#this set turned out uglier than i wanted it to look like

[hoshifighting]

rockstar!reader x church boy & bestfriend!joshua

— Synopsis: Joshua and you had this contrast, you too embedded in the electric guitars, the polemic rock band shirts, and Joshua deeply focused on taking care of the church activities. He has no idea of the after-parties of your concerts, but after so much insistence of him, you bring Joshua to meet your wildest side, the side you never let him meet before. — Genre: Best friends to Lovers — WC: 11.05k — WARNINGS: smut, fluff, slight angst, groupies showing tits references, alcohol, smoking and drug references, religious imagery—mention of a cross necklace, faith-based inner conflict. penetrative sex, rough sex, public make out, fingering, nipple play—reader have nipple piercings, face-slapping, mentions of boy fluids; cum/precum, cock riding, clit stimulation, dirty talk, post-sex care.

The neighborhood kids were a patchwork of personalities—there were the loud ones, the shy ones, the troublemakers, the saints. And then, there was you and Joshua. From the outside, it made no sense. You, the devil-may-care rebel with ripped jeans, always two seconds away from an argument with someone who couldn’t handle your attitude.

And Joshua, with his pristine shirts buttoned all the way up, soft-spoken voice, and the kind of calm that came from growing up in a house where every wall had a cross and every Sunday had a sermon. He was the kid who never missed a single morning of church, and you were the kid who never missed a single rehearsal with your rock band, banging out chords in your parents’ garage so loud the neighbors had to invest in better windows.

But here’s the thing: despite everything that set you apart, you were inseparable. You’d been friends since you were both knee-high, back when you didn’t even care about music or God or any of the other big things that defined you later. Joshua was the kid you trusted with everything. The one who’d patch up your scraped knees when you wiped out on your bike, even if you yelled at him for fussing too much. The one who never let you feel alone, even when the world felt like it was coming down around you.

You’d look at him sometimes—like now, when you two were sitting on the curb outside your house, him in one of those stiff, white shirts with the collar high enough to strangle someone, and you in your old, faded Black Sabbath tee—and wonder how the hell this worked.

“I don’t get why you always button that thing up like that,” you mutter, side-eyeing him as you light a cigarette.

Joshua looks over, raising a brow. “You sound like my mom,” he says, smirking. “Besides, it’s comfortable.”

“No way. You look like you’re ready to choke.”

“Yeah, well, you look like you’re ready to summon a demon or something in that shirt,” he fires back, glancing at the witch printed on the front of your tee. “You couldn’t find something uglier?”

You snort, blowing out a puff of smoke. “You’re just mad ‘cause you know Sabbath’s better than that crap you play.”

Joshua rolls his eyes. “Hey, I like Coldplay, alright? Not everything’s gotta be power chords and screaming.”

“I don’t scream,” you retort, half grinning.

“Yeah, you do.”

“Do not.”

“You screamed at the last gig.”

“That was—” You pause. “That was for effect.”

Joshua chuckles, shaking his head. “Sure. For ‘effect.’”

The thing is, Joshua could have roasted you to dust if he wanted to. But he never did. He’d always laugh it off, always find a way to turn the conversation into something lighter. And no matter how different you were, there was this unspoken respect between you. Like how he showed up to your gigs in high school wearing one of your band’s shirts, plastering flyers in the school hallways and sneaking some into the church bulletin board when no one was looking. 

And how you showed up at his baptism, cross necklace and all, standing there in the back, quiet but present. You never took the necklace off after that. The church boy who wouldn’t dare wear anything less than holy had given you a symbol of his faith, and you’d worn it ever since. You believed but weren't dedicated to it like Joshua, you used it because it was from him.

Joshua notices it now, the silver cross resting against your chest, slightly crooked. He reaches out, straightening it with a soft smile. “You still wear this?”

“Never took it off,” you admit, taking a long drag of your cigarette. “Doesn’t mean I’m converting, though.”

“I wasn’t gonna say anything,” he replies, leaning back on his palms. “I like that you wear it.”

You glance at him, a little surprised by the sincerity in his voice. “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Joshua says, turning his gaze toward the sunset dipping below the houses. “It’s…nice, y’know? Like, no matter how far apart we get, we’re still connected.”

“Connected, huh?” you murmur, tapping the cigarette ash onto the ground. “You’re getting sappy again, dude.”

He laughs, nudging your shoulder with his. “Shut up. You like it.”

“Yeah, but your world’s so boring, Josh. All hymns and Jesus. You should come to the dark side more often.”

“Pass,” he says with a smirk, but there’s warmth behind it. “I’d rather keep watching you make it big as a rockstar. Somebody’s gotta pray for you when you’re out there corrupting the youth.”

Maybe that’s the thing about you and Joshua—no matter how much you rag on each other, how different your lives look on the surface, there’s a connection you can’t explain. You’re fire and he’s ice, but somehow, you keep each other balanced.

“Hey,” you say, suddenly serious, eyes fixed on the street ahead. “Thanks for, y’know…showing up. For all of it. I know I’m not the easiest person to be around.”

Joshua’s voice softens. “You don’t have to thank me. You’ve always been there for me too.”

You glance at him, your heart doing this weird flip in your chest. “Yeah, well, don’t get used to it,” you tease, though the words come out gentler than you intended.

Joshua grins, eyes crinkling at the corners. “Too late.”

You take another drag, the two of you falling into a comfortable silence, the kind only years of friendship can create. 

You weren’t trying to change him, and he wasn’t trying to save you.

The gossipy aunts on the block could speculate all they wanted—Joshua didn’t convert you, and no, you didn’t lead Joshua down some reckless path. You two were just… you. 

He’d brought you to church bazaars, where the smell of fried dough and barbecue sauce clung to your clothes long after you’d left, but he’d never pushed you to step foot into one of the more serious services. The ones where the hymns stretched on forever and people lost themselves in prayer. You didn’t do that, and he never asked you to.

And you? Well, you dragged Joshua to your gigs. He always stood at the front, close enough to feel the vibrations from the speakers, his clean-cut figure looking hilariously out of place in the sea of ripped jeans, leather jackets, and band tees.

But no matter how much he begged—and he did beg—you never brought him to the after-parties. The kind of chaos that erupted once the amps were off and the guitars were packed up. You’d drive him home, drop him off with a playful slap on the back, and head to the wildness he’d never see.

He didn’t need to know about the after-parties. He didn’t need to see you in your shortest leather mini skirt, the one that barely passed as clothing, as you downed beer after beer straight from the bottle, while the groupies flashed their tits at the band.

Joshua didn’t need to witness the wild shit that happened when everyone was too drunk or high to care about who was screwing who in the corner or the endless river of alcohol. That wasn’t his world, and you didn’t want him to see you like that. It was one thing for him to come to your shows, but seeing you let loose in a way that would make even your bandmates blush? No. He didn’t belong there.

Except… now Joshua was sitting with you in your garage, tuning your guitar like he always did before a big show, and he’d overheard you talking about the after-party.

“It’s the ten-year gig, huh?” he said casually, fingers sliding over the strings, adjusting them with that stupid focus he always had. “Big deal.”

“Yeah,” you replied, not thinking much of it. “It’s gonna be insane.”

Joshua’s head tilted, his lips pursing slightly. You recognized that look. It was the one he got when he was curious about something, when he was too polite to ask outright but dying to know more. He glanced at you. “You doing anything after? Like, after the gig?”

You paused. Shit. You hadn’t expected him to actually ask about that part. “Uh… yeah. There’s an after-party,” you said slowly, not looking at him. You fiddled with one of the tuning pegs on your bass, trying to look busy. “Same old stuff. You know.”

“I don’t know,” he said, and you could hear the smirk in his voice. “You’ve never let me go to one.”

You glanced up at him, already feeling your cheeks heat up. “That’s ‘cause it’s not your scene, Josh.”

“I want to see it,” he said, leaning forward a little. His voice was soft, but there was a determination there you weren’t used to. He wasn’t backing down from this one. “I’ve seen you perform. Why not let me see the rest?”

You let out a nervous laugh, shaking your head. “Trust me, you don’t wanna see the rest.”

Joshua raised an eyebrow, studying you. “Why not?”

Why not? Why not? How were you supposed to explain this without getting even more flustered? You could feel your palms sweating just thinking about it. The thought of Joshua witnessing that version of you—messy, no filter—made your stomach twist in a way that wasn’t entirely comfortable.

“It’s just… different, okay?” you muttered, rubbing the back of your neck. “Like, the crowd’s wilder. Things get… crazy. I’m not the same up there as I am here.”

Joshua narrowed his eyes, clearly not buying it. “I’ve known you since we were in diapers, and you think I can’t handle ‘crazy’?”

“You’re not getting it,” you insisted, your voice a little sharper than you meant it to be. “This isn’t just a few beers and hanging out. People get wild, Josh. There’s stuff that happens that you probably don’t want to see. Hell, I don’t want you to see it.”

He didn’t flinch, didn’t back down. “Maybe I do.”

You stared at him, dumbfounded. Was he serious right now? Joshua, the guy who got anxious if someone said a cuss word too loud around him, was asking to see the madness that was your after-party?

“Why the hell would you want to see that?” you finally asked, genuinely confused.

“Because,” he said simply, leaning forward on his knees, “I’ve always seen one side of you. The side you let me see. I wanna see the whole picture. I want to know who you are when you’re up there, when you’re with your band, when you’re… being yourself.”

You felt your heart thud hard against your chest. Shit. This wasn’t just about the party, was it? He wanted to understand you. All of you.

“I don’t know, man…” You trailed off, looking anywhere but at him. 

“I can handle it,” Joshua said, voice gentle. “I’m not a kid. I know what goes on. Just because I don’t live like that doesn’t mean I can’t handle seeing it.”

You bit your lip, hesitating. He was stubborn, and you knew he wouldn’t let this go easily.

“Alright,” you finally said, sighing. “But don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

Joshua smiled, wide and a little too innocent. “I’ll take my chances.”

[...]

The van sat parked in front of your house, baking in the morning sun, loaded with amps, guitars, and a drum kit that had seen better days. You were supervising the guys hauling the last of the equipment into the back, hair still wrapped in rollers, trying not to sweat through your shirt before you even made it to the venue.

And then, you saw him.

Joshua was walking up the driveway, and for a split second, you didn’t recognize him. The button-up shirt, the clean-cut image you were so used to—it was all gone. Instead, he was wearing one of your shirts, and not just any shirt. 

It was from your solo album outside the band, the one with the wild, scrawling letters across the chest and the cover art below. The cover art that featured your bust, as your tits were covered by an electric guitar. Skin covered in smeared kiss marks, lips of all colors pressed against your skin in a way that had been raunchy enough to make your bandmates whistle when you first showed them.

The album cover had been controversial, to say the least, but it sold like hotcakes. And Joshua—Joshua—was strutting around in it like it was no big deal.

You almost choked on your own spit.

He had black jeans on, hugging his legs in a way you didn’t expect, and he’d thrown on a couple of leather bracelets that looked suspiciously like the ones you’d worn on stage a few times. And the sunglasses perched on his head? Definitely not his usual vibe. He looked like someone who belonged backstage, maybe even on stage, and not at some church picnic. Worse—he looked like the kind of guy you could moan just from looking at.

Your brain short-circuited. You could already imagine the girls from your staff catching sight of him and drooling. Hell, you were almost drooling.

But then you caught sight of that shirt again, and all you could think was, out of all the merch I’ve got, why the fuck did he pick that one?

“Josh…” you called out, your voice full of disbelief as he approached. You gestured at the shirt. “Did… did your parents see you before you left?”

Joshua burst out laughing, shaking his head. “Are you kidding? No way. My mom would’ve had a heart attack. I snuck out before they were even awake.”

You groaned, clapping your forehead. “Oh my God. You realize you’re walking around with a picture of my tits on your chest, right?”

He grinned, glancing down at the shirt like it hadn’t even occurred to him. “Yeah, I noticed. It’s bold, right?”

“Bold?” you repeated, eyes wide. “It’s fucking obscene! You wearing that is obscene. Jesus, I can already hear the aunties in the neighborhood clutching their pearls.”

Joshua shrugged, completely unfazed. “Relax. No one from church is gonna be at the venue. I’m good.”

You gave him a hard look, still half in disbelief. “I’m not worried about church people, I’m worried about all the other people.”

He raised an eyebrow. “What, you don’t think I can pull it off?”

You blinked. Was he pulling it off? The more you stared at him, the more your brain started to fry. You didn’t know how to process this new Joshua—the one standing in front of you like he’d been born to wear that shirt. Born to make you lose your goddamn mind.

Joshua noticed your silence and raised an eyebrow. “What? You embarrassed?”

“I—no!” you shot back, though your cheeks were burning. “It’s just… fuck, you couldn’t pick a more normal one?”

“Where’s the fun in that?” he asked, flashing a grin that was a little too cocky for your liking.

“I can already see the crew girls drooling over you.”

Joshua shrugged, completely unfazed. “Let ‘em drool.”

You had to laugh at that.

“You know what? Never mind,” you muttered, waving him off. “Let’s just get to the venue before I lose it.”

Joshua chuckled and followed you to the van, casually tossing his sunglasses onto the dashboard as he climbed into the passenger seat. You took one last glance at him before slamming the door shut. He was leaning back, arms crossed, looking totally at ease in a way that was both infuriating and… kind of hot. Shit.

You could feel Joshua’s presence next to you, his knee brushing yours whenever you hit a bump. It was distracting as hell, but you did your best to focus on the road, on the gig, on anything that wasn’t Joshua in that damn shirt.

The ride was filled with the usual chaos—your drummer tapping out beats on the seat in front of him, your guitarist tweaking pedal settings on the floor, and the bass player scrolling through social media, barely paying attention. Joshua sat next to you, quiet, but you could tell he was absorbing everything. The energy, the vibe. This was the part of your life he’d never seen before.

When you finally pulled up to the venue, you felt the familiar buzz of expectation in your chest. The stage crew was already setting up, speakers being wired in, lights being tested. You hopped out of the van, gesturing to the others to get moving.

Joshua followed close behind, his eyes wide as he took in the scene. The venue was bigger than the high school stages he was used to seeing you on. It was packed with people running back and forth, instruments being tuned, sound checks echoing in the air.

“Damn,” he muttered under his breath, eyes scanning the stage. “This is...bigger than I expected.”

“Told ‘ya,” you said, grinning as you grabbed your bass and slung it over your shoulder. “Welcome to the real deal.”

Joshua nodded, clearly impressed. You could see the awe in his face, and a part of you felt proud that he was seeing this side of your world. The chaos, the noise, the energy. It was all part of the life you lived—the one he’d never been fully exposed to.

As the band started running through sound check, Joshua found a spot near the back, watching quietly, tapping his foot along with the beat. Every once in a while, you’d glance back at him, half-expecting to see him overwhelmed, but he wasn’t. He was nodding along, sunglasses now perched on his nose, looking like he fit right in.

You could hear the low murmur of the crowd outside, getting louder as more people settled into their seats. Joshua was still talking with Rob, your drummer, which gave you just enough time to pull the rollers out of your hair and finish your makeup in front of the cracked mirror in the dressing room. You rushed through it, swiping on your signature dark lipstick, when the door creaked open, and in walked Joshua.

Of course.

He stopped mid-stride, eyes darting around the room, then finally landing on you—and your outfit. You were wearing a black, lacy top that was just sheer enough to leave little to the imagination, especially when it came to the piercing you knew he had seen before. You’d never made a big deal out of it, but every time Joshua caught a glimpse, he’d get that uncomfortable look on his face, like he wasn’t supposed to be seeing something so private.

“Eyes, Joshua. Eyes,” you could almost hear him coaching himself. His gaze flickered up to your face, but it was too late—you’d caught the quick dip to your chest, to the black leather pants hugging your hips like a second skin.

“Uh, hey,” he muttered, scratching the back of his neck, clearly trying to act casual, but his voice came out rougher than usual. “I was, uh… just letting you know I should probably get to my seat. The crowd’s filling in.”

You smirked, finishing the last swipe of lipstick and tossing the tube onto the makeup table. “Don’t worry about it,” you said, standing up and adjusting the top slightly. “You’re not sitting in the crowd anyway.”

“What?” His brows furrowed in confusion, still trying hard to maintain eye contact, which was almost comical at this point.

“You coming up for the encore,” you explained, crossing your arms. “VIP section, side-stage. Didn’t I tell you?”

Joshua blinked. “No. You didn’t mention that.”

You grinned, seeing how flustered he was, and it only made you want to push him further. “Guess I forgot.” You winked, loving the way his mouth opened slightly, the words stuck in his throat. “Go get settled. We’ll call you up when it’s time.”

He mumbled something under his breath and awkwardly nodded, backing out of the room with a half-hearted wave. As soon as the door clicked shut, you let out a breath, grinning to yourself. Good luck keeping your eyes up there, church boy.

[...]

By the time you hit the stage, the crowd was electric. You could feel the vibration in your bones, the pulse of the drums and bass weaving through your body. The lights were blinding, sweat already starting to drip down your back within the first few songs. You scanned the crowd, catching sight of Joshua standing where you told him, off to the side, eyes glued to you like he’d never seen you before.

Maybe he hadn’t.

You weren’t just some girl with a guitar tonight. You were in it, the music flowing through your veins, your hands sliding over the neck of the guitar like they were made for it. The band was tight, every note hitting harder than the last, and you felt alive in a way you couldn’t describe. The crowd roared, hands reaching out as your bandmates, already stripped of their shirts, threw them into the audience like trophies.

Joshua’s eyes were wide, watching the sweat drip down your arms as your muscles flexed with every chord change. You were lost in it, mouth slightly open during one of your solos, head thrown back as you pulled the guitar into your body like it was an extension of you. You could feel his gaze, heavy and unblinking, and it only pushed you harder. You let your voice growl into the mic, letting out the kind of raw, strong energy that got you here in the first place.

His mind must’ve been racing. He’d seen you play before, but never like this. Never with this much heat, this much intensity. You weren’t just a rockstar tonight—you were a sex symbol, and every single person in that venue, including Joshua, could feel it.

It hit him then—this was why you didn’t want him to come to the after-parties. It wasn’t just about the chaos or the booze. It was because, in this space, on stage, with the lights and the music and the crowd screaming your name—you were untouchable. And so, so fucking hot.

He’d always known you were beautiful, but this? This was something else. Watching your body move in rhythm with the music, the way your fingers slid across the strings, the sweat glistening on your skin—fuck. Joshua couldn’t take his eyes off you. Every part of you was dripping with confidence, sexuality.

The crowd erupted as you launched into the final solo, the room swelling with the sound of your guitar. Joshua’s gaze lingered on your body, on the way your leather pants clung to every curve, on the sway of your hips as you moved, and on your lips, slightly parted as you leaned into the mic. He swallowed hard, heat rushing to his face as he watched your muscles tense and release, every move planned, every note flawless.

His thoughts ran wild, and as you finished the set, throwing your head back in a final roar of victory, he couldn’t help but think, So this is what she didn’t want me to see.

The show ended in a blur of cheers and flashing lights, the energy still pulsing in your veins as you stumbled off stage, half-drunk on adrenaline. When you spotted Joshua at the back of the room, standing there with that wide-eyed look of disbelief, you couldn't help but laugh.

You walked over to him, sweat still glistening on your skin, a tired but satisfied grin on your face. “Well?” you asked, chest heaving. “What’d you think?”

Joshua blinked, forcing his gaze up from the floor to meet yours. He swallowed thickly, that guilty knot tightening in his throat. “It was… amazing,” he admitted, his voice a little hoarse. “You were—fuck, you’re incredible up there.”

His compliment was genuine, but there was something else in his eyes. Something conflicted, like he wasn’t sure how to feel about what he’d just seen. His best friend—the girl he’d known since forever—looked like this. Played like that. He felt sick about it. Sick because his heart was pounding for all the wrong reasons. Sick because seeing you like that—half-wild, sweaty, powerful—it wasn’t just admiration anymore.

You grinned, wiping your forehead with the back of your hand. “Told you it was a rush.”

Before he could respond, the two of you heard the unmistakable sound of feet pounding the floor. Fans. A whole wave of them was running toward the back, hoping to catch a glimpse of the band before they left. You didn’t even think, just grabbed Joshua’s hand and yanked him with you, sprinting toward the van parked outside.

You were laughing as you ran, your grip tight around his wrist, and Joshua couldn’t help the way his heart raced—whether from running or from being so close to you, he didn’t know. He could hear you breathing hard, could see the wildness in your eyes. And for the first time, he got it. The thrill. The chaos. The rush that came with living your life like this.

By the time you both reached the van and slammed the door behind you, you collapsed onto the seat, letting out a long, relieved moan. Joshua just stood there for a moment, chest heaving, eyes wide. He felt it now—the thrill, the electric hum in his blood. But also something else, something that made his stomach twist.

When you caught his eye and smiled that lazy, satisfied smile, he felt like he was losing his grip. You looked like a sexy mess, hair tousled, lipstick smeared, eyes sparkling. He could still feel the warmth of your hand in his, and it was doing things to him—dangerous things.

“The after-party’s at a club,” you said, glancing at him as the van roared to life. “Private for tonight. Just the band and our friends.”

Joshua nodded, his mouth dry. He had no idea what to expect.

[...]

The club was another world entirely.

The moment you stepped inside, Joshua was hit with the smell of sweat, alcohol, and something that might’ve been smoke, but wasn’t just cigarettes. The bass was pounding, vibrating through the floor, and there were bodies everywhere.

The first thing he noticed was your bandmates already surrounded by a small crowd of girls—half-naked, some practically sitting in their laps. One of them was making out with the guitarist, her hand slipping under his shirt while the others just laughed, already drunk and messy.

Joshua’s throat tightened, his eyes wide as he took it all in. It was chaos. Absolute chaos. People were drinking, smoking, making out in dark corners, hands wandering under clothes with zero shame.

And then there was you.

You didn’t miss a beat, grabbing a drink from the bar and downing it like it was water. When you turned to face him, leaning back against the bar with your leather pants clinging to your body and your shirt barely covering anything, you were a vision. A sexy, disheveled vision, your hair a mess, lips wet from the drink, and eyes hazy from the adrenaline of the show.

You were the kind of person that people wrote songs about—the kind of person that people lost themselves over.

“You good?” you asked, voice low, almost drowned out by the music.

Joshua blinked, swallowing hard. “Yeah… yeah, I’m good.” But he wasn’t. He could barely keep his head straight with everything going on around him.

You grinned, holding out your drink. “Here. This’ll help.”

He hesitated for a second, but then grabbed the glass, taking a long gulp. The burn of alcohol felt good, grounding him for a moment. But it wasn’t enough to block out the heat in his chest, the strange attraction, the strange guilt swirling inside him.

You chuckled, watching him down half the drink. “Easy there.”

Joshua wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, exhaling hard. He shook his head, swallowing again, trying to focus. But then you were close—too close—and he could smell the combination of your perfume and sweat, and suddenly it was all he could think about. You were so casual about it, so relaxed in this wild mess, like you were born for it.

Joshua stared at you, watching the way your body moved with the music, the way your hips swayed slightly, your hair falling in your face. And he couldn’t help it—he wanted you. Wanted to pull you close, to taste the sweat on your skin, to feel the heat of you pressed against him.

But he couldn’t. You were his best friend. You’d been through everything together. But right now, in this moment, you weren’t just his friend. You were a fucking rockstar. And that terrified him as much as it thrilled him.

Joshua took another long drink, trying to drown the feelings that were bubbling up inside him. You watched him, a slow, knowing smile creeping onto your lips as you leaned in closer, eyes gleaming in the dim light.

“You feelin’ it now, aren’t you?” you whispered, voice just loud enough for him to hear.

He nodded, not trusting himself to speak. Because yeah, he was feeling it. The rush, the heat, the want. And it was all because of you.

Someone in the crowd—a guy with a half-buttoned shirt and lazy grin—held out a blunt to Joshua, smirking. “Want a hit, man?”

Joshua froze. His mind blanked for a second. “Nah, he doesn’t smoke. Leave him alone.” The air suddenly felt too heavy, the idea of it too real. Before he could even answer, you were at his side, grabbing the guy’s hand and pushing it back with a casual laugh. “He’s too saintly for that.”

Joshua froze, the word saintly cutting through the noise. You were teasing, of course, but that single word twisted in his gut. He didn’t need you looking at him like that—like he was too pure, too clean for this world you thrived in. He hated it. Hated that you saw him like some untouched, pristine version of himself that didn’t even exist. That look you gave him, all amused and lighthearted, made his skin crawl because it only reminded him of how distant he felt from you in that moment.

You grinned at him, eyes gleaming. “Come on, Josh. You’re way too neat for this shit. Leave the bad habits to me.”

He clenched his jaw, hands in his pockets, trying to keep his cool. The thing was—you had no idea. You saw him as the same old Joshua, the one you grew up with, the guy who kept his hands clean while you dived headfirst into the chaos. But fuck, that wasn’t him. Not really. Not anymore. You thought he was some perfect church boy who’d never done anything wild, who probably still had his V-card, for God’s sake.

If only you knew.

The way you laughed about it, as if the thought of him doing anything wild—anything sinful—was so absurd it was hilarious. And that burned. More than it should’ve.

Joshua swallowed, trying to keep his cool, but your words dug in deep. Saintly. Neat. Like you didn’t know. Like you couldn’t even imagine him doing anything like that. He wasn’t a fucking saint. He wasn’t clean like you thought. He’d done things—felt things—that would wipe that smirk off your face. But you… you never saw him that way. Not Joshua.

