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heron-knight · 3 months ago

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decided to crack open my skull and pour the contents of my brain onto the keyboard. thought the denizens of tumblr might enjoy it. bon appetite

Mech Pilot Care guide

You never expect it, do you. Even as you see the flashes of pulse-decay fire in the sky, illuminating a scene of violence on the cosmic scale. Planetary defense satellites forming Monolithic structures in the sky, their purpose now revealed as they scatter constellations of destruction across the night horizon, drowning out the stars and replacing them with ones born of death. The oxygen in a ship catching fire and burning away in an instant, a flash of light that marks the death of its crew of hundreds. Even if you take your telescope to watch this spectacle, this war in a place without screams, you still feel profoundly disconnected from it. Even as you see a pilot cleave through a drone hive with a fusion blade, the molten metal glistening in the light of the explosions around it, scattering without gravity to the corners of the universe, even as two mechs dance across the sky, their reactors pouring into the engines enough energy to power the house atop which you sit for ten thousand years, flying in a 3.5 dimensional dance with only one word to the song that can reach across the vacuum: “I Will Kill You.” you don’t feel even the slightest glimpse of what goes on inside their minds. You don’t feel the neurological feedback tearing across the brain-computer interface, filling her mind with more simultaneous pain and elation that an unmodified human could ever experience. You don’t feel it as the pneumatic lance punctures through steel and nanocarbon polymer, the mech AI sending floods of a sensation you could never truly know through the skull and into every corner of the body carried on enhanced nerves for every layer of armor punctured, tearing into the enemy chassis with a desire beyond anything the flesh can provide. Let the stars kill each other. After all, I am safe on earth. No, you don’t expect it when the star is hit with a sub-relativistic projectile, piercing through both engines in an instant. You don’t expect it to fall. You never would have expected it to land, the impact nearly vaporizing the soil and setting trees aflame, on the hill beyond your house, and you would never have expected, beneath the layers of cooling slag, for the life-support indicator light to still be visible.

All the fire extinguishers in your house, your old plasma cutter that you haven’t used in years, and whatever medical supplies you think they might still be able to benefit from. All that on a hoverbike, speeding at 120 kilometers per hour through the valley and up onto the hill, still illuminated by the battle above, unsurprisingly unchanged by this new development. 200 meters. 100 meters. You don’t know how much time you’ve got. It wasn’t exactly covered in school, how long a pilot can survive in an overheating frame. You’ve heard rumors, of course, of what these things that used to be human have become. That they don’t eat and barely need air. That they don’t feel any desire beyond what instructions are pumped directly into their brains. Not so much of a person as much as an attack dog. It’s understandably a bit concerning, as if they are alive, then it’s not guaranteed that you will be. Three fire extinguishers later, the surface of the mech is mostly solid, and the cutter slices through the exterior plating. With a satisfying crunch, the cockpit is forced open, revealing the pilot, and confirming a few of the rumors, while refuting others. Pilots, it seems, are not quite emotionless. In fact, there seems to be genuine fear on its face when it sees you, followed by… a sort of grim certainty as it opens its mouth, moves its jaw into a strange position, and you only have half a second to react before it would have bitten down with all its force on the tooth that seemed to be made of a different material then all the rest.

Your thumb is definitely bleeding, and is caught between a metamaterial-based dental implant, and one containing a military-grade neurotoxin. You’re not sure exactly why you did it. The pilot looks at you for a second, before the tubes that attach to its arms like puppet strings run out of stimulants, and it passes out after who knows how long without sleep. This battle has been going on for weeks already. Has it been fighting that long? Its various frame-tethered implants disconnect easily, the unconscious pilot draped over your shoulder twitching slightly with each one you remove. It’s a much longer ride back to the house. Avoiding having the pilot fall off the bike is the top priority, and the injured thumb stings in the fast-moving air.

An internet search doesn’t lead to many helpful sources to the question of “there is a mech pilot on my couch, what do I do?” a few articles about how easy targets retired pilots are for the “doll sellers,” a few military recruitment ads, and a couple near-incomprehensible legal documents full of words like “proprietary technology” or “instant termination.” However, there is one link, a few rows down from the top-- “Mech Pilot Care Guide.” It’s a detailed list, arranged in numbered steps. The website has no other links on it, just the step-by-step instructions: a quick read reveals that this isn’t going to be easy, but looking at the unconscious pilot, unabsorbed chemicals dripping from the ports in its arms and head onto the mildly bloodstained towel, you come to the conclusion that there’s no other option.

Step one: the first 24 hours.

The first thing you should know is that pilots aren’t used to sleeping. They’re used to being put under for transport and storage, but after the neural augmentations and years of week-long battles sustained by stimulants that would fry the brain of anyone that still has an intact one, they’ve more or less forgotten what real sleep is. If they see you asleep, they’ll think you’re dead, so don’t try to let them stay in your room yet. Once you’ve removed the neurotoxin from the tooth (it breaks easily with a bit of applied pressure, but be careful not to let any fall into their mouth or onto your skin.), start by moving them into a chair (preferably a recliner or gaming chair, as the mech seat is about halfway in between), and putting a heavy blanket over them. Don’t worry, they don’t need as much air as normal humans do, and can handle high temperatures up to a point. This is an environment similar to the one they’re used to. It’ll stay like this for about 12 hours-- barely breathing, trembling slightly underneath the blanket. Feel free to check if it’s alive every few hours, not that you could help it if it wasn’t. It won’t freak out when it wakes up. In fact, it doesn’t seem like they can. Turn down the lights and remove the blanket from its face. It’ll stare blankly at you, trying to evaluate the situation with a brain that’s not connected to a computer that’s bigger than they are anymore. Coming to terms, if you could call it that, with the fact that it isn’t dead. Don’t expect it to start reacting to things for a while yet, give it a couple hours.

It’s been a bit, and its eyes are starting to focus on you. The next thing you should know is this: pilots only have two groups into which they can categorize non-pilots: handler and enemy. You need to work on making sure you’re in the right one. Move slowly, standing up and walking toward them, making sure they can see where you’re going to step. Place both hands on their shoulders, then slide one under their arm and carefully pick them up. Don’t be startled by how light they are, or how they still shake slightly as they realize their arms don’t have anything connected to them. Most importantly, don’t break. Don’t reflect on how something can be done to a person so that this is all that’s left. Just focus on rotating them as if you’re inspecting all the brain-computer interface ports, while holding them at half an arm’s length. Set them back down, wrap the blanket around them, then lean in close and say “status report.” they won’t say anything, as they usually upload the data via interface, but what’s important is that now they recognise you as their handler. Their entire mind will be focused on the fact that they exist now to do what you want. Now it’s up to you to prove them wrong.

Step two: the first week.

They’re shaking so hard that you’ve had to move them from the chair back to the couch, sweating heavily as they pant like the dog they’ve been trained to think they are. This was to be expected, really. Pilots are constantly being filled with a mix of stimulants, painkillers, and who knows what else, and you’ve just cut them off completely. You’ve woken up several times in the night and rushed to check if they’re still breathing, debating whether you should try to tell them that they’re going to be okay. The guide says they’re not ready for that yet, whatever that means. They’re still wearing the suit you found them in, made from nanofiber mesh and apparently recycling nutrients and water before re-infusing them intravenously. It’s been three days since you tore them out of the lump of metal atop the hill outside. Long enough that the suit’s battery, apparently, has run out. You lift them gently from the couch and carry them to the bathroom. The shower’s been on for the past hour or so, meaning the temperature should be high enough. You set them on their chair, which you’ve rolled there from the living room and covered with a towel. Removing the suit normally isn’t done except in between missions, and it’s only done to exchange it for a new one. Without the proper tools, you’ve opted for a pair of scissors. Cutting through the suit takes a bit of time, but you manage to cut a sizable line from the neck down to the front to the bottom of the torso. The pilot recoils slightly from the cold metal against their skin, but you manage to peel off the suit without incident, The Temperature of which was roughly the same as the steam filling the room, and you’ve done your best to minimize air currents. They’ve got a bit more shape to them than you expected of someone who’s been so heavily modified. Perhaps what little fat storage it provides helps on longer missions, or perhaps this is for the purposes of marketing. Just another recruitment ad that appeals to baser instincts. Either way, it doesn’t matter. Using a cloth with the least noticeable texture possible, you wash off as much sweat and dead skin as you can, avoiding the various interface and IV ports, as you’re not yet sure that they’re waterproof. Embarrassment is the enemy of efficiency, so you’re slightly glad that their eyes never completely focus on you. They shift their weight slightly, however. Despite the difficulty moving with their current symptoms, they lean in the direction opposite the places you wash once you're done, allowing you to more easily access the places you haven’t got to yet. An act of trust that you have a suspicion they weren't “programmed” to do. As they dry out, you prepare for the difficult part. You take the blanket that previously wrapped around their suit, and gently touch a corner of it to their shoulder. Pilots are used to an amount of sensory information that would overload any normal human in an instant, but most rarely experience textures against their skin. After about half an hour, they’re used to it enough that you’re able to replace what’s left of the suit with it, and after another you’re able to wrap them in it again. You carry them back to the couch, and place a few of your old shirts next to their hand. They pick one and touch it with one finger before recoiling slightly. Eventually, they’ll be used to at least one of them enough that they can wear it. It’s slow progress, but it’s progress.

Step 3: food

It goes without saying that it’s usually been at least a year since they’ve eaten anything. The augmentations scooped out much of their knowledge on how to survive as a human, assuming that they would die before ever needing to be one again. Start them off with just flavors. Give them a chance to pick favorites by giving them a wide selection and firmly telling them to try all of them. Avoid anything solid for the first month or so, both because they can’t digest it and because they associate chewing with their self-destruct mechanism. Trying to and surviving might make them think the “mission’s fully compromised” and attempt to improvise. They’ll typically pick out favorites quickly with their enhanced senses, so once they’ve sampled everything, tell them to pick one. Remember it, not in order to use it as a reward or anything, but them still being able to have a “favorite” anything is something you should keep in mind for later.

Use a similar method anytime they become able to handle the next level of solidity. Don’t be alarmed if one of their favorite foods is the meat that’s most similar to humans (such as pork.) they’re not going to eat you, they just will have already formed an association between that flavor and the moment they went from being a weapon to living in your house. Don’t worry about your thumb getting infected, by the way. Pilots barely have a microbiome.

Step 4: entertainment:

Roll them over to your computer and give them access to your game library. No, really. They need enrichment, and there’s only one activity that they’re able to enjoy at the moment. A simulation of it will make the shift from weapon to guest easier. Start them off with an FPS with a story. Don’t go multiplayer, as your account may get banned for being suspected of using aimbots. Watch as they progress the story. The military left pilots with just enough of a personality to allow them to improvise, and that should be enough for them to make decisions on this level. They won’t do much character customization, but keep an eye on which starting character body shape they pick. No pilot would consciously think they have enough of a “Self” to still have a gender, but keep track of the ones they pick in the games. As for the one you’ve found, it appears that she’s got a player-character preference. You even saw her nudge one of the appearance sliders before clicking “start game.” Whether this means that a pilot doesn’t think of themselves as “it” or that it means there’s still enough of their mind left for them to know there’s more to themselves than the body they have, it’s a handy bit of information to know. Some pilots might have had this decision influenced by their handlers having referred to them as “she” in the way it refers to boats, but still, on some level they always know that “it” meant that they’re a weapon.

Step 6: outside:

There’s a profound difference between experiencing the world through information fed directly into your brain and standing up for the first time, wandering around the room and investigating with hands not made of a half-ton of metal. She’s not used to feeling the air on her skin as she stands in front of the window, visual data coming from two eyes instead of seven cameras. It’ll take a while to get used to it again. New old data, reminiscent of a time before she’s been trained not to remember. It’ll take a while until she’s walking like a human and not a mech, as the muscles used are different, and the ones to hold herself upright haven’t been used in a while. She’s going to fall down at least once. Be sure you’re standing next to her when it happens, as pilots that fall aren’t trained to think they can get back up. It’s worth it, though, when she opens the door herself and strides into the yard, still wobbly but standing. Be careful not to let her look into the sun, partially because it looks nearly identical to the barrel of a pulse-decay blaster milliseconds before it fires. She would get hurt trying to dodge it. It will be somewhat confusing for her, standing on a hill as she once did, but not contained within a 12-meter metal chassis. A feeling of being small and alone without the voices of the computer. This means it’s time for step seven.

Step 7:

All this time, and any idea that she’s still a person has, for her, been subconscious. Any thought of humanity is stopped when it slams into the wall of her handlers and mech AIs reminding her for years before now that she is a weapon. She’ll still ask for your permission before doing just about anything, and that’s just the rare times that she’ll do something you don’t tell her to. Even after you’ve moved her into your room, she’ll still try to sleep on the floor. She still thinks that beds are only for humans. Kneel next to her as she curls into a ball on the ground, assuming that’s what she’s supposed to do. Expect her to try to move down to the foot of the bed after you set her down on it. Gently move her back up until her head’s on the pillow. Sit on the edge of the bed, and hold out your hand to her. After a bit, she’ll take it, wrapping both hands around it and tracing her fingers along the scar on your thumb. Lie down next to her, an arm’s length apart. Place your other hand on her forearm, then slide it up her arm to her shoulder. Don’t move too quickly, and don’t surprise her. Whisper softly but audibly every movement you’re going to make in advance. Move in a bit closer, until you’re wrapped in her arms. Mech pilots aren’t used to this. They aren't used to feeling someone next to them. Not above them, but next to them, getting exactly as much out of this as they are. Even after several months, many won’t admit they deserve it. You wouldn’t waste time lying next to a gun. So why do they feel so strongly that they don’t want you to leave? Why do they hold on tighter? They often feel they’re doing something wrong. Overstepping a boundary. There’s a rift between what they want and what they’re told they can want that nearly tears their mind in half, and it hurts. No normal human will ever know how much it hurts them to think they’ve broken some instruction, that they feel things they aren’t allowed to. Nobody said it was easy, learning how to become human again. Tell her it’s okay. That she’s allowed to feel this way. She still won’t know why. It’s time to tell her. The guide can’t tell you what to say, only that you have to say it. It has to come from you. You have to be the one that tells her what she is underneath all the modifications. It’s time, say it.

“Do you feel that? Do you feel your heart start to beat faster as it presses up against mine? Do you feel your own breath against your skin after it reflects off my shoulder? Do you feel your muscles start to tighten as I slide my hand across them, then relax because you know it means that you are safe? It’s because you’re alive. Because despite everything, you’re still alive. Still someone left after all the changes, all the augmentations. And I know you’re someone because you are someone that likes food a bit spicier than most would prefer. Someone that closes her eyes and gets lost in music whenever it’s playing. Someone that added that one piece of customization to her character, even though they would wear a helmet for most of the game and nobody would know it was there but you. Maybe you aren’t the same person you were before. Maybe they did take some things from you that nothing can give back. But you’re still someone. Someone that people can still care about, and I know because I do.”

You can feel her tears drip down onto your neck as she pulls you closer. She tries to say something, but you can’t understand what. You tell her it’s okay. That it’s not easy, and that she doesn’t have to pretend that it is. Not for you, and not for anyone anymore. She doesn’t have to be useful anymore. No need to keep it together. All that matters is that she’s alive.

There’s another battle going on in the night sky outside. The same flashes of light you saw the night you stopped living alone, even if the other person couldn’t admit that they were one yet. She still flinches at the brighter bursts of pulse-decay fire, still stretches out her hand on reflex to prime a pneumatic lance that isn’t there. But she knows it’s not her, it’s just a ghost of the weapon that died when it hit the ground. You can feel her relax as she realizes this, moving her hand back to dry her face before reaching out towards yours. You hadn’t noticed the tears on your own face. You place your hand on hers as she wipes the corner of your eye. Outside and above, the war continues on a cosmic scale, so far apart from where you both are now that you barely notice it. Let the stars kill each other. After all, the one before you has already fallen, and she doesn’t have to return to the sky. Together, you are safe on earth.

#mechposting #creative writing #mech pilot #Heron knight’s writing

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ploridafanthers · 2 years ago

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this is some wonderful extra-hockey

#when do i wake up in a vapor-filled garage and we have like 40 points on the season

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undertale-encyclopedia · 7 months ago

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thinking about sans' first lines of dialogue. Like, making assumptions of where this story is going:

Imagine youre just some dude, working on some science shit with this guy you know, related to darkness and timelines and crazy spacetime shit like that. Then your boss gets vaporized across all of reality and you get trapped in another parallel universe where you are imprisoned underground.

The machine you took to get here is broke as fuck, you cant fix it, the way this world functions is different than where you're from so they cant even help you get back with your machine. You talk to the royal scientist about this shit and shes just like "I dont know anything about darkness but we're researching this stuff called Determination that affects time in some way, maybe that will help?" And you work with her and figure out the timeline you are currently inhabiting keeps getting shifted around and some anomaly keeps starting and ending timelines and there's basically nothing we can really do about it. So you fully give up, you're not getting back to your reality, you're not getting out of this cave, you're not getting out of this timeloop. You spend your days eating greasy food, making bad jokes at the comedy club, and trying your hardest to give your brother a happy life. Plus, you met this person you really like behind this sealed door and she asked you to protect any human that leaves that place. So now theres an extra thing you gotta worry about.

And now. On top of all this shit. Coming out of this door that has never opened ever. A human, filled with this Determination shit you've researched, key to freeing everyone, has walked right out of that door.

