#two sides supplemental writing

[flipping-the-coin]

[Patient Report: OP-7845-91653]

[Authorization Requirement: Alpha]

[Document Status: Sensitive - 94% preserved]

[Listed Authorized Individuals: Primal Steward Ratchet]

[Overseeing Medical Personnel: - Primary Physician: CMO Ratchet - Secondary Assistant: First Aid]

[Session: #004]

═════════════════

Orion was a decent enough patient this session. No serious deviations from what I’ve recorded. Through medication he has begun to return to awareness without any serious side effects. He’s still very unstable, but he is improving bit by bit. He hit me with his field again when I got too close, but that is to be expected. He's still very sensitive to anything and everything. 

Megatron loomed over me as usual. He tried incredibly hard to get a rise out of me, but unfortunately for him, I was wise enough to take a low dose of sedatives before arriving. They kept me calm at the cost of awareness. I worked in a daze, but it wasn’t as if I needed to be on my best behavior when Orion was too unsettled to even let me closer than a foot away without Megatron holding him. Orion may need to be issued ration tickets for the time being. He’s too thin and Megatron is exhausted caring for him. To my knowledge, Orion should have a sizable inheritance. As soon as he is aware enough to come and claim it, I will give it to him and he won’t need to live the way he does.

It is the least I can do. He’s entitled to his inheritance, and with Alpha Trion currently MIA, there is no point leaving a bunch of shanix and assets to rot in a vault. The banks are nearly open again. I might be able to pull some strings and give Orion access prior to his registry as a citizen, but I can’t get Megatron access when their conjunxing is unconfirmed. Slagging policies. I’m sure Megatron blames me for a lot of the issues we are dealing with globally. Primus, I wish I could show him just how chaotic things are. No matter how hard I try, files fly under my radar and sneak past the correct authorities and worm their way into legalization. I’m just one mech. I can’t do everything.

Sometimes I detest the fact that Optimus left this role for me in his will. But I know he wasn’t in his right mind at the time. It wasn’t like he trusted many of us anyway. 

Orion muttered strange things. Lots of pleas to be released and all sorts of nonsense about Bumblebee being ‘their’ sparkling. I don’t give a frag about a lot of it. The arrogance is startling. Still, I got some information from him through a few pointed questions. Megatron almost punched me for it, but I asked about Optimus again. I got a scrambled answer and a field attack in response.

I don’t have all the pieces to this puzzle, but I am beginning to put things together. I know that Orion and Optimus shared a frame throughout the war due to the Matrix. I know that the Matrix seemed to have… made Optimus. I have no clue what process allowed that to happen, but that’s what I’ve gathered. Orion was locked within the Matrix throughout Optimus’s functioning, which explains why he is the way he is. They appeared to have been able to communicate, but based on what Orion has muttered, there was a severe miscommunication issue or Orion is delusional.

The way he talks about Optimus… you would think my Prime was murdering sparklings in their cradles. War did lead him to have to make some tough calls, but everyone suffered during the conflict. Orion isn’t special in that regard. The Primus forsaken slagger really seems willing to die on the hill of Optimus being the worst thing since the Quints. 

Frag him.

I gave Orion a new dose of sedatives and left before I could get hit again. Orion Pax makes me angry. Far more than I care to admit. He was my friend. My closest companion before the war. But… I didn’t choose for it to be that way. Maybe my old fears are re-emerging. Having Optimus around made it impossible for me to think about my past. The circumstances of mine and Orion’s association were irrelevant. I didn’t want to be there and I would have been punished if Orion deviated, but I like to think we took comfort in one another.

Then he just had to fall for that mongrel Gladiator. I really shouldn’t have helped by giving him the train ticket to Kaon, but he was just so very broken. He had something he finally loved and I didn’t have the spark to deny him. I was trapped in the constraints of my deal, but he could enjoy himself a bit if I covered for him. 

So many vorns later… that decision still haunts me. I should have stopped him. I should have refused to let him go to Kaon. My biggest fear at the time was that Alph- my sponsor, was going to kill me. Who could have imagined that the end of our entire civilization would have come about instead. I was worried about vanishing mysteriously when I should have really been paying more attention. I don’t like to think about all the times I considered going to Alpha Trion. It brings back bad memories. The war made it all seem so small.

Slag, I honestly believed I was trying to court my best friend. 

I still haven’t processed that fact. How am I supposed to process that? I firmly believed that Optimus was just Orion given a new form. I thought I knew him. But now that I am Orion’s doctor and now that Optimus is gone-

I don’t think I knew either of them.

It doesn't matter anymore. I’m old and memories are difficult for me at times. I don’t want to think about any of it. I have more important things to do. I can’t allow myself to lose control. I can’t be angry with Orion. I need to stay composed. Once I put the pieces of this messed up story together, then I can decide how best to act. I don’t have enough information.

Patience. That was Optimus’s best trait. I just need to emulate him.

So long as I am patient, I will get through this. I can get the frag out of being Orion’s doctor as soon as the clinics are operational. I can get away from all of this. These slagging memories that I don’t want to recall.

═════════════════

[Assistant First Aid Report:

Everything was delivered without issue! I managed to come inside and clean up a little bit for Mr. Pax, which was nice. I got everything all picked up and I even managed to give Mr. Megatron a care package without seeming rude. At least, I hope it wasn’t rude. 

However I think there is something that should come to your attention, Doctor. I think your pill dosage was a little high this time. I know mistakes happen so please don’t take offense! I was just looking at the pill case and noted a few too many in there to be healthy. I don’t think it would have killed Mr. Pax thankfully. But it would have been very painful for him. Luckily for all of us, I removed the excess pills before anything could go wrong.

I just thought you would like to know. You have some serious jitters sometimes, so if you would like, I can count out pills when you need it, Doctor.]

[bloddysnow]

What if you were a popular anime/ game character he’s obsessed with?

Pairings: Sub! Yandere! boy x Dom! A/G character reader

nsfw minors dni

He would’nt have missed any opportunity to get any item related to you, and was ready to spend significant amounts of money to supplement his collection. Figures, posters, clothes, mugs and other items with your image. His room or workplace is decorated with this things. He would definitely have a whole collection of books or manga dedicated to you. He buys official soundtracks if they included tracks related to you or important moments with your participation.

He refused to be in relationship with girls. He would have difficulties in communication or negative experiences in real relationships, which would encourage him to avoid them. He feels a deep emotional connection with you, which would seem more meaningful and safe to him than real people. He could spend most of his time watching anime or playing the game where you exist, which made this world more meaningful to him than everyday life.

He would feel a strong rejection of any hint of your romantic relationship with another character. He actively expressed his dissatisfaction in comments, forums and social networks, leaving negative reviews and criticizing such stories or fan art. Often his negative comments were based on a sense of personal jealousy. He could perceive shipping as a threat and felt rejected. In response, he could have created alternative content where you are left alone or associated exclusively with him.

He reads fanfics where you are always dom and he is sub. You are his master, and he is your devoted slave or pet, humbly waiting for your orders and striving to please. You are his god, and he is your worshipper, ready to fulfil any of your wishes. His fantasies come to life when he imagines himself on his knees in front of you. Sometimes he writes fanfics by himself about how you crawl on him to cover his face with gentle, warm kisses, starting from his forehead and gradually descending to his eyes, cheeks, and finally to his lips. He was very excited by such fantasies. In the process of reading, he masturbates, presenting scenes so realistically.

His pants have been lowered for a long time, his hand is covered around a red, leaking dick. Mouth is full with a shirt that gets wet because of saliva. He holds phone that threatens to slip out of his fingers. He whines your name and begs you to let him cum.

One, two, three sharp pushes, his whole body shuddered when you poured inside him. "You are mine," you whispered, sticking your nose into his neck on the side, sticking out your tongue to lick it comfortingly and proprietaryly. "My sweet little reader."

His phone screen is sprayed with his own sperm.

[schattenhonig]

The A in LGBTQIA+ doesn't stand for aspec because they're not repressed!

(please read the disclaimer at the end of this post)

Ummm, excuse me? Would you mind telling me what your definition of repression is, then?

Because I feel repressed when a doctor asks me about my sex life, and if I say I have none, it gets marked down as a symptom without being asked if I suffer from it.

I feel repressed when my gyn tells me I can't get a hysterectomy yet despite losing so much blood on every period that I need to take iron supplements all the time, because I could change my mind about not wanting children (which is a whole other post, I know, but it's most likely linked to sex).

I feel repressed if I can't use dating apps or platforms because my sexuality doesn't even exist there, and the one time I tried, I got called names because I didn't want to meet for because it was clear where this date would go, despite my explicit "what I'm looking for".

I feel repressed when I think about how recently a paragraph was finally abolished in my country that considered sex a vital part of a marriage, basically entitling the spouses to having sex with their partner (both gender neutral, because entitling people to having sex with somebody else by law is wrong. It's basically a rape permission).

I feel repressed when I can't watch any film or show without it being about love and/or sex, no matter if it fits the narrative and furthers the plot.

I feel repressed when I plot my own stories and automatically put a romantic couple in there as main characters, even though I have no idea why this would be important for the plot. Not even my own stories, my own thoughts are mine.

I felt repressed when I was asked accusingly in a relationship if I wasn't missing something before I even knew asexuality as a spectrum was a thing, and having to lie about this being a side effect of my medication instead of genuinely not feeling attracted to someone in this way.

I feel repressed when I can't tell people I'm not sexually attracted to them because they will take this personally no matter how well I explain myself.

I feel repressed when everywhere I look there's advertising relying on naked skin, suggestive posing and objectification. Why are expensive cars still presented by women considered beautiful and tempting? It's not like that's necessary to convince people of spending so much money on a thing that gets you from A to B. Couches with women in smart dresses and high heels. That's not what a normal person looks like on a couch. But the worst is a truck in the town where I live: it's from a small fruit and vegetable stand, so whenever I see it, it comes from the warehouse, delivering groceries. On it is a woman clad in very little, presenting fruit. I'm sorry, but why? Does a misogynistic picture convince you of the necessity to avoid scurvy?

I feel repressed when I tell people and get the answer "you just haven't found the right person yet", because there are two possible assumptions from that point: I'm either not trying hard enough (so it's basically my own fault) or something about me is not right, appalling even (which circles back to I'm not trying hard enough or frames me as a victim of my genetics, upbringing or circumstances to be pitied).

Do not tell me how I feel. Do not try to tell me everything is fine and I shouldn't complain or ask for acknowledgement if everywhere I look, I'm reminded of how odd, how weird and how not normal I am. How much it inconveniences you to even acknowledge my existence, let alone respect any of my traits, views and choices.

And while I can only write from my own asexual point of view, I wrote this with all kinds of flavours of aspec in mind, so I'm explicitly including aromantics, aroace people and every shade of the spectrum in this. Not all my examples may apply to you, but I hope you can find something to relate to.

ETA: please feel free to add your own experiences of repression!

[thef1diary]

Happy 2k babes! Can you write a small piece of reader being iron deficient and lando just taking care of her? Reminding her to take the pills and stuff

I am totally gonna use his first win as a plot, also this reminded me to take my own pills cuz ya girl is iron deficient

wc: 600+ (omg I can actually write a blurb?!?!)

© thef1diary 2024. all rights reserved. Do not copy, steal, translate, or repost any of my work

You've been standing on your feet during almost the entirety of the race, anxiousness overtaking your emotions, rippling through you as he raced lap by lap in first place.

Throughout the podium celebrations, you cheered so loudly to the point where you felt like you would wake up with a sore throat tomorrow morning. You felt lightheaded, and as the celebrations went on, you were reminded of the fact that you had forgotten to take your iron supplements earlier that day. Telling yourself you'll take them later, you returned to Lando's driver room while he completed his media duties.

You heard Lando's footsteps approaching, entering his room covered in sweat and champagne but still holding onto his trophy. You smiled once you saw him smiling, so wide that it could've competed with Daniel's infamous pearly whites. You mustered all your energy to stand up and greet him, but as you rose from your seat, a sudden rush of dizziness swept over you, causing the room to spin.

Lando's quick reflexes caught you just in time, his strong arms wrapping around you to steady your wobbly stance. "Whoa there, easy now," he said, concern etched in his voice.

You leaned against him, grateful for his support. "I'm okay," you insisted, though the lightheadedness refused to dissipate.

As you sank back onto the sofa, feeling defeated by the sudden onset of weakness, Lando's expression softened with understanding. "I think you might have forgotten to take your iron supplements again, haven't you?" he said gently, his tone more statement than question.

You nodded sheepishly, feeling guilty for neglecting your health in the midst of the celebrations. But Lando didn't scold you or chastise you for your oversight.

Without a word, Lando wandered off further into the room, finding your bag and shuffling through it for the bottle of supplements you always carried. He returned, standing in front of you while holding a bottle of water, "here, take this," he said gently, handing you the pill.

As you swallowed it down, you couldn't help but feel grateful for his thoughtfulness.

Once the room stopped spinning and you felt more steady on the couch, Lando helped you up again, this time with more caution. "Let's take it slow, okay?" he said, his arm wrapped protectively around your waist as he held you close.

You arched up a brow, "says the fastest guy on the track today." His worry dissipated, replaced by a smug grin, "I won."

"Yes you did, baby, I'm so proud of you." You placed a kiss to his cheek, earning a sound of displeasure rumbling from his throat.

"Gimme a proper kiss, I deserve that today, no?" He looked at you with the sweetest smile, but you shook your head, pushing him away playfully. "You stink, go shower first."

He held his hands up, knowing that he was covered in champagne and sweat, "alright, alright, as long as you don't faint out here while I do."

"The faster you shower, the faster you'll get your kiss, Norris," you stated and held in a chuckle when he fumbled over his two feet to get himself in the shower.

When he returned, you curled up on the couch, Lando wrapped his arm around you, pulling you close. "Don't forget to take care of yourself, okay? I'm always here to help," he whispered.

With those simple words, Lando reminded you that even in the midst of his own triumphs, he would always be there to support you, to lift you up when you were feeling weak, and to remind you of the importance of prioritizing your own well-being. For true victory, he knew, could only be achieved when both of you were standing strong together, side by side.

