#that message alone was enough to fuel this view of them

[just-sg]

If the community doesn't welcome "cis men", then it excludes transmascs who pass or at bare minimum sends a message that the goal they worked so hard to achieve has made them less welcome in spaces that once supported them, actively punishing them for transitioning. It forces transfems to out themselves, which can be especially dangerous. It forces nonbinary amabs who can't or don't want to change their presentation to out themselves and sends a message that nonbinary people owe you androgyny or visual non-conformity. And if you think you can gauge any of these things by looking at someone, you're not doing the community any favors.

If the community doesn't welcome cis men, it excludes gay men. If men are welcome only when in a relationship with another man/person who reads enough like "a man", it excludes bi/pan/etc men and sends a message that what relationship they're in Right Now determines whether or not they're Queer Enough, you know, one of the core tenets of biphobia and erasure.

If the community doesn't welcome cis men, it excludes men all over the ace and aro spectrums. :) And yes actually, the heterosexual aromantic straw-man does deserve to be here just as much as anyone else. IF he's treating his partners like shit, then we judge him for that behavior, but queer people can be douchebags with shit views and we don't get to say they're not still queer. And if the het-aro dude is instead communicating honestly and being respectful-- a thing I promise is fully possible for humans to do-- then guess what, assuming he couldn't possibly be a decent person is just arophobia and maybe a side of puratinism.

Anyone questioning their identity, anyone who isn't actively questioning yet but later will, guys about to experience bi panic, transfem eggs who haven't clocked anything about themselves yet. Their early exposure to queer spaces being a hostile one is not going to help anyone, and can easily actively discourage people. We also need to be welcoming of supportive partners, siblings, parents, friends, etc, especially in cases where a queer person is disabled or otherwise has trouble going places on their own, or for helping ease anxiety in virtual spaces, etc.

Listen.

The nature of Being A Man is not and has never been the problem. And as much as some of you don't want to hear it, and as much as it fucking sucks and is objectively unfair when it does involve men who are participating in and benefiting from oppression, trying to turn the tables is never going to be an effective strategy. It's "not fair" that it's more dangerous for women to walk alone at night either but you hopefully wouldn't advocate against carrying mace on the basis no one "should" need it. Whether something is fair and whether it's true are not the same thing.

You cannot Get Revenge against a whole huge portion of the human population, and when you actively threaten or ostracize people, (a) you're mirroring the very thing you fight against, but (b) it makes people defensive!!! Some allocishet dudes would get defensive anyway at the idea of not being on top of the ladder anymore, but giving them more fuel won't change that. Dudes who'd have that kneejerk reaction but could be reasoned with won't be if no one bothers to try, or oftentimes even if someone bothers but it's immensely overshadowed with hostility. And people who were already allies can actively be pushed out and turned against the cause. (Not to mention perpetuating in-fighting.)

You catch more flies with honey, I'm sorry. And yes, we do need allies. Perpetuating the "us vs them" mentality helps no one, patriarchy does not target men in the same or as many ways as women but it is also harmful to many, and we will always have a better chance of fixing any system when we have people working for the cause inside and out. People using their positions of privilege to help provide extra leverage and voice to those with less privilege is always going to be desirable overall.

Even mainstream media writers throwing in crumbs of badly handled representation isn't without some merit, if only for proving it's not illegal and won't destroy sales to have Anything At All, which couldn't be said mere decades ago; if only for normalizing that queer people exist even the tiniest bit more. But just, normal people going about their normal lives. Just every random man who will frown at their coworker's homophobic joke and give a simple "not cool dude". Those little things adding up are important. When people hate you, it's easy to ignore you standing up for yourself, and harder to ignore people they like also standing up for you.

Cis queer men are not your enemy. Amabs who "read" cis to you and don't want to out themselves are not your enemy. Bi men who happen to be in relationships with women are not your enemy. Straight male partners of queer women are not your enemy! Allo cishet dudes married to allo cishet women with no queer kids or siblings or anything are not your enemy, not if they're behaving like friends.

People operating on ignorance, especially to a point of willful ignorance because they don't 'have' to deal with it, can be enemies-- inaction in the face of oppression is taking the side of oppressors, and all-- but even they're like... minion enemies if that makes sense. (That goes for men, women, questioning folks or folks who are definitively queer but don't feel like Part Of The Community, etc, to be clear.) It's not your personal job to educate every person, but when you can afford to, taking no shit but remaining civil will leave someone else a better chance of getting through to them. Picking a nasty drawn-out fight with that jackass on Twitter won't fix homophobia but may well increase his devotion to the enemy cause.

Prioritizing defense isn't always an option and I'm not saying it is. Sometimes you need whole riots to make a point, but even that involves group effort, and often times lashing out in your personal daily life can do more harm than good. THIS SUCKS. OF COURSE IT SUCKS. But it's a matter of the big picture. It's not about letting people "get away with" anything, it's about expressing disapproval in a calmer and more casual manner while trying to minimize anything they could twist into an excuse to be worse.

And that's with people who ARE actively shitty, the ones more casual and micro-aggressive about it but still ultimately against us. Lashing out pre-emptively on the assumption that people would be shitty does a lot more harm and no longterm good.

People joke about The Gay Agenda but honestly, yeah. The Agenda is ultimately for the queer community as a whole to be accepted, have the same rights and protections as anyone else, to end oppression, etc, right? Sometimes that's gonna mean dealing with being uncomfortable or uncertain or even biting your tongue in the name of forwarding the Agenda. Especially when it's literally about acceptance within our own communities. How can we reasonably expect everyone else to accept us if we're struggling to accept each other?

i don't care how uncomfortable you are around cis men, queer cis men still need places to go, and sometimes, those spaces will be shared with yours. disabled and neurodivergent queer men and queer men of color especially need a place to go. the queer community isn't the "fuck cis men" community. that is the rad fem community. if you think cis men and people who read as cis men are inherently "too scary" or shouldn't be allowed in queer spaces, you joined the wrong community.

[antari]

one thing i love about sz/sz is the clear distinction of themes and the way both of them view each other and just mixing it all. I can enjoy my fair share of possessive zoro when it comes to zs but it's more about thinking about how his devotion towards the rest of the crew (pre relationship) fuels his feelings towards sanji and the need to make sure he knows how important he is for him, how he would follow him anywhere sanji wants. Zoro would do anything as long as it made sanji happy imo (it can totally turn a little bit weird, we are talking about ZOSAN of all people. Zoro would definitely say some insane shit like cutting his chest open and giving sanji his own heart in case he is hungry or something like that)

And don't get me started with sanji's need to make sure zoro feels loved all the time, not just with food, but through quality time (no matter how little it is, his free time would definitely be reserved for zoro) he would think his actions are his way of saying "i understand how lonely you must have felt" after kuina and his years as a pirate hunter which later on turns into a "i want to give you a piece of what zeff and the rest of the baratie staff gave me". Sanji would be SO sweet with zoro once in a established relationship, and zoro would feel a kind of love he never knew existed, and that realization alone is enough for him to bow to never let anything bad happen to sanji, not because he thinks sanji is weak but simply because its what he deserves. Seeing sanji happy makes zoro happier

[princesssarisa]

In the past I've shared other people's musings about the different interpretations of the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. Namely, why Orpheus looks back at Eurydice, even though he knows it means he'll lose her forever. So many people seem to think they've found the one true explanation of the myth. But to me, the beauty of myths is that they have many possible meanings.

So I thought I would share a list of every interpretation I know, from every serious adaptation of the story and every analysis I've ever heard or read, of why Orpheus looks back.

One interpretation – advocated by Monteverdi's opera, for example – is that the backward glance represents excessive passion and a fatal lack of self-control. Orpheus loves Eurydice to such excess that he tries to defy the laws of nature by bringing her back from the dead, yet that very same passion dooms his quest fo fail, because he can't resist the temptation to look back at her.

He can also be seen as succumbing to that classic "tragic flaw" of hubris, excessive pride. Because his music and his love conquer the Underworld, it might be that he makes the mistake of thinking he's entirely above divine law, and fatally allows himself to break the one rule that Hades and Persephone set for him.

Then there are the versions where his flaw is his lack of faith, because he looks back out of doubt that Eurydice is really there. I think there are three possible interpretations of this scenario, which can each work alone or else co-exist with each other. From what I've read about Hadestown, it sounds as if it combines all three.

In one interpretation, he doubts Hades and Persephone's promise. Will they really give Eurydice back to him, or is it all a cruel trick? In this case, the message seems to be a warning to trust in the gods; if you doubt their blessings, you might lose them.

Another perspective is that he doubts Eurydice. Does she love him enough to follow him? In this case, the warning is that romantic love can't survive unless the lovers trust each other. I'm thinking of Moulin Rouge!, which is ostensibly based on the Orpheus myth, and which uses Christian's jealousy as its equivalent of Orpheus's fatal doubt and explicitly states "Where there is no trust, there is no love."

The third variation is that he doubts himself. Could his music really have the power to sway the Underworld? The message in this version would be that self-doubt can sabotage all our best efforts.

But all of the above interpretations revolve around the concept that Orpheus looks back because of a tragic flaw, which wasn't necessarily the view of Virgil, the earliest known recorder of the myth. Virgil wrote that Orpheus's backward glance was "A pardonable offense, if the spirits knew how to pardon."

In some versions, when the upper world comes into Orpheus's view, he thinks his journey is over. In this moment, he's so ecstatic and so eager to finally see Eurydice that he unthinkingly turns around an instant too soon, either just before he reaches the threshold or when he's already crossed it but Eurydice is still a few steps behind him. In this scenario, it isn't a personal flaw that makes him look back, but just a moment of passion-fueled carelessness, and the fact that it costs him Eurydice shows the pitilessness of the Underworld.

In other versions, concern for Eurydice makes him look back. Sometimes he looks back because the upward path is steep and rocky, and Eurydice is still limping from her snakebite, so he knows she must be struggling, in some versions he even hears her stumble, and he finally can't resist turning around to help her. Or more cruelly, in other versions – for example, in Gluck's opera – Eurydice doesn't know that Orpheus is forbidden to look back at her, and Orpheus is also forbidden to tell her. So she's distraught that her husband seems to be coldly ignoring her and begs him to look at her until he can't bear her anguish anymore.

These versions highlight the harshness of the Underworld's law, and Orpheus's failure to comply with it seems natural and even inevitable. The message here seems to be that death is pitiless and irreversible: a demigod hero might come close to conquering it, but through little or no fault of his own, he's bound to fail in the end.

Another interpretation I've read is that Orpheus's backward glance represents the nature of grief. We can't help but look back on our memories of our dead loved ones, even though it means feeling the pain of loss all over again.

Then there's the interpretation that Orpheus chooses his memory of Eurydice, represented by the backward glance, rather than a future with a living Eurydice. "The poet's choice," as Portrait of a Lady on Fire puts it. In this reading, Orpheus looks back because he realizes he would rather preserve his memory of their youthful, blissful love, just as it was when she died, than face a future of growing older, the difficulties of married life, and the possibility that their love will fade. That's the slightly more sympathetic version. In the version that makes Orpheus more egotistical, he prefers the idealized memory to the real woman because the memory is entirely his possession, in a way that a living wife with her own will could never be, and will never distract him from his music, but can only inspire it.

Then there are the modern feminist interpretations, also alluded to in Portrait of a Lady on Fire but seen in several female-authored adaptations of the myth too, where Eurydice provokes Orpheus into looking back because she wants to stay in the Underworld. The viewpoint kinder to Orpheus is that Eurydice also wants to preserve their love just as it was, youthful, passionate, and blissful, rather than subject it to the ravages of time and the hardships of life. The variation less sympathetic to Orpheus is that Euyridice was at peace in death, in some versions she drank from the river Lethe and doesn't even remember Orpheus, his attempt to take her back is selfish, and she prefers to be her own free woman than be bound to him forever and literally only live for his sake.

With that interpretation in mind, I'm surprised I've never read yet another variation. I can imagine a version where, as Orpheus walks up the path toward the living world, he realizes he's being selfish: Eurydice was happy and at peace in the Elysian Fields, she doesn't even remember him because she drank from Lethe, and she's only following him now because Hades and Persephone have forced her to do so. So he finally looks back out of selfless love, to let her go. Maybe I should write this retelling myself.

Are any of these interpretations – or any others – the "true" or "definitive" reason why Orpheus looks back? I don't think so at all. The fact that they all exist and can all ring true says something valuable about the nature of mythology.

[marigold-hills]

day 10: making love | @wolfstarkinktober2024 | 3993 words

MINORS DNI - NSFW - EXPLICIT

(also: crying, spit as lube, touch-starved Sirius)

Also on AO3 here

****

The signal takes twelve years to reach Earth.

There are many colonies now. Some stay in close touch, sharing news, sharing commercial routes. They’re an extension of the life already thriving on the home planet; separated by distance but keeping trade and communication alive.

Not Proxima Centauri b.

Remus remembers reading about it when the colony was established. When Black Industries had revealed themselves to be little more than a cult and left Earth behind to start a new, pure human race.

There was nothing from them. Until now.

The colony has collapsed. Send help, the voice said, then twenty two seconds of static silence. Then: please. 

Chances are there is nobody there anymore. That’s what Head Command cited, when they ruled out the possibility of sending search and rescue. The message was sent twelve years ago, the admiral said, whoever sent it, they’re dead by now. 

But those twenty two seconds played on repeat in Remus’ head. He woke up hearing them, fell asleep replaying them. Then, one morning, the final word, the please, appeared in his dream, and he knew he had to do something.

He’s had some favours he’d scrounged up over the years. Things he never thought to cash in, because what for? He didn’t mind covering the odd shift or hiding the odd miscalculation that a higher-up missed. Sure, there was the time when Admiral Dumbledore came to him to fly someone out of the Sol system under the radar. Sure, Moody once did ask him for help derailing legislation through less than stellar means.

As it turned out, he’s had quite a few people he could press on, lean on, to make it happen. Nobody understood why he cared so much. He didn’t understand either.

