#tagging this because I do mention them so. yknow.

[erumai-maadu]

I've never heard about aromantic Tenten before today but now that you've brought it up I feel like my world has expanded. Do you think she's asexual too, or is it just aro? Is she in a QPR with Neji or is she demi and does end up liking him romantically? Lesbian Tenten could also work... but I kind of like the idea of her being aro :) Very big brained of you.

Oooh yes hi anon thank you! Aro Tenten is an idea that i’ve played with back and forth through the years but she’s always had that kinda vibe to me. I think I was introduced to the idea by someone in the tenten tags a while back talking about it and i was like OOH. yes.

Tenten being aromantic to me is also closely tied to my own aro identity and the more i’ve accepted that i’m aro recently, the more i’ve really started to like the idea that Tenten is also aromantic.

It's kind of interesting to me that almost every woman that Kishi's written has some kind of love interest one way or another, especially the konoha 12's girls, except for Tenten. Like she doesn't even have a romance set up for her. I'm a nejiten shipper through and through but even I have to admit that every MomentTM that I talk about with them are scenes from filler (so not canon) or they're scenes interpreted to hell and back through shipper glasses and aren't truly indicative of any romantic bond. Even the filler scenes aren't truly romantic if you look at them without the shipping glasses LOL.

But Tenten is the only girl in the k12 that this happens to. Kishimoto just set up aro Tenten so cleanly, even though I doubt he really intended to.

In one of the light novels (which I believe were directed by kishimoto), the one about naruto and hinata’s wedding, it’s stated that Tenten has never really cared about/wanted romance or marriage, she was always too interested in weapons. This is really the most direct statement about romance that we get from Tenten.

“Marriage, huh…well it’s a nice thing…” Tenten exhaled, leaning against one of the stakes. Her hands silently played with one of the kunai she’d collected. This was what had been bothering her. Naruto and Hinata were getting married. It was a happy occasion. Tenten herself had always been getting caught up in thinking about shuriken or kunai or flying guillotines, so she’d never had a boyfriend. She lived her life without any thoughts for romance or femininity. Hearing about someone close to her getting married suddenly made one disturbing thought fly into Tenten’s mind and refuse to leave: Was it really okay for her to be like this? From morning until night, it was always Ninja Weaponry, Ninja Weaponry, Ninja Weaponry… Was it really okay for a young woman to be like that?”

The weapons aren't really the point here though. What she's questioning when she says "is it okay for me to be like this" is referring to her lack of romantic interest. She’s not disinterested in romance because of the weapons, but it seems to feel that way to her because all the passion and effort others seem to put toward romance, she puts toward her interests. That's definitely a feeling I've had before about my aromanticism.

there’s definitely a Gender thing going on here with all of this too that I am not in the right mindset to unpack rn but it’s definitely there.

anyway onto some shippy sort of stuff.

I think she’s aromantic and bisexual. While Tenten being a lesbian absolutely works, her being bisexual is important to me because I'm bisexual and like to assign all of my blorbos "bi unless i say otherwise", so I will always consider her to to bi. This has no basis in any kind of canon, of course, I just know it in my heart.

Her thing with Neji is weird and complicated but they’ve got Something Going On, to me. Given that i’m new to my own aromantic identity, I’m not quite sure what to call it, but I think a QPR sounds right? They’re just together, like they always have been. They’re Neji and Tenten.

They don’t get married but they do live together, journey together, etc.

Quick dip into the nsfw side, they absolutely do fuck, to me at least. I usually hc Neji as demisexual/demiromantic, and Tenten’s always been one of his best friends, so it’s easy and comfortable for him to be with her like that. From Tenten’s side, she just likes to fuck lol. and with Neji she knows that he won’t expect her to have or reciprocate any FeelingsTM, so she feels comfortable having that kind of relationship with him.

There’s definitely an argument to be made for her being ace and obviously anyone can headcanon whatever they want, but to me it’s important that she is aro but not ace.

I still have to Think abt aro Tenten a lot more bc i also coming into this identity myself and have to do more research for sure, so this is all i’ve got for now!!

[daisybell-on-a-carousel]

Still very wild to me when people try to gotcha Jason with the whole "if you can kill other people for being evil why can't they kill you" when jason is like. One of the most passively suicidal characters I've ever seen. What if man

[milolunde]

We all know Timmy is Wanda’s mama’s boy but we need to keep in mind he’s still Cosmo’s kid too and that Cosmo would love him just as vehemently as Wanda

[commence-screaming]

I know you all are awaiting my response, and I’m grateful for your patience. There are some things I have to address here. Never wanted to put everything out there—I don’t like drama on my blog. I have a document that’s over a thousand words long, but I realized that when people have blocked me and are saying stuff in the main tag, they don’t want to listen. They just want to hurt me.

So I guess now there are things I have to clarify… it’s heavy, but I tried to keep it short. I didn’t have the energy to read everything they were saying about me so I may get things wrong. I didn’t really want to post this.

Content warnings for mental illness, suicidal ideation, mentions of abuse.

Let’s get right into it.

1. I’ve always lived with the paranoid delusion that everyone was conspiring against me, that people secretly hated me and would smear me behind my back. I passed these off as negative thoughts, anything that might’ve “confirmed” this would set it off. I’d have an episode I would have to deal with on my own. I thought that nobody would stick with me in a crisis, and I would always be thinking along the lines of, “is it all over?”

I feel liberated, now. There’s no need to fight when they’re true. I am more at peace with myself.

2. I never want to hurt anyone. Not a real level, the angst stuff is fictional pain. I am autistic—the things you’re hearing me say are the first times I’ve talked to people (other than my family) for my entire life. I always want people to go to me when I do something wrong so I can handle it and learn from my mistakes, that’s why I have my bio set to what it is.

That, and my memory is so fuzzy that I can’t remember too much from even last week. I tend to dissociate and my brain turns into mush.

3. The “minor incident” that Ghouse and the others were talking about was one of his mods saying she’d “tear people apart” and then immediately citing me as the main cause because I was “being rude.” I told her why I was taking a break, as I couldn’t handle it, this had happened before and I asked them to correct me if I was wrong—even confirming multiple times that we were just joking around because I was paranoid.

I suggested they go straight to me for future reference. I was having a mental health episode. She called me crazy and that I was overreacting, implying I was stupid. Another mod told me I was overreacting and that I was acting pathetic and childish. This made point 1 so much worse.

4. The “suicide baiting” was something I told the Panic Room server in confidence. I told them I was talking a break. Ghouse said “it wasn’t that bad but okay,” as if he were gaslighting me. He said things like this as I was sobbing alone in my room, which he was well aware of.

I have to clarify that it wasn’t baiting. Suicidal ideation has been something I’ve been dealing with since I was 9 years old. I have been abused/gaslit for more of my life than I have been safe. I never wanted to say this, but they were brushing me off at a point where I was trying to find a reason to live. I had stupidly thought that they would understand what they were doing to me if I said.

5. That was the first time I had an episode like that. To say that it was baiting is to say I was lying. Let’s play devil’s advocate here.

If I were lying for attention, why would I destroy all my relationships in a single night? Why wouldn’t I make art or something along those lines? They’re big on art.

If I wasn’t, then that would mean that I was having a few bad days and they did nothing to help me… beyond condescendingly saying that I need help. I don’t blame the minors in the server, I’m talking about Ghouse, who is older than I am by around 2 years. I told them I called 988 and it didn’t really work. He continued to tell me off.

After I was kicked I was made aware that they immediately started insulting me. Whether you believe me or not, purposely attacking someone who’s mentally ill is… too far. I hadn’t done anything to them before this incident.

6. The reasons I freaked out was because I was sad that I had unintentionally hurt people, I had started a new, dangerous job, and… well, to be honest, I was terrified.

They were making me forget that I’d been hurt. I was starting to trust them. I had been starting to look forward to tomorrow. And, I was so scared that it would all be over. I didn’t know when, just that it would be.

Now, it is.

7. I may very well have been joking around with everything while on the server, but serious topics were serious. I was never “demeaning” when Ghouse was venting about something that happened to him beyond a couple of lighthearted comments. I thought they’d have the same respect for me. Again, I had confirmed multiple times that I was joking.

8. I might not have done much wrong in the Panic Room situation, but the other things that people are saying about me? I had no idea.

That was the first time I’d ever heard of them.

In the past, my autism had gone completely unchecked. some of those things were from when I was a week into being on my first server… ever. I was 17, had no idea how to check for age or even pronouns. Never used anything but tumblr, never interacted with anyone. Never went to school or even had a job at that point. I more tried to figure out everything based off of my own experiences… which was, not good. To say the least. The things I did, in my head, I thought they were “normal.” This doesn’t make it less terrible, but I hadn’t even remembered some of the incidents until someone pointed it out. It was so mundane to me—I was a messed up child. I’m sorry for this.

8. I wasn’t the best person, I really wasn’t. I didn’t know how to “mask” my traits at that time, I was excited to be able to talk to people. I was protective over my friends (my first friends! ever!) and very clingy. I didn’t know that people held characters close to their hearts, either? (When I have a favorite, I only want to hurt them, you see)

So while the doc was deliberately taking things out of context, some of the other accusations are true, unfortunately. I will be posting my DMs between me and the people on the server in my doc.

9. I have explanations for what I’ve seen of the accusations, but I don’t really recall anything from that incident over 3 years ago… if someone had told me, or even confronted me, I’d have known what was wrong. But they didn’t, and they kept talking to me like everything was normal. I was completely unaware. This is most of the reason I thought people were plotting against me—people would be cold to me and I wouldn’t know why. The worst part is that I can’t apologize. I can’t even try to rectify anything. Some of the people in that server still played PAYDAY 2 with me, some would even reply to my DMs. I had… no idea.

I have hurt people. Unknowingly, but still. I apologize to anyone I’ve affected. Most of it was not knowing how basic social media functions worked. I hope you understand that my behavior was out of line, and that I didn’t mean for any of this to happen. Don’t defend me on that, I was entirely wrong. But… smearing me in the fandom tag instead of going to me directly means that they want to attack me. They don’t want an explanation.

All of my actions were genuine. I never intended to hurt anyone, but that’s what ended up happening. I’ll put more detail into the doc.

10. I was already going to take a break. I was already doing poorly, and the server knew this. At that point, they want me to go through with it. What else would they be saying when they do all of this? Unless I’m reading that wrong. Whatever the reason is, they don’t want to help me, they’re deliberately being malicious and they know I wasn’t baiting.

Although, I guess I have to thank them. Now, I can say that I wasn’t delusional. I can say that I was too smart for my own good. How crazy does it sound to think that everyone was just waiting to betray me? But… they were. I can begin to trust myself again, even if it’s accepting some of my “negative thoughts” as reality. I won’t be reaching out to anyone I don’t already know, and there is safety in never putting myself out there again.

Thank you to everybody who stuck around. My delusions… weren’t entirely correct. Just like how most of my former friends blocked me on sight, there were a few people who didn’t mind when I wasn’t responding. There are some people who believed in me to a point where even if all those accusations were true, they believed that I could change. That’s… something I never thought I’d hear, ever, in my life. That is a form of trust I don’t deserve, really.

So, I was wrong again. Not everyone wanted me gone. It took all of this for me to realize that there were people who loved me in the truest form of it.

As for everyone who cut me off… well, I hope you understand that because of my mental issues, I can never trust you beyond a professional level. It is for my own wellbeing, because I’m still not doing good. I will still be taking that break. The PAYDAY 2 fandom was a source of reprieve for me, and now it’s not. It wasn’t an accident that it turned out that way. All my safe spaces have been taken from me. I don’t know why the Panic Room server hated me, so I can’t provide any extra insight on that.

The truth is, I haven’t been around because I’ve been dealing with depression for a long time. I’ve been passively… yknow. Not actively. I haven’t had the energy to respond to anything on most days, I’m sorry for that :(

All of this was just the breaking point, really.

Thank you for reading. I know most people won’t, but I appreciate those who do. I won’t blame the rest of you if you all decide to leave as well, I understand that. I never made the blog for other people, I made it for myself. This whole thing will serve as a reminder that there are more important things than online spaces. Can’t get therapy because I’m broke, but I can enjoy the few things I still can… even if I’m reminded of what I’ve lost. I don’t think I’ll really be here anymore, but I will be okay.

[mabaris]

ok so reading the article about world state choices. my take on it is that it seems like they’re specifically referencing choices to create the inquisitor, like that’s the “adventurer” in question? it might be on its own page because that’s when you’re also customizing their face and voice. maybe there will be another page for more worldbuilding because i don’t think there will ONLY be three choices that matter in the scope of the game. the well of sorrows absolutely has to come up in a game with morrigan and the inquisitor and the elven gods right??? i hope??? come on

[wifiwuxians]

SongXue 🥺👉👈 (platonically, if you'd prefer)

game

okay so i have to make the distinction here

canon:

my own wifiwuxians government approved vast array of worlds:

super honest under the cut

please nobody take it personally!!! it's just fandom has a lot of song lan negativity and i'm not about that ever so i stick to doing my own thing (also that is baby xy)

[celestie0]

gojo satoru x reader | oneshot smut [18+]

title. around the clock

Hooking up with your little brother’s babysitter? That sounds more like a bad porno than a sensible decision.

ᰔ pairing. babysitter/boxing au - underground boxer & babysitter!gojo x college student!reader (f)

ᰔ summary. when underground boxer gojo satoru becomes a little strapped for cash, he gets a day job as a babysitter for a five-year-old kid named yuuji who most definitely has adhd (but that’s besides the point). the kid’s mom gave gojo two rules, and two rules only: don’t accidentally kill my son, and do not flirt with my daughter. he’s pretty sure he’s got a good hold on the former, but he’s got no self control over the latter.

ᰔ warnings/tags. 18+, fem!reader, smut, casual sex, lil bit of fluff, lil bit of crack, slight age gap (reader’s 22 & gojo’s 27), cum play, creampie, unprotected sex, praise kink, slight degradation, gojo is a sleazebag that cares?, sort of porn-coded smut except there’s a lil bit of lore so it’s kinda porn w plot, uhh having sex with risk of getting caught, gojo beats people up at night & then plays father figure to a 5 y/o during the day, mentions of violence/alcohol/drugs/blood/cigarettes

ᰔ word count. 12.6k

a/n. hiiii friends jeez it feels like FOREVER since i've posted some good ol' smut (still has plot tho xd)...hopefully you enjoy n see ya at the bottom! lmk if i missed any warnings! if you asked to be tagged but didn’t get tagged it’s bc you have your tags off aaa :( even when some ppl tried to fix it i still couldn’t tag them i’m sorry!!

alsoooooo so very much love to @starmapz for beta reading this for me :”) really helped me w my posting nerves haha. she is also a wonderful jjk author pls go check out her works!! 💕 ART CREDITS: @/3-aem

➸ masterlist

2:34 pm yuuji’s sis (no flirting): heyy um i’m sorry if this comes off kinda rude i just am kinda bad with this but i was wondering if you could text my mom for questions about yuuji’s care instead of me?

2:46pm Gojo Satoru: Oh 2:46pm Gojo Satoru: Yeah, sure

2:34 pm yuuji’s sis (no flirting): sorry i know my mom doesn’t know much ab how to take care of him bc i was the one that took care of him for a while but i just really want to separate myself from that guardian role now that i’ve transferred to NYU yknow? :/ i think it’s not my place anymore. i just wanna be big sis now haha

2:46pm Gojo Satoru: I get it. Sorry if I was making you uncomfortable with my texts

2:48pm yuuji’s sis (no flirting): no no not uncomfy by it, thanks for looking after him. it’s just i’m kind of busy n stuff so it can be distracting 

2:49pm Gojo Satoru: Ok, got it

2:52pm yuuji’s sis (no flirting): and it was kind of an issue with his last babysitter

2:53pm Gojo Satoru: Oh?

2:55pm yuuji’s sis (no flirting): yeahhh like he would keep textinf me n stuff uhh kinda weird things… i told my mom about it and she was super pissed so she fired him

2:55pm Gojo Satoru: Weird things?

2:56pm yuuji’s sis (no flirting): yeah he was always “accidentally sexting me” n like he sent me a dick pic once sooooo yeah

2:56pm Gojo Satoru: Who tf 2:56pm Gojo Satoru: I’ll go beat him up

2:57pm yuuji’s sis (no flirting): oh no no its fine lol 2:57pm yuuji’s sis (no flirting): please dont beat anyone up 2:58pm yuuji’s sis (no flirting): i’m not saying you’re like him tho i just think maybe less texting unless its an emergency okay?

