#so emergency rehousing

[trout-tears]

rehoused Baby into a new enclosure last night ! she's been diggin' , which is good news to me :) go my scarab , renovate .

[mousedetective]

PAYPAL | AMAZON WISHLIST | KOFI | GOFUNDME |PATREON

10/28/24 - New Post!

CAR EMERGENCY + NEED TO COME UP WITH RENT!

Our car died today. Apparently the power steering belt snapped off and one of the things supporting it fell off our car. We already have other repairs that we need done, so we need to raise about $3000 total, with at least $1000 before they can buy parts.

I also have to pay the movers who helped me move storage units $765 after what I already paid, and I'd like to pay them as quickly as possible.

Please spread this far and wide. I can't walk the mile it is to connect to the bus stop to get places so we desperately need to get the car fixed. And we just got rehoused and really don't want to be homeless again.

$1706/$5771

[ms0milk]

𝟏𝟔 | 𝐇𝐞𝐦 𝐊𝐢𝐬𝐬

ー✧ prince!bakugou x royal guard!reader

"This is so much worse than fury, and you rip your hand away from his to take a step back. You didn’t mean to. Bakugou stares like a dragonslayer, heartbroken."

cw blatantly suggestive, an accidental kiss and the panic that follows. bkg doesn't know why he's been looking for you. you couldn't be angry about it if you tried. laughter, bite marks, magic, a warm hiding spot. 8.1k

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A slap across the face and the spatter of blood that follows in an arc across fine rugs. Bakugou bleeds when he tries not to think of you. You are too easy to be with and too difficult to find.

Your prince and fragments of rehearsal fineries that you would beam at if you appeared in this frigid foyer– which he knows only because you’ve done nothing but smile at him for seven cursed days– storm towards warmer hallways. There’s nothing for it but to track you down. He wakes up and you are not outside his door. He eats and meets and eats again and you do not materialize behind him or emerge from shadowed corners to brandish a weapon when unpleasant lords are unpleasant. Are you still following orders or are you finally sick of him?

Bakugou pretends he is not walking quickly. A maid has pointed him in your direction. The waitstaff here has no particular affinity for either of you, so they’ve tried their hardest to answer his questions this week and be rid of Alderans for the day. After all, once he finds you he doesn’t bother anyone else until dawn.

Find is a strong word, the maid thinks as she chews a dry lip. You don’t seem to be hiding from him.

It's the busiest morning, second only to tomorrow’s actual ball, and Bakugou has spent the whole of it in dress fittings and board meetings and appetizer tastings. He was meant to rehearse the first waltz with Fuyumi but for four days in a row she’s had her hands full with final adjustments to royal rosters and seating arrangements. The king is home afterall. And he does not dote on his daughter.

Bakugou turns up a second staircase once he arrives in the center castle and barks at a guard, stationed and startled, in the doorway where he emerges. Shinsou clutches his chest and stares at the imposing prince, heavy but silent.

“Boo. You seen my captain?” Bakugou only half-waits for a response from the apprentice before following his intuition to the left. You like to hide in odd places.

“Yeah,” Shinsou breathes and finds his position again, “carrying her lunch to the catwalks.”

Bakugou grins and hopes you can feel him wherever you are, rolling his eyes.

She was in common clothes– I think, headed towards the throne room.

Haven’t seen her, sir.

Your Alderan? It’s freezing, she should request a jacket from the supply corps.

Five days ago he found you rehousing spiders in the rafters of the greenhouse much to the chagrin of delicate flowers. Two days ago he finally spotted you among a dozen soldiers all helping the blacksmith resilver the inlay of the soldier quarter’s door. Yes, he’d told you to leave his babysitting to Kirishima but he didn’t expect you to listen.

Yesterday, Bakugou caught you wandering through the ninth-story walkways, the walkways sculpted onto the side of the castle like wasp nests where the archers hide. Your fingers, red with cold, gripped the hem of your padded tunic and your back pressed flat to the white castle marble even as you craned to gaze the city and sea over the edge of the balustrade.

Your prince almost screamed when he glanced out one of ten thousand pale windows in his search when instead of the depressing gray sky, it was your braids whipping in the wind outside, several stories higher in the air than he would have liked you.

“Eyes!” He jerked the window open and stuck out his head. 

“The marble is too smooth Highness, please stay inside.”

White pointelle curtains rattled on their rods with the ferocity of the afternoon wind. “Come now,” he’d barked. He swallowed a roar to keep from startling you off the wall. You turned from the view towards his outstretched hand and half a golden body out the little window, and smiled.

You smiled from the cobwebs when he asked you what the fuck you were doing in blue begonias. You smiled at him among the crowd when he mimed flexing from the gallery to mock the blacksmith. You smiled when he caught you practicing sword forms for bored children and again when he and Kirishima joined in. You smiled without thought and he warmed at the sight of it. He laughed.

He laughed when the florist shrieked over a clutch of spider eggs and he laughed when you hammered Aizawa’s door crooked in your distraction. He laughed when Kaminari tried to teach you to juggle apples in potion storage, and very softly he laughed when he found you asleep beside the proofing ovens.

The castle’s vanity seeps into every orifice, it bleeds from the seamless walls and into seed-sized crannies. Family portraits, royal crests, kingdom’s colors, wards against death written in old Takoban like they think this is the only kingdom on the continent where people might live forever. Superstition and agitation nick the Alderan like thorns through cold blue hallways. He itches for forests. On the third floor of the East Wing there is a great open gallery. It hangs over the grand staircase of the castle’s entrance so that an invaders couldn’t so much as piss over the threshold before the legion of soldiers that fit upstairs fired off their arrows.

It was only a matter of time before you found yourself a roost here, warmaster.

He knows where you are. He can hear the king shouting from an open door downstairs and crosses the entrance gallery, bathed in warm sunlight from its volley of windows. It takes him exactly as long to cross as it takes the heat through stained glass to pink his shoulders, and with a perfect golden hue he dips under a doorway to find you perched at the lip of a ledge. You’re always about to fucking fall off something.

You sit cross-legged behind a black railing, picking at the cup of fruit beside you. Your hair is getting longer, wilder, and your braids tumble with white ribbons as you follow the scene below.

The ballroom is awash in afternoon light. Dozens of floral arrangements circle a group with the king dead in the middle, roaring at the gathered artisans. Prince Natsuo is slightly behind him and his neck is an agitated red. You pop a berry in your mouth. You were always going to love the catwalks– the thin system above important rooms that servants use to gauge crowds and light the tall candles. All of tomorrow it’ll be crawling with footmen but today you sit comfortably alone in its shadows and watch.

Tension melts from his veins when he finds you and nothing replaces it, so Bakugou isn’t quite sure what he’s thinking when he slips inside to be closer. Jeanist taught him too, he can be quiet. You wipe juice from your lip with your thumb and polish it clean with a lick. You run your fingers through your hair to push your braids behind your shoulders and focus again on the agitated king and his crying arachnophobic florists.

“You stare like the best of ‘em,” Bakugou whispers as he drops behind you and cups a hand over your mouth in case you make a startled sound, although, you react before he actually finishes the thought or announces himself and jerk forward to catch his gentle hand with your teeth.

King, prince, artisan, maids, seagulls, and dustbunnies pause their meeting to interrogate the ceiling, before continuing their jury over the fate of the party decorations. A whiff of caramel is the only thing that keeps you from breaking the hand with your bite and just as quickly as you attempt to reveal the intruder through pain, you swing your arm around to cover the prince’s mouth before he gives away your position with a yelp or fireblast. The momentum flattens you both.

Maybe one day Bakugou will remember that you are filled with the same fire that he is before trying to bother you. When did the urge to bother you even occur to him? Both of you, square on your backs to hide properly in shadows, hold a hand like a muzzle over the other's mouth. He smiles first this time. You smell like blackberries.

Your prince wires his jaw shut when he laughs in the shadows to keep from kissing your palm. In the seconds that the king and his entourage fall silent, Bakugou can only just barely contain huffs from his nostrils and the wet at the corners of his eyes. You stare like always and he must have melted fast enough because horror and apologies haven’t tumbled out of you yet. His dragon’s nails have gotten longer. Loose and wild hairs frame the face he only ever knew as perfectly kempt and unreadable. He cannot stop finding new things to notice here on the itchy rug beside you and he’s grateful you have only covered his mouth because his firebrand eyes gleam when you succumb to your own smile. Immediately your lips to stay quiet the pair of you swallow stupid mirth in the dark.

Where did his anger go? “Ow,” the prince rasps when he’s collected himself and pulls your hand into his.

“Excuse me, Highness,” you whisper back. Your smile still rattles him like a blow to the side of the head. Bakugou rolls onto his back. If you were sick of him you probably wouldn’t lay so close.

He tilts his gaze back to you, “What are you doing up here?”

Watching, you mouth, hoping he'll lower his voice. You pull your hand away from his and look over your shoulder towards the ledge where roars and curses roll up from the king like crashing waves.

“Why?”

It’s as close as Bakugou has ever seen you come to rolling your eyes. You blink at him and press forward. Something horribly soft started to grow the night you helped him carry drunk friends to bed. Something like rot. It eats away at the strongest parts of him, the parts of him that are poised and beautiful and ready for war. It’s eating you too. The strongest parts of you that are silent and obedient and deadly.

