#role is to keep nonsense in check

[bird-inacage]

Only Friends Shitpost | Pray for Sand

This man is already so tired, and it's episode 1. He just wants to get on with his job and call it a day. Prayer circle that Sand still has a single shred of sanity remaining by the end of the series.

The fact that the cast noted a 'it's complicated' relationship between these two is still very much at the forefront of my mind.

[anisespice]

“ block boy ” || tokyo rev.

parings: bonten x fem!reader [ mikey, kaku, sanzu, rin, ran ]

warnings: mature content ahead. MDI. cursing, mentions of violence, blood, pregnancy mentioned in ran’s, a lot of down bad behavior on both ends lol and i think that’s it.

notes: i pledge allegiance to doechii, and the absolute banger of a song that is “what it is”. literally the first thing i thought of was bonten and couldn’t get ‘em out of my head unless i wrote something down sooo here ya go lol 

notes ii: basically times where you pulled their weight when they least expected you to/when they’re not around. called the shots, took some shots, beat someone up, defended them, loving on them, stuff like this (•3•>)

tagged: @fantasycantasy, @illegalspacecow, @captaincyberqueen

“Did the severity of the situation finally click in your thick skulls, or do I have to waste more of my breath spelling it out for you?”

When MIKEY returned from his much needed evening snooze in the break room you threatened sweetly advised him to take after working for 17 hours straight, he was expecting to return to the shitstorm he left behind. However, when he entered his office, to his muted surprise there you were, in the middle of berating a handful of subordinates nearly twice your size, all shrunk within themselves as your sharp tone pierced through them all. He stood in the doorway with a curious gaze, head tilted ever so slightly as he made sure to keep quiet so not to notify you of his presence.

Mikey took note of your hip popped outward, balled fist rested upon it in the stance he knew all too well whenever you were on your last nerve. Knowing what those idiots did, someone was bound to stumble outta there in tears; your fury wasn’t for the weak.

You eyed the group with raised brows, expectant. “Well?”

One member was brave, or stupid enough to actually answer. He hesitated, but cleared his throat and replied, “I-It was an honest mistake…we thought the product was secured in the truck already when we made the exchange, b-but-”

“B-B—Bullshit. You were given specific instructions to check the inventory to make sure those smarmy assholes weren’t trying pull a fast one, and you were too careless to do a full sweep. You failed abortions not only made Bonten look like complete amateurs, but you added more nonsense for my man to deal with all because you didn’t check the back of the goddamn trucks!”

You flung the clipboard you were holding at the guy’s head, making them all duck around to avoid getting hit, only one unlucky sucker wasn’t as quick as the wooden projectile got him right in the nose. He yelped, no doubt it was broken with the sheer amount of force you put in the throw. Mikey barely flinched, but he did blink a few times in astonishment.

“You’re gonna hunt those fuckers down like dogs and make right of your ‘mistake’ by the end of today, or I’m gonna have Sanzu chop you into pieces and throw you in the Shinano River-!” Mikey cleared his throat.

You swiftly looked over your shoulder at the noise, mood doing a complete 180 when you locked eyes with the object of your affection, skittering over to wrap him in your arms. “Oh! Jiro, baby, I didn’t hear you come in.”

“‘s okay..” he leaned into your warmth, eyes hooded as he graced you with a faint, sleepy grin. “Didn’t want to interrupt your.. meeting. Seemed serious.”

You playfully rolled your eyes. “Just doing a little ‘housekeeping’ until you got enough rest, that’s all.”

He slowly nodded, lips pursed. “Could’ve sworn I pay good money for people to do that for me.”

“You do, but I was already here. Figured it was more productive to handle it myself rather than waste time looking for someone available. Besides, had to make sure you didn’t try to sneak your narrow butt back in here to continue working—We both know I’m the only one around here who can keep you in check.”

He couldn’t argue with that.

“Mm.. can’t say you don’t fill the role of boss rather nicely. It suits you. Should have you do it more often.”

Though you were sure he was teasing you, you couldn’t help but feel yourself grow warm at his praise. You lightly hit his arm, bashful. How this was the same woman who struck fear in a room full of criminals was beyond comprehension, but he wouldn’t have it any other way.

Speaking of which.. Mikey couldn’t help but notice the said group of subordinates silently begging for him to reconsider in his peripheral, hands clasped in prayer while the one with the busted nose bowed deeply to the floor, forehead to hardwood. It was as if the idea of you being in charge any longer brought them great despair. How interesting.

Huffing through his nose, Mikey placed a loving kiss on your forehead whilst eyeing the group behind majority of his stress for the day, void of any remorse as he coldly spoke.

“Matter of fact.. think ‘m still feeling a little tired, angel. How about you handle another hour f’me? Or two?”

The silence was deafening as the dual-color eyed man avoided looking at you while you stitched him up without a word. When you were greeted by a bleeding KAKUCHO at your doorstep a little past midnight, pale in the face and could barely stand, there were no questions asked as you quickly escorted him into your home, setting him gently on the couch before you sprung for your first aid in the kitchen. He wasn’t sure what he could say in that moment, feeling like a complete moron for even showing up looking like he fled a crime scene which he kinda did but that’s besides the point. Your relationship was still in the budding phase, just starting to get a feel of one another as you tested the waters.

Well, consider the waters tested.

“You’re not really an undercover cop, are you?”

Kakucho gulped. He slowly shook his head, eyes trained on his lap while yours felt like they were burning holes right through him. You nodded as you continued carefully stitching him up. It wasn’t the best, but it would hold him over until he got proper medical attention. At first, he figured that would be all you said to him. But, when you completed dressing the wound, you asked a follow up question. “It’s something illegal, isn’t it?”

He couldn’t bring himself to answer, his strained grip on his pant leg enough response. Kakucho half expected you to berate him, curse him for potentially endangering your life, for lying.

“.. forgive me..” he croaked, bowing his head.

He felt sick to his stomach, he couldn’t bear the thought of you despising him, but he’d honor your wishes without protest if you never wanted to see him again…

However, what he didn’t expect was for you cup the sides of his face and bring his wavering gaze to your soft one. You smiled endearingly at the bewilderment that overcame his ashamed expression, him blinking at you widely with tears hanging onto his lashes like a wounded puppy. Your thumb ghosted over the tiny droplets, careful not to aggravate the bruise forming around the socket.

Leaning forward to shower him with tender kisses, Kakucho was at a crossroad—One side wanted nothing more than to melt into a puddle of goo, but the other refused to believe that he wasn’t hallucinating, waiting for the sick twisted punchline of this dream come true. Feeling him still so tense in your hold, you leaned back with your smile still present.

“This doesn’t change how I feel about you, Hitto.”

Kakucho blinked. Then, he meekly replied. “W-what?”

You coyly tilted your head, “To be honest, I always figured there was something…off about you. Like, you were holding something back. My first guess was that you were seeing other women-”

“Never.” His eyes switched from uncertain to stern in a matter of seconds, as if the implication alone repulsed him. He softened once you giggled at his declaration, patting his leg in reassurance.

“I know. You’re much too sweet to be a player. I pondered over it for a while, thought back to how we usually met up late at night, or you would have to leave at odd times. My second guess was your work just kept you really busy.. and after tonight.. after all of this,” you gestured at the blood stains everywhere, “safe to say I was on the right track.”

Kakucho hesitated. “And that doesn’t…put you off?”

“That you’re a thug?” He winced, but nodded. The silence that followed behind was borderline suffocating, leaving his hands sweaty and nerves shot as he anticipated your response with baited breath. But, he didn’t need to worry.

With a loving coo, you placed a kiss to the corner of his mouth, right over the split in his lip causing him to flinch slightly at the sting, but he welcomed the affection all the same. However, when your warm tongue peeked out to soothe the cut in slow, teasing swipes, homie nearly choked.

Kaku’s jaw fluttered open as a soft gasp escaped him next, the sensation foreign but not unpleasant as he felt his entire face heat up like a furnace. Your sudden proximity forced him back on the couch while you slid down to the floor betwixt his spread legs, making his head spin; this wasn’t going like how he thought it would at all. Being careful of his stitches, your arms rested on either side of him as your tongue explored his mouth, making him groan softly at the feeling of the wet muscle tangling around his so earnestly, hand reaching up instinctively to caress the side of your face as he deepened the kiss. His other hand held your waist, gripping your shirt as if he couldn’t believe you were there—That you wanted to stay.

The ravenette’s breath hitched when he felt one of your hands trailing up his thigh, slowly but surely making your way to his stiffening cock confined in his pants. Slightly startled, Kakucho pulled back from the heated kiss, a string of saliva still keeping you connected as you panted in each other’s mouths. Before he could question what you were up to, he cuts himself off with a whimper when you palmed his thick shaft while maintaining intense eye contact, a smile on your face as you sent the gangster into paradise when you sweetly whispered:

“Always wanted to be a ride or die.”

It was as if someone pushed him into an alternate dimension.

Not even moments ago, you were showing SANZU a cute tiktok of a kitten wrapped up like a burrito and mewing dramatically, nearly tearing up at the sight as you tugged on his arm and pleaded for him to buy you one just like it. Having bought out the entire evening in one of Tokyo’s most exclusive five star restaurants for your anniversary, Sanzu figured it’d be nothing more than a simple night with his lovely wife. Man’s must’ve forgot who he was.

When those fools tried an ambush on him, Sanzu was more than happy dealing with them quickly by just airing them out until his gun was empty. Although, as he went reaching for it, imagine his shock when you held his wrist to stop him. You had a different sentiment.

It was like a scene out of one of his most crazed fantasies. His lovely wife, holding his beloved katana to an enemy’s throat, covered in the blood of his comrades as he sobbed pathetically for you to spare him. As if Beatrix Kiddo entered the chat, you sliced into them with a swiftness, shredding through them all like paper; a dinner and a show. He wasn’t sure when you learned how to wield the weapon with such grace and precision, but he couldn’t care less when his pants were this fucking tight. But he couldn’t let you have all the fun, watching your six any time a goon tried to get the jump on you while your back was turned, Sanzu was quick to bust a cap right between their eyes. After spilling gallons of blood from the opposition, leaving one still standing, you decided to play with him a little bit.

“P-Please! I-if you let me go, you’ll never see my face again, I-I swear! I was just..just following orders, I-”

“Oh, c’mon, where’s your conviction from earlier, huh? You were so confident before I minced all your friends. What was it you said you’d do to me once you killed my husband? Can’t seem to put my finger on it…Haru, darling, do you recall?”

Sanzu, with his chin placed atop his interlocked fingers like a smitten fool, smoothly answered, “Said he’d ‘Fuck you raw on top of my corpse’.”

You winked. “Bingo. Thank you, handsome.”

“Welcome, gorgeous.”

The sniveling man yipped when the blade nicked his skin, a thin stream of blood flowing in its wake as you pressed it closer to his throat. His heart rate paced like a rabbit caught in a trap, nostrils flaring as he breathed sporadically while his life laid in the palm of your hand.

“Guess that didn’t go according to plan, aw.” You sardonically cooed, spurring on a bit of rage as he gritted out a dry ‘Fuck you’ in his final efforts of showing dominance. “Oo, there’s that passion we were missing!~ Let’s see how much more I can carve outta yo-”

Hearing the sound of faint sirens in the distance, Sanzu clicked his tongue in annoyance. With a grumble the pinkette popped a piece of his steak in his mouth and spoke between chews as he cocked his gun, “Alright, [_____], playtime’s over. We gotta haul ass.”

You pouted. “But, we didn’t get to fuck on top of his corpse...”

Sanzu swallowed, hard. He couldn’t help but internally groan with desire at your innocent display of vulgarity, tempted to take you up on that offer, but the last thing he wanted was for you to be involved in a standoff with the cops. You’ve proven you can handle yourself very well, a lot more than he realized that’s for sure, but you were still his precious baby at the end of the day.

Better to keep you out of danger than thrust you in more of it, no matter how much the thought excited him.

“Next time, pretty baby.”

You huffed. “Fine.”

Without hesitation, you strummed the man’s throat like a cello, the katana tearing through the skin with ease. The symphony of gurgles that escaped him sent shivers down Sanzu’s spine as he watched in manic glee as the man choked on his own blood. You never looked more stunning covered in red and holding his blade like it belonged in your hand, he wanted nothing more than to ravish you on the spot, but as the sirens drew near he tamed his urges just this once. You took his extended hand gratefully, swaying them as you both rushed for the restaurant’s back exit.

Once outside, while he scoped out the area for any cops patrolling, you nudged him. When he turned to see you beaming at him whilst blood stained your face, he swore his heart skipped a beat. “What?”

“You’re getting me a kitten to make up for this, right, Haru?”

He raised a brow, but exhaled a chuckle. “Sweetheart. Show off that violent side of yours more often, and you can have as many as you want.”

“You good, ma?” A delightful shiver ran down your spine and straight to your pussy.

That was always the visceral response your body had whenever RINDOU spoke, especially low and intimately in your ear. From either gently waking you first thing in the morning, or to secretly shit-talk in crowed areas, it was his go-to method to getting your attention effortlessly. A dangerous method, one that was about to make you act up in front of all these important clients, decorum be damned.

“I am now,” you purred, falling back into his embrace as strong arms came vining around your waist. He chuckled softly, pressing a kiss to your temple as he gently swayed you both to the rhythm of the soft jazz playing over the speakers of the ballroom.

“Missed me that bad, huh.” You nodded with a slight pout, turning in his hold to stare up longingly into his eyes. They were lidded, heady. Another dangerous method of your husband’s that made you weak in the knees—his undivided attention. “Bored?”

“So fucking bored,” you whined, tugging on his lapels. “These things are always such a drab..”

Rindou hummed, hands slowly slipping down from your waist to hold your hips. You tensed slightly, not even bothering to mask the second shiver it caused. His grin turned sharp in response, head tilting. “Ya sure that’s what has you so out of it?”

You tilted yours, confused. He continued, “You’re not as subtle as you think you are. You’ve been eye-fucking me for the past ten minutes. Came over to make sure you weren’t dripping all over the damn floor—”

“Shut up,” you jabbed him in the side, face boiling. Rindou barely flinched, squeezing your hips as he snickered cheekily at your embarrassment. “You’re so irking...”

“Yeah?”

“Yes. If you knew I was horny, I could’ve been folded on my back ten minutes ago.”

“Hm, almost as if I was doing something important, like…” he trailed off, making you squint and almost jab him again until he grabbed your hand in the last second, bringing it to his chest with a smug grin, “working.”

You huffed, “I’m important too…do me.”

Rindou snorted, but brought your hand up to gently kiss the inside of your wrist with a tender look in his eyes. “‘course you are, baby. Didn’t know it would go for this long, ‘m sorry.”

“Then, how ‘bout you and I take a little…smoke break,” you suggested, hopeful; desperate. However, it’s futile when your husband clicks his tongue.

“No can do. Kakucho’s still not over the last time we took a ‘smoke break’ together.”

“He’s not? Seriously? We weren’t even gone for that long!”

He raised a brow. “[______]. The check made it back to the table before we did.”

You groaned, exasperated as you wiggled around in his hold. Rindou merely watched in mirth, not even phased as he let you finish your tiny tantrum. He teasingly cooed, “I know, I know. Poor thing can’t go a day without something plugging up her slutty little hole.”

“Shut up..!” You shrunk into his chest to hide away from the sultry words spoken directly in your ear, thighs clenching together as his deep chuckle came soon after.

Rindou was very much aware of your voice kink. It filled his ego to the brim with how needy you were, crumbling anytime he so much as spoke to you in a certain way. There’s nothing he wanted more than to ditch and bury himself in your thighs, giving it to you however you wished, for as long as you wished, whispering praises to you with a sprinkle of degradation in there to keep you craving for more of his soothing voice. But, unless he wanted his nuts handed to him on a silver platter by his stickler of a superior, you were just gonna have to wait.

And he knew how much you hated doing that.

