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talenlee · 1 year ago

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The Worst People Unalive

For years now I’ve been holding back on penning this description of one of the worst places in Cobrin’Seil, and only because it’s the worst in a different way to you’d expect. Oh it’s a tightly controlled city with a gaggle of liches trading favours at the top making the whole place a necromantically controlled undead polity, but the real problem the city has is its housing rates and fad technology bubbles.

Welcome to Uxaion.

The player’s basics

Here’s your high-level pitch. Uxaion is a necromantic cyberpunk city where it’s always night and people and gangs squabble in the underclass dealing with economics of living in a rich place where the richest people are able to literally siphon off your life if they can make you desperate enough to give it. It’s a city haunted by capitalism, where even if only one in four of the Startup Necromancer businesses that are Changing The World are run by an Evil Necromancer, that’s still a shitload more Evil Necromancers per head. It’s an adventure city where it’s always grimy and you have pacts with ghosts and the undead and people flip open skulls they use for communication with The Boss.

It’s one of a number of states in Cobrin’Seil that have the appleation of necrostate. One of them, The Osteon, has already shown up in a conversation about The Szudetken, where there, the undead are both sanitised and used as a form of mass industrialisation. The Osteon is very Victorian. Uxaion (“Out of Time”, they claim) is much more Big Tech, Big Noise, Big Indulgence. The city is decorated in vibrant paints and bright colours and ugly architecture because they can always spend to maintain things and the living feed the dead with their time and effort. Being a necrostate is obviously politically fraught, because most other places are either jealous of you (oh wow, no continuity of government problems and no fear of death if I, a king, live forever), or deeply worried by what you represent (wow, we couldn’t get rid of one of our shitty kings?). This gives the city a tenuous position politically, almost no form of extradition or legal imposition of other countries, but also not isolation.

Some example characters that might come from Uxaion:

A boneyarder, someone who works for or around the criminal gangs that populate the underclass of Uxaion. You may have necrosymbiotes or a soul pact, or a contract with a necromancer for your resuscitation

A worker in the city who has to bounce between the Response-Incident Patrollers, Private Security Firms and gangs in order to navigate their day. They may have a day job that involves running rituals for hours at a time to maintain their work spot until something goes wrong one day.

One of the experiments of the necrotic state! Who’s to say you haven’t been brought back for a bad reason and now you’re putting together your new life, while trying to find a way out of the contractual ownership your resurrector thinks they have over you?

A necromantic prodigy, trained in the city to wield the magic of death, full of idealistic ways your gift can be used while being surrounded by people who are just using it for The Worst Possible Reasons.

Important inspirations for Uxaion are Planescape Torment, Hard Wired Island, Cyberpunk 2077 (just the memes), The Locked Tomb, silicon valley excess, fads like ‘AI’ and blockchain and uber app style services, the housing crisis, and the need in the real world for people to be toppled and have their entire worlds burned. In minecraft, there are people who need to burn.

Uxaion

Island Urbanised Independent Micronation, The Spectral City

Cultures

Uxaion is one city, on a set of islands, spread across a variety of districts. Most people who live there live in the poorer areas, known as ‘Minimal Needs’ Housing, which is to say, just a bit better than a closet in which people store skeletons. The greatest burden of the people in Uxaion is the needs for housing, which, thanks to the island’s hunger for both space to do experiments in and people to do experiments on, puts a lot of living in the city under pressure. As large cities, almost all cultures are extremely common, but particularly of note, in Uxaion, undead characters like Revenants and Necropolitans are much more common.

While Goblins show up everywhere, they are much less common in Uxaion than you’d expect, and often are part of very small family units of only 2-3 Goblins at at time. Abilen traders also regularly visit, but very rarely live in Uxaion, due to its constant night and inclement weather.

Common: Half-Elves, Half-Orcs, Halflings, Humans Uncommon: Eladrin, Elves, Kobolds, Orcs, Tieflings, Shadar-Kai Rare: Abilen, Dio Baragh, Drow, Goblins

Reputation

Opinions on Uxaion are mixed. They’re absolutely known for their necromancy, and if you know only one thing about the place, it’s that it’s a necrostate. The chain of islands have one large linked city spread across them, with some smaller islands regarded as holding areas or holding housing estates meant for the richest members of the society. You may even know about the way the city has positioned itself, and manipulated the sky, so that it is always night there, somehow.

Uxaion may mean to you, a place of immense magical research, with a great university system and a willingness to engage in complex magic that has been considered ‘too dangerous’ in the past. They’ve done amazing things in the field of medical research, saving and restoring lives, communicating with ghosts, and even undoing magical fallout from terrible curse. You might know Uxaion as a place that normal people can go, and can sign up for amazing projects that may help them cheat death or become fabulously wealthy, in exchange for life force or unique practices.

Uxaion may also mean to you its profile of tall spired towers, full of magical research, and a population of indulgent, reckless undead leaders who are constantly searching for novelties. They’re a place that invents new games and new ways to have fun and tries reckless new things, because they know they’re dead and they know they can be restored.

If you’re from Uxaion you probably know those things are overblown. Yeah, there are the reseachers. Yeah, the rulers of the city, the Necropolitans, are undead. Yeah, there’s a lot of use of ghost energy to power the trains and the lights, and yeah, the undead are common sights across the city. But who isn’t and what isn’t? It’s a city, like a lot of others, built across the water, and full of people who are, generally, just trying to live their lives.

locals

If you live in Uxaion, you are complaining about the rent. You may also be complaining about the latest fad the necromancers are working on because that’s a new thing you’re going to have to hear about that’s going to change everything before they eventually go back to doing the basic three necromancer things of bones, zombies, and ghosts, but much more annoyingly. You are almost certainly overworked and underpaid, and a lot of the things and spaces you would rely on to give you community are limited or under stress. The most common place people gather is a bar, because almost all the park space in the city is private, and almost all the privatised park space has been replaced with necromantic experiment spaces.

You might be on a contract with a necromancer, to give a little of your life force regularly. You may have a postmortem contract lined up, meaning that when you die, you can work off a debt as a resurrected undead. Some of these contracts even split you into a ghost and a zombie, so your two halves can work at the type of labour they can do in the name of working off a debt. Most of these debts are so brutal and set up so predatorially, you may just be working now to pay off the interest. What’s more, you might not have earned the debt directly, and instead inherited it, or had it bequeathed to you by someone gaming a system of legal debt and re-dying.

You might be in a gang. You might have to deal with the city’s most common type of guard, the Response-Incident Patrollers who believe themselves entitled to taking samples of your blood when they inspect you, or the ones who demand you swallow a tooth as a security measure while talking to you. You may live somewhere the RIP don’t operate and have to deal with one of the major research guild’s street guards. You may have a weapon you keep at home to defend yourself because you know you don’t live somewhere nice enough for the two different flavours of watch to protect you. You probably know something that could be valuable to someone, if you just gave up on trying to play by the rules, and be nice.

Travellers

Lots of people have reason to travel to Uxaion and also to leave Uxaion. Uxaion is one of the most active cities per capita of Adventurers, because a lot of the businesses that work there employ Adventurers’ Guild operators to do work of various types. It’s the step in respectability above gang member, but also crucially, still lets those Adventurers interface with gangs.

Travel to and from Uxaion is by boat, which means that you can be stuck on the islands for a time, based on a transport contract or a holdup in the company managing your ferry. This can make travel to the city relatively easy, but out of it hard. This is not seen as a bug by the city’s administration and more of a feature in case of people trying to leave while still having debts or contracts.

Rivalries

Officially, Uxaion has no ill will with, and no problem with, the Eresh Protectorate. In fact, they’ve floated the idea of applying to become a member of the Eresh Protectorate, and have even at times, documented the paperwork necessary to apply. What they’ve heard in response, before the paperwork was delivered, was that the Eresh Protectorate has never had to refuse an application before, so they better not apply and make themselves the first.

This is because if you’re going to join the Eresh Protectorate, part of what makes it easy is the diverse power base of the Protectorate. Across all its cities, there are basically six major power blocks.

The Eresh Crown, which is extremely pragmatic and largely amoral in terms of expanding its access to power. They do not care about Uxaion and would view its application acceptably if they could arrange any coalition of other power bases to support it.

The Tzarumites, who are extremely legal and law driven, and who have a firm policy against necrostates. This is partly ideologically driven (undead icky), but it’s also heavily entwined with the idea that any law written has to be considered precedent. Because of this Tzarumites are extremely reluctant to open any new space in the law code that can’t be done with regulation and control already in place. Any laws passed for operating with necrostate actors would be absolutely not fit for purpose and would not be evident as being so for centuries. Simply put: It’s too hard to make laws for undead state actors.

The Raguzans, who are libertine and free roaming find the idea of contracts that last beyond death, that people couldn’t escape, as absolutely horrifying. If such individuals fled Uxaion and the Raguzans were asked to recover them, it would be, in their opinion, asking them to be slavetakers. In these negotiations, the Ragauzan Praetor promised that if Uxaion became a member of the Eresh protectorate, their first action would be declare war against it, and win.

The Lethenites, who are scholarly and extremely focused on magical containment find the Uxaion ideology of revolutionary magical technology irresponsible. Especially, they find the way that Uxaion treats undeath as an all-purpose solution to all problems as untrustworthy. They see the entire city as an ongoing project in playing with Demon Cores, and refuse to sanction it.

The Chardunists, who are spies and investigators who focus on protecting psychics across the Protectorate. They ostensibly have not voted against Uxaion but have communicated that if Uxaion joined the Protectorate, they would start assassinating people and not stop until they weren’t concerned about the association any more. Basically, Chardunists favour direct action over votes.

The Church of Olifar, a Catholic-like organisation that’s kind of Pauline Christian in their idea that ‘we would really rather you focus on this’ as a matter of ongoing holiness. Not in the ‘women suck’ way. The Church of Olifar holds that undeath is a moral failing, and while lots of people disagree, they’re a hard no on accepting a necrostate.

So with two potential declarations of war on the books, Uxaion decided not to apply for the Eresh Protectorate. They still consider them a great trading partner and have built ports for Halfling trade ships, but there’s no direct linke Uxaion and the King’s Highway.

trade

The most common thing for Uxaion to export is magical technology. While some of this is pretty obvious, things like cursed weapons, necromantic devices and traps, it’s a much more profitable trade over time to work with businesses in terms of long-term services. Uxaion, bar none, have the absolute best technology in the world for corpse preservation, so Uxaion wizards are hired by large companies and guilds for things like protecting records of the dead or reconstructing data from historical battlefields, while also being used for making meat more widely transportable while fresh.

Uxaion’s systems have even given rise to some really useful services that other countries export and trade for. Resurrecting dead languages through direct consultation with their speakers, healing of extremely challenging injuries through recreation of bone and lost flesh, safe and reliable building materials that can be trusted to not harm an ecology (through bone), Uxaion are doing things that people want to pay for. But also, as a state, most countries don’t directly deal with Uxaion, and prefer to deal with middleperson like the Halfling Trade Houses. Uxaion does trade directly with Seibelmarsh but they have no current access to the Osteon.

They do trade with Visente, with one of the most common things traded between them being day labourers – it’s not uncommon for people from Visente to boat over to Uxaion for a six or nine month contract doing some kind of service job, before heading back to Visente.

What Uxaion needs the most of is raw materials, which given their endless appetite for novelty and constant exploration of stupid ideas kind of makes them a perfect consumer of almost everything. Almost all kinds of farm good gets imported to the island and purchased, and if you want to eat anything that wasn’t made by a necromancer, you’re going to be eating stuff that was imported recently.

And thus Uxaion. It’s a place of contradictions; high tech, no life. It’s important to me to give a place like this room to be both a stable place with legitimate reasons for existing and also a garbage place that any player character would want to avoid, or escape.

Check it out on PRESS.exe to see it with images and links!

#Cobrin'Seil #Dungeons &amp; Dragons #Games

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monochromemedic · 3 years ago