...

#ramblings

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tspiremedia · 2 years ago

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malleleothreesome · 1 year ago

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Azul Ashengrotto x afab Reader - Aphrodisiac + Breeding

💜 summary: After an alchemy accident, you and Azul end up covered in an aphrodisiac potion ༶༶༶ 💜 warnings: afab reader, smut, LOTS OF BREEDING KINK, pregnancy mention, porn with plot??? ༶༶༶ 💜 word count: 8.4k words I DON'T KNOW HOW THIS HAPPENED ༶༶༶ 💜 song: Vapor - 5 Seconds of Summer "I wanna feel you in my veins I want to breathe you in like a vapor I want to be the one you remember I want to feel your love like the weather, all over me" ༶༶༶ 💜 inspired by: this ask thank you! ♡✧*:･ﾟ

As a magicless human, Alchemy had always been your favorite class at Night Raven College. Despite lacking an innate aptitude for spell-casting, mixing and crafting potions was an artform that didn't require magic in order to bring spectacular effects into the world. Alchemy classes provided a refuge—a safe space with no barrier for entry where you could excel instead of feeling singled out for being an oddity in a sea of talented mages. You relished in the opportunity to learn about new components and elements, excitedly observing as volatile chemicals bubbled in heated pots to produce glowing, glittery pastes.

Much to your suspicion, Azul had always been particularly enthused to help you with potions, boasting how he was the most adept in the class due to his academic proficiencies, and that he was certain you'd find success with his aid. He took special interest in mentoring you, watching your delicate, nimble movements as you worked, walking you through procedures and detailed steps, and speaking knowledgeably about the ingredients in a tone that oozed expertise. His tutelage had helped you reach impressive grades on even the most challenging assignments. It wasn’t long before you found yourself spellbound by his charming intellect, deceivingly sweet demeanor, and the addictively intense gaze of his unique blue eyes.

There was always a subtle mischief hidden behind the smiling eyes and the easy charisma that suggested an ulterior motive lurking beneath his silver-tongue. Based on your observations of his interactions with other students, you assumed this was a ploy in hopes that if you had taste of the sweet, intoxicating elixir of power and success, you'd become desperate for more of his help, consequentially making you subservient and open to the idea of contracting yourself to him. In defiance of your paranoia that his motivations are not entirely altruistic, you did always feel an odd prickle in the air when he stood right behind you to monitor your actions. That sensation, a fiery buzz that hummed in your lower abdomen, always gave your heart flutters and kept you on edge as Azul's calm breaths ghosted against your hair and sent ripples of warm pleasure tingling through you. Your breath hitched in your throat as his large, gloved palms gently guided you through your motions, brushing over the bare skin on your knuckles or arms, leaving electric jolts where you felt his warmth. He smelled crisp like ocean breeze, an inviting fragrance that enveloped your mind and wrenched you out of reality and into his heady fantasy—a scene in which all you can taste are the thick, sweet notes of his dark intentions, and all you could do was choke on his cloying, dominating allure. He didn't ask permission to touch you or indicate an appropriate method to teach—no, his hands simply snaked around your waist and ran along your curves, slowly learning the feeling of your soft flesh through his gloves. Each time, you couldn't help but sink a little closer to his chest, instinctively chasing the seductive ambience radiating off of him, drowning in his captivating presence as though he was the tide pulling you under. There was no denying it—you wanted more of him.

Today's lab was no different, the air was tense and thick with charged attraction, filled with sexual tension so palpable it could be cut with a knife. The assignment was to experimentally combine various liquids, mixing and adjusting for better consistency, until you found a formula to concoct a viable, bountiful healing potion that would greatly ease the effects of injury. This assignment was a notoriously difficult, energy-draining procedure that required extreme vigilance to avoid an adverse chemical reaction that would result in a completely different type of potion, although Crewel didn’t elaborate on the exact details. After carefully pouring two compounds—one a milky white, and the other a vivid magenta—into a tall, cylindrical flask, Azul cautiously peered over your shoulder to check your concoction's progress as you stirred them. With one arm outstretched against the table to secure a good vantage point, he rested his other on your waist and leaned in closer as he studied the bubbling pink mixture. After adding an infusion of ground powder, a burst of sparkles clouded the interior of the flask, a telltale sign you were on the right track. This is the portion of the experiment where you needed to take extra caution to mix the elements together in perfect precision without faltering or taking your eyes away from your project, a delicate operation requiring the utmost concentration. Suddenly, Grim barges in and jumps on the lab station in excitement, yapping about how he wants to help, despite you and Azul explaining multiple times he has a proven history of destroying your projects.

The moment the little cat-monster attempts to extend his claws into your precious potion, Azul reacts automatically with surprising speed, his hands fly in a frenzy to scoop Grim away from your chemistry equipment. "Get off that this instant, Grim! You have no business here! Get your little paws out of that glassware this instant before you ruin another assignment! Do not interrupt us! Get away from there immediately!" Azul scolds him repeatedly while chasing him around the room, attempting to steer him to the door. "Why you foolish beast! You're far more of a liability than an asset! This experiment requires extreme care and concentration to avoid failure—a common result of your erratic, clumsy behavior!" His expression hardens with anger, eyebrows drawing into a line as Grim hisses defiantly. The little monster still hasn't relented, his hind legs clumsily scrabbling and slipping in Azul's grip as he tries desperately to cling onto the edge of the lab table, hoping for a quick paw-hold. A heavy, frustrated sigh escapes Azul's nostrils, his face morphing into one of desperation, pleading with the troublesome cat-creature to just leave you to focus your project in peace.

"How very annoying... To think he would willingly place himself in danger without even stopping to consider the consequences... what a foolish and irresponsible creature," he exhales irritably, struggling to wrestle Grim from his precarious position as his composure begins to slip, agitation creeping through his voice and shattering his typical polished and suave illusion of unflappable equanimity. He continues to scold Grim as he chases him around your station, gritting his teeth and losing his cool as the monster's cries of distress and denial ring through the entire room. Grim is an unrelenting little bastard who won't quit squirming. There isn't the slightest semblance of remorse or pity on his stupid, feline face, and Azul feels his resolve crack as he becomes utterly fed up with this spoiled brat's behavior. Grim continues to kick and howl his way through Azul's grip, determined to aid with your Alchemy project, but his clumsy movements start causing your potion to bubble and ripple in an unsettling manner. You shriek his name, begging him to just settle the hell down and be a team player.

It happens in a matter of seconds—a fizzling sound grabs your attention. You turn back around quickly and notice your reaction beginning to froth violently. Your eyes widen in horror and your mouth drops in disbelief. Azul notices your fear-wide eyes and immediately stops his futile efforts to reprimand Grim. In an instant, his gaze reflects the alarm in yours and the blood drains from his already pale cheeks. Grim runs out in a screaming huff as he exits in a frenzied flurry, knowing when to take a hint and make a clean getaway. At this point, the compound is pouring heavily from the top of the flask, spewing out onto the heating device and coating the table below. The chemical reaction is completely beyond your control now, its speed increasing exponentially, bubbling and exploding, kicking out thick, unmanageable clouds of murky pink and purple fumes. Within seconds, it covers the lab tables in an almost misty haze as you choke and sputter in a coughing fit, Azul gasping and choking right alongside you, panic flashing across his face. An eerie glow seeps through the thick liquid as a swirling mist appears from inside the glass. Without warning, it erupts directly toward the two of you before either of you have time to take cover—shattering the flask and showering the fronts of your faces and bodies in its noxious, intoxicating fluids. Both you and Azul choke out muffled yells and groans, the sticky, glittering mixture clinging to the fabric of your clothes and the exposed skin on your faces.

The next thing either of you register is Crewel's obnoxious bark as he spits out sharp commands to open the windows and clear out all the air from the room. Coughing, you gasp for fresh oxygen, suddenly becoming very aware of how fast your heart is racing. It thumps so hard and so forcefully inside of your ribcage that the noise reverberates loudly in your ears, overwhelming your senses. However, no amount of labored inhaling can free you from the toxic, vaporous gas; every molecule in your lungs has already been bombarded and completely overcome by the potion’s effects. As its intoxication takes hold of you, a wicked fever seems to roar within you, followed by a horribly slow heat that makes your limbs ache. Every orifice of your body is saturated by the miasma—liquid slips between your lips, gushing down the front of your body to coat your exposed neck and chest. You taste the surprisingly sweet potion on the inside of your mouth; its taste lingers sweet and tacky on the flat of your tongue, coating your throat. You'd panic that you just consumed some horrific cocktail with traces of corrosion or stomach-rotting acid, if it weren't for the fact that Crewel seems more frustrated than concerned for your well-being. Rather than damaging you, whatever substance was expelled seems to be having quite the opposite effect; you feel your body becoming more energetic, your head becoming lighter, and a bubbling rush of warmth seems to radiate all over from the inside out, changing your physiology into a fertile garden in need of sowing. Adrenaline rushes through you and awakens your basal instincts, forcing you to acknowledge every excruciating detail of your body in an erotic manner. Arousal slithers through your veins like venom, poisoning all remaining thoughts and rationality, as a throbbing, almost blinding wave of pleasure overtakes your body. You become intensely, achingly aware of your physical needs, and all those needs center upon an impassioned desire to be filled, stretched, and seeded full—the frantic urge to be bred nearly splits you in half and makes your lower belly cramp in a hot flash of want. For a second, you hear Azul stutter something to you, his voice wavering on the verge of cracking with the desire that the aphrodisiac had triggered. You lock eyes with Azul, pupils blown wide as lust makes his oceanic gaze shimmer. The front of his slacks have grown embarrassingly tight with the straining girth of his aroused cock. You meet his clouded eyes, almost embarrassed by your wanton thoughts and the desperate throbbing between your thighs.

It is only a split second of recognition, a blurry, sweaty haze of unfathomable passion, before your shared moment is interrupted. Crewel shouts at you to look him in the eyes, snapping you out of your sexual frenzy, even if only for a split second. He stares at you, his gray-streaked hair framing the contoured features of his face as he cocks an eyebrow. The elder gives your flushed skin and trembling body a once-over.

"Just as I thought. It's a dopamine-based aphrodisiac. At least nothing fatal or life threatening, but enough to send you both into a delirious, euphoric-fueled rut," he assesses calmly, unfazed. "What's more, the way the explosion altered the structure of the compound has made its properties even more potent and uncontrollable. In terms you incompetent pups will understand, we're past the stage of antidote or reprieve, and you both have mere moments before the hormones will reach maximum capacity and you two will need to find some private location to release the effects..." He trails off. From his expression, you can tell there is more he would like to add to the situation, yet a worrisome crinkle furrows his brow as his eyes remain on Azul, as though assessing whether the situation is really as under control as he wishes. "Both of you bad dogs listen carefully. Do not even dare to even breathe a word of what transpired here—you are to wait in isolation for five to eight hours until its effects wear off. Under no circumstances should you share physical contact with anyone else for the remainder of the day." He holds Azul's gaze longer than necessary, silently threatening him not to take advantage of this situation—but Azul seems far too caught up in the spell and too infatuated by the burning image of you, sweating, panting, and splayed before him.

"Should anyone at all realize that the two of you have taken any sort of love potion or been afflicted in this manner, it could create a massive scandal, and I'll punish you both so mercilessly for causing such an indiscretion, you'll be licking my boots in front of the entire school!" his deep voice booms in threat. "Have I made myself understood, dear pets?" Crewel snaps, the sting of his whip making both you and Azul wince and nod profusely. He leads you and Azul to the decontamination area of the lab, ushering you two into separate stalls so you can change into fresh, dry garments and wipe off the evidence of the explosion from the potion. When you both emerge, it takes Crewel less than a second to glance from the massive bulge straining against Azul's clothing, to where your heaving, quivering chest is spilling over the low neckline, your nipples hard and pressing obscenely through the thin fabric. He glares down his nose at the two of you in distaste.

"Five to eight hours," he hisses, eyes narrowing, almost sizing you and Azul up like he's waiting for one of you to give in to the pressure of the aphrodisiac. He throws open a back door, gesturing for you and Azul to disappear. Azul leaves first, a flushed, jumbled mess of conflicting emotions that are only intensified as he can feel every agonizing beat of his aroused heart pulse in the heat of his hard dick. You follow closely behind, but before you can cross the doorway, Crewel shoots his hand out to grip you by the upper arm, turning you to him as he towers over you, giving you an intense glare before sighing and pulling a small vial of bluish, iridescent potion from his bag and thrusting it into your hands.

"Since I know you won't be able to resist such a delectable temptation from that damn fishy bastard," his words drip with annoyance as he continues, "at least be safe, Pup. Go have a nice screw if that's what you really desire. The serum I just gave you is a contraceptive—just one sip and you will have full reproductive control, in case Azul isn't a decent man about his desires." You blink up at him in utter bewilderment. "Under no circumstances will I allow my star pupils to fall prey to the temptations and consequences of unprotected intimacy in the midst of this reckless hormone rush... I can't allow something like this to affect you or your ambitions. My students can only go to greater places." You feel his eyes burning with concern as he brushes your cheek, sending you a warning in his eyes and urging you to please think it through and consider it. "You are interested in Azul, are you not? I won't allow you to get involved in anything you don't consent to. If you don't feel safe, I can escort you straight to Ramshackle dorm and I will handle Ashengrotto myself." His stare, once cold and imposing, is now warm with protective care, as he looks you up and down with a gentle softness you didn't expect from your professor. The paternalistic expression on his face strikes your soul and pulls on your heartstrings a bit. After all, it's the type of support you feared was lost to you once you found yourself trapped in Twisted Wonderland with no hope of ever seeing your family again. With all the gentleness of a father, he squeezes your shoulder and gazes deeply into your eyes. You assure him that it's okay, you trust Azul. Nodding, your professor finally allows you passage out the door.

You had barely made it beyond the courtyard doors before Azul approached you with a sickly sweet, almost giddy look on his face. His steel-blue irises burned bright with anticipation, accompanied by a hint of something dark and salacious flickering in the shadows. The corners of his lips pulled taut, curling upward in a devious smile. A tremulous shudder passed through you and prickled up your spine at the thought of those hypnotizing eyes studying you while you lay enraptured beneath him, completely at his mercy. As he takes a few tentative steps toward you, his right hand glides and rests softly on your hip, making you gasp with surprise, your heartbeat fluttering and pounding deafeningly in your ears. Azul leans close to your ear, his breath coming out in hot, rapid pants, a carnal excitement that threatens to spill over and devour you whole. You swallow in nervous expectation, hardly daring to look into his lustful gaze. With his elegant index finger, he lifts your chin up and you are left gasping and flushed beneath him, lips parted to beg him for more as his gentle caress lingers. He flashes a devilishly handsome smile before tracing your lower lip with a seductive slowness. "Please, allow me to escort you back to Octavinelle where I can properly tend to you and your condition," the breathiness of his voice and his lack of composure cause your clit to throb, your inner walls pulsating, pleading to be stretched and ravaged. His lecherous advances and insinuations combined with the aphrodisiac coursing through your veins is making you so aroused, even standing close to him is threatening to make you cum. The very fabric of his essence seems to burn a shade darker—there is a terrifying intensity to his ardent desire for you, yet also a rawness and exposure you hadn't seen on his usually suave and polished facade.

Your whole body flushes when your gaze lands upon the size of his aching erection, an impressive tent straining tightly against his immaculate slacks, begging for attention through the dark material of his trousers. There is a manic, primal gleam that's spreading rapidly across his entire visage; he looks rabid with uncontainable greed, and you shudder at the thought that Azul will use your body to satisfy his own dark and twisted curiosities. "Please... It's the least I could do. After all, our most unfortunate situation is all due to my own recklessness," Azul pleads. His tone of voice is unwaveringly convincing in its sweet charm, yet you cannot escape the licentious twinkle that betrays his intentions, eyes ablaze with passion and lips quivering at the thought of making you his forever.

"Please... Just let me serve you and tend to your every whim," he begs. Even though the tone of his voice suggests innocence, you're reminded once more that Azul Ashengrotto believes the true intent in a plea is only to benefit his own ambitions—how ironic, then, that you find yourself overwhelmed with the desire to listen to the velvety cadence of his whispered sweet-nothings until you orgasm multiple times around the girth of his hard dick. Before you can speak, he reaches out and threads his fingers between your own. It was impossible to say no to the lilting honey of his tone, nor was there any will to fight as his firm and commanding hands ushered you towards the teleportation door. He practically pulls you into the mirror with him, and with a twinkly, delighted laugh, his covetous hand grasps you harder than ever as the portal draws closer, his eyes and touch almost reverential—eager, desperate, craving. The surface of the mirror swallows both of you up as the shadows distort the edges of your vision. The whole world spins around you both before the smell of the sea overwhelms your senses—the crispness of ocean air fills your lungs, and a feeling of cool relief washes over your flushed skin. In seconds, Azul is shoving you into an elevator and hitting the button to his suite. When the metal doors slide open, he gently shuffles you forward as he urges your body closer and closer toward his bedroom.

