#she couldn't breathe without extreme pain for a long time and they had to remove the tumor which had already taken her vocal cords

[fourwingedwriter]

Magical Signs - Part VIII (8)

AN: We're back to the point where I remember the average person doesn't know roman numerals to the extent I do. Anyways life update: I have rabbits and one of them is not doing so great, so if I end up not writing, it will likely be because she's died or gotten even worse.

First Part - Previous - Next - Master Post

----

Helion sat at the kitchen table with his mug of coffee, leaning back and staring at the ceiling. He took a deep breath, digging a hand through his hair.

They'd been through so much together, and things had been fine for a while. He loved Luna, but she could never seem to catch a stroke of good luck.

From the weeks she was in a coma on a ventilator to the months spent learning sign language to the years of processing trauma. She had finally caught a break and was back to what she loved the most. Helion couldn't help but resent this boy for ruining this for her.

Luna would never abandon anybody in need, which was a quality he always admired in her. But to see her breaking down over it? That hurt. He couldn't just sit idly by while she suffered, so, Helion started planning.

He figured he would ask Luna her opinion on letting this boy stay in their spare bedroom for a short while. Helion stood, taking his drink with him and taking a long sip of the dark liquid, it was about to be a long week.

-

Millo woke up a mess, still in the previous day's clothes and hair tangled to all hell. He started with the hair, furiously brushing it out for a few minutes before settling down.

He was shaky getting out of bed, simply sliding off the side and onto the makeshift stool he used. Millo rummaged under his bed for a moment before pulling out a box of easy food he kept stored.

Inside was a few packages of cheap noodles, granola bars, a small container of candy he needed to throw away, some canned soups, and a bag of small cubes which made a broth he didn't mind too much. Breakfast foods be damned, he got some of the noodles and one of the small cubes.

In a different box, he pulled out a small, surprisingly good pot he found at a thrift store. It was one of his favorite tools because it consistently worked well. Millo cast a heating spell, not even realizing he had done it in sign until he was halfway through.

Summoning water was easy enough, but all it did was remind him of Luna. The way that girl smiled was quite possibly one of his favorite things in his current life. She was everything he could ever dream of and more.

Millo quietly waited for his water to boil, thinking about the last two days. They started off like he had been in paradise, but the previous day would likely haunt him for years to come. He didn't want to reveal how bad his living conditions were.

Luna probably wouldn't want to see him, so he just stayed home. The van couldn't leave him at least. Maybe he should go to the next town, check if they have a food pantry and take some from there.

Millo dropped in the noodles and small broth cube, appreciating the smell of the broth. It was both comforting and depressing. This meal was simple, reminding him he could make something edible without going broke. But even then, this being one of his best meals was concerning at best and depressing at worst.

He grabbed one of his pillows, placing it in his lap and hugging it. He burried his face into it, nearly falling asleep before he heard a knock on the door.

----

Taglist: @tildeathiwillwrite @mellowwhumps @mellowwhumps @aloafofbreadwithanxiety @whumperofworlds

[firespirited]

So I have a bunch of 'war stories' about my long long time with violent gallbladder attacks trying to magically lose weight

(I'd already cut out all fat down to the gram) to get to an arbitrary surgery number except dun dun: hunger triggers bile.

The diy nonsense and prep you get up to when the pain is that intense, the moment when my body reacted post op with the biggest attack yet, crazy chaotic stupid stuff like at the hospital, i got unplugged from my IV and spurted blood everywhere...

All tiny compared to what was to come. During the post op attack, they gave me a painkiller that lasted 5 hours and locked me in my body unable to move or speak. It was relief and was nice and fine until

1/ I discovered my mother had terrible sleep apnea where she'd stop breathing for what felt like forever

2/ a power cut reset my heart monitor machine to a solid beep for 30 seconds and mum thought I had coded.

In those 5 hours and singular moments, 18 months of random blinding pain that makes you moan, rock uncontrollably and sweat enough to fill towels, elaborate precision scalding under the ribs with burns you treat later, the anti nausea/vagal nerve/fainting remedies, the post op pain: It was all trivial.

She went home next day because she was wiped. But they hadn't kept up my meds and I went into combo ssri and benzo withdrawal. I had a psychotic episode, made a very angry phone call to a very confused and distressed mum, called a taxi and had the guy sneak me out of hospital convinced my loved ones had abandoned me and wouldn't allow me home. So that there was my third withdrawal psychotic break and let's just say there's a very clear pattern, it's not entirely irrational and there's nothing I fear except THAT when it kicks in. Not too painful a memory as I've apologised profusely and know it was fake and know my deep faultline. Just a cherry on top of the mess sundae. Funny isn't it?

Mum's on a CPAP now and it's wonderful. I couldn't do a thing while that machine beeped and that moment was more potently awful than all of it.

—-------–-----

When I was 16 a doctor did botched local anesthesia surgery on my toe to remove my toenail and scrape the bone, the anaesthetic syringe didn't work. I was alone and the doctor thought I was just afraid of pain and hysterical (ask me about the surgeries and disinfections i'd done on myself someday lmao) I passed out multiple times. The syringe needle shifted right into a nerve and i spasmed and begged out. But the whole afternoon was fuzzy, I had dissociated on my way home from school after a rape threat and attempting groping by the local drunkard about an hour before my appointment so the whole very bloody gory and extremely painful moments are fractured like a broken mirror or a badly downloaded movie. It took me about a week to properly piece together the sequence of events and explain why I'd left the doctors and walked home with a shoe full of blood. I don't know if it would have been worse to be fully present.

—————

I had a series of daily treatments with the generic version of an intravenous antibiotic with a crap formula that crystalizes and burns. The brand name was too expensive for me to switch. It was very high pain both in the moment and the next hour. I have lumps of scar tissue that get in the way of my daily injections, large lumps of chemically burned lower hip/upper glute muscle. Those injections gave me back the ability to walk more than 10 yards, more spoons, less exhaustion agony so I kept submitting to it for as long as treatment was available. I resent that big pharma doesn't care if the generic has bad side effects. I only curse the scars when the needle jams and it hurts. I'd do it again.

–––––––

Pain is a constant but it's so varied. Bowel spasms, migraines, shooting pains, dull aches, burning sensations, muscle cramps, pain that itches your teeth, skin like a sausage ready to pop, the fibro zappy zaps. How do you choose a worst one without taking other things into account? Which part of the orchestra is giving you a headache?

=======

I have some really funny gory stories about the ingrowing toenails though. Oh and sis removed a large sebaceous cyst from my back with a disinfected exacto knife - we were sober but high on sleep deprivation.

I got pink eye last week and thought I'd put alcohol into some sterile water, i'd just got drips down the side and got 70% rubbing alcohol in my eye, sis nearly cried laughing when I said I'm fine with a high pitched wobble. It worked though.

I cracked my shoulder bone when I stood up to a bully age 10 and he pushed me so hard I hit the ground with no way to brace. Had to wear an elastic potato sack for 3 months and learn to write with my left hand. But I'm very proud of that one.

Others I'm too sore to talk about at least tonight. Toxic friendships, institutional neglect. Stuff I tried to ignore or didn't care to care for myself.

Eh. What matters is now and now I'm doing slow rehab and off to get some sleep.

[crystals-and-cosmos]

{ficlet} Somewhere I belong

Twin ficlet paired with I'm Here.

Characters: Yuna D. Kaito, Akiho Shinomoto Rating: T Tags: hurt/comfort with glimps of happiness, lots of introspection, painful memories and firm resolutions Warnings: mention of seizures Summary: A moment of Akiho and Kaito's life. Based on canon (set 3 weeks after chapter 80), and on the assumption that, differently from what the ENG translation said in ch. 80, in the JP Sakura affirmed that thanks to his stopped time, Kaito wouldn't be hurting more than that...this means that his seizures would continue, just they wouldn't get worse than what we've seen till now. A brief journey inside Kaito's head and his complex feelings. Word count: 1099 A/N at the end of the ficlet. English is not my first language; keep that into consideration.

Excerpt:

“I’m sorry...”, I blurted out, in a whisper. Every time we ended up in this situation, I would apologize. And she would never reply to it.   Maybe an apology wasn’t what she wanted to hear, but I had yet to find out what were the right words to say.

Kaito's POV

I don't think I'll ever be able to forget it. 

The way she looked at me when they told her everything, that night.  The way she had slowly turned her head and kept her gaze fixed on me, while the British magician rattled off all that my plan had entailed, down to the way it had affected my body. He had recovered all the previous memories, and he knew Akiho-san needed an explanation more than anyone else, but he also knew I was in no condition (neither mental, nor physical) to give it to her. I could feel her gaze piercing through me, while someone was helping me sitting down, as I couldn't even stand up. 

Her hands gripped the tablet tightly, shaking. Her blue eyes, usually crystalline and bright like the Caribbean Sea, darkened several shades and turned into a raging storm. They once again glazed over with emerging tears, but she probably held them back, because not a single one trickled down her cheeks. 

And I felt so weak. My guilt, growing again each passing second.   I would've given anything to remove that hardened gaze from her and bring back the soft features I've always known. But you see, that was my problem.   Giving everything the way I did before wasn’t the correct answer. And I had finally bowed my head in front of the truth, that night.  But I didn't know any other way. If there was something I understood over these last three weeks of rest and slow recovery, it’s that I simply didn't know how to express how important she was to me without pushing it to an extreme, and that was exactly how we had gotten to that point.  

I don’t know when exactly I started to hear that voice inside of me, telling me that I wanted to connect with her. 

I could hear it every day, before I carried out my plan. Louder and louder and louder. Kicking and screaming inside of me. I tried to fight it for so long, forcing myself not to hear it. But when she asked Sakura-san to bring me back, and she stated that she refused to keep living a fabricated life, wanting to go back to what she had before with me, I suddenly grew so tired. So, so tired. I was exhausted. I didn't want to fight that voice anymore. 

I've fought countless magicians ever since I was a little boy and defeated every single one of them. People kept me at a distance because of that. And yet, completely oblivious to all of that, she was the one who defeated me every single time.   Even this time around, she won. She won over that brutal, devastating desire to disappear forever that had consumed my life to that point. She won over my guilt and self-loathing that I, quite frankly, haven’t got rid of yet. 

So here I was, now, clinging to her like a lifeline in the kitchen, while I waited to regain control of my breathing. I had tried to hide it from her, the first couple of times after I got back on my feet, following that fateful night. But she found out every single time and made it very clear that if we wanted to live together from now on, this kind of behavior had to stop. I didn't know what to do with myself anymore. Why was I fighting it again?  So I did as she requested and, by now, this was already the third episode of seizure she had witnessed.

I didn't know...how any of this worked. But I wanted to learn. I wanted to try. 

I was slowly starting to get it. Why I caved in and agreed to go back to her, that night, despite how confused I was and how much I still despised myself for making her cry like that.   She made me feel wanted.  Made me feel accepted. Made me feel like I finally belonged somewhere. I hadn’t realized how much I actually had yearned for that, all this time. 

I thought I was nothing to her. I thought that she could've lived perfectly fine without me, without remembering anything of what we experienced together. Because, in the end, who the hell was I? Just her butler. I embarked on that mission with the full understanding that I would've always been just her butler, and I played that part till the end at the best of my ability. An expendable tool to let her achieve the happiness she deserved.  

But I wasn't just her butler. I wasn't, and I couldn't see that. I could only finally realize it that night in the most harrowing way possible, causing that face I wished to see eternally smile to be tainted with burning tears, as she poured out all her pain. Pain that I had caused. This wasn't the kind of support she wanted from me, and I had failed her terribly. 

I was willing to do anything to make things right. So when she asked me, no, rather demanded not to be kept in the dark whenever I had one of my seizures, I had no choice but to comply. That was what she wanted, and there was no way I could refuse her. 

But now that the medicine was finally starting to kick in, and my breathing stabilized to a more normal rate, I raised my head to look at her worried face and I couldn’t help but think how unfair all of this was to her. She was so young, and she didn’t deserve to endure all of this because of my choices.

“I’m sorry...”, I blurted out, in a whisper. Every time we ended up in this situation, I would apologize. And she would never reply to it.   Maybe an apology wasn’t what she wanted to hear, but I had yet to find out what were the right words to say. 

She helped me stand up and supported me all the way to the couch, where I finally laid down and released the tension from my stiffened muscles. Seizures usually left me completely exhausted and sore.  

She sat down on the floor next to the couch, and we exchanged a long, wordless stare. Her eyes were clear and bright again. Before I drifted in a dreamless heavy sleep, I remember I felt so grateful to have her by my side.   I didn’t deserve it.   But the warmth I felt in my chest, contrary to before, felt so nice.  

And I was pretty sure she was the cause of it.

Author's Note:

This is the second Kaito x Akiho / YunaAki ficlet that is paired with I'm Here, the first one I wrote from Akiho's POV. Please read that one first so you can have a better understanding of the situation!

The setting here is the same as the first ficlet, but Kaito's thoughts drift all over the place because....well, he's Kaito. He's been officially named as the "overthinker" by CLAMP, so I tried to reflect that in my writing. The sentences are shorter compared to Akiho's POV, they're more concise, but they're like a raging storm. Let's remember he's an introvert, after all, and a lot of what's going on inside his head doesn't find a way out on his lips.

