#rapid tone ingredients
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dadsbongos · 25 days ago
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gurgle. spit. rinse. do not repeat. do not repeat.
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18.3 k words [o mein gott!] / warnings - suicidal ideation/suicide, this bitch is mentally ill, unrequited love but it isn't but it is but it isn't, intentionally strange text formatting
summary - trapped on the tulpar. surrounded by your life's work, chemicals and blood stains. and then there's sweet daisuke, who wants you so, so bad.
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[2 months after the crash]
ETHANOL POISONING RISK ⌧
IF YOU OR SOMEONE YOU ARE WITH SWALLOWS MORE THAN FOUR TEASPOONS OF ETHANOL CONTENT IT MAY LEAD TO:
ABDOMINAL PAIN CONFUSION, SLURRED SPEECH INTERNAL BLEEDING SLOW BREATHING DECREASED ALERTNESS VERTIGO VOMITING, NAUSEA DIARRHEA 
IF DIARRHEA OR VOMIT CONTAINS BLOOD, OR IF SYMPTOMS DO NOT NATURALLY DESCEND, SEEK MEDICAL ASSISTANCE SUCH AS 9-1-1 OR LOCAL POISON CONTROL. 800-222-1222.
BEFORE CALLING, HAVE THE FOLLOWING INFORMATION OF THE SWALLOWER ON HAND:
WEIGHT HEIGHT AGE TIME SWALLOWED AMOUNT SWALLOWED
IF NOT ALL OR NONE OF THE INFORMATION IS ON HAND, DO NOT DELAY CALLING. DO NOT WAIT. CALL HELP. CALL HELP.
CALL HELP.
“Got 14% ethanol,” Swansea croaks, rotating the opaque cyan bottle in one hand with raised brows. A piqued lip. Wrinkles stretching until the skin is smooth as he observes the sloshing liquid.
“Is that bad?” you wonder aloud, holding the bottle up over your face -closer toward the dusty orange overheads and swish the plastic until its contents cyclone, “That’s alcohol, right? Cleaning and shit?”
Anya grimaces, scanning the ingredients along the back of the bottle, “All the sugar in this eliminates the disinfecting properties.”
Daisuke sucks his bottom lip between his teeth, one hand covering the other around the bottle. Fingers tighten around the pearly cap, twisting it just enough not to break the plastic seal, “But then it doesn’t taste bad, right?”
“We can’t drink this,” Anya shakes her head, reaching out as if to snatch the mouthwash from the intern’s grasp. The same way one would rip chocolate out from a dog’s mouth.
“Why not?” Swansea’s tone is light enough to come as sincerity rather than derision. He flicks the cap open with all the ease of popping a button and roughly punches his bottle against the one in your hand, “Ten and a half years sober: down the drain!”
You were in a minor collision as a child. Your mother’s car rear-ended on the highway while you swung your feet from the backseat. The abrupt jerking flung you hard into the back of the driver’s seat before your seatbelt whipped you back. A rapid burning needled along your neck, leaving you a whiny blob while Mom grumbled out of the car and rounded toward her assailant. Through tinted windows and bleary lashes, you catch turned faces -even drivers slanting your way and back quicker than the crash even happened. Leering curiously, children pushing over each other to peek closer than their siblings and wives’ lips moving as fast as their brains can narrate the scene to husbands. 
Currently, you’re no better: head swinging toward Swansea’s tensed gulping like malleable rubber.
Wrinkles vining by his eyes and throat bobbing unevenly, Swansea pulls back with misty, saccharine drool pooling in the corners of his mouth, wiping it up with the back of his hand before loudly sucking wind between clenched teeth. Even louder, he smacks his lips, clicks his teeth, and stares at the floor. From above a low buzz blankets the soft humming of machinery below, lights clawing to be heard in the still survey of Swansea swallowing way more than four teaspoons of pure mouthwash.
Daisuke pops the seal on his bottle, and Anya blinks wildly as if upon the fifth hundredth one she’ll awake to normality, Jimmy cringes with the slowest headshake of disapproval. You shift closer, scooting your shoes sideways rather than taking independent steps, and place a cautious hand between Swansea’s shoulder blades,
“How was it…?”
Expecting the old man to spontaneously buckle forward with a geyser of crystal blue vomit streaked with innards, you slink back as his pruny mouth falls open. 
Broad shoulders straightening and eyes alight the closest thing you could call joy since the voyage began, Swansea tosses back another shot of Dragonbreath before looking at you, “Not fucking bad.”
*
[!] new message: kills 99.99999999999999999%
[sent by: CPT. curly, grant | subsection: the bathroom is moldy again]
*
[5 weeks before the crash]
Modus operandi declares you perform the most daunting and grotesque step first, then you can peel off the second skin you wrapped around yourself -- throw it into one of the yellow buckets meant to be incinerated -- and wash your hands thoroughly. After that due diligence, you earn the much less demoralizing honor of scrubbing the sinks.
Although. Ola kala dictates you’re being too harsh on the various thrones your crew occupies:
Pretending to find this deal disgusting after five years would be juvenile and beneath you, and nobody would care even if you did. If anything, they could get upset thinking you’d slack off and get the crew credits package reduced. Maybe Daisuke would be a little empathetic, at least. He’s new enough, face round enough, hands soft enough to still pity the janitor just doing their job. Maybe he’d offer to help (and then you could sigh and swoon gratitude before assuring that no, Daisuke, you’re not BBP trained). 
Streaks of greying brown crust around the curve of the metal bowl, plumped just beneath the seat. Scrubbing down by the siphon jet, your sponge meant to be steel wool barely grapples reddish muck from the drain -- you assume because anything with harsher ridges would scar the company’s precious shitbuckets. Boxed off with the same greenish, blueish turquoise color that makes up your coveralls. Thin plastic boxes for the sake of privacy. Technically everybody in the ship could pile into this bathroom at once -- three in the stalls and two at the urinals.
It reminds you of malls back on earth, or grocery stores, not an employment bathroom. 
Smaller gunk already stuck around the bowl’s interior needs to be scraped up beneath a solid silver putty knife. Each blackened chip cracks off easily enough that you can almost act like this isn’t the epitome of your job title.
At this point, you don’t bother wiping your eyes -- content to let them blur with tears until you’re finished. After all, it isn’t like trying to smear the waterworks away with your forearm will make stinging chemicals fumes drift anywhere else. It’d only make your skin damp.
Beneath the concoction of bleach and syrupy blue whiteners, is a new stale wafting.
Oddly: it’s almost sweet, the smell of the bathroom. Or maybe your brain tells you the stench is more pleasant than it really is because you’ve spent so long surrounded by it. Most of the perceived sweetness is from that earthy musk, the things Pony Express feeds you: Canned soups and processed meats and germinated water pouches, all chock full of corpo-grade nutrients and healthy minerals. Not just a couple of years ago, they even used to permit snack sacks like nuts and freeze-dried berries. You never knew why they stopped doing that. You suppose no answer is satisfying because it wouldn’t matter, the smell doesn’t change much, anyway.
After the feces settles up to your brain, and you’re certain the stink is caked into today’s uniform, you get the hint of piss. 
Depending on who most recently took a leak, the smell is different. Sometimes it’s almost sugary, but like if a melon had sat in the sun for two days. Sometimes it’s electric and burns second-hand, making your entire face wrinkle up at the shock. Sometimes it’s got the quietest hint of cat litter. You don’t care to know who’s who. You just acknowledge that they’re all different.
Human bodies are an absolute nightmare. Most times the actual people those bodies host are not much better. 
Years ago you learned that breathing through your mouth did not help at all, then you would just taste the mixture. And the idea of all those particles on your tongue was more than enough to make you hurl. Usually, the job isn’t all bad because at the very bottom when you scoop what should not be touched, you can catch the most relieving smell of cologne. With how many men occupy the ship, the least they could do is be some nasal comfort while you scrub their bowels.
Suds soak acorn-colored, slowly growing darker brown the longer they sit as you attempt to rid all evidence that anybody on this ship ever shit in their entire life.
Backing out from this stall to glance down the row, you see more blackish splotches painting beneath the seats. Staining where each toilet is bolted into the floor. Stubborn to be forgotten.
Yeah. You don’t think these things could’ve survived just one more day.
[1 month before the crash]
“Ain’t shit else to drink around here,” Swansea clacks his Pony Express mug -stained around the lip and Polle picture cracking from years of use- against your own empty cup, “Cheers, kid. Find something else.”
“You just admitted there’s nothing else!” you sigh, glaring after the man as he strides unsympathetically toward the door. 
In fair humor, Anya shakes her head, clicking her tongue, “How could you, Swansea?”
“Yeah,” Daisuke jeers after his mentor, “Boo, Swansea!”
“Boo!” you copy, deciding against a morning drink altogether. Replacing your cup haphazardly in a random cabinet.
“What’re we boozing?” a gravely Southern drawl bawls from the doors, Curly just barely scraping himself to the side as his mechanic slips out.
Swansea thumbs over his shoulder and grunts, “Your idiots don’t understand limited supply.”
“Ah,” Curly catches the wave of brown liquid in his mechanic’s mug, “Coffee’s a hot commodity, what can you do?”
“They can not lose their Goddamn heads,” the man gruffs into the steaming cup, sipping as he returns to work. 
Once the mechanic is out of earshot, Curly frowns your way and confesses, “I was hoping to get a last cup before the pot was dry.”
“Oh well,” Anya sing-songs, combing both hands through her messy shag, “At least we won’t have a fight over it anymore.”
Daisuke nods cheerfully, despite being alert and bright-eyed without any caffeine, you assume it comes with his youth (because the few-year difference between you two is soooooo massive), “Exactly!”
“We can just go back to cute family breakfasts,” you chide.
Curly snorts. Nodding shortly.
Then he mumbles, “Jim’ won’t be too happy about the coffee being gone.”
“Is he up yet?” before Anya’s question earns reply, she spins toward you, “I think I could use some help sorting meds.”
“Oh,” you shrug, “Sure.”
Daisuke perks up, looking rapidly from you to Anya and back to you, “Can I come?”
“Swansea won’t miss you?” you tease.
He pauses in earnest, though. Eyes sliding off toward the motion-activated Polle statue, a consistent ‘uhhhhhhhh’ slinking out from his throat before he shakes his head, “Nahh. I don’t think so.”
Curly’s head darts your collective way, tilting specifically at Daisuke, “You don’t?”
Daisuke does think so, but what’s got more importance to it: A workplace romp or some mechanic experience during his internship? Pretty obviously the answer is you.
“He’ll know where to find me,” Daisuke shrugs easily enough, sweat bulleting down his temple beneath Curly’s knowing gaze.
“If you say so…” the blonde grins.
[7 days before the crash]
Anya stopped you on your way out after mopping the floors. Given that Anya isn’t a pig and most on-ship accidents are related to Daisuke banging around in utility, you hardly ever go into her office without scheduling. But she’d pinged you specifically that the floors were a little more heather gray than eggshell white lately. By time you finished pushing watered-down bleach around the tiles, you realized the floor was always heather gray. This was a trap.
She’s shuffling papers, looking at you through thick, low-hanging lashes, and shrugging, “It’s that time again.”
“Boo.”
“Can’t boo your way out of it now,” she sits and gestures across the table, clearly a silver base painted over with sad beige. You follow with a rumbling groan and fold your arms.
“Okay, shoot,” you throw your head back over the edge of the chair, staring upside down at the digital cloudy sky hanging above the patient beds. You think it’d be a more serene touch if the clouds could stroll by, but Pony Express -regardless of how big the Tulpar is- apparently cannot comprehend such advancement and maintains their stance on stationary clouds.
“You’re not taking this seriously…” a treacherous accusation because,
“If I didn’t take this seriously, I’d tell you I wanna bang Polle.”
“How’d you know about that? These are confidential and- !”
“He brags about saying it, he thinks it’s hilarious.”
“Oh…”
“Anyway,” you check your wrist which does not have a watch on it, and say, “I gotta get to the kitchen in five, so? Can we get this rolling?”
“That was just rude,” she lays the papers in her hand flat and rests her head in her palm.
“Sorry…”
Anya gives no discernable reaction to your apology, pouty lips popping open blandly around a rehearsed questionnaire she can read with her eyes closed, “Have you been able to complete your mandated task as custodial engineer efficiently and to your fullest capacity?”
Perhaps feeling a little guilty about how you spoke earlier, you clear your throat and offer something just a tad meatier than your typical ‘yep’, “As well as the past five years I’ve been here. Maybe even better this time around.”
She’s unimpressed, “Are you capable of shifting multiple variables on a tight schedule?”
You recline, “Naturally.”
“Are you overwhelmed by sudden and unprompted changes in task when necessary?”
“Nope.”
“Have you experienced lapses in time or are conflicted by the day/night screening schedule?”
“Nah-uh.”
“Does prolonged silence and isolation upon the freighter concern you and/or inspire unpleasant thoughts?”
“Nothing.”
“Are you experiencing, whether of your volition or not, troubling thoughts of hurting yourself or others?”
“No.” you sweat. It’s a little hot in medical today, shouldn’t Swansea fix that?
“Hmmmmmm,” you already know the criticism about to fly from her at that testy hum, and those narrowed eyes -suspicion masked by playfulness, “You gave all the same answers…”
“Well, they’re the same because nothing about me changes!” she merely sighs in response, and you cut her next thought short, “Honestly, Anya, don’t worry about this all too much. Jimmy’s right, this job isn’t hard. Anybody could do it, and everywhere needs it.”
The only difficult part is finding a place to hire you.
[1.5 hours after the crash]
Sprays of blood are already browning onto the metal floor. Stretches of pure red skin smoking from between the floor grates, mushy fat parts caught in the lining. Gloved hands pull at the elastic tissue, gummy white slop plopping back onto the floor. Hurriedly, those gloved hands toss the skin into a round yellow waste bucket -the kind meant to be incinerated after one use- because you’re convinced that if you move fast enough you can pretend the hands aren’t yours. 
Instead, a disembodied entity is what plucks shredded chunks of the captain out of the floor, where they’re starting to dry between the lining. 
Smaller gunk already stuck to the ground needs to be scraped up beneath a latex-covered nail. They crack off easy enough, you can almost act like it never happened. Really, you could treasure the memory compared to what you know lies ahead.
Just inside the recoverable parts of the cockpit are the hands and feet Swansea axed off mere minutes ago.
If you stress your ears then beyond the shrieking from Captain Curly, you can hear Anya and Daisuke wailing also. Blubbering meaningless comforts Anya trips over herself to bandage him up. A cloth skin to replace what you’re stripping off the ship.
At this point, you don’t bother wiping your eyes -- content to let them blur with tears until you’re finished. After all, it isn’t like smearing the blood on your forearm will aid the situation, and it certainly won’t make the smell of burning flesh dissipate.
Not when the scent has successfully buried into the back of your nose, and is nailing toward your brain.
Sizzling fat and iron make for a nauseating sweetness, the faintest earthy musk just beneath. Then after the whiff settles, the most putrid sourness of exposed, warm meat chases. 
Breathing through your mouth helps none, then you just taste the mixture. Making your stomach lurch, bile rushing up before you swallow it down in rough chunks that drag down the canal of your throat.
At the very bottom, when you scoop what should not be touched, you can catch the most relieving smell of Curly’s cologne. 
Suds soak pink, slowly growing darker the longer they sit as you attempt to rid all evidence of how violently you each had to rip Curly out of the cockpit. He was unceremoniously dragged along the floor, and no amount of distance from here to the medbay would make the trail lighten. Meaning, as you work your way back, any more muscle stripped from the exposed grouts will be firmly stuck down onto the floor.
Looking down the hall, you see blood rusting on the floor. Lots of it. Stubborn to be forgotten.
You’ll be surprised if Curly makes it just one more day.
[!] new message [!]
Peace and quiet.
Static at either side, your hands have the politest little splay. Webbing tickles as wind whistles through and a moist tar nose pokes around, short auburn fur stabbing into your knuckles. Hot air fans your skin every offbeat. Yellow wings wink from below, dotting dew-slicked sage tendrils. Spiders wave from behind pale silky petals. 
You pray to avoid the temptation of casting eyes any nearer above ground. At least this way, staring out into the horizon -- trying to peek over downy hills. Humble curves curling beneath a seafoam green sky, just tinging azure in the corners of your eyes. You hear a breeze blowing through trees -not unlike the sucking of big teeth- but nowhere in sight do you find thick trunks or brushes. You see flapping wings swiftly gliding fatty birds until they sizzle deep into the sun’s scorching image, but you hear no caws. 
A mushy, sticky roundness skims your middle finger, making you flinch back wildly. Though you don’t dare drop your stare… it wouldn’t matter either way, you can see more than enough no matter how intensely you attempt to dodge it.
Thick gashes in a cluster-quad cover the top of the thin deer’s skull. Two beneath the eyes and along the snout with two more stretching across the top bend in bend, toward where antlers sprout. Each ragged sniff causes the pear shapes to suddenly inflate, folds stretching until you can make out the pinkish flesh beneath faint dark fur. You’d been desperate to avoid knicking the bulbs and discovering their feel, so to find that they felt like silly putty stretched around an elbow was plenty disturbing.
The most you’ll allow yourself to glimpse are those awful antlers. Frail and formed in straight zig-zags, sickly almost yellow. Despite splitting straight from the deer’s head, you can see where skin parts around the thin branches, looks… homemade. Like yanked chicken wire, or an unbound hanger. 
And the closer you look, the more patches you see in its pelt. Pinky lumps glaring into flighty eyes.
Swallowing hard, you just try to keep your gaze locked outward -- into the wide expanse beyond smooth rolling earth. No clouds. No sun. Just seafoam pale light.
Another deep inhale has a warm, soft, almost gelatin-like corm thing filling the gaps between your knuckles. You think the glands are whiter than they used to be, and you think they’re staring, but you can’t be sure; you’re intent on not looking.
You just wanted peace and quiet.
*
[!] new message: the 00.00000000000000001% remaining
[sent by: zare, jimmy | subsection: stop leaving your fucking buckets everywhere i just tripped]
*
[1 week before the crash]
Fish. Green scales and an open slash down the rotund little gut. Flopping into one, mushy pile. Content in nature, to be eaten is to complete their cycle. Bred to be consumed and caught between molars, molars belonging to men with poor dental hygiene. Men like Jimmy, who scream in faces no matter how obviously and tightly they wrinkle in disgust.
“It’s unbelievable how many times I’ve had to talk to you about leaving out buckets, this shit is impossible to avoid when you stand it in the middle of the fucking walkway!” he spits in your face, snarling, and without pause to let you explain yourself he ramps up again, “You don’t listen when I ask nicely, so now I have to start yelling. And another thing- !”
“Heyyyy,” Daisuke waltzes in, a dramatic bounce to each stomp and hair bouncing around his shoulders, “I had the soft sponge you were looking for! Stole it for some spilled tonic, sorry!”
He lets out a quiet ‘eughh’, halting full force just after the door to examine your predicament. Jimmy is practically bent over you, stabbing a finger in your face with his mouth split, throat swollen with venom glands. 
“What’s going on?” he drops the sponge-bound hand at his side and frowns at the co-pilot.
A violation, technically. Crewmates are not to berate one another on deck, but the reporting route is so demeaningly difficult that now you just let Jimmy go off. It’s easier that way.
“Sounds pretty brutal…”
Jimmy’s seething, fist clenching, and you dodge past him to slip the sponge from Daisuke, “Don’t worry about it,” you shoot a raised brow over your shoulder at the brunette, “We’re over it anyway?”
Your answer comes in a scoff and head shake -- resounding agreement. 
[0 days before the crash]
Slamming sideways into a bolted shelf forces a hard guffaw from your lungs. You hardly get time to cradle your bruised core or question what sent you flying when suddenly the trusty old Tulpar rattles violently. Tripping you over hard, solid ground, you barely manage to catch yourself on the rungs of one shelf before your nose cracks on the supply door.
“Hey!” you shriek, another rocky bump shaking you off the shelf and sliding your shoulder into the opposite wall, “Jimmy! Help!” 
Polle smiles at the yelp, calling an unhelpful, “Don’t drink undrinkables! If you or someone on ship does: call help at 800-222-1222!”
The doors part swiftly, clicking loudly as two hands force them aside faster. Hands that you’re sure are not Jimmy’s unless he spontaneously got more tan and started wearing thick silver rings. This is strange because you’re sure Jimmy was the one lingering outside the closet just seconds ago, sure maybe looking a bit spacey and distracted but not that spacey.
Your name isn’t called by Jimmy’s voice, either.
It’s Daisuke’s. 
Doors clash against his elbows, fervently trying to squash him but he puffs out wider, stuck into the clacking jaws like a louse and he reaches out to you with the most concerned folds in his face. He screams for you again, “Grab my hand!”
You do, nails biting his wrists with enough teeth to draw blood. He makes no complaints, adrenaline masking any possible sting as he hoists you out of the custodial office. The momentum slings you both straight onto the floor, heads knocking against each other. He rolls each arm tight around you while scooching toward one wall with the strength of his thighs.
“I don’t know what’s going on,” he pants, “Captain just ran by and said to get low!”
“Where’d Jimmy- ?!” 
You’re cut off by a blistering slam -- metal shredding against hard rock. Tulpar screams that way as she dies. Yet something screams louder: animalistic and ragged, pure terror dragging through the walls of the ship like barbed wire. Echoing in bubbles, filling each inch of the vessel until it’s overcome by the shirrrrrrrrrrrrr and whirl of thick, luscious emergency foam spewing out of Tulpar’s gaping wounds. Sparks spitting as fast as still-damp froth can put them out.
Fizzling out with surprising serenity. 
Overheads once blood red blink blinding white twice before cutting. Drenching you both in pitch black.
Daisuke squeezes your arm in one hand and palms the flat of your spine with another, wrenching increasing bundles of fabric into his hand. He gasps and trembles, closing your body off between his legs. When all you hear is his thundering breath, you ask, 
“Did we just crash?”
Silence consumes you. 
No humming gears or hissing pipes. Just your tempered exhales and Daisuke’s gasping. 
“I think so,” he sniffles, unwinding the arm wrapped around yours to scrub away the wetness dribbling down his face before it crusts. 
You lunge off each other, still clasping hands, breaths mingling between your buzzing faces. 
Lights flash hot white once. Then twice. Then red. Then they flicker back to normal.
“That must be the backup generator,” Daisuke assures before you have the chance. He nods unsteadily to himself, “Swansea must’ve flipped it…” he laughs tenderly and without humor, “He’s probably pissed. I totally ran out without saying anything.”
“Yeah…” your head is a little too thick with foam to realize the implications of what he said, “Probably.”
[9 hours before judgement]
teeny bopper thinking with his dick. some useless kid. a cute kissing buddy.
Daisuke can play lots of roles, just never the right one. 
“It’s time to be brave, Daisuke,” Jimmy asserts, searching for any weak points he can exploit, “You want to impress that mop-pusher of yours, right? And Swansea’ll be proud, too.”
Daisuke rallies himself, radically stiffening. Both terrified and electrified at the proposition, “You really think?”
And Jimmy’s stark certainty just emboldens him, “You’ll get a recommendation and a date. Everyone’s counting on you. Captain’s orders.”
Daisuke knows you’ve been on edge, maybe if he can rescue Anya you’ll realize he’s worth something more serious than late-night makeouts.
*
[!] new message: polle says: “call help!”
[sent by: musume, anya | subsection: evals are meant to be like a pop quiz i cant tell you when theyre coming up… even jimmy knows that…]
*
[5 months after the crash]
Most of Pony Express’ provisional chemicals are Grade A: Windex watered down with literal H2O -- a stock of bottles pumped into the bottom of the ship before taking off. Meaning the only genuine water not provided by Dragonbreath bubbles in plastic cylinders beneath your feet. You’ve assumed the water to be from a sink in some warehouse, compound that with the fact it’s mixed with a bleaching agent and it has to have less germs than the water packets provided onboard.
Reaching blindly into the shelf at eye level, you grasp the first bottle that fits into your palm. Pulling and turning it. Full. Blue. Not electric blue, though, more like cartoon water. Not too much more saturated than the Dragonbreath water packets.
Sandpaper tongue scraping the ridges of your mouth, you try your best to remember how refreshing water is. You don’t think you can.
