#smells like.....

[hotmess-exe]

I repeat: Happy Pride!

[teaboot]

When I was a kid one of my moms would call her period "moon time" or "her monthlies" or shit like that and my other mom straight up stealthed it, but when I'm a dad I think I'm gonna go straight down the middle and call it Werewolf Week. Like sorry kids, dad can't roughouse right now, it's Werewolf Week

[mikufanclub]

ohhhhh okay

[calamitys-child]

What's everyone's favourite flowers that aren't like. The normal ones. Like everyone's a fan of roses and sunflowers what's a more niche one. One you don't get in gift sets. Mine's sweet peas

[drakenathan]

[time-woods]

dingdingding who wouldve guessed it ! its bill cipher ! wow !

before i settled on thewhole mask thinghe was gonna hav this bigass hat but it clashed with the fur too much so idecided against it

[bixels]

me too, luna.

[mr-malumm]

Morning routine of local TV star

[shotmrmiller]

sex pollen trope where you're the one affected, having been exposed to some dense gas while on an op that felt like harsh sandpaper across your throat and lungs, and now you're a feverish mess on some ratty cot in a safe house and with only ghost as company, it's miserable, as the saying goes.

hair sticking to your sweaty skin, plastered onto your forehead and neck, every swallow feeling like you've got a mouthful of sand, your fluttering pulse wild and deafening in your ears, and the throbbing ache deep in your core, the blistering heat right below your navel— it'd only been uncomfortable in the beginning, the faint throbbing incredibly familiar, but the more you ignored it, the worse it got.

and now you're here, with arousal sticking your underwear to your pussy, unable to do anything about it because your lieutenant is seated in a corner that lets him have both you and the front door within his line of sight. a quick, discreet rub under your clothes is not an option.

someone put you out of your foggy misery.

"squirmin' like a worm on a 'ook isn't gonna help." his staring doesn't either, yet he does it anyway.

"got to make sure ya aren't dyin' on me." you want to snap that you don't think proof of life is on the darkened stain between your legs, the retort pressed behind clenched teeth but another thick wave of bestial need rolls over you and god, you're about to shove your hand into your underwear, propriety be damned—

"best you don't do tha'." why the fuck not? "you'll only get relief for a moment 'fore it comes back twofold." he says as if he's reading off the morning paper and not watching you fight tooth and nail to not fuck yourself against the pillow your head is on. (soap's offer to be friends with benefits is only looking better by the hour.)

you hastily decide that it'll be better than nothing. you'll just have to rub your pussy raw until this drug runs its course and you're telling him to piss off or don't, but you've had enough. you're stuck here with him anyway, no flight home until the morn and you're not about to spend it writhing around.

"if tha's wha' you want," ghost bites his gloves off, spitting them out onto the ground before curling his hands around your ankles and dragging you toward him. "i will help." your entire world narrows down to the feel of him touching your skin, his fingers searing as they hook into the waistband of your pants, and you almost kick him in the mouth trying to get them off faster.

"but 'm not fuckin' you." the bite of disappointment is quickly forgotten, his breath warm against your slick pussy, and after three quick glides of his tongue over your pearl, your orgasm crests, pulse after pulse of pleasure so potent it stung.

in less than a minute you're burning again, need thrumming through you and with the heady push and drag of his middle finger over your sensitive nerves, curling in you until he can fit two, three—

you're lost.

(ghost telling you that he's not doing anything else because if he's going to fuck you then you're going to remember it falls on ringing ears.)

[weirdsociology]

hey writers we have to talk.

if you've read any romance or fanfic in the past twenty years (i know you have), you know that there are a certain number of scents associated with hot dudes. you can probably recite the list of Things Men in Fic smell like in your sleep: leather, black pepper, pine, sandalwood, "something uniquely him", clean sweat, and if the character has ever fucking been within 50 yards of a firearm, something called "cordite".

here's the thing.