“Ten minutes.”

He sighed. “[_____]…”

“Five minutes?”

“We can’t-“

“A minute, god, I don’t even have to finish, Rin, please.” You whined in his ear, forcing him to close his eyes as a means to strengthen his resolve. It didn’t do much help when your arms wrapped around his neck to gently rake your manicured nails against the nape, your thigh deliberately rubbing up against the growing erection confined in his dress pants. The tables had turned with a shiver now running down his spine, mind turning to mush as common sense slowly sunk into his dick. Maybe…sparing just a few minutes wouldn’t hurt.

Even though the lavender-haired gangster couldn’t see your face, he was certain you were grinning victoriously at the sound of his resolve breaking instantly, the slow exhale through his nose being all the confirmation necessary. Clearly, you weren’t the only one who was needy.

Swallowing down a groan, he hissed through clenched teeth, “You’re gonna be the death of me, y’know that?”

Giggling, you were already leading him toward the nearest exit, swiftly evading the eyes of his coworkers, satisfied that you were getting exactly what you wanted in the end.

“Better me than Kaku.”

“Like I’ve already explained to you, Officer. My husband’s been here all day. Dunno if you’ve noticed, but he can’t exactly afford to leave my side for more than ten minuets let alone an entire evening.”

Despite gesturing to your swollen stomach and the small child shyly peering from behind your leg, the cop still fixed you with a skeptical look. You did your best to remain unnerved, providing comfort for not only your son but yourself as you ran your fingers through his hair. Apparently, there had been a shootout that happened in the streets of Tokyo, and apparently a witness was able to describe one of the shooters…

Henceforth, the unexpected visit from law enforcement. Again.

“Mhm. And, may I ask, where exactly your husband is now? Surely if he’s been tending to his pregnant wife, he wouldn’t have her answering the front door.” He raised an eyebrow, wry grin stretched across his face.

You worked your jaw, annoyed. “In the shower.”

“How convenient. Washing off the blood, I assume?”

“You can assume whatever you want, it doesn’t change my answer. He’s been here, with us. Whoever said they saw him was mistaken. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got mouths to feed. Have an evening, Officer.”

“Now, hold on—”

Without an ounce of hesitation, or care, you slammed the door in his smug little face. And just like that…blissful silence. A grand weight lifted off your shoulders at the disgruntled sound of the pig’s flat-footed steps exiting out of your day. Releasing a slow exhale, your son took it upon himself to blow a raspberry at the closed door, having worked up the courage to mock the officer now that he was out of sight.

You grinned as you ruffled his hair, endearingly. “You tell ‘em, baby.”

However, that silence didn’t last long as RAN made himself known now that the coast was clear. Having hid around the corner in case things escalated, he too released an exhale, easy grin spreading across his face. Though your child was happy to see him, racing to cling onto his long legs, you merely glared in disapproval. Based off his appearance alone, disheveled and glistening with sweat, you wished your fib from earlier was true; he needed a shower.

“[S/n], don’t touch daddy right now…he stinks.”

Though a bit childish in your phrasing, Ran was well aware it held an underlying meaning, a chill running down his spine under your harsh scrutiny. He cleared his throat, somewhat nervous, as he searched his brain for honeyed words that would soothe your soreness toward him. And he laid it on thick.

“That’s ‘cause Daddy had to run the rest of the way home to make sure his babies were safe,” he leaned down to scoop up the clinging child, lightly tickling at his stomach poking out from under his pajama shirt to receive more joyous squeals. “But, Mommy scared away the big, mean police man all on her own, didn’t she?”

“Yea!” [S/n] squeaked, bright laugh bouncing off the walls as he wiggled around eagerly. You felt the corner of your lip twitch upward at the sight, but you pursed your lips to hide the impending smile—Ran noticed. He always did.

“Yeah.. we’re real lucky to have someone as wonderful as her to watch our backs whenever we’re in trouble.. right, mama?”

Your glare still remained, though not as harsh compared to moments ago. Despite the mirth swirling in his lavender gaze, you took note of something else hiding within. Something more raw, more vulnerable.

Remorse.

Ran didn’t like getting you caught up in his business. He did everything he could to ensure that none of you were ever exposed to the ugly parts of his life. Tonight, he was sloppy. He fucked up, and he knew that. The second shit hit the fan, his only priority was his family… You had every right to be livid with him, having both your son and a pregnancy to deal with virtually on your own, while also covering his ass from prying cops itching to nail him to the wall…It’s a miracle how you haven’t packed up and left him yet…

And he thanks his lucky stars that you haven’t.

With another deep exhale, you rubbed your temple. “I don’t know what it is that you do in those streets to cause such an upset, Ran-”

“For the record, tonight wasn’t exactly my fault-”

“-and I don’t care. I just…”

Your exhausted tone was more than enough to shut him up. He felt his throat tighten as he gently bounced your son on his hip to distract his increasing anxiety. The lavender-haired man mentally prepared for your scolding, already set on sleeping in the dog house if that’s what got him in your good graces again…but it doesn’t come. Eyes that were hyper focused on [S/n] fiddling with his loosened tie slowly trailed up at the sound of you huffing in, what he assumed to be, relief.

Waddling over to your boys, you reached up to caress their faces. Instinctively, they nuzzled into your palms, Ran a little more hesitant than your beaming son before reaching out with his free hand to touch your stomach. When your unborn child kicked against it in response, you noticed his shoulders visibly relax. Your thumb gently rubbed under his eye, frowning at the dark circles that formed on the pale skin. He looked solemnly into your eyes, turning his head slightly to kiss the inside of your palm. You sighed once more, eventually granting him a smile in reassurance.

Despite his abnormal lifestyle, and how hectic it could get, “I’m just glad you’re home.”

© 2024-2025 anisespice ッ all rights reserved. likes, comments & reblogs much appreciated!

[edenianprincess]

INTRO !!      ❤︎ ׄ                                               Different ways to say I love you .ᐟ

Sweet gestures that demonstrate their love to a gender neutral!reader. Characters chosen are Bi-Han, Kuai Liang, Tomas. Content warning: none, just fluff. Please, respond to the poll at the end!

Bi-Han !

He lets you call him by stupid nicknames, he acts annoyed when you're using them, but he won't admit to anyone or even to himself that he is fond of them. Everything you make him feel is so unusual for Bi-Han, he doesn't know why he seeks for this warm fuzzy sensation every time he has your attention and affection, when his body as well as his soul are made of ice, but he does, and your foolish nicknames provide them. So, if someone else uses them, he would not only see it as an attack on his honor, not hesitating to put them back in their place, reminding them of whom they're talking to, but also, who do they think they are to call him like that when they’re not you. He prefers if you only use them in private, for plenty of reasons which include that he thinks your love life should be kept private, it isn't a subject of chatter for everyone to be entertained with, but also a matter of respecting his clan's honor as he is its head. He'll be grumpy if you do, but let’s be real, when is he not.

"How many times do I have to apologise for you to move on, snowhan?" Your voice whispers in his ear as your body is glued to his back, an arm hugging his neck while your fingers are twirling a loose strand of his hair that escaped from his bun. The man in your arms lets out a grunt. "Those champions lack senses for making fun of me, Liu Kang wouldn’t have stop me I would have knock them some of it in their head. And you.. my own partner disrespecting me in front of them." Despite his back facing you, you can feel his glare that is meant for you when he spits those words. But, even with the anger within him, he doesn’t move on from where he is, not even moving an inch when you take his clenching fist and start doing circles on them. "I thought I made it clear but apparently it wasn’t enough for you to get it. How can we bring glory to the Lin Kuei, when my companion lacks perspicacity and respect for their husband, out of all people you should know better than putting on a foolish act… " His voice fades away, it seems like he was going to continue his rambling but loses himself instead in your fingers gently brushing his silky hair, his bun long gone since, causing his grunts to become quiet moans. "I'm sorry, I won't do it again." You suddenly remove yourself from him. When he feels your fingers being taken away from his hair, it catchs him off guard as he turns around to see you smiling innocently but also playfully, which he returns with a dirty look that questions as to why did you stopped. You tell him that you’re just respecting his space like a good spouse should. "Nonsense, there's nothing preventing us here. Continue what you were doing. Now.” He pulls you back with ease in his embrace going back to the soft moment where for once he let his guard down, and that’s a sight no else should be able to see.

Making sure you sleep well. Rest is important, he doesn't want to have a weak lover by his side, you must keep your energy in check and if you don't do it, he will. When he goes to bed at the same time as you, he'll wait for you to sleep first before he does, making sure you don't go on a sleepless night, and it gives him a moment alone to appreciate your features. If you can't sleep, he'll help by brewing warm tea or if necessary, draw a bath, anything that will help he’ll do, it’s one of his rare soft moments where he lets the cold facade fall for once, it’s in the night where it feels like you and him without the world or the worries. When he is occupied during the night because of his role as Grandmaster, he'll go check up on you, always, to see if you're sleeping safe and well. 

He opens the door slowly of your shared bedroom and walks at quiet steps to your sleeping figure, when he is next to the bed he let the blanket he searched for fall on your body and make sure to cover the exposed areas. The night is colder than usual and you aren’t used to the cold like he is, he doesn’t want you to end up ill and weak.  After he finishes tucking you in, he takes a moment to trace the features of your face delicately, his finger travelling from the lips he enjoys kissing to the cheek he loves holding, but it doesn’t last long as he has to go, with one last stroke he moves away to the door that he closes after looking at you again. Each times, seeing the moonlight illuminating your soft features in the dark night reminds him that seeing you being so peaceful is one of the reason he wants to strengthen the clan even more, the universe is full of threats from every realms and now even from every timelines, it gives him unspeakable worries if one of those threats reaches you, it’s too late to go back when the Lin Kuei was being held back and weak, time is changing and he needs to go forward with it. 

Kuai Liang !

Using his powers to make you feel better.  Whenever he sees you shivering cold, he'll automatically wrap his hand around your waist, offering to share his body heat. But, if that's not enough he'll slightly heat himself up, making sure to not burn you but still bring enough warmth. You're free to lean on or snuggle to him whenever you want to, he isn't one to reject his lover when they are in need, and it would be a lie to say he doesn't find it adorable when you seek for him to warm yourself up, sometimes you’re throwing yourself on him so he has no choice but to hug you back, not that he complains, his arms are always open and keep their high temperature for you. He is also your personal heating pad for stomachache, it saddens him to see his loved ones in pain, so he's happy when he's able to help ease it even for a little, by rubbing where the pain is.

It is a particularly cold day and nothing that you found could bring you enough heat. You know it is the day for Kuai Liang to train the recruits so you go to the training place and seek for him. When you find him, you lightly tap on his shoulder without saying a word, and just by the look in your eyes Kuai Liang knows you need something, so he follows you into a secret hiding from the rest of the clan where you can talk. “What is it, my lo-” He is about to ask, but you interrupt him by throwing your arms above his waist and push your face into his toned chest that you can feel through the fabric. It takes him by surprise but he quickly laughs and returns the hug, you feel his hot touch on your trembling body, causing to send shivers of excitement down your spine. A sudden wave of comfort and heat rushes through your skin as he uses his power. You don’t want to hog him just for yourself but it feels so good and you don’t want to leave him for the moment either, his strong but gentle hands slowly start doing small caresses on your back as if you were the softest and most precious thing he ever held in his hands. “Does it feel better, love?” His lips whisper close to your face, so close you can feel his breath warming up your cheeks. You can think he is using his power in his smooth voice to make your heart melt like that. “Yes.. yes, it does.” Your voice drifts away as you let Kuai Liang’s warmth embracing you fully, enjoying it as long as it last.

Letting you do his hair. Every morning, you have the habit of brushing his hair until every knot is untangled, then putting them in a high and tight bun so he won’t be bothered when he goes to work. He can do his hair alone, but he trusts you with it, besides from his parents when he was a boy, nobody has ever touched his hair. It feels intimate and relaxing whenever your fingers pass through his hair which feel like silk, for once it’s like he puts a pause on everything and lets you manage the moment, with nothing being able to interrupt it. It’s impressive, even for him on how can you put the pyromancer in a vulnerable state just by your touch, while his enemies had train all their life to get even an once of his vulnerability, it’s like any fire within him extinguish with your presence. He really wishes to pay you back in some way, if you have long hair he’ll do them if you let him, styling you in hairstyles that he thinks embellish your natural beauty. And of course, his hair ties and pins become yours and vice versa.

“And, here you go.” You say as you rearrange the bun making sure no hair escaped. When you are finished, Kuai Liang turns around to face you, you feel the rough skin of his hand passing over your hand and gently take it to pull it lightly to bring you closer to him. “Thank you, beloved. I can't think of anyone better.” His gaze who holds sincerity it doesn't leave your eyes, still holding your hand he intertwines your fingers in an unbreakable link between his. “It's a simple gesture, however I'm happy to be the one to do it.” You smile at him, you really feel lucky to be the only one who can share this moment with him even for how simple it is, passing your fingers through is hair is almost like a small addiction, his smooth hair framing perfectly his handsome face is a sight you can't get tired of. “It may not be much but it means a lot to me.” His hand strokes your chin before pulling it and his lips capture yours in a kiss. It feels sweet and soft but you can feel the deep emotions he is putting in it, he is not letting your face go from his hand until his lips leave yours and smile tenderly at you.

Tomas !

Being your number 1 fan. This man is quite easy to amaze, but nothing amazes him more than his sweet partner that is you. Everything that you try receives a compliment from Tomas, some may say he is a fool in love, while he’ll say that he is simply proud of you. His significant other kicking ass? That’s my bae for you! Showing off a new trick you just learned? It’s impressive, could you teach him how to do that? (Definitely not an excuse to spend some time with you) While the praises are genuine, they’re also here to make sure you don’t fall into the rabbit hole of insecurities, which unfortunately he has sunk in too many times. He would hate for you to feel bad about yourself, it means for him that he failed as a boyfriend and by extents, he failed you, that’s why he needs to cheer you up and show how much you’re incredible in his eyes.

It is one of those days again, where a gloomy feeling overcomes your mind and manifests itself when you're looking at yourself in the mirror almost defeated by its reflection, the more you look in the mirror the more you are able to see each imperfection and you suddenly start to feel like a mess. Tomas who has just arrived to check on you, notices your weird behavior, how you twirl your clothes, and look at yourself in every angle with a frown on the mirror that you have been looking at for a long time now, he knows what this means and he knows he needs to put a stop to it. Your investigation is suddenly brought to an end when you feel a pair of strong arms around your waist. “Hey, you look particularly beautiful today, have you done something new?” Tomas asks with curiosity and a small smirk, he is looking at you in the mirror and you notice his eyes are filled with fondness which makes you smile in returns. “I just woke up, Tomas. I didn't even brush my hair yet.” “Oh, I suppose it's your natural charm that makes you beautiful then.” When he says that you can't help but kiss him on the cheek, no matter how many times these bad feelings come back they could never surpass the feelings that your boyfriend is making you feel.

Making you surprises. Tomas is always trying to show that he cares for his partner, he fears that he may not show it enough so he tries through little pleasant surprises that he knows you will like. For example, bringing breakfast in bed, it’s convenient that most of the time he wakes up before you, as the way of teaching from the clan does not allow to sleep in and wake up after the enemy does. He’ll cook your favorite food of course, and somehow the fact that it is made by him makes it even more appetizing but also he learned from the best cook that he knows who is Madam Bo, honestly you don’t know who is sweeter between the breakfast or your boyfriend. He also likes to leave love notes when he is on duty in places he knows that you go and sometimes those notes are attached to cute gifts like plushies, chocolate or flowers.

