#queer fat bodies celebrated

[babehotstudent]

[collaredkittyboy]

Well it's come up multiple times today so I'll make a post about it.

I think the popularization of the word "twink" has ultimately been really bad for people in general.

I know it's hard to track the positive and negative effects of language but I don't think it's hard to see how creating a word for a group of people wherein the most consistent qualifying trait is "being skinny" is healthy for people's self image. Obviously people have lots of ideas about what it means to be a twink- gay, lacking body hair, feminine, beautiful, young, white- but the most consistent descriptor I've seen is "skinny." Hell, it's even a body type on Grindr; the size below "average."

So it kind of functions as a code word in the gay community: anyone can say that they're only interested in twinks and they don't have to look shallow by saying they only like skinny guys. It's such an accepted attitude that no one really bats an eye when they hear it.

I'm not even going to get into how it's become part of the larger issue of people turning "top" and "bottom" into gender roles 2.0, but that is closely related, because people with any internalized homophobia can look at a skinny, feminine man and turn off their fag alarms by viewing him as a woman or not a "real" man, and it makes twinks more acceptable to society at large.

No, ignoring all of that, one of the biggest issues is that gay men are taught by society that they are only attractive while they are skinny. Just having the label "twink" reminds a boy that people are looking at his body and judging it. There were countless times when I was growing up that people would tell me, "You're such a twink," or argue about whether or not I qualified as a twink because I had body hair. People around you, unpromted, judge your body and give you a label based on it, and that label has a large influence on whether or not you're seen as objectively attractive. I know many other gay people who say they wish they were a twink so they could be more attractive to guys.

So think, you have all these kids growing up being told whether or not they qualify as a twink, and then we have the gay community as a whole where it's completely acceptable to say you're only attracted to twinks. I think its because of all of this pressure to be a twink (in other words, to have a below average weight) that many of the gay people that I interact with struggle with a negative body image or eating disorders.

I mean, people talk about "twink death" like it's an actual event that makes a gay man much less attractive, and no one thinks that, maybe, it's harmful to tell a guy that the very day he stops being young and thin and pretty, he will stop being attractive and celebrated?

I'm not qualified to speak on fatphobia in physical queer spaces because I don't have the ability to frequent them where I live, but I can't imagine that these aren't issues at social gatherings as well. I also can't speak on my own experiences with weight discrimination because so far in my life I have had a naturally thin body, but I have experienced a lot of outside pressure to be thin that have caused me to pick up unhealthy eating habits to reduce my weight in fear that I could become fat later on. Thankfully that is something that I've mostly been able to work past. I'm not an expert, but idk, I just wanted to rant on my silly tumblr blog.

Obviously it's impossible for a word to be inherently bad. I'm not trying to imply that saying "twink" is a magic word with evil powers. Obviously the real issues at play here are fatphobia and harmful beauty standards and body shaming. But in my opinion, the popular use of the word twink has made it much easier and acceptable to express fatphobia, etc, in the gay community by turning "skinny person" into a "type of guy that you should try to be so you can be attractive."

[ladycamdens]

i know the first instinct here is to be like “well it’s ur fault for idolising celebrities” but i think it’s important to recognise that fat black women and fat women in general have very, very little positive representation in the media. for them lizzo represented a lot more than just celebrity. her entire image was centred around changing how people viewed them and their bodies. she was also (supposedly) a fierce ally to the queer community. i think it’s perfectly valid to be disgusted that she would take the abuse she’s endured from the general public and freely inflict that back on her team tbh

[katakaluptastrophy]

You know when you're at a dinner party with God and things start to get...weird...? It's Maundy Thursday, and it's time for more Bible study for fans of weird queer necromancers!

It's currently Holy Week, the week where (Western) liturgical Christians reenact the events of Jesus' death and resurrection in real time. And today, it's Maundy Thursday, which commemorates the Last Supper, where Jesus ate with his friends before he was crucified.

Before we get to the Locked Tomb, what's so special about the Last Supper?

There are actually a few significant things that happen during the Last Supper, but this is where Jesus introduces the concept of communion:

Now as they were eating, Jesus took bread, and after blessing it broke it and gave it to the disciples, and said, “Take, eat; this is my body.” And he took a cup, and when he had given thanks he gave it to them, saying, “Drink of it, all of you, for this is my blood. - Matthew 26:26-28

This isn't actually the first time Jesus has told his followers they will need to literally eat him:

So Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him. - John 6:53-56

If you're thinking that sounds a bit intense, you're not alone - the Bible says that "many" of his disciples left after being told that they were apparently going to have to eat Jesus to be saved and resurrected.

While many Protestant denominations take this symbolically, Catholicism teaches transubstantiation: that when the priest prays over the bread and wine at mass, they really do become Jesus' body and blood.

With this in mind, let's circle back to necromancers:

"Overseas to Corpus. (She likes the word corpus; it sounds nice and fat.)"

This is probably Corpus Christi College, Oxford (named after the Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ, where the church celebrates the real presence of Jesus in the eucharist). The symbol of the college is a pelican - there's even a fabulously gilded pelican atop the sundial in their main quad.

What do pelicans have to do with the eucharist? Quite a lot, actually... The pelican is a really old symbol for Jesus, because it was believed to feed its young on its own flesh and blood in times of famine. The pelican on the Corpus Christi sundial is pecking at its own chest.

The pelican, like Jesus, was believed to give its own body to save those it loved.

Okay, so we've talked about Jesus, and weird cannibal birds, but why is this relevant to necromancers?

Specifically, the necromancer, the Necrolord Prime. John Gaius styles himself as "the god who became man", echoing Jesus as "the word became flesh". His entire pastiche of divinity is a sort of bootleg Catholicism. But while Catholicism posits Jesus' offering of his own body as foundational to the salvation and resurrection of humanity to eternal life, John's godhood relies the exploitation of other's bodies as the foundation of an empire of eternal death.

I've mentioned before in discussing Lyctorhood, how vampires have been understood to represent a sort of inversion of the eucharist because instead of consuming Christ's blood to receive eternal life in heaven, they consume other people's blood for an cursed eternal life on earth. John, and the Lyctors who followed him, gained power and eternal life from the consumption, body and soul, of another person.

In Catholic theology, Jesus offered his own body to degradation and death for the eternal salvation of humankind, but John forcibly consumes someone else's in service of his own apotheosis and immortality, dooming humanity in the process. He wants to be a Catholic flavoured god, but without the suffering that entails. But he's perfectly willing to outsource that suffering to others.

There's something just achingly awful about Alecto liking the feel of the word "corpus" - "body" - when she so hates the body that John constructed for her. John describing Alecto as "in a very real way" the mother of humanity and the mother pelican on the Corpus sundial rending her own flesh for her children. John forcing the earth into a personification of femininity and playing Jesus on another's sacrifice. His daughter, unwillingly trapped in her own corpse walking around with the wounds of her significant self-sacrifice like the resurrected Christ but yet again another body exploited by John in support of his performance of godhood. It brings to mind a very different fantastical engagement with Catholicism, where in the Lord of the Rings Tolkien - riffing on St Augustine - suggested that evil cannot create, it can only mock and corrupt. The ethics of The Locked Tomb may be messier than that, but there's something indicative in how John shies away from his creative powers - his abilities to grow plants, and manipulate earth and water - in favour of his dominion over death.

The metaphysical world of The Locked Tomb is clearly not intended to be the same as that of Catholicism. But with hindsight, perhaps John was onto something when he was surprised that he didn't "get the Antichrist bit" from the nun too.

John isn't the Antichrist. But he is, thematically, anti-Christ.

If we're talking about John and Jesus, there's also, of course, the question of Resurrection. But we've got to go through Hell and back before we get there on Sunday...

[easays]

To Ragh; or, On Fatness

Hi! Below is an actual play mini-essay. These are written as part of a personal writing practice of thinking critically about actual play. I hope you find this reading engaging and know that all I write reflects my own interpretations rather than as an official representation/canonization of these shows. Keep reading for my interpretation of Ragh Barkrock's fatness as part of queer representation in Dimension20.

Ragh Barkrock may be one of the most beloved NPCs in Dimension20. It would be easy for Ragh, a bloodrush player good enough to potentially play professionally, to be presented as hypermasculine. In fact, the freshmen year art for Ragh, when he was antagonist rather than beloved ally, showed him in a muscular, inverted Dorito shaped body typical of a jock.

He's, obviously, built, and his cut jaw and cheekbones only bolster that image. As Ragh comes to terms with being gay at the end of Fantasy High, his countenance changes. When we see him again, the new art reflects a chubbier, happier Ragh.

The show aligning weight gain with acceptance and happiness already works against prevailing stereotypes that use weight loss as a quick metaphor for improving yourself and being the "real you." Moreover, connecting Ragh's acceptance of his sexuality with what seems like a larger comfort in his own body is a strong indictment of hypermasculine gay culture. As Gabriel Arana writes, gay men "must reconcile their sense of masculinity with their failure to conform to its heterosexuality." Not doing so has negative mental health outcomes, as Arana points out, and contributes to a culture that devalues fat queer people (see the popular "no fats, no femmes, no Asians" that often is touted in masculine gay subculture).

All of this, I think, is why Ragh's art for Junior Year was particularly impactful for me as a fat queer person. If being a gay man (or half-Orc, in Ragh's case) means having to situate your life in relationship to failing compulsory masculinity, then it seems there is an inherent queer aspect to embracing, celebrating, and showcasing a beloved NPC in an explicitly fat and happy body.

FHJY Ragh art by @caitmayart

Ragh is still strong and he is still fat. His body radiates a commitment to the power of fat bodies to exist in spaces they are often violently unwelcome in, such as gyms. Existing in gyms and sports spaces as fat people means dealing the "impossible standard that rejects nearly all of us" and upholds a diet culture rooted in impossible, Eurocentric and colonial body standards. In TTRPGS or actual plays, there is a unique opportunity to think about how bodies might exist in worlds different from ours, to imagine bodyminds as otherwise. However, as queer critics like Paul Preciado have noted, sci-fi and fantasy representations of cyborgs and other transformative bodies often lean into "fixing" disabled people or moving gender nonconforming bodies more easily towards technologies upholding a normative standard rather than questioning the standard all together.

Spyre is a world that deals with similar issues to ours, even without direct one-to-one correlations, so it, too, is a place where the narrative and artistic choices should be examined in how it helps us interpolate the world the audience resides in. From the Applebees cultish adherence to a deity-based nationalism to the various representations of parental neglect and abuse and every side story in-between, Dimension20's flagship show does not shy away from difficult realities even when recasting them through fantasy. Ragh, as a half-orc gay son of a disabled single mother, then, I see the arc his fat body goes through as meaningful and intertwined with his self-acceptance and queerness. He moves away from the toxic masculinity engineered into his blood rush team to instead pursue coalition comraderie with his friends to the point that he and his mother end up joining a communal living situation with those friends and their parents. Ragh's body expands as his family does, as his ties to community do, and to me, the gift of his fatness is the invitation to expansion that it holds out to us as viewers.

[televised-uhhh-nerdistry]

Cartoon rec of the week:

Craig of the Creek

I haven't seen enough people talking about the show, so I'm mentioning it here. Absolute 10/10 cartoon. Just three kids, running 'round, making friends, running their own semi-sustainable community in the forest (there are some concerns about how much trash they leave there but ultimately they're better than most adults). Literally such a dream. they encourage each other to be emotionally healthy and they protect each other from "danger". Like they'll help each other achieve their dreams as they come (and new dreams show up pretty often because they're young kids).

And they're so funny! Like genuinely these kids are so earnest and intelligent and incredibly humorous and full of heart! They have full lives and they live them to the fullest out in nature after school, on the weekends, and in the summer. It's one of the best representations of found family I have ever seen in a cartoon, and I absolutely love it.

Also several of the writers behind the show are POC and queer (I think the head writers are all Black but I could be wrong), so you know that it was written well and the representation is awesome like I know that it should absolutely go without saying, but representation is much more than just showing BIPOC people on screen, and in terms of cartoons I haven't seen that many shows understanding that fact except maybe the Proud Family, Fat Albert, and a few others whose names will return to me once I've taken my ADHD meds. But the point is that Craig of the Creek gets it right. Most of the characters throughout the show (from what I've seen) are BIPOC, and you can tell that there are caring nods to BIPOC communities (primarily Black American communities), and more than that, that the writers know what they're talking about and are deeply familiar with and are a part of those communities. Craig, the titular character, is a young Black boy, and his family are middle class and ultimately very successful Black people. Kelsey (one of the main characters) is Jewish and Polish, and written with more complexity than having a one and done Hanukah celebration. The Creek's main business, a trading post, is run by Kit, a young Black girl with a love for economy and business. And many other characters are racial or ethnic minorities as well, and it warms my heart to see these characters done justice time and time again.

There's great subtle queer rep too, and you can tell it wasn't written just for the sake of representation, like it was thought out and intentional, and it worked beautifully. There are queer witches, and there are no labels applied to them, they're just allowed to exist with no explanations, happily in love with one another. There's a non-binary character later in the series (I'm only like 10 episodes in so I haven't met them yet but I've read amazing things about them). Kelsey also apparently identifies as a lesbian later in the series (I say "apparently" because I haven't done much reading so as to avoid spoilers, not because I am discounting her identity). On top of that, JP (one of the main characters) has a sister who is dating another girl.

There's also a significant amount of body positivity in the show, at least far than I've seen elsewhere. Not only do they openly say "all bodies are beautiful" and follow up on that by defending one another, there's also very little need to defend one another, because there's a very unspoken and deep respect in the Creek for things like body type, skin colour, disabilities, and so on. The kids of the creek, and their grown ups, are all different body types, and given their penchant for community and uplifting one another, it's no wonder they all seem confident in their bodies.

