#supersize pair

[gutsby]

Wingman

Pairing: Himbo!Joel x Reader

Summary: Your bestie braves the tampon aisle for you.

Warnings: 18+. Period crackfic starring Himbo!Joel—don’t take it too seriously. R has a uterus that hates her. Mentions of blood, cramps, & hangover-induced puking. Dirty talk, f!masturbation. One (1) Mean Girls reference.

Word count: 1.7k

You were fucked ten ways to Wednesday if you didn’t get your hands on some soap, a steamer, and a supersized box of maxi-pads in the span of the next eleven minutes.

Joel Miller moved like molasses on a flat slab of granite.

“WILL YOU HURRY— THE FUCK— UP?”

Your cheeks were hot. The night air was cold.

Every other word that managed to claw out of your throat was punctuated by a breath—your stomach clenched, and the sex organ below it was in hysterics.

Joel continued to lace up his loafer, clumsy as ever.

“O-kay, okay,” he hummed, “Steamer, soap, and, uh…”

“Pads!”

“Uh-huh. Right. So what kinda…blood stuff is it, again?”

The words were like an aspersion on his tongue. At the ripe old age of forty-seven, Joel still hadn’t quite learned to jibe with the menstrual product lingo, and it showed.

“Heavy flow. Any brand. With wings,” you hissed.

“Boneless or traditional?”

And if he hadn’t been standing outside the truck, foot propped up against the driver’s seat while he tied his shoe, you likely would’ve smacked him upside the head. The glare you gave him was sufficiently vicious to extinguish the smirk, though. Your hand made a fist in the front of your dress, and you groaned, leaning inward.

Joel got the picture and finished his bunny ears quick.

“Sorry.”

Then, a little more sheepish as he straightened up,

“I’m goin’. Be just a minute.”

And he was off.

Your body curled into a ball as soon as he left. It cried in pain, to nothing and no one around but that fugly slut, the nastiest skank bitch you’d ever met, your uterus.

There was no way you and Joel were making it to this rehearsal dinner. You needed to be at the venue by 7:00, the clock on the dash read 6:11, and you were, currently, twenty miles shy of Fredericksburg with a rag between your legs and your best friend scouring the local H-E-B.

That afternoon you’d been running late, so of course you’d thrown on your thin, satin, pre-wedding-ready dress before you left—and forgotten a change of clothes. Joel had been hungover from all the batshit bachelor party antics, so of course you’d had to stop three times along the way just so he could throw up on the side of the road. And, though your friend was many, many things, discreet was not one of them, so of course he’d told you, point-blank, when he saw you reaching for something in the backseat with your butt sticking up:

“You been pissin’ tomato juice or somethin’?”

And you’d looked back in abject horror.

Of course your period had come a week early and made you bleed straight through your bright yellow dress.

Maria was your best friend. You were her maid of honor. Tommy’s groomsmen happened to be the most fuckable bunch you’d ever seen—save for Joel—so there was no way you’d be caught dead at that dinner with the flag of Japan on your ass. And Maria had bought the dress just for you, so you felt like you had to get this bloodstain out.

You lifted your head to peer out the window. Even with the help of a fistful of ibuprofen, you could barely move.

6:29

“Dude, where are you?!”

It was like your phone and the FaceTime call to Joel had just materialized on their own. The man on the screen was blinking slow. Ogling something in front of him.

“So ‘L’ stands for…long?” he said after a beat.

“No, that’s light, Joel, I need a heavy one.”

“This one’s got cardboard in it, I think.”

“That’s a tampon applicator, dipshit.”

In a blink, Joel’s eyes flitted to his phone. His nostrils flared, and he met your gaze with a scowl of his own.

“Well how the hell am I supposed to know that? Only stuck two— three things in a pussy before and it sure as fuck wasn’t cotton,” he griped, and if he were any less mature he likely would’ve rolled his eyes. Drama king.

You winced as another cramp rolled through you. You shook your head and tried to regain your composure.

“Just find a heavy-flow. pad. with wings. for me. Please.”

Joel sighed and turned back to the shelf, eyes searching.

It shouldn’t have been this hard, but it was. You had no doubt Joel had never willingly touched a pussy product before in his life, so the road ahead was treacherous. Silently, you felt the urge to tell him he had no business being in pussy at all if he didn’t bother to learn what came out of one every month, but you let him cook.

His dark, greyish brows drew together in concentration. He leaned forward and reached for a box. Then stopped.

Went low to grab another, before pausing to show you.

“Very close, Joel. That’s a pantyliner.”

You felt somewhat like a mother showing a headstrong four-year-old how to copy shapes onto paper. No, darling, that’s a diva cup—and be careful with that crayon. Joel stood and he stewed and, by the look in his eyes, you’d already resigned yourself to another ten minutes of this back-and-forth rummaging at least.

Then you shifted in your seat, pushing your legs down a bit. They rubbed, of course. In spite of the pain that had seized your whole lower half, you felt a sweet, dull pulse.

You stared hard at Joel’s face on-screen to make sure he hadn’t seen it in yours, but damn that friction felt nice.

Sensitivity elevated with the influx of hormones, no doubt, you sat tight and tried to enjoy the feeling on purpose for a moment. You slowly sucked in a breath.

“Aw, hell, there’s just too many’a these damn boxes.”

You flexed your thigh muscles and let out a sigh.

“I don’t know how y’all do it,” Joel grumbled.

Keep looking, Miller. Just keep looking.

Slowly, your hips began to stir, and one small grain of pleasure gave way to a jolt—a twist in the pit of your belly that made the pain less grating. You leaned into it more.

Holding your phone, you could feel when Joel let out a frustrated groan. The sound low and almost enticing.

Wait.

Wait.

“Gross,” you said out loud, half-whispered.

You couldn’t help it. Joel was one of your closest friends; a man who loved beer die, Pall Malls, and Keith Whitley like nobody’s business and gave suffocating bear hugs whenever he was sweaty just to gross you out. You weren’t supposed to find men like that attractive.

But when the grit of his voice was just so nice…

“What?” Joel stopped to look down again.

“What?” you shot back, instantly.

A frown tugged at his lips.

“What’s ‘gross’? Me?”

Not…exactly, no.

More disgusted with yourself than anyone else, you clamped your legs together and shook your head. You tried to swallow, as if the action might suck the pleasure down with it, but the hot, throbbing sensation only grew.

You were practically grinding into the towel that had been stuffed between your thighs when you heard:

“Wings!”

An exceptionally proud Joel displayed a box of extra heavy-duty maxi-pads, with wings. He was grinning.

You weren’t sure if you thanked him next, congratulated the man, or what. You probably strung some words together and tried to return the smile as best you could, but who knew? The next thing you saw was that the line had gone dead, the truck was silent, and all that could be heard above the hum of the engine were your moans.

You braced yourself against the seat and rolled your hips even harder. Out of habit, you caught your lip between your teeth to prevent a louder sound from escaping, but then you remembered there was no one to hear you but you—for now. Your palm pressed flat on the dashboard, your knees squeezed even closer, and your vision flooded with soft, minuscule pinpricks of an all-too-familiar hue.

The only thing new to you here was Joel—the thought of him had never crossed your mind in moments like these.

But now you were closing your eyes, humping the seat with nothing between your body and the old, weathered upholstery but a scrap of fabric. And you were moaning his name. Imagining a face that was littered with coarse, grey stubble—you might’ve teased him for that once or twice before—and lips that were soft. So soft against your own that you wouldn’t think twice if he tried to slip his tongue inside and hold the sides of your face as he filled your cunt to the brim. In fact, Joel’s mouth would be a welcome distraction. Knowing how foul he was in even friendly confab, he’d undoubtedly be whispering the most vile things in your ear while he fucked you.

Reminding you, quietly, that you made such a pretty cocksleeve for him—why didn’t we try this sooner?— and how you’d be the sweetest thing if you just gave his cock another squeeze and made yourself cum all over it.

The mental image of that alone was inducement enough.

You felt a hot, euphoric band of something start to give way inside you. It tightened up, twisted—then snapped. Your mouth fell open and your thighs clenched tighter, grinding desperately in tandem with a pace you’d hoped Joel might’ve set if he were laying there underneath you. You clung to one last thought of him gripping your hips and bruising your walls with the force of his cock driving in and out, over and over again until, eventually, his cum was leaking out through each fluid thrusting movement. It was all your body could take, conjuring thoughts of his load spilling into you and onto him in warm, wet, sticky—

Whistling.

Someone was whistling outside. Walking up to the truck.

You were still coming down from the staggering heights of your climax when the driver’s side door swung open. You blinked furiously, as though to drive all the filth and depravity and need from your eyes before he could see.

It didn’t matter.

Joel was too amped up off a white plastic baggy to be concerned with much else as he plopped down beside you and smiled—beamed, really. Completely oblivious.

Your extremities were still twitching with the residuum of bliss when he reached for your hand. His eyes somehow warmer than they’d been all that day, they sparkled and shone and crinkled at the corners in a way that seemed to say the words before his mouth had uttered a sound.

“I got three boxes to be safe…”

Joel was really too sweet.

“…and some chocolate for your cramps…”

Always so considerate.

“…and you look real pretty when you cum, by the way.”

This motherfucker.

[jimxnslight]

Hey. Love your works. How are you?

For the prompts: 19. If you are okay with it, reading struggling after SA and finding it hard to tell taehyung about it ( only if you are ok with it)

Why Won’t You Let Me Help You? | KTH

Pairing: lawyer boyfriend!Taehyung x reader

Word Count: 3.1k

Warnings: Sexual Assault (i.e. slapping, groping), accidental minor injury, some blood

A/N: so um did I say max 1k for the drabbles? I didn't, right? I don’t remember saying that at all, nope, not at all… okay so maybe I went a little overboard with this but in my defence this is a pretty heavy topic and I didn’t wanna just breeze over it like it was nothing. So I present to you this supersized drabble

You never think it will happen to you. 

Sure, you’ve heard gruesomely detailed cases about women getting assaulted all the time on the news. You’ve read horrifying stories on Reddit of men committing atrocities against the opposite gender. You’ve even witnessed your own friend be catcalled on the bus during one of your girls' nights out. But you never think it will happen to you. 

Until one day it does. 

Until one day a man double your age grabs you while you're walking down the familiar hallway of your workplace. Until one day you’re being dragged into an empty meeting room before you can even think of screaming and shoved against the wall while your arms are restrained by hands that feel like they were made of iron. Until one day you have this man telling you how long he’s been waiting to get you alone, how annoying it has been to have had to hold back because of your “stupid boyfriend.”

You remember struggling at first, desperate to get away from a distant nightmare that had become reality, desperate to get this man as far away from you as humanly possible, but his next action had stopped you in your tracks. 

“Shut up,” he had snapped, and a sharp crack had sounded as his palm came in contact with your cheek. It shocked your senses, the fact that you’d been slapped in the building you had felt so comfortable working in for years, the fact that you had been so easily overcome. 

The realisation of how helpless you truly were in that moment seemed to strike you harder than any slap, the thought so jarring that you slowly felt the fight begin to drain from your limbs, fear settling to lock them in place instead. You couldn’t move, could barely even breathe, and you knew it had nothing to do with the steely grip the man had on you to keep you from running. Your strength was nothing in the face of his, and he seemed so angry and determined that you feared he might actually break your arms in a fit of rage if you tried to oppose him. 

You think that was when the numbness had begun to set in, because you couldn't remember feeling a stinging sensation on your cheek, the one you’re supposed to feel when a person is struck. In fact, you couldn’t remember feeling anything at all, even when you had watched the man’s hands roam over your chest and back greedily. Why hadn’t you screamed? Or cried? Or felt anything that wasn’t nothing at all?

That dazed state hadn’t dissipated even when the door to the meeting room had burst open to reveal your boyfriend’s friend and your co-worker, Jungkook, who had only taken a moment to process the situation before he had shoved the guy off of you and landed a harsh punch against his cheek.

You couldn’t remember what happened next. One second you were watching Jungkook angrily ask the man what he thought he was doing and then the next second you were standing here, staring blankly at the door to Taehyung’s familiar apartment. You felt like you were in a dream, everything surrounding you hazy and intangible as you watched your shaking fingers pull your keys from your pocket and unlock the door just like you always did. 

You were immediately greeted with the sound of the living room TV, and then the sight of your boyfriend stretched over the couch, two case files strewn out on the wooden coffee table before him as his attention jumped from the files to the series playing on the TV. 

At the sound of the door he turned to glance at you, a boxy smile overtaking his features.

“Hey, you’re back early,” he noted, his attention returning to the files, “how was work?”

It took a second for you to process the question, partly because the sight of his refined eyes and dark brown hair felt grounding and partly because that grounding effect seemed to tug at your hazy mind, attempting to pull you out of this thick fog you found yourself swimming in. You didn’t like it. You didn’t like that every time you felt yourself drifting away from the fog you could start to feel that man’s hands back on your body, as if they had been dipped in permanent ink and he had smeared it all over your skin. It made you feel dirty. It made you feel desperate to scrub it all off in the shower. 

But you couldn’t seem to get yourself to move towards the bathroom, too stuck in this autopilot mode that your mind seemed to cling to desperately to feign some form of ignorance. You watched yourself, as if you were some kind of spectator in your own body, walk into the kitchen just as you always did when you got back from work. As if following your daily routine would erase any remnant of the last hour from your memory. 

“It was fine,” you answered, your monotonous tone catching Taehyung’s attention. This time he gave you a sympathetic look as you mindlessly began pulling things out of the cabinets and fridge, his own hand moving to grab the remote and turn off the television. 

“Ah, I guess night shift isn’t exactly what you were expecting it to be…” he shook his head, misinterpreting the situation. He pushed himself off the sofa and began walking towards your form, “but it was only your first day, I’m sure it’ll get better as time passes.”

You quietly placed a head of lettuce - you don’t remember how it got in your hand - on a cutting board, while your other hand grabbed a knife. You had no clue what you were doing, no idea why you were cutting a head of lettuce right now, but you did know that you couldn’t look at Taehyung. Every time you did you could feel yourself slipping out of the daze that seemed to be keeping you together in front of him, could feel those hands groping at your body again.

Taehyung stepped beside you as he leaned against the counter with his arms crossed over his chest and an encouraging look on his face, “and even if it does end up sucking, your manager did say the switch was temporary. You’ll be back on the dayshift in no time, trust me.”

Your silence continued, Taehyung’s words flying over your head as you focused on keeping your erratic breathing levelled and your hands steady. You felt like a bomb, the pressure building and building and building until it could no longer be contained by the numbing of your mind and explode all over the place. You didn’t want to fall apart in front of him. 

“Hey,” he said, shifting so that he wasn’t leaning against the counter anymore and instead facing you with one hand against the counter, “did something happen? You don’t need my help with suing anyone, do you?”

He’d added that last sentence to lighten the mood, but when you didn’t answer him he couldn't hide his worry. His tone dipped as he tried to get your attention, which was still on that head of lettuce. You tightened your grip on it, trying to hide the evident tremor in your fingers. 

“Y/N? Come on, say something. Was it really that stressful today?”

You took a shaky breath, “no, it’s fine.”

“No, it’s not, you’re clearly stressed over something. We can go out somewhere if you want? Or we can order takeout and watch movies here… Just ask me anything and we’ll do it.”

The pressure was nipping away at your composure, so much so that the feeling of your throat closing up barred you from answering him. You could feel a hand on your chest, another at your hip; there was one sliding up your back, one closing around your neck. He was everywhere. You closed your eyes. It was too much. You just wanted it all to stop. 

You just wanted it all to stop. 

“Y/N!”

Taehyung suddenly lunged for the knife just as a sharp pain shot from your hand, his fingers wrapping around the handle to pull it out of your grasp. There was a small trail of blood dripping from the new cut on your palm.

“You’re bleeding,” he announced, dropping the knife back onto the cutting board before quickly opening the medicine cabinet to bring out some band-aids, “it’s not too deep thank god, but try to staunch the bleeding with those paper towels just in case.”

But when Taehyung turned around he found you frozen in place, gaze hazily fixed on your bleeding palm. You tried to focus on that pain instead, hoping it could help you balance your breathing and stabilise your shaky arms and stop the hands. Those hands, that wouldn’t stop grabbing at your skin over and over and over. 

Taehyung, more confused than ever, walked over to where you were standing and grabbed a couple of paper towels, “please say something, Y/N, you’re worrying me.”

He reached over to wet the paper towel before cleaning your palm, and it was only then that he felt you trembling. His brows furrowed as he reached over once again, this time to place a comforting hand on your shoulder.

“God, you’re shaking-”

But the moment his fingers connected with your shoulder you flinched. It wasn’t a small reaction either. It was the kind that had you snapping backwards, your hand smacking against a pan that went crashing to the floor while your head bumped against an overhead cabinet. Taehyung’s eyes were wide, his entire body freezing as he watched you cave in on yourself. 

“Please…” you said, unable to produce anything more than a whisper, “please, don’t touch me.”

A look of hurt flashed on his face, and you felt awful for causing it. But, up until now, the touches of that man’s hand had been ghostly, merely whisps brushing against your skin, until Taehyung’s hand had made contact with you and suddenly they felt too real. It was as if you couldn’t differentiate his touch from that man’s, and that thought only pained you further, so much so that you felt your eyes begin to water.

Taehyung tried to take a step towards you, but you moved backwards further, causing him to pause. 

“Y/N, what’s going on?” He pleaded now, begging you to shed some light on the situation. You looked so pained, he couldn’t bear to see you like this, “please baby, why won’t you let me help you?”

You didn’t want to break down in front of him, didn’t want him to see you like this: so weak, so vulnerable, so incapable of pulling yourself together. 

And yet, at the soft tone of his voice, that’s exactly what Taehyung witnessed.

The tears came first, heavy as they slid down your cheeks before sobs began to rack your frame. You couldn’t even hold yourself up anymore, causing you to drop to your knees as you began to cry into your hands. You’d tried so hard to keep yourself together, and yet here you were now, unravelling entirely at Taehyung’s feet. 

Silently, he walked to where you were bent over, slowly crouching so that he was on the same level as you. His hands were itching to pull you into his arms and hold you while you sobbed, his heart aching to lessen even a sliver of whatever you were going through in that moment, but after your earlier reaction to his touch he decided not to push it. Instead, he stayed crouched before you, dropping soft words of comfort to let you know that you weren’t alone, he was here, and he wasn’t going anywhere. 

Eventually the story began to drop from your lips. You started from the very beginning, mentioning every detail of the experience as Taehyung struggled to keep his anger at bay the longer he listened. You went farther than that too, admitting to just how helpless and vulnerable you had felt in that moment and wondering how you were ever going to feel comfortable in your workplace again.

By the time you’d finished the anger and pain he felt was straining his chest, the urge to pull you closer reaching an unbearable level.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” He asked instead, knowing that getting angry and emotional now wouldn’t help you in any way. Right now it was his turn to stay strong, so that he could be that pillar of support for you during a time like this. 

“I don’t know,” you shook your head, sniffling while your hands tried to dry your cheeks. Taehyung’s gaze softened at how defeated you sounded. 

“Y/N, look at me,” he said, causing your damp eyes to meet his, “none of this is your fault, you understand me? What that man did to you was wrong, and he deserves to rot in hell for it. I’ll make sure of that if you’ll let me.”

Taehyung shifted forward, taking care not to touch you as he placed his hand on the floor in front of you, “and you’re going to get through this. I know it hurts right now. I know you feel helpless and vulnerable, it’s normal to feel that way. But I know how strong you are, I know you will get through this. And I’ll be here for you every step of the way, that you can count on. I promise.”

Even though you felt embarrassed, letting it all out to Taehyung and knowing he would still be by your side no matter what felt like a huge relief. Perhaps a part of you had been afraid of what his reaction would be, which was stupid considering how many sexual assault victims you knew he’d defended before in court. But there had still been that little “what if…” taunting you in the back of your mind. You were glad that thought had been shot down now entirely. 

You sniffed as your gaze dropped to his hand, still placed on the floor in front of your knees. You lifted your own, extending it until you hesitantly brushed your fingers over the back of his palm. You were relieved when your body didn’t recoil or flinch, relieved that you could lace your fingers in between his without any bad feelings.

Perhaps there still was hope for you. Perhaps you weren’t entirely broken. 

“Y/N?” Taehyung whispered, squeezing your hand reassuringly in his. You looked up at him in question. 

“Can I hug you?”

Even though your nod was quick, because just the thought of him was comforting, you appreciated it when he slowly pulled you towards him, making sure that if you needed to back out at any time it was okay. But by the time he had pulled you halfway towards himself, it was you who threw your arms around his torso and buried your face in his shirt, Taehyung’s arms immediately encircling your form. His hands stroked your back softly, nothing like that man’s hands in the slightest. 

The two of you stayed like that for so long that by the time Taehyung spoke, you could feel your leg start to cramp from the hard floor and awkward position. 

“So,” he said, stroking your hair gently, “what do you want to do now?”

He wanted you to say the words so badly, to tell him to help you sue every last penny out of that man before throwing him in the worst jail Taehyung had heard of. He was more than ready to, the anger from before slithering back into his chest like an enraged snake. He wasn’t a lawyer for nothing, and he’d show that man exactly what he was capable of. 

But you surprised him when you said none of that and instead said, “I want to take a shower.”

He chuckled, although it was more bittersweet knowing that a lot of women tended to feel “dirty” after being assaulted; he’d seen a lot of that in his line of work, and the thought of you feeling that way hurt his heart. 

“Do you want me to join you?” He asked, pulling the two of you from the ground, though his arms stayed fixed around your waist. 

You shook your head slowly, hoping he wouldn’t take any offence. You just felt like you needed a moment to yourself to sort some things out in your head, but Taehyung was quick to nod, instead placing a light kiss on your forehead. 