The synthesizer has run dry. And the vendor is dead.
Your lips are chapped, skinning each other as you push them together.
Rolling the bottle from one hand to the other, you take care to monitor its weight. Heavy. How much liquid lulls around. Over half, you think you could handle over half.
You’ve had mouthwash already.
If your kidneys can survive that, they can take this, right?
It’s just more alcohol with water. You don’t even think it’s ethanol, which basically means it’s safer than mouthwash.
IF POSSIBLE: WAKE AND MOVE PERSONS TO A COMFORTABLE PLACE TO SLEEP OFF EFFECTS. MAKE SURE PERSON WILL NOT: FALL, CHOKE ON TONGUE OR VOMIT, OR OTHERWISE SUSTAIN INJURY.
TO ENSURE PERSON DOES NOT CHOKE ON VOMIT, TURN ONTO THEIR SIDE.
DO NOT MAKE PERSON THROW UP UNLESS TOLD TO DO SO BY A HEALTHCARE PROFESSIONAL OR POISON CONTROL.
CHECK PERSON FREQUENTLY TO MAKE SURE CONDITION DOES NOT WORSEN.
WHEN IN DOUBT CALL FOR HELP.
CALL FOR HELP.
CALL FOR HELP. 98.9% 91.1% 80.02221222% KILLS99.9%OFGERMS
[4.5 months after the crash]
“I dunno if I can ever have a mojito again…”
Anya is the only one to look up from her cards, pouty lips sinking further and brows bending. Swansea makes a disconcerted grunt from the base of his throat. Daisuke doesn’t move whatsoever, blinking sluggishly down at his dealt hand -- mouth open and eyes listless. He doesn’t seem particularly inspired by anything before him, and you doubt the raw alcohol coursing his veins is helping any.
Jimmy has locked himself in medical to feed what remains of Captain Curly his painkillers. He requires absolute solitude and recently, nobody wants to disturb Jimmy while he prowls the ship for another fruitless task.
Swallowing pooled spit from the bowl of his jaw, Daisuke’s gaze rolls around the table with all the grace of a loose marble before he flings a hand forward. Knocking his bottle of mouthwash onto the side, it gushes out rolling across the table and wetting the spare pile of cards before he gasps loudly and picks it up. He watches you stretch over the table to move the cards.
Swansea snaps, slurring some scathing statement Daisuke doesn’t hear over the sight of you. Shirt sliding up your waist, exposing skin he shamelessly ogles. 
Daisuke plays the hard rim of his uncapped bottle against his lip, tipping back until the hard minty taste is scarring down his tongue. With it comes the immediate urge to gag and spit, but he powers through like a man: the way Swansea says.
He has to close his eyes and dig all five nails into his palm just to get the stuff down. Maybe it’s because he’s not like you- he’s never had a mojito before.
“Are they bad?” he asks.
“Huh?” you copy, swiping damp cards against your coverall pant leg.
Anya quietly observes the interaction, laying her hand upright on the table for all to see. Though you and Daisuke are too preoccupied bumbling toward one another. And Swansea hasn’t been properly taking his turns since the second round.
“Mojitos.”
You don’t have the strength or mind to explain yourself so you just nod and keep rubbing the suit off onto your pants -moist red and black shreds sprinkled across your thigh, “Yeah. Like shit.”
[2 months after the crash]
A long time ago, back when you first joined the crew, there was a Polle poster advertising kitchen safety. They discontinued it a year later for ‘violent imagery’ and decided to loop kitchen safety beneath the Don’t be Daft issues. That poster was your favorite, though, and given the state of things you almost regret not stealing one before they vacated every copy from every freighter. It hadn’t been the cutest, but it was definitely eye-catching. Every time you passed, you couldn’t avoid paying attention.
A goldfish with delicate, silky fins swims toward the bottom of its slender tank. Full to the jet-black lid with water, tiny oxygen bubbles floating along the right-hand side, just near the handle. COOK WITH CARE! glubbed the fish SAFETY ISN’T TO SPARE!
An uncharacteristically careless Polle sipped coffee with a gloved hand while the other was hairs away from starting the blender. Silver blades jumping to dice a clueless friend as it inspected the glittery metal.
Don’t be Daft is much less effective, in your opinion. After all, the much less foreboding message has done nothing to prohibit you from giving into Swansea’s pressure. 
”Don’t you miss it?” he teased. For a man fresh out of sobriety, he sounded so devoted to everything he once battled. But you know what? 
He was right. You did miss it. At least the heavy-lidded, sleepy little high of it anyway. 
Absolutely not the taste.
Sour and bitter works best not consumed at all, but you especially think the manmade minty freshness makes everything worse. Enhances that burning taste until it scorches out your nose and works up the back of your eyes. Heating your face from the inside. 
Laying your cheek against the cold wood of your table, both arms coiled around your waist. Hoping any kind of familiar pressure will keep down what cannot be swallowed.
You think you only make it worse, like pushing on a tender bruise. 
Woozy eyes swing to the half-empty bottle of sugary alcohol. Just the thought of another swig has you stumbling onto both feet, ankles rolling aside until you’re crashing into the wall. Clawing toward the sink to plop your head in. Slobber veining toward the drain as you moan once.
Then twice.
Then red stains shoot into the sink. You don’t get to gasp before another shot comes back up, foul flurrying from your mouth. So hard your head feels ready to pop open.
Rust companies you. Knowing it's your own makes you shrink back. Concern immediate, then shriveling: if that’s blood, you should seek the nurse. You should cry out for Anya. 
Another acidic spout cuts through your stomach, up your throat, and takes out a tooth before clattering into the metal sink.
You watch it slide like thick slime into the drain. Pulling out the tooth and pocketing it for the trash. Rinsing blood from the rim with fresh mouthwash, then gargling and spitting the taste from your mouth. You nearly puke again just from the smell.
The gap in the back of your mouth shrieks out. You just push your lips together tighter, taking the bottle with you as you slink away from the scene and toward the custodial office. Conveniently and coincidentally across the ship from the medical room. 
[1 day after the crash]
“Have you been able to complete your mandated task as custodial engineer efficiently and to your fullest capacity?”
You inhale the clinically stale air of the medical room, imagining it could dig out the remaining chunks of rotted, cooking meat from your nasal cavity. No matter how roughly you beat your coveralls or snort the chemical fumes in your office, the stench of grilled fat and blood persists. Clawing one nail beneath the other, you wonder if suddenly popping keratin straight from the bed would make Anya forget this evaluation.
“Do you have to do this?”
Anya shoots you an unimpressed glare, “Have you been able to- !”
“Yes, I have.”
“Are you capable of shifting multiple variables on a tight schedule?”
Pressing up harder from beneath your thumbnail until it stings, you’re sure the time is coming: she’ll forget all about this and just bandage you up. Cooing dull reassurances rather than poking for the softest part of your belly to slice open. Guts don’t need to be shared, you don’t think, there’s nothing to talk about.
“I didn’t suddenly stop being capable, no.”
“Are you overwhelmed- !”
“Anya,” you sigh, giving up on the nail torture to massage tensing temples, “Nothing changed. I’m fine.”
She stares at you too hard. No amusement in her straight face before she confesses, “I don’t believe you.”
“What does it matter what you don’t believe?” you groan, slacking into the seat across from her.
A thin teal curtain is drawn around the edge of Captain Curly’s bed. Aside from the offbeat squelch of his throat opening for air, silence radiates from that side of the room while he lies practically comatose. Anya told you she assumed the instant his adrenaline wavered, he was out from the blood loss. And he’s been out since. 
“In the event of a work-related incident: are you fearful of continuing work with Pony Express?”
“None of us work for them after this,” you spit, if it wasn’t already faxed out then surely this crash would be enough to terminate your lot.
She repeats herself until you throw out a frustrated, “no! fucking- no!”
And she keeps flapping her lips, droning with procedure that’s on the bottom of your priority list, “Do you consider harming others when you otherwise would not have?”
“No, Anya! I’m fine!” i just smell a corpse in the back of my mind at all times. it won’t leave. i can’t get rid of it. i smell it now, and it reeks. it just makes me want to
“Have you considered harming yourself?” she trails off, blinking up at you. Papers flopped onto her desk, which was shuffled toward the right in the crash. Uprooted and askew.
Uprooted and askew, you slowly shake your head and answer, voice almost drowned out by the new sound of Curly breathing, “No.”
She muffles your name, bit-crushed beneath the captain’s impression. Strange how someone so big becomes something so small: you keck at the horrible passing thought. Curly the esteemed captain, a slab of cooked meat.
You salivate.
People salivate before vomiting, right?
You can say it’s that. You’re so sick you’ll vomit.
“I’m serious,” you think that’s what Anya says, “I know it seems pointless, but I need you to be open with me. This isn’t about Pony Express anymore. I’m just worried about you.”
You could tell her she should be, or you could spare her the piece of mind. Give her peace of mind.
“I’m fine, Anya,” you stand and grin, a firm perch of the lips, “Really.”
Anya rises before you have time to process the protesting screech from her chair, she darts around the edge of her shifted desk and latches onto you. Wrapping arms around your neck and squeezing air out, “Please… please...”
“You’re so thoughtful, Anya,” you return the embrace, shoulders drooping. Her nails scrape the nape of your neck. It’s bizarrely reassuring to have no choice in her arms, “You’re kind. I wish…” you sigh, barely clinging to the remnants of adulthood in you saying it’s too immature to bury your face into her jugular, “I wish my mom was more like you growing up.”
Anya’s claws sink into the top-notch of your spine, cutting sideways in harsh lines before she takes your shoulders in her hands. As if she really was your mother, as if you really did something wrong, as if you deserved all the ensuing agony: she shoves you back with a ghastly face. Onyx eyes swimming in a pearly sea, shock etched into her -down to her trembling hands. She jerks them into her sides to hide the shaking.
“Get out!”
“What?”
“Get out,” she steps back, “I’m not- I’m not your mother.”
“I- yeah, uhm… I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to… I’m not saying…”
“Get out.”
“Anya, I’m sorry!”
“Get!” she flings papers your way, they fly away in every direction except toward you. When they float and drift onto the floor by your feet, you see the evaluation questions. Pencil notes beneath each one, “Out! Get out!”
You’ve never seen her so desperately upset. Not even at the news of layoffs. Not after her several rejections to medical school.
“Anya?” what’s wrong?
She skirts behind the curtain surrounding Curly’s bed.
You don’t get to ask. You assume the evaluation has been concluded.
[3 weeks before the crash]
A curved spine and furrowed brows are often the sign of an artist in deep concentration. With the way his knuckles are whitening hard pressed against Anya’s metal desk, you don’t doubt Daisuke envisions himself as an artist either. His little tongue creeping out the side of his lips. Pen swipes scratching through the room.
Anya smiles down at the man, “I can’t file my reports when you steal all the pens, you know?”
Daisuke grunts in acknowledgment, mouth opening like he’s about to respond only to let out a resounding, utter silence. 
You laugh at the profound focus he exhibits, “I’ve never seen you so serious.”
“Hold on, hold on,” he’s muttering, then shooting up with the lemony post-it cupped to his chest, “Done!”
“Let’s see it,” Anya waves.
Daisuke flips the tiny square around to show off his work: a wide forehead parted by two obnoxious bug eyes and a thick nose. 
“Is that Jimmy?” you tilt your head, Anya’s neck limping in the opposite direction.
“Yimpyyyy!” Daisuke cheers, pointing at the name scrawled beneath, “Yimpy!”
“Yimpy?” you steer closer, just to stick the note against your finger and push it nearer to Anya’s face, “Yimpy!”
“Yimpy…” she nods slowly, then shrugs and slicks her finger against the rapidly aging adhesive stripe. Laying it flat against her corkboard to tack in place, stepping back proudly with a soft giggle, “Yimpy.”
Daisuke beams over making the sullen and serene Anya laugh. Turning to you for a private celebration, only to see you laughing as well. It feels even better that way.
*
[!] new message: signed legal agreement
[sent by: juarez, daisuke | subsection: huhhh you had to sign up for that????]
*
[first day of expedition]
“Everyone, meet Daisuke.”
“I’m Daisuke!”
“Hi, Daisuke!” the room drones, in a slow little tune reminiscent of an Alcoholics Anonymous chant.
“He’s an intern, so technically all of us can teach him something but I figure he’ll learn the most under Swansea,” Captain Curly nods toward the mechanic. Swansea swears between gritted teeth while you snicker.
“And what about the esteemed custodian, can’t the kids stick together?” he weasels, “Bad enough to get another baby on board.”
“Please,” Curly sighs, the hand he laid on Daisuke’s shoulder tightening just so before he drops it altogether. Clasping both fists in a plea, “I’ve been assured this is nothing that will sabotage the voyage. We should just brace for rationing a bit tighter with the last-minute addition.”
“Ain’t excited for more babysitting.”
You, very maturely, blow a raspberry at the older man, “Don’t break a hip bitching about it.”
Daisuke giggles at the retort, nearly earning his own beratement if not for Anya quickly cutting in:
“Go easy on them, it isn’t like that’s anybody’s dream job.”
“Besides,” Jimmy sneers, “they’re the most reliable part of the crew, we might catch a cold from the shitters if this one wasn’t there to clean ‘em.”
Curly bends to clap his co-pilot on the shoulder, perhaps a bit harder than he has to, and shines that million-dollar smile your way, “You’ve been my lucky charm on every voyage. Highest credit payout when the rest of the crew is living clean!”
You roll the praise off with ease, locking eyes with Daisuke, “Most of what I do is shovel the shit Jim’ spews. You’ll learn more with Swansea, for sure.”
Daisuke’s never met you before. He doesn’t know you at all. 
But he’s sure that the boiling coil in his stomach is disappointment when he’s hauled off toward the utility room with Swansea rather than wherever you’re going.
[1 month after the crash]
“I let you in there and you’ll tear the ship a new asshole,” Swansea swears, squinting over you as you lean against the opposite side of the door.
Daisuke looks your way as you shrug, “Alright, already, I don’t even care anymore. Not like fighting with you is worth it, stubborn geezer.”
Swansea scoffs, crossed arms tightening over his chest (Daisuke’s head flips back toward his mentor), “Yeah, right! I’m sure as soon as I walk away you’ll try ripping into that foam and get us all killed!”
“Why would I give a shit, Swansea?” Daisuke chuckles at your bite, bleached chestnut hair flapping around his shoulders.
“Because you’re young!” Swansea points right between your eyes, and Daisuke’s stare swings back around toward the older man, “You’ve got no ears,” you raise a brow at the accusation, “Everything I’m saying goes in one end and floats out the other, until you end up scraping the ship open and suddenly everything ole Swansea said makes sense!”
Daisuke’s head whirls back at you, chomping down a smile at whatever you’ll say next.
“What? You think I don’t listen?”
“I know you don’t.”
“Just ‘cuz I don’t have the patience to wait around until you’re ready for me to mop up utility…” you roll your eyes, “You know that rule is stupid.”
“I don’t know anything,” he mocks.
Daisuke’s neck will crick off how often he wrecks it back and forth, with all the thrill of a high-speed tennis match. 
“So, what’s the plan?” that question only earns you a wrinkled glare.
Swansea knows you know the plan. And he knows you’re only dragging this out for the knucklehead beside him’s entertainment. It’s far more irritating than anything else. 
Then, just to dig into his side, something somehow more irritating pounds closer and closer.
Jimmy appears over your shoulder -- Swansea makes a displeased grunt from the base of his throat, silently prodding the brunette for -what everyone’s sure is- his 500th rant of the day. Which is the worst, and funniest, thing about Jimmy, even if he’s entirely silent you can always read how pissed he is just by other people existing.
“Yeah, capitano?” Swansea scoffs when the man doesn’t just start prattling.
Daisuke straightens out, hands flaking at his sides. Brown eyes shooting to you, an almost comical bead of sweat dripping down his nose. You roll your eyes again and coo,
“Captain Jimmy, do you have orders for us?”
That, of course, is what sets him off.
Jimmy throws his hands in the air, aggravated, “I’ve been running around this ship, being helpful, while you three stand the fuck around?!” he jabs a shaking finger in your face, and you notice up close that it’s crooked after the first knuckle -like he broke it and never bothered having it set properly (something you wouldn’t put past him), “Go mop up Curly’s shit or something! This place is filthy, you’ve got things to be doing- I know it!”
“I already emptied his stupid bedpan and the catheter, whatever’s happened since is Anya’s business.”
Daisuke watches you with eyes positively sparkling as you sass a man on a higher wrung of the ladder without batting an eye. When Jimmy’s not looking, you catch him mouthing excitedly ‘you’re so cool’.
“Useless!” a hot glob of spit melts onto your cheek, he pays no heed to your grimace, “I pull my fuckin’ weight while you just stand here, a useless goddamn body!”
Yeah. Whatever.
You wait until Jimmy has stormed off again before playing off the infectious saliva stinging your face, smearing it off with the back of your hand, “Say it don’t spray it, dude.”
Daisuke snickers. That’s the best part of the interaction since your pseudo-captain forced his way through. Maybe since the crash, even. Not many things make your heart sputter or remember what it was like to beat, but for some reason Daisuke is different.
As for work... There isn't much to be done on anyone's part. Not yet at least. Daisuke can't do anything without Swansea's (extremely temperamental) supervision, and Swansea can't do anything until the foam is cleared, and you can't clear the foam until Swansea lets you, which so far he has been intensely clear about how little interest he has in that option. Three useless bodies. 
Make four out of the incapacitated Curly. Then five anytime Anya isn't actively supervising or aiding the captain. As for Jimmy.... you aren't exactly sure what it is Jimmy does to keep busy except for maybe crawling around the Tulpar to nitpick everyone else. He raves about the responsibility he takes, but as far as you’re concerned each of his assignments have been childishly basic. 
Perhaps his real work ethic translates into being as unapproachable as possible.
After talking to Jimmy, you always have the strongest urge to drink more. Swallow more. Bathe more. Purge the entire interaction from your system -kill 99.9% of him off until only the most vague and pleasant parts remain. The parts where he's fucking walking away and shutting up.
[4.1 months after the crash]
Aside from your hard steps down the rattling Tulpar, you can hear quiet lights droning: protesting their own existence. A blood orange hue staining the Polle Horse posters stuck down the walls, your skin glows too, but most of all: it turns the candy pink petals of a sweet hibiscus darker, kind of like a mildew eating out from the fabric’s folds. 
You gently prod the ribs hidden beneath that fabric with your shoe’s toe, “Daisuke? You awake?”
“Eughhhh,” he rolls onto his back unsteadily, arms wiggly and he completely falls onto one elbow in a way you’re sure wasn’t intentional. Those suspicions are confirmed when his entire round face yanks toward the center, a wimpy whine escaping his plump lips as he cups the elbow with his spare hand and massages the afflicted bone, “I don’t feel gooooood…”
“I can tell,” you squat down, hesitating only a moment before soothing your hand from his shoulder and toward the injured joint. His body seems to go lax beneath your warm touch, he smiles up at you,
“You’re so nice to me…”
“Uh, I guess? I never really thought of it like that.”
He tilts his head back against the floor, stray bubbles of foam soaking into his dyed strands, thin black brows furrowing, “Whaddya mean…?”
“I just. I dunno,” you guess it doesn’t matter how you phrase it, or what it even is that you phrase, Daisuke won’t remember come tomorrow, “I just talk to you how I think everybody should talk to you, you’re really someone that I like. As a person.”
“Really…?” his mouth splits in a wide smile, even rows of teeth glinting up at you. You take a weirder, closer glance and see that some teeth actually aren’t even, the bottom front pair grow over each other and one canine is a little far to the left. He giggles quietly, “I like you, too.”
“Thanks, Daisuke,” looking down each end of the rounding corridor, you slip onto your ass and sit with Daisuke curling around you. His knees come up until they’re brushing your knees and he tries nuzzling his face into your thigh, “You’re real touchy when you’re drunk, huh?”
“I’m not drunk!” he breaks down immediately after the charge, “I didn’t have that much!” his hand clanks around the floor until it scoops up a nearly empty bottle of mouthwash, he drops it before managing to properly show off what he’s drank, “Swansea had a ton more…”
“This shit’ll kill you, Daisuke.”
“You drink it…” he pouts, wrangling his hands into the back of your overalls and pulling as if trying to coax you to lie over his belly.
“In, like, shots. Quick swallows. Kids do it all the time.”
“That’s still drinking!”
“I’m not a good person, Daisuke,” you laugh it off, but it feels weird to say. You don’t think you meant it, but it felt. Solid. Coming out of your throat so concisely it still startles you how it sits in the open air, “I deserve to drink it.”
He blinks up at you lazily, lashes batting and you feel him yank your overalls tighter, “That’s not true!”
“I’m just someone that got stuck here years ago, you don’t know…” you shake your head, “I didn’t mean it.”
And saying that felt chunky, like upchucking cottage cheese and curdled milk. So sour you can feel it singe the back of your nose.
“Good because you’re my favorite,” he uses your pantlegs as leverage to crawl around and lay over your lap, turned onto his back. His hands settle over his chest, fingers busying themselves wringing his sweatbands around his wrist, “You’re funny and really pretty. And you’re nice to me.”
“You said that one already,” you pat his cheek when his eyes drift closed a little too long.
“It’s true…” he bemoans, reaching up to copy the gesture. Popping his lithe fingers once, then twice, against your cheek -not even hard enough to leave an imprint, “I like you a lot.”
“It might be time for bed, Daisuke…”
“My mom would like you,” tiny grunts escape as you prop him upon his feet, one of his arms thrown around your shoulder and he lends most of his weight to your side. Sloppy feet borderline hindering your joint trek back toward the common lounge.
“Would she? She wouldn’t disprove of my influence?”
“Nahhh, she’d love you,” his drunken grin falters just a moment as you lay him onto his mat, “She got me this internship, you know?”
“Did she?”
“Mhmmmm,” he snags you by the sleeve, urging you into his bed, “Said I was too aimless but I just don’t know what to do with myself,” he blinks up at you, “Never took to anything. Never wanted to try anything… just partied and drank. Now I’m drinking away this internship, and I might not ever get to thank her. Or show her that I learned anything.”
Just as you see water swelling along his lashes, you fall onto his mat, combing fingers through his hair. The bleaching has made it feel a little rubbery, it stretches a bit before untangling around your knuckles, you scratch over his scalp and pray it drains the tears before they fall.
“I’m sure you’ll find a chance, people like you always make it through.”
“Like me?”
“I mean. Pony Express has got to be tracking us somehow, right? They have to know we crashed…”
“Yeah,” he sighs, bloodshot eyes drifting over your features, “You’re so smart, too, my mom would be totally obsessed with you…” content to let yourself drift off in the coupling silence until Daisuke is audibly swallowing and murmuring again, “You know, when I need some dreaming material before bed… I like to imagine taking you on a nice beach date. Like. A real beach, not the sunset window screen. And we could have a lot of fun, I think. I like you.”
You nod slowly, scrunching his hair in your hand.
Even with your eyes closed, you know he’s turned to look at you -feeling his nose nudge across your cheek and his damp eyelashes scuttering along your temple, he says louder, “I really like you.”
“That could’ve been nice,” you admit.
“I’ll make it happen,” he promises, finally closing his own eyes, and committing to falling asleep together again.
Then his brain zaps again, apparently too fired with curiosity to realize he could just ask in the many coming days you’ll spend stranded on this big ass rock,
“How’d you end up here anyway?”
He yawns. Loudly.
You yawn back.
Not bothering to open your eyes before blandly spitting, “If I didn’t find some kind of purpose, I could’ve killed myself.”
Then nothing. Not shock or disappointment or even a feigned gasp. It’s almost… offending, humiliating even. You swing up violently, lips twitching to scream when you’re stunned still:
Daisuke’s wholly asleep. And now you can hear his soft snoring, quiet sighs escaping his -you bet pained and burning- throat.
[5 months after the crash]
“Pfft, I thought you said this would work!”
“I thought it would!” 
Daisuke giggles and lifts some of your dead ends, “You know I don’t think any amount of bleach could get these colored…” he’s mumbling, mindlessly, thinking nothing of it, “They’re so fried…”
Immediately your entire face twists unpleasantly, “Hey! Don’t say that…” you shove Daisuke’s hands away, clutching the dead ends by your neck, “Get scissors and just chop ‘em off, then…”
“Right now?” he tilts his head, blinking at you stupidly.
