#what can i make this guy Think about so he can introspect for a few paragraphs and i can say cock again | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

burnyouwithacigarettelighter · 1 year ago

Text

IT’S YOU, HAPPY ALL THE TIME ─── jonathan breech ✧☾𖦹

ೃ⁀➷ “I ask Jessica what drowning feels like and she says not everything feels like something else." — ‘Jessica gives me a chill pill’, Angie Sijun Lou.

pairing. jonathan breech x reader

summary. you’ve bared your heart to your bestfriend, jonathan, more times than you can count, whilst knowing practically nothing at all about him. what is friendship if it is not equal… what is love if it is not returned? can your relationship survive such one-sidedness?

warnings. swearing, TW mention & description of suicide/attempts & depression, very introspective/kind of a character study???, alcohol & drug use, pining, ANGST!!!!, crying, fluff, smut with feelings, p in v, unprotected sex, oral sex (f), SMUT UNDER THE CUT!

word count. 10k (WTF??!?!!??)

a/n. the title is from “she won’t go away” by faye webster:) btw this is… rly angsty (and SO long omg im still in shock) so beware🫡 ALSO IM SO SORRY FOR NOT POSTING IN WHILE!! SCHOOL IS KICKING MY BUTT & THIS FIC WAS AN ABSOLUTE MONSTER TO WRITE LMAO

There are very few words in your vocabulary you can use to accurately describe Jonathan Breech.

The boy is an enigma, a matryoshka doll that never ends: he is witty and lighthearted and sarcastic, but you’ll always catch that edge, the air of malaise he carries around himself, the unspoken elephant in the room that screams WHO ARE YOU REALLY?

He had always been more of a figure, a landscape; something to witness, observe-- experience without letting it do the same to you. You don’t know if that’s something you want, either: there’s an imbalance in his hilarity, and he always takes things a step too far. Jonathan lights matches and lets them burn all the way down to his fingertips; he shaves and lets the blade leave stinging little nicks, rivulets of blood running down his neck; he chainsmokes cigarettes in his room and only opens the window when he feels his heart hammering in his chest, desperate for air.

You meet him — or, first experience him in a similar fashion: he had been in the university library, standing on top of a creaky, old bookshelf, shouting something you couldn’t understand over the music blasting through your headphones. You could certainly see him though, gesturing animatedly, dressed eccentrically in his signature winter trapper hat and a velvet blazer. That thin, effeminate figure of his was making winding, marionette-ish steps along the wood, an action that had everyone readying themselves to catch his inevitable fall.

Then, seemingly out of nowhere and catching you completely off guard, you caught his eye. He began stepping from one shaky shelf to the next, a complete miracle none of them toppled over, before stopping on one close enough for you to read his lips.

“Hi,” he mouthed, shifting uneasily on his left foot before regaining a steady balance, “you’re in my class, right?”

You nodded, hesitantly— yes, truthfully, you’d seen him in your Introduction to Literary Studies course a couple of weeks ago, sporting the same outfit as he did now, but you thought nothing of him. He’d been generally well-behaved then, asking slightly odd but in-tune questions that more or less answered all your inquiries, so you didn’t think the guy would have a penchant for, well… book-shelf hopping.

He grinned, about to say something else, before something — or someone, made him flinch. A professor, probably, considering the unintelligibly muffled, booming voice behind you. However, Jonathan made quick work of the situation, sneakily climbing down and escaping out the door.

The next time you see him, he’s sidled up beside you in your shared class. “Mind if I sit here?” a familiar voice had asked, to which you murmured a non-committal knock y’self out, before realizing with wide eyes. His presence had caught you off-guard, as he so often did, and you sensed a pattern blooming.

Jonathan certainly made for an odd desk-partner; his personality warped the environment around you, and it was suddenly so much easier to tear your eyes away from the lecture and land on Jonathan’s own. It’s something you never thought you’d ever do, because you adore the material being taught.

At the end of class, he asks you out for a drink: he’s just found the best Irish stout in the entire city, and what better way to make it known than to take anyone and everyone he knows there?

Rejection is written on your face clear as day— you have class tomorrow, an essay that needs to be finished, and honestly, pubs just aren’t really your scene.

But in the end… you still bite. You can’t help it: he’s disarming and warm and looks like he should smell like a bonfire. Somehow, that just does it for your brain; it’s here you learn of the charm that is Jonathan Breech.

That night goes everything and nothing like you expected: you expected not to be able to predict his actions, and that’s exactly what happens. When you meet Jonathan at the aforementioned pub, it’s not actually the one he’s meaning to take you to— it’s just the closest public place to the on-campus dorm, which is where he says he’s rooming.

“‘ve got a neighbor m’pretty sure is trying to sleep with me,” he says absently, ushering you onto the back of his bike, which had been leaning against a NO PARKING sign. “He’s always toget’er wit’ our dorm advisor, so I should l reject him before I get kicked out, if y’get what I mean.”

Now, you honestly should’ve expected this from a guy who jumped from six-foot book shelves, but Jonathan’s biking is all swift turns and jilted stops, mere milliseconds from repeatedly running red lights. You want to ask if he just learned how to ride the thing yesterday, but can’t, not with how utterly reckless and shameless he is about it, his terrible steering making you instinctively wrap your arms around his chest.

You clutch him tightly, making him hum in approval, and you feel your ears burn flusteredly. You would’ve pulled away, but then he cut from the right lane to the left in one swift move, barely missing several cars, and you practically shrieked instead. “Oh my god!”

“Sorry,” he apologizes quickly. You can’t see his face, having shut your eyes in fear, but after hearing the blatant cheekiness in his tone, you can imagine clear as day how gleefully it contorts. You want to slap him somewhere, anywhere, but that’d defeat the point of being mad at his recklessness, so you squeeze him tighter instead, and he chokes on his breath. “Jesus-- m’sorry, really!”

When the two of you make it to the pub — alive and uninjured! — annoyingly all the way across town, your first few steps off his bike are stuttered, dizzy: “We are-- not going by bike next time,” you gasp, leaning against a random brick wall.

“Next time, eh?” He grins, and this time you really do slap him— just on the arm, bless your self-control and niceties not to beat this oddly comfortable-to-be-around near-stranger to death.

The pub, with its forgettable name and dingy stools, has a minimal, lackluster crowd. A kitschy neon sign flickers and dies as you walk in, making you raise a brow, but Jonathan merely drags you by the arm to a cozy corner table, then disappearing deeper within the venue before returning moments later with two pints of black beer in tow.

“Go on, then,” he gestures, setting the tall glass on the table, sitting down in the chair in front of you and taking a hearty sip of his own drink.

You let out a little hesitant sigh at his words, before relenting and taking in a long gulp of the liquid. “…Huh,” you remark, impressed. Jonathan smiled knowingly behind his glass, letting out a smug little ah, you see?

“Worth the long ride?” he inquired innocently, as if that was the only thing wrong with the night.

“Worth the ride, but not worth almost dying for,” you rolled your eyes goodheartedly, knocking back the rest of the bitter drink and making him whistle.

The rest of the night goes like this: Jonathan orders two more rounds of the quality Irish stout before the two’ve you are stumbling out of the pub, exploring all the nightlife there is to offer, like the crowd surrounding an out-door live comedy group performing down the street that has you and Jonathan giggling for hours after, or the underground speakeasy you accidentally find yourselves shoved into, a nasally guitarist singing on a smoky stage, several more drinks finding themselves in your system despite how nauseous you already feel.

“You-- d’you fancy him?” Jonathan slurs behind you, steadying himself by pressing his hands to your waist.

“F-fancy who?” you blink blearily, leaning into his warm touch.

“Who else m’I talkin’ about, girl? The singer!”

You shake your head no numbly, practically collapsing into his arms now, your head lulling on his chest. You’re so close you can smell the distinct scent of his skin, that unique musk everyone has, and it’s strangely familiar, like those smells that evoke old, nostalgic memories. It’s like how sunscreen summons the smell of the sun after a childhood beach day, or how vanilla extract takes you back to the smell of your mother’s baked goods on a specific winter evening.

“Reckoned you wouldn’t,” he assumes, hands coming away from your waist to wrap his arms around your shoulders, swaying to the music slightly in the crowded club, “looks like a -- right bleedin’ dope… wit’ that mop of hair.”

You giggle, alcohol riddled beyond belief, unable to formulate a response with the conflicting blurry thoughts in your head: it’s telling you Jonathan Breech isn’t the crowd you want, that you need to go home and work, that you let loose too easily— but it also tells you that you can see yourself becoming friends with him very, very quickly.

It’s there, in that club, Jonathan Breech moves into your life and fills a gaping hole you didn’t know existed, like a hole in your stockings you only notice when you get home. You have friends, certainly, more than you can count on both hands, but they never get as close as Jonathan does. After that night, an unknown force pulls the two of you together, making you run into him everywhere, and a tight friendship blooms like a lilypad in a raging storm; beauty within the chaos. In the multitude of close friendships you’ve harbored, he is the first to see so many sides of you. The last thing that did was your mother; it had only ever been your mother.

He is an endearing, amazing friend, both the intent listener and the charismatic speaker all at once; he knows his friends like the back of his hand, can recount their life like he can count the number of moles on his face-- but you, and everyone else, know absolutely nothing about him.

At least, close to nothing-- you know he likes ice cream and hanging out and going to the pub; you know he likes biking and doing drugs and women; you know he hates the sea and his brother and his father, but you don’t know him. All you’ve ever seen him do is smile or laugh or shout in mock anger; there is a carefully glued mask on his face he takes meticulous caution in preserving-- he is terrified to let go, despite the blasé persona he lets on.

Or maybe the mysterious matter of your bestfriend is tripping you up for no reason; maybe you’re psychoanalyzing something that doesn’t need to be psychoanalyzed, reading between lines that don’t exist. But if you were asked to answer honestly, there’s just something about Jonathan you don’t get. There is a split seam in the tapestry of his life, missing pieces in the story he pretends to tell with utmost accuracy. There are things that he never talks about, that he recoils when asked like you’ve poked a tender wound.

“So, what were you doing before… all this?” You ask him once, laying on his messy bed in his dorm-room and scanning the water-damage constellations dotted along his popcorn ceiling. By all this you mean going to university, being the resident party boy, aimlessly pursuing a degree you’re 99% sure he picked blindfolded (culinary science) and standing here, with you, snorting a line of something on his creaky wooden desk.

Jonathan freezes, still hunched over. “What d’you-- what d’you mean?” he says, tone breezy but, uncharacteristically tense… jilted and preoccupied. You could’ve brushed it off as him being seriously focussed on his drugs, but the way he shifts, how his shoulders curl in like he wants to disappear, tells you otherwise.