“Alright, just call if you need me, okay? In the meantime I’ll order some takeout,” he smiled, showcasing that beautifully boxy grin that you could stare at for hours if he let you. Taehyung was glad to see you give him a small smile of your own before you turned around and disappeared behind the doors to your shared bedroom. 

The moment he heard the shower turn on, the sound of his phone going off made him flinch. He walked over to the coffee table and picked it up, brows furrowing when he saw Jungkook’s name displayed on the screen before immediately pressing the answer button. 

“Hyung!” Jungkook yelled into the phone, his worry apparent, “is Y/N at your place?! I’ve been trying to find her for the last 30 minutes, but I think she left the building. There was this guy and I caught him trying to force himself on her, but after I shoved him away I turned around and she just disappeared. I-”

“Relax Jungkook,” Taehyung calmed him down, quickly explaining that you were at his place and everything was fine. But Jungkook being involved relieved Taehyung, because that meant he could trust him to be a credible witness and to send him some extra information. 

“I need you to send me the details of the guy that hurt her,” Taehyung said, noticing the malice in his voice but not finding it in himself to care. His gaze dropped to the abandoned case files thrown across the coffee table, knowing that he’ll have to give most of his cases away if he wanted to spend as much time on yours as he wanted to. 

Thankfully, Jungkook’s reply was immediate, “of course, anything you need.”

Taehyung smiled, not only because Jungkook was ready to help him defend you, but also for protecting you when he wasn’t there. If Jungkook hadn’t been there… well Taehyung didn’t want to think about it. A part of him thinks he might have actually been capable of committing murder. 

He took a breath trying to steady himself, focusing instead on what was within his limits at the moment. 

“Thank you, Jungkook.”

“I’ll need your help if I want to make that man regret ever being born.”

[filth-burps-writing]

Rules of being a superslob

This lifestyle isn’t for every lazy guy with stains on their shirt. And I’m not going to tell you too just be lazier. This is a detailed list of rules for those of us who want commit our whole lives to being as digusting and piglike as possible. For those who’ve already given up working and showering. For the piggies who really want to roll around in the muck. I won’t say anything obvious because I know you’ve already done it but somethings I might tighten up what already do.

Food

No vegetables. Ever. Not a single one. Not only do they take up important room in your obese belly but they give you energy and make you healthier and you need to be as tired and sickly as possible.

The slob nutrients are; fat, calories, carbs and sugar. Eat as much of these four things as possible. If you can stomach it eat them in their purest form. If not enjoy a constant barrage of delicious junk food containing plenty of these things.

Eat as much as humanly possible. Try to always be as stuffed as possible. Eat constantly and at high speed. If you don’t feel like you belly is filled with rocks you need to eat more.

Every drink should either have over 600 calories or have bubbles to make you burp. If a drink has neither of these do not drink it.

If you drink alcohol always have some to hand. I’m sure you’re already familiar with its slobby effects.

Behaviour

Make as much noise as possible! Don’t just let fly your supersized farts and belches make your grunts, groans, moans and any other noise be heard! They’re all beautifully digusting.

Be an asshole! A true blue superslob doesn’t give a singular fuck what anyone thinks so let any possible rule go! Be as rude and unpleasant to be around as possible. And don’t forget to be crass! Swear, yell, scream, talk about sex constantly. If you want something get it.

Drool. You’ve probably started noticing some drips around your mouth and on your various chins. This is a good sign! Make sure your slack jawed as often as possible and delight in the sludgy goop that slides out of your mouth.

Be stupid. Remove all clocks and books from your home. Watch porn all the time. Lower your brain capacity as much as possible.

Stay lying down. I know you love sitting but you need to move as little as possible. Set up your bed and stay there. If you need to move do so as little as possible and as slow as possible.

Clothing

Stop wearing bottoms. I’m sorry you have to part with your dearly beloved stained joggers but they’re limiting you. The only thing you should be wearing on your lower half is a stained, tight set of underwear. Keep your old pants close by by piling them up under your pillow so you have lots of stink close to your nose.

Stop buying or washing clothes. You already have plenty and changing clothes at any time is impeding your stink potential. Find your dirtiest, smelliest t-shirt, put in on and never take it off.

Your new uniform is a pair of underwear and the t-shirt from the previous step. Never ever change your clothes. Just watch them get dirtier, sweatier and smaller as you grow.

Pour seed oil on your belly twice a day. It’s fun, it makes you extra greasy and it gives you some nice gross acne to make your belly even more repulsive.

Sleep

Never fall asleep before three am. You should ideally be nocturnal to be as unhealthy as possible.

You can take naps but try to do something like eat a heavy meal after you’ve woken up so you stay lethargic.

Use caffeine wisely.

Sex

Find a partner who supports you to do all the work and to help you with not moving. They’re are plenty of freaks out there who will love your sloppy ways. I’m one of them.

Use sex toys and tools for pleasure!

Try to make your kinks as terrible as possible! Find new and innovative ways to be a pervert!

[stellayuta]

Love on The Grid - Formula 1 AU! Yuta Okkotsu - Pt 3.

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PART 1 ||| PART 2

synopsis: One-night stands were nothing but a necessary painkiller for your inability to cross paths with true love. Your most recent find at a Vegas Club was no different. He was boring, obedient, SLOW! You leave him high and hanging hoping you'd never see him again until you find yourself gawking at a supersized billboard of him on a Vegas highway with the title 'LEGEND RETURNS TO VEGAS'.

genre: some smut and lots of angst

content: 18+ only. Formula one driver! Yuta x f! reader, all sorts of sexy stuff (fingering, oral, orgasm denial), swearing, angsty elements, cheating and discussion of mental health <3

word count: 5.2k

a/n: can't stop writing this lmao. here's part 3. Also, I noticed I have some trouble writing second person pov and keep switching to first so pls excuse any grammatic discrepancies.

WARNING: always use protection!

The chilly November air is ruthless as it bites your exposed skin. You had an ambitious plan for the night with your flashy dress, but all of it fell apart, leaving you alone and miserable for the second time in your life. Maybe it's the cold, but you feel your nose leaking - or maybe it's your uncontrollable crying that's causing that.

"Oh my god, stop crying!" you snap at yourself. This is pathetic. Your friends will not be happy with this advancement. You couldn't even get Noritoshi his darned autograph.

You seemed to have picked the back exit of the casino fortunately because you can still hear camera shutters going off in a distance. There is nothing in the back except a small, marble fountain with a weak stream of water. You do notice a very flashy, bright red car parked near it though, very far from the parking lot which is more towards the front of the casino. You look at in awe, how it casts a pinkish-red glow on the white marble around it - almost looks like it's made of rubies.

"Like my ride?" a haughty voice grabs your attention, and you haphazardly rub at your eyes before looking up. It's a tall, slender man in a fiery red suit and black accents walking towards you. You take note of his snowy white tresses and crystaline blue eyes. You feel like you've seen him somewhere before? Is he perhaps an actor or a supermodel?

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to stare at your car." You apologize to the man in case he had plans of accusing you of an attempted grand theft auto.

"Ah, don't worry about it." He says, waving his hand dismissively, "These cars are meant to be stared at, otherwise what's this point."

The comment makes you smile at bit as you hug yourself a little to get some relief from the cold.

"So?" He begins, twirling his keys on his long index finger. "What are you doing out here? Saw you last with Okkotsu? You his chick?" He interrogates you.

"I just came out for some fresh air, I don't quite like crowded spaces." You tell him, evading his question.

"No one hates glamor." The man says, fashioning a pair of circular sunglasses from his jacket pocket and putting them on. "Especially not formula one glamor. The richest of the riches. The most esteemed parties, crowd. What is it that really irked you?"

You frown at him. "Why do you believe everyone is interested in that kind of life? Do you think one kind find genuineness in life when your environment is constantly this superficial?" Maybe you spoke too much but the man seems intrigued.

"So Okkotsu bagged a smart chick. Good for him." He teases but you are not in the mood for any of it. "I am not his chick. We are friends. Not anymore probably. But don't make assumptions." you snap at the guy.

"Ah, calm down, tiger..." He says, putting his hands up and sitting up on the hood of his car. "Yuta doesn't just bring any chick along with him to places. I thought the two of you looked nice together!"

"He doesn't?" you ask. You feel a terrible ember of hope inside of you but want to immediately douse it. The strange man lets out a manic laugh.

"What? Did you think he was some Casanova, getting into everyone's pants. Do you even know anything about him?" he asks you mockingly and you feel a blush of embarrassment creep onto your cheeks. "He's not like the rest of us - forever on the search for love, and getting played by women who want us for the fame." He says, gazing at the sky. It is quite pretty out here today, a starry night.

You don't know for sure if this guy would know anything, but it seems like he would so, you can't help but ask him.

"What's going on between Yuta and that woman with the mole?" you ask, not making eye contact with the man. He looks at you with narrowed eyes.

"Who? Rika?"

"Yes, her."

"Oh yeah, they dated. For a year maybe? Yuta thinks they were in love, but I disagree. Yuta would think he's in love with anyone as long as they love him. He's pretty stupid I must say." The last part brings a smile to your face. "What happened between them?" you prod.

"Hmm, aren't you curious, as a friend?" He sticks his tongue out at you but continues on before you can protest.

"Well turns out, Rika loved how popular he was. Ad campaigns, parties, press tours, social media. Rika loves to be talked about. And with Yuta, she'd be as notorious as him. That was when Yuta was at the peak of his career. He hasn't been so well this year and Rika, finding that she had no screen-time anymore, decided it wasn't worth being linked to Yuta anymore." He says, sighing. You furrow your brows at this reveal.

"And so, as all fake things must come to an end, she asked for the breakup and Yuta had to comply. Do you know why he let her go?" Gojo asks you and you shrug your shoulders.

"Because he felt he wasn't deserving of being her boyfriend if he can't even be famous and publicly liked enough to be known as her boyfriend. He thought she deserves better."

You and the man exchange a glance, knowingly fully well that no man would think this way. Yuta was truly, genuinely too stupidly kind for his own good.

"W-why is he still in contact with her then?" you ask. Now this came from a place of selfishness. You didn't mind that Yuta had a past, but you didn't want her around him anymore. Regardless of whether you and Yuta had anything going or not.

"Well, they got to know each other because she is his personal manager. He didn't want to risk her livelihood by firing her." Gojo says.

"Well not anymore." a third voice joins the two of you as you turn around to see a livid Yuta close the door behind him and walk towards you. His hair is now falling onto his head, lock by lock, ruining his neat hairdo but very much reminding you of his fucked-out look from the other night. He has discarded his grey tuxedo jacket for good. He stands in between you and the white-haired man, seemingly trying to shield you from him. "I got rid of her for good. Now, what are you doing here, Gojo?"

Gojo. Now you get it. The first Ferrari driver who crashed out today. The question makes Gojo give Yuta a half smirk.

"Bad timing, Okkotsu. I was just about to ask this pretty lady here for a ride in my Ferrari. Third-wheel much?"

"Well, that won't be necessary." Yuta declares, pulling you in by the waist. "My Lambo's faster and Y/N prefers the better driver."

Yuta's blatant show of talent supremacy makes your mouth pop open in sheer admiration for a full two seconds.

"See you around..." Yuta says, pulling you along and not waiting for Gojo's reply.

Before the two of you can get to the car though, he finds a crevice between two pillars to push you into.

"I am apologizing again. One last time. You won't see the likes of her again." He says, very seriously, his spiky dark hair brushing the top of your forehead due to his proximity to you. You stare at his lips mindlessly, not knowing what to say. Why would he go this far for you?

"I don't think anybody in your world wants to see you with me and, she seems like she is still in love with you, Yuta..." You admit more to yourself than to him, cupping his face in your quivering hands. His expression is very honest as if he wants to shout it out to you with every cell of his body.

"She can go to hell. So can all of them." It is but a gentle whisper and he waits merely a second for your nodded consent before he presses his lips onto yours and your legs turn to jelly. You take fistfuls of his black shirt into your hands for support as you wrap your arms around him, melting, drowning into the kiss without any hope of surfacing. His hands run up and down your torso, trying to touch as much as body as possible before deciding to settle one hand on your ass and the other holding your chin to face you as he breaks the kiss to take a breath.

The two of you huff, separating yet still connected by a slimy string of your salivas. The weather doesn't seem chilly anymore as you feel his marble-like, wet back from under his soaked shirt. You also find your nipples poking out of your dress painfully, your collar bones shining with sweat as Yuta notices them and swoops right in to start kissing them.

"We'll be papped in this position, dummy." You slap Yuta's back, looking around with haste to see if you had peeping company.

"Don't care," he mumbles, groaning while he peppers the top half of your chest and your cleavage with kisses.

"I care!" You tell him, trying to yank him off of you. "I don't want to be on the gossip pages of a tabloid, making out with you."

He looks up, his dark blue eyes feral. "My car has tinted windows. No flash would penetrate."

You follow his stream of thought to realize what he's saying and bite your lip. You nod at him to give him the green signal to take you back to his car, parked out at the front where the paparazzi is parked too.

But it is not near enough.

You are clinging on to his muscular arm as you walk and feeling the weight of his arm right between your breasts is driving you insane.

Thunder makes a surprise appearance as a previously clear sky starts collecting an army of angry, dark clouds, illuminated by a shameless full moon. It's about to rain down on you two people, whose passion knows no bounds.

"Wait, Yuta-" you make him stop halfway and bring down his face to kiss him yet again. You run your finger along his jawline, admiring how perfect its edges are and occupy your hand with grabbing his hair. You take a small break to mumble truthfully against his puffed-up lips- "I couldn't wait till the car..."

That is enough motivation for Yuta to pick you up in his arms like a doll and carry you the rest of the way to the car, with your legs wrapped around his waist and your tongue fighting his for dominance. Fortunately, it seems the paparazzi had deserted the front area of the casino and you hear them in a distance yelling out "gojo" and "ferrari". So it was him. Now you owe him one. Thanks to that, you're able to manage getting into Yuta's sexy black lambo pretty discreetly.

This is the first time you get to properly see the car and with its teal interior and white lightwork, it truly looks like an engineering masterclass. Somehow your brain wires back to Toji driving this car around smoothly through the streets of Vegas and you turn to Yuta who's already made himself comfortable in the driver's seat.

He looks at you with yearning but it's unsafe to drive under the influence of lust.

You stare at him though till he raises his brow.

"Are you sure you can drive the car, I mean, it's an expensive car." you say before you realize what's coming out your mouth.

Yuta makes the most interesting expression possible.

"Remind me whose car this is?"

"Yours?"

"Remind me what I do for a living...?"

".... drive cars really fast...?"

Okay that was stupid on your part. It's just out of Toji's smooth, more practiced hands and into Yuta's younger, more energetic hands - you didn't know what to think. You were now going to witness Yuta Okkotsu in his true element - doing the thing he was born to pioneer.

Yuta revs the engine and pulls the car out of its spot and out of the premises smoother than buttery silk. He gets on to the road and soon enough we accelerate to a comfortable pace.

You admire how perfectly this car moves, like a black cat prowling through the roads.

Once Yuta hits the highways though, he assaults the gas pedal.

"Ahhhh!!!" you yelp, feeling the air hit your face with the windows down. It feels like literally being slapped by the wind. This earns a hearty laugh from Yuta.

"You should sit in one of our race cars, this is nothing!" he yells, rolling down his window too.

Since it is the wee hours of the night, the highway is practically empty, and you watch Yuta own the road like he was meant to rule it.

"Woo-hoo-hooooo!!!!" You scream out again, this time, cautiously putting your head out the window. You watch the buildings and the shimmering rows of cars running on the local streets pass by at a distance. Your hair finds its own rhythm, flying with the wind.

When you finally get off the highway, the both of you roll up the windows and relax into your seats. You feel wide awake now, more than you've ever been before.

"That was the best!" you tell Yuta, still high on adrenaline.

"You're welcome..." he says coolly.

"Where are we going?"

"On a scale of 1 to 10, how much do you like stars?" Yuta turns to you, smiling, probably already knowing your answer by how your eyes begin to twinkle just like those stars he mentioned.

****

The car finds itself right at home by the edge of a cliff as Yuta helps you out of the car and locks hands with you. It is quite windy up here too and the cliff overlooks the Vegas City, the view is mind-blowing.

But nothing can beat the expanse of the universe that is showing you a glimpse of itself in the night sky. You stand there looking up at the myriads of colors and glitter decorating the inky black canvas of the night. You spot at least 5 shooting stars in 30 seconds.

"Come here." Yuta calls out to you, and you turn around to see that he has laid out a fluffy blanket on the hood of his car and has another one in his hand for you two to use, perhaps.

You approach the car skeptically and ask Yuta if it can handle the weight.

"It can handle much more." He comments, urging you to join him on the hood of the car. The two of you maintain a good distance between you on the hood, but you so want to touch him right now. The sparkling sky finds its home in Yuta's dark, spectating eyes too and you can't help but look at him with... l-love?

For a while the two of you just sit there, enjoying the view and saying nothing. The silence isn't awkward this time but calming, very warm. You bring your knees closer to your chest. Without club alcohol, you feel shy now, of all times to be shy.

The last strand of your patience snaps though when you put your hand down on the hand and accidentally brush fingers with him.

The two of you exchange a look and you are not sure what's stopping you two? Dignity? Qualms? To hell with all of that.

"Stop looking at me..." you whisper at him, slowly sliding towards him, across the hood and climbing on top of him, right on his crotch, making him lay back down on the hood. He, however, does not want to stop looking at you like he wants to drink you up,

"Look anywhere else!" you gasp, placing your palms face down on his chest and yet, he won't break eye contact at all. He is studying you now, up and down, eyes stopping a second too long on the cleavage out for display, your lush thighs around his hips.

"Why, is it bothering you? I'm not going to look away." He declares, propping himself up on the hood and running his hands up and down your sides. The roughness of his hands that is evident even through the dress makes you bite you lip and breath out harshly. You are now practically sitting in his lap.

"Usually..." He continues, bringing his lips dangerously close to yours, brushing them against yours as you breathe in his heady scent.

"People have a thing for doing this stuff inside the car." His tongue slides across your bottom lip and he moves to bite your earlobe.

"Yet, here we are..." he comes back to your lips, nose brushing against yours as his hand snakes up your side to hold your neck gently. "Right out in the open... inviting anyone to see, am I right, Y/N?"

You look at him with pleading eyes and move in to kiss him but he uses his other hand to hold you by your hair. He doesn't hurt you but pulls with enough pressure to keep the two of you apart.

"I want to touch you..." you confess. What is his problem, this jerk? The only thing he is accomplishing by delaying this is making your heart race and making your bottom wet.

"Would you have gone with Gojo if he really invited you out for a ride?" He asks, his eyes darkening further while his fingers stay intertwined in your hair. Oh, now you see. He is the territorial type. Well, you can't judge him, so are you. But two can play at this game.

"Well, he was quite hot." you lie with a convincing smile, pretending to dream of some attractive version of Gojo that does not exist in your brain. Sure, he is handsome - but, Yuta made you suck him off in record time, that's something. Even Megumi took a month.

Yuta must believe what you say because his grip in your hair tightens ever so slightly.

"What did you talk about?" He asks, cocking his head to the side as he uses his free hand to slide it down your back and raise your skirt up. He must be pleased to find his target already soaking wet and you barely control a squeal when he plunges two fingers in at torturously slow pace. You have wanted him for so long though, that you begin to lose focus and he lightly tugs at your hair.

"Go on, what did you talk about?" he demands in a lower voice.

"Huh, oh yes." you try to continue your farce. "H-he was telling me how good I look. He told me he's a good ride." you grin at Yuta and he curves his fingers upward into your womanhood to finally earn a disgruntled moan from you.

"You riding him? Don't make me laugh." He says, a twisted smile forming on his face that only makes you want to prod him more.

"Why not?" you push. "He's tall, has a majestic body. He looks like he's got a lot of endurance. He looks like h-he'd b-be." With every compliment you direct towards Gojo, Yuta's pace increases as he assaults your sensitive spot.

"He what?"

"H-h-he... it would be fun to r-ride-" before you can finish your sentence though you can already feel a balloon of pleasure inflating rapidly inside your nether regions. You were about to cum any second now.

But just as you are about to go over the peak, Yuta pulls out his fingers without warning. Your brows furrow together, and you look at Yuta with a face so shocked, he almost wants to laugh.

"What happened, baby?" He asks, pushing his face into your cleavage. "Go on... tell me." he says, the vibration of his voice making your nipples erect.

"Why'd you stop?" you ask him, still unable to fully recover from the loss of your orgasm.

"That's your punishment for lying about Gojo."

"Yuta that's unfair!" you grab a bunch of his hair and hug him tight, making his nose press between the valley of your breasts.

"Mhmm..." he replies lazily. "I can give you a chance to make it up to me though." He kisses your nipple through the fabric of your dress and looks up at you. He doesn't need a nod to know that you are up for his challenge. He helps you shimmy yourself out of that flimsy dress and it lays discarded on the top of the car. Now you are butt naked in the middle of nowhere, atop Yuta's car. The thrill of it sends a shiver down your spine and certainly a shiver up your puss.

Yuta makes you get on your knees on top of the hood, facing the windshield. The cold touch of the glass on your squished breasts makes you sensitive and ticklish. He pokes your ass. "Up!"

At once, you raise your bottom for him to feast his eyes on. A leaky mess you are, glossy liquid covering your inner thigh and the opening to your womanhood. Yuta doesn't waste too much time gawking at it though and gets straight to business.

He licks one strip up your slit to get you started as you moan out. "Yes, that's your task. You only get to come today, if you are loud enough."

"What if someone comes running to find us?" you ask, turning around only to see Yuta raise a brow. "Isn't that what you want?"

You hate that he is right. This is exactly what you want. It's a massive, massive turn on for you, the risk of being seen. How does he know though?