You drag your body across the floor to be closer to him– so much closer– so close that your thigh practically drapes over his and you cup your hand to his ear so you can whisper an answer that he can’t even focus long enough to hear. Maybe the rot started earlier. Maybe he should never have picked a fight with you.

A sudden scream flies up from the ballroom and Bakugou reacts before you do, less to offer protection and more because he knows you’ll launch right off the walkway if he doesn’t hold you down, but still his hold is protective when the scream is followed by a pillar of white orange fire that flies high and soots crystals in the chandelier. It’s brief and scalding like a geyser and you are not strong enough to protest your prince tucking all of you under his chest in the interim. You smell like home, like forests like moss. The scent of the sea is finally falling out of your hair.

“In what world is this my responsibility?” the king seethes. His drop in volume is menacing and it echoes violently in the empty room, “pick your own fucking flowers, I have work to do.”

The ballroom doors are not meant to be closed or opened with such force and they scream louder than he can when he burns his way through, leaving the prince and his artisans in the cold and terrible hall. A ball in Takoba– an oxymoron. It's a malicious idea. Bakugou leans back on his arm to release you and sits up to watch Natsuo console his workers. The eldest Takoban prince wears patience well. Whose idea was this party? The same person who sent for Enji? Belligerent. Bakugou hasn’t seen the queen in weeks.

He grumbles before he turns to look at you, “Missed what you said.” But when he does finally look, you are so much Alderan that the cold of Takoba falls off his shoulders like frost. Maybe that’s why he’s been searching for you. The fire that only a life in his castle could stoke, ravages the blacks of your eyes. Even though you are silent, he knows what you’re thinking. “Down girl,” he grins and kicks his legs out from under him to settle more comfortably.

Flowers below are picked in whispered consensus and the room empties under your glare. The sun has started to set. The far wall of the ballroom is, in classic Takoban fashion, one long series of windows taller than most houses and the sea shines behind it in a trick of rolling warm shapes like smoke from a fireplace. You both linger at the edge of the shadows up on high. Bakugou watches you shamelessly.

“I will not attack the king.”

“Who’re you trying to convince?”

You think for a few seconds and turn to him with an awkwardly soft air that crumbles into a smile too easily for you to be the same girl who grew up learning how to kill in his castle. Everything you do but fight is bizarre. Like blue fire, he cannot make himself look away from you.

“What’ll you do at the ball?”

“What do you mean?” The ballroom is empty so there’s no need to whisper but neither of you know how to talk to the other.

Bakugou cocks his head and doesn’t need to hope you know when he rolls his eyes anymore because he can finally do it in front of you. He crosses his arms, “Do you dance? I can’t think of anything else to keep you distracted enough to avoid assassination.”

But you are already distracted by something and he can see the moment you stop listening to him talk. All the better, he thinks. He might have just asked you to dance with him.

“Your hand Highness, I– mers–” and you reach forward to take up his bitten fist like touching him is suddenly the easiest thing in the world. Your fingertips are ice-cold. The rot spreads. “You startled me, I’m so sorry.”

Now Bakugou isn’t listening. You rub at the divots your teeth left in the side of his palm and press them like imperfections in pie dough. Your hands are so much more slender than his. So much rougher. Do you feel it too? The death of fury? How the ocean slowly laps at the bonfire until wood can no longer fight back? Do you remember the library like he does? He wants more than anything to sit in a nook and read for a thousand years in recovery from this trip. Is it a safe place for you, or has he ruined it? Do you miss home like he does? Or has he ruined that too?

“No. I’m sorry,” he admits before thinking. He startled you after all, but immediately he is silent with realization. His breath hods fast in his lungs. Fuck, that’s not– you asked him so clearly not to do that. You watch his fingers twitch for a moment like you can feel his heartbeat there and then look up at him and stare. He’s not sorry for sneaking up on you at all. That’s not what he meant.

Eyes was an apt nickname, if not a little mean. Bakugou has never envied telepaths before. How ignorant he was, to think of you as the bloody little girl in a velvet carriage. You hold his hand now with just as much strength as you did all those years ago; obviously it was strength and not desperation. You did not hang laundry to thank him. You did not catch fruit to thank him. You didn’t learn to fight the rain or windows or soldiers or the sea for your prince. It was only him, making magic for you.

“A sheep apologizing to its collie?”

He startles a little, just a slight widening of his eyes, because you hold his hand up to see the ring of teeth clearly and cover your chuckle with the tips of your fingers.

“Callin me a sheep?”

“You are biteable like one.”

Do you know what you’re doing? Bakugou wonders as his own smile escapes the confines of horror. He snatches his hand back and leans against the black iron railing to face you. Quick wit, quicker draw, why do you hide such pleasant things under such a ferocious– the Alderan blinks and his face falls for half a second again in realization.

You blink back because you cannot read his mind, "Are you okay sir?"

The same fire. If he stopped and thought for a single fucking second you wouldn’t have been the enigma protecting his home. You would have been a girl that he wanted, very much, to talk to in his ceaseless boredom. He relaxes into a smile again and this time his teeth glint, “Don’t call me that.”

Autumn truly is crueler at the edge of the world; the sun sets faster with each second and soon the ballroom below is a great orange pool. He was meant to rehearse the opening waltz today and the thought of you watching him, concealed, makes his ears hot. Florals drift up and up from their vases where they’re warmed in dying afternoon light.

You cross your legs and turn too, “Are you looking forward to it?”

“To what?”

“The ball, Highness. Are they fun?”

“You’ve attended balls,” he grunts and scans his memory for the last party thrown in Aldera, although you don’t appear in the pictures his brain conjures up. “They’re fine. Loud.”

You nod. There are ten-thousand things he could think to ask you and a hundred more questions he knows that the answers will spur but sitting beside you in the dark without a threat to either of your lives is new and overwhelming. Your wild hair makes wild shapes.

“Fuyumi wants to dress you up.”

You don’t find that as funny as he does and you’re frowning when you turn from the view of the ballroom to look at him. He thinks you aren’t afraid of him– he hopes– but he knows you still won’t say what you long to for fear of sounding unprofessional. He’ll have to work on that.

“She gave up on Ochako years ago.”

“Is it a gown?”

“Takoban,” he rests his head on the metal too, enjoying all the scandalized expressions your lips make, “frilly lace, the works.”

You consider this for a moment and make the shape of his name before swallowing it. One more time, “I see.” And you turn back away to think some more, about how to phrase something unprofessional.

He’s teasing, he hasn’t seen the damn thing but for a moment your prince can picture you so clearly, sewn tight into a dress made of sealace. You try to speak again, fail, and lean closer. Your breath is sweet from fruit and your bowl is empty behind you.

“I can’t wear blue for another second, Highness. I’ll hurl the tailor into the sea.”

Bakugou spits over the railing in amusement and huffs when he crosses his arms again.

“Highness please,” you chuckle, “I’ll get violent,” and you smile under the frown, which just serves to make you look even more like a dragon– like you’ll make good on your word– and less like an obedient footsoldier. How do you do it? Bakugou can only stare with a rough affection because if he tried to speak right now something might come out.

You run a hand back through your braids to settle them where you like them to lay. It’s draconic, regal, every way you sit perch and glare from the clearest part of any room. His mother calls it King’s Corner, or the Seat of the Queen, that perfect spot where you can see everything important without showing your back to a soul. That’s always where he finds you. That’s your secret. He pinches an ear between his knuckles to try and cool it down.

“Takoba’s lucky you aren’t a mage,” he manages. He has to look away to say it but he does manage, “should thank you for it.”

“I did try,” you don’t need to manage back. Proximity to him isn’t eating you alive. “And I don’t work for thank yous.”

When Bakugou was ten years old he celebrated his birthday in a parlor with boughs of cherry blossoms and sweets for which he never really had an appetite. He was doted on and he worked hard to deserve it so that anything he wanted to do that day, and any birthday thereafter, was his. You were not celebrated with cake. He wouldn’t know until years later that his mother brought you gifts and good food on your birthday because he could find you every day of the year at work somewhere in his castle. You did not fall ill, you did not fail, and on his birthday you, nine years old, practiced forms in the paths between spring orchards just downwind from the parlor. Jeanist was seated inside with him among the family’s guests. No appetite for cake. Bakugou only celebrated ten birthdays and you have never stopped breaking his heart.

“Tried what?”

You ruffle your own hair so you don’t have to look at him either because at least one thing embarrasses you. “Magic.”

“Magic.”

“It’s not funny,” you chirp at his flat tone and round on him with your legs crossed. He leans back when your voice comes out a bit louder than expected and his bitten fist aches when it clenches. “I would copy you.” The rot makes him weak and useless and susceptible to your stare, but the rot makes you fearless. “I used to watch you studying– when we were really little– when we were both supposed to be eating with everyone in the Hall. You used to,” you look briefly to your side like someone important might be watching you acting so casually and it dims that fire he needs.

“Used to what?” he smiles. He knows you watched him, you must know that too. Finish, please finish your story, he wants to hear your voice tell you more about home.

“Used to watch you flail your chubby arms until sparks came out.”

When Bakugou laughs this time he tries not to hold anything back, if only just to douse you in oil and keep the fire alight. Fucking please, just talk.