“I mean, before going to school here… y’know, what were you like as a dumb teenager?”

You two’re twenty, barely not-teenagers, but it still makes a world of a difference: you’re living away from home, doing what you want, experiencing (a juvenile, naive version of) freedom and adulthood.

“I dunno… kind of a tool, that's f’sure,” he chuckled, rubbing his nose roughly. He’s being funny on purpose, a jester’s distraction: he doesn’t want you to realize his answers’ not really one at all.

You shifted on his bed, now leaning against his headboard. His answer strikes you as odd and uncharacteristic despite his attempts to evade suspicion: usually, Jonathan pounces at the chance to yap on and on. “What, the great Jonathan Breech doesn’t have any wild stories to tell? No bones broken, girls dumped, houses trashed?”

He snorted at that, like some inside joke you weren’t privy to was brought up in your words, and he descended back down on a carefully partitioned line of white. “I broke my baby finger once,” he relented vaguely when he finished, dusting off the table and licking the remains off his hand. “I cried and I cried and I cried.”

“Did it hurt that much?” you grinned, mind trailing off to imagine a baby-faced Jonathan Breech, a juvenile highschool boy, doing something silly to break that finger. Maybe he accidentally flung off his bike, broke it because of a dare, or maybe it happened just by slipping and falling.

“It - uh… didn’t hurt enough,” Jonathan smiled, tight-lipped and paltry. All at once the air in the room had changed, like someone attached a vacuum to the window and sucked everything out.

Your grin fell, and you watched him carefully: perhaps, had you not been as close to him as you were, he’d have let something show. A twitch in the smile, a break in the facade. But you were, and his face stayed the same, and your thoughts ran circles around themselves. This was… something else, something belonging to the part of his life he didn’t talk about.

The atmosphere had grown tense, taut, a rubber band twisted ‘round and round, threatening to burst, so you leave the matter of his injury alone; of his life alone. You go back to staring at his ceiling, he goes back to his drugs; Jonathan collapses within himself, and you don’t notice how badly he suffocates… how suffering in silence is also accompanied by the overwhelming desire to be found.

ii.

Sometimes, despite his self-imposed distance, Jonathan lets someone look inside his head.

You are both the sometimes and the someone; you don’t know why it’s always you, but you chalk it up to the fact that beneath his unpredictable demeanor, the murky and unreadable feelings he holds for others, is this uncharacteristic constant: he holds a softness for you. It’s what lets you know there’s something haunted lurking beneath his happy-go-lucky surface.

You don’t know where this softness comes from, either. But you know you see it, in lingering touches, tender duchenne smiles unlike the devilish tilt his lips usually hold, how he clasps his hand around yours after a night at the pub and walks you home because he knows you get paranoid. You see it in how he comes over to your apartment when you don’t answer anyone's calls during exam season, how he remembers what your mother’s name is and what your childhood pet was and what your favorite flowers are. How his lips brush past your cheek when he pulls away from hugs, his hands shuddering around your shoulders, like he’s afraid he’ll crush you.

You only wish you could do the same. You want to sit by his side and mend his heart, lend an ear to his most mundane fears, you want to take his hand into your own and kiss it softly, return all that he has done for you, take the same as you have given to him: what is friendship if it is not equal, what is love if it is not returned? It is something broken, unable; split halves of one heart, an imbalance in the scale, Bonnie without her Clyde, a fish out of water.

Jonathan pours his heart into your own, filling holes you know you don’t have, and you think he may be overcompensating for something else, seeing things in you that really belong to him. It is maddening, and you just want to beg and plead he lets you in.

But you settle for the gentle pokes, the prodding, and try to decipher the vague answers he gives you. Most days, you can’t really make sense of it.

“Sorry,” you apologize, about to leave the outing you planned with Jonathan — studying, or, trying to study, at an intimate coffeebar the two of you frequented — “my dad’s gotten drunk with his lads and my mum needs help dragging him home.”

“Hey, hey, don’t worry. I get it: my dad used to do that all the time,” he waves your words off casually, but you don’t miss how jilted he says used to and the pain in his tone at all the time.

“Oh, surely she was fit to go to the madhouse?” you laughed once, responding to Jonathan’s complaints about an eccentric classmate in his agricultural studies. He laughs back, he always does, but this one is hollow, forced; barely stopping a grimace from coloring his tone.

You notice these things like it’s a shadow following someone in the sun. He is lying, hiding; about something you don’t know but it is happening. It is happening, and you are so very curious: you pick up on the littlest tendrils of him, fed wholly on any information you can squeeze out. He is a mystery you want to delve within completely; answer that question of WHO ARE YOU REALLY? and leave no room for error.

You’d give yourself to him the very same if he merely asked; you’d whisper childhood fears and tell the origin stories of faded scars on your knees and why you check under your bed before sleeping. You’d detail your entire life from sunset birth to starry night end if he even made a passing comment about knowing; you would trust your love, your heart, your entire life in his beautiful, shaky hands. This is the relationship you have built around yourselves, and it is beginning to feel terribly one-sided.

Alas, your curiosity overwhelms him, and you take it too far, just once. Only once.

“Where’d this come from?” you murmur, brushing your fingers over a scar above his eyebrow. It’s something you see only now, his hair mussed and wild from the various blankets and pillows on your dinky couch.

He’s crashing at your apartment tonight, an invited event, because you often miss him like you miss home; the boy is sneaky— he slinks away like a street cat and only comes back for food. It’s only fair he lets you wrangle him back like this, making him stay by your side at least once a week.

Your words make him freeze, like he often does; it reminds you of hikers, who freeze when they see mountain lions— he thinks if he stops and stares and pretends to disappear you’ll look the other way, drop the question, forget him completely.

But you don’t. You don’t know what’s affecting him -- not that he wants you to -- so you just stare back into his cornflower blue eyes. You stop and stare and see right through him; you hold the question like a knife to his neck, and commit him to memory.

“The scar?” Jonathan pales, shuddering despite it having long since been healed over. The aftershocks of an earthquake.

You simply nod, fingers pulling away. You’re still closer than ever though, the two of you being the only things in your cramped concrete apartment, the chosen movie on your telly still running and long forgotten.

Your attention remains on him, brandished into something dangerous, like you’ll carve the answer out of him if you have to— but the moment passes. He doesn’t say anything and you accept that as the answer. Gone is your razor-sharp focus, and there is nothing more to the matter.

But Jonathan doesn’t register this, no, he’s thinking, gears in his head turning and creaking. His tongue grazes against the backs of his teeth, jaw chattering like it was as cold as it was when… as cold as it was back then, and he doesn’t want to tell anyone— but it’s you. You’re not just anyone.

You’re the one he holds a certain softness for. The one he equally bares his heart to and holds the most secrets from. The one he’s most terrified to know. The only one he wants to know.

So, he decides to tell a partial truth— something digestible. People adore that which can easily slide down the gullet: news headlines don’t detail the goriness of a murder, they give the “insider” scoop of the scared neighbor. To be able to digest information is what makes the world go round, and he does not think you could digest the full truth-- he does not think he wants you to.

He feels ill at the thought of anything between you changing— oh, how ruined he’d feel if you began treating him like fucking glass.

This abhorrent social pressure is what makes Jonathan grit this sentence through his teeth: “I got into a car accident,” he gulps dry, “when I was nineteen. Was drunk… went fer a spin. I skidded off a -- um, an empty highway. The tall sorts; high up, y’know. Fell.”

His voice makes you look back up at him, and your eyes are beautiful and tense— it breaks his heart. He knows you’re probably thinking it was in-character, how expected that is of Jonathan Breech, how you’ll easily take this partial truth, how you’ll never know the full one until it comes in a letter under your door and he’s long gone.

“Tell me,” you ask him, lips falling into a near-frown instead of laughing or grinning wider. It’s hushed, whispered like a secret, “What did it feel like? Falling, I mean.”

Jonathan licks his lips, bores his shaking gaze into your own, and tells you not everything feels like something else. That the word connotes all you need to know. Falling meant he was falling; his arms raised and the air took him and that was it.

It makes your brows twist and your lips press into a thin line: his nonchalance is worrying, no more his signature characteristic— there is something wrong about this apathy toward injury, toward the potential death.

“Is that how you broke your finger?” You murmur, and it startles him. How you pieced the two things together, how you weaved a web from what little you knew about him; how futile his attempts to hide could be.

“What?” he responds, hoarse. There is a lurking shadow in his bones telling him he’ll taint you, telling him to be ashamed, telling him how badly you will never be his. It is such a damning reality, that no matter how much he may yearn for you, he is too incomplete to meet your needs; he is too hurt not to hurt you too.

“The car accident. Is that how you broke your pinkie?” you repeat, and you gripped his hand resting at your side, bringing it up to present the finger to him like he forgot where his pinkie was.

Jonathan’s gaze darts from you to the finger, and he feels his insides quiver; so badly does he want to spill his entire soul to you. But that internal reminder -- hurt people hurt people hurt people -- makes him settle for nodding, parted lips locking closed.

Nothing special happens that night, no shocking revelation or bombarded confession; Jonathan nods, keeps his lips sealed, and gets up from the couch, figure dreary and fatigued. He murmurs an incomplete excuse, something half-baked and blatantly unconvincing that he has to leave, and you let him go. You think you’re imagining the shudder in his shoulders, the shake in his voice as he says goodbye, and you let him go.

It’s there, like that club so long ago, you discover another thing about Jonathan Breech: push too far and he shuts down, closes shop and puts up his guard forever. It’s the mere fact of how attentive you are to his words; you remember how he broke his finger, and he realizes he cannot hide from you any longer.

You’re reaching a point in your friendship -- your relationship, no matter platonic or romantic for all lines have been crossed; nobody is so raw to one another with love not involved -- where you’ll bare your hearts on your sleeves, share your every thought and dream and fear. But Jonathan won’t be able to reciprocate, and the very thought of rejecting you, betraying you, makes his stomach twist in knots. That crestfallen face of yours would haunt him for all time, your every melancholy feature burning into his memory like the scars left by cigarettes on skin.

So he leaves, hurt people hurt people hurt people echoes in his ears all the way home; he turns into an alleyway shortcut and prays death swoops down and takes him right there. He leaves his consciousness curled lovingly in your arms; his shell walks home and prays you’re none the wiser. But you’ve already reached that point in your relationship; you already know.

When people die, or friendships do, sometimes they end with just a goodbye, a mild, casual goodbye because you think there’ll be dozens, hundreds more-- but there won’t be. Suddenly, alone in that cramped apartment, the buzzing from the tv filling your ears, your couch still warm from someone long gone, you know.