 “You’re lucky, y’know? Not everyone can pull off that whole saintly thing,” you teased, brushing a hand through your messy hair.

He clenched his jaw. “I’m not a fucking saint,” he muttered under his breath. But you didn’t hear him—or maybe you didn’t care.

Joshua felt his pulse quicken, the alcohol buzzing in his system, loosening up the tension in his limbs but doing nothing to calm his mind. He hated how you looked at him. Like he was too clean, too good for this world you lived in. He hated how you never saw him as anything more than “good ol’ Joshua.” The guy who had never gone off the rails, the guy who probably never even had his dick wet before.

That’s what you thought, wasn’t it?

And fuck, he couldn’t stand it. The truth gnawed at him, because you had no idea who he was outside of your little bubble. You didn’t know about the times he’d stayed up too late, desperate to cum, the fantasies he’d let himself get lost in—half of them about you, goddammit. You didn’t know about the nights he’d spent grinding against someone, hands buried in their hair, feeling the warmth of their body pressed against his, the messy nights where he lost himself entirely.

You looked at him, one eyebrow raised. “Oh yeah? Prove it.”

His breath caught. You were joking—you had to be—but something in the way you said it, so casual, so sure that he wouldn’t… it broke something in him. The club around him blurred as he focused on you, standing there all relaxed, your lips still slightly parted, that familiar teasing glint in your eyes.

He couldn’t stop himself. “You really think I’m that fucking innocent, huh?” His voice was sharper than he intended, the words cutting through the thrum of the music.

You blinked, pulling back slightly, surprised by the edge in his tone. “What? No, I just—”

“You think I’ve never been with anyone? Never had my fuckin’ cock wet before?” He didn’t care how crude it sounded. Didn’t care that it was probably the first time you’d ever heard him talk like that. He was sick of it. Sick of the version of himself you’d created in your mind.

You feel the heat rise in your chest, a compound of anger and something else you don’t even want to admit. The way he said it—rough, out of character—like he was someone else entirely. Part of you wants to slap him for it, for breaking the image of the Joshua you knew. The good one. The clean-cut guy who’d never even raise his voice, let alone tell you he wasn’t so fucking innocent. But the other part of you… it liked it. The tension, the bite in his words, the way he stood there, all riled up.

You narrow your eyes, smirking just a little.

His jaw clenches. His nostrils flare. For the first time, you see his eyes darken—none of that usual light. No soft Joshua anymore. His face shifts into something harder, almost dangerous. It catches you off guard, and suddenly you’re not sure if you’re playing a game you can win.

“Don’t push it,” he warns. It sends a cold lick from the beginning of your spine to the end, but you tilt your head, still smirking, testing him.

“What? Gonna do something about it?” You lean in closer, just inches from his face now, daring him. “C’mon, Joshua. Show me.”

And then it happens.

He’s on you so fast, you don’t even have time to process it. His hands grab your waist, fingers digging into your hips, pulling you flush against him, and you feel it—the hard line of his cock pressing into your belly. Your breath catches in your throat, but you don’t pull away. Instead, you lean in, testing the waters, your body instinctively reacting to the sudden heat between you two.

His mouth crashes onto yours, rough, almost desperate, all that pent-up tension is spilling out at once. His lips are soft but demanding, like they’re asking for something, but also taking it without permission. You kiss him back just as fiercely, a messy clash of teeth and tongues, the taste of alcohol on both your breaths mixing as you struggle for control.

His hands slide down your back, grabbing your ass with a roughness that makes you gasp, and he pulls you tighter against him, grinding into you just enough to let you know exactly how turned on he is. “Fuck,” he mutters into your mouth, barely pulling away to speak. You can feel the frustration, the years of him being the good one, bubbling up in every kiss, every touch.

You’re not sure if it’s the alcohol, but you grab onto his shoulders, pulling him even closer, your nails digging into his skin through his shirt. It’s messy, frantic, and the sound of it—the heavy breathing, the low growls coming from him, the way your lips smack together—fills the small space between you like the only thing that matters is how fast and hard you can make this happen.

And god, it’s wrong. So fucking wrong. You can feel it in the back of your mind, the thought lingering, telling you this isn’t who Joshua is. Not the guy you grew up with. But right now, he doesn’t feel like the Joshua you knew. He feels like someone who’s been hiding this side of himself for too long, someone who’s finally letting the mask slip.

And the worst part? You like it. Maybe too much.

He pulls back just enough to look at you, and his eyes—fuck, his eyes are almost black with craving, his chest heaving as he stares at you like you’re the only thing in the world that matters. You can see it on his face—how much he wants this, how much he needs to prove to you that he’s not as clean as you think he is.

“You sure you wanna keep pushing?” His voice is raspy, breathless, and his grip on your hips tightens. “’Cause I don’t think you can handle what happens if you do.”

Your breath hitches, but you don’t back down. “Try me,” you whisper, barely able to keep your voice steady.

And just like that, he’s on you again. This time, rougher. His mouth moves down to your neck, teeth scraping against your skin as he kisses you there, biting just hard enough to make you gasp. Your hands tangle in his hair, pulling him closer, and you feel the hard press of his cock grinding into your stomach as his hands roam over your body, touching, grabbing, pulling. He’s all over you.

You’re backed into the wall of the van now, his body trapping you there, and for a second, you think about the others. Your bandmates. The people who know Joshua—the real Joshua. You can almost feel their judgment, the silent “what the fuck” looks they’d give you if they saw this. If they saw how you’re fucking with his head, breaking him down until he’s someone else entirely.

But right now, none of that matters. Not when he’s kissing you like this, touching you like this. Not when his hand slips under your shirt, fingers grazing over your bare skin, making you shiver. Not when he’s showing you this side of himself that you never even thought existed.

And fuck, you realize. You’ve been wrong about Joshua. So, so wrong.

And he’s not done showing you just how wrong you’ve been.

Joshua’s hands slide under your top, squeezing your waist, his thumbs teasing your skin, brushing against the underside of your boobs until they find your nipples, flicking at the piercings. The sensation makes you gasp, your body betraying you as you fold under his touch. You clutch his arm, your breath heavy against his neck, before you moan right into his ear. You feel him twitch, nearly stumbling in front of you, his control unraveling.

Your fingers tangle in his hair, yanking it back to force his eyes on you. His bottom lip catches between his teeth, and you can see the hunger there, the intensity, the rawness of it. “We need to stop,” you breathe, trying to sound firm, but even to your own ears, it’s weak.

Joshua’s mouth presses back against your neck, and he mutters between kisses, each one punctuating his words. “No. You don’t. Want. To. Stop. Do. You?” His breath is hot against your skin, each word hitting you harder than the last, unraveling your willpower.

“I’m serious,” you insist, but it’s pathetic, because the way he’s touching you—like he’s memorizing every inch of your body, like he’s known this moment was coming—makes it impossible to think straight.

He pulls back for a moment, eyes searching yours, checking if you really want to stop. His expression softens, as if he’s giving you an out. 

“We need to stop, or we’re gonna end up fucking right here in front of everyone.”

For a second, you both pause, glancing around. The crowd is still buzzing, everyone too lost in their own world to notice what’s happening between the two of you. You could, technically. You could fuck right here, and no one would bat an eye, but that last shred of morality keeps you in check, pulling you back from the edge. Barely.

Joshua was imagining just how much worse things could get. But honestly, he liked every single one of these thoughts. 

He grabs your hand, pulling you toward the club’s parking lot, and rushing toward the van.

The heavy door of the van slides shut behind you, and Joshua locks it with a rough click, sealing the two of you inside. The second the door’s closed, it’s like the floodgates open. His hands are everywhere—grabbing, pulling, needy. He kisses you harder now, more frantic, his body pushing you against the side of the van, and your back hits the first seat with a thud.

You stumble, the both of you crashing into a pile of boxed-up instruments. Your knee hits a guitar case, his ass bump on the drum box, but neither of you care. Joshua’s hand slides down to your ass, squeezing hard as he pulls you into him, making sure you feel every inch of him pressed against your thigh. You’re practically panting, the need between you both building, burning.

You push him back toward the last row of seats, hands fumbling at his belt as you go, your teeth grazing his jaw, his neck, tasting the sweat and the heat from the show earlier.

He moans down in his throat, a sound that rumbles through his chest and straight into yours, and you swear it’s the hottest fucking thing you’ve ever heard. His fingers dig into your hips as he backs into the seat, pulling you down on top of him, your legs straddling his lap, the hard press of his cock straining against his jeans beneath you.

“Fuck,” you gasp, grinding against him, and his head falls back against the seat, eyes rolling shut for a second as you move. You take advantage of it, your lips finding his neck, your teeth scraping his skin just enough to make him hiss.

The leather of your pants is sticking to your skin, but you barely register it as Joshua leans down, kissing you again, his hands slipping under your top and pulling it up, exposing you. His mouth moves lower, trailing down your neck, across your collarbone, and then lower, until his lips are at your chest. He doesn’t hesitate—his mouth finds your nipple, and he flicks his tongue over the piercing, making you arch your back, a strangled moan escaping your lips.

The leather pants cling to you, slick with sweat, and you can feel every inch of them suffocating your skin. You groan in frustration, hands fumbling to yank them off. In your hurry, you knock your elbow hard against a nearby box, hissing in pain. Joshua’s hands are on you immediately, steadying you as you finally peel the damn pants down, tossing them aside like they personally offended you. He takes the opportunity to shove his own pants down to his knees, and as you glance up, he's yanking his shirt over his head.

You’re back on his lap before he even realizes what’s happening, grinding down on him through the thin fabric of your underwear and his boxers. It’s a hell of a lot better than the rough leather, and you feel the instant response—his hands grip your thighs so hard it’s like he’s holding on for dear life, his head falling back with this breathless, whiny moan.

His fingers slide down the front of your panties, finding you soaked, and he’s instantly wrecked. “Fuck, you’re dripping,” he growls, his voice ragged, eyes dark and hungry as they lock onto yours. “You’re so fucking wet for me.”

The dirty words coming from him feel so wrong, so foreign, but god, it’s making your head spin, red flags of danger flickering in your mind, and you can’t stop.

“No shit, Sherlock,” you mumble, still grinding against his hand, but then he pushes a finger inside you, and your whole body jolts. A hand flies up, palm slamming against the fogged window for balance, leaving a print there as you rock forward, riding his thick, calloused finger.

His finger feels huge, and the stretch of it makes you dizzy. You’re thankful for the seat behind you, giving you the support you need because you’re practically sprawled back on it, grinding on his hand like your life depends on it. 

He’s watching you, eyes locked on every twitch of your face, every moan spilling from your lips, and then he slides another finger in. The stretch makes you gasp, thighs trembling as he moves them inside you, fingers curling and hitting that spot that makes your vision go blurry.

“Talk dirty to me,” he suddenly demands, voice low and gruff. 

“You… don’t like it when I curse,” you manage, barely coherent as his fingers keep moving inside you.

“Fuck that,” he growls, fingers curling deeper, making you whimper. “Call me whatever the fuck you want. Call me a motherfucker, I don’t care. Just talk to me, let me hear it.”

Your body’s trembling, eyes rolling back as you grind harder against his hand, desperate for more.

You moan, feeling his fingers pumping inside you as his thumb brushes your clit. You’re teetering on the edge, and words are spilling out before you can stop them. “God, Joshua… Always acting so pure. I bet no one would believe how fucking hard you are for me right now, huh?”

His breath stutters at your words, his fingers thrusting harder inside you. “Keep going.”

“Is this what you’ve wanted?” you gasp, rocking your hips against him, feeling that coil tightening in your belly. “You want me to ride your fingers like a fucking slut, huh?”

He groans, low and deep. "Fuck, yes”

Your body’s trembling, every thrust of his fingers pushing you closer to the brink. “You’re such a motherfucker,” you whisper against his lips, your voice breaking. "You feel that? Feel how close I am? You're gonna make me—shit!—cum all over your fingers.”

Your head falls back against the seat, eyes fluttering closed as his rough, calloused fingers curl inside you, hitting that spot that makes your entire body tense. You're whimpering, struggling to keep the dirty talk going, but it's hard to form words when every nerve in your body is on fire. "God, Joshua, your fingers... they’re so fucking big," you manage to choke out, voice shaky.

He smirks, eyes dark, watching the way your body responds to him. “If you think my fingers are big,” he breathes, thrusting them deeper, faster, “imagine how you’re gonna feel when it’s my cock inside you.”

The thought sends another wave of heat pooling between your legs, and you grip his forearm, nails digging into his skin as he moves his fingers faster, relentless, pressing into your sweet spot over and over. Your walls clamp down around him, and a broken cry escapes your lips, your body trembling as the tension snaps, pleasure ripping through you in a rush.

"Fuck—Joshua!" you moan, your voice high and desperate as your orgasm hits you hard, your pussy squeezing his fingers so tight you can barely think. Your slick coats his hand, and he watches you fall apart, eyes locked on the way your body writhes against his, chest heaving, face twisted in pleasure.

He doesn’t stop, doesn’t even slow down, and you can feel him watching you, his expression mirroring your own without even meaning to. His lips part in a quiet curse, like he’s just as lost in it as you are, completely captivated by the way you cum on his fingers, riding the digits until you curl up on him.

His fingers slip out of you, slick and shiny, leaving you empty. Your breath catches in your throat when his hand dips down to his own cock, still hard and straining under the thin fabric of his boxers. He grunts softly, shifting, and you catch a glimpse of the outline of it through the fabric—big, thick. Your mouth goes dry at the sight.

He’s moving fast, lips already on you again, his mouth latching onto your nipple. You gasp as his teeth graze the sensitive bud, his tongue swirling over the metal of your piercing like he’s obsessed—after all, besides seeing it through your blouses, now he has them in his mouth. His grip tightens around your waist, pulling you closer, almost like he’s trying to devour you.

���Fuck, Joshua,” you rasp out, voice shaky, still buzzing from the orgasm he pulled from you with just his fingers. “Where the hell did you learn how to do that?”

He pauses for a second, teeth scraping your skin as his mouth moves up to nip at your collarbone, smirking. “What, you think just 'cause I look all neat and clean, I don’t know how to make a girl cum?” he leaves a wet hickey on your chest. “Trust me, babe, I know exactly what I’m doing.”

You arch into him, head tilting back as his tongue flicks against your other nipple, but this time, he looks inside your eyes. “Could’ve fooled me… always acting like a saint.”

His hand tightens on your thigh, sliding up between your legs again, brushing against your soaked panties. He smirks against your skin. “You’re the one who’s been driving me fucking crazy. Always teasing me. You know how hard it’s been to keep my hands off you?”

You’re about to reply, but his fingers are pulling at the waistband of your panties, dragging them to the side. The next thing you know, he’s pushing his boxers down, freeing his cock. Your eyes widen slightly at the sight of it—he’s big, thicker than you expected, the tip already slick with precum. And for a moment, you can’t help but wonder how many girls have seen this side of him, but then he’s guiding you back onto his lap, hands firm on your hips, lining himself up with your entrance.

“Shit,” you whisper, feeling the thick head of his cock brushing against your folds. The feel makes you hold your breath, the heat from his body and the sheer wrongness of it making your pulse race.

His eyes flick up to meet yours, and for a brief second, there’s conflict there—like he’s torn between the best friend who used to crash on your couch, and the guy who's about to fuck you. He’s barely holding himself together.

He guides himself inside you slowly, inch by inch, and you can feel every stretch, every pulse of his cock as it fills you up. You gasp, fingers digging into his shoulders as you sink down onto him, his size making your head spin. "Jesus, Joshua..." you groan, head falling forward, overwhelmed by how full you feel.

His cock feels impossibly big, filling you up completely, and for a moment, you wonder how the hell you’re even taking him.

His hands tremble slightly on your waist as he pushes the rest of the way in, a throaty moan slipping from his lips. “Fuck, this is so wrong,” he mutters, voice shaky, eyes squeezing shut. “You’re my fucking best friend, I shouldn’t be doing this—” His voice breaks off into another moan as you start to move, your hips rolling against him.

You watch him, grinning at the conflict flickering in his eyes, the way his face contorts with each movement of your hips. His best friend—the girl he’s never even crossed boundaries with—now stretched out, tight around his cock. It's almost too much for him, his mind clearly buzzing with how wrong it is, but his body craves more, needing the way you feel wrapped around him.

His moans meld with yours, louder now, whiny. "You're making me fucking lose my mind."

You lean in close, lips brushing his ear as you whisper, “Then lose it. Let me fuck you like no one else ever has.”

He growls low in his throat, his control slipping completely. He thrusts up into you, harder, deeper, and you moan, head falling back as your body rocks against his. His hands slide down to your ass, squeezing roughly as he pulls you down onto him again and again, his cock hitting deeper with each thrust.

You press both hands to his chest, halting his frantic thrusts, pinning him back against the seat. “Whoa, slow down,” you say, eyes locked on his as you adjust yourself, shifting until you find the angle that makes you gasp. His cock twitches inside you, and you bite back a smirk. You know you’ve got him right where you want him now.

You flick your hair to one side, leaning back a bit, and start riding him slow, dragging it out, making sure he feels every inch. His mouth opens to say something, but you change the motion, circling your hips instead, and whatever he was going to say dies in his throat. You scoff, half laughing, half moaning. “What? Why so quiet now?”

His hands fly to the armrests, knuckles turning white as he grips the leather for dear life. You know exactly what he’s doing—trying to stop himself from grabbing you too rough, like you can’t handle it. Like you don’t want him to. But you take one of his hands and place it on the side of your face, his palm practically engulfing your head. You lean into his touch, biting your lip before saying it. “Slap me.”

His eyes go wide. “What?”

“Come on,” you grind down on him again, slower, teasing. “You’ve never slapped anyone before? Right on my face. Do it.”

He looks torn, breath hitching as you ride him harder. You can tell he’s struggling to even think straight, his stomach clenching, his abs flexing under your hands as the pleasure hits him hard. But it’s your pace that’s driving him insane, the way you bounce on his cock, taking him deep, then slowing down just enough to drag it out. He’s barely hanging on.

His voice is rough when he finally speaks, “Fuck… I don’t—” He gasps when you clench around him on purpose, his hips flinching up into you, reflexive. His hand tightens on your jaw before he lets go, shaking his head. “I don’t think I can—”

“Shut up,” you whisper, eyes burning with challenge. “Slap me.” The way you’re looking at him, daring him, makes his heart pound in his chest. He hesitates for half a second, but when you grind down on him again, harder, his control snaps.

He slaps you, hard. Harder than he intended.

The sound of it rings out, followed by his shocked gasp. But you’re already moaning, your pussy clenching so tight around him that he almost loses it. He watches in disbelief as you react, the slap turning you on even more, your walls fluttering around his cock, soaking him.

“Holy shit,” he breathes, staring at you, wide-eyed, as you keep riding him like nothing just happened—no, like it made everything better.

Your body jerks with each bounce, the slap leaving a burning sting on your cheek, but all it does is fuel the fire between your legs. “See?” you taunt. “That wasn’t so hard, was it?”

He groans, the sound low and desperate. “Fuck… you’re fucking insane.” His hands find your waist again, but this time he doesn’t try to hold back. He grips you tight, fingers digging into your skin as you grind against him, circling your hips just to watch his head fall back, lips parted, eyes squeezed shut.

Every time you clench down on him on purpose, his whole body flinches, like he’s trying so hard not to lose control. “Jesus Christ, you’re so fucking tight,” he growls, voice ragged. “I can feel… fuck, I can feel you squeezing me like you want me to fucking break.”

You bite your lip, eyes half-lidded as you meet his gaze. “Maybe I do.”

Joshua's thumb strokes the still-hot skin of your cheek where he slapped you. You bounce hard on his cock, the slap only making the tension between you snap tighter. His thumb lingers, gently caressing the mark like he’s making up for what he did, but you grin, biting your lip through the pleasure and ask for more;

“Slap me again.”

It’s the same voice you used when you asked him to push you harder on a swing—excited, impatient, full of that rush of adrenaline. He sucks in a breath, brows furrowed like he’s torn, but the way your pussy tightens around him makes his decision for him. His hand raises again, and this time, it lands with purpose.

Your face turns to the side from the force, cheek burning red-hot, and fuck, it burns even better than the last one. 

Your pussy tightens around him instantly, and Joshua groans. He can feel the way your body responds, how you pulse around him every time he does it. You moan, “Fuck… I think I’m gonna cum again.” The whine at the end of your sentence makes his cock twitch, and it sparks something animalistic in him.

Joshua grabs your hips, lifting you just enough to pin you down on his lap, grinding his pelvis into you so deep that your vision goes hazy for a second. You roll your eyes, barely hanging on. Before you can catch your breath, he’s flipping you onto the seat, his cock never leaving you as he lays you down, spreading your legs up and grabbing the backs of your knees.

The new angle has you arching your back immediately, hands scrambling for purchase on the seat. He starts thrusting, and it’s so hard and deep you swear your body is melting into the seat. Each snap of his hips sends a sharp lock of bliss through you, his pelvis slamming into yours, and you know anyone outside can hear the van rocking, but you don’t fucking care.

You don’t care about anything except him, the way his thumb circles your clit just as he slips it down, thumb circling the base of his cock, spreading your slickness over the throbbing nerve. Your body jerks, an involuntary sob escaping your throat.

Joshua’s never seen you like this—ruined, makeup streaking down your face, thick tears rolling down your cheeks. His grin is huge, his breath ragged as he stares down at you, fucking relentless in his pace. “Aw, look at you. You’re crying on my cock,” he coos, his voice laced with sweet mockery. He presses harder on your clit, making you squirm, and he chuckles low, shaking his head. “Such a good girl, crying for me like that. You can’t even handle it, can you?”

You let out a strangled gasp, your body writhing under him as you feel the heat pooling low in your stomach, everything inside you winding so tight. “Fuck,” you choke out, “Josh, I’m gonna—”

“I know, baby,” he growls, leaning down, his mouth right by your ear now. “You’re gonna cum all over my cock, gonna make a mess of me?”

You’re too far gone to answer, your head tipped back as your body reaches its breaking point. His thumb circles your clit faster, his cock hitting that spot inside you over and over, and your whole body shakes uncontrollably. You feel the coil snap inside you so hard that you almost black out, your pussy clenching around him like a vice as you cum, the orgasm ripping through you with inhuman intensity. 

You scream his name, tears streaming down your face as you sob through it, your body trembling violently as your release floods out of you, soaking his cock and thighs.

Joshua watches, mesmerized by how fucking ruined you are beneath him, and he leans down, whispering against your lips, “That’s right. Cry for me more, baby. Show me how good it feels. Look at you… soaking me like that, dripping all over me.”

Joshua's hips stutter, and you feel the unmistakable swell of his cock inside you, growing thicker, pulsing as he teeters on the edge. He pulls out suddenly, leaving you breathless as he grips his cock, jerking it against your slick stomach. His hand is tight, desperate, moving fast as his chest rises and falls in ragged breaths.

His moans are a mess—whiny, high-pitched, slipping from his throat like he can’t control them. He bites his bottom lip hard, but the sly little whimpers escape him anyway, each sound more desperate than the last. His abs tense, his whole body trembling above you, muscles tight as a cord about to snap. His eyes flutter shut, head falling back slightly as he loses himself in the feeling.

“Fuck—” he gasps, his voice breaking as his orgasm hits him like a freight train. His grip falters for a split second, and then his cock jerks hard in his hand, spilling hot ropes of cum. It spurts in thick, messy streams, splattering across your belly, sliding up toward your chest, even reaching your chin. His knees buckle slightly, and he has to grab the back of the seat in front of him to keep from collapsing, his whole body shuddering through the force of it.

He’s panting, still jerking himself through the aftershocks, and his cum keeps dripping from the tip, mixing with the sweat that’s already covering both of you. Your legs tremble uncontrollably, falling to the side as your body finally gives out, utterly spent. The van feels suffocating, the air thick and humid, making it hard to breathe as the windows fog up completely now.

Joshua’s hand is still braced on the seat for support, knuckles white, his chest heaving as he tries to catch his breath. His eyes flicker open, and when he looks down at you—covered in him, eyes heavy, body limp—you can see the disbelief, the satisfaction, and maybe even a little guilt.

But neither of you moves, too wrecked to do anything but exist in the humid silence of the van, your breaths slowly returning to something like normal.

Joshua settles into the seat next to you, staring down at you like he’s trying to make sense of everything. You both stay silent, like the weight of what just happened hasn’t fully hit yet. Neither of you moves; it's as if you need this stillness to process, to figure out what the fuck this was and where it might lead. Was it the alcohol? The adrenaline? Or maybe the tension between you two, the one you both never admitted but always felt.

He suddenly stands up, his voice breaking the silence. “Where’s your necessaire?” You barely register the question, too lost in thought, so you just point lazily toward the front of the van, your limbs too tired to follow his movements.

You hear the zipper open, the soft rustle of him digging through your things. Your legs ache from the awkward position they’re in, but before you can shift, Joshua is back beside you. Without a word, he gently lifts your legs, folding them in a more comfortable position, almost cradling you. You catch his eyes as he pulls out makeup remover wipes.

He starts with your face, wiping away the tear-streaked makeup, his touch as soft as it’s ever been. “Close your eyes,” he murmurs, brushing your cheek tenderly—the same cheek he slapped earlier, his movements extra gentle now, like he’s trying to undo any mark he left.

You close your eyes, feeling his hands glide across your skin. “You’re lucky I know how to clean this up,” he teases lightly, the sound of his voice strangely comforting. “You always were a mess after shows.”

