#twitchy!bonfire

[thejokig23]

Favourite and least favourite part of each FromSoftware game I've played

Demon's Souls:

I really like the freedom of choice on where you want to go. Stonefang, Latria, the Shrine of Storms, and the Valley of Defilement are all accessible after beating Phalanx, designed to be completed or visited in whatever order you choose. A lot of mechanics in Demon's Souls also fit this style pretty well, like the grass system.

When playing Demon's Souls, I find it lacking in amazing fights like the other games. The only one that's really a stand out is the False King. The lack of a proper dragon fight is particularly devastating to me. The fights aren't bad for the most part, just usually more puzzle based than I'd like.

Dark Souls:

The interconnected aspect of the first half of the game. It reminds me of Metroid in a way, being able to navigate through a twisting world to get stronger or pick up items you need, finding shortcuts. It would have been great if this carried into the second half as well.

I find out if all the games, Dark Souls has the most enemies that aren't really designed to be fought. A few coming to mind being the blue drakes, the cats in the forest, giant sentinels, Sen's fortress' giants, the Titanite demons, the giant maggots in Izalith, and the boars in the archive's entrance. They're just awkward to fight, usually with janky movement and collision.

Dark Souls II:

The variety of viable playstyles is at its best in DS2. Bows, crossbows, and magic are all just as good as melee. You can infuse pretty much any weapon, even special weapons and catalysts, really anything goes. There are certainly bad options, but they aren't bad in the same way as bad options in the other games.

Unfortunately, the game is just really fucking janky. Moving feels like your controller is covered in molasses, animations are both slow and weightless, and both enemies and the majority of areas look outright unfinished. I can't stand playing it for more than a few minutes.

Dark Souls III:

This is the most consistently great game FromSoftware has made (that I have played). Every area has looping paths, with shortcuts reusing bonfires and secrets to find. A vast majority of enemies are just fun to fight, even grouped together, and there are very few bad bosses, with many times more amazing ones.

Although, playing the game multiple times gets old incredibly fast. The combat is incredibly light attack centric, and most weapons function pretty similar to each other. Viable builds that noticeably devuate from this are few and far between: bows suck, sorcery sucks, miracles suck, and pyromancy is only okay.

Bloodborne:

The trick weapons are exactly what I like to see in a weapon's moveset: toolkits for beating shit up. Fewer weapons with more individual personality is an amazing idea, and while there are a few somewhat disappointing (note: I didn't say ineffective), like the saw spear and Ludwig's holy blade taking their untransformed moveset from the saw cleaver and Kirkhammer respectively, the majority are really cool and fun to use.

While the game looks gorgeous, the visuals do tend to get in the way of gameplay. There are framerate issues quite often, colours blend to mush a lot, and particle effects will just cover whatever you're fighting, which is made worse by how fast and twitchy enemies tend to be. A particularly bad example was fighting Ludwig's first phase. The second phase was fantastic, but god is getting to it miserable, with dust and blood everywhere as he flails around incomprehensibly.

Sekiro:

I did not get far in this one. People lumping it in with the other games is a mistake, it's really not that similar to the other games in most ways. Not to say it's bad, obviously, in fact I think deflecting is an amazing mechanic. I never quite got good at it, but it's engaging and fun to do.

Sekiro just wasn't really for me. I kinda just got lost and gave up, with no clue how to get better or stronger in any way. I wasn't having fun dying to the chained ogre over and over, gettibg no closer to beating it no matter what I did, and not really fibding anywhere else to go.

Elden Ring:

The setting of Elden Ring is fantastic. Lots of vibrant colours, but all within a certain natural pallet. The world is bursting with life in a way the other games weren't, and I find a living world bursting with energy more compelling than one falling into entropy. Character and monster designs are amazing and play into this as well, especially when comparing them to previous games. It's not perfect - I dislike how boring sorcery is as just being, for the most part, Blue Stuff, while incantations get many, MANY more interesting spell types to work with (and its Yellow Stuff being limited to one or two spell groups). But otherwise, it's my favourite FromSoftware setting.

Combat in Elden Ring can be kinda hit or miss. The main culprit, I think, is that fighting most enemies and some bosses feels unnatural, like they're all truing to just trip you up and hit you with bullshit. I like Dancer oft the Boreal Valley, I like Pontiff, I like the Nameless King - but not for every fucking fight in the game. It just feels tedious.

[talentforlying]

SENSORY DETAILS FOR YOUR MUSE. 

SCENT: 'ashtray' is the general first impression; everything he owns has a clingfilm of silk cut cigarettes to it that is endlessly being refreshed. beneath that are other kinds of smoke: fresh-lit matches, and bonfire, and burning wire. metallic and pungent and crisp, with an underlying layer of oaky and sweet once you've gotten used to it. there's also something vaguely bittersweet, like red wine. nicotine & cytrel are all over his fingertips, and so is the bitter iron tang of old blood when he's been stressed enough to chew at them; there's also frankincense, and myrrh, and sage, and beeswax. his hair smells like a lavender shampoo that he picked up from kit ryan, and a coconut oil conditioner he picked up from dani wright; there's pine pomade when he's feeling good enough about himself to put in the effort. there's always a whiff of shaving cream around his throat. when he's been near demons and other denizens of hell, sulfur lingers on his clothes; when he's been using magic, he smells like a lightning strike, burning ozone.

TOUCH (RECEIVING): he runs fever-hot most of the time, and his skin is a seismographic map of tattoos and old scars, surprisingly soft in the few places it's been left untouched. receiving touch is complicated; even when telegraphed, there's a tautness that enters his body under someone else's hands. he's had time to practice not flinching away from unexpected touches, but if you leave your hand on him for too long he gets twitchy and irritable and will inevitably shrug you off. casual contact that isn't directly hand-based has nowhere near the same effect: hip checks, shoulder bumps, or an arm around his shoulder are accepted, returned, and leaned into without hesitation.

TOUCH (GIVING): his hands are the harshest parts of him besides his personality, and oddly inverse in expected sensation: what you'd expect to be smooth is rough, what you'd expect to be rough is smooth. almost every inch of skin is littered with cut and burn scars ranging from small to severe; he's missing his left thumb, cut off just above the knuckle, and the pads of his fingertips are glossy with scar tissue, overlapping crescent-shapes from his teeth. they have a tendency to tremor when not in use/being used for something gentle/intimate and the tremor gets worse when he's emotional, but when set to a task, they're rock steady. there's usually smudges of wax or chalk or charcoal on them, and the nails are either perfectly manicured or bitten to the quick depending on his mood. when it comes to touching, he associates it with pain and fears his ability to inflict it on others, so he limits himself in its application: either a brief, friendly/kind gesture or hands in his pockets. every active touch has a purpose to it, a focus, an intent; there is always a thought or a plan behind what he's doing. he's prone to full-handed, all-in, lingering touches, no matter the potential danger: if he's reaching out or taking something, he's committing to it. he has a reputation for injuring himself on things, but it's not because he's careless: it's because he's stubborn, and holds on tight to what he's got even when it's hurting him. ( ah, symbolism. )

HAIR: naturally curly, either short enough to be a little spiky or long enough to get a decent handful. usually looks a bit like this, though a more natural, un-fried blond. left alone, it's relatively soft, if somewhat coarse, and floppy. he runs his hands through it frequently when he's working through a problem, so it's not uncommon to see it sticking up all over the place. there are a few bristly patches here and there that won't grown in properly because of shitty electroshock practices, but you can only really find them if you run your fingers through them. in his high periods ( when everything's going well and his mental health isn't shot ) his hair is usually around nape-length and he takes enough pride in his appearance to style it neatly: pomade, gel, slicked back if he wants to look particularly posh, the works. in his low periods, he'll either chop it haphazardly short or not have the energy to cut it at all, and it quickly becomes unwashed and unruly.

VOICE: gravelly, low-range tenor (baritone?) with a liverpudlian accent and dialect that's been thinned out a little by a lifetime spent in london, and thickens when angry or stressed. usually settles in the lower end of his register, but spikes higher when agitated. though he has a flippant manner of address, his tone usually ends up being some degree of deadpan. there's a certain level of breezy affectation around strangers and people he's lying to that disappears around friends and the people he loves. no matter who he's speaking to, though, just like everything else about him, his speech is rife with intention: he speaks evenly and clearly, choosing precisely which words to give weight to and when. he tends to come across as believable and earnest, someone who means what he says, whose words hold meaning; whether he does or not is a moot point.

FACE:   the two most common descriptors for constantine are that he is pretty, and that he looks exactly like his father. only one of those is something he wants to hear. he's very good at controlling his expressions, and his base setting is inscrutable. he's always clean-shaven or with a very light layer of stubble unless he's in a low period. his face has a narrow frame with delicate features, a well-defined jaw that's uneven on the right side from a previous break, pronounced cheekbones, a high forehead, a strong brow, and a pointy chin; fairly filled out, but there are definite signs of ill health that linger in the architecture. his eyes are electric blue, bright and alert, and oddly reflective at night; they're slightly sunken and heavy-lidded, with thick, dark eyelashes. there are permanent dark shadows stamped underneath, and deeply defined crow's feet at the corners. there's a deep knife scar beneath his right eye that connects with the lower lid and runs halfway down his cheek. his eyebrows are set low over his eyes, giving him an intimidating resting face; there are deep-set frown lines between them. his nose is sharply angular, a little crooked from several past breaks — with a few faint scars criss-crossing the bridge as evidence — and there are several broken capillaries spider-webbed around his nostrils from a lifetime of heavy drinking. his lips are bow-shaped, ranging towards thin, and often cracked; he's got dimples, and a big, beaming smile that makes his eyes sparkle and crinkle at the corners.

TASTE: copper pennies, sweet tobacco, irish coffee, the tingling burn of capsaicin. something forbidden.

CLOTHING:  he's a fairly snappy dresser and likes to look, at minimum, put-together and confident; there's definitely a chip on his shoulder about growing up working class, etched in by a whole childhood full of bullies and the sneers of margaret thatcher's london, and he exorcizes that by putting on respectable airs. his outfits usually range from business casual to very formal: at his finest, it's a white button-down shirt, black slacks, nice cufflinks, blue or red tie, ben sherman label cerulean suit, and a clean trenchcoat. his one personal, rebellious touch to a nice outfit is the shoes: he likes his stompers, vintage solovair derby boots with yellow ladder-laces and steel toecaps he added himself. at his most careless ( which is also his most depressed ) it's a rumpled white button-down shirt missing a few top buttons, loose tie, wrinkled slacks, black ankle boots with no socks, and a trenchcoat with years-old stains that will never come out. in between, especially in the more domestic periods of his life, there's some more variety: pastel button-ups, the occasional leather jacket, a black trenchcoat that's awful rare to see in use, a red-and-black-striped tie, light-colored knit sweaters, black jeans with a chain loop, and the occasional ratty band tee that he only ever wears to sleep. he's also got a collection of eclectic sunglasses and silly boxer shorts, because he finds them fun.

yoinked from: @handgiven whoever wants to snag this, feel free!!

[tinytalkingtina]

For your wip game! 🏃

Whew, this one fought me as I was writing until it finally flowed properly, so you get 3 paragraphs instead of 3 sentences :)

Role reversal 1 | 2

All around him, the crowd ebbs and flows between the kegs and the bonfire, the flickering flames and shadows making it hard to tell who is who. Someone stumbles into Eddie, breaking him out of his brooding. “Whoops, sorry Eddie! Guess I’ll have to make it up to you later.” Before he can say anything, the giggling cheerleader presses a quick kiss to his cheek. (He knows he went on a date with her about a month ago, but her name eludes him. Tina, maybe, or Vickie?) He forces a grin back. “Of course you didn’t mean it sugar. Gonna hold you to that okay?” As soon as her back is turned, he lets the smile slide off. His post-meet high wore off too quickly tonight, leaving him well, twitchy.

Make me write!

[eclipsecrowned]

[ PHOTOGRAPH ] : as someone volunteers to take a picture of them on a day out, sender instinctively wraps an arm around the receiver to steady them, holding them close for a photo that turns out to be more romantic than they were expecting. soap and gaz >:3 // @teardownheaven

"'M fine, 'm fine--"

More than fine, in fact. Gaz is so warm against the autumn night, a low-burning bonfire against the first chill. Though the other Sergeant might speak out against such handling, he doesn't do a thing to pull away.

Though, there's enough whiskey in him just now to present a clear fire hazard. Turning his head to stare into the lens, his mop of hair ghosts over Gaz's jaw, one eye shut against the offending streetlight just behind Roach. Pushing himself closer to Gaz, his hand shoots up, a vulgar gesture pushing against itching fingers --

And falling short. The hand meets Gaz's chest instead, a low rumble of laughter kicking up from his chest. So maybe Gaz has the right idea. All the punkish desires in him shrivel up and die as he chuckles, Once twitchy fingers now nesting into the fabric of a warm shirt.