After his dorm door slams shut, your bodies mindlessly work to free the other's of their pesky and offending clothing, eager and restless fingers tearing and ripping at each article as though your lives depended on it. As each piece of clothing is discarded on the floor, new heated skin presses desperately into another as your erotic moans reverberate through the air. It feels electric, the way your sensitive, exposed bodies seek each other out, pawing and grasping at any available flesh and kissing any naked skin you can reach. Your hot, yearning mouth hungrily seeks Azul's for an urgent, feverish kiss—it is sloppy, desperate, almost savage as you share the intensity of your lusty feelings, gasping into each other's mouths, sucking, nibbling, tasting the sweet and sticky aphrodisiac concoction still lingering on both of your tongues. When Azul finally sheds his trousers, his painfully erect member juts out, throbbing and eager, bouncing happily and proudly as it quivers with eagerness. His knees weaken at the sudden release of the tension he'd suffered since the accident, the air a bit brisk against the heat of his erection, which begs to nestle itself securely into an inviting heat and fill your womb with the lusty seed it desires to spurt forth. His cock is ruddy and reddened, and his sack hangs swollen and tight with pent-up pressure. He doesn't think it possible for it to throb and swell even larger, yet its angry head and veins grow dark and twitch from his hot blood pumping. His hand mindlessly falls to his cock, and at the first stroke to his aching member, a needy whine catches in his throat. There is no time for shyness or apprehension. Whatever spell you were both under was driving you forward—like two planets caught in the gravity of an irresistible force, each gravitationally pulled toward the other with no means to stop. The rational part of his brain has been overwhelmed by an urgent instinct. Azul knows without a shadow of doubt that the only cure for this overwhelming haze of sexual depravity is to thrust himself deep inside the hot, velvety cunt of his precious lab partner.

Next thing you knew, you were pushed roughly, falling backwards before connecting against the smooth, luxurious blankets covering his mattress. He follows eagerly, letting his entire weight drop against your form and trapping your supple body beneath his. It was then, right then, when Azul found that the feeling of his aroused cock pressing against your thigh was unbelievably divine—a warm and pleasant tingling sensation spreading all over his hot, hard shaft and emanating out from his loins. With a contented hum, Azul can't resist the urge to buck his hips against your warm skin, stroking his arousal a little further, groaning at the exquisite friction. What a delicious sight you are—all nude and aroused—splayed and exposed across his bed. The effects of the potion have left you looking thoroughly wrecked, legs open, dripping and hot with an aroma so alluring, it nearly knocks the air out of his lungs. You are positively lovely, just as he'd always dreamed, with your petals unfurled and beckoning, enticing him further and drawing him in as your soft moans coaxed his cock in closer. To see you writhing and panting, the flush of your skin as you burned with longing for him...it was exactly as he'd always wanted it, almost as though someone had crafted the perfect image just to fulfill his darkest wishes. A surge of erotic fantasy comes upon him, and Azul's breath hitches in his throat as he ponders, briefly, about your womb filled with his seed, his beautiful angelfish round with child. He wants nothing more than to unceremoniously bury himself as deep within as he can, to push his thick, pulsating shaft as far as you could manage and stay buried to the hilt for days. His body quivers with excitement as a particularly vulgar dream reenters his mind. He had longed, always, to possess a most lascivious power over you—the power to make you writhe and squirm in bliss, and more importantly, in total and unbreakable dependence and submission for him—the neediest, sluttiest mess imaginable. Perhaps he'd have to thank Grim later for consequentially bringing about this fortunate chain of events.

Azul begins stroking himself fully, unabashed in his view of the sight before him. You don't protest the show. In fact, a high pitched, whimpery moan escapes you as you bite into your thumb to stifle the volume, but the sound is not missed, the harsh pang in his cock proof enough. After some thought, he realizes that he much preferred when you had been writhing and moaning quite uninhibitedly a moment earlier. You shift uncomfortably underneath his heated gaze as his eyes drink in every little curve, every little wrinkle and fold of your dripping pussy. Your toes curl inward and the ache deep within you demands attention. "You're so perfect, my little angelfish. Your body is exactly as I imagined," his saccharine voice admits as he leans forward, letting his fingers dance across the swell of your breasts. His left hand cradles your jaw and throat as his right continues its delicate massage across the plush pillow of your breasts, toying with the perked nubs of your nipples as his thumbs swirl small circles against the delicate flesh.

Azul's gentle touch ignites flames under his fingertips that follow his descent down to the juncture of your legs. The first brush against your swollen bundle of nerves and slit has your spine arching upwards, making his cock throb even more painfully, stiffening under the visual of your trembling body. A whine escapes and your hips grind involuntarily, the heat building intensely as his fingers begin to experimentally spread your folds slowly, running the tip of a finger from your core to the hood of your pearl. Without warning, Azul swipes upwards, expertly pulling back the hood and exposing the raw, sensitive flesh of nerves underneath, pinching down on the fleshy bud and causing you to yelp loudly in shock. With a satisfied grin, his forefinger begins to toy and tweak the hardened bud, rubbing gentle, rhythmic patterns over and over against the bundle as a chorus of delightful, high-pitched squeals fill his dormitory. After a few more ministrations, his hands continue down, delving his fingers straight into the moistened and heated opening, swiping up the slick mess you had coated his palm in. Two long fingers deftly slip right between your folds, caressing their way around your labia, your wet walls clenching around his fingertips desperately. "This wetness, for me?" Azul chuckles wickedly, crooking his fingers upward and brushing your g-spot with a knowing curl of his fingers, sending you spasming, gasping, and writhing in ecstasy, eyelashes fluttering wildly. "Oh, my dearest—so precious, my angelfish. That's it, so beautiful, just for me..." His voice drips with lecherous intent, his body moving without even the slightest hint of hesitation as though you were merely an extension of his own and not even a separate entity. Your wetness coats his fingers easily as Azul keeps sliding his fingers into your wet heat until the pads of his fingers touch all your deepest, hidden places, causing more sweet moans to fall from your lips and echo through his room. He scissors and curls his digits inside, stroking you slowly as though wanting to feel every bump, crease, and ridge along your walls, claiming his ownership over your deepest parts with a sinister delight.

A pressure builds and teeters precariously right at the precipice—the curling of his digits work feverishly to milk every drop of pleasure he can from your shuddering body, the warm flood of wetness drenching his eager fingers and making his head fall back with a sensuous moan. He continues with his relentless assault against your pussy, whispering filthy compliments about how badly he wanted to fuck you and how sexy it is when you take his fingers so well. Your legs flutter open wider, inviting his slim and nimble digits deeper within you, fucking them vigorously as your release begins to pool, rising closer to the boiling point. The aphrodisiac grips its poisonous talons deeper into your mind, warping and bending everything into an unshakable desire to submit yourself and your pleasure to the hands of the devious sea creature above you. He leans down, his silvery eyes roving over your face in an intense appraisal, his features drawn in with concentration, mapping out how to unravel you—there wasn't an emotion or micro expression that slipped past his vision as he carefully considered all the factors of how best to please and overwhelm your body with incomparable rapture. There isn't anything else beyond the present—no outside forces, nor worries about the consequences of being intimate. There's simply no room in your mind to think at this point, the cloudiness of the effects rendering your body vulnerable—you give yourself up entirely. He drinks up every breath, every shake and shiver, as he continues calculating your climax, relishing in each tiny noise or action he drew from you, meticulous with the acquisition of your bliss.

"Yes. Give in." he laughs maniacally, his face fully consumed in the intense madness of his lustful insanity. "Give in to every sensation. Let me drive you wild... Do as I command and cum," Azul demands you through his laughter, his breathing rapid and heavy as he watches your eyes rolling back. He moans in awe as the loud, slick sounds of his hand filling your soaking cunt meet his ears and a deep flush travels across his collarbones. His own needy cock leaks, eagerly anticipating what's next as its engorged state bulges obscenely, its every vein throbbing with virile desperation. Your high-pitched moans continue for some time as his pace stays fast, until you can finally feel your entire body tensing up, the fire coiling inside your gut ready to explode any moment. Everything builds higher and higher to the peak, every muscle and nerve fiber in your body primed to receive that last push that would send you catapulting over the cliff. As he feels your walls tremble, Azul moans along with your high-pitched wailing. A deranged smile stretches across his face and his silver eyes fill with amusement and fascination.

Azul leans into your ear, whispering sweet nothings mixed with commanding, demanding words to finally succumb, "That's it...Let go..." He twists and digs deeper, stroking the perfect places inside you, hitting the correct spots relentlessly in an overload of mind-bending, debauchery-fueled, electric-spark pleasure, forcing your senses to dissociate from reality. His thrusting hand matches the frantic racing of his own heart, unable to keep the carnal fever down. "Give in... submit yourself fully, and surrender that orgasm. It's mine. I've worked for it, and now it belongs only to me." He whispers in a devilish growl, nibbling on your ear as his strokes become rougher, harder, faster—you can hardly stand the overwhelming force of your pleasure before its sweet relief crashes like waves. A broken moan leaves your mouth, a pure exaltation of uncontrolled passion. Noises come tumbling out and spilling over until you finally dissolve into a messy orgasm, shrieking his name in pleasure as his hand slows its motions but doesn't stop, keeping its pressure steady and rocking the whole of your existence until your mind goes blank. "Such a good, obedient angelfish, giving me all of your sweet, succulent cum... all for me, yes?" Azul hums sweetly, teasingly. "Oh, this is so precious," he sighs, feeling the quaking and trembling of your fluttering walls. His expression melts into one of deep satisfaction and pride.

"There you go, my lovely angelfish. Just as I said I would," Azul croons. Without another word, his hand, wet with your desire, abandons its ministrations, pulling from your depths with a slick pop, leaving your empty cunt to tremble from his absence. Azul brings his fingers to his mouth for a lewd taste test, licking the juices from his hand as a self-indulgent smirk plays upon his lips. As he rolls the digits around his tongue, sampling the essence of your cunt, a sharp groan rumbles deep from within his chest, the vibration coursing down his spine and directly into his throbbing member. Even as his breath grows heavy from the feeling of his needy cock, the smug, triumphant smirk doesn't disappear. He enjoys the honeyed, tangy sweetness and savors the lingering sensation on his taste buds—another string attached, making it utterly impossible for him to let go. A low chuckle is heard from deep in his chest, dark and hauntingly mirthful. From his pleased sigh, you could easily read the insatiable hunger growing within his gleaming eyes—clearly the lust in his loins has only been ignited further—a starving, manic beast hungry for even more from your yielding form, an insatiable craving that can't be satiated so easily. His cock visibly twitches, begging for him to mount you and thrust his painfully aroused length as far as he can manage deep into your eager, spasming pussy. The aphrodisiac courses through his veins with all the potency of a tropical storm, whipping every nerve into a frenzy as the instinct takes hold in Azul's most primordial thoughts and drives all those cravings with an irrepressible urgency—he simply has to get your pregnant. Azul's cheeks flush with a reddish-pink shade as he fixates on you, the hunger in his gaze absolutely feral, filled with a single-minded lustful determination to breed you.

When your eyes meet his maddened, love-struck stare, you are overcome with the same desperation radiating from your womb, urging to be stuffed and claimed by his thick load. At last, the two of you had connected in this all-consuming fire—a conflagration of desire so severe and a love so encompassing that both of you could do nothing more than dance on the ashes and burn with the flames. In that moment of recognition, an irresistible, bewitching aura emanates from him and mesmerizes you as the air of mystery dissipates from his visage, the eroticized specter of the fearsome and dangerous, devious mogul melts away to reveal the raw intensity of the young man underneath, exposed in all his ardent, unfettered passions. Here stands Azul, naked with vulnerability, desiring only a love that no other has been able to truly give. He's always tried to prevent access to his real emotions, afraid of the kind of cruelty they would reap upon him if they were found. He didn't believe himself to be worthy of their regard, let alone capable of receiving someone's genuine affections. With you, though, there were none of his signature theatrics, no polite deflection, nor charming evasiveness; he gave you full permission to view him and all of his repressed feelings on full display. An open book, Azul trusts you enough to expose his heart fully, so transparent in his neediness. Since he brought you to his bedroom, there was never the slightest hint of deception in his tone—not once had he attempted to distract you, nor used a tactic or trick. Perhaps his true intentions for getting close to you were more admirable than you thought, his desperation to get close to you was merely just a pining for your love rather than a sordid trick. His earnest, loving gaze, combined with the grip of your desire, makes something finally shift within, like the turning of the tide—a sense that it was fated for you to fall and crash so desperately, madly, and completely for him—a long-awaited inevitability, just as he had already done for you long before this Alchemy accident. Azul was an adoringly gentle yet brutally powerful force, a pillar in your life you can lean into without hesitation. All of your fears, worries, and frustrations are suddenly null, evaporating into the thin air of Octavinelle, carried into the gentle waters outside the window and disappearing into the seas.

Nothing is more erotic than seeing his carefully maintained veneer crumbling before you and letting himself fall apart at the seams. No longer hiding his desires or his ambitions for you, Azul's lusty hunger has you excited, aroused, and turned on like never before. You return his lustful, hazy expression and Azul is drawn right into the softness of your inviting stare. Your mouth parts to allow a needy moan to pass as you buck your hips slightly, inviting him to finally claim your body as his, a beautiful sacrifice you're eager to make for a beautiful siren such as him. With a deep, lewd groan, Azul pushes off your trembling body, propping himself onto his knees and groping at your chest, making you mewl. There's no trace left of the smooth businessman persona, not even a hint of it lingers when his wet mouth kisses at your mounds and his large hands explore the contours of your curves, his fingertips desperately memorizing the way you're put together, tracing every bit of available flesh. His eager tongue swirls at your peaked nipples, moaning in appreciation and delight. Your mind is being swallowed by a bubbling wave of bliss that has no end as his hand trails across your hips, his touch is as gentle as a ripple in the water. With a shyly embarrassed flush and a sigh of wanton abandonment, you surrender entirely to him—letting the sea creature drown you in ecstasy, deeper and deeper, into the endless ocean. He caresses your stomach gently, the calloused pads of his fingers exploring the sensitive skin where he knows your womb lies. Your heart stumbles as his lips twist upward in an impish smirk at the thought of all the cum he's soon going to pump straight into the cavity. He palms your belly, which would soon carry his progeny as an inevitable result of this union, imagining his angelfish's stomach rounded and taut with his unborn child, perhaps, even more than once—Azul's thoughts are full of fantasies about filling you and fucking your pretty little womb over and over until he succeeds and you're blessed with his babies. Azul hums at the image of your pregnant body, worshiping the slope of your thighs and rubbing his hands up your waist and the undersides of your breasts. Azul knows that even if it doesn't work right away, he is more than prepared to breed you again and again as many times as necessary. He is more than certain you'll eventually give him a consortium of little octopus-human hybrids. After all, you'd offered yourself up in the end. Who was he not to take what was freely given?

He grasps the back of your knee to prop up your leg in the air, shifting closer. In one fell swoop, your tender thighs are flung open, revealing your glistening cunt. Azul moans, running the rough pad of his finger right up the slit of your lips. You're already a mess, his slick hand had not been able to satisfy your heat at all, it only created a further yearning deep within that could only be satisfied by his aching cock. Azul settles against the fronts of your thighs, letting the stiff heat of his bulging erection nestle against the dripping lips of your cunt, already poised and eager for insertion. The anticipation causes the two of you to tremble slightly at the intimacy, your lips wet and sticky as they run against the length, his cock drooling freely from the tip and leaking beads of sticky, precum fluid right across your folds. With one more affectionate, sweet peck against the corner of your lip, and another one right upon your forehead, Azul slowly glides inside. A shared cry of euphoria leaves your mouths simultaneously as Azul buries the full length of his throbbing cock into your sopping entrance, thrusting powerfully to hilt balls-deep. The pure, erotic rapture of finally consummating your love floods both of your veins. His dick is filling you in the most indescribable way and stretching your cunt so deliciously that stars appear behind your eyes. A glorious symphony of relief sings in your blood while his hard girth massages your innermost walls as though he were meant for no other—like he was perfectly made to be the puzzle piece filling your immaculate pussy. You both gasp sharply in unison as the sensation sends tremors down his shaft. Every vein, ridge, and inch of his length drags deeply with each thrust as he grinds you thoroughly, bringing your clits into tantric connection and rubbing the sensitive bundle of nerves back and forth in perfect time with the rocking motion. Each snap of his hip makes the two of you share a joyful sob as he pleasures you in the most divine manner.

A low and sinful groan passes through your lips as your hands grip him tighter, begging him to increase his momentum and pace. Azul's hands clutch you in a tight embrace, his chest to yours with every inch of his hardness fully embedded into your velvety passage, sending white-hot sparks of pleasure shooting to the deepest recesses of your innermost being, triggering the sudden rush of a climax that is starting to rise to its precipice. Azul groans as your juices run down his balls, pooling around his sack and providing more lubrication for his relentless drive inside of you. You clench and flutter around him, squeezing your inner walls with every desperate urge for friction and movement, drawing Azul's eye right up to yours in a lusty daze. His body is coiling for release, ready to cum, and there's a glitter of utter happiness in his expression. His lips quiver with desire and he smirks as he feels you clamping and spasming around his rock-hard dick, begging him to breed you like the little slut that he secretly knows you are, all while knowing deep down you'd get so unbelievably plump and swollen with his hatchlings, he'd hardly be able to move his tentacles with all the kids crawling over him.

