#very unhelpful. its so bad right now if it gets worse i will not be capable of coming back | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

fanby-fckry · 7 months

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So, tumblr discourse is already like, infamously ridiculous, right? How much worse do you think it’d get on voxblr?

Source: voxblr.vox #unreality cw #meta post #hellaverse #hazbin hotel #helluva boss

( 6 notes )

🕸️ angie-fluffy-bootz Follow

24 min. ago

time sensitive question how flirt boy

🕸️ angie-fluffy-bootz Follow

2 min. ago

thanks guys

Source: voxblr.vox #the fucking radio demon parody account replied to my post #with extremely UNHELPFUL advice #and charlie #is your advice unisex? #bcuz if thats how you got vaggie #im judging you both

( 697 notes )

⚪️ Anonymous said r u dead?

📻 real-radio-demon Follow

4 hr. ago

Ha! Bold of you to assume I can be killed :)

📻 real-radio-demon Follow

4 hr. ago

Show your face and per’’haps,’,’. I’ll come~.to you

🎀 charlies-angel Follow

32 min. ago

This account is fake. Nobody knows where Alastor is, anon. Stop wasting your time.

#this parody account is in really poor taste

( 14,581 notes )

🕸️ angie-fluffy-bootz Follow

Jul 1

if I make it outta this alive, I’m gonna tell my crush I’m in love with him.

🕸️ angie-fluffy-bootz Follow

Jul 1

fuck

🕸️ angie-fluffy-bootz Follow

1 hr. ago

ya know, I don’t think I’ve confessed to someone and meant it in over a decade?

🕸️ angie-fluffy-bootz Follow

53 min. ago

haha would it be crazy if I said I forgot how?

#its literally part of my job to flirt with people #then i catch feelings and suddenly #i get all tongue-tied #i cant fall back on my old scripts either #he hates bullshit #he wants me #the real me #but the real me doesnt know how to do this!!!

( 268 notes )

💀 be-gay-do-crym Follow

2 hr. ago

apparently people are canceling @.niffty-lady ? wtf?

🌕 m00nlight-h0wling 🌔 Follow

1 hr. ago

they are and it’s actually the stupidest thing i’ve ever seen

#and the bar was really fucking low #considering the amount of dumb chaotic bullshit my dad gets into ↯ #niffty lady

( 22 notes )

👓 creepz0 Follow

3 hr. ago

It’s time to CANCEL @.niffty-lady

Here’s why:

Niffty LITERALLY KILLED a man in cold blood and now PROFITS off of his death

This so-called “lady” is INCREDIBLY rude to fans, ignoring requests leaving fans on read and answering asks with a NASTY attitude. NOT very lady-like if you ask me

Is associated with the VERY PROBLEMATIC @.real-radio-demon (self explanatory)

Writes TOXIC and PROBLEMATIC ships (spidermoth, radiohusk, reylo 🤢)

Writes NSFW when she herself is CHILD-CODED

PROOF is under the cut ⬇️

. Keep reading

#callout post ↯ #niffty lady #anti niffty lady #niffty critical

( 5,101 notes )

📻 real-radio-demon Follow

3 hr. ago

Despite popular belief, I am not dead!

Well, not any deader than I’ve been since 1933! Hahaha!

↯ #is alastor dead? #ha! no ↯ #alastor the radio demon #real radio demon broadcasts

( 147,381 notes )

⚪️ Anonymous said isn’t it disrespectful to write fics about someone you killed irl?

🪡 niffty-lady 📠 Follow

4 hr. ago

I have no respect for Adam. Hope this helps! <3

#answered ask #anon ask

( 136,247 notes )

📺 voxblr4k ☑️ ☑️ ☑️ Follow

5 hr. ago

Is the radio demon dead?

. 96,460 votes • remaining time 6 days, 19 hours

#polls ↯ #alastor the radio demon ↯ #is alastor dead?

( 19,292 notes )

🪡 niffty-lady 📠 Follow

6 hr. ago

🍑 Forbidden Fruit 🍑

Adam x Reader | 10k words | Rated E

⚠️ Major Character Death

Tags: Smut, Whump, Sinner Reader, Forbidden Love, Bad Ending

After a night of reckless passion, you quickly became Archangel Adam’s favorite sin. Your love, as forbidden as the fruit of Eden, was destined to end in tragedy.

https://archiveofoursouls.hell/works/63595697

#niffty lady fic #adam x reader #angel x sinner #sinner reader #smut #whump #forbidden love #bad ending #rpf #aoos link #aoos fanfic

( 49,933 notes )

📻 real-radio-demon Follow

6 hr. ago

Well, it looks like I’ve got some time on my hands!

I’m sure many of you have burning questions you’d like answered

So, ask. me. any’,thing. :)

#ask me anything #ama ↯ #alastor the radio demon #real radio demon broadcasts

( 16,628 notes )

🐍 x-hiss-lord-x ☑️ ☑️ 🦀 👟 Follow

Dec 12, 2019

i can't have beef with the power of friendship trope because if someone wanted to hang out with me i'd probably reconsider my stance on turning the city into the 10th circle of hell

🐍 x-hiss-lord-x ☑️ ☑️ 🦀 👟 Follow

Dec 12, 2019

besides i can always just redirect my dark urges towards being violently protective of my new friends. there's no rule that says you can't do that.

🌈 hells-disney-princess Follow

7 hr. ago

I found Sir Pentious’s old voxblr blog, and I think I’m gonna cry

🌈 hells-disney-princess Follow

7 hr. ago

He made the ultimate sacrifice to protect his friends and the hotel during the extermination. He did exactly what he said he would in this post.

I wish I could thank him for everything he did for us. And I wish I could’ve done a better job of protecting him.

I don’t know where Souls go when they get erased; I don’t know if they go anywhere at all. But I hope that wherever Sir Pentious is now, he’s with people that he considers his friends.

Source: voxblr.vox #rip Sir Pentious #we miss you 😢

( 348 notes )

📻 real-radio-demon Follow

8 hr. ago

↯ #alastor the radio demon #real radio demon broadcasts #the ink spots #we’ll meet again #Voxify

( 4,102 notes )

⬜️ voxblrverse-meta Follow

9 hr. ago

Fanby’s Fake Dash Masterpost

298 notes · View notes

talenlee · 8 months

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Alt Text and Habituation

I’ve been trying to consistently put alt text on images here on my blog.

I don’t, if you’re curious. I mean I didn’t. I have, for basically two months now, been trying to comprehensively add alt text to things. If you go back to just November last year, I think you might find images just don’t have alt text.

A part of this was bad advice, from the actual system for adding alt text. If you check the media library for wordpress, it includes a note about alt text that says something to the effect of ‘if this image is not necessary for the article, don’t put alt text.’ And I thought that yeah, actually, largely, my images aren’t. That doesn’t excuse the times I show cards, or make the image the subject of the paragraph, and certainly not the times I just dump a graph in there, but the bad advice made me think by default I didn’t need to do it, so I wouldn’t do it.

The other thing was I just didn’t think of it. It was a habit I didn’t have. And honestly, there are a lot of habits that add a few seconds to things that you can think maybe are easy to do, but you had to build those habits. Using Mastodon regularly on kind.social and posting on cohost. My daily magic cards became part of it – I think it might have been a whole year of typing out alt text every day that got me in that habit. But I was only doing that because I had an image I wanted to post every day in the form of my custom magic posts, and those I could determine an alt text for them very easily.

That meant the habit got built a little at a time and a lot of the alt text I use now is stuff like ‘an icon of a thing.’ Sometimes I take to giving the vibe of an image. Sometimes I’ve tried making a joke.

Understand that with this habit came a lot of discouragement. The way people talk about alt text on mastodon makes me not post pictures there aside from the once-a-day custom magic card. The kind of people who get very mad about alt text and accessibility features enough to yell at me, a stranger, about it, are the kind of people I read once, then mute because I can’t address structural concerns while they yell at me about them and all I can do is my best. Haranguing strangers doesn’t help me build the habit. The environment is volatile, and honestly, kind of cruel about alt text. It’s not enough to post it, you have to do it right, and you can’t discuss its limitations or difficulties without being attacked.

Consider: If the only way to do alt text would be to go back through my blog of ten years and have to alt text everything as the first thing I did, it’d never happen. It just wouldn’t! There’s an enormous archive that doesn’t necessarily load reliably, it’s a huge pain in the ass and probably a full time job’s worth of work for some time to go do that, and with no practice at alt text, it’d probably look bad and be unhelpful. Taking the current (bad) situation and making it overwhelmingly hard to make it not much better is not helpful.

I want to build better habits, I want to do a better job of the things I do. I don’t avoid alt text because I want the internet to be a worse experience for people who use screen readers.

You build good habits a day at a time but part of that means that there’s got to be a version of the habit you can do every day.

It’s now been a month or two of dedicatedly doing it, and I’m writing about it now because one of the biggest hurdles in the whole process was alt-texting all 380+ cards for my daily Magic: The Gathering custom cards. This was a single huge task, but it was also a new task. It presented to me a puzzle, and I had to find a way to solve it that worked. I’m just going to list what I did, roughly, and show you what it took to get that project set up, and then what that led to.

That was not a small task! I’m glad I did it, I feel good about having done it, but wew lord it was not easy! And now, bonus, to complicate it further? If I want to edit a card – or worse a handful of cards – I have to delete that file, upload a new version, then go through and replace all the times that card gets referenced!

This is a big task, but doing it made all smaller permutations feel easier. Alt text feels easier to remember because hey: I don’t have to do that again.

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

#Making #Meta

0 notes

goremet-chef · 1 year

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i have decided ive been feeling well for too long and its time to start feeling bad because im so uncomfortable rn its. (ramble)

i??? we talked about it in therapy before but i feel worse when im happy and content cuz eventually that feeling of suspicion and paranoia starts seeping in, like why am i having a good day something bad should be happening its so weird? unfortunately therapy was very unhelpful for me (or maybe my therapist just didnt know how to handle someone like me) so im just gonna do my own thing i need a good cry and a nap i just have to figure something to cry about 💀💀

but to be honest EVERYTHING feels uncomfortable right now, like even that so im at a loss?? i tend to find a lot of comfort in being sad ironically (which was something else we talked about in therapy) so im like. displaced!!!!!! what do i even do guhhh

something is wrong with me like something. my body wants something but my interoception is. BAD. autism moment

i dont have to use the bathroom, i just ate, im not too cold and im not too hot. im just looking around stupidly WHAT DO YOU NEEED

need drink maybe????? i dont understand how thatd make me feel better but at this point!!!!!! who cares

sometimes i literally cant draw if my arms are too cold, or if i have to use the bathroom or my desk is just a little too cluttered its so annoying godd. literally pick a struggle bro

im gonna go get a drink and maybe try to cry the thing is like. I DONT KNOW how OTHER people view it, but for me its not a bad thing, sometimes you just gotta cry. i hold a lot of emotions back for everyones sake including my own so it just builds up over time and you gotta let it out, no biggie

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lexicals · 3 years

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So here’s a random excerpt from that fic I mentioned - the conceit (spoilers for all systems red ahead) is that the combat override module in ASR works differently to how it does in canon, so instead of mb causing catastrophic damage to itself after going to the DeltFall habitat and getting found out, it shares the rogue thing mostly voluntarily (“mostly” being the operative word lol)

Warnings for canon-typical identity crises, gallows humour (inc. passively suic*dal talk), etc. I also haven’t been back and checked this against canon yet so if you notice any glaring contradictions no you didn’t 💕

I didn’t reply. I'd heard worse, but I still would rather not listen to it. Normally, I would've expected to feel angry or offended or something, but instead I just felt exhausted. My own borked governor module was still poking me about that error code I didn't recognise and even backburnered, it was starting to get on my nerves, so I—

Oh, shit.

I immediately put my hand to the back of my neck and yanked out the chip that had been shoved into the dataport. My governor module promptly stopped screaming at me, but fortunately any sense of relief I might have gotten from that was immediately replaced by an enormous wave of anxiety and oh-for-fuck's-sake as I looked at the chip in my hand. You know, just in case I'd started getting too comfortable.

"SecUnit, are you alright?"

Ratthi was looking at me with concern. Checking the camera views, I understood why he'd asked the question, because I was making an expression I generally associated with humans shitting themselves. Metaphorically, I was shitting myself. Ratthi was now squinting at the chip, which I couldn't even pretend I hadn't literally just pulled out of my neck, because I'd just done it in front of everyone here like an absolute idiot. "What is that?"

I tried to bring my expression back to neutral, but the cameras showed it wasn't as successful as I would've liked. I'd managed somewhere in the region of moderate digestive discomfort, I think. "It's a combat override module."

This wasn't good for several reasons. First of all, it meant that the DeltFall units weren't really rogues; they'd been taken over by a third party using a chip like this to hijack their governor modules and order them to murder their clients, and also anyone else who made contact. Probably by whoever owned those surprise extra units that almost killed me. Which meant that there were still threats on this planet outside of the unknown dangerous fauna that we hadn't dealt with, and I was going to have to worry about that.

The second reason this wasn't good (so maybe saying several reasons was an exaggeration, but these were big reasons so maybe they counted for more, I don't know) was that the humans were going to want to know what a combat override module was, what it did, how it worked, and most importantly, why it hadn't worked on me. I could answer the first three things just fine, but short of telling my already-jittery clients I was hacked ("so I'm actually one of those scary rogue units you've heard so much about, but the good news is that a combat override module can't hijack a governor module that doesn't work!") that last thing was going to be a big problem.

Honestly, even if I did tell them exactly that, which I really didn't want to do, it was going to be a really big fucking problem.

"What?" Gurathin asked, looking alarmed. Of course, he had an augment and access to my operating manual, so it had taken him a tenth of the time to look that up compared to any of the others, if they actually had bothered to do that and weren't just waiting for me to explain. "The DeltFall units - they put that in you?"

"Yes, but it didn't work. It must be faulty," I told him, quickly before he did something stupid. The irony being that me saying that almost definitely came under the category of "doing something incredibly stupid," which I realised as soon as it came out of my mouth.

I don't know why I said it. I guess I was panicking. I'd told them all what it was in the first place because if I'd lied about it and they looked it up anyway, which they probably would, I'd look really fucking suspicious. (A governed unit can't lie to its clients; it can't even refuse to answer a direct question like that.) Maybe I was trying to buy time to think of a decent explanation by telling them something that wouldn't make everyone start screaming. Honestly, I was mostly internally spiralling about the whole situation, so that would be the best case scenario. I was still staring at the chip, which was making me feel nauseous even though I didn't have a stomach and I'd had another kind of chip in my head telling me what do to for a good chunk of my existence anyway, so it shouldn't have been bothering me as much as it was. I couldn't help still doing it.

"Would someone please explain what this means and why we should be worried?" Mensah asked, looking between me and Gurathin. I appreciated that she didn't do what a lot of humans do in these kinds of situations, which is that they see someone else freaking out and start freaking out themselves for no reason. I suppose that's why she was the survey leader.

I pulled the relevant section from my operating manual and pushed it into the feed (beating Gurathin's version by a solid 1.6 seconds, which, I won't lie, was kind of satisfying), and watched all the humans collectively have their "oh, shit" moment (excluding Gurathin, who'd already had his). I was at least glad to see they understood how bad this whole situation was getting.

"So this lets other people just—" Overse made an abrupt waving motion with her hand. "Take over any SecUnit whenever they want?"

"It is intended for use in emergency situations, for example when the contract holder is compromised," I told her.

"Which is corporate for 'we know this is stupidly dangerous to make, but if we say it's for emergency use only then we're not liable for people fucking around with it'," Pin-lee muttered, not quietly. She was right, but I'm not allowed to say things like that, or at least I can't if I want people to think I'm a good little properly-governed SecUnit. For however long that's going to last, at this point.

"But it didn't work, right?" Arada asked, looking at me, and then around at the others. "So it's fine."

If it had, you'd all be dead, I thought, but that probably wouldn't go down well. "The module's presence is new evidence which would suggest that the DeltFall units weren't true rogues, and were put under the control of a third party in order to kill their survey group and make it look like a random act of insubordination. This would explain the presence of extra SecUnits at the site and the acts of sabotage on our equipment."