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I had been stuck in the Dark World for who knows how long. The days didn’t seem to matter down here. No sun, no moon, just the vibrant green grid that coated the sky that would twitch and surge with occasional frequency. When I first got here, I fought hard to get back to the surface, to fight for any sense of normalcy, for home but after a while the dream began to fade. The options began to run dry when compared to the dangers that surrounded me. And so I settled. I survived. I searched for food, begged for shelter from kind Darkners. I did what I had to to live. The Queen was not an option. Whispers from Darkners told me how I was just what she was looking for, that would help her expand her reign to the Light World. As much as that would probably help me, I didn’t want to ruin the lives of others for the chance to see my family, as much as I missed them with every passing minute. The sound of bustling cars and the blinding lights of neon signs stung my senses, my palms pressing into my eyes to drown out what I could. Damn it this place never slept did it? There was always something, some sort of noise. Whatever bags I had under my eyes were probably made cartoonishly drastic with the lack of pure rest I was getting. ‘Supose it was better then being dead... My body felt heavy, and I knew I’d have to find a place to rest or I’d fall asleep mid crossing of a road and get run over by one of those goofy cars I’d seen. Maybe that wouldn’t be so bad... I recalled the time one of the car’s rear bumped into a fire hydrant (or at least I thought it was) and made a squeaking sound. The darkness of a certain alley called to me, the silence a sweet lullaby to the roaring around me. Was it dangerous? Oh yeah. Was it stupid? No shit. Was I going to do it? The shadows the engulfed me were perfect and if it wasn’t for the underlying stench of garbage it’d probably be ideal. Still beggars couldn’t be choosers and if tonight was good enough I would have to consider having this as my permanent sleeping spot. My back slid against the cool wall across from the dumpster, eyes half lidded as they read the advertisements littering above. Why the hell did the Queen have ads anyway, if she wanted she could monopolize any products she wanted... Despite the quiet I couldn’t shake the feeling that creeped down my spine. The presence of something other then myself around me. I tried to close my eyes, I was in the city after all. It’d be concerning if I didn’t feel like people were one second from crawling up my ass. Though I had to admit I didn’t expect to actually feel something begin to touch me. My eyes snapped open, elbow prodding into a blurry shape that yelped and tumbled backward, it’s grasp my on shoulder tearing a hole in my already worn shirt in the struggle. “Hey! What the hell?!” I barked, standing over the perpetrator. My shoulders slumped when I saw what looked to be a doll staring up at me with wide eyes, an over exaggerated smile permanently spread across it’s face. The creature’s jaw opened wider with a clack, it’s small body shooting upwards to stand on it’s small pointed feet. “WOAH WOAH WOAHAH- [Live worms]!” The darkner’s voice was deafeningly loud, a shrill tone that cut the air like newly sharpened blades. “ I THOUGHT YOU WERE [Roadkill]. NICE TO KNOW I WON’T BE [Sleeping with the fishes] T0NIGHT!!” Well he had a certain way of speaking that was obvious. What the hell was going on with him, he talked like he was constantly being cut of random clips of other people speaking. He talked like a youtube poop or any other shitpost that would randomly shove memes into them for a quick laugh. “You thought I was dead? I was just... I was... uh.” I looked around me, eyeing the dirt and debris. “I was... going to sleep... here.” Dammit, telling people I had to sleep in such ratty places were always a blow to the ego but I suppose it was better then saying ‘Oh I was just sitting down here to die’ The puppet shook his head and waltzed over to the dumpster, his small hand smacking the side with a sense of pride. “ [Finders keepers, losers weepers] HUMAN, YOU PICKED A GOOD SPOT. TOO BAD [so sadd] I GOT HERE FIRST. THOUGH FOR A DEAL I SUPPOSE I COULD [Share the love~]” “Got here first... what are you talking about?” The Darkner let out a laugh, distorted echoes filling the air as he leapt inside, a solitary hand popping out to beg me to come closer. This was a terrible idea, but despite my best judgement I followed, and witnessed what I could only describe to be a makeshift bed inside. The puppet laid on top of musty mats and raggedy rugs, a single stained pillow resting just beneath his head. My god was he living in here? The creature continued his laugh, lurching only a few inches away from my face. “ [Sweet deal] ISN’T IT? J3ALOUS, [baby]?” I shirked back, cheeks reddening at the tone of his last word. I was most defiantly not jealous, in fact I was filled with remorse, something his pride did not help with. “It’s... uh something. I guess this means I’ll have to find another alleyway um, sorry for bothering you-” “SPAMTON.” “What?” His hand shot out towards my chest, fingers wiggling for a handshake. “SP-SPA MTON G SPAMTON, [Number 1 rated salesmen 1997]” He announced, an extra flair of bravado laced his titled. His hand was surprisingly warm for what it was made of but nothing that would be described as body temperature. “Jenna. Also 1997.” “WHAT A YEAR. LISTEN LIGHT nER, I AM DEALSMAN [yes/no?]” “Um... y-yes? I don’t-” “THEN LET ME MAKE A DEAL YEAH? FOR ONLY [many] KROMER, YOU MAY STAY IN MY [Privately owned] ALLEY. IT’S A REAL [steal] YOU’RE ROBBING ME [deaf] HERE!” My brows furrowed as I searched his face for any context clues for what the hell he was trying to say. Kromer? What the fuck was ‘kromer’? The only thing I knew of currency down here was dark dollars not kromer... even if he did ask for dark dollars he didn’t name a price, he just said many. And the amount of dark dollars I had was zero. “Uh I don’t have kromer. I don’t even have dark dollars I’m kinda broke Spamton, in case you couldn’t tell from uh...” I trailed off realizing saying that sleeping in an alley wasn’t a very smart thing to say to someone who slept in an alley. He seemed surprised by my words, beginning to tug on my coat, flipping my pockets to see if I was really lying. I had to push his mitts off me a couple of times, to which he eventually got the idea the way his hands began to rub at his extended jaw. “NO KROMER... WHAT CAN YOU DO?” “What do you mean?” He seemed to sense my change in tone, his grin beginning to wobble nervously “[Whoopsie daisy!] LET ME START AGAIN. DO YOU HAVE A [trade]? A [skill] TO [Exchange for goods and services]?” he croaked. I eyed the ground, rubbing the back of my neck. What the hell was I good at again? “I mean, I can draw, I suppose...” “ARTIST? WOW OWOW!” Spamton’s face lit up before digging in the dumpster, pulling out a few napkins and a ball point pen and shoving them into my hands. “WHAT A [trade] TELL YOU WHAT. YOU DRAW A [one-of-a-kind masterpiece] AND YOU CAN STAY THE NIGHT!” “You’ll let me stay... if I draw something for you on this napkin. Am I getting that right?” The doll nodded feverishly, basically hovering over my shoulder as I played with the pen. This was certainly the weirdest way to pay someone that I could imagine... well no but one that was in the realm of reality. I had to ask Spamton to give me some space a few time, the feeling of his breath on my neck making me more then nervous as I drew. God he was like those kids in school that would ask for drawings but ten times worse with the amount of personal space he’d give you. Besides I needed something to draw and with nothing on the mind why not draw the most interesting thing in front of me. I held the finished doodle out to Spamton only to have it snatched out of my fingers so fast I swore we could have started a fire. “WOAH...” The puppet sank inside of the dumpster, his face softening as for once in what seemed like forever the alley way grew silent. “THIS IS... ME?” “Yeah. Sorry I didn’t know what to draw, you kind of put me on the spot. Besides everyone likes drawings of themselves right?” I shrugged, being pulled away from my thoughts by an overdramatic sniffle. Was he... crying? Not quite, just damn well close. Spamton’s shoulders quaked as a warm smile returned to his cheeks, slipping the napkin into his pocket with glee. “SO GOOD... THANK YOU.” “It’s really nothing, honestly that was a pretty shitty drawing.” “WHAT? YOU’RE [&#!^]ING ME! THAT WAS [BIG SHOT]” He was screaming again, hands gesturing wildly about. “It wasn’t but thank you. I wish I was better to be honest. I’m not very happy with my art, not at all.” I turned away from his gaze, unsure of why I was overcome by a choking sensation building my throat. Why the hell was I telling this stranger this sort of stuff anyway? I mean I could hazard a guess it was the fact that this was the longest conversation I had had with anyone since I had gotten down here but with how things were it could be some magic power the doll possessed to tell him my deepest darkest secrets. “YOU DON’T THINK THIS IS [Big?]” “No.” “WHY NOT?” “I don’t know. I just... I think it doesn’t look the way I want it to. Doesn’t look good to me, and I don’t know how to fix it. Which I guess is a little funny considering how long I’ve been drawing. Just keep... drawing and drawing and never improving, least not how I’d like. It’s just garbage to me.” Spamton’s face seemed to fall, his glasses fading to a dark inky black. “YOU FEEL? NO GOOD AT WHAT YOU DO? YOUR [passion]?” “Yeah.” A laugh ripped from his chest, his head lolling back with each chuckle. I felt my soul began to crack, a shame flooding my body with how hard he seemed to laugh. Did he find this funny? Humorous? I felt tears prick my eyes as I snapped my head back to glare at him, his head glitching back to stare back at me. “YOU’RE JUST LIKE ME, JENNA. A [slime] A REAL [slime]!” With a quick motion the puppet jumped to the ground, his hand resting against my arm as he spoke. “YOU’RE A REAL [BIG SHOT] YOU KNOW THAT? STAY AS LONG AS YOUR [Greasy little heart] DESIRES!” Well... that was unexpected. He’d really let me stay here as long as I want cause I was pathetic? Or did he just feel sorry for me? What was going on? And why was he calling me a slime... or us a slime? “Oh... uh thanks? I didn’t think I was being much of a big shot whatever that is but I apricate it. Really.” His head clacked with every little nod, leading me to a pile of cardboard boxes and patting them with the grace of a car salesman. “BEST [Seat in the house] ALL FOR YOU. [Night night forever]!” Spamton beamed, awkwardly swaying side to side before stumbling back to the dumpster a few inches away and crawling inside of it, much like a wild animal. I couldn’t help but laugh a little. This guy was weird. Kinda creepy but also kind of funny. I honestly couldn’t pinpoint a feeling on him but at least he didn’t want to hurt me just make weird ass deals and make me ‘big’. Did that mean famous? Was this guy so into my art he wanted to be some sort of manager? I rubbed my eyes and let out a yawn, the excitement of the day finally beginning to fade. God I forgot how tired I was, that little guy made me feel like I was gonna go into fight or flight. “Hey Spamton?” “YES?” his voice echoed from inside the metal container. “...Thank you.”

#self insert #spamton #vent #idk im just thinking #just wanted something to do

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yungbud · 4 years ago

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Hi my love! When you have time could you write an fluffy & smutty imagine where the reader gets insecure & worries or compares themselves to Ashley? (Halsey) & Dom finds out & shows the reader how much they mean to him & how much he loves them daddy kink in there with the smut please & a lot of praise & saying "I'll take care of you pretty girl" 🥺

Word count:4.1k

TW?: mostly angst and fluff, but mentions of daddy kink and adult themes obviously its smut.

A/n: anything for you my lil nugget 🥺 Smut is at the bottom you horny cunts. I hope it was everything you wanted and more <33

*rewrite

You knew better. Unfortunately, you were self destructive and couldn't help yourself. It was 3AM and Dom was fast asleep beside you, and had been for hours. You, however, had chosen to watch a video before bed. It was titled “Yungblud being cute for 6 minutes straight.”, but of course one video turned to five or six more, until eventually you came along another video. This one was called “Halsey and yungblud cute moments.” and the cover photo was of them in onesies, one of Dom's arms wrapped around her and the other holding the camera. You could feel the pit begin to grow in your stomach. Glancing over at Dom to check he was still asleep, you pressed play on the video, flipping over so you were facing him, so that if he did wake up he wouldn’t see what was on the screen.

It was ridiculous, honestly. How could you be jealous of her when you were the one laying right next to him. It broke your heart the way he looked at her, you couldn’t help but wonder... is that how he looks at you? Why would he? She’s so beautiful, look at jawline, look at those eyes and her voice. Oh god... her voice, she's a musician. You loved music, but you had never been musically inclined and at best you could go hard on the triangle. But her, she understood it all, down to the tour life. When he was overwhelmed with work or couldn’t find a melody, she could help, when he didn’t know how to deal with all the attention, she could help. She was like the perfect mentor/ girlfriend combo. She connected with him in ways you would never be able to. She got it.

Your finger hovered over part 2 of the video, a moment of hesitation before pressing it. You tapped twice more to skip past the person's intro, wasting no time in getting to the painful stuff.

One of the first clips was Halsey talking about the night they met. You knew it was unhealthy, but you couldn’t look away. She described it so beautifully, taking a moment to mention that of course she would because she's a writer and that's how she saw the world, her world was so beautiful. Dom deserved to live in her world.

She went on to say that they had met up in a bar to chat, to which you remembered why. It wasn’t a coincidence, Dom liked her music. He looked up to her. Just another way you could never be who he needed.

You couldn’t help it. He’d made the trade down of the century and everyone knew it. You paused the video momentarily, subduing the verbal attack on your ears and laying your phone down on your chest. Heavy breaths slid past your lips as you tried to calm yourself from a full blown breakdown.

You glanced once more over at Dom, ensuring he was asleep before letting a single tear slip down your face. You used the blanket to wipe it away, basking in the shitty feeling you had created for yourself. You decided that was enough of that, shutting off your phone and plugging it up for the night. After laying there silently for a moment you scooted a bit away from Dom.

You didn’t really feel like being held by him tonight.

----

The first thought in your head the next morning was of the events of last night, the same shitty feeling digging itself into the pit of your stomach.

“Fuck.” You sighed

“Sorry, I was borrowing one of Dom’s shirts. I didn’t mean to wake you.” You turned your head to acknowledge the presence in the room. It was Tom, bent over and digging through a pile of Dom’s clothes.

“All good.” You murmured, flipping onto your stomach and burying your face in the pillow. It smelled like Dom.

Soon after you heard the door shut behind Tom as he left, your head lifting from the pillow. You didn’t know what to do, you didn’t really feel like being around Dom today. You couldn’t get past the feeling that he was ultimately worse off with you, that he had settled for less.

You hated the way you felt, your face drooping back into the pillow in an attempt to hide and ended up dozing off, the late night pity marathon catching up with you.

About an hour later you were awoken to Dom’s lips on your forehead. Your eyes met momentarily as you blinked the sleep out of them, reaching upwards in a stretch.

“ ‘ello sleepy head.” Dom says, planting another kiss, this time to your nose. You roll over, replanting your face in the pillow once again, “Are you going back to sleep?” He asks

“Tired.” You mumble back, voice muffled by the pillow.

“It’s 1pm.” no response “How late did you stay up last night?” He asks, laying his head on the pillow next to yours. You shrugged.

“Are you feeling alright, love?” You shifted your head so that you were looking at him, cheek still pressed softly against your pillow “Are you feeling a bit sick? Is it cramps? I can make you a cup of tea and get you some pain killers.” He continued, offering to help you in any way he could. He just wanted to know what was wrong with you, so he could help you. He hated the idea of you up in bed all alone feeling ill. He considered skipping the studio today, he was already cutting it close on time.

“No, I feel fine. Just need a nap. I must’ve stayed up later than I realized, s’all.” You knew you needed to tell him. Every silent moment was filled with you trying to convince yourself to just say something to him. Just talk about it. Just let him in.

“Okay, if you’re sure. I’ll be out of the house at the studio, but Tom and Adam are here if you need them. I’ll tell them to be quiet so you can get some rest.” You smiled in response, your eyes closing as he rubbed his thumb lovingly against your cheek “Hey, I love you.” he says, your eyes opening as you mumbled back an I love you of your own, your lips meeting in a chaste kiss before he stood back up and slipped out the door.

As much as you would’ve loved to, you didn’t sleep at all after he left. Tom and Adam had made good on their promise to stay quiet, but it didn’t make much of a difference when that little voice in your head wouldn’t shut up. You opted for distracting yourself with your phone, scrolling through instagram and hoping the memes would brighten your mood. For the most part they did, acting as a simple distraction.

Once you felt a bit better, you decided part of the reason you felt so bad today and last night was partially due to the fact that you hadn’t had anything to eat. You went to the kitchen to prepare yourself lunch, hearing Tom and Adam talking quietly in the other room.

While you were preparing your food you accidentally bumped into a stack of dirty dishes that had built up in the kitchen. You didn’t see what happened and when you turned to check nothing looked broken, but it was loud.

“Y/n?” Tom asks, tilting his head to get a better look into the kitchen.

“Hm?” You respond after a few moments of quiet deliberation. You weren’t exactly ready to be observed as awake, but you didn’t have any other choice, besides blaming it on an intruder who broke in with the intent of stealing the beloved orange tree outside, but when they arrived in the kitchen and were met with such a disgraceful mess decided they had no choice but to clean up after us. Of course, that might have stirred up a bit of a panic. They loved that orange tree, after all.

“Oh you’re finally up. Are you feeling alright? Dom said he thought you maybe came down with something.” Adam says

“I’m alright, thanks for asking. I’m just making myself lunch.”

“Come sit with us while you eat. We’re playing uno.” Tom invites. When you’re done making yourself food, you decide maybe it would be best to join them. It’s not good for your mental health to be stuffed up in your room pitying yourself all day.

You sat with your food in front of you, watching silently as they played.

“You wanna be dealt in the next round? It’s more fun with three players.” Tom offers, you give him a nod in response as your mouth is full of food. As you nod, Adam plays a red six, which ultimately leads to his demise as Tom then plays three red draw 2’s, stopping Adams hand as he goes to pick up and continuing to lay a red skip, then a yellow one, changes the color back to red and ends on his own red 3. You all laughed as Adam was absolutely massacred, almost choking on your lunch.

“There ain’t no coming back from that. Just tap out man.” You say through your laughter, reaching over to place a comforting hand on Adam. You all had small conversation as you finished your lunch, but soon you were done and the cards were passed out.

After a game or two, the round was paused as Adam stood up to get himself a glass of water, Tom and you shouting out your own drink orders from your place in the living room. By the time Adam was back at the table the running conversation had died down a bit. You began to think about why you’d been in bed all day, and the fact that Dom still attributed it to a small sickness. You felt the insecurity growing inside you once again, and you finally decided to talk about it.

“Did you guys like Ashley?” You ask, as inconspicuously as you could manage. You watch as they glance at each other, taking a sip of your drink to occupy your mouth.

“Yeah, she was cool,” Tom says, Adam nodding in confirmation “Why?”

“Just curious, I guess. Did you guys ever hang out?” You tried to play it off as casual conversation, but you got the feeling they were picking up on the fact that there was something more under the surface.

“Not really. Not without Dom, even then it was rare. Who’s turn was it?” Tom continued, feeding into your curiosity while trying to maintain the card game.

“Yours, I think.” You paused for a moment, thinking of your next question “Do you think she was better for him than I am?” Your eyes met with Tom’s as the words left your mouth. He stayed silent for a moment and you couldn’t tell what the emotion on his face was. It felt weird, confiding in your boyfriend’s friends. Usually you could tell what your friends were thinking, or have an idea about what they might say, but you didn’t know these two like that.

“Like how?” He asked, nodding towards you to silently mention it was your turn.

“I dunno, they have the same career.” they let out a small laugh at that.

“She knows how to play a guitar so she loves him more?” Adam says

“Well, no, but…” you tried to remember what you were anxious about “she gets it. She knows what it's like to be on the road all the time and not see your family, she knows about the mental toll being in the public eye has and how to deal with it, she knows how to help if he’s nervous about performing.”

“What makes you assume that?” Tom asks

“She’s been doing it so long.”

“Well, yeah, but knowing how to do that isn’t a part of the job description. It’s less about knowing how to be famous and more about knowing the person you’re with. If it was about that, most people in Dom’s life don't get it. But we get Dom, and that’s what he cares about. You get him, so you have nothing to worry about.” Tom says softly. He made a surprisingly good therapist.

You nodded, picking up 4 cards and sorting through them in your hand.

“But that doesn't mean you get to hide in your room cause you’re insecure. Just cause we’re talking about it doesn’t mean you don’t still need to tell him.” Tom continues, his chin resting in his hand as he looks at you.