Taglist: @nikfigueiredo @wonnou @jointhehunt67 @sya-skies @lochnoch @llando4norris @monsieurbacteria6 @namgification @lilymurphy03 @sargeantdumbass @hiireadstuff @racingheartsposts @d3kstar @xjval @namjoonswaifu @isabellewinchester @thedecalcomania-blog @casperlikej @khaylin27 @mlioravanfleet @glitterquadricorn

[revehae]

weak (r. fantasies)

warnings: smut, noncon, virgin!jisung x (f) anemic!reader, drugging

wc. 990

i been writing this on and off for 24 days and youre telling me its only 990 words im not a serious person at all… fake news its longer now cause i suddenly added one (1) sentence. thank you @neocentral for holding a gun to my head

for two entire days, jisung was antsy. even the mere thought of you, no matter how brief, made a cool wind sweep over his shoulders and his gut tighten uncomfortably.

he knew what he was going to do, and he knew how he was going to do it, but even more so, he knew that it was wrong.

but if he knew that it was wrong, then why did he resolve himself to do it anyway? why did he smile in your face as if he didn’t know that he was about to hurt you? why didn’t he give jeno back his stuff, instead of holding onto it all this time?

jisung didn’t have any idea what it was, other than what jeno had told him while pressing the tiny bag into his chest. colorless, odorless, tasteless, and she’ll be out long enough for you to do all the dirty, perverted stuff you’re too scared to do while she’s awake.

but the truth was that compared to the thought of doing it while you were awake, this terrified jisung tenfold. would it still hurt you, bother you? would you feel the soreness between your thighs and instantly know what he had done? would you hate him more because you wouldn’t remember?

those were the thoughts hurtling through his head when you got up to use the bathroom. but if he was going to do it, he had to act quickly. your nightstand was littered with prescriptions pills and jisung knew you took the iron supplements every night. he poured the powder into your water bottle, watching it disappear as he shook it.

jisung’s heart raced at a rhythm he never knew could be possible when you came back and grabbed a hold of your water bottle. you didn’t make a face, drinking it like nothing was the matter. and he was surprised by how quickly you were out. in the few minutes it took to take effect, you didn’t even have time to become sleepy.

for a long minute, jisung didn’t even seem to remember why he had done this anymore. he was staring at your face, poking your cheek to see if you would react, but you didn’t stir. he worried that maybe you were dead, but when he put his finger to the base of your neck, there was still a normal pulse.

jisung’s breath quickened when he realized all of the things he could do to you right now. he didn’t dive in headfirst like he thought he would, his fingers absentmindedly trailing your soft skin first. he started with your neck, since his hand was already there, gently tightening his fingers around it. he wanted to mark you so badly, but he couldn’t.

he brought his thump up to your bottom lip, overcome by the formerly suppressed urge to kiss you, and with nothing to stop him, he pressed his lips to yours. he was mildly annoyed that you couldn’t kiss him back, but on the bright side, he still had the opportunity to touch you.

to do all the dirty, perverted stuff he was too scared to do while you were awake, as jeno put it.

his words always echoed in jisung’s head, influencing him in ways that were less than healthy. you could easily take her, if you weren’t so weak in the knees, jeno would tease, nudging jisung painfully. she’s anemic, for fuck’s sake. she can’t be that strong. 

jisung pulled back to gape at you in your night gown. he always thought you looked good in them. the way they gave away your collarbone and the little lace ribbon where your cleavage stopped, and the way the cute sleeves cuffed at your wrists was endearing to him.

but right now, as he gingerly bunched up the dress and caught sight of your lilac, cotton panties, the only thing he could think about was how desperately he ached to be inside you, to feel your sticky, throbbing walls cling around his virgin cock. to prove that he wasn’t a coward, that he wasn’t weak like you were. 

and for that reason, he couldn’t be slow and steady anymore. he knew there was no clock on him, nothing pacing him and nothing threatening to tear him away from the warmth of you, but his self-restraint had already worn thin and he was running on empty.

jisung convinced himself that you wanted him as he sheathed himself deep inside you with a guttural groan, every impatient inch of him. it may not have come from your mouth, but the slick somewhat facilitating his entry was answer enough. you may not have known what was happening, but your body was hyper aware.

god, jisung’s was, too. he couldn’t resist the tight squeeze, the way your pussy gripped him for dear life, and he tipped his head forward as his hands gripped your thighs to anchor himself before he fell too deep. even they were warm, the most cute and supple pair.

his eyes were completely closed, winced shut at the first pulse of your warm and tight cunt around his dick. he knew you would have loved him, if you could feel him. he knew he was big enough to please you. the guys too often teased him, saying he had all those inches, but not a hint of what to do with any.

but jisung knew right now. driving his hips passionately into yours, big hands clasping at your soft, moisturized skin, he knew he could make you feel things unimaginable. the sounds you were unknowingly yanking out of his throat, he could easily pull out of you. the way his face tensed with pleasure, he was certain he could make short work of you, too. 

“so weak,” jisung whispered into deaf ears, burying his face in your neck, and breathing in your ravishing scent. he imagined you calling him sungie like you always did, and it only made him grunt. “it’s okay. i’ll protect you. like i always have.”

[lavandulawrites]

Hello! Do you write pregnancy? If you do, can I request some headcannons about that with Aventurine x Pregnant!Reader? Thanks!!!!! Decline if you want to 😙

Aventurine With a Pregnant Reader

Aventurine x female reader

Aventurine would be the best dad.

Masterlist

When Aventurine finds out you are pregnant, he’s over the moon. He hugs you tightly with tears in his eyes as he tells you how much he loves you.

He cooks for you (at least tries) and spoils you rotten. You are not allowed to do any work around the house, leave that to him or your maids.

He won’t say it, but he is afraid of not being a good role model for his child. He is determined to give his child the childhood he never had and to spoil him/her rotten. He only wants the best for his child.

He can be quite overprotective and is constantly afraid something is going to happen to you or the little one. He consults with the best doctors in the cosmos and makes you take multiple supplements that will make your child as healthy as possible, as well as you.

He is with you to your first ultrasound appointment and he can’t help but shed a tear when he sees his little baby on the screen.

When you are nearing your due, he is on the edge. He is constantly checking up on you and takes time off from work. You may find him annoying, but he only means well.

When you get into labour he is panicking, but hides it with his poker face. He never leaves your side in the hospital. You have to convince him to get some breaks and get something to eat for himself.

When you are finally giving birth he grips your hand and kisses your hair and tells you have well you are doing and how proud he is of you. He will let you squeeze his hand as hard as you can if you need a distraction from the pain.

When the baby is born he can’t control his happiness. With teary eyes and a smile brighter than the sun, he holds his beautiful baby. The baby is a perfect mix between you two. It has your hair colour and his gorgeous eyes. Aventurine has finally gotten a family again and he can’t wait to watch his little one grow up together with you.

[therealcocoshady]

Hey! Can you please write marshall's reaction when doctor tells him that his wife is pregnant with TRIPLETS and all of them are BOYS?

Boy dad 🩵

A/N : I find it absolutely hilarious that you sent this request right after I mention I had a soft spot for writing Eminem as the ultimate girl dad 😅. You’re challenging me and I like that 👀. Also… I had SO MUCH FUN writing this request. I don’t think I have written anything this fast ! I hope you enjoy it ✨.

CW : Mention of infertility diagnosis - surprise pregnancy - triplet - mention of abortive measures - angst - fluff

I imagine that he’d react differently to all these news, this pregnancy definitely bringing him on some type of emotional rollercoaster.

He absolutely did not expect you to tell him you were pregnant. You’d been together for a while and, early on in the relationship, you’d told him that you had endometriosis, and that the rather advanced stage of the condition affected your fertility. He didn’t mind it one bit, though. He already had daughters and did not necessarily want any more kids. If you had mentioned that being a mom was important to you, he would have done everything in his power to make your dreams come true, whether it was by doing IVF or adopting. But you didn’t. You’d known about the condition for more than a decade and, though it hadn’t been easy at first, you were at peace with the idea of not raising kids. As long as you had the love of your life by your side, you knew you’d be happy. The two of you went on to get married and enjoy life together. For years, you enjoyed marital bliss and a childfree home, his daughters being all grown up and out of the house. Never in a million years did you expect to get pregnant. The absence of period didn’t exactly tip you off, since your cycle had always been very irregular. And you almost laughed in the face of your GP when she suggested you get some bloodwork done and do a pregnancy test. Sure, you’d booked a consultation because of fatigue and nausea, but there was no way in your mind that the symptoms could be pregnancy-related. After all, the doctors had evaluated your chances of conceiving as « slim to none ». The only reason you agreed to the pregnancy test was because the bloodwork prescription also included other things, so you figured your GP would actually find the cause, probably anemia, and prescribe you some supplements.

You nearly fell from your chair when she called you about the result, and you had her confirm several times that there was no confusion, or that it was not a prank. When the call ended, you burst in a fit of nervous laughter, still in disbelief. Your laugh echoed throughout the house, causing Marshall to come to your office. You realized you probably sounded manic and demented when you saw your husband’s concerned expression. « Are you… alright? » he asked with a raised eyebrow. You didn’t even think twice abut breaking the news to him. « The doctor called. She had my results », you said, struggling to form a complete sentence. He looked at you, nervosity creeping up on him. When it came to you, he seemed to have the ability to get paranoid over nothing. And if it had you sounding this insane, he figured bad news weren’t exactly out of the question, especially with how sick you had been in the past few weeks. He kneeled by your side, holding your hand in his. « So… Is there anything wrong? » he asked in a concerned tone. « I’m pregnant, » you cackled, sounding like a hyena. « Fifteen years ago, they said I was infertile. I did three years of therapy after that and now… pregnant », you hysterically guffawed. You had tears streaming on your cheeks and you struggled to catch your breathing, the nervous laughter taking over your body. So much so that you didn’t even register Marshall’s reaction, or lack thereof. But, minutes after you said the word, you slowly realized he’d remained silent. He was still in the same position, staring at you without so much as blinking. For a spare second, you thought he’d turned into a wax statue and you suddenly understood why some people had described his stare as « creepy ». As your mind became clearer and the silence settled, you started freaking out. « Marshall…? » you asked. He slowly started blinking, looking at you as if he were a deer in headlights. « P-pregnant? » he whispered. « You’re… pregnant? ». You gently squeezed your hand and nodded, the news dawning on you in a different way. « I am » you confirmed. « And, uh… eight weeks along, approximately ». He let out a sigh, visibly surprised. Then, he took both of your hands and kissed them profusely.

« But you’re alright? » he asked, and you nodded again. « Fuck, babe, you scared me. I wasn’t sure if you were dying, or demented, or both » he let out with a chuckle. « Nope… Just… Pregnant », you giggled, still in disbelief over the word. « That’s wonderful » he said emotionally, a smile appearing on your face. You looked at him, scanning his face, just to be sure. « You really think so? » you asked. « Because I know it wasn’t planned, and… ». He gently pressed his finger to your lips and shook his head. « It wasn’t. Fuck. It really wasn’t. But if you’re happy about it… Wait. Are you? » he asked carefully. You gave him a nod and a smile. « I am. I just… I can’t believe it ». He cupped your face and smiled at you tenderly. « If you are happy about it, so am I. That’s great news, Y/N. We made a baby » he said. You couldn’t help but grin from ear to ear, happy tears welling in your eyes. « I thought I’d never be a mom » you whispered, waves of emotions crashing over you as you remembered the first time you were told you couldn’t conceive. « Apparently, you thought wrong » he said, happiness radiating on his face. « And I know our baby already has the best mama » he added emotionally, bringing you into a tight, heartfelt embrace.

The following couple of weeks was emotional but happy. The two of you were ecstatic, determined to welcome this baby as the most beautiful blessing ever. You were still sick and exhausted, but the perspective of welcoming a bundle of joy that was the product of your love certainly made it easier to bear, as did your husband’s gentle care. He seemed determined to make your life easier and give you the most beautiful pregnancy experience, constantly dotting on you and spoiling you. You thought he’d given you the princess treatment in your early courting days but apparently, he was able to take it to another level. You didn’t need the numerous bouquets of flowers (in fact, the smell made you nauseous but you couldn’t bring yourself to tell him that), nor the many presents, but you enjoyed them nonetheless. Most of all, you loved seeing his excitement and devotion for the baby, whom both of you had yet to see.

Both of you felt a sense of childlike excitement, going for the ultrasound appointment. The closest thing you could compare it to was your niece’s first trip to Disneyland, preparing to meet her favorite princesses. You were a little nervous, praying that the baby was healthy. You’d asked Marshall about the gender, and whether he’d rather have a boy or a girl, but both of you were in agreement that, as long as the baby was healthy, it did not matter. « You know, I always thought being a girl dad was what made me so soft, but I know the baby will have me wrapped around their finger, even if they’re a boy » he said. You knew that it was too early to know the gender anyway, but you couldn’t help it. You kept on trying to imagine what that baby would look like. Marshall held your hand in his as the doctor put the probe on your stomach, squeezing tighter as both of you noticed the furrowing of her eyebrows, looking at the screen. « Alright », she said. « It looks like I made a little mistake while interpreting the hormone rate results » she said, turning to you. You turned to Marshall, a sense of nervosity taking over, unsure what the implications were. Did she mean that there was no baby ? Or that there was some health issues? You felt a lump form in your throat, unable to talk. « What mistake? » Marshall nearly barked, nerves taking over his usual politeness. « Well, you see, we usually use the hormone rates to give an estimate, of how far along the pregnancy is » she explained. « However, we tend to assume that it’s a singleton ». Both of you opened wide eyes and you held two fingers up. « Twins? » you asked in a throaty voice. « Triplets » she announced with a smile. « You’re not as far along as I thought. About six weeks. But all three babies are healthy ».

Part of you wanted to sigh in relief, over the news that the pregnancy was healthy but learning that you were carrying not one, not two, but three babies sent both you and Marshall into a spiral. As you drove home, pictures in hand, none of you knew how to feel, and you both remained rather quiet, exchanging banalities, visibly in shock and in need of some time to process. Not so long ago, you were sure you’d never have kids and now, you had to wrap your head around the fact that you were carrying three. In a way, it was a blessing, for sure. But you’d spent so many years envisioning your life without kids of your own that even the perspective of raising one was overwhelming. Multiplying it by three left you speechless and terrified. You weren’t sure how you were supposed to do this. And you weren’t sure how your husband felt either. That would make him a dad to… Six kids. You spent the night in your bed, trying to get some rest and emotional clarity. You took to Google, typing vague and stupid requests such as « pregnant with triplets and freaking out ». You were hoping for some support, some testimonies of parents who had shared your concerns but made it work. Instead, you were met with hundreds of resources about selective fetal reduction procedures. You read a couple of them but, soon enough, you ended up bawling. You couldn’t bring yourself to consider it. You weren’t really churchy or religious by any means, but part of you wanted to believe that life had given you triplets for a reason, and there was no way you would get rid of one of your babies. They were there, and you already loved them so much, even if the perspective of running after three toddlers was nerve-wracking.