“Right now!” you shout, drunkenly.
Just as drunkenly, Daisuke stutters over while shaking his head, “No way! They’re just dead ends… I didn’t mean it mean,” then he’s tweaking his own bleached, frayed strands of hair between his fingers, “I got ‘em, too! Look!” 
Peeking through your disgusted scowl, you reach out and yank, “You do.”
Daisuke snickers in your face, nodding, “Exactly! Sorry I said it weird.”
You nod sluggishly and Daisuke simply lets you hold his hair. You judge the splitting hairs, you think it’s strangely pretty -- maybe just because it’s Daisuke.
“You’re lookin’ at me funny,” he mutters, looking from your eyes to your lips. You do the same, “You look at me like you wanna kiss me.”
You shrug. Coy. Pouty. Perhaps not acceptance, but most definitely not denial.
“Can I?” he wonders.
You lean in first. He tastes like mouthwash, and you keep kissing him anyway.
[4.2 months after the crash]
Page two, subsection General Safety, paragraph seven states that in the event of shattered glass. The custodial engineer is the sole person capable of collecting and disposing of loose shards. There are thick gloves in the office and a hazard bin for exactly this moment.
After Jimmy stormed off with the emergency axe, Swansea stumbled down the hall toward utility. Grumbling about the apparent nerve of your new captain after burying the blade into the window screen. Red bathes the foamed lounge. Daisuke sits criss-cross from you: both your faces turned up toward the cracked screen. Starry-eyed at the glitches like two toddlers sat in front of morning cartoons. 
Then a crimson glint catches from your peripherals.
You twirl in place, shuddering into the wall before drunkenly reaching out and grasping for glass. 
There’s no time for gloves or bins- not when glass is littered everywhere! This is too urgent.
Bare prints pricked long ways, you know you’re cut before the bleeding even starts. It never outright hurts when you cut yourself by accident, there’s that momentary shock like ice pressed right against your skin. Then you bleed out onto the floor, and then it stings. Skin peeling back exposing the tiniest bare fragments of yourself to open air. It fucking stings.
You whine and pull back and Daisuke hurries over. He hisses at the sight and plucks your hands away from the scene. Blood drips from your fingertips and over the carpet, no doubt to fester a new commune of mold. 
“Uh, shit,��� he blinks himself as sober as possible, then has to close one eye just to see straight while clobbering for a bottle of the trusty stuff, “Disinfectant! Right? Gotta clean this…”
Daisuke holds your hand palm-up, clenching it like he believes what’s next will hurt at all. In his other hand is a backwash-frothy bottle of DragonbreathX mouthwash -- it tips hesitantly. Guzzling faded teal into the cup of your hand. You hold your breath, expecting that searing wave of alcohol draining a wound. Daisuke holds the bottle upright and stares through you.
It just feels like you have a slowly leaking handful of mouthwash. Sugar sticking around your cupped skin. 
“Should I get Anya?” he asks, watching your blood turn the liquid brown before tipping over the edge of your hand. Drooling from the cracks between your fingers.
“No,” no, no you don’t think she’d help at all. You shove your fist knuckle-down into your thigh and smile wryly at Daisuke, “I think the mouthwash will be fine… It’ll take care of everything.”
It’s just some glass, after all.
[!] new message [!]
When you try raising your head, it hurts. But not really. Just an incredibly dull vibration that you know is meant to be a painful deterrent, so you choose not to fight it. No matter how badly you know you should look up.
Mom sits on one end of the couch and Dad on the other. They lean into their respective arms and do not cross the middle of the couch, where you sit. Every few minutes a bell rings from inside the television, but other than that all it plays is monochrome snow. Randomized pixels all buzzing across the screen. A white glow emanates from the screen. It looks cold, you think if you pressed your palms flat against the glass a chill would race up your arms. 
Mom yawns, Dad shoots a brief slant her way before mumbling, “Tired?”
His thick voice and drawling tone mutilate the vowels, though, so all you can make out is a gentle, ”Terrred?”
Mom shrugs and speaks over your head without looking away from the television. Dad nods listlessly and they both rise and shuffle off down the hall, leaving you and TV buzzing. A bell rings. 
It tingles sweetly, all gentle songbird and high. Sort of like the bell at school warning you from being late to class, or permitting you to charge into the canteen for soggy pizza and frozen milk. 
When Dad comes back, he’s without Mom, and he’s got wavy blonde hair and a little scruff. And he doesn’t speak at all. His eyes are hidden beneath stray golden strands, but his lips are stretched pleasantly. Pressing the TV into pitch black before scooping you into two big arms, cradling your neck against his chest.
You hear his heartbeat; pulpy, it pounds in loud, viscous waves. As if it needs to prove that it's still alive. And the heat is overbearing, as though he’s melting from the inside out.
He lays you down and leaves. 
A bell rings.
*
[!] new message: i am my worst moment i am defined by my past and i am fucking awful
[sent by: sender outside of network. please contact captain if messages from unknown senders continue to route to this machine. do not respond. do not respond. do not respond.]
*
[6 hours until judgement]
Sixty excruciating minutes drag by before five fingers are snapping over the edge of the mattress. A distinctly metallic click follows. Hinges squeak apart, clacking against the frame of the bed with finality. A wobbly elbow pokes into sight before that clutching hand pushes up, dragging his whole body sideways as you yank the sheets with effort. Standing upon squiggling knees, downcast eyes linger beneath the bed -- he can’t see that far down. But he’s sure he already knows what you’re looking at.
Get it over with he wants to hiss Just shoot me. Don’t keep me in suspense.
Your forearm writhes with a ‘click’, eyes heavy with discoloration. Somewhere between sinking into your skull and popping out like a cyst -- they finally rise upon him.
Somewhere between upset and stoic, your face remains unchanged as you lay the hidden hand just by his bandaged arm. Silver glints angrily into his eyeball -- he’d flinch away if he could.
Just do it already he screams in his mind, but all that escapes are wheezy whistles Just fucking shoot me!
You already said you would, didn’t you?
It’d help everyone. Meat would make the crew happier than when they still had those canned soups. That’s what you said. So just get him over with.
[10 days after the crash]
He always said the past is something that defines who you are, but not something you need to be enslaved by. You can be a terrible person, and become something shinier. Less obscure or offensive to observe over time, you just need to put in the work. You wonder how long you can be disgusted by your thoughts before they’re no longer your own.
this doesnt even look like curly anymore
Instinctually, and despite not having verbalized it, you clasp a hand over your mouth at that.
You unwind the bent arm to wrap knuckles in warm bed sheets. And he watches you. You think he knows what you were seething. You’re sorry. You don’t say that. Rather, you ask,
“Do you sleep anymore, Captain?”
He ticks his head just slightly, just enough as he can manage before the muscles shred and burn. 
“I bet…” you murmur, uncapping the jade bottle of little white relievers, “it just hurts all the time now…”
He tips his head back, then shudders forward.
Shaking two capsules into hand, you look down at the panting crimson stain that is Captain Grant Curly and shake another two out. Then you tip six more out. Balling the pills in your hand. 
His pupils shake around your hand with the pills, dilated to hell -his entire eye nearing black.
You notice now that Curly has no eyelids. But the muscle still attached and bound around his socket puckers as if there’s anything there to move. It all pulses with the best intentions, just to accomplish nothing. Same for his nonexistent lips, singed off just to show off bare nerves beneath crisp gums and gapped teeth. Blood dried into the bones’ indents. His teeth chatter as he moans, as if to speak but there’s only a stubbed tongue back there. Nothing he can use to shape the words to beg for
“Should we just…” his gaze snaps up to your face then, teeth clicking against each other, “Uhm…” open red muscle flexes around his neck but before you can see which way he moves his head, you clench shut. 
can we kill you already?
Pure darkness swallowing your sight, you fiddle around the plastic green bottle and replace eight of the pills, “Here, Captain, open up.”
Barely peeking through your shrouded lashes, you slot the pills between gaping, warm gums where teeth should be. His tongue feels like fucking sandpaper, you cringe and clench your eyes harder.
“I’m sorry,” you shake your head, hand shaking at his jaw before soothing the caps down his gullet, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
Logically, it makes so much sense: he’s in pain simply lying here -no skin, charred flesh, exposed nerves, chopped limbs- and you don’t imagine he will ever recover what he’s lost.
Emotionally, you clam up completely; rejecting the thoughts until you can claim they were never even yours.
You never got the question out, anyway. And you never saw his response.
So, practically, none of that happened. You just gave the captain his pills because you’re a good subordinate and a good crewmate, and more importantly a good friend.
Eyes still closed, you mutter, “Feel better soon, Captain…”
He moans in protest as you turn. Groaning louder when you call Anya back into the room, claiming to be finished.
“Thank you,” she sighs, stepping into her office with hands clasped over her heart. One soft palm laid over the other, “I’m sorry to put it on you like that, but I just…” she frowns, “The sound… I’m- well. I can’t- “
“Anya, it’s fine. I don’t mind,” you wave her concerns away, a thin, forced smile stretching over your face. And you pretend the huffing behind you is just the new sound of Curly breathing.
Escaping into the hall, you wait as long as it takes for the medical room to click shut behind you before darting for a waste bin. Clamping the sides between two shaking, clammy hands and heaving into it.
Your whole body jerks over the neon bucket. Something like a big ball races up your intestines and just beneath your uvula before falling back into the well of your stomach. Gagging again, you feel it just about to slip over your soaked tongue before: nothing. The thick coil shudders back down again with nothing in your stomach to offer up. Besides spit that burns on the way down.
Your stomach rumbles for something to puke up.
Begging for relief.
[13 hours before the crash]
“Woah.”
Gold tresses gleam beneath the digital moonlight, two pale faces shining your way. Deep lines cut beneath your captain’s eyes. 
“Didn’t expect to see you out here so late, Captain…”
He shrugs, throwing an arm over the back of the lounge couch to better watch you, “I’ve had to think over some things recently,” you’re about to prod and he must be able to sense it because then he asks, “What are you doing up?”
“I wanted a sweet tonic, honestly.”
He raises a thick brow at the response, you merely shrug and meander toward the kitchen. Not sparing the code booklet a glance before punching numbers into the synthesizer.
“I’m basically already fired anyway, right?” you rationalize, sensing his judgments from across the floor, “Plus, there’s supposed to be fewer germs in the sweetener anyway, so it’s healthier than a regular tonic.”
When he doesn’t miraculously approve that response and spin back around, you scoff, continuing the one-sided argument,
“What? Will me sneaking another sweetener pack get you in trouble with your old bosses?”
Curly sighs and slumps back into place, “No. I guess not……… Look. Kid. I didn’t know any more than you all do. I didn’t. I didn’t know.”
“It’s not really my business, Captain. You heard Jimmy, I’ll be off to another shithole soon enough.”
Nothing back, not even an admissible chuckle.
Sliding squishy, silicone packets on either side of the humming fabricator is a simple enough task that you can look away without screwing anything. So you watch Curly as he watches the window screen -- silent. Stiff. Unsure, you poke again, “What’re you looking at?”
“There’s a dead pixel in the screen,” he scans left to right as he says it though.
Two glasses in each hand, you sit beside Curly on the white pleather. It squeaks at the sudden weight when you throw yourself back, slipping one tonic toward Curly while curling the other into your chest. Nestling it comfortably in the middle with the straw right beneath your lips, “Where?”
He ignores the offered drink, “I’m still looking for it.”
“Huh… okay,” you squint up at the screen, sipping the sweet mixture.
That look is back in his eyes. That vacancy. Pulling in and nulling all the light above, something reminiscent of a black hole. He stares down at Jimmy that way a lot. 
“I just don’t see it, but I know it’s there,” he says: solemn, gloomy, “I know it’s up there.”
Curly has a wide face and wider shoulders. Blonde scruff has grown out around his jaw since his last shave on earth, and the hair on his head is almost waxy with how perfectly it falls and frames his head. Rosy cheeks, button nose. And those dull blue eyes. Captain Grant Curly, your beloved and trusted pilot.
“Uhm, you know, Captain…”
He blinks, eyes flicking your way before returning toward the screen.
“I’ve been thinking a lot more lately,” you sit up straighter, shoulders feeling lighter as you finally confess, “I usually do nothing but think, but now it’s stuff that’s actually… important. And it’s all terrible. After this crew disbands, I’ve got nothing and nobody to go back for. I’m not sure what else to strive for if I’m not being told what to do, I don’t know what else I should stay alive for. I feel like I’m watching someone else use my body to make all the worst decisions possible but I don’t know how to find the will to stop myself,” you feel nauseous in a good way, the way you feel when you lurch the last part of a hangover. Just before the stomach lining starts repairing itself. Getting everything you’ve let stain your back out into the open actually feels… 
“I’ve just been thinking that maybe Jimmy was probably right about me… about everything…”
Good.
But if it’s good, then why does Curly shoot off the couch like you lit fire at his feet, and why does he scream like you did too?
“Goddammit, kid!” he scoffs, raking untamed tresses, “I’m not the ship’s personal diary!” he heaves, eyes wide, “We’ve got psych evals for this shit!”
He looks down at you, you’re still on the couch and you’re completely still. Your mouth agape and hands folded nervously over your drink. He thinks he could hear a bit of Jimmy’s blunt gruff in the back of his mind: he sharply turns away and marches toward the doors.
You feel nauseous. In a terrible way. Like your dad just called from the hospital. Suddenly your nose feels fuller than it used to, and suddenly your eyes are fucking burning, and suddenly your arms shake so violently you need to put your drink on the table. Next to Curly’s untouched one. You hiccup, short of breath.
Thudding steps pause just after the hiss and release of the lounge doors parting, a man sighs, “Don’t spend all night out here, kid.”
You don’t hear that over the sound of your own breathing, heavy and wavering. Pretty pathetic.
Befitting to be hidden away scrubbing some abandoned shithole. Desperate enough to hire a goddamn mess.
Jimmy was probably right.
*
[!] new message: neighhhh^7
[sent by: hotard, swansea | subsection: last i’ll say this, i need to be there when you clean utility.]
*
[3 days after the crash]
You get it, really you do. After a crash, some gears are bound to not work the way they used to, that’s just common sense. In the same way Curly is forever changed, Tulpar too is marred by her collision. And the same way Jimmy has already taken the helm and is pushing for rationing and repairing, doors squeal in agony as they open. The offside closet attached to Utility did when it opened for you to enter, and you were already prepared for it to do the same as it opened for you to leave.
Except it didn’t.
“What the fuck…?” you groan.
Slapping both hands against the metal door, straining your arms to manually glide the steel apart. Huff and puff as you might, nothing would budge.
It reeks of stale emergency foam, leaking through the cracked walls. One stumble too far back and you may be torn apart by space. 
That could be preferable to starving alone in a closet, though.
You just wanted something to do. Something to get the smell of a breathing corpse out of your nose.
Banging into the door with both hands wide open, you scream hard for any pair of ears to hear. “Help! Help! Help!”s devolving into wordless, snotty trills and ceaseless violent slams on cold metal. Your voice echoes in the cramped space. Bouncing through one ear and out the other faster than wails leave your mouth. 
You slowly become less upset about being trapped and more upset that nobody’s found you yet. It didn’t feel real until the third time you screamed: Nobody’s looking. 
Dropping your arms, you just ball your pants into each fist and hang your head to whimper. Tears streaming down your face. Dripping onto the floor, rolling between grates. Hacking into the open air. Flem webbing down your chin.
It’s like being seven all over again. Strangers pushing rusty carts past you as you shiver in a tank top and jorts in the meat section. Shiny plastic swelled over beef and pale chicken watching high over your head. A big man with a round belly and a white plastic card clipped into his yellow shirt came upon you. He asked your name. He asked if you knew where you were.
“Do you know where you are, kid?”
“Did you get lost?”
“Hey, hey, hey.”
A big man with a round belly has no choice but to pop you in the cheek with the back of his hand. Immediately he apologizes.
“Sorry.”
Not a grimace crosses his features as he wipes a conglomerate of tears and snot and drool from your cheeks with the pads of his thumbs. His brows are creased so far down that they nearly hide his eyes. You reach up, snagging his wrists in your hands, burying a cough into your shoulder,
“The fuck happened in here?” he means it entirely, obviously expecting an answer as he jitters you by the neck, “You see 
Whatever else he’s saying sounds too complicated. Underwater. None of your business. It makes you feel little again: watching another man with a plastic card over his chest, and a tie latched around his neck have a stern conversation with your mother. Who looks like she couldn’t care less while he’s red in the face.
“Are you fucking listening to me?” he scathes, “Do you wanna die or something?”
[12 days after the crash]
“Huh?”
“Do you wanna die or something?” Swansea swerves the axe in front of your face. Ticking it like clockwork.
“I’m just trying to clean out the foam,” you cannot fight back the yawn as it drags out, protruding the middle of your sentence like a fat beetle.
He merely tightens his stance and glares at you. Axe now against his chest, hugged between both arms.
“I’m trained for this, I know what I’m doing,” for a man of his age he’s more determined than he knows what to do with. Both of you have been at this argument for at least a couple hours. Not long now before the nighttime window screen illuminates, “Besides, if we’re really stranded here then isn’t it better to just die now than wait for something worse off?”
Rather than answer with sincerity, Swansea sarcastically bites, “Is that your way of saying we’re all gonna kill ourselves?”
“Starving, Swansea. Starving.” 
Sighing, Swansea pulls a hand on the door and preemptively shushes you. Not that it stops you from nearly splitting ears as you cry “fucking dick!”
Clasping a hand over your mouth, Swansea swings you both into utility after a fleeting glance down the hall to ensure you were alone. Shutting the door so you’re locked into the vast floorspace of a fucking empty utility room. Foam clogs, maybe, a quarter of the room: stuck near the edge of the wall where most of the damage was concentrated.
Before you can bite his hand, or chew out more swears, he’s speaking again:
“I wasn’t lying, nothing in here works anymore,” he holds up a finger, letting it fall to the left, “Except that cryo pod. I’m hiding it from Jim’, I just know something about him ain’t right. I don’t want him or Curly to be the ones in it,” he must catch the confused twitch by your eye because he redirects his pointing toward the lounge where Jimmy and Anya and, most importantly, Daisuke are sleeping, “The thing might be big enough for you and Daisuke to jigsaw into place, and I’ll make sure it starts from the outside. Just gotta wait for Jimmy to stop fucking wandering,” then he sighs, mostly to himself but also for you.
He says, pretty evidently disappointed, 
“If there’s not enough room for both of you. I’ll be making sure the kid’s the one that gets in, you know?”
You think you do. You assume you do.
Something about a
[8 hours until judgement]
“Please, please, please please please,” you’re slurring all the consonants together, flurrying out each word as if they could save him, “Please! Please, Daisuke?!”
Daisuke responds the only way he can: writhing. 
His eyes are full circles of bloodshot white. Piercing through you ambivalently.
Malice and resentment, but also so so so much regret. Past all his grunting and squealing, no words have room to grow. Instead they stay buried with the rest of his feelings, deep in his chest right about where his lungs are filling with blood.
“Don’t leave me,” you gush, squeezing him on your lap. Devastated over a death you can physically feel coming. He’s getting so warm with all those weeping wounds, and he flexes with each passing breath -- every one taking more effort than the last, “Please, I need you. Daisuke…” 
He knew you were selfish. A little flighty, too. And as much as he wants to grant your pleas, this task is just a bit impossible.
You’re asking someone to live when there’s no remaining quality of life.
[1 month after the crash]
Page five, subsection Poison Control, paragraph one -Polle pledges that if any chemicals are out of stock without proper logging, personal credits will be docked from the crew pay package. To ensure something like that doesn’t happen, custodians are required to perform stock counts. Often. 
To distract yourself from the mounds of foam cobbling the Tulpar together, maintaining its air seal, you continue to perform this duty. Even if you’re sure it’s one of many less pressing matters.
“Ready and reporting for duty!” is what greets you. Daisuke pushing two fingers to his forehead with the other arm wound behind his back, a toothy smile parting his face, “Hi!”
“What’re you doing?” you skip past the intern, keying the walk-in open.
“Keep you company.”
“That’s against policy, you know? I’m supposed to be alone for this,” on the off chance he believes that you believe that, you force a tiny laugh out.
He takes the bait and shrugs, slotting against the gaping doorway. Picking and twisting his neon sweatbands absentmindedly. His eyes snaking after you, “Are you gonna snitch on me?”
Bending to lift a toppled bottle of blue, bubbly chemical -a motion you feel Daisuke thoroughly examine- you make a flippant hum, “I don’t see why I would.”
You spare all of two seconds trying to push the chemicals onto the top shelf -unsuccessfully- before your dear, sweet intern is charging into action. Bravely saddling up beside you and rolling up his sleeves somehow higher.
“Oh, you need help with that?” now Daisuke curls up behind you, already grasping the jug in your palms without any response.
Daisuke’s arms are not the biggest or broadest, but he’s certainly more capable than the aging Swansea or thin Anya. You’d just about rather die than approach Jimmy.
Besides, maybe the sight of his muscles flexing overhead is interesting. Bubblegum hibiscus flows around your waist and warmth flushes up your back. Hard chest rounding against your back, thick thighs nearly shuffling between yours.
Daisuke is breathing so heavily, but you don’t think it’s from any heavy lifting. Plump lips parted before he sucks his bottom lip between sharp teeth, eyes darting from your face -sickly in the pale freighter lights- to your own pulsing chest. Spindly fingers fumble out for your own, looping around the first two before he bravely snatches your entire hand. Scrubbing his thumb along your knuckle.
“Can we…” he has something in mind, and at the last minute you watch that pivot click behind his eyes, “Can we share a bed tonight?”
Smaller than the closet, you’re forced to slather Daisuke with your weight. Legs tangling and arm over his stomach. He’s got a hand up your shirt drawing shapes into your back; it’s about the calmest thing about him right now. Blunt nails crush the impression of lopsided, top-heavy hearts into your skin while his head is pin-straight forward. Gaze locked on the pumpkin-painted ceiling, the sunset projection across the room more interesting than saying anything he actually wants to.
“I feel like,” he has to close his eyes, visualizing himself on the edge of a cliff. Jumping off. If you don’t catch him, he’ll die anyway, “We do this a lot.”
“Cuddle?”
“Get close,” the pace of his breathing quickens, your head on his heart bobbing in rushed time, “And then we kinda pretend it didn’t happen.”
“Do we?”
“I think so,” he’s questioning himself even with a hand up the back of your shirt. Eyes squeezing harder until technicolor shapes are popping into little greyish stars, “I thought so, anyway…”
Mercifully, you lay a hand over his jaw, squishing round cheeks between thumb and forefinger. Scooching up on the lumpy medical mat to sweetly lay a kiss on his cheek. Instantly his face flares, the hand not shoved up your back latching onto your wrist -- squeezing but not prying, cooking your lips. The next moment his head falls and twists, lips puckered and sugary against yours. 
Hand slithering along your arm until he’s cupping your cheek, arm curling tighter around your waist. Nigh pulling you on top of him completely. Plying the fat of your thigh, working toward your ass with cute whines. Grinding tenting jeans into your leg with little distorted jumps.
You pull back, kiss his cheek, and murmur, “Goodnight, Daisuke…”
He sighs quietly but grins against your face and nods, “Goodnight…”
Hugging you tight, Daisuke rolls you two enough so he’s able to hang off you like a backpack with arms wound around your waist. Legs entwining with yours. He kisses along your shoulder before burying his face in your neck. You think something wet drips on your skin, but you don’t ask about it -- too scared of the response.
Daisuke is sweet and kind and you know he likes you. You like him too.
You squeeze the hand he has rested over your stomach.
You just don’t know how to like him without ruining everything you liked.
(at some point in the night, you’re woken by anya -- asking with just the tiniest bend in her lips- asking if you knew daisuke was in your bed. you would nod sleepily and she would wish you goodnight. daisuke, then, drowsily smiled and mumbled ‘what’s up anya??’. she ruffled his stiff, bleached hair and wished him goodnight too.)