“Yeah, of course.” You agree

~~~

You could hear Dom the second he walked in the house, engaging in a small conversation with the boys before making his way up the stairs. You heard his footsteps trail down the hallway and eventually meet your bedroom door, your eyes closing as you listened to it creak open.

“Love? Are you up?” Dom whispered, shutting the door softly behind him. You remained silent, trying to regulate your breathing like that of someone who’s asleep. He sighed, which made your heart crumple a bit. You wondered if you should respond, he might’ve had a hard day, but the nerves took over and you remained silent.

“You’re still sleeping?” He asked, partially to himself, before exiting the room once more. You could hear him talking with Tom from outside the door.

“Has Y/N been asleep all day?”

“Uh, no. She came out and ate lunch and played uno with us around 2. Is she asleep now?”

“Yeah, I think so.”

You planned on talking it out with him, and up until he walked into the house you were, but you were suddenly overcome with intense nerves and all you wanted to do was hide. You figured you would get a good night's rest and talk it out with him in the morning, that way if it went badly he would be out for most of the day at the studio and you wouldn’t have to sit in awkward silence as you tried to sleep.

He entered the room once again, stripping himself of his clothes as he preferred to sleep half naked, before joining you in bed. You felt his arms wrap around you, pulling you into him and wrapping you both in the blankets. Flipping over to face him, you nuzzled closer into his arms.

“Y/N?” He asks again, shifting to see if you’re awake. You hum in response this time, curious as to what he might have to say.

“Are you feeling better?” He asks, his hand returning to your cheek as it was this morning. You nod, letting out a small, genuine yawn as you nuzzle your face into the crook of his neck.

“How was your day?” You ask, shifting the conversation.

“It was good. We finally got that song done, I think i’m gonna play with it a bit more tomorrow though. It’s good but I think it could be better.”

“You always think it can be better.”

“It always can.” He states simply, making you smile. You loved that about him, his pure determination and dedication to his craft. It can always be better.

“How was your day? Tom said you guys played a bit of uno, who won?”

“It was alright. Yeah, him and Adam were playing when I came down so I decided to join them. I think overall it was probably Tom though, I think he was cheating.” Dom laughed a little at the claim, brushing his fingers through your mess of a hair.

“So...” You began, needing to get a word out so you wouldn’t bail on talking about this. God, you hated confrontation. Especially when it was about something you were feeling.

Dom hummed in response, the gentle reminder to continue breaking you out of your thoughts.

“I wasn’t sick today.”

“No?” He encouraged

“No. I was a bit tired though. But, that wasn’t the problem. I was watching youtube last night and I came across a video someone made. It was, like, a compilation of cute moments or whatever so I watched it cause it was cute. Then I watched another, and a few more, and eventually I came across a video that was called ‘Halsey and YUNGBLUD being soulmates for 3 minutes’... and I watched it.” He lets out a small, quiet snort, not entirely catching onto the vibe of the conversation.

“Jeez, how do they come up with this shit.” He remarked lovingly

“Heh, yeah. It’s just… I watched it and I saw the way you talked about and looked at her… It just got me thinking, yenno?”

“I don’t. What’d it get you thinkin’ about, beautiful?”

“I just felt like maybe you regretted being with me. Maybe you’re still bummed that you guys broke up and you ended up with me. Like maybe you still miss her.” You admit. It’s silent for a moment as he takes it all in, you almost expect him to confirm your suspicions.

“I’m so sorry, I can’t believe I made you feel like that.” He took a moment to think carefully about his next words “I know it must be hard to hear me talk about someone else like that, you can’t really escape my past relationships because of who I am. I honestly never thought of that. I love you, okay? Not anybody else. Obviously she and I had something, but it’s completely in the past and I don’t regret a thing because it led me to you, and I love you so much. You’re my fookin soulmate, I mean it. I’m not gonna let that slip out of your head ever again.” He said, punctuating it with a passionate kiss.

You expected the kiss to end rather quickly, but it didn’t. It kept going, building in intensity as you scooted closer to one another.

“I love you.” You whisper, breaking the kiss momentarily

“I love you so much, pretty girl” He responds, his hand coming up to hold your jaw.

“Hmm, show me.” You whisper, pulling him closer. His hand slides down your side and onto your thigh as your lips meet again, taking your bottom lip between his teeth and pulling away lightly before indulging in the kiss once again.

Dom’s hands didn’t stay in one place for long, moving about your body as you made out, pausing his actions for a moment to take your shirt off, placing a kiss to each of your breasts before moving his lips up to your neck, leaving little marks for you to find in the morning. A chill ran down your back as he bit down on your ear, his hands massaging your breasts before reaching behind you and unbuckling your bra, throwing it off to the side and shifting his attention to your nipple. Taking it into his mouth, he presses his tongue flat against it as you lie down to give him a better angle.

His tongue flicking against your nipple while his hand plays with your other nipple. He swapped between which he used his mouth on and which he used his hand, making sure to give them both equal attention, your hands tangling themself into his hair while he did so. When he was satisfied he pulled away, causing you to let out a small whimper as you felt his lips leave you, making their way down your stomach in a series of wet, open mouthed kisses.

When he made it to your underwear he licked a single stripe, taking his his sweet, sweet time. First, kissing his way up one thigh, then back down and ghosting his lips over the area you needed him both, taking a moment to inhale your scent before kissing his way back up the other leg, and right back down.

“Please.” You whine

“Shh, I’m gonna take care of you, pretty girl.” He hushed, pulling your panties down your legs and glancing up at you as he did so, mimicking your pout before placing a chaste kiss on your clit. You leant your head back, closing your eyes as you waited patiently for him to begin.

He started off slowly, licking up your slit as he took his time with you. Dom loved to use his tongue anytime he could, you loved it too. When he ate you out, it wasn’t just tongue, he made sure to pay attention to your clit and use his fingers when needed but on nights like tonight, where he really wanted to drive you crazy, he made sure to use a lot of tongue.

“You taste so good, pretty girl.” He whispers, his breath fanning against you, his hands wrapped around your thighs as he lost himself in you, holding you like if he didn’t you would take his meal away. You tried your best to suppress the moans he was pulling out of you, knowing Adam and Tom were just rooms away. The way he was working you left you wishing you had come to him with this sooner. Your hips came up to meet his actions, your hand placed firmly on the back of his head, pushing him as far into you as he could go, eager to meet your release.

“That’s it, pretty girl, ride daddy’s face. Let daddy show you how much you mean to him.” He hums, taking a moment to catch his breath. You do as you’re told, the request putting you in anything but a bratty mood. You let out a small moan as he continues his actions, your hips setting the pace.

Once again, it started off slow, until you began to work yourself up. Your hand reached down, tangling itself in his hair once again, tugging as you tried to push yourself further down, your hips speeding up while you bite your tongue to keep down the moans that clawed their way up your throat.

You could feel the pressure building up in your stomach, squeaking out to Dom that you were gonna cum before releasing on his tongue. He let you remain there for a minute, riding out your high while he massaged and kissed your thighs. When you had fully come down you move yourself off his face, making your way down to his bulge where you began to unbutton his pants. His hand quickly came down to stop you.

“Tonight’s supposed to be about you.”

“I wanna make you feel good too.” You say, giving him a small pout. He stops to think for a moment before taking off his pants pulling you over him, giving himself a few painfully slow strokes before slipping himself inside of you. Your hips rocked carefully against him, still sensitive from your last orgasm. His hands continued to massage your hips as you found your pace, finding it harder and harder to remain silent.

“You’re so beautiful, pretty girl. Daddy loves to watch you bounce on his cock.” Dom growls, his hips coming up to meet yours, the sound of skin slapping against skin filling the room, you give up on holding back your moans at this point as it’s already very obvious to anyone in the house what's happening upstairs.

The bed was creaking, your skin slapping together as he thrust into you, unable to cease the loud moans falling past your lips. Your legs began to shake as you approached your second release. Dom pulls you close, holding you, the gentle gesture in sharp contrast with the way he’s pounding away at you.

“Please can I cum.” You whimper

“One moment,” he interrupted himself with a groan “I wanna cum with ya, love.”

You held on as best you could, melting into his grasp as he worked towards finishing himself off. Soon after he growled a barely audible “Cum.” signifying his release. You moaned against each other, Dom pulling you closer as close wasn’t close enough. He maintained his actions, riding through your orgasm with one hand in your hair and the other lovingly stroking your thigh.

“Daddy’s got you babygirl.” He whispers into your ear, hushing you as you come down from your high.

When you finally felt well enough to sit up, your muscles hurt from the strain so you and Dom decided to have a bath.

He got up to run the bath water just the way you liked it and insisted on carrying you there, because ‘You’re hurtin’ so you can’t walk.’

You didn’t mind, though, laying your head on his shoulder as he carried you princess style into the bathroom. Luckily, the boys were in their rooms with the doors closed, presumably to suppress some of the noise.

The warm watered soothed your aching as you sat with Dom behind you, his wet hands stroking your arms with his head buried in your neck while he whispered sweet nothings in your ear.

After that night, you didn’t think you’d ever question your relationship with Dom again.

#yungblud #yungblud smut #yungblud fic #yungblud fanfic #yungblud fanfiction #yungblud x reader #dominic harrison #dominic harrison smut #dominic harrison fic #dominic harrison fanfic #dominic harrison fanfiction #dominic harrison x reader #dominic harrison fluff #yungblud fluff #yungblud angst #dominic harrison angst #yungblud aftercare #dominic harrison aftercare

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smallraindrops-blog · 3 years ago

Text

A Road To Somewhere.

For prompt: road trip

Hypnos/male!reader

Thanatos/Zagreus/Meg in the background.

5.7k total, link to part two at the end.

Warnings: some sexual stuff are talked about but the most that happens is kissing and cuddling. Jokes about cannibalism as well. Alcohol uses. No beta.

Summary: Why talk about your feelings with your childhood best friend when you can just go on a road trip?

A/N: sorry for going silent, I was dealing with some medical issues on top of helping my partner with stuff.

To the Anon who requested this, I'm sorry about the wait, I hope you like this and feel free to always hit me for another request!

At three in the morning, your phone rang.

You groaned as you rolled across your bed. and you squinted at the brightness of your phone.

Hypnos' photo flashed on the screen, the one where he stole your letterman jacket to nap in on the school bus that Zagreus had sent it to you. And if you kept the photo five years after high school, well that is your business and nobody else's.

You hesitated, not sure you want to talk to him right now. After that night, the only thing you and Hypnos traded was polite, almost cold texts. not your usual meme or lazy chatting about whatever. But something about the picture of Hypnos' sleeping face pushed you to respond.

You swiped the green button.

"You are coming with me." Hypnos said, or rather slurred.

You covered your face,"Hypnos, dude. Are you drunk right now?"

"You- you said you have never seen the ocean right?" Hypnos asked, ignoring your question.

"Where are you? I am coming to get you." You turned on your lamp, looking for a pair of jeans to wear.

"No- no." Hypnos said firmly and very drunkenly. "Y/N, dude. I'm fine. I'm at my shitty apartment." Hypnos paused, "You know, the one where my brother hooked up with Meg. And Zagreus. At the same time. Which is really effing weird for me."

"I - Hypnos-" you tried to think of what to say. The said incident happened over a little month ago and Hypnos had the misfortune of walking in at the wrong time. Which of course because Hypnos got his heart broken by Meg lead up to Hypnos trying to hook up with you to get over her.

"Look, you always said you wanted to see the ocean right?" Hypnos yawned, which you took as a good sign. Hopefully it means your dumb best friend will pass out soon and not ruin his liver for rest of the day.

"Yeah, what of it?" You asked, frustrated at Hypnos for doing this to himself and to you.

"Road trip!" Hypnos dragged out the words with a laugh. "I will be picking you up tomorrow. Love you bestie."

"Hypnos wait no, we can't just leave." You said. You waited for a response, "Hypnos?" You asked worriedly.

A snore came through the phone and you sighed. You turned off the lamp and laid back down, listening to Hypnos' deep breathing.

You stared at the ceiling, and tried not to think about the last time Hypnos got this drunk. Or about that night or how Hypnos acted like nothing happened the next day.

You rolled over to face your phone and closed your eyes.

You will just stay on the line in case Hypnos wakes up.

💤

"You can't be serious, Hypnos." You said as he went through your clothes, uncaring of any boundaries you may have.

But honestly with Hypnos, you had long lost any boundaries. You knew you should actually try to enforce some but you craved just being near him.

"I am! I need to get away for a bit and you told me you were taking a week off right? And it starts today or last night technically." Hypnos held up a lime green shirt and made a face at it.

"Yes for a staycation, I don't have extra money for a motel or anything like that." You replied, and took the shirt away to place it back on its hanger.

"It's my treat, Y/N." Hypnos leaned on you, his head on your shoulder. You tried not to notice how warm he was against you or his big golden puppy dog eyes. "Come on, a free trip away with your best friend aka me aka the best thing ever with your favorite person ever-" Hypnos rambled.

"Fine, only because you said you will pay for everything." You sighed, You hated how hard it was to say no to him.

Hypnos cheered and pulled you into a bear hug. You savored the warmth despite not wanting to.

You just needed a vacation too. To clear your head. And who knows, you and Hypnos could finally get back to being normal.

💤

Hypnos was in the driver's seat as you closed the truck and joined him in the car. A pen dangled from his teeth as his golden eyes flicked across the map. He glanced at you as you strapped in.

"It will be a two days drive if we only stop when we need to. That gives us three days at the beach or wherever else we end up doing." Hypnos took the pen out and marked a couple spots on the map.

"Couldn't we just use our phone GPS?" You asked.

"Nope, the place I'm taking you isn't a normal public beach and we have to drive through some mountains and mountains always win over gps." Hypnos pointed the pen at you. "Always." He said in a mock doom voice.

You rolled your eyes, and with a finger pushed the pen out your face. "Alright but if we get lost in the mountains. I call first dibs on eating you."

"Ha, jokes on you, bestie. I got almost no tender fat on me. So enjoy gnawing on my worthless bones." Hypnos crackled as he started the car. He tossed the map in your lab and peeled out of the driveway.

His deft fingers quickly found some music as Tom Petty sang through the radio.

Hypnos sang along badly. You covered up your smile, it feel good just near him again even if you didn't want to admit it.

Within minutes, Hypnos had weaved into the midmorning traffic. But even with the traffic, you already feel a little lighter.

💤

The first day of the drive went surprisingly well, even with traffic for the first hour. The skies were a vivid blue with fat, lazy clouds that casted shadows across the land.

Hypnos had the windows rolled down, one arm out of the window and music blasting. His shades should have made him look like a frat boy but you actually liked how they looked with his messy white curls and dark red shirt.

You kept your mouth shut and just watched the landscape change from suburbia to the fields dotted with cows and horses.

It was the most peace you had felt in a long while even with the elephant in between you and Hypnos.

It wasn't until twilight had followed you to the motel that the problems started.

"Is that a permanently closed sign?" Hypnos asked flatly, his shades resting on his head.

You nodded, "I had a feeling the trip started a little too well."

You and Hypnos both stared at the sign, the red and white words mocked you.

"I knew google was lying to me." Hypnos murmured.

"We can just sleep in the car, Hypnos." You followed him as he turned back. "We probably shouldn't drive anymore tonight."

Hypnos shook his head, "Nope, we would get murder so fast." He snapped his fingers to make his point. He threw an arm around your shoulders and guided you back to the car. "Come on, I bet there's another place just up ahead."

"And if there is not?" You asked, noticing how easily you fit next to him.

"There will be." Hypnos said confidently.

At your doubtful look, he said cheerfully,

"Or we could just get murder in a much nicer area."

💤

It was almost an hour before you saw the faint vacancy light just peeking behind the trees.

You gasped, "There! Do you see it?"

"Yeah, I see it." Hypnos replied, perking up. The rundown motel looked like someone's idea of what an old western inn looked like without actually never seeing one before.

But after driving for an extra hour and half, it looked like heaven.

Hypnos pulled up in the first empty spot he found which was plenty of.

"Stay here, keep an eye on the car. Don't get murdered." Hypnos said as he locked the car up. He only looked back once as he entered the building.

You slumped in your seat, exhaustion overtaken you. Your phone buzzed in your hand, Zagreus's name popped up.

'Is Hypnos with you??'

You stared down at the text, why is Zagreus asking you?

'Yeah, why?' you replied.

Immediately, Zagreus responded.

'He hasn't responded to any of our texts or calls.'

In a separate text, 'Is he okay? I knew my talk with him was rough but I didn't expect this. '

You bit your lip, just realizing that you haven't heard Hypnos' phone go off all day. Normally, Hypnos' phone was glued in his hand and he was always constantly texting or playing a game.

You looked up, making sure Hypnos was still in the building.

You replied, 'I think he just needs a break. I will let you know if anything happens but maybe just give him some breathing room. Also what talk?'