You merely nod at him and lay your face back down on the glass as he continues to alternate between licking your nether lips and inserting his tongue into your hole. With each move, you are unable to hold you moans and whimpers that echo away in the night.

Soon, you feel another tingle of a bubbling orgasm and your moans turn to lower groans which makes Yuta stop again.

"Yuta, I swear to fucking god!" you scream out.

"Yes, keep that volume up!" Yuta grabs a hold of your ass and takes a deep dive into your crevice, picking up a lot of speed as he goes in and out with tongue and using two of his fingers to prod at your clit.

"Ah! Oh my goodness!" you shriek, moaning louder than ever, your breasts hitting the windshield with every time he thrusts his face into your heat.

"I-I'm cum-" this time, you are able to go over, losing your mind in the process, going cross eyed as Yuta doesn't slow down at all.

He doesn't stop until minutes later when your orgasm has subsided, and you are speechless from overstimulation. When he retracts you simply slump down the windshield and lay flat back on the hood, facing the sky - your face red and in a daze.

"How does it feel?" Yuta asks, placing a warm hand on your abdomen. He is completely soaked - in sweat and in your fluids. So is the blanket he laid out on the hood.

"Please Yuta..." you beg him, raising your hands up at him. "I can't, I need to kiss you, please..."

"God, baby..." Yuta pouts at you and leans over, connecting your lips together as your grab hold of his hair and deepen the kiss. This is all you wanted at the end of the day. To feel his lips and their warmth, to breathe in his odor. When you finally separate, you keep your heads connected and smile like a crazed teenager.

"Wait, it's your turn..." you remind him.

"It's fine. We can do that later." Yuta says, grabbing a hold of the second blanket to wrap around you while using the first one to clean you up down under. "You'll catch a cold out of here. Sorry, if I went too far."

You don't want to buy that though.

"You're going too far if you don't let me see mini Yuta again."

"Don't call it that oh my god." Yuta fake-heaves.

"But that's my favorite part about you!"

"What happened to liking someone for their character, Y/N?"

"Ughh... shush.. you!" you snap, getting off the car and reaching for your dress. It's a chore to put it on but you have to.

"I'm not letting you go without pleasuring you." you declare but Yuta merely guides you by the back and makes you sit inside the car.

"Soon, soon." he says. "We're going back to my hotel anyway. We need a change of clothes and a proper bed."

"So it's part two of last night?" you ask him teasingly. It was impressive that it had not even been a whole 24 hours yet it seemed like forever between last time and now. It also seemed like you got to know so much more of this man who was a complete stranger as of last night.

This made you smile but it immediately made you anxious as well.

When this night is over, where will the two of you be?

You were partially afraid to say anything and break your trance. what if this is all a dream?

"What are you thinking?" He suddenly asks, caressing your hair. This is the first time he touches you in a while. Well probably, it's only been a few minutes but it felt like a while.

"I-" you begin but are unable to find words.

"Do you think this is just an infatuation and will dwindle down to nothing in the next few days?" you finally say. It's better to face the truth now than to delay it. Yuta has to take a chance to ponder over it for a while which only proceeds to create a knot in your stomach.

"That depends on whether you believe in love at first sight?" he replies unexpectedly.

A woman of no nonsense, you can't help but reply "I don't."

"I don't either." he reciprocates. "But I do believe in potential at first sight."

He separates himself from you only for a moment to hold you and look into your eyes as he speaks, pouring out his feelings.

"After the first time we locked eyes, after our first conversation and after the first night we spent together - albeit it was rushed and impulsive and although I won't say I was in love back then, I can't stop thinking about you either." He tells you, transparently.

"This pull between us, it doesn't exist without reason. So I'm asking you..." He says, taking a deep breath.

"Are you willing to give this a chance?"

----

Megumi and you met at a mutual friend's house-warming party. Both of you were newcomers in a small town who migrated for work. There was that in common other than the fact that both of you were slightly awkward, not great talkers and certainly liked the indoors better than adventure. You were just happy that you could find a similar soul in a town full of older people or already married people with families. It was almost not surprising when the two of you started dating. It was a choice of convenience. There was love, without doubt. At least from your side. How could you hate a man, who made you coffee first thing in the morning after a long, tiring day at work. How could you not love a man who played with stray puppies he found on the side of the road. How could you not love a man who knew how to have intelligent conversations and also appreciate your intelligence at the same time.

For you, love was a no-brainer. If this wasn't your perfect match, who would be?

Although Megumi had never explicitly given you any 'I Love You's ,Who could Megumi possibly find in this small town that was more compatible with him than you?

So, when another new hire at the company, Nobara, first reached out to you to set her up with some social circles, you started out by inviting her home for dinner. The three of you had a pleasant evening and you thought nothing of it. Megumi and you had been together for three years at this point. You were even planning to adopt a dog together. You thought of yourself as a married couple, almost.

Then why?

Why, after a horribly taxing day at work, with chinese takeout in your hand and barely enough energy to make it your room, do you find yourself listening to noises of a creaking bed. Why do you find yourself looking at your boyfriend biting Nobara's lips as he tells her the filthiest, yet most romantic phrases. Why is pressing her forehead on to her as he cums. It doesn't make sense. Intercourse with Megumi was quiet, quick affair. That's why it was 'intercourse'. It was something the two of you did to quickly satisfy each other, mostly him.

When you dropped the take-out bag, curry streamed out onto the wooden floor and carpet, and you could only do so much to keep yourself upright and not fall into the small puddle of curry. The noise made the duo turn to look at you and your brain was completely tuning out what Nobara had to say. She seemed to be apologetic, pleading almost but your eyes only followed Megumi as his bare self got out of bed, put his pants on and walked right past you - like you were air. Like you were invisible to him. He went to the restroom and closed the door, with Nobara scurrying out of the house, half clothed.

That night, a part of you was lost forever. The other part of you that refused to give up your survival instincts pushed you - it pushed you until you found yourself at Momo and Noritoshi's doorstep - the Kamo household.

You remember telling them the whole thing as it killed you again, word by word. You find yourself sobbing till you got a panic attack - and then one more. Momo had to call over Miwa and her boyfriend, Kokichi too.

They were the ones who decided that to pull you out of this, you'd need to be pulled out of that town.

The Vegas trip happened only after you promised yourself in the mirror, with a lot of conviction that you would never, ever fall in love with a man again.

----

It's like his confession sobers you out completely. You fall back into the chasm of reality.

Yuta's dark blue eyes wait earnestly for an answer. And maybe you know what you're going to tell him. You'll have to tell him it's not going to work. You'll have to tell him you can't place your heart in jeopardy again.

You will have to stab yourself in your heart because you can't afford to hurt yourself, but you absolutely can't lie to this man and hurt him too.

After tonight, you will let him go..

"Let's get going, Yuta." You laugh nervously. "I'm too tired, don't mind if I sleep."

to be continued.... PART 4 HERE

a/n: phew, this part took some time to figure out what direction I wanted this to go and what elements I wanted to include in this part. Expect a LOT of angst in the next one. I believe Part 4 may be the penultimate chapter. Till then, stay tuned and stay healthy!

[goneahead]

Show Me The River

Right after the rescue, watching Steve on the chopper—the easy way he'd held his weapon, the way he'd laughed and joked around—Danny had assumed they would chalk this up to more proof that SuperSEAL was, apparently, indestructible. Assumed they would get back to Hawaii, and he and Chin would probably have to resort to duct taping Steve to the nearest hospital bed.

He'd been wrong.

title: Show Me the River

fandom: Hawaii Five-0

word count: 8,296

pairing: Steve McGarrett/Danny Williams but gen

summary: Danny takes care of Steve after 2.10, aka the ubiquitous 2.10 coda

On AO3: Show Me The River

huh. I think I only have one more H50 fic still parked over on dreamwidth. And maybe a couple of comment fics😳

[grandwretch]

only i must wander

[chapter one] [on AO3]

In the months before Steve's graduation, he and Dustin had something of a routine going on. Every Friday afternoon, Steve would pick Dustin up from Hawkins Middle School and they would drive out to the McDonald's one exit over. They even ordered the same thing every week: A Big Mac for Steve, nuggets for Dustin, two Cokes, and a supersized fry. After driving slowly back to Hawkins they would eat in the arcade parking lot, and when they were done they would either spend the rest of the afternoon trying to kill each other over air hockey or renting shitty science fiction movies. Whichever Dustin wanted, really. 

It wasn't anything like Steve's life had been just six months ago, but he loved every second of it. Even when Dustin was getting mud all over his upholstery and asking too many questions. 

On that particular Friday night, Steve had been late picking Dustin up because Mrs. O'Donnell had stopped him in the hallway on the way out, for the third time this month. Some bullshit about him not "applying" himself, or whatever, and how she didn't "feel it was right" that Steve had passed her class when he'd obviously learned so little. Which was bullshit, Steve thought, because she taught fucking English, which he already spoke, and he'd been pulling solid C's in her class all semester. 

So most of the conversation had been about that, really, with Steve complaining about how every teacher he'd ever had hated him, and Dustin scolding him just as fiercely as any teacher ever had. A typical Friday night. 

Tonight, however, Dustin paused, mid-sentence.

"Are you ever going to tell me why your eyes do that when you're mad?" 

Steve paused, a french fry halfway to his mouth. He looked over at Dustin, who was staring at him from the passenger seat. He was almost used to it, a kid spending every day in the seat next to him instead of Nancy or Tommy, but big, curious eyes still threw him off from time to time. Especially when they came paired with off the wall questions like this. 

"Why do my eyes do what, Dustin?" 

"You know," Dustin said, gesturing to Steve's face with his burger. "When you get mad they go all black and stuff. Kinda like El's do when she uses her powers, but you don't--" Steve had never seen Eleven actually fight, but he had seen her do small tricks now and again for the boys. Her eyes were more like pits, her entire face wrinkling around the deep depths. Steve felt his stomach churn just thinking about the same in his own face. 

The reflection in the rearview mirror was the same as it had always been. Hazel eyes, smooth skin marred only by a few moles. Steve made himself breathe. 

"I think I would know," Steve said, keeping his voice carefully steady. He was trying to be less bitchy around the kids, but sometimes they made it so goddamn hard. "--if my face looked like that. It probably-- It probably hurts, right?" 

"Not really," Dustin said, with enough conviction that it tore Steve's gaze away from his own reflection. "Anyway, it's not your face. It's just your eyes. Look, I don't know what kind of Wesen you are, man, but you can talk to me about it, whatever it is. You know I'm one, too, right?"

"A-- a what?" If this was another one of those weird fantasy novel things, he was going to finally strangle the little shit, he really was. 

"A Wesen," Dustin repeated, looking as confused as Steve felt. "Like-- like me and El."

'Like me and El,' Steve thought, turning the sentence around in his head. He was not equipped for this, Jesus. It had to be hard, growing up fighting monsters and stuff, and having one of your best friends be a weird ass superhero, but Steve hadn't expected Dustin to deal with it by playing pretend. He'd always been the most grounded in reality of the kids. It was why Steve could put up with him for more than a couple hours. 

"Buddy, maybe you should talk to your mom about this stuff," Steve said, slowly. "Or like Mrs. Byers or somebody." 

Dustin rolled his eyes, which Steve thought was pretty rich coming from someone sitting in his car and talking about made up words. "Oh my god, Steve. Look."

And then-- And then. 

Steve didn't know how to explain it. One moment, he was looking at Dustin, the kid he'd become absurdly attached to over the past semester, and then something shifted. In the next breath, Dustin was... different. Light brown hair had sprouted all over his face, smooth and straight and so unlike the curly mop still on top of his head. His nose had changed, the bridge gone flatter and wider, the end still hairless but now a deep dark brown, like a dog's. Underneath his nose, his lip was cleft, opened wide so Steve could see even more clearly the gap where Dustin's teeth should be. On either side of the cleft, whiskers sprouted, white and long. 

His eyes were the same, though. Dustin's eyes, staring out of a beaver's face. 

Two years ago, Steve would have screamed. He would have thrown things. He would have been out of the car in two seconds flat. His flight reflex had been recently shattered, though, and now all he could do was stare and try not to choose the other option-- fight. 

This was Dustin, Steve told every dark instinct swelling up in the back of his mind. This was his best friend. Not something that crawled out of the Upside Down, not something stalking through the night. His kid. 

Dustin blinked at him, with a silly smile on his inhuman face. "See?" 

Steve's hands gripped the steering wheel, fingernails digging into the leather. "Dustin, what the fuck is happening right now?" 

The smile faded on Dustin's face slowly. "Do you not-- Steve, come on. You've seen El do this like a thousand times." 

"She's El!" Steve said, his voice going higher with stress. He could feel his muscles start to shake with the effort of keeping himself in place. "She's got, like, powers and shit! She was born in a lab and experimented on! You're-- You're just Dustin!" 

"Okay, ouch," Dustin said. A pout began to form on his face. "Okay, yeah, El is special, but there are people who like her who are, like, normal Wesen you know?" 

"You keep saying that word." 

"You know, like--" Dustin gestured between them with-- Jesus fucking Christ, with a fucking paw. "You and me." 

Steve had to get out of the car. His heart was going so fast he could feel it in his ear drums, in the roof of his mouth. It took too long for his shaking hands to open the door, and by the time his feet hit the dirt, he could feel adrenaline churning his stomach. Behind him, he could hear Dustin calling his name, the passenger door opening, but it only spurred on Steve's desire to get away. 

He stumbled a few feet, his legs too weak to carry him far, until hands grabbed at his jacket. Steve whirled around, ready to fight-- Your kid! A smaller part of his brain screamed at him. --but Dustin was... Human again. 

"What the fuck, Dustin," Steve couldn't stop repeating. "What the fuck." 

"Steve," Dustin said, deadly serious. "Are you seriously telling me you've never met another Wesen before?" 

"Stop saying that." 

"What?" 

"Stop saying that I'm one of you! I'm not. I don't-- I'm normal. Stop saying that." 

Dustin's eyes were too understanding. Steve fucking hated it when he did shit like this, when he could just look at Steve and got him, because Steve barely understood why he did what he did, sometimes. How did this fucking kid always seem to know him? And if he could, why didn't anyone else ever manage? 

"Steve," Dustin said again, pitched low and calm like he was trying to soothe a rabid dog. Like Steve was a monster, crawling the junkyard, looking for blood. "Look at your eyes right now."

There was a compulsion in Steve's blood that would not let him look away any longer. He had to look, had to face his own reflection already knowing it would ruin him. Steve raised his eyes to the car window, and its distorted mirror image of his face. 

For a moment, Steve almost had hope. His face was not marked or pitted like El's, nor was it covered in fur like Dustin's. It was his nose, his skin, his moles, his mouth. The scars that littered his face in the last two years were faint, but still visible. Steve could still feel one of them in the corner of his upper lip. It was almost easy to miss, almost easy to chalk it all up to a bad joke. But then Steve met his own gaze, and all illusion was shattered. 

It was like a trick of the light; They were the same size and shape as Steve's own, lined with the same delicate eyelashes, but there was no mistaking the change. His eyes were black. Not the deep void that stared out of El's other face, no. At first they seemed dead and glassy, like a shark's, but the longer he stared, the more Steve became aware of something moving inside them, like smoke behind glass. 

Steve didn't feel his knees grow weak or his legs buckle underneath him. He barely felt it when he landed on the ground. One moment he was standing, and the next he was on the asphalt, staring up at Dustin. Dustin, who looked down at him with such a mixture of confusion and sorrow that Steve felt, bizarrely, like his change was more inhuman than all the fur and torn flesh in the world. 

"What the fuck," Steve said, his voice croaking in his throat. "What's happening to me? Dustin, what the fuck is happening to me?" 

"I don't know," Dustin said, and-- Embarassingly, Steve let out a thin noise of panic, because he was absolutely fucked if Dustin was admitting he didn't know something. "I mean, I have a theory, but..." Dustin cut himself off and looked around the parking lot. They were alone here, had chosen it specifically so they could laugh and play Dustin's tapes as loud as they wanted to, but he still scanned the area with more suspicion than Steve had seen out of him in months. It made Steve's instincts kick in, had him scrambling to his feet to put himself in between whatever danger Dustin suspected of the world around them. "We really shouldn't do this here." 

"Is this..." Steve swallowed, his hands shaking. "Is this Upside Down shit? Is it because of the tunnels? Did I-- Did I breathe too many spores in or something?" 

Dustin considered the idea for only half a moment before dismissing it with a shake of his head. "No, if this was a symptom, Will would have displayed the same ones while he was in the hospital last year. No, this has to be... Come on, Steve, let's go home. I promise, I'll tell you everything I know. Just not where people can hear us." 

"This is fucking insane," Steve muttered to himself, but he climbed back in the car, hands shaking. 

The ride to Steve's house was tense, neither of them speaking, although Steve could sense Dustin throwing him concerned looks the entire way. He usually hated when the kid did that, mostly because he didn't need a thirteen year old's concern, thank you so much, Dustin, but today it rankled Steve's nerves worse than ever. Everything in his body wanted to fight something, but the only enemy he could identify was inside his own head. Dustin's gaze on him only made it worse, made Steve so jumpy he imagined, several times, jumping from the moving car. 

Whatever was wrong with him, it didn't stop at his eyes. 

Steve stormed down his driveway and threw open his front door. Dustin scurried in after him as if afraid to be left behind, and Steve had a brief pang of guilt, but then he caught sight of himself in the long mirror that hung along the foyer and-- He turned away, swallowing bile. "Alright, kitchen," he said. "I need a fucking beer." 

They sat on either side of his mother's breakfast nook, the only place Steve ever ate alone. Steve had a beer, one of the last few he'd been nursing since his party days ran out. Dustin had a root beer in front of him, untouched. They stared at each other, unsure. 

It was time to be a fucking adult, Steve decided, and unstuck his tongue from the roof of his dry mouth. 

"What was that word you kept using?" he asked. 

"Wesen," Dustin answered, his mouth a grim line. "That's what I am. That's what El is. Or was? It's not really clear." 

"But it's what she was supposed to be," Steve said, and when Dustin nodded, he sucked in a breath. "And what I am." 

Dustin squirmed on his stool. "I think so." 

"So... So what the fuck is it?" Steve shook his head, confused by the very words coming out of his mouth. "Am I going to start growing fur? Or-- Or get all wrinkly or whatever, like El when she uses her powers?" 

"No, it's not--" Dustin paused, his face creased with the uncomfortable feeling of having no idea how to explain something. "I only know what my mom has told me, which isn't, like, a lot. But we're not like humans." 

"Yeah," Steve scoffed. "I got that." 

"What I mean is, we're part of the same community but we're not all the same. We probably have some stuff in common, but I don't know how much. I can't exactly go to the library to figure this stuff out." Dustin's voice held the long-suffering frustration of a child who'd been asking the same questions for a very long time, with no adult willing to answer. Steve was usually all for it, being the first to encourage the kids to say fuck adults and do it themselves, but he was still lost in a sea of information that made no fucking sense to him. 

"Can we just-- Explain it to me like I'm really stupid." 

"I want you to know that I'm not making a joke right now because I can tell you're in a really vulnerable place." 

"Thank you so much, Dustin." 

"You remember Star Wars, right?" Dustin asked. 

Steve's head tilted. "The movie you made me watch over Christmas break? With the laser swords? Yeah, I remember them." 

"Alright, so, everyone in that movie is an alien, right? Some of them look like humans, but they're not from Earth. And some of them don't look like humans at all. They're all from separate planets, some of them entirely separate species, but they're all aliens." 

Steve blinked at Dustin for a long moment before his face collapsed into disbelief. "We are not fucking aliens." 

Dustin's glare was legendary. "No, you idiot. But we're not human, either." 

"Then what am I?" Steve raised a hand to stop the answer he could already see coming. "And don't say Wes… That word. I can't just be not human. People aren't… whatever they're not. I have to be something." 

"I don't know," Dustin said. "I don't know a lot of the names. My mom is kinda…" 

Steve nodded. Mrs. Henderson's brand of flighty overprotectiveness was well known to the entire group, and probably most of Hawkins by now. Dustin was allowed to spend whatever time he wanted with Steve, even staying over at his house when Steve's parents were out of town, but Steve had also been horrified to find that Mrs. Henderson had woefully unprepared the kid for things like puberty or high school. Dustin said his mom didn't like to talk about things that upset her, and Steve guessed that other Wesen was one of those subjects, much like Dustin growing up or rock music. 

Steve felt himself begin to calm. Whatever happened, it was bound to be easier than the time he had to explain to Dustin what a pube was. 

"Do you think she might know?" 

"Probably, but we can't ask her." Dustin was beginning to look actually distressed. "There's no way she would let us hang out again." 

Steve's stomach sank. "Really?"

"When she found out the founder of the D&D club at Hawkins High was a Blutbad, she made me promise I would never join," Dustin said. Brightening, he continued, "Oh, wait, duh! Your parents have to know; They must be Wesen, too! Just ask them." 

Bradley Harrington's eyes had never gone black, Steve was pretty sure, though they had definitely been angry enough a time or two. He couldn't imagine his mother, Sophia, as anything less than human, either. They were both so… normal, although sometimes so damn keen on being completely on-trend that Steve suffocated with it. Half of the trouble Steve had gotten himself into over the years was more about calling too much attention to himself than legitimately bad behavior. Steve was sure they would be just as annoyed by having a genius like Dustin as a son as they were having an idiot like him. 

He tried to imagine what his father would say if Steve called just to tell them his eyes had changed color, and winced. 

"If they wanted me to know, they would have told me," Steve said, grimly. 

"Well, fuck," Dustin said, which Steve thought pretty much summed it up, yeah. 

After a moment of stewing in his own misery, Steve remembered to ask, "So what are you, then?" 

Dustin's chest puffed up with pride, and a ripple of fur sped across his face. "I'm an Eisbiber!"

"That means absolutely nothing to me, you gotta know that." 

