#they're all the same language with different hats

[superconductivebean]

#1539

I disdain and hate Engish dialogue punctuation. I'll explain.

With M-dashes for dialogue and quotation marks for thoughts and inner monologues, the text is objectively a lot easier to read without actually reading the script. You're aware of what to expect, grammatically, and can adjust to the author's pace this way.

I am a fast reader, it's all vital for me and it's a generally good exercise to try and implement grammar as a pace marker.

But the way English-language allows for random placements of the spoken speech is aggravating; it's not, technically, the language's fault, but I totally understand why people constantly feel lost or don't understand the system completely. I don't understand it either, and in a sense, I reject and resent it.

How are you supposed not to if everything looks exactly the same?

Especially when it allows this to exist:

"A lengthy line of dialogue", character A says. "A line that belongs to its own paragraph and is poorly indicated, if at all", character B adds. [Unrelated things are happening here and it's not clear why they're not their own paragraph.] "Line." [who said that???]

Bonus point if there is no indication and the reader is expected to utilise the power of cosmos to understand who said what lest they don't want to reread an entire scene multiple times to simply be able to digest it.

It's partly author's fault. A paragraph is a concealed thought, it should be lone in most cases, but intertwined with everything else. We as authors should always remember this.

But the language allows to mush these thoughts together. It creates a sense of the flow, yes, to write like this; but then its reading is done backwards. You have to look at the end of the next sentence to know who said it, then read the line, then read everything assembled together, and even if your eyes were trained to do that in seconds, it's tiring and unnecessary. Cute but rocky flow, perhaps you shouldn't write like this, maybe it's better to opt out for something like this:

"Line." "Line?" "Line x10." "Oh. Line then."

If a paragraph is a concealed thought, the thought can also be a compound of smaller thoughts. Yet they shouldn't be convoluted or smooched together too tightly they're nigh impossible to untangle?

With M-dashes, this would look like this:

— A lengthy line of dialogue, — character A says. Character B adds: "A line that could still be its own paragraph but now fits as it is clearly marked as an addendum BEFORE the line begins; could be possible with the previous example but is rarely, if ever, structured this way". [Things became their own paragraph.] — Line. — Still unclear who said that but at least it is its own thing now.

And this is one of two cases when "" aren't used for thoughts and inner dialogues; another one is when your entire dialogue is back and forth and can be presented as its own paragraph.

It also makes the text read extremely fast because you take in the sentence structure first and then populate it with words and senses.

I'm angry at this, evidently. A lot of thought goes into where it should not belong—ttp it feels like a honest downgrade from Russiаn. The punctuation should be the rail regulating of reading, not a labyrinth or a some kind of twister game.

[harzilla]

More self aware concepts but humorous.

You end up in the world of Twst but every time you try to tell somebody your actual name you get censored out by some random background noise, a car horn(why is there a car on campus?) a random student running into a tree, Sebek yelling, Kalim's carpet crashing into the person you were talking to, etc... to the point that the others notice and certain troublemakers like Ace, Floyd, and Jade start doing it on purpose because they want to see how the universe censored you. About the fifth time it happens you turn into a mess of explicit language, much to the horror of Vil or Riddle. It turns out the only name you can give them is your in-game name. If you used your own name. You're good. Used the name Yuu? Not so bad. But if you have some hard to say or random numbers? Good luck. You're going to get mocked by Ace especially. Like you couldn't pick something cool at least?

Explaining the friendship system to them. Like trying to explain how the guestroom and sticker system work. The guys you give the stickers vary in reaction. The liars who act like it's no big deal but the stickers end up somewhere safe. The ones who react happy. Thank you, they love them! Then you got the "I would die for these stickers" group. They're gonna protect them so hard.

You got guys like Azul who openly brag "Why yes of course I have more stickers, the prefect is quiet intelligent when it comes to strategizing... blah blah blah. A couple people about ready to shove the stickers down his throat. Stickers end up in odd places. Trey's hat stand, Jack's dumbbell, Rook's quiver, one of Jade's terrariums, etc... Some of them have them tucked away in a box. Floyd walking around with one on his cheek because you drew an eel on it for him.

The guys being stuck doing the same dance routine five times in a row. What do you mean this is a game mechanic? Do they HAVE to perform this much?

You: Oh no I actually have all week but I like to get it all done in one go. Now we gotta do the "piece of my world" set three more times. Chop chop.

Them: Mercy....

You: Mercy is for the weak. Now keep dancing.

The guys be acting up and you're just tired of it.... So the particular trouble makers you pick for lessons. Azul or Jade pissed you off? Welcome to Hell flight class. The two start getting nervous because you know how much they dislike this class right? Then you look them dead in the eye as you bust out the candy jar from your pocket that extends the lessons. The smile you give them. There's no mercy behind those eyes. Azul is trying to figure out a hundred different ways to get you to sign a contract to never torture him with flight class again after you extend the time twice. Everybody knows that if you bring out that jar, nobody is spared. May the seven have mercy on their souls.

[loganwritesprobably]

When You're In Danger - Straw Hats (Monster Trio)

Content/warnings: GN!Reader, Luffy, Zoro and Sanji headcanons, canon-typical violence referenced, injuries referenced, these men believe in your independence and your abilities!

Part two feat. Nami, Robin and Jinbei

While Luffy hates the idea of you getting hurt, he knows he can't stop it

He'd never expect you to idle by when a fight happens just because he doesn't want you getting hurt

He knows that you're capable, and he's proud of that fact

He'd keep an ear out for you though, as you continued your own fights, just in case

If you were in serious danger that you couldn't combat yourself, Luffy would move heaven and Earth to make sure you were safe

If you got hurt despite him rushing to your rescue, he would blame himself, but he would internalise that

If anyone stood in his way on his path to your side to defend you, they wouldn't be standing for much longer

Monkey D Luffy is a beast, and seas forbid anyone forgets thet

If you were hurt in a battle because you were outmatched, Luffy wouldn't leave your side for anything until he was sure you'd be okay

He trusts Chopper instinctively, but you're too special to lose

Zoro knows, perhaps even more than you know yourself, that you can handle danger. He trusts you to know how to protect yourself

He taught you how after all

So generally speaking he doesn't worry much about you when a fight begins, instead he oozes a quiet confidence

Zoro also knows when he or the crew are outmatched

The crew are brilliant, and have their own skills, but they're all at different combat levels - you're not on the same level as him

If he knew a fight would be too much for you, he'd seek you out in order to assist you

Needing help doesn't make you weak, it just shows you what you need to improve on

It would be second nature for him to find you, one of the rare times that he has a sense of direction

If you became injured because of his failure to protect you, he'd punish himself with intensified training, forcing himself to work harder

If he can't protect you, then what's the point? You're the only thing as important as his dream and Luffy

He wouldn't be able to look at you for a while after, afraid that you also weren't going to forgive him for his failure

Zoro would cut anyone down, ally or foe, to get to you in times of danger

Sanji knows when you're in trouble as if it's a sixth sense

Even if he thinks you can handle himself, he'll rush from his own fight to appear at your side and see for himself that you're coping

It's almost uncanny, how fast he can be there at your side

He only steps in if he's absolutely sure you need him to, because the last thing he wants is to step on your toes if you can handle it

He knows how good it feels to succeed

If you do need him to get involved, he's there before you can ask out loud. He sees it in your face and your body language

He dispatches whatever was causing you problems as fast as he can, then makes sure that you're okay

You even rank above Nami in terms of importance for him. The entire crew loves Nami and can help her - nobody loves you quite like Sanji does

If he can't get there in time, the person who hurt you will have the highest price to pay: a slow and painful death

Nobody is allowed to hurt you, not as long as he lives

He'll apologise to you profusely once the job is done, and spend at least a week if not more at your beck and call doing whatever you need ask him to do

You best be ready to eat your favourite meals every day until he's satisfied that he has apologised enough

Requests are open! See below links for my other works, and how to leave requests. I write both canon/canon and canon/reader requests for your enjoyment

AO3 | Fanfic Masterlist | Request Rules | Fic Trades Guide | WIPs

Tags: @claryeverlarkf

[directdogman]

Hi, I hope this isn't a bother. I'm trying to make a dating sim and want to have a section where the player inputs their pronouns (like you gave the option to in Dial Town). Despite my hours of effort though, I can't figure out how to do it. I'm using Visual Novel Machinery for Unreal Engine (because Unreal is required for the class I'm making this for). Even if you aren't familiar with it though, just the basic 'pull code from here and input there' would be so helpful. I'm sure I can piece it together in a way Unreal will understand with a bit of help. Legit though, I made unreal crash twice when I tried to run the initial code for it, so I'm at a loss. Side note: Your games are so awesome and a big part of why I want to make a dating sim to begin with. I wish you all the peace and love on planet earth!

Hello hello:

The trick is using a string for every instance of a pronoun in player dialogue (which is just a variable set of letters.) They, them, their, theirs, etc. Be careful when you set the system up as some pronouns don't conjugate for all cases. For instance, their and theirs are separate words, as are her/hers, but his uses the same word for both pronouns.

You also have to account for case too. This is how I set it up (this is all done right when the pronoun is first entered btw):

1)let the user input a pronoun for each option. each pronoun is a different string, one for each pronoun type (you'll see my list below)

2)i then use a script command right after that to turn all of the pronoun strings entered to lower case. This is account for players possibly capitalizing the first letter in the pronoun instinctively. IE: characters won't say: "Hey, where's He going?" instead of "he going?", which is correct.

How you convert to lowercase is different for each programming language, but I bet there's an equivalent command in UE.

3)Then I copy each pronoun twice, essentially creating two duplicates for each lower case pronoun (so there's now 3 identical pronouns for her, three for hers, etc.)

4)For the second set, I run a command that capitalizes the first and only first letter of each separately (this is useful for if a sentence starts with a pronoun, meaning the first letter would be upper case in that sentence. EG: His cowboy hat looks RIDICULOUS.)

5)for the third set, i then turn the whole string upper case. this is useful for if a character speaks in all caps or if the character is shouting/emphasizing. (EG: "Where's HE going?!")

At the end, this is what my list of strings looks like, hopefully helping you visualize what I've done:

Then, when a pronoun is referenced in dialogue, I use the string that matches the correct version of the pronoun I need. So for he, i use #6 normally, #12 if it's the start of a sentence and #18 if the character is shouting. it's good to keep a list like this handy so you don't have to go looking every time you write dialogue.

The big other thing to watch out for is how plural pronouns affect verbs. He and she IS, but they ARE. I have the player tell the game whether or not their pronoun of choice is plural after they're entered it in and then simply load two separate versions of each sentence with one set for ises and one for ares.

You can also make some more blank name variables to use for verbs and have the game check if the pronoun's plural and then reference a string like with the pronouns (ie, having a string for is that changes to are if plural and using that in dialogue.) Both solutions generally work and I use both for different situations in dialogue.

Beyond that, I can't really give any engine specific advice, but this is how I do it. Best of luck with your game! :)

[aethelwyneleigh27]

Cod Characters General Dating Headcanons (part one)

+ Random and Some bits of Chubby Fem S/O Headcanons with mentions of different nationality S/O

+ What type of BF/GF they would be

Including John Price, Simon "Ghost" Riley, John "Soap" MacTavish, Kyle "Gaz" Garrick, Alejandro Vargas, Rodolfo "Rudy" Parra

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3

Fem terms and pronouns like she/her are used for the reader

ꕥ HOPE YOU ENJOY! ꕥ

My rules for requests and characters I can write for

Please comment if you want to be added to the taglist, the next part or cod content alone.

Taglist: @marshmallowinamess

A/n: Hi lovelies! Lia here, I'm back after a nerve-wracking week of school. This is a bit short but I hope you enjoy it otherwise. God I fucking hate school. I wrote all of this in a cold room, a heat pad on me (because period cramps) and at 3am so any mistakes will be edited out as soon as I'm aware of it.

This is divided into a multiple part thing (I think 2-3?) because God knows I can't fit them all in one post because of the limited amount of gifs and photos. I'll add more to these in the future, some are longer than others because I can't think. Also because I can't write them all at once, that's a lot to write okay 😭

Disclaimers/warnings: Typical Cod things, OOC characters???, Unrealistic, Some suggestive themes and language, I'm so sorry but English is not my first language so please don't come after me. Most of the content I've seen are on TikTok and Tumblr I don't actually play the game but I love the characters so much, same with any other content I have for other video games.

Tiny sidenote: the reader in this has been describe to be shorter than the characters and has been mentioned to have a soft body rather than the muscular type.

John Price

ꕥ (OH MY GOD LOOK AT HIS SMILEEE) (He's such a quokka)

ꕥ Price who literally is such a father figure, doesn't matter whether the relationship between you two is romantic or platonic. He often takes the dominant caring role.

ꕥ Doesn't smoke around you, doesn't matter if you insist he doesn't. He still won't and definitely will criticize you if you try or do smoke because he doesn't want you do end up like him.

ꕥ If there's a bit of an age gap between you, I'd say he's hesitant. Definitely afraid of what the rest of the task force thinks (He can't help it, they're basically his boys)

ꕥ John Price who wants to settle down with you, maybe have kids if you want but just a white picket fence life with you without the chaos that is war and his job.

ꕥ He only ever let's you have his hat, only when he gives it to you though. Most of the time it would be while you're out, he'd put it on your head from his. (Cowboy hat rule? I heard that in more respectful terms rather than sexual, it respectfully means that you are theirs)

ꕥ John Price who rests his chin at the top of your head no matter how much he needs to crouch down whenever hugging you from behind. Love doing it whenever you're busy doing something too. (Props for the effort because you cannot tell me he doesn't have back, neck and knee pains)

ꕥ Is constantly worried if you share the same line of work, like at first it was nothing but a tiny crush and slowly he finds himself caring about your well-being more and more over time.

ꕥ Can't help but think he's an acts of service type of guy, reaching up for things you need or better yet lifting you up so you can reach them and loves opening things for you like bottles or anything canned. (Girlies who get their nails done or wear press ons know this struggle ( I'm a press on girly)

ꕥ The kind of man who would turn on some oldies music and slow dance with you in the living room, your footsteps and breathing being the only other sounds as you smile at each other, foreheads against the other's.

Simon "Ghost" Riley

ꕥ Ghost who is such Doberman/Black cat boyfriend. Like have you seen this man? He's so tall and intimidating, one distasteful look from him and if it was physically possible that person would drop dead.

ꕥ Ghost whose a chubby chaser through and through, he just looks for something different from what he's used to.

ꕥ Is definitely a tits kinda guy, doesn't matter how big or how small they are. He'll definitely play with them in some way during doing the you know what.

ꕥ Feels like you can take him and his size better because of your plush body. Has a size kink and likes seeing it bulge a bit when he's inside you.

ꕥ You're just so soft and warm, he wants something away from what he usually feels doing his job. Not really that touchy but he gets quite clingy within closed doors.

ꕥ Likes to squeeze your thighs, his grip on them would not falter. Doesn't matter whether it's in a sexual or domestic way.

ꕥ Thinks you deserve better than what he can offer and needs constant reassurance, never says it out loud but you pick up on what he feels. (please be patient with him)

ꕥ More often than not, he thinks you're quite fragile. Even if you can protect yourself, one of his ways of showing you he loves you is through protecting you. Hence the Doberman boyfriend scenario.

ꕥ Doesn't like PDA but knows when it's necessary, him placing his arm around your shoulder is enough to keep perverts in their places. If that rando is really that bold then they'll most likely end up with a few broken bones depending on how pissed Simon is.

ꕥ If you work alongside him, he'd constantly worry about your well-being but at the same time is conflicted because he's confident that he can protect you.

ꕥ Only you and the TF141 can call him Simon, he still feels uneasy when he gets called that but when it's you saying it, it doesn't sound as daunting to him. Still dislikes in in certain tones of voice because his name reminds him of his past.

ꕥ You've seen his face, it took a long time but after that he trusted you enough to show him. The fact that you didn't find his face revolting and even kissed his scars while cupping his face was enough for him to want to marry you.

ꕥ Isn't fully insecure about his face but has his moments. (You know like the voice line where soap asks him to take off his mask and asked him if he was ugly and Ghost said "Negative")

ꕥ Takes a little while to get him to open up and little things like letting you hold him takes him a bit of time to get used to because it makes him feel vulnerable.

ꕥ God forbid something were to happen to you and he couldn't do anything to stop it, Simon would lose his fucking mind.

John "Soap" MacTavish

ꕥ Soap is a Golden Retriever boyfriend through and through. He's energetic, loyal and really affectionate.

ꕥ He's a lighthearted flirt at first because he doesn't wanna scare you off but damn does he gradually get bolder over time.

ꕥ Very hands on, touchy, and could be clingy at times unless you don't consent him, secretly always finding new ways to touch you.

ꕥ A sucker for cheek kisses, lips are his favorite but he can't help but break out a wide grin whenever you kiss his cheek. Can't help but feel kinda manly whenever you do.

ꕥ Adores making you laugh, no matter how stupid your sense of humor is he will absolutely say that joke if it gets a laugh out of you. Would be concerned if you had a dark sense of humor but will eventually get used to it. To describe it, hearing you laugh makes his heart feel full like in a content domestic way.

ꕥ Also, see the gif? You cannot tell me that he doesn't look at you that way because he absolutely would.

ꕥ Loves your weight against his body to the pint he's begging you to lay on him. You, him in the bed while he's shirtless with grey sweatpants on and you in your night clothes sharing each other's warmth with your head on his broad chest.

ꕥ Shows you silly and cute pet videos, especially the cat ones:

"[Name], look at this one!"

"Soap, we're not adopting a pet. Not right now at least"

ꕥ He was upset and gave you puppy eyes the whole time because the only time he had pet was when he was child, it was a hamster which was killed because it got sucked into the vacuum by his older sister.

ꕥ You're the only one allowed to tough his hair, he's very proud of his mohawk and will let you style it. Won't wear it out if you did something silly to it though.

ꕥ Soap who loves showing you off to everyone, loves light PDA but doesn't wanna potential put a target on your back.

ꕥ He definitely is the guy you want to take home to your family and friends (or found family <3), he's funny and easy to get along with. Very flirty with you but he'll straighten out because he's terrified on making a bad impression.

Kyle "Gaz" Garrick

ꕥ (HE'S SO FREAKING UNDERRATED WITHIN THIS FANDOM)

ꕥ He gives Labrador boyfriend vibes, you can't help but want to take care of him.