Not to mention the disability representation. There is a character later on in the series who is Black and deaf, and he not only speaks in Sign Language, but in Black American Sign Language. In addition, though unconfirmed, many of the kids in the creek embody aspects of various neurotypes. For example, the three main characters, Craig, Kelsey, and JP all come across as neurodivergent, with special interests, neurodivergent ways of thinking, and so on. Some have speculated that JP has Ehlers Danlos Syndrome, which is a disability often comorbid with ADHD. Not to mention that all the kids in the creek embody different special interests, most of which would be considered weird or frowned upon in everyday society, but that are given the opportunity to shine and flourish in the Creek's accepting culture.

Take the Horse Girls for example, a small clique of girls who roleplay as horses in a pasture near the Creek, and of course many of their behaviours are played as jokes, but ultimately they are accepted and involved in many adventures because of their unique interests and abilities which are ultimately how they aid the rest of the Creek. Every kid is a useful and accepted part of the Creek, with the exception of the ranger scout kids, who are essentially the same as cops, who are often exploitative, rude, and disruptive to the community as a whole.

Ultimately, the show is one of love, friendship, community, and acknowledging differences as a natural and helpful part of life. On top of that, it's not copaganda! What more could you want?

[gncentral]

I wonder how many people relate to the sentiment that growing up fat massively affects your relationships to your sexuality.

Your body is set up as a joke almost universally. If it’s not that, then it’s something to get rid of, and if it’s not that— if it’s actually celebrated—well then, it has to be some sort of fetish, right?

And it becomes even messier if you’re lonely and queer. You grow up with a lack of understanding, only to seek it out, and notice how nobody looks like you.

That’s not even touching how it may affect your gender.

Fellow fat bitches I love you. Fellow fat butches, I double love you.

[zan0tix]

May I just say I really really appreciate your approach to and respect for the transfemininity embedded in Homestuck. Like the fact that you depict Jake as a kind of "genderfuck" (for lack of a better word) character without trying to divorce that from transfemininity as so many others do, as well as being able to depict Roxy with certain clocky characteristics without disregarding her femininity or making it feel fetish-y, is all really admirable in my eyes. It gets extremely frustrating seeing large swathes of the fandom constantly trying to separate the story of Homestuck from transfemininity despite it having a transfem enby author, so I really appreciate that you don't shy away from it in your art :)

I am so glad!!!!! Its something ive Always noticed in like every fandom since i first got onto the internet the disparity between the amount of transfems i knew vs how often their story got to be uplifted in fandom spaces or get to be celebrated how transmascs did considering how queer dominated they are but then i grew up and realised how badly male centric queer spaces are too😭

Homestuck is one of the spaces that has a big amount of transfems openly engaging in fandom activities and that makes me really happy to see! since i often see gross rhetoric from transmascs or cis women about fandom spaces abt “who is allowed” and “fandom being a safe space” cough blatant transmisogyny (sobs everywhere its so bad)

I DONT UNDERSTAND HOW PPL BRUSH PAST HUSSIE BEING TRANS SO OFTEN ISNT THAT INSANE. To me it reframes homestuck how the creators of the matrix being trans does. Like I dunno maybe that informed the works presentation of gender somehow. Maybe all the commentary and critique and displays of frustration at the contradictory nature of gender but especially trying to fit “being a man” in society came from somewhere when they were writing it 🤔🤔🤔 hussie said it herself that alot of homestuck was just stream of consciousness. Everything that comes out of daves mouth near the end seemed very plausible to be a reflection of hussies own journey realising that Actually these boundaries of what defines A Good Man and A Good Woman are ridiculous and no person can possibly live up to that no matter what were told from birth.

But i try my best to reflect the innate transfemininity of homestuck and the majority of its cast, its something integral to the works themes and just the community who built it! It saddens me how skittish other transmascs are about engaging with or portraying the transfeminine stories when its just. Practically textual. And all you need to do is Listen and empathise. I love learning how other feminine people see themselves in this story like how often do you get such a menagerie of in depth fem characters. And i love seeing what the experiences transfems see echoed in homestuck are because its all such insightful stuff About femininity and its beauty and its ills all at once. Roxy..kanaya.. wipes tear from my eye.

I want to actively include and celebrate transfem features and bodies as much as transmasc ones get to be around here and i am glad my jake and roxy do feel that way 🥹🥹 my aim with my designs is to make them feel like some everyday people youd see, no fetishisation/sexualisation or demonisation, just Existing and appreciating. Because i know how much it can mean to see yourself in something and for that to be treated with care and kindness. Its why i create in the first place! Because of how others creations gave me that comfort when i couldnt find it elsewhere

I feel similarly about how people portray fat women or just like. Women in general. its sad how badly the whole sexualisation = acceptance warps how people portray things fatness or transfem features. Never ever saying these things arent hot or sexy or to be appreciated. Duh. I think how i portray jake says enough abt what i think of that LOL just that It feels like its the only way people try and show theyre accepting? Which just feels so gross and dehumanising the only way they think to display they feel empathy is through saying “Yeah i can get off to people like you”😭

Rlly bad in society in general so also in the homestuck space. Worlds hardest challenge is liking the alpha kids. Im so sorry for what they do to you jane and roxy🥲🥲🥲 Its baffling because Homestuck is Prime Example Numero Uno of how to humanise characters. Just display them being people; their thoughts, their feelings, their insecurities, their passions, their woes, their loves, their losses. So much can be communicated through how a character speaks with their friends.

I wana do that for jake and roxy! They get to be dimensional too! I like showing their laughs and their sorrows, just them Existing with the people around them. They get to be a part of the lighthearted comedy just as the rest of them do. They get to be a part of all the gender and sexuality insanity going on in their friend group, can point out their flaws and mistakes and insecurities. I dunno its rlly not that hard to just empathise with them and want to tell their stories.

I am so invested in the raw unabashed Humanity of homestuck. Its just one person pouring their brain contents into this huge thing and it displays the best and the worst and the absurdity and the questions. Its so interesting and hussies transness IS JUST BAKED INTO IT. Thus the characters contain that too and it kinda stinks of transmisogyny to throw that out!

YAPPING TOO MUCH OMG but i rlly appreciate this ask🫶🫶🫶makes me so happy to hear

[morvantmortuary]

our strange duet --

(Maxi Morvant x Plus size!Non-binary!Reader, 18+)

summary: early in your relationship, Maxi has a hard time focusing on his embalming work after an evening with you. he finds relief, but he's not proud of how.

warnings: discussion of binders and body dysphoria; discussion of being queer in the small-town south; mentions of biphobia; demon possession (sorta); period sex/blood kink; oral (both enby and cis male receiving); light stalking; blatant voyeurism; discussions of fatal wounds and embalming process; penetration with toys; vaginismus/resistance kink, dead dove do not eat with all of this.

general: reader is non-binary and queer (bisexual, but they don't use that word specifically so fudge however). reader is fat/plus size/curvy whatever you want to call it. maxi uses fem-ish petnames for reader. any tweaks to make skin/hair more seamless are appreciated. no use of y/n, as always.

the nice thing about getting to go back and repost my old fics is not only that I get to revisit them, but also that I get to revamp them to match how I write now rather than how I wrote then. 🖤

for this one, my main focus was making Maxi's coming out moment more explicit, because I really thought he deserved it. I wanted it to get more time and emphasis compared to the first write-through, because I was worried the reader moved on kind of quickly in the last version, and I wanted to celebrate him a little. 🖤 I also thought it added to the jarring feeling of the Reaper in the back of his head, comparatively.

special shoutout to @darkhairedmenrule -- I saw your tags about how you missed Maxi, and that inspired me to post this one next. cheers to you, buddy 🖤

Maxi was pretty sure he shouldn’t be thinking of you on top of him last night while he was preparing to embalm the forty-something woman on his table. 

No, in fact, he was certain he shouldn’t. 

Despite the multiple layers of PPE he was wearing - his usual scrubs, gloves, and mask, and then a plastic splashguard over that - he still caught himself feeling oddly vulnerable in front of the decedent. 

He was used to empty, staring eyes, he’d been used to them for more than half his life. But something about Mrs. Berthelot-Yang’s hollow gaze today made him feel like he was the one with just a sheet for modesty’s sake, rather than the other way around. He kept dropping things, leaving them in his office or on the wrong counters, forgetting what he was doing in the middle of filling out paperwork - he couldn’t help but feel like he was fumbling in an entirely different sense, whereas last night couldn’t have felt easier.

But damn, if you didn’t seem to have him utterly bewitched, and you’d only been going out for a month.

Well, okay, three weeks, six days, thirteen hours, give or take fifteen minutes. …But who was counting, anyway? Certainly not him, nope.

There was something about you he was having a hard time putting his finger on, but since that kismet day in the cemetery, he’d found his mind wandering back to you at the most inexplicable moments. He couldn’t hear the afternoon rain pelting his windows without remembering your smile in the passenger seat of his hearse, giggling even when you were soaked. He couldn’t just lay on his couch in the grip of insomnia and watch a shitty horror movie without remembering your soft, clean scent when you were sitting next to him at the theater, and how he’d wondered if the cherry slush would’ve been any sweeter if he’d tasted it on your tongue.

And now, despite the purposeful chill of the prep room, he swore he could still felt the heat of your mostly-bare form pressed against his, when it had taken everything in him not to devour you on the spot.

He’d been careful with you. He’d been so goddamn achingly careful with you, wanting to take this slow. He wanted to make sure he took his time, didn’t scare you off, didn’t lose your interest before he got the chance to...

He blinked out of his trance when he realized he was still standing over Mrs. Berthelot-Yang with the trocar still in his hands, staring at her violently bruised and scraped bare abdomen. Motorcycle crash on the highway. Even with a helmet, she hadn’t been any match for the concrete barrier she’d swerved into in her attempt to move around a semi that had thrown on its brakes. The devastated wife was delivering her clothes tomorrow for her viewing this weekend.

“I’m so sorry, ma’am,” he sighed, shaking his head in exasperation and feeling himself blush. “I don’t know where my head’s at today, I swear.” That was a lie. He knew exactly where his head was at. 

He heard a ghostly chuckle from the very edge of the salt that bordered the edges of the room — not the sharp, cruel ones of some of the House’s permanent residents, but something soft. Almost knowing. He glanced up to see the faintest flicker of movement near the door, as though a figure had just poked their head in the room and pulled it quickly back out again.

There was sudden wafting of a warm, light scent of jasmine and vanilla… a perfume. Her favorite, her wife had told him through tears in the client parlor upstairs - and Maxi couldn’t help but smile a little to himself as he relaxed. It was always a relief to have an understanding guest of honor. 

Or, well, as much as they could be, under the circumstances.

“Thank you for bein’ patient with me,” he said, carefully lining up the sharp tip of the instrument with a spot just beside her navel. “Now, this is gonna look nasty, but I promise it’ll be all right again in just a sec—“

The tip slid through the soft flesh like butter, and he let the trocar do its work before carefully angling it again to perforate the other end of the cavity. With a couple more easy jabs, he set it aside, watching the new wounds attentively before he set to preparing to close what needed closing.

But even as his hands went through the same motions as they had for close to two decades, his mind wandered immediately back to you, and the curiously strong pull you’d had on him already. He couldn’t explain it to himself, but he felt like if he slept with you and you ghosted, it would drive him insane for ages afterwards. He’d had friends with benefits before, sure, but they were usually more of an obstacle to work around with his… other nocturnal activities, than something he ended up entertaining for long.

And he wanted more with you, he already knew that. He wanted so much more, so soon, and he was trying his damnedest to be cool about it, but god if you didn’t make it difficult in the best way. How you liked his morbid jokes, and he genuinely laughed at yours, how you didn’t mind his odd hours or his tendency to ramble about various histories of death and decay at the drop of the hat. How curious you seemed about his work, and your compassion for the families he dealt with. How he loved the way you talked about your own day, even if it was something as simple as your side gig, and the care you took with it even when it was frustrating you. He just liked you. All of you.

And he’d been so close to finally getting all of you last night, when the two of you had stumbled into your bedroom after you’d invited him over —

He maybe should’ve guessed something new was afoot when you’d wanted to change plans from actually going out to just staying in for a quiet evening at your place, but he’d been happy just to get to spend time with you, so he hadn’t thought about it too much. It had genuinely started as the two of you goofing around with some multiplayer horror title over pizza, but when you’d teasingly tried to distract him by kissing his neck like you usually did, you lingered there just a touch longer than normal. There was a bit of teeth to it, a heat that the two of you had skirted but hadn’t quite explored yet.

Needless to say, he’d immediately dropped his controller to pull you into his lap. You hadn’t protested - to the contrary, you’d straddled his thighs with yours, your hand pulling his tie like a leash to close any distance left. 

— Even through the rubber gloves he was wearing now, he swore he could still feel the silk of your skin like fire against his palms. He shook his head again, the trocar wounds closed and now trying to thread the needle so he could sew the dear lady’s mouth closed through the frenulum and up through the septum. But he felt his face burn under his mask as he remembered just how you’d sighed when he’d run his hands up your sides under your top.

Like you were relieved. Like you’d been waiting for him to touch you, almost as much as he’d wanted to.

If you had any idea how hard it had been for him to let you go, especially once he heard that sound, you would’ve called the cops—

“Son of a bitch,” he growled, putting the musculature needle down just a little too hard on the steel table top when he couldn’t get his hands to stop shaking.

He was instinctively reaching to pinch the bridge of his nose under his glasses when his hand ran smack into the plastic face shield instead. Frustrated, his swore under his breath, about to fling the offending garment across the room when he heard another gentle laugh from the doorway. He hesitated, then carefully exhaled his frustration in a practiced sigh through his nose, before turning to look over his shoulder. 

“Well,” he mumbled, the tension leaving his shoulders. “I’m glad one of us is havin’ fun with this.”

