#there's nothing I can really cut out either without leaving gaps

[lynchiangf]

at this point I think I’m trying to do slightly too much with my thesis considering the max. word count which means I can’t thoroughly analyze everything and it’s stressing me out but I don’t think I can do much about it anymore. my perfectionism is going crazy over this bc I'm afraid not getting the max. potential out of it will mean getting a bad grade. but it is what it is I suppose. I hope I can still turn in good work even if it’s not as elaborate as I’d like...

[taissaswifelowkey]

dreaming

bartender afab reader and anora

it’s difficult to love someone and not being the right person for the other. you’re sure that’s how ani feels or would feel about you. but how are you so sure? can you be so sure?

let’s pretend ivan doesn’t exist here 😜🔥🔥

a/n: i cannot wait anymore and anora is coming out in six days so here’s a drabble. also if you noticed, the title is named after dreaming by blondie which was used in the trailer :) (i’m sorry, im really a fan of movies and their details) proofread but there might be typos, leave feedback if you have any and enjoy reading!!

warnings: uhhh if you know what the movie is about then you know it’s about ani’s job like everyone else in her place of work but nothing is explicitly mentioned. UMMM KISSINGGG?? mentions of legal drinking, swearing, a touch sad, gay yearning but it ends on a really hopeful note, i promise! that’s it really. and self indulgence you already knowww probably an out of character anora, i haven’t seen the movie as yet but that will be corrected soon once it releases in cinemas here ‼️‼️

it starts below the cut 🤠

Loud music was blasting through the speakers. You can still hear the faint noises of laughter and chuckles, slightly distracting you as you were only looking for the laughter of one person.

You swear it’s the only thing you’re looking forward to everytime you tend the bar. Not for the additional tips offered by clients who would pretend to act all innocent and have no idea of what they’re doing. But for her jokes, her gentle smile and her laugh that always sends a strange swirl in your abdomen. For her warm touch whenever you felt like you could handle it. It’s insane how she sends you a visceral yet pleasant shiver throughout your entire body whenever she’d rest her head on your shoulder. Her floral, white musk scent would make you completely feel dizzy. You were once on the rooftop of your tiny flat when it first happened. Ani’s hands were in yours the entire time while you talked and she wouldn’t let go. Maybe the alcohol helped you ignore how much your heart struggled to regain its normal rhythm. And her fragrance didn’t really help your situation. That’s when you knew you were entirely fucked.

You fell for people before. But not for your friends. Especially not your close friends. She was the good thing you had in life among others. Losing her was not something you’d even want to imagine, the thought making you upset. Besides, thinking about different probabilities about her catching on to your crush would always circle back to the same answer. She might be straight and this will leave an awkward gap between your friendship and you won’t be as close anymore, will look back at all the interactions you had before and paint you as a creep. Or she might not be but it will still leave an awkward taint in your relationship. Either way you needed to get over this and get over it quickly.

Blinking back your thoughts as you found yourself spiralling again, you wiped the counter with a cloth, a drunk client haven spilled drinks before while having two girls wrapped around him. You were slightly grateful for your daydreams' interruption. Letting your mind roam about Ani was like a double edged sword.

As you cleaned the surface, a voice catches your attention.

“Finally, I get to have some time for you.”

Your eyebrows rose slightly and you were about to answer the person talking to you when you noticed her playful smile and her eyes.

Shit. Shit. Shit.

It’s also insane how your brain manifests its thoughts and wonderings into reality, her presence seeming to have a powerful hold on you.

“Are you okay? You look like you’re like…drunk. Are you? Look, I wouldn’t tell anyone but doing this is pretty risky. Definitely don’t do it without me next time, though.”

Get yourself together.

“It’s just one of those days where I had to stay up cramming for a test and got three hours of sleep.”

“Oh and I thought those days were over and you’d take your sleep seriously. What happened to you putting aside caffeine and focusing on a good sleep schedule?”

“Left behind me. But it worked for a week in my defence.”

You try to laugh but the highlighter near her eyes, her perfectly applied eyeliner and her lipstick makes all your cells come alive. She’s so damn pretty.

With a disapproving look, she reaches to fix your collar.

“Do I have to babysit you or something? College is already hard as it is. I don’t need you stumbling around me.”

You already do that.

“I wouldn’t mind having an overseer.”

With a wink, you take care of an order for a client approaching the bar, missing her slight chuckle at your tease. It’s a good thing she’s not a mind reader, your brain overplaying the sentence“why the fuck would you that out loud?”

The customer follows her gaze over you but doesn’t pay any mind, sidling over to her.

“Hey…I have enough for two drinks. Or three, if you’d like.”

You visibly hurl at the sight. That was worse than what you said.

Taking a deep breath and focusing on cleaning an already clean glass, you keep a subtle glance on him. His aftershave wafts in the air and leaves an unpleasant overwhelming scent.

You hate how he looks clean, fresh. The way he has a perfect jawline. How his smooth, deep voice, almost makes you wish you could have the same traits as him.

This was getting ridiculous. You’re getting ridiculous.

Throwing the towel over your shoulder, you sigh at the relief of having customers flood the counter. A bachelor’s party. You just go on autopilot, listen to their orders and ignore their vague offensive teenage boy adjacent behaviour.

Ani’s focused on the charming man. At least, she was trying too. Sure, he was funny and looked like a formula one pilot…but was also incredibly bland. For the past thirty minutes it’s been him, him, him. She knows his name but he has no idea about hers, he didn’t even ask any questions.

While he goaded about having a mansion in The Hamptons or who knows where, she trailed back her eyes to you. You felt different. Your overall senses felt different. She didn’t felt the calm radiating energy balancing her bright one anymore. And she wasn’t joking when she asked you if you were off. For the past few weeks you looked downright exhausted. She believes that it’s because of your midterms, but she knows there’s something more to it. You have this sort of signal whenever you’d close yourself off from people. You’d get really silent, almost out of space. Then you would twist the rings you have on your fingers, one of then being a gift she got for you.

Then there were your texts. You weren’t dry or simply answering her texts for the purpose of replying but you would always be late to do so. She knows you’re busy with college and whatnot, but she also knew you well. You were hiding something from her. The dilemma she had to deal with was whether to confront you because you being somewhat closed off felt like losing you. Or should she wait until you talk to her?

Will you?

⋆｡°✩

The guy who talked her ear off didn’t even bother paying for her drinks, just his. Her best friend is acting weird. And on top of that she has a show in ten minutes. She can’t operate with a negative state of mind. And none of what was happening was of help.

She understands you and knows you need your own pace when it comes to handling certain things. But what exactly are you handling? And why were you looking like a kicked puppy but now you’re chatting and chuckling with your coworker. That or you were forcing yourself. Yeah, something is wrong. And she’s tired of this.

Completely ignoring the conversation you’re having, which by the way, must be uninteresting and forced because she knows you only really laugh those warm laugh of yours with hers, she asks if you can soon talk.

She’s still respectful of your working hours. When she could just drag you outside and beg you to tell her what is going on with you.

“My shift is over in five minutes, Ani—”

“I can take over from here. You’ve been practically hosting the patrons on me.”

Your coworker, smiles at you and moves to your position. Good.

And you’re so tired and confused you don’t even process how Ani marches over the bar, gently takes your hand and smiles at the man before leading you through the crowded room of sweating bodies until you reach a private, quieter area.

She steps in the room and mentions for you to do the same. You’re honestly surprised how you didn’t manage to faint.

“I need to know what’s your problem.”

Your eyebrows furrow at her tone, knowing she usually takes it with annoying clients or rude people who feel the need to make comments.

“What problem?”

“With me.”

She won’t waste anytime. Whatever the fuck is happening between you two has to end.

You feel your knees go wobbly so you just sit, trying to calm down your hammering heart.

“I…I have no…I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

You blurt out in one go, as if taking your time to answer the question might reduce the chance of her picking up on how out of breath you are.

She chuckles dryly, raking her hands through her hair, pacing the room.

Don’t yell. This is not the approach to take here.

“Then why the fuck are you so distant with me?”

She couldn’t control the raised volume of her voice. She quickly regretted it, seeing how you slightly jerked up.

The dim lighting concealed how your eyes were getting bleary and hid her face flushed with anger. Or sadness. Maybe a bit of both. The room felt so stuffy. You looked down at your shoes, finding the colours to be so interesting.

“Did I do something wrong?”

She whispered, barely even audible, like a ghostly breath. You’re sure you wouldn’t have heard her if it weren’t for the utter silence in the room.

And you felt bad. Plain miserable. But hiding the truth was a way to protect the both of you, right? What would she do if she found out that you were crushing, no, fucking fell in love with her and carried on like nothing ever happened—

“Right. I have my answer then. Look, I don’t know what I did wrong but…I want you to know I’m sorry. I never meant to hurt you. I’ll try to be better from now on and so hope that I’m deserving enough of a second chance.”

She sniffs, trying to keep her breathing steady. She couldn’t lose you. Wouldn’t lose you. You’re the best thing in her life. And she hates herself for pushing you away.

She gives you another mental chance at speaking up before moving to leave.

And you let her.

Wiping the few tears she has, she swiftly leaves the room. And when you’re the only one left, you let the tears flow through your face, wanting nothing but to be honest with her, tell her how you feel, relieve yourself from the feeling of carrying what is similar to that of a burden.

Loving her doesn’t feel like one, though. It feels freeing. Weirdly enough it’s like you share the same oxygen, and a part of her cut is sure enough for you to choke.

You look down at the ring she got you from a thrift store, saying that it reminded her of you. Silver. With star design engravings.

“I don’t know why but being with you feels like I’m dreaming.”

Fighting back your nausea, you trace your fingers over the stars, remembering how she held your fingers in hers, linking them together.

You had to tell her the truth. You had to risk telling the truth. She’s deserving of it. And whatever outcome it has, not that you’re thinking of any positive ones, it will be a great relief. Even if it’s painful.

⋆｡°✩

Allowing yourself a minute to take deep breaths and gather your wordings, you slowly left the room, trudging to wait for Ani until she completes her show.

You wait for her near her trailer room, your legs still feeling weak, and slide down the door. Even though you willed your heart to calm down, you still feel this immense pressure on your chest, a slight headache and fatigue from all the overwhelming sensations. You close your eyes and try to rest.

It must not have been that long, because someone is lightly, gently shaking your shoulder. You lift your head from your crossed arms, blinking blearily at the presence of people and lights before your tired gaze lands on her.

Her warm hands are on your cheeks and you feel like you could cry anytime now, even in front of her friends who looks at you like you’re on the verge of a breakdown.

With a silent look, she asks them to leave you, one of them muttering “call me if you need anything.”

She should hate you. She doesn’t even know if she does. But you’re not exactly one of her most favourite people anymore.

That doesn’t mean that seeing you like this makes her feel a sense of victory. If anything it just adds to the shitty mess of emotions she has when it comes to you.

“Ani…”

You softly whispered, trying to get up but she presses down on your shoulders. She picks up bottle of water on the ground and opens it for you.

“Drink.”

Your eyes are puffy and red, your face completely heated. Whatever it is that is happening with you…she wants to help. If you’d let her. If only you’d let her.

Although the water did make you a little clearheaded, you still needed to a bit of space before the same thing happens again.

“Ani, I…this…”

Your head leans back at the door, your eyes closed. She’s never seen you like this. This vulnerable and lost.

She’s grateful that you’re feeling safe…or felt safe enough to be that way around her. If this is the last chance you two have of mending this weird relationship.

“Let’s go outside.”

“But…don’t you have anyone to see after?”

With a wry smile, she stands up and offers you her hand.

“My shift ended as soon as my friends told me you were passed out. Let me get our jackets, okay?”

Right. You would always leave your jackets here. Now you’re worried this would only give valuable reasons of making you look like some weird obsessive.

You wish you had something to drink.

After getting your jackets, you thank her, and walk outside the nightclub, waiting as she waves goodbye to everyone. That’s the thing. Everyone loves her. She could have anyone. Any thoughts of you and her being together for a split second is bounds enough for you to check for signs of delusions.

You lean against the wall, refusing a cigarette when she offers you one.

You don’t want to waste anymore second. The more you wait…the more the dagger will twist in your stomach. Literally. And figuratively. Because you would bleed your love out for that girl.

“You didn’t do anything wrong.”

You muttered after two minutes, your eyes trained on the sky. It was particularly starry this evening.

Ani confusedly stares at you but says nothing, waiting for you to speak.

Finally speak.

“You didn’t do to say anything hurtful to me, Ani. You never could. I would trust you with my life.”

A pause for breath.

“You apologising when you’re not in the wrong shows how much you care. And you talked about whether you deserved a second chance but that thought never crossed my mind. I’m the one who should apologise and ask you for a second chance. I’ve been acting like a complete jerk these past couple weeks. I’m sorry. That was…that was fucked up on my part.”

You twirl your star ring, and encourage your brain to spill everything that’s it’s been clogging your senses with, spill everything that you’ve been hiding.

“I don’t deserve you at all. I shouldn’t. Not with the way I’ve been feeling—”

“What have you been feeling?”

Her cigarette long finished, she took the opportunity to speak, to finally know what’s the deal between the both of you and if it will ever be resolved. She’ll do it with time and effort, even if you insist that she didn’t do anything wrong. But she won’t do it if you let things go. If you let her go.

You drop your hands and lift your eyes to hers, your ears welling with tears you could hardly make up her frame.

“I’m in love with you.”

To say she felt her guts fell to the ground would have been a complete understatement. She chuckles hesitantly, wondering if this was some kind of sick excuse, and sees nothing but. Her mouth opens and closes, her eyebrows furrowing. While you just wanted to throw up.

“You…what?”

Saying it once was difficult enough but this felt like plunging a knife through your chest.

You’re willing to spill your blood for her if this means saying goodbye. At least she’ll know how much she meant to you.

“I love you, Ani. I don’t know when I realised it but I love you. You’re always there for me, you’re kind and so gentle. You treat me like I’m worth something. And I treasure that. But…I also treasure our relationship and I understand if you think I’m some weirdo who just wanted to be friends with you because I’m attracted to women. Just tell me and I’ll stay away from you, I will get away and—”

“Stop.”

She takes a tired hand to her forehead, lightly pinching it.

Oh you have fucked up so bad—

“Are you fucking with me?”

Your eyes widen at the question before you clear your throat, trying not to cry. You can’t cry.

“No. I…I have feelings for you. I would understand if you think it’s awful.”

“Can you not say that? Why would it be awful?”

“Because you…because you don’t…”

“What, just cause you see me flirting and dating guys doesn’t mean I can’t do the same for girls?”

There’s a soft twinkle in her eyes, the same one you love to find yourself lost in.

“But…but that doesn’t mean you can like me back.”

God, how ridiculous you were.

Do you know the way you made her feel whenever you would hold a sleepover and bring her favourite things to bed just for her? Or offer a drive to and back from her place? And whenever you’d leave your sweater, her favourite sweater, in her reach, don’t you think she wished she could really hold you?

She steps closer to you, moving to wipe your tears away.

“You have no idea, do you?”

Well, to be fair…she was pretty good at hiding it. With you, however, she should have been able to pick up on the signs. Maybe then it might have been quicker.

You close your eyes, refusing to believe that any of this is real and that it’s just a lucid nightmare.

“Look at me, baby.”

She softly whispers, waiting for you to meet her gaze. She presses a kiss on the tip of your nose, loving how absolutely adorable you look.

“I love you. So much. You know when I said that being with you felt like I was dreaming? That’s how I always want to feel. I don’t want us to be apart. Ever. And for that whole thing of me rejecting you? That’s bullshit. You’d still be my best friend in any case.”

You don’t know if you can believe that.

“I would never lie to you.”

She feels her voice breaking with the intensity of emotions she’s feeling. It’s you. Every night, every day, it’s you. You feel more like a dream, really…she would fade into you if you’d allow her to.

“You love me?”

“I love you.”

“Say it again.”

Your voice is hoarse, an effort at trying to hold back your cries. You think you can see Ani’s eyes blearing too, hesitantly reaching up to wipe her tears, just like she did with yours.

“I love you.”

She wastes no time. She doesn’t want to waste anytime.

She presses her forehead against yours, grateful for your touch. The number of times she held those hands, felt them around her waist or shoulders when you’d embrace each other, can’t be at the same level as it is now. Your eyes meet, and you notice the slight darkened hue of her pupils, the sight sending a heat tumbling down your chest.

“Now, you say it.”

“I…I love you, Ani. More than you know.”

She cups your cheeks, her eyes flickering between yours.

“Don’t ever leave me again.”

“I won’t.”

“You promise?”

“I’d swear on my life for you.”

Long seconds are morphed into minutes and you can’t detach yourself from the haze you’re trapped in. Her eyes then lower to your lips before they meet yours again. This time, the painful hammering that you felt in your chest has been replaced by a fluttering sensation.

“Can I kiss you?”

Her question pangs over and over in your mind, mostly because you want to remember everything she said in the exact tone. Thinking she stepped too far, she was about to pull back and apologise when you wrapped your arms around her waist and nodded.

She chuckled, leaning to graze her lips, trailing from your cheek to your ear, tickling the skin.

“Words, baby.”

“Y-yes.”

“Yes, what?”

“Yes, I want to kiss you.”

“Good.”

She looks between your eyes, slowly leaning in to give you enough time before she captures her lips in yours. It feels like she’s living for the first time again. She’s buzzing from the softness of your lips, how they taste like your chapstick you always carried everywhere with you.

It’s slow, new, almost hesitant. But it still makes her feel warm, on top of her jacket, forgetting the evening winter air surrounding you. You break apart for a quick breath before pulling each other closer again, this time the kiss going from sweet to passionate. She softly tugs your bottom lip with her teeth, making you slightly yelp. She smiles against your lips before you switch positions and gently push her on the wall, breaking apart to kiss her jaw, her neck, careful not to leave any marks, then back to her lips. Everything is mingled. Your tastes, your breaths, your bodies, no one wants to leave anytime soon. Too drunk with desire to do anything about it.