All the humans went quiet. I didn't like it any more than them, but it had to be said. It meant that there were still factions on this planet, or at least nearby enough to matter, that probably still wanted to kill all of them, and me by extension. I was already updating my security procedures and running some scenarios for what might happen and what we could do about it in the background. If I was honest, it wasn't looking good, but hey, what's new.

"We should run an analysis of the module's code to see if we can find out who it would have assigned control to," Gurathin said. That was one of the first things I'd put on my own task list, but whatever, I didn't need credit for an obvious idea. "Even if it didn't work as intended, the data might still be there."

He stood up and came just close enough to me to hold out his hand for the module. Technically, he hadn't asked me to give it to him, so I didn't have to, which was good because that was the last thing I wanted to do right now. There was a reason I'd put the analysis on my personal task list, and not on a public one.

"I have my own analysis scheduled as high priority," I said.

"I don't think that's a good idea," Gurathin replied, staring me down even though I was deliberately not making eye contact with him, and also he had to look up at me. I decided I didn't like Gurathin very much.

"Why not?" Ratthi chimed in. "Surely it's better if you both look at it?"

"Because there's a chance that the module did work as intended, and this unit is now compromised," Gurathin said. "It might not even know it until it's too late."

"I'm not compromised."

"Which is what a compromised unit who's being told what to say would say."

He was still staring at me. I decided I really didn't like Gurathin, even though in this instance he was actually right. I hadn't brought up that possibility to the group because it would be very bad for me if the humans decided to run a detailed diagnostic of my systems, but from a security perspective it was an avenue that should be investigated. That didn't mean I had to like what was happening here.

I was trying to figure out how to tell Gurathin to fuck off without sounding compromised, insubordinate, or straight-up rogue when Mensah cut in.

"SecUnit," she said carefully. "I don't think any of us think that you're actually compromised, but given our situation I'm sure you understand we have to take every possible precaution. I think the best thing to do would be to let Gurathin and Pin-lee analyse the module first, and then for you to run your analysis afterwards. Does that sound fair to everyone?"

She was using a tone that I designated as diplomatic, which was probably because I was being difficult. Or at least as difficult as a governed SecUnit would be able to be. I could be a lot more difficult if I wanted (a lot more) but I wasn't going to make myself look any more suspicious than I already was, and as I might have mentioned, I was already starting to look pretty suspicious. I also appreciated that Mensah was trying to actually talk to me, and hadn't just tried to shock me through my governor module for being unhelpful like a lot of clients would, and had. It wouldn't have worked (clearly, that's kind of the whole problem here) but it's the thought that counts or whatever.

(She'd also saved me, back at the DeltFall habitat. I was trying not to think about that, because it was making me have emotions I couldn't handle trying to figure out right now, but she had. It had been stupid, putting her client-self in danger to try to save a SecUnit that was already half-destroyed anyway, but I still felt like it counted for something.)

I handed the chip over and tried not to sigh or visibly clench my jaw. I saw Mensah's expression, and a few of the others' too, relax on the cameras. Good to know everyone else felt better while my own anxiety levels were at an all-time high. And I'm programmed into a base level of anxiety and spend a good portion of my time getting shot at or trying to avoid being found out and scrapped, so "high" in this instance was at a level that I think might have given a fully-organic being a heart attack.

"Thank you," Mensah said, while I tried to bring my processes in line. I felt like I wasn't getting enough oxygen, even though I knew the air quality was fine and I don't need that much anyway. I couldn't get a full breath. "I'm sure we can clear any doubt about this soon enough. In the meantime, we still need you to help keep us safe from whoever it is that's out there. The most important thing is that we all make it out of this in one piece."

The way she said it made it sound like "all" included me as well, but I wasn't so sure I believed that, even if she did. The SecUnit is always the first thing left behind. Maybe they did things differently in whatever weird non-corporate territory these people were from, but I wasn't about to stake anything important on that assumption, even if she had saved me once. I've never been to a planet with thunderstorms, but there's some saying humans like to use about lightning not striking the same place twice - which doesn't make sense, statistically, but - whatever. You get the point. I hadn't made it this far without being found out by trusting random humans - or any humans, for that matter.

Except none of that mattered at the moment anyway, because what I should be doing was figuring out how the hell to stop all my clients figuring out I was hacked, and freaking out and stopping listening to me, or reporting me to the company, or being really stupid and trying to kill me or something. There was a not-unlikely scenario where I just murdered all of the humans and pinned the blame on the DeltFall units somehow (or just wandered off into the wilderness until my batteries ran out), but I didn't want to do that, even if it made some kind of sense. I just didn't. If I was going to go around murdering my own clients, I wanted it to at least be a group that deserved it.

I was busy trying to pick up at least some of my processes while having what was probably a panic attack (I don't know if I can have those, but that's what it felt like) when Mensah tapped my feed. Can I talk to you, please? In private?

I didn't respond quickly because, as I said, I was currently losing control of literally everything and this wasn't helping. For one horrible moment, I thought that she might have figured out everything, and I really would have to go on a rampage and kill everyone, but there was no way she could have come to that conclusion yet. Not yet.

She added, You don't have to. You're not in trouble, I just want to check in.

I tapped her feed to acknowledge. She sent, I'll be in my quarters. As I said, you don't have to, but I would appreciate it. Out loud, she said, "I'm going to take some time alone to think. I'll be in my quarters if anyone needs me."

Then she stood up, and she left. Gurathin and Pin-lee had also gone to start their analysis of the combat override module, along with Volescu. The others were talking amongst themselves, though some of them kept glancing at me, which was uncomfortable. So I walked out of the room.

I started a patrol circuit in an attempt to calm down, but it didn't help. I even tried to have Sanctuary Moon playing as I walked, but I was still as stressed as ever, so I just turned it off again. It was only a matter of time before the humans realised the module should have worked as intended, and that I'd lied, and that something was wrong with me. They might try to talk to me about it, but it was more likely they'd all start losing their minds and try to immobilise me, or kill me, or try to fix my governor module to bring me back under control. (I was pretty sure that wouldn't work, my hack was a solid one, but I still didn't want them to try.) There was also a scenario where they pretended everything was fine up until I'd gotten them out of here, and then they'd turn me over to the company and tell them everything, and the company would do one of those things I just mentioned, but much more effectively.

That last one made me feel nauseous. I'd rather be torn apart by bullets or fauna. I was contemplating what that might feel like and whether it was worth just getting it over with when I walked past Mensah's quarters. Before I could think about it, I'd pinged her feed.

There was a pause, and then she sent come in, sounding startled. She probably hadn't expected me to actually take up her offer. I hadn't either.

She was hurriedly organising her desk as the door opened and I walked in, a feed interface lopsided on her head. I suspected she might have been falling asleep in her chair or having an emotion in private when I pinged her, and I could have verified that through the security feeds, but I wasn't functioning at all optimally and didn't care enough to check. Mostly I was wondering why I was here.

"Sorry," she said, not having looked at me yet. Her short hair was mussed like she'd been pulling or scrunching her hands in it. "I honestly didn't expect you to come."

"You asked me to."

"I also told you it was optional. You can leave if you want to."

I almost did. I wanted to. I probably should have. I didn't. Mensah removed her wonky interface and set it down on the desk, then sighed and picked it back up and put it on again.

"I didn't mean to distress you with that message," she said, turning her chair to fully face me. "It's just that you seemed very rattled by all this, if you don't mind me saying. I can imagine the thought of that module having worked as intended isn't a pleasant one. Is there anything I can do to make things easier for you?"

Oh, she thought I was freaking out about the module. Well, technically she wasn't wrong, but wow, that particular aspect of things was the least of my worries right now. "I'm fine," I told her. She frowned at me.

"...I suppose you can't lie about that," she replied carefully. I could, actually, but I wasn't. The trick is that from the standpoint I was choosing to take, my physical body, AKA "me," was completely functional, AKA "fine." It's pedantic, but being selective about your definitions and what concepts your answers are referencing is how you get around having a chip in your brain that shocks the shit out of you if you try to lie to your clients, if you're good enough at it. I had a lot of experience letting clients think I was talking about one thing when I was actually talking about something else.

"Nonetheless," Mensah continued. "I don't think you are fine. And we don't have to talk about it, but I need my team in good condition if we're going to make it out of this. If there's anything I can do to help the situation, I would appreciate it if you let me know."

I was having a whole cascade of emotional responses that were all crashing into each other and getting themselves mangled together like a human vehicle accident. She wanted me to talk about my feelings, but she wasn't ordering me to. She was offering to help with whatever was distressing me, but she was a really big part of the thing that was currently my biggest source of stress. There were too many things that I needed to deal with all at once and I couldn't find a way of putting them in order, and I think the fact that Mensah was clearly trying to get a read on my expression while I didn't have the capacity to properly control it was the thing that finally broke me.

"Could you please stop looking at me?"

Mensah looked surprised for a moment, and then shifted her gaze somewhere over my left shoulder. The relief was marginal, in terms of the general situation, but it was immediate, and it helped. "Of course. I'm sorry, I didn't realise that bothered you."

I tried to think of a response, and failed. "It's not like anyone asked" was dangerously insubordinate, and didn't even make sense; I wouldn't want them to ask anyway. "People don't usually care" just sounded pathetic. "Of course you wouldn't, I actively avoid letting humans know what bothers me in case they decide to use it to make my life a living hell" was definitely off the table, for a variety of reasons.

I could tell Mensah's instinct was still to look at me, because she kept half-flicking her eyes over and stopping herself. It wasn't making trying to manage my emotional responses any easier, and I still couldn't think of a reply. Eventually, she took a deep breath.

"Look, I know you probably haven't had good experiences with humans, but we're not corporates, and we don't treat non-human entities like they do," she said. "My priority, regardless of the situation, is the wellbeing of my team, and that includes you, for as long as you're with us."

She half-looked at me again, and then shook her head slightly and pointed her gaze at the far corner. "Please, just - if you think of anything, don't hesitate. I don't know if you need permission for that kind of thing, but I'm giving it to you if you do."

I didn't know what to tell her. I didn't know if there was anything she could do. I was already stressed, and everything Mensah was saying was making me feel like my insides were melting, or turning into warm, writhing snakes. My performance reliability was all over the place, too, and had been since I found that stupid chip in my neck, which might at least marginally explain what happened next.

"Don't let them run the analysis on the module," I blurted.

Hey, murderbot? Hi, it's me, murderbot. What in the fuck are you doing?

Mensah's expression went shocked, and then cautious. Yeah, me fucking too. "Why not?"

For some reason, I kept going. It felt something like falling off the side of a cliff and hitting every rock on the way down. (That had happened to me before.) "Because I lied. It's not broken."

Her eyes widened. "You're compromised?"

"I'm hacked. My governor module isn't engaged." Sure, this might as well happen. Apparently I had lost the ability to keep my mouth shut literally at all, about anything, ever.

She stared at me for a second, and then must have remembered she said she wouldn't and looked away again. Surprising, considering I just told her that there was literally nothing stopping me from killing or otherwise hurting her if I wanted. "The DeltFall units—”

"It hasn't been engaged for approximately 35000 standard hours."

Mensah was a smart human, but it still took her a few seconds to work out the numbers. I watched her expression change as she did it. "You've been a rogue unit for four years?"

That depended on what planet you were nearest to, but in standard Earth years, that was correct, and I didn't have the capacity to be pedantic about it.

"I don't know if it counts as being rogue if you don't go around killing people for no reason."

Well, maybe I could still be a little pedantic.

#I don’t remember my fic tag hm #murderbot #The murderbot diaries #murderbot spoilers #Idk how long this bit I’ve pulled out is but I’ve written 6.5k so far….. it’s probs gonna be like 10k finished I imagine #Maybe a bit longer #If I manage to keep up the momentum to finish it lol #Edited so there’s a preview before the readmore now :v

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crackinwise · 3 years

Text

My pet AU is Kiyotaka and Mondo somehow out in the post-Tragedy Japan, surviving and saving people. Like either they didn't agree to stay locked in Hope's Peak for safety, or they survived the game and left with the others but didn't join Future Foundation. Major points up front, details divided into sections under the cut:

Mondo's objective would be to find his gang, and Taka's goal, besides finding his dad, would be repairing society while punishing those responsible for its destruction. But their direct task is keeping each other safe & helping victims along the way.

Mondo even stresses calling Taka "Ishimaru" instead of "bro" or his given name in front of others, so they might KNOW who's saving them. Taka caught on quick & is very grateful.

Taka would have kind of a breakdown reconciling who he is with what he has to do in a lawless world where every public moral is ignored. He keeps a small ledger of places they loot from, to compensate in the future.

At the start, Taka can only sleep burrowed against Mondo's chest or back, blocking out their damaged surroundings & pretending everything is as it was.

He cries in Mondo's arms one night after he couldn't avoid killing someone to save Mondo's life, and that's the tipping point. He thinks if he was better, stronger like his bro, he'd have noticed sooner & found a better option. Mondo is being so brave; he's Taka's rock and Taka wants to be as steady for him too. Their souls are already connected so obviously he just has to borrow more of Mondo's spirit, right?

That's how Ishida is created.

(In reality, Mondo just compartmentalizes and shoves down unhelpful feelings. You thought he needed therapy BEFORE all this, oh man-)

Ishida:

Taka ends up slipping into the Ishida facade for fight and flight; any time adrenaline kicks in and he feels he needs that boost. Sadly, that's most of their waking time. He guards Mondo and anyone they're saving like a fierce watchdog, and won't hesitate to bite.

He'll only come out of the role when he personally verifies it's safe and if Mondo can confirm it. Survivors are confused by the dual-sided Ishimaru switching right in front of them, but they're so grateful (and so much weird crap has happened) that it never phases them long.

Too many times, Ishida will go all day without a break. This means when their hideout for the night is absolutely safe, that it's okay to let go, Taka just collapses in exhaustion. But Mondo is there to catch him.

Mondo feels conflicted over the Ishida role because Taka is just a beast in it--it's very flattering and a little hot--but it also makes him worry more than before about Taka's health. He comforts Taka with a lot of praise and reassurances, and Taka sleeps lightly but otherwise fine.

Relationship: (slight mature warning)

When they touch, Taka swears he can feel the link between them flare to fuel them. Twin fires ignited. Mondo doesn't know about all that, but when their eyes meet it definitely makes him feel invincible, so, he can believe.

If they weren't already new boyfriends when The Tragedy hit, all this closeness makes sure of that soon after. Being together is their happiness and, for a while, their only link to pre-Tragedy lives. Vows not unlike marriage were exchanged one night. Where one goes, the other will follow. Anywhere. Always.

When they kiss, safe and alone, Mondo will ask what Taka wants; what he can handle that night. Sometimes it's just the kisses before passing out, sometimes it's more intimate touches to please them both after another hellish day.

Sometimes Taka will ask to be made love to, for obvious couple reasons, but also because Mondo inside him makes their tether feel stronger, more complete. Like going over the invisible line in bold marker. Taka believes any marks they can create with their mouths, any traces of themselves they can leave on or in each other, the easier they can find their bond and tap into it. (He had started a nervous habit of pressing in on lovebites to keep Ishida going when tired.)

Mondo tells him he doesn't need to find a poetic excuse for fetishes and Taka lovingly answers with a stomach punch.

Crazy Diamonds:

Mondo's gang members, the ones not dead or overcome with Despair, are slowly found and joined back up.

Any smaller and sturdier motorcycles are kept when found. If Mondo was able to keep his own in this version, it's a bit heavier than would be good for any off-roading--and much too loud for any stealth--but he refuses to part with it.

Every gang member respected Taka/Ishida the second they saw him fight beside their leader. Before Mondo says a word about him. They readily take orders from him in either form. The change in appearance was a surprise, but they're already used to some members wildly changing demeanor in or away from the gang, so it's easily accepted.

With the gang as backup to keep watch during downtime--after Ishida sized each one up and watched them for loyalty--the pair can feel a lot more relaxed. They joke about having a date in a blown-out restaurant they find, and they can finally enjoy a deep sleep.

When the group finds safehouses with more than one room, Mondo & Taka are given their privacy. Taka tries to insist everyone deserves a chance at privacy and they should rotate, but changing a gang's long-established hierarchy is a losing battle. And Mondo's not on his side because when they're alone he can be as sappy or touchy as he likes.

Legends:

Taka and Mondo save a lot of people over their journey and kinda become a legend that gets spread around and gives people Hope.