“I used to try every night too!–” you laugh, slightly louder, “– wind up my arms tight and spin around my room after curfew– disturb the horses– pretend to be a dragon.”

“Your runty prince looked like a dragon?”

You grin, “My runty prince taught himself magic, didn’t he? What’s wrong with wanting to breathe a little fire?”

“I don’t breathe fire, dumbass.”

“You still make miracles. Ever seen a dragon?”

“Of course I have.”

“Have you ever sheltered from a spray of ethereal flames?”

He frowns and smirks, confused, as if to ask, why have you? And the flint tinder in the bright part of your eyes sparks white hot.

“Melting, crushing, it’s completely inescapable without a barrier mage,” you pull your knee up with a bit of theatrics and lean because with everything inside of you except for actual realization, you want him to listen too. “Pink and red, blue, green golden and white hot. Highness, has no one ever told you how beautiful your magic is? You make magic like a dragon, who wouldn’t want a blessing like that?”

No one would want this cursed fucking magic that prickles his palms with sweat in the dark for no other reason than because you are looking at him, when all he wanted was– he just wanted to see you– watch you, he didn’t need you to watch him back and now the fire of Aldera he keeps trying to warm beside will blast him all the way to the wick. This is the flattery he hears so much about from his blushing mother.

“‘s not special. My magic maims people.”

“So do I.”

He frowns deeper, “Not the same.”

“I worked hard to maim people, it’s not the same because what I do isn’t beautiful.”

“That’s not–” he doesn’t think that. Don’t think that he thinks that, “–work isn’t beautiful. War isn’t beautiful.”

“You’ve never seen war. Highness you make–”

“Fuck off."

“I won’t.”

“Eyes–”

“– it’s beautiful.”

“I make bombs.”

“You make starfall.”

Bakugou stares. Rough affection, yeah right, he’s melting.

You fall back on your hips when you realize you’ve broken clear through the confines of professionalism and the embarrassment sets in quickly. Eyes dart sideways, chest and knees turn. Your embarrassment is a subtle grip on fraying rugs. What do you do to your heart to make it pull so strong in every direction? Is it a spell? One that makes him quiet and happy to wait for his silent guard to speak again. This must be how the queen feels. You turn fully back to the rising orange light of the ballroom below and your lips part before any words are actually ready to come out.

The first time you try to speak, he doesn’t hear you. Bakugou traces the path between your shiny scars with his gaze. One below your ear to the one at your eyebrow and down again, past an old cut in your cheek. You couldn’t douse the forest fire behind those lashes if you tried. Not under orders or oath. Not from embarrassment.

“What does it feel like?” You whisper, looking a great distance down past abandoned flowers.

Both of you have fallen closer to each other in the waves of your nothing conversation, so much so that your shoulders would press together if the rot just ate away a little bit more. Bakugou’s heart sinks into the ballroom. It plummets like a drowned man.

“Gimme your hand.”

This is a fucking mistake, but all your prince can see is the last time pure joy ever sailed across your face in an evening spent around your wonderful campfire. He caused and extinguished it with one spark thrown into your cupped palms, the last time you ever tried to make magic.

“I won’t hurt you,” he rumbles even though it kills him to look at you now.

Your side of the catwalk begins to glow at the lips because the sun has set far enough to climb walls towards the ceiling. You glow with it. Pink in a thousand places, ears and throat, lips, because you’re thinking too hard about what it is to be a proper guard and how much it is probably not raising your voice to delight in magic that does not belong to you. The corners of your mouth tremble. Who was it that told you you talk too much?

“Is that an order?”

“No.” Of course not.

You study the details of the itchy rug for too long, in the new light at its edge. Bakugou used to hate hiding up here in the cold but it was the only place the idiot children his mother sent him here to entertain couldn’t find him. He couldn’t be happier now, now that no one but you can see just how hard he flounders without fury.

Your hips swivel back towards him in precise decision then you fold your knees neatly underneath them to get closer. A few white ribbons in your hair seem to catch fire as the sunlight climbs higher and the sun dips lower out an infinite distance. Every mile it is far, is a mile Bakugou can feel in measures of chill. If Aldera is at the center of the world, Takoba is the outer edge and you remind him just how blessed he is when his hand melts at your Alderan touch. You reach and pull both his fists into the space between your bodies from where they lingered in the air.

“Yes sir.”

“Don’t,” he breathes, watching all the shapes your fingers can make together. He’s a prince, this is ridiculous. He sits up tall and stretches his arms out so you don’t need to reach so far, and makes a safe place for your strong fingers, those calluses and scars, to rest atop his open palms. “Don’t call me sir.”

You are looking at him and considering something about his face, or his words, who knows– one of your eyebrows twitches in decision. It’s remarkable how steady your heads are. You are sure of everything you do even when it’s destructive and disruptive and punishable by death.

Laid out plainly like this and stiller than either of you have ever been together, your fingers and wrists, your palms, even your fingernails are so much more delicate than his. Like if he closed his golden fists, you’d disappear. Compared to the princess you have the hands of a farmer, but not a single thought– past how each other part of your body might look beside his– is allowed to rattle through his head when you watch him, straight ahead, and smile.

“Okay.”

He clears his throat. He’s a mage and magic is easy. He’s not going to set off the sweat on the back of his neck. “Don’t be nervous,” Bakugou grumbles to the dark.

You grin and ghost a thumb over damp of his open palm, “Who are you trying to convince?”

“It’s this stupid fucking magic,” he bites. A bead of sweat drips through his knuckles onto the floor and if he’s not careful he might take out half the castle. Prince and apprentice assassinate world’s most fucked up royal family– he can already see the dossier sitting pretty on his mother’s desk.

You’re suddenly in a wonderful mood and you sit up slightly at the beginnings of warmth under your fingertips. He can hear your knees squeak and count your heartbeats in the veins of your wrist that his own fingertips reach. Those eyes again– always your eyes. They’re colored like any normal pair anyone might ever see but he’s one of few people who watch the dragons. You must have watched them too, too long, for your gaze to become so similar.

It feels like any other second of Bakugou’s life. Setting fire to own hands and measuring the strength of his magic in reds and whites. It’s an ordinary moment for many whole seconds until your prince follows the beginnings of light up from his palms, to your starving and unabashed awe. The sparks bubble up as hungry fish would in a pond, and then jump, spit, between your fingers like cooking oil. Your touch is so gentle at first. You train and measure your own skill every day so that Jeanist’s recruits don’t lose varied limbs, but as your excitement wells up you spill a bit from your seams. You rise slightly higher and give him more weight to hold and your prince dissolves into a smile.

Four hands rest inside one another and fire from the dragons illuminates your hiding place.

“Highness,” you whisper and startle a thousand times at every new color Bakugou ignites between your fingers. You’re fully up on your knees now having risen higher and higher to watch his magic as best you can and Bakugou sits on the floor beneath you, rotting.

“Highness what,” he whispers back.

You abandon the thought and jump when a green sparkler squeals through the air between you, and when your prince thinks to pull away your fingers are already wrapped tight around every part of him you can manage. He could have done this for you a thousand times; your joy was always this simple, raw, and unjealous. Purple and gold soar across the highs of your cheeks and hug your jaw. It’s all he can bear, to love this smile and to know that his sweat is plastered across your hands and soaked through the cuff of your sleeves, and so he freezes with the realization and embarrassment and with your last words.

“Highness, thank you.”

He doesn’t have the wherewithal to speak yet. The smile he loves. The magic dies with his concentration and as the sun finally crests your walkway for its fleeting moments of warmth, Bakugou tries to muster something like confidence because you’re looking at him with a softness he didn’t realize you had. Is it overwhelming because he knows you could kill him? Maybe it’s because he’s never wanted to kiss anyone before.

Bakugou’s pomegranate eyes dart up to you, saying goodbye to the last of the light and something like sugar scalds his throat. That new thought is fleeting because your golden prince drains the life from it like a butchered animal– gods, can’t he leave you with anything?

“Told you I don’t bite,” he grins and swallows the last selfish thought to death, “that’s your job right?”

You beam before bursting into deep and hungry laughter in the sun-soaked air above him. Whatever. Bakugou supports you as you cling to his arms and struggle to stay upright in your laughter. You’re overflowing. He smiles and huffs, he can’t help that. He can’t help goosebumps either but you don’t need to know about those and he’ll never utter a word. He still needs to meet the dressmaker for alterations and finalize the appetizers, and make sure the kitchens send dinner to your door.

“Highness,” you breathe like a bird and try to collect yourself enough to stop laughing. You plop back onto your hips, “Highness–”

“Highness Highness,” he taunts. The sound of it will make his ears bleed. Bakugou palms for a handkerchief with one hand and lets you hold his other. You cling to the bite you left there. Your legs overlap. “This is ridiculous,” he chuckles when your joy almost folds you in half, “A real joke might kill you.”

“Let it,” you breathe, canines twinkling, and dip slightly closer, laughing, to press your lips to his.

It’s so easy, you don’t mean to. You are lightheaded in the warmth of the sunset, magic trembles across your sensitive skin and you only want to be closer. Just close enough to bury yourself in that place that is so safe and that fills you with such a horrible comfortable joy–

As Bakugou reaches inside his tunic for something you lean too close. Your chest falls over his lap before either of you remembers that it shouldn’t be like this, that there are a thousand other places your prince belongs and ten thousand rules you have engraved on the meat of your skull to keep comfort at bay. It’s so warm with your eyes closed and his smile tastes like cinnamon. He doesn’t pull away.