Good morning, Love! I hope you slept well and did beautiful dreams (hopefully about me). I regret not being with you here but we had to leave early this morning and I didn’t want to wake you up so early. I made you a quick breakfast before leaving and this time it didn’t burn! I promise I’ll make up for my absence but for the time I wish you a nice day and can’t wait to hear about what you did tonight. With love, Tomas :) Your smile grows when you re-read the notes that Tomas left, you kept a small pile of them in the drawer and like to go through again when you’re in an emotional mood. Some of them are small, others are longer, they can be funny or romantic with a deep otherwise cheesy love quote, either written by Tomas or this ‘anonymous’ person who signs as ‘The King Of Smoke’ and hopes to not be caught by your boyfriend so he can keep sending you gifts that represents his love. Whatever those letters are, they always contain his sweet nature in them and never fail to touch you.

‘𝓣𝐇𝐄 𝓔𝐍𝐃  Please don’t copy/translate and don’t reblog if you’re a yand3r3 blog/reblog account, or you’ll be blocked. Besides that, likes/reblogs/comments are appreciated.  Imagine Tomas leaving a love note and Bi-Han finds it accidentally, you can’t even imagine the disgust that he has on his face, he is even more displeased with Tomas than he already is, why can’t he keep his personal stuff private and not expose it to all the clan.

[dilatorywriting]

Apart

Vil Schoenheit x OC Word Count: 2.2k

Summary: Never in a hundred years would anyone have expected the Vil Schoenheit to develop seperation anxiety.

[OC Archive]

Vil wasn’t picking up his phone. Which was saying something, because normally the blonde was hemming and hawing over getting Saya to answer in any reasonable fashion. It wasn’t her fault she was terrible with texts, let alone the strange, encrypted, messaging software he’d insisted they use. But Vil was normally so focused—so intent. She’d never had to wait more than a few minutes before for him to respond to even her silliest of questions.

She listened through the tinny speakers as the phone rang, and rang, and rang.

It went to voicemail again with a near petulant chirp and Saya huffed irritably through her nose.

Vil was away filming. He hadn’t wanted to be. He’d told her time and time again that he’d specifically set aside his acting career to focus on his education, and that he had no intentions of stepping into any new roles when his duties to Pomefiore and Night Raven already ate up so much of his precious free time. But this was some reshoot or other for a project that had long since shifted into post-production. And he was contractually obligated to pack his bags and head out on the earliest flight to the Shaftlands.

“Call me every night,” he’d said, as he was fretfully checking and rechecking his suitcase. Shifting through outfits like a blackjack dealer spitting cards around a table. “And every morning.”

“And every afternoon?” she’d drawled, rolling over to bury back into his too-expensive plum duvet. The sun wasn’t even up yet. The birds hadn’t even started to sing yet. It was too early to be awake at all, let alone trying to juggle kindness and reciprocal doting.

“I’m serious,” he’d snapped. “You already get into enough trouble while I’m here to keep a watch over you. And now I’m going to be on another continent.”

And he’d seemed… frazzled, almost. There were smears of purple beneath his eyes that didn’t look intentional or artful, and there was a tightness to his sculpted brows that spoke of a burgeoning headache.

“You said It’s only for two weeks,” Saya mumbled, sitting back up to give him and his fretting her proper attention. “It’ll be fine. It can be, like, a vacation,” she tried. “Away from all my nonsense. I’m sure by the end of it you’ll be dreading coming back.”

Her cheek stretched with sharp, stinging pain and she whined into Vil’s palm as he pinched the skin there.

“Don’t say that,” he demanded, bitter and… something she couldn’t quite place. Saya blinked back, owlish and surprised. Vil never really liked when she joked about him not caring, or about her being a burden, and blablabla. It was all in good fun, well, mostly, but he always put a hard stop to it nonetheless. So she hadn’t expected him to sit back and laugh at her little joke, but he’d never really looked quite so…

“…I’ll miss you,” she said around his fingers, instead of pushing further. Hoping that might be less of a conversational landmine. But instead of helping, that something darkening his eyes just got worse.

“Every morning and every night,” he said again after a moment, ducking forward to press a lingering kiss to her forehead. “So keep your phone charged.”

Another chirp. Another ‘you have reached the voicemail of—’

Saya frowned and set her phone aside.

He had been a bit… odd, maybe. The last few times they’d spoken. Or, well, to be fair, he hadn’t really been himself the entire time he’d been away. Like there was an undercurrent of tension to him winding tighter and tighter, just waiting to snap. Vil had always had a tendency to work himself too hard, but this… didn’t really seem like that. There was almost a mania to it. Not quite hysterical, but something that reminded her a bit too much of trickling tar and the foul, creeping sludge of blot for comfort.

Her phone vibrated and Saya pounced for it before the screen even had a chance to light up.

“Oh thank god, you picked up. Do you know where he is?”

Saya blinked, startled, and then hazarded a quick glance at the caller ID. When his PR Team's icon blinked back at her, she swallowed a pissy curse.

“Amelia,” she frowned, fighting the urge to twist her fingers. “What do you mean? Know where who is?”

“You know who!” the woman snapped, sounding halfway to a meltdown. “Vil stormed off set hours ago and no one’s been able to find him.”

Saya’s stomach dropped and she felt herself moving towards the door before she’d even realized she’d stood.

“What do you mean?” she frowned, scraggling blindly along the coat hangers for a jacket. “What do you mean ‘ran off?’” He wouldn’t. Vil would never. He was a consummate professional—

“He hasn’t been… feeling well,” Amelia said into the speaker, sounding a bit choked. “And some of the crew was struggling with his… his mood.”

“Just call him a bitch and be done with it,” Saya snipped, yanking her arms through the sleeves and shoving her keys into her pocket. “What does that have to do with anything?”

“He can always be a bit difficult to work with—demanding, heavy-handed. We all know that. But never cruel. But this time it was like… He was just... ” the woman trailed off, still stiff. Still clearly panicked. “So things weren’t going well. I—We—He just—"

“Look,” Saya interrupted, stumbling out the door and hearing the creaking old hinges slam behind her. It was pouring. A torrential downpour that had turned the whole of the paths outside Ramshackle into a hazardous, muddy obstacle course. “You can share your poor, boohoo backstories later. Do you have any idea where he could have—"

She crashed headfirst into another rushing figure with a whoosh that knocked the air right out of her chest. Saya leaned forward with a gasping wheeze, trying to get her feet back under her and the air back into her lungs, and gaped in shock at the very familiar chest that she’d just barreled into at Mach speed. A chest that was supposed to be a hundred miles away on a movie set and not—not—

The voice in her phone was faint, droning buzz like the flighty chitter of mosquitos. She shoved it into her pocket until the panicked white noise was muffled through a layer of fabric.

There were too many questions. Too many hard questions.

So Saya just stiffened her lip and looped an arm through Vil’s.

“Come on,” she sighed, feeling a terrible, nervous chill trickling through her veins like ice water. “Your makeup is dripping everywhere. Let’s get you inside.”

Vil hated Ramshackle—made it a point to say so every time he laid eyes upon the fetid, lopsided, wreck of a building. But this time he just let himself be herded through the main entrance without a word, and that fretful, freezing something in her limbs got worse. Saya corralled him carefully upstairs to her small room. Ro was supposed to be away at Diasomnia for the evening, but the little bit of extra privacy wouldn’t do any harm.

Saya’s heart was tripping unpleasantly in her chest and she decided she had a plan.

First, she’d sit him down on her bed all comfy like. She’d wipe away his smeared mascara and dot at the red, angry lines on his cheeks. Then, she’d bundle him up in her comforter and maybe make some cocoa. And then—then… Well, she didn’t know what then. But it was a start.

Vil, naturally, was never one to make anyone’s lives easier ever. Even hers. So when she moved to start pushing him towards her mattress, he lurched around—quick as a snake—and dragged her into his arms so tight that her sides were aching with it. Saya squeaked and fought the urge to immediately start wriggling like a fish in a net. Because something wasn’t… This really wasn’t…

“Vil…?” she tried, and he pressed forward until his nose was digging into her throat so hard there was sure to be a fresh set of red marks there tomorrow. She tried to get her arms up, to hug him back, but it was too tight. And he wasn’t moving. So Saya sighed and settled on a soft, “I missed you.”

Vil locked up like a broken doll and she froze, feeling like she’d audibly misstepped somehow.

“Uhm…” she mumbled, unsure how to backtrack. “Are you alright? Amelia called. She said everyone was worried that—”

“They’re not worried,” he sneered, so sharp and so venomous that it genuinely startled her. “I did what I had to do and I left. I doubt they could care less.”

Saya frowned, hesitant. “Something’s bothering you.”

A scoff. “Everything bothers me.”

“Yeah, well, I can’t fix everything,” she pressed back. “Not all at once, anyways. Just—one thing at a time maybe? So I can help with that first?”

“…I always knew,” Vil said against her shoulder after a moment, “that they were miserable, lying vermin. That’s all any of this really is. What can I do for them, how can they use me best. And it never bothered me before. Or maybe it did, but I just never knew any better.”

“What are you talking about?” Saya frowned, doing her best to shuffle up against him in as close of an approximation to a reassuring pat as she could manage with her arms pinned to her side.

“It’s hard,” Vil continued, sounding bitter. “To learn that you can be loved as a person, and then having to go back to being a commodity. To being nothing but your use. So don’t ever,” he seethed, digging his painted nails into her hips, “say that leaving you is a vacation, or a treat, or enjoyable ever again when you’re the only one who ever even lets me be a person to begin with.”

“…okay,” Saya choked. Because that sounded like a lot. A lot, a lot. But—but this was Vil. Who she really did love so, so much. Cracks and all.

So she did what she did best and walled off the strange something that had started to fester in her gut. Locked it away and decided promptly that it had never existed at all.

“But maybe next time at least tell someone where you’re going,” she protested weakly, forcing a bit of levity into her tone. “Because your PA was calling me in a panic. I was literally about to go down to the road and hitchhike to the Shaftlands.”

“Do not ever get into a car with a stranger who tries to pick you up on the curbside,” he snipped at her, grip loosening just enough that he could reach up to tug, reprimanding, at a lock of her hair instead. “And this is why I was so nervous about leaving you alone. You’re just as danger prone as your brother.”

“Oh, please. I am not.”

“Being willing to turn and bite the thing chasing you like a feral racoon doesn’t mean you aren’t being chased,” Vil snorted, a bit of his more familiar, playful snark curling over the words to replace that horrible, cloying something from before. He ran his fingers through her hair and scratched lightly at her scalp. “I should track your phone at this rate.”

Saya scoffed. “I’m surprised you don’t already.”

Vil hummed, sounding pensive. And perhaps a touch of good humor. Like he’d caught himself thinking on an inside joke.

“Nevertheless,” he sighed, slowly unwinding himself from around her like a hulking, venomous snake unspooling its coils. “I’m sorry for worrying you. I just missed you terribly. And wanted to come home as soon as possible.”

Oof. One hit KO.

Saya huffed, cheeks going pink all the way up to her ears.

“Yeah, well, I missed you more and you didn’t see me forgetting your stupid ‘keep your phone charged at all times’ rule, did I?”

Vil chuckled and leaned forward to press a soft, apologetic kiss along the underside of her jaw.

“I have a lot to repent for, it would seem,” he hummed.

“Damn straight.”

A pause, as she looked over him with a touch of that same creeping, prickling worry.

“But… only after you’re feeling a bit better,” she amended, eyes darting off to the corner of the room with an embarrassed little huff. “It’s not fair,” she said after a moment. “That you feel like—” like there was no one in the world who wanted him for him. That he was good for nothing but his face, or his smile, or pretty, little lies. “—like they don’t care about you.”

“You care,” Vil sighed, burrowing back into her collarbone. “That’s all that really matters, hmm?”

“It shouldn’t be,” Saya harumphed. “Next time this happens I’ll follow you around myself and like, I don’t know, spray them with a water bottle full of cat piss. Or something.”

Vil laughed, low and deep.

“Of course. What a simple solution,” he hummed against her throat. “To just never let you leave my side to begin with.”

And maybe the steady, unquestionable undercurrent to that proclamation should have been a bit concerning. Like the sweetness of chocolate undermined by something darker and stickier that would leave one’s mouth dry and a peculiar sense of wrongness coating their tongue. But honestly, that sounded all well and good to her. Never leave his side to begin with. Saya sighed and let Vil pull her back towards her mattress. Because honestly, if it was him being the clingy one, then at least she’d never have to admit to it on her own. 

.

.

[shuamorollss]

unfortunate unexpectations — l.hs x f!reader

In an everyday attempt to avoid the man you eternally loath. Of course, the universe isn't always by your side as you accidentally reach a dead end, with no other choice but to dance with him.

romcom, regency era, enemies2lovers, just cute bickering warnings— not proofread, first time writing this kind of trope pls bear with me. 2.6k wc + reblogs are greatly appreciated!

author's note— I'm back again with another piece ( I'll disappear for a few months after this)! I wrote this exactly on Hee's bday but I only decided to post it now since i didn't really feel satisfied with this when i finished this a few days ago :/ i still don't so I may delete this when I'm in the mood to make changes ^_^ BUT HERE IT IS!! Happy belated birthday to my hubby wubby @Heeseung 😅❤️❤️

perm tags— @jangwonie @jungwonize @luhvlyuna @w3bqrl @ineedaherosavemeenow @leaderwon

"Would you be so kind and get that for me?"

Oh how annoying. You thought, gently tricking your finger up to block your ears and releasing in an instant, wanting the bothering itchiness to fade. His arms stretched beside you reaching to the the man holding a tray with glasses of wine.

Oh how you knew he did it intentionally.

Heeseung's boldness to give you an order was extraordinary, baffling even. You were not in a higher position than him, and he wasn't much higher than you, though he was just there, and heeseung didn't want to play the "he was just there" role in your life. He always feels the need to spite you at any given time, similar to a cricket making noises while you attempt to sleep.

Though much to his dismay, you certainly do show his own place as just a nobody in your existence; to which he never seems to catch the hint of your unintrestment.

Or he might do, only walking in and out of your life in terms of spitting utter nonsense to your peace.

Honestly, it did work. It made you fume and it certainly made you want to do more than just give out the usual glare and other threatening expressions to the other.

You turn around with utter confidence, meeting the man's eyes unbothered. Your eyes observed his structure, his unfortunately dashing attire, and his pretentious face.

As you check out the details of his sleeves, your eyes darted to Heeseung's exact shift of expression, smirking.

It was certainly expected, yet so mind flaming. You'd rather just explode right then and there than to keep up with whatever he wants to pull to you.

"You know, if a lady looks at someone from head to toe for too long it must mean that they yearn for that someone." He lets out a prideful scoff, eyes mockingly going through you as he sips from the wine glass.

Disbelief in what you heard, you halted your eyes from any further notice. Proceeding to roll your eyes at the man who had unknowingly tinted your cheeks red.

"Don't be silly, I was looking at your outfit. Actually baffling but not surprising for you to wear something so… Eye-vomiting." you spit. Twirling against his view and proceeding to waltz away from his standing figure, not setting a single glance at the man behind you. A fuming smoke sets up your chest at the realization of what you had just done to that awful of a man.

You explore more of the manor by yourself, enthralled by every piece of art plastered on the clean walls. You found an inner piece at the volume of the hallway, no noble bands performing and people crowding the room as they tap their feets and hearts out, it is truly a wonder to feel.

"Lady Y/N!"

Of course, every pinch of euphoria has their cut to its end, as one of your acquaintances calls you out.

"Oh, Lady… Lily? Was it?" You asked softly and loudly, as the woman clicked her heels towards you.

The girl smiles, "Oh yes! Though please, just call me Li."

"Alright, Lady Li."

…

For moments to what felt like hours, chit-chatting with Lady Li as you both walk around the manor corridors. The both of you had now reached your very destination which was the party itself that you so desperately want to be separated with.

You timidly smile at the girl beside you, eyes widened agitatedly at the crowd. "Uhm, Lady Li," The other nodded, her eyes also seemed to be searching through the sea of nobles.

"Why did we decide to return to this room?"