It's more intense, and far more electrifying than the filthy fantasies that had invaded his sleep every lonely evening whenever he gave in to his insufferable yearning for you. He'd envisioned this, over and over—what it would feel like to make you orgasm, just how satisfying it would feel to cum with you at the same time, and how heavenly it would be to stretch your cunt so snugly—and yet, in this moment, it surpasses his imagination exponentially, eliciting a complete flood of sensual pleasure all throughout his senses. Not even his wildest wet dreams had prepared him for the heady intoxication and undeniable high he experiences with you—being passionately and physically intertwined, wrapped around the most sublime euphoria that was possible—a wave so dizzying that there's absolutely no going back to life without the other once your bodies have succumbed and reached that ultimate, highest peak.

When Azul hits the point of no-return, his legs start shaking as though his limbs were going to fall off. His fingers tangle roughly in your hair as he drags your mouth closer to meet his. With each heavy thrust, he swallows every moan that erupts from your throat. His movements become less coherent, rougher, and disjointed as the strength of your cunt's embrace pulses tightly around his shaft and urges him toward the edge. Suddenly, an intense wave of satisfaction takes hold and shoots to the tip of his cock, pulsating violently in need to release its seed. Azul can't help but groan loudly into your ear as he slams his cock into you with ferocious strength, fucking the life and soul right out of your being while a high-pitched scream accompanies the splash and squelching noises of your pussy. Your mouth has gone slack, jaw dropping as you cry out his name and climax with such power that it whips you into a complete frenzy of desperation, sending your vision dancing with lights. You quake and shiver under the force of his fervor and ecstasy, writhing on the mattress and throwing your head backward to soak in your overwhelming, toe-curling rapture. He buries his face into the crook of your neck, pounding you fiercely as you wail and shatter with a rush of emotions so intense, you don't know if you will ever put yourself back together. A strained whine and a few sharp pumps later, a surge of hot, wet euphoric heat shoots from Azul's balls and spurts out in ribbons of his own spent climax as he spends his load of pearly cum directly into your waiting womb, splashing your tight channel with a continuous stream—painting every crevice of your silken, fluttering, vice-like depths a glossy white. Azul is unable to help himself as his hips start grinding into yours with slow rolls, fucking and stuffing every drop of his sticky cream deeply and ensuring it remains securely nestled in your folds. Every remaining bit of sexual tension floods out as though you'd been submerged in the most heavenly waterfall of pleasure imaginable. Azul whines weakly into the pillow and your moans join, eventually dissipating into a heavenly silence as you sink heavily back to reality.

Time slows to an almost stop and your vision gets a bit hazy and bleary as the aphrodisiac magic completely pulses away. You two lay side by side on the soft blankets, still in the bed and soaked with sweat. Neither of you move for quite some time. Just in the wake of your post-orgasm, everything becomes intensely surreal. You try to breathe quietly so Azul doesn't hear and as his head rests on your breasts. He, too, is heaving with difficulty, each inhale is a conscious decision. He clings tightly against you, hands threaded together like a lifeline, afraid to let go. One last sentence leaves his mouth—a whisper that could have easily been missed by anyone except for you. It was a question.

"Are we both in love?" Azul asks with such hesitance, you think maybe you've misheard his inquiry. He is lying right by your side. His face is dangerously close to yours, and the way his stormy, ocean azure eyes reflect every emotion swirling inside allows you to see the years of hurt that's plagued him. He's absolutely enchanted, like you are the perfect dream come true—everything he'd ever imagined in one living, breathing, precious human body—a lover so magnificent he could hardly comprehend. He studies your expression with awe and reverence. A look so intensely raw it burns right through your heart and lights up the space in your soul that you never before realized was reserved just for him. "Because I love you... Truly and deeply. So much that I don't know how it was possible, even," Azul admits freely, without the least hint of apprehension or nervousness. You can feel the intensity and honesty of his words radiate through his trembling fingertips, through the places where his naked skin touched yours—he doesn't try to mask the pure unadulterated warmth and delight that leaks through the shaky but firm expression on his flushed face.

A wide, cheerful and genuine grin breaks out against your features as you nod enthusiastically, and it is almost as though a heavenly, soothing light has poured over his entire world. It feels like a dream, a fairytale that is too good to be true. Yet here you both lie, doused in the magic of the concoction, clinging to each other and to that euphoric elation after giving in to the passions and the chemical bonds. It felt incredible, it felt natural and familiar and right. This wasn't anything artificial, rather the long overdue acknowledgement of feelings that were there all along—a kindling of romance that was never forced, but rather fanned to life after many days spent as Alchemy partners. After seeing each other every day, getting to know each other's quirks, and learning of each other's daily habits, the intimacy had bloomed and nurtured into something tender and real. The closeness the potion provided simply allowed the two of you the confidence needed to step across a boundary and pursue things.

"This won't be something short lived... you understand what I am saying, yes?" His tone has a tinge of fear creeping in and you can't help but stroke the outline of his cheekbones. This feeling will not end with a simple fuck, you knew that deep in the marrow. There will be more of that to come. In fact, the thought of it has your cunt pulsing, your sex aching at the idea. "I simply won't have you anywhere else but with me, and here in my dorm. I just won't be able to be happy otherwise..." Azul's voice quivers as the vulnerable sincerity flows.

"Yes, Azul. Yes, I understand and I feel the exact same," you chuckle and cradle his head. His blue eyes crinkle slightly from the beam across his lips, and Azul can't resist pulling you in for a feverish kiss, groaning from the rush. That familiar, sinfully blissful high is starting to take hold again, the rush of the aphrodisiac stirring something fiery back into a pleasant burn. The chemical’s grip on the two of you continues. After all, nothing will stop the magic from bringing you closer together. He murmurs a seductive promise into the curve of your throat that he won't stop until his load drips and slides right out of your swollen cunt—he's going to breed you the rest of the night and spill as much of himself deep within as he can. He has no doubt you're going to give him a child that will cement this loving bond permanently.

Listen I don't know HOW this HAPPENED, I DON'T understand how I wrote this much. I am DELIRIOUS and I need to go pick up some pizza for dinner, so I wish I could say more here but I can't right now. I'll update this part when I get back home. I just needed to get this out into the UNIVERSE. THANK YOU ALL!!! HOPE YOU ENJOYED!!! <3333 Erica Malleleothreesome

#twisted wonderland x reader #twst x reader #twisted wonderland smut #twisted wonderland x reader smut #twst smut #twst x reader smut #twst azul ashengrotto x reader smut #twst azul ashengrotto smut #twisted wonderland azul x reader smut #azul ashengrotto x reader smut #twst azul ashengrotto #azul ashengrotto smut #twst azul #twisted wonderland azul x reader #azul ashengrotto #twisted wonderland azul #azul x reader #my writing

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carbonfiction · 13 days ago

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Bitter days and bitten lips

Summary: Thinking about sharing a cold winters day in origins! Logan's cabin. (Or the lovers are loving each other sickeningly)

Can't lie i was cold and lonely when this came to be. Do with that what you will chat. once again fluff is NOT the strong suit so, go easy.. i promise smut will resume again soon :p

Warnings?: just overwhelming fluff. Reader bakes goods. reader makes a joke about him landing on his ass, Cuddles, kisses and general lovey dovey couple stuff.. Plus a teeeny moment of self doubt.

(Spoiler: Logan really likes kisses in this one..)

Masterlist Words: 1.2k (got carried away writing about boyfriend Logan.. sorry chat :/)

Thinking about the kind of days when frost gleams across the mountains. Rocks and trees covered in a dusting of snow. every step accompanied by a resounding crunch, ground slightly slippery with ice.

The kind of days when your breath puffs out as vapor and even a coat, hat and gloves don't ward off the chill.

However, inside that little cabin hidden far atop the hill, life is cosy. The fire steadily warming with a soft crackle; the little wooden pile slowly dwindling. Fingers and toes toasty warm instead of iced cold.

You adorn one of logans flannel button ups with some panties and comfortable knee highs, while logan lives in some sweats and one of his white tee's.

There's a radio playing low on the dinner table, some old music crackling through soft static serenading your actions in the kitchen. Freshly baked good filling the counters; a combination of scents wafting deliciously through the air. Bread, various pastries, and logans favorite pie all sitting cooling whilst you carefully place your cleaned bowls and utensils back in their respective places.

Meanwhile logan lounges comfortably on the couch, body sunk into the soft cushions, a book held in his grasp that he's only half paying attention to. Soft hazel gaze often flicking from the page to peek at you.

The sight, you clad in his shirt and those thigh highs he loves, wrapped up in an apron and doing something so domestic; so.. At home doing what you love in a shared space, brings a twinge of warmth to his chest. He loves you, more than he can ever express, but by god does he hope you know it.

After turning his attention back to the book, its not long before he hears the gentle sigh that releases from your chest. Fingers beginning to tug the aprons bow apart; the soft rub of fabric sounding out as you lift it off to hang on the hook. the soft click of the pantry door following, before your feet start to pad over.

You round the couch and attempt to sit by his feet silently, but logan looks up immediately, a love drunk grin lighting up his face.

"Hey darlin c'mere.." he pats the space next to him as he shifts around, book forgotten in the wake of you.

You shuffle closer, trying to tuck in besides him until he quite literally tugs your body to his. Like you weigh nothing in the world he lays back, placing you comfortably atop of his broad chest, the fire flickering in his eyes as he gazes at you.

"there we go" he murmurs quietly, a teasing edge to his voice as you squirm to wrap your arms around the bulk of him beneath you. "Snuggle on in.."

By the time your comfortable your chin sitting in the middle of his chest, legs limp between his as you rest on your front. "There's my girl" he smiles, bringing up a hand to tuck some hair behind your ear. "finished keepin' us nice and fed for the winter huh?"

A smirk falls across his face as he teases, growing as your hand slaps softly at his shoulder making him laugh slightly. Faux shock filling your expression.

"I can stop and make you trek into town for goods instead if you'd like.." you grumble, trying (and failing) to hide your own sly smirk as your fingers draw circles on his pectoral.

"much prefer eatin' what my girl makes, y'know that." logan says, words falling from him so honestly that it makes you grin shyly.

And, in truth, You do, you know he is being honest wholeheartedly. From the way he clears his plates at meal time; often coming back for seconds. To the way he's damn near begged for your food for lunch when he's down working at the yard (a simple sandwich, nothing special really, apart from how he swears its his favorite thing on earth; apart from you of course) he never fails to remind you of his enjoyment.. But what's love without a little fun?

"Mhm, sure." you agree, eyes rolling playfully from under your lashes as you poke at his chest curiously. "Is it my cookin' or the threat of slippin' on your ass down the mountain that makes you say that?"

Logan's silent for a moment as he thinks, making a show of it. Then he dares a quiet hum, hands squeezing your sides jovially.

"Might be a little of both.." he smiles, teeth showing as you gasp dramatically making him really laugh. The deep rumble of his chuckle shaking your body atop of him as you pull on a grumpy little pout.

"Nah, sweetheart seriously" he grunts after a moment, sitting up a little to pull you in even closer, your head resting nearer his neck now as his voice drops in honesty. "you take care of us.. Me.. So well. More than i deserve. Cant thank you enough"

Your heart stutters in your chest, playful expression softening as you look at him. The man you have the best time calling yours, who loves so unconditionally it could bring you to tears.

"Hush" you murmur, hand moving from his chest up to place a finger gently on his lips. "None' a that, i could say the same about you.. deserve the world Logan Howlett"

"I dunno about th-" he goes to grumble, cheeks growing warm with the slightest dusty pink hue. self doubt still creeps up his spine, even as you cut him off by pressing your finger harder against him, smooshing his lips slightly.

"I said Hush.." you all but growl seriously, nipping softly at his Adams apple. "Or do i have to kiss you more to make you believe me?

Ah.. Kisses, or more specifically, your kisses. His achilles heel from the very first day your lips pressed to his. Gentle and sweet, the taste of you overwhelming his senses.

He's certain if he could choose his death, his choice would be to go by your lips.

There's a moment he relishes the feel of you, of the love you press tight to his skin. Across his collarbone, up his neck and even the scruff covered expanse of his sharp jaw.

"...suppose" he breathes shallow, shakily, as a quiet almost whine follows his words. "Kisses could work.."

You hum absentmindedly, trailing up from his jaw to softly peck at his face. cheeks, then forehead and back down the bridge of his nose. Your breath a gentle puff over his skin.

By the time you reach his lips again logan is pliant under your touch. His lashes fluttering gently against his cheeks as his hands grip tight on your waist.

which is why the soft nip of your teeth tugging at his lip draws a little surprised purr from his chest, his heart hammering quickly. The careful pain soothed by the swipe of your tongue before you kiss him properly once again.

"Believe me yet?" you whisper quietly pulling back, thumb rubbing gently over his chin.

"Might-" he pants, beginning to squirm ever so slightly beneath you. "Might need some more.. For convincing.."

You grin at Logan, wasting no time to press your lips back home against his. You'd be happy to kiss him all night if it would make him believe you.

So, you do.

Because nothing else matters but the warmth you feel at home with him; the very warmth that outweighs the bitter chill outside.

#carbonrambles #logan howlett #wolverine #logan howlett x reader #deadpool and wolverine #carbonasksforasks #carbonsfics #logan fluff #logan howlett fluff #wolverine fluff #wolverine x reader #wolverine x reader fluff #origins logan howlett #lumberjack logan

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ahmedpalestine · 5 months ago

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In these difficult moments my family is going through in the Gaza Strip, their suffering worsens day by day. The Israeli army has threatened to completely evacuate the Al-Maghazi camp and parts of central Gaza, forcing my family to flee on foot without being able to take anything with them. Now, they are wandering amidst immense destruction, with no clear destination or place to go, amidst the growing numbers of displaced people from those areas.

In our last call, they were struggling to secure a place to protect them from danger, searching for clothes, food, and basic necessities for life. With their phone batteries running out, our communication was cut off, and now I have no idea about their fate or where they have gone. My heart is filled with worry, as they live a life resembling a continuous nightmare, a suffering that the world cannot truly grasp through screens.

H ow long will this torment continue? How long will my family, in every call, give me their final wishes as if it’s the last time? How long will I continue to follow the lists of the dead, fearing that my loved ones might be among them?

I plead with you to stand with my family during these difficult times. They are in dire need of your support and help. Time is running out, and we need to secure their safe exit from Gaza. The harsh conditions they are enduring have compelled me to seek assistance. If you cannot help directly, please do not let my message stop with you. Share it as widely as you can, hoping it reaches someone who can offer help.

Every day you remember my family, at least remember them by sharing this message. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.🙏🍉

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#free 🍉#save 🍉#palestine 🍉#free palestine 🇵🇸#don't stop talking about palestine 🇵🇸#free gaza 🇵🇸#filistin 🇵🇸#from the river to the sea 🇵🇸#save palestine 🇵🇸#i stand with palestine 🇵🇸#🍉🇵🇸

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v1rtualsalvat10n · 27 days ago

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there is no market for this. this is purely self indulgent guys please don't hunt me down for this.

you're a chemistry student and you steal a bottle of chloroform from your lab. we all know what comes next. obvious tw for (consensual) drugging.

disclaimer that solvents are bad they can kill easily and there is no safe way to use them don't try this at home guys

Luigi sets the brown, glass bottle in front of you, staring you down while he does.

"Was looking for my charger in your room after I left it in there and found this stashed behind your dresser."

You freeze, face flushing red as you look down at it's label. Trichloromethane. God dammit, you knew you should have hid that somewhere better. Absolutely anywhere better.

"You stole this, right? I mean, it makes sense, you're around chemicals all day and you decided to at least make the most of your arsenal, huh?" He raises an eyebrow.

"It's chloroform," you mumble out. He chuckles softly, taking the bottle and running his eyes along the words printed on the label. "I know it is. I looked it up because honestly, I didn't expect you to tell me that's what it was." He glanced up at you as he said the next sentence.

"You gonna tell me why you stole it, or do you want me to wager a guess?"

You fiddled with your hands for a moment, staring down at the table beneath you, before speaking.

"Can I just show you?"

—

You sat on your bed, Lu behind you, on his knees. The sound of him twisting off the bottle's cap made you tense up in anticipation, as he dabbed the liquid onto a pure white hand towel.

"I'm sure you're already aware of how dangerous this is."

"You're the one who agreed to it," you mumble, and he tilts his head in understanding. He brings his arms around you, one hand clutching the soaked rag, the other resting on your thigh.

"If you want me to stop, tap my arm twice and I'll let you breathe." He nuzzled into your neck, looking at you as he slowly pressed the fabric to your mouth and nose. We're really doing this, you think to yourself.

You take a deep inhale of the fumes, being met with a sickly sweet scent that surprised you. It encouraged you to press your hand against his, forcing the rag closer, as you took another breath, reveling in the pleasant scent of it.

"Careful," he coos, and fuck his voice sounds so good. "Don't take too much at once, amore."

You don't listen, chasing the high as you take another huff, feeling it fill your lungs. The tension in your body starts to melt as you lean back against him, maybe a little harder than intended because he holds your waist to stabilize you.

Now the intoxication is clear. Your vision turns hazy and the corners of it darken as the world swirls around you. It looked grainy yet clear, like a sharpness filter, and your overhead light was suddenly blinding, so you shut your eyes softly.

Your breathing turns more shallow as you pant softly, moaning into his hand, feeling his bulge press against your back. What could he say? You were helpless under him, and that turned him on more than he cared to admit.

"You know," he whispers, the sound of his voice making you dizzy. "In movies and TV shows, it takes only a minute or two for someone to black out from chloroform. But in real life it takes quite a bit longer, isn't that interesting?" He pressed the rag harder to your nose, prompting you to take another deep inhale.

