#their isn't anyone unique like her

[lesbiangummybearmafia]

[insipid-drivel]

Horses: Since There Seems To Be A Knowledge Gap

I'm going to go ahead and preface this with: I comment pretty regularly on clips and photos featuring horses and horseback riding, often answering questions or providing explanations for how or why certain things are done. I was a stable hand and barrel racer growing up, and during my 11 year tenure on tumblr, Professional Horse Commentary is a very niche, yet very necessary, subject that needs filling. Here are some of the literary and creative gaps I've noticed in well meaning (and very good!) creators trying to portray horses and riding realistically that... well, most of you don't seem to even be aware of, because you wouldn't know unless you worked with horses directly!

Some Of The Most Common Horse + Riding Mistakes I See:

-Anybody can ride any horse if you hold on tight enough/have ridden once before.

Nope. No, no, no, no, aaaaaaaand, no. Horseback riding has, historically, been treated as a life skill taught from surprisingly young ages. It wasn't unusual in the pre-vehicular eras to start teaching children as young as 4 to begin to ride, because horses don't come with airbags, and every horse is different. For most adults, it can take months or years of regular lessons to learn to ride well in the saddle, and that's just riding; not working or practicing a sport.

Furthermore, horses often reject riders they don't know. Unless a horse has been trained like a teaching horse, which is taught to tolerate riders of all skill and experience levels, it will take extreme issue with having some random person try to climb on their back. Royalty, nobility, and the knighted classes are commonly associated with the "having a favorite special horse" trope, because it's true! Just like you can have a particularly special bond with a pet or service animal that verges on parental, the same can apply with horses. Happy horses love their owners/riders, and will straight-up do their best to murder anyone that tries to ride them without permission.

-Horses are stupid/have no personality.

There isn't a more dangerous assumption to make than assuming a horse is stupid. Every horse has a unique personality, with traits that can be consistent between breeds (again, like cat and dog breeds often have distinct behavior traits associated with them), but those traits manifest differently from animal to animal.

My mother had an Arabian horse, Zipper, that hated being kicked as a signal to gallop. One day, her mom and stepdad had a particularly unpleasant visitor; an older gentleman that insisted on riding Zipper, but refused to listen to my mother's warnings never to kick him. "Kicking" constitutes hitting the horse's side(s) with your heels, whether you have spurs on or not. Most horses only need a gentle squeeze to know what you want them to do.

Anyway, Zipper made eye-contact with my mom, asking for permission. He understood what she meant when she nodded at him. He proceeded to give this asshole of a rider road rash on the side of the paddock fence and sent him to the emergency room. He wouldn't have done it if he didn't have the permission from the rider he respected, and was intelligent enough to ask, "mind if I teach this guy a lesson?" with his eyes, and understand, "Go for it, buddy," from my mom in return.

-Riding bareback is possible to do if you hold onto the horse's mane really tight.

Riding a horse bareback (with no saddle, stirrups, or traditional harness around the horse's head) is unbelievably difficult to learn, particularly have testicles and value keeping them. Even professional riders and equestrians find ourselves relying on tack (the stuff you put on a horse to ride it) to stay stable on our horses, even if we've been riding that particular horse for years and have a very positive, trusting relationship.

Horses sweat like people do. The more they run, the more their hair saturates with sweat and makes staying seated on them slippery. Hell, an overworked horse can sweat so heavily that the saddle slips off its back. It's also essential to brush and bathe a horse before it's ridden in order to keep it healthier, so their hair is often quite slick from either being very clean or very damp. In order to ride like that, you have to develop the ability to synchronize your entire body's rhythm's with the rhythm of the horse's body beneath you, and quite literally move as one. Without stirrups, most people can't do it, and some people can never master bareback riding no matter how many years they spend trying to learn.

-You can be distracted and make casual conversation while a horse is standing untethered in the middle of a barn or field.

At every barn I've ever worked at, it's been standard practice with every single horse, regardless of age or temperament, to secure their heads while they're being tacked up or tacked down. The secures for doing this are simple ropes with clips that are designed to attach to the horse's halter (the headwear for a horse that isn't being ridden; they have no bit that goes in the horse's mouth, and no reins for a rider to hold) on metal O rings on either side of the horse's head. This is not distressing to the horse, because we give them plenty of slack to turn their heads and look around comfortably.

The problem with trying to tack up an unrestrained horse while chatting with fellow stable hands or riders is that horses know when you're distracted! And they often try to get away with stuff when they know you're not looking! In a barn, a horse often knows where the food is stored, and will often try to tiptoe off to sneak into the feed room.

Horses that get into the feed room are often at a high risk of dying. While extremely intelligent, they don't have the ability to throw up, and they don't have the ability to tell that their stomach is full and should stop eating. Allowing a horse into a feed/grain room WILL allow it to eat itself to death.

Other common woes stable hands and riders deal with when trying to handle a horse with an unrestrained head is getting bitten! Horses express affection between members of their own herd, and those they consider friends and family, through nibbling and surprisingly rough biting. It's not called "horseplay" for nothing, because during my years working with horses out in the pasture, it wasn't uncommon at all for me to find individuals with bloody bite marks on their withers (that high part on the middle of the back of their shoulders most people instinctively reach for when they try to get up), and on their backsides. I've been love-bitten by horses before, and while flattering, they hurt like hell on fleshy human skin.

So, for the safety of the horse, and everybody else, always make a show of somehow controlling the animal's head when hands-on and on the ground with them.

-Big Horse = War Horse

Startlingly, the opposite is usually the case! Draft and carriage horses, like Percherons and Friesians, were never meant to be used in warfare. Draft horses are usually bred to be extremely even-tempered, hard to spook, and trustworthy around small children and animals. Historically, they're the tractors of the farm if you could afford to upgrade from oxen, and were never built to be fast or agile in a battlefield situation.

More importantly, just because a horse is imposing and huge doesn't make it a good candidate for carrying heavy weights. A real thing that I had to be part of enforcing when I worked at a teaching ranch was a weight limit. Yeah, it felt shitty to tell people they couldn't ride because we didn't have any horses strong enough to carry them due to their weight, but it's a matter of the animal's safety. A big/tall/chonky horse is more likely to be built to pull heavy loads, but not carry them flat on their spines. Horses' muscular power is predominantly in their ability to run and pull things, and too heavy a rider can literally break a horse's spine and force us to euthanize it.

Some of the best war horses out there are from the "hot blood" family. Hot blooded horses are often from dry, hot, arid climates, are very small and slight (such as Arabian horses), and are notoriously fickle and flighty. They're also a lot more likely to paw/bite/kick when spooked, and have even sometimes been historically trained to fight alongside their rider if their rider is dismounted in combat; kicking and rearing to keep other soldiers at a distance.

-Any horse can be ridden if it likes you enough.

Just like it can take a lifetime to learn to ride easily, it can take a lifetime of training for a horse to comfortably take to being ridden or taking part in a job, like pulling a carriage. Much like service animals, horses are typically trained from extremely young ages to be reared into the job that's given to them, and an adult horse with no experience carrying a rider is going to be just as scared as a rider who's never actually ridden a horse.

Just as well, the process of tacking up a horse isn't always the most comfortable experience for the horse. To keep the saddle centered on the horse's back when moving at rough or fast paces, it's essential to tighten the belly strap (cinch) of the saddle as tightly as possible around the horse's belly. For the horse, it's like wearing a tight corset, chafes, and even leaves indents in their skin afterward that they love having rinsed with water and scratched. Some horses will learn to inflate their bellies while you're tightening the cinch so you can't get it as tight as it needs to be, and then exhale when they think you're done tightening it.

When you're working with a horse wearing a bridle, especially one with a bit, it can be a shocking sensory experience to a horse that's never used a bit before. While they lack a set of teeth naturally, so the bit doesn't actually hurt them, imagine having a metal rod shoved in your mouth horizontally! Unless you understand why it's important for the person you care about not dying, you'd be pretty pissed about having to keep it in there!

-Horseback riding isn't exercise.

If you're not using every muscle in your body to ride with, you're not doing it right.

Riding requires every ounce of muscle control you have in your entire body - although this doesn't mean it wasn't realistic for people with fat bodies to stay their weight while also being avid riders; it doesn't mean the muscles aren't there. To stay on the horse, you need to learn how it feels when it moves at different gaits (walk, trot, canter, gallop), how to instruct it to switch leads (dominant legs; essential for precise turning and ease of communication between you and the horse), and not falling off. While good riders look like they're barely moving at all, that's only because they're good riders. They know how to move so seamlessly with the horse, feeling their movements like their own, that they can compensate with their legs and waists to not bounce out of the saddle altogether or slide off to one side. I guarantee if you ride a horse longer than 30 minutes for the first time, your legs alone will barely work and feel like rubber.

-Horses aren't affectionate.

Horses are extraordinarily affectionate toward the right people. As prey animals, they're usually wary of people they don't know, or have only recently met. They also - again, like service animals - have a "work mode" and a "casual mode" depending upon what they're doing at the time. Horses will give kisses like puppies, wiggle their upper lips on your hair/arms to groom you, lean into neck-hugs, and even cuddle in their pasture or stall if it's time to nap and you join them by leaning against their sides. If they see you coming up from afar and are excited to see you, they'll whinny and squeal while galloping to meet you at the gate. They'll deliberately swat you with their tails to tease you, and will often follow you around the pasture if they're allowed to regardless of what you're up to.

-Riding crops are cruel.

Only cruel people use riding crops to hurt their horses. Spurs? I personally object to, because any horse that knows you well doesn't need something sharp jabbing them in the side for emphasis when you're trying to tell them where you want them to go. Crops? Are genuinely harmless tools used for signalling a horse.

I mean, think about it. Why would crops be inherently cruel instruments if you need to trust a horse not to be afraid of you and throw you off when you're riding it?

Crops are best used just to lightly tap on the left or right flank of the horse, and aren't universally used with all forms of riding. You'll mainly see crops used with English riding, and they're just tools for communicating with the horse without needing to speak.

-There's only one way to ride a horse.

Not. At. All. At most teaching ranches, you'll get two options: Western, or English, because they tend to be the most popular for shows and also the most common to find equipment for. English riding uses a thinner, smaller saddle, narrower stirrups, and much thinner bridles. I, personally, didn't like English style riding because I never felt very stable in such a thin saddle with such small stirrups, and didn't start learning until my mid teens. English style riding tends to focus more on your posture and deportment in the saddle, and your ability to show off your stability and apparent immovability on the horse. It was generally just a bit too stiff and formal for me.

Western style riding utilizes heavier bridles, bigger saddles (with the iconic horn on the front), and broader stirrups. Like its name may suggest, Western riding is more about figuring out how to be steady in the saddle while going fast and being mobile with your upper body. Western style riding is generally the style preferred for working-type shows, such as horseback archery, gunning, barrel racing, and even rodeo riding.

-Wealthy horse owners have no relationship with their horses.

This is loosely untrue, but I've seen cases where it is. Basically, horses need to feel like they're working for someone that matters to them in order to behave well with a rider and not get impatient or bored. While it's common for people to board horses at off-property ranches (boarding ranches) for cost and space purposes, it's been historically the truth that having help is usually necessary with horses at some point. What matters is who spends the most time with the animal treating it like a living being, rather than a mode of transport or a tool. There's no harm in stable hands handling the daily upkeep; hay bales and water buckets are heavy, and we're there to profit off the labor you don't want or have the time to do. You get up early to go to work; we get up early to look after your horses. Good owners/boarders visit often and spend as much of their spare time as they can with spending quality work and playtime with their horses. Otherwise, the horses look to the stable hands for emotional support and care.

So, maybe you're writing a knight that doesn't really care much for looking after his horse, but his squire is really dedicated to keeping up with it? There's a better chance of the horse having a more affectionate relationship with the squire thanks to the time the squire spends on looking after it, while the horse is more likely to tolerate the knight that owns it as being a source of discipline if it misbehaves. That doesn't mean the knight is its favorite person. When it comes to horses, their love must be earned, and you can only earn it by spending time with them hands-on.

-Horses can graze anywhere without concern.

This is a mistake that results in a lot of premature deaths! A big part of the cost of owning a horse - even before you buy one - is having the property that will be its pasture assessed for poisonous plants, and having those plants removed from being within the animal's reach. This is an essential part of farm upkeep every year, because horses really can't tell what's toxic and what isn't. One of the reasons it's essential to secure a horse when you aren't riding it is to ensure it only has a very limited range to graze on, and it's your responsibility as the owner/rider to know how to identify dangerous plants and keep your horses away from them.

There's probably more. AMA in my askbox if you have any questions, but that's all for now. Happy writing.

[skys-archive]

I think in honor of pride month and also in general forever we should stop trying fit queer people into the identities we think they should call themselves.

And I know no one is going to see this because no one ever does but I'm going to talk about it anyway because this is important.

Bisexual doesn't mean you don't date trans people, it doesn't mean you like men and women, it doesn't mean you can't have a preference. Someone can identify as polysexual or bisexual or omnisexual and have no preference and you don't get to say that that means they're pansexual. Because no, if they don't identify as pansexual then they're not pansexual.

Transmasc doesn't mean you use he/him pronouns. It doesn't mean you identify as a man. Transfem doesn't mean you use she/her pronouns. It doesn't mean you identify as a woman. You can be nonbinary or genderqueer or agender or any gender that isn't binary and not use they/them pronouns. You can use any of those labels and still identify as a man or a woman. You can use different pronouns than is typically used for your birth sex and not consider yourself transgender. People can be gender non conforming and not he trans. People can be trans and not gender non conforming.

A trans man can be fem. A trans woman can be masc. Nonbinary people don't owe you androgyny. Intersex people don't owe you androgyny. Intersex people are people, they deserve way more attention than a way to one up transphobes. Intersex people face discrimination and body altering surgeries without their consent and then are only ever talked about to say "some cis women have penises" or "some people have an extra x chromosome" and then we never talk about the struggle they face as part of the queer community.

Asexuality and aromanticism is a spectrum. Some aces like sex, some aces are repulsed, some aces only experience sexual attraction to one person or once in their life, some aces need a deep emotional bond, some aces their attraction changes. Some aros change identities. Some aros are repulsed by romance unless it's a fictional character. Some aros have romantic feelings until they get to know someone. Some aros crave a romantic relationship but never have romantic feelings. You don't get to say someone isn't asexual or aromantic enough.

Asexuality and aromanticism is having a unique relationship with romance or sexual feelings and impulses. Someone who is transgender has a unique experience with gender. You don't get to decide that they don't have a unique experience. But guess what? You don't get to decide if they do either. Someone can have a unique experience and still not identify as asexual aromantic or transgender. You can cross dress and still fully feel like a man. You can use he/him pronouns as a cis women. You can have trauma around sex and not identify as asexual. You can never have a romantic relationship and not identify as aromantic.

You can have "contradicting" labels. I don't know as many of these because I don't personally identify as any but please fell welcome to add in reblogs. There are trans men lesbians and gay women. There are sex loving asexuals. I know there are others I just genuinely am not educated enough.

YOU DONT GET TO CHOOSE SOMEONES LABELS

ANYONE CAN EITHER IDENTIFY OR NOT IDENTIFY AS QUEER

Please feel welcome to add anything in reblogs. I'm sure there's things I've missed. I haven't talked about neopronouns I haven't talked enough about "contradicting" labels. I haven't talked about queer platonic relationships or kink or polyamory or enough about intersex people or pronouns vs gender. There's so much important things but at the end of the day it's just so important to not choose other people's labels.

[bi-writes]

the lamb experiment

a body is given. and it cannot be taken back.

pairing: ghost (+ tf141) x curvy!fem!reader word count: 6.3k summary: the 141 are not known for their pliancy. in an effort to take back control, they send a lamb to slaughter.

cw: (18+) mature language and content, suggestive language and content, dark!tf141, military criticism, unhealthy power dynamics, graphic descriptions of violence + gore + torture + murder, themes of dubcon (but reader is consenting), piv, cumplay, fear play, size kink, praise kink, curvy!reader with hair long enough to hold

You don't think you've ever been the object of anyone's affections, not really. Although you are blessed with many gifts, even physically, you do not see yourself that way when you look in the mirror. How you feel inside betrays you when you look in one, and instead of staring too long, you always turn away.

This time, you stare. Because her ass looks nice, and her skin looks soft, and her face isn't disagreeable.

This reflection almost terrifies you. In front of you lies a woman you do not know.

She looks good. Your clothes are a size too snug, and it squeezes all the parts of you that normally you attempt to hide. Your thighs, the cinch of your waist, every curve you cover up with your uniform normally is on display, and instead of your hair in a standard bun, it lays free. You are anything but the soldier you always see, and just when you think about running, there is a knock at the bathroom door.

You open it, straightening out your outfit, and you look down shyly when you see the face on the other side of the door.

"It's...a little tight," you say, tugging at the waistband of your pants, but the woman tuts, crossing her arms over her chest as she steps back to look you up and down.

"It's as it should be," she responds, very matter-of-fact. "Now follow me. Need to debrief before your flight."