ꕥ Gaz who literally had to do a double take when he first saw you, he turned to Soap with that "Are you seeing what I'm seeing?" look in a good way.

ꕥ Gaz who literally had to ask you out multiple times before you said yes thinking he's only doing it for a bet or a cruel joke.

ꕥ Constant reassurance from him because he doesn't want you to feel insecure about your looks because to him you are literally an angel.

ꕥ Loves to chill with you, cuddling and just relaxing. Maybe scrolling on TikTok occasionally and show you the funny ones he chuckled at.

ꕥ He has a sixth sense whenever you crave something, say you want chocolate or drink of some sort then he'd definitely being home whatever it is you we're craving without having to ask you.

ꕥ Kyle who has your Starbucks order memorized because he likes being the one to order things for you. Will playfully argue with you on who'll pay this time. (Don't even try anymore, he always wins anyway)

ꕥ Puts his hat on your head mostly when you're out, has done it the first time because it was hot out and the sun was in your eyes. He's picked it up from Price and once you smiled at him through the shade of his cap, he has not stopped doing it.

ꕥ Definitely a words of affirmation and acts of service kind of guy when it comes to love languages. Sometimes whenever he'd give you two thumbs up and a cheeky smile, you can't help but laugh a little.

ꕥ He's very thoughtful, so much so that he prides himself in knowing you better than anyone. Everytime you two go out to eat, when he gets something and know that you'll want to taste it (he knows damn well whether you'll like it or not when he tastes it) he'll bring it upon himself to order you one before you even say you want some.

ꕥ Soft snores when he sleeps, it's cute but you know damn well he's tired. Also I think he's very cuddly, like he just likes reminding himself that he's not alone and that his bed is warm because you're in it. Therefore at minimum always has an arm around you in bed.

ꕥ Dances in the rain with you and loves it when you pull him gently on his arm while your hands are intertwined. Takes note of how the the raindrops sometimes fall on your lashes while you look up at him smiling.

ꕥ Kyle Garrick who wants nothing more in the world to see you happy and smiling. His "this is the woman I'm going to marry" moment was when you baked his favorite cake for his birthday despite it being so hard, you nailed it perfectly. (Whether it's out of luck or skill is up to you)

Alejandro Vargas

ꕥ (idk how to write for this angry Mexican man but I'll try my best, love him and his megamind hairline though <3)

ꕥ Alejandro is definitely a flirt, a very bold on at that. He's quite forward when it comes to liking someone so yeah.

ꕥ He lives for it when you boss him around. That being said, he isn't picky about body type or any of the sort.

ꕥ Will teach you Spanish if you don't know any, definitely prioritizes the curse words and laughs whenever you jokingly call him pendejo.

ꕥ Wouldn't mind you teaching him your own culture and mother tongue. Bonus points if it's similar to his.

ꕥ Has Spanish nicknames for you because I imagine his own culture is important to him.

ꕥ Would hate it if you had the same line of work but will never take it out on you, it's just that it's so dangerous given the people he's involved with. (It's definitely Valeria)

ꕥ Speaking of El Sinombre, I don't think they had anything romantic going on. It's mainly platonic and the "betrayal" sucked on Alejandro's side. They definitely had some rivalry and the tension was through the roof. (Mainly because I headcanon Valeria as Lesbian)

ꕥ Can be so romantic when he tries, you can't tell me this mf ain't a smooth talker because he definitely is. Can be very blunt like in a forward way with his affection too.

ꕥ Likes kissing your wrist and feeling your pulse against his lips because it reminds him you're alive. (The amount of angst this scenario carries would be something I'm up for to write)

ꕥ Is sent on a fit of rage when something happens to you, say you got kidnapped then this man would tears off the walls of every building if he had to.

Rodolfo "Rudy" Parra

ꕥ (ANOTHER UNDERATED CHARACTER)

ꕥ Another Golden Retriever boyfriend. This man is just loving and dotting, very husband material.

ꕥ Loves chubby women, has a soft spot for them and just likes holding them.

ꕥ He's definitely used to the insecurity that comes with the body, also doesn't get why such beauty standards are even in place. Has and would fuck the insecure out of you again if he had to. (It's in a very gentle and loving manner)

ꕥ If you hold him in your arms, he'd be absolutely living for it. He already has had a long day and being honest he hasn't had many lovers that went far so having you care in this way about him would have him wrapped around your finger.

ꕥ Worships the ground you walk on. That's it.

ꕥ Would take everything to heart whenever you teach him or mention something within your culture if you aren't of Spanish origins like he is. He just loves you so much that it makes him happy knowing more about you.

ꕥ Would adore slow dancing with you, brings him back to reality where he realizes that he has you and that you're there.

ꕥ Terrified that one day you'll end up leaving him so reassurance would be much appreciated by him.

ꕥ Definitely a sucker for receiving forehead kisses, as for giving he likes to kiss the back of your hand.

ꕥ If ever danger presents itself to you too closely, he would have a heart attack like full on crying but not in public though.

[muffinlance]

EDIT: The switchover from "Wani" to "Wanyi" has begun! Salvage should be switched; if anyone's re-reading, let me know if I missed any or accidentally borked any formatting during the change.

All crew names will be left the same, because they are Real People Names and I already had different personalities.

Thanks to everyone who helped me decide!

---Ye original post:---

Debating removing the various hat-tips to Embers in my fics due to attempting to re-read that story and finding it far less enamoring than when it was the second fic I'd ever read.

So anyways now soliciting potential new names for the Wani (Zuko's ship), Crewman Teruko, and Helmsman Kyo.

Update: Seems people (at least on this blog) associate those characters with my stories, not Embers. And the personalities are different, and they're legit real world names... So I'll likely leave those two alone.

Still tempted to change the Wani's name, though. My current top contender is Wanyi, which was @tuktukpodfics 's adorable change when they were podficcing Salvage, which I shall just quote here:

Wànyī (萬一): One in ten thousand, Perchance. I realize now that MuffinLance got the name Wani for Zuko’s ship from the author Vathara and it means "alligator" in another language. But when I was reading Salvage, I always imagined it was "wànyī," which literally means "one in ten thousand" and is used grammatically to mean "what if" or "just in case." I think a ship called "The Perchance" is perfect for a boy clinging to false hope.

I think that is a lot cooler and more meaningful than "Alligator". <3

[tswwwit]

Hello to the best author ever!!!! Familiar au has had me in a death grip for years. I will never stop re reading and overanalyzing this work of art. 😘

I'm having thoughts about familiar Bill having the same history as canon Bill. Doesn't that mean Bill isn't a demon? Hold on, I'm donning my conspiracy theory hat.

What is a demon in familiar au anyway? Just a general term humans made up to classify any evil being of unknown origins? My head canon is that a demon is an entity that manifested in the nightmare realm. I feel like that matches best with familiar au lore so far.

Canon Bill and his Hechmanics are a group of interdimensional criminals from different dimensions. Bill spending "eons amassing criminals and lunatics from different dimensions" is a direct fact from Alex. Another fun fact! Hectorgon used to be sheriff of the interdimensional task force meant to take Bill down. So they aren't evil because they're demons. They're just like that (and we accept them for who they are ♥️).

So is familiar Bill even a demon? Are his Hechmanics demons? Did everyone just assume they were demons and they never bothered to correct them? Or are they lying about it? How much of canon is in familiar au?

Did Bill forget he isn't even a demon??? Did he forget just how "human" he actually was before meeting Dipper? A trillion years is a long time to Stockholm Syndrome yourself.

Okay but it would be so funny if my theory was correct. Dipper thought his familiar being a demon was bad enough but he doesn't know he's a Mafia wife on the interdimensional scale oh nooooo

I believe Bill in canon is technically still a 'demon', in that he's described as such and never really denies it? But details aside - I've never really defined what a 'demon' is in Familiar AU - and I'm glad, because I started it waaaay before we got all that supplemental canonical material!

Familiar Bill didn't manifest out of nowhere like the classical idea of 'demon'. He had parents, and the backstory, and all that!

But I would say that Familiar Bill is a demon. In that it's a catchall term for Very Magical Powerful Malevolent Being from Another Dimension.

And in this particular branch of the multiverse, well. Let's use Bill's incredibly old age for this bit of worldbuilding.

Say you've been hanging with interdimensional criminals since a billion years back. Turns out that when nasty customers hang out in certain places, beings of similar nature and intent tend move into the general area. It's the part of the universe the 'good guys' of the universe avoid, making it all the more tempting for all kinds of weirdos and monsters to gather around! A few hundred thousand years later and before you know it, the whole thing snowballs! A little spectrum of nasty little monsters with powers, fluttering in the same neighborhood. Not all of them are immortal though, and it turns out if those stick around in the same-ish place for long enough - that being millennia - the mortal ones'll develop their own culture and amalgamated language.

Familiar Bill: Confirmed for Demon, as he's Enculturated enough over a billion years to consider himself one.

[hillbillyoracle]

How to Create Downtime Menus

As a lot of my posts are, this one was inspired by a conversation with my partner. She seemed to think some of my ideas were helpful so I thought I'd write them up and share them here.

I use a combination of these ideas to do two things - redirect myself when I get stuck doomscrolling/freezing/obsessing and redirect myself when I'm stuck on the "must be good, must be productive" hamster wheel and can't seem to stop doing chores until I'm fucking exhausted or have pushed/hurt myself. Knowing you need to stop is one thing - knowing what to do instead is another.

Not all of these will work for every person at every time. Pick one or two that seem interesting and give them a whirl.

Habit of the Month

This is a small habit I can do in about 5-10 minutes a day. These are sometimes habits that I want to audition for my lineup or just want to focus on as a way of rebooting a given area of my life. Physical habits have been things like stretching, a walk, putting on moisturizer, drinking water, making tea, etc. Emotional habits have been things like stream of consciousness journaling, bullet journaling, recording myself venting, etc. Spiritual habits have been things like meditating, altar work, reading sutras, tarot readings, etc.

If I'm stuck in a loop and I haven't done that task yet, it serves as an easy win that feels moderately meaningful to accomplish. This is easier to do than longer or less interesting tasks.

Side Quests

These are little challenges I'd like to accomplish that are 100% fun and completely optional. They are specific and can me completed within a given time frame - usually a month. They usually aren't the most meaningful to keep them more fun and so I'm not letting myself down if I don't opt to complete it.

They've been things like:

The Minor Expert Challenge - read three books in one subject

The Kanopy Critic Challenge - use up all of my Kanopy credits that month

The Regal Freegal Challenge - download all the albums/songs I can on Freegal that month

The Monthly Playlist Challenge - create a playlist of the month where each song represents something about each day of that month; like a playlist diary

The Reverse Tarot Draw Challenge - pick/list a tarot card you best think represents each day of a given month or other time period; like a tarot card diary

The 100 Words Challenge - learn 100 words in a foreign language

As you can see, I prefer things that are pretty low energy friendly so I can work on them on days I'm super tired. Just little chronic illness things.

Alphabet Lists

I use these for my cleaning routines actually but I also have been trying them with my downtime. The way it works is you list out the alphabet and choose one self care or hobby task you'd like to do for each. They don't have to start with the same letter, it just serves as an easy way to limit how many you pick and keep track of what you've done. It's satisfying to cross off the whole list.

Tasks I put on these are things like

A - paint my nails

B - crochet a charity hat

C - write 5 letters for Letters Against Isolation

D - send a letter to a friend

E - play a solo rpg

F - play a solo board game

G - complete a puzzle

etc

They're fun tasks I'm not currently doing as often as I'd like but chill enough that it doesn't matter when precisely I do them more often. I try to pick tasks that are roughly 30 minutes to an hour long though some definitely take longer. I like to complete these roughly monthly but I try to complete a whole list before I start it again. Anything I just did not feel like doing and kept skipping gets scratched out and I rewrite a new list with new item to replace those. And I start again.

Whenever I'm like ugh I don't know what to do with myself, I try to pick at least one thing on the list and give it a try for 5 minutes. If I don't like it after that I can just put it away and pick something else.

10x10

10x10 lists are a different take on a similar idea. It's a list of 10 things you'd like to do at least 10 times in a given time period. Mine tend to be on the seasonal or annual timescale but maybe you're intense and prefer a monthly one. If I don't complete them in a given time period, I just continue with it until I'm done. Better to complete it on an altered timeline than not at all.

For me these tend to be slightly bigger tasks that take a little more planning or energy. I'm not totally sure why I use them this way since you could definitely use them for smaller tasks but that's just the space they occupy for me.

So examples of what would be on my list would be things like:

Grab a hot chocolate from the coffee shop (x10)

Complete a PokemonGo event (x10)

Have a spa night and watch a movie (x10)

Do something extra nice for my partner (x10)

Try a new game (x10)

Find a geocache (x10)

etc

Filing up a little 10x10 grid is pretty satisfying. Much more so than anxietying myself into my bed for the equivalent amount of time.

Seasonal Bucket Lists

I really enjoy making these though I really struggle with the current season (Spring) given my allergies. There's this idea my partner has told me about in DBT where you try to recall positive moments to help "build a life worth living". I think seasonal bucket lists are really good at helping with this for me. I look back on the seasons I made these lists way more fondly than the ones I didn't.

They generally center on seasonal activities I don't want to miss out on. So for summer that's stuff like going for a night swim/skinny dip, getting 5-10 good cloud photos, playing a yard game (like cornhole), seeing a street concert, etc. I also try to take pictures of those (if they don't already involve them) so I can reflect on them later and enjoy the residual happiness.

Conclusion

The point of these isn't to overwhelm you with options. It's just to have enough ideas prepped that you can find something no matter your energy level or time you're working with.

Remember - rest and enjoying yourself is necessary for human health. Folks how get good rest and experience flow states more regularly tend to heal better. People who spend time on what they enjoy are often more enjoyable to be around.

It's never a waste of time to make yourself happy.

[bkgexe]

rotary devotion

caleb (love and deepspace) x reader ✾ part 2/2 ✾ 19.7 (35k total)

✾ info! part one

✾ tw! yandere-adjacent activities typical in canon. f!reader referred to w/ gendered language and she/her pronouns.

✾ notes! reminder of angst with a happy(ish) ending lmaoo. smut in this part uhhh they r pretty switch-y both of them so watch out for that also dry humping + oral f!receiving + they're both weird as hell. read on ao3 if u would prefer!

He’s done everything they’ve asked of him. He’s achieved one of the highest ranks in the Farspace Fleet. He’s reintegrated himself into your life somewhat smoothly. He’s become powerful beyond measure, refined his Evol to a point that his strength and precision are unmatched. Ever has modified him into something different, something he can’t come back from. He’s their perfect weapon. 

Surely this means they can fix you now. He has to have done enough.

Professor Lucius doesn’t usually respond to Caleb’s requests to meet, but he was insistent this time. He made threats he really had no place to make. Knows that their worst nightmare would be Caleb killing himself and wiping out all the progress they’ve made. They know he has the willpower to do it, too. He knows he’s just a weapon. Understands that ultimately, all he’ll become is a machine. He wants to live, but he wants you to live more.

His only regret would be leaving you permanently. Inflicting that trauma on you a second time and not being there when it comes time to heal. 

The professor always conducts his meetings in the gardens. Something about the positive impact of nature on mental well-being. A line straight out of a textbook. Lucius has never felt like a real person. He’s like a machine, too, even though he beats out Caleb in the competition of flesh and blood.

“Colonel.” Lucius has a hard time putting respect into his voice when he says this. As if Caleb got his position through Ever’s string-pulling alone, as if he didn’t put in hard work and sweat to get where he is. 

“Professor.” Caleb affords him the same courtesy. He doubts the piece of shit in front of him earned this title in any real, concrete way. 

Lucius has a watering can. He tilts it over some blooming azaleas, pink-white blossoms reaching up towards the sun. Droplets of water catch on the petals, pulling them backwards harshly, damaging the flowers. There are real groundskeepers that do this work, but Lucius likes to play at caretaker. “This must be important if you threatened to go to such a drastic extreme,” he says. He watches the azaleas sway in the light breeze instead of looking at Caleb. “Yet you’re wasting my time with silence.”

“I’ve done everything you wanted. And I’ll keep doing more,” Caleb says. He takes his hat off, worries the rim of it in his hand, the one he can feel with. If he can keep his nerves to this one spot, then the professor might believe that he’s approaching this with boundless confidence. “It’s time for you to fix her.”

The expression that overtakes Lucius’s face is grim. Something about it makes Caleb’s stomach twist uncomfortably, makes him feel like he’s about to be pushed off the edge of the gardens, fall to the ground below. 

He’s fifty floors up. The fall would be long. He’d think about you all the way down. 

“Are you really in a place to be making demands?” Lucius asks. “You don’t think I’ll actually let you end your life without my permission, do you?”

“I do,” Caleb says, “because you agreed to this meeting. Even if you have some kind of control over me, there’s a chance that it could slip. I’m a quick shot. Won’t even need five seconds.”

Instead of responding to the threat, instead of killing Caleb right out to prove that he’s unnecessary, instead of folding immediately because his plans could be rendered impossible—Lucius smiles. It’s a terrible, gut-wrenching thing. The smile of a man that hasn’t felt joy over anything except the suffering of others for too many years to count. “Well, Colonel, I have some wonderful news for you.”

Caleb doesn’t breathe. He’s afraid that Lucius is going to say that somehow, out of his sight for five minutes, they’ve already killed you. If your name comes out of the professor’s mouth, he doesn’t know what he’ll do. His heart rate is already climbing dangerously high, and he tries to breathe deep and even. Keep things calm inside of him. He can’t lose more than he already has.

“She no longer requires our help.”

It’s not at all what Caleb had expected to hear. Internally, his confidence falters. There’s information he doesn’t have. Something important they’ve neglected to tell him. Is this how you feel every time you find out something new he’s been keeping from you? No—he does that to protect you. Lucius has kept something important under wraps for this very moment, to undermine Caleb when he thinks he has an upper hand. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

That smile again. Sharp-edged, the way a wolf smiles its way into an animal’s skin. “Her aether core has been repaired. She found another fragment and used it to stabilize the one in her heart.”

[                                      ] telling the truth or not. [                     ] for you.

“Your silence speaks of confusion. I’ll make it simpler: she will live a long, healthy life. Well—as long and healthy of a life as a Hunter commonly lives. There’s no risk anymore.” Lucius nods, as if trying to cajole Caleb into nodding with him. “Everything you’ve done for us… We appreciate it, but it seems the reward you were seeking has already been granted.”