As you probably noticed, while Akiho thought to herself without problems that she loved him, you didn't see Kaito thinking that, here. This is a very early stage of their new life together and he's still far from acknowledging any of that, but he's starting to come to terms with things, at least. He knows he's messed up big time, the guilt is still eating him alive, but at least there's a fire inside him fueling his will to take the second chance he's been given and make Akiho happy in the way she asks him to. This will be relevant in my future fics as well.

Writing for Kaito proved to be very difficult for me. First of all, because he's a male character and I struggled to put myself in his shoes, since I had decided to write these two ficlets in first person.

But also because once you get the hang of it, it tends to become an angst-fest, and you have to be constantly aware of how his mind works... I caught myself writing contradicting things at least twice, and while one might think it's typical of Kaito since contradiction is his thing (he kept his distance from Akiho but at the same time he was giving his life for her), I didn't want to play that game here because I hope that after that night he got at least SOME of his shit together. 😅 As a result, this one might be a bit more angstier than the other POV, again because this is Kaito we're talking about. His self-loathing won't disappear overnight. But I hope that the finale comforted you, at least. ❤️

[kervinredfire]

Loonatics KR Update: New Member, Character, Plus Sneak Peek Chapter!

Hello everyone. Still part of the Loonatics? Today I got new updates working on in Loonatics KR.

New Member: Today we got a new member for our project Loonatics KR. Thanks to @mysticinternetdinosaur we have just added @segamarkiii as the new member for Loonatics KR She is a Loonatics Unleashed artist who draws the art of Rip X Kit including her OC Tess to check it out in her account. Again thank you for being part of us!

2. New Character Koale: We have also added a new character in the for the KR cut named Koale written created by @mysticinternetdinosaur and drawn by @segamarkiii . In short this character will appear as a busker when meeting Ace and he will talk about joining in a contest to get the prize money. There is not much about him to avoid spoilers for the KR cut so you can check his OC here.

NOTE: You have no right to use this image or use this character without permission from the owner and you have no right to use for nfts

3. Sneak Peek: I felt bad for not posting the KR cut but we don't rush the stories. As of now here is a sneak peek for the special KR cut from Episode 1 Chapter 1 featuring the first KR cut character Koale.

NOTE: Please do not use the fic without permission

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Originally written by @purpleluckystar

KR-fied re-written by @mysticinternetdinosaur and @kervinredfire

"Stupid Dad and his stupid dojo..." Ace mumbled under his breath, looking at his feet as he walked who knew where.

He'd been walking for a good while already but didn't know how long exactly. He just kept going until the hills, where his house was located, were lost behind the city's skyscrapers. The noises of flying cars and busy streets soon took over and he found himself not far from Acme University, where he had been studying for the past three years to obtain a Martial Arts coaching degree – which, of course, had been forced onto him by his paternal.

His mind was still wrapped around his argument with his father. Why couldn't he understand that military life was his calling? Not like he hated martial arts, he found it to be of good use if somebody tried to mess with him. But being forced into it just for the sake of "legacy" was extremely annoying – if not oppressive. No matter what he said, Nao would never allow him to decide for himself. What kind of parent does that? And he was twenty-one, for goodness' sake! He shouldn't even have to obey his father's wishes!

Still lost in his thoughts, he didn't even see the tall, black limousine parking beside the sidewalk and the young lady getting out of it. Before he could even register her presence, they both bumped into each other. Ace felt the pain in his jaw and cursed between his teeth, putting his hand on his furry white cheek. He lifted his eyes toward the other person – a rabbit, just like him, with cream-colored fur and green eyes, wearing what he guessed was a cheerleading uniform. She was holding her head with a hand, most certainly where he accidentally hit her.

They both looked at the others, and right at the same time, they sputtered:

"I'm sorry!"

"No wait, I'm sorry," Ace objected, "I wasn't watching where I was going! Are you hurt?"

"I-I'm fine," the girl replied, still holding her head. "Just a bit stunned, that's all. What about you? I'm sorry, I didn't see you there!"

"Oh, nothing bad, don't worry!" he reassured her with a friendly smile, suddenly forgetting his anger from only a few seconds before. "I guess we both need to be more careful with our surroundings, right?"

The other rabbit nodded with an amused smile and, oh, welp, she was cute, Ace thought. She was around his age and could be attending Acme University too. But he never saw her before, so maybe she was on another course. There were more of them there than fingers on both hands after all.

Suddenly, the girl seemed to remember something as her expression changed for a concerned look.

"Oops, sorry, I have to go!" she excused herself, taking off toward a building a few feet from them. "And sorry again!"

She disappeared behind the doors of a multi-sports facility, leaving Ace alone where he stood while the limousine next to him finally left. Apparently, she was also rich.

He sighed; he was a bit disappointed he didn't get the chance to talk a bit more with her. At least that would have helped him ease his mind. Well, maybe he'd run into her again in the future, who knew?

Deciding he needed something to keep himself busy, preferring not going home yet, at least not until lunch, he thought about his options. Many of his classmates had already gone home to other states to see their families, leaving him on his own. He remembered there was a science forum at Acme University, but science wasn't his thing and it was mostly for future students who chose scientific courses. With a sigh, Ace finally opted to go to the beach. He didn't attend to swim – he had no swimsuit with him anyway – but rather found a quiet place to think.

The rabbit then walked until he saw a subway entrance and took off toward the west of Acmetropolis. Thankfully, he had his credit card on him to pay for a ticket. But while he was waiting, he could hear a familiar song play across the subway. It was an old song that he used to listen to a long time ago. The artist who performed that song had mysteriously disappeared during a series of events. He continued to go inside the train.

•••

The beach wasn't entirely quiet – it was right next to some restaurants and much smaller buildings than the skyscrapers in the middle of Acmetropolis. But for now, the place was mostly calm, with only the sound of the waves to break the silence. Ace didn't take his shoes off and simply walked on the almost white sand. He stopped only a few meters from where the waves gently crashed on the beach and lifted his brown gaze toward the horizon. He took a deep breath, feeling a small breeze caress his fur.

So, what now? He couldn't convince his father to let him live his dreams. Serving his country really mattered for him, but as long as he lived with his father, Nao would always come in the way.

Maybe... maybe he needed to move out. Find another place to live, far from his paternal so he would finally be left alone. He would have to find a job in another city to rent a small flat for himself, and once he saved enough money, he would be able to register in the army. That sounded like a good plan. Now he just needed to break the news to his father. Another day, of course; he had his fair share of arguments today.

As he was walking down the sand, he heard someone singing faintly in the air. He soon comes across an armadillo lizard playing on an electric guitar. The music is good to say the least. His voice was a bit scratchy, but the lyrics matched perfectly with the tempo. The busker finishes the song they were playing. He looks around, seeing that there is no one listening. Ace decides to tip him a few dollars. The busker takes notice of Ace's donation. "Thanks man!" He says in satisfaction.

"Sure, anytime." He says showing some slight stress. The lizard also takes notice of this. "Hey, why the blues?"

"Oh, uh. It's nothing really." Ace answers to him. "Just having a bad day, that's all."

"Really?" He says while tuning his guitar. "Well if it could cheer you up, got a song request?"

He was a bit surprised to hear this. "Are you sure?"

"Yeah, I am!" He answers, cheerfully. "Besides, I can play any song of any genre. Name it, and I'll play it. Your call."

He thinks of a song they can play. Then, a song comes up in his mind. "Can you play 'Faded Paradise' by Discorded?"

When the busker heard this, he was taken aback. "Uh..." He starts to look around in random places. "Are you sure you can't choose something else?"

Ace was confused by this statement. "But didn't you just say that you can play any song?"

"Sorry, any song BUT electronic." He says. "If you want, I can play anything else. I can play pop, folk, country, blues, R&B, jazz, rock, classical, classic rock..." He started to see Ace's disapproval of this. "You really want me to play this, don't you?"

"Just this one time?" He asked politely.

The busker sighs loudly. "Fine. But just this one time." He then started to play the song Ace requested. The performance of the song was beyond words. It was calm and peaceful, and it was as if his worries had faded away. He could only listen in awe at the way he was playing. The busker finally finishes the song. "So, how was it?"

"That was awesome!" Ace excitingly says. "You were able to sound like Discorded himself! It was perfect! Almost too perfect..." The song he played sounded familiar to the one he heard on the subway. He then started to put the two and two together. "Wait a minute..."

"Oh no." The busker says worryingly.

"You're Discorded!" He shouted. A few people started to stare at the two.

"Shhh! Not too loud!" Discorded whispered at him. The people ignored them and walked away.

"Fine, you caught me." He said, defeated. "I am Discorded. I mean, I was Discorded. But please just call me Koale."

"So this is where you've been for the past few years!" Ace says with excitement. "What happened to you?"

"Hum... Well... Uhhh... " Koala started to fiddle with his guitar pick. "Alright, I'll tell you. Just sit down with me for a bit, okay?"

Ace decides to sit next to him as Koale tells his story.

"I started to play music when I was around 14 years old." He said as he fiddled with his guitar pick. "For some reason though, no matter what I create, it becomes a total hit. Soon, some music producers found out about my talent and asked me for a partnership. I got a bit too cocky and said yes."

"What happened then?" Ace asked him.

"Let's just say I fell down hard. Very hard," He continued. "It turned out that I wasn't really making as much money as I thought. And I was a fool back then. I started to spend my money on almost everything. Clothes, shoes, and music gear; I wasn't keeping track of my savings. Eventually, they decided to cut my partnership with them and do it with some other dude."

Koale took a moment to inhale his vape pen, then blew out a big puff of vapor. "After that, everything went downhill for me. I lost my career, my so-called friends left me, and I basically shamed myself. I just couldn't handle the pressure I was under. So I left my hometown and drove to anywhere I could go. During my travels, however, I heard that Acmetropolis was going to be holding a music competition with a big prize at the end. So yeah, that's why I'm here."

He then looks up at the clear blue sky. "But I'm super nervous right now. What if I fail again just like I did last time? I don't want to go through that again."

"I think I can feel the same way." Ace finally talks to him. Koale looks at him with curiosity. "Oh?"

Ace continues with his problems. "I've been getting into fights with my dad recently. For some reason, he doesn't approve of the ideas I have. I want to go into the military and help others, but he wants me to inherit our family legacy when he becomes old. But I'm twenty-one for crying out loud! I already have dreams of my own! I don't want to be trapped inside the dojo for the rest of my life!"

"So, a 'dream being held down' type of problem?" Koale replies.

"I guess you can say that." He answers.

Koale takes another puff from his pen. "I don't think he's wrong. Being in the military is a hard thing to do. He probably just wants to keep you safe."

"C'mon, my father raised me in martial arts." Ace interrupts Koale. "I think I'll be fine."

"Fine, show me some of your moves."

Ace starts to show him some of the moves he was taught over the years. There were a few punches here and there, but one of the moves that really got his attention was when he jumped and did a roundhouse kick. After that, Koale was left speechless.

"Whoa..." He said in awe. "Okay. I think you'll be fine."

Ace wipes some of the sweat on his fur. "I'm glad I got some of that out of my system, but I need to go now. Thanks for helping me talk about my issues."

"No problem," Koale says. "But I think you should patch things up with your father. Try to see if things can work out. Take it easy."

Ace waves at him. "Later." He continues to walk on the sand.

[stellartales]

zhongli ▪︎ glazed moon

pairing: zhongli x traveler!reader

genre(s): comfort + mild angst + fluff

summary: liyue harbor is once again preparing for another festival — the mid-autumn festival. but somehow she simply couldn't bring herself to join the others in the celebration. definitely not when her heart is aching in melancholy for her missing twin. — | m.list

background: this scenario takes place during the mid-autumn festival - as quoted from wikipedia - it is the second-most important holiday after Chinese New Year with a history dating back 3,000 years, when China's emperors worshipped the moon for bountiful harvests.[2] The celebration is called Chuseok (autumn eve) in Korea, Tsukimi (moon-viewing) in Japan and Tết Trung Thu (Mid-Autumn Festival) in Vietnam

this event celebrated by the chinese is usually spent eating mooncakes and drinking teas. lanterns are also an important aspect of this festival. unlike the yuanxiao fesitval or mingxiao festival (which is the fictional festival featuring best boy Xiao in GI) where lanterns are released into the sky, lanterns are hand-held. this is a festival i celebrate every year hence i'm familiar with it — feel free to read up about this on wiki!

a/n: don't mind me, this is just a random idea that popped in my head. i'm in the mood for some angsty stuff these days so just had to get it out. Flute version of 无羁 (Wu Ji) from the drama 'Untamed' was the song which inspired my angsty mood while typing this. pardon my errors (I may have missed them and i kinda wrote this on a spur sooooo yea)

Please do me a favor and reblog this. Thank youuuu ❤

the vitality of liyue harbor has always been astounding; an envy of the seven nations.

bright, bustling streets even in the darkness of nights was enough to show the nature of the city.

though, today it was a different kind of bustle. stores were already closed; even the nocturnal businesses that one would only see at night.

the moon had been bright and round the past few nights while the people busied themselves for another festival to come.