Her name is Laswell. You have not been graced with any other name, and you suspect it is because she wants you to call her Laswell and nothing else. She is blunt and intelligent, and there is no room for anything but the truth with her. If you answer her with a lie, she waits until she hears what she knows is expected.

When you sit, she spreads a few files out in front of you. Four manila folders, three packed with documents and pictures, one with documents only. You reach for one, eyeing the labeled name.

MacTavish.

You open it, and you're overwhelmed with the information. You see a man with pretty blue eyes and a military history that would put your old squadron to shame. Flicking through the pages, there are numerous confirmed kills, no small list of disarmed explosives, reports written by others and himself that even at a quick glance exude something impressive, utmost intelligence and extensive knowledge. You take note of his unique hairstyle; shaved sides of his head and tuffs of dark waves that run down the middle. You acknowledge how much you like when it gets a little long, falling in curls over his forehead.

The next file is equally as large. You flip it over, and you tilt your head to the side when you see a picture of him. He isn't posing, but his stature is one of confidence, and he's gorgeous. A strong facial structure, dark eyes. He keeps his hair short, and his skin is dark, and as your eyes roam lower, you notice the strong muscles of his forearms as he grips a rifle. His skill sheet is no less impressive than his sergeant counterpart. He has been in so many dangerous situations, and he comes out with nothing but scratches; and he seems to be deadlier with nothing but his hands than any small firearm could be.

Kyle. It's fitting.

You look away from his pretty face to their commanding officer. There is a picture of him with the other two sergeants, and you notice how he stands taller than them, but just as broad, and you think military fatigues suit him well. He wears his sleeves rolled up to his elbows, and you can see the expanse of his strong arms and his large hands, and you take note of his carefully sculpted beard and the hat he wears. When you flip through the history, you are overwhelmed with the amount of ops he carries under his belt. This man is a war machine. You suspect there is a number on his head somewhere, in some distant country, and it makes you shift in your seat when you realize this isn't someone easy to kill.

He does the killing. And that's all that matters to the Crown.

John. That is the one that has to matter most.

"He's the one who calls the shots." Laswell's voice cuts through your heavy thoughts. She takes the last folder and opens it for you, and immediately you notice the lack of photos here. "But this is the glue."

Ghost. That is the name that sits on the official documents, but there is a dirty sticky note pasted next to it with Laswell's chicken scratch.

Simon Riley.

"His name is redacted," she says simply. "And so is his face."

"He has no face?" You ask, and when you realize how you worded it, you think it a stupid sentence, but Laswell only stares.

"Not one that matters," she responds. You look back down at the documents. He is tall, and you observe that he's most skilled with a sniper rifle, although he doesn't lack confidence or efficacy in any other form of combat. Hand-to-hand, smaller firearms, rifles, he uses them all with a terrifying accuracy, and you pull the papers closer to you as you read more.

"The glue," you murmur, not quite understanding. "And what am I supposed to be?"

"The solvent. The hammer. Whatever the fuck I need you to be."

The thing that breaks it apart. The thing that tears. The thing that makes them bleed.

And so you lie. It is what you do, what you are taught. Laswell is good at it, and you are a fish to water with it. You lie until it comes as easy as breathing, you learn to pretend until it is all you know, and when you create your second life, it is easy because it is the only one Laswell tells you to know.

You are a soldier, and you do as you're told. When your orders are to forget who you were and become something else, you do it, because that is how it works. And you know what you are in Laswell's eyes--you are a weapon, and you gave your body to the state, and she can do what she pleases with it.

And you know, really, what she expects you to do.

It isn't spoken of. She never says it out loud. But when you study the files she gives you, you notice there are more details that what is necessary. You learn more about them, in ways that feel intimate, that feel secret.

That John's favorite color is red. That MacTavish likes a traditional meal. That Kyle has a sweet tooth and likes jazz. That Ghost downs two fingers of Kentucky bourbon to unwind.

They are things to help make them agreeable, you think, but agreeable in what way is up to you.

But red looks good in lace. You've been told the stomach is the way to the heart. Chocolate is supposed to be an aphrodisiac. And alcohol is the perfect enabler--and armed with this information, you will divide and conquer.

Break and tear apart. Separate. Sever the bond. That is your mission, that is what you've been told to do, and you will do it because that is what a good soldier does, and this is all you are.

Laswell's pet. Her pretty little soldier. The hammer to her nail, the bone for her dogs, the string that will mend the ones snapped by her own puppets.

She wants control, and she isn't stupid, and neither are you. When you look in the mirror again, you understand why she picked you. No matter how far her men stray, they cannot change what they are at their core.

Men.

And men are fickle.

You suspect, you hope, even these ones are. They are not gentle, and Laswell makes sure that you learn well why it is they need supervision. She shows you pictures, videos, eyewitness statements of their spiral into violence.

It's not that they weren't war criminals before, but they were her war criminals. Unsanctioned ops, sure, but they toed a line that was drawn for them. But then the red tape became too much, even if there wasn't very much of it for them.

They began to ignore orders. When they were told to stay put, a sergeant would slip off, and under the guise of protecting them, all four would end up in a firefight. And when this became a frequent excuse, they stopped coming up with them. They simply showed up in manila folders like the ones you held, enemy casualties sometimes in the hundreds, and they did not appear even when required.

Debriefing? Their connection was bad. A hearing in front of their superiors? They're on a mark, and they cannot move. And then it was just silence. The occasional response to real crisis, and then back underground, until all Laswell could get from them were limbs taken off the enemies they weren't allowed to kill just yet.

They knew how to disappear. They knew how to hide. They knew how to stay put, come back up overground, and then scurry back underneath where no one would find them.

But that wouldn't do. Not for the CIA, not for SAS, not for either of their governments who soon realized they had let loose a group of soldiers-turned-mercenaries who hold valuable secrets that could put their politicians at the forefront of Congressional hearings, NATO violations, and then in the right mess of breaking off relations with a numerous amount of countries they already held fragile relationships with.

The 141 is a liability. They need to be the ones pulling the reigns again, no matter the cost--and they tell Laswell to do it, and to spare no expense and to pull back the curtain on what she believes might be crossing even the lines she has drawn before, to go beyond it.

She draws this line around you. A circle, a fence, wrapping around you as she molds you into what she needs you to be. She is honest. Not always kind, but honest, and because she is, you want to succeed.

Finally, you can be of use. Finally, there is something that will give you purpose. Even if it hurts, even if it kills you, you want to give her what she needs, because it isn't fair.

You have already given them everything, and you have nothing to show for it. So you paint your face, and you zip up the tight pants, you lie and you learn and you listen, and when she tells you that they will not be gentle, all you reply is, "I won't be either."

Men are fickle. And they fucking deserve this.

You are wearing red when John sees you for the first time. It is in your hair, a bright red scarf that keeps it out of your face, and you know he looks right at you and not through you when your eyes meet.

When he eyes the open door of your room later that evening, you pretend not to notice his gaze when he drinks in the sight of you in red lingerie.

It is the first morning you are with them that Johnny wakes to the smell of something in the rec room. You stand there, at the stove, stirring a wooden spoon in a warm pot, and when he steps in, you turn to see him, and you smile. You exchange no words, but when you hold a tasting spoon out to him with a soft potato and a spoonful of wonderful broth, he can't help the way he closes his eyes. There's a beautiful woman cooking stovies in the rec room, and when he opens his eyes, you are looking right back at him.

And then it's the music that plays in the evening that catches Kyle's attention. They are trailing back to their rooms after drills, and he catches sight of you in your room, and he can hear Ella Fitzgerald, and when you look over your shoulder, he is there, and he doesn't shy away.

And then--fuck--it is so easy.

Wherever you go, they follow. Unconsciously, you suspect, but they do, and you live the lie, and it feels fucking euphoric. You know you've won when you run your knuckles down John's cheek for the first time, and he keens, nuzzling the side of his face into your hand and chasing after your touch.

They are animals. You watch them when you join them on ops, rifle in front of you as you follow them, and you keep a neutral face as you observe them wreak havoc. They kill and they maim, and they sleep like the dead at night, as if the heinous ways they kill do not bother them at all. John points, and Kyle pulls the trigger. John nods his head, and Johnny detonates, nothing but a dull reflection in those blue eyes. John clicks his teeth, and Ghost sweeps.

He sweeps, and he kills, and if it wasn't so fucking terrifying, you would have admired the way he did it. The elegance that he took on an entire room of moving targets, how he never let himself be pinned down in one spot. Whenever someone gets too close, he goes hand-to-hand, and it's fucking brutal the way he finishes them off. He keeps throwing knives in his boot, and they sink into eye sockets as if running through tender meat. He puts blades through their mouths and doesn't let them go until the light leaves their eyes.

You hate that it makes you warm. That there is something deep in your belly, that twists there, that tells you that you like it. When he turns around and meets your eyes, wringing the blade out of someone's neck and letting them drop on the floor at your feet, you don't flinch. You simply kick them to the side and step over them, and Ghost watches as you lick over your teeth as you pass by him.

Insatiable. Fucking hungry. He eyes the sway of your hips, and when he finds his next target, he uses his hands again just because he needs to feel flesh under his gloved hands, needs to tear it apart. And when he feels you watching him again, he grunts as he stands to his full height. He's a fucking bear, and you leave him with a hint of a smile before you turn the corner.

You are not sure if you are pretending that day.

They ravage, and then they go back to their beds, and they wash the blood from their clothes with ease--and the worst part of it all is that you do it, too. You come out of the same places that they do, and your face is splattered with their targets. Your jeans have flecks of brain matter, your hands are dirty with someone's singed flesh. When you finally stand in the light back at their base, all John does is sit you in front of the bathroom mirror and wipe at your face with a warm towel.

He tells you how good you've done. How special you are. How he has never seen a woman keep up with them so easily, fit into their pack like she was meant to be.

He says that you belong, but he doesn't say to who. You wonder, for a second, if he means that you belong to them all.

When you report back to Laswell, you tell her this. What you don't tell her is what you've had to do to gain this status. You don't tell her about the blood you spill. You don't tell her about the bodies you see or the men that lose their faces or how worked up the boys get after an op and how it takes them hours between your legs to lose the adrenaline.

You don't tell her this because this is for you. It's all for you.

They tell you things you aren't supposed to know. When you're in their beds, they talk, and you listen. Kyle tells you about the man they are keeping in the cellar. That he's been there for 29 days, and he hasn't said a word, but that Ghost will be next to speak to him, and he will talk then.

Kyle tells you that it is a mercy that Ghost hasn't visited him yet, but they are done playing nice. When he says this, you have the image of Ghost standing over a man who pulled a gun on you in your head, and you remember watching him with a sickening relief as he pressed his thumbs into the man's eye sockets and pushed they were nothing but squished matter. You squeeze your legs together; and this time, you don't feel bad about it.

Johnny begs for you, his bonnie lass, to keep close to him on the next op because you strayed too far today. He fucks you to make you say yes, his lips on your ear as he tells you to promise him that you'll do as he says, and that if you promise, he'll let you come. So you promise, and he fucks you boneless, and the next day, you are glued to his hip when you raid a foreign embassy for nothing but answers.

You know they know. They don't say it out loud, but you know that they all know where you go at night. One night, you are kneeling under John's desk, kissing the pearly tip of him before taking him down your throat for what feels like hours. The next, you are letting Kyle bend you over his desk, rattling it against the wall as he tells you how pretty you are. And in the morning, you are pressed against the shower wall, Johnny holding your wide hips in his hands as he fucks into you, begging you, bonnie, please--give it to me, tha's it, right there, ye can do it, good girl--

Good girl. That's what you are. You're a good girl, and you do as you're told. You smile, and you keen, and you give them big, soft eyes, and you let them have the illusion of control. Maybe they think they're pressuring you. Maybe they think they scare you. Maybe they think this is why you get on your knees for them or let them pool your pants at your ankles or allow them to have you whenever they want, but the reality is that you want it, and you need it, and this is working.

They don't even realize you've fucked them into submission because they're too busy showing off.

A domino effect. You expect them all to fall once you have the captain, but there is one chess piece that does not move willingly.

Ghost.

He is an unmovable object. He stands still and rigid, and he is a statue that refuses to be pushed or pulled in any direction but one he deems. Even in the middle of the nights, when you notice he is awake, he never joins you when you drink his favorite bourbon outside. He doesn't ask for a cigarette when you smoke one, even though you never actually take a puff of it. He passes by you, and he doesn't look at you, and you are invisible.

You want to be content with what you've accomplished, but it isn't enough.

This is the glue. He is the glue, and without him, everything falls apart, and you cannot fail. There isn't room for it. And maybe you feel bad for preying on the parts of Ghost that you think he prefers to keep hidden, but you need to catch him before he gets too far away.

A kitchen accident. A knife that plunges too deep, that draws blood and makes you cry. You are in the bathroom, tears coming down your face, blood in the sink, and your hands are shaking as you try and patch yourself up. You are loud enough to draw the attention of the lieutenant whose door is only just across the hall, and when he sees you there, he doesn't leave you.

One moment there is nothing, and the next, he is behind you, a pervasive warmth at your back, and you whimper when a gloved hand wraps around your injured hand. Wordlessly, he turns the faucet on, running your hand under the water, and you hiccup, looking away and breathing deeply.

He wraps your hand in his room. You sit on his bed, and he works to cover the wound, and you know he has done this before. Soothed another's tears, quieted soft cries, covered up cuts and bruises and things that will scar.

He kneels in front of you, and when he stands to his full height, you tip your head back to look up at him. You think you will meet a soft gaze, but he glares, and he seems angry. When you open your mouth to speak, he tsks, and your tip trembles as you close it.

"Y'can fool the others," he says lowly, finally. "But not me."

You frown, confused. When you sniffle, he snarls.

"I know why y'r here," he murmurs. "Isn't the first time Laswell has sent one of her little...toys."

You clench your jaw. For a moment, something envious rattles you. You aren't like anyone else. You are certain no one has accomplished what you have, that no one has gotten this close to rock the fucking boat or pet the beast. He doesn't get to demean the progress you've made like this, even if he's figured you out, because you aren't going anywhere.

Not until you get everything you need.

"Excuse me?"

"Y'r a spy. You're CIA's whore, and I don't like y'here, puttin' y'r bloody nose where it don't belong," he kneels, his voice low and gruff, and he reaches over and grips your chin hard. "Y'may have fooled them. In their fuckin' beds...in their heads--" He draws you closer, and you swallow. "But y'r not in mine."

You meet his eyes. They are dark, and they are meant to scare you, but the feeling that runs through you isn't one that terrifies you. He is a magnet--and you can feel the field of his presence, and it has you. This is supposed to be your show. They are men, and they are stupid, and you hate them, and Ghost should be eating out of the palm of your fucking manicured hand, but there he is, spitting against his mask, and it is you that aches to see what is underneath the cotton.

"So, little lamb..." Ghost rumbles, and it is with his entire chest that he speaks. "Wot is it you're here to do, eh?"

You shake your head, "N-Nothing. She...all she told me was that this was a joint operation...CIA and SAS--"

"Y'r on the piss, I know that," he hisses, clicking his teeth. "Joint operation," he laughs, but it is without humor. "Is that we're calling this now? Being barracks bunny for the 141?"

"Fuck you," you snap, shoving his hand off. "You're a fucking bastard, and if you think--"

"If I think wot, eh?" He stands, and you choke as he grips you by your throat, lifting you off of his bed and forcing you against the wall. You grip his wrist, but it is useless, because he's a brute, and you are nothing to him. He holds you there on your toes, and you grip him tighter, but he doesn't budge. Even digging your nails into him doesn't make him flinch. If anything, he seems amused. "Wot kind of trainin' she make y'do, eh? Did ya have to practice? Who'd y'shag to get y'r stripes?"

"Eat shit," you spit, and he snickers. There is fire in your eyes, venom on your tongue, you are a fighter, and when the world is so quiet, fighting feels good, and he knows this feeling well. He understands what it means to be nothing and then something, what it means to worthless and then useful in the eyes of government and government alone.

Because you are useful, but only to Laswell, and only as this, whatever this is. Whatever you are. Pet, prize, toy--it doesn't matter what the name is today, but it will stick tomorrow, and you wonder, sickeningly, if that is your destiny.

To be unknown. To be used. To be the property of what you do not know. To be given, to be taken, to not know and to be content with not knowing.

To accept it because it is still better than whatever you were before.

He sees this. He looks into your eyes, he breathes in, and he hums, and when his grip loosens just enough, you put your toes on the ground, and you lean in, and there you are.

One and the same. Bitten, chewed, spit out, two people who are products of their suffering and the culmination of their sheer fucking will to live, even if the living is miserable.

Maybe that is what it is. Maybe it's what's broken that will put you together. Ghost is the glue, you are the solvent, and you will make it so.

Because I can't fail, I can't do it, I won't go back, I can't go back--

"I'm here for me," you whisper. "I'm here for me, and no one else--" You gasp, and it isn't a lie, not really. You are here for you, this is for you, even if it is at the downfall of someone else. If you need to step on necks to get ahead, you will.

