#too many skeletons to tag them all

[metashard]

Guess who I collected yesterday

[yuriyuruandyuraart]

motorcycle sketch featuring cross!! >:)

[cable-salamdr]

The growing pile in question

Does anyone else have this problem where you keep picking up minifigs from their supposed-to-be-designated-spot to take around, but then afterwards instead of putting them back into Their Spot you put them at the edge of your desk, eventually accumulating into a pile of minifigs that are just laying there and judging you for constantly forgetting?

Or is that just me

[nsharks]

bleeding blue | apocalypse au

part twelve —other parts

pairing: Simon "Ghost" Riley x fem!reader words: 3k tags: *hint at sexual assault. please be cautious!* death. blood. cannibalism mention. zombies of course. AFAB reader. single dad ghost. there will be sex but it isn't here yet. slow burn!!! enemies to lovers. summary: After losing your companions, you run into a skull-masked man and his daughter. They are your last hope for survival.

Dense mud packs onto the soles of your boots. You shift the near-empty backpack on your shoulder and slip back a few sweat-laced strands of hair from your face. Never before were you a morning person. In fact, you used to purposely sign up for all the afternoon lectures in uni. But now, time and sunlight are precious. You set out to search for the camp this morning with only a sliver of sunrise as your companion. 

You hope Ghost was right.

He suspected that their camp would be situated in a location with easy access to the military base, river, and nearby village so they could draw resources from all three. So that's the direction you're headed in, squinting at nearby landmarks and interstate signs to help guide you. It's quite the hike: grueling, hilly terrain and moist air that you can't distinguish from your own sweat. You've stepped over some interesting sights along the way. An old forest station with CAMP FEES and LEAVE NO TRACE posters still outside. A small skeleton tucked in a bush with only child-sized rainboots left on it. For a moment, you saw Joseph. Toddling around in the puddles outside your sister’s house. You had to force yourself not to look at it for too long; you wiped your eyes, gritted your teeth, and prayed it had been painless for them.

You come to a narrow creek, crossing over a stone bridge that spits you out among dense evergreens. Finally, a faint column of smoke comes into view just above the forest's canopy. 

That must be it.

It's certainly a sign, so you suck in a shaky breath, ignore the rush of blood in your veins, and do what Ghost suggested: climb a tree to get a better look. 

There was a time not long ago when climbing trees was your only means of survival. This time, it feels so much easier to hoist yourself up and grip the bark as your muscles flex to steady yourself on a high branch. Luckily, there wasn't much to bring in the backpack Ghost gave you. For now, there's nothing in it other than your lighter, a roll of gauze, that romance book, and a small piece of dry wood. 

Squinting your gaze, you make out the silhouette of triangular, orange tents and uneven fencing. Definitely a camp. The fence doesn't appear barbed from here, but it's at least a meter higher than the one that surrounds Ghost's place. You're close enough to see a few blue crates in the center that look like those ones from the military medical site. Is that what they're keeping the supplies in? It seems like the only obvious place based on the layout.

What you really want to know is how many people. Soundlessly, you shift your boots to get a different angle and finally spot movement coming out of one of the tents— a sizeable male wearing a leather jacket.

One.

Is that it?

Your eyes stay locked on the stranger for a minute, tracking his movement as he cooks something over the fire. He gives out a long whistle, the high-pitched sound audible even from where you stand nestled in the treetop. Panic seizes your breath: did he somehow see you and is alerting someone else? But no— you're much too far, and his eyes never shifted in your direction. 

Instead, there's more movement, the faint shuffling of paws on the ground, and then a large dog appears at the man's side. He tosses something in front of it, what must be a slab of meat, because the dog is quick to start chowing down with the enthusiasm of a mindless Grey.

"Fuck me," you whisper to yourself, fingertips splintering against the bark. "Couldn't prepare me for that, huh, Ghost?"

The plan he instructed you with is fairly simple and straightforward— you'll just have to stick to it and be mindful of the additional obstacle. You've survived much worse even just a few days ago, so with that in mind, you slip down the column of the tree and purposefully backtrack your steps, gaining a bit more distance between you and the camp. 

You need a ruse, something to draw the man out for enough time for you to grab the ammo. Ghost told you to bring the book to help get a fire started since the twigs and leaves here are damp after the storm, so you find a good spot and start ripping out the pages, crumpling them up. You arrange the piece of wood and paper in such a way that you have a minute or two before the smoke really gets going. You pull out your lighter from the pocket of your jeans, start it, and then head back towards the camp, this time going around so you can approach it from the side. 

You keep your footsteps as light as possible while moving quickly. Once the man notices the smoke and leaves to scout it out, your timer starts. There's another whistle followed by a gravelly bark from the dog. You sneak close to the side of the fence, pausing behind a tree, just when you catch a glance of the stranger shucking a rifle over his shoulder and exiting out the gate. He shuts it behind him with a series of padlocks.

It won't take him long to find the source of the smoke and realize it's nothing, so you muster all your strength and begin climbing the fence, rusty links digging into your palms. You try to do it without making much noise, but the moment you jump down with a thud, the dog's head snaps in your direction. It begins to growl, flashing thick canines under its bloodied muzzle. You break out into a sprint toward the blue crates, but it crosses the span of the camp in mere seconds, clamping down on your forearm before you can even begin to look for the ammo.

The pain is white hot. You silently cry out as the dog shakes its head, tearing through the fabric of your coat and the tissue of your muscle. 

"Fuck."

You tug at your arm, but it doesn't let go. Remembering the piece of squirrel meat you brought as a snack, you dig it from your pocket and wag it in front of the dog's face.

"Come on, let go— please."

It's enough to catch his attention, the bite on your arm loosening once you toss the meat a few meters away and he follows it. You clutch your arm with a ragged breath, ignoring the blood and pain that radiates from it.

The squirrel can only distract him for so long, so you urgently flip open the lid of the first crate. Staring back at you is a mix of what appears to be severed limbs and various animal parts. The pungent smell floods up your nose. You instantly clamp the lid back down, fighting the urge to vomit, and move on to the next one. 

Ammo.

Plenty of it.

Without a second to waste, you sling off the backpack and begin stuffing it with the cardboard packs of cartridges, hoping it's the kind Ghost needs. When you tug the zipper closed, a decision pops into your brain: to keep looking through the other crates for medicine, or to get the fuck out of there. You take a millisecond too long to think about it because suddenly, you notice the dog from the corner of your eye, done with the meat and moving towards you with another throaty growl. 

You tug the heavy backpack on and make a beeline for the closest side of the fence. In the panic, you fail to notice the creak of the gate opening until you are stumbling into a hard chest. A strong hand wraps around your bicep.

Fuck.

He's back.

This is it, then.

"Rocky— sit."

The growling behind you ceases. A whole new fear washes over you as you blink up at a rugged face. The stranger uses his other hand to take hold of your jaw, hard enough that your teeth are forced to grind together. In a heart-pounding silence, he inspects you, bluntly looking you up and down. Then, he takes out a knife and presses it to your neck. Your throat bobs against the icy metal. 

"Fucking bitch," he mutters. "Start a fire to try and steal from me?"

"N-no!" Your brain reels for a lie. "No— I don't know what you're talking about. I-I came here looking for help."

"Try a better lie, sweetheart." 

"I mean it," you stammer, holding onto the fact that he hasn't slit your throat yet. Raw desperation speaks for you. "My… my friends are gone. Someone attacked us a few days ago and killed them. I've been alone ever since and then I found your camp, hoping someone would be here to help me."

This seems to grab his attention. Dark eyes narrow. It's now you realize he's quite young, maybe in his thirties.

"Someone attacked you, huh? Who?"

"Um, some guy. I don't know. I didn't get a good look at him because he was… he was wearing a mask."

"So some guy killed all your friends by himself?" When you slowly nod, cringing at your terrible story, his jaw flexes. "I've lost my friends, too. They went out on a hunting trip three days ago and haven't come back."

"Oh. I'm sorry," you lie, swallowing. "So you… so you believe me?"

"I believe your friends are dead. I don't believe you didn't start that fire to distract me."

His words make your heart race. Again, his eyes trail down, and the knife follows, lowering to the floral fabric of your blouse and popping open one of the buttons. 

"Take it off," he suddenly orders. 

"W-what?"

"The shirt. Take it off. Let me decide if I should kill you or keep you."

You put on a brave face and do as he says, not given much room to protest despite the sick feeling that twists your gut. You drop the backpack, half-inclined to swing it at him, but then what? There is no way you can take him in a fight, especially since he's armed with a knife and gun, and there is no Grey this time to help you out. 

The coat falls to the ground at your feet before you shakily undo the buttons of your blouse, wincing from the movement of your bitten arm. Crisp air greets your bare skin. Your nipples tighten uncomfortably and his gaze darts right to them, intensifying the churn in your stomach. 

He gives a low whistle. "Lucky me."

Your nails jab crescents into the palms of your hands. "Am I… am I worth keeping, then?"

He bears a sick, toothy smile. "Pretty for a thief," he confirms. "Haven't seen someone so pretty in a few years now." His eyes flash to your arm and he reaches to grab it, making you choke. "Hell, Rocky. You gave her an ugly bite, though. Might get in the way of what I have in mind for you."

Half-naked, you are dragged by the arm to one of the blue crates. He slips the knife into his pocket in order to search through it. You notice pills, liquids, and a single glass bottle of what appears to be clear alcohol, which he pulls out along with a cloth.

"Tell me your name," he says, forcing you to sit down on a folding chair. "Before I enjoy you.”

You tell him quietly.

With an eery gentleness, he sits across from you and dabs the bite with some alcohol. The sting is immeasurable, but you roll your eyes to the sky and silence yourself. The feel of his cold, calloused fingers makes you imagine how they would feel touching other parts of your body. You need to think of something quick before he gets the chance to. He still has the gun on him, and the only knife you brought is in the jacket on the ground. Your eyes flicker to the bottle, which he set down by the leg of his chair.

"What's your name?" you ask, looking back at him.

"Leo."

"So, um, Leo— how did you end up here?"

"I was a new recruit in the military when shit started five years ago," he explains idly, fixated on your arm. "Stationed at the base nearby."

"I saw medical tents there," you mutter, clearing your throat. "Did you help with that?"

He chuckles. "For all of a day until some buddies and I decided to take what we could and leave. There was no point in trying to help people. We figured that out pretty quick."

"Oh. Were those the buddies who haven't come back?" 

He nods. "I'm sure they're dead by now. But, one good thing is," he reaches for the gauze, sniggering lowly, "—that means I don't have to share you."

As he begins to unwrap the gauze, you decide he’s distracted enough. It happens in one, urgent motion. You clasp the alcohol bottle by the neck, arch it above his head, and thrust it down. The glass shatters, drenching him with alcohol and blood as a piece slices open his forehead. He immediately drops the gauze and hisses in pain.

"Bitch," he snarls. "I'm going to fucking kill you!"

He leaps to his feet and pulls the knife out again. As he does, you dig the lighter out of your pocket and ignite a flame, bringing it to his soaked shoulder. Instantly, fire flashes up his neck and face in hues of orange and blue, even catching your wet fingertips. It renders him blind as he howls and tries to swing at you, but you immediately run away, rubbing your burned hand against your jeans.

You grab your discarded clothes and backpack before flinging open the crate with medicine in it. You begin stuffing as many bottles into the side pockets of the backpack as you can, breathing frantically.

"I'm going to kill you," he seethes again, and the firing of a bullet somewhere behind you means he must have grabbed his rifle.

But he still can't see, his eyes blistered by the flames that continue to lick his face. Each shot bites the ground as you heave the backpack on your shoulders and take off toward the fence.

The dog barks, louder and louder as he runs after you. You don't look back. You wad your clothes up in a ball and toss them over the fence to free up your hands. Then, you quickly climb up, the muscles in your face tightly clenched as the full backpack weighs you down. 

You're too slow. 

Teeth grab hold of your boot.

You're pulled back down, hands spreading out to break the fall. 

In the mud, you wrestle beneath a snarling jaw, dirtying up your hair and exposed skin. This time, you don't hesitate to hurt the animal. You grab your lighter again and thrust the flame into the dog's eye, making it leap back with a pained squeal. 

Freed, you scramble back up the fence.

You leap down. Grab your clothes

You can still hear him shouting as you run away, weaving through the thicket of trees. Only when the sound fades do you stop to catch your breath, sinking down against a tree and putting your clothes back on.

"Here."

A moan of relief escapes your lips the moment you shrug off the backpack and drop it at Ghost's feet. He crouches down, swearing under his breath when he unzips it and the ammo practically spills out. He grabs a few boxes, opening and inspecting them under the violet light of sunset. The walk back took you hours longer. You were almost tempted to sleep in a tree for the night, but the threat of Greys or any more strangers kept you going. 

"Good. This is good, Twix." There's a hint of disbelief in his voice before he clears it away, zipping the backpack up. He stands and offers a lengthy look from your head to your boots. "How many were there?"

"Just one."

"Just one," he repeats, brow lifting. "And you look this roughed up. What happened?"

"There was a dog," you say dully, lifting your arm up to show him the bitemark in your sleeve. Beneath it, you already bandaged the wound, not wanting to draw attention to its scent. “Just a dog and a cannibal rapist guy."

"What?"

You shake your head. "Nothing. I'm going to sleep."

Before you can take a step past him, warm fingers latch onto your wrist. So warm. You inhale a breath, a burn of moisture lining your eyes.

“Please don’t touch me," you request in a harsher whisper than you intend.

You can no longer see the details of him with how bleary your eyes are, but you feel his touch disappear.

"What happened?" he asks again, voice lowering.

"Nothing. I got your ammo and I handled it. When can we leave?"

There is a pause before he responds as if he is debating whether or not to drop the subject. For now, he does.

"Tomorrow, hopefully."

"Good." The back of your hand smooths over your eyes. "Don't— don't forget our deal, Ghost. Promise me."

A firm nod. "I don't back out on my word."

As if to prove it, he shucks off the jacket and hands it over.

[elizabethemerald]

Don't Sneak up on People with Swords

@im-totally-not-an-alien-2 made a prompt about Danny sneaking up on Jason Todd and @sky00asara made a comment in the tags about what would happen if Danny did that to Talia. So here is my version of that! Enjoy.

Talia al Ghul watched her beloved from afar. He was out, again patrolling his city for those he considered wrong doers. Her son was by his side. She scowled at how Damian’s fighting style had changed, softened in the company of her beloved. Despite her love for the man under the cowl, he had a tremendous ability to take even the most ruthless of killers and change them to spare the undeserving. He had even tried it with her. 

She was hidden on the roof of an abandoned tower nearby. The tower had succumbed to fire and was now condemned until the city got around to destroying it properly. For now it made the perfect place for her to observe her beloved and her son work undisturbed. 

“Excuse me?” 

Talia whirled, drawing her blade as she spun. Her blade moved fast enough to almost cut the air itself yet the small shape ducked under her stroke and back-pedaled quickly to move out her range. 

“Jeez! Why is everyone in this city so jumpy!” 

The voice more than anything made her realize that the person who had somehow snuck close enough was an actual child. Their black hair and blue eyes made her wonder if this was another of her beloved’s adoptees. Except surely this boy was too young to catch Bruce’s eye? 

“Well maybe you should not sneak up on people?” Talia hissed, her voice soft yet stern. To say nothing of how a child who couldn’t be older than five had snuck up on her at all. 

“Well maybe you shouldn’t brood on the roof of my home!” The child snarked back, just like one of the Bat’s brood would, completely unafraid of the blade still in her hand. Talia raised an eyebrow at him then looked around at the burnt skeleton of the building they were standing on. 

“This building is not fit for human occupation.”

“Neither was the last place I lived.” He said dismissively. “This place hasn’t even killed me yet, so it’s practically a paradise.” 

She was tempted to take the child’s words as sarcasm, yet something in the way he spoke made her think he meant it more truthfully. 

“You’ve died before?” Talia asked. She relaxed her hold on her blade, allowing it to rest at her side. 

“Oh yeah, I die all the time.” He said, then he looked at her curiously tilting his head first one way, then another. “You’ve died too, huh?” 

She nodded, now examining him closely, looking for the signs she would recognize. She could see the hint of a scar on the boy’s palm that might have caused a death. 

“What is it with this town that so many people have died and come back?” The boy asked, apparently rhetorically as he didn’t let her answer. “First the stabby Robin, then the stabby Batgirl, then Batman, and even Red Hood. It’s like everyone I run into is contaminated.” 

Talia’s eyes widened. 

“You can sense those who have utilized the Lazarus Pits?” She would have to inform her father about this child. He could put the entire League of Assassins at risk. The child before her just shrugged. 

“I have no idea what that is. Red Hood mentioned some kind of pit as well, but I’ve never seen anything like that. I just know y’all are contaminated with ectoplasm, though not enough to make a core.” 

“What is this… ectoplasm?” Another name for the Lazarus Waters? Had there perhaps been a Pit outside of League control? In the midwest somewhere based on the boy’s accent. 

“Oh it’s this stuff.” He held his hand out and Talia couldn’t help keep her expression of shock withdrawn despite all her training as his hand filled with the glowing green light of the Pits. He held the Pit Water in his hand then tossed the glowing orb to his other hand in a half juggle as if he weren’t carrying the League's greatest secret and weapon. 

Nevermind telling her father about this child, he could never learn of him. If Ras had the power this child had under his control the world would never survive. There was only one option. She needed to train this child to wield this strength. With the stealth he displayed in sneaking up on her and his power over the Pits themselves he could make an assassin like the world had never seen. He could be the next Head of the Demon under her guidance. She knelt down to the boy’s level, slipping her sword back away as she did so. 

“Tell me, young one. Are you living in this death trap of a building all by yourself?” 

“Yeah, but don’t worry, I’ve got it taken care of. I know I’m little, but that just means people are less likely to notice me. I’m able to steal all the food I need from that big box store down the street.” 

“Oh of that I have no doubt. My name is Talia al Ghul. What’s yours?” 

“Hmm. I’m Danny.” The boy seemed hesitant to trust her, which to be perfectly honest was probably a very smart thing to do, but at least she had a name for this gift of Lazarus. 

“Danny, how would you like to come live with me? You won’t have to steal any more, or worry about food ever again, and I could train you how to fight even better than the Bats.” 