He could see a gentle swirl of white floating in the doorway, like steam out of a shower. For a moment, the swirl changed direction, as though something like a waving hand had interrupted its floating through space.

 With this small encouragement, he turned back to the waiting guest, taking another cleansing deep breath. “Get it together, Morvant, christ,”  he muttered, cracking his neck on both sides before trying again. You had him acting like an amateur in his own House. 

This time, he hooked the needle through the needed places as easily as writing his own name.

He still frowned even as he neatly stitched the lips closed, hearing the faintest echo of his father in his head. Not the torso half-corpse chained to the wall downstairs, thank Everything Below. But the version that still loomed large in the crevices of his brain, that still snidely muttered about his every move if he performed his duties less than perfectly.

Mooning over a mortal. Jesus, his father would’ve taken the belt to him for that. Again.

Once he was satisfied with how her mouth lay, he picked up the wax he’d be using to fill some of the rougher contusions on Mrs. Berthelot-Yang’s face. With a careful angling of a flat blade to get it out of the jar, he rolled it across the side of his latex-gloved hand, letting it warm itself into something malleable.

You would’ve been worth his father’s wrath, he caught himself thinking. He didn’t know quite how he was so confident yet — the unbearable soon-ness of it haunted him again, as he sized up the empty hole the glass shards had left in her cheek — but as he did so, he felt you, flush against him like you were there in the room.

 He’d gotten greedy last night, he knew that, but you’d been right there and so soft, he couldn’t resist. He clenched his free hand through his glove as he remembered the scent of your neck, the lightest hint of some delicious fragrance as he’d taken small, covetous bites of your flesh just to feel you writhe in his grip.

He’d paused his sampling of your skin at the neckline of your shirt, sitting back to watch you open your eyes he stopped. “…Can I take this off you?” His hands were still up at your back, holding you close, but he indicated what he meant in the way he passed them over the fabric. The two of you had a tendency to be all over each other in stolen private moments during the brief time you’d been going out: at the House, in the hearse, on his favorite bench in the cemetery. But these had been careful explorations despite your shared enthusiasm, mostly over clothes due to him never being quite sure who - or what - might be lurking nearby. Now, there was no threat of a paranormal pest, or his spectral sister’s looming eyes from the shadows. 

It was just you and him, alone at last.

He was too close to you not to see the tiniest hesitation on your part - your teeth briefly grazing your lower lip - before you nodded, your coy smile back in place. “…I’d like to keep what’s under it on, though,” you admitted, your voice soft in how close you were to him. “Is that… Okay?”

“Anythin’s fine by me,” he murmured somewhat hazily, nodding as his hands slid down your sides to your thin top. “Whatever makes you feel comfortable, gorgeous.” He savored the feeling of his fingers sliding under the fabric and finding the warmth of your bare skin, curling around its hem, before he glanced up at you one more time to double check. 

You nodded again, your eyes bright with anticipation, and that was all it took for him to yank the flimsy fabric over your head.

Maxi sat back slightly, taking in your mostly-bare torso — your soft stomach was adorably sweet, just as he’d imagined. He admired your clavicle, the way it was set into your shoulders, the way your skin looked with all the small marks collected over a life. You were a miracle, a work of art, just like he’d dreamed. He took you in almost ravenously, wanting to memorize every freckle, mole, spot. The small galaxy that was you.

You shifted in his lap, your arms drawing in slightly over the dark garment covering your breasts. He couldn’t help but move his attention there as well, pausing in his awe-struck inspection. That… wasn’t a bra. At least, not one he was familiar with. He was flustered internally for a moment; he knew he hadn’t dated around in a while, but did they really start making them a whole different way when he wasn’t paying attention? He swore he’d just put a regular one on a nice little octogenarian at work the other day; was that considered outmoded now? An antique?

“…It’s a half-binder,” you said softly, snapping his attention abruptly back to your face. His heart jumped into his throat when he saw you looking shyly down at your thighs, anticipation replaced with more hesitancy. “It’s. Um— It’s for when—“

“Oh, no, that’s not—“ Maxi stumbled and nearly bit his own tongue, cursing himself for interrupting you. But he was desperate for you to understand how much he was only looking at you with wonder, not with second thoughts. He wanted to curl into himself in agony at the mere thought of you having such a notion.

But the way you looked immediately back to him made him think you were almost more nervous than he was, rather than annoyed, and he felt a flash of protective fondness at the expression on your face. 

“I— It’s okay,” he soothed, nodding. He reached up to your face, his thumb stroking your cheek as he kissed your jaw line. “It’s fine,” he reassured you again, smiling at you. “That’s all okay, darlin’. I only looked concerned because… well,” he paused, feeling his own face warm slightly. “I thought they’d gone and changed how they made bras on me, s’all.”

Your uncertainty was punctured by your surprised laugh, and he immediately felt relieved at the return of your smile, even as he rubbed the back of his neck. He didn’t want to do anything that would make you think he was less than… capable, of taking care of you. But he was only being honest.

“No,” you said, kissing the corner of his mouth. “You’re sweet. No, this is a different thing.” You shook your head. “It’s… um.” The shyness crept back into your face, and as much as he wanted to reassure you again, he made himself wait for what you wanted to say. “…Okay, so,” you said slowly, letting out a breath that shook a little around the edges. “Sometimes, um. I have some presentation issues around my…” You paused like there was something stuck in your throat, instead gesturing to your chest under your binder. “And I don’t… really want to have them there. Or out. Or, like…” Your hand clawed for a moment in frustration as you tried to explain. “I just don’t want them to be a focus?” you managed at last, a sigh on the heel of your words. 

“I don’t know, sometimes I’m fine with them! I mean— Obviously,” you gestured shyly to Maxi, who immediately recalled every time he’d pulled down your neckline to nip at the top of your breasts greedily, on his couch during a bad movie, or against the wall of a crypt during a cemetery walk.

“I’m… very familiar, yes,” he agreed, smiling even as he felt the heat in his cheeks.

Your smile in return reassured him, and he watched the tension in you ease. You reached up, running your fingers through his hair, and he had to fight not to shiver pleasurably at the contact. 

“I just… today was a bad chest day, is all.” You bit your lip again, clearly still somewhat nervous about this. “And I was just, um. I thought we might… and if I-I flinched, or something, I didn’t want you to think… it was you something you did. Because it’s not. It never would be.“ You looked down at your thighs again as you trailed off, your hands sliding to his shoulders. “It’s just - this thing my brain does sometimes, and I don’t always know when.”

Maxi was trying too hard not to get stuck on the fact that you had implied you’d never flinch from him, from his touch, his heart fluttering like a trapped bird in his chest with muffled excitement. He had been trying to slow down just how hard he’d been falling for you lately, but you weren’t making it easy. You didn’t know, you didn’t know, he reminded himself sternly. He couldn’t take it entirely at face value if he knew what he was hiding from you, and you didn’t.

And ideally, he thought to himself, you never… would. Not completely, anyway.

Because there’s no way you’d stay if you knew what he really was, was there?

Realizing he’d been still too long, been too quiet, his hands went to your hips and squeezed affectionately. “Hey.” He waited until you met his eyes to roll his shoulders in a slow, lazy shrug, smiling up at you. “I’m just happy to be here with you like this,” he said, his tone hushed again as he ran his hands up your bare sides. “Really. That’s all. Whatever you don’t wanna do, or— don’t want me to touch,” His hands stopped a respectful couple of finger widths away from your binder. “We don’t have to, at all. Okay?” He shifted, closing the distance between you so you were almost nose to nose… before he paused again. His lips flattened into a line without realizing, his eyes wandering off to the side as he realized what he wanted desperately to tell you in this moment.

It wasn’t The Necromancy Thing, but it something he didn’t discuss often, that was for damn sure.

“You’re sure?”

He looked immediately back to you, and realized you’d been watching his face. Your eyes were careful, searching - veiled, he noticed with a hint of panic. You must’ve thought his hesitation was about you, when nothing could be further from the truth.

“Yes,” he said immediately, nodding vigorously. “Yes, angel, absolutely.” He tapped his fingers where they rested on your skin. “Your boundaries are yours. I’m not about to want anythin’ you tell me you don’t, I swear.” He smiled at you again, feeling a little nervous now. “I was just… you got me thinkin’, is all.”

You blinked, your eyes lightening a little bit as you leaned back slightly to take him in. “Oh yeah?”

Maxi nodded, wetting his lips out of nervous habit. “I…” He hummed quietly, trying to figure out how to word this, exactly. He cleared his throat before looking back to you. “…You, um.” He swallowed. 

How long had it been since he’d done this? Years? It sure felt like years.

But you were waiting patiently, with that particular little smile of yours that you got when he talked. 

When was the last time someone had smiled when he was speaking, he wondered.

“…When we first met, that day in the cemetery,” he finally said, forcing himself to meet your eyes. “I saw your, um. Your pride pins. On your bag, and all. And then, of course, you told me you use ‘they,' and it got me thinkin’ about…”  he paused again, the words still not quite right. “So I just wanted to… not that it’s the same, of course, but I wanted to… What I mean is… God,” he sighed in frustration, his head falling backwards against the couch to stare at your ceiling. “Why is this hard.”

“…I could state the obvious,” you deadpanned, shifting as you straddled his lap still.

There was a pause as Maxi looked down at your thighs, then back to your face. “I see your point.”

There was a brief second of silence, and the both of you dissolved into giggles, the tension at last broken.

“What are you trying to say, Maxi?” you’d asked when you’d both got it out of your system, tilting your head the other way to catch his eyes again.

Maxi sighed, setting his hands on your hips as if to ground himself. “What I’m tryin’ to say,” he said quietly, forcing it out now. “Is that… me too?”

You blinked, your brow crinkling delicately. “…You ‘too’?”

Maxi groaned, running one hand under his glasses over his face. “You’re gonna have to forgive me, Darlin’, old habits die hard.” He gave you an apologetic smile. “I have to be a little more careful about, y’know… who knows, and all,” he said, gesturing vaguely around the room to indicate Greymoon as a whole. He swallowed again, not sure why his heart was racing, why his palms felt like they were going to sweat. You of all people were someone he knew he could tell this to and be safe. So why did this still scare him? 

“I, um. I’m… bi, too. I’ve known since I was… what, twelve? Thirteen?” He felt himself flushing furiously, watching your face for any dimming, any twitch of uncertainty. People reacted differently to bi men. Like there was something about him that was dubious — tainted, suddenly. Though he knew you wouldn’t do that to him, the anxiety was well-learned. “…If I could signal, y’know, and not get shit for it with my… my job, and all, I would. Maybe a pin, or some nail polish, or… somethin’ little, I don’t know. I’ve always wanted to.” His eyes fell to the floor, sheepish. “But this town is so fuckin’ small, and everyone knew my family my whole life,” he said quietly. “It just wasn’t worth the grief, y’know?” He let out a quick, unsteady exhale. “Shit was lonely enough already.” 

He remembered himself and where he was, his eyes snapping to yours. “I don’t mean to— to make things about me,” he said quickly, his words tripping over themselves. “But because I really want you to know, there’s nothin’ you could do, or change about yourself, or how you present, or anythin’, that would make me… not attracted to you,” he explained. His voice was hushed, like he was trying not to spook you. “Does that make sense?”

Your eyes were bright as you beamed at him, clearly relieved — and, if he dared let himself believe it, even elated. “Yes,” you said, nodding excitedly. “Yes, it totally makes sense.” You leaned in, cupping his face in your hands. “I fucking knew it,” you added in a delighted whisper, before raining kisses down over his face.

Maxi laughed, both relieved himself and a little euphoric. “You’re just sayin’ that.” He felt warmth pooling in his chest at the idea that something about his most private self had rung true to you, somehow, even after years of hiding. He pulled you flush to his torso, eliminating the already minimal space between you.

“I’m— not!” you said between kisses, peppering his forehead and his jaw for the sake of making him laugh again. Finally, you leaned back to look at him as your arms wrapped around his bare shoulders. “Babe,” you said at last, looking him dead in the eye. “I can recognize one of our own, even if they’re hiding it under a damn good suit and some hair gel.” You looked him over exaggeratedly before kissing him on the cheek again, then leaning to whisper in his ear. “But you kind of gave it away when you told me you liked Vincent Price and musicals, not gonna lie.”

Maxi felt himself grinning even as he rolled his eyes. “Yeah, okay, I’ll give you that.” He leaned forward to jokingly kiss you all over in turn, but you caught his lips with yours before he could make it there, and everything slowed down again. It was warm against your skin, the fabric of your binder feeling like comfort. Trust. His shoulders, for the first time in ages, felt lighter and looser somehow. Kissing you tasted like coming home, and he felt you smile against his mouth as he leaned into you.

In that moment, Maxi was suddenly intensely aware of the feeling of something… else, looking out through his eyes at you.

Something that wanted you - to drink the light from your eyes until there was nothing left - with such a desperate ferocity, he could swear the scream was audible inside his own skull.

Startled by this unbidden urge, he broke this shared kiss abruptly, pressing a messy kiss to your pulse in your throat. External sensation tended to help shut the Reaper up or drown it out, and you gave him plenty of that: the softness of your skin, the scent you wore in your hair, the surprised noise from low in your chest that turned into a barely-muffled moan. He lingered there, drawing it out, feeling you squirm on his lap as your hands found his hair again and tried to tug him upward. He winced only slightly, seemingly determined to leave his unmistakable mark on the precious column of your neck, but internally he was running a panicked inventory. After decades of being aware of the Reaper, the demon that had made him its home, he thought he’d gotten a good handle on just what could set it off. Sure, it had made noises about liking you, especially the more you hung around. It had done that with everyone he’d dated, as inescapable as it was. It was a jealous, territorial sumbitch, but so was he, deep down, so he couldn’t really blame it.

