#payday is in like 3 days

[tigers1o1]

What if someone venmoed me like $20 for dinner/groceries with a writing prompt and ill get you like a 5k fic based on the prompt

/j. Of course. Probably.

[hoxooster]

What my Payday 3 experience has been like for the past year:

Just in case anybody was wondering about that.

[delllamortes]

girlhood is booking a tattoo without being financially secure bc ✨life is short✨

[rattlesnakess-den]

Oi Mr. Rattlesnake Sir, what're your thoughts on this "Jacket" feller if ya've met em'.

Ah, Jacket. I remember him. Wasn't in the gang long back in the day so I don't think I got ta talk with him much. no pun intended. Interestin' fella. He was a hell of a fighter last I saw him. I 'member he could be real funny when tauntin Sokol, seems he and Jacket were always at eachothas throats. Maybe we'll see him round some time, Shade might find 'em or he might meander back on his own, who knows?

[du-hjarta-skulblaka]

FucksSAKE we're desperate and I'm fucking sick of begging for money so does anyone want some emergency art commissions. Like. Say a fiver for a quick sketch, maybe 10 to 15 for something with flat colour?

[leviiackrman]

Me: I wanna be productive so bad! I wanna finish my drawings!!

Illness: how about barf up a lung?

[orcelito]

Sometimes. Impulse purchases. Can be so personal.

[dinoisdizzy]

Y'ALL YA GIRL HAS A JOB AND SHE FUCKING HATES IT.

MY FUCKING BACK HURT AGH

[little-mimikyuwu]

.

[lustlovehart]

Hard Stoned Gallery Dance

A/n: This was made like monthhsss ago, so I’m posting it as forgiveness for the lack of work i’ve been doing.

Pairing: [ Monster!Twst ] Malleus Draconia x Reader

Summary: Dancing is a beautiful past time, yet such a pretty act is ruined, when Malleus decides to let his affections for you run rampant. (Wc: 1.9k)

Warnings: Kissing & Licking, Murder/Death of Minor Characters (Not explicit), Possessive traits, Clinginess bordering obsession, a little blood, Biting/Marking

Your head leans itself on the rough surface of the stone wall. You’ve finished your objective for the day, so giving yourself this break is well deserved, ten minutes free of Crowley’s nagging is still freedom despite how it sounds. Your eyes can’t help but look up at the pretty blue sky, it stings to look at but you don’t mind the pain, seeing something so clear is worth it.

That cloud looks like a cat.

…

The taste of indulgence is quickly stripped out your grasp when the familiar sound of dragging stone resonates through the air, grating to your ears.

“Child of hunters, what may you be doing here?” His rock-hard face interrupts your view of the sky, green solid eyes look down on you as he casts a shadow on your visage.

Despite his body being made of pure stone, his eyes give a faint green glow, as if a bioluminescent moss grew there. His hair, his wings, and even his tail freely flowed as if he were just a regular Dragon hybrid. But alas, he is some sort of statue— Oh no not a statue, in his words a gargoyle.

You forgot about the difference one time and in turn, he gave you a 3-hour lecture on the difference between a grotesque and other gargoyles. Never again…

“I’m trying to hide from my boss.”

“Shall I be rid of him for you?” His mouth forms a little o as a small puff of a green flame releases from him.

“That would be a bad idea, I’d lose my source of income.” He quirks an eyebrow up at this., to be fair, you don’t think he has any clue what a “payday” is.

Despite his confusion, he lifts from his bowing form, a hand reaching out towards you in all its mossy glory. You’ve known him long enough to know what he wants.

A dance.

You don’t try to hide your exasperation as you take his invitation, albeit a bit slow. His stone body quickly pulls you up and into him. With how much tamer his form is compared to other beasts you know, it’s hard to remember that he’s part dragon, and even worse is part of the only few monsters who know magic.

So as of right now, this marks your third time dancing with one of the worst monstrosities currently on the bounty list. No maybe not one of the worst… From what you remember from Crowley’s ramblings (which isn’t much since you tune him out when possible) he’s probably the most dangerous.