Three dots appeared and disappeared a few times before Zagreus' response came.

'No, I know. We just wanted to make sure he wasn't alone. Thanks.'

You rubbed your face, unsure what to make of the texts and that Hypnos, a known phone addict, hasn't been on his phone all day. And that Zagreus didn't bother to tell you what 'talk' he had with Hypnos.

You looked back up and saw Hypnos walking back a grin on his face. When your eyes met his, he waved the roomcard and a plastic bag triumphantly.

You pushed your worries aside for now, Hypnos will talk to you when he is ready.

💤

"Uhh, dude. There is only one bed." You said blankly when Hypnos turned the lights on. All the room had was a single hotel bed and a little table with two chairs. The whole area looked like it never left the seventies.

"And a sofa." Hypnos pointed out as he flopped down on it. The sofa creaked loudly as if threatening to snap in half. "I can sleep on anything, remember?"

"If you are sure." You grabbed the plastic bag from the floor as you sat down on the bed.

You dumped the goods on the bed. There was a healthy mix of spicy ramen bowls, candy bars and cans of soda.

You picked out the one you knew Hypnos liked and set on making dinner.

The sofa kept creeking each time Hypnos twitched or even breath. Hypnos' eyes were close but there was a tension to his body that kept him looking truly relaxed.

You debated on telling him that Zagreus had reached out to you but the tight frown on his face kept you from saying anything.

The microwave gave a high pitch beep and you quickly pulled out the ramen and placed the hot bowl on the table. "Hey, Hypnos. Soup on." You told him as you got your bowl ready.

"Oh. Thanks. Wanna have a soda?" Hypnos asked.

You thanked him as you dug into your own dinner and honestly the cheap ramen was the best thing you tasted after not getting lunch during the drive.

Hypnos was unusually quiet during dinner and while getting ready for bed. You couldn't help noticing that Hypnos never once picked up his phone.

Hypnos yawned and sat on the sofa much more carefully yet the beast still creaked in warning.

You sighed, there was no way you or him would sleep with all that creaking.

"Hypnos, just come to bed. I think it's a queen so we got plenty of room." You told him as you got under the covers. You met his gaze, his eyes bright even with the dark circles under them.

"Okay." He agreed softly. He gave you a look that you ignored as he joined you. He turned off the lights. "Good night, Y/N."

You rolled on your side, back facing Hypnos. "Good night." You yawned widely, already halfway to sleep.

💤

You didn't quite wake up all the way, not at first. You blinked at the wall, small cracks in the blinds allowed for small rays of sunlight to break though. It made the motel room feel cozy even with the ugly decor.

There was an arm loosely wrapped around your shoulders and you sank into its hold with a sigh.

Your eyes closed before your brain realized that you could feel another body pressed against your back, legs tangled together.

You snapped awake, your body went rigid and you heard Hypnos grumbled against your nape.

You relaxed, letting out a breath when you remembered Hypnos was in bed with you. Hypnos, during sleepovers when you were children, always ended up clinging on to you.

It was almost nice, a return to a simpler time. Almost.

It was a very different experience when you both were adults. You flushed when Hypnos pressed a little harder against your body, a pleased, sleepy hum rumbled in his chest.

You could feel him pressed against your lower back and damnit, your traitor of a body was responding. You squeezed your eyes shut, flushed from shame and want.

Your mind flashed back to the last time you allowed Hypnos this close.

You could still remember how he pushed you into his dark bedroom and kissed you again and again. How it felt being under him on his bed. How you almost let him have more.

And you knew you wouldn't survive if Hypnos acted just like he did the morning after.

With the small strength you were able to find, you pulled out of his hold or rather you tried to.

His arm went tight and kept you in the bed, "Where are you going so early?" His sleep rough voice mumbled against your skin.

You ignored the goosebumps he caused and you sighed annoyed. "Come on, you're being a jerk. I need to go get ready for the trip."

"Hmm, we drove more than we planned. We still have some time." Hypnos murmured, clearly going back to sleep. You grabbed the blanket with your free arm and yanked it off the both of you.

Hypnos yelped at the sudden cold and let you go. You darted out the bed and grinned at the scowl Hypnos had. You tossed the blanket over his face and walked away. "Early birds get the worm Hypnos!" You called out as you headed to the bathroom.

You bit back a laugh at the loud groan Hypnos made.

💤

After a quick stop for coffee and pancakes with bacon which Hypnos immediately drowned in syrup much to your disgust of the sheer amount of sugar, you were back on the road.

After an hour of staring out the window at patches of woods between the farmlands, you turned to look at Hypnos.

"What is it about this place that made you pick it? I looked at the map, we could get to the ocean quicker if we went along the other route. " You thought for a moment, "And you know, not to have to drive past the mountains."

"Yeah, if you want to see what everyone else sees and deal with the crowds." Hypnos scoffed. He pulled his shades down a bit to look at you, his windblown curls bounced with the movement.

You prayed he didn't notice your blush.

"Also my mom told me about this place a million times. Trust me, it is going to be worth the wait." And with that, Hypnos focused back on driving.

You turned back to the open window, silently hating yourself for still being attracted to him.

"Hey- is that a cow?" Hypnos asked, already slowing down. You looked down the road and saw the animal. You couldn't help the laugh that came out. "Yeah it is."

The stray cow stared down at the car. It was apparently unconcerned about being hit as it chewed on the grass in its mouth.

Hypnos pressed down on the horn repeatedly and long. The cow kept chewing on its bit of grass, blinking slowly.

"Dumb cow. It knows what it is doing." Hypnos muttered.

You laughed again, "I think that is an oxymoron."

Hypnos scowled and waved his hands at the cow whose tongue had found its nose.

"Well, what bright ideas do you have, Y/N?"

You looked into the bag of snacks down by the footrest. And pulled out a bag of barbecue chips.

"I'm going to lure it out of the road, first chance you get, drive past."

Hypnos pulled his shade down, an eyebrow crocked.

You shook the bag at his doubtful look.

Hypnos' eyes narrowed, eyes sharp and calculating. "That won't work."

"Oh?" You raised a brow. "And why not?"

"Those are barbecue chips, I'm pretty sure even that dumb thing know that smell. And when it smells the barbecue, it will just run you over enraged about the chips."

You leaned toward him, "Wanna make a bet?"

He matched your lean, a bright glint in his eyes. "Sure. If I win, you have to agree to everything I say until we get to the hotel."

"Fine." You agreed. "And if I get the cow out of the way, you can only speak in moos until we get to the hotel."

"Deal." He leaned back into his seat. "Easiest win ever."

You scoffed at him as you got out. "Gee, thanks for believing in me."

You stared down the cow who merely blinked at you.

Hypnos poked his head out the window, laughing "Hey Y/N, when it's moving, start running!"

You shushed him and crinkled the bag at the cow. It took a wary step forward and you opened the bag and it took a sniff.

The cow immediately tried to bite the bag but you took several steps and it followed you. You couldn't stop your smirk at Hypnos' outraged face. "Good cow." You cooed. "Good cow."

You took several steps back into the tall grass and dumped the chips on the ground.

The moment the cow started eating the chips on the ground, you took off like a shot and almost fell into your seat. You barely had a chance to close the door before Hypnos drove off.

You pulled your seatbelt on and waited, a huge grin on your face.

When Hypnos refused to say anything or even look at you, you poked him in his cheek.

"Hypnos." You called his name in a sing-songy tone. "I won the bet. Hypnos. Hypnos." You poked him with each word. There was an evil, childish part of you enjoying this too much.

Hypnos batted your hand away. "Moo fucking moo." He replied sourly.

You playfully frowned, "I don't think cows can say fucking."

"Oh my god."

"They don't say that either."

Part Two

#hades hypnos #hypnos x reader #hypnos x male!reader #requests

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rgco413 · 3 years ago

Text

WIP Meme: List the titles/filenames/descriptions of your WIPs and tell us a little bit about them/wail about them/beg for inspiration/whatever you want! Then tag some people for a no-obligation mutual wailing/cheering/complaining session!

I saw someone doing this! Idk if it's okay to tag them so I'm just not gonna xD

WIP#1 - Stabbity Stab stab stab (to be decided title) Oso gets stabbed again whoopsy. The context is that I binged a hospital drama, and wanted Oso to secretly get a minor surgery but he reopens his wound, Animatsu with maybe a bit of Matsuyo at the beginning I'm still deciding.

Here's an excerpt:

"How long have you been feeling like that niisan?" He says, quietly.

"Feeling like what Kara?" He asks, genuinely confused.

"Like you think we don't care about you"

WIP#2 - Oso with glasses. I've had this idea for a really long time XD basically the context is that since HS Oso has had really shitty eyesight and he actually got his glasses the same time as Choromatsu, he just got contacts as soon as he could because he thinks glasses make him look stupid.

Here's a draft of what I'm planning:

"You lost your contacts!?" and Oso explains that his contact lens case was empty this morning and he doesn't know where tf it went and Choromatsu goes "Dumbass. It's a good thing we still have your old glasse--"

And when he turns with the glasses case in hand, he sees Oso mad pouting. And he's like unimpressed and says "Don't tell me you still hate wearing these." And Oso just pouts MORE because he was never really vocal about things he was genuinely uncomfortable about.

THERE'S LITERALLY 3 MORE AND IT'S GETTING LONG SO IF U WANNA CONT. IT'S UNDER THE CUT

WIP#3 - Drunk Oso singing praises for his brothers. I JUST REALLY REALLY REALLY LIKE THE IDEA OF OSO BEING MORE HONEST AND CHILDISH WHEN HE'S DRUNK. So like the context is that Oso is out in a bar drowning himself in beer because he had a big fight with the others at home because of a misunderstanding.

Here's part of my draft:

"But... You know...? I wouldn't trade being the eldest for aaanything" *twirls the alcohol left in his glass* "Because I love them a lot, like a lot a lot!" Spreads his arms open wide "like thiiiis much!" *laughs like a lil kid* "they're my precious little brothers!"

"they might not know that though..." *laughs lightly and is suddenly solemn* "I wish I could be the big brother they deserve... But all I seem to do is fuck everything up. I bet they would like it if I never went h-- *yawns* home..."

WIP#4 - I'm calling this one "Insomnia and Pills" it's mainly Beni and all of them. So basically the plot is, So imagine Oso has to take sleeping pills every night cos he's been having nightmares like nonstop for the past month so he finally decides to do something about it. But like he has to take it after dinner and right before bed yeah? So like, What if a brother catches him taking them?

Here's a bit of a rough draft:

"Osomatsu-niisan since when have you been taking those pills??" all worried like-- and Oso panics like 'oh shit' and like "They're just sleeping pills it's not a big deal" and the bro is like, "How long have you had trouble sleeping!?" Cos honestly they SHOULD HAVE noticed, and Oso's like 'well shit I made it worse' and like "I said it's not a big deal! C'mon let's get to bed"

And he tries to leave, but the bro grabs his arm to stop him and like "Niisan." It's just one word but like Oso just sighs heavily like "I'm already used to it at this point, I told you it's nothing you should worry about. It's already been a month okay? Let's just go to bed"

And like he jerks his arm away from their hold and goes upstairs and like, you can expect an intervention comin for the poor niichan

"He better not think he's gonna get away with this."

WIP#5 - This one's part of my "Osomatsu-niisan Can do That?" Series where basically it's 6 fics where each of the bros find out that niichan is secretly talented. This ones is Choromatsu's!

I don't have a proper draft for it but the summary is basically "♥️💚Choromatsu is worried about what they're going to do for lunch with their parents not home, and is shocked to see who's making lunch in the kitchen"

And that's it! Hopefully I can get more than one of these out this month! ❤️

#me

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davidmann95 · 4 years ago

Note

RWBY V8E12?

* God that fight was so many different kinds of perfect. The satisfying THWACK on the first kick (after two seasons of bootlicking: the boot comes around on him), Ironwood’s first blow resulting in his unrelenting force being turned against himself, at least 3 or 4 times his tunnel vision brutally costs him, that someone finally did “passes through someone with a sword swipe but actually hit them fifty dozen times faster than the eye can perceive and it takes a few moments for them to react”, the cross-cuts, that it’s overlaid with the Nora song that’s I think at last the first JNPR solo(-ish, bits also apply to Emerald) track, that half of Ironwood’s downfall was that he traded his pistols representing justice for a big dumb Liefeld canon as the ultimate articulation of his mindset...beautiful. Only way it could have been better is if Harriet’s super-speed burst took her within an inch of Robyn and Qrow before she was stopped.

* (Ironwood still did better than I would’ve expected though; with how much trouble a single nerd gave him before I’d assumed he was a so-so combatant whose real value was his military mind, but I guess he’s simply a tank who does better in a brawl than a chase.)

* Last week’s movements for Jaune as he left the room, now Emerald’s afterimages/Winter’s finishing move/Marrow’s eyeline/the gleam in Penny’s eye; it’s really going all-out anime at the last minute in a way that’s usually reserved for the premieres.

* Speaking of Emerald, I’m really curious where things are going with her. She found a breaking point in not wanting the extinction of all life on the planet - including her - and her need for attachment seems to be breaking in a healthier direction now, but while she’s clearly made at least some moral realizations given her line here I don’t think given her priorities and how quickly everything went down she’d reasonably have made a total 180. She was onboard with the idea of a global revolution undoing kingdoms and huntsman academies even if she was mainly there for Cinder, and given “undo the monarchy/borders and stop training kids to be war machines” aren’t exactly unreasonable takes I really hope her arc at least somewhat involves reconciling all that with the rest of the team alongside the rest of her issues, especially since the founder of half those social systems is riding shotgun with the kid who vouched for her.

* I don’t think we’ll get Ironwood suddenly becoming sensible because of his aura being broken and his semblance being deactivated, but if this series felt like making a sudden pivot into pure comedy you could do worse than “I’m gonna be a good guy again, you just have to beat the absolute shit out of me every morning!”. The vibe I’m getting is he’ll die in the next two episodes after some kind of emotional wrap-up, while Jacques lives but is essentially off the table - Ironwood being convicted for war crimes while the kingdom drops on the shitty dad would be more satisfying for my money, but the former seems more narratively appropriate.

* In volume 7 I was adamantly “we’re not gonna see redemption for the Ace-Ops and specifically Marrow’s gonna stay on their side to illustrate the point”, but I think this did his shift really well by not making it a cutesy “well, he was the good one all along!” thing, but rather making clear all of them while complicit had self-doubts and regrets about the whole thing...but once the situation had no remaining arguable justifications, he was the only one who wouldn’t brush them aside anymore. It works for me because it’s done in a way that highlights their guilt as much as his turnaround.

* Ambrosius said himbo rights. God, him vs. Jinn is like a “well, male superheroes are oversexualized too!” meme come to life except he actually is - true equality folks, glad they made this course-correction. And after how happy I was when Nora pointed out a loophole with the vague wording Jinn had used in the past, my autistic ass was delighted that half this episode was about the team being so precise with making sure their genie wishes couldn’t go ironically awry they were using literal schematics.

* I’m seeing speculation that when RWBY and any others inevitably fall they’re going to find themselves in the afterlife, and not only will that be the focus of the briefer volume 9 but it’s how Pyrrha will temporarily come back into play. I can definitely see that broad setup happening, but I think the afterlife journey would mostly be confined to the finale, simply because I don’t see them doing another ‘split the party’ season right after this one. If I’m wrong though and it’s a long-term proposition, even if I’d be very happy if 90% of her role would have nothing to do with him there is the question of Pyrrha comes back for more than a brief vision in the series finale or something but doesn’t STAY back how Jaune would deal with that. He’s already found at least some degree of closure, having him be sad about losing her again would be redundant, and after a season of buildup with RWBY in the afterlife and JNR waiting you couldn’t really get away with “Hey, we ran into your lost Lenore, she says hi!” “Well that’s nice!” Very curious how they’ll thread that needle if this ends up what happens after all.

#RWBY #Emerald Sustrai #Opinion

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badmusesarch · 4 years ago

Text

RP sentence meme (change pronouns/details as you need)

Helstrom s01e01: Mommy’s little helpers

CW: religious imagery

I'm just trying to help.

I can't get them to stop.

So... how's this gonna work, exactly?

I'm fairly new.

Look, I know it's busy, but call me when you can.

We were just discussing how difficult the situation has been on the family.

I really don't care.

The problems began several months ago.

But, uh... don't you need a Bible or crucifix or something?

No. I'm good. Uh, though, I could use a rest room.

No matter what you hear, do not come in. Understood?

What name do you go by?

You're unworthy of my name.

I'm not that evil.

Latin, holy water, prayer, they used to be the "secret weapons" of the trade. But now, thanks to movies, TV, the internet, they're just... tropes.

See, the thing is, secrets lose their power once they're exposed. Kind of like you.

My power is real and will not be questioned by anyone.

You want to know what real power is?

The good news is, your son's not possessed, but the bad news is, he is an asshole.

What the hell are you talking about?

_____ can refer you to a family therapist but, in the meantime, lay off the vodka. And remember: the internet is a shitty parent.

You can't be so insensitive to everyone

Oh, I see. So, helping people is a waste of your precious time.

The kind of help they need, I can't offer.