You only realize what’s happened after that smile falls dead against your lips. He’s soft against your touch. He’s soft like he’s never fought a day in his life. Your hands hold his beautiful golden head right where you need it and in the quiet, your eyes open to blinding and beautiful sunlight.

A touch is all you wanted, gods know why– they’ll never tell you– and you draw your chin back an inch to breathe. Bakugou is staring violently and his eyes are more like targets now than cherry pits. Eyebrows wider, higher, than the sky, he stares like his heart has stopped. What happened? He doesn’t look like anyone but himself anymore. You freeze.

Prince Bakugou is staring at you until he’s not, on the itchy rug in the sunset of the great black catwalks, until his eyes close and he kisses you back. Soft, closed lips brush so hot they’ll leave a mark, they’ll brand you and everyone will know what you did. The doom spreads quickly.

You have never been so graceless in your life as you are now, falling backwards out of his warmth and stumbling onto your feet. He’s still on the ground and you only know he is holding you because sweat drips from the fingers of yours that he clutches.

“Wait,” he gasps. This is so much worse than fury, and you rip your hand away from his to take a step back. You didn’t mean to. Bakugou stares like a dragonslayer, heartbroken.

You run. Before you can breathe or be reasoned with, before you hear him call your name, you turn and dash through the back doorway alone. If this were Aldera, where would you hide? The frozen air of the seashell castle whispers straight through your flesh as you, sprinting, stumble your way past the castle’s vanity. There is a nook in the wall of the principal staircase where only Jeanist can find you. There is a seat on a high window in the Great Hall that you can reach with a library ladder. There are two tiny battlements in the east corner of your queen’s castle without a real way to get inside and on any day but a lightning storm, you can wedge a hunting knife in loose mortar and climb the masonry over its edge to lay and nap and stargaze at the tallest point of the most beautiful kingdom. An ant couldn’t hide in Takoba. There’s not one dark seam for the bugs.

A guard barely moves in time to avoid being crushed under your boots because fuck this horrible waterlogged place. The ocean drips out of your ears like tears from a seashell, drop by drop because you picked a fight with the goddess and thought yourself lucky to live before you realized she had made a home for herself inside your heart. Now you laugh with your prince and you touch him happily and you spar with him and hold nothing back and you tell him how much his magic helped you to live.

Resisting the urge to kill him, fighting to win Mitsuki’s favor, the threat of blue fire and a mage you doused in the sea, it was all so much easier than this. It could have been that easy forever, what were you thinking?

“Y/n!”

You weren’t, that’s what being too content gets you.

When Bakugou calls your name again his voice cracks because you are so much faster than he is in slipping through corridors. There is nowhere to hide in this awful country. Why are you running? If you were just slightly calmer you might have known where you were but white windows will always look like white windows and Bakugou is not so slow that you can ever really outrun him.

You duck under a low door and its hanging tapestry and emerge on the other side at the edge of a stretch of empty hall. Setting sunlight pours past ten silver vases and someone left the windows open so lace curtains flow around each pedestal and their silvery prizes.

“Y/n, please.”

Agony. This isn’t what you want. When Bakugou calls to you one last time you have no choice but to face him because he has never begged for anything before, and when you do, tears drip off the highest parts of your cheeks.

He lets the tapestry fall over his shoulder and stops at the front of the long, long hallway. Neither of you speak for an eternity besides the sound of breath being caught again, him at the edge and you in the center being swayed by cold air. His shaggy hair has been pushed back in his rush to follow you and his eyes glow unobstructed. Bakugou’s broad shoulders fit too perfectly into his baubled tunic. It’s easier to watch him than to think.

When he leans forward, you step back, and he pauses like you might start sprinting again. He doesn’t realize there’s something rotten stuck in the depths of your throat that keeps you from straying too far.

“I–”

“Don’t be sorry,” he begs, reading your mind. He’s never looked like this once in his whole life. He fell a step closer in his panic and when you do not run, his fists unclench from where they draw blood at his sides. “Don’t cry.”

You shake your head and he cautions another step. How can you ever go home now? How much longer can you survive here? The thought is suddenly and immediately overwhelming and Bakugou freezes again when you drop your head into your hands. It’s too much, you can’t believe how badly you want to hate him again and how much easier it would be than this.

“Y/n,” he whispers. His voice is candled ash. You know exactly how close he is even with your eyes closed because Alderan fire is unmistakable and you know too that he’s giving you a moment to escape.

“I didn’t mean to.”

Prince Bakugou’s magic-worn hands reach up from where he wires them and you snatch them both, and all their kiln-fired warmth, out of the air before he can touch you like you might break the first finger that moves. You don’t mean to bare your teeth either, you hope you aren’t, if you are he doesn’t care. Your prince stands above you, brows knit and eyes stupid with worry.

“Forget,” you plead in whispers.

He pulls your grip higher so that he can rest his palms under your ears. He moves easily because you do not stop him and he brushes his thumbs over stray hairs and their wild shapes. Silence is worse than his rage, but he’s trembling. He does not look away. He’s studying, contemplating something that continues to break his heart.

“Highness, please.”

Bakugou cups your jaw like it might bruise and tilts your head up just enough to kiss you. He could not care less about broken fingers.

His lips quiver and press just once to yours before pulling back, reconsidering, and dipping into you again. Your hold on his hands and his hands at your throat are melting, shaking, sweating. His chest swells above yours. You melt with him because you have lost your mind and push against the body you know can hold you. It can pull you from a current and throw you over its shoulder. Bakugou can lift you in strong arms, he can make you laugh until not even an order could compose you at your station.

You part your lips to be closer. He tangles his fingers in your braids so that you might take whatever you want. Your prince tastes like his favorite pastries, and Alderan peaches, and gold, he tastes like he’s fireproof.

Wet drips from your bottom lip in the mess of it all, before Bakugou tilts your chin in strong hands to catch what he’s missed. The slick of your tongues, a clicking of teeth, you want to eat him whole. He’s going to devour you.

He holds your face now to move you as he’d like– four feet tripping over each other to find a wall– and you grip at the patterns on his tunic between stolen breaths and steps stumbled backwards. Magic crackles where he touches you. His voice comes out with his gasps in growls because there is too much and nothing to say. You have forgotten apologies.

“Your hands” he breathes between nips for the softest warm parts of you, “cold.”

“The window–” but he kisses you again before you can finish. His hands are shaking, he is a starving dog and still he holds you like you’re going to break. You terrify him.

How long have you wanted this? There’s not enough focus left for your brain to turn its wheel and if there was you wouldn’t have pulled him so close. You suckle at his lower lip because his heartbeat tastes like home and he lets you dip inside again when you’ve had your fill. He fills you with himself in return. Wet, soft against you. It’s clumsier than sparring, and so much warmer.

At the end of cold hallways, where servants bustle and where there is still work to be done, the guard who barely survived your warpath ducks out from under the tapestry. He only wanted to check you were okay, but in the almost empty hallway Shinsou’s hand falls slack and his baton slips from it. It rings out against white marble and your heart stops beating at the same time as your prince. Your wheel groans in its new turning. The guard stares and you bristle.

You do not hear what Bakugou says in your panic but he does not let you go so easily this time. You freeze. You’ll find somewhere to hide in this prison because that is your job and no one has ever done it better than you, and there you will figure out what to do. The last breath you take before attempting to run is shared in the sunlight with your prince and just as you tip in a hint of escape, Bakugou cups your cheeks one last time to keep you still.

Your claws jump immediately back around his. He stares. His eyes are a study over every scar and warm flush, the violence of your sudden caught fear, even the parts squished and wrinkled in his hold. His magic vibrates unlit through your skin for one more second just one more second he takes to look and then he whispers,

“Okay.”

You take off the moment he releases you to deal with the apprentice and slip as best you can around a blue-tiled corner. Seedsized carvings raise their axes and little white waves fall. Sparks fight the chill on your jaw.

You forgo the seaside for fear of worrying your prince again. Manure pools around your pretty white boots because in the stables, horses don’t care if you cry. The ocean swallows the last of the sun and you are suddenly a child again rinsing the blood from her face and into the hay and finding a dark place to hide. Every step is labor. Agitated white stallions complain to you in a line about their dinner and restlessness, and about chickens roosting inside uninvited, and about the woman who has sat here for hours and done nothing to help them.

The port city of Takoba shimmers at twilight under the hill that the stable looks out on. Its waters are silver and beg you to join them on all sides from their great distance. They have the advantage as you turn your back to the view.

When you amble towards the last empty stall, a figure drowning in blue is perched on a bed of straw. She is sickly beautiful and she stares like she hates everything her gaze falls upon.

“Majesty,” you startle and forget to take a knee.

Where you tread carefully in borrowed clothes, the Takoban Queen is happy to ruin her gown sitting up to her hips in straw beside a very plain horse. She runs a brush over the sheen of its black mane.

“Yes?” She sighs, defeated, until she turns to you and cocks her head like she might have expected someone else. Hundreds of translucent layers fall over themselves in her skirt like a flower and catch imaginary light for every inch that she moves. There is an ache so deep in your bones, chilled first then charred like dipping cold hands in hot water, you struggle to compose yourself. You cannot muster the question of why a queen might be hiding in the belly of her stables but you could guess.