3:00pm Gojo Satoru: Are you sure because I will totally go beat him up for you

3:01pm yuuji’s sis (no flirting): NO I DONT WANT YOU TO BEAT ANYONE UP FOR ME 3:01pm yuuji’s sis (no flirting): also no offense but you dont look like you could beat someone up

3:01pm Gojo Satoru: WHAT 3:02pm Gojo Satoru: Tf you mean “no offense” that’s literally the most offensive thing you could say to a guy

3:04pm yuuji’s sis (no flirting): yeaa i mean you have muscles ofc but in the ‘ohhh i wanna look good for instagram’ way and not like real man muscles yknow

3:06pm Gojo Satoru: Ok princess next time you visit home and go on one of your stupidly large grocery hauls I’ll make sure you carry all those groceries in by yourself 

3:06pm yuuji’s sis (no flirting): NO 3:07pm yuuji’s sis (no flirting): I WAS JUST JOKING 3:07pm yuuji’s sis (no flirting): YOURE SO STRONG TY FOR ALWAYS CARRYING THE GROCERIES INSIDE 3:08pm yuuji’s sis (no flirting): PLEASE KEEP CARRYING MY GROCERIES INSIDE

3:09pm Gojo Satoru: Nah 3:09pm Gojo Satoru: Should we be texting right now? I’m not sensing any emergencies here

3:11pm yuuji’s sis (no flirting): pls. my groceries :(

3:16pm Gojo Satoru: I’ll let the kiddo know you say hi 👋🏼 

The irony of it all was that, if Gojo really wanted to, he absolutely could beat the shit out of someone. And he has, hundreds of times, pseudo professionally. Although that isn’t something he’d admit to you, out of fear that you might relay that info back to your mom who would then become mortified that she’s entrusted her five-year-old son’s life to the hands of an underground boxer. 

But he needed the money. A night-time job didn’t really make daytime money, not when they could easily replace him with the next dude the second he gets knocked out of the ring more than twice, let alone if he let it happen once. And although he sometimes made large sums, it wasn’t stable income. He needed a back-up plan, and so babysitting it was. 

The babysitter working nights at unsanctioned dojos and gyms located in the back of cartel blocks, knocking teeth out of men twice his size, would put any decent mother into a coma or induce some episode of syncope, hence why it wasn’t something he put on his resume before he got hired. Not that he even needed to provide a resume; your mom seemed desperate to cover the position as fast as possible, that promotion at work was moving faster than she wanted to, and Gojo’s beneficial attribute that he possessed as a candidate to look after her son, compared to all the other potential hires, was that he had a penis.

He likes the kid. Yuuji. He’s got kind of a short attention span, and makes Gojo weary of his age. Hold up, that makes him sound like he’s geriatric, he’s really only the ripe old age of twenty-seven, but the immortality and infinite stamina that a five-year-old boy has on him is enough to have him huffing and puffing at the end of every single evening shift he takes on with the rascal. 

Fighting is all sprint, and no stamina. Sure, there might be some more seasoned boxers that might disagree with him, but for someone as young as him in the field, it’s the tactic he’s been forced to gain. If he draws a fight on for too long, he'll get killed by a forty-two year old man with steroids clogging up his adipose tissue and enough  testosterone to grow a full-body beard by the time the sun starts to set. No, his strategy is to knock them out within the first fifteen seconds. Use their weight against them, and whatnot. A tactic he’s found has worked, since he’s been undefeated thus far. 

He can never wrap his head around it. The drug lords that run the rings who’ve gained millions the night before from selling crystal meth only to lose it all the night following in the second Gojo hooklines a solid punch to their betting boxer’s chin, making them see God & their Momma before they tap out (if they’re even able).

He doesn’t pocket much money from it, not anything compared to what the men who bet on him end up making at least, but it’s a decently solid sum. How lucrative it really is depends solely on what he thinks the value of his life is.

It’s not unheard of, boxers dying in the ring. Turns out, rich drug dealers care very little about the sheep they’ve captured to perform their entertaining little stunts. But Gojo wasn’t doing all of this to feel some sense of work-life pride, no, it was just sustenance. When basic needs are not met, humans resort to the most animalistic of all behaviors, and while he’s not proud of what he does, he can’t deny the fact that it’s turned him into an adrenaline junkie that gets a rush in his veins every time he knocks a jaw loose.

But balance was key. And hence why he’s a boxer by night, babysitter by day. For at least four days a week, he gets to pretend he’s the king’s most trusted appointed knight, or he’s the radioactive tyrannosaurus rex that wants to tyrannize all the other dinosaurs, or maybe he’s the evil power ranger (he always forgets which color that one was) that is determined to make the world a living hell by smashing mr. potatohead against the bunk bed post a billion times for all the other toys to see. Or whatever other imaginative hyperfixations Yuuji imposes on him in the later afternoon once he’s had his bowl of spaghetti-O’s and is ready to play. Lately, the kid’s been really into space. They’ve got all sorts of space toys these days. Back in Gojo’s day, he just had a good ol’ Buzz Lightyear.

“One rule, that’s it: don’t accidentally kill my son. Actually, one more rule. Don’t flirt with my daughter.” 

There’s a part of Gojo that believes your mom kind of knows he’s up to shady shit at night, otherwise why else would she clause for him to not flirt with you if she didn’t read the slight swell to his eye and the healing gash across his cheek as anything other than this boy is trouble and I want him nowhere near my too-good-for-him daughter of reproductive capacity since that’s the exact tale of how I became a single mother in the first place. Or maybe he inherently looks like he’s up to no good? He’s not sure which angle is more offensive, and which one was more flattering. Well in any case, she entrusted Yuuji’s life to him, despite acknowledging the plausibility of harm, and that means she overall thinks positively of him, right? ……right?

The first night he met you, it was awkward to say the least. Gojo spends most of his nights performing deadly stunts for middle aged men with potbellies, and most of his days hanging out with a five-year-old (one who he’d argue is his only friend at this point). Sure, he’s got some people he sees occasionally back in his high school hometown when he can brave hearing about how everyone’s in college now or doing a masters or they’re working respectable nine-to-five day jobs meanwhile he has to lie to his Pops that he’s been working in insurance for the past two years. Listen, in fairness, he probably makes the same amount of money as an insurance broker would anyways, but he can’t exactly own up to the identity of his craft. 

Anyways, the point is, he’s not used to seeing other people his age anymore. There’s the occasional hook-up with girls he hasn’t seen since Mrs. Tracy’s homeroom period back in sweet two-thousand-sixteen, or his twice-a-year hangout with Suguru where he only learns the day of where he's visiting from since the guy moves around more than Gojo can keep up with. But save for that, he mostly just sees your mom and then Yuuji. 

So seeing you standing in the kitchen for the first time when he went to put Yuuji’s half-finished GoGurt back in the fridge was startling to say the least. When the sight of a woman startled him, he knew he needed to start getting out again.

You were on your tiptoes, reaching up to grab at something over the fridge, and wearing these ridiculously short shorts to where he could see the curve of your ass, his line of sight trailing down the skin of your bare legs. He couldn’t see anything of your form above your shorts, given you were wearing an extremely baggy t-shirt with NYU on it in big bolded university letters. As far as he knew, you were a senior at NYU, studying psychology, made dean’s list consecutively for the past three years given the way your mother posted all your stellar transcripts up on the fridge (he gets that she’s proud of her daughter, but doesn’t that kind of stuff usually end in grade school?) But other than that, it was all the information he had on you.

“Here,” he said, pressing his front to your back, maybe just to get a feel, as he reached over to you to finally grab the box of cereal you were swatting for, the one that he purposefully placed at the back because Yuuji learned how to climb counters recently. “Is this what you want?”

He had heard you gasp, spinning around on your heel fast, staring up at him with wide eyes like you weren’t expecting some random man to be in the house right now, and your first instinct ended up being to grab the knife out of the kitchen knife block and lunge it straight at his torso.

If it wasn’t for his boxer reflexes, he’d have ended up at the ER that evening. Or dead. All depending on the strength you could pack into a stab. But instead, he deflected it, though not without a gash to his torso through the fabric of his shirt, one that you spent the rest of the evening profusely apologizing for and eventually mending to with cotton balls and neosporin. 

“I didn’t know you were my little brother’s babysitter,” you mumbled with a small wince on your face as you dabbed ointment on the wound while he pulled the hem of his shirt up to his shoulder. He’s never had an injury tended to before. It was nice.

“It’s fine, I get it, totally acceptable response to seeing a random dude in your house.”

He remembers the curl of your eyelashes while you stared down at his bare upper half, something he imprinted on his memory rather than the concern in your face as your fingertips traced the scars across his chest. He hoped they made you feel better about the one you just slashed into him, because after all, what was one more? 

He knows he shouldn’t have, but he kissed you that night. Two minutes before your mom came home, and right after you bid him goodnight with one more apology, he backed you up against the door of your bedroom, his hands on your hips pulling you towards him, and his lips pressed against yours. Something seamless, from candid conversation that was heading towards an end, to full fledged making out against white-painted wood, his teeth nipping at your lip and he wondered just how touch-starved those university boys were leaving you given the desperate way you’d clinged to his shirt for dear life as he deepened the kiss.

The moment only lasted one minute and fifty-seven seconds, and in the remaining three, your mother’s key pushed into the front door and he had to pull away. Always, on the dot, 10PM, she was home. It was how he knew he had two minutes left to make a move in the first place.

So much for no flirting.

6:57pm Gojo Satoru: Bahahah I accidentally forgot where yuuji’s epipen is 6:58pm Gojo Satoru: [sent a photo] 6:59pm Gojo Satoru: Turns out this can-o-soup was just covering it in the cabinet

7:01pm yuuji’s sis (no flirting): ??? why did you need to find his epipen

7:08pm Gojo Satoru: Oh he accidentally took a bite of my pad thai 7:09pm Gojo Satoru: I freaked cuz I thought it had peanuts in it but I remember I asked for it without any  7:09pm Gojo Satoru: shit’s crazy

7:10pm yuuji’s sis (no flirting): WHY THE FUCK DIDNT YOU TEXT ME????????

7:12pm Gojo Satoru: YOU SAID YOU DIDNT WANT ME TEXTING YOU UNLESS IT WAS AN EMERGENCY ?

7:13pm yuuji’s sis (no flirting): SATORU YOU THOGHT HE ATE SOMETHING W PEANUTS IN IT AND YOU FORGOT WHERE HIS EPIPEN WAS THATSS A FUCKIGN EMERGENCY

7:15pm Gojo Satoru: THE KID IS DOING FINE HES ALIVE JESUS LEAVE ME ALONE 7:16pm Gojo Satoru: [sent a photo] 7:16pm Gojo Satoru: See. he’s chill 7:17pm Gojo Satoru: with intact airways might I add 7:18pm Gojo Satoru: Also isn’t he a little too old to still be watching baby sensory videos?

7:20pm yuuji’s sis (no flirting): yeah my mom thinks he has adhd :(

7:22pm Gojo Satoru: oh

He tried to keep his word though (although he doesn’t recall ever giving it) out of the respect he had for your mom. She was a hard-working lady, single mom of two who went from working three jobs to now being a major administrator at a big law firm near the outskirts of town. It was an underdog story if he’d ever heard one, and he loved an underdog story. 

But a little texting here and there wouldn’t hurt, right? Or so he thought, until you told him to cut it out with the contact. Maybe you were just trying to be the good one in this situation. After all, hooking up with your little brother’s babysitter? That sounds more like a bad porno than a sensible decision. Still, he’ll eventually get your replies to his which shirt should Yuuji wear to the park? and look, the toothfairy gave him the butt of a joint and a couple thumbtacks for his front tooth. he’s ecstatic texts, although in a less timely manner than before when you weren’t trying to preserve propriety. And when you’d occasionally visit every other weekend, he’d do his best to keep his hands in his pockets, and you’d fill up your nights with hangouts with your hometown friends to avoid spending too much time with him at the house. A silent agreement to not fuck each other, it was. 

4:55pm yuuji’s sis (no flirting): send pic of yuuji pls i miss him :(

5:04pm Gojo Satoru: [sent a photo]

5:08pm yuuji’s sis (no flirting): IS THAT BLOOD?!?!?!?!

5:09pm Gojo Satoru: chillllllll it’s fake. We’re working on his halloween costume

5:09pm yuuji’s sis (no flirting): WHY DOES IT HAVE BLOOD?!?!?!?!?!?

5:10pm Gojo Satoru: He wants to be a baby xenomorph and I'm his parasitic host. You know that iconic chestburster scene from the old school alien movies? yeah

5:12pm yuuji’s sis (no flirting): satoru please for the love of god just dress him up as a dinosaur or something

5:13pm Gojo Satoru: I’m not the one that came up with the idea, okay? It was him

5:14pm yuuji’s sis (no flirting): because you let him watch adult swim with you before putting him to bed. you’ve deranged his brain.

5:14pm Gojo Satoru: He needs it. Builds character.

Gojo was living a double life, and if someone asked him, he’d say it was less of a Clark Kent way and more of a Bruce Wayne way, although in reality, he knows it’s close to neither. He’s no superhero with a concealed identity fighting crime, he’s a con artist that’s tricked a hard-working woman into hiring him just because he’s trying to save up enough money to get the fuck out of this godforsaken town, given he’s not knocked dead before then for the crime’s amusement.

But Yuuji looks up to him now. And Gojo’s grown attached to him too. He taught the kid how to tie his own shoes and piss inside the actual toilet like a real man. And that kid’s the only thing that’s made him question any of this. Maybe that’s what dads feel, suddenly held to all this impossible responsibility and the pressure to stop doing stupid shit so that you’ll stick around to see your kids get older. The thought that there are eyes on you now, eyes that are innocent and hopeful and learning, and because they know nothing at all, you feel the responsibility to protect them from everything. For fucks sake, remind him to never become a dad. 

“Do you like my sister?” Yuuji had asked him out of nowhere one afternoon after he just got home from preschool, stacking a blue cube over a yellow one at the dining table.

“Uhh,” Gojo starts. He wondered if your mom had put a wire on the kid, so his answer was as diplomatic as he could manage. “Yeah, she’s cool. You’ve got a cool sister.”

“But. But.” Yuuji stutters, trying to find his big boy words. He stretches up higher to reach the top of his stack of blocks, but he only has so much arm real estate at the age of five. “Do you like her like you wanna kiss her?”

Gojo grabs the block from the kid’s hand, for a moment questioning Yuuji’s decision to want to put a blue block over another blue block, but he figures aesthetics are the least of a kid’s concern, and so he places the block where Yuuji wanted it. 

Why does the kid know what kissing is anyway? Do kids know that kind of stuff at that age? Isn’t a kiss to a five-year-old just something their mom gives to them before they head off to preschool for the day? And not something that happens between adult men and women? Maybe he should stop watching that adult swim in front of him.

“No. I don’t want to kiss your sister,” he says, again, because he is suspicious of a wire. It was a lie and then some, because he wants to do a lot more than just kiss you.

Gojo lifts the RedBull he was nursing up to his lips and watches Yuuji in the corner of his eye as the kid stares at his growing stack of blocks with a concentrated expression on his face, his chubby fingers squeezing tightly into little round dimpled balls, like he’s putting together all his tiny brain cells together to form another coherent thought before turning to face Gojo on the chair.

“It’s ok. You can kiss her if you wan’ed to. You can marry her too,” Yuuji says.

Gojo almost spits out his RedBull. He barely manages to swallow it, a broken cough immediately leaving his throat when some of the liquid goes down the wrong pipe and he’s smacking a fist against his chest to knock the sanity back into himself.

“Where the fu—…where the flip did that come from?” he asks, blinking back tears from the rasp in his throat.

Yuuji’s small shoulders sulk as he sits back on his heels. “I want a papa.”

Oh fuck that hurt. Jesus christ, there was nothing more sad than that. Yuuji has literally never known what it’s like to have a dad, since his had left before he was even born. Gojo’s not really close to his old man by any means, but he had still been a fatherly figure in some pivotal moments when he had needed it growing up. Kids need their dads. And he’s seen enough people lose their way without one to know that the value of them is really underestimated.

He’s also kind of shocked that Yuuji really did think of you as his motherly figure. Maybe since it had always just been him and his dad, Gojo learned how to self sustain from a young age, and he and his dad became accustomed to just looking after their own interests to avoid the headache of tending to one another. My land is my land, and your land is yours, and there was the occasional Saturday night spent together with his dad’s millions of beer bottles emptied dry on the carpet in front of the 1992 box TV as the two shared a greasy pizza from the place down the street. That was the extent of family solidarity that he knew.

But he can’t imagine being barely eighteen and having to take care of your little brother all by yourself because your mom was too busy trying to put food on the table and was too poor to hire a babysitter. Your mom tried so damn hard to keep you away from the single teenage mother life, but somehow ended up giving it to you by proxy in the end anyway. It was no wonder you wanted space now that Yuuji’s a little older and your mom can afford a babysitter. No matter how much you might love your sibling, being their effective guardian out of pure necessity had to have taken a toll.

Gojo clears his throat before he speaks. “Buddy. If I married your sister, we’d be brothers. I wouldn’t be your dad.” 

Yuuji’s eyes light up at the word brother. “Brothers? Me and you?”

“Yeah. Bros.”

The kid giggles, all bubbly with cheeks rounding fully and eyes sparkling. Gojo reaches out to ruffle at his hair before Yuuji gets down onto one stubby leg at a time from the chair then bolts towards the kitchen.