Lily simpers her smile as her eyes turn fixated on one figure, "There he is!— Thank you so much Lady Y/N for keeping me company through the manor." She gives you thanks, walking away with delight eventually linking arms with a man who Lady Li might have been searching for. great.

Another woman infested with men's validation, how unfortunate.

Your eyebrows furrow as you stare at the couple in disbelief, letting out a brief sigh at the thought of almost every woman here might be just like that.

"Feeling all bitter now, are we Lady Y/N?", you trembled at the sensation of his teasing breath tickling your ear.

"What on— oh... it's you again."

"The one and only." Heeseung lets out a ridiculous triumphant smile, the smile that makes you feel itchy in all aspects of your body, it was extremely bothersome reaching to the point you would rip your hair out to the unspeakable rage you feel for the male.

"Don't make that face now, a real lady doesn't do that, well— that is, if you are even a lady." He chuckled, always digging deeper into your little actions in an attempt to reach you to the edge. How delightful.

"Your words remind me so much of my younger brother's pitiful counters." You face the opposite once more, your heartbeat slowing down at each step you take far from Heeseung, hoping to have a similar instance from earlier to happen once more.

Unfortunately, the things one desires don't really happen twice. As you hear the footsteps of the man through the crowded noise, the only shattered expectation you wish did not.

"Oh so I remind you of your family now? How thoughtful." His smirk added to his audacious response that could be sensed at such a distance you didn't even know was possible without even taking another look.

"It means you're just as annoying as my brother, don't take it as a compliment."

"I presume older sisters still love their annoying brothers nevertheless, so that must mean you secretly feel that way for me too if I remind you so much of your annoying brother."

"Oh how great, you can go stay in your own personal pride zone Mr. Lee, though that zone, will tell you to cut it out very soon."

"I doubt that, I think I can sense what's true and not true."

"Being ever so ethical now, aren't you?"

"You know what they say… I am that of a gentleman."

"Well so ethical now anymore, 'cause, you see… you claim to be a gentleman which in fact is ridiculously wrong, no, you're not a gentleman."

"Okay lady, I figured that was a mouthful to sneer."

Your eyes widened, subconsciously sighing aggravatingly, utterly lost of the others' words. "Please don't follow me."

"I'm not following you."

"You are? Don't make me feel stupid."

"I don't think I'm doing that."

You continued to walk further and further, you don't know where, it could be just anywhere to be out of this man's grasp.

not even reaching an uncomfortable minute of making your way, Heeseung finally made it way up to you for god-know-what reason.

Only a few more threads left to untangle until you implode, besides showing this man what you're capable of doing, you weren't about to do anything in front of hundreds of people.

You swiftly turn to face the man following, "Look Mr. Lee, don't even attempt to come and step closer—" the hissy grin never ever fading from his look. Before you snap even further, you raise your head as the lights suddenly turn dim, the current music start to tone down as the band plays a new mellow romance.

The both of you faced your worries, silently questioning the sudden change of atmosphere.

"Now, it is time for the party where the gentleman… dances with the first lady they set their eyes on, Amuse-toi bien!"

…

..

.

His eyes were on you, and yours on him. Slowly developing the idea you most certainly would refuse to believe.

"No." You shook your head promptly with no hesitation.

"Y/N."

"No, don't even"

"Y/N—"

"No. Not ever. Never in my life. Never in a millennia. You can serve the mediocrity of mediocrity— I am not even paying attention to what I'm saying, but just so you know, I am not dancing with you."

You groaned continuously at his spews, this chit chatter going nowhere at all. Heeseung was also growing exhausted of your opposed responses. Hearing your never ending hatred for him is never known to him, although being in this position during an all rounded dance segment, he was not about to embarrass himself in front of such nobilities.

"Y/N just—" His hand abruptly slid up your waist sending your internal nerves through every stage of shockwaves.

"What are you—" Your words began to halt from his tightened grip, slowly putting power on pulling you closer… and closer… too close to say the least.

"Just this once, we don't want to leave a bad impression at a party we're just mere visitors at." His breath fanned your neck and sent shivers down your spine. Truly a feeling between his embrace that you have never felt before.

Too much of a guilt to even feel, considering this is the man you swore your whole life to loath yet here you are. No other way of escape out of this man's grasp, other than to spend a minute and more with him following the melodious rhythm serenading within the whole room.

"Fine. This doesn't change the fact that I want to scar my name on your face."

"How romantic." His lips curved sarcastically, eyes shifts into pure mockery as it lays on you. You couldn't say if you were teased by his softly menacing gaze or comforted by it. Eitherway, you couldn't register the right words.

"Besides," Heeseung continues, eyes darting away from yours, looking elsewhere within the ballroom, suddenly a light flashes your vision, snapping you back to your current position, right in front of Lee Heeseung.

"I don't even think we could get away from this anyway, we're literally in the middle of the dance floor." His head shifts in every direction to deem his assumption correct, which you mirrored.

It's true, the both of your are really in the middle of the ballroom.

You felt blockage on your throat, as if your vocal chords refused to spit words out of your mouth. The close proximity between you and Heeseung felt extremely new, you wanted to escape it so quickly yet, quite in a state of culture shock of his careful and kind demeanor as his every step to the rhythm of the music are seemingly careful not to make a mistake or you could say in other words, step on you.

The distance soothes, your hands still intact as the both of you walk in circles. His gaze locked onto you as if a man had seen the beauty of the moon for the very first time. He was allured, not only to the sight of your eyes but also your entire attire.

Who was he kidding? He was making fun of how you looked earlier, or was it you who taunted his? Even he couldn't remember. What is this contact causing him?

His eyes followed the direction of your eyes shifting all the way to your linked hands rising, following the rhythm and everyone else's. Only then Heeseung was able to return to his composure.

Being quiet with you didn't exactly make him feel like himself. It's indeed a peculiar case, his eyes fixated on your focused figure attempting for a thought, any words, any attacks, frankly quite anything.

"I feel conceived Lady Y/N," He started, your eyes now transferring to the man.

"Did you walk all the way here on purpose just to lure me in this dance?" He smirks, deeply hoping he did not look ridiculous in your eyes, which in fact, he did look ridiculous to you, though in basic sense, he always does.

You scoffed, "Don't be such a crude, I was walking away from you, or if you didn't understand that, I was escaping you. however, you followed me. If anything, you expected this dance to happen beforehand." You sneered at your words, feeling vastly proud of regaining the upper hand.

"Now now, shifting the blame onto me?" He jokingly asked, swaying forward and backward, then continuing to circle in unison.

"Well, I couldn't be wrong." Your raised your brows at the man, receiving a tuneful chuckle.

"You're ever so ethical now aren't you?"

you scoffed, "Touché."

After a few warm-hearted rhythms, the distance slowly basking in, his hand starts to tenderly slide from your hand up to your shoulder. Now facing your back at a dangerously close proximity. The way his fingertips barely made contact onto your skin yet it still tickled, sending you into unreasonable wonders.

Lee Heeseung? Sending you to unreasonable wonders?

"What if I tell you that I really expected this dance to happen and followed you to be able to have this dance with you?" he breathes out.

Your mind stood place, frozen. It couldn't function solely because of those words.

You knew this was his tactic of his obvious teasing yet... that had sent your heart into places you did not expect for it to reach. Your breathing abruptly stopping at every emphasis you place into his words.

It wasn't any different for the man, he was hellishly anxious.

The way his hand stood still on your shoulder, then slowly sliding it down to your hand the same thing he had done at the start. He felt crazy, he couldn't grasp the feeling whether he's disgusted at this contact or was it, satisfactory?

Heeseung's breath unawaringly hitched in unison to yours.

The high-rising tension the both of you are desperate to escape yet… would embrace it more long.

As Heeseung's hand reached your hand, the distance once more soothes, or did soothe for you? Did it to him?

One spin had the same closeness return, now you two are entirely facing each other.

How did this moment feel too slow? normally the dance routine did not walk this type of pace before, usually it happens quickly before the music finally comes to its end.

The silence echoed immediately through the other's ears, having the slight worry of gkving you discomfort.

Worried? Heeseung, really?

Heeseung lets himself battle his own internal conflicts as the outer silence continued. You were in a desperate measure of developing a genius idea for a comeback yet none came into mind. The unexplained whimsical threw you off, the fact this man had to send you in this type of frenzy was never in your lists of expectations.

Yet now, at this very moment, changed your very view on your surroundings.

All because of this very man you swore to loath ever since his eyes laid on you.

One last twirl to the maiden as the band's instruments faded into the void, completing the romantic waltz.

As everyone in the middle applauded their elegant and coordinated routine just now, both you and heeseung processed your breathledd tension just earlier.

Finally having all the words reached the right parts of your brain, finally having control of your conscious, your hatred to the man came back with it.

"Aww, you really do feel deep adoration for me, Lee Heeseung." you politely curtsied. contrasting to the tone of your voice, as you reply to the man's words from a few minutes back.

Heeseung lets out a chuckle, "You know what? Maybe I do have a thing for such abominations."

"Haha. Aren't you a clever guy." You gave him a wide infuriating smile, as you turn around walking away from his presence, now leaving the man at the middle of the dance floor.

It was a peculiar state for you. You swore you completely lie instense hatred for the man, yet now you're smiling at his mere words that usually drives you to banging your head on the wall, sometimes the urge to bang his head on the wall.

Yet what happened just earlier felt, extremely out of place, something you couldn't quite explain for the time being.

You were conflicted about being bothered by it.

How it bothered your feelings, bothered you deeply.

A memory that surely the both of you would engrave in later lifetime.

.

..

...

"Wow, she called me clever."

© seungiepup. please do not modify, edit, copy or reproduce any of the works published.

[bratzforchris]

No Tricks, Only Treats

Summary ⋆˖⁺‧₊☽◯☾₊‧⁺˖⋆: Luke knows just how to treat you when you have to miss out on your favorite Halloween party of the year<3

Pairing: Luke x feminine reader

Warnings: Smut, oral (f receiving), marking, protected p in v, blasphemy (oh god, etc.), a bit/mention of a role-play scenario, sex while reader is sick, fluffy ending

Word Count: 2.1k (exactly!)

Note: Happy Halloween everyone! Whether or not you celebrate, I hope you have a lovely day <3 Also, I know the photo technically isn't Halloween, but I wanted Luke to look somewhat nurselike for the purpose of this fic >.<

☾

“There’s no way I’m going to that party, Y/N.” Luke mumbled, snuggling beside you on the couch as he pulled a fluffy, white throw blanket over both of you. 

“You…” You paused to let out a chesty cough. “You have to, Lu. You’ve never missed an Ash Halloween party.”

“You’re sick, I’m not leaving you alone.” Luke hummed, laying his mop of curly, blond hair on your shoulder. 

“I'm not that sick, babe.” You sniffled. 

“Your fever was 102 earlier!” he protested. 

You curled into Luke’s side, coughing roughly again. You felt beyond awful, but you weren’t going to tell Luke that. He had never missed one of Ashton’s Halloween parties since he’d known him and you weren’t letting him now. Your boyfriend held you closer, allowing you to wallow against his chest, before laying your head on his stomach as Luke reclined against the couch. 

“I’ll be fine. You have fun.” You insisted. 

“So, if I check your temperature you’ll be fine?” Luke asked, raising his brow and searching your eyes, worrying clouding his typically bright blue ones. 

“Mhm,” You put on a brave face. “I’m an adult, Luke. I can care for myself.” You giggled. 

“I just worry,” the blond caressed your cheek. “You’re warm.”

“Luke,” You said firmly, your throat croaking. “Don’t make me drag you to that party myself.”

Luke pouted his lips, snuggling you closer to him. He ran a hand up and down your back, smiling softly as he heard sleepy noises falling from your lips. “Fine. I’ll go for an hour. Deal?” he smiled. 

“Deal!” You smirked, knowing you had won him over. “Go get changed into your costume!” 

Luke rolled his eyes playfully. “The party isn’t until nine. I’m staying right here and snuggling you until eight-thirty.”

You sighed, wrapping your arms around him and closing your eyes. “Y’know what? I’m okay with that.” You smiled sleepily. 

Luke held you closer, trying to keep you warm because of how awfully you were shivering from the fever. You let out a few barking coughs before closing your eyes and relaxing, knowing Luke would keep you safe no matter what. Your boyfriend hummed a soft, nonsensical tune until you fell asleep, caressing your hair with his lips. 

The next time you woke, it was to Luke picking you up and carrying you to your master suite. It had grown dark outside and the heat inside the house had kicked on, making you even more sleepy. You relaxed into Luke’s bridal-style hold as he carried you up the stairs and into the room, tucking you softly into your king sized bed. 

“Mmmmm Luke,” You mumbled tiredly. “Come snuggle.”

“I’m getting ready to leave, hun,” he said, fussing with something on your bedside table. “Do you want me to stay here?”

You snapped out of your sleepy trance when you heard what Luke said. You sat up and blinked your eyes sleepily, watching him bustle around the bedroom. You smirked when you watched your boyfriend pull the nurse costume out that you’d bought him earlier in the month. You had originally planned on being a doctor/nurse duo, but now, it appeared Luke would be a solo nurse. 

“You’re a hot nurse.” You giggled, coughing into a tissue. 

Luke wiggled into the teal scrubs, shaking his ass playfully. “You know it,” Your boyfriend came around to your side of the bed, laying on top of you to calm you down. “Are you sure you’ll be okay alone?”

You nodded, running a hand through his blond curls. “I promise, bub. Go have fun with Ash.”

Luke stood up off the bed and wrapped the costume stethoscope around his neck. He planted a kiss on your forehead with an exaggerated ‘mwah!’. “I’ll be back around ten, okay? There’s medicine, a water bottle, and a thermos of soup on your bedside table.” he smiled. 

“Thank you, baby,” You smiled and sniffled. “Now go have fun.”

The blond nodded, picking Petunia up and setting her on the bed with you. “Here’s a present; it’s a piggy.” he giggled, kissing you once more and slipping out of the room. 

You curled into Petunia’s soft, warm fur as you heard Luke pull out of the driveway. As much as you would have longed for Luke to stay with you, you knew he needed to go have fun. Besides, you were pretty content to lay in your cozy nest of blankets and pillows, watching Halloween specials and eating chicken noodle soup. You heard the wind howling the trees outside as rain splattered against the window. It was the perfect Halloween setting, you thought to yourself as you coughed sleepily. 

–

“I’m home, baby.” You heard Luke whisper as he laid his warm, plump lips against your feverish forehead. 

“Mmmm, hi Lu,” You whispered, rubbing your eyes. “Have fun?”

“I did, but it wasn’t the same without you.” Luke hummed, sitting beside you on the bed. 

“You’re too sweet,” You giggled, sitting up and putting your glasses on. “Damn, it’s already eleven?” You asked, letting out a barking cough as you reached for a tissue, glancing at your phone. 

“How long have you been asleep, hun?” Your boyfriend asked, beginning to take his costume off. 

“Since like, just after you left?” You said, more like a question. “I don’t really know, honestly.” You shrugged sheepishly. 

“Awwww, baby.” he pouted. 

“Wait!” You said when he reached to take off the scrubs costume. “Don’t take it off yet. I think you’re a hot nurse.”

“Even when you’re sick you’re still horny.” Luke laughed. 

You blushed, which wasn’t hard to do because of your already-red cheeks. Luke obliged your request, leaving the costume on and laying down with you on the bed, pulling into the little spoon. You blushed as you felt Luke’s soft stomach against your back and his dick that was beginning to harden at your words against your ass. He hummed softly, trying to relax you as he felt you wheeze against his chest. 

“Maybe I am.” You shrugged innocently.  

Luke laughed, rolling so that you were straddling him. “You know what they say the best cure for a cold is, right?” he asked, cheekily holding your ass in both his hands. 

“Cold medicine?” You joked. 

“Mmmmm,” Luke pulled you into him, starting to make out with you. “Don’t be a brat.”

You blushed and giggled, but pulled away from him. “You’re gonna get sick, Lu.”