But he was given a ship, and indefinite time off work (a sabbatical, they called it - like pilots ever had those). He went alone because that was the deal. Nobody is to know. This is a waste of resources and of taxpayer money.

Two weeks, it takes him to reach the exoplanet.

(Nothing, in comparison to twelve years.)

He doesn’t mind the solitude. Just him and his little ship, and all the stars in the sky. It’s a newer model, easier for a crew of one to manage than the older ones. The computer working the systems keeps getting smarter. Soon, Remus thinks, his job will be obsolete.

Proxima Centauri b is pretty from orbit. Vast oceans, swaths of green, sun-bathed clouds hiding it from view in the most picturesque way. Remus watches as the line of day-night moves across the surface of the planet, so, so slowly. He’s stalling - he’s here and now he’s stalling, because this is it. What if it was for nothing? What if the voice had been extinguished in all the years that passed?

He’s not to land unless he makes contact: a waste of fuel on an already wasteful journey. It’s a clear command and already he knows he’s going to break it, because he’s not come this far just to be waylaid by the colony’s malfunctioning communicator, or the owner of the voice not seeing his message. Because, if he’s there, why would he check it? After all those years? 

Still: there is flagrant disregard of orders, and there is covering one’s tracks, so Remus sends out the message.

Survivors of the Proxima Centauri b colony, come in. 

The little black text on the little green screen flickers with its own electrical life. 

No response comes and Remus tells himself you knew this would happen, it doesn’t mean anything. He sends the message again, and then again after a couple of hours. He has enough fuel to stay in orbit for a week and still get back to Earth with a safe amount spare.

He’s planned it like this: three messages, equal times apart, to show he tried it that way first. Then, short circuit the communicator - notoriously unreliable on the class of ship he’d been provided. Nobody can blame him for not trying. Nobody can blame him for finishing the mission in person.

What else was he to do, turn back?

He lands as near to the colony as the landscape allows. The compound is vast but the atmosphere is breathable. Remus has gotten used to the staleness of the recycled air he’s been in for a fortnight and this freshness is so welcome it makes him a little bit dizzy.

From the first look, it’s clear that the colony was abandoned - that something had happened. Remus’ footsteps echo against the white walls of the compound in an eerie quiet. He’s been to these places, these colonies, more times than he can count, but never once had he seen it empty.

It’s only the steady humming of power, running through the cables built into the floor, that gives him hope.

He comes across a doorway to an Aeroponics bay and this - this can’t be something that had cultivated itself. There must be someone here.

The plants have grown tall, their exposed roots well maintained - the air is moist, warm and hazy and Remus doesn’t think he sees an automatic water deployment system. Somebody must have just sprayed them. He touches the leaves of potato plants, gathering the moisture with his fingers because it’s a dual thing of life here - a sign and a gift.

There’s corn, and what he thinks is spinach, and strawberries. He shouldn’t be surprised - this was a large scale colony, with families and children. Of course they’d have things just for pleasure, even if it’s not the best use of the space.

The first time Remus sees him, it’s just a glimpse of a person walking through greenery. An afterimage of dark hair, of leisurely steps, of a strong, straight posture.

And then the man takes a few steps into the main aisle and turns around, and there he is.

It’s clear he’s been living by himself for too long. His hair hangs past his shoulders, unkempt but clean, a mess of black waves. There is a thinness to his frame, a suggestion of jutting elbows and sharp hipbones, clothes hanging on him like they were used to a larger body. Facial hair accentuating the edges of his cheeks, the set of his eyes.

Even like this, clearly malnourished, clearly not caring for his appearance, he’s beautiful.

They stand apart - two meters, maybe three. Remus still in his flight suit, the man in something soft and worn and comfortable. There’s the buzzing of electricity and the humming of the air purification unit and no other sounds, none at all.

Remus knows it’s him. He knows his silence as others would know his voice

And then: “You came,” and the voice, too, is familiar.

“I did.”

The man takes step after halted step, like walking on unfamiliar ground. He comes closer but not close. Remus understands.

“How long has it been?”

“Twelve years.”

An interface on one of the plant unit beeps and the man turns to it. “Huh,” he huffs out, a small sound almost like no sound at all.

He fiddles with the positioning of roots and presses buttons that make the beeping stop, then picks up an atomiser and sprays a fine mist over the plant. He has lovely hands, even if the fingers look a bit bony and the nails have been bitten down.

“What’s your name?” Remus asks because he’s wanted to know since the first time he heard the recording.

“Sirius,” the man speaks to the plant.

And Remus is a pilot. He knows the stars. He’s flown amongst them, used them as guides. He knows which one is the brightest in the winter sky and how to orient by it.

“Suits you.”

Sirius turns to him again, surprise written clear across his face. “You’re still here,” he says, then pauses. It’s the same pause Remus knows. “You didn’t go away.”

“No, I didn’t. I won’t.”

“No?”

“Not without you.”

More plants get sprayed, more roots adjusted. Sirius checks things on the interface displays along the aisle he stands in.

There is no need for him to maintain them anymore. Back on the ship Remus has enough food to last them both a month. He won’t tell Sirius that - he watches him care for the plants as if by muscle memory. They must be what kept him fed all the years he’s been alone.

He doesn’t move. Everything in the Aeroponics bay feels fragile and breakable, the air soft with mistwater, the silence held up by humming electricity. “Will you come with me?”

“Not today,” he walks out of the Aeroponics bay, doesn’t look back.

***

Proxima Centauri b is situated in a binary star system. The days are almost never ending, and the nights, when they happen, are so black that navigation becomes impossible.

The dual suns are larger than Remus has ever seen from any planet surface, the size of the Earth’s moon when it hangs full low over the horizon. They’re both red Dwarfs, giving out little heat. The sky is painted a dark maroon and the shadows are strange, multi-positioned. Everything looks one-dimensional. Flat, like a photograph. Rendered in tones of reds and greys, and deep, rich blacks.

Walking into the compound is like waking from a surrealist dream.

Sirius is in the Aeroponics bay again, tending to his plants. He doesn’t startle when he sees Remus.

“You came back,” he says after a long stretch of silence. He maintains eye contact this time, waits for the answer. 

“I said I wouldn’t leave.”

“There is a difference between not leaving and coming back.”

Remus wonders where the bodies of everyone who didn’t leave but didn’t come back are. Every other member of the colony of dozens. Did Sirius bury them, dug up the cold, hard ground? Is there a cemetery outside in the infertile red soil? Was it slow, gradual? Or did the colony collapse all at once, suddenly and quickly, until Sirius was all that was left?

“Come,” Sirius says, but doesn’t look if Remus follows.

There is a Mess Hall across from the corridor, with a small kitchen attached. Sirius gestures for Remus to sit. He does, choosing a chair closest to the kitchen and wonders if this is where Sirius would normally sit, or if he rotates his spot, or if Remus is the first to sit there in twelve years.

Sirius placed two bowls on the table, cream-of-potato soup and cornbread. “Eat,” he says, dipping the bread into the soup in lieu of a spoon.

“Thank you.”

Sirius drops the bread and looks at Remus and it’s clear that before he wasn’t, not really. Not at Remus, but through him, like he was an apparition or a hallucination or maybe not there at all. A trick of the light or a figure of mist.

The scrutiny verges on uncomfortable. Remus tries eating, tries to look natural - it would be so easy to spook Sirius here, one wrong move is one too many. Remus can’t afford to make a mistake, not when the eyes looking at him (into him) are so bright with life that simply wasn’t there before. He didn’t notice that Sirius was as flat as the horizon until he sparked up.

“This is very nice,” he says about the food.

And Sirius barks.

It’s a laugh, Remus supposes. An approximation of one. Sirius silences it and touches the hollow of his throat with unsure fingers. Remus wonders how long it’s been since he laughed.

“It tastes like shit,” he says. It’s the most animated he’s sounded since Remus found him. His fingers don’t move from over his trachea, as if he’s feeling the vibrations his voice creates there. “I ran out of salt years ago.” 

Everything they’re eating was grown by Sirius’ hands, then made into food by him too, and that annuls any complaints Remus could have had about the taste. He’s seen how SIrius is with his plants, delicate and caring, like they’re more than just something which provides him with nutrients. 

Did you speak to them? Remus wonders. Did they keep you company, the only other breathing things left here?

Once the food is gone, Sirius meanders away. “I’ll be back tomorrow,” Remus says to his retreating back. Whether Sirius heard it or not is unclear - his steps don’t falter, he doesn’t turn back.

Not today.

***

There is an artificial day-night cycle on Remus’ little ship. Lights simulate the natural progression of the Earth’s sun to keep his circadian rhythm from deteriorating while he’s off planet.

(He dreams of silence.)

In the morning, Sirius is outside of the compound. The angles and edges of his face look softened in the strange reddish shadows. He doesn’t say you came back, doesn’t say anything. The way he watches Remus is unlike he’s ever been watched before: shrewd intent, no hesitation. Each step he takes towards him is like that, too.

Remus doesn’t move. Waits for Sirius to reach him. (He thinks he’ll always wait for Sirius to reach him.)

“Who are you?” Sirius finally asks as they’re face-to-face, less than an arms’ length apart, close enough to touch.

“Lieutenant Remus Lupin,” he answers in the simplest way he knows how. They both know that’s not what the question meant.

“Why are you here?”

“You know why,” Remus tells him. It’s not you sent a call for help and it’s not it was my duty. 

Surely, Sirius feels it too - maybe felt it before Remus got here; when the message made it to Earth or when Remus was played it for the first time, or when he downloaded it onto his personal drive and snuck it out of the lab. These things don’t happen in a vacuum. Surely, Sirius too must have dreamt of this moment when the silence gets filled with words, and the next one when it will be filled with sound. Just the two of them, where before Sirius was alone, reminding the air what it feels like to resonate.

Sirius takes the last step forward and brings his hand up, fingers trembling as, haltingly, he places it over Remus’ heart.

“We don’t have to,” Remus tells him, “we can wait.”

“I did my waiting.”

Sirius moves his hand up, along the zip of the flight suit, until he reaches Remus’ throat: a mirror of how he touched his own, fingertips light against the skin.

Remus speaks just so Sirius can feel his voice as it’s created. “I’m sorry I took so long.”

Sirius is conservative with his words, with the humming sounds he chooses to respond with. Everything from him is a bit rough - a voice unused in too long a time. Some words he overpronounces. Forgotten how they feel on his tongue, Remus guesses.

The hand on his throat stretches out, fingers splayed until they span the width of it, then slip around and into his hair. Sirius watches as if he isn’t the one doing it. As if it’s something that just happened, that was always going to happen. Inevitable. Written into the atoms that make up the both of them, aeons ago when they were still stardust caught in nebulae, strewn across the cosmos. Cyclically, with each universe beginning and each one ending, coming back to this moment - to this first touch.

Delicately, because Sirius should always be touched delicately, Remus takes hold of his wrist. Sirius’ breath hitches, then stops. It's divinity to touch him. 

Remus makes it gentle. Makes it safe. If he’s the first in twelve years to place marks of fingerprints on Sirius’ body, then he’ll make himself into something worth it.

It’s a wonder how seamless everything is. As if it isn’t new. Remus knows Sirius is going to kiss him before he does. There is no change in his demeanour but there is a shift in the silence, something else stirred through the determination. 

And then Sirius does. And Remus finds his home on Proxima Centauri.

It’s odd, that he didn’t realise a part of him was missing until he found it, but it’s so clear now, with Sirius’ lips against his own. There was a hole inside of him and now, with each second he is allowed this, each second he’s given this, that hole is filled.

Sirius is slow about it. Patient. If nothing else he must have learnt patience, surviving like this. Remus keeps it like this: soft touches as their lips come apart and come together. Warm, where Sirius is warm, the only source of heat on the surface of this cold planet, the only source of life.

Sirius leads him toward the compound and it’s like stepping into the ocean - the water welcoming its long-forgotten counterpart.

They walk through the corridor, past the Mess, past the Aeroponics Bay. There are more spaces there - Engineering and Storage and rooms Remus pays no mind, too engrossed in the way Sirius has weaved their fingers together to pull him along.

The bedroom they enter is sparse. Utilitarian. Somewhere Sirius shouldn’t belong in and yet, through circumstance, does. Remus thinks of his home back on Earth. Comfortable bed strewn with blankets, an old wood fireplace he’s had converted into plasma. Thinks of Sirius in his kitchen or on his little balcony or in his bed.

Then Sirius reaches for the zip of his flight suit, and Remus thinks of nothing at all.

“Don’t touch me softly,” Sirius asks when Remus runs careful fingers up his arms. “Touch me like you’re here.”

So he does: tightens his hold, puts his hand into Sirius’ hair, down the sharp bones of his face, across the harshness of his beard. Sirius’ eyes flutter open and shut, once, twice - on the third they’re red-rimmed and wet.

“I’m here.”

They kiss again and it’s harder this time. Purposeful. Remus walks them forward until the backs of Sirius’ knees hit the bed and he collapses onto it, still held as he wants to be held.

There are tattoos down Sirius’ sternum. Remus discovers them with his mouth as he pushes the soft shirt up and off and out of the way.

This is the first one: a soft, quiet whimper, laced with the tears that finally spill. It sounds both like pleasure and like pain. Remus coaxes more of them out of Sirius’ throat as he mouths across it. Feels the trembling under his skin as his body remembers how to make these sounds. Feels the skin heat as it remembers why. 

“I found you,” he says into Sirius’ ribs. “I knew you’d be here.”

Sirius doesn’t reciprocate. He lays stretched out on the bed; hands twisted into the pillow, one a fist he bites into. “Don’t hide,” Remus tells him, “let me hear you.”

“I don’t know how.”

“It’s alright. We'll find it.”

He licks down Sirius’ hipbone and the sound comes again. Louder, needier. More like a moan. He does it again, and again. Encore. One more time. For me, once more. Then: harder and Remus obliges, bites to bruise.

There is no teasing. There are hands in hair, pulling, and mouths tasting and then please Sirius says - please, the word that brought them together. 