You get the basic idea, but you’ve never truly seen for yourself why he’s considered so terrible. Is he not just a glorified water spout? Compared to a Kraken and an Incubus, surely his damage isn’t so grand to be warranted as the biggest beast to hunt.

“You’ll always be welcomed in my castle, you would not be short of accommodations either.” his hand rests upon your waist, pulling you closer than need be. His invasion of personal space is akin to a parasite leeching off its host, but you let him feed of you. Whether it’s from fear or a bond, you’re not decided.

Your movements are sluggish at best, but you can still remember the basic steps in the dance, your foot sloppily setting itself down where it should be, the occasional step on stone happening once or twice though.

“Considering the current state it’s in… is that even safe for me to walk in…? It looks like one good shout and the bricks holding the place together will crumble apart…”

“That is just the disguise we give it, as to not alert others of our presence. For you though, I’m willing to make it stand out if it makes you happy.” The hand lying on your waist retracts itself as he takes his other clawed limb and twirls you around, falling back into position when the spin is done.

“… I’ll think about it.”

“I’ll wait as long as it takes.” You know he’s not lying about that. You can distantly recall when a certain mystery monster had told you the tale of a longing dragon who perched himself at the opening of his window to wait for a certain hunter's return.

“Yes, he was so determined to be the first one to greet you, why he even stayed sat at the window for 5 months. It was quite endearing hehe.”

“Doesn’t it take hundreds of years for you to erode? Maybe it’ll take me 50 years to decide, by then I’ll be old and grey and you’ll be perfectly fine.” You take a step forward before the gargoyle's grip on your body tightens significantly, shrieking when he suddenly dips you down unprepared.

His freed hand takes your other arm and lifts it up to rest on his shoulder. Green sparkles are faintly flying around his lips as he slowly leans into the soft skin on your arm. His face leans in and presses chaste kisses on your limb, the gentle texture of his mouth catching you off guard as it tickles your body. Now you get it, he must’ve cast a spell to temporarily soften his lips.

He had attempted to kiss you once without taking this precaution, in turn, you gave him a face filled with discomfort at the stone texture that kept peppering you.

You can still remember the hurt face he had on when he saw your dislike towards his affections.

On his ninth kiss, his forked tongue peeks out from his mouth, licking a stripe up your skin. He finally lifts you up after the assault on your arm, his face only a few inches away from your own. It would’ve been quite the romantic atmosphere, had your nose not catch a sharp smell, and a horrible wretched one at that.

“You could be on your last breath and I’d still wait for an answer. But I hope that won’t happen.”

“Who knows, I work a dangerous job.” what is it?

The both of you twirl in unison despite the lack of music, your bodies in tandem as they move to just the sound of your surroundings. Though, your body is a little more sluggish than his own.

That stench… Is too familiar.

Eventually, your last steps fade out as you stop in your tracks.

“Is something wrong dear hunter?” Your grip on his shoulder fastens, if he was human you’re sure you would’ve broken his shoulder.

“What did you do?”

A smile is lit on his lips, his head tilting to the side, giving you such an innocent look, like he did nothing wrong.

“Whatever are you talking about?”

“The smell… Iron… This whole time I thought it was just the smell of the forest. But…” You swiftly pull a dagger out from your side, throwing it past his shoulder, the tip of the steel piercing into what sounded like wood.

He doesn’t turn back, only continuing to smile at you, as if you’re the only existing thing here, or more accurately, the only thing he cares about.

The bark of the trunk splits in half, falling to the ground, revealing the source of the stench. The top of the tree isn’t green, it’s red and brown.

4 pairs of hands stick from the leaves.

“You… What did you do Malleus–?!“ he’s quick to twirl you again, his grip on you tighter than it’s ever been. Despite your protests, he continues dancing as if you hadn’t seen anything.

You’re suddenly stricken with the memory of your first meeting with the beast, blood coating his mouth when he looked at you, pure admiration when he had finally met the muse everyone spoke so dearly of.

“Malleus, you—!“

“Tell me, dear human, was it not you who spared me?” He dips you down. “Was it not you who saw a beaten beast and allowed him to live?” He lifts you up. “Even as you walked away with a piece of stone you let go of one who’s rendered thousands over the years,” he pulls you in. “Dead” every action with your body is harsh, but not enough to hurt you, never enough to hurt you.