You hum, half-laughing. “You should see me after the after-parties.” The humor doesn’t land quite like it usually does; there’s something too real now, something too intimate that makes the joke feel heavy.

He uses a fresh wipe to clean the cum from your body, starting at your chin and working his way down your belly. His touch lingers, but it’s not lustful—more like he’s making sure every part of you is taken care of, like you’re something precious. “Lift your arm for me,” he says softly, and you comply, feeling the coolness of the wipe brush under your arm and along your ribs.

When he finishes, his hand slips to your necklace, the little cross with the rhinestones—one you wear mostly because of him. His fingers fiddle with it for a second, the small gesture almost grounding, like it’s pulling him back to reality. 

“You good?” he asks finally, eyes scanning your face, like he’s not sure if he went too far, if maybe you’re more hurt than you’re letting on.

“Yeah,” you breathe, and even though you’re wrecked, there’s something warm in your chest. “I’m good.”

His thumb brushes your cheek, his touch featherlight. “You sure? You need anything else?”

You smirk a little, exhausted but still yourself. “Yeah, I need a nap.”

Joshua chuckles under his breath, still holding your necklace. “Alright, you take that nap. I’ll watch over you.” There’s something sweet in his tone, a promise hidden in the words, something you know he means more than he’s letting on.

And as you start to drift, you can’t help but think that despite everything—despite the wild shit that just happened—Joshua is still Joshua. Sweet, caring, a little too good for this world, and somehow, still your person.

[...]

The nap you took wasn’t just any nap—it was wild, like the kind where time feels like it disappears. When you finally blink your eyes open, groggy and confused, the van’s already moving, and you hear muffled voices. Your crew is in the van now, going about their business like nothing happened. Instinctively, your hands fly to your chest, covering yourself, but you’re already dressed—the same clothes from the show.

Relief floods through you, though you’re not sure why. Then you realize where your head is resting—not on the uncomfortable seat like before, but on Joshua’s lap. His thick thighs beneath you are surprisingly comfortable, his body warm against yours.

You feel him stir beneath you, his body shifting as he wakes up too. His hand brushes against your arm, and you glance up, meeting his eyes. His hair’s a bit messy, his eyes still heavy with sleep, but there’s this soft smile on his face, one that makes you feel like everything’s okay.

“Mornin’,” he murmurs, voice rough from sleep, his hand absentmindedly stroking your arm.

“Mornin’,” you echo back, your own voice low and hoarse.

There’s a moment of quiet between you, the rest of the van oblivious to the weight of everything that passed between you two last night. You shift a little, feeling his thighs under you, and the memories flash through your head—the heat, the sex, the things you said and did. You wonder if he’s thinking about it too.

“You slept through everything,” he teases, his smile widening, though there’s a hint of something unspoken behind it.

You chuckle, adjusting slightly but still keeping your head on his lap. “Guess I was tired, hm?”

“Tired? You passed out,” he grins, his hand moving to gently fix your hair. “Had to dress you. Can’t have the crew thinking… well, y’know.”

Your face flushes a bit, imagining him trying to carefully dress you without waking you up. “Thanks for that.”

“No problem,” he says, his tone playful but gentle. There’s a pause, the kind that stretches just long enough to make you wonder what’s next, what happens after this.

You glance around at the others in the van, but it’s like they’re in their own worlds. No one’s paying attention, no one’s noticed how close the two of you are, how your head’s still in his lap, how his fingers are still brushing through your hair like it’s the most natural thing in the world.

You can get used to it, can't you?

[starringthesturniolos]

baby it's cold outside - chris sturniolo

summary: you are forced to share the air mattress with your long time enemy, chris, on a camping trip.

"Since you two wanted to argue the whole way up, you guys get to share a tent together. Yay!!", Matt says while jumping up and down in fake excitement.

On the way to the camp site, Chris and I did argue a lot. But in my defense, the idiot kept pushing my buttons! He kept turning my least favorite songs on and blasting them at full volume so I couldn't sleep. When we stopped at 7/11 he grabbed the last of my favorite drink and gulped it down in front of me. When we finally arrived, he dumped all my heavy bags on the ground and laughed at me struggling to pick them up. It was like he was asking to get yelled at, or like he wanted me to be mad at him.

"No, Matt please!" I grab onto his arm desperately. "I'm sorry but please don't make me stay with him!"

Matt rolls his eyes at me and folds his arms over his chest. "Would you rather sleep outside then?" I scoff and shoot a glare towards Chris who isn't standing too far behind Matt. "Yeah, sounds about right."

"Sleep outside then. That's fine by me, princess." Chris sneers responding to my comment while turning his back on me to set up his tent. I take three deep breathes and close my eyes. I am not going to let this idiot keep getting under my skin. I stomp away from Matt and Chris over to the log Nick was sitting on and he laughs at me.

"Well hello, Mrs. Grumpy"

"Oh shut up" you sigh.

I plop my bag down on the floor, my chest heaving from hauling ass. I had to carry my heavy bags all the way from where Chris dropped them earlier today to the tent. He was laying all comfortable in his set up of blankets and the sight alone pissed me off.

"Thought you were sleeping outside tonight. Is it because you're scared of the animals, princess?" he sneers out the nickname like I'm more of an ogre than a princess. Why is he always so fucking annoying.

"Leave me alone, and I leave you alone. I'm going to bed. I'm tired and I'm not here for the bullshit." I say as I reach into my bag for my sleeping bag. My sleeping bag. Holy shit.

"Shit, shit, shit" you dump out your bag and see no sleeping bag in sight. Its cold out and the thought of sleeping without any covering made a shiver crawl down your spine.

"What is it now??" Chris sits up and turns the flashlight on in an exasperated manner. You sigh deeply. "It's nothing, go to bed Chris." He shrugs and lies down again, turning his back to me. I didn't need to give him another reason to tease me tonight. I flop on the ground on the opposite side of the tent from him and curl up into a ball. I can feel myself shivering but I try to ignore it.

Thinking back on when I first met the triplets in 3rd grade, I remember how cute I thought Chris was. I met Nick and Matt on the bus ride home from school one day when Chris was sick. The next day, me, Matt, and Nick were playing tag at recess when Chris walked out with a doctors note in hand. He walked over to his brothers and my heart skipped a beat. Immediately, Nick and Matt went to introduce me. "Chris! This is-" before Nick could even finish his sentence, Chris was already talking. "Well, isn't she a looker" he chuckles sarcastically while looking down at me, clearly judging me. I also looked down at my two loose braids and hand me down clothes and sigh. "Am I really that ugly" I thought to myself. I knew I probably shouldn't have let a boy that I hardly knew opinion get to me, but the tears came nonetheless." I wanted him to like me" you thought to yourself, wallowing in self pity. I was cut out of my trance when Chris started to laugh sporadically. "What? What is it?" I mutter looking at Chris and then too Matt and Nick who look embarrassed by their brothers rude antics. "Nothing, nothing. Its just... You're even uglier when you cry!" he starts laughing even harder. I felt myself start to shake from embarrassment and anger. Who did he think he was. "Your mean!" I stomped my foot which only made him laugh harder. I couldn't take anymore harassment in one day, and turned on my heel and ran away with Nick and Matt right on my heels.

After all these years he still hasn't changed. "Y/N, HELLO!!" Chris yells bringing me back to the present. "What?".

"Where the fuck is your sleeping bag?" he asks. I sit up from where I was laying to face him. He was now laying down with his body faced in my direction.

"Oh my God, clearly not here or I'd be using it, dumbass." I roll my eyes and go to lay back down.

"Lose the attitude and come stay in the bed with me" he mutters before I can return to my balled up position. My mouth flys open. Since when did he care if I was cold or not. "Wait, what?" I say in shock.

"Get the fuck up and come here. Nick and Matt will punch me in the throat if you catch a cold." he says nonchalantly as if it's normal for people that hate each other to share a bed. I roll my eyes again. I'm not sharing a bed with an asshole, even if it causes me to freeze to death. "No thanks" I scoff, preparing to lay back down again.

He sighs exasperated and moves from his comfortable position in his blankets. He stands up and starts walking towards me. I feel my throat start to tense up. "What are you doing?" fear creeping into my tone. Once he reaches me, he grips underneath my thighs with one hand and tries to support my back with the other. Desperately, I try to wiggle out of his grasp but too no avail. I am in his arms in no time. It takes everything in me to not sink into his warm chest. I didn't realize how cold I was until this exact moment. Suddenly I start to panic again when he starts to walk because I have no idea where he's taking me. Then I think of the worst. "Are you seriously gonna throw me out the tent. Come on Chris, do you really hate me that much??"

He stops moving entirely and he looks down at me. God the way he looks looking down at me is enough to be in any girls dream. Too bad he's just a big dickhead. "You weren't listening to me. So now I'm forcing you to stay with me on the air mattress." he pauses before continuing, almost like he doesn't want to say what he's going to say next. He sighs and continues on, "You were shivering really bad while you were in La La land. I didn't want you too freeze anymore." He had a glimmer of concern in eyes when he said it and that's all it takes for me to believe him. I hate the way my cheeks warm up from the honest confession. It meant he cared, and it shouldn't matter to me but it does.

He starts to walk again, seeing I had no response and plops me down on the mattress. He flops down right beside me, and even though it's warmer with the blankets, it's not enough. Another shiver racks through me. "Y/n??" Chris doesn't even try to hide the concern in his voice. "Do you need me closer? Will that help?" he looks at me waiting for my call. The thought of Chris getting close to me is enough to make my head spin. And as much as I wish being in Chris' arms would repeal me, it doesn't. Instead I feel my heart skip a beat like they did all those years ago. Get it together Y/n.

"Yes" I whisper. Chris doesn't need to be told twice and he pulls me impossibly close to his body. He grabs my thigh and puts it around his waist and then pulls my head into his chest. All I can sense is him. Instead of it annoying me, I lean into his scent and his warmth. In my heart I know that even if it was the hottest night of all time, I'd still enjoy being wrapped in him like this. And I hated myself for it. I melt into his arms and feel myself getting lulled to sleep. Just as I'm about to fall asleep I feel his lips graze my hair. " I could never hate you, angel, not in a million years. I'm sorry". And with those words, I fall asleep in his arms.

Send in request, I could always use some more inspo

Love, Mya

[unclewaynemunson]

CW for body issues and negative thoughts surrounding weight gaining

Cold autumn air has fallen over Hawkins for the first time in months. Steve reaches into the back of his closet to find his favorite sweater, the dark red one that his grandmother made him when he was in his junior year. The wool still feels just as soft in his hands as it was last year.

He pulls it over his head, welcoming the warmth it immediately gives off around him, but it feels tighter than he remembers it being. He pulls and adjusts the fabric, then gives himself a critical look in the mirror, and - fuck. It must've shrunk somehow. He messed up his favorite sweater.

But... The last time he wore it, on that one cold night at the end of April, it still fit him perfectly. He remembers that night clearly: they were all sitting around a campfire in the trailer park for Wayne's birthday, and Eddie had kept looking at him like that sweater was causing all kinds of unholy thoughts - partly the reason why it's Steve's favorite.

The sweater can't possibly have shrunk lying unused in the back of his closet for months. It didn't shrink; Steve has grown.

Suddenly, he looks at himself in the mirror and sees a whole other person. He zeroes in on all kinds of details he had never paid much attention to before, and he wonders how he could've ever missed what was happening to him: his expanding belly, the fat that has gathered around his hips, his stretched-out thighs... His upper legs are looking more chubby than muscled now that he stopped swimming regularly, and his sweater is tight around his upper arms and too narrow over his belly, the imprint of his belly button clearly visible in the stretched-out fabric.

He has no idea for how long he has been staring at himself when the bedroom door opens and Eddie comes in, still roughly brushing a towel over his wet hair. He's wearing nothing but a pair of boxers. Again, Steve wonders how he could ever have missed the way his body changed, especially next to Eddie: Eddie, who has always been lean, on the verge of being scrawny, his ribs almost visible underneath his tattooed skin and not a single curve in sight.

Eddie freezes in his tracks when he notices Steve, his eyes hovering over the red sweater. Steve feels caught, exposed under Eddie's gaze. He must be coming to the same conclusion that Steve had reached a minute before: that Steve's best days are behind him. That he's getting fat and that his body will only deteriorate further from now on. That he stopped taking good care of himself. That he's only going to get uglier with age.

'Sorry,' he's quick to say when Eddie won't stop staring. He turns his body away from Eddie's gaze, and starts rummaging around in his closet to find something with a looser fit. 'I didn't realize it wouldn't fit anymore, I'm gonna get changed right away. I suppose the red isn't really your color, but you can have it if you want to, I'm sure it'll fit you perfectly.'

He feels hands grabbing the underside of the sweater from behind.

'No.'

'What?'

He turns around, facing Eddie again, who now fists his hands into the sides of the fabric instead.

'Don't you dare take this off. Only one person is allowed to do that from now on, and that person is me.' There's a look in Eddie's eyes that Steve only recognizes from very different settings, like when he used to get home after a run all sweaty, or when one of them sinks to his knees in front of the other.

'What is happening?' he mumbles under his breath.

'You, in this tight sweater?' Eddie's voice is low and breathy. 'You are a fucking dream, Steve Harrington.'

Steve takes a step backwards, but Eddie's hands stay plastered right where they are.

'Are you making a fool of me?'

Eddie frowns and he finally lets his grip on Steve's sweater go.

'Why would you think that?'

Steve huffs, needlessly gestures to his own body. 'I look ridiculous!' he points out, unable to keep the frustration out of his voice. 'It doesn't fit anymore, I let myself get fat, I'm getting old and ugly, I–'

With one step, Eddie is right in front of Steve again, shutting him up by placing his index finger against Steve's lips.

'Not another word,' he says. 'I don't want to hear you talk like that about yourself ever again. You got it all wrong, you know. I mean, don't get me wrong, you were already hella sexy in your jock days, but your soft pillow belly is, like, the closest one can get to heaven here on earth.'

It should be too much, it should sound insincere because of how dramatic it is - but Steve is used to Eddie's dramatics and he can see that Eddie is being one hundred percent serious right now.

'You are the sexiest man I know, and every pound you've gained is a beautiful one. You are gorgeous, Steve – and you will keep being gorgeous and sexy in every shape you'll get.' His hands are roaming over Steve's sweater again, comforting and hungry at the same time. 'I do have to ask you not to wear this sweater outside of our house, though. It'll cause riots. People might die because of it.'

He looks dead serious saying it, and Steve can't help but laugh before he tugs Eddie closer and presses their lips together.

[just-jordie-things]

[part fifteen] to build a home - gojo satoru

word count: 5.8k warnings: !!manga spoilers!! swearing, jjk-verse style fighting series summary: when (y/n) (y/l/n) catches wind that the notorious sorcerer killer, toji fushiguro, has children, she makes it her personal mission to find them. the catch being she couldn't tell a soul about them- the risk of the zen'in clan learning about them was too great. keeping the secret isn't the hard part, it's lying to her friends, shoko ieiri, geto suguru, and of course gojo satoru, that she struggles with. especially when satoru has suddenly become so keen on keeping an eye on her lately.

series masterlist

[part fifteen] : “The Whole Truth”

___

She’d been in this room before, more times than she could count on both hands, but standing here now, (y/n) suddenly is overwhelmed with the anxiety that she’s invaded a very private space.  Despite the fact that she was asked to come in, despite the fact that she’s there with one of her oldest friends- if she could still consider him that- when she’s standing before him, she’s overcome with the urge to find an excuse to leave.

Her fingers curl around the paper bag that’s still in her hands, the parting gift she’d gotten for him, and she comes back to earth for long enough to extend it to him.

“I got you mochi,” She says softly.  Satoru takes the bag to inspect its contents.  “From that place you like that’s always way too busy”

Still holding the bag open, Sartoru’s eyes slide upwards, peering over the top of his sunglasses questioningly, already feeling a motive behind the random gift.

“So busy you had to wait overnight?” He questions, and (y/n) frowns.

“I picked them up this morning,” She says, the previously level tone she’d kept her voice at dropping, just enough to let him know that his comment irritated her.  “So they’d be fresh”

Satoru nods, before rolling the top of the paper bag shut and setting it on his desk.  (y/n) doesn’t say a word as he lets out a huff, his peace clearly disturbed by her already, before he leans back against his door and crosses his arms.

“What’s this all about then?” He asks, in an uncharacteristically bored tone.  “Is it an apology..?” He shakes his head as though he couldn’t fathom the idea.  “Because I don’t need an explanation, I’ve heard enough-”

“Satoru, I don’t want to-”

“Fight?” He finishes her thought with a scoff, a bitter laugh escaping him before he looks over her again, her nervous stance, her tired features.  His annoyance quickly burns into something uglier.  “I mean, was it worth it?”

(y/n) blinks in surprise, and hearing the same question that Suguru had asked her just a few weeks ago has her blood running cold.  What a bitter feeling of deja vu.

“I don’t expect you to understand,” She says quietly, ducking her head so that she didn’t have to look at him while she spoke.  “And… and I don’t expect you to forgive me.  I know I wouldn’t,”

That has Satoru’s muscles relaxing, and he doesn’t cut her off this time when she speaks.  He lets curiosity get the best of him as he hears her out.

“But I… I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I didn’t even try to tell you how sorry I am before…” She trails off, her teeth gnawing on her bottom lip to keep her from saying too much.

Her throat feels like someone had just poured lighter fluid down it and dropped a match.

Satoru leans off the door then, his head cocked and his eyebrow arched as he tries to fill in the blanks she’d left.

“Before what?” He asks.

(y/n’s) eyes nervously meet his but it’s fleeting before she turns away again, this time fixing her gaze on a single photo taped to his wall.  It displayed all four of them, having a picnic during their first year.  

For a brief moment, she’s transported to the memory, remembering the way Shoko had giggled as she held out the camera, her face barely in the shot but the peace sign she held her fingers in front and center.  Satoru has his arm slung around Suguru’s neck, pulling him into view as they both grin wide.  He has his other arm wrapped around (y/n’s) middle, forcing her to be in the photo as well.  She remembered trying to scramble away before Shoko could snap the shot, and how tight but not uncomfortable Satoru’s hold on her had been.  She remembers squealing as she tried prying his arm off her, but in the picture, it looks like she’s grinning happily, clutching his arm almost lovingly.  It looks like she not only gives into his hold, but embraces it.

It brings a sad smile to her face now, and she wonders if she had embraced it, no matter how hard she tried to tell everyone she didn’t.  

“(y/n),” Satoru steps forward, jarring her thoughts as she whips her attention back to him.  “Before what?” He repeats his question.

Her lips part, an excuse writing itself on her tongue, but she can’t bring herself to say it.  In the grand scheme of things, one more lie meant nothing.  Satoru already thought so little of her that it wouldn’t matter how much more damage she could create.

But she just couldn’t do it.

“I’m…” Her voice fails her, and she clears her throat before trying again.  “I’m leaving”

Her voice still cracks when she says it, but she tries to maintain eye contact so that he knows she meant it.  This wasn’t another act of deceit, which he believed it to be as the words first processed in his mind, but the longer he stares at her and sees that her expression is unwavering, the more he realizes she had meant it.

He would have preferred another lie.

“No you aren’t” He says in disbelief, hoping, praying she’d finally fucking learned how to lie and he could call her bluff.

(y/n) nods her head in a small motion.

“Yes, I am,” She says softly.  “I just wanted to try to make things right before I-”

“No- no, you’re fucking explaining yourself this time,” Satoru cuts her off, his arms falling from their defensive stance over his chest.  “You don’t get to just- fuck- are you quitting? Is this about Suguru?”

That seemed to catch her attention, as her face fell as she shook her head adamantly.

“No,” The word comes out solid, and it’s the loudest she’s spoken since she’d come into his room, even though she still hasn’t reached a normal speaking volume.  “It’s not about him, at least, not entirely.  It certainly hasn’t helped-”

“Then why? Why do you have to go?” He asks, his words coming out in such a rush they almost slur together.  “Where are you going? What is this about?”

“I…” She wants to explain herself, but there’s nothing for her to say.  “Satoru, I can’t…”

It’s quiet for a moment, while he hopes she could just find the words to tell him, to help him understand why she’d been pulling away so much, why it had brought her to the point of leaving entirely.  He waits, impatiently so, while his eyes search hers desperately for some kind of reasoning.

After a minute, it dawns on him that she won’t explain it to him.  Even now, she won’t tell him the full truth.  He wants to hate her for giving him scraps of clues of what’s been going on in her world, he wants to tell her off, tell her to leave just as she’d told him.

But just as she can’t tell him the whole truth in fear of hurting him, he can’t tell her to leave in fear of hurting her.  It was a vicious cycle they had been putting themselves through.

A thought comes creeping up in his head, and he doesn’t want to speak it into existence, but he does anyway.  If she really was leaving, he might as well try to uncover the truth.

“It’s them, isn’t it?” He asks, quietly, afraid that it was the truth.  “The Zen’ins?”

(y/n) fights the urge to show any expression of emotion, but it’s not enough.  Satoru is quicker, and catches the flicker of recognition in her eyes.  He’d guessed correctly.

“What is it then?” He asks dejectedly.  “They’re moving you into their weird fucking compound of a house? Are they arranging your marriage? You’re just going to skip along and follow their old, backwards lifestyle? Do you really want that?”

He gets carried away rather quickly, the reality of the situation hitting him the longer he thinks about what her life would become if she really did go down that path.

(y/n’s) breathing is rapidly increasing, and she realizes that no matter what she’d done, if she’d continued with the lie or admitted the truth, Satoru was always going to be hurt.  Tears prick her eyes as she tries to come up with a solution that would put him at ease, at least until she flees first thing in the morning.

When she doesn’t say anything, Satoru takes quick steps forward to close the remaining space between them.  (y/n) has to tilt her head up to look at him properly, her eyes wide at the sudden action.

This was the part where he told her everything he’d said in her nightmare, she thinks as she stares up at him.  This is all your fault.  This is what you deserve.

He’d meant to tell her that this was her mistake to make, that he wouldn’t stop her if she went through with it, even if he found it ridiculously foolish.  But then he got a good look at her, at the way she was holding back her tears, even in her physical exhaustion, she fought the will to cry.

And Satoru softened.

He pauses before her, and everything around them pauses for a moment as he kept watch of those eyes he’d been staring at for years.  He’d seen every flicker of emotion one could in them.  He’d seen the way they brightened when she smiled, how they crinkled when she laughed, how she looked when she was surprised, or angry, and he’d seen them sad before, too.

But he’d never seen them helpless.

And although everything she’d been saying had been in an effort to push him away, there was something swimming in those irises that was trying to communicate something else entirely.  She was lost.

With a sigh, Satoru pushed his sunglasses to the top of his head. Not caring that they got tangled in his hair.

“Oh, sweetheart,” He huffs, and (y/n) blinks in surprise at the affectionate nickname.  “What’s going on?

She blinks again, but she keeps her lips sealed shut.  Even if she tried to speak, she’d be a sputtering mess.

“You know…” He speaks carefully, making sure to pick just the right words.  “You know that you don’t have to do anything that you don’t want to, right?” The question comes out in a whisper, as though there were prying ears to hide from.  “And if you need help-”

“It’s not like that”

Just as she suspected, her voice comes out in a strained whimper.  Satoru frowns.

“You’re crying,” He states the obvious.  “And you’re telling me that you’re leaving but you’re still not telling me why”

“Because I can’t,” (y/n) speaks again, and this time is no better.  “I just can’t, okay? I’m sorry-”

“Well you’re going to have to,” He says decidedly, his hands wrapping around her shoulders.  “Because something isn’t adding up, and I can’t just let you go when you’re like this,”

Against her will, a tear slips down her cheek as she looks up at him.  She shudders as she takes a deep breath.

“Please, (y/n/n),” He says softly, “Who’s done this to you? Who’s hurt you?”

Another shudder rattles through her as she tries to breathe normally, and she curses him internally when a warm hand touches her cheek, wiping away the stray tear and bringing her an undeserved amount of comfort.

“I… I can’t,” She mumbles, closing her eyes as she draws her face away from him, before she steps away from him altogether.  “I can’t bring you into it” She finishes, her voice barely above a whisper.

Satoru shakes his head, filling the distance she’d tried to put between them.

“Well it’s too late for that, so you may as well tell me anyways,” He says, trying to sound comforting, and he has no idea just how much she longed to be comforted by him.  

She drops her head so that she couldn’t be tempted by him again.

“(y/n),” He tries to bring her to look at him again, but she won’t.  Hesitantly, he reaches his hands out to her, his fingers grazing over her knuckles.  “I won’t know rest until I know you do,” He admits.  “So I’m begging you, okay?”

She sniffles, and closes her eyes tighter while his fingers carefully wrap around hers.

“I can’t hurt you anymore” Her voice still shakes, and Satoru doesn’t know how much more of this his heart could take.

His resentment towards her these last few weeks had been washed away so easily by his overwhelming need to protect her, and he’s never felt so strongly about doing so until this moment.

This wasn’t how he’d seen her cry before.  This wasn’t how she’d behaved when Haibara Yu had passed.  This wasn’t how she’d behaved in her desperate rage to push him away.  This wasn’t her.  He knew deep down something was terribly wrong, and he didn’t care what it was, he just wanted to make it go away.  He just wanted her to be herself again, to be okay, to be happy.