Until you hear remaining dancers leave and you jump. Ani laughs and you join along with her, the sounds creating a blissful harmony.

You wrap your arms around her, pressing her body closer to yours, and take a moment to breathe.

You’re sure you would give your own life if it were to kiss Ani again. It felt as good as it was in your dreams, sweet, loving, and hungry.

“When there’s something you need to tell me, tell me, alright? No more secrets from now on.”

“I will. I promise you. I’m…I’m so sorry again for not saying anything sooner.”

She softly presses kisses all over your face, before tugging on your jacket and pressing her lips against yours.

“Don’t apologise. I understand if you were afraid. I would be, too. I was…even a bit scared if I’m honest with you.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. But we’re…we’re together now, right?”

You’ve never seen her this way, so uncertain. You promised yourself to never make her feel doubt again. Not like you did before.

“We’re together. I’m your girl, Ani.”

“And I’m yours.”

And one last kiss was shared before you ended up in your home, not knowing the place will morph with memories you’ve created together.

[randomwriteronline]

"Ah! You're one of those," a voice came to his ears.

Nuparu turned to find a tall Gaquri standing at the entrance, looking at him curiously.

"I am a Toa," he corrected.

The other nodded: "Yes, I do know that. Forgot the name is all. You're a, uh... Ko?"

"Onu."

"Hm! My mistake. Which element is that, again?"

"Earth. Do you need something?" the inventor cut their small talk short, lightly tapping a tool similar to a wrench against the skeletal frame of what appeared to be a heavily modded chariot: "I'm working on a project."

"You know where Berix is?" the Gaquri asked. He raised an arm: an interesting weapon, with a jagged light blue blade at one end and some kind of projectile mechanism attached to the handle, dangled from it casually. "Wanted to drop this off to him. The thornax launcher's been jamming up more often and I know that boy can make it work like a charm again."

"He's getting parts," Nuparu answered. His eyes rested once more on the blade and he added, tilting his head intrigued: "You can leave it here if you want."

"So you can study some original Bara Magna manufacturing?" the other joked.

"It's not really my field, but it looks remarkable."

He watched the organic being laugh heartily as he approached - with a fairly heavy limp, he noticed: "Remarkable! Now that's a bit of an exaggeration, kid. I made these from some bones, whatever viable scraps I could find from wrecks of the Core War, and a few patches across the years when I could afford it. It's held together by spit and whatever Ackar's friend did to make it spurt water."

"From what I understand, spit doesn't seem like a good adhesive."

"That's what we say here to mean something's parts are real shoddily connected together."

"Hm! Like dried mud. Or aluminum sheet."

"That's the idea. Ah, where should I put this, anyhow?"

"There is fine. What's with your leg?"

The Gaquri gave a grimace: "Nothing much - just my knee acting up," he replied, patting the guilty joint. "Something must have gotten rusted. It happens."

Even through the lack of expression of his mask Nuparu treated him to a baffled look.

"What?"

"Organic parts don't rust," the Toa sputtered. "At least, ours don't."

The other eyed the tendons and muscles peeking through black armor, and his lips perked up in a little smile.

Without a word he placed his weapon on the least cluttered corner of Berix's work desk before redirecting his now free hands to the side of the faulty knee, messing with what appeared to be the graceless stitching of a large wound: his fingers sank deftly into it and pried through the gaps enough to loosen the whole thing, and before the less organic being's flabbergasted eyes pulled down the fake skin and meat to reveal a fully mechanical joint, complete with pistons and springs and even what seemed like wires.

"Don't worry," he chuckled with a wave, "Ours don't either. But most crusty old Glatorian like me haven't been completely flesh and bone in a long time."

If the inventor's attention had been piqued before, he was completely captivated now. He was leaning on his seat towards him, vehicle project all but forgotten, intently studying as many details of the prosthesis as he could see from that distance.

His eager interest made the other laugh again: "Why all that surprise! Don't you see something like this on you every day?"

"Yes, but I'm not you!"

"And what's that mean?"

"You're all flesh! And meat! And skin! How does that work?"

The Gaquri considered something for a moment. "If you can get me a seat and figure out what's wrong with it, I'll be glad to let you have a closer look," he offered at last.

Nuparu pulled the stool from right under himself so fast that he fell on his ass.

He then placed it down with extreme care and patted it insistently.

The other barely held back a snort.

His implant hadn't caused this much of a scene since the first day it had been up and functional.

"The name's Tarix, anyhow," he introduced himself as he sat down a little heavily. "Since you'll be rummaging knuckle-deep through the insides of my leg for the next thirty minutes."

"Hm," Nuparu replied as he kneeled until his mask was all but grazing the joint.

Tarix waited a dozen seconds, and added: "You got one too, Toa?"

"One what?"

"Name."

"Nuparu."

"I see. Ah - nope, nope, don't-" his fingers quickly pinched the mechanical being's and lifted them away from the scarified tissue binding the meat to the metal: "That's real flesh, don't peel that - the nerves still work, you'd put me through the pains of Plude."

"What's that?"

"You folks have a place in your lore built just to torture you forever?"

"Yes, Karzhani. I've been there."

"Huh. Well, I've been to Plude too back when it still existed, and I'll just say that the only good thing the Lord of Sand might've done was collapsing it on itself. So, you get what I mean about the pain."

"Hm. Yes, I can imagine. But how do I - see, to check the individual parts, I'd need to pull them off..."

"Oh - hold it, let me just..."

Angling his leg in an uncomfortable position and hunching down with a hiss, the Glatorian set to work carefully pulling screws loose with the help of an empty pipe he'd fetched from his pocket. The small parts dangled from their sockets without falling, just distant enough from the point the metal touched to allow the top and bottom pieces to be pulled apart without needing to pull the much more easy to lose components out of the whole.

"Hold the calf a moment, will you?" he muttered with the pipe now stuck between his teeth. Nuparu complied, holding the lower half of the leg still as Tarix worked his magic on the inner wires. At last, satisfied, he unfurled his back up once more and puffed satisfied: "There, pull."

When the Toa did so, the prosthesis came apart as easily as a house of cards. Suddenly, in the mechanical palm was a whole calf, still warm with life and undoubtedly organic.

Tarix watched genuinely amused as Nuparu tested the ankle in his hands and on the ground, miming an attempt at a walk as though playing with a very concerning doll with nothing short of pure unadultered fascination.

He posed it as if stuck in a sprint: "Can you feel this?"

"Not a single thing," the Glatorian replied. He patted the metallic femur's exposed head: "And neither can I here. The connections are all in the wires, they go right into the nerves, see? So long as they're apart I can't feel crap anywhere from over here," and he pointed to the flesh that stopped around the middle of his thigh "To the rest of the leg underneath. Not that I should be able to, frankly, if we wanted to abide by nature's whims, but luckily for me us Spherus Magna natives never cared much for that."

Nuparu hummed: "How'd you get it like this, anyways?"

"Oh," the Glatorian shrugged as though it were the most normal thing in the world, "Blew up."

"It just exploded?"

"Not by itself, of course, someone shot the whole thing out of me."

The Toa treated him to an appalled look.

Tarix waved a hand harshly, chewing on his unlit pipe: "The Core War was absolutely barbaric, kid! I've witnessed stuff I wouldn't wish on a Skrall. When I saw that half you've got there in your hand fly over my head as gracefully as the ugliest bird known to any being with eyes, I thought I was going to die of shock like a Mountain Striker with a broken wing. I still have no clue how I managed to keep awake through the bloodloss and pain long enough for the fixers to figure out I was still alive enough to be taken down to the medic."

Nuparu regarded the half of a limb in his grasp with newfound horror and fascination. A whole portion of leg, shot right out... He wasn't sure if even the Vortixx could have had something capable of doing that. Oh, sure, they had plenty of possibly worse things, but even the most blunt tended to have slightly more complex effects than just 'blows a chunk off of you'.

And the fact that they had managed to rebuild the broken joint and connected it to the rest of the nervous system was nothing short of miraculous, compared to the same thing done on a mechanical being - whose organic components regenerate, too.

"And all Glatorian have something like this?"

"Us older ones, yes," the other nodded. He watched with a sort of lazy interest as the Toa turned his attention to the mechanism of his prosthesis, checking for damage as he had promised. "The rookies tend to have the usual stuff, thank goodness - scars, plaques, maybe a limb, some fingers..."

"Fingers?"

"Yes, some of them. They tend to nip 'em a lot during training, you know, when they start to get the hang of it and stop holding their weapons like they're gonna grow a mouth and bite them - they cut tendons often those first few times. Or just the whole thing."

"Really?"

He chuckled, playfully waving his fingers: "Gresh keeps losing them. If you look closely you can tell which phalanxes are still his."

"I thought he was good at fighting."

"He is. He's just young. And a little too brash at times."

Nuparu hummed, moving onto the piece of implant attached to his thigh: "You mentioned limbs, too," he noted absentmindedly: "Is that also common, during training?"

"Losing them? Oh no, that happens out in the desert. Or, used to happen... Well, the desert's still out there, just smaller, so I guess - point is, you'll sooner get one cut off by a Bone Hunter or chewed up by a Vorox than find a fellow Glatorian who'll do that to you, on purpose or not. We made sure to try and avoid that sort of thing when we made the rules for the job."

"And plaques?"

"Oh, these," and he tapped some strange metallic protrusions on the top of his legs, on the side of his arms, and on his shoulders. "Nothing special, they keep armor in place. Easier than having to strap it on. We install them when we come of age."

Their shape was somewhat familiar: "Berix has them too, I think."

"I think everybody gets them - Agori, Glatorian, Skrall..."

"They are pretty useful," the Toa nodded.

He couldn't really imagine how they could have managed to stick armor to themselves otherwise. Maybe through some cloth? But then it might chafe their joints, and they'd have to find a way to insert it in the metal anyways...

He hummed thoughtfully, wracking his brain as he tried at once to figure out both the logistics of putting armor on fully organic beings and whatever was wrong with the implant.

So concentrated he was that he actually jumped a little when the pipe gently smacked his shoulder.

Tarix had a strange look on his face as he pointed down at a spot on his prosthesis: "Don't - it's nothing to be worried about yet, just, watch it," he warned, "That coil there you've got near your index, she's real frisky. Won't be a problem now that it's taken apart, but when you stick it back together you'd better avoid even just so much as grazing it - it'll pull my calf back at top speeds to kick my ass. Been like that since the start."

"Oh! Sounds painful."

"It is!"

With a hand already rummaging through a box of springs, Nuparu offered: "Since I'm here already, I could replace that..."

"Ah, there's no need really," the Glatorian quickly stopped him.

"But it's a liability."

"If it's out in the open like this, yeah, but - well, when it's covered it's a lot more manageable, and the wires-"

"It's still a malfunction. I can fix that without any trouble."

"I get it, but it's - I - hm! Let me explain. See, when - if I cover it up, see, with my-"

"The fake flesh?"

"Yes, that - it still jerks back if touched, but not as hard, you get me?"

"But it still does."

"Yes, and here's the - the thing is, I also have my nerves connected, right? Right, and when the coil gets touched and makes my leg jerk, it... Er... See - have you ever - hm! Hmm-hm. Hold on. Do you... Is there something that you know is not good for your body, but when you do it it just feels nice?"

"No."

"Alright, this complicates things."

"Oh! Oh, no, wait - when I cut metal with a saw, I like to keep myself as close to the sparks as possible so they can hit me because they tingle. It's fun. Do you mean like that?"

"Eeeh, close enough! That's what's going on with that coil."

"It tingles?"

"It... Uh... Sure, let's. Call it that."

The change in tone was weird, and he seemed to be somewhat embarrassed about having brought the subject up.

Now, in regards to asking personal questions, Nuparu tended to be as uninterested in other beings' private matter as much as a Kofo-Jaga is in lightstones.

However, this was directly related to the machinations of an impressive, if a little primitive, handmade mechanical joint.

So yes, he would have loved to pry.

The mental manifestation of Turaga Whenua repeatedly smacking him over the head with his drilling staff was currently the only thing keeping him from inquiring on any activities Tarix might have enjoyed dabbling in outside of his work hours, but luckily for the Glatorian that singular imaginary scenario was also an extremely effective deterrent for any Matoran or Toa that had ever at some point of their lives resided in Onu-Koro.

As such, the Toa just shrugged and diverted his attention onto the object the Gaquri was now nervously twisting in his hand: "What's that, by the way?"

The total swerve in subject matter destabilized the Glatorian briefly. He looked down at his fingers, then back at the Toa.

"A pipe?" he replied.

Nuparu squinted at it a little better: "That does not look like a pipe." he decreted.

Tarix lifted an eyebrow, curiously: "It's just an Agori pipe."

"That's not a pipe," the inventor insisted.

"And how should a proper Toa pipe look like, then?"

"Matoran pipe, maybe-" the Toa scoffed, rolling his eyes and making the other chuckle a bit while the mechanical hands went right back to checking on his implant in the midst of his correction: "First of all, it's far too small to be of any proper use; second, that seems to be made of wood, which is the worst material for this kind of thing - even if you could fit that tiny piece in a proper hydraulic system, long time usage will lend it to rot and come apart much faster, which is why we used to trade iron with Le-Koro to avoid the whole village from caving in on--"

"Oh!" Tarix interrupted him all of a sudden, smacking the object on his palm with a hollow sound: "Oh, you meant - no no no, it's not that type of pipe! It's a, uh -- pipa! Nagele! Sghitt!"

"Don't curse at me, please."

"I'm not cursing at you, it's just different names for this! You really don't have a word for-?" then he cut himself off as he seemed to remind himself of something evidently obvious: "Ah - well, I mean, you don't have a mouth, of course you can't smoke..."

"Yes we do."

"You do?"

"Yes? How else would we hold our masks?"

Tarix blinked, briefly wondered if he should have asked, and decided it didn't matter: "But you don't smoke? At all?"

"No? Unless we get catastrophically overheated or are set on fire," Nuparu replied as he attached the disjointed calf into the thigh again. "Both of which in all fairness have happened before. Not very often, but they have happened."

"No, I meant... Ah, hold it, hold it..."

He stuck the unlit pipe back in his mouth, puffing out nothing a few times with a thoughtful expression on his face.

"See - it's a bit like the coil and the sparks again, the matter with smoking," he decided to start explaining: "There's certain plants, if you dry them and burn them well, that make really pleasant smoke."

"How is smoke pleasant?" the Toa muttered.

"The smell can be," the Gaquri shrugged, "And the taste too. Wait-" and he gently knocked the foot of the pipe on the top of the Volitak before the inventor could interrupt him again "-Wait a second, I can't very well clear this up if you keep cutting in. Alright, so the bigger part here, the bowl we call it - you need to press the dried plants in here and light them up, only a little before the whole thing burns up; once they're charred nicely, you inhale through the shank, and then you puff it back out. That's how the smoke gets in your mouth and you can taste it."

"And how does it taste, then?"

"Ah, depends on what you smoke," was the whistful answer. "Same goes for the smell. The Lebori have a certain bark that gets real flexible when wet - they make whole pipes with it, they burn up real well, but it's a bit too sour for me. Before the Shattering there used to be a type of kelp I liked, and Kiina said they had River Eyes up near the Dormus that made some terribly sweet smoke."

"River Eyes?"

"It's a flower! Small, round, blue, and it grows on river banks. Never got to try them, though, and it's better I don't go around asking for some with the lungs I've got. Like I said, smoking's the same as the coil and the sparks: feels good to do, but it's bad for the body."

Nuparu hummed deeply, rummaging inside the knee as he handled the hanging wires carefully.

"I think I figured out the problem," he announced.

At that Tarix perked up: "Rust?"

"One piston has developed a limestone growth that makes it much harder to move properly, and as a result one of the springs is bent out of shape and chafes right against the nerve."

"Ah! Well, damn. You can get limestone in there?"

"If it's humid enough, it can build up over time."

"Hm... Alright, I guess all those years sweating in arenas and whatnot were bound to do the trick eventually."

"Also there was rust."

"Hm. Where?"

"Three screws. I changed them already."

"Wait, really? When?"

"While you were talking about the Core War."

"Huh! You're quick. And quiet."

The Toa shrugged: "I like working."

He pulled the prosthesis apart for a second time, laying the calf down on the floor. He then leaned back to search through a tool box brimming with bits and pieces - bolts, nuts, coils, springs, and all sorts of other things - with what his mask's stillness still managed to convey as a focused furrowed brow, evidently still thinking about what course of action to take now that he had pinpointed the anomaly to fix.

Changing his mind, he stood up and made his way to one of the various piles of junk and assorted more or less useful knicknacks to start looking for something in there instead.

"Speaking of the Core War," he said, implying he wanted to start a conversation but without really adding to that sentence.

Tarix waited a few minutes, puffing out in silence while watching him shift towels or bottles until he found what he was looking for (a clean enough rag and flask containing a murky liquid), before figuring that he was waiting for some kind of permission to continue on the admittedly not particularly pleasant topic: "Yes?"

"You said other older Glatorians also got implants like this from it."

"I implied it, but yes, that's the case."

The Toa hummed as he settled back before him: "And they're all knees, like yours?"

"You want to ask what their own prosthesis are?"

At that, he got no response.

"You can, by the way," Tarix reassured him, "It's been a damn long time by now, it doesn't hurt as much as say, eighty hundred years ago. We've been living like this long enough to joke about the whole thing and whatnot."

Nuparu mumbled something indistict as he soaked up the rag and began scraping the limestone off of the metal with it.

"Don't act all shy now, kid! As I said, it's no trouble." the Glatorian repeated. A sly smile curled the corners of his lip: "You can't get embarrassed like this every time you have to ask about new possible clients, you know," he jokingly reprimanded him, "Otherwise you'll have a hard time getting any."

"I don't want to be paid!" the Toa replied. "I'm just curious, is all! This is... Well, I didn't expect it to be something you'd have."

"Oh, don't worry, not everybody's missing a whole chunk of leg like me," Tarix chuckled. "We Glatorian like to keep ourselves distinct from one another."