When Marshall walked into your shared bedroom and found you crying, he immediately engulfed you into a hug. « Babe, what’s wrong? » he asked softly. « I’m so scared. Three babies is a lot » you hiccuped. « But I don’t want to kill any of them ». He stepped back and looked at you in shock. « Woah, woah, woah. Calm down. Who said we needed to kill babies? » he asked. « I learned that there’s this surgery, that you… I don’t know. Apparently, people do that when they’re carrying too many babies » you tentatively explained in a shaky voice. « I’m freaking out, Marshall. And I know you are, too ». He hummed and nodded, not denying it. « Of course I am » he said gently. « I mean, I wasn’t prepared for a new baby. And now, knowing there’s three of them… It’s a lot. But we can do it. It’ll just take… a lot of logistics. And diapers, I guess. ». His tone was reassuring, though you could tell he was definitely stressed out. « But how are we going to do? With work and all? And do you think we’ll get any sleep at all? » you asked nervously. He shrugged and pressed a kiss to your forehead. « I don’t know » he admitted. « But we’re lucky enough that we can afford anything we need. If you want to quit your job, you can. Or we can get nannies, or a chef, or whatever. Or I can quit my job. But we’ll manage, I know it ». You let out a sigh and let your head roll on his shoulder. « It’s going to change everything » you said. « Yeah, it is. But we’re doing this together. » he replied. « So… You don’t want to get rid of two of them? » you nervously asked. « No. If you think you can’t handle three kids and you want to have that surgery, I’ll support you. But other than that, it’s not up to me to decide. It’s your body and your pregnancy. And whether we have one, three, or seven babies, I will love and support all of you ».

In the months that followed, Marshall continued to dot on you, trying to provide comfort and reassurance, but you could feel each other’s nervousness. This wasn’t help by the reaction to your pregnancy announcement. Your friends and family, though they were happy for you, were not exactly tactful about the huge change the triplets would bring in their life, sometimes making little jokes about Marshall being « too old for this shit ». They also seemed concerned about the impact on his career, though he made it clear that family would remain his priority, as it had been in the past, and that he would put his career on hold if need be. He reiterated the sentiment when you confronted him about it. « You don’t have to do this, you know? I know your career is important to you, and that you had so many plans in mind. The last thing I want is for the pregnancy to ruin it for you » you told him one night. « I know I don’t have to » he assured you. « But you’re my wife. You became my family the day I put a ring on your finger. We vowed to support each other and you held your part of the deal all these years. You supported me in everything. I want to be here for you and our babies. And it wouldn’t be fair to ask you to sacrifice more than you have » he said. You nodded, swallowing dryly. You had felt his tension and nervousness in the past weeks. He remained loving and caring, but you knew he was trying to anticipate everything. «Look, I’ve already talked to Paul. We cleared the schedule for a while. Two months before your due date, and six months after that. Then, we’ll reevaluate. But it’s not just all the career, you know? We’re welcoming three babies, everything is going to change and, some of it is going to be hard, but it’s also going to be happy. I don’t want to miss any milestone. The first time they smile, the crawling, the first steps… I want to be there. So, really, you giving me three amazing, beautiful, healthy kids is not ruining anything ».

As the pregnancy progressed, however, the nervousness remained. The two of you certainly had a few cold sweats when you tried to prepare for the birth, overwhelmed by the amount of baby stuff. Cribs, diapers, bottles, car seats… Everything was to be multiplied by three. In true dad fashion, he decided to buy a new car to accommodate the needs of your growing family, but you could see his frustration. « I think I’ll just end up repurposing a tour bus » he sighed. « The amount of stuff we’ll be driving around is insane ! Have you seen the space we’ll need, just to fit the stroller and diaper bags?! ». The more you tried to prepare, the less joyful it became. The two of you were still happy, determined to welcome the babies and love them, but you were both overwhelmed, especially Marshall. Carrying the babies, feeling them growing inside of you was your main source of comfort and reassurance but, even though your husband was involved, he didn’t have that bond. For him, it still felt distant and logistical. Until the gender reveal.

Prior to learning you were having triplets, the two of you had toyed with the idea of waiting until the birth to find out the gender. But now that the planning was overwhelming, it felt like knowing the gender would make things easier. You also suspected that it might help Marshall feel a little closer to your little ones, since he would be able to at least picture it a little better. However, you opted out of turning it into a huge event. Carrying triplets was exhausting and you were in no mood to be social for a whole afternoon. Instead, you decided to enjoy the moment, just the two of you. The doctor had given you an envelope with the gender of the triplets, which you have to the owner of your favorite bakery. You ended up with a three-layered cake, the color of each layer representing the gender of one baby. « Are you ready? » you asked as you opened the box, revealing an elegant cake, coated in white frosting. « Ready » he said with a smile. « Still no preference for the gender? » you asked teasingly. « I’m hoping for at least one son, » he admitted. « I love being a girl dad, but six daughters and a wife would feel… A little lonely » he chuckled before crouching in front of you and placing a loving kiss on your belly. « But I love y’all anyway » he whispered. You took a deep breath and cut the cake, careful not to look before he could. « I can’t do it! » you said. « I can’t look! You have a look and tell me! ». He chuckled as you closed your eyes. You heard the cluttering of cutlery, followed by a « HOLY SHIT!!! ». You immediately opened your eyes and saw all blue layers inside of the piece of cake on the plate.

Marshall was covering in mouth, in absolute disbelief. « Boys! All boys! » he said. « Looks like your wish came true » you whispered. He took your hands and kissed you lovingly. « You’re going to be a boy mom » he stated with a smile, knowing full-well you’d always said the boy moms were the most annoying of the species. You giggled and pressed your forehead to his. « Hopefully, I don’t become too annoying » you chuckled. « Do whatever you want, I’m definitely going to be an annoying boy dad » he grinned. «After we eat that cake, I’m ordering Lions jerseys for them. And Jordans. Oh my God, I’m having sons ». You watched lovingly as he rambled about how great it would be to introduce them to football, how much fun they’d have bonding over sports. His joy, which had seemed quieted by the logistical concerns, was overwhelming and he was positively beaming. « I’m quitting » he finally said. « You’re what?! » you asked. « Babe, picture this: you give birth to these three, and you do it twice more. Maybe just twins for the last pregnancy. We only need 11 players for the Mathers football team! ». You rolled your eyes at him and patted his chest. « We’ll see how you feel about it after the first night home from the hospital » you said. He rolled his eyes back at you and placed a kiss on your lips. « I can’t wait to meet these guys ».

[entelodante]

Wanted to figure out how chimera’s wrote and ended up starting on their written language proper. MASSIVE info dump below! 

Writing

They write using four fingers of one hand, usually the right, coated in ink. Think like a stamp almost. The three middle fingers draw with the tips of the teeth whilst the thumb will alternate between tip and back. All words are written simultaneously inward. The remaining fingers grip the source of ink, usually a length of hardened pigment only wetted on one side OR those who write often could invest in a pen. A pen for a chimera is a fanning brush saturated with ink that the writing teeth brush through when needing to reink. It allows for much faster wetting of the teeth, but can be messy when learning or refilling. 

Most chimera are right handed but left handed individuals exist, they will simply need to learn to use the two fingers opposite the middle in reverse of how someone who is right handed would! Luckily all fingers can move pretty independently of each other and it is an easy task.  As chimera mostly communicate through direct broadcast most find the written word lacking, so it is a common occupation among Chimera to write for others. It is an impressive skill to eloquently convey ideas/feelings through writing. Though their language set up lends to it MUCH more than others. 

The Nitty Gritty

All subject to change as this is very first drafty. 

Chimeric is a logographic language, there is no set alphabet and all ‘words’ stem from symbols representing things and ideas. Sentences are kind of two sentences atop one another, with one being the literal and the other the reactionary. It is read from out to in and sentences are written in a circle divided into 4 quarters. We’ll start with the top moving counter clockwise. 

Quarter 1 (Red) is the subject area, now subjects function the same as nouns for the most part, people, places, and things. But something important to note is that there must always be an ‘audience’ for the words being spoken. An audience basically means pronouns though they are a lot more encompassing with: I, You, Us, Them, Them excluding me/you, Us excluding you, Everyone, and a bunch of others. These are all acceptable audience subjects to top off your sentence. For instance you wouldn’t say “This pizza tastes good!” you would instead say “I enjoy the taste of this pizza” or “Everyone enjoys the taste of this pizza” the opinion/emotion needs to be applied to a source to make sense grammatically. 

Quarter 2 (Green) is all about emotions and opinions. Chimeric language is an exchange of ideas but also importantly emotions and feelings. Q2 is dedicated to how the sentence is supposed to be interpreted or felt by the reader, as obviously in ‘spoken’ chimeric speaker and listener technically feel the same about what is currently being said. Listener opinion is very distinct from speaker and in writing the speaker takes priority. So for example the statement “Who finished the box but left it in the pantry?” would instead have to be translated into something akin to “I am pissed and questioning who had the audacity to finish the box and did not care enough to remove it from the pantry thus leaving me to find it and become disappointed?” Basically chimeric lends itself to very long translations due to their feelings.  

Quarter 3 (Blue) is the action section of the sentence. The verbs if you will. This is where things are happening and is VERY tied in with Q1. Subjects in Q1 and Q2 will be linked together with lines that follow the same slice through the circle.

When a subject is linked to an action that means that the subject is the one performing the action, whereas subjects closer to the center and unaligned with an action are what is being acted upon. Like with the audience conundrum though an action needs a subject to actually act, whether it is an individual/s or an object or place. This is usually the least word heavy portion of the sentence as it is almost supplemental to Q1, and in contrast to the thin, crisp lines of the other quarters, Q3 will often be smudgey and more messy due to being written mostly with the back of the thumb. 

Quarter 4 (Yellow) is generally not going to have any words written there, as it functions as the anchor point for the hand. The outmost finger rests here on the page to stabilize the hand as it closes during writing. When writing in a ream of papers this is where the hole to hold them all together is punched through. However in modern fanciful writing styles Q4 is also used as a secondary emotional quarter. This style will use Q4 as the reactionary emotion of the reader, more so the expected reaction and emotion from the reader. This is an EXTREMELY class based writing style and it is a GIANT NO NO to write like this for someone of higher status to read. Typically only Clan heads will freely use this writing style, especially towards each other lmao. The writing style of the passive aggressive power struggle. 

All together Quarters are read at once! And I mean that there is no one word the chimera will start with. Every word of the sentence is absorbed at the same time, no following along a line like how I’m currently typing. But what indicates the order of which things are meant to be perceived is how close they are to the outside of the circle. Things closer to the center come later in the sentence and will be understood to be lower in the hierarchy of words. However only subjects and actions are directly linked to each other, emotion/opinion words are to have a more natural seep throughout the entirety of the sentence with only a loose idea of where they are to be felt. In this way while a subjects actions may be concrete, the writers feelings about them are more fluid and organic. 

Chimeric conlang yay! I wanted to make modern Mirum script but decided I needed to start at the roots. So technically two written languages originate from Mirum, but they are extremely similar with one directly branching from the other. Chimeric is the original and Miran is the derivative, they mostly share characters but their sentence structure is different. Chimeric keeps the circular structure whereas Miran is a zigzagging horizontal and completely drops quarters 2 and 4. Leading to modern Miran being a very literal language vs Chimeric’s emotion heavy focus. But if you know one you can pretty much read the other, albeit with some culture shock. 

[to-thelakes]

banged up

pairing; frank castle x fem!reader

summary; after being friends with daredevil gets you into a sticky situation, frank takes care of your wounds

warnings; fluff, hurt/comfort, reader is very injured but also very stubborn, soft frank, not proof-read, mentions of torture + wounds. some insecurity from reader

notes; okay this one-shot was written ages ago and i just got reminded that i could post it when i got an anon request (which i am going to work on if that anon sees this post ;) ) about the reader not liking swallowing pills. that's a big thing in this fic because I have been taking like 4-5 medication/supplements a day for the past 6+ months and honestly, i hate it. so so does the reader here <3 i hope you enjoy this little fic, i was debating on writing a part 2 that would be a little more angst-focused because frank hates when people he cares about gets hurt but feel free to lmk if y'all would be interested in that <3

part two

“Hey, hey,” A gruff voice pulled you back from unconsciousness. Your eyes slowly blinked open and the first thing you felt was pain. A cry escaped your lips as your hand shot to your side where the pain seemed to be radiating from. But the quick movement only seemed to make you feel worse and you cried out again, “Stop- Stop moving,” The voice repeated. It took you a minute for your eyes to adjust to the gloom and you turned your head to see Frank kneeling on the edge of the bed. There was a frown on his lips.

“It hurts,” You muttered. He sighed and gently took a hold of your bandaged wrist, pulling it down towards your side again.

“I know, sweetheart. You gotta stop moving,” He retorted. Your eyes fell closed again, the pain seemed to be coming from everywhere. Your side is where it hurt the most and as you shifted, the pain rocketted through your system. Eyes squeezed shut and another whimper fell from your lips. Frank sighed, “Sweetheart.” His tone was a warning and you balled your hands into fists by your side which made more pain shoot up.

“What happened?” Your voice was croaky. Your throat was dry and even trying to say a word made your body hurt. Your throat was scratchy, it was so uncomfortable. A ragged breath escaped your lips and you heard Frank’s heavy footsteps moving away from the bed.

“You got banged up pretty bad. Gotta stay there, sweetheart,” He insisted as his footsteps only seemed to get further away. Your eyes opened again and you turned your head to see that he was in the other room of your apartment. You didn’t know what he was doing and you knew that you should have stayed down but you never really listened to him.

With a deep breath, you slowly pushed yourself to sit up. It made your entire body ache and you cried out when the pain bloomed across your side again. But you fought against it to get onto your feet. Frank came rushing back into the room and managed to catch you just as you were about to fall on your ass. You hadn’t expected your ankle to hurt as much as it had when you put pressure on it.

“I told you to keep your ass on the bed,” He snapped. Though there wasn’t as much conviction behind his words as there usually was when it came to Frank. If anything, he seemed concerned that you were hurting yourself.