Remus doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to resist giving in when Sirius asks like that. He pulls one of Sirius’ legs up, wraps it around himself to spread him open. Licks his own fingers until they’re soaked. Kisses Sirius through the first touches, apologetic. Forgive me for the pain. Sirius grabs at his shoulders, nails digging into the skin. He’s so impossibly tight, so wonderfully warm, and Remus knows when it turns from hurt and discomfort into something better. Sirius’ face doesn’t relax, but contorts into pleasure.

“I’ve forgotten,” he says in halted breaths.

Remus fucks him with two fingers, slow but hard. Kisses each moan straight from his mouth. Sirius clings onto him through it. “Please, Remus, more,” he uses the name for the first time. 

(Better than silence, the sound of the name ripped out of him mid-moan.)

“I don’t want to hurt you,” Remus doubles his efforts to make just his fingers good enough. They have nothing to help with the stretch.

“It won’t hurt,” Sirius uses the leg thrown over Remus’ hip to bring him closer. “Let me feel you. Let me have you.”

“You have me,” Remus tells him and means it in so many ways, “whatever happens here now, you have me.”

Something softens in Sirius’ expression. He pulls Remus in, fingers splayed across his jaw. Kisses him so slowly. The contrast - fingers hard where they bring Sirius pleasure but his lips soft and yielding and pliant - the contrast is almost enough to send Remus towards his own edge.

He’s not prepared when Sirius surges up and reverses them. Pushes Remus to the bed and straddles him. Rids them both of what clothes they have left on. Then, hand on Remus’ cock, his face turns mischievous and that? That is the look that suits him better than any other. “You’re so hard for me already,” he purrs. “I want to feel you everywhere, inside of me and outside.”

And who is Remus to deny him? No one. He’s no one, but a vessel for the things he feels for the man above him. Before he was empty and now, here, he’s overflowing.

I think I love you, he wants to say as Sirius lathers him up in spit. I think the stars have sent me you. 

The moment you laid eyes on me was the moment my existence began.

Sirius is careful about it, but inch by torturous inch he lowers himself down Remus’ cock. He’s warmer than the double suns keeping the planet alive. Remus could stay like this, surrounded by him, until the permaday ends.

And then Sirius sits. Arse flush to Remus’ hips. Throws his head back in pleasure, mouth agape and eyes closed as he feels it out.

“That’s it,” Remus tells him, voice tight and hands splayed on Sirius’ hips, grounding them both. “Take your time.”

Sirius, a contrarian, starts to move almost immediately. Minute rocks back and forth. Remus feels it as static electricity in his veins. He brings Sirius down, until he lays down on Remus and their lips can meet again, and Remus can bend his knees and drive himself further into Sirius, use the grip on his hips to bring him down closer on each thrust.

It’s maddening. Unlike anything. That he found it here could be proof of a higher power, had Remus not flown across the known galaxy. He always knew there was no space for such things in the sky. (He didn’t realise they were hiding here.)

Their movements grow erratic. The tears in Sirius’ eyes return and Remus wipes them off with his thumb. This gesture he allows himself to be soft, and Sirius turns his face into the palm of Remus’ hand, welcoming it.

“I’m so close,” Sirius says. The way he clenches over Remus a giveaway. Maybe a reward, but Remus doesn’t think he’s done anything in this life worthy of such a thing. 

Remus takes Sirius’ cock in hand, keeps his thrusts deep and steady. “That’s it,” he says, “come for me.”

Sirius moans into Remus’ mouth, loud and unashamed and this, this right there, is what makes Remus cum.

There is an eternity contained in the time they cling to one another. Remus runs his fingers up and down the lovely curve of Sirius’ back. All the ways left to discover you, he thinks, tracing vertebrae. All the time we’ll have, now we found each other.

***

In the two weeks they take to get back to Earth, silence becomes a thing of the past. Remus reminds Sirius what it’s like to be touched, and in return Sirius rewrites each sensation for him like it’s brand new. 

“Stay with me,” Remus asks before they land, and:

“Always,” Sirius replies. 

[lightwise]

Okay, okay. I have thoughts (and feelings) on this latest episode of The Acolyte. (And no, this is not another post on Manny Jacinto’s arms…even though 👀😮‍💨🥵).

This is the first episode since the first one that I can unequivocally (except for one aspect) say that I really liked. Where has this level of dialogue and character insight been the entire show!?

Manny continues to take the starring role in the show as The Stranger. I’m seriously in awe of how compelling his performance is, how effortless he’s making it feel between all the switches of his personality—hungover, drifting bum, to terrifying dark side user with chilling morals, to a calm, quiet, perfectly in control man who knows who he is and what he wants, what he’s capable of, and what the emotions of those around him are.

He and Sol have switched places this episode just as much as Osha and Mae have. Sol is unsettled, anxious, lost in tortuous thoughts of the past. So much so that he doesn’t recognize that Mae has boarded the ship with him instead of Osha for (an agonizingly) long time. He starts to feel more like a villain when he finally figures out that Mae has tricked him, binds her, and then hovers over her menacingly after she wakes up. He’s becoming unhinged and going rogue, even making sure that they leave the planet and that Vernestra cannot track him because he wants to go retrieve Osha alone. Why? What is he hiding??

I’ll go ahead and do my quick gripe with the episode here. I like Amandla’s performance as Osha. I really can’t get into her performance for Mae. Osha feels transparent in her mental state and desires and motivations throughout the show. Mae is very difficult to get a read on, and I don’t mean that that is a bad thing when it comes to storytelling. I mean that it’s not working here. She’s gone back and forth like ten times in the last two episodes alone, wanting to compete her mission, then wanting to abandon it and turn herself into the Jedi so she can be with Osha, then fighting Jecki, then running from Qimir, then seemingly picking up the mission again so she can kill Sol, then not, then reprogramming her sister’s droid in a very callous manner, then somehow knowing enough about ships that she can work with the power systems (which is her sister’s area of expertise, not hers)….it just doesn’t work for me.

I also think that Sol took too long to recognize her. I’ll give him the getting onto the ship and trying to get a message out bc his emotions are a wreck. But he should have noticed after that. I also think Basil is completely unnecessary as a character. Sorry.

Anyway, back to Osha and Qimir. It’s a classic dark side seduction unfolding (I cracked up at the “if you’re not going to join me”), but Manny is oh so convincing about it. We know as the audience that everything he tells Osha is a half truth. It’s interesting to see how both the Jedi and the Sith in this show are kind of dealing with a half truth in how they are using the Force and teaching others. But it’s still very convincing, because he’s really not fueling it with overly grand promises or even his own ulterior motives, though he does have them. He’s simply telling Osha what his version of the truth is. What his experiences have been. And how he thinks they overlap with hers.

The dialogue is wonderful. A great example of how monologuing to give us info we don’t already have can actually work sometimes (looking at you, Ahsoka show). The line “why do you love people who can only go so far” was a standout for me. Again, not the accurate truth, but definitely a “from a certain point of view”. Sol also reiterates that Osha’s main characteristic has been love. So what is going to make her turn away from that? Anger? Feeling abandoned? Feeling guilty? Pinning an objectively hot Sith to a wall with his own lightsaber? SORRY. Sorry. 🤣🤣🤣. Really loved the “when you lose everything, that’s when you’re finally free” too, as well as “it’s just you and the Force. And what you bring with you.”

The fact that Qimir was a Jedi and might be much older than we expect is very interesting. I know very little about the Sith timeline from Legends, other than seeing names float about (Revan, Tenebrous, Plageous, etc). I’m interested to see which named Sith they might slot Qimir in with, or if they’re going to keep him completely separate from the main Sith line. He definitely does want to be a part of it though, given his “power of two” comment. A discarded apprentice who seeks his own apprentice to gain power, not unlike one fandom favorite Maul, perhaps?

I also liked Vernestra in this episode. I got a little better read on her character in a short time and loved seeing her speed in the Force using her light whip. It’s fascinating seeing her padawan be just as uptight and questioning as Jecki and Yord were…almost like this whole generation of padawans will grow up to be the masters who train the masters we see in TPM. What I would still like to understand better is why there seems to be such a split between the generations here. What outside or internal factors are influencing this? All they’ve shown is still is wanting to keep the senate and the council on good terms, but we don’t know why.

(Side note: Her Universe or someone definitely needs to make the open shoulder sweatshirt Osha was wearing.)

If the whole show had been like this I would appreciate it a lot. As is I think I’ll enjoy where they’re taking us but not necessarily how we got there. Hopefully the last two episodes will keep up the momentum.

[ellekhen]

No Hard Feelings

Chapter 7 - A Return

Chapter Summary: The party makes it to Rivington. In the shadow of the place of their first meeting, Wyll knows that he has much more to say to Irva — if she's willing to listen.

---------------------------------------

Pairing: Wyll x Female Tav Rating: Explicit Length: 23K+ words; Chapters 7/9

Excerpt below:

Dusthawk Hill. 

It’s a monolith of granite that looms above Baldur’s Gate’s Outer City. 

In his youth, Wyll remembers racing his father on horseback up the switchbacks of these cliffs to reach the summit and its unbeatable view. At age seventeen, he did the same thing — except on foot and alone — when Mizora summoned him to protect his city. Whether fueled by childish delight or fear-driven adrenaline, either way he was much younger back then. 

Now, he huffs and puffs, doubling over and staggering around each turn. He’s frantic with anxiety and dread in pursuit of Irva — if she’s still there at all. If not, then this will have been a waste of time, and he’ll be here alone with the memories. 

But as he staggers up to the summit, he’s relieved to barely make out a figure huddled atop a shelf of rock, gazing out over the city they have yet to enter. 

“I didn’t think you’d want to come here,” Irva says distantly without looking at him. “Least of all with me.”

Wyll is still breathing heavily as he makes his way over to her, collapsing beside her. 

“It’s quite a hike,” Wyll manages after a long moment, wiping the sweat from his brow. “But it’s nice to get away from the crowds of Rivington.”

Irva grunts. “Do you think any of the refugees tried to fly from here down into the city? Seems easier than bribing the guards.”

Wyll chortles — until he notices Irva staring expectantly at him.

“Oh, you’re serious?” he realizes. 

“Yes,” the cleric says simply. 

“Well… I think the city guard would have a thing or two to say about that,” Wyll waves his hand at the city walls. “An arrow or two, rather. Or worse.”

Irva hums in disappointment. 

There is another long silence between them, filled only with the distant sounds of the city and its harbor below. 

“Why did you come here, Irva?” Wyll asks gently. 

Irva smirks. “I didn’t get to take in the view last time.”

Wyll manages a small smile at that, despite the anxiety gnawing in his chest. 

“I don’t want you to apologize,” Irva says as soon as Wyll opens his mouth again. He shuts it. “I don’t want your pity. Your empathy. Your compassion. I had your ear and eyes, and that was enough. No one else has known what you have known. I burned them all myself.”

Wyll nods, waiting for her to continue. 

“I don’t want to apologize either,” Irva continues. “Because I did not know what it meant to bring my queen into this world. That freeing her would destroy others. It was all I knew growing up. It was all I was meant to be. I didn’t know. And I still do not know. But what I do know is that from up here…”

She inhales and exhales slowly. 

“…this city is beautiful. Full of ignorant strangers. But not all sinners. Not intentionally. I would have hated for it to be destroyed.

“And I also know…” she continues, clearing her throat as her voice grows hoarse. “That ever since we were last here seven years ago, I have been lost. I waited for my queen to send me a message to assure me I did the right thing. That she would forgive me for being a coward and not letting them preserve me for her next coming. But I heard nothing. I had nothing, except a broken mind, a broken body, and a curse upon my lips for you. Meeting you the first time was my curse,” her scowl softens. “Meeting you again was a gift. And being back here? With you? As… friends?”

She smiles, and it is resplendent. 

“It’s a gift,” Wyll agrees. 

Irva nods — and then shakes her head. “It’s more than that. It’s…”

She huffs a laugh. 

“It’s… everything. Everything I could never dare to ask for. More than I ever deserved.”

Wyll leans against her then, taking one of her hands in his while the other wraps around the back of her neck, stroking slowly over the shaved underside of her scalp and along the lines of her tattoo. As she exhales softly, he guides her head to nestle against his. 

“I don’t deserve you,” Irva whispers.

“Enough,” Wyll replies fervently.

“I’m not good. I’m not noble. I’m—”

“—Irva,” Wyll murmurs against her lips. “You’re everything you need to be.”

[enoughyi]

HELLO HELLO

What about .. 61 ? (I can't copy it, it's the hands on back one) With Julia/Imelda/Poppy ? I absolutely adore them together

#2: Arum

Ship: Imelda Reyes x f!MC (Julia Wright) x Poppy Sweeting

Summary: Competition was the steam to power the Research, and the Research itself was too captivating to put it to a side and up the gaze to verdant and rocky meadows just behind the lovely curtains, adorned the window's both sides with herbose imagery. Poppy picked them a few months ago, thought the design of Julia's study could have a touch of Hufflepuff's grace.

Prompt Number: 61. Hands On The Other Person’s Back, Fingertips Pressing Under Their Top, Drawing Gentle Circles Against That Small Strip Of Bare Skin That Make Them Break The Kiss With A Gasp Kiss. [>>>link to the list]

Word count: 839. Rating: M.

A/N: It's brainrot-powered. Characters are in their 20's.

Flower language ahead. I didn't want to link the full dictionary but I hope I left enough semantic clues to work out the meanings. ^ ^

This one feels… incomplete, idk? It's a drabble but still. lmk pls.

Tags: @celestial--sapphic @espressoristretto-patronum

One day Julia caught herself smirking, wand motionless in her hand.

The study's location within the house was intentionally put to the western side of the house. Julia wanted the Sun to be her clock in and clock out mechanism, but she lived on the British Isles.

The window, this addendum of little practical value, therefore hid behind the lovely gift from Poppy; an elegant reminder Julia's life wasn't confined to a desk, and an effective one at that.