“You won’t,” He murmurs, still unsure if it was a lie.  “You won’t,” He repeats himself with fervor.  “There’s nothing you could tell me that would hurt me, sweetheart, okay? So just… just tell me what he’s done, and I’ll fix it”

(y/n) looks up at him then, realizing now that Shoko must have filled in the gaps of her lies between them, and that Satoru truly does believe she’s gotten into trouble with a suitor of some sort from the Zen’in Clan.  Any thought of lying through her teeth escapes her mind, as she looks at him now, all she can find in his eyes is pure honesty.

He’s serious, and it’s almost tangible before her.  She fears that he really would do anything to put her at ease, and she fears that she would do the same for him.

She fears that she’s in this situation because she’d tried to do the same for him.

She doesn’t know why, she doesn’t understand the feeling, but she chases it, in hopes that it would guide her to do right by him.

“I’m not seeing someone from the Zen’in Clan”

It’s the clearest she’s spoken in a few minutes, but Satoru hesitates as though he still had to make out what she’d said.  (y/n) doesn’t blame him.  She’s just as surprised by herself as he is.

“You’re not?” He mumbles in disbelief, his brows drawing together in a confused knot.

“I’m not,” She whispers back.  “I… I never was” She adds with a small shrug of her shoulder.

Satoru blinks a few times, his eyes flickering between hers, just to be sure that she was once again telling the truth.  He doesn’t find an ounce of insincerity on her, but it still doesn’t bring him much comfort.

Suddenly, his hands are squeezing around hers, and he’s bringing them to his chest, holding them close as though the action alone could convince her to stay.  (y/n) almost stumbles from the action, but catches her footing before she could fall into him.

“Then why are you leaving?” He asks the nagging question on his mind.

Her tears threaten to spill over her lashes, and her hesitation tells him she still isn’t ready to give him the full truth.  She tries to think about Megumi, about Tsumiki, and everything she was going to do to ensure their safety.

“There must be a reason if you’re going to put yourself through this much trouble,” He voices his thoughts while (y/n) tries to blink her tears away.  “What is it, sweetheart? You have to tell me”

“Sa-toru,” She chokes on his name, her eyes falling shut as a last ditch effort to keep all of her tears from falling.  She tries to pull her hands out of his, but he keeps them in a firm grasp, and she doesn’t have the will to snatch them back.  “I just can’t- please, please forgive me,”

She hiccups, and closes her eyes tighter, even though she can feel wetness racing down her cheeks.

“I just have to protect you, I can protect all of you, but you have- you have to let me-” She’s cut off by another hiccup, and when she opens her eyes again all of the tears she’d tried to hold back are streaming down her face.  “I know it’s not fair, but it’s the only way I can keep you safe”

Satoru’s eyes blink wide in surprise, his brain desperately trying to connect the dots, trying to figure out who she’s talking about, who she’s protecting, and from what?

He doesn’t rush to ask her these questions, instead he shushes her gently, and brings her over to his bed so she could take a seat.  She wants to fight him, but she doesn’t.

“Alright,” He hums, releasing one of her hands so he could catch her tears against his finger, flicking them away before they could stain her cheeks.  “Alright sweetheart, let’s start slow, alright?”

She shakes her head, unwilling to drag him down with her.  Satoru tries again anyway.

“There’s nothing you could do to jeopardize my safety, okay?” He tells her, wishing she’d look up at him.  When she doesn’t, he hooks his finger under her chin and gently lifts her head so she could see he meant it.  “Okay?” He asks again.

(y/n) lets out a shaky breath, and her eyes fall from his, landing on his throat.  She takes a few more breaths before finding her voice again.

“You’ve been hurt by my mistakes before,” She whispers.

He’s certain he couldn’t have heard her right, but he doesn’t try to speak over her.

Her eyes don’t move as she continues.

“I just can’t hurt you again,” She sighs.  “I’ve done it too much and… and it hurts me too” She admits the last part in a voice that barely reached a whisper, but he hears her clear as day.

“I understand,” He hums.  “But you have to understand that I can’t ignore this anymore, (y/n).  Whatever this is, it’s killing you.  And I can’t just let that happen”

“I had a chance to kill Fushiguro Toji,”

Her voice is raw, sore from her crying, strained from her whispering, but she forces herself to speak anyways.

“The day we were sent after Riko Amanai,” (y/n) continues, still staring at the spot on his throat where he’d shown her Toji’s blade had cut clean through.  “When we parted ways that day, I ran into him,”

Satoru hung onto her every word, wondering where she could possibly be going with this, and why she hadn’t told him sooner.  Although so far, the truth didn’t seem too harmful, there was a nagging pull on his heart that led him to believe somewhere, sometime, things had gone completely wrong.

“Just by accident,” (y/n) continued, shrugging her shoulders in thought.  “Or maybe it was fate, I don’t know what led me to him that day, but…”

Finally, her eyes flickered up to his, and she swallowed the remaining lump in her throat before speaking again.

“I overheard a conversation he was having, on the phone,”

Satoru nods, understanding the story so far, while he waits patiently for her to continue.

“He mentioned… he mentioned children,” (y/n) said through a shaky exhale of breath.  “And I just… I just had to follow him, I had to learn more, I don’t know why, but it just nagged at me, and I…”

She turns her head, her eyes landing on that photo on the wall again as she thinks back to that day.  The way she felt in the beginning of this all, desperately searching for Megumi and Tsumiki like their lives, her life, depended on it.  And now, because of her, they did.

Satoru watched her as she stared at the photo for a long moment, trying to collect her thoughts.  He was on the edge of his seat, but he didn’t say anything to rush her into explaining further.

He looked down at the hand that still sat in his, limp and clammy from her nerves.  He squeezed it gently before running the pad of his thumb over the back of her hand.

(y/n) looked back at him right away, almost jolted by the small gesture, but Satoru kept his focus on the small motion of comfort.

“He had children,” She whispers out the truth like it was a damning piece of information.  “Two children.  Young.  A girl, and a boy”

When Satoru finally meets her gaze again, she’s no longer crying, but she’s still giving him that hopeless look, as though she’d done something terrible that she couldn’t take back.

“That’s where you were when you disappeared that weekend?” He finally spoke after listening to her so intently.  (y/n) chewed on her lip as she slowly nodded her head.

“I followed him but I… I lost him..” Her eyes trailed back down to his throat, and now he understood what she’d been staring at.

She’d been watching the place on his throat where Toji had stabbed him that day.  Oh, he realizes, all too slowly, she blamed herself.  As soon as he puts the pieces together, he squeezes her hand again, as though requesting her attention again.

“That wasn’t your fault”

“I could have-”

“That wasn’t your fault”

“But I was there”

“(y/n),” Satoru’s voice is firm now, and she snaps her mouth shut.  “You couldn’t have known,” He tells her, sure of every word he spoke.  “There was nothing that you could have done differently to prevent it.  There was nothing I could have done differently to prevent it,”

She sighs, her eyes falling to her lap as that dreaded feeling of uselessness washed over her.

“And need I remind you, I’m fine?” He adds, pulling her hand upwards, gently laying it at the base of his throat while keeping his palm over her hand.  “Just a little mark,” He whispers while (y/n’s) eyes linger on the spot.

This must be his most vulnerable spot, she thinks, after what happened, no matter what he says, he must have some trauma from the incident.  And yet, he lowers his infinity, and lets her rest her trembling fingers there.

Her eyes meet his unsurely.

“I need you to believe me when I say it’s not your fault”

“Okay,” She whispers back.  “Then I need you to believe me when I tell you I have to go”

Satoru shakes his head, his fingers curling around hers again, dropping her hand from his throat and against his leg.

“I can’t do that, sweetheart” He sighs.

“Why?” She whispers back, her eyes flickering between his, trying to figure out why it was he cared so much about this.  “I’m… I’m going to do a terrible thing tomorrow”

Satoru raises a curious brow.

“Is that so?”

She nods back at him, frowning.

“It will be unforgivable,” She whispers.  “But I don’t have a choice,” Her voice cracks again, but this time it’s just the reality of her situation crushing down on her.  “I can’t lose them”

“Lose who, sweetheart?” Satoru asks, his brows furrowing now, as he was missing a vital piece of information she hadn’t shared yet.

“I found them,” She whispered, almost gravely.  “I found Fushiguro Toji’s children”

The confession processes slowly, and then all at once, and (y/n) watches as he begins to put all the pieces together in real time.

Those children weren’t just poor abandoned things left to live their days out in some broken, unjust system society deemed charitable.  No, they weren’t your average non-curse users.  They were property.  Valuable property.  

They were Zen’in property.  And it was only a matter of time before the clan would come to collect them.

“I see,” Satoru hums.  “So you…”

“I’ve been sneaking off campus for eight months to take care of them” (y/n) whispers.

Every time he caught her in an odd lie, every time she’d go missing as soon as classes were out, the tutoring, the dodging of plans, it all came flooding back to him now, in a completely different light.

“Oh…” He mumbles, leaning back slightly as he was still processing it all.

“Yeah,” (y/n) sighs, hanging her head.  “They’ve sent a notice that they’ll be collecting the boy, Megumi.  His cursed technique has begun to manifest… just like Zen’ins to care when there’s enough power involved”

“What is it?” Satoru mumbles, his gaze fixed on a spot on the floor.

“Ten shadows” (y/n) answers, also refusing to look at him.

Fuck.

Satoru runs his free hand over his face, trying to come up with a solution and fast, because he didn’t know how much time they had to keep him from the Zen’in’s greedy clutches.

“I’m to bring him to them tomorrow,” (y/n) says.  “They don’t have an interest in the girl, she was born a non-curse user.  And the two can’t bear to be split apart so…” She trails off, nervously looking Satoru’s way.  “So I’m going tomorrow to… make my case”

“Make your case?”

Satoru repeats the words back to her in disbelief, because he knows just as well as she does that the Zen’in Clan don’t just hear people out.  They’ll take what’s theirs by whatever means necessary, and if she went to them tomorrow then-

Fuck.

It hits him then as he looks back at her, her glossed over eyes and frowning lips, he knows exactly why she’d come to tell him goodbye.

“No, you’re not-”

“I have to”

“(y/n) that’s a death sentence” Satoru stands up from the bed now, her hand falling from his as he stands before her.  Her expression doesn’t falter, not once.

“I’m not losing them” She tells him, clearly, and he knows she means it, but he can’t possibly accept this.

“And that cost is your life?” He raises his voice, although he tries not to yell, he can’t help it as it all sinks into his veins, the situation she’s in.  

Why couldn’t she have come to him sooner?

He begins to pace in front of her.  (y/n) remains calmly sat before him, letting him process however he needed to.  As much as it had hurt, she’d made her peace with it all.  It’s simply what she had to do.

“It doesn’t matter how much you train yourself to death, (y/n), if you walk in there tomorrow with any malicious intent, they’ll strike you down.  They’re an entire clan, (y/n), do you understand that?”

“I do” She whispers with a small nod of her head.

He shakes his head at her, his hands on his hips as he huffs and moves about the room sporadically.

“No, you can’t possibly understand it, because you wouldn’t just be sitting here right now-!”

“Satoru,” She calls his name softly, and while her voice is much smaller than his, he quiets immediately.  “I do understand,” She tells him with another nod.  “I love them,”

His features fall, softening as he sees her small smile begin to break through a painfully hurt exterior.

“I do.  I love them so much.  And I won’t let anything hurt them for the rest of their lives,” She tells him while he’s still frozen in front of her.  “So I have to go.  I have everything prepared, I’ve left them as much money as I can, a few cursed tools I’ve given them and hidden in their house that I’ve imbued with my cursed energy to protect them even if I…” She trails off, not wanting to admit the dark fate that would be in store for her come tomorrow.  “But now that you know, can you promise me something?”

Satoru doesn’t answer, still stuck in front of her, hearing her horrid confession play on repeat in his head.  She was really planning on this? She really was going to go through with this?

“Promise me you’ll keep an eye out for them?” She asks, and no matter how much she tries to keep her breaths even, he can hear the shakiness in the exhale she lets out.  “You don’t have to watch their every move but… just make sure they’re safe, here and there?”

Her brows draw together as she stares at him with utter hope.  She knows that she doesn’t deserve a favor from him, after everything she’s put him through, but if she had to, she’d beg him to make sure her kids were safe when she’s gone.

The room is silent for a few beats, before slowly, Satoru kneels himself to the ground before her, bringing himself to her eye level.  (y/n) stares at him steadily, and he’s close enough that she longs to reach out, to hold him by his jaw and make him swear he’d do her one last favor.

“You’re not doing this,” He tells her, quietly.  “I can’t let you”

“I have to”

“You don’t”

“I don’t have another choice,” She’s quicker with her words, more decided, unwavering in her choice.  “The Zen’ins, they sent men to the house this morning, to intimidate me, or scope out the area, I don’t know.  But they aren’t just going to back down now.  They’re going to take Megumi whether I try to stop them or not”

“We’ll think of something else” Satoru says surely.

“There’s no time,” (y/n) whispers back.  “Tomorrow I’ll put as strong of a curtain over their house as I possibly can and then I’ll go face Zen’in Naobito myself,” She tells him her plan in hopes that he would accept this was her final decision. “So I… I need you to promise me you’ll check in on them”

Satoru’s eyes don’t leave hers as she says this, and he can see that she means every last word.  He’d never pegged (y/n) as someone to have the stomach for cold blooded murder, but he can see now that something had changed, and the love she had for these children would drive her to do anything to protect them.

“You’ll die” He whispers back, knowing that she’s well aware.

(y/n) musters up the courage to give him a small smile, although it still carries the weight of her sadness, it is genuine.  She only hopes to bring him some semblance of comfort in knowing that this was her decision and hers alone, and that she’d found solace in it.

“Promise me,” Is all she replies with, followed by an even softer, “Please”

Was mochi supposed to make up for all of this? Satoru wonders as his eyes flicker between hers.  

While he’s sitting here fighting the urge to completely break down in front of her, she was trying to convince him that she was okay with this plan, that throwing herself into the wolf’s den in the name of love was her only choice.  He wants to tell her she’s completely deluded, that he’d chain her down and keep her here if he had to in order to keep her from making the sacrificing play.  And a part of him knows that he would really do it.

Satoru pinches the bridge of his nose, closing his eyes as he takes a deep breath and tries to run through every possibility on how this could end.  He doesn’t like what he comes up with.

“Satoru,” (y/n) calls softly, and when he looks up at her again, her hand is hesitating over his shoulder.  It takes her a minute before she lays it there, and she lets out a deep sigh before speaking again.  “I’m sorry,”

Her eyes follow the trail of a single tear slipping down his cheek, and she has to remind herself why she has to do this.

“If by some miracle I live, I’ll send you a postcard” She means to jest, but her voice is too soft, and the way her eyebrows sink as her eyes meet his again tells him she barely believes her own words.

Her hand falls from his shoulder as she stands from the bed, and Satoru’s quick to get up to his feet too, stopping her before she could leave.

“Stay,” He says before he can think of something better to say.  “Don’t go yet, stay, please, let’s think of a better plan, together, okay?”

He’s rushing through his words again, desperate to keep her here long enough that he alone could solve all of it for her.

(y/n) opens her mouth, no doubt to protest, but Satoru cuts her off before she could even start.

“Let me help you,” He pleads, stepping closer to her, leaving little to no space between them.  Her eyes noticeably widen at this, but she remains silent.  “You didn’t have my help before, I could get you out of this, we can come up with a way to keep the kids and you safe, okay?”

She’s frowning at him, but she doesn’t walk away from him either, so Satoru thinks he has a chance at making her cave.

“Please?” His hands grab onto hers, the action harsher than it had been before, desperate, even.  “Please, (y/n), I just can’t accept this.  You can’t do this… not without at least talking about it first, okay?”

(y/n) ducks her head and slowly begins to pull her hands out of his, although she longed to stand there with him holding them for the rest of time, as he’d always reminded her that she would never find comfort in another person the way she felt it with him.  She knows that if she stays any longer, then she’ll never leave.

And it was the right thing to walk away, right?

Satoru lets her pull her hands back to her stomach where she could wring them together as some form of control over her nerves.  He doesn’t mind that she tries to pull away from him, because he’s quicker.

When she feels the warmth of two palms resting on either side of her face, lifting her head so she’d look at him properly, (y/n) knows right away that she wouldn’t be walking away anytime soon.

Satoru’s hands are warm, smooth, and no matter where they are on her they still bring her that same blanket of comfort.  They’re so delicately firm, cupped around her face to keep her looking at him.  They’re so solidly gentle that she couldn’t break away from them if she wanted to.

She already knows her answer as soon as he speaks, although she can’t quite explain how she folds so easily, she decides to blame it on her overwhelming physical and mental exhaustion.

“Stay”

___

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xoxo ~ jordie

[trillscienceofficer]

from Star Trek: Voyager the official magazine, June 1997

ROXANN DAWSON - B'Elanna Torres

by Ian Spelling

“You never really get used to it,” Roxann Dawson says of the makeup that transforms her into B'Elanna Torres on STAR TREK: VOYAGER. “I've gotten used to having it applied, but I don't think you ever really get used to it. Part of me likes it though. It certainly helps me slip into character and, of course, I'm not recognized at all out of the makeup, sometimes not even on the set.

“I remember that in the first few months we were doing the show, even people on the set had no idea who I was. I would walk right onto the stage without makeup and our own director of photography wouldn't recognize me. Over time, people have seen me out of makeup a little bit more often. So at least the cast and crew are beginning to know who I am now.”

Dawson smiles, which is a big no-no. At this very moment, she's sitting in a chair as a makeup artist glues on prosthetics and paints over assorted Klingon facial ridges. Every time Dawson stretches her facial muscles too much—which occurs when she smiles or laughs—she risks ruining the makeup artists work, and that would only mean more time in the chair. “I usually like to look the person I'm talking to in the eye,” Dawson explains. "But I can't turn my head, either. Use the mirror. I know it's a little weird, but if you look at me in the mirror as we speak, we can make eye contact.”

Clearly, Dawson has held more than a few conversations from this chair, which sits in the middle of a make-up trailer just a short walk from the VOYAGER sound-stages on the Paramount Pictures lot.

Hard as it may be to believe, three years have passed since Dawson first arrived here to play B'Elanna in the “Caretaker” pilot. “It is hard to believe, and it has been a great experience. I've been able to do almost everything as an actress portraying this character,” she enthuses. The other day, they had me rappelling for a scene we were shooting. That was so cool. It's one of the neat things about being an actor. You don't have to know how to do something and you don't really have to practice it. They just had me do it. Of course, I was protected, and a stuntwoman would have done anything that would have been too dangerous for me to do.”

Dawson notes, “We're also learning so much about this character. In ‘Blood Fever,’ we really explored many aspects that were very particular to B'Elanna, but not necessarily particular to Klingons or chief engineers in general. We're discovering that she's not just strong in the masculine sense, but that she can be sexual and feminine and interested in learning more about herself. I talked with Jeri Taylor at the beginning of the season because I wanted to see more of B'Elanna's Klingon side come out. I didn't want her to become too complacent. I wanted her irreverence to always be there. I wanted that war going on inside of her to be present and always a conflict that influenced her choices. I think the writers are making sure that's all there this sea- son.

“I don't want B'Elanna to be a goody two-shoes,” Dawson emphasizes. “I don't mind seeing her darker, uglier sides. That's important. It's part of who she is. It's good to see her at her worst. It's good to see her learn from her mistakes. That's what makes a character interesting. I love that, and I hope it continues.

“You never really get what you want as an actress, but with B'Elanna, I've really gotten a lot of what I had wished for. The writers keep surprising me,” she continues. “They keep coming up with different aspects of her for me to explore. I think to myself, ‘How did you know that was in my hidden agenda?’ That's a wonderful feeling for an actress on any show to have.”

Dawson also believes that the writers are doing justice to B'Elanna's relationships with the other characters aboard Voyager. When the series began, she was primarily presented as an outsider, even among her Maquis co-conspirators. Over time, B'Elanna has emerged as a respected member of the crew. Captain Janeway now shows the utmost confidence in her, and her friendship with Tom Paris seems to be blossoming into romance. “One thing people have to understand is that this is an ensemble show. There are nine regular characters to service every week,” Dawson notes. “I just feel really fortunate that, in such a short time, they've developed B'Elanna's specific relationships with just about everyone on the ship. except maybe Kes. We haven't had much to do together and I would love to have an episode exploring that relationship a little bit more.

"With all of the other characters, though, I have a specific relationship and a definite attitude, and each relationship and attitude is changing and growing. I love thee fact that the Doctor can tick me off so much at one moment, but al other moments there is an element of respect, when he does something that impresses me. For example, when I thought we were losing him and his memory, I suddenly realize that I need him, that he has grown me. I love that every once in a while, we see little windows of B'Elanna's past with Chakotay. Paris and I got very close in ‘Blood Fever’, but I was under the influence of something, I was in Klingon heat.

“I want the writers to keep surprising me. Sometimes I love not knowing exactly what's going to happen, and not figuring it out until I'm handed a script. I really don't know where they're going to go with the relationship between B'Elanna and Paris. I do hope they'll take their time and make it happen slowly. I hope it's original, a little different than what we've seen before. I hope they put in a great deal of friction. I'm sure B'Elanna is different from anyone Paris has ever been involved with before, and would love to see him realizing and dealing with that. I see that all happening, and it really pleases me.”

According to Dawson, she and Robert Duncan McNeill have sat down and discussed the best ways to make the B'Elanna-Paris relationship work for them, how to best add layers to the groundwork being provided by the shows writing staff. By way of example, when they received the “Blood Fever” teleplay, the two discussed the arc of the script and how they saw it as the launching pad for an ongoing relationship. They incorporated their conversations into their performances when the scenes were played out before the camera. 'It really comes down to the actors interpreting what's on the page,” Dawson says. “Robbie and I wanted to make sure that certain elements were there and, also, we didn't want to overstep any boundaries. We wanted to be certain we were doing it right. We do discuss things on that level, but we always have to keep in mind that we must by what the script says.”

Sometimes, of course, Dawson also must go by what her directors say. And the actress has been directed not only by actor/directors Jonathan Frakes and LeVar Burton, but also by her VOYAGER costars McNeill and Robert Picardo. McNeill helmed “Sacred Ground”, while Picardo called the shots on “Alter Ego”. “I had about 30 seconds of screen time in ‘Sacred Ground,’ but I was impressed with what Robbie did. Actually, he's going to direct another episode,” she says. “Bob was great on his show. It amazes me, because you don't always know that an actor will be able to direct. Both of these men are obviously multi-talented, because they're not only fine actors but they managed to direct well, too."

Soon enough, Dawson will find out whether or not she can add herself to the list of multi-talented VOYAGER cast members, for she is enrolled in STAR TREK's director-in-training program, which has turned out such directors as Frakes, Burton, Patrick Stewart and STAR TREK: DEEP SPACE NINE's Avery Brooks and Rene Auberjonois. She's watching other directors in action, sitting in on editing sessions and the like, all in preparation to direct an episode sometimes next season. “There's a great education to be had here and they treat me with such grace. I'm so grateful to have the opportunity to learn this craft,” Dawson enthuses with a smile that elicits a wince from her makeup man.

“I've always wanted to direct. I've directed for theater, but it's quite different from directing for film or TV. I honestly don't know if I'll like it or be good at it. I think the time for deciding whether I'll be a good director is right now, during the learning process. So far, I really do love it. Hopefully, I'll be good at it, too. Whatever episode they give me to do, I just want to be able to bring it to life. Each episode is so different. Sometimes you're handled something that's very action-oriented, and sometimes you'll get something that's very thought-provoking. I don't know which kind of show I would be better at, but part of me says I would be better off starting with a quieter episode. I don't know if I have a particular style that I would impose anything. That was always my goal as a stage director. I'll probably stick with that idea for my first episode."

While Roxann Dawson may go on to make her mark as a director of VOYAGER, she's well aware that, even though she'll likely enjoy a long, fruitful career beyond STAR TREK, the show, her role and the fans will always be a part of her life. "I've heard that. Am I comfortable with it? I guess I'm growing more comfortable with the idea," she acknowledges.

"If this was something that didn't deserve that kind of recognition, then I would feel uncomfortable. But I think VOYAGER does deserve that kind of recognition. I'm part of something special. So, yeah, I guess I am comfortable with the idea STAR TREK being a part of my life forever. Let me put it this way: I'm as comfortable as I could be.”

Focus: Star Trek: Voyager

It has been a long time since Roxann Dawson last looked back at the episodes of STAR TREK: VOYAGER which were either focused almost entirely on B'Elanna Torres or which featured scenes of importance as they related to the character. Thus, the conversation backtracks to October 1995, when “Persistence of Vision” first aired:

“Persistence of Vision” (The crew's deeply buried desires surface; Chakotay seduces B'Elanna): “All I remember from that one was not being able to stop laughing when we were doing the love scene between Chakotay and me. Robert Beltran and I just kept cracking each other up.”

“Resistance” (The crew encounters the Mokra; Tuvok and B'Elanna are captured): “I liked working with Tim Russ. That was the first show where I saw any potential for exploring the relationship between Tuvok and B'Elanna. I realized he could help her explore some of the imbalances in the way she views her Klingon and human sides.”

“Prototype” (B'Elanna reactivates a robot, only to have it kidnap her and try to destroy Voyager) and “Dreadnought” (B'Elanna beams inside a missile to deactivate it): “I worked with Jonathan Frakes and LeVar Burton [as directors] on those two shows. They're both great guys. It's funny, in ‘Faces’ I dealt with myself a lot. In ‘Prototype’ I dealt with a robot and in ‘Dreadnought’ I dealt with a computer that had my voice. So, I was acting with myself in three B'Elanna-heavy episodes. I begged the writers to make the next one something where I interacted with a human. “Jonathan did a great job directing ‘Prototype’. ‘Dreadnought’ surprised me because so much effort went into actually developing the computer voice. That came about through hours and hours of looping. The whole show was B'Elanna and her relationship with this computer counterpart. So, it was fascinating for me to create that relationship half in performance and half in a sound studio.”