“You were crying.”

“Please don’t tell Mitsuki.”

When will you be allowed to go home? The queen looks between her horse and the space you haunt above her, and pulls a second curry comb from the depths of her soft straw seat. “They’ll find you if you stand in the open like that.”

The day drags on like a dream you have made from picturebooks of Aldera and the man that you will never be free of, but queens don’t much mind if you cry either. You crumple into the spot she digs out for you in the straw and until it is too cold, the two of you sit quietly in shit together.

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could not tag for some reason :(

[adnauseum11]

Unexploded Ordinance (John Price x Reader)

You and John navigate the process of moving in together. John is pleased you are home.

1.4k words

CW: swearing, explicit sex MDNI

If the end of this chapter feels a bit abrupt it's because I split it in two to keep it from being a ridiculous length. You can expect the next chapter to pick up where this one left off.

Still not completely happy with this chapter but in the interest of not circling the drain forever and moving forward I'm posting anyways lol yolo

feedback welcome!

When John hasn’t returned from his call before you are done eating your breakfast - and polishing off the last of the raspberries - you take yourself to the bathroom to shower. He’s waiting for you in the living room when you finally emerge, feeling a bit more like yourself. He’s clearly lost in thought, your hand on his shoulder finally knocking him back to the present.

John is easy to talk into moving more things today, on your impromptu day off. When you arrive back at the apartment, he checks the door before he lets you enter, satisfied it’s been undisturbed. You immediately bicker with him about your furniture and what pieces will stay or go. You can tell he’s pleased when he wins the debate between the couches, you being partial to your vintage re-upholstered and wildly heavy chesterfield sofa. It’s too short for John to lay down on, forcing him to bend his knees and isn’t very comfortable, truth be told. It’s a gorgeous deep green velvet that draws the eye but otherwise isn’t overly practical. You pout about having to give it up until he gives over on your books entirely. He’s consistently bitched about moving your personal library, filled with heavy anthologies from your university days. They’ve been dragged from pillar to post over the years and you’ve refused every less than subtle suggestion to sell them. He doesn’t even try to make you choose which ones to keep, sighing deeply in resignation and asking how many boxes you think it will take to pack them all. This earns him the hardest hug you can muster and a rain of kisses he has to crouch for, chuckling lowly.

You make a trip back to his place with your clothing, the colourful array of fabrics making John’s limited selections seem all the starker by comparison. It brings you up short, seeing your things beside his in the wardrobe. You get caught up wondering what the hell you are doing, agreeing to this. You don’t get very far in your spiral before John finds you, kneeling surrounded by folded t-shirts. You’re jealous of his ability to seemingly pick a course of action and execute it without the self-doubt that swamps you occasionally. If you hadn’t known him as long as you have you would say it’s something he learned in the military, but you’re pretty sure that’s all John.

His presence steadies you again and you end up making another trip to collect your hairdryer and various other products needed to make yourself presentable for work tomorrow. Most of your everyday use items and valuables are safely rehoused in John’s flat by the time you are ready to throw the towel in for the day. You agree to go to the pub around the corner for dinner, neither of you feeling like cooking. On the walk down, John’s big hand stays on your lower back, keeping you close as you wander down the street together. It’s quiet at the pub, early in the week meaning the clientele are mostly regulars. You get your choice of seats and John steers you to a booth against the back wall, tugging you to sit on the same side as him.

He questions your half-baked plan to quit your job while distracting you from giving an answer, his hand creeping over your thigh and shoulders, bracketing you against him. You finally cross your legs, pinning his warm hand between your thighs so you can formulate a coherent response. He presses a smirk against your temple and listens as you complain of your treatment this morning, and then just in general. You've had a volatile few days and vent your spleen accordingly.

He removes his hands from your body when the food arrives, creating a tiny sliver of space between you on the bench seat. John hums sympathetically at your complaints but finally convinces you to get through the rest of the week before you submit anything in writing, pointing out you should probably update your resume first at minimum. You grumble but reluctantly agree, his even-keeled approach to the situation a better tactic than your instinct for dramatics.

John’s level head only seems to extend to your choices because by the time you’re out the door and on the way home he’s truly unable to keep his hands to himself. Twice on the short walk back he’s pressed you up against the wall of a nearby building, his hands cupping your face as his eager mouth finds yours. You make out like teenagers until you can feel the cold creeping into the tips of your ears, a gentle push against his chest enough to back him off temporarily. You’re getting better at reading John in this state, how his eyes glaze with want and his focus narrows. You finally resort to threading your fingers with his to keep his hand from constantly drifting over your ass, wrapping yourself around his arm to make him behave. 

You open the door using your key, John too preoccupied with working his hands under your jacket and shirt. His big body corrals you against him, kicking the door shut after wrestling you through it, almost not giving you time to get your key out of the lock.

“Fucking hell John.”

You breathe out as he spins you around, your arms going around his neck automatically. He kisses you hungrily, his palm cupping the back of your head. You feel the thump of the wall at your back, his hand leaving the back of your head to shove your coat off your shoulders. You wiggle out of it and push at the thick lambskin jacket he’s wearing, slipping your hands under it to grip his shoulders. He shrugs out of it, his lips finding yours again almost immediately. You can feel desire vibrating through his frame, his thigh working its way between yours. Before he can overwhelm you completely, you push back against his chest.

He's breathing hard, confusion mixing across his face as you flatten your palms against his chest and push, reversing your positions by backing him up against the opposite wall. You have to go up on your tip toes, gripping the back of his neck to tug him down to kiss you again. He’s got his hands full of your ass, too preoccupied to catch on to your intent until you're slipping out of his grasp, sliding to your knees in front of him. Your nimble fingers have his belt undone and his jeans open before he can process and stop you, hissing out your name as your fingers wrap around his twitching cock.

You smirk to yourself and wrench a deep groan from his chest as your lips close around the flushed head of his cock, your eyes locking on his face. His cheeks and throat are flushed with the same shade of red as his cock, his blue eyes now nearly black, his pupils dilated with desire. He looks so intense it sends a thrill through your belly that you’re capable of affecting him like this. You swirl your tongue over the head, tasting the salty pre-cum and slide your palm up the wiry hair of his firm abdomen, pushing his shirt up.

John growls lowly, his fingers burying into your hair, gripping close to the roots. He doesn’t try to direct your movements, content to let you work him over however you see fit but the gentle pull on your hair sends flashes of sensation down your spine. The muscles of his stomach jump at the drag of your fingers on his cock as you squeeze the base, sucking on the tip deeply, making John’s fingers clench in your hair. You lift off him and press his erection against his belly, running the flat of your tongue over the underside before teasing his balls with the tip of your tongue.

That has John rocking up onto his toes, hissing your name again followed by a curse. You can’t stop the pleased smirk that slides across your face and wrap your lips around the tip again, focusing your tongue on the sensitive spot on the underside. You can feel his cock twitching, the tension in his body ratcheting tighter with a moan. You let his shirt drop and cup his balls, lapping at the tip intently.

That seems to finally push John beyond his limit and he firmly tugs your hair to pull you off him. Your scalp tingles and you hum in disappointment but John’s already got a hold of your arm, lifting you to your feet again.

“C'mere love, I want to be inside you when I cum.”  

He growls lowly, making you shiver, backing you down the hallway to the bedroom with predatory intent. The look on his face makes your stomach quiver in anticipation, your insides going molten.

Next Chapter

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@deadbranch @cadotoast @beebeechaos @syoddeye @writeforfandoms @itr-00

[ukrfeminism]

A social worker turned interior designer is tackling furniture poverty by transforming the homes of social housing tenants through her charity.

Emily Wheeler, founder of Furnishing Futures, says the need for her charity is not just cosmetic design - domestic abuse survivors are often driven back to their perpetrators after being given empty social housing with no beds for their children.

When families escaping domestic violence are rehoused by their local council, properties are often stripped of all white goods, furniture, and flooring for health and safety reasons.

Having left their old homes suddenly without any of their belongings, families often end up in a flat or house with nowhere to cook or store food and no beds to sleep in, Emily Wheeler, founder of the charity Furnishing Futures, tells Sky News.

"There are no curtains at the windows, there's no oven, no fridge, no washing machine," she says. "Children are expected to sleep on concrete floors with no beds or bedding.

"Mothers may have experienced economic abuse or coercion and might not have access to their money and find themselves having to start again.

"So you can understand why some women think 'this is actually no better for my children than going back to my previous situation'."

Emily has been a frontline social worker in east London for more than 20 years. During a career break, during which she had her two children, she retrained as an interior designer.

When she returned to social work in 2014, she says austerity meant council budgets were being cut and previously available grants for social housing tenants were no longer funded.

"I've always seen furniture poverty throughout my career, but it had got worse," she says.

"I was meeting families living in these conditions without furniture and without access to support.

"When you look at the amount of stuff councils have to spend money on just to keep people safe, furniture isn't the priority."

Moved into empty flat two days after giving birth

Laura, not her real name, moved between different emergency accommodations while she was pregnant with her first child after being abused by her ex-partner.

She says she was offered a council flat two days after giving birth.

"When I first moved in it was all dirty, there was no furniture, no carpet, no cooker, fridge, or washing machine.