You know you startled him, that he’s left your apartment and he’ll never come back. Your heart cools, and she whispers that you took it too far, that you crossed a line you were never made aware of, that when you see him in class tomorrow he might not sit next to you, he might not talk to you, that you might lose him forever because he is too stubborn to open up and you are too stubborn to let him go.

Well, you were too stubborn to let him go.

It’s three weeks before you speak to Jonathan again. Three long, dragging weeks, moments in time where he avoided your gaze, evaded your presence, slipped past you before you got too close. You certainly try, of course— you seek him out every chance you get, trying to get an I’m sorry, please talk to me out before he runs off, but it’s virtually impossible.

Once, after class, you’d caught him in the middle of a flurry of exiting students by the velvet blazer, your hands curled around the lapel. “Jonathan,” you panted, trying to drag him off to the side to escape the bustling activity around you, “please, we need to talk--“

But then Jonathan had faced you, eyes widened and spooked like he’d seen a ghost, a never-before-seen-by-you fear covering his gracefully cut features, before he tugged off the black blazer and escaped into the crowd. He had seen you, widened his eyes, left. Such a simple action tore your heart in two; it had confirmed your suspicions— you’d gone too far, he was never coming back, and you were all alone. There you stood, fingers wrapped around one of his favorite articles of clothing starkly without its beloved owner, completely alone.

In three measly weeks, he has put up a biting winter of distance between you two.

Your feelings are unable to comprehend themselves— they fight and sob and run circles around your mind, they make you doubt, crumble, devour yourself from the inside out; they make you ask yourself what you can do to salvage this, what can you do to fix this? What is there to make of him, of his behavior; what do you do with yourself and this guilt?

If you could imagine time was a construct, you were certain you could convince yourself this stretch of time was nothing… propel yourself into a present where Jonathan does not afflict your mind, take over your every thought— does not ruin you like so. If only you could do that, you could close your eyes and reopen them when you’ve let go. But you were always too stubborn to let him go, weren’t you?

It’s three weeks to the day before you speak to Jonathan again, and it happens through the crack of his dorm door, your arm wedged through it because you know he is not cruel; he will let you in without a doubt.

“Please,” you plead to Jonathan, “just— I just want to talk. Please?”

He stares at you straight, expression cold and reserved, before he breaks and pulls away; bites his lip, lets you in his room, doesn’t look you in the eye. Looking around, you sense something in his dorm has changed; it had gained a bereft quality, like it was attuned to Jonathan’s state of mind and felt depressed beyond your comprehension. There was a cold air to the place, an utmost frigid demeanor to a room incredibly warm just weeks prior. In your absence, the dorm had been neglected, gutted, abandoned.

“I’m sorry,” are the first words that tumble out of your mouth. “I- I know you don’t like… talking about -- about your life before here, and I’m sorry. But please, Jonathan, just talk to me. Tell me what I can do to make it up to you.”

He sits down on the edge of his weak bedframe, pulling his knees up and pressing his face into them. “You don’t need to-- don’t… don’t apologize. You don’t need t’make it better, either. All’s grand.” he promises, words muffled and shaky. It’s a weeping kind of tone; you could just as easily imagine him sobbing with that voice.

Your brows knit. Your emotions are wavering, treading brutally between disbelief, despair and rancor. “Then -- then why?”

“Why what?”

“Why did you avoid me? Why did you - why did we spend these last three weeks playing cat and mouse, if you weren’t mad at me? Is this your sick idea of a joke?”

“No! I-- jesus christ,” Jonathan looked up from his hands before immediately pressing two fingers between his eyes, “I wasn’t … avoiding you.”

“I haven’t seen you in weeks!” you point out painfully, exasperated. “You know, you’ve been avoiding me for longer than this. You— you push me away any chance you get. You’re afraid. I don’t know of what, but you’re- so fucking secretive, and it’s tearing me apart.”

“I’m not - afraid of anything. I’m just a private person— you know this. Would you, if I ‘pushed you away?!’”

At his denying deflection, something within you snaps: “Why won’t you - fucking let me in? I’ve — I’ve bared my soul to you; you know me from the inside out. I trust you with my life— why, why can’t you do the same?”

“I didn’t ask you to do that! And I didn’t — I didn’t mean t’get so close to you, okay?!” He bursts, and you flinch. His hands shakily come up to his face once more; he wipes roughly but it’s no use— you’ve already seen his delicate tears threatening to spill, and it burns more holes in your heart than you thought his suffering would.

“What are you talking about?” you pry, now without any cautious reservations about his demeanor.

“I didn’t mean to get so fucking attached, because - ‘cause I…” Jonathan’s hands clenched into fists at his sides, “fuck.”

“What?” you repeat, but it’s softer, concerned; how quickly his body language shifted from irritated to terrified has you scrambling to support him. “Talk to me,” you ask, taking nervous steps closer, like you were approaching a wounded animal.

He sucks in a sharp breath, and holds it, like he did cigarette smoke, before exhaling heavily. “Okay- okay. When I was - nineteen, I drove a car… I drove off a cliff and tried t’kill myself. I was-- admitted to a psychiatric hospital for a year, and when I got out I moved here f’school. I- I… promised m’self I wouldn’t let anyone get too close.”

The confession hangs in the air, a lonely little thing; it’s a bleeding piece of his own heart he’s plucked and placed in your palms. He shudders, and you want to nurture it like nothing else. This is a culmination of a year’s worth of evasion coming to a close; you’re seeing him completely, rawly, for the first time.

“But- but why? You don’t have to— Jonathan, you don’t need to do that just because you - you… y’know.”

“I’m- I know that,” he starts brashly, defensively. “It’s b’cause I am very, very aware of my - of m’own self destructiveness…” His words taper off into something of grief; the Sisyphean struggle of wanting to live, while that depressive boulder pushes him back, colors him completely. “I just… I didn’t want to - t’hurt anyone in case I -- in case next time I succeeded.”

“Next time?” you repeat, and your voice broke in a way you wish was less vulnerable, less blatantly miserable.

“This is why I didn’t want to—“ Jonathan sighs, deflates, “I’m not telling you this because I want you to - t’fucking save me, okay? I’m telling you this because you wanted to know, and I couldn’t hide from you anymore. Because you asked.”

“You didn’t need t’hide it in the first place!” you exclaimed, coming closer to him. “You’ve never had to hide a fucking ‘ting from me.”

“You wouldn’t have understood!” He said back, volume nearing a shout. “You’ll treat me differently now, you see, you’ll look at me fuckin’ different—“

It made your heart sink-- how sure his words were, how certain he was of your rejection. How little trust did he have in you?

(You remember he wanted to sink, too-- lose himself in the baby blue sea; let it swallow him whole and never be seen again.)

“You - you really think I’ll treat y’differently because of this? You know my every crevice, my every thought-- I have never once doubted that you’ll accept me.”

“I-I… why should I - expect any of this to stay the same?”

Suddenly, you took his face into your hands. “Because I-- I fucking love you, okay? And it’s not just friendly, or romantic, even if it’s both— I’m… I love you like nothing I’ve ever loved before. I accept and adore your every skill and flaw and antic; you wormed your way into my heart and I want to worm my way into yours.”

“That doesn’t mean—“ Jonathan tried to interject, a noise all utter disbelief. You cut him off, though, continuing your sudden confession; you hadn’t been privy to these own romantic feelings of yours till moments prior, but everything being said just felt right.

“Jonathan, I don’t care if you drove a car off a cliff or cyanide-poisoned our professor or blew something up, because I love you. You, with all your problems and great, big, beautiful life. All I want is for you to want that life; I want you to want me in it. I feel it in my bones that I’m meant to love you; you are meant to be my home, you are everything I am supposed to know. It won’t fix you or fix anything at all but I just need you to know-- I need you to know the why to my every action. It’s because I love you.”

He looked up at you, wide-eyed, head resting in your gentle hold. “I - don’t know what to say… are you - for real?”

“As real as can be,” you smiled back at him, tracing circles along his smooth skin; you could’ve drank in that attentive stare of his for hours upon hours. “I love you, and nothing and no-one, not even you, can change that.” An aching grip had clenched around your heart at his words, that blatant disbelief: are you for real? God, had you ever been-- had you ever fucking been.

Jonathan’s mouth opened to speak, but instead, he let out an agonizing sort of cry; an exclamation of utter surprise at the loving acceptance. Then, he hesitantly leaned into your touch, as if he’d never hugged before, wrapping his arms around your waist to snatch you as close to him as possible. He held you tighter and tighter as the seconds went by, like this was all a mocking dream his yearning mind had made up; that if he closed his eyes now he’d wake up desolate, alone, without you for eternity. His worst nightmare.

“…God, I’m so - fucking stupid,” he grumbled, sounding angry, but you could feel vulnerable, hot tears soaking into the fabric of your shirt. “To assume you, of all people, would act that way… you of all people.” He said that tenderly; you of all people certainly meant miles more things you weren’t explicitly aware of, but you still felt the sentiment. “I’m not -- poetic or anything like that… but I love you, too.”

You chuckled a beautiful, wet laugh. “You don’t hafta’ say anything sweet or special. You’re everything to me.”

He squeezed his eyes shut, before wrapping his fingers around your wrist and pulling you onto the mattress with him. He flipped you beneath him, and held himself up by the forearms laying on either side of your head. “Fuck, I love you. I love you.” Jonathan repeated the words several more times, strange and foreign but right at home being said to you. Like his mouth was made to only ever say I love you to you.

Suddenly, you pressed your lips to his, shutting him up momentarily. You could still feel the vibrations of I love you rumbling in his throat as you kissed him. Your tongues danced along one another, an all consuming waltz; you wanted to know everything about him, down to the taste of his tongue, memorize how sweet his mouth felt on yours. Oh, how you longed for this moment; how could you ever think about love again, and yearn for it, without thinking of Jonathan?

You reckoned that’s what this had been the whole time; your love started as a little flame, something under the guise of friendship, but the two of you had fanned it, nurtured it-- all of a sudden the miniature warmth of platonic love burst into a raging, adoring fire. You’d fed this flame with tenderness, and it responded in kind; you could never again look at Jonathan without a certain intimate reverie. Perhaps that’d been why Jonathan found it so hard to cut off this relationship as he had dozens others: something primal and unconscious within him had begged him not to let you go— some higher being knew his home was only ever in your arms.

Jonathan deepened the kiss hungrily, pressing his weight onto you and pushing you into the mattress. Your head was spinning from the lack of air, and one of your hands had to sneak beneath his hat and tug at his hair to get him to stop. “Hey,” you panted, looking worriedly into his eyes, “what’s up?”