I'm not here to hold hands or to save a cat from a tree or respond to false alarms.

That family in there was just looking for some hope.

I can see his hard‐on from here.

A fool and his money are my favorite couple.

I mean, seriously, are you studying for your PhD or just trying to embarrass me?

Weapons of war have always been an interest of mine. They have a... certain aura about them.

You overpaid, by the way.

What can I say? When I want something, I have to have it.

That's a bit twisted.

I hear you like twisted.

Don't get me wrong, you covered your bases very well.

Well, if you wanted my attention, you have it.

I know your secret... thief.

You know that's not what I'm talking about.

Anybody can steal money...

You get off on stealing the light from women's eyes.

You see, I'm a little bit of a thief, too.

Try not to hit anybody when you land.

Why she chose you two, I'll never know.

This is why we were chosen.

We do not like pain. We learn to fear it at a very early age. And fear is the most powerful, most primal motivator in our little dinosaur brains.

And then we grow. We evolve.

Ah, it's, it's interesting, don't you think, how we learn the stick before the carrot? The pain before the pleasure.

Sorry I threw you off there when I came in.

Just lost my train of thought for a second.

It's not gonna work out.

Give it time.

Oh, so she's a spy.

Come on, give her a chance. She's here to help.

You know me better, you know what we're dealing with, she doesn't.

I did not come here to argue.

Please tell his family the funeral costs will be covered by an anonymous donor.

Do you have any idea how much damage control I've been doing?

You can't just drop people off rooftops like the old days.

It was an accident. He fell. Shit happens.

Yeah, and who's there to clean up that shit with his little eco‐friendly green bag?

Honestly, I think he's past his prime and should retire

You're going to see her.

No. Actually, I'm going to a CrossFit class.

No one goes in there but me.

I'm scared out of my mind.

Your memory is tainted by sentiment.

She knew what you were, what you'd become.

I thought you were the king of all that's dead and creepy.

Did you just pay me a compliment?

Not intentionally.

I'm guessing that this is what's left of the fools who broke in here.

You know, this isn't why I brought you in here.

Since when do you wear glasses?

Do you want to reach out to your brother?

This is what happens when you don't let me in.

Mother enjoys her games.

Fine. I'm an asshole.

First class, with honors.

You owe her an apology.

Yes, ma’am.

I raised you better than this.

Seriously, what's up with this scar?

It's okay. Just keep trying.

my tone may have offended you yesterday. If so, then don't take it personally. Call me back.

Some are harder to forgive than others.

My body is a cage. My mind holds the key.

it wasn't some random family tragedy. It was evil.

There's only so much strain the human body can withstand.

Do you think Galileo wasted his time explaining the principle of inertia to earthworms?

Our pain and suffering gives them pleasure.

I've never experienced anything like it.

#rp meme #helstrom rp meme #sentence rp meme #ok to reblog for rp blogs #meme

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salamoonder · 4 years ago

Note

caddy did specifically say he isn't into sex though? it's not true for every ace, but it is for him & i guess i don't get why someone would (after this episode) write smut with him

alright anon, you clearly sent this in good faith and i’m going to try my best to give you a reasonable explanation. apologies if it gets rambly or tmi, i’m going to insert tws.

let me give you some perspective on where i’m coming from.

hi, i’m thane. i was raised in an extremely isolated religious homeschool community in the literal woods with a lot of siblings .i thought i was never going to leave this tiny little town. i think death is fascinating, i love mushrooms and i adore tea. i consider myself to be, among other things, asexual. i’m possibly romance repulsed. (still figuring that out.) when i get upset i throw myself into taking care of other people and ignoring my own feelings as hard as possible. i project onto caduceus hard.

for the past six months or so, i’ve been working on a fjord/caduceus smut fic in which i also project very hard onto fjord, who i also believe falls somewhere on the aroace scale. it deals with the discomfort of realizing that other people may be attracted to you in a way that you can’t reciprocate, the frustration of having a high libido and nothing to “do” with it, having a connection with someone that isn’t quite sexual or romantic or platonic that is difficult to explain to anyone else, and the pressure of outside expectations and rude questions/assumptions on a private relationship that people don’t “get”--are you ace or aren’t you? if you have sex with someone when you’re not particularly into it, doesn’t that mean they forced you? why don’t you just kiss already? qprs are just friendships, haven’t you ever had a friend before? how can you be kinky and dislike sex at the same time? that kind of thing. this fic is my baby and i’ve poured a lot of my own experiences and thoughts and feelings into it. i’m not sure if i will ever actually publish it. it might be too personal. anyway. there is one reason for you that people may still write cad smut after this.

i understand the frustration of watching allo people go “buuuut ace people have sex too so i can just keep shipping him!”. i’ve dealt with a lot of that--fortunately not in this fandom (yet :P) but i’m in another fandom where it’s frustratingly prevalent, and quite frankly, i can’t stand it. so i get it. i really do. and the posts that i made were out of frustration and anger at the idea that now that we have canon confirmation, that would mean that i would now possibly have to contend with “excuse me caduceus is ace wtf” in my shippy cad posts or fics when quite frankly i’ve considered him canon ace for months and was feeling very well represented and happy that i had someone who is somewhat like me to insert into these relationships, especially in qprs or in “yeah we’re dating but it’s not really a Relationship relationship we just kind of do our own thing, attraction and lack thereof is weird and nebulous and we just do what makes us comfortable”.

[dubcon tw, sex, “virginity” talk] another reason someone may have, from a reader’s perspective? there’s a fic on the kink meme which i can link to if anyone wants it where the nein encounter a dragon who says that he can trade nott’s true halfling form back to her in exchange for a sexual favor from the nein, so long as it’s from a virgin. jester starts to volunteer but caduceus insists, reasoning that sex isn’t really a big deal to him since he’s not into it and doesn’t matter all that much. he basically dissociates during the act itself and later feels empty/weird/”broken” without really knowing why and has some trouble processing the encounter, especially as, he reasons, he consented, right? it ends in a lot of comfort and validation from the rest of the nein.

without going too deep into details of my own trauma, this was a fic that i was able to point to and say me yes me this makes sense oh my god other people experience or at least understand this. it was an incredibly validating read. so there’s another reason. [end tw]

one last thing i would just like to clarify/point out: while i don’t have to like it (and i seriously do not like it), a lot of people in that other fandom i talked about will tag fics with “i know [character] is aroace, but i’m ignoring that in this fic”. it’s kind of shitty of me to read that, and then complain that “hey, [character] isn’t aroace in this fic”. they warned me. (it is also worth noting that a lot of this stuff is just people continuing fics that they’d started before this character’s identity was confirmed.) and i don’t have to like or agree with them, but they have made it extremely easy for me to open that fic, see the warning, and go “oh, nope, not for me”, and click out. we can debate till we’re blue in the face if this is the same as, say, if i tagged my fic with “human!molly” and someone went “oh, nope, not for me” and clicked out, because “tiefling” is not a real life marginalized identity, but they do have one thing in common, and that is that they are both not canon. they can’t change canon and they never will. that’s the magical best-and-worst part about fanfiction, in my opinion. if someone is going around saying “caduceus isn’t aroace because i said so” well then not only is that asshole behavior, it’s just a straight up lie. but i don’t want people to be punished for warning me exactly what i’m getting into precisely because i may not like it.

so there’s my reasoning for writing ace cad smut, and also my reasoning for why i don’t think we should be harassing people for writing clearly marked cad smut, ace or otherwise. if you’d like clarification or more explanations, please don’t hesitate to ask. it feels like i barely brushed the surface of my thoughts on this.

#i genuinely don't know what to tag this with tbh.#not putting it in main tags #but not tagging discourse either since this particular question is just that #a question and not an argument #if you want additional trigger tags please lmk #anonymous

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aperfecttimeforscreaming · 5 years ago

Text

AN EXCHANGE OF MEAT

Late valentines day ZADR drabble, extremely nsfw, takes place in the #izspacetrash universe NSFW 18+ Warning: Petplay, Zussy, Choking, Power play, Power theft, Over-stimulation, flirtatious bullying

Back on Irk, coupling is illegal. It’s a big deal for humans because they can’t name a rock without forming an emotional attachment, for Irkens however, there’s no reason for the law to even be in place. As a species we have evolved past the need to interact with others. Every individual in the empire has the potential to be a sturdy, self sustaining island unto themselves. We’re built better than every sentient stain in all the known everything!! We have YET to encounter anything that even compares to our size and MIGHT. The last fertile cluster of Irkens died out a thousand decades ago. Every irken is cloned and easily replaced if not functioning at maximum capacity.

So, the desire to do more than indulge yourself is...low. There’s no reason to involve another irken in the matters of ones…..self congratulation.The practice of an EMOTIONAL and spiritual coupling fell out of favor long before we learned to control our natural impulses.

If this is all true (and it is), how can I feel so much for the vicious neanderthal that calls me his? Dib was working on one of his drones as I sat in the dark pocket of the lower bunk bed, the bed itself built into the wall of a home on wheels. Dibs white rectangular fat assed Arr Vee was parked behind a dunky doughnuts so that we could stay out of the sightline of main roads and siphon power to recharge the vehicles battery. See, the outside of Dibs roaming home looks like any other shitty old caravan. In fact, it is more like Dib’s own mobile base. The battered shell outside the chrome and black and blue innards of the crisp sterile mobile lab are no more than a clever disguise. An infuriatingly smart trick. It’s a trick wrapped around stolen Irken technology and it’s to our collective benefit that everything stays hidden. It’s more comfortable being a prisoner, knowing that Dib has become secretive of his most prized belongings. Legs crossed, back pressed to the wall, chin in hand I was thinking my thoughts.

My hand drifted down my neck to trace the soft top edge of the lined matte black metal collar locked around my neck. I felt at the difference in texture between the soft barely there fuzz on my skin and the smooth cool metal. It had been locked there for thirty one days, ten hours, six minuets and eleven seconds. It’s some fluke of nature that Dib is as smart as he is. At one point in my career as an invader I theorized that as humans grew taller, their brain shrunk to make up for the increase in body mass. With Dibs lineage, this is less so. As an adult he is only more cunning, more dangerous, more cloyingly obsessive, more driven. He neglects his sleep to work. He works with the single minded diligence of an Irken researcher. His drive to excel in his field transcends the greasy smelly differences between our kinds. The efficiency he commands my own technology with rivals that of a practiced PAK technician. He’s studied the things I left behind on earth for 14 of his years, and it shows. With a single steady bare claw I traced the shape of the emblem embossed onto my collar tag. Dibs skull shaped symbol, displayed in shiny silver across the front of my neck at all times. An unnecessary humiliation that marks me as one of many stolen treasures. I feel its shape on the bare pad of my finger and silently kiss my teeth, stung by the reality that Dib thought of it first. If the world was just, if things made sense, things would have been flipped, things should have been different. If I really am the more advanced life form, I have no excuse for his subjugation. Thirty one days, ten hours, seven minutes and forty fucking seconds.

From my dark hideaway I could see him, hunched over his desk with the posture of a scoliosis king. A bright white desk light illuminates the front of him and reflects off the cobalt blue shine of his protective eyewear. The blue strips of emergency LED light that mark out the floor area catch the underside of his form, and stripe the wrinkles of his sloppy mechanics smock in toxic blue slivers. Through the gap in the curtains in front of him, I could make out a flickering yellow street light. Dibs sigh broke through the silence. He set down his tool and leaned back in his chair, away from the open shell of the drone he’d been repairing. I watched him drag a long fingered skeletal hand back through his greasy weird hair, and watched the unruly sprig of bone and black people fur spring back up as his hand passed it. “You’re quiet.” The human announced, obviously. Before he could twist the rotating chair around to face me I let my hand fall into my lap and folded both hands neatly together. “My brain is loud.” It needed no explanation, but Dib had demanded the cause. Slouched back in his chair, I watched him copy how I had my fingers folded into each other. His eyebrows arched high on his forehead and crinkled his sweaty brow. “You’re thinking? You’re capable of thought?” He’d lick his loathsome incisors and grin. “Damn, I’ll have to correct my notes. I thought the metal parasite on your back did all that for you.” “IT’S NOT A PARASITE! I TOLD YOU! It’s as ME as the rest of ME!” The corners of Dibs eyes crinkled with delight as he watched me retrace the fact. “MY PAK stores the thoughts of my brain jelly- it’s not responsible for my depthy, nuanced original thoughts. It’s all to my benefit. Your simple animal mind can’t BEGIN to perceive the archives of information, understanding and theorizing, locked away between my two magnificent thought centers.” On my knees at the side of the bed, I pointed to my skull, illustrating the thing Dib wished to understand but could never fully unravel. He reached up to peel the lenses of the goggles from the hollows of his eye sockets. As Dib deftly replaced them with the large circular frames of his glasses, he spat noise at me. “You’ve beaten that dead horse to a pulp, Zim. I don’t think your PAK is any different than a circuit board hardwired to the brain of a roach. You’re just as animal as I am. Only, your issues stem from being part evil cyborg, and mine stem from trauma.” Sunny as a blistering summers day, he grinned at me. Smugness radiates from him like pulsar blips, and my innards are assaulted by tight gripping trembles. I tense my core muscles to keep my tymbal from rattling at the slightest provocation. With my antenna pitched slightly forwards, I can smell the pheromones on his sweat. I crossed my arms over my chest, raised my chin, curled my lip at him to flash fangs. “Tch. Zim is no creature. You’re the animal here. You have the technology to advance yourselves into a race of space faring monstrosities, and yet all you want to occupy yourselves with is the pursuit of earthly pleasure. Your kind construct elaborate rituals just to try and rutt against each other. It could be so much simpler!!!” Dib scratched his chin, nonplussed. “Yeah, I never really got all that either. We do have dating apps and that can simplify things if you don’t account for catfishing, and people who straight up lie about themselves just to get their dick wet.” I grimaced at the mental image of a wet human phallus. I re-contextualized the image in my head and imagined the organ as Dibs. I bit the inside of my cheek. “Sooooo… what? As you get older you stop exchanging meats, and instead swap false personal information?” Dib laughed, quick and dry, brimming with unearned superiority. “Oh, fuck- what you mean like what we did back in grade school?” He sat up, leaned in closer to me. Elbows folded on his knees he hunched closer. I could smell his breath on my antenna. Coffee and sugar and bacteria filled my senses and the stalks flicked quickly backwards at the olfactory intrusion. “Yeah I don’t really know why we did that. I have a theory it’s all metaphorical, some kind of mind manipulation game the government was playing with kids to get them to associate “love” with “flesh”. I mean, you know what “meat” alludes to, right?” My face screwed up as I searched my brain for obvious answers. “MMHhn. HHHMN. Pain? Obviously, pain. Emotional...badness.Maybe hormone tampering. Disease?” Dib was already getting out his phone, snickering to himself as he does when he knows something I do not. I kept going. “Death? Blood? Salt? Disgust? The inevitability of the cycle of consumption? How you’re all doomed to be slaughtered by a greater predatory force?” “No. No- what?” He cocked an eyebrow as he looked back up at me. I wanted to rip the piercing out of it. “No. Shut up and look at these.” Dib held out his portable telephone slab to me and on it I saw a digital gallery of meat related memes. The phrase “beat my meat” was prevalent. There were photos of hammers pounding sickly off grey slabs of deceased pig muscle, and a man dusting a sprinkling of salt or spice over a carved rib of bovine corpse.

My head pulled back, giving me the appearance of multiple chins of disgust. My gut churned as I turned my head away. “Why would you show me those??! THEY’RE REVOLTING!!”

Dib frowned, irritated, and put his phone away. “The “meat” those memes are talking about? It references human JUNK- y’know, genitalia? The memes aren’t talking about actual dead farm animals. And, that’s what I’m saying.” He put his large warm hand on my shoulder and continued, sure to hold my eye contact as he put the curl of his thick broad thumb against my cloth covered collar bone. I tensed my guts to keep my tymbal from rattling. “The government has skool children trade literal meat, so we get the idea early on that we’re supposed to exchange our "meat" with people we're attracted to. So that way, we learn to breed, and the men in power get more workers and soldiers and grease for the wheels of their self destructing machine.” My eyes flicked to look at his hand- the long pale olive fingers, the beaten fight scarred knuckles. My gaze then returned to Dibs humorless expression. “That’s a… problem?” Dib groaned, he rolled his eyes, he took his hand off my shoulder.