"I had to take out an emergency loan from Universal Credit to get away from my partner, so I didn't have any money left when my baby was born. The first couple of nights I could only eat takeaway food because there was nothing to cook with.

"It had concrete floors. I'd get up in the middle of the night to make my baby a bottle and it would be freezing, so I had to put blankets all over the floor."

Chief executive of the National Housing Federation Kate Henderson says: "In social housing, carpets have historically been removed as standard practice for practical reasons, to ensure hygiene between lets and to prevent any possible contamination.

"In some cases, housing associations provide new flooring as standard when a home is re-let, or in other cases they may provide decorating vouchers to new tenants, which can be used for flooring of their choice."

According to a 2021 study by the campaign group End Furniture Poverty, only 1% of social housing properties are furnished.

Councils under 'no legal obligation' 

The Housing Act 1985 states that a local authority "may fit out, furnish and supply a house provided by them with all requisite furniture, fittings and conveniences".

But Emily says this means there is no legal obligation to do so.

"Councils are fulfilling their duty by providing housing, so in the eyes of the law they're not doing anything wrong.

"But having an empty shell of concrete is not a home - just because you're not on the streets."

Having seen the problem on a wider scale when she began chairing multi-agency child protection conferences, she decided to combine her skills as a designer and social worker - and create a charity to help bridge the gap.

Furnishing Futures was set up in 2019. Emily and her team refloor, paint, and furnish empty properties given to trauma and domestic abuse survivors by councils.

She uses her industry connections, which include Soho House, DFS, Dunelm, and others, to source donated furniture, and fundraises for the rest.

She believes it is the only charity of its kind in the UK.

So far they have furnished more than 80 homes across east London, and a pilot scheme with Waltham Forest council and housing association Peabody will see another three completed there.

But with thousands of families on social housing waiting lists in each of the capital's 32 boroughs alone, she wants to expand nationally.

"The hardest thing about my job is having to say no to people because we don't have the capacity," she says.

"Every day we get inquiries from women, midwives, health visitors, other local authorities, domestic abuse agencies - but we're just a small team and the demand is huge."

The charity has a 4,000-square-foot warehouse, a team of five full-time staff, and a group of regular volunteers who help with flooring, painting, and assembling furniture.

As situations are often urgent, work is usually done in just one day.

Empty homes are form of 'revictimisation'

Jen Cirone, director of services at Solace Women's Aid, one of the charity's partners, says being housed in an empty home and having to start again is a form of "revictimisation".

But she says of the charity: "It's not only the practicalities of having a beautiful space to live in but also demonstrates that others care.

"Together, Furnishing Futures is able to complete the road to recovery that work with Solace has put them on."

Hannah, not her real name, is another of Emily's clients.

She was homeless after leaving her ex-partner and given emergency accommodation a day before she was due to give birth to her first child.

"I felt extremely stressed and vulnerable," she says. "As a victim of domestic violence and heavily pregnant, I already felt alone and unsupported.

"This empty space didn't feel like 'home' and it certainly wasn't suitable for baby."

As a type one diabetic she also had nowhere to store her insulin injections, she adds.

"I ended up staying in hospital for some time due to an emergency C-section and during that time Emily turned my empty, scary space into a home for me and my child."

Emily says that although COVID and the cost-of-living crisis have opened the conversation about poverty and how it affects domestic abuse survivors, the situation is "worse than ever".

"We're not just talking about poverty now, we're talking about destitution," she says.

"People need safe and comfortable homes. You won't be able to recover from trauma, rebuild your life, and be a productive part of society if you don't have your basic needs met."

A Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities spokesperson said: "Domestic abuse survivors deserve a safe home and we are grateful to Furnishing Futures for the work they do to help these families rebuild their lives.

"We expect social housing providers to play their part and provide homes that are of a decent quality, if tenants are unhappy, we encourage them to speak to their landlords.

"Our Social Housing Regulation Act is also driving up standards and strengthened the role of the Ombudsman so that it is easier for tenants to raise complaints."

[auckie]

To everyone calling the stupid trapdoor cute. The larger ones are so intimidating and intense. I’m not really afraid of many animals, save bears. We feed lividus and wandering spiders and giant ass centipedes, we don’t carry very venomous scorpions anymore, but we used to, and may again soon! Which I’m really looking forward to. Keeping medically significant species isn’t something I’m personally into, but I can appreciate how interesting it is just to see these creatures live in a captive setting.

Regardless. Feeding the armored trap doors is so fucking scary. They play dead, if they’re not in their burrow, and they’re these huge black things with what looks like plate armoring on their abdomen, which is odd for a spider this size, and they have huuuge chelicera and fangs, they’re HEAVY. They’re actually hard. Tarantulas are all soft and fuzzy and a bit squishy if you manage to somehow touch their abdomens. Delicate beasts. The trapdoors are literally fucking dungeon monsters, and since they came through the mail, when rehousing them, we had to regularly check that they were okay! So you see this big stupid beast in a death curl and think oh shit it died! And you gently poke it with a paint brush, or blow on it, or squirt it with some mist thinking ‘let’s see what happened’ or ‘maybe it’s dehydrated from the trip’. NO! Zero to sixty in a millisecond and you have to shut the lid to its enclosure without trapping one of its legs, watch it do fifty somersaults and physically shake the container while you wait for it to chill the fuck out. So then you come to anticipate this during feeding, and ideally they make their stupid little burrows what with the tripwires. It’s cute and cool yeah whatever. But since we’re trying to ‘feed expeditiously’ as my boss always puts it, and they’re huge and might take multiple roaches, you gotta lift the door sometimes. If you’re lucky, the roach runs in because it’s stupid and dark hole. If you’re not, even expecting the monster to emerge, it still scares the absolute shit out of you. I sweat every time I deal with them. Tena and pokies and even the Thai funnel webs who have a very dangerous bite and are also just as fast (but so much more relaxed) don’t faze me, I mean sure the centipedes sometimes escape and make everyone stand up alarmed or the wandering spiders make all the dudes talk about the whole permanent erection thing, but these guys have the element of looking like a toy Halloween decoration and moving as fast as an old world T. They’re so cool. But so scary. And I don’t even think their bite is *that* bad compared to some of the hot shit we carry. But I don’t care! but the little one I filmed was very cute and stupid I will give them that. I don’t think I could own one tho. They can’t climb smooth surfaces but that wont stop them from doing 28 backflips if you walk past their tank and I just don’t really feel like associating myself with something that does that, that isn’t at least fuzzy and funny and pink toed. Or even the sand spiders we got. They’re pretty dangerous. But they’re so goofy. Speaking of which I will post a video of one here to make up for a paragraph of text

[safrona-shadowsun]

So many changes so soon within her life. But life is full of surprises is it not? How is she fairing with things? If rumor is to be believed there was even a murder of one of her own right at the heels of a return of a much closer much more literal one of her own to her life. Between work and home she must be a busy woman in deed!

{ So much is happening for Safrona at the same time, and all of it is very stressful. The fall of Dalaran seemed to be an omen of life crashing down upon Safrona too, very suddenly. After the chaos had cooled from playing emergency Postmaster for the first 2 weeks of the disaster, the outright murder of a warlock definitely impacted her business in Stormwind, with evidence being left at the scene that implicated one of her own in her office.

Even she was not left out of the investigation, and she cannot be too sure that she did not have some hand in it, even somehow as an unknowing accessory to the crime. SI:7 has her couriers that have residences in Stormwind under deep investigation, and they have been ousted temporarily from their own homes during the process, leaving her to rehouse them. She is of course omitting the names of those that work for her in Silvermoon, and she knows this entire mess is far from over. Humans tend to take their time with these things - she is deeply considering that she will have to launch a personal investigation of her own with the help of some choice contacts, perhaps.

And nearly in the same week, a daughter has fully showed up at her doorstep after over 15 years of being separated. She doesn't know how to process this sudden appearance, an anxiety gripping her deeply over Serenas like she was some secret that was never supposed to come to light. Her memory of the girl is wildly unrealiable, and though there is some desire beneath all the apprehension Serenas brings with her to know her, Safrona doesn't know how to approach any of this eschewed past that seems bound to come back to haunt her.

In her extreme stress, while Azeroth's heroes and champions hear Azeroth's call for aid, Safrona hears the dark call of something that feels too much a part of her, offering risky solutions that make too much sense. Safrona knows in this unstable time she cannot dive into Void-entrenched areas of new territory, much as she would like to. She is already fighting a very personal instinct to fall away from the known world, and remake herself. }

[artisan-king-morleus]

EMERGENCY COMMS!PAYPAL ONLY!

SALE ON MY EMOTES!

This is my laptop; and this is what I mean when it's having seizures.

I'm saving for an actual computer to rehouse my works and only use my laptop for games. ATM I'm working on a one-shot comic for a contest and this doesn't help.

So sale on my emotes comms, as they are easier to work with and get done in a short amount of time.

Plz consider commissioning me 🥲

[heirhonkful]

Emergency Commissions!!!

Hey everyone! Just a trans girl who needs help, pretty common I guess.

I can’t get into too many specifics, but I’m basically losing my home and don’t currently have a job or any savings. I’m moving in with my grandparent until classes start back up and I’m working on rehousing my cats and birds. So I’m kinda starting over.