“Sorry,” he apologized sheepishly, hanging his head lowly for a moment before meeting your gaze once more, batting his long lashes. “Jus’ missed you. Thas’ all.”

“Missed y’too,” you murmured, pulling him back down to kiss you again. Your hands left the crown of his head and trailed down his backside, tracing over the curves and bumps of his frumpy yellow v-neck sweater.

That touch of yours seemed to spur him on even more, and his kisses began to travel; along your jaw, to your pulse, down the long ravine of your neck, tongue darting out to lick the hollow of your collarbone, making you squeal. He chuckled against your skin, a genuine amusement rather than the mocking one you two so frequently practiced, and it all went downhill from there. His hands skillfully tugged off your tank top, knee between your clenched thighs, more teasing kisses being planted along your now bare -- save for your bra -- chest.

You didn’t mean to come over, profess your love and suddenly jump into a steamy, yearning makeout session (which, you were pretty sure was venturing off into sex…) but you supposed that apologizing— arguing, whatever —meant your relationship went back on track to wherever it was heading… which may have been set to end with an ardor romance anyway. This love of yours would’ve bursted at the seams of friendship; it could not be confined by such mere things as labels.

“Fuck,” you groaned, arching into his teasing kisses along the peaks of your breasts, his hands ghosting around your clothed chest but never touching. “Please, Jon.”

You could feel his cheeky grin on your skin, “Tell me what you want, love.”

“…Take this off,” you demanded gently, referring to Jonathan’s sweater.

“Your wish is my command.” he snickered, obliging and removing the yellow knit-- as well as his white undershirt and pajama bottoms. He was left in a pair of boxer-shorts and that silly, silly winter-trapper hat, his fingers sneaking up to your supple thighs and tickling the edges of your jean-shorts; a silent plea.

“Eager,” you mumbled, noticing his over-compliance in completely stripping, smiling and guiding his hands to the waistband of your shorts to tug the tight article off.

When he did so, you shivered, both at the feeling of being only in your underwear, as well as Jonathan’s sharp, attentive gaze. “You’re so beautiful,” he panted, eyes exploring your every sweet feature.

He was enamored with your bare body, not in a sexual way despite the blatantly sexual situation, but rather in a worshiping, religiously devoted way. It may’ve been blasphemous to think so, but Jonathan’s sudden chaste kisses along the curve of waist only seemed to prove you right; his mouth on you was gentle, like he’d held you before, except now without any guilt or hesitation. It was a holy way of loving you; something all-consuming, becoming the epicenter of a life, becoming the purpose, motivation, and belief all at once.

That familiar broiling in your gut occurred as he made his way closer to the pulsing, lace-covered place between your legs; your hands were gripping the sheets tightly in pure anticipation, his hot breath on your sensitive skin. “Don’t be such a tease,” you pouted, legs fumbling for purchase along his body, trying to pull him closer to you.

“We’ve got all the time in the world,” he hummed, but his fingers still curled into the band of your baby-blue panties and dragged them down in one desperate go, “but I do wanna taste you….”

Jonathan’s veiny hands pried your quivering thighs apart, murmuring an offhand already stole y’panties, don’t get all shy on me now when you whimpered flusteredly, before he descended on your dripping lips, licking a flat-tongued stripe up to your clit.

You gasped at the sudden action, but it quickly morphed into a choked moan when he pressed himself further and parted your lips, nose to your pelvic bone; he made quick work of you, artfully curling his long tongue into your hole and slurping your slick.

“So sweet,” he praised, the vibrations of his voice making your thighs clench around his head. He hummed in amusement at your reaction, lapping you up quicker; he kitten-licked and slobbered, feeding on your sticky cunt, tongue darting in every direction, feeling your walls and prying deeper into your hot hole, which ached for the cock straining against the mattress now. The bottom half of Jonathan’s face was now positively soaked, glistening with his own drool and your needy wetness, all of it mixing dirtily and sliding down the length of his neck.

“Jon!” you mewled, hands tearing off his trapper hat and flinging it elsewhere before curling your hands into his mousy brown hair and pushing his face deeper into your pussy, desperate to come. You were riding his face now — or, attempting to, more accurately bucking up into him — adoring his unceasing ministrations. He was basically fucking you with his tongue, overstimulating your clit with teasing licks then pulling away, feeling along the ridges of your walls.

“Pick m’hat up later, love,” he tutted, pulling away slightly to see where you’d haphazardly thrown it, and your desperate whine neared a sob. He breathed in sharply, taking in how quickly he’d undone you: in a matter of minutes, your expression had grown wanton, eyes blown out, drooling, hair askew, bra riding up your tits and revealing your sweet, puffy nipples.

Jonathan quickly forgot about the state of his beloved hat, and went back down on you, mouth devouring in full force once again. You rolled your hips forward, and when he pulled his tongue out of your wet hole to suckle softly on your fleshy nub, your eyes rolled back into your head and your legs shook around his face, toes curling tightly. A choked moan left you alongside the sudden climax, sounding a hundred percent pornographic and all for him.

You panted, silent and unmoving for a moment, and Jonathan began moving to get up and let you take a breather before continuing, absolutely terrified to push you too far or do anything you didn’t want to do— he was the spontaneous one, and you were the responsible one, but that didn’t mean he ever wanted to force anything upon you. His simultaneous decisions were made mostly in part with your interests in mind; he made the decisions you were too nervous and over-thinking to choose quicker.

However, you took a long breath, then trailed your hand over the painfully noticeable bulge within his soft boxers. “Wan’… make you feel good,” you murmured, flattening your hand against his erection.

Jonathan inhaled sharply, pitifully affected by the minor touch but holding back with an incredible amount of self restraint. “I can wait,” he offered sweetly, one of his hands coming up to your flattened hand’s forearm to rub the skin.

You shook your head foggily, cupping him through the fabric, slowly adding friction by sliding your hand up and down.

“S-shit,” he bit his lip, “you want this now, baby?”

You nodded vehemently with a whimper, and to make more of a point, you reached behind and unclasped your bra, tossing it elsewhere on his dirty dorm floor, before beginning to slip off his underwear.

The hand on your arm stopped you, though, in favor of doing it himself and pressing his weight further onto you, your chests flush with one another. You were only able to take in thin breaths, making your head spin, but it also amplified the arousal blooming in your cunt when Jonathan slotted himself at your soaking entrance, collecting his saliva and your slick on his tip.

Before he pushed in, however, his head dipped into the hollow of your neck, plush lips brushing past the shell of your ear. “Is this okay?” he murmured, pressing a wet kiss to your temple.

“Please,” you whined, hands pushing flat on his back to bring him closer to you.

With that, Jonathan slowly buried his length within your cunt, making your breath hitch. “I love you,” he groaned, entering you inch by inch, relishing how your warmth swallowed him whole. “Fuck, I love you so much.”

Your hole was stuffed beyond belief, but Jonathan was gentle with you, caressing your waist with the rough pads of his fingers and massaging you, trying to ease his entrance into something painless. Obviously, with that length and thickness it couldn’t be painless at all, but his attempts helped your mind drift off elsewhere and take some of the attention off the stinging stretch.

After a long moment of ragged breathing, Jonathan cooing words of praise into your neck as he kissed you without moving, you dug your fingers into the skin of his back: “More,” you choked out, the fullness in your cunt now feeling delicious rather than cringeworthy.

He smirked against your skin, “Looks like you’re t’eager one now.”

“Oh, get on with it,” you rasped and he let out a low chuckle, sliding out of your hole before thrusting back in. That first movement already made your hips jerk up into him, back arching. It was like all the warmth in your body had collected in your cunt, leaving you freezing from the tips of your toes to the top of your head, but still with a needy, burning fire in your insides.

Jonathan’s pace was affectionate and rhythmic: you could feel the tenderness in his each and every gentle roll of the hips. It made you feel like the sun, how attentive he was, but he was also so fucking slow. If anything, that had your walls clenching onto him harder than if he hammered into you— that slow build-up of friction was dizzying. You squirmed, cunt clenching and contracting around his smooth thrusts— you wanted to take him within you completely, cause more friction for you were going stir-crazy with this lazy speed.

“F-fuck! Faster, please,” you cried out, unable to take his sensual movements any longer. Your legs were twitching with his patient movements, and you could’ve sworn you saw a cheeky grin on his lips. The bastard— even in sex was he teasing you, wanting to torture you until you gave in to the pleasure and begged him to ruin you.

Sure, this was your first time together, and was going extremely pleasantly and sweetly, but you were actually pretty fond of the idea of letting him pound into you like there was no tomorrow…

At the lewd thought, your walls pulsed around his cock, making him buck up unintentionally, hitting that sweet spot within you. He grunted at the feeling of your tightened cunt, while you cried out his name, pleasure running like a current through your body. Your face was on fire, reminiscent of a raging fever, and your insides were coiling— god, how did his cock just feel so perfect within you?

“Oh,” he grinned in a pant, “found y’spot, didn’t I?”

Jonathan didn’t give you a chance to speak before he pulled out so far his tip was the only thing in your hole, before slamming back in and making your eyes roll to the back of your head. Props to him-- he hit your g-spot with utmost accuracy, and you let out a long, stuttered mewl, scratching at his freckled back, legs twitching. Your wail was almost catatonic, loud and cock-drunk, dripping unabashed, filthy pleasure.

“Makin’ such sweet noises f’me,” he praised huskily, hair sticking to the sweat on his forehead, “fuck, ‘ve gotta hear that again.”

He must’ve noticed your neediness earlier, when he was slow and languid, for the new speed he set was double- no, triple that: his hips were snapping against yours, balls smacking filthily against your lips, left hand pinning your hips down and letting him sink into you faster. Shocks of pleasure tore through you at the sudden increase in speed- he’d inured you so well to the torturously slow pace from earlier that this new frenzied one felt like getting hit by a bullet train. You were overstimulated and needing more of him all at once, practically vibrating with need under his touch.

“I’ve- hnngh- wanted this…” you gasped between moans, “f-for so long…”

“Wanted m’cock?” Jonathan questioned in a hiss, feeling with his every inch how your walls absolutely soaked him. His tone was, obviously, sarcastic, but it still made you feel incredibly lewd.

You shook your head numbly, “Wanted you… I love you, Jon!”

“So fuckin’ beautiful,” he purred, fucking you faster and making you writhe beneath him, “love you s’much.”