"In implant too?"

"Of course! Let me think, now..."

He inhaled a long breath through his pipe, leaning back a little as the kid continued on with his work, and exhaled with a whistle.

"So, let's see - Vastus, he's got a good chunk of his lower spine replaced and, oh, 'bout three quarters of his intestines," he began: "Kiina had her hip crushed and put back together, and that should be... Ah, nope, nope, half of her left hand and the whole ulna too. Telluris I haven't see in a long while now, but unless he's figured out how to place his brain in a tin can I'd bet his head's all that's left. Certavus, bless his memory, I don't think he had a single original organ left by the end, and Gelu's got bionic feet - one foot, one leg, right, a whole leg, so then Strakk was the one who got his eye shot out and his nose crushed. And the jaw, of course. I don't remember if it was him or Malum who cracked his head but I do think it was him, because Malum had the femur that got split in half and it worsened with that problem with his ribcage where the metal was corroding and messing with his blood... Which is why he had to get his marrow replaced in his leg later on. Oh, and Ackar also had to... Ah, wait, which one was it? Right, right. Ackar, poor guy, his back itself is worse than a Plude street but his real problem's his right shoulder blade, which got essentially pulverized - I was there, ghastly sight - so they had to replace the whole thing, and that was bad enough; but then, and this is the fucked thing, the implant actively degraded the rest of the arm, so he had to keep replacing bits and pieces of it until it was just completely gone."

Nuparu lifted his head, eyes wide and flabbergasted: "The fixing made it worse?"

"It did! He kept having trouble moving it."

"How?"

Tarix raised his shoulders: "Beats me," he replied just as baffled. "It's a common thing for Tapyri, honestly. It's hard to tell if the material's bad quality or has trouble with the heat. Perditus too - after he got half his leg replaced, the damn thing somehow managed to melt halfways and left him limping almost worse than he would if he just didn't have it."

"And he can't replace it?"

"It's grafted onto the bone and the muscle has grown over it. They'd have to carve the whole thing out with it, it's just not worth it."

The Toa stared at him positively appalled.

"That is horrid," he spat, punctuating the adjective with a harsh yank of his hand over the faulty piston, thus launching a loosened piece of limestone to skid across the floor.

"You're tellin' me, kid."

"That's - it's inadmissible. It's insane."

"And I haven't told you about the Agori."

"What about the Agori? Were they fighting too? Do they-?"

"No, not fighting, usually - it's something we got in common with your lot: we're basically the same species, but we are much bigger and they're much nimbler. So you had us larger folk tearing one another to bits properly, while they tended to work as scouts if they weren't busy trying to put us back in one piece."

The Gaquri interrupted himself to stretch his arms up, pulling one towards his head.

The movement produced a loud 'crock!' roughly around the height of his shoulder, followed by much softer pops crackling all the way up towards his wrist as it twisted.

Satisfied with the sound (which instead made the inventor a little uneasy considering their conversation), he moved to massage the sides of his spine with his knuckles, rolling his neck: it seemed to make a curious ticking noise in place of a meatier sound, filling in the quick pauses of Nuparu's rag scrubbing the limestone away.

At last he puffed into his unlit pipe: "If you look at the older ones - the Agori, I mean - you'll see they've got less lower half than upper."

"That makes no sense."

"It does if you don't count implants. We've got them a bit everywhere, I told you, but an Agori with an arm prosthesis is a real rarity. They've got them mostly between their soles and the top of their hipbones."

"And why's that?"

"It's 'cause the lucky ones stepped on mines."

The Toa hummed thoughtfully.

He did not raise his eyes from the almost clean piston: "And the unlucky ones?"

"Well, we were trained to aim for either the neck or the head."

Ah.

Those certainly had been unlucky.

For every thing Toa and Glatorians seemed to have in common, a complete opposite came around. To imagine a Toa willingly kill was already hard, though not impossible - the Mahri themselves had been met with the chance to do so once or twice, and it had been tantalizing to say the least; but to envision a group of his brothers and sisters being not only instructed but even trained to kill, and especially to kill Matoran...

Well, he was glad he did not live in that kind of world.

"That's just how life is," Tarix sighed in the end. "Nobody wins. They've got their metal hips, and I've got my leg held together by wires and pistons. And an artificial diaphragm."

That snapped Nuparu out of his unpleasant musings: "A what?"

"That one wasn't the war's fault, though - well, it was, but it came in later. See, I had some sharpnel that got stuck in there but nobody noticed, and then one day I got a shove in the wrong spot during a match and just stopped breathing. So I had to get a mechanical one, and when I have to put myself under any sort of strain I need to hook myself up to an oxygen supplier to make sure it doesn't collapse under the effort - you know, that tube thing you might have seen on me, sort of like yours."

"Your gills?"

"I..." the Gaquri briefly did a double take. "You call those gills?"

"Yes?"

They blinked at each other briefly.

"Yeah," Tarix conceded, "Yeah, I guess those would be gills for you folks, huh. Makes sense."

"What was it that you had to replace?"

"My diaphragm."

"What is that?"

"... The muscle?"

"Which muscle?"

"The... The one that makes the... Lungs? Work? I understood you did have lungs?"

"Lungs work on their own."

"No they do not?"

"Yes they do. They are muscles."

"No they are not??"

Before Nuparu could further argue his point by lifting his chest plate and forcing Tarix to behold the disquieting spectacle offered by his very much clearly autonomously moving lungs, the unmistakeable noise of a small variety of hollow brass objects gracelessly crashing on the floor and being hurriedly chased after by stomping feet attracted their attention elsewhere.

Berix did not notice them as immediately as they noticed him, since he was busy making his entrance on all fours as he scrambled to pick up a bunch of scrap metal that had spilled from his arms.

The other two beings made no sound as they watched him curse to himself after stepping on a rogue bolt. They decided to simply observe him in silence much like an equipe of entomologists observes a particularly frenetic spider panicking for some kind of fault in its web, making no motion to lend the young Agori any help as he crawled along the ground to collect the scattered pieces of his scavenged treasure of junk.

It was particularly fascinating when he accidentally shoved several bolts in his mouth to the point of almost stuffing his cheeks with them, realized his mistake, and spat them in what looked like an exhaust pipe.

He almost cried when they fell out of it and rolled away again.

Then he lifted his eyes briefly to the other two silent beings in the room and failed to recognize them.

Meaning he then proceded to jump almost three whole bio straight in the air once he figured there were people looking at him - landing on a screw.

"FUCK!" he whimpered.

Tarix waved: "Hello to you."

"Do you need help?" Nuparu asked with a notable delay.

The Agori kneeled to the ground and skidded across it: "No no no, I'm good! I'm good, I'm - hey, hi, Tarix, hi, when did-? What are you-? Uh," he said nervously as he tried to catch as many nuts and springs as possible, "What is going on there? Is it, did I interrupt or, should- should I leave? Again? Should I leave again?"

"Nuparu's fixing my leg."

At that Berix snapped his head with a deafening gasp to look directly at him, the most betrayed expression to ever grace his face plaster across it.

"But I wanted to do that!" he cried out in anguish like a desert fox cub experiencing the horrors of its mother's tongue bath for the first time: "I told you I could do it, I- I replaced Gresh's ribs and, and I fixed his lungs when the Skrall got him and he hasn't had problems with them since, I told you I could do it, I'm good at fixing-!"

"I know that, and Gresh told me you did real well," the older Gaquri stopped him, "But - don't take it personally, kid, you're good and all, but when it comes to my leg I only trust you as far as I can throw you and believe me, it ain't far."

"But then why does he get to do it!" Berix wailed, pointing at Nuparu still scrubbing off the limestone.

"He's got a whole body like this, I'd imagine he knows what to do."

"But I know what to do too!"

"I told you, I'd rather have a specialist on it."

The Toa briefly wondered if being a descendant of the Water Tribe had something to do with how outstandingly wet Berix could will his eyes to look, or if it was just a specifically Berix thing.

Mabe it was an Agori defense mechanism. After all, it would have been pretty hard to want to hurt something that appeared to be the personification of the verbs 'to whimper', 'to whine', 'to sob', and last but not least 'to wail'.

Whatever the origin of such an expression of anguish, Tarix was not immune to its effects: "Oh, don't be like that," he finally pleaded with a tired but guilty tone, and pointed off to the cluttered desk not too far away: "There, I've got something for you too, alright? I came in 'cause my Thornax launcher's busted and you're the best with 'em. Could you fix that for me? Pretty please?"

That was enough to light the younger being's face up again.

With the sort of excited thin howling laugh that a mischievous ghost might have, he scuttled away to the mess of a table that was the headquarters for most of his projects: onto it he dumped the rest of his scraps, not caring even in the slightest that it only helped to worsen the general situation he already had going on as he was already completely absorbed by the thought of the inner mechanics of the weapon at hand.

The perfectly good chair right beside him thoroughly ignored in favor of sitting on the ground in a curled position that would have made a shrimp suggest booking an osteopathic appointment, he immediately started tinkering around to figure what the problem was with the drive and precision of a blood hound.

That had been perhaps one of the best things their unplanned collaboration had brought Nuparu - aside from all the knick-knacks and thingamajigs and vehicles and tools he'd been able to make or just plan out with the Agori, of course. Watching Berix work on something was such a fun and fascinating experience: his intensity gave his body language a sort of visceral desperation that contrasted his careful fumbling motions, pulling pieces apart with his scarred skeletal fingers and letting them fall all around him as though discarded carelessly - yet he somehow always knew where to search when he needed them again, and if in the middle of his fixer's frenzy you asked him for a specific nut or a gear he could pick it up without even looking, always on the first try. The thunderous act of creation and its rhythmic symphony played on rough instruments whisked the both of them away from the world at large, but when the Toa managed to pull himself back to reality (whether done or stumped or just in need of a break) it was enjoyable if not just all-together mesmerizing to observe the other hard at work on his own project.

A loud bang was not enough to deter him from the launcher either.

The equally loud voice that followed with an exasperated bark did, however: "BERIX! THE DOOR!"

"RIGHT! RIGHT- RIGHT, HOLD ON!" he squeaked hurriedly, abandoning (with a little more care) the weapon to scuttle away as fast as he could to the entrance of their laboratory.

The figure that emerged from the held open door replied to his rambling apologies by grunting every few steps - not without reason, seeing as they were carrying the carcass of an older model of chariot intertwined with some other mean of transport that had clearly gotten lodged sideways in its back, trying to balance the hellish thing on their shoulders in a way not too dissimilar to how a shepherd might carry a too small Mahi tired from a day of running wildly.

The mess of a car accident was dropped rather gracelessly onto the first largest spot of floor available; freed from their herculean weight, the being sighed and pulled back their arms, making the rather dull metal vertebrae poking from their skin creak in a somewhat unsettling fashion.

Nuparu briefly wondered if they were encrusted in limestone too.

They sort of looked like it.

Hm.

Now he had to wonder if it was a common yet not very well-known problem for organic beings with mechanical implants. Maybe it had to do with an excessive production of sweat?

While he was busy pondering that, Tarix grinned at the sight: "Hello, my beautiful wife who sucks at killing me," he crooned lovingly.

Vastus turned to him with a smirk, thin feathers raised and brows slightly furrowed in a manner that was much more fond than annoyed: "Hello, my beautiful husband who can't aim for shit," he replied; upon noticing the Toa kneeled before him, he cheekily added: "Committing adultery, I see?"

His partner wheezed a loud gurgling laugh: "Twelve thousand years we've been married! Twelve thousand years and now you mistake me for Gelu!"

"For who?"

"What, you haven't heard about--?"

"NOT IN FRONT OF MY PROJECTS!" Berix shrieked.

The Lebori chuckled - it was a strange sound, some kind of hiccuping hiss - and reached out to rub his hand all over the younger Gaquri's head; the kid swiveled away from him with a soft rattling noise as his annoyed trembling arms shook his scales against one another, face contorting into a piqued grimace, and returned to the launcher to tinker the other two away from his conscious perception.

"And where'd you get that?" the Glatorian inquired, pointing at it with his chin as it was common to do in his tribe and getting no answer.

"It's mine," his husband reassured him, "He's fixing it."

"Jammed again?"

"Seems like it."

"Bet you just didn't clean it properly."

"You don't know that."

"But I'm right," Vastus teased him as he approached to steal the pipe from his mouth. "And over here, what's going on?"

"He's fixin' up my leg. Nuparu, by the way, that's his name - he's a, ah, Ko- nope, Onu-Toa, he said - thought it was rust but I had limestone in it."

"We can get limestone?"

"Might be the sweating," Nuparu interrupted them suddenly. He fixed his unmoving mask onto the Lebori: "Can you turn around, please?"

Tarix snorted at the other's brief baffled blink: "Hey now, kid, I get you've put your hands in me and all, but you shouldn't go around just checking my wife out like that!"

"NOT! IN FRONT! OF THE PROJECTS!"

The Toa looked between the three of them with no clue what any of them was going on about: "I thought there might have been crusts on the vertebrae," he explained. "Since I have the solvent at hand already, I could handle that already if it's the case..."

"That's what they all say," the Gaquri snickered.

His confusion was palpable.

Vastus flicked a playful finger at his husband's head, warning him: "Berix is gonna kick you out at this rate... But I'm sure it's just some dust, kid, nothing to worry about."

"It still would not hurt to do a simple visual check."

"He's right," Tarix interjected while trying to snatch his pipe back and failing: "Maybe you've been building up a limestone deposit this whole time without knowing it."

"I don't have limestone."

"You don't know that."

Vastus smirked at him as he turned around for Nuparu to check: "But I'm right."

"You can't keep answering that and get away with it."

"I can if I'm always right."

The inventor gave a high pitched hum: "False alarm. That's just dust," he confirmed.

A triumphant grin briefly met the Gaquri's eyes as he rolled them.

Nuparu reached into a box to pull out a short variety of springs in order to compare their size with that of the one that had been bent by the affected piston, now cleaned and hopefully ready to work smoothly; careful not to dislodge anything else, he carefully pried the ill piece out and hooked up its replacement.

Satisfied with how the procedure had done, he pulled himself back a little and announced: "I have another question."

"Shoot," Tarix answered instantly.

"What do 'wife' and 'husband' mean, exactly?"

A hot second of silence passed in which the Glatorian regretted opening his mouth.

He glanced at Vastus.

His wife glanced back.

The quiet persisted.

"We're married," he answered lamely at last.

The question he dreaded slapped him in the face with outstanding punctuality: "And what does that mean?"

Having had his fun of seeing his husband's best full-body impression of a yam turning exponentially smaller when fried to a crisp piece of coal, the Lebori finally intervened: "You folks have contracts?"

"We do."

"Marriage is a contract between people where you become part of one other's family. And tribe, if you're from different ones like us."

A vacuous gaze met his explanation.

"Alright, what's confusing you?"

"The 'becoming part of' thing."

Vastus shrugged, his feathers puffing out for a moment before returning flat in a way similar to how certain avian Rahi did before starting a very long song: "It means we become relatives," he tried again. "Here, look - Tarix is a Gaquri and I'm a Lebori, so my family and hers come from different tribes. By marrying me she became a sort of honorary member of the Jungle tribe, and everybody treats her almost as though she was my brother, or my cousin; in the same manner, I became an honorary member of the Water tribe and I'm treated like her sister or cousin."

"So... It's sort of like assembling a team?" Nuparu tilted his head, puzzled: "There's no need for a contract for that. All Toa consider each other siblings already."

The other clicked his tongue as though he'd bitten it by accident: "I shouldn't have used that metaphor," he muttered.

"Why not?"

"First of all marrying your actual blood-siblings is frowned upon."

"Why? What's a blood-sibling?"

"I'll tell you when you're older. Secondly, I can assure you marriage is nothing like siblinghood."

At that, the Toa frowned: "It sounds the same to me."

"Your knee and Tarix's look the same to me, too," Vastus argued: "They're both made of metal, so they're the same thing."

"They really aren't." then he blinked, bright eyes flashing briefly, looked to the ceiling to recollect his thought, gave a loud hum, and met his gaze again: "I see your point."

The Glatorian smiled: "Good kid."

"Back to the point - how do 'wife' and 'husband' fit with all that?"

"That's just how you call someone who's married."

"So they're synonyms?"

"Yes, pretty much."

The answer seemed to satisfy the inventor greatly.

"I'm learning so much about your species today," he commented in a giddy tone. He returned to the discarded robot calf on the floor, dusting off its mechanical parts to make sure not even small amounts of debris would interefere with its functions; just as he plucked it back into the bulk of the implant, he looked again at the two Glatorian and told them with complete and total earnestness: "You know, if you were significantly smaller, quadrupedal, perhaps vaguely insectoid and incapable of speech, Turaga Whenua would have the best day of his life writing down and trying to decypher your absolutely incomprehensible habits."

That was the highest compliment an Onu-Matoran from the island of Mata Nui could bestow upon someone.

It was not categorizable as such by perhaps any other being in the entire universe, considering the source of such an idiom had been cut off from all other known civilizations and it was generally not considered particularly flattering to be told that you would make for a great petri dish for one's paternal figure to microscope if you were any less sentient, but luckily his tone did manage to properly convey the positive nature of his otherwise insane sentence.

So instead of knocking his head off with roundhouse kick, Tarix and Vastus smiled awkwardly in an attempt at not laughing in his face and just replied: "Thanks."

His Volitak did not have a mouth, but Nuparu's grin was blinding.

Berix chose that moment to shriek triumphantly.

"Fixed!" he declared, Thornax launcher hoisted into the air like it was the second making of the Element Lords.

The older Gaquri turned to him with eyes wide: "What, already?"

"It was encrusted with Thornax juice!"

Not even the time to feel bashful about such a silly and easy to fix thing hindering his battling performance so much that his wife was already leaning down into his line of sight with a smirk so wide that he could have just bitten his whole head off with it.

"What did I say?" he teased.

Tarix sighed, a weary smile on his face: "You cannot keep getting away with this."

"Yes I can," Vastus gloated, "If I'm always right."