“Juice!!” he yells somewhere around the corner out of sight.

Gojo sighs, staring at all the toys he pulled out for Yuuji to play with, all left in a scattered mess across the table. He gets up out of his chair and heads towards the fridge. “Yeah, yeah. I’ll get you your juice, you little demon.”

The conclusion he comes to, and it might read like an obvious one, is that kids don’t really know the reality of life, hence why adults hide so much from them. 

This is what he thinks of tonight when he wraps his worn out boxing tape around his hands and his wrist, tightening it with his teeth, and he can smell the sweat and grime from them. The back of the underground gym had an old dated locker room, and as Gojo stretches his neck side to side while sitting on the stiff metal bench, he eyes the peeling red paint of the locker in front of him, blurring vision making it look like spilt blood. 

His phone pings with a text. He shuffles inside his duffle bag to look for it while his other hand scratches at his bare chest.

1:07am yuuji’s sis (no flirting): hhhhhhhhhiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii 1:07am yuuji’s sis (no flirting): omgomgomg sor y i’m 

He blinks at the screen, confusion flashing across his face. He types one letter, but then he sees three dots and a speech text bubble in the bottom left, so he waits for you.

1:09am yuuji’s sis (no flirting): i drunk :(

The corner of his mouth ticks up slightly. 

1:09am Gojo Satoru: Yeah I can tell

1:10am yuuji’s sis (no flirting): at a apartyyyy

His eyebrows raise slightly, the thought of you tipsy on some frat party couch flashing through his mind, yet of all things you could be doing at that frat party, you’re texting him? Must be a really boring party.

1:11am yuuji’s sis (no flirting): whyyy are you aawake?

1:12am Gojo Satoru: Couldn’t sleep 1:12am Gojo Satoru: Don’t you have a midterm in the morning?

1:14am yuuji’s sis (no flirting): wtf hwo do you knwo that

1:15am Gojo Satoru: Your mom keeps your schedule posted on the fridge

1:15am yuuji’s sister (no flirting): im so fucked;’;(((

He snorts. He’s got a bit more life experience than you, five-ish years to be exact, more than enough time to master the no-hangover hangout, but just before he can offer you some advice, he sees another text from you. 

1:16am yuuji’s sister (no flirting): can i tell u smething 

His gaze flits up to the ceiling briefly, and he hears commotion outside the thick walls of the locker room. The previous fight was over, and fast. The guy must’ve been knocked out in under twenty seconds tops, which means that Gojo was next up against whatever superbeast just beat him up. 

1:17am Gojo Satoru: Sure

He stands up, placing his phone down on the bench before he flexes the muscles in his arms a couple times to get the blood flowing into them. And there’s the noise of another ping. Actually, four.

1:14am yuuji’s sis (no flirting): sonetimes 1:14am yuuji’s sis (no flirting): i thikn of  1:14am yuuji’s sis (no flirting): when u kisse me 1:14am yuuji’s sis (no flirting): *kissed me

His eyes widen slightly, irises dry to the ashy cigarette smoke from outside lingering in the air, and his heart rate picks up a bit. An adrenaline junkie with close to no fear in his veins due to the way his amygdala’s been fried to a crisp from years of boxing, yet he’s got his breath hitched from the memory of your soft lips against his. It makes the blood rushing through the muscles of his arms rush somewhere down south instead.

Loud banging on the door of the locker room jolts him out of his trance, and he’s stiff around the edges once more.

“Satoru! You’re up, man,” he hears Danny, the fight coordinator, yell at him from the other side of the heavy & poorly-installed steel door.

Gojo sighs, glancing down at the texts on his phone. To respond, or not to respond. You’re off your face, clearly chatty from the alcohol, and he knows for certain you’ll regret every life decision you’ve ever made once you wake up in the morning and see the self sabotaging behaviors you’ve engaged in tonight. He knows that responding to you might put you at ease rather than straight up ignoring you, but the feeling will pass, and he has a match to win with no more room left to stall.

He makes his way out the locker room, pushing past the crowded halls of people underneath dim flashing club lighting, some dudes angrily jerking to face him when he pushes past them with a stiff shoulder, only for their eyes to widen when they see just exactly who pushed them. 

There’s strippers in the ring, doing some routine for pre-match, and Gojo narrows his eyes at the man he sees laying back over the rubber boundary rope, head tipped back up to the ceiling with a wicked grin on his face. So that was his opponent? He’s never seen the guy before. Was he from a different district? Different district talent was tough, you had no background info on them, while they’ve been preparing to be here for weeks. Hence why boxers tend to do better when they visit a different district than they do in their own. There have been rules made to limit these types of fights, mostly over outrage that it was unfair to bid on them, but they were also usually more entertaining to watch. Gojo’s got a sick feeling to his stomach as the strippers clear the ring.

“Hey,” Gojo calls out, grabbing Danny by the back of his collar and dragging him towards him and away from the girls stepping down onto the floor, “what’s in for this fight?”

Danny glances up at the ceiling. “Tarp’s bettin’ tonight, so it can’t be anything less than ten grand for you. I’d say tops fifteen?”

Gojo narrows his eyes further, then glances off into the ring again. The man stands up, and Gojo gets a better look on his face. He’s got short hair, neon green in color with a dark fade underneath and tattoos all over his face. But those eyes. They were freakishingly red, and it made him uneasy. He knows the type. The type of boxers that do this to genuinely hurt people for thrill. Make no mistake, Gojo understands he’s made himself out to be like that too, gaining some kind of rush out of this profession, but this type of fighter was different. The type to literally continue smashing a dude’s face into the floor until they’re a bloody mess even minutes after the winning call, and no referee to stop it because that’s the kind of action the spectators wanted.

Danny reads his line of sight. “That’s Gale. Newton’s new boxing toy. Came outta nowhere about a month ago. He’s undefeated so far in his district, and Newton specifically wanted to see you up against him tonight,” Danny tells Gojo, resting his elbow up on his bare shoulder. “Chances are he’ll compete with Tarp for final bid if you win this one. I’m talking twenty-five grand in the next if you can knock him out in this.”

“Uh-huh,” Gojo acknowledges, rolling his shoulder so Danny’s elbow falls from it. Forget the money, he just wants to make it out of this alive.

He sets his foot up on the square, ducking through the dividing boundary straps and the tacky caution construction tape that the gym thinks creates an exciting ambience. He hears the static of the speakers as the announcers call out Gojo’s name, then this other guy, loud bass club music booming through Gojo’s chest as he tries to take a few deep breaths through the thick air of this low-ceiling arena. 

The dim overhead lights flickered, casting shadows over the makeshift ring, and the crowd pressed tight around at every perimeter area, yelling and pushing, one even tosses a beer bottle on the square and it shatters, spreading glass all across, a few shards reaching Gojo’s feet and he looks down at them with a shudder. A fight immediately breaks out in the crowd over something related or possibly entirely unrelated, and he’d have no way of knowing as he swipes the shards away with his heel.

The influential men always sat up on higher seating, off towards the back in their own VIP section where they suck in the smoke of fat cigarettes and peer through 100% tinted sunglasses to assess the boxers they’ve bid thousands on. The light reflects off the golden grills of their teeth with every snarl at any passerby that gets too close, like a lion in its den. That’s what the sanction was called. Lion’s den.

Gojo sighed, eyeing the twisted grin of this Gale guy across from him. Was that his real name? Usually, foreign district guys get nicknames. Gojo’s always thought the nicknames were tacky, and he’s accumulated some of his own over the years, but to his ears, none of them ever really landed, although The White Fox admittedly was kinda nice. Reminded him of throwback shooting games. 

He sucked a breath in through his teeth, holding his hands up in front of his chest in weak fists, storing energy in them in the form of pure anticipation alone, and then the bell rang.

His opponent lunged towards him immediately, fists flying in a barrage of reckless strikes, and Gojo’s eyes momentarily widened in the briefest moments of hesitation he had been allowed before ducking and dodging every one of this guy's shots, then jumping a step back to create distance.

Fuck. He was fast. Not just boxer fast, athlete fast. There was a difference. And it wasn’t a good one to be up against.

Gojo picked up light on his feet. He couldn’t win this one fast, that much was certain. One single careless or reckless move, and he’ll get tackled. He knows that by the malicious look he sees on that guy’s face, grin wide like he’s some cannibalistic beast. 

Stepping back towards the center, Gojo purposefully set himself up for Gale to swipe a vicious hook towards his head, before Gojo last minute ducked down, crouched to the floor, and swung his leg out to knock the guy off balance by his ankles, and he falls onto his back with a loud thud!

There’s a moment of momentary silence from the crowd, right before Gojo put the man in a torso-lock, twisting him in a way a human body should absolutely not be twisted, hearing the grunts of pain and the crack of spine even through the shouts of the crowd.

He can hear it. Kill him! Knock his fucking teeth out! Snap his neck like a goose, man! FIN-ISH HIM! FIN-ISH HIM! FIN-ISH HIM!

He feels like throwing up. 

Gojo looks up at the referee, who wasn’t really a referee, just there to run the clock when there was action and only barely stop it before near death. “This is enough, right?” he asks.

The referee nods. “1-0, next round.”

Gojo lets go of his opponent, leaving him there to heave for a moment before he gets up onto his feet again. Just needs one more, and he’s a winner. Ten grand in his pocket, and he won’t have to come back here for a couple weeks.

Gale gets up, swiping at the spit that had trickled out the corner of his mouth down to his chin, and he had an enraged look on his face. The second the bell rang for the second round, he exploded forward towards Gojo with even more fervor than before, gritted expression with a thirst for violence fueling the storm of punches he was throwing towards Gojo but he tried to remain calm, light on his feet, swiftly duck and avoid before he can find another opportunity to clear a sharp, clean jab right to the ribs—

sometimes, i think of when you kissed me

Gojo misses his strike, leaving his guard wide open, and Gale takes the opportunity to land a solid punch straight to his jaw, sending his mouth guard flying straight out of his mouth into the air, and knocking him backwards onto the ground with a thud and then he finds himself staring up at the rusting metal ceiling and a ringing in his ears that almost matches the roar of the crowd.

His head is in a haze, dizzy like where one second could feel like a millennia. He feels a soreness underneath his chin, a pain that radiates to his mouth, and he briefly swipes his tongue over his front teeth to make sure he still has all of them. 

What the fuck was that? That intrusive thought. There’s no intrusive thoughts allowed in life or death situations, not when he was always just one smash to the head away from a permanent concussion. But, fuck, he can’t help it. Can’t help thinking of you. Even when his vision has gone blurry and he should really be weary about what happens next in this ring, his mind’s just thinking about you, at some frat party, tipping back shots of tequila and waiting for a text-back in response to your tipsy ones. Were you even waiting up on him? Have you already passed out on the couch, or were your friends dragging you back to your dorm? Or are you fucking some other dude right now? Has he got his hand up your top, squeezing at you, sleazily feeling you up before spilling beer all down your shirt, and are you kissing him back with the same enthusiasm, your phone now somewhere long slipped between the cushions of the couch and out of sight?

Even though it’s still sore, he tenses his jaw. Grinds his teeth, even. Tasting blood somewhere along the line of his gums, he realizes his lip is split. He licks at it, the flavor of copper more rich on his tongue, and he clenches his fists tightly. Why’s he thinking of that right now? It just pisses him off, the thought of you with some other dude. Maybe that’s what he needs to win this fight. Spite. Although he’s not sure why the guy across from him at the ring has to pay for it.

He lifts his head up off the ground, and while it felt like years he had been down, a glance at the timer tells him it’s only been a solid four seconds. A solid four seconds that his opponent had to fully charge a lunge towards him with the look of death in his face, raising his elbow up into the air in time with his leap, ready to come straight down, and Gojo’s eyes widen at the sight above him from where he’s still lying on the wood.

“Shit—” he cusses, rolling his body over to the side so that the dude falls straight down onto the floor rather than elbow Gojo in the fucking ribs, and then he gets back up on his feet. 

Stakes were high, he has to end this, he has to end this now, and he flexes the muscle in his right bicep, channeling everything he has into this one blow, and before Gale even really has a chance to turn around and face him again, Gojo’s already three-fourths set up a knockout undercut that he drives straight up the guy’s chin, with so much force it has him lifting up off the floor, a vertebrate stretch to his spine before he’s sent flying backwards and slammed against the tight rubber lining of the ring to where he was half hanging over it.

The room fell silent for a split second, then erupted in a roar as the referee fell to one knee beside Gale, checking him for any semblance of consciousness, and when he found none, he waves the match off. 

Gojo’s eyes flit up towards the lion’s den, the only opinions that he really needed to care about were sitting in those mahogany chairs with glasses of scotch swirling around in their hands, and he sees some of them looking straight at Gojo before leaning towards one another and discretely talking about something he can’t make out because he doesn’t know how to read lips.

He feels someone tug at his arms from behind, pulling him to crouch down and he balances back on the balls of his feet. He glances down through the ring at the floor. Danny was leaning against the wooden surface of it. “Dude. Go.” He jerks his head towards Gale, who still laid there sprawled across the now stretched out rubber perimeter bands. “Go fuck him up. Knock a few more teeth out, I don’t know, get some more blood out of him.”

“What?” Gojo huffs, yanking his arm away from Danny’s grip. “The fuck are you saying?”

“I told you, man, Newton’s here and he’s got his eye on you. Go give him a show,” Danny says, “do it.” And when he sees clear frustration on Gojo’s face he sighs. “Twenty-five grand, consider that, will you?”

Gojo sneers at the man, an awful taste in his mouth as he spits blood towards Danny’s feet. “Go fuck yourself on his cock if he wants a show that bad.” And then he ducks underneath the bands and hops back down onto the floor, pushing past people who were trying to grab at him and pull at him and lift him up and even throw him down until he made it through flashing hallways and back to the locker room.

He shuts the door behind him, sliding the bolt lock into the frame so no one can follow him inside, and then he leans his weight back against the chilling steel before tipping his head back until it hits the surface too.

He lets out of a few deep breaths, then stares down at the sting he finds over his knuckles. Red and blistering from the last punch he delivered, and he’s almost certain he broke a bone in his hand. Fuck. It was bleeding across the cuts, too. He had to figure out a way to get it all healed by tomorrow, as if that was humanly possible, just because he doesn’t want Yuuji questioning him about it.

Yuuji. For fucks sake, when has he ever thought about the kid this much? When has he ever thought about much of anything when he’s out here or in the ring? He’s a babysitter by day. He’s a “part” of your family when the sun is up and normal functioning society is breathing their lives into the clean air. That’s it. He’s no five-year-old’s caretaker in front of all these primetime drug lords, and he certainly shouldn’t be thinking of you when facing big, burly men he’s aiming to rough up, all within the dead hours of night. So then how come these thoughts are on his mind at all times, twenty-four-seven, around the clock?

He heads further into the locker room, glancing down at the bench where he’d left his phone, then picks it up, neck craned all the way down to glance at the screen as he holds his phone by his hip because he doesn’t have any energy to pick it up any further towards his eyesight. 

He sees your messages. You never sent any follow-up ones, just your horrendously typed out sonetimes, i thikn of when u kisse me *kissed me across the span of four texts, and Gojo runs a tired hand down his face.

He tips his head back to groan at the ceiling, guttural with no basis other than a release of all the pent up frustration of every sort, then he types in a couple messages to you,

3:23am Gojo Satoru: That’s nice 3:24am Gojo Satoru: I think about fucking you all the time 

—and then tosses his phone into his duffel bag to call it a night.

⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘

You’re awoken to your alarm blaring heavily, and you whack your arm across your nightstand table beside your tiny twin-size bed to hit the snooze button, then rub your eye with a loose fist while smacking at the residual taste of alcohol you have on your tongue. 

“Mm…” you mumble to yourself. And then the thirst hits you. The overwhelming, intense, unquenchable thirst that leaves your mouth feeling like the Sahara desert before you grab your twice-dented Hydroflask from the nightstand, twist the cap off and chug about twenty ounces of water in one breath. 

You let out a deep exhale and fall back into bed, your hand resting on top of your water-filled tummy, and you stare up at the ceiling of your dorm. 

Last night was horrible. You knew you shouldn’t have gone to that frat party, especially given you have an exam in—you checked the time on your phone—about an hour, and an hour was not enough time to recover from the raging hangover headache that’s pounding through your head. But your roommates insisted you went, and so go you did. You never knew what to expect, always torn between shaving your pussy before you go or throwing on a stained pair of sweatpants to keep the guys away instead. Sometimes, it was a combination of both. But last night, you ended up drinking more than you usually do, and that always led to poor, poor, poor decisions, in which all the sense of pride you had in yourself was washed down with the puke that you hurled into the upstairs toilet. 

You grab at your phone again, briefly seeing that your friends had sent you some photos from the night. You immediately swiped off to the side to dismiss the notifications, because as far as you were concerned, you never wanted to see those photos in your life.