NO ONE SMELLS LIKE CORDITE.

cordite was a highly specific type of smokeless gunpowder developed in the 1890s by england specifically and used mostly in wwi.

if your good-smelling guy is not (a) english (b) using a very specific type of british rifle (c) dying in a trench in flanders, he does not smell like cordite. technically even if he does meet all those conditions he still doesn't smell like cordite because he smells like trenchfoot.

the point is, cordite is so far from universal that no one but the most hardcore gun nerds give a single shit about it. making your Sexy Hero smell like cordite is like naming a cassette-only bootleg live recording from the 1970s as your favorite grateful dead album. everyone at the party hates you immediately and knows you're doing it for clout. also, it's just factually... wrong. please stop. i know everyone else is doing it, but you can do the right thing here, i believe in you.

so what do people who are using guns smell like?

well if your story is set before the late 1880s, the smell of a fired gun is black powder, which, unfortunately, smells like seventeen flatulent cows have been shoved in a tire factory. trust me, you do not want your Hot Dude to smell like black powder. it's b a d.

if your story is set after the late 1880s, guns are using some variety of modern 'smokeless' powder - which speaking broadly doesn't really have a ton of scent when used. it does have some, but it's sort of non-descript: the best way i can describe it is the sweet, ozone, hot-plate smell of popping your car hood with a warm engine.

people who use guns a lot don't smell like fired guns all the time anyway, so while those scents might work in a fight scene, they're not realistic all the time. but there are some things that your Sexy Shootist will smell like basically 24/7 and that's metal and gun oil. metal you can go and sniff (i recommend non-stainless steel), but if you want a reference, most gun oils have a sharp, organic smell that's not dissimilar to canola oil but muskier and with a tang overtop. it's not unlikely leather is in the mix as well due to routine handling of leather equipment and gear. modern gear also tends to have a certain smell although it varies by production country and storage conditions - lots of opportunities there.

in conclusion: gunslingers and hired killers and military folks can be sexy and smell great on page, but i am begging you not to say "cordite" when you mean "gunpowder" ever again. we can do this. we are writers and therefore pedants. i believe in us!

[batemanofficial]

that smoking in public poll got me thinking. you don't get to waffle about being neutral with these options you gotta choose

i personally like the smell of weed but dislike the smell of cigarette/tobacco smoke, but combing through the notes on that poll indicates that this opinion may be unpopular! idk!

[verawhisk]

You are safe. The winds of fate blow you to the warmest of hearths in the most cordial of inns. The touch of the sun comforts your flesh, but never burns it.

my commissions are closed, but you can still look at my prices here!

[technically-human]

I delivered

[inbabylontheywept]

she was dead silent on the drive home, but that was okay. sometimes, after band practice, she was just out of words. it was a short drive to her house. the only part where it actually felt weird was after i pulled up her parent’s driveway. 

after that, the silence stretched so far it smeared and left a weird residue. she kept looking at the car door like she wanted to leave, so i looked at the door too, then she looked at me, and i looked at her, and my first thought was that she was going to tell me that the door was stuck. i was used to that car always doing some damn thing. it was the car me and all my siblings had learned to drive in, and it was really beat to hell. there were dents all over the body, which we’d unsuccessfully tried fixing up with spackle. it had looked nice for maybe a week, but then the sun wrecked it - the spackle cracked up like the mud on the bottom of a dry riverbed and turned a sort of off yellow-white that made the car looked like it had been molded out of chicken shit. it also had a bullet hole it through the cabin that whistled like a toothless old man whenever the car went above 40, so loud it could drown out the radio, and a cabin that smelled so strongly of bugspray that even the arizona summer we drove everywhere we could with the windows down.

(if you have kids one day, you will maybe, possibly, begin to understand how much i loved that car.)

anyway, i was thinking about what else could possibly be wrong with the chickenshitmobile, and she just kept looking at me, and then i wondered if there was something on my face, and she just kept looking at me, and then the penny dropped and i realized she was trying to work up the nerve to break up with me. 

now, i’d seen her work up the nerve to do things like this before – it could take quite a while. and knowing it was about to happen made the waiting immediately unbearable. 

so i said hey. 

and she looked at me, very startled, and said hey back real small. like she’d been caught. and in a way, i suppose she had. 

and i said it’s okay. you can just say it. i’ll be okay.

i’m always okay. 

and she said: i’m really sorry. 

i loved her, you know? it was highschool, but teenagers are capable of love. the way people love changes over time just as much as the way they stand, or the way they talk, but things don’t stop existing just because they're different. opposite really – a thing only stops changing when it's fully gone.

and i said, nothing to be sorry for, and i meant it. she looked a little relived, and i was happy to give her that peace. then she left. i watched her make it through the front door, because that was just habit at that point, and then i sat there a while afterwards, checking how i felt. and the answer was not good, but good enough to make it home. good enough to limp on. 