Always being at the periphery of her vision, never leaving her alone on any day but especially on a gloomy, darkened one, when the thick material would stop the cold from sipping in through the cracks in the frame or through somewhere underneath the sill. The morphing print, spread wide on these days, couldn't escape Julia's heed, too.

She flicked the wand; the curtains spread, its elaborate etching of twining honeysuckles slid down, slowly turning a yarrow meadow.

"Love," it hinted; a compelling message in a subtle and silly language Poppy astutely knew Julia spoke as fluently, a potioneer she was.

Poppy never answered if the curtains complimented or commented on the mood. Did she know and did it matter if either of them was flabbergastingly flattered each time by the magic herself, no less.

However.

A lovely one and a peaceful one but a however nonetheless.

Imelda.

Julia wagered the curtains would shift momentously and bloom with roses whenever Imelda knocked and click the doorknob. Waiting for the invitation was usually out of the way of Imelda's only reasonable amounts of patience, tied to clock arrows and intricate timetables. It rarely left Julia time to have a lengthy conversation before the quick and often haste leave.

From her point of view, she could only suspect Imelda wasn't blind to the shifting scenery; and she wasn't.

One day Julia was nearly belated to the flying practice at the broom racing club. Imelda wouldn't take 'no' or 'Research' for the answer, not even the "Competition". Trading and academic pursuits could wait for a few hours, she said; those were obviously training time, evening, dinner, nightly pleasures and night itself plus part of the morning.

In other words, "Julia, arse off the chair!"

Mid-leave, Julia heard Imelda's unsavoury request and stopped. The print told her vulgarities. Imelda's grin was uncomfortably smug. Julia hoped the curtains didn't comment on that.

She warned her, the doorsill could turn a bewitched plank -- much like to the one Caldwell&Brewster had, thanks to Fastidio -- if that will keep Imelda's curiosity at bay.

Preferably, at bay at down the town, a few miles away, at the broom race course muggles just built. This curiosity could fuel something in Imelda to help her improve broom handling or to finally figure out was it her slippery hand or the broom pleaded to be sent to the retirement cupboard.

Julia concluded their exchange, her voice strict, "Everywhere but not in my study".

"All right. Keep your dungeons closed and safe then. For now," Imelda retorted.

Julia muttered, "Pest".

She didn't regret Imelda's teasing revenge came later that same day but ever since that exchange she became wary of Imelda's potential stunt.

Soon comes the day acute-angled towers of papers and ledgers will carpet the floors, inks will splash, pens roll in all four directions, cards and wax stamps scattered, unsent letters hid under the table, and on top of this mess, them, shamelessly careless, looking at the curtains' chagrin lilacs and lilies, or amaranths, laugh its comment off.

If the curtains actually commented because when that day came, Julia, stuck in a sultry kiss while sat still on her own table amidst the papers, -- unbelievably audacious woman, Imelda Reyes, -- eyed carnations blooming; saw Poppy coming, her cheeks red as the print.

Julia snorted when Imelda gasped at Poppy's shy touch on where her clothes didn't cover her skin.

"You will be the death of me," Imelda said. "You and this one." She nodded at Julia. She continued, glanced at the print, "I didn't know what I expect but not this. Anyone says anything about 'love' and I will correct you instantly; this flower's meaning is 'sex'."

"Never been up for romance, you," Poppy cackled. "It's just… Us."

Julia sighed, "If either of you were looking at herbs and not at Mirab-- err, Garlick all the time before the NEWTs, you'd know it's fascination. Poppy is the closest, though." Julia glanced at Imelda, tried to appear stingy. People, sat and held on their own tables, with a body standing in-between their legs, can't appear any less threatening. It's a break free, or a surrender. "You are narrowing it down too much, Imelda."

Maybe, Julia managed to have it to her eyes. Imelda's following kiss stung her lip; she must to had it from somewhere, mustn't she.

"Can you maybe not have it… here?" Poppy asked with a hint of demand she often let it in her voice to compel people. "We've dinner almost ready, besides, there isn't enough space for another one…"

[fablegaze]

Spectember day 6 - leviathan planet culture

(mostly me rambling for this one)

the leviathan planet is made up of 2 major landmasses: I'll call them the "human continent" and "leviathan continent" for now. you can find a Very messy world map that I drew on day 1. it's not entirely accurate (going to make both continents smaller in the final version) but it's good enough for now

the human continent is the largest area of land on the planet, mostly uninterrupted by water and with only a few islands surrounding it. "wait how are humans on this planet-" don't even worry about it.

the leviathan continent, on the exact opposite side of the world, is Entirely islands. some of them get pretty big though

there’s a huge divide between human & leviathan cultures, fueled by distance, a language gap, and a recent uptick in leviathan hunters

human culture is almost entirely unaware that some leviathans are sapient. leviathan hunters are the only ones that interact with them often enough to be able to tell, but they tend to push those thoughts aside for the sake of money or culling these “dangerous animals” (human attitudes toward leviathans are not the best)

the only guy that actually knows about their sapience is now kinda a leviathan himself and has almost entirely left the human side of his life behind, so. yeah, no contact between humans & leviathans at all

(i will explain Why he is a leviathan. later. eventually)

leviathan hunting is a relatively new thing that more and more people are hearing about, largely fueled by the sheer rage and hatred of One Guy. most people either don't like it or just don't give a shit

fish leviathans & seal hexadogs are both species that used to gather in schools/packs, and are still very social. they tend to get anxious if alone for long enough. frilled leviathan socialness varies wildly from individual to individual. horned leviathans are almost entirely solitary

most leviathan settlements tend to be on land near the shore, or in shallow waters. there are a few deeper settlements for those who can hold their breath long enough to go down there

leviathans don't wear clothes very often, but they LOVE accessories and many leviathans are just completely decked out in random bits and bobs that they found or made. necklaces, earrings, and bracelets made out of driftwood, shells, dried plants, beads, and/or scraps of fabric are very popular

in the biggest leviathan city (the one that the two pictured above live in), the most common way to show your affection for someone is to give them gifts. accessories are a go-to option, but also food and supplies. bullet (the lighter gray one) spends a lot of their time fishing, and passing out the extra to anyone who needs it

leviathan culture as a whole adapted pretty well to being contacted by other sophonts, but most are entirely disinterested in space. especially the bigger leviathans that would require specialized equipment and large ships to even get up there. the fish leviathans & seals are overall the most interested in space. they are little and easy to transport

humans are way more eager to go into space, and all the people from other planets are eager to meet them. humans are an outlier on the leviathan planet; they don’t look like anything else that lives there, and no one knows where they came from (including Me ❤️❤️❤️). there are old leviathan legends about humans descending from the skies but they don't really go into much detail past that

humans learn about sapient leviathans around the same time the leviathan planet is contacted and the reaction is mixed. some people don’t give a shit and still view them as wild animals, others are filled with immeasurable amounts of guilt. leviathans are willing to make peace with anyone who Wasn’t involved in leviathan hunting. their only message to the hunters is “get fucked”

[aonoexpat]

07-10-2023

Aaaaand just like that, plans change...

I was very disappointed to receive an e-mail from the vineyard I was supposed to start working at soon, saying the start date would be pushed back until the 24th of October. They didn't apologise or empathise at all, just informed me. It had been the 9th at first, and had already been delayed until the 16th. On top of that, out of the past 33 days, I have spent a combined total of 22 waiting to hear back from them. They have consistently been very slow and minimal in their communication, and still haven't answered my questions, so this message was the final straw for me. I have heard that this is a cultural difference, that people here only plan a week ahead, but that simply does not work for me. I have spent enough time in this area, and if they only plan a week ahead, I'm not going to wait around for another three, only to possibly get blown off again when the weather still isn't right, or they decide not to employ me after all. The sunk cost fallacy makes me want to stick around and wait, but I'm going to cut my losses and move on.

I am in quite dire need of a job, however, so I've pinned my hopes on finding something either in Whakatū or in Te Whanganui-a-Tara. In a way this is more convenient, since Elrond's self-contained certification expires on December 11th. I'd like to have seen the whole West coast by then!

So, this morning I laced up my hiking boots again for the first time in a long time, and climbed Mount Iron. It was a 1.5 hour loop, but I still managed to get a blister on my heel 😖

It was worth it though, the view was amazing! It felt so great to be out in the sun again, no jumper needed, and on the way down I finally spotted a pīwakawaka once again ❤ I ended up getting a tattoo of one of these cute little birds back in Ōtepoti, so this was a very heartwarming encounter for me.

After getting some groceries and begrudgingly fueling up (the prices out here are painfully high), I set out on the road towards the West coast along Lake Hāwea and Lake Wānaka! It took me a while to find a parking spot that both felt safe (not right next to the road, and, I kid you not, no decomposing unidentifiable animal corpses around) and had phone signal. Anytime my phone said I had 4G signal, I pulled off the road at the nearest parking spot, only for the signal to disappear again the second I actually tried to load a web page. It got super frustrating after the fifth time, but the sixth time was the charm. The drive was absolutely gorgeous though!

Now I'm having a little improvised dinner and stargazing through Elrond's roof window. I'm listening to pretty tunes and looking forward to not being so alone anymore hopefully soon 😌

[cosmicjoke]

I am not a shipper or someone who has harassed you. I wasn’t even shit talking Levi, as I said he’s my second favorite character. I was trying to talk about the fact you aren’t ever open to any discussion that contradicts your specific view of his character.

Furthermore, the only reason I am on anon is because you’ve reblogged my posts in the past && were cruel even though I also love Levi to death. You say you’re not a Levi expert but any time anyone challenges you than you go on the attack instead of being open to others views.

Excuses, excuses. I've never been "cruel" to anyone on this site for just trying to talk to me. Show me the posts you're talking about, instead of making vague accusations. I'll only tell someone off if they're rude, as you continue to be, or if they don't stop harassing me over the same topics again and again even when asked. Like I told you, if you want to debate me on something, then stop being a bitch and reply to my post, instead of running around like a coward, making second accounts to harass me while crying about being the "victim". I'm not going to give you time or consideration if you can't man the fuck up.

Why won't you just leave me the fuck alone? I'm allowed to say whatever I want on my blog about the media I want to talk about. No one ever said you have to read it or agree with it. No one is forcing you to follow me around and consume my posts. But you seem incapable of accepting that fact. Too invested in your image of being a victim, I guess, you need constant fuel to feel like your "opinion" is being oppressed, when the truth is, nobody cares what you think, certainly not enough to stalk you on your blog and hate read your opinions. I don't give a shit about your opinion, and I'm not obligated to, either. I'm not obligated to "hear you out" or listen to you on any level. You need to learn to deal with that. You need to understand and accept that, and to realize that it's you who are incapable of accepting other people's views, to the point you feel the need to create anonymous accounts and harass them over having those different views, trying to force them to read your own shitty takes and then crying about it when they refuse. I'm not the one sending messages to blogs that have different views from mine, harassing them over it.

You and your little clique. I warned you. Well, whatever. Here it comes, I guess.

[cheloumita]

To the ones who are playing it safe,

Yes this goes to multiple people. To the various versions of men who’ve played it safe, those I’ve encountered in every chapter of my life. There are too many of you to mention, and each of you doesn’t deserve an individual letter. Thus, read this letter collectively.

It’s just ironic that men like you are so inconsistent yet in some inexplicable way I always meet a version of you in every phase of my life. You are the only constant character in every chapter of my book. Among everyone, you’re the one who resided rent-free in my mind. You occupied my mind but never my heart. I spent more time trying to forget you than trying to know you. 

Mr. Play-It-Safe, you’re adept at finding the perfect balance to keep that level of mystery and openness to keep me interested, comfortable, and giddy. You’re skilled at making me believe I’m the sole one who felt a connection, and that I alone fuel my delusions. You are so good with words that I replay them in my head over and over again every night until I fall asleep. You are so good at making me feel so special and yet making me feel like trash at the same time. 

Days after meeting you, I somehow find myself checking every notification on my phone, hoping for a message, a reaction to my post, or even just a view of my stories. I basically stalk all your social media activity and convince myself that everything you do online has something to do about me. It’s insane right? It’s crazy that I fall for the same pattern each time. That each time I pray that you are different from the rest.

Perhaps I’m at fault for assuming too much, but was the blame solely mine? Because whenever I try to move on or limit my interaction with you, you would work your charm again and be consistent for days, weeks even, showering me with attention but never giving me assurance. You offer just the right amount of attention to keep me longing for you until you disappear again, leaving me questioning reality. 

To the ones who are playing it safe, you give a piece of your heart to each girl who got your attention and used that sharp piece of that thing you call a heart to break the girls who were once whole before they met you. 

You deceive yourself into believing you’re the one providing affection and attention, but in reality, you’re the one yearning for attention and affection. You suck the joy and the smiles of the girls you prey on. You never stay long enough to see the consequences because you just live for the thrill. You have this sick need of giving love and taking it back, making me question if all of it was just a dream. You leave a trail of broken hearts and each tear from the girl you broke is like trophy. You always get away unscathed because you never made a promise, you never compromised. 

To the ones who are playing it safe, I pity men like you. How will you live once the thrill is gone? You don’t know how to stay and you don’t know how to love. All the pieces that you’ve given will eventually run out and you’ll be left with nothing. While all the girls you’ve broken will mend their hearts and meet a man who will love them in ways that you never could, you will be alone in life and regretting everything, wishing that you knew how to be serious and sure. Because while you were busy playing it safe, the one for you has already slipped away. 

[meimi-haneoka]

Fans like you are precisely what will never make me touch the X fandom with a 10 ft. pole even when I get down to resume my reading I interrupted several years ago. I didn't have your side of the fandom in mind when I wrote this post, as the CCS fandom itself does have plenty of people who talk in this disrespectful way, despite we're the ones "getting attention" right now, but let me just say a couple of things.

What's dishonest, here, is talking without knowing what's really going on.