And then, in the briefest of moments, you saw a familiar name in your notifications that made you heart skip a beat.

Gojo Satoru (yuuji’s babysitter)

With an immediate gasp, you pulled your phone to your chest and held it there, blinking up at the pale yellow ceiling, your heart picking up in rhythm.

Oh fuck.

That was right.

You drunk texted him last night.

You drunk texted your little brother’s hot babysitter.

Fuck.

Mortified was an understatement, possibly because you don’t even remember what you said, and so you don’t even want to see what he replied with.

You groan, rubbing both your hands across your face then kick your sheets back with your feet like a child having a temper tantrum because you were so embarrassed you had even texted him at all last night. I mean, he was hot. A little older than you, really gorgeous eyes, tall, and, yeah, you gave him shit for the Instagram muscles thing, but that’s only because you thought he’d find it cheeky that you were trying to humble him despite the fact that he’s more toned and ruggedly sculpted than any other man you’ve ever met. You didn’t want to have a flustered schoolgirl attitude because it would just seep through to his ego.

In any case, he was hot, there was no denying it, so can you really blame yourself? But still. There was collateral with this. You had to see him every other weekend. He knows your family, even your extended since they invited him to Thanksgiving dinner a couple weeks ago. A high-risque drunk text recipient if he ever was one (of course he has been, look at that face). Why couldn’t you have just drunk texted ECON160 guy from last semester who Clit DJ’d you underneath your desk at the back of the lecture hall instead?

The thing that made you nervous about Gojo Satoru was that he was just so…confident? Like, in that I was raised to be this way confident and not that I fought inner demons my whole life to barely end up this way confident, y’know? Never had to fake it ‘til he made it, he just was. At least that was the kind of energy you got from him, and unfortunately for you, it was nerve wracking but enticing all at the same time.

You sigh. “Stupid. Stupid. Stuuuuuupiiiiidddddddddddd. You. Are. So. Stuuuuuupiiiiddddddd,” you sigh, running your hands through your hair to grip at the strands.

You pull your phone away from your chest, and finally brave yourself to read the texts from your notifications screen, but not without blurring your vision a little to further stall. And then you finally refocus it to read them. The first one you see has you gasping—

3:24am Gojo Satoru (yuuji’s babysitter): I think about fucking you all the time 

It has heat spreading across your cheeks, and you blink at your screen, then quickly swipe up to read the previous messages with rushed glides of your index finger on the screen to see that he had sent it to you in response to your barely coherent texts about how you still so often think about that time he randomly pressed you up against the door of your bedroom to kiss you that night you first met him.

I think about fucking you all the time

At 3 in the morning? He decided to send that text at 3 in the fucking morning? That was the devil’s hour. What’s he trying to tell you? 

Oh come on, you’re not stupid. And you know he isn’t either. The sexual tension was palpable, it was there since the day you two met and you almost stabbed him, and also everytime you were visiting the house, and his shoulder brushes against yours when he’s trying to get past you in the kitchen, or when you’ve got Yuuji in your arms and the kid is clinging to Gojo’s sleeve because he wants him near him at all times. There’s even sexual tension over the phone, in those stupid texts he sends you all the time about meaningless child care stuff, and honestly, those little updates made your day.

But… you don’t know much about him, and your mom would kill you if she ever found out you wanted him. And she’d probably pulverize him if she found out he ever made a move on you. Cremated without leaving a trace behind would be an understatement. She thinks he’s no good and she thinks you’re too good. You know she’s warned him before to not get close to you, as if she was pre-emptively expecting him to try to get in your pants like it was some canon force of the universe, hence why he’s probably so fucking awkward around you whenever she’s there too. Like if he accidentally got caught staring at your ankles, your mom would light him on fire, so he’d rather not risk it by just avoiding looking at you at all.

Your mom has always been protective of you. Your father was a deadbeat, one she thought she loved, only to watch him leave. And she had to raise a baby all by herself. He re-entered your lives right before you graduated high school, knocked up your mom again with Yuuji, and guess what? Left again without a trace. To be doubly humiliated by a man is a fate you wouldn’t wish on any woman, but that’s exactly what your mom went through. It was a wake-up call for her, though. No more living paycheck to paycheck like you had been your whole lives up until Yuuji was born. The kid doesn’t even know how lucky he is with everything he has right now. Your mom worked her way up the corporate ladder and made something of herself and now you guys were comfortable, so it was safe to say she had some sort of right to look after her daughter, of whom she simply doesn’t want to follow in the same naive footsteps of her youth.

You get it. She wants to break the generational cycle. But it made being with men tough on all fronts, let alone dating. You could never bring a guy home because he’d never be enough, even if he cured cancer or could make you orgasm while doing a sixty-nine handstand. And while her overbearing paranoia over what you do or where you are or who you’re with has since dimmed slightly since you officially moved out to finish your last year of higher education at NYU, you can still feel her disappointment from a hundred miles away when you’re making out with some random frat guy on his beer-stained couch at eleven AM on a Tuesday.

But you got to college. You’ve already made it this far. You’re on dean’s list. You graduated high school as salutatorian. You’re the most highly decorated cello player in the state. You won Miss County pageant when you were sixteen for your philanthropic efforts towards feline leukemia. You did online community college for three years so you could stick back after high school and help your mom raise Yuuji, which meant that you had to forfeit your scholarship to Cornell. You’ve spent your whole life being good, you just wanna be bad for a little bit.

And if bad meant fucking the hot and mysterious babysitter, then so be it. 

You pick your phone up, begin blasting what the hell by Avril Lavigne on your dorm room bluetooth speaker, then type a message to him that says—

10:34am you: do it then

—then shove your phone under the sheets and belt out the lyrics aaaall my life i’ve been good, but now, ahhhh i’m thinkin’ what the hell!!! while kicking your feet and clutching your pillow.

⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘

Gojo has no clue what divine entity has overcast their gratuitous spirit over him on this blessed Monday afternoon, but he’ll thank them for it later once his balls are empty. 

He’s got you on your back, sprawled across the couch in the living room, the first fuck being a rushed one that you offered him with before he has to go pick Yuuji up from circle time at preschool, which wasn’t ideal, but he’s delirious at the sight of you underneath him right now. Your little NYU shirt, a tighter one this time, bunched up over your bare breasts, otherwise entirely naked other than the flimsy panties dangling at your ankle, and the view of the tip of his cock looking hot and heavy against the velvet of your cunt, slowly pushing in, feeling the warmth of your walls squeeze around him paired with the sweet moan that leaves your lips, makes him fall forward with a bracing hand dug into the cushion by the side of your head because the sensation feels so fucking good he can hardly keep himself upright.

“Fuck, you’re so tight,” he grunts, pushing himself in further to try and bottom out but he’s still got a couple inches he needs you to take, and so you curl your hips upwards towards the cieling to make more room for him, practically putting yourself into a mating press and soon enough he’s balls deep, “you on any birth control?”

“Uh-huh,” you moan, eyes closed and head tipped back with one hand squeezing your own tit.

“I can cum inside then, yeah?” he asks you, pushing your knees to your chest, slowly drawing his hips back and you squirm underneath him.

“Let’s get there first, and then we’ll discuss,” you breathe out.

“I’ve been there for the past ten minutes, baby. I could cum at any second with the way you look and feel,” he informs you flatly, because it was just the truth and you had to know it, then he feels himself twitch inside, slowly working up to a languid rhythm, almost fearfully like your mom’s going to pop out somewhere around the corner with a camera crew ready like one of those retro TV shows just to humiliate him on national television for not keeping it in his pants like she’d told him to. 

“Harder,�� he hears you whisper, and he rolls his eyes shut to just focus on the feeling. The feeling of your nails grazing down the skin of his chest and his abs, tracing the scars he’s collected over the years, and he feels you tightening around him. He leans down to kiss you, fucking you properly now with the squeak of the couch springs echoing across the room, your hums of moans seeping through his lips until he’s fully taking them on with an open-mouthed kiss of sloppy tongue. 

The fact that it was wrong felt right to him, and he realizes in this moment he’s lost all sense of control. He wasn’t just an adrenaline junkie that liked to rough up dudes, he was an adrenaline junkie that wanted to fuck you against all better judgement or moral compass. The way your tits were bouncing, the slap of skin on skin, his balls slapping against your ass while you wrap your legs around him tighter, all convincing him that any consequence made it worth it.

“Good,” he groans the praise, pinning your hands above your head as he rams his hips against yours, your cute moans and squeals sounding like literal music to his ears and he feels heat spread all the way up his neck, “goooood, keep squeezin’ me like that, fuck.” He slows down momentarily, just to take a moment and watch, really look and see the way his length disappears inside of your pretty self with every push forward, and then he works back up to a relentless pace that has you tipping your head back with a slack jaw and eyes closed tightly shut, sprained expression of pleasure spread across.

“Oh, oh my god, Satoru—” you mewled and he felt dizzy from the sound of his name from your softly parted lips.

“Fuck, I’m gonna—” His hand finds it’s way between your legs, calloused pads of his fingers brushing against your clit and you jolt underneath him, gasping as your hand shoots out to dig your nails into his bicep for purchase. “I’m gonna cum, better tell me where you want it.”

“In me,” you moan, “nowhere else.”

He presses his mouth against your cheek in a lazy smile, “Atta girl,” he drawls before pushing your ankles down as far as they’d go near your ears, folding you in half and then reigns all hell into your cunt. He should really care a bit more about your pleasure, but testing your flexibility like this with both his hands holding you down was doing sinful things to his brain, and besides, you had yourself covered with the messy circles you were rubbing over your clit. It was hot to see that too, your nimble pretty fingers so close to the place where he was pounding into you. 

“Oh shit, shit, shit—” he grunts when starts to see blistering white in his vision, balls straining with a pleasure that was almost painful. The moment he finishes feels like hot flashes in his brain, a heat like the cum he begins to paint inside your walls in time with your release, thrusting over and over and over, each one more staggered as he lets off a long, drawn out groan that comes from deep within his chest with the feeling of you milking him dry and the sound of you enjoying every second of it. He can’t remember the last time he came this much or this hard and even after coming down from the high, he feels the remnant pulse of your orgasm around his now half-flaccid dick.

He leisurely pulls out, hearing you let out a soft whimper as he marvels at the sight of his cum slowly dripping out of you and down towards the couch, before he scoops it up with a couple fingers and pushes it back inside. You grip his wrist tightly, but you weren’t stopping it, that motion of him plunging it all back into you.

“Want a taste?” he asks, casually.

“Mhm,” you nod, face looking flush.

He pulls his fingers out of you, coated with sex, then plugs your pussy with the fingers of his other hand because he kinda likes the idea of you walking around all day with him inside of you, so he doesn’t want it getting out. He’s then pushing his other fingers past your lips, pleased to find he’s met with not even so much as a grazing of teeth, and he grins, “bet you take a dick in your mouth as good as you take it down here.”

Your furrow your brows at him, the pout of your lips seen in the way they were puckered to lick his fingers off clean, and when you release the suction with a smack of your tongue and his fingers were wet from your saliva now, his eyes narrow with desire. You push his face away with the heel of your palm to his forehead. “Flattery won’t make me suck your dick.”

“Alright. So? How is it?” he jerks his chin towards your face, pushing against your hand with his forehead until he’s hovering over you again, “taste good?”

“It’s cum, Satoru.”

He shrugs. “Bad?”

“No,” you say, and you can’t make eye contact, “good.” You sigh. “Hot. I don’t know. Salty, sweet. I’m the sweet. You’re the salty. And this conversation is obscene.”

He kisses you, capturing your lips softly, tongue darting out to taste what’s on yours. “I like it that way. Dirty. Nasty. Obscene, whatever.”

There’s the slam of a car door heard from the driveway, and the two of you instantly make eye contact with round eyes.

“Sa—” you stutter, “Satoru.”

He gets up off the couch in a panic, and heads to the window of the living room fully butt-ass naked, then peers through the blinds to see—

Your mom was making it up towards the front door, rustling with her keys in her purse. And the last thing he sees before he turns around to face you is her pushing the keys through the lock.

“Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit,” he cusses, finding his boxers off of the floor, hopping on one foot with his cum & slick coated dick flapping around and slapping against his thighs unceremoniously as he tries to get one leg in through them and then the other. You’re trembling as you hook your panties back into place, pull your shirt back down your torso, and even in his extremely panicked state, he’s still sad he can’t freely stare at your tits anymore. You’re rummaging for your skirt in a haste, looking everywhere for it, and he finds it underneath the coffee table before tossing it to you and then he side-to-side hops towards the coat closet while he pulls his sweatpants up over his ass, in time for you to quickly run and shut the door of the closet closed just before the front door of the house swings open.

The inside of the coat closet is dark, barely enough space in there for a six-foot-four two-hundred-and-twenty pound man, but it’s better than being balls deep inside his boss’s daughter on the couch when said boss just came home from work.

He hears conversation on the other side of the door, albeit muffled, and he presses his ear to it to hear better while he tucks his dick into his boxers from where it was hanging over the waistline.

“Mom! You…you’re home so early,” he hears you squeak out.

“Yes,” your mom says, “The rest of my meetings today are online, so I figured I’d come home when there’s less traffic.”

Gojo feels you lean against the coat closet door.

“I see, I see, how was your day at work?” you ask with a tremble in your voice.

“Fine.” And then nothing. The silence could mean that was all she had to say, since your mom wasn’t really a woman of many words, or it could be a silence that means she’s suspicious about something. “Darling, why is your skirt flipped up and tucked into your panties? Your whole butt is showing.”

Through the wood of the door, he hears you softly gasp. “Oh, um, I just went to pee. Must’ve—…must’ve got caught when I pulled it back up.” 

“I see,” your mother says, and Gojo can hear her dropping her heels down near the shoe rack at the entrance. “You know, I really don’t like those short skirts you wear often. Maybe it’s just your generation, but I think it looks tacky and cheap.”

“Mom,” you say, in as stern of a voice as you can manage without sounding embarrassed.

Your mother sighs. “In any case, where is Satoru? I still would like him to go pick up Yuuji. I don’t have the patience to sit in preschool & daycare traffic right now.”

“Oh gosh, I don’t know,” you chirp, and then he hears you let out a small oh no before you lean even more weight against the door, this time somewhere lower, and he realizes you’re pressing your ass against it. His eyes narrow with a small frown, and then he realizes— his cum must still be trickling down your thighs. You couldn’t put your panties on fast enough. 

Shit. That’s hot. A little fucked up, but hot. He feels his dick harden against the fabric of his boxers, and he rests his forehead against the door, fringe stuck to his forehead with sweat as he slips his hands down his sweatpants and then gives his cock a firm squeeze. The thought of you discretely swiping his cum up your inner thigh and smearing it against your thin panties so your mom doesn’t catch sight of it dripping down your legs has him slowly working up to a rock-solid erection, and he almost lets out a broken grunt from the feeling.

“What?” your mother says, “what do you mean you don’t know?”

“I’ve just been watching TV this whole time,” you say, “last time I saw him…he was…um, in the backyard pulling weeds?”

He lets out a small scoff through his nose at your cover-up. Cute. And not bad. 

Your mother sighs loudly, and he glances down at the strained veins on his dick as he tugs it through his hand, the tip rearing and appearing flushed and dripping with precum. God, you were just on the other side of this door. Less than a few inches away, and he’d be inside of you. 

“I’m going to take a shower. Go find him and tell him to pick up Yuuji soon. But before then, change into something less revealing,” your mother says in a more or less detached tone, and he can hear the stomps of her footsteps up the stairs from above him in the coat closet.

The two of you wait at least a solid minute, and just when the coast is clear, he hears you turn the knob of the coat closet and slowly crack it open.

“Okay, I think she’s in the shower, I hear the water running,” you whisper at him, “you can go now—” You glance down towards his groin, your jaw dropping. “What—…Satoru, why the fuck is your dick staring at me right now?!” you whisper-hiss at him.

He pulls you into the coat closet, pushing your front against the door to where it clicks shut, and you gasp when his hands pin your wrists crossed behind your back and his dick presses into the plush of your ass.

“You talkin’ to your mom while your pussy’s stuffed full of my cum was the single hottest thing that’s ever grazed my lizard brain,” he tells you, flipping your skirt up and hooking your panties to the side, his index finger briefly brushing against your entrance to find it still leaking from the way your walls were pulsating from his words. And then he aligns his tip to your entrance. “Now keep quiet while I do this, ‘kay?”

“Oh—” you gasp, your cheek pressed against the door as you arch your back and push your ass out for him, “okay—” you say, barely vocalizing the first syllable before he’s already stuffing himself inside of you with one solid glide of a push, making you yelp loudly and he has to instantly cup a hand over your mouth.

“Shhhhhh,” he hisses at you, immediately starting to pound you from behind, “told you to— fuuuck,” he catches sight of his length covered with a mix of your glassy arousal and his white cum, now starting to cream at the base of his cock, “jesus christ—” he breathes out, squeezing the flesh of your ass harshly with his other hand and you let out another yelp, “I told you to fuckin’ keep quiet.”