Like that, it's done. Roach comes bounding back, flipping his phone around to display his masterwork. An appreciative whistle is the first thing tumbling out of his mouth.

"Kyle, do you ever take a bad pi--"

Suddenly, Kyle is not the issue. Well, he's a large part of the problem, but not the whole thing. He sees himself clinging to Gaz like a formal date, his grin careless, digits hooked into his shirt. Then there's Gaz himself, attention divided, for all the world somewhere between perplexed and amused by his aimless hanger-on. Whatever the photo was meant to be, it comes across... Differently.

He cocks his head, looking up to Gaz for any sort of guidance.

"Bruv, are we about to kiss?"

[twitchesandstitches]

Bonnie and Charcoal are both indefatigable breeding stallion femboys (and as robots, have specifically engineered themselves for this); they don’t get tired, they don’t get bored, and every part of their bodies is massively sensitive. They’re both incredibly virile, so much that they can impregnate people just by walking by them if they’re backed up enough, and take enormous pleasure in MILF-ifying girls

meanwhile, Nevnir and Tiashar are absolutely massive MILFs, proportionately speaking; huge, buxom and incredibly stacked dynamos that also do not get tired at all; Nevnir is a cyborg, and Tiashar is... well, she’s weird and a spooky goddess monster-lady. They crave being pregnant and carrying dozens, if not hundreds of children at once, gestating them in eggs or in bunches, to the point that it is almost a physical need.

Needless to say, they pair off each other well! It helps that both girls are VERY domineering, while the boys are very passive and obligingly adoring of girls. (In different ways; Bonnie meekly makes himself as cute as possible with possible sexy poses and “oh no, I hope you’re not MEAN to me...!”, while Charcoal just slaps his butt and yells “It ain’t gonna smack itself, ma’am!”)

[dewi205]

Poly Relationship

the seven + Nico + Reyna + Will are all in one big polyamory (bc I’m a multi shipper, everyone is with Nico, feral baby deserves all the love)

Reyna + Annabeth + Leo are ace, Nico is gay, Will and Piper are pan, Jason and Percy are bi, Hazel and Frank are straight

Frazel is together and no one messes with their relationship (if they do Nico pops out of a bush to drag u to the Fields of Punishment)(they’re not really part of the poly but they don’t really understand what it is and felt left out so everyone just treats them as in the poly)

Nico ONLY goes to Jason + Will + Leo + Reyna for premium cuddles, gets head pats from Annabeth and forehead kisses from Piper, Percy sometimes noms his neck/shoulder area and paints Nico’s wrists blue for fun

Nico is an old school romantic, he buys his partners gifts (everyday) and takes them out on romantic dates (one at a time), he caters the dates to their liking (like blue roses, hyacinth, etc.) and he asks the parents for their child’s hand in marriage (even godly parents, by going up to them face to face)

Nico is both touch starved and touch adverse

he is touch adverse some days with everyone even his partners and other days he’s just touch adverse with everyone not in the poly

when he doesn’t want to be touched he bites and does harsh little pokes (not enough to harm) in ppls rib cages with a drakon bone knife

when he’s not touch adverse with people in the poly he is really touch starved and goes looking for attention

he doesn’t directly ask for it but he kinda stands near them and stares.

Annabeth pats his head and he buries his head in her hand or she is big spoon and uses his head as a book rest

Jason gives him bear hugs, Nico kinda climbs up him and rests his head on Jason shoulder, wrapping his legs around Jason’s waist glaring at everyone who passes by

Percy gives Nico hugs too which Nico melts into until Nico gets a little irritated and twitchy and ducks away

Piper cups both his cheeks and kisses his forehead, Nico does a little satisfied nod and walks away

Reyna just straight up picks him up and carries him around like a basketball under her arm

Will walks him over to an empty infirmary bed and tucks him in for a nap after feeding him a little

Nico acts as big spoon and sits behind Leo as he works on a machine, pointing out little things

when Jason goes to wake Nico up he sings Spooky Scary Skeletons and it got to the point where the song was constantly stuck in Nico’s head

when Nico asked Jason to join the poly he asked by singing Spooky Scary Skeletons with 2 accompanying dancing skeletons behind him doing the Tik Tok dance

his partners thought it was so freaking adorable and asked Jason in their own ways

he did it during the Halloween karaoke session around the bonfire

Hestia just HAD to leave the fire to give Nico a hug

Piper, Leo, and Nico make a game out of “Who can borrow(/steal) more of Jason’s clothes without him noticing”

Leo sometimes gets caught in the act

Piper does not get caught raiding Jason’s closet but does get caught wearing said clothes

Nico is KING and doesn’t get caught because he uses the clothes he steals from his significant annoyances to have a nest he sleeps in (in his Underworld room) when he misses the surface

[novelconcepts]

fic: (could be dreadfully) boring

Boring gets a bad rap, really. Boring can be the best thing in the world. 

“Could be kinda boring, right?” Dani says one Thursday morning, cold breath and hot hope mingling in the words, and Jamie laughs a little. She says it like it’s the best idea in the world: could be kind of boring, like all the songs say it shouldn’t be, like every movie tries to dismiss. But Dani says it, and Jamie thinks she’s only partly doing so to make her smile. Maybe she’s saying it for other reasons, too. Real ones. Ones that have nothing at all to do with Jamie, and how much she knows about the allure of boring.

Jamie didn’t grow up bored. Jamie walked the line between bad and worse most of her life, between one poor decision and the next, and Jamie found out all too fast what it was like to live out an adventure. The storybooks make adventure sound like something to chase, something hot-blooded and excitable, a rush. 

In real life? In real life, adventure is hot-blooded, and excitable, a rabid thing with teeth. You grab hold, it swings around and bites you right back. 

Spend enough time with enough idiots who think I want is a perfectly fine life philosophy, spend enough time far from freedom, spend enough time picking up after someone else’s catastrophe, and adventure starts to sound something like a dirty word. She doesn’t want adventure. Her life, as it stands, makes sense. Get up. Get ready in a little flat made up with a little bed, a little couch, a little table. Drive to the house. Grow. Go home at the end of the night, ready to start it all again. 

It’s not easy, but it is simple. And simple, from where Jamie’s standing, is a good thing. You can make sense of simple. Of when to plant, when to harvest. How much to prune away, and how long to let something linger before it’s ready to be picked. Simple, scheduled life. Nothing wrong with it. 

And then here comes Dani Clayton, and Jamie doesn’t have the words to explain why she knows, but she does: Dani isn’t simple. Dani blows in with her strange American accent and her big blue eyes and a smile that doesn’t quite reach them, not all the way, and she’s not...simple. At first, Jamie can’t say what she is. Bigger than she looks, somehow. Like there’s something too expansive behind her ribcage to fit under the pastel blouses and the denim jackets. Like she spends all that time puffing her hair up and puffing her chest out because if she were to let her guard down for one minute, something on the underside of Dani Clayton would come unmoored. 

And it’s not Jamie’s problem.

Not supposed to be, anyway. 

She did this once, sort of. This caring about an au pair thing. Rebecca Jessel was different, but there was something about her that clicked with Jamie--something like a younger sister, someone with such ambition and so little self-preservation at the same time--and Jamie had thought, sure. Sure, this is worth the time, the energy, the stress. Family is what you make of it, and say what you will about Hannah and Owen, but they are family. The kids, too. Wee monsters, the pair of them, but they’re hers, somehow. 

Rebecca was almost hers, too. She thinks some nights about that far-away look in dark eyes, the way Rebecca turned her head sharply away near the end, like looking at Jamie--at any of them--was too near a mirror she couldn’t bear peering into. Rebecca was something special, and Jamie couldn’t see her pulling away until she was too far out to swim to.

And here: Dani Clayton. Also something special. Also something...something about her Jamie can’t quite put a finger on. Like walking into a room and inhaling the scent of the last good day of summer vacation, and thinking, yes. This one’s right. 

But she’s also twitchy as all get-out, and her eyes do this funny jig any time Jamie meets them, and her mouth goes tight around the corners, and Jamie thinks: not this time. Not again. Not my problem. 

Until it is. 

And she didn’t plan it, certainly. Didn’t plan to stay the night, with the kids all wound up and the rain pattering outside and Dani bunched up on the couch beside her using words like love and possession like she’s intimately acquainted with both. Didn’t plan on the way Dani’s breath hitched around the words. Didn’t plan the way her own throat swallowed like it was trying to force down the first spark of true honesty. 

Just for safety, she tells herself, setting up on that couch with a thin blanket and a shake of her head. Just in case. 

And on it went: a grab of the hand; a sudden understanding; a flirtatious banter exchanged under guise of mourning. All of it innocent enough. 

And then there’s Dani Clayton, telling her she sees ghosts. Telling her she sees the ghost of her ex-fiance. Telling her, with eyes clenched shut and thumbs jammed into her fists, like she doesn’t want to say the words, but she needs Jamie to hear them. And Jamie, she thinks, this isn’t boring, with a lurch of the stomach that says it shouldn’t be an attractive quality in a person. The idea of not being boring. It’s a bad goddamn idea.

Like it’s a bad idea when Dani surges into her. Like it’s a bad idea when she’s got Dani’s hair wound around her hands, her thumbs dragging arcs across Dani’s cheekbones, her mouth pulling into a delirious grin as Dani kisses her. It’s a bad idea. She knows it, and she doesn’t care in the least as Dani presses in and groans softly against her lips, and--

Jerks away. 

Always, with the jerking away. 

This isn’t how you do the thing, Jamie thinks for the next several days. This isn’t how you get involved in something like this. People are so goddamn much. And Dani is maybe more than most, maybe more than anyone she’s ever run up against in her entire life, and she tries not to think of it. Tries not to feel Dani’s small hands clutching her jacket. Tries not to taste the way Dani almost laughed with relief into her mouth. She tries. 

Few days away, she tells herself. That’ll do the trick. Few days to get her head on straight again, and then she’ll go back. Go home. Get back to the schedule of plant and tend and harvest, and it’ll be like it never happened. 

“Could be kinda boring,” Dani says, and Jamie looks at her. Wants to tell her no. Wants to want to tell her no. 

Smiles anyway. 

“Could be dreadfully boring.”

And even then, she thinks it won’t make a difference. Dani’s already shown her cards. Dani’s carrying something bigger than the both of them, and Jamie knows all too well how someone else’s baggage can upend a person’s life. It can ruin a person, to stand too close to someone else’s bonfire. Can singe you straight down to the bone. 

And yet...here she comes, anyway. Back for Dani that night. Back to take her hand, feeling the slide of cautious fingers knitting with her own. Back to lead her into a damp, dreary grove where only Jamie has ever stepped foot, and she tells her. Everything. How it is. How the world is. How her world is. She tells her more than she’s told anyone in years, and never all at once like this, and even as the words are spilling out of her, she thinks, this isn’t simple. 

Dani doesn’t seem to mind. Dani looks at her for the longest heartbeat in the world, and she is looking at her. Not with eyes darting, not with jaw tensing, but with the most open-hearted want Jamie has stood near in maybe her entire life. 

It burns. It burns in the absolute best way. 

And it isn’t simple, and it isn’t easy, but it’s right, she thinks, as they stand in the drizzling rain with Dani’s arms wrapped almost double around her shoulders. As she lets Dani hold her and kiss her and sigh like this is what finally letting go feels like. 

It isn’t simple, and maybe it isn’t smart, because Dani Clayton isn’t boring. And, suddenly, Jamie doesn’t want her to be. Or, rather, she doesn’t want Dani Clayton to be anything shy of what Dani is: selfless, silly, hopeful Dani, who touches her like she’s never touched anything worthwhile in her whole life and is a bit terrified Jamie’s going to fade away under her fingertips. Dani, who walks back to the house with her like she’s on a goddamn mission, head up, eyes more certain that Jamie’s ever seen them. When she smiles in that bedroom, it reaches those eyes. When she lets Jamie slide with her beneath the blankets, with nothing between them, there’s no sign of ghosts or goblins or guilt. 

She gasps when Jamie touches her, and burrows closer, and Jamie thinks, oh, we’re in this, now. 

Her blood sings, her heart racing, and it feels like adventure, and something in Jamie sits back and sighs. All right, that something says. All right, you’ve made your call. When’s it ever gone right for you, to choose something like this?

She shakes her head, helpless, unable to explain to this core of self-restraint that this is...everything. That Dani being less than simple isn’t enough to negate all the rest. That Dani being less than simple is, in fact, integral to how desperately Jamie needs to keep her close. 