"We're like beaver people, basically. Mom says it's impolite to compare people to animals but–" Dustin shrugged. "I call it like I see it. I'm a beaver. Lots of Wesen have animal attributes." 

"What, like a werewolf or something?" Steve asked, incredulous. 

"Those are Blutbads," Dustin confirmed. His voice dropped to a whisper. "But Mom says if you call a Blutbad a werewolf to their face, they'll eat you." 

Suddenly, Steve could only think of demodogs, their faces peeled open and saliva shining in the moonlight. All those fucking teeth. 

He nodded slowly. "I'll… keep that in mind." Shifting in his chair, Steve thought about the tight, inner group of the Party, and the way he hadn't really been a part of it before last fall. Even within their small group, there had always been an air of mystery about El and her origins. Even Nancy hadn't had many ideas, when Steve had gotten the courage to approach her about everything post-breakup, but if Dustin had known the whole time... "So how many people know about this stuff, then? Are Lucas and Mike like you? Is that why everything happened with Will that first time?" 

"I don't think Wesen are that common," Dustin said, "though that might just be a Hawkins thing? Like I said, it's hard to do research. Lucas and Mike don't know. I'm not sure how much Will knows, honestly." 

"But they know about El," Steve said, frowning. 

Dustin paused, looking guilty. "I know. That's the problem. Mike treats El like a superhero, and I'm not... Eisbibers aren't like Hexenbiests, especially superpowered ones made in labs. We mostly make things. I don't want him to think I'm... I mean. You know. It's bad enough, already, with the human shit." 

"Look, Mike and I have never gotten along, but I don't think he would do that. Whatever Wheeler is, a bully isn't one of them." Steve knew what a bully looked like. Scrawny, angry twelve years olds didn't make the list.

"Alright, so you tell them you're a--" Dustin paused. "A whatever, then." 

"I will," Steve said, "the second we can figure out what the fuck it is I'm supposed to be. What about Hop? I mean, how much would El have told him?" 

"Nothing about you." Dustin shrugged. "El was raised in a lab by humans, presumably. She didn't even know what she was. My mom had to tell Hop everything, and then made him promise me and El would never be allowed to hang out alone." 

Steve thought of angry little El, eyes painted to match her second face, who wanted to be with her friends so badly that she ran away to find her past. "I bet that Kali girl could have helped us." 

"Good luck finding her. I'm pretty sure she was half Musai," Dustin said. Steve wished he'd just stop saying shit like Steve was supposed to understand it. Being stupid about human stuff may be embarrassing, but he refused to be bullied for not knowing the names of every single race of a species he'd just realized he was a part of. 

"This is insane," Steve said. He slumped in his chair, and looked around his kitchen. It looked just like he'd left it this morning, the kind of half-cluttered that houses inevitably got when they were lived in by people who desperately didn't want to be there. Filled up with the necessities of life but abandoned just as quickly. Clean dishes haphazardly placed around the room and junk mail months old still piled on the counter. His bread box was empty, half a loaf of bread still sitting in its wrapper on top. 

It should be different, he decided. Not just his kitchen, but his entire world. That's how things had been when he'd seen the demogorgon in the Byers' house-- He'd realized things about the world in that moment that had changed everything. It was fast and violent, and the next morning he had looked at himself in the mirror and not recognized the kid looking back at him. It was the same for everything he'd ever loved, even the people, and while Steve had spent a lot of time looking back, he'd always known there was no resetting time before that moment. 

He was starting to think he'd preferred the violent realization to this slow roll of information. Now Steve was left with the knowledge that the world had already been just as it was, and Steve had just been unable to see it. Right under his nose. His parents, his best friend, his fucking kitchen... the same as it had always been. He'd just been looking at it the wrong way. 

That was a much harder pill to swallow. The demogorgon hadn't left Steve with much choice-- swallow or choke. Get it over with. Fight until you win. But how the fuck was Steve supposed to fight this? He felt helpless in a way he didn't often let himself be, disconnected from his body and vulnerable in the haze of his own thoughts. Like his soul was hanging raw and open in the space around him, and this part of him that was a living, breathing thing was left with no one home. 

"We're gonna figure it out," Dustin said. Steve blinked slowly and pulled his gaze back to the kid who'd just blown his worldview to smithereens. Dustin's face was pulled tight with determination, leftover baby fat bunching adorably in his cheeks. He looked like an angry chipmunk, Steve thought hysterically, and then corrected himself: An angry beaver. 

God, what the fuck had happened to his life? 

"I'm serious, Steve," Dustin said, when it became clear that Steve wasn't going to react outside of a foggy gaze. "We're gonna figure this out, okay? Me and you." 

"Yeah?" Steve said, the edge of a laugh in his voice. "We're gonna, what, hunt down what I am, what my parents are, completely on our own? You literally just said this shit was impossible to research." 

"We don't need that shit," Dustin said, scoffing. "When have we ever needed evidence? Or, like, adults?" 

Steve really wanted to protest that; As the older party and a practical adult himself, it was probably his job to insist on both evidence and adults for pretty much everything Dustin wanted to do, whether or not it involved fictional creatures that Steve may or may not be. The problem was, though, Dustin wasn't exactly... wrong. Hop and Joyce were the only adults that had ever been any help to either of them, and that was on a good day. Half the time they kinda just got in the way. Steve was pretty sure that if cops and doctors just listened to Nancy as much as they listened to the adults, they could have figured out most of this shit back in junior year. 

"Fuck, okay," Steve said, pushing his hands through his hair. "Sure. Goddamn it." 

"You are literally never allowed to tell me off for cussing again," Dustin said. He sounded unimpressed. 

"Sorry, is my breakdown upsetting you?" Steve shot back, but he felt his muscles unclench enough that it no longer felt painful to breathe. Dustin's snark was honestly calming, though Steve would rather die than ever admit it. Still, it was a good reminder that no matter how scared Steve was, things hadn't gotten so bad that Dustin had lost his particular brand of sarcastic zen. As much as the little shit loved to dig into the most dangerous curiosities he could find, he wasn't exactly the sort to smile calmly into the face of death, so... So whatever Steve was, he could deal with it. 

Probably. 

"I'm going to go home," Dustin said, jumping out of his seat. Ignoring Steve's small sound of protest, he continued, "and you're going to take a shower and then a nap. Tomorrow, once you've calmed down, we can do some tests." 

"Tests?" Steve repeated, his nose wrinkling. El had never really divulged what had gone on in the lab with him, but he knew just enough for his imagination to take over. He knew Dustin wasn't exactly the government experiment type, but he still hated the concept being applied to him. "See, this is exactly the kind of shit I didn't want to happen." 

"Tough shit," Dustin said, stomping his way out of the kitchen. Rolling his eyes, Steve followed. 

"Do you want a ride?" he asked, because he always did and, well... Whatever Dustin thought, Steve didn't exactly want to be alone right now. Also, he just found out there was a whole new kind of monster in this town, and every protective instinct in his body wasn't exactly jazzed about Dustin riding all the way home on his bike. "What about the B-- the Bad werewolves or whatever, you were talking about? You said one lived in Hawkins--" 

"Blutbad," Dustin corrected as he wedged his feet back into the shoes he'd previously abandoned next to Steve's front door. "And I think I'll be okay. I've existed in the same town as them for thirteen years and I haven't gotten eaten even once." 

"Not for lack of trying," Steve muttered under his breath, and then helped Dustin put his backpack on. Dustin let him, not complaining about being able to do it himself for once, and not for the first time Steve felt a small rush of affection for the kid. He knew not a lot of people understood why he and Dustin spent so much time together. Sure, sometimes the other kids were involved, Max and Lucas especially, but usually it was just Steve and Dustin. The other kids didn't really get it, and no matter what Dustin said, Steve wasn't sure they saw him as more than Dustin's big brother. As for Steve's old friends, well, Nancy had long stopped being impressed by Steve's ability to keep a kid alive for more than forty five minutes; She probably just thought it was pathetic now. Tommy sure gave him enough shit for it when Steve bothered to give him the time of day. God knew what Jonathan thought, outside of the stern nods they traded when Steve picked Will up for an arcade trip. 

They just didn't understand the warmth in Steve's chest when Dustin let him help with something stupid and small. It didn't matter if Dustin could do it on his own. That had never been the point. Helping the kid put on backpacks and jackets, fixing his hair, making sure his grilled cheeses were evenly toasted on both sides so the texture didn't turn his stomach-- No matter how much Steve bitched, he loved doing every little thing no one had ever done for him. 

"Listen, Steve," Dustin said, standing nervously in his doorway. "I want you to know that it doesn't matter." 

Steve dragged himself out of his sentimental reverie. "What?"

Dustin squirmed, face pinched with thought. "What kind of Wesen you are, it doesn't matter. I'm gonna help you because you want to know, and that's-- That's cool. You've got a right to know, just like El. But knowing didn't change El, and it's not going to change you. You'll still be Steve, and Steve's pretty great." 

Blinking, Steve couldn't respond for a moment. Finally, he managed to say, "Are you trying to pep talk me right now, Henderson?" 

Embarrassment flooded Dustin's face, creasing his brown and throwing blush across his cheeks. "Okay, fuck you, see you in the morning, douchebag." 

Laughing, Steve followed Dustin out the door and onto his front steps. "Hey, Dustin?" he called as he watched Dustin clamber onto his bicycle. Dustin looked up, eyes squinted in suspicion. "Thanks, man," Steve said, a blush rising in his own face. 

Dustin grinned. "Welcome to the club, asshole," he said, and then sped out of the Harringtons' driveway as fast as his little Gumby legs could carry him. God, Steve loved that kid.

Dustin kept his promise. He was there the next morning, before Steve's neighbors had even left for church, with a list of potential 'tests' to try out. None of them were the weird science experiments that Steve had been dreading. Most of them, in fact, were just Steve trying to flex muscles he shouldn't have. 

"Acid spit?" Steve read, incredulous. 

"That one's a far reach," Dustin admitted. Shifting through his backpack, Dustin pulled out item after item, and Steve lowered the list to look doubtfully at the large slingshot that now sat on his kitchen table. "But I didn't want to leave anything out." It wasn't a long list, Steve noted, and most of it was ridiculous. No matter what Dustin said, he was pretty sure he'd have noticed something like kisses that drugged people or the ability to lead rats around. 

Probably. 

"Fine," Steve said, giving up. "But we're not doing this shit outside where the neighbors can see. The last thing I need is another rumor going around about King Steve." 

"It's your house," Dustin said, shrugging, and threw the water balloon launcher over his shoulder.

To Steve's complete and utter lack of surprise, he did not have acid spit or any other set of superpowers. At Dustin's insistence, Steve ran across his backyard a few times, picked up some heavy things, caught a few launched tennis balls-- 

"I'm not playing anymore fetch," Steve decided, dropping the last of the tennis balls at Dustin's feet. 

Dustin glared up at him with all the tiny rage of a scientist disrespected in his field. At least, Steve imagined. He hadn't known too many non-evil scientists in his life. "I'm trying to determine if you have super strength or improved reflexes." 

"Oh, good," Steve said, and then flopped into his usual lawn chair. "I don't." 

"You picked up a grill," Dustin protested, but even he didn't sound convinced. 

"I was on three different sports teams for all four years of high school," Steve said, resisting the urge to roll his eyes. Dustin was only trying to help, and Steve knew he should be grateful. But once the panic had faded, all Steve was left with was this... irritation. Wasn't it enough that everything he'd ever known about his life had turned out to be a lie? One more lie on top of everything else turned out to be just one more pea under the princess' mattresses, and Steve was sick to death of vegetables in his bedding. "And I've been prepping to murder interdimensional monsters for the last two of 'em. Of fucking course I run fast and pick up heavy shit. It's, like, literally all I'm good at." 

"I give up," Dustin said, throwing his arms up. Paper floated down around them, escaping from Dustin's clipboard. "You're the most useless Wesen in the world! If I hadn't seen you woge myself, I'd think you were an Eisbiber!" 

"Jesus Christ, kid," Steve said, "Cool it on the beaver hate. Your mom's pretty cool." 

Dustin's glare was intense enough that even Steve knew it was time to shut up. They sat in silence for a moment, Steve placidly watching as Dustin squinted into the reflective light of the pool. Steve had no idea what Dustin was thinking, and didn't have enough context to guess. At this point, Steve was ready to chalk the whole thing up to a trick of the light and move on with his life. Eventually, though, Dustin shook himself out of it and sat on the other end of the lounger, close enough their knees bumped together. 

"Woge for me," Dustin demanded. Steve had learned enough that wogeing meant the change, the other 'face' that El and Dustin possessed. Dustin had talked about it at length that morning, talking about the difference reasons for it and how it might point to the truth of Steve's identity. None of the tests had worked, though, and Steve's eyes had stayed human. 

"I don't think it's the same thing for me, man," Steve said. When he saw Dustin about to protest, he rushed to continue. The last thing he needed was another Henderson rant about the scientific method or some other bullshit Steve wouldn't bother to remember. "I tried for hours to make it happen last night, just so I could make sure that it had actually happened. Besides, it's only my eyes-- And your thing is literally everything but your eyes. Those stay human."

"But El's don't." 

"El also looks like a literal diseased corpse when she changes," Steve said, tired. "Like we've said a million times, it's stupid to compare either of us to the girl literally created and then raised in a lab." 

Even Dustin couldn't argue with that logic, but it didn't phase him for long. "Fine, then we just need to replicate the last time you woged, so I can take notes of all the characteristics I may have missed the last time," he said, slipping back into the overly professional voice that Steve was almost certain he'd stolen from one of his doctors. 

Resisting the urge to groan, Steve frowned. "So, what, we have to go get in the car?" 

"Maybe, if it doesn't work here, but I don't think the place is really the important variable here," Dustin said, and Steve supposed it was a sign of how seriously Dustin was taking this if he didn't even pause to ruthlessly bully Steve for getting it wrong. "How did you feel the last time your eyes changed? What caused the feelings?" 

"Dustin, you were literally there," Steve sighed, but Dustin was already speaking over him before he could finish the sentence. 

"Yeah, but I'm not you! I don't know what instincts were happening in that big head of yours!" 

"I don't know, I was... upset?" Steve asked, and when Dustin rolled his eyes, he kicked at the kid's legs. "Hey! You're the one sounding like a fucking Hollywood therapist! What am I supposed to say? I just watched my best friend turn into a fucking beaver!" 

Dustin's eyes narrowed. "You think my woge triggered yours?" 

"I don't... know?" Steve leaned back in the chair, brow creasing as he tried to remember what had been going through his head before the panic of not recognizing his own reflection. The primal fear hung over every second of the memory now, but he knew that wasn't true. There had been adrenaline, yes, but Steve hadn't been scared of Dustin. His instincts had been more violent, almost angry. That had been what scared him, in the beginning. It hadn't been Dustin that sent him scrambling out of the car, but his own impulses. "When you changed, it made me... I thought I had to fight you." 

Dustin hummed under his breath. "Once, when we were in the city, Mom and I ran into this lizard guy in the hospital. He turned out to be really nice, but when Mom first saw him, she woged out of fear and he woged back-- I think it was probably some kind of predator-prey instinct. Maybe it's like that?" 

Steve felt a pit grow in his stomach. He didn't like the sound of that. "So, I'm like... A hunter?" 

"Unless you think you're the only natural prey of the North American beaver, yeah," Dustin said. 

Great, Steve thought, what a way to have every fucking bad thing anyone had ever thought about him confirmed in one fell swoop. Crossing his arms across his chest, he tried not to settle into a sulk. Pouting in front of the kid you were supposed to be a good influence for was embarrassing as hell, and probably even worse than being an instinct-driven murder machine. "Does that at least narrow it down?" 

Dustin made an unsure noise in the back of his throat, kicking his feet back and forth as he thought. "I mean, kinda. It means you're definitely not anything my mother will let me within five feet of, but we pretty much already knew that. The problem is that, as far as I know, most of the Wesen world is pretty dangerous. Even some of the prey animals are killers." 

"According to your mom," Steve said. He loved Claudia Henderson, he really did, but she thought her neighbor's Yorkie was two seconds from killing them all on a good day.

"According to my mom," Dustin agreed. "Look, let's just woge right now, and it'll confirm it." 

"You don't think that triggering my 'predator instincts' on purpose will be a bad idea?" Steve asked, shrinking in on himself. If he hurt Dustin over some stupid science experiment, he'd have to go ahead and drown himself in the pool. And he genuinely didn't think Dustin could take the extra trauma on top of everything else. 

"You'll be ready for it this time," Dustin said, and twisted around so they were face to face. 

'Ready' turned out to be mostly erroneous. There was no countdown, no time to prepare-- Their eyes met and then Dustin was changing. The fur, the nose, the cleft lip. It was all as Steve remembered it, all exactly as he'd played over and over again in his mind. Steve braced himself, waiting for the same rush of adrenaline, for the same muscle-clenching urge to fight. 

It never came. 

One moment passed, then another. Steve forced himself to breathe. "I'm not feeling any rodent murdering tendencies," he admitted, although he couldn't quite convince his shoulders to relax.

"Well," Dustin said, his tiny beaver face peering into Steve's. "Your eyes definitely changed. They're... Huh." 

"What?" Steve wanted to squirm under Dustin's gaze, uncomfortable with the very intense eye contact going on right now. Even though Dustin was looking at him, in his eyes, Steve didn't feel like he was being included in the interaction. If anything, it felt more like Dustin was watching something through him, and after all the multidimensional shit they'd been through, the last thing Steve wanted to think about was his eyes being a portal. "Come on, man, you're freaking me out." 

"They're reflective," Dustin said, his voice faraway with thought. 

"Yeah?" Steve said, confused. "So are everybody's."

"No, they're like mirrors. I can see myself completely. Every detail." Dustin's voice still sounded lost, and Steve swallowed down the sudden lump in his throat. 

"That's weird," he said, eventually, when Dustin had proven that he had forgotten to even blink. "Um, can this part be over now? I'm not great at eye contact on a good day." 

After a moment, Dustin shook himself, looking just as confused as Steve felt. "Yeah, sorry, man," he said, frowning down at his notepad. "I don't know what happened. Maybe your species is good at hypnosis? Some kind of snake, maybe?" 

"Do I look like a fucking snake to you, Dustin?" Steve said, gesturing to his smooth skin and fluffy hair. 

"No," Dustin admitted, "but we don't really have any proof your species has an animal counterpart, either. El doesn't. And before you say it--" Steve closed his mouth. "-- I'm not comparing you to El. I'm saying that whatever a Hexenbiest is supposed to be, I don't think it was originally like me. Maybe they're not the only ones." 

Honestly, Steve hated the idea of his powers being anything like El's. To put it mildly, El's powers were fucking terrifying. Not the girl herself; It had been impossible to be afraid of El after Steve had gotten to know the sweet little girl that hid behind all that trauma. He adored her, really. But her powers? Steve genuinely didn't know how El slept at night, because if it were him with all that responsibility, he'd probably just have a heart attack. The more power someone had, the more opportunities they had to fuck up. Steve was proof of that. Having as much power as El was his worst nightmare. And if Dustin was right, that Steve might be something like her... 

"We should tell Hop about this," Steve decided. Immediately, Dustin groaned. 

"Come on, Steve! Hopper isn't going to let us dig into this and you know it!" 

"Yeah, and maybe we shouldn't," Steve said. "I don't know anything about this shit, and my parents aren't talking. But if you're right, and I have the ability to hurt someone, then Hop needs to know about it." 

Dustin's face softened. "You-- It's not like that, Steve. You wouldn't--" 

"You don't know that." Steve was on his feet again, pacing the concrete that surrounded his pool. "We don't know anything, and you've seen what happens when El gets angry. And what happened to Will last year?" 

"That wasn't Wesen related," Dustin tried to reason, but Steve was already shaking his head. 

"That we know of," Steve said, "and I think we've proven that neither of us actually know a goddamn thing about this."

"... Fine. But I want it on the record that I think this is stupid, and you would never hurt anybody, Wesen or not." 

Steve rolled his eyes. "Your complaint has been recorded, and will be going directly into the trash. Do you have your walkie on you?" 

They went inside to collect Dustin's abandoned bag, his walkie still packed safely inside. They had given Hopper a Party-approved walkie the year before, when he decided that in case of emergency, relying on phones wasn't enough. Steve was pretty sure he'd given up on the Upside Down being a one-time thing, and making sure the kids weren't being eaten by monsters in the woods made everyone sleep better at night. They had a separate channel, though, for adult-included emergencies, because Hopper had threatened to arrest Mike for calling in a Code Orange over being out of toilet paper. 

Steve hesitated over the dial, for a moment, and wondered if discovering you weren't human was a Code Yellow or Orange. 

"It's not going to call itself," Dustin said, and Steve-- 

His eyes shut, all usual irritation at Dustin's annoyances drowned out by fear. Because he was so fucking afraid. Afraid of himself, yeah, but also a million other things. Like, how was he supposed to look Hopper in the eyes and admit what he was? Sure, Hop was okay with El, but El was a kid. His kid. Steve wasn't sure if he'd have taken the beaver thing half as well from anyone but Dustin. Wasn't sure he would now, even, and he was fucking one of them. Would Hop think he was a monster? 

Even worse, would Hop believe him when Steve said he was something to be feared? Steve wasn't sure if he hoped Hop would, or if he dreaded it. 

"Can you wait outside?" Steve asked, his voice shaking. He could already see Dustin gearing up for an epic bitch fit, so he quickly continued, "Just for a second. I swear, you can come with me. I can't do this shit without you, man." 

The admission made Dustin quiet. With shock or with mollification, Steve didn't know, but whatever it inspired in Dustin was enough to have him nodding and walking out the door. 

Steve turned the walkie to Hop's channel, and held the button down. "Chief, are you there?" 