Because why would he ever wish to harm you?

He’d much rather smother you in affection, even when you’re exerting all your energy to kill him as he hugs you.

“It’s because you…”

“Looked so human?” He continues to keep you close, impossibly so, your skin melting into his, not from fawness, but fear.

“How did you know-“

“You’ve spared so many of us because we made you feel something in the moment,” he must be referring to everyone else… The look you gave him is dazed, caught up in the thought of every other monster you let get away. His fingers cage your chin in between them. “But don’t forget what we are.” Sparkles fly, temporarily blinding you.

When you open your vision, you’re greeted by the sight of Malleus, with the appearance of what he looked like if he was human, or at least similar to a human.

His skin isn’t rough and solid, his breaths are warm, and his hair is soft and pretty rather than a soft moss.

His eyes are a nice green, a pretty green. A color you would’ve enjoyed more had he been a human. Such a lively color shouldn’t be backdropped by crimson, yet, it is.

Behind him, several other trees collapse on themself, revealing the other tops, the same as the tree you had just seen. Views of stray limbs and vaguely familiar faces of hunters invade your mind, panic setting as you finally realize a question you should’ve asked long ago…

Why was Malleus so far from his castle?

Before you can react, your ears hear a faint whisper, eyes going heavy as little pings of thorns claw at your shoes. The last thing you see and feel, is his face leaning towards you, his finger loosening itself from your chin.

In a blink of an eye, he’s no longer the human you spared, but the monster you let escape back into the wild.

The fiendish of smiles is graced on his lips. Not because of evil, but because his smile, is so love stricken.

All because of you.

“Seems the little birdy fled the nest without permission.” Your eyes slowly flutter open, the familiar figure of a man bowing on top of you. “Now, I’ll forgive you as we weren’t expecting such a beast to appear-“

He’s immediately cut off in his sentence when a searing pain cuts through his chin.

“Augh—! How could you kick me after I spent precious time searching for you!“

“You’re the reason I’m here in the first place…!“

“I didn’t do anything!“ Despite your annoyance towards Crowley and all he stands for in your life, you can’t deny if someone had seen this scene play out in front of them, they would assume you two to be a father and his bickering child.

You attempt to stand to your full height, faltering at the pings of pain in your ankle. You suck in a breath, looking down as you nurse hurt skin.

There are briar thorns wrapped around your leg, a single rose adorning the stems, and a gentle green hue that contrasts the pure black of the floral life.

“Oh my, what were you doing last night?”

“… Night?”

“You’ve been gone for 36 hours my birdie.”

You don’t feel any different… Save for the prickle of thorns and fresh bite on your arm.

… Fresh bite?

Despite the indent, it doesn’t hurt, it’s like, he left it there as a reminder of your failures, at least to you. It could very well be his way of staking his claim on your heart.

“It’s a shame you didn’t get him when you could’ve, with your connections, you could’ve spared us a huge loss today…” you’re cruelly reminded of the people that lay to waste hidden in the trees. “We should let today serve as a reminder of what you must do.”

Crowley doesn’t look happy at the sight of so many employees who failed their jobs, yet he doesn’t look grieved either.

You… Truly, you wish you weren’t so softhearted during your missions. Maybe then, this could’ve all been avoided.

A/n: Like I said, this piece was from so long a goo, so i’m so sorry if the plot isn’t to anyone liking, but if it is, i’m happy you enjoyed it!!

[villainessbian]

Concept: most aliens can get anxious, can get scared, can get fight-or-flight. What most aliens do not get, however, is stress. Stress is a weird thing even by human standards. It can build up over time or be something tied to a very limited situation. It can be caused by a lot of things, and it comes in a lot of different ways. But it's a core human reaction, when a situation is wrong, it causes stress until it is righted. And it even affects different people differently!

