, a burst of energy from the part of your mind that wanted to escape.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” he said, holding up his hands to show that they were empty. “I’m here to save you from these freaks.” Your silence made him frown, some of the warmth fading from his voice. “We have to move fast, while they’re all distracted.” He came even closer, reaching out to grab you. 
“No!” you cried, recoiling. “I’m not… I’m not going with you. I don’t need to be rescued.” 
His eyes narrowed, you could practically hear the gears turning in his head. “You’re not their hostage, are you.” 
“No,” you said, once again checking your pocket for the knife, squeezing it so tight that the metal indented your skin. “I won’t go.” 
“Look,” he said, his voice hardening. “Your dad’s offering a lot of money for your safe return, so you’re going to come with me. Is that going to be a problem?” 
“You can’t make me go with you, I won’t,” you said, shrinking back. You were essentially cornered, but you were also closer to the ladder than he was. If you could scramble up and close the hatch, you could find a place to hide. 
“I want you to know that if it were up to me, I’d let it be,” he told you. “But you’ll have to figure that out with your dad.” 
With a burst of energy you didn’t know you had, you sprung up and practically fell off of the chest, scrambling towards the ladder. 
He swore, grabbing you by the arm to jerk you backwards before striking your face. With your momentum broken and then flipped, you couldn’t adjust, going down hard and hitting the floor without feeling much of anything, just the mindless, deafening fire burning up your entire face. You were blind, your right eye streaming, seeing nothing except dark. The man hauled you off of the floor, grabbing your arms to painfully twist them. Your left shoulder socket screamed with red hot pain. That soundly snuffed out any will you had to fight. 
“I’m going to… To wrap you up. Try not to hyperventilate,” he advised, his words muffled beneath the sharp ringing in your ears. You realized that you weren’t blind, you had crashed into the light and shattered it when you fell. The man did as promised, covering you with a sheath of coarse fabric. It smelled dusty and a little rotten, it was probably one of the prop curtains. You didn’t have time to struggle before he threw you onto his shoulder, knocking the wind out of you all over again. 
Blood rushed down into your pounding head, mixing with the potent disorientation of being struck. It pulsed against the burning flesh of your cheek, you could practically feel the swelling. You knew you needed to escape, but if he dropped you while climbing to the upper deck, you could seriously injure yourself. And what good would it do? There was no way you could escape, you would only invite more pain. Maybe some people got used to it. They could take beatings and bear the pain with their teeth grit, but that wasn’t you. Already your head hurt so bad you worried you were going to vomit, your face burned, your left shoulder screamed, and your breathing was dangerously unsteady, muffled and hot in the cocoon of dusty fabric. The pain you felt now was nothing compared to what it could be, you knew that profoundly, and you couldn’t handle that.  
Think. 
You had to think. 
When you gingerly raised your right arm to check, you found that your knife had stayed in your pocket through the ordeal. You couldn’t be stupid about using it. The blade wasn’t long enough to do much damage, the most you could hope for was that it’d give you a chance. 
Even muffled by the curtain and pierced by the sharp ringing in your ears, the sound of the battle was deafening when he reached the upper deck. Your final night in Barley Village had given you a hint of violence’s atonal song, but when the man carried you out of the hatch, it hit with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer. Screaming, shouting, clanging, popping shots, howling like animals. 
Your kidnapper’s grip on you tightened, although you were less inclined than ever to struggle, your body seizing up in response to the cacophony, withering in fear. You wanted it to stop, you wanted to get out of the noise, to escape to where it was quiet. Not outside quiet, but the inside kind. You could feel it creeping up with its anesthetic-like haze, your mind’s best attempt to protect you from the fear and the pain and the horror. 
No, you couldn’t withdraw. You had to be brave. You would not let him take you back to your dad. You could not let him take you away from Captain Buggy. 
Figuring out where you were was too difficult when there was so much noise and activity. He would be taking you to the Jolly Boats, wouldn’t he? That was the only way to escape. You needed to act while you were around people, where you could escape into the chaos. Better to take your chances amidst a brawl than let him get you onto that boat.
Slowly, you reached into your pocket and found the knife. Moving as little as possible, you worked your arm back down to hang forward. Fumbling blindly, you felt for the notch to flip the blade out, nearly dropping the weapon in the process. But you got it, readjusting the handle to hold it in your fist. Wrapped up like you were, there wasn’t much space for you to get good leverage or hit especially hard, but it was all you had. Biting into the loose fabric of your jacket to keep yourself from vomiting, you slammed your fist into your kidnapper’s back blade first. You imagined Buggy behind you, pulling your hand out to thrust it back in, helping you just like he had on that day. Once, twice, three times and then the man practically threw you off of him with some expletive that you were pretty sure ended in bitch. 
For a second you were falling blindly, wrapped in a suffocating shroud. Then the deck caught the bend of your spine, your momentum rolling you away into a painful sprawl. You fought wildly to free yourself of the fabric, your panicked limbs thrashing desperately. 
“You fucking—you stabbed me?” The man shouted incredulously. You shucked off the dusty cocoon finally, sour bile dribbling out of your mouth as your body finally relented to the stress. You choked and coughed it out, unable to do anything else with the massive jolt of sensory overload. You thought the fighting was loud and frightening from within your curtain cocoon, but it was nothing compared to finding yourself on the deck in the midst of a true hostile takeover. 
The man was right above you when he stopped in his tracks, something emerging from his chest. He looked down at it in surprise, but the blade pulled out just as quickly. He pressed his hand against the stab wound as blood began to gush out, looking more like ink than anything else. 
Before he could do anything, he was stabbed again, the sword sticking through his chest and out the back of his hand. When it pulled up and out, his body followed it. He hit the deck with a heavy thump, his body spasming as it tried to expel the blood in his lungs. Behind him stood your vengeful guardian angel. Cabaji lowered his sword, his expression unchanged as he stalked past your would-be kidnapper.
“Are you alright?” he asked when he was close enough for you to hear him. You stared up at him blankly, unable to comprehend the question. 
The man on deck in front of you wasn’t dead. Even as he choked on his own blood, he went for his weapon. Scowling, Cabaji pushed him down with his foot and finished him off, carving a bright red smile across his neck. The man dropped, his eyes open and empty. 
Cabaji sheathed his sword and offered you a hand. You took it and stood weightlessly, your head as light as a balloon. The world spun, blinking out of reality before it slammed back into you all over again, you were made of lead. Were you crying? Or just sobbing? You realized right then that your hands were shaking violently. The entire world shook and trembled. 
“You can’t stay up here,” Cabaji told you.
You nodded, agreeing because you knew you should.
“Stay close to me,” Cabaji told you. You nodded again, clinging to his back. Cabaji didn’t stop you from holding onto his scarf, practically burying your face in it, ignoring everything else as he guided you across the deck. Every muscle in your body strained with tension, the scent of blood and smoke and gunpowder choking you, the howling of men and explosions and steel only barely piercing past the ringing in your ears.
From what it looked like when you dared to look, the fight was very one-sided. The Buggy Pirates had overwhelmed the other ship with their noise and number. You passed beneath a screaming, thrashing woman who hung from the rigging, it looked like she had climbed up in an attempt to escape and gotten tangled up. Somebody had thrown one of the powder bombs at her, painting her in red. Richie the lion had joined the fray, looking every bit the beast you feared. Bodies littered the deck, their inky blood reflecting the colors flashing in the sky. And the pirates, people you knew, rejoiced in it, cackling and dancing and killing with a reckless joyousness you couldn’t fathom.
A surprise party. As in, the other ship must have been surprised by the vicious crowd of circus performers throwing a party on their ship. 
It was grotesque. Unnatural. You didn’t belong here, it didn’t make any sense that you were. It didn’t make sense. 
When Cabaji stopped at the quarterdeck hatch leading down the officer’s quarters, you nearly fell against him. He opened it up, stepping aside to usher you through. It was on unsteady feet that you stepped down onto the ladder, and with clumsier hands that fumbled. You hit the floor hard on your tailbone. There was no pain. Cabaji jumped down next to you, once again holding out a hand to hoist you back onto your feet. 
“Go into the captain’s cabin and lock the door.”
With the battle muffled, your deafening heartbeat took its place. You nodded, swallowing hard to pop your ears. “Yes,” you said. “Yes, sir.” 
Before he could ascend the ladder again, you grabbed his hand, looking him in the eye with a sudden, vivid flash of hyper reality, every detail of the ship and the man in front of you viscerally present.
“Thank you, Cabaji.”