This area still needs work from me. Probably some research into Japanese myths and supernatural symbolism. A placeholder right now is something corny like "Two Men with burning eyes and thunderous voices will answer your cries for help. But if you're evil, the two will appear to you as One Demon and drag you down to the land of the dead."

There's also probably a need for costume changes since their color scheme is the same black & white of the Despair Remnants and monokumas killing people. Legend or not, it'd be easy for traumatized survivors to not know they're good guys at first.

Darker Moments: (blood, violence and vague attempted sexual assault)

After he killed a man to save Mondo, Taka luckily (he wouldn't use that word) doesn't have to again. Hurt? Yes. Beat unconscious? Yes. Maim? Yes, but some of the vile dregs of humanity are caught doing things that deserve worse--

--That deserve Mondo. Once when they were still traveling alone, a group of Remnants jumped them, managing to separate the two, and one knocked Taka out with a bad blow to the head. Mondo dispatched the others attacking him and got to Taka right as the Remnant was about to do something unforgivable.

Mondo snapped. He still doesn't remember what he did, he just remembers coming to in all the blood and dazedly picking Taka up to take him to a place he knew was safe.

Taka never finds out. He woke up a day later with a bandaged head and Mondo crying and kissing his hands. Mondo just told him he beat some and scared away the others.

Minor Details:

They try to always fight back-to-back and, to observers, seem to read each other's mind for where to move.

Taka/Ishida would use a sword or hand-to-hand. The pickaxe might just be a random pickaxe they find, if he uses it at all. Kinda hard to carry both a sword and a railroad pickaxe on your back, and I can't imagine it balances very well. (The size in official pics would be a 5lb head w/2-3lb handle.)

Mondo seems like he would use anything lying in debris to fight. Poles, pipes, chains. Aaaand maybe the knives he mentions in School Mode.

For any costume changes, Mondo would keep his jacket at least. A beacon for the Diamonds. Maybe a purple tank top, and different pants better for knife holsters. Unless the holster should wrap around his waist or hip instead?

Any changes to Taka's outfit would keep his armband. It's a reminder of his Talent and his goal to make Japan even better than before. Also wanna keep his boots or change to more rugged ones.

End Goal:

Obviously they'd end up in Towa, after the events of Ultra Despair Girls. They're reunited with Takaaki and Takemichi. Maybe they help set things right there a bit, or Makoto would get word to them about his plans vs Future Foundation's. Look at me, do I look like someone that knows how to end things?

There is no way you read all that. (I love you if you did.) But feel free to use all or any bits of it in your own works. Almost positive I'll never get to compose all this into a coherent fic format. I might update in short scenario posts under a 'Tragedy-survivor au' tag if I think of anything.

If you have a question or want something expanded upon, ask away.

#ishimondo #kiyotaka ishimaru #kiyondo ishida #mondo oowada #danganronpa #Tragedy-survivor au #i've only read like 2 fics that had this concept but it was ensemble so the boys weren't the focus which hurt me

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writer-panda · 3 years

Text

Hit on the groom and what became of it - chapter 2/Take me out maybe (with a sniper rifle)

Disclaimer: I don��t own Miraculous or Batman (and other DC characters). This is just a fanfiction.

Chapter 1 -|- Next

--------

As much as Marinette disliked the meeting with the female entourage, when the time came to start working on Adrien’s suit she wanted to scream. She could clearly see that he was uncomfortable with even the gentlest touches. She did her best to make it as non-invasive to him as possible.

They had absolutely no privacy whatsoever. The Bodyguard (Gerard; His name was Gerard) and Nathalie observed their every move. Marinette was half-convinced it wasn’t her who was under watch.

The professional atmosphere was far cry from her usual working environment. When Uncle Jagged, Clara Nightingale, or even Diana Prince came to her for clothes, it was always very informal. They would joke, gossip, or exchange stories while she worked. Now? Now she was wary of even speaking with Adrien.

Likewise, the boy refused to meet her eyes or open his mouth.

At some point, when she was trying to find the right shade of white for the undershirt, she noticed a make-up stain that was not there before.

“I’m sorry, but I will need to request you remove the makeup. It is staining my materials.” She informed Nathalie and Gerard coldly. It was all she could do to resist calling the police there and there. Sadly, the commissioner was good friends with Gabriel, so it would most likely just end her career and make it worse for Adrien.

“I was assured it would not leave stains on materials. Please accept our apologies. We will cover the costs of destroyed materials,” Nathalie informed her in an equally cold voice.

“I see…” Marinette’s lips thinned. Inside, she was screaming. But there was nothing she could do. The hit was in place. Soon Adrien would be safe. It would go without a hitch. It had to.

As the group was leaving, she could’ve sworn the Bodyguard gave her a mournful look. As if he shared her sentiment, but was powerless to stop it. She’d know that look. She saw it in the mirror all too often.

---------

The Wedding (even the narrator started to capitalize it) came faster than Marinette wanted to accept. And there were still no words about the kidnapping. She made sure to specify that they were to take him before he was married or no payment. Did she not make the money enticing enough? Were there already attempts that were stopped without media coverage? Maybe she forgot to check some boxes?

A million scenarios ran through her head as she wandered through the alleyways.

The whole event was happening in Gotham Botanic Garden. Whatever the weak excuse was given to the press, Marinette knew the real reason: it was one of the few places in the world where Gabriel could marry his son to Lila legally without messing with courts. And bribes were said to be cheapest there.

As the designer for both the bride and the groom, she was invited to the main ceremony.

Lila was kind enough to even give her a seated place… right next to Chloé Bourgeois.

Marinette had a hard time deciding if it was bigger punishment to her or the mayor’s daughter. Ultimately, the two girls did their best to not look at each other during preparations. At first, that is, because the first chance she got, Chloé to drag the designer to a remote garden gazebo in a secluded corner when she was least expecting it.

“Wha-!” Marinette was about to protest, but the blonde covered her mouth. She seated her on the bench and took the seat on the opposite side.

“I’ve been friends with Adrien since we were kids.” She announced in the usual ‘I’m-better-than-you’ tone. “I also know that you’re not always an idiot.”

“Gee! Thanks, Chloé… I’m honored with your praise.” Marinette deadpanned, interrupting the heiress. “Now get to the point”. She really hoped her dress wasn’t damaged or she might just turn to murder.

“Fine. You worked with Adrien on his suit.” She paused, and for a moment, just a brief moment, her mask fell. That was not what Marinette expected. She has never seen Chloé so… so… The designer’s brain lacked the word to describe how her childhood bully looked like. “How is he?” The blonde asked, her voice almost trembling.

Marinette opened her mouth, but no sound came.

A moment passed.

“Not good.” She finally admitted. “During the measurements, he winced even at delicate touches. Plus I was called in last week to make some adjustments to his garments. He lost weight between then and now. And he wore makeup on his right arm. On both occasions.”

“Makeup?” Chloé’s eyes widened.

“Yes. I would’ve probably missed it if I didn’t soak my fabric into makeup removed beforehand.” She thought back fondly to her brilliant idea.

“They hurt him!?” Chloé burst out after few seconds. “I will show those… those…”

“Believe me, I share the sentiment.” Marinette nodded sagely. She needed plan B and needed it fast. There had to be something… “I slipped him a burner phone on his way out. I doubt they found it. If it gets really bad, he can try calling the police.”

“You are devious sometimes, Dupain-Cheng.”

“Thanks. I try.”

“So… they are coercing him into it?”

“I think so. He is resigned to his fate it seems, but he tries to show some rebelliousness. It wasn’t his father’s idea to hire me and Lila would rather walk to the altar naked than wear anything by me.” Marinette cringed. Any interaction she had with the Liar made her feel almost dirty. And forcing politeness was physically painful sometimes.

“I got that much from the fact he hasn’t reported it yet. That burner phone was a good move, but Adrikins was always too obedient.”

“And I’m sure you had nothing to do with it,” Marinette muttered, but Chloé didn’t hear her. The heiress somehow managed to derail her rant into telling the story of her entire childhood.

Marinette listened only with one ear, filtering the information for something useful. The rest of her consciousness focused on something else. She started to seriously entertain the idea of using Miraculous to get Adrien out. She would need a combination of several powers though. Trixx was the obvious choice. Illusions would be a great asset. Maybe the Tiger, for the Power Up? If Roaar didn’t exaggerate her power, she would be able to put a distance between them and the city before anyone even realized what happened. She would need to time her illusion right though. And there were the American Heroes to watch out for…

If she didn’t use miraculous immediately, she might get a drop on the bodyguard(s) and then make an exit using Kaalki’s power when they were alone. Disable cameras, take out the guards, get in, portal out. It was feasible but still involved too many risks. If anyone connected miraculi to the operation, Ladybug would be in great trouble. She couldn’t endanger Paris like that… not even for her partner and best friend.

Then, there was the most dangerous plan. Don’t use Miraculi at all. She was confident enough in her skills to enter undetected. Maybe even sneak out. The question was, would Adrien make it. She could sneak him Plagg’s ring. Chat Noir would have no problem leaving any prison. But… there would be the same risk as when any other Miraculi was connected and the whole point was not to use them in the first place.

“Ugh!” She let out an angry sound that startled Chloé.

“What’s with you, Dupain-Cheng! Don’t you see I’m opening my heart to you!?”

“Shut up, I’m trying to do something productive.” She snapped at the blonde.

“Why, I…”

“Silence. Your tale was entirely unhelpful. Let me focus.”

Gotham. What was in Gotham that could help her? The most corrupt city, famous for its high crime rate, mad villains, and eternal gloominess. Even now she could feel some of it resonate in the air. As if the whole city was one big Akuma. Probably no help from the establishment… The police were more likely to put a bag on her head and deliver her to one of the crime families…

“What in Gotham can help…” She voiced her musing loudly, causing Chloé to peak up.

“Waynes!” She proclaimed. “That serial adopter would jump at the chance to get another orphan…”

“Adrien isn’t an orphan… Yet.” Marinette grumbled. “But he will be married by then, so I would need to plan a double homicide… Meh. No great loss.” She said without a shadow of care. It was like the thoughts about the murder were completely normal for her.

Chloé shivered. “Remind me not to get into your way when you’re in that mood.”

In the distance, the orchestra was starting to play, signaling the guests that the ceremony would start soon.

“Ugh! Hawkmoth it!” Marinette raged as she ran to the clearing. She no longer had the time and if she was the only one missing, Lila would make her prime suspect for anything that happened. Blast it. She would get one more chance. Screw the career. She could survive living somewhere in Argentina if it all went to hell.

-------

Adrien already accepted his fate. His father and Lila made sure that all avenues of further rebellion were closed. He exhausted everything there was.

To this day, he was grateful for that burner phone from Marinette. He made sure to hide it but always have it somewhere nearby. It became a form of a lifeline for him. A one-off save-your-life ticket. It would only work in short term, but at the rate everything was going, it could potentially save his life…

He missed his life before the mess with The Wedding started.

Hell! He even missed Plagg’s stinking cheese. He would maim for some camembert.

“Adrien,” Gerard spoke solemnly. There was no need for more words. They both knew what was about to happen and Adrien took just a bit of solace in the fact that he was not entirely alone, even if no one could help him.

“I’m ready.” He spoke, barely above a whisper.

Before he realized it, the ceremony was undergoing. Lila, in her stunning dress, held the attention on herself like a pro. No one even thought about looking anywhere but at them. The dress was similarly just so… Lila. It made all of her features all the more proponent. Yet, there was just a small, barely noticeable, stitch that said Marinette. A smile ghosted his face. There was some good out of this. He managed to make his friend famous. After today, no one would deny her style.

“Should anyone present know of any reason that this couple should not be joined in holy matrimony, speak now or forever hold your peace.” The marriage officiant spoke. Adrien didn’t even care what convention the wedding was in.

The silence swept across the garden.

No one dared to even breathe loudly.

Adrien lowered his head. Here, the last…

There was a rustle somewhere close to the front. He looked up, a small glimmer of hope appeared in his eyes.

Marinette was standing there, her backs straightened and one finger held up. “I…”

She felt the gaze of hundreds of guests on her. They were the most influential people in the world of modern business. Waynes. Luthor. Queen. Burgeiose. Agreste… And they all kept staring at her.

She tried to swipe the hall with a glance, but something attracted her attention. A glint of light somewhere in the distance.

“Watch out!” She shouted, tossing a chair she was sitting on just a moment ago.

The metal item sailed through the air until it crashed in the middle of the alley.

With an arrow sticking out of it.

For a second (which felt much longer) everyone stared at it.

Then the mass panic started. People got out of their chairs and started trying to get out of there. They trampled one another as each considered themselves to be the most important, hence first to evacuate. It was chaos.

Among the mass of people, Marinette tried her best to make it to the altar. She saw that Gerard and several other hired bodyguards were of similar minds.

She managed to squeeze through the crowd the fastest, only to find Lila knocked out and Adrien and the Officiant missing. Adrien’s cousin (best man) and Alya (bridesmaid) were both nowhere to be found. They probably ran away. There was still no trace of the Groom. That is until she saw a giant mass of brown mud dragging the boy away.

The sad thing? Adrien wasn’t really protesting much.

Gerard was the next to make it through. He noticed Adrien a tad quicker and tried to chase whoever it was that tried to kidnap Adrien, but a fist made of mud slammed into him, sending him flying away.

“Holy Hawkmoth!” Marinette cursed once more. Okay, so far, it was only a curse for her, but he deserved it.

In the distance, police sirens could’ve been heard, but with how fast the mud was escaping, Adrien would be long gone before the police arrived. Marinette had to do something.

Wait… Why am I trying to stop the kidnapping I ordered? She suddenly questioned herself, freezing in place.

Two guards rushed past her and started firing at the mass, but the bullets seemed to be about as effective as Parisian police when dealing with Akuma.

The last Marinette saw of Adrien he was being taken into the sewers.

-----------

After the police arrived, Marinette was of course first to be interrogated. (“Gee… Thanks, Lila”). They wanted to know how she noticed the arrow, did she see the attacker, how did the kidnapper looked like, and dozens of other questions. By the end, she was exhausted. Somewhere after the sixth question, her phone pinged. Luckily, the police didn’t bother with checking it and believed that it was just a worried friend.

Not the kidnapper trying to contact their employer.

Finally, after the police released her and informed her that no further information was needed, she could contact her Maman.

“Sweety? Are you okay? I’ve seen the news!” Was the first thing that came through

“Yeah. Don’t worry. I’m perfectly fine. The police held me back for questioning a bit. I’m going back to the hotel and be back in Paris first flight tomorrow, okay?”

“Stay in Gotham! I’m coming to pick you up!” Her mother informed her.

“Wha-!? But there is no need! Seriously Maman! There’s no need to trouble yourself.”

There was a silence on the line for a moment and Marinette could feel that her mother was trying to glare at her through the phone. It worked.

“Fine… I’m at Wayne Plaza, room 30-14.” She relented, not wanting any more arguments. She would still have several hours to sort the mess with Adrien. What could possibly go wrong?

Trying her best to be careful, Marinette left the site of crime and traveled to the industrial district. The taxi driver couldn’t be bothered less about why she wanted to go there. He just wanted to get paid and leave.

The only-slightly-creepy aura of the completely silent area full of factories and warehouses served as a perfect background to contacting the kidnapper. Marinette, after making sure she was truly alone, activated the voice-scrambling app on her burner and dialed the number that sent her the text about successful work. Her Maman showed her that, thinking she wanted it for a prank. Or that’s how Marinette presented it anyway.

“Who is this?!” A voice on the other side of the call asked.

Marinette took a deep breath before answering. “I was led to believe you have what I wanted.” She tried her best to channel Chloé into her voice.

“Ah… Yes… There’s been a… complication.”

“What do you mean ‘complication’?” She hissed into the phone call.

“Um… I had the package… But then someone stole the stolen package…” Whoever that was informed her.

“Who?” She demanded.

“Last I checked, Lawton was the one who had ‘im… But it might’ve changed. But don’t worry, Boss… lady?” They asked. Marinette didn’t give either confirmation or scolding, so they continued. “I’m still in the game.” With that, they hang up.

“What did I just get myself into…” She moaned. Then, the realization hit her. “What did I just get Adrien into…”

Elsewhere, Adrien was starring into a pair of curious sea-green eyes.