He narrowed his eyes at her, looking her over closely. 

“Would I get a sword?” 

“If a sword is what you want, then once you were trained in its use I would acquire one for you.”

Danny looked like he was about to nod, but then he froze, his head tilting to the side as if he was listening to something. His eyes widened and Talia tensed. 

“Uh-oh. Fruit Loop incoming. I gotta go.” 

Talia half turned as she heard the sound of one of her beloved’s grappling lines catching on the building’s edge. By the time she had turned back to face him, Danny had completely vanished. She hadn’t even heard him leave. She stood and scowled as her beloved landed on the rooftop next to her. 

“Talia.” He grunted at her, glaring all the while. 

“Beloved. Must you ruin every nice thing in my life?” Talia snarled back. The boy, Danny, had the gift of Lazarus at his beck and call and Batman had scared him off. 

Bruce looked momentarily stunned at her fury, but quickly hid it behind his mask. However Talia couldn’t care less about her beloved right now. She just needed to lose him so she could return to find the boy. The boy who would change the world with his power. 

[blckbrrybasket]

Double Negative

Rafe Cameron x Fem!Reader

ᴡᴀʀɴɪɴɢꜱ: past breakup, fluff, alcohol consumption, Rafe being sweet

ᴡᴏʀᴅ ᴄᴏᴜɴᴛ: 1.8k

part 1 here

Nobody’s gonna regret this for you

If it don’t make you smile (oh)

I’ll let your skeletons shake all evening

And bless your heart for tryin’

After running into you at the party, Rafe was unable to get you out of his head. He had worked so hard to forget about you after the breakup. It wasn’t that he didn’t love you anymore, he always loved you, but that was the problem. He was sure that he would love you until his heart stopped beating and without you it caused too much pain.

Forgetting was the easy way out of what he didn’t want to feel. Therapy was the other. He had tried, seriously tried this time.

Losing you was the largest eye opener he had in a long time. Getting clean and dropping toxic people from his life had done wonders, but therapy hadn’t. Rafe couldn’t get past the walls he had built since he was ten to speak about anything besides how horrible he was.

He had always blamed himself for how you two split. He knew he was to blame, he also knew you wouldn’t blame him. Ward was unbearable to him, infiltrating every part of Rafe’s brain until he couldn’t function as himself.

Rafe was the one to distance himself, focusing on getting his father’s approval. You were the one who broke up with him after so many lonely nights, struggling with your own mental health. Yet, you knew how Ward was. Without him you were positive Rafe wouldn’t have destroyed himself the way he did.

There was no one that could have saved either of you. Sometimes you have to go on your own to fix the problems. Rafe was certain you had said that before. You were always so wise. That’s all he could think about as he tilted his head back, downing his rum.

Drinking was an expensive habit picked up from his dad, but it was safer than the drugs he used to do. 

He had yet to see you working at the end of the counter. Rafe a few months ago would be at the country club, but now he was at a fancy bar in one of the nearby hotels. He didn’t like the recognition that he got at the country club anymore. 

Setting the glass down with a small thunk, Rafe lifted his eyes to the mirror behind the counter. He studied the eyebags that had come months ago and refused to leave. His hair had grown back out, closer to how you had known it when you first started dating Rafe.

He sucked in the side of his cheek, biting it while his eyes drifted around the space. Naturally they gravitated towards you, not even questioning why you were working there. Rafe wondered if you had quit your other job. There was zero chance that you had been fired.

You were an excellent employee, he was biased but also correct. Watching you now, dutifully making drinks while keeping conversation up with businessmen only strengthened his argument.

Rafe was too far to hear the comments of the man though. I’m on a business trip. The misses didn’t want to tag along. You’re so pretty and smart, you must be a heartbreaker. Your eye had been incessantly twitching since he had started speaking to you.

Feeling the second pair of eyes on you, you looked over to find Rafe. Instead of feeling unnerved at the second man staring at you, your stressed expression melted some. No matter what happened you were safe. Sighing imperceptibly, you turned back to the man.

“Sir, you have a wife,” you started at a volume you knew Rafe could hear as well as other patrons, “I know she isn’t here, but I doubt she would want you flirting with your bartender. Am I correct?” The man’s eyes widened, thoroughly shocked in how you spoke to him. Rafe’s eyebrows raised, looking quickly at the man. If he did a single thing out of line, Rafe wouldn’t hesitate to personally throw him out.

Didn’t you know who he was? Another washed up douchebag of a businessman, you’d had your fair share of them. “Ma’am I-“ the man started in an appalled tone. “No sir, I asked a question.” Your eyebrows lowered as you stood straighter, eyes casting an exasperated glance at Rafe. He chuckled silently, knowing you could hold your own.

Looking back in front of you, you tilted your head. “Would she?” The inevitable grumbling about the customer service came, his drink abandoned as he got up and briskly walked out. It had gone better than other times and you couldn’t help but wonder if it was due to him spotting Rafe as well.

Anyways, it was settled, you grabbing his half empty glass to clean. Out of anything you hadn’t expected Rafe to come over and sit on the now vacant stool. After the party a few weeks ago you had assumed he was ready to completely move on from being around you. Once again, you were wrong when it came to guessing his behavior.

“Hey,” he drummed his fingers on the counter. “Is this seat taken?” You rolled your eyes, turning around towards the sink to hide the smirk creeping up on your lips. “It is now,” you commented, sparing a look over your shoulder.

Rafe seemed pleased, smiling down at his glass. “Yeah?” He scratched behind his ear, “And is that a good thing?” Was it? You mulled over the question, placing the glass in the sink, and spun around again. “I don’t think it’s a bad thing if that’s what you’re asking.” 

Your crossed arms pressed on the counter as you leaned on them for support. Not bad, Rafe would take it. He nodded, glancing at the clock on the wall. “Good…good. Uh, what time do you get off?” With the absence of excess alcohol you had expected him to be less forward, surprise flashing in your eyes. He must have registered what he said, panicking.

“Not like that! I, uh shit, I was going to walk you to your car!” Okay, that is a way better approach. You snickered and shook your head at his worried face. “Rafe, it's fine. I’m off in like…” You looked at your phone tucked under the counter, “Five minutes?” You shrugged, “Is that fast enough for you not to lose interest?”

Rafe wished to say he could never lose interest in you, but he was sober enough to know that was a terrible idea. “It’s perfect. A minute later and I’d let you walk alone,” he said sarcastically, smirking. It was sweet to see him bantering with you again. 

“Oh and here I was thinking you were my prince charming.” Rafe snorted at your far fetched claim. “Yeah, whatever. I’m going to run to the bathroom, I’ll be back in a few.” You didn’t know that it was an excuse for him to nervously talk himself down. He needed to make sure he didn’t do anything stupid like he had plenty of times before.

You blissfully wrapped up your shift, unaware of him obsessively fixing his hair before coming back out six minutes later. Rafe swiftly found you leaning against one of the pillars in the lobby. “Ready to go?” You glanced up from your phone, a smile growing on your lips. You quickly tucked your phone in your bag and fell into step beside Rafe when he walked towards the door.

“As always,” you hummed. “Thank you,” you mumbled when Rafe held the door open for you, letting you walk out to the parking lot. “Where are you parked?” Rafe tried hard to make conversation without staring at you to study every inch of your face. If it was socially acceptable, he’d commit you to his memory any time he could.

“Second row, over there.” You pointed in the direction. It had to be a sadistic joke that Rafe had parked behind you, or maybe a subconscious need to be near you. “I’m behind you.” You didn’t have to be told that, you could see the silver of Rafe’s truck glinting under the parking lot lights.

Maybe it wasn’t intentional, either way you didn’t mind, not when his hand went to hover above the small of your back. Rafe didn’t know what was okay anymore, too scared to actually touch you and possibly scare you away. Halting for a split second, you let Rafe’s hand bump into your back, immediately walking again once it settled over your shirt.

Once again silence fell over you. It seemed to be a recurring theme in the last times you’d run into each other. The quiet seemed to linger on the border of talking about everything that was new and the long past you shared when you had once known everything about one another. Stopping at the side of your car, Rafe’s hand fell away, letting you unlock and open the driver's door.

“Drive safe, ‘kay?” You looked at him and nodded with a small, sad smile, “You too?” Rafe’s demeanor softened, hand clenching over his thigh. He already missed the feeling of touching you. “Always.” Your eyes slowly moved from his as you got into your car and started it up. Rafe granted enough space for you to pull out and drive out of the parking lot.

He didn’t get into his truck until he had watched you drive down the side road, car lights disappearing into the night. If he hadn’t pussied out at the party maybe he would be the one driving you home. You would be able to rely on him again, instead of having to do things alone.

Rafe knew you liked being self-sufficient, but he also hated knowing you didn’t have a best friend and partner by your side. You in turn hated how alone Rafe was. After cutting out the toxic people from his life, he had lost a lot of close friends.

Ultimately, it was his decision for the better, but your heart still ached for him. Could you even be that person again? Should you text him? What was the point of no contact if every time you saw each other that invisible string pulled you together?

There was no point. At some time along your journey of grieving your relationship with Rafe you had let go of the anger and sadness towards him. After the last week or so from seeing him at the party, it was impossible to think of anything but him. Red filled the front of your car, your hand moving faster than your brain to get to your pinned texts.

One text, that’s all you needed. ‘Thank you for walking me to my car 🫶 i knew you were soft’. It was sent before the light could even turn green. You tossed your phone into your passenger's seat, focusing on the rest of the drive home instead of panicking over the message.

Still near the parking lot, Rafe tapped his fingers on his steering wheel as he drove home. The ding of his phone distantly registered over his music, his eyes darting to the screen. He couldn’t read all of it, but he could clearly make out your contact name with the heart he never took out of it.

God he missed you. It couldn’t hurt to text back, right?

[sheepispink]

A LIGHT THAT NEVER GOES OUT

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Masterlist AO3

pairings: Simon Ghost Riley/ Reader (platonic or romantic, up to you)

tags: probably loads of military inaccuracies, anxiety attacks (possibly?), heavy angst, angst and comfort, paranoia, bad mental health, cuddling and literal sleeping together (up to you romantic or platonic)

A/N: I’d appreciate if no one complained abt the accuract/realistic of the story (ofc if its the characterisation of ghost that’s perfectly ok!) i’m open for criticisation for how i write etc etc but this is a sensitive topic and.. based off personal experiences 😅😅 so it’s very realistic to me even if its not to you!

This technically takes place after this fic but it’s not a big deal in which the order you read it

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

You’re an introvert, even if you do get excited really quickly, loud around people you’ve known for a while and love meeting new people. Yet still, you call yourself an introvert, even if that technically still makes you an extroverted introvert. You don't like the sound of an extrovert— someone who thrives off of others' attention and loves to be the center of it, who brightens their days with their friends and always wants to make plans with anyone and everyone. You like the attention sometimes; when Price mentions your name in a conversation, praising your skills, your heart thumps a little louder. Being at the limelight of the party isn't always the worst thing either, especially when everyone laughs at your jokes so hard they double over, grinning so wide you can't help it either. You love your friends, your teammates, even the random soldiers you’ve only exchanged small greetings with. The love for others is held tight in your heart’s vessels, bursting each and every time they make you smile or you just see their presence. You feel so warm and alive when you give them a grin in the mornings, even more so when they seek out your presence throughout the day.

Though, that only applies sometimes— never always.

A familiar soldier could ask you out to lunch and yet your chest begins to twist uncomfortably, like someone is wringing your intestines with their hands. Something screams at you when they say those words, like an invisible line had just been crossed that had been clear in everyone's heads. You had only ever spoken to those soldiers in the gym or around base, there was nowhere else even remotely personal you’d think to take them to. One on one conversations were not common either, since it wasnt that often. It’s not that you don't like them, it’s just.. not right. You’d shake your head apologetically as you force an excuse between your teeth. The regret you then express is a lie, along with the love you felt before— only reduced to a being who could never hold any of those things.

The truth is, you have a sick little parasite in you, it claws at that heart muscle, tearing away the flesh and devouring any love you feel for the people you care about and replacing it with an empty feeling which is always followed by an unreasonable hatred. Your mind grows dark, headaches permanent, as you live through the day as a skeleton of yourself— no longer able to hold any love within you as it slips past your bones in seconds. You don't like the boundaries you’ve mentally set for each person to be crossed, even if it’s a perfectly normal task. In fact, some may even say you’re scared of change. You don’t like to put a label on these things, hell you don't even like to think too hard on these things. It begins to make sense when you sit and reflect, piecing all the reasons for your behaviour together until you hit the final point. Soon you’re done, finally aware of the most significant reasoning behind your antics. The only issue is, being self aware doesn't mean you get any better; no matter how many nights you sit and stare at that mirror, nothing changes.

The only thing you gained was the ability to squash down the parasite from prying eyes. Excuses fall from your lips quickly, no matter how bad you feel when they give you that look of disappointment. It’s not your fault— you know you won't be able to handle an outing like that, you’d get too worked up. Why? You don't need to dwell on it, not right now. This continues for multiple people, multiple soldiers for two weeks, until you're ‘normal’ and you hang around others again. People begin to subconsciously catch on and so your little routine continues to carry on moving so well, staying right on track.

“Sarge? You aint comin’ to team night? Why?”

Ghost stands at the door of your quarters, dressed in his typical training attire whilst you’re sitting in something cozy, made for home wear. You have to fight the urge to cover yourself up. “Oh right.. i, uh..yknow, lot of paperwork to do. Thought i’d stay in.”

You say with a small smile, attempting to ease any concerns he had before but little did you know, he was already growing aware of your little issue, or at least the fact there was one within you. “Paperwork? On a Friday? You should be relaxin’.” You grit your teeth a little, the burning urge inside of your chest returning just like the sick pit in your stomach. It felt so awful fearing just a simple team night out, but it was just so late and you were so tired— you didnt have the energy to be rational the whole time, to think of your next move constantly.

“It’s not a big deal. I’ll come to the next one.” You shrug, turning back to your small desk as you pull another small stack of papers in front of you. His boots thump loudly against the floorboards, sounding like the heavy thump of your heart in your ears. It stops, suddenly, behind your back and your body stiffens as he leans down, looking at the paperwork you’re going through. It’s a lie— naturally, you finished it all. He doesn't even have to stare at you first nor visibly raise a brow; you’re already waiting for him to call out your bluff just as quickly.

“You can just say you want some time alone, yknow.” That catches you off guard, half expecting him to just tell you to stop whining and grab some drinks. His words were still difficult though, how could you easily just say that? Of course, the words itself aren't the hard part, nor speaking it—it’s the implications behind said words. An excuse means you have other things to occupy you, so no one dares to disturb you much after that, however explaining you want some alone time gives way to more questions. Specifically the first being: why? Then they begin to wonder if you’ve been doing okay recently or if you’re struggling with something. You dont like the idea of that at all— people thinking about you in that way. It feels weird, almost like it’s wrong. Sometimes you wished people would just not care, and leave you alone to wallow with yourself.

“Sarge?” You snap out of it, sheepishly scratching the back of your head as he still stands behind you and you turn in your chair, putting the best meek face you can on for the night. “What? No, that’s not why I declined. I’m not really feeling any alcohol today and a new episode of a series I previously binged on the weekend just came out. Sorry.. didn't want to make it seem i was ditching anyone for a show.” Perfect, an awkward grin had tied it all off into a well constructed excuse. Even if it was partially true and this really wasn't fake, it sure felt like everything you did was an act. After all, you really didn't want them to think you were ditching anyone, and you didn't feel like having any alcohol tonight. “A new series” He says gruffly, and you nod with a tight smile, teeth gritting so hard you’re sure they’ll break in a few seconds. “I’ll join you then.”

You blink once, twice, three times in pure utter confusion. Ghost—The Ghost, whose name is rumoured across the battlefield and known for never giving into idle small talk—wants to watch the series you lied about, with you.

You’ve never felt more guilty in your entire life, practically fumbling for a solution. You could just tell the truth, say no and admit you needed to be alone. But this is the first time he’s ever expressed wanting to hang around you, actually together and alone— and miss out on a team night?! He may just want an excuse out of it, but still, you can't just say no now. “Well yeah, i just..” You hate how there’s no easy way out of this in the slightest, torn between saving your own mental health or finally getting close to the teammate who you’ve been on eggshells around for nearly a year now. “My room’s not exactly clean--“

He cuts you off with a gruff, shake of his head, a scoff resounding in his next words, promptly embarrassing you too. “There ya go— knew you wanted to be alone.”

You fumble, not understanding how he managed to pry it out of you so fast, just a simple lie blowing your cover. “I said it wasn't like-“

“See you tomorrow.” He’s gone just as fast as he silenced you, heavy footsteps disappearing out of your door and down the corridors. What you couldn't wrap your head around is how fast he had figured it out and made you confess to your lies that fast— it was a real problem, something you couldn't just let slide. If he knew, did others too?

Unfortunately for you, the very much needed alone time didn’t help as well as it usually did considering this new information has threatened everything that made up the core of your very being—specifically everything keeping you glued together. You just couldn't sit there and possibly relax like you usually did when alone (more specifically think over everything you’ve done wrong until you quite literally fell asleep mid thought)— not when Ghost could clearly read everything you had ever thought about in your life.

That being said, you’ve been a nervous wreck all week, concentrating so hard on looking sane that you’ve barely paid a second of attention to things you should’ve listened to. It’s not like you slipped up regularly, but before that day you were already feeling pretty uneasy and now with still no relief and the added stress, you feel like you really might lose it any second now. Every time you see him, every word exchanged with your teammates—with another person—it eats at you, tugging further on the ropes you’re hanging onto. They’re already been pulled thin, especially since you’ve been put in charge of a group of rookies for the past few weeks now. Of course, you had pulled the short straw when assignments went round because not only did your group love to talk back, but they loved to test every limit by asking the most stupid of questions possible. It’s the second time now you’ve had to lecture one of the rookies about why you can’t just ‘throw a grenade at the enemies’. It’s only temporary, just basic training exercises and medical procedures they need to know until the Officer, who usually oversees them, returns from their sick leave.