The day comes and goes, Jamie still wearing yesterday’s t-shirt, Dani smelling faintly of Jamie’s shampoo somehow. No one calls them on how close they sit, on how Dani’s hand is always brushing Jamie’s, a constant reminder that last night happened, that Jamie is still here. No one calls them on how Dani’s laugh is louder now, dizzy-giddy as she gasps for breath, or on Jamie’s leg angling of its own accord to press against Dani’s thigh from the next chair over. She looks up once, sees Hannah’s knowing brow rise, and thinks, this could be you, you know. Hannah, for all her clever glances, doesn’t seem to read her mind. She only lifts her mug of untouched tea very slightly, nods, smiles. 

The day comes and goes, and it isn't easy, and it isn’t simple: Flora’s acting strange again, coming and going in that unpredictable way children sometimes have, and Miles is strung tight at the table, and there’s a strange distance that seems to be growing up between Hannah and the rest of them. The price of family, Jamie thinks with a stab of regret--and then Dani is slipping away with her to the hall, pressing her gently against a low table, kissing her with the already-easy fervor of someone who would gladly do this every day for the rest of her life. 

That thought, above all else, should scare her. To think of a life not lived in that little flat, with the little bed, the little couch, the little table. To think of a life lived, instead, sharing someone else’s baggage. 

She almost stays another night. Almost. If Dani had tried a little harder, she thinks she would have lost all measure of restraint. If Dani had kept making that tiny noise, the one that unbinds everything calm in Jamie’s chest, her tongue brushing Jamie’s in the sweetest invitation. If Dani had taken her hand and led her back down the hall. She almost does it, anyway. 

Simple, she reminds herself, breaking the kiss, her skin humming beneath the splay of Dani’s fingers around her ribs. Boring. Boring and simple and let it blossom on its own time, why don’t you. 

She goes home. She goes back to that little flat, where she showers and lays down with a book she can’t seem to read, her head buzzing with the nearly tactile energy of Dani’s smile. Eventually, she sleeps. 

She wakes already reaching for a body she knows isn’t there, and the only thought in her head is, trouble. 

Her phone is ringing, she realizes belatedly. For a bleary second, she’s sure it’ll be Peter Quint on the other end, breathing deep, taunting--but it’s Owen’s voice, shaggy with sleep, saying, “The house. Something at the house, Jamie. Do you feel it?”

She’s already screaming Dani’s name before she reaches that lake, before she has any idea why talons of terror are scraping down her back. She’s plunging into the waves in great hitching leaps, moving as fast as she can to catch Dani up before she--and Flora, Flora’s out here in a nightgown and shuddering fear, her eyes older than any eight-year-old’s have a right to be--can tip over into the restless water. Dani is shaking like she’s going to come apart right here in Jamie’s arms, shaking and clutching Flora close and muttering, “It’s us. It’s us. It’s us.” 

There’s something wrong with her eyes. Jamie won’t be able to tell for almost an hour what it is--the moonlight isn’t bright enough, the shadows too thick around them, and even when everyone is back on solid ground, Dani curled in her arms, she holds them shut against Jamie’s searching worry. As if she thinks Jamie seeing her up close tonight will undo all the careful, hopeful, wonderful work they did together over the last two days. 

“D’you want some company?” Jamie asks her, when the dust has settled enough to make clear the road that led them all to this point--Henry, here; Hannah, not; Owen, drifting. It’s a mess, she thinks, just the biggest goddamn mess she’s ever come across, and the simple answer would be to walk now. To drive back into Bly, back to the little flat with its little world bunched up behind little walls. Close down, start over when things regain proper equilibrium. 

“D’you want some company?” she asks, and she’s sure Dani will say no. Dani’s head is already shaking--and then, slowly, reversing course. Dani, looking at her with swollen eyes--one the blue Jamie fell into that very first day, the other a soft brown made up of all the sorrow one woman could possibly carry without falling down dead of it. Dani, letting her kiss their joined hands, a silent promise that other nights are coming--as many of them as Jamie can scrounge together--and that Jamie isn’t going anywhere. 

And now they’re here: in America. In another life altogether from au pairs and gardeners and ghosts. They’re here, and Jamie thinks, not simple. But boring?

Yes, in its own way, she supposes it is. 

It takes her by surprise, honestly. This sort of behavior is textbook adventure. To up and leave the only place she’s ever known for a land as alternately thrilling and scandalizing as America. To do so with Dani’s hand in hers, holding tight like if she lets go for even a second, she’s sure she’ll turn around to find Jamie gone and the beast in the jungle standing in her place. Jamie doesn’t mind the way Dani’s grip grinds her bones together some nights. The way Dani just sits back and looks at her, searching her face for something, anything, of the monster she feels lurking in the shadows. 

Jamie does her best to give only what she has, and what she has is apparently enough, because Dani slowly...slowly comes back. There are moments, yes, afternoons that start out perfectly sunny and swing without warning to Dani sitting with her back against the wall, her breath coming in shallow gulps as she chokes on her own terror. There are nights Jamie wakes to find Dani clambering atop her with a child’s grace, legs and arms clutching, heart racing so hard, Jamie can feel it beneath her lips. Those nights aren’t good ones, and Jamie wonders each time if she’ll wake the next morning to find Dani has fled under cover of moonlight. If Dani has decided the terror is greater than the reward of working on this with her. 

But each morning, Dani is there. And, slowly, slowly, the tension slides out of her grasp. The look in her eyes, the one that says she’s been staring inward too long to see Jamie at all, fades. They’re still mismatched, those eyes, and sometimes, Jamie misses when they were both that mesmerizing blue--but the longer Dani looks at her, the more she thinks, doesn’t matter. Doesn’t matter what color they are at all, s’long as it’s her looking back from behind them. 

They build a routine. Jamie wonders if this will get old, if this will wear at them; the songs all say it, the movies all insist: routine is cousin to death. Got to keep it fresh, everyone insists. Got to keep it moving. 

But what they don’t seem to get, what they don’t seem to see, what Jamie believes with her whole heart is this: 

Anything worth growing takes time. And patience. And routine. Anything worth growing needs a person to give every ounce of devotion they can muster, not the ragtag chaos of the brand-new. 

They build a routine. Find a place. Build a shop. And with every passing day, Dani comes back to herself a little more. She’s making jokes now--bad ones, ones even Owen would cringe away from--and Jamie’s laughing every time because it’s not the words that count. It’s the delight in Dani’s eyes when she lands one that makes water stream out of Jamie’s nose. It’s the sheer open-hearted bliss of knowing someone so well, you can’t help but make them laugh with the stupidest things. 

Jamie’s out of bed first each morning. When it was Dani, at the beginning, it made her uneasy; waking in bed with one arm reaching toward Dani’s side always felt like an omen of uncertainty for the day ahead. Would she walk out of the bedroom to find Dani pacing the apartment, wearing tracks into the carpet as she muttered under her breath? Would she find, instead, Dani struggling over the morning coffee? Would she find Dani gone altogether, only to come stumbling through the door hours later, arms laden with grocery bags and strange decorative bits and bobs? 

Jamie likes it better this way. Out of bed at six, sitting on the edge of the mattress, watching Dani breathe. At the beginning, this was the only time she ever saw Dani truly relaxed. It still feels like a gift now, a stolen moment unshared with anyone else. Dani curls toward Jamie’s pillow, her hand sleep-sneaking over to rest beneath it, and Jamie leans to kiss her brow. 

She’ll sleep another hour or two, probably, and in the meantime, Jamie breathes. Brews tea. Waters plants. Plans out orders to keep the shop stocked. Every day like this feels clean in some strange way, like by getting up with the sun, she’s allowed a chance to wash away the past. If she didn’t, if she slept later, maybe she’d wake to find the ghosts had followed them after all. Better this way. Better to keep vigil so Dani doesn’t have to. 

“You’re not sick of this, yet?” 

Those same words come weighted with different meaning. Sometimes, Dani says them laughingly--usually when they’ve both managed to botch a meal so badly, the only recourse is pizza. Other times, her voice is stiff with swallowed tears. On those days, Jamie knows, she’s thinking about the concept of borrowed time. Wondering how much she’s earned with good behavior. Wondering how Jamie could possibly stand starting every day not knowing what might pop out at them from the corners of Dani’s anxiety. 

“Not sick of it, Poppins,” she says every time. Sometimes, she says it and pins Dani against the nearest bit of furniture, ensuring they’ll both be breathless and giggling with irritation when the pizza finally does interrupt. Sometimes, she says it into the crown of Dani’s hair, hands stroking calm, repeat patterns down Dani’s back. It doesn’t matter how she says it. It’s always true. 

It’s boring, she wants to tell Dani, but can’t quite find the right way to say it. It’s boring, and it’s right. It’s the good kind of stable, the kind where you know for a fact that no matter what happens, your reaching hand will never come up empty. It’s the right kind of natural, the organic state of live and flourish that comes from tending something with earnest care. It’s boring, and I could never be sick of it, she wants to say, because it’s you. It’s me. It’s us. 

Their home is the good kind of cluttered, and their bickering is the good kind of stupid, and every time she finds herself tucked under Dani in bed, or tucked into Dani on the couch, or tucked close to Dani in a moment of perfect bliss, she thinks, this was always how it was supposed to go. I knew it, somehow. First time I saw her at that lunch table, I knew it. 

But there are words, and then there are words, and Jamie isn’t really designed for pretty language. She presents Dani with a flower--one carefully tended moonflower, grown in secret--and she says with shaking certainty, “We’ve got a problem, Poppins.” The problem, of course, being that she’s not sick of it. Not sick of Dani’s legs tangling smooth against her own after a shower, not sick of Dani’s heaving laughter when they slip on an icy Vermont sidewalk and go down in a heap of limbs, not sick of waking to Dani’s hands tracing, gently, the raised tissue of the scar on her back. She knows her life inside and out, knows the good days and the bad, and above all, she knows the thing that counts most: 

It’s boring. It’s the right kind of boring. Dreadfully, perfectly, wonderfully boring. 

And she is so in love. Has been, if she’s honest with herself, for ages. Has been since Dani was scolding her for a bedframe gone unbuilt, since pinning Dani against an upright mattress and sliding a thigh between her legs and hearing her groan against her ear. Has been since Dani was sitting beside her in that weathered diner, talking about realism and one-day-at-a-time. Has been since Dani reached for her hand without looking in the Bly Manor foyer, has been since Dani shuddered and shook in her arms after the lake, has been since Dani kissed her in the hall, in the grove, in the greenhouse. 

It makes sense in all the ways that Dani has from the very start, and it makes no sense at all in the way Jamie thinks good things in her life never do. And it’s right. Dani, looking at her over the counter with such affection, like she’s questioned so much, but never this. Never Jamie. Not really, deep down, where it counts. 

They’re in the back room, all hands and mouths and laughing sighs, and Jamie knows boring gets a bad rap. Knows that every kind of narrative insists this is the thing to be avoided. Keep moving. Keep dancing. Keep it fresh and new and hot-blooded and ready to bite. 

But this...this is what people don’t understand. What people could be so much happier, if they could only wrap their heads around the concept. Boring doesn’t mean stagnant. Boring doesn’t mean stuck in place. Theirs isn’t a photograph, all arc and angle and line frozen in time. 

Theirs is a story. Growing. Shifting. Ever-evolving. Blooming and fading and blooming again. Dani’s hands, always finding hers. Dani’s eyes, mismatched but so full of adoration, whether she’s spent the day worrying about dinner or demons. Dani, who once stood with her back to a greenhouse counter and said, “Could be kinda boring, right?”

Boring is good. Boring is perfect. 

Jamie thinks she could do boring for the rest of her life. 

