#sure it’s a debarker whatever makes you happy

[restnowyourhardshipisover]

Zedaph very carefully not saying stripped while showing Keralis his new machine for stripping logs.

[doberbutts]

Thank you for tagging!

As you say, unfortunately “problem barking” is too vague a descriptor to be really that useful in determining the cause. Most likely, a trainer would need to either see this behavior in person or see a video of the behavior to determine what exactly is going on. And also unfortunately it’s rarely just the one thing, but multiple factors contributing to the barking including the fact that barking is self-reinforcing- it feels good in the dog’s brain to bark, and so the bark will continue because the brain is rewarding itself. This is also why a lot of times things like bark collars are ineffective as long-term training tools- they may stop the bark while they’re on but once they’re off most of the time the dog will return to barking exactly as they were before. This is also why a lot (and I do mean a lot) of people will debark or “soften” a dog when “nothing else works”- barking that becomes a form of self-pleasure can be a nightmare to stop if you don’t know what causes the dog to seek that form of reinforcer in the first place. This is often the “barking at nothing” thing- it’s rarely actually nothing, but good luck figuring out what it actually is while the dog is getting hits of feel-good with every woof.

This also is really hard when there is something obvious as a trigger but it’s not a controllable something. As you said, barrier and leash reactivity is so hard because the dog begins to BOW WOW WOW WOW and then either is moved away from the trigger or the trigger leaves of its own volition and either way the dog got what it wanted which is the thing leaving. So many people give in to demand barking because at least it shuts the dog up (for now...) without even thinking about the implications of creating that behavior chain and how much of a tantrum the dog will have when the human in the situation has had enough and tries holding their ground and not giving in (and then eventually gives in and does whatever it is the dog wants and now we’ve created a monster). Barking in the crate, barking at sounds... there’s so many reasons dogs will bark and bark and bark and unfortunately it’s one of the least controllable things about dogs because, well. Dogs bark.

I’ve found the most success comes from a number of different things combined into one.

1. Change the entire picture. If you know that your dog will bark when someone walks by, for instance, before your dog even gets a chance to wind up and think about barking, do something else besides stand there and wait for your dog to BOW WOW WOW at that person. Pivot and walk the opposite direction. Whip out a toy and play a good game of tug. Walk somewhere else where people will pass you less. And work with a trainer to solve the reactivity, of course. 

2. Unending barking, as said, is self-reinforcing because it’s a hit to the pleasure center of the dog’s brain every time they vocalize. It’s, erm. Kind of masturbatory in that way (and, dogs do masturbate too, for the same reasons). But often when the dog is doing this nonstop, it’s a sign of the dog struggling to cope with something, usually stress. Finding the stressor can be a challenge in and of itself, but often there’s something making the dog unhappy so they’ve figured out they can make themselves happy to try and cope with the stress of that. These types of dogs are often very anxious or aggressive- I lived with a shiba like this and she would literally bark from sunrise to sunset if she heard someone in the yard once in the morning. She was very anxious, and she ended up needing anti-anxiety medication to calm her little brain and allow her to cope better with the stress of “oh my god someone is here and that scares me”.

3. Make sure your dog’s needs are being met. And I know this can be difficult, but for instance my new addition Phoebe will have a complete tantrum meltdown in her crate if she has not satisfied her social and physical needs that day. I need to interact with her for a minimum number of hours and I need to exercise her for a minimum amount of steps or she will be completely inconsolable when I try to go to bed at night. She, of course, cannot tell me “you haven’t hugged me the required 15 times yet today and thus I am Unhappy About It”... but that doesn’t mean that’s not a minimum requirement for her to be fulfilled in her life. You may feel you are “doing enough” for your dog, but if your dog is showing signs of stress like barking nonstop... it is possible that you aren’t, actually. And it’s okay to realize you’ve over-dogged yourself by accident, as long as you’re willing to do something about it whether that is to find a way to meet that need without driving yourself mad, or whether that is to find someone who can meet that need for your dog to live with instead.

I was wondering if you had any advice (or links to such) on the issue of dogs who bark a lot. The two big pieces of advice one tends to see about barking are “figure out what need is not being met” and “don’t reinforce behavior you don’t want” and I kind of… don’t see how to do both of those at once? If I don’t respond (positively) to the barking I don’t know how to figure out what need they’re expressing, and if I do respond to it I don’t know how to ask them to express it a different way? I feel like there’s some Step here I’m missing in how to marry these concepts.

Welcome to why barking is a really complicated behavior problem to address once it’s become frequent. I’m going to say, as I always do here, that you should find a local positive reinforcement-based trainer to work with on your specific issues, but I’m happy to talk theory a little bit.

There’s a lot of different reasons dogs bark, which is where you have to start. They might be letting you know there’s someone nearby (alert barks) or they might be asking for something (demand barks). It could also be communicative with other dogs letting them know to back off (threat barks) or inviting them to play (play solicitation barks). They might be expressing frustration or internal conflict (referential barks - I can’t for the life of me find the paper about this I remember reading). So the first thing you have to figure out is why they’re barking, which means understanding what the context is. Only then can you figure out how you’re going to be able to modify the behavior. That means you may have to watch for a while without trying to interrupt or redirect to figure out what’s going on, even though that goes against the rule of not letting animals practice behaviors you don’t want.

A good example of the variety of causes for barking is your classic “dog barking at a window” situation. A dog barking at passerby and their dogs might be, for instance, frustrated about the proximity of other dogs it can’t greet or interact with. (This is often your classic barrier frustration situation). But a different dog might be expressing discomfort - there’s another dog that’s too close to it / it’s property, and that’s uncomfortable. And a third dog, say of a guarding breed, might be alert-barking to tell you about the proximity of strangers. Each of those is going to need to be addressed differently. For a dog with barrier frustration, I might put up opaque window cling so they can’t see out the window, preventing them from seeing the stimulus that’s triggering the barking. For a dog that’s alert-barking, all it might take in some cases is training an acknowledgement cue. (Basically telling the dog yes, I see your concern, good job telling me, job done, chill out now). I’m purposefully not giving an example for anxiety or fear solutions because those are complicated situations that should be handled individually.

The hard park about modifying barking behaviors is that you’re only the reinforcer for some of them - in some cases, because barking is a bit of a self-referential expression of an internal state, getting to bark at something can actually be internally reinforcing for the dog. In a situation where, say, your dog is demand-barking for dinner, you can very easily choose to stop reinforcing it: don’t react to the dog when they bark for dinner, only put food down when they’ve stopped barking. But if it’s something more complex like a barrier-reactive dog barking out a window, you can’t necessarily stop that situation from being reinforcing for them once it starts: you can’t control passerby or what the outside dogs do, and both the reaction of the strange dogs and your dog’s experience of barking may be reinforcing it. At which point, if you can’t control the reinforcer, you have to control the thing that allows the behavior to happen - in this example, that’s being able to see outside dogs at all, hence why some people put up opaque window film to remove the dog’s ability to see dogs they want to bark at.

Because barking can have so many triggering stimuli, and it’s so context-dependent, that’s why it’s a really good idea to get a skilled trainer who can help you assess the situation and problem-solve it. @doberbutts, tagging you in for any additional thoughts since you’re much more active in dog training than I am these days.

[bookishofalder]

Night Changes [Four]

Summary: Desire and darkness consume Poe and the reader, leaving them with only one goal. In the aftermath, years of pain and grief finally surface. 

Warnings: 18+ Sex Pollen=dubcon/noncon smut. Dark themes, mild violence/injury descriptions, language, angst, fluff. WC: 10,551

A/N: SURPRISE! One day early because I love you all and got my shit together this week. PLEASE NOTE the red banners are visual cuts you can use to skip the dark smut should you prefer to! 

Poe stood next to Charlie on the tarmac, waiting impatiently with his stomach in knots of excitement and anticipation. Even Charlie was shifting from foot to foot, uncharacteristically quiet while watching the transport ship slowly landing. When it hit the ground and the flight intake crew moved forward to help with debarking, he tossed Poe his signature grin.

“Ready, Flyboy?”

Poe laughed, “What does that even mean?” He glanced down at his shirt, straightening it for the tenth time before smoothing his hair carefully. “It’s been two years, I’d have gone to pick her up myself if they would have let me.”

“That’s my point,” His friend replied smoothly, raising a brow at Poe, who gazed back at his best friend, bewildered. “Two years apart, barely been able to speak with her, you keep her picture in your inner pocket here,” He tapped Poe over the heart, where the picture would be if he was in his flight suit, “You two are the most clueless lovebirds, I swear. Don’t hold back on my account.”

Glancing at the ship to see the ramp still hadn't lowered, Poe frowned, a rush of emotions swirling within. “You...uh, knew how I-?”

Charlie clapped Poe on the shoulder, “Isn’t there a term for it? Soulmates, I think. Yeah.”

“Charlie, I don’t think-“

Charlie rolled his eyes, “I’m not saying anything else about it, don’t worry. Just wanted you to know I understand why you took so long picking the perfect shade of sand shirt to wear under your jacket.”

Poe hummed in response, stunned by the casual way his friend spoke like everything was inevitable. He wasn’t so sure, though he’d always thought the term ‘soulmate’ could apply to platonic relationships. And while he was pretty sure he’d never just felt platonic toward you in any sense, Poe wasn’t going to get his hopes up that you actually may return his feelings.

Two years ago, Poe had held you the entire night before his and Charlie’s departure for D’Qar, cried along with you over how impossible it felt to part, to not see each other every day when his life had been wrapped around yours since as long as he could remember. He had left a part of himself there with you on Yavin-4, and now you were about to disembark your transport ship and unknowingly hand it back to him by simply being with him, real and tangible.

He was nervous to see you, he didn’t know why. Maybe Charlie’s words were only highlighting Poe’s own concerns now that you were mere moments away. He had barely even been able to get in contact with you for two years, he and Charlie were far enough away and regularly over-worked that it was impossible to do as much as they both would have liked. What if you climbed off of this ship as a completely different person? Perhaps things wouldn’t be as easy and natural between you both now, after so long apart. 

He’d gotten through these past two years without you knowing he would always have his memories of you, that before he knew it you would be with him-and Charlie-again, and new memories could be made. Maybe you didn’t feel the same. Regardless, the last thing Poe was going to do when he finally had you back was confessing his feelings and risk fucking everything up straight off the cuff. He’d lived with these feelings for a long time, he could continue to do so now.

Lost in his thoughts, Charlie suddenly stood taller next to Poe, who glanced at his friend to find he was beaming toward the transport ship. Following his gaze, he first saw that the ramp was down and many of the passengers were now splitting away meeting friends and family. It only took him a moment from then to locate you.

The moment his eyes landed on you, excitedly bouncing down the ramp with a duffel bag over your shoulder, eyes searching wildly around, Poe felt every single worry melt, and a heavyweight on his shoulders seemed to lift away. You still looked like you, and stars were you ever beautiful, the loveliest woman-because, you were a woman now, not a kid, not a goofy teenager-he’d ever laid eyes on. He drank you in, during those moments you hadn’t yet spotted Charlie’s waving arm. Two years had given your curves a new classification, a reverence within Poe rising as he gazed briefly in surprise at the swell of your breasts, the fullness in your hips.

He could...drop to the ground right here and declare his undying love for you, just for coming back to him with that same fucking perfect smile. Just for the way your eyes finally found him and Charlie and you lit up like a sun, bathing everyone lucky enough to be within your presence in your warm glow. It was a fucking sight, a moment that he would never forget; you grinning and then hurrying forward through the crowd. Your duffel bag hit the ground just seconds before you were throwing yourself toward your brother and Poe, who each expected exactly what you would do and easily stepped forward and caught you. Crushing you between them in an embrace that felt so whole, so entirely right. Poe felt for the first time in two years as though he were home.