You let out a long breath as you enter the small break room, also known as taskforce 141’s meeting room but they’ve let you lounge in here too many times to count. It’s quiet in here, Soap and Gaz both on missions and you assume Ghost must be too. It’s the first time you’ve been able to relax all week, knowing damn well Price is down in London with Gaz. Your shoulders sag, the miserable look returning to cover your features now that you don't need to pull that tight smile anymore. Your chest physically aches from how anxious you’ve been all day, the weight of the day’s mistakes and fears of the future swelling deep in your gut. You know it’s a Friday, know you should just take a long sleep but you can’t help but think about all you have to do for the days to follow. You’re busy the whole day tomorrow, a team outing you can’t deny no matter how much you really do not want to go. Just thinking of all the final work you’ll have to cram in on Sunday makes a splitting pain run along the bumps in your brain. Even your breaths begin to feel shorter, an uncomfortable feeling that you just still cant rid of no matter how long you take deep breaths. Your eyes are weighed down with exhaustion and yet your brain refuses to let you sleep yet. No, you cannot. If you sleep the night away then you’ll only have Sunday left for yourself, and that won't work out, will it?

You pick up the mug you had just stirred, hoping the drink would soothe at least something if not your dehydrated body. Taking a small sip, the hot liquid spills down your throat, leaving a warm feeling in your ribs. “Alone by choice or force?” A gruff voice rings out behind you, along with an arm reaching around to supposedly grab a teabag as well, is enough to make you flinch. Stumbling on your own feet, your mug jolts and the steaming water splashes against your shoulder. If you were worried about someone catching you so vulnerable before, you were certainly terrified now, especially since your skin was burning from a small startle.

“Fuck— sorry—“

Ghost’s gloved hand settle on one side of your waist while the other quickly takes the mug from your hands and places it upon the counter. You cant respond, barely processing the situation and everything just feels like too much and your skin feels so hot, you know he’s seeing you fall apart and still there’s nothing you can do—

Your thoughts snap to a blank when he presses the cold rag against your burning skin. Thankfully the layers of the training uniform stops any severe marks from forming. His other hand rubs your cheek, his mask so close it could brush your face, and you can actually see every speck of brown in his irises. You can't look at him for long though, moving your gaze away quickly, not when you know what you’ve done. For the past week or two you’ve hated him, painting the most horrible picture in your mind. It wasnt even on purpose, you’ve just started seeing everything wrong about him. He doesnt give the rookies much mercy, nor does he particularly entertain any of Soap’s antics even when the situation is pretty lax. He’s boring, he seems to care about nothing but himself somedays, he refuses to let you do something stupid and he never takes that damn mask off even when you’re all supposed to trust one another. You’ve lied to him, yes, forgetting about your hatred when he made you laugh with those gruff remarks. But he’s not the only one— no, you’ve began to hate everyone in this task force, picking at them and every little thing. It’s weird, you don't want to victimize yourself, because you know you’ve done just as much wrong too. But still, somedays you really can't look past the list of things you dislike about your own friends.

“Are you alright? I havent seen you all week.”

Of course he hasn't, you’ve been avoiding them all. It’s nearly impossible to think straight these days and you knew you wouldn’t be able to fake it so naturally, you just stayed away. The more you did it, the better it began to feel. Avoiding them was the solution— you were just the thorn in their side with your tricky mood swings and anxiety always painting them to be the villain. You couldnt just allow this to happen, to destroy them with your issues even if they had no idea about it.

But now, face to face with him, all you feel is unexplainable guilt for everything you’ve done to them— how could you even hate them for a second? His hand is still rubbing at your skin, nudging your face gently upwards just so you’d at least look at him for a second. “Really? The silent treatment now?.” He sighs and you hate yourself, how did you let this spiral to this point— to where he’s apologising to you and yet you wish you could just disappear. Isnt this what you wanted? For everyone to be kind to you? So why are you running— why do you refuse care?

Your lips press together as your teeth bite down on the soft flesh, torn from how much you’ve picked at the skin the whole week. It aches with anxiety, and your teeth hurt from how often you’ve clenched them so hard they scraped against eachother. The only thing you can do is stand there as Ghost fusses over you, trying to get you to move a damn muscle instead of falling apart silently like some kind of broken watch, unable to move forward or backwards. Just still.

“Sarge— snap out of it, look, I'm sorry. Okay?”

His hands are still on you, and you’ve begged for a day where someone would care this much about you and still, you step back, almost afraid. “I’m sorry, Ghost.” You croak out, your hands reaching up to your eyes as you wipe at your skin obsessively, trying to hide and stop anything from leaking. “Why’re you apologising?” He says gruffly, confused by all of this, this sudden onslaught of emotion.

He’s not stupid, he had a feeling you weren't quite yourself this week. Stupidly, he figured you’d just deal with it on your own. That's what everyone did, right? He knows he just takes a breather when he feels a little rough— even Price had his own battles. Comfort isn't a strong point for Ghost, not even when he was Simon Riley, never has and he never thinks it will be. He’s born and bred on violence and the coldness that comes after it, the lack of warmth even as hot blood trickles and emptiness consumes the space where his fellow soldiers should be. So watching you crumble right before him, apologising profusely while your body wracks with shaken breaths, makes something stop in him too. He doesn't know how he’ll do it, but he knows damn well no one fights alone anymore.

“Look at me.”

He says firmly, both his hands landing firmly on your shoulders, one hand even tempted to just force your chin up but you shake your head profusely. “Why not?” He stays patient for you, even if he knows he may have to force you soon— its the least he can do for you. “I cant look at you. Not after everything i did.” He pauses, hands now settling on your jaw in confusion, he knows this is moving towards an interrogation but he has to know. “What are you talking about?! What did you do?”

“I hated all of you! I avoided you all and destroyed our relationship, i fucked it all up.”

With that he cant stand to see this continue, a gloved hand firmly planted over your mouth as the other wraps around your back. He leads you to the couch even as you squirm, not caring in the slightest. He knows he has strength and not comfort, so he’ll use it to shut you up whilst the truth comforts you instead.

“Look at me.” He says sternly and you do, eyes snapping up with wide fear as you look at him. “That’s not true— okay? None of us consider our relationship with you ruined, not one of us has even mentioned you in a bad light at all.” He makes sure your whole body is pressed against the back of the couch, considering that you didnt particularly look as if you could hold yourself up right now.

“Soap has only talked to me about you once recently— he told me you helped him organize the training schedules for the rookies. Told me to thank you for it because he felt he did not express his gratitude enough. Do you understand now? No one’s mad at you– not one of us have even considered anything to have gone wrong.”

His hand grabs your own, settling it on the center of his chest so you can feel the pattern of his breathing, silently praying you’d try and match it. You can only blink at him though, slowly processing his words with each passing second until his hand leaves your mouth and your lips part, breath hitched before you swallow a sharp breath. “I’ve avoided all of you– i’ve been hating all of you.” You choke out, chest clenching with regret and the weight of unreasonable guilt and his other hand moves to hold your face again, his brown eyes piercing into yours with his silence.

“What is like to hate someone?”

“What?”?

“What is it like to hate someone?” He repeats, his thumb pressing gently into the curve of your cheek.

“I-...” You falter, thinking for a moment before your lips part again. “I dont like things that they do— the way they act and everything about them.”

“You’d avoid them too, right? Like that general you hated. Remember when he touched you and you pushed his hand away?

You nod along in agreement, breathing a bit slower to hopefully ease the pressure on your chest at the moment.

“Y-yeah.. i’d express my dislike clearly..”

“So why did you never push me away the past few weeks? You said you avoided us, but you would always speak to us if we needed to. You still helped Soap too.”

You pause, blinking at him in confusion now, you had convinced yourself that you hated them so why did you never.. actually express it?

“You’re also letting me touch you now and last week you didn't want to hang out with us, but you didnt want to hurt our feelings by saying that.”

You’re left silent, baffled and confused because in your head, you were being horrible to them, hating their guts like it was nothing.

“I think… whatever is going on in that head of yours.” He says slowly, tapping at your forehead gently as you look up at him with widened eyes. “You’ve held it in for too long. You’ve dwelled on those thoughts, so self aware of your own anxieties that you’ve distorted reality. You think you’ve done something bad, because you can't understand why you always feel so bad.” His voice is softer than usual, even if his words are still gruff and holds his thick Manchester accent.

Somehow that alone reminds you that Simon has never lied, not even once, to you. That stern voice of his is straightforward, doesnt mess around and forces his way through any problem. Just like he had just pushed himself to the root of your mind and destroyed your seeds of doubt.

“You’re allowed to talk to us you know. I have a funny feeling you’re scared o’ somethin’. Not sure what just yet.”

He doesnt force you to respond, just speaking his thoughts even if that’s what you usually do when you’re together. The couch creaks as he stand up, pulling you to get up aswell beside him. He places a hand on the crook of your back, gently encouraging you to begin walking towards the door. “Cmon, back to my room. Lets get you cleaned up properly.”

Before you know it, you’re sitting against the headboard of his bed, something you had only felt months ago when you first came here, scared and confused over a stupid hornet. You trusted him to help you then, but you dont understand why you suddenly felt that fear again. Meanwhile, your shirt is half off, Ghost sat on the bed beside you as he inspects the burns on your chest from the tea. It’s harsh, the skin reddened but not enough to be something serious thankfully. He presses a cool towel against it, soothing the stinging skin but he knows it’ll fade out soon enough. You’re wearing his old shirt, and he gave you some comfortable sweatpants too for good measure. You just watch all his moves so quietly, feeling like a ghost yourself in this moment from how detached you are. It’s weird, feeling so much yet nothing at the same time.

“Nothing too bad, should be alright by the morning.” He hums, lifting the fresh mug of tea he brewed for you and brings it to your lips for you to sip before he steals some for himself. “Is your chest still tight?” You blink, not expecting him to ask that of all things because you hadnt exactly mentioned that part and yes, it was. “How did you know..?” Your hand reaches out, silently asking for more of the tea he graciously lets you sip, unable to fathom how he brews it so perfectly each time. “You were clutching at your chest before and your breaths are a little shorter than they should be.” He’s seen straight through you again so you slump your shoulders and just nod quietly. “Yeah, it’s really tight. It’s always like this and i dont know how to make it stop.”

His gloved hand reaches out, gently rubbing at your chest thus making you sink a little back into the pillows. Before he can respond, you speak up with a quiet confession. “That day, when you came ‘round, I was upset. You said you wanted to watch the series with me and I felt so bad. I didn't want to give up my only chance of spending time with you, but I knew my head couldn't take it.”

He nods along quietly, letting you reveal it all to him. “T-then you figured me all out and i got scared— i didnt want someone to know everything about me because i didnt want to be a problem. I want someone to listen but i dont want to be seen as something different. I just.. i dont know how to handle all of this. I dont feel like the person i am when i look in the mirror.”

The strangest thing of all is that it didnt actually take you long to figure it out. You knew all along, of course, but when you’re fighting against yourself, you’re supporting both sides and so a part of you decided not to dwell on a certain bit of information too much. The reason for that to be pushed aside is no part of you wanted to face it.

Your heart always secretly wished someone would find out— that someone would push past the walls you’ve banged so hard against even if they were crafted by the webs of your brain. You prayed and prayed that they’d read through it all, express their concern and one day, one day you’d be saved from this hellish feeling. It was a common daydream for you and yet you were terrified of it. If someone knew, there was no guarantee they’d follow the fantasy. They could ridicule you, or they couldnt be able to comfort you at all, maybe they’d try and it wouldnt even do anything or maybe, just maybe— they wouldnt give a damn about it. What happened then? If that daydream was real, and that was the final outcome, there was no turning back in time. It seemed like only one person would ever figure you out, after all, no one had up until this point.

But then Simon became aware, and you got terrified. You hid away because you were too scared to know his reaction to your problems, even more so his reaction to you. You wanted someone to help, you really did, and yet your brain feared to know the uncertain future of it.

His ungloved hands card through your hair, the callouses gentle against your scalp as he slowly scratches at it. “You need to speak with us, and the others. Your feelings are real— hell, we all have our doubts. I used to feel it before every mission. Soap began to tell me his, then Gaz joined too. Price always looks for a way to solve it, and i give my two pence when i feel i want to. Just cause you feel different, doesnt mean you are. Plenty o’ people felt the same way you did before.”

“Really..? I’m not like.. crazy?”

“No, never. Even if you do some stupid shit sometimes.”

That makes you finally crack a real smile, even if its small and you’re unable to stifle the small chuckle that bubbles in your throat and although he’s the epitome of stoicism, he smiles beneath the mask. “Everyone’s out on a mission, ya can't leave me alone tonight. C’mere.”

You settle yourself in the crook of arm as he lays back against the bed with you, propping up his laptop on his lap as he searches for a good movie.

“You better report back to me everyday this week, alright? I want you here at nine pm sharp, dressed in your pajamas. That’s an order.”

Thinking over all your previous daydreams of how this would eventually go, this was far from how you expected it to be. Firstly, you never expected Ghost, nor it to happen in the military at all. Perhaps you thought maybe later in life it’d occur or maybe Soap or Price would figure it out. Either way, you arent actually upset over it. No one would be your fairy tale saviour in life, coming forward to fight the demons that plagued your head all the time. Even so, the way Ghost had shut you up and calmed you down makes you think he’s pretty damn close to being one, even if knights usually dont scoff at their princess.

He doesnt even look like he’d be willing to give a little kid a hug, but still, you couldnt be happier with how this turned out in the end. Compared to fairytale princes and men in the movies, you knew Ghost and you knew he was serious— so if he wanted to help you, he would. And no, he wouldnt ridicule you throughout the process, nor ever feel like you’ve been misheard. You know that if you spoke to Ghost, he’d listen earnesty and never forget, carrying that around with him even if those anxieties eventually died out.

You knew he’d always linger around, never forgetting you or leaving you behind. Just like a Ghost.

“Okay, i promise i will.”

You say softly, pressing your cheek against the curve of his chest, the faint thump of his heartbeat drowning out any lost thoughts. He was your support, and no matter how bad it got for you, no matter how many times you get overwhelmed and lash out, not even when you avoid everyone— he’d never break away. No, he would always be beside you.

[devildomwriter]

Obey Me As Tumblr #25

Satan: What are some good cities?

Solomon: Owl

Satan: Too many fireflies, infested

•

Mammon: Scary how fast someone can mean so much to you

Leviathan: Scary how fast you can mean nothing to someone

MC: Scary how fast I switched my car insurance to geico

•

Leviathan: Dead leafs? That’s card yard salad now, and it’s the new food trend

Raphael: Leaves*

Leviathan: Where are you going?

•

Mammon: I got some many love in my souls

Luke: Why do you have more than one soul?

Mammon: Irrelevant

•

Diavolo: Assert your dominance by calling your friends by their student ID number

•

Simeon: Homework? Decent grades? The Bible said Adam and Eve not Adam and achieve

Belphegor: I almost spit everywhere

•

Leviathan: Fanfic titles be “we have not touched the stars (nor are we forgiven)” and then you look at the tags and the first one is “anal fisting”

Satan: I choked

•

Mammon: I can’t believe clowns are real what the fuck…

Belphegor: DID YOU JUST DISCOVER MIRRORS?

Mammon: SHUT UP!!! SHUT THE FUCK UP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

•

Beelzebub: You ever get a bus driver that drives like they’re running from god

Solomon: You’re really complaining about the discount roller coaster?

•

Beelzebub: Due to plaque build up, human arteries are sometimes crunchy. Also, the arteries themselves are made up of a smooth, elastic (possibly gummy?) type of tissue. Therefore I imagine that eating a diseased human artery would be a similarly experience, texture-wise, to slurping one of THESE babies

*picture of a nerds rope*

Raphael: May the only thing that dampens the flames of hell for you be God spitting in your face

•

Leviathan: So, do seahorses read fpreg?

Lucifer: Seahorses are illiterate. A quality I wish I had so I didn’t have to read this post

•

Mammon: Laying an egg hard and loud

Solomon: Will the person who tagged this “Stephen Colbert” please approach the bench

•

Satan: Someone in my younger siblings class said they were “yandere for them” and my sibling responded “first of all cringe, second of all red flag” and no phrase has entered my daily lexicon so fast

•

Mammon: I go to Home Depot

Beelzebub: I eat the tools

Satan: Stop it

Belphegor: Crumch

•

Mammon: There’s no crime in being a thief

Lucifer: What a thief does is steal someone’s property without their permission, which is a crime

Asmodeus: Not when I do it. I’ll steal your heart and you wouldn’t mind

Solomon: …

Satan: That was very smooth

Leviathan: I’m gonna steal both your organs and money

•

Diavolo: What do teens like?!? Is it memes? Memes about skeletons? Piss? Communism?

Solomon: This post is 20x funnier if you imagine a CEO shouting it at his board of directors

Last • Next

[janearts]

ASDLKFJADKJ I love how you two immediately jumped to 'ok but like... is he #4 material?' (For those wondering, "What The Hell Is A #4?", the answer is linked here for reference.)

(The way to a woman's heart is through her favourite animal, obviously.)

Halsin is very much Roisia's type physically—aka large and in charge—and he has character traits that she would be attracted to: he's kind and compassionate, strong-willed and decisive, gentle and slow to anger, and in possession of a wry sense of humour and a keen intellect. So, yes, in that regard, Halsin definitely stands next to Wyll on the "suitable suitor to bring home" list. Top tier. Well done.

Additional rambling thoughts below the cut.

The trouble with Roisia when it comes to matters of the heart is that she unwittingly looks at a person, thinks she knows their true desires, can play out their combined future in her head, and judge them as compatible or incompatible without questioning her basic assumptions about that person. So, for example, Roisia would in many ways find Halsin an ideal romantic partner. And then, she would get into her own head. Like so:

Halsin is an archdruid. An elf accustomed to leading a notoriously outdoorsy lifestyle in a grove. Roisia is going to someday inherit an entire funerary business and wants to stay in Baldur's Gate, known for being not-at-all grove-like. Surely Mr. Outdoorsman will feel cooped up and miserable in a city if he thought the Grove was too comfortable for his tastes. Incompatible!

Halsin is all about the Natural Order of Things. Balance. Guess who disrupts said natural order when she takes dead things and reanimates them? Roisia. Roisia does. So they're at opposite ends of an ideological spectrum. Incompatible!

He's an elf; she's a human. They are on two different timelines as regards their lifespan. Unless Roisia can guarantee her own extended lifespan in a way that preserves the flesh on her bones in addition to her bones, she wants to grow with her #4 and not outpace her #4. Incompatible!