*
[!] new message: stop fucking ignoring me and answer these
[sent by: sender outside    network. Please contactact captain if messages from unknown senders continue to route ot this machine do not espind. Do not respond. do not respond..]
*
[5 months after the crash]
The inside of Anya smells worse than the outside. 
A thought you never imagined you would actively have, but something that makes sense logistically. 
“Does logic help with team cohesiveness?” Polle asks over your shoulder.
In theory, it should.
“So how did your crew end up like this?” he sounds a little girlish, high-pitched and all. You think pointing that out could get you a visit to the HR office.
But also, the question is valid. How did you get back here, and at this point, is there a point to being back here? The rag is sopping wet and all the white threads have turned burgundy. Everything is so… ripe. Pungent. Pushing muck around the scratched tile. Everything not clinging to Anya seeks to stain you. 
Why are you here?
Polle answers: “Biohazards! You are the first line of defense between your crew and disease!”
A janitor is important, after all.
Nobody else wants to play in shit and blood and oil so it’s best they seal off the slimiest grub they can find to roll around in it. Who better than you? If you get sick it’s fine.
“That’s what you’re paid for!” Polle chirps. Giving a mock salute. Obnoxiously clicking his black hooves.
Which is why Anya appointed you the one to wipe the captain’s shit out of a bent bedpan. Which is why Anya gave you one last task: mop up the vomit she choked out. Whatever you can’t mop, everything on her clothes and skin and tangled into those petite little framing hairs, should be burned. For sanitation. 
“It’s about all you’re good for,” a deeper voice adds. Disgust grating each vowel.
Polle laughs behind the stiff veneer of his poster, nailed down years before you came here and no doubt hanging up long after you eventually croak. 
Looking up at the red man on the bed, you find him already staring down at you with that single bulging eye. The fucking nerve: leaving you all here, free to venture out. Free of your nastiest thoughts, free of the grotesque thanklessness of sucking puss out of an open wound. Free of the concern of where you’ll end up next.
Free to just die.
“What did you just say?” you snarl, an unfamiliar fire encouraging you onto your feet. On a bridge, staring into crystal waters at a fish floating belly-up.
All his crispy lungs can get out is a quiet moan. Pained at the center. Gooey in all the wrong ways.
“Why did you watch Anya die?” his gaze darts down to your hands, now balled in blistering fists, “Why were you the last one she talked to?” he refuses to look back into your face, “And why does Daisuke want your fucking approval so much? And why is Jimmy obsessed with keeping you alive?” unsteadily your volume has risen, yet startling even yourself when you’re shouting. The cockpit safety gun -that spontaneously disappeared not long before the crash, that you’re pretty sure you spotted just now beneath his bed- would be comfortable in your hand right about now, “Maybe our crew would’ve been better off if we just fucking ate you!”
Curly’s chest convulses wildly. Now he’s looking you in the face.
Polle says: “Play nice! *unrest amongst the crew requires befitting punishment from the Captain, and will dock personal credits from the crew pay package.”
He looks afraid. Squirming away from your cinched hands and huffing inconsistently. Like he’d cry if he could.
Sympathetically, you crumble to your knees, bent over his bed and hugging the sheets while dry-heaving self-loathing, “I’m sorry- I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it!” you hack, snot and salt mingling in the back of your throat, clogging it as you rush to spew, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry- I didn’t mean it, Captain, I didn’t - sorry! I didn’t mean it! I didn’t mean it! I didn’t mean iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit’s one year older for you, Captain! [6 days before the crash]
How’s it feel?” you tilt your head, bumping both brows lightheartedly.
“Surprise!” Jimmy jeers from beside you, arms folded.
“Surprise!” Daisuke copies, “Look at your face!”
“Gotcha!” Anya giggles, dainty hand curling over her mouth.
“Cheers!” Swansea, despite his eagerness to appear unenthused, is the loudest after Daisuke.
“Uh. Wow,” Curly blinks, shaking his head. You hope just clearing the adrenaline from his system… you wouldn’t think this party could be that much of a startle.
Unless something else had completely overridden his mind, he should’ve known this was coming.
Swansea was last year, after all, and your crew always moves the parties in a routine circle.
“Last year must’ve been wild, huh?” Daisuke nudges you with an elbow.
“Huh?” you wonder if he could read minds. You beam the number four into his third eye, waiting to see if he’ll snag the bait.
He doesn’t, confirming two possibilities: he either does not read minds or is committed to keeping his powers a secret. In both scenarios, you have no choice but to move on, so you do.
“Last year, I can’t believe I missed it! You guys got Swansea,” he points across the room, some would call it rude but you think it’s just another harmless Daisuke-ism, “Wish I could’ve seen him get loose!”
The old mechanic grumbles a vague threat to keep you silent.
“It was fun, he ate three whole slices of the company cake and puked. Real party animal shit,” while Anya recounts how Swansea stumbled over himself as everyone screamed ‘surprise’, you whisper to Daisuke, “I actually made the cake last year. Captain was too busy filing reports from corporate.”
“No way!” he hisses back, “You know the sweetener code?”
“Uh-huh, take notes,” you mimic a notepad and pen in your hands, “2-3-4-1. It was the first thing I scammed my way into memorizing on this stupid ship,” perhaps a bit unwise you’re just telling some new intern this, but oh well, “Captain pretends he doesn’t know.”
An overly dramatic hum breaks out over your shoulder, making you jump in place as a deep voice quizzes, “What’s that?”
Recovery is simple enough, you just twine your hands bat your lashes, and beam, “Ohhhh, nothing, Captain!”
He seems a bit out of things as he laughs. That usual spark in his eyes long faded and lips not quite quirking the way they used to. Even just a single day ago, his face seemed brighter.
Even as he brings the cake to your crew, sat around the cheap table. Anya and Swansea are on one side, across from you and Daisuke. Jimmy at one head by Anya. And Curly at the other by you. 
“Speech! Speech! Speech!” Daisuke chants, encouraging you to join.
Swansea grins, lackluster and slight but full of mirth he would never show, leaning his chin against folded hands, “Yeah, captain.”
“Can’t be a party without a speech!” Anya giggles, head turned fully toward the blonde, “We won’t let you get out of it!”
Before Curly’s mouth opens, even a little, the man on the other side of the table prompts:
“What’s wrong?” Jimmy scours his friend with those wooden eyes.
Curly can’t maintain any mask in front of the slightest prodding, let alone from Jimmy. . . .
that’s all it said on the report from management we will receive the paycheck for this delivery I don’t know any more than that
Silence gnaws at the table before Swansea braves to break it: pony express finally kicking the bucket huh what a joke and we’re the punchline
You blink. The back of your neck is freezing cold. Your throat is too tight to swallow any saliva, so you let it all pool in your mouth.
i don’t have any savings they can’t just do this right
Anya’s voice wasn’t always so shrill, was it?
Are your ears melting off? They’re burning hot enough, you think. The temperature clash makes you push a shaking hand into your gut. Tissue bubbling beneath your palm.
A hand joins the one you aren’t pushing against your stomach, coaxing your nails out from puncturing your chair’s armrest. Daisuke squeezes your hand, turned away from Swansea in favor of studying your troubled face. Each minuscule slacken surveyed by him, he can pinpoint the exact moment your crewmates’ voices stop sounding like bland static impersonations and start sounding like themselves again.
Unfortunately, that exact moment is when Jimmy asks:
“When did they tell you?”
You actually look at Curly for his response, and Daisuke decides that maybe he should look over too. At least seem a little invested in anything that isn’t your obvious unrest.
“Earlier this week,” each body not belonging to Daisuke flinches at the brutal honesty, which he supposes is fair, “I was instructed to wait until we’re closer to the haul destination. But I can’t keep something like this from you all…”
“So, I guess you got what you wanted. Without the guilt.”
Not exactly the shot you assumed Jimmy would be taking, but you can’t say you disagree with it.
Captain Curly constantly had this greyed look in his eye. Watching a movie he could recite the ending to. Maybe even one he dreaded having to sit for again.
For a long time now, you’ve suspected he wanted to move on. Who better to confirm it than the longtime friend, co-pilot Jimmy?
“I can get back to my…” the brunette snorts inauthentically, “How’d you put it? ‘Struggle of a life’?” he swings a rabid arm across the table, “Anya never got into medical school because she’s, well, let’s be real. And how many employment years Swansea got left in him?” he sneers towards your more youthful half of the table, “Daisuke will be fine, mommy and daddy have him covered. So there’s that at least! And that one won’t be out of work for long, huh? Anybody could do that job, and everywhere needs it. Only worry there is finding the right dump desperate enough to hire a burnout!” Jimmy slumps back into his chair, leveling Curly with an almost painful glare, “But you. Headed for bigger and better, right?”
Curly clenches both fists, sighing through his nose and head shaking, “I’m just,” he blinks too hard, each drop visibly manual, “I’m just working on my life being a place I don’t have to fucking escape! That’s what I was trying to tell you: nothing more!”
Jimmy bangs a fist on the table before swiping it across to display you all, you and Anya recoil at the unexpected motion as he declares, “We’re the ones you’re trying to escape! Leave the dirt behind now that your boots are clean!”
“That’s not what I meant!” hearing Curly raise his voice is sickening. You turn your hand on the rest to now be the one squeezing Daisuke.
“That is what you meant,” Jimmy asserts, “You just couldn’t frame it to yourself in a way that kept you as the hero. Abandon the crew and make your escape.”
“What else could I do?!” seeing him so desperate, clawing for a way out of Jimmy’s needling like a declawed cat in plastic, has you doubling over yourself with a buzzing stomach.
Jimmy throws himself back into his chair at the head of the table, “Let’s have some fucking cake, hm? Props to the twilight crew of the Tulpar. Props to the captain and his new prospects.”
Even in a different light, you don’t know if you would’ve ever enjoyed here- hearing Captain Curly’s advancement from the Tulpar.
So when he looks to you for any cheap defense, you don’t find anything to say. You even congratulate yourself for not whimpering for him to talk the higher-ups out of this. 
Jimmy does not find your bravery as inspiring, and instead scoffs, “Even your codependent maid can’t talk you out of this.”
Ashamed, you sink into the seat. Only Daisuke’s grip keeps you from slithering onto the floor. Slimy and wet and pathetic. And whimpering for some kind of miracle that means this won’t really be the last time you work with your crew. You lay your hand in the hand Daisuke doesn’t pulse, his gaze solely on you: now hunting for the moment you pick yourself up. Or at least for an opening where he can manufacture it for you.
Curly’s knife clinks as he picks it up, sawing through plasticine sugar.
You don’t raise your head.
[8 hours until judgement]
“Please, please, please please please,” you’re slurring all the consonants together, flurrying out each word as if they could save him, “Please! Please, Daisuke?!”
Daisuke responds the only way he can: writhing. 
His eyes are full circles of bloodshot white. Piercing through you ambivalently.
Malice and resentment, but also so so so much regret. Past all his grunting and squealing, no words have room to grow. Instead they stay buried with the rest of his feelings, deep in his chest right about where his lungs are filling with blood.
“Don’t leave me,” you gush, squeezing him on your lap. Devastated over a death you can physically feel coming. He’s getting so warm with all those weeping wounds, and he flexes with each passing breath -- every one taking more effort than the last, “Please, I need you. Daisuke…” 
He knew you were selfish. A little flighty, too. And as much as he wants to grant your pleas, this task is just a bit impossible.
It’s bizarrely greedy for everything he could have to give, gobbling him down and demanding more. In a strange way he could only accept in death, he likes it. Wanting to reach up and fondle your cheek -- tackle some hair in his fist and yank you onto his level -- Daisuke flails his hand up with a whimper and gargle. Blood spitting onto your shirt.
Jimmy nearly trips over you with a full, unopened bottle of mouthwash in his hand. Cracking it open ferociously before dumping it over Daisuke’s gaping gashes, dowsing you in the process. Fresh mint horribly scars the inside of your nose.
Finally.
Captain Curly’s corpse stench is wiped straight out.
Relief.
Relief. He’ll live!
“You’ll be fine,” you weep, though, hard and ruinously, “You’ll be okay, Daisuke. It’ll fix everything,” but you can’t say what it is because you already know that if you do, you’ll be wrong, “It’ll fix everything!”
Mouthwash can’t fix this.
Your hand is still wrapped, bloody and sticky and aching, infected from sugar poured over deep glass cuts. Mouthwash can’t heal anything properly.
But you scream for it anyway, “Please don’t leave me, Daisuke…!”
Rattling footsteps shake you from behind, followed by a meaty hand on your shoulder, “Out of the way, kid, I’ll take care of him.”
“No!” you bawl, frantically clawing into Daisuke’s flowy pink shirt as he flounders on your lap, “Please, no, no nono!”
“Get to the pod,” he curses down at you. Lifting the axe despite how you and Jimmy scream at him to stop, stop just listen fucking listen stop it stop!
Daisuke’s body lurches against your thigh. Pelvis jumping once. Chest sputtering twice. All ten fingers twitching.
Followed by punctuating silence.
Jimmy yells, as Jimmy always does. You don’t catch any of it.
The sight of Daisuke’s body was too captivating. 
Swansea’s voice joins the mix, but he’s far away. Adults arguing overhead. Things you don’t care about nor do you want to hear. It takes you back to your childhood.
You wish you knew Daisuke back then, maybe you could’ve been sweeter with him.
And maybe someone better acquainted with the ship’s layout, like yourself, would’ve been a better choice for Jimmy. You’re not foolish enough for him to approach, but you almost pray you were. Younger and stupider.
Swansea said it himself. You have less quality of life. You’re the perfect candidate to die.
“Kid, I said get the fuck to the pod!”
Swansea butts you in the gut with the axe so hard you cough up stomach acid.
Rolling onto your back in agony before kneeling up, crawling out toward the hall as Swansea restrains Jimmy.
[7 hours until judgement]
The smell of death clings like a snarling dog to rope. Gnashing teeth growling around frayed, rotting strings. Blood and flesh slide off his bone as he lives. Painkillers could’ve dulled the sensation of twinging muscles but they don’t make him ignorant to the fact it's happening. Worse is the lingering stench of vomit. Which makes him feel worse than knowing he’s dying as he lives: Anya was his responsibility and now she’s had to take care of herself the only way she knew how. 
He can’t even be upset she took the rest of the capsules. She deserved them if it meant some peace.
Now he prays Daisuke is dead. For as short of a time as he spent with the boy, he knows him well enough to say he does not deserve suffering. And as Daisuke had to pull himself out of that collapsed vent, skin caught and shaved off by metal scraps, he was only suffering. 
He knows Jimmy very well.
He thought he did: but then, he should’ve expected this, right? If Jimmy was so capable of inflicting pain, then he should’ve seen those signs. He knew that Jimmy was unstable and mean-spirited and violent, but he never thought Jimmy could torture people.
Anya opened his eyes and he couldn’t. Function. 
With that knowledge came such overbearing responsibility that Curly froze completely.
And now, because of Jimmy, he has no choice except to remain frozen.
Even as you crumble into the room.
Even as Jimmy and Swansea’s voices slough down the halls, ringing through after you.
Curly wants to soothe your terrible hacking, wants to get you back home. You’re a misguided thing with some frustrating parents. You should get to find another gig.
So why are you going for the [PONY EXPRESS PERSONAL PROTECTION WEAPON] case?
[ISSUED TO CAPTAINS IN CASE OF UNREST AMONGST THE CREW]
He watches through one eye as you kneel by the bed. A glint of confusion passes over your face, and in the next instance is gone: your thumb scrolls over the clicking digits.
Every muscle in his neck convulses as he swallows. Slow and pained before it goes down.
The case does not open. He exhales.
You calmly seat yourself on the floor. Both hands grasp the metal box. Both thumbs meticulously click through each possible combination to open the lock. [6 hours until judgement]
Sixty excruciating minutes drag by before five fingers are snapping over the edge of the mattress. A distinctly metallic click follows. Hinges squeak apart, clacking against the frame of the bed with finality. A wobbly elbow pokes into sight before that clutching hand pushes up, dragging his whole body sideways as you yank the sheets with effort. Standing upon squiggling knees, downcast eyes linger beneath the bed -- he can’t see that far down. But he’s sure he already knows what you’re looking at.
Get it over with he wants to hiss Just shoot me. Don’t keep me in suspense.
Curly watches, heart thundering so hard into his ribs his entire chest shakes. Just shoot me already.
One pulsing eye, twitching muscle lining the organ. 
Your forearm writhes with a ‘click’, eyes heavy with discoloration. Somewhere between sinking into your skull and popping out like a cyst -- they finally rise upon him.
Somewhere between a pill-induced rest and knocking out beneath senseless, whole-body waves of pain. He prayed he’d just go cold after the third day, and now he’s not sure how long it’s been since Jimmy lashed out. 
Somewhere between upset and stoic, your face remains unchanged as you lay the hidden hand just by his bandaged arm. Silver glints angrily into his eyeball -- he’d flinch away if he could.
Just do it already he screams in his mind, but all that escapes are wheezy whistles Just fucking shoot me!
You already said you would, didn’t you?
It’d help everyone. Meat would make the crew happier than when they still had those canned soups. That’s what you said. So just get him over with.
Slowly, your lips part -- eyes on his, and you draw the gun from the bed, laying it flat in your palm before turning the barrel. Finger snug around the trigger, teasingly curling tighter until it jerks in your hand, bucking into the meat of your palm. 
You pull tighter, until the gun is firing. 
Jerking your hand back; he can see that silver catches silver and clatters to the ground, but he can’t hear it. Can’t hear much of anything following the gunshot crunching through the back of your skull.
Iron pervades the room as soon as your body hits the floor. Brain matter clumped around the sliding med door, peeling off slowly and squelching onto indifferent tile. Bone shards sparkle from the puddling floor. 
You cleaned that floor just today. 
Who’s going to clean you up?
He’s self-aware enough to know why his first thought is something so callous and mundane, but he isn’t present enough to realize that heavy breathing -like a sprinter fresh off some marathon- is his. It startles him. Eye darting around the room to find the wind-sucking culprit, that sick bastard stealing all the oxygen must be the one! The one who shot you- he needs to find them- someone else in the room- 
Someone else, surely?
Someone not previously seen on the ship, right?
Someone he’s never met before, you know?
Because he met you five years ago, and he’s seen you walk up and down the Tulpar corridors countless times since he’s known you, and you wouldn’t do this. You’d never shoot yourself, he knows that.
Just like how he knew Jimmy would never hurt anybody.
As if sensing those condemning thoughts, his dearest friend runs into the room just then. Wide-eyed and ripping the gun from your hand without a teary blink, screaming, 
“Swansea’s gonna fucking kill us!”
Curly can’t see straight -blurry green splotches zig-zag around medical. He must not be seeing straight; no way he could be because Jimmy would also never kick aside the corpse of some unfortunate kid. 
Swansea shouts the name of his co-captain.
Curly feels the laugh bubbling between his ribs before he even registers it's coming out. Raw throat croaking and exhales biting exposed nerves.
It’s just too funny- everything, really- it’s hilarious.
So funny he could just about throw himself into open space.
[!] new message [!]
Amber sands sink beneath your feet. And long ways above you, itching cloudless vermillion skies, are hot pink hibiscus flowers with gold stigma scraping even higher. Each flower casts wide shade from the sun -- it blares at you, dull vibrating from all directions that makes you so very deeply nauseous. It sounds distressed.
Dark ocean, frothy and black, still sparkles over the coast. White sprinkling far into the horizon. 
Shiny onyx beads pop out of the vibrant sands; scorpions driving in lines down toward the coast.
All you hear is the gentle crashing waves.
Then a wavering voice, no distinct syllables, just a nonsense song. You turn, and there’s a picnic basket on a pink gingham blanket. You know the voice comes from inside. No matter how roughly you shove your feet through the sand, you’re slowed to a near standstill. But the basket waits, assuredly so.
Flopping onto the soft cotton, your eyes flutter shut with hands folded over your stomach. Lullaby waves coo you to blissful rest, and the voice inside the basket praises your hard work.
This could’ve been nice.
Peace and quiet.
* *
[five years ago]
“And this is the internal system for messages,” his lips press a bit too firmly, that universal misalignment saying you’re not gonna like this, “I’ve only ever seen it used for custodians. Specific requests and all.”
“So, like, if somebody fucks the medbay but that’s not on my schedule, they just get to message me here? Like an email?”
Curly jumps at your swear before nodding slowly, “Uh, yeah… Something like that.”
“I thought going into space, we were beyond email…” you step deeper into the dark closet, rusty shelves lined to the gums with white bottles, labels bubbling from age. Reaching out to tweak the receiver’s edge, tracing a single finger around the tiny screen, you raise a condemning brow.
“Well, we’re still just people,” the blonde watches in real-time as your amazed smile flattens and those stars in your eyes fade over with rippling fluorescents, “Most advanced part of the Tulpar is the idea it exists,” he shrugs, “And maybe the fabricator.”
“Fabricator?” that makes you grin again, “No shit- we got a fabricator?”
Your language could use some work, but that wide fucking smile reminds Curly of when he was starting out -- sure, his uniform still had more specs back then, and sure he was in a much better position. But still, he was just a kid (only nine years older than you now but sure, a 27-year-old kid) impressed by the idea of floating through the stars without realizing it wouldn’t be too different from earth life. Besides the fabricator, at least.
“We do,” he confirms, stepping back from the 6x7 foot closet with ‘CUSTODIAL OFFICE’ printed across the front in chipping white paint, already pivoting down the hall suspecting you want to witness the machine posthaste, “You want to see it?”
“Yeah!” you cheer, slamming the door shut behind you before speeding toward the lounge, calling back, “It’s gotta be in the kitchen, right?!”
* *
[!] no new messages [!]
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@toxycodone / @maniacpixiedreamboy + @penguite + @morbiddog + @whoresinatrenchcoat + @voidcat / @fortheharbingers
trying another horror fic a la bug sluts @ da clurb
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nightxcreature · 2 months ago
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Do You Wanna Touch Me?
18+ ONLY
Summary: Part Two to Hotblooded, Reader can't help herself. She needs Dean anyway she can get him.
Warnings: Smut, Masturbation, Spice, Dirty Talk
Pairing: Dean Winchester x reader
A/N: wow. I did not expect that last one to get so much love and attention! Thank you all for being so kind! This is only my second ? time writing smut, so I hope it meets your expectations. I may keep this one going for at least one more part if you guys are interested. :) As always, comments, reblogs, and likes are always appreciated!
do not copy and share my work anywhere, you don't have permission.
I had been trying to fall asleep for hours now, and yet here I lay, half naked and clinging to a pillow for dear life. The ingredients in my drink from earlier were still running their course through my system and had left me panting at the mere thought of Dean. I’d rid myself of my T-shirt before Sam had even left my room, heat emanating from my body at a rapid pace. Sam had awkwardly averted his gaze before locking me in and reminding me that I should feel better after I rest. And yet even hours later, I feel like I’ll die if I don’t see Dean soon, speak to him, touch him…
                I groan as I shift to snag my phone from the nightstand, my hips rolling deliciously against the pillow below me. Feral thoughts of the hunter a few doors down rack my brain and I quickly pull up his contact before pressing the call button. His ringtone echoes down the hall from where I assume he is in the library before he answers.
                “Hey, Darlin’,” His voice alone causes my heart to race, a gasp leaving my lips, “Are you okay?”
                I shuffle to straddle the pillow below me as he speaks, the worry for me in his voice sending me into a frenzy, “No. I need you.” I practically cry into the speaker, “Need you so bad.”
                He sighs deeply and I can hear papers shuffling in the background, “You should be asleep, Sweetheart.”
                “Can’t sleep.” I mumble, rolling my hips against the pillow as he speaks, “Can only think about you. I don’t think I’ll think of anything else ever again.”
                “I’m trying to find something to help make it easier for you, I’m sorry.” He whispers, papers shuffling again, “I promise, it’s got to wear off eventually.”
                I let out a frustrated sound, my bottom lip jutting out as I whine, “I’m going to die in here! I’m going to die from needing you so bad and you wont even come in here to help me.”
                “I can’t come help you, Baby. It’s not you that’s asking for this.” He whispers and I can hear the frustration in his voice. One part of me is yelling for me to shut up, to hang up the phone and go to bed, try to somehow go to sleep and forget this ever happened…but the other part of me is ravenous, feral for the man on the other end of the line, and she is not going to lose this battle without a fight.