[allthecolorsofourlove]

dearest bunny baby, wild little hare

i am stalling by my suitcase. it won’t fit all my love for you inside. i am jittery but well rested today, slept only 6 hours but it feels like i slept 60. my hands are twitchy, like they are on the cusp of sleep. they are shaking for you. i shiver when i think your name.

i’ll be home by the time night falls. our friend is picking me up from the airport; she called me to woefully inform me of the line at the dispensary. i cackled. it’s fucking 4/20 and i am flying home from college instead of being stoned for 24 hours straight. that’s so stupid. it’s all for you.

i am tucking you in my magpie nest and in my chest and in the wardrobe locked inside my ribcage. you follow me around like a ghost, like dandelion seeds in the spring. you’re on my skin even when it’s been a month since i’ve seen you. my grin is unfaltering and my steps are sure. i am coming home to you.

i love you like a forest fire and i love you like a candle wick. i love you like something grand and unrelenting and something intimate and small. i love you like ashes and i love you like a supernova demolishing all we know. i love you like burnt fingers and branded lips and smoke whisking through the window. i am the burn scar and i am the bonfire and i am the smoke blown into your mouth.

it might’ve been a new neighborhood. i think this infrastructure is changing all over me; a byproduct of concrete and rain. i hold myself a little different. i trust a little different. you’re the same though, just closer. i scrunch my nose up and shut my eyes softly when i remember your face.

the past few days have been strange, i’ve seen a new side of friends i know and i want to put more of myself in their pockets. i love them and i feel badly for withholding. i always feel badly for withholding but i do it anyways, so it is nice to be with you and do no such thing.

i distract myself from tremors and packing and travel anticipation with the thought of you: you wearing my clothes and you smiling at me wide and you lacing your fingers in my hair [which, will continue to be a point of contention]. i miss you in the way that makes me happy and makes me weep. i love you like something stupid and knowing i’ll see you soon fills me up with something wide and cosmic. i love you like the supernova, i love you like the candle wick.

rabbit, dear, i am coming home. make room for me in your den, push aside the bracken and fern and let me bring you glass shards and shining bones. over and over in my head, i replay your voice; “you okay?” and like clockwork i respond, “i’m just so happy.” i’ll bring you the moon and i’ll bring you the sky. i’m tearing clouds off the tapestry to bring puffs of white into the din of this tree root home. i love you. i’ll be home soon.

longingly, lovingly

your birds eye view

[raysreads]

Teen Wolf Character Scents

Okay this might sound weird, but I’ve been reading a lot of Teen Wolf fic lately and it always puts a heavy emphasis on what the character smells like. Because...werewolf senses and everyone has a natural scent. I personally love this so here are my headcanons for what each characters natural scent would be!!!!!

(I give reasons for why I went with those things but some of the reasons themselves are headcanons, and some just came to me and have no reason at all besides that fact that i love it that way)

So background info: I headcanon some scents are from birth, while some are added/change based on experiences, temperament and emotions. You have your own scent and it does its own thing, even when you’re human. Humans cant smell them since they aren’t necessarily real, they are more a smell supernaturals pick up that’s a cryptic reflection of ones personality.

Stiles: Gotta start with the main boi!!!! He smells like spicy chili peppers, honey and everything spicy. He is wild and loud and so so sharp. He uses cutting anger and snark and sarcasm as a defense mechanism, this reflects in a scent that burns your nose. But he cares and loves a lot and is super soft, hence the honey. If you focus on his scent too much your eyes water with the chili. When he gets angry he send tears down everyone’s faces and even reddens the cheeks and burns the tongues of the supernatural pack members in his anger, his scent becoming physical as his spark acts up.

Peter: He smells like cold. Like cold, and petrichor and mint toothpaste. He always has. He smells like the cold of ice, the cold you smell when you open a freezer in the cold isle of the grocery store and like Vick’s Vaporub but 10x as strong. As the left hand of the pack it was his job to kill, to eliminate threats, his job to bear all the blood on his hands, to have his hands permanently stained sticky red and his eyes glow blue, so that no one else in the pack has to live with the guilt of murder, even when justified. His first kill was at 8 years old and he would never forgive the fact that he had been given that burden. So he became unmovable ice and unending cold. With the thick smell of rain for the warmth he would always keep hidden.

Theo: His scent is that of fresh, right off the smoker, BBQ sauce-soaked ribs and apple juice. Its a scent he was born with, one that reflects the gooey warmth of his soul and his innocence before he was manipulated and tortured. His scent always throws people off since it usually reflects ones personality and he’s not a good person by any means, he is amoral and cruel; and such a warm, soft scent doesn’t make sense. But his soul (though no longer pure) would always hold his original innocence. The apple juice isn’t actually his scent, but his sisters, her heart such a part of him that his guilt manifested her soul in his scent. And if you focus hard enough, underneath all that you can find the sting of bleach. His time with the dread doctors (and the fact that he was surgically tortured into being a chimera) leaving part of his scent mangled and altered into the artificial tang of bleach. The fact that he forced his scent to remain mostly unchanged throughout his life (which was worse than hell on earth) is Very Very Impressive, even more so when in the beginning he wasn’t even supernatural.

Scott: Our ever-sweet true alpha. He smells like overly sweet pink and blue cotton candy and hot, buttered, movie theater popcorn. He’s literally sugar and spice and everything nice. His morals and warmth translating to the hot popcorn and his perpetual smiling and niceness coming though as cotton candy. He smells like fairgrounds and the laughter of children. Underneath all that he bears the subtle scent of rust,  a permanent reminder of his forced change to the supernatural and permanent resentment of the burden he must bear (and the guilt about that resentment)

Derek: He smells of Sandalwood, Patchouli, and Frankincense. He always smells like incense and spices, like the inside of a stereotypical fortune tellers shop. He becomes heat, warmth, and flame. Something that pulls at his soul since the fire. Something that is a comfort to the wolves around him. He also smells heavily of smoke (something that makes Peter unable to be in the same room as him for longer than 30 minutes unless forced) because of his never-ending guilt about his family, something that seared the event into his scent. When he’s angry (which is a lot) his scent gets stronger and the incense smell becomes extremely heady and makes his betas lethargic.

Lydia: She smells like metal, like your hands after handling handfuls of change. She smells like she bathed in pennies, her standoffish coldness bringing the bitter smell to her scent. Since she became a banshee she also smells strongly of spider lilies (also know as hell flowers), japans flower of death. You would think the contrast between bitter metal and floral scents, so strong you choke, would be bad but its actually strangely comforting. And while bitter its the only thing that can get Jackson to relax some days. The scent of the only person there for him for over a decade-and-a-half sometimes even more comforting than the scent of his boyfriend.

Isaac: His scent is of strong cologne even though he never wears any, he smells like he bathed in the Mahogany Teakwood candle from Bath and Body Works, or lived in an Abercrombie & Fitch for 50 years. He always had that smell, even as a child, but it just gets stronger the more confidence he gains. His childhood innocence and cleanliness of soul translates as a strong laundry soap smell. But hidden underneath there's an undertone of metal, plastic, and cold; that takes over his scent when he's scared and overwhelmes everything in a mile radius. It takes the Pack far too long to realize it smells like a freezer and metal chains.

Allison: She smells strongly of ozone and static (not rain though, never rain). Her anger and righteous fury making her scent like electricity and making the static-y-ness tingle in everyone's nose - sometimes making Scott sneeze. Nothing in her scent is pleasant or comforting to everyone's confusion. Its only when she feels negative emotions that she smells like roses and summer. Its like a warning but in reverse, the opposite of what it should be. Bad scents usually mean bad emotions or feelings or memories, and good scents mean good moods and positive things but for her its the opposite. Just like how she took the opposite path then what was laid out for her.

Jackson: He smells very very heavily of cherries, his scent so strong and sweet its like he took a bath in a hot tub filled with cherry cough medicine, chloraseptic cherry sore throat spray, cherry pie, cherry starburst, cherry Jell-O, and maraschino cherries. Its thick and sticky and strong enough to drown out the scent and stick for hours on anyone standing near him or touching him and it lingers on the Pack members even if they haven’t seen each other for years. Case-in-point: Jackson left for England after the kanima thing and Isaac left for France not long after. When Isaac came back 6 years later (2 years after Jackson came back) he still had the smell on him pretty strongly. Why cherries? No one knows. But its thick as hell and stronger than epoxy when it binds to things together forever. The Pack thinks it stems with his identity and abandonment issues, but once he claims you he wont let go, not even his scent. He is very self conscious and embarrassed about it so its never discussed, and he’s been friends with Danny for so long that his scent almost drowns out Danny’s own. 

Ethan: Ethan’s scent is subtle and barely there. He was the one who always stood in front of Aiden to protect them, and took the beatings when possible so his scent became as bland and barely-there as possible. The Pack can only smell his scent with intense focus and at least an hours meditation (unless you’re Aiden). He smells of freshly baked bread and homemade jam, comforting smells that easily calm Aiden down. In times of distress he smells of burnt toast, he scent twisting with negative memories. A reminder that all good things have eventually turned bad for him and his twin.

Aiden: Aiden on the other hand smells strongly like curry and lavender. An odd combination but one that speaks of his guarded- but angry, headstrong and stubborn- nature. The abuse left him angry and twitchy and paranoid, everything setting him off and his moods turning on a dime. His scent fluctuated wildly between spicy curry and calming lavender which indicated his mood and Ethan was the only one able to calm him down, doing so with a single touch between his shoulder blades where they merged.

Danny: Danny smells like he lived in a Eucalyptus oil factory for 50 years, the scent soothing and calm like he is. Its always the same and never changes, not even when his emotions do. It was concerning at first, since everyone else’s scents changed throughout the day, even when their mood didn't (the only other scent that barely changed was Peter’s but that was because the man hand an iron grip over his emotions, even in his scent. Which is super impressive). He was just that calm at all times, even when annoyed. The one time he got angry- and I mean really angry not just the pretenses he kept when ‘annoyed’ with Stiles who he more endeared with than anything- his scent overwhelmed the entire apartment complex ( the one Derek had bought out for his loft) with the horrible, strong, pungent scent of burnt rubber. No one angered him again.

But they did have a chat about his witch ancestry.

Erica: Her scent was that of a bonfire. A blazing bonfire, gasoline, and the smell of the world when it was so hot outside the air above the tar street shimmered. She was competitive, and fierce, and pure heat and burning. If she wanted something, she would take it she had always been that way, even when she was sick. And while her sickness may be gone she had a subtle distortion to her scent, one like poison, that made her always smell slightly sick. (Peter almost had a panic attack when he first met her because of her scent, he now never came within 10 feet of her).

Boyd: He smelled like a flower garden. He was so stoic that the floral scent took many by surprise. He had always smelled like soil and dirt, his down to earth personality manifesting as a calming and grounding scent. He also smelled like the ocean, like salt and brine, and waves. But that was all drowned out by the overwhelming smell of flowers, a scent that used to be his sisters, one that he subconsciously adopted after her death when he was still human. He empathized with Theo and would exchange heavy glances when the pack discussed their natural scents as a ‘pack bonding exercise’, they were both drowned in guilt for different reasons, but both over lost sisters. They never discussed it. That was all folks!!! Feel free to add on to this and/or use it as a fanfic reference!!! Do you agree??? What are your headcanons???

[holdwiththosewhofavorfire]

Braids

For: @maplelattes22, who asked for “JJ x Kie, request where he tries to braid her hair/do a hairstyle but is having a hard time”

Notes: Turned out to be a little softer than comedic. I’m always taking requests!

Summary: Kie is sick the first week of summer and JJ knows exactly how to make her feel better. 

The first week of summer, official summer with no school and endless days for surfing and boating and drinking around bonfires, and Kiara has a cold. So today at least she is basically bedridden, sinuses too stuffed to put her head in the water, eyes too sensitive to go outside in the bright sun. She’s moping around her bedroom, propped up on pillows and aimlessly leafing through one magazine or another, when her window slides up and in tumbles JJ, a thoroughly unappreciated knight in damp boardshorts.

Kie barely registers the devil may grin he always has on his stupid gorgeous face before she’s pulling her bedcovers up and over her head. JJ, like all the Pogues, has seen her scraped up after a long day surfing, expelling water and snot out of her nose, hair tangled and definitely not at her most composed, but being sick is something entirely different. She knows she isn’t that pretty at the best of times, but she will not allow JJ to see her with her nose as red as a reindeers and feeling like cotton balls have been shoved up her sinuses.

JJ laughs at her reaction, and that does not help her mood. “Aw, Kie, don’t be like that. I’m here to help you feel better.”

She stubbornly keeps the comforter over her head even as she hears his footsteps come closer. “Go away, JJ. I’m sick. Go bother the other guys.”

“John B. picked up a shift at the Club. They didn’t need me today. Pope is studying for some test with letter--“

“the PSAT?” She interjects, and he continues, “—yeah that one—and I saw them all day every day at school, when I went to school anyway, so I figure now is the perfect day for some JJ and Kie quality time. Turn on that fancy TV of yours.”

Letting out a huff of air, she peeks one eye out of the comforter. “I really don’t feel like company right now. I’m sick, I’m gross, and I just want…”

Kiara trails off when JJ puts his hand on her head. “You’re not gross. I’ll leave if you don’t want me around, but…you’re never gross.” He looks awkward all the sudden, uncomfortable with what he just said and a little defensive like if she makes him leave, he’ll take it the wrong way. And at worst, JJ is always entertaining. If he wants to hangout and watch her blow snot rockets into a tissue, then who is she to deny him his entertainment.

“The remote is on the dresser.”

“Yes!” He cheers, bounding over to grab it, then effortlessly flinging himself on the other side of her mattress. “What daytime soap is on now? The Bold and the Beautiful? The Young and the Restless?”