Again, these are assumptions that Roisia would make about Halsin, and I think she would ultimately write him off as a potential #4 more out of fear of some future rejection down the line than of Halsin necessarily explicitly confirming any of these assumptions to be true OR as relationship dealbreakers if they were. I want to shout out to @gracelessrogue for their tags:

It would not occur to Roisia that she could bond with a druid and a healer over life and death. If she would only think to challenge her own baseline assumptions about what she thinks she knows about the people she's travelling with, I think she would see the ways in which she could nurture long-term romantic connections with one or multiple of our possible companions.

Because, as it is, I think the larger issue is that Roisia would write off not just Halsin, but all the current known companions as not being a good fit for her #4. I don't think she would look at any of them and say: 'This person would stay with me in the city of Baldur's Gate and be totally, completely comfortable and content in a house with bodies in the basement, my skeleton father roaming the halls, and a graveyard right out back.'

Granted, it's still only Act 1/EA, but that's just a real bummer.

[beamiesbuddies]

Part 2: A Dream of an Autumn Garden

A few more photos of Mr. Morpheus, continuing from my post here!

As I said on the other photoset, I'm very happy & proud of him! I'm happy I decided to take my time to get him just how I wanted & edit the photos I took nicely. I hope you all love him too. Sweet dreams~

I have included a bunch of Cool Facts about how I made him under the cut if you are so inclined!

Started: Late Jan 2022 / Finished: Dec 30 2022

Approx work hours- 273 hours (worked on average every 3rd day out of 274 days; averaged 3h/session)

Times I remade something because I messed it up/wasn't happy with it: Hands- 2; Feet- 2; Head- 2.5; Body- 1; Clothes: 3

Pattern: trial, error & determination

Height: 3ft tall

Materials:

stretch jersey knit (body)

polyfill (stuffing)

brushed out acrylic yarn (hair)

star sapphire x2 (eyes)

pipe cleaner (hand armature)

wooden dowels/18 gauge wire (elbow/arm skeleton that keeps snapping I may add)

acrylic paint/pastels (shading & details)

acrylic thread (body sculpting & upper eyelashes)

stretch velvet/velvet burnout, cotton (clothes)

Fun facts:

his look was inspired by his overall appearance in the comics; I particularily like the depictions done by Jill Thompson, Mike Dringenberg & Marc Hempel!

his arms and legs are jointed in the same way as many teddy bears are: you use a washer, nut & bolt to butt-up the limb against the body internally and it gives the limbs full rotation. First time I have tried the method and it's definitely something I'll try again!

I had no idea how I was going to do the inset eyes, but I was determined to have them as some sort of stone. I had to redo his first head completely because I cut too far in! Eventually I got it to work by creating a "backcushion" with clay for the stones, and then closed and sculpted the eyelids overtop to secure them in.

You can't see in most of my photos but his eyes are star sapphire: when light hits them correctly, it causes a ✨to appear just like his eyes in the comics~!

making his hand & feet were a challenge, especially thinking about where to put the needle through to sculpt tendons, nails, etc (and also deciding how detailed to get without looking strange). I think I learned a lot tho and I'm very proud of the hands

my favorite sculpted parts are the collar bone/chest, the right hand & the nose~

because the skin is white, he gets very dirty with his black clothes, so I had to line all of them in white. He also has to soak in bleach once in a while to maintain his complexion (LOL)

A signature somehwere on his person xD

Thank you all again for your nice tags & comments so far on my work. If you guys would like for me to share some behind the scenes photos of this photoshoot, or WIP photos of me making him, let me know and if there's enough interest maybe I'll make a post down the road!

[meiliarotten]

Team Fortress 2 Kinktober Time Three: Return of the Kink

Day 1: Language of Lust (Voice Kink)

🔞MINORS DNI🔞

Pairings: Medic x Fem!Reader

Summary: The first thing art of my third Kinktober challenge, let’s go besties!

Tags: voice kink, language kink, oral, scratching, gratuitous German, aftercare

Word Count: 4.3k

The Masterlist

You tried to understand Medic, you truly did. He talked about his experiments at length, and anyone could see how passionate he was about them. Still, he often forgot that not everyone understood the medical jargon that he did, and you couldn’t bring yourself to interrupt him. The last thing you were able to understand was something about the superiority of the mega baboon heart when compared to the average human’s. It was all downhill from there, but as long as he kept talking, you would keep listening, nodding along. The truth was you loved to hear Medic talk, and the reasons weren’t entirely innocent.

“Now this part gets a bit complicated, are you paying attention?” Medic asked, gesturing towards a rough diagram he had scribbled on the back of some paperwork. As far as you could tell, it seemed to be detailing how one would successfully prevent the human body from rejecting animal organs, specifically the uterus, for some reason. Usually you wouldn’t question it, but you felt it would be wrong to let him keep going on if you truly didn’t understand. Plus, it might mean you get to hear him talk for longer.

“Oh yes! Of course I am,” you said. “But just in case, could you run it by me one more time?”

Medic sighed, smiling fondly at you in a way that made your heart skip a beat. “I am starting to think you just enjoy hearing me ramble, mein schatz.”

You hoped he wouldn’t notice the soft blush that colored your cheeks. He had no idea how well he had just read you. “Maybe I do,” you said, trying to keep your tone as casual as possible.

“Well, I appreciate that. Not many are willing to listen to me go on like this. However, you don’t have to pretend to understand for my sake.” You noticed a hint of sadness in that statement. You knew how it felt to enjoy something, especially something weird, and have no one to share your interests with.

“I don’t have to understand to see how passionate you are about it, and I like it when you get worked up.” You paused for a moment before realizing how that sounded. “When you’re excited, I mean. Excited about your work.”

Medic chuckled. “Is that so? I have always wondered what you enjoyed out of these conversations we share.” He got a bit closer to you, looking you up and down like an intriguing specimen. “And while I do believe you like seeing me happy, I don’t think that’s the only reason.”

“What do you mean?” you asked, perhaps a bit too quickly. You kicked your legs nervously, hearing the metal operation table you were sitting on creak slightly as you did.

“Let’s see,” Medic said, leaning in, studying you. Suddenly, he started touching you. It was entirely innocent, nothing that wouldn’t be done during a normal physical, even if it did leave goosebumps all over your skin. You started giggling uncontrollably when his fingers lingered on areas that he knew were ticklish. All the while he made mock ‘observations’ about you. “A slight flush, perspiration on the brow… excellent bone structure!”

You narrowed your eyes at him, growing more confused by the second. “What the hell does my bone structure have to do with anything?”

“Nothing,” Medic said. “But based on how much redder your face just became, I would say you like it when I compliment your appearance.”

You stared at Medic, finding yourself at a loss for words. He held your gaze, and you looked away first with an awkward laugh, feeling like he was staring right into your soul. Was this really happening? Was this Medic’s way of flirting?

Placing a hand on your cheek, you found that it was indeed warm. You also probably should have been unnerved by Medic’s comment, given his track record with skeletons. In fact, he had once detailed how he planned to one-up that particular achievement with something he lovingly referred to as ‘the circulatory system heist.’ Honestly, he probably wouldn’t be satisfied until he managed to steal every major organ system in the human body at least once, preferably leaving his victim alive in the process.

Finally, you responded. “It’s not just the compliments. Truthfully, I just like hearing you talk. You have a hot voice.” A moment of silence was all it took for you to realize what you had just admitted. Shit. You had gotten too comfortable. You had said too much, and of course, your immediate response was to stammer your way through a desperate, panicked stream of consciousness. “I mean nice! You have a nice voice, in a normal way. It’s, uh- unique, with the accent, you know? Yeah, that’s it. You would make a good narrator.”

Real smooth. Perfectly executed. He wouldn’t suspect a thing.

He had, in fact, suspected many things. An expression flashed across Medic’s face. First came realization, and then surprise. You weren’t sure whether you should be proud of the fact that you actually managed to surprise Medic, of all people.

“You like my accent?” He spoke with a certainty that implied he already knew the answer. You wished you could blame it on Medic being observant, but the fact was you had basically outed your massive crush on the team doctor in a moment of weakness. The only thing to do now was own up.

“Maybe,” you said, just above a whisper. You’re face was so red, and you felt hot from the blood rushing to your face. “I do have a bit of a thing for it.”

It was definitely more than just ‘a bit of a thing.’

“I am surprised. Usually when it comes to accents people go for the French, or the other romance languages,” Medic said, looking you over like you were a subject to be psychoanalyzed. It made you feel so small, even though you had the freedom to leave whenever you wanted. Not that you would. You liked where this conversation seemed to be going, even if you were embarrassed by how it was initiated.

“I guess I just have unique tastes.” There wasn’t much more of an explanation for you to give. You weren’t quite sure when you developed a thing for accents, let alone Medic’s in particular, but the human brain worked in mysterious ways. While you satiated yourself with the occasional foreign nickname he had given you, there was a part of you that occupied lonely nights with thoughts of how it might sound if he were to moan against your ear, whispering sweet nothings in a language you barely understood.

“I hope that this isn’t the only reason you come to visit me,” Medic said. “I actually thought you enjoyed hearing me ramble about exotic animal parts and Medigun technology, but perhaps that was just wishful thinking, ja?”

“Of course not,” you quickly reassured him. “I guess you could say I came for the accent and stayed for the sordid tales of grand theft skeleton.”

That at least got a laugh out of him. “Well then, I suppose I can’t be too hurt, liebchen.”

Damn it. Your blush had just begun to calm down, too. “That’s not fair!”

“Why not? You didn’t seem to have a problem with my little pet names before. In fact, I think you liked them very much.” His eyes narrowed, zeroing in on you in a way that reminded you of a wolf tracking its kill.

“It’s different now that you know,” you stammered, struggling to keep your composure as you held his gaze.

“How so, schatz?”

You huffed. Now he was just doing it on purpose. You weren’t going to humor him with an answer if he was just going to keep teasing you- until you felt a breath against your ear. “I asked you a question, mein engelchen. I expect an answer.”

“Oh fuck,” you whispered. You hadn’t even realized how close Medic was getting. Now his arms were on either side of you, gripping the edges of the operation table. He probably noticed the way your body stiffened and the way you squeezed your thighs together. Even so, a part of you worried you were being too presumptuous. Was this really going where you thought it was going? “Medic, what are you doing?”

“I thought that would have been obvious,” he said, chuckling softly. “I’m giving you what you want, if you’ll let me.”

“Seriously?” you asked, trying not to be too embarrassed at how the word came out as more of a shocked squeal.

“Only if you want to.” Medic backed away to look you up and down. He still wore a knowing smirk, but there was a hint of sincerity behind it that let you know that if you wanted this to stop, it would stop. You didn’t want that though. You had dreamt of a moment like this, and here it was, being offered on a silver platter, or rather, a silver operating table.

Before you could think, almost as if on instinct, you leaned forward and kissed him. You felt him startle, jolting against you slightly before he melted into the sinfully short kiss. You looked up at him with glassy eyes when you parted. “I can’t tell you how long I’ve wanted to do this.”

Looking up at him like that, you were irresistible. Medic leaned down, kissing you hard. He was much rougher, biting at your lower lip until he could slip his tongue into your mouth. Your legs wrapped around his hips, pulling him against you. He moaned into your mouth as you grounded against him, cursing the layers of fabric that remained between the two of you.

“Medic, please,” you gasped when you parted for a breath.

“How about you beg for me in my native tongue?” Medic said. “After all, I know how much you love it.”

“I don’t know how,” you whined, not even caring that you sounded utterly pathetic. Your voice was already quivering and besides a heated makeout, nothing had really happened yet.

Medic’s gaze softened. You were adorable when you were frustrated. “I’ll teach you, liebe. You know how to say please, don’t you?”

“Bitte.” You responded with some confidence, having heard Medic say it before, usually when asking for assistance on the battlefield.

“Very good. Now, repeat after me, ‘Bitte, lass mich deinen Schwanz lutschen.’” He spoke slowly, and you repeated the words at the same pace, occasionally struggling around the pronunciation that felt foreign on your tongue.

Medic smiled, and you took that as a sign that you did well. “What does it mean?”

That smile twisted into a smirk. “It means, ‘please, let me suck your cock.’”

The heat in your cheeks deepened, and you knew you had just turned a much deeper shade of red. Perhaps it was a bit naive of you to think that what you had just said would be anything other than lewd. “Well,” you said, trying to keep your voice steady. “Can I?”

“Certainly!” Medic’s swirk widened, his teeth glinting in the harsh light of the infirmary. His eyes tracked your every move as you dismounted the table, pacing around him until he was leaning back on the steel surface and you were knelt down in front of him. His ever present gaze made you shiver. Reaching for his belt, you paused at the buckle, glancing up at him nervously. “Go on, liebling.”

You nodded, wasting little time unfastening the belt and unzipping his fly. With some finessing, you eventually freed his cock, working him up with your hand. The way he groaned at your touch made you squirm, pressing your thighs together in an attempt to quell your arousal. You were quite proud to find that he was already half hard.

It wasn’t long before you could get to work with your mouth. You licked your lips until they were reddened and wet. The noise he made when you simply dragged your tongue along the underside of his cock was maddening. You had fantasized about what it might be like to hear him moan, to watch him come undone with your touch, but nothing could compare to the real thing. You needed to hear more.

Little did you know, Medic had thought about this before as well. He had wondered how you would look on your knees, lips parted and ready to take anything he gave you. You took it so well, too. Your mouth was tight around his shaft, and you did such delightful things with your tongue that made him grip the edge of the table and pulled shaky groans from his lips. “That’s it, keep going, liebchen. Du machst das so gut, you’re so good!”

You shuddered, a low moan escaping you. Although it was muffled, Medic immediately took notice. Your muscles were taut, and you seemed to double your efforts, bobbing your head faster and working your tongue against him. Something he said had certainly motivated you. ‘A praise kink,’ Medic thought to himself. ‘This will be fun.’

“Do you like it when I call you good?” You would have nodded if you weren’t otherwise occupied. In fact, you were so wrapped up in your current task that you barely heard him. He didn’t seem to need any further confirmation though. Medic weaved his fingers into your hair until he had a tight grip close to your scalp. “Let’s see just how good you can be for me then. I want to feel your throat tighten around me.”

He pushed you further down onto his cock. Every move was gentle and gradual. Medic paid attention to your reactions, pausing whenever he felt you gag, letting you adjust until eventually you managed to take him as deep as he hoped for. You were held there, breathing slowly through your nose as you felt his cock press into your throat. Your tongue continued to massage the underside of his cock.

“Sheiße,” Medic cursed softly. His grip on your hair loosened, and you took the opportunity to start bobbing your head again. Only now, you could take him to the hilt on your own accord. Instantly he was gripping the edge of the operating table in a white knuckled grasp. “Oh gott, liebling! That’s so good!” He was panting, and you loved it. Every sound that came out of him was breathy and high pitched, almost sounding more akin to whimpers than moans. “You’re doing so well, meine gutes mädchen, my good girl!”

Of course the praise wasn’t about to let up. You moaned around his cock, doubling your efforts. You were a good girl, you were his good girl, and you wanted to prove it with every fiber of your being. For a moment, you thought you could be content to simply bring him to completion right there, your own pleasure be damned, but it seemed like Medic had other plans. You felt a harsh tug on your hair, pulling you off of his cock. You gasped, the sound quickly turning into a whine.

“Sorry, liebchen, but with the way you were moaning…” He paused for a breath. Medic’s expression was pained, as if he didn’t want to make you stop, but forced himself to. “I was getting much too close, and I still want a chance to fuck you properly.”

You immediately jumped at that, almost literally, as you hoisted yourself back up onto the table with surprising speed. The metal had gone cold, cold enough that you felt it through your clothing, causing you to shiver. Speaking of clothing, you were still wearing far too much of it. At least that’s what Medic seemed to think. He quickly stripped you of your pants and underwear, only allowing your top to remain, to ward off the chill of the metal.

Medic took in the sight of you slowly, relishing every detail. Your legs were spread wide and inviting. Oh, you were positively soaked. He ran a finger over your sex and it came back wet and shining. The gesture left you shuddering. It seemed you were sensitive to even the smallest touch. This was going to be fun.

“Please, please fuck me!” you whined.

“You can’t withstand a little teasing, liebchen?” Medic laughed, letting his hands caress your inner thighs, so tantalizingly close to where you wanted to be touched, but just out of reach. “Don’t worry, you’ll have what you want, but first, beg for me properly.”

“Bitte!” you cried, recalling your earlier lessons. “Bitte, Medic!”

“You remembered! Very good.” He dragged you forward to the edge of the table, sliding his cock against you, past your entrance and up to your clit. So close, so agonizingly close. “Now let’s add some new vocabulary. Say, ‘bitte, fick mich.’”

“Bitte! Fick mich!” You didn’t hesitate like before. There was no need to speak slowly and sound out words. Desperation apparently did wonders for your pronunciation.

“Perfekt.”

Medic’s cock was coated in your arousal, twitching against you. He was just as needy as you were, he was just better at hiding it, but there was no need to resist anymore. In one quick thrust, Medic lets you feel every inch of him. The noise you made was animalistic. You clung onto his arm, pulling at the sleeves of the white coat that he still wore. You didn’t even mind- the uniform was starting to become part of the appeal.

He groaned, thrusting slowly, savoring the feeling of your warmth around him. You watched, enraptured by the way he buried himself within you. “So good,” he muttered. You glanced up at him, meeting his eyes. “Is it good for you too, meine liebe?”

Medic stroked your cheek gently, his gaze softening. “It feels good. Fuck, Medic! Please fuck me harder!” you gasped, bucking your hips uselessly.

That moment of gentleness faded as soon as it arrived. Medic gripped the edge of the table for leverage as he fucked you against it. The metal creaked beneath the barrage, but it wouldn’t give away. This table was built to hold the likes of Heavy, there was no way it would buckle. Any other surface very well might have, though.

“I’ve wanted to do this for such a long time,” Medic groaned, his voice low and his breathing heavy. Even now, he tried to take in every feature, committing the image of you taking him so nicely to memory. Everything from the gentle bounce of your chest to the way you bit your lower lip in a vain attempt to smother your own moans would be a detail he could call upon during lonely nights. “If only I knew sooner that you were so smitten with something as simple as my voice.”