Ghost is the last piece. The last one you need to move. He is stuck, but now you know what it is you need to do, you know how to set the game into motion.

"Ghost," you breathe, and it's soft, it's quiet. You meet his eyes, and you lean close, and he feels your breath on the front of his mask. "It's not what you think."

"You're a lamb."

"I don't wanna be a lamb."

"It doesn't matter what y'want, y'are a lamb," he growls, and you whine, and he hums, and you can see the crinkle of his eyes, and you know he must be smiling. "Tha's wot y'are, and y'can't run away from tha'."

You blink, and he stares, and there is understanding. You are prey, and you belong, but you don't know where. But then you remember you are a soldier, and it isn't your job to know. Your job is to lie still and let them have you.

And to not tell my handler how much I like it.

"It's what they made me," you whisper, and when there are tears in the corner of your eyes, he is gentle. He smooths his hand down your throat, rubbing a thumb over your trembling lip, and you know that he understands you. "It's not what I wanted."

"It's never what we want," he murmurs. "Never."

You hold your breath when he cups your face with a big gloved hand. Dark eyes on soft ones, and you wonder what it would be like to have him. He doesn't keen the way John does, doesn't kneel the way Johnny kneels, doesn't follow and listen without objection the way that Kyle does. No, he's a brick wall, and you need to be what knocks him over. You need to shake the foundation, split it in two.

You need to sever the fucking bond and do your fucking job.

"So when can I have what I want?" You ask him softly. "When...when is it my turn?"

He tilts his head to the side, curious, and you slide your hands up his forearms, over the muscle of his biceps. He is everything you cannot have.

And he is everything that you suddenly realize you want.

Forbidden. Unrelenting. The oxygen to a raging fire. He isn't the glue, he's the catalyst to whatever the fuck you bring to the experiment, and even though you know this will be disaster, you want it. You want it so badly.

Destruction tastes so good. Control is victory. Sex is power, and you want him, you want this, you want him to have you, to own you, to make you see what he sees, because it will be familiar because you are the same.

"Y'r a soldier," he says lowly. "Not about what we want. 's about what they want."

"Fuck what they want," you groan, looking away, and then a few tears slip down your face. "Fuck what they do with us. If I die for them, they only tick some fucking statistic. It means nothing. So why can't I do what I want with the time I get before...before I'm just...before I'm nothing again?"

And there it is. The mirror you hold up. The common ground. The level playing field. The two paths that cross, this is it, I have it, I have it, I fucking have it, I have him, he's mine--

He kisses you. You don't get to see his face, but his lips are there, a precious amount of skin that you're blessed with seeing until your eyes are closing.

His bed is warm. He fills it well, the breadth of him almost too much for its size, but it doesn't matter because he fucks so well. He eats your cunt because he's hungry, your thighs on his shoulders shaking as he laps at your wet folds.

He does this different. John is soft and slow, Kyle takes his time, and Johnny is always eager and sloppy. But Ghost watches. He slides his tongue in soft motions, watching, and when your thighs twitch and shake, he does the motion again. He flattens his tongue and drags it, and when you whine and arch your back, he revels in the way you move. He drinks what you spill, he fucks you with his tongue, and this is different because this isn't just attraction.

There is something about him. Something underneath the layers he covers himself with, under the mask, something that you can see that others cannot even though he doesn't take those layers off.

You know this is true when he's inside of you. His mask hasn't come off, but his mouth is on your ear, and he groans, and he talks, and you feel like he spoils you this way. Ghost never talks. You wonder often if maybe he has a limited amount of words, and he never says more than he has to lest he runs out of them. His eyes speak, and it's more than enough, but now, he talks, and it is a gift, and now you know.

He cradles your head as he fucks you, and he kisses you until you can't breathe, and then when he talks, it takes everything in you not to beg for more.

"Such a nice cunt...'s so nice..."

"Fuck--y'feel me, luv? Right there--" And he presses his palm down on your stomach, and you cry when he grabs your face and forces you to look at him, because he's cruel and he's mean, but his cock feels so good--

And you think it can't get better, and you think he can't go any deeper, and then your thighs are wrapped around his waist, and he's leaning over you, and you think you're forgetting your name.

You forget yourself. You forget the reason you're here. It's so hard to think when you're not yourself, when your mind is in the stars, when everything feels far away and so close all at the same time. There is a place for him inside of you now, and you know that even though he will ruin you, even though he already has, you will never be rid of him.

You've severed the bond. You've made your own.

When he kisses you again, and when he grinds his hips down so nice that your clit aches, you know suddenly what it feels like to have real control. The feeling that Laswell chases, the feeling she wants so fucking badly that she's made your body a weapon, your cunt a tool, your brain the hivemind that will make her every wish come true, you understand now.

You will make the sky blue, the birds sing, but you did not realize the power you held until you had Simon "Ghost" Riley buried so deep in you, that you aren't sure you're even really here anymore.

You gnaw on his arm, your tongue tracing the tattoos there. You taste sweat, and you swallow it, and you go numb thinking about having more of him inside of you. You want to bite and eat and take as much of him that he will let you--no.

You will bite and eat and take as much of him that you want, because he's yours, and you get whatever you want.

Your fingers grasp the cotton of his mask, and your grip is enough to pull his lips off of you, and when your eyes meet, the gaze is different. He's desperate. For once, there is something disorderly there, and he pants, and he wants something from you, and finally you have something to give him.

You fuck it out of him. You lay him on his back and let him look at you, and you fuck him because it feels good, because you want it, too, because it's all that matters. You cry into his mouth, sob, "please--! please, please, please--"

And he tugs on your hair in response, guiding your hips as he loses his composure, "'ve got you...y'r mine...'s olright, yeah--nggghhh, fuck, luv, th's it..."

You do want it. You do need it. You need them, but you want Ghost the most, because he is the piece that does not move. He is not willing to do anything except for the sake of his pack. Ghost is impenetrable, even your pretty cunt isn't enough to change his mind, but that isn't what this is.

This is mercy. Ghost, he is the product of all of his misery. You, you are the result of every man to ever betray you, the outcome of your unwavering desire for revenge. You are the same, somehow, and he knows this, and that is why can't help himself. That is why Ghost is underneath you, that is why he bares his mouth to you and lets you lick into it and allows you to taste the forbidden fruit.

Because he thinks you are him, and he thinks you think so, too, and all he's ever wanted in his life is just for someone to see him the way he saw himself.

When he comes, he paints your cunt and fills you, and you collapse, your body on fire as you come down from a high that takes your breath away. His big hands cradle you against his chest, and you don't move, too afraid to let go, and he kisses your face when you whimper. You can taste yourself on his tongue, and when he pulls out, you gather it up on your fingers and suck. He groans, and he kisses you, and then he sinks back to his knees because he doesn't hear the ringing in his ears when his mouth is on your pretty pussy.

You're just a lamb, it's all you are. Handpicked by Laswell to head into the lion's den, a scarred animal that has no one to protect her, straight to slaughter.

He knows what it feels like. He knows what it feels like to be used and forgotten, to have nowhere to go, to be backed into a corner with no way out, and he pities you.

Ghost pities you because there is nothing behind your eyes except fear. But it's a lie. You're so good at it now. It's a lie, and you tell it so well, and you're warm inside. Not from taking the last moving piece, but from the satisfaction of knowing you have done what others cannot. What others never could.

It's late when you finally settle beside him. He leaves you when you ask for something to eat. You watch him slip clothes on haphazardly and leave, the door swinging shut behind him as he shuffles to get what you need.

To provide. To protect. To shield. Ghost is good at those things, you knew he would be. A man does not nurse a brother back to health without it, does not protect his mother and defy his father without being good at being a dog.

He's a good guard dog. And when he goes, and the door is closed, you smile because the dog is mine, all fucking mine--

You reach for your phone, and you pull up the only contact in it. You type a simple message, and then you send it, and for good measure, you shut the device off, tossing it into the pile of your discarded clothes.

>> we have joy.

You are good at pretending. You can tell a lie without blinking. You have been taught to be this thing, and you do it well, because you are a soldier, and this is your mission, and you cannot fail, and you didn't fail.

When you see Laswell again, many weeks later, she is not surprised to see you covering up with long sleeves and keeping your hair down. One tug on the collar of your shirt, and she gets glimpses of the love bites that have marked bruises all across your skin. She lets you go, tells you to sit, and she smirks.

You smile back this time.

Men are fickle. And they fucking deserve this.

"Good girl," she takes out another manila folder, but it's different this time. When you open it, you have schedules of upcoming ops, intel the boys are working, evidence of their reckless abandonment of order in favor of the chaotic success of getting the job done. You have seen this first hand, you know what they do and how they do it. But now there is another factor, another subject, right in the middle of it all. It is you.

Laswell takes a seat, spreading out the papers, and you meet her eyes. This time it's different. This is the truth, and you want to feel bad for your betrayal, but you don't. The fact of the matter is that you and Laswell, together in this room, have more power at your feet than you know what to do with.

A lamb to slaughter, and yet you sleep with the wolves.

"Alright," she says. "Now let's get to fucking work."

[lady-griffin]

Jinx's Hallucinations + Ekko

Before Act III drops, I wanted to talk about an aspect of Timebomb that I'm quite fascinated by -

Ekko isn’t a trigger for Jinx’s hallucinations.

He has even stopped her hallucinations – not intentionally or anything, but more than once Ekko's presence seems to have a nullifying impact on Jinx.

Which is odd, right?

One would assume due to their history Ekko would be just as triggering to Jinx as anyone else, if not more so, and yet the opposite seems to be true.

In Jinx's first reunion with Vi, she quickly becomes overwhelmed and has an episode due to a whole combination of factors, but notably because her hallucinations of Mylo and Claggor start attacking her, largely because she's starting to breakdown and is getting overwhelmed (a self-perpetuating cycle).

Jinx can't even begin to calm herself down, in fact she yells at everyone to shut up, because she needs to think.

Then she hears Ekko’s hoverboard and suddenly the hallucinations are completely gone.

Jinx isn’t sure if what she heard was real or not.

Which is a great detail, since it indicates Jinx is aware that the voices she hears aren’t “real," meaning she knows other people can’t hear them too. So, it's rather telling (at least for me) that she asks Vi to confirm if she too heard the hoverboard sound.

It's also impressive Jinx was able to instantly recognize the sound of Ekko's hoverboard, despite her being in the midst of a mental breakdown and unable to think properly.

It’s almost like Jinx’s brain went into fight mode or something, because seemingly all the hallucinations stopped at once because there’s now a much bigger threat Jinx needs to be on guard for – Ekko is heading her way.

I really can't emphasize how much I love that.

While not traditionally romantic, in any sense, this shows the amount of respect Jinx has towards Ekko and the threat he poses to her. He’s someone she actually has to take seriously when fighting.

Which is a bit unique for Jinx.

Throughout S1 we saw Jinx being far more scared of her hallucinations then actual real, physical threats, but in this moment it’s like her brain recognized Ekko as being the far greater threat than her hallucinations.

Which he is - but that’s also true for many of the other things Jinx faces and isn’t scared of.

Jinx does “glitch out” while fighting Ekko and the Firelights in “When These Walls Come Tumbling Down,” - but it’s more of an asset than a problem, as she easily dodges the Gorilla Mask Firelight (at least I think it’s a gorilla).

Then when Ekko disappears, Jinx's psychoses come rushing back; obviously, this has less to do with Ekko himself and everything to do with him taking Vi, but nonetheless, it's still a slight repetition of the pattern that keeps happening between them.

In "The Boy Savior," during Jinx's bridge fight with Ekko, she once again specifically doesn't experience any hallucinations; even though she was just experiencing them not too long ago.

Mylo was this 'demon' on her back that while she could initially argue against, the more upset she became, the bigger his presence was.

She saw Caitlyn as this devil figure, laughing and mocking her and her psychoses even blocked Vi almost entirely from her sight; whether literally or symbolically, Jinx clearly wasn’t fully aware she was shooting at Vi, despite her obviously seeing Vi and then shooting in her direction.

Then Ekko bursts onto the scene and suddenly no more hallucinations. Which is just...

I honestly don’t know what this is. I really don’t.

To be clear, I absolutely love this whole thing despite not knowing what it is exactly, because honestly, I'm just fascinated by this dynamic, because for whatever reason, Jinx isn't triggered by Ekko nor does she hallucinate him.

In S2, Jinx’s hallucinations have significantly decreased, but in “Paint the Town Blue," she's suddenly bombarded with pretty much everyone’s voices because she’s beyond upset and panicking about Isha being taken by the enforcers.

She sees pretty much everyone - Silco, Vi, Mylo, Claggor, Sevika, and Isha.

Jinx seeing Vi, Sevika, and Isha shows us that she can/does hallucinate people who she knows are alive.

In addition, Isha being one of her hallucinations shows us that Jinx doesn’t need to have negative or even complicated feelings towards someone for them to become a part of her psychoses, as Jinx largely thinks/feels positively towards Isha.

Though it should be noted, the hallucination of Isha isn’t acting aggressive towards Jinx, not like the others are.

Finally, Ekko or Vander are the only two she doesn't hallucinate, but we know Jinx has hallucinated Vander in the past, making Ekko the odd one out when it comes to Jinx's hallucinations once again.

Which for the millionth is absolutely fascinating to me.

Because why?

Why doesn't Ekko trigger Jinx? Why isn't he one of her hallucinations? How come he's the only one we've seen having the ability to stop Jinx's hallucinations altogether (even if it's completely unintentional)?

For whatever reason, Jinx’s mind has seemingly categorized Ekko as being different than everyone else and while it’s obviously not this big thing the show brings your attention to, it’s also clearly there, albeit subtly.

And yeah...

I don’t really have much more to say, I just wanted to talk about this interesting aspect of Timebomb before we get to the last and final arc of Arcane.

[nataliesscatorccio]

okay but here's the thing I can't shut up about. they would have been these people anyway!!!! tai did everything she said she was going to. jeff reminds shauna "secrets have always been a part of us." lottie has struggled with her mental health since childhood. shaunajackie fallout was always going to be nuclear whether it happened in the woods or at college. if van and natalie weren't stuck in the woods they'd be stuck with their parents or what was left of them. and everybody knows misty was already who she is. they could have taken any route and they would have ended up at the destination of themselves anyway. say they didn't crash, say they won nationals. it doesn't matter. it doesn't fucking matter!!! fast forward twenty-five years and the class reunion plays out more or less the same. they win nationals and misty is still a nurse playing god and natalie is still in rehab or maybe not because who would be paying for it so scratch that they win nationals and natalie is still dead, and shaunajackie are still swallowing each other whole. they win nationals and nothing singularly or uniquely terrible happens to them and they still grow up to be wracked with anger and guilt anyway! they're still unsatisfied, cheating on their spouses. they're still suicidal, still schizophrenic. terrible things still happen to them but they're commonplace terrible, so who cares? get over it. all this to say the self is inescapable. all this to say this life fucks you up no matter what. there was no other way for them, there was no other fate for them. there is no ideal life where they are perfect and good. the crash isn't the tragedy. the tragedy is that they all are who they are. they are human. they win nationals, and they still have to be these people. they have to be these people, but alone. the tragedy is that they think they could have been fine if they hadn't done such terrible things to survive after the crash. but they were never fine, they were never going to be fine, and that IS fine because neither was anyone else. "we're all like this." we were always going to be. and I don't mean it's a good thing they crashed. I mean it's all a crash. there is no unscathed life.

[deathbxnny]

Hi I just wanted to say I loved the arcane adhd headcannons u wrote, the viktor one made me cry bc I want to be seen like that sooo bad. Do u think u could do some more characters? No pressure tho ur an amazing writer

Arcane characters with an S/o who has ADHD. | Caitlyn, Jinx, Ekko x Gn!Reader

(Previous part)

Aww, I'm so happy to hear that you enjoyed the last part, anon! I hope this is to your liking as well!<33

Content: Fluff, ADHD, established romantic relationships, sfw

Reader has no mentioned pronouns.

((Not proofread))

》CAITLYN

She noticed from the start that you were a little different from everyone else. Not that she necessarily cared much about it. You were still you after all, and your diagnosis is just a part of you she considers endearing.

With that said, Caitlyn always listens to your needs very closely and does everything in her power to help you out with them. She'll get you anything you ask for in hopes of making life easier for you. Whether it's medical help or just something to help with your fidgeting in general, you'll have it in no time with her.

Cait can, therefore, come off as kind of overbearing or overprotective at first. She wants you to lead a smooth and successful life, so she'll always be around to make any task doable for you. Procrastination does not exist when she's there, to say the least.

Her patience is an important part of your relationship that's practically invaluable. Your fidgety and unfocused nature took a moment for her to get used to, but she never makes a big deal out of it. Instead, she simply adapts to your needs and learns to cherish them as well.

》JINX

Probably the most understanding out of everyone, albeit in the most chaotic way possible. You two are a rather troubling duo, as she herself isn't in the best position to help you out properly. Her ideas are always outlandish yet somehow still work out in the end anyways, which is rather impressive.