But that fascination, that need… what the fuck was that? Demanding as his darker self was, it had never been that… specific. Blood, flesh, souls, the usual maudlin bullshit, sure, he was used to it railing and howling and carrying on as it called for what it believed was its Due. Sometimes for sleepless nights on end, when he was younger and trying to fight his true nature.

But wanting you? Specifically, to watch the life drain from your face? To feel your flesh grow cold under his palms?

He had the unavoidable mental image of a face that wasn’t his running a tongue over too-sharp teeth in his mouth, and he couldn’t fight a shudder.

Before he could really figure out what had triggered the spike of aggression, however, you’d turned the tables, yanking slightly on his hair so you could capture his lips when he reluctantly let go of your throat. Your hands moved to unbutton the dress shirt he’d worn having come straight from closing up, and he felt you pause when you got so far down, then the twist of your smile against his mouth as your hand found his shirt stays still on once you unbuttoned his slacks. 

“Aw, Maxi - for me?” As much as you were trying to tease, he could hear how you sounded slightly breathless, your fingers shy as they skimmed over the elastic.

His face positively burned, and he wondered if you could feel its warmth, as close as you were. “Well,”  he mumbled, suddenly unable to quite meet your gaze. “You mentioned that you, um. Didn’t mind, last time—“

“No,’ you corrected, and he looked up immediately.

You were fighting a grin as you toyed with the one on his left thigh, before your eyes flicked back to his. “I said I thought they were hot, remember?” You gave him a coy smirk. “That’s different.”

He had to remind himself to swallow just then, the Reaper well and truly quiet as his brain was too overloaded to process much else besides your expression and your fingers tracing along the inside of his thighs. With some maneuvering, you had his shirt open a moment later, your hands roving over the coarse hair on his torso. 

Something else he couldn’t help but adore about you, besides the enchantingly warm squish of your figure against him, was the way you seemed just as taken with him as he did with you in that aspect. Lord knew why - he knew he was that slightly confusing mix of lean with a soft stomach, and he still didn’t know how to feel about that even now - but it was also the way you didn’t seem to flinch at any of his scars. Namely and especially the thick line of tissue over his heart, where his father had beat him to the punch and drawn first blood all those years ago, and where he’d painstakingly re-opened it not long after, trying a particularly dark bit of magic in attempt to dull his own pain.

As he’d held you in his arms, feeling your warm palm ghost over it with all the sweetness in the world, he was so bitterly glad that it had backfired - and not as badly as it had for his late sister.

“I want you.” You’d said it so softly, your lips brushing his, that it nearly broke him. “Please?”

“I’m yours.” He’d answered as automatically as breathing, and for a second he’d felt at least a fraction of the blood rush back to his face, realizing just how… eager, he must have sounded. But you’d only laughed in that way that left him weak every time, and when he’d shifted underneath you to kiss you harder, it had hitched into the sweetest breathy moan when his cock pressed against the core of you through the cotton shorts you’d worn.

“Goddamn, Maxi,” you’d whispered, pulling away to glance down between the two of you. It was everything he could do not to let himself smirk. 

You’d turned it right back on him though when your eyes met his again with what was unmistakably hunger. “You gonna wreck me with that, babe, or just make me suck on it?”

He’d heard the soft hissing inhale through his teeth before he even realized it was him, his hand gently settling over your throat. Even as he held it like it was made of glass, he still felt himself freeze, realizing he hadn’t asked you first. He watched your eyes, nervously retracting his hand just slightly to hover above your skin — only to relax when he saw the entertained glint there, and the way you tilted your chin back to grant him access.

He replaced his hand delicately, his thumb lovingly tracing the vein he knew lay just underneath your skin from years of filling others with formaldehyde. “You’ve got a hell of a mouth on you, sugar,” he’d murmured darkly, unable to help himself. “If you’re not careful, you’re gonna give me ideas.”

This was apparently the right thing to say, because you’d shoved your neck further into his palm as you’d kissed him furiously, grinding your cunt against his length as you did so.

He’d had to will himself to keep at least a modicum of self-control, both hands falling to your hips and pulling you harder against him to hear you gasp. As he felt the faintest trace of heat and slick through the thin garment of your underwear, his grip turned to steel, fighting the urge to yank away the meaningless little fabric between the pair of you and push into you to give you what you wanted — what he wanted, if he was being honest, just to feel you clench around him in any capacity. When he heard your gasp change to a soft, tremulous moan as you moved again, it took everything in him to force himself to let go of your waist.

“Your room.” He’d blurted it before he realized quite what he was doing, and you’d blinked at him, your eyes already sweetly hazy. “…Please,” he added, swallowing slightly. “I want to-- I need to do this right.” He pressed a soft kiss to your jawline, hoping he hadn’t just made a fool of himself. “I wanna do this like you deserve.” If this was going to go how he thought, he wanted to make sure it mattered. That even if it was all he ever got, he could say he’d gotten to really savor all of you while he’d had it ever so briefly in his grasp.

Your laugh was shaky but real, and you tilted your head to kiss him again (and, unbeknownst to you, muffle his sigh of relief). “You fucking angel, you’re so sweet,” you’d murmured, kissing his mouth and his cheek and the tip of his nose in quick succession. “C’mon.” You’d stepped backwards onto your floor, grabbing his hands to pull him up with you, and the two of you had only run into a chair and one wall when you couldn’t be bothered to look up from refusing to let go of the other person.

Maxi had been over to your house enough times that it wasn’t too odd how well he could pick his way through your living room, and then your hallway. Luckily, by the time he was walking you backwards to your bed, you were too busy nipping his lower lip and gripping the back of his neck to notice just how well he could navigate across your somewhat messy floor, sidestepping you carefully around things he logically shouldn’t have already known were there.

But he’d gotten very well acquainted with your floor in the last couple of weeks. And the space under your bed, which if he was being honest, was more comfortable than most, if only for the rug underneath and the lack of perilous storage boxes he’d have to contort himself to fit around. It would’ve been downright homey, comparatively, if he wasn’t constantly in danger of knocking his head on your bed frame if he sat up too quickly.

In that moment, he’d been beyond thrilled to be with you on top of your mattress as the two of you fell towards it. He was more than happy to be pinned beneath your full hips, his hands caressing your sides, and feeling you push yourself against his cock already leaking into his clothes as you sought any sort of friction between the two of you. This was more than agreeable. If you wanted to ride him until he couldn’t remember his own name, that would be divine. There would be plenty of time after to fuck you into your mattress until you ruined your sheets, he had all night. 

Your fingers had finally hooked into the open waistband of his slacks when suddenly you hissed a curse under your breath, withdrawing so abruptly he was left bewilderedly blinking at your ceiling for a moment.

“Gorgeous?” He sat up to see where you’d pulled back, your expression at once stricken and frustrated. “What’s wrong- you okay?” He felt himself snap out of his own blissful trance, looking you over for any immediate obvious cause of distress. “…Is it somethin’ I did?” He swore he’d just been laying here savoring the taste of your tongue - did he miss something obvious? Had he been careless, distracted? The latter had made him panic even more, wondering if the dark presence inside him had somehow made itself known when he had his guard down.

“No,” you shook your head quickly, pressing your lips together in a slightly aggravated line. “No, baby, it’s not you.” You sighed heavily, sitting back and crossing your legs as you looked… embarrassed? You bit your own lower lip hard for a moment, clearly annoyed with something, before you glanced at him from under your lashes. “…My uterus has the worst fucking timing, is all.” You have him a rueful grimace, wincing slightly as you did so. 

Maxi felt himself exhale a laugh in relief, his fear immediately abating. “Oh, babydoll - is that all? Hell, I don’t care.” He shrugged, his shoulders suddenly immeasurably light compared to a second ago. “Or — wait, shit, hold on.” He caught himself a second too late, blushing slightly at his own phrasing and quickly running his palm over his face under his glasses. Smooth, dumbass. “I mean,” he said, showing you his palms apologetically. “That I don’t mind. But obviously,” he gestured to you. “I don’t wanna do anything that would make you… uncomfortable.” He gave you a smile meant to be genuinely soothing, but only relaxed when he saw you let out a breath you’d seemed to be holding.

“Ugh, I’m so sorry.” You rolled your eyes, falling on your back next to him with an exaggerated sigh. He immediately stretched out next to you, determined to be as close to you as possible while he had the chance. You were always a vision, to him, but stripped down like this, you were something he wanted to treasure. “I tend to be really… sore, later, after my first day. Like, ‘hurts to sit down’ sore, sometimes.” You rolled onto your side, and your fingertip traced a soft line down his chest and stomach that stopped just above the exposed fabric of his boxers. He suppressed a visible shiver as best he could, but it was a struggle. “And based on what you’re packing, babe,” you said, your eyes flicking downward before meeting his and causing him to forget to breathe for a moment. “I don’t think I’m going to be quite able to handle it all tonight. Which sucks,” you added, with an embarrassed giggle. “Because if I’m being totally honest with you, I was really looking forward to it.” You have him a small, shy smile that still felt somehow conspiratorial. 

Jesus, you were going to kill him. He was going to die right there in your bed from the sheer thought that you’d wanted him as much as he’d pined after you.

He took a breath as subtly as he could, trying not to give away that you’d about knocked it all out of him. “Don’t worry about it.” He reached over, lightly moving some of your hair away from your eyes. “Again, I don’t want to do anythin’ you don’t want to do. Right now, later, whenever.” He smiled, admiring your bare stomach and thighs in the soft light of your bedroom window, how the beginnings of the blue hour reflected just a certain way off your skin. You were already lovely from his place in the dark, but out here with you? Where you’d wanted him to see you? “You’ve got me as long as you want me.” His eyes had met yours again, taking in how those shone as well, how he wished he could see them in this light more often.

“But I really do want you, though,” you said with just a hint of a whine, and when you leaned in to kiss him again, it was everything he could do not to roll and pin you down so he could kiss you everywhere, slowly and deliberately. You moved closer to him on your mattress, your hand skimming lower over clothes that now felt far too tight. “Can I… help with this, at all?” —

Maxi swore softly to himself as he mis-aligned the apple of the decedent’s cheek again, impatiently picking up the clay and re-rolling it into what it would’ve looked like if half of it hadn’t been ground off onto the hot concrete of the highway once the visor of the helmet had been smashed out.

“I swear I can do this,” he said over his shoulder, still smelling the hint of perfume. “I’m just… havin’ a day, is all. You know how it is.”

He paused, looking back down at the face he was working on restoring and feeling slightly mortified with himself. “I mean, of course you do. Of course. I’m so sorry, that was thoughtless of me. I’m - I’m just gonna shut up now,” he muttered, furiously re-rolling the clay in his hands to try to change the texture.

When he felt the tiniest ‘thump’ against his shoulder blade, like a heavy palm lightly clapping him on the back, he about jumped out of his skin. 

— As cool as you were trying to be about it, he could hear just the slightest hesitancy in your voice still, and he could’ve died at the idea you thought he would still say no to you. 

“I…” His face felt almost drunkenly warm as he tried desperately to get his brain to work with him here, overwhelmed with just how long he’d ached for you to touch him at all, the warmth of your flesh threatening to scorch his normally cool skin. “I don’t want you to feel like you have to? I—“ He forgot what words were for a second as he felt your hand move again, your fingertips skimming the skin above the waistband between the pair of you. “I’d wanna be able to reciprocate, somehow,” he managed, forcing himself to meet your eyes again. “However, um—“ Oh, you’d been positively teasing him then, sliding his trousers down as slowly as possible while you watched his face. Your expression was sweet, your lips parted just slightly as if in innocent curiosity, but he could still see that light in your eyes that told him you knew exactly what you were doing. “However you feel comfortable,” he said, buying himself time by gently taking your hand in his. “I don’t want this to just be about me.” He couldn’t have imagined anything more agonizing than you touching him and him not being able to touch you. It just wasn’t how he was built. He kissed the back of your hand, and the wickedness in your eyes liquefied into something soft. “Please?”

You bit your lip thoughtfully, considering. He knew what it was to be vulnerable with someone new - to be even more vulnerable than you’d maybe expected, in your case. He gazed at you earnestly, hoping you would see that he was already devoted, there was nothing about your body that could scare him, because it was yours, and at this rate, he was as good as.

“…Okay,” you said at last, and he couldn’t help but beam when you smiled a little at his enthusiasm. “But only whatever you’re cool with. Don’t feel like you have to reciprocate in exactly the same way, if you don’t want to.”

“Try me.” Maxi said, quirking a brow in a playful challenge.

“Oh, I intend to,” you murmured, kissing the corner of his mouth before dipping lower to trace the scar over his heart with the white-hot tip of your tongue.

Maxi fought to keep his surprised inhale from being too obvious as you did so, feeling his already present blush turn into a full flush down his neck and shoulders. He’d been with other people, sure, but he couldn’t remember the last time anyone had seemed to… savor that part of him, quite like you were.

But of course you’d caught that. You looked up quickly, meeting his eyes with a furrow of concern. “Sorry,” you said softly, your eyes flicking between his and his scar. “I- Should I not—?”

“It’s fine,” he reassured you, kissing your cheek hastily. “You’re fine, sugar, I’m just… not used to that, s’all.” His fingertips ghosted down the line of your jaw, watching your brows ease apart. “…People tend to avoid it,” he explained quietly, the corner of his mouth lifting in a half-smile and a shrug of his shoulder.

You blinked. “Oh.” You glanced sheepishly down again. “I should’ve asked first, I know, I just—“ You lifted a hand, your fingers ghosting over the ridge of tissue you’d just claimed with your tongue, and Maxi found himself not only enjoying the feeling, but leaning into it as much as he dared. “…I just figured, it’s you,” you murmured, your eyes finding his again. “And I-“ You broke off, teeth grazing your lip self-consciously like you were fighting a laugh at yourself. “I want that too.”