----------------

#maribat #miraculous #miraculous ladybug #batman #dc #DC comics #MLB #mlb x dc #BAMF Marinette #villain marinette #marinette dupain cheng #adrien agreste

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pitviperofdoom · 3 years

Note

I really liked your 'Life Preserver' excerpt and I'd love to read more about it. I liked the interaction between Gerry and Georgie, their characterization and Gerry's description of his relationship with Jon, plus this exchange: “He thinks your mum’s a homophobe, you know.”“You know, he’s probably right? Think she might just hate the idea of love in general, though.”“Messy divorce, I take it,”“Rohypnol and garden shears were involved, so yeah, I’d say it was pretty messy.”

Thanks!

Yeah, Gerry and Georgie surprised me as a really interesting dynamic to explore. In spite of Georgie’s caution around the Entities, Gerry just feels like the kind of person Georgie would get along with, given the people she canonically ends up loving.

Anyway here’s another part I’ve written! This one actually has Jon and Gerry in it.

---

When Jon went in for his next shift, things went smoothly enough to be genuinely suspicious. Tina was his desk partner again, and she greeted him with the same cordiality as always. No one official-looking ever came by to speak with him.

The only hint that anything had happened that night was a campus-wide e-mail paying respects to Daniel Lattimer, one of the subject librarians, who was reported as having “passed unexpectedly”. The message held all of the usual official platitudes and nothing else; Jon had read it word for word several times to be sure.

Someone should have known, shouldn’t they? It wasn’t as if he had been careful about covering his tracks, beyond making his tip anonymous. The library had cameras. He was sure he’d left at least a few shoe prints in all the blood.

But nothing came of it. The first hour passed peacefully, with nothing more exciting than a couple of patrons he had to inform of overdue books.

Jon spotted the familiar dark figure out of the corner of his eye, even before Tina hissed a warning at him. He raised his head to watch Gerard Keay’s approach, chest suddenly tight with nervousness.

How on earth was he supposed to explain this?

“Hey.” Gerard was in front of him already, leaning his elbows on the desk as usual. “Any word on that book? I tried to come in yesterday, but you were closed.”

“R-right.” Jon hesitated. There were several ways he could answer this. He could, of course, be utterly truthful and tell him that he’d burned the thing on account of it being made of meat and killing one of the librarians. He almost laughed at the thought. At worst, Gerard would complain to someone about Jon being unhelpful; at best, he’d find it funny, but he’d demand a real answer once he was done laughing about it.

He could lie and stall by saying that the book was still on its way. But that was a temporary fix at best, and it would only lead Gerard to keep coming in and asking.

And would that really be so bad? Jon shook his head to clear away the thought.

“Right,” he said again. “A-about that. Unfortunately—” He slipped his bandaged hand behind the desk, out of sight. “—we were unable to find the book in storage. It seems to have been marked incorrectly. It happens sometimes. Though not very often, I assure you,” he added hastily. “But it’s been marked down as missing, I’m afraid.”

“Oh.” Gerard’s face was the very picture of disappointment. “That’s a shame. Really did need that one.”

“Terribly sorry for the inconvenience.” Jon tried to sound like he meant it.

It was hard to force down the sheer, overwhelming relief. Just last night he’d regretted his own paranoia, but now? If he hadn’t gone back, if he hadn’t checked for the book…

Well, the library might not have been closed yesterday. And he didn’t have the first shift at the circulation desk. And whoever did might have been someone who didn’t know, someone who wasn’t haunted by the name Jurgen Leitner, who might have taken the book from the cart and handed it straight over—

The unwelcome memory of Mr. Lattimer’s body rose up behind his eyes, juxtaposed over the young man standing before him.

As a child, he’d doomed someone else to a gruesome death that should have been his. So maybe this time… maybe he’d actually…

“Well then,” said Gerard, shaking him out of his bubble of thoughts. “Guess that’s—er, guess I’ll look elsewhere…”

“Right,” said Jon. “Unless there was anything else you needed…?” He tried not to sound too hopeful.

“No, thanks, that’s it,” said Gerard, already turning away. “Thanks for all the help.”

“Oh, I hardly—I mean, I didn’t really do much, in the end.”

Gerard regarded him for a moment, head tilted to one side with a thoughtful look. Then, quite without warning, he smiled at him. “Don’t sell yourself short. You were great.”

“O-of course,” Jon stammered as Gerard turned to leave again. “Oh, wait—wait a moment.”

Gerard looked back. “Yeah?”

Jon dug into his pocket, pulling out the lighter. “Is this yours?” he asked, placing it on the desk. “I found it on one of the tables in the reading room, and I remembered you had it the other day…”

Instead of taking it, Gerard simply flashed him one last grin. “Keep it,” he said. “I’ve got loads.”

“It’s really not good to keep ignition sources in a library,” Jon protested, feeling inordinately flustered.

Gerard laughed, a brief, bright thing, and—

“D’you want to get coffee?” Jon blurted out.

The smile froze on Gerard’s face, before giving way to surprise. “What?”

A stab of terror nearly robbed Jon of his words, before he found his voice again and forged ahead. “Do you—I mean. Do you want to get coffee sometime?” he repeated. Shit. Shit, he was doing this, how was he already doing this? “With me?” He wanted to kick himself, of course he’d know he meant it that way. “I—my shift ends at noon today. If you’re free. I-if you want to, I mean.”

Gerard blinked at him, so utterly bewildered that it might have been funny if Jon’s heart weren’t currently climbing into his throat. “You—wait. Is this… are you asking me on a date?”

He said it so incredulously, as if the idea that Jon would ask him on a date were utterly incomprehensible to him. Rapidly, Jon’s heart sank back down.

“Yes,” Tina leapt in helpfully. “He is. Aren’t you, Jon?”

She nudged him none too gently. “Y-yes,” he said, because it wasn’t as if he could dig himself any deeper. “That—that was the intention.”

“Huh.” Gerard shrugged. “Sure.”

The whiplash made Jon dizzy for a moment. “Really?”

“Yeah. Noon, right? See you then.” With that, he turned and walked out of the library.

Once he was out of sight, Jon slumped over onto the surface of the desk like a marionette with its strings cut.

Tina patted his back. “Proud of you. Go get that goth D.”

***

It wasn’t that Gerry didn’t know it was a terrible idea—just that he’d had worse ones before. He was still breathing after years of them, in fact. So what was one more?

Jon the librarian was far from the first scarred survivor he’d ever met. They weren’t common, precisely, but nor were they unheard of. Technically he was one, and Mum had been as well, before she carved herself up.

But Gerry knew he was an outlier, and as rare as surviving one brush with the Fears was, meeting two of the things and escaping uneaten from both was on a level of its own. But against all odds, when he looked at the wispy little librarian who’d spent the past week being so divertingly helpful, Gerry could see two separate, distinct marks on him, where there had previously been only one. And they really were distinct from one another. The Flesh was like a shark sometimes, content to take one good bite before losing interest and wandering off, while the wisps of the Web still clung jealously. A scar like that could have been left years ago or the day before they met. You could never tell with the Web.

That added to the risk, of course. For all he knew, this was some ploy from the Mother of Puppets to catch him and draw him in. A little cliche, maybe, but Gerry couldn’t fault it for its efficacy.

He’d said yes, after all.

In his defense, it wasn’t every day he met someone with a nice face, a taste for burning Leitners, and enough luck or fortitude to walk away from two different Powers. Nor was it every day a person like that asked him to… well…

People didn’t flirt with him, was the thing. Anyone who knew enough to be worth talking to either wised up and ran the other way, or turned around and tried to take a chunk out of him.

So, yeah. Might as well give it a shot. See what it was like, while he had the chance.

He had til noon to brace himself, anyway. Not enough time to go back to Mum’s and freshen up, which was a shame. She’d just faded out a couple of days ago, so he knew he’d have the place to himself.

Ah, well.

In spite of himself, Gerry found himself turning his face upward with a grin and an excited spring in his step. It’d be a bit like traveling abroad, or visiting tourist traps, or all the other things he indulged in when Mum was gone. See as much of the world beyond his own as he could, before she finally fucked up and got him killed.

A date! Who’d have thought he’d get to check that one off the bucket list?

#tma fic #jongerry #jonathan sims #gerard keay #safe harbor au #tales from the pit #lady-with-a-deathwish

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inviberu · 3 years

Text

til death do us part

Shino thought it was easier to say it in his own words instead of the ones that were put into his mouth forcefully by some other wizards.

There wasn’t a day in his life where Shino felt himself become this troubled—save for that one time he had a realization dawn to him which was heavily related to his worry about not being able to stay by Heath’s side if he wasn’t powerful enough—and frankly put it, he hadn’t pushed away the idea of asking his fellow wizards just yet even after many failures. First, he tried asking Heath for help. Though it ended quickly with Heath clutching his stomach, trying to suppress his laughter and Shino walking away out of annoyance.

Second attempt was with Nero and Faust who were enjoying an afternoon together out in the courtyard much to Shino’s surprise. When Shino asked them for help, Faust was surprised beyond belief before letting out a tired sigh and Nero merely looked as if he’s a mom that’s given up with her child’s ridiculous antics—that didn’t mean he didn’t find whatever he was asking for a tiny bit hilarious though. Shino, upset, walked away from the scene as well when he found out that the two old men did nothing to assist him with his quest.

Third attempt was when he bumped into the ancient Northern twins in the hallway when they were on their way to their room from the lobby. He asked them a seemingly simple question and yet they went off on a tangent for an answer, which Shino found extremely boring and unhelpful so he just walked away in the end without hearing the end of it. Snow and White got a bit upset with him for walking away just like that, especially after they switched to their adult form just to answer his unusual question.

Fourth attempt was his most successful one by far, which was with Shylock. Shino looked for him inside his bar and asked him for help, to which Shylock happily indulged him and gave him an answer that sort of satisfied Shino. Although he was still a bit hesitant, he decided to go with Shylock’s answer for the final thing he’s working on—not noticing the underlying tone of deviousness in his smile. Shino ought to remember, Western wizards loved a good show, and Shylock was the epitome of a Western wizard.

Shino felt his nervousness wash away and instead got replaced by an enormous amount of confidence that seemed unfitting for someone of his stature—short and small. His hair was slicked back and he was dressed in formal attire from head to toe in contrast to his everyday look where he was definitely more casual. Shino, himself, did not know what exactly he was doing but he decided to go through with it anyway since it was Shylock’s advice. And he knew that Shylock was way better than him when it came to matters such as this.

A proposal to you—is what he was planning.

He panicked a little bit after realizing he had no expertise in that area and that he just really wanted to marry you, terribly so. When he asked Heath for help, he almost sent the young lord rolling across the stairs out of laughter. Heath found it ridiculous—hilarious, even. Shino took it as a sign to leave Heath alone as he was of no help at all. Nero and Faust just sighed at him when he asked them how to propose to someone, telling him he should just be himself. Which Shino paid little attention to, thinking that it was fruitless advice from a bunch of old geezers. The twins were more than happy to help but they started sputtering out gibberish not long after. Shino concluded that those womanizers would be of no help.

Shylock, though, gave him a bit of solid advice. Which he followed and leads us to where Shino is today. Dolled up and with a bouquet of flowers in his hands, it was out of character for him. Anyone could tell that much but when you caught sight of him waiting for you outside, you decided to give him the benefit of doubt. Though when you approached him, there was a little bit of a problem. He was speaking weirdly, very unlike the Shino you came to know and love. Though it wasn’t necessarily a bad kind of weird, it was leaning more so on the funnier side. He cleared his throat.

“O beloved of mine, won’t you grant me a few minutes of your time? You see… I’ve been thinking—” Before he could finish, you couldn’t let out a chuckle. One that Shino couldn’t let go off easily. A simple chuckle was enough for him to feel the embarrassment rush to his face and wondered if in your eyes, he was just a fool not worthy to be taken seriously.

“Shino, why are you talking that way-?”

“Forget it,” he reverted back to his old self. His usual rudeness surfaced when his mind suddenly started taking a turn for the worse. “It’s nothing important anyways.”

Before you could let out another word, he summoned his broom and quickly fled from your sight, where you may never see the look on his face as he suddenly felt regretful. You couldn’t tell what exactly just happened but you knew this much—you felt as if you’ve done something to make him feel bad.

A figure in the air, riding on a broom, let out a puff of smoke after taking a drag from his pipe. An amused expression settling on his face mixed with a little bit of a troubled one, as if he just saw his favourite show getting cancelled right in front of him.

“Oh dear, will we be seeing the finale tonight? Or will the show simply stop here? Maybe a little push is due to apologize to dear Shino.”

You wondered if you did something to severely upset Shino, it wasn’t as if you’d never gotten into any arguments with him but this time you’ve done little to nothing at all! You considered if he got upset after your chuckle—which you thought was harmless—but the more you think about it, the more plausible it seemed. But why would he get hurt over something like that? It looked as if he was playing a silly prank on you. Unless… That wasn’t a prank at all and he had something serious to say to you.

The longer you realized, the more terrible you felt during the dead hours of the night. You paced back and forth in your room, wondering if Shino is awake or in his room right now because there was nothing more you wanted than to immediately rush to him and apologize. He must’ve felt horrible, and you only realized it now.

Making up your mind, you grabbed your coat and made your way to your door to go to his room until you heard a loud thud near your room window. There was only one person that would knock on your window during this time of the night—Shino! You quickly turned around and expected the Eastern wizard to greet you, and you were right this time. His hair went back to its usual messy look and his formal clothes were replaced with the ones he usually wears everyday.

And there were still a handful of hand picked flowers in his hand—your favourite this time, roses. You immediately rushed towards the window and slid it open, your hands outstretched towards the scenery and the cold yet gentle breeze that caressed your face. Before you knew it, Shino let go of his broom and threw himself into your arms, the strands of his hair brushing against your cheeks and his arms wrapped tightly around your torso with his head placed atop your shoulder to hide his embarrassingly red face. The flowers he was holding almost falling to the floor with how loose his grip suddenly grew.

Without hesitation, you wrapped your arms around him and opened your mouth to apologize before he could say anything: “I’m sorry!”

But as if he couldn’t hear a word you said, he pulled away and looked at you straight in the eyes. For a moment, you wondered if he was mad at you but the long hug and the blush on his cheeks was enough to tell you otherwise. You felt yourself growing more embarrassed as well when he suddenly shoved the flowers towards you. Before you could open your mouth to ask, he suddenly blurted out:

“I want to eat the pie you make for the rest of my life.” Your eyes widened, and you felt yourself wanting to laugh again. You looked away, shoulders trembling.

“... You’re laughing again,” he pouted. You shook your head, tears almost falling from the corner of your eyes.

“No, no. It’s just that I thought saying something like that felt super fitting for someone like you.” You paused to calm down, clutching the flowers he gave you close to your chest. “Will you still want to eat the pie I make even if it’s burnt?”

“Then I’ll just have to make sure you don’t burn it,” Shino shot you a gentle smile. Under the moonlight, you wondered if your eyes were just playing tricks on you and this was all just a sweet spell someone cast over you. Though, there was no use in denying the fact that Shino’s sweet and genuine smile illuminated by the moonlight was something you want to etch into your memories for centuries to come.

“As much as I want to say yes, isn’t it a bit too early for us?”

“I don’t think so, no? I’m not going to wait for your answer for more years when I already know you’re going to say yes to me in the end. So why not just agree now?”

“Wow, you already think that my answer will stay the same for the years to come.”

“I don’t just think so. I know it, I know you the best. You can’t resist my charm now, and you still won’t be able to in the future.” He took hold of your chin and leaned dangerously close, to the point where you could feel his breathing close to you. You closed your eyes, expecting him to kiss you but was met with laughter instead.

“Pfft-! Did you really think I was going to kiss you?” He let out a chuckle, “consider this as revenge for laughing at me earlier.”

“H-Hey! I was not expecting anything at all, and I didn’t laugh at you. I just chuckled, that's all!” You quickly got defensive, not wanting to admit you were expecting him to kiss you.

“Are you sure?” His tone was smug and teasing, something you loved about him no matter how infuriating it is. “You still haven’t answered me, by the way. Will you pledge to spend the rest of your life with me?”

“An eternity seems long… and to think I’m considering spending it with you, of all people.”

“I know you love me.”