A strange, siren-ish whirring makes itself clear, and every time he spoke that sound would ease up, so you pushed your hips back against his to draw a moan out of him. "Fuck," he whined. "I might not be able to wait that few minutes for you to pass out."

The cool vapor against your nostrils felt so good, you couldn't stop yourself from desperately huffing it, one of your hands reaching down to rub yourself through your shorts. He notices, and swats your hand away, replacing it with his own.

"You're soaked," he observes. "The idea of me using you while you're unconscious gets you off, huh?"

You let out a muffled confession into the rag, your body beginning to feel heavy and numb. It was originally used as anesthetic, after all, so that made enough sense - and he had to hold you closer to keep you from toppling.

"What's wrong? Feeling sleepy?" You nodded softly, eyes still shut as you tried to open them, the brightness of your room almost nauseating to look at. You whined in discomfort, and he covered your eyes with his hand, leaning you back onto him.

"Shh, don't fight it. Just let yourself go, amore. I'll take care of you." When you'd closed your eyes, you felt his hand slip back down between your legs, still rubbing his two fingers on your clit, his cock throbbing under his jeans.

Fuck. His voice was so soothing, and your body just felt so heavy that you wanted to give up. You stayed there, teetering on the edge of unconsciousness, mind spinning as he rubbed the last of your logical thinking away.

He slipped your panties aside and pushed his two fingers inside, and that was enough for you. You took another deep inhale, the deepest yet, your head throbbing pleasantly again as you felt yourself slip.

What he did after that? Well... you woke up with tons of hickeys, half your clothes off, and a hangover, so it didn't leave much to the imagination.

But he was there, with a glass of cold water and lots of kisses for you.

"Have you learned not to steal, darling?"

#tw drugs #tw drugging #luigi mangione #luigi mangione x reader #real person fiction #real people fiction 18+#luigi mangione fanfic #rpf #luigi mangione fanfiction #luigi mangione smut #luigi mangione imagine

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chinesehanfu · 4 months ago

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[Hanfu · 漢服]The past and present of "eating mooncakes during the Mid-Autumn Festival"

As the Mid-Autumn Festival/Zhong Qiu Jie 中秋节 is coming, let us learn how “mooncakes/月饼” became an iconic traditional food of the Mid-Autumn Festival

🌕🥮Mooncake/月饼🥮🏮

A mooncake (simplified Chinese: 月饼; traditional Chinese: 月餅) is a Chinese bakery product traditionally eaten during the Mid-Autumn Festival (中秋節).The festival is primarily about the harvest while a legend connects it to moon watching, and mooncakes are regarded as a delicacy. Mooncakes are offered between friends or on family gatherings while celebrating the festival. The Mid-Autumn Festival is widely regarded as one of the four most important Chinese festivals.

Mooncakes were originally used as offerings to worship the moon god.

Worshiping the moon is a very old custom in China. It is actually a worship activity for the "moon god" by the ancients. Eating mooncakes and appreciating the moon during the Mid-Autumn Festival are indispensable customs for celebrating the Mid-Autumn Festival in all parts of China. Mooncakes symbolize reunion. People regard them as festive food, use them to worship the moon, and give them to relatives and friends.

Cultural relics believed to be the predecessor of mooncakes were unearthed:

<China Tang Dynasty Baoxiang flower-patterned mooncakes/宝相花月饼>⬇️

Mooncakes, traditionally offered as a tribute to the Moon Goddess, have a long and rich history. The term "mooncake" was first recorded in the Southern Song Dynasty in Wu Zimu’s <梦梁录/Meng Liang Lu>.

Over time, mooncakes merged with various regional culinary traditions, giving rise to different styles such as Cantonese, Shanxi, Beijing, Suzhou, Chaozhou, and Yunnan mooncakes, all of which are beloved by people across China：

Mooncakes truly became associated with the Mid-Autumn Festival during the Ming Dynasty. In the writings of Liu Ruoyu 刘若愚, a eunuch during the reigns of the Wanli and Chongzhen emperors, he mentioned in his prison work Zhuozhong Zhi 《酌中志》(Vol. 20, "Brief Record of Culinary Preferences"): “八月宫中赏秋海棠、玉簪花。自初一日起，即有卖月饼者。加以西瓜、藕，互相馈送。西苑鹿藕。至十五日，家家供月饼瓜果，候月上焚香后，即大肆饮啖，多竟夜始散席者。如有剩月饼，仍整收于干燥风凉之处，至岁暮合家分用之，曰‘团圆饼’也”

Translation：

"In August, the palace having event appreciates autumn crabapple blossoms. From the first day of the month, mooncakes are sold,it accompanied by watermelons and lotus roots, and are exchanged as gifts.By the fifteenth day, every household offers mooncakes and fruits in worship, waiting for the moon to rise before burning incense and feasting lavishly, with some gatherings lasting all night. If there are leftover mooncakes, they are stored in a dry and cool place until the end of the year, when the whole family shares them, calling them 'reunion cakes.'

In the Qing Dynasty, there were books that detailed the methods of making mooncakes. For example, Zeng Yi, a female writer and female doctor in the late Qing Dynasty, recorded the "Method of Making Crisp Mooncakes" in her book "Zhongkuilu": "Use white ash flour, half of which is steamed in a steamer, and no water vapor is seen; the other half is raw, and kneaded with lard and cold water. Then, mix the steamed flour with lard. Use a ball of raw oil flour, and wrap a small ball of cooked oil flour inside; use a rolling pin to roll it into a cup-sized shape, fold it into a square; roll it into a ball again, and fold it into a square again; then wrap the filling. Use a cake stamp to stamp it, and put it on the stove to cook. For the oil-flavored filling, use cooked flour, sugar, walnuts, etc., and add a little sesame oil, so that it will not fall apart." The method is very similar to today's Suzhou-style mooncakes.

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🧚🏻‍Production & Model/Makeup：@曾嚼子

🔗Xiaohongshu:https://www.xiaohongshu.com/discovery/item/66e66ef70000000026033df2

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#chinese hanfu #hanfu #Mid-Autumn Festival #Zhong qiu jie #中秋节 #mooncake #Chinese traditional food #Chinese Traditional Festivals #Chinese history #hanfu accessories #china #chinese

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mashkaroom · 2 years ago

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Translation thoughts on the greatest poem of our time, “His wife has filled his house with chintz. To keep it real I fuck him on the floor”

It’s actually quite tricky to translate. Because it’s so short, each word and grammatical construction is carrying a lot of weight. It also, as people have noted, plays with registers. “Chintz” is a word with its own set of associations. Chintz is a type of fabric with its origins in India. The disparaging connotation is from chintz’s eventual commonality. Chintz was actually banned from England and France because the local textile mills couldn’t compete.

Keep it real” is tremendously difficult to translate -- it’s a bit difficult to even define. It means to be authentic and genuine, but it also has connotations of staying true to one’s roots. Like many English slang words, it comes first from AAVE. From this article on the phrase:

“[K]eeping it real meant performing an individual’s experience of being Black in the United States. As such, it became a form of resistance. Insisting on a different reality, one that wasn’t recognized by the dominant culture, empowered Black people to ‘forge a parallel system of meaning,’ according to cultural critic Mich Nyawalo...The phrase’s roots in racialized resistance, however, were erased when it was adopted by the mostly-White film world of the 1970s and ’80s....Keeping it real in this context indicated a performance done so well that audiences could forget it was a performance.This version of keeping it real wasn’t about testifying to personal experience; it was about inventing it.”

One has to imagine that jjbang8 did not have the origins of these phrases in mind when composing the poem, but even if by coincidence, the etymological and cultural journeys of these two central lexemes perfectly reflect the themes of the poem. The two words have themselves traveled away from the authenticity they once represented, and, in a new context, have taken on new meanings -- the hero of our poem, the unnamed “him”, is, presumably, in quite a similar situation.

Setting aside the question of register, of the phonology, prosody, and meter of the original, of the information that is transmitted through bits of grammar that don’t necessarily exist in other languages -- a gifted translator might be able to account for all of these -- how do you translate the journey of the words themselves?

In my translations, I decided to go for the most evocative words, even if they don’t evoke the exact same things as in the original. The strength of these two lines is that they imply that there’s more than just what you see, whether that’s the details of the story -- what’s happening in the marriage? how do the narrator and the husband know each other? -- or the cultural background of the very words themselves. I wanted to try and replicate this effect.

Yiddish first:

זייַן ווייַב האָט אָנגעפֿילט זייַן הויז מיט הבלים

צו בלייַבן וויטיש, איך שטוף אים אופֿן דיל. zayn vayb hot ongefilt zayn hoyz mit havolim.

tsu blaybn vitish, ikh shtup im afn dil

This translation is pretty direct. There is a word for chintz in Yiddish -- tsits -- but, as far as I can tell, it refers only to the fabric; it doesn’t have the same derogatory connotation as in English. I chose, instead, havolim, a loshn-koydesh word that means “vanity, nothingness, nonsense, trifles”. In Hebrew, it can also mean breath or vapor. I chose this over the other competitors because it, too, is a word with a journey and with a secondary meaning. Rather than imagining the bright prints of chintz, we might imagine a more olfactory implication -- his wife has filled his house with perfumes or cleaning fluids. It can carry the implication that something is being masked as well as the associations with vanity and gaudiness.

Vitish -- Okay, this is a good one. Keep in mind, of course, that I’ve never heard or seen it used before today, so my understanding of its nuances is very limited, but I’ll explain to you exactly how I am sourcing its meaning. The Comprehensive Yiddish-English Dictionary (CYED) gives this as “gone astray (esp. woman); slang correct, honest”. I used the Yiddish Book Center’s optical character recognition software, which allows you to search for strings in their corpus, to confirm that both usages are, in fact, attested. It’s a pretty rare word in text, though, as the CYED implies, it might have been more common in spoken speech. It appears in a glossary in “Bay unds yuden” (Among Us Jews) as a thieves cant word, where it’s definted as נאַריש, שרעקעוודיק, אונבעהאלפ. אויך נישט גנביש. אין דער דייַטשער גאַונער-שפראַך -- witsch -- נאַריש, or “foolish, terrible, clumsy/pathetic. not of the thieves world. in the German thieves cant witsch means foolish”. A vitishe nekeyve (vitishe woman) is either a slacker or a prostitute. I can’t prove this for sure, but my sense is that it might come from the same root as vitz, joke (it’s used a couple of times in the corpus to mention laughing at a vitish remark -- which makes it seem kind of similar to witty). I assume the German thieve’s cant that’s being referred to is Rotwelsch, which has its own fascinating history and, in fact, incorporates a lot of Yiddish. In fact, for this reason, some of the first Yiddish linguists were actually criminologists! What an excellent set of associations, no? It has the slangy sense of straightforward of honest; it has a sense of sexual non-normativity (we might use it to read into the relationship between the narrator and the husband) -- and a feminized one at that; it was used by an underground subculture, and, again, the meaning there was quite different -- like the “real” in “keeping it real” it was used to indicate whether or not someone was “in” on the life (tho “real” is used to mean that the person is in, while “vitish” is used to mean they’re not). It’s variety of meanings are more ambiguous than “keep it real”, which can pretty much only be read positively, and it also brings in a tinge of criminality. Though it doesn’t have the same exact connotations as “keep it real”, I think it’s about as ideal of a fit as we’ll get because it’s equally evocative of more below the surface. I also chose “tsu blaybn vitish”, which is “to stay vitish”, as opposed to something like “to make it vitish” to keep the slight ambiguity of time that “keep it real” has -- keeping it real does< I think, imply that there is a pre-existing “real” to which one can adhere, so I wanted to imply the same.

The rest is straight-forward. “Shtup” is one of a few words the Comprehensive English-Yiddish Dictionary (CEYD) gives for “fuck”, and I think it has a nice sound.

Ok, now Russian

женой твой дом наполнен финтифлюшками

чтоб не блудить с пути, ебемся на полу

zhenoy tvoy dom napolnin fintiflyushkami.

shtob ne bludit’ s puti’, yebyomsya na polu

In order to preserve, more or less, the iambic meter, I made a few more changes here -- since Russian, unlike Yiddish, is not a Germanic language, it’s harder to keep the same structure + word order while also maintaining the rhythm. I would translate this back to English as:

“Your house is filled with trifles by your wife. To not stray off the path, we’re fucking on the floor”

So a few notes before we get into the choice of words for “chintz” and “keep it real”. To preserve the iamb, I changed “his” to “your”. This changes the lines from a narration of events to some outside party to a conversation between the two men at the center. Russian also has both formal and informal you (formal you is also the plural form, as is the case in a number of other languages). I went with informal you because I wanted to preserve the fact that his wife has filled his house not their house, as someone pointed out in the original chain (though I don’t think that differentiation is nearly as striking in the 2nd person) and because it’s unlikely you’d be on formal you with someone you’re fucking (unless it’s, like, a kink thing). I honestly didn’t even consider making it formal, but that would actually raise a lot of interesting implications about the relationship between the speaker and the husband, as well as with what that means about the “realness” of the situation. Is, in fact, the narrator only creating a mirage of a more real, more meaningful encounter, while the actual truth -- that there is a woman the husband has made promises to that he’s betraying -- is obscured? that this intimacy is just a facade? Is there perhaps some sort of power differential that the narrator wishes to point out? Or perhaps is the way that the narrator is keeping it real by pointing out the distance between the two of them? there is no pretense of intimacy, the narrator is calling this what it is -- an encounter without deeper significance?

Much to think about, but I actually think the two men do have history -- i think the narrator remembers the house back when it was actually only “his house” and was as yet unfilled with chintz. We also don’t know what they were calling each other prior to this moment. This could be the first time they switched to the informal you.

Ok moving on, I originally translated it as “твой дом наполнен финтифлюшками жены”. Honestly, this sounds more elegant than what I have now, but I ultimately though removing the wife from either a subject or agent position (grammatically, I mean) was too big a betrayal of the original. The original judges the wife. She took an active role in filling the house. If she were made passive, that read is certainly a possible one -- perhaps even the dominant one -- but it could also read more like “we are doing this in a space filled with reminders of his wife and the life they share” -- the action of filling is no longer what’s being focused on. Why do I say the current translation is inelegant? I feel you stumble over it a little, because it’s almost a garden path sentence. This is also an assset though. “Zhenoy tvoy dom napolnen” is a fully grammatical sentence on its own, and it means “Your house is filled by your wife” -- as in English, the primary read is that the wife is what the house is full of. If the sentence makes you stumble, perhaps that’s even good -- we focus, for good reason, on the relationship between the two men, but in a translation, the wife is able to draw more attention to herself.

Ok, chintz: I chose the word “финтифлюшки” (fintiflyushki), meaning trifle/bobble/tchotchke, because it, allegedly, comes from the german phrase finten und flausen, meaning illusions and vanity/nonsense. Once again, I like that the word has a journey, specifically a cross-linguistic one.

Keep it real: this one, frankly, fails to capture the impact of the original, in my opinion, but allow me to explain the reasoning. “Stray off the path” implies, again, that there is some sort of path that both the narrator and the husband were on before the wife and the chintz -- and one they intend to continue taking, one that this act is a maintenance of. It brings in a little irony, since the husband very much is straying from the path of his marriage. “Bludit’“ can also mean to be unfaithful in a marriage (as, in fact, can “stray”). The proto-slavic word it comes from can mean to delude or debauch -- they want to do the latter but not the former.

As for register -- “shtob” is a bit informal. I would write the full version (shto by) in an email, for example. The word for fuck, yebyomsa, is from one of the “mat” words, the extra special top tier of russian swears, definitely not to be said in polite company (and, if you are a man of a certain generation or background, not in front of women; it’s not that the use of mat automatically invokes a male-only environment, but if we’re already thinking that deeply about it. But while we’re on the topic, i will say that in my circles in the US, women use mat much more actively than men (at least in front of me, who was, up until recently, a woman and also a child).)

Ok i think that’s all the comments i have!

#can you imagine if someone called you вы during sex unironically #i'd be like 'ты че? лучше меня тыкай' haha do you guys get it #also if you have not checked out the YBC's OCR software DO IT

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awritesthings1 · 1 year ago

Text

All The Things We Don't Say

Pairing: Tommy Shelby x Female Reader

Summary: An anthology of your life with Tommy, from friends to strangers to lovers, and all the little moments in between.

Warnings: 18+, implied DV, substance abuse, childhood trauma, ptsd, overprotective tommy, swearing, brief smut, longfic oneshot, feminist themes (motherhood & being a wife in the 1920s).

ao3 link

Smash!

“Pick it up!”

Your daddy was a drunk. You remembered the fact since you could walk. He stayed home while the working men left for the factories, then disappeared in the late hours of the morning until his eventual return when the slam of the front door woke the household up. Mother used to hold you at night as she curled up in your bed. She was sick a lot. Always sniffing into the back of your neck when you were asleep. Sometimes the sleeve of your nightgown would get soaked while she muffled her hiccups.

She looked sad, too. In the morning, she kept the curtains drawn and stayed away from the outside world. She told you it was to keep nosey Mrs. Gretel away from her family affairs. But Mrs. Gretel had left Birmingham two months prior.

By seven years old, you were the 'man' of the house. You had gone to sleep one night, and when you awoke, your mother had vaporized into the air like a rabbit in a hat.

“She left because of you,” your father slurred at you.

You hated him.