Jonathan targeted the spongy, swollen spot deep within your cunt, suddenly filled with a renewed vigor and motivation to make you come as quickly as possible, and he pounded into that one, specific spot, watching how you twitched and squirmed, heavy moans exiting you. He was relentless, hands reaching to hook under your knees and spread you wider.

At the new angle, his cock penetrated you even deeper, fuller, which you thought wasn’t possible with how goddamn full you already felt, but when his thick cockhead brushed up against your cervix you thought you were going to burst. Then, one of his hands came up to your tits to knead the flesh, and you squeaked when he tweaked your soft nipples. He was pawing at your sweet tits, fondling you in a needy, boyish way, like yours were the first pair of boobs he’d ever felt.

“M’close!” you gasped, mind going fuzzy with pure ecstacy. Your skin prickled with goosebumps, cold sweat running down your spine, a terribly stark in contrast feeling to the warmth buzzing under your skin.

“C-can’t last much longer either,” he choked, still pumping in and out of your sticky hole and savoring the feeling of your tight warmness on his long length. He looked absolutely exquisite above you, and you lost yourself in the ethereal picture. Maybe you were in love, or maybe he really was just an empyrean beauty; you took in the sight of his focussed iceberg blue eyes, the cute flush spreading along his pale cheeks and bare chest, how he bit his pink lips to muffle his needy grunts and moans.

Then, you mewled and convulsed around him, your walls spasming and contracting as you came undone, reaching the precipice of your pleasure. That made him fall off the edge— you had tensed all over- all over, and Jonathan couldn’t help how his hips stuttered, knees buckled, cock twitched; he only gave one last, powerful thrust into you before spilling himself inside of you. He painted your soft walls white, and you felt that familiar heat spreading within you; you welcomed it completely, and wanted such warmth to be there forever.

You milked him for every last drop, cunt like a vice grip, and Jonathan gave you another wet kiss, this time on your lips, and your hands wrapped around his neck, allowing you to kiss him back. Your brows knitted at the sour taste of yourself on his lips, but it just made everything feel so real— Jonathan and you had “made love”. It was a phrase you always wrinkled your nose at, feeling uncomfortable and juvenile at the intimacy it entailed, but now you understood it completely.

“I love you,” you repeated for what felt like the hundredth time, unable to say anything else that conveyed what you felt for him.

Honestly, you weren’t sure anything could accurately do so— you felt infinitely about him, your love touching all edges of your mind, heart and soul, filling you completely. You supposed you felt about Jonathan how the sun felt about the moon— without one, there could not be the other.

“I love you-- too,” he responded, pausing in the middle at the aftershocks of your orgasm, which had caused you to tighten around his softening, sensitive cock for a second.

You peered deep into his baby-blue eyes, watching the utter love that coloured them; it was like submerging yourself in a great blue ocean, except you didn’t want to come out, because you knew you wouldn’t drown in those eyes. No, you knew Jonathan would always be there to pull you out.

Speaking of pulling out… Jonathan slipped himself out of you softly, careful not to agitate that first stretch any more than necessary, before collapsing back into your arms. The two of you tangled yourselves in a messy flurry of limbs on his cushy mattress, sweaty and breathy, something that should’ve been terribly uncomfortable but just wasn’t— you swore you could fall asleep anywhere, no matter your own state or the circumstance, as long as you were with him.

Blearily, both your eyes began to droop, until you gave into the familiar presence of deep, dark sleep. It was a dreamless sleep for you, but you had an ever present comfort at his weight on yours, something you could feel even in unconsciousness.

Hours later, in a brisk, shuddering early-morning that you felt all over due to Jonathan’s unruly habit of opening his window at the peak of the day’s hottest weather and forgetting to close it before cold nightfall fell, you awoke to Jonathan watching you carefully, so close you could feel his warm exhales of breath on your cheek.

There was no goodmorning or anything like that, just pure, uninhibited being, reveling in the space you two occupied together. Like you two were the only things left in the world.

When Jonathan noticed you woke up, he shifted, presumably to extract himself from your grip. You stopped him, though, wrapping an arm around his shoulders and bringing him closer to you.

“What did it feel like?” you asked instead, for the last time. You brushed your fingers over his scar, and, knowing exactly what you were asking, this time Jonathan doesn’t flinch away. This time, he leans into your touch: it doesn’t burn, not anymore, and he wants your tenderness to swallow him whole.

You didn’t mean what it actually felt like, of course. You meant, what were you thinking? What have you done, and what will you do to yourself? You meant, I love you.

“It felt like,” falling; not everything feels like something else; I raised my arms and the air took me and that was it-- “it felt like… giving in. Letting my desperation find its purpose. It felt like I’d reached a point of peace… gained clarity after a long stretching, wounded moment came to an end. It felt like becoming something only meant to be talked about in past tense.”

You don’t say anything to that; you know he doesn’t want you to. There’s no need for you to hush or plead or make better, you just need to listen, and love him. He knows you accept him for everything he is, all his flaws and his strengths; he knows your love is all accepting- it veers on saintly.

At your silence, he melts into your arms and you can finally relax; there is an admission in the action, a release, an acknowledgement -- is suffering in silence not also accompanied by the overwhelming desire to be found? -- you have found him, at last, and you will never, ever let go.

You take it too far, just once. Only once. And you let him go just once, only once; never again.

#cillian murphy #cillian murphy x reader #cillian murphy smut #jonathan breech #on the edge #jonathan breech x reader #jonathan breech x reader smut #jonathan breech smut #cillian murphy x reader smut

804 notes · View notes

princesssmars · 10 months ago

Text

a few ellie headcanons bc i like her c: sfw.

she is a backpack lesbian. always has a tiny backpack. they are always black or a dark green. will sometimes get a patterned one. maybe has bananas on it. wants to put stickers on basically all of them but won’t because she gets paranoid they’ll get ruined.

i can’t find the post and ong i don’t remember what type of snack girlie i said ellie was but yes. this bitch loves snacks. always snacking. had a four month long addiction to jello it was a little scary.

she can cook for herself! she can make a damn good burger. hates tomato’s because she’s a baby 👎🏽

feel like she likes the weirdest cereals ever…like bae why are you eating kit kat cereal

runs super cold and always has a blanket. lovesss those super thick fluffy blankets that make you wanna fall asleep immediately. begged joel for one of those full body blanket snuggie things and he kept forgetting so she bought a matching dinosaur set with jessie and she loves it.

despite running cold her bedroom fan has not turned off in thirty years.

loves trivia. likes to play are you smarter than a fifth grader because you are NOT gonna catch her fuckin lackin.

likes mixmatched socks. her dryer is always eating half of her pairs so she grows to like it.

calls things pretentious and overrated as a joke bc she is annoying. watching a popular movie? she hates it the author is trying too hard. if she has a letterboxd she is either giving the most in depth review you’ve ever seen or a five star rating with a “cool”.

super nervous at the start of relationship yo show affection but when she’s locked in she is always on you…cuddles all the time. if you’re getting up to do something she is gripping around your waist. it’s cute until you need to go to the bathroom and she is insistent on going with you. once when she was high she told you she’d get a second toilet so you could go together 🫤

playstation girl yawn. she was hyped for elden ring then got her ass beat and didn’t play for a month before randomly deciding to finish it in two weeks.

whoever said she loves spongebob first was right…binges regular show when high. loves breaking bad. will act like she doesn’t like romance shows but if you make her watch the first episode she hasssss to finish it she can’t help ittt… sorry not sorry i’m making her watch bridgerton.

secretly watches those family guy adhd tiktoks

has a habit of watching movies through tiktok

and those space tiktok’s… comparing the gravity of different planets, what’s it’s like to fall through jupiters atmosphere.

likes orcas… watches marine life documentaries and gets emotional.

would know ur birth chart. ever forget ur big three signs? she knows. kind of scary. weird talent. doesn’t believe in astronomy buts knows every basic fact about every sign?? 😭

has two instagrams. her main is for her art and to post pictures with her friends and you. second she posts anything. and i do mean anything. will go from an introspective into idk why hoodwinked is underrated to

loves green it’s literally her color. needs some green in her dorm/apartment. thinks about this ahead of time so when she’s in middle school she starts buying tiny plants to take care of. at the start they’d die in like a week but now she has a dozen and they’re all healthy <3

bunch of posters on her bedroom walls. hates bare walls.

likes to try new hobbies every so often! is lazy about working out but when she does she gets on the treadmill and doesn’t break a sweat no matter how fast. kind of scary.

likes to go on the most random dates. you’ll be sitting on the couch and she’ll show you some random restaurant she saw on like instagram and be like let’s go. right now.

likes when you touch her hair. rest her on top of you while watching a movie and run your fingers through her hair? she’s out like a light. if you want to try different styles on it at home she will let you. doesn’t care if she has stupid looking like stubs everywhere she’s like c:

jesse told her she had a fuck ass bob once and she almost hit him :c

such a bike girl omg. i know she used to put water bottles in the back to make it sound like a motorcycle.

who first came up with that she loves spongebob because you’re so right. tried to act like she’s grown out of it but when she’s high and you’re trying to go to bed she’ll whisper “twenty five” to herself and laugh for five minutes straight.

spider-man girl because she’s cool.

pretends to hate all the dumb nicknames you give her when she does stuff. she makes a pb&j? shes now 'ellie jellie' for the rest of the week. has a stomach ache? now she gets to hear 'ellie bellie' for a month.

links for palestine, sudan, drc

#lowkey nothing but i wanted to talk about her #love this crazy bitch #tlou #tlou 2 #tlou 2 x reader #tlou x reader #ellie #ellie williams #ellie williams x reader #ellie williams fluff

165 notes · View notes

max-nico · 1 year ago

Text

"Well, what do you like, Shadow?" Sonic asks, staring up at the cloud covered night sky.

Shadow finds himself pausing, his eyebrow furrowing in contempt. "I liked Maria."

"Duh, I'd be concerned if you didn't, Shadow. I meant what do you like now?" Sonic huffs through an exasperated grin. "Like–If you could only bring three things with you on a deserted island, what would you pick… or do you like dancing or are you more of a cooking type-a guy? What would your perfect day be like? If you had to choose between a cottage or a penthouse, which one would you buy? Do you prefer warm temperatures or cold?"

"As the ultimate lifeform my body temperature is always perfectly regulated, I have no need to think about that."

"It's not about what you need Shadow–" Sonic sighs, flippantly gesturing his hands. "–It's about what you like, about what makes you happy."

"What makes me…happy?"

"Yup."

Shadow thinks for a moment, his head now turned toward Sonic, who's still not looking at him. Though in all fairness, Shadow himself is more looking toward Sonic's direction than at the hedgehog himself. He's lost in thought, focused on finding something he genuinely likes on this godforsaken planet.