“I’m—mff,” you muffle against his palm, “I’m trying but,” your hips move back in time with his, “feels good, feels too good,” you mewl, and his hand desperately yanks up the fabric of your shirt so he can squeeze at your breast.

“Yeah?” he grunts, hypocritical for telling you to keep it down when he was slamming his hips against your ass with so much fervor he wouldn’t be surprised if the sound was reverberating across the entire house, “you like it when I fuck you while your mom’s all clueless just up the stairs?” His rhythm falters, feeling his release building, and his hand reaches in front of you to rub your clit, making you drop your head against the door with tightly closed eyes. “Gets— you—wet, doesn’t it?” he torments you, his lips near your ear as he slams his hips against you harshly with every enunciated syllable. 

“Mhm, mhm,” you easily agree, or maybe that’s because it’s all you can really articulate, and he angles his hips up so his balls slap more fervently against your clit, making you scream into his palm while he picks up the pace of the circles he draws on your clit and in one, two, three— beats of his pounding heart, he feels you come undone around his cock, gushing wetness leaking out of you, he can feel the mess of fluids splattering on the skin of his thighs due to each of his heaving thrusts as he cusses out a fuuuuuuckkk before spilling his cum inside of you, a short-lived and thicker release this time that has you mewling from overstimulation, and in a few following thrusts, he’s given you everything he had to give.

His eyes open, he wasn’t even aware he had shut them in the first place, and he glances down at where the two of you were joined. Rings of arousal coat the length of his half-pulled-out dick, and the second he retreats all of it, a bulging push of his cum seeps out of you, dripping and pooling all over the hardwood floors.

“Holy shit, I wish I could take a picture of this,” he says, taking a step away to commit the sight to memory, your legs trembling and still slightly spread, ass pushed out and when you wiggle it a little, he lets out a huff of an exhale because he just can’t believe how sexy you are. Are all college girls like this? He’s never been to college, his old man’s been trying to get him to go for years, but maybe this is what finally convinces him.

“No pics,” you breathe out once you catch your breath, standing up straight slowly, “that’s my one sex rule.”

He takes a step closer to you, flipping your skirt back over your ass while you shimmy your shirt down to cover your chest. “That’s the only rule you have? Anything else goes?” he asks.

You spin around to face him, his eyes briefly flitting down to the still exposed skin of your midriff. “I have a feeling I’d be making up more specific rules if it was with you.”

He smiles, his hands grabbing your hips before pressing you up against the door again. “I also had a rule. It was to not fuck you. Wait, no, to not flirt with you. Which, technically, I didn’t do.”

You blink your eyes at him. “You’re kidding, right?”

“What?” he asks, genuinely confused, “I didn’t.”

“Huh—” you scoff, “how do you think we got into this situation in the first place?? You didn’t just say wanna fuck? You were insufferably flirty with me.”

“Nahhh nah nah nah nah, baby, that’s not flirting,” he tells you, thumb running circles over your hips, “that’s, like—…I don’t even fuckin’ know how it worked on you to be honest, I was just being stupid.”

“Oh okay so I’m stupid.”

“I never said you were stupid?”

“Well you said you were being stupid so me falling for it must mean I’m stupid.”

“Pshhh. You’re cute. Pulling weeds, by the way? Adorable.”

Your hand slowly roams up the front of his shirt, the fabric bunching at your wrists until you uncovered up to his collar bone, and you stare at his skin. He tries to not let the way his heart’s beating faster show through the heave of his chest. 

“Why do you have all these scars, anyway?” you whisper to him.   

“Too many girls tryna stab me,” he tells you.

You roll your eyes. “Seriously.” Your thumb traces the one you had left on him. 

“I—” He stops himself.

Does he tell you? Should he tell you? What, just because he’s seen you naked and you took his dick like a queen he’s supposed to open up to you about these things now? He doesn’t know. Maybe he could? Maybe you already suspect what he does at night. And if not, at the very least, I’m an underground boxer might make you think he’s hot? At the very worst, you’ll report him to the cops and he’d get fired as your little brother’s babysitter then thrown into jail, but not before the busted cartel gets him first.

“Maybe I’ll tell you some other time,” he says, his hand wrapping around your wrist and pulling it from his chest, “no hyper personal details until you’ve had my dick in your mouth at least once or twice. That’s my one rule.”

You snort. “I could’ve guessed that rule from a mile away.”

He hums. And then there’s the sound of steps creaking down the stairs above the two of you.

You both make eye contact, eyes widening, internally yelling at each other: how the fuck did we get into this situation twice?!

This time, Gojo opens the door and stumbles out of the closet, leaving you inside of it, just in time for your mom to come down the stairs.

“Satoru. I was looking for you,” she says as she rounds the post. “Have you picked up Yuuji? He has to go for his swimming lessons soon.”

“Ah, nope, was just about to head out,” he says, letting out a cough to diffuse tension, “sorry, I was—” he points his thumb over his shoulder to behind him, “…pulling out some gnarly weeds.”

She narrows her eyes at him. “I see. Well, thanks. If you want, I can add a gardening stipend to your paycheck. Let me know.” And he’s not sure how to respond because he’s not sure if she’s joking. 

He heads out the door, the keys to your mom’s minivan in his palm as he throws them up into the air and catches them a couple times. And just before he gets inside the car, he turns on his heel to face the house and pulls his phone out of his pocket to type in a message for you.

3:22pm Gojo Satoru: Send over those me-specific sex rules soon

.

.

.

[the end]

a/n. hope u enjoyed im shitting bricks posting this bc i haven't posted a oneshot smut since february but thanks so much for reading i appreciate u!! i got way too invested in the whole underground boxer thing 😂😂 but the fact i managed to keep everything under 12k is an accomplishment to me bc if u read my other fics you know i’m a yapper LOL i have another kind of a similarly written smut oneshot n it’s a lil angsty (totally different au tho) i’ll probs post that one next but yea i really like, hmm, i really like exploring entire characters within a short amount of time i enjoy writing the obscure lore drops xd it’s been kinda fun so far anywho much loveee hope to see u around! <3

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[mxmc13]

sometimes I think about how my toxic ex accused me of sending them a video of me h*ng*ng myself and that’s wild to me— like, sure i might’ve recorded a video of me talking after my attempt but I always delete videos of me ranting and shit and I know for golly I would never. Hell, I didn’t text them at ALL during that period of time

[mollusken]

IWTV FINALE 🫶

[gibbearish]

guy who is really mad some people don't like having cake smushed in their faces

guy who is really mad that people smush their friends’ faces into birthday cakes

[just-some-random-blogger]

Tormented Spirit | 4

Part 1 2 3 4 5

"Is it such a sin to stand up for yourself?" you mutter as tears blur your vision. The way he reacted was visceral, instinctive even. "You never have to stand up for yourself ever again," says Daemon, reaching a hand to you, "come."

Daemon Targaryen x Hightower!Reader | 4k+ | cw: fem!reader, reader has brown hair, wife!reader, twin!Gwayne, arranged/forced marriage, canon divergence, alternate universe, slow burn, DD:DNE, daddy issues/child abuse/family problems, mentions/depictions of mental/physical/psychosomatic illness, ye old misogyny, angst, typos, etc.

A/N: ayo i did it again (rambled). i have no idea where i went with this but it really wENT yknow, but hey you get fluff!!!!!. ALSO (im looking at you cristi) if it wasnt clear this is set, like, pre-show T_T just before ep 1 lmao (ily cristi im just going through it with my writing) | cross posted on ao3

tagging: @arabellasleopardcoat

You did not realize being made a spectacle would be as exhausting as it was. Truly, all you did as your prince brought you to the training quarters of the City Watch, was stand, force a smile and feel their gaze upon you as Daemon instructed them to roughhouse for your (but really his) entertainment. Yet, it felt like you had been running nonstop and only now found reprieve.

Perhaps it was because it was really your mind that was running with the thought of how you snubbed your twin. In truth, you knew Gwayne understood your actions, for he was really the only person who understood you, and yet that was precisely why it ate at you so much. How could you do such a thing to your brother?

At some point, Daemon is too distracted by his sparring soldiers to remember you were there. By the time they began to drink, you gave word to one of the guards and made your way back to the Keep yourself.

You head for your brother's chambers, set on setting things straight. You do not find him there however, and your mind begins to wander. Was he avoiding you? Was he cross?

Upon asking one of his servants, you find that he was tasked with duty from the Lord Hand. Part of you feels comforted by the answer, but then you wonder if the task had something to do with you. You try not to think about it as you head back to your own chambers.

You are ripped out of your train of thought when you hear your name called.

Queen Aemma stands across you, hand on her belly, smile on her lips, "have you come to worry on me, good sister?"

Your back straightens and you clasp your hands in front of you, "my queen. I-I-"

"I do hope not," she stretches, leaning back into her hands, "the last thing I want right now is to have yet another person try to tell me what is best for me and my babe."

You shake your head, turning to your feet, "the last thing I would do is impose my inexperience of child bearing upon you."

Aemma's face softens. She's seldom seen someone who looks as though they suffer more than her. "Excellent."

You lift your gaze.

"Come keep me company then and distract me with tales lacking child bearing."

You are taken aback by the invitation and watch the queen slowly waddle back into her quarters. You delay to realize you should be assisting her then promptly rush up to her side. You offer her your arm and she gratefully takes it. She is exhausted by the time you reach her bed.

"Thank you," she sighs, wiping the sweat on her temple.

"Of course," you help her put her feet up. You look over your shoulder momentarily, "have you no one to call to? Shall I call for someone?"

"No," she waves you off, "I merely walked out of the room and looked out of the window for a while. I am fine."

You nod and pull away, fidgeting with your fingers, "is there something I might do for you?"

"Yes," she reaches for your arm, "sit."

So you do.

"And tell me, why on earth did Daemon bring you to the City Watch?"

You freeze upon hearing that.

There is a playful curiosity upon Aemma's features, but you do not think she asks to embarrass you. Still, you open your mouth and begin to stutter, "h-how did you kno-w?"

She chuckles, leaning deeper into her pillow, "oh, my dear," she rubs her belly, "I am privy to all gossip in the Keep. Tis the only activity one such as I can do in my state. Incidentally, had the opposite been true, it is all the servants speak of—" she slowly reaches for you, pushing your hair back.

You are made acutely aware of the marks on your collar again.

"—how the fragile lamb tamed the ferocious dragon."

You chuckle dryly and stare at your lap. You pick at your nails, feeling your throat tighten, "I tame no one, my queen."

As Aemma looks at you, she thinks again she's not laid her eyes upon someone that looks more pained than herself. The sun was already setting, but the marks on your collarbones were still visible. She wonders if you at least enjoyed yourself when you received those marks. "Perhaps not yet."

You chuckle once more.

"He is stubborn and brash, but he is also loyal and passionate."

"Loyal to himself," you turn to her, "with a passion for deviance."

You are unnerved by the sudden call of your name. Your heart races at her misplaced familiarity.

This might be why you blurt out, "I am no fool."

She straightens up, "I did not say you were."

"I know I am feeble in form, but not in mind. I am a mere piece in someone else's game of chess, but every piece has its purpose, even pawns."

Aemma frowns. Her forehead curls, "and pawns can turn into the most powerful piece."

You stare at her belly.

"The Queen."

You do not tell her it is only true in board games.

"Does it frighten you?"

Your eyes quirk up to hers. Her violet orbs are much softer than Daemon's. She does not clarify, but the way in which she rubs her swollen stomach makes it clear to you what she meant. You rub your own as dread pricks through you, "I do not know how it is possible for anyone not to be frightened."

It is her turn to chuckle.

It perturbs you.

"I will not lie to you," she shifts in her spot, "there is no greater pain in the world than becoming a mother, I think..."

It is mortifying to hear, considering you know how many times Queen Aemma has conceived and given birth. How much more painful it must be, as she remains to have one child. You do not think all your years of pain could ever prepare you for such loss.

"... that can be the most gratifying."

You are taken aback when she reaches for your hand. Her palms are soft, just as her expression.

"I do not presume to know you, but I find that whatever pain I have is eclipsed by love I feel for my babe. Still, when the thought of childbirth gets too much, I retreat into something I loved before my babe."

Your brows furrow.

"Tapestries and tea time," she tilts her head, "and Viserys."

You do not know how to feel as she pulls away.

She rubs her forehead, "even speaking is exhausting when you are with child. Forgive me, but I think I would like to go to sleep now."

You shake your head and stand, "there is nothing to be forgiven. I will leave you to your own comforts," you curtsy.

You roam the candlelit halls as you digest the queen's words. You were on your way back to your chambers, then you remember your brother. You promptly head to his room, finding the door open. "Gwayne?"

Emerge two servants carrying a trunk, greeting you before walking off. Your brows furrow as you watch them. You turn back when you hear your name called.

Your twin walks over, still in his doublet and leather shoes. You begin to get nervous, "you're leaving?"

"Preparing to," he says, eyes falling on your collarbones, "there is still the matter of the tourney."

"Tourney?"

"The queen is set to give birth soon— you must not let that man dishonor you so," he quips through clenched teeth, pulling you into his room.

You are dragged inside and he releases you once you're in front of his bed. He grabs his blanket and drapes it on your shoulders. He gathers your hair and pulls it out from underneath, "play dumb if you must."

You knit your brows.

"Bat your lashes at him to have your way."

You tighten the blanket around yourself, "I already have."

"To protect me," he tilts his head, "protect yourself, sister. Put yourself first, always."

You clench your jaw.

"He will be kinder if he believes you to be a bimbo."

You scoff, "must I do such a thing?"

Gwayne narrows his eyes, "he is shaming you purposefully out of spite— for me and our father."

The idea makes you queasy because you knew it was true. Your brother was sensible because he got his sense from you, and yet... is it so farfetched for the prince to simply want to show you off proudly? Even in something like this, you were not even being thought of. "And acting a fool will save me from spite?"

He looks at you the way he did whenever you said something stupid. It offends you because it was not a stupid question. He speaks to you, as if you were four, "if he asks you to wear something compromising again, tell him all your dresses are being washed."

You chuckle dryly, "you honestly think he would believe such a blatant lie?"

"He need not have to," he scoffs, "it's not like he'll go through the trouble of inspecting your closet." He places a hand on your arm, "come. I will walk you to your room."

Something unpleasant bubbles up your throat as Gwayne leads you out. As you exit his chambers, you pull away and choke out, "do you think me a fool, devil?"

He sighs and rolls his eyes, "do not be-"

"Do you truly think that I am slowwitted and senseless?"

Your ears ring because of how says your name. You step back when he tries to take your arm again. Gwayne raises a finger and a brow, "I've had a long day. I do not wish to quarrel."

"And I have not?!" you quip, "answer the question!"

He says your name again, firmer, as though you were a petulant child.

"Just fucking tell me!" you snap.

"Gods!" he wipes his face, "you're acting fucking stupid, I'll tell you that!"

You scoff and shove him with all your might. It barely makes him recoil, but you get your point across, especially when you walk away.

Gwayne sighs and calls your name, following after you.

"I hate you!" you spit back, unwilling to turn back as you feel your eyes begin to water.

"I did not mean it," he calls, quickly coming up to your side, "why would you ask me something you clearly know is not-"

"Then why would you reduce me as such?" you stop in your tracks to glare at him.

Gwayne freezes and scowls back, "why do you think I tell you anything?"

"Stupidity will not save me, you fucking idiot," you blurt back, doing your best to hold back your tears.

"It will fucking save you from scheming rats," he grabs your arms and shakes you gently.

You shake your head as tears stream down your cheek.

"H-"

"Do not make me."

He purses his lips.

"You know I will do it if you tell me to," you mutter, "do not make me."

Guilt eats him whole as you weep. It never gets easier. You'd think that he'd be indifferent to it by now, but he knows the great effort you put in withholding your emotions. It hurts him even more, if anything. He sighs in defeat, dropping his head before wiping your cheeks. He attempts to hush you.

You only further fall apart, "I would be remembered as a stupid, dying girl."

He speaks your name, as if to correct you.

"Please don't leave," you mumble weakly.

"Listen to me-"

"No, promise me you won't le-"

"I am heir to Oldtown," he interrupts, "my place can never be at your side."

"So you forsake me now?"

"Listen," he speaks firmly, "you are my twin sister. There is nothing I have not shared with you, and you know this."

You look down for a moment then shake your head, "I wish you kept a few things to yourself..."

Gwayne releases a breath at your words. He leans down to look you in the eye, "says the woman who bares love bites on her neck for all to see."

You shove him away and tighten your arms around yourself, "ass. That's different."

He rolls his eyes, placing his hands on his hips, "how?"

"I did not chose this," you mutter.

His expression falls. He balls his hands into fists, "I would call our house to banner for you."

You scoff, looking away, "don't be ridiculous."

"An affront to my twin is worse than one to myself," he points a finger to the ground.

"I am his wife," you look back to him.

"And I am a man of honor," he proclaims, "if he kills me, then all will know I died protecting my sister from his malice."