Either is an apt description for JJ, she thinks. It’s actually pretty nice to feel his solid body next to hers, and maybe she does feel a little better after all. She twists her head to look over and up at him.

“Aw there she is.” JJ grins down at her, back against her headboard, looking at ease and her heart flutters. “Come on out, princess.”

Kiara slowly, more for show than anything else, lowers her blanket down. She sits upright for a moment, then scoots back toward the headboard too, intending to lean against it as JJ is. Instead, he, looking deliberately at the tv, lifts his right arm to the side, a clear invitation if she’s ever seen one. Hesitantly, she settles into place, tucked under his shoulder. She can smell him here, salt and sun and boy, and her stomach is fluttering a little.

They watch the show quietly for a bit. Kie acknowledges she isn’t really paying attention, more focused on the smooth, warm skin covered muscle under her cheek, and the slight pull from where he’s playing with the ends of her hair.

It doesn’t take long for JJ to get twitchy from just sitting there. She can feel his eyes drift down toward the top of her head, and the light stroking of her hair becomes more deliberate and thoughtful.

“My mom taught be how to braid hair, you know.”

She shook her head, turned her neck to catch his bright blue eyes with hers. “I didn’t know that.”

“Yeah,” He says, voice tight, like he’s forcing it to be casual. “I’d braid her hair after…when she was feeling sad. She used to say it made her feel better.”

Kie shrugs a little, heart aching for him and trying not to push because she knows that’s a surefire way to get him to retreat like the ocean at low tide. “I’d probably feel better if you braided my hair too.”

“Yeah? Ok!” He’s eager suddenly, a little puppy like, and he’s poking at her until she leans up and moves forward so he can scoot behind her. The TV plays on in the foreground, but she can picture how JJ’s eyes are squinted in concentration as he gathers her heavy mass of hair into his hands. Thank goodness she’d washed her hair just that morning.

It’s surprisingly painless. For some reason, she’d expected his calloused fingers to be rougher, to catch on the curls of her hair. Instead, JJ makes an effort to be gentle, combing lightly through any tangles and carefully navigating the strands. The warm summer sun shines through the window, the TV volume is a low murmur, and he hums to himself as he focuses on the pattern. It feels like he’s doing multiple smaller braids, which makes sense for her hair type. Kie thinks maybe this is what contentment feels like and she likes it.

She’s drifting in and out of awareness, always conscious of the warmth of him behind her and his hands occasionally lightly brushing her neck, but she didn’t really realize how much time passed until he announced triumphantly, “Done!”

JJ hopped off the bed, and tugged on her wrist until she followed him into the floor and over to her mirror. “Tada!” He says, gesturing broadly.

The braids are actually pretty tight—both in that they look good and are structurally sound. He braided four thick braids, and she ran her fingers over them before turning to face him.

“I’m impressed, JJ.” She tells him, smiling up into his face. “You did a really good job.”

“And you feel better?” He prods. “You’ll come out with us tomorrow?”

Kie laughs a little. “Yeah, I feel better. I’ll see you at the Cut tomorrow morning.”

Their eyes catch, and she’s still smiling but doesn’t feel like laughing anymore. She doesn’t recognize the small half twist in his mouth. It’s not his usual recklessly wide grin, or his got-away-with-something smirk. There’s a fondness to it coupled with an unusual softness in his eyes that is utterly new. For a moment, she thinks this is the moment when he kisses her or she kisses him and all the feelings she’s been so careful to never acknowledge come out and all the rules she’s been so careful to obey become irrelevant.

Neither lean forward. In the golden light of the early evening, JJ reaches up to trace the braid closest to her face. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Kie.”

Then he’s back out her window and running off into the sunset. She stays by her window for a minute, watching him go. The braids will need to be undone eventually—not even she is willing to wear them out in public like that. But they can stay exactly as they are for now.

[littlekatleaf]

Buried in a burning flame is love and its decisive pain (end)

Holy shitballs. Pretty close to exactly a year ago I got this idea - Junkrat and Roadhog have Christmas with some of the Overwatch crew. It was gonna be short and sweet and fluffy. I started writing in... February? 10 months and 21K words later I ended up with something almost entirely different. Oops? Thanks for joining me on the ride!  Part 1  Part 2  Part 3  Part 4  Part 5  Part 6  Part 7  Part 8  Part 9

Meds and tea and whiskey and food and mitten and probably a bit of fever still and the lingering feel of Roadie’s hand on his forehead all swirled together into an edgy excitement that made his blood fizz in his veins. Twitchy, itchy. Been looking forward to setting off the fireworks for months - been working them up that long and planning even longer. Had to get it all just right, then combine it with Lucio’s music, get the timing connected to the right shapes, the explosions to the right second… had to be focused, had to be precise and he loved the challenge. The sparks of thrill tingled along his spine and the fire they ignited burned away the lingering crud of sickness leaving him sharp and clear.

He enlisted Hana and Lucio to round up the others, betting they’d be able to convince anyone who was reluctant much better than he would. Even so, he was urging them down to the lake, torches bobbing through the dark, throwing odd shadows between the trees. Maybe talking a little faster than usual but how else was he going to impress upon them how exciting this was? 

“Know it’s cold - hadn’t really thought about that when I was planning. I mean, hadn’t planned to be here at all, just thought we’d be at the Watchpoint. Course, this is better, discounting the cold. Which is hard to do, but Roadie’s getting the bonfire goin’ - he could light a fire in the middle of a monsoon so no worries on that count. An’ Hana brought some whiskey to help so she’ll be right. Ya need to stand here, no closer. Gonna be over the water.  Safe as houses, but can’t be too careful - least according to Morrison, ha! Now turn off the torches. Better the darker it is. Lucky ain’t moonrise yet…” 

“What are we doing out here in the middle of the night when we could be curled up on the couch?” Mei asked no one in particular.

Junkrat ignored her. She’d see, they’d all see and he knew they’d love it just as much as he did if they gave it a chance. Lucio had been kind enough to not only have his sound system set up, but also brought out the box of fireworks so Junkrat didn’t have to lug it himself.

Didn’t take but a minute to set it all up, music on automatic once he started the program. All he had to do was hit the power and light the first fuse.

Music came up slow, soft, bit of piano, then edge of something electronic, rising bass and the first firework streaked up to the center of the sky and as the beat kicked in it exploded in a rain of silver and gold. At the crackling boom the others fell silent, faces tilted to the sky. The sparkles reflected in their eyes and Lucio’s soft ‘oh!’ and Hana’s squeal of delight made even the cold worthwhile. 

Let it start slow. Basic colors, red, blue, green, as well as the gold and silver. Usual shapes, circles, stars, ones that looked like fountains or willows. Then the music shifted, became rhythmic and complex with a minor edge and he sent the first special rockets. The streaks crisscrossed, intersecting like Satya’s hard light shield, like one of her knit shawls and around it burst snowflakes, all in shades of blue and silver. 

Music shifted again, bright and quick - and the second set of his own rockets split the air with a whistling crack then exploded in a crackling red heart, then a gold arrow streamed through. Lena bumped Emily’s hip with her own as their names twined through the heart. Another shift, one of Lucio’s songs, written for Hana and the rockets burst into pink bunnies and green frogs that seemed to bounce up the mountains ringing them and into the stars. 

As the music shifted a final time, setting a beat with a swing, Lena grabbed Emily’s hand and pulled her into a twirl, hands clenched firm but light, feet moving quick, spinning each other in and out and then they were dancing and so were Hana and Lucio and even Mei tugged Satya into the group. 

And then - perfect timing, as the music sang “Seeing’ stars, I’m seeing stars” the final bursts of fireworks - his favorite of the bunch - exploded overhead and Junkrat couldn’t stop his grin at the stars he’d created. Spread above him and Roadie was their night sky. The Saucepan and the Crux. Looking right, looking perfect, not upside down like here.

For a long moment Roadhog said nothing, just stood with his face tipped up, sparks reflecting in his mask as the fireworks cracked and popped and the music thumped and the others laughed and danced.

“Thought ya might like a bit of Straya,” Junkrat said finally, unable to wait for Roadhog to say something. Anything. Maybe he hadn’t recognized it after all. Or maybe it wasn't anything like he’d hoped. Maybe it only looked like home because he was remembering it so clearly. Imagining it. Making it all up again. He shoved his hand in his pocket as a gust of wind swept over them and a sneeze slammed into him, followed quickly by two more. “Huh-r’isssh! Isshh! Ishhew!” 

Didn’t even hear Roadhog move, but suddenly he was right there, shoving his hat down over Junkrat’s head and then wrapping his scarf around Junkrat’s neck. “Stay warm, idiot.”

“Trying,” he said, shivering still. He let Roadie lead him over to the fire which had grown to a roaring height, pouring out a welcome heat. Pine logs crackled and spat sparks swirling into the sky to swirl with the real stars and their backwards constellations.

Lucio cranked his own mix and the bass echoed off the mountains and Lena and Emily still danced with him and Hana. Mei and Satya huddled together, passing a mug of something between them and for a moment, just for a minute, everything felt fine. Felt good.

Junkrat glanced at Roadhog, and though the mask obscured his expression, there was a looseness in his shoulders, something in the tilt of his head that seemed to speak of relaxation and calm. Made the cold and exhaustion worth it. “Happy Christmas, Roadie.” 

“Happy Christmas, Rat.” The warmth in his tone did more to drive away the chill than the fire and Junkrat leaned against his side, letting himself enjoy the closeness. 

After a bit, the others joined them around the fire and Lena passed a joint around, “For everyone except you, Junkrat. Sorry.” 

He shrugged, pulled a flask out of his pocket. “Not gonna share my plague. Got this anyway.” The whiskey left a warm curl in the center of his belly, his muscles loose and easy. Satya told a story about a Snow Queen whose frozen heart melted with the love of a peasant girl, and though Junkrat wanted to roll his eyes, he understood the feeling. The desire to have one’s own story told in myth - to be connected to something bigger. Lena told a story about Father Christmas. Mei about a Chinese hunter, Jia Deng, who hunted with a pet wolf and left gifts of his hunt with the poor during the cruel months of winter. Then Roadie exhaled a long puff of smoke and said,

“Bet you never heard of the Holiday Boar.”

Junkrat giggled into his scarf. “Ain’t gonna tell that one to this lot, are ya?”

Lena cocked her head quizzically. “No, can’t say I have.”

“Well. Long before the Omnium exploded, before the Omnics were even an idea someone had, the Outback was still a hardscrabble place. Dusty and hot and many were desperately poor, trying to eke a living out of land that wasn’t easily giving. One day a wild boar appeared in a village, ribs showing through its skin, hair falling out in patches, it was the most pathetic excuse for a creature the villagers had seen. Most tried to chase it away with kicks and shouts and stones thrown. 

“At the edge of the village there was a farmer. He lived alone on the land. When the boar came to his homestead, the farmer’s first reaction was the same as the others - he wanted to chase it away. Nothing good could come of bringing another mouth to feed into his life. But as he raised a hand to throw a stone, he caught a glimpse of the creature’s eyes and his long dead daughter’s voice spoke in his heart. ‘Papa, please.’ His hand fell and he sighed and the boar stayed.

“In the beginning he found it annoying, an intrusion on his solitude. Still, he fed the creature, sharing the little he had, and in return it kept him company, following him like a dog and seeming to listen when he spoke. Come winter the boar was healthy and grown to a surprising size. Villagers who saw it walking with the farmer nodded knowingly - at the first cold snap he’d likely kill it, and the meat could feed them all.

“But the cold came and still the boar walked with the farmer. The villagers eyed them more than a little oddly. Finally, on the longest night of the year, the farmer was sitting by a fire with the boar at his side as usual. The farmer was lamenting that the land had been even more reticent than usual, and he was likely to lose his home to the mortgagers. 

“The boar’s stomach gave a great rumble, then it leaned forward and puked up a pile of gold coins onto the ground. The farmer never went hungry again and the village prospered.”

Junkrat couldn’t help himself, he burst out laughing. 

Hana laughed too, shook her head. “There’s no way that’s a thing.”

“It’s Australia,” Roadhog argued, deadpan voice. “It absolutely is.”

Lucio nodded, took a drag from the joint. “I could see it.”

They told stories and Lucio led them in carols and the warmth of the fire and the whiskey and Roadhog at his side and Lena’s jokes “What do you call a dinosaur fart? A blast from the past! Why does a duck have tail feathers? To cover his butt quack!” and Emily’s laughter lulled Junkrat into a doze.

“He snores louder than a boar,” Satya said, irritably. Lena giggled.

“You gave him your scarf,” Hana said to Roadhog and her tone was equal parts teasing and curious.

Junkrat felt Roadie’s shoulders move in a shrug. “Never takes care of himself, even when he’s sick.” But though he was more than half asleep, he could hear the tight coldness of the comment. The relaxed ease had gone. Junkrat wanted to sit up and interrupt, but he was just so tired.