Suddenly, his grip shifted to your waist, pulling you forward to meet his thrusts. You keened, feeling him drive deeper into you. He rocked his hips against yours, letting you grind and adjust to the newfound depth.

“Medic,” you began, struggling to catch your breath enough to speak. “Medic, I want- oh fuck!”

“What is it, liebchen?” He paused, letting you regain enough composure to speak. “Go on, tell me what you need.”

“Just keep speaking to me, please, until I come,” you pleaded.

“What would you like to speak about?” He asked, a knowing smirk on his face.

“Anything,” you said, hesitating for a moment before continuing. “And could you maybe do it in German?”

“Natürlich, kleine Taube. Ich glaube, du willst es härter, ja?” Now unable to understand him, the ferocious pace you were subjected to came without warning. You held onto the edges of the table, feeling the metal dig into your fingers as your grip tightened. Medic’s fingers pressed into the softness of your waist. You gasped when his nails dug in as well, adding a delightfully painful edge to the pleasure. “Das gefällt dir, nicht wahr?”

The pain was gone almost as suddenly as it began. You whined, unable to hide how much you had enjoyed the rougher treatment. It wasn’t long before you got another taste. Medic’s hands moved down to your ass, his nails leaving little crescent shaped indents in the supple flesh there as well. You were starting to pant, mouth agape and gasping as he suddenly lifted your hips upward.

“Gott, du hast so einen schönen Arsch. Das nächste Mal sollte ich dich von hinten nehmen.” This new angle proved to be very effective. You were much louder like this, his cock hitting all the right spots. Medic knew that if he were to simply touch your clit right now, you would be coming for him in seconds. However he wasn’t ready for this to end just yet.

Your moans were music to his ears. Should any of his fellow mercenaries pass by the infirmary right now, it wouldn’t be hard to determine just what was happening. The thought managed to rouse some envy in Medic. Your sweet sounds were for him alone. Perhaps it would be better to quiet you down for now. Leaning down, he pressed his lips roughly to yours, muffling your noises. You still whimpered between kisses, but they were soft and subtle, just barely loud enough to reach his ears.

“Magst du es, wenn ich dich küsse? Soll ich weitermachen?” he murmured, stealing another soul reaping kiss. This was quite liberating, being able to say whatever he wanted to you, only to watch you melt at the sound of it every time. “Du musst nicht antworten. Es ist für mich offensichtlich.”

You rolled your hips to meet his. He felt the way your muscles flexed under his hands, and he knew you were close. You whimpered and gasped, haphazardly bucking against him, chasing the last bit of sensation that would tip you over the edge. Your expression was a beautiful mix of desperate frustration and overwhelming pleasure. It was a sight that brought Medic dangerously close to losing control. Realizing he was reaching his limit, he finally showed you some mercy, knowing that the look on your face when you came would far outweigh anything he had yet seen.

“Komm für mich,” he groaned. One hand splayed out on your lower stomach, his thumb reached down to rub quick circles over your clit. You may not have known German, but you could most certainly infer what that meant. You shuddered, back arching, letting out a harsh sounding moan as your orgasm overtook you. “Du fühlst dich so gut an. Ich komme- scheiße!”

Now that you had reached your peak, Medic’s inhibitions seemed to be gone. He chased his own climax, thrusting into you roughly and unevenly. When he finally went still, you had practically gone limp beneath him, overstimulated and teary eyed. When he came you could have sworn he was even louder than you were. You almost wondered if he was playing it up, given your affinity for his voice, but on the other hand, Medic was loud and proud in most situations. It would only make sense that he was a bit of a screamer himself.

When he finally came down from his high he noticed how you were trembling. It was clear that your body was overwhelmed. A few tears managed to spill down your cheeks, even as a blissed out smile remained on your face. You probably didn’t even realize you were crying. Medic withdrew carefully, making an apologetic sound when you whimpered at the sensation.

“You’re going to be sore tomorrow,” he said, stating the obvious. Medic observed you for a moment, making sure you were alright, before you suddenly found yourself being hoisted against his chest. You wrapped your legs around his waist for stability as he lifted you off the table and carried you towards an offshoot of the infirmary. Before you could ask where he was going, or how the hell he had the strength left to carry you like this, Medic opened the door to reveal a small, but cozy room. This was clearly his personal quarters. It made sense that it would be part of the infirmary.

“Why are we here?” you asked. Your words were soft, as if raising your voice above a whisper might shatter the pleasant afterglow that had began to settle over you.

“It is quite late. The least I could do is let you stay the night.” Medic laid you down on the surprisingly plush mattress. This was luxury compared to your barracks. You stretched out before burrowing into the blankets letting them engulf you.

“Thank you,” you whispered. “For all of this. That was so good.”

“I had fun as well, mein Täubchen.”

That pet name was new. He had used it a few times tonight, but only now did it pique your interest. “What does that mean?” you asked.

Medic smiled softly. “My dove.”

“Oh,” you said, too flustered to say much else. Being compared to one of his beloved pets felt nice. It made you feel delicate, like something to be cared for.

“You blush so easily!” Medic said with pure glee. You almost expected him to pinch your cheeks. “I will definitely enjoy this side of you, liebe, so easy to tease!

“Yeah, yeah,” you said, trying to brush it off, even though you knew your face was practically glowing with the flush that you were sporting. “Maybe we can do more tomorrow. I’m exhausted.”

“Of course. This was quite an eventful day.” Medic kissed your forehead, an oddly tender gesture after all the rough treatment. “Get some rest. I will join you once I’ve cleaned up in the infirmary.”

Medic left and you closed your eyes. When he returned just a few minutes later you were already asleep, snoring softly in your sanctuary of pillows and blankets. He had never seen you so relaxed before. You murmured something unintelligible when Medic slipped under the covers beside you, whispering for you to go back to sleep as he draped an arm over you, feeling your body press closely against his in the peaceful darkness.

[sugar-omi]

i was gonna hold onto this but.. what better time than now?

DAY THREE — One Night Stand [ baxter ]

tags : NSFW, masc/amab reader, unrequited love, vanilla, underage drinking, reader is bigger/beefier than baxter, unprotected sex, blowjob (baxter receiving), anal, riding, creampie

synposis : this is the last night you'll spend with baxter before he leaves your little hometown for good. you know you can't ask him to stay, but you can at least have a little.. souvenir? for your aching heart before he goes.

[ kinktober '24 masterlist | ao3 ]

“so..” you break the silence, taking the half empty bottle of expensive chardonnay from baxter's loose grip. "this is really your last night here, huh.."

it's not a question, it's a statement. one you didn't want to make and you cringe at how pathetic it sounds.. but all your other ideas about what to say sound desperate as well.

you know why baxter is eager to leave home and go so far away from this tight-knit town. you'd like to think that you're the only one who really knows him, but you know he keeps his oldest skeletons close to his chest.

he only reveals to you the dirty cobwebs and the crawling bugs in his closet. the smaller, but deeper and meaningful things. things that won't ruin him. sometimes he shows you the bigger bugs, things that the adults in his life would scold him for. things his parents pride shield them from.

but he's thrown you a bone sometimes.. when he's had one too many sips from his parents liquor cabinet or when his heart is so heavy the heartbreak has seeped into his bones and weighs him down with lead.

you are close. in some.. weird way..

and so of course you knew he'd been planning to go to college out of state, and of course you knew he'd never look back. of course you knew you were disposable.

he's never said it. but he's always choking on something, something heavier yet so light in weight that it could fly out at any second and shatter you like a bomb through a glass window.

even though he gives you pieces of himself in exchange for pieces of you that you earnestly give to him, you see how far away he is, and you know his smile is false.

you know there is a wall between him and the rest of the world and while you can chip at it as much as you want, you are not getting past it.

baxter a. ward is an anomaly. he is something much greater than you that you cannot touch and you intend to soak up as much of his light as you can.

"yep." baxter pops cooly, leaning back on his elbow on this stupidly long couch. you're pretty sure this couch is the size of your entire bedroom.

he already knows how pathetic you are, especially after such an uncool icebreaker. that's why he says, "don't worry, you'll be fine without me."

you glare at him, him and that stupid smirk on his face.

your stomach is burning, and you can't tell if its the alcohol or your stomach eating itself. you're hungry, and you're going to be sick after tonight.

you take another swig from the bottle, trying not to think about waking up tomorrow. baxter has one foot out the door, and it's making your world dull.

you wipe your lips with the back of your hand, then your neck before the wine drop can stain your shirt.

"of course i'll be fine, asshole." you spit, trying to cover up your fluster but your face feels hot and your voice is thick. "i can finally relax without you dragging me into your schemes and all over town with your rich friends."

you have to admit, you enjoyed spending time with baxter at that fancy dinner his parents dragged him to. you got to see a dazzling side of baxter that you’ve never gotten to see before. if you didn’t think he was crafted by god already, you did then.

he laughs at that, a look in his eye you refuse to place and you let him take the bottle from you, watching him lean his head back to take a drink.

you swallow thickly, fidgeting in your spot on the couch... you hate how far you are, an unusual amount of space between you, but somehow it's not far enough because your heart still pounds.

you push down all your nerves. soon enough.. you'll be further than your heart can handle, the string he has around it will tug with every inch he walks away from you until it's razor tight, your heart small and bleeding.

"what.. what do you really want to do..?"

baxter looks at you, his lips coming off the bottle with a wet pop. he stares at you, waiting, thinking..

"..what do you have in mind?" he prompts, trying to see where this is going.

you crawl across one cushion, than the second.. then, before your tipsy brain can stop you or process your actions, you're leaning over baxter, the chandelier casting a shadow over him with how you lean on the side of the couch, your faces just inches apart...

you can smell his cologne, and you can see every eyelash, and you can see each crease in his plump bottom lip. having him this close while your blood is pumping hot is intoxicating.

your eyes are boring into each other, and you can’t keep yourself from saying every word that pours from your mouth. “maybe.. one last hurrah? with me..?”

baxter stares back at you, and you know you are going to be stuck on him for years to come because your heart only speeds up and your head is swimming as you sink into every detail of those deep brown eyes.

and you're following how his eyes flicker across your face, lowering to what you think is your lips.. and you're watching that signature, lopsided smile return to his face as he looks at you from under those long lashes he uses as a weapon against you daily.

"how forward.. i didn’t think you had it in you” baxter can’t drop his grin, clearly pleased by your implication. he leans back, exposing himself to you. “i’m in your capable hands, y/n.”

you bite your lip, trying to calm down your excitement.

you’ve kissed people before, even got frisky with someone, a miracle in this little town. your little world. but you’ve never kissed baxter. you never really thought you would even if you’ve imagined it and dreamed about you two being helplessly in love.

you feel like your heart is going to bust with the range of emotions you are going through. but you swallow, pushing everything down, forcing yourself to be in the moment instead of cloud nine.

you straddle him, careful about where and how much of your weight you put on him. aside from the fact that you view him as your own little prince, he’s delicate, bruises like a peach and weighs nothing. 

“i’ll be gentle.” you mutter, leaning forward to snatch his lips up into an uncoordinated kiss, the alcohol blurring your senses, blending them together.

you truly do not know where baxter starts and you end, you feel like you’re on a cloud and this is the best you’ve felt in weeks since you realized the end of your little crush was imminent.

you’re going to savor tonight. memorize the feel of his lips against yours, wet from the alcohol and soft compared to your drier ones. you’re memorizing the taste of the chardonnay, the way it tastes combined with his spit once his tongue slips past your lips, curling his arms around your neck and curling one of his legs around the back of your knee.

his body is tangling with yours, his lips hot and soft, his tongue invading your mouth. baxter is hot under your hands and pliant to your will. it’s making your head spin and it’s definitely not the wine.

your hands roam across his chest, trying to get a feel of his body through his thin undershirt, the heat of your palms rubbing up and down on his hips pulling a pleased groan from him.

you pull away from his lips, moving down towards his pale neck, running your tongue over his mole before latching onto the skin, sucking and grazing it with your teeth.

baxter claws at your shoulders, shivering. “fuck.. don’t leave a mark there.” he breathes out, his voice a tone of light pleasure that you only dreamed of hearing.

you move further down, pushing his shirt up to his underarms so you can kiss down the length of his stomach, your hands on bare, smooth porcelain skin, reaching for every area of skin and muscle you haven’t been able to map out.

“sorry..” you mumble against his skin, latching your lips onto the skin just under his ribs.

you intend to leave your mark. literally. you have to leave evidence, so that way he cannot forget you that fast. that way he won’t move on the second his plane leaves the ground.

baxter has said before he’s not a long-term kind of guy. so even if you don’t confess your feelings tonight, or ever. at least you can let him go after taking a piece of him, even if he’s taking half of you.

you suck harder, and almost sink your teeth into the skin like an apple, pulling off when baxter goes “ah! y/n!” and pushes against your head.

the hickey is dark, and your stomach swirls with something primal and ancient, a quiet beast sitting in the darkest parts of your body.

“are.. you proud of yourself?” baxter pants, trying to gather his breath. you haven’t really done anything, but you can feel and see how hard he is in his tight jeans and you’re proud of yourself even if he’s scolding you.

you look at him through your lashes, putting on your smuggest grin. “of course i am.”

he rolls his eyes, but his annoyance is clearly falsified when he pops the button on his jeans, and you can’t see it, but he has to bite back a smile at how your eyes are following how he slowly.. tantalizing pulls down his zipper, subconsciously licking your lips in anticipation.

he lifts his hips up a bit, shuffling down his jeans just a pinch but leaving on his boxers. he’s making you work for it and it’s terrible. baxter lays back, all proud and pompous.

it would tick you off if he wasn’t so handsome. but instead, you’re pulling his cock free from his boxers and admiring how pretty it is. the length is a blushing red, average length and girth and curved up in a way you’re sure would feel mind blowing inside of you.

that would have to wait for later though, or maybe never, because you intend to rock baxter’s world tonight and deal with the chilling air in the morning.

you take his length in your hand, stroking his cock just enough to make pre pearl at the tip of his flushed cock and pull shaky sighs and stifled moans from him, but you can tell he aches for more, squirming and gasping when your thumb runs over his head.

“y/n..” baxter groans, his fist curling in your ratty t-shirt of some band you never knew but ma said was popular back in the day.

you know what he wants, and you give in without even thinking about resistance or teasing, licking your lips before wrapping them around his tip, earning you a loud moan that rips from baxter’s throat before he can stop it.

you can’t help how giddy you feel, and you pull off, giving short pumps of your hand around baxter’s weeping cockhead. “you’re sensitive.” you tease, returning your lips to his length and staring at him through your lashes. you’re feeling mischievous and powerful. baxter is making all these pretty sounds that leave a quiet echo in his big, shiny house and you’re eating up his expressions.. the way he tries to hide his blushing face and muffle his moans of pleasure.

seeing baxter like this, having baxter like this under you is driving you up the wall and you’re certain you’re going to be ruined for another week with every kiss you pressed against his skin, and with how your lips and tongue wrap around his length, taking him deeper into your mouth.

“god..” baxter groans, his fingers weakly threading through your hair.

you moan around baxter's length, trying to adjust to the intrusion, closing your eyes and holding onto baxter's thighs for support.

you look up at him through your lashes, making eye contact with him. that must do something for baxter because he mumbles something and throws his head back, his hips bucking and making you gag.

“shit- i'm sorry, sorry..” he gasps out, pushing your hair back with his shaky palm. “please.. move.”

you can't deny such a sweet plea, and so you start pulling off, running your tongue along the underside of his cock and suckling on the tip, pumping what's not in your mouth with your hand before taking more of him down your throat again, hollowing your cheeks and sucking.

“oh my god!” baxter howls, digging his nails into the leather, his back arching.

he props up on his elbows, pushing against your shoulder.

“fuck.. okay that's enough, i'm going to come if you keep doing that..” he pants, all the blood that didn't rush to his dick rushed to his face and you're dazed with how good he looks.

he looks a bit disheveled between the wine and the sex, and goddamn if he doesn't make it look good.

you sit up, wiping the spit off your chin. “what’s wrong with that? do you wanna stop?”

baxter shakes his head, putting his dick back in his underwear and taking his sweater off the arm of the couch.

“no, i just want you to fuck me in my bed.” he purrs, enjoying how wide your eyes must be and how you gap at him, your face feels hot and your dick is throbbing in the confines of your jeans painfully.

he tugs your frozen self off the couch and towards the stairs, and before you can pick your jaw off the floor, you're in baxter’s room and he's pushing you towards the bed, giving you one final shove when the back of your knees hit the mattress.

he shoves his pants down his legs, throwing them somewhere on the floor and starts to rifle through his bedside time.

baxter throws a bottle of lube on the bed, and stands between your legs so he can pull your shirt off, running his hands over your relatively smooth skin.

he moves downward, his hands unbuckling your belt with swiftness and popping the button on your jeans. baxter leans his body into you, his lips so close to yours that they’re brushing together as he speaks.

“i don’t have condoms.. the maid found them and tattled. but you’re clean, right?”

you nod certainly. it’s difficult to be promiscuous in this little place, and everyone knows everyone's business. baxter smiles and steals your lips, pushing you down so you’re flat on the bed.

you grab his hips, bringing them down to grind against you which he follows, circling his hips down on your length, his hands groping your chest and tracing the valleys of your body with his fingertips.

he pushes you towards the pillows, tugging your pants and each of your boxers off along the way, and urges you to just lay there all pretty for him while he preps himself, taking the lube in hand and pushing down his boxers, he gives you a front row seat to all his lewd expressions..

you find yourself gulping thickly when his eyes flutter shut and a quiet “oh god..” falls out of his lips when he sinks one of his slick fingers in, his arm trembling a bit on your shoulder.

you take his cock in your hand, stroking him while he adds in another digit.