Although his severe expression remained, you thought you felt him squeeze your hand in passing reassurance before swinging around to rejoin the chaos above. 
The trip back to the captain’s cabin was just that—a trip. After locking the door, you stumbled your way past the antechamber where you would normally wait and into Captain Buggy’s bedroom. For a long moment, you stood there looking at Buggy’s bed which you had neatly made earlier that day. His desk, littered with a familiar mess. 
This was real. All of it. 
Doubling over with a hard punch of nausea, you rushed to the bathroom, barely getting the lid up before you threw up everything in your stomach. Supper had been a while ago, there wasn’t much to expel other than acid, but your body violently convulsed in rounds as if to get rid of something more, something worse. Trying to rid itself of the sickness that nestled right into your bloody, corrupted insides, desperate to cleanse itself of the sticky rot that thickened your blood and made your head ache. 
But that relief never came. 
When you were so emptied out inside that your body couldn’t justify even dry heaving, you stood up and flushed the toilet. Moving slowly, lethargically, you grabbed the nearest liquid—a bottle of disinfecting alcohol Buggy used to wash his pierced ear—to rinse your mouth. It tasted foul and felt worse, but it removed the taste of vomit from your tongue. 
With slow, stumbling steps, you went into the bedroom and poured yourself a cup of water, drinking until you couldn’t take any more and then-
And then what? 
You stared at the worn down edge of his desk and even though you weren’t moving, couldn’t even feel yourself shaking anymore, the world was collapsing around you. It felt like that one time you fell out of one of the buildings northside, that hook like drag from behind your bellybutton as gravity got a hold of you, the terror that came moments before the agony of crashing onto the ground. 
Not knowing what else to do, you huddled in the corner. Not on the bed, but behind it. Hiding. 
You wanted to shut it all off, to retreat into the inside quiet like usual, to go where the world couldn’t touch you. There was too much pain and horror. Too many thoughts you couldn’t stop yourself from thinking. You did not belong here. You wanted to go home. 
That pathetic thought broke through the fragile composure you’d maintained and you curled up into yourself, crying openly. You didn’t want to be here anymore, it was scary and violent and loud. You wanted to go home.
Pressing a clammy, trembling hand to your cheek, you could almost feel your dad’s touch imprinted on the skin, burned there as surely as a brand. 
You closed your eye and it was as if you were in the familiar old sitting room with the overstuffed upholstery and fire that burned so brightly yet never seemed to put off any heat. That night, the last night before he left, dad called you to sit at his feet, appraising you with tired, bleary eyes. At the height of his fury, he looked more vicious god than man, towering above you with lightless pupils and a blank expression. Now he looked old and worn out. His days at sea had carved a million little creases into his face, the leathery flesh sagging off the bone from one too many emptied liquor bottles. 
“I didn’t want to hurt you,” he said as he stroked your cheek. “I don’t ever want to hurt you.”
“I know, daddy.”  
“My sweet little girl.” His words slurred together like they always did when he was in an affectionate mood. “You are, aren’t you?” 
“Yes, daddy.” 
“You’ll be good now, won’t you? You won’t misbehave while I’m gone?” 
What you wanted to remember was agreement. A bland ‘yes’ that you didn’t mean because of course you were going to run away. But that’s not what happened. That’s not what you said that night.
“Please don’t go,” you begged. That part of the memory was the most important because you understood it now. If he had stayed, you wouldn’t have left. You would have died in that house if he was there to keep you with him. Because you didn’t want to leave, not really. But you knew you couldn’t stay, either. You had to at least try to get out. But dad stroked your cheek and told you he would be back in a blink, that you wouldn’t have time to miss him. 
You saw him off the next morning, your shoulders heavy with the knowledge of what you were about to do. What you had to do. 
Destiny, fate, a bad joke—you didn’t know what to call it. Inevitability, maybe. Now you were here.
Your own hand dropped from your cheek, falling limp to the floor beside you as that memory fell away, replaced with another. 
“If he doesn’t kill you, your dad will. Do you really think you’ll ever be able to hide from him?” Randall said that right before you cut him—cut him a huge red smile—and he was right. That’s what this was. 
What happened tonight had been a deliberate attempt to kidnap you, to get away while everybody was distracted by the raid. Maybe your dad would be able to guess which merchant ships the Buggy Pirates would raid based on the stolen maps. Maybe he sent messages out to a few mercenary types, people who would be on board to protect the goods anyway, people who wouldn’t mind abandoning their crew for a bigger payout. Maybe this was just the most rotten confluence of bad luck and coincidence. 
The execution was overshadowed by the far more intimidating message of it all. He would never let you go, not you, not his sweet little girl. 
There was no quiet, not inside or out. The thrashing, raving thing within you screamed, and you did too. A ragged and terrible scream that ripped up the inside of your throat. It was pathetic and ugly. More than anything, it hurt.
Even if you went back to him, he would know what you had done. He would know that you weren’t his little girl anymore, that you were tarnished. One life burned for another you could never have. No matter what you thought or told yourself, you weren’t a pirate. You were a fake. A coward.
And there was nothing you could do. Not now, not anymore. Nowhere to go. Nowhere to run. Nowhere to hide. 
For the first time since boarding the ship, you thought about what led you to this point. Really thought about it. The sneaking, the hiding, being strung up and threatened, the cage. Standing behind Randall with a stranger at your back, a knife in your hand, a blade to the neck of a man you had loved nearly all of your life, a man who never loved you. Screaming. Blood dripping down your wrist.
Murderer.
There were moments in your life that you thought were too much. You stopped crying, stopped shaking, stopped breathing, and knew, knew with absolute certainty, that you could not handle any more. Then time continued to march on, pulling you right along with it, and there was nothing other than your suffering, it was without end, and you wanted to die—more, you wanted to never have existed in the first place.
Those moments didn’t come when dad beat you, or when he screamed at you, or after losing mom, or because of what happened to your eye, or seeing Randall marry another girl. Pain and fear and sadness were immediate. Pain and fear and sadness, no matter how intolerable, made sense. At least you weren’t alone, at least you had a tether—even one that was barbed and electrified. 
True misery, the kind that made you want to claw your way out of your skin and rip out your still-beating heart, was a solitary experience. It came when the cellar door closed and you heard the lock turn. When your desperate pleas and apologies and cries were met with silence because nobody was close enough to hear them. Those dark hours you spent curled up on the stone floor shivering, listening to your wheezing breath shudder in and out of your lungs. When the quiet didn’t come and you realized the enormity of imprisonment. It wasn’t that you were trapped in the dark, dank cellar with rats, or in a house with your angry dad, or in a town where everybody thought you were a freak. Hell was realizing that you were trapped within yourself, with the monstrous creature who lived in your head, the one that hated you so bitterly. Was that you? You without any mask at all, exposed and plain and wretched and a murderer.  
It was too much. You could not handle it.
But there was nothing else. No one else. And you only had yourself to blame. 
There was something Randall used to tell you. He’d laugh good-naturedly and say you’ve really stepped in it now. You could hear him now, as clearly as if he were right next to you. 
You’ve really stepped in it now.
You heard the door unlock and open from the other room. The sound jolted you stiff, a gasp leaving your sore throat. 
“Honey, I’m hoooome,” Buggy called, shutting the door. Hearing that it was him made your shoulders relax a little. Did that mean the fighting was over? “Babydoll, are you here? Cabaji told me you were naughty and he had to put you in time out.”
“I’m back here,” you called on autopilot, your voice cracking.
You had no idea what happened now, or what you were meant to do. There was nothing you could do to hide the fact that you had been crying, no matter how much you wiped your face. Bracing yourself for anything, you got to your feet. Standing up so fast made you dizzy, and suddenly you felt quite aware of how ridiculous it all was. Pathetic. A pirate wouldn’t cower in the corner of a room crying like a child. A grown woman wouldn’t do that. 
You reached up to pull down your bandana, only to poke your left eye. It must have come undone sometime during the attempted kidnapping. You lost your knife too. That hurt worse than losing your bandana, nearly prompting you to start crying all over again. 
“Where oh where has my baby gone,” Buggy began to sing as he walked through the other room. “Oh, where, oh, where can she be? She whines so sweet, like a bitch in heat—” He reached the open doorway, smiling as soon as he saw you. “Oh, there you are. I didn’t wake you up, did I?” 
“No, sir,” you said, your head bowed to hide your splotchy red face.
“What were you doing?” 
You sniffled. “Nothing, sir.” 