Shadow opens his mouth to answer.

"And don't say something that Maria liked, I'm asking about you."

Shadow closes his mouth. Back at square one he supposes.

It's hard to think of something he genuinely enjoys. He's spent so long preserving life for Maria, growing plants for Maria, saving people for Maria, eating for Maria, living for Maria. What begins with him and what stops with her is a giant mess. It's a tangled ball of raw emotions that he can't even begin to decipher, let alone understand.

"C'mon dude, I know you have some good memories in there." Sonic finally turns to Shadow, his whole face lit up in some amalgamation of amused and disbelieving. "Better than having no memories at all, am I right?"

To that, Shadow's introspection halts. His face flattens at the joke as he doesn't find it funny, and he remembers the absolute dolt he's talking to. God, this whole conversation is stupid, isn't it? He has to wonder why he's talking about literally anything with the hedgehog next to him, he's a moron on top of all other morons.

Sonic has enough emotional competence to at least be apologetic as Shadow gets up to leave. A hand coming up to stop him before he can get very far, and a repentant look to accompany it as well. Shadow simply deadpans in response.

"Too sensitive? My bad." Sonic looks down at the grass. "I've been trying to get better with… that."

Shadow tries to pull away, his counterpart doesn't let him.

"I won't make another joke like that, promise. Come sit back down."

For a reason unknown to Shadow himself, he complies. He takes the same place he was sitting before, Sonic is a little closer now, but it doesn't really bother him. The grip on his arm doesn't either. At least not enough to make him do something about it.

"Now, you still haven't answered my question."

"Have you considered the possibility that your question is stupid?"

"Humor me. Just a little bit longer."

Shadow sighs, rolling his eyes and looking back up at the sky. It's easy to fall back into his reappraisal and forget about the blue hedgehog all together. It's easy to focus solely on Maria too, but it's hard to think of himself. Not being able to answer Sonic's question makes him feel dumb in a way he's never experienced before, shame is probably a better word for whatever he's feeling, but it's even harder to admit that then think about himself.

He repeats the question to himself a few times, as if that will magically give him an answer. Repetition makes him irritated, God he's so irritated right now. Stupid ass hedgehog asking him stupid ass questions.

"I'm tired of thinking about this. Let me leave."

"Aw c'mon, Shads." Sonic frowns. It's an odd look on his face. It makes Shadow uncomfortable. "Look, I'll try and help. You like Rouge and Omega don't you? I've seen you walk out of Tails' garage before–which was a little surreal for me by the way–but I assume you enjoy hanging out with him, right?"

This makes Shadow think. Sure, he's okay with Rouge, grateful to her at least. He's been staying with her for the past few weeks, and though she lives on takeout, talks enough to make him deaf–don't even get him started on her attitude, and hoards like she's never had anything of her own before, he's truly indebted to her. He would never say this out loud of course, she would hold it above him and never ever let it go. Rouge is annoying enough without him giving her leverage.

She's oddly kind though, in her own special way. She doesn't touch his stuff unless asked to, makes sure to order enough take out for him to eat too, she's even allowed him to put up the few portraits of Maria he has. Rouge constantly gives out mixed signals because of this unfortunately, so it's hard for Shadow to get a read on her.

All of this being said, he wouldn't call Rouge a friend, but he wouldn't call her a foe either. Rouge is also way past the acquaintance stage, but not nearly close enough to be called family. Their whole relationship is completely out of Shadow's depth.

Omega's is easier to classify. Not with one word, nothing that simple, but it makes sense in his head. Simply put, he and Omega bond over their mutual love for blowing shit up. If they talk, they're discussing bombs and war tactics. If they're hanging out, they're testing explosives. Sending messages? You guessed it, they're talking about how funny it would be to bomb GUN.

They're like… bomb buddies or something. He thinks that's how Tails referred to them. Omega would think it's stupid a name though, which is fine, because Shadow also thinks it's stupid a name. They work well like that.

They're still not friends though.

Now, as for Tails, that's another complicated case. They both enjoy engineering and talk shit about Sonic when he's not around. They both enjoy learning, and find space fascinating. They both enjoy mutual silence as well, making talking to him easy with no pressure to keep the conversation going.

He still doesn't think Tails qualifies as an answer though, because the whole reason he even began to give the kid the time of day was because of Maria. Young, hopeful, naive, bright blue eyes, golden hair. He was like a bucket of water while being surrounded by wildfire. He still is, because Tails reminds him so much of Maria that it hurts sometimes, but the nostalgia feels like a reprieve from all the newness so the pain is welcomed. The pain is greeted, given a tour, and then shown its bedroom in his mind.

So sure, he'll give Sonic this one, the fox is his friend, he genuinely likes the fox, the kid is easy to talk to and incredibly sweet, sue him. He neglects to say this out loud anyway, both because it's not a valid answer, and telling Sonic he found companionship in his kid brother makes him want to keel over. He'd never hear the end of it, and the hedgehog already talks enough to power the sun.

"I think I like when it rains." He says instead, just barely catching a distant flash of lightning behind Sonic's head.

"That's a good thing to like, Shadow." Sonic accepts Shadow's answer easily, shrugging his shoulders. "I like the rain too."

"You hate the rain."

Sonic smiles, letting go of his arm. "Yeah, I just didn't want you to feel bad."

Annnddd that's it. This is pre-sonadow technically, but I wrote it with platonic intentions lol. This is pre all Shadow relationships.

I am incapable of not giving Shadow and Tails a wholesome relationship sorry not sorry.

Anyway, this fic is titled I Think I Like When It Rains on AO3. I posted it there a while ago so I decided to put it on Tumblr bc why not.

Please feel free to hit up my DMs or askbox, though if you're requesting I prefer my askbox lol. I am a multishipper if ships are your jam, but I mostly post Sonic and Tails being brothers (NOT A SONTAILS SHIPPER PLEASE DON'T TALK TO ME ABOUT THAT LOL)

#sth #sonic the hedgehog #miles tails prower #shadow the hedgehog #team dark #sonadow #shadow x sonic #sonic x shadow #sonic fanfiction #pre relationship #i have the mic #can you tell i am incapable of retaining Shadow lore? im so sorry im doing my best #shadow and sonic #shadow #sonic #for info on the fic before you read it scroll to the bottom 👍🏾#first post about shipping and its about gay hedgehogs... whoops

279 notes · View notes

t00thpasteface · 5 months ago

Note

I never considered hawkahey before but I love it! Father is so calm and sweet except when worked up, whereas Hawkeye is always so acerbic and snarky except with the ones that he loves. The very definition of dog and cat boyfriends. :3 Thank you for opening my eyes!!

YAY!!!! welcome to the club!!!

the big thing i like about hawkahy, besides the ten metric tons of narrative symbolism they can carry together, is the way i think they resist a lot of your typical shippy/romcom templates. i've spent a LOT of time in fandom spaces over the years and i've gotten mostly pretty tired of the same formulas, especially when half the time it requires chopping off canon aspects of either/both characters just to make them fit. at least, i try to be conscious of a few different red/blue, this/that dichotomies when i write/draw them, and play around with the sorts of expectations one might have for them both as individuals and as a pair.

i actually have A Lot Of Thoughts about this so i'm gonna put my yapping under a readmore:

i think the show itself does a lot to twist expectations, by virtue of having begun as a satirical comedy (which is still what i think it does best), a genre which relies very heavily on ironic inversions of common character/social archetypes that the audience would be coming in with preestablished tastes/expectations for. hawkeye seems like a self-centered hedonist, but he's also highly introspective and articulate, so he's often quite capable of waxing poetic about why and how he does what he does, instead of just acting on raw instinct with no higher thought. meanwhile, mulcahy's entire thesis as a character is just lampshading or inverting every expected feature of a priest character; if he's the "father", then the other personnel are latchkey kids. the last thing i want to do is flatten any of that!

here's some specific tropes i try to keep in mind and intentionally upset, whether explicitly or implicitly, in my hawkahy art/fic:

hawkeye as the aggressive boundary-violator, mulcahy as the helpless victim having his lines crossed— hawkeye can be pretty pushy and insistent, but he's not one to commit actual assault, especially not to someone who wouldn't hurt a fly. even in an early-seasons scenario, i don't think he would move much faster than what mulcahy's comfortable with, at least not with anything more serious than jokes and come-ons; i think he prefers to awaken things in people and encourage them to loosen up, rather than pull them along by himself.

also, mulcahy is not a pushover; he just knows when to pick his battles and prefers to bite his tongue. he's certainly blown up on hawkeye before. it would also be fairly easy for mulcahy to throw hawkeye over his shoulder or snap the guy in half like a twig if he wanted to. when mulcahy does get pressured into doing something he doesn't want to do, it's the focus of an entire episode, i.e. the exception that proves the rule. if hawkeye's going to tempt him into something, it'll be because he really wanted to deep down and thus made that conscious choice, not because he got drunk at a party and hawkeye decided to try and cop a feel.

hawkeye as someone who needs a tumultous relationship and thus won't be satisfied by stability— i talked more about this in a previous post, but i think hawkeye does want to settle down eventually. like i said, he comes off as a hopeless romantic. we know he watched a lot of movies; he almost certainly grew up on those "screwball comedies" that were so big in the 30s and featured neurotic nutjobs pratfalling their way into a genuine happily-ever-after. i don't think he'd want to settle down with just anybody, nor do i think he really places a lot of value in fulfilling those milestones of "get married by X age, buy a house with Y rooms, and pump out Z kids" just for the sake of fulfilling them and keeping up with the joneses, but i think he'd love to marry for love. again, he was certainly planning on it before the war, and he admitted that he's still carrying a lot of hurt from having that domestic future taken away from him so abruptly.

mulcahy as the innocent ingenue— this one is complex, and of course i'll preface this by saying i'm predisposed to not being all that intrigued or entertained by genuinely innocent characters. i find them to be something of a nonstarter, narratively speaking. beyond that, they tend to be unrealistic in certain settings and demographics. yes, there will always be people living in a bubble for every possible background and age group, but i find it implausible that a man could be 30 or 40 years old and enlisted in the military and still somehow be as naive as a sea sponge in a pineapple.

mulcahy is definitely not all that worldly, and starts off with a somewhat myopic view of his role in the grand scheme of things, particularly as it pertains to the motivations and effects of missionary work. he did join the military of his own volition, but i also think the mulcahy we see at the end of the war (and even at several points in the middle of it) is not the same mulcahy that volunteered to be here in the first place. what's more, we see from lines like "i know all about motels" or his hesitance to say hello to his family on camera that he probably picked up a lot of the hard lessons and ugly experiences that are typical growing up working-class in a big city. i think it's a disservice, both to the character and to the broader themes of the show, to assume that mulcahy's optimism and cheeriness must come from a place of inexperience. yes, he has plenty of room to grow, but he wasn't born yesterday, and i think his optimism is far more the result of a conscious choice to do good than an innocence to the evil in the world.