“mmn..” baxter moans, and you can see how his wrist moves, scissoring and pumping his fingers in and out of his hole. his head falls on your shoulder, his lips are right under your ear, all his little moans and gasps are falling into your ear like music.

he pants and pulls his fingers out of his hole, pouring extra lube over your cock and sitting back on his knees with shaky legs and a flushed, sweaty face. “that’s good enough..”

he straddles your lap, lining you up with his entrance and enveloping the tip of your cock.

your nails dig into baxter's hips, groaning lowly as he slowly takes more and more of your length inside, his insides hot and wet around you, his hole trying to cling onto every inch if dick that pushes into him..

you're pretty sure the feeling and sight of baxter split open on your cock, blushing cheeks to lure you in and open lips to serenade you with his moans is what heaven looks like.

baxter's butt smacks against your thighs, both of you moaning loudly at the action. baxter's arms tighten around your neck, taking a moment to accommodate your girth before he slowly lifts up his hips, his sweaty chest pressed against yours, increasing the heat between you.

you remove baxter from your neck, pulling him into a messy kiss, holding his jaw as your tongue slides along him, the taste of the cheep beer your friends had snuck earlier washed away with the taste of the wine you drank to irritate baxter's parents as a little goodbye present from their darling son.

somehow it tastes better coming from his mouth, the taste tangled with his spit, the taste of pears and your love for baxter is sharp. it envelopes your chest, just like his hot insides take your cock, his body rocking and bouncing in your lap, kissing you hotly, moaning into your mouth as your hand strokes him in beat with baxter's movements.

your minds are clouded with just the sensation of each others tongues exploring the others mouth, and the sensation that comes with baxter's lips latching onto your neck, sucking and biting at your long neck, mumbling into your skin..

"you.. feel so good.." he gasps, the sound of skin smacking bouncing off the walls of baxter's bedroom.

you grip baxter's hips, planting your feet so you can thrust up into him, trying to make up for baxter's slowing enthusiasm.

baxter groans, his teeth sinking into your shoulder almost painfully but he has the consciousness to let go before he pierces your skin. "i'm.. nhgn- i'm gonna cum." baxter gasps out, the sound so much more vulnerable than you've ever heard from him.

"fuck.. me too." you growl, resting your forehead on baxter’s shoulder as you thrust into him, your grip around his cock tightening, giving his length short pumps before he spills into your hand.

your orgasm follows closely behind him, painting baxter's insides with your sticky seed, wrapping your arms tightly around him..

eventually, you two pull yourselves from the hot, mushy pile of your bodies and share a shower, and by some small miracle, you share the bed for the night, your arms wrapped around him with his back to your chest.

but in the morning, once the golden sunlight comes through the crack of the curtains, you peel yourself out of baxter's bed, only after admiring his sleeping face, and slip into your clothes from the previous night.

you quietly creep down the stairs, hoping no one, or worse, his parents are downstairs to see your walk of shame.

your heart aches, leaving so suddenly. so quietly. but it's a lot easier than watching him leave with it.

[haptronym]

Hap's Adventures in Dadmight

aka “this experience was really strange so I’m going to write 6,000 words about it”.

Fandoms are bizarre. I know this, but I still keep doing the shocked Pikachu face whenever I join a new one. 

This time around, I really thought there would be no surprises. And yet, the fandom ended up having a really weird, really uncomfortable dynamic that confused the hell out of me for a long time. I met several others who said “Yeah, it freaks me out too,” but they couldn’t explain exactly why, and nobody really wanted to talk about it. So now that I’m mostly done with the My Hero Academia fandom, I’ll just go ahead and vaporize my bridges with a whole-ass case study about what on earth seemed to be going on here.

Warning: very long, very self-absorbed, as usual. Contains discussions of relationships, underage shippers, and how to influence whether something “feels” platonic vs. not.

Disclaimer 1: This doesn't apply to everything tagged "Dadmight." Just a select subset. But this subset appeared pretty consistently.

Disclaimer 2: I'm posting brief, fair-use-commentary examples of the content that made me question my sanity because it has to be seen to be believed, but I'm not including names or links because I don’t want to easily funnel negativity to them. If an author really wants me to, I’m happy to link directly to their story.

Disclaimer 3: I’m not trying to “spread awareness” or do a callout. I just like to write for fun and this time the fun was puzzling out why I, personally, had the experience I did. Many people feel differently and that's great. If all fluff has always felt 100% wonderful and charming to you, then this post isn't relevant to you. But if a supposedly "cute" story has ever made you squirm with discomfort, this might help explain why.

-

A few years ago, I took a terribly wrong turn in life and ended up in the My Hero Academia fandom. My kidnappers were these two:

In short: the little kid on the left, Izuku Midoriya, is exactly as dorky as he looks. He was born powerless in a world of comic-book superheroes and has a tendency to burst into tears under any possible circumstance. The series kicks off when the guy on the right, #1 hero and national celebrity All Might, sees potential in him despite all this. In a fit of inspiration, All Might decides to give Izuku the same chance he was given as a young boy. Despite being a notorious lone wolf, he (secretly) names Izuku as his successor and takes it upon himself to covertly train this weepy, noodle-limbed wimp into a hero, the hero, the next Symbol of Peace who will wield the world’s strongest superpower and safeguard the future of society. Surely they’ll pull it off just fine, right?

(Don’t ask how All Might switches from a bodybuilder to the skeleton pictured  above. The show doesn’t know either.)

I loved these two. I wanted eight seasons of beach training montage. The mentor/student shenanigans were hilarious and the found family potential was off the charts. They’re two awkward bumbling fools with several truckfuls of emotional baggage, brought together by purehearted heroic zeal. Wonderful.

However, I quickly discovered that the show shoveled approximately ten thousand new characters into every new episode and definitely wasn't going to slow down long enough to give me the All Might & Izuku content I craved. So I wandered off to see what kind of fanfiction was on tap.

...I wandered off, while bracing myself. I’ve been a weeb long enough to know that any characters who pass on power through “DNA” are never going to escape a fandom unscathed, regardless of pesky things like “Age Of Consent” and “Have You Watched A Single Minute Of This Show, He Would Never Fucking Do That”.

Their canon relationship is impressively alarming all on its own:

Izuku is 14-15. Underage character? Check. 

All Might is 55+. Enormous age gap? Check.

All Might is both Izuku’s secret mentor and his high school teacher. Teacher-student dynamics? Check.

Izuku is a nobody. All Might is a global celebrity. Staggering power imbalance? Check. 

Izuku’s superpower, which lets him go to the school of his dreams, accomplish his lifelong goals, and be the protagonist of this show, was given to him by All Might at great personal cost. Enormous sense of debt and obligation because of a huge sacrifice? Check.

Izuku is an outright fanboy. His room is full of posters and figurines of All Might in spandex. Other characters frequently comment on how obsessed he is. There is a whole plotline about him being so starstruck by All Might that he can’t think for himself. Literal hero worship? Check.

As the cherry on top, they spend most of the story pretending they don’t know each other and sneak around under the noses of every other character, including Izuku's mother. Secret hidden relationship with a minor that no other adult can learn the true extent of? Check. 

What a pair. Japanese fandom constantly cracks jokes about how Izuku is probably that kind of fanboy. Even official media is well aware of how sketchy it all looks:

With all this in play, I was pleasantly surprised to find that the stuff in their platonic-relationship fanfiction tag vastly outnumbered the stuff in their shipping one. Phew. Finally, a pair of characters who got something besides endless gross hornyposting. 

As I browsed, I kept seeing a certain tag: "Dadmight." This, unsurprisingly, was used by stories that decided to make All Might into Izuku’s biological father. But it was also used by... pretty much all non-shipping media that focused on their relationship. How interesting! I was used to ship pairings having nicknames, but not platonic ones. 

I could imagine why the name caught on. All Might was practically the definition of "goofy wholesome dad energy,” and his mentor/student relationship with Izuku was easy to see in a parental light. Plus, Izuku’s actual dad is never to be seen during the story. Clearly he deserves a replacement.

So I delved in. Man, this was going to be great! A huge amount of good clean platonic content, with an easy-to-find tag too. Reading about cute dadly shenanigans was going to be such a fun-

How he would love to fall asleep to the sound of his soft voice and the touch of his rough hands, telling him he was proud of him, caressing his hair. He was so mortified over having this need, for all kinds of reasons, but it became clear a long time ago that fighting it wouldn’t work, so he let himself dream.

Uh... well... Izuku didn’t grow up with a dad, so... maybe he needed a father figure... to... caress his hair with his rough hands...

More hums of contentment make their way from him, his body swaying with every push and pull from Toshinori’s long fingers. He uses them to massage Midoriya’s head, taking every moment to not just clean his hair, but to make him feel good; Toshinori can’t bear for this to be purely utilitarian.

Uhhh... okay... All Might was a rather isolated guy. I bet he appreciated being able to share time with his student... bathing time...

What if the boy would rather this stay simply as it has been, professional as mentor and mentee? What if Toshinori has read all of this wrong and the boy has no feelings above Toshinori being his teacher, and all Toshinori has done is fall harder and harder for him every day?

What was this? What exactly did people think kids got up to with their dads!?

Well, maybe I just found a few of the strange ones, I told myself. Fanfiction always has its odd outliers. But after more searching, I realized: no. There was wildly uncomfortable stuff all over. It wasn’t all Dadmight stories. But it was a lot. The most popular authors of the “Dadmight” tag wrote it and the rest of the Dadmight authors gave them big thumbs-ups. It was at least as popular as the “All Might is Izuku’s real dad” stuff and sat at the top of the kudos and comments sorting.

Were people just being polite? Or was I overreacting? I know how annoying it is when people deliberately take things in bad faith and demonize perfectly innocent human affectio—

He kept the contact to a minimum, not wanting to take advantage, not wanting to cross a single, unspoken boundary… but how could he possibly completely refrain, with both how proud and how worried Izuku made him?

There was a voice, in the back of his head, that didn’t agree. That voice – either logic or wishful thinking – told him that while Izuku didn’t initiate physical affection, he surely did lean into it, and seemed to crave receiving it as much as Toshinori craved giving it.

Oh god oh god oh god what is happening STOP—

This was horrible. I just wanted to enjoy cute fluff. I’d never had this reaction to platonic fanfic before. I’m a big found family fan and my worst issue with fluff is usually just that it tends to be kind of samey. I normally love reading about chaste affection and closeness between characters who care about each other. So why did these stories read like Lolita AUs to me? Did shippers in this fandom like to hide their softcore stuff in the platonic tags?

I was soon able to find out. I had been writing my own All Might & Izuku story, and got invited to a “Dadmight-centric” Discord server. Almost all the popular Dadmight authors were there, including the ones who wrote the particular stories that made my skin crawl. There were several channels where people brainstormed, critiqued, and discussed the motivations behind their writing. 

Cool! I’d be able to meet new people, make some friends, and get a better understanding of what the Dadmight dynamic really was. So I introduced myself, I chatted, I lurked. Everyone was really nice.

I found zero cheeky shippers. The writers claimed to be horrified by the idea of shipping the two of them. They would never disrespect the purity and innocence of this beautiful platonic relationship, they said, as they churned out stories about Izuku “coming undone” under the caress of All Might’s rough hands. Right...

I could’ve understood if this was coming from naive 14-year-olds. But some of these people were in their 30’s, with kids of their own. If anyone understood family dynamics, it should’ve been them.

But after I spent more time around the server, I began to notice something else... something which explained a ton of the strangeness. 

Baby Fever

To understand what was happening, you first have to understand that Izuku’s baby face inflicts instant brain damage on sight. I mean, look at him:

aaa his cute widdle cheeks oh my god—

This kid sets off maternal instincts like landmines, and in the Dadmight server, I found that the Izuku infantilization train had gone completely off the rails. Writers constantly cooed over the adorable antics of 2, 3, 5-year olds and constantly talked about how much they wanted to make Izuku act them out. And surely, if All Might could indulge in the parental joy of caring for an innocent young babe, then his emotional scars would be healed and he could find fulfillment outside of that pesky “saving the world” business.

Now, the bio-dadmight folks had it easy: they just wrote about Izuku in his toddler years playing with daddy All Might. The cuddling and tickles made sense and were very cute. But other writers faced a challenge: they wanted to keep him 14-15 so that canon events could occur... but they didn’t want to be left out of the fun. 

So... they decided to rationalize and egg each other on. I mean, how much does age really matter? Being a child at heart is always cute and wholesome, right?

Suddenly, a whole lot of very uncomfortable things began to make sense:

So Much Physical Contact

He loved the physical touch. It was embarrassing and he would never admit it out loud, but there wasn’t much in this world he loved more than receiving physical affection from his idol. Every single time it happened he would save the memory to replay it over and over again whenever he felt sad, or almost every night before he went to bed. He was glad no one in the dorms had a mind-reading quirk. And All Might always gave it more freely when he visited his apartment, so of course he went there.

Izuku is often written to have a near-pathological craving for hair stroking and cuddles. Which is cute when directed at, say, classmates or mom, but gets real weird real fast when directed at the adult man he canonically idolizes to a freakish degree. Ever work with teenage boys? Most of them would rather die than be physically affectionate with adults, even parents... unless, you know, they’re that kind of fanboy.

Even freakier is that the grown adult would then reply, “Hell yeah! I see nothing wrong with getting physical with this kid who worships me! I crave it so much! I can't resist!” Ever work at a school? They have rulebooks and seminars specifically about how teachers should never touch or be alone with kids.

Then again, Midnight exists at this school. Maybe U.A.’s infamous lack of safety standards extends to this too.

Either way, though: cute and wholesome for a parent to do with their three-year-old. Very creepy when a high-school teacher makes excuses about why he really needs to cuddle and stroke his fifteen-year-old student in secret.

Narcolepsy Xtreme Edition

His student was never this affectionate or vulnerable when he was conscious, so he enjoyed the moment, even if it was a short one, as he moved to his room upstairs.

If you’ve read fanfiction for more than seven seconds, you’ve probably seen the “cram the character with booze/painkillers until they blurt out Vulnerable Things” plot device. It’s a beloved classic. But Izuku writers are robbed of the alcohol angle since he’s underage, and morphine is pretty niche. So authors who want to use this trick often just make Izuku tired after a long day, conclude that being sleepy is close enough to being five drinks in, and have him murmur “thanks, DAD... OOPS DID I SAY THAT OUT LOUD???” to awkwardly segue into Familial Confessions.

But quite a few stories took the “sleepy” angle to a new, very odd place. Instead of groggily dispensing convenient confessions, Izuku would just... keel over while doing homework and be utterly dead to the world. And instead of having All Might briefly rouse him to shoo him to bed, or worry about his student suddenly becoming catatonic, the writers would make him eerily fixated on the opportunity to physically carry Izuku to his bedroom (which would somehow not wake him up!!!) and tuck him in while waxing poetic about how vulnerable and helpless he looked. 

Before joining the Dadmight server, I was mildly alarmed whenever I saw this, wondering why so many authors were obsessed with roofying the teenager and making the adult fondle him. But after joining, I realized: they were just trying to act out the cutesy aww-the-two-year-old-fell-sound-asleep-while-playing, it’s-so-cute scenes that all those darned lucky bio-dadmight people got to indulge in so easily.

Bed Sharing

It wasn’t long before Izuku’s breathing slowed, and soon he was asleep, snoring peacefully. Toshinori, after a few minutes of debating with himself, said screw it and got into the bed with the boy.

Cue me SCREAMING internally in confusion and fear. But no, it was just that the cutesy-kid-trope obsession stretched all the way to “Well, I used to snuggle with my parents at night after I had a nightmare! It was super wholesome!” Which led to scores of stories featuring a celebrity crawling into bed with his student.

All in all, joining this server was a huge relief. I was so glad to see that these hair-raising scenarios were just the result of the authors forgetting to mention “Oh, by the way, the characters are acting weird because we made them all agree to participate in preschooler roleplay.”

Just picture this while reading and it all makes sense.

Fanfic is uniquely susceptible to this sort of “forgot to mention this strange dynamic that I take for granted” issue. After all, 99% of fanfic doesn’t bother to waste time asking “would this make any sense to someone who had never watched the show?” It’s not worth it to focus on such a broad audience. As a result, fanfic normalizes skipping huge swaths of context that would normally be mandatory in a story. Fanfic authors don’t have to practice asking themselves “did I explain this properly?” anywhere near as often as original fiction ones.

This would be bad enough on its own, but then, we go cloister ourselves away into little sub-fandom echo chambers, and spend months crafting obscure in-joke fractals, and get so absorbed in our tiny myopic corners of the community that we also fail to ask, “would this make any sense to someone who hasn’t spent the last 5 months marinating in this specific Discord channel?” 

Sometimes we know exactly how niche our stuff is and just don’t care. But too often, we just legitimately suck at guessing how our work might come off to other groups. We don’t have to practice theory of mind as much as original fiction authors do. Our fandom buddies see nothing amiss with our writing (since they know all the server insider lore!) and everyone outside our tiny clique politely ignores our word salad... so we never get proper feedback on how incomprehensible our work can be even to other members of the same fandom.

In this case, this resulted in a whole pack of writers seemingly getting lost in the fluff sauce and completely forgetting to address the fact that the stuff men do with their own five-year-olds generally becomes really weird and creepy when done with someone else’s 15-year-old, whether or not the 15-year-old seems to want it. Izuku was a cute widdle innocent baby in their heads, so they assumed he was a cute widdle innocent baby in everyone else's.

Once I realized where they were coming from, it wasn't so hard to adjust my mental framework and enjoy these stories on their own terms. That said... infantilization still couldn't explain stuff like “What if Toshinori has read all of this wrong and the boy has no feelings above Toshinori being his teacher, and all Toshinori has done is fall harder and harder for him every day?”

To explain why that paragraph makes me want to crawl out of my skin, we first need to answer: what makes a piece of writing feel “questionable?”

“Vibes,” A Primer

Love comes in many forms. The big four are platonic, familial, romantic, and sexual. Sexual is easy: you’re horny for the person. Platonic love is specifically non-sexual, and familial love is a subset of platonic love. Romance usually implies horny, though there’s definitely a difference between outright sexual behavior and the behavior we file under the “romance” label.

There’s also a difference between romantic and platonic behavior. And this is where a lot of “questionable” vibes appear: when you’d expect an interaction between two people to be platonic, but for some reason, it has uncomfortable romantic/sexual overtones instead.

But what causes those overtones? A dad can give his kid a kiss on the head, and it comes off platonic. A suitor can give their crush a kiss on the head, and it comes off romantic. In fact, most romantic gestures have nearly identical platonic counterparts. Kissing, hugging, hand-holding, cuddling, vulnerable confessions. So what gives? What makes something “come off” one way or the other?