"You idiot," you shake your head at him, "do you think the people would believe the words of a prince or a dead man?"

"A princess."

You stare at him.

"With a tender heart," he takes your arm, leading you off.

You take a moment before responding, "you mean a stupid, dying princess."

"You are not dying," he gives you a serious look.

"We are all dying."

He sighs, "a jolly thought."

"I am dying sooner than you howev-"

"No," he interrupts, "you will outlive me. I will die in battle."

You glare at him, "we cannot both be yearning for death, moron."

"I do not yearn no more than you do," he raises a brow.

You stare at him for a moment. He is in denial. You almost tell him that you still pray the same prayer he caught you praying all those nights ago. You do not.

"You will get better, sister," he says, "I simply won't allow you not to."

You look away, "ever imperious."

His expression slips for a moment as he imagines a world without his twin. It is so grotesque, he cannot bear it. He hides behind humor, "you mean charismatic, dashing, and valiant."

"And stupid."

"And incredibly well-spoken, witty, charming-"

"Shut it."

"-attractive, gallant, seemly—"

You bid each other good night with a smile. Neither of you knew how broken your spirits were after your conversation though, and you never will.

Your head lies heavy on your pillow. You are unsure if you are grateful or resentful that you sleep tonight by yourself.

Meanwhile, Daemon is startled out his sleepiness by the words of his subordinate. He sets his cup of ale down and chuckles in disbelief, narrowing his eyes at one of the three men he had been drinking with, "what?"

The man clarifies, shifting in his seat adjacent his commander, "you've changed since being wed, my prince. For the better."

The prince chuckles yet again, "pray, tell."

Someone else answers for him, "you have been more gracious during drill training."

Daemon's brows quirk.

"And you have been more forgiving as of late," another blurts.

The first who spoke finally says, "you do not drink with us as often as before. This is the first since you've gotten married."

He scoffs and shakes his head, "so. You think I've grown soft?"

The three immediately straighten up and even manage to muster in unison, "no, commander."

Daemon downs his ale and shakes his head, "I'll show you soft."

The next morn, the queen's words repeat in your mind as you awaken. Retreat in what you love. What was it that you loved? You think of Gwayne, but he is set to leave, Alicent, but you do not wish to burden her with your woes... your father...

Oh... your mother. You could retreat in her.

You sit up and rub your face when your servants enter to wake you.

You lose your resolve to light a candle at the temple at when you realized you'd be dying girl retreating to her dead mother. Pathetic.

By the time your servants are helping you fix your hair, you ask them, "if you could do whatever you wanted for a day, what would you do?"

The servants turn to each other then break into giggles. One says, "I would spend a day with my Gwilym."

You watch them in the mirror as they squeal under their breath.

You turn to your nails. You cannot retreat into Daemon.

After they're finished squealing, the other speaks, "mmm. I might go foraging for fruits and flowers."

You lift your head upon hearing that.

"And if I had my pay that day, I'd buy myself some lemon cake."

Your lips part at the idea, "you absolute wit." You turn to her as much as you could as she fixed your hair, "what a brilliant idea."

She chuckles and curtsies, "thank you, milady."

By the time your ward comes, you're already at the door, eager to greet him.

He examines your smile. His brows knit and belly feels uneasy as you take his arm.

You narrow your eyes at his face, doing your best to distinguish who exactly you were face to face with. You forget if it was Arryk with the longer beard or Erryk. You mumble as you make a face, "Erryk?"

"Yes," he nods, feeling stomach rolls, "how are you, my princess?"

You grin, squeezing his steel clad arm as much as you could, "oh, how good of me to get it right. I am glad to have guessed well."

Erryk chuckles under his breath, "you wound me. Am I not set apart in your eyes?"

You stiffen at his expression. You mistake the softness in his eyes for hurt, which is why you release his arm and begin to apologize, "oh, ser. I do not mean to offend, I-"

Erryk raises his hands, "no, my lady. Twas a jest."

Your eyes widen at the clarification. You laugh awkwardly, "ah... apologies."

"Nay," he shakes his head, "I apologize. I do not wish to cause you discomfort."

You huff and give a curt nod, "then," you take his arm again, "I ask that you humor me today, ser Erryk."

His brows furrow. He is intrigued.

"I..." you trail off, gathering your resolve, "wish to go out and pick flowers today." you profess with a soft smile. You raise a finger, "I am not a fussy passenger. I do not mind sitting in front or behind you on horseback, but I fear I do not know how to control a horse on my own very well," you look away in thought, "we do not have to go very far out of King's Landing, so if it is not possible to get a horse, I will not complain if we walk."

Erryk finds himself smiling as you continue to justify yourself.

"I would not take very long to pick flowers, but if I do," you turn back to him, "I would not refute you if you think we must away."

He nods at your words, "have you broken fast yet?"

You both walk off. You shake your head, "I have not. But I will be quick!"

He shakes his head, "my brother mentioned that you do not like eating alone. If it be agreeable with you, we can break fast together."

You stop in your tracks upon hearing this, "ser Arryk mentioned this?"

Erryk simply nods.

The thought pinches your heart, "it... it was a passing comment. I did not think it noteworthy."

His brows knit at your expression, "do not be so surprised. It is our duty to care for you."

Care for you. You turn to your feet, feeling overwhelmed with emotion. It takes a moment for you to comport yourself, but then you manage turn back at him and smile, "how the gods have blessed me."

His gut reacts to your smile. He releases a breath to calm himself, "we can pick flowers after breaking fast, my princess."

You gasp, "so you agree?!"

Erryk face falls in confusion.

"You would allow me to pick flowers?!" you pull away, nearly jumping up and down in excitement.

"I..." his mouth hangs low, "I do not allow you."

You tilt your head, chuckling in confusion.

"If you instructed me to bring you the moon, I would do my best to claim it for you."

You laugh. You laugh because you miss his sincerity, for it is unfamiliar. You laugh because you only know the kindness of your brother, who cherishes you dearly, yet ridicules you in the same breath. This is why you say, "do not mock me, ser. It is not a crime to enjoy picking flowers."

You expect him to reply the way your twin does: 'I did not say it was a crime,' but you are taken aback by the novelty of his response. Erryk says, "the crime lies with whom would mock such a gentle soul."

You are glad he does not wait for you to respond, because you did not know if you had anything to respond with.

Erryk is silent as you eat in the solar. At first, it was because he second guessed his offer to break fast with you, as it felt so obvious that he was overstepping. But then it was because he was enamored by you and the great many tales you share of eating with your family, picking flowers with your siblings, swimming in rivers with your brother. He did not expect such a temperate outpour from you. He tells himself that he must do all he can to preserve it.

He is selfish in wanting to forfeit a horse. He knows soon enough his brother will come to have his shift, and he wants to keep all your stories to himself; walking will make his time with you longer. At the same time, he fears your body might give in if you were to walk very far, so he settles that you ride on horseback and that he lead your horse on foot.

He is glad of his choice, for had he been on horseback with you, he would not have seen the way your face shone at the sight of the meadow upon reaching it. The moment is quickly fleeting however, and he soon jolts to catch you when you nearly leap off the horse.

Erryk helps you down and is soon forgotten as you run off to gather flowers.

He follows after you with no sense of urgency. He allows you to frolic to your hearts content while he slowly leads the horse towards your general direction.

"ERRYK!" you gasp in horror. It is so sudden, he releases his reins and runs towards you.

"My prin-"

"We do not have a basket!" you slap a hand on your forehead, "I am doomed."

He freezes at your words, debating if that is truly the cause of your distress.

"I am doomed to pick flowers only until my hands are full," you sigh and shake your head. You frown at him and point, "but just over there I see a hundred flowers I wish to bring back home with me."

Erryk's forehead curls but then he realizes you were serious. He finds himself chuckling before sighing in relief.

You scowl, "and you mock me again"

He chuckles louder, placing a hand on his breastplate, "I do not mock! I merely find amusement in such an issue so easily solved."

You scoff, "pray, tell how would you solve my issue, ser knows-a-lot?"

Erryk belly laughs. He shakes his head and offers his hand, "I will hold your flowers for you."

Any trace of offense instantly disappears. You perk and step forward, "oh! I have been blind!"

He tries to take the flowers from you but then he's frozen in place as you suddenly begin tucking in his beard.

"Indeed," you snicker, "blind as a bat."

You are both covered in flowers when you return to the Keep, him more than you, for Erryk's skill in securing flowers in people's hair was not nearly as good as yours. Most of what he had put in your brown hair had fallen when you reached the gates. The rest are threatened off by the wind as he helps you down the horse. His on the other hand—

You chuckle, catching a flower that slipped from your head, placing it by Erryk's ear, "they should call you the knight of flowers, ser."

He bows, "I would be honored to be known as such."

"Oh, gods."

You both turn upon hearing the voice.

Gwayne looks at Erryk as though he was stabbed on the side, then turns to you, "you've victimized the poor man."

You roll your eyes.

"-held him captive and tortured him with pretty things," your twin points a finger as he walks towards you, "no wonder you could not be found. You were doing evil things."

You shove your brother, but he dodges.

He makes a face, "laggardly fellow."

You turn to Erryk then point at your brother, "why do you delay? Seize him at once!"

Gwayne gasps, placing a hand on his chest, "behold: the cruel princess."

Your upper lip curls, "the ugly thing insults your lady," you shoot Erryk a look, "apprehend him!"

Erryk watches the two of you bicker, unsure if he should, in fact, apprehend Ser Gwayne.

When he does not, your brother says again, "behold!" the auburn haired man gestures vaguely, "your cruelty inspires no loyalty from you— aw!"

You snatch your his ear and pull him down. You drag your brother all the way to a crate and force him down, "I'll show you cruel."

"Do not think— AW!" Gwayne clutches his cheek when you slap him.

"Silence or your torture will be more severe," you hiss, promptly placing flowers you still had on hand on his head.

Though Gwayne grumbles the whole time, he makes no attempt to save himself from the proclaimed torture. Very truly, he loathed it so when you made a dolly out of him, but after you sobbed so bitterly when he fled you one instance when you were still children, he could never stomach the thought of attempting such a thing again.

And— he catches the way your lips tug upward, you only ever smiled the way you did now when you were torturing him. Still, he cannot help his scowl when you grin at him to behold your work.

You pinch his cheeks, "my lovely twin."

Gwayne groans and swats your hands away, glaring as he stands, "I abhor you, sister."

You giggle and take his arm, "and I do so love deeply, my brother."

"Unhand me," he says flatly.

"You cannot command a princess, you lowly lord," you snuggle into his arm.

Gwayne turns to Erryk, "retrieve your thing."

Erryk opens his mouth, but then catches the look on your face. He is powerless against your pup-like expression. He clears his throat, "my shift has ended, ser. I will notify my brother at once to see what can be done."

Gwayne's jaw drops.

You throw your head back in a laughter.

He scoffs, turning to you, "how uselessly loyal you've made him."

"What is the meaning of this?"

You three turn. You pull away from your brother upon seeing Daemon. He is covered in dirt, and blood, and anger.

He glares at you, "why is it I find you here twice, wife?" He scrutinizes the flowers on Erryk's beard and hair, then quips harshly as he turns to your brother, "should you not be waiting on me?"

"Why do you think I am here?" you mutter, not missing a beat. You walk over to him, and he tries to intimidate you with his expression.

Gwayne and Erryk are ready to act but then Daemon's face falters when you grab your skirt and try to wipe some of the dirt off his face.

The truth, of course, is that you were not waiting on your husband; him finding you here was simply a coincidence, but the genuine concern that clouds your features makes it the lie indistinguishable.

He is so wholly bewildered by your gentle touch, he is unable to react.

You release your skirt and wipe his cheek with your long sleeve, "I shall have a bath drawn for you." You take his hand, "come, I-"

He pulls out of your grasp.

You expect him to lash out on you. He does not.

"I have a council meeting to attend."

A line forms between your brows when catch the blood on his armor, "but you are hurt."

Daemon is stoic. He stares at the lone flower by your ear, "it is not mine."

You release a soft breath and nod. A gust of wind makes you aware of the bud by your temple. You pull the flower out of your hair and stare at it for a moment. You show it to Daemon, who spares but a moment's glance at it. He involuntarily pulls his head back when you place the flower in his hair.

You are unfazed by the look he gives you. You secure the flower then swipe the dirt off his chin, "I will make sure your bath is finished after your meeting."

It is your turn to be taken aback. You freeze when he catches your wrist before you pull away. "Wait for me," he mumbles.

You raise your brows.

He does not repeat himself.

You nod slowly, "I shall... after having the servants dra-"

"Your princess requires you to accomplish a task for her," Daemon looks past you, looking between Erryk and Gwayne. He grits his teeth, pulling you toward him, "do it."

You look over your shoulder, "please inst-"

"They know what to do, wife," Daemon blocks your vision, "tis I your attentions must be fixed upon."

[eyeritestuff]

Billy Kid x Reader Headcanons ☆

—X—

A/N: super into ZZZ right now (and billy.)

CW: nothing, maybe a few suggestive jokes but everything is generally SFW :3 i’m super sleepy and writing this at 1am so bare with me when it comes to spelling and grammar :’)

Reader: Gender Neutral [they/them]

—X—

Billy takes a lot of selfies, especially when on missions, and sends them to you. You don’t know what made him start doing this, but you save each and every one of them and you make sure to drop whatever you’re doing to ask him about it.

Billy is on the spectrum. Don’t ask me the logistics of it, yes he’s sophisticated AI, but hear me out! Though you like to indulge in some childhood nostalgia, you aren’t particularly fixated on watching just one media from your childhood. However, one of the medias you watched back in the day is called Starlight Knight. As soon as you told him you enjoyed that show, he would come to you to talk about it. It wasn’t all the time, of course, but whenever conservation went dry (in person or via DMs), he’d make it a thing to talk to you about it for hours. It didn’t annoy you, not in the slightest. It made you happy to see him so happy about the children’s show, and so you entertained it as much as you could.

When Billy texts, he uses old fashioned emoticons as punctuation. Think ‘ :3 , ^_^ , o_O ’ and then replace it everywhere a period, an exclamation point, or a question mark would be. So many emoticons…

Billy loves to play video games, especially at the arcade. He invites you, and usually you tag along. When you can’t, he sends a selfie of him making a sad face. He’d probably captions it something like ‘Missing my pookie.. 💔💔’

On that same note, Billy will pick up on vocabulary you use and steal it. So if you have a habit of saying ‘pookie’ ? That’s his now. He’s using it all the time.

Billy panics easy when it comes to you. not only when it comes to safety, but also when it comes to romantic scenarios. During times you hang out with Anby and Nicole, they spill all the details of how Billy went on a rampage to find the perfect flowers, or how Billy sat in a corner all morning whining about how he didn’t find the right color outfit for you. Things along those lines!

Sortve related, but Billy gets flustered easily. Especially when you make dirty jokes, most of which aren’t really directed at him. He doesn’t get the jokes at first, but when he does understand them, he reacts in such an over the top and dramatic manner. Flailing around, gasping really loud, whining, yknow the works! One time you made a joke about ‘whimpering audios’ and he didn’t understand it. For a while too! Once he asked enough people (Anby explained it to him), he went silent and locked himself in his room for a considerable amount of time. He wasn’t sad or anything, just… shocked.

Billy isn’t human, so he doesn’t necessarily get injured in the traditional sense. One time he came back from a commission with his arm all battered up. You never seen him so down in spirits! You were able to help him, luckily, because it was only one part on his arm that was damaged that really messed up the rest of it. You kissed his hand, and immediately after inspecting your handiwork, he stuck his hand out again. “I dunno.. my arm still feels wonky. How about another kiss for good measure?”

When you’re bored, you love to dress up as Billy. Well, you’re not really dressing like him, you’re just wearing his jacket. You also like to wear the jacket with certain outfits you think it would look best with. Since your boyfriend is so tall and broad in the arms, you mostly wore it as a shoulder drape in an odd anime fashion statement. Regardless, Billy loved to see you wear it.

Earlier I mentioned Billy loves to take selfies, but I forgot to mention how most of them include you, and despite having all of those selfies of himself, half of his camera roll is you. He likes to sneak pictures of you sometimes! It’s one of his more odder behaviors, but he takes such cinematic pictures of you, even when you’re wearing the worst outfits. You didn’t know how he did it, but it’s one of the things that made the random picture taking somewhat okay.

Billy loves hugs. Don’t ask me how it works in terms of comfort. I would assume it’s the equivalent of sleeping in a car. However, Billy does have plenty of plushies thanks to you, and you use those to your advantage… so it’s not all bad :)

You asked Billy to teach you how to sling guns, and the entire tutorial sesh was just him feeling every inch of your body, memorizing and admiring how you looked. He loved you. All of you! He thought he was being sneaky, but you knew (and secretly loved it too).

Billy loves to carry you on his back and walk around. All I’m saying is, he’s got handlebars on that jacket for a reason… this has to be one of them……

Billy loves stickers. Self Explanatory!