— the mid-autumn festival, an annual festival celebrated by the people of liyue or at least that was what zhongli explained yesterday when he extended an invitation to her to join him and others in moon-gazing today.

tonight, the moon shone bright and full in the clear dark sky, seemingly more so than the previous nights.

strategically rooted to the ground of a spacious balcony overlooking the gentle waves below, the stone tables were in a perfect spot beneath the brilliant moon.

colorful mooncakes of various flavors and teacups filled with steaming tea laid before her.

she sat at one of the round stone tables with some funeral parlor staff and of course, zhongli himself who has been rather busy ever since she arrived—

the cheerful chatters and laughter drew her eyes away from the empty seat beside her and to the tables across theirs.

his archon days were over, he said.

he was simply trying to experience a mundane life as 'zhongli' now, as the geo archon had put it when she expressed her surprise at his involvement with a festival fabricated by the mortals' minds.

and indeed—

her gaze idled on him.

— he was doing it too well.

illuminated by the golden glow the table lanterns emanated, the cordial and relaxed atmosphere was warmed by attentive eyes and smiling lips.

all on him.

apparently, some things never changed. whether he was rex lapis or zhongli, he carried an alluring elegance and charisma. clinging to every word and his occasional hand gestures, they were like moths drawn to a flame.

she could understand why; she liked hearing him talk. she would have gone over too, if not...if not for this weight on her heart.

it has been nearly a year since she was in teyvat looking for her twin. these few days in the harbor, the full moon was a constant reminder of how time has passed, and yet...

a heavy sigh escaped her. a longing gleam waned in her eyes as she lifted her gaze to the sky.

they used to talk and eat under a full moon just like this, a bitter ache clenched her heart.

her teeth sank into her lower lip as it trembled.

please...not now. her hands curled into shaking fists as she tried to hold back the tears threatening to leave her eyes.

not now. not at this party. she silently pleaded with herself, her squared shoulders shaking. it took all her willpower to not let the dam break.

but one managed to escape her anyway.

—shit.

she was up on her feet fast and slipped away from the party as subtly as she could.

stumbling out of the party half-blind with tears wasn't exactly the best situation to remember about the cloak meant to keep her warm on an autumn night.

luckily, she didn't end up falling off the stairs she currently sat on.

autumn in liyue was typically not cold, but tonight seemed especially so.

she shivered to the chilly breeze brushing against her back. goosebumps crawled across her skin, particularly on the areas her dress failed to protect against the cold.

she couldn't quite bring herself to go back for the cloak. not with the mess she was now.

the sight of the round moon above wavered in her vision as tears quietly trailed down her cheeks.

under the vast, seemingly endless night sky, she felt small...

— her knees were drawn closer to her chest, curled fingers digging into her dress.

...and extremely powerless.

where is he? why can't she find him? is he even in teyvat? Is he even...still alive? does he even exist anymore?

—a dreading sense of hopelessness echoed in her heart and summoned another wave of tears wavering her vision.

under this wide, endless sky and its luminous moon, she felt alone, truly alone in the presence of the joyous cacophony of laughter and playful yells coming from the festival she left behind.

a nasty voice prompted by the noise taunted her — of how no one would notice, even if she were to walk right out of liyue harbor right now.

drowning in harsh, relentless thoughts, she failed to notice the gaze of a pair of wise, golden eyes on her back, soft with concern.

long legs covered the distance between them in a quiet, graceful stride; the gentle clacks of his loafers whenever their heels hit the ground slipped past her notice too.

not even when he climbed down the steps to settle himself next to her, a step above hers.

not even the inevitable proximity between their bodies caused by the short stairs spacious for one but narrow for two.

only until his coat was off his shoulders and wrapped around hers—

"why the tears on the mid-autumn festival?"

—she jolted with a sharp gasp, her widening eyes snapping over to him.

the calm and prodding gaze that met hers was accompanied by the tender brush of his thumb across her left cheek, right under her tearing eye before switching over to her other.

"zh-zhongli?"

she stayed stunned, unsure she was feeling so because someone noticed she had left or was it because of this simple gesture.

zhongli has always been a mentor-like figure to her. his words, his wise gazes, the comforting pets he occasionally gave on her head and back had always reminded her of how she was a mere child in his eyes.

but tonight...this, nothing about the gentleness his hand or his eyes emanate felt normal. or was she just delirious?

the strange stutter of her heart caused by the hand on her face, the blush heating up her cheeks made her tear her gaze away from his, flustered.

zhongli let his hand drop back onto his knee, but his eyes stayed.

crossing her arms to hold onto his coat sitting on her shoulders, she thought hard to recall his question.

"i can't help thinking about my brother, that's all." she looked back at him, smiling.

a smile he thought reminded him of the moon when it was not yet full — a quiet light melancholic with vague sadness.

"don't worry about me, i'll be fine." she slipped a glance over her shoulder in the direction of the festival. "you should go back there, zhongli, they need you. what's mid-autumn festival for liyue without you?"

she moved to remove the coat from her shoulders, but a hand wrapped around her wrist stopped her.

"but what's mid-autumn festival without you, my dear friend?"

zhongli regarded her intently, his eyes boring into hers for a second before shifting to focus on his coat.

there was something else in his eyes when they return to hers; it came and went in a flicker. "...keep this on, it's chilly today."

"thanks..." she murmured, her shoulders sinking as she yet again returned her thoughts to her brother.

"aether..." the pain she guarded showed on her face. "will i ever be able to see him again?"

tears started to well up in her eyes once again.

"i'm sorry, zhongli, i'm so sorry..." a quiet sob broke through, "today is supposed to be about the mid-autumn festival, and yet...here you are, listening to me."

zhongli's mouth opened then snapped close.

he always knew what to say whenever she was in a pinch. however, it was tears this time, and he wasn't exactly sure about what he should do about his body's urge to extend his arms out to her.

he was already more than a thousand years old.

as the former geo archon, he was the immovable rock. emotions and impulses he used to hold within himself in his younger days were buried deep under the sands of time...or at least they should be.

so where did this come from? was this strange stir an inevitable part of being a mortal?

"you know what?"

her movement to rise from the spot beside him turned his head back to her.

resolute hardened the glint in her tearing eyes, "i don't want to hold you back any longer,"

her fingers curled into a shaky fist, nails digging into her palm.

"....the people need you. i-i think i should just go bac—"

his hand flew out before he could think any further; his body was faster than his thoughts this time.

her next breath puffed out of her, in surprise and bewilderment as her body was tugged and cocooned by a breathing warmth before she could understand what happened.

and when she did, her eyes flew wide.

cheek pressed against his neck, she found herself held to his chest. she could feel his chin atop her head and his arms around her.

he was beside her a moment ago, and now he was behind sharing the same step as her, broad enough to accommodate them. was she the one who moved? or did he?

she didn't know how but she couldn't find the energy to care —the scent of musk and lingering tea engulfing her was an alluring comfort that made her want to stop trying.

so warm. really, really warm.

and so was his voice. "...but you need me." a hand caressed the back of her head.

there was a pause before a feigned cough ensued. "i meant, this."

[yionji]

Scream and cream

A/N: Hiii!!!! ^_^ I started this as a lactation kink but I ended up doing this.I almost always take 1 day to write things like this (though y'all notice my fics are usually vague </3)in this one I took almost 2 days, it's longer than usual,free to point my grammar error pls.... see the tags 😩 before reading,I hope you like it,<3

Tags: lewd faces,grimace,out of it,big ass,big tits,lactation kink,boing,blowjob,forced blowjob,blackmail,someone hearing,pressed throat,deepthroat,big cock,large cock,Moans,doggy style,on your back,male dom,curse,Degradation,Break the cutie,cute reader,bukkake,unprotected sex (duh),cervix hiting,tight pussy,painful,cock warming,screams,creampie,squirting,facil,female student,fingering,first time,forced orgasm,forced stimulation,Overstimulation,trusts,passed out,hair pulling,choking,Academy uniform,licking,Pervert,dirty talk,insults,spiting,extremely wet,Breastfeed,mind fuck,cum dump,naked,oral,rough sex,scream,creamy pussy,twiching pussy,poor grammar,strong pervert male,teacher x student,Transfer student,nipple play,sensitive,skirt fetish,Virgin reader,Narrated Hentai,bad narrated(?).

Pairings: Gojo x F!student

Summary: Y/n has a curse that increases her libido, which in turn prevents her from fighting, she keeps it a secret until her friend, Nobara, gets fed up and tells the teachers about the situation and what needs to be done to remove her curse.

"Y/n has a curse and she has to be fucked to remove the curse."

Those were the words that came out of the mouth of your friend, Nobara.

While you closed your eyes in sorrow.

"Her curse is annoying, doesn't let her fight, doesn't let her sleep" she was fed up with you not saying it and complaining all day long.

"How did this happen to her?" asked Gojo.

"You see when we went to that school I think it happened."

"How do you know someone has to have relations with her to cure her curse?"

"The curse told her."

They went, I mean Nobara dragged you with her to where nanami and gojo were so that at least they could help you.

"Is that true y/n?" The two men looked at you .

"Yes" a shy yes came from your lips.

"if that's true why don't you do it when one of your classmates? If it's not that serious, Toudou or megumi could help you" said nanami.

"You're kidding right? Those slugs would be distracted from what they're doing" said nobara.

"Then y/n I will help you, I am your sensei, besides I am in charge of you" gojo said with a smile.

"No, I'll do it" nanami said to gojo standing in front of him.

Gojo clicked his tongue, approached him almost whispering with a smile from ear to ear, "I understood that you had to go take care of some business out of the country".

Nanami sighs, walked away and turned around, approached Nobara's ear.

"In cases like this you should have spoken to me in private."

Then he said to you.

"If he does something to you that you don't like, just call me and I'll come."

"Y-yes."

Gojo went to your room he took the blessing out of his eyes and waited in your room.

"Took you a while y/n."

He made you sit on his lap,gojo was very happy and encouraged.

Y/n nodded somewhat sheepishly, "just do it."

That reaction made him a little sad.

"Look baby, if you are nervous it will be more difficult, first I want to make you feel good, when I am done you will be very happy," he said encouraging you,

You nodded with a smile as his lips moved over the soft curve of your breast, brushing dangerously against your nipple. "Gojo, please...".

He paused and his eyes widened "so the curse makes you breastfeed too?" This is astonishment ,he thought to himself.

"You need me, huh?" he asked, his voice like a teasing purr against your chest as he looked down at you. "Tell me what you need me to do, y/n".

"Please...I want you to drink my milk, Gojo, there's too much pressure," you murmured y/n wrapping an arm around his shoulders to squeeze him close.

Finally, he pursed his lips over the firm bud that craved his attention. you sighed as he ran his tongue over it, while his hands slid down the nape of your neck. His smooth muscles slowly explored your skin. Just as she was about to offer him a reminder of how he had ordered you to try, he gently took the entire nipple into his mouth and pressed the sensitive bud against the roof of mouth with his tongue. You moaned , after a moment, your sweet milk began to flow, his fingers stroking the back of your head as he sucked on your breast. The pleasurable buzz of yours, made his stomach squirm in the best way. When he moved against you, his hard cock brushed your thigh through your pants and you moaned. He squeezed his erection by grabbing your ass under your skirt.

He started breathing harder, squeezing your waist tightly as he rubbed his erection against your wet pussy over your panties. Cojo sucked hard on your nipple, a squeal came from your throat when he bit you, he laughed and apologized while still holding your nipple in his mouth and playing with the other with his free hand.

"Your nipples are very sensitive."

You began to feel a great, and roll your eyes, it felt so good.

sucking on her soft and delicious breasts, small and pink nipples. She is so happy.

Things heated up quickly

Gojo took you by the waist and laid you down on the bed.

"But what a small waist" compared to him you are so small.

He slipped his fingers between take of your panties and opened your pussy lips.

Y/n was already soaking wet and his fingers were covered with juice as he withdrew them and began to caress your clitoris.

a spasm ran through your brain and you closed your legs and came in his fingers.

"What a creamy pussy... you're very delicate,it's your first time,isn't it?"

"A-ah yeah."

Electric spasms of excitement began to run through your body.

"C'mere"

You looked down and saw that the entire crotch area was taut with a huge, rock hard erection. You tugged the material very gently from the belt of his pants. You were anxious to see that beast, though. You started to get even wetter, dripping wet, when his cock popped out of his pants like a huge python. Tonight was going to be the night you would have the tallest man with the biggest cock you had ever seen. He was easily twelve inches long and your hand couldn't even go around his girth. You went down to suck his huge, throbbing cock, and it barely fit in your mouth, you only gave the tip a fraction of a lick.

Gojo grabbed you by the hair and flipped you over, you were on your back, he still had you by the hair.

"G-gojo sensei, wait."

"To tell you the truth I wanted to fuck you since I saw you."

You opened your mouth in a worried way and your eyes were dull, you felt that the worst was going to happen to you.