You're both very fidgety, but she makes up for it with her hyper awareness. Procrastination is never a thing with her, considering how focused she always is on every project she has and so it becomes somewhat of a normal thing for you to simply work in the same space together, even if it's with just music playing in the background in-between you two.

She's the last person to ever treat you any differently for your diagnosis and doesn't ever let you feel bad for it either. You accept her, and she accepts you. Anyone that tries shaming you for it is as good as dead anyway.

You two learn how to take care of each other better than anyone else ever could. Jinx may not be able to help you out like a professional doctor could, but she'll do anything to help you out no matter what forever.

》EKKO

He doesn't entirely get it at first, mainly as he was always surrounded by people who were rather unique in their own way. But as always with anything, he still does his best to learn everything he needs to about your diagnosis and how he can help you with the resources he has. Which aren't many, but his creativity truly shines at times when it comes to you.

You're not treated any differently from everyone else, and he sure as hell doesn't allow anyone to do that either. You are normal, just with more needs that he tends to carefully. So whether it's your inability to focus well or stay still for a long time, he'll find a way to make things easier. He understands your procrastination and doesn't really push you to do things unless it's very important. But he'll work with you on any projects or missions you may have.

His patience is endless for you and his kindness even more so. He understands if you feel frustrated sometimes and tries his best to soothe you when your emotions are a little harder to process. He'll let you fidget and be yourself as much as you want to, never the type to stop you. You should be yourself around him, and he appreciates how vulnerable you are with that.

Ekko loves you no matter how hard things can get with your diagnosis. He takes every challenge on with ease and never judges you for it either.

[goldfades]

𝐆𝐈𝐑𝐋𝐅𝐑𝐈𝐄𝐍𝐃 ─ PB⁵

౨ৎ ─ summary | paigey being your girlfriend - a list of relationship "headcanons"

─ warnings | in a bullet-point formatting, i hope you guys like it! fluff (lmk if yall want nsfw ones bc i can provide), paige being DOWN BAD, social media tingz, maybe alluding to being outed but not really, some angst but you can skip over it, paigey being protective (duh), nothing else?

─ taglist | @xocherishxo @iienstein @yazmunson and here's a link to my taglist if anyone would like to join!!

─ ev's notes | THIS IS SUCH LONG MESS BECAUSE I'M HAVING PAIGE BRAINROT RN, but i hope y'all enjoy nonetheless LOL being in my paige era i've read so many of these and i'm sure you guys have as well, so i'm making this as unique (or descriptive) as i possibly can to make it because it's more fun to read (and write cus im a sucker for details)

PRE-RELATIONSHIP STUFF

when you guys first started dating, i feel like paige would be kind of secretive about it

maybe secretive isn't the right word but very... private but not secret type of vibe (at least irl)

not because she doesn't want to show you off, because believe me, she wants to (she's a bragger what can i say)

but just because she wants to keep you all to herself for a while

she knows that as soon as people find out about it, everyone will be talking about it and making assumptions and she just wants to keep you to herself

at least for a couple months

she doesn't care about the public's opinions but she wants to make sure that y'all are LOCKED IN before she makes it public on social media

but it's clear to paige that y'all are very much locked in after the first couple weeks

she's not new to relationships and she's had her fair share but she can tell that it's different now

so the whole "not sure if i wanna hard/soft launch her cus what if we're not a long term" sentiment turns into "i wanna keep this special thing to myself ONLY for at least a couple months"

and of course the entire team knows paige is down bad for you, they've never ever seen her this WHIPPED

because paige seems like she'd be nonchalant and SHE IS... for people she doesn't give a fuck about

so when she likes someone, she LIKES someone

she is extra what can i say

they tease her about it and in any other situation, she would be annoyed but she loooooooves it because it's like "yeah i'm in the best most awesome relationship with the cutest sweetest and kindest girl in the PLANET"

you and paige would've definitely known of each other since freshman year but like... she's kinda intimidating so you sorta tried to steer clear of her

you were really close with some of the girls on the team, specifically azzi so you saw paige kind of a lot

but sophomore year, azzi kind of pushed you guys to be close and since she knows you guys so well, IT WORKED!

you guys clicked so quick and that doesn't happen a lot with paige, it takes a lot to earn her friendship

but you practically ripped down all her walls within like an hour of talking to her

definitely the first one to catch feelings

at least... to her ;)

very much friends to lovers trope with lots of sexual tension cus who doesn't love that?

i feel like after 3 months of being really close friends, you guys would spend like a shit ton of time together

you guys were ALWAYS together

she even tried to convince you to come to practice with her but you said no cus... what the heck

everyone knows... EVERYONE knows that paige likes you

and it kind of becomes like cemented (for paige at least) after she realized you were her literal COMFORT PERSON

like after every terrible, long practice or after losing games all she wants to do is be AROUND YOU so she could forget about everything

especially when she gets injured, she's such a wreck and the only person who made her feel better was you

it wasn't even what you said or what you did, it was simply just you

and after going through such a bad time with you, she realized that she liked you and she can't keep pretending

and she asked you (yaya!) and you said yes cus you liked her back (yaya!) and everything is just YAYA

so it's safe to say she knows she's found her soulmate within a month of knowing you

but she doesn't wanna seem like she's love-bombing you or whatever so she pretended to be nonchalant

which of course FAILS because she's down bad

so she tells you she loves you within like a month of dating

i KNOW it seems bad but you guys both felt it because of the whole injury and spending every moment together

when you know, you know vibes

she told you she loved you after you were there for her through some of the worst times of her life and you said it back of course and it's all cutesy

paige's love language is TOTALLY quality time and touch

even before you were dating, she just liked having her hands on you whether it was like holding your hand while walking through a crowd, or braiding your hair, or putting her head on top of yours or something as simple as just HUGGING you

but she kept it cordial of course cus y'all weren't dating

yeah that was all thrown out the window as soon you became her girlfriend

hands on you at ALL times, it becomes so subconscious neither of you even know you're doing it anymore

so remember that whole secret relationship thing?

well... everyone kind of figures it out online after like 3 months of dating

it was because of paige, poor girl couldn't keep her hands and lips off of you after a particularly hard game and somehow 🤨🤨someone gets a picture and it was all over twitter and tiktok the next day

literally "paige bueckers girlfriend" trending after an hour of getting posted

but neither of you cared too much about it because A. it was totally worth it cus the kiss was 😫😫😫 and B. she finally doesn't have to turn off her girlfriend mode when she's with you at games

cus she has the prettiest and best gf in the world and she wants everyone to know that

the only reason she was slightly annoyed was because she couldn't hard launch you on instagram :( poor girl had potential captions in her notes :( cus she's our little drama queen:(

but that doesn't stop her cus she ends up doing it! (shameless plug right there hehehe)

now that she can freely touch you and just be herself finally, she literally doesn't GAFFF

of course nothing like over the top because sure she loves PDA to a certain extent and she's an athlete so she needs to keep it civil

RELATIONSHIP STUFF

we've already covered how paige is a physical touch and quality time girly

and paige loves spending literally all her free time with you because you just recharge her

but it isn't in like an overwhelming way

paige understand that sometimes you need quiet time (or vice versa) but the thing is she doesn't even need you to talk just being around you is enough

so idk if it's necessarily QUALITY time but just being around you and spending every free second she has with you tells you that she is in love with you

paige is the most protective person IN THE WORLD, not just with you like in general

it doesn't even have to be someone she knows, if she sees someone giving someone else a hard time SHE WILL STEP IN!

and with her friends, y'all have seen her... she does not back down and will literally murder anyone who comes for the people she cares about

so if that's with people she doesn't know, and her friends, you guys can imagine how crazy she gets over you

if somebody says something even slightly consendecing or mean, slap. someone looks at you the wrong way? slap. somebody breaths wrong around you, slap.

obviously she won't lay a hand on them first but likeeee would she back down, nope

she is actually your guardian angel

like at parties, her hand is always on you and she never ever leaves your side

you need to get a drink, she's coming to

if you need to pee? she'll wait in the bathroom for you

yeah don't expect her to leave your side

because even when she IS by your side, there is always a weirdo in your guys' ear trying to get with one (or both!) of you

but yeah she's not afraid to defend you when it comes to literally anything

and this doesn't only apply to strangers, if there is someone that you know (your friend, her friend, etc) she WILL stand by you and defend you

like she doesn't shy away from confrontation, she will say something but only if you want her to

and GOD HELP THEM if you shed a single tear, cus the next morning you bet she's saying something

like i said, paige is a confrontational person and that means she's the biggest communicator

if she has a problem, she will tell you so that you guys can fix it

but sometimes she can come off a little argumentative and like she's just attacking you

she uses a lot of "you" statements so it seems like she's pushing the blame all on to you

so that can be the root of a lot of your guys' arguments when paige is only trying to solve the issues

but of course paige doesn't back down so she will be arguing with you even if she doesn't even know why, she just hates being wrong

but she doesn't let you leave or go to sleep unless the problem is fixed (or at least on the road to being fixed)

she'll give you space, she'll go another room to take a breather but she will not let you leave until it is fixed

usually after the breather you guys can come to an agreement and then paige usually hugs all the anger outta you

cus who could resist her?

if the argument lasts a couple days (it usually doesn't unless it's something serious) paige will talk it out with her mom or her friends

and you'll usually do the same

and paige will force you to sit down and talk about it until it is FIXED because she hates not being able to talk to you

and when you guys do eventually talk about it, especially if it's a serious topic, it will end with tears with both parties

but you guys always make up and everything will be better

okay okay no more angst ... for now hehehe

i feel like paige's nervous tic would be braiding the ends of her hair so i feel like that would transfer to YOU somehow

she just likes braiding your hair!!!!!! or just running her hands through your hair, it would help her relax

and if you're like me, it will help you relax as well

if you're black/have braids, she would only touch your hair if you let her!

paigey takes pictures OF EVERYTHING so obviously that includes you

her camera roll consists of ONLY you atp, like... 20% pics of literally anything else, and the rest would just be pictures of you or something to do with you

and oh my gosh don't get me started on the damn .5's of you, some of them are HORRENDOUSSSS and paige uses them as reaction pictures sometimes

and you found out from azzi that she does indeed use them in the girls groupchat

but she argues that you just look adorable which you respectfully disagree

oh and don't get me started on her tiktok drafts, she has at least 1,000 (rip her storage)

and when y'all started dating she just makes cute relationship tiktoks but she never posts them

EXPECT the "you're spinning me around, my feet are off the ground one" cus she wants to prove to the world that she has muscles

and the tiktok girlies will cry but WHO CARES!

oh and if you're on the basketball team, they will started to fan-girl over you as well

HELLA TIKTOK EDITS

and paige will favorite, repost and comment on them

like the most down-bad, insane comments you can think of

"GET THE STRAP GET THE STRAP!" is one of many ✨✨

if you aren't on the team, trust the tiktok girlies will find a way and they will make edits of you

and paige will do the same

obviously you do the same for her, your favorites are just paige edits atp (mine too)

ESPECIALLY THE GET IT SEXY ONE OMLL

and everyone will make ship edits and cutesy things like

"omg the way paige looks at her" and like a slideshow of paige being like all 😍😍😍

after paige gets more comfortable with like the media knowing about you two, she posts you every five seconds

usually like stories and stuff and especially if you’re also a basketball player, she reposts ALL your stuff

she is a proud gf !!!

she also has a highlight FOR SURE, she loves

also she def has like 10 diff wallpapers of you and her, some are really cute and some are really… 🫣

also paige strikes me as the type to like be texting you ALL DAY

and girl doesn’t care if you reply, she will send you 8 consecutive messages of different things

“omg look at the group chat 😂 *insert screeshot*” “baby they ran out of fucking caramel at dunkin, how does that happen ?” “i ended up going to a local cafe why did this shit cost me 9$” “baby you’re coming to my game on saturday right?” “HAHA look at this meme 😂” “why haven’t you responded to my tiktok’s in 2 days?”

yes she 100% uses the laughing with tears emoji argue with the WALL

or skull emoji

she also sends you 20 minute snapchat vlogs and they’re so chaotic, especially when she’s at practice or something

kk will steal her phone and say hi then you’ll hear them play fighting for like 80% of the vlog

also she does grwm’s on snapchat too when she’s at away games and her morning voice is SOOOO SEXY CUTE

↳ make sure to check out my navigation or masterlist if you enjoyed! any interaction is greatly appreciated !

↳ thank you for reading all the way through, as always ♡

[cerastes]

Legitimately can't stop thinking about the brilliance of Degenbrecher's introduction as a playable character.

We've known Degenbrecher for a long, long time before this event, and even before Break The Ice, actually: Before Arknights even released, Gnosis and Degen can be seen in this pre-launch trailer at 0:14.

Degenbrecher existed for years as this larger-than-life figure shrouded in rumor and fame, with an almost supernatural countenance to her presence in the corner of the narrative she inhabits: The three-time Grand Champion of the Kazimierz Major, the dreaded Black Knight, the peerless warrior, who has the strength of ten knight companies on her shoulders alone. Spoken of in equal parts awe and fear, her stint in the knightly competitions were legendary in how one-sided they were whenever she took to the field, and Platinum even comments that her portraits on the gallery of champions all make it seem like she doesn't even age, adding a supernatural element to her legacy. All we know is that she's currently SilverAsh's bodyguard and no doubt part of why his faction is so formidable, as it would be for anyone who has a one-woman army on their payroll. When we are finally introduced to her formally in the narrative, she's all business, no non-sense, in the middle of her job, and boy howdy is she good at it: We know the kind of juice Rhodes Island Elite Operators have, they are really, really strong, and yet all Sharp can do is stall for time against her, with tacit understanding that no matter how much he tries, he is NOT overcoming her.

There is not a single thing anyone present on Doc's side can do to actually overcome Degenbrecher during Break The Ice, so the very best thing anyone could do was stall her. THAT is the winning move, or at least as close to one. She's that formidable, and then some. We only see her in business mode here, with a small glimpse to her more noble nature in that she is nothing but non-self aggrandizing compliments for Sharp for being able to even fight her, even if there is no chance he can beat her, because most people just take a single swing from her. When Doc's plan succeeds and we reach the climax, she simply sheathes, says "Well played", SA recalls her back to her pokeball, and we are left letting out a sigh of relief that we made it in time.

Then, for some more years after that, that's our impression of her: Unsurmountable. We don't know much more about her other than she is simply not someone you measure up to. This, by itself, isn't particularly unique, both as a concept or in the cast of Arknights, but it leaves you to wonder exactly what is she beyond being Unsurmountable. Who is she, actually?

Then, The Rides to Lake Silbernherze happens, where she is the main character, and after all those years of mystique and grandeur, of guessing and wondering, we finally can see her not as a plot device, but as an actual character: The very first scene is her covered in blood and raw jumping on a moving train for some mysterious purpose. Oh god, oh no, why is she soaked in blood already? Is she already in Terminator mode?

Then, in the best possible payoff of years of mystique and build-up, we learn that Degenbrecher, the person, not the plot device, the person, is fucking hilarious.

She's covered in blood because she stopped by a nearby farm to help farmers deliver a farm animal, which covered her in blood given how messy births are. She apparently didn't have to do this, and just opted to because, well, she was there, they needed help, and she's in a perpetual state of down to clown.

While pursuing possible dangerous elements to Kjerag later, she stops by to talk with tourists and recommend good spots to sightsee and eat before resuming her chase Looney Toons style.

She looks the same in the three champion portraits because she didn’t like the photoshoots so she skipped them. They were just reusing her photo.

She'll have the single most mundane conversations with the simplest people in midst of off-handedly mentioning that she quite enjoys fistfighting avalanches -- in a setting where this is not at all normal or feasible -- just to test herself. Reactions to her saying this vary from "hey is this a bit" to "oh, Degenbrecher, you card, we saw you do that the other day, next time I'll bring my camera".

She's a combination of Bugs Bunny, Sakamoto-kun, and Broly, and her main gimmick is that she's a reasonable, normal ass person in terms of personality sans the more overt feats of power like fistfighting avalanches. She's just Someone, who just happens to be mind-bogglingly strong and skilled with the greatsword and with swordbreakers.

This is doubly hilarious when you compare her to other one-woman armies we know: Nearl's dialogue is entirely composed of flowery promises for a better tomorrow and heroic declarations, Saria has woman pain 9000 and hasn't had a good day in years, Skadi is afflicted with survivor's guilt which in turn lead to a potent-self loathing and rationalizing her mere presence is what causes tragedy to those around her. Degenbrecher, in comparison, is just happy to be here, enjoys a good fight within reason, loves challenging herself, and honestly is quite content with stuff like paperwork or small talk. She's the friend you call to help you move or when your pipe busts or when you need someone to take care of your kid for a few hours if you're going to be late home due to work. And she puts her entire god damn pussy into it, too, you bet your kid is going to have the time of their life if Degenbrecher is on babysitting duty. Degenbrecher chips in for pizza night. Degenbrecher helps you change your flat tire.