“I don’t care,” he said with a lopsided smile. “It was bound to happen anyway. Just let me take care of you. I’ll be your nurse.”

You rolled your eyes, but kissed Luke again. “Fine. Be a good nurse and take care of me.”

The blond kissed you back again, his tongue meeting yours almost like a soft “hello”. He moved once again so that he was now topping you. “Arms up.”

You did as Luke asked, allowing him to pull off your Nightmare Before Christmas pajama shirt. He slowly trailed kisses down your cheek, before beginning to softly suckle on your neck, leaving hickeys that slowly trailed from the sweet spot behind your ear and down your neck, moving to leave them on your chest and tummy. Once he had left a small, soft hickey at your waistband, Luke looked up at you with blue eyes full of earnestness. 

“May I?” he asked, hooking a thumb around the waistband. 

You nodded, already feeling better with Luke’s electric touch. “Please do.”

Your boyfriend slid your pajama pants off, smirking when he realized you weren’t wearing any panties underneath. “Awww, already ready for me to take care of you?”

You whined, wiggling and arching your back against the sheets. You let out a cough, and Luke quickly began to hold your boobs in his hands, massaging softly. “For the cough.” he winked. 

“Feels so good.” You moaned out, your voice croaking a bit.

Luke left a kiss on both of your breasts, before moving down to your bare thighs. He slowly spread them, planting a kiss on each leg, slowly starting to leave kisses against your already damp slit. You gasped as the blond slowly licked over your clit, entangling your fingers in his curls. 

“Oh my god.” You whimpered, letting out a sneeze. 

Your boyfriend didn’t even give you a warning before he began to eat you out. His tongue was running across your folds and clit as he tapped out a rhythm on your electric spot, making you gasp out and clench your thighs around his neck. Your walls were already beginning to clench at the sensation of Luke’s beautiful tongue in and on you and despite your sickness, you already felt close to climaxing. 

“Luke, I’m close.” You whined, tugging slightly on his hair. 

The blond didn’t even answer. He just kept stimulating your sensitive spots with his tongue and his fingers until you had no choice but to let go. You came on Luke’s face, to which he lifted his head with a smile, wiping his eyes and nose with the hem of his teal scrub shirt. 

“You are such a good fuckin’ girl. Even when you’re sick.” he said, kissing you roughly.

You smiled, sneezing again. “Only for you…and your dick.” You giggled. 

“Is that asking for my cock, baby?” Luke smirked. 

You nodded sweetly, fluttering your lashes. “Please?”

“Well, as a nurse it is my job to make you comfortable so…” Luke chuckled, pulling off his shirt and tossing it to the floor. 

He moved to pull a condom out of his bedside table, practically tearing his pants off and rolling the rubber onto his throbbing dick that was begging for stimulation. Luke lined himself up with your hole, looking down at you. 

“Are you okay?” he asked, checking in. “Don’t wanna push you too hard since you’re sick, princess.” 

“I’m fine. It’s making me feel better. Oh god, just fuck me.” You whined. 

“Someone’s eager.” he chuckled. 

You pulled yourself closer to Luke as he slid his tip inside of you, making you gasp out. “So fucking big.”

That must’ve fueled Luke’s ego, for he immediately slammed inside of you, bucking his hips against you. You were so wet that he didn’t even need to lube up. He just began to ride you fast and hard, moaning loudly himself. You were already so sensitive from your first orgasm that you felt close again within the first two minutes of Luke fucking you. 

“Close again,” You moaned, beginning to grip his back. “Makin’ me feel good.”

Luke thrusted into you roughly, making you both yell out at the same time. Something about the way he was grinding into you was unlike anything you had felt before. Your sickness had completely disappeared from your mind. All you were thinking about now was Luke’s enormous cock inside of you and how good it felt. You were snapped out of your thoughts when you heard Luke speak, his voice husky. 

“Do it, baby. Cum all over my dick. Cum with me on the count of three.” Luke started and then began counting. 

As soon as he reached “three”, you both released, riding out your highs together as the sounds of sex filled your bedroom. Luke slowly slid out of you, panting heavily as he pulled the condom off, tying it off and throwing it in the trash can beside the bed. 

“You’re such a good girl. I had a great time,” he hummed, bringing you into him as he laid down beside you. “Feeling okay?”

You nodded, snuggling into Luke’s side as you caught your breath. “You were right. Sex is the best medicine.” You giggled. 

“I told you. No tricks, only treats.” Luke laughed. 

You swatted his bare shoulder gently, pulling the comforter over your naked bodies. “Please, no more corny Halloween jokes.”

“But they’re funny.” he fake pouted. 

“No, Luke. They’re not.” You giggled, coughing again. 

“They are!”

“Are not.” 

Luke rolled on top of you, leaving kisses all over your face as he began to tickle you. “You summoned the tickle monster, babe.”

You yelped out playfully, wiggling in Luke’s grasp. “Help!”

The blond left one last kiss on you, before relaxing and pulling you into him once more. “Happy Halloween, Princess Y/N. I hope you feel better.” he said sweetly, rolling to turn off the lamp. 

You blushed, hiding your face in Luke’s chest. Even after two years of dating, you still got butterflies when Luke called you princess. You loved him more than anything in the world and you knew he felt the same. “Happy Halloween, Nurse Luke.” You chuckled. 

[honesty-my-policy]

Resources/Sources against HAMAS + more [re-organization of previous posted resources]

LONG POST - WILL PUT A READ MORE - SEE UNDER IT FOR MORE RESOURCES.

Sources/places that have uncensored footage from the Oct. 7th attack. For anyone who needs a reality check or needs to smack someone with a reality check.

THIS FOOTAGE IS UNCENSORED AND HIGHLY DISTURBING BUT IMPORTANT TO HISTORY. I HAVE WATCHED A LARGE COMPILATION AND IT STILL RUNS THROUGH MY MIND ALL DAY.

https://www.october7thattack.com/

https://oct7th.org/

https://www.hamasvideo.com/

https://theworldwatch.com/tags/hamas/

https://www.hamas-massacre.net/

important websites + articles they have posted

UN Watch - https://unwatch.org/about-us/our-work/

Fact Checking UNRWA Claims About Teachers and Education

Hamas stole 36,000 liters of fuel from UN warehouses

Group of 3,000 UNRWA teachers celebrates Hamas massacre and rape

UN staff celebrate Hamas massacre

The Case against UNRWA from UN Watch - link

2023-Report-UNRWA-pdf - link

Report: Red Cross Statements ‘Overwhelmingly’ Biased Against Israel - link

Honest Reporting - https://honestreporting.com/about/

Desperate Media Accuse Israel of ‘War Crime’ Over Killing of Terrorists in Daring Hospital Raid

Media Accused Israel of ‘Strike’ on Palestinians Who Died in Gaza City Aid Truck Stampede

Council on Foreign Relations -https://www.cfr.org/about

What is HAMAS? Link

The Sunni-Shia Divide - link

MeForum - https://www.meforum.org/about/

A Primer on Hamas; Part 4: Who Are the Palestinians? - link

Countering ‘Pro-Palestine’ Propaganda Part 4: Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing - link

Countering ‘Pro-Palestine’ Propaganda Part 5: Gaza is an Open-Air Prison - link

Countering ‘Pro-Palestine’ Propaganda Part 6: Palestinian Refugees’ Right of Return - link

Israel Can Trust Hamas - To Keep Its Promises - link

The Rhetoric of Nonsense - link

The Wilson Center - https://www.wilsoncenter.org/about

Digital Deception: Disinformation’s Impact in the Israel-Hamas War - link

Hamas: Words and Deeds… - link 

Hamas over-reporting civilian casualties in Gaza, again - link

Misc Articles (find the about page yourself if you care enough) -

Hamas use of human shields in Gaza (pdf) - link

Intelligence Reveals Details of U.N. Agency Staff’s Links to Oct. 7th Attack - link

Don’t erase our history: The Jewish people are indigenous to the land of Israel - link

Hamas’s October 7th Attack: Visualizing the Data - link

Teaching Terror: How Hamas Radicalizes Palestinian Society - link

Why Hamas is an Unreliable Source and How Many Reporters Fail to Disclose this - link

Misc Resources -

The Complete List of the 1030 Jewish Expulsions in Human History (pdf) - link

Educational Posts made by rootsmetal -

Palestine and the Holocaust

Hamas's Islamism

we are treated differently

evidence (there's plenty)

teaching hatred

united nations

lies about 1948

was there peace before 1948?

HAMAS Guidelines to Social Media (excerpts)

Anyone killed or martyred is to be called a civilian from Gaza or Palestine, before we talk about his status in jihad or his military rank. Don't forget to always add 'innocent civilian' or 'innocent citizen' in your description of those killed in Israeli attacks on Gaza.

Begin [your reports of] news of resistance actions with the phrase 'In response to the cruel Israeli attack,' and conclude with the phrase 'This many people have been martyred since Israel launched its aggression against Gaza.' Be sure to always perpetuate the principle of 'the role of the occupation is attack, and we in Palestine are fulfilling [the role of] the reaction.'

Beware of spreading rumors from Israeli spokesmen, particularly those that harm the home front. Be wary regarding accepting the occupation's version [of events]. You must always cast doubts on this [version], disprove it, and treat it as false.

The interior ministry prepared a series of suggestions specifically for Palestinian activists who speak to Westerners via social media. The ministry emphasizes that conversations with them should be conducted differently from conversations with other Arabs.

When speaking to the West, you must use political, rational, and persuasive discourse, and avoid emotional discourse aimed at begging for sympathy. There are elements with a conscience in the world; you must maintain contact with them and activate them for the benefit of Palestine. Their role is to shame the occupation and expose its violations.

Avoid entering into a political argument with a Westerner aimed at convincing him that the Holocaust is a lie and deceit; instead, equate it with Israel's crimes against Palestinian civilians.

The narrative of life vs. the narrative of blood: [When speaking] to an Arab friend, start with the number of martyrs. [But when speaking] to a Western friend, start with the number of wounded and dead. Be sure to humanize the Palestinian suffering. Try to paint a picture of the suffering of the civilians in Gaza and the West Bank during the occupation's operations and its bombings of cities and villages.

Do not publish photos of military commanders. Do not mention their names in public, and do not praise their achievements in conversations with foreign friends!

Recently I came across a bunch more ancient/old maps of the Middle East, Near East, Levant, Israel, and others. Some are remakes as the old ones were degraded or unable to be scanned, some are historian estimates of what the area looked like at the times, others are actual scans of maps from back in the day. I will link specific maps of interest but also databases below. I will link the maps first and the databases they are from above them.

David Rumsey Historical Map Collection (over 130,000 maps and related images online)

Alte Welt: Städte. (Old world: cities)

No. 1: General map of the countries mentioned in the Bible

No. 2: Map of the journeyings of the Israelites : in the desert

Turkey. Middle East. Ancient World

American Society of Overseas Research (online resources)

The Ancient Near East: The Hellenistic World c. 200 BCE

Neo-Hittite and Aramean States

Iron Age IIIv2 Empires

The National Library of Israel

Specific search for maps of Israel

Map History (part of the virtual library)

Index

Gallica (digital library of the National France Library and its partners + I don’t know if it’s just my browser but switching the language to English didn’t work much so it was mostly in French)

Database

Maps

W.F. Albright Institute of Archaeological Research (Digital Collection)

Palestine of the Old Testament

Historic Map Works

ASIA/recens summa/cura delineata

United Nations Archives

Map Collection of the League of Nations + UNOG

Library of Congress World Digital Library

Map Collection

links to previous posts containing the same resources in case i missed any - link

[orion4ever]

hey dude, i know you mean well for the ol community, and i think you're really cool and have been following you for a while, but i really don't think all this shitting on rose is justified. spreading callout posts by taking shitty things people have said out of context, especially queer poc, is a real tactic used by terfs to spread discourse and isolate queer people from communities, and it's worked so well that queer people have started doing the same to their own with really good intentions, but the overall effect is nonsense discourse and the spread of hatred. kab herself has publicly said that she and rose have a good relationship and that she thinks most of rose's impact on the games and community has been really helpful for checking her own biases. the screenshots and shitty things you've read about her are not the full story, and yes, i do agree that rose handled certain things really really shittily and i am not excusing that at all, but rose isn't a bad person at all, what the callouts show is out of context and does not show rose accurately as a person, and the degree of hatred for a group of people honestly trying to create a safe space for queer people is wildly disproportional. i really hope this doesn't come off as any way accusatory, because it really isn't, and i really look up to you as a creator. i just want you to be aware that this is something that has been settled by the people involved, and continuing discourse and wanting rose fired goes directly against kab's own wishes and is based on misinformation. thanks for reading this far. please have a wonderful day

I respect you and I appreciate that you reached out respectfully with this.

I do not repost these call out post to be malicious or start a hate campaign like some people have been accusing others of.

I do not encourage witch-hunting or harassment of Rose or Kab ; As they are people and make mistakes , even if the mistakes are extremely shitty and I understand that those screenshots were a private conversation but frankly , I think some of the stuff Rose said was extremely odd and vulgar , context or without.

I am not in the official OL server so maybe your right about them not being as bad but even if that was the case they should still be let go of the role as sensitivity reader because they’re views aren’t open minded and its ironic that they are supposed to help prevent bias and keep the game inclusive when they’ve shown a weird rhetoric and the paper bag comment actually made my jaw drop.

OL has been one of the most comforting things to me , I was in a really dark place when I started a new save file and fell in love with all the characters and the game so believe me when I tell you I would never want to attack the very person who created and brought me that comfort. It physically exhausted me and upset me yesterday when it all came to light , considering it has been a huge hyperfixation and boosted my self esteem.

I don’t care if GB is okay with their friends talking an insane amount of crap behind their backs. It's not my business, I just think that they need better friends.

Even with this in mind, I can’t continue my support for Kab if they decide to keep Rose on the development team, not purely just because of what they said in private but how they treated my friend. The both of them are insinuating that they’re a “liar” or that they “overreacted” when they just wanted to express a grievance. And a surprisingly large number of people are harassing them and accusing them of starting a “racist campaign” towards Rose when they are a trans minority as well. If the fandom is so quick to villainize my friend for simply speaking out then frankly I don’t want to be a part of this fandom.

I hope you also have a good day.

[bengiyo]

The Trainee Ep 4 Stray Thoughts

Last week, Ryan woke up late and had to scramble to make it to the set, and added extra stress by accidentally taking the store's phone instead of his. On set, Jane tasked him with supervising the extras so they would remain on standby, leading to a lesson in ignoring age politics to do his job well. Pie did well executing the shots for Unit B, but kept looking for more to do because she felt all of their tasks were beneath her. Pah did well with his tasks, and helped teach Pie a few things. Ba-Mhee did poorly, and needed a stern lesson in the role account managers play in keeping a set functional. After Pie accidentally let an extra go home early, Ryan noticed a way to replace her, and Jane ate crow for Pie when the client was pissed about the overages. Ryan returned home after checking in with Jane to help his sister with the extra work from the phone issues. Ryan also tried to reach out gently to Pie, who felt really bad about causing problems.

I was happy to see Ryan interact with his dad, but now I'm nervous about Ryan bringing oil to work.

EP 4: Backup Files

I love when a show remembers its own drama. Ryan is sore from his first day required to work on his feet for extended hours, and Pie is still embarrassed about her mistake. She kept throwing Ryan under the bus before. Curious how she'll manage her fear of Jane.

Pah, please don't fuck up the invoices...

I'm glad Jane is getting used to Ryan's nonverbal tendencies.

Oh no, Jane can smell the oil.

Ba-Mhee should not have followed Tae to the same company. He's clearly trying to complete a task right now, and this drive is going to break.

This is classic intern behavior. You're afraid to admit you made a mistake, and now you're scrambling to try to make up for it. It's also something they do because they're bored. Pah is rushing off on a plan to fix something he didn't break because he's clearly avoiding the invoices.