Everything he’s done for them. [                                                                                   ] forgive him. You wouldn’t. You wouldn’t, he’s sure of it. He [                                                                                                          ]. So you would be okay. So they would fix you.

“You should be happy. It’s what you wanted.”

You’ll be okay. You’ll be okay. Even as emotion crawls up his throat and makes him feel like he’s going to throw up, like he’s [                                                             ], he’s so relieved by the fact that you’re okay.

“I believe it was the Onychinus leader that helped her acquire the fragment she needed. Her lover. Seems his time was better placed than yours in the end, no?”

[                                                                                         ]. [                                                                                                ]. [                                                                            ]. [                                                 ��                                                                   ]. [                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             ]. [                                                                                           ]. [                                                                                                   ]. Her lover.  [            ]. [                                       ]. [       ]. Your [           ]. [                                                                                  ]. [                                                                                                                                                                                                                           ]. [                                      ]. [                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          ]. [                                                     ]. 

The Toring Chip pulls him back from the precipice when he’s being yanked off of the professor, when [                                               ] and there’s blood on his hands. Lucius [                                              ], his nose surely broken, front teeth [                              ], but he still smiles. Nothing Caleb has done has been for anything, and [                                                   ] for you, because he loves you, because he would do anything for you. 

He fights against the guards that pull him away, metal arm freeing itself easily. They shouldn’t have made him so strong. He breaks [                                                     ] before they subdue him, before [                                               ]. He’s on the ground. His face is pushed into grass, into dirt. [                                                                                                ] and it meant nothing. It meant nothing. 

But you’re okay. You’re okay and he could cry with relief. He is, he thinks. Something is so deeply wrong inside of him and he doesn’t want to be that way. He loves you. He loves you so much. He loves you so, so much and you’re going to be okay. He [                                                            ] if he ever even so much as gets a glimpse of the guy that [                         ] you. Her lover.

Someone else took his job from him. He’s the one that’s supposed to protect you. That’s supposed to heal you. That’s supposed to be there when you need him. And he was gone for so long that you [                                                                        ] with someone that wasn’t him, and he’s going to kill someone. He’s going to kill someone. He’s going to put Lucius in the ground.

There was another way. Of course [                                          ]. Ever has lied to him so many times that he should have assumed, but there was another way to heal you. His impulsiveness got him here. If he’d just waited instead of believing them outright, he could [                                                                  ] and he would be whole and maybe you’d love him the way he wants you to.

Sound cuts in and out. It feels like his brain is a processor, overheating, melting into hardware. He hears the guards holding him down ask the professor if they should dispose of him and he laughs. Because he would love to see them try. He could break their necks easily if his head wasn’t pounding the way it is, if the chip wasn’t working overtime to subdue him. He could turn these people into paste. (She would be afraid of you. She would be so afraid.) He’s losing more of himself with every passing day, with every emotional lapse of judgement, and he wishes he could go back.

He just wants to be the boy that dried your hair for you after you showered, that sat with you on the porch in late summer and held you in his arms as you read to him from whatever book you were in the middle of. He didn't even need context for what you read to him—he just wanted an excuse to hear your voice for as long as he was allowed.

“Let him go,” Lucius says through the blood in his mouth. “He’s learned his lesson.”

When the guards let him go, he can’t stand up immediately. The cool dampness of the ground beneath him is the only thing that keeps his head from feeling like it’s going to cleave itself from his body. There are gaps in places there shouldn’t be gaps. (She can’t see you like this.) There are white spots in his vision that feel permanent. He claws at the ground with his hand and he can’t feel it, he can’t feel it, the same coolness that touches his face, that stains his skin.

His hand. His hand isn’t real. [                                                        ]. That’s why. Replaced. Cold metal. Can’t feel you with it. (Want to so bad.) Your lover. Can’t feel you with it at all and didn’t even know you’d memorized the details of him. The stretch marks that are gone. He loves you so much. Of course you’d notice. He loves you so much.

“Get up.”

Your palm against his chest. His heart beating under your hand. You could tear it out. He wants it to be yours. He loves you so much. Your lover. Summer heat, buzzing and sticky. Sitting on the porch with you. He can’t feel you with it. Cold metal. He loves you so much.

“You’re embarrassing yourself. Get up.”

Buzzing in his head, like the low drone of summer. Sticky heat. God, he wants you. Your lover. Caleb. I didn’t sleep with him. He needs you to know. He needs you to know. 

A foot nudges his side. His coat. The uniform of the colonel. He gets to his knees, then stumbles to his feet. His head is lightning, heat, pain. His vision is black at its edges. He needs you to know. Know what? Your lover. He loves you so much. Caleb. I didn’t sleep with him. Summer with you. (She likes to wake up at nine, so you’re up at eight.) Vacation, when he monopolized most of your time. Mornings he made you breakfast. In the afternoon, he took you to amusement parks, movies, any restaurant you wanted. You liked the shitty place a few blocks away that only did shakes and burgers and fries. (Don’t swear in front of her.) A little more upscale than other fast food places. No drive-thru. Strawberry or chocolate, sometimes with whipped cream. You changed your mind enough that he could never preemptively order for you. Didn’t want to get it wrong. It made him feel like he didn’t know you sometimes, the fact that he couldn’t tell what you were going to want just by your mood. 

He wants to be that boy again. 

He wants to be that boy again.

He wants to be that boy again.

He wants to be that boy again.

[                                              ].

“Colonel?” someone asks, and it’s your voice. It’s not your voice. You wouldn’t call him that. Caleb. He wishes it was your voice. (She shouldn’t see you like this.) He misses you. He wants something but he can’t remember what it is. He misses you. “ Colonel.”

“Yeah,” he says. His voice is rough, breaking in his throat. Trying to swallow past the feeling of the gravel in his mouth proves difficult. Trees stand tall above him, growing strong even on top of this building. The azaleas seem to glow, their pink and white blooms fully highlighted by the beaming sun. Their scent is on the breeze, light and honey-like. Spongy earth gives slightly beneath his feet. A fertile garden. A verdant paradise. Breathing deep used to ground him. Now it just reminds him that he’s alive.

A security guard stands in front of him. Lucius is gone. Probably to the infirmary. Blood still adorns Caleb’s knuckles. Dirt is caked into the knees of his slacks. (You’re disgusting.) The guard crosses his arms, impatient. He’s asked Caleb to do something that he didn’t hear. Leave, probably.

“I’m going,” Caleb says. 

The guard doesn’t stop him. He stalks back through the garden, into the professor’s observatory and to the elevators. There’s a destination in his heart, somewhere he needs to be so badly he could choke on it. 

He needs to find you. He needs to find your lover.

˚✧ ﾟ.

His childhood, a list of wants: safety, warmth, food.

There were no parents in the picture, as far back as he can remember. Fate twisted unfortunately, putting him in a foster home run by a group of scientists. Foster home was too good a word for what it really was—an orphanage, essentially, that just managed to pass during inspections by governmental child care services.

Ten kids, including you. The lab across the street. Constant visits, though he managed to avoid them for a long time. Sometimes kids didn’t come back. Adopted, the matron of the house would tell everyone. No one thought about it too hard. It meant there would be more food for the rest of you. 

Each item on his list, crossed off daily. Just. He learned to be self-sufficient, learned the finer points of dealing with people. The matron liked him best because he was charming, kind, looked out for the other kids. The kids liked him best because he would give them his treats, breaking whatever candies or baked goods he received into pieces to share with everyone else. There are laws to give and take. People follow them because they’re born into them. They don’t even realize they’re adhering to doctrine.

But Caleb realized. He knew, even at eleven, the basics of what made people tick. 

They took you the most often. Something changed at a certain point, and Caleb was no longer the favorite. You were—quiet, tiny you , with your small voice and empty eyes. At first, he resented you for it. You’d get bigger portions than anyone else, the way he used to. He lost some of his leverage with the rest of the kids. Less to share with them. He lost special privileges with the matron. Staying out later to play with his friends from school became more of an argument, asking for any sort of allowance was rendered impossible.

You acted like you didn’t know anyone. It bothered him. It made him seethe, in fact, that even though you were younger than him, you acted like you were above him. So he did what he was good at. He observed you. Watched, learned, interacted with you more to try to get a read on you. Laughed with you, told the same jokes he told everyone because it made them feel secure. You can always trust someone you can laugh with. Slowly, he came to understand. It wasn’t that you were acting like you didn’t know anyone.

You were forgetting. They were making you forget.

Every time you went to that lab, you came back with your eyes even emptier, your hands always balled into fists. You chewed on the ends of your hair and sat on your bed and didn’t move until mealtime. Because you were scared. You didn’t know any of these people. You didn’t know where you were. 

Caleb’s list of wants was small. Self-sufficient. But he considered, even then, what it would feel like to extend that list to you. Safety, warmth, food. He had never been a provider. Taking was easier for him, especially when he could do it with a boyish smile and an ingratiating thank you.

They started bringing Caleb to the lab on his twelfth birthday—and before then, he thought he understood. He thought he had come to understand you.

The worst part was that they didn’t make him forget. Or maybe that wasn’t something they were doing—maybe your brain was rewiring itself, protecting you from the things inside that building. From the serums injected between fingers, the centrifugal stress tests, the cell mutation, the machines that froze the body to a point of near-death and the machines that would warm it until it felt like being burned alive, the Evol amplifiers, the sensory-deprivation chambers, the forced body enhancement, the interviews with their questions that didn’t make any sense but felt terribly important.

Caleb grew eleven inches in three weeks. None of his clothes fit him. His skin burned—burned like it did in the machines, burned with the way it was begging his bones and muscles to stop expanding, burned with the wrongness of his sudden growth spurt.

His childhood, a list of wants: food, quiet, relief from the pain.

Taking care of you started with reintroducing himself every time you returned from across the street. Turned into removing the ends of your hair from your mouth when you were anxious, letting you play with his instead. He’d go to school with tiny little braids in his hair that you left there, brush it off when anyone made fun of him. Portions of his food were saved for you. You always got to shower first, when the water was hottest. The matron would sometimes put the best treats aside for him, old loyalties, and they would be yours without you even having to ask.

Each time you forgot sent him back to the beginning. Slowly, you would begin to talk to him. Slowly, you would begin to smile. He could do this as many times as you needed. Even when his bones ached with a pain that no child should ever have to know, he would make sure that you were clean and fed and content as possible with the life the two of you had been given.

The number of children in the foster home dwindled and he started getting restless. Started worrying when they took you away, even though it was clear that something about you was very important to the people across the street. If you didn’t return, he didn’t know what he would do. He’d already gained incredible control over his Evol. He made you laugh by floating things in the air, sailing paper airplanes across the cramped space of your communal bedroom. They made him do more at the lab. They made him crush things even bigger than him. Cars, tons of solid metal, massive slabs of rock.

Sometimes smaller things. Sometimes things that were scared, that reminded him of you in their innocence.

It was hard for him to touch you after those days. You’d ask him to braid your hair and he’d have to say no, even though it killed him to say no to you. Because he didn’t deserve it. Didn’t deserve to touch you and find solace in your presence when he was capable of such things.

His childhood, a list of wants: your safety, your happiness, a place to rest his head.

The Chronorift Catastrophe itself couldn’t touch his small list of priorities. The woman that found him in one of the camps for lost or orphaned children was one he recognized. At first, he was scared. She had interviewed him once. Twice, she had been the one administering the needle into the delicate skin between his fingers.

But she made it clear that something about now was different. She didn’t want to take him back there. She promised. And though he would never say this out loud—there were things he knew he could do if she reneged that promise. Things he would hate himself for, but things that were necessary.

He needed the help of an adult. Of someone that had some kind of power, some kind of status after Linkon was nearly destroyed. I don’t know where she is, he told her—and she knew he was talking about you.

The worst part about rebuilding his life after the Catastrophe was that you had forgotten again. It felt more significant this time. A new home that he was learning at the same pace as you. He didn’t know how to protect you because he didn’t know what threats to look out for.

Josephine was kind. Caleb would tell this to anyone that asked. But there was something stopping him from forgetting the way she looked at him when she administered the needle—the way she looked through him, the same way he was sure she had looked through you. 

And it’s not like the experiments didn’t leave their mark. He had his own problems, sure—frequent body aches, chills that put him in cold sweats for hours, joint freezes that he had to push through, forcing himself past limits that couldn’t be breached healthily—but yours were worse. Whatever they’d done to you left you with a heart condition that had to be monitored. Doctor’s appointments every other week, medication that ruined your appetite. He tried to keep you fed, but it was hard when the idea of eating pushed you to tears. You hated the hospital. You hated the medication. You hated the pain. How could he ever look Josephine in the eye and genuinely thank her for taking the two of you in when this is what her experiments had done to you?

Caleb was very good at a lot of things. Gifted, one might say, if you only considered the pretty parts of the consequences of his childhood. He was not very good at forgiveness. 

It’s why he was never fully able to let go, allow Josephine to take care of the two of you alone. Caleb always considered himself your caretaker. He was the one that was looking out for you first—Gran was just a necessary second, a legal adult that would assure you both had a roof above your heads that you couldn’t be taken from.

Stability helped. You adjusted quicker with less stress. Smiled faster, began talking to him like a friend within a week instead of a month. It was enough for him. His list of responsibilities fulfilled. His purpose was to be there for you. 

Even when you were at school, in different grades, he would find you at lunch. Abandon his friends to sit with you. When he aged out of your school building and started attending the high school down the street, he had a long talk with the principal that allowed him to leave his last class twenty minutes early to pick you up every day. 

People are the same. They’re driven by wants and needs that are so easy to take apart, to play into. He could be your best friend, taking you to the mall on weekends to shop with you. He could be your guardian, chiding you when you stayed out too late with a friend. He could be your doting older brother, picking you up everyday to walk you home. Whatever other people needed him to be in order for them to allow him to be right next to you.

It didn’t matter what they thought. What he was to you was different—something deeper, too nebulous to be titled. He was your everything, and you were his. As it should be.

The time he spent with your hair was sacred to him. His favorite memories of your childhood: pulling at the ends to bother you, massaging shampoo into your scalp with firm and careful fingers, lying his cheek against the top of your head and breathing in the scent of you. 

You let it grow out after moving into Gran’s. As it got longer, it should have become more of a nuisance. Another thing to take care of. But because it was a part of you that he got to care for, he never really minded it. He researched styles, spent hours watching videos on hair care, monopolized your time at home so he could practice on you. He wanted to take such good care of your hair because it was important to you. Something he found out while doing another thing he shouldn’t have been doing. 

Eavesdropping was second nature to Caleb. Growing up the way he did, he always tried to be a step ahead. To know when you would be taken across the street, when he would. To see if he could glean any information about what was going on from the adults that purportedly cared for the two of you. He’s no different at Gran’s house.

A conversation he overheard, Gran on the phone with your therapist: post-traumatic stress disorder, an unhealthy attachment to things that feel familiar. To your hair, to your few remaining belongings that made it through the Catastrophe, to Caleb. Anything that felt like it was intrinsically yours. 

He focused on the hair because focusing on the implications of him being intrinsically yours, even then, could have torn him apart. Could have made him jump the gun at fifteen, to tell you that somehow he knew that he would always be yours, that you were destined to be side-by-side for life. Even in death, he wanted to rest beside you.

Something was very wrong with him. He knew this, even then. Knew that if he went to therapy like Gran wanted, they would pick him apart the way they’d picked you apart. They’d say he had post-traumatic stress disorder, impostor syndrome, a protector complex. That he was unhealthily attached to you—that he believed you were intrinsically his. 

This was all easy to figure out on his own time. It wasn’t that he wanted to be ignorant to the things wrong with him—he could just deal with it by himself. He didn’t need other people to tell him what was wrong and then give him some half-assed advice on how to be better. The things that were wrong with him weren’t going to make his life worse. They were going to make your life better. He’d always be there for you, whatever you needed, whatever complex that meant he had or whatever attachments that meant he had formed.

His childhood, a list of wants: your comfort and to exist beside you. And he knew he could provide comfort to you, despite his shortcomings. 

He was sixteen when he received his first confession. There wasn’t a point before that where he had considered dating anyone—even considered romance as a concept in his life—and that extended to after. You didn’t like it when he explained what had happened. He was kind, as always, and turned the girl down nicely. You took the card the girl had written for him, still unopened in a cream envelope adorned with shooting star stickers, and ripped it apart. 

There isn’t a clear, defining moment in his past where he knew you would always be where he wanted to end up. But this moment serves as a clear indication in his head of the beginning of the messy period where he had to figure out the extent of what he wanted from you.

Caleb hated the attention he got in high school. No one knew him but you—he made sure of that. And yet droves of guys and girls would line up to give him little gifts at the end of the school years, would pass him notes in class asking if he liked anyone, would get close to the other guys on the basketball team in an effort to find out things about him. It was all because of his past—the body given to him through unnatural means, the charisma he learned through trauma.

He resented people for wanting him for those things. But he didn’t really care either way what they thought about him. He was eighteen years old when he became positive that the only person he was ever going to date was you. He’d marry you, too, if that’s what you wanted. A massive wedding that he’d spend his entire savings on, or something small, just friends, even just the two of you. Or you didn’t even have to get married, if you didn’t like the idea of that. Whatever you wanted. Whatever way you would have him. He was yours down to his veins, down to his blood, down to his cells. He belonged to you.

When you received your first—and only—confession in high school, Caleb realized that it went both ways. You belonged to him, too. 

You told Caleb about it right after school, like you couldn’t keep it in. You were terrible at keeping secrets from him. He loved that. The guy asked you out on a date, said he’d seen you around and thought you were so pretty, that he’d be kicking himself if he didn’t ask you out.

The guy was a soccer star. Tall, handsome, nice enough. In Caleb’s year, which meant he was too old for you. He’d be going to college on a scholarship the same time Caleb would start at the DAA, because he decided he could provide for you as a pilot. This guy would be an athlete in college and then do some shitty, run-of-the-mill job afterwards. (Don’t swear in front of her. You have to be a good example.) And who did he think he was, asking you out now ? Was he gonna date a high-schooler while in college? Had he even thought about how he’d keep in contact with you while he was away? How he’d make sure you were eating enough, make sure that you were happy?

No. Of course he fucking didn’t. (Language. Careful.) Caleb was the only guy thinking about these things that young. It was okay if it was him because he was meant for you. He’d take things at your pace, obviously—he was just getting everything ready for your future together. He liked to be prepared.