The essence of Degenbrecher is that the rest of Terra is going through some really dire, really interesting times, to say the least, but she's on New Game+ just sort of doing side quests, overleveled as hell and with her shit figured out, and she decides to be as funny as possible about it.

[cynthiav06]

I can Almost imagine how Impressive you have to be To Pull THE percy Jackson. Like pulling any Demi-God is great but PERCY?!? The son of posiden?!? THE SAVIOR of Olympus?!?

I headcanon that Percy is really just out of Anyone's League And You gotta be Pretty damn Special to be able to Pull him

Like imagine Fumbling him or breaking his heart

THIS IS HOW IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN.

Like come on Rick you are telling me Percy the greatest demigod of all time Jackson has to be paired up with someone who has nothing in common with him, frequently condescends him, literally forces her own views on him, hates his father, has a mother who tried to kill Percy, is controlling and toxically possessive of him and most importantly someone who has completely different life goals than him?? It doesn't even make sense when you look at it rationally.

I think Rick himself was trying to put Percy down in post Son of Neptune books by making his personality all about Annabeth.

We are talking about the Savior of Olympus, the bearer of Achilles Curse, the strongest demigod, the man who denied immortality from the King of Gods, Poseidon's favorite son, the only demigod to have been approached by other Pantheons first and well respected among their demigod equivalents, the only male demigod to have respect of Artemis, only one to be favored by so many Gods on the Olympian Council and that's only pre-Heroes of Olympus.

The Survivor of Tartarus, the demigod whose blood even Gaia wanted to wake to due to his power, the first and only Greek to be made a Praetor and now two times savior of Olympus. This is all without mentioning his singular and unique feats, and he has many.

AND THIS IS WHAT RICK DOES WITH HIS CHARACTER ARC????

Had Rick not been so obsessed with shoving Percabeth down our throats, he could have totally made Seafam Arc, and all our fics would have not been fics. We wouldn't even have needed headcanons for seafam cause Amphitrite and Triton and all of Atlantis would have absolutely loved him cause come on, it's Percy. It's impossible not to love him. So let's assume that's exactly what happened.

So the whole of Atlantis, Seafam, and most of the Olympian Gods love Percy and not to mention Sally and Paul, who are also very protective of Percy.

The new Lord of the Wild is his best friend, The Lieutenant of Artemis is his other best friend and cousin, both the children of Hades/Pluto are his best friends/cousins, the only other demigod to be blessed by Poseidon with a rare gift is also his very close friend not to mention other members of the Seven also respect him greatly and owe him quite a bit.

Hestia, Apollo, Hermes, Aphrodite, Artemis,Hades, Hepheastus, and even Dionysus and River gods either openly favor him or have much respect for him. (Poseidon and the Seafam are implied, Bob and Damasen as well).

This isn't even taking into account all the pegasi and nymphs and sea creatures who love him and that he has a literal hell hound.

Percy not only has friends in high places and the favor of literal gods on top of being Poseidon's favorite son as told by Poseidon himself, all the people with special abilities are all close friends with him.

In Riordanverse, Percy is like the only person you don't want to cross like ever.

So you know logically if anyone needs an explanation as to why Annabeth isn't a good match for him and someone like Rachel would have fit much better. A mortal blessed with sight much like his Mother later turned Oracle of Delphi, the girl who saved his life in literally the very first two encounters they have, a girl under protection of Olympians and blessed by Apollo?

Apollo could have definitely waived the celibacy rule as there have been mentions of married women later becoming oracles in Greek mythology( May Castellan too if you count the books) and that the rule is only to prove devotion to the God nothing more. And if Apollo can't, then Delphi, who is a spirit older than Gods themselves, could just change allegiances. She once belonged to Poseidons' domain, so there's that.

But since I am biased in favor of Rachel, literally any other ship but Percabeth would have been logical and fitting and better off compatibility wise.

[the-90s-music-colosseum]

Quarterfinals, Match 2

expand to see all propaganda received! (wall of text warning oh my god this is a severe cautionary message)

Lauryn Hill:

"she paved the way and was hot as fuck the whole time"

"Girl c'mon. Look at her. You're gonna try and tell me that isn't the most beautiful and attractive person alive? Okay. You're lying but okay."

"if u freaks don't give ms. lauryn hill the respect she deserves..."

"actually one of the prettiest women ever I'm such a lesbian for her. like irl I'm already a lesbian but she is helping"

Damon Albarn:

"Don’t think Damon should be here? Why don’t you get your head checked by a jumbo jet? Maybe you’ll feel heavy metal and calm down."

"If Damon is in the “some guy” category, he’s the heavenly and heartbreaking version. Damon is the sort of significant stranger I’d see on the train out of Colchester but could never speak to, just a face seen in passing yet too radiant to be real. I’d fall in love for an hour and carry the ache for a month."

"Damon sets the standard for me. I think he’s the most fascinating man alive. What I find attractive in Damon is not just his gorgeous bone structure and boyish charm, but how wholly he’s committed himself to music. Damon is an artist who walked the walk: in one of his roughest years with some of his rawest songwriting, he said he was no longer excited by anything except the creative process. He was disillusioned with the celebrity of it all, with his relationships suffering for it, and only wanted to make art: nothing more, nothing less. He would go on to compose film scores, write operas and stage musicals, produce other artists’ records, form collectives to fulfill his passion for world music, and create some of the most globally successful music of his career in a completely innovative format that placed him as the phantom behind the characters. Whenever one band takes a break, he makes a solo record or puts together a supergroup to stay busy. He’s uniquely collaborative and still writes personal letters inviting artists to record with him, and yet can function as a one-man show, acting as a multi-instrumentalist, a singer-songwriter and a producer. He’s been a constant voice of bringing British music to the world *and* bringing world music into Britain. Sure, he’s won Brit Awards and a Grammy among others, but he also has a Guinness World Record and was named an Officer of the British Empire for his services to music; his long work with Africa Express earned him respect even from peers who’d previously dismissed him, and his commitment to support his Malian collaborators in the face of violence earned him the title of Local King in Mali. There is so much talent in the world, but there is truly no one else with a career that looks like Damon Albarn’s. Damon is far more than just a prettyboy to look nice on a magazine cover, but looks are the ultimate point of this tournament, so make no mistake: he was terribly, terribly pretty. You watch him performing in the 90s, you sift through photoshoots and interviews and documentaries, and it feels *cruel* how beautiful he was. If his talent was god-given, so was his face. To put a bow on this thesis: I don’t know if Gorillaz and Damon’s musical universe would be the experimental, globe-trotting, boundary-pushing community affair it is if Blur hadn’t become such a central figure in Britpop and if Damon had not been made such a media spectacle, and I don’t know if Damon would have been that spectacle if he wasn’t so ungodly pretty. The domino effect is that Damon’s cherubic face launched a thousand multimedia art school projects for decades to come."

"I wish I was basically any bloke in the 90s so I could tongue Damon Albarn down. Damon will see a man and ask “is anyone gonna kiss that?” and not wait for a response."

"I have a pillow with his face on it. I sleep with it every night 😊"

"“I’m more homosexual than Brett Anderson, always have been. As far as bisexuality goes, I’ve had a taste of that particular fruit, or have been tasted you might say…” is just the rawest most Shakespearean statement ever"

"he is the ultimate Pretty Boy ™. his glorious golden locks, his electric blue eyes. he is if Princess Diana was a Britpop Dude. he is the Regina George of Britpop. he is if Aphrodite took male form. Zeus would come down to earth to fuck him if he knew. he is a caffeinated orange cat let loose. he is deranged. he is unhinged. you never know what will come out of his mouth. he had sexual tension with every single man who knew him. he pulled justine fucking frischmann. his aura knows no bounds. he is a siren. he is a weird guy. but being so gorgeous stunning ethereal didn't stop him from also being one of the most prolific songwriters of his generation"

"THE MAIN BLUR"

"literally where do i even begin. i could write entire essays on this man. a good place to start would be the beetlebum music video, i suppose. i'll never forget the first time i watched that music video. something in me changed, my brain chemistry was altered, my life was never the same, i view the world a lot differently now. and a lot of the viewing i'm doing is of pictures of damon albarn's face because of boy do i have a lot of those saved. every time i try to look for a photo of something on my phone i can't find it because there's so much damon. okay that's maybe an exaggeration but this man has the most unfathomable beauty ever. his eyes? HIS EYES. god dammit i love his eyes i want to stare at them until the end of time like nothing else exists. i'm so normal about this man (lying) and while i'm usually very shameless about my interests i'm actually incredibly glad this propaganda is anonymous because otherwise. yeah. but the world deserves to see damon albarn's beauty and also hear his fantastic voice because what the fuck. his voice is literally the most gorgeous sound ever produced like bro sounds like that and expects me not to fall in love? i want this man to sing his silly songs and talk absolute nonsense to me until the sun eventually blows out and the world ends. cmon damon girlies let's demolish this tournament i know there are a lot of you."

"He’s beautiful. He’s a little rat. He’s a sweetheart. He’s a dickhead. He’s a musical genius. He’s a dumb bitch. He’s a jock. He’s a weirdo. He’s real. He’s an illusion. He’s everything. He’s just Damon."

"DAMON DAMON DAMON where do I begin oh jeez I've hyperfixated on this man for a solid 4 years and still going strong. Damon makes me wish that British people are real. That says A LOT. This man created a whole ass ANIMATED BAND WITH A SHIT TON OF LORE as a SIDE HUSTLE??? Not to mention, what other man has collaborated with Stevie Nicks, MF DOOM, Del the Funky Homosapien, Snoop Dogg, AND Beck?! People, we're literally in the presence of a god. And he's STILL GOING. Anyways, TL;DR, damon is so so so neat and cool and he should definitely win this competition. Thank you."

"Okay 90s Damon is The Perfect Boy yes yes, but the people who parrot the Daily Mail and say "he's ugly now" will never understand. I would still suck every drop from him on his deathbed."

"Vote for whoever you want to. But Damon is so pretty."

"i did not spend hours admiring this beautiful man's face on pinterest just to see him lose."

"Damon Albarn just brings me joy. When I'm watching him perform, following along as the camera lingers on and adores his pretty face, I get butterflies like I'm 15 again. It's nice to still feel that totally unguarded giddiness sometimes."

"God let the intrusive thoughts win making Damon. What if he's a beautiful blond twink with eyes like saucers and dick to his knees, he reads Herman Hesse and plays footie and is insufferable about both, he'll be the most prolific musician of his generation and write operas and seminal albums in 5 different genres and also he's gonna be the dumbest bitch alive? He'll also be kinda bi, but only kinda. And send."

"when i found out about his existence, my life was changed forever. i wish i could use him like the hannah montana boot milk pillow and chuck him at the wall so he makes a loud thud"

"Think of the drama and anon fights it'll cause if Damon wins it all! And think of how quiet it'll get after Damon's out. You'll miss him when he's gone, like memories of a noisy house years after it's grown silent. Choose Damon, and keep the messy train chugging."

"Even the Gallagher brothers have the hots for him."

"Kiss kiss I love him also you can't vote for any of the Seattle men they're literally copy and paste it's not fair. We need Brit representation"

"I want to take care of him, I want to provide for him. I need to gauge his baby blue puppy dog orbs out to I can clean them with wood varnish, paint shades of Pantone 320 C in his eyes, spray eau de parfume by dior in them and sew it back into his eyes like that scene in Toy Story 2."

"Seeing as simply filling the page with ‘Damon’ written 10000000 times isn’t going to cut it 😅 may I admit/submit: I DO have him tattooed on my being (no descriptive, is this anon?); he’s inspired somewhat unhinged late night/early morning fandom conversations in which I’ve served as ‘parish’ priest hearing confessions from all manner of folk about what they’d like to do to him/receive from him; sadly I lost an essay where I detailed why the letters that make up his name suit him so well, and described him as the hot caramel sauce to Graham’s cool vanilla ice cream. He’s a faerie princess with a nose that makes people weep and a voice that feels like the warmest home and he gives amazing hugs. He loves trains and chickens and his tuxedo cat. He’s annoying and sweet and somewhat unhinged and his music saves people and all this is on top of that fantastic dick. He’s a dream yet very real and we’re fucking blessed to be on earth at the same time as him, amen"

"Damon Albarn was a beautiful, beautiful boy. The world saw that, regardless of if every individual reading this has the same taste in men; it felt like a truth of the universe at the time. They don't make celebrities that angelic in face and erratic in personality anymore."

"I need to touch his eyebrows, nose and prostate just one time JUST ONE TIME COME ON"

[bogleech]

Many parasites takeover the minds and bodies of insects, spiders or other creatures, making them like zombies. You’ve listed some in spider-ween and other places. Do you know any parasites that take over bees? I know wasps lay their eggs in their larva, but haven’t really found anything about those that pilot a bee’s body.

Strepsipterans! Also frequently just called "Stylops"

These are the weirdest most alien insect group in existence. What you're seeing are the head ends of the mature females; their bodies are just bags of tissue that absorb nutrients from the host, so they no longer have any trace of limbs or wings and their flat little heads no longer have mouths or eyes.

The only reason the female's heads stick out of the host at all is because the head evolved into the end they mate with. The short-lived mature male is a very tiny flying thing (whose anatomy is unlike any other insect alive today - a totally unique type of wing, unique eye arrangement, we have NO idea what these evolved from, except for some loose connections to beetles!) who mates by breaking through the female's featureless armored face with his bladed genitalia and then he dies. And Strepsiptera can be found infecting all sorts of arthropods, even apparently some arachnids, but none of those arthropods really tend to sit still when a little tiny flying man tries to land on them, so the females usually do something to their hosts (we aren't sure what exactly) to make them slower and more complacent. Social Hymenoptera like bees are especially common hosts though, and when a worker bee or wasp is infected by stylops, she actually abandons her colony and her duties for extended periods of time to just perch in one place while the parasite broadcasts its mating pheromones. This is especially eerie from the bee's perspective; a worker bee is a female bee that wasn't allowed to become a queen and isn't "supposed" to be going around mating, but now she's sitting around waiting for a male just like any other bug that wants to be a mom. It's just not a male of her species and she's not the one who gets to reproduce. Is the parasite tapping into buried queen behavior? Does the bee's little brain think it's calling for a drone to help it start a new hive? Or does the parasite just make the bee a lazy slob who stops caring about her hive and just feels like chilling out on a flower all day? We might never know.

Here are those unique eyes of the male for anyone wondering. Not set in a fine multifaceted grid like in other insects, but clustered, still set in their own individual "sockets" like we see in much more ancient arthropods like trilobites! This suggests that Strepsipteran eyes date back to when insects were first beginning to evolve towards true compound eyes, but there still aren't many insects in the fossil record that have anything else in common with these animals. EDIT: oh yeah I forgot to include that these are in the children's book made by @revretch and I!

I did the rough pencil sketch of this page while Rev did the beautiful inks! I felt kids should know about these animals but I tried to explain it in the most kid-friendly way possible.

[burr-ell]

Sometimes Things That Shake Up the Status Quo are Worse

I keep seeing people insisting that Exandria "can't return to the status quo, which was bad", but rarely do they say anything in support of that argument beyond "the Primes pick and choose favorites!". And while I'm not confident the show itself won't try to make that claim, the reality is that it just isn't borne out mechanically or narratively. Laying aside that non-Divine Soul sorcerers exist (like, and I'm just spitballing here, Aberrant Mind Ruidusborn), the gods work primarily through the on-the-ground efforts of clerics and paladins—people who have actively and consistently put in the work to devote themselves to the divine. This is a setting where resurrection magic, which relies on divine power, has been intentionally made more difficult than it is in DnD rules-as-written. Even clerics only get access to Divine Intervention at level 10 (when they've already spent a long time devoting themselves to their deity) and up until level 20 the chances of it actually working are vanishingly small—and level 20 clerics are both hard to come by and ultimately still limited.

In the rare event that the Prime Deities choose to bless someone who isn't a cleric or paladin, it's someone who has a good reason to have gotten their attention. Vax offered his life during a divine ritual in the burial site of the Raven Queen's most devoted champion and then actively committed himself to her cause. Yasha was an aasimar being mind-controlled by a devil who wound up at a divine altar and chose to worship Kord after he freed her. Orym is the devoted widower of someone who is in Melora's realm and was present at a ritual in a temple associated with Melora, and one of his companions prayed at a shrine to Melora on his behalf. Vex was directly in front of Pelor, had taken a leadership position in one of his sacred cities, and had received a vision from him directly—and even then, she had to earn it. Scanlan also had to earn the right to Ioun's favor and complete a trial, and had previously shown qualities and values that she believed were fitting of her champion. Fjord was a companion of a devoted cleric of Melora who had sought her help in keeping Uk'otoa sealed and made requests of her on Fjord's behalf, and Fjord also chose to meditate and then became a paladin devoted to her.