“Aw, did the big scawy fight make you cwy?” Buggy asked. You shook your head fast, unwilling to trust that your voice wouldn’t break if you spoke. “Don’t be embarrassed. It’s okay to be scared your first time. Even I was a little freaked out during my first big raid.” 
You dared to look up, your eyebrows furrowed. “Really?” 
“No,” he said, laughing as if the thought itself were too ridiculous to entertain. “Can you imagine me being scared?” 
He took his gloves off, tossing them aside. Buggy had lost his hat and coat and his clothes were splattered with blood and colorful powder and who knows what else, but he wasn’t wounded. He was fine, and he was in good spirits. That was good. 
“You know,” Buggy finally said to break the silence, “if you want me to keep you around, you’re gonna have to suck it up and put on your big girl pants. Nobody likes a crybaby.” 
“I know,” you said softly, self loathing making your chest swell, sitting heavily on your heart and lungs like a tumor. “I’m sorry, sir.”  
“God, you’re so… so pitiful,” Buggy said. “Yeah, no. That’s not gonna do it for me tonight. We’re drinking.”
You side-eyed his collection of bottles. The sweet liquor he had shared that first night was an outlier, most of what Buggy drank was much harder and more abrasive. Even the smell made your stomach turn, you had no idea how he could handle it. “I’m okay,” you said, wiping your eye again. 
“Oh, right. Poor little baby can’t handle her liquor. Don’t worry, Captain Buggy has just what you need. I scored this a month ago at a club owned by this Saydon guy.” He walked over to the armoire, shuffling around the clutter before finding a bottle. “He’s a thieving sack of shit without an original bone in his body, but I had a good time fleecing his stupid customers. This,” he held up the bottle as he turned and approached you, “is the good shit, straight from some rich guy’s personal stash. I was going to sell it, but I’m willing to sacrifice a few berry to cheer up my pathetic little charity case.”
You swallowed hard at the offer, looking from his smile to the bottle. Thick red glass and a real paper label, although the text was illegible. 
“Let me pour you some so we can skip to the part where you’re not making me miserable and we can celebrate my brave and triumphant victory.”
“Okay,” you said. It was fine, probably some type of opiate. Your dad had given you that sort of thing to help you stave off the hysteria before. It would be nicer than feeling like this, wrung out and hiccupping in the pitiful clutches of despair. 
“Gotta be careful not to overdo it. Hey, you wanna eyeball this for me?” Buggy asked, laughing as he measured out the tincture and added some water. Seeing your lack of smile as he handed you the cup, he sighed dramatically and grabbed one of the bottles from his desk. “A toast to the flawless victory won tonight by the most fearsome captain in all of the East Blue.”
“To Captain Buggy,” you said. Buggy drew back the bottle, giving you a sharp look. Sluggish as your brain was, it took an excruciatingly long few seconds to realize what he wanted. “To Captain Buggy, the future King of the Pirates... and-and the best man I’ve ever known,” you tried again.
“Eh… I’ll take it,” he allowed with a shrug, tapping his bottle to your cup.
The drink was as terrible as you expected, but the taste of bitter medicine was still better than hard liquor. Buggy clearly didn’t feel the same, downing a mouthful without even wincing before unceremoniously collapsing onto the end of his bed. You ran a hand over your face. Red, hot, and a little swollen. You knew you looked rough, probably about as bad as you felt. 
“You weren’t this weepy last time,” Buggy said. “You weren’t worried about me, were you?” 
“Of course I was,” you said, frowning. “I was worried about all of you. I… I don’t know what I would do without you, Captain Buggy. I’m sorry, I’m…” You shook your head, trying to clear it somewhat. “It’s silly.” 
“Yeah it is. Those idiots wouldn’t be able to hurt me even if I was doused in seawater and blindfolded,” Buggy said, rolling his eyes and leaning back on his elbows. “It was so easy, barely even worth bragging about. After I killed like ten of his men, the captain came out with this huge sword—clearly compensating for something. I let him get a good swing in right through the middle, and you should have seen his eyes when I put myself back together. His reaction was even better than yours. I’m pretty sure he shit himself.”
“And everyone else?” you asked.
“Yeah, they did fine too,” he said flippantly. “Frankly, it was boring. For me, at least. I could probably have taken them down all by myself.” He sighed dramatically. “But, hey, it was a good learning experience for my freaks.” 
You nodded, dropping down to your knees to take his boots like always.
Buggy capped the bottle and buried it in the sheets, pulling something out of his pants pocket. You glanced up to see him messing with something wrapped in thin foil wrapping before forcing yourself to focus on the nightly ritual of wrestling his boots off. They were splattered in blood, a fact you only realized when some of it smeared onto your hands.
“I found these in his office,” Buggy said after you got the first boot off. “Salted caramels. They’re a bitch to get out of your teeth, but-” Buggy popped one in his mouth, moaning loudly at the taste, “sooo good. Want one?” 
You were more concerned with the unabashedly vulgar moan than you were with the candy, it took you a second to remember the question. 
“Oh, um. Yes,” you finally said. “Yes, please.” 
“Okay, but don’t tell anyone that I’m playing favorites,” Buggy said as he unwrapped another, sitting up to hold it out. When you tried to take it, he pulled away. “Ah, ah, ah. Open wide, babydoll.” 
You frowned, realizing that he meant to feed it to you. “Why?” 
“Look at your hands! Have you got any idea how nasty blood is? Come on, say ahhh.” 
You sat up to take it with your mouth, he pulled it back at the last second, your lips closing around empty air. 
“Oh, you almost got it,” Buggy teased. “Try again.” 
Your eyebrows furrowed. “Captain Buggy, why…?”  
“I’m teaching you a valuable lesson. If you really want something, you have to work for it.” He held the chunk of caramel up again, within reach. Once again, you tried to eat it, but he pulled it away again. “So close,” he taunted. Every time you leaned closer, Buggy pulled it away, scooting further up the bed to keep it just out of reach, laughing the whole time. It forced you to crawl up, bracing yourself on the edge of the bed to chase the prize. Once you thought you really had it, uncomfortably hovering above him, he looked you in the eye and popped the candy into his mouth. “Guess you didn’t want it that bad,” Buggy said with a big grin, the words gummed up as he chewed. 
Flushing with embarrassment, you sat back onto your knees. 
“You know,” Buggy said, sitting up. “I had a dog once that did the exact same trick. It wasn’t as good as when you do it, although he was a lot better at actually getting the treat.” Foil crinkled and, this time, he pressed the caramel directly against your lips, pushing until you accepted it. You were too caught off guard by the way he’d put it into your mouth to do anything other than automatically chew and swallow, barely tasting anything. “See?” he asked. “Delicious, right?” 
“Yeah,” you belatedly agreed, the word coming out on autopilot.
“I can’t stand having sticky fingers,” Buggy said, tapping his tacky fingertips together with a frown. “Be a good little puppy and lick them clean for me.” 
You blinked, laughing dizzily in disbelief before you fully comprehended what he said. “What?”
“It’s what dogs do, isn’t it?” Buggy asked, wagging his fingers in front of your face. 
“You mean it?” you asked, hoping that he was just playing with you. 
“Yes, I do,” he said slowly, condescendingly. “It can’t be that much more embarrassing than doing tricks, right?” 
 So it was just another game. An embarrassing one. It felt dirty, like something you shouldn’t have been doing. But maybe that was in your head. Maybe Buggy didn’t see it that way. It was fine. Avoiding looking up, you opened your mouth for him. He said to lick them clean, but it was more practical to close your lips and suck until there were no more traces of caramel stickiness on his skin. 
“And Cabaji says you’re dead weight,” Buggy said, satisfied. Pulling his fingers out of your mouth with a slick pop, he leaned back again, grabbing the bottle from the sheets to take another drink. 
“Cabaji says that?” you asked, confused. You and Cabaji were, well, not friends. But he saved you. When you thanked him, he squeezed your hand. Hadn’t he? When you tried to think of it, the whole night floated somewhere distant, far beyond the warm bubble of this room, there was a chance you made that part up. 
“Are you ever gonna finish up down there?” Buggy asked as if he hadn’t heard you, raising his remaining boot. Somehow, you’d forgotten that removing his boots was the reason you were on the floor to begin with. Trying to shake your head clear, you braced yourself to get his boot off. It took more effort than it probably should have. Your limbs had loosened, your head light like a balloon. When it came free, you tipped backwards, thumping down on the floor. There was no pain. 
Buggy laughed. Surprised at first, then louder, a big belly laugh.  
You sat up, dazed and frowning. Your expression only made him laugh harder. When his amusement settled somewhat, he managed to speak. “You okay?”