“Gave him your cold too, huh.” Still that sing-song teasing tone, but it cut at Junkrat.

“Maybe.”

“Come on, Roadhog. What’s up with you two, anyway? He won’t give us a straight answer.”

Felt like everyone’s eyes were on them, staring. Junkrat tensed. Sit up, he told himself. Stop this. But he didn’t. He wanted to know what Roadhog would say, even more than he didn’t want to know.

Roadhog’s shoulder moved in another shrug. “Someone’s gotta keep him from offing himself on accident.”

Mei laughed; least no one else did.

Ice through his body, through his stomach, his mind, his lungs. He coughed against it, but it didn’t move. The fire had burned down to little more than embers and even scarf and hat, mitten and whiskey weren’t enough to keep him warm. He forced himself up then, away from Roadhog. Faked a yawn like he just woke up.

“Knackered. Gonna call it a night. Happy Christmas all.” Forced the words past lips that felt frozen and barely heard the others saying goodnight and thanks for the fireworks. 

The moon glowed on the snow, lighting the way back to the cabin enough to keep him from stumbling on tree roots and rocks. His foot crunched softly on pine needles and he heard Roadhog’s louder footfalls behind him. He walked faster. Just wanted to be inside, to be alone, to be warm, to be silent. Even the light of the Christmas tree seemed to mock him with its fake promise of coziness. He’d take a bath, let the water warm his bones, soothe the chills, then sleep. 

“When I said ya ain’t gotta babysit me no more, I meant it,” Junkrat said stiffly as Roadhog followed him into the bathroom. “Promise I ain’t gonna drown in the bath. Even I’m not stupid enough to do that.”

“How’re you going to get in and out?” Roadhog asked bluntly.

Junkrat turned to look and of course there were no bars to let him navigate it himself. Once he took off his prosthetics he’d be screwed. Fuck. He pushed past Roadhog and out of the bathroom. Wasn’t worth it.  

But the bedroom was just as bad. Wanted to collapse onto the bed and sleep for a century or ten, but Roadhog was standing there in the middle of the room taking up all of the space and all of the air and Junkrat knew he wouldn’t be able to fall asleep with his… looming. Instead he shoved the pillows to the head of the cot and sat against the wall, wrapping a blanket around himself. Just barely resisted pulling it over his head, too. Knew Roadie would stare and it was making him jittery. Not in a good way. His head ached again, skin tight with the too hot too cold feeling of returning fever. Should have asked Lucio for more meds. He rubbed a hand over his face, wishing for relief. Wishing for Roadie’s hand on his forehead again, cool and firm and steadying.

“Gonna tell me what’s eating you?” Roadhog asked, finally. His arms were crossed over his chest and he looked down at Junkrat from his full height. Not exactly the most inviting posture. 

“What are we?” The question spilled from him like he was vomiting. “An’ don’t give me some stupid shit like you don’t know what I mean. Hana asks and Lucio asks and you avoid the question.”

“Why do we need to put words to it? Why do they need to know anything?” 

Junkrat shrugged. It wasn’t for them that he needed words. It was him. He needed a foundation, an understanding. Because things were slippery and they could slide away from him before he had a chance to catch hold. “It’s me askin’. Now that ya ain’t my bodyguard. What are we?”

A long pause, a silence full of all the things Roadhog didn’t say. 

“Morrison said I could leave,” Junkrat blurted, unable to stand it.

Roadhog waited.

“Said if this do-gooder shit was too bloody difficult he’d have Lena turn me in. Serve my time and then whatever came next was my choice.”

No response.

“Told him I’d have to talk to you about it, but he said just meant me. I been thinkin...’ we should do it. Could probably convince him to let you go too. Then when we were far enough away could hijack the Orca, dump Lena and head back to Straya. Head home. Get the treasure, sell it to the Queen and find a place to just… live.” He blinked and the after-image of fireworks burst across his vision, constellations in all their permutations. Home. Was it? Didn’t really know anymore… But maybe there it wouldn’t be so hard, maybe there it would be like it had been.

Still no response, no movement at all. Like Roadhog’d turned to stone. Mountain. Felt his gaze go cold, measuring, calculating. Had seen Roadhog turn that gaze on others, size them up, find them lacking… but not on himself. He froze. Utterly still. Waited for the judgment to fall. Then Roadhog laughed. Not like something was funny, or maybe like he was funny and the sound was brittle and sharp in his ears.

“What’s so bloody funny, mate?” and his own voice held an edge.

“The idea that I would want to leave this,” he gestured around the room, taking in everything, “give up the good thing I got going here to… what? Live out some tiny shit life in that hellhole with you? Why the fuck do you think I’d want to go back to that? And with you?” He positively roared with laughter. “You are thick as a rock. Batshit crazy. A complete mess. Sure, when there wasn’t anyone else around who wasn’t trying to kill me, you were good for a laugh. A way to get my rocks off. But in the real world? Fuck no.”

“Fuck you too.” The words scraped his throat and he wished he had covered his head because he had that ominous prickling behind his eyes like he was going to fucking cry, or sneeze, and either way he was fucking well not going to give Roadhog the satisfaction.

“You want to know what we are, Junkrat? We ain’t shit. Nothing. Do what you want, stay or go. I couldn’t possibly give less of a shit.”

“Well that’s fuckin’ clear as crystal. Why don’t you fuck off then an’ let me sleep.” He grit his teeth, bit the inside of his cheek hard enough that he tasted iron. Not going to crumble. Watched as Roadhog turned and crossed the room. Watched the door click shut behind him. Watched the blank wall and refused to let himself crack. Silence then, that he’d wanted. But no warmth. Even wrapped in blankets felt like he was sitting in a snowstorm. Everything muffled and frozen. Freezing.

Then that chuckle in his head. You got an answer. Might not have been the one you wanted, but really Jamison, what did you expect? Did you honestly think he would go back to an irradiated waste land and a criminal life to be with you?

He thumped his head back against the wall, squeezed his eyes shut. Clenched his fist so hard his nails bit into his palm. Shut it. Ain’t real.

No? So make me be silent, then. More laughter. Oh Jamison. How do you think someone would want to be with you when your own mother couldn’t stand to be with you? 

You don’t know nothing ‘bout my mum, he told her. Nothing. But a couple tears leaked free, and the tingling prickles made him sneeze and he buried his head in the blankets and let himself go until he fell asleep, her laughter and Roadhog’s laughter still ringing in his head.

Sleep was restless, part of him kept jerking awake thinking he heard the door open. He hadn’t. When he finally woke completely he felt like he’d been hit by the ute, then had it back over him again. He stumbled out to the living room where he found Hana and Lucio playing a game with Emily, and Mei and Satya watching. 

“Morning, Junkrat,” Lucio said.

“More like afternoon,” Hana corrected.

“Potato potahto,” Lucio shrugged. “Wanna join? You can play winner.”

“Nah,” he cleared his throat, tried to sound nonchalant. “Where’s Roadie?”

“Apparently Morrison sent him on some mission. Something going on in Australia. Lena took him early this morning,” Satya said. “Guess you didn’t go ‘cause you’re sick?” Hana asked.

“Yeah. Something like that.” His head went light. Hadn’t thought Roadhog would actually leave. Take the treasure for himself and go… but there it was. He made his way into the kitchen on a floor that seemed to rock like a boat. Opened the sat comm with numb fingers. 

“Morrison.” “It’s Fawkes. I’ll take your offer. I want to turn myself in.”

[iwouldfuckillinois]

Imagine having known Illinois for quite a while now, both of you having gone on many adventures together. You both know each other’s little quirks and tics. You know the way Illinois’s eyes light up at the prospect of a new adventure, the way his brow furrows in concentration at a puzzle or how his entire being shines at finding treasure or a relic, his joy utterly infectious.

He still relentlessly flirts with you, but they’re saturated now with inside jokes and teasing. His sleepy smile as he greets you in the morning, his usual impeccable charm softened by fondness as he passes over a steaming mug, both of you completely at ease with each other.

You know him through and through. So when you notice the slight twitchiness of his fingers, the random changes of subject as you ask about today’s adventure, you start wondering about his nervous energy today. But you trust Illinois. You trust your partner to let you know if something is wrong, just like he trusts you completely when you’re both out there in danger, having each other’s back at every trap and ambush.

The trip goes smoothly. Too smoothly. There’s a suspicious lack of traps and obscure ancient warnings on crumbling walls, as you both traverse up through a cave. Illinois keeps up his usual charm, but there’s a certain distraction to his wit, a hesitation to his words anyone else would’ve missed. You track along, keeping the conversation flowing with your comebacks and teasing, but his nervous energy starts infecting you too. You begin to question what’s wrong. And the longer the trek goes on, the more worried you get. Has something gone wrong? Is he sick? Are we in trouble?

Am I annoying him?

Does he want to end our partnership?

Is he tired of me?

Lost in your own troubling thoughts and insecurities, you almost miss the spike of energy in Illinois, a sudden excitement as both of you reach your apparent destination.

The sight you encounter is breathtaking. Clouds misting above a valley, the first sprinkling of stars above as the sun sets in a beautiful soft glow. A soft breeze blows through your hair and you feel as if you’re on the top of the world, peeking through to the cosmos above.

You don’t notice when Illinois comes to stand right beside you. But you feel his warmth when he softly grabs your hand, turning you towards him. And everything around you fades then, becoming nothing more than background noise compared to the depth of love you see in his eyes.

He starts talking. How you mean more to him than any of his former partners. How he admires every part of your personality, the good, the bad and everything in between. How he fell in love with your wit, your passion, your strength, and dedication. The way you like your toast and hate sand in your socks, the way your laugh brings more warmth than a bonfire and how he loves teasing you while you’re both doing chores, throwing wet clothes at each other. He tells you about how he fell in love with you over and over and over again. He tells you how he wishes to share that love with you for the rest of his life.

Your soft tears start streaming down your face as he slowly lowers himself to one knee, a little box already open in his palm. And he asks.

“Y/N, will you do me the honor of being partners for life?”

And as the last rays of light fade into glittering darkness, his lips warm against yours, the ring a comforting weight against your finger, you realize.

You are happy.

[iwhumpyou]

The Cost (Part 3)

Masterlist.  Wergild.

Taglist: @whumps-the-word, @swordkallya, @whumpy-daydreams.

Part 2.

~#~#~#~#~#~

It hadn’t even been a day and Jace was already displeased with the arrangement.

Not with Nerali – he’d seen her face relax after she’d drank some spring water, and he could see the gruesome edges of her wounds where the bandages didn’t cover them all the way, and he owed it to her.  She had given him his future back, and she deserved to have one of her own.

But Nerali being there meant that Mirai was following her around like an overeager duckling with far too many knives, and Jace wanted to have a talk with Nerali (the kind with him very slowly sharpening his sword in a dark room) but Nerali could literally not lay a finger on his sister right now.

But Mirai being on Nerali’s tail meant that Aidan was constantly lurking in the background, arms crossed and scowling fiercely as he glared at Mirai, at Felix, at Jace, at anyone who wasn’t Nerali.

Intellectually, Jace knew that Aidan’s powers were suppressed.  He knew that the key to Aidan’s cuffs rested around his neck (because he’d already checked it four times that hour).  He knew that Aidan had about as much chance of hurting Mirai as a feral cat, even if Mirai was still recovering.

But Aidan was very good at glowering and the lack of visible sparks did nothing against the countless memories of raging flames.

Aidan had always taken Clarissa’s friendship with Jace as a personal affront, and Jace was twitchy about having the man inside his compound walls, cuffed or not.  Aidan was dangerous and he ran on spite – where Nerali wanted to please her sister, where Clarissa wished to unite the forest, Aidan had only jealousy and rage.

There was a reason he would’ve rather had Clarissa’s youngest siblings accompanying Nerali, and the reason was that Aidan put everyone on high alert.

Jace (who had plans for the day that had not involved lurking just out of sight of his sister and his guests) spent three-quarters of his time watching Aidan, and being thankful that the elementalist was scowling in the sun instead of lurking in the shadows.

And then after dinner, when he could finally lead them to their rooms and post a heightened guard around Aidan’s, the insufferable elementalist had walked into the room he was giving Nerali, nodded, and proclaimed it suitable.  Jace had given it up as a futile argument and arranged for a second bed to be delivered to the room.

Jace had passed the room three times in the middle of the night to check on the guard.  He’d met Felix twice doing the same stretch.

Judging by Aidan’s dark circles and darker glower, Mirai and Nerali were the only two people who actually got sleep that night.

Jace glowered at Aidan, sneered at the return glare, set Felix on guard duty and swept away to get some actual work done.