[pondslime]

subterranean

FANDOM : house of wax (2005) PAIRING : bo sinclair x afab!fem!reader RATING : explicit 🔞 WORDCOUNT : 3.9k

Reader POV. Basement fuckery. He tells you it's to keep you humble. It’s really just to keep you scared. The distinction doesn’t matter. You end up here again and again, knees biting into the concrete.

Crossposted on A03 here.

⚠️ Stockholm Syndrome. VERY dubious consent under duress. This was supposed to just be porn without plot. But then I lost my goddamn mind. Oops. Decent amount of weird prose. Depersonalization and derealization. Pet play (but make it weird and kinda metaphorical). Collaring. Forced boot riding. Vibrator and anal plug use. Bondage/gagging/edging. Bo at his absolute WORST (his natural state), being smug and mean and awful. Dirty talk dialed ALL the way up. Extremely dehumanizing and degrading language. Mind break elements. LOTS of backhanded praise. ⚠️

You always got too comfortable.

A lifetime before—when you were first here—you sat on this mattress with him, swallowing down mouthfuls of cold beef and carrots. You can remember the soup swirling in the can, murky and brown like a puddle of stagnant rainwater. He hadn't bothered to warm it up for you, but it hadn’t mattered. The food was something. Sometimes it felt like everything.

You licked the broth off the spoon as he plugged another tape into the VCR.

“One of my favorites.” He told you. Of course it was. Every movie he showed you down here was one of his favorites. Every can of soup might be the last. It was always the same things, over and over.

That’s when you started to lose track of time, you think—when you’d started to cling onto all that nothing.

Time wasn’t all that bad of a thing to lose, was it? Who needed it when his thumb was rubbing against your knee, stroking up your skin? The soup was cold, and his hand was warm. You traded one for the other and you liked it.

Funny. Thoughts like that always felt like they came with an or else tacked at the end.

A chunk of potato sat unpleasantly on your tongue—almost bitter, gravel in your mouth. Just like everything else, you swallowed it down.

He pressed play, his fingers drifting up your thigh. The TV quality was fuzzy, interrupted by the occasional flicker of static. Sometimes the films he chose would start in the middle of scenes. You’d get brief glimpses of things he’d recorded over—the triumphant blare of a talk show theme cutting off mid-note, dropping you in media res. He always assured you that you weren’t missing anything. At least that was one thing he didn’t bother lying about.

The movie wasn’t why you remembered that day, though. It was because of something he’d asked you.

“Where’d ya’ grow up?”

You hadn’t known what to say. He never asked you things like that. Your confusion only deepened when you turned towards him. There was no tension in his jaw, no furrowing of his brow. He looked, for the first time, wholly and startlingly calm.

When you failed to answer, he leaned forward and switched the TV off. He never did that either.

“Tell me ‘bout it. Whatchu do out there, anyway?”

You always regret not lying to him.

The world had shrunk down so much in the time you’d been in the town that it almost felt like you could gather it up and stuff it in your pocket.

You think about home. It looks different now.

Spidery tendrils of dust cling to the gaps between the balusters. It’s so difficult to get light in the house. No matter how many windows you open, there are always corners lost to shadow.

It’s strange how you could be up there one day, replacing the bulb under a fringed lampshade—and the next, you’d be tumbled back underground.

Just last week, you were lying on the couch in the living room.

The dog had padded into the room. She’d been gone for the better part of the day. With the doors unlocked, she went wherever she pleased. It had worried you at first, but it didn't anymore. She'd never leave town. She knew better.

At least, that’s what he’d said.

“Come here, beautiful.”

Jumping up, she curled into the space beside you. You wrapped your arm around her, wrinkling your nose. She reeked terribly of dog, stale corn chips and dirt and musk. You wondered if she might let you give her a bath now that you were in her good graces. It took a while to get there, but she came around. In a manner of speaking, the same thing had happened with you.

Pretty funny, huh?

Earlier, you'd been thinking about the puppies in the pet store window. Did she know about them? Slumbering away behind glass and dust, forever only a couple breaths old. Click. A switch was flipped, and they were as alive as they would ever be, nestled on newspaper shavings. On days like this, did she ever make her way down the hill to see them?

“Girls don’t last in this town.” You murmured, scratching behind her ear. “Just me and you, yeah?”

With a huff, she buried her head in the crook of your neck. It seemed like she was done listening to you.

That was fair, really. Half the time you weren’t even saying what you were really thinking anymore—and when you did, you weren't entirely sure that you made much sense. So much of yourself was locked up in your head and you kept forgetting where you left the keys. It all got clogged up inside your skull and oozed out of your mouth in a trail of sickly platitudes. You were just so thankful, so grateful.

“Sorry.” You whispered. You were always sorry for something, and sometimes you even meant it.

The rays of light were receding off of the arm of the couch, crawling up the wall. Your thoughts filled the living room. You could almost see them floating through the air, bouncing off each other like bubbles. Fleeting, effervescent things, popping as soon as you tried to track their paths. When you turned your head, you could smell his cologne. It was his jacket, hanging discarded over the couch cushions.

For a sudden, terrifying moment, you missed him.

That’s when you said the prayer. You didn't know where you meant for it to go. You guessed it was for whoever was around to hear it. Most days it was him and some of the time it was his mother. Both choices rang false. If God was still in this town, it was here, caught in these beams of light. Or maybe God was the dog heavy on top of you, her breath a rhythmic rumble against your throat.

Maybe you wouldn’t last long. Maybe it was all just wishful thinking.

Today, Bo fastens the collar around your neck. The leather feels heavy against your skin.

He tells you it’s to keep you humble. It’s really just to keep you scared. The distinction doesn’t matter. All the light bulbs you screw in will eventually need to be replaced. Wiping away the dust only gives way to more dust. You'll end up here again and again, knees biting into the concrete.

This almost feels more like his room than the one he sleeps in up at the house. Here, you can feel him more than anywhere else. There's more of you down here too. Real, tangible parts of yourself. Look around. There you are in the stain on the mattress, the blood crusted on the vinyl.

Welcome back, baby.

You keep your gaze on the ground, searching for something to bore your eyes into. Your eyes land on his shoes. Flecked with dirt, they bear obvious signs of wear. There’s a sizable hole in the toe of one of them. You focus in on that as he readjusts the collar, tightening the strap around your neck.

Embarrassment heats your cheeks as you hear him click the leash into place. Even without looking up at him, you can picture the expression on his face. It isn’t a good one. You still can’t decide if he looks more or less like himself when he screws his face up like that.

Tugging roughly at the leash, he forces you to look up at him. Wrists bound; your hands flex uselessly against your back.

“Please—”

Without warning, he sticks his fingers into your mouth, forcing them to the back of your throat. You choke, your hands flexing in panic behind your back. When he pulls them out, you cough, eyes watering.

“Now, normally I like hearin’ you, baby.” He says, smiling down at you. His face is a discordant thing. All American, boy next door. A slice of apple pie that someone put a cigarette out in. “But you know somethin’—”

He crouches down in front of you, still smiling. You watch him silently, shifting anxiously on your knees.

“I never did meet a dog who could talk.” Reaching over, he flicks at the metal ring on the collar. “Feels wrong.”

Dropping the leash, he gets to his feet, striding away. You crane your neck to the side as he rustles around behind you. After a moment, he lets out an affirmative grunt.

Quickly, you pivot your head back to the front. Making his way back to stand in front of you, your eyes flash to the item in his hands. Seemingly amused by your concern, he dangles it in front of you.

It’s a ball gag, shiny and black��noticeably a hair newer than the rest of the junk down here. Maybe he bought it just for you. It’d make a pretty lousy gift, but then again, he was always shit at stuff like that.

He had an incredible knack for getting you shit that you never asked for. Everything came with conditions, a laundry list of provisos and conditions that you didn't remember signing up for. Everything he gave you was actually for him.

“Open up, baby.”

Before you can think to do as he asks, his thumb forces your mouth open, pressing down on your teeth. You sputter as he forces the gag into your mouth, securing it around the back of your neck.

“That’s better, yeah?” He asks, grabbing hold of the leash again.

You stare up at him, exhaling tight bursts of air through your nose. You tilt your head a bit, working your jaw around the ball. Your teeth rest uncomfortably on the rubber.

“You been so good today, think we outta give that pussy some attention, huh?” He smirks. “Whatchu think?”

You whine, the noise coming out in an embarrassingly wet gurgle. Spit runs out of your mouth, dripping down your chin and trickling onto your neck.

“So cute.” His voice is syrupy sweet. He can play at authenticity, but never with you.

He kicks your thighs apart with his foot, nudging the tip of his boot between your legs. His eyebrows shoot up expectantly as he nods down at you.

“Go on, then.”

Disgust is an old friend. She disappears for months at a time, only to show up unexpectedly as if no time has passed. She’s back again, turning your stomach around in her hands. You tilt your hips down. Rubbing yourself against the tip of his shoe, you wonder if he’s doing this for old times' sake.

Rocking forward, you imagine a glossy magazine cover. You could see him on the cover of one. He does have the face for it, when he bothers to put it on.

Bored? 50 Ways to Keep the Spark Alive!

Your jaw is beginning to ache. Bo's hand strokes softly at the top of your head. You hate that the pressure against your clit almost feels good. Your mind unhelpfully supplies more article titles, bubbling up in your mind in obnoxiously curly lettering.

10 Mouth Exercises For The Modern Woman. Have You Tried Screaming? It’s All The Rage in This Town. Once You Start, You Won’t Want to STOP!

“That’s it.” He grins. “What a little slut.”

You look up at him pleadingly, another dribble of spit running down your chin.

“Always got told ya’ shouldn’t let dogs up on the bed.” He muses, the amusement plain in his voice. “But you been on your best behavior, huh?”

Last week, you fell asleep on the couch. You woke up somewhere else.

It was dark and you were pressed against something warm. Not the dog, not the light. Those were both gone. His jacket hanging off the side of the couch, maybe. But it was moving now, and so were you.

“Gotta getcha to bed.” He’d muttered, carrying you up the stairs.

You lay across Bo's lap, the side of your cheek against the dirty mattress. You shudder, your legs shaking.

“Pretty girl.” Reaching over, he tugs you up by the leash, forcing your head back.

Every breath you take seems to make your muscles clench around the plug in your ass. He works it in and out of you slowly and you gulp, shallow breaths whistling out of your nostrils. Every time you jolt forward you can feel him press against you, hard against your belly.

“Hey. What’s wrong, baby? That hurt?”

You nod frantically.

“Huh. Funny…'cuz I don't think it does. You wanna know how I know?” You feel him spread you open, fingers dipping into your pussy. “You’re wet for it, baby.”

He pushes the plug deeper, and your head spins at the sensation. A warbling moan pitches out of your mouth as you feel it sink fully into you. You shiver uncontrollably, whimpering around the gag. Saliva gathers on your tongue, and you feel it spill out of the side of your mouth, pooling under your cheek.

“Good.” He rumbles out, stroking his knuckles along your back. “That’s my good girl.”

You squeeze your eyes shut when you feel him nudge something between your legs. With a click, the vibrator buzzes to life. You let out a startled cry as he strokes it along your pussy.

“It’s nice, huh?” He chuckles. “Don’tchu act like I never gave you anything.”

The vibrator teases against your clit in short bursts, pressing down just long enough to leave you panting before he pulls it away. Almost enough, not quite. You arch back uselessly, chasing after that glittery warm sensation. He laughs a bit, holding the vibrator just above your clit.

You can feel the edge of pleasure, but it’s nothing more than a distant dull thrum. He keeps you hovering over it for what feels like forever, squirming over a feeling that’s hardly there. You bite down on the gag, your sob watery and muffled around the rubber.

“This body’s all mine, girl.” He murmurs, running his thumb down your spine. “I ain’t gotta make it feel good.”

With a hum, he rests the vibrator fully onto your clit. The sensation you’ve been chasing envelopes you, shimmering through your core. Nasally, high-pitched whines escape you in quick, desperate succession.

“But I do, don’t I? ‘Cuz I’m just so sweet.”

You open your eyes, staring up at him in bleary gratitude. He presses down on the plug. The discomfort has crested over and all you feel now is loose and pliant. You moan around the gag, your eyes fluttering.

“You like having somethin’ in your ass while I play with this pussy?”

And you nod, humming out your agreement.

“Mmm-hmm? Yeah?” He teases, mimicking your garbled reply. "That's good, baby. That's real good. Reckoned I’d fuck your ass today, but that pussy’s gettin’ nice and wet for me. Whatchu think? Which hole you want fucked?”

You mumble incoherently through the gag.

“All of ‘em?” He exclaims, the grin evident in his voice. “Well, ain’t that real sweet. Good answer, baby.”

He keeps talking, but it’s getting harder to focus on what he’s saying.

“Next crew that comes through here—maybe I’ll tell ‘em I got a slut who needs breakin’ in. You spread those legs so nice, sure you’d fuckin’ love it.”

The image flashes through your mind. Hands everywhere, laughter and heat and friction from a kaleidoscope of people destined for death. You’re in the middle of all of those faceless people—a tribute to be used up, one last meal for a parade of living corpses.

You’re all destined for the same end, but theirs is closer than they know. Yours is prolonged, tied around touches and salt.

Bo would be in the corner, lighting another cigarette—watching, because he’s always watching. Mouth twitching into a smile because he’s right again. You’re exactly what he thinks you are. You’ll keep your eyes on him because you can’t look at anyone else. After all, if it isn’t his hands, could you even feel it? Would it even count?

The panic is sudden and hot, twisting inside your chest. A desperate little whine builds at the back of your throat.

If I’m everybody else's, I can’t be yours.

“I’d have a hard time sharin’, though.”

Relief. The vibrator pulses against your clit and your eyes go unfocused.

“’S funny. Gotchu down here—and nobody knows.”

Between your legs, your pussy feels pathetically wet, sloppily sliding along the vibrator. You almost wish he’d keep you like this forever, jolts of pleasure lapping hungrily between your legs.

“If there’s even anybody out there lookin’ for ya’…” He muses. “Wish they could see ya’ now, huh? Don’t think they’d feel bad for you, baby.”

Pleasure rolls dizzily through you, electric licks of sensation as he rubs the vibrator against your clit. The rubber in your mouth is an anchor, it feels good on your teeth.

“Betchu thought you were really somethin’ out there.” He chuckles. “How’s it feel to find out you ain’t? Feels good, don’t it?”

You open your eyes and nod up at him, panting out your agreement. Through the haze, you see him smirk. It’s a cruel, cold thing. You’re all full and useless, but he doesn’t need you to say it, because he knows. Thoughtlessly, you shift in his lap, trying desperately to spread your legs wider for him.

“Nothin’ but a little fucktoy.” He coos. “That’s all you are, baby. Want you to remember that.”

He doesn’t need to worry. You remember everything, except what counts.

“Good girls cum, baby. They can’t help it.”

You’re hurtling higher and higher, the pleasure battering against your brain. That’s where the memories are, where the time used to be. It feels better to fill it with this. But then again, you’ve known that from the start.

“Go on, baby. Cum all pretty for me, yeah?”

And you do, a million times over.

He keeps the vibrator pressed firmly against your clit as you tense up, your hands clenching into tight fists behind your back. Your orgasm is a bone-deep shiver, wracking your legs with uncontrollable chills. The pleasure throttles through the last of your coherency, prizing a desperate noise from your throat. Maybe it’s a word. It might be his name. It might just be the time. Maybe this is how you find it again.

The buzz of the vibrator goes dim and far away as he holds it against you. You’re twitching somewhere above it. Each involuntary movement you make brings with it a new hiccup of sensation. Around you, the room seems to spin—whirling into a terrific blur of green and yellow.

It can be beautiful down here, if you squint.

When he lifts the vibrator off your clit, you pitch forward, warbling out a dizzy laugh behind the gag. You wait for the sound of the wand powering off. It doesn't come. Behind you, the buzzing is a low, incessant drone. You’ve barely managed to ground yourself when you hear it kick up a notch.

Click.

The sheets smell like all the thousand versions of you, each one answering questions she shouldn’t. Four walls surround you and they feel like they’re collapsing down on all sides. They could be made of plaster or stone, but they might just be something else. Your limbs, your heart, your mind, him. Separate appendages, but all linked. All part of the same crumbling structure.

A scream builds at the back of your throat as you feel him set it back on your clit.

“We ain’t done, baby.”

Your sleep is deep. Quiet. Only one dream.

Bo’s sitting on the edge of the bed, an inky blot in the gray morning light. He makes a move to stand up and you grab onto his arm.

“Go back to bed, angel.” He murmurs.

It almost sounds real enough.

When you wake up, you're alone. You try the door and find it unlocked.

Figures.

Upstairs, the shop is empty. There’s a can of unopened Coke on the counter. You crack it open and take a sip. Lukewarm bubbles of carbonation fizz over your tongue. God, he really was shit with gifts.

Walking up the hill, you catch your reflection in the window of a sedan. You look haggard, your hair a raggedy clump around your shoulders. You try the handle and it cracks open easily. Crawling into the dirty belly of the car, you wince as you lower yourself down into the seat. You sit with one leg dangling out, absentmindedly studying the dusty speedometer.

There are cars in other towns, parked on different streets. There are places without dust. There are always other futures. Sometimes you turn down the wrong road, and sometimes you die. Sometimes you don’t.

That’s just the way these things go.

You imagine the town collapsing in on itself like a pop-up book. There’s Bo, frowning down at it. He seemed like he’d been the type of kid that wasn’t allowed to check those kinds of things out from the library. He’d bring them back with pages ripped out, scrawled with pen marks. Pilled white card stock where faces used to be.

God, you’re miserably sore. It’s impossible to narrow down the ache to a certain part of you.

Lifting your leg into the car, you pull the door shut. The dust inside tickles your nose. Unthinkingly, you reach up, your fingers brushing against the metal buckle of the seatbelt. The sting is sharp and immediate. You pull your hand away with a hiss, your hand smarting. When you reach for the seatbelt again, you’re careful to avoid the clip.