Need some money to save up, pay for food, my HRT, and basically all things that require money… which is unfortunately everything in our horrid world.

You can look on my Instagram for more easily accessible examples of my art! Otherwise I use the tag “#honkful art” on here to label my art posts, but there’s not as many on here.

Like I say in the pictures, I’d appreciate all the help I can get. Even just a reblog is helpful!

[pararennial-archived]

*‵ ･ from where there are no heavenly bodies ･ ′

There are no fair negotiations for things that lie beyond one's control. Of course, there's a more succinct and colloquial way of putting it: life is not fair.

Fingers idly pluck at steel strings, thrumming out a continue empty twang in the air, buoyed only by some sort of forlorn idleness; as though passivity seized all motor control in a soft-palmed hostile takeover. Roxanne hardly does anything without intent, she's never aimless. The thought, "Was any of this ever mine?", never crossed her mind until recently. Everything at this point might as well slip through her fingers like sand imbued with shards of glass. It's not like she can tighten her grip in hopes that the bleeding will stop and cycle back into her veins.

But perhaps, there might have been something she could have done in order to allow herself the peace to not be… for once.

A string snaps loose and whips against her finger, leaving a pink wake upon her skin. She stares at it for a while, watching it fade the instant it appears. It's a small lapse in concentration, in which she easily remedies by taking the string and refastening it. Nothing really stings, it's pale. Bloodless.

By the time she finishes the menial task at hand, she suddenly doesn't feel like playing anymore and sets her guitar back on its stand. With nothing but pure instinct leading her, she ambles out of her room and finds her way to the front porch. She stares at the house ahead, her neighbour from across the street emerges with her golden retriever-poodle mix. She smiles and waves at Roxanne, and Roxanne returns a wave of her own but the smile on her face is as artificial as plastic petals.

She can't remember if there was a time where things were far more simple, the memories feel like a collage of someone else's life. Akin to patchwork, swaths of fabrics sewn together but the colours and frames fail to fall in line with the overall scheme and design. She wants all of it to work ⏤ to be hers. And so she pulls herself into frenzied nights out with friends, dissonant laughter in hallways, music flourishing but not quite reaching its peak. Empty promises to herself to live on her own terms. She honestly thought she could get herself a cut of a self-congratulatory slice of cake and eat it, too.

So, count your parts and measure them twice, because you can only cut once…

Whatever semblance of normalcy she once had was proven a falsehood, there's no form to really return to other than blissful ignorance. A time where she felt alive, but now all of her history seems to be composed of someone else's memories. A fever dream. Images fluctuate and bend into each other like a kaleidoscope. She is merely the spectator, taking in everything and nothing all at once. For all the times she attempted to rehouse, reshape, and rebuild a sense of belonging, the home she ended up creating still remained untrustworthy. A life built off artifice ought to do that; foundation as fragile as a porcelain vase.

There is no turning water into blood.

What exactly is there to trade in exchange for that? Roxanne internally asks herself, and she has no intention of really getting an answer. Could she have gone another way home? Could she have avoided that gateway demon? Could she have dutifully wore the charm her guardians meticulously crafted so that she does not fall into awaiting jaws of a world that was kept from her?

Such questions make her vision fog over, so she turns back inside the house after mere minutes of being outside ( to her it felt like hours ). Her steps remain aimless when she retreats down the halls and finds herself plopped on the living room couch, muscle memory guiding the remote into her hand and she flicks on the TV. She hopes it will silence the slow drone from which every cell in her body is being replaced by something other than human. Mindless chatter from flickering channels do little to tame the turmoil haunting her mind, like a thundering echo within an emptied bullet chamber. Her feeble attempt in her continued search for something to keep her rooted and real has finally landed her on a live news broadcast featuring a local farm, celebrating the birth of a two-headed calf from last night.

Something trembles in Roxanne, but she only stares blankly. A two-headed anomaly, unexpectedly blessed with the ability to gaze upon twice as many stars the night it was born. In her case, so she believes, it would be an overwhelming relief have that second head removed immediately. The poor thing would have hours, or if lucky enough, mere days left to spend on Earth. Wouldn't that be a fair trade? To cut out a part that is only measured by its remarkability in exchange for an unexceptional life that will be well lived and untouched by misfortune?

She doesn't even notice Mallory entering in, the shadowed goddess standing by the screen and partially illuminated its glow. Her beloved guardian felt so far away.

❝What is it my child? I sensed you were in trouble.❞ Mallory closed the distance, kneeling next to the couch and enclosing Roxanne's face within the palm of her hands. They were cool but never truly devoid of warmth. ❝What is wrong?❞

❝Nothing...❞ There is a strange fizz accenting her voice, ❝Is mine. Even if I tried.❞

[priapocalypse]

i'm just so exhausted. existentially exhausted. with every month, there comes a new emergency or two. at this point, they threaten our lives with possible future unhoused life, all our furry family being rehoused with others, and all our possessions disappearing. my mind always hammers me with paranoia abt the worst possible outcome every time, even though we manage to survive each crisis with the help of friends. but now that we've finally received a 10 day pre-eviction notice, we're doing all we can to fight the doom reaching out to drag us into oblivion. i don't think this will ever end.

[arielsodyssey]

I think this is a good list, though I’d humbly like to add a few suggestions, mostly based on anecdotal observations and critiques while working (low level) with local government agencies which ultimately report to HUD (continuums of care, or CoCs, which, depending on what office you’re running for, you may be dealing with, or you may be dealing with the larger Council of Governance, or CoG).

Anyway, I think an approach which prioritizes the needs of those at the bottom (“literal homelessness” or “vulnerable/ at risk of homelessness”) would be good for a couple of reasons:

Taking care of the most vulnerable members of society is the morally correct thing to do

And also, I think this could alleviate the pressure put on the working class more broadly, in a ‘trickle up’ sort of way (kind of like how raising the minimum wage would result in increased wages throughout the working class).

So, what options are available and what steps do I think we can take to improve things?

Shelter: I don’t think anyone sees this as a solution, so much as a last option- a limited one at that. As far as I can tell, shelters are operating over capacity in CoCs across the country, and funding for overflow (hotels) is limited. Hypothermia beds (cots in an open space) are also typically only available from Nov-March (curious how HUD authorizes its point in time; pit; count during the last week of January- the coldest time of the year when CoCs will typically report the lowest numbers of street homelessness 🤔).

“Affordable Housing”: Despite the name, this option isn’t always necessarily “affordable”. From my understanding, affordable housing programs were implemented in response to critiques of public housing (that they created concentrations of poverty detached from the centers of city life). The idea was to create mixed income housing by partially subsidizing a certain number of units within standard, for profit, apartment complexes. The landlord/ leasing office get tax credits for making a certain number of units “affordable”, allowing lower income residents to live in the same area as middle income residents, etc. Here’s the problem though: 1. There aren’t enough to satisfy the need (of course for-profit leasing offices are going to dedicate as few units as possible as affordable, while getting tax credits); 2. They’re not really “affordable”. It’s based on average rent, and as the average rent goes up, landlords can raise the rent of “affordable” units beyond what lower income families can afford, while still taking tax credits; 3. This is essentially an outsourced, neoliberal market solution. Instead of making public housing better for people living there, governments decided to just provide some financial incentive to landlords to rent to lower income tenants.

Permanent Supportive Housing Not everyone can be “stabilized”. Some people have mental and physical disabilities, developmental disabilities, serious mental health issues, etc. that prevent them from ever being able to work full time and support themselves. Ideally, PSH units should be available for people in these situations, but far too often these programs are woefully underfunded with nowhere near enough units to meet the need. Many people who meet the qualifications for psh end up “chronically homeless” because there aren’t any units available. If you’re looking for a pitch to convince some conservative sociopath to invest in expanding PSH, let them know that, by HUD’s own recommendations, it’s cheaper to provide PSH to a chronically homeless person than the associated cost of chronic homelessness (repeated emergency room visits, emergency outreach and shelter services, etc).

Prevention CoCs often have prevention programs (Rapid Rehousing, homelessness prevention and diversion, etc) which, in my observations, are often woefully underfunded. They also probably wouldn’t be as necessary if so many people weren’t struggling to make ends meet and pay rent every month.

Section 8 Similar story to “Affordable Housing”, except that vouchers actually contribute significant subsidies which can make a difference in people’s lives. Unfortunately, it is very hard to get a voucher in many places, and the wait list in some regions is more than a decade.

Public Housing I really think this is the best solution, albeit one which may be difficult to sell. Subsidized housing “projects” have a lot of negative associations for some people- especially snobby middle class residents who may be worried about their property value or crime or something. But projects can be nice, they can be integrated into the larger community; they can be located in city centers close to jobs and parks and schools and all of the nice amenities people want. It’s just a matter of actually investing in those units. They don’t even have to be new buildings- local governments could just buy nicer apartment buildings in mixed income neighborhoods and rent them out to people at subsidized rates. The problem with public housing is it isn’t properly funded and there aren’t enough available units. I don’t have the numbers, but I wouldn’t be surprised if this would be cheaper than tax credits as well. Subsidizing landlords to get them to rent out to lower income tenants is, imo, just setting things up for greedy landlords to find ways to game the system and make more money without really providing affordable housing for people. Local government could just buy the units and rent them out to lower income households themselves, at subsidized rates. Get rid of the middleman.