Neither you, or I, or anyone else beside CLAMP and the publisher involved knows what's really going on and the reason why that series has been on hold for so long. That is an undeniable truth, NO ONE BUT THEM KNOWS and getting mad and automatically frame everything as "it must be because they want to mess with us/because they hate us/because they're lazy" IS what's dishonest here. Precisely BECAUSE it's been on hiatus for so long, one should probably need to take another approach to this matter. This is the "lack of empathy" I was talking about. I'm not saying one shouldn't feel angry about it, but fueling that anger to the point it crosses borders and throws shit at other series produced by the same authors is definitely not okay. They are free to work on whatever they feel like, in the timing they feel like, since they're the only ones who really know what's going on in their lives and in their business. Because yes, they're authors, artists and they're making a living off it.

What's dishonest here, is calling Clear Card a cash-grab when it is actually the opposite. I know you haven't followed closely the reactions from the JP fandom along the years, otherwise you would know that Clear Card ended up upsetting and gaining criticism of the old CCS fans multiple times along the serialization, not because of the easy reason you might think of (boring/dragged on, all problems that in most cases disappear once you read the story all at once and not through serialization) but precisely (precisely!!!) because CLAMP didn't choose the easy, cash-grabbing way of portraying nothing but an endless stream of SyaoSaku romantic scenes. That's all the fans wanted and asked for, but CLAMP wanted to portray another story, other important messages, they wanted to bring this story towards more adult and complex themes (precisely what made many turn their noses up). They talked about childhood abuse, self-sacrifice, suicidal tendencies, self-acceptance, boundaries, the lines you should never cross when you're trying to help a loved one...and so much more. It was extremely difficult to talk about all that stuff without crossing what's considered acceptable in the "world view" of that series (something that seems SACRED in the way the JP fans enjoy a series), but they did because they felt they WANTED TO tell that story through the CCS narrative. My translations are aimed at that too, showing how much they actually care profoundly for this story too, they had a precise project for it and it wasn't just an easy way to make money. The chance came with the 20th anniversary, and they took it, that's all.

Instead of continuously trying to bring this series down because you're mad they're not continuing your favorite one, I'd suggest showing how much you actually love that one and you all feel it's still very relevant today. Support all the initiatives they're releasing lately for the series. It might have an effect or maybe it might not (because, again, you don't know what's going on in the background), but you shouldn't stop trying showing your love. But please leave their other series and projects alone. The fact that you're mad about this still doesn't change the fact that there are people, human beings behind those hands that write and draw their stories, and insults will only have the effect of degrading those people, they aren't going to change anything. If it were enough to insult them to bring your series back, it would've come back decades ago. I don't think it's dishonest to say that.

And that's all I'm gonna say on this matter, I'm not going to reply anymore.

I know my last report is so long...and technically, I could've summarized so many of those info in shorter paragraphs.

But it's all intentional. I really wanted to write their dialogues out as far as possible, because I've noticed something in the fandom. I'm pretty sure this is not limited to CLAMP but to 'public figures' in general, especially on the internet.

I've noticed a sort of tendency to dehumanize these four women. Sometimes I come across comments that make my skin crawl. People calling them names, insults, "these old hags", people who think these four women should only live to satisfy the fandom's hunger for content, or their fetishes. They don't consider (and even if they do, they do not seem to know what the words 'be indulgent' mean) these are four human beings who have their lives, wishes, preferences, shortcomings, health problems, or even not a 100% great mental space.

I admit I have "joked" with heavy terms in private too, in the past. But lately, especially after they started to open the Twitter Spaces, showing their more "raw, genuine side" to us, and ever since my JP skills allowed me to understand them better, I can't bring myself to do that anymore. It might be because I'm getting old too and I understand painfully well what it means to begin having problems related to age (for memory or even physical pain), and the love and care (and often pain) that lie behind a piece of artwork, but I just can't help empathizing with them. Hearing them joking among each other, knowing how much they care for one another like sisters, hearing them talking so humbly about their work even after such a long time, getting to know when they're feeling sick and knowing their struggles because on the workplace they're like a machine that can work well only if all the components are in good condition...it really really makes you realize how human they are.

I think the turning point for me was when I heard one of the personal Spaces Ohkawa opened every morning for a week, while she was having breakfast, talking about various topics. In one of the firsts, she apologized because you could hear the noise of the washing machine working on the background. It struck me so powerfully. This is not some kind of unapproachable, inaccessible person living on another existential plane, this is a normal, regular human being who writes stories for a job but who's got to do laundry like every other regular person on this earth. They might drink champagne and go to fancy restaurants (but Ohkawa in particular is a fan of McDonald's too) but that doesn't mean that they lost their humanity.

And I found myself not wanting to partake in this stupid game of dehumanizing them anymore. Actually, with my translations, I want to try to make people see what I see too. Make them feel the "vibe" through their own words, because you can understand so much of them through the words they often use. Ohkawa might look like this merciless and whimsical boss, but she actually just loves the stories she envisioned very much, and she's ready to go through a shitstorm to defend her choices on the workplace.

She just feels a bit guilty that when there's criticism of her choices, the work of her colleagues gets dragged down along, but they're all in this together and they stick to one another tightly.

I can only do these translations when it's about CCS because they're exhausting to me and take me so much time, so my "brainrot" helps me push through to finish them. But at least for that, I want to try to do this, when I can.

[barnesbabee]

Could I request ateez reaction to sending nudes infront of the other members and they see it :))))

[ATEEZ REACT - You send them nudes while they're with the other members]

⚠gender neutral reader⚠

ꜱᴇᴏɴɢʜᴡᴀ

-> It would be at the dorms, since he'd hate getting sidetracked at work -> Seonghwa had just informed you they were finally out of practice, so you could have a decent chat without the constant 'sorry have to go :(' and 'see you in a bit' texts -> So it wasn't weird that his phone buzzed in his pocket -> And had it been anybody else he would have waited until dinner was over, but he missed you -> And he missed seeing you -> Thankfully he'd see you much sooner, and a lot more than he had anticipated -> He's innocently grab his phone -> And slam it right down on the table, screen pressing against the wood as his face flushed red -> His widened eyes searched around the room, to find everyone questioning him -> He would 100% awkwardly excuse himself, he couldn't deal with all this in front of others -> His heart would be torn between scolding you, praising you or teasing you, but he somehow (with his still dizzy mind and sweat running down his forehead due to the nerves) found a middleground -> Hwa: you know they could have seen you... We can't have you misbehaving like that, can we?

ʜᴏɴɢᴊᴏᴏɴɢ

-> 100% wouldn't mind -> If anyone saw, it would just fuel his ego and pride, as if he was showing off his prized possession -> He would definitely be at the studio when you'd send the picture -> As a way to fuel him up, and also to show how much you missed him, due to the incessant work hours -> Hongjoong's work company would always differ, from being alone, to being with a couple other people, to being in a crowded room with 7 other boys -> His phone buzzed, and he immediately checked it, as he'd been waiting for the CEO to contact him with a deadline, but it was from you -> Attached image -> He instantly smirked, and opened it, knowing fully well what reserved him -> Hongjoong would always admire your pictures for a very long time, taking in all of your curves -> What he would do next would very much depend if he was alone or not -> But he would always be kind enough to reply -> The male would always know what you wanted: a picture of what you did to him and the promise of a long night ahead of you

ʏᴜɴʜᴏ

-> Yunho wasn't necessarily shy when it came to sex talk, but he would be very shy when he was unprepared -> He would always be happy to receive a text from you -> ATEEZ said he would always be the fastest to memorize the choreographies, so Yunho would usually have a little time to text you -> Every day you woke up with a 'good morning <3', and every night he went to bed with a 'good night <3' -> So when he received a message from you at 8am he expected it to be wishes of a good day -> But instead he was met with a picture of you, naked, legs spread wide so there would be no doubt at he was looking at, in front of a mirror -> The caption DID say 'have a good day' however, so he wasn't totally wrong -> Yunho was paralyzed -> Between the raging boner, the fiery feeling spreading through his body, and the picture he couldn't bring himself to look away from, he couldn't seem to move -> So much so that it caught the attention of others, earning a 'Yunho, you okay?' from Hongjoong -> He would just nod and excuse himself -> 100% would call you so you could finish what you started

ʏᴇᴏꜱᴀɴɢ

-> Expect scolding and a whole lot of spanking. -> He would check his phone during break, but since they all hung out together during the short period, it would be impossible for some of them not to notice your exposed body on the screen -> The man would keep his composure, although very much embarrassed (and jealous the others had seen you in that state), as shown by the flush that would 100% be on his cheeks -> Yeosang would excuse himself, only to text back what he would do to you as a punishment, later that night -> But he wouldn't give you the satisfaction of letting you know how flustered and riled up you had gotten him in front of everyone, as he knew that was your goal

ᴍɪɴɢɪ

-> Obviously flustered line 2/2 -> Would mindelssly check his phone, and when he saw you had sent a picture he very innocently expected a meme, of a funny picture of your animal -> Instead it was a picture of your ass, perked up, in full view for him -> Would yell 'what the fuck!?' attracting all attention to his phone -> Needless to say, all of the boys who dared look at the phone immediately grew red and looked elsewhere -> Would pop an immediate boner, and would have to excuse himself to finish the job with the picture by his side -> Mingi: If I tell you everyone else saw this the chances are I'm never getting one of these again, right?

ꜱᴀɴ

-> Your sexual relationship with San would be based on teasing and punishing, so you'd time it just right -> Right before an interview, where a boner would be hard to hide and would give him a very good motive to have a go at you once he got back -> He would pull out his phone before the interview, to tell you he might be MIA for some time, to find a text from you -> San didn't think much of the fact that it was an attached file, he expected a 'good luck' gif or something of the sort -> So his initial reaction to a picture of you, naked with a hand in your crotch was of shock -> His eyes wide, mouth agape and face as red as a cherry -> But it would only last for a few seconds -> San would recompose himself just as quickly -> Would find a lame excuse to go somehwere else, to snap a picture of his dickprint -> Sannie: this isn't good news to you baby, the price of making me hide a boner in an interview is high -> Y/N: can't wait to pay it ;)

ᴡᴏᴏʏᴏᴜɴɢ

-> Oh he would absolutely love it -> Didn't care that others saw it, like Hongjoong he saw you as the most beautigul thing in the world and he would be proud to show you off -> It would be a regular thing for you two to exchange pictures, so when 'Picture Attached' showed up on his phone he knew he was in for a good time -> Except he wouldn't be so lucky some times -> Wooyoung had given San the phone to plug it in the speakers, and a message from you came hrough -> San noticed it was an image and clicked it -> He saw Wooyoung take weird photos all the time, so when he clicked on the message he expected to see a goofy face from you, not a full blown nude during work time -> 'Uh... Wooyoung... Y/N sent you... something?' -> San would be looking away while showing him the screen -> Wooyung would just smirk and grab the phone confidently, zooming in on his favourite parts of you -> 'They're really pretty, aren't they Sannie?'

ᴊᴏɴɢʜᴏ

-> Little kid at heart -> Would be very embarrassed when receiving one of these, no matter if it was in private or public -> His cheeks would warm up, and he would giggle and hold his phone to his chest, to make sure no one aorund him saw it -> Wooyoung would have definitely caught a glimpse of it, being the nosy boy he is, he wanted to know what was so funny for Jongho to be giggling, but he wouldn't tell the younger he had seen his other half's body in display -> Jongho would excuse himself to go to the bathroom and would call you -> He would whine about how horny you'd left him and would beg you to help him out -> So you would have a nice, steamy session of phone sex -> Once it was over, it was his turn to tease you -> Jongho would snap a picture of his cum-covered thighs, with the caption 'the things you make me do...'

[wellhellotragic]

The Placeholder (2/2)

Summary: Emma is not the girl that boys date. She’s the girl that he sleeps with but never tells his friends about. She’s the girl that he’ll cuddle with and then ghost. She’s the fun one who he goes out with but not the one he goes home with. She’s the one that fixes him so he can be with someone else. She’s the placeholder, the one who works for now but won’t ever be his forever.

A/N: This fic is based on a TikTok video that was just heartbreaking, where the creator always came in second. If you want to watch the video, you can find it here, but this story can be read without watching it.

It’s three months later when she runs into Robin in the street, turning her entire world upside down. Killian is engaged.

 There’s a bottle of rum at the back of the cabinet above the refrigerator. She finds it while looking for her favorite mug, completely certain and irrationally irate that Killian took it with him when he left. Because that’s what she does. People leave and unable to deal with the pain of being left behind, she looks for reasons to hate them instead.

 It’s his favorite bottle. The expensive bottle that he bought when he started his firm. The one he was saving for a special occasion, so it was hidden away out of sight.

 She’s angry, and turnabout feels fairplay. She’s two tumblers in when her anger turns to grief, and she decides to make her first Tiktok video. It takes her a second to figure it out, especially in her slightly drunken state, but once she does, she catches sight of herself on the screen. Tears fall, and before she knows it, she’s spilling out all of her pain.

 I am not the girl that boys date.

  I am the girl that is pretty enough to sleep with but not pretty enough to brag about to his friends. 

  I am the girl that he will cuddle with on the weekends and then not message throughout the week. 

  I am the girl who is fun to go out with and dance with and have a drink with but not to take to breakfast the next day. 

  I am the girl that will show him that he can be loved and deserves to be loved before he finds somebody better. 

  I am not the girl that boys date. I am the placeholder until they find someone better.

 She goes to sleep after, waking late the next morning to multiple alerts on her phone. 40,000 people have liked a video she barely remembers making. She’s about to delete it, mortified that she let herself be so bare in her rum fueled state, but then she sees them. Duets of her video, hundreds of women putting their own spin on her words, making aesthetic videos to her voice and it hits her. 

 Emma Swan may be alone, but she isn’t alone in the world. She isn’t the only one feeling so unlovable, so she leaves the video up, hoping that it helps other women to realize that they aren’t alone as well.

 By the end of the week, her video has almost 4 million likes amongst whoever knows how many views. She loses track of all of the comments and stitches, finally just turning off her notifications, overwhelmed by the comradery. Sure, there are some snarky and misogynist comments, but they become drowned by the words of encouragement, letting her know that she's loved and that her time is coming.

 They don’t know her though, don’t know that she’s irrevocably broken.