He checked for the key seven times in the first hour alone.

~#~

“Where’s Nerali?” she asked when only Robin, Frances, and Davina showed up for lunch.

“With Aidan,” Robin answered, not looking up from her meal.  Clarissa pursed her lips and let it go.

She had seen Aidan’s face. He needed time to calm down, and if seeing Nerali in front of him, alive and well and whole, was what he needed, so be it.

(Clarissa ached to hold her sister in her arms and never let go.)

No one showed up for dinner.

After sunset, Clarissa went around the compound, a sliver of worry caught in her throat, and tried to find her siblings.

Robin was in the infirmary, counting bandages.  Frances was reading a book, his tone clipped and terse.  Davina had looked at her with a gaze full of contempt, as icy as the room she’d frozen over.

The next morning, only Robin showed up to breakfast.

“Where’s Nerali?” Clarissa asked again.

“With Aidan,” Robin responded, staring at her meal.

Clarissa took a slow, steady breath.  “And where’s Aidan?” she asked, unable to hide the edge to her tone.

Robin looked up.  Her expression was not reassuring.

~#~

Aidan shivered as cold winds tugged at his clothes, the wooden platform creaking.  Far below him, fires flickered and occasional snatches of conversation or laughter drifted up.  If he looked down, if he paid attention, he could probably pinpoint which one of them was his sister, moving awkwardly with arms that had only half-healed.

But he wasn’t looking down. He was staring up, at twinkling stars and a half-full moon, and letting the cold night air chill his frozen skin.

A raucous chorus of laughter burst out and he winced.  He squinted downwards, at the forest floor far, far below, and he could see a slim figure balancing on their hands, swaying like they were dancing.  Nerali was talking to a woman that was not Mirai, not that it mattered.  His little sister had taken very well to Jace’s clan – goodwill that was probably brokered by a combination of her sacrifice to break the curse, Nerali’s good nature, and the way Mirai became hilariously flustered every time Nerali decided to return her teasing.

Aidan got hostile looks every waking moment of the day, and he couldn’t even lurk in the shadows because he couldn’t bear to leave the heat of the sun.  He knew that he was being followed everywhere he went, and he was painfully aware that the moment he did something wrong – or the moment they said he did something wrong – he would be attacked.

Clarissa had made her stance on family members getting injured quite clear.  Sure, she’d get mad, but her precious peace was worth more than elementalist blood.  Aidan knew that.  Jace knew that.

The only thing stopping him from getting jumped was Jace’s honor.  And the thought was frightening, the same way a clawed fist around his heart was frightening.

He turned back to the sky. The platform was high and secluded and no one had stopped him from climbing the ladder to the top.  He needed a moment to think, to breathe without the weight of suspicion and resentment on his back.

The ladder creaked, and Aidan tensed.

He turned, the railing digging into his back, uncomfortably aware that there was only one path up to the platform and that it was a long, long way back down.

His mood worsened when Jace peered over the side.

Jace considered him for a moment, clearly calculating the distance between Aidan and the ladder, before pulling up the last few rungs and straightening up onto the platform.  He didn’t say anything for a long moment, crossing his arms and tilting back to stare at the stars.

Aidan cracked first.  “Are you allowed to be up here with me?” he asked, going for patronizing but ending up with uncomfortable.

“Am I allowed to be on my clan’s lookout post?” Jace blinked, “Why wouldn’t I be?”

Aidan clenched his jaw. “Your bodyguard follows you whenever he’s not following me,” he said curtly, “And here we both are, with him nowhere in sight.”

The faintest trace of amusement crossed Jace’s face.  “Felix is having dinner,” he crossed the platform and motioned to the bonfires on the ground.  Aidan struggled to remember how to breathe – Jace wasn’t within touching distance, but he was significantly closer than he’d been on the other side of the platform.  “And I don’t need a bodyguard in my own compound.” 

Aidan wanted to press him on that, wanted to ask ‘are you sure?’ with a smirk and dancing flames – but he didn’t have the dancing flames.  He didn’t have his powers, and his sneers and glares felt like skin stretched thin, a mask twisted out of proportion.  Jace could break his arm with a barely a thought – Aidan was a trained fighter, but without his powers he was only human.

Jace – and Mirai, and Felix, and all the others – was not.  Not entirely, anyway.

“Why are you up here?” Aidan asked finally, his tone stuck somewhere between belligerent and annoyed.

“Wondering what you’re doing up here,” Jace said easily, and Aidan watched the lines of tension in his posture, the way his head was turned slightly towards Aidan even though he was staring at the ground, his stance careful not to lean too heavily on the railing.

“I’m not trying to spy on your clan,” Aidan scoffed.

“I didn’t say you were.”

“Like I care about your stupid compound anyway,” Aidan huffed, tracking Jace’s movements.  “I’m just here for my sister.”

“I’m aware,” Jace said, straightening up.  Aidan stilled, and watched as Jace crossed to the ladder.

“It’s cold up here,” Jace said, before he left.

Oh, he had no idea.

~#~

Part 4.

[herrings]

where the sky meets the sea,

@minorindech​: 💫 Bernie's mad at Linhardt. Or at least, she thinks she is. She can't remember why and her head kind of hurts when she tries. But she really doesn't want to be alone right now even more. "Um. Can I, uh. I"m sorry, I promise I won't bother you, but can I just. Stay. Here?"

PROMPT: official beach day starters // STATUS: accepting 

he’s always wanted to sleep under the stars, but he never knew where he could. camping was a distant dream to him, a bittersweet yearning oft end prematurely due to the heir’s curse of finicky bedding choices. the temperature in hevring was always too dreary for a snooze near the shore, the stars never glimmered brightly even when he sought a pretend eden within the hevring manor’s courtyard blossoms. however, in this paradise… upon this elysian shore, the temperature was perfect. the wind tousles verdant tresses gently and the lull of the ocean was downright sleep-inducing. seasalt of the sea’s winds permeate his senses but not in an overbearing manner; paradise.

darkness has always been anxiety inducing (or so, he now believes.) earth reaches its darkest shades closer to where the sea meets sand, the murk of night would signal for linhardt to make his absence. however, a bonfire has been left in his area from previous sea-goers, embers that burn bright and ease the soul. he has no means to leave as aegean hues gaze upwards. boundless, but content.

the sound of shuffling alerts linhardt’s senses as his attention drifts to the right, to where bernadetta has made her welcoming. that’s new, the hevring heir thinks as the varley girl gains enough confidence to join him, her mousy voice aside. linhardt adjusts, making room for his new companion besides him.

“you’re no bother to me, bernadetta.” he reassures at first, “by all means, be my guest. i’ll make sure to keep still for your comfort.” though, there’s a gnawing feeling within him. something odd, as if he had disturbed his ex-housemate before and thus makes him puzzled as to why she would choose his companionship over anyone else’s. perhaps it’s because they are both recluses-- or have the potential to be a recluse, had it not been for the hevring heir’s dedication to research.

silence envelops them. linhardt finds, perhaps a friend by his side had been the missing agent to ultimate bliss. while friends may be quite a stretch to describe his bond with bernadetta, they’re at least familiar enough to where even her twitchy mannerisms were… oddly comforting to him, too. the hevring heir tilts his head, now more interested in bernadetta than the sky. it’s in that moment that he notices… she is more tense than before? perhaps it’s a trick of his eyes, since bernadetta’s always been quite the paranoid one, but an ounce of concern pricks at the heir’s senses. should he ask if she’s alright or would she prefer a distraction? bernadetta’s always made herself to be an open book but-- oh. what if she thinks that he’ll attack her if he pries?

“how familiar are you with the stars, bernadetta?” it’s his own soft voice that shatters the quiet shared between them, linhardt opts to give her a distraction. “if you look closely, there’s something peculiar about the sky.”  

[thelostcatpodcast]

THE LOST CAT PODCAST TRANSCRIPTS: SEASON 5: EPISODE 1: ROCKS IN HIS POCKETS

THE LOST CAT PODCAST TRANSCRIPTS: SEASON 5: EPISODE 1: ROCKS IN HIS POCKETS Released on : 28th March 2020 https://thelostcat.libsyn.com/season-5-episode-1-rocks-in-his-pockets

I have spent a lot of time recounting the adventures i have had trying to find my cat, but not nearly enough recounting the adventures my cat has had while it has been lost.

If you listen to the Special Episode called ‘Pet Detective’ ( https://thelostcat.libsyn.com/special-episode-the-lost-cat-pet-detective ), you can hear about a dark time my cat had while in the city.

Well now I will tell you about an even darker time he had while taking a trip to the country

THE LOST CAT PODCAST BY AP CLARKE SEASON 5, EPISODE 1: ROCKS IN HIS POCKETS

The woods were beautiful, full and green. Gentle winds moved waves through the canopy, and the air was filled with the calming sussurration of life. Healthy forest, rare these days, and quite gorgeous.

And my cat cared for not a bit of it. Walking grumpily through the undergrowth after a long andl eventful journey from the city, my cat only cared for its next meal. It had been far too long. There was a meal on every corner in the city, if you looked in the right bins. But here there were mouldy berries and aggressive squirrels, and, as far as my cat was concerned, squirrels were the worst.

So my cat trudged on, grumpy and hungry, and hungry and grumpy, and increasingly so of all of them.

But... then... my cat felt a ripple in the air, and a rhythm in the earth. A clean, lapping motion. My cat’s ears pricked up. There was water nearby, lots of it and in it, yes, fish.

So he walked a little faster, the undergrowth cleared, and the forest opened out in to a huge lake, beautiful, fresh, clear, calm, with the verdant forests all around reflecting upon its mirrored surface.

My cat walked up to the dulcitly lapping shore, sniffing at it.

He considered going in the water, he did. But it was cold.

He would, if he had to.

He totally would.

But he saw a boat, bobbling about, making its way back to shore, and reeking of very recently caught fish. The boat was full of younger human adults, My cat could tell this from the smell of beer, weed, and unwashed genitals accompanied by a constant barrage of territorial noises. They seemed friendly enough, but my cat knew to keep back, and he quietly watched them land.

They got out, pushing and pulling at each other, hitting each other, wriggling their hips, and generally making a lot of noise, throwing their empty cans away into the grass.

They wore bright, small clothes.

But they took the fish with them, a huge shiny gloriously fresh fish that my cat could eat for a week. They hung it from a pole and it dangled as they walked up the hill towards the buildings.

So my cat picked up the pace through the long grass to keep up with the fish. As my cat passed one of the cans the humans had thrown, his foot flipped a twig that pushed the can in to another and they both clattered down the hill back towards the water, dislodging a few rocks as they went.

One of the humans, a woman with dark hair, glasses, and a jumper on, spun round, checking the treeline.

My cat froze in the long grass.

“Hey guys, did you hear anything?” she said.

The others just laughed. “No, what?”

“I think someone’s following us.”

“Don’t be crazy Maisie, come on!”

The woman called Maisie hesitated, looking out over where my cat was standing. “Well...ok.” she said, and then she turned back to the path and carried on with the others, accepting a can of drink from one of the men.

And my cat followed.

When they got to the buildings they split up.

“Hey, Deeber, put that thing in the store-house, yeah?” said one of the men. “It’ll stink up the house!”

“Yeah OK. I can salt it up a little, too. Make it taste gorgeous.”

“Whatever, you’re still gonna burn it on the fire tonight!”

And they made a bunch more territorial noises and went inside the house. Deeber went in to the store-house off to the other side of the path, a large wooden building full of shelves, tools, and other equipment for the upkeep of the camp, along with endless cans, bottles of wine and packets of snacks and trash strewn all around.

Deeber took the fish inside, so my cat followed him in.

Deeber hung the huge fish on one of the large hooks that hung on a rail from the ceiling, then opened some jars with salt and other herbs.

My cat watched him, with some disdain, rub these things in to the fish.

Then Deeber, satisfied with his work, picked up a can, left to join his friends, whooping loudly, and leaving the fish to hang until that evening.

My cat went and looked at the fish, hanging from the large hook in the centre of the room, high above the floor.

He leapt up to grab at the fish but could not reach.

He leapt up onto one of the counters, avoiding piles of heavy, rusted tools and empty packets of crisps. He tried to reach the fish, but fell to the floor, scattering many of the empty bottles of wine and spirits that lay around.

My cat froze at the sudden noise, checking all around him.

“Hey!” came a voice from outside. It was Maisie, the dark, haired lady. “Is anybody in there?”

My cat, leapt up and hid in a cupboard. He did not want to be found. He kept very low and very still in the shadows.

The front door creaked open and a spatula was pushed through, hesitantly followed by Maisie’s head, looking about.

“I’m armed.” she said, wielding the spatula. “I’m serious!”