Maxi sat up with an abruptness that drew a small squeak from you, lifting you so you were straddling his lap now. One hand tangled in your hair as he kissed you hard, the other hand squeezing your hip with a need he was sure gave away just how desperate he was for you —

He slammed down the clay knife a little harder than he meant to on the steel table surface, cussing up a storm under his breath as he failed for a third time to get it shaped exactly how he needed it over the partially exposed gums. “Come on,” he growled, not sure if he was more annoyed with his lack of focus or embarrassed at just how completely you’d invaded his every sense, leaving him stumbling like an apprentice on their first day. 

Probably even moreso, given just how long he’d been helping shape flesh back into faces before he was of legal age.

“I’m so sorry,” he said again, straightening up and folding his gloved hands behind his head. He turned away, unable to quite face the woman he was making a fool of himself in front of on his on table. “I swear, this has never happened before, really. I’m absolutely gonna have you lookin’ right as rain for your viewin’, I promise, I’m just… feelin’ a bit off, today.” He gave a long, slow exhale, one that shook just a little bit around the edges. He had to focus. He had to try. It wasn’t like he hadn’t done this hundreds of times.

But you — you were something new. He’d never had to work with someone like you in his head, before.

And it seemed to be having the worst time trying to hold his infatuation and his professionalism in the same amount of space.

— His brain immediately returned to how you’d kissed him back with just as much eagerness, your teeth nipping his lower lip, and when his tongue had filled your mouth, you sucked on it in a way that went straight to the base of his spine.

“PleasecanItaketheseoffyou?” he’d asked in a single breath as he broke away, his fingers hooking impatiently into the cotton lounge shorts you were still wearing.

You looked shy again. “Um. I’m not��“ You stumbled, choosing your words. “I’m not wearing a lot underneath,” you mumbled. “I thought I still had a day or so, and I wouldn’t want to—“ You gestured loosely at the white dress shirt he still had barely hanging about his shoulders, more off than on at this point.

Maxi pressed another messy kiss to the side of your neck, emboldened and secretly thrilled by the idea that you’d been planning ahead for this. That you’d wanted to, been hoping for it maybe as much as he had. “I don’t mind,” he said against your skin, and he felt your head fall back slightly as he kissed down to the crook of your shoulder. “I swear to god I don’t mind, there’s no part of this I don’t mind, I promise you—“

“Okay,” you half-breathed, half-giggled in his ear, and you got your knees under you to hover over his waist just as he pulled down, finding the black mesh waiting for him underneath.

“Baby.” He nearly whined at the sight, his hands moving covetously over the curve of your ass as he admired you. “Fuck, you’re pretty. You always are, of course,” he added quickly, looking up at you where you were still perched up over him on your knees. “Of course I knew that, but— fuck,” he repeated, his hands moving up your plush hips and your soft sides adoringly. “You’re gonna be the death of me.”

You giggled in a way that went right to his chest. “Calm down, Monsieur, you’ve already got me naked,” you teased, still looking a bit shy.

He hooked his arms around your waist, pulling your stomach flush to his chest where he was somewhat pinned under you. “I mean it,” he whispered, and he watched your face, the self-conscious half-smile falling away at what must be the sheer dark intensity of his gaze. “You have no idea how much I want you. Just like this.” 

He was sure his eyes would have changed, the way he was looking at you. He couldn’t always feel it when they did, but the yowling ache of Want inside him as he looked at you like this, for him — you had to have to seen it. There’s no way you could have seen him and missed it, the way he wanted you all to himself, folded into his arms against the dark that threatened to swallow him up when he thought of being parted from you. 

He knew it was scary, especially so soon. It scared him too, in a way. He wouldn’t have blamed you if you’d unwound yourself from his grasp right then and thrown him out.

…But, miracle of miracles, you hadn’t.

You’d watched his eyes with a tilt of your head, transfixed by what, he wasn’t totally sure. But your stare was curious - and, eventually, oddly familiar. He saw it then, that flicker of pure Want, not quite as sharp or dark as his own. But it had been there as you looked down at him, your hands lightly carding through his hair… before one set of fingers tangled in it, scraping ever so lightly at his scalp.

That dark presence in him - something that had no business being so close to you, especially not this quickly - crowed in triumph in a way it hadn’t in a long, long time.

You leaned down, catching his lips in yours, and he met you with a kiss that bordered on ravenous. He couldn’t help the sound that escaped him when you gave another careful, experimental tug at his hair — which blossomed into a full moan when you’d pulled harder, eliminating what space there’d been still between you.

“Tell me what you want,” he demanded as you broke away, the pair of you panting as though you were starved for air. “What can I do for you?”

“…Those all the way off,” you said softly, nodding down at his open slacks as your tongue traced your lips - which, he’d noticed, had begun to look just the tiniest bit swollen with his attentions.

He let go of you only long enough to fumble with them and the accompanying underwear, unable to help a smirk when your own hands had dropped to help him when you decided he wasn’t quite moving fast enough for you. He’d been appreciative of every display of your enthusiasm so far, but the need he’d felt crackling between the pair of you at that moment had been undeniable.

Maxi slid them off with your help, immediately pulling you back against him as soon as they rustled to your bedroom floor. He was trying to keep his breathing level as he felt you finally skim your palm lightly over his cock, and he couldn’t help but glance down to see you sizing it up.

“Damn, Maxi,” you murmured, glancing back to watch his face as you took it fully in hand. 

He bit down hard on his lip as you spread the drops that were already waiting there over the head, trying not to be so obvious in how much he’d been wanting you to touch him. 

“Were you planning on making sure I couldn’t walk tomorrow?”

He opened his mouth to answer, only to have the words tangle into something somewhat incoherent when he watched you move down his abdomen to lick a long, hot stripe towards his hips. 

The pressure at the base of his spine was taking over the rest of his brain, and all he wanted was the heat of you around him, wishing he could do exactly as you said.

“Depends on what you wanted, pretty,” he managed through his teeth, feeling his fingers dig into his own palms. 

“Oh yeah?” You glanced up at him, moving so your torso was perched gently on his thighs. You ran a fingertip lightly up the inside of one, smirking a little as he obviously squirmed. 

Maxi forced himself to nod. “I swear I could— be careful,” he said, trying to keep his voice from shaking as he watched you lick your own palm lasciviously. “I wouldn’t hurt you, I promise—“

“Unless I wanted you to?” 

He knew you felt him spasm in your palm in response. It was too obvious. He said nothing, looking from where his cock was aching, leaking in your hand to your eyes, where you were watching his face with such a dark glitter to them that he had to fight to keep his hips still in response.

“…Okay,” you said slowly, your smile enigmatic. “Good to know.”

Oh, shit. He was a goner now.

You didn’t say much else, your hand gliding up his shaft and gripping just enough to make him inhale raggedly. You gave him a couple of experimental strokes, watching still — 

Before your mouth was around him, and he had to fight to keep his shit together.

“Fuck.” His hands tangled hard into your bedspread, trying to keep himself grounded through this onslaught. He’d kissed you a million times by now - he couldn’t help himself when you were around - and just like then, you were slow, deliberate. Taking your time with him because you seemed to like keeping him right on the line of agony and bliss. 

He felt the softest puff of air, like a suppressed laugh, and when he looked down he felt everything inside him seize at the way you were watching him, your eyes mischievous as he saw a thread of saliva trace its way from your lower lip down his shaft.

He fell back against your pillow with a moan, forcing himself to look away so he could keep from totally embarrassing himself with you. You had no right to look that perfect with your mouth on him like that. His fist knitted tighter into your comforter, until he felt the soft touch of your hand on his - looking down, he let you gently pull his hand away from your bed and set it in your hair, holding it there for a second as if to reassure him before your hand returned to pinning his hips to your mattress. 

Tentatively, he curled his hand in your hair, not wanting to pull hard enough to hurt. He relished the feeling of its familiar texture, something he’d come to love in the time the two of you had spent on the couch with your head on his shoulder. He was just willing himself to be gentle when he heard the quietest noise, and it was only when he felt a shift in your mouth that he realized you’d taken him deeper.

He pulled hard on your hair reflexively, gasping at the change, at the soft sound of you fighting to take him into your throat. “Fuck, angel, you don’t have to...” He looked down at you, and the slight glaze of tears at the corner of your eyes made him forget himself so entirely, he felt his hips thrust forward before he could stop himself.

If you hadn’t been ready for him, he would’ve hated himself for being so careless with you. But you met his worried eyes with something of a challenge, your tongue tracing the underside of his shaft invitingly, and something dark in him delighted at the mirror it seemed to find in you.

Experimentally, Maxi thrust up again, and when he could feel you fighting to control your breath, he wound his fingers tighter in your hair and pulled.

Your moan couldn’t have been more exquisite, and Maxi at last let himself give in.

He wasn’t a monster - his thrusts were tempered, short, but he lost himself in the feeling of you around him: the warmth of your mouth, the soft ragged puffs of your breath, the spit that dripped from your lips. With the lovely wreck you made, and the way he felt you carefully take the rest of him in your hand to make sure no part was neglected, he found himself falling apart fairly soon.

“Darlin’,” he whined, glancing down at you through the now lightly fogged lenses of his glasses. “I can’t take this, I’m— I’m close, I have to—“

It was the way your eyes locked on his and the subtle shake of your head that finally sent him over. The sharp, clear gaze you gave him, the way you made it clear he was doing this your way. That this was something of his that you wanted for yourself.

He came with a shaky groan of your name, feeling the tiniest bit guilty he did so alone, but unwilling to deny how much he loved watching you as he did.

When you finally sat back, gasping, he sat up and immediately crushed his lips to yours like a man possessed, his hands gently cupping your face. He could taste just a trace of himself still on your tongue, and everything that just happened crashed over him at once, turning his kiss nearly feral. 

Even through catching your breath, you giggled again at his eagerness, and he knew immediately he would fight a pissed-off alligator for you if it ever came to that. Two alligators. Possessed ones. There was nothing in the world he wouldn’t face for that sound.

“So you enjoyed yourself then,” you teased, leaning over to kiss him on the cheek. “I’d hoped so.”

“You were divine,” he mumbled, leaning down to kiss your bare neck like a man called to worship. “I mean - I already thought so,” he added. “But that was…” He felt his brain go pleasantly blank again, distracted by whatever scent you were wearing on your skin. 

You smiled under his praise, but there was the tiniest hint of relief in your eyes. “I’ve been wanting to do that for ages, to be honest.” You leaned forward, kissing the end of his nose as he blinked at you in surprise. “I knew you’d be hot when you weren’t totally together. Not that you’re not hot when you’re put together,” you continued, seeing his eyebrows begin to knit together. “I mean, I’ve been wanting you to rail me in those suits of yours forever, obviously.” You waved a hand as if this were, in fact, obvious, despite Maxi having a very distinct hiccup of brain activity at the mere thought. 

“But you’re always so… poised, Maxi,” you said, your hands lovingly coming to rest on his now-bare chest. “I know you have to be, with everything that can go wrong with what you do,” you went on, and he had to keep his face neutral at just how close to the truth that came. “But I’ve been… curious,” you leaned forward, your lips an inch from his as you searched his eyes. “About what I’d see when you finally let go for me.”

Maxi watched you apprehensively as you reached up and ruffled the hair that sweat had undone. You fixated on it slowly sliding over one of his lenses, where it was naturally inclined to lay when he didn’t attack it with hair gel and a comb every day, and after a moment, you sat back with a smirk. “I have to say, baby, I really like it.”

You weren’t totally prepared for when he moved forward suddenly, capturing you in a kiss while flipping you beneath him. He delighted at the soft moan around his tongue in your mouth, only pulling back to hover over you when you were both absolutely out of breath. 

“If I wanted to make you come so hard you can’t think straight,” he whispered, dark eyes boring into yours. “What’s the best way I could do that right now?”

He watched the coquettish set of your face dissolve into a mixture of surprise from his phrasing and - what he was far more excited by - open, undeniable need. Your teeth grazed your lower lip hard, but he got the feeling that you weren’t having to think about it. No, this seemed more like you were hesitating.

“Try me,” he repeated, more insistent now. He kissed the corner of your mouth, then kissed you properly, coaxing you into something more heated. He lingered until he felt you relax a bit, opening up to him, before he pulled back just enough to speak. “I mean it, anythin’.”

Your guard was down, because he saw your eyes move briefly towards where his hips were resting against yours, your back arching very slightly to rock gently against his hipbone in search of any sort of contact. But they snapped back to his immediately, widening when you must’ve realized you’d given yourself away.

“You a hundred percent do not have to reciprocate,” you blurted, your words tripping off your tongue in your hurry. “Especially not, like, today,” you added with an apologetic wince. “Obviously. I’m not about to ask you to— well.“ You looked askance, embarrassed. “Not our, um. Our first… time, and all.”

Maxi snorted, smiling wryly. “Babydoll. C’mon, now.” He propped himself up on an elbow, cocking his head to look at you. “What, did you think I was gonna try to dodge that every month? Twiddle my thumbs ’til it was over?”

You met his eyes again, yours wide - and Maxi realized he’d tilted his hand, hinting at anything remotely close to a future together this soon. He opened his mouth to backtrack, kicking himself for being so presumptuous… when you looked off to the side again, giving a tiny shrug. 

“I didn’t want to assume or anything,” you said, smiling shyly. “Some people just aren’t into it.”

He managed to disguise a sigh of relief as a chuckle, realizing you weren’t automatically discouraging the idea of a… repeat engagement. Hell, that you didn’t even seem to be that put off by the thought of him sticking around. 

“Well. I appreciate your lookin’ out,” he said, tilting his head further to meet your eyes. “But trust me when I say there’s nothin’ about you I’m not into.”

You laughed, disbelieving, but there was a curiosity in your eyes that, when he saw it, he couldn’t look away from. “Define ‘into’ here, babe.”