The comedy of this whole plan execution is really quite stellar. They're hitting these comedic beats perfectly.

They're also cutting in the tension of being discovered really well, too. This is a lot of fun. I like that simple office nonsense is where we went after the high stress of a film set. In the grand scheme of things, the footage is probably already on additional backup drives. All this is unnecessary, and I'm hoping for a meaningful resolution.

Ew, this guy is gross. Both women and his coworkers have told him to stop and he keeps going. Disgusting. I'm glad they showed them scolding him further after the ladies left to change.

Pie is nervous about this meeting, but I'm sure it's about her actual work on Unit B.

I do love this moment between Pie and Ba-Mhee. It would suck if Ba-Mhee was only defined by her relationship with Tae.

Ah, there's our romantic moment of the week.

Of course Tae has helmet now.

Tae from another multiverse. Not a Vice Versa reference.

I love when a show and I are on the same page. Baimon asked generally about the day to see where Pie was about it, and she immediately unloaded about how she screwed up. They used it as a teachable moment about relying on your team, and revealed that they did see her talents, and that she did real work that mattered as a test for even more responsibility with a specific timeline. This hits especially hard because we had that scene with that gross man earlier, because we have two men she reports to validating her efforts.

It's actually refreshing to see a GMMTV workplace show where they understand the minutiae of the work itself. Their interns are making small mistakes that interns make that have manageable consequences for their organization, which allows for the appropriate scolding. Tae screwed up when he didn't report the broken drive, and Pah screwed up by bailing on his own responsibilities. Worse, Tae could have leaked client information. Reminding the interns that they have superiors for a reason, and the purpose of their internships, is going quite well here.

Aww, Pie is hugging Ryan.

Of course Jane was the one who insisted Pie be given another chance. He recognized how she had already beaten herself up about her mistake, and so there was no need to pile on. He focused on correcting the presumptions she had about working on a team as they move forward.

Well well well, the oil led to a cute moment instead. A win.

An excellent preview: they assured me we'd be dealing with the invoice paperwork next week, and that Ryan will still be dealing with Jane's curt nature.

We've been led down a lot in the back half of GMMTV shows lately, so I really hope this one holds together. The drama in this show is so well-balanced for the setting. I also am really enjoying the pacing. Last week was quite frenetic to match the energy of a film set, but this week was a bit slower as we dealt with post production issues. I've really enjoyed following the projects they've been working on, and am excited about the beginning of a new one next week. It's also really cool that the projects we've seen are rather small: first an ad, and now a music video. That feels like the right work for a production company that's trying to keep revenue streams going. A big show gets a lot of views, but you're hoping other producers want to hire your company for their projects too. This has been an awesome watch experience.

[veinsfullofstars]

⭐ Memories of friendship ⭐

(ID: Kirby series fanart, Childhood Friends AU, featuring young Dedede, Meta, Para Dee, and Bow Dee hanging out and interacting in various cute and silly scenarios. More detailed descriptions and bonus headcanons under the cut. END ID.)

Just a buncha li’l guys. The littlest of lads. I could literally fill pages with all the wholesome slice-of-life nonsense I have in mind for these kids (and maybe the smallest touch of angst, too, but that’s for later). Also might’ve made DDD’s overalls a little brighter to match his coat in the future. Also made refs for Para and Bow.

UPDATE 03/11/24: Added a few misc. details.

Sketches started btw 11/23 and 12/23, render started 12/13/23, finished 01/07/24. NOTE: This was originally posted on my deleted account on 01/08/23.

—

Image descriptions

Top-left: Meta carrying DDD by his hands and lifting him (with great difficultly) into the air (probably only a few inches off the ground), the latter laughing happily and kicking his feet, the former grimacing with effort and flapping his little wing as hard as he can.

(HC: Even at a young age, Meta is built more for dexterity than strength, and DDD isn’t exactly as light as the rest of his buddies - not that it stops either of them from doing something dumb in the name of a dare.)

Top-middle: Meta and Para holding open a large book between them (the image of Planet Popstar on the cover), reading and discussing its contents (as indicated by a wall of blue and green “Blah”s behind them), while Bow (slumped on Meta’s side) and Dedede (reclining back on Para’s side) are both fast asleep from boredom.

(HC: Needless to say, Meta and Para are huge nerds, often seen checking out half a dozen books at at time from the local library and finishing them before the week is out. Bow and DDD try to be interested, but they just don’t have the attention spans for huge walls of tech jargon and dusty old history.)

Top-right: Para floating with his parasol (patterned the same green-and-brown plaid as his bowtie), sweating and kicking his feet wildly, looking down in terror; Meta hovers nearby on his wings, looking on in surprise at his panicking friend.

(HC: Despite his proficiency, Para rarely uses his parasol for anything besides keeping himself dry in the rain. He is deathly afraid of heights and has gotten himself stuck in trees more than once thanks to his buddies’ daredevil antics.)

Middle-right: Bow - angered by something off-screen - furiously kicking and flailing about, her face red with rage, as DDD casually holds her up off the ground by the top of her head, looking annoyed and bored.

(HC: It doesn’t take a lot to set Bow off. Despite her tiny size, she can be an absolute terror when she’s upset about something, and the boys know this well. DDD is often the one to hold her back when she gets too rowdy, a role he’s not particularly thrilled to have. Stars help anyone in her line of sight if no one’s around to calm her down.)

Middle: Meta and DDD sitting side-by-side, the former in a rare excitable mood as he fidgets and chatters on about all kinds of things (indicated by several word bubbles with images inside, including ice cream, swords, bats, planets, stars, rockets, and Galacta Knight’s mask); DDD listens with surprising patience, a fond (if somewhat exasperated) smile on his face.

(HC: Meta is usually a very quiet kid, his silence filled by DDD being his typical boisterous self. Sometimes, though, when they’re just hanging out by themselves, Meta will find an opening - usually provided by DDD - and go off on tangents as random and hyper-focused as his more talkative buds. Not many people get to see him this animated or comfortable, and DDD - who’s seen them the most - cherishes these moments, even if it’s embarrassing to admit.)

Bottom-left: DDD dashing to our left, a determined grin on his face, as his friends ride Piggyback on his back - first Meta, wings out and free arm waving in excitement, then Para, clinging desperately to Meta with a look of panic on his face, and finally Bow, hanging off of Para and laughing merrily.

• (HC: DDD is always dragging his friends into one crazy scheme or another, usually at a full-tilt sprint and without much forethought beyond “C’mon, it’ll be fun!” Meta is often swept up in the excitement, too curious and eager to learn to worry much about danger. Para is the embodiment of “I don’t know about this, guys…” but too lenient to really stop them. Bow will literally follow the boys off of a cliff as long as there’s fun to be had.)

Bottom-right: Bow, DDD, and Meta sitting in the grass surrounded by butterflies (their bodies black and wings white with dark edges, save one in the back with yellow wings rimmed in orange and red). One lands on DDD’s beak, and he pokes at it curiously, staring cross-eyed. Bow trembles behind him, staring at the butterfly in watery-eyed terror over his shoulder. Meta tilts his head to look at her with an expression of bemused concern, a butterfly settled on his foot.

(HC: Bow will tell you she isn’t afraid of anything. In many cases, this is true. She will routinely stare down threats ten times her size and promise to beat them up on the spot before someone more rational pulls her out of harm’s way. But, if there is a bug anywhere in her immediate vicinity, she will absolutely run for the hills. DDD used to tease her about this, hiding bugs in his hands to scare her. He stopped as soon as she started panic-smacking him.)

[misc-obeyme]

Scary Noises in the Night

Sometimes I write serious stuff and sometimes I write complete nonsense. This is the latter. Not sure where this idea came from, but it's pretty ridiculous, so just be prepared for that.

You’re spending the night with one of the demon brothers and you hear a scary noise! What do you do?! Do you make him go investigate? Or does he simply comfort you until you go back to sleep? Well, it depends on the brother…

GN!MC

Warnings: Sleeping with the bros in their beds, but nothing sexual is talked about, just some snuggles and a couple kisses.

Lucifer

After being annoyed at you for waking him up for no reason, he's amused. Are you really scared of a strange noise in the night? Please, MC. As if anything could happen to you with him at your side.

Will absolutely indulge you if you insist that you want him to check it out. Very well. He'll make sure all is as it should be within the House of Lamentation. He has no problem proving to you that your concerns are unfounded.

When you go with him, he will wrap an arm around your shoulders. Says it's to make you feel safe, but that's just an excuse to hold you close.

To no one's surprise, Beel is in the kitchen for a midnight snack and he's not being quiet about it. After telling him to keep it down, Lucifer will carry you back to bed.

Mammon

You shake him awake and he's bolting up immediately, on high alert. What is it, MC?! What's wrong?! What's goin' on?!

You tell him you heard a strange noise. He's out of bed in seconds, you don't even have to ask. Though he's telling you that it's probably nothing, don't worry about it because the Great Mammon is here to protect you!

You follow him out and he holds your hand tightly. He's not afraid or anything, he just doesn't want you to be.

Turns out it was just Asmo coming home late from some party. See, nothing to worry about at all. Tells Asmo off for scaring you by being too loud. You drag him back to bed before they can start an argument. Holds you close to himself for the rest of the night to ensure you feel safe.

Leviathan

Another one who wakes up quickly and in a panic when you start to shake him. When you tell him why, he suggests what it could be and all the options are absolutely terrifying. There is no doubt he's thinking of every horror movie he's ever seen.

S-sorry, MC, but what do you think an otaku like him could possibly do about an intruder, anyway? You have to hype him up a bit. Remind him that he's the Admiral of Hell's Navy, that he can summon Lotan, and that he's the third most powerful demon brother. Your words mean so much to him! He's sure he can handle whatever that noise was!

When you venture out of his room, you cling onto his shirt. He's always looking over his shoulder to check on you.

The only thing you find is Lucifer in his office, still doing paperwork. Still, when you return to Levi's tub, he curls himself around you protectively.

Satan

It takes him a minute to fully wake up. He's concerned about you, but what could possibly be the problem? It's the middle of the night, you know. You heard a strange noise? The House of Lamentation is pretty old and creaky. Are you sure it wasn't just old house noises?

He sees no reason to go wandering around the house in the middle of the night just because you heard a strange noise. The chances that it's anything to worry about are slim. And even if there was something to worry about, he's right beside you. He'll keep you safe.

Anyway, MC, haven't you seen enough horror movies to know it's a bad idea to go investigate creepy noises in the dark? If you wake up tomorrow and someone in the house has been murdered, Satan is more than happy to take on the role of detective to find the killer then.

He will soothe you back to sleep. He holds you close in his arms, smoothing your hair back, and kissing your forehead gently. You don't need to be afraid as long as he's with you.

Asmodeus

Wakes up reluctantly and then pouts because you should know he needs to get a full night's sleep if he wants his skin to stay beautiful. What do you mean you heard a noise? What kind of noise? A scary noise?

Normally he wouldn't even worry about something like that, but you look so upset, he can't help but give in to you. Don't worry, MC darling! He'll charm any intruders into submission!

Puts your arm through his, keeping you close to his side. He can't stand the thought of you getting too far away from him when you're scared.

Aside from hearing some loud game music from behind the door to Levi's room, the house is quiet and there's nothing there. Asmo takes you back to his bed where he kisses you and snuggles you. He waits until you fall asleep before he closes his own eyes.

Beelzebub

Wakes up pretty quickly when you start to shake him. He's a little bleary, but aware enough to be worried about you. You heard something? Maybe it was his stomach?

When you insist that it wasn't his stomach and that you want him to check it out for you, he obediently does as you ask. Sure he'll go, MC, but he's going to grab a snack while he's up.

Holds your hand the whole time until you're in the kitchen. Then he makes plenty of his own noise getting something to eat. Makes sure you get to have some, too.

The two of you actually run into someone prowling around in the House of Lamentation's foyer. You exclaim about how you were right and Beel immediately goes into demon form to protect you. This scares the shit out of Mammon who just lost all his Grimm at the casino and is trying to sneak back into the house. When you finally get back to Beel's bed, he wraps his arms around you and tells you there's nothing to worry about as long as you're with him.

Belphegor

Good luck trying to wake him up. You have to shake him for quite a while before he even reacts at all. Eventually he opens one eye to glare at you. Why are you trying to wake him up in the middle of the night, MC?

You tell him about the sound you heard. Oh, right, a scary noise. Are you sure it wasn't Beel's stomach?

When it becomes clear to him that you really are scared, he reassures you that there's nothing to worry about. You're with him, Beel is also close by, and more than that if anyone actually tried to get into the House of Lamentation, his brothers would take care of it.

Belphie snuggles close to you, kissing your cheeks and rubbing your back. He comforts you until you're no longer afraid and lulls you back to sleep with his own steady breathing.

masterlist | part 2 with the side characters | Thank you for reading!

[gilbirda]

This mostly stemmed from the constant image of Jason being so disgustingly enamored with Jazz [the twirling-his-hair-heart-eyes-and-being so-unfocused-on-important-shit lovesick] that the batfam finds it bizarre rather than cute

The most I got is Ember rolling into Gotham looking for a bigger crowd [I guess], Jazz, interning at Arkham as the popular saying goes, tries dealing with her and Jason obviously steps in cause Crime Alley business is his business and smth about this new rocker chicks smells fishy.

I'm guessing you know where this is going?

Ember gets away, off to collect a following as she does.

Jazz is prepared for ghost nonsense, but she was not prepared for this vigilant built like a brick house to suddenly be mooning over her. So she reluctantly knocks this guy's lights out and leaves him in some alley [maybe checks him over for what she hopes is a panic button and leaves the bats to it]

The bats find him and bring him home, and thus have to deal with their uncharacteristically goofy, lovestruck family member going on and on about some redhead. He's talking about her long pretty hair, the color of her eyes, the way she kicked ass, her bossiness.

They can't get anything useful out of him.

It's both sickening and blackmail worthy

Cue batfam looking into the whole Ember business all while trying to keep Jason from wandering off in search of Jazz and keep him from potentially exposing himself or embarrassing himself. Meanwhile, Jazz is also trying to deal with Ember and maybe calling in the big guns....

Cue flustered Jazz having some weird ass run-ins with the bats and watching them as they try to keep an embarrassingly enamored Red Hood in check [The dude is probably singing her sonnets and all sorts of romantic shit]

[He refused to stay home, he wanted the chance to see her]

Hmmm, not much room to figure out a route for potential romance there :p

FAM

I THINK YOU HAVE A WHOLE ASS FIC RIGHT THERE

I would read it!!!

I mean, Jazz could acknowledge that this stranger is under a spell and doesn't really like, like her, so she's understanding and kind?

She still needs to deal with the ghost situation without Batman knowing what really is going on, so she has to outsmart the bats while she outruns this guy that's reciting very cute poetry oh my god he should write it down and publish it! and defeat Ember on her own.

She calls the big guns. She is strong, but she knows when she's overwhelmed.

Team Phantom deals with Ember as she deals with the bats. After all, she needs to make herself a distraction from the whole ghost-is-mind-controlling-people, and they are following her anyway, so she just-

she leaves fake clues?

It's actually really fun!!! She has taken a support role when helping her brother, and spreading her wings like this, running around the city at night and testing the limits of her liminal abilities, IS FUN.

And the guy, he said his name was Jay but she stopped him before he could say more, is actually very fun to talk to. When she is caught by him before the others and they get to interact, she sits down and studies him and what he uses to romance - it strikes her that he can quote plays and books at the drop of a hat (that is not the spell, this guy legit has memorized those) and that he is actually very polite?

Spell or no spell, it's been a while since she talked to someone like this. Nerding out.

But then Ember is defeated and the spell is broken and she is bummed that it's over but hey, it's been a fun experience!

And this dude remembers what happened too? He is very sorry and she assures him that it's totally fine and that he didn't say anything compromising about his identity.

And so they go back to their normal lives

except-

she misses him? It was fun and it was all a spell, but she misses him. It's silly, because there's no way a whole ass vigilante with probably a busy life is interested in silly romance?