She left behind her long-sleeve dresses, scarves, and wicker hats that covered nearly every inch of her skin. They were far too big for you then, but when your father came home at the end of the week with a stack of cash, you ran to your mother’s closet, which had remained untouched until then, to find only cobwebs. Gone. Every single one of her dresses. You looked out at the moon in those early hours of the morning and swore to it that when you were bigger, you would get him back so much worse.

And so you were left to clean up his smashed glass bottles and scrub the alcohol out of the gritty carpet. Your little hands struggled to pluck the glass from the floorboards. In a year’s time, they were covered in little scars.

On your tenth birthday, you decided you were grown enough to take matters into your own hands. When he was passed out on the floor from whatever he managed to fill his pipe with, you grabbed the small bottles he hid under a loose floorboard and poured them into the gutter at the back of your house.

You turned to run back to the door when the contents of the bottle were empty, but a ball almost tripped you over. You gripped your tattered skirt before you could lose your footing and snapped your head around with a fierce pout.

“That’s my ball,” pointed a young Thomas Shelby.

You put your small hands on your smaller hips. “You kicked it my way on purpose!”

You weren’t entirely sure, but you suspected it.

“Maybe I thought you were pretty,” he grinned.

You noticed his two front teeth were missing.

“Ewwww! I would never go out with you!” You squawked.

At ten years old, you knew better than that.

Seemingly unaffected by your distaste, he continued. “Do you live there?” He nodded to the house whose roof was falling apart.

“What’s it to you?” You frowned stubbornly, not wanting to admit that, yes, that was your house.

“The curtains are always drawn,” he answered, walking over to pick up his ball from your feet. He was the same height as you were at the time. “My brother Arthur said it’s haunted. He saw a ghost in the window once. He said it was a woman and that she starved to death.”

Your nose scrunched up. "Well, he’s a phony!”

You ran inside said house and slammed the door shut.

He kissed you down by the docks that winter. It was your first kiss, and a clumsy one at that, so you didn’t remember much of it.

By thirteen, you had given in and sold the rest of your mother’s belongings to support yourself. You hated yourself for it, and that nagging voice inside your head told you that you were no better than your father. Oh, and your father? Your father lost vision in his left eye from a bar fight. Too bad it wasn’t both.

Sometime later, a boy two years older than you saw your wandering hand in someone’s bag at the fair and threatened to teach you some manners ‘the hard way’. You bit anxiously on your nails and pleaded with him because he was bigger than most boys his age, when Tommy’s brother Arthur (who you’d seen hanging around the Garrison) came passing by and threatened to ‘toss him about’. The other boy, not all believing in Arthur’s temper, rushed forward, and the two ended up rolling in the dirt, but by then you were gone with a stolen pocket watch in your fist. Nearly two legs and an arm deep in poverty, some quick cash, or a hero complex? You’d take the penny.

At fourteen, a lady knocked on your door. It was a lady of the night who had come to inform your father that he had fathered a son with her. You were glad it was a boy. A girl wouldn’t have stood a chance in the slums of Birmingham. Life was hard, but Birmingham was harder. Your father had refused to listen to the young woman and shooed her off. You never saw her teary-eyed face again.

At fifteen, your father attempted to wash his hands of you by marrying you off to the highest bidder. There was no real auction, but just about anyone who suggested a handsome sum of money did the trick.

“His name is William,” you exhaled, kicking your legs over the edge of the dock.

Tommy laughed. “You won’t marry him.”

“What choice do I have, Tom?”

Your finances were getting tight, and the gloomy pressure to take up working at night like many young ladies was beginning to loom closer and closer. You hated being a woman. Boys would never have to worry about selling themselves to survive.

“I’ll put a gypsy curse on him,” he decided, squinting his eyes from the bright reflection dancing across the water.

You hit his shoulder.

“No, you won't, because then you’ll be cursing me.”

The severity of your situation began to dawn on Tommy. No amount of pestering Polly for change to spare would relieve you of your burden any longer.

“That’s it, then?” He gulped, shifting his glassy eyes to the harbor.

You sighed and followed his gaze.

“Maybe it won’t be so bad. I’ll never have to see dad again, and William promised to take care of me.”

Tommy scoffed.

You frowned at him. “What?”

He shook his head.

“What! Tom—”

“Don’t marry him.”

You rolled your eyes. “Oh, here we go, why?”

“You know why.”

You were engaged to William on the eve of your seventeenth birthday. He was a very proper man and never dared to go any further than hooking an arm around yours on formal occasions. You were never attracted to his thin mustache nor the thick lenses he wore. In fact, he was incredibly awkward at social occasions, always checking his pocket watch and avoiding eye contact with whichever circle he stood in.

Tommy began to fade out of your life around that time. Margaret—a lady who had taken you on to help with the sewing of her family’s tailoring business—told you that Tommy was spotted arm in arm with another girl that week. You expected to feel jealous, but you felt nothing. You knew love would never be your right. Love was for the more fortunate.

You spent that year learning how to be a wife. Surprisingly, it wasn’t too different from what you did as a child—cooking and cleaning up like you did when your father came home, that is. It was comforting to have a routine in place. It meant finality—no one walking in and out of your life as they pleased, and certainly no more growling stomachs. Perhaps being a wife was a skill your mother never learned. You were grateful for William’s mother, who seemed to be more than enthusiastic to show you the reigns.

After a year-long engagement, you caught your fiancé, William, locked in a compromising position with another man.

“Oh,” was all you got out before leaving his house.

You lacked the special ingredient that marriages needed: love.

You sat down at the fountain across the street. William and his lover’s silhouette were visible behind the blinds he had drawn on the second floor, which peered over the sidewalk. You watched their shadows fluster their feathers around the room like headless geese, and for a moment your head surfaced above water and laughter frothed out between your sealed lips. Perhaps Birmingham made you a little mad.

You didn’t go through with the marriage. You suspected William was relieved.

That week, your father left. You never knew whether he left on his own accord or just never made it home one night. Either way, you never really cared to find out.

With nothing left to lose, you knocked on the Shelby family’s door at Watery Lane. Finn appeared around the other side of the door a moment later.

“Is Tommy home?”

Finn nodded, spinning on his heel to alert his brother. When Tommy did appear, his shoulders were tensed. Disheveled hair never looked so stylish on him. When you saw his suspenders (which were hastily thrown on), you wanted to ask who he expected to be at the door that he planned to answer dressed in such fashion but then thought better of it. He peered down at you, then checked over his shoulder before ushering you inside and up to his bedroom.

“It’s… smaller than I thought,” you landed on, taking in his room.

After all these years, you had never stepped foot into the Shelby home. You weren’t the type of person to come door-knocking.

You turned around to face Tommy after hearing him click the lock on his door.

“Are you hurt?" were the first words he had spoken to you in a year.

“No.” You pressed your lips together, eyeing everything from the bed to the view out the window.

Silence followed closely after.

“Then why are you here?” Tommy sighed.

Your vision began to blur then. “I don’t know,” you said honestly, trying to stop your bottom lip from trembling.

Desperately, you pushed your hair back and straightened up, attempting to hold yourself together. You must have looked like a puppet being held together by a string, given how poor you looked.

Tommy’s boots pad across the wooden floor. “You love me?”

Did that word truly exist? How could you answer if you never knew what it meant to love?

You don’t meet his eyes. He licked his lips, pushing your head up to meet his with his thumb. His eyebrows rose expectantly.

“I don’t know what to do, Tom,” you breathed, avoiding his question. “I’m all alone now. No William, no father…”

His lips parted, and you watched with fascination as the cogs turned in his head. “Yes… that is a problem." His breath fanned over your face.

You gagged, a reaction you yourself had not expected, before rushing to his door, only to remember that, yes, he had locked it, before turning to the nearest silver bucket in the corner to empty your guts.

The first thing you heard when you caught your breath was, “are you pregnant?”

No, but when you stand so close to me and I can smell the cigarettes you smoke and your freshly washed skin, I can imagine a future where we are married, and I see your face growing more disappointed as we age together because you married a woman who never knew how to be a mother to your children nor a wife who knew to tend to you with affection by your bedside when you’re ill.

“No,” you choked, spitting out the vile taste in your mouth. “We never did anything.”

You wanted him to know that. You wanted him to think that you never let William touch you because you never loved him, not because William wasn’t interested in girls.

A moment later, Tommy sat beside you on the floor and quietly combed your hair away from your wobbling lips.

“So, if you’re not pregnant and you don’t love me, why are you here?”

You wiped your mouth with the back of your hand. How were you supposed to answer that? After letting your guts loose in his room, you thought he would surely have booted you out the door.

A knock came on the door: “Tommy?”

“A minute, Finn!” Tommy growled at the door, refusing to back away from your trembling frame.

You were so hungry. Margaret had to cut back your hours ever since her husband fell ill. She spent more time by his bedside than keeping the store open, which meant you were making less than usual. The imminent closing of the store hung over your head like a taunting crow, gouging your insides like you were Prometheus. Birmingham your chains, a woman your fate, and the bird your punishment for thinking you deserved more.

“I should go.” You shivered at the draft inching towards your skin from the open window.

Tommy’s intense gaze stuttered, falling to your lap, where you picked at the dead skin around your nails. He cleared his throat, fishing out the key from his pocket. Although it was dull and muted from the years, it gleaned brightly in your eyes as if it were the reward you came for. Flushed, you grabbed it out of his hands without sparing a glance. Electricity sparked in those precious seconds, igniting a deadly fire in your belly.

“You’re cold." Tommy flinched at your touch.

You retreated as soon as the key slid into the hole and unlocked with a click. In your haste, you left the most valuable thing you owned there in his room.

Your heart.

The months went by, and summer arrived. The stories your mother told you left you expecting a bright gleam of air that would wash over the streets and paint each tree and every patch of grass a frighteningly bright green that would even encourage grumpy Mrs. Gretel to come out to preen her stubborn roses that would just not grow. Birmingham left less to be desired. The summer days never came, and that persisting bitter bog thickened, albeit with slightly less rain. There were gray clouds, smoke from the factories, and a shivering north westerly, which pushed said clouds at breakneck speed as if they had somewhere to be. You looked to the sky one day and said a prayer for blue breezes and sweltering sun, but the sky was empty.

Sometime later, men marched the streets armed with guns in their ‘dashing’ uniforms. A war, they said, a great one. Queues lined the street for the post offices and grocers. Rain rivaled the bustle of the city. What did it feel like to love someone so much as to stand in the pouring rain next to the gutter? You wanted that kind of love. Not the love you could only give yourself because even you didn’t want your own love.

One of the soldiers decorated in medals stood on a crate at the port, yelling something supposedly inspiring that captured the attention of many young men. The words honorable and patriotic were tossed in there like a delectable salad, enticing them in the way farmers held a carrot to a pig’s snout.

You pitied their mothers. Their daughters were married off, and then their sons were swooning over the idea of dying. Birmingham was filthy, rotting, and disgusting. You needed to leave.

You kissed Margaret goodbye on the cheek one Tuesday morning. Ever since your pockets turned out empty, you had been working as a bedside nurse for her ill-stricken husband. They were good to you, and they were probably the only people you could consider family.

She patted your cheek and said, "you're doing good to serve this country.”

You hadn’t had the heart to tell her you were leaving because the city was marring your flesh, so you slipped her the sugarcoated lie of wanting to join the war effort so that you might help others who were bedridden, just like her husband.

At the train station, you stood with your suitcases held tightly in both arms. You had to set one down to hold onto your hat as a train full of men waving their caps out the window pulled into the station. Some children weaved between the crowd, wagging a newspaper above their heads, hoping to make a quick penny. To your side, women wept for their brothers, husbands, and lovers.

“Who are you wishing off?” asked an elderly woman who was clutching her cane.

“Oh, I’m not. I’m boarding the next train.”

She laughed, and you wondered how old your mother would be now. Would she have grown wrinkles and settled into a deeper laugh like this woman?

“My dear, you have a bright imagination if you think they will let a woman on any of these trains.”

A sudden anger filled your blood. “Why not?”

“These men are heading straight for London, where they will be shipped away to France to fight,” the woman explained as if it were any other day.

“I’ll catch the next train then.”

She shook her head, and her frail hand curled tighter around her cane. “They’ve stopped the trains so they can transport soldiers to London.”

You frowned. “Then how will I leave Birmingham?”

You’ll never forget her dismissive laughter.

“My dear, you won’t.”

Men boarded the train, clapping each other on the back with a wink and a laugh. When a line of men on the platform thinned, the train whistled, and you looked over just in time to see Polly, Ada, and little Finn standing with their hands crossed over their hearts as they waved to the train.

No. It wasn’t possible.

But it was because you caught the gleam of the razors sewn into their peaky caps. Tommy, Arthur, and John all stood aboard the train, sticking their heads out and waving to Polly and Ada with a grin that wrung your stomach like a wet cloth.

Those countless daydreams you spun, the intricate webs you wove, began breaking down to thin fibers. In one pathway, you stayed there in his room and told him the truth you always denied yourself. You loved him. In another, you stood next to Polly, close to tears, as you begged him to come home safely. There was a resounding click in that moment as your breath stuttered. You had been the person who wiped away those futures, thinking it was nothing but an annoying spiderweb. Oh, how wrong you were!

“Tommy!” You left your suitcases behind and stepped around the old woman as you ducked under hugs and tearful goodbyes.

“Tommy!” You cried again with the gusto of someone who certainly shouldn’t be as concerned as they were considering you left him in his room that day.

Thankfully, his eyes eventually found yours as you pushed through the last line of people. You stood there and stomached all your regrets head-on. It was funny how, up until that moment, you managed to squash every seed of doubt. Why was it that you only realized what you had when it was slipping out of reach?

He never called your name back. He just stared at you blankly as the train pulled away, unlike you, who clung to the image of his frame even as the train disappeared from sight and the crowd began to disperse. You stood there unblinking, hoping to soak up the last of him before you forgot the intensity of his eyes or the humming rumble of his voice. Because the idea of something you held dearly becoming a memory meant that it could as easily be forgotten, and that terrified you. Your eyes were watering now, against your best wishes.

You overheard Polly ushering Finn and Ada off. Finn rushed home without protest, but Ada stopped in her tracks when she saw you hunched over your knees in tears. She smiled weakly before chasing Finn home. It was then that Polly’s shadow approached your huddled frame. She didn’t say anything, and for a moment, you weren’t sure if she expected you to stand and apologize for being such a mess. That’s when a penny clattered to the ground beside you. She squeezed your shoulder once before disappearing.

You kissed that penny as if Tommy would feel the power of it across the country, then ran back to Margaret’s, having forgotten your suitcases.

“Oh…” She exclaimed, slapping her tea towel on the counter when you walked into the kitchen. “You missed your train?”

Dread made your stomach tender and your breath short.

“I’m enrolling in the Red Cross.”

Throughout the war, you thought of Tommy every day until your stomach lurched. Would it have worked if you had stayed? Would you both have grown old together instead of subjecting yourself to the spray of dirt when a bomb went off nearby?

A day ago, your supply rations never came. It wasn’t like hunger was anything new, but when your mind was too focused on surviving the perilous weather, it was hard to save other lives. You made work with what little supplies you had left. The morphine went stint within hours of its arrival, and the cries of pained soldiers filled the medical tent all night. You did what you could, wiped sweat from their foreheads, and wrote letters to their mothers and lovers with what supplies you could scavenge. Some were written on cardboard from shell packaging, others on torn pages from the bibles they kept over their hearts. Pens were useless—the ink ran in the rain—so you scribbled everything down in pencil.

Before you left for France, you were warned of the bullets. No one ever warned you about the shrapnel, nor the bombs or grenades. They shattered soldiers’ bones beyond repair and left bodies unrecognizable. There wasn’t much you could do when most of their flesh was missing.

Keeping faith became an impossible task. Supplies were depleted, and nurses were dejected. Sally, who had been writing home for news of her brother, recently had her letters returned with the black stamp. Death—return to sender. She spent only an hour sitting on a trunk, letting her tears fall, before she got back to work. Grief privileged those with time, something no one could afford in these conditions.

Then it came—the day Arthur Shelby was carried in on a stretcher. You were making your rounds around the beds when a truckload of yelling men pooled through the entrance of the tent.

“Nurse!” They all yelled, some limping, others setting down stretchers of men on the dirt between the filled beds.

You and two other nurses dropped everything and ran over to attend to the wounded. They were all covered head to toe in dirt, groaning and clutching limbs that were twisted the wrong way. One in particular coughed and huffed while he fought against hands, which were fruitlessly pushing him back down on the stretcher.

“Let me go!” He yelled, wrestling against an older nurse.

“It’s alright, Mary. I’ll handle this one,” you patted her shoulder as you swapped places.

You dunked a washcloth into a bucket of water to wipe away the dirt in his eyes. “Calm down; you're safe here,” you said, starting your usual script of reassurances.

When the striking blue eyes squinted up at you, your blood ran cold. You froze before taking his head in both your hands, despite his protests. “Arthur? Arthur, it’s me!”

He loosened his grip on your wrist. “Huh?”

“It’s me! Where’s Tommy and John?”

He spat blood and gritted his teeth. “Fucking hell, where’s the whiskey?”

You laughed despite the smell of blood encompassing the tent. You quickly fetched the alcohol you had been using to clean wounds and pressed it to his lips. You weren’t sure if it was whiskey or not, but you reasoned he was in too much pain to be able to tell. He drank it with a groan of pleasure. You didn’t try to snatch the bottle away as he emptied it down his palette; you just sat and grinned at the way he suckled it like a newborn baby while you cleaned away his cuts.