so i put my car in reverse, took my last look goodbye, and immediately backed into her neighbor’s car. 

crunch. 

air bags didn't go off, which was good. i left a decent dent in the bumper of the other car. genuinely couldn’t tell if i did anything to my car – anything wrong with it just kind of blended together into the general ecosystem of hand mottled, sun cracked, chickenshit spackle. 

i checked my glove box, and my car insurance info was, of course, out of date. my phone was dead too. as a teenager, my phone was less my lifeline to my friends, and more my tether to my parents, so i wasn’t particularly conscious of keeping it charged. both my fault.

i sat there a few minutes, trying to think of the best way to handle things, and there was only one answer i could think of, and i hated that answer, so i spent a few more minutes trying and failing to think of a better one, and then a few more coming to peace with what had to be done. 

then i went back to knock on my now ex’s front door. 

her dad opened, which i was very relieved over, even if he seemed less than thrilled. he looked me over, and in a firm, but slightly apologetic way said: she does not want to see you right now. 

(i think he assumed i was going to try and talk her out of the break up?)

and i said not here for her. i just backed into your neighbor’s car, and i need to call my dad, but my phone’s dead. could i borrow yours?

and he looked at me, then back at his neighbors car, which sure enough was dented, then he looked at the chickenshitmobile, and if there was something wrong with it, it just kind of blended into the general Wrongness of the car, then back to me, and i could see him imagining the last ten minutes from my pov: getting broken up with, backing into a car, having to walk up to your exes door and borrow a phone, calling my dad to tell him that i just reversed into someone.  

and his expression shifted from stern and apologetic to truly sad, which felt more kind that i deserved. things only got here because i kept fucking up - forgot to look behind me, forgot to replace the insurance forms, forgot to charge my phone. it was my mess, but his sympathy meant the world to me. i probably would’ve cried if he said sorry, or patted me on the back or called me sport, but instead he said

stay out here – i’ll bring you a phone.

and then he left.  

i found a nice spot on the lawn in the shade under a sycamore, then settled into his grass.i was trying not to freak out, and was doing an okay job. he came out a minute or so later, not just with a phone, but a juicebox and a jar of green olives, which really threw a wrench in the whole try not to cry thing. soon as i saw those, a few tears squoze out. i was still hoping i could pass them off as Manly Tears but then he told me that he’d gotten the olives a few weeks before and had been meaning to hand them off to me, and that this was his last chance for that. then i made a sound like a horse drowning in a bog, and he patted my back pretty rough, four solid thumps, like he wasn't sure if i was crying or choking on an olive, and was trying to cover both bases at once.

then he went back inside, and i made a few more bog horse noises while finishing off the rest of the entire jar of green olives, and then i called my dad.

he was about ten minutes away that day, and luckily was home. he drove over, and we went to the neighbor’s house, and from there things actually went quite nice. the neighbor was a retired man who actually said he could fix the dent himself, no need for insurance. he said he appreciated that i didn't just drive off, and i said i was really sorry about his car, and he said he was really sorry about my car, and then he gestured to the chickenshitmobile and i laughed because it really was a disaster on wheels.

then we left.

i thought we were going to head straight home, but instead we went to a gas station, and we both got several slim jims that we folded into thick enough coils that we could put them on a hotdog bun because the growing up mormon equivalent of having a sad brewski with your dad is just choosing to make bad decisions sober. then he took me to the canals and we watched the sun turn all orange and pink, and he looked over at me and said:

brains are good at remembering bad days. so you gotta make sure that a bad day has a good part in in, so you can remember that too. remember that when you have a kid. try to do a good job on days like that - they're going to be a big part of how they remember you.

and then he gave me a big hug and said he was never going to eat another slim jim again.

---

the year after that i went to college, which kicked my butt in new and exciting ways. and on a lot of those bad days, after a test that went sour, or a faux paus that was particularly embarrassing, or some other hardship of my new adult life, i’d stop by the gas station and pick up leathery, half jerkied hotdog before heading to the canals to watch the sun set. i’d take a bite and imagine my dad next to me, grimacing through the slim-jim wad, asking what good thing i was going use that time to remember. 

and in my head, i’d say you, dad. 

i’m going to remember you.

[nightmarereverie]

me every day