Cue Human Cassandra, on a ship with her friend and co-worker Human Pauline. The ship is crewed with a mix of species. It's a cargo ship - load up in a space port, unload in another, get news and supplies during their stops, and live as an ever-shifting family as some of the two dozen crew members, give or take, get replaced. Some leave come payday, and new ones come looking for the thrill of low-level adventure, experiencing warp drives across the safer roads of the known universe.

But getting the supplies you need, or want, in stops is never so easy. Humans are new to the galactic community, and their needs misunderstood. Most broad-edibility food is bland for them, but that's okay. A big enough bag of their condiments can last them years. But ADHD meds... now that's less easy to get, the further from Earth you are. And a contract too big for their captain to pass on came up, much farther than the two humans expected.

Cassandra's mood deteriorated, her work priorities out of order, her sleep schedule in disarray. Little by little, she grew restless, shifting moods and gears unpredictably. A few weeks in and she was a mess, barely able to keep up with the minimum her job doing maintenance and running safety diagnostics for the route charting team required of her. While Pauline could help with the mechanical aspects of keeping the ship running, picking up the "slack", the safety had to be double-checked by the charting and pilot teams. When the curves of asteroid probability reached beyond a certain level, several hundred simulations had to be run, time-consuming processes had to be used, to avoid any collision at speeds beyond speed c. Some truly exotic things happened to ships that experienced those, but none of them contained the words "surviving crew." A safe route avoided any probability of collision over .1% and when going faster than light, any choice of course required thinking in 3 dimensions plus relative time to navigate dangerous probability fields in one piece, finding time-specific corridors and accounting for a dozen variables at once.

After she had a breakdown over a path she would normally have been able to find in under a minute, Pauline spoke to a concerned pilot team member:

"You have to understand her, this is a stressful situation and she's doing her best..."

"What do you mean by 'stressful'?" Gabalt asked. The furry little creature stood on two arched legs, and barely reached up to Pauline's shoulder, opening three wide eyes with curiosity and concern in equal parts.

"Things are... getting difficult for her, and keep getting more difficult because she does not have medication to help her brain be efficient. It makes her tired, and inefficient, and as it goes on, she's less and less able to cope with the situation. The longer this goes on, the worse it gets, and that is stress. Getting more tired because it takes more energy to deal with the situation, and less efficient because she's more tired, and things get harder because she's less efficient, on and on until something can solve the problem and the stress goes away."

"That sounds... hard. Do all humans have to deal with this?"

"Well, everyone has sources of stress, but she's got a disability. Without her meds, she gets stressed all the time. Not a lot all at once, but it always adds up."

"Oh no! So she'll be stuck like that until we get closer to Earth?"

"Most likely, yes."

But the most momentous thing to happen this day was not her breakdown. Not an hour later, alarms blared up. The simulation holograms all displayed blinking red masses - the less-travelled "safe route" was not as well protected! An asteroid range had been detected cutting through the border field, and it was in their way!

Pauline froze up, not knowing what to do. Gabalt was too surprised to act fast. All the courses from the ship's library of regular manoeuvres suggested a crash chance of over 60%, and mere seconds to act before entering the field!

Before anyone could react, Cassandra came in running from her corner to the front of the bridge, slamming the warp drive shutdown button. Most holograms stuttered and collapsed, the exit from FTL essentially dividing one or several of their dimensions by zero.

Looking quickly at the few remaining ones and gazing at the screens showing the current outside situation like a large window would have - plus a few critical extra points of data - she adjusted the angles manually while everyone still shuddered from the gravitational and temporal whiplash of suddenly coming back into normal time. Unblinkingly, she spotted the asteroids on the route while the ship was still going, if not at relativistic speeds, still fast enough for a single pebble they met to vaporise the Whipple shields, the outer hull, the inner hull, the crew members, and the hull again coming out if they but grazed it. Confirming the angles visually, she played with the reaction wheels, the thrusters, the gravity drives, to divert the ship's course just enough to miss a collision while not risking any grave injury on board. There was no time to react - if anything showed up straight ahead on the "unaugmented" outside view screens, it was too late to not get splatted. After half the crew had had the time to get thrown to the side or on the ground due to the rough handling, she'd managed to avoid any crash.