"W-WAIT"

He put his whole penis in your mouth and with his hands he started to press on your throat.

You were gagging and crying.

Gojo's eyes were upturned and he was moaning hoarsely "your throat is great I can feel my penis your esophagus".

His penis wasn't hitting your uvula, it was all the way down your throat and his balls were against your nose, he kept hitting and pressing down your throat very fast.

You felt like your jaw would dislocate, he's too careful to let that happen,he kept it up but all you could do was cry and kick at the air.

He started to go faster, pushed his hips and pressed his thumbs down your throat with all his strength until he reached his orgasm and emptied all his cum inside your throat, and,he came a lot.

He pulled his cock out of your throat "it seemed like you wanted to keep it inside you" his cock took a time to come out but you see every inch of it come out of your mouth. The cum kept going down your mouth, down your throat, and out your nose, you couldn't take it.

As you felt his cum in your throat you too came with a squirt without him touching you leaving a trail of your juices in your bed.

You swallon all his cum.

"Sensei, don't you think the curse is gone?"

"Calm down fucking slut, it's not over yet."

He grabbed you by the hair again as if you were a toy and changed your position, he choke you with one hand and you could only complain a little bit.

'What am I going to do if I stick it in all at once, she's going to scream and cry, I don't think anyone will hear us'.

Gojo looked at your face,he was on top of you,he see your facw makeup ruined, your mascara ruined, blushing, your lips very red, that worried expression, watery eyes and you still had some semen on your nose, letting out little whimpers, black pupils dilated and dull, trying to remove the hand of "the strongest" from your neck. Gojo just breathed and you looked at him, his gaze was like that of an animal, no, not even that, it was terrifying, until he smiled.

"You know y/n you are a whore" and he spit in your face and slapped you so hard it made you scream and that would leave a big mark.

You got your hand on gojo's arm, hoping he would let go and felt the tip of his hot penis in your wet pussy.

"W-wait it's too big for me,don't do it,I can't take it."

"Ayy are you going to cry? The bottle is too big for baby?" he said with a very calm smile teasing you.

You couldn't do anything,just looking at him.

He started to put his fat cock inside you, you closed your eyes trying to calm down. "You can't tell me you don't like it, you've already wet the whole bed".

You opened your eyes and it was true, you didn't realize it but the whole bed was wet with your fluids.

You didn't realize that gojo took advantage of the situation and shoved his entire veiny cock inside you, hitting your cervix, you could almost feel your bowels moving.

You could almost feel your bowels moving. He let out a loud moan, and you cum on his cock, starting to tremble, your eyes rolled back in your head and you couldn't keep your tongue in place and you began to drool, your fleshy wet walls squeezed all over his cock, throbbing around it, as gojo began to laugh.

His penis filled every pussy space

It was the best orgasm of your life.

"I wanna hear you scream"

You couldn't. He came to change your mind.

Your body felt weird but it was great, like you were floating, you were happy.

You were about to tell him how happy you were to have him but a noise came from your bedroom door.

"Hey y/n is everything ok in there?" it was nanami.

Gojo immediately covered your mouth.

What's he doing here, wasn't he going to stay until tomorrow?'

Gojo was angry, he still didn't know that your brain and body were in that state.

"You're going to tell him that everything is okay, aren't you?" To end that "you" he thrust harder into your cervix causing your pussy to release some juices and you turned your head away, you shook your head yes.

"Y/n if you don't answer I will force my way in, open up."

"I'm fine, very fine,"

"Okay, let me know if anything happens."

"Yeees,thank you~"

Gojo waited for nanami to leave and immediately grabbed you by the neck and put you in four and began to move his dick with great force, it was very long and somewhat wide, your arms could no longer hold that position, you just collapsed on the bed and Gojo grabbed you by the hips to continue pushing his dick into your walls.

"Come on y/n you only cum 2 times, don't tell me it's too big for you."

He began to increase the speed of his thrusts hitting your cervix almost penetrating your uterus.

"Aah "a hoarse moan came out of his mouth with his deep voice he said

"This is the best pussy I've ever tasted in my life"

He reached forward placing both his hands on the sides of your head a moan came out of your throat as you clenched your teeth, as he did this he pressed your cervix.

You mind was dizy, your eyes didn't focus, you mumbled a few words, gojo kept on giving small thrusts.

"What?, such a cute lewd faces are you making"

"Fuck m-me more"

"Uh? My needy girl."

"fuck me harder with your cock, take the curse out of me"

He do a sadistic smile on his face,he pulled his cock out of you to push it back in.

"Your pussy is creamy,!"

He exclaimed before pushing his length deep inside you. You screamed at the sudden pleasure. He wasted no time. His hips slammed against you as he sank deeper and deeper with each thrust. You cried out loudly and he leaned forward between thrusts. He rested his elbows on the mattress. Using his hands to grab your breasts and your hair. Fucking you roughly against the furniture, he was rough and made you bang your head against the back of the bed.

You grunted and groaned, getting crazier and crazier.

You became a moaning mess under him. It didn't take long for your orgasm to take hold of you. "slut" He growled in your ear from behind as he continued to fuck you.

"You are a whore ,how does it feel to be fucked by your teacher you just met".

A little out of your mind, you remembered that you met him less than 3 days ago.

"Oh goood." You moaned helplessly. His grip tightened, pulling and groping you roughly. You cried out in a low growling tone,clawing at your back as you felt his orgasm release. You gasped as you felt him tense up. It took a moment for him to relax.

Too many cum in less than an hour. He practically dropped you, you felt like you were going to pass out.

Gojo didn't like to take his cock out of you.

"Uh. Baby." His voice became sweet and loving. He kissed your neck and cheek lovingly. "You're wonderful."

"I can't take it anymore," you said with a deformed but happy grimace on your face.

"Just once one mo-" he saw your back a black shadow formed and ejected from your body and fell to the floor.

Suddenly you felt light and fainted.

"Oh that was your curse...mh." gojo still didn't take his penis out of your tight wet walls, he liked that feeling. He saw you motionless and thought you were asleep and pulled his penis out of you.

He got dressed and covered you with a blanket and then left.

Pretty sick of his part to let you sleep in a bed soaked in your fluids, sweat and semen, his semen inside you.

You woke up and your head was still spinning and you were out of it, you didn't know what had happened but you felt great.

lmao

[desertofsnowflakes]

Incorrect Order Chapter 4 (Nessian AU)

A/N: I know I haven't been able to update as fast as you'd want me to but I'll try to fix that. Your comments and feedbacks are very much appreciated. Do inform me if you wanna be added/removed from the taglist! If you happen to find my storyline similar to another fic or one of yours, I'm extremely sorry, I might've just not known. All characters belong to the author Sarah J. Mass. Enjoy!

Summary: Don't first impressions always affect the way you see someone? Well, what more with the Nesta Archeron? Nesta meets Cassian at few unexpected places and to say it didn't go well was a major understatement. Certain circumstances make them become enemies to tolerable company to friends to lovers.

Trigger Warnings: None really

1652words | Incorrect Order Masterlist | Read on AO3

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The best way to keep whatever problems one has out of their mind was to do something they liked. That was the only way Cassian kept from spiraling. Since sending the woman to her own house, Cassian had more than a few moments when he wanted to repeatedly slam his head against a wall. That’s why he spent most of his time sparring with Azriel. He won’t admit he was simping for that woman in his free time too. Or maybe that was always.

Now, sprawled on a couch in front of the TV, with nothing to do but stare at a blank screen, Cassian led his thoughts to the box he kept all unwanted thoughts locked in. He thought about Tomas, her ex-boyfriend. Funny, he thought. I know her ex's name but not hers.

It took him a little too long the other day to realise they didn't exchange names. Again. He once thought that maybe she was purposely not giving him her name. That maybe, for her, he was just a random stranger who happened to save her life. He snorted. Surely anyone would know the name of the person they saved or was saved by— stranger or not. He supposed he'll have to make do with pronouns for now.

After she left his home, it took every scrap of self-restraint not to beat this Tomas dude to pulp and let him rot in the same alley he had the misfortune of meeting him in. He may or may not have been the cause for some extra injuries. Cassian appreciated the woman’s attempt at mercy. He, however, didn’t trust Tomas at all. He was dubious about just handing him over to the police. Who’s to know he won’t frame him and the woman for absurd things? Anyway, he left a note in Tomas’s house saying something like “Step out of line, lose your favourite part of anatomy. Name it and have it for your meal.” He made sure he printed so that no one would recognise his writing. Yet, all this didn’t calm his nerves one bit. He presumed he’ll have to stay on guard for some time now.

Now, back to the girl. He sighed. He didn’t dare change the sheets in his guest bedroom. He didn’t even let Mor use the room when she came over last weekend— which he could bet created suspicion. No, that room was only open when he craved her scent. He even realised one of his shirts was missing. He shrugged it off thinking he would've left it somewhere and just couldn't find it. Once she came to his house, he was constantly thinking about her. So much that now he started pinching himself often. It was the only way he could stop thinking about her— by creating physical pain.

Cassian glanced at the clock on the wall. 2.30 in the afternoon. He walked to the refrigerator and checked his freezer compartment. Huh. No ice-cream. He sighed, grabbed his jacket and keys and headed to the mall to get an ice-cream with a pout. He’ll have to leave for Rhys and Feyre’s first anniversary only around 5.30 to prepare everything. He has enough time to get an ice-cream and probably hang out for some time. Good enough to stop thinking about her. Or so he thought.

***

Nesta wasn’t sore anymore. Her headache was gone almost a week after the incident. Her nose didn’t hurt anymore. Okay, maybe a little bit. It didn’t hurt unless she bumped her nose against something. Today, her nose was dully throbbing because she hit her nose against a pillow yesterday. A very, very soft pillow and yet it hurt this much.

The man’s first-aid and medicines were really helpful.

It really wasn’t fair that he excelled at basic first aid too. It wasn’t fair that he looked so good. With black tattoos swirling over generously muscled arms and shoulder-length dark hair curling at the edges and gloriously tanned skin and hazel eyes with minute flecks of green and brown when taken a closer look at and dimples and—

A quiet “Who is it?” snapped Nesta out of her moping. She looked up to see Gwyn walking to her.

“Who is what?” she asked, feigning nonchalance. Gwyn's pursed lips and glare conveyed that her act wasn't enough.

“Who are you thinking about?” Gwyn clarified.

“What makes you think I'm thinking about someone?” Nesta retorted.

Gwyn sat on the chair next to her and started assisting with classifying the unceremonious heap of books on the table to be kept back in its correct positions on its own rack.

“Nesta,” Gwyn sighed, “Clotho assigned you this stack almost an hour ago. And you've barely finished a third of the stack. Normally, you'd finish stacks bigger than this in an hour. So there's clearly something.”

“It wasn't anyone,” Nesta mumbled.

As usual, Gwyn saw through her lie. “You were twirling your hair,” she said flatly.

Heat inched up her neck. “I was not!”

Gwyn murmured a “uh-huh” and they lapsed into an easy silence till they were almost over.

Gwyn's eyes lit up as it normally did whenever she got an idea. “Is it him? The guy you came with that day?”

Nesta scowled, “How do you know…” she broke off when she realised which 'that day' Gwyn was talking about. Nesta fought back a blush. “No, no, this isn't about him. We don't know each other. Much. Like, we've seen each other a number of times? That's it. Nothing else.” Cauldron, the first part was a complete lie. But at least the rest are true. Will Gwyn happen to know his name? Maybe I ought to ask her. Or maybe I shouldn't.

She should, she decided. She cleared her throat. “Uh, Gwyn? Do you happen to know his name?”

Gwyn frowned and asked, “He hasn't told you yet?”

Nesta shook her head and answered, “No, we, uh, forgot. I guess. We haven't really exchanged names.”

Gwyn nodded and smiled. “Well, he is—”

“Gwyn!” a voice called. “You can't expect me to come over to you and beg for you to help me. Help me only if you want to or don't work under me.”

Gwyn’s eyes widened. She abruptly stood up and mouthed, “Merrill. I gotta go. I’m so sorry.” She all but ran to Merrill, the very strict librarian Gwyn was working under.

Nesta sighed and continued her work. There wasn’t much left so she was able to finish fast. She picked her things and left the library with a word to Clotho, heading to the mall.

***

The best way to keep whatever problems one has out of their mind was to also eat something they liked. So, ice-cream it was. After having his ice-cream, Cassian was aimlessly walking around the mall. Here, not more than a month ago, he met her for the first time. Almost a month ago. He huffed out a breath. The fact that he was pining for her this long blew his mind off. He—

“This is your fault— not mine. I’m not taking the blame for this,” he told her. They bumped into each other. Again.

Her lips quirked up. “It is kind of my fault. But blame this—,” she poked his chest, “— for making my nose hurt again.”

Just like that, his mood sobered. “How are you?” he asked.

She pointed at the cafe to her left. “Coffee?”

He nodded. Who was he to say no to her?

So they ordered coffee and talked about everything and nothing. He grinned and she laughed. He laughed and she smirked. He wouldn’t say he knew her well but he’d never seen her so carefree. Her laugh was like nectar for a starving man. Her eyes bright and welling up with tears from laughing.