“What happened,” You repeated your earlier question. Frank sighed and he led you back to the bed so that you could sit down.

“Told ya,” He retorted. You scoffed and then whimpered when your side began to hurt again. Frank gave you a warning look before he disappeared out of the room again so that he could get the glass of water and painkillers he had initially gone out for. The room was silent and it made you pause, you could vaguely remember it now. The torture. The men. You didn’t even know who they were but they wanted to know who Daredevil was. They needed Matt’s identity and they were willing to kill you to get it.

“Where’s Matt?” You croaked out as Frank walked back into your bedroom with a glass of water and pills. You stared at them and then at him. He knew that you hated taking pills. You always bought the liquid form for your own sake. The only reason you had normal pills is because of him and Matt and Karen for when her periods got bad.

“He’s patrolling, making sure you’ll be safe,” Frank explained. You were glaring at the pills that he offered out to you and he sighed. He placed the glass on the table and put the pills next to it, “You’re a real pain in my ass, you know that?” You rolled your eyes and watched as he walked back to the kitchen. Everything hurt. Your face, your body, your feet, your ankles, your hands. When you lifted your hands up, you could make out the bruises in the gloom and there were ugly marks around your wrists from where you had been tied up.

You shoved your hands under your armpits, hiding them from your sight as you waited for Frank to return but even that movement made you hiss out in pain. After a moment Frank returned, with your usual bottle of painkillers. You always bought the kids stuff because it was the only one that was reliably in liquid form. You knew it was silly but you hated swallowing pills and your periods were too bad to force yourself to swallow them down.

“Thank you,” You mumbled. He nodded and then he got onto his knees in front of you so that he was on your level. He didn’t want to make you feel any worse by looming above you as he spoon-fed you painkillers like he would a baby.

“I patched you up. Red dealt with the rest,” Frank informed as he poured some of the liquid onto a spoon with the precision only a Marine would have. Usually, you spilt the liquid everywhere but he seemed to have practice with it.

“Explains why it hurts so much,” You retorted, practically teasing him. He narrowed his eyes, holding the spoon of painkillers away from you, “Frank,” You whined. He chuckled and then moved the spoon forward so that you could take it into your mouth. You swallowed down the liquid and watched as he poured another spoonful, “How long is it gonna hurt for?” It was a stupid question, you knew that. It was probably going to hurt for weeks, if not months considering the damage that they had done but you wanted him to lie.

“You’ll just have to see, sweetheart. Gonna have to take some time off work with an injury like that,” He said as he held the spoon out to you again. You took it gratefully and then he poured another one just for good measure.

“My boss is gonna kill me,” You mumbled. Frank scoffed and he then held the last spoonful of medicine out to you.

“If he gives ya any trouble, I’ll deal with it.” If it was anyone else, you would have laughed off those words but this was Frank and you knew he meant what he said. A soft sigh escaped your lips once Frank put the spoon onto the bedside table. He then twisted the cap back onto the bottle before he placed it down beside your glass of water.

“How bad is it?” You asked after a beat of silence. Frank was just looking at you, concern etched across his features.

“I’d still call you a pretty lady,” He said. You let out a soft huff and glanced over at the water but Frank passed it before you could hurt yourself doing it. You took the glass gratefully and cautiously took a long sip. It soothed your dry throat and you were so glad to get something to drink. You were sure that you were incredibly dehydrated after all the tears and the blood.

Frank took the glass back from you when you had drained the whole thing and he slowly got to his feet. It seemed he was going to get you another glass and you wanted to go with him. So, once he was in the other room, you pushed yourself to your feet again. It was slow and you made sure to keep the pressure off anywhere that hurt and you were on your feet, comfortably.

Each step was slow and he heard you step into the other room, his head snapping back. He narrowed his eyes, placing the water jug down before he turned to look at you. He shook his head slightly at the fact that you were walking around.

“They could have done worse,” You said before he got the chance to comment, “Can still walk.” There was a small smile on your face, trying to make light of what had happened but it was hard considering how much your body hurt with every movement.

“Don’t tempt them, darling,” He retorted. You made it over to the kitchen counter and he took a hold of your waist, keeping you steady as you took the glass. You downed the water again before placing the glass down and limping over to the fridge. You needed something to eat, your stomach was growling for it but when you looked inside, there were no leftovers. Your roommate - who worked the night shift - must have taken them with her.

“Hungry?” He asked. You nodded and he glanced over your shoulder before he grabbed a few things from the shelves, “I’ll make you something, go lie on the couch.” You let out something akin to a ‘yes’ before you hobbled over to the sofa and lay down. Your head hurt, your body hurt and you were glad that Frank was here.

<3

[huramuna]

growing on you - oneshot.

modern aemond x (ex) girlfriend reader

content: smut (specifics under the cut), afab reader, angst, unhealthy coping mechanisms, descriptions of depression and its effect on the body, probably an unhealthy relationship, aemond being an idiot, probably ooc aemond, reader not described, no use of y/n, targtowers seek therapy: the story, fluff at the end bc hehe

work is 18+, minors do not interact or you shall be smited.

word count: 7.4k (oops)

a/n: i've had this one in the drafts for a while. tweaked to be a fun 'lil angsty end of year holiday fic. as is my motto: fuck it we ball. a/n 2: i pivoted from a third person pov fic to a second person pov fic 3/4 through writing this using the find and replace tool, so if there are grammar errors, i apologize! also my first time doing second person pov, weehee.

monsters - all time low ft. blackbear • why do i - set it off ft. hatsune miku

warnings: p in v, creampie, cockwarming, slightly tipsy sex

Everything in your life was enveloped by him. your clothes smelled like him, small strands of his hair were woven into every nook and cranny of your apartment together, his fitness regime protein powder and ketogenic supplements were littered in your kitchen cabinets. 

You couldn’t get rid of him, not even if you tried. Aemond was all you'd ever known— you have known one another since the age of seven, and have been in a relationship since fourteen. You were both now twenty-six. Twelve years you’ve been together romantically (longer, even, but you were both too stubborn to admit it) and nineteen years you’ve been in each other's lives in some capacity or another. 

You’ve been involved together longer than you’ve not known each other. You hardly knew who you were without Aemond— a thought that scared you deeply. 

It’s been two weeks since he moved out, only temporarily he’d said. He needed space. He would still pay his share of the rent and you didn’t need to worry about that. 

But what about everything else? What about him warming you at night? Comforting you when you had nightmares? What about his items in the fridge, surely you’d spoil if he didn’t use them soon. What about Vhagar? Their— no, his geriatric cat that he took with him to God knows where— she must be terrified, surely. 

Was he giving Vhagar her medicine before bed? Of course he was— he was the more responsible one anyway. 

You paced back and forth until the soles of your feet ached and then some. Knowing Aemond for so long, you had intimate knowledge on everything about him, you were woven into each other's DNA like vines on a trellis, growing and expanding until you swallowed all of the other plants whole. 

That is what happened, wasn’t it? You grew too large, too comfortable and became stagnant. You weren't unaware of his rising workload at his firm, but he had always been a workaholic— throughout their teenage years, through college and grad school. It never slowed him down so you didn’t understand the change in behavior. 

Aemond was closed off. He always was a bit emotionally stunted due to his upbringing or lack thereof from his father and everything that happened surrounding his eye, but he had a soft side for you, always for you. You could retrace every part of him perfectly from memory, always could make him laugh, could comfort him when he recused himself, and the rare times he did cry, you were there. 

But the last few months there was a shift— a change in him. Where he had been hard to open before, like a rusty hinge just requiring some oil, he was now padlocked, ironclad and impenetrable. Attempts to talk were shrugged off, ignored or diverted. 

“Please, just talk to me, Aemond,” you said one night as you sat on the couch. You were watching your collective favorite show and he wasn’t even commenting on it like he usually did, he was silent and deadpanned. “I don’t understand what’s wrong if you don’t talk about it.” 

“There's nothing wrong, therefore, nothing to talk about. I’m just tired from work,” he responded gruffly. “Stop whining.” 

His tone was clipped and harsh, sending a wave of hurt trickling through your body. you were overly emotional, where he was under emotional— usually, you balanced each other out and struck a good middle ground, but in times like these, during fights, things would get explosive. 

The tears started right away, your little sniffling cries stifled by a hand over your mouth. You turned away, wrapping yourself in the blanket. 

“Seriously?” he growled, “I didn’t even say anything and you’re fucking crying again.”

“I d-don’t appreciate your tone, Aemond— you’re being mean,” you sniffed, wiping away tears that were soon just replaced by new ones. “Please, don’t be mean to me.” you were always soft hearted, and it was one of the things Aemond loved about you— or he had loved at one point. 

“I’m not being mean,” he pinched his brow, “you’re overreacting and I do not have the capacity to deal with your antics anymore.” 

Of course, your mind hit the panic button. ‘Anymore’ meaning that he didn’t want to deal with you at all, ever. The tears increased and you recused yourself further into a ball. 

“Fucking hell.” he cursed, getting up from the couch and stomping outside to the balcony, lighting up a cigarette. He was out there for about an hour— you had cried yourself to sleep. 

It was many situations like that for weeks that finally just… broke him. 

“I can’t do this anymore,” he said one day, slamming his keys down on the kitchen table, “I seriously cannot deal with your childish shit anymore— I’m working my ass off at the firm, actually bringing in money and I still have to come home and tend to you. you’re twenty-six, grow up and stop crying at every little thing. It’s fucking infuriating.” 

“You know I can’t control that part of me!” you screamed back, your temper rising immediately to match his. The words flowing out of your mouth didn’t feel like yours, but some sort of defensive mechanism. “You can’t do this anymore? You’re not doing anything Aemond, except pushing me away. God, you haven’t even touched me in weeks.” 

“Oh, so this is about sex?” he countered, getting closer to you, nostrils flaring. “You’re mad because I won’t fuck you? Are you that desperate?” 

That one stung, to be sure. Aemond had been your first and only— you only ever knew him, only ever had him. “No, not just sex,” you murmured, “you haven’t even… just touched me normally. No hugs, no little caresses, nothing— it's as if I’m an aversion to you.”

He backed up from you, “Maybe we’re just too close,” he admitted, “We’ve been together too long. It's not fun anymore, it’s not new— it’s the same old, same old, going through the motions for release, not because I actually like it.” 

“I don’t understand.” you said, your voice sounding disconnected from your body. The tips of your fingers felt numb, the numbness spreading through your body, your heart pounding in your chest as if it wanted to escape. 

“I need space. I need to think about this.” 

“This?”

“Us. I need to think about us and if this is something I really want,” he paused, “You’re… too much and not enough right now.” 

“Wh— Aemond, please,” you whispered, your voice broken, “What can I do? I’ll… I’ll change, I won’t cry or whine anymore— please.” 

He stared at you, his prosthetic eye unmoving while his remaining one bored into you, “I will think about it.” 

“What… does this mean?”

“We are taking a break, alright? I’ll have my essentials out and I’m going to stay with Aegon.” 

“Please— don’t go. I need you.” 

That was the end of that conversation. That was the last time you spoke, two weeks ago. You expected him to text you at some point, to check in on you, to maybe try to talk things out. 

Nothing. There's been nothing. Radio silence. 

You felt isolated— you had no family, as your parents were estranged from you. you couldn’t go to Aemond’s family, as close as you were to them all, it just simply wasn’t an option. 

You didn’t have friends. All you knew was Aemond. 

It was early in the evening and you were in a deep pit of self-loathing. You decided to text him. 

You swallowed thickly— the green meant he either turned off his phone or blocked you. You hoped that it wasn’t the latter. 

The next few weeks were a blur. You felt like you were barely living, merely going through the motions to stay alive— not that you really were. 

You woke up, went to work, came home, scrounged up food and then went to sleep. Rinse and repeat.

Weeks become months of your monotony, and no word from Aemond. He still had half of his stuff left in the apartment, you felt like you could barely breathe. At every turn there was something to remind you of him. 

You’d lived in this apartment together for four years, the evidence of your relationship etched into the very walls. It was like the space was closing in on you and you couldn’t catch your breath, barely keeping your head above water. 

You had to move out— you had to get away. 

You managed to find a place, a cheap studio above a coffee shop downtown. The landlord was an old lady who was sympathetic to your situation and agreed to let you take the space quickly. 

There was still the matter of your and Aemond’s current apartment— or, rather, it was just Aemond’s now. 

Saving yourself the embarrassment of seeing if you were still blocked, you called Aegon. He was a better messenger than none. 

“Hey, Egg,” you said, sitting on the couch. you bounced your knee up and down, biting at the skin of your lip. You and Aegon were amicable, not necessarily as close as you and Aemond, but you grew up together. Aegon ran in different social circles than you and you were somewhat polar opposites so you never really stuck— you did have your phases of friendship, though– which pissed Aemond off to no end. “Um, I don’t know if this is the right way to go about things but, do you mind relaying a message to Aemond for me?”

“Yeah, ‘spose I could. What’s up?” Aegon replied, his tone nonchalant like usual.

“I’m moving out of the apartment into my own place, so I guess he can go back. I’ll have all my stuff out by tomorrow.”

“Fuckin’ finally,” Aegon said, “He’s been driving me up the wall with his tidy, feng shui bullshit. He rearranged my whole place like five times and has taken up all the space in my cabinets with that nasty no-carb shit,” he paused for a moment, “I… didn’t mean that in a bad way to you, ‘course. I’m sorry it had to come to this. He’s a fucking idiot.”

That made you laugh, genuinely. Your first laugh in months. “Yeah– he… tends to do that. He left half of his stuff here, it feels like I’m living in the twilight zone. I just… gotta get away, you know?”

“Hey, I get that– you don’t have to explain yourself to me. He’s a dickhead and doesn’t understand how good he has it. If you want, I can bring my truck over tomorrow and help you move stuff.”

“You don’t have to if you don’t want to, Egg.”

“I want to– please.”

Your brow furrowed– Aegon usually wasn’t so persistent on anything unless it involved drinking or drugs. But, you hadn’t had real human contact in eons besides at work so… maybe it could be good.

“Okay, see you tomorrow. Thank you, really.”

–

It was rainy the next day– nasty and wet, droplets pouring down like tears. It felt somewhat familiar.

But, Aegon showed up like he promised, rolling up in his old, fading yellow pick-up truck. His hair was much shorter than you remembered and he looked actually well kept– Aemond must’ve been whipping him into shape.

He waved and ran through the rain, standing under the eave, “So– it’s raining.”