So he talked to the guy. Of course he was nice about it. Didn’t want to embarrass anyone. Just told him to keep his distance, that you were off-limits.

What are you, her brother? 

No, he said, and no, no, no, no, no, he wasn’t even though some people liked to say that he was, he wasn’t because he was going to be yours one day and you were going to be his.

Then what’s the problem? C’mon, man—doesn’t she look sweet?

Sweet. The way he said that about you. A suggestion.

Caleb attended a soccer game for the first time that Saturday. It was a shame that the guy who called you sweet fell the way he did while shooting and tore his Achilles tendon. He lost his scholarship. Couldn’t run anymore. Need that in soccer. Those kinds of injuries never fully heal. 

No one asked you out after that. Other students looked at him in the hallways and whispered, all speculating on his Evol, the rumor of its power. Didn’t the guy that fell ask out his little sister, or whatever she is to him? No, surely Caleb—golden boy Caleb, captain of the basketball team and all around great guy—wouldn’t do something so drastic. So insane.

Sweet. Sweet. 

Things like desire were foreign to him until they weren’t. The guys on his team always talked about women in ways that disgusted him, in ways he couldn’t even begin to comprehend. Just like the guy that fell and hurt himself. They talked about what they wanted to do to the models they saw on social media, even to the girls they shared classes with—and he just didn’t understand it. The depravity.

And then one day he got home from shooting hoops at the park with his friends, and he needed to shower before he saw you because you always complained when he was sweaty from playing sports. Without even thinking, he opened the bathroom door—and you were changing into something comfortable for the night. All he saw was the exposed skin of your back, the curve of your ass in black underwear, the softness of your thighs. He closed the door as quickly as he could and apologized. Apologized again. 

He had been hard in his lifetime, obviously, but he was so hard he couldn’t think. Just the image of you in his brain, the idea of him touching the soft skin of your lower back, his hand cupping your ass and squeezing just enough to hurt. (You shouldn’t want to hurt her.) Sweet. He got it. He understood and he hated himself for it.

He was appalled at his own thoughts for a long time. This pushed him away from desire in other ways. He felt sick when his friends started talking about sex, about what they were doing at parties with other people. He refused to get himself off, which led to a lot of long evenings lying in bed staring at the ceiling and a lot of ice-cold showers. He rarely gave in to his desires, but when he did, he couldn’t look you in the eye for a week. If he came in his sleep it didn’t count. Dreams didn’t count, even though each one heavily featured you and your soft, pliable body under his hands. He was overly sensitive, pent-up. You’d brush past him in the kitchen and even the feel of your hip bumping his, the smell of your shampoo, would get him so hard he’d have to excuse himself and lie down.

Everyday was an exercise in restraint. An exercise in self-hatred. (You’re disgusting.) He’d already decided he was going to be with you forever, but you didn’t think of him like that yet. He was going to be good for you and wait. He would still talk to you all the time and take you to the mall and braid your hair for you and listen to you read to him and he would be good .

And he was. He went to the DAA Academy and he was. But it was easier to give in when he was alone. Without you one room over, the guilt felt less like a vice and more like a garment. He wore it without being strangled by it—but he still wore it.

The first time he purposefully got himself off in years was with a scrunchie you’d given him to take to school braided through his fingers. It wasn’t the most pleasant sensation. There was no lube or spit because he didn’t want to ruin anything that was yours. Besides—he wanted it to hurt, because then he was paying for thinking about you like this. It took maybe four strokes. He came so hard that he couldn’t stop the loud, strung-out whine that rose from his throat, couldn’t look at himself in the mirror when he went to the bathroom to clean up, couldn’t stomach the guilt when he hand-washed your scrunchie in the sink with dish soap.

Rationalizing his behavior became a practiced skill. Everything he thought about you that was somewhat akin to sweet was okay—because you were going to want him the way he wanted you. One day, he would touch you the way he imagined touching you and you would sigh into him, you would tell him that it’s okay to need you the way he does, that you need him just the same. 

(Disgusting. Disgusting. You can’t choose this for her.) But he wasn’t choosing it for you. It’s just how things would happen. No one else knew your likes and dislikes, the way your tone of voice changed when you were asking for something. No one else knew how to take care of you when you were tired and didn’t want to ask for help. No one else knew the way you liked your hair braided, your favorite meals, your picky nature when it came to the preparation of tea and coffee. He could know you in other ways. More intimate ways. He would know all of it. You wouldn’t have to worry about a thing. No one could love you the way he could. 

He grew into adulthood knowing this. He was the only one that could protect you. That could save you from your own body, from the experiments that shortened your lifespan by whole decades. You couldn’t die before him. If you did, he would’ve failed. He made contact with scientists in lofty organizations, he charmed his way into meetings with people that a DAA pilot could never be important enough to meet. He was going to protect you forever and always. Like wedding vows. Because you couldn’t leave him. He wouldn’t let you.

The plan had been in place since you graduated high school. The first real secret Caleb ever kept from you. The first one he felt bad about. So when you both returned to Gran’s during your first ever vacation from the Hunter Academy—when you sat with him on the porch like everything was normal until it wasn’t—he had to stop himself. What’s going through your head, baby? he asked. Couldn’t help it. Called you baby in his mind every single fucking day, because you belonged to him and he belonged to you. Your face in his hands. God, he wanted to kiss you. He wanted anything you’d give him. Whatever you were ready for. But he knew he was going to have to leave you. To protect you, to heal you. It would be better to wait until after. If he kissed you then, knowing he’d have to leave you, break your heart—it would be messier when he came back. 

It was for the best. This way, you could be together for the rest of your lives. Once he came back, did what he had to do for Ever, everything would work out. 

His life, a list of wants: you and nothing else.

˚✧ ﾟ.

Caleb breaks more than a handful of laws figuring out the identity of your lover.

Getting into the Hunter Association’s database was as easy as monitoring its access port and lifting a username and password from the first person he saw log in. Their information is a joke—a name, a voice file, some info on the guy's Evol—but it does lead him to some of his connections in the more dangerous parts of town. 

Obviously, people don’t want to talk. The leader of Onychinus—a dreadful figure, someone with no remorse, who kills with a snap of his fingers. He can’t believe you got mixed up with this guy. But it’s hard for his contacts to ignore him when he’s hitting them with enough G-force that their legs begin to shatter, and that makes getting a name and some poorly-scrubbed CCTV footage easy. (She would hate you if she knew you were doing this.) 

Sylus. He’s younger than Caleb thought he would be. Still too old for you. He’s handsome, and Caleb is sure that he’s charming, too. He’s probably playing you just like that asshole that asked you out when you were a sophomore in high school. 

He’s gonna break this guy’s teeth. He’s gonna go to the N109 Zone and scrub Onychinus from the planet like a stain.

But first, he has to talk to you about it. He hasn’t slept in thirty-six hours. Nowhere near as bad as he had to put up with in pilot training, but still. His adjutant is keeping everything in order at the Fleet. Something feels like it’s ending, and Caleb isn’t completely sure whether or not it’s his own life.

When he checks your location, you’re at home. It’s nine at night, so you shouldn’t be in bed yet. He comes directly from the other side of town. There’s still blood on his knuckles. Dirt still stains his slacks, the elbows of his coat. His face, he’s sure. He hasn’t tried to see what he looks like, even though he usually likes to make himself somewhat handsome for you. You’ll have to forgive him this one time.

Caleb only second-guesses coming straight here when you open the door after he knocks—your face immediately twists in concern, your hands go to the sides of his face to brush away dirt, blood, whatever’s left behind from the past two days. 

You pull him into a hug and he could almost forget everything. He wraps his arms around you and curls into your embrace and he could just be whatever you want him to be. It doesn’t matter if you’re with someone else. (It does. It does. She shouldn’t be with him. You can be better than him.) Just let him stay. Let him be with you however you’ll allow. He’ll take anything. He’ll be your guard dog if you want. Stay awake every night at the foot of your bed. Turn his face into your hand to feel your warmth when you praise him for being good. He’d take that. 

His head hurts so badly, even though he’s not missing anything right now. Maybe it’s the lack of sleep. Maybe he can never let himself rest enough to feel the extent of his pain until he’s with you, where he can finally be himself. He considers it a weakness—that vulnerability that you claw out of him. But it’s yours to claw out, like anything else you might want from him.

You’re talking to him. He didn’t realize. His head is roaring so loudly that he couldn’t hear your pretty voice. Your hand is in his hair. Fingers gently massaging his scalp. Isn’t he supposed to be the one doing this for you? Your other hand runs down his back, wraps around his waist. Pulls him closer. That’s all he wants. Closer.

“Tell me what happened,” you say. “Please.”

He wraps his arms around you, and he winces at the movement. His joints are aching, skin burning, body screaming at him to rest. It reminds him of high school. It reminds him of everything that’s ever been done to him and all he can’t have and all he wants—a small list, the contents of which are too much to ask for.

“...a bath, if you’re hurting,” you’re saying. Holding him. It feels like he’s floating in and out of his head. He wants you to hold him always. He’s scared to ask you the thing he needs to ask you. You look up at him and you’re worried, which you should never be about him. “We can get your joints loosened up. Okay?”

He nods. Whatever you want. You smell so good. Did you shower when you got home from work? He loves the conditioner you use. You’ve used it since late high school. He knows exactly when you switched, actually. Beginning of junior year. This brand helped your ends stop splitting so quickly after Caleb would cut your hair. Did anyone cut your hair for you after he left? Or was this dramatic change the first time you’ve cut it since he died?

“You’re gonna have to let me take you to the bathroom, though.”

Your voice is so pretty. Everything about you. (The prettiest girl in the world.) He was always so blown away by you when you’d buy new dresses, do your hair nicely. Nothing compared to when you dressed up for his graduation in the dress he’d bought you, though. He nearly lost his mind. He bought that for you. He provided for you, picked out what you were wearing. It was one step removed from dressing you himself. His ears are ringing, his head pounds. He wanted to steal you away then. To keep you somewhere separate from everything else, to make you his in all the ways that mattered. He loves you. You're wearing one of his old shirts. He can feel the material pilling beneath his fingers. He loves you.

“Hey—please. Look at me, baby.”

It’s the term of endearment that does it. He likes that. He wants to see your face when you call him that. “Baby?” he asks, almost teasing, pretending that he doesn’t feel like he’s been shredded to pieces inside because even if you did really call him that, there’s another man you’re saying it to as well.

“Caleb,” you say—no, repeat. He misheard you. You didn’t call him baby. 

There was a steadiness to your voice, a confidence that made him believe you were calm in this situation. When he really looks at you, he can see that isn't how you actually feel. Maybe you did call him baby. Maybe he’s knocked you so far into anxiety that you’re not thinking straight. You look sick from worry. Lines between your brows, marring your forehead. You’re worrying your bottom lip between your teeth. Without your arms around him, both hands are clinging on to his lapels, nearly shaking. And your eyes—

You’re scared you’re going to lose him again. He realizes it too late. Why else would he show up like this, bloodied and worn, in the late hours of the night? The last thing he wants to do is make you feel like this, and once again, he’s been selfish. You’re his priority, but he keeps unintentionally putting himself first. 

“I’m not going anywhere,” he tells you, and you visibly relax. Not completely, but some. Your shoulders lower, your grip on his coat leaves the realm of white-knuckling.

You take his hand and bring it to your face—like you’re about to kiss his knuckles. You don’t. Wishful thinking. You examine the skin. It’s the hand he can feel, two knuckles split and the rest patched in dried blood. (You came here to ask about her lover.) He should. It’s important. You touch the scar on his ring finger, the one he got protecting you years ago. When you do actually end up bringing his knuckles to your mouth, pressing a gentle, meaningful kiss to the scar, his thoughts feel less important. 

You gaze up at him with that look in your eyes and he can’t deny you. You’re everything to him. “Let’s get you cleaned up. Okay?”

Caleb follows you to the bathroom, watches you run the tub, put in the same bubble bath solution that he used to use when you were younger. Orange blossom scented, with epsom salts. The one he used to pick up from the drugstore when he was around thirteen because the burning in his skin returned. Crying out against his natural growth spurt after he’d already had his artificial one. You were too young to know that. Or—you weren’t, but Caleb wanted to keep that information from you. How often he was in pain, how much it affected his day-to-day. All you knew was that Caleb took baths, so you wanted to take baths too. 

One of his most precious memories: your elbow was injured from softball practice, but you needed to wash your hair. You, in a swimsuit in the bathtub. Caleb, on his knees behind you. It’s the only time he’s ever been there for the whole process. The shampoo and conditioner, assorted lotions you left in afterwards. The comb he used to detangle your hair held firm in his hand, tacky with product, until it cramped. The whole moment is steeped in orange blossoms, the smell of your damp skin. The feel of his hand cupping the back of your neck longer than necessary to keep you still. 

You face him, the water running, that same scent in the air. Floral, light, with a slightly earthy undertone. And quietly, you begin to undress him. His breath catches in his throat. He can’t move. You push his jacket over his shoulders, let it fall to the ground. Undo the buttons of his shirt. Pull its ends from where they’re tucked in, let that fall on top of his coat. 

When you start taking off his slacks, he catches both of your hands in one of his. The wrong one, mechanical. He wants to feel you. He can’t stop staring at the point of connection, how much bigger he is than you—and despite the clear disparity, the power he could have over you, your fingers hook into the top of his belt buckle. “I can do this part,” he says, but his voice is pitchy. He’s not good at hiding how he feels when it comes to you. Especially not when you’re touching him. His mind blanks, he loses a little piece of his sanity that’s always belonged more to you than to him.

You nod. Don’t make a move to try to free yourself. Your fingers stay there, curled into his belt. The tops of your knuckles graze his stomach right above the band of his slacks, your skin meeting coarse, dark hair and the veins that he’s always thought run a little too visibly south of his waistline, and he has to stop himself from moaning at just that—such a light touch that he feels sick in the head at how much it affects him. 

“I want everything off,” you tell him. And then you pull away and turn around.

Caleb can feel that his face is hot. Knows how obvious that must be to you. He removes his shoes, his socks. (You should’ve taken them off at the door. You’ll have to clean her floors for her later.) Peels off his dirt-stained slacks. And you said everything. He’s already achingly hard. Your knuckles on his stomach, your fingers curled into his belt. It doesn’t take much for him when it comes to you. He doesn’t want to scare you.

It feels like a power shift—asking him to undress when he’s like this, when you’re still fully clothed—but you’ve always had power over him. It doesn’t matter how vulnerable Caleb makes himself in front of you. You’ve always had access to all of him, whether you wanted it or not. So he does as you ask. “Now what?”

“Get in the tub, obviously,” you say. He can tell you’re rolling your eyes. Wishes you would turn so he could see it. So you could see him. 

Would you like his body? It’s a good one. It serves its purpose. He takes care of himself. Needs to, for his job, but also because he wants to be desirable to you. It’s never felt like it’s his. The muscles, the height—how much of that was given to him? Forced upon him? Even if it’s not fully natural, he can at least make it into something you would want. That’s why he’s so careful about his diet, so precise with his work outs. He doesn’t want there to be anything you could find that you wouldn’t like. If he’s perfect for you, then there’s one less reason for you to leave him.

He gets into the bath. It’s not like the one you had in the house growing up, free-standing and large. It’s a smaller apartment. The bath is caged in on three sides by tiled walls, a small shower head juts out of the tile four feet above him. He’s too tall for the shower, too large for the entire space. His knees protrude from the water awkwardly. You probably fit in here perfectly. Damp skin, the smell of you when you’re warm and wet. He hopes you blame the unintentional noise he makes on his body being tired and the feeling of lowering himself into the warm water.

The bubbles are built up to a point where he’s pretty sure you won’t see how hard he is for you. He doesn’t want to scare you. He doesn’t want to scare you. You’re going to touch him. He’s decently sure of it. Take care of him the way he should be taking care of you. He doesn’t want to scare you, but the sheer scale of his want for you is enough that sometimes he thinks the stitching at his seams could come apart, that he could turn into someone different entirely just to finally find out how you would say his name when he fucks you.

He puts his face in his hands, pushes his index and middle fingers against his closed eyes until it hurts. (Disgusting. She’s taking care of you and you’re thinking about her like this.) He takes a deep, shaky breath as quietly as he can. There’s no way you don’t hear him in the small bathroom. “Okay, I’m in,” he says, and he wishes that just once he could control himself when it comes to you. That he could stop thinking like this when you’re caring for him, that his voice wouldn’t sound that fucking pathetic when he spoke to you, that he could be the same boy that washed your hair when you were teenagers and it was all so innocent. He loved you then. He loves you now. It sounds simple. He wishes it was simple.

He wants to be that boy again. Remembering something he’s forgotten is always painful. His eyes burn. He can smell the epsom salts more than the orange blossoms now, the mineral tang of rock and earth.

You lower yourself to your knees. The bath prevents you from being behind him, the way he was when he washed your hair. You’re at his side with a washcloth, and you put out a hand, palm up. Waiting. “I need to clean the cuts.”

Of course. You’ve gotten so good at taking care of him. Maybe when he left, you learned because you suddenly had to take care of yourself. There was no one else to do it. No one who would do it right, at least. “I should be doing this myself,” he says. Offers you his hands despite this.

You remove the blood from his knuckles gently. Thoroughly. The cuts aren’t as bad as they looked before, with their aftermath adorning them. “Thank you for letting me.”

You know him so well. Better than anyone. You know how much he hates letting people down like this—letting you down. He’s the one that’s supposed to be strong. That shouldn’t need this. He was built for it. If anyone else ever saw him like this, he would kill them. Not because he can’t admit weakness—because this is only for you. His vulnerability is only for you. You don’t need to thank him for it.

“Will you tell me what happened?” you ask. 

“Question for a question?” Like when you were both little. He just wants you to answer him honestly.

You let his hands fall, satisfied with your cleaning of his wounds. “Okay,” you say, a little hesitant. Like you always are with him now. You drag the washcloth across the width of his shoulders, then back and up the length of his neck, dampening the hair at his nape.

He leans into your touch, lets his eyes close. How often he’s wanted to be at your mercy. Something in him wants you to hurt him, to take back your pound of flesh. Do the very thing he did to you. “I was given some intel I had to follow up on.”

“That’s… vague.” You massage circles into the back of his neck, thumb and forefinger on either side of his spine. Gentle, with the washcloth, but firm.