“It’s not that funny,” you said.
“You know when you see a kid trying their little heart out to do something, but they keep failing because they’re so small and stupid? It’s like that,” Buggy said. “Watching you struggle with everything you try to do is half the reason I keep you around.”
Frowning with all of the indignant strength you could muster, you got your legs beneath yourself, using the edge of his desk to stand. Although it had probably been more of a gradual process you were simply unaware of—that would explain your lack of concern with his antics—it was only when you were upright that you fully realized the impact of the medicine. 
Woah. 
Breathing deeply, you followed the motions of getting a rag to clean up your hands, surprised at how lethargically you moved, how warm your skin felt. Annoyed, you pushed off your jacket, relaxing when its weight was gone from your shoulders. 
You mumbled an apology, something about the room being too warm, turning to look at Buggy. The air felt so nice brushing against your bare skin, like warm little whispers all over your arms and legs.
“Hey, kiddo, you’re lookin’ kinda flushed,” Buggy said. “I didn’t give you too much, did I?”
You blinked slowly, caught off guard by the way his pale skin glowed in the warm lamplight, the way it highlighted the shadows beneath his cheekbones. “What?”
“Come here,” he said, holding his hand out to you. 
It wasn’t a long distance, a few feet at most, but your legs weren’t steady at all. You let go of the desk and almost immediately tipped forward. 
“Sheesh,” Buggy said with a laugh, catching you before you fell. “I didn’t expect you to throw yourself at me.”
“Sorry,” you said distantly, trying to get your bearings. The melty lightheaded feeling had your head spinning, reality shifting on its axis before snapping back into place. 
“It’s not like it's the first time,” Buggy joked, grinning. Standing like this, your hands on his shoulders, you were so close. His breath smelled like whiskey and caramel and his makeup had faded and smeared after the fight. You wanted to be closer, to feel his bare skin against yours. That would be so nice, wouldn’t it? He was warm and solid and-
You looked around, overcome with the absurdity of the situation. How long had you been in here? The air was warm and too close, and your bandana was gone when you nervously tried to pull it down. 
“Sorry, um… What?” you asked with a confused smile, trying to focus your thoughts. “I… can’t think…” 
“It’s not like I keep you around for your brains,” Buggy told you. He sounded a little drunk, smiling that boyish grin you usually only saw in the morning. “Why don’t you sit down? We’re still celebrating.” 
“What about your… your makeup?” you asked, trying to find a familiar point to tether yourself with. 
“What about yours?” Buggy asked, running his thumb over your cheek. “It’s smeared all over your face. You look like a one-eyed racoon.” 
“Oh, I… I forgot,” you said, running a finger under your eye. It came away smeared with black makeup. “I’m sorry.” 
“I don’t mind it,” Buggy said, “Actually, you look kinda cute like this—all cried out and red and pathetic. I don’t know why, but there’s something about that sad look you get that really turns me on. Is that weird?”
A beat too late, your eye widened in surprise, your shoulders raising defensively. “You can’t say that.” 
“Why not?”  
“Because…” You floundered, searching for the right words. The other night when you were drunk, the alcohol made your thoughts scatter, difficult to interpret. This drug was different, it eased away the edges. Too many words and a very soft world in which to speak them. That was confusing, just for a different reason. “Because it’s not true,” you finally said, almost proud to have remembered what you meant to say. “You’re just trying to embarrass me.” 
Buggy laughed. “I don’t have to make shit up to embarrass you. Half the time you spare me the trouble and do it yourself.” 
You frowned, your eyebrows furrowing. 
“Don’t worry,” he said soothingly, “I’m into it.”
You looked at him for a second before laughing nervously, a little tremor working down your spine. “Captain Buggy, I, um…” 
“Don’t you trust me?” he cooed in an overly saccharine tone. 
“Yes, I do.” 
“You’re not afraid I’m trying to pressure you into something, are you? It’s not like there’s anything wrong with sitting together. I bet you sat on your dad’s lap all the time,” Buggy said as he pulled you towards him, scooting back to make more room for you to sit. 
“Not… like this,” you said, your nervous smile straining as you tried to twist sideways to sit with your legs across his lap because that was the normal, safe way. Sitting with your legs straddling his hips was entirely different and wrong. “Isn’t this… awkward for you?” 
“Not at all. Make yourself comfortable.” You tried to hold your weight off of him, one foot on the floor, but he reached around to hook a hand around your thigh, forcing you fully onto the bed and onto his lap. “Yeah, just like-” Buggy’s words cut off with a groan when you tilted forward, a sound that made you tense up, very, very aware of his hips between your thighs. 
“I’m sorry,” you said, trying to squirm away. “Did I hurt you? I can… move…”
“No, don’t,” Buggy said, his hold on your hips tightening. “It’s, uh…” He exhaled harshly. “Fuck. I swear I never even thought this sorta thing was hot before now… Like, sure, I guess it’s a little charming when girls get coy and act like they’re innocent, but, I don’t know, it’s so played out. But then the real deal comes around and suddenly I get the appeal. I really get it.” 
You giggled at that. It wasn’t funny, you weren’t sure why you would find it amusing. “Shhh,” you said as seriously as you could. “Don’t say that.”
“Why not? It’s true, isn’t it?” Buggy asked, raising his eyebrows. “Have you ever even kissed anybody?” 
Your eyebrows furrowed. “Yes, I have.”
“Riiiight, that shithead from the other day. But he abandoned you, didn’t he? Broke your poor little heart all because he couldn’t imagine looking at your busted eye while fucking you.” Buggy’s hand raised to cradle your head, his thumb tracing the scar beneath your left eye. “Well, personally, I think it’s hot that you’re just as damaged on the outside as you are on the inside.”
“No,” you told him, shaking your head with more vigor than was warranted when you weren’t sure what, exactly, you were protesting. 
“Between you and me,” Buggy continued, leaning even closer to speak in a conspiratorial tone, “last time I was jacking off, all I could think about was how adorable it is. Your eyes just scream ‘rape me’ which is weird because only one of them works, and believe me, it makes it pretty damn difficult when you spend so much time on your knees. God, would you even know what was going on if I popped a boner while you were down there? I’m chubbed up half the time and you don’t seem to get it.”
That crossed a line you hadn’t been aware of, and he said it so easily. So casually. The words dripped hot poison into your core, pulling a dark shiver down your spine and an unexpected sound from your mouth. You didn’t mean it, you never really did, but your mind was drifting above the clouds, leaving your body to try and sort out the feelings he so effortlessly dragged out of you. As soon as your reaction registered, you clasped both hands over your mouth with enough force to almost send you tumbling backwards, but Buggy pulled you back, laughing.  
“What was that?” 
“I… didn’t mean to,” you said, but he probably couldn’t hear through your hands.
“No, seriously. Do you practice these sounds ahead of time, or do they just happen?”
“I’m sorry,” you said, releasing your mouth. “I…” When you squirmed in discomfort, his hips rolled to meet it, grinding directly between your legs. You squeezed your eye shut, just trying to breathe. The drug made your body relax, but it relaxed too much, dragging you down with the heaviness of your flesh. A bubble of sound left you, something like a sob or a laugh or a hiccup. “Why are you doing this?” 
“Because it’s fun and, more importantly, because I want to,” Buggy said in a matter-of-fact way. “Do you want me to stop?”
You shook your head again, refusing to look at him as if that would buy you some time so you could find an answer. 
“Hey, your captain asked you a question.” 
“I… don’t know…” you told him, fleetingly meeting his eye in an attempt to convey your inner conflict, to make him understand what you felt.
Buggy made a harsh sound of frustration, his eyes rolling up to stare at the ceiling. “Yeah, that’s not really an answer. The last thing I need right now is you waking up tomorrow and crying molestation or some bullshit.”
“I wouldn’t,” you told him. “I don’t want you to-to stop, but… I-I don’t know what… or-or how, I…”
“Ah, I’m doing this all wrong, aren’t I?” he said in a softer tone, looking back down to meet your eye, smiling and petting your hair. “I mean what is the first rule of storytelling?” 
You frowned, your eyebrows furrowing in confusion. 
“Show,” Buggy answered for you, his hand sneaking around to hold the back of your head, “don’t tell.” 
It wasn’t a kiss, not at first. At first it was just hot and wet because you didn’t understand what was going on. You knew you were supposed to open your mouth, so you did, but you couldn’t comprehend anything other than the vulgar assault of tongue and teeth. He tasted like salt and caramel and liquor and greasepaint. It was strange to feel his nose pressing against your cheek and the drag of his stubble against your skin.