Maxi sat up a little more, skimming your torso with a rakish glance. “Put it this way,” he drawled, leaning down to kiss just underneath the elastic of your top. “When you do what I do, there isn’t much about the human body you don’t learn to appreciate, in its own way.” 

He ran the broad swathe of his tongue down the curve of your stomach as he moved lower, causing you to inhale through your teeth and squirm slightly. He trapped your plush hips in his hands, fingers nimbly spreading and adjusting to hold you down against your mattress. His thumbs worked their way under the waist of the pretty sheer underwear you’d worn - for him, his insides twisted with eagerness at the thought - down over the skin, as though he were unveiling you. 

“There’s nothin’ I don’t find more beautiful than somethin’ alive just bein’ allowed to be itself.” He kissed your lower abdomen with parted lips, his teeth grazing lightly below your navel just to hear your gentle sound of surprise, to feel you try to move against his palms… and find you couldn’t break his grip. He couldn’t help but sneak a peek at your face, or help the grin that was just a touch too sharp when your eyes were already hazy and huge. “…And it’d be a sin,” he added quietly. “For you to feel like you had anythin’ to be shy about.” He held your gaze as he shifted his hands to your thighs, letting you watch as he pulled them a little wider, his fingers sinking into the plush flesh.

He waited for a response from you - the barest nod, given with only a short dazed lag - before he settled his torso between them, his thumbs tracing the velvet of your skin. He planted an open-mouthed kiss to the inside of each, just adjacent to your cunt, with all the slow measured movements of a ritual. He took the opportunity to adjust his grip again, his right hand shifting slightly upward to mitigate the jolt of your hips, his left staying anchored to your thigh as he continued to rub circles there.

He didn’t know what his eyes were doing when he looked at you a last time, but he could feel the Reaper poised just behind their sockets, unable to resist the proximity of something so vulnerable and precious. He didn’t bother to try to knock it back; it liked this too. Too much to ruin it for both of them. 

He’d let it watch, it didn’t matter. 

Pleasing you would be something that would strictly fall to him. He’d make sure of that.

His eyes wandered downwards, seeing you were already visibly wet - something that sent another searing jolt through him - and there, as though a sign, the beginning bloom of red.

When he swiped his tongue brazenly up your slit, pushing into your folds, the moan you let go from your chest hit him at the same time as the unmistakable taste of blood.

He fell on you like a man starved, pulling your thighs even wider to spread you for him. He felt suddenly insatiable, taken in by your heat, the way you shivered on his tongue, and couldn’t help but cant your hips just slightly upwards to allow himself better access. 

You made a sound of surprise that turned into a hitched sigh, your thighs pushing slightly against the side of his face and his palm as though to keep him there, and he felt himself grin wickedly as he continued giving you exactly what he’d wanted to since that first encounter in the cemetery.

In the midst of the familiar human essence, the iron across his palate, there was something that left the vague impression of… sweetness. He chased it, lingering on your clit to lave the flat of his tongue there like a wave. He heard your moan twist into a whine, and he couldn’t resist the urge to echo it, his cheekbone scraping the inside of your thigh as he unashamedly lapped at your core. Your slick spreading across his mouth and further up left him wanting, and as his hands clenched at your body with need, yours fell to his hair.

He couldn’t help the moan at the feeling of your nails against his scalp, the way he was sure you didn’t realize just how hard you were pulling. He had to fight to keep his eyes from rolling back as you tugged hard, your hips pushing against his mouth for more. He didn’t know which got him to start rutting lightly against your mattress, the little licks of pain or the way he was tempted to just let you grind against his jaw until you were done with him.

“F-fuck,” you groaned, your first actual word in a while, and it came from somewhere low in your chest. This was beyond the breathy noises of a first time, what people thought the other person wanted to hear. There was a rawness as your groan became something strangled, your voice breaking, and when your heel very lightly came to rest on his back, his nails sank into your skin before he could stop himself.

“Fuck, Maxi, I’m—!” You punctuated that sentence with a keening cry as you came apart, and he held his tongue steady against your clit when your hips spasmed against his face. Your heel dug further into his back, and your hands knotted in his hair as evidence of your orgasm coated his tastebuds. He drove his own hips hard against your bed as you shuddered, already inescapably aware that he wouldn’t know peace again until he could have you making a mess on his cock too.

But this was more than enough, for now. He would’ve been happy to do this until the day he died - and then to be resurrected, at your whim, for this express eternal purpose. His name sounded so much more pleasant from your mouth, especially when you sounded on the verge of tears with sensation, your throbbing cunt indecisive as to whether it wanted more or if it couldn’t take anything else.

He only let up when he felt your fingers go slack in his hair, your foot hitting the mattress with a soft little thud. When he pushed himself up to catch his breath, you were gazing sightlessly at the ceiling, your eyes like a starless night as your own chest heaved.

The blood he could feel congealing around his mouth only exacerbated the sudden overwhelming urge he felt to cage you in his arms and never let you go again, to meet everything else that sought your attention with a murderous glare and hands that itched for cold steel.

“Mine,” the Reaper hissed in the back of his skull, and for once, he had found himself in total agreement.

- Fuck. This wasn’t working. If even open wounds weren’t enough to dull the heat he felt spreading through his veins, he didn’t know what would. “Christ, M’sorry,” he muttered sheepishly to the woman on his table, hastily throwing down the clay knife as it felt like his skin was going to combust inside his protective gear. “I’m so sorry, ma’am, I’ll fix everythin’, I swear I’ll make it up to you, I’m—“ He couldn’t even finish the sentence as he pulled the sheet over Mrs. Berthelot-Yang for her dignity’s sake, then bolted out the door of the prep room towards the door to the hearse’s loading bay. 

A full-throated peal of laughter rang out as he left, echoing off the stainless steel on the walls.

He slammed through the exit door, barely noticing the pouring afternoon rain as he scrabbled free of his gloves first, ripping the black latex in the process, before yanking off the splash guard and tossing it over his shoulder and back inside. He was already panting as he ditched the mask underneath, then clawed off the protective coat over his dark scrubs and throwing it behind him as well. Only then did he let himself lean over to put his hands on his knees, letting the somehow still warm rain run through his hair and over his face as he tried to figure out how to deal with the throbbing ache that drove him to literal distraction. If work wouldn’t do it - especially a hard restoration like this one - he wasn’t left with a lot of options.

One tempted him in particular. One he’d been trying to avoid, to be honest. It wasn’t something he liked to do, and it was definitely something he didn’t want to get in the habit of doing whenever a… similar situation occurred.

But as evening loomed on the edges of the afternoon, he couldn’t see himself with a lot of other options.

If he wasn’t in such a state, he would’ve admitted to himself that it was probably troubling how he could’ve made the drive to your house blindfolded by now. How it was probably even more troubling that there was starting to be a spot in the bushes in the empty lot, just down the street from your place, where he hid the old Mustang. Or how he’d already had a change of clothes in the back seat for just such an occasion, and he stripped out of his wet scrubs making as little eye contact as possible with the smugly smirking figure of his uncle in the rearview mirror.

He followed the little not-path that was starting to form between the lot and the old oak trees that encircled your house, carefully ducking as needed to avoid any sight lines to the neighbor’s place across the street, avoiding the thorn bushes he’d learned were there the hard way, and carefully stepping around what rodent warrens he’d come across -

And at last, ended up exactly outside your bedroom window.

Your light was on, but your curtains were closed. He checked his phone, scrolling to his last text message from you - before lunch, if he remembered correctly. Amidst a flurry of bad jokes and some random dancing skeleton .gifs, you’d told him you had been feeling kind of gross today, and were planning on taking it easy.

So you were definitely home, then.

He peered through the small crack he could find in your blackout curtains, scanning your room and finding it still charmingly messy, but blessedly empty. Your bedcovers were rumpled, but there was no sign of you.

He hadn’t seen any light from your front windows when he’d driven by, though - so you weren’t watching TV on your couch. But where were you, then, if not here?

Slowly, he cracked the window, listening to what sounds he could catch so he could try to tell. Sure enough, he heard strains of music, loud, but distant - further in the house. 

So no headache then, he thought with a touch of cheer. Good, you always seemed so miserable when you had one of those. You were endlessly restless on your mattress when you were, like you could never get comfortable.

He took the faraway music as his cue to crack the window wide enough to slide in, bending over to fit through in as little space as possible. It was a careful step over the window seat (something he was rather envious of, if he was honest) to your carpeted bedroom floor, and he immediately removed his shoes, not wanting to track any dirt — both out of respect for your space, and his own desire to remain hidden. 

From there, he dropped into a crouch to hide behind the silhouette of your bed in the middle of the room, carefully lowering the window as he himself sank to the floor. Once he was sure it was secure, he fell over on his side and rolled in one motion under your bed -

And came to a stop right before he ran face-first into your box of clean bedsheets. Perfect, he noted, you hadn’t moved anything in the few days since he’d been by. He’d carefully arranged everything under your bed so he was concealed from the vantage of the doorway, but had enough room to stretch comfortably and avoid a dreaded leg cramp. There was even just enough space to stash his shoes down by his feet, safely out of sight and nowhere where they could leave a mess.

He curled into his familiar space, resting his head on the hoodie you’d left down here once the weather had turned warm. He wasn’t even sure if you’d noticed it gradually sliding off your bed - genuinely, without any manipulations on his part - but after multiple nights of being tossed about in your fitful slumber, it had finally hit the floor when you’d rolled over, and he’d snatched it up immediately to repurpose it for himself. 

It was an old lesson he’d learned early: never waste a good opportunity. Not only did it make lying here easier, it had the lovely bonus of smelling like your soap, too.

…But that scent was a little stronger than usual, if he wasn’t mistaken. He sniffed your hoodie again, confused - it wasn’t like you’d found it to wash it, recently. When that wasn’t it, he kept still, trying to figure out what was happening to create this change. Your room wasn’t a place that changed drastically, and definitely not under your bed, so anything that caught his notice was definitely worth assessing as a potential hazard.

However, it took him all of a minute to realize the music he’d heard was coming from your bathroom, accompanied by the sound of water rushing through the pipes in your walls. You were just having a shower. Was it cramps, then? Heat might relieve those, or it could just be general exhaustion. Bodies were tricky things when they were alive; he’d just have to wait and see what was ailing you.

He took a moment in the stillness to pull his phone out of his pocket and turn off vibrations along with sound, putting it completely on mute. He couldn’t risk him responding to one of your texts giving him away - wouldn’t that just be awkward.

As he did so, he caught another layer of sound amidst the water and the music, and he froze in place instinctively, trying to identify it. It was a voice — yours, he realized.

After another moment still, he realized you were singing.

His heart was fit to burst; he’d never heard you sing before. It wasn’t professional, by any means, but it was just so… adorable. Genuine. You were no songbird, but neither was he. And he would’ve listened to this for hours, just to hear you sound so happy and at peace.

The song itself was familiar too, although the instruments weren’t quite right - a cover, maybe? He scooted as close to the far side of your bed as he dared, trying to make out the lyrics through the wall and the water. You’d stopped singing, your part apparently ended, and the voice had changed:

“—Sing once again with me,

Our strange duet...”

Maxi sat bolt upright in his excitement - or tried to, before he smacked his forehead hard into your bed frame. He immediately lay back down, cursing himself quietly and touching the tender spot that he was sure was going to bruise. Pulling his fingertips away, he was grateful not to see any blood, at least. But he was definitely going to have to not slick his hair back for a little bit, lest he attract unwanted attention.

But you rather liked it when he did that, he remembered you saying so. He squirmed a little where he lay at the idea of your fingers running through his hair, playing with it, the ache in him only slightly assuaged by being so close to you (after being tempered somewhat by having to walk through the rain in the growing dark, on top of that).

But the song was definitely a Phantom cover. He was surprised it had taken him so long to place it, but he was willing to chalk it up to the water and the less-than-spectacular acoustics of being stuffed under your bed. But it had just gotten to Christine’s part again, and he could hear you trying to keep up as she swept into her grand finale. You were admittedly nowhere near the singer’s range, but it was obvious you were having fun. When her final note sounded, he could hear you laughing at your own attempt to match it that came out more of a squeak at the end, and he thought his heart would melt out his mouth and dribble all over your floor. He couldn’t believe he’d never thought to ask you if you liked the show, when he knew the two of you had discussed the book before. He was already reaching for his phone to google when the next touring company would be in town when he heard the water shut off.

He froze even though you were still in the next room, listening hard. You’d turned the music down as well, the playlist having shuffled to something else - another singer he liked, he noticed with glee, making a note to ask you about it later - and he could still hear you faintly through the walls, singing at a much more subdued level to match the quieter melody. 

He heard the clattering of your various skincare products as you moved around, before the music moved as well, leaking into the hall as you opened the door and stepped back into your room. 

Only wearing a huge t-shirt and (he could barely glimpse them) a pair of underwear, you seemed to move on a cloud of steam and something sweet. The whole room was filled with the scent of your favorite products now, and he relished being able to just lay there and drink it in.

He watched your bare feet pad around your room, your nails freshly painted your favorite color, and surmised you must have been trying to treat yourself to a spa day. You had said you’d been feeling less than your best, so this might have been your way of trying to take care of yourself. 

He had to resist the urge to check the date, make a note for next time - he knew he was weird, sure, but there were lines even he was willing to respect. He’d have to trust you to tell him if you wanted his assistance with… something like this. He could respect your discretion if that wasn’t the case; your relationship with your body was your own.

But still. He’d at least make sure to ‘just happen to have’ some extra of your favorite snacks in his kitchen. It wouldn’t stand out too much, he supposed.

At last, you fell over onto your bed, and he heard you sigh contentedly as you relaxed onto your mattress. He resisted the urge to echo it aloud, instead just stretching out as much as he could manage to pretend he was resting alongside you. This wasn’t perfect, but it was definitely better than trying to white-knuckle through things at the Mortuary alone. At least you were here. At least the overwhelming feeling of… everything, had subsided somewhat now that he was with you.