“The Thaw” (A clown [Michael McKean] holds Harry Kim and B'Elanna hostage while Janeway tries to free them): “I didn't have a whole lot to do in that. but I thought it was a brilliant episode. It had a lot to say and certain moments were just chilling, especially the death of Fear. Michael McKean was just great.”

“The Swarm” (The Doctor's system overloads and B'Elanna tries to help him recover his programming): “That was a great opportunity to work with Bob Picardo and to explore B'Elanna's relationship with the Doctor. I liked the fact that, to B'Elanna, he had always been just a computer, and in this episode she got to see he had this... humanity.”

“Remember” (B'Elanna has bad dreams; Dawson plays two roles): “I loved having the opportunity to do that show. It was a brilliant script. I loved being able to play the two characters, and how Karenna's [sic] life influenced B'Elanna's. I felt the show had something to say. Bruce Davidson [who played Jareth, Karenna's father] was extraordinary. I've always wanted to work with him. I had known of him since I lived in New York City, and he was just brilliant.”

“Blood Fever” (B'Elanna experiences Klingon heat; she and Paris begin their relationship): “That was an extraordinary experience. It demanded a kind of courage I didn't know I had. I took risks there, and I'm glad I did. I hope people think those risks paid off.”

“Darkling” (The Doctor goes bad): That was our Jekyll and Hyde epsiode with the Doctor turning a little evil. Bob Picardo and I had some fun together when he was in his Mr. Hyde mode. He paralyzed me and he was threatening to kill me and Bob was speaking in a sleazy, very sexual way. It was so disgusting, but I think it came across very funny.”

Though Torres doesn't feature heavily in the next few episodes shot, efforts have been made to develop one aspect of her character. “What's happening is that they've been furthering the B'Elanna/Paris relationship in subsequent episodes. In ‘Displaced’ we have the B-storyline. We did a lot of head-butting in that one. And we did one show where, for the first time, I worked only one day. But the whole day was B'Elanna/Paris stuff.

[atinylittlepain]

Only Lovers Left Alive

cowboy!vamp!joel miller x f!reader

joel miller masterlist

He offers her another option between life and death. How could she refuse?

warnings | 18+ smut, slight dubcon initially, gore, blood, dark themes in general, you've been warned muah hahahaha

wordcount: 4.5K

a/n | vamp!joel has me by the throat (pun intended) and though this is my last fic before my two month break, i have decided to turn this into a series that will span the decades! i already have 1920s, 1950s, and 1970s vamp bb waiting in the wings for when i get back in august :) BTW this first one is set in the 1870s ish - ALSO, @toxicanonymity posted a mind-melting vamp!joel fic last night that y'all should check out if you have a taste for the ~darker~ things in life. k, love you, bye

.........................................

A condemnation. An exile. Execution and exultation all wrapped up in one. She knew that if she rode out of town she need never look back. A white dress hanging on the bureau in her room the last thing she saw before she slipped out into the night. Her daddy’s gun and her brother’s horse and a scrawled note for her mama left behind. Do not look for me, I am already gone. 

She has every intention to be dead by the time the sun unfurls over the plains. The only true escape for a woman in this world, a loveless marriage nipping at her heels on her way out. She rides hard in the inky darkness until the flickering lanterns of the town are only a blink in the distance. 

Her hands are shaking as she dismounts, eyes skittering over the lip of the canyon she stands above. A bullet and a fall. If it’s so easy, why can she feel the cool slip of tears as she presses that steel mouth to her temple? Just like she learned from her daddy, thumb back the hammer to load that single, sweet bullet. And a pull, as easy as a loose tooth snapping free.

But before she can, her horse lets out a nervous chitter, head swinging side to side. A man, silent, palms open and up, comes inching toward her out from behind a copse of sagebrush.

“Don’t come any closer!” He stops dead in his tracks, lips parted, eyes wide and glinting in the moonlight.

“Easy, miss. Don’t want any trouble. Just wanted to offer my help.” It’s such a strange thing to say to a woman with a gun nosing at her temple that she finds herself letting out a humorless laugh.

“Do I look like I need any help right now?” It surprises her, the smile that softens his features, eyes crinkling up, soaked in kindness, and understanding.

“With all due respect, miss, you seem perfectly capable. But you should know that pistol of yours ain’t loaded.” She almost doesn’t want to check, a hot rush of embarrassment skittering up her spine when she does and sees that the man is right. She can already feel the tight sting of tears, something uglier and more desperate than frustration settling in her stomach.

“You probably think I’m a fool, don’t you?” The man takes another step forward, still with his hands up, still with that kind look in his eyes.

“I don’t think you’re a fool. Think you’re hurting like a lot of other folks out on these plains.” Another two steps closer and he extends his hand out to her, and for some reason, she takes it.

“Name’s Joel Miller, miss. Pleasure to make your acquaintance, even under such circumstances.” Deep, dark brown eyes that swallow her up. She finds herself telling him her name before she can even think not to. 

“I ain’t gonna try to talk you out of anything. What I can offer you are some bullets, and maybe a meal if you’d like to stick around a little longer.” All charm, the quicksilver of his smile crooking in the pale light and she has to force herself to let go of his hand. She tries to take a few stumbling steps back, oblivious to the cliff-side her heel skids right over, a clipped yelp jolting through her chest before strong arms are wrapping around her waist and tugging her back from the edge.

“Woah there, miss. I think you’d prefer a bullet to a fall like that.” The way he so easily talks about it makes her stomach flip, something slippery settling that isn’t altogether unpleasant. 

“I don’t have money and I ain’t that type of girl if you’re thinking you’ll get something out of helping me.” He laughs, a low thrumming thing, his palms still gripping her waist, his legs brushing against her skirts.

“Ain’t that type of man, miss, I promise. Just another lonely soul like yourself.” His hands slip away from her, stepping back, a chill running up her spine that makes her flush.

“Tell you what, I’ve got a camp a few yards ahead. A quick ride on that horse of yours. You can think on it and when we get there, I’ll get you your bullets and if you’re inclined to it, a warm meal.” She knows she can’t go home, not now, something worse than death waiting for her there. And something about this man, Joel, is making her want to say yes.

“Alright, you have a deal. But just because my gun isn’t loaded doesn’t mean I don’t know how to use it in other ways so you better not try anything.” A grin, all teeth.

“Wouldn’t dream of it, miss.” 

He’s strong, she can feel it in the bulk of his thighs settling behind her on her horse, the steady, solid front of him pressed against her back. By the time they canter into a small rock outcropping, her mind is hazy with the feel of muscle pushing and pulling against her.

True to his word, the first thing he does after helping her down from her horse is to rustle around in his pack, taking out a silvery pistol and giving her two bullets from his own barrel, palms brushing in the trade.

“Those oughta work just fine in that gun of yours, though I am waiting on your answer.” That same slanted smile of his, eyes flicked up with the tilt of his chin.

“Please, miss. Pity a poor, lonely man. Just a bite.” How could she say no to that?

In the warm glow of the fire, shadows and light reveal just how handsome he is. The strong hook of his nose, the cut of his jaw beneath that patchy scruff of his. And those eyes, flickering in the flames, watching her every move. 

She hadn’t realized how hungry she was, and though it’s sparse, rough fixings, she finds herself scraping up every last bite. No one to tell her to chew with her mouth closed, no table to get her elbows smacked off of, just this strange, silent man staring at her.

“Aren’t you hungry too?”

“Oh no, miss, I’m quite alright.” It makes her pause, her breath hitching, as she stares down at her already empty plate, her stomach rolling in a quick lurch.

“You– I–”

“You worried I poisoned you?” He says it with that same grin, and she’d like to scramble onto her feet and onto her horse and get as far away from him as she can. But the cool prickle running up her spine keeps her seated right where she is, trying to stammer out some sort of response. Joel is quick to silence her stumblings with another laugh though, teeth glinting in the swerving light of the fire.

“That’s alright, miss. But you should know I don’t want to harm you. I want to help you.” 

“Help me?”

“Uh-huh. What if I told you that I could offer you another way out that doesn’t involve putting a bullet in that pretty head of yours?” Those eyes of his are catching her again, soothing the stilted beat in her ribs.

“W-what would it involve?” 

“Well that’s a bit hard to explain, miss. But I assure you, it’s nothing you wouldn’t enjoy, thoroughly.” His hand reaches out, fingers tracing along the hinge of her jaw, brushing down the side of her neck before dipping under the neckline of her dress, flickering back and forth, back and forth along her skin.

“If you ask me, a sweet thing like you deserves more out of this cruel, cruel world.”

“M-more?” Shifting closer to her, his arm draping over her shoulders, pulling her into the haze of him, that silvery grin up close.

“Don’t you want to feel good, miss?” His lips so close she can feel the brush of them along her cheek, his fingers curling tighter around her shoulder. And then, with a stuttered nod of her head, she sinks into him completely. 

She’s only had frivolous, playground kisses before. Quick, daring pecks followed by a fast dash away before anyone could catch them. This is not that. He devours her, licking into her mouth in a way that both shocks and soothes, his palm coming to hold her jaw firm in place as his lips move against hers. And she takes it, all of it, letting him move her to his will, his lips a wandering drag beneath the hinge of her jaw, lingering along the arc of her neck before dipping down to the tops of her heaving breasts pressing against the neckline of her dress.

“How sweet you are, my darlin. Sweet everywhere, ain’t you?” There’s nothing she could possibly say to that, her mind spinning in jagged gasps of sensation when he brings his hands to the front of her dress and rips clean down the front of it, corset and all, leaving her in just the thin gauze of her slip. She finds something like courage, a small ember of it smoldering enough for her to start tugging at the shoulders of his leather coat, earning a chuckle from him when he finally gets the hint and shrugs out of it.

“I need your words, darlin, else I can’t do this. Do you want this?” She’s not even entirely sure what this is, only that her mind is swimming in it, in him, and she wants more of it.

“Yes, Joel, I want this, I do.” He pulls her in for another bruising kiss, lips curled in that grin as he coaxes her to lay out on the cold desert ground, though she doesn’t mind with the way her body is burning up beneath his touch. 

She’s never done this before, guided only by the sharp tug in her belly, that aching want intensifying as he rucks her slip up beneath her collar bones and begins a salacious trail down her skin. His lips close around the peak of one of her nipples, a gasp dragging through her throat as his tongue laves over the bud. But it’s a rattling shock when he dips just a bit lower, teeth sinking into the full curve of her breast before his tongue sweeps over the sting, soothing, soothing, soothing. 

Lower and lower, a path of his open mouth mapped across her skin until he’s settled between her thighs, the broadness of his shoulders spreading open the hinge of her hips.

“No one’s had you like this, have they, darlin?” His eyes are blown black, unwavering, turning her shy and small beneath his question, her chin tucking into her shoulder as she shakes her head. He lets out a low groan at her response that makes her thighs clench, jolting in the wide grip of his palms.

“I’ll do all the work. All you have to do is let it feel good.” That’s about all the warning he gives her before his tongue drags a flat stripe through her cunt, her spine arching with the dizzying sensation as he settles his lips over a spot that makes her gasp. Over and over again, his tongue swirls against that aching point of pleasure, his palms turning harsh in their grip on her thighs as her muscles start to shake from it. Her eyes roll back, up to the stars in the pitch-black sky, ears thrumming with the obscene sounds of his lips smacking with her arousal. And it hits her all at once, everything going tight and hot with sensation before she unfurls for him with a sigh of his name, body languid and liquid as he continues to lap at her dripping cunt.

“Feels good, huh, darlin? Can make you feel so much better though.” She groans when his mouth meets hers again, open, wanting, receiving, the taste of herself on his lips making her mind swim. It’s primal, pre-human, the want she feels for the thick heat of him that’s settled between her legs, her hips canting up to chase that pressure. 

“Please, Joel, I want to feel good.” She’s almost crying with it. Nothing has felt like this, ever. And he’s more than willing to give her what she wants.

“Gonna take my time with you, darlin. Make it feel real good.” He plants one palm next to her temple in the red earth, his other hand fumbling to unfasten his pants and shuck them down enough so his cock can rest, heavy and flushed against the soft inside of her thigh. She has to bite back a whimper just looking at the sheer size of him.

“Don’t you worry, darlin. Remember what I said, huh? Not gonna harm you, just help you. Relax for me, that’s it.” A stretch, a searing, sick pleasure as he begins to drive his cock into her fluttering cunt. But he’s gentle, so gentle, a slow spread that has her mewling beneath him.

“There you go, taking all of it. Made for me, ain’t you? My angel, all mine.” She can’t help the moan that tears through her chest when he grinds his hips deep and driving, a pulsing, aching fullness that has her digging her nails into his shoulder blades. But that ache bursts into a snarling fire of want when he drags his hips back, only to roll them forward on a much faster, much deepers thrust, already settling them into a dizzying rhythm of push and pull.

“Joel, please I– feels so good, oh my go–”

“Just my name, darlin. Say my name and nothing else.” She does, long drawn out preens of it as he fucks her, that same pleasure pulling taut up and down her spine. 

“Again, darlin, just like this.” His words are murmured into her throat, that beating, pumping crook in her neck, and her body responds in kind, unraveling for him all over again as he continues the hot drag of his cock through her cunt. As she starts to come, those open-mouthed kisses snap into something else. Teeth, a graze, and then a sinking, startling pain. All she can do is hold on, her whole body going limp in his arms as that pain radiates into a burning singe. A rushing settles into her ears, dark pinpricks around her vision, barely registering the warbled moan he lets out as she feels something warm smear against her stomach.

“I think I’ll keep you, darlin.”

And then perfect darkness.

…

Like fingers skittering up her throat, she wakes up to a thirst so singular, so consuming, she actually brings her hand to her neck, wincing when her fingers brush what feels like a bruise across her skin. 

“You’re awake.” It startles her so badly she jumps, curling up and scrambling back until she’s pressed against a large boulder. Joel sits, crouched, studying her, face schooled and steeled. 

“I– how long was I asleep?” Her voice cracks, that thirst making her words weak and warbled. 

“About two days. Slept like the dead when I was done with you.” His words crackle with his grin and she has to shake her head to refocus on figuring out where the hell she is. Looking down at her body, she finds herself in men’s clothes, slacks and boots, a button up, all too big for her, most likely Joel’s. And then she remembers what he had done to her dress and her thoughts go hazy again.

“W-where are we, Joel?” 

“Just a few miles west. You hungry?” 

“No, I’m– I’m thirsty.” His grin goes big and bright at that, silvery slick in the moonlight.

“I bet you are, darlin. Why don’t you come over here and I’ll give you something to drink?” The promise of this need, this burning urge being slaked is enough for her to close the distance between them, letting him maneuver her shivering body into his lap.

“Just give your body what it wants. Easy as reaching out and taking it.” Her palms press against his chest, a futile struggle as he guides her face into the crook of his neck with his hand cupping the back of her head. But something else takes over in her, a fire flickering up her throat when her lips press against the thin skin of his neck. And it is what her body wants, lips parting, teeth snarling and sinking in.

“That’s it, darlin. My angel’s a natural, huh?” When she finally pulls away, eyes hooded and heavy with satisfaction, she finds herself smiling up at him, something slick and sweet simmering in her veins. 

“Thank you, Joel.” Teeth, all teeth.

“Of course, darlin. Gonna be you and me from now on.”

…

He offered her another option. Something between life and death. That is where she lives now. This is how she lives now. With him. 

When they must, they travel in the day, wide-brimmed hats tilted down, bandanas tied over their faces, long leather coats and gloves. Otherwise, they move in the night, over the vast, whimpering plains, whetting their particular appetites whenever they can, jumping towns before their faces can be known.

A year, maybe two, maybe even three. What use do they have for time? Caught in an endless tangle, just the two of them, and that blazing thirst. 

But there is one thing they have their sights set on. Making their way back, retracing their path, her path to him, until they find themselves on the outskirts of a town she swore she’d never see again. 

No guns, they don’t need them. Horses set loose, they won’t be needing them either. As the sun dips down over the plains, they walk through the main drag of town. He let her call the shots, agreeing when she insisted they come for the men only. Let the women and children run so long as they stay out of their way. 

It’s a long night. One that ends in her childhood home. And by the time the sun is coming up, one would find the ranch house with the front door ajar in a silent yawn, her mama and her sisters having fled. And on the porch, still holding his shotgun, her daddy’s splayed out body. Perhaps luckily, she didn’t have any brothers. Just the man she was supposed to marry.

“I’m so full, Joel. I don’t know if I can have another bite.” 

“Hmm, you wanna save him for later?” 

“I think I can make room.” Fear, like the cream top on a fresh gallon of milk. So, so sweet and rolling in waves off the man’s trembling body, Joel pinning him against the wall of her childhood bedroom as she paces back and forth. They haven’t had this much to drink in ages, and she feels dizzy, drunk off it, smacking her lips with the lingering taste.

“What are you people? W-what happened to yo–” Joel cuts off the man’s blubbering by jostling him back against the wall, teeth bare, something like a growl pulling from his chest.

“Now, Joel. Didn’t your mama teach you not to play with your food?” She grins, and he mirrors her in turn, looking over his shoulder at her. A hum in her throat, she glances around her old room, eyes settling on the wardrobe, her hands itching with a small want. She’s already moving over to it, opening it, and sure enough, that white dress is tucked inside. 

“That’s pretty, darlin. Why don’t you put it on for me?” It’s nothing for Joel to hold the man against the wall, one forearm pinning him by his neck as he turns to watch her, her fingers already flickering through the buttons of her shirt. She strips completely bare, savoring the two sets of eyes trailing her every move as she slips the simple white frock over her body.

“Look like an angel, darlin. Doesn’t she, boy?” Joel punctuates his question with a harsh press of his arm into the man’s windpipe, making him wheeze out a stuttered yes. 

“All this talk has worked up my appetite again.”

“This one’s all yours, darlin.” 

Blooming red flowers all down her dress, a trail of it down her chin that Joel laps up with a satisfied groan. They turn greedy with it, desperate to get the other bare, and when every thread of clothing is in a pool around their feet, he circles around her, his lips pressing into the striped scars on her back, a mapping of her history that she finally got to repay.

“How’s it taste?”

“You were right, Joel. There’s nothing sweeter.” 

“Except for you, darlin.” 

She’s not that shy little girl anymore. She knows how to take her pleasure, how to pull it from her man. And tonight, both of their bodies painted and slick with their feast, she does just that. All teeth, sharp, scraping nips when her mouth meets his, her hands tangled up in his hair to tug him closer with a low groan. Push and pull, a stubborn tangle onto the bed, her hands splaying out on his chest, nails digging in enough to make him hiss beneath her. Their skin sticks and slides with all the dribbling blood. They’ve always been messy eaters.

“Look at you, darlin. Like a fucking painting in my lap. So beautiful.” He swipes his thumb over her nipple, collecting a stray trickle of red and sucking it into his mouth with a thrum in his throat. And she in turn dips down to lick up the line of his neck, salt and metal on her tongue. So perfectly sated, she feels dazed with it, a slow-flickering want rolling in her belly as she drags her dripping cunt along his cock, just a taste of the pleasure they’re both chasing. But they’re both too far gone, too full of that ache for her to tease much more, sinking down onto him slow and smooth with a preen curling her spine.

“I’m so, so full, Joel. Fuck, so good.” Her whole body hums with it, the harsh press of his fingers into the curve of her ass, his eyes watching the tight bounce of her breasts each time her hips drop against his, and his cock grazing so deep inside her, that pleasure that snarls with just a tinge of pain.

“Take it, darlin. Fucking take all of it. My angel’s so good, always so good for me.” Planting his feet into the mattress, his thighs settle against her back as he starts to meet her thrusts, a broken cry dragging from her chest as she lurches forward in his hold.

“Yes, yes, yes. I’m so close, Joel. Please don’t stop.” Words she presses against his throat, collapsed on top of him as he fucks up into her, chasing that pleasure with snarling teeth so he can lay it at her feet. It snaps all at once, her whole body going tight and taut around him, a close cry of his name as he fucks her through it. She doesn’t drink, just a simple creature comfort to sink her teeth into the curve of his neck, a lick of pain that sends him right over the edge with her. 

They lay like that for a while, chest to chest, mouths sliding lazily together until sunlight starts to flicker through the window. She gets up with a sigh, his softening cock finally slipping out of her as she steps off the bed to close the shutters tight.

“I need a little taste.”

“Reckon there’s some left over, darlin.” The body is still warm, slumped on the floor. She crouches over it, still bare, flecks of red drying and flaking off her skin. His wrist, pale and perfect, untouched, just the place to sink her teeth and pull. Sweet satisfaction singing in her bones, she hums as she slips back into bed, curling up against her man and letting him lick the remnants from her mouth.

The story goes that a town lays somewhere tucked in the rolling dips of the plains that one day went dead. Women and children fleeing, and a fate far worse for the men. You can go searching for it in the daylight, when all lays still and silent, maybe catch a glimpse of a skeleton long picked over by some larger predator. Just don’t stay long enough to see the sun slip over the hills unless you’d like to meet a pair of lovers with a taste for a violence so pure, and an appetite that surely can’t be human. 

“You and me, darlin. Forever.” 

“Forever, Joel.” 

[daydream-believin]

That Was Hot But Maybe Don't Make A Habit Of Doing That Babe

warnings: well. assault. transphobia. some of my more. uh. salacious work. never proof read.

word count like barely over 1k.

---

“Aren’t you afraid? Out here insinuating that God made a mistake.”

You clutched your red solo cup a little closer to you, trying your best to ignore this acquaintance who thought she had a right to corner you in this living room and tell you what she thought about your sinful lifestyle. Because that’s what you come to house parties for, to give other guests unsolicited advice on their mortal soul. You took a deep breath, schooling your expression as Jessica prattled on.

“Your body is a temple, you know. You can’t just do whatever you want with it. It’s sacred.”

You stared at her thick eyeliner, wondering if she used a stencil or something to get the wing that smooth. Her long brown hair was pulled up into a “messy bun” and a quick glance at her feet proved she was wearing white converse. So, a woman who’s bitter about having never been sold to one direction for gambling money, it looks like. You’d never seen her outside of a professional setting, so this was a curious insight on her personality, if the glaring red flag of this entire conversation wasn’t that already.

“Is that so,” you said in the bored-est tone you could muster.

“It’s a shame, really. You could’ve been a good wife and had a family like God intended, but no man will ever want you until you quit it with this. Such a waste.”

Ah, and there’s the reminder that she doesn’t see you as anything more than your uterus. Jessica swept her eyes over your form, so tight to the wall you were up against that you might have to unstick yourself from the wallpaper after this. You watched her as the look of disgust graced her features. The other people at the party may as well have been shadows, just you and the she-wolf here in this moment.

“And you’re not fooling anyone, hon,” she snorted, “Honestly, anyone can see you’re just a woman who really let herself go.”

“Excuse me?” you said through gritted teeth.

She grinned like a shark, “I said I didn’t think it was possible, but you’ve only gotten fatter and uglier since this whole thing started. You poor girl, letting your mental illness ruin you like this. Maybe if we had gotten you into a good makeup artist--”

She didn’t get to finish her sentence before the fist collided with her cheekbone. Your eyebrows hit your hairline as you instinctually tried to back further into the wall.

Ah. Looks like your boyfriend finally got here.

“Holy shit man! Did you just punch out that chick?”

Doux stared at his still-raised fist, in disbelief himself that he just did that. “Uh…” he trailed, “I’m a feminist?”

You glanced over to her. Jessica was too caught up in gripping her newfound nosebleed to pay any attention to you.

“OKAY,” you grabbed his shirt collar, “We need to go have a serious conversation, right now,”

You headed off up the stairs of the house, pulling Douxie along as you heard Jessica whine,

“Perfect, I got blood on me. This blouse is ruined.”

Well, at least she was madder about her dry cleaning than the getting punched part.

“Did anyone see who the hell did that?”

..Okay maybe not.

“I don’t know, Jess, it happened so fast, sorry. Let’s get you another drink, yeah?” You heard the host tell her. Fortunately, no one at this party was keen on the idea of having the cops called, so you could count on them to diffuse this situation for you.

You quickly found the upstairs bathroom, right where you remembered it. Luckily wide open and vacant. You shoved Doux inside, locking the door behind you. He awkwardly perched on the edge of the bathtub, rubbing his now sore knuckles, as you turned around to glare at him. His gangly legs kind of reminded you of a spider as he stamped his feet in annoyance.

“What. The fuck. Was that.” you stalked towards him.

“I’m not about to defend my need to defend you.” His tone was fast and angry, telling you was still riding out the adrenaline high from instigating a fight. He stood to meet your level. Or slightly tower over it, as it were.

You grabbed his collar again. Douxie stared you down as you leaned into his space, and he pushed himself into yours until your noses were brushing, pupils blown wild.

“I’d say it’s my responsibility, even.”

You aggressively kissed him, clacking your teeth together, but neither of you seemed to care. Your hands pinned his face into yours, and he grabbed your hips, pulling your body closer into his.

Your lips dragged together in a dance. It was amazing how easily he could make your head spin. Douxie moaned into you, and you, not for the first time, wished you could get a recording of that sound to play over and over again. You smiled into the kiss.