as for sexual stuff in particular, he mostly reacts to hawkeye's promiscuity with knowing winks and smiles, and even jokes with him about it, which i think is pretty clearly enabling him. sure, he bolts out of those VD talks, but with henry's public speaking skills, can you really blame him for eagerly excusing himself? plus, he has a strong incentive to act more innocent than he really is, because if he plays dumb, it means he won't be preemptively excluded from the conversation by people who think he's easily offended by bawdier talk. he may not be up to date on all the slang, nor is he always observant of certain subtle cues, but he's not a pearl-clutcher; that role is fulfilled by frank, margaret, and charles, so it would be redundant to make mulcahy also gasp and scold people like hawkeye for having premarital sex. mulcahy largely serves to validate hawkeye as being in the right in these disputes. which brings me to:

hawkeye as the amoral maniac, mulcahy as the moral compass— this one especially flies in the face of the spirit of the show, i think. hawkeye is doing his absolute fucking best! he would do anything to save a life, and it doesn't matter whose. he's willing to run into active artillery fire to rescue enemy soldiers, to stay behind and monitor a patient while the camp moves out, and to potentially get himself killed just to stand by his principle of never carrying a gun. he sleeps around as a coping mechanism, but more than that, i think he also does it out of a genuine desire to share some happiness with others in an otherwise miserable and dehumanizing place.

even mulcahy doesn't care that hawkeye does all that other stuff on the side. he wouldn't do a lot of it himself, but that's not an issue to him. again, his entire schtick as a character is being "unpriestly" to comedic/dramatic effect, like winning at poker, getting drunk before a sermon, etc.; he's far more accommodating than he is preachy. he has a profound respect for hawkeye that can be seen even in season one, because hawkeye always looks out for the frightened and vulnerable, and that's what matters to him above all else. mulcahy loathes lip service and values action over feel-good talk, which means he cares more about hawkeye doing the right thing than the superficially squeaky-clean thing.

pairing hawkeye with mulcahy invites some incredibly rich commentary on what "morality" even means, but i think getting hung up on the fact that hawkeye drinks, gambles, and has a LOT of premarital sex is completely missing the point and only reinforcing the puritan ideals that mash itself is trying so hard to upset and dissect.

the cute, sweet, blushy, short one is the sub and/or bottom— nah son. hawkeye is always talking about getting pregnant. mulcahy works out and likes to roughhouse. you do the math here.

ALL THIS TO SAY... i really encourage people to look beyond the stereotypes of horndog and cinnamon roll, or frat boy and nerd, or whatever other thought-terminating cliche one may be tempted to apply to these guys. hawkeye is a sleaze, but he's also sensitive and articulate. mulcahy is a sweetheart, but he's stubborn and resilient. they both go so much deeper than the superficial tropes, and what makes them work so well as a couple IS their ability to bring out those interesting, lesser-known facets in each other, both as characters interacting with each other and as symbols placed in juxtaposition to serve the themes of the show.

#i have a LOT of thoughts and i have NOT been drawing/writing so you get ESSAYS in lieu of anything actually Creative #shebbz shoutz #ask #mash #hawkahy #we got another one lads

38 notes · View notes

campbyler · 1 month ago

Note

that thing about the chapters makes total sense yeah! i liked hearing you break down the themes and realisations etc, it's nice to hear meaty info about the creative process and undercurrents in the work alongside the jokier interactive posts you guys usually make!

and we are both aware that we could probably cut certain scenes or events out, but we also are very adamant about maintaining a pace that feels realistic and makes sense, which usually leads to those higher word counts 😙

the word count splitting absolutely makes sense then, too - two halves of a whole. i'm surprised people have complained about wanting you to cut down on actual scenes for word count purposes... i wouldnt want to lose action or scenes themselves! maybe they meant more brevity or succintness? not repeating things that don't add to the narrative as much, etc. because the dialogue between characters is the most exciting part, as it usually is in storytelling! its happening NOW, we're IN IT with these characters, its so compelling compared to description or that famous bane of writers' lives: long recountings of events that happened previously or 'offscreen'.

please don't cut out action scenes and dialogue - i'm thinking of how my heart picked up when mike was waiting for will to get the sparklers, that tension was so well played... and also the final scene of 10.2, how fast mike's realisations moved as he kissed will into the sand. a vast contrast to how long it took to get there - so perhaps your stylistic choice is to slow the pace and draw out that delicious tension by making characters very pedantic and introspective rather than by adding more external action, dialogue, or obstacles that prevent them getting where they want to go. mike and will ARE their own biggest obstacles, it seems. and perhaps this is the vibe you wanted to create; it makes for a story that really feeds into the cloyingness of being stuck in your head and being stuck in one place - camp - no matter how much the boys both love it. the camp itself becomes a crucible for the story, giving the reader themselves something of the same claustrophobic feeling mike and will must have. very meta!

i’m so glad that helped clear things up from our perspective! we like to largely let the fic speak for itself obviously, so we usually refrain from flat out saying what the intention behind certain decisions was, but in the context of asks like this and the og regarding chapter/overall fic structure, it did seem fitting to clarify the purposes of chapters 9 and 10 more specifically so i’m glad everything makes sense! sorry for the absolute beast of an answer that’s going to follow, except for i’m not. teehee

regarding the word count, i don’t think we’ve been told outright that we should cut down on certain scenes to keep the wc lower, aside from maybeeee a comment or two that i can remember remarking on us over-describing or over-narrating things? which is probably true at times but also honestly that’s just me n thea’s writing style, so if there is something really egregious we will likely catch it while editing and otherwise we’ll just let it slide 🤷🏽‍♀️ overall though, i feel like it’s more of an implied thing — since we talk often about chapters taking longer to get out due to our typical 20-30k count, i’m sure a few people have wondered why we choose to include all of the interactions and details that we do. thea did actually give me the push i needed to take out an almost 2k chunk that we both loved but agreed was a little clunky and unnecessary in the context of what was happening, and its removal wasn’t detracting from any characters or relationships or worldbuilding in the chapter. so there are definitely times that we do decide something isn’t important enough to tack on a couple thousand extra words, and we will rectify that when possible!

this also brings me to your point about Long Recountings of Offscreen Events — that’s also something we try really hard to avoid, and when we do want to recount something that happened in the past or offscreen, as is natural for basically every story, we do try to make it feel natural and in the moment, like a character is simply remembering or thinking about something instead of trying to catch the reader up to present day. i LOVEE writing dialogue, maybe too much (i added almost all of the 1700ish words i deleted back again with dialogue. oops) but i completely agree with you in that the In The Moment-ness of it all is what’s most compelling to me as well — writing their reactions as they happen, or adding distinctive mannerisms and thoughts and motions while two or more characters speak.,, ougghh it makes my brain vibrate. but of course you need narration and descriptions to fill in those gaps, and i hope our efforts come off as at least somewhat successful! and for the most part, fleshing out the characters and the story and setting as much as possible is just as key to us as the Byler Moments are — if we wanted to focus on only every interaction mike and will had with each other while tabling those with the rest of the party, background/original characters, or the setting of camp as a whole, we would write a much different (and much shorter) fic instead :-)

finally, about 10.2 specifically: THANK YOU SOOOOOO MUCH WHDBHDHDGDJ <- me blubbering with happiness FRRR. thea can tell you firsthand that i spent many weeks banging my head against my desk trying to hammer out the entirety of the bonfire scene and its transitions — it was particularly tricky for me to try and balance general pacing with the inclusion of other characters And having everything lead up to the final moments, so i’m so so so glad it was a good read and that everything felt fitting and intentional because it was definitely meant to be! thea mentioned this in the last ask but will in ch09 gets kind of bowled over by his realization moment all at once, whereas mike kind of has two separate ones — one in 10.1, and one at the end of 10.2, both helping him come to terms with similar but different aspects of his romantic feelings and processing them and moving forward — and i didn’t want them to feel like the same moment happening twice (past a certain obvious degree).

they definitely are their own worst obstacles, especially in a modern au that takes away a good amount (but definitely not all!) of the canon universe pressure of comphet and sexuality and conformation. i know this is a big reason people tend to shy away from modern aus in this fandom, because it’s true that the source material is pretty heavy on these themes, and i have my thoughts on this that i’ll probably expand on soon, but to me, in doing so, it’s kind of a really fun exercise in fleshing out their internal struggles and playing off of those more, if that makes sense: their shared stubbornness, self-repression, reactivity and emotional tendencies, etc, but also the fact that they are very kind, generous, and loyal characters who, at least in the context of acswy, are more scared of being hurt by each other or themselves than they are actually invested in “hating” each other. and you bring up an excellent point as well, probably something that has been more of a subconscious but known goal for us than something we are On Purpose trying to get across: everything is happening in one location during one part of the year for a reason! they’ve had good memories here and bad, both in regards to each other and their friendship and otherwise, and are drawn to coming back every summer just as much as they are each other. with the brief exception of ch09 (although the context of it is a Rare Day Away From Camp, so the idea is still there lol), the emotional journey of the mainline fic very much plays out in the same place to try and convey that.

sorry for the essay long answer to your long ask in response to a long answer in response to a long ask — it’s just very very fulfilling to know that people are noticing our choices and the reasons behind them when we make so many of them intentionally! thank you again and i’m soooo so so glad you enjoyed 10.2 🥳🥳🥳

#took me my entire lunch break to type this out on mobile #worth it #if thea has any additional thoughts she can just edit this whenever #and also sorry for going on like 17 small tangents but unfortunately i have thoughts and you’ve given me #an outlet for them so. HA #this was lovely to read and think about!! thank you again anon #asks #acswy spoilers #<- obviously #ch10

32 notes · View notes

zenosanalytic · 11 months ago

Text

I've been thinking about how to articulate a thought I had about a possible Doylist/non-diegetic reading(EDIT: I originally wrote "Watsonian" here, which is the opposite of what I meant X| X| Brain, you Tricksome Jester *shakes entirely metaphorical fist*) of Eridan's Trollian handle, caligulasAquarium, in response to a post of @mmmmalo's, and I think I've got it.

Ok So: the popular perception of Caligula is as a "Mad Emperor". One of the points used in this depiction is his "War on the Sea", which is taken as obvsl absurd and empty and irrational(and possibly hubristic). Eridan chooses to call himself "caligulasAquarium" and he lives in a wrecked ship(a feature commonly put in aquariums)... on the surface.