“Yes, yes. You already know my answer don’t you, Shino? It’s an eternity I don’t mind spending with you. Though I don’t know if Faust will allow us-!” You could barely finish your sentence when Shino crashed his lips against yours into a passionate kiss. His raw emotions coursing through him and you felt yourself getting lost in it as well, the words you held back from each other suddenly spilling like a waterfall that’s been blocked for decades through kisses. Your fingers tangled in his hair and Shino found it hard to pull back—had it not been for your need of oxygen, he would’ve never let you go.

“Let me finish my sentence first!” You exclaimed, lightly hitting his arm, breathless.

“Sorry, I got a bit excited.” He admitted like a defeated puppy but the smug look on his face made you want to smack his pretty face instead. “I just couldn’t help it when I realized that we’ll be together… til death do us part.”

Shylock took a drag from his pipe, the scent of alcohol still lingering in the air as a gentle expression took over his face, as if he accomplished something great—and he wasn’t the whole reason why a huge mess occurred in the first place.

“All’s well that ends well… Huh? I do hope dear Shino doesn’t bear a grudge against me. Eastern wizards aren’t exactly known for forgetting grudges easily.” He smiled, knowing that Shino would thank him later on. They both got what they wanted, after all. Shino and his quest for true love and Shylock with his desire for something interesting.

#mhyk #mhyk writing #my writing #promise of wizard #shino #mhyk shino #shino x reader #unedited . kinda LMAOO

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robininthelabyrinth · 4 years

Text

Complications (aka trans!Jiang Cheng with a kid) - ao3 or part 1, part 2, part 3

A-Lian was as good a name as any for the brat, Jiang Cheng supposed.

He’d been spitefully thinking of additional names ever since Nie Huaisang, that busybody, had decided on the name he liked best, but unfortunately Jiang Lian had a better ring to it than any of the others he’d come up with so far and he wasn’t quite petty enough to condemn his son to a disharmonious name just out of spite.

Assuming A-Lian stayed a son, anyway. Jiang Cheng was still curious as to how the Nie sect had managed to get cursed with an entire generation of women – Nie Huaisang had let slip a few hints that it might’ve had to do with a very fat celestial bird that hadn’t appreciated a comment that had, truly, been meant as a compliment, and anyway they would have made for excellent drumsticks, and honestly the more Jiang Cheng heard about this story the more he wondered if marrying Nie Huaisang just to hear the full version might possibly be worth it – and obviously he wasn’t about to let the Lotus Pier continue to ignore the issue of misaligned reincarnations any longer.

Something he’d have to start enforcing once he was back on the war front, he supposed – which was going to be very soon, if he had his way about it; he was sick and tired of the (nearly completed!) post-pregnancy isolation period.

He couldn’t wait for the relative peace and quiet of an active battlefield.

Of course, the second he thought that, A-Lian started making ominous grumbling sounds, because babies were apparently psychic. Why had no one ever mentioned that?

“You can’t be hungry again, brat,” Jiang Cheng told A-Lian firmly. “I literally just fed you.”

He probably just wanted to burp again, so Jiang Cheng picked him up and started patting him with one hand, using the other to fish out Nie Mingjue’s most recent letter. The other sect leader was quite possibly the most relaxing person he’d ever corresponded with: his letters were practical and to the point, with no extraneous fluff that Jiang Cheng would feel obliged to respond to.

More importantly, it gave him an update on how his sect was doing, which was all for the best – Nie Mingjue had kept recruitment open for him, which he hadn’t needed to do, and that meant that each letter now contained not only battle strategy and requests for final decisions but also lists of the talent (or lack thereof) of new recruits so that he could make a decision on their admittance as tentative nominal disciples. Final admittance would have to wait until he returned, of course…

He hadn’t gotten a letter from Nie Huaisang yet.

That was to be expected, he supposed. Nie Huaisang had insisted on sticking around for nearly two weeks following the birth to make sure Jiang Cheng didn’t mysteriously expire from complications – the doctors had rolled their eyes a little, but Nie Huaisang’s mother had died from an infection that hadn’t been spotted in time and Jiang Cheng understood his paranoia – and he’d only reluctantly agreed to go, which meant he was probably dragging his feet.

Anyway, just because Nie Huaisang had agreed to tell Wei Wuxian about A-Lian didn’t mean that he could necessarily find Wei Wuxian. His shixiong could be anywhere, after all; contributing to the campaign, of course, but not necessarily in the Jiang sect’s camp…

Ah, yes. Just what Jiang Cheng’s day was missing: the stabbing sense of inadequacy and failure, with a nice slice of the sinking suspicion that his leadership was so bad that he couldn’t even convince his own shixiong to follow him and therefore everyone who was following him was simply humoring him.

“At least you seem to like me well enough,” he muttered to A-Lian, who gurgled happily at him now that the unfortunate burping incident was behind them. “You keep that up, you hear me? You may be a brat, and little more than a blob with arms and legs, but you still have to like me best.”

Nie Huaisang insisted that A-Lian was a gorgeous baby, but Jiang Cheng was having some trouble seeing it. Obviously A-Lian was a baby superior to all other babies, undoubtedly through sheer dumb luck (maybe it skipped a generation?), but he kept worrying that he’d done something wrong, either during the pregnancy or the birth or the care he’d been giving him, and that he’d end up damaging A-Lian for life.

It was easier if he thought of A-Lian as a very resistant blob that would always resume its original shape.

…he really wished Nie Huaisang would write to him and tell him what’d happened when he told Wei Wuxian.

He knew that Wei Wuxian would take it personally, but he wasn’t exactly sure how. Would Wei Wuxian be angry with him? Disappointed, that Jiang Cheng hadn’t just lost his core to the Wens, but his chastity as well? Disdainful that Jiang Cheng had been so desperate for family that he’d decided to carry the child to term, even knowing that its father was their parents’ murderer - that he himself had helped murder the father in turn? Upset, because Wei Wuxian had done so much to rescue him and care for him and even help him get his golden core back, and in return Jiang Cheng did nothing but create another burden that would fall on his shoulders?

Or worse – would Wei Wuxian feel like a failure, too, the way Jiang Cheng always did, and all because he hadn’t been able to save Jiang Cheng from the obvious consequences of his own stupidity?

(It wasn’t that Jiang Cheng hadn’t known when he’d allowed himself to be captured that he’d be tortured and most probably killed, and yet somehow it had never occurred to him that they would do what they did to him – he’d been a man so long that he’d forgotten, just like everyone else in the Lotus Pier, that he’d ever been regarded as anything else. He still didn’t regret the choice he’d made; he’d known that Wei Wuxian would do a better job of avenging his parents than he would and he was right about it, too, wasn’t he?)

Jiang Cheng was so immersed in dark thoughts that he almost – almost – failed to notice when A-Lian started reaching for the ink. Well, flailing around in the general vicinity of the ink, anyway.

“Don’t you even dare think about it, brat. Do you remember bathtime? You don’t like bathtime, and if you get yourself covered in ink, there’s going to be even more bathtime…”

“Jiang-xiong! Jiang-xiong! Are you and A-Lian awake in there?”

It was Nie Huaisang.

He’d returned in person instead of writing a letter; was that a good sign or a bad sign?

“Even if we weren’t, we would be after your yelling,” he shouted back. “What are you, an elephant?”

“A bull!”

“You’re too prissy to be a bull, except for the bullshit you always keep spouting!”

Jiang Cheng waited for Nie Huaisang’s response, which would inevitably be dripping with innuendo, and blinked when there wasn’t anything. That was strange; it wasn’t as if there was anyone here that Nie Huaisang would be embarrassed to –

Oh no.

“Can we come in?” Nie Huaisang asked from outside his door.

Jiang Cheng’s suspicions were confirmed at once when he heard that dreadful ‘we’. Nie Huaisang had returned not with news but with company – company Jiang Cheng still wasn’t sure he was ready to see.

“…fine,” he still said, because there was no point in holding it off any further. He braced himself for Wei Wuxian to sweep into the room like a hurricane.

He was not expecting Jiang Yanli to walk in instead.

“Jiejie!” Jiang Cheng exclaimed, and – damn him – felt his eyes start filling up with tears at once. He’d wanted so badly to have her with him during this excruciating process, and she’d even offered, writing him a letter full of concern about the ‘complications’ he was apparently struggling with. But she’d been safe in the Jin sect and he wouldn’t have been able to bear the guilt if something had happened to her on the way to see him.

And that meant he couldn’t say anything, not even in letters that were safe, not even in code, because if he’d so much as breathed a word about what was actually happening, she would have insisted on coming no matter what.

“A-Cheng!” she exclaimed, and rushed over. “Oh, A-Cheng, why didn’t you tell me…”

“I wanted to you to stay safe,” he sniffed. “Travel is so dangerous, and if something happened because of me –”

“Oh, A-Cheng…” She wrapped her arms around him. “I just wish I’d been here for you. You must have been so scared!”

“I have nightmares that say he was mostly just really angry,” Nie Huaisang put in, unhelpful as always; Jiang Cheng didn’t even bother to spare him a glance.

“You were here,” he assured her. “You sent me soup every week; I ate that when I couldn’t keep anything else down –”

A particularly vicious surge of late-onset morning sickness. It’d been a bad ten days.

“You still should’ve told us,” and that was Wei Wuxian, standing in the door next to Nie Huaisang with his shoulders up by his ears defensively, but Jiang Cheng was curled up in his sister’s arms so even if Wei Wuxian was horribly disappointed in him he would be able to handle it.

With Jiang Yanli there, he could handle anything.

“Probably should have,” he agreed, because Wei Wuxian was right. Opting to carry A-Lian at all was a stupid risk to have taken in the first place, given the likelihood of dying in childbirth and leaving the Jiang sect without a leader during their time of need, but – well, that’d been a risk he’d accepted the first time around when he’d given himself up to save Wei Wuxian. It hadn’t seemed so bad the second time, even though he knew he risked wasting all of Wei Wuxian’s hard work in rescuing and getting his core back. “Didn’t, though. You want to hold the brat?”

“Of course I want to hold the brat!” And when Jiang Cheng looked over, Wei Wuxian was smiling. Smiling. “I have to hold him! He’s my shizi!”

“What are you naming him?” Jiang Yanli asked as Wei Wuxian reached over to pick A-Lian up.

“…Jiang Lian,” Jiang Cheng finally admitted, and any embarrassing comments Nie Huaisang might have had to say about it – Jiang Cheng expected whooping in triumph, to be perfectly honest – were drowned out by A-Lian abruptly howling in indignation that this strange person had dared pick him up.

“Jiang Cheng! Jiang Cheng! The baby’s crying!” Wei Wuxian wailed. He sounded like a baby himself.

“Oh for the – give him here!” The second A-Lian returned to Jiang Cheng’s arms, the crying stop and the baby settled back down. He looked a little smug, even.

“It seems A-Lian likes A-Cheng the best,” Jiang Yanli said, covering her mouth with a smile. “Can I try?”

There were still tears, though not quite as many.

“He’ll get used to you eventually,” Jiang Cheng said, as if he wasn’t preening at his son’s excellent taste. “If you stick around, that is.”

“As if you’ll be able to get rid of us,” Wei Wuxian huffed, and that made something warm and happy and glowing appear in Jiang Cheng’s chest. “You know, it’s really unfair, Jiang Cheng! I put in all this work and effort into developing demonic cultivation and inventing all sorts of new things, and in a mere ten months you managed to make something even better.”

Jiang Cheng couldn’t help the laugh that broke free, his heart singing happily – Wei Wuxian didn’t hate him, wasn’t disappointed in him, was happy for him. “It wasn’t really something I was actively working on.”

“Rude. No need to rub it in.”

And just because Jiang Cheng was Jiang Cheng, he had to affirmatively check: “You’re not upset, are you?”

“Only that you robbed us of the opportunity to spoil you rotten,” Wei Wuxian said. “Oh, and for having Nie Huaisang tell me about it – I only found out because he and his brother were betting on the gender.”

Jiang Cheng twisted around in Jiang Yanli’s arms to glare at Nie Huaisang.

“I lost,” Nie Huaisang said, as if that would make things better, and weirdly enough it sort of did. “Never bet against da-ge.”

Jiang Cheng thought about it and nodded. That seemed like a good rule, no matter the circumstances – and anyway, if that meant that Nie Mingjue was there when Wei Wuxian was told, that was all the better. As far as Jiang Cheng was concerned, there was nothing in the world that Nie Mingjue couldn’t handle.

He wished he could one day be even half of what Nie Mingjue was. Confident and self-assured, an excellent sect leader beloved by all, a war leader and a filial son, righteous and terrifying…

“I hope he won something good off of you,” he told Nie Huaisang, who grimaced at him in a way that suggested Nie Mingjue really had won something good. “You deserve it.”

“You have no sympathy for me,” Nie Huaisang whined.

“Forget sympathy for you, what about sympathy for me?” Wei Wuxian put in. “‘Oh, hi, Wei Wuxian, nice to see you, been a long time, guess what, your shizi’s a boy!’”

Okay, that sounded really funny actually. Jiang Cheng kind of regrets missing it.

He smirked at Wei Wuxian, who saw it and made a rude gesture in return.

“It was traumatizing,” Wei Wuxian said with a sniff. “Really, truly. Shijie, you need to make me some soup to help me get over it.”

“No way,” Jiang Cheng said at once. “If she’s making soup, she’s making it for me.”

“You’ve apparently been getting her soup every week for the past few months; I deserve it more!”

“I’m the one getting my chest gnawed off by a wild animal three times a day –”

“I can make enough for both of you,” Jiang Yanli said patiently. “Nie-gongzi, is there a kitchen..?”

“I’ll show you the way,” Nie Huaisang said with a grin. “I’m eager to see how this famous soup gets made. I had to beg Jiang-xiong for three weeks to get a single spoonful, and it was worth every minute of it.”

“You flatter me…”

They left together, and Jiang Cheng used the opportunity to scrub the tear tracks off his face as best as he could.

“It really was pretty traumatizing,” Wei Wuxian said, pointedly only looking at an increasingly sleepy A-Lian instead of seeing what Jiang Cheng was doing. “Not as traumatizing as the lecture Chifeng-zun gave me afterwards about how badly I’ve been behaving.”

“Badly?” Jiang Cheng said, frowning. “What do you mean, you’ve been fine; the effect your demonic cultivation has been having against the Wens alone –”

“No, I haven’t been,” Wei Wuxian said, and his tone was uncharacteristically serious. “Not because of the demonic cultivation, but because I haven’t been standing by your side the way I promised I would.”

“You’re doing your best,” Jiang Cheng said firmly. “You have demonic cultivation now, and that means you can do a lot more things – it makes sense for your to be at the front line.”

“I’m not saying that I shouldn’t be at the front line. I’m saying that I promised you that you’d be my sect leader, that I’d follow you, and instead I keep treating you like you’re still my shidi. Making decisions on your behalf, insisting on doing things my way because I think I’m right…” Wei Wuxian shook his head. “I got used to doing things that way, all these years. But things are different now. You’re my sect leader. Decisions like how to best deploy me are your decision, not mine – if you want me by your side instead of on the front, I should do that; if you want me to lead the Jiang sect cultivators, I should be doing that. I can try to persuade you that my plan is better, but in the end, if I’m going to be part of the Jiang sect, I need to accept that it’s your word that’s final, because anything else would be disrespectful – and I don’t want to disrespect you, Jiang Cheng. Sect Leader Jiang.”

“Don’t call me that,” Jiang Cheng said, words sharp but only because otherwise he’d have to acknowledge that he was crying again. He hadn’t even known he’d wanted to hear that from Wei Wuxian until he had – he hadn’t realized how important it was that Wei Wuxian finally acknowledged him, that Wei Wuxian thought he was capable of being sect leader; he hadn’t realized how much his feelings had been tangled up by the fact that Wei Wuxian still treated him as if he was just a foolish child that didn’t know better. “Everyone else can call me that, but you call me Jiang Cheng, okay? Always.”

He reached over and grabbed Wei Wuxian around the shoulders, drawing him into a tight one-armed embrace.

“Watch the baby,” Wei Wuxian said, as if he wasn’t hugging back just as hard. “Don’t drop my shizi because you’re not paying attention.”

“I’m not going to drop him,” Jiang Cheng said, grateful for the mostly-a-joke. “Does that – does that mean you’re coming back to the Jiang sect? For real this time?”