You snorted, “I think I can see that,” you teased with a tiny smile, “Not sure when it’ll let up.”

“I brought uh…” he paused for a moment to think, stretching out his arms in a square shape, “Y’know?”

“A tarp?” 

“Yup– that,” he gave a lopsided grin, inviting himself in through the open door, “you aren’t going to kick me out if I don’t take off my shoes, right?”

You glanced down at his boots– they were a bit muddy and definitely wet. Aemond wouldn’t have let him step two feet through the threshold without taking them off. But– you weren't Aemond. “No, keep them on if you want. It’s not my problem if you track dirt through the place anyway.”

He nodded, taking his phone out of his pocket for a moment and shooting a quick message to someone. “Sorry I haven’t been around, it’s just… he’s my brother. It would be kind of… I dunno, crossing some sort of unsaid boundary if I visited his… girlfriend?”

“Ex-girlfriend. I guess,” you corrected softly– but you didn’t really know yourself what it was. He wouldn’t talk to you, “It’s fine. I didn’t expect anyone to really reach out anyway, because of that… unsaid boundary thing.”

“We should’ve. you’re a part of our family with or without Aemond. Me, Helaena and Daeron have a whole group chat about it. Even mom asked where you’ve been,” he scratched the back of his head absentmindedly as he sent out another text, “Someone should’ve checked up sooner.”

“You’re acting like I’m some sort of neglected puppy, Aegon,” you turned to him, “... do I really look so terrible?”

Aegon glanced up at you, his mouth formed in a hard line. He cracked his knuckles, shrugging his shoulders. “I won’t lie to you. You look half dead.”

You blinked. Hard. Moving towards a mirror in the hall, you looked at yourself. Dark circles under sunken eyes, your skin was a pale pallor and your hair needed a trim desperately, your split ends curled and fettered. You were gaunt, as well– having lost a bit of weight over the months. “Jesus,” you muttered. Glancing over at Aegon, he was texting again. “Sending an update to the group chat, I guess? ‘Good news, she’s still alive, barely’?”

He snorted, “Yeah– something like that,” finally, he locked his phone and slipped it in his pocket. “I made sure to text Aemond, too.”

Your mouth felt dry at the mention. “Why?”

“He asked.”

“Asked?”

“He asked me to… make sure you were okay.”

Goosebumps prickled at your skin, the ever familiar feeling of nausea and despair swirling in the pit of your stomach. Nibbling at your lip more, you turned away, feeling a bit too exposed. “And what’d you say?”

“I said you were alive but you are not okay.”

Your lips pursed into a line as you tasted a bit of copper in your mouth from chewing on your lip. “I guess that’s right,” you muttered, “Why would he ask?”

“Aemond is… complicated. you know that better than anyone. I don’t know what kind of bug he has up his ass these last few months but… even through all of this, he still cares.”

“Like hell he does,” you snapped, feeling the sting of tears, “If he did, he would’ve given us a chance to talk it out, to… to try, maybe even go to therapy, I don’t fucking know– he would’ve reached out– anyone should’ve reached out,” your hand went to your hair, right at your hairline at your scalp, picking at the hairs there– another self-destructive habit you’ve picked up in your months of isolation, “I’m so fucking alone, Aegon. He knows… you all know I have absolutely no one else. I’ve been going through this on my own. I have no friends, no family– no brother to go live with when I need space, no family group chat. I don’t have shit, Aegon. All I’ve ever known in my life is him and you and Helaena and Daeron and mom. Why… why does it feel like I was cast off the island without even… a tribal council or something?” you sniffed, the tears coming in full force now. 

Aegon was silent, coming up behind you. “I’m… sorry,” he murmured, putting his hands on your shoulders, as frail and skeletal as you were, “We should’ve been better. We… will be better.” he turned you around and pulled you into his chest, enveloping you in his arms. “We thought you would’ve been… fine without him. He made it seem like that– that you were strong enough. I only figured it out yesterday when he was up my ass about texting him as soon as I saw you. He needed to know if you were feeding yourself, if you were keeping up with your medication, if you still had nightmares. A fuckin’... laundry list of questions– I told him to stick his questions up where the sun don’t shine and to see for himself,” he took a breath, “He settled on one question– if you were okay.”

“I think he got his fucking answer, then,” you whispered, “I am not okay. I haven’t been okay in months. I… I need help.”

“I know,” Aegon shifted you slightly to look at your face, “We’ll help you– I promise, you won’t be alone anymore. Look, I’ll even add you to the group chat, okay? I’ll rename it to ‘Aemond Sucks’, how does that sound?” 

You cracked a tiny smile, sniffling. “Yeah… I’d like that.”

– 

You ended up moving your belongings to your new place the same day, effectively ridding yourself of the constant shadow of Aemond’s memory.

Aegon even took you to Michael’s and HomeGoods to get stuff for your little studio, so you could really make it yours. It was a bit intimidating at first– you weren't used to being able to decorate things the way you wanted, as Aemond always opted to keep things simple and minimalistic. 

You, admittedly, went all out. Your new studio looked like a Pinterest board titled ‘cottagecore’. You were incredibly happy with it all, practically jumping up and down at it.

“It looks so good! I love these little mushroom chairs you picked out, Egg,” you hummed, patting some plush felted stools in the shape of mushrooms, which you put near the window. “I bet Helaena would love it.”

“Let’s take some pictures for the group chat, Hel will literally be all over this. you two always love that cottagecore, fairycore, fantasy… shit.” he grinned, stooping down to take some very out of perspective pictures of the mushroom chairs, making them look fifty feet tall.

You settled into your new place quickly, having Helaena, Aegon and Daeron over quite often for drinks and movies. Your health steadily improved until you were mostly back to normal physically– there would be a lot of scars internally, however that would take longer to heal, if you ever would. You had developed a trust issue complex since Aemond’s unceremonious exit from your life and hadn’t gone on any dates, you didn’t know when or if you would ever be ready. They did you the courtesy of not mentioning Aemond, until Daeron said something odd.

It was about four months after you moved in, and almost a full year since you’d last seen Aemond. You were all a few mixed drinks in, Aegon had made them and you were heavy on the alcohol, light on the ‘mix’, and you were all kicked back on the couch, with Aegon laying on the mushroom chairs stacked next to each other, lazed back like a cat. 

“Mom says she wants you over for Christmas dinner,” Daeron said, taking a sip of his drink, “She figured it’d be fine with Aemond going off with his new…” he blinked, catching himself. 

Helaena nudged Daeron in the ribs as a warning, staring at their friend warily.

“... his new? His new what?” you asked, your voice so quiet that it must’ve been like a squeak.

“... new girlfriend.” he finished.

You were silent for a while before sighing. “I figured it would happen eventually. I can only hope that it… wasn’t too soon after we broke up– or whatever… happened.”

“We all told him it was fucked up that he just left and ghosted you, lovey. Even mom got on his ass about it, and he is her favorite child who usually can do no wrong.” Helaena put her drink down, wrapping her arm around you. “You should come to Christmas dinner, everyone would be super happy to see you! And Aemond won’t be there, so even more reason to come. Please.” she whimpered, using her best puppy-dog face.

You mulled it over in your mind for a few moments. You couldn’t think of anything more painful than being alone during the holidays, so you nodded.

–

It was snowing on Christmas day, the flurries coming down and melting against your skin as you waited for Aegon to pick you up. You were wearing a red checkered tapestry dress with a flannel jacket, a white fluffed scarf wrapped around your neck and lower face. As soon as you saw the familiar color of Aegon’s truck, you practically booked it into the passenger seat. 

“Merry Christmas, you look fantastic,” Aegon mused, ever the charmer. “I’ve got the heater on full blast, I promise– but y’know my old boy’s puttering these days. We’ll need to get some speed for it to really warm up.” 

“Mmm,” you murmured, your teeth chattering, “S’cold.” 

He reached back and grabbed a well-used blanket, draping it over your legs. “Better?”

“... yeah– but,” you blinked, raising a brow. “What do you have this in the truck for?”

Aegon laughed as he began the drive to his family’s estate. “I think you know.”

“Please don’t tell me you’ve fucked someone on this blanket, Aegon.”

“Someones– not just someone. But I keep it clean, no worries!”

The drive to the Targaryen estate was about an hour and a half from town, nestled deep into an expansive forest where there weren’t any other homes in at least five miles. It was a gorgeous, Victorian style mansion and according to Daeron, was most certainly haunted. You had been here numerous times, of course, but it’d been a while. As you pulled up in the driveway, you saw Alicent standing outside the door dressed in a gorgeous red and green festive dress, hair curled to perfection. Nothing less was expected of Alicent, though.

“Oh, my darling,” Alicent cooed, holding her arms out to caress who she thought of as her fifth child. “It’s been too long, I’ve missed you.” 

Your heart warmed under Alicent’s caress, someone who had become more of a mother figure to you than your actual mother. You sniffed, pressing your forehead into Alicent’s shoulder. “Missed you too, mom.” 

“Come on, you both can cry inside in the nice toasty house, yeah? I’m freezing my balls off here, mom.” 

Alicent huffed, ushering both of you inside. “Don’t be vulgar, son– it’s Christmas.”

Helaena and Daeron were already there, as well as Otto, who gave you a stiff nod as a greeting, as was his usual means of communication.

You settled into the kitchen, Alicent pouring everyone apple cider and dishing out at least six types of holiday themed cookies. About an hour after arriving, there was a knock on the door. 

“Oh, that must be Rhaenyra and Laena. Can you answer the door, darling? I need to take the roast out of the oven. I’m sure they would be happy to see you!” 

“Mhm!” you mused through bites of cookies. You loved Rhaenyra and Laena, who were technically married with husbands, as was Alicent, but the three of them were in a secret, not so secret to anyone with eyes, polyamorous relationship. It always amused all of their kids when they tried to hide it. 

You turned the doorknob, fully expecting to see Rhaenyra and Laena. It was not. 

Aemond.

“Fuck.” you blurted out, eyes wide. It had been the better part of a year since you had last seen him. His hair was longer now, gathered into a low bun at the nape of his neck, his cheeks a bit more gaunt. He still wore his earrings and his rings– including the one you had given him almost a decade ago. 

“Shit.” he responded, seemingly caught equally off guard by seeing you again. The pupil of his non-prosthetic eye dilated until the iris was almost consumed in black, before he flexed his hand and reeled himself in. 

You couldn’t help but notice he was alone– no ‘new girlfriend’ as Daeron had put it. “Aemond,” you breathed, feeling like you were outside of your own body, your head filled with fluff and static. “Merry… Christmas.”

“Merry Christmas.” he responded gruffly, “Can I come in?”

“Oh– yeah, duh,” you chastised yourself, stepping aside to let him in. “Sorry.”

“Mm.” he grunted in his usual manner. That seemed to be a habit he hadn’t dropped. 

You all but retreated to the kitchen, the expression on your face telling everything. Aegon, Daeron, and Helaena gathered around you.

“I didn’t invite him, I swear.” Aegon whispered.

“Well, neither did I!” Daeron professed.

“Don’t look at me, I didn’t invite him. He left me on read three weeks ago when I sent him a picture of a bug on my windowsill.” Helaena sniffed.

A new voice chimed in. “I invited him,” Alicent spoke, breaking up the little posse, “I told him to come over or he would be grounded for three months.” 

All four of you stared at Alicent, deadpanned. 

“Mom– he’s… almost twenty-seven. you can’t ground him,” Daeron said, confused. “And moreover, why? Wasn’t he busy?”

“Well, first off, he is my son, so I wanted to see him for Christmas. Two, I believe we have someone here who has some unresolved issues with him.” Alicent responded, staring right at you pointedly.

“... I don’t know… I… I don’t know if I can talk to him. It’s been too long… I feel like I was just getting over all of this.”

“Well, do I have any say in this?” Aemond barged into the circle, his hands in his pockets. 

You suddenly felt overwhelmed, the familiar bubbling of everything being too much rising in your stomach. You were teleported back to months ago when you were barely alive, trapped in your own mind. “I… I need… I need a minute.” you muttered, your voice sounding distorted as you made your way to the bathroom, turning on the faucet. Chest heaving, you were already crying, the waterworks starting somewhere between the hallway and the sink. 

“You’re always fucking crying, I can’t take it anymore.” Aemond’s voice from months and months ago echoed in your head, causing the tears to flow more. You bit against your lip, tasting blood right away as you willed yourself to stop crying. 

“S-stop… stop crying,” you whispered, fingers messing up your hair as you held fistfuls of it. You couldn’t catch your composure for the life of you, sliding against the bathroom wall onto the floor.

Vision blurring, you don’t know how long you were incoherent for. When you came back to yourself, Aemond was in front of you, crouched down.

“Hey,” he murmured softly, the door closed behind him, “It’s okay.”

You swallowed, still numb as he pried your fists from your head, out of your hair, smoothing it down.

“Look at me, can you do that? Nod if you can hear me.”

You nodded slowly, the feeling coming back to your extremities in a sprightly tickling sensation. You blinked tears from your eyes, the liquid smearing your vision. 

Aemond rasped a thumb over your eyes, effectively clearing the obstruction from your vision. “Just breathe,” he continued to whisper. It was ever reminiscent of when he would calm you down after a nightmare, voice low and scratchy in a way that comforted you. He was so close now, closer than he’d been in forever. He still smelled the same, the scent triggering a deep aching within your chest. A scent that took you forever to get rid of, but you never truly could. “Can… we talk?” he asked then, his voice sounding more vulnerable than ever. 

It felt like whiplash, visions of your previous fights plaguing you, where he had been so closed off, so far away, so distant that you couldn’t reach him– and now, he was here. In the present, in the flesh. In front of you, opened. Not opened completely, but you could see it, like the slit of a cracked door, the light bleeding through. It was there.

“... yeah.”

“I… I’m… I’m sorry. What I did was fucked up. It was fucked up and wrong and you didn’t deserve any of it.”

“You’re right about that,” you muttered, pulling your knees up to your chest, wrapping your arms around them. “I didn’t deserve it.” 

Aemond’s mouth twitched slightly before he sat down next to you, propping up his legs in a criss-cross. He opened his mouth to speak a few times, before closing it. His hands flexed and unflexed in quick succession– he was clearly thinking very carefully about his next words. “... I’ve… got issues. You know that better than anyone. I don’t know what was going through my head those months that we fought. I can hardly remember it now, it was like… I was in a fog, a haze– I was working myself half to death, I just wanted dad to notice, to fucking… appreciate me,” he put his hands on his head, “I was so… tied up in this illusion that if I made junior associate at the firm so young that he would congratulate me on my achievement and…” Aemond let out a sigh, “And… in the process… I pushed you away.”