There was a moment of quiet, and Steve thought- hoped? -that Hopper didn't hear him, that he might be busy or at work or maybe he'd thrown the stupid thing in a drawer somewhere, but eventually the speaker crackled to life. The chief's voice poured out, "That you, Harrington?" 

"Yeah," Steve said, the vowels coming out reedy in the tightness of his throat. "Yeah, it's me. Um... I got a... A Code Orange? Or maybe a Yellow." 

"I can never remember that stupid fucking system," Hopper said, and on any other day, Steve would have laughed. "You okay, kid?" 

Kid, Steve thought, his brain buzzing, when was the last time he'd been a kid? 

"No," Steve said, answering the question truthfully for the first time in years. "No, I'm not." 

There was a moment of static, and then, "You need me there?" 

Steve wanted to say yes. Steve wanted to sit on the floor and wait for an adult to come by and take care of it. Steve wanted a dad who would come home and make everything go away. But that wasn't the truth, and it would scare Dustin, so Steve took a deep breath and acted like a fucking grown up for once. "I was thinking that Dustin and I could come by the cabin tonight, actually. There's something there I think we might need." 

Hopper made a small, considering noise. "This about all that nastiness this fall?" 

"Dustin doesn't think so," Steve said, glad to be able to report some good news for once. "It's more… personal. But, you know, you have a lot in the cabin that might have answers, so…" 

There was a moment of dead air, and Steve wondered if Hop was weighing his affection for El against his need to protect Steve. Hopper was obviously more of a protective dad than Steve's dad had ever been, putting even Claudia Henderson to shame with his hovering abilities, and Steve… didn't begrudge El that. Really, he didn't. But there was a lump in his throat when he thought about Hopper leaving him to deal with this on his own. And he would, if it meant keeping his daughter out of trouble. Steve knew that without a moment's thought. 

He wondered what it said about him that the knowledge made his chest ache. Nothing good, probably. 

"Come on down," he said eventually, and something in Steve's chest unclenched. "You'll both stay for dinner." 

"Sounds good," Steve said, although they both knew it hadn't been a question. "We should be there in about ten minutes." 

"Yeah, I know where you live, boy," Hopper said with a snort, and then the line went quiet. 

Despite himself, Steve smiled down at the walkie as he threw it haphazardly back into Dustin's bag. No matter what changed, at least Hop would always be the same. He was the same as a father figure as he was when he had been a stranger breaking up all Steve's best parties. It was a small comfort, to see someone strong enough to not let all the craziness of their lives change him– A comfort that Steve let wash over him in the silence of his kitchen, breathing deep. 

Okay, game face on, he told himself. Keeping how badly this affected him from Dustin was hard enough, and he knew it would be near impossible in the face of El's observant gaze. He wasn't entirely sure how this would affect her, but keeping as calm as possible would stop her from freaking out, and that was always good for Steve's health. 

He loved the kid but, Jesus, she was scary sometimes. 

"So what's the game plan?" Dustin asked as they both climbed into the Beemer. "I mean, what are we going to tell him?"

"Stop trying to game the Chief," Steve said, with the air of an older troublemaker who had long since learned better. "It literally never works." 

"So, what, we just go in there and tell the truth?" Dustin said. He sounded uncomfortable at the idea, which Steve kind of understood. He'd been the same at Dustin's age, always lying and keeping problems to himself for genuinely no good reason. He was still working hard to break the habit, obviously. He didn't know why he did it, though, and Dustin probably wasn't even aware of it yet– It was just a knee-jerk reaction, something Steve had learned after years of proof that telling the truth rarely got you anything but grounded. 

"If we want Hop to help, he's gotta know what's going on," Steve said, with more confidence than he felt. Dustin argued for the entire drive, less because he disagreed, Steve was pretty sure, and more because it was easier than dwelling on the mystery. Sometimes your brain needed a break from the panic spiral of the unknown, and bugging the shit out of your best friend was the perfect solution, apparently. 

Steve sighed in relief when he rounded the last corner and the cabin slid into view. 

Hidden away in the depths of the same woods that abutted Steve's yard, Hopper's cabin was small and plain, unnoticeable from the main roads that cut through the town mere feet away. Steve wasn't sure how many people knew about the place, but those in the know rarely came by except by appointment. Even Joyce knew better than to roll up to Hopper's unannounced. If anything, such a bold move would be a sign that something had gone truly, terribly wrong. 

There was always a bit of nerves just before Steve knocked on the cabin door. Every time, something in him was convinced he would be turned away. The confirmation beforehand didn't help the anxiety, and Steve was never sure why– Maybe it was the feeling of constantly intruding on El and Hopper's new family, or maybe it was just the fact that they both could kick Steve's ass, but the initial frisson of nerves never faded even after Steve had grown comfortable in their presence. 

Hopper opened the door before he could knock, leaving Steve's hand hanging awkwardly in the air. 

"This doesn't look like an emergency," Hopper said, voice gruff– But his gaze swept carefully over the both of them. 

Steve opened his mouth to explain, or at least offer some kind of vague reassurance that would get them in the door, but Dustin beat him to the punch, as usual. "It's not really a human-type emergency." 

Hopper's eyes snapped to Steve, surprise and suspicion mixing together in equal measure. "You said this wasn't about the lab." 

Steve swallowed, his mouth suddenly dry under Hopper's gaze. 

"Most Wesen aren't man-made," Dustin said, suddenly huffy with offense. Steve would probably be offended, too, if he'd had a lifetime to adjust to not being human. Seemed kind of rude to start assuming people were created in a lab. "Look, can we come in? If I have to re-explain my entire society to you, I at least want to do it sitting down." 

To Steve's surprise, Hopper smiled down at Dustin and took a step back, shrugging. It wasn't exactly a grin, but it was there plain as day, small and fond. "Sure, come on in. El," Hopper said, raising his voice to shout across the cabin to his daughter. "Company's here!" 

El's door swung open on cue, all the proof Steve needed that she'd known they were coming the whole time. The girl all but sprinted into the main room, nearly tackling Dustin in a hug. They looked almost like siblings, all brown curls and wide smiles, and El's delight at seeing Dustin was effusive. Despite the stress of the last two days, Steve found himself sharing Hopper's smile. 

The kids chattered to each other, voices soft with delight, and Hopper made eye contact over their heads. "You hanging in there, Harrington?" It was the kindest way to say that he'd heard the panic in Steve's voice earlier, and embarrassment flooded through his veins. Steve appreciated the concern. Really, he did. But suddenly the shame of his own need to be cared for was overwhelming, and Steve had to fight the urge to back out of the house with a mumbled excuse. 

He couldn't figure this out on his own. This wasn't going away. 

Luckily, Hopper's voice had reminded El of their second guest, and she saved Steve from having to reply by pulling away from Dustin. "Steve!" she cooed, her voice still pure childhood. 

She went in for a hug, her face tilting up to beam at him, and– As their eyes met, El's face shifted. The rapidly familiar ripple of a woge, leaving behind the twisted, pitted skin of her second face. 

The black of her eyes burned like coals, and the intensity of them sung in Steve's veins as adrenaline shot through his blood. His hand, which had raised to pull El into a hug, shot towards Dustin, instead– 

Every cell in his body thrummed with instinct. He needed to get the kid out of here, away from the danger. He needed to put himself in between, needed to fight.

Before his hand could even land on Dustin's back, his feet were off the floor. 

Steve hit the cabin wall, the entire room rattling with the weight of El's power. He could hear Hopper and Dustin's voices, surprised and panicked, but their voices were lost in the ringing in his ears. He struggled in vain against El's invisible hold, rage mounting with every futile second. 

The part of him that still held on to rationality, the part that made him Steve, struggled to calm his pounding heart. He knew El wouldn't hurt Dustin, knew El wasn't the threat his body said she was, but it took everything he had just to bite down on the feral scream building in his throat. 

The strings of El's power were cut just as quickly as they were woven, and Steve slumped to the floor. There were hands on him, but he recognized them as Dustin's, and he let them hold him down. 

"I'm… I'm sorry," El said, her voice small. Steve wanted to cry at the fear there, even as the furious parts of him settled in smugness. 

He didn't look at her. He couldn't. Instead, Steve looked up at Hopper, pleading. 

"Something's wrong with me," Steve said, voice shaking. "You have to help." 

Hopper's face was grim, his mouth a flat line as he looked down at them. "You feel the Mindflayer on him?" he asked El, his eyes never leaving Steve. 

El was quick to shake her head. "No, it's not like Will. It was… I think it was me." 

"I already told you, it's not an Upside-Down thing! He's just a Wesen," Dustin said. His hands were shaking where he had them fisted in Steve's t-shirt. Steve leaned into them, feeling them steady against his ribs. 

"Like us?" Some of the unease faded from El, excitement in her eyes. 

"Not exactly," Steve said, still looking up at Hopper with guilty eyes. 

Dustin turned to El, his eyes sparkling with the excitement of having someone who would entertain his nonsense for once. "You noticed his eyes, right? That's the only aspect of his woge. I've never seen anything like it, have you?" 

El shook her head. "I've had woges forced before, but I–" 

"Forced?" Hopper repeated, and Steve slumped further into himself. 

"Steve didn't, though," El said, and her eyes drifted back to Steve. He didn't like the way her eyes went unfocused when he looked back, the same way Dustin had drifted into a haze earlier that day. "I was… afraid." 

"A prey response," Steve said, glumly repeating what Dustin had theorized before. 

"Not of you," El said gently, to Steve's surprise. "When your eyes went black, I could see myself in them. Not my body, but my…" Her face twisted in thought. "My self." 

"I did, too," Dustin said, frowning. "And Steve said he had the same initial adrenaline response, but I didn't–" 

"I didn't like what I saw," El said, her words clipped in the harsh, stilted way it had been when she was younger. 

All four of them sat in the silence that followed for a moment. Steve wondered if they were also trying to ignore what Steve was: The things El had done that Dustin hadn't, the things she'd had no choice but to become. He wasn't sure what El had seen staring back at her, but Steve couldn't imagine having to actually face the worst of himself. And how did his pathetic little life even compare to the things El had survived? 

Eventually, Hopper broke the silence. "I didn't see anything." The skepticism in his voice was palpable, but there was relief there, too. 

"Humans wouldn't," Steve said, a terrible realization creeping up his spine. "We were wrong, Dustin. It's not a predator thing. I think it's…" He huffed, trying to think of some kind of comparison. "It's like those butterflies that make themselves look like owls. They're trying to fend other Wesen off. Whatever I am, it's afraid of being hunted." 

"Alright, alright. This is–" Hopper rubbed a hand over his face, looking five years older than he had when Steve and Dustin had knocked on his door. "Start from the beginning. What exactly are we dealing with here?" 

Dustin and Steve shared a look. 

'You're the smart one,' Steve said with a shrug. 

'You're the one with the freaky eyes,' Dustin said with an arched brow. 

"Alright, so… It started after I picked Dustin up from school yesterday," Steve began. He ran them both through everything, even the parts that made him cringe. The first intense need to fight or escape in the face of Dustin's woge, the changes in his own reflection he couldn't replicate. 

El listened politely, sending Steve small smiles when she noticed him looking her way. Her obvious happiness when he or Dustin included her in their discussion of Wesen almost made Steve feel guilty for hating this. He knew isolation, both real and metaphorical, was the hardest part of El's slow integration into society, and having more Wesen around was probably a dream come true, but– Steve wasn't that guy. He didn't know a damn thing about being Wesen. He was just… human with a condition. 

Besides, whatever levity El brought to the situation, Hopper was apparently determined to stomp out. His face was that of a man facing down a firing squad, one who was fucking pissed about it, besides. When Dustin mentioned Steve's parents, he practically went apoplectic, turning away as his face went redder and redder. 

Whatever the fuck that was about. 

"So we decided we should come to you," Steve said, gesturing, "because you would know what to do about… me." 

Hopper's face didn't get any less angry. El, who had apparently just noticed her father's countenance, looked between them with wide eyes. 

"What to do about you," Hopper repeated, voice flat. 

"Yeah," Steve said, nodding. "Like you did with Will." 

El and Dustin both flinched, but Hopper was made of stone. Nothing but long, uncomfortable eye contact from him. "I don't think there's anything to be done here, kid," Hopper said. 

Steve couldn't suppress the full-body reaction to that, scrambling to his feet. Adrenaline was hitting him again, sending his already exhausted heart into paroxysms, but now it was true fear. Not of some imagined enemy, but of himself. "I can't just be around people like this, Hop," he said through gritted teeth. 

"You're around people now." 

"That's my fucking point! I have like four fucking friends in the entire world, and two of them turned out to be the exact kind of people that I'm a danger to. The only reason El isn't hurt is because she can kick my ass," Steve pushed a hand through his hair, feeling it stick up at the ends from leftover hairspray. He didn't care. He wanted to pull it out by the fucking roots. "What if I go to the grocery store and meet a Wesen in the fucking dairy aisle, Hop? What about the next time I see Mrs. Henderson?" 

"You didn't want to hurt El," Hopper said, his voice calm but his face still marred by anger. "You were reaching for Dustin. You wanted to protect him." 

"You can't know that for sure. I can't– I can't control myself when I'm like that," Steve said. "It took literally everything I had not to hurt my own fucking kid." 

"Me?" Dustin squeaked.

"You can. I know what someone out of control looks like, Harrington. You aren't it." 

"Why can't you just fucking help me?" Steve said, his voice going reedy with desperation. 

Hopper sneered. "I'm not going to help you punish yourself for something you haven't even done yet." 

"I think maybe we should go outside," El said, and Dustin nodded eagerly. They both scurried outside like they were being chased. 

"Stay where I can see you!" Hopper bellowed after them. Steve blinked back tears, shaking in the silence the kids left behind. Hopper took a deep breath. "Look, kid…" 

"I don't get why you won't help," Steve said, his eyes falling to the floor. "It's not punishment when it's El. Why can't you–" 

"El could control herself," Hopper said. "She just didn't know that she needed to. She's still learning how to be a person, Steve. She's just a kid." 

"Right, right. Sorry," Steve rubbed at his nose, willing his tears away. "I'm sorry I bothered you, I–" 

"That's not…" Hopper sighed, grabbing one of Steve's shoulders in one big hand. "What I'm saying is that you're already a good kid. I don't have to worry about you getting yourself or somebody else hurt." 

"I get myself and other people hurt literally all the time."

Hopper rolled his eyes. "You know what I mean. You're not going to hurt the kids, and I don't believe you're going to start attacking randoms in the street. You're still you." 

"But…" Steve swallowed around a dry throat. He didn't know how to make Hopper understand, didn't know how to make him care. He'd never been very good at that. Half of his life, Steve had been begging people to care. None of it had ever worked. "Alright. I get it." 

Hopper nodded, looking relieved. "Just go home, Harrington. Lay low for a little while. Get used to the new instincts." Steve still wanted to protest, but he agreed. "Good. Let's get outside, before those kids start some trouble." 

Steve followed Hopper out the cabin door, head held low. Dustin and El were waiting for them on the porch, sitting on the edge with their knees pulled up to his chest. They weren't talking, just watching the door with their bright, expectant faces. 

"It'll be fine," Hopper told them, voice calmer than it had been inside. The kids deserved that, Steve told himself. "Steve's got this." 

"Yup," Steve said, his tongue sticking to the roof of his mouth. "It's all under control." 

El darted forward, throwing her arms around Steve's chest and clinging. Steve tried not to meet anyone's eyes over her head and hugged her back just as hard. 

"I'm sorry I scared you," he whispered, heart twinging in his chest. Not much scared El, and now he was on the list. What did that say about him? 

Squeezing even harder, El shook her head, rubbing her face against his chest. "Don't be sorry. It's not your fault," she said. It sounded like she was mimicking someone, and Steve wondered if Hopper had done that for her. If she'd been held close and told everything would be okay. 

Swallowing around his jealousy, Steve held on until El stepped back and smiled up at him. "You'll have to give me some tips on how to do this Wesen thing," Steve said. "Dustin's terrible at it." 

She smiled up at him. "We'll learn together." 

Dinner was a simple affair. Hopper hadn't let Steve help at all, so he had sat on the couch and watched Dustin and El play card games until spaghetti was on the table. The kids were loud and chaotic, thrilled to be around each other again, and it didn't matter that Steve only talked when someone asked him a question. Somehow, he made it through the meal, even when every bite churned in his stomach. 

Even when Dustin kept sending him little looks of concern, always too perceptive for his own good. 

They said their goodbyes quickly, even when El begged them to stay. Hopper, laughing, had told her they couldn't stay forever, and waved them out of the cabin and into the car. 

When Steve pulled into the Henderson's driveway, Dustin hesitated before opening the door. 

"So, I've been thinking," Dustin said, "and I don't think I should go to Camp Know-Where this year." 

Immediately, Steve knew he had fucked up. Dustin had talked about little else since the spring semester had started. No matter what problem he'd had, whether it was bullies or how boring his classes were, Dustin had changed the subject to how good this summer was going to be. And Steve got it. Really, he did. If he'd grown up in a town where no one cared about sports and bullied him for liking basketball, he'd be fucking stoked to spend some time with people who understood him, too.

But now Steve had ruined that for him, too. 

"Absolutely not." 

"I can't just…" Dustin looked distressed, and Steve was all the more determined to send the little shit to camp himself. "What if something happens while you're away?" 

"What's gonna happen?" Steve said, even as his brain played a horror film of all the things he could do without Dustin as a buffer for the rest of the world. He tried to borrow a little of Hopper's confidence. "I just have to get a handle on my instincts, that's all." 

"I don't think sitting in your house alone all summer–" Dustin started, but Steve cut him off, slicing his hand through the air. 

"You're going to your shitty little nerd camp, Dustin, and that is final." Before Dustin could protest again, Steve continued, "I have to get a job this summer anyway, remember? Official Bradley Harrington decree. Even if you stayed home, we wouldn't be able to hang out all day. You can't, like, come to work with me." 

Dustin didn't look convinced. "What if something happens?" 

Honestly, Steve didn't know, either. "You know, I'll call…" Who? The last thing Steve wanted was to disappoint Hopper, so he and El were out. The kids were too young to help with this shit, anyway, and Steve didn't really know many other people. That only left… "I'll call Jonathan or Nancy, okay?" 

"You're really gonna call your ex-girlfriend and tell her you went insane and beat the shit out of somebody?" 

Steve sighed. "If I say yes, will you go to camp?" 

Dustin nodded. "Honestly, I kind of hope you fuck up, now." 

Closing his eyes, Steve responded: "Get the fuck out of my car, Henderson." 

The rest of the spring went smoothly. Steve kept to himself at school; He had already descended into minor loserdom after everything with Billy, so it was a piece of cake to stop making eye contact with anyone he wasn't completely sure was human. Graduation came and went with little fanfare. He skipped the ceremony, and made up some shitty excuse about a vacation with his parents. 

He and the kids ate pizza and watched movies all night. Steve pretended not to see the pity in Nancy's eyes when she picked up Mike and Will the next morning. He waved politely at Jonathan and closed the door.

A few weeks later, Dustin left for camp. 

He started work that same week, and Steve was grateful for the distraction. Orientation was a quick affair, the manager running him through health and safety protocol and quizzing him on customer service. Steve wore his best mask the whole time, smiling at all the right times, frowning thoughtfully when he was supposed to. 

"Let me introduce you to your coworker," the manager said, and led Steve into the back room. A girl sat at the table there. She was wearing the same awful uniform that Steve currently held in his hands, but Steve could still see the nerdom radiating off her. Something about the hair and the tacky thrift-store jewelry. This wasn't one of 'his' crowd, and Steve breathed a little easier for it. "Steve, this is Robin Buckley. Rob–" 

"I know who he is," Robin said, and raised her head. 

The woge rippled across her face, revealing fur and piercing golden eyes.

[Next Chapter]

[weird-tree-girl]

Us and Them

-images are not mine-

Pairing : Caesar x OC human reader

Warnings : Loneliness, inter-species relationship, language, angst/depressing topics, slight gamophobia, more?

Summarize : Clover is a misfit woman in her early/mid twenties, thriving in the Muir woods in a post-apocalyptic world along side her companion ‘Woofer’ -a large brown wolf she rescued as a pup from an old hunting snare- survive day to day in her shelter deep in the woods, building the life she always dreamt of for herself. However, the Muir woods don’t belong entirely to Clover, and these neighbours can’t avoid each other forever.

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(A visual for Woofers size, leaning more towards 3.3FT height and 7FT length. Clover is 5”8)

Chapter 2 : Word of mouth.

2 years have passed since I decided to renovate the shelter I came across at the end of my long journey on the road.

Woofer is still with me. In fact, he’s grown quite a lot actually. I honestly don’t think wolves typically grow this big, he kind of reminds me of Dire wolves, although they’re long extinct, Woofers just supersized I guess, I remember reading a book as a kid that talked about supersized animals. He could honestly carry me if it really came down to it.

Over the past 2 years, I mostly spent the entire time renovating the shelter and also travelling to the closest abandoned city and back often, looking for supplies that I could use in my shelter and to help repair it.

I’ve also been figuring out and familiarizing myself with the layout and land around my shelter, such as seeing what type of foods I can forage, the best areas to catch fish, if there are any game around that Woofer can hunt, etc.

I still have yet to travel more than a day up into the mountains from where I live now, I wanted to finish my shelter before I decide to explore the entire Muir woods.

I’ve been in my part of the woods for 2 years now, and I’m pretty sure I’m not alone in here.

Obviously there are other animals besides Woofer and I but what I mean is, someone else definitely lives somewhere in these woods.

I can usually see the faint glow of fire up in the mountains at night, and I can sometimes hear screaming or screeching- which scares the hell out of me.

Now that I’m practically finished with renovations for my shelter, at least the stuff that needed to get done immediately like fixing the roof and making the interiors livable, I can start to enjoy living here.