It slid down to my hip, his free hand mirrored the motion and I was lifted up from the bed and onto my humans lap. He held me there and growled at me in frustration. “YEAh! Zim! It’s a problem! If people are going to have sex it should be their own choice to do so, it isn’t something we should be culturally brainwashed into accepting! And we don’t NEED to do it! Some people are asexual- some people don’t want children and-” Dib rambled, on and on, laying out the injustices of an archaic capitalist system reliant on the breeding whims of its workers. I couldn’t help but wonder how much of the argument was fueled by Dibs xenophilic leanings and revulsion towards his own kind. I gave less than a quarter of a shit about the very political tangent my human was going off on, but I did like how Dibs lap made for a nice sitting surface, and how the heat of his angry body felt against my skin. As Dib spoke I smoothed out the front of his damp black wife beater absentmindedly, my expression unmoved. As my hand rested in the center of Dibs chest, I patted him, I then mock pouted at him. “Poor Dib, how he’s been rejected by his own kind at every turn. How hard it must’ve been for you! Brainwashed into needing the fuck, harassed by the need for fuck with noooo options for how to obtain it!!”

That got him to glare at me, and my spine tingled for it. I grinned as he countered; “You’re missing the point.” And I kept going. “Addicted to the unknown feeling he can never hope to attain, his vile monster meat might have shriveled up without the wetness- like an unwatered flower! Like a rotting length of carrot! Like a bundle of seaweed on a beach, growing drier and nastier the longer it’s left alone, collecting nothing but mold and botfly eggs and-” Dib grabbed me by the throat. His hand closed around my throat. He gave a warning squeeze as he told me to shut up and I peeped in response.

Lowly, my tymbal rattled.

Dibs narrowed angry eyes softened as he caught the surprised chirp of arousal.

The words on my tongue stalled at the tight curling of his long fingers as they overlapped my neck.

“Even if that was how things worked, I’m not at risk of that anymore, am I?”

Dib looked at me with a gaze that implored an answer, and I shrugged coyly. As he frowned and squeezed harder I gagged, my stomach fluttered and a chirp rattled out of me far clearer than the first.

"Mhhn. That's what I thought."

Dib hummed, his human purr was deep and infuriating. He used his free hand to shift my placement on his long thigh, so that I straddled his thigh as he choked me. My eyes began to water as he raised up his knee and gently bounced my vent against his leg.

There is nothing playmates can do for eachother that a squidgyblit cannot also achieve the end goal of. However, being choked while your nemesis grinds your pleasure center against his leg hits differently.

I moaned with a grimace. I scowled at him as he drew another choked out squirm from my body. Unpleasant as the sensation of constriction around my throat was, we both knew the short term strangulation wouldn't kill me. It was a comfortable routine and Dib continued his gloating games.

"You think you can resist all this? You think you can resist the urge to get absolutely wrecked- by someone who's going to lovingly put all your pieces back together when he's done? You need me as bad as I need you, you fucking moron."

He’s wrong. I don’t need him. But, his games are so amusing, they’re so entertaining. It’s such a thrill to be obsessed over. If he ever knew that, it would all go to his head. As bad as he already was, there was ample room for things to get worse. Dib pressed his fingers up underneath my jaw and held my mouth shut. My growl came out as a choking sound, I tried to open my mouth wider and he put his free hand on my shoulder as a threat. “Shhh. You don’t need to talk right now. Why don’t you show me what you want?” I glared, I tried to hack out a rebuttal, but he didn’t want that. Pink heat spread across the skin of my face plate, I chirped and ground my slick vent slowly against the black jean fabric of his thigh. In doing so, I inspired an unhinged smile to pull across his gaunt snout.

He released my throat and my posture bent, towards him as I gasped. My throat opened back up, and my PAK hummed softly as it began to replenish its oxygen reserves.

Dib patted my warm cheek with his hand. “That’s a good boy.” He mocked softly. I was well within my right to bite him. His hands settled on the bone of my hips, I watched his eyes pass over my head and point towards the bunk behind me. The curious gentle twitching of my antenna caught the heat of his words as they stood on end, and I lifted my chin to glare up at him. “Is that really what your brain was being so “loud” over? You’re still angry about our arrangement?” My lip twitched, it’s downwards arch could not have been more dramatic. “HOW could I not be mad about it? You know better than ANYONE what a powerful beacon of mayhem my existence is- that I can be controlled by someone as misshapen and weasley as you is a blistering amount of shame for Zim- full offense.” As I spoke his fingers laid over the small of my back, he rubbed along my tense lower spine and his gentle ministrations forced my aggressively postured antenna to lower. “Oh, full offense taken. But I know you’re happy about it. Deep down, somewhere in your cold blooded brain, there’s a tiny Zim just glowing over how it feels to be fully appreciated. You’re a hideously evil space terror, I can’t take that away from you by loving you. And I wouldn’t want to.” The heat in my face wouldn’t stop, the fluttering sickly feeling in my guts wouldn’t go away. Like knotted strings being unwound or spider web being gently tugged by a trapped fruit fly, the vibrations of his words unwound my nerves. I had to look away from him to speak, the weight of his useless human affection was too heavy to bare the brunt of head on. It was blasphemy that something a horny ugly alien said to me could mean more than the approval of any tallest. “MMMhhNNG. Stop making words.” I growled politely. Dib chuckled without malice, he curled in over me to press his lips to the crest of my skull. “You love serving me.” “Phheh. Zim loves nothing.” “You love what I’ve done to you, Zim. And I can prove it.” Dib lifted me up to move us onto the bunk bed, and bumped the front of his proportionally massive head against the shelf of the top bunk. “Fuck-ow,” “HAH!”

I reached up to hit the button on the bottom of the shelf, and the top bunk folded up against the wall behind it. As the mechanical components hissed, Dib rubbed his five head. “Yeah? That’s funny? You think your master getting brain damage is just hilarious don’t you?”

“If my “master” (I used my fingers to make mock air quotes) is dumb enough to turn his brain to garbage when we aren’t even under attack, he’s not showing mastery over anything, is he?” Dib dropped me out of his arms and onto the bed, I landed with a yelp of surprise though the impact came painlessly. “HEY!”

With his teeth clenched and his eyes narrowed Dibs hands flew over my body, grabbing and groping, pulling off boots and leggings, striping me of the new uniform I’d been given, replacing dark blue cloth with an expanse of green skin. There was ample evidence to suggest Dibs need was as urgent as my own, from his feverish actions to the telltale tenting at the front of his tight emo boy pants. He needed me. I gave a quick shiver twitch at the feeling of air on my exposed skin, and hissed at him. He pinned my chest down with one hand, and sneered at me as the other cupped over my pelvis. “Your standards are way too fucking high for someone who screws up constantly.” I grinned at him with challenging eyes as my legs folded up and opened. “Where would your challenge be if I lowered them, Dib?” His middle finger split the wet slit of my vent open. He traced the sensitive pink interior and I had no choice but to draw in an afflicted breath. The finger slid deeper, he brushed the base of my wriggling dwarf ovipositor, and the distraction sent my antenna fully back. “You, crave conquest.” I crooned, distracted. Sensations continued. I felt the shivers of pleasure in the back of my teeth, my tymbal rattled with quick twitching clicks each time his middle finger teased the inch length of my pink wiggly hot button. “You don’t know what I crave, Zim.” I cackled, light and airy and I gripped the blankets beside my face. I bit my lip and looked at him. His thumb slid into my slit and he gently pinched his fingers around my “dick”. I gasped sharply. I kicked out a heel as he pressed firmly enough to make me whine. I could not help how my eyes wanted to roll back into my skull at the continued friction, but I swear I caught the reddening of his cheeks before vision became meaningless. I do know. I chirped, I moaned, I rubbed my cheek into the soft blankets stained with floral detergent as the tingling feeling of goodness rolled from my loins up the rest of my body. I felt good, and I made it LOOK good. Dib likes to watch me writhe, and in return he rubbed over and over, again and again he rubbed, till it seemed I was breaching a new level of tingly bliss with every passing second. “But, I know what you want, don’t I?” I groaned in disagreement, his fingers stalled on my sex, then his thumb rubbed small twitching strokes at it’s base. I trembled all over at the teasing agitation, and breathed out hard. “MHn, you’ve�� got AN idea, of it.” Dibs motions were less practiced as he set out to release his tube steak from it’s denim cage, but he didn’t move his hand from the source of my sultry keening sounds. He wouldn’t, I had been so SO fucking good to him. Letting him work uninterrupted without a single complaint of boredom. I hadn’t tried to attack him in DAYS. It was a personal best record at the time. I was overdue for a reward.

“UHM, EXCUSE YOU??” Dib took his hand out of my vent and I sat bolt upright on my elbows, glaring at him in a sex flushed daze as I watched him inch the clothing down his nearly non-existent ass. “I WAS BUSY. Who said you could STOP?”

He pushed me back down, grabbed my leg and sharply fixed himself between my open thighs. “I’m not stopping, you know I’m not stopping you shrill shitty bedbug.” It spiraled into more routine. In the act of copulation I could always count on the sensation of his fingers sliding into my orifice to pull it’s tight walls steadily open. I could feel all the bumps and ridges, the rough calluses, the finger pad curling around my core and pulling delicious sensation from the thing inside me that made my guts twitch and tremble and rattle like a sack of angry crickets. It didn’t take much. I didn’t need long, and he wasn’t willing to hold off from indulging in the ambrosial clutch of a wanting Irken tunnel. I groaned as he withdrew three of his fingers from me, pulling with them a thin strand of pinkish slick that broke and collapsed over my cleft. I trembled, I hissed in disgust with myself as Dib aligned the head of his extraterrestrial shaft with it’s destination. As he looked down on me, he commanded. “Beg.” “What?” My head cocked, one antenna lifted while the other lowered, my hand reached up to wipe the pearling sweat from my brow. “Really???” He ground his length into the gooey mess he’d left my vent in, I grit my teeth as my tymbal rumbled. “Yeah. Really Zim.” “Mhgghh.” Eyes closed I tensed as the friction of dick on dick action swayed my compliance. “ Plleeeeeaaaase.” “Please what?~” I tried to scowl at Dibs goading, but his grinding made me bite my own tongue. “You have to say it, pet. I won’t give it to you unless you ask properly.” The nickname is a scorning stinging wound that burbles and pops like a pollution born wound, it feels like a hot sudden burn, it catches me the way his fingers do when they clamp around my most intimate points. In the most pathetic of tones and volumes, I answer my mate; “Please, please fill me with your cum, master Dib.” I was rewarded by a hand coming to stroke across my skull. He cradled the dome of my head and caught one of my antenna stalks between his fingers. With the same care he gave my cock, he gently strokes the black hairs to reward me. “Good boy. Good bug.” When the rutting commences sense tumbles out the window in a broken screeching fury, like an escaped chimp on meth, like a rat on fire making a break for water. I lose my fucking mind to the reactions of my body. The vehicle rocks under us with the power of Dibs mighty thrusts.He fills me so deeply with his oversized ovipositor, I can feel his pulsing want bulging against the skin of my stomach at full hilt. When he finally spills in me I am so wound up that I have already hit my climax twice over. I snarl, I lean into him and the lips I have put to his salty skin part so I can taste his sweat on my tongue. My jaws open wider, and as Dib grunts, at the height of his peak, I bite hard enough to puncture his fragile skin on the edge of my teeth. The red taste of metal is smeared over my lips, on my tongue, over the pasty tan palette of his shoulder muscle. Dib hisses air in through his teeth. “You couldn’t- you couldn’t help yourself, could you?” His panting breath stalls his words, a red tinted smile spread across my fuck drunk face. I licked my lips as I replied, and watched a thin trail of human red meet up with the black fabric of his shirt and diffuse into it.

“No, no I couldn’t.” I hummed back at him. In the state of high endorphine swing I am not fully myself. Everything was brighter, lighter, more exciting. A hazy happy drugged exisence takes hold of me and sways me to Dibs whims. As he pulls out of me, he sighs with a shivering buzz. “Then, you’re not done yet.” In a matter of minutes Dib is redressed while I remain naked, wrists and ankles shackled to the four rectangular points of the bunk via metal shackles that the walls of the Arr Vee spat out. I was only just beginning to come out of my fogy mental state when my human retrieved a black blunt vibration wand from a drawer of tormenting devices. Over the following hour I grew more and more delirious as Dib wrung my body out for increasingly mind crushing orgasms. Things stopped having meaning, Dibs taunting words lost their sense, and I rattled straight through to my bones. That I could not pull my limbs in towards myself and protect my body from the assault of sensation had at one point been disquieting, but then and there, it encouraged me to let go of my resistance. I had let go of my fruitless delusions, I had given myself up to Dib, and Dib did not stop till I was crying with the intensity of multiple peaks.

It made up for everything else that had happened. The blinding beacon of his smothering affections absorbed me in it’s garish embrace as he unshackled me from the walls. He cleaned me, he held me in a folded blanket till the shaking of my overwhelmed body stopped. My prickly insults bounced off him like harmless pebbles of sand. The Dib stroked over my antenna, groomed them with the sex scented oils of his fingers, the Arr Vee reaked of the smell of our sins. Accepting Dibs terms of affection is illegal, but I’m defective anyways, aren’t I?

#screaming//#izspacetrash #zadr #zadr fuck fick because in this they bone #no fuckin minors allowed

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adhdo5 · 5 years ago

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can you give a basic overview of ur o5s? i love them but i dont know what's going on

OH yes absolutely!!!! I kinda stole them from the wiki dossier and went “free real estate” and now they’re my children. Details under the cut bc holy shit it’s long

O5-1 - the Founder!! Shitty gay Ukranian cultist too stubborn to die. Still Gears’ dad. Still old as fuck. At least 95% robot. Wears his robe of rags and bones and lives in the basement of Site 01 in his “life support” sarcophagus. Practicing Mekhanite. Also, practicing recluse. Originated Foundation culture of Work 25 Hours a Day and Never Sleep, and also of O5 Council Hubris. Does large-scale admin, technological infrastructure, and containment design. My favorite bastard.

O5-2 - the Nazarene!! Literally Jesus, with the scars to prove it. Also Sophia Light. Council wine mom. Exhausted. Martyr complex, but knows it’s ineffectual. Holds the brain cell when Three doesn’t have it. Makes bread. Helped found the Foundation. Distributes Fountain water and does timeline stability. Not as developed as I’d like her

O5-3 - the Philosopher Scientist!! Man who sent a lot of HR emails in his youth grew up and decided to actually do something about it. Started the Ethics Committee and psych department mostly-singlehandedly saved the Foundation after the Chaos Insurgency Shitstorm of 1924-1930. Holds the brain cell when Two doesn’t have it. Told You So. Known for throwing his support behind measures he’s previously opposed so that he and the Committee can get involved and carry it out in the least unethical way possible. Still in charge of scip and personnel welfare. Massive projection character

O5-4 - the Ambassador!! Koori Australian by ethnicity, Canadian by nationality, enigma by trade. Does terrible card tricks. Does parkour. Cannot fast travel when enemies are nearby. Distinguished chaotic. Runs PR and is basically corporate Twitter for the Foundation. Very good at being disorienting, which has led to rumors of reality bending and/or anomalous charisma. Gets kidnapped a lot. A meme taken completely seriously. Has an aesthetic, not an identity. Thinking 50 things at the same time. Professional Stepford smiler. So fun to write and I love him

O5-5 - To March Forward!! Formerly Manifest Destiny. Got in with a very bad crowd (the ASCI) before getting yeeted to the Council. Very aggressive. Very short-tempered. Incredibly easily bored. Usually seen in either tactical gear or late-1800s period clothing, and also heavy plastic glasses. Essentially a wolverine that’s been stuffed into a three-piece suit. Support fodder for Council hubris. Ready to fight at all times. Oversees specific projects/technological advances, as well as military/wartime tactics. Originally intended as a throwaway but is too fun to write

(Getting shoved into the water by Teeth; Teeth is getting held back by Nazzie; Bureaucrat is just out of frame to the left)

O5-6 - Cowboy!! The man the Mikell the legend. 6 feet 5 inches of Council dumbass. Owns debating boots. Cannot and will not pay attention in meetings. Probably got promoted so the Council would have an easily swayable vote. On 300 layers of denial. Is in charge of security, R&C, dealing with hostile POI, and also wrangling personnel. Oldest muse

O5-7 - Teeth!! Eldritch entity, manifests as very tall, very bony Chinese person in human form. Very good and also very terrifying. Also helped found the Foundation. Care very much about the cause, especially since they directly see the effects and the efficacy. Kinda a wild card, except not really. Run the Foundation through proxies just in case. Do reality warding and stabilization, extraplanar negotiations, and other fun things. Second oldest muse, and one I wanna get back into writing

O5-8 - the Lesser!! Made one (1) mistake and since has been the Council disgrace. You destroy one site… Is essentially the backup one that the Council tosses everything they don’t want to deal with on. Second-least developed muse.

(Hiding behind Cowboy; to the right are Outsider in green and Philosopher exhausted. Ambassador and Founder are out of frame to the left and right respectively)

O5-9 - the Outsider!! Rock lady who was disgraced in the scientific community after she started researching the anomalous, but kept working on her unified theory undeterred anyway. Hired directly from the outside for the theory, and disappearance easily covered up. Touch Tone Telephone vibes. Has been better since joining the Foundation and has probably adjusted better than expected… though that may be because she’s, ironically enough, not fully cognizant of some of the shadier stuff that surrounded her promotion. Runs research, stats analysis, and continues work on her unified theory; also serves as The Cute One. She’s great to write she’s just so valid