Broader inequality this is a bigger issue to address, and things like creating jobs (maybe government investments like infrastructure), raising the minimum wage, expanding social safety nets (expanded Snap benefits, child tax credit, pua payments, and the eviction moratorium helped keep a lot of households afloat during the pandemic. There’s no reason that has to end other than catering to the greed of the bourgeoisie…).

Landlords have leverage right now because they know there aren’t many affordable housing options and people are afraid of ending up on the street. Government can invest in housing and provide those options to people, and I genuinely believe if people have options, it’ll be a “renter’s market”. Providing fully subsidized housing, for everyone, but especially for households with very low-zero income, creates, at the very least, a safety net for the working poor and lower middle class (and housing for the most vulnerable populations). Expanding, at the very least, partially subsidized options, can give the working poor and lower middle class leverage and options, forcing all landlords (parasites as they are) to start lowering their rent in order to attract tenants.

Keep in mind, I’m very low level, mostly working with the public (and not in Ohio), so there are probably a lot of obstacles and issues at higher levels that I’m unaware of, but if you ever do get elected these are some of my observations and reflections.

Good luck! And hopefully these ideas/ reflections are helpful.

What has to happen in order for housing reform to start here in the US, because I just had the thought that maybe I should run for some kind of office and theres no way that a working class leftist nonbinary lesbian would win any position in ohio. Give me details on who to vote for, what to watch for, advocacy programs- because I'm sick of this and I know yall are too.

[stomp-of-the-angels]

Update:

Chromatopelma cyaneopubescens (Greenbottle blue tarantula) had a emergency rehousing. Had a mold spot growing from an old leftover food. And couldn't get it out without destroying the entire enclosure. So we've been placed in a new enclose that's slightly larger. Larger opening grants us access to more space to grab any leftover to prevent this from happening again.

[mrmrswales]

The Duke of Cambridge has issued an impassioned plea for more help for rough sleepers in the “life and death” emergency during the coronavirus crisis.

The Duke of Cambridge, who praised “hero” frontline workers and volunteers for their work, said he wants to help 600 more homeless people get off the streets of London by tomorrow.

With millions of people nationwide self-isolating, including his own father Prince Charles, William urged Londoners not to forget those with no homes to go to.

The duke spoke out during a conversation with Mick Clarke, CEO of homeless charity The Passage, of which William is patron, telling him: “We are in a life and death fight to help those people living on the streets in this public health emergency.”

William, whose telephone call is listed in the Court Circular today, rang Mr Clarke to get an update on the plight of the homeless and stressed he wanted to turn the crisis into a ray of hope for the homeless.

Mr Clarke said: “We don’t want to get 80 per cent of people off the streets only to return them when this crisis is over. The duke was very keen for us to explore ways to avoid that happening.”

William, who is following government advice and self-isolating at home with his family, also thanked hotel chains that have given rooms to the homeless during the crisis.

Mr Clarke said: “We had 20-minute conservation and he recognised that is a public health emergency for those who are on the streets and in shelters.

“So it was good to tell him that everyone in the voluntary sector but also local and central government is doing everything that they can to try and get people off the streets and into places of safety.

“Hotel chains have really stepped up and have offered hundreds of places for the homeless.

“The Intercontinental Group including Holiday Inn, have been great But we need more. Clean clothes for those who have been rehoused and mobile phones so we can keep in touch with.”

He added: “We have got to ensure there is enough staff to scale up. We have to change the model away from day centres.”

The Passage is part of the Homeless Collective group of charities helped by the Evening Standard’s campaign tackling homelessness.

[thetarantulacollective]

Davus pentaloris, also known as the Guatemalan Tiger Rump.  This is a New World, terrestrial tarantula and an opportunistic burrower.  This species comes from Southern Mexico and Guatemala which is a warm and temperate area with temperatures rarely going above 82f.  Males of this species only live about 2.5-3 years while females have a lifespan of nearly 11 years. Females can grow to a size of 4-4.5in with most seeming to top out in size at 4”.

The only sexual dimorphism in this species in size, so to determine the sex of your T you will need to examine a fresh molt or wait for the male to mature, emerging from its molt with tibial hooks and papal bulbs. This T should not to be confused with the Davus fasciatus which has a darker or black carapace, a different pattern on the abdomen, and originates from Costa Rica. Davus pentaloris is the only species firmly established in the hobby. It is sometimes mistakenly sold in the hobby as D. fasciatus. So if you think you own D. fasciatus, it is very likely a D. pentaloris.

This species is known to be docile but can be skittish at times. Being a new world tarantula, this T does not have medically significant venom, but does have urticating hairs which can be very uncomfortable if the urticating setae gets on your skin and can cause serious problems if they were to get in your eyes, nose or mouth. Mine has never shown me a threat pose or even kicked hairs at me. Though it has nearly bolted from its enclosure when startled by me dropping prey on it web or when it is time to rehouse.

Check out the entire care sheet here:

[fangsandforests]

“Help! My Reptile Won’t Eat!”

This is one of the most common reptile comments I see floating around online, especially among first-time keepers. And I get why -- if you’re used to having animals that eat more frequently, it can be extremely worrying to have an animal that goes days, weeks, or even months without eating. So I thought I’d put this quick post together to help ease troubled minds.

I’m going to focus on tarantulas and geckos here, but some of this information can apply to a variety of reptiles. (Yes, I’m including tarantulas in the reptile category, but only because they’re so often lumped in with the reptiles.) 

Here are a few common reasons your pet might not have an appetite. 

New environment

Typically when people say their reptile won’t eat, it’s shortly after they brought the animal home. This is a major adjustment period for a new pet -- suddenly it has a new enclosure and everything is unfamiliar and scary. 

When animals are stressed, they probably won’t want to eat. And trying to force-feed them will only make it worse. Even tarantulas are uncomfortable with sudden changes of environment, which is why they usually won’t take down prey shortly after a rehousing. 

It’s always a good idea to give new pets some time to get used to their surroundings and the daily routine. If the animal is a rescue, it might need a more generous adjustment period. My leopard gecko went 10 days without eating when I first brought him home. (He was also skittish and recovering from some injuries.) But once he settled in, he was eager to eat!

Lack of variety

Would you want to eat a piece of toast for every meal? Probably not, right? Well, some reptiles are the same way. They grow bored of certain feeders over time. Or, they discover a favorite food and decide to pass on everything else. 

So be ready to try feeding different things. For example, if you’re feeding a leopard gecko, keep rotating the insects. Crickets, mealworms, dubia, hornworms, silkworms, superworms, Phoenix worms -- try them all and don’t get stuck feeding your gecko the same thing every day.

Shedding and molting

As many of you already know, reptiles regularly shed the outer layer of skin. Gecko species typically eat their shed to reabsorb the nutrients, so you may not even realize they’ve shed. They do, however, show some signs that they’re preparing to shed, and one of those signs is refusing food. 

Some tarantulas will go several months without food when they’re preparing for a molt. One of my tarantulas went over a year without food before molting! That can be alarming to new keepers, for sure! Just keep an eye on the abdomen -- as long as it’s not shrinking, they’ll easily survive the fasting period leading up to the molt.

Brumation or temperature changes

For many reptiles, cooler weather means it’s time to slow down and rely on reserves. Environmental changes can sometimes trigger them to go into partial or full brumation. Brumation is sort of like hibernation and is part of a reptile’s preparation for breeding season. 

Now, I don’t recommend allowing your reptile to go into full brumation unless you know what you’re doing, especially if it’s a young animal. But as those of us with cold seasons know, it can be a challenge keeping consistent temperatures year-round. So a decline in appetite is sometimes inevitable. Just be sure the animal is still eating here and there and closely monitor its weight. 

Yes, this somewhat applies to tarantulas, too. All my tarantulas eat less frequently during the winter months.

Parasites

Parasites are very common among reptiles. If you purchased/adopted a wild-caught animal, it would be unusual for that animal NOT to have a parasite load of some sort. But parasites can also come in via food, which is why it’s important to buy feeder insects from reputable breeders/retailers and never feed your pet insects you caught outside. 

The good news is, most intestinal parasites are treatable and shouldn’t cause long-term health issues if you catch them early. But if you think your animal might have parasites, get a fresh stool sample to an exotic vet asap.

A health concern

If you’ve ruled out all of the above, or your animal is showing other worrying signs (e.g. lethargy, dehydration, impaction, visible wounds, etc.), it’s time to head to the vet. Reptiles are good at hiding health issues up until they become emergency situations. And their condition can deteriorate rapidly. So you should never hesitate to reach out to a vet if you have the slightest inkling that there’s something medical wrong.

If you have a tarantula in need of attention, you’ll probably have a more difficult time tracking down a knowledgeable vet. Tarantulas are fragile, and their health issues are often fatal. Your best bet is to hunt around for resources (ideally before you get a tarantula) on how to treat common issues like bad molts, dehydration, and broken/detached legs. There are some dedicated tarantula keepers out there that have been very successful treating these things at home.  

---

A lack of appetite doesn’t necessarily indicate a health problem, so try not to panic. If you’re a new keeper, start to familiarize yourself with what’s normal for your animal. Keep records of what the reptile eats and when, its weight, shed cycles, egg-laying cycles, etc. This way, you’ll know when something seems off and you need to get to the vet.