Quietly, appreciatively, he groans. A noise pulled from deep within him, part of him that hasn’t been treated with this kind of care before reacting. Autonomic. Tears on his face. Burnt neurons. Your lover. “Who’s Sylus?”

Your fingers still, but your hand doesn’t leave his neck. You freeze up like prey. And Caleb has always been your predator. You clear your throat, weakly resume your massage. “That’s Hunter business. I can’t tell you anything about him. You know that, Caleb.”

“I know it’s not Hunter business,” he corrects. “Not entirely.”

You pull back then, and when he looks at you, your brows are drawn tight and low. The look on your face is the same as when you were about to argue with him because you thought he was doing something unfair. He loves the way you get frustrated, the roughness in your voice whenever you fight back. “And who told you that?”

“It doesn’t matter—”

“It does,” you say, voice hard. “Question for a question, right? Because you can’t let go of the same games we played when we were kids. So answer my question.”

What does he say to that? Someone that’s been watching you longer than he has? A corporation that has the resources to know these intimate details about your life? He’s not sure how to answer.

“This is your problem, Caleb. You always think you know best.” You’re fully removed from him, on your knees next to the bathtub. The washcloth drips onto your thighs, below the hem of your shorts. He hopes you don't get cold.  “What are you really asking?”

Another question he feels that he can’t answer outright. Admitting to himself that he loves you is easy. Admitting his jealousy is harder—the way it curls into his lungs, eviscerates him every time the idea of you with another person crosses his mind.

“You want to know if I fucked him.”

He flinches—not used to hearing you speak like this. He was a good example growing up. He made sure of that. “Jeez, pip. You don’t have to be so—”

“What? Blunt? Vulgar?” You roll your eyes and his dick throbs and he feels so gross for wanting you like this. 

He loves it when you’re a little angry at him, when you’re tired of his bullshit and call him on it. (She probably acts like this with him, too.) And there’s the jealousy again, curling, cutting. No one should hear you speak like this but him. He wants to put his thumb in your mouth and make you whine around it. (No. No. Jesus, dude.) 

“I’m an adult, Caleb. I had to grow up when you died,” you say. “I can talk about these things.”

“I know you can.” And he likes it, as much as it makes him feel ill. It’s just—you can talk like that, but he doesn’t want it to be about someone else. He wants it to be about him. “I know. I’m sorry.”

You go back to washing him, and he doesn’t stop you like he should. You soap up the sides of his neck, the wide expanse of his chest. Both shoulders. When you lean over him, he can smell your skin. The same body wash you’ve used since high school. Your sheets used to smell like this when he’d do your laundry. This and your sweat. The way he wants you is the way he’s always wanted you: primal and all-consuming. He wants to prepare himself for you like a meal, feel your teeth dig into his skin. You drag your hand lower, beneath the water. Across his stomach. 

He doesn’t stop you. He doesn’t stop you but he should. 

When your hand brushes against his erection, he hisses through his teeth. He tried not to—really, he did. But—god. Your hand. Your hand. 

You still entirely. You’ve been avoiding eye contact with him, but now you make it. You’re chewing on something in your pretty head, deciding how to move forward. He should have stopped you. He doesn’t want to scare you. Only a little. (It shouldn’t be any at all.) Just enough to see your eyes widen, to see you pull your lower lip between your teeth.

A decision is made. You keep going, slower, maintaining eye contact. Caleb knows he’s leaking ridiculous amounts of precum into the water. He gets a little messy when he thinks of you. As if he’s ever thought about anyone else. And now—you drag the washcloth up the underside of his cock, and he can’t maintain composure. His head falls back, he exhales sharp and hard. You pull another noise from him, a pitchy whine that reminds him of the first time he got off to the thought of you when he was away at school, finally able to voice his desire without you sleeping one room over. Too loud, too desperate. 

He should be thinking harder about this but he can’t. All the blood in his brain has gone straight to his dick, and he tries and fails to stop his hips from bucking as you continue to touch him, the cloth drawn up his inner thigh, then back down towards his hip. You lean over him again and everything is the smell of your skin, the soft brush of your hair against his chest.

Your hand travels upwards, out of the water. Across his chest again. He’s so sensitive that it doesn’t matter that you’re not touching him directly. Every caress feels like your hand wrapped around him, gets him embarrassingly closer to a precipice that he never thought he’d reach with you.

“Is this really all it takes?” you ask, and he can’t tell if you’re amused or pleased or mad at him. He’ll take anything but disappointed. He doesn’t want to be something you don’t want.

You lean over him, bring your face close to his. Your breaths mingle. The taste of mint. You’d already brushed your teeth, ready for bed, before he interrupted your evening with his shit. With his need for you. 

He doesn’t deserve what you’re giving him right now. He’s being selfish again. Taking when he should be giving. He doesn’t even know how you feel about him. Everything is wrong about this. You lean closer. Your foreheads touch. 

“Don’t— oh .” Your hand ghosts the length of his cock again, then traces up the taut lines of his stomach. He’s gonna finish like this. He fucking knows it. He wants to pull you into the bath and feel the line of your body against him, the warmth of you tucked against his skin like a card hidden up a sleeve. Your breath is on his lips. God, you’re so close to him. Wrong. It’s wrong like this. “Hold on, pip,” he says. “Just—wait a sec.”

“Why?” you ask. “Isn’t this what you wanted?”

The way you say that makes him sick. Nothing is simple like he wants it to be. Your voice is mean. It feels like he’s dreaming—one of his bad ones, where he feels guilty afterwards for wanting you. “Not like this,” he says.

“Then how, Caleb?” you ask, and you're frustrated. You're trying to understand but your patience is running thing and he understands. “How do you want me?”

The same way he’s wanted you since he was young. He wants to be your everything. He wants you to want nothing but him. He wants to be your protector, your lover, your home. He wants his life to start and end with you, for everything else to be secondary. His life, a list of wants.

He can’t be any of this for you. Not now. His brain is full of holes, his body doesn’t belong to himself. He’s not even fully human anymore. What happens when everything is taken from him? When he’s a shell of himself? He wants to believe that the ghost that’ll be left inside of his body will still care for you and protect you. But he’ll never know. Once the chip wipes out his love for you, he’ll have died. That won’t be him anymore. Loving you is so intrinsic to everything he is. It’ll just be his body, modified by Ever. His Evol, modified by Ever. His brain, modified by Ever. 

Their weapon. Not even yours. 

“I love you.” His voice breaks on the words. He says it quietly, like a secret you should already know. Something obvious. Not a confession. A reminder—and an explanation. I love you, so of course it has to be different. He feels like you should understand. Don’t you understand?

“But you’ve always loved me,” you say. 

He reaches for you. Your chin tilted by his fingers, pretty eyes looking up at him in question. What you’re asking is always a mystery to him, though it shouldn’t be with the way he knows you. Maybe this is why things have taken so long—you’re both afraid to answer each other’s questions, but you’re also both afraid to ask the right ones. “Is that a bad thing?”

“It just means you don’t want me like—that.” You refuse to meet his eyes while saying this.

How can he tell you how wrong you are without being cruel? Of course he wants you like that. He wants you in any way he can have you. “I’ve always loved you,” he says, “and I’ve always wanted you. But I know it’s not—right. I shouldn’t have felt like that.”

Your hand trails lower again, but nothing has changed on your face. You’re thinking, hard, that cute little line present between your brows that you get when you’re really considering something. “Why shouldn’t you feel like that?”

“I think some people could come up with a lot of reasons,” he says, and he laughs, breathy and nervous, because none of the reasons matter to him.

“I don’t care about what other people think,” you say. “Why do you think that you shouldn’t feel like that?”

His breath comes in sharp—you’ve dropped the washcloth and now it’s your nails on his skin, the scratch of them against his sternum, the tops of his abs. He’s trying to keep as clear a head as possible, but his body responds to you automatically. It’s attuned to you, like his cells are being pulled towards you, through you, attempting to merge just to have you closer. “So much of me is missing,” he tells you.

Your hand stills. Nails become the flat of your hand. Your palm on his chest. His heartbeat racing, then slowing, the chip in his head fighting to keep him calm. “Your arm doesn’t bother me, Caleb.”

“It’s more than that,” he says. “They’ve done a lot of shit to me, pip.” (Language.) But does that even matter anymore? You’re an adult. He has to let you be your own person. He has to let you grow up and tell you the things he doesn’t want to tell you because you deserve to know. He amends himself—says your name so you know he’s addressing you and not a memory. “I don’t think I’m all there anymore. I don’t think what’s in my head is me.”

“I know you,” you say.

“Better than anyone.”

“And I know that you’re still you.”

He can’t help but shake his head. You don’t understand because you don’t want to accept it, and he gets that. He’s a facsimile, but a very good one. That’s what happens when you build inside the shell of something else. When he rests his hand atop yours, holds it closer to his heart, you don’t stop him. For that, he’s grateful. Even if he’s not the version of Caleb you want, you’re at least allowing him this. 

“I wish it was all simple,” you say.

The same thing he’s wished for. He often thinks that the two of you were never meant to be separate beings. Sometimes he feels like he belongs in your head more than he belongs in his own. It’s what he wants the most—to meld into you, to fill all of the parts of you that you’re missing. Loving you is a close second. Possessing you is a dangerously close third.

“I’ve never been with Sylus," you say, and it's quiet but it feels very loud in the tiled walls of your small bathroom. "He’s a close friend. But that’s all.”

“It’s not even my place to ask you about that stuff.”

“It could’ve been,” you say. “You could’ve kissed me that night on the porch. When we were both home from school.”

Of course you'd think about that night. He had tried to protect you, even then. Stop your heart from getting broken when he couldn't tell you all the terrible things that were about to happen. “I could have. I should have.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“I knew things were about to change," he admits. "I thought—maybe after.”

You pause to look at him. Had you known before this moment that he’d been aware that something terrible would come to pass? You won’t forgive him for it, but he would never expect you to. “It’s after,” is your simple reply for much too complicated a situation.

“I didn’t think they’d take so much from me.”

“You’re still you, Caleb." You stare at him for a moment, like you're saying something obvious that he should understand easily. "You are.”

“Not completely.”

“Then I want what’s left.”

“You deserve a lot more.”

“So do you," you say, "but this is what we have. I want what’s left. It should be mine already.”

Of course you'd think that. He loves you. “Come in here with me?”

You hesitate, looking between his exposed knees and his face. Considering something.

“Let me take care of you for a little,” he says.

This decides it. You undress in front of him and he’s rapt. Maybe he should give you some semblance of privacy—but he can’t. He’s imagined this so many times. He’s imagined how your body would feel pressed against his since he saw you half-undressed in the bathroom when he was barely eighteen years old. 

You take off your cozy pajamas, the scant underwear beneath. There could never be anything about you that Caleb doesn’t love—and this vulnerability is something he cherishes more than you know. The fact that you’ll undress in front of him and allow him to watch, to look at your body with every emotion he feels for you: love, desire, care, need.

Need to touch. Need to kiss. He wants to press his lips to every part of you. He wants you hanging from his maw by the neck. He wants his teeth to tear you apart, he wants to taste the way you feel when you’re scared and then assure you that everything’s okay, that he’ll protect you forever. He wants to tell you how beautiful you are but his voice is stuck in his throat along with his breath—everything knocked out of him with the realization that this is really happening.

The water is still warm when you slot yourself between his legs, press your back to his chest. He’s so incredibly hard for you but that’s an afterthought, something he hopes won’t make you uncomfortable. His head is blissfully quiet. He just wants to hold you right now. You sink against him and let out a breath that says finally, here I am. 

Finally, here you are. 

He wraps his arms around you, buries his face in the crook of your neck. Breathes in the scent of your sweat-damp skin. “Whatever’s left of me is always gonna be yours.”

“And I’m always going to be yours," you tell him. A promise. "So it’s mutual. Forever.”

He smiles at that, presses a kiss to your shoulder. He’d like forever with you. He’d love it. “Tell me about your day."

“I should—”

“No. Whatever you need to do, I’ll do it for you later. I just wanna hear about what you’ve been up to all day.”

The washcloth is easily retrieved from the edge of the tub—Caleb’s too tired to lean forward and grab it, so he pulls it into his hand with his Evol. Does the same with your body wash, lathers the cloth until he’s satisfied with the amount. Gently, he cleans you the way you cleaned him. Takes his time caressing every inch of you, holding you against him with his mechanical arm. 

It matters less to him that he can’t feel the way he pulls you against his chest, the way his hand feels splayed out across your stomach. All he’s focused on is his cleansing of your skin, the soft hitch of your breaths, the gentle way you speak to him. 

He listens to you talk about work, about missions and your coworkers and how your gun keeps jamming—which Caleb makes a mental note to check out for you later—then asks questions about the details. He just wants more. He wants to know everything about what you’re doing all the time. It’ll never not be fascinating to him. But his eyes grow heavy—the thirty-eight or so hours he’s gone without sleeping take their toll. 

You notice, turning to look at him. Cradle his face in your hands. “We should get you to bed, hmm?”

“No, I’m listening,” he says. “Promise. Keep telling me. I wanna hear what Simone said.”

You smile, and Caleb’s head blanks. He should ask if he can wash your hair while you’re in here. He should have done things different his whole life so he could’ve gotten to this part a lot sooner. 

“Caleb,” you say, and he knows what you’re asking.

He holds your wrists in his hands. Fragile but not. You’re strong, but he’s undergone more physical experimentation than you. A victory of traumas. He wishes his body was weak so you could break him. He would let you. “I won’t be able to go back to how it was before.”

“I’m not asking you to.”

“Not now,” he says. “Not yet.”

“Not ever.” Your hands mirror as you touch him—trace his sideburns, the angles of his jaw, the backs of his earlobes. He curls his thumbs into the indents of your palms. 

“No matter what happens,” he tells you, “you’re never gonna get rid of me.” And it’s not a promise—it’s a warning. Because if you decide you don’t want him, he would never be able to decide that he doesn’t want you. His life. A list of wants. He doesn’t know what he’d do, but he knows it wouldn’t be good. There’s a part of himself that he can acknowledge but not confront. It’s the part that wants to lock you up, to keep you and tell everyone else you’ve left, that you’ve died, that they shouldn’t worry about looking for you. 

But that’s not even what’s distressing about the whole thing.

It’s the same part of him that wants to buy your clothes, to dress you every day, to pull your socks on and hold your delicate ankles in his too-strong hands, to brush your teeth for you because he wants to make sure you’re getting all the molars at the back, to cook all of your meals for you and straighten out your diet so it’s perfectly balanced, to feed you every bite of food from his fork, to hold your jaw in his hand as you chew to make sure you won’t choke, to carry you to every room and carefully place you on the couch or the bed or the counter or wherever you would like to exist next to him, to wash your hair and take his time keeping it healthy, to lather you up and clean you in the shower and do your skincare for you afterwards—

Something is wrong with him. When he says you won’t get rid of him, he means it. Once he has a taste of you, it’s going to unlock something inside of him that he won’t be able to put back together. And he’ll be so good to you if you never leave him. He’ll take care of you always, and try his best to make sure it’s the way you want to be taken care of. Not the thing he wants. He’ll be as normal as he can be and you can take him anywhere and call him anything and ask him for whatever you want. 

How to put this into words without scaring you? There isn’t a way.

“I wish I could see into your head,” you murmur, freeing one hand from his grasp and tapping a finger against his forehead, right between his eyebrows. 

“You don’t,” he says, because god, you don’t. He’s the exact kind of man that he wants to protect you from. But he’s also the only man that can protect you the right way. “There’s some bad stuff in there.”

You tap him again on the forehead, then on the tip of his nose. “I have a feeling it’s closer to what’s in mine than you think.”

What’s in his head is sick. He will always keep you safe from this. Instead of fighting you, he says, “Be sure you want this.”

And you smile. Allow your hand to sink back into his grip, your wrists once again both secure in his hold. A willing return to his grasp. “I am.”

When you kiss him, it’s the same kind of gentle as your voice. As your hands on his face. He follows your lead—you’re hesitant, clearly inexperienced, but that’s okay. He is too. He’s just thought about it more. He lets you deepen the kiss when you’re ready, only slides his tongue across yours after you’ve done it first. It’s slow, soft, incredibly intimate. Everything he knew a first kiss with you would be.

You’re so careful and precise, so gentle even though you treat everything with such firmness. His arms wrap around you to hold you steady, fingers curling into damp hair—when you moan, the noise small and breathy and completely his, he nearly loses his fucking mind. He moans back desperately, an exchange of sound, a price he pays into your willing mouth. 

You pull back to breathe, forehead pressed against his, hands still cradling the sides of his face. He has to breathe too—hasn’t figured out how to do it while you’re kissing him. It should be easy, but you make him breathless. Lightheaded. Like no air he could take into his lungs would be enough, because nothing could fill him like the feeling of your lips against his. 

He’ll get better at this for you. He’ll figure out the best way to kiss you, the things he can do with his tongue that’ll make you shiver against him. For now, he closes his eyes, catches his breath, leans into your touch. This is what people mean when they talk about heaven. If it was anything else, he wouldn’t want it.

He hasn’t shaved since two mornings ago. He’s sure his skin is scratchy against your palms. He hopes you don’t mind it that much. Can’t stop himself from asking, “What’d I do to earn that?”

“You didn’t need to earn it,” you tell him. “I just wanted to kiss you.”

He smiles and really has to look at you—just to find out whether or not this is happening. He doesn't deserve this. You’re so solid against him, so real even though he’s dreamed about kissing you more than anything else. He wants to give you everything. Wishes he could.

You smile, too—small, your lower lip pulled between your teeth like you’re trying to hide it. You don’t want him to give him a bright smile because you’re worried that he’ll get ahead of himself, get cocky in the way that always annoys you. He knows you too well, and you know him the same. It’s how he’s sure you’re aware that it’s too late for that. He’s already getting ahead of himself. He’s planning to kiss you every day for the rest of his life, and he’s damn sure gonna do whatever he needs to in order to make that happen. “Do I need to earn another one? Nah—I’m guessing you’ll just want to kiss me again.”

“That depends on whether or not you can keep your big mouth shut.”

He grins at you wide, all teeth and confidence. “Whatever you want my mouth to do, I’ll make it happen. Just say the word.”

You roll your eyes, but you’re clearly amused. He loves you like this. Happy. His. “I think I’m gonna make you earn it. Maybe that’ll shut you up.”