Gabalt was reeling. While it was surely not impossible, these was the kind of moves experienced veterans would never wish to attempt, and the margins for error were ridiculously low! She'd saved the ship and everyone on it, whereas she'd been unable to do a simple safety run so soon before?

Pauline was white as a sheet, but this was nothing compared to Cassandra, shaking violently and breathing unevenly.

"Pauline? What is she doing?"

"That's... probably the adrenaline."

"What's it for?"

"It's from stress. When it comes it overcharges the body. It's like the traditional, 'fight or flight' instinct from survival in prey-predator paradigms, it lets you move fast but paralyses thought... it feels pretty bad after a lot of it is released though. Now she's crashing down, must be harrowing."

"How did she do that? And you said her thoughts were paralysed for precision manoeuvres?"

Cassandra's voice came, nearly a mutter: "I just... had to. do it."

Gabalt needed to understand what happened.

"What do you mean you had to? Someone had to do it, but why you?"

"It- it was very stressful, I saw you freeze, and so."

"But... but HOW did you do all that? That was extremely complicated, few pilots -whose main craft is directly piloting- would want to even try doing that when given a choice!?"

"I had to. do it, so I did. I couldn't. couldn't make a mistake."

"This makes absolutely no sense."

Pauline interrupted. "She just works like that. Lots of stress and when people freeze up, humans with her condition... sometimes, surprisingly, function better in the moment than others can."

"Ah. So it's a human thing. of course, it's a human thing. NOTHING MAKES ANY SENSE WITH YOUR ACCURSED SPECIES" the diminutive pilot pouted.

And so one more story of the humans doing the impossible spread around. Humans of a subtype, more easily harmed, sometimes unstable and needing help for the simplest things... accomplishing odd, unthinkable, borderline heroic feats under duress none could be expected to withstand - but only then. Cursed, blessed? No story-teller seemed too certain. But the "magical" species never stopped surprising all others. And a new proverb developed: "it's not over until the human says it is".

[teethkid67]

PAYDAY

aka a valentine for the lovely @itsnotmystic / @corvids-calling - fanart for stars fic of the same name, which you can read here !!! i really enjoyed this concept and wanted to do some art for it :3 hope you like it because i REALLY loved your work & i hope this shows that !!! HAPPY VALENTINES DAY !!!!

this is also a loose love-letter to the wonderful @arginnit 's crazy background-drawing-ability and style/skill at portraying environments . wadds your stuff is insane and i love it

happy @mcyt-valentines exchange !!!!

[adviceformefromme]

YOUR RE-SET

So your life isn’t looking and feeling how you envisioned. You see the TikTok and IG girlies living that life. You dream about luxury travel, pilates on a Saturday morning, drinking overpriced green smoothies, driving a sexy car, and living your fullest most authentic life…But in comparison, you’ve grown to mostly hate spending time with your friends, you’ve out grown them and notice how much they complain about life and generally are low vibes, you’ve spent all of this months wages already, and still have 2 weeks left until payday so your bank balance is no way supporting the life you dream of, to add, your dating life is a mess not consisting of your dream guy that provides for you. No, instead it seems too much effort for him to message back, let alone take you to that sexy spa you’re dying to visit. So in short your life is a far cry from what you want. The life you’ve created right now is absolutely not what you would want for yourself for the next year, or even five years. So in order to completely shift from where you are to where you want to be. You need a fucking RE-SET. 

The re-set is basically your metamorphosis. Think of being the caterpillar, heavy, slow sluggish (currently you right now). In order to become a beautiful butterfly you need to completely transform, undo, take time to reorganise so you can re-emerge as nature intended. 

The Re-set might look slightly different for everyone so take what you need from this: 

2-3 months stepping back from the people around you. 

THE CORE ESSENTIALS FOR YOUR RESET - A DAILY PRACTISE  

Meditating daily to clear you mind so you can hear yourself, your own voice and drown out any external noise. (I recommend insight timer app, or mind app both for meditations)

A journal, to document your feelings and emotions, empty your thoughts, and a space where you can become your own best friend and create a connection with yourself. 

Movement. - you need to move your body this is KEY, you might pick up running, stretching at home, pilates, yoga, HIT, whatever it is just fucking do it. Your body needs the movement to replenish its energy and move you out of stagnation. 