He heard something move from your nightstand, and a moment later, he saw an empty wine glass come into view as you set it on the floor. You stayed leaning off your mattress, opening the door to your nightstand, and he moved backwards as much as he dared, trying to make sure you wouldn’t happen to notice him if you happened to glance underneath your bed. But you seemed fixated on whatever was in the cabinet. He couldn’t help but be a little curious -- he hadn’t gotten to see what you’d kept in there before, and it wasn’t like he had the opportunity to ask when he was here last night.

He heard your impatient sigh, then you moving to the right side of your mattress before settling your feet back onto the floor. A moment later, his heart - previously melted - resolidified and jumped into his throat as he saw your knees follow suit, and you were crouched in front of the cabinet you were still digging through.

Shit. Shit, shit, shit. There was no excuse for being under here, especially this early on, and double especially since you didn’t Know. 

He held his breath without realizing, pulling as slowly into himself as he could manage. It wasn’t like you had a direct line of sight under here, but it also wasn’t like you wouldn’t see him as soon as you bothered to look.

He had no deity or entity to pray to for this: the good ones wouldn’t dare grant his request, and he didn’t need the bad ones knowing how he felt about you. So he just held his breath and hoped, watching you rifle through a collection of —

…Oh. 

He watched you set what was very definitely a vibrator on your lap, then a second toy: long, made of dark silicone, it looked like. You picked up and held a couple similar ones of different sizes after that, clearly trying to decide something between them.

He knew he would’ve been scarlet if anyone could see him, the ache from earlier returning tenfold in an instant. So that’s what you kept in there. How… educational. 

You were holding the dildo in your hands, and he felt one of his own slide up to cover his mouth, while the other slid a touch more… south. 

Your fingers were perfect, and once again, he found himself wishing you would touch him now, as you had last night.

…In very different circumstances than right now, obviously. But still.

You were tracing the shaft with your thumb, humming thoughtfully to yourself. “Close enough,” you mumbled. “Or close as I’m going to get, anyway.” He heard you laugh to yourself, sounding a little embarrassed. “Yeah, super normal date conversation. ’Hi, Maxi, maybe-strange request, but can I just measure your dick for a sec? Why? Oh, y’know, just wanted to commission something custom off the internet so I could fuck myself stupid while thinking about you, even though we’ve only been going out for a month, no big deal.’ God, I’m such a fucking weirdo,“ Your laugh sounded somewhere between ruefully amused and mortified.

Maxi’s fingers dug into his cheeks as his palm clamped hard over his mouth, barely cognizant of possibly earning another bruise. His brain felt like it was on fire, his sweats suddenly uncomfortably, impossibly tight. 

You… what? You were doing what? Regularly enough that you wanted a what?

If he could’ve moved either of his hands, he would’ve pinched himself to make sure this was real, and not some pleasant fever dream from accidentally huffing embalming fluid again. But one remained firmly latched onto his face, determined not to give himself away and ruin this, while the other was already desperately rubbing over his cock straining hard against his clothes.

You pulled out a bottle of lube before you closed the cabinet, disappearing back up onto your bed. He like a fox would track a rabbit, aware of every little slip of your skin against fabric, every slight motion of your legs — 

Then the familiar sound of your gasp, soft and fluttering. Unexaggerated, wholly yours. 

You writhed on the mattress directly over him, and he could tell you were just warming yourself up. His face seared against his palm as he heard the growing sound of your wetness, you moaning quietly as you touched yourself, trying to relax.

Slowly, his left hand slipped under the waistband of his sweats, finding a slickness of his own already leaking from his sensitive tip. He bit down slightly on his right hand, determined not to make a sound as he spread it with a painful slowness over his shaft. As much as he dared, he tried to match the pattern of your movements, wishing it was him with you for real — as much as he was deathly curious about the version of him with you in your head.

He heard a quiet, choked sound from you not long at all after: a muffled moan, you biting your lip as you brought yourself to your first orgasm. You let out an unsteady exhale, and he heard you adjust, reaching for something you’d set down on the other side of your bed. 

He had to hold his left hand still as he heard the pop of the plastic cap on the lube, the further hushed sounds of you spreading it along the proxy shaft, before finally you fell back again with a soft ‘thud’.

“Okay,” you murmured quietly to yourself. “Let’s see if I can manage not to totally embarrass myself with another person.”

Maxi was all too aware of his physical body being anchored to the floor, resisting the aching urge to crawl out of the dark and onto your mattress to kiss those fears away. He could never find you wanting, not in a million years, he could prove it to you right now if you just knew he was there, if it wouldn’t scare you —

But behind his eye sockets, he was aware of something looming: a dark, preening arrogance that he couldn’t totally separate from himself. You thought you couldn’t take him.

The Reaper wanted to see you struggle to try, shy and flustered, to see the embarrassed tears that might result if you couldn’t, to feel your body strain and writhe against him because you just couldn’t keep his shaft in you.

The part of his brain that was still wholly his wanted to soothe any such tears, reassure you with coos and murmurs about just how good you were, how well you were doing. It didn’t matter if you needed time, or if you just couldn’t, he’d still be satisfied just to be near you; didn’t you know he’d do anything for you, just to make you feel good? Like you made him feel without even touching him?

 But there was the tiniest part of him that wanted to lick those tears rather than kiss them away, and savor them instead.

His train of thought was entirely interrupted by your sudden gasp, and your quiet groan. “Fuck,” you whimpered, and he could hear you writhing slightly, your feet sliding as you struggled to get comfortable. “Fuck, okay. Okay, it’s fine, I just need…” He heard your head hit the pillow with a sigh, and his body was a taut exposed wire.

He couldn’t help but fractionally tighten his grip on himself as he heard you panting softly, making a small, muffled noise as he heard you try to take the toy deeper, accompanied by the occasional slick sound of something moving in you. He felt his cock twitch in his hand at the noise, wishing desperately that you were adjusting around him instead.

A breathy whisper of his name sang across his nerves like a bow over strings, followed by a quiet whine. “I’m trying,” you pleaded to the imaginary version of him with you, already sounding a little frayed and overwhelmed. “You’re just… a lot.”

Christ, you really were going to kill him. Carefully, painstakingly, he timed the movements of his hand over his cock to what he could make out from the sounds of yours - his hand hoping to even slightly capture the way you would squeeze around him, the achingly slow pace of pushing into you and pulling out again, trying to offer you some relief while still trying to satisfy gnawing need building at the base of his spine.

“I can,” you murmured to him and not-him, your voice shaking a little. “I can, I promise, just… I need a minute.” He heard a groan muffled by you biting your lip, trying to push the toy further. “There’s just so much of you, Maxi.”

He bit his own lip so hard it could bleed, trying his damnedest not to react to that out loud. You thought he was a lot. You’d seen him — you’d had him in your mouth, for christ’s sake, so it’s not like you were exaggerating, but still. You were already anticipating not only fucking him, but wanting to take him fully, and in that moment he thought his own anticipation might burn through his skin from the inside out. He wanted to be in you, for real, now.

Then he heard a soft cry, followed by another thud of your head against your pillow, the scrabbling of your feet against your sheets as your back arched. “There,” you moaned, and his eyes threatened to roll back in his skull yet again. “See? I- oh, fuck, I told you I could.”

And then, slowly, he heard you begin to fuck yourself in earnest.

He bit fully down onto his own palm, matching your pace now, hoping your own slick sounds and now-desperate whines would cover the sounds of him trying to jerk himself off as silently as possible. He wanted to be on you, his chest pressed against yours, feeling your sweat and your heart racing under your bones and your warm panting on his neck as he fucked you properly, gave you everything you were begging for just a foot away. He wanted to pin you down and fuck you until you forgot your own name, until he only knew his own from the way it fell off your lips and onto his. He felt your pace pick up in his own grip as you got closer, and the way his whole body tightened, he desperately wanted to fill you with his own cum, to feel it slide down your thighs as he stubbornly fucked it into you, just to know that you wanted him inside you.

“Please, please, Maxi, don’t stop,” you whined above him, and he tasted his own blood as his teeth finally split the skin of his hand. He wished it was your neck, your shoulder, those lips of yours -- he’d kiss it better in a second, he’d apologize immediately for marking your precious skin, but he was so hungry to feel you with him, for real, that he longed for even the warmth of your wounds on his mouth.

Just when he thought he couldn’t take anymore of this, the closest thing to heaven and hell at the same time, he heard you come with a last cracked moan of his name. He shattered immediately, spilling his own load from a day of obsessing over and repressing the memories of you inside his clothes, and utterly ruining them in the process. He flushed even more furiously, the heat spreading down his chest from both the ecstasy of relief at last, and embarrassment for coming in his pants like a freshman. He fucked into his hand while he listened to your panting until he went fully soft, bordering on the ache of overstimulation but trying to satisfy the gaping hole that came from not actually being able to pull you against him, to descend together in each other’s tangled, sweaty limbs.

For a moment, the two of you just lay there in silence - you still trying to catch your breath, him still biting into the flesh of his hand, not trusting himself not to moan the minute he pulled it away. He wanted to kiss you, to tell you that you were perfect, that you took him like you were made for him - or that you would, when the time was right, he was sure of it. But not until you were feeling better, not until you wanted to, until you chose.

“…Holy fuck,” you mumbled above him, sounding somewhat hazy, and he instead had to fight his usual giggle-snort. How were you this cute, he wondered, it wasn’t even fair.

He heard you shift slowly, reaching for something else on your nightstand; he winced, secretly hoping it wasn’t the lube again. After a long day of agony, he wasn’t sure he could go another round as enthusiastically as you.

But instead, he heard a muted, familiar tapping. In his scattered haze, it took him a minute to place it — until he saw your arm dangling over the side of your mattress, your phone still clutched in your hand as you waited for a text to send.

He caught his name on the screen before you pulled your arm up again, and hurriedly, he rummaged in his pocket to pull out his own just as the notification of a new message appeared.

<[Thinking of you, handsome <3 Hope work isn’t giving you too much trouble today?]

That you were texting him immediately and so innocuously, after vividly imagining him fucking you senseless, made his insides twist again and the flush return to his skin. Did you do this often? His head spun from the idea; how many messages had he read that he’d thought were only sweet little missives, while you were actually glistening and debauched? 

Maxi released his palm from his teeth a centimeter of skin at a time, bringing up his second hand to write back only when he was sure he wouldn’t moan aloud. What could he even say?

[Aw, miss you pretty. <3 Work’s been… work haha. Feeling better?]>

That was as close as he could think to summarizing the situation, anyway. And he was reasonably sure ‘hey look down here :)’ wouldn’t be very well received, even if he was starting to become aware of your own more… interesting tendencies. 

He glanced up at the bottom of your mattress as he waited for his own message to send, pondering this. He knew the two of you were still in the early stages, but he was now deeply curious what other strange urges you were hiding in that sweet little head of yours. Besides apparently liking his dick enough to want a memento of your own - something that, if he wasn’t already still flushed, would’ve made him turn scarlet all over again. He was awash in heat from the tips of his ears to his navel, at this rate.

He heard your phone buzz, and his heart leapt at your quiet little excited noise. He heard you roll over on your mattress and was half-tempted to peek and see if you were kicking your feet in the air, as much as you made him want to do the same. But he resisted and kept himself out of sight.

A second of fast typing later, your response appeared:

<[So much better omg. Sorry about work though :/ Do you maybe want to hang out tomorrow? We could watch a bad movie and drink about it.]

‘Yes!!,’ Maxi sent immediately. He winced at his own eagerness, then quickly added:

[Whenever works for you, if you feel up to it! No pressure if you start feeling bad again.]>

He heard you roll back over onto your back, giggling to yourself. He restrained a sigh of relief. At least you thought he was cute, and not desperate.

Another response popped up on his screen:

<[Oh I’m definitely better, no worries. <3 My place, maybe seven-ish if that’s okay?]

And then, as he was typing a confirmation, another:

<[And don’t sweat needing to drive home or anything btw. I have a spare toothbrush and stuff lol]

Maxi resisted the urge to punch the air, both because it would send his fist straight into your box spring, and because he was far too old for doing that without feeling ridiculous. But he definitely wanted to, in the moment.

[Haha sure. I’ll see you then angel <3]>

You didn’t need to know he’d loved everything he’d seen so far.

Or at least, he would tell you later. 

Much later.

if you've read this far, I hope your next date is also really into musicals (positive) <3

[fuckyeahgoodomensfanfic]

Good Omens Fic Rec: picture it soft

Crowley has noticed, certainly, the way that tattered waistcoat puckers a bit around the angel’s sides these days, the way the seat of those trousers fits more snugly than before. He’s had to excuse himself from the room more than once because of it, thoughts reduced to mush at the barest glimpse of the fuller curve of Aziraphale’s arms.

Length: 3,037 Words

AO3 Rating: Explicit/ Spice Level 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥

Best for: After Dark, Romance

Triggers: None

Read it here, fic by perilit

NOTE: This is a locked work you must be logged in to view it

*Minor Spoilers* This is another smut fic that feels like mini therapy and a shining example of the variety and body positivity that can be found in our fandom. I've never been part of a fandom that so wholeheartedly worships its fat character. It is important for me to read stories that embrace Aziraphale's fatness. He's desirable not despite his body, but because of his body. Fatphobia is especially rampant in queer/trans male spaces, and that makes a story like this even more important to read. This narrative of a queer, feminine, fat man-shaped being with a vulva is worth celebrating.

It's an after dark read, but something a little slower, gentler, softer. It's comforting and intimate. Vulnerable, and trusting. I love stories like these so much.

Read it here, fic by perilit

[xxcalicofemmexx]

bear + steampunk

Bear: A queer person who is large, fat, and hairy. A celebration and embracement of body hair, diverse body types, and a more rugged form of masculinity. This term is most common with gay men, but it's by no means an exclusive term.