Wherever in the galaxy Poe went, if he had you with him it would be home.

“Oh stars, kriffing STARS,” You were squealing, an arm wrapped behind each of their necks to hold yourself up, your lips peppering warm kisses between them each, “I’ve missed you both so much, my best guys!” You had a few happy tears on your cheeks now, Poe noticed when you leant your head to his and pressed your forehead to his own, repeating the affectionate greeting with Charlie.

“Kid, fuck it’s good to see you,” Charlie’s voice was thick with emotion, but his eyes were much drier than both yours and Poe’s. “How was the trip?”

“Maker, Charlie, Poe-you’re both so tall!” You laughed, realizing you were dangling a few inches above the ground as they held on to you. Poe liked the way he could feel your laughter as your body moved against him; as though you were passing it to him. “The trip was fine, crap food but I had a nice elder lady as my seat-mate. Reminded me of mum.”

They set you down, though Charlie was stroking your hair out of your face and Poe kept his hand on your waist, unable to let you go and lose the sensation of you finally, finally in his arms again. He never wanted to be apart from you for that long again, not if he could help it. 

“I’m sorry we couldn’t make it home for mum’s funeral,” Charlie murmured, an apology he’d repeated many times since your mother’s passing a few months prior.

“Hey,” You smiled sadly, “You two spent a lot of credits to holo-call in for it, that meant a lot to me. You know mum would have been livid if you’d abandoned your duties just for her.” Still, a few more tears slipped down your cheeks and Poe reached up with his free hand to gently wipe them away as Charlie nodded solemnly, opening his mouth to respond when-

“Horn! Hey, come meet my brother!” The three of you glanced around, Poe recognizing one of the mechanics Charlie was friendly with waving him over. Pressing a quick kiss to your temple and assuring you he’d be right back, Charlie hurried away to greet the mechanic and his brother.

When you turned to peer back up at Poe, your grin wide and eyes seemingly doing their own assessment of him, he realized that this was now the first time you’d been alone together since that night two years ago. Feeling his face flush, Poe tugged you close against him and pressed his lips to the top of your head. You certainly hadn’t gotten any taller yourself, now especially small in his embrace. Something about the realization settled warm in his belly, but he pushed the thoughts away.

“Missed you so much, sweetheart,” He whispered, pulling back slightly to look down into your eyes again. Your expression was a little shy, as though you were pleasantly caught off guard by his affection, “How have you been, really?”

You had your hands pressed against his chest as you smiled up at him. “Good, glad to be here finally. Yavin-4 didn’t feel like home anymore after mum,” You trailed off, eyes falling and brightening somewhat as you gazed at his chest. “Poe, you got uh,” You slide your hands across the expanse of him and Poe had to work to keep himself from gasping at the sensation of it as heat coiled within him, “Like, big? Broad. Wow, oh and less scruffy, too!” You added, eyes swinging back up to his clean-shaven jawline.

Poe made a noise of embarrassment at your words, smiling at you shyly. Reaching up with one hand, you stroked along his jaw one, two, three times. Dousing fuel on the fire within him, the motion was so second nature, intimate, comforting, that he really could have gathered you in his arms right there and pressed his lips to yours. He wanted to ask you if you realized how much he fucking loved you, if you had any idea what you did to him, body and soul and mind consumed and controlled by you and only ever you.

Instead, taking a deep breath, Poe shifted himself away from you casually, leaning at the same time to bring his head level to yours, his nose scrunched, “And you are exactly as short as I remember. Actually, might be shorter with my extra couple of inches now.”

“Rude,” You laughed, playfully smacking his shoulder, whatever tension that had just been present now gone. Your eyes strayed away from Poe’s to look all around at what you could see of the Rebel base here on the tarmac, your gaze landing almost hungrily on a nearby x-wing before jumping to watch as several flew overhead; the current patrol.

He watched you in adoration as you drank in your first real glimpse of the Resistance, your eyes widened in wonder and excitement that Poe had felt too the moment he’d arrived on D’Qar.

But in truth, it didn’t compare to what he was feeling right now.

Poe reached up and stroked your cheek, “Welcome home, (y/n).”  

MISSION DAY SIX - ABOARD CRUISER

“Commander.” You stepped out of the cockpit, your hands twisting in front of you nervously. Poe looked up from where he sat on the bottom bunk. “We’re safely in hyperspace. Autopilot engaged.” You kept your voice soft, as if afraid he would startle.

Or maybe you were afraid of him now. He wouldn’t blame you.

Rather than replying, Poe simply made a noise that was meant to be confirmation he had heard you but it came out strangled enough that it sounded like he was in pain. And he was in agony but he was trying to hold it all back, figure out how to forget.

Did there exist a plant that could make him fucking forget?

He watched as your face twisted before you dropped to your knees in front of him, his body stiffening when you pushed between his legs. Your hands came to rest gently on his cheeks as Poe met your eyes, their expression mirroring his own; pain, regret. But there was something more there, though it hurt him to see it: concern.

“Poe,” Your voice was soft and Poe felt himself tremble in response, unwilling to accept your kindness. “Please, Poe. You didn’t do anything wro-“

Poe jerked himself out of your hold, leaning back as you remained crouched before him, your hands falling to his thighs to keep steady. “Didn’t do anything wrong?” He breathed, watching you look up at him. “I keep hurting you. All I do is hurt you, (y/n). Don’t tell me everything is okay.”

MISSION DAY FOUR

Desire.

It was...the only thing you could feel anymore. All there was. Nothing else in your mind, like it had been scraped of every memory, every morsel of you and the only thing that remained was this burning, intense thirst. It was fucking incredible, there was no pain anymore, the heat felt like it belonged, that you were designed for the sole purpose of allowing it to burn you. When you set your gaze to the man before you, you could see that he was burning too.

Poe, with his dark eyes and heaving chest, moved quickly-almost too quickly, and you wondered if the pollen gave humans a physical boost. It would make sense because when he was suddenly lifting you and thrusting you against the stone wall, you didn’t feel it. There was only pleasure, no pain, no disorientation, but fuck the feel of his hands finally on you was exactly what you needed. The relief of his touch was enough to have you craving more, more now, now!

As if reading your mind, he was swiftly peeling your layers of gear off, ripping and tossing the material, tugging off your boots, one hand holding you against the wall and it wasn’t until he was sliding your pants down that you realized you were dangling a few feet above the ground. So there was definitely some juice to the pollen. Something about that realization made your toes curl in anticipation.

“Please, please fuck me, I can’t wait another minute,” You heard yourself begging, and dark Poe smirked, pulling his clothing off before adjusting his grip on you. Now, his hand slid down to roughly hold your ass, pressing his body against yours so closely you were supported between him and the wall. You wrapped your legs around his hips, moaning at the feel of his erection pressed into your thigh, and you glanced down to watch as he lined himself up with your cunt.

And stars, he was huge, the biggest you’d ever had. Thick and veiny, you let out the filthiest moan just looking at his cock, your sounds morphing into screams when he tilted his hips and thrust into you completely in one swift motion. Filling you. Growling as he claimed you entirely.

It should have hurt. Even with how wet you were, being split open and filled so brutally should be agonizing but it felt amazing. You could hear yourself demanding he never stops once he began a fast, harsh pace. Your head knocked back into the wall and you still felt no discomfort, not with dark Poe surrounding you, filling you so perfectly. One of his hands did shoot up and grip your jaw, pressing your head into the wall so that you couldn’t look anywhere but at him.

He was feral, his expression greedy and dangerous and it only made you clench around him. “Fuck,” He groaned both hands tightening their hold on your hip and face, “G-going to fucking ruin you for any other cock, little girl. Fucking brat, always so mean, and now you’re begging for me to fill you up, aren’t you?”

You were delirious with pleasure, his words shot straight to your pussy, but you still managed to reply. “Want you to...fill me up, use me, just n-never stop fucking me.” He growled at your words and pressed his lips to yours, his hand on your jaw forcing your mouth to open so that he could lick into you, taste you and swallow your whimpers and moans for more. After a few minutes of this pace, you felt the coil you hadn’t realize was tightening suddenly snap, and you gushed all over his cock as you had your first orgasm.

“Oh maker, I’m cumming, fuck!” But even as you came, crashing through wave after wave, dark Poe didn’t let up and you didn’t feel even remotely spent. An orgasm of that magnitude should have had you passing out; instead, you screamed for more.

+

Poe couldn’t get enough of your body, tight pussy clenched around him as he took you in every position. He didn’t feel tired, sore, and despite having already filled you several times with his seed, his erection hadn’t worn off. You allowed him to roughly handle you into whatever pose he felt like, though you would curse if he took too long, and then mewl when he’d enter you again and begin harshly pounding you. Those dark eyes of yours always focused on him, taunting him. Begging him to claim you.

He was behind you on the floor now, one hand gripping your hip and the other pressed into your lower back, forcing you to arch for him. You were screaming for more even as he relentlessly slammed into you and he only grinned at the idea of giving you what you wanted. He smacked your ass to punctuate every other word, “So fucking tight! Such a good little slut, taking all my cum, you want more now?” He slapped you one last time as his hips slowed, his orgasm tearing through him and pulling another from you and he cursed aloud at how fucking good it felt when you squeezed his cock during your high.

“More, fuck, more!” You whined moments later, even as his forward thrusts forced out the excessive amount of cum he’d filled you with. It was hot, the visual alone enough to hold his attention as you wiggled against him and begged.

“Good little slut, taking me so well,” He moaned, leaning over your back and nipping marks into your neck. When he rose back up, he pulled you with him so that you were flush against his chest as he picked up the pace again. The new angle seemed to hit something inside you differently, as your renewed screams were filling the room within seconds. “Such a perfect body, look at these tits.” He whispered into your ear, one hand cupping your breast and pinching your nipple.

You came again, drenching his cock and before you even stopped moaning from the high you were asking for more.

And fuck, he was going to give you more.

+

Hours, it had definitely been hours. At least six, you thought, if the light from filtering from the hall was anything to go by. The sun was different on this planet, never fully setting, so from your best knowledge you guessed Poe and you had been fucking for a good six hours, minimum.

It wasn’t enough. You hoped it never stopped. Maybe it wouldn’t.

It still didn’t hurt. Each orgasm wasn’t yet enough. You could see rather than feel the bruises on your skin, the cuts on your knees and hands from the rough ground. Even when Poe spanked you, the bite was momentary and delicious. This high was simply incredible. The sensation of him coating your insides with thick ropes of cum was forever engrained in your mind now.

You were riding him now; had been for the last few orgasms. He liked letting you do the work even though it didn’t feel like work-and watched as you rolled your hips and bounced for him, his hands occasionally reaching up to play with your tits. When he would come, he would grab your hips and slam you down, his strength preventing you from moving as he filled you deep, usually pulling your orgasm along with him because he was just so fucking sexy groaning for you.

“Like riding me, little girl?” He growled, releasing your hips and allowing you to start moving again. This time, you braced your hands on his chest so that you could change the angle, moaning when his thick cock dragged along your walls in the most perfect way. Kriff.

“Love it, never stopping,” You gasped, the room loud with the noises you each made and the sounds your cum stuffed pussy made each time he entered you. “Fuck, so fucking good.”

You sunk yourself onto his cock for a long time, watching his face as he filled you over and over, and still, it wasn’t enough.

Was it ever going to be enough?