He leans forward, traces your jaw with the tip of his nose. Presses a kiss to the spot just below your ear. “I can do that—I’m an earner. Doubt anything’ll shut me up, though.”

“You’re annoying.”

“You like it.”

You hum in response, mirroring his movements—lips across his jaw, the spot under his ear, the column of his neck. You always take things farther because you never doubt yourself when you go for what you want. He’s always admired you for that. When it comes to you, hesitation is something he excels at. He doesn’t want to scare you.

But you don’t seem scared. You’re looking at him like you want to sink your teeth into his neck. And he’d let you. He’d enjoy it, too.

But this can’t be a comfortable position. Sitting between his legs, back pressed hard against the side of the tub because of the lack of space to accommodate you turning to face him. “C’mere,” he says, and puts his hands under your legs. Lifts you, turns you with his Evol until you’re comfortable on top of him, your thighs on either side of his hips. 

He didn’t mean to position you like this—not completely. The thought crossed his mind, about what it would be like to have you on top of him. But he’s good at controlling himself. Always has been around you, something he’s learned. Because he had to.

Maybe he should’ve asked you first. He doesn’t want to scare you. Never wants to scare you. He’s still hard for you and it gets worse when you lean forward, when the length of his cock presses against your stomach, when you kiss him again and this time he can’t remove the thought of what it would feel like while he’s inside you, fucking you slowly, carefully, the way you would maybe want him to.

He would have to control himself. He’s not sure what’ll happen if you ever allow him that—whether or not his thick band of patience and self-control will snap and he’ll live out his fantasies before he can stop himself. He wants to be the only thought in your head. He wants his name to be the only thing you can say. 

Not in a depraved way. Not in a disgusting way. He just wants to be the only thing on your mind ever. That’s one way to make it happen. And if he can take care of you while making that happen—if he can show you why he should be the only man that should ever be allowed to touch you, because he’ll treat you so well, because he’ll learn everything you like so quickly—he’d be happy. 

“You need to sleep. We should get you to bed,” you tell him. Still too close, your body pressed against his deliciously. It feels impossible for him to remove his hands from your hips. The feeling of his fingers digging into soft skin—he could tear you apart. 

He’s getting himself too worked up just thinking about it. You’re right. He should sleep. And he’s allowed to sleep next to you tonight. A blessing. A curse, maybe, considering the fact that there’s gonna be no way for him to take care of himself before you escort him to bed. What will win out, he wonders—his exhaustion, or his need for you?

One is very easy to overcome. The other—well. It’d be a waste of time to try to overcome that.

“Caleb?” you ask. You’re so patient with him sometimes. You never used to be. Is this from before he died, or after? He’s just been enjoying the feeling of his hands on your skin, your breath on his lips, your body flush against his. You tap his forehead twice with a finger, a careful knock. “You fall asleep with your eyes open?”

“They taught me how to do that at the DAA, y’know,” he says, pulling your hand to his mouth. He nips the fingertip you still have extended and he watches your eyes darken, your lips part. “That’s how I got through those dramas you used to make me watch when I’d come home for the summer.”

You roll your eyes and he loves you. “You watched The Duke’s Secret Bride on your own. I saw it in your streaming history.”

“Keeping an eye on me, huh?”

“Like you’re not doing the same.”

How much do you know? A better question: how much do you suspect? He’s careful. Nothing he does to watch over you should be able to get back to you. It’s all protected by the Fleet’s servers, which have been impenetrable long before Caleb took the rank of colonel. He could ask if that would be a bad thing—but he knows you like your independence. Knows that you would ask him to stop.

“I can’t tell if you’re trying to be mysterious by keeping quiet.”

“Is it working?”

“No,” you say.

“Damn,” he says. “Thought I was getting good at it.”

You’re silent for a moment. Thinking something over. “You have to decide,” you finally say.

“What do you mean?”

“Whether you want to go to bed, or…” Your gaze drops to his lips before you look away from him entirely. So cute. You can’t even say it to him. Does he make you nervous? He likes that he does. But he wants you to feel comfortable, too. Safe. “You have to decide,” you repeat, “because right now it feels like I’ve made all the decisions.”

“I want to take things as slow as you need me to,” he tells you.

“I just—it makes me feel like you don’t want... me.” You chance a look at him again. “Or—not in the way that I want you.”

So far removed from the truth, but he understands. It’s hard for him to believe this is happening, too. It seems that any moment now, you could reveal the truth—this is all an elaborate trick you’re playing on him, just to see how far he’d go. How deep his need is for you. 

He pulls you against him, fingers digging into your hips. Lets himself give in, just a little. Drags you up his length, tilts your hips back just enough that he can feel—god, you’re so wet. For him. He hisses out your name through his teeth, breathes out tight and shallow.

Your hands find his shoulders, you press your forehead to his. Say his name back, a call and response. The two of you forever. Together, the way you’ve always been. “More,” you say.

There has never been a request you’ve given Caleb that he’s denied you without good reason. And maybe his control is slipping, but he can find no good reason to deny you this. He digs his fingers into your skin hard enough to bruise—and you will, because he has to consciously think about how much pressure he allows his mechanical arm to apply. He can’t break you. He will never break you. 

Slowly, he pulls you down the length of his cock, then drags your hips back up. You make the smallest, sweetest noise against his mouth—and that’s it. He’s gone.

He’s rutting up against you like an animal, dragging your hips down hard, harder, until your hands go to his hair to pull, to hold on. The slick glide of his cock against your heat, the way your body moves when it’s completely in his control, the way you tilt your hips to chase your own pleasure—he’s not gonna last long. Every touch is like a live wire to his nerves, every breathy noise that comes from you like something out of his most twisted fantasy. He’s gonna fuck this up if things don’t slow down.

He opens his mouth to tell you this and all that comes out is a deep groan, and he needs to stop. He can’t last like this and he wants to take care of you and be a gentleman and so incredibly selfishly he doesn’t want to finish unless it’s inside you.

(Control this.) He has to. Fuck. He tries to even his breathing, slows his pace. Loosens his grip on your hips, and already there are bruises blooming. He was too demanding, took too much of what he wanted. “Fuck, pip, I’m sorry—”

“Caleb,” you say—no, beg, and your grip tightens in his hair. Where he slowed, you pick up your own pace. “I’m so close, please, just—your hands, I need them—”

He’s gripping your hips within his next breath, so tight that it feels cruel. Moving you again, because all he needs to know is that you’re close, too. The amount of times he’s got himself off to the idea of this—just making you feel good in any possible way—he wants to drown in you. He could die like this.

“Yeah, like that, perfect,” you tell him, and he likes the affirmation. Didn’t realize how much he’d like hearing that. “Like that,” you repeat, and one of your hands untwines from the hair at the back of his head, moves to lay flat against his chest. 

Slowly, slowly it creeps up, the curve between your thumb and pointer finger perfectly lining the base of his neck, the smallest amount of pressure on his windpipe. He makes a noise without really thinking, a little higher-pitched, a little desperate—and the way your eyes light up, the way your mouth curves in satisfaction—

He cums hard, his legs tensing up so quickly that they both cramp up. There’s no control of his body—he can’t stop himself from pulling you against him as your hips continue to rock against him—and fuck , he’s too sensitive for this—until you reach your peak, a sharp and vulnerable noise coming from deep within you, unlike anything he’s ever heard. 

You let him hold you. Sink into his embrace the way you’ve done every time he’s ever hugged you. Your body folding into him, tucked away at its edges. He wants all of you. Holding you is a mercy, something he feels he shouldn’t be allowed. Regardless, he closes his eyes, lets himself rest his cheek against your hair. Listens to your deep breaths, 

He says your name, like there’s nothing else to say. It always feels special to call you by your name after calling you something else for so long. It’s intimate to him. He wants to know if you feel the same, but this isn’t the time to ask. “You’re so…”

You pull away from his embrace to press a kiss to the corner of his mouth. “Something good, I hope.”

Perfect. He was going to say perfect. The thought of your hand begging to curl around his neck just solidifies the fact. Is he into that? If it’s you—whatever you want, he’d be into it. He just never expected something so bold from you. “Is this—have you done this with anyone else?”

He shouldn’t have asked. It’s not his place. He knows that if you have, it’d be okay. Even though the thought makes his stomach fall through the fucking floor, he knows that he would have to be okay with it. 

But you shake your head and his exhale is like a holy blessing. It’s like learning to breathe at full capacity after only using half for years. Only him. He’s the only one that’s ever touched you, and the only one that ever will. All his. “It’s okay. If you have, it’s—you can tell me,” he makes himself say, because he is a good person. He has to be a good person for you. If he was truly a good person, he would tell you not to answer his question. To forget he asked.

But again, you shake your head. You can’t say it out loud, which is so incredibly endearing to him. Still, you manage to ask, “Have you?”

Bold in the way you question him, shy in your own answers. He loves you in a way he doesn’t think anyone has loved before. “No,” he says. “You’re the only person I’ve ever wanted to be with.”

Maybe it’s too much—a view into his brain that might scare you. (You don’t want to scare her.) He doesn’t want to scare you. But he’s said it, and that’s that. You’re still here in his lap, your hand was still curved around his neck with intent, you still kissed him first.

“I know,” you tell him, and he understands—you’re not saying that you knew the whole time. You’re saying that you felt the same. That you waited for him, like he waited for you. You had ample opportunity to move on. The guy whose knees he shattered earlier told him about the way the Onychinus leader treats you, with soft touch and genuine care. 

And still you waited, even though his hands could never be that gentle. Even though he’s sure his crimes are on par or worse than this other man who could have claimed you if only you’d let him.

You pull the plug from the bath, run the shower. The both of you clean yourselves off and all he can do is look at you. Even when you’re in pajamas again—his shirt, his shirt—soft and cozy, he just can’t take his eyes off you. The night’s final destination is your bedroom—it’s unspoken, but after that, he’s not sleeping on the couch. He doesn’t think he’ll be able to be far from you ever again. He’s going to have to figure out how to manage being away from you when he could just forget everything and stay close. Just the two of you, his hands on your skin, your lips on his.

When the both of you are settled, lying together in bed, you say, “I always wanted to be your first. I didn’t think I would be.”

“Why would you think that?” he asks, almost affronted even though there are many valid reasons he can think of, even now, that would answer his own question.

You shrug, unable to look at him—not shy, never shy. But still getting comfortable with this kind of vulnerability in his presence. “You’re charming. You know that. And I know there were tons of people that wanted to get with you when you were away at the Academy. And you're—I mean, you know. I don't see why anyone wouldn't want you. You're pretty. And you're—big, and... People like that.”

He has to stop himself from groaning, instead dragging a hand down his face to try to physical push down his reaction. Your voice, saying these things—how long have you thought about him this way? Since you were nineteen, since that almost-kiss? Maybe he hasn’t thought about this more than you. Maybe it’s equal. If that’s the case and he finds out, he’s gonna fuck you into the mattress. He’s gonna lose his entire process of rational thinking. “If you keep saying things like that,” he tells you, and it’s a genuine warning, “it’s gonna be hard for us to go to sleep.”

You smile, amused, as if that was the intended reaction. “Fine. I can be merciful. But I want a kiss.”

Tomorrow morning, he will wake up and things will have changed, but not enough. He will have to report back to the Farspace Fleet as their colonel, and he’ll have to explain his absence to Ever, and the parts of his brain that he’s locked up to keep you safe will suffer without you. He will be a part of Ever’s plans until the day he dies. He will love you until his brain is torn apart by the chip that controls him and there is nothing left but a shell. Something that looks like him but is not. 

Right now, he’s still Caleb. He kisses you deep, slow, his tongue running across the roof of your mouth because he wishes he could exist there, right behind your teeth. He slides one big hand underneath your sleep shirt, tries to feel as much of your skin as possible. 

And who was he ever kidding? He’s not gonna control himself.

He slides your panties down your leg and tastes you for the first time outside of his imagination and this is the only place he ever wants to be. Tongue curling against you, inside of you, wet noises and the sound of your moans, and what did he do to deserve this?

Nothing. It takes a little longer than he'd like for him to make you cum the first time, but then he gets it. The way your back arches when he sucks, the way your legs tremble when he moans against you. He’ll learn everything. And his name, his name, his name, please, Caleb, baby, I want—

But it doesn’t matter what you want right now, because he’s giving you what you need. Worship as absolution. His fingers curling inside you and making you squirm until there are tears in your eyes, until you’re saying no more , but the thing is that Caleb knows you have more for him, and he’s happy to tell you this.

And you do have more for him. You do, and each time your thighs tighten around his head, and your legs shake after a while, a constant tremble, so he’ll hold them for you. Wouldn’t want you getting tired. 

When he loses count—seven? eight?—you finally push him away. Not the little weak nudges you’d given him throughout, but a shove with your full strength behind it, dislodging his head from the cradle of your thighs. He’s so hard for you, but nowhere close to finishing. He doesn’t think he can unless it’s your hands on him, your mouth—no. Maybe he can. Even the thought of that makes something in his stomach twist dangerously, makes his breath halt in his chest.

But there are more important things to think about—you look disappointed. This is the exact opposite of what he wanted. “Too much?” he asks, but he can’t quite get himself to apologize. He knows he won’t really mean it. But there’s also a part of him, ingrained like code, that makes him need to give you what you want. He took too much for himself again. Did what he knew was best for you rather than what you thought would be best.

“I don’t—I can’t handle it after that. I wanted you to—” And you can’t even say it now. All that bluster from earlier, talking about another man fucking you. Or—maybe he misunderstands. Because you say, “I want you,” and it’s clear what you mean but you’re so earnest.

You want him to make love to you. Not to fuck you. Because that would be such a callous way to put what crossing that final boundary would mean to you. But it’s a little out-dated, a little too much to use those words. There’s nothing else to replace them with. “I want you,” you repeat, and everything in him softens for you. His perfect girl. 

“Next time,” he promises, and he means it. He won’t do this to you again until you’ve had what you want. He’ll do his best to be good. To think about how it would feel to be inside of you—divine, he’s sure, and even that thought extends inside of him horribly, pulls tight like something ready to snap—instead of thinking about what’ll be best for you. 

He moves up the bed to kiss you, the lower half of his face soaked. Maybe he should clean himself off first? No. Not with the way you’re looking at him, not with the way you say come here, please . He kisses you with tongue, can’t stop himself from whining a little when he pulls back and sees your face streaked with your own cum.

“You didn’t…” you start. 

“I did,” he said. “Earlier, y’know—when you took advantage of a poor, tired man in your bathtub.”

You snort, roll your eyes, act like you’re annoyed. He could fuck the attitude out of you right now, make you apologize for it. Over and over until he’s satisfied—which, knowing him, would take a long minute. He can always tell when you mean it and when you’re saying sorry just to say sorry. And he’d make you mean it. 

No. You’re too overstimulated for that. And besides, he’s being good. He’s trying so, so hard to be good.

“Get yourself off,” you say. A command. 

His bravado dries up in his throat. The attitude is doing something different to him now. Something worse. “An order?”

“Yeah,” you say, consider something dangerous. “And you can’t use your hands.”

“Oh… my god.” The words are mumbled into the crook of your neck. His eyes are closed. Your voice is fucking incredible. “Do you want me to—how should I—”

“However you want,” you tell him, but he can tell you’re up to something. This is the sound of you when you’re up to something. “But be careful with me. I’m sensitive, remember?”

He wants to be anything but careful with you. You frustrate him to no end and also make him want to smile every second of the day when you play with him like this. He loves being your toy. Christ, that sounds—a little crazy. But that’s always what he’s been for you, so it doesn’t really matter all that much, he figures.

Your hips in his hands, he grinds himself against you. He’s careful to avoid where you’re most sensitive—really just ruts against your hip, your lower stomach, dick straining against his sweats. He has to reach out above your head, his fingers wrapping around one of the wooden slats of your headboard, because otherwise he’ll push you up the bed uncomfortably and he needs to fuck you. No—he needs you to be comfortable. That’s what he meant. His head is spinning and he wishes he wasn’t wearing sweatpants because he wants to feel your skin against him.

They’re going to be ruined but he couldn’t give any less of a fuck. He has to do what you ordered him to do. And even like this—god, you feel so good—he gets close so quickly. His breathing is shallow, labored. He tries to say your name but can’t. His noises are all broken, pitchy, too vulnerable.

The friction of your soft body against the underside of his cock is torture. Your shirt’s ridden up and he has one hand on your thigh and there are already so many bruises, little coin-sized marks from his fingers and mouth that say she belongs to someone . He wants you to do the same. He wants to have more than just scars from childhood that he gained for you. He already belongs to you but he needs it in every way. He wants your teeth to break the delicate skin of his lips and mark him up permanently, so everyone always knows.

He kisses you hard while he rocks his hips against you desperately, like he can tell you this without saying it out loud, and when he nips your bottom lip you return in kind, biting hard just the way he knew you would. Not enough to truly hurt him—but he’ll get you there eventually.

“So good,” you say—put your hands on his shoulders and moan into his ear, dig your fingernails into his shirt. It’s like he’s one step removed from fucking you for real and he thinks you know this, because there’s no real pleasure you could be getting out of this. Apart from the pleasure of seeing him do this for you. Seeing how quickly he unravels even when he’s only able to touch you like this. “So good,” you repeat. “My good boy.”

He cums so fast that it could be a record. Eyes screwed closed, fingers digging into your thigh and the slat of your headboard, nose buried against the crook of your neck. You smell like sweat and body wash and fuck, fuck , he wishes he was inside you, and he rides out the waves of his orgasm against you, dragging his oversensitive cock against your hip. He didn’t even cum this much in the bath—it’s copious, a stupid amount. He could be fucking this into you right now but he has to follow orders. He has to do what you want.

He’s talking shit and he doesn’t even know what he’s saying, just snippets of gonna fuck you so full of my cum next time and so sweet and bet your pussy’s even sweeter and thank you, baby, thank you and thank you for letting me cum and god, fuck, I love you, thank you so much. 

When his breathing has calmed, he realizes he’s putting a little too much of his body weight on you—but you don’t seem to mind. Your hands cradle his head, fingers tracing his hairline. He shivers a little at the touch, at the overwhelming after of probably the best orgasm he’s had in his entire life. 

“I didn’t think you’d like that so much,” you say. Amused, again. When did you get good at getting the upper hand on him like this?