 She dives back into her work, trying to ignore the lingering sting in her heart. She also ignores the ribbing that she takes when one of the paralegals comes across her video sharing it with the whole firm. 

 It takes another two months for the jokes to die down. 

 There’s a new junior partner that joins them, and against all odds, she and Emma become fast friends. Well, friends isn’t exactly the right word for it. They’re the yin and yang of the law firm, and together they have an undefeated court record. And she’s the closest thing that Emma Swan has to a confidant.

 It’s on a Saturday, four months after her original post that Elsa first brings it up, letting her know that she saw the video. Emma chalks it up to a lack of sleep and stress which had caused her to have an emotional breakdown one night, trying to laugh it off. But Elsa isn’t so easily dissuaded and she won’t let it go.

 Instead, she tells Emma that the video is part of the reason she chose to work at that firm. She could see something in her vulnerability that drew her in, because who else could be trusted to fight for children than someone who knows what it was like to feel forsaken.

 Emma tries to brush her off, but she forges on, asking Emma if she’s seen the replies to her video, thrusting her phone in her face. There are so many stitches that she knows she’ll never find the time to watch them all, but Elsa is relentless and shows her a few that are the most commented on. 

 Some are like the one she’s already seen, women mouthing words of encouragement, and some are women crying and nodding along, pointing at her video as if to punctuate the end of each statement. But it’s the last one Elsa goes to show her that has her gasping for air. The one Elsa says is the most heart wrenching.

 Blue eyes stare back from the screen, and she’s so mesmerized by the sight of him, that she doesn’t even read the words flashing across the screen. It’s too much.

 She leaves work, feigning a headache.

 When she gets back to her still empty apartment, she feels like igniting the world to flames. Wine bottles fly across the room, she screams into pillows. The world around her is burning in her rage.

 He broke her and used her for views.

 Emma Swan is a glutton for punishment though, and as her anger boils over, she opens her phone, looking for his video so she can block him, or leave him a hateful comment. She wants him to know what he’s done to her. Wants the world to know.

 But her resentment dies on her tongue as she gets back to his video, and sees the anguish in his face. She’d missed it before, the bags under his eyes. The way his hair is mussed in every direction from him running his hands through it, something he absentmindedly did when he was stressed. The way the sparkle was gone.

 She hits play, letting it all sync in this time, letting her eyes scan the words that appeared next to her own.

   I am not the guy that dates. Not anymore. 

  I’m the guy that fell in love and wanted to be able to sing it from the rooftops, but she wasn’t mine.

  I’m the guy that obsessively carried his phone everywhere with him just so he wouldn’t miss a message from her, and still kept checking his phone once she was gone, because he felt phantom vibrations all week, and now he spend each weekend alone on the couch wondering what if. 

  I’m the guy that went to our diner every Sunday morning for a month hoping to run into her getting breakfast, and then went home sulking, drinking when she never showed.

  I am the guy that was shown that he could still be loved and deserved to be loved before he ruined it all, because he was terrified of losing her when she was the only one that ever mattered.

  I am not the guy that dates girls. I am the heartbreak when the story ends.

 She would be mad at all of the comments if she didn’t already know how in pain he already was. There were lines of women, drooling over him, reaching out hoping to each be the one that fixed him. She’s already done that though, and what has it gotten her?

 She is about to exit out of the app when she notices that there is one comment that he’s replied to. Someone asks for a storytime, and against her better judgment, she clicks on it. It’s just him, sitting on what she assumes is a stool as he leans against a counter. 

 He is in her favorite shirt, one she’d bought him for good luck during a major design pitch that she told him brought out his eyes.

   So, uh, a few of you have asked for a storytime. I’m afraid many of you might find yourselves disappointed as it isn’t much of a tale. My whole life, I felt like an outsider, and tried as hard as I might, there was never a place for me that felt like I belonged. Until I met a woman who changed my whole life.

 Emma has to pause the video, grabbing a glass of the only unsmashed wine bottle to help her stomach whatever he is going to wax poetic about Milah. She’s only met the woman a handful of times, and she’s nice enough, but all Emma can think about is the fact that she stole Killian, and in her mind, she’ll forever be the villain. 

 A glass and a half of merlot later, she pulls his video back up and hits play.

   She was the last thing I ever expected, having resigned myself to a lonely life. But she blew in, and before I knew it, she had consumed my soul, and everything I was was hers. She made me believe in myself again, told me that I was worth something. But before her, everything I’d ever touched had turned to ashes, and I was terrified to tell her how I felt, because I knew that eventually I’d ruin everything. So instead, like the coward I am, I threw myself into the arms of another, hoping to drown out the longing in my heart that screamed for her. But in doing so, I lost her anyway.

  I briefly let myself believe that I could move on and be happy in the relationship I was in. I gave myself to it completely, or I tried to. I even proposed thinking that if I just took that step, I’d forget the woman that haunted the very recesses of my mind, taking up residence in my dreams. 

  But then I came across the video that mine was stitched with, and I knew that I would never have with my fiance what I had with her, that she was the love of my life, and without her, there was no point in pretending with someone else. So I ended my engagement and made that video. 

  I suppose a part of me hopes that maybe she will see it, that she will know that I realize how much I’ve mucked everything up. But perhaps most of all, I want her to know how sorry I am for the pain I’ve caused her, and even if she never forgives me, I just need her to know that even though she often felt like nothing, to me she was everything.

 He gives the screen a small sad smile before standing and leaning towards the camera, and the video cuts off.

 She sits in stunned silence, not quite sure how to process what she’s just seen. It’s been months since he dueted her video and he’s made zero effort to reach out to her beyond the stitch, so she’s left to wonder about his authenticity. Killian has never been a man to do things by half measures, and if he really wanted her, he would have found her already. 

 She blocks him and deletes the app.

 It’s three days later when there’s a knock on her door. 

 It’s a man in a tailored suit delivering a small manilla envelope, insistent that she sign for it. He doesn’t give any indication what he’s there for as he slides the package into her hands, just nods toward the item she’s clutching and tells her that once she opens it, she’ll understand.

 Her name is written in the center of the package, along with her address in unfamiliar handwriting. There’s no return address, and she’s hesitant to open it, having heard horror stories at work.

 Eventually curiosity wins out, but not stupidity as she dons a pair of latex cleaning gloves just in case there is danger lurking inside.

 What she finds takes the air straight from her lungs, leaving with a gasp on her lips and a single tear shed onto the page. She has a brother, by blood, and he wants to meet her. He only recently discovered that she even exists or he would have sought her out sooner, but he understands that it may be too much for her right now. He gives her his name, number, and address, writing that his door is always open to her.

 It’s too much and not enough all at the same time. She’s been alone for nearly her entire life, and the idea of there being someone out there in the world, someone who looks like her, maybe has some of the same mannerisms, well it’s simply terrifying. What if she can’t measure up to his expectations, or what if he doesn’t measure up to hers. Life has taught her over and over that she’s not the type of person who gets a happy ending.

 But she caves. It takes weeks before she can summon the courage to send him a text, not quite ready to hear his voice. Texting is safe, she can step away, she can change her number even, if needed. They start with little things, like their jobs, interests, music tastes. It’s all superficial, and if she didn’t know better she might think that he was just as nervous as her.

 He’s a cop with the Boston PD. In time, she learns about his wife, a school teacher who actually teaches not far from where she lives, and he convinces her to meet him for lunch in a diner not far away as he puts it. He has no way of knowing that it’s a diner she frequented once upon a time, that it holds memories she can’t bear.

 And in true form, Emma cancels at the last minute telling him she has a work emergency. He’s persistent though, and won’t give up on her now. He tells her that family doesn’t give up on eachother, and she wonders where he got that idea from because their parents surely didn’t share the same mentality when they gave her away.

 It’s David’s birthday, and he’s having a get together at his house. A casual affair and he asks her to drop by, telling her that it won’t be awkward. She debates going, right up until the minute that she finds herself on his stoop, her hand a hair's width away from knocking. She can’t quite bring herself to do it, but she isn’t walking away yet either, which for Emma is progress she supposes.

 She isn’t sure how long she’s been standing there when a hand on her shoulder makes her jump, shaking her head to clear the thoughts running circles. The face on the other side of the arm holding onto her is shockingly familiar and she’s confused until he explains that Mary Margaret is Roland’s teacher and then Emma remembers the Nolan name from the trial depositions. She’d actually interviewed her maybe-kinda-sorta-sister-in-law and learned how she took a special interest in watching over them after the boy’s mother passed away.

 It’s almost a cosmic joke how small the world is, and how intent the universe is on littering her life with small reminders of ‘him.’ 

 Meeting David isn’t as awkward as she expected it to be. He introduces her to everyone as his sister, like it’s just a simple fact that she belongs and her heart nearly explodes at how unreasonably right it all feels. Emma actually knows a few of the officers at the party, having worked with them on some of her cases. She chats with guests as David mingles, looking so happy every time they lock eyes, as if her being there somehow means the whole world to him. And maybe it does if the way his wife gives her knowing glances. 

 She even speaks to Robin for a bit, catching up on all of the progress he’s made since she won his case for him. She doesn’t question him about Killian, and he has the good sense not to bring the man up either.

 The weeks turn to months, and Emma finds herself standing back on David’s stoop, knocking this time only because her hands are full of presents for her family. A word that still leaves her shocked sometimes as she says it outloud. She doesn’t normally wait at the door anymore, Mary Margaret having been insistent that she just walk in, because again, they’re family now.

 There’s something strange in the way with which she’s melded into this family unit. With how David knows exactly what she needs, like he’s always known her. Like he’s somehow been there for the more intimate moments of her life and understands why she is the way she is.

 It’s a smaller gathering this time. Just the misfits as David puts it, the family he’s adopted along the way, having spent too much time alone in this life as well. She’s learned a little about her birth parents, not enough for her to forgive them by any means, but maybe enough to understand them, because to the ugly duckling turned swan, forgiveness and understanding have never been synonymous.

 David’s father left when he was young, almost too young to remember him, and at the time, he had no idea that his mother was pregnant. With no formal education above high school, and no job, she knew that she couldn’t take care of two children, so she gave Emma up, hoping for a better life for her. Ruth passed years before, having taken her secret to her grave.

 In fact, it isn’t until that night, on a cold and snowy Christmas Eve that Emma learns how David even found out about her. The night is winding down and everyone is leaving, even Robin with a sleeping Roland resting in his arms. He says his goodbyes, but asks Emma to follow him outside for a moment. She obliges, and it’s there that the lifeboat she’s carefully been tiptoeing across nearly capsizes. 

 He shouldn’t be telling her this, he swore that he wouldn’t, but he thinks it’s stupid how headstrong they’re both being, and from someone who would give anything for even a few more minutes with his wife, he can’t stand the idea of them wasting what they have. With that, he hands her a folded piece of paper that’s been hiding away in his pocket all night.

 She waits until she gets home to read it, and then waits some more. It’s Christmas Morning, and she’s supposed to be heading back to her brother’s house to unwrap presents and drink ungodly amounts of cocoa, but instead, she’s curled up on her floor reading Robin’s chickscratch for the fifth time. 

 It was Killian. 

 He sought out a private investigator to look into Emma’s past, because as Robin put it, even though he screwed up and couldn’t be there for her anymore, he didn’t want her to be alone. That Killian wants to give her the world, he just doesn’t think he has a place in it anymore. 

 Robin also includes an address.

 She doesn’t go. 

 Instead she self sabotages and orders her usual from Mr. Wong’s around the corner and eats until the pain in her overcrowded stomach is stronger than the pain in her heart. She watches movies and yells at the scream about how they are all lies. That people don’t really make these grand romantic gestures. And she drinks wine until the fog overtakes her muddled mind.

 It’s David that finally puts her in her place having let himself in after days of not hearing from her, worry etched into his face until he sees her wallowing. They argue, yelling about this and that. She’s mad that he never told her about Killian and the private eye, and he tells her to grow up and stop playing the victim. That neither of them can change their pasts, but they can change their futures.

 She tries to kick him out and tell him that they are finished, barely more than strangers, but he tells her he isn’t giving up. That siblings fight and she needs to get used to it because it’s not going to be that last time that they disagree. He does take his exit though, knowing she needs time to process, but he leaves her with a final thought, picking the now crumpled note up off the coffee table, handing it back to her.

  He’s all she has left in this world, but he doesn’t have to be.

 His profile is gone from the app. She’s searched every combination she could think of but the videos that were stitched are gone now. She never should have blocked him.

 It’s seven pm on New Year’s Eve when she makes the decision to find him, not wanting to start another year without him. Not if he’ll have her anyway. She doesn’t even take time to throw a bag together, too aware that she only has five hours until midnight, and the drive to New York takes four in normal traffic. 

 The world is absolutely against her in the most tragic way possible. She gets a flat tire just outside of Hartford and her sweater is nearly ruined by the time she gets it changed. The traffic is horrendous and somewhere near Eastchester she gives up, parking her car in a random grocery store parking lot before running to a subway station. 

 She’s out of breath, nearly doubling over with a pain in her side, but she’s made it with four minutes to spare. With four minutes to gather enough courage to grab him by his shirt and kiss him into next year.

 She scans the piece of paper, making sure she really does have the right address before knocking, knowing it’s late and not wanting to disturb his neighbor by accident. But she’s in the right place, and with the minute hand on her watch now reminding her that she only has three minutes left, she pounds on the door, hoping he can hear it above the chaos of the city. 

 The door swings open, and she’s crestfallen with a short stocky forty something man opens the door, nearly growling at her as he does. She has the right apartment, but she’s about a week too late and now someone new lives in the apartment. 

 It’s late, and she should just get a hotel room in the city, but she can’t stay. Doesn’t want to. She just needs to get home, back to her own bed in Boston. Or to cry in a hot shower until the water runs cold. She’ll take either at this point, but she doesn’t want to be here, in a strange city mourning the what ifs.

 What if she had gone when Robin first gave her his address? What if she had replied to his video when she first saw it? What if she has just stopped being such a coward and told him how she felt before he ever had the chance to meet Milah?