(The shelter so far, has 3 layers)

(Little river in front of the shelter)

(Kitchen area where she stores food, bottom floor in shelter)

(Main living space, middle floor in shelter, bed area is top floor in shelter. Scribbled-out area is the bookshelf in next pic)

(Where she keeps her books, she collects them on runs)

(Outside of her shelter where she cooks food)

After spending the morning reading an old book on the couch, I close it and place it back on the shelf.

“If I had known that the world was ending, I would’ve brought better books.”

I pack a bag with enough food and equipment to last me a couple of days and sling a bag of arrows over my shoulder and pick up my bow as I head out of my shelter and into the Muir woods.

Woofer still hasn’t come back from hunting. He’s sometimes gone for a day or two, to say I’m worried is a serious understatement.

He could hold his own against a bear if he came across one, and if he ran into some people out hunting for food he would scare the holy hell out of them.

But we haven’t come across any other people since before arriving to the Muir woods.

I wouldn’t have it any other way.

I’m not lonely, living this way, because I’ve given up expecting that loneliness can be blotted out by anyone else. My loneliness is my own cherished possession and probably my only one.

As I make my way deeper into the woods and up the mountains, I relish in the quietness around me.

“It is so quiet out here, it is the quietest place in the world.” I say, continuing on.

A few hours pass as I walk into the uncharted parts Muir woods, I keep in mind that I have neighbours somewhere in here that I know nothing about.

I decide to stop on a large rock and eat some dried fish and drink water.

While eating I notice my boots, they’re pretty old. I’ve had them for a handful of years now and as one could tell by now, I walk around a LOT.

They’re basically at the ends of their life, if I push just enough with my toes on my right shoe, they lift the shoe up off the soul and you can see my sock.

These won’t do in the coming winter, but luckily by my calculations, it’s about early to mid summer, I have some time to head into the abandoned city and look for something.

As I chew on my fish jerky, I hear a loud..roar? I’m not sure what else to call it. It wasn’t like a bear or mountain lion, and definitely not Woofer. It was like, a man, but also not. God, I hope not.

Whatever it was, it got me upright on my feet, grabbing my shit and hauling ass out of there.

I’m confident as hell when it comes to protecting myself. I’ve just about mastered taekwondo and Krav Maga, although I learned these back from before and have been practicing since then. I’ve also mastered long range weapons like the bow n arrow, slingshot, and guns, but I haven’t used a gun of any sort since the beginning of the end of the world.

I’ve mastered the bō staff too. I came across one during my journeys on the road. However, for the first year or so that I had it, I used it mostly as a walking stick and as a means to help me cross/get over things, before I found a book that explained the art of the bō staff.

But seriously, what the hell was that?

Before I could move very far from the rock I sat on, I heard the unmistakable sounds of a heard of deer or something running somewhere to the left of me, a decent distance away, luckily for me.

They didn’t sound like they were getting any closer to me, thank god, but once I thought I had calmed down some, in the distance I swear I could make out dark figures jumping through the trees.

“I don’t know what the hell is going on in the most wonderful way” I half-heartedly laugh out.

Rubbing the space between my eyes, my curiosity got the better of me and I found myself pulling an arrow out from behind my back and readying it on my bow as I started to make my way towards wherever the figures in the trees were heading, ensuring that I stayed well behind them.

After trailing behind them for a while, I saw a a figure walking on the ground, and after getting a more clear look, I realized that this was a chimpanzee.

“No way..” I mutter to myself, making sure not to be heard.

All along this where the apes went? I guess it makes sense, it’s not very far from the Golden Gate Bridge.

I tighten my grip on my bow as I stay put watching the ape, when another one comes into view.

This one was bigger and looked older than the one I originally saw alone. Something about this bigger chimpanzee was.. alluring? Like, something deeper, something more to them than meets the eye.

The older ape touches a tree with mark on it. Hold on those marks-

Before I could fully process even gawking at the apes in front of me, a grizzly bear lunges out of hiding and attacks the smaller ape, leaving some nasty scratches along its chest and face.

The older ape jumps in front of the younger ape, holding its chest up and letting out a roar of sorts to intimidate the bear, but the bear roars back twice as loud.

To be honest, I thought about helping the apes, but against a grizzly bear? I only have my bow on me, and I don’t even know these apes, for all I know they could see me as just as much of a threat as the bear.

I get pulled out of my thoughts when the older ape lets out a loud call, to me it seemed like they were trying to get help, this made me feel rather guilty.

Not even a moment later, another chimpanzee jumps into view, spear in hand, and plunges it deep into the bears back.

After a moment of silence and anticipation, the new ape climbs on top of the bear to ensure it was dead, and checks on its companions.

They all seemed alright, other than the scratches the younger ape received, but they weren’t life threatening from what I could tell.

What happened next absolutely blew me out of the water and I almost gave my location away. The alluring one signed the words ‘thank you.’ To the new ape that just saved their lives.

“Sign language??” I mutter a little louder than I meant to.

There’s just no way, how could they communicate in a way like that?

But to my horror, I was heard.

The 3 chimps faced my direction. I didn’t dare move, hoping I could still get out of this, they partially heard me but they haven’t seen me yet.

From what I remember hearing on the news, these apes mostly escaped from testing labs, which means that there’s a high probability that in this situation, they would kill a human on sight.

I could try explaining that I’ve always been against animal testing, but that would probably fall on deaf ears.

After what felt like hours, the trees above the 3 apes fills with even more apes.

They start to hoot and sign to the apes below, from what I could make out, they were asking what happened and if they’re alright.

I understand sign language from before, one of the only friends I had in school was mostly deaf and I learned a lot of sign for them.

The alluring one signs to them, reassuring them, then faces back in my general direction. I’m not off the hook yet it seems.

The chimp that took out the grizzly hoots rather aggressively and picks their spear back up and throws it in my direction.

“Idiot!” I thought, they’re apes, they could probably smell a human from a mile away, of course they know I’m here!

The spear misses me by a couple of feet, I stumble back out of the bushes, landing on my bottom.

“Shit, shit, shit.”

I stand and take off in the other direction through the trees.

There’s just no way I’ll outrun so many apes. But I have to try.

The screeching and hooting of the apes behind me is deafening.

While running, my shoulder slams hard into the trunk of a tree, not enough to dislocate luckily. I continue to run.

I realize while running that I can’t lead them back to my shelter, even if it’s hours away from where I am right now, so I change my direction slightly, enough where I’m no longer going the right way to my shelter.

But of course, just like anyone who is running for their life in a situation like mine, my foot got caught in the looped root of a tree, sending me tumbling harshly to the ground.

I tumble for a moment and my back slams into the trunk of a large tree, knocking the wind out of me.

Vision blurry and gasping for air, I begin attempting to collect myself, preparing for the apes to get to me.

Not long after my fall, the apes begging to surround me.

In one liquid motion, I pull an arrow from my back and flip over off my stomach, pressing my back against the tree trunk and pulling the arrow back with my bow, breathing heavily.

The apes above continue hooting, but I’m not even trying to pay attention to what they could be signing.

An ape begins to approach me, walking on 2 legs. It’s the alluring one.

They stand on a tree stump maybe 15-20 feet from me, taking note of my readied bow and arrow.

The ape frowns at me, locks eyes with me and holds up their hand. The apes in the trees above us become silent.

“Lower.. the weapon.”

The ape in front of me says in a deep voice that I could feel rumble through my chest.

My eyes widen and my breath gets caught in my throat.

Did he just.. fucking talk??

After a minute of gaping at him like a fish out of water, I compose myself once again.

“You… you attacked me first.” I say finally, the words not feeling like my own.

The ape just continues to stare me, narrowing his eyes more if that was even possible.

“Lower.. the.. weapon.” He repeats himself, this time slightly louder.

I press my lips into a straight line, debating on what I should do next.

I sigh quietly, and begin lowering my bow, releasing my grip on the arrow and letting it fall softly between my feet.

The apes expression softens by a fraction of a fraction, to the point where I could honestly be making it up in hopes that he’ll just let me go.

He looks as if he’s about to say something again, but the older ape from before comes to his side and begins signing to him. Getting a better look at him up close, he looks like he’s been through the wringer one or twice.

While he signs frantically, I can make out “get rid of her” and “others” and “nothing but trouble!”

He signs again and my veins turn to ice.

“We must kill her!”

My grip on my bow handle tightens but I don’t point it up just yet, I don’t want to risk starting something.

The ape that spoke to me frowns at the older ape and huffs.

“No.” Was all he said and waves the older ape off.

The older ape looks pretty pissed and turns to look at me, baring his fangs and turns to leave.

My grip on my bow handle loosens slightly. I look back at the talking ape. He meets my eyes once again and seems to notice the fear in my eyes which had mostly left before the older ape came up to him.

‘You understand?’ He signed to me.

I nod, not taking my eyes off of his.

I thought about asking how the hell they are able to speak, let alone sign, but decided against it. Today is already just about as weird as I can handle. I am not asking any more questions.

As if he could hear my inner dialogue, he starts to speak once more, but is cut off when the sound of a large animal moving at a fast pace grows closer to us.

The apes start to hoot and chatter, signing about there being another bear. The ape in front of me stands taller and looks around.

Through the trees, a giant dark mass runs closer until it jumps into view, standing in front of me, growling aggressively and baring its fangs at the apes.

Feeling like 5 pounds was lifted off my face, I exhale with an anxious smile.

“Woofer!”

•

•

•

Chapter 2 of Us and them, done! I hope you’re all enjoying the series so far as much as I am, I’d love to hear anyone’s feedback or thoughts/hopes for this series!

See you in chapter 3!

[gacha-incels]

The "if there's men I don't play" situation in CN is actually funnier than it sounds.

So, the thing about CN is that a lot of players like to track their favorite game's revenue, and playing a game with high monthly revenue can somehow make them feel better about themselves.

And these dudes' ideal game is kinda like those bullshit isekai clones where the player character is the only man living in a world full of conventionally attractive women whose lives centered around them and them only.

There fellas were loud so a lot of gaming companies chose to pander them. One of the more well-known game, the literal gospel for these dudes, was Snowbreak: Contaminant Zone (Imma call it SCZ for short). It's one of those softcore porn game targeting dudes who are too repulsive for real women.

And SCZ's revenue got steam rolled by Arknights, another CN game knows to have lots of women players and an active fandom composed of mostly women, every single month. Like Ak isn't some saint game made by saint company, but they do have record of firing male employee for engaging in hate speech against women using one of the company's social media account, so they had a relatively decent reputation among gaming women in China comparing to other companies.

So the SCZ dudes gets salty for not being the "silenced majority". They launched an attack on the game, spamming discussion forums when Arknights released a male character (Ulpianus), who debuted like a year ago and was presented in multiple story updates, this May, attempt to stir up community problem by pairing him up with a popular female character(Skadi) who was released at launch.

Now here's the problem. There are some dudes who want male characters out of Arknights completely, but they're like, 1% or something. Most people who played doesn't give half a rat ass about SCZ dude's big problem with fictional men existing.

Furthermore, the two character they attempted to pair together already had plenty of build-up to their relationship, and both the story's narrative and the fandom treat their relationship as teacher-apprentice/father-daughter. So their attack was largely viewed as "out of nowhere" and "ridiculous". They were also ridiculed by the community, people just kinda take their words and made a bunch of copypasta about popular ships in the fandom out of it.

And Arknights's playerbase was huge. It launched at the best time for mobile games in CN and it's the few weeb game that people who aren't into anime or gaming heard about or played. Heck it was even viewed as some sort of cultural phenomenon that influenced the UI, art style, story etc. of mobile games that comes after it. So the playerbase was huge, and the majority of it wasn't even aware that there was an attack at all.

So yeah the attack was as big as an ant bite on an elephant at best. Then these dudes go back to their little echo chamber enjoy their self-declared victory on Arknights. Then life continuous on as usual.

Also these dudes seems to have found a few more new CN exclusive gachas and called praised them too nabraska and back for not containing male characters in promotional trailers, only to be supersized by like one or two playable dudes at launch. Those lads were seething in the comments.

Also the Japanese Himedanshi/Himejoshi(people who enjoys yuri) community mistakenly interpreted their goal to be "only lesbian relationships allowed, no hetero bullshit". Funniest shit.

the snowbreak game is crazy lol truly the future of incel gacha. I feel bad for the women who just wanted to see lesbian relationships.

I’m glad they could be totally ridiculed humbled even though AK pulled this shit on their KR server which was never addressed by Hypergryph. This is at least really funny though. These guys seem to always try this “cuckolding” bait with the characters to make people riled up specifically within these Chinese incel gacha communities. I’ve seen the craziest shit recently looking into the newest clusterfuck going on with them and that Genshin Impact character “Wanderer” they seem to hate to an insane degree. after this I looked up their upcoming white pharaoh ™️ banners, it’s so many female characters and they still lose their shit like this about existing male characters… I think there was also a huge blowup with “Girls Frontline 2” with some assumed cuckolding issue, and the CN Blue Archive server literally had to issue an apology for doing a collab with the game Mahjong Soul because the BA players thought they were being cuckolded by the MA players

I don’t want to get too deeply into the more niche aspects of it because it’s not the main focus of this blog and I feel like I’m falling down a rabbit hole of info lol. but when I have a little more time maybe, just so I know I won’t be rushing and using a place like reddit to double check things. But thank you to everyone who has sent info, it’s been interesting to read about and see how it compares to the other movements chronicled here. It’s been hard to find some of this information in English so thank you to everyone who has ever sent a message for writing to me in English as well. Thank you for your patience. I’m trying to learn Korean on my own now so I can actually speak with Korean feminists in their own language and read their works without machine translation….

[primordialsoundmeditation]

POTENT POSSIBILITIES GEMINI FULL MOON

Shamanic Weather December 15, 2024

Our last Full Moon of 2024 practically vibrates with potent possibilities and illuminations. So many magical connections are lining up for us, and some of them may directly impact you!

Full Moons are about oppositions, since the Sun and Moon are opposite in the sky.

How You Shine Sun is in Truth Seeker Sagittarius, while How You Feel Moon gets talkative in Just One More Question Gemini. Both signs are curious about everything, and in opposition bring out the adventurous and playful spirit in you.

PLAYFUL SOUNDS GOOD!

A Grand Trine in Fire heats up any transformation process you are in!

That can look like extra energy and motivation, or impatience and arguments. So, you are on notice to pace yourself and your words!

Altered Consciousness Neptune in No Boundaries Pisces squares (challenges) this Full Moon. Enjoy all the wonderful ideas and opportunities, but know that illusion and deception can be at play as well. Discernment is a necessary filter for any choices made under this influence.

Let Me Supersize That For You Jupiter is currently in Gemini, amplifying the “I can’t sit still" power of this Full Moon.

Jupiter is the largest planet in our solar system, and is moving into a square with the second largest, There Are Rules For A Reason Saturn.

This applying (building) aspect will continue to exert polarizing pressure on us as a world and, depending upon your natal chart, you as a person.

ANY OTHER POTENT POSSIBILITIES?

About 12 hours after the Full Moon is exact, Mercury stations Direct (appears to stop and return to a forward direction).

YAHS!

This retrograde has featured some of the classic Mercury retrograde shenanigans: major websites glitched up, car and communication devices broke down, and travel plans were delayed as weather worked against safe landings.

This Is How I See It Mercury is also in Sagittarius. In fact, Mercury and Jupiter are considered to be in Mutual Reception as they are in each other’s signs of rulership. It’s like two countries swapped kings. And it further amplifies the high (and for some provoking) energy of this Full Moon.

YOUR FULL MOON CEREMONY

We’ve had so much heaviness - let’s lighten up!

Look up the song, “The Future’s So Bright.”

Spend some time dreaming in all the wild possibilities you could embrace, no matter how crazy they seem.

Grab a pair of sunglasses ;) to wear.

Now, put on those cool shades, play the song and dance your dreams! Have fun with all the potent possibilities.

Invite some of this abundant Air/Mind/Gemini and Fire/Change/Sagittarius energy to work on your behalf and feed what’s best for you!

Make this a final Potent Possibilities Full Moon to Roar about!

Namaste,

Mara Clear Spring

Shamanic Practitioner & Teacher, Reiki Master Teacher, Munay-Ki Mentor, Shamanic Astrologer

See me for Shamanic Soul Retrieval and Shamanic Healing!

Shamanic Training Begins January 2025

🪶https://maraclearspring.com/events/

Shamanic Weather Disclaimer

This is a general interpretation not meant to address individual natal charts, soul journeys or destiny paths. Take what works for you and leave the rest behind! Love!

Fantastic Art by Jens Fine Art on Etsy https://www.etsy.com/shop/HolgaJen.

Mara Clear Spring Cook

[phenomenalgems]

💎 Our favorite finds of 2024 continue with #5: this pair of supersized Herkimer Diamond Quartz crystals at Mohawk Valley Mineral Mining in Sprakers, NY! These gemmy beauties were less than 2 feet away from each other, and sleeping just under the surface waiting to be discovered. It’s a privilege to interact with nature this way, and the feeling of seeing a crystal like this exposed to the light for the first time is one of a kind! 💎 #toptenfindsof2024 #XLcrystals #bigcrystals #herkimerdiamonds #herkimerdiamondquartz #mohawkvalley #findyourowncrystals #rockhounding #naturesgifts #americanminerals #newyorkminerals #miningmybusiness #phenomenalgems

[runawayonryo]

ppl stop writing for Heisenberg... how about our magnetto man with a punk/alternative SO??

OUHHHH yessssss!

pairing: Karl Heisenberg x GN!reader

{{note: I generally write REVillage fics Post-canon/alternate universe, assuming Ethan and rose, Mia etc. never existed sry XD}}

Warnings: swearing, brief mention of gore, very mild sexual themes

Ohoho where do I begin?

Karl when he first spots you is... intrigued to say the least.

You weren't like the others, you dressed differently, acted differently, and most importantly... you weren't like the other villagers, blindly following and worshipping Miranda!

Now, Karl being Karl... he thought about pulling his usual BS about "I'm a metal lord, fear me!" but quickly decided against it; not wanting to scare you off or anything. Especially since you didn't seem local, therefore not knowing who the fuck he is.

{and pshhh don't tell anyone i told you this, but despite his huge ego... he might not actually want you to know who he really is at first. So he'll try his best to act "normal" and as human as possible}

After he finally approached you and engaged in a regular conversation, he quickly finds himself craving more.

Long story short, he seeks you out in the village again the next day, inviting you over to his factory because... he didn't really have a house. Anyway, he wouldn't show you what he actually does in there... you two will be in his office on the first floor, he ain't taking you down into the actual factory until he is sure you won't freak out.

This "friend meeting" (totally not a date ͡ ° ͜ʖ ͡ °) goes smoothly surprisingly. He'll ask you about your tattoos and/or piercings, scars etc. {if you have any}.

After a long-ass conversation about all kinds of shit, he'll just ask the question we've all been waiting for.

"So buttercup, you... eh... one of those emos?"

Time for the explanation between emo, goth, punk, rock. Two minutes into this, Karl stops listening... he got his answer.

You listen to heavy music.

And so does he.

Start talking about Metallica, Slipknot, I prevail, Rob Zombie, ACDC, black sabbath, Iron Maiden, Avenged Sevenfold, hell.... even SOME my chemical romance and Seether- and i promise, you'll get his attention piqued!

Especially if we're talking german bands such as "Rammstein" or "Die Toten Hosen" and he'll just... scream internally?

Like first of all... there's someone who also hates mother miranda besides him, they are funny, hot AND love german bands?!

SIGN HIM TF UP!

Needless to say, you two started a relationship quickly.

Despite needing to make his huge ass metal army, he takes a day off to make a bigass stereo...

{and then later that day Lady Dimitrescu complains about the loud ass music coming from his factory that even SHE and her three girls can hear from her castle. lol. Heisenberg tells her to shut the fuck up}

His huge goal is obviously to kill miranda... and then after escaping this shit village together with you. When the day comes, you two will celebrate with flipping off Lady supersized bitch and rolling off to a concert

{which likely isn't a good idea... imagine Karl wanting the microphone from the singer or something. You be chillin and there's just... a floating microphone... you be like... "Karl? what are YOU DOING?!" meanwhile Karl just has a shit eating grin as the crowd screams}

But let's not jump to far into the future...

Right now, you two are stuck under Miranda's disgusting-ass thumb.

Dark times man. It's shit, but whenever you waddle into his office whilst he's working... just y'know... get your phone out and play one of his favorite songs!

This man will {depending on his mood} shoo you away, or most-likely drop what he's doing and just... *grab* you and start juming around the room like monkies in a moshpit.

Once the song finishes, his hand will move from cupping your cheek, to cupping CHEEKS. Just him seeing you rock out to his favorite songs... is enough for Karl to get all hot 'n bothered. So expect some bending over the Work-bench and nice grindin' whilst 'Closer' by nine inch nails plays ;)

EXTRA:

if you like steampunk

this

man

will

just...

Scramble to collect little gears and screws... making little earrings, rings, necklaces etc.

also

stud bracelets.

OH

and if you like wearing chokers

be careful

that awakens a beast within him

"oh ho ho buttercup! What do we have here? Want me to attach a leash and make you *my pet*?

[alittlepudge-neverhurtnobody]

kinktober #20

Haunted House 🏚️ / Supersized Stoner 🍁

When Luke comes to the door, his eyes are red and sleepy, his smile languid and sweet. “Trick or treat,” he says as he lets Han in, and Han promptly goes weak in the knees from how much Luke fills the doorway. Not like that’s anything new, but it never stops feeling new.

“Treat,” says Han, offering him the bulging bag of drugstore Halloween candy he picked up on the way back from work. The musk of weed hangs heavily in the room, and he crosses to crack a window. “Lotta treats. You up for it?”

“Oh, you know I am,” says Luke, closing the door behind Han. “I’ve been preparing all night. You want a hit?”