“I don’t think I’ve laughed this much,” she said.

Cassian put a hand on his heart dramatically and said, “I know, I know. I’m very funny.”

Her lips kicked up a notch. She straightened as if she just realised something. He was about to ask when she drawled, “So I just realised that we still haven’t exchanged names.”

Oh. Right. Of course. “Yeah,” he nodded. “Usually, when people meet, they start with introductions but in our case we’ve literally bumped into each other three times and still we don’t know each other.” He shook his head and extended his hand. “Well, hello there. I’m—”

His phone rang in his pocket. Fuck. He was going to kill whoever was calling him now. He was so close to knowing her name. He pulled out his phone to see an incoming call from Azriel. He apologetically looked up at her and said, “I’m sorry. I wish I could choose not to take this call and instead kill this idiot but I can’t. Just give me a moment, okay?”

She nodded and he picked up his call.

“What do you want?” he hissed.

“It’s 5.30 already, you idiot. We’ve got to get the things ready for the party. Mor already went to get the cake and you’re not even at home. Where on all earth and hell are you?” came Az’s faint voice.

“15 minutes only? Mother above, I’m coming.” he said.

Az’s “make it fast” was the last thing he heard before hanging up. “I wish we could stay here and talk forever,” he said to her, “but I have something up in a short while and I totally didn’t realise time was passing this fast. I’m so sorry. It was nice talking to you. Really. And I wish we could meet again. Though without the bumping part.”

He grinned when she smiled and said, “Bye. Have a nice day.”

“You too,” he called back. He didn’t want to think he imagined the subtle look of disappointment on her face because hell, he was a walking epitome of disappointment right now.

taglist:

@shadowsinger07 @im-someone-i-guess @saltyfortunes @cressjacquine @julian-blackthorn-supremacy @champanheandluxxury @zemiraa @ladygabrielli1997 @nehemikkele @heartless--aromantic @sv0430 @ddsworldofbooks @irenethaleia @sjm-things @dontgetsalmonella

[boop-le-snoot]

masterpost • main masterlist • taglist & faq

previously on...

Chapter 1! Reader's job has no chill and Wanda means well (Tony does too), but, as we know, the road to Hell is paved with good intentions. Reader discovers the source of some peculiar things and can't help but be overcome with curiosity. F-bombs galore!

Fun fact: this story's main soundtrack is Claire de Lune, for some reason. Usually I can't stand classical music.

I didn't anticipate my first day at the bodega to be remarkful in any way but I was quickly proven wrong. My expectations were low: few customers, some of them flat-earthers of the garden variety, perhaps one or two of those 'witches' from social media blogging platforms and an overzealous Satanist or two, since I was pretty sure I saw an Ouija board and a silver pentagram hanging in Odette's office on the day of the interview.

Boy was I wrong.

We averaged a customer every fifteen minutes with each person requesting increasingly strange items: healing quartz and sage were on the closer end of normal; I felt like I had teleported to Hogwarts and was now attending Professor Snape's Advanced Potions class, having to race between the high shelves and memorize the exact location of each and every ingredient. In the end, I sacrificed a few dollars and bought one of the beautiful, leather-bound notebooks off Odette to write down the shelf and position number for the most commonly requested items and planned to begin memorizing them at home.

There's a little bit of Ravenclaw in all of us, I supposed. My curiosity only extended further: sometimes, a haggard looking person would come up and declare they had an appointment with Odette and was quickly whisked away by my boss to her office, coming out looking slightly less haggard in about half an hour or so.

I adapted to the routine fairly quickly, choosing to make my personal peace with the strange customers and Odette's mysterious meetings: after all, I got the job because I needed money - who was I to judge her for doing Tarot readings and spiritual séances for an extra dollar?

The bodega's atmosphere did grow on me rather quickly, as I had thought it would. It was warm and homely even on the rainiest afternoons, there was an unlimited supply of herbal tea, free of charge, and I grew to appreciate it just like I learned to find the positives in my job at the café. That remained a constant, mildly interesting affair too - my regulars, especially the superheroes, had started coming in during the morning hours and we were able to resume our chit-chats without a hitch.

Wanda still fished for my most recent, memorable reading and Dr. Banner left his incomprehensible scribbles on every napkin within an arm's reach for me to return to him on his next visit. The fully grown man with multiple PhDs didn't fail to blush like a schoolgirl every single time it happened, causing Mr. Stark to double on his own salacious jokes, should the engineer have had come with. They often came together, blabbering things I couldn't even fathom understanding even with the help of Google.

"Penny for your thoughts?" Wanda sounded surprisingly chipper for it was freaking seven in the morning.

I blanched, banging my arm against the display door painfully with a softly muttered, "Fuck!".

The witch frowned. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah," I muttered, hoping my face wasn't portraying the mixture of confusion and fear that I felt. "Something weird happened at my other job yesterday, I'm still processing," I replied honestly, looking to the side.

In fairness, I didn't know what to think. The situation wasn't something that should have shocked me, with aliens and magic people an abundance in NYC, but seeing it with my own two eyes had been jarring.

A limping, paranoid young man had arrived for an appointment with Odette shortly before closing time; I had escorted him to her office without as much as a blink, only noticing he was dripping oddly colored blood when the door behind him had closed. I cleaned it up, dead set on confronting Odette about the obviously injured person - the blood, it was more of an attempt to clean it, since it merely stuck to the rag, refusing to wash off it with water or any of the organic cleaning solutions kept under the sink.

I had to leave the rag in a paper bag, acutely aware of the fact it could not have belonged to a normal person. My best guess was that a man was a mutant - NYC had plenty of them living behind a blue wall. Odette's office wasn't soundproof: I heard a pained yelp and then a vocalisation of relief as whatever was causing the man to bleed had been removed. In a few minutes while I was closing the cash register, he came out looking almost brand new - and as I paid him a more careful look, he was missing his scleras, leaving his eyes to look slightly terrifying.

And then he winked at me, a surprisingly human, boyish gesture - the smile that crawled up my face was purely automatic. I was sure it looked frozen. He disappeared without a word as Odette herself emerged from the backrooms, a tired sheen to her brow.

"Did you manage to clean up?" She asked, eyebrows raised at the lack of stains on the hardwood floors.

"It stuck to the rag," I replied, eyeing her warily. "The rag is in the unmarked bag next to the sink. I didn't know what else to do with it."

"Sometimes it does that," her sigh was very telling. This was to be expected to become a regular occurrence. She motioned for the notebook I got to keep track of everything in the store, rattling off a recipe for a cleaner and solvent combo, made purely from the items she had inside the store, giving me stern instructions to add the ingredients in the exact order I was told. I sighed but added the footnote. Odette was a far cry from the greasy git from Hogwarts so she deserved the benefit of the doubt at least.

I didn't dare to ask any more questions about the strange man; not that day, not after I had suprised Wanda with a quick recap of my story. It's not like I had anything against mutants - as long as they were peaceful and didn't harm humans with their abilities, I was content to co-habit, share my space and even be friends with them. A very nice old lady who came by three times a week had gills peeking out of the top of her turtleneck and she was just the most polite, sweetest thing.

Wanda's curiosity was understandable and not suspicious in any way: I was under the impression she was a mutant, too, along with her twin brother - so the feeling of dread that blossomed within me as soon as the two suited figures entered the small store I attributed to the larger size of the man and vulture eyes of the woman. They both appeared extremely out of place with their black two-pieces and badly hidden pistol holsters, topped off with badges I couldn't take a good look at without losing my customer service facade.

I decided to play it dumb, self-conscious of the thudding of my heart in my ribcage. My body screamed 'danger' at me. "Hello, how can I help you?"

The woman cast an observant look over me, my plain clothes, lingering on my star-patterned scarf and matching hair band. "Are you the owner of this store?"

"No," I frowned, not liking where this was going. "Do you have an appointment with Odette?"

"We'd like to see her," the man pointedly moved his arm, exposing the gun and the badge.

I dropped the nice act, staring him down in earnest. I never liked self-righteous, pushy government officials; even less so, when they didn't follow protocol and started the conversation with demands instead of proper introductions. As I shot a quick text to Odette, noting that there were 'strange people in uniform' looking for her, my suspicions were only confirmed when the woman looked around the store with eyes that knew what they were looking for. Those two definitely weren't cops or even feds, they were straight up shady.

Odette all but flew to the bodega, the imposing, suffocating aura I'd seen only once on full display. It was hard to breathe standing so close to her; with muted satisfaction, I noticed both agents squirm, their fingers twitching, as they took in shuddering inhales through their, undoubtedly, lying mouths.

The whole spectacle was over quickly. I had managed to serve and quickly usher out Ike, one of the Satanists (yes, we did, in fact, have a few of those as regulars) with his paper bag full of powdered goat horn and a fresh cat skull under his armpit before the curtains parted and the two agents left without saying a word. I thought their eyes looked - wrong, like glass marbles, dull, lifeless and unseeing.

Odette dismissed my worries with a frivolously waved hand: "They won't be bothering us anytime soon," closing the door to her office - it reeked of strong incense and horseradish, for some reason. Like she'd been making some hell salad in front of the two nosy officials.

I took a deep breath in and then a deep breath out. The weirdness should've bothered me more, I knew, but I couldn't bring myself to decide whether I wanted to know what that interaction was actually about or live in blissful ignorance, where my boss might be some sort of a mutant or an actual witch that helps other mutants.

The longer I thought about it, the louder anti-mutant propaganda articles screamed at me: children being killed or abandoned because one day, they woke up and could fly or move things with their mind; every potential situation could end up like Carrie or Brightburn - two movies so blatantly obvious in their point to instill fear against children that could grow to work alongside Earth's Mightiest Defenders.

Needless to say, my conscious calmed down pretty quickly. I had felt the hairs on my nape stand up as soon as the agents entered the room and in my experience, a reaction like that was never good. I had been taught to trust my gut.

Odette had cancelled her visits for the day, holing up in her office as the whole store rapidly filled up with the stench of horseradish, old blood and sage. The occasional noise came from the office, interrupted by mumbling, and I was quickly told to just turn up the old, vintage radio if it bothered me.

I was too busy taking in the contents of her office - the table that previously stood in the far end of it, stood in the middle, folded out into the shape of a circle. Something was drawn on it, something the color of dried blood, and there were light candles, white and blue, littered on almost every possible surface. The air was clouded with incense smoke, so thick, it made my eyes water.

Odette's grin was sardonic as she met my eyes, wide and shocked, that had previously landed on what looked like a pot- or a cauldron, emanating the strongest bitter stench that wafted even through the lead curtain of incense. No wonder the whole store reeked.

Before she gently shut the door in my face, I caught the centerfold of the whole show - an extremely large, tattered, leatherbound tome with yellowed pages and a heavy metal padlock laying next to it. Overcome by stupor, I didn't manage to make out the intricate silver letters on its cover.

Needless to say, walking home that day was an adventure. In part, I was cautious that the agents would find me, follow me home, interrogate me - I've never been arrested even by usual cops and it was unlikely that shady government agencies were delicate in their approach. A larger part of my brain was wondering about the implications of what I had seen, I'd nearly chewed off my fingernails remembering the vacant, lost face expressions on the agents' faces.

As soon as I got home, I set to do some serious googling. And find information, I did. Plethora of minor details - candle colors, herbs used, deeply individual incantations and mythical deities that chose to work with a particular witch. It was nothing short of a whole science; I'd go as far as to say it was a complete lifestyle. The use of magick bled into every aspect of daily life, from sleep to food to communication with others.

Part of me felt incredulity at the implication of sacrificing so much to get results that might be the opposite of the ones desired. A larger, braver part of me - the very same that used to push me to explore abandoned buildings with my friends and drink booze given by a stranger - admired the work and the dedication my boss and her kind put into their work.

Having received my first paycheck and successfully having made it through rent day without having to make excuses, my conscious allowed me to treat myself to a few items - I decided to give into my curiosity and placed an order for a few books on modern witchcraft, happily waiting for the package to arrive next afternoon. I went to sleep with my head full and a new world at my feet to explore.

The books were late - or more like, never showed. The refund couldn't come soon enough. My curiosity began to reach unbearable levels the longer I worked the front desk at Odette's. These days I didn't need much assistance anymore, ready to help any new or returning customer with the help of my notebook. Time after time, I noticed a certain working order, a pattern to things if you may - and was able to recommend a few things here and there. In short, I stepped over my initial apprehension and dove into the world of natural remedies and energetic manipulation headfirst.

It made all the sense that Odette would start to take absence from the bodega as my training progressed. On the days she had fewer or no appointments, she would don her favourite scarf and trot out the front door, large purse in tow, to run errands or restock on the rare, pricy items that couldn't get delivered directly to the shop. I'd grown accustomed to locking up on my own; the spare key to the entrance door was my pride and joy, the dull silver a warm comfort hanging on a chain around my neck. Its antique design made a fairly pretty necklace.