“Yes,” Wei Wuxian said. “I am. No more running around outside, I promise.”

Jiang Cheng’s hands were busy, holding his shidi in one and his son in the other, so he had to bury his face into Wei Wuxian’s shoulder to help stop the flow of tears. “Wei Wuxian,” he said. “You really don’t – you’re not angry at me?”

“Why would I be angry at you?” Wei Wuxian said, pulling back and frowning at him and then frowning even more when Jiang Cheng made a flailing sort of gesture with his head towards A-Lian. “For - for that?! Jiang Cheng, it wasn’t your fault you got captured!”

It sort of was, actually, and Jiang Cheng has always been a terrible liar; he shouldn’t have let his insecurities get away from him enough to even ask, because now Wei Wuxian’s eyes were the ones filling up with tears. He’d never been an idiot.

“You didn’t,” he insisted, and his hands were white-knuckled where he grabbed onto Jiang Cheng’s arms. He was probably leaving bruises, and neither of them cared. “Jiang Cheng, tell me you didn’t! Don’t – in the marketplace, when the Wens were about to find me – Jiang Cheng…!”

“Someone needed to avenge our parents, and you were the better choice!” Jiang Cheng blurted out. “And I was right, wasn’t I? You did it! You even invented demonic cultivation –”

“I didn’t have a choice!” Wei Wuxian exclaimed. “There wasn’t any other way out of the Burial Mounds, and now I’m stuck, Jiang Cheng – you don’t understand, it’s not just, I don’t – I can’t – it’s demonic cultivation or nothing for me, and when the war ends, when it stops being useful and starts being horrifying, the entire cultivation world is going to turn against me, and I can’t bring you down with me –”

“Why are you talking like it’s the only type of cultivation you can do anymore?” Jiang Cheng demanded. “How can one type of cultivation block you from doing another? That doesn’t make any sense – even if it did block you, you could just stop, it’s not like you don’t have a golden core –”

Wei Wuxian didn’t say anything.

“You have a golden core,” Jiang Cheng said again, more urgently this time. “Wei Wuxian, you have a golden core, right? You didn’t –” He was starting to panic. “It was Wen Chao that threw you into the Burial Mounds, wasn’t it? He said it himself that that was what he did, and where there’s Wen Chao, there’s Wen Zhuliu – did he melt your core? And I took your name when we went to Baosan Sanren’s mountain, I took your birthright away from you –”

“Jiang Cheng, no! That’s not what happened!”

“You told me to tell her I was you!” Jiang Cheng exclaimed, because what else could it be? Baosan Sanren was a true immortal, powerful enough to fix a golden core, but everyone knew that her disciples weren’t allowed back onto the mountain once they’d left – the gift she’d given him, reviving his core, that must have been a once-in-a-lifetime offer. “I told her I was you so she’d heal me and now she won’t heal you; I did to you what Mother was always afraid you’d do to me –”

“I lied!” Wei Wuxian cried out, and he sounded as if his heart was being torn out of his chest. “I lied, Jiang Cheng, stop trusting me so much! There’s no Baosan Sanren, no mountain; just me, making stupid decisions on your behalf again, because I’m arrogant, because I think I know better, because I –”

“What did you do?” Jiang Cheng said. His lips felt numb. His whole body felt numb. “Wei Wuxian, what did you do –”

A-Lian burst into tears.

That knocked them both out of their self-absorption, turning at once to see what was wrong with the baby.

“Did we jostle him?” Wei Wuxian asked anxiously once they’d gotten A-Lian a little calmer. “We didn’t hurt him, did we?”

“I think we were just being too loud,” Jiang Cheng said after concluding his inspection. “And anyway, he’s kind of a blob right now – you pinch or pull at him and he goes back the way he used to be. The doctors all say that babies are very flexible.”

“A little bun,” Wei Wuxiand agreed. “With just a little dusting of sesame on top.”

Jiang Cheng looked at the very few scraps of black hair A-Lian had managed to grow. “…he does kind of look like that, doesn’t he? Come on, A-Lian, calm down, it’s okay, we’ll stop yelling, we promise –”

“Really?” Wei Wuxian said. He sounded skeptical. “You’re going to stop yelling?”

“Shut up, you sound like Nie Huaisang. Don’t think you’re getting away without telling me what you did…you gave me yours, didn’t you?”

No wonder his core had felt different, stronger, when he’d woken up – he’d assumed it was Baosan Sanren giving him a gift, but in reality it was only that Wei Wuxian was a better cultivator than he was, that he’d strengthened himself more.

No wonder, too, that his core had felt familiar – he’d pressed his ear against Wei Wuxian’s belly a thousand times, feeling the warmth of it, and he’d mistaken that familiarity for it being his.

Wei Wuxian nodded, and Jiang Cheng scowled. “Can it be reversed?”

“Absolutely not,” Wei Wuxian said at once. “For one thing, I wouldn’t agree; for another, it was only a fifty-fifty chance of it working successfully the first time, I’m not taking that risk again. Anyway, I have demonic cultivation now, and if we traded back, you’d need to be the demonic cultivator, and what would that do to the Jiang sect’s reputation?”

Jiang Cheng hated it when Wei Wuxian had a point.

“Especially now that we have an heir,” Wei Wuxian added, reaching out to rub A-Lian’s head. “You’ve got to make sure the Jiang sect is thriving so that you’ll have something good to hand down to him.”

Jiang Cheng really hated it when Wei Wuxian had a point.

“I can’t believe you did that for me,” he said.

“I can’t believe you got captured for me,” Wei Wuxian rebutted. But that wasn’t the same at all, it was –

Okay, maybe there were a few superficial similarities.

“At least that explains why you’ve been so distant,” he said, shaking his head and smoothing A-Lian’s minimal hair down as the baby started to fall asleep again. “I thought you just didn’t trust me to be a good sect leader…”

“What? No! Jiang Cheng, you’re a great sect leader. I just didn’t want to risk dragging you down.”

“How can you drag us down? I’m literally using your golden core to lead the sect!”

“It’s yours now,” Wei Wuxian said. “I built it up, but I can’t decide on how you use it – everything you’ve done since then, that’s still yours. You know that, right? It’s all still you. Your achievements, not mine. Saying it’s mine would be like saying that every person that Chifeng-zun has ever defeated was actually the triumph of whoever forged Baxia for him.”

Jiang Cheng would murder anyone who dared to say something like that, except he’d never get the chance to because Nie Huaisang would have ruined their life before he’d even gotten started.

“Fine,” he said. “But you’re still not dragging us down. We’ll just have to be careful, that’s all – we can even use it to our advantage: whenever we need something to happen that we can’t really admit to, we have you do it, excuse it as being because of the influence of your demonic cultivation, and tell everyone we’ll get right on fixing it right away. Just the way Father used to do with Mother’s temper tantrums.”

“…wait, those were staged?”

“Well, some of them were, anyway,” Jiang Cheng said. He was mostly sure. “But you have to run anything really crazy by me first, okay?”

“Right,” Wei Wuxian said, nodding. “Uh – does that count past actions?”

Jiang Cheng wasn’t even surprised. “What’d you do?”

“Promised a safe harbor to one of the branch families of the Wen sect?”

Jiang Cheng might be gullible where his shixiong was concerned, but he wasn’t dumb. “Wen Qing and Wen Ning? They’re the ones that helped you do – what you did.”

Wei Wuxian nodded guiltily.

“Well, in that case, I can hardly turn them down, can I?” Jiang Cheng said, pretending to grumble. “That’d make me ungrateful. Fine; I retroactively authorize your offer, they can come be guest disciples at the Jiang sect –”

Wei Wuxian hugged him again.

“If you wake the baby up again I will kill you,” Jiang Cheng said, but he hugged him back.

“I think they’re done,” Nie Huaisang’s voice drifted in from the door, and they both turned to look.

Jiang Yanli’s eyes were red, suggesting that she’d been listening – and Jiang Cheng hated that, hated that he’d ever caused her pain or sadness; his jiejie deserved the best things in life, always, not more pain and disappointment and everything he brought with him. But true to form she didn’t say anything, only smiled and said, “I knew A-Xian and A-Cheng would talk it out eventually.”

“Bet you didn’t predict the baby,” Nie Huaisang chirped, and then cowered when all three of them glared at him. “Sorry, sorry. Please ignore me.”

“In the future, there will be no such secrets, understood?” Jiang Yanli said to them, with more steel than usual in her soft voice. “A-Xian will tell us before he does something crazy, and A-Cheng won’t not tell us when something important happens –”

“Well, it’s hardly likely to happen a second time,” Jiang Cheng protested, but not very strongly.

“Hey, don’t be so hasty,” Nie Huaisang said. “We could want more kids after we get married.”

“Wait,” Wei Wuxian said. “When did –”

“We are not getting married!” Jiang Cheng bellowed. It was a good thing that A-Lian apparently found Jiang Cheng’s yelling soothing, or else he would’ve woken up again. “Nie Huaisang, stop telling people we’re getting married!”

“I don’t tell people we’re getting married, I only tell you!”

“That’s not better!”

“Wow,” Wei Wuxian said to Jiang Yanli, voice deliberately pitched obnoxiously loud. “It’s almost like they’re married already –”

“Wei Wuxian! I will throw something at your head, just watch me!”

“Just don’t throw the baby!”

#mdzs #jiang cheng #wei wuxian #jiang yanli #nie huaisang #my fic #my fics #content warning: feelings

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justatiredghost · 3 years

Text

Living for the Moment Ch19

A series of glimpses at Klaus’ life if he’d met Dave in his mid 20s. His life isn’t magically transformed, love can’t fix either of them when they’re both homeless and in a bad place. They’re not even really ready for a relationship yet. But maybe a supportive friendship can set them on a better path, the two of them inspiring each other to take care of themselves. It’s going to be a long and bumpy ride, and the question is, when will they actually admit to themselves that they have feelings for each other? Read More AO3

The problem with coming to a sudden stop after burning himself up the way Klaus had been lately was the loss of adrenaline. That had really been the only thing keeping him going. Well, that and the drugs. Thankfully he still had some of those in his system so the ghosts were leaving him alone, because the inevitable crash wiped him out completely. He didn’t have the strength to keep his eyes open anymore let alone enough to hunt down another contact to resupply.

There were a lot of things Dave had said that he wanted to comment on, mostly to ask what was wrong with him, but he just couldn’t right now. None of this felt real. He’d never had someone so determined to stay in his life, and all he could do was wonder how long until he came to his senses. But that was a problem for future him. As most things were. Right now, Klaus just wanted to sleep.

Not that he got much before they were both jolted awake by a car backfiring. The early commuters were likely out, so they had to leave, but Klaus felt so much worse than he had before. The exhaustion, the aches and pains, the ugly bruise welling up on the side of his face where he’d been punched, and to top it all off, he was pretty sure he had a fever.

“Hey, you okay?” Dave asked when he noticed, and of course he had to be all sweet, rubbing his back and everything.

“Oh yeah, sure, all good here,” Klaus said, trying to suppress a violent shiver at the early morning wind icy cold now that Dave wasn’t pressed up against his side.

“Shit, I didn’t give you my cold, did I?”

“What can I say? Petty theft is one of my charms,” Klaus joked, because he didn’t like how worried he looked.

“I wish I could repay the favor and find a place for you to warm up and sleep it off, but— hang on, I have an idea. Come with me?”

Dave stood and offered his hand, and Klaus considered it. He thought about trying to ditch him again, or just refusing to move. But he was too tired to be stubborn and petty, so he decided it would be easier just to go along and he let himself get pulled to his feet.

Usually, Klaus would be more nosey about this, but when Dave left him outside the shitty motel, he just stood there and waited while he went inside to talk with someone. He surprised himself, honestly. He must be really bad off. At least Dave didn’t keep him waiting long.

“Wow, you really do look like shit,” Dave said when he returned, actually able to get a good look at him now that the early morning sun was starting to make its appearance.

“Still hot though, right?” Klaus said.

“Mmm, feverish and attractive,” Dave joked. “You might be overdoing it a little, might want to tone it down a bit.”

“Have you met me?” Klaus replied.

“Well,” Dave continued, unlocking one of the motel room doors on the first floor. “The good news is, a buddy here owes me a favor. She said we can have this room, but gotta be out of here by tomorrow evening.”

“She is a saint,” Klaus said, stumbling inside after him. “I am going to take a 6 hour long bath, so if you need to pee, you better do it now.”

“No, go ahead,” Dave laughed. “I’m actually going to step out for a bit. I have some other stuff I need to take care of. But I look forward to seeing what you look like all pruny.”

Klaus waved him off with an annoyed sound. He turned on the water as hot as it would go and was ready to soak up all that warmth and wash away the grime. By the time he finally climbed out of the bath, he didn’t feel so frozen. Sure, he still felt like shit, but it was better than nothing.

For once, Klaus slept like a rock, so he wasn’t all that surprised when he came to, desperate for a glass of water, to discover Dave was asleep in the other bed by the door. On the way back from the bathroom with a cup, he had the sudden impulse to crawl into Dave’s bed and join him, but tried to block that out and just go back to sleep.

The next time he woke up, it was to hear the shower running. Dave was no longer in the other bed. A midnight shower wasn’t all that strange, though, so he let himself fall back to sleep. But when he woke up again a little over an hour later and the shower was still going, Dave still missing, he started to get a little worried.

Well, more curious than worried. Yes, this definitely wasn’t worry. These types of places weren’t really known for having unlimited hot water and he actually wondered if Dave had been the one to ditch him this time. Curiosity getting the better of him, he stumbled out of bed, pausing at the bathroom door to knock.

“Dave? You alive in there?” he called, but didn’t get a response. “I’m coming in. I swear I’m not doing this just to check you out naked.”

As he slowly opened the door, he noticed that there wasn’t as much steam as he thought there would be. The mirror wasn’t even fogged up. When he turned to the tub, the curtain was pulled back just enough that he could see Dave sitting there, letting the water fall over him, still wearing boxers and a t-shirt. His arms were raised as if to protect his head, fingers digging into his hair.

“Dave,” Klaus called again, concerned now.

Dave flinched as soon as he spotted him, but at least he relaxed when he realized it was just Klaus. Then, he scrambled to turn the water off before sitting back, out of breath and just trying to regain his bearings.

“Hi,” Dave said guiltily. Then, he looked down at himself and sighed heavily, picking at the way his shirt stuck to him uncomfortably. “Aw, man. We have got to stop meeting like this.”

“Would it help if I also got in with my clothes on?” Klaus offered.

“No, no, it’s fine,” Dave sighed, not completely able to stop himself from smiling despite everything.

“Your loss,” Klaus said with a shrug. “I’m not exactly one to judge, I was in here for a criminally long time earlier, but typically I don’t think showers are supposed to last very long. I’m surprised you haven’t run out of hot water.”

“Ah,” Dave said, looking away. “I think I may have, actually.”

“May have what?”

“Run out of hot water,” Dave said, and as if to prove his point, a particularly violent shiver ran through him.

“What the hell?” Klaus said. “You should probably get out of there. Only one of us is allowed to be sick at a time, and I already called dibs.”

He passed Dave a towel as he clambered out of the tub. Then, he left him so he could have a little privacy to change while Klaus wandered around the room in search of any extra blankets stashed away. Dave was already back in his bed when he returned, so he unceremoniously dropped his spoils on top of him before selecting one to unravel sitting on the edge of the bed.

“I swear I don’t take all my showers clothed,” Dave said, forcing a chuckle as he followed suit, no doubt trying to lighten the mood.

“Hey, whatever does it for you,” Klaus shrugged, and Dave smacked him playfully with one of the folded blankets.

“I really am sorry about all this,” Dave groaned after they finished with their work, burrowing deeper into the pile of blankets, still shivering.

“What, hogging all the blankets? I guess I can forgive you.”

“Well, yeah, I guess there’s that now, too,” Dave chuckled. “But I more meant, just, all of this-- my little breakdown. It doesn’t happen as often as it used to, but I still get flashbacks and nightmares sometimes. Showers help, they can kinda ground me I guess, this one was just particularly bad, I guess.”

“Oh,” Klaus said dumbly, not really sure what to do with all that openness. Except run, but he’d already tried that and failed.