You buckle yourself in. Click. Alive again, now more than ever. Wrapping your hands around the steering wheel, you close your eyes. The leather is hot against your palms, and it hurts a bit. Just a little. That’s just the pain again, but you don’t really mind. It’s something you can keep. It’s all yours.

Nothin’ you can’t handle, girl.

That’s what he said last night. Afterwards.

You were laying with your head in his lap, the itchy crust of dried spit against your cheek. It was then that you decided that you were so ugly that you had to be beautiful. You had to be worth looking at. You’d rolled over on your back, looking up at him through swollen eyes. That’s when he said it, so low and quiet that you almost didn’t register it. There’d been a an edge of pride to his voice.

Nothin’ at all.

A lick of pleasure thrums between your legs and your eyes flash open. You unbuckle the seatbelt and scramble out of the car, ignoring the pain that sings through your limbs.

Things like that? They always came with an or else tacked at the end. You remember that, don’t you? You couldn’t have forgotten.

Looming above you, the house is a dark blot of ink against the blue sky.

There were no collars for dogs in this town—they didn’t need them. They’d always find their way back home, pawing at the door for some scraps. The only leash is the one that exists in your mind. You can almost see it, trailing off your neck and up the hill, looped messily around the front doorknob.

You were going to die here with all that wetness between your legs, begging him to take out more of you with his teeth.

It's like he said.

You don’t need to tie up a dog if it loves you.

[nyxe9206]

When you catch him cheating

All character(s) are aged up to be in their 20′s and some scenarios are suggestive so 18+ MDNI. Nameless and ageless blogs will be blocked. I do not own these character(s) and all scenarios are just fiction and for fun. Please do not copy my works or repost without either asking or giving credit.

CW: angst, cheating, piv sex, fem!reader, fighting, non-curse!au

WC: 846

You never thought it would happen, in all the years you spent together this was not how you thought things would go. He told you he was going out with the guys but here he is right in front of you at the party he said he didn’t want to go to. You watch as the girl giggles at him, her hand on his shoulder as he cages her against the wall with one hand smiling. You get closer but before you can confront him he takes her hand leading her up the stairs. You follow them as they go into one of the empty rooms in the frat house and listen to them from behind the closed door.

“Don’t you have a girlfriend, what if she finds out?”

“What girlfriend, all I care about is you pretty girl, she doesn’t mean anything to me.”

Your eyes sting with tears as you hear his words, still you press your ear closer to the door listening to the sounds of their soft breaths and pants. You don’t know how long you stand there torturing yourself listening to their moans and the sound of skin on skin.

“Oh fuck… Toge you’re so big… gonna make me cum~”

“Go ahead… fuck your pussy’s so tight, so much better. Cum on my dick princess gonna feel so fucking good~”

Your mind goes blank, anger and sadness weighing heavy on your tongue as you slowly back away from the door leaning on the opposite wall for support, your heart shattering. You come to your senses when you hear the door open, you look up and see the purple eyes that you fell in love with.

“Y/n…what are you doing here?” He sounds breathless as he speaks to you, the girl coming out from behind him, her smile falling as she realizes what’s going on.

“Yeah, so I’m gonna leave you were a nice lay though.” Her voice breaks your heart even more when you realize she didn’t even really want him.

Toge looks between you both, his mouth falling open as he doesn’t know who to respond to first but ultimately chooses you as the girl leaves.

“I can’t believe you…How could you?” Your tears fall faster as you speak feeling the venom in your words

“Baby, baby no look I-”

You cut him off not wanting to hear his excuses. “Don’t fucking call me that, I heard everything Toge…I mean nothing to you?”

“Baby, o-of course you do..” His eyes are teary as he realizes he was caught, there was nothing he could do or say that would make you feel better. Nothing could take away the feeling of a gapping hole in your chest.

“No I don’t clearly, what the fuck are you even doing here, you said you didn’t even want to come.” Your voice betrays the want to not show him you’re broken, the wavering in your words as you speak is evident.

“I didn’t but the guys-” you cut him off already knowing he’s lying.

“They’re not even here, not a single one of them so why are you!” You raise your voice, your scream is deafening in the quiet of the hallway

Toge looks down like he’s ashamed clenching his fists as he tries to keep calm. “She invited me, Aurelia asked me to come with her and I thought you were going to stay home so I said yes. I didn’t even see the guys tonight.” Your breath gets stolen at his admission, you lean against the wall as you try to take everything in but only one question comes to mind.

“How long?”

“Baby she means nothing t-”

“How long Toge!” at this point you were a wreck, you couldn’t stop the tears from falling down your cheeks or the way your chest stuttered as you cried.

“Six months…” His voice is low and he can’t seem to look you in the eyes anymore.

“Six fucking months…you cheated on me for six months and now you’re acting like you did nothing wrong!”

“No of course not, baby just listen to me…” You hang your head taking a deep breath trying to calm your anger.

“No, I’m fucking done Toge- we’re done do you hear me? I don’t ever want to see your fucking face!” You storm out of the frat house and get into you car all the while Toge chases after you calling your name.

You drive home slamming your apartment door shut as you angrily take whatever he has there and throw them in a box. You look at all the pictures on your walls of the two of you together and feel disgusted wanting to shatter them on the floor. Everything that you thought you knew shatters inside you, the bed you once shared becoming an eye sore as you move to sleep on the couch. Nothing will ever be the same, you will never be the same and even though it breaks your heart you wish he was there to comfort you all the same.

[veroniquesboutique]

Kinkvember Day 23 - Exhibitionism / Uniform

For Kinkvember day 23!

Neji Hyuga x AFAB!Reader

Content warnings: AFAB!reader, female reader, age gap, power difference, exhibitionism, hate sex, public sex, f-masturbation, PV sex, unprotected, facial, degradation/fighting, brat taming, pet names (darling, good girl), asshole!Neji, bratty!reader

18+ Minors DNI!

More under the cut

The only benefits to working under Neji Hyuga on these long-term missions are his byakugan doing most of the hard work for you and how unfairly mouth-watering he looks in his uniform. Other than that, he was a total asshole that you hated working with. 

“We’re all clear,” His stern voice breaks through your thoughts, and you shake out your head to bring yourself back to the moment. He’s looking at you with his eyebrows high up on his forehead, which means he’s probably tried to get your attention a few times, and you’ve been ignoring him in favor of begging the universe to hasten this mission towards it’s end. 

“Great,” You mutter, rolling your eyes a little and settling onto the ground to wait for the other two on your team to catch up from their own first task. 

“We have to keep going,” He crosses his arms, staring down at you on the ground, and you wish your mouth didn’t dry out at the feeling of him towering over you, at the feeling of staring up at him through your long eyelashes. He’s stupid and mean, but unfortunately the butterflies in your stomach only care that he’s hot.

“We should wait for the others to get back,” You throw out at him, checking your nails to avoid looking up at him. 

“We are losing time if we don’t go now.”

“It’s safer to move as a group.”

He shoots his glare back down at you, his mouth pressed into a line to give you the time to reconsider your tone. You, of course, don’t. 

“Why do you choose to do nothing but undermine me?” He asks, taking a step closer in an attempt to coerce compliance out of you. “I am your superior; you listen to me.”

“I do other things too. Like sit here and wait for you to need my help. It’s not my fault you always have it under control.” You lean back on your hands to give yourself space from his oppressive aura. “And superior is really bold when I’m literally older than you-”

“-And I’m literally in charge right now! I’m the highest rank shinobi-” His resolve breaks for a moment, and he snaps for just a few words before he sucks in a breath and irons himself out again. You smirk, knowing that you’ve gotten under his skin, even if it’s only a little bit. He shakes the tight anger down his body. “-on this mission,” He finishes his thought with a much tighter and controlled voice, “So, it is your obligation to follow commands from your superior.”

“I’m not getting up until the others get back.” You put you own foot down.

“Then I will leave you here.”

“Ah, yes brilliant idea, captain. That way you can go off without any backup, I can be left here helpless and alone, and the other two have no idea how to find either of us. Really impeccable leading here.” You roll your eyes, and there’s a moment where you feel a little bit of guilt deep in your stomach, but the Hokage has paired you with Neji on missions more times than you can count now to help you “see what each other brings to the table”, and every time he’s all mighty on his high horse, drunk on power, bossing you around even though you graduated years before him. If he would just watch his tone when he gave you orders, sounding a little less like he thinks he’s better and smarter than you, then you’d listen to him. If he maybe considered your ideas with little more than an eye roll, then you’d listen to him. If he would just treat you like an equal shinobi and not one of the kids in training, then you’d listen to him.

But he doesn’t, so you don’t.

“You petulant child-”

“-Child, are you joking-” You scoff, flabbergasted.

“-Yes, child because all you do is act like a child. I have half a right mind to report you to the Hokage and have you stripped of your title, but I am not fully convinced that that’s not what you want considering the way you treat me. You have never once been helpful on a mission, only a burden. Pull your weight and listen for once,” He snaps at you, reprimanding you like a disappointed and overwhelmed father, and you narrow your eyes as his words fall from his lips and hit you like little stings all over your body. He lets it hang in the air, and you can tell by the smug look on his face that he thinks his won. You fucking hate it when he thinks he’s won.

“Make me.”

Continued on AO3...

[everydayyoulovemeless]

Can I request the Butch NSFW alphabet? 🥺👉👈 I love your headcanons!

Butch NSFW Alphabet

➼ Word Count » 1.2k ➼ Warnings » Knife Play, Age Gaps, Threesome? ➼ Genre » NSFW, Romantic ➼ A/N » Here you go, dearie <3

A - Aftercare (what they're like after sex)

He’s really talkative after sex. He’s young and isn’t that sure what he’s expected to do after you’re done, so he just throws a blanket around the two of you and whispers about this cool feature he just added to his knife.

B - Body part (their favorite body part of theirs and also their partner’s)

Tiddies. Doesn't matter if you're a man or a women, Butch loves tits. His favorite part of himself is his hair, no doubt. He spends so much time on it, how could it not be his favorite?

C - Cum (anything to do with cum, basically)

He likes to cum on your face. There's a part of him that still likes to see you humiliated, and having you covered in his seed fulfills that carnal desire inside of him. Even if it's not necessarily humiliating for you.

D - Dirty secret (pretty self-explanatory, a dirty secret of theirs)

He's got a thing for older girls. He gets so turned on at the thought of an experienced woman "taking care" of him. He usually likes being on top, but if he spots a milf, he won't be as picky about where she wants him.

E - Experience (how experienced are they? do they know what they’re doing?)

He's got none. There weren't that many people in the vault growing up, so his options were pretty limited. That being said, he finds it ironic he ended up with you. Sex will be an experience for both of you.

F - Favorite position (this goes without saying)

Any position works for him, but missionary is his favorite. He likes being able to have access to your face and throat. Makes sex all the more fun for him.

G - Goofy (are they more serious in the moment? are they humorous? etc.)

He alternates between the two moods faster than a nuke could wipe you out. One second, he's got his knife pressed close against your throat, and the next, he's giggling in your ear about how he wouldn't actually try to hurt you.

H - Hair (how well groomed are they? does the carpet match the drapes? etc.)

I mean, he doesn't really do much with it, he just lets it do whatever it wants. If you asked him, he'd try to cut it, but it's probably safer to just leave it be.

I - Intimacy (how are they during the moment? the romantic aspect)

Butch isn't a romantic guy by any means. He likes to keep things as straightforward and simple as he can. The most romantic you're getting out of him is a trip to the bar. He's no different at the moment either. He always makes it light-hearted and fun, nothing serious or gushy.

J - Jack Off (masturbation headcanon)

He's a 19-year-old boy. He's jacked himself off once a day, or a few times a week at the very least.

K - Kink (one or more of their kinks)

Knife Play, Dommy Mommy's, Public Sex, Humiliation, Sadist/Masochist, and Threesomes.

L - Location (favorite places to do the do)

He could not care less where it happened. If you're asking him to do it, he will never be one to say no. Do it in a super mutant base for all he cares, as long as he gets to hit.

M - Motivation (what turns them on, gets them going)

Literally everything. There's not a single thing that could turn him off. He's the horniest guy in the Capital Wasteland.

N - No (something they wouldn’t do, turn offs)

You'd have to be a cannibal for him to not wanna smash. There's nothing that really turns him off. If you're willing to sleep with him, he's willing to provide.

O - Oral (preference in giving or receiving, skill, etc.)

Receiving. He's got no clue how to give head, and he would hate it if he embarrassed himself. Getting the blowjob is easier than giving it, he thinks, and he wants to look like he's experienced and knows what he's doing.

P - Pace (are they fast and rough? slow and sensual? etc.)

Once he sticks his cock in you, it's like he loses all control. He'll pound himself into you quickly and roughly. He's like a dog in heat just looking for that sweet release.

Q - Quickie (their opinions on quickies, how often, etc.)

He would honestly be so ecstatic if you told him you wanted one. What teen wouldn't agree? With how nicely you asked him? And how tempting the offer is? Give him a timeframe and he'll be done before then, promise.

R - Risk (are they game to experiment? do they take risks? etc.)

Butch is game for just about anything. You want him to injure you a little? Sure, he'll do it. You wanna injure him? He doesn't mind. Or if you want to try something specific to you're fantasies, just talk to him about them and he'll agree to test them out with you.

S - Stamina (how many rounds can they go for? how long do they last?)

One, sometimes two. He's a bit sensitive, so one is usually where he stops at. I'm not gonna lie, Butch doesn't last that long in bed. But he tries to make up for it using other methods.

T - Toys (do they own toys? do they use them? on a partner or themselves?)

He prefers not to. He thinks they look and feel weird and would much rather just do it the old-fashioned way than stick anything artificial inside of you.

U - Unfair (how much they like to tease)

My man is constantly teasing you. He never quits. He'll wrap his hand around your throat and ask you to beg him, or coo at the faces you're making for him. Even outside of sex, he'll tease you. He likes to hold things above your head and have you try and jump for them sometimes.

V - Volume (how loud they are, what sounds they make, etc.)

Butch is actually pretty loud at the moment. He either lets out the most guttural groans or talks to you the entire time. It's a shame he's into public sex because he just can't keep quiet.

W - Wild card (a random headcanon for the character)

He'll ask you for a threesome at some point in your relationship. You can pick who the third party is, he just really wants to say he's done it.

X - X-ray (let’s see what’s going on under those clothes)

5 inches and moderately thick. He's average, but his fingers make up for it.

Y - Yearning (how high is their sex drive?)

He's a teenager. It's high.

Z -Zzz (how quickly they fall asleep afterwards)

He can't ever find it in him to fall asleep after sex. He just wants to stay up with you and mutter back in forth. He doesn't care what it is you talk about, as long as he can listen to you, he's happy.

[jess-the-vampire]

Wanna add more insight as to why people are as bothered by not revealing the wittebane story more from a fan perspective, i’ve already talked about why it bothers people in regards to belos’s character, but here’s partially why i think fans feel the sense of lacking they do:

I think what especially bothers people about not getting the complete answers on the caleb/evelyn/philip story is compared to other stories within the series, this one not being explained is a big outlier, because the show is actually decent at setting up stuff that they’ll answer afterwards.

Hollow Mind works as well as it does because all of the reveals in it are stuff you could of figured out beforehand due to all the clues being thrown around, there are hints to the grimwalkers, to caleb and evelyn, to flapjack being caleb’s, it rewards the viewers for paying attention to the stuff they were showing us.

Like “Here’s an open grimwalker page” and “Here’s the statues, doesn’t the faces on them look familiar?”

But then they still dangle some key elements, leaving some for later after hollow mind. No full answers to the door, what exactly happened between caleb and philip during the fight, ect ect

Which is fine, because you expect answers later.

And this continues with a lot of the other mysteries too, collector’s backstory gets foreshadowing before it’s reveal, lilith cursing eda has foreshadowing before it’s reveal, even manny having passed away is something you might pick up on before we’re told.

The show is actively showing you evidence and then rewarding you for paying attention by giving answers to the setups without many loose threads.

the show loves to show you the audience “Hey look at this thing, this will be important later”, and then have to come back with the answers it promised.

Though the show was cut, so not everything it wanted to resolve was, the story of evelyn, caleb and philip kept going post cut and kept ramping up, most of s2b involves caleb hints in every single episode.

And when you are making him sound important and then then continuing to make him and evelyn both relevant in s3, the audience is waiting for the promised reward for putting all the pieces together, and then...nothing happens.

the show asks you to pay attention to the door eda finds with a scratch on it, to the tale of the brothers, to the ghost of caleb, to flapjack knowing caleb and knowing about the blood, and there’s no answers to most of it.

You can’t even say most of the stuff missing were small either, like we don’t need the holes in collector’s story answered too much, but there’s almost too much in the wittebane story to really breeze over.

When jacob shows you a picture of a burning building and says “Tragedy struck” before explaining the brothers were lost, you think “Oh, i can't wait to understand what this means”....and to this day we don’t have any idea what that tragedy was.

Why was evelyn on earth? no clue. Was caleb even planning to see philip again? no idea. Why didn’t the door work for luz who used philip’s notes correctly and completely? who knows.

Like there are things brought up, that not even small details in the show can answer,

There could be something really neat about having this whole story in the bg that fans figure out mind you, the problem is there’s too many large gaps that can’t really be filled in by what we get.

So while you can pick up on a lot and put a lot together from what we get, there’s still not enough, heck, people who have looked into this lore still have very different ideas on a lot of stuff because the gaps are so wide.

And while the show was cut, it also put most of this out there, after the cut, we know this because the cut happened during ER and collector was added post cut, so KKKOHD was a point where we can confirm everything was being written with the cut in mind.

So a lot of this stuff about the wittebanes being implied, was written to fans to notice and draw their attention to, while not planning to fully answer it seems.

The ghost haunting the narrative is a neat idea, but it feels less like ghosts and more like half finished set ups.

I think manny works better as a ghost in the narrative because there’s no gaps with him, you get everything you need to understand what he means to the characters and story and there’s no lingering mysteries about him, At best you can just pick out stuff about him from the bg which are more like bonus stuff then anything. There’s no expectations that we’ll meet him or see him, or that we need more then we get.