You looked at him, feeling your gaze soften ever so slightly. You knew that his father was a sore spot for him and that trauma ran deep. “You didn’t just push me away, Aemond,” you sighed, reaching out a shaky hand to pry one of his from his face. “... if you would’ve just talked to me, I could’ve helped. You didn’t push… you… you shoved, you shoved and ran in the other direction.”

His one violet eye danced towards you. “I know. I’ve been kicking myself for it. When Aegon told me you weren’t doing well… I almost left work to see you.”

“... you did?”

“Yeah. Aegon basically told me not to– that… this was something you needed space for. Kind of like I did but… maybe in a more healthy way.”

“A text wouldn’t have hurt.” 

He reached into his pocket and took out his phone– his wallpaper was still the same as it was, a picture of you, him and Vhagar very unhappy in an elf costume. He scrolled to his notes app, which was filled with messages addressed to you. “... I thought it might, after what Aegon had said. I was… ashamed of how I acted, how I handled the whole thing– how I left you alone without a word. He told me how you looked… dead. I didn’t want to make it worse.”

Your eyes scanned the messages, picking out some words. The main ones that caught your gaze were ‘sorry’, ‘love’, ‘regret’. A huge breath left your lungs, feeling as if everything had been knocked out of you at once. You felt like you were being whipped back and forth in the wind, trying to grab onto anything. If you both weren’t so stubborn and just messaged one another– well, no. You did message him, one time. “I thought you blocked me.” 

“... for five minutes, maybe.”

“God, we’re so fucking stupid, Aemond.”

“You aren’t– don’t say that. I’m literally a dumbass. All of my siblings told me so, even my own mother, and you know she never curses.”

The tiniest of smiles cracked onto your face as you jostled his shoulder. “Yeah… you are a dumbass. I am allowed to say it at least once. So, um,” you shuffled slightly, “Daeron kind of let it slip that you had a new girlfriend?”

Aemond pinched his brow. “Of course he said that. He is twenty-one years old and still doesn’t know how to use his goddamn ears. I said I was seeing a new therapist, not that I had a fucking girlfriend.”

“A therapist?”

“... things got really dark for me after I moved back into our… no, my… place. After you officially moved out. It felt lifeless, all of your things were gone, the fucking warmth sucked out of the place. It felt like it’d been sterilized of anything… good. I feel into something– I don’t know, a depression? I guess, that’s what Aegon called it. He suggested I see a therapist, citing me as ‘an emotionally stunted asshole who needs more therapy than him’.” he exaggerated the last bit with air quotes, rolling his eye.

“... he isn’t wrong. I mean, I love your family, but all of you are all kinds of fucked up. Maybe I am too, practically being a part of it.”

Aemond chuckled, giving a tight lipped smile. “We are fucked up. I realized that… I really do not give a shit what my dad thinks, because nothing will ever be good enough for him. He’s so far gone now that he probably doesn’t even know we exist. I’ve come to terms with that and honestly… it feels like a weight has been lifted.”

“I’m glad you could… work through some of that, Aemond.” you say sincerely, resting your cheek on his arm absentmindedly. 

“... I want to talk about us.”

“... us. Okay.”

“I don’t expect you to want to jump right back into things. It would be unfair to think that– but… maybe we could try?”

Your chest feels a bit tight at his admission– he wanted to try. Every fiber in your being wanted to say yes and jump back into it like you’d never left. But you knew you couldn’t. There were still parts of you scarred by this whole experience, some parts that may never heal. It would take a long time and a lot of talks like this to even get some semblance of what the both of you had. “Well… before we were together, believe it or not, we were friends. Could we… try that for right now?”

His chest visibly deflated a bit, but he nodded. “Whatever you need, okay?”

–

The days following Christmas, leading up to New Year’s were… different. You and Aemond were back in contact, going out for coffee and lunch a few times.

On the day before New Year’s eve, you texted him.

Turns out, timing the movie to sync with 12 am on New Year’s day to Toby Maguire saying ‘Pizza time’ was difficult. Well, it wasn’t difficult for normal people– but you and Aemond were a bit tipsy, as Aegon had left some hard apple ciders in your fridge, to which you both indulged.

“Okay, okay,” Aemond stared at his phone, “5… 4… 2… wait, no, fuck, 3… 2… I think we fucked it up– just go, go!”

Quickly, you started the movie. “Maybe we should’ve practiced– can we start over?” you plopped on the couch, sinking into the sofa and taking a swig of the cider.

“Doesn’t work like that, sweetheart. Can’t turn back time.” he mused softly, squatting down on one of the mushroom stools. “Pretty comfy.”

“Aegon picked those out, nifty, huh?”

“Nifty.” he parroted. 

The movie continued on, but as it went on, there was an unspoken tension growing. Aemond hadn’t sat on the couch, but rather, the stools that were on the other side of the room. It felt like a chasm had formed, the strain almost palpable. 

You chewed on your lip anxiously, contemplating whether or not to say anything. But, you had both been trying a new technique called ‘communication’ – a pretty cool and helpful thing that Aemond’s therapist had taught him. You remember laughing when he posed it that same way– but it was extremely important. You cleared your throat. “Why are you sitting all the way over there?”

“... um. I wanted to try the mushroom seats, I guess.”

“You don’t want to sit next to me?” you countered, feeling especially brave. 

“Is that… alright?” 

“Um, duh. I invited you over for pizza and a movie so we could… sit together. Not for you to be half a mile away sitting on a mushroom.”

“As long as it’s alright with you.” he murmured, sitting up from the mushroom stool and making his way over to you, sliding onto the couch, still a few feet away from you.

You weren’t sure if it was the atmosphere, the pent up emotions, the small buzz of alcohol, or a destructive cocktail of all three, but you inched closer to him. Closer, closer… until your thighs were touching. You glanced up at him beneath fettered lashes. “Hi.”

“Hey.” he responded, his voice low and warm. It caused a balmy and comforting vibration to go through you, reverberating in your chest. 

You became all too aware of your movements, your closeness to him, the skin of your thigh grazing against his jeans as you got as close as you could. Your lips parted slightly as he stared back down at you. “Can… we?”

“Can we, what?” he murmured, lacing his fingers through your loose hair, gently grasping it at the nape of your neck. “Use your words, sweetheart.”

“... kiss. A little bit.”

“Just a little bit?” 

“Mhm. A teeny bit.” you leaned up, Aemond meeting you halfway as your lips came together. The culmination of your year apart, all of the emotions, the sadness, the frustration and anger, the passion, love, tears– all of it came together at this moment as the two of you melded together perfectly, as if you’d never left. You couldn’t help but let out a sigh of contentment, followed by what could only be articulated as a moan. 

It caught both of you off guard, Aemond pulling away for a moment, his lips still ghosting over yours. “Fucking hell,” he breathed against your skin, sending goosebumps tingling from your tailbone up to the nape of your neck, the hairs on your body standing on end. “I’ve missed you.”

“I’ve missed you,” you responded before latching onto him once more. It started off loving and slow, your lips moving against one another like two old lovers dancing together– then it began to heat up, your mouth parting to accommodate his tongue, gnashing against yours as their dance turned up a notch. Your hands roamed his body, everything you committed to memory for so many years still in its same spot. It felt good, it felt like home. “Please, Aemond– I… I need you. It’s been so long… too long…”

“Too long since I’ve had you, had this,” his hand reached down, cupping your mound still hidden beneath your panties. Somehow, you foresaw this moment before it happened and thankfully wore a light dress. “Let me in, love.”

You parted your legs, feeling the ever familiar crook of his fingers slide down the front of your panties, testing the waters. The pad of his thumb and middle finger locked on instantly to your clit, swirling the sensitive bud, sending electric shocks through your extremities. You bit your lip to stifle a moan, pressing your forehead against his. “Need you inside, now.” you all but growled as you peppered little kisses along the soft flesh of his neck.

He wouldn’t keep you waiting long, as it seemed he needed this as much as you did. He parted your panties to the side, propping you on top of him and sliding you down his length, earning a hissed gasp from both of you. It took all of his strength not to burst in you right then, as you enveloped him in your tight, wet heat. “You were made for me,” he breathed, biting down on your shoulder, leaving red marks. One of his favorite things to do was to mark you, leaving hickies in his wake as he worshiped every inch of exposed skin he could reach. “Melded so perfectly, just for me.” he grabbed the flesh of your bottom, squeezing gently at first, then landing a smack on it as he began to thrust up into you.

You nodded fervently, hiccuping little moans as you dug your face into his shoulder, biting him in turn. Your nails sunk into his skin, indenting against his spine as they always had, as they always were meant to. It felt much like a pianist resting their fingers on the ivories after a long break, the pads of your fingers sinking into the ridges of his very being. You were meant to be here, he was meant to be here. You could feel your end coming on all too soon, his cock filling every nook and cranny of you, bullying that spongy, delicate sweet spot just right. You began to clench, your tell-tale sign to him that you were close. 

“I love you,” he whispered, panting slightly, using one hand to push your face back so you could meet his gaze. His wild, pupil-blown out gaze, cheeks reddened, mouth parted, brow furrowed. “I love you, I fucking love you. I missed you– fuck.”

“I l-love you,” you responded before he parted your lips with his thumb, “Love you so much– p-please, s’close.” you whined into his mouth.

“Let go, sweetheart, c’mon,” he grinned against your lips, nipping and biting at them. “Come for me.”

That was all you needed, the twine of your climax coming undone right in your core, snapping like a taut thread. Your usual habit was to hide your face in his shoulder when you came, whimpering and panting– but he didn’t let you this time. He held your face, staring at you intently as if you were a piece of fine art on display, and he was a connoisseur. 

You clenched around him tightly, spurring him to his own end. His hard wrought fingers gripped your ass like it was a lifeline, grunting as he found his release deep within you, where it was always meant to be. 

Coming down from your high, you slumped against his chest, mouth parted. Embarrassingly enough, a little drool wetted your lips. You were fully and thoroughly fucked out, not even registering that Tobey Maguire said “Pizza time!”

“Happy New Year, love,” Aemond murmured against your hair, nestling you tightly against him. He didn’t pull out– he preferred it this way, having you warm him through until you both fell asleep. 

“... Happy New Year,” you whispered back.

–

Two and a half months later, it was Valentine's day. You and Aemond were officially dating again as of January 2nd, much to the surprise of no one. 

You both took things as slow as you could, keeping separate apartments for the time being– but you’d given him a key to your place about two weeks in, and he was there all the time, taking much needed leave from work. 

Unlocking the door to your apartment, you walked in, seeing Aemond lounging on the couch with a scruffy brown furball on him. 

“Oh, Vhagar! You brought my baby,” you mused, dropping your items (with some grace, so as not to scare the geriatric cat), walking over, “Oh, I hope she remembers me.” you frowned, kneeling down and offering your hand to her.

“Of course she’ll remember, she yelled at me for a good three months at Aegon’s when we were without you.”

Vhagar sniffed your hand for a good minute before blinking her sleepy, lazy eyes at you, then promptly rubbing her scraggly cheek fur on your hand. You were elated, scratching her cheeks, hearing the tinkling of a little bell. 

“A new collar?” 

“Mhm, take a look.”

You swirled the collar around, looking for the name tag– only to find… a ring. An opal and moonstone ring. Your heart stopped in your chest as you stared at Aemond.

“I would get down on one knee– I was intending on you coming home and Vhagar running to you and then you finding it… but she’s on me, and I can’t get up. Cat rules,” he mused, unclipping the collar from her neck and slipping the ring onto your finger. “I know we’ve only been dating for… a month and a half, so stop me if it’s too soon.” he grinned, his toothy smile.

Vhagar gave a croaking meow, promptly jumping off of Aemond’s lap. As soon as the old cat was off, you threw yourself at Aemond, blubbering. “This… this…” you sniffed, unable to form words.

“Just so there isn’t any confusion… will you marry me?” he asked, wiping your tears away with his thumb.

“Yes, yes– I will,” you sniffle, burying your face in his chest and sobbing. 

He let you sob on him, getting his shirt all snotty and wet, all while smiling. 

After crying for at least ten minutes, you manage to take a picture, sending it to the group chat, with the caption: “I think we should add him to the chat now, guys.”

Ding.

“Is this group chat named ‘Aemond sucks’?” 

[tinyluvs]

once again thinking about unprofessional!aether who helps mountain with his bad back by straddling his ass, letting his quint flow through his fingertips while he massages his back and once mountain is pliant, he shuffles to sit over his thighs, tugging mountains pants down so he can stuff his cock into mounts perfectly loose hole, shushing him gently whilst telling him that it’ll help and to just trust him while he grinds into him

unprofessional!aether who takes advantage of aurora’s obvious distaste towards the speculum and offers her an unorthodox way to stretch her little cunt out. starting slow with two of his fingers, then three, then four and then suddenly he’s sinking his entire fist into aurora while she cries, whimpers, says that it’s too much but won’t let aether pull away from her, so he just smirks, tells her how well she’s doing for him and coos gently at her when she cums, clenching and gushing around his wrist

unprofessional!aether who accidentally writes down swiss’ appointment time wrong so when swiss walks into his office early he catches aether with his pants down around his thighs and his cock disappearing into the wet clutch of his fist and before he knows it, swiss is dropping down to his knees, barely managing to ask can i?, before aether is feeding his cock into swiss’ mouth, making swiss forget what he was even there for

unprofessional!aether who gives cirrus supplements and waits patiently for her to come back embarrassed because no matter how many times she cums her cock will not soften, aether just says it’s a side effect and that he knows how to help her. it’s totally professional when he gets her comfortable and jerks her off until she’s cumming in puddles over his office floor, until she’s crying that it hurts but it just feels so good, until she’s cumming dry and her cock has literally no choice but to soften

psa!! this is all consensual !! 𖤐 ghouls masterlist

[flipping-the-coin]

[Inquisitorial Report: Subject - Megatron of Kaon]

[Authorization Level: Alpha (Elite Guard Selective)]

[Listed Authorizations: Head Elite Guardsmech Smokescreen]

[Assigned Inquisitor: Hush]

[15 Vorns after Cybertron’s Restoration - One Vorn into assignment]

═════════════════

Hush here with another report. As usual, it's been a pretty tame stellar cycle. Megatron really doesn’t do much, Smokescreen. I’m not joking. I thought he was terrifying at first, and don’t mischaracterize me when I say he still is absolutely terrifying, but if you know how to deal with him, it isn’t all that bad. He’s been doing a lot of writing recently, but that’s about it. He wrote a rather well done piece on Orion Pax’s dancing. I didn’t think I was one for romantics, but even I can admit it was a wonderful little thing. It was so sweet and well thought out. I think Orion will like it when he reads it. I plan to go find some nice solarite blooms for Megatron to give to Orion alongside the poem he’s composed. It will be a lovely accent piece to really add to the feeling of the gift.