O5-10 - the Archivist!! Paperwork cynicism lesbian. An enabler, and also a source of terrible good ideas. Rarely has hot takes, but when she does, they’re very spicy, and have led to some intense Council drama. Infamous for the Gatorade Rice incident. Cynical, deadpan, good at hiding the fact that she’s a massive instigator of Council hubris. Also lives at Site 01 and usually sends her body double to go outside. Runs infosec and archival duties, especially eschatological. A muse that’s always been moderately active but has recently been doing New Fun Things

O5-11 - the Bureaucrat!! Low self esteem, mostly unearned. A not-insignificant amount of pent-up rage, but appreciates most of the Council, expect for Five (hates) and Twelve (it’s complicated). Studied the blade. Usually overlooked, which suits him fine. Big [REDACTED]. Does antimemetics, expungement, and occult integration, and has several projects both of his own and enabled for his coworkers. Least developed muse.

O5-12 - the Physician!! Archetypal mad scientist. Dislikes processing things verbally. Just here to have a good time. Loves his job. Generally left to do his own thing, though by no means excluded from the Council’s shenanigans. Another well of hubris. Majored in w. Spearheads amnestic/mnestic etc. development, medication, and Safe-class research, though also has some specific projects with much higher stakes. Not a very developed muse, but a great one.

(Pictured with Outsider (left))

O5-13 - Tamlin!! Joseph Tamlin, our bastard. Ran away with AWCY? at least once. Hangs out with the Council for their hubris, because he herself is both detached from time and bound to he position as the arbiter of the timeline. Also helped found the Foundation. Wants you to come to her House. Enjoys hosting parties and also being an agent of chaos. Kind of a wild card despite the whole Bound To The House thing. Believes in the value of art. Just overall a great guy to hang out with. Does timeline stability, metaphysics, narrative coherency, and miscellanea. Very fun and generally very forthcoming as a muse

(Gets two pictures because he’s just that great. Pictured below w/ a younger Founder (right))

#HOLY FUCK THIS IS LONG #O5 Council #posts that make you realize which O5 I need to draw more :pensive:#These are all pictures I had in my camera roll #3 4 5 and 6 all have ADHD confirmed

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junie-valentine · 4 years ago

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7, 10, 12, 13

7. Your favorite downtime activity.

uhh prolly card games / drinking games with friends but i dont tend to be too good at em

10. Your favorite enemy and the enemy you hate the most.

i honestly feel like both of these have the same answer weirdly enough. i really, really hate every last devil at UMIC but that makes it really fun to take em down. this may sound bad but revenge can be fun sometimes, ‘specially when it’s deserved

12. Your in game inside jokes/memes/catchphrases and where they came from.

i used to announce my name all the time when i was fightin back when i had that fiend in my head. it started as a fun catchphrase when i was improving my swordfightin but now it’s associated with that so... i don’t like to do that as often now. especially with the circles we run in. true names and identifiers can be dangerous and all that.

on the lighter end, angtha swears by her medium rare whiskey chicken and i don’t think this group is ever gonna let her live that down

13. Introduce your current party.

we’re known in the Trades as the Fosters, and im just gonna go in alphabetical order so i dont miss anybody

we got amelia, whos an assassin with a specialty in poison. shes been learning some weird magic lately, i think ‘s got to do with The Patron. she took on the Foster name officially after we got rid of her family (they were extremely shitty). we’ve been on more comfortable terms lately, and i can appreciate that.

angtha is a 7′ tall 3/4 orc and thus the only tall member of this party. she wields a ridiculous anime glaive and has also been picking up some weird new Patron magic. she’s got some family trouble she won’t forgive herself for but i really dont have any of the details on that.

biscuit is my best friend!! she’s a selkie and she’s looking for her skin, which got stolen by a rakshasa named meringue. biscuit is an amazing healer and also i’ve been helping her raise a terrifying dinosaur pterodactyl thing named Bird. Bird screams inside your ears.

madge is not technically part of this group but she’s an honorary Foster. she’s basically everyones grandma. she looks like a dryad but she’s actually a fey goddess but is super humble about it, we didn’t even know about it and amelia’s known madge for years. everyone in the city knows madge, and she knows everybody.

satomi is an aritian elven samurai whos got some home issues she’s been running from. metaphorically. physically she got exiled. i’m not sure how she’s gonna handle it when we go to arito, cause that’s where we’re headed next. she’s real close with amelia but refuses to get involved with anything related to The Patron, which i can fully respect. she’s super protective of this party and has saved our asses in a lot of ways in fights- mostly at her own loss.

the shrike is an at-least-1200-year-old gnomish planar physicist and robotics expert. she’s conditionally immortal i think, and she does a lot of time travel dealings for The Patron. she has a reputation as the best informant in the city by virtue of her many many robots. her legs are also robotic. she harpoons people who disrespect her. she’s also dating madge.

this got long but that should be everybody?

edit: oh me. duh. im junie i’m from the (former) desert town of Lakewood, im the best marksman i know and im also pretty good with a sword. my family is cursed to work for UMIC for 500 years and i’m trying to kill the devil responsible so that the contract ends early. also i got possessed by a fiend pretending to be an angel in a sword for a good while and i doubted him and his god so he killed me but i got better.

#ask

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ravel-puzzlewell · 5 years ago

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Jack: 27,29,30,48,54,55 sorry for the spam bute i really like hearing you talk about your ocs XD

Don’t you dare to apologize, I love it, and also I rarely get to talk about my Courier:) You didn’t ask for it, but that’s his music theme :3

The ask meme

27. What’s their family like? Who’s in it? What’s their relationship with them? \29. What was childhood like? \ 30. What was adolescence like?

His mom, Vanessa Chae, was NCR’s high ranking scientist, but she left bc of NCR’s shady shit clashing with her ethics and settled down in a small town on NCR’s borders, working as a medic, teacher and de facto librarian. She’s a complex and complicated woman who doesn’t like to talk about her past,very rational and planning. She’s in “gal pals” with an owner of a local bar, Nichelle, a very charismatic, loudmouthed and confident woman, it was the cutest tsundere romance, Vanessa kept asking Nichelle to help her with fixing domestic stuff, Nichelle teasing her about being a big city princess who doesn’t know how to fix a sink, etc. Jack got his skeptical scientific turn of mind from Vanessa and a firm belief that everything can be settled down with a conversation from watching Nichelle deal with bar fights. Nichelle has a brother, Marques, who is confident and charismatic (and hot) like her, but also quite a fuckboi and a gambler. He’s a merchant, so Nichelle’s place always gets good stock with low prices.

Jack’s childhood was pretty uneventful, he was helping and learning from both of his momsand ended up being a Jack of all trades. The racial prejudice against being Asian didn’t play a lot in his early years, because the town learned to respect his mom for being a great doctor and a teacher. He’s an introvert by nature, but he hang out with kids when he felt like it and has no trouble socializing. By the time of his adolescence tho, he grew pretty bored with his little town, and itched to see the outside world, so Marques started taking him on trading trips, first short, then longer and longer. That’s where he learned that despite his seeming laid-back, non-argumentative nature, Marques could be sharp and ruthless when he needed to, and that’s how it was possible to have these low prices for his sister. That’s when Jack learned how to bluff and combined it with his mom’s love of planning into the admiration of artistry of cons. Marques was his male role model, and what he got from him was “be polite, but ready to shoot first. Love ‘em, then leave ‘em if both of you know that’s how it’s gonna go. If a shitty thing needs to be done, do it yourself and leave your loved ones blissfully unaware and thinking you’’re a goof.” Basically, taking trading trips with Marques is how Jack realized his love for travel.

Everyone in his family is fine, Jack visits them when he can.

48. What was their lowest point? What was their highest point?

Nipton was his lowest point for sure. Highest... idk, I don’t think it was in F:NV, this is one of the characters who doesn't reach his peak in a space that the game gave him and he’s def went on to grow and achieve things.

54. What does your character want, and what do they need?

Vanessa didn’t approve of Jack leaving just to travel into nowhere, she thought that with his intelligence he could apply himself to much greater things, but her wife convinced her that if a person has a tumbleweed heart like her brother, it’s better for everyone to let them go. “He’s rational like me and smooth-talking like you,” Vanessa said to Nichelle, “what are we unleashing upon the world?” “What matters is that he’s decent like the both of us.It’s going to be okay“.

He still needs something to apply himself to.

55. What’s your character’s core trait? What’s their best trait? What’s their worst trait? When happens when these all interact with each other?

His best, worst, and core trait is intellectual curiosity.

#idreim #jack the courier #jack doesnt have a tragic backstory or smth so i never got to talk about his lesbian moms thank you for giving me an excuse!

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wholesomegirlfriendmemes · 6 years ago

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story submission!

(I saw there were some stories submitted on here and I wanted to share ours!)

So I met my gf several years ago at school, we had two classes together and one of them was Shakespeare, which happens to be a big interest of both of ours. I was at the time suffering from a broken heart, and we sat next to each other and started getting to know each other through our shared interests of Shakespeare and theatre... she was literally the first thing in my life at the time that made me feel happy again after what had just happened. I remember we got coffee and talked for HOURS and i came out as bi to her, she was one of the first people I'd ever come out to. She said she was straight (which is....HILARIOUS now!) so I didn't think much of it, but I definitely harbored a small crush on her from then on... Then flash forward a year to last fall, when we both started falling for each other more but I tried so hard to push the feelings away since I thought she was straight. We'd cuddle and hold hands and it was literally the best but I kept having to tell myself it wasn't real... then she came out to me as bi and I realized I might have a chance! I was terrified of coming out to people if I were to start dating her like my homophobic best friend at the time and my homophobic parents... But at the beginning of finals week we confessed to each other, and became official girlfriends two days later!

The sucky thing though was that we started dating two days before we had to go home for two weeks of Christmas break... and I was preparing for a semester long study abroad. So I had to deal with homophobic family all break who did not take the news well, and then after only one month of being together I left for three months in Europe and we had to do long distance for that time. It was torturous but I think it really grew us as a couple. The rest of the year had its ups and downs, lots of downs, we both lost friends, sacrificed relationships with our homophobic families, went to counseling together, and had to fight a lot of shitty situations, but it's been a little over a year now and I literally would not trade her for anyone in the entire world. She's worth every single bit of the hard stuff that's happened, and I am forever thankful to her for blessing me unspeakably. I deal with a lot of religious homophobia as a bi Christian, and she's affirmed my faith in ways I never expected. Basically yeah I could go on about her forever, but we both love this page and we love memes and vines, and Shakespeare, and a ton of other things. She's literally the light of my life, and I can't wait to see her again when school starts in a week, and someday to marry her. <3 Thanks for letting me share!

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lynnafred · 6 years ago

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A Quest - A Short Story

Last year, I wrote a short story on my old blog that I’d called “A Favor” based on a prompt from @merigreenleaf. Then December hit, Tumblr decided my blog was no longer worthy, and forced me to abandon nine years of shitty memes and audio posts and here I am. But there were shorts on there that I liked, dammit, so I’m posting them again. So, for no particular reason than because I like the way it came out, I (re)present: A Quest. Instead of breaking it into parts, I’ve decided to post the whole story here for ease.

A Quest (Light Swearing, no other warnings, First Person POV, 4970 words total)

“I need a favor.”

I rolled over in my bed to face where the voice had come from. However, I refused to open my eyes to see who the requester was. “Are you shitting me?” It was well past three in the morning, and I had a massive hangover. I was in no condition to be doing anyone any favors.

“I understand that it’s late, but this errand is of the utmost importance.”

With a sigh, I cracked one eye open. It was the town blacksmith. Of course it was. I’m sure that I know her name, but my mind was too foggy and my desires too minimal to be bothered to remember it. “And what is this favor of the ‘utmost importance’ on this fine day at three am?” I tried not to be sarcastic, but it was hard not to be.

“There is an item that my wife desires, called ‘That.’ She speaks of it often, always wishing that it was in my possession,” the blacksmith explained. “If you were to find me ‘That,’ I would compensate you for your time.”

“Seriously? It’s called ‘That?’ Are you running out of names?”

HEY, NO METAGAMING. THIS IS MY FIRST CAMPAIGN AND YOU SAID YOU’D BE NICE. SO FUCK OFF, IT’S CALLED THAT.

“Ugh, this sucks,” I muttered. I considered my options. I could indulge the blacksmith, or I could tell her to stuff herself, roll back over, and go back to sleep until the innkeeper threw me out. I groaned, audibly, before swinging my feet over the edge of the bed. I hated being a Paladin. “Fine, fine. I’ll find you ‘That,’ but this compensation had better be worth my time.” I put on my armor as I spoke. “Do you have an idea of there I’ll be able to find ‘That?’ Or am I left on my own to figure it out?”

The blacksmith’s eyes lit up at my words. “Oh, kind paladin, thank you for your help. I’ve heard that there is an item collector in the next town. Rumors have been circulating that he has ‘That’ in his possession.”

Great. A three am excursion to the next town. Luckily for me, the next town wasn’t more than a few hours’ walk. If I worked quickly, I’d be able to get there and back within the same day and still be able to rest before I continued my journey. I still had an adventuring party to assemble and a dragon to slay.

The early morning air was brisk. I could feel the cold through my armor, and that only made me wish that I could go back to the inn and sleep until a more reasonable hour. Regardless, I promised I’d find her the item. So, I made the trek as fast as my feet could carry me, trying my best to avoid any confrontations with marauders and goblins as I went.

The sun was rising over the treetops by the time I made it to the neighboring town of Selkirk. Even though it was still relatively early, there were plenty of people out and about in the market. I looked over the market as I walked, gawking at the items that some of the vendors were selling. Figures, all the best products show up first thing in the morning when I don’t have the money to purchase them.

It didn’t matter, I wasn’t here for sightseeing or shopping, I was here to find the item collector. At the end of the main road, I found the place I was looking for. Walking inside, it looked more like a pawn shop than the house of a man who hoarded collectables.

“I’m looking for an item,” I announced as I walked inside.

The shopkeeper, an older man, totally ignored me.

WHAT’S YOUR DAMAGE? CAN’T YOU MANAGE A ‘GOOD MORNING,’ AT LEAST?

“I just want to get this over with so my character can go back to bed. I can’t heal unless I rest for a full eight hours.”

YOU WOULDN’T HEAL ANYWAY. YOUR CHARACTER WASN’T RESTING, YOU PASSED OUT FROM DRINKING TOO MUCH ALE. THEY’RE NOT THE SAME.

I shrugged. Touche. “Uh, good morning,” I said. “I’m looking for an item.”

The shopkeeper turned around to look at me this time. “Ah, welcome. Good morning.” The man smiled. He was missing a tooth that caused him to whistle as he breathed. “As you can see, I have many items here.”

I straightened my posture and tried to ignore the sharp sound that accompanied every sound that started with an ‘S.’ “This may be harder to find than most, but I’ve been told that it’s in your possession. I’m looking for a legendary item called ‘That.’”

“Ah, yes, I do have the item you seek,” the shopkeeper said. His eyes sparkled as he spoke. “However, ‘That’ is an item worth far more than any amount of coin could buy. I’d be willing to trade for it, though, if you were to provide me with ‘This’ in return.”

I crossed my arms. “Are you kidding me?” I asked. This couldn’t be happening to me.

“I assure you, I do not jest. If you want ‘That,’ I will require ‘This’ in trade.”

I rolled my eyes as I asked, “And do you know where ‘This’ would be located?”

“For twenty silver, I can tell you where ‘This’ might be.”

“This is bullshit!” I yelled.

YOU’RE MORE THAN WELCOME TO LOOK FOR IT YOURSELF IF YOU DON’T WANT TO SPEND THE TWENTY SILVER.

The booming voice of the Dungeon Master (that only I could hear, apparently,) had a point. Paying twenty silver could take days - weeks! - off of my quest for ‘This.’ I begrudgingly slid a satchel with the requested amount of coins across the table. “Fine, here’s your twenty silver. Now where can I find ‘This?’”

“The last time ‘This’ was seen was a day’s journey from here, alongside the flooded streambed.”

I gritted my teeth. This was the absolute worst. “Very well, I’ll seek out ‘This.’ But I require ‘That’ in return.”

The shopkeeper smiled. “Of course. I won’t trade ‘That’ for anything other than ‘This.’ Save travels, Paladin.” With that, he turned his back to me. I was no longer worth his time if I didn’t have ‘This’ or coin to spend. With a huff, I exited the shop and went back into the busy town.

The day had turned out to be fairly warm, for autumn. The town market still bustled with activity, but the only thing that I could focus on was getting out of here and getting to the flooded streambed before anyone else could find the item I needed. Without ‘This’ I’d never get my hands on ‘That’ unless I resulted to drastic measures. Like killing the shopkeeper. Even then, I had no idea what I was looking for. I wouldn’t know what ‘That’ looked like if it bit me in the ass.

So instead, I found myself trudging through the woods, looking for the streambed. Townspeople that I’d spoken to were of little help, but I was able to glean that the stream bed was pretty distinctive. A day’s journey, though, was pretty intense. I could only hope that there was little danger in the woods ahead of me. If I wasn’t able to rest, then my exhaustion would get the better of me.