Healthy diet. Less alcohol more greens. If it’s processed, if its fizzy, if its sugar, if its cake, if its chocolate, if its ice cream (you get the picture), cut that shit OUT. You need food that supports you, cleanses you, energises you in order to thrive and clear your energy. 

FAITH in something bigger than yourself. If you’re religious, great lean into your faith with prayer, scripture, faith music. If you’re not religious maybe you believe in the universe, the love all around you, faith in something unknown, something guiding you, protecting you, even if you believe this is part of your own psyche - lean into this. Your faith is your support system. Your faith is the unseen that will guide and protect you on this journey. 

The above might seem overwhelming, and it will be if you don’t already incorporate those things into your day already. The worst thing you want to do is try and do everything at once and feel disappointed when you don’t succeed. So start with one thing if that’s all you can manage and focus on doing that one thing consistently and then add from that. 

The purpose of the first 2-3 months is the cleansing. You want to start slowly removing what doesn’t serve you, and start creating space for yourself, your thoughts and visions so you have space to start planting new seeds of the life you want to live. 

What your first steps in your journey might look like: 

Saying no to going out for drinks with friends, instead you go for a long walks in nature listening to an empowering podcast, go home journal and meditate. 

Weekends might look like not seeing friends, maybe even family. Doing exercise, making healthy food, researching recipes, creating a vision board on Pinterest and doing a guiding meditation, affirmations and mirror work. 

Having a prayer practise, reading books/ passages that support you in your journey 

Deleting your social medias or even doing a detox day / weekend so you have a break 

PART 2 - COMING NEXT….(Here)

[du-hjarta-skulblaka]

8am and I'm fast asleep but I realised I've been quiet for like a week and uhh

Yall know how I am, sorry to folks who've sent messages I haven't responded to. Mixture of stress, spons being burned through, and just general exhaustion

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

WIBTA For telling my partner I'd like to bring my ex into our relationship?

I'm copying this over from r/relationship_advice, because the responses are giving me the impression they don't really get what polyamory is & I'm hoping tumblr does. For reference: there's me (29M), my ex (28, Trans Man), and my partner (30M).

My ex and I were best friends in high school, went to the same college, & dated through the tail end of undergrad, for about a year and change. We ended things on very good terms, the only reason we broke up was a difference in life paths: I stayed in the city to get my Master's, he traveled constantly for his work (he's a sculptor who makes these huge custom multimedia pieces, they're genuinely some of the most beautiful things I've seen). We fell out of touch for the most part, but I'd see him popping up on social media occasionally, or he'd text me when he was in town and we'd hang out, along with some other school friends.

The last time I saw him before our present situation was about 3 1/2 years ago today. We went out for drinks, he came back to my place after, and we ended up hooking up. He stayed in town for about a week, and we hooked up a few more times, and then he left again. He sort of dropped off the face of the earth after that, but he'd always been pretty sporadic, especially when he had a big project, so I didn't think much about it.

Not long after that, I met my current partner. He's truly one of my favorite people in the whole world; he's incredibly thoughtful, and earnest, and passionate about his morals & principles (he's an environmental lawyer), and more than anything, he's someone I never feel like I have to pretend with. He asked for my number, we had our first date a few days later, and ended up staying awake the entire night just talking about anything and everything, so we went ahead and got 5am pancakes and called it our second date. We've been together for a little over 3 years now, we've been moved in together for about 2, and while we've had the occasional fight or rough patch I can definitely say I love this man, and I plan to spend the rest of my life with him.

So, the big change.