They set him him up, and they pay him off in the story, we get what we need and we don’t need more.

While with evelyn and caleb, while they do haunt the story and everything ties back to them, not only does the show leave so much about them in the dark that the only reason people figure this out is through theories and going online for the information, but even the show won’t acknowledge how important they are to the main story, they’re almost treated as if their story doesn’t matter to the main one even tho the main story wouldn’t have happened without theirs.

When philip’s reasons for his actions are explained, we aren’t even told caleb had anything to do with it, or even evelyn for that matter. You almost don’t even need caleb or evelyn in the story at all for most of the plot to happen given the show ends almost acting like they meant nothing in regards to what happens.

it’s even more unusual because the main characters never mention them either, gus knows the story more because he saw philip’s memories but he never mentions anything about what he saw outside of the grimwalker thing.

You would kinda think seeing the memories would imply gus could tell hunter who caleb was, which given hunter was worried about that would kinda be important, but it never comes up.

The kids are told about caleb, told about evelyn, but they never talk about it or bring it up. Hunter sees his own palisman be recognized by philip, that it was aware of the rebus, which he finds out later was caleb and evelyn’s, but again....has nothing much to say about his own ortet knowing flap at all.

it is as if the show is going out of it’s way to have the main cast ignore them, even tho there’s no reason why they should, especially not hunter or gus.

again, there is a lot to wrap up, and tbh even i doubted they would explain everything about this, but given they gave it the time they did, even despite the cut, it’s more baffling the show ended almost making it out to be irrelevant.

even if they couldn’t explain everything, we still needed something 

because as is, it almost feels like a waste of time to even focus on that story at all.

and even if we do get a spinoff for this, this was written with the idea the show would not get one, so it ended expecting what we were given to be good enough for fans.

And for some, it was.

But in a show where it went out of it’s way to set up a lot of stuff it paid off, to keep setting up stuff for this particular plot and leave with very little actually answered is something people are gonna find frustrating.

They clearly wanted people to care, to want answers, and then didn’t even give them anything and then kinda told them it wasn’t even relevant to the main story or to the cast at all.

it sorta leaves people wondering why they were told to be invested in the first place.

[thefreaksrunthisshow]

Fantasy

Summary: Joel can’t get enough of you and then you show up at his door one evening. Too bad he quickly realizes that this is a fantasy he can’t indulge in.

Pairing: dbf! Joel x Fem reader

Warning: 18+ Only, SMUT, Minors DNI!, No outbreak AU,  dad best friend Joel, dom Joel, age gap, fingering, masturbation, corruption kink, perv Joel makes another appearance, panty sniffing, some angst, if I missed anything let me know!

Word Count: 2,288

Part 1 of this series here (I’ve got at least one more part planned)

Masterlist

Frustration hovered over you like a storm cloud full to the brim of water. Dark clouds swarmed in your gut and you needed release. It was too bad the only thing able to quench your thirst was your dad's best friend — Joel Miller. Finding yourself falling for him was bittersweet like lemonade in a sickly twisted kind of way. It made you sick to your stomach, but you couldn’t get enough. Any sort of fling with him could only end badly and that knowledge only spurred you on.

The encounter with Joel had been on your mind all week. But too embarrassed to confront him you’d done your best to avoid him by leaving early for work and arriving home later. That’d done nothing to satiate the desire for him that kept growing. In fact, his absence only made the ache in between your legs worse and you’d screamed his name late at night too many times to count lately.

Now, he was done putting the new floor down in your living room and you wished he’d bent you over and fucked you roughly that day. He’d surely seemed to be enjoying himself, but then again, he hadn’t really touched you either. It was as if he was wrestling with his own desires and what he knew was right. Much like you had been doing for some time now, he was torn finding himself attracted to you.

—

Joel just couldn’t get enough of you no matter much he tried.

He was sure you’d been teasing him — taunting him — for years now with your fucking low-cut tops and shorts that showed the bottom of your ass cheeks poking through. He’d tried to keep his distance, but he couldn’t anymore. He wanted – no, he needed – to defile you. He had to absolutely ruin that pussy of yours. Walking without a limp the next day wouldn’t be possible once he was done with you. But that was the whole conundrum of it all. The fact of the matter was, he couldn’t have you no matter how much he wanted to. Having you meant ruining his relationship with his best friend. He wasn’t sure he was willing to take it that far yet, but he was tempted. Every day he felt himself being closer to saying to hell with it all and fucking you real good.

The addicting scent from your panties that he had stashed away, filled his nostrils. His face was buried in them while his hand furiously stroked his red and weeping cock. He had wanted to bend you over and take you right there in your dad's living room, your releases staining the subfloor as a permanent reminder of the twisted act you had committed together. A stain for the next home owners to find and wonder what had happened there when they decided to replace the floor. But then you had decided to test him and he was irritated that you had the audacity to disobey his orders. He was the one in control, not you. And he wanted to make sure you never forgot it.

His orgasm was fast approaching, he could feel it in his gut. It was so close that there was a screech on the tip of his tongue when his doorbell rang. His movements sped up and he stuffed the panties into his mouth to muffle his moans as he came all over himself. Panting and out of breath he tidied himself up and headed to the door hoping that the redness on his cheeks wasn’t noticeable and that the culprit was someone he could dismiss quickly. He was taken aback when he saw you standing there looking like a goddess in the glow of the streetlights.

“Hi, Mr. Miller,” you said in a squeak. “Can I come in?”

“Joel. Just Joel.”

“Fine, then. Joel, can I come in?” Fully prepared to bolt if he turned you away you rocked back and forth in your feet awaiting his response. Sure he would turn you down, you were a bit surprised at his reaction.

“Don’t know, honey… Can you?” he taunted, leaning up against the doorframe. “Why are you here anyway? It’s kinda late.”

“I’m an adult,” you huffed. “Plus it’s Friday night and I told my dad I’d be out with friends in the town over. Said I might even crash at their place.”

“And yet you’re here… with his best friend,” he said smugly, cocking his head to the side. “Lying to your dad now, eh? Naughty girl.”

“Shut it,” you huffed.

“Don’t,” he warned, his eyes darkening. “Watch yourself.”

Scared to fuck up and be sent away with your tail tucked between your legs, you apologized immediately. A sigh of relief was all you could muster when he accepted your apology but still, he didn’t let you inside. It was as if he were waiting for you to present him with something that would make his time spent with you worthwhile. Good thing you came prepared.

“May I come in now?” you offered, pulling a bottle of whiskey from behind your back.

“My favorite,” he noted, taking the bottle from you with a slight nod. “You didn’t answer my question. Why are you here, baby?”

You simply shrugged and walked past him, making yourself comfortable on the couch. “No, Sarah?”

He laughed and shook his head. After a few moments of mumbling and grumbling, you were able to discern enough to realize that Sarah was indeed not home. Turns out she was out of town with her long-term boyfriend on vacation. There would be no surprise appearances from her tonight. You suggested that you could watch a movie, and though rather hesitant Joel finally agreed. “Two glasses of whiskey coming up, but I’m picking the movie,” he insisted.

Settled down on the couch with Joel’s pick of a movie playing in the background, the two of you sat in comfortable silence, sipping on your whiskey. He’d picked a cheesy 80s horror film, one that really dated him but was bearable to watch at least. By the time the first victim had succumbed to the killer in the film, you were inching closer to him. One big jump scare later and you were cozied up next to him, your head buried into his shoulder and your legs intertwined with his. Your breath tickled his neck and he chuckled when you jumped, your body pressed impossibly close to his for comfort.

It was as if his body was made for yours the way the two of you leaned into each other. You felt safe with Joel, you knew that although he could be quite harsh, he’d never take things too far. Attentiveness was one of his strong points. He’d take care of you, however he saw fit but always keep an eye on you to ensure you were okay. You were perfectly fine with that. In fact, it made you giddy to see what he could get away with doing to you before you crumbled.

Soon enough, your hand found its way to his thigh, drawing circles there. His erection was an obvious bulge in his pants and you palmed it lightly a few times. He did nothing to stop you though you felt him tense up and let out a low groan at your touch. You squeezed it gently and felt it twitch in response to your attention.

“You ever touched one before?” he asked suddenly. The question threw you off guard and you stuttered out a response.

“N – Not really.”

“Only that fake one of yours, huh?” he teased, not taking his eyes off the movie.

“I have just not very much… Wait, how did you know about that?” You were stunned to hear such a suggestion come from Joel. There was no way he could have known about your secret special toy hidden away in your bathroom.

“I’ve got eyes and ears everywhere, honey,” he replied smoothly, shooting the rest of his whiskey back in one motion.

Silence followed his statement as you thought his words over. He’d definitely been in your room there’s no way he would have said such a thing otherwise. “Have you been snooping around in my room?” you whispered.

“What if I have? What’re gonna do about it, sweet thing?”

The thought of him in your room was enough to have your heart hammering in your chest. It was wrong — but it really got you going and you could feel the slickness that had been steadily gathering in your panties flowing faster. Just as you were considering excusing yourself to the bathroom to clean up the mess, he spoke again.

“Just an assumption, honey. Figured you probably had something hidden away. Most of us do.”

“You got something hidden for… Uh… you know?” you asked very hesitantly. It was odd to ask him such a question, but you really wanted to know.

“That I do,” he chuckled, thinking back to your pair of panties he’d just been using to get himself off with.

“What –” you started before he cut you off.

“Let’s just watch the movie, darlin’.”

—

Joel was having a hard time keeping himself together as the movie played in the background. The contact with your body pushed flushed against him made him feel like he might cum in his pants like a goddamn teenager. It was embarrassing, but it was also invigorating. It had been ages since he’d felt this young. You were certainly doing things to him that he had no control over and that was a bad thing. He’d always had very good self-control but with every second spent with you he could feel it all slip away into nothingness. How long could he keep this up before the beast inside of him took over? Would you enjoy seeing him take control of you? 

Beside him, you shuddered and he instinctively wrapped his arms around you. Were you scared? Were you cold? He reached behind him and pulled the blanket off the back of the couch, incasing you both in the warm wool. Fuck, if he were a teen right now he would have done the same thing to conceal the fact that his hand was inching closer up your thigh. Why did he have to hide? Between sneaking around and suppressing his feelings he was about to lose it. He needed a trip to the hospital, maybe he could find some help there for all the ways you were affecting him. It was like a sickness seeping through to his very soul.

“Joel?”

“Mhmm?” His hand had reached the hem of your skirt now and his fingertips were ghosting under it.

“Can we talk about the other day?” His hand paused on your thigh, then he resumed his exploration, creeping up a bit more until he was so close to your cunt you could scream. The anticipation was killing you.

“No,” he said sternly, his eyes darkening.

“But –”

“I said no,” he repeated. Typical Joel.

The movie was nearing the end when you felt Joel finally push your panties to the side. You sucked in a deep breath at the contact of his calloused fingers on your clit. Even though he was barely grazing through your folds, it was enough to have you trembling under his touch. He circled around your clit and you gasped as your cunt clenched around absolutely nothing. It was a bit embarrassing how fast you were approaching your climax. He’d barely touched you yet.

“Fuck,” he muttered as he inched one finger into your hole followed by another. Shaking you grabbed onto him and buried your face into his neck. “So fucking tight… You close already?”

Unable to speak you let out a breathy sigh and a nod in response. Your cheeks burned. You had been fingered before, but not like this. Joel had way more experience than anyone you’d been with previously and it showed. He was already reading your body like a book.

“That’s it,” he coaxed, finding that perfect spot inside that set-off fireworks behind your shut eyes. “Cum for me,” he commanded.

You screeched as he started pumping his fingers into you relentlessly. It felt so good but there was also an odd sting to it that you ignored. You were close, so fucking close and then his phone rang ending your bliss abruptly. Joel slowed his movements and leaned over to grab it. With wide eyes, he held up the phone so you could see the contact name. It was your dad.

“Be quiet,” he commanded before answering the phone. “Yeah?” He knew he sounded a bit out of breath, but he did his best to keep it steady. He talked on the phone for a few minutes. Well, he mostly listened as your dad rambled. Eventually, he made up an excuse that he was tired and would call him back tomorrow. He ended the call with an aggravated sigh.

“What did he want?” you asked.

“Doesn’t matter,” he shrugged. “But, I think you should leave,” he said sternly, wiping his fingers on the blanket. Talk about grand intervention. Your dad just had to call right now, didn’t he? He was about to bring you to the edge and help you through it, but then reality crashed around him. This couldn’t happen. It was barely legal, right? It definitely was wrong by any normal moral standard. This wasn’t something he could indulge in. It needed to remain just that — a fantasy. “Go. You don’t need to be here. I’m – this is trouble. We can’t do this.”

You sat in silence and cried the whole drive home.

[sleeplesssmoll]

Honestly, I’m starting to wonder if Sonetto rejecting Vertin’s gifts didn’t affect her a ton. Like, obviously it did, but I mean in a lasting way. Their dynamic changed completely, from Vertin constantly seeking out Sonetto to Sonetto constantly wanting to spend more time with Vertin.

Obviously, Vertin doesn’t reject her, but she doesn’t actively reach out anymore… Could she still be hurt by Sonetto’s rejection, and too scared of it happening again to try again? Or worried that despite Sonetto’s change of attitude, she would still choose her loyalty to the Foundation over everything else?

And I wonder how much of this is an organic development, VS the writers working within the specific constraints of a mobile game story. They can’t do anything that would change their dynamic too drastically for a ton of reasons: it could make Sonetto’s voicelines obsolete, confuse new players checking out new events without past context, upset the playerbase (if they prefer other Vertin ships)… It’s possible they’re saving any major developments for future main story chapters too, leaving Vertin and Sonetto in a status quo for the moment. Or maybe Sonetto’s crush is truly one-sided and I’m coping hard.

Aaah I’m just starving for Vertin and Sonetto content that focuses more on Vertin’s perspective. Sonetto’s side is so obvious, but Vertin’s is kind of a mystery to me. Sorry for rambling in your ask box, I hope this gives you some food for thought at least.

I won't turn down a free meal so no need to be sorry 😎

When it comes to shipping culture, shippers are going to sail no matter how strong the current is. Unless the fans get toxic and we have another Voltron on our hands (it's better if you don't know).

I understand your frustration. It's really the large gaps in their childhood that make this so hard to figure out. Why is Sonetto suffering from puppy love? We see Vertin is comfortable teasing her too so they are closer but how did we get here?

Something is missing.

Also, I wouldn't say that Vertin isn't reaching out to her, but rather she changed the way she interacts with everyone.

Smoltin: Look at what I found!

Vertin: Are you interested in___?

Vertin treats most of the people she meets like this. What are your motives? Dreams? Wishes? What do you want to do? And then she acts accordingly.

With Regulus, it was freedom.

With Druvis, it was a moving forward to a new future.

With Schneieder it was a shelter.

Even when fighting her enemies, she reaches out offering what she can and tells them she can be what they need if they come with her. Vertin isn't lying either, unlike Manus or the Foundation. She reveals her limitations as well as what she can do for you. If you played through Green Lake, you'd have the perfect example of this but the previous chapters do a great job establishing this too.

Present day Sonetto expressed a desire to see the world. (Also she likes riding stuff like trains and buses. Vertin should take her on a hayride during pumpkin season. She'd love it. ) ANYWAY, Vertin spends more time asking what other people want to do than bringing up her own story.

And that could be because she's seen the end of so many stories cut short by the Storm. She has changed.

This is also why it's hard to pinpoint what love is for Vertin. She's the one giving most of the time but we don't know what she wants aside from the truth and peace. You could say she needs a place to belong, but that could extend to everyone in her Suitcase living under her protection and protecting her in return (found family is best family).

So what can a “lover” give Vertin anyway? What is it that Vertin wants? What does she need? (No one say milf if I hear one more mother joke I'll eat my phone.)

I have a hot take. If nothing about this girl I is conventional, then I don't think her love life would be either if she had one. But…I have no idea what that would look like.

Notice how you asked about wanting to see into Vertin’s head and I made it more confusing. This ended up with more questions. 😅

But if can find Vertin's "void", we can figure out how she works in a dynamic with other characters and what they provide to fill it. In this case, what is it Sonetto does for Vertin?

[fountainpenguin]

"I've got to be where my spirit can run free... Got to find my corner of the sky~!" (x)

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New Dog's Life chapter today! ~ 3rd Life series fan-season

Chapter 12 - “Intermission Boogie”

Read on AO3

Start from Chapter 1

More Pixels Imperfect fics

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The days between Sessions 1 and 2 trickle by… Sniff searches for his place in the world and has a run-in with Scar. Grian takes a look at Impulse's code. Meanwhile, Cleo and Martyn get into trouble and Bdubs helps Scott investigate the anarchy breach.

(First 1,000 words under the cut)

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🌓 🖤 🖤

Tuesday

SnifferMyFeet

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Etho's Void-black room is a lot more fun without Etho in it, until it's not. Pause and Beef both went offline. Nobody's here to tell him what to do. Sniff bounces on Etho's bed, slapping the ceiling on every jump. He tries to do a backflip, but… too scared. He gets too close to landing funny on his neck and stops bouncing after that.

My gods, it's so dark in here…

The room feels like an open night sky. Sniff tests his weight against the mattress, bouncing just a little, and watches the glowing glitter up and down his arms. He's leaking… but the little sparks he's producing are drifting upwards, against gravity. Is that Etho? Is Etho the sparks? Where do they go? Sniff tries to follow them, but they twinkle and dissipate in the air. He pats his head, ruffling his hair, and checks the mirror hanging on the back of Etho's bedroom door. Huh. Yeah, his hair's leaking glittery bits too.

I guess this makes sense? When I ate his soul, he didn't really go down my throat. He kind of melted in my mouth and blended with my gums… Well, maybe just a little of my throat. But he didn't make it to my stomach. So if he didn't get digested like meat or bread, I guess this is how he leaves my system? Etho's mind may be unconscious, but the particles of light that form his body seem to be escaping through tiny gaps between Sniff's pixels. That's his current theory, anyway.