+

Poe could see you were cock drunk, your grasp on Basic slipping to the point where you simply whimpered out short phrases, some of them entirely unintelligible. It was incredible, seeing you bent over the table, stuffed full of his cock and unable to articulate properly how good it felt.

“Oh fuck, here you go, take my cum,” He snapped his hips forwards and came, his grip on your hips like steel, holding you in place to take every last drop. You came moments later, your orgasm soaking him and dragging his out again. After just a moment, he readjusted you, lifting one of your legs onto the table and holding it there, his other hand sliding up your back and pressing to the back of your neck, pinning you.

“Oh, fuck, fuck!” You screamed when he started up again. He smirked, enjoying the sound of his body slapping against yours. From the way he held you, Poe had his wrist comm directly in his line of sight. After a moment, he registered the time on the display and realized that you’d been fucking for twelve hours, give or take. Twelve hours.

“Fuck, been fucking you all day little girl, filling you with my cum for fucking hours and hours,” He groaned, pressing you into the table even more. You whimpered in response, unable to speak. “Yeah, you love it, don’t you? Want more, come on I know you can speak, tell me you want my cum.”

“Uh, fuck I w-want, want your c-cum, please!”

“Yeah you do, fucking slut,” He picked up the pace again, then shot over the edge as you screamed, “Take my cum, take it, fuck.” Poe growled, still amazed at how tight you were, milking his cock perfectly every time. Once his orgasm subsided, he flipped you over onto your back and took a moment to gaze down at you.

Your black eyes were staring up at him hungrily, waiting for him to decide his next move. When you licked your lips, an idea popped into his head. He reached down and spun you so your head was at the edge of the table, your legs pointing away from him. He moved you so that your head just dangled over the edge, and then he pushed his fingers into your mouth, wetting them.

“Gonna put my cock down your throat, think you can handle that?” He said, grunting when your lips wrapped around his fingers and sucked a little. He was quick to replace them with his cock, one hand moving to hold under your head and the other guiding his length into your eager little mouth. “Fuck, yes.” He moaned, quickly setting a steady pace.

Once he had a rhythm going, Poe used the hand not supporting your head to place one of yours behind that one, “Tap, fucking hell yes, t-tap my hand if you need air, ah shit!” He just managed to give you the instructions before the overwhelming feeling of your mouth working on him so expertly had his balls pulling up and before he knew it, he was shooting his load down your throat.

You swallowed everything and then continued sucking him off as he fucked your face.

Thirteen hours.

+

He tasted delicious. You’d almost wished, when he shot that first load down your throat, that he’d started things out this way so that the taste of him was on your tongue the whole time. You made up for it by taking as much as you could, swallowing around his length as you pulled orgasm after orgasm from him.

Eventually, you were moaning around him enough that he realized it had been a while since you’d cum, and he pulled from your mouth. His dark gaze searched your cum covered face greedily before he climbed onto the table, pulling you up to lift you over his cock. He lowered you slowly onto him, the stretch exactly what you needed and so perfect that the moment you were fully seated you came, jerking in his arms.

You were in his lap, your legs wrapped around his back, and you briefly thought of how this was the most intimate position yet. Your chests pressed together, and he was expertly moving you in his lap, helping you to ride him.

His face was a breath away. You closed the gap.

He groaned when your mouth opened for him, letting his tongue taste the mixture of you and his spend. You squeezed his cock harder, you were so turned on, and it only took a few more rolls of your hips to feel yourself come undone again.

Your head felt heavy, so you let it fall into the crook of his neck, nuzzling.

“Oh yeah, so fucking good,” You whimpered, your arms around him, “Oh, Poe don’t stop!”

Poe.

Your Poe.

+

This is how...this is how he would have liked to be with you the first time, how he pictured it when he was younger. You straddling his lap, wrapped around each other as you rolled your hips and he pulled the most delicious sounds from you with his deep thrusts. It was intimate, the position allowing him to move between kissing you, holding you, licking your breasts, ensuring you were enjoying it as much as him.  

He could whisper sweet nothings into your ear this way, tell you he loved you and that he’d take care of you. And you would have liked it too, he knew, because you liked watching his face, reading his expressions every day and he knew that would have translated over to making love.

But this-this wasn’t making love, was it?

You had dropped your head down as you came again, your body curling into his as though for safety, comfort.

“Oh, Poe, don’t stop!”

He was going to cum again, the sound of his name on your lips for the first time hurling him over the edge, “Sweetheart, oh fuck, (y/n)!” He pressed your body into his and dropped his head to your neck, where he peppered it with gentle kisses as he spilled inside of you.

You both slowed your movements after coming down from your highs this time.

Poe felt himself panting, out of breath. You were panting too.

But why...why was he on the table? Poe leaned back slightly and you raised your head at his movement, your eyes meeting his. They weren’t as dark as before, but you looked tired. Poe felt tired, exhausted really.

You were still moving your hips, almost as if on autopilot. But you were frowning at Poe as you did, and then you winced. He froze, watching as you looked down at yourself, his eyes following yours.

“No...” He heard himself whisper in dawning horror. You were covered in marks; bruises or bites, hickies, red welts from places that looked like they’d been slapped.

They had been slapped. He had slapped you.

Poe felt himself softening inside you, a pain in his back and knees, his chest smarting as well. He glanced down and saw track marks from your nails down his chest. He didn’t even remember you doing that, it hadn’t hurt at the time. You whimpered, this time in pain and he looked back up into your eyes. They weren’t dark anymore. You were crying.

“Sweetheart-“ Poe faltered, shaking his head and trying to clear the clinging fog. You shifted a little and he slipped from inside of you. Both you and Poe groaned at the sensation, and you quivered as the mixture of fluids spilled out from inside you. “I-what happened...what did I do?”

Poe was sobbing now too.

It took some time to regain enough strength to move from the table, without the boost the pollen had provided you were both spent and every tired, aching muscle, bruise and bite mark or scratch could be fully felt now. Poe recovered first, easing himself to his feet and searching for the packs you’d each dropped when things...went dark.

You were panting on the table still, in much worse shape than he was and the rising panic inside of Poe was giving him the energy he needed to get to the medkits. He pushed through the pain in his limbs, thirst in his mouth and throbbing in his head-none of it mattered right now, not when you were suffering. He glanced at his wrist comm as he unzipped the medkit and realized, with horror, that it had been fourteen hours. Fourteen hours of brutal, relentless, rough sex.

The plant hadn’t just taken away inhibitions, hadn’t made it impossible to resist one another, no it had obliterated both of you-pushed you both into the far recesses of your minds and forced you to watch as its pollen turned you into feral, angry animals with exactly one goal.

And it stole from you both, stole your consent, your right to chose, abilities to control the urges that were twisted by its potency. Warped into selfish desire, the need for release and control, as if it was some archaic mating ritual-mark, consume, dominate. It wasn’t real, none of it had been, each of you losing yourselves in a hopeless battle against the strength of the pollen. And Poe...he had been violent, mean, brutal. It wasn’t that you hadn’t been, but it was the unavoidable reality that he was much bigger and stronger, the boost of the pollen making it easy to manhandle you.

He would never forgive himself for harming you. For the things he said, the marks left all over your body. If he could have died instead, fought against the pollen and let whatever happened in that case happen, he would have. Ten times over, he would have.

Just like Charlie, he would have sacrificed himself in an instant to protect you.

But you had refused to run and told Poe that you didn’t want to die. At that moment, right as he was coiled to try and run from you, he realized that you could die too. There was no medical backup, no nearby crew to call for help. It was Poe and you and the bacta shots that would have been completely ineffective with the pollen pulsing through your systems. He had to give in, and the darkness had taken him over the moment he accepted it.

He remembers fleetingly thinking of all the times in his life he had let himself think of being with you intimately. Usually guilt-ridden, he pushed the thoughts away; as a teenager, he failed half the time, and as an adult, he tried to refocus on other women, but they never measured up. When his imagination did get the better of him, it was always, always tender. Soft, slow, sensual. Just the very idea of being the one pulling moans from your lips and taking care of you would send him over the edge.

But that wasn’t what happened here. It wasn’t a light high that lowered inhibitions and made the sex last longer, feel more intense. No, this was a sinister plant so potent it drove away each of your humanity and respect for one another, pulling pleasure for yourselves instead of giving it to one another.

It was cold and harsh, and Poe was devastated.

You whimpered suddenly, pulling him from his thoughts, his head shooting up to look toward where you were laying on the table. “Sweetheart?” He stood the medkit in hand and tried to swallow back his sobs as he moved toward you.

“S’okay,” You groaned, eyes pressed tightly shut, “Find the bacta?”

“Yes, I-“ Poe faltered as he stood at the edge of the table, his hands holding the bacta shot he’d pulled out. “Can I touch you, or do you want to try and-?“

“Poe,” You mumbled tiredly, “I’m okay, please just give me the shot.” You attempted to roll yourself to your side and expose your buttocks for him but only ended up sobbing in pain again.

Flinching, Poe reached out and gently, so incredibly carefully, helped you to twist your hips. He heard himself whispering words of comfort but focused on opening the shot and lining it up. When he plunged the needle into you and pressed down on the plunger, you let out a weak but relieved little moan. “You’re okay sweetheart, I’m here, I’ll take care of you.” He promised, tossing aside the bacta shot and brushing his fingers over your face comfortingly.

His shattered heart beat hopefully when you reached up and took hold of his hand, squeezing.

+

Poe was watching you race Charlie up an older tree, his strength no match for your agility as the smaller sibling. It was a lazy day, hot enough to warrant a day by the river-which was what most of the kids in their town on Yavin-4 had been thinking, it seemed. The banks of the river were piled with kids and teens as far as he could see, though thankfully the prestige of the Horn and Dameron families left your favourite spot along the water relatively free of unwanted guests.

A few friends were nearby, giving Poe his space as he sat leaning against a boulder. A book sat open in his lap, though he’d been distracted many times now thanks to his inability to control his thoughts around you. His father had assured Poe that it was natural at seventeen to have a wandering mind, a surge of hormones, he’d horrifyingly explained. He advised that should the thoughts and feelings become too intense, that Poe needed to take a few breaths, refocus elsewhere, remind himself of the person that deserved his respect and not his wayward thoughts.

But Poe didn’t have these thoughts or feelings or whatever the fuck about anyone but you. It had always been you, and though so far he’d managed to hide his emotional and physical feelings from your notice, it alarmed him in moments like this. When you revealed much more skin than usual in a simple water suit, hair and sun-kissed skin damp from the water, he worried he might slip up. He was as ashamed of the direction his thoughts would go in as he was sure that you would, for the rest of his life, be the only one he ever truly admired so ardently, loved so deeply that he fought to refuse to disrespect you with his hormone fuelled thoughts.

You gave a whoop when you reached the highest point the tree would allow, its trunk and branches thinning enough to make it unsafe to climb any further beyond. A friend of yours, Tahla, and a few of his buddies were nearby in the water, laughing and teasing you from below and jokingly daring you and Charlie to jump. It wouldn’t have been unsafe to do, so instead, you both laughed and began the slow climb down.

You were moving much more slowly than Charlie now, out of breath from the race and taking care not to scratch yourself. Your brother hit the ground, tossed Poe a smirk, then barrelled into the water to cool off. Poe rolled his eyes, laughing as Charlie started picking up some of the smaller guys and tossing them into the water. A game fondly, yet unofficially, referred to as tempting the bull.

Poe adjusted himself against the rock, trying to get comfortable but he felt warm enough now that he thought he should get in the water as soon as Charlie wore himself out enough not to be a threat. You were still a good way up the tree, now slowed even further as you had a conversation with one of Tahla’s friends that had come out of the water to chat with you. Frowning to himself, Poe watched as you continued a friendly banter and felt the clutches of envy reaching for him.