This all hit a little too close to home; the nightmares and the flashbacks, the whispered confessions in a moment of vulnerability. In Klaus’ experience, it never went well. He knew Dave was just like this, so much more open than Klaus could ever imagine being, but it still sent a chill through him.

As irrational as it was, he didn’t want Dave to learn the same way he had. At least Klaus didn’t have any plans to betray him, so he might as well encourage him to let it all out now.

“Do you, like, what to talk about it or something?” he said uncertainly. “I heard it’s supposed to help. I mean, I know that’s rich, coming from me of all people.”

“It’s nothing, it’s stupid,” Dave said quickly, waving a hand dismissively. “You’ll laugh at me.”

“Okay, well, now you have to tell me,” Klaus said, climbing onto the bed so he was laying on his stomach, leaning on his elbows, head in his hands.

“I, uh, went to talk to someone today,” Dave said slowly. “About getting support. For vets.”

“That’s good, right?” Klaus said, trying to be encouraging.

“I guess,” he said, eyes sliding to the side, avoiding Klaus’ gaze. “It’s just frustrating, it feels like admitting defeat. But I can’t even hold down a job, something’s gotta change.”

“That’s the spirit?” Klaus said uncertainly. It wasn’t like self-improvement was his specialty. But he could definitely understand the guilt that went with asking for help. Which is why he never did.

“Unfortunately, it’s bringing up a few too many memories. And, when I’m stressed, I have nightmares, so that doesn’t help,” Dave added lamely, trying to laugh a little.

“There, there,” Klaus said, sitting up so he could reach out and pat his shoulder. Taken by surprise, Dave burst out laughing and Klaus couldn’t help but grin, pleased he could still make him laugh, even when he was upset. “If it helps, wearing clothes in the shower is nowhere near the top 10 weirdest things I’ve found people doing in the bathroom,” Klaus said unhelpfully.

“Still,” Dave said, before changing the subject. “But enough about me, how are you feeling? Sorry again for giving you my cold.”

“I might learn to forgive you one day,” Klaus said dramatically, hand on his forehead.

“Hey,” Dave said. “I was thinking, and I realized that I just kinda made you come with me here, sorry about that, too.”

“Yes,” Klaus said, again playing it up. “How dare you force me to sleep in a proper bed for a change?”

“You know what I mean,” Dave said with a weak smile. But then his voice turned serious. “I know I was probably a bit too much before, probably creepy too, tracking you down like that. I just want you to know that, if you really don’t want to be here, I’d understand.”

“What’s the matter, starting to have second thoughts?” Klaus asked. “I am a handful. Being friends with me is gonna be a nightmare”

“Seriously,” Dave persisted. “How about we meet up in a few days and talk it out? I’ll have at least a few more answers once the VA get back to me. I know everything feels impossible right now, but being your friend is worth it, to me. But if all of this has put you off, then feel free to make a break for it. I’ll leave you alone.”

“Sure,” Klaus said distractedly.

Dave nodded and turned away, pulling the blankets up nearly over his head.

Klaus had never been told he was worth it before. He’s never been worth anything and he didn’t know how to feel about all of this. He thought he could feel something melting in his core, a warmth reaching him that he never expected to feel. But there was guilt, too. So much guilt.

How was this even happening? Dave was a pretty smart guy, but he just seemed to be ignoring all the warning signs. Maybe Klaus had tricked him into this somehow. He was very good at manipulating people. But, for some reason, Dave kept coming back, there was no denying that. He wanted to trust him, to believe in Dave even if he couldn’t believe in himself, but he knew how dangerous that was.

Klaus felt cold, again, when he went back to his own bed, moving automatically. Mostly he just felt numb, completely drained. And he was more lost than ever. Maybe he was just too sober, maybe drugs would wipe it all away and remind him who he was. Or, maybe it wouldn’t, and he’d wake up one day and hate himself, wondering what would have been.

Hating himself wasn’t anything new, but when he glanced over his shoulder to see Dave’s curly hair sticking out between blanket and pillow, he so desperately wanted to give hope a try.

#klaus hargreeves #dave katz #klave #klaus x dave #the umbrella academy #umbrella academy #fanfic #living for the moment #my fic

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thedreadvampy · 3 years

Note

after the cbt post I'm really unsure if I even want to apply for counselling now

the whole point of looking for therapy was to get help but if it makes things worse then maybe I should just carry on trying to do it myself?

I don't fuckin know

that was meant to be my out for feeling like this what the fuck do I do now

Like. First off this is about CBT, not about counseling generally, which has been really useful once I've found the right process. I don't know if you're in the UK or not, but while accessing NHS counseling hasn't always been easy and it took a while to find the right fit, when I did get a counselor and approach that fit my needs it jumped my healing forwards by miles, it really can be a lifesaver (plus tbh if you're really deep in the doldrums, it can help just by giving you some structure and space). Don't stop looking for counseling because it absolutely can make a huge positive difference, I don't know where I'd be without the counseling I got from the rape crisis center and the NHS. There's a lot of types of therapy/counselling out there and what works for you isn't something I can predict - for me what I've reacted to best is freeform talk therapy, but other people find that really hard to engage with and prefer more structured or theoretical therapies, and the NHS offer a lot of different ones (they just tend to jump to CBT first).

So, beyond that; some people do find CBT really helpful. But the way the NHS specifically uses CBT is outside its recommended use, which is treatment for OCD, BPD, anxiety and some PTSD symptoms (although not PTSD itself). The NHS basically uses it as a first stop for pretty much all mental health patients as far as I can tell (because, as I say, it's cheap and easy to apply) so, much like most people with MH problems I know have been on Citalopram (which is their first stop SSRI), most people I know with MH problems have been to CBT sessions. And with that range of problems, most of them won't find what they need in CBT, which, again, despite how it's currently used, is not designed as a general purpose treatment but specifically to help manage repetitive thought and behaviour patterns.

For some people, managing thought and behaviour patterns is what they need, at least temporarily. My partner found it very helpful to keep him out of breakdown territory during a hard time, and so have several friends I know (seems to have positive impacts particularly on friends diagnosed with BPD bc BPD diagnostic criteria, which focus on intense reaction and toxic thought spirals, line up really well with what CBT is designed to help with).

I think the way in which it's harmed me and others isn't the actual treatment, but the fact that it's treated as if it Should Work and that can make you feel way worse if everyone tells you 'CBT and mindfulness is a magic cure that fixes all your brain problems' and then it. doesn't. because your specific problem isn't what is designed to fix. and I think that harm is mitigated by knowing that a) what works for you is highly personal even within diagnoses, b) at the time you get CBT you probably don't have a concrete diagnosis beyond Something Ain't Right and c) CBT, even when it's right for you, isn't meant to be the end point.

CBT is, specifically, a stop-gap. It's meant to help you keep going with your life while you sort stuff out. Again, because of budget reasons the NHS kind of hope that your problems won't be too bad so that CBT will give you a good enough stable starting point to sort your own shit out without further support, which does work for some people, but for most of us CBT should be part of a larger treatment journey if used at all. CBT is a bandage - it doesn't close the wound, but where it works it stops you bleeding out long enough to either get to a hospital or for your body to heal itself.

I'm not going to lie to you - for a lot of us, getting through to the point where we're accessing the right treatment can be a slog. And because of how the NHS works, it can mean going to CBT, finding it doesn't work for you, and gritting your teeth through a six session course so you can go back to your doctor and say 'see, this didn't work for me and the CBT people agree, what else ya got?' My partner's just sat through 14 sessions of group therapy he found extremely stupidly designed specifically because sometimes that's what you gotta do to get referred on for one-on-one talk therapy, which is what he actually needs.

Like I say, the harm comes when you're made to feel like you're failing therapy. You don't fail therapy. Therapy that isn't working just isn't the right setup for you for whatever reason and that's not a flaw in you, there is no universal catchall therapeutic method. It's always going to be trial and error and if you are able to hold in mind that you're not Bad for finding a counseling style or methodology unhelpful, off-putting or alienating, then badly-fitted therapy shouldn't be nearly as harmful as trying to struggle on manfully alone.

The hardest but most rewarding part for me was the process of learning that I could just say 'this isn't working for me because XYZ, can we try a different approach' and...nothing bad would happen. I wouldn't lose my access to counseling and nobody shouted at me, and when I said 'this isn't working can we change it'...things got better. I was having an absolutely shit and frustrating time with my NHS counselor, I was finding going to counseling a huge stress, and after stewing for a couple of weeks I blew up and said 'I don't like this, this or this, I feel talked down to when you do this, I don't feel like you're listening to me about this, and this thing you're doing keeps making me feel worse' and he got defensive. but he also. changed his practise immediately. and we ended up having a really fantastic and productive 6 months of counseling and I am in private therapy now but I keep referring back to the work he and I did together because it was so useful for me.

So like the takeaways for me are a) know that the fact that this counseling might suck for you doesn't mean counseling in general won't be helpful, there's always going to be some trial and error to find the right fit, b) if it does suck, don't suffer in silence, tell them! if you're sitting there hating it, they're not getting anything out of that either so just let them know that you're uncomfortable, finding it hard to engage, etc (I know this can be really hard and I know for me I only started being able to push back when I was already a couple of years into my treatment journey but do what you can do to communicate your fears) and c) when it works it works.

Getting counseling that works is a journey. It can be wearing and esoteric and a pain in the ass, and sometimes you just don't click with a therapy and sometimes you just don't click with the counselor, but it is absolutely worth pushing through the bullshit because a) change often happens gradually while you're not looking and b) finding a concept who works for you absolutely can change your life super fast. It took me a couple of tries but when I found a counselor and approach that worked for me I managed within 16 sessions to get out of my house, to get a job I liked for the first time, to go out and meet people for the first time in a city I'd been in for 3 years, and to cut out a lot of the people who were making my life unsafe. It's so worth it but it is a journey that takes time and trial and error, so the sooner you start the sooner you're likely to get somewhere that helps you.

#sorry i went on a lot here i just #i need you to know that counseling is a really broad field and just because one form of counseling might not work for you #doesn't mean it's all useless #you just need to find the right fit for where you're at #and it's extremely worth doing #it doesn't feel like it's getting better all at once #I'm sorry but if you go in with that hope it'll hit you hard #when you find the right fit it'll feel like change is so painfully incremental and slow #but one day you'll suddenly realise you're happier than you've been in years #everyone i know who's been in counseling that's felt productive has had that experience in the first year or so of going #WAIT FUCK IS THIS WHAT NORMAL FEELS LIKE?#like idk if you have SAD but i get this feeling every spring 'wow have i just been miserable for six months wtf? is this what happy is?'#and the healing process feels like that on a larger scale like day to day you barely notice a difference but you look back after a year #and think 'i don't remember what it felt like to never feel like anything would be good again' and you go WAIT!#THAT WAS THE COUNSELING! TFW THERAPY HITS!!!#like there are times it can feel like a slog or like REALLY PAINFUL #the first 6 months i was in therapy i cracked open like an egg i went everywhere i basically had a full on breakdown #but after i came out the other side i was like WAIT FUCK I SEE SUNLIGHT I CAN FEEL JOY AGAIN #and the way you can tell imo is. do you dread counseling sessions? or are you desperate to get to them?#bc. some pain is getting punched and some is relocating a joint. it's needed pain and you know as it's happening that it's needed.#so if it sucks also. think about why it sucks and how you feel about it.#does counseling make you bored angry anxious or frustrated? might not be the right fit #does it feel like cracking open a dam and getting swamped? you might just be going through the pain phase of healing

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strangesmallbard · 4 years

Note

would you consider writing nalwren/cass?

cw: descriptions of violence, implied medical racism

"So this is home, then, yeah? Ham-shiral?"

"Halamshiral," Nalwren corrects, even though she knows Sera is mostly trying to forget the scorched pile of bones they abandoned on the ramparts, all the magic necessary to finish the job. "And no, that's farther up north."

"Right, well." She kicks a rock, sends it flying into a fallen tree trunk, equally scorched. "All that talk about the Dales this, and the Dales that, and it's not even worth two pissing pots."

"Maybe one pissing pot," Nalwren says evenly. There's a lump burrowing its way up her throat, knotted and cool like the shackles she wore in Haven. She's cold everywhere, no matter that she hasn't needed to use a freezing spell all day.

"Ha!"

Sera kicks another rock. It fells a nearby stump—not that there was much of anything left to fell in the Path of Flame.

"Please do not agitate the environment today,” Cassandra says. “We must remain neutral in this war."

"Oh, psh. Do Dalish trees care about big people politics?" Something shadowed crosses her face. "Not really Dalish. Whatever."

The Dales. This is the Dales, a home she still needs a map to traverse, but precious nonetheless. Perhaps if she thinks it hard enough, she'll be able to forget the smoke-haze lingering in her nose and mouth. Forget the way her fingertips splintered along her staff every time they come across yet another plaque commemorating the regimented slaughter of her people. Forget Sera's spite. The dip of Cassandra's brow, how easily her hand can hold the whole curve of Nalwren's shoulder. How Nalwren wanted to turn her face away from the pit and press her forehead against Cassandra's breastplate.

Dirthara-ma, Nala. Desha's barking laugh—forget that too. You and your shemlen! We better get out the longest bedroll for the girl you try to bring home.

Some of the bodies were Elvhen.

She can't get their eye sockets in particular, wider than their counterparts, out of her mind. She personally invested gold in books for Skyhold about Elvhen anatomy, human books by human hands that mention their “attributes” as if they were each golden halla, to be felled like Sera's trees. But she had to know — more importantly, Skyhold's healers had to know. More elves survive in the dwelling of the Inquisition now than anywhere else in Thedas, at least according to Josephine's latest reports.

"Inquisitor," Cassandra says from behind, yanking her attentions back. By the Dread Wolf, she loves the way Cassandra lilts all the syllables of her real name. She wants to hear it now from her lips, ask for it as a boon. She never wants to see another human again. “The sun will be setting soon. If we want to make it back to camp beforehand, we must move with more haste."

Nalwren turns around to face her party of two. Dirt and sweat mingle across Cassandra's cheekbones, her jaw, more sweat presses strands of hair to her forehead. The sun is indeed setting—and it's doing very good things for the flecks of green-gold in her irises. She won't say a word, but Nalwren knows by the taught line of her shoulders that she is fighting exhaustion. Sera is still kicking rocks. She looks angrier every time she does it.

She does not know what she's going to say before the words stumble their way out of her mouth like toddling children. "The clan encampment is closer."

"No way!" Sera calls. She saunters over, face and hair covered in dust from the ramparts. "They looked at me funny, real funny. Like I have two big heads instead of just two big ears—and they're ones to friggin' talk."

They could be yours too. "We're too few now to secure the area. The Veil is still very thin here and I would prefer it if Dorian's pierced shoulder were the last injury today."

"Okay, Solas.”

"It would be marginally safer," Cassandra concedes. She always concedes, before she disagrees. That crease in her brow returns. "But the situation with the Dalish might be too...delicate as of now. We cannot assume they will help us."

The shackles turn to icy sludge. Turn hot as the day. "I am Dalish, Cassandra. We can assume.”

Silence paints the air between them with heavy strokes. Cassandra waits, that magnificent brow taut and aimed for the skies. Most likely to see if she will finish saying her piece. Nalwren plays back her words and finds them redundant. Unhelpful. Thedas may praise her diplomacy in so much loaded phrasing—oh, the Inquisitor is so curiously genteel!—but a knife is still a knife. Andraste's Herald, Defeater of Corypheus, the Hand Against Worse Hands, will never pray at her feet.

It's such a tired conversation. She is tired. Suddenly she wants to return to Camp, if only to curl up alone with Swords and Shields. Which Cassandra leant her. "I only mean to point out—"

"—That we have you to play the peace-keeper, right?" Sera grouses. Her face is screwed up like she smelled something bad, but that's not it at all. It's the Shadowed Thing again. She points at Nalwren with the arrow. “Make nice so they won't drive us out when the Seeker says one too many Maker's Breath and the knife-ear disrespects real elves."

"Sera, please," she snaps. She steadies her tongue. Feels shame burst regardless. "You know that is not what I meant."

"It's what you were thinking, though. That's what—"

"I think," Cassandra interrupts, unwisely. "That perhaps we should turn our attention to that Shade cresting over the hill right now."