At sunset, I built myself a small fire near a rock outcropping and decided to wait until morning to continue my journey. These woods got eerily quiet at night, and darker than most I’d traveled through. They made me nervous, and as a result, I didn’t sleep well.

Exhausted, I made sure the embers of my fire were extinguished before making my way to where the townsfolk had insisted the flooded streambed was. Ahead of me, down a small hill, I saw what I could only assume is what the townsfolk had talked about. There was no stream, but instead a small vernal pool where a good deal of the spring rains had collected. Dancing near the shores of the pool was a goblin. I drew my claymore and approached it with caution.

“Halt, goblin!” I called as I approached it. The last thing I needed was a goblin horde to attack.

The goblin stopped its dance and looked at me, caution plaguing its features. “I am no normal goblin, human,” it spat. “Stay back.”

In its hand, I noticed a small spherical object. “The item you keep. Is that -”

The goblin hid the item behind its back. “Not ‘That!’ This is ‘This.’”

My stomach sank. The goblin had gotten to it before me. “Give me ‘This!’”

“‘This’ is mine!” the goblin growled. “Finders keepers!”

“I need ‘This’ to trade for ‘That!’” I yelled. “Give it to me!”

The goblin hissed at me and clutched ‘This’ close to its chest. “No! If you want ‘This’ then I need a lock of hair from the silver-haired maiden.”

I cocked an eyebrow. A maiden? This was way more my speed. “Silver-haired maiden?”

The goblin eagerly nodded. “Yes, the silver-haired maiden. She lives in the woods over there.” The goblin gestured to where it meant. “Her beauty is captivating, but you mustn’t succumb to her charms, human.”

I crossed my arms. “Fine. A lock of hair from the silver-haired maiden for ‘This.’ You have a deal.”

The goblin nodded. “Good. I will be in hiding but will emerge when I hear your footfalls. Come back with the lock of hair, human,” it instructed before running away down the streambed.

The woods the goblin spoke of weren’t too far. In only an hour’s walk, I came to a large clearing in the forest, decorated in all of autumn’s colors. In the middle was a large boulder, and on top of it, the maiden that I sought.

Her hair glittered in the afternoon sunlight with an ethereal glow. Resisting her charms was going to be far harder than I thought. I took a tentative step into her space as I called, “Excuse me, maiden, may I have a moment of your time?”

WHY ARE YOU SUCH A DICK TO EVERYONE ELSE BUT KIND TO THE MAIDEN?

“Have you seen her? She’s beautiful, look at her. Maybe I can relieve her of her status as a maiden for a lock of her hair.”

YOU’RE DISGUSTING AND THINKING WITH YOUR DICK. I DON’T GET WHAT CHERYL SEES IN YOU.

The maiden turned her attention towards me, beckoning me over with a wave. “For you? I may be able to spare a moment.”

I stepped further into the meadow, cautious of any traps. “I’ve come looking for something, my lady.”

The maiden’s voice was even toned, but tinted with curiosity. She smiled as she spoke, “And what might that be? I may not be of much assistance.”

“A simple lock of the maiden’s hair.”

Her face fell and she looked at me, blank-faced. “A lock of my hair?”

I nodded, the metal on my helmet clinking as I did so. “Yes, my lady, I’m in need of a lock of your hair. Would it please you to do so?”

The maiden, perched atop a boulder, furrowed her brow in concentration. “I accept, but will require something in return.”

Of course she does. “Anything, my lady.” Probably not the best thing to reply. But she was beautiful. In spite of the goblin’s words, I was definitely captivated by her beauty.

“I require an apple.”

I paused mid eyeroll. “Wait. An apple? Is that all you require?”

The maiden nodded. “Yes, an apple.” Her smile was warm, but something deadly glinted in her blue eyes. “The sweetest apples are found in a valley high in the mountains to the east, guarded from the deadly frosts around them by a spirit who resides in a deep blue lake. I require an apple from those mountain hills, for that is the only way I will be able to taste one. I cannot leave these woods.”

I nodded. “As you wish, my lady. An apple from the mountains in the east.”

She smiled. “Thank you, kind traveler.”

I was able to hitch a ride with a traveling merchant to take me most of the way to the mountains in the east. The journey was long, a few days, but the merchant kept me company and allowed me to sleep while he minded his shop during the day as long as I guided the cart at night and protected him from beasts and attackers. For the first time in my journey, someone hadn’t asked something impossible of me.

He regaled me with stories of the spirit in the mountains that I was headed to, a young child who guarded over the apple trees I sought. He urged me to be cautious in my ascent, and as thanks for protecting him from danger, gave me a fleece-lined doublet before sending me on my way. He said that he hoped that the doublet would help me shrug off the cold that I was going to experience in my journey up the mountain cliffs.

And he wasn’t kidding. Scaling the mountain was hard work. There were hardly any paths once I reached about a third of the way up the mountain, and skeletons and wolves were everywhere. As much as I’d wished the merchant had gifted me with potions, the doublet kept me from getting cold, even as the temperatures around me continued to fall.

It wasn’t only the temperatures that fell, either. The higher up the mountain I went, the more intense the snowfall became, until I was climbing up sheer mountainsides in a blizzard. I hoped that I found the valley before my hands slipped and sent me to my death.

A cave provided me with the shelter I needed to make a warm fire and sleep for a few hours before starting on my way again. As exhausted and injured as I was from all the fighting, I was eager to meet the spirit in the mountain valley, to see if it was anything like the merchant’s stories.

Finally, after what seemed like days, I found the valley. Snow blew through the valley and obscured the apple trees a bit, but there was no mistaking the blue lake in its center. I steeled myself and took my first step towards the lake. It almost felt sacrilegious to set foot in such a pristine area of the world.

Apparently, I wasn’t the only one to think that. I wasn’t even halfway to the lake yet when I felt the earth move beneath my feet. The snow subsided and the wind died down as I saw it. The spirit rose from the lake, water of the purest blue pouring off of its form as it rose. “Human, why do you disturb this valley?”

I rested my hand on the hilt of my claymore, preparing for a fight if these negotiations failed. This looked like no child I’d ever seen before. “I have journeyed from far in the west, seeking the sweetest apple that grows under your protection.”

The spirit’s voice boomed, sending shockwaves from its place, as it spoke to me. “For whom is this apple meant?”

“A silver-haired maiden, bound to the deep forests of Aboyne.”

“These apples are not for mere mortals,” the spirit thundered.

My eyes shone. “This is no mere mortal,” I replied. “This maiden is fair and beautiful. An apple from this valley is the only thing she has ever asked of me.” Not a lie, it was the only thing that she’s asked of me.

“Very well,” the spirit said finally. “There is a scholar at the base of this mountain, in the town of Kinross. Tell him I desire a vanilla pod from his orchids.”

“Vanilla? Vanilla only grows in tropical areas, it’s not going to be found in a temperate town on the base of a snowy mountain.”

I DON’T REMEMBER ASKING YOU YOUR OPINION ON QUEST ITEMS, MIKE.

“I’m a fucking botanist! You can’t tell me to get a plant based item and not have me scrutinize it!”

I DIDN’T HEAR YOU BITCHING ABOUT MOUNTAIN APPLES.

“Because that’s almost plausible! Depending on the depth of the valley and the lake, the thermal heat of the body of water -”

SHUT THE FUCK UP AND GET THE VANILLA.

“Jesus, so touchy, alright.” I turned my attention from the sky back to the spirit. “Very well, I’ll get you your vanilla. May I ask you why you need it?”

The spirit gazed at me, its face unable to hide its disdain. “No,” it said before vanishing in a flash of water. From the empty air, its voice was barely an echo. “Do not return here unless you have what I seek.”

I looked around me and sighed. Getting out of here was going to suck. Getting off the mountain was going to suck harder.

It took me another two days to get down from the snowy mountain valley, but I was relieved to feel the comparative warmth of the autumn air in the quiet town. I passed the traveling merchant on my way into town, who gave me a knowing smile on his way past. He knew that his doublet had save my life. There was no need for me to say it again.

I trudged through the town, greeting the remaining townsfolk as I went. Merchants tried to get me to purchase what was left of their daily wares, but I was too tired and too broke to think about getting anything for now. A group of particularly chatty kids pointed me in the direction of the scholar’s library. I hoped that the scholar was still there, because it was nearing sunset. Many people were heading back to their homes for the night.

I wrenched open the door to the scholar’s library. “Good evening!” I called.

The place was completely dark. I looked around me for a lamp, and upon finding it, used a small burst of fire magic to ignite it. Long shadows were cast from its glow across the room.

“Turn that off this instant!” a voice screamed from the corner. “This experiment is light sensitive!”

I quickly put the lamp out. “You could have replied to me when I called for someone!” I spat. “Are you the scholar?”

“The only scholar in the village!” the man, a high elf, replied. “Now what do you need, now that you’ve ruined my experiment?”

“I’m looking for a pod of your vanilla for the spirit in the mountains.”

The scholar clicked his tongue. “Again? I’m starting to think making a deal with her was a mistake. Very well, I’ll give you a pod of vanilla for her if you will buy me some coffee from the grocer up the road.”

“Coffee?”

“Yes, coffee. I’ve been up for days without rest, and I need some coffee in order to keep up this pace.”

“Perhaps you should just rest, then?”

“I’ll rest when my experiments are complete!” the elf yelled. He tossed me a small satchel. “This should be enough to buy the coffee, as well as some extra for your trouble.”

I caught the satchel and slipped it into my pocket. It felt light, but I took his word for it anyway. “You have my gratitude.”

“And you have my coin. Now go get me that coffee.”

I ran out of the scholar’s library as fast as my feet could carry me without tripping myself and headed to the grocer’s stall. The grocer, a portly woman of middle age, smiled upon my approach. “Coffee for the scholar?”

I nodded. “Please tell me you have some?”

The woman’s smile grew even larger. “For him? I always have some!” She flashed me a gesture to tell me to wait as she dug through the saddlebags on her horse. “There you go, my dear,” she said. “The strongest coffee I have, ground yesterday in my mill on the farm.”

I pulled out the satchel the scholar gave me. “How much?”

“He usually gives me a gemstone,” she replied. “His gemstones are worth more than my whole farm, but I’m the only one who’s figured out how to grow coffee.” She winked at me.

I looked in the satchel the scholar had given me. Inside were three rubies, a diamond, and an emerald. I gave the woman the diamond without any hesitation. “For you,” I said as I handed it to her.

Her face fell as she took it. “There must be some mistake,” she said. “This is too nice a gemstone.”

I couldn’t hide my grin. “No, no,” I replied. “You’ve done me a great service. I can at least give you this.”

ARE YOU SURE YOU SHOULD HAVE GIVEN HER THE DIAMOND? THERE WAS ONLY ONE DIAMOND.

“Fuck off, Rebecca,” I replied as I ran back to the scholar’s library. “The woman is a saint and deserves a life of luxury and comfort, I’ll find another diamond.”

YEAH, OKAY, WHATEVER. I DON’T WANT TO HEAR IT WHEN YOU FIND YOURSELF IN NEED OF A DIAMOND.

The scholar greeted me at the door, taking the coffee from me and eating the grounds by the handful. I rolled my eyes. Why were elves always like this? “For you, the best pod of vanilla that my orchids have produced,” he said as he handed me the pod. “Now go, before the spirit gets angry.”

I trudged my way back up the mountain and announced myself when I got to the banks of the spirit’s lake.

Its voice was a rippling whisper over the valley. “Toss the offering into my spring, human.”

I did as I was told and tossed the vanilla pod into the deep blue lake. “As you wish.”

With a flash of light, the spirit appeared before me again, this time in the form of a small child. The temperature seemed to have gone up, as well, because I found myself uncomfortable in the relative heat of the valley. “Thank you for your offering, human,” it said, its voice light like that of the Fey. “For you, the sweetest, largest apple off of my trees for a silver-haired maiden.”

The spirit produced a large apple, cold to the touch, into my hands. I slid it into an empty bag at my hips, not willing to risk it getting ruined on my long journey back to the woods where the maiden resided.

As one last favor to me, the spirit used its magic to deposit me immediately back outside the woods where the silver-haired maiden resided. She still sat at the top of her boulder, her hair still illuminated by the sun, and smiled at me when she saw my approach. For the first time since I’d met her, she slid off the rock and met me at its base.

“For you, my lady,” I said with a bow as I held the apple out to her.

She smiled as she took it into her own hands. “It’s everything that I’d hoped it would be,” she smiled. “As promised, you may take a lock of my hair.”

I took my dagger out of my satchel and gingerly took a small lock of hair from her. Her hair felt like silk to the touch. Along with being the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen in my life, she also had the most beautiful hair. “Thank you, my lady,” I replied finally as I slid the lock of hair into the pouch where the apple had been not moments before.

“May the gods bring you glory, Paladin,” she responded. I shuddered when she ran her hand down my cheek, but not from attraction or arousal. My blood ran cold when she touched me, fear settling in the pit of my stomach. I needed to get out of these woods, and fast. She smiled down at the apple.

I turned away from her to make my journey back to the goblin when I heard her bite into the apple and laugh. Against my better judgement, I looked behind me, hoping to catch a glimpse of her enjoying the gift I’d brought her. Left in her place, though, was a ring of gently glowing flowers and the apple, as perfect and unblemished as it had been when I’d brought it.

I ran out of the woods without another look back.

I was tired and out of breath by the time I’d gotten back to the vernal pool where I’d met the goblin. Not seeing it, I decided to start heading back to the village. It had promised to find me, and I was going to take it at its word.

It peeked out from the rocky outcropping where I’d made my camp, what seemed like forever ago. “Human!” It greeted me. “Welcome. You have the hair?”

I nodded, still struggling to catch my breath.

“Sit, sit,” it offered as it lit a fire. “The sun sets soon and these woods are not safe at night.

So that’s where my initial feeling of dread came from. I took the offered seat and fished in my satchel for the hair. Upon brandishing it to the goblin, it grinned. “You managed it!”

I laughed and handed it the hair. “It wasn’t easy, I assure you.”

The goblin devoured the hair before I could stop it. In a flash of smoke, a dwarf sat where the goblin had just been.

CONGRATS, MIKE. YOU JUST FREED YOUR GIRLFRIEND FROM HER CURSE AND SHE CAN JOIN THE CAMPAIGN AGAIN.

“What the fuck.”

CHERYL, COME JOIN THE CAMPAIGN! MIKE JUST FREED YOU! AND GRAB ME ANOTHER SLICE OF PIZZA!

“Thank you, friend!” the dwarf roared with laughter. She gave me a firm slap on the back that knocked the wind out of my lungs, like I hadn’t just caught my breath. “You are a true friend to dwarvenkind.”

The dwarf sat by the fire with me as she braided her beard. “The silver haired maiden lured me into her trap with her charm. Turned me into a goblin and left me for dead in these woods.” She caught sight of my blank stare and laughed, deep and rumbling. “It seems that only your ignorance of this place protected you, human. Tonight, we stay here, but from tomorrow I will accompany you on your journey to repay my debt.”

The next morning, Cheryl Ryngwyn and I headed back to town to meet with the pawnbroker. His shop was as cluttered as the last time we’d met, but he smiled when he saw us enter the shop. “Greetings, Paladin! I see you’ve made a friend in your quest.”

I narrowed my eyes at him. I’d been through too much the past week. Between the Fey masquerading as a maiden and the knowledge that my girlfriend has been playing D&D with her friends as a bearded dwarven woman, I was suspicious of everything I came into contact with. “Indeed. I have ‘This,’ so now it’s time to hand over ‘That,’ as promised.”

The pawnbroker smiled. “Of course. ‘That’ for ‘This’ as promised.” He reached behind the counter and produced a small disc. I took it from him as Ryngwyn handed him ‘This.’ The man behind the counter smiled. “Thank you, travelers. ‘This’ is going to look good among my personal collection. ‘That’ might be more valuable, but ‘This’ is truly a treasure.”

I looked down at the item that he had given us. “This is a copy of Shrek 2.”

DAMMIT, MIKE, I DON’T HAVE ENOUGH MINIFIGURES AND PROPS FOR EVERYTHING YET. WHY ARE YOU BEING SO CRITICAL?

“I’m not trying to be critical, I was just hoping that it would be more impressive than Shrek 2.”

Beside me, Ryngwyn laughed.

WELL IT’S NOT, SO THE LEGENDARY ITEM ‘THAT’ IS A DVD COPY OF SHREK 2, OKAY? YOU CAN BRING THE PROPS NEXT TIME.

Ryngwyn and I shared a look before we left, hurrying back down the beaten dirt road to the town I’d started in. We paused halfway there to eat a portion of our rations before continuing on our way. We nearly collapsed from exhaustion when we arrived at the blacksmith’s house.

I knocked on the door and waited for the blacksmith to answer. It was late, but if she could bother me at three am to go on a goose hunt, she could surface at midnight to answer her door. Eventually, she cracked the door open and looked at us with suspicion. “Paladin? Have you returned with what I seek?”

I held Shrek 2 in front of me. “Yes, I have… ‘That’ …in my posession. Do you have the payment you promised?”

The blacksmith nodded. “Yes, I do.” She invite us in and motioned to a table. “I’m prepared to offer you the best claymore that I have ever forged in exchange for ‘That.’ It’s been enchanted with holy magic, making it particularly effective against evil creatures.” The blacksmith looked at it fondly. “I’m sure it will help you on your journey, Paladin.”

I smiled and handed the blacksmith ‘That.’ Her calloused hands brushed against mine. “Thank you, this is an extraordinary weapon.” I picked the weapon up and gave it a preliminary swing to get a feel for the weapon. For something so big, it was well balanced. “This is an offer I’ll gladly accept.”

The blacksmith smiled and clutched ‘That’ close to her. “I’m glad you’re fond of the trade. Thank you, Paladin.”

As we turned to leave, I cast a look over to Ryngwyn and smiled. “Tavern?”

The dwarf laughed and slapped me on the back. “Let’s just pick up some adventurers so we can slay that dragon, alright? We can celebrate at the tavern once we’re done.”

#A Quest #short stories #Lynnafred writes #writeblr #imported from old-lynnafred

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