The actual answer is: a ton of stuff, most of it subjective. Everyone draws their lines in different places, based on culture and personal experience and how gutterbrained you’re feeling on any given day. A lot of it has to do with context (that thing that us fanfic authors are notoriously bad at judging).

Online wars are fought every day about whether some glance or gesture or phrase means they're "totally into each other fr"

But if you want to draw broad strokes, one way to roughly separate platonic vs romantic love is by gauging the level of passion involved. “Passion” is “a strong and barely controllable emotion that compels action.” That last part is key. 

Stereotypical romantic love is incredibly passionate. It’s all about desire to act, desire to change, desire to progress the relationship to something more. It features overwhelming anxious preoccupation about the other person’s thoughts and opinions, feeling irresistibly drawn to them, feeling intense longing. It’s about confessing and hoping the other person also feels the same. It often involves attempting to label the relationship, make it “official”, and show it off. It’s about trying desperately to secure assurance that this love will last forever and ever. You have to do something, and every moment spent not doing something is torture.

Contrast this to typical depictions of platonic and familial love. Familial love is calm, encompassing, soothing. It’s secure. You don’t have to worry, because no matter what rough patches you go through, they’ll always be your family and will always have unconditional love for you. Yes, you’ll fly into action if your loved one is threatened, but at rest, platonic love is generally not “exciting” and there’s generally little sense of urgency.

Romance is usually an insecure, anxious thing that’s trying to get to that secure, grounded familial stage. That’s why people say they progress from being “in love” to just “loving” one another. Romance draws people together and kickstarts the bonding process. And as the steady, mature bond of a long-term relationship forms, the obsessive mania of romantic infatuation fades away. 

So the difference between platonic and romantic behavior is not so much about the actual actions. It’s more about the mentality. Is the person anxiously trying to secure their partner’s affection while treating the relationship as a really big deal that will make or break their lives? Then their affectionate actions may come off more romantic. Are they seemingly at home in their partner’s presence and not trying to deepen or change the relationship? Then their affection will probably come off more familial or platonic.

There are, of course, a ton of things that go into it besides this, and caveats out the ass. For example, people trying to establish a new friendship are often anxious too. But when it comes to determining the “vibes” of a kiss or a cuddle, this can be a useful litmus test. Failing this test is often what makes something feel Questionable. The characters seem too invested... maybe because it's not truly innocent.

Now, let’s take a look at our Dadmight characters.

The biggest challenge of writing familial closeness between Izuku and All Might is simple: they are not family. They have no long shared history to justify any sort of intimacy. Instead they have a teacher/student relationship that places them both into rigid, frigid roles. 

Usually, familial-style bonding just takes time. You wait a few seasons, the characters slowly get closer and learn to trust one another, and eventually they’re hugging. But these two clowns spent the whole show being the ultimate found-family blue-balls experience. They were just never very emotionally open or touchy-feely. Every time they had the chance for Vulnerable Conversation And Cuddles, they passed it up in favor of a pep talk and a fist bump. It took a near-death experience to extract one (1) brief hug and some tears. But in normal everyday life? Arm’s length.

Literally. For example: after five seasons of bonding and character development, they are separated and Izuku is embroiled in a deadly conflict that almost destroys the world. When they finally reunite after the harrowing ordeal, alone under the starlight, they greet each other with a loving, heartfelt… handshake. This, predictably, spawned furious fix-it fic.

Overall, there is a huge gulf that authors need to cross in order to get these two from “polite handshake” to “tender cuddling and kisses.” They could write 50,000 words of setup to slowly accomplish this, but most authors did not want to wear their fingertips to the bone just to inch these two into an embrace. They wanted to jump the gap within a oneshot, leaping from canon frigidity into an unbreakable lifelong familial love that was also super touchy-feely and extremely vocal.

Now, remember what I was just saying? How romance is generally about trying to establish new family bonds? How it’s all about trying to change the relationship into something more?

Knowing all this, what do you think might happen if an author tried to speedrun two characters to the Family Finish Line as fast as they could? What do you think their shortcuts might end up looking like, completely by accident? Especially if their “sane and appropriate human interactions” gauge was warped by an echo chamber of fluff tropes and baby fever?

You might get:

Was it even possible that his feelings could be reciprocated? Toshinori didn’t want to think about it. It would just pain him more. Young Midoriya only saw him as an idol, a mentor who would help him train his body for One for All. Midoriya did not see him in the way he wanted him to.

Or:

He wanted desperately, desperately to have the courage to cross that threshold, to ask him what he longed for, to ask him for that relationship that he dared not voice.

Or even:

Toshinori feels his heart rate pick up and his gnarled stomach twist with nerves. Is he really going to do this? Is he going to tell this boy what he truly thinks and risk everything they’ve built up together over the past year-plus? His palms are sweating and he wipes them on his suit pants, rubbing the pads of his fingers together.

I'll stop now. The point is that these quotes could all have been word-for-word ripped from a romance novel. These are some industrial-grade Questionable Vibes. And reading them in context really doesn't help that much, for me at least. It's almost comical when they throw in "...I crave the touch of your rough hands as a son! A SON!"

If you know the building blocks of romance, it makes perfect sense why stories like this could come off this way. Platonic love is great, but it’s also stable, calm, and slow. It simply doesn’t have the sheer explosive force needed to catapult two stilted dorks into a brand-new dynamic within 2,000 words. Most stories can only achieve that kind of mileage via near-death experiences... or by inflicting the characters with neurotic infatuation.

Not only that, but their canon relationship is uniquely poised to set off romance-adjacent warning bells. Because they are not actually family, it makes sense for them to yearn for a deeper relationship in a way that a normal family wouldn’t. It makes sense for them to be anxious and insecure about their relationship, because it’s a very strange, hard-to-define thing that has to be kept secret from those around them. And it makes sense for them to consider their relationship a huge deal, because in canon, it’s fundamental to the most important aspects of both their lives.

I actually think it’s kind of inevitable that their character dynamic will sometimes stray into places that feel romantic. But that doesn’t mean the writer is a secret shipper... because I don’t think that passion always has to imply sexual desire, especially in fiction.

I’ve spent some time around the asexuality community, and my biggest takeaway was that sexual desire is very different from the desire to make deep, lifelong connections. Most asexual people still yearned to find that special someone, their anchor, a partner who unconditionally loved them and would stay by their side forever. Family. They would fall for people... they just didn’t want to fall into their pants. But it was almost impossible to keep these partners unless they were asexual too. Every one eventually pushed to “take things further,” or they left to find another person who would. 

So I can understand the yearning for a world where sex is kicked to the curb, where two strangers can find each other and share intense, whirlwind, “you’re my #1” love... without any lewd overtones. This little pocket of stories seemed like a manifestation of that yearning. 

Nowadays, more and more stories are taking previously romance-exclusive intimacy and yanking off the sexual baggage. For example, looking on the Dadmight tag will reveal “platonic soulmates” and “platonic hanahaki” stories. Yes, platonic hanahaki. No, not parody. There’s a clear unironic market for this content. People really want to be able to indulge in passionate, “till death do us part” emotional bonding in a safe, nonsexual way.

All Might and Izuku sit in a unique place. Not related, but powerfully linked by something thicker than blood. And their relationship is easy to paint as “safe”. It makes perfect sense that these two would attract creators who want to explore this hard-to-define chaste side of passionate love.

In real life, passionate obsessive-style attraction between adults and kids is a huge red flag. We can never really know whether those feelings are innocent or healthy. 99% of the time, they’re not. But in fiction, the author gets to choose what people really feel and whether things turn out well. They can explore the most unbelievable scenario of all: not a world where everyone is a mermaid, but a world where it’s actually wholesome and healing for a high school teacher and his student to confess their deep, undying love for one another, where a famous celebrity can secretly invite his obsessed underage fan over, stroke his hair, tell him how special their relationship is, and sleep with him in bed, without it ending up on Law and Order: SVU. 

On Critique

“Hap,” you might be thinking, “surely these stories can’t be as bad as you say. If they were, someone would have pointed it out to these poor souls. You should have pointed it out to these poor souls. You were in their writing server for chrissakes, and now you’re gossiping about them like a heartless goblin.”

First: yes, I'm a goblin. Second: I did bring this topic up to several Dadmight authors one-on-one. After getting a bunch of head-in-sand excuses in response, I decided to just quietly munch popcorn and watch the fandom’s antics unfold like a slow-motion train wreck.

Third: people did try to point this stuff out.

It was fascinating to watch the Dadmight server whenever someone posted a comment expressing concern. Some comments were trolls trying to get a reaction, of course. But others were very gentle: “hey, isn't it kind of weird to have them hop into bed together? It comes off kind of shippy...” I learned that the reason I had never seen comments like these in the past was because they were usually quickly deleted by the fic authors.

After deleting a comment, the author would often flee to the server for reassurance. The other users would agree that the commenter was definitely in the wrong, since they could see absolutely nothing questionable about the writer’s story. Someone would inevitably chime in saying that, oh, one time they got a comment calling things questionable like that, and it turned out to be from a shipper who shipped bad things. So, you know, anyone who sees shipping in things is probably just a bad person.

Phew. Crisis averted. If you can successfully paint the critic as a bad person, then there’s no need to descend into existentialist dread as you’re forced to critically reexamine the foundational concepts of your writing and your grasp on relationship dynamics.

(Credit where credit is due: one of the rules of this particular server was not to bash or insult people who like things you don't like. In most groups this is followed with an unspoken "...unless you can clutch your pearls over it", but to my surprise, when stuff like the above started kicking off, the moderators did step in to remind people to keep it civil. So, good job, mods. More maturity than I usually see in online spaces.)

But still, if anyone actually bothers to read this long screed, I already know what certain responses are going to look like. They’ll smugly assert that people who see questionable things are just sex-obsessed weirdos, projecting their icky lewd thoughts onto every innocent interaction they come across. A morally pure person wouldn’t make such gross assumptions.

I’m familiar with this kind of response because I’ve spent a lot of time around another group that responds the exact same way to these kinds of concerns. That group is known as fundamentalist Christians, and their attitude fosters three things:

People are afraid to speak out when they feel uncomfortable, because they don't want to be accused of being dirty-minded. 

People fail to learn the ground rules of normal romance/sexuality and so fail to recognize red flags.

The community is absolutely infested with creeps who take advantage of points 1 and 2 to run rampant.

Sadly, these three things also seem to be true in the Dadmight community. Being a platonic pairing, it naturally attracts people uninterested in and inexperienced with romantic/sexual relationships. And then the vitriolic, derisive responses to people’s concerns teaches them that it’s wrong to bring up those topics around the community at all.

And so, point 3 blooms. I eventually confirmed that my initial suspicions were correct: shippers did camp in the Dadmight tag, and they got away with posting some impressively brazen softcore underage content in public, presumably because even the people who were suspicious knew that going “hey now” would trigger a circular firing squad. 

The Dadmight community wasn’t clueless about this problem. They were incredibly paranoid as a whole. They knew there were bad actors lurking in their tag, but since they had disabled all their own safety alarms and expanded the definition of “platonic” to a ridiculous extreme, they had no way of being able to determine what was shipping and what was not until characters started actively whipping their dicks out. I saw constant fretting over whether it was okay to click the “like” button on an affectionate-looking piece of fanart without knowing for sure the intentions of the creator. But asking intentions was pointless anyway, since shippers just lied to them and then laughed as the platonic group eagerly ate up their evil, dirty-minded content.

I get why these “wait, that feels shippy...” comments feel like attacks. It’s fucking awful when your intentions are pure but someone interprets them in such a horrifying, disgusting way. It feels disrespectful when you clearly label something “platonic” but people still doubt. 

But remember: Going from “mentor” to “dad” with these two generally means breaking down normal boundaries, to escalate the emotional and physical intimacy between an authority figure and a starstruck, needy, vulnerable kid, because they have such a special and unique bond that no one else understands. So special, in fact, that it needs to be kept secret from the public.

In real life, this scenario is known as Groomer Tactics 101. 

Seriously, stop and read that link. It’s short and non-explicit. This is why I called their canon relationship “impressively alarming”—the bullet points of stages 1-3 describe Izuku and All Might nearly word-for-word. This does not mean I’m claiming All Might is a groomer, or that Izuku and All Might’s relationship is bad. Just that, due to their circumstances, they happen to have all the building blocks of relationships that go horribly wrong. All that separates their scenario from tumbling into Bad is the goals of the adult. So when a fanfic then comes along and makes the adult suddenly really interested in excessive touching? And the only reason he gives is “I’m weirdly drawn to this kid and touching them feels really good”? Of course people will get nervous!

Noticing this does not mean someone is “obsessed with shipping”. It means they’re a normal human being with eyes. Accusing someone of being problematic for making the most obvious possible observations about adult/child interactions is like accusing someone of being an arsonist because they embarrassed you by pointing out that your homemade backyard fireworks setup is halfassed and dangerous.

This does not mean it’s wrong to write wish-fulfillment where escalating to bed cuddles actually turns out great and awesome. But it does mean that, if an author writes it ignorantly or carelessly, they risk coming off like they’re glorifying and normalizing Groomer Tactics 101. It’s the same as when careless Twilight fans glorify and normalize stuff that, in real life, is abusive controlling boyfriend behavior.

Yes, it sucks when people come and yuck the yum. I’m sure the Twilight fans also get sick of people who complain and demonize them instead of letting them write their vampire boyfriend fantasies in peace. But the concern usually comes from a well-meaning place. 

Proudly announcing “I ignore the most basic child/adult red flags because they ruin my fun” is not the flex that some people think it is. I highly recommend people reconsider before they try to paint anti-child-groomers as the bad guys.

The Recipe

So, let’s summarize how to reproduce the Dadmight phenomenon. It starts with a canon relationship that has the most enticing found-family building blocks the world has ever seen: a downtrodden kid who really needs a dad + a lonely heroic mentor. However, their canon relationship also sits on top of a powder keg, coincidentally featuring all the “setup” stages of the sexual grooming model: 

a lonely, low-self-esteem kid

singled out by an esteemed, charismatic adult who is a pillar of the community

sharing a “special” relationship

constantly going off alone and keeping secrets 

A platonic fan community forms that is blissfully unaware of the above dynamics. They head off to fluff echo chambers, as platonic fans do. But due to the crybaby tendencies of the teenage character, they start projecting really aged-down toddler-play scenarios onto him. Eventually, as echo-chambered fans do, they decide that contextualization is for chumps. This results in fics that take the powder keg and add:

The adult craving to touch and hold the teenager

The teenager craving touch from the adult and mewling like a kitten when his hair is stroked (I’m not fucking joking)

Completely age-inappropriate stuff like stroking, kisses, and sharing a bed with a teenage student

Izuku and All Might also happen to suffer from loneliness and isolation, even more so in their fanon incarnations. This really resonates with most fans, who want to soothe and heal them. They also want to get to the healing cuddles within a few chapters instead of wasting time on super-slow buildup. So they make the two of them really strongly fixate on and angst about the agony of their loneliness, and how the other person’s love is the only cure that will fix them. In doing so, they insert:

Anxious passionate obsession

Love confessions

Coming-out scenes

Craving for exclusive relationship labels

Desire for exclusivity

Lastly, because platonic groups are either uninterested in or too young for spicy content, they tend to have very little experience with romantic/sexual literature and the tropes and catchphrases they lay claim to. So fic writers will innocently sprinkle in poignant-sounding things they’ve picked up here and there, such as:

Blushing and heart racing when looking at the person

The phrase “falling for each other”

The man “caressing” his partner with “rough hands”

“He came undone”

And because their communities condemn people who “read into things”, nobody points out any of this shit, and it all slides out into the public Internet unquestioned.

And so, we get the most impressively uncomfortable platonic content I’ve ever seen. It’s no wonder I had never encountered something like this before. It required a lot of unusual circumstances intersecting in just the right (wrong) way.

In the end, I think the biggest aspect was just that I'd never become a fan of characters that had such a potentially-problematic canon relationship. Usually adult and kid characters have very different dynamics, so if fics treat their social interactions with all the tact of a bull in a china shop, it just comes off as lazy instead of creepy. I'd be interested to know if other platonic adult&child fandoms suffer from this issue.

In any case, although it was fascinating to watch, I sure hope I never run into it again.

[theroyalthornoliachronicles]

Advent Calendar 2023, Day X and XVII: Tenues d'hiver pour enfants

SURPRISE!

I told you it would be worth the wait!

I know there are few dates where I've been behind. But I thank you for your patience. Working 13 hours a day six days a week on top of being super sick, and then staying up into the late hours to make sure posts went out has been quite a lot for me. But things are coming!

I'm finally able to release the gifts that were due the last two Sundays (Dec 10 and 17th)! There were last minute drama's for each of them, but they are now fit and ready to go!

A huge thank you once again to @historicalfictionsims for her help in converting the dress from an adult frame to a child frame. Many may remember the dress in my previous advent calendar, as it was worn on one of my deco sims, but the dress was too broken and I didn't have any knowledge of how to fix it at the time. So with her help I was able to finally make this dress functional! And of course a huge thank you to @buzzardly28 as well for helping with all the clipping issues! We did it! <3

Robe d'hiver d'Odile

A conversion of @batsfromwesteros Elisabeth Winter Dress from Adult to Child

100 Swatches

Suitable for Children

Tenue d'hiver d'Eugène

A Frankenmesh edit of a top from @historicalsimslife Bodacious Boy's Suit and bottoms from @peebsplays skeleton suit

100 Swatches

Suitable for Children

My TOU:

Do NOT claim as yours.

Do NOT put edits behind paywalls/early access.

Do NOT reupload my content.

Recolours are allowed, so long as you do not include the mesh and give credit where credit is due!

If you feel so kind, please tag me if you use them! Would love to see your sims! (@theroyalthornoliachronicles)!

Download (Always Free!)

Patreon | SFS | Curseforge (Odile) | Curseforge (Eugène)

[ancha-aus]

RealAgeAU Drabble - Preparations

Hello!

So. I had an idea :3 That is usually how these start :3

First Drabble Prev Drabble Next Drabble

Are you guys ready? So some cute shenanigans? You better be :3 ( Also, @spotaus Get in here! :D) Timeline wise? Like... early summer to mid summer ish.