This seemed like a good enough excuse to close his eyes and take one of those deep breaths his father advised. First standing, Poe tugged off his shirt so that he could make his way to the water, then allowed his eyes to flutter shut. Taking half a breath in until the sound of a branch snapping and your scream halted him in his tracks. Poe’s eyes snapped open and then he was frantically running, too far away to do anything as you lost your grip and fell, slamming into the ground on your side and letting out a pained wail.

Poe briefly met Charlie’s wide eyes as they both ran for you from different directions. Panic reflected there, but Poe got to you first and his eyes moved to you. Annoyingly, the blonde who had been speaking to you-distracting you-was knelt over you and worriedly checking you over.

Poe pushed him away from you, “Don’t touch her,” He heard himself snarl, taking a threatening step toward the kid, who raised his hands in surrender, “Get the fuck-“

“Poe,” He halted in his tracks and spun at the sound of your tiny voice, his anger waning the moment he saw you clutching awkwardly at your arm, Charlie knelt beside you. It was like you hadn’t even noticed your brother, though, your eyes only on Poe, surprisingly intense as you stopped him from chasing down Tahla’s idiot friend. “I-I think my arm is b-broken.” You sniffled, eyes streaming, and flinched as some of the tears ran through the scratches on your cheek.

“Oh sweetheart,” He was kneeling in front of you seconds later, inspecting you all over for any more injuries, thankful when your head appeared to be free of any bleeding. He looked to Charlie, who read his thoughts instantly.

“Kid, I’ll run ahead and let the Healer’s know what happened, flyboy’s got you.” Charlie kissed the top of your head and ran off at full speed.

You let out another sob, this time revealing to Poe that your pride was as injured as your arm. He leaned down and pressed his forehead to yours, “You’re okay, sweetheart. I’m here, I’ll take care of you.” And with great care, he slid one arm under your legs, the other bracing your back, lifting you as he stood.

He carried you with great caution, moving a little slower than he’d prefer but, since you were still flushed and awake he figured jostling you too much would cause more damage than taking his time getting you to the healer.

“Were you gonna punch Raine, Poe?” You asked, still holding your arm carefully.

Poe grimaced, “He distracted you, should have waited till you were on the ground to bug you.” He replied tightly, not meeting your gaze as he didn’t want you to see in his expression how upset he was.

You sensed it, though, your good hand reaching up to stroke his jaw one, two, three times in a successful effort to soothe him.

“Raine isn’t all that distracting.” You murmured after a minute. Poe had to bite back a pleased smile, a little guilt bubbling up as a rogue thought tumbled in the back of his head that perhaps you had been looking at someone else when you became distracted.

+

Poe was a stubborn fucking man, this was something you’d always been keenly aware of, but at this moment you wanted to throttle him for it. You didn’t have the emotional energy to deal with him, though the bacta shot he’d given you had you feeling physically wonderful, it did nothing to help your mind.

And you were so weary, all you wanted to do was sleep but his refusal to receive his bacta shot was preventing that from happening. You just needed to close your eyes for a few hours and let your brain process everything that had happened.

“Poe, there’s no reason for you to say no to the shot. You know I have to do it, it’s my directive-“

“And as your Commander,” He cut you off, pushing the hand that held the shot away, “I’m ordering you to not follow the directive. I’m fine. Don’t need it.”

And he wouldn’t even look at you now, his eyes everywhere but yours, his expression tight. Stubborn, stupid flyboy!

You considered how to convince him, realizing the arguments you had used so far were ineffective. “Poe, I don’t know anything about this pollen.” You stepped up to stand in front of him at the table, both of you now dressed in fresh clothing, skin scrubbed with medical towelettes, though you both needed to take showers urgently. You stunk.

Poe glanced at you nervously as you came into his space, and you wanted to cry at how he looked afraid of you. Afraid to move, because he might hurt you. You could see him taking the last few years and pushing it all into this fucking day, convincing himself that he hurt you again, that it was somehow his fault.

You’d really done a number on him. Your heart filled with sorrow.

“I feel fine.”

You set the shot down on the table next to where he sat, then reached up and grabbed his face in your hands, forcing him to meet your eyes. He flinched at your touch, his body going rigid. “Poe, baby please let me do this,” His brows shot up in surprise at the sincere concern in your voice, the tenderness of your hands on his face, “If for no other reason, to at least prevent cardiac arrest or...or a relapse.” You didn’t want to say this aloud, but you knew that just because you’d been exposed to the pollen once didn’t make either of you immune to its effects. The bacta would ensure that nothing further happened while you were on the planet.

“What?” His voice was sharp, “Are you saying I could...that I might-“

You shook your head, “I’m saying I don’t know, and anything is a possibility if you don’t take the shot.”

Poe sighed heavily, his eyes closing as he gave you a small nod. Wordlessly, he stood and you dropped your hands, picking up the bacta shot as he undid his belt and pushed one side of his pants down just enough to reveal his buttocks. Wasting no time, you plunged the shot into his skin and let out a breath of relief at his sound of content. Without thinking, you placed your free hand on his lower back in comfort.

“Thank you, Poe.”

He fixed his pants and glanced at you over his shoulder, his expression painfully dejected. You wanted to hold him. Instead, he took a few measured steps across the room and stooped to pick up both of your packs, no longer meeting your eyes. You sighed.

“Let’s find somewhere to get a few hours shut-eye.” He said, leading the way out of the room.

You followed him, glancing over your shoulder at the room one last time, your heart ten times heavier than it had been before you entered it.  

+

It didn’t take long to find a room with a few bunks, you and Poe each falling to an empty bed and falling asleep in a matter of moments. You were able to get a few hours, waking up feeling surprisingly refreshed, one of the helpful effects of the bacta shot. You were on your back and blinked up at the base of the upper bunk for a few moments, confused as to why you’d awoken. A sharp, suppressed sob pulled your attention to the bed just across from you, though Poe’s back was to you, you could see his shoulders shaking. He was crying.

It happened then, a monumental shift inside of you that was like seeing your whole life flash before your eyes. Only it was all Poe, every single moment of your life interwoven with him because he had always been there, always been absolutely everything to you. Seeing him across the room from you, trying to hide his pain again. Something in the core of your being shifted. You had to bite back a gasp as you felt several years of pent-up anger and pain begin to melt away until you were left raw, trying to reconcile how you had let your relationship with Poe get to this point, and even why you ran in the first place.

Maker, you were awful. Charlie would be ashamed of you, he loved Poe like a brother and you had been nothing but cruel these last couple of months. Another choked back sob cut through the air and you wanted to walk over to Poe and soothe his pain, assure him everything was okay. But it wasn’t, and you didn’t know how to even begin to try and repair everything between you and him, especially not after what had just happened.

But you did...you wanted your best friend back. Which meant you needed to do some serious thinking. And that couldn’t all happen right here during the mission. So you pretended to just be waking up, noisily to give him a moment to hide his tears and pushed everything else back-just for a little while longer.

Poe stilled, and out of the corner of your eye, you saw his head duck down, no doubt wiping his tears away. By the time you sat up, he was rolling over at pretending he had just woken up as well.

“Hey,” You gave him a small smile, then glanced at your wrist comm. “If we eat something and then start our search, we can be back at the ship in roughly four and a half hours.” Poe nodded in response, sitting up, and you watched him reach into one of the packs by the side of his bed. He pulled out two bottles of water and a couple of rations each, handing yours to you and carefully avoiding touching your skin as he did.

As much as you wanted to tell him you weren’t afraid of him, you knew this moment wasn’t the time to start the conversation. Instead, you ate in silence, Poe’s eyes on the floor and yours gazing at the walls, which had some basic Empire propaganda posted upon them.

After breakfast, you each suited up properly for exploring the facility and set out, wandering the halls cautiously in search of the main control room. It didn’t take too long to find, though you were held up trying to get the door to disengage. When your usual tricks didn’t work, you had to set up a charge and blow the door. You’d used these kinds of minor explosives plenty of times, retreating down the hall further than necessary as you counted down until detonation.

Surprising you, Poe suddenly spun from where he stood next to you and blocked your body protectively with his wider frame as the door was blown off of its hinges. He looked over your head, hands clenched at his sides, but he didn’t move until you leaned to look around him and confirmed it was safe to move in.

You felt as though your heart was sitting in the back of your throat now.

It was well preserved, evidently one of the first rooms to be locked up when the Empire forces abandoned this outpost. It was a treasure trove of intel and you excitedly got to work, breaking away from Poe to complete a safety sweep.

After completing a preliminary search of the room, you found the main control panel and, flipping through every piece of information you had in your brain on old technology, you started pulling it open to seek out where you could insert the data drive you’d brought. You were confident BB8 could crack through any ancient firewalls on any of the data you were able to recover. Poe was doing similar work at the stations' console across the room, working in silence but sometimes you could feel his eyes on you, looking away before you could catch his eye.

A while later and you were on your back under the console, seeking out the hidden panel that would give you access to the data bridge. It took a few minutes, but you finally found it and had to finagle it awkwardly with your nails, trying to pry the cover off. It gave a satisfying little ‘pop’ when you managed to free it.

And then it promptly fell straight onto your face.

It shot straight through your hands, the edge smacking off of the corner of your cheek before bouncing to the ground. “Fuck!” You cried, feeling the skin tear and warm blood pooling out.

Stars, you really were off your game.

Dabbing at the blood carefully with the sleeve of your shirt, you were suddenly dragged out from under the panel by your ankles. Before you could even question what was happening, Poe was leaning over you, his expression panic-stricken, only paling further when he saw the blood on your cheek.

“What happened?” His voice was frantic, hands hovering above you; it was an entirely uncharacteristic reaction for him that for a moment you could only stare up at him in surprise. “Sweetheart, what happened?”

“I’m okay,” You assured him hurriedly, sitting up onto your elbows, “Just dropped that panel on my face.” You gazed at Poe as his eyes dropped from you to the panel now laying on the ground next to you. A modicum of relief swept over his features fleetingly.

Wordlessly, he reached into your nearby pack and pulled out a bacta-spray. When his hands raised toward your face, you watched as he hesitated briefly before he touched you, one hand wrapping around the back of your head to hold you steady, the other applying the bacta-spray.

Still holding you, he dropped the spray into the pack again and pulled out a bandage. “Turn your head for me, sweetheart.” He murmured, his eyes focused on your cheek.

You did as he asked and waited as he used both hands to apply the bandage over your skin. Peering up at Poe when he finished, you were touched by his gentle care, though you understood it was coming from a place of contrition more than anything. His fingers absentmindedly brushed downward, to ensure the edges of the bandage were sealed; you shivered involuntarily at the light contact.

Poe went rigid, his eyes meeting yours briefly in surprise before you glanced away, your face flushing. “Thank you.” You murmured, remaining still until he scooted back and stood, and then you were quickly pushing yourself back under the panel.

MISSION DAY SIX - ABOARD CRUISER

You sat back on your hunches, eyes on the man in front of you as he came apart, the emotions he’d tried hiding from you since that morning now spilling out. You were holding yourself steady by gripping his thighs and could feel the way his body was as rigid as durasteel. You looked at him and reminded yourself that this was what you would do to him if you left again, that leaving things unsaid and unresolved was never the answer.

“I hurt you, over and over,” His hands came to clench at his sides, gripping into the sheets of your bunk, “I said horrible things to you, at Charlie’s funeral and then since you’ve been back, and yesterday I-I can’t even-“

“Yesterday wasn’t you, Poe, it wasn’t either of us.” You interjected softly, urging yourself to remain exceptionally calm as he came undone.