Then something clicked, your body taking over while your mind faltered behind. With the drug swimming in your system, everything felt at least a little good. The heaviness inside of you was also raw, stimulating warmth, a sort of buzzing wherever the two of you touched. Kissing Buggy felt even better. Being kissed, letting him guide you. It was filthy and messy and a little gross to feel his tongue in your mouth, but it was animalistically hot. 
When his hand pushed under your shirt, it tickled enough to make you laugh, squirming in his lap. He groaned hungrily right into your mouth, his hips grinding up against you. With one arm wrapped around you to keep your head in place, the other pushed your undershirt up and out of the way to palm your breasts. The limited exploration you had done with your body had given you the impression that you were indifferent to feeling anything other than disgust and shame, but the sensation of him rolling your nipple between two rough fingers zipped down your spine like electricity. 
Even muffled by his mouth, you couldn’t stop yourself from moaning and whimpering, from helplessly pressing yourself against him for more. He said you hadn’t noticed when he was hard before, but you were pretty sure that’s what you were feeling right then, that it was his erection hot and hard between your legs. 
Leaving both nipples hard and painfully sensitive, his hand slipped down to wiggle under the waistband of your shorts. Bad. Bad. Wrong. Very wrong. You pulled away with a harsh gasp, trying to squirm away from that hand. 
“Hey, no, it’s okay. I’m just gonna check real quick to see if you’re wet,” Buggy said to console you. His makeup was smeared from the kiss, and his eyes were round and excited. “It’s not weird, I’m just trying to figure out where we’re at with the whole consent thing, okay?” 
“Okay,” you mumbled, even if you had no idea what one had to do with the other. The angle was awkward, especially when he had to navigate beneath the confines of your shorts, but his searching fingers found your clothed pussy pretty quickly. His touch shocked you as physically as a jolt of electricity. Even through your panties, there was a foreign intensity to the pressure. More intense, maybe, was the look in his eyes. You expected amusement, but there was none. Stripped of the jokes and the teasing and the smile and the crass comments, he was somebody who wanted. Wanted you.
“You have got to be kidding me,” Buggy said, his fingers curling, pushing the fabric of your panties between your folds, and you choked back an embarrassing whimper, your hips unintentionally bucking forward.
“I don’t think this is… I’m really, really sorry, I…” you stammered out, stumbling over your excuses and apologies and anything at all that would get you out of this. “I mean, we shouldn’t, it’s probably not-”
“Shut up,” Buggy told you sharply. “Here I thought I should take things slow so you didn’t feel too bad about it afterwards, but you’re fuckin’ soaked.”
“No, it… ‘s not-”
“No?” he cut in, easily shutting you up with another curl of his fingers. “So what am I feeling right now. Did’ya piss yourself or something?” 
“I didn’t! It’s just…” Hard to think. Hard to talk. Hard to figure out what you wanted. Hard to know what was happening, what he expected. You laughed a little, hoping that he would too, and that this would be a joke, but he didn’t. You broke, shaking your head and whining. “It’s too… too embarrassing.” 
“For you, maybe. I mean, jeez, talk about desperate. You really want me, huh?”
“I… I don’t know if… I shouldn’t.”
“God, it’s like pulling teeth,” Buggy said, pulling his hand out from between your legs. “Wait, there’s an idea. Should I go get the pliers? Will that get me a straight answer out of you?”
You swallowed hard, trying to focus on anything other than the zapping memory of his hand down your shorts. If you didn’t want something, you already would have left, your body wouldn’t be singing and surging to get more of his touch. But you couldn’t say that you wanted to go further either because you could not imagine or conceptualize that happening. More than anything, you didn’t want to be alone. You didn’t want to disappoint him. The idea of being touched drove you wild, but there was a sickness in your stomach that was only getting worse. 
“Listen, babydoll,” Buggy told you, his voice lowering, steady like he was talking to a frightened animal. “I’m not going to force you to do anything you don’t want to do, but I’m really hard right now so I’m gonna come. You can either stay here and come with me or get the hell out of here.” As much as you could feel Buggy trying to maintain composure, it wasn’t working.
You closed your eye, trying to think, just to scrape together a single coherent thought that would help you figure out what to do, but instead you thought of the warehouse. The air stank of wet rot and ocean air and old metal. “New girl,” Buggy had called, snapping to beckon you closer. Randall knelt on the ground. Pathetic and powerless, groaning in pain. You obliged then, rushing to Buggy’s side, your feet crunching on the broken glass and chunks of old building. Buggy didn’t look angry, not like you feared he would. Instead, he smiled. It was a mean smile, a frightening one. But a smile all the same, a gruesome expression meant to set you at ease, and maybe to keep himself composed. “Are you ready for your big moment?”
“So, uh,” Buggy, the real one, the one sitting beneath you watching with expectant eyes, said, licking his lips, “which is it?”
There was only one answer, there had only ever been one. You didn’t know. These things, your choices, weren’t for you to make. So you didn’t know. Not then and not now. Instead, you took the knife he offered and asked for him to show you how. Instead, you pressed yourself closer to him, hoping that he would decide, desperate for him to choose for you. Buggy moaned, his hips rolling upward to meet yours. He caught himself quickly, practically growling in frustration. 
“Fuck… Stop,” Buggy told you in a rough voice, grabbing you by the back of the hair to force you still. “I need you to tell me what you want. Out loud. Right now, so it's on the record.”
“I want,” you told him in a weak voice, stopping there as you tried to find the right words.
“Yeah?” He prompted you.
“I want…” The words sounded so far away, like it wasn’t really you speaking them at all, as if you were trying to guess the right answer. “I want you, Captain Buggy. Anything you want, I’m yours.” 
“Finally!” Buggy said with a hoarse laugh, shaking you back and forth. “See how easy it is when you allow yourself to be honest?”
Easy. It was easy, of course it was easy, of course you wanted to give him whatever he wanted, especially if it was you. Anything, anything, everything. Buggy grabbed you by the hips to spin you around, dropping you onto the bed. You landed on your back and bounced twice, dizzy from the sudden shift. Buggy was already kneeling between your legs by the time you blinked your vision clear, roughly getting out of his pants. 
“Since we’re being honest now, I’ll tell you something too—I’m glad this is your first time,” Buggy told you, flinging off his shirt before getting you out of yours. He didn’t undress you with any grace, pulling your shirt and undershirt off in a twisted bundle of fabric, leaving you half naked to his manic, hungry eyes. “Opening night is special,” he continued, licking his lips. “It’s something that nobody has ever seen before. Sure, it lacks the polish of later shows, but there’s beauty in that. It’s real, it’s raw. This, right now, is your debut, babydoll. I wanna see you come. Once, maybe twice just to start because then I’m going to fuck you and that…” Buggy laughed, pulling off one boot and tossing it behind himself with a thump before taking the other. You sat up, trying to cover your chest, only to be knocked back down when he grabbed the waistband of your shorts and underwear to pull them down your thighs, curling your legs up to shake you out of them. “It might hurt, after all of this teasing I don’t think I’ll be able to hold myself back. But that’s good. You want it to hurt, it should hurt—pain is how good art is made.”
Before you could respond to that, he descended upon you. Not a kiss this time. At least, not a kiss on the lips. While his fingers trailed up your thigh, his mouth latched on your neck. The same moment he found your entrance, his teeth dug into your sensitive skin. When he began to suck, his fingers trailed upward to land on your clit.
You might have wailed, if only you had enough air in your lungs to do so. He only got a sharp, pathetic whine and more nervous giggling, your hips jumping up into his hand. Somewhere inside of your swimming mind, there was a thought. A spark of one, a bit of consciousness that had no real conclusion before it bubbled out of your mouth in a string of stuttered “I…I…I…”  while your hands gripped desperately at his shoulders. He kept rubbing your clit and you knew, logically, that it would feel better if you stayed still, but you couldn’t. 
Buggy pulled away from your neck with a slick pop. “Can you…fuckin’...can you settle down? I can’t do this with you trying to buck me off.” 
You meant to tell him that it wasn’t your fault, that you couldn’t keep still, but the only response your drugged brain could manage was a nervous smile and hiccup. Making a sound of frustration, Buggy sat up and grabbed you by the waist to pull you down, his forearm settling across your pelvis to keep your hips flat. With his weight pinning down one leg and your other shoved aside by a not so gentle slap, you couldn’t go anywhere. So you whined, giving up and covering your face with your hands instead. 