He can’t look at you. There’s a better question he should be asking. Is he into that? And how many times is he gonna ask himself this question today? The real answer is that he thinks he’d be into anything if you were the one doing it. Maybe he has a couple hard nos, but not many. He’s so bent out of shape over you that he could get off to your bare shoulder, or the skin of your ankles between low-rise socks and a pair of jeans. Anything you do is sexy to him. 

He racks his brain for a response that doesn’t feel like giving in. It’s hard with the quiet emptiness that fills his mind, the contentedness of you holding him after letting him do some weirdly depraved shit. “You really have a mouth on you,” is what he settles on.

“Yep,” you say. Nip his earlobe. Jesus—you can’t get him worked up again. You cannot get him worked up again. “Does things like that.”

“Baby, please,” he says. He’s spent entirely. The inside of his sweats is uncomfortably sticky and slick. He needs to fix that and get you both to bed. “Please.”

You laugh. If it wasn’t his favorite sound in the world, he would pinch your cheek, maybe bite you back. Anything to annoy you a little. “Fine,” you say. Admitting to knowing what you were doing. “But let me clean you up.”

Finally, he allows himself to pull away from you. To hold himself up over your body, his face inches from yours. He taps your nose with one long finger, shaking his head. “Nuh-uh. You and those wandering hands. I think it’s best if I take care of that myself.”

“Ugh,” you say, dramatic, and he loves you. “Have it your way. Go clean up alone, I guess.”

“I’ll be thinking of you the whole time,” he promises. Something easy to keep.

You roll your eyes. “You’d better be. Leaving me by myself out here.”

“I’ll be back for you, duh,” he says, and kisses you like it’s his usual. Already a habit he never intends to break. “Can’t just leave you here all messy like this.”

“I don’t ever want you to leave me,” you say—and it’s a little more serious. Your mouth is still set in the small smile you have when you’re amused, but your eyes are devoid of mirth. This is you telling him seriously. I don’t ever want you to leave me, and the again is unspoken but understood by both of you.

“I won’t,” he says, but he’s terrified to make this sound like a promise. Not as easy to keep. “Not if I can help it.”

And you understand that he can’t assure you he’ll be there forever. He sees it in your eyes—something muted and hurt, but not by him. By the circumstance. “You’d better do everything you can.”

For you, he’ll always do this. He’ll claw himself back to life, he’ll tear apart whoever he needs to if it assures his freedom. He’ll work tirelessly to make sure that the only person he belongs to is you. This is what he needs to do now. This is his new command, his new set of orders to follow. “I will,” he says, and then repeats it. “I love you.”

You look at him for a moment, pensive. “In what way?”

“Every way,” he says. “I love you the way I loved you when I was a kid. But also differently. More.”

“More,” you repeat, and he wishes he was more eloquent. You’ve always been the one with the great vocabulary, the penchant for reading books for fun instead of just to figure out how to put together mechanical models or fix plane engines.

“I love you completely.” It’s the only way he can think to put it. “All of you. Everything. And I won’t ever not.”

Finally, you smile. A small thing he doesn’t deserve. “Tell me again,” you say. Troublemaker.

“I love you completely.”

“And you always will.”

He nods. “I always will.”

You take his face in your hands and kiss his cheeks, the corners of his lips. He’s never felt warmth like this. “Then you’re stuck with me,” you tell him, "because I feel the same way.”

And it’s enough for Caleb. It’s more than he deserves, and everything he’s ever wanted. His life. A list. What he’s wanted since he was too young to want it.

Just you, entirely and always.

˚✧ ﾟ.

Life with Caleb is all uncertainties. You knew that this would be the case. You can count on several things: if he can’t see you because of work, he’ll call you whenever he can. He’ll always tell you how much he loves you before he ends these calls. When he comes to see you, it’s always with a gift—a favorite snack, a trinket he saw in Skyhaven that made him think of you, sometimes a handful of blooms he’d picked from the apple trees near his home. 

You press them into bookmarks, encase them in resin. Pretty white blossoms flattened and kept perfect forever, a symbol of how he feels for you. They will outlast the both of you. Long after you’re both dead, the flowers will look exactly as they did when you sat with him on your couch and pulled them out from between pages of your oldest and heaviest book.

You will never be entirely sure that you won’t lose him at some point. You will never be entirely sure that Ever won’t do something terrible to him without his consent. You will never be entirely sure that he’ll come back from the Deepspace Tunnel when he flies off for his weeks-long missions. 

But he always loves you, and you always love him. This is undeniable, non-negotiable. 

He surprises you sometimes, too, when the both of you have time. Dates that are thoughtful and sweet. A weekend away together, when the Fleet can spare him.

In the depth of summer, he takes you out into the country. Tells you to prepare a bag with everything you usually need at home. Two hours from Linkon, a house sits on the edge of its own lake. An older build but obviously well-kept, with wood-panel walls and a wrap-around porch. It’s nothing you would have expected from him, until he takes you to the bathroom and you see the tub. Free-standing, like the one from your childhood home.

“Let me wash your hair,” he says. Asks, really, despite it not being a question. He’d spend the time doing whatever you wanted him to do—this you know. But you love that he asks, that he voices his wants. You love that his wants often involve taking care of you, even if that’s a little selfish.

He knows how to do everything perfectly. You taught him well when you were younger, and he didn’t forget. He never forgets anything you teach him. 

“It’s so pretty like this,” he tells you. Short, he means. Shorter than it was when you were younger. The most stark reminder that this is what has come after. You’re not nineteen anymore. Caleb isn’t at the DAA, so far away from you that sometimes you’d get scared he’d left without saying goodbye. You exist together as these new people you’ve become, love each other as well as you can.

You sit on the porch during sunset, after Caleb insists on drying your hair for you, too. You’re sure his arms are tired, his hands stiff. He doesn’t complain once. There’s a swinging bench, pillowed with a high back. Sitting between Caleb’s legs, you lean back against his chest, let his large body engulf you. He was right when he accused you of loving this. 

Fireflies dot the budding night sky. The forest that surrounds the lake turns dark, blends into the void that hangs above. It’s hard to tell between firefly and star. It’s hard to tell when exactly you knew what Caleb was doing by bringing you here, to this place that replicates your childhood home not in entirety but in a few very specific ways. 

Your childhood was nowhere near this grand, this isolated. You lived in the city. You were lucky to have a porch. You were lucky to have Caleb and you still are. “I love you,” you tell him, in this imperfect replica of the spot where he could have kissed you such a long time ago.

“I know, baby,” he says, presses a kiss to the top of your head. 

You tell him that you love him less than he tells you. You’re scared, sometimes, to still be so vulnerable with him. So much has happened. You’re still in the middle of so much chaos, an indeterminate end guaranteed for the two of you. When you say it to him, he doesn’t say it back—as if to not spook you. He knows your limits. Always, he will be the person that understands your boundaries without you having to say them aloud. 

“So are you going to kiss me or not?” you ask—a little antagonistic on purpose. You’ll thank him for doing this, for bringing you here, but you have to give him a hard time first.

Maybe you’re imagining it, but it’s like you can feel him smile, feel the amusement coming from his body as he holds you. “I dunno, pip. It’s special, being my first kiss and all. I’m nervous.”

“You’re so annoying,” you say, and you turn and pull him to you by the neck of his sweater and you kiss him, the way you should have the last time this happened, nineteen and hopeful. You forgot your own agency. You were scared of it, more accurately. 

There was something there to ruin. The same as the first time you kissed him for real, in your apartment after he came to you exhausted and bleeding. Believing him dead was what showed you that the risk was worth it. Because losing him without letting him knowing your true feelings was the most empty you’d ever felt. You couldn’t deal with that again.

You bite his lower lip—one of his favorite things while kissing you. It never fails to get a reaction, his hands always tightening their grip on you with intent. 

And he does, predictable in a way that drives you crazy. “During my first ever kiss?” he pulls back to ask, and you kiss him again and bite harder.

Exactly what he wanted, you’re sure. He groans deep, breathlessly, whispers your name between breaths. Done with joking, now. His hands pull at the ends of your shirt— his shirt, all you sleep in these days. 

You put your hands atop his. He stops kissing you to look at you in question, brows drawn up high, concern in his eyes. Did I go too far? is always the question on his lips, always the worry that sits in his bones. 

“Caleb…” you say, a soft reprimand. “You're trying to go farther during my first ever kiss?”

He laughs, then squishes your cheeks with one hand, forcing your mouth into a pout. “You think you’re so cute, don’t you.”

You narrow your eyes, your squished pout turning into a squished smile. He loosens his grip, hand instead cupping your chin, tilting your face up to his. “I think you think I’m cute.”

“I know you’re cute,” he says, and he means it. You can tell he does.

“Thank you for doing this,” you say. “You can be a sweetheart when you want to be.”

He wraps his arms around you, pulls you into his embrace. Rubs his chin against the top of your head, something you think he used to do to annoy you but that’s become one of your favorite ways to be touched by him. “Hmm,” he says, pretending to think about it. “Only for you.”

“That’s what I like to hear,” you say, because it’s true. You want him to be sweet only for you, the way you’re sweet only for him.

That’ll be the case until, inevitably, one of you leaves the other. Not by choice. By death or something worse. You wouldn’t leave Caleb for anything else—but you’ve gotten better at thinking less about the future and more about the present. About Caleb’s arms around you, his chin resting on your head, his hands keeping you grounded and steady.

“We should stay here forever,” he says, and you both know that you can’t. Soon you will leave, and life will resume, and the fears you’ll always have will be right back where they always are, sitting like rocks in your lungs. 

But that’s not now.

“I’d love that,” you tell him. Melt into his arms, breathe in the smell of his aftershave and earth-logged night and mineral oil. “Let’s stay here forever.”

[weirdly-specific-but-ok]

south africa but i've never been there also i'm drinking

HELLO MAGGOTS this is the good omens mascot here hello hello. my psychiatrist just spent today telling me how I won't be able to be out in college when it starts in May and I'll be misgendered etc etc it's all a good time. So my solution:

My darling cousin @imchronicallyonlinesowhat (the one who thought Sir Terry Pratchett looked like Sudha Murthy, was a kindly old woman and was married to Neil Gaiman because their book cover fonts were similar, OG maggots know the PAIN) who lives in South Africa asked me to make a South Africa post. FYI, she's moving to Australia for college, so you can be assured I shared my Australia posts with her she is SO prepared she won't say marmite instead of vegemite and she knows the Wibbles are inherently sexual. SOUTH AFRICA (I've only had a teeny weeny bit of cheap ass wine so far):

There a lot of white people there it's ineffable. There are enough of them there that my cousin regularly talks about not ever marrying someone who doesn't have some masala.

Afrikaans is a gorgeous language. I thought my cousin was showing me her Afrikaans notes once. She wasn't. It was her English notes, she just has the most illegible yet neat handwriting in the world.

They don't say yo but they say YOH and it sounds very much like a bass drum.

People at my cousin's school pump their hands in the air while saying jesus-jesus.

There's a trio of white boys that rule the school kind of like a genderswapped mean girls. They all look the same haircut-wise, they're Catholic and they're called the Triumvirate.

I'm realising here that my knowledge of South Africa is limited to cuzzy's school. But the wine is shit and I promised my blood-relative so I am continuing.

The books are fucking expensive and so everyone has to pirate shit. This sounds like the US.

Everyone is TALL. Like VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY TALL. The standard of height is insanely different from India. TALL.

If you don't have a last name you're going to get into legal trouble.

The no hat no play rule applies here as well as Australia apparently.

The wine cost like 2.5 dollars in USD if my conversion rates are correct, it smells like battery acid and tastes of rotted grapes. Nothing to do with South Africa, it's just that I cannot remember a single other thing about South Africa other than it's a country in Africa that's presumably in the South.

My braincells are already frying. For my cousin's sake, I'm going to compile all my Australia posts here so that she knows what to expect! Australian maggots your continent is about to be graced with the Good Omens Mascot bloodline. Notably the one with the Sudha Murthy fuck up so that's doubly fun. @howmanyholesinswisscheese, @im-a-sentient-magic-carpet, @madfangirlontheloose @obsessed-sketches @drconstellation and any other Aussie maggots be prepared and welcome her.

Toot Toot Chugga Chugga by the Wiggles is an Ineffable Husbands Song

Deaths in Australia in 2015, an ask

VEGEMITE IS NOT MARMITE, another passionate ask

Pt I Australia but I've never been there

Pt II Australia but I've never been there

Oh I hate cheap wine. @imchronicallyonlinesowhat I hope you appreciate this, blood of mine. I'm such a great cousin.

[helly-watermelonsmellinfellon]

Recently, through Twitter, I have become aware of the fact that modern American parents have been very ignorant of their parental duties when it comes to their children. Parents are banding together to complain about the schools their children attend because their kids are getting bad grades in class, or they're getting detentions for doing bad consistently, or they're being held back because they're just not at the same level as their peers.

There was an entire thread of some woman whining about how the school was failing her kid, because his English class grade was so bad. There were thousands of comments agreeing and various reposts with anecdotes from other parents with similar experiences.

"My 26 y/o son can't even write a check for God's sake!"

And one single person finally replied with, "Do you guys not teach your kids anything at home before they start going to school?" Which then spawned people with actual common sense questioning the level of involvement these people had in the lives of their kids.

This is what led to a large surge of people complaining about how it's the school's job to teach them everything and they did their job just keeping them alive.

Now, I don't want to be mean, but it's gonna come across that way.

Parents are lazy these days.

When I was a child, my Nana and mom had me learning with Hooked on Phonics before I entered pre-K. I was 3 years old and already sounding out words that rhymed. I was practicing how quickly I could say them in under 30 seconds so I could progress to the next lesson.

mat hat sat that cat vat pat bat fat lat rat brat

etc...

When I was in pre-K(4 years old), they had a single, really old computer that had a bunch of Winnie the Pooh CD-ROM games. Because I always got my work done faster than everybody else, they let me use the computer because I could actually read and follow Pooh's instructions, and it kept me busy.

And when I entered kindergarten for the first time, I was really surprised to see that Hooked on Phonics was actually part of my curriculum and I was already very well ahead of everyone else. My mom and Nana took traching me very seriously. They not only read to me, but they would also get me Madeline books and cassette tapes from the children's library downtown. And then I would listen to the cassettes telling the story while reading the book at the same time to get used to the words.

At three years old, I was helping out in the kitchen, learning all of the different kitchen utensils and types of measurement. My mom often went between English, French and American Sign Language at random times so I picked up a lot of stuff that way. We never had a computer in the house for the first 12 years of my life, but I did have an old keyboard to learn how to type. Nana gave me basic piano lessons for a couple years. Mom taught me how to hem my clothes because she would buy me bigger clothes, hem them to size, and then let them out as I grew. Hell, Sperm Donor taught me how to write a check when I was 8. He was also a Financial Adviser, so I got a lot of lessons on money management, investments, and 401Ks and shit.

All these incredibly simple things ended up benefiting me later on, because I was so far ahead of all of the other students that it consistently put me at odds with them. I was better at reading, cooking, sewing, music, languages, etc... I was allowed time to do whatever I wanted while the rest of them had to catch up.

There is a lot more to being a parent than just making sure your kid eats three meals a day and doesn't die in a stupid way. And it seems like a lot of parents these days have completely forgotten that they have a duty to their kids beyond the feeding and clothing thing.

Certain things SHOULD be taught in schools, like how to balance a checkbook. But if it's clear that the school won't cover it, why aren't YOU doing something about that? And why do so many parents have no clue what the hell their kids are even getting up to in school? Why don't y'all get involved in your kid's lives?

[doukeshi-kun]

🎭🚬 nonnie here! Thank you so much for the support Keshi!! I'm really honoured🥺🤍🤍

Anyways I made a small Relationship Headcanon to fresh up and see what's it like to be in a relationship with him (⁠〃ﾟ⁠3ﾟ⁠〃⁠)

warnings: a little ooc. generally fluff and angst if you squint

AYATSUJI RELATIONSHIP HEADCANONS

Ayatsuji is considered someone who tries dating in order to satisfy his curiousity in the systems of relationships. He's already content with the companies of his dolls, claiming they are more amusing than a real person, but we know this man truly craves for someone to be there with him through thick and thin.

‌He's happy to be with someone who likes his interests and hobbies, especially if they want to take into it as well

‌I can imagine cafe, museum, or library dates>>>

‌He isn't really into PDA or maybe he's just generally shy about it, but if you are offering him a hug, he'll jump right in for the opportunity (but not that directly yk)

‌He's a big tease in private tho, he will suddenly tickle you haha he really loves your smile :((

‌He would definitely date a person who would initiate physical affection because he's so damn shy about it and it's also because he was never given proper love since he was a child huhu

‌He'll bury his face in your neck or chest, he really wants be buried in your warmth <3

Of course, he loves, loves, loves, LOVES giving you neck kisses too

‌Speaking of physical affection, I know he's the type to take of his hat before leaning in to kiss you, ESPECIALLY he would use his hat to cover both of your faces in public when wants to smooch (this is best of the most giddiest gesture this man can do)

‌He knows he's beautiful and you mostly can't deny him for everything, so if wants your attention, he'll shoot you a small pout and give you puppy eyes (this guy pouts a lot in the manga and fanmade comics I swear)

‌slow dancing together..... *drools*

‌calls you in names like: doll/darling/dollface

‌Doesn't men who have pet cats or are cat lovers are always the cuntiest? *Coughs and looks at Fukuzawa as well*

‌His main love language is gift giving. We know he's not so openly expressive but if taken a liking to something, he'll definitely buy it for you or he would just suddenly give you a cat loaf pillow and say something like; "I saw it outside a shop and it reminds me of you."

‌Doesn't this go without a saying how he'll buy you anything to doll you up? It's he's more than just happy if you let him be his dolly (aww)

‌He'll probably not tell you anytime soon, but this man would make a bunch of dolls of both you in different outfits and it's all probably made to recreate what you wore in your outdoor dates together skshdkskl

do I have to mention that he would also make one of both of you together with his beloved two cats as a testament of your bond with them?

He's OBSESSED with letting you scatter your things in his apartment or office, it makes him feel comfortable or assured in his own place since there's a sniper pointed in his head almost 24/7

It's the when he would buy the same perfume you frequently wear and he would spray on himself or on his duvet because he wants be reminded of you all the time.

that's all I can think of for now, have a wonderful day(⁠ﾉ⁠◕⁠ヮ⁠◕⁠)⁠ﾉ⁠*⁠.⁠✧

i love all of these! definitely something yukito would do with his lover. though, i feel like since he's a very big tease in private, he isn't so shy about initiating affectionate gestures. but probably he does feel slightly embarrassed if he were to do it in front of other people—like ango or tsujimura, cough cough professionalism cough

they're all cute 🩶 we love ayatsuji yukito in this house <3

[imagininghogwarts]

Being A Weasley Would Include...