And then this guy finds her one time as she was going home. He's just checking on her, really, because it must have been stressing dealing with all of that. He says he is sorry about being clingy and, well, she's been cool about it but wanted to make sure it was all fine.

He's being nice, she thinks.

He asks her if it could be cool to keep in touch. Because, uh, books? He wanted to know more about that theory she mentioned and maybe when they had a free schedule she wanted to grab a drink?

Yeah, sure. She gives him her number. How else would he contact her? By being a creep and stalk her to her house? No thank you.

And that's how Jazz ends up being courted by a Bat and doesn't realize what's going on.

Yes I hc her as aspec, what about it

-----

OOF

THIS GOT OUT OF MY HANDS!

If anyone wants to add, go ahead!

[jackiequick]

Operation Baby Rescue - Fast & Furious Fic 🏁 (Part 3)

If you haven’t read part 2 click here.

Pairing: Deckard Shaw x Val Toretto

—-

The first few days were a rather interesting story. After arriving at the safe house, the trio, plus Owen Shaw, got settled into a small plan. Lay low, take care of the baby and wait until the signal to come home. Simple as that.

Owen left to find a place to stay upstairs leaving the couple to their own devices downstairs. That same afternoon, Deckard didn’t hesitate to pick up Marcos Toretto and head over to give him a diaper change. Until he realized he never changed a bloody damn diaper in his life. He fed them, rocked them to sleep, played with them and even saved one! But never has he changed a diaper before.

“Uh love?” He yelled from the living room, holding down the squirmy baby, who became a bit fussy.

Val was in the kitchen looking for supplies to start cooking and yelled back, “Yeah? What happened?”

“Come here for a second.”

“Sure!”

She walked over laughing at the sight in front of her. Deckard Shaw, one of the worlds most best assists for combat and reliability, couldn’t change a freaking diaper. The man glared at her, not finding it hilarious on his part, sighing in defeat. He moved aside giving Val space as she took care of the situation.

Removing the diaper of the fussy baby, who just 8 minutes ago was blabbing nonsense, wasn’t easy. But she got it done, holding his tiny feet and closing the taps to the diaper showing Deckard how to do it as she went along. The man was a fast learner and understood the assignment for next time.

However he was impressed. This women was able to gently strap this little charmer down within 5 minutes flat. Deckard knew that she has a niece and nephew at home, due to them being Mia and Brian’s kids, but he never seen her in action before. As in take care of a child. He smiled brightly and chuckled.

“What?” She asked holding Marco in her lap now, smiling at him. Val knew he was thinking of something.

“Nothing.” He replied with a chuckle, taking a seat next to her.

“Deck.”

“You just amaze me. I’ve known you for a long time now, but this is new to me.”

“What is?”

“You as a aunt. Parental figure, i like it. A lot.”

“Aww..i like it too. I’m still surprised, Dom let us on this mission together.”

“You and me both, love. It’s alright, he trusts us with his kid.”

“So you two gonna kiss or what?” Said a voice standing in the doorway eating a banana. Owen had a cheeky smile on his face watching his brother and girlfriend on the couch with child in between them. It made him annoyed at the idea of his older brother in love but he liked it. It was good to see his brother as he deems as happy.

Deckard rolled his eyes and followed his younger brother into the kitchen, muttering how he might sent Owen to live somewhere else for the next few days instead. Val chuckled blowing raspberries onto Marcos’s chubby cheek, heading upstairs to put him down for a nap and later on a well needed nap.

——

The rest of the 24 hours have been alright. Yeah sure they had a fussy baby to deal with in the middle of the night and a schedule to try to keep up with. Other than that it was pretty okay. Owen moved onto stay in London for a couple of day leaving the couple along again to their own devices. It amazed each other how well of a caretaker role was brought to the table. With Val quick response to things like cries and Deckard’s problem solving skills to figure out what could done.

They had their bumps in the road like the other night where Marcos couldn’t get to sleep. They tried hushing his cries, he wasn’t hungry, and nor did he need his diaper changed. Hell, the pair even checked if there anything inside his crib that might make him feel uncomfortable. Checked for any weird smells in the room and etc. But nothing.

Val was hushing Marco who was in her arms, trying to start humming a lullaby. Deckard stood their for a moment until he removed his sweater leaving him a warm grey undershirt. He sat down on the rocking chair taking the baby from his girlfriend’s arm, having Marco curl up into the warmth of his body as he rubbed his back.

It took Valentina a moment for it to click in, but once it did, she was impressed. She heard stories of how he helped take care of his younger brother and babies on base, but never seen it in action. It made her heart flutter.

“Almost skin to skin contact?” Val whispered softly, as it came out more like a question.

Deck nodded whispering back, “He was probably cold or just need the warmth of a body, I’m guessing.”

“Nice thinking.”

“Eh, i try.”

The pair took turns that whole time, eventually bringing the event to a close putting the baby boy back in his crib. Thankfully he was asleep and didn’t even fussy the rest of the late night. They smiled, leading back to the bedroom satisfied as ever.

Two days later, Deckard woke up first, turning off the alarm clock and being greeted with the warm shine of the sunlight. Val was snuggled up close wearing his black shirt and a pair of brown shorts. He kissed her forehead as he always did, crawling out of bed to brush his teeth and get ready for the day.

Their resources were sorta limited to his usual rental stays but neither he did care or wish for anything else than. He had food, water, clothes, the basic essentials, WIFI, entertainment inside and outside the house, and of course his morning coffee. Deckard entered the shared bedroom again noticing that she was still asleep, he couldn’t blame her since she woke up more than once last night as well as the night before. He stepped into the well centered bedroom next to find the little man of the house half awake. You would think of all people in this house, he would be most tired.

Marcos was laying down on his back, playing with the moon and stars mobile making grabby hand at it. The little guys was wearing blue pjs and in his own little world, babbling softly about god knows what.

Deckard couldn’t help but smile as imagines of last night flew back in his eyes.

Remembering the sight of Val putting Marcos to bed at 7:30pm last night, humming a little song at the loopy baby who coo sleepily, resting his head on his auntie’s shoulder. The smile in her voice as she sang to the baby boy tend laying him down in the crib tucking him in, was simply lovely.

He snapped out of his thoughts at the squeals of the little charmer in front of him as he gently picked him up smiling.

“Hello governor, sleep well?” Ask Deck bouncing him gently in his arms with a soft smile as the baby babbled happily, “I bet you did.”

He stayed in that positions chatting with the baby boy rocking him back and forward, handing him his stuff animal that was sitting on the changing table. He just giggled and smiled softly at the man holding him with just pure joy.

“How about we play some music and have breakfast in a few minutes, hm?” He asked with a chuckle, “But first let’s wake up your auntie Val.”

Val was fast asleep, having turned the alarm off twice already. Just 5 minutes was all she needed. Her body was turned towards the window, not feeling the dent and shift in the bed as a small little cubby body crawled around eventually landed onto of her.

On top of her sat the 12 pound package she saved a while back, with his hand patting her chest and side gurgling and looking around, as his small hands grabbed the fabric of her shirt playing with it. Eventually after a few requests for a bit more of sleep, she peaked her eyes open to the cutest sight she ever seen.

Marcos was just chilling sat on top of his auntie with a care in the world, looking over at Deckard, who had a hand on the baby’s back for support, every once in a while. Pinch Valentina, she must be dreaming! She tickled lightly her nephew’s belly responding in some giggles in return from the baby.

“G’ morning..” She said softly, looking at her boys with a smile on her face. She couldn’t ask for more than to just frozen in this moment forever.

“Good morning.” He replies with a matching look on his face.

He leaned down, placing a darling kiss on her lips as she hooked her finger underneath his chin gently laying down two more kisses. It resulted in Deck to give her a few more. Val cooed at her nephew placing a kiss on his cheek as well. It was like at that moment Valentina Toretto knew one thing, she wants to spend a good life with Deckard Shaw doesn’t matter if they’re under the same roof or miles apart.

The three of them headed downstairs to the kitchen, making breakfast and staying in comfortable silence as they all ate. Eggs, toast, coffee and music playing in the background. The smell filled up the entire house. With the cooing and gurgling of Marcos making sure their was smiles the whole time.

Afterwards they stayed in the backyard, taking in the nice breeze and nice spring sun that came with such lovely warmth. Like a being snuggled up blanket freshly out of the dryer. Marco stayed on the grass playing with the toy cars that were brought, Val combed her slightly wet curls after washing it earlier and Deckard was checking emails while keeping on them.

Nothing could be more perfect, to say the least. It felt domestic. A nice break from the last few days.

Leaning against his chair, Deckard broke the comfortable silence and said, “What do you about us having one of our own?”

“Huh?” Asked Val with a smile taking it a moment for her to lock in what he said. She replied, “You want a kid?”

“Yeah, why not? It’s probably Baby Toretto charm and the safe house, but i can see us with one.”

“Just one? Why not two with a dog?”

He laughed putting his hands up in defense, “Dial it back there, love! I think one would be enough for us.”

“Alright, fair. Besides, I couldn’t a dog and two children to be honest.” She replied chuckling.

“So why did you suggest it?”

“I wanted to see your reaction, that’s why! In all seriousness, one day a child would be nice. I rather settle first, right?”

“Where you thinking? London? Brazil? Hawaii?”

“I don’t know yet. Just give it time, we’ll figure it out.”

Deckard grinned and leaned in into her face, “Good. Because that means I’ll have you all to myself until we please.”

“Yes sir.” Valentina remarked leaning in and chuckling.

They were soon stopped by Marcos crawling up to them with his hands in the air, wishing to be picked up from the grass with a pouty face and Val couldn’t say no. That was when Deckard got the text from Dom that it was safe to bring his kid home, he smiled hearing that.

—-

It took two days of packing, and a early morning just to get everything in the car. Deckard was carrying the last of stuff needed for the drive over to New York. They could’ve taken a plane but decided against it after the resist endeavor, a long drive felt rather safer.

Val was placing with Marco nearby the entrance of the safe house, waiting for her boyfriend to finish his duties. She would’ve help but she was do busy packing up lunch, pillows and water bottles. Finally she was given the green light to place Marcos in the car seat.

The baby was squirming around in his seat, babbling loudly and giggling about god knows what. As Val was trying to place his seat belt on, Marco threw his toy race car over his aunties head and out of the door.

Val walked over to pick it up jokingly saying, “Hey bubba, not all cars fly. But this one does, huh?”

She handed it back over to her nephew, who just playfully threw it out again with a grin and a giggle to match. It was a game to him. Definitely part of this family. Over a straight minute and a half of Marcos tossing the toy out of the car, Deckard walked over with a little solution to the problem. He handed the baby United Kingdom Flag Mini Boxing Gloves, in which the kid happily took with such glee.

She noticed what it was and playfully glare at her man, then said, “Dom is gonna kill you for that.”

“What he doesn’t know won’t kill him, love.” He replied breaking into a laugh and grinned, strapping the baby into the seat perfectly.

And off they went.

The drive wasn’t so bad. They all took time to eat, took breaks to stretch their legs, bathroom breaks and stopped at a motel for a while. Yeah sure everyone got tired and kinda fussy during the trip every once in a while. Especially with a baby on board, it can be tougher. It was a pretty long drive, but they were entertained as much as they could be.

———

It felt like forever, as they finally arrived to a hotel in New York City. The very next day, the trio packed up once again, only this time for the youngest Toretto, to be with his daddy and meet his stepmother, Letty.

The pair walked up the stairs slightly tired, opening the door to the rooftop. Deckard was carrying the baby carrier with the giggly little boy inside as Valentina carried the baby bag. Once they opened the front door to the rooftop, music played, bunches of teammates talking, barbecue smell hit their noses and a fresh bottles of beers being open.

Some stopped talking, looking at the door to see the pair with the baby walking over to Dom. Deckard and Dom talked quietly over the reason why for the mission. Val stood her with a smile, hearing them speak to one another.

“Can’t believe you went to see my mother.” Deckard said with a slight delay smile, once Dom grinned back.

She noticed it was her cue, walking over as Dom pulled his baby sister into a tight hug.

He smiled looking down at her and said, “Thank you.”

“I would’ve done either way.” She replied with a matching smile.

“Still, you took that risk.”

“How did you know I’ll be there at the right place and time?”

“Cause i know you. And i knew you would’ve guessed something was going on.”

“You got that right.”

“Was he a lot of trouble?”

“Nah he’s pretty alright.”

Dom smirked, “I was talking about him.” He added pointed over to Deckard for extra effect, “Was he trouble?”

“Oh my god-” She rolled her eyes laughing, resting her head on her big brothers chest, “He wasn’t any trouble. More of a surprise. Both boys were.”

As if on cue, Baby Toretto cooed brightly. Dom turned reaching down to pick up his son who smiled and giggled, his cubby cheeks lighting up his face at the sight of being hold by his daddy.

Val smiled.

She walked away giving the two a moment together at least, as she went to join Tej and Roman in a few laughs. They were trying to figure out Ramsey’s last name but she was the only one who knew it. Deckard went to speak with Mr. Nobody and Ramsey, sharing a drink. After a while, lunch was finally being served.

Everyone sat around the table, Val missed her boys so she sat beside Tej and Roman, sipping her second beer of the day, after she helped serve the BBQ to everyone’s plates of course. They were all chatting, waiting for Dom to take a seat, he was too busy admiring his beautiful baby boy with Letty who smiled at the cute pair.

Finally he walked over to the table holding the baby boy in his arms. Dom had a soft smile as he spoke, “You heard me say that you never turn your back on family, and i wanna thank you all for never turning your back on me.”

The crew looked around with returning soft smile, sending winks and nods to each other, before turning back to the man of the hour. Dom looked at his son saying, “You wanna meet them? All right.”

He looked back at the group this time and proudly said with a smile on his face, “Everyone, meet Brian.”

Everyone smiled, chuckling and clapping at the sweet introduction.

Some even had glimpses of tears in their eyes smiling brightly.

In return Baby Brian clapped his tiny hand, cooing with a gentle smile. Dom then sat down, with his son sitting on his lap, knowing his was turn to say grace. Everyone held hands with full on smiles hearing Dom’s words before digging into the food.

Thank you so much for reading this fic! What did you think? Did you like it? Let’s discuss.

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[mariacallous]

The winner of the 2024 US presidential election will confront complicated questions about whether the government is doing enough to protect the country from cyber threats. But one leading conservative group is sidestepping those questions and pushing to shrink the government’s main cyber agency, calling it a bastion of far-left tyranny.

Project 2025, a widely circulated playbook from the influential right-leaning Heritage Foundation, takes aim at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) on several fronts, especially its efforts to reduce dangerous online misinformation. If former president Donald Trump wins the election and appoints officials who follow the playbook’s recommendations for CISA, the five-year-old agency could face an unprecedented crisis.

Trump has disavowed Project 2025—a 900-page document full of controversial proposals—but its authors have close ties to his former administration and his campaign, and many of its recommendations align with Trump’s agenda. If he wins a second term, Trump is likely to embrace Project 2025’s combative approach to CISA, whose director he fired for debunking his lies about the 2020 election. That makes the 2024 election an existential moment for CISA.

“If every recommendation in this proposal were accepted, this would significantly weaken CISA as an agency,” says Steve Kelly, a former special assistant to the president and senior director for cybersecurity and emerging technology at the National Security Council.

“It would essentially see CISA cease functioning as a principal element of cybersecurity,” says John Costello, a former chief of staff to the national cyber director at the White House. “It really takes out many of its central functions.”

Missing the Mark on Misinformation

No aspect of CISA’s work has sparked as much GOP ire as its efforts to combat online falsehoods destabilizing American society, and Project 2025’s most substantial recommendation for CISA concerns this work.

“Of the utmost urgency,” the plan says, “is immediately ending CISA’s counter-mis/disinformation efforts.”