Buggy laughed. “Don’t act so pathetic, I know you love this. You're sooo sensitive," he said, lazily pushing a finger into your pussy before dragging it out. Letting his fingers glide between your folds with an agonizingly light touch, drawing little circles over your swollen clit. Again and again and again and- "I’m barely doing anything and you're practically having a seizure down there." 
You whimpered, squirming beneath him to no avail. He had your hips completely immobilized. Buggy laughed again, slowly sinking his fingers into your pussy. Two of them now. Two calloused fingers to press deep into you, to seek out the spongy spot as they curled and thrust in and out. Slow, painfully slow. There was nothing you could do about it. Push at his shoulders with shaking hands, arch your back to nowhere, shake your head back and forth like it mattered, like he cared. You tried to laugh like he did, needed to diffuse some of the scorching tension, but the sound was breathy and high pitched and it wasn’t funny, it was torture. 
Buggy’s fingers finally broke the slow pace to practically slam into you, and it sounded disgusting. Wet, harsh. You couldn’t stop shaking, and there wasn’t enough air, your lungs were being collapsed by the weight of the drug. Despite that, despite everything, your pussy squeezed his fingers, only getting wetter the rougher he got. The noises you made, the mewling and the whining and the moaning, were practically innocent compared to the loud squelching of each thrust.  
“It sounds like I’m plunging a fuckin’ toilet,” Buggy said, laughing.
You pressed your palms against your eyes as if that would hide you, caught between humiliation and need. “I’m s-ss-sorry,” you babbled. “It’s… gross… I’m sorry, please just… Stop, it’s—”
“Stop?” he repeated. “Is that what you just said? You’re giving me orders now?” He slowed down, only to add another finger. The frantic rise of tension had your heels digging into his bed, your hands unable to decide if you wanted to cover your face or claw at the sheets. 
“No! No, no no—” What were you even denying at this point? It was all incoherent anyway, and you knew you didn’t actually mean it.
“Do you know when I’m gonna stop?” Buggy asked. “After you come all over my hand. So quit yer yappin’ and hurry it up.”
Your whimper was barely audible, but it was one of resignation. He was right, the slick squelching sounds really did conjure the worst imagery. But, somehow, not even that killed your building orgasm. Neither did the musky smell, or the gross feeling of your sweat soaking into his bedding. It was all just sex and, right then, it was hot. You couldn’t focus on anything other than the tightening coil in your core, not even the man fucking you with three fingers, going hard enough to hurt, hooking and curling with each thrust to grind them against the spongy spot inside of you. The only thing that mattered was the pleasure that sat on the very tip of your tongue and how badly you needed it. To please him, to end this embarrassing torment, to stop inconveniencing him. You had no idea if it was what you wanted but, one way or another, your body would expel the foam in your head, the need in your belly. Come or throw up or scream. 
With a choked yelp, you came. Your back arched, your body fighting against Buggy’s hold. You had one hand across your face while the other desperately clawed at the sheets and you wanted to fuck yourself on his fingers, to meet them with each thrust, but you couldn’t move your hips. All you could do was take what you were given, endure the helplessness, the sticky waves of pleasure. 
And then it was over, just hot air and sweat.
There was a sense that you were not yourself, like you had been unbound from your existence as a person. But also one that stitched you into your hot, heavy skin so tightly that you knew you could not ever be somebody else. The lucidity of the feeling killed your desire, you needed a break. You needed to breathe. 
“No more,” you told him, trying to squirm away, to grab his hand. “Please, I… Please, no more.” 
“That was it? Seriously?” Buggy asked, incredulously amused. His fingers did slow down, stroking your g-spot in a way that made you twitch uncontrollably. “You just came?” 
“I’m sorry,” you said breathlessly, covering your face with your trembling hands.
Buggy laughed in delight. “No, it was,” he said, finally pulling his fingers out and taking his weight off of you, “weirdly adorable. I was just joking about the puppy thing earlier, but you’re kind of proving my point. Girls usually, you know, moan. Or scream or something, I don’t know. What is it, do you think? The daddy issues? Or is it ‘cause I’m the first guy to make you come? Don’t get me wrong, I liked it, it was fuckin’ hot, but now I’m curious. Do you think you can moan like a normal girl at all, or are you just gonna keep whining the whole time?”
“I, um… I-I don’t,” were the only words you could muster as you stared at him, completely still. For a couple of seconds you had fooled yourself into thinking you had escaped the red stained-glass fog of the drug, but the vulgarity drew you right back in, enveloping you in its humid dusk.  
Buggy grinned, a mad expression. “Guess we’ll find out.” 
When he pulled off his underwear, you didn’t know if it was okay for you to look or not, your eye flicking nervously from his smile to the pale expanse of his torso, following the trail of hair that led down, and down. His cock bobbed up the moment it was free. It was more intimidating of a sight than you thought it would be, giving you that uncanny sense of vertigo, like staring down a very high cliff into some unknown abyss. This was wrong. Buggy clearly had no such reservations, spitting into his hand to stroke his dick as he loomed above you. 
“You’ve got me in a romantic mood, you can stay just like that,” Buggy said as he crowded you further up the bed. You stared up at him, stiff and too nervous to move. He frowned. “Okay, well I didn’t mean literally just like that, you’re gonna have to make some room for me.” He gave you a second before huffing in irritation, rolling his eyes. “Fuckin’ virgins.”  
Buggy grabbed you, hauling you up the bed to drop you unceremoniously into the pillows. You squeaked, trying to hold onto him while he hiked your legs up his waist. Breathing was difficult, all of the air smelled like Buggy and sex and you were so, so aware of the way it pressed slowly out of your chest. He released your right leg to grab his cock, slicking it between your folds. That made you gasp sharply, your fingers digging into his back. 
“Are you trying to scratch me?” Buggy asked, amused but distracted as kept nudging his dick between your folds, his hips rolling forward when it caught on your entrance. 
“I… I’m… No-hh—I-I-” Any part of your mind that was still functioning was focused entirely on the pressure of his cock as he pushed forward again, pressing it a little deeper. 
“I don’t mind it,” Buggy told you, “but fair’s fair.” He punctuated that word with a harder thrust, pushing his cock past the initial resistance of your entrance. Your eye widened, a sound of surprise practically punched out of your body with the shock of it. His fingers had not at all prepared you for what it would feel like. The insistence. The weight. Buggy smiled, watching your face as his hips rolled forward. 
This time, you whined, squeezing your eye shut and digging your fingers into his back, your pussy unintentionally tightening around him which only made the discomfort that much worse, but you couldn’t force your body to relax and you honestly didn’t know if you were trying to push him out or pull him deeper.
“No, look—look at me,” Buggy demanded hoarsely, hiking your right leg back up his waist, not moving until you met his demand. You let out a shuddering breath and opened your eye, looking up at him through tear coated lashes. His eyes were familiar to you, but not like this. In the dim light, all that remained was their devious sparkle, his hunger, his all-consuming lust. You tried to keep your expression composed, to hide your embarrassing reactions, but it was all in vain. The leverage made it easier for him to rock his hips forward, his cock driving deeper, and your expression crumpled as you cried out, you couldn’t help yourself. 
The intimacy Buggy demanded of you while splitting you apart became intolerable. You tried to rear back, your back arching beneath him, but Buggy grabbed your jaw to keep you from looking away, to keep you from hiding. You tried to tell him that it was too much, too heavy, too big, too overwhelming, but you couldn’t find the words before he was already thrusting forward again, filling you more and more, his entire body covering yours, his eyes devouring your reactions. He watched with parted lips, his eyebrows raised in some sort of needful appeal. It felt so cruel, but Buggy didn’t look at you cruelly.
It was too much to bear, let alone understand. Giving up on begging him to slow down, you tried to push at his abdomen. Buggy wasn't bothered by it, or by the scrape of your nails along his back, it was like he didn’t even notice.
“Cap-tain,” you whined, the word broken in your mouth, squished from the grip he had on your jaw. When he moved, you could feel how you were shaking beneath him, around him, your heartbeat thumping hot blood between your legs. The pressure was intense, unfamiliar. You whimpered, your back restlessly arching, your free hand clawing at his shoulder. “I… It's… Too much…”
“Yeah?” Buggy asked, managing a smile before that became another moan. “You’re so fuckin’... Fuck.” 
It was impossible to not respond to the overt sound of his pleasure, your pussy clenching around him, soaking his cock. It sounded filthy. You opened your mouth to say something and, like he’d been waiting for it, Buggy released your jaw, his hand resting beneath your chin to push your face up so he could kiss you instead. His tongue in your mouth was just as invasive as his cock in your pussy, it felt more like he was trying to eat you, to devour you, leaving you no space to breathe or think or react. You could feel every grunt and groan, feel the way he reacted to every little sound you made. 