                “It’s your job to help people, Dean.” I cry out, a low blow I know, but the desperation coursing through my veins won’t let up, “Are you really going to leave me here like this?”
                “Don’t do that.” He growls out, “I told you before that we could talk about this when you’re not drunk off some god-level fuck juice. I want to talk about this. I do want to help you, but I won’t go in that room.”
                His take-no-shit tone goes straight to my core, which I know is the exact opposite of what he’s looking for, but I can’t stop imagining the firm look on his face as he scolds me. My hips roll quicker, a ravenous feeling overtaking my thoughts, “Please keep talking.” I whisper as my eyes close. I hear his breathing hitch, but he doesn’t speak for a moment, and I bite my lip nervously. Did I make him upset? I don’t think I can live with myself if he’s upset with me, “I’m sorry, I didn’t-.”
                “Don’t apologize.” He cuts me off quickly, “What are you doing?”
                Embarrassment should flood my system, but the idea of being caught getting off to his voice just spurs me on. I lift off the pillow to roll my shorts down my legs and then position myself over it again, “What do you think I’m doing?” I whisper seductively into the speaker. Hoping, practically praying, that he knows and he’ll throw whatever righteousness he has left out the window to come help me reach my goal. Sweat pours down my forehead and a heaviness sits in my hips, I rut against the pillow again to try and alleviate the feeling, a small moan leaving my lips as I do.
                The rough sound of his chair sliding across the library floor and his heavy boots thudding as he walks stills me. I sit with bated breath listening to the sound through the phone, waiting to hear him outside my door, “Where are you going?”
                I hear him chuckle quietly before his voice finally graces my ear again, “Where do you think I’m going?” I hear his boots come to a stop, but no sound comes from the hallway in front of my room.
                I groan in frustration, rutting against the pillow isn’t bringing the amount of relief that my body needs and the thought of Dean not being here to help me brings a sinking feeling in my stomach, “Where are you?”
                A door clicks closed on his end before he speaks, “What are you wearing?” He whispers gruffly, sending a shock to my core. I stay quiet for a moment before he whispers a bit softer, “You told me to keep talking. I won’t come in that room with you, but I am going to help you. Now, what are you wearing?”
                Though he can’t see me, I nod quickly and glance down to my torso. Thankful for the black lace panty set cladding my body so I don’t have to lie…I don’t think I could lie to him right now, “My underwear.” I whisper, holding my breath while I wait for him to speak again, “It’s black and lacy and I think you’d really like it.”
                He groans quietly and I can hear him lay down on what I assume is his own bed, “I’d like to see that.”
                “Come here and you can.” My breathing is heavy, anticipation building throughout me as I beg him, “Please.”
                “Please? You gonna beg me, Sweetheart?” He whispers lowly, the teasing tone spurs me on and I roll my hips against the pillow again, moaning louder as I do. I hear him suck in a breath before he continues, “Tell me what you want me to do to you.”
“Touch me. Please, touch me.” I cry out, “I need you all over me.”
                He chuckles darkly, “I can’t right now, can I? But, you can.”
 At his words my hips stutter, I glance down at the pillow as I slide back toward my headboard, “You want me to…”
“Touch yourself, Baby. Where do you want my hands?” His voice is low as he instructs me and I dust the hand not holding my phone across my chest as I listen to his breathing, “Where do you want me to touch you?”
 “Everywhere. My chest, my legs, my….” I gasp as my fingertips rub over my clothed nipples; eyes still closed, I imagine his fingers being the ones ghosting across my frame.
I can practically hear the smile on his face when he speaks again, his voice quiet and heavy, “Yeah, I wanna touch you there, too. I can’t stop thinking about the things I want to do to you.”
“What else do you want to do to me?” I whisper, my hands making their way down my body at a slow pace. I play with the hem of my panties, imagining it’s his thick fingers there teasing me as he speaks slowly into my ear.
“I wanna spend all day between your legs, Baby. Wanna fuck you so good, you forget your name.” He whispers huskily, his breathing is heavier and I almost cum at the thought that he must be touching himself, too. I slide my hand into my panties and moan breathlessly at the feeling of relief that rushes my system. I circle my fingers around my opening, brushing my fingertips over the bud at the apex every so often
                “You drive me crazy,” I groan, throwing my head back against the headboard as I picture his face between my thighs and all the filthy noises he would be making while he eats me, “I need more. You make me so wet.”
                He curses into the speaker and I can hear his breathing quicken, “Take off your clothes.” The harshness in his voice causes my eyes to snap open and rushes me to strip bare faster than I ever have. I remain quiet as I lay alone, listening to his rapid breathing on the other end of the line, “You want me to fuck you, Baby?”
                I nod dumbly before realizing that he still can’t see me and quickly recover, “Yes.”
                “I want you on your hands and knees. Arch your back and touch yourself.” I nod again, rolling quickly to my hands and knees to do as he asks, “I can’t see you, Sweetheart. Are you listening to me?”
                “Yes, Sir.” I mumble as I rush to put the phone on speaker and roll my hips against my fingers, “I’m listening.”
                “Good girl.” He replies, chuckling as I moan at the name, “You like that?”
                “Yes. I love that.” I pant, rubbing faster against the bundle nerves between my thighs. My eyes roll back at the feeling and I try my best to focus on Dean’s voice as he continues to talk me through this.
                “All those little sounds your making are getting me so hard, Darlin’. I can’t stop thinking about how good you must feel, about how good I’d make you feel.” His husky whispers sends my imagination into overdrive as I raise up to sit on my heels. A single finger sinks into me and I moan out at the relief, “I’ve been thinking about being inside you all day. Whatever you want me to do to you, I’d do it. I want to be so deep inside you.”
                My eyes roll at his words, my breathing becoming heavier and I barely hear him when he asks, “You close, Sweetheart? Want me to make you cum?” The teasing lilt in his voice urging my hands to move quicker, my fingers rushing in and out of my opening like lightening. My toes curl and my vision goes blurry as the orgasm crashes into me suddenly. His name leaves my lips like a prayer as I come down and I hear him grunt, whispering my name quietly against the phone speaker.
                My breathing is heavy when I finally speak, “Thank you.”
                He chuckles awkwardly and I can imagine the way a blush covers his cheeks when he replies, “No need to thank me, Darlin’. I think I got just as much out of this as you did.”
                I laugh a little in response, feeling the hint of a blush rising in my own cheeks. The relief I feel is insurmountable and I can feel exhaustion taking over my body in exchange for the rabid horniness from earlier. “Do you think this is over? The potion, I mean.” I ask, waiting for the intense feeling of want to return.
                “Guess we’ll have to wait and see.” He mumbles, “If you need me again though, just call.”
                “Will do.” I reply, “We do have a lot to talk about when I’m feeling better though…”
                He laughs nervously before trying to hide it as a cough before agreeing, “Yeah, uh, we do.”
                “I’ll see you after my nap, Dean.” I answer with a slight smile, “And then we can see just how quickly I forget my name.”
                He snorts and I can hear the smirk in his voice, “Set a timer, Sweetheart, it won’t take long.”
______________________________________________________________
Taglist: @lmhf1 @whimsyfinny @enigmalynne @envysarchive @aylacavebear @suckitands33 @oceean @mxtansy @k-slla
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yoonavii · 1 year ago
Text
Flirting with fire (Pt. 2)
OPLA! Sanji x Reader
A/N: Read PART ONE first before this one. Enjoy :)
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The next morning, you made your way to the Baratie’s bustling kitchen, ready to start another day of culinary adventures. As you walked in, the savory aroma of cooking filled the air, but your attention was quickly drawn to the hushed voices coming from the pantry. Curiosity getting the better of you, you lingered by the pantry’s cracked door, unintentionally eavesdropping on a conversation between Zeff, the grizzled old chef of the Baratie, and Sanji, the suave and passionate cook.
Zeff’s gruff voice reached your ears, “Little eggplant, you’re not fooling anyone. I’ve been around long enough to recognize love when I see it. I’m aware of your feelings for y/n. You’ve been taking too long to confess.” Sanji, who was usually quick with his retorts, tried to deny his feelings, “Oi, Zeff, what are you talking about? There’s nothing like that going on.”
Zeff’s eyes bore into Sanji, his tone stern, “Boy, I know you better than you know yourself. Don’t try to hide your heart from me.” Sanji sighed, seemingly defeated, and admitted, “Yeah, Zeff, you’re right. I’ve got feelings for her, but I don’t know how to confess. I can’t even find the right words.”
Zeff chuckled, “Confess? You, who can woo female customers with ease, can’t confess to the one who matters most? That’s rich.” Just then, you cleared your throat, making your presence known. Zeff greeted you with a knowing smile and gave Sanji a subtle wink before leaving the room, leaving you two alone.
An awkward silence hung in the air as you began gathering ingredients from the pantry’s shelves. Sanji, seemingly unable to contain his emotions any longer, followed closely behind you. With a gentle push, he closed the pantry doors, leaving you both in a secluded, intimate space. The tension between you two was palpable; your bodies were practically pressed against the pantry shelves, and you could smell his signature cologne, a mix of tobacco and spices, even more intensely at such close proximity.
Breaking the silence, Sanji took a deep breath, his voice sincere and filled with longing, “I can’t hold it in any longer, y/n. You mean everything to me. When I’m cooking, it’s your smile I picture. When I’m dreaming, it’s your face I see. I’ve been hiding my feelings because I was scared, but now, I can’t. I love you more than anything in this world.” Your heart skipped a beat at his heartfelt confession, and you couldn’t resist any longer. You pulled him closer by his tie, capturing his lips in a passionate and fiery kiss. The world outside the pantry seemed to disappear as the two of you lost yourselves in each other’s embrace.
As the kiss deepened, your hands explored each other’s bodies, igniting a fierce desire that had been smoldering for far too long. Sanji’s hands cradled your face, his lips fervently moving against yours, tasting the sweetness of the forbidden fruit they had longed for. You could feel the rapid beat of his heart, synchronized with your own, and the heat between you intensified with every passing moment. In your passionate frenzy, you stumbled and crashed into shelves, knocking over cans and creating a cacophonous mess. From a distance, Zeff’s voice interrupted your heated moment, “Oi, you two lovebirds better get to work before the whole ship catches fire!” Giggling and flushed with desire, you both separated reluctantly, leaving the pantry to resume your duties in the kitchen. But now, you carried a secret, a newfound passion for each other that had finally been confessed.
As the day went on, the two of you shared secret glances and subtle smiles, knowing that your love had been revealed and that your future together was now a tantalizing promise.
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©𝐘𝐎𝐎𝐍𝐀𝐕𝐈𝐈— Any sign/evidence of plagiarism made from outside this name will be dealt with by whatever means necessary. Legal action may occur if non fanfiction works are plagiarized.
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healmyhrt · 1 year ago
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⌗ a night alone, c. sturniolo
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chris x fem!reader
summary: you and chris have the house to yourselves and decide to do something other than… inappropriate things, and fail. (lmao)
disclaimers!: established relationship, oral sex (male receiving), mild smut, kissing, cursing, use of y/n,
a/n: yall. its short. all my shit is short unfortunately, I APOLOGIZE. I WILL MAKE LONGER FICS IN THE FUTURE. until then, HERES A CHRIS FIC FOR MY CHRIS GIRLS 😜 | also didn’t proofread <3
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the boys were out for the night, so it was just chris and i. we often have nights to ourselves, but we usually choose to do more… inappropriate things. that’s why i wanted to have a simple date night tonight.
“okay come up!” i yell down toward his bedroom. chris jogs up the steps, and his eyes widen at the kitchen table.
“what’s this?” he smiles.
spread across the wooden table were all the ingredients to bake cookies, and a few candles. he looks over to me, and smirks. “oh, you shouldn’t have.” he says in a dramatic tone, walking toward me.
he puts his arms around my waist, and i place my hands around his neck, slightly looking up at him. “i thought it’d be a nice change for our night alone.” i grin back.
chris glances back over at the table, and then back at me with the sweetest smile ever. “and it is.”
i kiss him, impatiently, and he tilts my jaw upward with his index finger. a repetitive sound interrupts us, and i look over at my phone on the table. “sorry.” i sigh.
“i set a timer for the butter to thaw.” i chuckle, holding up the now soft, stick of butter. chris laughs and then stops abruptly, looking at all the ingredients again.
“wait,” he starts, “does this mean we’re not fucking?”
oh my god.
“chris—” he continues walking around the table until he gets to the assortment of cookies. “wait, babe.”
i scoff. “yeah?” he picks up the cookies, and turns it so i can read the title. “these are bake only, they’re pre-made. we dont need all these ingredients.” he laughs.
i snatch the cookies from his hands, and read the title again. “shut the fuck up.” i mumble. chris takes the cookies from my hands, and places them on the table.
“so, i guess we can fuck.” he smirks.
“chris, noooo. we need to do something different.” i gesture to the cookies he just put down. he places his hands on my waist, lifting me up like it’s nothing.
i automatically wrap my legs around his waist, and he places both hands on my hips, holding me up.
“please, baby.”
i gently bite my bottom lip. that’ll do it for me.
“fine. but only for a little.” chris smiles instantly, and smashes his lips against mine. the kiss is hungry, like he couldn’t get enough of me.
he sits me on the counter, and slowly lifts up my nightgown. i pull it over my head, and do the same to his shirt, then he throws it on the floor.
“pants.” i say through a kiss.
chris’s hands leave my hips, and begin shimmying his pants down. i hop off of the counter, and adjust him so he’s leaning against it. “what’re you—” i interrupt him by putting my hand over his mouth.
he nods, and i move my hand, using it to pull down his boxers. chris’s breathing becomes rapid, and i smile to myself.
i hold his shaft in my hands, and spit over his tip. chris watches while it slowly trickles down from my lips and onto him.
he trembles as it slides down his shaft, and i hold eye contact with him while i move my hand up and down, spreading it.
i had grown bored of touching him with my hands, so i move my mouth to his cock, and wrap my lips around his tip. i look up asking for his consent, and chris gives me a quick nod.
i took more and more of him, stopping halfway because i couldn't swallow any more. i started bobbing my head on his cock, collecting the precum.
“ah, ah…” chris moaned every time i put more of him into my mouth, and felt his tip hit the back of my throat.
“please, ma…” he spoke through whimpers, and grabbed a handful of my hair. chris thrusts into my mouth, bruising my throat.
i tap his thigh, and he comes to an abrupt stop.
i pull myself off of him, and his cock leaves mymouth with a pop sound. “too rough?” i wipe my mouth, and stand up, kissing him.
“it’s okay. i like it when you’re like that.” i smirk.
chris pulls up his boxers and his pajama pants together, and looks around for his shirt. i slide my nightgown back up my legs, and straighten the straps on my shoulders.
“so, we should probably make these cookies now, huh?”
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necropathys · 19 days ago
Note
Could I have some soft (as soft as it gets with them anyway) and cute apple poly headcannons or details of their relationship? Having a rough time and I'd like to read about the ever suffering trio getting some comfort
i just got out of the hospital and im on heavy bedrest so this is comfort for me also lmaooo
“You’re not using lemon zest?” Sol’s voice dripped with scandalized disdain as he lounged against the counter, his bright mismatched eyes narrowing. “It transforms the flavor entirely.”
“What could you possibly know about cooking?” Shattered didn’t even glance up, his focus entirely on the rhythm of his whisk, beating egg yolks into a golden froth. The bowl sang softly under the rapid motion, and his corruption-composed tendrils moved with surprising grace, deftly snatching an ingredient from Dream’s hands.
Each motion of the tendrils was precise, controlled—a far cry from the chaotic spread they once left in their wake. They weaved around the cream with care, their blackened edges glinting faintly under the overhead light, a subtle reminder of the power they contained.
Sol opened his mouth, his mouth already curling into an argument, but Shattered cut him off without missing a beat. “Something you didn’t pick up from one of your personal gourmet chefs, or whatever culinary show you’re binging this week.”
Sol huffed, straightening up with exaggerated offense. “Pardon me for being a man of impeccable taste,” he shot back, his voice oozing with mock indignation.
“You’re fortunate I’m allowing you a taste,” Shattered murmured, voice silk-wrapped steel, his words delicate but carrying a sharpness that could cut. He lifted the creamy custard mixture from its nest of bowls and carried it to an awaiting row of petite, porcelain ramekins. They sat arranged within a shallow roasting pan, their pristine surfaces waiting to cradle the promise of something sweet, something sublime.
“For the record,” Sol chimed in, pushing forward his lower lip in a most delicious pout, “I’m the one who suggested we make this in the first place.” His tone was both defensive and indulgent, as though he knew he’d already earned the right to savor what was coming next.
Shattered’s gaze, half-lidded and predatory, slid over to Sol. “You just want an excuse to turn your hands into a blowtorch for the brûlée,” he deadpanned, each word laced with a scathing familiarity that only existed between those who shared many intimate hours in close quarters—cooking or otherwise.
“Guys,” Dream interjected, voice laced with both amusement and exasperation, as if he were attempting to smooth creases out of hot silk. He hovered close, the warmth of his presence a pleasant balm against the crackling tension. He fixed them both with a soft, pleading look. “Please… behave.”
A sigh slipped from Sol’s mouth, followed by the click of his tongue. He folded his arms loosely, acknowledging the gentle request without surrendering an ounce of his pride. Shattered merely hummed, the vibration of it low in his throat, acknowledging Dream’s presence without relinquishing command.
Then Shattered turned to Dream, one tendril drifting closer as if to beckon. “Come here,” he purred, voice now gentle yet firm. His eyes narrowed, not in anger, but in focus. “I’ll show you how to pour this just right.”
Dream moved closer, drawn as if by some soft gravity that Shattered seemed to command. A tremor of anticipation flickered over the surface of the custard mixture, a mirror to the subtle tension winding through the three of them. The overhead light gleamed in Shattered’s dark eyes as he guided Dream’s hands, cupping them in his own while a tendril slipped around Dream’s wrist, steadying it. Dream inhaled, slow and shallow, as if afraid a gust of breath might disrupt the delicate chemistry between them.
“You want to keep the flow steady,” Shattered murmured, voice low enough that Dream had to lean in, close enough to catch a note of spice and sweetness lingering on Shattered’s scent. He tipped the bowl slightly, and the pale golden custard ribboned gracefully into the first ramekin. “See how it settles so smoothly at the bottom? No air bubbles. That’s what we’re after.”
Dream nodded, swallowing carefully. He could feel Sol’s gaze playing over them, observing every subtle brush of their bodies. Sol’s mouth twitched, half a smirk and half something else—something almost too fond, too genuine, for someone so proud. He reclined against the counter, ankles crossed, hands folded neatly, as if challenging himself not to interrupt. Yet the sly gleam in his eyes revealed that he was savoring this moment, like sampling the barest spoonful of sugar on the tip of the tongue.
“Good,” Shattered praised, warming slightly, as if each carefully poured ramekin pleased him more than the last. He coaxed Dream’s touch along, adjusting the angle of his wrist, aligning their movements until the bowl was nearly empty. The quiet hiss and hum of the kitchen—an occasional drip of water in the sink, the distant thrum of something mechanical—became a backdrop against which their breathing and hushed voices were amplified.
Sol finally broke the silence, voice softer now, less biting. “Huh, so it’s finesse you’re after, not just brute force.” He tilted his head, as if recalculating who Shattered was beneath that venomous charm. There was genuine curiosity there, buried in layers of banter.
Shattered’s response was a slow, lazy blink and a subtle grin that curved at the corner of his mouth. “Finesse is everything,” he said simply. He lifted the bowl away once the last creamy trickle slipped into the final ramekin. With a practiced motion of one tendril, he set the bowl aside. Another tendril—its movement fluid and graceful—took up the sugar meant for sprinkling atop the surface. “Dream, would you care to do the honors?”
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fleckcmscott · 8 months ago
Text
Something Old, Everything New
Summary: After Arthur has a run in with the past, Y/N provides the shelter she’s always hoped to.
Words: 4,227
Warnings: Swearing, Smut
A/N: @tally-kiza made the request that prompted this story. Cal, I hope it's what you're looking for! 😂 Heartfelt thanks to @sweet-nothings04 for beta-ing, helping with the summary, and her neverending kindness and support. 💜
If you have any thoughts or questions, please comment, feel free to message me, or send me an ask. Requests for Arthur and WWH are open!
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The shopping list was broken into three sections, each separated by a thick, felt-tip line. Ingredients for a recipe Y/N was keeping secret. Refills of temazepam and fluoxetine. And supplies for light repairs he was determined to finish before the weekend was out.
Through poverty and an absent landlord, Arthur had become something of a handyman as a teen. He'd figured out how to snake gooey clumps of hair from the shower drain, unstick stuck drawers with a spritz of WD-40, patch the hole in the wall left by his fist. A job done himself was a dollar saved, a buck to spend on cigarettes or butterscotch candies, depending on how his week went.
Tapping each item on the paper, he dodged a pallet of tightly stacked potting soil and ambled down the fourth aisle of Garber's Value Hardware and Housewares, his first stop and a staple that'd served Burnley since 1926. Paint thinner stains dotted the creaky wooden floor, the shop's knob and tube wiring was a decade out of code, and the fumes of last year's grease saturated the air.
The red bins of O-rings, washers, and valve seals were poorly sorted. He sifted through grimy plastic baggies, searching for a standard size set. The kitchen faucet had been leaking for weeks, and the drops grew ever fatter and faster. He decided on a variety pack, then aimed for the door section for hinge lubricant, as vegetable oil no longer quieted the bedroom door's squeaks and squawks.
He was midway through the yellow bottle's directions when an old nickname smacked him in the back of the head.
"Hey, Fleck the Speck!"
The jovial call made Arthur's joints as stuck as an old drawer.     
"Hell, it's been what, twenty years?" Richard continued, dark blue mechanic's overalls swishing as he advanced on Arthur. The guy thrust a friendly hand his way. "You just kinda fell off the face of the earth. How've you been?"
Arthur glared at that hand.
Richard McMahon was an old classmate, from Cowther's Middle School straight through sophomore year at Gotham High. Being held back two years hadn't stopped him from reaching the level of cool to go by Rick, not Dick.
And he was one of the many people Arthur could have gone to his grave without seeing.
Fleck the Speck had caught on amongst Rick's group of rowdies like too much Brylcreem. Dingy hair and ratty, ill-fitting clothes had made Arthur a target to rival a dart board. Rick's hair had been just as greasy, his t-shirt couldn't keep up with his stocky teenage body. But youth hierarchy demanded someone be shit on, and via his natural awkwardness, Arthur attracted all the flies.
But that was then, and this was now, and if Arthur interpreted Rick-not-Dick's tone correctly, he saw him as a regular guy.
"I'm good," Arthur said, returning the shake. The man grabbed him in a sweltering grip. "I- I had a lot going on. With my mother and everything."
"Good, good. You working now?"
"Yes. I'm a comedian."
"No shit! You still doing that laugh?"
That Rick would bring up Arthur's condition wasn't a shock. It'd been a source of endless entertainment for his peers. He took half a step back. "Doing that laugh?"
"Yeah! It was a riot, really threw the teachers off, too. Got any kids?"
Rapid fire questions with teasing cloaked as compliments dizzied Arthur, like he was a returning guest on the Murray show under the lights and the heat. "I'm married."
"Me, too. You remember Shelly Petters?"
Shelly Peters had sat to Arthur's left in US History, a course he'd struggled with like all the rest. Getting dates confused was too easy, and it was far too hard to concentrate while awaiting next month's allotment of government peanut butter and wondering if Penny had left on the oven again.
In her pink miniskirt and flowing, flaxen locks, Shelly had been a beauty fit for the cover of TV Guide.  During the mid-term, he'd frowned at the blue test booklet, the words swimming in front of him. Frustration channeled its way to his knee, bouncing it against the bottom of the desk. Bang. Bang. Bang. The force of his grip snapped his pencil in two. The pointed half fell and rolled across the floor, right into Mr. Galloway's shoes.
As if helping Arthur was the most natural thing in the world, Shelly had offered her spare. He'd done his best not to chew on it and fallen in love.