About a year ago (~2 years since seeing my ex, my partner and I have lived together for about a year at this point), my partner and I are having a night in, and there's a knock at the door. It's my ex, looking absolutely ragged, holding a 15 month old baby. As in, a baby who was conceived 24 months before then. Yep, it's pretty much what you're guessing. I let them both in, we had a sit down in the kitchen, and he told me everything he'd been doing in the past 2 years in between me cussing him out for keeping it all from me in the first place. I really do want to keep this as short as possible, so to give you the super condensed version:

She's my daughter, he's completely sure about that, there's no one else he's been with the math is even close to correct for

The second he found out he was pregnant, he more or less panicked. He's got a whole Thing about feeling like he's irresponsible/not a "real" adult, and this really set him off, so telling me felt like "admitting to fucking both our lives up" at the time. His OB/GYN said some pretty awful shit to him about not being more careful as a trans man too, which just made it all even worse

Because of all that, he'd genuinely planned to just never tell me I have a daughter & raise her completely on his own, but a few things compounded to force his hand:

The birth was really rough on him, and his recovery was slow enough he was having trouble going back to work, to the point where money was getting tight

On top of that, our daughter has celiac disease, and between paying out of pocket for blood tests & spending more on baby food she's safe to eat, things got desperate enough he went and took out a really dodgy loan from a scummy payday company

He was at our door because all of this had finally spiraled to a point where he'd lost his apartment, they'd been sleeping in his car for about a week, and he couldn't think of anything else to do

I think I was probably feeling every human emotion in existence at the same time through all of this, but the thing I remember most from the whole conversation was the way my partner kept drifting right back to the baby, and the soft way he looked at her. We put my ex & daughter up in a hotel room for the night and told him we needed to talk, and we'd discuss our options in the morning, but I think even then I kind of knew what our answer was going to be.

Sure enough, for the last year and a half we've been co-parenting our little girl, all three of us. We didn't want to juggle who's got her, or force my ex to find a place to stay, so we've turned my partner's home office into our daughter's room, and redid most of the downstairs layout so my ex could move into an actual bedroom, rather than just sleep on our pullout couch in perpetuity. We finally succeeded in convincing him that rest and recovery was more important than trying to contribute to the house finances right away, and it's been magical watching all that stress and terror slowly fall off him. It's like he's a little more alive again every time I look.

Which is where my question comes in.

I'd like to restate, I love my partner 100%. None of this changes that whatsoever. If I ask, and he says no, that will be the end of the discussion for me completely. But I have eyes. My ex is, objectively, a very attractive man. I know we work well together, and I have to admit I'm very curious to see where that same chemistry could lead now that he's not on the other side of the country half the time. I've also been noticing these little moments between him and my partner. Nothing I'd consider crossing a line, but I've caught my partner checking my ex out several times, as well as vice versa, and they get along remarkably well. Sometimes I'll go to enter a room, and see them both sitting there laughing and chatting and playing with our baby, and I'll just hang back to watch because it makes me so happy.

Add to all that, we're pretty deeply ingrained in each other's lives now. My partner and I don't often go out on dates alone anymore, but the last few times we did it felt as if my ex was missing from the table. We watched a movie together last night, and my ex sat in the middle of us with his feet in my partner's lap and his head on my chest, and it felt just as natural as my arm on my partner's shoulder. It's not about just having sex with him, and it's not that I'd want to invite any old person into our relationship. I know we already all love each other, and I think there's potential for that to become romantic between the two of us and my ex.

It just feels as though we're all holding our breath, waiting for someone else to say it first. My ex certainly isn't going to bring it up when he's living rent free in "our" home (it's his home too, but he doesn't seem to see it like that yet). My partner grew up sheltered enough that I'm not sure he's ever heard of polyamory at all, so he's not going to bring it up. That just leaves me.

My problem is, if I'm wrong about what I think I'm seeing, or if I bring it up the wrong way, I can't take it back. I don't want my partner to feel insecure or betrayed, I don't want my ex to feel pressured or put on the spot, and I definitely don't want my daughter to lose any of us, which I know could happen if we aren't all on the same page. Or worse, if we do all date and it goes badly.

Should I just keep this whole thing secret? Is that even worse? Would I be the asshole for opening this can of worms on everyone else?

Help!

[dat-soldier]

Hey did you see the art I did for Payday 2's 10th Birthday Update

It was fun to get hired by the payday devs again, glad they included me for what is likely the last Payday 2 event ever... Like dang, I've been playing since 2015 and did freelance art for them between 2016-2017, what a journey!

Hope they hire me again for Payday 3, I'd be down for it!