There was no refinement to it, no mercy, no thought given to anything other than animal instinct and need. Buggy was barely even pulling out, grinding himself into you as deep as possible over and over and over and it was maddening because he wasn’t slamming his cock into you the way he had with his fingers and that should have been easier to take, but there was no release, just more and again. 
When he pulled away from the kiss, giving you a few moments to catch your breath, you threw your head back to keep him from kissing you again, worried that you’d pass out from the lack of air. Buggy groaned in irritation, punishing you with a hard thrust. And then another, and another. Skin slapping and squelching and your confused yelps of pleasure or pain.
“I-I—I can’t, I…” Your nails dug into his back, his shoulders, not to make him stop or even slow down, but because you had no other way to express what you felt. “Too much, i’ss—”
Buggy grunted, grabbing your legs again to pull them back up, changing the angle. The surprise zip of pleasure struck hard, making you moan loudly and openly, your wide eye meeting his. Buggy’s lips twitched almost like a smile, a little look of victory at getting such an unabashedly slutty reaction from you. You couldn’t take it back, and he knew he had an advantage, exploiting it with every thrust. 
“Come on,” Buggy said, his voice labored and heavy. “Admit it… You love this. You wanted me to fuck you from… from the day we met. You’re a freak.”
“Captain… Buggy please,” you begged, whining his name desperately in a voice that sounded so unlike your own. None of you really felt familiar, not your voice or your body or the sensations. Maybe it was someone else and you were only along for the ride, that would explain why you lacked any and all control over your body, why you could feel the torturous build of pleasure in your core in spite of the discomfort or fear or uncertainty, why you had been driven to true delirium from the way his cock ground against your walls like his fingers had, another point of excess stimulation on top of the overwhelming fullness. You could feel your pussy squeeze around him, feel the fresh wave of slick arousal that coated his cock, spilling out around the seams. You had no control, there was nothing for you to do but hang on and accept what had become helplessness in its purest form.
Buggy laughed, a hoarse, mean sound that stuttered with each thrust before leveling into a moan. You couldn’t help but whimper in turn, your hips moving to meet each rocking thrust, your thighs trembling with how hard they were clamped around his waist. If you let go, you worried that you’d never stop falling, that you would be lost because there was nothing else. 
“Buggy,” you whined. “Buggy, I…”
He groaned low, grabbing your hand to hold it with your fingers entwined, pinning it by your head. By now you were chest to chest, both of you sweaty enough to be slick, your breathing dangerously unsteady, lungs puffing the sweltering air. He was kissing you, but every part of your functional mind that still worked was focused on coming. Buggy didn’t seem to mind your preoccupation, content to kiss your open mouth, content to swallow all of your moans. You didn’t think it was physically possible to be closer to another human being, you could feel his heart beating within your own heavy ribcage, feel the rush of his blood through your veins. There was nothing left of you without him.
So, then, you couldn’t do anything else, there was no choice, just that anxious need, some wild feeling that you’d scream if you couldn’t come. After teetering so close for a frightening few seconds, that was the thought that tipped you over the edge, your body tensing and seizing beneath him, disturbing your synchronization as your pussy spasmed around him, your hands holding onto his back in a death grip, pleasure rippling through you, stoked over and over again by the relentless weight of his cock. When you were done whimpering and whining and writhing your way through your orgasm, your body going limp beneath him, Buggy released you from the kiss. You saw a thick strand of saliva pop between you as he pulled away. 
“Did you just… come?” he asked breathlessly, incredulously.
You nodded, gasping for air, your glassy eye swirling with moving colors, your hazy mind unable to focus on anything while he was still inside you. 
“Guess that answers that question then,” Buggy muttered. Laughing as he began fucking you again, laughing and then moaning, his thrusts less targeted and more indulgent. All he had to do was get his hand on your jaw to remind you to look at his eyes. It made you choke, whimpering as the wake of your orgasm faded into overstimulation all over again. The intensity of too much combined with the trembling pleasure-pain, all of it twisted and hazy red, a world filtered and scattered, intangibly delicious but also anxious and frightening. 
Buggy fucked into you selfishly now, his hands digging bruises into your thighs, his thrusts jarringly rough and without any rhythm you understood. But the sounds he made, you liked those. They were almost pained, rising in pitch as he got closer. Lustful appetite in its most crude and feverish form. 
“Buggy,” you whined, scrambling to hold onto him, to mitigate the violence of his desire. “Buggy, please-” 
He moaned loudly, crushing you, claiming you with his open mouth on yours, all teeth and tongue and hunger. Using you, sparing you no soft affection when he came, burying his cock as deep as possible for those final few sporadic thrusts. 
You thought you could feel it, feel his cock twitch inside of you, but maybe it was just your imagination. How could you feel anything other than the steady throbbing between your legs? 
Buggy groaned, breathing hard. A second later, he pulled out and flopping onto his back beside you, either missing or ignoring your wince of pain. You covered your face with your hands, willing the world to fall away. You couldn’t understand it anyway, what was the point?
“I was thinking of a more appropriate title for your job,” Buggy said between ragged breaths. “I get worried that-that people might expect too much from you. So I was thinking something like Buggy the Clown’s Cocksleeve or—or the Flashy Fool’s Fucktoy. But just now, it came to me-” He snapped his fingers. “Captain Buggy’s Cock Puppet.” He turned his head to look at you, grinning. “Eh?” 
A hard shiver worked down your spine. “That’s gross,” you muttered.
He huffed, annoyed by your answer. “It’s pretty bold to act like a prude when you were creaming all over my dick a couple minutes ago.”
You groaned, covering your face again. 
“We’ll work on that,” Buggy said, sitting up. You opened your eye, watching him roll his neck and arms, his shoulders popping. His hair was a mess, a lot of it had come loose, he had to fight against the hair tie to get it out, swearing at it before the thing snapped and he threw it somewhere to the side. You were too sleepy and dazed to care that you were staring at him, admiring him. You did admire him, even if he said things you wished he wouldn’t, or did things you didn’t like. You admired him as your captain. And he was beautiful. 
Buggy rolled off the bed. He wore his nudity without a shred of shame. You watched as he poured himself a big cup of water from the jug, downing it all in a steady stream of gulps.  
“Thirsty?” he asked, shooting you a look over his shoulder. 
You pushed your hair off of your sweaty face, the world spinning spectacularly as you sat up, and nodded. He filled the cup again as you crawled to the edge of the bed, wincing at the sharp pain between your legs, the wet mess coating your thighs.
“Drink up, you were leaking pretty bad from both ends tonight,” Buggy joked as he helped hold the cup steady in your shaking hands. You hummed, not really caring about his words because the water was the best thing you had ever tasted in your entire life, and it felt even better on your dry tongue and throat. He took it when you were done and you wiped your mouth, an anxious question forming in your mind. You weren’t sure if you were supposed to leave or not.
But you weren’t sure if you could move, either. Maybe you would just stay there forever. That didn’t sound too bad.  
Buggy turned off the lights and threw himself onto the bed, uncaring that he was lying in the mess the two of you had made or that he was sweaty and grimy.
“What are you doing?” he asked. 
What were you doing? Why were you here? What had you done? “I… um-”
“Yeah, I don’t actually care,” Buggy said through a yawn. “It’s been a long day and I’m wiped. Get up here.”
It took a moment for you to follow the simple order, but you managed to crawl up the bed. Rather than suffer your nervous attempts to find a spot that wouldn’t disturb him, Buggy grabbed you, pulling you against him like a child with a toy. He was hot and sweaty and the amount of weight he put on you wasn’t exactly comfortable, but you didn’t dare move—you didn’t want to move. His skin smelled like greasepaint and musk and sweat and gunpowder and leather and you drank it in, accepting your discomfort because it was Buggy. 
In the swampish dark left behind in the red heat of passion, and especially in his arms, you thought about the affection you felt when you looked at him. It was only natural that you would love Buggy. Not as a lover, but as anybody would love their captain. To serve him as you had sworn, your love had to be absolute. But then you wondered what he felt for you. It would be too much and much too soon to ask for love, but surely there was something. 
You, with a shocking amount of clarity given the fogged state of your mind, decided that you would ask him and accept whatever answer he gave. Emboldened by that resolution, you looked at him. 
Buggy was already asleep.