He huffed, unimpressed with your argument, “Y-you and I, we lost everything the day Charlie died. But you kept it together, organized the funeral, smiled and hugged everyone who came up to us...all I could do was stand there and be angry at y-you even though I knew it wasn’t your fault,” Poe shook his head aggressively when you opened your mouth to interrupt, “No, you know it’s true, you even said it yourself. I failed you. And then you came back and I failed you again, let us drift further apart than we’d been when you were in a different galaxy. You lost your brother, and then I lost you both and I-I’m so, fuck (y/n), I am so sorry.”

And he sobbed, a retched, heartbreaking sob that almost knocked you off of your feet, it was so real and deep. You couldn’t help the tears that poured down your cheeks in response, and you were momentarily at a loss of how to respond. How could you even begin to help take away that much pain? When you were the fucking person who caused it?

Unsure of what else to do, you slid forward and in between his legs again, your hands moving to grip his forearms. You rubbed up and down soothingly and held him harder when he tried to pull away.

“You shouldn’t be near me, not after w-what I’ve done to you.” He gasped out, failing to move out of your grasp but continuing to struggle. It was a testament to his fear of causing you harm that he simply didn’t push away, as the stronger person.

“Neither of us had any choice, Poe, we were both covered in that pollen. And,” You moved your head to catch his eye, to ensure he heard your next words, “And Poe, I was the one who tackled us into that bush, who forgot the map they studied for two days that showed that cliff. Do you blame me for what happened?”

Poe almost glared at you, stilling, “Of course I don’t blame you-“

“Then understand that I don’t blame you either, Poe, fuck.”

“(y/n),” His voice dropped, thick with emotion, “You said...right before I-you said that you didn’t want to die. When you put it like that, I knew it meant you understood what was happening but hadn’t heard of a plant this powerful and didn’t know if you could die if we didn’t...” He paused, shaking his head. He looked at you then, through tear-soaked lashes, an expression so full of sorrow you stopped breathing. “That was the only reason I stayed with you. I was fighting it, I was going to make a run for it when you wouldn’t. I wanted to run, let myself die because I could feel what the pollen was making me want to do to you and fuck, it scared me. What I did to you yesterday was horrific. Unforgivable. Everything I’ve done to you is.”

Suddenly, you were angry, his words registering in your brain like an explosion, “Shut up,” You growled, harsh enough to catch him off guard and he was peering at you in surprise, eyes searching your face in confusion. “Don’t ever, ever say-I can’t believe you...why would you want to die, Poe? What the hell is wrong with you? Do you think I could survive you dying? That I would want to live in a galaxy where you and Charlie were both gone? I left, I know, but I always knew you were at least alive!”

Poe gaped at you in shock, looking as though you had just slapped him awake, cleared the fog from his brain. Before you knew what was happening, he reached down for you and gripped your waist before dropping to his knees on the ground with you, crushing you into a tight embrace. His head dropped into the crook of your neck, and you wondered how you ever could be trusted enough for this strong, capable man to let himself become so vulnerable for you.

“Didn’t mean it,” He murmured, nuzzling your neck slightly as you instinctively run your fingers through his hair. “I promise I won’t leave...if you don’t want me to, I won’t leave you.”

You remained in Poe’s arms for some time, the silence was no longer heavy with anger but rather thick with emotion. And stars, you had forgotten what being held by Poe was like, the warmth and safety his arms had always surrounded you with. You let yourself forget; instead, you’d spent these last few years painting a picture of Poe Dameron with only the medium of his final words to you, resulting in an ugly, distorted image that served to fuel your pain, your resentment.

In doing this, you had forgotten how complex Poe was, how he acted cocky, snarky, but deep down he was a serious, earnest man with a heart of gold. He let himself feel, didn’t try to hide his emotions from you or Charlie growing up, he cried when you cried and...and fuck, the one time he messed up and let his emotions get the better of him, you fled and didn’t look back. You didn’t let him apologize, and you knew even if he had found you straight after your fight you wouldn’t have listened.

You abandoned Poe because you had been afraid, a coward if there ever was one in this situation. And you weren’t just running from the loss, you were running from feelings you didn’t understand the depth of until you lost your brother. Because there was this moment, it was so brief, fleeting, but for just one moment you had been relieved that Poe hadn’t died during the Gold team mission.

And what did that make you? Not only a coward for running but a monster for thinking it in the first place. Instead of dealing with any of your feelings, your grief, you took the easy route and fled literal constellations away, severing ties with the one man in the whole galaxy who mattered to you anymore because you were terrified of how fucking in love with him you had been, and how your brother dying was what made you realize it.

+

Poe had let you shower first, taking time while you were in the fresher to collect all of the items from the mission and put them in an airtight container. He didn’t want to risk any of the pollen getting onto either of you again. Once he’d done that, he put on a fresh pot of caf and was halfway through his first cup when you emerged, hair down in long, damp tendrils, wearing another of Charlie’s old shirts and some worn jersey shorts.

“Oh, maker, caf!” You groaned happily, eagerly accepting the cup he’d poured for you and taking a long swell, eyes closed. Poe watched you, his mind still reeling over everything that had occurred in the last day.

You had been acting so much like the you he remembered, the person he’d grown up with-so kind-hearted, understanding. It was overwhelming to try and process what had happened with the pollen while navigating this shift in his relationship with you. For the first time in a long time, Poe felt as though his best friend was coming back to him.

“Did you,” He paused, gauging your reaction to his voice, but you just observed him over your mug, a small smile tugging at your lips. “Did you keep a lot of Charlie’s things?” If you were upset by the question, it didn’t show. You considered his words, nodding.

“I did, at first. I left so quickly that I didn’t have time to grab anything of his...Tommy and Rico boxed everything for me and kept it stored until I was reassigned.” Your expression tightened at the memory, “I had a few weeks off, I planet hopped to some of Charlie’s favourite spots, then once I was settled in at my new assignment had everything brought over. I kept a lot of his shirts, personal effects. Just donated his pants, really.”

Poe smiled, “I guess there were some very happy big and tall men that found those pants at the shelter.” Cheesy, he cringed internally.

But you laughed, a genuine little giggle just for Poe, one he’d heard a million times before but it had been so long, emotion bubbled up within him and his smile faltered; he glanced away, hoping you wouldn’t notice his shift in mood.

“What is it?”

Poe sighed, mildly amused at your familiar behaviour. You never did let him get away with hiding things if you could help it. Rather than explain how much it meant to him to be standing there with you, laughing, he swivelled the conversation, one last thing on his mind.

“I’m going to say something, and then if you want to just close this conversation after I do, I’m good with that, okay?”

You tilted your head curiously, giving him a little nod, “Sure.”

Poe looked away from you, staring down into his mug as he considered how to phrase what he wanted to say. “I know it was the pollen, all of it,” He took a deep breath, willing his brain to make itself useful, “I still need you to hear me say this: the things I said to you during...while we were under it-I wouldn’t ever say anything like that to you, (y/n). They were mean and filthy, crude words I’ve never...would never...not that we would, I mean, shit.” He ran a hand over his face, holding over his forehead as his frustration with himself grew.

“Poe?” You said after a pause, and he glanced up. Your expression was exceptionally understanding, “The same goes for me. The scratching too wasn’t me. And,” Your lips quirked, “I think I called you Commander a few times, and please know I do not call people by their rank during sex, stars.”

Poe chuckled, “Obviously, that would be fucking embarrassing,” Your smile widened at his response. “It’s just important to me that you know I would never think or enjoy saying mean and degrading stuff like that about a woman, about you.”

You nodded and bit your lip, “I’ve always known that, Poe.” Pausing to take another deep drink of your caf, you then pointed with your free hand to your right forearm, “Also, um, I have an implant so we...that is, I’m not going to, uh...” You trailed off awkwardly.

His eyes widened in horror, realizing he hadn’t thought beyond the potential emotional consequences of what had happened. “Shit, are you sure?”

You nodded vigorously when his gaze fell to your stomach before meeting yours again, “No sex pollen babies.” Each of you looked away at the same moment, embarrassed.

After a few minutes of quiet, Poe looked back down at you. You were standing next to him, leant against the counter and staring unseeingly in front of you. “Sweetheart?”

Your eyes refocused and met his, “Y-yeah, Poe?”

He moved slowly, careful not to startle you. Using his free hand, he cupped the back of your head and lowered his own to press your foreheads together, an affectionate display you had both done since you were little. He felt you relax into it, and for a minute everything was quiet and peaceful and safe.

Poe felt like his shattered heart wasn’t in so many pieces anymore.

And then you reached up with your hand and stroked along his jaw one, two, three times. Just like that, he felt you come back to him.

Poe smiled to himself, getting lost in the feeling.

@mermaidxatxheart​ @foxilayde​ @eleinemk​ @paintballkid711​ @mylifeisactuallyamess​ @20th-centu-fairy-girl​ @deitysnips​ @cannedsoupsucks​ @ubri812 @poedameronloverx @hoeforthefictional @astrological-bitch @itsnottilly @its-djarin

[falke-scribblings]

I wrote a thing for the one-year anniversary of the film's U.S. release. Fair warning - it’s self-referential to the point of being obnoxious, and even mentions a thing or two I haven't gotten around to publishing yet.

Chronologically compliant. Might even be important later, who knows?

Nick had no idea what time it was when they came out of the studio, into the bright afternoon light of downtown.

It had gone quickly. Their interviewers had kept the discussion brisk, probably out of concern for their time slot. Nick and Judy were given just enough time to marshal their thoughts and answer the question, and it was on to the next one. Nick had liked the snappy pace, even if the content was safe-for-primetime softball. It reminded him of the hustling days.

Judy wasn't much better at on-camera work now, either - especially with the expectations that came with a taped segment. She hadn't been totally at ease with the tiny chair they'd give her to sit in. It was perfectly scaled - they'd just put it on a box, so she'd been at eye level with Nick.

But then she would rather be working, no matter the circumstances. Time out of their schedule, she'd frequently reminded him ahead of this show, was just going to put them behind on their cases.

Now that it was over, Nick watched her comb claws over her ears to reverse whatever the set assistants had done with their brushes, and check her phone. "One-thirty. We're not too deep in the hole, then."

"You know Bogo said we could take whatever time we needed. Want to grab lunch?"

"Whatever time they needed." Judy led the way down into the plaza. "And they're done with us."

Savanna Central was in full early-spring swing, with weather so temperate and warm that the transit authority had already broken out the open-air trolleys. They tagged onto the tail end of a nearly full car and sat in the rear-facing seats to watch the city go by.

It was just one stop back to precinct HQ, but there was a lot to see in that time: whole herds of mammals out for lunch or business or just to enjoy the weather, the lush greenery and fountains of the plaza, and the big afternoon train flickering behind the buildings in the historic quarter, on approach to Central Station.

Nick's nose twitched as they passed a food truck parked in the shade of one of the acacia trees. He could smell pretzels.

"Are you sure you're not hungry?" he asked.

"I am," Judy said. Her ears followed the truck, too, and she got a faint smile. "Just not hungry enough to stay late, if we can help it."

"Dinner it is," Nick said.

"No daydreaming." Her elbow jabbed him in the side. "I need your help with these scene reports."

"You'll get it, Carrots. You'll get it."

They made their way up the broad steps at headquarters and back to their desks. Judy leapt into her boosted chair with practiced ease, looking much more comfortable already.

They made good progress - half a binder, before Bogo came to check on them.

"They done prodding you for the day, Hopps?"