The customer coming to pick up a special order hardly disrupted my time. I had Janis Joplin blaring from the old radio, my skirt swayed to the rhythm of the song together with me. The elevated mood while working in the shop was something I appreciated fully - with a kind smile, I departed for the backrooms to search for the package with the customer's name, not finding it anywhere near the proper place. A call later, I was opening Odette's office and extracting the paper-wrapped shoebox from the fridge, passing it into the customer's arms with utmost care: 'FRAGILE. KEEP REFRIGERATED AT ALL TIMES.' read on it in Odette's sharp cursive.

The bell above the door rang as the woman departed but I was already inching behind the curtain, overcome by sudden inquisitiveness.

The book. It stood right in the middle of Odette's desk, shut, but missing its padlock, beckoning with the thick gothic letters spelling out 'PRACTICAL ALCHEMY'. I noticed it as soon as I stepped into the office, confused and puzzled by my own unbearable desire to approach it immediately. I knew something was amiss, yet, my legs had a mind of their own and my hands firmly placed themselves upon the heavy cover of the book, seemingly without the input from my brain.

"What the hell..." I muttered to myself, finding the books contents to be - for the lack of a better word - peculiar. "Protect a babe born on all Hallows Eve..." I numbly mouthed the first words that my eyes registered. The pages made a soft noise as my shaking fingers turned them, one after the other. "Bestow healing upon a barren womb... Punish a thief..." There were - spells, and potions, and so many plants I've never even heard about before.

The pages turned and handwritings changed - at the start, words were written out precisely, the cursive neat and sharp, obviously written by an ink pen. Some things were scribbles, pencil or charcoal, so barely intelligible I had to guess about a third of the words written. Towards the end of the book pages made with a typewriter appeared - blocky letters and numbers, language modern, ash and cigarette smell coming from the paper.

I couldn't believe what I was seeing. The longer my hands touched the pages, the stronger the tingling sensation became - I failed to notice it at first, attributing it to the exhilaration of finding something so strange yet so precious, but as I was finishing a page that contained a fairly short spell for protection of a witches' home, the discomfort of my palms rose into a mild stinging pain.

"Fuck," I yelped, casting a look at my fingers. They were hot, angry, as if I had briefly touched boiling oil - and the skin on my fingertips began to blister, little white pustules forming where I had gingerly held the pages of the book in place. "What the fuck?" Was my reasonable question to nobody in particular.

The books contents were, no doubt, interesting but I was more concerned with the state of my hands - had I ignored the pain for five more minutes, I might have had to go to the hospital to treat what was beginning to look like a second-degree burn. I slammed it shut none-too-gently, placing it exactly as I found it and winced when barely a second of touching it brought on more excruciating pain.

The healing peppermint oil salve I knew people bought for mild burns only soothed the initial sting, so I had to suffer until I clocked out, stopping by a drugstore on my way home to purchase some much-needed burn cream. And while it didn't make it worse, I knew that my next day at work was going to be Hell.

Most thankful, however, I was to my voice-to-text option on my cell. Not only it allowed me to communicate with my friends without hurting my abused skin even more, but it also dutifully saved the short, simple spell that was supposed to protect my house. There was no harm in trying it, I supposed, after seeing what I didn't doubt was the book's own protection wreak havoc on my snoopy little hands.

The tag list is open until the story is finished.

@couldntbedamned @mikariell95 @letsby @sleep-i-ness @toomanyrobins @mostly-marvel-musings @persephonehemingway @schemefrenzy @lillsxd @bluecrazedandbeautiful @slothspaghettiwrites

[angelsswirl]

Petrichor

Ten

⚠️ Sexual Content

"I'ma get your heart racing in my skin-tight jeans, be your teenage dream tonight. Let you put your hands on me in my skin-tight jeans, be your teenage dream tonight."

You knocked on the door insistently. Your heat is in full swing now, and you can practically smell your alpha through the door.

The door swung open with a flourish, "Where's the fire?!"

You squared your shoulders. You stood up as tall as you could while fighting that empty feeling in your core.

"Where's Lia?"

"With Irene and Seulgi. Why-" You cut Jisoo off with a bruising kiss that ends up pushing you back into Jisoo's apartment.

"You're-you in heat?" Jisoo already knew the answer. She could practically smell you from down the hall.

"Great deduction." You seemed a bit miffed about breaking apart, but Jisoo needed to have some things put into perspective.

" Did you want me to bite you? Do you want to be my mate?"

You huffed. Wasn't it obvious?

"Yes, Jisoo."

"...." Jisoo sniffled.

"Are you crying?"

"No. There's like a lot of dust around here and-"

You latched back on to Jisoo's lips with a deep groan. Jisoo relaxed into it.

"Unless you want to be interrupted you're going to have to stop and let me tell Irene and Seulgi they need to keep Lia a bit longer."

You whined.

Jisoo's not looking at you, she's instead looking for her phone (it's in her hand) frantically. You decided this was the perfect time to start fighting your clothes off of your body. If only because you're starting to overheat.

"Oh, I was holding it!"

The One With The Kid: Take Lia to Disneyworld or something for the next like three days

Scary Fairy Godmother: uh...why?

The One With The Kid: Y/N

Scary Fairy Godmother: Say no more👀👌🏼

Scary Fairy Godmother: P.S. I told you so

Irene hadn't told her shit, but that was neither here nor there at this point.

Jisoo placed her phone into her back pocket. She turned back around to you.

"You're naked. Well, that certainly makes things easier."

You don't really say much of anything in answer. You're splayed across Jisoo's couch, your hand hidden between your thighs.

"Well, we're definitely not doing this on the couch."

"You're going to make me carry you, aren't you?" Jisoo is already performing the task before she even finishes her own sentence.

The apartment isn't that big, so it doesn't take long for jisoo to navigate the hallway connecting the livingroom to the bedrooms.

She set you down on the bed before frantically wrestling off her own clothing, then joining you on the mattress.

Jisoo ran her hand up your side. You pressed yourself into Jisoo's s cool palm as much as your body would allow.

"Remember that time I got you to beg. Yeah, I'm totally going to do that again."

You're scowl is extremely lackluster by normal standards. And it all but disappeared as Jisoo pressed her lips to the side of her throat.

"Chu." You mewled.

Jisoo slid up to the lobe of your ear, a direct contrast to her left hand which was slithering down your stomach to replace your hand between your legs.

"Yes?"

You jerked in response to Jisoo's fingers coming into delicate contact with your center.

"Please, need your knot." Your words leave your mouth in small pants. Jisoo hummed lightly, and you swore you could feel it.

"Hm. That was easier than I thought it would be." Jisoo mumbled, her lips grazed over your ear as she spoke. She easily batted away your hand and circled her fingers.

"Fuck, you're stunning."

Jisoo occupied her opposite hand with trailing her fingers over a pert nipple, drawing a small gasp.

You keened, you brung your hand up to claw at jisoo's shoulder, urging her to provide you with more.

Jisoo's lips smashed down onto yours. You readily gave up control to Jisoo. It would be a bit redundant to keep up the ruse now.

Eventually, Jisoo does start doing what you wanted her to.

Her fingers left the sensitivity of your clit to do the same to her entrance. Only this time, she doesn't tease for long. Her index finger slipped into you.

You moaned loudly, back arching enough to push into her slightly.

She continued to pump her finger in and out of you slowly. Partially distracted by the pleasure playing across your face.

"Jisoo. More. Please."

Another finger of the alpha's slipped into you, the resulting whimper is probably the loudest one yet and just as desperate as all its predecessors.

She pulled out then pushed back in slowly, her palm catching on your swollen clit.

Jisoo sped up without having to be urged to. She could see exactly what you wanted in your face.

Your mewls and whimpers grew in pitch and frequency. Your hips bucked up into Jisoo's hand on just about every thrust.

"F-fuck..."

You released into Jisoo's palm. Eased over the edge by Jisoo's light nips at your collarbone. You're hips stuttered upward with aftershocks.

You pulled jisoo into you by the shoulder for a heated kiss.

You gasped as you felt the tip of Jisoo's length nudge lightly against your entrance.

Jisoo pushed into you haltingly. Making sure you're sharp breathes were of pleasure and not of pain.

You watched Jisoo bite down on her lip as she bottomed out.

She can tell you're close again and she's not that far behind. She's sure under different circumstances that she would be mildy embarrassed at that, but neither of you can bring yourselves to care that much.

Jisoo stared at your neck constantly. Even in regular conversation she often eyed your neck subtly. If she wasn't an alpha then you'd assume she was a vampire. So, you're not surprised that she immediately latched onto the spot that she often eyed as soon as she got the chance.

"F-fuck, Alpha, faster." You mewled. You figured Jisoo wasn't exactly taking direction from you, but she does increase her pace into you.

Her knot had formed quickly, and it only took a couple more thrusts of her hips for it to slip into you.

You stretched your neck as you released, presenting the expanse of skin to Jisoo. The alpha growled lowly, latching onto your neck. The skin laminating your neck stayed intact and Jisoo took pride in that. Any pain that you would have felt is quickly overtaken by the visceral relief you feel of your bond coming together.

You're thrown into another shutter at the feeling of Jisoo spilling inside of you.

Jisoo pulled her hips back experimentally. Mentally clapping herself on the back when you groaned at the tug.

She carefully flipped so you were on top of her and she didn't crush you when her arms finally gave out.

"I feel like we should high five or something after that." Jisoo suggested.

You blinked at her tiredly, "Say something goofy again and I'll leave. You're weird."

"Yeah, but you love me." It came out a bit questioning despite Jisoo's probable attempts to keep it a statement.

"Yeah, I do love you." You let your head rest in the crook of Jisoo's neck.

Jisoo took this opportunity to test out a theory. She stuck her nose in the crook of your neck and inhaled deeply. Her theory is just about instantly confirmed.

"Yeah, that's what I thought."

"I'm sorry, did you just sniff me?"

"Needed to confirm something."

"And what might that be?"

"You're pregnant."

"I don't think it works that quickly, jisoo." You very distantly acknowledged that this did explain a few things.

"Not talking about from today, though if you weren't already, you definitely would be now. I'm talking about a couple months back. I was a bit too occupied to think about protection. I had my suspicions back at the hospital, but I couldn't like just stick my nose in your neck. And you would have kicked me if I just handed you a pregnancy test." Jisoo shrugged as much as she could with a person laying on top of her.

"You didn't think that would have been pertinent information!?"

"I wasn't sure!"

"We will resume this conversation when I'm not in heat."

Almost as soon as those words left her mouth, you were out of it again.

~•~

Jisoo thinks you tried to kill her during your heat. You just kept going, like you had absolutely no need for sleep or food, which Jisoo knew not to be true.

You barely had any recollection of any conversations you had (well except for one) while you were in heat, so you think Jisoo is full of it.

Speaking of the one you do remember...

"So..." You inquired.

"So?" Jisoo is currently in the middle of a staring contest with her three year old. The three year old is winning.

"I'm pregnant..." You continued.

The three year old won.

"I mean we should probably see a doctor to confirm, but I'm pretty sure. It's hard to explain how I know. It's like there's you and then something else. Something extra? Like I can smell you and you plus something different. You but sweeter? I don't know." Jisoo grimaced. That was a horrible explanation, but it was the best she could do.

You chuckled lightly, "I believe you, Jisoo. That's not really what I meant. I mean what does it mean for us?"

Jisoo removed Lia from the counter and placed her on the floor. The toddler ran away hurriedly only to smack into your legs.

"Well, I imprinted on you-"

That explained why you could never tell who it was based off of emotions alone. Chaeyoung isn't very intense in general and everytime Jisoo had an intense emotion you were already having that same intense emotion as well. Hard to tell the difference between very sad and also very sad.

"-and I mated you, and I got you pregnant, I think I successfully managed to trick you into sticking with me for the rest of our lives." Jisoo smiled triumphantly.

"You seem way too proud of that." You bent down to pick up Lia. You settled her on your hip.

"Oh, that's because I am. I'd even do a little victory dance if I thought I wouldn't trip and bust my head open." Jisoo settled for patting herself on her back enthusiastically.

You didn't reward any of that with a response, but you did gaze at Jisoo lovingly. You don't think you could hide that even if you tried anymore.

"I-"

"If you're about to apologize again, save it. I've told you, it's okay. Besides, I won." Jisoo scooted from behind the kitchen island and approached you. You don't try to convince Jisoo that you weren't going to apologize, because Jisoo could read you now. Jisoo just knew.

"I don't know how I feel about you applying I was something to be won."

Jisoo smiled softly, "I got you, didn't I? Which is exactly what I wanted. So yeah, I won."

You sighed wistfully as Jisoo placed a soft kiss to your cheek, ignoring Lia's glare, "So you were first place after all, huh?"

You smirked, "Always."

[judgement-free-sideblog]

Dancing lessons

Barry Berkman x reader

Summary: Barry is finally cast in a feature, the problem? He said he could dance and now he can either disappoint Sally or found a way to learn some steps.

Warnings: Swearing, blood, violence, guns, cheating maybe.