You're probably sorted into Gryffindor. Sorry if that's not your house, but the sorting hat doesn't seem to separate families even if they really should be in different houses (I could rant for hours on how Ron is a Hufflepuff and Percy is a Ravenclaw, don't even get me STARTED)

Even if you're not in Gryffindor though, Arthur and Molly would love you just the same <3

You'd share a room with Ginny of course!

And you'd be super close, sharing a room and being the only sisters

Molly hand makes a lot of your clothes and blankets, so they're super cute, warm and cozy, and made with a lot of love <3

Her home cooking is fantastic as well!

Your brothers are all very protective of you, even if you're fully capable of hexing someone for yourself.

Ginny looks up to you so much, you're her personal hero

Arthur is such a fun dad! He barely ever gets cross with you, and he has so many cool trinkets!

He also taught you how to play quidditch <3

For the holidays, Molly sends you cookies, candies, and jumpers she home makes <3

You'd grow up playing quidditch with your brothers (and Ginny of course) so of course you make the house team!

Backyard quidditch in the summer

Also exploring the marshy woodsy areas with your brothers

SUMMERS AT THE BURROW.

School shopping in diagon alley with your whole family can be chaotic, but you all get everything you need and it's kinda fun with Harry and Hermione there

Speaking of, Harry is there just about every summer. Get used to him!

The two of you are probably very close friends (Harry is a girl's girl fr, he's so good to Hermione and Luna, 10/10 friend)

You're also super close with Hermione! It's always so fun when she comes to stay with you guys <3

Fred and George are total menaces and nobody is safe from their antics, not even their precious baby sister.

You have so many stories about your brothers and sister, you never run out of things to talk about

A LOT of inside jokes with Ron. Being the closest in age, you two basically have your own language of inside jokes and references.

Getting to go on cool trips to visit Charlie and seeing so many cool dragons!!!

Spending weekends at the cottage with Bill and Fleur to get away from Fred and George from time to time lmao (and they absolutely adore having you over, Fleur loves you)

You probably bicker with Percy because he's a git </3 (but he still really loves you and will protect you at all costs)

During the Battle of Hogwarts, you fight side by side with your family. They're absolutely not letting you out of their sight, ever

You're part of the most cozy, loving family of all time <3

Let me know if you want a part two! I love the Weasleys <333

[nopeferatu]

Might be a reach, but Jack wearing red when he reunited with Ennis bugged me bc red doesn't seem like his color?? But then I remembered that red is LAUREEN'S color and it made so much sense like omg... visual representation of her claim on him (at least in the eyes of the law)

ohhhh that's actually really interesting point you make there 🤔 you know, i hadn't considered too much into the symbolism within the costuming before, but there is definitely some aspects worth noting.

a while back someone on youtube made a video essay discussing the symbolism tied to specific hat colors in Western films and how it applied to Ennis and Jack in BBM. I forget the nuances of the point now and for the life of me I can't find the video to link to it anymore, but it was something along the lines of black cowboy hats being representative of a subversive character or smth like that? And we all know which of our two boys wears the black hat lol

aside from red being a bold color, which i've established previously speaks to jack's flashy personality, he tends to stay more within the blue/green/black/gray range, doesn't he? so it's interesting that he's surrounded by red through both his shirt and also his truck in the scenes following the establishing of him as a family man now. you're right that it does almost act like a visual depiction of his ties to lureen even when he's away from her. the big ol wedding bands visible on their fingers do the same thing, too, but i like how much subtler it can be interpreted through clothes.

going back to the cowboy hats, i also find it really interesting how the reunion scene where jack's in red is also one of three in the entire film where jack wears a light colored hat... and who do we see wearing light colored hats throughout the entirety of the film? 👀 so it's as though jack's wardrobe is sort of clashing with different claims on him. red shirt = visually lureen's, light hat = visually ennis'.

taking it a step further, every time we see jack in a light hat, it's when he's asking ennis to make a life with him; the reunion scene is in conjunction with them going off to the mountains for the weekend, the King of the Road scene after the divorce, and then the last time jack directly tries to persuade ennis into moving down to texas with him when ennis gets paranoid and asks if people ever look at him funny. these are all scenes where jack wears a light colored cowboy hat, and they're all tied to him trying to get closer to being with ennis, so he starts adopting a bit of his visual language to reinforce the connection 😭

this truly is a movie rich in visual text!!

[dcdreamblog]

So Johnny Thunder and Jakeem Thunder’s genie is from the 5th dimension right? Is the weird lightning genie like, a different species from the weird short guy in the bowler hat and the tiny dude in the Batman cosplay? Because they don’t look like they could be the same species

Yes, the Thunderbolt is a 5th dimensional being in the same order of magnitude as annoyances like Mr Mxyzptlk (I lived in Metropolis for 4 years, I know him well), he is also some version of a mythological djinn as told in Islamic mythology. I am neither a theology scholar nor a dimensional physicist so I'm relating this information as I understand it, so take all with a grain of salt and know I am DEEPLY simplifying.

The 5th Dimension is a realm of pure imagination, there it is as physical a force as motion or heat and can be just as easily manipulated in the same way a 3rd dimensional organism moving forward and back would be considered wizardry from the 2 dimensional perspective. The native beings of this realm, which they call "Zrfff" in their own language are the "Imps" you speak of, of which Mxyzptlk is the most famous though beings like them have been spotted around both Batman and Aquaman. These beings can appear in our reality only once every 90 days after their previous visit and can be returned to their reality by speaking their own name backwards.

This "5th Dimension" also seems to be where Djinn were born and still mostly reside, created by some higher force VERY early in universal creation. Because they are born and molded of the 5th dimension they can manipulate it easily. They don't exist natively in our reality and require some kind of "anchor" in order to exist like many other arcane beings.

They're two separate classes of beings who inhabit the same dimensional space. From here on in I will refer to the Zrff-ians as "Imps" and the Djinn as "Genies" since that seems to be the accepted parlance.

(The only portrait of the Thunderbolt ever successfully taken solo, 1945)

The Thunderbolt's "real name" (if the concept applies) is Yz, and he is a member of the second class of being a mythical Genie who came into the possession of Johnny Thunder who had the power to bond with Yz because he was the 7th son of the 7th son, born at 7 a.m 7/7/1917 (magic, folks).

He's able to grant any wish his master made using the magic words "Cei-U" which of course Johnny uttered as the then popular sentence filler "Say you".

As Thunder aged he eventually developed Alzheimer's disease, and soon after or even upon the moment of his death he wished Yz into the service of his sudden protege J.J or Jakeem Thunder. This process also seemed to merge Yz and Thunder into a single being who now goes by the name Johnny Thunderbolt. What kind of merging this was or what that would even entail is a question for a VERY dedicated psychologist. And I'm not one of those either.

I should note however, there's no reason they couldn't all be the same species. They're 5th dimensional beings able to manipulate all things via their own imaginations. Trust me when I tell you that Mxy probably doesn't actually "look" like a tiny bald man in a purple bowler hat.

[the-froschamethyst4]

Time Of Death: Dawn

𖤐Pairing: Vampire! Alex x Werewolf! F! Reader

𖤐Pronouns: She/Her

𖤐Warnings: Smut, fluff, language, fake marriage, kissing/making out, eating out, P in V, enemies to lovers, Victorian Era, sexism,

𖤐Summary: Vampire Alex Keller and his so-called wife Y/n L/n-Keller had to be perfect but they're not. Alex is the future of Vampires and Y/n was the future for her wolf kind, but this so-called marriage was to keep the peace between both worlds of Vampires and Werewolves.

————

————

The sun peaked through the curtains leaking into the bedroom shared between Alex and his wife Y/n. Y/n every night when going to bed would open the curtains just slightly for the sun to come in to let the sun try to burn Alex.

But before the sun could reach him. Alex would use his powers to shut them.

"Asshole," Y/n says, whipping her head around to look at her husband who was just bring his hand down.

"Coming from the woman who tries to kill me every morning."

"Not like you do the same," she says, kicking the covers off her body and grabs a shirt off the floor and puts it on. Y/n slept naked because she gets hot at night, while Alex sleeps pajama pants and a shirt.

The two had a agreement to do a fake wedding, mainly to keep the peace between Vampires and Werewolves, they were both the future them all, Alex going to be King of Vampires and Y/n going to be an Alpha. But they could not stand one another.

In public people saw them as two lovely couple who didn't let their differences stop them, but behind close doors, they hated one another, trying to kill one another.

Why kill each other, because when one dies the other gets their fortune.

Y/n stood on the balcony looking down at the people, Alex hissed when seeing the light seep in just a little bit.

"Close the door, you damn woman."

"Make me," she says, not even looking at him instead at the boy passing flowers out to couples on the street. She leans on her hand as she watches him pass them out, she loved seeing him, he was always so kind, gentle, and soft spoken, something about him that Alex wasn't.

"Him again?" Alex came out with his cloak over his head. "You know damn well if they see an affair going around-"

"They'll hang me, I know, drive a sliver nail through my heart, I get it, I can still dream, can't I?"

"No, you cannot, you are married to me-"

"Fake married, mind you," she says. She walks away from him. "I'm going to the market...care to come?" She felt like she was going to regret that answer.

"I would," he says with a smirk.

They both get ready dressed in their usual attire to match everyone else. They walked arms linked trying to look like a 'normal' couple. Y/n carried a small lace parasol over her shoulder, and Alex made sure his top hat covered his face.

"You could have stayed home," Y/n mumbles.

"And what let you have your way with the flower boy?"

"I would never, who do you think I am?" She teased.

"You are a woman, that I don't trust," his hand gripped her wrist.

"Mr. and Mrs. Keller what a lovely surprise," they stopped and looked at the person coming towards them.

"Mr. Wilson, how long has it been?" Alex jokes.

"Only a few days," Mr. Wilson laughs with Alex. Mr. Wilson didn't really like Y/n, refuse to speak to her, acknowledge her, or even look at her to even ask how she was doing. He acknowledged Alex like they've been best friends for years.

They haven't. Alex just can't stand the man, but doesn't know how to to tell Mr. Wilson to leave them alone.

"I'll be at the bread vendor," Y/n says, looking up at Alex dismissing herself from the men's conversation.

"Didn't think she'd ever leave," Mr. Wilson says, hiking up his pants.

"Easy there, Mr. Wilson. That's my wife remember that," Alex warns.

"Ah yes I know, but I wanted to talk to you. I'm opening up a brothel and I was wondering if you'd like to come, drink, hang out, get the good ol' whistle wet. I know you and that...whore probably don't do it often, I mean if she was my wife, I'd never be home, I'd be out," he chuckles, but Alex didn't, Alex wanted to get away from this creep.

"Haha," Alex sarcastically laughs. "With respect, my wife and I do quite often, and I would like it if you don't EVER call my dick a whistle ever again-also...do leave my wife and I alone," Alex walks away from the fat man.

He sees Y/n looking at the bread and paying the vendor some money for the loaf she picked up, she turns to see Alex waiting for her, she walks to him looking down and linked her arm with his.

"I heard everything you know."

"I figured, you and those ears," he says, he moves a piece of her hair behind her ears. She slightly winched and pushed his hand away. Almost letting him know 'don't touch me.'

"You could've gone-"

"What did I say about them catching us have an affair?"

"Only me, they don't care what you do, you're a man, I'm a woman, people care more what I do versus you."

"Yeah but if they find out what we are, they'll kill both of us no matter what," he says.

"I need some fruit, I'll be back," she says, walking away. Alex stood back letting her shop, but he went to the boy passing out flowers.

"Good day, sir, care for some flowers?"

"Do you have orchids?" Alex asks.

"Orchids?" He looks around. "Ah! I do, my last one," he says, handing them to Alex.

"How much?"

"5 pens," Alex gave the boy the money and heads back to find Y/n she was also paying, once she turned to see Alex with the flowers in his hands.

"Orchids?" She smiles, while taking them from him and smelling them, Alex took the basket she carried and let her carry the flowers, showing them off to the other women.

"Your favorite," he says.

"Thanks...but why?"

"You seem down today...I don't know why, but...I want you to be happy today," he says.

"What's the catch?"

"No catch," he says. "Just you."

"What's your game, Alex Keller?" She warns taking her arm out of his.

"No game..." She still looked at him confused. "You just haven't received flowers from me in such a long time, so I figured I'd give you some," he says.

She stares at the flowers and hides her smile from Alex, they walked back to their shared mansion, she walks to the kitchen and pulled out a vase, filling it with water and sticking the orchids into the water.

She then places the vase into the window above the sink, that's where the most sunlight comes from, so it only fitted to place it there.

She walks up to her bedroom where she saw Alex remove his clothes. He sits on his side of the bed and looks at the sun peeking through the curtains. He then feels eyes on him and looks at Y/n who was removing her dress.

"I need a bath..." she stops in front of the bathroom door. "...C-Care to join?" She asks, looking at him over her shoulder.

"You want me to join you in the bath?" He asks.

"Sure-but you don't have to-"

"I'll join," he says.

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

Alex had watched Y/n as she washed her body, he watched as her skin had water dripping off her body. She looks like a Goddess. Alex looks at her bare back as she stood up, some scars on her back some freckles here and there, he stood up behind her moving behind her and kissing her neck.

"Alex!" She squeals. She tries to push off him but his arms wrapped around her waist to hold her against his body. "Hey, s-stop," she says.

"Y/n...please," he stops and looks up at her, his face was a bit red and he was slightly giving her a pouty face.

She turns to him and kisses his forehead, Alex stood up while also picking her up, her legs wrap around his waist, while she still placed kisses on his forehead and then his lips. Alex steps out of the bath and sets her on the counter and kissed her neck and then her chest.

Y/n let's out a soft moan, as Alex's kisses started to trail down, going from her chest down to her stomach and then just above her pelvis. He slightly pushes her legs open getting a small glimpse of her wet pussy.

He smirks while he was on his knees kissing her inner thighs. It was a while since her and Alex have done it, Alex would be busy and Y/n would be out or handling business within her community. This is the only time were they both can be with each other.

"Take it slow." She says.

"Of course," he says, licking his lips and kissing her wet clit, his tongue going between her wet folds, the sound of sucking and wet noises filled the bathroom.

He started eating her like she was his last meal, Y/n then squeezed her thighs around his head, he groans as he loved the feeling of her plush thighs around his head. He looks up at her seeing her leaning back on her elbows.

"F-Fuck," she moans, her hand going to his hair, slightly pulling and pushing him to make his tongue go deeper inside of her.

"You taste so sweet," he mumbles against her folds. Alex then stood up between her legs, aligning himself up at her entrance. "I'll be gentle," he says, close to her ear and kissing her shell of her ear.

Alex starts moving slowly, slowly grinding as well, her legs were resting on his waist, and her palms resting on the sink counter, her head back as she looks down at her stomach slightly bulging because of his dick.

"Fuck, Alex," she looks up at him, her arms going around his neck and kissed his lips, he starts moving a bit fast.

Alex smirks into the kiss, he picks her up and moves out of the bathroom, he placed her on the edge of the bed, her legs up and rested on both of his shoulders, he starts going a bit fast, balls slapping on her ass.

Her hands go from gripping the sheets to resting on his lower stomach, touching his toned chest and stomach feeling the ripples of his 6-pack under her fingers and palms.

"Ah!" She moans when feeling herself about to cum, she looks up at Alex almost telling him she was close. Alex smirks and chuckles at her.

"Come on, wolfie."

"D-Don't call me t-that," she says with a bit of a growl.

""Awww~ don't like my teasing?" He says, bending down close to her head.

"Don't you k-know not to tease a-a dog?"

"A dog?"

"Shut it," she says as he chuckles at her again.

Y/n puts her head back as Alex gave her one last thrust before she ends up coming on his dick. He pulls out and watched as cum leak from her lower half, he chuckles and bends down to use his fingers to kind of shove it back into her.

"AH Alex! W-What are you d-doing?" She asks.

"I don't want anything spilling from you," he says, now just placing his fingers inside of her.

She looked embarrassed, grabbing a pillow and hiding her red face behind it. Alex smirks and loved seeing her embarrassed.

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

Alex sat on his bed, Y/n was next to him asleep, he looks down at her sleeping naked figure, her face buried into her pillow and the blanket just resting on her waist. Alex stood up and walks to the window making sure they were shut. He heads back and pulls Y/n close to his chest, he kissed her forehead and rubbed her waist.

"Alex?"

"Hm?"

"...When we both become King of Vampires and Alpha of Werewolves...will we have to leave each other?"

"I don't know, baby," he says.

"I don't want to leave," she says.

"I know...I-I don't either," Alex said, holding her close, kissing her forehead, and then kissing her lips.

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

The next morning Y/n woke up first, the room showed no signs of light in the bedroom to hurt Alex, she looks down at Alex, touching his chest and moving her hand down to his stomach, her hand then slowly moves down to the blanket.

"Hey now...what do you think you're doing?" He says.

"Oh nothing," she says with a giggle, she leans down and kissed his lips. The kiss soon became something heavy, his tongue slipped into her mouth, she moans when she was pushed onto her back, her arms wrapped around his neck and his hands touched her soft thighs.

"Fuck, your lips...they taste so...so good, did you put something on?" He asks.

"I put some ChapStick on before I went to bed," she says.

"Taste good," Alex says, hiking her up to sit on his lap. Their bare bodies against each other, Alex was always so cold and Y/n was also so hot but with them two against each other it was a perfect warmth.

"I love your body," he says.

"Perv-"

"For what?" He chuckles. "I'm allowed to say I love your body."

"Shut up," she snuggles closer to his body and they both landed on their shared bed.

They are suppose to hate each other, why are they acting like this? Are they finally loving each other like a husband and wife are suppose to? Y/n looks up at Alex and pushed him on his back.

"What are you doing?" He asked as his hands rested on her ass now.

"Nothing just looking at my husband."

"Husband huh? When's the last time you've ever called me that?"

"Now," she says.

"You're being a tease."

"And you aren't?"

"When did I tease you?"

"Literally last night," she says, crossing her arms.

"Guess wife's are always right." She just chuckles at him and kissed his lips.