"Yes, Chief," Judy said. "We're almost caught up."

"City Hall had better stay happy for another year or so, then," Bogo said. "Unless they want to start filling in for you. If they keep bugging you, send them to me."

Now Nick hoped the obnoxious diversity committee reps would call back. "With perverse pleasure, boss."

He tossed his big horns in acknowledgement as he left. "And don't stay too late."

"If only it was just every year or so," Judy muttered. She had one paw on her chin, and she was bouncing her pen on top of the binder. "We've lost enough time to these retrospective pieces already."

"Not our problem anymore." Nick got to his feet. "I'm getting more coffee to power through this. Want some?"

"Half-caf. Thanks."

Nick couldn't remember exactly what the terms of their special interview had been - go here, answer this, it will play well with with the government's initiatives, yadda yadda. But now that Bogo had brought it up, he couldn't come up with a special reason for the timing. It would be published in a couple weeks, but the second anniversary of the Bellwether case was still about three months out. They hadn't said anything about his first year with the force, eventful as it had been.

There was one possibility, he realized, but he dismissed it almost immediately. Neither he nor Judy shared their personal lives. They didn't want to, and they had what was nearly a mandate from Bogo to leave it alone. Who you dated stayed home - especially in Nick and Judy's case. It had nearly bitten them more than once.

But it was about right, wasn't it? Now he wasn't sure.

To be fair to both of them, it had been a whirlwind, up and down, faster than any TV interview. They'd kept up. Their work had driven some of it by necessity, and when they'd both realized what was there and how important it was, they'd taken special care to strengthen it themselves. To find the time and boundaries and compromise and attention they both needed.

That was probably why it was hard to pin down, Nick decided, as he brought their coffee back. It was such a process.

But the more Nick thought about it, the more he realized they both deserved to figure it out. He stopped at the entrance to their cube, and watched his partner's ears shift their focus from paperwork to coffee. Judy looked up at him and smiled. He held her mug out.

"I know what we should do for dinner."

---

Judy caught on just before they stopped at the boardwalk, and spent the last bit of the trolley ride positively vibrating in anticipation.

"You didn't," she accused, when they debarked at the intricate garden pathways that led to Morgiano's restaurant.

Nick nodded. "I didn't. I did check, just in case, but the wait list is a mile long."

"Oh." She deflated, just a bit, and looked down at her pristine uniform. "We're not really dressed for it, either. TV interviews, sure, but not this."

"Maybe not for dining in, no," Nick said. He offered her his arm. "But I know a guy."

Stephane took time from his dining room duties anyway, to meet them in the kitchen itself, where a staff of tiny rodents scurried around an immaculate brick-and-brass space to make outsized portions of pasta.

He plied them with more spaghetti and house salad than they could possibly eat at once, in thick unmarked boxes. He was having fun with it, too.

"Not a word of this highly unusual behavior," the otter said. He could just barely lift the huge bag into Nick's paws. "We have a reputation to maintain, Officers."

"We're not on duty, Stephane," Nick said. He followed his grin over to where Morgiano himself was washing his paws in a tiny sink and shaking his head in amusement. He passed over the check. "You can count on our discretion."

Stephane waved the folio, and now he did look serious. "What have I told you about this, Wilde?"

"I cannot for my own life remember," Nick said. They started for the exit. "Keep it. For next time."

"Fine," Stephane called. "I'll hold you to it."

---

Nick saw how Judy was inspecting the food on their way to her apartment, and the way she kept looking back at him as they climbed the stairs to her floor. And she watched as he set the food down just inside her threshold to latch the door shut and slide the security chain home.

When Nick turned around she was pulling on his tie, making him thump to his knees. Her paws against his cheeks held him still so she could kiss him, hard, and then she nuzzled close with her chin over his snout. Nick closed his eyes.

"You felt it too, huh?"

"I figured something was up," Judy said. "Considering the last time we were there. What's the occasion?"

"I think it's us."

"You think."

"Ever since the interview it's been nagging at me. Bogo was talking about it today, too," Nick said. She let him get to his feet, so she could go find plates. "And I realized that we don't know how long it's been. Right? I haven't kept a calendar."

Her look made something warm start up in his belly. "Since our first time?"

"Since any of it." That night in particular was maybe the one he didn't have to worry about. It would be burned into his memory for the rest of time.

And everything else was just as vivid, even if he didn't have the dates down exactly. Shutting down Baird, and Boots before him. The rough encounters with larger predators, that still got him scared for her, even now. Lying half-naked together in bed, listening to her chat with her family. Standing half-naked in this very room not so long ago, when they'd first explored what they'd be getting into.

"I keep counting backwards," he summarized. "We went back to the farm that first time, what, six months ago?"

"Almost seven, I think."

"Right. And when we were settling in."

Judy had two big bowls in her paws. It was close enough. "There was Merc's concert, and all those nights before. The sky trams. And the garden."

Speaking of...

Nick found the cutting board, buried under a bunch of books on her desk, and rummaged in the crate by the microwave for the knife he'd gotten her. It was high-end ceramic - her sister Sharon's recommendation, when she heard how often they relied on fresh vegetables they grew themselves.

"Are there still carrots? Or cucumber?"

"We're going to have cucumber for months," Judy said. She went to the fridge. "More than we know what to do with. I need to call the food bank, or the farmer's market or something."

He accepted the one she held out and started chopping. It would go well in their salad. Judy sorted their food into bowls, and stowed the rest where it would keep in the fridge.

They sat against the front of the big green couch to eat. Judy had changed somewhere in there, into one of her favorite oversize shirts and apparently very little else.

"Definitely not dressed for the dining room, then."

"I think I like this better right now." She leaned against him. "You could join me."

"Do I even have clothes here? I thought I took all of them to wash."

There was that look again. "Even if you don't, it's not like I'm going to mind."

"I love you." Nick ducked his head, not to take a bite of his spaghetti, but to nuzzle her ears. "I'll get more comfortable after dinner."

So they ate, and Nick changed into the one pair of beaten duty grey pants he had on her clothes rack after all, and they curled up on his couch to quote the entirety of The Dusk Prowler at each other while they watched. The sun sank outside, and when the movie ended they stayed there to listen to the unmistakable rush and murmur of the city at night.

Judy had his tail hugged close. She squirmed on top of him, at his curious paws under her shirt. It was magnetic.

"Did you bring your muzzle?"

Oh. "No." He rested his chin between her ears. "This kind of came together as we went. Sorry, sweetheart."

Judy twisted around to look at him. Her claws prickled against his chest at his expression. "Something to plan for tomorrow, then. Quit it."

She was insistent that he stop being glum about it, too, even if it wasn't exactly helping matters. Judy pushed her chin and cheeks over him, until she had him chasing her around with his nose. He had to squeeze her tight to keep her still, and to keep his own paws from doing too much exploring.

"You're making me want to go get it right now, Carrots."

"I love you." Judy huffed against his throat. "And you know you're not going to need it forever."

Nick knew. And he was so happy for that. Everything they'd done together, every professional and personal problem they ever came up against - they always found a way to beat it. And who else could say that? That their relationship just got better and better? He hoped it never ended.

Judy did settle down after that, high up enough that she could hold his head in her paws and look him in the eye.

"Tomorrow," she murmured.

"First thing, if you like."

"And the day after tomorrow, and the day after that." Nick felt her nose tap against him. "I think that's how we should do this. That's how it happened. It was never just one night."

Leave it to Judy to turn uncertainty into something so perfect. Nick pulled her closer, to keep her wrapped up safe, to drift off as they watched the subtle glow of the city outside.

"It's a promise."

[trespiratesque]

Day 3

Thursday, April 13th

This was Beck's first day of working at the lab, so I walked over with him and one of our hosts, Anne-Claire, around 8 or so. He's working for now in the Comparative Anatomy building, and as we approached, Anne-Claire pointed out the bust of Georges Cuvier in the entryway, and the first-floor office that belonged to him. Cuvier is known to modern scientists as the father of paleontology, and spent a lot of time in that office pioneering the science of comparative anatomy. (Wikipedia link here for the curious, he was an interesting guy.)

The building itself is an old one, a squared-off stone pile set a couple minutes' walk past a guarded gate and a little clump of frog-filled forest. At first I just assumed the building's exterior was made of the regular gray stone you see in East Coast collegiate Gothic buildings, but I was later surprised to find that it was a porous, pockmarked, igneous rock that didn't call to be touched the way smoother stone does. Inside, the wood floors and high ceilings brought me straight back to the castle-like dormitories of my alma mater, The combined scents of dust, books, and wood polish immediately made it my favorite olfactory landscape yet encountered. Anne-Claire pointed out the water cooler and instructed Beck to only take drinking water from it, as the building's lead pipes render the tap water unsafe. I loved every inch of this building, if you couldn't tell.

After Beck was ensconced in his new setting (with a super nice desk and a computer with windows XP), I headed back to the house to do some writing and put myself together for later adventures. I later met Beck for a quick brunch (a superior croissant for me, an apple pastry for him) and a walk around the block, I headed off towards the 20th arrondissement. Paris is broken into 20 of these districts; as I will be here for 20 weeks, I thought it would be nice to make sure I visited them all. I'll aim for one every week, though other travel may interfere and I'll adjust.

The 20th is one of the larger districts of Paris, but it is relatively far from the center. Far, in this case, meant about 20-30 minutes by Metro to reach a stop on one of the centerward edges of the region. Its most famous feature is Pére Lachaise cemetery, the final resting place of Oscar Wilde, Jim Morrison, and many other luminaries (most of whom are actually French). But I did not originally plan to visit Pére Lachaise on this day, intending rather to wait for Beck and explore it together. In the end, I did wind up in the graveyard; but as I discovered, there is quite a lot of it to explore, so a return trip is likely in the cards.

Initially, I debarked as near as I could to the Parc de Belleville, which is reputed for its elevated views of the city. I got slightly lost on my way there due to following the wrong large street when I emerged from the metro, but it wasn't a problem, and I entered through an overgrown fence. There was a distinct urban park feel to the way the world of cars and buildings disappeared behind me, reminding me of certain Philadelphian parks I have loved. I explored without thinking too much about any direction other than upward. I saw a man in a suit drinking beer on a bench and enjoying the sunshine. There were patches of young adults spread over a short wall, just like on the cover of my high school French textbook. The paths cornered around the face of the small hill with regularity, so I could never quite see where they led, but I was in no hurry. Eventually I reached a set of stairs leading up to a cement structure with a military shape to it - almost every human-made structure here was once used for a different purpose - and from that perch, I looked out over the park.

A very healthy-looking cat crossed a path below at an angle, on the hunt. It was the first cat I had seen so far, and the second came soon after. The view honestly wasn't much to write home about otherwise. Perhaps I've been spoiled in the endemically hilly Bay Area, but I think Paris is just too damn big to be well-captured in one view. Or maybe it was just kind of a hazy day. At any rate, I left the park a different way than I came in, realizing I had a lot of day left to pass. There were a lot of shops and markets along the Boulevard de Belleville where I was walking, many of whose awnings proudly declared a nation of origin other than France. I noted this in service to future specific food needs, but I had nowhere to store any new purchases at the moment as we were still crashing on a couch. I decided to scope out Pére Lachaise, thinking it was unlikely that I'd see the whole thing in one visit anyway.