Han shakes his head. Tonight they’re headed to a Halloween party Lando is throwing at one of his partner’s houses. Han’s half-assing a cowboy costume, his bandana and boots doing most of the heavy lifting. Luke had originally decided to capitalize on his consummate roundness and paint a jack o’lantern face onto an orange sweater, but once he’d gotten it out of Han that he was doing a cowboy thing, he’d found a giant cow-print sweater and insisted on wearing that.

(“That’s, like, a whole other thing, isn’t it?” Han had said when he’d first gotten wise to Luke’s idea. “Like … cow stuff?”

“Is it?” Luke shrugged. “I just think it’s funny. You’re going as a cowboy, why wouldn’t I go as a cow?” He had not gotten what Han was putting down, so he’d given up, but god.)

Now, Han’s having a harder time finding fault with it. Luke looks huge and soft in the sweater, and he’s even got a stubby little pair of horns poking out of his thick blond hair. The whole effect is kind of cute with his pink cheeks and big, heavy-lidded eyes.

“All right,” says Han, wrapping his arms around Luke’s generous waist and kissing at the back of his neck. Luke’s put on a few since they began seeing each other, both from his natural tendency toward overindulgence and Han’s vested interest in keeping him soft and full and overfed. Even the giant cow sweater reveals a pale swatch of doughy belly if Luke raises his arms too far. “Let’s get outta here, huh? I wanna get to Lando’s before all the good booze is gone.”

“Mmm, wait,” says Luke, tipping his head back against Han’s shoulder. “Feed me a little first. I’m so hungry.”

And of course, it’s not like Han can pass that up, so he gropes inside the drugstore bag for a candy bar and rips it open. “Got everything?”

Luke pats his pockets and grabs the hemp satchel he carts with everywhere — full of necessities like a variety of snacks, eyedrops, a phone charger because Luke chronically forgets to check if his phone’s low on juice before going somewhere, and a couple extra joints in an Altoids tin. “Almost.” 

He tugs the drugstore bag from Han and dumps it into his satchel. Han stares. 

“I kinda thought that would last the weekend?” he says, and Luke laughs. 

“That’s cute,” he says, reaching for Han’s hand. Han obliges, partly because he thinks he might fall over if he doesn’t. “I told you, I’m starving. And I’m probably gonna smoke more at Lando’s, he always has good stuff.” He bats big eyes up at Han. “You don’t want me wasting away, do you?”

“I do not,” says Han, tousling Luke’s hair. “Better not risk it.”

The bus out to Lando’s partner’s house is crowded, but Han makes sure Luke gets a seat. Sometimes standing for too long takes it out of him, and they’ve got a long night ahead. And okay, sure, maybe Han wants to watch how his belly jiggles with the movements of the bus. Sue him.

Lando’s partner’s house is a few sidestreets away from the bus stop, and they go slow because Luke doesn’t really move another way. The extra pounds he’s put on in the past six months have settled in his upper arms, the bottom of his belly, the tops of his thighs, and his gait is slowly starting to start looking a little like a waddle. Han feeds him fun-size chocolate bars as they walk, and Luke rewards him by letting him grope the bottom of his gut beneath his sweater when they pull off the sidewalk to make out in the dark.

The party is in full swing by the time they arrive, and it takes them half an hour to even find Lando, who’s dressed as — well, Han’s not sure exactly. Some pop culture reference that eludes him. Luke thinks it’s funny, whatever it is, but he’s also slightly too high to explain it well. 

They make the rounds, Luke saying hi to people he shares classes with or knows from working the tap-in desk and Han lurking behind him with his fingers around the neck of  a beer. He spends plenty of time looking at Luke from the back, but something about the cow sweater and light pants he’s wearing really underscore how wide he is, how much weight he’s carrying and how much it affects his gait. Each step makes him wobble, and Han’s getting a good eyeful that confirms he jiggles almost as much in the back as he does in the front.

Lando’s trademark eclectic mix of house, hip hop, and psychedelic rock throbs through the floors, and the whole room is washed in pink lighting and tiny blips of color from glow-stick jewelry peppering the partygoers. Luke gets pulled into a group of girls Han vaguely recognizes as being from the ag program, and one of them fastens a blue glow stick around his neck as she bobs next to him. He catches Han’s eye and raises an eyebrow, and Han nods back because he’s fine to dance as long as it’s with Luke. He’s spent his share of time rubbing up on strangers in the dark; could be nice to do it with a little more direction and a whole lot more padding.

Luke jiggles and shimmies with the group of girls until the crowd pushes him back to Han, who receives him with open arms and sinks his hands into Luke’s plush hips. He can feel the heavy bounce of Luke’s belly as he dances, the harsh kick of Luke’s breathing against his collarbone, the sheer breadth of him in his arms. He cups the back of Luke’s head in his hands and kisses him long and deep, drinking in the smoky sweet smell of him. Luke gathers him tight in his arms, and Han would gather him back except that Luke is so big he literally can’t pull him any closer. 

And then the song changes to something that has Luke’s group of gals cheering, and Luke hands off his satchel to Han with an apologetic shrug and disappears back into the thrall of people. Han backs up to the wall and lets the heave of sound wash over him, feels the pulse of the music in his bones like the deep, guttural purr of his car. 

He finishes his beer and mingles a little, and then he bounces off Luke coming around a corner and tugs him into a slightly quieter corner near an open window. Luke flops, panting, onto the sofa beneath the window, his big belly sagging to rest between his plump thighs. Han squeezes in beside him, letting the thick, soft swell of Luke’s side spill over his own bony hip, and puts an arm around Luke as he catches his breath and lights up one of the joints from his Altoids tin.

“How you doing?” he murmurs into Luke’s ear, and Luke blows an approximation of a smoke ring.

“Whoof,” he says, resting his free hand on the mound of his stomach and giving it a little wobble. “I’m a little out of shape, I’m tired. But I could eat.”

Han takes a slug from his beer and sweeps a pile of bracelets strung with brightly colored candy and plastic beads from the little table near the couch onto a nearby bean bag chair so he can put the bottle down, careful not to take the purple lava lamp on the table with them. He repositions so he can reach Luke’s belly with both hands and presses his lips to the soft skin of Luke’s jaw. “A little outta shape, huh? Yeah, I’d say so, kid. Look at all this.”

He runs a hand across the wide, billowing expanse of Luke’s stomach, over the heavy width of his thighs, and pushes a chocolate into Luke’s mouth with his other hand. 

“Mmmm,” breathes Luke as he swallows. Usually Han’s not too much for exhibitionism, not keen to let the world in on whatever he’s up to, but here, where everyone else is wasted and the music is thrumming too loud for anyone to hear what’s passing between him and Luke, he could get behind a little something spicy in their corner of the room.

“Keep it up,” says Han as he rips open chocolates. “You think that sweater’s a little small on you now? Wait until I’m done with you. We’ve got a lotta candy to get through, sweetheart. You’re just getting started.”

Luke moans, and Han can’t hear it so much as feel it beneath the music and laughter. He takes a hit off Luke’s joint when it’s offered, and he nibbles at Luke’s earlobe, at the soft spot where his chubby neck and shoulder meet. He squeezes and squishes Luke’s flab in both hands as the party rages around them, and Luke’s breathing gets more and more ragged as they go. He gulps a sip or three from Han’s beer and makes a face, then belches with a rumble that Han could swear shakes the couch. 

“More,” whines Luke, and Han feeds him and feeds him, working his hands underneath his sweater and pushing and prodding Luke’s hot, damp skin. The sweater makes that Luke’s upper arm fat, one of Han’s favorite places to fondle, is unfortunately out of reach, but Han consoles himself with the thought that that will be his treat when they get back to campus. 

Luke doesn’t make it through the entire satchel full of candy, but he makes it through more than Han expected. His eyes are almost fully closed now, and he’s leaning more and more heavily against Han, hiccuping sleepily and humming idly to whatever song is playing.

“Hey,” says Han into his ear. “Wanna get outta here?”

Luke bobs his head. Han throws back the rest of his beer and begins the strenuous work of hauling Luke up and steering him toward the door. He’s so high and tired and overstuffed that they don’t stop at all on the way back to the bus stop; it takes long enough for him just to waddle there, Han circling protectively like a shepherd dog. But the bus is emptier after midnight, so Luke gets two seats to himself, his ample backside and fat thighs spreading helplessly over the hard plastic seam between them. He cradles his overstuffed belly in his hands, and after a while he stops tugging the hem of his sweater down when it rides up. He can’t stop burping, but the bus is so empty that Han can’t bring himself to care. It’s Halloweekend; everyone on the bus route that runs by campus should just be grateful no one’s hurling on them. 

They head back to Luke’s room, very slowly. The bottom of Luke’s belly wobbles with each step where it’s fallen out from beneath his sweater. Han wants to bite it so, so bad.

“Hey,” says Luke sleepily in the elevator, gesturing vaguely to their blurry reflection in the steel. “The cow thing was cute, right? Look how cute we are.”

A few months ago, Han would have protested that he’s allergic to the word cute, but now, even looking like a Polaroid picture that’s been shaken too much, there is something sweet about the pair of them: Luke, short and fair and so perfectly round, and Han, a little taller and a lot rangier, dressed all in blacks and browns.

“Yeah, sweetheart,” he says fondly, jigging the bottom of Luke’s belly and kissing the crown of his head. “We’re cute.”

[cf8wrk4u-us]

Across Space and Prime Chapter 3 (Part 2): Of Masters, Students, and New Guests.

The passage was much shorter than Optimus and his companions' departure from the Decepticons Energon Mine. In the end he was on physical ground in a matter of seconds. Transforming out of his altmode Optimus saw he was in a canyon on earth. The rock cliff sides towering over him as blue sky showed brightly above.

He looked around for his fellow wayward Prime.

“Sentinel”! He called out, before taking notice of some impressions in the sandy dirt that looked like footprints. Sighing he trailed after them and like a recording scene he once again found Sentinel crouched by a portion of wall looking over a portion of rock.

Without even waiting Optimus roughly grasped his orange shoulder blades and pulled him backwards.

“Are you insane”! He hissed into the other Primes audial “Did you forget what they told you-”

He was caught off guard as Sentinel whispered back “Lower your voice! Are you trying to get us caught”

“What-” Optimus tried only for Sentinel to silence him with his servo before nodding behind him. Taking the hint, Optimus cautiously stepped forward and looked over the rock.

There he noticed the back of the other Bumblebee seemingly pacing back and fourth.

“Wait” he said “Where's the other one”

“The supersized version of you”? Said Sentinel “Yeah he walked off-”

He was caught off guard when a series of angry buzzing came out from behind them.

<What are you two doing here>!!!

It was Bumblebee, with surprising speed that even Optimus couldn’t detect the scout had not only figured out their presence but also snuck up on them.

Optimus raised his hands in a pacifying manner “We’re sorry, honestly, we weren’t trying to do anything”!

“Just here to help rookie” Sentinel said easily summoning his lance “I’m a trained Prime, I’m meant to be out here in the field, not entertaining some pet organics”

Optimus saw Bumblebee standing their, his optics seemingly twitching as he let the audacious words settle into him.

<First of all, thos humans aren’t pets> he finally buzzed out < And second I know what I’m walking into, do you>

Sentinel opened his mouth trying to come up with a remark but Bumblebee had already began to walk off, he looked over his shoulder with optics narrowed dangerously at the both of them.

<Stay close and no matter what happens listen to what we say>!

Then like scolded protoforms the two mechs trailed silently behind the scout, though Sentinel did give a few grumbles.

When the scout crouched again they finally saw were the alternate Optimus was. The large mech was walking steadily to a pair of bots who Optimus startled as he saw their red optics.

Decepticons.

And they were just as large as the ones from his world, or even larger as even the one green and gray flier seemed as big as Lugnut.

"It has been a while, Skyquake," they suddenly heard the other Optimus say.

The mech called Skyquake easily pushed his smaller companion "Optimus Prime, I haven't seen you since the battle of Technar” he replied, before adding “Megatron ordered me to annihilate you”

Optimus shivered at the quiet malice that came from the mech using his name, he knew it wasn’t a threat made to him personally but still it made him dizzy that Megatron had high ranking mechs personally try to assassinate him. He had more than one occasion had delt in hand to hand combat with the Decepticons and even Megatron. But those were only eleventh hour attempts at stopping the Decepticons, whether keeping the All-Spark out of there reach, defending Detroit from their attacks, or even preventing an invasion on Cybertron. The had somehow been successful, somehow managed to beat the Cons, but up until his later victory he wasn’t sure that Megatron had even taken him seriously. Not even when he was kidnapped by that bounty hunter, it was Megatron's soldiers who wanted revenge, not the warlord himself.

But to think in this world, Megatron not only knew his name but actually made his death a priority was astounding. What his other half that infamous? To know Megatron? To have even beaten him?!

"That was a long time ago," the other Optimus spoke, his voice so strong yet somehow so light.

"That may be, Prime, but my orders still stand”! The bot named Skyquake growled.

"Is this ancient war still worth fighting, when so many comrades have been lost and worlds destroyed”? His alternate self argued, he then turned to the smaller silvery mech "If you want to be a true leader, Starscream, then stray from Megatron's path and lead the Decepticons toward peace”!

“Starscream”?!! Optimus whispered in shock.

The Starscream he knew of was a much bulkier mech made up of purple and black metals, the being here was more slim and gray with sharper angles. Coming here he knew their would be differences in appearance, but not so dramatic. What other mechs would he fail to recognize despite knowing their counterpart so intimately.

"I would be willing to consider a truce…" Starscream said with an oily purr "If you would be willing to bow before me, Optimus Prime”

“Uh, is he really trying to negotiate with a Con” muttered Sentinel

"Again”?! Skyquake yelled at Starscream with surprising outrage before raising a fist to him "Bow to this”!

He then backhanded him into the canyon wall, groaning Starscream transformed as soon as he got up and flew away. The force of hit making both Optimus and Sentinel stiffen

"Skyquake,this is a new era on another world," the other Prime said, "Side with the Autobots, and help me end this conflict forever”

"I will never side with a Prime”! roared Skyquake before charging right at the other Optimus, slamming him at a wall and then grabbing him the Decepticon threw the other mech to the side.

Coming to his senses the other Prime stood tall, raising his hand before turning it into a blaster before firing shots at the Decepticon. With Skyquake returning fire as he grabbed a weapon from his back that expanded into a gatling missile launcher. Optimus and Sentinel gasped in horror as some of them pelleted into the bigger Autobot, but the former relieved to see that somehow the other was still standing if barely.

<We have to help him>! Bumblebee cried rushing forward

Seeing the scout running towards the Decepticon, the other Optimus cried “No Bumblebee”!

But the scout was already up in the air, shooting his own retaliation at Skyquake from behind. The blast hit the mech square on, but did nothing to debilitate him as he turned around with a ragefull expression and aiming his weapon at the scout.

To Optimus' amazement Bumblebee managed to dodge every blast , jumping between the canyon walls to evade them. But unfortunately as he tried to get close to attack the mech, Skyquake grabbed him and slammed the scout into the wall. He made to shoot at the downed bot till the other Optimus grabbed his weapon and forced him to shoot up instead of his companion.

Unable to take sitting on the sidelines, Optimus rushed over, joining Bumblebee as the both attempted to tackle the mech. But just as easily as before Skyquake threw the pair off of him.

The bigger Prime was back though, throwing his own punches at the Decepticon. But Skyquake was quick to counter with his own strikes, but just as he moved to give another blow his arm was tangled in metal wire. Optimus strained as he tugged the wire from his grappler trying to knock the Decepticon over, but strained under his heavy weight. He had some relief as Bumblebee gripped his arms to help him.

Then something unexpected happen.

“You owe me big time for this Optimus”!

Sentinel in his vehicle mode rushed in and plowed into Skyquake, finally sending the heavy flier over. The scene almost seemed impossible given the strength of this Decepticon even more so when transforming back the blue and orange plow truck Sentinel stood over the downed Skyquake

“Hah, Decepticon scum”! He snarked pointing his summoned lance at the large mechs head “Let it be know that I, Sentinel Prime, have brought down this might war machine”!

Optimus saw Skyquake head twitch and tried to warn his friend “Sentinel”!

Sentinel yelped in panic as his lance was grabbed, he was tugged forward as Skyquake grabbed him by the neck in a tight choke hold that had the other Prime gasping.

“You call yourself “Sentinel Prime”? asked Skyquake a quite rage in his voice as he gripped Sentinel tighter, he looked to Optimus other self in outrage “You let this one call himself that, are you that desperate for supporters you welcome delusional and sacrilegious fools”!

“He knows not what he’s saying” said the other Optimus, leveling an angry fist at Skyquake “Let the bot go”!

Skyquake growled as he lifted Sentinel up “We don’t need anymore false Primes, especially by that name”!

Bumblebee jumped forward, trying to get at the Decepticon before he did anything to Sentinel only for Skyquake to viciously toss his captive away at the yellow bot. The pair nearly tumbled down before Optimus moved in to catch them.

“Are you all right”? the smaller Prime asked, which in hindsight was a pretty stupid question given the glare Sentinel shot his way.

<Been better> Bumblebee whirled as he helped the other blue and orange bot up <Could be a lot worse though, wonder why Sky-Head hasn’t kicked up for an aerial attack>

“Skyquake has not yet acquired a vehicle mode” whispered the other Optimus

“What does that matter”?!! Hissed Sentinel “Any minute he could just transform into his Cybertronian altmode”!

“From what I gathered Skyquake has been in deep sleep on Earth, it could take awhile for him to fully stabilize his systems without given a vehicle” explained the bigger Optimus

“Well, that's convenient” said Sentinel

Skyquake gave another battle cry as he rushed forward, weapons at the ready.

“Not enough to disregard the obvious danger”! Said Optimus “Fall back, everyone”!!

Instinctively the smaller Prime and his companion shifted into their altmodes with the other two, back peddling in hard gear before steering straight ahead.

Behind them Skyquake fired more shots screaming into their dust “HAS TIME MADE YOU A COWARD PRIME”??!!!

“So what's the plan”?! Sentinel said in a panic “Keep driving till we reach somewhere safe”?

“It would be far better to call the others for back up wouldn’t it”? Optimus stressed

“I concur”! His other half agreed “But we should find a secluded location to call a ground bridge, we can’t risk the children's safety should a warrior as deadly as Skyquake force his way into the base”

“Alright lets-” but before Optimus could finish thundering footsteps followed close behind them, getting closer and closer.

“Are you kidding me”?! Sentinel screamed over the com “Is that con really chasing after us on foot! He’ll catch up to us in no time”!

<How maybe just one of us>? Buzzed Bumblebee <I have a plan>!

“Can anyone tell me what he just said”? Asked Sentinel

Optimus crouched in a corner of the chasm with Sentinel, still in vehicle mode, tensing as they watched Skyquake pass by chasing a lone Bumblebee into what they knew was a dead end.

He heard Skyquake chuckle "It will be a shame to crush you here, bug, but it is my duty,"

Just then a loud horn sounded off, signaling the attack. The bigger Optimus was up first, plowing down the Decepticon before giving a sharp turn to let the other two Primes to follow. Before Skyquake could get up though, Optimus himself ran over the con, Sentinel coming up behind him to join in the final attack.

Skyquake was finally thrown to the wall, crumbling it as he fell to the ground.

The group were all in their bipedal modes looking over the groaning Decepticon.

“Is it done? Did we do it”? Asked Sentinel

The answer was clear though as Skyquakes molten red eyes snapped open and he swung his clawed servos, scratching at the bigger Optimus chassis. The others backed away, weapons out and gripped tightly.

“Skyquake” Optimus otherself said steadily, “Stay Down”.

Before giving a mighty punch that sent fragments of metal flying off of Skyquakes face.

Optimus tried to take a moment to breathe, but his mind couldn’t help but capture just the strength of the larger Prime before him. The echoes of the punch still resonated in his mind.

That is till a new sound hummed through the air, the group looked to the sky to find the source. Optimus worried it had been the new Starscream, there to pick up where Skyquake left off. But the jet didn’t look like the one Starscream turned into.

“Fowler”? Optimus breathed

“Who”? Said Sentinel

But no questions could be answered as a blinding green light erupted from Skyquakes eyes, along with a triumphant smile.

“Agent Fowler, fall back” cried the bigger Optimus touching his comm.

It was too late though as no sooner did the green lights hit the flighter jet, Skyquake rushed past them and transformed into that very aerial vehicle.

“Air Superiority Achieved”! Yelled Skyquake as he angled his new altmode down and began to fly towards the group of Autobots.

“Run”! Said Optimus, his other self, Sentinel, and Bumblebee following after.

The tides have turned and once again the Decepticon was on the chase, now not only did he have both his strength and his weapons but aerial distance that made his weapons even more deadly.

The four of them drove through the canyon, narrowly dodging the blast that launched after them.

“Oh, great! How are we getting out of this now”? Begged Sentinel “Does anyone else have any bright ideas”

“Yeah, don’t get hit” Optimus growled to his fellow Prime.

Surprisingly more large blast came out, only instead of being aimed at them it instead hit at Skyquake. It forced the DEcepticon to veer off, following the jet.

“Who is that”? asked Optimus

<Agent Fowler!> said Bumblebee <You can trust him to come in clutch>

The shots returned though, forcing the group to drive faster.

<For the most part>

The gunfire came faster and harder, Optimus and Sentinel were nearly taken out by a large missile only for the Primes other self to jump in. Using his larger body to shield them, going so far as to grab the missile and throwing it away. But Skyquake continued his onslaught, once again aiming for Bumblebee who still continued driving.

To Optimus surprise, the scout turned towards the direction of a road towards the top of the canyon. The Prime had no idea what he was doing, that is till he saw Bumblebee change from his vehicle mode and run across the edge of the canyon.

Before jumping from his vantage point to land right on Skyquakes vehicle mode. The scout clung to the wing, staying on even as he was scrapped into the canyon wall creating a comm splitting scratch of metal.