There really isn’t a lot about Megatron to discuss, but since I would like to meet glyph count and have something to do other than knit another three stuffed turbo foxes, I’m going to tell you more about what’s been going on. Hope you don’t mind Head Guardsmech, but I’m really quite bored and this is a nice way to get my thoughts recorded for when I inevitably have my memory wiped and I need a refresher on handling my targets.

So you know I made up a company, right? Of course you do, I put it in my last report. Anyway, I put on my disguise, changed my paint, and swapped out my visor for a gold one before going to meet Orion as my new persona, Melody. I double-checked that everything looked good and covered up the wings of my badge. Then, once it was a good way through the morning, I walked up and rang the doorbell with my bag of gardening tools. You have no idea how long I spent frantically learning about gardening. I read everything I could get my servos on and I even went to train under a florist for a few deca-cycles. I had Carnage go out and look for plants for me as well. Did you know that the ruins of Crystal City are filled with plants thought extinct? I mean the city has been on fire since the Quints blew up Vector Omega, but the fires aren’t as bad now, so I could feasibly go fetch some plants.

Right, back on topic. I made sure my disguise was perfect and then rang the bell. I made sure Megatron would be out at the time just so that in case things went south I would be able to book it without being murdered. Orion’s field is nasty, but it won’t outright kill a mech, at least not based on what I’ve seen. If the Primal Steward and Megatron can walk it off, I am sure I can handle it too. That said, Orion answered the door pretty quickly and seemed genuinely surprised to see anyone there at all. I smiled as nicely as I was able, and our interaction went something like this:

“Hello! I’m Melody from Melody Photographics and Landscaping! Would you happen to be Orion Pax?” 

Orion was really shocked when I introduced myself. He hesitated a lot at the door but replied soon enough.

“Yes, I am Head Archivist Pax. What can I do for you?”

 I think he was expecting me to demand money or something with how he was giving me a look. Maybe he thought Megatron hadn’t paid dear Melody for the pictures. He wouldn’t have been wrong if he had thought that. Megatron hasn’t paid me for scrap, but at this point, I do what I do because I’m bored, so I guess it doesn’t matter.

“I was hired to tend to your garden and the exterior of your hab. Would it be possible for me to step in so we can discuss what you would like to get from this arrangement? I can begin work as soon as I know the budget I will have available and what you would like to see your garden become.”

Again, he looked like someone had come and slapped him upside the helm with a brick. Honestly, I can see why Megatron is fond of Orion’s optics. They are very expressive when he’s running through lots of emotions. He invited me in pretty quickly, and we ended up sitting down to discuss plans over tea. Orion makes killer tea by the way. I don’t think I’ve had tea since I got put in this post of mine, so his tea was extra nice. Did you know he likes his tea with loose crystals? I didn’t but now I do. 

We chatted for a bit and he asked all about how I got my job and who hired me. I told him Megatron hired me to take care of the place since my photographs turned out well and he liked my work. I also let him know that I do have a feline named Carnage who stays with me to assist me with my visual impairment. That one I came up with on the spot when I accidentally slipped up about my visor. See, the one I was wearing wasn’t actually a medically enhanced one, it was just protective. I think he might have been worried I was hiding something, either that or he was just curious. Whatever the case, I panicked a bit and took off my visor to show him why I have it.

I might have scared him, but I don’t think so. It’s really hard to tell with Orion. Sometimes he’s as clear as crystal, and other times he’s impossible to read. He just looked at my mutated optics, asked if they were painful, and then made an understanding noise. It was… relieving to have somebody look at my face and not be disguised. Megatron is going to have a field day when he finds out that his nickname of 'spider’ for me is far more accurate than he originally assumed. I know what I look like. I know that it’s because of my optics that I was made into an Inquisitor.

Sorry, it’s just nice to not be immediately gagged at. Following my reveal, Orion asked about Carnage, to which I just stated that Carnage comes and goes but doesn’t cause trouble. Then, once he seemed confident in my genuine interest in gardening, he grabbed some datapads, floor plans, schematics, designs, and so much more that I didn’t even know he had. By the time he had everything laid out, his entire kitchen table was covered in documents detailing his property and how he would like his garden to look. It was honestly super fun working with him to design the layout of the garden. We spent all cycle debating what would look best where.

I’ll tell you what, though: Orion Pax is rich. Megatron never spends much shanix, so I haven’t actually seen the sheer amount of cash these two monsters have in their accounts. But when I asked how much I could spend and made it clear I was happy to purchase whatever was missing, Orion outright shut that idea down. He shook his helm and went over the expenses for the garden, which I will have you know are absolutely astronomical considering what Orion wants. This is what he told me:

“Melody, you look like you haven’t fueled properly in vorns. I am not going to have you take shanix out of your hard earned salary to pay for my garden. I have a substantial inheritance to my name, and even with all these expenses, I will still hardly scratch the surface of those funds.”

He showed me his account, Smokescreen. He’s got more shanix than some senators have at this point! He’s disgustingly wealthy, and I did, in fact, choke a bit when I read his account balance. Orion is related to Alpha Trion, right? Well, that fragger must have been swimming in funds because Orion looks like some sort of foreign prince with how much shanix he has just sitting around. He told me a good chunk of his inheritance was made null and void with the shift in economics and the new currency system, but that much of it still held strong because many of his assets are in relics, property, and documents.

It was wild. I ended up handing Megatron a copy of the amount of shanix in his and Orion’s accounts a few cycles later, and he did an actual spittake at the number. I can’t blame him. Even deca-cycles after the matter, I still find myself recalling just how much cash my targets have to their names. I haven’t seen that much money anywhere, much less in one place at the same time. 

Back on the subject of the garden. Orion made his plans, and I’ve been spending the past couple of deca-cyles hunting down things he wants. Orion has been helping too, and so far we meet once a deca-cycle to go over plans again. I’ve already begun clearing out the garden of all the random plant growth already there. The dirt is all sifted and energon shards have been distributed to fertilize it all. I got some bots to bring over the trees Orion ordered and I managed to convince Megatron to help me hold them up while I got the holes prepared. Currently, there is one huge techtite tree that shot up like a vining holoshade and two smaller trees from Crystal City that I grabbed. I don’t actually know what they are, and neither does Orion. We are both looking into it, but they are pretty so they are allowed to just kinda hang there.

I spent a cycle with Orion laying down walkways too. That was fun. We talked about all sorts of plants and had lunch on the deck after spending the morning laying down eco friendly path pieces. We got into an argument over a bench we were putting together for the garden, but that argument resolved itself when Megatron came out and showed us that we were both reading the manual wrong. We put one screw in the wrong place, and the whole thing looked like a fragged up mess.

I got laughed at and Orion got kisses. I may or may not have been rather bitter about that. But we got the bench finished and got seeds for some copper growths spread around. I expect them to grow in alongside the newest plants we have shipping in rather quickly. Oh, we also got a nice tea table put under the techtite tree. We’ve had lunch there once a deca-cycle ever since. First Aid even came by once and got to fuel with us! He’s really nice. I really enjoy First Aid’s company. He knows a great deal and is very caring. He took one look at my optics and prescribed me some medication I don’t know.

I’ve been taking it for a while now and I must say, while it hasn’t fixed my life’s problems or the sensitivity of my optics, I can now withstand a little more dust before my optics get all agitated. 

As a side note, Carnage has been sleeping on top of my cockpit for a while now, and just the other cycle I decided to open it up because he kept pawing at it. He jumped right in and refused to hop out. He hasn’t emerged in cycles, but he doesn’t seem to be very concerned. I can feel him in there and it’s actually pretty comforting. Is that normal? I mean, I know that some of the big fliers will let others ride in their cockpits, but are they supposed to have to fuel more afterwards?

That’s all I’ve got for now. I will keep you updated, as usual. 

═════════════════

[Report Received: Visibility Status - Seen]

[Note from Head Elite Guardsman Smokescreen: Hush for Primus’s sake, you are getting far too comfortable in your role. I can’t exactly stop you now, but please, be careful before giving away your weaknesses. As for your question? I am afraid I don’t have the answer. Very little is known about yours and others frame types. A lot of information was lost during the war. So unless you are in pain, I wouldn’t worry about it.]

[hihello-pinky]

Sight (5)

Suna Rintarou X F! Reader

Sometimes, it takes losing someone to finally see them. He wished he knew this before, but Rintaro had to learn this the hard way.

Genre: Angst, Romance, Hurt/Comfort

Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction and in no way represents my views of the original anime/manga characters.

WARNINGS: nothing, just fluff, and OH, did not go through proofreading lols

Word Count: 1.6k

Surprise quick update! I know I said in the last part that things are about to get downhill starting from this chapter. However, I really enjoyed writing this one that I had to cut out the angst portion. So... this is also quite a short read. Happy reading, though!

Kindly reblog, like, and/or leave a comment if you loved this chapter and let me know what you think! xoxo

part one part two part three part four

kofi ~~

˚✧₊⁎⁎⁺˳✧༚ - - - ˚✧₊⁎⁎⁺˳✧༚

“I’m very happy, Y/N,” Dr. Hirai says in front of you as she examines the papers. “These results look good. You haven’t been stressed much lately?”

You beam at the woman. “I guess so. My headaches have rarely occurred as well.”

”Great.” She smiles as she picks up her pen and starts to write. “I’m going to prescribe you some vitamins and supplements. But remember, rest and sleep is top priority, okay?”

You respond with a nod, akin to a child receiving instructions from their parent on the first day of school.

As you wait for Dr. Hirai to finish writing the prescription, a knock comes on the door. After the doctor’s “Come in”, your husband’s head peeks inside.

”Hi, Doc.” He greets before looking at you. “Hey. Something came up at the company and I have to go there. Would you want to wait for me at the cafe across the street?”

Other times you would have felt disappointed about his need to leave, but the mere fact that he’s informing you - through a cute peek at the door nonetheless - makes your heart flutter instead.

“Okay, sure.”

Rin shoots you a smile that almost melts your heart. “Great. I’ll keep you posted.”

And just like that, the door closes again. You turn to Dr. Hirai to see her looking at you. “Anything’s the matter, Doc?”

The woman just smiles before handing you the prescription. “Oh, nothing, Y/N. Nothing.”

˚₊⁎⁎⁺˳༚ ˚₊⁎⁎⁺˳༚

You watch the busy street through the window, your hand tapping a pen against your journal. You’re not one to miss writing daily but these past several weeks, you have been too preoccupied to jot down your thoughts.

Then, there’s also the matter of an irrational fear.

Truth be told, you’ve been happy since that night Rintarou admitted his attraction to you; the night he asked you to give him a chance and for you two to get to know each other.

You’d love to pen down those memories but there’s a voice at the back of your head telling you that it’s a bad idea. That it’s a prelude to something terrible happening.

You place your pen on the table and flip through the older entries on your journal, only to remember the entries you are looking for are no longer in the notebook’s binder. You had them removed and placed in a box the day before you asked Rin for divorce, thinking that it's time to give up on trying to make things work for both of you.

But then, things have changed now.

Or have they really changed? That voice in your head asks in skepticism.

What if, just like before, this “peace” is a fluke? What if Rin ends up hurting you again?

You close your eyes tightly and rub at your temples. You shouldn’t be entertaining this kind of thoughts. Overthinking and worrying about things from five years ago…

”Hey, Y/N? Is that you?” A familiar voice brings you out of your thoughts and you open your eyes only to be met by a friendly smile.

”Oh,” you say in pleasant surprise, “Hi, Hajime. What an unexpected meeting.”

The older guy's smile widens as he gestures for the seat across you. You nod in reply, closing your journal and putting it at the side.

”What brings you here?”

”I had a check-up with my doctor at the hospital across the street. How about you?”

At your question, Hajime scratches his nape. You notice his ears redden and you try not to smile at how boyishly embarrassed he looks. “Um, I’m visiting someone.”

”A friend?”

He locks eyes with you and groans at the teasing look that you know is visible on your face. “Okay, okay. She’s not technically a friend. I… met her one night through an accident, my motorcycle bumped into her. Thankfully, her injuries are not serious.”

”Oh my god,” you cover your mouth in reflex. You compose yourself before continuing, “I’m assuming she’s okay, though?”

Hajime waves his hand in front of you. “No worries! She’s fine and getting better. In fact, she’s about to get discharged tomorrow.” He suddenly clicks his tongue. “Am I bad to feel sad about her being discharged? I won’t have a reason to see her anymore.”

This time, you’re not able to stop yourself from laughing. “Hajime, that’s silly! Why won’t you just ask her out? Or her family and friends, maybe? You probably have met some of them, right?”

He smiles sheepishly and it’s a contrast to his usual demeanor when in the playground with his son. “I’m nervous to ask. Also, her family’s not here. She very recently moved back to the country from living abroad several years before. She also mentioned she has yet to reconnect with any of her old friends.”

”Oh, I see. But isn’t that reason enough to ask her out, if you’re really interested in her?”

”I guess so…”

Seeing the flush on your friend’s face makes you smile. “Who would have thought you’d get yourself in a classic meet-cute scenario?”

”Ugh, Y/N, please stop teasing me.” You know he means to reprimand, but Hajime still joins you in your laughter.

˚₊⁎⁎⁺˳༚ ˚₊⁎⁎⁺˳༚

“Fuck.” Suna resists the urge to throw his phone after the screen died on him. The battery had been on the verge of dying and he couldn’t find his charger anywhere. So, he’s on the way to the cafe, hoping that you didn’t decide to go somewhere else.

As he approaches the entrance, it amazes him how he’s quick to spot you in a crowd now. He sees the baby pink dress you’re wearing, your cardigan looking soft and comfortable over it. He also notes that you had tied your hair into a bun, a few strands framing your face.

And then he notices you’re not alone. To his dismay, he recognizes the person you’re currently with. Before he knows it, Suna is already brisk-walking the short distance from the entrance to your table.