She was making loud aggressive sounds, but from her smell my cat could tell she was not used to this sort of anger, and was more than a little scared right now. She seemed like a nice one.

My cat kept low so as not to startle this clearly rattled woman.

My cat watched as Maisie walked all around the massive store-house. “If you’re messing with me, I swear!” she said.

She found the fish, and the scattered bottles of wine and tutted.

Then she leant down and picked up the bottles.

“I keeping saying to take them to the recycling…” she sighed, and arranged them neatly to one side, near the door.

She took one last look around, then grabbed some snacks and left, closing the door quietly.

My cat, for his part, waited patiently, staring at the fish.

The sun slowly set, the humans lit a bonfire down the hill, next to the lake, and singing and shouting could be heard all around.

My cat decided now was a good time to try a different approach with the fish.

He stood up... but then the doors to the shed smashed open and a clearly intoxicated Deeber another friend came in, picked up the fish from the hook, and started carrying it out.

My cat hunkered down, but the wood of the cupbaord creaked, and Deeber looked back in to the darkness of the large shed.

“Did you hear that, Gus?”

“No, I didn’t hear anything,” said Gus. “Come on.”

“Wait no, maybe she was right?”

“Crazy Maisie? Come on, let’s cook!”

“Hey, don’t call her that.”

“Uh-huh,” said his friend. “OK.”

“You go on, start it without me. I’m just going to check.”

“Fine, bro.”

“Oh, get out of here.” Deeber replied, brightly, but he was twitching and shaking. He was a lot more nervous than he was acting. A cigarette trembled as he held it.

“Well come back with some wine, will ya?”

“Ha! Sure thing!”

Deeber checked all around the huge, empty store-house. He checked in the other rooms, checked around the shelves, all the while smoking nervously from his cigarette.

My cat watched him search the space all the while the smell of the fish fading as it was taken down the hill.

The man was twitchy, constantly checking behind him. My cat wanted to follow the fish, but was worried about how this Deeber could react. My cat was worried this man’s state could lead to dangerous, uncontrolled reactions. My cat did not move.

Deeber checked all around the storage area, walking right past the cupboard my cat was hiding in. But then he paused, took another drag of his cigarette, then yanked the cupboard door right open. He saw my cat and screamed.

My cat leapt straight past him to get away.

The man panicked, flailed about, trying to escape. He made grunting noises. He lost his footing, tripped backwards and impaled himself on the hook he had hung the fish from, and the momentum of his fall pushed the hook along its rail towards the far wall.

He banged against the wall, his feet not touching the floor, and his arms trying to gain any leverage.

My cat watched him, from a safe distance. What could a cat do?

And then Deeber’s body slumped, his limbs started twitching, and blood slowly started dripping from his body.

And, as my cat observed, it dripped directly in to the bottles that Maisie had organised against that wall. The blood filled the bottles until they looked, for all the world, like bottles of dark red wine.

My cat hopped down to look at Deeber, but Deeber was not moving. My cat was able to hop onto the body and climb all the way up it. Deeber did not react at all to his claws.

“Hey come on Deeber, the fish is almost ready - you got the wine yet?”

The front door slammed open once again just to their left.

A couple of his friends stood by the door, stinking of bonfire, alcohol and hormonal sweat, shouting in.

Deeber, literally just to their side, did not answer

My cat crouched down around Deeber’s shoulders.

The two friends looked down and saw the bottles.

“Oh hey! he left them by the door! Cool!”

They took the bottles, then walked away. They never even looked up.

“Hey Deeber!” they said, calling back. “Once you’re done jerking off, come down to the lake!”

When they were safely gone, my cat sniffed Deeber again to see how he was.

His body made some deep gurgling sounds, some more blood dripped from him, and he slumped a little further down on the hook.

His foot knocked one of the empty bottles beneath him, and it rolled away, out of the door and down the hill towards the bonfire.

My cat stuck his head around the door, and watched it roll, checking for the reaction of the partying people.

It rolled faster and faster, heading right for the group. The huge fish was cooking beautifully on a spit over the fire pit. The flames cast huge flickering shapes out in to the deep darkness all around them.

The bottle got closer and closer.

And… It bonked against one of the logs they were sat around and absolutely no-one noticed at all as they were all being very, very loud.

They drank wine straight from bottles, danced around the fire, and shouted jokes at each other.

Up in the shed, my cat went back to the Deeber situation

Down at the fire, one was talking:

“So I heard, right, a man was murdered in these woods, he was thrown into the lake with rocks in his pockets to weigh him down.”

“This isn’t funny, Brendan.” said Maisie.

But Brendan continued: “I heard they killed him because he was a peeping tom, so a whole mob ganged up to ‘kill the perv’.”

“Guys, come on, don’t be mean,” said Sophie, trying to take Maisie’s side.

“And some say, he comes back, and you can hear him sneaking around.”

“Oh god, whatever” said Sophie, giving up, and drinking more.

“And the last thing you hear before he gets you is the sound of the rocks in his pockets.”

“Stop iit!”

“And they killed him fifty years ago… TONIGHT!”

“Dammit, I heard something. I did!”

“Sure Maisie!”

“You’re all being horrible.”

“He’s watching you Maisie!”

“Shut up!”

“OK, OK, enough,” said one of the guys who had just returned from the shed with the bottles. “We brought the wine!”

“Thank you, Topher.” said Maisie, but refrained from the bottles. “I’m good for just now.”

“And i’m thirsty!” said Gus, took a bottle from Topher and drank a huge swig.

“It’s...really thick,” he said.

“I think they make it locally.”

And they all started drinking from the new bottles.

Back in the shed, my cat froze, as Deeber shifted and the hook holding him groaned. The mechanism was not holding his weight.

My cat jumped off, the mechanism gave way, Deeber fell down, pitched forwards, through the door, and, as my cat watched from safely inside, Deeber began rolling down the hill too.

His body dislodged rocks as it went, which tumbled down with him.

“Can you hear, like, rocks moving?”

“You mean like...rocks in pockets?” said Gus, waving his arms around.

“I’m serious!”

She pointed her flashlight at Gus, accusingly, but then stopped short.

“G-Gus,” said Maisie, “I...I don’t think that’s wine.”

And everyone looked at Gus, and at the thick, opaque red liquid all over his mouth. He was smiling gormlessly through it.

“What?”

“That’s BLOOD!”

And everyone saw it.

“Oh my god!” they all screamed, and threw their own bottles away. They spit the blood out of their mouths.

And then Deeber’s body barrelled in to the camp, rolled into the fire pit and caught fire

Up in the shed, my cat watched the people down below run about.

Down below, there was panic.

“He’s coming for us!” They yelled.

“Get out of here!”

“What about Deeber?”

“No! Get out of here!!!”

Brendan tried to pull Deeber out, another two lit off towards the far road, and the group’s car, but bumped in to Brendan who toppled head first into the fire, getting tangled in Deeber and the fish.

Maisie, Gus and Topher ran away from the carnage, up the hill, towards the house, screaming “He’s here! He’s here!”

Brendan, finally untangled himself from the spit and from Deeber, and ran, on fire, towards the water.

My cat kept an eye on him, as he was covered in lumps of the fish.

My cat left the shed and followed him as he stumbled along towards the shore. Though he became obscured by the treeline, he was still visible due to the flames.

He tumbled, once, then twice, and, just as he reached the shoreline he lost all strength and collapsed like sacks into the water. My cat was watching him from the long grass as he slowly floated out and then sunk.

Behind him, Maisy Gus and Topher reached the store-house and locked themselves in.

My cat trotted down the hill to see if there was anything left of the fish, now that the bonfire had been deserted.

Inside the store-house, they split up in the darkness and searched the place, just to make sure it was safe, they picked up the big rusted tools to use as weapons.

The fish… was destroyed, sadly, mulched up into the wood and burnt to a crisp, there was nothing for my cat there.

Inside the store-house, things were tense.

“It’s OK,” said Gus. “Everything is going to be OK. Wait what’s this?”

“Gus? Gus? where are you?”

There was a massive smash from the darkness and Maisie let out a scream.

“It’s alright! It’s alright,” said Gus, emerging from the darkness behind the shelves with a sheepish grin on his face. “I just tripped.”

“Well don’t. Come on!”

My cat, from the bonfire, looked out towards the far road, where a couple of of the humans had run off to find their car, as shouts of panic and the screech of wheels could be heard, but he had no idea of what was happening.

This night was not going too well for him at a;;. He was starving.

But right then, the smell of the fish, cooked but still very edible filled my cat’s nose again.

Brendan emerged from the water, burnt up and moaning dreadfully, shambling up the hill.

“Heeelp me. Heeelp me,” he moaned hoarsely through a burnt throat.

My cat followed him up the hill.

Inside the store-house, they explored in the darkness, scared, holding their weapons out in front of them, and starting at any strange noise they heard.

Brendan reached the door, and banged on it.

“Heeeeelp meeeee” Brendan moaned.

Topher got brave, wielded his machete, and walked towards the door. What he did not know was that Gus was approaching the door from the other side, blade up and terrified.

And, just as they approached to the door, the car, covered in blood, with a door missing and occupied by only one person, smashed into a tree hear the house and exploded.

The boom shocked everyone and the flash lit up the store-room for a shining moment.

And in that moment, Topher saw Gus and Gus saw Topher and they both slammed their blades in to the other’s chests.

“Noooo!” screamed Maisie as she ran towards the door carrying her axe.

She got there in time to see Topher and Gus tumbling forwards into the door, collapsing against it, and smashing it down to reveal Brendan, unrecognisable, burnt red-black, dripping wet and horrifying. He raised his arms and strode towards Maisie, moaning loudly.

She bared her, teeth, screamed one last time, and hurled her axe at him.

The blade of the axe hit him square in the face and lodged there.

He went down, moaning no more.

My cat watched all this from the long grass.

Maisie, sobbing from stress, went to check her friends, but they were dead and bleeding out.

She, stumbling and weeping, she went up to the body of Brendan, yanked the axe out of his head, and slammed it back into his face three more times.

Burnt up, water-logged, and with his face destroyed, there was no way Maisie could have recognised her friend.

Then she dropped the axe, walked blankly over to the house and sat on the stoop staring out at the water beneath the moon.

She said, quietly to herself: “Rocks in his pockets.”

My cat gingerly sniffed Gus and Topher, then went over to Brendan and, ignoring his missing head, ate up all the fish that was spread all over his body.

It was really good fish.

And, having finally eaten, everything was good with my cat, and he looked for a place to sleep.

He padded over to Maisie, who still sat, dazed, over on the stoop.

He gently rubbed against her arm, but it made her startle. My cat realised she was still very tense, and would have to do more to calm her down enough. He purred and rubbed himself against her.

She sniffed, and then laughed - the shock broken.

“Come on, kitty, up you get.”

And my cat sat on her lap, and curled up.

Maisie started stroking him, the tension leaving her system.

“I did it,” she said. “I did it.”

She scritched behind his years, as he slowed his breath and purred deeply.

“No more rocks in his pockets. Not anymore,” she said, and sighed, staring contentedly up at the moon.

And my cat, in her lap, fell asleep.

THIS HAS BEEN EPISODE 1 OF SEASON 5 OF THE LOST CAT PODCAST, CALLED ‘ROCKS IN HIS POCKETS’, WRITTEN AND PERFORMED BY A P CLARKE

THANK YOU FOR LISTENING

Links

https://apclarke.bandcamp.com/album/the-lost-cat-podcast

thelostcat.libsyn.com

twitter.com/LostCatPod

thelostcatpodcast.tumblr.com

facebook.com/lostcatpodcast

soundcloud.com/a-p-clarke/sets/the-lost-cat-podcast

[twitchesandstitches]

both Bonnie and Charcoal dress skimpily, in sexy and revealing femboy outfits, but they have different tastes.

bonnie loves to be as feminine as possible; pink clothes, frilly things, translucent fabrics, lots of flippy and sprarkly bits. he likes skirts and dresses (particularly those that can be undone by deft, MILFy hands a lot bigger than him), crop tops with cute logos, and low-cut booty shorts with logos on the back. Usually with something to indicate how submissive and sexually open he is!

Charcoal also likes revealing clothing, but his tastes tend to be a lot cooler; he likes leather pants and tank tops, long flappy trenchcoats and triangle shades. If its cool and kinda punk, he likes it! Plus he has a larger tail than Bonnie, so he modifies his clothes for that.

This is mirrored by their GFs; Nevnir is modeled after the girl bully punk archetype, so she has that look; leather clothes, jackets, vests and stompy boots, with shades and a ton of piercings. Tiashar usually wears flowing dresses, robes and cute MILF-coded outfits. (She doesn’t normally wear much more than shorts or pants with a bikini or tank top, as her morphing body gets frilly and cute enough for her tastes.)