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mildy-vibing · 9 months ago
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Okay but genuinely, Cult of the Lamb is such a versatile piece of media. It can be made into almost anything and still retain its initial culty vibes.
Like on one end. You could have it be an angsty broody interpretation of the game as a 'last of their kind' character sworn to kill the bishops in a vengeance fueled killing spree, sacrificing anyone for the 'greater good', manipulation of the masses and horrors beyond our means,
Or you make the cute little menace to society that is still on a killing spree, but at least they look adorable doing it.
And it works either way.
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bubblergoespop · 11 months ago
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My Top Elliott Quotes
sunshine and elliott reunion WHENNNN?? @selene567 he’s hereee, sorry it took a while ♡
“I wanna snuggle okay? Sue me.”
“I was kind of joking earlier when I said they gave off culty vibes, but I don’t think it’s a joke at this point.”
“My powers can do more than just bring you peaceful sleep. I love them for their ability to do that, but they can also bring you wonder, and mystery, and strength, and joy. They’re yours, Sunshine. Always.”
“I’m glad you think it’s beautiful. But if you ask me—and if you won’t, I will—I think you are so much more amazing than any dreamscape I could create.”
“Do I have to send you back to your self-inflicted grocery store hell?”
“Since when do you have to date somebody to cuddle them? I mean that just seems like you are drastically reducing your list of potential cuddle partners for no reason.”
“I mean if I just come out and say it, I’ll be denying us both the opportunity for at least a few more years of reciprocated but undisclosed pining for one another that could easily be solved by an honest conversation but one that neither of us is prepared to make for fear of rejection…”
“It wasn’t a game to me. You aren’t a game and you aren’t some prize to win.”
“I call you Sunshine because that’s what you feel like to me. Like warmth. Like a guiding light. I literally smile when I think about you like some hallmark bullshit.”
“God, you’re fucking cute.”
“You’re all I have now Aaron, please help.”
“Congratulations. You unlocked a portion of my tragic backstory, brave traveler.”
“‘Yes’? That’s all I get? Well sure, it’s enough, but where’s the weeping, where’s the drama, where’s you cutting me off with a kiss like some kind of movie? OW, why are you hitting me?”
“Thank you, Sunshine. Well… for giving me a chance. A decision you very well may come to regret, but if that’s the case, it’s really not my problem.”
“I’m working on it, I promise. For you.”
“I think people are beautiful because they’re complex, and they can surprise you in a million little ways, every day.”
“I’m probably pronouncing half of these wrong, because, ya know. I’m trash.”
“That one there—that’s called Caelum. It’s one of the dimmest ones. It’s not a very exciting one, the name just means chisel. But the word also means Heaven, or Sky. I like that. It’s just a little guy, but… I feel like it’s got some cool secrets.”
“The dreams are always sweet when you’re in them.”
“I just want them to be safe.”
“Sorry, baby. Kiss to make it better.”
“I love my powers. But the waking reality that I have with you is so much better than the things I make. Because that reality is true. And I’ve got you in it.”
“‘Slew’ is a word, shut up.”
“Urgency? You say that like I'm annoyed my Starbucks order is taking a while, this is my partner's life we're talking about, ‘urgency’ doesn't begin to describe it.”
“No. No, I don’t think you’re crazy. I know you, sunshine. I trust you.”
“If they’ve been trying to use you in some way, I’ll make their life a living hell. They’ll wish they could wake up.”
“We’ll… figure this out. Together. That’s the part that I care about. You, Sunshine.”
“Fuck physics, fuck law of nature, just give me M. C. Escher, baby”
“Oh you think I sound whiny now? You don’t know how whiny I can get.”
“Oh good. I wanna hold you as I pass the fuck out.”
“Hey, but then again, we also might just get some looks because people know a power couple when they see one.”
“This feels like the magical equivalent to ‘we’ve been trying to reach you about your vehicle’s extended warranty’, just now with a fun culty, closed-community spin.”
“You feel good. No improvements necessary there. Well I mean maybe there are a few things I could fix—“
“Fuck off, Blake!”
“I know you hate me, you don’t have to remind me.”
“I’m just here for good dreams and good vibes, you know?”
“You’re doing so good, baby.”
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shessoft · 8 months ago
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okay so i have a jeep wrangler right and its a thing among each other to wave when we pass by it's literally called the Jeep Wave and in the beginning i was like 'this is culty' and people make having a jeep their entire personality which is still true but honestly when i don't get a wave back i'm like 'well excuse tf outta me then'
Also duck duck jeep guys it’s a whole little culture it’s wild
anyway Regina George (2024) drives a jeep wrangler...(I linked pictures so you can get the whole vibe)
And when she first gets it she doesn’t realize she’s being waved at until Karen points it out one day. She thinks it’s weird and lame. Like “why do I have to acknowledge these losers?” She starts waving back when she’s alone in her car but she'd never admit it.
Eventually she starts initiating the wave out of habit and when the girls give her amused glances she says “whatever it’s just a reflex.”
Karen tries to buy her one of those fake hands to put on her dash but she shuts that down immediately because “gross Karen that’s fucking stupid.”
Suddenly she’s getting road rage when she thinks someone intentionally doesn’t wave back despite Gretchen’s very valid point. “Regina, its dark and rainy, they probably can’t see you over your high beams.” She just complains that she can't see them either but she still waved.
Another time the girls tell her all about the history of the ‘jeep wave’ and that there is a hierarchy according to their intense google search. Regina ignores them as she flips off the driver of a blue jeep instead, mumbling “bitch” under her breath.
Karen buys her a wave decal for her mirror. She lets her put it on.
——
Much to Regina’s chagrin Karen learns what ducking is. “I saw Aaron and his friends covering their goalies jeep in them! So I looked it up and it this whole game-“
“Ugh Karen, no.”
“But it’s so cute, Gina look!” She’s cradling a yellow rubber duck in her hands, dressed in pink and wearing heart sunglasses, in an attempt to coax Regina into letting her duck her jeep.
“It’s very cute, babe, but you’re not putting that on my car. Also, I think you’re supposed to do it secretly…” she trails off when she sees Karen’s mouth drop open the slightest bit.
“Wait, you know about the ducks?” Her surprised expression makes Regina chuckle.
“Yes, Kare I know about the ducks. Why don’t you keep it? It’s too cutesy for me.”
“Oh, okay.”
A week goes by and she starts finding different ducks in various places on her jeep, while Karen insists it’s not her. She just smiles and throws them in her bag trying not to draw attention to it. She still thinks it’s lame but it makes Karen happy. After a year or so Karen stops ducking her jeep all together, because she just forgets about their little game but Regina is fine with it. She still has a tower of ducks in her room wearing ridiculous outfits.
But one morning at the start of senior year she finds a little surprise perched on her driver side mirror. It's a little duck, this time it’s all pink and wearing bunny ears. She feels her eyes sting with the threat of tears when she catches herself smiling. This one she puts on her dashboard for all to see.
She regrets it in the end because now the ducks have come back tenfold. She really has no where to put them but Karen, and now even Janis, are having way too much fun with it. So she keeps her mouth shut. Until one day when she starts to find mini ducks, not just in her jeep but in her house, her locker, honestly anywhere they could think of she finds a mini duck. There are hundreds and she knows this was Janis’ doing. It had to be. She keeps quiet though, slowly collecting them until she has an absurd amount. She’s sure she’ll find more but she easily has almost two hundred collected so she gives them to Janis. She had one of the girls on the robotics team rig a gift box so they would fly everywhere when said box was opened. Janis falling off her seat at lunch made it all worth it. Hearing the girl curse her under her breath while trying to save face as Karen cracked up was the icing on the cake.
—-
Regina also has mirror decals (also gifted by Karen). On her visor mirror it says hello gorgeous. (Or any of these. Honestly there are so many options.) Her rearview mirror says buckle up bitches. And the passenger mirror says passenger princess. For Karen.
Gretchen obviously gets the whole backseat to herself and she controls the aux cord.
Janis gets her this for the back window.
Y'all there are things called easter eggs please Janis would put one on the windshield and see how long it takes Regina to notice.
@erikahenningsen tagging a stranger person because reasons
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rainbowxocs · 13 days ago
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But Culti.. By doing this you aren't helping her at all.. She's actually become more resentment of you these past few days.. I know you want to make sure Daisy isn't acting out and such but I still want you to have a semi okay relationship with our daughter..
She’s a teenage girl.
One day she will realize once her hormones or whatever you humans go through at that age settle down that what I did was necessary. That it was necessary to control her to this degree.
I know what she’s capable of.. and that needs to be contained into this domain..
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