“I’ve never been happier to see you, Arthur.”

“Yeah, yeah,” he mumbled, his lips still wrapped around the bottle.

You tried to stay by his side for as long as you could before the second wave of patients came tumbling through the flaps of the tent. One of them lost their grip on the stretcher, and the patient went sliding into the dirt headfirst.

“Fuck!” They all swore, abandoning the stretcher to drag the limp man further into the makeshift hospital.

You rushed to help when a hand gripped the back of your neck. You yelped in pain as your hair got caught in a fingernail when they turned you to face them.

And there he was: Tommy Shelby, covered in a thick layer of dirt, heaving for air.

“Nurse! Nurse!” Voices cried for you, but between the ringing in your ears and the wrath in Tommy’s blue eyes, you were frozen in place.

“The fuck are you doing here, eh?” He yelled over the anguished men.

You suddenly felt stupid standing there in your Red Cross uniform.

“I was looking for you, I—”

His dirty hands cupped your cheeks—something you were painfully aware of from the uncomfortable itch from the mud on your flushed skin—and pulled your forehead to his.

“You think this is some fantasy?” He squinted. “You think there’s any fucking moonlight to kiss under here, eh?” He spat.

His eyes held that haunted look you had seen on many soldiers that passed through the medical tent. Your eyes watered. Perhaps it was from the humidity and dirt being kicked up as nurses and patients scuffled around, not because you could hardly recognize the man in front of you. The blood smeared above his eyebrow worried you, so you reasoned that he was mad because it had been leaking into his eyes. Dutifully, you reached to wipe it with the back of your hand. He grabbed your wrist harshly, bringing it down to your side. He was in shock; you scolded yourself.

“Where’s John and Arthur?” Tommy swallowed, flexing his hands.

You led him to Arthur, who had been left in his corner while the nurses attended to more serious cases. It hurt watching the brothers reunite after their ordeal, so you left them alone no matter how much you feared them being discharged before your return. After all, everything you ever wanted sat in that corner, but it would be selfish to coddle Tommy all to yourself. Still, you couldn’t help sparing a glance when you walked up and down the tent, attending to patients.

Later that night, he came to you under the candlelight of your tent. He cleared his throat upon entry. You were lying face-up on your cot when he cleared his throat and peeled back the entrance to enter. The candlelight painted the mountain peaks of his face in a dull amber and the valleys in a frightening shadow. You sat up, pulling the thick cover over your shift.

Tommy kneeled next to you, resting on the heels of his boots. He licked his chapped lips and itched his nose. “You don’t belong here.”

Your grip on the cover loosened. “Huh?”

Nothing prepared you for when he swung his brooding stare towards you. He exhaled loudly before running a hand over his face.

“You should have stayed in Birmingham.” He said it like a warning.

“And done what?”

Vulnerability never looked good on Tommy. His head hung and his fingers itched at the back of his head—a tick you used to love; now you weren’t so sure. Because your Tommy was never afraid, but this man in front of you was alarmingly tense despite the clear efforts to mask it.

What have they done to you, Tom?

Under the dim light of your tent, you barely recognized him. A stranger’s eyes were blown wide in a frightening state of shock, something most soldiers mirrored. War washed out the sweet blue pair you knew, refitting them for a steely weapon. You hated seeing him like this, so still, so unsteady, cocooned into the corner as if afraid to take up space.

You feared you looked no better. Having worked till the point of exhaustion, you usually found yourself awakening against a wooden crate or trunk to the cries of patients who demanded your attention despite your body not having the strength to stand. Today you had been lucky and found yourself crawling distance to your private tent when your knees started wobbling and your head lulling.

The wooden reinforcing of your private tent fought in vain to shelter your bodies from the elements; it still flapped and whipped about, sometimes rocking your cot. Yet Tommy remained still like those life-size stone statues you’d find outside an important building, brooding at the dirt and locked in an internal battle. You shifted to the edge of your makeshift bed and leaned close enough that you saw how the top buttons of his dirtied uniform were missing and most of his clothes were torn.

His arm, which was breaking out in goosebumps, lay heavily across his knee so that he could rest his forehead there limply. He looked in a bad enough condition that you feared the possibility of him succumbing to the wasteland threatening him outside your tent. You wrapped your arms around the scruff of his hair and pulled his face into your stomach, where he could hide from the terrible world. On instinct, his arms wound around your waist, and you felt his warm exhale against your skin through the thin fabric of your slip.

His tin water bottle clanged against the satchel he wore, which made you wonder if he had any time to rest at all if he still had all his equipment tied to his uniform.

“I didn’t…” His voice was muffled by your slip. He cleared his throat again, shaking his head.

When he dropped the thought, you spoke up. “Have you eaten?”

He slapped your thigh haphazardly. “No, do you have a cigarette?”

You resisted the urge to roll your eyes, instead gently pushing him away so you could kneel beneath your bed and fish a cigarette from your satchel. You pinched one from its tin case, then thought better of it and tossed it on Tommy’s lap. Gratefully, he collected one from the case and lit it with a nearby candle. You watched his chest rise and fall as he took an especially deep drag. His eyes shut as the nicotine rushed to his head.

“Fuck, that’s good,” he muttered under his breath.

“How are you here, Tommy? One of the night nurses should’ve been on watch.”

“Oh,” smoke puffed out of his mouth, and he raised his eyebrows, “there is.”

“Then how—”

“I had to see you.”

The butterflies in your stomach dove. The blue in his eyes appeared translucent as they hazed over like a ghost. His shoulders were slumped dejectedly, and he had a hand pushing through his greasy, unwashed hair to relieve his neck from the weight of his thoughts.

He pointed to you then, with the cigarette nursed between his fingers. “I need to know why you changed your mind.”

“About what, Thomas?”

His voice slurred and slipped into a deeper register from the lack of sleep. "Why you came back. Why you came to France.” Tommy shook his head lazily. “You expect me to believe you had a sudden change of heart? What? You a patriot now?” An amused exhale curled out while he took another drag. “Well I don’t believe it.”

You began shivering despite the way your body flushed.

“How’s Arthur?” You tried to avert the conversation.

“Bloody drunk off his ass.”

“And you?”

Tommy held your stare and swallowed dryly. “Trying.”

“You can go join him if you wish.”

He looked at the entrance of your tent as if he were weighing his options, then shook his head and took another drag before clearing his throat. “It’s different now.”

Naïvely, you sank to the ground beside him and rested a hand on his shoulder. “It doesn’t have to be.”

He sighed.

“I wish that were true.”

The next time you saw Tommy, you were working a shift at the hospital. After the war, you received a medal for your efforts, which easily got you a job in Birmingham. You pleaded with them to send you to any other hospital—London, Manchester, Liverpool—you didn’t care. Anywhere but Birmingham.

“You should be honored to work for me!” Exclaimed the head nurse at Birmingham Hospital, who didn’t seem too pleased with your distaste for the city.

You thought the job would be the final nail in the coffin, but you surprisingly got along well with the head nurse once you had put your animosity aside. So much so, she offered to lease you a room upstairs from hers.

Then came that dreaded night where you were finishing the filing of some documents when a patient was being rushed in. Your ears perked up, and you looked through the blinds of the office to see a man being rushed by. Something small and round had fallen off the stretcher while the nurses paid no attention, pushing him around the corner and down towards the operating theater. Curious, you exited the office.

And there on the ground was one of those peaky caps Tommy and his brothers used to wear. You knew this because you picked it up and nearly cut yourself on the blade that was sewn into the seam. You spent the next hour gnawing on your nails. Your imagination sparked ideas about the beaten man who was lying in an operating room two doors down in surgery. Was it Tommy? Arthur? John? The shadows under your eyes darkened at the thought. No, it was probably some other Peaky Blinder. The Shelby brothers were too careful. Still, you knocked over your coffee in a mad dash to the bathroom, where you heaved up your dinner.

You volunteered to stay until the morning, but the head nurse on duty for the night refused and sent you home. You didn’t sleep at all that night.

The next morning, you arrived early and made a beeline for the emergency ward. You grabbed the admission form and scanned the patient list. There were only two emergency patients who were listed under the final hour of your shift, a woman and a man, which made it easier to narrow it down to the man who was admitted at quarter to midnight in ward four, room seven.

When you peaked through the crack in the door, you knew you had been worried for a reason. Tommy lay under the covers, battered and bruised, with a swollen eye and a nasty scar where he had reportedly received surgery for trauma to the head.

You slipped inside quietly and closed the door. Tommy’s eyes were closed, and his mouth hung open, stealing miniscule amounts of air into his lungs. He looked as good as a ghost.

“Tommy…” You clutched his peaky cap (which you meant to return) between your fingers.

He didn’t move an inch, so you set the cap down by his bedside table, carefully watching the rise and fall of his chest.

What have they done to you, Tom?

On the second week, he woke up while you were cleaning the windowsill. He coughed, and you whipped around in shock.

“Nurse?” He asked hoarsely, blinking away the blinding light.

You rushed to his side, tears bursting like the fountain you passed on your way to work.

“Don’t move,” you urged when he tried to sit up.

“I have to get to London,” he slurred, only half awake.

You weren’t upset that he didn’t recognize you. You weren’t upset that he didn’t recognize you.

“Tommy… it’s me.”

He shrugged your hand off his shoulder with a hiss. “Fucking hell.”

Don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t cry.

“Please don’t move; I don’t want you to hurt yourself.” You couldn’t hide the way your voice broke.

He looked up at you, then, through bloodshot blue eyes. You wished you knew what was going through his head. Happy or sad?

“Am I dead?”

“No,” you smiled weakly as a tear fell.

“Can I have a smoke then?”

“I don’t know how to love, Tommy!”

“Yeah? Yeah? That’s bullshit! Why do you keep coming back then?” He pinched your chin, glaring furiously into your eyes. “Eh?”

He stood so close that he blocked the light from the chandelier, which mournfully hung from the ceiling. You shivered in his shadow.

“I shouldn’t have come tonight.”

“But you did!” He accused, pointing in your face.

“It was a mista—”

“You fucking did!”

“Tommy!”

“I’ve had it! If you want to leave, then fucking leave; otherwise, don’t stand there all righteous waving empty threats over my head because I know you won’t leave.” He shook his head with a wild look in his eye. “No… You won’t leave. You won’t leave because you love me. You keep coming back,” he pointed matter-of-factly.

Tommy’s eyebrows danced between being terribly furrowed and alarmingly raised during his passionate monologue. It was rare for him to emit so much emotion these days. The war changed men, and Tommy was no exception. A chilling stillness framed his presence, which even you weren’t excused from. No more laughter, no more dreams of working with horses, because he was above all that now, wasn’t he? It was ambition that ground his teeth together and hollowed his eyes. Still, you couldn’t forget that the anger came from vulnerability, because it took a lot for someone to get under Thomas Shelby’s skin.

You moved to grab your purse, to make good on his word, but he halted your movement by grabbing your shoulders, roughly at first, before loosening his grip. You softened at his frantic demeanor. He was scared—oh, so afraid of you walking out that door again. But how could you ever explain it to him? You were never born for love. You would never know how to love him properly the way wives were supposed to because what you felt for Tommy was sickeningly deep. So much so that the mere impression of him sealed off your ribcage and ruined any chance of your heart beating for any other soul, so much so that you carried the weight of him in your bones because you could never shake him off.

When you looked back at life, all you saw was the absence of love. You used to imagine yourself growing up and falling in love with a handsome stranger, then getting married in a proper white dress to go live in your proper house. But when you looked in the mirror, you saw a ghost. The pathway of your life was laid out before your eyes once, and what you saw didn’t match the reflection. The man you were supposed to marry couldn’t even look at you, even if you cleaned and cleaned and cleaned until your fingerprints turned white and pasty.

Because what it all came down to was simple. You never got to become the person you envisioned. Instead, you were cursed to live as a blank slate and be consistently reminded of what you were supposed to be and of who you were: no one.

Tommy exhaled in a quick huff, pressing his forehead to yours so that he saw you clearer, without all the tension and bullshit in the way.

“Here it comes, Tommy.” You took a shaky breath. “I love you, but I could never be the perfect wife to you, and I would be a terrible mother.”

There, in all its ugly colors and shades, you hung yourself with the truth.

He shook his head as if he too couldn’t believe your words.

“Fuck’s sake! Forget about all that." His eyes watered out of frustration, but he was still puffing in anger. “I need you. You. Not some whore.”

You bit your lip to muffle the god-forsaken cry ready to erupt from the volcanoes you suddenly found roaring in your stomach. An earthquake overtook your hands the more you fought the inevitable eruption. You grabbed both his hands to stop yours from shaking.

“I have to be cursed; there’s no other way!”

“No!”

“My life slips through my fingers like grains of sand—”

“You’re not cursed!”

“And I can’t stop it, Tommy!”

“You’re not fucking cursed, and I’ll tell you why." Tommy cut you off. He leaned in, licking his lips, which had turned dry from all the shouting, and squeezed your hands. “Because my ancestors charmed dogs with their magic, they didn’t scare little girls with curses,” he paused. “But you… You waved a hand over my head, and now I’m no better than a dog.”

He closed the space between you, pressing his forehead against yours, and stroked both your cheeks, wiping at your tears. You held him there in a meek attempt at reciprocation.

You wished the world were ending so then you could grab Tommy’s hand and say, ‘I’m ready, Tom. The world is ending, so let’s kiss and love each other under the flames without any fear because the world is ending.’

But you were never good at expressing yourself with words, so you sealed it with a kiss, hoping he could taste the unspoken words on your lips the same way you tasted the tears. He responded in earnest, gripping you roughly by the scruff of your neck to seal the promise laden between your lips; no more running.

It was just your luck that you would bump into your ex-fiancé, William, while visiting a bar in London with Ada. You were buzzing from the warmth of three sweet liquors and whatever else Ada insisted you try, and everything was starting to seem a little funny by the time he approached you.

He engaged in pleasantries, swishing his wine around the glass and sniffing it occasionally, like many pompous older men tended to do. There was only so much smiling you could afford before you caught your reflection in the freshly wiped bar and realized how poorly your acting skills were. Ada was no help, muttering something about finding a phonebooth and then slipping into the belated and boozed crowd. It was then that the supposed nectar in your glass began to taste like the cleaning products—that nose-scrunching stench. Thankfully, William was too involved in some tangent to notice you muffle a gag into your palm.

The dazzling hum in your ears muffled out all his words. In your drunken state, William appeared to be more confident than what you remembered, but you were unable to decipher whether it was from a change of heart or if he was trying to fall back in your good graces. Otherwise, you were blinded by the roaring bustle of the bar and the delicious swell of music that seemed to reverberate across your being.

Growing a little bored with William’s story, your attention wandered over his shoulder, still being sure to nod every now and then as if you were deeply pondering his words. Not far away from his side, a man seemed to linger—a man who was careful not to reach your eye. You must have laughed a little harder than usual because William turned sharply to the man at his side, gave him a quick once-over, then returned his attention to you, but by then it was too late, and you knew exactly what William’s relationship was with this man and where William’s confidence had come from.

“You’ll make a fine wife and a finer mother someday,” William quickly added.

You cursed the witch inside you, who laughed from her stomach and used his shoulder to steady herself. Once upon a time, that was all you longed to hear, but now, with a half-spilt martini in hand, you couldn’t care less. Both of you had found happiness despite your unconventional circumstances, and there was no more to it. You could close that chapter without any loose threads.

A little drunk, you thanked him, disappeared, and never thought of him again.

“I can’t do it, Ada,” you stressed, beginning to feel uncomfortable with the baby in your arms.

Motherhood came rumbling into your life like a rusty engine spitting out oil. ‘Instinctual’, the mothers down the lane from Arrow House had said, ‘it’s like your body has been preparing for it your whole life.’ How awful, you thought, and by the time one of them finished speaking about their experience with their first, your nose was so scrunched in disgust that you would need an iron to flatten out the wrinkles. It wasn’t until now that you longed to be in their shoes, because nothing came naturally to you.

“He’ll latch eventually; he’s just a little fussy,” Ada reassured.

“Is it supposed to hurt?”

“It’s perfectly normal.”

Then, after an hour of rubbing your sons back on the verge of tears, he finally began feeding from you. Ada soothed your back the whole time and cooed softly to calm both you and your unruly boy. Sometimes she brought Karl. He would obediently sit on her lap, playing with his wooden horse, while your little Charles fussed.

One time in the early morning, when you were up attempting to feed Charles, Tommy rushed in alert with disheveled hair and sunken eyes.

“Sorry,” you mouthed, deflated your hardworking husband had been disturbed from his sleep.

He ran his hands over his face and sighed. You mistook his action for frustration and desperately tried to hush your baby. Tommy moved over to the rocking chair where you sat, trying to feed little Charles in your arms.

“Don’t be sorry,” he whispered into the crook of your neck. “How is he?”

You flushed under the moonlight, suddenly embarrassed that your husband had caught you in this vulnerable position with the top of your slip peeled down. Your exposed skin hissed when he pressed a kiss against your pulse.

“I don’t think he likes me very much.”

Tommy inhaled sharply against your neck before resting his chin on your shoulder to peer down at Charles. Charles had settled since Tommy walked into the room, acutely aware of his father as his little hands made a grabbing motion for him. Diligently, Tommy relieved your arms of Charles and cradled him close to his chest. Within minutes, the little baby was gurgling happily and blinking in a way that suggested sleep was on the horizon after all.