And in Exandria, if you don't want to follow a god, you don't have to. Percy, Keyleth, Grog, Beau, Veth, Caleb, Essek, most of Bell's Hells, the average commoner in the various cities the parties have traveled to—whether they outright dislike the gods as a whole or just don't have an interest either way, they're all capable of thriving with or without them, and indeed their problems are almost entirely caused by mortals. It's especially egregious when you consider that cities like Avalir were around during the Age of Arcanum, when the Prime Deities physically walked Exandria, and people like Laerryn, Patia, Zerxus, and Lacrytia Hollow—openly disdainful of the gods or even trying to create feats of magic to get on their level—were continuing business as usual. The previous god of death not only willingly abdicated in favor of a mortal during this time, but outright helped her do the job!

The Prime Deities can't win. If they didn't give anyone any power at all, they'd be viewed as selfish. If they'd stayed on Exandria after the Calamity, they'd be foolish and reckless. They're simply not capable of intervening and helping everyone, so they're labeled capricious. If they leave Exandria, they're abandoning not only their refuge and home, but also the people who need and rely on them. You can argue that "no one should have that much power" all you want, but I think it's exceptionally silly to take an argument meant to criticize the wealthy and powerful of our world (whose only unique quality is ultimately that they got lucky) and apply it to fictional deities (beings who are powerful by their very nature) who, while flawed, also think they're too powerful. They tried to protect Exandria from themselves and the Betrayers while still using their power to do right by the people there, and for the most part it was working just fine.

The "status quo" from before all this was and still is the best compromise available. No one has managed to sell a better one that doesn't amount to "cater to my blorbos and my self-indulgent idea of revolutionary politics, which may or may not also ultimately circle back to my blorbos". I think that's pretty telling.

[optimisticmosquito]

Guys hear me out on this svsss au idea.

Sower Shen yuan. SY transmigrating into a young sower child and having to learn sower and demon culture. One large difference to his old life is that his diet now consists of rotten flesh. He has a lot of feelings about that. It's raw flesh! It's rotting! It's the worst every world has to offer!

Curse you system for placing him here! He must be the unluckiest transmigrator to ever exist! Or maybe not the unluckiest, he could have been transmigrating into some low iq villain and destined to be killed off by the protagonist. His new life is definitely preferable to that! Barely.

He might grumble but he's learning a lot of new things that were never mentioned in PIDW! After all cultivators don't know much about sowers, and higher demons don't care about what's going on in sower society as long as they follow orders.

They are natural scavengers, their food needing to be at least somewhat deteriorated for them to digest it properly. Every sower is born with the ability to rot flesh, it's kinda needed after all if you want to survive. But as they age sowers can cultivate their ability, creating faster ways to rot flesh, or methods that are more effective on different types of flesh. The most talented ones are even able to create diseases that can affect and rot still living flesh.

Of course the better one's technique is, the easier it is to get food. So most sowers would be hesitant to share their techniques outside direct family. This would create sower lineages with uniquely cultivated diseases.

It's all very interesting! SY would be vibrating with excitement if he didn't have to experience it firsthand.

This all without mentioning human meat as a delicacy among demons. SY refuses to participate, but even he can't decline when his caring grandma was able to procure some just for her beloved grandkids, as a rare treat.

The worst part is his body actually likes the taste, despite how revolting it looks. He has a lot if internal crises about it.

You could of course spin this into a bingyuan. Luo Binghe just out of the endless abyss meeting this nice sower and falling head over heels. Making a lowly sower his empress after he takes over the demon realm.

But I'm thinking of going another direction, either jiuyuan or liushen.

SY's forced to go into the human side of the borderlands because of food scarcity on the demon side. He's not stupid about it! He knows some cultivators patrol the area so he's gotten himself a bracelet of disguise to hide his demonic traits.

While there he comes across a head disciple from Cang Qiong Mountain Sect and ends up entangled in their mission. They help eachother out, shares laughs and near death moments, creating a bond that should surely last even after the mission ends.

If not for the fact SY is a demon. He desperately hides his identity, making sure his new friend doesn't touch his skin by accident as he has cultivated enough for his touch to be dangerous to normal humans. He isn't sure it would be dangerous to cultivator disciples, but he doesn't want to take any chances.

And then the worst happens, he is revealed as a sower and his new friend mistakenly assumes he was tricking them so he could kill and eat them later. Angry with themselves over being tricked, disgusted by any good feelings still harbored towards a man-eating demon. Only a moment of quick thinking on SYs part saves them from having to kill SY. SY returns home heartbroken and without any food for his family, abd stays listless and sad for a long time.

Years later he'll come across a peak lord, looking for a cure to a deadly sower disease spread on behalf of the old demon emperor.

If anyone feels inspired please write it! I'd really want to read a sower!SY au as well!

[theagstd]

One Night Stand ; 41

➥ rundown ; as if the unexpected twist of a one-night stand turning out to be your CEO boss wasn't surreal enough, the situation takes a more challenging turn when both of you discover that you're expecting his child.

→ genre ; enemies to lovers | CEO au | pregnancy trope | slowburn

→ Jungkook x y/n

→ contains smut, fluff and angst

→ Chapter forty one ; wc | 9.5k

primarily on Wattpad

index ⇢ next chapter

Your mother is an angel; she's not just a mother. She's everything to you, and you're more than just her world—you're her entire universe. If there's a word or phrase better than that to express how much you mean to her,

she would use it. She's raised you in her own special way, where love, kindness, and security thrived in her care. She has a unique way of being strict, yet her warmth and kindness always shine through.

She truly is the best person you could ever have in your life, the best mother anyone could ask for. Her endless gossip might get on your nerves, but you tolerate it because she once patiently listened to all your teenage dramas in high school—now it's your turn to return the favor. You wouldn't call it a favor; you'll say it's a duty now, which at the end of the day, you like.

You wouldn't say that to her, though—she'll be over the moon about it. But it's not about all that right now, because she's standing in front of you, her eyes wide like saucers and lips slightly parted, struggling to speak but unable to, and the sight leaves you breathless. Because your grip on Jungkook's

hands has tightened so much, he's beginning to wonder if his bones might break. You want to greet her, hug her, but as you lift your foot to step forward, your mother speaks, "What the hell?!" Her voice rings out, loud and full of shock. Both of you flinch at the sudden outburst, and you instinctively take a step back, startled by her reaction. The tears pour down her face, you watch her, and burst out in tears too.

"M-mom—" "What the hell is this—" she murmurs and covers your mouth with her trembling palms. "I-I can expla—" "There's no need for explanation! I see it all!" She speaks, her tone laced with embarrassment over her daughter. You can't bring yourself to meet her eyes, shame washing over you for letting her down.

Yet deep inside, you know you love your child unconditionally—nothing will ever make you feel ashamed of that. This feeling only exists because of your mother's judgment, not your own heart. Her eyes move from your bump to the man beside you, her lips parting even more as the minutes pass. You want to hide from her and everyone else, from the world.

Jungkook beside you isn't doing anything at all, and that's because he's afraid of what would happen if he speaks. The situation isn't calling for him, so he'd rather keep quiet than make things worse. Your lips tremble as you try to hold back your sobs and tears; your mother can't collect herself, so she zones out as she tries to think about it. Jungkook shifts uneasily,

aware of how long the two of you have been lingering at the doorway, but he can't bring himself to say anything. Relief and anxiety churn inside him as your father appears, walking toward you both. "Who's at the door, darling?" he murmurs, his voice steady as he steps closer and pushes the door open wider. You freeze in place, your hand slipping from Jungkook's grasp without thinking.

Your father's gaze locks on you, his expression unreadable as he scans you, then shifts to the boy beside you. He says nothing. The silence is suffocating, heavy enough to make your heart race. A pit forms in your stomach as regret seeps in—you wish you hadn't come back home. Your sobs get uncontrollable, and your cries get loud and heavier than they were.

You've never cried this hard; the last time you did was when you found out about your pregnancy—never again. "D-dad—" You're gasping for air, crying so hard it feels like you might break. Jungkook's starting to panic, his worry mixing with anger. Why the hell are your parents just standing there, letting this happen at the doorway, when you're a total mess—and pregnant?

His jaw tightens, grabbing your hand, his thumb brushing over your knuckles as he turns to face you. "Hey... hey," he whispers, trying to pull you back from whatever's breaking you. His voice is soft but shaky, desperate to calm you down, because this isn't just crying—it's something deeper, and it's killing him to see you like this, and he can't take it anymore.

Your parents watch the scene unfold, their frowns deepening as they notice the stranger holding their daughter. "Y/N, shhh," Jungkook whispers, his voice soft but strained. He's desperate to calm you down, his worry growing with every shaky breath you take.

You're such a mess, and he's terrified this much crying might make you sick. You cling to his hand tightly, trying to steady yourself as you gather the courage to speak. But before you can, your father cuts in.

"Come inside," he orders, his tone sharp. Jungkook stiffens, startled by the sudden authority in his voice, and you flinch. You glance at your father as he pulls the door open wider and steps inside. That tone—it's so unlike him. He's never spoken to you like that before, and it only makes the tears flow harder.

If Jungkook had a choice, he wouldn't step inside. It's not about his pride—it's about you. Sure, you're their daughter, and he gets that they're shocked and struggling to process everything. But making you stand at the doorway for over twenty minutes, crying your heart out while nosy neighbors peek from behind curtains? That's where his patience runs out.

The sight of you breaking down like this, with no one stepping in to help, fuels nothing but anger in him. You deserve better—pregnant, vulnerable, and hurting—and the fact that they can't see that makes his chest tighten with frustration. He gets it—it's not an easy situation. This isn't some casual introduction of your boyfriend. You're pregnant, unmarried,

and with a man they know nothing about. Of course, it's hard for them to take in—it's overwhelming, even. But still. At the very least, they could take you inside first. Let him stay out; he doesn't care about that. What matters is you—giving you a seat, letting you breathe. Watching you cry like this, standing in full view for the world to see, feels unbearably wrong, and it only adds to the weight in his chest. Jungkook holds your arms as he helps you walk inside slowly.

He focuses on your feet and sobbing, all he wants is to make you sit down on a couch. That will ease him. Your father sits on his maroon armchair, which looked worn out, like it's been used for the past 15 years. You sit on the larger couch as Jungkook rubs his hand on your hair, looking at your face with a frown.

"Stay here, I'll take our luggage inside, mm?" he whispers to you, not wanting your parents to hear his voice. You tug at your nose and nod at his words, unsure of what else to do. He casts a brief glance at your mother, who glares at him as though he's unwelcome in her home. Without a word, he carries the luggage inside, setting it against the wall.

Yours, he moves closer to the stairs, a quiet act of care. His own, he leaves untouched, off to the side. It's clear he has no intention of staying the night—or perhaps he knows better, judging by the sharp chill of your parents' silent judgment. He walks back to stand beside you, not wanting to take a seat because it's obvious that no one wants him here.

Your mother sits in front of you. She doesn't speak a word as she tries to collect her thoughts first. Your father, on the other hand, does not seem very angry as your mother does; he looks disappointed. "Can you explain this to me?" your father speaks up as he communicates with his eyes, moving from your bump to the man beside you. You gulp, nodding.

You wipe off the tears that run down your cheek and pull your nose. "I w-will!" You sit up straighter, trying to claw back the confidence you'd built over the past few weeks—the same confidence that crumbled the second your mom opened the door. Jungkook looks like he wants to reach out, maybe grab your arm to let you know he's there, but he doesn't.

Not with the way your parents are glaring at him like he's the worst decision you've ever made. You take a moment, your eyes darting around as you try to gather your thoughts, piecing together words that refuse to come out as sentences. "I..." you start, your voice faltering, stammering under the weight of the truth. How do you explain something so unreal?

That the man standing beside you was once a stranger, someone you hooked up with, only to discover later he was your boss. That the pregnancy you never planned became a mistake you embraced wholeheartedly. And now, here you are—hopelessly in love with both him and the life you're creating together.

It would sound completely like you've taken it out from a film, but it's the raw truth, and you just can't seem to find a way to explain it to them. Jungkook sees the struggle; your parents see it too, and it only makes them fear for what they must hear next.

"So I..." This time, Jungkook doesn't wait; he places his palm on your shoulder so he can speak this out. He doesn't want to put the whole burden on you when he was an equal part of this.

"Please don't take it out on her. This... this whole thing was a mess, and if anyone's at fault, it's me. More than her," he says quietly, his voice steady despite the weight of your parents' piercing gazes. You stay silent, your words stuck in your throat.

The way he steps in, taking the blame for something that wasn't entirely his fault, twists something deep inside you. He's shouldering everything, trying to protect you, and it makes your heart ache in ways you can't put into words.

"No... don't do this, Jungkook," you murmur, and he looks down at you with a frown. You wipe your tears away, not wanting to cry anymore. You're determined to lay everything out for them, no matter how messy or awkward it gets. They deserve to know the full story—every detail, no sugarcoating, no covering things up.

You can't stand the idea of them hating Jungkook, and more than anything, you want them to accept the baby you created together. This little life means everything to you, and you need them to see that too.

"You don't have to take the blame on yourself," you say and pull his hand to sit beside you. You want him next to you and seated. He doesn't have to stand behind you like he doesn't belong here; he's yours and belongs wherever you are. He sits, with a fair distance between you two.

"This was all unplanned, and I promise you that it all began as a mistake," you start. You're aware of your parents' decency and how they don't interrupt. You're thankful that they are respectable and allow others to keep their opinions before they speak. They listen, and you know that they will hear you out no matter how messy and awkward this situation and story is. You look at Jungkook, who gazes at your bump with his eyebrows crossed together.

"We weren't together until a few months ago, and I know that everything is very upsetting and difficult to take in, but we both are taking our responsibility and... and we are trying to do as much as we can. I just want you and Dad to support me in this." You blurt it all out in one breath, squeezing your eyes shut as if bracing for the storm of their reactions. Jungkook shifts uncomfortably beside you, awkward under the spotlight that feels far too bright, his every instinct screaming at him to escape.

Your father lets out a heavy sigh, his gaze drifting away as he tries to process everything you've just dropped on him. Meanwhile, your mother sits stiffly, her anger still palpable, though she holds back from yelling. Her eyes, unblinking, fall to your bump, and something softens—though only slightly. She's clearly torn, her thoughts racing as she takes in the sight of you,

undeniably pregnant, and wonders how everything came to this. You look more beautiful than you ever have, but how can she admire you when you've so clearly hidden everything from her? She can't believe how her own daughter could have kept something so important, so life-changing, hidden for so long.

The realization hits her like a cold wave, and for a moment, she's at a loss for words. The hurt is there, buried beneath her frustration, but it's not just anger—it's disbelief. How could you have kept this from her? From both of them?

Your mother finally breaks the silence, her voice quieter than you expected, yet still sharp with emotion. "Why didn't you tell us sooner?" she asks, her eyes narrowing in both confusion and hurt. "This... this is a huge deal, and you've kept us in the dark all this time?" Jungkook, still awkward and tense beside you, looks like he wants to say something,

but he holds back. It's clear he doesn't know what to do, how to help, or how to ease the tension that's growing thicker with every passing second. You feel the weight of your mother's gaze, the expectation for answers. You want to explain, to tell her why you waited, but the words are stuck, caught between the truth and the fear of losing her approval.

"Why, Y/N?" Her voice trails as she asks you again. You hurt her so deeply that you can hear it. You want to cry all over again, but now's the time to talk and clear everything up.

"I... I was scared," you mumble under your breath, and you hear your father chuckle sarcastically, which makes Jungkook turn his head to him in confusion.

"Scared?" he repeats what you said. "I thought we raised you to tell us every. single. thing about your life. The silly, the happy, the worrying, the anger—and even the crazy things you've faced," your father says, his voice trembling with a mix of disbelief and hurt. His words slice through the tension in the room, a reminder of the trust and openness he believed you'd always share with both your parents.

Your mother's eyes are searching yours, waiting for some kind of explanation, some reassurance that this was just a mistake, a misstep on your part. But you know there's no easy way to make things right. You look down at your bump, feeling ashamed of hiding this big deal from your own parents.

Jungkook is taking notes on how each of your parents speaks. Your father speaks warmly, even if his words are limited and cold for the moment. He senses that he's still being delicate with it for you. He's also observed how your father is a quiet man who takes his time to give a reaction, in comparison to your mother, who has outbursts from time to time.

"We did not expect this from you, Y/N," your mother says as she looks at you with red eyes and trembling lips. It stings you in each layer of your skin and heart because you're well aware of this. You did not expect this from yourself either, and although you grew out of it with time, it resurfaces now that your mother says it.

"Enough, honey," your old man stops her from saying anything more, and Jungkook relaxes his tightened jaw when he hears it. He's glad that your dad spoke up because now's not the time to throw any more taunts. What's done has already been done, and putting you down is not going to magically make it all disappear.

"But—"

"They're tired. Let them rest. We can talk about this tomorrow," he says and stands up from his armchair. Jungkook does not know what to do, so he sits still.

"Have you both had dinner?" he asks, and you nod. You're not very hungry since you had your meal on the flight along with snacks that Jungkook got for you. The man beside you nods too, so your father hums.

"You can go to your bedroom, Y/N." You get on your feet with the help of Jungkook. You don't want to leave the room without completely solving everything, but you also can't take it anymore. You're in desperate need of rest, and you're not ready for a lengthy conversation yet.