Part 1 ● Part 2 ● Part 3 ● Part 4 ● Part 5 ● Part 6 ● Part 7 ● Part 8 ● Epilogue

Part 3

The cheerful notes of the Pas de deux of Swan Lake's third act started to play and you were all alone in the studio, the girls had been practicing to that and it was still in the record player, you were liying on the floor, and your pointe shoes were next to you.

Barry have left about fifteen minutes before leaving your head troubled with his words. After on long hour of practice he was finally getting somewhere with the slower rhythms of tango, but there was a long way ahead of him to learn his routine.

Tired he sitted on the wooden floor looking at himself in the mirror, and you went to sit next to him.

"Well that's an improvement" You told him and he gave you a nod, and a smile while he tried to catch his breath "You should be proud, is more than I expected"

"It's all you, you are an excellent teacher" He said sincerely "I just hope all this work is worthy"

"Worthy or not I still get paid" you wink at him and stood up giving him a hand to do the same.

"Of course, I meant..." He took your hand, and stood next to you "I accidentally listen to Janice and Andre fighting on the phone, and it sounded like they were removing the scene, I mean I had the other scenes but I don't want to know I have spend the last 5 days rubbing Voltatrol on my calf and knees for nothing"

"Well I wouldn't say for nothing, you have learned a new skill and I'm sure you may take your girlfriend out to dance and she would appreciate it"

"Yeah, once she is not busy" he sounded hurt, but you didn't feel it was your place to ask, and didn't needed because he kept talking "I mean I know that she is working on something she loves, and I'm proud of her and I love her but..."

"You wish she had more time for you?" You asked, interested since this was the first real personal conversation you had with him.

"Yeah, you know. More like you" He said and you gave him a very confused look "Well you and your husband, I wish we were like that" he added nervously.

"Like what?" Sick of each other to stubborn to quit your mind said but your face continued smiling.

"Well you work in something you love, and you are really good at it, and I always have the feeling that I'm not enough for Sally, is not like she says it, is just that she always have something more important, and I fear one day she will found someone more important than me" You nodded with your lips extremely closed trying not to be mad at him since you actually didn't know him. "Also you work at home that's good too" the innocence on wich he said it made you furious for some reason.

"You had no idea what you are talking about" you told him, again trying to not sound too harsh and not succeeding "Lesson is over you can leave"

"What? No, I meant it as a compliment, you have the best job..."

"Shut it!" You scream and he looked shock at you "I'm sorry I didn't mean to yell, but that's just stupid you know? I don't mean to offend you, but you are at a studio 6 to 7 hours every morning surround by beautiful actresses, and here two hours every day with a woman basically rubbing on you, think about that for a second" You told him but he didn't say anything "If she didn't have her show, and she had to sit at home waiting for you, I bet you would not consider you are letting her down"

"Well no, because..." He started but you make it shut down with a movement of your hand.

"Because you are the big guy, the man, the one allowed to have dreams and follow them even if you have to put other people's needs apart. Maybe think about that and then you can talk" You notice your chest going up and down quickly and you were thankful you were still on the heels because on your normal level you would have look ridiculous screaming at someone that tall.

"That's what people call toxic masculinity isn't it?" He asked, surprisingly calm

"Get out" You said pointing at the door and turning your back at him

"Yeah, I thought so" He said and pick up his stuff without going to change back to his regular clothes "Same hour tomorrow?" He asked by the door

"Of course" You said and with that he was gone.

As the third act was coming to his end and you could clearly picture in your mind Odile and Rothbart entering the palace, you stood up and put on the shoes, Barry was wrong of course, in expecting a servant woman as a partner, but that was not what hurt you, you made a bow to an invisible Siegfried and make a couple movements to get loose, Mr. Block dare to say that you were happy? Well at least your deception was working and you look like you were, and like you love that job, Odil's coda started and you start making fouettés, one and you could feel your leg shaking but you continued, even when you were moving from your place and in no way at the speed that you wanted, two, three... by the sixth you were sure you could get to twenty, but then at the ninth that old damaged ankle gave in and the stinging pain made you tremble and fall to the ground, but it was okay because once the sharp edge of a chair broke into your skin and everything went black you were no longer thinking about it.

***

About ten minutes after he left the studio, Barry's brain struggled to understand why does Y/N had taken what he said so personally, was then when he realized he was hungry and turn his car to go to the nearest In-N-Out, he searched for his wallet and couldn't find it, Fuck he thought knowing it must be still at the studio with probably his hoodie since he didn't have it either, he made another turn hoping to still find the woman there. The music he could hear when he approached and the lights coming from inside suggest him she was still there.

"Y/N I know you are mad, but I leave my wallet here..." He said opening the door and froze in his place "Jesus, Y/N are you okay??" The women's body was in the floor, with her head over a small pool of her own blood, and next to her one of the chairs covered with her blood too making evident what have happened.

The cut on her head was small, and when he checked on her she still had pulse but was unconscious, and not responding so he carried in his arms back to his car and drove to the closest ER he could find.

"Help please!" He screamed with her in his arms and her blood covering his hands. "She was dancing and fall, she hit her head with a chair" He said to the two nurses that come at his encounter "She is not waking up..." He was agitated and he wanted to scream for them to move faster.

"Hey, hey sir calm down, come on deep breaths" a doctor said once she was in a stretcher and after checking her pupils to be okay, "what's your name sir?" She asked putting a hand on his shoulder and speaking in a calming voice.

"Berkman, I mean, Barry Berkman" He was trying to breath but there was a knot in is chest tightening more every second.

"Ok Mr. Bearkman, go with nurse Joaquin and help him fill some forms and we will take care of her, ok?" Barry nodded and let the nurse to take him away. He filled the forms mechanically not even sure he was putting on them and finally sit on the waiting room. He covered his face with his hands and he saw they were still covered in blood and the memories of the last time he had been in a hospital started rushing to his head like wild horses.

Mr. Cousineau knew, he was sure Fuches had told him the truth about Moss and was trying every day after the arrest to talk to him, and he tried his best to avoid him, he even skip a couple classes until it was impossible to ignore it anymore.

On the other hand the look for Fuches was a waste of time, any rat hole he was hiding in was too hard to locate, and since Hank was back at Chechnya he had no assets to help him.

One night Gene invited Sally and him to have dinner at his lake house again, an obvious set up since they have barely crossed words in the last two months, but after the massacre and the damage he was sure he had caused he felt like it was time to face the truth and find a solution. After all Gene was not Janice, and he was sure they could get to an arrangement.

Sally went to sleep and they were left alone in the livingroom, Mr. Cousineau had a glass of whiskey in his hand and signaled the door with a head gesture, and Barry walked outside with him.

"It would have been nice you know?" He started once they were by the lake. "Growing old here, just me and her, that's all I wanted." He was looking at the water and Barry was behind him just patiently listening. "I kept repeating that night in my mind, over and over again, for so long and it never occurred to me to think about you" Barry's eyes were fighting back tears since Cousineau was standing right where she was that night "But in all fairness you had told me already what you used to do for a living, I just didn't listen" He turned around and a small silver revolver was in his hands.

"Gene calm down, let's talk about this" Barry started knowing all too well that the old man would shoot his own foot before he could aim at him.

"Why don't you do it one more time?" He asked and took the gun by the barrel and gave it to him.

"Mr. Cousineau what are you talking about?" He asked perplex.

"My life is meaningless Barry, I have no longer reason to live without her and even when I hate to admit it Leo being back in my life is just not enough, so since you owned me this do it, take my life like you took hers" He put the gun in Barry's hand an point to his head "Just do it"

"Are you insane? Sally is in the house" Barry let go from his hand and put the gun down "Where did you get this?"

"Is mine, I bought it to kill you, but I can't do that, I'm too much of a coward, I don't even have te courage to kill myself, that's why I need your help" His voice was calmed and a monotone, but his eyes reflected a broken man and Barry feared he might convince him.

"Let's get inside, we can talk about this later ok?" He said taking his hand, and the man followed him like a sheep.

"You'll have to do it at some point, I haven't told the police but I might" he said once they were on the house, and he walked to his room leaving Barry alone in the dark.

A couple weeks later Fuches broke into his apartment, he looked sick, skinnier, with several scars and open wounds on his face. Apparently the Chechens blamed him for the massacre in the monastery and he managed to make a deal to bring him to them.

"And why would I go?" He asked once he was tied to a chair "Do you really thought you could take me?" He asked, not to brag but he was in terrible shape and it didn't cost him much to subdue him.

"Oh I knew I couldn't, what I need is your help to flee the country, they know you want to kill me, if they think I failed and that you did they would leave me alone" He said, and he was no longer the man Barry used to know, he was erratic and completely disturbed.

"What if actually kill you and we end this for once?" He said and pointed his gun at him.

"You wouldn't, you don't want to, I have followed you, you live your life like the happy little lep dog of that blondie, and that's fine. You don't want to unleash the real Barry again, and I'm counting with that" He said and Barry got angry because he was right. He left him go without accepting his offer, but he was sure he will came back.

The days passed and he was holding on to the hope both men will drop their "plans" and since Mr Cousineau was becoming a granddad and he was offering a big party he believed at least he had.

The morning of the party Gene asked him to help him buy some party supplies and he gladly accepted, by two in the afternoon they were loading the car with bags and talking about the new baby in the almost empty parking lot.

"Barry, do you remember what I asked you?" He said after putting in the las bag.

"I do, and the answer is the same, it won't happen" he said frowning.

"And I hope it doesn't, the thing is, you don't know how great life is until you know it, I mean I'm giving a baby shower for a woman I barely know because she is having my granddaughter"

"That's great, I'm sure Leo is thankful for that" Barry was not completely sure of why he was saying, so he asked. "And now what, are you telling the police?"

"Oh jesus no, that's a lot more trouble, and that won't be enough punishment for you, I want you out of the class, forever. After the party, you'll make a brilliant excuse and you will leave us alone" It was obvious he had rehearse that speech because he was not even looking at Barry who was about to replicate when the sound of a laugh make them turn around.

"Oh look the little actor guy is breaking up with you" Fuches said, he had a gun in his hand and was aiming at Barry.

"You??" Gene asked recognizing the so called Detective that had showed him Janice's body, and told him about Barry "what else do you want from me?" He ask with his voice about to break.

"Absolutely nothing, but since our boy here is not responding to diplomacy I thought a little pressure may help, now Barry be a good sport and come with me or" He said and got closer to Gene still pointing the gun at him.

"Fuches stop this man, leave him alone, he is not part of this" Barry tried to reason with him "Let's talk about this, leave him alone and I'll figure out a way to help you, come on man" He started to come closer, and tried to move Gene away from Fuches.

"You really need to know who is in charge here Barry" Fuches said and shoot the gun, it was all so fast, as Gene body fall to the ground and Barry tried to hold him as Fuches was running away, but he didn't bother on follow him, his only concern at that moment was to put pressure on Mr. Cousineau wound and wait patiently for the ambulance to arrive.

"Is going to be ok, don't close your eyes, just hold on" He said while he dialed 911 on his phone "Hi, my... my friend has been shot, outside Ralphs on Venice Boulevard"

"That really hurts you know? I don't know why would I tell yo to do that to me, but in the end you didn't, isn't it funny Barry?" He said before losing conciousness.

The lights of the ambulance came a couple minutes later, and they drove him to the ER, they asked him a couple questions and send him to the waiting room, he sited and waited for Leo and Sally to get to the hospital, he waited as he went into surgery, and he waited until the doctor come out to tell them he was out of surgery. The story they told was that some burglar tried to stole the car from them, and since the cameras on the supermarket recorded Fuches coming at them it was believable.

He spend every afternoon outside work in that hospital for the next week helping Leo take care of his dad. And even when Mr. Cousineau was thankful for his gesture he end up leaving the class when he came out of the hospital, hoping that being apart from him was enough to prevent more damage.

And now here he was, again waiting, again with blood on his hands, just that this time it was not his fault, the doctor came out a couple minutes later and walked him to her bed, they had shave part of her hair and put some stitches to stop the bleeding, and she was now awake, talking very animated with a nurse.

"And then you just add as much mozzarella as you want Abby" Y/N said and finally looked at Barry approaching to her bed.

"Well it sounds delicious, I would definitely try it. Thanks Y/N" The nurse saw the doctor and immediately walked away.

"Well apparently you are doing better Mrs. Berkman, but I still prefer for you to stay here for a couple more hours just to make sure you don't have a concussion" The way she addressed her took Barry by surprise but he didn't say anything.

"Do I have to? I'm fine, it was just a bump on the head, and you already fix that, and gave me a edgy haircut thanks for that" She responded, not bothering to correct her, wich was a surprise for Barry.

"Ok, let's do this, your husband can take you home, but you can't go the sleep, stay awake for at least the next 12 hours, and if anything happens in that time you can call me ok?" She said writing her number in a piece of paper and giving it to Barry "I'll make someone take this off" She signaled the IV on her arm and walked away.

"Ok hubby let's go" She winked at Barry once they were done with the paper work and inside Barry's car.

"Why didn't you said anything?" He asked starting the engine.

"Because they would have called Alan and since he is in Texas in a business trip I would have to stay the night there waiting for him to fly back so they could discharge me" She said like it was not a big deal "and don't worry I put my on social security number, so the bill won't be a problem."