*-------------------*

Nightmare looks for his target and sees is rather quickly between the different stalls. He rushes over and looks up at the woman mannign the stand. She is very familiar to for a very good reason.

Toriel smiles at him "Well hello there. Where are your fathers?"

Ngihtmare shurgs " 'Ror is arround." Next he lays some of his allowance on the stand "The best flowers I can get please."

He went with Horror today with a mission after all. It is still early as Horror left to go to the market with Crop to get some stuff for their farms. Nightmare had been quick to tag along.

He needed these flowers for a very important plan.

Toriel smiles "oh? Are you buying flowers for someone you like?"

Nightmare shakes his skull. As if. He doubts Error would even like flowers.

Toriel waits with a pleasant smile "I can't pick out the best flowers if i don't know what you need them for."

Nightmare frowns. damn. He glances over his shoulder and doesn't see Horror anywhere near. Okay. Good. He got time.

Nightmare rubs his hands as he mutters "Is for dads... for... date night..." Not that they know yet they are having a date night today.

As Nightmare mentioned. He has plans and they are very important.

Toriel smiles "That is very sweet of you." she hums as she looks at which flowers she has available from her and her husbands farm. "Well, Roses are generally seen as the more romantic flowers."

Nightmare considers the flowers but frowns at the price. He doesn't have a lot of pocket money and he still needs to get some other things too... But they deserve the best of the best! And according to the romantic books he read before that environment is important for dates!

Toriel smiles "However... Your dads are more on the practical side aren't they?"

Nightmare frowns as he thinks. Horror probably. Dust is more of a minimalist. Killer likes havign stuff but he also always uses it. Cross is almost more of a minimalist.

But... does that mean they don't like it? Or are just used to having little?

Toriel smiles as she waves at the many flowers in the stall "Sunflwoers are very pretty too."

Nightmare pulls a face. a memory from long ago. Villagers giving Dream sunflowers and telling him about how sunflowers always turn towards the sun. How it is only fitting for such a bright and sunny person like Dream.

He shakes his skull.

Toriel's voice shocks him out of his memories as she offers other flower ideas.

Toriel smiles as she holds up another flower. it is a beautiful light pink and it is a cluster of smaller flowers all packed together in a sphere shape.

Toriel smiles "A winner I see? These are hortensia's. I find them rather beautiful myself. Do you think these will do?"

Nightmare considers it and nods. They are pink and pink and red are aparently romantic colours. The flowers look nice and will look nice and full even with only a few of them! Making for a nice bouquet on the table!

Toriel nods as she starts to pack the flowers up and Nightmare waits patiently.

"Oh thank everything!" Nightmare yelps as he is suddenly removed from the ground. Nightmare shoots a glare at the skeleton holding him.

Crop smiles "Horror has been beside himself looking for you. Don't just run off in the market Ngihtmare." he smiles at Toriel "Sorry for interupting."

Toriel looks amused "It is alright. Though I would appreciate you putting my customer back down." Nightmar enods in agreement.

Crop glances at Nightmare before he looks at the stall "oh... Hey it is okay if you wanted to get flowers. I am sure Horror would love to get them for you."

Nightmare shakre shis skull as he huffs "No." That wasn't part of the plan! Nightmare had been planning this carefully!

Crop looks confused before looking at toriel. Toriel just crosses her arms as she speaks with a smile "Sorry Crop. I don't talk about what my customers order with other customers." she moves around with confidence as she packs his order.

Crop sighs but nods "alright alright. I get it. No need to gang up on me." and crop moves him back to the ground. Ngihtamre grins once he stands with both feet on the ground again.

Crop frowns at him "Horror doesn't want you walking around too much though."

Nightmare rolls his eyelights "I am fine." and he turns back to Toriel just as she hands him the wrapped flowers. the brwon wrapping makes sure nothing is visible and he smiles "Thank you Miss Toriel."

Toriel blinks in surprise before smiling "It was a pleasure to finally meet you Nightmare. Come by anytime okay?" she grabs the money and puts it away.

when Ngihtamre turns back to look at Crop he sees him quickly tapping his phone. Crop sees him look and grins "Telling Horror that I foudn you."

Nightmare did feel bad about that. He didn't mean to worry Horror. It just took longer than he thought it would to find the right stall. He knows the farmers market by now but it still takes longer than Ngihtmare would like to find the stalls and people he is searching for.

Still he walks back with Crop towards somewhere. It doesn't take long for Nightmare to spot Horror and he feels many times worse. Horror looks so worried. Nightmare quickly leaves Crop's side and joins his dad's again.

Hroror is quick to pick him up as he nuzzles him gently "don't do that... please..."

Nightmare pusehs close to Horror and tugs his skull right under his chin. It always feels safe "sorry. didn't mean to scare you."

Horror chuckles and nuzzles his skull "Will always be scared something hurts you."

Nightmare purrs as he snuggles close.

Crop joins them and sighs in relieve "Oh thank god. He just left my side again. luckily it was just to get back to you quicker."

Hroror nods and finally spots the package Nightmare has with him "what is that?"

Ngihtmare hides the package behind him "nothing..."

Horror snorts nad chuckles as he bonks their skulls softly together "alright. keep your secrets." Nightmare grins back.

Crop and Horror take a moment to calm down and check both their lists of nessesary things. Nightmare knows they are here to get more of those growth guide things for the grape vines and Horror got those first thing so he wouldn't forget.

Crop ends up having to meet up with some other farmers and Horror turns to Nightmare "Did you want to get anything?" Horror gives avery pointed look at the package in Nightmare's arm.

Nightmare hums and nods as he swings his legs, comfortable still being held in Horror's arms "wanted to get some fruits strawberries." that was the only ingredient he didn't have yet for his surprise.

Horror tilts his skull but nods as he glances around before starting to walk into the right direction. Nightmare is happy Horror didn't put him down yet. His back aches a little and he will need to rest it up a bit if he wants to complete his surprise without worrying any of them.

They get to the right stall and Horror lets Ngihtmare make his purchase. Horror tries to pay for him but Nightmare refuses! this is part of his surprise! He gets the things needed! Horror just shot him another curious look but seemed more amused than anything. Still, he lets him pay for the things and they walk back to meet up with Crop and drive back home.

Well. Horror walks. Nightmare is sitll being carried.

suddenly out of nowhere Horror nuzzles his skull again and Nightamre can't help but purr and lean into the contact.

Horror mumbles softly to him "It is okay if you want to get things... but you aren't an adult remember? You are our babybones. it is okay to let us take care of you."

Nightmare nods and snuggles close "I know." and that is why he is doing this. It is why the surprise has to be perfect.

They finally get home and Dust takes the chance to give him a bath and get his bandages cleaned. They still mostly do it at night but they had been trying to see how his spine was handling things and trying to go a bit longer with bandages as long as they were clean.

In the end the others go outside to work on the farm. Dust makes sure to leave him in their nest with some homework.

Nightmare doesn't complain about it. No today he needs time alone to work on his plan.

Dust immediantly notices of course and shoots him a look "Is something wrong?"

Nightmare shakes his skull "I am fine."

Dust looks uncertain as he looks back at the exit the others had already left through "I cna stay wiht you if you would like that?"

Nightmare actually would like that. a lot. after the whole school thing Ngihtmare didn't like being alone. but it was important he did this! And today he had to do it!

And it is fine! He is at home. in their nest. with all their things and no one ever comes here and the others will keep a close eye on him!

Ngihtmare shakes his skull "It is okay. You can help them." and he tries to smile for the other.

Dust sighs but gives in with a nod "We will stay close okay? Give a shout and we will be here within seconds." Dust gives him a nuzzle and goes after the others.

Nightmare grabs his homework and works on it for a bit. Just to make sure that if any of them check on him it looks like he isn't doing anything he shouldn't be doing.

Like... leaving the nest...

He finishes most of the stuff that he still had to do and glances at the window. Nothing there. He inches out of the nest and uses a reading chair to sneak a look out of the window. He sees Killer and cross at work on the upper level near the grape plants. Which emans that horror and dust are on one of the lower levels, probbaly.

The plan. is a go.

Nightmare feels himself grin as he grabs a vase and fills it with water. he carefully carries it upstairs and looks around.

The ground is still clean and the small window lets in fresh air and light. the spare fairylights light up the space nicely and the small radio is still on the tiny side table.

The main table, more like a small round table honeslty, still has four chairs and Nightmare grins as he walks over and puts the vase carefully on top. Next he grrabs the package of flowers nad puts them in the vase. perfect!

Nightmare takes a few steps back and looks his hard work of the past few days over. It is hard to sneak this by them but it is going really well! He grabs his diary and checks the list he made for this plan. Okay. He set up the table for the romantic dinner. check.

He glances to the side where he used the spare stuff for winter to make a second nest. He nods to himself and checks the bed stuff.

Look. Nightmare isn't an idiot. He used to be an adult! or at least have na adult body. He heard what people said about what they did in privacy and with those they liked. So. Obviously. bed for... bed stuff.

Ngihtamre feels himself blush adn grow embarresed as he quickly moves to the next stuff. Romantic decoration? The fairy lights and the flowers. check again! the right mood? He got the radio right there and he had found a channel that played a lot of love songs. check again.

Now. The hardest and most complex part of this plan. Getting the food ready for this date!

Nightmare clsoes his diary and nods to himself. he tugs the glitter pen back in the pen clip on the journal and make shis way back downstairs. he waits a moment and checks the window again. Everyone is still by the grapes so that still gives him time!

He gets to the kitchen and moves the chairs around until they are in the right places. Just to make sure he doesn't have to climb up and down the whole time, that is the stuff that is actually hard for his spine.

Next he grabs everything he needs and gets to work.

Trying to think of a romantic meal had been hard. Mostly because most dishes were a bit too complex for him to make on his own.

Whcih was because they hid all the knives and put the larger things out fo reach for him. You try to make some food yourself once and suddenly you are banned from the kitchen because you hurt yourself.

Nightmare is better aware of his limits now though so he has full confidence he can do this.

He grabs the bread and veggies and gets to work. He first puts some wood into the old oven and lights it up carefully. This will heat it up nicely. He stays right by the side to make sure it works the way it should but Nightmare used to cook with one of these himself and he has seen Horror use it. Once it does exactly what it should Nightmare gets to work on prepping the dough and veggies.

The dough is luckily something he made the day before. sneakily while the others were cleaning stuff up. it wasn't hard and it has been resting in the fridge.

It is nice and floofy and he splits them before making tiny balls and flattening them. He grabs the veggies and gets to work on cutting them.

Look just because they hid the knives doesn't mean they hid them well enough.

Next the sauce. which is just a pot. and the cheese, which he shreds and puts in a tiny bowl.

All the pieces are in place.

He spreads the sauce on the dough and puts veggies on top. lastly the cheese and tada! Tiny pizzas... or is it just pizza bread kinda deal?

doesn't matter. He puts them in the oven adn gets ready for part two!

The dessert!

He grabs the fresh strawberries. removes the little leaves and cuts them right down the middle. He doesn't have anything fancy planned for dessert but it will do!

Next he grabs the ice cream from the freezer and makes four nice bowls. first three scoops of vanilla ice cream, thank you Crop and Straw. Next he puts the strawberries all over it. then some whipped cream.

Nightmare nods, content with a job well done! He moves them back into the fridge to keep them cool and hoepfully the ice cream doesn't melt too quickly. He also has chocolate syrup for Cross but he knows Killer doesn't like chocolate all that much.

All the pieces are in place. Now it is time to wait for everything to finish and then he can move it up.

--

The door downstairs opens and Nightmare grins as he places the last few bowls in place. He rushes towards the small radio and turns it on, keeping it low volume for now to make sure they don't hear downstairs.

"Nightmare?!" Cross sounds worried.

Nightmare hums and answers "upstairs." He quickly goes towards the light switch adn turns it off. only leaving the light of the fairylights and the sunset through the window the light the place. he goes back to the table and lights the candles as he hears footsteps come up.

He grins as he stands before the table wiht his arms wide.

THe door opens and Cross spots him and a clear look of relieve on his face. Then his face turns to shock as he looks around the room "What?"

Killer joins his side a moment later and stares in shock himself "what?"

Nightmare grins "It is datenight." he makes sure to make it sound like a fact. Because it is a fact!

Cross and Killer both blink. look at each other confused. then look back at him and speak in unison "what?"

Nightmare snrots and puffs up his chest a bit "It is datenight. You four are dating. Datemates have dates. which happen on datenights. You four haven't had a datenight yet. so. datenight!" easy!

Cross suddenly looks around much more shocked as he sputters. Killer grins and coos as he walks voer nad hugs him "Oh nighty. You didn't need to do that!"

Dust and Horror join them upstairs to see what is going on and take in the room themselves.

Nightmare huffs "I so did. You haven't been on a date yet. so. date." he waves behind him "I also made myself some food. It is in the fridge. I am going downstairs and eat and watch my bat movie adn you guys can do datenight." easy!

Horror chuckles and walks over. he rubs his skull and Nightmare pushes his whole head nad face into the gentle touches.

"We appreciate it. but we are happy to be with you. We can move it downstairs and-"

Nightmare pulls back and shakes his skull "no! Datenight up here. Date only includes the ones who are dating. you four." he wiggles and luckily Killer puts him down.

Nightmare looks around once more. everything still looks perfect. before giving them a nod and walking towards the exit of the attic "have fun!" and he leaves his dads on their datenight.

As siad he goes downstairs and gets his own hidden food out. He crawls into the nest after putting his new favourite movie on. Ngihtmare grabs Dust's hoody and puts it on before pulling the blanket Error gave him for his brithday close.

It takes abit of moving around but he ends up comfortable against the pillows with Batsie by his side. wrapped in his blanket with his meal in his lap.

Nightmare grabs the remote before turning on the movie.

He eats his meal slowly. feeling tired after the whole day. or well week.

He had been planning this for a while and aparently with the nerves for making it perfect and the excitement to surprise them leaving he is just tired.

He yawns and ends up putting his half finished meal on the side table for now. He rolls up more with Batsie and watches the movie as the narrator talks about the wonderful world of the bats that live in the jungle.

--

He wakes up sleepy and grumpy. What? where?

He blinks and sees that Cross is holding him close very gently.

Wait that can't be right... why isnt'that right?

Cross notices he is awake and shoots him a very large and happy smile "Hey there baby... how are you feeling? Feeling hungry?"

Ngihtamre blinsk adn shakes his skull. he isn't hungry. just tired. he yawns before trying to glare at Cross. he wasn't suposed to be here... right? He had a plan...

Man he is tired.

Cross smiles and laughs softly before nuzzling him "Thank you for setting everything up for us. We had a blast."

Nightmare frowns as he looks around confused. the others are in their nest again. his plate is gone and the tv is silent. it is still clearly night outside. that doesn't make sense. he made them a nest upstairs! He figured they would... spend the night there. He looks at Cross "But... upstairs?"

Cross chuckles and nuzzles Ngihtmare "oh baby. We much prefer to be here with you when we sleep than not. of course we come actually sleep with you after our date ended." a soft kiss to his skull and softer "But no setting up dates anymore okay? We will figure that out ourselves."

Nightmare yawns and he snuggles clsoe. feeling tired "Wanted you to... have fun..." he nuzzles Cross, purring at the familiar feeling of safety and warmth "You are always busy with me... wanted you to just have fun..." he is always distracting them or something... He wants them to have fun too.

Cross hums and just holds him closer "We love taking care of you nighty. It makes us happy to be with you."

Something in him relaxes as he just melts fully against Cross.

Cross coos and nzuzles him again "Now back to sleep with you. tiny babybones need their rest. especially after they spend a long time setting up a perfect surprise."

his soul feels light after the praise and affection each word carries. He yawns and lets himself drift off again.

*-------------------*

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[skumhuu]

not at all the other anon (and very VERY much proship leaning) but the "proship means you're against harrassment" definition has always seemed flawed to me because... i was an anti once. And from my direct experiences there are so many antis who have horrible opinions of proshippers but are also very firmly against harrassment—they're still antis and still hate us, viscerally even, they just keep it to themselves and to their friend circles. That doesn't make it harrassment and also doesn't make them less of an anti, they still believe awful things about us and would likely be hostile if we ever interacted.

The definition i typically use for myself to determine whether or not someone is a proshipper or not is if they believe someone's taste in fiction has any bearing on their real-life moral compass or not. If you believe it does, you're an anti. if it doesn't, you're proship.

(This isn't to step over your opinion at all���just sharing mine! I really apologise if this comes off as disrespectful in any way haha.)

No no you’re fine! 💚

This kinda goes back to the unfortunately widespread idea that proship=pedo/problematic. Because like, those people just sound like they identify with being an anti because all of their friends are antis, they have the wrong info, or are too scared to speak up.

Also please remember that my aggressiveness lately isn’t due to hate, I am more than okay with former antis and people who don’t know better, but at this point I’ve dealt with so much harassment and hurt that I’ve lost my patience.

Aligning oneself with the face eating leopards to stay safe doesn’t mean they’re going out to eat faces themselves, but they are enabling that behavior. Even if they aren’t hurting people, by displaying “proship dni” they’re okay with isolating particular kinds of people out of the fandom. They’re okay with inciting harassment, or standing by while others do it for them. And like, they can say they’re against harassment all they like, but they’re still siding with the face eating leopards, hoping they don’t eat their faces next.

Adding proship to my bio wasn’t what I wanted, but I keep getting people acting betrayed when they discover that I’m proship and attacking me that I felt forced to add it. I simplify proship down to ‘proship means you are against harassment’ because I keep having to have this same song and dance where people show up in my askbox demanding I explain myself, when in reality I’m a random sanscest artist like 😂😂😂 the situation is very nuanced! But y’all I’m just trying to make the skeletons kiss

I keep linking studies, and info about the situation, and the way you explained being proship is exactly what I keep saying over and over but in different words :0 I’m too tired to be sympathetic with the people who call me an unsafe pedophile over fiction, who fill my ship tags with hate/disgust while I’m trying to vibe, and I’m not going to tolerate the people who side with that anymore. Like I don’t care if they aren’t harassing others themselves anymore.

Literally look at the tmnt fandom, they ended up turning on “neutrals” and bullied the ever loving shit out of everyone, even those who didn’t care. If we tolerate that here, eventually it might get that bad too. I refuse to let that happen. I will NOT let the face eating leopards in