Billy loves giving you gifts. He puts your needs over his more than he should, but luckily you’re not in this relationship to take advantage of his immaturity and inexperience. You give back as much as you can.

Billy is clingy. Needed to type it out despite it being loud as hell in this list.

Billy cant cook. Not like he needs to anyways, but he wants to learn for you! So when you’re cooking, he watches close behind you and asks you every question he can think of.

Billy likes to ask why… a lot. It gets frustrating sometimes, but he genuinely wants to learn.

—X—

A/N: thx for reading! idk might make a part 2 i’m gonna go fall asleep now :3

[gffa]

Hiiiiiiiiiiiiii

Do you take rec requests? If so, can I ask for your recs for Obi Wan centric fics where Obi Wan is just absolutely adored by everyone around him? Like people love him, think he's great, beautiful, talented, etc. you could also include fics where Anakin isn't one of his adoring fans but he comes around eventually. If you've ever read the Shoulder The Sky series by @kcrabb88 ? Where Anakin is kind of weird about Obi Wan in the beginning but he'd die for him at the end? Yeah like that.

Preferably no Obitine please, and also no order 66, if you would. They can be fix its or maybe they just don't get to order 66 in canon. Long and short is fine. I just want to read fic to justify my absolute rabidity over Obi Wan Kenobi.

Yknow if you're going to answer the ask? Might as well include every fic that you know that portrays Obi Wan very well. Whether everyone thinks so or not, I just want an excuse to fangirl over Obi Wan. Whether it's cute adorable initiate obi wan; smart skilled Padawan Kenobi, best master in the galaxy Kenobi, best general in the gar Kenobi, unfuckwithable Kenobi that everyone knows not to piss off, the Jedi's best member, whatever. Just fics of obi wan being great, whether people acknowledge it and love him, or acknowledge it and go still like prey animals when he looks at them

Hi! Oh, this is going to be a bit of a difficult set, mostly because avoiding Order 66 is a tough one, and I'm not sure how you are with various Obi-Wan pairings (which tend to have some good Obi-Wan fic), but I can at least start you out with a few recs sets I've done that have a lot of Obi-Wan fic and hopefully the Order 66 fic will be pretty avoidable.

My Star Wars fic recs tag (pretty much anything that mentions Obi-Wan in the subject will treat him well)

Obi-Wan Kenobi epic fic

Post-OBW's first two episodes-centric set

It's hard because some of my favorites:

Reprise by Elfpen (absolutely epic time travel fic that does the really good, hard work of showing us the timeline shifting and why it has to be done in baby steps)

Fire and Ice by Yesac (set in an AU where Order 66 happened, but Anakin won the fight and took both Obi-Wan and Padme hostage, and it's about the incredibly long road to recovery from there, which does have some love = attachment minor, minor notes, but has an Obi-Wan characterization that was fundamental to how I see the character)

Aren't necessarily about Order 66, but it does happen in both those fics, as something that's either being avoided or fixing the aftermath of them, and I'm not sure where you stand on such things, since you don't want Order 66. Same for

The Desert Storm by Blue_Sunshine (time travel AU where Order 66 happened in Ben's timeline, but not in the one the fic is set during)

Knightrise by deviantaccumulation (this one includes Order 66 happening on-screen, but it's an AU where more Jedi survive and they go into hiding together to rebuild)

where it's time travel to fix things, is that still over your line? Is it about the other characters that love Obi-Wan or the narrative of the story that loves Obi-Wan, because that would change a lot of the recs I make! Not that he's unloved in them, but Cataclasm by dendral is one of my favorites, but it has Obi-Wan off on his own a lot of the time, so the narrative loves him, but the people around him aren't in the room with him, etc. I also have a Jedi culture set of recs, which you can scroll through to find Obi-Wan mentioned in the summary, it's probably going to be about how much everyone loves him. But some good places to start for you would be:

ruth baulding's Lineage series and then her Legacy series. The first series is an epic length run of adventures when Obi-Wan was a padawan with Qui-Gon, and then the second series is his time teaching Anakin, with more adventures

Remedial Jedi Theology by MarbleGlove, a fantastic look at Jedi theology, philosophy, and interaction, with Obi-Wan in a prominent role.

Supreme Chancellor Obi-Wan Kenobi stonefreeak, which is crack treated seriously, very Jedi-positive, and while it's an ensemble piece overall, Obi-Wan is very much at the heart of the story and the focus will always come back to him. Just so much fun and very soft on the heart, this is a universe where everything goes right.

Tano and Kenobi by FireflyFish, which is a time travel fic where Ahsoka goes back into the past and becomes Padawan Obi-Wan's Master instead of Qui-Gon. The fic is kind of harsh on Qui-Gon, but if you love the disaster lineage or if you just want more Obi-Wan & Ahsoka, this fic will scratch the itch so good.

Unexpected Awakening (The Rewrite) Rhiw, another time travel fic where Order 66 did happen, but the fic is about Legends!Obi-Wan taking a different path from what happened in the first Jedi Apprentice book, instead of becoming Qui-Gon's Padawan the way he did in canon, he and Bruck go to Bandomeer and then get wrapped up in an epic story about Obi-Wan slowly changing the galaxy's course.

walk by faith/tell no one what you've seen by Killbothtwins, which is time travel with Obi-Wan after the end of the galactic civil war (the one against the Empire) going back to his 12 year old self and diverting the timeline, with a really great voice for Obi-Wan's character in this fic.

The Uses of a Sandwich by Laura Kaye (laurakaye) is a fun young Padawan Obi-Wan fic where he meets Qui-Gon's first apprentice and has a great sense of comedy.

Uncle Ben and Little Luke by phoenixyfriend which is de-aged!Luke and suddenly alive again!Obi-Wan and is just so much fun for a dynamic that doesn't get enough fic. (NEVER ENOUGH.)

Well Met by avocadomoon is one if you don't mind Obi-Wan/Padme fic, where they develop a friendship and later in life just slowly fall into a relationship, where it's about discussions and politics and philosophy and worldbuilding, it's such a subtle dynamic between them in a way that felt so natural to me. I also enjoyed the author's other fic Anamorphosis just as much, too.

[nats-revival]

ditto — e. williams

!! PLEASE READ BEFORE INTERACTING !! - Its still imperative that you do anything you can to support Palestine. You can help by doing your daily click, or reviewing this masterlist. You can also help by not buying TLOU, and here’s why.

aestras notes: WOOOOO GUESS WHO FINALLY DROPPED??? THIS GUY!!!!!! 😝😝😝 tried something new for the banner this time, i think it looks okay. 🙂‍↕️ anyways!!! everyone thank @softlysunrays for encouraging me yawp yawp!!!!

tags: loser!ellie, theatre kid!dina agenda, modern au sorta?, i suck at tagging a year later, ellie is a nervous wreck, italics indicate internal monologue (most of the time), fluff(?), one small use of y/n, okay that’s it i think

Ellie might’ve had a little thing for you — probably more than just a little thing, because you’d occupy most of the space in her brain 99% of the time. And she was, unceremoniously, an incredibly big loser. She never speaks to you directly, instead stealing glances at you during passing periods or watching you from afar whenever you’d been hanging out with your other friends. 

The hallways always seemed to be cramped and crowded, but not crowded enough that she couldn’t see you. Something about you made her always recognize it was you. 

Standing at her locker, she’d been joined by Dina as she’d been grabbing some things from her backpack. The hallways were bustling with chatter and bodies, but it seemed to only be them right now.

Dina looks at Ellie as her locker shuts with a small smirk. “I saw you staring at her again.” She teases. “You’ve got it bad!” Dina pokes her softly. She sings a cheesy love song, to which Ellie groans and puts a hand on her forehead. “You’re gonna make me die of embarrassment.” She mumbles.

Dina laughs at her, putting an arm over her shoulders. “Look at you, all grown up and having a little crush.” She says theatrically, wiping fake tears. Ellie chuckles to herself as she looks down at her canvas sneakers. 

“Yknow, I could introduce you to her.” Dina mentions without much thought. If Ellie had water in her mouth, she would’ve spit it out dramatically. She stands as stiff as a board as she turns to look at Dina. “Really? I mean — you’re serious? Like 100%?” Ellie seemed excited, but god was she nervous at the thought. 

“Yeah, totally! You can sprinkle your little loser dust on her in hopes that you absolutely woo her.” Dina throws her head back dramatically with the back of her hand on her forehead. The pair chuckle slightly at Dina’s antics.

Ellie still couldn’t believe that Dina knew her. Like, a majorly pretty girl? “Pinch me.” Ellie says, clearly in some state of disbelief. “I think I’m dreaming.” Dina pinches her on the cheek and she smiles. “You’re awake, Ellie! It’s me — Dina in the flesh!” Dina smiles at her.

“Dina, I’ve been like, dreaming of this since school started. I will come to your house later. Just please don’t be lying about this.” Ellie did dream about you a lot, and she always wished she didn’t wake up before the good parts. But she always did, so she woke up sulking all morning.

Even when the passing period had ended, she couldn’t stop creating scenarios about the two of you in her head. Well, the two of you and Dina. Cause she’d be there too. Ellie would feel bad to leave her out.

She knew that this was super cliche but she liked how cliche it was in some odd way. 

She was staring out of a window with her earphone in, tapping her gnawed up pencil against a wooden desk as she listened to songs that reminded her of you.

Which was, obviously, most of the music she’d ever listen to now because she was just that in love with you. She had it bad. Super bad. Actually, no word could describe it.

Once she started dreaming about you, she knew she was doomed. Even more so now that she’ll actually talk to you.

The anxiety of meeting a pretty girl like you sets in. What if she thinks I’m too weird? But she’s friends with Dina.. maybe it’ll be okay. This is so stupid. God, just focus on her! Her internal monologue was a flurry of ‘you got this’ and ‘don’t be a total loser’.

All of that literally goes out the window the second she makes it to Dina’s house.

As usual, Dina’s home was cluttered but homey, and the walls were covered with Dina in various grades performing in school musicals. Ride The Cyclone, Heathers, all that kinda stuff that she has little to no knowledge of.

“She’s waiting in my room — and stand up straight or something. Body language is important.” Dina says, leading her up the creaky stairs. Ellie almost didn’t hear what Dina was saying as they got closer to her room.

She’s in there! Right there! She thought, a smile creeping onto her face. The door of Dina’s room swings open and there you were, sitting on the edge of her bed.

“This is who I was telling you about! Y/N, this is Ellie. Ellie, Y/N.” Dina smiles at both of you brightly. “Hi!” Ellie blurts out, her voice cracking slightly. She instantly feels embarrassed and clears her throat. “Hello. How are you?” She attempts to reapproach the conversation, but when she saw that you’d been already chuckling and smiling, all her affirmations were lost to her.

“I’m fine. And you?” You asked, smiling at her. “I’m.. I’m good. Totally chilling right now, yeah.” Ellie rambles nervously. 

She kinda just stands there awkwardly until she thinks about another question. “How’d you uh, meet Dina?” She asks, rocking back and forth awkwardly on her heels. “We’re in the same theater class. And you,” 

You point at her. “You’ve known her since like, forever, right?” She says to Dina, eliciting a soft hum from the girl. You smile at Dina. “I’ll leave you two alone for a while.” 

Upon hearing that, Ellie snaps her head around to look at Dina. Her eyes scream “don’t leave me here”. Dina smiles remorsefully before leaving the room.

So now it was just Ellie and you. Staring at eachother while birds chirped softly in the distance. Ellie smiles awkwardly. You chuckle at her. “Are you usually this nervous?” You ask, tilting your head to the side slightly.

“..Yes, but not really?” Ellie would never in a million years admit the big fat crush she had on you, not now that you were sitting infront of her. “Well, I’m not gonna like, eat you or anything. You don’t have to be so nervous.”

“That’s easier said than done when you’re that pretty.” Ellie mumbled to herself. “What was that you said? You think I’m pretty?” You ask, smiling brightly. When she realizes you’d heard that part, she becomes incredibly flustered. She smashes her face into the palms of her hands as her cheeks become flushed. 

“I’m truly flattered! It means a lot coming from another pretty girl.” Ellie stood breathing for a moment. She thinks I’m pretty? She thinks I’m pretty?! She truly wants to jump for joy but she doesn’t. Instead she just stares at you.

Once you stand up and start walking towards her, she gets even more nervous because you smell like heaven. “I think we should get to know eachother more.” You suggest as you look at her. “I’ll give you my number.”

“Your number?” She blurts, excitement underlying her tone. “Yeah! It’s no biggie.” You say as you reach for your phone that was previously on the charger.

When you both eventually exchanged numbers, Ellie was staring at your contact in awe. Maybe you were talking to her but she was in her own little world.

She’d finally done it — talked to the girl she’d had a crush on literally all year. And somehow pulled it off enough to get her number.

Has Ellie wooed you? She didn’t know. Were you definitely looking forward to talking to her? Hell yeah you were.

“So I guess I’ll talk to you very soon then?” You raise an eyebrow at her with a smile on your face. Very soon? That could mean tonight! “Yeah, yeah totally. Call me whenever. I’m always free, yknow, never busy.” Ellie said, forming an awkward smile.

I basically just told her I have no hobbies or many friends! How charming is that? Way to go, Ellie. She internally cringes at herself. “Good to know. Bye Ellie.” You wave at her before leaving Dina’s room.

The door shuts and Dina runs up the stairs. “Oh she’s definitely into you.” She exclaims, holding Ellie’s hands. “I’m proud of you for putting your big girl pants on.” Ellie looks at Dina with a stupid smile. “She’s into me.” She mumbled with a starstruck expression. “She’s into me!” She repeats, smiling. I really hope that’s true. She thinks excitedly, squeezing Dina’s hands while looking at her.

[circular-jerkular]

Little Is A Dumb Word Anyways

The old man in this case is syscourse. I do not want to start shit with the individual linked here, but I think it's vitally important to discuss how atrocious these sources are, particularly as others have been in agreement with them. Here's a link to the post. Content warning for SA, as it's not tagged. This post isn't here to bitch about the user who posted this, however -- it's to dismantle the ideas they're presenting, which they keep presenting. Do not, for the love of God, fucking contact the user with this. It is blatantly obvious they do not want to hear it, and they've already received enough harassment at this point. They will not be convinced out of their misinformation by harassment, and I am very disappointed in everyone who chose to go after them. You are worse than the misinformation being spread.

I am not writing this for you, OP, and genuinely, if you happen to read this, I hope you (and your thumb, I saw about your hospital visit) are doing alright.

But I figure the general syscourse community needs to be able to discern real information from... what you posted. Because you're trying to pass your opinion off as fact using illegitimate sources that don't actually support what you're saying. And that's something that does need addressed.

TW for, well uh, trauma discussions, lol. Also, please excuse the color coding -- it's needed for me to process just what on Earth I'm writing.

STEP ONE: SOURCE REVIEW

So, let's talk about the sources OP uses here first!

Source One: The Mighty

To start, their first source is from The Mighty, which is a newletter opinion article website dedicated to mental health. This particular article is someone discussing "every type of alter role," though they only actually depict 10. What a lovely article this is, which:

Assumes every system has a host

Discusses types of alters but not really "roles" as depicted in medical literature (such as "animal," "dead," and "demonic," as well as little, as none of those re actually 'roles')

States that demonic alters "come about by the host blaming the abuse on a supernatural being or the abuser using it as a reason to hurt the child." This is not universal and is not even the case for most demonic alters I see.

Uses the term fictive, which is not a medical term for the role. Also doesn't mention factual introjects, which used to be one of the most common types of introjects in systems (or at least were cited as that at one point, I distinctly recall that).

Assumes every system has gatekeepers

Simply put, this is all the opinion of one system, based on their own experiences. They have no sources, they have no claims beyond their own ideas, and while what they say is perfectly valid for their system, it doesn't fit mine. For instance: My demonic alters did not form from supernatural beliefs and have their own actual roles beyond being demonic, I have no host and no gatekeepers, and I have no fictives but I do have fictional introjects (I do not use the term fictive). This article is almost entirely useless to understand my system.

So, what do they say about littles? "Unlike biological children, they can usually understand very complex concepts." So littles are not biological children and can understand complex concepts (yknow, like consent). "They commonly speak and act like children." Commonly, but not always. "They can be a version of the host as a child, the child that was wanted, or just a trauma-free version of the host." None of these options actually describe my littles in the slightest. And the rest of the description is entirely personal information about their own system.

In general, this source is entirely based on personal information and what the individual has gleaned from their experiences with systemhood. I could just as easily post my own "10 types of alters in systems" and include my dreamway part and the two created alters, along with "elf alters," since I have one. I could also depict littles as my own are represented, which would be something like "Unlike biological children, they usually understand very complex concepts. They rarely speak like actual children or act like actual children. They're sometimes younger versions of various parts in the system, or are meant to hold the trauma of maturity. Part of their healing is reclaiming childhood, but part of it is reclaiming the sexual freedom that was stolen from them." Cause, well, that's my experiences.