“What on earth is he thinking”?! Yelled Sentinel “He doesn't have an aerial vehicle, or even a jet pack? How does he expect to get down”?!!

Optimus mind was reeling at the fact that the scout performed such a daring stunt, it took him a second to answer Sentinels question.

“Fowler…”

His other self sent him a confirming nod before touching his comm link again “Agent Fowler, we acquire immediate assistance”

Optimus could only watch from the ground, he felt helpless as he saw Bumblebee hang from the Decepticons wing. His spark racing further as he saw Bumblebee begin to hit the fighter jets wings, punching into Skyquakes engines and pulling out vital wiring. As evident when the jet began plummeting down.

Sentinel's question echoed through his head, wondering if his fellow Prime was right. That what Bumblebee had just leaped into was a suicide mission.

But like mercy from Primus himself, the other jet belonging to Agent Fowler dipped by besides the falling Decepticon. Getting closer and closer, before finally breaking enough space for Bumblebee to jump on.

Skyquake was falling on his own now, a smoking trail tailing his arrival as he met the ground floor with a heavy crash.

Once Bumblebee was lowered close to the canyon's edge, the scout made another daring leap before throwing the group below a thumbs up.

With a shaky smile Optimus returned it.

It was a little while later that the group walked to where Skyquake had crashed. All of them on guard, but as they made their way their Optimus felt his tank twist at the state of the mech.

His hulking form was twisted in a crooked position, metal smelted to a black scorch marks, and one optic dimly lit.

Optimus tensed as the red optic landed on him, but soon enough it fluttered once and blacked out. Never to open again.

“Is he…is he…”? He heard Sentinel mumble.

“He is” Optimus answered quietly

He wasn’t a stranger to death, he and his team had brushed by it more than once, Prowl and Bumblebee almost offlining. And he himself had been an offlined mech for a nano-second. Even as early as his cadet days with the supposed death of Elita-One.

But somehow this death felt more…brutal…

It seemed to have an effect on Sentinel who couldn’t stare at the body any longer.

But his other self and Bumblebee, they were oddly solemn, almost numb to the sight before them.

“Had Skyquake had chosen to stray from his masters path…perhaps we might not be burying him this day” the other Optimus said solemnly before he turned to the two of them “Now, lets return to the base…and see how we proceed on what is to become of you two”

“What”? Asked Sentinel

“I believe we had rules instated to your group, both regarding the use of the Groundbridge and that of leaving the base without supervision”

“But we helped”! Sentinel insisted “That has too count-”!

“We can discuss this later” said the other Optimus, his voice didn’t sound angry but the level look he gave them was a serious thing.

“Hey-”!

“Sentinel”! Optimus begged his friend “Let it go”!!!

His friend looked at his definitely, but then looked to his hands that were shaking unsteadily. Finally he slumped his shoulders coinciding.

Little was said as Optimus other self called on a ground bridge and the pair, in their bruised and scuffed glory, entered through it.

“Sooo…” Sentinel tried to ask from where he was sitting “How long do you think we'll be here”?

“I don’t know, ask the angry medic who tossed us in” said Blackarachnia, standing on the wall.

“I’m not talking to you, you techno-organic freak” huffed Sentinel “Right Optimus”

“I’m not talking to ether of you” Optimus gritted out from the otherside of the room.

“Oh, touchy”~ chuckled Blackarachnia

Optimus resented how oddly calm the pair of them acted after the trouble they were in, after returning to the base Optimus and Sentinel were presented with a group of scowling Autobots, kids nowhere in sight, and Blackarachnia standing nonchalantly with her servos up as Arcee pointed a blaster at her.

Then came the onslaught of screaming from Ratchet at the two mechs, of how they broke the rules, potentially put their hideout endanger, almost got their own remembers killed, and left Ratchet no time to finish up the kids science projects.

The later not as serious, but still there responses were reasonable if expected. Especially when it came to rounding them all up and forcing them into a room together before locking the door. In the very least both Optimus and Sentinel were provided with first aid and reluctantly all three of them were given a cube of the blue energon each.

The group were in silence for hours, only interrupted with Sentinel and Blackarachnia bickering. Now the sound was filled with the femme bots soft pacing over the ceiling and Sentinels soft humming.

Somehow though it was enough to make Optimus explode “YOU KNOW WHAT?! WE ARE SO FRAGGED”!!!

“I thought you weren’t talking to us” Sentinel smirked.

“Shove it”! Yelled Optimus “Seriously! All you both had to do was wait at the base and touch nothing! It was that simple”!

“Hey! I wasn’t going to sit back and do nothing while we're stuck here”!

“And how did that work out”?! Spat Optimus, nodding to the dented metal on his fellow primes chassis. Not life threatening but as Optimus knew, it would ache.

Sentinel grumbled but before he could give a retort the door to their room opened.

“I swear nothing has changed since-”!

Just then Ratchet walked in with the other Optimus behind him “Follow us” the medic grumbled.

Hesitantly Optimus got up and proceeded with Sentinel and Blackarachnia following behind him. They walked briskly through the halls till they made it to what was deemed as the medical corner. The rest of the team stood by, all but one sent a glare their way.

Inside a large glass hatch, Bumblebee stood. It looked like a energon therapy pod, made to expose bots to high levels of energon to help revitalize them. The last time Optimus had seen the scout he had all but collapsed into a medical berth. Now he looked well rested and buffed out from his battle the previous day, greeting Optimus with a cheerful whirl.

<Hey, guys!> he said <Glad to see your okay!>

“You too” said Optimus, letting a smile slip onto his face.

Sentinel who was still unable to understand the scout but judged by his joyful whirl that he was being greeted gave a nod to Bumblebee.

“Nice to see your doing better, scout” he mumbled.

“So you have been in our base for less than a day but your little trio has somehow broken the majority of rules we placed for you” said Ratchet

Optimus gulped “I-I understand sir”

“Oh do you now”? Says Ratchet “Our war, the war you apparently won somehow in your world, is a very real thing” he paced back and forth “We’ve fought in it for centuries, longer than I imagine you;ve been online! And even with Megatron gone, our one advantage, the Decepticons as you see are a very real and persistent threat”

“We don’t have time to be babysitting a couple of insubordinate mechs who don’t have the processors to realize how serious this situation is for us” said Arcee

“Insubordinate”! Sentinel said outraged but was silenced by a growl from Bulkhead.

“The fate of this planet, this very galaxy, rest on on us keeping Earth from Decepticon control” said Optimus “Can you understand what is at stake and the gravity of stepping into the battlefield, we are the final defense”

“I can” Optimus said simply, his gaze steady at his alternate self.

Earth being endangered by Decepticons was nothing new, fighting an impossible battle, none of that was new to him. But with Cybertron now gone and the Decepticons running wild under Starscream, the stakes were all the more higher.

“We are a dangerous part of the war, needing to stop the Decepticons and maintain our cover on earth” said the other Optimus once more “So though we feel for your plight, I don’t believe we can provide as much support in returning you three home”

He could feel Sentinel growing agitated besides him, so Optimus quickly said “But you do believe us”?

The silence was enough of an answer as the group looked between each other nervously, the only one match his gaze was his other self.

“...yes”

This grew wide eyes from the larger Primes team.

“Sir, once more I want to apologize for our actions the other day” Optimus spoke once more for his group, in a way that felt similar to their academy days “I like to think with what happened with Skyquake we all finally understand our position here and the importance of your mission”

Sentinel crossed his arms “Pretty convinced”

Blackarachnia said nothing.

“And because of that I don’t see us being able to leave back to our own dimension without finding ourselves involved in your war…so I want to officially join your mission in defeating the Decepticons”

The other Optimus opened a fraction while besides him Ratchet huffed “And your companions”

“I still think returning home should take precedence, we have our own war too think about” Sentinel grumbled “But I doubt we can really get anything down with those warmachines running amuck on this planet”

Optics than shifted to Blackarachnia.

“Uh, Optimus, are we seriously going to let a Con join our team”? snapped Arcee looking to her leader.

“Yeah, seriously, Optimus”? Said Sentinel looking the opposite direction to his companion.

Confused stares flickered all around.

Optimus sighed before looking to Blackarachnia.

“Blackarachnia, once again, can I trust you too fully cooperate with this team and their fight against these Decepticons”?

“You not giving a girl much of a choice here” muttered Blackarachnia “Ether join your little crusade underlock and key or join up with whatever nearly offline the pair of you”

“So is that a yes”

Blackarachnia gave a nasty stare “It's a “I don’t have a better option” at the moment”

Optimus gave a weary look before looking to the rest of the suspicious bots “I promise to keep an eye on her, no matter what, consider me fully responsible for her”

“Ugh, don't do this lover-bot” grumbled Blackarachnia “I’ll stay”

“Then we’ve come to an agreement at the moment” said the other Optimus “With hope you’ll abide by our rules more closely” he held out his large servo to the smaller version of himself.

Optimus hesitantly took it, his small blue servo all but disappeared in the larger Primes black servo.

“I also hope you’ll refrain yourselves from putting yourself endanger necessarily” said his other half, before looking at Sentinel “Though you performed admirably”

The younger Primes face-plate seemed to flush under the large mechs face.

<Alright, you guys are part of the team> buzzed Bumblebee finally stepping out of the pod.

“Hmm, no bad” said Bulkhead stepping forward and clapping a large hand on Sentinels shoulder “For a fake Prime”

Sentinel sputtered and shoved his servo off “Fake! I’ll have you know I’m one of the most official Primes here, so you better refer to me as such"!

Bulkhead just cocked a brow before shaking his head “Not likely”

“What did you say”!

“And you”! Bulkhead said pointing to Optimus “This is getting kind of confusing that you have the same name as our leader, is there anything else we can call you”?

Sentinel chuckled “Maintenance Prime could be a choice”

Optimus threw him a glare before rolling his eyes, he sighed before thinking. He never really had a nickname per se, perhaps his serial number OP2607, but that was a bit degrading and a mouthful. He really did like his designation, the one Kup gave him, but understood the unneeded confusion it brought.

Then he remembered something Jazz said to him.

“You can call me…Op” said Optimus

Sentinel gave him a look but Bulkhead nodded “Sounds like a pretty good name, now I got to go pick up the kids, I’m already late as it is”

“Can I go out too”? Asked Sentinel

Optimus was quick to intervene, remembering his friends' less than ready earth road skills“You really want to be surrounded by organics”?

Sentinel cringed before shaking his head.

At least one crisis was averted, now to face a whole new world of problems.

[justforbooks]

Morgan Spurlock

American film-maker best known for his acclaimed 2004 documentary Super Size Me

Few film-makers can say that their work has made a change to the real world, but Morgan Spurlock had a stronger claim than most. His 2004 documentary Super Size Me, an exposé of how the fast food industry was fuelling America’s obesity epidemic, appeared to have direct repercussions for the world’s largest fast food chain, McDonald’s.

Shortly before the film came out in May that year, the company introduced its Go Active! menu, which included salad items; six weeks after its release, the company abolished its supersize portions entirely.

McDonald’s claimed these menu changes were a coincidence. But the director, who has died aged 53 of complications from cancer, struck a timely blow at the business when awareness about fast food’s corrosive role in public health was on the rise.

Super Size Me’s high-concept premise – eating three McDonald’s meals for 30 days straight – was key to conveying Spurlock’s message. With the director gaining 11kg, plumping out his body fat from 11% to 18% and inflicting heart palpitations, impotence and depression on himself, his gonzo approach put him at the forefront of the early noughties boom in cinematic documentaries instigated by Michael Moore. “There’s real power in a documentary,”Spurlock later said.

Doubts later emerged about Spurlock’s experiment in bodily attrition, after he refused to release his diet logs from the period; and then when it later emerged that he was an alcoholic who had also imbibed during the shoot.

An inveterate attention-seeker and twinkly-eyed showman, he was not going to let these details affect either the purity of Super Size Me’s marketing line, or his emerging career as a documentary star; a budding Moore for the Jackass generation. He would consistently target totems of modern capitalism and consumerism, though none of his subsequent works had the same kind of influence as his 2004 lightning-bottler.

Spurlock was born in Parkersburg, West Virginia, and grew up in Beckley in the Methodist household of his auto-repair shop-owning father Ben and mother Phyllis, an English teacher and high-school counsellor. Though his parents later divorced, he credited his mother in particular with instilling in him a sense of activism: “She was one of those people who speak up when she didn’t agree with things. She was a collector of people too: if you had the ability to help people, you should,” he told the International Documentary Association.

A childhood fan of British humour such as Fawlty Towers and Monty Python, he was already exercising his entertainer’s streak doing “funny walks” around the house aged six or seven.

Rejected five times by University of Southern California’s film school, he graduated from the New York University Tisch School of the Arts in 1993. “I wanted to be Spielberg. I wanted to write and direct scripted movies,” Spurlock told Interview magazine. He originally showed promise in this direction, winning an award for his stage play The Phoenix at the New York international fringe festival in 1999.

After stints as a personal assistant on Woody Allen’s Bullets Over Broadway and Luc Besson’s Leon (both 1994), Spurlock first stepped in front of camera as a promotional spokesman for Sony Electronics. But his breakthrough came though hitching himself to the reality TV bandwagon with the self-created internet webcast, and, later (in 2002), MTV show, I Bet You Will. As one of the presenting team, Spurlock goaded members of the public into humiliating themselves for money – with stunts such as being “wedgied” or eating a worm burrito.

Super Size Me grossed $22m on a $65,000 budget, making it one of the most profitable documentaries of all time. Spurlock believed his body never fully recovered – though he lost the weight thanks to a special diet concocted by his then girlfriend, the vegan chef Alex Jamieson (the pair married and had a son, Laken, in 2006, before divorcing in 2011; Spurlock had been previously married to Priscilla Somer between 1996 and 2003).

He also later expressed doubts about the longer-term impact of Super Size Me on fast food corporations, later reflecting: “People say to me, ‘So has the food gotten healthier?’ And I say, ‘Well, the marketing sure has.’”

Spurlock could not skewer the zeitgeist again to create a second “doc-buster”, despite tilting at big-hitter topics such as terrorism (in 2008’s Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden?) and product-placement and advertising (POM Wonderful Presents: the Greatest Movie Ever Sold in 2011). With his trademark handlebar moustache, he settled into a reliably affable front-of-camera presence nosing around socio-cultural issues and foibles – sometimes fatuously.

In total, he directed and produced nearly 70 films and series, including a One Direction hagiography in 2013 and a Super Size Me sequel in 2017. But he retained keen business sense and marketing nous throughout this prolific output. “He taught us that we have to be chief executive artists,” his fellow documentary-maker Ondi Timoner told Variety.

Towards the end of Spurlock’s life, his career was on hold after he confessed in a 2017 blogpost to sexually abusive behaviour, including an allegation of rape while at college and paying off a production assistant he had harassed. “I have been unfaithful to every wife and girlfriend I have ever had,” he also wrote, explaining he had been sexually abused in his youth. He divulged all this possibly pre-emptively in anticipation of future accusations in the up swell of the #MeToo movement.

Making himself the focus of the story was true to his modus operandi, and his professed desire for self-improvement could indeed have made a fascinating documentary.

But the mea culpa proved an effective self-cancellation, with him resigning from the production company, Warrior Poets, he had founded in 2004 and being sued by Turner Entertainment Networks for an aborted project.

He divorced his third wife, the producer Sara Bernstein – with whom he had a second son – in 2024. His final documentary credit was for a mockumentary creating a fake history around the classic 1992 Simpsons episode Homer at the Bat.

Spurlock is survived by his children, Laken and Kallen, by his parents and his brothers, Craig and Barry.

🔔 Morgan Spurlock, director and producer, born 7 November 1970; died 23 May 2024

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at Just for Books…?

[neojayink]

Sketch Dump + Splatoon Neo Artist Updates

I’m nearly finished the complete plot of sneo hero story. Currently planning on how all my ideas will coincide with each other.

Hero: “Cross Contamination” - A sub plot that introduces Toxic Octolings and shows the failures of a scientist attempting to create genetically modified Octolings. Much like sanitized Octolings, the toxic octos have been contaminated and now show off zombie-like behaviors.

“Hero Team Up” - A pair of heroes on their night shift protecting the city. The left hero is physically exhausted from the mission. Neon Octolings shown carrying the new “Dauber Glove” weapons.

“Part time environmentalist” - Sketches for a story in which the main character works at a water plant facility. Currently scrapped idea as it introduced a convoluted storyline. Reworked into the Hero Night Shifts. (Protecting the Microbiome) “Water jug ink hammer” and “stream shot” seen as weapons. May be explored in the future.

“Tree Octoling Trio” - First concept for the Tree Octoling in the story. The hero will arrive to a zoo-like Forrest enclosure in search of a hidden treasure. The tree Octoling is protecting it, and has never seen an outsider before. Their natural instinct to protect their turf kicks in and a battle starts. Tree octopuses do not exist, but this one has been created in irony of that fact. They represent a successful genetic modification experiment by the scientist.

“Hype Mode” - A new mechanic that lets the player trade their heart for stat boosts. More details coming in the sneo mechanics updates.

Edit: this mechanic will be reworked into what we will call “flow state”

“Lock Jaws” - Splatoon Neo’s second official special. Will be seen after the “Supersize: Streamshot Deluxe” is shown off. The user summons a ghostly koinobori (carp/koi fish streamer ‘kite’.) The lock jaws which is made of holo ink swims through the air and surfaces to latch onto its target. Holo ink allows inklings to cast 3D projections of ink. It’s seen in many specials, but in this case, holo ink casts into a koi fish. Once locked, the enemy player will lose access to its special, sub weapon, and given negative effects such as dizziness and dillution. (Dillution makes you take more damage and deal less damage when affected)

“Turf Board” - New weapon class of surfboard + hoverboard weapons. It will be a usable method of transportation in battles. Comes with its own ink tank to let you “hover” from its fountain mechanism. Ink saver main will be your friend with this wpn as the hover mode will burn through ink. I haven’t finished the mechanics and balancing but I could see this letting you hover for at least 5 seconds. As a turfing weapon it can shoot out two streams of ink. The win animation will definitely look like how people dance with sign advertisements. Vehicles will show up in the “raceway” stage as obstacles you can drive around with ink like the turf board.

And finally,

“Neon Lotus” - Album cover concept 1. The twins have their final designs pretty much complete and they have a few songs in the works already. Their album vibe is inspired by old school sonic graphics. Surprisingly it’s harder for me to create songs for the twins vs ultramarine. It’s about 4 to 6 in difference. I’m definitely a perfectionist to neon lotus but I’m sure they’ll come out great. Over time I’ll be sharing more audio clips for both bands songs.

(This post sat in my drafts for months 😅just now checking drafts)

[enbycupcake]

ranking live action frankie's fits

#1

[ID: two screencaps of frankie stein showing off their outfit. they are wearing a black leather-esque jacket with a safety pin heart on the left side, with a blue chain hanging right below that attaches to the jacket's side pocket. frankie has a yellow lightening bolt earring and a metal chain necklace with what appears to be a supersized safety pin instead of a necklace's traditional pendant. they are wearing a black shirt, and their pants are half black on the right leg with white and black pin stripes on the left leg. end ID]

the fit they were in for most of their screentime, i believe. and it's a fucking BANGER. the jacket? the pants? with the gloves? slay, frankie

#2

[ID: screencaps of frankie wearing knee high silver boots, a yellow lightning bolt earring, a black school vest with blue trim, a white button up, and a pleated skirt that is half yellow/black plaid and half black with one yellow striped accent. their belt has a chain that splits into three, and they are wearing their safety pin heart on their vest. end ID]

the half and half skirt? beautiful. the heart safety pins? the BOOTS? what a great first outfit to introduce us to them

#3

[ID: screencaps of frankie wearing a blue lightening bolt earring, a yellow plaid shirt under a white sweater vest with black line detail. their jeans have a hole under their right knee and above their left knee. above and below both holes, grommets have been placed with decorative thread placed between them. they are wearing two belts on their waist. frankie's shoes are platforms with blue and neon lime green/highlighter yellow. their bag is either leather or faux leather with studs. end ID]

fucking work, babe! i love belts and i love plaid

#4

[ID: screencaps of frankie wearing their pajamas which consist of a boxy fit yellow hoodie with wide armholes and black pants with numerous chunky zippers all along the legs. end ID]

i fucking want these jammies. the hoodie looks so damn comfy, and the pants are chic. i want that many zippers just to look cool

#5

[ID: screencaps of frankie wearing a sweater vest with white and pink trim, a white button up with a black studded collar, a skirt with three different types of plaid – blue, green, and yellow – distressed leggings, and two belts with dangling chains on the waist. they have a large pink electric bolt earring. end ID]

a similar outfit to fit #2, but i like the skirt less. i love the pop of pink and the collar on the button up is *chef's kiss* really, if it weren't for the skirt this would be look #2

#6

[ID: screencaps of frankie wearing a striped white and black shirt. the shirt is not one continuous cut of fabric; its stripes do not line up along the front of the bodice. frankie is wearing a black pleated skirt; on the pleats are grommets with blue laces threaded through them in an "x" pattern and tied at the bottom. under the skirt is the same pair of jeans from out #3. end ID]

the skirt is cute. love the reuse of the jeans; pieces of clothes are meant to mix and match! but the overall look just isn't as visually interesting to me. it does look very comfortable, tho. i'd wear it.

#7

[ID: the monster high: the movie poster for frankie stein. in it, they are wearing a white button up under a plain black dress. the only details on the dress are the belt sleeves and the matching belt frankie has placed on their waist. a neon green chain hangs from the belt. frankie is also wearing distressed leggings and black platform boots. end ID]

unless i just missed it somehow, i only saw this fit in the actual movie in a bust shot. so. on account of not seeing the full fit in the movie it gets last place even tho i like the dress