I walked the three-quarter mile distance to the cemetery - it was a pleasant day, and it was a straight shot. I entered at the unassuming northwestern entrance, befuddled for a moment by the woman with the folding table and whether she was charging an entrance fee. No, it was just for a map or a postcard - I didn't think I needed either. But as soon as I climbed the stairs I began to regret my decision. Turns out the property is 110 acres, about the size of Vatican City. There was a very detailed map on a sign (the only one of its kind I saw) right at the entrance, offering coordinates of various luminaries' gravesites. I decided to head for Edith Piaf's memorial at the opposite corner, hoping to take in some nice sights along the way and enjoy the weather.

It was a really long walk on cobblestones and I got lost to the point where I downloaded a map on my phone. I had thought that all I would have to do would be to follow the borders, but that wound up being impossible. In the end, I saw several wonderful and unexpected things, including a very striking monument to the dead, a grave topped with a life-size bronze sculpture of a broken cello, and a whole lot of ominous-looking mausoleums. I found Edith Piaf's grave almost by pure luck. I sat down on a bench to give my feet a break, thinking I had a small ways more to go, when a very small crowd caught my attention. I re-referenced my map and realized that they were visiting the chanteuse. When they dissipated a little, I stopped by for some pictures and some thoughts for my maternal grandmother, who was a fan of Piaf's.

I was tired and hungry by then, and couldn't muster the energy to negotiate any complex interactions like buying food from someone who didn't already know I spoke toddler-level French. So I took the Metro homeward (again, got only slightly confused navigationally) and got a bread-sausage-cheese loaf to tide me over until Beck was done working. I settled into a bench in the Jardin des Fleurs and read for an hour or so, which was a pure pleasure.

I met Beck back at the front door of the house, and we went to pick up a few groceries for dinner - the plan waas to grab whatever looked good. In the end we wound up with a nice little meal of a baguette, some hummus, cucumber, and lemonade. Continuing our walk, we found another nearby Metro station that was on a different line. We sat by the Seine for a while near a boat-shuttle stand, the kind of thing where you pay $60 for an all-you-can-ride boat ticket. Neither boats nor hopeful passengers came or went. Finally we returned home, walking through the park again on the way. Anne-Claire had mentioned with some distaste that parrots had become a common sight in Paris, a result of the pet trade and irresponsible owners. This evening, we spotted some of the invaders for the first time. They were perched in a tree that was blooming purple, and they were snipping the flowers off the stems without a care in the world. We stood there for a few minutes, tsking for the tree's health and watching the intact flowerheads fall to the ground.

Sometime after dinner, we got confirmation that the apartment we really wanted wasn't going to be available until May 15. This pushed us to put in a request for an Airbnb, which we had been treating as an emergency option in case we needed more time. Anthony and Anne-Claire were more than happy to have us stay as long as we needed, but as small as Paris apartments are, I expect they were looking forward to having their living room back.

[brishu]

My Week At Sea - Part 1

I can’t remember whether President’s Day gave us a three day weekend in Greensboro, North Carolina. We sure as hell didn’t get a whole week off, but New York schools do so this year we took a cruise with my parents.

No matter how far in advance you try to book a flight for that week, the quoted fares will send you into a tailspin of regret, forcing you to relitigate all of the decisions you ever made that delivered you to this moment as a budget-conscious person. You might even start rehearsing your explanation for why this is probably a good year to skip the February trip somewhere warm. Maybe the polar vortex won’t barrel through the Northeast this year. Maybe we can get the girls wall to wall playdates so they won’t miss frolicking in the sun so much. But while you refine your excuses, your hand has already extracted a credit card or two and the people who run Kayak nod like the borderline abusive paramour who knows you’ll answer his texts every damn time. Your laptop itself might whir in a way that sounds a lot like, “Mmm hmmm. Thought so.” If only the airlines maintained their own schedules as scrupulously as they adhered to that of the New York City public school system.

So what are you really doing when you wail to your parents about how expensive Presidents’ Week trips are? Maybe, maybe you’re bemoaning your well-traveled spouse’s mathematically tenuous expectations. But lo and behold, it “occurs” to them that that week would be a great opportunity to spend some time with their delightful granddaughters. And waddya know? They’re friends with a travel agent! And as long as you don’t look too unflinchingly within, or excuse yourself the flinch through self-deception too insidious to monitor, you’ve been furtive enough about the whole thing to keep your dignity intact.

Five months later the Out of Office reply is on and you’re on a 7 AM flight to Miami, encouraging your kids as passive aggressively as possible to forgo the in-flight entertainment and take a damn nap. But when you’re eight or six and your parents enforce draconian screentime restrictions, you ain’t gonna waste three hours of untrammeled access to a large movie library on shuteye, no matter how wise or mathematically sound your handsome, loving father’s advice is. I read a book. Between naps.

Day 1

We landed in Miami flush with optimism for the week ahead. My parents were waiting for us in baggage claim. I took the girls’ stuff so they could run into their grandparents’ arms, an airport ritual they’d been performing since they were ambulatory. Watching my mom and dad’s faces during the interval between launch and collision always made me feel like my nachas/tsuris account with them was finally balancing out.

A mild comeraderie starting fogging around baggage retrieval. The airline was sending mixed messages about which carousel would convey our luggage and people were subtly jockeying, not to be first to get their stuff, but first to have the straight dope on location to share with passengers as if that established some sort of heirarchy. I was happy to smile and offer grateful thanks to another dad who seemed keen on attaining the certainty that would finally deliver him from 10 minutes inter-carousel limbo, and realized that if I knew first, I would not want anybody lavishing gratitude on me. I wondered if this distinction was formed as some kind of private rebuke of the other dad, though I was glad to oblige his emotional ambition, maybe provide him with some social momentum so he could spend his vacation accumulating validation and even new friends, patronizing as all that was. But it was him who was chomping at the bit to be town cryer. It occurred to me that us vacationers wouldn’t be revving up so much at the outset if we weren’t bracing for a few unpleasant moments we’d have to fend off or minimize, protecting our experience from anything ruinous or memory-souring.

The boat itself shoved off from Port Everglades in Fort Lauderdale. We rode a transfer bus with a father and his grown son and daughter, all from Toronto. They were very nice and fascinated by real live New Yorkers. I forgot both men’s names quickly but Barbara was easy to remember, sporting a Til Tuesday-era Aimee Mann hairstyle with stars shaved into the sides. The punk rockness of her haircut combined with her genuine warmth and gladness made me feel like she knew exactly who she was and she liked it very much, which I liked too. Still, I was afraid to veer any conversation away from banalities.

By the time we got to Fort Lauderdale, I realized that my private observations were lapsing into probative NPR-speak, luxuriating in my own bafflement in the groggy upward lilt I associate with people whose comprehension lags a hairsbreadth behind their speech. Like I was trying not to miss my own bus.

Standing between us and the boat (you’re supposed to say ship but every jolly reminder of this stiffened my resolve to call it a boat) was a processing facility that seemed designed with the mandate, “Think Ellis Island, but bigger and with less craftsmanship.” “So, hollowed out Costco?” “This guy gets it!” All sorts of heirarchies were enforced within the hangar: Gold, Platinum, Emerald, Diamond, Diamond Plus and Pinnacle Club each had their own dedicated service areas with varying calibers of expedience and hand sanitizer. I asked someone where I should go if I was Linoleum Status, and then I felt bad because he was obligated to act amused even though he probably wasn’t. Or maybe his smile was from sending us to the back of the longest line. We had been up since 4:30 and had deviated slightly from our strict kale and broccoli-based diet by feeding our daughters jelly beans for breakfast. So while I was careful not to catch myself trying too hard to maintain perspective, as that tends to trick me into thinking I’m teetering over a lake of despair and that the only way to relieve this emotional vertigo is to plunge right the fuck in, I was eager to get onto the boat and start consuming. The whole process wound up taking about 15 minutes.

I don’t want to belabor the zeal with which Royal Caribbean goes about bolstering its revenue, nor even refer to it as greed since some of the money they grub has to support their massive scale of employment before funneling to a handful of bean counters in the C-Suite. But from the bombardment of promotional emails I started getting after signing the waiver for the onboard zipline to the army of soul-stealing photographers swarming the margins of every potential memory we had from boarding to debarcation, the relentless attempts to upsell lent the entire cruise the feel of a sterilized, Eurocentric souk.

So, experiencing only the downside of fame, we fled the pre-boarding papparazzi and made it to the gangplank. Setting foot onto the ship felt like it should feel momentous. So I took a picture of my parents and daughters.

This was the moment of transition from the cold grind of work and school to a carefree, sun-drenched week at sea. Just a few more steps and the fun we’d been anticipating for months would start happening! In real life! Or maybe it’s just a pavlovian response to a relative with a camera, now embroidered with the wonder of how widely the record of this moment would be publicized and digitally appreciated.

Alcohol. When I was in my 20s we took a family cruise with my parents, brothers, cousins, aunts, uncles and grandma. The onboard drinks were a ripoff so we went to the duty free shop, bought bottles of bourbon, vodka and kahlua and, with milks and juices ordered from room service, ran a bar out of our stateroom. This was pre-9/11 and smuggling was much easier so we also made beer runs at every port of call. But now all duty free purchases are held until you debark. Wanna drink, gotta pay the ship. So my father bought the four adults on the trip the Premium Beverage package. This presented a fairly obvious quandary. Do I do my damndest to make sure Dad gets his money’s worth? Or do I exercise caution to avoid being even more unpleasant company than I already am? Predictably, I opted to sprint across the emotional minefield I’d first glimpsed in the Miami airport, honoring my father’s financial commitment on my behalf and hoping that eroded inhibitions would only make me that much more charming and fun. I finished my second margarita on the way to lunch.

The Allure of the Seas features three main dining rooms, 15 different restaurants and cafes plus a few snack bars and one doughnut kiosk I learned about one day too late. But upon boarding, only one dining venue was serving food and definitely not doubling as a nautical porn location: The Windjammer. Or that was the name of the always-open poolside buffet when I was in my 20s. It had since graduated to the Windjammer Marketplace, and I am sure that many cruisegoers appreciated the connotations of wider variety, enhanced freshness and the Milton Friedman Chicago School of economics. Our blood sugar was not quite at grumpy levels, but it was low enough that I worried whatever auspiciousness I had been drumming up was about to get overtaken by hostility toward entire teams of shipmates who stood between me and the food. Writ large, this first encounter with so many hundreds of fellow passengers, representing so many different ages, body types and origins, all unified by the overfed western version of hunger had the potential to arouse contempt. We all have reserves of generosity and good will toward our fellow man, it’s just that we also have moments when these reserves are inaccessible. Or, in my case, trying too hard to access them makes me feel so artificial that my resentment toward my surroundings is compounded by my inability to generate good will toward them. But, maybe because I was afraid that feeling too much antipathy this early in the trip would not bode well for the prospect of continued heavy drinking, summoning smiles for every beefy red-stater handling what were rightfully my nacho tongs was nearly effortless.

At every pass between the buffet and our table (usually for another glass of water, in my defense), the line to get into the international temple of all you can eat poolside cuisine grew longer, and announcements began issuing in three different languages to please enjoy your food and then get the fuck out so somebody else can sit down. I couldn’t help wondering how many liberty-loving Trump voters responded to authority-impelled courtesy by remaining at their tables until dinnertime. Did anyone onboard know Cliven Bundy? But I had seen enough signs of friendliness among the array of diners there, polite deference to wheelchairs, help with utensils, that a climate of decent manners did seem to govern the Windjammer Marketplace and perhaps the entire boat. Everybody seemed to understand that we all have more fun when we’re nicer to each other. And a lot of them were even drunker than I was.