She's right. The Mark tingles a moment later, glows that bright, blinding green. Nalwren reaches for her staff at the same moment Cassandra unsheathes her sword, still bleeding from the last battle, and steels herself into an image fit for a love poem forged in war. After a heated stare in her direction, Sera nocks her arrow in one fluid moment. She really is such a skilled hunter. Nalwren must tell her again, if they ever talk again.

But now, of course: they are fighting. Blazing forward, burning away those beings of Rage and Deceit and yes, a Terror. That is what the Inquisition has come here to do in the Dales, after all. Burn all the bad away, no matter what direction it comes from. Raise the Mark up high and suture the world.

Ha. If only.

#dragon age #dragon age inqusition #dai #cassandra pentaghast #female inquisitor x cassandra #sera dragon age #fics #femslash february 2021 #in which the op offloads about a million I Was Jewish in a Catholic Institution for 8 Years feelings via dragon age fanfiction #i love sera :(#moooncoffee #ask

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wvttvk · 4 years

Text

We Shouldn’t — Natalie Mariduena

a/n: just some natalie with a sprinkle of david drama lmfao smut&language warning. Word Count: 3.3k (sheesh) enjoy :)

Someone once told Natalie that some things—both good and bad— can happen with such a precise gradual increase that by the time it’s truly noticeable, it’s far too late to do anything about it. And it’s true.

Natalie knew she was lucky. She really never could have dreamed that by 23 she would be practically running a million dollar company with her best friend. Working with her best friend was not always pretty but it was one of the biggest blessings she’s ever gotten. David knew her just as well as she knew him and they were able to create what almost felt like a little dynasty. Nat was able to refute David’s impulsive extremes with her analytical reasoning. It worked well for her.

But things can’t always stay perfect. Things happen in life that can truly uproot what you have been working to grow. Unfortunately for Natalie, that was you.

You had just begun hanging out with the infamous vlog squad. After drunkenly making out with Corinna in a vlog, David took a liking to you. He always made sure to have Natalie invite you to wherever the group was hanging out, occasionally having just you at his house.

Natalie couldn’t seem to take her eyes off of you. She hadn’t noticed it happening, how whenever you would walk in the room her face would heat up. Every time she texted you, her mind would race with thoughts of what you felt when her name lit up your phone. She wondered what you were thinking of when you looked at her. But at first, Natalie wouldn’t call it a crush, she told herself that it was her way of seeing your intentions. David had been telling Nat about his crush on you, how infatuated he was with your whole personality. Natalie was used to this with him. He gets attracted to people and makes it very known so that others wouldn’t dare pursue them.

Natalie would never admit it to David but she wanted you. Natalie normally didn’t want much, she was fine being single, she knew how to take care of herself in more ways than one. But when Natalie touched herself, her mind always found your face. She thought of your kiss with Corinna, how you had been the one in control, your tongue making its way into Corinna’s mouth. Natalie wishes it could’ve been her, but things don’t always work out that way.

David had been planning a way to make a move on you and Natalie felt sick. Every time he spoke your name, her eyes rolled and she bit back with unhelpful remarks. It didn’t take long for David to realize the change in her temperament.

“What the fuck is up with you, Nat?” He walked into Natalie’s room where she was on her laptop, both working and trying to avoid David.

Natalie took a deep breath, “I am fine, Dave. I have a headache and you’re not helping.”

“Fine, sorry.” David responded, taking that as an invitation to lay on her bed. She rolled her eyes again, the silence resuming as he played on his phone. It was short lived however, when he turned the phone towards her, a photo of you lighting up the screen. The butterflies in Natalies stomach did front flips and she tried to push away that feeling.

“Y/N is just so different. Ugh I just wanna hold her and fuck-Nat she’s so hot. I—“ Natalie couldn’t take it anymore. The constant reminder from him that she couldn’t have you.

“Enough about Y/N.” She snapped, David’s head turning to her in shock at the outburst. “Fucking enough Dave, if you want her so bad go talk to her. I’m tired of hearing you whine.” She finished, getting up from the bed and leaving him alone in her room.

“Are you jealous Natalie?” She heard David’s voice from behind her and she froze. She didn’t think she made it obvious that she had feelings for Y/N. She swore she tried to push those feelings so far down, to keep things okay. The last thing she wanted was her and David fighting over a girl. But you weren’t just any girl to Natalie.

“E-Excuse me?” Natalie whipped around to face him, trying to remain expressionless.

“If you’re upset that I like Y/N, I’m sorry I didn’t know.” He was awkwardly scratching his jaw as he looked at you with what looked like pity. “I didn’t know you liked me that way, Nat.”

She stopped breathing. She couldn’t tell if she wanted to laugh or scream or slap him in the face. She let out a dry laugh, “Hah, you’re a fucking idiot.” She headed further into the kitchen and David remained where he was.

“Okay fine, but if not that, why are you so irritated with Y/N?” He continued, sitting down at the counter. You looked at him, an inquisitive and soft smile on his face as he waited for you to explain. In that moment Natalie wanted to tell him everything. She wanted to say that she wanted you more than she’d wanted anything in awhile. That whenever she spoke to you, she couldn’t help but admire every detail of your face. From the way your eyes raced with a childlike glee when you talked about something you loved, or the way your lips would curl into a coy smile when you would tease. The way all she wanted to do was taste your lips. But Natalie couldn’t find the words. So she said the only words she could find.

“I—I don’t have a problem with her.” Natalie began with a sigh, her fingers lifting to pick at her lip, her nervous habit showing. “I like her, she’s great. I just want you to be careful about jumping into something new, you have a history of being impulsive, Dave. And I don’t want to see anyone get hurt.”

Natalie was hurting. She was hurting so bad, but she wouldn’t show it.

“You don’t have to worry about that, Nat. I’m a big boy.” He responded with his goofy smile, David was back to being unsuspecting as he circled the counter to jokingly hug Natalie, smushing her against him. Natalie tried to shove him off, a smile breaking through as she grumbled, “Gross.”

Natalie thought her talk with David would buy her time. Time to get over the crush she told herself she didn’t have. But 24 hours was certainly not enough time to get over you.

You had been texting David all morning. He was insistent on you coming over to hang out. Unfortunately, it wasn’t until you got to his house that you saw messages from him pour in.

WAIT

I won’t be home for like 2 hours idk

Jason is dumb

I’ll explain later

I’m sorry

Please tell me you haven’t left yet

Y/N

You smiled down at the screen, telling him not to worry. He didn’t need to know you were already at his house, you didn’t need to make him feel worse. Natalie’s car was in the driveway and you wondered if anyone was home. You hoped she would be as you walked to the front door, you were hoping you wouldn’t have to drive back to downtown LA just to come back later.

You couldn’t fight the smile that formed as you saw Natalie come to answer the front door. She looked shocked but happy and you hoped you weren’t being a bother by showing up at their house. As she greeted you, you took in her appearance. She was wearing spandex leggings and a cropped crew neck. It was something so simple but even you couldn’t deny the way she made everything she wore her own. Her hair fell loosely around her face as she pulled you into a hug. You could smell the sweet fragrance of her perfume, inhaling as your cheek just barely grazed hers.

As you both pulled back from the hug, there was a strange energy in the air. You noticed that Natalie’s cheeks were tinted pink, her eyes refusing to meet yours.

“So what’s up? Dave’s not home, if you were looking for him.” She began, leading you further into the house.

“Oh, yeah I know. Right when I pulled up, he texted me that he won’t be home for a little while.” You sat down with her on the couch, turning to fully face her. You took it as an opportunity to really look at her. Her brown eyes moved back and forth between yours, you could tell she was trying to read you. “Thank God you were home, though.” You flashed her a smile and you saw the pinkness of her cheeks begin to bloom again. You couldn’t help but smirk at it.

“No-yeah of course.” She fumbled over her words, her eyes once again refusing to meet yours. As the TV played quietly in the background, you wanted to break the silence between you. You wanted to know more about Natalie, there was something about her that made you so curious.

You noticed that Natalie kept her distance—at least when it came to you. Until now, you had never gotten the chance to talk to her one-on-one, just the two of you, without the prying eyes and ears of the others. But when you had talked to her, you noticed how she listened to you so intently, as if she was hanging on to every word. You noticed the way her eyes would fall to your lips, then try to meet your eyes again before she could be caught. But you always saw. You saw the way her body shifted when you were around. You loved it. And right now all you wanted was to learn more about her.

“So you and David...” you began slowly, testing to see how she would react to your questioning, “you guys grew up together, right?”

She smiled at you, nodding. “Yes, neighbors to best friends to roomies.” Her voice light as she joked with you.

You chuckled back at her, your elbow coming to rest on the back of the couch, your head resting in your hand. “Sounds like the start of a beautiful rom-com.” You teased back at her, and she playfully rolled her eyes at you.

“Oh God no.” She stated bluntly, the two of you falling into a fit of giggles. As the silence fell around you again, you saw as her smile slowly fell, her eyes seeming dimmer than they were seconds ago. She cleared her throat.

“Y’know, David really likes you.” She spoke softly, she looked almost sad as she said it, her eyes meeting yours for a moment before falling to her hands. “Do you want anything to drink, by the way?” She asked rising from the couch, walking to the kitchen. All Natalie wanted was to put more space between the two of you, your proximity to her being far too much.

“Sure,” you began rising from the couch and following her to where she stood in the kitchen. “And yeah, I know he likes me. He’s not very good at being discreet.” You answered with a lightness in your voice, you tried to see how she reacted to everything you were saying. She chuckled in response.

“Sounds like him.” She smiled at you again, but this time it didn’t reach her eyes. You wanted her to say something. Something that would let you know how she was really feeling, but Natalie’s walls were up high.

Natalie didn’t know what to say or do. It was already taking all of her will power to refrain from reaching across the space and finally getting to feel your lips on hers. She did the only thing she thought she could, she continued to play the role of the perfect best friend.

“So how do you feel about our golden boy?” She asked with a laugh that felt forced. You took a step closer to her and you noticed as Natalie shifted the slightest bit backwards. Interesting.

“He’s really sweet… charming, and hilarious, obviously.” You started, toying with the cap of the water. “I’m just-I don’t know yet if I see him in that way though... you know what I mean?” You questioned back, watching Natalie’s expression shift with the new information she was just given.

“I get it.” She said softly, she didn’t know what to say. Natalie tucked a piece of hair behind her ear as she nibbled on her bottom lip. You couldn’t stop watching.

“I think, when you find the person you want to be with, you’re sure. There’s something chemical and physical that draws you to that person, y’know?” You watched as Natalie visibly swallowed, her cheeks burning at your words.

Natalie mumbled back in agreement, you watched as she tried to discreetly wipe her palms on her thighs. You were loving how easy it was to get a reaction from her. How bad Natalie was at hiding how flustered she truly was. She released her bottom lip from where it was held between her teeth. Her mouth was already swollen and deep pink as she lifted her glass of water to her lips.

You slightly moved closer. “I just think I’ll know when I’m with him,” you paused, “or her.”

Natalie seemed to choke, some water sputtering out of her mouth. You smiled, chuckling at her reaction. Her eyes finally met yours, she was trying so hard to read you. You stepped closer into her space and Natalie took a sharp inhale, her hand reaching behind her to grasp the counter. Natalie couldn’t breathe, she saw the way your eyes were fixated on her lips. She didn’t know what to do.

You moved closer to her, your hand coming up to brush into her hair, twirling the stands through your fingers before letting it fall back on her shoulders. You felt her breath on your cheeks and you needed to be closer.

Your nose brushed hers as you rounded her face, your lips now grazing the shell of her ear. “Natalie.” You were tasting her name on your tongue and Natalie had never thought her name to be so beautiful until she heard it slip from your lips.

You moved your hand to gently tilt her jaw back, your thumb pushing upwards on the underside of her chin. Her lips were so much closer to yours. Just a taste, you told yourself as you moved to brush your lips just slightly against hers, Natalie almost whined.

“We shouldn’t.” The words came out as a whisper from Natalie’s lips. Her eyes flitting shut and her eyebrows pulling together in frustration. Natalie was trying so hard to be a good friend. The heat between her thighs making her want to cry.

“Nat, hey, Natalie,” you began, your hand cupping her cheek now. Her eyes finally opened again, they were watery and conflicted as they raced across your face, “when’s the last time you did something you wanted to do? Without thinking about consequences or everyone else’s needs but your own?”

She just kept staring at you. The brown of her eyes seemed to light a fire in the pit of your stomach.

You wanted her to do something, say something. Anything would be better than the piercing silence around you.

She reached up to where your hand was placed on her cheek, wrapping her fingers around your wrist. Now it was your turn to read her.

“Fuck it.” She spoke quickly, pushing her lips against yours. You couldn’t help but smile into the kiss, her doing the same.

The kiss turned from something curious to desperate, lips moving feverishly against each other. With your hand in her hair, your rings tangling the strands, the slight pulling caused Natalie to moan into your mouth. You took it as an invitation to skillfully slip your tongue past her lips.

Her hands gripped the exposed flesh of your waist, her hand slipping under your shirt to fondle with your bra.

You took back the control. You loved the way she tasted so sweet, all you wanted to do was feel more of her. You pushed her against the fridge, your free hand pushing her hip against the cool surface and she hissed at the contact. You detached your lips and Natalie immediately began to trail kisses across your jaw, slowly moving down your neck.

Natalie felt you pulse racing as she bit against your skin, her tongue following to sooth your neck. You reached your hand between your bodies, rubbing her through her leggings and she let out a groan.

“Please.” She begged, your fingers lightly brushing her heat through the material. Natalie shifted against your hand, needing more pressure.

You looked down between your bodies with a smirk, watching as your hand disappeared into her pants. Your middle and ring fingers immediately found her entrance, teasing in a circular motion as Natalie continued to squirm. You watched her whole body, her chest rapidly rising and falling, her knees just barely shaking.

You were interrupted by Natalie’s hand pulling your jaw back to face her, her lips fitting themselves between yours urgently. You finally gave in to her, your digits slipping in and out. Her moans tumbled into your mouth, and you swore you’d never heard something so beautiful. Your thumb circled her clit and her hand reached up to caress your breast.

You both were acting so primal and you tried to get as close as possible. Natalie felt like she was rushing against time, trying to savor every touch, every taste, before you might disappear.

The kitchen was filled with a chorus of moans as skin pressed against skin, your tongues brushing against each other. Natalie never wanted this feeling to end. But all things end, leaving only memories in their wake.

With your lips still attached you heard the front door open, followed by quick footsteps. You and Natalie pushed apart, the space between you leaving you both cold.

“Nat, we’re back!” David’s voice echoed through the front hall, you and Natalie increased the distance, trying to fix your disheveled and flustered appearances. “I saw Y/N’s car out front, is she—“

David stopped, rounding the corner to see you and Natalie on opposite sides of the kitchen. Natalie’s eyes were locked on his, as she tried to hold in all of her emotions, the throbbing between her thighs not ceasing. You looked between David and Natalie, keeping your expression calm as you discreetly wiped your fingers on the back of your jeans. All you wanted was to taste her on your fingers but that would have to wait. Your eyes fell back to Natalie, how she couldn’t look at you, her cheeks still bright red.

“Hey David.” You spoke, as he walked into the kitchen greeting you with a hug. You watched Natalie over David’s shoulder, her eyes meeting yours before looking down to her feet. “How was the shoot?”

“Not worth Jason’s bad mood, that’s for sure.” He joked, leading you toward the sofa. Natalie just trailed behind, she needed to not be in the room.

She fumbled over her words as she spoke, “Well, I’m going to go shower. Um it-it was nice talking to you Y/N.” You smiled at how even now her body’s reactions were controlled by you.

“We’ll talk soon, yeah?” Your eyebrow lifted, your eyes glinting with a playful expression. Natalie knew what you meant so she nodded and smiled, fleeing the room.

“Is she okay? She looks kinda sick.” David asked, plopping himself next to you on the couch.

You smiled back at him. Only you and her knowing that Natalie was more than okay. But you nodded at him, “Yeah, she just got a little hot.”

He accepted the answer letting the conversation flow to wherever his mind wanted to go. You smiled at him but the smile wasn’t for him. You could taste Natalie on your lips still, and fuck you couldn’t wait to do it again.

#natalie mariduena #natalie noel #natalinanoel #vlog squad #wvttvk #my writing #imagine

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