But his heart was as poorly schooled as his mind. As sweet as that recollection was, it was interlinked with the truth of how rare kindness had been.
He'd untangled his curls, slicked them back with tap water. Tucked his sweater into his trousers, rolled up the cuffs to hide the holes. When he'd caught up to her by her locker, Rick had stuck one heavy foot between them.
"What'd you do to your hair?" The rowdies formed a half circle, a pack of wolves, and the leader addressed his eager audience. "You gonna put on a show for us, Fleck the Speck? How about telling one of them jokes of yours? Knockknockknockknockknock!"
"Richard, stop it," Shelly hissed.
Laughter forced a cough from Arthur, his fingers clawing his trousers in an attempt to get control over his breathing. The tightening of his throat turned tears into a nakedness that choked. He'd fled to the boy's bathroom on the third floor. Locked himself in the last stall. Wiped his snot with cheap toilet paper and sleeves. What a fool he was for trying to raise himself above his station. The station shared by them all.
A blink returned Arthur to the present. The raw quality of his voice couldn't be restrained. "Shelly married you?"
"Right out of high school," Rick said. "Our daughter graduated this year. It was fun, seeing the old gym again. It hasn't changed one iota." His thumb gestured at Arthur's baggy cardigan, a hitchhiking motion. "Looks like you haven't changed much, either."
Nostalgia coated the comment, not meanness. But the same sense of worthlessness engulfed Arthur, joined by a rising fury that this man - this- this asshole - maintained the power to tear him down. To leave him the same boy who'd fled to the bathroom, when he'd tried to be more than allowed.
Crumpling his shopping list, Arthur shoved his first in his pocket before he could shove it in Dick-not-Rick's nose. Blunt nails dug his palms. "I can't believe she'd marry someone like you."
Offense deformed the man's face. "What's that supposed to mean?"
"Don't you remember? All you did was make fun of me."
"Hey, everyone had a nickname back then. It was all a joke."
"Yeah, well. Comedy is subjective, Dick, and I never thought it was funny."
"We were kids. Kids do stupid shit." A hint of reticence twitched Dick's mouth. Lifting his chin, he straightened his features into calm. "I'll say hi to Shelly for you. Let her know you're doing all right. She'll be glad to hear it."
Then came the words that hit Arthur like a hammer.
"You really haven't changed at all."
~~~~~
Y/N brushed stray strands from her hair, the usual stragglers after a fresh cut. Wilma, the hairdresser she'd been seeing for three years, had called out sick, so she'd met a new beauty school graduate named Nancy. Though shy about feathering, the girl was eager to blunt cut. Y/N had halted her with a raised hand just as she was about to give her bangs.
Crossing the living room, Y/N paused long enough to turn on the TV, where a rerun of the Honeymoon Game would start at five. Arthur and she had become experts at guessing each other's answers and often ended those nights with more than a kiss. Being newlyweds themselves, it was the perfect watch.
And what a blissful eight months it'd been.
All on her own, she'd made the leap to move to Gotham at an age when most people had a spouse, a house, and two cars in a garage. Self-sufficiency had been her middle name for over a decade. She hadn't planned on getting remarried, instead relishing in finally having her own path.
But fate had introduced her to the kindest, most wonderful man she'd ever met, and the whole world had shifted.
It was a delight to have a helper, a partner. A person she could come home to and who could come home to her, who brightened her day with love and laughter. Who made the smallest domesticities matter, because she could share them. And being married to Arthur was fun.
She'd jotted a shopping list this morning, starting with ingredients for skillet enchiladas, a recipe he'd played at trying to peek. Then he'd perched on the kitchen counter and named all the hardware he needed, counting on his fingers as he went. There was something undeniably alluring about it. A masculine confidence that tickled her insides, a suaveness that came naturally when he let go enough to let it.
Alone, she would have waited at the bottom of the super's list for small fixes. She was good at keeping house, but repairs were outside of her league, Class A when her skill set was Class C. Now, sitting at the dinette table with a cup of tea and the Gotham Times, she couldn't stop picturing Arthur holding a wrench. The flex of his bicep as he twisted it, his broad stance as he bent over the sink.
Heat burned her cheeks, a good dose of fluster. Squeezing her thighs together, she turned the page.
Just as she'd read a statement from Gotham's Office of Management and Budget protesting any attempt to expand aid for the unemployed, the front door unlocked. She pushed the paper aside, tightened the bow of her pencil skirt. "There you are, Mr. Fleck," she said, rising to help with the shopping bags. "Did you find everything?"
A single sack hung from Arthur's twitchy knuckles. Brown paper. Wrinkled. The size of a lunch bag.
Head tilted to one side, she tested its light weight with two lifting motions. "Was Ed's closed?"
"No."
She looked inside. Hardware jumbled at the bottom, along with a distinct lack of orange, plastic bottles. "What about your medication?"
"Don't worry about it."
He shoved his tan jacket on the hook next to hers. Fingers smoothed his hair, turning into claws, a pressure that blanched his temples. Warmth fled her face, replaced by a concerned chill, for it was a move she recognized. A jarring and painful echo of tough times.
Without the usual peck, the usual caress, the usual smile, he walked past her to the living room. Grabbed the remote from the coffee table and flicked off the TV.
One foot forward before she held back. "Arthur, what's wrong?"
No answer, no turn towards her. No indication he'd heard her inquiry. He jerked the chair from his desk and dropped into it. Yanked open the top left drawer and smacked his journal to the surface.
Y/N's breath caught in her breast. When Arthur was upset, a pattern came into play: he wanted space, and she respected him by giving it. A behavior she attributed to his years of isolation and not a small amount of fear. Yes, she'd gotten used to it. But that didn't make it any less irksome, any less hard on her heart. Without the whole story of what'd happened, she found herself at a loss as to how to help. A fog had rolled in and she was a dinghy, drifting through choppy waters with a broken masthead.
She forced herself to browse the cupboards, search for what to piece together for a comforting meal. A can of peas sat on the second shelf. There was half a box of macaroni, but they'd used the last jar of tomato sauce on Monday. In the freezer, one Salisbury steak Swanson stood its ground, next to bags of chicken breasts and sweet corn. It was all about as comforting as cold chowder.
In the doorway by the dinette table, she observed him anew. He hunched over his desk, muttering to himself. He'd shed his cardigan and shirt, his trousers, even his worn white socks. They lay strewn on the other side of the room divider to his right. Out of sight but, judging from his posture, far too firmly in mind.
She approached with quiet, measured steps. Stopped six inches behind him. His every sinew screamed dissent. Ballpoint pen scratched across paper. She pushed herself to her tiptoes to peer over his shoulder. Though his forearm covered two-thirds of his journal, enough of the slanted script cried out to her.
"...bad guys alwaze win at life. 35 years here and I got one prize!!!!! What??? How fucking long can peeple like Dick make me feel awful? I don't want anything to hurt me any more. They never think what it's like to be someone like me. This city is too crowded and full of Dicks. If I..."
Testing the waters of what Arthur was willing to receive, she laid her hands on the nape of his neck. It was cement under her palms. Thumbs worked lines up and down on both sides, beneath brown curls that brushed knuckles. After a minute, after he hadn't pushed her away, she said, "You don't have to shut me out."
His scrawling stopped.
Lines became circles as she moved outwards. The pads of her fingers traced his clavicle, massaged the bony knobs of his shoulders. But his muscles grew tauter, and she realized the swirling strokes stung instead of soothed. Reluctance ached her sternum. She swallowed against the worry he hated.
He'd been in worse shape before and he'd come to her. He would come to her again soon.
In the meantime, she'd meet him where he was. Care for him the best way she knew how. "I'll get the groceries and stop by Groves." Her lips brushed the shell of his ear. "And be home before you have a chance to miss me." One final squeeze before she turned to leave.
Quick as a whip, his hand locked around her wrist.
Relief flooded her frame. A welcome, wished for reaction to the man she loved. The man she was devoted to, the man she adored opening up enough to need her. She went to his side, assuming he wanted to embrace her, press his face to her stomach. Let go with her, into her. But his posture remained rigid, a ramrod of resentment. His whole body appeared to be filled with waiting - but for what?
He traced the veins on her forearm, mapped a path to her palm. Her fingers curled around his. Low and rumbling, he pierced the silence. "Say you want me." A rasp equal parts desperation and demand. "Tell me." When his gaze darted to hers, the smoldering in his stare said he wanted to possess her.
She'd let him.
One sideways step to stand before him. Her rear rested on the lip of his desk.
"I want you," she said. She placed his palm on her breast, guided his thumb beneath the placket of her blouse. Popped the buttons with a flick of her fingers. "Put your hands on me."
A harsh inhale as he shot upwards, grabbed her chin with greedy hands, and shoved his mouth to hers. Her bottom lip caught on his teeth. He groaned and lapped the sting away. In one smooth motion, he shoved her skirt to her waist and lifted her onto the desk. The pages of his journal crumpled under her ass.
He grasped her collar, tugged crepe to her elbows. She snaked between their torsos to open the front of her bra. Her breasts spilled onto him and he groaned. Smothered her mouth with a savage intensity.
His clothed erection bumped her vulva, flint striking stone. Aching, her nipples tightened against his chest, his hair tickling, teasing. Thumbs hooked around the lace trim of her panties. He shoved them over her hips, down her thighs, past her knees. When the cotton reached her toes, she kicked them off. They landed on the console stereo, hung indelicately from the corner.
Dragging her ass to the edge of the desk, Arthur pulled himself out of his briefs. She fell backwards onto her elbows, knocked over their framed photograph, taken on a night to remember. It fell to the wooden surface with a slap. He cupped her labia, slipped a pointer between her lips. Long enough to test her readiness, to test her willingness.
The desk lamp's gentle light played across his ribs, his toned abdomen, his thighs. Breath shallow and ragged, she eyed the tip of his cock. Purplish red and shiny with slick. Stare fixed on her center, he took it in his palm. She gulped. Her knees fell further apart as she canted upward, her damp folds brushing his knuckles. He pumped once. Twice.
And then he breached her.
A rough cry flew from her throat. One leg curled about him, her heel at the small of his back, her other foot braced on the seat of his chair.
Bent over her now, he propped himself on one hand. Cupped her neck and sheathed his shaft completely. He crushed her to him for a fierce, firm kiss. The tip of his tongue pressed for entry. But before she could grant it, he moved to nuzzle her temple, her jaw.
Steady and sharp, his thrusts impaled her with the taste of something primal. The hot glide of flesh on flesh. His thighs rattled the pencil drawer. He grunted. Fucked faster, harder. The desk threatened to bang the wall.
His sweaty face fell to the crook of her shoulder and her eyes fell shut. The sensation of him inside her was powerful, overwhelming. A stretch that scorched in every way she wanted, forever and always.
This felt different, though. In the past, she'd invited him to take comfort in her body. To let their coming together be a haven, their union be a defiance against the tragedies life had dealt him. Besides the night she'd confessed she loved him, he hadn't taken her in that way. Arthur doing so now confirmed the strength of their connection. How much he trusted her, how much he honored her, as equally as she trusted and honored him.
Her heart longed to comfort him, too. To heal whatever had happened, to make the present and future brighter than the past. She sealed that vow with a kiss to his cheek.
His pelvis jerked unevenly, stammering between her thighs. She clutched his shoulder, gripped his forearm. A ragged moan tumbled past his lips, onto her skin. Her calves rose to squeeze him tight, tighter. Fingertips digging her hip, he stiffened, his hot essence splashing her walls. Gasps mingled, humid and heated. His abdomen quivered against hers.
Once he'd softened and steadied his breath, he slipped out of her. Arming his forehead, he stumbled to land in the chair.
Slowly, she clambered down, one foot meeting the carpet, then the other. She left her skirt at her waist but peeled off her blouse. Wiped their mess from the desk and tossed it on the pile of his clothes. She smoothed the pages of his journal, shut its leather cover. Smiling, she picked up their picture. Straightened the easel and put it in its place.
When she turned towards Arthur, he appeared to still be in a state, but one not altogether unpleasant. Gaze dazed and out of focus, dark brows lifted and lines of his face relaxed. And was that blush the result of his brazenness or his orgasm?
"Feeling better?" she asked, slinging an arm about him as she sat sideways on his lap.
"Uh huh."
She gave a throaty little laugh. "Good."
Sticky with perspiration, his forehead met her cheek. Her nails ran over his scalp, caught in damp, knotted curls. He heaved a long sigh, which goosepimpled her skin. Quiet blanketed them, tranquil and lovely, sunlight that sliced through the earlier fog.
But clouds did remain, questions she couldn't let go. Who was Dick? And what had he done to her husband, both then and now?
Rumbling disturbed the peace, a loud squeal like a balloon. Chuckling, Arthur splayed his fingers on her stomach. "Sorry about the groceries."
"Don't be." She covered his hand with hers. "I have an idea."
~~~~~
At a nearby diner, in a booth by the kitchen, over a blue-plate special of baked beans and hot dogs, Arthur told Y/N about it. All of it. The bullying, the cruelty of laughter, the taunting he hadn't always understood but a tone as familiar as not fitting anywhere. How reading had been hard and therefore it'd been hard to learn, even when he'd had the will. ("No one else had any problems. I felt stupid all the time.") That the awfulness he'd been destined to encounter every day made it a ten round fight to get off the couch, get washed up, and get to school.
And that he didn't get - would never get - how a guy as mean as Dick McMahon could wind up with the nicest girl in class.
Arthur scraped his spoon across the plate to snag the last bite of beans. "I dunno. I didn't want to be upset. That happened when we were kids."
"It's normal to be upset by assholes," Y/N countered. "What happened wasn't okay. Twenty years doesn't change that."
"But shouldn't it be easier by now? He said I hadn't changed but I have." Arthur wanted to believe that. He had to believe that.
"There're people I don't ever want to see again, no matter how much they've changed. Why do you think I moved to Gotham?"
The corner of his mouth quirked. "You're right, I just-" A slight shake of his head as he broke off. Dick had already stolen enough of today. Arthur wasn't about to allow him the rest. He retrieved a cigarette from his pocket and lit up. "I don't want to talk about it anymore. I'll be fine. I just want to enjoy being with you."
"You're always welcome." She caught the waitress's attention with a raised hand and ordered a decaf and slice of Pineapple Dream Pie. "We can get groceries tomorrow. Your refills, too. No, wait. Groves is closed Sundays."
"I have enough until Wednesday. Don't you have an appointment that morn-?"
"Schcuze me, ma'am?"
At the end of their table stood a man, clad in an orange and white Gotham Knights basketball jersey. A fiery K was emblazoned on his cheek. Arthur wondered where the rest of the letters had fled to.
The squire teetered on drunken knees. "Can I have your catchsup?" he asked, gesturing towards the glass bottle at the other end of the booth. Arthur handed it over. The man offered a goofy grin and shuffled away.
When he'd rounded the counter, Y/N smirked. "I hope he ordered a pot of coffee. Anyway, yes, Dr. Shapiro's at ten. Just a routine visit and he'll check my IUD. I got it after I moved, so it should have a few years left in it."
Ready to tease, Arthur wrinkled his nose. "But why? When we met, you said you weren't looking."
"Well, I wanted to be prepared. And it's a good thing, too, because that changed when you came along."
Chuckling, he rubbed the nape of his neck. A very good thing, indeed.
She poured the last of the creamer in her coffee, gave it a slow stir. She put the spoon on the saucer and lifted the beige mug. For a moment, her eyes had a faraway look. Her lashes fluttered it away. "Do you ever feel like you missed out, having only been with me?"
A flinch shot through him. "No. Why would you think that?"
"It's silly, I know. It's just that I was married before. I dated. You didn't have all that. And I'm older than you." The sheepish tuck of hair behind her ear. "I just wonder sometimes, that's all."
The cash register opened and shut. Order Up! bellowed from the kitchen. The shop bell ting ting tinged.
Arthur rested his cigarette in the table ashtray. Slid out of the booth and slid onto the bench seat beside her. "I'm comfortable with you and you care about me. I care about you, too."
A bright blush as she drank. Contentment washed over him, a happiness he hadn't known he could have before being with her. In this diner, in this city, in this life. A life he couldn't have dreamed of in that high school bathroom stall, snotting all over himself and asking why don't I fit, why don't I fit, why don't I fit?
"You know what's changed?" he started, folding her into his side. "I'm not alone anymore. Instead of getting angry, I should've bragged about that."
Beaming, she angled to face him. "You'll have plenty of chances."
She brought the mug to his mouth. Though he disliked milk in his java and one sugar wasn't enough, he stole a quick sip. Then he kissed her, sipping from her lips to wash the bitter away.
~~~~~
Tag list (Let me know if you want to be added!): @harmonioussolve​​​​​ @ithinkimaperson​​​​​ @sweet-nothings04​​​​​ @stephieraptorr​​​​ @rommies​​​​​ @fallenstarsabyss @gruffle1​​​​​ @another-day-in-chuckletown​ @hhandley80​​​​​ @jokerownsmysoul​​​​​ @rafaelbottom @ralugraphics​​​​​ @iartsometimes​​​​​ @fleckficgirl
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snzhrchy · 2 years ago
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for a request, would you be interested in doing a jealous/possessive hyoga x g/n reader?
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jealousy, jealousy.
hyoga akatsuki x gn!reader
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synopsis; hyoga has no reason to be jealous over ryusui but he can't himself...! notes; do not ask if i'm interested because if you request hyoga, i WILL do it. i love that man so much
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the sounds of conversation were dulled out by the constant movement of the water waves which were repeatedly attacking the persues.
much of the excitement and loud noises were emitted from the central area of the ship, where francois resided snd their bar. it was lively there; everyone was huddled around francois, wondering and guessing what sort of intoxicating concoction they'd come up with next. after all, everyone was desperate for a way to escape after the heinous events they'd been through.
you, however, were farther away from the action. trying your best to avoid the new drunks that were scattered across the ship. the only thing that slightly piqued your interest was the fighting practice going on between tsukasa, mozu, homura and of course, hyoga. still, their rapid moevements weren't enough to free you from your bored state so you just sat on one of the chairs, dissolving into your own thoughts.
until, a familiar blonde pilot came into your view.
'yn! i knew i'd find you here!' ryusui exclaimed with a big, bright smile. however, his happiness was cut short when he saw you, 'what's with the long face?' he suddenly asked, concerned laced in his tone.
'nothing-! what is it you wanna say?' you stammered once you realised that ryusui was indeed attempting to communicate with you.
'i asked dear francois to make you a perfect drink! it has alcohol, hope you don't mind it but also some mint and...' ryusui trailed off on explaining the ingredients and the way in which francois prepared your alcoholic beverage. eventually, he pushed the drink towards you, with his large, brown eyes indicating that he wanted you to give it a taste test.
immediately after taking your first sip, you felt enlightened, free. the alcoholic beverage was swoon swept into your body, making you intoxicated. you couldn't get enough, it was simply elegant. so after your first sip, you took another and then another...
soon, you too, were in a drunken state of mind. all thanks to ryusui, who was just happy that you were finally enjoying yourself. ryusui had also gotten himself a few drinks from francois, who joyfully made them for him and you.
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unbeknowest to the pair of drunk young adults, there had been hyoga who was keeping his golden eyes fixated on the two.
it was quite odd for hyoga to ever feel such a way. normally, most people won't even bother disturbing his significant other as he'd always be there by their side and glare at anyone who dared to get a little too friendly with them.
however, right now, he was busy exchanging attacks with mozu. he'd fought him already so he saw no reason for him to do it again. but it was required by him to do so; after all, he'd finally announced that he'd be loyal to the kingdom of science and they had just started to trust him. threatening ryusui would do no good to his reputation nor would be to halt his fighting practice.
nonetheless, hyoga felt bothered. he couldn't prevent himself from gazing at the pair every now and then. this action also resulted in his fighting moves becoming rather sloppy. but could he prevent himself? absolutely not. who wouldn't be bothered when a far more attractive man is basically wrapped around his significant other.
hyoga wasn't the type to consider himself to be jealous. he had no reason to be. but with the way ryusui had his arms wrapped around them and the way they both were laughing and giggling with each other made his heart drop--whether it was in jealousy or resentment, hyoga didn't know.
when hyoga saw ryusui grab their arm and practically drag his lover to francois' bar, he couldn't handle it anymore. he was really starting to dislike ryusui--was the captain not aware that yn was already taken?
hyoga had had enough. he simply let his spear drop to the floor as he trailed behind his lover and ryusui. this action of his earned a snicker and a degrading comment from mozu but the man immediately stopped his taunts once he saw hyoga's dark gaze.
once hyoga caught up to the pair, the first thing he did was grab a hold of his lover. he used one arm to tear them away from ryusui's grip and the other to gently caress their face.
his face turned into a frown after he realised that his lover had had too much to drink and were terribly intoxicated by the alcohol. how could they have been so careless?
'say, ryusui, don't you think they've had too much to drink already?' hyoga spoke, trying to keep his voice as monotone as possible.
'hmm...? we've barely drunk 4 glasses though-!' ryusui tried to explain.
'yeah, i think i'm going to have a few more!' yn confirmed.
'oh come on, you're on the verge of passing out. you know you can't handle alcohol very well.' hyoga snapped back. to be fair, he wasn't lying. his lover was practically falling asleep--their eyes were barely open and they could not form a coherant thought at all.
before ryusui could answer or before his lover could object, hyoga had already picked up his lover in a bridal-style manner and had already begun to depart the main deck of the ship.
he was right after all, his lover was just too tired to even deny any of his claims because as soon as hyoga swept them into his arms, they found themselves falling closer into a deep slumber.
the captain would've objected but he knew better than to get on hyoga's wrong side and he could not deny that indeed, 3 glasses of alcohol had rendered yn pretty helpless. so, he let them go but was determined to drink with them another time.
finally, his lover was far away from ryusui's grasp could hyoga finaly breathe properly.
upon gently settling his lover down onto their bed, hyoga realised that their lover had fallen asleep. a small smile crept it's way onto his features as he layed down next to them...
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enchantedchocolatebars · 10 months ago
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🥧 Crumbs And A Smile 🥧
Original story
Ao3 version
Pie recipe
A small slice of maple buttermilk pie sat idly on a plate at the supper table as Philip and Caleb hovered over it with hungry smiles on their faces while holding forks in their hands.
Their excited eyes started to sparkle as both boys stared down at the rich dessert before them.
The pie looked so perfect and well-made.
Its flaky and tender gold crust was complemented by the creamy custard filling, which was pure and smooth thanks to the well-mixed blend of brown sugar and maple syrup.
To enhance the pie's tanginess and sweetness, both lemon zest and cane sugar were sprinkled on top as a finishing touch.
When it came to pie, Philip and Caleb shared a similar fondness for the food.
However, the dessert was quite costly in the Puritan town of Gravesfield.
A single slice cost the boys all of their income that they had earned last week from their butter business.
But, in a way, the expense was worthwhile since maple buttermilk pie was their favorite treat.
Plus, purchasing the ingredients to bake their own at home was a no-go since Philip was far too little to use or be near the oven, and Caleb's baking skills weren't exactly the best at his age.
"Caleb, Caleb, Caleb!" Philip began as his voice chimed with such excitement.
"Who gets the first bite, huh?" he asked, eagerly wanting to know as he inquired the question to his brother a second time. "Who, who! Tell me! Tell me, tell me, tell me!"
Philip was unable to cease his buoyant bouncing.
This causes Caleb to let out a chuckle at his hyperactive little brother as he smiled a gentle smile at him, closing his eyes.
"Well," the blonde began. "I figured we'd cut the piece into two equal halves so that we both get one. That way, it's fair!" Caleb said, finishing his sentence in a tone that was both cheerful and calm.
His brown eyes begin to open back up again.
They spot Philip and soon take note of his messy, new appearance.
The brunette's mouth was now covered with pie as nothing but crumbs remained on the plate.
"Yay!" Philip cheered. "When do we get to do that?" he innocently asked, licking his lips.
Caleb was taken aback by his brother's rapid eating.
He didn't hear a single chewing sound come from him when his eyes were shut.
In spite of the slight shock, however, he chuckled, ruffling the pie theif's hair some.
"Hmm," he hummed. "Perhaps maybe next time, if someone doesn't decide to go gobbling it all down," Caleb answered, gently scolding his brother while sending him a stern look that was laced with playfulness.