 But now she’ll never know.

 Getting back to her car isn’t nearly as difficult. Everyone is still busy enjoying the festivities near Times Square and the train is nearly empty. The drive back is just as uneventful, although somehow every single radio station seems to be mocking her life choices with their song selections. 

 With Boston approaching in her windshield, she lets the tears finally fall, feeling safer in the embrace of the known. This is her city, her home, and she’s missed it tonight. Or maybe she misses what it used to be. So she lets herself grieve the ambiguous loss.

 The city is still lively as she drives down Boylston, people nearly falling over themselves in the street as she tries not to hit them. It’s stupid how accurate her brother was. She is alone, and he is all that she has left in this world. And it’s all her own fault for putting up her walls.

 It doesn’t help her wallowing that all of the street parking is taken in front of her building and it’s about twenty minutes of aimless driving before she caves and parks her car in her work parking garage, taking yet another grimmy subway train home as she avoids men with loose lips from too much liquor on her street.

 She’s almost there, ready to just crawl into the abyss, but there’s a man sitting on the curb blocking the front door, and she can’t quite make him out through the haze of tears that have reformed. She’s not completely able to discern if he looks threatening or if he’s just drunk enough to let her pass by unscathed. Taking in the way he’s slumped over with his head tucked into his arms against his legs, she assumes it’s the latter and tries to quietly walk past, sniffing into her sweater sleeve as she goes, alerting him to her presence.

 His voice is shaky and her name is a question on his lips. She feels betrayed, because there’s simply no way she’s hearing the voice she thinks she is. Her mind must be playing tricks. It’s almost five in the morning and she hasn’t slept. That’s it. A hallucination.

 Except it’s not. Somehow he’s there, looking as weary as she feels. They should talk, but it’s late, or early depending on how she looks at it, and she’s too exhausted to do anything but grab his hand and drag him upstairs and into her bed. 

 They don’t speak. He just reads her silent cues, and like he never left, he knows exactly what she needs without her having to ask for it. And what she needs right now is to just feel him, so he removes his jeans and crawls under the covers, scooping her up and holding on for dear life. 

 They’ll talk about it tomorrow, and the next day and the next, because she’s never letting him leave her again.

 In the end, she’s not the placeholder until he finds someone better. And he’s not the heartbreak when the story ends. 

 No.

 They’re the sudden turn of a blank page, an empty slate with nothing but promise.

[butwhyduh]

Under a spell

Sex pollen part 1

Batboys x reader (separate stories)

Okay so I’m going to write the beginning here where theyre all hit and you pick who you want to read their own personal story afterwards. Each one is going to be batboy x reader. I’ll post the second parts next week.

Tim looked down through the roof of the art gallery. Something was happening and he didn’t like it. Bruce and Dick were going inside as he stood by. Damian was home with a cold he caught from school. Jason was on standby on the neighboring roof.

A new street drug was being sold in the Gotham underground. Chemically similar to Poison Ivy’s sex pollen in a mild form mixed with an upper, it was a drug to induce sex fueled euphoria. Unfortunately there had been 4 ODs and multiple sexual assaults from it. Tim wanted to stay far from any kind of sex pollen. Dick had described it as awful and painful.

“Hey boys, I hear someone coming,” Jason said on the comm. a large black van rolled up to a side entrance.

It might seem weird for an art gallery in a pretty nice area of Gotham to be part of an organization that sold sex party drugs but there was a connection. The movement of fine art entailed the movement of a lot of money. It would be pretty easy to buy a piece for a huge sum and part of it goes toward drug movement. Plus those delicate crates were pretty nice for physical movement of supplies.

A set of men started moving crates in the warehouse.

“Should we move on them,” Dick whispered.

“Negative,” Bruce said. “Surveillance until we know more.”

Dick watched from his point of view as they filled a side room with the large wooden crates. It was a full 10 minutes before the men placed them all in the room.

“Can you get close enough, Nightwing, for me to run scans on the lot number of the boxes,” Tim asked.

“I can try,” he said moving along the rafters towards the crates. He stopped as the men returned.

“A little closer, Nightwing.”

“Hold on, Red,” Dick whispered.

“Hmm?” Jason said having been momentarily distracted by a very distracting text message.

“Closer, before they close the door,” Tim urged, ignoring Jason.

“Yep,” Jason said. He swung down and knocked out one of the guys holding the door open.

“What the fuck,” Dick yelped as he suddenly had to dive from gunfire as the other men let loose a hailstorm. Bruce jumped in front of Jason, kicking a gun from a henchmen’s hand.

Tim could see 2 of the men trying to escape a side door and he jumped through an open window to stop them. He hit one with his staff, disarming him. He dived behind a crate as another drew a gun.

“Secure the crates, contain the men,” Bruce growled through the comms. Jason growled at the intrusion in his ears and shot one guy in the knee before kicking him in the face as he went down.

“Oh boys,” came a melodic feminine voice from high. They looked up to see Poison Ivy smiling near the the roof entrance Tim had used.

“Oh fuck,” Tim managed to gasp before a soft purple mist flooded the room. Poison Ivy flipped out of the building with a little laugh. All but two of the henchmen were unconscious. Bruce quickly dispatched one while coughing and the other ran straight to into a door, knocking himself unconscious.

They rushed towards the door, trying to hold their breath, as the mist flooded their senses. The first sign of Poison Ivy’s toxins were racing heartbeat and endorphin release. A bit like right before riding a roller coaster. All four bats stood in the side alley.

“I’m calling GCPD about this warehouse so they can confiscate any evidence and prevent anyone from coming in,” Bruce said, stepping to the side. “And then to the bat cave. All of us.”

“Just give me a antidote because I’m going home,” Jason said. He grabbed one from the bag in the batmobile that Bruce kept for moments like that. He tossed a few to Dick and Tim. “I’ll see you later.”

Bruce finished his phone call and sighed. “Where did Jason go?” He asked.

“Went home. We have the antidotes,” Tim said taking his. Dick swallowed one too and they started giving them to the henchmen slowly regaining consciousness.

“I’ll meet you after patrol,” Bruce said. “I’m going to test this formula just in case.”

“I’ve got to go to WE after we get this cleared up,” Tim said scratching the back of his neck. “A big meeting tomorrow.”

“I guess Nightwing works alone tonight,” Dick laughed with a shrug. He hated it but it wasn’t anything new.

“Alright. Any new symptoms, contact me immediately. Do you understand?” Bruce said seriously. Both agreed. Bruce climbed in the batmobile and drove back to the cave.

He sat at the computer after placing a sample in a test tube and centrifuge before having the computer analyze it. He pulled his cowl off and ran his hand down his face. Was it seriously hot in the bat cave? Perhaps he had Damian’s cold? He started planning for a potential call to the doctor in the morning if Damian wasn’t better and he started feeling ill.

It was a soft hand on his shoulder that made his heart race and his body react that connected the dots:

The antidote didn’t work.

[obae-me]

Upside Down CH-1

Author’s Note: Hi, yes, hello, welcome to the fic series that no one asked for! Do I have other things I need to finish? Yes! But has this been the only thing on my mind for the past four days? Also yes! For some reason I was incapable of writing anything else! Thanks, brain, for this out of the blue obsession! 

Tags: Reverse AU

Word Count: 4587

                                                      Next Chapter

Hell Away From Hell

Wrong. You didn’t do anything wrong. It was a mistake. It had to be. Although, with every clink of your restraints, your reality was becoming ever clearer. The chains rattled, echoing down the hall like a set of twisted wind chimes. Ones that sung of your dismal fortune. The demon ahead of you yanked the lead attached to your cuffs, sending you stumbling forward. You bit your lip to keep from cursing. Steading your body, you took their less-than-subtle message and picked up the pace. Keeping your eyes glued towards your destination, your stomach sank to your knees. Why? Why had you been brought to the castle? You hadn’t done anything wrong. Well, not anything to warrant being escorted by the palace guards in chains. And as they led you silently inside, past the polished halls and gaudy antiques, your fate pounded just fervently in your mind as your heart was in your chest. 

They were going to present you in front of the prince. 

It was torture in and of itself just making it to the throne room. The worst part about it all was your rampant imagination. You could only imagine what type of horrific techniques the prince was aware of. Halting in front of the large double doors, the demon behind you moved to open the entrance. Holding it open, the guard tugging you along guided you in. You managed to take only a few steps inside the room before you were practically thrown inside, your body tumbling over the ground. Both the guards smirked at you, flashing their pointed fangs in their conceited gestures before shutting the door, leaving you alone inside. 

“MC.” All the air inside your lungs had conveniently escaped. Lifting your chest off the ground, you tightened your lips as you met his gaze. Those glistening emerald eyes pierced right through you. Quickly, you lowered your eyes, attempting to show as much respect as you could to gain his favor. 

“M-my lord.” 

The melodic note that left his throat was a mix between a laugh and a coo. “Now, now, none of that groveling. I had you brought here to ask you a favor!” You could hear him stand to his feet, and you watched his shoes approach, clicking against the marbled tile. Then, you felt the smooth skin of his hand caress your right horn. The sudden sensitive feeling had your tail rapidly twitch and tuck under your leg. He pushed your horns back, raising your chin so you could look up at him. His dark hair drifted down across his forehead, curling around his horns that curved above his head like a broken halo, his face soft and inviting, and yet your gut wouldn’t let you believe it. “Please, from now on, just call me Simeon.” 

Simeon hummed as he lifted his tea cup to his lips. He had been hospitable enough, but you still couldn’t shake this feeling of unease. Plus...what he had brought you in to ask you was...well, something short of insanity. You continued to rub your wrists where your constraints had been. And as much as the prince of hell apologized for his guard’s brutish behavior, you had a feeling it was purposeful. A message of sorts. Even now, as he had his little servant bring in sweets and tea as sickly sweet as it could get, it all tasted bitter to your tongue. “So let me get this straight,” you started. “You want me to be a member of this…” 

The prince tilted his head, eyes practically shining. “Restoration program.” 

You cleared your throat after the little scone this blonde demon had given you made your throat run dry. “R-right. And I’m assuming I don’t have a choice in the matter?” 

His voice was soft, but the light reflecting off his horns and his fangs suggested another answer. “We all have choices, MC.” 

Swallowing your nervousness, you lowered your head again. “But, with all due respect, sir...why? Why a restoration program?” 

Another voice chuckled behind your figure. “Because, why not?” You strained your neck, getting a view at the newcomer behind you. White hair, a mischievous smile, and something unknown swimming at the back of those dark eyes. Not only that, but the figure was wearing clothes as pure as clouds, with a certain glow to him. 

Simeon stood, hand out to greet this person as if they were an old friend-and for all you knew, they might’ve been. “Solomon, how good to see you.” 

The new guest-now known to you as Solomon-beamed. “Likewise. You’re looking well.” He turned, giving you a once-over to take you in before nodding. “And you are MC, yes?” 

Glaring, already feeling your skin about to burn, you leaned away from him. “And you’re an angel.” Your distrustful attitude let him frown for just a moment, but whether it was just his angelic nature or his personality, that smile was right back on his face. 

“Yes, well, the plan requires an angel, so Simeon personally asked me for my hand in this matter.” 

The both of them could tell that you were unbelievably confused, so Simeon gestured for the angel to take a seat at the table. “Luke.” The prince gestured to his small servant, the one who had not only brought you sweets but had taken the liberty to be staring you down the entire time. Finally, he turned his attention away from you. “Please do me a favor and get our new guest some refreshments.” The lesser demon squinted at you, nearly growled at the angel, and then took his leave with rapid little steps. Simeon laughed quietly to himself. “Don’t worry about him, he’s not used to others quite yet. But, MC.” With your name mentioned, you straightened your posture. “I’ve been planning this for quite some time. It’s been a desire of mine to bring the three realms closer together.” You couldn’t help but wonder why, what purpose it served, but you kept your mouth shut. “And while I’ve started to make decent progress fixing the old wounds between the Devildom and Celestial Realm, most of my kingdom and Solomon’s people refuse to make connections with the humans.” 

Mortals...even just the mention managed to leave a heavy pit in your stomach. “If I may speak.” You waited for the prince’s go-ahead before speaking your mind. “What would be the point of connecting with the humans? They serve little purpose. They’re either so corrupt they destroy their own kind or they think they’re so pure they isolate themselves or get themselves killed in the name of their twisted justice.” Speaking so passionately against the idea, you didn’t realize your nails had grown into talons, leaving marks in the wooden table. You took a breath, reclaiming your typical form. “They can’t even do themselves any good, what makes you think they’d be good for our realms?” 

Solomon, an expression of understanding mixed with pity, bounced a little in his seat. “That’s the question, isn’t it?” He turned his head to Simeon, who was nodding at you with a bit of approval. 

“That’s what this plan is all about. Testing them, observing them. We’ll be watching these humans, and at the end of this project, we’ll be able to determine if they’re ready and worthy of being brought together with us.” The ruler crossed one leg over the other, his tone making it sound as it was as simple as eating pie. 

Setting down the fork to your pastry, you felt a sense of dread wash over you. “And by we you mean?” 

“Why, you and Solomon of course! A demon and an angel, both working together to restore the bond between the human world and ours! The Demonic and Angelic Restoration program! Or D.A.R. -dare- for short.” If it weren’t for the horns, you’d almost think this demon was an angel with the way he eagerly talked about restoring bonds and bettering the nature of the realms. But, then you felt nauseous. 

“What...what exactly do you need me to do to help with this...program? And why me?” 

It was actually the angel that spoke up. “I’m sure you’re aware of the Morningstars?” 

It was such a silly question, you ended up scoffing. “Who doesn’t down here? Those brothers are filled with so much corruption and chaos they end up fueling about half the lesser demons down here...why?” 

They both straight up ignored your question and instead asked you some of their own. Simeon leaned forward, looking at you intently. “It took me quite a bit of time to find you MC. Most people don’t know you exist, and those that do hardly know your name. You simply are known to most as Isolation. Is it true that you’ve never made a pact with a human? Rumor is that you even refuse to subsist off their sins. And you’ve never taken a soul? That’s typically unheard of nowadays.”  