"So your apartment is empty?" He asked thinking about what the doctor said.

"It is, but don't worry I can stay awake" She smile at him.

"Bullshit, I'll stay with you, at least until you are clear to sleep" He said and she let go a little chuckle.

"Oh look at you, what a nice husband" the comment almost make him blush but he focused on the road. "Fine let's go, we could find something to do for the next twelve hours"

I'm so sorry I didn't post this yesterday but I got the flu and I feel like shit, anyway I hope you enjoy this.

@meraki--mei

[hippityhoppityyourenowmyproperty]

Reset! Rant (part 2)

Chapter: 10

In this chapter Wally shows up at Helen's house and confronts Thad with his earlier actions. (That being killing the clone.) He expresses his worry about Thad being around Bart and the potential threat he's posing to him.

Stopping when Wally didn't move out of the way, Thad glared up at the Flash. "What are you looking up?" "A killer." Wally replied. "You're not going anywhere alone with Bart."

...................................."Thanks." Then Wally looked to Thad. "Still, killing isn't the answer."

That's right, Wally is the one who tries to make sure that no more harm will come to Bart from the hands of Thad. No, not Helen is giving him the "Killing isn't right and I will not accept you going around murdering any more people" talk, it has to be Wally. Wally, the guy who can't be in the same room as Bart for more than ten minutes without getting into a fight with him is more concerned with his welfare than his actual surrogate mother. Once again, Helen comes off as irresponsible in her duties as his guard.

Around a mouthful of egg and sausage, Bart mused, "So what does that make a robot dog?" Reminded of his own dog begging by his chair, Bart dropped a piece of sausage on the floor for Dox.

Raising an eyebrow, Thaddeus eyed Bart. "I have to wonder if I was lied to about being a clone. Moments like that would be better explained if I was the original and you were the copy. So much could be excused by a bad splice."

What he's suggesting is: "I'm better than you and you are inherently flawed." And yes, both Helen and Wally heard Thad's put down, but neither of them spoke up about it. That implies that they think what Thad stated about Bart is right/doesn't need to be corrected.

Chapter: 11

Thad: "Max is why I'm helping. That he is too important to loose is why I'm leading. Bart lacks the capacity of forethought that is requiered in an operation like this."

This will become pertinent later when talking about Thad's hypocrisy.

Thad: "Until we encounter Rival, do not use your meta human abilities under any circumstances." Kon frowned and remarked, "Don't spoke the locals. Yeah, I think we can figure that one out for ourselves. We don't all ride the short bus."

"I was more concerned about Bart", Thad added.

"Hey! I know how to not use my powers!" Bart protested.

Thad muttered under his breath, "That's obvious."

That's judging and criticizing disguised as advice and a put down. And yes, Kon is a massive dick for saying the shortbus insult for the same reasons Thad was a douche for using the insult on Bart. Expressing his disdain through this term is still extremely inappropriate and unacceptable.

"I don't like him. He's a bossy jerk." Kon said to Bart as he leaned back. "Inertia? Yeah but at least he's helping."

Bart is saying that Thad helping him with bringing back Max justifies his shitty behavior. It obviously doesn't. Firstly, Thad is not doing this because he wants to do Bart a favor. He's solely doing this because he wants Max back. He's doing this for himself. If Carol or Helen had vanished, he wouldn't lift one finger to help find them. Secondly, him helping Bart does not excuse his toxic behavior. He can't just treat Bart however he likes because they're both working towards the same goal. He's still a dick for calling Bart these names.

Chapter 12:

"That was foul" Thaddeus remarked sourly. "Though we would have been here already if Bart hadn't missed a decimal point in the time coordinates.

"I couldn't hit it!", Bart defended, "Your arm was in the way!"

This is and excellent example of accusing and blaming coupled with senseless judging and criticizing. Thad is chewing Bart out for something that is completely irrelevant and unimportant, and that doesn't negatively affect him in the least. Furthermore, saying this after they landed didn't help Bart or the others in any shape or form. He's solely critizising him because he can and because putting Bart down makes him feel more powerful and superior. Then you have the fact that he's blaming Bart for something that is out of his control. He couldn't have changed it if he wanted to. It's not his fault that he missed it, like Thad wants him to believe. And, the most ironic part of course, is that Thad himself is responsible for Bart not being able to do what Thad reprimended him for not doing. If it wasn't for Thad, Bart would have been able to press the button. After Bart calling him out on his flawed logic and pointing out that Thad's accusations are unjustified and don't make sense, Thad stops responding. He drops the subject and ignores Bart's complaints. Moreover, we can't skip over the fact that Thad was adressing Bart's friends when critizising him, and not Bart himself. He's trying to get them to turn on Bart. He wants them to join in on ripping on him. 'Look at this idiot and be displeased with him', he's saying. 'Look at how dumb he is for having a minor mess up that doesn't affect us and that I'm really responsible for.' Abusers will often call people out on their (insignificant) mistakes or shame them for their personality flaws in public when in front of their friends or in privacy in order to humiliate and embarrass them. It's another insidious way of damaging their self worth and taking power away from them. Being exposed to a treatment like this for an extended period of time is like poison for a person's self esteem and sense of self worth. Sooner or later, nothing the victim of the abuse does or says will be good enough. Seemingly everything they do is wrong. The recipent of the abuse will start questioning their personality as a whole. The abuse will destroy a person's self confidence and self value and make them exactly believe what their abuser wants them to think of themselves. They're 'just' words, but they have a huge impact on a person. They can appear harmless and innocuous but they're not. It's a sentence that seems for a lot of people normal or acceptable, but it's lethal for someone's self esteem.

Thad: "I've taken Max into the speed force before to help him reconnect with it."

Thad uses I instead of we. He 'forgets' to mention that Bart helped carry Max into it after Thad tried to kill them and then left. Bart was the one who actually carried Max through the most dangerous part of the speed force, namely the speed storm. If anyone deserves credit for saving Max, it's Bart.

Kon's laughter managed to reach their ears. "I should have brought a camera! That was epic fail!" He was still laughing when their staggered to their feet. Inertia pressed his hand against the ball's wall with a rude gesture.

....................................

"We could do another practice run," Inertia suggested,"Superboy is close to Max's mass and he's invulnerable." ....................................Inertia saw the display read almost at the goal point where Morlo would shut down the run and grinned. He let go of Kon, hopped to one side and kept running. Kon and Bart crashed down and were pasted against the transparent wall, spinning at a sickening rate. With an extra burst of speed, Inertia kicked the ball faster and then vibrated out of it. Crossing his arms and laughing, he watched Kon and Bart spin around in the ball. When it finally came to a stop, Kon and Bart cralwed out of it. Inertia leaned over Kon "You're right, that was hilarious. I should have brought a camera." Impulse pulled the trashcan towards him and draped over it. "No more spinning", he moaned,"I hate spinning." .................................... "So, are we ready for the real run?" "As soon as Impulse gets back up," Morlo answered.

"I hate spinning" Impulse weakly repeated into the trashcan.

Inertia strode towards the sleeping rival. To Empress he asked: "How long will he stay unconscious?" "Hard to say," She replied. "So, you should move fast. You don't want him waking up while you're running."

So apart from that Bart shouldn't experience nearly as much nausea from spinning around as Thad should because his father was a Tornado Twin and that DNA string was removed from Thad's biology, and that Thad was only written to be more impervious to vertigo to make him appear superior and more "in control" than Bart, this is were Thad's action once again cross over to highly irresponsible, petty, selfish and, quite frankly, douchey behavior. He forces Bart and Kon to experience extreme vertigo because his ego can't take one joke. His pride was so wounded that he had to inflict pain on both of them so that he could regain the respect he thought Kon owned him. He doesn't care that Bart, who did absolutely nothing wrong, suffers as well. He probably views it as a bonus to humiliate Bart again. Thad only cares about reigning in Kon for his comment, it's not important to him who else gets hurt in the process. All he cares about is himself and how he feels, the rest of the world can go die if it were up to him.

The things he does are also very reckless and, dare I say, impulsive. They're on a time limit here. Empress used her voodoo magic on Rival to temporarly render him unconcious. Temporarly being the key word here. She admits that Rival could wake up at any moment and that she doesn't know how long she will be able to maintain control over him. And what brillant move does Thad, the boy who has supposedly as much brains as Robin has, pull? He holds them up with unnecessary pranks because he can't take his big ego being damaged. If Thad dislikes arrogant people who like to ridicule others so much, then he should take a good look into the mirror and start changing his ways. He his more oblivious to his own behavior than Bart is, and that's so ironic. Thad is supposed to be smart in this, but this was a reckless and selfish move. Rival could wake up at any moment, Thad actively endangers everyone that's in the lap with them. He risks Rival breaking free and killing even more people because it's more important to him that Kon 'knows his place'. By the way, great job on making Bart, your partner whom you need to success with carrying Rival through the speed force, trust you. What was it what you said about Bart again? That he lacks the capacity of forethought that is requiered in an operation like this? My, how the tables have turned.

Chapter: 13

Another possibility dawned on him. "What if that's why they weren't doing much to help Max in the first place?" His vision tunneled on the skillet with which he was cooking with and he clenched his jaw. "Why didn't they tell me? Why do I always have to be left in the dark?"

Thad's voice broke in,"Because you're an idiot. You would just brainlessly jump in and do the stupidest thing possible."

Another insult from Thad designed to make Bart even more anxious about his deep insecurities and shame him for having ADHD. Carol sits next to Bart while this scene happens, and she says nothing to comfort Bart and ease his concerns, nor does she tell Thad to lay off Bart or make him understand that his behavior is unacceptable.

"We're traveling through time, moron," countered Thad, "We can return later tonight, no matter how long it takes."

And another degrotary term linked to Bart being nd.

Chapter: 14

Shaking her head again, Meloni answered,"Sorry, sunshine. You said that it was a timeline that wouldn't happen? I'm guessing that the me that helped you was from the other timeline. She never existed here, so I don't remember any of that."

"Oh."

Thad rolled his eyes and snorted. "I can't believe you had to be told that." Bart scowled at him.

"Jerk."

"R*tard", Thad shot back.

Meloni stood up and pushed her dying hair away from her face. "I'm going to get dressed. If you're hungry, help yourself to the kitchen."

This. This is what convinced me to write this rant. To use the r-word on someone is offensive and repulsive for the same reasons the shortbus insults are unacceptable, but it's way worse. This is the most obvious way of saying: "You're inadequate/weird/not functioning properly/dumb because you are neurodivergent and because of that you should be ashamed of yourself and you deserve to feel bad." Being called a r*tard is like a punch to the face. It's extremely hurtful and damaging. It would be detestable if Thad would have used it on someone who didn't have ADHD, too, but for him to use it on someone who has it is just down right loathsome and shows us what a contemptible and vile person Thad is. You don't call this someone unless you really want to make them feel hurt and worthless. You don't do this unless you are a dispicable person. Calling nd people this is not okay, it's not funny, it's not harmless, stop using this word and start watching your language. If you can't see by now how abusive Thad is in this, then I don't think you will ever understand it. This is so unbelievable disrespectful and inexcusable, so goddamn contemptuous and insolent on Thad's part that I honestly expected Bart to finally snap and grind Thad's face into the dirt. Thad is such a condescending and self-entitled asshole in this that I hoped for someone to finally confront him with consequences for his shitty actions. But nope, he gets away with it yet again, all the while people will still criticize Bart for having minor mess ups. And this brings me right to my next point: Meloni's reaction, or rather, lack thereof. Meloni. HEY MELONI. You want to say something about your own child being called a r*tard right in front of you? You want to reign Thad in for insulting Bart like that? My god, how much do you have to hate your child to let someone call him the r-word right in front of your eyes and let them get away with it? She's not showing the slightest signs of disapproval or anger. We are supposed to see Meloni as a good parent, but she really isn't. She's terrible at parenting. Her standing up and leaving the room comes off as a "Oh my god you two are so annoying with your endless bickering, can't you get along?" She should have been livid and angry about Thad's comments, but she's not. Alone the degrading "I can't belive you had to be told that" should have been enough to set her off, but it doesn't. She shows the same apathy to Thad's verbal harassment that Helen shows. She's a neglectful and shitty parent. If it were up to me, I wouldn't let her take care of Bart and Thad out of concern for Bart's mental health. In fact, I would call the child service on both Helen and Meloni for their horrible "parenting" style. And by the way, r*tard isn't stared out in the original.

This whole scene is so disgusting and disturbing that it made me feel physically sick while reading it. I couldn't believe what I was reading, I really couldn't.

Chapter: 15

Thad:"I still reserve the brotherly right of beating the ever loving snot out of you whenever you get too annying."

No, no you fucking don't. This is the opposite of what being brothers means. You don't get to hurt Bart just because you feel like it. Stop being so entitled. Just so you known, he threatens Bart in front of Meloni and despite a soft spoken "Thaddeus." We get no reaction. This is especially careless on her part when you remember that the the "still" implies that he already beat him up for being annoying before. You see how upon learning new informations he immediatly tries to twist it around so that he can further justify his abuse?