His hands roamed up to your ribs, fingers digging into the flesh of your chest beneath him. You gently bit down on his lower lip in retaliation, suckling an apology as he made a noise that could only be described as a hot little whimper.

You started walking him backwards, until he hit the wall behind him. You pushed a leg in between his, and an arm up on the wall beside his head, trapping him against you. Well, not trapping. He was bigger than you and could overpower you anytime he wanted to. That just made it sexier in your opinion.

He pulled back slightly, just to run his tongue over your lips, making you gasp and provide an opportunity for him to push in past your teeth. Doux moaned as he ran his tongue over yours, driving you crazy. God, you loved how vocal he was. And you loved tasting his breath like this.

Douxie continued exploring your mouth like he hadn’t memorized the pattern of your teeth by now and you let him have this bit of dominance over you, considering you were currently boxing him into the wall. He dragged his tongue along the roof of your mouth, and your brain shut off. Nothing was happening except this feeling. He was the only person in the world and--

A loud bang bang bang from someone knocking on the door reminded you where you were. And there were in fact more people here.

You pulled apart, gasping for breath. His face was adorably flushed.

“Just for the record, I wasn’t reprimanding you," you told him breathlessly.

“I can see that now.”

You snickered as he started fixing his hair in the mirror in an attempt to look less disheveled. It wasn’t going to matter when you both walked out together, but sure.

“I know the party just started but we might need to leave already.”

“Oh yeah, definitely. we ‘might’.” You smiled up at him, as you took his hand, “C’mon let’s get out of here before Jessica sees me again.”

[lauvwar-r]

07 from the start ⸝⸝ cold drinks and cowardice

"oh? we're not going to the library this time?"

it must be a sign, you think, holding a paper bag in your right hand and his hand in your left. it was late enough into the cold winter season for frosty breath and signature hot chocolate but warm dandelion rays seemed to follow you two and frame the campus perfectly.

"nah," you shrug, "pela said that the council agreed that the stage would be put in the middle of the campus uh- garden? lawn? grass area thingy- you know what i mean…"

"yeah! we thought the area would bring the most traction." you're not even looking at him: your nervous eyes glued to your surroundings with false confidence, but you know he's giving you that look. that sickening soft one that you often mistake for adoration.

it's… fond??

and it makes your heart race — just for a second, before remembering what he said before.

"not a date huh…" you mutter dejectedly.

truthfully, it kinda sorta hurt when you found out he said that. whilst not fully demolishing your ego and porcelain heart, it did pinch at you — like soft rope burn for your self-esteem.

but what hurt a little more was the fact that he never told you. never told you about his private account that is.

i mean yeah… i have one too, but that's because i talk about how much i like him on there, you reason with yourself. and i get privacy and everything. but, bronya? you thought him and bronya were just school friends. were you… even his best friend?

"hm?" a hum interrupts your spiralling thoughts.

"anyway! i thought we could like, survey the area. see how and should things be set out and work from there." you say with faux enthusiasm, "we can work on your quote-on-quote poster on a bench nearby too."

"...it's not that bad."

"uh huh," you tease, raising an eyebrow. whatever. who geppie lets follow his private doesn't mean anything.

eventually, you two end up sitting on a bench together that faces the lawn.

"oh come on! look," gepard laughs as he pulls out his laptop, already logged in and displaying a somewhat improved version of his last poster. the changes are minor, like font changes and whatnot. but you can tell just how much effort he put into it. effort he put into everything and anything he did. a quality of his that you love. "i got rid of some of the uglier images," he pointed out excitedly, shuffling closer to you so you could get a closer look, "just like you told me to." the last part, a whisper similar to the sweetness of vows.

"it's good…" you mumble, too busy clinging onto his words and soothing a racing heart.

"really?"

"really." you reply earnestly, hooded eyes studying yours.

you wanted to lean in. to tread past the tightrope of a line preventing you and gepard from being more than just friends; to finally speak your mind on what you've been feeling for the past few years.

but…

"ah!" you explain, pretending to remember something by suddenly grabbing your paper bag from before.

…you're a coward.

inside are two beverages and a warm pastry carefully wrapped in tissue. "my favourite…" gepard mutters, surprised, "you remembered."

"iced coffee. you always preferred things cold. and a pastry too! it's a thank you for yesterday and-"

his ears turn redder than the normal red-on-a-windy-day red. and you almost — almost considered this a win: a step over that line, before…

"ha. you really are my best friend."

ouch.

MASTERLIST ⸝⸝ previous! ⸝⸝ next!

𑁤 sypnosis. despite claiming to be 'rizz master 3000' name has failed to ask out their crush and childhood best friend, gepard, for a few years (L). with this new wave of courage, will this lovestruck idiot be able to confess before gepard buys a house and adopts 3 cats and a bunny with someone else? (this is a joke. geppie will not be adopting 3 cats and a bunny).

notes. . . omgg this is like my 6th time ive tried to post 😭 ( so sorry for the like 3week hiatus LMAO) anyways ive been trying to get into a law school for next year so college has been biting me in the ass lately. sending love to all yall tho <3

. . . tags @520cafe , @kitsuxiv , @91ed0 , @iridescentsunsetwaters, @yevene , @lunavixia , @vilthenothing , @ryuryuryuyurboat

[gale-gentlepenguin]

Rating Disney Villains based on how relatable they are and why they are evil (part 1)

Ursula: 5/10

Despite being banished she isn’t starving to death and still gets plenty of visitors. Clearly she’s capping.

Jafar: 7/10

Considering the Sultan is an idiot, I too would probably want to take over the kingdom just so the kingdom doesn’t fall into ruin

Cruella de Vil: (original not that dumb live action prequel) 3/10

The dogs would have made great coats but she could have waited until they needed to be put down or the cops find out a place has over 100 dogs without a license

Maleficent: 9/10

I too would curse a baby if I was not invited to a party and no one was sorry about it

Gaston: 2/10

Just because one girl doesn’t want to marry you when you could have Litterally ANYONE ELSE, granted I think Bell is hot, but not worth starting a mob hot. Incel behavior do not approve

Scar: 7/10

Mufasa was elitist as f*** and everyone called him Scar, plus fighting to Attain dominance is a normal animal thing

Captain Hook: 7/10

I too would be annoyed if anytime I did anything a demigod in green tights and animal costume wearing children got in the way

Lady Tremaine: 1/10

You Literally have no reason to be this vile. If anything, being nice probably would have set you up for life.

Hades: 7/10

If I was stuck being life guard for the most depressing adult swim in history I would probably stage a coup too.

Evil Queen: 3/10

Considering she made a potion to look ugly to trick Snow White, why not just make a potion for Snow White to look slightly uglier so you can be the fairest.

Mother Gothel: 4/10

Considering Rapunzel’s hair helped make her nigh immortal, I kind of get why she went through such lengths to keep her isolated, but if she just took Rapunzel out 1 time. She could have stayed immortal for much longer.

Claude Frollo: 2/10

Using a bad interpretation of your religion to justify genocide is a dick move. But I get why he was into Esmeralda.

Shere Khan: 8/10

Humans are dicks, and fire burns. Very realistic animal reaction

Professor Ratigan: 8/10

Considering how people constantly called him a triggering name, I too probably would conquer England and write an entire diss track to play right at my nemesis’s death.

Yzma 10/10

Kuzco was 100% that guy people would not be sad seeing die in the start of the movie. Yzma Litterally took over within like a day after he was gone. I’m shocked it didn’t happen sooner.

Shan Yu: 7/10

It’s war, and historically speaking the Huns would have decimated China. Also considering how easily him and 5 guys managed to get into the capital and nearly kill the emperor, China needs to reconsider its military practices.

Dr.Facilier 2/10

Dude got himself in debt for his own powers then got shocked when his evil voodoo/hoodoo turned on him. Rip to him but I’m different.

The Horned King 4/10

While blander than an unsalted cracker, I don’t think a face like his could get into any other profession, so undead army

Madame Medusa: 4/10

That was a big ass Diamond, but probably wouldn’t have been a problem if she wasn’t a dick to children

Prince John: 0/10

He just taxed people for no reason, so basically like most governments.

Chernabog: 1/10

If he is basically satan than yea, pretty lame motivation

[dangermousie]

Oh, brother...aka keeping it in the (royal) family

I recently realized that for some reason “multiple brothers one girl” seems to be a popular category in costume dramas. I am not sure why such sharing is necessary in a polygamous society for fancy royals each of whom can get himself a whole harem, but I am not complaining that it appears any remake of the Hollywood classic “Seven Brides for Seven Brothers” would clearly be changed into “One Bride for Seven Brothers, and Some of the Brothers Spit Blood and Die” if it were a cdrama. Here are some of the dramas at issue. 

Liu Shi Shi appears to be the queen of this subgenre to such an extent that I am vaguely wondering if it’s in her contract. We are gonna start with THREE of her dramas:

Bu Bu Jing Xin - Liu Shi Shi has not one, not two, but THREE hot royal brothers, played by Nicky Wu, Kevin Cheng and Lin Gengxin, pine for her time-traveling self. Since this is an exquisite (no, seriously, it’s amazing) period piece about loss and longing, she ends up with none of them, instead of a hot vagely-’cesty gangbang as one might expect from that set-up.

Lost Love in Times - poor Liu Shi Shi, she’s a sexy witch having to pick between William Chan and his shady brother Joe Xu. To make it even trippier, the two actors look like each other, to really hammer the whole “siblings want her” theme.

The Imperial Doctress - why bust what’s not broken? It’s the true and tried Liu Shi Shi and hot royal brothers formula. She’s a doctor who spends most of her time practicing medicine, escaping barbarians and creating feminism, not noticing that as she pines for one royal brother played by Huang Xuan, another royal brother, played by infinitely hotter Wallace Huo, is pining for her.

Gong/Jade Palace Lock Heart - if Liu Shi Shi is the queen of that set up, Feng Shao Feng is the king, what with this and Military Seal, both of which star Yang Mi. Clearly, there are worse ways to make a career than stealing Yang Mi from a royal brother. Here, Yang Mi is a spunky time traveler in the middle of Kang Xi’s sons’ fight for the throne. She first falls for Four but ends up with Eight. In between, she offers to bang Four to save Eight as one does. Gives a whole new meaning to sharing is caring and “have you brought enough for the entire class?”

Legend of the Military Seal - Yang Mi and FSF strike again. FSF is madly in love with his brother’s wife, and since she’s not afflicted by blindness, she shares his feelings. Surprisingly, but delightfully, happy ending ensues. 

Who Rules the World - more like which brother rules awesome Zhao Lusi’s heart. Going by the rule of “hottest brother wins,” Yang Yang gets the girl in a drama that is pretty yum yum.

Colourful Bone - one hot seriously whumped out royal brother and one whiny immature one, oh who should the heroine pick? This drama stands for the proposition that you should protect and save abused people, especially if they are hot men, since they will always turn out to be an emperor in disguise. This drama btw is one giant kinkfest for yours truly.

The Eternal Love - you could make THREE whole seasons out of timetravel and brothers into the same girl, who knew.

Dreaming Back to the Qing Dynasty - if you’ve seen Gong or BBJX, you know the drill. Horde of queued brothers queueing for the heroine.

(Mine and all my brothers’, that is -Ed.)

Princess Jieyou - Yuan Hong narrowly escaped the curse of fancying his brother’s woman in BBJX, being about the only sibling not in love with LSS in that one. But clearly, you can’t fight fate and shortly thereafter he’s got to be a sister-in-law luster in a drama of his very own. He is a barbarian general who falls in love with a woman only to discover she’s to marry his brother. Angst and deliciousness and eventual happy ending (the husband fulfilled the uglier brother’s duty by eventually kicking the bucket.)

The Promise of Chang’an - if you want to watch brothers with the same woman but no happy ending, and have already watched BBJX, I present this recent drama where Cheng Yi gets to, as always, suffer beautifully watching the woman he loves marry his annoying brother. Pretty much everyone dies at the end of this one, going off to a great big threesome in the sky.

Twisted Fate of Love - will Sun Yi pick the delicate Tan Jianci or the sexy as fuck bastard that is Jin Han? Being a smart woman, she picks the latter and my hormones rejoice.

Go Princess Go - this is a drama that parodied every cliche there is, so why not brothers into one woman? Who is actually a man in a woman’s body making it even more delightful!

Ashes of Love - even being divine, with women from three separate realms available will seemingly not prevent love interests being a scarce resource leading to sibling love rivalry. Deng Lun and Luo Yunxi duke it out ostensibly for Yang Zi but in reality for who can suffer more prettily. Deng Lun might get the girl, but LYX wins the suffering crown, so it all more or less evens out.

Princess Silver - are siblings in love with the same woman not spicy enough for you? How about TWINS in love with the same woman? One awesome (Aarif Rahman) and one psychotic (Jing Chao) want our heroine and both marry her at one point. Only the awesome one gets to bang her though. (But the psychotic one gets to stick meathooks through his brother in compensation for not being able to stick...ummm...meathook through the heroine, so it’s all OK.)

Secret of the Three Kingdoms - and now we are gonna go REAL PERV! If twins are not enough for you, seekers of strong sensations, how about IDENTICAL twins? Ma Tianyu replaces his dead identical twin brother as the last Han emperor and gets to woo Wan Qian (whose plan it was in the first place.) At least she doesn’t need to get used to a new face?

We are gonna end here and not get into father and son sharing the same woman a la Empress of China.

(Congrats to Aarif Rahman for getting to bang both his brother’s and his father’s wives on screen. That is an interesting niche.)

[innerpalaces]

The Life of a Cannon Fodder Mother-in-Law - 28

Chapter 28: The Deceived Mother-in-Law 28

Qi Zhengming went downstairs with a sullen face.

When he saw the people below secretly peeking at him, his expression became even uglier. Although they didn't make much noise just now, based on the relationship between these people, everyone could imagine several big dramas.

He almost ran out of the restaurant. He had something on his mind and didn't want to wander around, so he went home directly. Not long after entering, he saw his son who was about to go out. Qi Zhengming thought of Liu Huixin's words and stopped him: "What have you done recently?" Qi Hechen's eyes avoided his: "In another month, it will be the New Year, and the county exam will be in the spring. I have been busy learning to solve problems with my grandfather every day." "Your mother said that what you did annoyed her," Qi Zhengming said in a stern tone. Qi Hechen swallowed: "It didn't work out anyway, so don't ask." Seeing his son's expression, Qi Zhengming knew that there was something wrong. He frowned and said: "Hurry up and tell the truth!"

Qi Hechen looked at the sky and the earth, but did not dare to look at his father: "You may not want to hear it..." So this matter is not good for him either? Seeing his son hesitating, Qi Zhengming was furious: "Tell the truth!" "It's..." Qi Hechen closed his eyes and said, "I heard that mother liked that pretty boy and wanted to bribe him. But it turns out that pretty boy doesn't know what's good for him, so I thought about finding her another one. I went to the brothel and picked a popular male courtesan, but mother didn't like him..."

Qi Zhengming: "..." Is  this really his biological son! He was so angry that he couldn't suppress it at all. He raised his hand and slapped his son hard. Father and son were so close that Qi Hechen couldn't avoid it. His face burned with pain, and swoll in an instant into a print of Zhengming's hand. Qi Zhengming was still trembling with anger: "You bastard, what were you thinking?" As a son arguing with his father, the younger generation must suffer. Qi Hechen did not talk back, let alone fight back. To prevent his father from making another move, he took two steps back and looked at the servant not far away. The attendant understood instantly and ran towards the Old Master's yard. Qi Zhengming looked at master and servant's actions and became more and more angry: "Even if your grandfather comes, I will still teach you a lesson today." Qi Hechen did these things for his own reasons. Their relationship as mother and son for many years was not fake. They were very close to each other during those years. They were not biologically related, but they were closer than biological relatives. Now that she ignored him, it should be more because she was angry at his father. Therefore, if he showed that he was on his mother's side, the gap between mother and son might be reduced. Sending a beautiful young man was a good intention, but who knew that his mother would set her sights on that pretty boy again.

The Old Master had high hopes for his grandson. When he learned that he was injured, he rushed over quickly. Panting from exhaustion, he said from afar: "Stop, stop!" The Old Madam followed beside him, panting in urgency. Seeing the injuries on her grandson's face, she was so distressed that she cried out: "Oh, my darling, how could your father do this?" Then she scolded her son: "The child did something wrong, you can just talk about it; he is old enough to understand. How can you do this? Don't you feel bad for beating him like this?" Qi Zhengming was so angry that he wanted to chew Qi Hechen up, how could he feel bad? Old Master Qi looked at his grandson up and down and saw that he was only injured on the face, and he breathed a sigh of relief: "Go back quickly and apply medicine. It's hard to see outsiders with a wound on your face. Your father has his own reasons for beating you. After you go back, recite half a book every day."

Qi Hechen said, "Grandpa, I'm injured." 

He looked distressed. "Then take a rest first, and recover from your injuries." Old Madam Qi answered, and then instructed her grandson: "But you really can't go out now. If others see you, they will talk nonsense again." With Liu Huixin's business flourishing and her refusal to come back, the Qi family was now conspicuous enough. Seeing that the matter was about to end, Qi Zhengming was unreconciled: "Dad, you are still protecting him. Do you know what he did?"

"No matter what he did wrong, you can't hit him." The Old Master disagreed: "If you want to punish him, it's good enough to let him copy a few books. Not only can he memorize the books, but he can also practice his calligraphy, killing two birds with one stone." Qi Zhengming didn't want to hear this, and said angrily: "He gave Huixin a beautiful young man!" The Old Master: "..." The old couple looked at each other, never expecting that their grandson would do such an unscrupulous thing. The old lady slapped Qi Hechen on the back: "Your parents are quarreling like this, and you didn't think about matchmaking, but are instead fanning the flames. What are you thinking?" If he was a biological son, Qi Hechen's behavior would indeed be wrong, but he was not a biological son. If he wanted to get close to Liu Huixin, he could only think of alternative ways. Of course, the truth could not be told. He was silent for a moment: "I heard that she was close to that cousin, so I wanted to test it. That's why I did this. Dad, I did this for you."

Father and son have been together for many years, and Qi Zhengming can tell whether his son is sincere or faking. This was clearly a quibble on his part. The anger that had just subsided came back again. Seeing that something was wrong, the old couple quickly took their grandson away. Qi Zhengming was left alone to stand there and sulk. Liu Huixin had someone new by her side, and she would never look back again. To be honest, he can't accept an unfaithful woman, but he is still young, and his family needed a reliable madam to earn money to support the family. These days, he has discovered that Zhao Zhenyan is not that capable... Given his age, the simplest and most direct solution was to beg Liu Huixin to come back. Begging was begging, but he still felt a little uncomfortable. Qi Zhengming was depressed at home for two days. Before he could make a move, he heard that Liu Huixin had transferred one of her shops to Ke Beiyu. This time, Qi Zhengming really couldn't bear it. He immediately got up and went directly to the courtyard where the mother and daughter lived. He didn't look for Liu Huixin, but his daughter. Qi Cai Miao has been resting recently and her health had improved a lot. She did feel uncomfortable about the divorce for a few days at first. However, thinking that she did not have to deal with those people from the Xu family anymore, she became happy again. When she learned that her father was coming, she felt that it was necessary to have a good talk with him. "Dad, sit down." Qi Cai Miao stretched out her hand and got straight to the point: "Mom and Master Ke are doing well. You should also find someone else. It's not good for you to keep pestering her." Qi Zhengming: "..." Is this my biological daughter?" He thought that since his daughter was willing to see him, she was willing to assist him and help bring the couple back together. It turned out that she was working as a lobbyist for Ke Beiyu. For a moment, Qi Zhengming was so angry that his chest heaved. "Cai Miao, I am your biological father. Besides good looks, what else does Ke Beiyu have? Is he worthy of you speaking well of him like this?" The more he spoke, the angrier he became: "That pretty boy is just after your mother's money!" Qi Cai Miao looked behind him and her face changed slightly. "Even if he wants my money, at least he is honest. He treats me well after getting the benefits." Liu Yuniang stood in the corridor and mocked: "You also want my money, but what did you do?" Qi Zhengming was speechless. He stood there, once again clearly aware of the alienation between the two and her disgust for him. It wasn't until a maid stood next to him and asked him to leave that he suddenly came to his senses and explained: "Huixin, I didn't mean to lie to you. Rumeng had already schemed against me before I married you. Not long after the engagement, she said she was pregnant, and she was too weak to abort, otherwise there would be two deaths... I was still young at the time and couldn't bear the responsibility of a lost life, so I had to grit my teeth and let her give birth to the child. I had planned to arrange for her to remarry with the child in two years, but my father's urging all those years had affected our relationship. After thinking about it, I brought the child back. Later, she got married... But she wanted to see the child often, and she became seriously ill because of it. It was really inappropriate for me to separate them, so I came up with the idea of ​​recognizing her as a godmother... Things developed to this point by accident, and I really didn't mean to lie to you."

"You are my wife, and I have never wanted to separate from you." He said with sincerity on his face: "Huixin, now that I think about it, this was all Rumeng's calculations." "If you say that, I will only look down on you even more." Liu Yuniang sneered: "Such things between men and women are consensual. You put all the blame on the woman and take no responsibility. I only hate myself for being blind and being deceived by you for so many years. I don't care who you want to spend the rest of your life with, and I don't want to know the emotional grievances between you and Cheng Rumeng. To me, you are just a stranger. Go away quickly and take care of yourself in the future." She then told Qi Cai Miao beside him: "For someone like your father, no matter how much you talk to him, it's all in vain. Don't bother." Qi Cai Miao smiled bitterly: "I just want him to stop bothering you." "If your father can't find the next woman to help him support his family, he will always bother me." Liu Yuniang spoke bluntly, met Qi Zhengming's angry eyes, and asked: "Isn't that the case?" Qi Zhengming said: "..." He left in anger. On the other side, Cheng Rumeng dreamed of marrying into the Qi family. She couldn't see Qi Zhengming herself, so she wanted to find someone to intercede for her. She was too embarrassed to find an outsider and didn't know many people. Finally, the problem fell on her daughter-in-law's head. "Yan'er, you must help me this time." Zhao Zhenyan really didn't want to care about her mother-in-law's affairs. In her heart, she still hoped that Liu Huixin would come back. Even if Liu Huixin didn't come back, the Qi family would be better of marrying in another wealthy woman. Otherwise, how would the family live?

"I've been short-tempered lately and have been sleeping all day, so I probably can't help you." Cheng Rumeng was not stupid. She immediately knew that Zhao Zhenyan didn't want to help, so she emphasized: "Yan'er, I am Hechen's biological mother!"

Zhao Zhenyan pointed at the wall: "You can be louder and let everyone know about this." Cheng Rumeng: "..." The fact that she is the child's biological mother cannot be spread out. Otherwise, if the news that he had deceived his adoptive mother for many years and secretly supported his birth mother came out, it may affect his reputation among the other scholars. By then, he will not even be qualified to pass the county examination, which would ruin her son's life. She smiled bitterly and said: "Yan'er, although Hechen didn't grow up beside me, he is still the person I am closest to in this world. I can't possibly harm him. I just hope that you can let our family be reunited for the sake of me being his mother." Zhao Zhenyan was annoyed: "Do you know that the Qi family is in a difficult situation now? If you go back, all the expenses at home and outside will fall on me. I don't have much dowry, and  it's almost gone. Can you afford it?" Cheng Rumeng: "..." She can't afford it. Zhao Zhenyan was getting more and more irritable, and she spoke rudely: "If you didn't remarry before, father would still care about you. It was your own choice that got you where you are now! I can't help you!"

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[justalonelyslytherin]

Colin Shea

“Give me a piggyback ride”

Thank you so much for sending this in <3

“Hello?” 

Colin didn’t think much of it when he answered the call. He’d send his girlfriend on her merry way only a couple of hours before, to have a nice evening with her friends. They’d planned to go bar hopping, so it wouldn’t be the first time for him to get an – in his opinion cute – drunk call from his girl. Only did this call turn out to be anything but.

The moment he heard her sobbing everything in him froze and an alarm started to blare in his mind. “I can’t find the others, I think they left me.”

“Are you somewhere safe? Are you lost?” “I’m not that drunk to get lost, only a little tipsy...”

“So you aren’t crying because you are lost?” He didn’t want to sigh in relief just now, as there still seemed to be an important part missing.

“No,” she mumbled once more, “I think I broke my foot.” And just like that, his heart stopped for a second time this evening.

“Where are you?” Immediately he stood up, marching towards the front door and grabbing his keys. In his haste, he didn’t even notice the tv still going on in the background.

Her foot throbbed like crazy, even the smallest shift made white-hot pain shoot through her. It was so bad it made her dizzy. Which was exactly why she was still sitting on the walkway, patiently waiting for her savior to come. 

Colin didn’t let her wait long. She was able to see him rush down the street towards her soon enough. The relief that flooded her upon seeing him brought on the waterworks, her bottom lip quivered as tears pooled in her eyes and she let out a low wail.

No later than the sound had left her lips, he was at her side, his arms wrapped around her softly pressing her head against his chest. She felt his lips press a gentle kiss onto her hair as his hands rubbed comforting circles into her shoulders.

“Let me take a look?” Everything in her screamed against it, the defiant pout on her lips translated her inner feelings to the outward. It would hurt and she didn’t want to feel any more pain than she was already in. Not that he would want to cause her any pain. 

“I’m just going to look at it. No touching, I promise.” With a huff she relented, nodding finally. She had pulled her heel off some time ago, immediately after falling before the adrenaline from the fall had vaned and the pain set in. His wince had her whine and sob once more, acutely aware it wasn’t a pretty side and an even uglier situation she had gotten herself into. A big bump protruded from the side of her foot, already becoming blue and purple.