Okay… That checks out, actually. That goes along with what Grian said about getting cycled into the system faster if Martyn eats you than if Bdubs does. Bdubs eats more, so it probably takes a lot longer for everyone to sneak out again.

Huh. Sniff flaps his arms, trying to shake Etho's particles out faster, but that actually stops him from glittering for a hot second. It's a couple minutes before the sparkles start up again. Oops. Maybe all that shaking made whatever's left of Etho's consciousness kinda dizzy. Sorry, soulmate. Boat Boys for life.

Then he smacks himself across the cheek. What am I saying? Etho was Joel's soulmate. Not mine. Boat Boys are dead in the water anyway. They don't matter. Etho yanked him into Between to do one job and that's it. He doesn't care. There's probably something going on with Bdubs or the real Joel or Beef or Pause or Cleo anyway. He told me himself he was only cuddling up because he's greedy and touch-starved. My gods, Sniff… Get over him. Boat Boys are over and he was never yours anyway, so treat him like an ex. You've got Pig now. It's time to move on.

Etho snuffed the lanterns out before bed. Try as he might, Sniff can't find a proper lighter. He checks every kitchen drawer and even some in the front room, but nothing. Etho's lack of interest in knick-knacks, apparently, extends to the entire bleedin' flat. And there's no blimmin' coal around either, so he can't craft any torches. Absolute disappointment. He slams the last drawer shut in a huff, then flops against the counter.

I'm so bored…

Which is maybe a bit pathetic, actually. Sniff rolls over, sprawling his arms across the counter from this angle too. Ceiling's lame… Everything's lame. At least the dark is good for one thing. The purpur flooring's a lot less ugly when you can't see it.

It's not like he's never been alone before. He used to be alone all the time back on his home world - He really needs a cool name for it, like 'Empires' or 'Hermitcraft' but like, personal - and he'd pass days or even weeks with Pig only popping in every now and then. That was lonely too, like this.

But the thing is, when Pig was gone, Sniff still had a whole server to explore. He picked apart every End City he could find. He got wings. He wrangled villagers. He beefed himself up with enchanted netherite gear. He built himself a flying ship.

But I can't build anything here. Or at least, Etho and Grian said you can't place blocks in New Star Station. The whole thing's bugged out or something? Spawn protection? Not sure. To be fair, he barely paid attention as he had other things on his mind.

Well, if he can't build… At least he can explore. Etho tried to spook him out, claiming the HALO team or big bad Bdubs might come to log him out if he isn't careful, but what's it to him? Sniff just ate the man. And if he can eat Etho, what's to stop him from eating anyone else? He can eat anyone he wants. Yeah, that's right. His fingers, still splayed, tighten into fists.

Bdubs said it himself: he didn't want to poke around in here because he thought I might log him out…

Everybody's scared of vex. Even HALO. Even the phantoms. Sniff studies the blank ceiling in the dark for another couple seconds, then peels away from the counter. He walks straight through the den, slides open the bamboo door, and steps onto the balcony. Fresh air… Stale air, technically? They're still under bedrock-

"What are you doing?" asks a voice from above, and Sniff jumps about four blocks in the air.

"WHAAAA!? Oh my- What?"

Cackling laughter breaks out above him. Sniff jerks up his head, breathing hard. TwoMuchGrian is perched right on a copper bar above his head, arms wrapped around his stomach. He's doubled over, wheezing like an absolute madman (My gods…) His hair waterfalls down one shoulder, swishing with every wingbeat. He's losing petals from his flower crown. Sniff drags his hand straight down his lips.

"Oh my gosh… Two, what the hell? You scared the blimmin' daylights out of me! Ohh, I'm gonna be sick!"

It takes several seconds of laughter before Two's caught his breath enough to answer. He unfolds. He rights himself on the rod, letting his wings flap down in a blur of blue and gold feathers. "Ohhhh… You have no idea how long I've been waiting to catch you, Sniff. Ohhh… That's going in your newbie clip comp for sure." Two holds his fingers up in Ls, framing Sniff between them like he's pinned on a comm screen. "Wooo… How you feelin'?"

"Like I just short-circuited my own hearts. My gosh, you are something else. Uggggh… I'm so mad. You're so bloody lucky I don't have any weapons on me right now."

[Cnt'd on AO3 - Link at top]

[flock-talk]

Hi! Was hoping you might have some advice for me? Bit of a long one sorry.

Ive had my green cheek for about 5 months now, and hes always super sweet. Hes only about 1 year old but hes picked up basic training and general manners really well, super cuddly velcro-bird.

The other day I got my hair cut for the first time in months, went from just below the shoulders to a fade, and when I came home he was fine? a bit shocked, but got over it after a bit, was acting his normal cuddly self. Then yesterday when I get him out of his cage in the morning he crawls up to my shoulder like normal and starts attacking me? Nothing else changed either.

I would often have my hair tucked behind my ear and he would try and nibble on my earrings, and he was easy enough to redirect onto his actual toys, but since getting my hair cut hes suddenly super violent and aggressive? When I let him out of his cage in the morning or just when I pick him up, he crawls straight up to my shoulder and starts biting my ears/cheek VERY hard. He'll give me a new piercing at this rate. And when I try to remove him he just starts biting my hands instead. Hard enough to draw blood too, which is the first time thats ever happened.

I've been trying to use treats to reward him for sitting calmly, distract him with toys, but nothings working. He'll forgo his favourite toys and treats that he normally goes crazy for in favour of biting me. I've been having to keep him in his cage for way longer than I want because I can't handle the constant attacks from him.

He's my first ever bird and I don't know what to do at this point :(

There's a number of reasons that behaviour can suddenly flip and without doing a super thorough background dig on your specific bird I can't guarantee a 100% correct answer here

based on the information provided it's very likely a defensive stress response. Birds ID each other visually so when you suddenly change your appearance you're no longer recognizable, they may have reacted 'fine' when you initially changed your hair due to increased stress suppressing behaviour. Think of how young birds react when you meet them in a store, many end up very complacent, slow moving, or even affectionate due to the stress of the environment and strangers handling them. Once they get home and relax their true mannerisms start to show up and they can present more aggressive behaviours and selectiveness as the stress that was suppressing these behaviours is no longer present. So they may have been stressed upon seeing the change and over the following days became more adjusted to the change and are now reacting to you as they may a completely unidentified stranger that has barged in and is taking over the home.

Conures also tend to be very sensitive to emotional changes, becoming overstimulated exceptionally easy and often default to nipping for communication. So it's another possibility that the conflict of figuring out who you are, confusion, and random bursts of excitement or stress release with the changes could be triggering events as well.

I would approach this situation as though he's a brand new bird you just brought home. Give him space, utilize target training for necessary handling, and go right back to the basics with building foundations and trust. I would ensure to keep interactions very short and successful, enter the room, drop off some snacks, and promptly leave sort of things. This may help him be able to observe you, recognize you aren't a threat, and form better associations about the change.

You may find it helpful to experiment with hats, some birds will become more aggressive around hats but others recognize it as being an accessory rather than a part of you and it could help bridge that recognition gap for them. Additionally if there are certain phrases you often say to them, certain tones, routines, or body language you presented with them often prior to the haircut I would ensure to lean heavily in to those to further help them connect your mannerisms to your identity.

As your foundations with this bird get stronger they will adjust to these changes easier and you are less likely to have these massive fallbacks. In the meantime it's important to recognize that they aren't behaving this way to spite you, they're behaving this way because they are distressed and don't know how to cope. During this time you have to meet them where they're at, move slow, and help them relearn that you aren't a threat.

[beansnpeets]

Sigh. This is incredibly tmi and personal, so leave now if you aren't prepared, but I haven't talked about this much and I fucking need to because I hate being afraid to talk about this.

I've mentioned it before here briefly, I think, but uh Jon's had a bit of an issue with porn.

About a year into our relationship I walked in on him in the bathroom one morning and that's when I'd figured it out. Every morning he would do that. Despite not soliciting anything from me. His excuse was that it helped him wake up and that it was less work than being intimate with me. I was hurt, but all I asked of him was to just not do that when I was home because it made me uncomfy and felt kinda bad that he was going there over me. He could not do this for me. He continued to do this and we had argument after argument about this. He got sneakier and sneakier about hiding it from me, but I always caught him.

Eventually I'd had enough and I figured if he can't at least cut this back I'd feel better if he just quit because it seemed like that was the only way and our sex life suffered pretty severely over this whole thing. He also could not do this. It took until last year when I threatened to leave him if he didn't quit. So he quit, as far as I was aware.

However he's started again because we haven't been intimate for some time, because I've had enough of this lack of respect and the unkindness that has been thrown my way by him. And he doesn't see how that, again, makes things worse. Because what was he supposed to do?? I told him he could do it without the porn at least, but apparently then it takes too long 🙄

But he's complaining that I won't even look at him anymore and I won't give him any attention, but he's not giving me reasons to WANT to give him those things. Asking him to fill the gap in our finances and our housework is too burdensome, he doesn't spend any time with me doing things, he refuses to fully commit to our relationship, and nothing I do is ever good enough. So yeah. I don't really want to sleep with a guy that's treating me like that. I don't want to give any romantic attention to that guy.

He never gives me attention when I want it, but expects me to give some to him when he wants. He expects me to drop what I'm doing to do things for him, but gets upset when I ask that of him. He constantly wants me to go out of my way to do shit for him, but if I ask the same, it's a problem. Gets upset when I spend money on "unnecessary" things because I don't have much money and he thinks I'm reckless with spending, yet he only ever spends money on things he can make more money off of. Never does anything fun, never gets anything that would make our lives easier. The robot vacuum was my birthday present one year and I had to beg for it. If there are other things we don't NEED, but I want to make things better I have to buy them. If I want to do anything recreational I have to be the one to spend the money.

Then at the start of covid there was the tinder incident. We were watching videos together on his phone and a tinder notif popped up. I lost it. I cried and cried and told him that was such a betrayal. He claims he "just wanted to talk to people and make friends". When I asked why he did not indicate that on his profile and why he didn't mention he was already in a relationship all he could say was "I don't know". Which was a cop out. I should have left. I should have broken up with him then and there. But instead he cried and I comforted him and he deleted the app and we moved on.

This still haunts me. This is still always in the back of my mind. He insists he wasn't aiming to cheat on me, but he can't give me any other real explanation, so I don't believe him.

It's just frustrating that he is so oblivious. He has no fucking care for my feelings. He seems to think I shouldn't be bothered by any of this and I should be able to just let it all go because I'm not perfect either and I'm not giving him what he wants so why should he give me what I want. But I didn't start to pull away until AFTER shit started going bad. And even after things started going bad I was still putting in so much work to try to hang on. And yet things have only continued to get worse. So yeah. I gave up. And now I'm waiting to be able to leave. I don't feel like that should be as surprising to him as it is.

We argued about everything for a while this morning, but after a couple hours he shut down and we had to quit because he just overloaded and couldn't take it anymore, but nothing is resolved. Not even close. So idk what to do.

My absolute last resort is I could steal cash out of his safe and fuck off, but that feels really shitty and I would have to leave a lot behind if I did that.

[goddesstrolls]

“Ah! Mr. Alkain. Good to see you.” 

The ceruleanblood gave the tealblood detective a weary smile and extended a hand to shake. Alkain took it, nodding in greeting.

“Evening. Terris, was it?”

“Yes, sir.” Terris nudged his glasses up, and then knit his fingers together. His gaze briefly flickered to another of the museum’s staff as the passed by, and then his attention went back to Alkain. “Shall I show you around?”

“Please.” Alkain gestured for Terris to lead the way.

“Right. So, um...To recap.” Terris turned and began to walk; Something about his stride and tone shifting as he clearly switched into tour guide mode. 

From what Alkain knew, Terris had been a staff member of the museum for many sweeps, working his way up from front desk, to guided tours, then processing inventory, and then assistant branch manager, and finally one of the branch managers.

He’d done checks on a solid portion of the staff, trying to discern who might have committed the theft- From what he’d heard it was too clean to not be an inside job.

“The museum closes to the public every now and again for private tours and dinners. Typically, we just post a sign a few nights beforehand stating that the museum will be closed. The same was true this time,” Terris began, and Alkain began jotting down quick notes.

“Most staff take the night off since there aren’t as many guests to handle, and not having so many trolls bustling around makes the atmosphere more peaceful for the esteemed guests we do have. I believe you were provided a list of all the trolls who came in or out of the building that night.” Terris tossed the detective a glance, and he nodded in return. Terris continued when Alkain seemed to have nothing to ask.

“Now...There’s supposed to be someone in the high security room at all times. You page a coworker if you have to step out at any point. Er, unfortunately, that simply is not often the case, and there’s usually only someone there during the hours we’re open to the public. It’s a big building and our security team is better applied elsewhere...So... Well, no one was there when the theft occurred. In fact, there was a span of three hours where the room hadn’t been checked.”

Terris seemed a bit embarrassed, fidgeting slightly with a nervous smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. 

He stopped in front of what had once been a heavy-duty, metal framed door. The entire frame and doorway had been cut directly out of the wall, and said door leaned on the wall next to the opening. A curtain had been placed over the hole, and a security guard stood next to it.

“And, when we did check it, we found the door, well...Wouldn’t open.” Terris gestured to the door leaning on the wall. Alkain stepped over to inspect it, running a finger over the gap where the door met the frame. At first glance, nothing seemed amiss.

“At first, they thought...The security system was glitching- It happens, quite often. We tried all these different overrides, and we were just going to call the security company and leave it...Because, ah, well, this room just shows the camera feed, and it’s not really high priority. But...Then we realized something was missing, so...We had to look at the camera feed. As you can see...This is what it took to get in.” Terris gestured at the hole in the wall where the door had been.

Without a word, Alkain took out a small flashlight and shone it between the door and the frame. The frame and the door had been melted together- But not as though they’d been welded, which would have left excess metal visible from either side. He drew the flashlight all around the frame, confirming that the door was totally fused to the frame.

“I see. What was on the camera feed?”

“Yes, let me show you.”

Terris showed his staff ID to the guard, who checked it on a database on a tablet- And then let them in. Inside, the room was dark, with a wall of screens displaying the camera feeds. Terris sat at the desk, at a laptop waiting open; He logged in, and began pulling up a program.

“So...The thing is, the camera feed shows nothing.” Terris said, tapping a key. The multiple displays showing the feed sped through one minute at a time, and the only movement on them was a small party of guests- Mostly seadwellers- being lead through the museum.

“Then, at 2:34 AM...”

One of the cameras suddenly went dark. Terris moved back on the feed, to just moments before the camera cut out. He replayed the footage second by second, with the camera seeming to jostle slightly just before cutting out. He rewound again to before the footage went out, and pointed to a display case on the screen.

“That held the item that was taken. This is the only camera on it. And, you can see, the other cameras nearby picked up nothing.” Terris pointed out the other cameras pointing at the areas nearby before replaying the footage. “In fact, our guests were within earshot of this room and heard nothing.”

Alkain gave an intrigued hum in response. Terris did not seem to mind his silence.

“Now... It gets stranger. Before we go to the next, ah, area of the crime scene, did you have any questions..?”

“No, I’d like to get the full picture first.”

“Right. Okay.” Terris took a short breath, stood, and began to lead Alkain onwards. He seemed excited almost, but also nervous, knitting and unknitting his fingers over and over. “I’ll admit, I’ve never seen anything like this before. Never even heard of it. The thing is, we might suspect psionics... If not for the fact that all of the high-priority rooms are outfitted with anti-psionic fields, as well as the display cases themselves. These fields were active throughout the entire night, and we are absolutely certain there were no outages. So the fact that this thief managed to pull this off without psionics is... Well... Dare I say, incredible?”

“Honestly, I have to agree, but I’ll hold off on my judgement for now.”

“Right, right, you haven’t seen the camera yet.”

Alkain raised his brows, but didn’t ask. Terris led him back to the main floor of the museum, through the various displays. He finally stopped and gestured to a broken security camera lying in a heap on the floor, surrounded by caution tape.

“That is the camera.”

“I see why it cut out.” Alkain stepped over the tape and crouched to inspect it.

It wasn’t just broken; It was sliced neatly into pieces.

“I might add,” Terris said. “That it was mounted twenty-five feet up. This is exactly how we found it. If the camera fell, it would have shattered. The lens, at the very least! Pieces would have gone everywhere. And our guests, as you recall- Were in the next room. They would have heard it.”

“So our thief somehow got twenty-five feet up and sliced this into pieces like it were made of butter, and then got it to the ground without a sound.”

“And without being seen on any of the other cameras! Without psionics- And we know, without a shadow of a doubt, that our anti-psionic field works on all kinds of psionics. It’s been tested on hundreds, if not at least a thousand trolls, and not just lowbloods! I don’t even know what kind of device could cut through a camera like that, without a sound.”

“Me neither.” Alkain straightened, and Terris began to move on.

“And then! They somehow managed to get into the case without opening it. Our cases have pressure sensors which trigger a silent alarm if the weight is removed. For example, by breaking or lifting the glass. However, as you can see…” Terris gestured to an empty display case towards the center of the room. 

“It’s untouched. The alarm wasn’t disarmed or tampered with, we even tested it. And…” Terris clapped his hands together for dramatic effect. 

“For the icing on the cake… The item they took was nearly mundane. Special in its own right, of course- But half these other items are high-profile, they would have fetched a fortune in the right hands.” Terris gestured at the items left untouched in the surrounding display cases before continuing.

“No provenance. We only know how old it is from tests. It had passed through various collector’s hands so many times that no one knew where it actually came from. All we knew was that the style and make was completely unknown.”

Terris pulled up an image of the piece on his phone and passed it to Alkain. It was a large, flat necklace, made of gold and inlaid with black, red, and blue stones, with two dragon-like figures forming the clasps which held the chain that allowed it to be worn.