Philip giggled with a grin, showing off all his teeth, which had bits of pie stuck in them.
Caleb could feel his teeth ache at the sweet sight.
This leads him to chuckle a third time
As sweet as the piece of pie could have been in his mouth, nothing was sweeter to Caleb than seeing Philip smile.
He would rather see him happy than have all the sweets in the world.
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mydahliarose · 1 month ago
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Love in the strawberry milk bath🪽🃏🔞
Pairings: niiri x Michael/miiri
Tags: male lactation, urethra insertion, motorboating, MINORS DNI!🔞
Fandoms: what in hell is bad?
Synopsis: although due to there circumstances they could never be fully intimate with one another. however in a spa day of relaxing in a milk bath together niiri found other ways to satisfy her angel lover.
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Lukewarm water filled the rich tub halfway to the top. The temperature of the bathroom reaches the perfect warmth of relaxation, soothing both the couple's mood into a peaceful one.
When it came to self care, Michael was always strict about it, and especially when it came to his hair. Today he wanted a milk bath made from the clouds, he often collects them for his spa day besides feeding them to his little cloud dogs minions.
Milk baths have perfect benefits for the skin it can exfoliate and brighten your skin, perfect for a beautiful angel like himself to lavish himself in. But even more beautiful is that he would share this with niiri. A doll is the most perfect beauty of all so why not spoil her with this sweet treat as well?.
Michael pours the jar of cloud milk onto the warm water. the effects create a creamy condensed liquid, there was a hint of sugar if your nose got close to it.
Niiri got extra and added a few drops of honey for that exfoliating effect for his skin, add that with pink food dye and wala.
" I hope you like strawberries~" she winked, oh for sure he would look radiant once his outta here, in fact he would glow brighter than any star with these ingredients submerged in and smell delicious all together she thought to herself.
" Its my favorite dairy flavor infact." He walks over to lightly squish her cheeks. " You know me so well my psychic~". He begins removing his robe slowly it slithers down his body, his porcelain skin in full center now along with his chastity belt.
Niiri had to blink many times to not loose her composure, but her rapid heartrate might be her demise.
" Whew! Is it getting hot in here or is it just me?" She fans herself, face fully red that Michael couldn't help but chuckle.
" Careful niiri perhaps all this time I'm an incubus in disguise~." The unexpected tease made niiri cough then she played along. " abaddon demon a knew it!." Both begin laughing already having a good spa day.
" Alright alright niiri cmon remove that fabric and come submerge with me, i do so want to feel those arms embraced with me..." There was a hint of sultry in his sentence. " God he was good. In his command she did as she was told, her ball jointed body parts now in full view for Michael to see.
She pointe feet the surface water before dipping them all the way in. Michael submerges from the front, sighing of the light steam of the bath, stretching his legs out to in a v position to not feel cramped in. " Ahhhh~ this feels good..." Leaning his body to lay against her chest, he turns his head slightly awaiting his deserved head massages. " Tell me I'm a good boy..." With a purring tone how could she resist? Her delicate porcelain hand makes their way to his luchious raven locks. pouring a small amount of the condensed milk, pink liquid dripping down glistening his hair ever more brighter. The other hand slithered around his muscular chest wanting to be held like he said earlier, now he was completely spoiled by his demonic lover. " Your such a good boy~". She digs her long nails onto his scalp, every combing made him shiver down his spine including his wing. " So good in fact that you must always be rewarded like for this instant~." She traced a strand of hair on her finger, twerling his locks around it before moving it up her lips kissing it. " If only i could reward you in a way that would connect us in a much deeper level of our relationship..." She knew where this conversation was going, she hoped this wouldnt bring down the mood.
" i know love..." The hand that held his chest was brought to his lips for a gentle kiss of reassurance. regardless of the chastity belt situation being together laughing, teasing, and helping each other in their lowest moments where enough for him and her an emotional bond was always the strongest. But that never did stop them from having such intimate thoughts about each other in bed. " I assure you that your kindness for me has helped bring our relationship to a far greater path than ever and continues doing so everyday." He smiles, cupping her face while hes still facing foward. " So dont feel that without sex it's the end of the world ok? But perhaps one day maybe there will be a miracle of sorts..." For the divine and sin to connect as one is surriel.perhaps long ago if Michael hadn't met her hed do everything in his power to keep his purity locked for eternity and only for god to see, but then all that changed when he did met her, now he wants to know a feeling hes long craved. To be touched by the one he loves. " Angelica...that means alot, thank you..." In a blink till you miss it moment niiri was suddenly strikin by the pink milk on her face, caused by Michaels playfullness. " No more sadness or else ill start crying in both eyes we dont want that now do we?" She couldnt help but giggle. " Yeah yeah your right! But do that again or no more good boy for you!". Michael made a dramatic gasp of horror. " Your going to kill me with a broken heart! Ooooh~ then ill need doctor niiri to cure me back to health~". Without a warning Michael was suddenly pushed down, entirely submerged now head to toe then brought back up. " You said yourself no more sadness!" She pouts. " How was that sad?!". He began coughing violently from the amount of milk that passed through his throat. " You said id kill you! That makes me sad!" Oh now he gets it. " Fine you got me there dolly i apologize."
He returns to his original position, shifting himself to get comfortable as niiris arms fully embrace him now, head resting against his as she hums to him. "Apology accepted Angelica~" smile. The smell of honey and sugar was now ever more evident after Michael was pushed down. His auroma completely changed to a sweet dessert one that you cant get enough of. But most notably his skin was glistening into a full milky glow that was radiating bright under the sunlight that was coming from the top of there window view. When niiri moved around her arms he certainly felt slippery, however when she decided to take a peek down his milky body her face flushed red. His beautiful bare chests looked unbelievably etheral with the beam of the sun, she dosent know if its her mind playing tricks or not but she could have sworn she saw sparkles forming around in every light. But something else caught her attention, something that made her swallow her own saliva. A tiny droplet of diary began to trail down from his pretty pink nipple. now she would just wipe it with her hand and the end but then her thought wondered into a territory that had never pondered to. "...c-can angels...lactate?." What a stupid question she thought. If demons have the ability to make anything happen whats to say that applies to angels as well? She wasn't those demons that went through angel hood originally so shed never know. Well she would know now since unfortunately for niiri Michael heard her lewd mumbling. ".... come again?."
He opened one eye to look up. Oh dear, the embarrassment she felt right now. Too bad with no matter how much shed try to evade the question he was already onto her. " Uhhh...w-well first of i ment it as research purposes yeah!..so *do you?*..." She eagerly waited for his answer. "....well of course, after all any beings are capable of it, not just demons and angels. Anything is possible with us including you." He cocks down an eyebrow, still very much eyeing her. He felt there was something more to her than what she was leading onto besides such knowledge. Could she be indicating?....oh my. " Niiri...be honest with me, you where thinking about wanting a taste of me didnt you?". When she bite her lip trying to avoid eye contact that was all he needed to know. "Niiri out with it." Finger snapping to bring her back to his attention. " F-fine! Ok yeah i thought about it! I couldn't help it! When i saw how deliciously it dripped down there my mind went into a place i hadn't thought before..." Shes thought about making love to him top and bottom but never milking him until now. " If its to much i get it...i wont bring it up ever a-" . She was stopped abruptly when Michael said something she didnt expect him to say. " You can have some if youd like." He turns his entire body now, crossing his arms to rest on his chin looking like a siren entrancing somone. Now niiiri's mind raced with so many thoughts in her head that she lost her own signal to stay normal. " A-am i dreaming right now?". Michael placed a hand in her forhead almost like checking her temperature. " Nope, this is certainly very real my doll,". He sensually leans forward to her lips to kiss, it was sweeter than anything shes tasted before."so whats it going to be?". Sweet merciful roses hes worse than an incubu. And niiri thought she was the tempting one in the relationship. " Mmm...perhaps i am rather curious if it tastes just as yummy as this bath~"
And thus her inner minx began to slowly began to make way. A satisfied smirk made its way onto his lips. " Only one way to find out~". He scooted her over to switch positions. He properly adjusted himself to lay but not to low, he brought his beloved doll to his chest. Now she had a perfectly good front and center view of his well built body. " Woah..is it me or have theyve gotten bigger?" Michael couldnt help but chuckle ." Oh niiri your to cute." He swallows up her praise feeling prideful of himself. He caresses her hair before moving her close to his nipple, encouraging her to lavish in his flavor. " It is the most holiest of all natural production, and its all yours~, so go on." This was really going to happen, she never thought this day would come when they by a miracle be in this level of intimacy. Dear lord where to begin? Face in awe she leaned close to his left nipple. " So pretty.." she said softly before finally her lips touches his most sensitive part of his body. his rosey colored flesh combined with the strawberry dairy was like an aphrodisiac to her tongue. rolling around in a tease as she bops her head back and forth to tug it a bit. His body twitched in the sudden sensation of her mouth teasing him,sending his body in jolts of shockwaves running through through his lustful figure. Sweet honeysuckle moans escaped in Michaels mouth the more she lapped him up in great pleasure. She squeezes his occupied tit while the other gently massaged it, teasing her fingers around there to. Edging him on the sound of his pleasure ran echo in the washroom, althou outside it was only there room but behing that door was the hallways of the exorcists church anyone could walk past and hear his loud sin. Oh god if they caught him in the act what will they think? Would they disgrace him for betraying his title and oath? And yet why is the thought of getting caught in this act so thrilling in a place like this? Oh has the angel gone mad?
Perhaps so now that his imprisoned cock Awakened into the sensation of his lovers admiration. The angels legs began to shift around, uncomfortable that niiri cant do much to build up his belief. Although with her long thin nails that can cut anyone if she wanted to seemed to be a perfect fit to his entrance of the belt. " A-ahh!~ m-my d-doll~ nghh! P-please enter down t-there-A-ahhh~! W-with those b-beautiful n-nails- mmmf! I-i need~ngh! N-need to feel them~ a-ahh~". He said with such desperation in his tone that niiri couldnt help but find him cute in this state of bliss. " Since youve been such a good boy in taking all this pleasure ill reward you with it~." She mumbled while still tugging into him. Not only that but years upon years having your manhood caged up for the sake of devoting to a single entity must be uncomfortable niiri has always felt bad for him in that aspect so shed relieved him in whatever manner she can. The hand that massaged his right chest began to slither down his urethra opening, adjusting her slender sharp nail to dig in his tip. " N-Ngh!." All it took was just the sharp edge to enter in him for his legs to jolt in an embrace wrapped around her waist, once it began to go in deeper his grip became tighter. His thighs where incredibly strong for an angel that represented war how fitting, it aroused niiri so much that it only encouraged her to please him even more. Her nail slide upward and downward, scratching very gently in his sticky walls. all the while she stayed completely concentrated in soring up his glanse to leak out. Not only where his legs bounded around niiri, but so where his arms now crossed around her back bieng squeezed tighter in his embrace now. Both partys began to moan blissfully, one muffled while the other released years of sexual repression through his voice. " Y-your to good~." Tears began flowing from feeling stimulated beyond belief, shaking the more niiri teased his pretty pink walls.
Tongue toying around in a dance of tango, his tit seemed to have begun to finally leak some product out. " Mmmf~ its finally coming out~." Her pacing became increasingly faster. the drooling of her saliva dripped down along with his pre leaked lactation, squeezing his big muscled breast to bring it all out. " N-niiri i-i f-feel-." More beautiful lustrous moans from the heavens escape once he finally began to leak all his white creamy calcium onto her mouth. The doll demon swallowed it euphorically, sweet as vanilla with perhaps almost a sugary feel to it. This was worth every moment, perhaps this bathtub would be even better if it was filled with only his natural lactation instead. Niiri giggled at such a silky thought but one can only hope, shed lick from top to bottom of the bath so that the strawberry condensed milk mixed up with his making the experience even better than it already is. " You are so deliciously sweet my angel~". Now all that was left was to finally release him of all his pent up fluids inside, the hot sticky sperm already building up, touching her tip of the sharp nail as she kept it in. Michael squirmed around with the need to finally let it all out, halo glowing so brightly ever more so after his lactation. "N-niiri!! A-ahh! P-please! I-im g-gonna-." His face was red beyond belief, tears completely dripping down as his tongue nearly sticked out from this once in a life feeling for him. Niiri removed her hand from his chest to cup his face, then moving up to give him a sweet kiss of love. making out with him, lips now covered in his own flavor mixed with the tub of strawberry honey. " You may~." She mumbled in his wet lips as she finally releases herself inside of him. Spurts of hot liquid pooled around the dairy bath now soaked in fluids. This last orgasm flashed his halo so bright that niiri hid in his chest almost motorboating onto him until finally he calmed. "Ahh...ahh...that was... something...".
He took a deep sigh of relief, god he hadn't felt that good in well...ever really. He leaned down to kiss niiri's head while caresssing her in his praise. " Good angel...your my good angel my beloved niiri~.." she blushes at his comment, nuzzling deeper into his chest feeling bashful. " I-i cant believe we did that! I never thought wed connect in such a way until now...". Michael chuckled. " Its all thanks to your little mumbling earlier, otherwise if i hadn't heard it I wouldn't have been so tempting about it~." Niiri smacked his beautiful pecks light heartedly from his slight tease. " And i thought demons where freaky god your worse!". Still bieng buried in his chest suddenly Michael squeezed both his pecks sandwiching niiri into a motorboating session for one last innocent mischievous playfullness. "MMF!" "Perhaps your right dolly, but i trust youll be keeping this naughty side of me a secret hm? Otherwise it would be ashamed if i squished your pretty face if you don't~." Of course he knew she would, but its fun to mess with her like this once in a while. muffled voices could be heard. " MMF! YEAH YEAH YOU SEXY FUCK, YOU KNOW I WON'T JEEZ!." part of her didnt try to break free from his grasp but rather she seemed to enjoy being smothered by his tits quite alot. " You promise?" He smirked down. " Yes yes! You know i never break a promise we make especially when we did something like that!." He pushed them together squeezing her further. " Forever and ever?". At this point she might as well not breathe. " YES YES!". the angelic bastard pondered for a bit and then finally he released her. " Ahh look at you... Your so red like an apple i could just eat you up~." Michael leaned in to kiss her cheek then looks at her with his innocent smile. "...hehehe you learned from the best i see~." Now that Michaels gotten used to teasing her back the way she always did to him. Shes never felt even more equal to him. " Your right, i did~. Be prepared for more dolly~."
End
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silviakundera · 5 months ago
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aug objective: actually finish Meng Xi Shi's Fourteenth Year of Chenghua
I've started and stopped it twice before, but that was due to the english translation not being complete at the time.
Starting over from the beginning and I forgot how much I enjoyed him adopting the lil 8 year old to be his sister and them actually becoming like real siblings ❤❤ and then badass Brocade Guard boss basically moves him in and wifes him up without him noticing. I love how clear it is that the 3 of them have a richer, happier life together as a family. It's not dramatic & angsty, it's just subtle undertones cushioning the plot - just them becoming a warm & safe home for each other.
I also enjoy all the ancient china crime solving. A classic mystery fan, I grew up on Agatha Christie. After reading half-way the last time, I went looking a translation of The Celebrated Cases of Judge Dee (and then got sucked into late Qing/Republican true crime Murders of Old China by Paul French).
Random highlighted passages so far...
[Tang Fan finds himself in possession of an 8 year old]
“Can you take me in, Sir Tang? I’ll be really hardworking, and not give you any trouble. I don’t want to go to Nanjing, I don’t know the Young Lord that well!”
Tang Fan didn’t know how to react. “You being willing to come cook is fine by me, but the question is: will Young Lord Li be willing to let you go?”
Hearing that his tone had relaxed, she suddenly got excited. “He will, he will! I heard the steward say that the house has too many people in it right now, and they won’t need so many later on. Isn’t that them being eager to lose a few? I eat a lot and don’t work that much, so they would definitely be willing to let me go and wreck someone else’s house!”
“…” Is it really good for you to be that frank?
Ah-Dong stuck out her tongue. “I misspoke, I misspoke! Me being too happy is all to blame. Don’t take it to heart at all, I’m actually great! Just pretend that you didn’t hear what I said right then!”
[Tang Fan finds himself on a date (without knowing he's on a date) and then moved into his date's house. Sui Zhao is efficient like that.]
He took a long detour, and when he leisurely got back home, he discovered that someone was already standing at his gate — wasn’t that Centarch Sui?
“If I had known before that you would be here so early, I would have come back first thing so that you wouldn’t be standing in wait at the entrance!” Tang Fan promptly sped up towards him, an apologetic smile on his face. “It’s no problem,” Sui Zhou answered.
Tang Fan found that he was also carrying some food.
“My home is far from yours, so I’ll just stay with you for tonight. Do you mind?”
“Ah? I don’t mind, I don’t mind! My break is tomorrow, so we can talk through the night by candlelight!”
Mister Tang lived the legendary bachelor life to its entirety. ... “Where did you buy this crispy tofu? And why is it so delicious?” he wondered. “I had some ingredients at home,” Sui Zhou answered concisely. “You can cook?” Mister Tang was wholly shocked. Sui Zhou gave a rare hook of the lips, saying nothing. A few breaths later, Tang Fan was still soaking in his shocked emotions. “Brother Guangchuan, you can actually cook? That’s really, really, really…” He ‘really’ed for half the day, but didn’t get out what the ‘really’ was about. Then, a rapid knock echoed in from outside the door. “That’s really too amazing!” Tang Fan took in a deep breath. ...
“Since you’re in such contradiction with the Li’s, what are you going to do about housing?”
Tang Fan hadn’t told him the thing about him currently looking for board everywhere, but he still took note of it. His meticulous mind was apparent.
“The capital is big, and there’s a lot of rooms. I’ll likely be able to find some.”
Sui Zhou thought about this for a moment. “If you want, you can come live with me.”
Tang Fan was taken aback. “Is… that alright? Wouldn’t your wife be upset?”
“I haven’t yet taken a wife,” Sui Zhou replied coldly.
“There has to be someone like a wife, right…?”
Sui Zhou was not pleased. “I haven’t accepted any concubines, nor slipshod maidservants.
Before Tang Fan could ask anything else, he proceeded to say, “My parents live with my eldest brother. I moved out on my own. Don’t worry about that.”
With all that said, since the other was inviting him there in good faith, it would be poor of Tang Fan to decline again. He ended up clasping his hands together, saying with sincerity, “I’ll bother you for now, then, Brother Guangchuan!”
[Sui Zhao continues marrying in Tang Fan]
" Furthermore,” he paused to look at Tang Fan, icy expression finally suffused with a trace of helplessness, “you’re a Dynasty-ordained official that’s run off to write an anonymous book like that. If that gets out, your reputation likely won’t be kept.”
Tang Fan chuckled. “What’s wrong with doing it? It’s not just me, but a lot of people in Court that do this, too. No one can tell who’s who with pen names, anyways. How could somebody support their family otherwise? Relying on salary alone? If they don’t want to be corrupt, they can only take a different approach..."
“I have a salary.”
Tang Fan just kept going. “Wouldn’t you say so, Guangchuan… eh? What’d you say?”
“I have a salary. No need to worry.”
...Hearing what he said, Tang Fan was stunned for a while, after which he started to laugh wildly. He ended up having to support himself on Sui Zhou’s shoulder in order to keep steady, rubbing his own stomach in pain. “Ouch… well, then, us siblings will depend on you from now on, Centarch Sui. Once I use up all my salary, you’ll have to help me out!” “Mn.” Tang Fan still couldn’t resist wanting to laugh, but he was a bit touched, as well. He knew that not everyone was capable of making the man say stuff like this. //
“Today is a family banquet, second brother. The Old Madam said not to bring outsiders, so why did you bring someone we don’t know? There’s women here, too! He’s not even someone close enough to be considered family! You’re really being too careless!”
The speaker was the wife of Sui Zhou’s older brother, Lady Jiao.
... As soon as she was done, [Sui Zhou] gave her an indifferent answer: “From now on, he’s to be considered family.”
Those words were so authoritarian, no one could say anything for a moment. They all stared at Sui Zhou.
// “How would Ah-Dong be able to hold you back?” he asked. “From now on, after you get your salary of grains and cash from your paper money, hand half of it over to me. I’ll safeguard it for you. If you ever need to spend more after using up what you have on hand, you’ll need to justify that to me first. You can use it only after I agree to it.”
Sui Zhou had never been fond of meddling in others’ business. Almost all of said business that he had cared about in this lifetime had come from Tang Fan’s head.
It was fortunate that they had the kind of relationship they had. If someone else had been ordered to do this, they would feel it difficult to understand, and might even turn hostile. Someone like Mister Tang, who was different from the average person, just nodded with delight. “That’s great! With you stopping me, I won’t spend so recklessly!”
From that point on, Millarch Sui not only had a heap of things to look after in the Northern Bastion Office, but also had to help Mister Tang manage his money when he returned home. He truly did wield total power, both foreignly and domestically — how very envy-inducing!
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bizzybkd · 1 year ago
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The Walk Home
~ Itto x Reader ~ Pt. 2 (Fluffy, Slow Burn)
(Read Pt. 1 here!)
~~~~
I watched in slight awe of the man before me, enjoying the second meal i’d prepared for him which i had triple checked to make sure none of my bean like or based ingredients were in it i could only terrify myself with the idea of going out of business over a customer losing his life from my cooking.
he seemed ecstatic once again when i’d brought it out, his mouth practically drooling as he gripped his chopsticks from the previous bowl. i could already see half the bowl gone once id set it down on the counter. i had to fight back the grin as to keep up the “not so creepy restaurant owner” persona i used for business.
this time, with not so many eyes on me and an interest in the person who seemed to be so important (self proclaimed or otherwise) and let alone not even human who’d come to my shop. hugging my tray to my chest and ignoring the slight heat radiating from the spot the ramen bowl was on, tilted my head to get a better view of his face.
what i could see of it anyway, he was so busy stuffing it, it wasn’t until most of the bowl was gone and he had to pick something from his teeth that he noticed me.
“Ah! sorry, i totally didn’t see you there, this ramen is just.. ugh! it’s so good!” he grunted with a smile and a laugh, once again lifting the bowl and tilting back his head.
i swore i must check the quality of my bowls once he leaves i could hear the cracking and shaving of the porcelain.
i didn’t bother responding, continuing my people watch as i found my eyes drawn to his throat, the rapid movement of him swallowing the broth and whatever else was left into his gullet. it was impressive, almost scary, but i figured him not being human was the cause of that.
i scanned the rest of his body from what i could see from behind the counter, his toned figure down to the markings on his body and where they led. i wondered if his entire body was as toned as his upper half seemed. i wondered if he had tan lines from his clothing, it was obvious he was out and about a lot, and judging by the slight dirt stains along us arms, the shoulders and back of his clothes, i assumed he was one to be outdoors.
but, due to a lack of awareness and a quickly rising interest in him, i hadn’t noticed him watching me, same as he hadn’t noticed me before this.
i let out a small yelp in realization, looking up at his face as “be professional! be professional! BE PROFESSIONAL!” rang like alarm bells in my head. but seeing as i’d been caught there was no real way to deny it now.
“I am so sorry, i promise i don’t usually stare i’ve just never seen someone enjoy my food as much as you seem to.” i said slightly shakily, a little worried that i had offended him with my staring.
he rose a brow with a smirk, putting his chopsticks in his bowl and stretching up his arms behind his head, his mouth curling up into a content smile from the stretch.
“no need to apologize i know my presence can be star stuckening.. or is star strikening… star striking? whatever it is you like what you see.” he teased, earning a slightly less friendly smile from me but a smile nonetheless.
“i must admit you are very interesting, Itto, what are you if that’s okay to ask? i don’t mean to offend.”
“Oh!” he seemed surprised if even asked such a question. “well i’m an oni! arataki numero uno itto, the one and oni of course. i’m a red oni to be specific.”
“an oni? a full blooded oni? that’s incredible! excuse my ignorance but i thought that oni’s had.. y’know.. died out a while ago. i’ve never met or heard of one before.” i placed down my tray, walking closer to the counter to be more in tune with their conversation.
he seemed taken aback by my approach, leaning back from the counter as a result as he shrugged.