"Aw shucks Honey. This doesn’t look good. You need to have this looked at.” “Noo, I don’t want to go to the hospital! I just want to get home.” There was nothing more that she wanted right now than to go home and snuggle up with her boyfriend for comfort. Perhaps for the pain to stop was also a wish right now. 

Colin crouched down beside her, finding her eyes until she looked at him again. “I won’t leave your side for even a second,” he promised her, serious yet softly.

“You promise?” Her question was answered with a dutiful nod and a joking salute from him. It made her lips quirk up the tiniest bit before she remembered to pout again in the misery of her situation. 

“Alright....but only if you give me a piggyback ride.” His amused chuckle made her heart warm together with the smirk that had made her fall in love in the first place.

“What my girl wants, she gets,” Colin told her, already getting up again and reaching his hands out to help her into an upright position. Once she balanced in front of him, rather shakily, on one foot, he turned around. 

It took them a hot minute but when she finally was situated on his back, her arms wrapped around his neck and her legs being held up by his arms, she let out a sigh. Leaning her head against his, she mumbled a soft “Thank you,” followed by an even quieter “I love you,” whispered against his neck. It made him smile softly, glancing at her out of the corner of his eyes.

“I’d do anything for you.”

[scroogles]

I'm using an IPad that I checked out from my community College library for my final art project and it has totally affirmed my hatred for Apple products. As much as I love the fancy shamnsy bluetooth pencil, it seems like their whole idea is to make their devices as sleek and simple to use as possible, but it really doesn't work for me. (Rant below)

For example, the UI tries so hard to be unobtrusive and sleek that it just ends up feeling unintuitive and confusing, and it kinda looks like something designed for babies. Ik this is partially cause I'm used to samsung UI, but i feel like it's layout is a little uglier but i think it's a lot more practical and customizable beyond the surface level stuff.

Also idk how to describe this other than Samsung UI feels like it's made of little cubes that fit together perfectly while Apple design feels like it's a plate of large orbeez covered in a thin mucus.

They implement features like adaptive brightness and don't give you the option to turn them off, which might not be so bad if it wasn't constantly changing the screen brightness while I'm trying to draw. And why not just give me the option?? There might be some technical reason ig but my Samsung phone let's me customize all those kinda gimmick features.

Maybe I'm crazy for this but something about the whole thing gives me the vibe I'm being condensed to somehow?? Like the designers think they know better than me what I want my device to do and I can't handle more than 10 symbols on the screen at once.

This feels especially true once you go to actually Do Anything to your device outside of its factory setting. As far as I can tell, Apple devices cannot run .apk, cannot be easily repaired at home, and have half of the customization options out of the box.

[amaranthinecanicular]

calypso

The shore is rocky. Sapnap climbs and claws until the sea is behind him, and the rough stone beneath his hands turns to sand and sharp beach grass. Coughs up the bowl of his stomach, all sea water.

His arms are still steaming. When it clears, he stares down at volcanic rock in the jagged shape of a palm and five fingers. He doesn’t recognize his own hands.

Far above him, a lighthouse looms. He waits for the keeper to notice him. He waits for the lighthouse to flash and spin. He waits for anything.

He waits.

(Calypso: alone on his island.)

[my pinch hit gift to bee @edgarallanpoestan for the @mcytblrholidayexchange! i’ve been wanting to write this for so long, so thank you for letting me. and i am SO sorry it is a few days late, i got way too into it and this whole thing got. SO away from me]

[a gentle karlnapity horror, for the retelling of a gentle myth. alternatively read on ao3.]

:

chapter one.

:

He fights his way out of the water, legs hissing, then crackling. The waves wrench him back. He catches himself on his hands, submerged up to the elbow, and chokes on the rush of steam.

The shore is rocky. He climbs and claws until the sea is behind him, and the rough stone beneath his hands turns to sand and sharp beachgrass. Coughs up the bowl of his stomach, all sea water.

His arms are still steaming. When it clears, he stares down at volcanic rock in the jagged shape of a palm and five fingers. He doesn’t recognize his own hands.

Far above him, a lighthouse looms. He waits for the keeper to notice him. He waits for the lighthouse to flash and spin. He waits for anything.

He waits.

:

It’s a small island, with one lighthouse and one cottage and nothing else. About a mile long, or so Sapnap estimates, by the time it takes him to walk the length of it (twenty minutes). Three sides drop sharply into broken-teeth black rock. The last slopes into the sea more gently, like someone took a thumb to the end of the island and smeared it into the water. There’s a tiny beach on that side, more pebbled than sandy, dotted with scrubby tufts of beachgrass, and the rusted, long-drowned remains of traintracks that trail out of the water like a tongue.

The cottage is derelict, and gives him the impression of an old man’s rugged face, busted up and perpetually snarling from a life of unforgiving seas and barfights. Windows are smashed, and the door hangs wrong in its frame. The roof sags in like a furled brow.

The lighthouse is too sturdy for breakdown, so instead it just looms, watchful and dark.

It’s an unfriendly place. He’s not surprised it’s been abandoned. The sky is gray like iron and the ocean dark like wine, and the climate, already cool, turns lashing and frigid in the sea spray. It’s nothing like the oppressive heat and humidity of Sapnap’s childhood, but the rugged inhospitality is familiar, and welcome. He thrives in a challenge.

:

It’s hard to believe, but the cottage might be uglier on the inside than the outside. It’s just one drab rectangular room, with a coal-burning stove, a cluster of cabinets, and a small wooden table packed in on one side, and a soggy couch cramped up around a fireplace on the other. The fireplace might be cool if it weren’t dripping rainwater, which has clearly spent years soaking into the rug laid out in front of it. He can feel and hear the whistle of at least four different drafts. The ceiling droops and the floor warps and sags in places, concerningly soft. There’s a door set into the kitchen-side of the room that leads to a bedroom, equally sodden. The only other door leads to a rickety wooden path which itself leads to an outhouse, stood on stilts and drunkenly tilted. It is absolutely the most depressing thing about this whole island.

He steps back inside the cottage. Looks around. Cracks his neck.

“Fuck it,” he says, to no one. “Let’s go.”

:

His dad was always trying to instill him with good habits. Productive directions to channel his energy. Most of them were boring, so most of them didn’t take, but he’s retained bits and pieces. Cleaning, tidying, and organizing were examples of this: a practical life skill, his father said, like he was trying to sell him something, and a fun hobby!

Some of it’s easy. He may not be a carpenter, but he’s handy—fixing the flue and the set of the door in its frame are simple affairs. He can beat out the cushions and fabrics, sweep away the dust and muck, open what windows can be opened and air out the place properly. The damp is burrowed into the walls and the floorboards like a cancer. The scent of rot. Taking care of the bad wood itself is going to be intensive, but the solution to the musty stench of decay is fairly straightforward. Just kind of tedious.

A fun fact from his father: with enough controlled heat, you could burn almost anything clean. You could boil away impurities. You could kill viruses and spores. You could preserve wood against the elements—wind, water, rot, insects, even fire. Isn’t that cool?

I guess, Sapnap had said, and then dashed outside to burn some shit under the guise of “cleaning.”

Sapnap cramps himself into the newly non-dripping fireplace and cranks up the heat. Up and up and up until the air shivers and his body is glowing and his arms and legs crackle with red veins of magma. He’s careful not to burn the place down. Soon enough it’s more of an oven than a cottage, rolling with the kind of heat that would cook human flesh. He holds that for about three hours, folded like an accordion and twiddling his thumbs. When he pulls himself from the fireplace, all his joints cracking, the place smells nothing like mold and entirely like charring. He imagines anyone else would complain, and tells himself that’s another reason why it’s good that he’s alone.

And hey. No one was around to see him shoved embarrassingly into the fireplace. That’s good too.

:

Something he didn’t expect: there’s a cellar.

He finds it when he peels back the unsalvageable rug in front of the fireplace, beneath which lies a square hatch with rusted hinges. It opens onto a ladder that dips down into blackness. The smell billowing up at him is dusty, but not dank, and descending into it is like dipping down into a well of ink, or a drum of tar. Or a tomb.

He’s on the ladder for longer than he expects. He keeps waiting for his foot to meet solid ground, and keeps waiting, and keeps waiting, and suddenly the ground is there rushing up to meet him, a jarring surprise. The storm up above is muffled and far away. He sets both feet down and leaves one hand cautiously on the ladder, peering around with squinted eyes, but it’s no use. It’s dark and cool and he can’t see a thing. He imagines, briefly, an unseen hand grabbing his ankle. He imagines a hand grabbing for his ankle and passing through it, because suddenly it feels like he doesn’t have a body. Like he doesn’t exist at all.

He scoffs, and breathes a flame to life in his palm. Shadows jump back from him to reveal stone floors and empty shelves. No food, obviously. A big barrel of salt. A smaller barrel of what might have once been coffee grounds. A drum of coal. Some hurricane lanterns, without oil. Two canning jars half-filled with cloudy, indeterminate liquid. A coil of rope and a handful of blunt, waxy candle stubs, maybe half a day’s worth of burning left between them. Blanketing everything is a layer of dust so thick it eats sound, consumes and absorbs it. It gets under his skin, a little. He tries to stomp his way through the room, rattling and rustling with more force than he might have otherwise, coughing and sneezing, but nothing seems to penetrate the silence. It feels a little like he’s burning up all the air in the room. The flame curls in against his fingers, slowly suffocating against the weight of the dark.

Stupid. He rolls his eyes and shakes it off. The little golden light brightens under his coaxing. On the other side of the room there’s a cistern with pipes snaking up and out, likely collecting rainwater and lead poisoning that he’ll definitely not be drinking. And, of all things, a loom.

It’s an old school wooden thing, enormous and skeletal. He only recognizes the frame from his father’s lessons as a child. He has no idea how someone got it down here, or why. The hatch isn’t that big. And weaving doesn’t seem imperative to lighthouse keeping.

He runs his fingers over the well-preserved wood. It looks like a piano stripped down to bones.

“People need hobbies, I guess,” he mutters.

:

He doesn’t trust the cistern for shit, but there’s more than enough dinged up pots to sit outside and collect rain, which never seems to end. Water taken care of. Food next.

Farming is out—there is no workable soil on the island, only sand and stone and salt. There don’t seem to be any animals burrowed in secret, either, which he knows because he spent a few hours sniffing for them like a bloodhound. No birds, which seems unlikely, though he’s not sure how he’d catch one anyway. Maybe this is why the previous lighthousekeeper abandoned ship: they stopped getting food from the outside, and couldn’t hack providing for themself. If Sapnap were any less stubborn, he might come to the same conclusion. Luckily he is bullheaded as shit.

There’s shellfish in the sand, and clinging to the black rock. They’re easy to miss if you’re not looking. When he clambers down the craggy sides of the island to harvest them, his legs nearly disappear, the gradient of flesh to volcanic rock just below his knees vanishing against the ground like some sort of partial camouflage. Which, as far as camouflage goes, is completely useless, and luckily not needed for hunting molluscs. They’re ugly things, oblong and irregularly contoured, with pearly silver insides. Oysters, he thinks, while the ones in the sand are paler and broader. Scallops, maybe? Clams? He doesn’t know or care. What he cares about is how annoying it is to pry the oysters up from the rock. He thought it would be a simple twist and pull. It isn’t, because why would it be easy? Fuck him is why.

“Come on,” he grunts, drenched and scrabbling at the cluster of shiny black shells, “come on, you little bastards, come oh shit son of a bitch—”

He slips into the water no less than three times before he figures out that it’s less about pulling than it is about chiseling and chipping. Luckily his new hands are perfect for that. He probably takes more satisfaction than he should from cracking them open and slurping them down.

But better than clams and better than son of a bitch oysters: there’s fish. Small, at most four pounds but usually less. He finds that when the weather is miserable, but not so miserable that the sea bashes him against the shore, he can stand in the shallows and wait for the fish to come to him. Hunting is familiar, and patience is necessary. Eventually they swim back, weaving between his legs, only to be caught on the sharp spears of his fingers.

He’s never had much sympathy for animals. He should have; there’s no real reason he shouldn’t. His father had a little white hellhound that Sapnap grew up with, and he loved it, like all kids love their childhood pets. He was deeply attached to a goldfish once. But when it comes down to it, they’re just animals. If you’re starving you butcher it. If it’s rabid you put it down. A dog is just a dog.

:

With his basic survival bases covered, he develops a routine. He likes routine.

Wake up in the small hours, still dark. Light a lamp or a candle. Eat the last of yesterday’s fish. Warm up with some swordwork—he doesn’t have a sword, obviously, but the iron poker for the fire is basically useless when he’s got fireproof hands, so he melts it down and beats it into a blade, however crude. By the time he hikes down to the water to hunt for the rest of the day’s meals, dawn is dripping through the cloud cover. Molluscs when the weather is at its worst; fish when the weather is awful but bearable. That usually kills three or four hours, and then at least two more while he guts, cleans, salts and stores the catch. Crisp one up for lunch. Eat in silence. Break the silence by focusing on the storm and the sound of his chewing.

Spend an hour and a half patrolling the perimeter of the island. He doesn’t really think he’s going to find someone hiding among the rocks, no matter the shadows he sees out of the corners of his eyes, but things wash up on the shore sometimes. Seaglass. Bottle caps. Bits of driftwood, weathered and sanded. He stores the things he thinks he can use later in the cellar. The rest he either skips on the water or burns for fun.

Devote a few hours to whatever house project he’s working on at the time. Thatching the beaten roof with beachgrass. Replacing rotted floorboards with wood from one of the empty shelves in the cellar. Scrubbing down the horrible goddamn outhouse.

A third meal in silence. Lie awake in bed afterward, in the dark, listening to the wind shriek. Try not to let the shadows sink into the grooves of his skull. Try not to think. Try not to remember.

Clasp one hand to the other until he can forget that it’s his own. Let this fantasy soothe him. Sleep. Don’t dream.

Wake up in the small hours, still dark. Repeat.

:

Sometimes the wind sounds like moaning. Sometimes it sounds like screaming. Sometimes he’s sure it’s a person, and he roves around in the dark like a blind, sick dog, hunting for someone to fight or to rescue.

Most of the time it just sounds like wind.

:

Sapnap’s never been an overly anal person. Like, he’s neat enough—when things get too messy he cleans. But he’s comfortable in a certain level of chaos. Things feel warmer, more lived in that way. Still, he’s diligent about keeping up the cottage. It’s the only way to keep rot from creeping in and breaking everything down further. He beats out the sheets and cushions every week, dries up the damp that’s settled in the corners every day. He washes himself in the ocean with a scraping stone, and tumble dries his clothes between his hands. Sand and muck are regularly dragged into the cottage so he regularly sweeps them out. He doesn’t let dishes pile. It’s all a little more sterile than he’d prefer, but he’s proud of it.

He has this vague idea of writing letters to friends and family and inviting them to a house warming party. Which is ridiculous. He doesn’t intend to stay here.

But there’s an old lighthouse keeper’s journal that he could use for invitations. He imagines rolling them up into green glass bottles, which he doesn’t have because none have washed onto the beach, and chucking them into the sea, inexplicably arriving at the correct locations. He imagines sending one to his dad, who doesn’t live on the water. He imagines sending one to George, and setting up a spot for him to crash on the couch, as though George wouldn’t immediately claim the bed and kick Sapnap out into the living room. As though George would ever step out of his house to visit him. He imagines sending them to others, too, but he can’t quite picture their faces.

He keeps his room especially tidy in the event of a surprise visit from his father. Somehow it seems plausible that he might just show up on the doorstep, glass bottle invitation or no, with a basket of muffins balanced in the crook of his elbow. He was all about dropping in unannounced, before—

Well. Before.

:

A week passes, or a month, before Sapnap realizes he could be keeping track of the days. He considers the idea for all of thirty seconds before he discards it. He’s here now and will keep being here until he’s not. Carving tallies into the wall like some idiot slowly losing his mind won’t make the days any fewer. And he’s a week or a month behind anyway. Too late to start now.

:

There’s one more part of his daily routine. After dinner and before bed, he climbs down into the cellar and he weaves.

Or, like. He tries to. At first he didn’t try at all; weaving never interested him. His dad taught him when he was young—another good habit he tried to pass down. Sapnap whined and tantrumed like he always did, but his dad, usually a pushover, had insisted. He adopted his schoolteacher tone and rattled off something about culture and tradition and blah blah blah. Sapnap didn’t get the point. He still doesn’t. Demonic fireweaving is a dead art; what was once vital and necessary is now obsolete, driven to extinction by canny flame resistant enchantments, sturdy textiles produced more efficiently by modern piglin means, and access to overworld trading.

It’s tradition, his father had said, meeting Sapnap’s childhood skepticism with infinite patience. There’s value in knowing where you came from, and the people who came before you.

It takes too long, Sapnap complained.

There’s value in taking the time to do something well, his father said. Sometimes you need to slow down. Clear your mind. Center yourself.

Is there value in being a smelly assbutt? Sapnap said.

Language, said his dad, but laughed through it.

He walked Sapnap through it step by step, weaving one panel and then another, and another. It took forever. This is boring, Sapnap said, and it was, but mostly he’d said it because he was annoyed, and he was a shit kid with no empathy who wanted to hurt his father.

I’m sorry you feel that way, Bad said. If he was hurt he only smiled.

I don’t think this is boring. I think there’s value in spending this time with you.

Eventually they had several white rectangles of different sizes that Sapnap didn’t know what to do with. Then his dad stitched them together and like magic, he had a shirt. Light, soft, flame resistant. And when Sapnap clutched it to his chest and grumbled that weaving was still pointless, Bad only said, I don’t think it is. Now you have something to keep you warm when you visit your friends in the overworld, and I got to make something for my favorite little panda.

Later, at Sapnap’s request, Bad embroidered an orange flame onto the front. That shirt lasted Sapnap years and years.

Now he sits in front of the loom, unsure how to begin. Or maybe it’s less that he’s unsure how to begin and more unsure how to begin. The strange, daunting hurdle of starting, no matter how prepared you are. The frame is both bigger and smaller than he remembers. After his father’s lessons sunk into his brain he promptly got to work never using them again. Honestly he’s surprised he remembers as much as he does now.

The first thing his father did was tease out the yarn. The warp, he called it.

He lights a flame in his palm, clean and steady gold. What you want, his dad said, is incomplete combustion, and an even line of smoke. He produced a flame that burned magnesium-bright, which in turn produced a delicate, dove-white ribbon that unfurled toward the ceiling. Sapnap had been so bored when his father showed him, had wanted nothing more than to go out and jump in a geyser to see how high he could fly. Now he can’t help but marvel at the grace of his memories. How swiftly and nimbly Bad drew out the thread and fed it into the loom, as though it was easy, second nature.

It isn’t easy, and it sure as hell isn’t second nature. It takes an embarrassingly long time to figure out how to get his flame to do what he wants, but eventually, a thin line of smoke threads up from the edges, soft and gray. He catches it between his fingers. He’s already sweating.

Too eager. The smoke dissipates half a dozen times against the jagged ends of his fingers before he figures to stop pinching it and start winding it around his thumb instead, looping it over and over until he’s got less of a thumb at all and more of a bobbin. He’s panting, the skin at his temples tight with concentration. His own fatigue shocks him, but not nearly as much as the satisfaction does.

Sapnap shuts his eyes. Breathes deep. Steadies his hands.

He starts dressing the loom. Slowly, clumsily, and with great care.

:

By the time he finishes he’s the kind of exhausted that aches in his teeth and spine and the roots of his eyeballs. He has no idea what time it is, or how long he’s been working. He shears the weaving free with one swipe of a finger—his dad showed him how to remove the warp from the loom properly, how to tie off the ends, but all that can come later. For now he lays it flat in his palm and appraises his work.

The first thing he’s ever woven is a misshapen gray square, the weft pulled too tight in some places and too loose in others. It looks like shit. It’s not even a pretty gray, just a muddy, sooty not-quite-black and not-quite-brown like dirty water or smog. He grimaces. His dad would be ashamed.

No he wouldn’t. His dad would have been proud. So proud he’d have clutched the tiny square to his heart, cried a little, and then framed it. That’s what his father would have done.

:

He makes a lot of coasters. That’s what he’s calling the gray squares. So, so many coasters. Does he need that many coasters? No. He doesn’t even need one. But it makes him feel better to think of them as something with a name and a purpose, and somehow, despite himself, he enjoys making them. It’s easy to fall into a rhythm. Throw the shuttle. Feed the cloth. Switch the treadle. Throw the shuttle. His head gets quiet, but in a way that still feels grounded in his body. Distant and present at the same time. It’s nice.

It’s nicer when he starts finding actual uses for his coasters. They make for excellent insulation. He lines the thatched roof with it, and the windows with whistling air. Plugs up every draft he can find. When one soaks through with rain, he replaces it with another. Soon there’s little handmade squares sticking out of every nook and crevice. That’s cool, he decides. He likes that.

Sometimes, when he’s down there weaving, he hears the creak of footsteps up above. He used to creep up the ladder, limbs coiled and ready, but no one was ever there.

He lets it go, now. Doesn’t let it interrupt his work. It’s just the old house settling. He tells himself that.

:

The days are growing shorter, he thinks, but just as often he thinks they’re growing longer, so really what the fuck does he know. The temperature stays the same, as does the muted palette of the landscape. The rain never feels summer warm, but it never feels like ice, either. It’s just cold. Cold, and dreary, and colorless, and wet. He misses the sun. He misses the searing embrace of moistureless heat. He misses a lot of things.

But it’s loud. That he appreciates, if nothing else. If it’s going to be wet and cold all the time, he’d prefer a full-chested, go-big-or-go-home storm over a half-hearted drizzle, even if the drizzle allows him to get more done. If a storm were something he could tune with a dial, then the perfect volume would be quiet enough to allow him to be productive, and loud enough to drown unwanted thoughts, unwanted silences.

He just wishes the wind wouldn’t scream.

:

He doesn’t dream anymore. He’s not sure why that is. The last dream he had, or remembers having, was one where he died and the meat of his body kept waiting to break down but it never did, because he was so alone that not even the bugs wanted him. He woke up laughing. It was the most pathetic dream he’s ever had.

He thinks he’d take that now. He thinks he’d take anything but the seamlessness between sleeping and waking. The complete lack of feeling or memory or thought, the passing by of the world around you, unhurried, impassive, without your knowledge. He may as well not exist for hours. He may as well fall out of the world the moment his eyes fall shut and then reappear, spontaneously, six hours later, when his eyes snap open. He has no way of knowing that’s not what happened. No proof he existed at all in that time, not a single sensation to hang the weight of his being on, not even in dreams.

:

His weaving gets better. He thinks it gets better. His stitching is nearer, and he can weave colors into his smoke if he controls his breathing and burns the right flame. His panels get bigger and bigger until he’s making—blankets, he thinks. He drapes one over the musty couch. Uses another as a comforter in bed. A third he lays in front of the fire to cover the ugly water stain from the last rug. The rest he folds up and stores in the cellar, on the shelves he didn’t repurpose.

There are some he keeps under his bed. One that he wove with burnt-copper hints of green that he keeps on the bottom of the pile. Another with speckles of red on the edges like embers. The next one he weaves to match it, but with pinprick stars of pale blue. He fucks up the next blue one, but the fact that it’s so ugly makes him laugh, so he keeps it.

The one after that is perfect. It’s downy soft and the color of ash, but tilting it this way and that under the right light reveals a subtle, iridescent sheen of navy, like the hidden colors on the wings of a bird. He loves that one. He uses it a lot, even when he doesn’t need to.

The one he’s working on now is probably his best. It’s also probably the most frustrating—he keeps undoing it and restarting, because it’s so hard to maintain the right colors. As he’s weaving he lets the shade shift at will—green to purple to yellow to turquoise—which is fine. That’s right, even, that’s good. The problem is that it’s so easy for the colors to get muddled. All the other blankets are smoky, but this one needs to be bright.

He’s pretty sure that when he leaves the island, he can sell some of this stuff. He’s sure there are pretentious assholes out there who would pay out the nose for classic demonic fireweaving. He could probably make a killing.

He won’t sell these ones, though. These are gifts. He runs his fingers over them and thinks about people he doesn’t know.

:

He climbs the lighthouse only once. He thinks he sees someone up there.

Gripping his poker-turned-short-sword, he ascends a rattling iron staircase, round and round and up and up, until he gets dizzy. There are landings and there are windows, but not enough of either. Great stretches of shadow separate each watery square of light, playing tricks when he looks up or down, giving the illusion of no beginning and no end. Like he’ll be climbing these stairs forever.

He makes it to the top uninterrupted, and no one is there. The lens of the beacon is smashed. Sapnap circles it slowly, looking out, seeing what there is to see.

Which is nothing, of course. No buoys or mainland. No ships coming or going. No fish jumping. No gulls crying. Just choppy black ocean, all the way around, vast enough to swallow him whole if he looks too long.

The lighthouse is quiet, and empty, and hollow. He doesn’t know what he expected.

He stands up there for an hour, waiting for nothing at all.

:

That night, he runs out of candles. He only realizes that because the storm bares its teeth after sunset, beating at the walls and stealing into the cottage through cracks too fine to stopper with coasters. The candle on the kitchen windowsill goes out while he’s in the middle of dinner. He looks up with the fish halfway to his mouth and frowns at the waxy puddle left on the sill.