Jungkook somehow feels something isn't right when he leads you to the stairs as you guide him up to your old bedroom. And he guessed it when your father says, "You can't stay with her," he announces, and you both stop in your tracks and look at him. You're frowning, and the guy next to you is biting his lower lip like he saw this coming.

"He can use the guest room, downstairs," your dad says, and Jungkook just nods. You don't say anything else. Honestly, with all the drama, you're just glad he gets to stay at your place, especially since your parents were so against him.

You lead him to your bedroom, and he helps you sit on your bed, removing the layers of coats that you put on. No words leave your lips, nor does Jungkook's, but surely the awkwardness floats in the air, and all you want to do right now is go back home and sleep in his arms. This doesn't feel like home, mostly because of the negativity that lies around. You hope it all clears when the day arrives. You pray for it, but right now, you both must accept this.

"Can you help me use the washroom?" you ask, and he stills at your question. He feels very aware of everything, like your parents are watching the two of you through the walls. You seem to figure it out and shake your head. "They might see us—"

"They won't... please..." you whisper, and he agrees. It's not that he does not want to help you, lord no. He'll do anything for you, but he's also developed a fear toward your parents with whatever happened a while ago. He helps to remove your socks and shoes, then leads you out of the room because your old bedroom does not have an attached washroom. He walks you and sees your father standing by the corridor, giving him a side-eye, which makes Jungkook gulp.

"I'll stay right here. Let me know when you're done," he says to you as he shuts the door and leans against it, not sparing a glance at the surrounding because he can see the old man by the corner of his eye.

You feel such relief after finally emptying your bladder. The tension from holding it in for so long is gone, leaving you feeling completely free.

"I'm done!" you yell as he nods and gives a tight smile when he meets your father's eyes. Jungkook walks you to your room and puts away all your coats. You both are quiet as he brings up your suitcase and places it on the couch so it's easier for you to reach your clothes. You notice how he looks irritated, his eyebrows creased, and his jaw tightened as he picks a pair of PJs for you to dress for the night.

You look at him curiously, wanting him to speak. You tilt your head and raise your eyebrows to signal him. He glances at you, then goes back to the clothes.

"Say something..." you whisper, and he sighs. You don't like his silence, and even though the matter is not solved yet, both your parents are mad at you, you don't want him to be angry at you either.

"Jungkook... are you mad at me?" you mumble under your breath, and he breathes deeply as he drops his hand and looks down. He doesn't want to tell you that he's angry and scared.

"I'm not, darling."

"Then why a—"

"I want to see you downstairs, not in her bedroom," your mother says as she stands by your door with her arms crossed. Jungkook clenches his jaw as he places your clothes on the bed and stomps out of your room without sparing a glance. You feel a twinge in your heart; you didn't want him to leave just like that. He didn't even say good night. You look up at your mother, then sigh.

"Mom—"

"I don't want to hear anything from you," she says as she steps inside, coming to a stop in front of you. Her arms remain firmly crossed over her chest as she fixes you with a stern gaze. You avoid her eyes, your attention wandering around the room instead.

She studies your face intently, taking in the soft fullness of your cheeks and the radiant glow that seems new and unfamiliar. You look so beautiful—pregnancy suits you in a way she never expected. You notice her staring at you, which makes you feel uncomfortable, but you don't address it.

"We will talk tomorrow. Get some rest now," she speaks, and you hum as she leaves the room after placing a bottle of water on your desk.

You sigh when the door closes. You look around your room and notice how everything is just as it was when you left. Nothing has changed, except for you. You feel lonely here, unlike before. You used to enjoy your own company, but now things have changed. You enjoy his company, and you can't wait to go back home and spend the rest of your nights with him.

Jungkook, on the other hand, is offered the guest room. He hesitates to suggest staying at a hotel—not because he wouldn't, but because he refuses to leave you. From everything you've told him, he expected your parents to be loving and accepting,

even though the situation is life-changing. That was the only reason the idea of a hotel even crossed his mind. But now? No way. There's no chance he's leaving you alone, not when your parents are this furious.

Your father stands by the door as Jungkook looks around the room and blinks. It's very different from his; the room is warm, homely, and has a touch of family in it, unlike his luxurious, cold rooms. "All good?" your dad asks, and Jungkook turns to speak. "Yes, thank you." He places his suitcase on the single chair and waits for your father to leave, but he doesn't. Instead, he walks toward Jungkook, leaving him nervous.

"I don't know who you are, but... you don't seem to be someone who would hurt my daughter," your father begins. "Until everything is clear, I don't want to see you around her. It doesn't matter what's going on between you two." Jungkook feels like his jaw might shatter from how tightly he's clenching it, but he forces himself to nod in response. He remains rooted to the spot, his fists trembling at his sides, until your father finally walks out.

The moment the door closes, he lets out a muffled curse under his breath. "Fucking hell!" His frustration boils over, and he stomps his foot in anger. Everything is a mess, and knowing how uncertain it all is from this night makes Jungkook fear for the future.

Jungkook ; Did you take your meds?

You grab your phone when you see the screen light up. Turning carefully to the side, you read his texts and respond.

You ; Yes, I did.

Jungkook ; Good. Are you okay?

You pout at his words, mostly at how cold they sound through the screen. You know he's not in his best mood, and neither are you, but it's not making you feel better, especially when you need him the most at this moment.

You ; Are you mad at me?

Jungkook turns to his left side and sighs when he reads your texts. He doesn't want to sound angry, but can he control himself? Definitely not.

Jungkook : I'm not, baby. I just don't feel okay.

You ; Can you call me? I want to hear you.

Jungkook ; No, not today. I don't want us to fall into trouble right now.

You agree. Now is not the time to call when everything is still heated, so neither of you reaches out, even though you both badly want to. The night is cold, much colder in the empty room you share. This was your bedroom, a place you spent your childhood and teenage years, but none of those memories matter to you now. You've had both happy and sad times here, but you don't dwell on them.

Instead, you focus on the future because that's what matters most—a future where you share every living moment with the man you love and the child you carry. Your parents beside you, supporting your decisions and being part of your life-changing experiences. That's what you think and wish for.

So you turn onto your side, trying to fall asleep, though it doesn't come easy. After hours of counting sheep, you manage to drift off, but it takes every ounce of effort. Meanwhile, Jungkook stays awake, staring at the ceiling, wondering about the "what ifs" and how he's going to face your parents in the morning.

He mentally prepares himself for whatever is left to come and thinks about how he'll protect you from all their questions.

Your parents aren't sleeping soundly either. In the quiet of the room they share, they collect their thoughts together. Last night, they couldn't sleep in excitement at the thought of seeing their only daughter again, but tonight, they lie awake in disappointment and shock that their daughter knocked on their door with a stranger and a pregnant belly.

;

Morning rolls around, and you wake up to the smell of fried eggs and bacon and—a couple of very uncomfortable movements and kicks. "Bun... where are you?" you whine as you try to sit upright and get out of bed. One palm stays on your belly, and the other takes support of the bed. Sometimes, just trying to sit up feels like a whole mission.

After lying down for hours, dragging yourself out of bed can feel like such a chore—especially when the baby's in some weird position, and you can't even tell if it's a hand or a foot giving you that little kick. You try to understand what's what, and by the time you do, there's a movement again.

You're tired at this point, can't wait for the baby to pop out because this does not feel like months—it feels like years since you carried this child. "You're being a pain today, I swear," you mumble as you stand up and take your clothes for the day. You walk out of your room to get to the washroom and meet your father along the way.

"Morning," he says, and you give him a tight smile.

"Morning, Dad."

He helps you with the door, and somehow you feel like the mood may have shifted since last night. He doesn't seem too mad, and he's also giving you a soft smile. Your father has always been a kind-hearted man. He doesn't lose his temper easily and has the patience to handle things calmly. He cools down quickly, which helps him empathize more easily—unlike your mother, who takes a bit longer to let things go.

You love that about him; it's why you like to share most things with him. You used to when you were back in high school and college. Things shifted when you got messy and became a woman. You got closer to your mom, but that doesn't change that you've always been a daddy's girl. Maybe you don't tell him everything now like you used to, but inside your heart and mind,

you're closest to him. That's why he feels hurt more deeply than your mother, even though he rarely shows it. While your mother expresses her feelings through words and actions, he lets his pain show in his silence. If you could look at him more closely, you'd see it all in his eyes—whether it's happiness, sadness, or anger.

It's also one of the reasons why you love Jungkook. His eyes hold galaxies just the way your dad's do.

You shower and walk downstairs carefully, holding the railing while you take each step. You come to face your mother and Jungkook already at the dining table. He has a blank expression on his face as he looks at the food on the table.

"Morning..." you murmur, and he turns his head to look at you. A shine radiates from his features, like you turned on a bulb in him. Your mother glances at you and mutters the same as she seats herself on her chair. You can still see that she's not very happy yet. Jungkook helps you sit and pulls the chair for you.

"I cooked your peameal bacon and pancakes," she mentions as she puts some on your plate, freshly cooked and warm.

You smile and nod. "Thanks..." you mumble. You four share breakfast in silence; only the clinking and scraping of your forks and knives fill the place. You had about four pancakes, two eggs, and a very long drizzle of maple syrup. Your parents glance at each other when you eat so much, making Jungkook feel uncomfortable because they gaze at him too.

He was used to seeing you gobble your food down, but they weren't. You barely ate before, trying to look good and in shape, but now... they feel happy too, seeing you eating so carefree.

"Where are the dogs?" you ask, curiously looking around. Your dogs would usually lie around here somewhere. "They are at Aunt Susan's place. She wanted some company since... Uncle Dan passed away." Your eyes bulge at your mother's words. "What?!" She gulps and nods like it's been ages since that happened. "He passed away a while ago now."

You couldn't believe it because Uncle Dan was someone who played a major role during your childhood. And although he wasn't really there for you after you turned eleven, he was someone special, so it hit you that he passed away not so long ago.

"Well, it doesn't really matter. What matters now is you two," she mutters as she gets up from her chair, screeching it and collecting the empty plates while you nervously look over at Jungkook as he freezes with his fork hanging in the air, waiting to be inside his open mouth.

"Mom... can you hear me out, please—"

"What? You're gonna tell me about this boy you've come with? Who is he even? How old is he? Twenty? And what's on his arm?! He looks unholy—"

"Mom, stop!" you raise your voice at her to stop her from talking rubbish about the man who sits beside you.

Your mother now does her chores with a lot of sound, proving to you that she's angry. You deeply exhale as you try to calm yourself down and not explode at her.

"He's not twenty; he's not a boy. He's a man, he's got his job, and he has a name for himself. If you don't know who he is, you should look it up."

You continue to speak, even though Jungkook gives you the look. He doesn't want them to know that he's a renowned businessman and all that. He doesn't like the boasting about himself. Even though that's not your intention, it puts him in the spotlight, which makes him uncomfortable.

"And about his ta—" Jungkook places his palm on yours to stop you from dragging this, but you don't buy it. "His tattoos don't change anything about him. I like them, and that sums everything."

You mumble and eat up the last piece of pancake before getting up from the chair and washing your own dishes. Your father looks down at his food and doesn't know if he should be happy about how you stand for the man in front of him or angry at how you spoke to your mother. 

"You need to stop talking to me like that, young lady!"

"Mom, what?" You chuckle and lean against the cabinet. "You don't want to hear me explain anything, but you also come up with assumptions? At least hear me out. I know you're mad and disappointed in me, but trust me, this was all unplanned. I... don't want to call it a mistake because I don't think it is one now. But... I promise you that none of this was in my plan or hands." You gently run your hand over your bump, smiling at how big it's gotten and how close your due date is.

Your mom slows her dishwashing, quietly listening to you talk. She's not mad at you about any of this—just hurt that you kept her in the dark all these months. You walk away from the kitchen to the backyard, feeling suffocated in the tension. Jungkook reaches for his plate, ready to wash it, but your mother gently takes it from his hands. He hesitates before speaking, his voice steady but full of sincerity.

"She's seven months pregnant, and... I know I'm still a stranger to you. I know you don't think I'm the right person for her, but I haven't left her side since the pregnancy. Even when we couldn't stand each other for months, I stayed. Things are different now. I really, really care about her. What she needs most is your support—that's what will help her feel better," he says as he backs away from the cabinet and walks to your dad. "Can I be with he—"

"No. I'll go."

Jungkook lets out a frustrated sigh as the conversation ends. Meanwhile, your father peeks outside and notices you sitting quietly on the step in the backyard. He walks over and settles beside you, his eyes fixed on the birds chirping on the electric fence. Neither of you speaks, and neither looks at the other.

You sit there together in heavy silence, your chest tight as you fight back tears. You never thought it would hurt this much, but everything feels overwhelming now. All you want is to go back home, curl up in the bed you share with Jungkook, and hold Bam close until the pain eases.

"Seven months, huh..." your dad murmurs. He smiles and looks up at the beautiful blue sky. "Boy? Or girl?"

"We didn't check the gender yet."

He nods, his smile only getting wider. "You know, when your mother was pregnant with you after three tries, we thought you'd be a boy. I was so sure of it! I got you blue clothes and basketball toys and spent bucks on all that, only for you to be born a girl." He chuckles as he recalls the old times.

"Were you disappointed?"

"Oh God, no. Never." He says with a gasp as his hand reaches to caress your face. "You're no less than a boy, if you ask me."

He chuckles, prompting you to roll your eyes, though a smile sneaks onto your face. Your father gazes at you with pure affection. He loves you deeply, enough to give you the entire world if he could. So, you made a mistake—what of it? At least you had the courage to own up to it, embrace it, and cherish it. He tells you that in his own words, and you feel much heavier than before. Because your father is so kindly accepting you, it fills your heart with love for him, even if the disappointment and agony inside you grow too.

"Look at you. He takes good care of you, I can see."

You blush at this and nod your head. Your father pulls you closer to him and caresses your arm.

"He does..." you whisper. Jungkook is everything you could have hoped for in this phase of your life. Even though he was part of this unexpected situation, he stayed—and that alone speaks volumes. Through all the ups and downs you've faced together, he never once walked away.

"He's the CEO of Jeon Industries, right?" You nod with furrowed eyebrows.

'So Dad googled him...' you think.

"How did all this... happen?" he asks, curiously.

And you explained it to him, leaving out all the explicit details. Your father didn't judge you or give you any looks. In fact, he listened with open ears and arms. Your smile faded while you explained the very beginning of the horrific news, but as you came closer to the incidents that took place recently,

your father noticed how your smile grew and how excited you were. Like you're living in the moment when you talk about Bam and how you both fought and how he made up for it. Your father noticed little details, like how you say Jungkook's name and your eyes sparkle. All that sums up to one question that he had in his mind.

"So, you love him?"

You paused at this. Your eyes blink a couple of times as you look around, trying to find a way to answer this sudden question. This makes him burst into laughter, resulting in your frown. "What, Papa??" you ask, your frown deepening.

"You love him, Y/N... oh, you love him," he says and gets on his feet, walking into the house, leaving you confused.

;

You've never felt so lonely in your home before. Your mom would entertain you, or you would be busy with a presentation to submit in a few days. Now you look at random objects and think of random thoughts with nothing to do. Your father didn't share everything you told him with your mother. He wanted you to tell her yourself. But he did ask her to be gentle with you and not lash out, even if she's more sad than angry right now.

Jungkook wants to be with you, sit next to you, but he can't. He doesn't want to disrespect your parents, so he settles inside his room, texting you or checking on his emails. He hates it here, but he won't tell you. You ask your mother if you could help her cook lunch, and she said she didn't want your help, which made you upset. You've got nothing to do, and it eats you up that you're just zoning out when you could be doing something useful.

"Mom, please, let me help with something," you plead, leaving her no choice but to hand you the chopping board.

You give her the side eye while you chop the vegetables for meat pie. You don't make an attempt to talk to her, but neither of you can handle the silence anymore, so she asks you, "How many months are you?"

"Seven..." She nods while she stirs the broth.

"Do you plan to deliver here or in Korea?"

The question stings a little, a reminder of how your parents haven't been as involved in your pregnancy as they would have liked. You don't want to answer and risk making her feel even sadder. Your silence speaks volumes, though, and she senses your hesitation.

"It's okay," she says softly, her voice understanding. "Just say you want to deliver in Korea."

She walks over to you and places her hand on your shoulder. "You don't have to think too much." She smiles, making you feel lighter instantly. "I'll take these." She takes the cutting board and gets back to work. You see Jungkook peeking at you from his room. He gives you a thumbs up, and you give him a flying kiss.

;

The day slips by quietly. You stroll through the neighborhood with your father and Jungkook, though he couldn't walk beside you like he wanted to—he had to follow behind, which annoyed him, but he went along with it anyway. Jungkook had not been feeling very well; he can't stand how he has to stand meters away from you when you're just around.

He wants to hug you, kiss you, and tell you how he feels, but he can't. You know that too. You see his frustration, and you feel the same. All you want to do is sleep in his arms, and you can't wait to go back home.

To your home.