“nah! sure i mean there definitely aren’t as many but it’s not like there aren’t ANY left, i mean you’re looking at one!” he laughed, crossing his arms over his chest. “i was raised by my granny so i learned a lot about humans growing up, it’s why im such a hot shot with—“
suddenly, heavy, metal rattling footsteps could be heard from atop the wall that had the main roadway on the top, the Hatamoto guards making their rounds. they’d come every other hour or so, depending on the day. just walking around looking at different people who they found in the streets of the city.
but when the same man who had been busy bragging about his awe installing reputation practically leaped over my counter onto my side, grab my face with both hands with one over my mouth and the other at the back of my head, pull me down behind the counter with my back to his chest and sitting between his legs, i couldn’t tell if this would be my death bed or my next bleaching area.
my gasp was muffled by the sudden large hand over my mouth, smelling of dirt and slightly too fragranced soap which i assumed was used to try and get rid of the dirt smell. didn’t work well.
he held me close to him, his head facing the top of the counter as if he was listening for something. although, i couldnt really process what he could be listening for because i could barely process the fact a man i knew nothing of was currently holding me down and covering my mouth.
was it the guards? was he trying to avoid them? was he a fugitive? did he commit some heinous crime that they were going to throw him in prison for? would i be considered his accomllice simply for giving him the meal he paid for and having him hiding in my shop?
so many thoughts ran through my head until the sound of his soft laughter filled my ears, turning my head the little i could to look up at him and find his head hung, his nose practically in my hair as he laughed. my chest heaved with every breath, adrenaline slowly subsiding as it turned into confused anger. why was he touching me like this?!
i almost bit his hand before he removed it himself with a small gasp.
"oh gosh, i am so so sorry, i should've said something before i dragged you down," he said, his hands behind him at his sides as he looke down at me.
I turned my upper body to look up at him, realizing just how large he was, even if he was sitting down. then again, he seemed bigger close up with me sitting between his legs.
"you.. why did you.. GUARDS--"
"Hey! shhh!!" he slapped another hand to my mouth and held a finger to his lips, a slightly pleading look in his eye as he once again checked above him, his ears seeming to droop a bit when the heavy footsteps got louder, approaching the shop.
"please please i promise ill explain if you just tell them in not here," he quietly pleaded, his hand slowly coming off my mouth. "i swear on my oni blood that i will just please.. dont tell them im here." he repeated, clasping his hands together. his eyes became fuller, as if a cat's.
ugh.. i hate that it worked.
i stood up on my feet, finding two guards walking down my walkway up to my shop. itto sat by my legs, looking up at me as i talked to the guards. i could feel him lean against my leg, his cheek pressing against my thigh as his hand placed itself on the ground between my legs.
the conversation was short, the guards saying they heard a voice down here and came to investigate, and proceeding to ask if i had seen an oni that fit the description of itto a bit too well. with a knot in my throat i shook my head to tell them i hadnt. i couldnt remember the last time i had lied, not to a friend, not to a professor, not even my own parents. so lying to the authorities made my stomach churn and i could only pray that the guards wouldnt take notice of my nervous demeanor.
they didn't, and with a simply thank you and one taking a menu for what i assumed to be futher notice, walked away, so did the rest of the guards down the road until their steps became faint and then nonexistent.
i exhaled as heavy as a marathon running danuki. a hand over my chest as i felt the weight on my thigh remove itself and said weight stand to his full height.
"haha! phew that was a close one, i really owe you one i cant thank you eno... oh." he said, cutting himself off as i looked up at him clearly distraught.
"i suggest you get to explaining. im not above running to go get them back and say i found you squatting in my kitchen by the radishes and carrots."
"no! no! ill tell you, i swear im not a criminal and im not a robber, stealer, kidnapper, murderer or anything! i just might of uh.. set off my collection of onikabuto on the training ground of the Hatamoto guards and uh.. may have caused a bit of damage." he let out a sheepish chuckle as if that would entirely explain everything.
"... so youre just trying to get away from accountability." I replied, leaning my weight on the counter with my arms crossed. he released another sigh.
"of course not, well i mean i run from them a lot cuz theres apparently a bunch of different laws the shogun put in place that id never even heard of before until i broke them but the real reason is because that woman that was here a little while ago, shinobu? yeah shes tired of paying my bail so i promised id never get caught again! and well.. im not!"
he flashed that damned grin that i was starting to think he knew the effect of the entire time again, making me groan as i shook my head.
"well if thats your story then i guess.. but this is a one time thing im not gonna put myself or my business in danger because you want to be reckless!" i scolded him, as if i hadnt met him not even two hours ago.
he hung his head in defeat and nodded, accpeting the scolding and effectively dropping the topic.
he found his way back to the other side of the counter, sitting himself down as we continued to chat while i got another customer or two. soon, closing time rolled around and although itto had realized he'd not only the meeting shinobu had tried to remind him to show up to, but as the sun set and i told him i needed to close, he refused to leave until he "used his oni ability to make sure i got home safe! the owner of such a delicious ramen shop needed the utmost protection of course."
i was too entertained to say no.
closing time took a lot less time than it usually did, with itto's help of course. new crates were put safely in storage and any unused ingredients were either trashed or put back into storage. the bowls which did in fact have a few tiny insignificant fractures in them were cleaned. the counters and floors were wiped and swept and every door and lock (that could be anyway) was locked. i noticed the oni stare particularly hard at the rusted lock on the main door, but figured he was simply asking why i even had it still, which i often asked myself at times.
then came the treck home, walking home was a little more pleasant than that of the walk to the shop in the morning. the many monsters and creatures a like found sweet slumber in the blanket of midnight air. the moon illuminating all of what would need to see to walk peacefully.
the walk was silent at first, only the mismatched footsteps of us both as he struggled to keep at pace with me. his stride allowed him much more room to walk ahead, along with his obvious leg muscle which i could only imagine meant how far and fast he could run when it counted.
i started to notice how he'd always end up a few steps ahead of behind him, his tongue sticking out from his tightly pressed lips as he stared at my shoes, seemingly trying to match my speed and stride, although that was obviously a bit uncomfortable for him as he could barely pull his shoes apart from hitting one another in every step.
"what are you doing?" i asked with a soft laugh, admiring his focus.
"trying to walk with you." he replied matter of factly, still keeping his eyes on my shoes.
"but youre already walking with me."
"i mean walk in sync! like everytime your foot steps down so does mine. here," he put out an arm in front of me, stopping me from walking as i looked down at it in front of me, then running my eyes up to his shoulder. were the veins always there? i surely couldnt have missed them if they were.
"just wait a second, here," he removed his arm and held onto my shoulder, pulling me closer as he tapped my left thigh, telling me to take a step, to which he did the same.
he then tapped my right thigh and so on, sending me into a laughing fit from how articulated he was being compared to what he seemed to have been doing just a few hours ago.
"hey dont laugh! walking in sync is fun once you get the hang of it!" he chuckled, his hands on his hips and a smirk on his face as he shook his head.
another 20 minutes of laughing and joking about whatever came up, it almost saddened me as we reached my front door step.
"thank you for walking me home, itto, and for helping me close up the shop." i finally said, accepting the day was over, and i couldnt wait to get in the shower and wash the day's efforts off my skin.
itto smiled and took a step back, bowing with a smirk and a hand at his stomach. "my pleasure, m'lady! it was definitly worth the fright of having a mouse scatter across my foot."
i shrieked, jumping as i looked along the ground, itto letting out belting laughs as he held his stomach. i tossed a pebble at his horn and rolled my eyes, turning to my house. "good night, arataki itto." i smiled, waving as he stood up with a cheerful wave.
"good night!" he called, and with a small pep in his step, got a full ten steps from my door before he fell to his knees, only imagining how upset shinobu could be when he went back for missing the meeting. hopefully it wasnt anything toooo important.
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aigoo-uk · 1 year ago
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dustedmagazine · 1 year ago
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Roland Kayn — Sorales II (Reiger Records Reeks)
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Sorales II by Roland Kayn
The deeper a dive taken into the elastic sound worlds conjured by Roland Kayn, the harder the bedrock obviously underpinning his alternately molten and frozen universe is exposed to be. Sorales II, the most recent release in the growing Kayn archive series, beggars description and confounds expectation yet again through a very surprising sort of unification.
Of course, and as always, the music is riddled with disruption. Given its 2005 vintage, that’s no surprise, and there’s plenty of what sounds like tape manipulation, that dizzying pitch shift and wrinkling effect that pervades the Little Electronic Milky Way of Sound. We are treated to the huge and all-encompassing “major chord” at 10:18, or the intriguing, because so rare, rhythmic layers that occur at least twice, the first forward and the second in reverse. They disappear with the rapidity of their genesis. Even the near silences adorning the last several minutes don’t so much disrupt as posit moments of repose in a quiet storm. The non-sequitur at 28:11 isn’t one really, and more on it presently. In those and all other cases in the 33-minute miniature, disruption is not as much of a primary ingredient. Its presence is subservient to another element, a fresh but slowly moving deep-down thing, a unity in diversity of which those New England Transcendentalists would have spoken with a mixture of pride, admiration and Classical allusion.
It seems a shame to evoke the concept of a drone in this particular instance. Yes, seasoned Kaynians will certainly recognize the long sounds that germinate, ebb and flow, often with fundamental disruptions of their own, especially throughout Kayn’s later works. This drone is different. It’s neither Vanessa Rossetto’s looping palimpsests nor Keith Rowe’s hiss, fizz and crackle conglomerations of radio static, interference, room buzz and charcoal, though it sits adjacent to both. Charles Ives would understand. His “Unanswered Question” or “Central Park In the Dark” contain string passagework that exists in similar spaces, even if the harmonic language diverges. Kayn is a Romantic, and the girders of the second Sorales prove it. Triad and elusive counterpoint emerge and merge from the cross-pollinations of tone and color that bunch, breathe, bunch again and writhe in a way that’s nearly human. Mountains and rapids form a landscape of constant motion dotted with reflective pools of moonlit tone throughout the pitch spectrum, including a single icy note approaching the stratosphere and illuminating all below. Everything is slathered in reverb, never distasteful but definite, a foundation of distant calm beneath lopsided cycles in movement. Listen closely as elements surface, half-repeat and sink. Even the disruptions, like the afore-mentioned sudden juxtaposition and the final gesture of the work, grow out of what has just occurred and out of the reverberant atmosphere containing it. It’s all cold, sometimes even windy as pitch blurs into frosty air, but it’s breathtakingly beautiful from beginning to end.
Marc Medwin
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drades-lair · 1 year ago
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The problems with being unique
Fandom: Helluva Boss
Rating: M
Pairing: Striker x OC
Warning: This fic contains rape and non-con elements.
When Striker wasn’t off killing someone, you could find him at a bar drinking whiskey, bourbon, or rum, tonight he had finished a job and now he was enjoying a well-deserved drink while waiting for Calus to join him. Once his first Whiskey was finished Striker headed to the washroom for a piss, telling the bartender to get a second one ready for when he returned which the bartender nodded at him in understanding. Finishing up in the washroom Striker made the move to exit when a hand wrapped around from behind him, covering the pale imp’s mouth just as he was about to exclaim a question instead yelping as a sharp quick pain stabbed into his neck. A numbing sensation instantly started creeping down his body at a rapid rate as he struggled to pull whoever was holding him from behind off, tail rattling violently.
“Relax…relax…” a smooth yet gruff toned voice whispered into Striker’s ear.
Side glancing Striker picked up enough detail that he could tell the one holding him was a hell hound, the bathroom door swinging open moments later to reveal a female goat demon from sloth wandering in. Striker’s arms fell to his sides as he lost feeling in them, the hound easily yanking him towards the back grimy brick wall which he shoved him up against causing the pale imp to release a grunt as he was held by the back of the neck.
“You weren’t lying, he is a nice specimen,” The goat cooed.
“Mind if I try out the merchandise?” The hound asked causing Striker to snarl.
“Sure, just don’t break him…the buyer wouldn’t be please,” The goat warned.
“I’ll be careful,” The hound chuckled.
Striker felt the hounds one hand trace down his back to his ass where it roughly groped at his ass cheeks, his tail weakly rattled as he tried to fight through whatever drug was immobilizing him. The hound growled lowly as his hand moved from Striker’s ass cheeks around to the front of his jeans where he undid Striker’s belt and undid his jeans before yanking them to his mid thighs along with his boxer briefs. Panic raced through Striker’s veins as the hound pulled him slightly sideways to get a look at Striker’s front portions instantly letting out a whistle.
“Wow, he’s got some unique hardware,” The hound smirked looking over to the goat demon again.
“Hmm, a barbed cock huh? Good thing you’ll be the one getting fucked although there will be some unique clients who’ll pay to ride that,” The goat demon quarried to herself causing Striker to curl a lip with another snarl despite a familiar, unwanted heat quickly pooling in his lower abdomen.
“Looks like the ‘special ingredient’ is taking affect,” The hound noted as Striker’s cock leaked precum onto the floor despite being unable to get hard thanks to the drug in his system.
“Yep, he’ll be in rut shortly,” The goat demon revealed, sending a shiver right through Striker like an arrow, between the drug paralyzing him and the one making him go into rut he knew his stupid incubus side would be triggered.
“And a bitch ass incubus like you will be begging for my cock in no time,” The hound growled.
Striker’s eyes grew wide, he knew! How the fuck did he know? Was he already putting off hormones? Striker’s thoughts were interrupted when the hound pressed a thick finger between Striker’s cheeks to his entrance. The hell hound pressed Striker into the wall harder as he pressed his finger roughly passed his tight ring of muscle causing him to groan out in pain.
“Hmm, he’s tight too. I out did myself this time,” The hound crooned.
As Striker’s mind began to fog over with the need that came from his submissive incubus side he tried to fight past the drugs, wanting nothing more then to escape. Memories that he buried deep in his subconscious starting to raise their ugly heads and for a moment his mind told him ‘No one is coming to save you, you’re just their slave now! Just like before’. The hound pressed a second finger into him making Striker grit his teeth with a subtle whimper that escaped his chest, sharp pain shooting up his spine each time the hound thrust his fingers then he felt it…something was running down his thighs. The goat demon’s eyes seared into Striker, analyzing every little detail from his scared pale skin to the puddle of precum starting to form on the ground between Striker’s legs. The hound simply shrugged at seeing the small amount of blood running down Striker’s thighs, just about to remove his fingers when the bathroom door burst open catching both Striker’s attackers’ attention, the hound yanking his fingers free at that moment as they turned to regard the massive draconic figure standing in the doorway, crimson eyes glowing from beneath the brim of a cowboy hat. The figure snorted with a deep guttural growl that probably rumbled the entire bar, dripping in a venomous rage as he stepped towards the hellhound who immediately dropped Striker. Striker slid down the wall to the ground with his chest heaving, face flushed down his neck and whatever control he still had quickly started to slip away with the scent of his mate heavy in the room. The spines on Calus’s tail rattled slightly as they rose like hackles on a cat, lifting his tail up while taking a stance that made the hound nearly wet himself on the spot.
“Shit! Why is a Dracony here?” The female goat demon exclaimed in a shaky tone.
“What! Have! You! DONE! To my mate!” Calus snarled out, clenching a hand into a fist.
“Mate? Oh, fuck!” The female goat demon exclaimed again as her brain swiftly realized the horrid mistake they just made.
“Get me out of here!” The hound exclaimed with a series of whimpering cries, running to get past Calus. The Dracony snarled again as he turned on a dime, raking sharp claws across the hounds back causing him to fall to the ground with a thud. The goat demon managed to leave however the hound was crawling after her with pained cries only to receive the end of Calus’ tail spines straight through his back, those hair spines breaking off as he pulled it back. The hounds blood seeped down the drain in the middle of the bathroom floor as Calus gave a snorted growl only to turn around to face Striker again, expression instantly softening.
“Striker…? Babe…?” Calus questioned taking a knee by his mate, one arm wrapping around Striker’s shoulders to pull the pale imp into his chest. The drug that paralyzed him was starting to ware off allowing Striker to reach up and clench a hand in Calus’ T-shirt.
“C-Calus…I…” Striker managed to whisper out, body thrumming with his forced rut.
“Sshh, I’m here. Let’s get you out of here,” Calus whispered, nuzzling Striker’s temple. The Dracony could smell the scent radiating off Striker from his rut as he shrugged off his trench coat to cover his mate before picking him up bridal style.
Calus carried Striker to the penthouse not far from the bar, taking him immediately to the master bedroom where he laid him on the bed. Calus gently stripped Striker of his boots and jeans simply tossing everything to the floor as Striker started whimpering louder and louder the more the paralysis drug wore off, his body shaking slightly, his cock starting to get hard. Calus stripped his own T-shirt off to allow Striker to touch his skin while further stripping him till the pale imp was nude. Striker tried to sit up only to cry out in pain instantly alarming Calus who gently held his mate.
“Hush love, hush. What happened?” Calus wondered pulling Striker in close as the pale imp buried his face in his mate’s nape.
“Hmm…it hurts…” Striker whimpered out. Calus immediately knew what Striker was referring to, glancing down the imp’s body to his bare ass where he caught sight of blood that was smeared between his cheeks and down his thighs.
“Oh, fuck…Striker,” Calus worriedly whispered, brows knitting together in concern.
“I need…Ya…please…” Striker begged, lost to his submissive side despite being in pain.
“I know, come here.” Calus declared, maneuvering Striker gently as he crawled onto the bed, keeping the pale imp on his side as much as possible. Calus propped himself up slightly against the headboard while Striker lay on his torso, one of his hands moved to lightly caress at Striker’s chest as the other caressed down Striker’s back till he could slide two fingers between his cheeks. Striker whined into Calus’ chest as the Dracony’s fingers rubbed against his entrance, uncertain if he wanted them to push in or not luckily that wasn’t a decision he needed to worry about, Calus gently kept rubbing them against Striker’s entrance as he concentrated his healing energies.
Striker’s pained whimpers turned more needy as Calus’ abilities healed Striker’s wounds swiftly leaving him in a horny, needy state. Once satisfied with his healing Calus pulled his fingers away from Striker’s entrance, sliding them to the base of Striker’s tail instead where he applied a pinching-rubbing motion. Calus’ other hand went to wrap around the base of Striker’s cock while he leaned down to capture the pale imp’s mouth in a deep heated kiss making him buck his hips in desperation. Calus wasn’t sure what they’d done to Striker, but the imp was in full rut despite not being anywhere near his rutting season, the thought caused anger to surge in Calus’ gut however he kept it in check because at this moment Striker needed him to focus. Stroking liberally along the base of Striker’s cock Calus matched the pace of his fingers on Striker’s tail base, tongue liberally exploring Striker’s mouth till his whimpering moans hitched, hips jerking with the distinct feeling of warm cum spilling over the Dracony’s fingers.
“Easy love…easy…” Calus whispered as Striker’s hands clenched and he released shaky open-mouthed cries, cum still spilling over Calus’ hand.
Striker’s body eventually fell limp against Calus, chest heaving for air as his body hummed with the shockwaves of his orgasm. Calus pulled his hand from Striker’s cock to gently caress along the imp’s hip, his other hand sliding up to cradle Striker’s shoulders.
“I’m so sorry babe…” Calus whispered into Striker’s hair, nuzzling lovingly into it. Slowly Striker’s senses returned to himself as his rut subsided a little.
“C-Calus…Ya saved me…” Striker whispered into his mate’s chest.
“Of course…did you think I wouldn’t?” Calus wondered.
“For a moment…yeah…just like back then…” Striker stammered out in a quiet tone.
“You’re not alone anymore, I’m just sorry I couldn’t have gotten there sooner,” Calus explained gently rubbing his hands all along Striker’s body.
“…fuck…why? Why this shit again?” Striker ground out, eyes squeezing shut in frustration both at how his body was betraying him and the memories swimming through his mind.
“I know babe, they drugged you, right?” Calus guessed, rubbing his hand along Striker’s back.
“Yes,” Striker simply answered.
“Are you feeling better?” Calus asked.
“I’m…getting hard again,” Striker winced out, hips shifting to thrust down onto Calus’ stomach.
“You want me to jerk you off again?” Calus offered.
“Don’t Ya…want me ta…get Ya off?” Striker stammered out, rocking his hips against Calus’ torso, bottom lip drawing up between his teeth.
“Nah, let’s focus on you. I can’t fuck you because of the injuries I just healed but, what if I suck you off this time,” Calus offered.
“Ugh…okay…” Striker agreed.
Calus smiled then helped Striker straddle his chest, one hand wrapping around the base of the imp’s cock while his other hand lightly gripped his thigh. Pressing the flat of his tongue to the tip of Striker’s dick Calus flicked across the slit, lathing along the underside of the head before wrapping his long tongue around the shaft just below the head while engulfing it. Striker let out a breathy groan, leaning back with his hands on Calus’s stomach for leverage, head tipping backwards. Calus sucked gingerly while bobbing his head to provide just enough sensation along Striker’s shaft between the head and his first set of spines, stopping occasionally at the head to suck liberally with the odd scrape of teeth that made the imp’s thighs quiver. Wrapping his hand around Striker’s mid shaft with his fingers splaying to accommodate the imp’s barbs, twisting his wrist to add further stimulation. Striker rewarded Calus’ efforts with a guttural groan, hips thrusting into the feelings till his abdomen tightened again. Calus held Striker steady so that he didn’t thrust upwards with the release of his second orgasm, swallowing Striker’s cum that flowed into his mouth.
“Finished?” Calus chuckled lightly as Striker’s head lulled forwards to look down at the Dracony through hooded eyes.
“Mm-hmm,” Striker hummed in confirmation.
Gently Calus eased Striker down to lay draped across the Dracony’s torso on his stomach, making certain he was on his side a little to prevent his barbs from digging into either Calus himself or Striker. Caressing lovingly along Striker’s back Calus pulled the blankets over his mate, kissing him on the top of his head as the imp happily nuzzled into Calus’ chest. Calus had to admit he embraced Striker a little possessively as he vowed in his mind to find the bitch who’d tried to kidnap and sell his mate.
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jajasgarden · 2 years ago
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Celebrating #EnchantedAsianDay with my friend @janice.kya
This photo is inspired by @jessica_drossin 's soft ambience portraits, evoking a magical realm created by simple ingredients - humans and nature.
This spring has been strange for me.  I came back from a journey in Japan.  
I came back to a world unfolding before me, brimming with rapid ideations and AI creations.
I am talking to young college graduates who are lost, confused, unable to find passion in their jobs.
I want to use this photo, to remind me, of a simpler narrative.
My greatest wish, is to just sit here with you, watching sunrise, sunset, embracing low tide, high tide, observing passersby appear, disappear.
My simplest joy, my simplest desire, my simplest love - is to hold your hand in this moment.
A moment of our own sacred space, untouched by the distractions of the outside world.
Model: @janice.kya Color toned with Inferno and Iris from @the.colorlab Butterflies: Butterfly overlays by @jessica_drossin Photography @jajasgarden
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modernwealthguide · 2 years ago
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Delicious, Easy-To-Make Smoothies For Rapid Weight Loss, Increased Energy, & Incredible Health
Click here to get a Smoothies diet...
I’ve been trying forever to lose the last 10-15 lbs. and tone up, and that’s exactly what happened, so I am very happy. I feel great about myself, I don’t find myself holding in my belly anymore, and feel confident about myself and people have noticed that about me too...and my love handles are gone! I couldn’t be happier with this whole program, and I definitely recommend this to anyone looking to lose a little or lose a lot.”
Click here to get a Smoothies diet...
This Is NOT just a big book of smoothie recipes. You're getting the same proven 3-Week weight loss and health improvement program I share with my private clients. The secret that makes the Smoothie Diet so effective is the Custom 3-Week Weight Loss Schedule. All the smoothies are given in a very specific sequence and frequency to maximize your results. For example the nutrient and ingredient ratios vary week to week to make sure the weight keeps coming off and stays off.
I’ve used my knowledge as a Health Coach and what I’ve learned from all my clients to ensure this program delivers rapid results. I have meticulously researched specific ingredients and nutrient properties to maximize the effectiveness of this program. All you have to do is replace certain meals with the smoothie recipes I provide and watch as the pounds melt effortlessly off your body and your energy levels skyrocket.
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