Cocktails in hand, we vacated our table and went to see our staterooms. We did not expect our luggage to be delivered for another few hours, but we could change from our morning in New York clothes into the bathing suits we’d carried on. Just after we’d changed, our stateroom attendant came to introduce herself. She was a stout Trinidadian woman in her 50s named Adeline. She told the girls to call her Addy. In a bigoted way that I fear no amount of enlightenment or sensitivity training will ever cure me of, I saw Addy as a type more than as a thinking, feeling person. And in this blithe relegation, I wondered if her relationship with the girls would be colored at all by the way they might associate her with some of the West Indian nannies they’ve known their entire lives. Would they warm toward her in ways kids from the sticks might not? But conversely, would Addy prefer to keep her interactions with guests perfunctory, with just enough warmth to engender greater generosity at end of the week tip time? Did it serve anything whatsoever for me to be so delightfully sensitive that I broke through the typically transient cruiser-attendant relationship to foster something more meaningful, or would I merely succeed in creating more confusion in service of my own moral vanity? Did I give a shit either way? Yeah, I guess. Maybe it was time for another drink.

My mom had a friend who had cruised on this vessel months earlier and she said the one show you do not want to miss is Oceanaria, a Cirque du Soleil type diving show, presumably enough  unlike “O” to perform without triggering a lawsuit. The show was so popular that by the time we sought a reservation, the only available timeslot was Night 1 at 10:45 PM. So will you please nap now please? Maybe after we go swimming. I see. So I accompanied them to the pool area and, responsible adult that I am, I waited at least 20 minutes before pursuing drink number seven. Whoo!

OK so you can’t actually swim in any of the pools. But who can resist the appeal of a chlorinated soak rife with incidental contact with obese strangers drinking sugary cocktails through straws while singing along to reggae songs whose lyrics they don’t know? The rational mind assures you that diabetes is not contagious but you still equate acceptance with osmosis and no matter how fictitious your worries are, you just know that something here is doing you damage. But what about the kids? They are joyous and unfatigued, so you owe it to them to smile and pump your fist every time they run through a candy-colored sprinkler. Now is not the time to teach them to raise their search for validation to a standard higher than getting wet. Sell that smile. You know you’re not supposed to be at war with your more jaundiced perspective while you’re on vacation, but if you are, at least win. Maybe all this running around will increase the odds of a nap. Maybe my parents can come take over for me lest I claim all this happiness for myself. And can’t I just cut ahead of all these multi-ingredient drink orders to get another plastic tumbler of whiskey? Whoo.

What finally pries the kids out of the pool is Muster, the mandatory survival drill that compels all passengers to the emergency station where a designated crew member would spirit us to a 237 person lifeboat. Take that, Godzilla. Our station was in the Silk Dining Room. My wife pointed out that photographers were poised in the lobby in front of a backdrop of the balustrade from Titanic, yet one more reminder that too much thought was ill-advised. Familiarity > Meaning.

After Muster we gathered on our room’s small balcony to wave goodbye to the Floridians who had come to the pier to bid our voyage bon. The horn sounded, the boat set sail and the waving grew wavier. Trying to get with the program, I thought that was very nice of the people at the pier and nothing more. Nothing whatsoever.

We were now at sea. And while I refused to call the ship a ship, I became a stickler for maritime directions. I don’t know what accounts for such inconsistencies, but by 6 PM the fore, starboard, aft and port views were all landless. The vastness of the Atlantic Ocean or Gulf of Mexico or Caribbean Sea or whatever was terrifying in a good way. Thrilling. And feeling dependent on the vessel and her crew, and recognizing how casually at ease I was told me that, for all of the blundering attempts the Royal Caribbean corporation made at invading my conscience, they succeeded where it really mattered, winning my trust in their nautical competence and banishing all worries the mighty sea presented.

At 10:45 PM, further mastery of water was on display at the boat’s Aqua Theater. Our kids normally get up at 7 and go down at 8. Today they got up at 4:30 and wouldn’t go down til midnight. I presumed the show would go one of two ways: either luster would be lacking or we would bear witness to muscular specimens whose notable skill was drilled into them by authoritarian regimes who had destroyed their capacity for joy whereby it could be argued that we were no better than party officials sitting there on our asses, too sluggish to express appropriate appreciation for the amazing feats these exploited acrobats were performing, quiet hatred seething justifiably from the stage. Instead we were treated to 30 minutes of soaring, splashing joy. Whatever behind the scenes cynicism governed the performance, I was too dazzled to contemplate. Plunging from 3 meter springboards, 10 meter ledges and even 15 meter perches, I joined the crowd in roaring approval, according the divers full dignity for their show. More than once a woman behind me said, “I’ll take either one of those!” And our sleep-deprived girls were so invigorated by the performance that even my mother’s guilt for booking us so late was relieved. As I downed my umpteenth drink, I felt my duties as a son were fulfilled on all fronts.

Day 2

I was out of bed early to run laps around the 650 meter track that wrapped around Deck 5.

I sweat buckets in 30 degree weather, so in the Tropics it seemed extra wise to get going before dawn. Didn’t matter. Between the heat, humidity, alcohol, shortchange of zzzz’s and onboard climate of sloth, three miles and a little work at the gym was all I could handle. Ashamed of my effort, I sulked back to our stateroom where my wife and kids were now awake and spoke to them as though my body’s newfound shortcomings were somehow their fault. Later that day my wife pointed out the donut kiosk so for the rest of the week, I went there after exercising and returned to our stateroom the picture of civility.

With no port of call on Day 2, all 6,100 passengers and 2,200 crew members were together and ready to…. well, that depends. I know that judging people says more about you than them, and that a crowded cruise ship is a great place to subscribe to Will Rogers’ credo that strangers are just friends you haven’t met yet. And there were certainly people around me who knew how to survey a crowd and then mingle into it successfully.

Sometimes I see a group of people yukking it up and I think of a passage from the Great Gatsby: Forms leaned together in the taxis as they waited, and voices sang, and there was laughter from unheard jokes, and lighted cigarettes made unintelligible circles inside. Imagining that I, too, was hurrying towards gaiety and sharing their intimate excitement, I wished them well. But these groups took delight from the heights they attained, whereas other groups laughed loudly and called it a good time no matter how funny anything really was, reveling in comedy without humor. I was not guaranteed entrée into either clique, and even if my private pomposity was as defensive as it was discerning, the boat groups felt boorish to me. So I dumped the kids on my parents and retreated to a quieter area of the boat, choosing my book over people.

The dimensions of the boat were such that port and starboard stateroom corridors were more than 100 meters long. Later I learned that you could always go to a deck that featured one of the boat’s “neighborhoods” and walk through that instead of a Shining-like hallway. But I did notice that the superstition applied to decks did not apply to room numbers:

A funny thing about thinking is that the wider you cast your thoughts, the less significant your personal affairs become. But the ego, never fully banished, can’t help but notice that recognizing your insignificance is a fine mental feat, so while you’re transcending your petty concerns, you’re touting the transcendence you’re achieving. Am I alone in enjoying the deftness with which I self-negate? Maybe there’s a paradox named after a suicidal philosopher that describes it better than me. But during moments alone, pondering the ocean and sky, questioning whether I’d like to see myself as more consequential or less so, I wondered if it wouldn’t be wiser to build a strong divider between material and spiritual concerns and spend the rest of the week focused on material good fortune. So what if I sensed spiritual poverty at every turn, from my shipmates’ difficulty returning a friendly wave to well-wishers to the hundreds of children I’d seen holding ice cream in one hand, an entertainment device in the other, crying their faces off? Who am I to judge? I’m probably worse because not only do I object to so much, I hone my fucking objections. Yes, I was enjoying the joy my unjaded kids were experiencing, and the nachas that was bringing my parents. But what did I want for me? Weren’t insistent anxieties like these exactly what I was supposed to be vacating for the week? On the flipside, how does one enjoy the ocean and sky without listing toward the existential?

Day 3

Made it a wopping 4 miles and change on the track, much of it with the sun well above the bristling skyline of Cozumel, Mexico.

The cruise company sold all sorts of onshore excursions, from swimming with dolphins and sea turtles to tequila and chocolate tastings to visiting the Mayan ruins in Quintana Roo. Ace researcher that my wife is, she found an escape from the rampant gringoism that was just a taxi ride away from the port. My parents and children wanted to take advantage of a less crowded boat so they stayed onboard while we went off to Playa Palancar.

It would have been lovely if I hadn’t spoiled it. The details are unimportant, but, attributing nothing to my masturbatory tussles with significance, I made a big deal out of something insignificant and that started an argument from which no winners emerged. I suppose the reasons why my difficulties relaxing were so acute they fucked up my wife’s relaxation too merited some kind of examination. But, possibly by astrological fate (Libra), I felt caught between attempting to solve an issue and dropping it altogether. Getting to the bottom of what the hell was the matter with me seemed thornier but more rewarding, while moving on felt like shirkery. I don’t think I ever made a decision one way or the other. My wife swam out to the floating platform (that’s her in the photograph) and I read my book. By the time we caught a cab back to the pier, peace had been restored and the rest of the day was fine and maybe even relaxed. OK, the argument was about fish tacos.

That night the kids slept in their grandparents’ stateroom while my wife and I had a reservation at the Comedy Club on Deck 4. You know, the Comedy Club. Across the hall from Jazz Club.  When the biggest George Carlin and Eddie Murphy ruled stand-up comedy, nobody paid much attention to the learning curve of a comedian. But in the current heyday of Louis CK and Chris Rock, it’s gushed into our consciousness that there’s more to the art than good jokes, and that one minute of solid material seems to take hours of work in small clubs, where even the big boys sometimes bomb. I don’t know whether this greater familiarity with the risks involved in stand-up comedy has trained audiences to be more supportive of those poor, vulnerable people onstage, or spoiled the magic of sausage-making. But either way, I figured the comics who got this gig would be seasoned professionals who knew how to work a room. And they were and they did. Opener and headliner alike got laughter from the room and they harnessed it and killed. It’s worth noting that Trump jokes were conspicuously absent. The only borderline political moment was when the headliner mentioned “participation trophies” and a few audience members roared approval (this is a right wing trope that has convinced a huge segment of America that poor people aren’t entitled to the same representation as rich people). I didn’t let it bother me (too much). The biggest laughs came from jokes about very specific cruising behaviors and when I saw that the participation trophy folks laughing just as hard as I was at some of the nonsense onboard, it actually gave me a great feeling of hope. As long as people believed that cruise ships were the perfect place to splurge on jewelry, elitist libtards and Bible Belt morons could unite in mockery of them.

Day 4

At sea due to arrive in Falmouth, Jamaica the following morning. Not much of note except it was National Margarita Day. I had grown sick of my anthropological pretensions and was not keen on observing people in pursuit of some great insight on human folly or spiritual deviation. I just wanted to observe NMD and spend time with the kids after being away from them the prior day. If I fell into the stupor that was de rigeur onboard, look out below.

But I’m realizing that, while I had a lot of fun throughout the week, it’s harder for me to write about the nice times in an interesting way. Muddling through my difficulties throughout weeklong Caribbean vacation is a tough enough ask of a reader. But what’s readworthy about the enjoyable parts, where I didn’t feel confused or conflicted?

That morning after breakfast I played shuffleboard and minigolf with my daughters. Even the boat’s minigolf course hardly seems noteworthy. The ice skating rink, the carousel, the zipline and rock climbing walls, I found myself wishing I was more familiar with deprivation so I could be wowed by those features. But I didn’t feel guilty about being non-plussed by them either. Just happy to be with my family and, at this point, looking forward to getting back to my book, which I already knew I would miss more than the cruise when it was over.

And I also wasn’t going to feel guilty about enjoying an hour alone with said book, a Spotify playlist I love, and said holiday’s honored beverage.