[this-game-has-themes]

This might be a weird ask but, as someone who's never done it before, do you have any tips or ideas for drawing NSFW art? Do you just draw whatever you feel like in the moment, or do you try to draw what you think other people would like?

always, always draw for your penis and your penis specifically. unless someone is actively giving you money to draw for their penis, instead. but thats not what you should be focusing on right now. what im saying is you rarely going to make nsfw art that 'works' unless you are drawing from your own desires, be they sexual, aesthetic, or whathaveyou. do not listen to the penises of others, do not aim to have an 'audience', you must trust in the heart of the cards that people who enjoy your work in its authenticity will come to you.

i have been making porn for nearly 15?? years now, and i have always been at my most miserable, making my most soulless, unenjoyable art while i was actively trying to make things that other people would 'like'. i dont do that anymore, not for free. all this porn ive been drawing on my own time has been out of sheer love of the game, raw enjoyment of drawing anatomy and challenging myself with angles/perspective/poses/themes.

my advice is, start soft and work your way up. look at softcore, pinup and vintage type erotica, get a feel for the framing and the focus of the pictures, use this opportunity of drawing naked bodies to hone your grasp on anatomy, which porn is one of the best ways to do so in its dynamism and variety of references. look sparingly at mainstream porn, for the market is oversaturated with stale, overdone poses and a narrow perception of 'acceptable' attractiveness. look at hentai to understand the professional's eye for drawn hardcore eroticism. look at weird fetish stuff you dont really 'get' and try and figure it the fuck out. dont turn your nose up at pornography if you wish to partake in its craft - it all has its merits as art and it all has something you can learn from it.

most of all: DRAW FAT PEOPLE! DRAW OLD PEOPLE! DRAW UGLY PEOPLE! DRAW VISIBLY QUEER AND TRANS PEOPLE!!!! art is about celebrating the beauty in variety! pornography is a celebration of the body in all of its forms! if you seek to draw only conventionally beautiful things you will find your tastes degrading and your grasp on the craft stagnating.

but most importantly, you gotta draw.

hope this helps!

[angelellipsis-devilofdots]

happy pride month to:

poc queer people. you guys deserve just as much representation as white queer people and you're beautiful as hell. ❤️

white queer people. remember to be allies to poc and let them into the spotlight as well, it's our mission to listen to and support them. 🧡

fat queer people. you're gorgeous and deserve so much love. your bodies are so wonderful, never apologize for being you. 💛

skinny queer people. you're beautiful and i see you. remember to help lift up fat queer people this pride month. 💚

cis queer people. be a trans ally always, and speak up for your transgender and transsexual siblings. 🩵

trans queer people. you are so powerful, you're all lovely and such fighters in this world. 💙

nonbinary queer people. no matter how you choose to present, you are valid and never let anyone tell you who you should be. 💜

straight queer people. you are just as valid as the rest of us. never let anyone exclude you from your community. ❤️

arospec queer people. your love is beautiful, even if it's not what society considers to be standard or status quo. 🧡

acespec queer people. whether sex-repulsed, sex-favorable, or anywhere between, you belong on this spectrum. 💛

allo queer people. remember to be a representative of your aspec and arospec fellow queers and be an ally to them always. 💚

closeted queer people. we welcome you no matter your situation, thank you for being so brave. 🩵

out queer people. being out and proud is inspiring. let's all show support for the closet queers. 💙

young queer people. we are the future and we can make a real difference in the world for future generations. 💜

old queer people. thank you for building us safe spaces and paving the way for us, we have so much to thank you for. ❤️

disabled queer people. even if you can't celebrate pride the way you want, i love you and i see you. 🧡

able-bodied queer people. let's work together to create safe, accessible spaces for our disabled queer siblings. 💛

neurodivergent queer people. we'll fight to create sensory-friendly pride spaces, you'll all wonderful. 💚

neurotypical queer people. help us work to create our safe spaces as well, i appreciate all support you can give to us. 🩵

religious queer people. you are seen and loved by any deity or deities that you believe in. 💙

atheistic/agnostic queer people. never let anyone make you believe that you're invalid for not following or believing in a religion. 💜

and literally any brand of queer people i forgot. pride is for you. i love every single one of you 💞

[rovermcfly]

I'm actually so tired of playing along with this tumblr joke of "what if I said I find them hot 😅🙈🙊" and it's always about people who just don't fulfill every single conventionally attractive feature and are fat or have eye bags or are balding or have a mustache or a limb difference or are in their 60s or have crooked teeth or literally any singular feature that doesn't scream supermodel or superhero actor. why is it so normal on this of all websites to talk about attraction with so much shame and embarrassment and frankly, offensive biases. I'm used to this from tabloids and people who have never questioned beauty standards and would best be described as having high school bully mentalities, but here everyone claims to champion the queer way of life, the rejection of the norm but very few seem to actually internalize this meaningfully. if your kneejerk reaction to a fat man or a hairy woman or whoever it is that you find hot is to say "oh god how embarrassing that I think that!" you probably should think about why and if maybe you havent rejected the cishet norms entirely yet. let's embrace love and attraction and celebrate each other and each other's bodies and not shame them with our embarrassment over our attraction.

[mr-laveau]

Ayo it's your boy, uhh, skinny penis- bitch you know who tf it is hi munchkin <3 xoxo

What's your listener's name and nickname? Sweetheart, name pending,,,,

What's their backstory? As you may or may not remember - My SH is Afro-Latinx, from an empowered family. The previous generation (their parents) called out DUMP on mistreatment of human born and unempowered humans (being detained, lack of jobs and representation) which started a whole commotion for the treatment of everyone but empowered humans (feeders, humanborn, and unempowered humans) and led to restructuring of DUMP. Think if there was a magical civil rights act and equal employment act. Anyway, my SH comes into play when DUMP catches them in the wrong place/wrong time and some higher ups think this is the perfect moment for revenge - either SH goes to jail and destroys their family's upright reputation and a family member's run for office OR they work for DUMP as a way to keep an eye on the family. They hate every second of it and face a lot of pressure to conform (gender presentation wise, accepting smart comments about being a stealth and some other microaggressions) but they want to protect their family.

What's the desired aesthetic of your listener character (punk, greaser, bimbo, scene kid, schoolgirl)? I'm feeling make noir sexy again. Like if you made a 1940s mafia boss in modern day and VERY sexy but also stylish. Gotta keep up with fresh to death did you see my ice Milo Greer. Pinstripes, suspenders, harnesses/holsters, etc. But like also in a bring your own gender I don't trust your gender with raisins in it kind of way.

What's your listener's gender presentation like? Yeah so gender as in mind your business. Androgynous as in I do what I want. It's masc, it's femme, it's ambiguous, it's all of the above. Really the point is constantly serving hot girl (gn) shit and looking super sexy next to Milo. They're that super hot stylish couple everyone wishes at least a little bit they dressed like because it looks effortless. My SH uses they/them pronouns and identifies as queer as in what's it to you (or genderfluid!)

What's your listener's ethnicity? Afro-Latinx! I wanted a listener who could dance bachata, okay? They're Dominican.

What's your listener's age? Ummmmmm. I think about the same age as Milo, maybe a year older? So 31 this year.

What's your listener's body type/build? Taller than Milo for SURE, I think they're like tall-tall. Like at least 5'10. Also they're a dancer and a runner (investigator things) (perhaps they were even a track star) so they've got a tall, muscular kind of body type - but don't be afraid to give them some body fat! They're strong!

What's your listener's star sign? Taurus!

What are your listener's most important relationships and who are they connected to? Their most important relationships are for SURE with their family. Since dating Milo, they finally told their family why they started working for DUMP (lots of anxiety but they were met with a lot of support and love). They are super close to their family (which is a big extended family, lots of aunt and uncles and cousins and nieces and nephews and so on) and so they spend lots of time at family dinners/parties/celebrations and love to bring Milo with them. Because their family (unintentionally at first) became so politically active in Dahlia for the rights of human-born, unempowered humans, and feeders, they have a lot of political connections through their own work and through their family members - definitely in a well connected family!

What's your listener's hobbies/interests? They love to dance - big inspiration for them. They like partner dances and particularly love Bachata (something something fond memories watching their parents and family dance together and learning as they grew up) but they just like to dance in general. You will be catching them at Zumba classes at the local gym with the aunties and grandmas. They're also really connected to community events - there was a lot of distrust created by them joining DUMP and so they are really invested in their community service and improving their community. They loooove to cook, but they're a "let's cook together" not "I'm cooking get out of the kitchen" kind of person. Definitely a food experimenter and sometimes it can go badly. Also makes a mean cocktail - always invited to dinner parties or wanting to host them with Milo.

If your listener was a deity from a known mythology, what deity would they be? Why would you ask me this. I don't know! Maybe Terpsichore, one of the nine Greek muses associated with dancing? You don't understand how central dance is to this character. They are always dancing.

What Audio RP series are they from? RedactedASMR - Sweetheart

What kind of lover are they to their partner/what kind of friend are they? In a few words - silly-goofy, observant, and a whore (said with love). As for a friend, still silly-goofy and observant, but I think they're affectionate as hell. Think of a really sociable cat.

What is something/are some things that your listener values? They really value family and community - firm believer in it takes a village and we are all our brother's keeper (except of course when it comes to them because they should be able to help everyone and not need any help themselves. sweetheart things.) There is no understanding how invested they are in protecting and standing up for their community and that's why they put in 4x more work (and overtime) than others at DUMP - they believe in helping people and not going with the easy solution. So family, community, doing something you're passionate about every day, and fairness/justice.

Pick a song that you think represents your listener. https://open.spotify.com/track/3qQbCzHBycnDpGskqOWY0E?si=e8cb80d8d36a45b3 This song started making me think about songs for listeners to dance to and kind of kick-started this whole idea. I just have an image of Milo and SH dancing to this song together in the kitchen while something is simmering on the stove ok?

What's the inspiration behind your listener's design? I wanted a listener who could dance really well, and decided a speaker who DEFINITELY can dance is Milo. And then I had to figure out the whole cop thing, so here we are.

Could you give me a vague concept of what your listener's visual vibe is? Modernized sexy noir film - but if you could be the femme fatale and the detective and the criminal at any given point. Truly, they do it all.

What are some extra tidbits you wanna tell me about your listener? Neither Milo nor Sweetheart are good with scary stuff (despite them being a stealth) and neither of them are killing bugs. They call David or Asher to handle them (I think David kills them but Asher puts them outside). Sweetheart and Aggro? Best friends. Milo complains that they're closer than him and Aggro - something about a stealth having cat energy and Aggro just gets it. "The girls that get it, get it, Milo."

Laveau's Listener Design Lab - design #001 - Sweetheart - Lexi Moon

Heyyyy Lexi! Good to see you in my inbox and congrats on getting your listener as the first design for the labs! It was wonderful getting to work on a SH and your concept really stood out to me when I first saw it so I had to draw it up!

Design Notes!

For this design, your initial concepts made me think of a few people I could implement for inspirations to your SH's design. Those people being Catwoman from DC and Gomez Addams from the Addams Family!

From Gomez, I wanted to make Sweetheart's suit similar to the patterning of Gomez's while adding Catwoman's femme fatale flair to the design. You made a note where you wanted SH to look like a detective, a femme fatale and a criminal all in one go so I chose to aim for darker blues to show professionalism whilst implying a sense of mystery to the character–and of course we can't forget every femme fatale's signature bold lipstick colour. You can also see some of Catwoman's influence in the nails as I figured it'd be fun for them to make witty remarks while snapping back at Milo with hand gestures. Additionally, I decided to add a few embellishments to show SH's lack of total compliance to the dress code of D.U.M.P by giving them piercings and tattoos; The moon earrings here is my favourite because every SH should have a moon motif but also given the symbolisms associated with the moon and the energy you wanted your SH to capture, I felt it was the perfect choice; the blue rose tattoos are also fun imo because the thorns can be interpreted as restrictive shackles or as "a rose with thorns", the choice to also incorporate blue roses was also informed by my knowledge of what they mean symbolically (that being mystery, admiration, uniqueness and aspiration) . Finally, I also tailored SH's clothes to be more ready for action whilst being fashionable and danceable (including the oxford shoes I added) so they can always move unrestrained whilst also being the hottest thing that Milo ever laid eyes on.

Overall, this was a really fun concept for me to work on and I really enjoyed being able to design your listener, hope you enjoy!

wanna have your listener designed by me? Check out my rules to the Listener Design Lab and send an ask my way!

[cupcraft]

It's kill the cop inside your head until you have to reconcile with the queer identities you "don't like" that "don't fit the right definitions". Its kill the cop in your head until you have to supports sex workers/porn stars/only fans accounts/nsfw content creators/strippers, it's kill the cop in your head until people want to present their gender in a way you don't understand or like who want to get body modifications you don't understand or like. It's kill the cop in your head until you see fat people existing. It's kill the cop in your head until people aren't able bodied enough aren't mentally abled enough are "too mentally ill" that don't have the non ugly symptoms of mental illness. It's kill the cop in your head until you want to reinforce the patriarchy and white supremacy and other modalities of bigotry because it doesn't affect you, until marginalized people are asking you to do better or are asking your bigoted content creators/celebrities to do better. It's kill the cops in your head until protesters do something a little bit "icky" until they're defending themselves against the fascist violent police until they're fighting against the US military industrial complex. It's kill the cop In your head until unhoused people exist around you in your communities. It's kill the cop in your head until people use substances/drink/smoke or are having active addiction or have had addiction before. It's kill the cop in your head until kink and fetish and sexuality is being liberated, is visible at pride and in your communities. It's kill the cop in your head until laborers are striking and protesting workplace abuse and mistreatment in a way you don't like and are being "too aggressive" to capitalists.

What this is to say some of you don't actually want to kill the cop in your head you really don't.