Source Two: The Dissociative System Fandom Wiki

Their next source is the... fandom... wikipedia for Dissociative Systems. I did not even realize they made a fandom page for my disorder.

Interesting choices all around.

Anyways, I don't think I need to explain how inaccurate a wikipedia page can be. This is not a scholarly source; there aren't any references to back up the ideas presented in this very short article, and the edit history could be literally anyone with internet access. A little themselves could've written this article.

So, what does this source say? "A little is a type of alter that takes on characteristics of a child." Vague, but I suppose that works. "They may appear younger in the innerworld and often act like a little kid." May appear younger, but not necessarily will appear younger. Often act like a little kid, but not always. "Each system's littles are different in what they can and cannot do. Some littles may be able to drive or work while others cannot." Oh. Okay, so every system works differently, and some littles may do adult tasks. "It is important to treat each little differently depending on what they need." Oh, awesome, so this article acknowledges that some littles will need something different. My littles require sexual things in order to heal, so that's awesome that this article acknowledges those cases! "A little often is a traumatized young part that hold onto the memories of abuse the system suffered during that age, but not always." Yep, my littles are not that. Actually, it's mostly me (Rice) who holds onto that! So nice that this article shows that. "A little tends to be between the ages of 0-10 years old, but different systems may use a different age scale to define who is a little in their system." That's the last bit -- acknowledgement that different sysems define littles differently than just 0-10 -- which is nice, since we count our ageslider who is usually 21 when he fronts now, and our 12 (13?) year old.

So, overall, this article can be summarized with, "Every system is different, so treat littles the way they need to be treated for each individual system."

Source Three: Trauma Dissociation Dot Com

Finally, a fairly decent source. At the very least, this website cites the information it provides, which is a damn step up from the last two. Unfortunately, I cannot find much information about the site managers, but I can find that the aim of this website is, essentially, summarizing information from medical sources. Not bad! I would love if someone with more free time could dig into this one a little bit!

The linked article is long. And of course, with any long piece of DID information, I definitely disagree with some of what it posits. For instance: "All the alters together make up the person's whole personality." This idea, presented with this wording, can be incredibly confusing for systems -- this information was presented to me to mean that we all had to fuse together in order to be a true person, when really, it simply means each alter in the system as a whole is responsible for the outward personality presented to others. I do wish it were rephrased!

To keep a long article short, let's see what this says about littles:

"Often nicknamed "littles" or "little ones" are a common type of alter. Several child alters exist in most people with DID." So far, so good; many DID systems experience having littles in their system. "Child alters often talk in a child-like way, but unlike a biological child they can normally understand abstract concepts and long words." Mm, abstract concepts, such as consent. They are unlike biological children. "They are often found to hold memories of child abuse which occurred at around the age the child alter feels he/she is. [7]:18" Often, but not always. Mine do not have those experiences! "Some may have the speech or appearance of a very young child, the youngest being unable to talk, read or write. [7]:18" Glad none of mine are like that, and that it acknowledges that only some child alters are like this. "Child alters may gradually age of may remain the same age. Some child parts may hold feelings of terror and pain, while others may be playful and fun-living and have only positive memories. [16]:60 A child alter may also be an idealized representation of the "perfect child" from the "perfect" family, for example the "good boy". [7]:18" (Emphasis mine). So, repeatedly, this article also acknowledges that all of this is subjective to the specific system's experience. It's an overview and nothing more.

TL;DR: Each article acknowledges that sometimes, littles can understand abstract or mature concepts, beyond what is expected of biological children. The first article shares that littles understand complex concepts. The second article determines that every system's little requires different things. The final article describes common aspects of littles while also acknowledging they are not the same as biological children.

None of these sources agree with OP's assertion that littles cannot consent and must act like children.

Your own sources disagree with you. Each of them suggest that littles do not have to act childlike, and even says most of them do not think like biological children.

STEP TWO: RESEARCH

However satisfying it is to get a good debunk out there, it's also important to correct misinformation by providing new information to fill that void. And, to be frank, two-thirds of those sources were garbage anyways, regardless on if they agree with OP's opinion or not. So, what does the research actually say about littles?

Unfortunately, I do not have the free-time I once did. Even with the grace of delays and snow days that I have received from Mother Nature recently, and the hard work I put in at work to get all my grades completed fully this past month, I just cannot put in the time to find all the various articles on littles and child parts. So why don't I just toss out the big guns?

Source: Therapeutic Hazards of Treating Child Alters as Real Children in Dissociative Identity Disorder

This paper was published in the Journal of Trauma and Dissociation, volume five, and was written by Shielagh R. Shusta-Hochberg, a clinical psychologist who worked in NY at the time of publishing. She now has a private practice in Naples, Florida. The article focuses on the treatment of littles in therapeutic settings.

The article opens up with a basic description of how DID forms, as well as the dangers of misdiagnosis and mistreatment. It's a lovely review of the horrors of having this disorder. The author also mentions how therapists need to be gentle while also setting firm boundaries -- something I've seen echoed frequently in treatment guidelines.

Then, we get to the parts about child alters.

"These child alters can be identified by any or all of the following: childlike vocal tone and pitch, sing-song or stilted speech cadence, simple or naïve vocabulary, body language and posture including widely open eyes with raised brows, frankness or timidity, brief attention span and rapidly shifting focus, behavior such as playing with office objects, and childish affective tone." Shockingly, even though I do not experience littles who act like children, my littles do fall into some of these categories. They do use more childlike vocals, and they do have open eyes and body language that is different from the adult parts of me. Notably, the author does not say a little must be these things to be classified as a little; only that they can be identified in this way. She continues, "Putnam (1989) has observed, “Child personalities may be easily recognized by their nervous fidgeting, movement overflow, and childlike gestures (e.g., rubbing the nose with the back of the hand)” (p. 122)." I have to disagree with Putnam here, however, as more often, my adult parts display these traits -- due to our autistic tendencies. Which, could open up a very interesting conversation about how autistic adults are treated like children, just like littles are... anyways. "Child alters are so common in cases of DID that that every clinician treating the disorder, however briefly, is likely to have encountered them. Child and infant personality states often outnumber the adult aspects of a patient’s system." Mmm, I would love a source on that. Unfortunately, there is none -- poor authorship there imo.

I like what she includes next, though, so much that I'll include the entire paragraph in full: "It is important to remember that the patient is an adult, despite the childlike ego-states. These parts are not actual children. I am in agreement with Ross (1997) who is of the opinion that “child alters are not packets of childness retained in a surrounding sea of adult psyche. They are stylized packets of adult psyche. . . . I hold the child alters responsible for their behavior in the same way as the adult host personality”(p. 147)." Once again, as everyone has been saying for the past day, littles in adult bodies are still adults. They are not actual children! Ross treats littles with the expectation of adult responsibility, and I think that's really important.

The article continues with how to explain DID to various parts and have the patient accept the diagnosis, as that's a common struggle. It doesn't hold much bearing on this conversation, so I'll skip it for brevity, but I do so love the technique this article describes of window blinds. But then. The author goes in a wild left turn, one that honestly I think my therapist could benefit from hearing. Essentially, she posits that, since child parts are often seen as so different from the system -- oftentimes with childlike mannerisms, for instance -- then, "The clinician unbends and reacts to the “child” in familiar ways, responding with more warmth and simpler speech. Thus, child self-states elicit and reinforce nurturing and care-taking responses on the part of therapists." Basically, treating them like children makes the therapy less effective.

The case studies (as in, true experiences of DID systems) she presents where therapy has been made less effective -- or even completely denied and impossible for the patient -- are horrifying to me, from an outside perspective. She describes cases wherein:

A patient stormed out because a new therapist would not hold her child parts when they fronted, insisting that her old therapist would do so.

A patient breaks down at the suggestion from a friend that they go watch an animated cartoon movie that has monsters in it, as her child parts cannot handle that.

A patient completely socially isolates because she spends so much money on her littles that she cannot afford her rent, and she lies to her friends about who the toys are for.

A therapist throws a child-part party for her DID patients, because it's "repairative" for the childhood that was lost. Despite the adult parts of the patients feeling disturbed by this, they go along with it, retreating deeper into the consciousness to avoid the situation. Then the littles are upset that the experience turns into a therapy session, rather than a fun party.

And, lastly, a description of a woman who falls prey to SA due to an older gentleman emotionally manipulating her younger parts.

All of these occur because the system (or even the therapist) is treating their littles like actual children.

This is horrific to me as someone who did have parts who we treated exactly like this. Our littles -- yes, the ones we frequently talk about being adults and having sexual desires and who do adult things -- used to be child parts through and through. Sie could not function as an adult when we were in high school, and she only started to get there when we were in college. Which... okay, when we were in high school, we weren't even an adult. So that makes some sense.

But Sie absolutely was 100% the type of child part that is frequently described by those who isolate littles and treat them like children. And the fact is, isolating littles and treating them exactly the same as children is harmful to many systems, and can prove to be a barrier to healing.

OUGH! STILL MORE TO READ. Speedrunning it now, the next section discusses treating littles like, well, part of a system. "The work may involve bringing the patient around toward a more family systems approach toward the DID (Chu, 1998), stressing that the safety of the “children” is ultimately in the domain of the patient herself, and not that of her therapist, psychiatrist, parents, partner, employer or friends. The fact that there is only one body despite feelings to the contrary is sometimes a very difficult truth to accept for DID patients." I repeat: It is the job of the patient, and not anyone else, to ensure the safety of littles.

The next section of the article discusses real-world safety concerns with littles, which I feel like are discussed frequently already, but really hones in on the fact that it is the system's responsibility (and nobody elses) to be responsible for taking care of their system. Examples include:

Switching while driving to a child part who cannot drive

A child part forcing a patient to go to an appointment, which worsened physical pain

A patient (it doesn't specify a child part, but I can assume that based on the topic of this article) suffers bad falls from the littles attempting things beyond their capabilities

Not an example, but she also mentions medication issues and how it might be needed to have a medication manager.

The author of the article specifically calls out that adult parts should be in control for difficult tasks that require them, and I fully agree. Until a child part is capable of handling adult tasks, then adult parts should be the ones handling things.

Next, she discusses re-parenting, and frankly, I fully agree here too. The parenting has to come from within, not from a therapist -- and definitely not strangers online dictating what littles should do. The article does push toward fusion (in this case, labeling it integration) of parts, and she addresses that many systems view this as a sort of death. "The host may misinterpret integration as death, saying something such as, “We love the kids. We’re never going to integrate. It’s not fair that they have to die.”" Treating littles like children would definitely contribute to that fear.

And then.... Fuck, man, the article rips my heart out by including a statement from littles within a patient's own system -- a patient whose child parts were repeatedly treated as children, over and over again. Here's the whole quote.

"It’s hard for the bigger parts to take us seriously. It’s hard to be out in a grownup body, especially in the early days of awareness of the DID. The protectors want to protect us too much now from reality, and we can deal with it now. They are overprotective and there’s no need to be. We are as much a part of the whole system as the other parts and want to be equal. As the walls come down, we can share our childlike joy with those (older parts) and they won’t close us out. We can tolerate their seriousness. And we’re able to comfort them, not only them comforting us. They can hold us but we can comfort them, because they need to be loved, comforted, or forgiven. Barriers are coming down. It’s mutual.”

I fully suggest reading that full article.

TL;DR: Treating littles as children in a system can be incredibly harmful for the patient, in many different ways. In the end, it is up to the individual system to reparent themselves, and it is not anyone else's job -- and, really, no one else's right -- to speak over that system's functions.

STEP THREE: PERSONAL REMARKS

As much as I would have loved to find more, discuss more, and go deep in depth with this research, I just... can't. I don't have the time anymore. And genuinely, I don't expect others to.

What I do expect is that others don't try to pass off their opinions as fact. And the thing is, regardless of how many times you post "It's just an opinion," that does not negate that you then attempted to back up that opinion as if it was supported by medical literature. You attempted to say that your opinion was supported by medical facts. And the fact is, the medical literature disagrees with your opinion, with sources to back it up.

I want to address some of the common things I see from systems who try to dictate how other littles act.

"But your littles are vulnerable." One, not all littles, according to medical studies. Two, isn't the goal to heal and make it so that my littles are not so vulnerable as to be a danger/dysfunction for me? Isn't the goal to make them less vulnerable? How do you propose we do that without also engaging with safe risk?

"But your littles aren't safe." One, that is for every single system to decide for themselves. Two, the Dignity of Risk is in effect here, in that it's okay if someone else gets hurt. Yes, even badly hurt. It's not the concern of anyone but the system if they get hurt.

"But my littles/my friend's littles-" Stop. Regardless of any trauma you or your friend may have, it does not impact anyone else. Your trauma is not my trauma. It is vastly, vastly different.

"If your partner fucks your littles, they're a pedophile." Pedophilia is specifically attraction to a child's body. I will not be posting any pictures of my body on here for fear of the Ban Hammer, but you have to understand that I am not a child. Even if my littles were to fuck my partner, my partner would be attracted to an adult body. At most you could say my partner would be interested in... IDK, a higher pitched voice??? (Side note, because I've never actually mentioned this: My partner has absolutely 0 interest in fucking my littles and we've discussed at length how they'd be a little weirded out by it.) Side side note: as a victim of CSA and whose parents used their disorders to try to make them feel incapable of love, stop fucking boiling the term pedophile down to "someone who has sex with someone I deem too childlike to have sex." I'm tired of my trauma being dismissed so you can use a buzzword loudly.

"Letting your littles consent makes you a predator." So, when I was 13-16 and [REDACTED], [REDACTED], and [REDACTED] because I thought I could consent, does that make me a predator? Are CSA victims predators because they thought they could consent? How am I being a predator to myself? My littles are me. Your arguments make absolutely no sense and are wildly offensive to CSA survivors.

"I'm going to judge you for it." K. Do you make it a regular habit to judge people's recoveries? Cause like. I highly suggest you take a class in Not Giving A Shit, perhaps a gardening class so grass could be caressed by your tender hands, and maybe, just maybe, consider either therapy or self help for your own issues, if you haven't yet. You should really concern yourself more with YOU than with judging other people.

"I'm going to report you for hurting yourself."

I am a 27 year old queer individual. I am a person who has a loving spouse. We have sex. Do you regularly report (and to whom?) adults who have sex? Do you regularly look at people and say, "Actually, your relationship is going to cause you harm because I said it is, so I'm reporting you for your safety!"

In that case, I should be reporting every single syscourser, because syscourse harmed me, so clearly everyone who is in the tags must be self-harming, right?

I think that's the funniest part of all of this. In a dark humor kinda way. See, letting my littles access sexual content -- letting Sie write smut, and letting LED embrace sexuality, and letting Gazi (whom we are now comfortable talking about after doing good good therapy about it) enjoy and take pleasure in her sexual desires -- has let us heal from our CSA and feelings of insecurity.

Without letting them have that, we would have continued to hold resentment for myself. For who I am. For "what I am because of what they did to us."

You are trying to tell me that my recovery is secretly harming me, and that the medical world agrees with you. And frankly, you have no right to lie to me like that.

... But then you look at the syscourse thing and go, "Yeah, no, it's totally normal and okay and up to the individual if they're harming themselves."

Pick your lane and stay in it!!!

Ough. Thank you for reading, if you got that far. Two very long nights and a very, very patient partner who is waiting for me upstairs. I'm ending the post here, with a reminder to everyone to please be respectful. Respect other systems privacy. Respect their rights to dignity and risk. Respect them as people. And for fucks sake, let littlecourse end. (It's a dumb word anyways).

[radioroxx]

@maskedinfinate HIIII ok i know you asked about alphys specifically BUT i had mettaton thoughts too lol ill put them below

also i didnt go into the kanako stuff at all yet sorry hfkf i will i will. one day. not right now. ok ok.

(ps! im gonna start tagging these as cloverbot so ppl can find it. yippie!)

btw i should mention my idea for this au(?) is! post undertale pacifist, monsters on the surface, the souls werent destroyed upon opening the barrier… and thats hkw theyre able to get clovers soul back for alphys to build them the body.

clover i think would make good friends with alphys :) if not cuz they like hanging out with her, but also because alphys is who they go to if they need repairs etc. which doesnt happen TOO often… they DO try to be careful with their cool robot body but yknow yknow jfjkf plus. adjusting to a whole new body is kinda? hard? can you really blame them?(ill come back to this). anyways anyways. they arent as close to her as they are to their other friends ofc, but still comfortable enough to know they can depend on her and talk to her if need be. so sure. awesome aunt figure works. awesome aunt figure who can give them cool upgrades like the finger gun or a built in jetpack or-

AS FOR METTATON. post ut i would think he and alphys make up of course… and alphys would ask him for a favour of helping this new kid get used to the body. as its something he had to go through as well, so he’s possibly got tips or just advice etc. or at the very least, its nice to have someone who knows sooomewhat what youre having trouble with lol. (not that adjusting to the body takes very long for clover- but they’d be friends afterwards anyway. of course mtt likes to have someone who looks up to him jfjf)