Shifting in your seat, you gave it to them straight. “It’s true. I do whatever I can to avoid contact. Haven’t even seen a human in the past millennia. Haven’t talked to one in about twice that time.” 

Clapping his hands together, Simeon let out an amazed sigh. “Perfect. You will be able to have a fresh eye! A clean slate. An unbiased--well, mostly unbiased opinion. You won’t be tempted to corrupt them, you’ll give me honest answers.” 

“Plus,” the angel agreed, “if you have the strength and willpower to live without human sustenance and influence for this long, you probably will have the patience to keep from killing them. If anyone could manage to live with the Morningstars, it would be you, from what I’ve heard.” 

You were grateful you had put down your drink a while ago. Your breath caught in your throat. “Wait, excuse me, what did you say? Live...with the…” 

“Mr. Morningstar!” A laugh, a handshake, even a pat on the shoulder, it nearly made you ill watching the upcoming king of the Devildom greet a human like this so casually. You couldn’t help but sneak glances at this mortal...one of the Morningstars, the eldest. The one who fueled the most demons without even knowing about it. People down in the Devildom called him by Pride. A human world CEO-whatever that meant. He was powerful, influential, not to mention ridiculously rich. And he’d do whatever it took to keep his status, even at the misfortune of plenty of other people. His suit and posture told you pretty much all you needed to know about him. A fancy well tailored pitch black suit, a striking red tie with a subtle but regal diamond design, diamond cufflinks, the works. It was as if dust and winkles knew to avoid him entirely. His hair was as dark as his suit, save for the ends which were greying. He didn’t seem that old, so you wondered if it was intentional or simply stress. You thought you heard someone say that once, that humans could get grey hair from stress. Did they all possess capabilities to change their hair based on their emotions? That human lady you saw outside the building with the blue hair must’ve been feeling something intense. 

“Mr-” The human you had come to see was cut off. 

“Please, you know to call me Simeon by now!” 

The mortal cleared his throat. “Simeon…” The human glanced at you, and raised his chin as he took Simeon by the shoulders and brought him away from you. If you had been a human, it would’ve been a decent tactic to keep you out of earshot. Unfortunately, you could still hear everything they were saying. “I know you have good standing with the company, and I’m pleased to know you respect and trust me with such a task, but...this is far from business.” You could feel his eyes on you. “I have to respectfully decline your request. I don’t think I can allow them to live with us for a year. You know my family.” 

“It would only be for a year, and I know you have plenty of room in that house of yours!” Simeon laughed a bit and then lowered his voice. You could feel the alluring pull of his influence flood the space. The human stiffened, his intuition picking up on a shift in the room. “Besides, Lucifer. You know I wouldn’t ask for a favor like this without some proper and well deserved remuneration. Listen...I happen to have something on the head of that business owner that’s been butting heads with your company. Wouldn’t it be nice to have them completely out of the picture? Not only is that increasing your profit, but if they happen to...I don’t know, completely go bankrupt, that little building of theirs on the corner of Main is some prime real estate.” Reaching into his pocket, Simeon pulled out a small...plastic...rectangle of sorts, with metal on one end. “I got everything right here.” Smiling, one hand firmly against Lucifer’s upper back, he looked him right in the eyes and whispered something you knew would have this human caught. “You can’t let them bother you like this. You need to show them and everyone else who you are, and that you’re not to be messed with.” 

It took the mortal a moment of internal struggle. Decline the offer and figure things out himself without assistance? Or swallow the smallest bit of ego for self satisfaction? Either way, this mortal was past helping. Already drowning in pride. Eventually, he gripped the object, tucking it into a pocket beneath his suit jacket. Despite being handed assistance, he still found a way to be demanding. “Alright, but no more than a year, and if I feel like anything is going awry, I’m sending them away. Is it really too unreasonable to just set them up on their own? Surely for you it’s no problem.” 

Backing up slightly after his incentive worked, Simeon shook his head. “I would feel endlessly guilty leaving alone, desolate, isolated, after what happened. Poor thing...they haven’t even said a word to me in days.” That last part wasn’t a lie. You’d nearly refused to say anything to him since being dragged to the human world. Prince or no prince. “My poor cousin, suddenly losing all their family like that. It’s tragic, isn’t it? Losing people you love?” 

Lucifer, with his arms folded, let his hand tightly grip the fabric of one of his sleeves. His eyes lowered the slightest touch, his jaw tightening. “It...is...I know it all too well.” You caught a hint of some emotion from the mortal. 

“Then you know that what would be best for them right now is company. Trust me, I wouldn’t have brought them to you if I didn’t think it would help. Besides, this is a win for all parties involved, right?” Simeon gestured to the gift Lucifer had tucked away, and the last string of resistance had been snipped. 

Sighing, the human looked at the luxurious watch on his wrist. “I’ll take them home. Let my brothers know what’s happening. Is it too much to assume they’ll be better behaved with a guest in the house?” 

Laughing once more, the prince shrugged. If only Lucifer knew who he was in the presence of. “You’ll all just have to find out!” Patting the other man on the shoulder, Simeon then came over to you with his arms outstretched. “It’s all settled, MC!” He pulled you into a hug, taking the time to speak quietly to you. “Remember to keep your identity a secret. I’ll be checking up on you and Solomon once a month for a report. Keep them safe. Play nice.” He pulled apart, coming around behind you and settling his hands on your shoulders. “And remember, what Mr. Morningstar is doing is unbelievably nice, so make sure to thank him and keep yourself out of trouble.” 

You broke your vow of silence out of irritation. “I’m not a child you’re sending away to school. I know how to keep my own head on my shoulders.” You attempted to brush his hands off but the grip was tightened. Swallowing your frustration, you kept yourself from grimacing, looking at the fabled Lucifer Morningstar. “Thank you...for letting me live with you.” 

For a human, he had a tenacity for picking up on things. He noticed your lie, giving you a stare down of his own before grabbing his phone. You only recently figured out what those devices were. Simeon had made sure he gifted you one of your own, since apparently it was the main source of communication in this realm. Too strange, but you picked it up fairly quickly. Lucifer just raised his head and pressed his cell against his ear. “Just make sure you refrain from being as irksome as my brothers.” The line he was dialing picked up. “Yes, have a driver prepare to come pick me up. And someone please contact my brothers for me so they know I’m bringing home a...guest.” 

It was going to be a long year…

The...metal contraption rumbled, making your head feel light. Without magic to get around, they had to use...these things. The movement slowed till it came to a stop. Looking out the pane of glass, you peered forward to see what the issue was. A big red circular light shone a bright crimson in front of the lane. Was it a threat? If so, why was the world seemingly filled with them? Then the eye turned green and the long carriage rumbled back to life. It was completely different than the last time you had been here. 

“Before you even step foot in my home, we need to set some ground rules.” Even just the sound of his voice almost physically rubbed you the wrong way. You bit the inside of your cheek. Play nice, the prince had said. How long could you keep your patience around these mortals? You looked up at him, feeling him stare you down to the corrupt depths of your soul. “Since you’re going to be living with us for so long, you’re going to have to follow the same rules I give my brothers? Understand?” 

Was this all worth it? Would having your soul be torn to shreds be that bad? “Yes.” 

He nodded, then decided his attention would be better focused towards whatever he had on that electronic device of his. He gave you orders without even looking at you. No wonder all the lesser demons who fawned after him were so pretentious. “No parties. No pets. You can stay up however long you want, but you must be back at the house no later than midnight. You can have your own room but you must keep it clean, don’t expect me to hire a maid for you. You’re responsible for looking after yourself. I might be providing a roof over your head, but anything you need is up to you. You break anything, you’re responsible for replacing it. Just use the basic level of common sense and we should have no trouble. Hopefully the year will be over before we—oh excuse me.” Without another word he picked another call, his third one since you’d been blackmailed into this ride. You just gave a gentle sigh and stared out the window. Just a few days ago you’d still existed in your botherless existence. A personal utopia of your own making. Now you were in this...hell away from hell, the scent of smog and exhaust still burning the inside of your nose. 

The rest of the ride was spent with you trying to think of ways to escape this fate, but finding none in sight. You didn’t need to fully see the building to get this overwhelming wave of impurity. The tempting allure of sin. Practically a demon buffet. These morons were just screaming to be killed or worse, eaten. Even just approaching the gate to the driveway, you could see remnants of spirits, demons without full forms clawing at the fence. Wisps of black sinking into their sidewalk. But not even those, you could smell the presence of other lesser demons...but more dangerous ones. Outside the gate were small crowds, not too many, but enough to safely conceal their presence. Photographers, journalists, fans, wherever they were, they were eager to get in. And amongst the rabble stood demons pretending to be mortals in an attempt to sink their fangs into one of the Morningstars. You slunk down in your seat, trying to conceal your presence, but you were sure they’d be able to feel you. The car slipped past all of them, approaching the first set of gates. Whoever was patrolling the vehicle pressed their fingers against a small pad attached to a pillar by the gate. It waited for a moment, then made an affirming noise before the gate swung open. The cries of mortal and hidden demons alike pleading for the smallest sliver of attention from this human made you feel sick. 

Despite having nearly ignored you the whole time, Lucifer scoffed. “You’ll get used to it.” The curved metal fence shut behind you, and the sound of the crowd slowly faded as you pulled up in front of the massive house. If anything, it reminded you a little of home. It was an old fashioned looking house, but fanciful nonetheless. With dark stone, piercing towers, arched windows, and an overall gothic aesthetic. You managed to take a moment to breathe. At least there was one silver lining. Lucifer stepped out of the idle vehicle first, paying you no mind as he approached the steps to the door. Slightly panicking, you tried simply pushing the door before noticing the small handle. Pulling it unlocked it, and you rapidly exited, feeling the motion sickness fade with your feet on the ground. You followed the mortal to the door, and was slightly pleased when he put his phone away to open the door, leaving it open for you. Lucifer shut the door, a small high pitched noise ringing through your ears. You turned and watched him mess with a little panel near the door. “Our security is top of the market. I make sure the code is changed every day, so if you’re not inside by midnight, I hope you enjoy camping.” 

You were about to speak up about that, but both of you were bombarded with noise. A noise you would later learn to get used to. “Oi! Lucifer!” A bundle of energy came racing down the stairs. Wild hair, dark skin, rings on nearly every finger, you recognized this individual without having to ask his name. You could feel the influence. Greed. Demons almost loved this brother more than Pride, because from what you’d heard, he’d make deals impulsively with demons without knowing their true intentions. As long as money or something expensive was in front of him, he’d jump for anything. It had gotten him in more than enough trouble, and it made him too much of a prime target. At least Lucifer knew how to look over his shoulder. The second brother confronted the eldest. He didn’t even glance at you. “Hey, I need some cash! For some reason my card keeps declining...you can spot me right?” 

Lucifer didn’t even hesitate. “No.” 

“Eh? Why not?! I did that thing the other day for you, remember?” 

“Hm?” Lucifer tilted his head, taking the time to recall-or pretending to. “Which thing would that be? Would it have been before or after you stole and immediately maxed out my card?” Lowering his eyes, the older one gave off a menacing smile. 

Mammon took a step back, muttering. “O-oh you found about that, huh?” 

The smile turned into a full on yell. “Of course I found out! I got a call from the bank as soon as they saw the purchase! What exactly do you need a golden tiger statue for, Mammon? Seriously, you’re absolutely ridiculous! I returned it by the way, and in the meantime I cancelled all your cards.” Mammon went to open his mouth in anger but didn’t have the chance to say anything. “You can try to find some extra work to pay off all the bills you’ve left me with. And if I think you’re ready, I’ll reopen your accounts in two months.” The effort of shouting sent Pride’s eye twitching. He lifted a hand to press against his forehead, the blood draining from his face. You shifted ever so slightly in your spot and he groaned. “Right, you’re here. Mammon, this is MC.” 

Eyebrows raised, he jumped a little when he finally spotted you were in the room. “Wait, wait, wait, that whole thing with someone staying with us for a year wasn’t a joke?” 

“No.” Although the slight warble to his voice seemed that that fact was just now settling in. “It wasn’t. And since you’ve so kindly volunteered yourself, you can take their bags and show them to their room.” He simply turned. No welcome, no tour, no warmth in those cold eyes of his. 

“Hey! Come back here!” Yet the younger sibling showed no signs of chasing after him. “Lucifer!” His older brother just quickly headed up the stairs and disappeared into the house. Was it really going to require a full year of observation? Just from what you were seeing right now, you wanted nothing to do with humans. Nothing. Mammon ran a hand through his hair, one of his strands getting stuck in one of his rings, but he tugged it out without noticing, like it was a daily occurrence. “I can’t believe this.” You could watch as the anger started to swell within him. “Screw this, I’m out of here!” You were ready for him to leave, to give into his emotions. He had wrapped his hand around the door handle before he stopped. Pausing, he just tutted to himself before shoving his hands in his jacket-pockets, looking in your direction but not fully at you. “You want the guest room we have upstairs or down?” Loud, brash, rude in some ways, but there was a weird sort of innocence about him. You simply shrugged. He nodded, grasping one of your bags suddenly, gesturing you to follow. “I’ll give you the downstairs one. Most of our rooms are on the second floor, so it’s a bit quieter down here, plus it stays cooler.” He led you past the entrance hall and back into the rest of the house. “Plus, it’s easier to sneak out from here, but you didn’t hear that from me. I’m guessing Lucifer gave you the whole rule spiel?” 

You restrained the urge to roll your eyes. “Yeah.” 

He hissed in air through his teeth. “Sucks, man, are you sure you want to stay here?” 

The pain around your wrists was still too prominent. Etched into your skin was a mark, a line of runes and symbols around your wrists. Who knew demons could give temporary pacts to other demons? Simeon ensured you a small fraction of his power, just in case you ran into trouble. But in exchange he had a hold on you, able to summon you to him whenever he needed you. It was your chain keeping you imprisoned here. There was no running. There was no hiding. “I didn’t have a choice.”