You didn't talk much to your mother, but your dad did. He shared a few things with her, and it seemed to help her understand everything. Tomorrow, you'd be leaving, and she was trying to come to terms with it all, hoping to send you off on a positive note. She'd been watching you and your bump whenever you were busy reading a book, and she couldn't help but feel so soft at the sight of you and her grandchild.

She wanted to ask you about everything, buy baby clothes, pack up, and be ready to fly to Korea when you deliver. She wanted to do so much, and for that, she must talk to you. 

;

Lunch was quiet, and so was dinner. But when your mother approached the dining table with a bowl of warm apple cinnamon rolls, you swear you almost teared up on the spot. 

"I'm sorry for yelling at you," she says with tears in her eyes, and you shake your head, pulling the chair so she can sit in front of you. Your father signals Jungkook that they shouldn't be here, so the men get up from their seats and walk to the backyard together. 

"Mom, don't be sorry! I totally get why you reacted like that—anyone would've!" 

"But I should've checked on you first," she says, tears still falling. It hurts to see her cry.  "Hey, Mom..." you wipe away her tears and give her hand a gentle squeeze. "Let me tell you about the crazy journey I've been on!"  She nods quickly, letting out a little laugh, and you watch her, curious about what she'll say.

You shared with her how you and Jungkook were complete opposites and how everything between you was such a chaotic mess. You really thought it would never work out. But somehow, it did. As you recounted all the wild moments, your mom couldn't help but laugh along with you, even though she still had her doubts about Jungkook. 

He wasn't the man she had envisioned for you—she'd dreamed of someone entirely different. Jungkook, being the exact opposite, made it hard for her to warm up to him. She didn't understand what you saw in him. Even by looks, he didn't seem all that good in her opinion, and with those tats that she hated, it made it more difficult to like him. 

While you and your mother had a chat about the past few months, Jungkook and your dad had strolled out into the backyard. Jungkook felt awkward, like he wanted to crawl out of his own skin in the oppressive silence, especially with your dad shooting him subtle glances every few minutes. He wanted to have a conversation but knew Jungkook was nervous and uncomfortable. He wanted to break the ice, to talk to the boy and know him better, to know you better. 

Finally, your dad broke the tension. 

"So, Jungkook... tell me about yourself. Your family? What you do?"  Clearing his throat, Jungkook straightened up, trying his hardest to sound professional—he was too nervous to speak naturally. 

"I'm the CEO of Jeon Industries... I, uh... don't really have a family." 

His voice trailed off as he avoided eye contact, glancing around the yard as if it might offer an escape. He tried not to sound affected, but deep down, the lack of a family stung more in moments like this. Being with your tight-knit family made him feel out of place—ashamed, even—though he'd never admit it. He didn't know how to speak to your dad. The pressure of speaking *to* a father—something he'd never done before—scared him. 

"I like to think Y/N as my only family..." he mumbled under his breath, not wanting your dad to hear him, but he did, and he smiled. He liked that, a lot. 

"You don't have to be nervous, son." 

Jungkook froze mid-step when he heard the word *son*. It hit him like a wave, a word he'd never had the chance to claim as his own. The sound of it lingered in the air, sinking deep into his chest and settling in a place he didn't know was empty. For a fleeting moment, he wished he could hear it again, over and over, like a melody meant just for him. 

Your dad might've understood more than he let on because his eyes smiled warmly at Jungkook, even if his lips didn't fully follow. It was the kind of look that said he knew—he knew Jungkook hadn't heard words like that before and silently wished he could offer them more. 

"Can I call you son?" he asked softly. 

Jungkook stopped in his tracks, his round doe eyes speaking louder than any words ever could. 

"Can I—" 

"Y-yes, yes... please," Jungkook whispered, his voice trembling as a genuine smile spread across his face. He didn't realize how much he needed it until he heard it. 

Your dad opened his arms, his voice gentle but firm. "Come here." 

Jungkook stepped forward, his hesitance fading as he accepted the embrace. It wasn't just a hug—it was a moment that stitched together a part of his heart he didn't know was broken. Jungkook hadn't felt a male presence in his life for as long as he could remember—no father, no father figure to guide or comfort him. 

But this hug, this simple embrace, seemed to mend something deep within him. It was as if all the tangled emotions he'd buried over the years unraveled in an instant, leaving behind a quiet, unexpected sense of peace. It completed him in ways he didn't know he needed, filling a void he'd long ignored. And in that moment, all he wanted was to know what it meant to truly have a father—and to be one himself. 

You four sit together for dinner, and things have never been better. None of you are sulking, and there's no feeling of anger. All that's left is peace and happiness. 

Your dad strikes up a conversation with Jungkook about business, their tones shifting between casual and analytical, while your mom focuses entirely on you, piling more food onto your plate every chance she gets. She barely spares a glance at Jungkook, her disapproval lingering quietly, even as her husband seems to admire the man sitting beside you.

Despite your dad's growing fondness for Jungkook, your mom remains unconvinced, her gestures more protective than welcoming, as though silently questioning if this man is truly the right one for her child. 

You feel Jungkook holding your thigh and bump every chance he gets under the table. Since he's barely made any contact with you, he craves it so much more, and he can't wait to get back home and make love to you, skin on skin, with no one to stop or fear. 

After dinner, your mom gently suggested you head to bed early and even asked if she could join you. Her question caught you off guard, and you hesitated, unsure how to respond. 

Your dad, always observant, noticed the fleeting glance you exchanged with Jungkook—and how Jungkook immediately choked on his water, scrambling to cover it up by suddenly fixating on the slightly crooked frames hanging on the wall. 

Clearing his throat, your dad chuckled softly, pretending not to notice Jungkook's awkwardness. "Guess I'll fix those tomorrow," he said, his tone light, though his knowing glance at your mom betrayed his thoughts. 

"I can help you with that, Mr. Lee..." Jungkook began, but your dad quickly cut him off.  "Oh, shut it. Don't call me that," he said, waving his hand dismissively. "Call me Dad."  Your mother whipped her head around at the words, her expression a mix of confusion and surprise, as if she was silently asking, *What on earth is going on?* 

You couldn't help but glance between Jungkook and your dad, wondering when exactly their bond had formed.  Jungkook, though clearly anxious, couldn't help the small warmth that spread through him at the thought of calling him 'dad.' Are you sure?" he asked hesitantly. "Of course! Come on," your dad said, his voice full of reassurance. 

Jungkook bit his lower lip, trying to suppress the smile that was threatening to spread across his face. You couldn't stop yourself from giggling at the sight of their unexpected camaraderie, even though your mom's quiet frustration was evident in the way she folded her arms, unsure what to make of it all.

;

"mmmm you look like you're having a boy..." your mother says with a smile beaming through her face as she hands you the pills and a glass of water, examining your belly while you lay on the bed. "Really? I wouldn't mind either way," you say and gulp down the vitamins. "Oh, I'm so excited for you! We can go out tomorrow if you wish... since you'll be leaving at night."

You nodded and handed back the glass, wiping off your lips. "Good night, Y/N. Call me if you need anything..." "Good night, Mom." She walked out of the room and closed the door behind her. You immediately grabbed your phone and texted him.

You ; Pstttttt wake uppppppp

Jungkook ; I never slept, darling

You ; Come out in... 10 mins

Jungkook; Why???

You ; I want to see you

Jungkook ; You saw me the whole dayyyy

You ; I want to touch you

Jungkook ; Don't talk unholy, Y/N!

You giggled at the reference to your mom that Jungkook typed.

You ; plssssssss

Jungkook ; If we get caught, Y/N, it would be bad

You ; They're probably asleep, we won't get caught, trust meeeeeeeeee

Jungkook ; Your parents strictly told me to stay away from you

You ; Either you meet me down, or I'm coming into your room, and we fuck

Jungkook ; What the fuckk!

You ; You heard me, and I'm hungry anyway.

Jungkook ; Stubborn.

You waited patiently, tapping your phone and looking around the room, finding the old posters of The Beatles so fascinating, like you're seeing them for the first time ever. You even put a timer on your phone because you're not waiting any longer than 10 minutes; it already feels like an hour. As soon as the timer says 1 second left, you get on your feet.

"Baby, you need to stop kicking me right now. I'm not in the mood for this pain. But I'm so in the mood for your father!!!!" You giggle and open your room door, peeking out to see if your parents are around. Then you tiptoe down the stairs very carefully because you don't want to roll down the stairs.

"Oh my god, Y/N, give me your hand!" he whispers as he comes up the stairs and slowly takes you down.

"Jungkook!!!!" you jump and hug him. You miss him so much, you would rip his clothes right this moment at how excited you are.

"Baby, I miss you." "I miss you so much moreeeee." "No, I do!" "Nope, it's me." You both fight as you stay in each other's embrace. You miss his warmth and just the feeling of him so much.

"I wanna fuck so badly." "Shhhhh, behave, Y/N." He covers your mouth, looking around just in case your parents hear you. "I don't want to behave," you whisper, your lips grazing his ear, a hint of mischief lacing your words. He closes his eyes at the feeling of your lips. He doesn't want you to behave either,

but he can't; you both must be cautious. You're not alone here. "Being on your best behavior gets you nothing. So why not be bad instead?"** Jungkook's jaw tightens, his dark eyes narrowing as he tilts his head to face you.

"You think being bad will get you what you want?" You smirk, leaning in closer. "Maybe. Or maybe I just like it better when you try to fix me." A deep chuckle rumbles from his chest, but his expression remains firm. "Oh, I'll teach you how to behave when we get home."

"Yes, please, Mr. Jeon..." He arches a brow, his tone dropping an octave as he counters, "Being on your best behavior has its benefits, darling." "Then teach me, sir..." "Don't test me, Y/N. We're not home," he warns, his dark eyes flashing with intensity. You can't help but chuckle at how quickly he reacts, you intentionally edge him. "I'm hungry! Make me something..."

"This isn't my kitchen..." he protests, glancing around nervously. "I know, but do something," you reply, gesturing at the ingredients scattered on the counter. "Your mom will kill me if she sees this mess." "I'm giving you full permission to mess up my mom's kitchen. So just do it. Make me something," you insist with a playful pout.

He rolls his eyes but relents, pulling open the fridge in search of something quick and easy. After rummaging through its contents, he grabs crackers, peanut butter, and jelly—something simple that won't create too much chaos. As he starts preparing, you interrupt with a soft plea.

"Wait—come here. Help me sit on the counter, please.!"  "Y/N..." he sighs, but there's no real annoyance in his voice, just mild exasperation mixed with affection. He steps closer and gently lifts you, his hands steady as he sets you down on the cool countertop. You smile at him, swinging your legs slightly.

"Much better. Now I can supervise properly." "Supervise? All you're doing is sitting there and watching me," he teases, smearing peanut butter onto a cracker with deliberate care. "Exactly. I'm an excellent supervisor. And also—"You pause, poking his arm to grab his attention. "I like being close to you."

For a moment, his movements falter, and he glances up at you with an unreadable expression. Then he shakes his head, a small smile tugging at his lips.

"You're so annoying."  "Yeah, but you love it," you quip, making him chuckle as he resumes his task. Minutes later, he holds up a cracker sandwich triumphantly. "Here. Gourmet dining at its finest."

You giggle, taking the makeshift snack from his hand. "Who needs a five-star chef when I have you?" "Yeah, yeah," he mutters, turning away, but you catch the faint blush creeping up his neck and red ears, popping a cracker into his mouth as you pull his arm to make him get closer to you. "Stay close..." you whisper as you deeply exhale in his warmth. You miss him so much, you can't wait to be around him every second.

"I want to go home." You mumble while licking the peanut butter off your finger. "But you are home..." he says with a frown. "Home is where you are, Jungkook, where we both are together." This makes his heart skip a beat, but he doesn't show it. "Yeah?" he asks, and you nod with an eyebrow raise. "Getting quite good with your words, huh?" "I've always been good with my words and actions."

"That, I know," he says with a smirk, scooping a dollop of peanut butter and playfully smearing it on your nose. "Heyyy!" you protest through laughter, retaliating by dabbing a bit on his nose too.

"Shhh..." he whispers, his chuckles melting into the quiet warmth of the moment. He cups your jaw gently, his thumb brushing your cheek as he leans in, resting his forehead against yours. The two of you fall into a comfortable silence, eyes locked, the soft hum of affection filling the air. Neither of you notices the figures watching from just beyond the doorway.

"They really do love each other, honey," your dad says softly, his voice filled with quiet pride as he glances at his wife and wraps an arm around her shoulders. She smiles, her eyes glistening with emotion.

"I know... I know," she whispers.

next chapter ⇢

[gh0st-t0wn3]

I finally had time to make proper designs for the Trio!

Redson: Ver 1

Ver 2

I couldn't decide on if I liked it better with the braids or not so I just posted both, but anyways!

I gotta admit, I used to not like the idea of redson having Bull features (except for a small pair of horn maybe) but the concept really grew on me and now I really love it and wanted to try making my own design and I'm really proud with how it turned out.

I would've added more scars, since Guanyins throne pierced his entire body, but there came a point where it just looked like there was too much going on so I had to get rid of a few scars to tone it down, so we're just gonna say they faded over time, okay? Okay.

I also made him Miao (one of the largest ethnic minorities in southwest China) on PIF's side, and Mongolian on DBK's.

The Miao ethnicity of China has a long history, rich culture, and an ancient folk religion. Adorned in beautiful traditional clothes, possessing natural talent for singing and dancing, they live in uniquely designed indigenous architecture, which I think fits perfectly with how I imagined Princess Iron Fan and with her; Redson.

As for DBK being Mongolian, I saw someone else talking about this headcanon and I just liked it so I decided to use it, I don't really have a specific reason for it, I just thought it fit, not sure why though, it's just one of those things that makes sense even if you don't know why, you know?

Mei:

I made her taller and gave her a long dragon tail (like really long, it drags along the floor if she's not holding it up), though her scales are pretty much everywhere across her body they're most noticeable on her shoulders, thighs, and face (they're a bit hard to see in this photo because they're kinda hidden behind her hair, but I did give her scales beside her eyes)

I also gave her horns these little spiral designs around them, gave her sharper nails, and designed her ears to look like coral, since she's a water dragon and I thought they looked cool.

Honestly idk what else to say about her design, I didn't have anything specific in mind when designing her, I kinda just had to wing it, but I'm happy with how it turned out :)

(I also made her Bengali, on her dad's side, but it's not really important or has any reason behind it, just a headcanon I've had for a while, don't know where it came from though)

MK:

Alot of people have speculated that the monkey form we see during the fight against Azure in season 4 isn't MK's full form yet, that we're just seeing a fraction of what he's yet to become, based on the fact that while he has the weird side burns, the tail and the face marking, he also lacks a natural skin tone, they didn't give him a proper nose etc, so I wanted to play with the idea.

I decided to make him this strange mix between human and monkey, leaving him pretty much human with the addition of his tail(s), and weird li'l monkey feet.

(I was also gonna give MK more arm/leg hair, it was in my first sketch, but I forgot to add them when I was doing the line art and didn't realize until after I saved it as a jpeg, so that's my bad, but I'm gonna add it in to any other art I make)

It's also a bit hard to see in this, but I designed his staff with more details, specifically adding dragon-esque imagery to the Golden ends, this is because (for anyone who's new to the fandom/hasn't read JTTW) Wukong's staff was originally one of the several pillars that held up the sea in the dragon palace, until he stole it and shrunk it down to use as his weapon.

I also did MK's clones :)

Porty MK:

I gave him stripes of coloured hair and gave his tails all different colours, though I don't think he would actually dye it, instead I like to think that he would use that really crappy dollar store spray in hair dye (or hair chalk). I kept the fishnet clothes that I added in my originally design of him for my headcanons post, and decided to give him striped elbow length fingerless gloves.

I also gave him a cropped shirt, ripped shorts and these weird fingerless glove-esque shoes for convenience, since regular shows seem like they would be uncomfortable.

Edit: my dumbass forgot Porty's stupid print jacket 😭

Artist MK:

For Artist MK I gave him overalls and a jacket over it, which he wears specifically for when he's doing paintings so he doesn't ruin too many of his actual clothes (I know I said that this was inspod by Circusapple, which it still is, but this is almost exactly what I wear when I'm painting too, just in different colours).

I also gave him those gloves that digital artists wear so they're hands don't accidently trigger something on the screen because everyone knows that every artist just walks around with their art glove on even when it's not necessary.

Delivery MK:

I have to admit, I was never a big fan of MK's work uniform just being his regular clothes with a work jacket thrown over it so I wanted to try and make him look a little more professional and decided to instead give him a chef coat (similar to the one Pigsy wears on the show as well), with a logo for the restaurant on the chest, along with it I gave him plain black pants, since casual red jeans didn't seem very professional (I know he's just a delivery person, but if you were to look at pretty much any food corporation, even people who do deliveries have to wear uniform, so it's always been kinda strange to me that he's just in regular clothes). 

The shoes were harder to make professional given the whole "half-monkey" thing so I opted to give him the same strange fingerless glove-esque shoes for comfort and convenience, but made them plain black as well.