There’s barely any wick left, so he scrapes the mess away and heads to the cellar to find a replacement. There isn’t one. He could bring up a hurricane lantern, but he already uses those to illuminate the bedroom and the outhouse and the cellar with his weaving—

The solution comes to him in his father’s voice. He climbs back to the surface and retrieves one of the canning jars from the cabinets, washed out in his first cleaning spree and yet to find a use. It doesn’t feel exactly accurate to say his dad taught him this. After the hours and hours he’d devoted to teaching Sapnap to weave, this seemed more of a neat offhand trick. Sapnap lights a flame, snips a bit of smoke from it, nips the end of his tongue, and then slicks the thread in blood. A demon’s soul weave is inflammable; a demon’s blood is combustible. Put them together, his dad said, plus a bit of soul flame, and voila: a perpetually burning wick, no wax or oil required. At most it might need another drop of blood every now and again. He called the wick an elegant bit of demoncraft, if a bit macabre.

Sapnap punches a hole through the lid of the canning jar and feeds the wick through. Snaps a flame to life over his finger and lights it. He’s pretty pleased with his work: the new candle is brighter and sturdier than the last, unlikely to blow out under a stray breath or draft. The wind kicks up from a moan to a screech as though to test this, and the candle doesn’t stutter once. Maybe he could sell these too, when he gets back. They’re way less effort than fireweaving, anyway.

The wind screeches again, and Sapnap frowns. He likes a loud storm. He doesn’t like when it screams. It gets him thinking there’s a person on this island, as so many other shadows and whispers have, when he knows there’s not. There can’t be. He’s checked a thousand times. He’s alone here.

The house rattles around him when he tries to sleep. The wind is a banshee. He squeezes his eyes shut and clutches his own hand very hard.

The next day, he has a visitor.

:

In the morning the world is back to a bleak staticky rumble, but mellow enough in context to count as a good day. He eats two small filets of fish. Drinks some water from the full pot outside. Scrapes the bottom of the coffee barrel for a few grounds to crunch between his teeth, just to taste something different. Grabs his sword to run through his warm up exercises and then walks out to the beach, skin steaming gently in the rain. When he gets there he strips off his shirt and pants to tuck beneath a rock where they won’t blow away.

“Good morning!” says a voice, and Sapnap jumps out of his fucking skin.

There’s a little sailboat at the end of the beach. A little past the end of the beach, actually—not far enough to smash against the rocks but not close enough to pull in gently against the sand either. It’s exactly in between, beached like a whale, no holes in the hull as far as he can see but at least a couple decent scratches. A little ways from the boat, sitting on the beach proper, is a young man.

“Hey there,” he says, in the cheerful manner of one who has not just been shipwrecked on a remote island. If the dingy can be called a ship.

“Fuckin. Hey,” says Sapnap.

He’s got a wet mop of brown hair and a colorblock oilskin coat as ugly as sin. Sapnap stares at him, and remembers belatedly to scowl. Why didn’t he bring his sword? He should bring it everywhere. “Who the hell are you?”

“Rude,” says the young man, not sounding offended at all. “Going for an early morning skinny dip, huh? Aren’t you cold?”

Because he’s practically naked. Sapnap feels a sudden and uncharacteristic flush of self-consciousness, which is annoying, because before he got here he was never insecure about this sort of thing. He’s always been comfortable in his skin. George said he should have more shame, which was hypocrisy at its finest, while his dad said it was a good way to be. But he’s been alone so long now that he’s forgotten how it feels to be seen by big gray eyes when you weren’t expecting to be seen by big gray eyes.

It’s also annoying because who the hell does this guy think he is, okay, this is Sapnap’s shipwrecked island and this clown can fuck off and find his own.

He yanks his clothes from their hiding spot. The young man politely looks away as he redresses.

To the sky, he says, “That storm last night sure was something, huh? I thought I was going to drown out there until I saw your lighthouse. It really saved my bacon!”

Saved my bacon. “It’s not mine,” Sapnap says curtly. Fully clothed, he feels much more sure-footed, and crosses his arms over his chest.

The young man looks back at him. “What?”

“The lighthouse. It isn’t mine.”

He absorbs this. Cranes back to take another look at the lighthouse, and then farther back to look at the cottage, and then farther still to look at Sapnap, with new eyes. Suddenly he stands. It’s more fluid than Sapnap expected, strangely graceful. Graceful doesn’t fit him, all stacked with pokey, bony angles. The guy looks like a child’s drawing: a stick figure with clashing colors. He’s seriously all leg.

He says, “So the light I saw must’ve come from your house. I guess you really saved my bacon.”

Sapnap raises a brow. “No way you saw some two-bit candles through that storm.”

“Handsome and modest. And a hero! You’re like some kind of triple threat.” He bats his lashes. His grin is sweet and honeyed. “I’ll have to find some way to thank you.”

So the guy’s a freak. No other word for someone whose first instinct after washing up on a deserted island is to flirt about it.

Sapnap seriously considers leaving him there to get his sword, but then the stranger’s eyes go bright and round, and without another word he’s bent double in the belly of his boat. He emerges with his arms weighed down by a wooden crate. It looks waterlogged, but otherwise intact.

“How about I make you breakfast? I’ve got wine and salted beef.”

Sapnap almost does a lot of things. He almost tells the guy to piss off, and he almost ignores him and walks away, and he almost kills him to claim his shit for himself. In the back of his head a little voice that sounds like his father chides him; that last one would be rude. The same little voice disapproves of wine at ten in the morning, but Sapnap can’t be bothered to give a rat’s ass about that.

The stranger is beaming at him. Sapnap thinks looking directly into the sun would be less blinding.

And, well. It’s been forever since he’s eaten anything but fish and son of a bitch oysters.

“Come on,” he sighs, and turns to hike back to the cottage. The stranger whoops behind him, and then Sapnap hears the scuff of his feet in the sand.

“I’m Karl,” says the stranger, coming up beside him. His hair is drying into a sandy halo of curls. Sapnap tears his eyes away. “To answer your earlier question. Karl Jacobs.”

Tearing his eyes away doesn’t do much, turns out. He doesn’t need to look to know Karl is struggling because Karl doesn’t bother to hide it—he huffs and puffs, swatting aside the tallgrass without much success and kicking up great clouds of sand that sting the backs of Sapnap’s knees. He readjusts his crate every other second, the contents inside clinking and sloshing sadly. Sapnap ignores it for all of thirty seconds before it starts to get annoying. He rolls his eyes and snatches the crate, hoisting it onto his shoulder.

“Sapnap,” he says to Karl’s wondering eyes.

“You’re strong.” Karl fans a hand in front of his face. “I’m swooning.”

Sapnap rolls his eyes harder. “There’s something wrong with you.”

“Or something very, very right,” Karl counters. “Maybe I did die in that storm. Maybe this is heaven.”

Sapnap barks a laugh. He can’t help it. “This isn’t heaven.”

Karl goes quiet, which Sapnap appreciates. Then he switches tack, which Sapnap also appreciates, though not as much as the quiet. Still, it’s better than what they were talking about.

“Sapnap,” Karl says, “I like that name. It tastes good.”

Sapnap laughs again, but this time it feels genuine. “What the fuck?”

“You’ve never found a word that tastes good?” Karl asks, as though Sapnap is the weird one. “Wow, that’s kind of sad for you? Sapnap. Sapnap Sapnap Sapnap. Sadnap. Snapmap. Snapchat.”

Sapnap sticks a foot out and trips him. “Shut up, loser.”

Before they enter the cottage Sapnap shakes off as much sand as he can. “Like a dog,” Karl giggles. It’s this funny, tripping sound that reminds Sapnap of the spiral staircase in the lighthouse.

Karl shakes himself out too, scrubbing his hands through his hair. Buckets of sand rain down.

“I can’t believe you just called me a dog,” Sapnap muses. “Look at you. You’re like one of those mop dogs.”

“A Komondor?” Karl says, and then answers himself, “Komondor, I hardly know ’er!”

He grins shamelessly through his hair. It’s everywhere, Sapnap can’t even see his eyes.

“I—that’s—that was so stupid. That made no sense.” Sapnap splutters. “And isn’t that a bird?”

Karl hoots. “That’s a commodore, dingus. A Komondor is a sheepdog.”

“Komondor. That’s what I said.”

Karl sweeps his hair back off his forehead. “Sure it is.”

“Fuck off, Jacobs. Your jokes are dumb. I’m going to make myself breakfast and you can stay out here and starve.”

He ducks inside and closes the door on Karl’s indignant yelp. While he struggles with the latch, Sapnap sets the crate on the tiny table and pries it open: two bottles of wine and, miracle of miracles, dried jerky. It’s been cut into strips and spiced, a fragrant, savory scent wafting up even through the overwhelming tang of the sea. Sapnap’s mouth waters. He tears into it and closes his eyes with a moan.

When he opens them again, Karl is waggling his eyebrows.

“Shut up.”

“Hey man, I didn’t say anything.”

Sapnap only has one chair, which he offers to Karl. He’s got a few cups though, so he takes two down, uncorks a bottle with his teeth, and pours some wine. Karl accepts one with painted nails.

“Did you make this?” Sapnap asks, referring to the jerky.

“Yep. How is it?”

Sapnap slurps pointedly at his wine. Karl reels back, a hand pressed to his chest.

“You wound me this way? After I shared my meal with you out of the goodness of my heart?”

Sapnap smirks around the lip of his cup. “I didn’t say anything.”

“I see what you did there. And I heard that borderline pornographic moan, it couldn’t have been that bad.”

“You would have had the same reaction if you’d eaten nothing but fish and clams for—” He doesn’t know how long. Maybe he should have kept track. “—as long as I have.”

Karl’s gaze turns critical. “You think you could do better?”

“Yeah,” Sapnap says, honestly.

“Okay then.” And he drops his chin in his hand. “Impress me.”

“What, now?”

“Unless you want to put me up until you can impress me at dinner, sure, now. Go for it, master chef.”

Sapnap grins. He thrives in a challenge.

He takes a few strips of jerky and clasps them tight. Soon the air is rippling around his closed fists, magma glowing in his wrists and the cracks of his knuckles. Karl ogles, and Sapnap abruptly recalls that he hasn’t spoken to another person in weeks-or-months. How the fuck do you conversation again?

“So.” Sapnap clears his throat. “What brings you out here?”

Jesus. Karl muscles back a smile and lets him have it. “I’m looking for someone.”

Sapnap waits for more, but Karl only smiles. Asks with a curious tilt to his eyebrows, “What about you? What are you doing in a lighthouse that isn’t yours?”

“Washed up here. Like you.”

He doesn’t offer anything else. Graciously, Karl doesn’t press. Instead he smoothly steers the conversation to the safer subject of cooking—does Sapnap like it, how long has he been doing it. He does, and a while. It surprises him to say. He’s been focused purely on the utilitarian while he’s been here; flavor, enjoyment have never entered the equation. But he does like cooking. His father’s a baker, but Sapnap enjoys the savory. His meals were something even George would grudgingly compliment.

After half an hour of trading recipes like they’re two normal people who aren’t marooned on a deserted island, Sapnap’s hands crack open. “It would be better if I’d had a few more hours,” he says, feeling gruff and oddly bashful.

Karl won’t hear a word of it. He plucks at the jerky, hot enough that he has to juggle it awkwardly between the tips of his fingers, before he takes a small bite. The meat tears away easily. His eyes pop open.

“Dude. If this is what you can do in under an hour, I’d kill to know what you could do with a day. Did I just watch you smoke this? In your hands?”

Sapnap grunts a yes, unsure what to do with the swelling pride beneath his breastbone. Karl beams.

“That’s amazing.”

They eat, and drink. When they’re done, Sapnap is left with the certainty that he should give Karl something in return, and the unfortunate truth of what little he has to offer. His preserved fish is purely for survival, blander even than Karl’s attempt at jerky. But what else is there? He runs through his stores in his mind. Stands up straight when it comes to him.

“Hey, hold on, I’m just gonna grab something.”

“Sure,” Karl says, easily, slouching into the little wooden chair like he means to bed down there. Sapnap crosses the cottage, pulls the hatch, drops into the cellar. Returns with one of his weaving projects. A shawl. No undertones of navy or purple, but the stitching is tight and even. He returns to find Karl, still at the table with eyes far away. He’s looking out the window. The set of his mouth soft and wistful. It’s more quiet, more still than he’s been in the brief time Sapnap’s known him.

“Here.” He holds out the shawl, and Karl turns to him, the wistfulness slipping back beneath the surface of his expression. “As thanks for the meal. Wrap it up under your coat. Should keep you warm in this shitty weather.”

Karl accepts it with a reverence that makes Sapnap feel embarrassed. His pretty fingernails stand out against the fabric, stroking gently. Sapnap has the absurd thought that he could be a hand model. “Did you make this?”

Another grunt.

“It’s beautiful. I’m serious, Sapnap. This is—wow.” He eyes rove over the shawl, and Sapnap startles to see that his irises match the shade of the yarn exactly. “Is this fireweaving?”

“Yeah.” Sapnap reassesses him. “You’re familiar with demoncraft?”

“Sure. I read a lot, and I’ve known a few demons in my time, friend and enemy both. Did you think I wouldn’t?”

Sapnap doesn’t answer, asking instead, “And it doesn’t scare you?”

“No. Why? Did you think I’d think you were spooky? Because you’re not human?” His smile turns small and secret. “I’m not human. Not completely, anyway. Do you think I’m spooky?”

His lashes flutter when he blinks. The shadows they cast over his cheeks, there and gone again, look soft as smoke.

Sapnap shakes his head and pretends it’s not just an excuse to break eye contact. “I think you’re weird, is what I think. I’ve been here for a while, and without a doubt today has been—”

“The most interesting day of your life? Magical? A dream come true?”

“Sure. If this was a fever dream, and you were some manic pixie dream girl hallucination.”

“You calling me your dream girl?”

Sapnap huffs. “Man. You don’t quit, do you?”

Karl’s eyes glitter a lively blue. They weren’t blue a second ago. “My charm is a blessing and a curse, I’m afraid.”

“It’s something, alright.”

Karl hugs the shawl to his chest. Sapnap gathers the cups to wash.

“Thanks for this. Seriously,” Karl says to his back.

“Don’t mention it.” He glances back over his shoulder, but Karl’s not looking at him. He’s looking at his hands. “You’re staring.”

Karl has the good grace to flush. “Sorry. It’s just, you’re the first demon I’ve seen with arms and legs like that.”

Washing the cups really just means rinsing them in rainwater from one of the pots. He flicks them dry and puts them back in the cabinet.

“Demons have a molten core,” he says. “Sometimes we can push that outward. Other times our emotions get the better of us and it pushes out on its own. When it cools naturally, our skin usually goes back to normal, but if it cools too fast you get…this.”

He wonders if the circumstances of how his arms and legs cooled too fast are obvious, but he appreciates that Karl doesn’t ask. Instead, when Sapnap turns back to him, he tips his chin towards Sapnap’s arms and says, “May I?”

Sapnap considers him. He thinks he’d back off if he said no. For some reason that’s why he says yes.

Karl takes one of Sapnap’s hands, drags it close to his face. His touch is curious and oddly gentle.

“Wow,” he breathes, and somehow his big bright eyes go bigger and brighter. “This is so cool. But also really weird? You’re kind of like a freak of nature?”

He says it so sweetly, so utterly without guile, that Sapnap knows in his heart he’s being a dick on purpose. And he laughs, charmed.

“You’re the freak of nature, Jacobs,” he says. “Now get the fuck off my island.”

Karl Jacobs gets the fuck off his island. Sapnap helps him push his boat back into the water and watches him go from the shore. He snorts at how Karl turns and waves whenever he isn’t steering, these big goofy pendulum swings of his arms. He waves back, albeit more reserved.

All the color in the world seems to drag behind the boat like a banner. And then it’s just Sapnap and the monochrome sea and sky, all varying shades of black and white and gray. He’d think the whole bizarre morning was a dream, if he still had those.

He resumes his daily routine. He’s a few hours behind so he throws himself into it. At some point it begins to rain, and it occurs to him, for the first time, that the storm may never end. Not in any meaningful way. This isn’t an earth-shattering thought. It’s not even particularly surprising; there are lots of places in the world where the weather is static. He thinks he’s known as much, in the back of his head, operating under the assumption that this is just the way of it: an island and a lighthouse and a storm, and Sapnap, weaving and working away, until eventually he leaves.

Which he will, some day. But the storm won’t. He thinks the storm will never end.

He’s wrong.

:

At first he thinks it’s the silence that woke him. The whitenoise of the sea is gone—every sound is gone. He stares at the dark of the ceiling and thinks that not existing would sound like this.

He sits up fast. The bed creaks, and the world exists again.

Outside the window the sky is a clear, velvet blanket, pinned in place with stars. The sea doesn’t exist. It’s just more sky.

He steps outside. Out on the beach, a mile away, a train is waiting on the night-sky water.

He goes back inside and picks up his sword. Walks a mile that feels much less. He can barely hear his own footsteps, the scuffing of rock on rock. He can barely hear his own breath. He huffs hard as he goes and he can still barely hear it.

Just at the sand he stops. The train waits a short walk into the water, a hundred glowing eyes reflected in the water and all of them watching him. Waiting.

A muscle in his jaw jumps. His mouth tastes like blood.

“No.” He says it through his teeth.

Nothing happens. Nothing moves. As if Sapnap doesn’t exist at all, as if his voice and his touch and his living are trapped somewhere and cannot affect the world around him.

A silhouette cuts into the frosted glass of the door at the end of the train. A man’s shadow. The door starts to open.

Sapnap turns around. Stalks back to his cottage and his bed. He sleeps. He doesn’t dream. He wakes in the small hours, still dark.

:

[spiritateababy]

Hi everyone, it's me (Spirit) once again spamming my work on tumblr.

Today, we'll explore the side of me I barely mention, my roblox building period. This post will contain some of my best works from this time.

Insolence Chamber (2021) (Piggy)

I was a massive Piggy nerd when I started out. So this led to me making most of my builds based on Piggy. This was for an idea of mine for a Piggy chapter. The idea was that [SECTION FOR PIGGY GEEKS ONLY PEOPLE OVER THE AGE OF 10 NOT ALLOWED] it would take place in a sort of nightmare realm for the player. It would just be them running from the spirits of Bunny and Doggy, as well as the deformed visage of Zizzy. It would all accumulate in the player getting over their "deaths" (which were really just them getting infected) and waking up. I never finished the map aside from a hallway and spawn room, as well as the models of main antagonists. I used the hallway for a showcase of a Piggy skin, speaking of which-

Wally and Jackie (2021) (Piggy) [Contact info in images outdated, refer to my card please]

Wally and Jackie were my third to last final Piggy skins. The lore was basically that Jackie had become sentient and, as a disciple of TIO (the big bag of Piggy), decided he would help in being a nuisance. Thing is, he's a puppet, and he needs legs to walk, where Wally comes in. Wally is sentient, he can talk and walk on his own, but he's bound to Jackie, so he's basically forced to help out with his tomfoolery.

Maggie Mae (2021) (Piggy)

Fun fact! I thought it would be funny to turn the skin's first image into a fake leak for the main-game and replace my credits with MiniToon's. Boy did I get bit back in the ass HARD for that one. Anyways, Maggie Mae is deformed as all hell, her design is somewhat inspired by siren-head and her name is from a Beatle's song. That's it.

Deepfreeze (2021) (Piggy)

Deepfreeze is a favorite child. He's my final Piggy skin and one of my most simplistic, which I like! His lore is that he was a military researcher basically left to rot, but his vengeance and ego brought him back to life how he is. He also had 2 cool showcase images, which I'm certain are now lost to time.

Subject Williams (2021) (Piggy)

Williams...I'm still pretty mixed on him. He looks great, but also weird. I made his head in blender, which probably looks like a polygonal nightmare considering how it was my first time using blender. He had an earlier version (see far right) which was uglier, and pretty confusing. The lore for Williams was that he wanted to help Mr. P with a cure for his wife, but having drank an early version of the potion that made everyone go insane, he went insane and turned into an abomination.

Alright, I'm out of things to be proud of. Piggy skin speedrun!

alright, my past in Piggy is out of the way, let's get to cooking!

Los Pollos Hermanos (2022)

Oh, that is actually dreadful timing. Dear god.

Welp, here's Los Pollos Hermanos. I made this in my free time and it was going to be turned into the centerpiece of a showcase game. I lost confidence after I started to worry about the building's accuracy to the real-deal. Fun fact! I got banned because of this game. I thought it would be funny to set the game's icon to this, and it got me banned for a week.

Hey, remember my post about the Lounge and Riot? (2021-2022)

Left to right, a factory that would've been a backdrop for RIOT, a store that would've had an arena inside, a naked render, and some conference room that the game's owner told me he would finish (he never did)

McMc (2021)

McMc aged worse than the Lounge, a lot of stuff looks very off now and it's very messy in general. I'm actually glad RIOT's owner didn't add this to the game (either way I sent it to him and I'm still a little mad about that)

and so ends part 1 of the mega post. Thank you for joining me on my journey thus far, and I'll see you again when I post the continuation.

[zstraps]

I posted 2,159 times in 2022

That's 1,984 more posts than 2021!

57 posts created (3%)

2,102 posts reblogged (97%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@blackbeardskneebrace

@blakbonnet

@snake-snack-stede

@wizardshark

@a-real-goblin

I tagged 1,345 of my posts in 2022

Only 38% of my posts had no tags

#ofmd - 1,025 posts

#blackbonnet - 109 posts

#ofmd textposts - 49 posts

#ofmd fanart - 43 posts

#edward teach loml - 39 posts

#our flag means death - 33 posts

#prev -> - 24 posts

#ofmd meta - 18 posts

#oh my god - 11 posts

#ofmd costuming - 9 posts

Longest Tag: 125 characters

#where’s that tik tok that’s like ‘you’re not in love’ ‘how do you know?’ ‘bc he’s a fictional character and you’re a lesbian’

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

reading first-time ed/stede fanfics where stede is all nervous and telling ed he doesn’t know what he’s doing and asking for guidance is so fucking funny. are we talking about the same character here? yes he’s inexperienced but you think that would slow him down for a fucking second? this man would be on his knees going “standard blowjob rules apply then? what are those exactly?”

669 notes - Posted September 24, 2022

#4

tbh one thing that makes Our Flag Means Death so delightful is how utterly unhinged all the characters are and how fully we just accept that. there’s a sort of moral suspension of disbelief—like yeah i know that in the moral universe i exist in, setting a ship full of people on fire and leaving them to die is not an okay thing to do, really. but i don’t give a second thought to it happening in the silly gay pirate moral universe.

and i feel like that’s a credit to the show! like in the same way that really good world-building lets a viewer suspend their disbelief and engage in a fantasy/sci-fi world—even though part of your brain is aware that in the world you live in, people can’t, say, move things with their mind, you accept that in this fantasy world, they can. But it needs to be consistent to be convincing—if the rules of the world don’t apply to some characters for unexplained reasons, or the logic breaks down if you look too closely, it jolts you out of that universe.

if you extend that same logic to the characters’ way of seeing the world—the OFMD creators did a great job of creating characters who are unhinged but in a way that’s convincing and even relatable within the context of the story. i accept that within the little gay pirate world, there is nothing morally wrong with murder or maiming or torture or stealing, but being racist or creating pointless work for your crew out of spite makes you an asshole.

and it’s so delightful because it allows for all these bonkers character interactions, little moments of subverted expectations. like stede’s guilt in ep 2 turning out to not be about killing nigel at all but about leaving his family without closure. or like when ed tells stede he hasn’t killed anyone since his own father—in a different universe that might indicate a moral difference between him and the other pirates, but instead he follows it up with “maiming’s different. love a good maim” and acknowledgement that he orders people killed all the time, just doesn’t like to do it himself. and suddenly an interaction that you’d expect to be about guilt or not wanting to cause harm instead becomes something else—something about ed’s discomfort with the uglier aspects of piracy, or about his reaction to his father’s violence, or about a part of himself he’s afraid to face, or about his relationship to the idea of death. so many possible interpretations—it’s such a fascinating little window opened up into his character.

it’s also fun bc it just completely absolves you of any feeling that you have to agree with a character’s morals in order to like them. not that that’s a super interesting way to engage in media anyway, but in a show like OFMD you literally can’t bc NONE of the protagonists would pass that test. so you’re sort of forced to just sit back and enjoy the ride

669 notes - Posted July 26, 2022

#3

that fanfic thing where the writer takes a relatively minor line a character says at some point in the show and repurposes it in a different context, and it’s such a perfect little touchpoint to make the character/moment feel so familiar and it lets you hear it in their voice so clearly and it’s so exactly THEM. fic writers who do this i am picking you up and kissing you on the head like a soft little mouse

718 notes - Posted August 26, 2022

#2

i may look like i’m paying attention to what’s going on around me but inside my head it’s just “well sussed!” “not bloody optimal” “dickfuck, no it’s not” “did you mean to do that?” “hi all!” “there’s always an escape” “i know that, BABE” “man for sale!” “coming nana! coming for cake!” “take your sword. run me through” “treasure is the real treasure!” “that’s some damn good marmalade”

2,490 notes - Posted August 26, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

i saw a post about the “izzy thinks stede and ed are fucking when theyre actually swordfighting” scene that was like “we need a s2 parallel where izzy thinks theyre swordfighting and walks in on them fucking”

and honestly youre right, and also, the reason izzy thinks theyre dueling is bc stede keeps loudly saying things like “well, now, that was an excellent move! youve got to show me how to do that sometime”

5,192 notes - Posted June 27, 2022

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