During the 2020 election, amid conspiracy theories and hoaxes about Covid-19 and the presidential election, CISA flagged state and local officials’ concerns about online falsehoods to social media companies. This practice, dubbed “switchboarding,” outraged conservatives, who accused CISA of suppressing their speech. House Republicans produced a report on what they called “the weaponization” of the agency, two GOP-led states sued the government (the US Supreme Court dismissed the case), and CISA and its federal partners all but froze their conversations with social media firms.

“CISA has devolved into an unconstitutional censoring and election engineering apparatus of the political Left,” Project 2025 declares. After dismissing Russian interference in the 2016 election as a “dirty trick” by Hillary Clinton’s campaign (despite it being extensively documented, including in a lengthy bipartisan Senate report), Heritage’s policy proposal recommends that the military and the intelligence community take over the responsibility of combating foreign propaganda.

CISA and its defenders maintain that the agency never pressured tech companies to delete posts, but regardless, the agency’s current counterpropaganda operation is a shell of its former self. Talks with tech firms have resumed, but in the election space, the agency is now relying solely on its “Rumor vs. Reality” fact-checking page.

Cybersecurity experts say the government needs to be debunking harmful lies, especially those spread by foreign adversaries.

“There's a role for CISA in mis- and disinformation, but they'd be wise to keep it cabined and narrow,” says Kelly, who is now the chief strategy officer at the nonprofit Institute for Security and Technology.

Costello calls Project 2025’s proposal “deeply problematic.”

The report fails to acknowledge the seriousness of adversaries’ efforts to sow chaos in the US, according to Mark Montgomery, senior director of the Center on Cyber and Technology Innovation at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a conservative-leaning think tank.

The document “appears blind to the fact that Russia, China, and Iran are weaponizing social media networks to create a false narrative that weakens US national security,” Montgomery says.

Project 2025’s leaders did not respond to inquiries for this story. Ken Cuccinelli, a top Department of Homeland Security official in the Trump administration and the author of the report’s DHS chapter, declined an interview request.

Vague and Contradictory

Most of Project 2025’s proposals for CISA are difficult to decipher and reflect what experts say is a misunderstanding of the agency’s activities.

The plan envisions CISA helping local election officials “assess whether they have good cyber hygiene,” but it warns that “CISA should not be significantly involved closer to an election” and should not engage in any “messaging” work.

“It's unclear to me what a statement like that would mean,” says Kiersten Todt, a former chief of staff to CISA’s director, “because as the elections approach, the need to ensure the safety and security of those elections is even more urgent.”

Indeed, Costello says, the run-up to Election Day is “when misinformation [and] disinformation upticks the highest” and when it’s most important to debunk lies about things like polling places and voting times. “That's when [we’re] most vulnerable. And we saw that in 2016.”

Muzzling CISA during this crucial period, Costello says, “runs the risk of creating a bubble where Russia or China or any other nation-state threat actor could have a safe space for a massive disinformation campaign.”

If Trump wins and adopts this approach, Todt worries that CISA’s locally deployed election security advisers will be pressured not to offer help in a campaign’s closing stage. CISA’s empowerment of its field force is “one of the great achievements and successes of the past few years,” she says.

Project 2025 also vaguely decries what it characterizes as CISA’s overlap with other agencies. The report says CISA “should refrain from duplicating cybersecurity functions done elsewhere at the Department of Defense, FBI, National Security Agency, and US Secret Service,” but no cyber experts consulted by WIRED could figure out what that means.

If the idea is that the military, not CISA, should be defending critical infrastructure operators from hackers, that’s “a fundamental misreading of US law … about who's allowed to do what,” Costello says. “CISA helps facilitate things domestically that DoD can't touch and NSA can't touch.” That includes direct monitoring of intrusion-detection sensors on critical infrastructure networks.

If anything, the military has impinged on CISA’s territory—not the other way around—out of exasperation with the civilian agency’s constrained resources, says Montgomery, a retired Navy rear admiral.

“The Department of Defense would say, ‘We're having to do things that we think CISA should be doing,’” Montgomery says, which has meant “slowly creeping outside the base fence to make sure that electrical power grids, water systems, [and] telecom systems [near bases] are properly protected in case of a crisis.”

Department of Dubious Moves

Of all the CISA proposals in Project 2025’s plan, the most ambitious one is highly unlikely to succeed: moving the agency into the Department of Transportation as part of a broader initiative to dismantle DHS.

The recommendation reflects conservatives’ desire to shrink the overall size of government, but it may also suggest a belief that moving CISA would curtail its scope and make it “a little more manageable,” says Brandon Pugh, director of the cybersecurity and emerging threats team at the center-right think tank R Street Institute. Pugh says some Republicans believe the agency “went beyond its original mandate and [has] become too bloated.”

But this idea is a virtual nonstarter because the congressional committees with oversight of CISA won’t give up their power in a rapidly growing domain. “There's no way that would ever work,” Costello says.

Apart from being infeasible, the proposal would undermine CISA’s effectiveness.

Cybersecurity fits squarely into DHS’s homeland-security portfolio, so moving CISA into a department with a different mission “doesn't make a lot of sense” and “would undermine some of the organizational logic,” Kelly says. “I don't actually understand the rationale of that.”

DHS is also better-suited to facilitate the kind of cross-government collaboration that CISA relies on for its twin missions of protecting federal computer systems and helping companies and local governments defend themselves.

“Giving CISA to Department of Transportation would reduce the cybersecurity of our national critical infrastructure for some period of time,” Montgomery says, adding that Transportation is “one of the last places” he’d put CISA and calling the proposal “nonsensical.”

Still, observers say it might be worth reviewing the structure of DHS, which has steadily accumulated functions since its post-9/11 creation and is now considered something of a Frankenstein department. But that review has to be “well thought out,” Todt says. “Reorganization of government should never be taken lightly.”

Squandering a Moment

Even as Project 2025 appears to misunderstand some aspects of CISA’s mission and focus disproportionately on others, the document also misses opportunities to recommend meaningful reforms.

Congress has spent years waiting for CISA to complete a “force structure assessment” that would better define its mission and the resources and organization needed to accomplish it. But even beyond CISA, there are serious concerns that the government as a whole isn’t coordinating well on cyber issues.

Pugh says it’s worth examining whether the system is working well. “Do we need to take a harder look at who's responsible for different leadership aspects of cyber?”

For now, though, experts agree that Project 2025 misses the mark. The document, Montgomery says, is “full of little tantrums” and “shows a lack of understanding of how federal government works.”

Costello says it’s “embarrassing” to see Project 2025 “call for essentially the hollowing out of CISA,” and he worries that its implementation could create a perilous feedback loop for the agency.

“If you were to reduce the mission scope and importance of CISA,” he says, “morale is going to drop, people are going to want to leave, and Congress is going to be less willing to fund [it].”

[heybiji]

hi!!! i just wanted to say i really love all of your MASKS stuff. i'm something of a newbie when it comes to the TTRPG community, but MASKS seems to be not very well-known and i think that's a real shame. i'm a huge fan of old-school superhero-adjacent stuff, especially the silver- and bronze-age ones!

by the way, i was wondering if you'd be willing to share some tips for a first-time GM? you don't have to if you'd rather not! i just figured i'd try asking since i was planning on GMing a MASKS campaign for some of my friends later, but despite my decade's worth of roleplaying experience i've never been in a TTRPG campaign nor a GM (or similar) role before

Thank you so much!! I was just lamenting about how I felt bad for the MASKS tag because it is now flooded with all my npc nonsense hahah so this is really nice to hear.

It's awesome you're planning on running a MASKS game for your friends!! There is an indispensable post on twitter I saw that has a LOT of great tips for running MASKS that I recommend checking out. But for my own personal tips that are just me things, here's what I got. Sorry it's gonna be extremely long-winded, it may take a few months to read through it.

(Note: I am also hugely into RP and probably put more into it than what is necessary, especially with MASKS which is meant to be able to be played out of the box. It was definitely not played out of the box in our case because I require a lot out of myself and everyone else to feel good about running something. if anyone else wants to continue seeing me as a normal human being please don't click the Keep Reading)

Since you're running it, make the world interesting to you. If the world runs around themes you're personally interested in then you'll have a much easier time coming up with answers on the fly. For me, themes I'm interested in that lend themselves well to a superhero world: money, power, family, celebrity, media, the 24 hour news cycle and the desensitization of violence. Because I'm interested in this stuff anyway, wrapping a world around them makes it much simpler for me to figure out how the world ticks and thus how the characters fit into it and how the world reacts to them, and I am DESPERATE to find out how the characters react to all the questions and expectations the world is imposing upon them.

Make sure your players have a good grasp of the tone of story so they can make characters that gel well within it. For me the tone is a lil more adult because I'm not personally into younger morality tale stories in tone, it's pretty grounded, and I think comedy and tragedy work hand in hand so I lean into them.

Talk. A lot. Talk about the characters, talk about the world. MASKS is fun because it's a LOT of talking and figuring out the narrative together. It's not a lot of crunchy mechanics, it's all around seeing how the characters react to the world narratively, all hurt and comfort and emotions which (for me) requires people to have a good grasp on their characters and the world. I like to give my players "homework" where I ask them a question involving their characters in some way like "what hero did your character look up to as a child?" so they get to come up with past heroes, or "How does your character feel about _____?" etc etc. The only fans are gonna be your table and fans love to talk so be the biggest fans of the PCs!!

Figure out your framing. I know in MASKS they suggest framing it like a comic book, and basically talking about the frames on screen. For me, because I'm more into movies and tv than comics, I frame it like that. So I have an active "camera" in play during sessions and will ask things like "would anyone like to grab the camera?" to encourage the players to put the character into a scene or "what does the audience see as the camera focuses in on your character in this emotional moment?" There is a LOT of playing up to the camera and framing the sessions as episodes of a show, so it's like, okay, you have several options but what is going to be interesting for the audience to see? I find this encourages the players to have their characters take bigger swings and feel comfortable letting us into how their character is feeling because it all looks GREAT on camera. The camera loves it. The PCs are the story after all.

Because I frame it a show, I also like to play individual ending songs over the "credits" at the end of each episode. So I asked my players to make playlists for their characters so if I feel an episode had a lot of emotional focus on one character in particular, I can play one of their songs at the end of the episode! I also made a general MASKS playlist with a bunch of songs from the era we set it in (2004) to pull from. It's a fun little addition that I really enjoy and that I hope makes it all feel more special.

The Dino Donut Effect: create landmarks in your world. (OK THIS IS GONNA BE LONG BUT WORK WITH ME HERE) They don't have to be locations, more solid landmarks of the story that the characters can refer back to and lean on to make the world feel more "real." I call it the Dino Donut Effect because in our world the thing that made everything click into place was talking out the backstory of one of the PC's figuring out they had the power negation ability. We were talking one night trying to figure it out; we wanted the character to fall out of a building and be caught by a flying superhero and accidentally turn off their powers, so they toss the kid to another flying supe whose powers also get turned off. But we were like... holy shit what is the height of a building needed that can handle this much action in the air without them hitting the ground in 3 seconds. So after a long night of talking about terminal velocity and looking at Splat Calculators we figured out the height of the building, and we needed them to crash into something that wouldn't fuckin kill them. The first suggestion was a truck full of bananas. Nah. We landed on a giant balloon that could take the impact. And the balloon became a giant T-Rex holding a donut that was the mascot of the city's beloved decades old donut shop Dino Donut. And so we decided that one of the two flying supes grabbed onto the kid and the other and flew into the giant balloon to try and keep them all alive, which destroyed the balloon, which was a city institution, and there was a crowd of children there that day that saw their friend Dino Donut die. Killed by a superhero. The balloon deflated loudly so it sounded like Dino Donut was screaming in agony. All the kids were traumatized (screaming crying throwing up), the city was furious because everyone loved Dino Donut, it was constantly in the news cycle, and it ruined the career of the supe that "killed Dino Donut." AND THEN THEY REPLACED THE DINO DONUT BALLOON WITH A LAME "UPDATED DESIGN" DINO DONUT STATUE which everyone hates and people consider to be a memorial to the old Dino Donut. ANYWAY, the Dino Donut effect is that now all the PCs have one single incident to refer back to that they all have feelings about. A couple of them were there that day and heard Dino Donut scream, one is now the protege of the disgraced superhero that killed Dino Donut so she feels uncomfortable talking about it, there's the kid that was saved that day but was sworn to secrecy by the supe so no one would find out about his power negation ability, and then there's the kid that wasn't there because she's an alien that just arrived to earth and now the kids have to explain the incident to her with all their varying opinions. Now the PCs' meeting spot is at a Dino Donut. Having this one solid incident that is both funny and kind of goes into the themes of the world has been an absolute treat. Creating "landmarks" like that in the world has done so much and now I'm like okay I'm gonna try to do this moving forward with any other thing I run.

anyway these are my extremely specific to me tips. my RP standards are kind of high which makes me a bit of a terror but also when the flowers bloom from it it feels GREAT. i'm not sure if this will help but hopefully there is something there that can be useful!

MASKS is fun and simple once you get the hang of it, though, so I'm sure whatever you do you and your players will have a lot of fun! especially if you're someone who is into RP which is the background I'm coming from too; MASKS is extremely narrative! i'll be looking in the tag for your game hehe

(The Day Dino Donut Died art by JD)

[bird-inacage]

Only Friends: Episode 8 Preview (Ray & Mew's Villain Uprising?)

So I think we can all safely say that last week was Mew's villain origin story and he makes it pretty crystal clear this episode that he intends to embrace this new era.

Now I've also heard (as may some of you) in interviews with the cast that Ray is supposedly the worst. That's quite the claim based on what has happened thus far. But I did get a sense of foreboding at the end of this episode, along with next week's preview that this may be where Ray's character begins to cause some fallout.

I guess Boston and Top have 'had their turn' being the leading villains, and now it's time for those roles to shift.

Ray's 'Bad Influence' & Mew's Enabling

Top comments on the fact that Mew is allowing Ray's bad habits to lead him astray. This isn't really surprising as Mew is hell bent on a self-destructive rebrand at the moment. Due to the betrayal of both his friend and boyfriend, he's sick of being the innocent, pure, and sensible one. It's his 'virginity' that he believes made him the target of this sick joke. So now he's taking a page from Ray's book and embracing his wild child.

The problem is Mew used to be the defacto caretaker for Ray in their group, (and was doing a half-committal job but at least someone was). Now that we have Mew going off the rails too, Ray is far from the right person to keep Mew in check (as well as himself). One, because he's worse at controlling himself, and second, he's willing to do anything that he thinks will make Mew happy. Ray just doesn't have it in him to do what's right or best for Mew if that requires being a voice of tough love.

So now these two are seemingly dating, they're going to exacerbate each other's worst qualities. This is why some couplings just don't work. Friendship fine, but romantically this sounds like a mess.

Ray's Desire for Ownership

Ray finally has what he wants - something he's wanted for so long, and it seems to have all gone to his head. The thrill of it.

After witnessing Ray and Mew getting very close and personal at the end of Episode 7, Sand is understandably tired of being 'used'. He made it very clear previously that he wants Ray to consider his feelings by not treating him as expendable and throwing him aside whenever a shinier toy takes his fancy.

So at the beginning of the preview, Sand behaves coldly towards Ray, perhaps in an attempt to start establishing distance. 'This is the end of whatever 'will-we-won't-we' nonsense we were skirting around with. You're now taken. There's no need for us to continue as we were'.

But lo and behold, when Sand tries to hook up with someone else, Ray's not having it. This is just a tame version of Ray's jealousy response. Even though Ray doesn't want Sand right now, he doesn't want anyone else to have him either. Which is ridiculously selfish and unreasonable.

This is why I'm even more keen on the idea of Sand's ex returning now. Ray needs a very healthy dose of reality when it comes to taking Sand for granted. He's not going to realise that until it comes into serious threat. The following line from this episode alluded that for me. Ray's going to regret this later on.