Your husband didn’t dare make any sudden noise as he gently set Charles in his cradle. Once he was surely asleep, Tommy guided you up from the rocking chair and into your shared bedroom.

“See?” you hissed, still maintaining a soft voice, “he only wants you.”

Tommy wouldn’t hear any of it, pulling you into his arms as he sat on the edge of the mattress. Your slip was still pooled around your hips, so he took the opportunity to plant a kiss above your breasts, where your heart was.

“He loves you,” he drawled in that husky voice of his. “I know he does because I do.”

Your head ached, but you couldn’t help the way your body reacted to his words and touch. Tommy’s wandering hands teased the silk fabric that clung to your hips as you felt his nose trail down to your breast, where he kissed one of your aching nipples delicately. Suddenly hot, you hummed in delight, the back of his shorn scalp pleasant beneath your nails. A grunt, bathed in that musk of his devours your senses. Inhaling sharply, he took the bud between his full lips, sucking, licking, and nibbling gently while his hands explored further down. Your head lulled back from the pleasure, gasping and withering under his skilled tongue.

The next thing you knew, Tommy was tugging the rest of your silk slip off and reminding you of just how much he loved you.

“Charles! Come here!” Tommy called.

Your little boy loved to play in the backyard of Arrow House. Much like his father, Charles adored horses. Big ones, small ones, black ones, white ones—but most of all, he favored his Shetland pony. Tommy had brought it for Charles before he could even walk. He said something about it being important for his son to be raised around horses from a young age. And while you didn’t necessarily disagree, it still stressed you out to hold your baby so close to such a large, muscular animal. You knew the Arabian breeds spooked easily, so you steered clear of them and were able to keep Tommy and Charles happy.

But now he had grown up so fast and was able to run around on his own two legs, climb trees, and bruise his knees on the way down. The sun beat lovingly on the apples of his cheeks as he dirtied his trousers, kneeling by the fence to feed his Shetland (affectionately named Biscuit) hand-picked grass through the gaps.

“Charles! We’re leaving!” You called when he ignored his father.

Stubbornly, Charles spun around to pout his lip and cross his arms. He glared at you as threateningly as a five-year-old could. You bit your lip to hide your smile because he really did look like a little Tommy with those big blue eyes. It would only be a matter of time before he perfected his father’s stare. With a sigh, you shifted your daughter into Tommy’s arms before approaching Charles, who was picking angrily at the grass.

You reached a hand out toward him, "let's go.”

“No!”

“All right,” you said decisively, spinning around, “Ruby will have all the fun then.”

“No!” cried your little boy.

You stuck a hand up in surrender and started walking back to Tommy. “No, it’s all right.”

“No, no no no!” Came his protest, chasing behind you as the gravel crunched beneath his boots.

You paid no attention to him, keeping your eyes trained ahead, silently relieved that your ploy worked. Tommy watched on in amusement while Ruby suckled on her thumb, curiously watching her brother storm closer.

“You hear that, Ruby? We’re going to spoil you,” a short smile played on Tommy’s face as he adjusted her so that she sat comfortably on his hip.

“And me!” Charles added and gave his best pout.

“No, Charles, you said you didn’t want to go,” you reminded him, raising your eyebrows.

“I do! I do!”

“Hmm,” you thought aloud, and held a finger to your chin while looking to the sky in exaggerated contemplation. “Very well, but only if you get in daddy’s car right this instant.”

He climbed into the backseat of the Bentley without further fuss.

When all the bags were neatly packed in the back for the day’s festivities, Tommy came around your side to sit Ruby on your lap. Quickly, he leaned in to kiss you and pinch your cheek, which swelled into a glowing grin.

He smiled back and whispered low enough for only you to hear, “got him wrapped around your finger, eh?”

You laughed. “Him and a few other Shelby’s I know of.”

The thundering sound of music could be heard from outside the theater on the corner of Old Pauls. Inside, patrons mused between champagne, dancing, and making a display of their wealth by bidding on little trinkets. It was one of the many charity galas Tommy had to attend because of his new move into politics. Usually, you enjoyed dressing for those sorts of things, but tonight you simply weren’t feeling up to it. Maybe it was the drape of your dress not sitting right or the new leather shoes that still needed breaking in.

Your shimmering smile faded into the crowd as you snuck through the back door in your satin bordeaux dress. Old Pauls sat perched above the cemetery it was named after. Conveniently across the street from the buzz of the theater, it was airily quiet and stuck out from the rest of industrial Birmingham. Your heels clacked across the pavement as you wandered up and down the garden, glimpsing at stone angels and silver plaques. All you had to light your path were the streetlights and the moon.

Your diamond wedding ring twinkled under the stars as you stopped to trace a name. It was the same as your mother's, but with a different last name. Still, you always wondered what happened to her. Had she gotten married to another man and taken his name? You expected to shiver at the idea, but you found that thinking of her no longer unnerved you. She packed up the title of mother when she left you all alone in that cramped house.

Light spilled out onto the pavement across the street when the entrance to the theater swung open. A few men flew down the steps and split off in different directions. Thinking it odd, you remained crouched until they disappeared around their respective corners. That’s when you saw Tommy exit through the same doors, throwing a cigarette and wiping at his brow while he looked up and down the street. Quickly, you stood and waved your arm to get his attention. When he noticed, he stormed down the steps and stalked across the street and through the gates of Old Pauls over to you.

“I needed some air,” you spoke up before he could get a word in.

His eyes wildly flickered back and forth from yours in a frenzy. Under the moonlight, they looked almost translucent, and, save for a ghost of blue, his pupils were wide.

“Why the bloody hell are you out here, eh?” He demanded, gently shaking your head between his hands for emphasis while his eyebrows rose expectantly.

“It’s quieter.”

When he tilted his head to the sky and exhaled, your stomach dropped at the sight of blood. Your ears, which had been tuning out the music, flinched when a shrill cry from a woman rang out the theater doors. The music was gone, now replaced with screams as all the patrons rushed out, tripping over each other like it were a race. You turned back to Tommy, now as worried as the others.

“What the hell happened? Are you hurt?” You urged, gripping his white collar, now red, to inspect where the blood was coming from.

“Not mine,” he cleared his throat, grabbing the hand on his collar to tug you down the street.

The frame of your world stretched a little wider, like light pouring in through open shutters. Car doors slammed, and drivers honked at the agitated crowd who ran this way and that across the road.

“Where’s the fucking ambulance?” Shouted a man who took no care to avoid bumping into you.

You stumbled back, your hand slipping from Tommy’s on impact. Rage flickered across his features briefly, having noticed the man push through you, but he reconnected your hands and continued walking fast. When he reached the Bentley, he urged you inside, holding your hand the whole way until you were seated in the passenger seat.

“What the hell happened, Tommy?” You repeated as he slid into the driver’s seat.

“Someone got shot.”

Your eyes widened. “Are Polly and—”

“They’re fine.”

You sank back into your seat as the engine roared to life. Peaky Blinder’s followed the frenzied crowd, moving together like a pack of wolves onto the streets. They only parted to let Tommy’s Bentley through. Out the window, people were fighting and throwing fists as they all tried to escape the mayhem.

“Why aren’t they letting people through?” You asked after witnessing a Peaky Blinder block the road and refuse to let a car pass.

“Doesn’t matter.”

He never told you anything when it came to business. And although you suspected this was much more than the doing of the Shelby brothers, Tommy’s face never betrayed him. Simply put, if he didn’t want you to know, you wouldn’t.

“Would anyone want to follow us?”

“No.” He exhaled deeply, cleared his throat, and then reached to give your thigh a squeeze.

You knew it was a lie when his eyebrows rose. He only did that when he was worried. Your tongue remained pressed to the back of your teeth the entire ride home.

The howl of the wind whistled down into the valley of the gypsy camp Tommy had brought you and the children to.

“Pack your things,” he had said one night after storming through the front door of Arrow House, “we’re going on a trip.”

Charles and Ruby cheered, but you suspected something sinister beneath his intentions.

So, there you were, picking at the grass by your feet while you perched on the bottom step of the gypsy wagon Tommy parked beneath a tree for shade. He kept quiet for most of the ride, absorbed in leading the horse around loose gravel and stones, or rather, he led you to believe he was lost in concentration. Because, when it came down to it, you knew Tommy better than to assume nothing was wrong.

The past week, he had been acting different, jumpy even. He ran into the nursery during the early hours of the morning on edge, as if expecting something to be amiss. You tried interrogating him, but he brushed it off, insisting things were fine. Fine—you began detesting that word. Fine this, fine that, but if things were really fine, then why was he on edge?

Then came the bloodshot eyes and the slamming of his desk drawer when you entered the office. Only this time he couldn’t deny the unmistakable jingle of a bullet, which rattled in the wooden compartment like some sort of airy death chime.

A black hand. One for each Shelby. And since you were now one too, that meant neither you nor the children were subjected to any special treatment. A week, he said, a week for his family to clear up the business while he stayed here watching over you like a shepherd to his flock.

And watched he did, standing next to where you sat, he found peace observing Charles and Ruby as they chased each other around the overgrown field. There he remained for an hour or so, frighteningly still, the only motion being his sharp jaw chewing on a mint leaf, somewhat reminiscent of the soldier in your tent all those years ago. Next to him, tied to the tree, the black steed filled the silence with snorts and grazed favorably on the loose roots and grass patches.

“Ruby was crying this morning. She’s scared, Tom." You sighed.

Tommy hadn’t been there when you woke up that morning in the caravan. He returned shortly after, ominous as ever, just as Ruby had begun to settle.

He tossed the stalk of his mint leaf into the grass and offered you his hand. You looked up at him in question for a moment, slightly suspicious of his intentions. Nevertheless, you slid your hand into his, and he stood you up, sat down on the higher step, and pulled you between his legs to sit on the lower step. He hugged you from behind as he slouched to rest his head on your shoulder, then exhaled deeply.

“We will be home soon,” he whispered in your ear, brushing your knuckles tenderly.

“For how long? Until we get another bullet in the post?”

Tommy’s throbbing forehead found solace in the warmth of your neck.

“You’ve never been one to run,” you continued, “what’s bothering you? We took a vow that we would share everything.”

He nuzzled his nose deeper into your pulse.

Frustrated, you tried to get up, but he held you firmly against his chest.

“Italians.”

“Italians?”

“Italians sent the black hands.”

You waited in silence for more information, but more did not come.

“Speak to me, Thomas.”

“I don’t want you any more involved than you are.”

“They’ve sent death knocking on our door; how more involved could I be?”

Tommy moved methodically, licking his lips and clearing his throat. He squinted his eyes up at the glaring sun.

“It’s nothing you should be concerned about. I’ll keep us safe.”

“Nothing I should be concerned over, Thomas? Just how many people are we at war with?”

He didn’t answer, so you turned your head away from him. Charles and Ruby had since settled by a patch of flowers. Charles was crouched over, helping his sister gather all the yellow flowers for her yellow dress.

The tension broke the surface then.

“Why are you still fighting, Tom? Is this,” you nod to your children and breathe in the fresh air, “not enough?”

You pictured Arrow House and its lavish garden, one to compete with all the wealthy families down the lane. You thought of Arthur, John, Polly, Ada, and all his family that lived to see his success. Everything, from the thoroughbreds in the stable to the fancy cars. The money itself was a testimony to his drive. What more could the gangster of Birmingham want when he already had everything?

You had gone and worked yourself up now because the world seemed blurrier than before.

Tommy, still on his guard, guided your chin to your shoulder so he could kiss the tears away. “It is enough.”

“Then make it enough. You’re respectable now, so stop the fighting.” Your voice broke at the end.

He hung his forehead on your shoulder. Like a flower sheltered away from the sun, Tommy wilted when he was away from his business. Usually, you were a strong enough light to keep him going, but whatever business he had gotten himself into was poisoning him, and ever the addicted flower, he kept running out to the fields, continuing to drink in the sunlight until it was too much and turned his leaves brow. Because business was what occupied his mind day and night, he was unable to turn the cogs of the engine off and let the air out of the tires.

A hand brushes your hair away to kiss the spot beneath your ear, airing out the destructive thoughts.

God, you loved him anyway. An overpowering feeling that ruled over calculating minds like Tommy’s and faint hearts like yours. You were no better than him—both addicted to a little sunlight.

The framed photographs on the wall shook as your third-eldest slammed the door to her room closed.

“I hate you!” She cried from the other side.

Your husband, Tommy, sighed to the ceiling, then stalked past you to his study, no longer interested in anything your daughter had to say. They had been at it for the last ten minutes arguing over some boy she was seeing, and your ears were just about ringing having witnessed it from the sidelines. You were left there in the hallway, an unwilling participant in the unspoken feud between father and daughter, and you understood that whoever you went to console would take it that you were siding with them, even though you just wanted to keep your family together.

Going to your daughter was the instinctive answer, but you knew she needed time to cool off. Tommy was the only reasonable choice.

You knocked on the door to his office before letting yourself in.

“Come to lick my wounds, eh?” He mused while smoking a cigarette.

Your lips wormed into a thin line. “This needs to stop, Tom.”

“Yeah,” he said, tapping the ash into his tray, “it will fucking stop.” He points with his cigarette, “I’ll make it fucking stop.”

You sighed. “You know that’s not what I meant.”

The chair screeched as he stood. “I’m her father, and if I say she can’t see that boy, she can’t. It’s only a childish fling; she’ll get over it.”

He poured a whiskey and downed it by the time you walked around his desk so that you were face-to-face with him.

“They’re in love, Tommy.”

“Yeah?” He scoffed. “Well, that can be undone.”

You held his glare, a challenge lighting in your own. “So easily, you think?”

He paused mid-drag, catching onto the underlying meaning in your words. “No,” he said, setting the cigarette down in the ash tray and grabbing your shoulders. “Don’t act like that.”

“Act like what?”

“Like you’re threatening our love over some fucking boy that’s charmed our daughter. They’re too young.”

“He’s sweet.”

“Oh, sweet and nice, I’m sure. But he’ll have no place in this house.”

“Why?”

“Why? Because I fucking said so!” He spat.

“Don’t yell at me.”

“Or what? You’ll leave me?” He huffed in amusement. “You won't; you love me too much.”

“You’re so certain?”

He paused for a moment and stared at you as if he couldn’t believe what you had said.

“Yeah, because we still fuck like two people who love each other, eh? And you’ve not told me no before, so if the day comes and your body no longer wants mine, then I’ll be worried. But until then, don’t test me with empty threats." His face hardened.

He knew you like the back of his hand. All bark, no bite. You loved him inexplicably, even after all these years, gray hairs and all. His face, body, and soul nourished you until you were satiated and full. And even if his eyebrows furrowed at times, you were willing to bet that it was for aesthetic, a shapely shadow gathered over the years from being the stoic leader the Peaky Blinders and Shelby family needed. How could you fault him for it?

Because, at the end of the day, you were a team. Even if he played the role of an overprotective father a bit too convincingly, he only ever wanted what was good for your daughter. Everything he worked for, ultimately, was for his family. A family man. And that came with its virtues and vices because, despite what Tommy thought, he wasn’t perfect; no one was.

Shrinking under his hands, you breathed a sigh and appeased him. “End this feud, Tom. Find peace with her. I don’t care what you do, but by the end of it, I expect to be able to sit down at the dinner table without having to beg my husband and daughter to look up from their plates.” You stroked his hands, which held your shoulders, and finally blinked up at him.

A haze of softness swept across his glare and melted the glaciers to a thin sheen of blue. The seams of exhaustion frayed one by one through his muscles. He nodded, licked his lips, and leaned down for a kiss of absolution. Not entirely prepared to surrender, you tilted your head so that he found the corner of your mouth instead.

“It will be done, love.” He brushed the apples of your cheeks tenderly. “And by tonight,” his voice lowered, “I promise you’ll forget all about it.”

Only then did you accept his kiss, eager to put the grievance to rest. Tommy, on the other hand, had other plans and stepped forward so that you were pinned between his desk and hips. He quickly began to gather your skirts above your waist, but you pulled away just as fast at the hiss of air against your exposed skin. An unsolicited gasp escaped his mouth when your knee brushed him there, and you sucked your bottom lip between your teeth, looking deep into his eyes.

“Promise me you won’t break her heart. She might not be old enough now, but I don’t want you to put her off love forever,” you caressed his jaw.

“No,” he agreed, breathier than usual, flexing the hands that were still caught up in the fabric of your skirt.

“And our Daisy may never say it, but I know she loves you dearly. So please, Tom, be gentle with her. I don’t want her to grow up despising you. Tell her you love her, kiss her forehead, hug her.”

He deflated, and you watched him swallow his pride. Cogs turned against the sweltering lust, threatening to deplete the clever thoughts in that powerful head of his in favor of your careful touch. Please, please, please, you begged without uttering a word; agree with me on this, Tom.

Tommy leaned back down to rest his forehead on yours; his face gave nothing away. You were sure he had found something to say, which would make you feel like a fool for asking. However, when you embraced those faint subtleties of emotion flickering across his face like candlelight, so miniscule you might blink and miss it, you found nothing of the sort to suggest any hostile nature. Because Tommy loved you.

“I will.”

A/N: Tried doing a long one shot, what does everyone think? Yay or nay? Comment to be added to the tag list!

Taglist: @maliceofwonderland , @fairytale07 , @goblinjnr , @ilovepeoplesdads , @multidimensionalslut

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