“Solid gold, and the blue is lapis lazuli, but the other stones weren’t particularly precious. I can’t tell you how expensive these other pieces are in comparison,” Terris gestured again to the other, more obviously costly pieces around them.

“A warning, perhaps.” Mused Alkain.

“What- Like they intentionally took something low-value, just to show off what they could do?”

“Maybe.”

“I-” Terris scratched his head, furrowing his brow. “I suppose? I don’t know. I can’t imagine what this troll was doing, how they did this. How they got around the museum without being seen or heard, how they melted the security doors without anyone noticing, how they got into the case…”

Alkain looked over his notes, and then looked to Terris.

“Well, let’s take it from the top…”

[empresstheresa-guide]

Theresa and Steve, love story for the ages.. part 3 A.

Part 3: Roads diverged in the Kindle, and that made all the difference. 

Recap: Theresa meets two boys in college. Steve is attractive and seems to have a similar personality, and she’s instantly drawn to him. But she feels obligated to date Jack instead, because Jack came to say hi before Steve did. Now she walks into Jack’s room and there’s another girl by Jack’s side. Shocked and humiliated, she goes upstairs to her room to wait for Jack to come in. 

And this is the part where the cogs in Norman’s brain started turning and never stopped. He keeps rewriting this over and over. I have 5 alternate versions from various editions of the book. There might even be more, for all we know. Norman cannot stop revising this part of the book. Maybe he likes to sit and fantasize about it. 

VERSION 1

I only had this on a Word file, which I lost after my previous computer died. I didn’t memorize the whole thing, so there may be gaps. But I swear by my honor and conscience that this version was in the book. 

To taunt Jack, Theresa decides to don a figure skater’s outfit, which she had bought second hand. This apparently is a thing, but how does Norman know about it? Theresa notes that the outfit had ”nothing in the back and not much in the front”, but it’s OK because ”families sent their sweethearts [out to the world]” in them. So we have a very bad beginning here, where Norman is just flat out sexualizes figure skaters.  

In lieu of a direct quote, here’s a complaint from a reader who actually did figure skating. Because of this, or some other reason, Norman took out the figure skating outfit. 

And here’s a quote about Norman’s original idea for ET… It’s wild how he went from that to this. I’d like to see that draft. It might actually make more sense than what we ended up with. 

Later in the book, Theresa enables having summer and winter olympics at the same time. 

Chapter 28: 

”I can see it now” said Steve.  “Somebody trains a girl to win gold medals in both gymnastics and figure skating the same week.”

“Wow!  I have to see that.”

Norman is oddly fascinated with figure skaters, and it's gross. To his credit, he did omit this part in later editions.  

Back to the scene. Jack and Steve walk in.

Jack says: ”Do you know what we could do here?”

Theresa says: ”Yes, girls read magazines too. By, Jack.”

And Jack just leaves, but Steve stays.

Is.. is Jack suggesting a threesome? I think he is. This is supposed to be a squeaky clean, family friendly book for young girls. It’s really inappropriate, unless there’s some other, more innocent reading I’m missing. Jack just leaves without saying anything else, and the relationship is over. That was fast. At least in this version, Jack did come up to Theresa’s room.. for a moment. 

But WHY would Steve come in? I can only think of one reason: he wants Theresa for himself, and he saw his opportunity here. That doesn’t make him look very good. You can be interested in someone your friend is dating, but to move in so quickly is just rotten. He’s supposed to be a Good Catholic Boy. Jack wouldn’t want him there, and Theresa wouldn’t either. This is between them. But Theresa has to end up with Steve, so there he is.

Apparently in this or some other version I haven’t seen, Theresa actually cuts her dress to make it shorter. In the later editions, she tapes it up. I seem to recall she changes to jeans, so Steve doesn’t have to be too horny. 

If you have this version of the book, please contact me, I want to read it again. 

VERSION 2 

”So!  Two timing Jack was coming up for a last look, was he?  I’d give him something to look at!

      I went to the closet and pulled out my ’little black nothing’.  It was a backless dress made of flimsy, clingy material.  It was something appropriate for a party, but in my room, with no other girls to look at, Jack would find it hard to forget.  He deserved the VIP treatment.”

Why does a good Catholic girl (hereafter GCG) even own such a dress? Don’t they like to dress modestly? And why would she get revenge on a boy by looking extra sexy? This doesn’t go together with her being a GCG.

”     Seven inches above the knee wasn’t a big deal these days, but to make it more interesting I folded back the hemline three more inches inside the skirt and taped it.  Now that was a dress!”

Theresa is only 5’4. That dress would barely cover her crotch.  Either Norman doesn’t understand measurements, or he’s just being really gross, indulging in his waifu fantasy. 

”  I put it on and looked in the full length mirror on the door.  Yup.  This would kill Jack.   He’d promise to throw Ginny out the window if I took him back.  Sorry, Jack.  Too late for that.”

This is immature and vain. The thing is, I could see a 17-year-old girl doing this, if she was a regular teenager. But it’s not fitting for a character who’s supposedly a genius and more mature than others her age. Not to mention humble, modest, and of course a GCG. Theresa doesn't even care at all about Jack.

There’s a knock on the door. 

” Steve Hartley came through the door.

      “Hi, Steve.  What‘s up?”

So instead of your boyfriend, a different dude walks in. A guy you’re not even friends with. And instead of telling him to get out of here, you just say ”Hi, what’s up?”

Why can’t Theresa have a friend or room mate who helps her? They could plot some kind of revenge, and then the following week or month, Steve could ask Theresa for a date. That would have been realistic and made both Theresa and Steve look better.

”  “Ginny is Steve’s old high school girlfriend.  They have an understanding.  She was supposed to drop in next weekend but she showed up early.”

”Understanding” sounds like they’re friends with benefits, or otherwise not too committed. 

    ” So it was all coming to an end anyway!  “She go to another college?”

      “No.  She’s a waitress.”

      Then she could be a cashier in Jack’s father’s store.”

Or maybe she could, you know, run the store together with Jack when he inherits it. This is just Norman’s snobbery. The book is littered with it, despite the fact that he works part time in a grocery store. He was a dentist, but let his license lapse and never renewed it. Imagine Norman being your dentist. He would ignore your pain and talk about ET. But he obviously thinks that being a dentist a long time ago puts him above other people. 

This passage also implies that Steve knew about Ginny. That means he enabled Jack’s deception. Would a good Catholic boy (hereafter GCB) do that? Would a good person, religious or not? He should have told Jack to come clean to Theresa. He doesn’t even seem to condemn Jack. 

”With that, the happy new couple had absolutely nothing to say. ”

Who’s ”the happy new couple”? Is she talking about herself and Steve? Is this sarcastic? I need a Norman-English translator to deal with all this. 

”Steve stood there glancing down at my dress.  He had a lot more to deal with than he’d expected. ”

Steve is having a massive boner. Very family friendly.

”Cat got your tongue, Steve?”    

He apparently thought this was an invitation.   He moved up against me, put his hands around on my bare back, and kissed me on the lips.   I felt a warm rush of blood in my face.  Steve must have felt the same because he didn’t break it off.   How long would this delicious moment last?”

She’s still with Jack and he just up and kisses her passionately. And of course, she doesn’t mind it at all, and it’s all just ”delicious”. She doesn’t feel guilty, just aroused. Jack is old news. 

”     “I feel guilty about what I’m thinking.”

      At least he was honest.

      “I understand.   I’m thinking the same way, but I don’t that that before marriage.”

Good girls don’t that that before marriage. I assume when Steve says he feels guilty, it’s because he’s thinking of filthy premarital sex, not because Theresa is still with Jack. 

”He stepped back and looked sheepish.   He must have thought the dress was a seduction for Jack and he’d be the bounce back boy. ”

Norman manages to combine ”bouncing baby boy” and ”rebound”. There’s apparently a band called Bounce Back Boy. You learn a lot when you Google Norman’s brain farts. 

”This was to make Jack sorry he made me mad.”

      “Did he tell you about Ginny?”

     Boy, could he change the subject fast!”

But .. it’s the same subject? It’s not like he brought up who his favorite captain is, Kirk or Picard. Theresa’s inner dialogue always comes across as so bratty and annoying, especially when she uses exclamation points.  

”  “No.  I guess he had the right to have a girl back home.  We’re not married, after all.  But he didn’t tell me.  If he had, we might have made some kind of platonic arrangement.  I dated a nice boy in high school for three years.  Everybody knew it wouldn’t last but that didn’t matter.  We were convenient for each other.”

But platonic means no sex. So they already had a platonic arrangement, because she won’t that that before marriage. [edit: apparently it can just mean not romantic, but she wasn't romantically interested in Jack either.] If there was no love involved, it was really just a friendship. Would a GCG date some guy just for the sake of dating, if there’s no long term plans, love, or sex? Would anyone? And this isn’t even her first time at the rodeo. I guess Norman wants her to be dating constantly, because she’s so hot everyone wants her. She can’t be single like some ordinary loser. But surely a GCG would wait until she’s truly in love? 

I also don’t understand the concept of having another girl at home, as long as you’re not married. That’s still cheating, if the girls don’t know about each other. Don’t Catholics have opinions on this kind of thing? 

      “So is it you and me now?” I asked.

      “I’d like to go out with you.” 

      “Yeah, well, this room is too awkward for both of us.  How about we go back downstairs and hang out with the guys?”     

      “Sure.”

      “Ginny should love this outfit.”

The last sentenced seems petty and vain again. She should be mad at Jack, Ginny has done nothing wrong. Why do you want to flaunt your body in front of her? 

Theresa has nothing to say to Jack, but wants to tell Ginny something. 

“Just so you’ll know, Jack and I both knew we weren’t going to have anything serious going on.  We just hung around together to have a social life.  We weren’t that compatible.”

This is uncharacteristically compassionate for Theresa. Later on, everyone who contests her can ”drop dead”, and she uses her powers against them. Here she seems to care about Ginny’s feelings a little. However…

     “Thank you” she said. That was all she said.    How would I feel if I had been the poor waitress back home hoping I could keep a college educated man and escape waiting on tables all my life?  It was very sad.”

Oh Norman. Of course being a waitress is a fate worse than death. I know it can be a crummy job and is not most people’s long term plan, but this just sounds condescending and nasty. 

Jack doesn’t say a single word, and there’s no description of his reaction. He just doesn’t matter anymore. 

”     When the boys lingering around in the hallway saw us they whooped and hollered in exaggerated manner.  They were paying tribute to my appearance and Steve’s triumph.

      “Pay no attention to these animals” Steve joked, but he was clearly pleased.”

The boys are immediately OK with Steve dating Theresa. Are they supposed to be GCBs, like Steve? Or are they just regular horn-dogs? Also the word ”pay” twice - maybe think of another phrase instead.

” Jack had always dominated the conversation when we were with the gang and I was mostly silent.  Steve was quieter, so I had the chance to talk with everybody.  It was nice.”

This is actually pretty good, by Norman’s standards at least. We find out something concrete about their relationship. It would have been better to write a scene where Jack talks and talks, and Theresa gets frustrated because she never gets to talk. But at least we get something. 

But none of this matters. It’s not canon anymore. It was all scrapped, and a completely new version was written..and then another version and then another. Steve’s passionate kiss is now history, and Theresa never speaks to Jack or Ginny again. 

This got very long and there's so much more, so I’m going to post this and then post a part B later. Look forward to awkward dialogue, thongs and Theresa’s father’s views on ”The Caine Mutiny”. 

[snowlilly]

Okay fine. Dinner

Dinner

"Do you ever go outside?" "I go buy groceries and such." "I meant for fun." "There's nothing 'fun' outside for me." "Am I to take that as a 'never'?" "…" "Aren't you lonely?" Yuzuki lowered his head, looking to the side. "…You've seen how they act yourself. People don't like dealing with those who remind them of the Witch." "That's not what I asked." "You're not getting a different answer." Nemo pouted in frustration over his avoidance. "That's it. We're going out. Now." "Going out? For what?" "Dinner." "At noon!?" "I'm not taking complaints. You've shut yourself in for far too long, and I finally want to eat at one of those fancy restaurants." "But, are you going to be fine? You can't taste the food without… people seeing your eyes." "I'm not going to have my day ruined by some folks staring at me! I can't just hide myself all the time just because of their prejudice, and you shouldn't have to either!" "If only staring was all they did…", he mumbled under his breath.

Nemo decisively marched ahead, seemingly impervious to the concerned whispers and mutters rising up wherever they passed. It was difficult for Yuzuki to keep up with their pace, but at least he only had to follow the breach created in the crowd. "Where are we going?" "I don't know." "What are you looking for?" "Whatever seems good enough." After a few minutes of aimless walking, they finally stopped at a restaurant with a luxurious facade. "Nemo, that's one of the finest restaurants in town!", he quietly reprimanded them. "And?" "And? Well…" He struggled to find the right words to explain. "I'm not going to change my mind now." "A-at least take a minute to cool down. You shouldn't walk in glaring like that…" "…Fine." They took a deep breath and put up a smile, then opened the door to the restaurant and walked up to the front desk, a concerned Yuzuki trailing behind them. "Can we get a table for two, please?" "Certainly-", the man at the desk started, but got hung up on that word when he looked into the guest's eyes. "---not, I'm afraid! We have a full house tonight," he frantically changed the sentence's direction. Nemo suspiciously looked around. "…The restaurant is half empty." "We're completely booked out for the day!" "I don't see any reservations on the table-" "My deepest apologies, but if you would please leave, you're holding up the line!", he exclaimed as he got in front of the desk. "There's no one behind us-" "Good day to you, please come again at another-" Yuzuki cut in between Nemo and the restaurant employee basically shoving them out of the door. "Are you the manager here? Are you seriously going to treat them like that?" "I am, and your friend is ruining the atmosphere of our establishment," he replied with a harsh, lowered voice, emphasising the word 'friend' in such a degrading tone it made Yuzuki's blood boil. "I'm about to ruin more than just the atmosphere-" "It's okay, Yuzuki," Nemo interrupted him, "I'm… actually not that hungry. You can go eat by yourself. I'll wait for you back at my place." Without waiting for his response, they rushed out of the restaurant. "No, Nemo, wait-" Yuzuki shot an icy glare at the manager. "Bastard," he hissed, before running after his fleeing friend.

He found them crouching in a small, dark gap between two houses, staring at the ground with a downcast look on their face. He sat down next to them. "Nemo…" "I'm sorry. I boasted about not letting it get to me before… But in the end, I couldn't handle it after all." "No, you- you don't have to apologize for that. I knew this could happen, but you were so determined to go, I didn't even give you a proper warning. I should be the one to say sorry." "I really…", tears started welling up in their eyes, "…wanted to enjoy the food with you." Yuzuki pulled them closer and let them cry on his shoulder as he wordlessly held their head in one arm and stroked their back with the other. Once they calmed down, he stood back up. "…Let's go, Nemo." "Where?" "We're going back." "To the restaurant? But they threw us out…" "I know. I've got an idea." "…You're not going to cause a scene, are you?" A devilish grin spread across his face. "Oh, absolutely." "Huh!?"

In the evening, the very same restaurant was graced with the presence of two ladies in elegant dresses, a dainty one with blue lipstick and black hair styled into a bun; and a tall one with red lipstick and a hat with a large brim, sunglasses and white bangs covering her face. "Might we perhaps get a table for two in here?" the dainty one asked with a smooth, silky voice. "Y-yes, of course, right away, madam!", the manager stammered, clearly distracted by the quiet one's appearance. "Pardon me, but is your companion a celebrity?" "No questions, please! And by all means, no staring. She is here incognito. We'd both be very grateful if you'd respect our privacy." "I-I see. Well, I'll be sure to have the finest table ready for you two!" "Much appreciated."

"I can't believe this worked." "I can't believe he was ogling you like that when he couldn't get you out of here fast enough earlier." "What's that proverb again? 'Looks can be deceiving'?" "That's not how you use it. Like, at all." "…Proverbs can be deceiving?" "Pfft. Yeah, that works."

Once they were done with the food, the woman in blue stood up, approached the other still sitting in her chair, kneeled down in front of her and pulled out a small box with a (definitely real) engagement ring inside. "Neplutonia, will you marry me?" The audience was already about to clap as 'Neplutonia' rose from her seat. "No, Yusephine! The food and service is so atrocious in this place, it opened my eyes! You never treat me right! I am in love with another! I am going to marry Bertibald! Goodbye!" After finishing her dramatic speech, she stormed out of the restaurant. "Noooooo! Not Bertibald!", Yusephine wailed in despair, and followed suit. "Hey, you didn't pay for your food!", the manager yelled after them.

Outside, Yuzuki jumped into Nemo's arms, who had already tossed the sunglasses and hat aside. "You deserve an Oscar for that performance." "Can I get a 'Yuzuki' instead?" "You already have me, silly," he chuckled, and gave them a light kiss on the cheek. They snickered and lifted him into a bridal carry. At that moment, the agitated manager barged out of the door. "Come back and pay your bill- hey, I remember you! You lot were here earlier!" "Fuck you! This is for making my friend cry!", Yuzuki yelled while flipping him off. Then Nemo spun around and sprinted away with him in their arms. The manager tried to chase the pair, but it was clear his pace was no match for Nemo's outstanding speed. "I'm going to call the knights!" "The knights can suck my ass!" "Keep that damn witch out of my restaurant!" "Like we're ever coming back! Much less with money!", Yuzuki shouted back at the manager, who had finally lost his stamina and gave up his pursuit.

Nemo ran through the city like a whirlwind. Even if the knights were to show up, they would never be able to catch them by foot. Yuzuki knew he was light and significantly smaller than them, but he hadn't thought his weight would have so little impact on their agility. Mid running, they began acting again. "Marry me, Yusephine! You're the only one for me!" "What about Bertibald?" "Oh, he dumped me." "Why's that?" "Didn't wash my toenails." Both of them started laughing. "Oh, Neplutonia, you crazy woman with your filthy toenails…" Yuzuki trailed off as he gazed at Nemo, smiling so brightly as they dashed through the streets. "…I could never say no to you."