You notice his presence as you look up at him and smile. That very sweet and innocent smile instantly calms him down a notch. He takes a deep breath. “Hey. I wasn’t able to send you a message, my phone died on me.”

”That’s okay.” Then, gesturing to your companion, you ask, “Rin, you remember Hajime?”

Suna tries to sound as nonchalant as possible as he faces the man. “Yeah. What brings you here?”

Hajime gives him what he assumes to be a friendly smile and Suna reminds himself that there’s no acceptable reason why he should give in to the urge to punch the smile out of the man’s face. “I was gonna visit someone at the hospital.”

Before Suna can respond, the man quickly checks his watch as if suddenly remembering and curses under his breath. “Oh, shoot. Uh, I should go.” He gives a wave before going over to the counter to make his purchase.

Suna shakes his head, a small scoff leaving his mouth. “Rin,” you call his attention. “Let’s go?” He watches you zip your bag close and before you can put the strap on your shoulder, he swiftly grabs to carry it for you.

If he didn’t turn his back as soon as he does so, he wouldn’t have missed your blush and smile.

˚₊⁎⁎⁺˳༚ ˚₊⁎⁎⁺˳༚

Once you reach Rintarou’s car, he asks if you have your phone charger with you. As you say yes, he asks again if you would plug it in the car’s charging port as he maneuvers the car out of parking.

You do as he asks and, as you place his phone on the console, notice some things that spark your concern.

”Rin?”

”Yeah?” He responds, eyes ahead.

”I know we both have sweet tooth, but didn’t we agree not to give Risa and Ryuu too much candy?”

”Huh?”

”Lollipops and gums,” you answer, finally tearing your eyes away from the items that had caught your attention. You turn to Rin and watch as the confusion leaves his face.

To your surprise, he only chuckles in response. “Those aren’t for the kids, Y/N. They’re mine.”

Now, it’s your turn to feel lost. “Huh?”

Rintarou bites his lips. “I’m trying to quit smoking. I heard those are nice alternatives.”

”Oh.” You’re at a loss of words for a moment, remembering the many times you have told him in the past that smoking is bad for the health. As you struggle to find what to say, Rin continues.

”It’s gonna take a while though. To be honest, this isn’t the first time I’m trying and it’s really hard.” A small laugh. “I’ve been smoking even before I was legally allowed to. But god, I do hope I can finally quit this time.” He shoots you a quick smile. “I don’t want my wife to leave me because of nicotine problems.”

And just like that, whatever response you’ve been able to come up with in your mind gets forgotten, chased away by the butterflies in your stomach.

Rintarou has been doing this a lot lately: calling you his wife.

Of course he had done so in the past, but they were all said in mockery, with the intent to spite and hurt you. It’s the very opposite now. He knows he makes you flustered and you know he enjoys seeing you blush.

You turn your head to look out the window, hoping he can’t see your very red face. Behind you, he laughs a little. It does not help in calming the beating of your heart. “What’s the matter, Y/N?”

”Shut up, Rin!"

to be continued.

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[swappingbryn]

Best Purchase

I knew I would likely not be able to achieve ALL my fitness goals, but I still wanted to try and achieve some of them. I was on the wrong side of 30, not balding but my head was thinning, I gained the “freshman 15” and it grew like compound interest, and I had little visible muscle.

After a year of strict diet, exercise, supplements, I had lost about 20 pounds of fat, gained some muscle, but I was fat from where I wanted to be and from where I thought I would be after all this hard work.

I kept seeing ads for a clothing brand “Midlife Changes,” which I only remembered because I thought it was strange that a company called “midlife” would have only influencers as models. However, they had lots of five star reviews and nothing below a 4, but the weird thing was that all the reviews were short or had no comments. Their prices were high, so I only bought a shirt from the clearance page called “Ragin Ray.”

It arrived in a small, nondescript package a week later (since I refused to pay for expedited shipping). Inside the package was a note thanking me for my purchase, a request to leave a review once I was satisfied, and instructions. I thought it was strange to include instructions with a shirt, but figured it was just washing instructions, but it was a detailed note explaining how to use it. I was to shower, then wear it to bed, the entire following day, making sure to work out as much as possible, not to shower or remove it, and sleep in it once more, and only then should I remove it and shower and then was the shirt. I thought it was stupid, but figured I had nothing to lose. I waited until Friday night, so I’d have all day Saturday to follow the instructions, I showered, put on the short and went to bed.

I woke up the next day and I felt different, and once I saw myself, I realized I was at lease 10 years younger. I wasn’t big, but I was younger, and with the extra time, I knew I could make better gains.

I wore the shirt all day as instructed, and went to the gym for two hours that morning, when I’m usually exhausted after one hour. Went home for lunch, I wanted to shower since I smelled but I held out, then knowing I couldn’t go out with friends or do anything since I was sweaty and smelly, I went back to the gym. I did another 3 hours. I was drenched in sweat but still felt good. When I went to the locker room, I saw my reflection, I was amazed, I was huge.

I went home, had a small dinner and went to bed. I refused to deviate from the instructions. I woke up Sunday and KNEW something was different. I ran to the bathroom and realized I was even bigger. As per the instructions, I removed the shirt, got in the shower and explored my body. It felt amazing, huge muscles, hard abs, and my dick was almost 9”. I exited the shower and when I entered my room, it was all different, trophies all over the wall, messy bed, a desk, and a closet full of clothes that for me, the new me.

I threw on some clothes, grabbed my phone and wallet and went to the gym. When I arrived, the desk attendant, who never paid attention to me before, said “what’s going Ray? Party last night?” I mumbled agreement and kept going. I checked my wallet in the locker room and saw a new ID, I’m Joel Raymond Edwards, 24 years old.

This was the best purchase I’ve ever made, and I made sure to leave a 5 star review, but only write “best purchase ever, love this shirt.”

@kiwineeds

[talenlee]

3e: Winners and Losers In Lawful Space

Planescape is a silly place.

Dungeons & Dragons is a wholeheartedly silly game, and it’s important to remember that what makes it silly is an expansive growth out of a particular root. It is a tree of many branches but thanks to the way that it encourages people to build their own things on top of it, it has become a sprawling kind of folk narrative and generally accepted consensus material that then a company comes along and tries to augment and supplement. Still, as much as a corporate mind is at the head of what gets published, what gets handed to that corporation is going to derive from the mind of a dork who likes D&D. To that end, D&D’s lore is a constant push-pull between the kinds of nerds who like organising lists and the kind of nerds who like to invent new types of dragons they want to have sex with and they’re all trying to integrate one another’s material because that’s how nerds demonstrate mastery over a topic.

The result is that D&D lore is composed of parts that neatly and smoothly fit together and parts that should be airbrushed on the side of a van, and all subjects exist in a space between those two points, on a spectrum. And nowhere is this more evident than in the way that 2e’s setting Planescape introduced elements that 3rd edition tried to hide.

Planescape, as a setting, exists very close to the ‘airbrushed on a Van’ side of things, and it’s extremely obvious when you look at its roots in 2nd Edition. In this space, much of what makes Planescape Planescape was codified. For those of you unfamiliar, Planescape is a setting made up of the idea of ‘planes’ as distinct, discrete universes with their own rules separated not by time and space, but just by barriers or magical boundaries. You know how Narnia is supposed to work, with the wardrobe? It’s like that, but there are a lot more wardrobes and they all go to different places. Think a sort of multi-level Isekai scheme.

Anyway, it’s a setting with like, multiple whole universe-sized worlds, that may or may not have planets inside them, some of which follow a very narrow set of identifying rules, like the elemental plane of Fire, which is full of Fire, or are just like ‘here, but a bit weird,’ like Bitopia, which is a whole plane that is mirrored vertically at a certain height. If you look up in Bitopia, you see another whole country up there – that’s why it’s called that. Also everyone there is bisexual.

Planescape sought to build out more of that structured universe and then in each structured space, fill it with interesting notions. But the structure is a little odd, in that it’s hard to make an infinite number of chairs organise neatly, someone is always putting out one more where they shouldn’t. That means there are tidy diagrams of the Planar cosmology, and then you look inside any of the bubbles in that diagram and find it’s full of gibberish.

It was in 2e that, as far as I know, we were introduced world-wise, to the characters of the Modrons.

There’s a whole writing form that involves referring to Modrons in deliberately obtuse ways, with Modrons being the individual, plural, categorical, and utility terms for this people, but what you need to know about them is that Modrons are weird lil guys that are made out of a basic geometric shape – pyramid, cube, dodecahedron, all the way up to sphere (or down to sphere, depending on who you ask). They are truly perfect Lil Guys, a byproduct of a plane of true law and order which doesn’t in any way cohere to what humans (the people playing the game) necessarily assume about law.

They make a lot of sense in a storybook kind of way where you don’t need to have big answers for what they are or how they work or even how their philosophical bias towards pure lawfulness works. In the world of 2ed, where sometimes things that sound like they should be well explained, clear rules are kinda yada-yada-yada’d in a space that you might imagine is flavour text, the Modrons left a bunch of questions unanswered and seemingly, that was good. It was good that they were heavily ambiguous because what was the life cycle of ‘an orb?’ Any answer made them less mysterious and pushed them away from the oddness that they represented.

Anyway, 3e was an attempt by a serious company to do serious things and that’s why when they went back to talk about the Creatures That Lived In The Lawful Planes, they came up with the Inevitables.

Inevitables are the demons of small minds, writ large. Literally, the point of an Inevitable is to be a Lawful Neutral version of a Demon, an entity that exists purely based on rules, coalesced out of a world made of rules, and with nothing holding them back from expressing that. Each of the Inevitables is meant to respond to a rule in the universe and then enforce it. They are self-appointed near-immortal construct cops, and they’re meant to oppose things and people that break the rules that they, specifically, are meant to care about.

These rules are completely out of whack, though, because one of them is meant to enforce say, justice, another the inevitability of death and another, the way the desert is a fixed ecosystem that nobody should try and change or interact with. And in that case, there are a bunch of plants that the Inevitables are going to have issues with, that don’t seem to be capable of forming complex political allegiances.

There’s a really interesting distinction between Inevitables and Modrons, to me. Modrons are weird and interesting but also, there’s nothing they can do that answers a question. Inevitables are a fun challenge that’s supposed to be present to oppose players or potentially be recruited into an adventure, but not for too long. But Inevitables, the 3e attempt to populate Lawful Planes with A Kind of Guy, sort of fell apart and are now more of a trivia question while Modrons have endured into 4th and 5th edition.

I don’t think there’s some greater, better reason for it or anything. I don’t think that Inevitables failed because they were Bad Design or something. But I do think that for me, the way that Modrons represented Weirdness was much more interesting than the ways the Inevitables sucked weirdness away with their simple, clear consideration of certain things as being part of natural reality.

After all: Inevitables would hunt down people who extended their lifespans because ‘everyone must die.’ But Inevitables were immortal. That’s a pretty interesting thing to juxtapose and maybe a character could struggle with that.

Or maybe they could make a big speaking trumpet and demand that everyone else refer to them as a Spokesmodron which is, in my opinion, much funnier.

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

[archibaldtuttle]

Alien : Romulus - a 7/10 reason to stop making Alien films

This review will be spoiler-free

When I came out of the theater yesterday, after having gone through a viewing of Alien Romulus, I caught myself agreeing with my friends - this was pretty good!

And I am beyond poisoned about the Alien franchise since Ridley Scott got his grubby paws all over it with Prometheus. The only reason I made the effort to move my ass to the theater to see this one was because he wasn't directing (and also I didn't have to pay for it) (thanks sib).

I knew Alvarez from two of his previous films, the 2013 remake of Evil Dead and Don't Breathe. I am pretty mixed on both - they demonstrate solid filmmaking abilities and (in the case of Evil Dead), a deep respect for franchises he's adding to. However they are also a little heavy on the jumpscares for my taste, and in the case of Don't Breathe I just can't praise the film without having to mention that the third act twist is gross in an entirely unnecessary, shock-value way, that does nothing for the film thematically.

That did give me some hope for Romulus however, because that third act twist told me Alvarez likes talking about rape and impregnation. And contrary to Don't Breathe... that's right at home in Alien.

So what about the film then? It's good. Solid premise, I like that we're finally, finally, seven films in, seeing the planet-side society that births all those rundown spaceships. Good pair of main characters with on one side a demonstrably resourceful Rain and on the other a very nuanced look at the franchise's synthetics with Andy. The others are more forgettable but I can't blame that too much on the film - they're well characterized in a few short scenes and that's all I can expect really. The build-up is solid, the various ticking clocks and sources of tensions well established.

What I find particularly notable is the really good setpieces and the use of facehuggers in a way I've wanted to see for a long time. Very good physical effects supplemented by good to ok-ish CGI. The writing is very heavy-handed - I wish more people looked at what O'Bannon did with exposition before they write their own Alien scripts. I do give credit to Alvarez and his co-writer Sayagues for the cool concepts explored and the way they thread Andy's character exploration through them.

The editing is mostly blameless - I wouldn't call it great or even that good, especially with how hectic it gets during some more action-ey scenes, but you can tell Roberts isn't specialized or even used to horror films. I guess he took from his experience on Pressure which would explain a lot... The score is really good, one of the highlights of the film in my opinion - I've liked almost all I've heard from Wallfisch so I wasn't surprised to find out he did this one.

So why did I give this review a very baitey title. It became clear as I was watching the fourth, then the inevitable fifth act unfold, that we were, collectively, scraping the barrel on what can be done with Alien. Prometheus and Covenant, beyond the fact that they were garbage movies, were already trying desperately to find new things to do with the concept. Romulus succeeded, for the most part, in finding new ways to twist it into something interesting, something we hadn't seen before (or at least not entirely). And I'm pretty sure that's it.

I don't want more directors to spend months racking their brains to try and find three or more scene setups that haven't already been done in seven main films, two AVP films and countless video games, in order to string them together into a coherent 2 and a half hour flick. I don't think it's impossible, Alvarez clearly demonstrated that he could do it and I'm pretty sure other people could. But why waste so much time, talent and energy on a series that objectively does not need expanding upon?

I know why, it's because the current studio system is allergic to anything that doesn't have brand recognition. But I think it's sad. And I think it would be a lot more gracious to put an end to a franchise after a pretty good film that did all it could to honor its predecessors rather than try to keep squeezing more out of it until it turns into the horror version of Star Wars.