So like: maybe the title is meant to be taken by the audience as ironic. Eridan's claim to an "Aquarium" is as absurd and empty and irrational as Caligula's claim to have warred upon the sea(in the common understanding of those events; as a matter of history this seems to be a Telephone distortion, from the sources I can find).

A few more points that have occurred to me since I started writing this:

Caligula "Made War on the Sea"; Eridan wants to "Make War on the Surface" by Killing All Landwellers, carrying forward the themes of inversion btwn Alternia and Earth.

Also: "Kill All Landwellers", "Kill All Humans": he's lampshading common evil-alien-overlord tropes

...Which in itself is sort of dunking on HIM, since Eridan is nobody's overlord he's just some GUY. Like: Yes, he's "Nobility" due to blood-caste, but he has no influence, no power, no RESPECT from anyone we meet, no friendships let alone alliances with other socially powerful individuals(other than Feferi, who seems to have foresworn all that to monastically care for G'lybgolyb) that he could USE to have influence; he's just a loner with his grand-dad's gun and allot of pretension.

...which you could argue furthers his parody of USian internet white-supremacists? Like: He is THEM: a gun-humping loner who only feels comfortable talking to the people he claims to hate, with no idea how unpleasant he makes himself to interact with, and even less interest in introspection or self-awareness, fetishizing past genocides as a way to claim for himself a "Glorious Past" he had nothing to do with.

As Feferi(and possibly other characters I'm forgetting) point out, Eridan's ambition to Kill All Landwellers is more than a little absurd. He's never really DONE anything to plan or prepare for it, and aside from Fef he exclusively hangs out with and befriends Landwellers, as well as LIVING ON LAND(well: a sandbar or reef). This could be taken as furthering the Caligula "War on the Sea" parallel.

Expanding on the last: Caligula, THE EMPEROR OF ROME and Grandest of Nepo-babies, was rather notably disdainful of and hostile towards the Roman nobility and inherited wealth/rank. This connects to Eridan in two ways I can think of: 1) his avoidance of other seadwellers, and 2) his philosophical hostility to landdwellers while Being, in practice, A Landweller. Basically: both Hate things about themselves shared by others.

Reinforcing #3: the choice of Caligula, a Troll-Emperor. Again: Eridan is Just Some Guy; he does not command armies, he does not command society, he can't even command Equius, who GETS OFF ON being ordered around. This is Pretension.

...which, I guess, you could connect AGAIN back to Caligula via the popular memory of him wanting to be treated "As A God", but it should be noted that 1)everyone who wrote anything about him hated the guy and was explicitly dunking on him, so we don't know how accurate these charges are, and 2)in the Roman context, while legal apotheosis was reserved for after death, imperial Divinity was already de facto given that sacrifices and prayers to the Emperor's health and success were legally mandated civic religious duties, AND 3)that classical Greeks and Romans, contra the Abrahimic societies which would later create this popular memory, considered apotheosis a real possibility for notable individuals.

#Homestuck #Eridan Ampora #caligulasAquarium #Irony #zA Analysis #Homestuck Analysis #History #Gaius Caesar Augustus Germanicus #Caligula #Historiography #zA Writes #Our Staff #zA's Endemic Historicality #Watsonian vs Doylist #My Traitorous Brain #zA Corrections

117 notes · View notes

insane-thoughts-oftheday · 5 months ago

Text

A (not) so small philosophical interpretation of Odysseus in epic

Disclaimer: I'm doing this analysis for fun, please don't take everything I write as truth, because this text is based on my interpretation and, even though it took some academic research to do it. It's worth remembering that I don't have a degree in philosophy yet, so I can still make mistakes on some points. Another point I want to highlight is that I wrote this text in a language other than English, and there may be some translation errors by Google, so I apologize if anything is confusing or if you have any questions about something, feel free to comment or send an ask, I'll do my best to explain.

(Notice that's basically me as far as you decide to read this blog)

EPIC:the musical is a work that is very present in my life and in the lives of many other people who are reading this little fan outburst; And if you've just stumbled upon this craze and are hearing about it for the first time, a brief summary is that it's a musical, more addictive than drugs, that tells the story of Odysseus, that guy from Greek mythology who spent 20 years trying to get home after the Trojan War, also known as Simp by his wife Penelope. We have moments of joy, sadness, introspection and many fan outbursts caused by the owner of it all, Jorge Rivera-Herrans, who is not only the creator but also the lead singer of this masterpiece, playing Odysseus and a few others.

But let's get back to the analysis here because I could talk about this for hours without stopping.

A few months ago, when the Underworld saga was released, I remembered the phrase:

"If you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you."

This phrase was written by Nietzsche in the book Beyond Good and Evil, and it reminds me a lot of the Odysseus we see in EPIC, although the phrase is incomplete in the previous quote, even though it is the most common one we see being spread around. The original is:

“Whoever fights monsters should take care that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.”

And I also remember thinking about that phrase by Heraclitus, which I think everyone has heard, probably incompletely, at some point in school:

“No one can step into the same river twice, for when he steps into it again, the waters are not the same, and the being itself has already changed. Thus, everything is governed by dialectics, the tension and the alternation of opposites. Therefore, reality is always the result of change, that is, of the struggle between opposites.”

In my opinion, I think that both phrases fit well with the version of the character that we see starring in the entire musical, since most ancient myths and poems have different versions and translations and of course Jorge took some artistic liberties; Odysseus is a Greek hero who fights against many monsters, both mythical and internal, taking into account his ethics as a person while trying to survive and return home.

I think it's interesting to point out that from here on I'll use some different terms, but I'll do my best to explain them.

We can see that throughout all the sagas Odysseus is describing the line of what it is to be human and how one can easily slip off it; this line is located between the definition of gods and monsters/animals and is known as Metron, which gave rise to the word measure, and here we will use it as a synonym for limit for something. It's also good to say that metron has nothing to do with a person's morals/character, because it's a question of ethics.

Morals are the set of rules that concern good and evil, right and wrong. These standards refer to values that are passed down from generation to generation and guide the conduct of individuals in their daily lives. (personal)

Ethics is a field of philosophy whose object of study is the principles that guide morality. In this sense, ethics is a philosophical reflection on morality, approaching the universal principles that govern the common good and coexistence between human beings in general. (common sense)

In my opinion about the musical, the issue of gods and monsters is not so different. For me, in that context, monsters and gods are the same thing, since they are outside the ideal of humanity, but this point may be mentioned later.

Metron is not a knowledge, it is, above all, the limit between impossibility and weakness.

We can see in several Greek myths that human beings like to cross this line, most stories end in tragedy because of this, human beings can also be called “Hybris” which is an excess, it is being hybrid, having two natures, acting in two ways, it is being in the Metron and trying to be something that one is not, because thinking that we can be more than men is arrogance, and arrogance is a human emotion, another story that exemplifies this well is the myth of Oedipus who tries to overcome his destiny given by the gods and ends up fulfilling it anyway.

Hybris is a Greek concept that can be translated as "everything that goes beyond the measure; "immoderation" and which currently alludes to excessive confidence, exaggerated pride, presumption, arrogance or insolence (originally against the gods), which often ends up being punished.

It is worth noting that hybris would in no way be a sin, in the concept of the word and the ideal current translation for it would be "Hamartia", which by chance is also no longer used in its original meaning because of the Catholic Church.

Now going to the interesting part because I was just giving context of terms.

In The Horse and the Infant, we 'meet' our beloved version of Odysseus, where during the Trojan War he states that everything he is doing is for his wife Penelope and his son Telemachus, using this as a way to inspire his men to carry out the massacre that he himself did not want to participate in, I think because of his moral nature, the proof is so much that in Homer's original Odyssey, he pretends to be crazy so as not to show up when called, unfortunately he is unmasked and forced to go.

We also see here that up until now Odysseus is still a very moral character, he has his reasons for being there, he, like the other warriors, has a family and his deepest desire is to return to them. So with this we can conclude that he is still just a man, he is human.

In the same song we see how far his morality goes, as he receives the divine mission to kill the young Trojan prince, Astyanax, who is just a baby, due to the threat that one day he will want revenge on him and his kingdom.

All of this creates doubts in Odysseus, about the morality of gods and men. Here we see him crossing the line and this whole text begins to be about ethics, as it is common sense that killing a child is a monstrous act, but for him not to kill means that his family will die in a more horrendous way later and he cannot let that happen.

Then we have the monologue in Just a Man, the best song, where we can really see the doubts mentioned earlier. And one detail that I find very interesting and that will be important for this text is that in Gigi's animatic, we can see Odysseus' "monster" being 'born' and its source is the baby and his doubts about whether he would really be a monster just for that, even though at that moment the baby is still just a human, the mission to kill him little by little makes him a monster due to the possibility that one day he himself will commit several atrocities.

It's fun for me to think that representing 'the monster' as a tree could be an allusion to the fact that trees take as long to grow as a monster takes to be formed by man.

I think you now understand part of Nietzsche's quote. Odysseus looking at his own reflection and not recognizing himself, seeing the monster he will become if he crosses the metronome is very well treated in several animatics, but the most visible is in Gigi's where he is not only referenced but shown as a completely different being both in attitudes and thoughts.

I'll just pause to say that I love how Gigi did the work of showing the tree growing in the shape of a skull, which could be the deaths that the monster will bring or that it is a macabre thing to do, I don't know, I just love this detail for some reason.

And also how I think that makes a point of showing that the real problem is not the baby but rather Odysseus' unethical thoughts developing because of his doubts.

Ok, end of the pause and start of a mini explanation.

I didn't think this analysis would be so long and in my original thought I was only going to end up mentioning a few songs and focusing more on "No Longer You" and "Monster" but it ended up getting out of control and listening to the musical again it seems like I can make a lot of connections that I hadn't thought of before but now I can't express them properly, so from now on there will be a gigantic gap in content that I might fill later in another post or by editing this one, but at the moment thinking too much about it is giving me a headache and I really wanted to be able to post this now along with the Wisdom Saga because it's something I did for fun from fan to fan and I know that now the fandom is busier. One day I swear I'll do a complete analysis relating song by song, but not today for the sake of my mental health.

End of explanation, subject change.

Going through his entire journey, Ody goes to the underworld after Tiresias who reveals that he will never return home, which makes him indignant, I think any human would be, how much he suffered to get there for nothing. Here we can see how Heraclitus fits into the prophet, and as much as I hate cutting philosophical phrases in half, I don't think I need to use the whole thing to make sense of it here, because the most well-known part of it is enough to get to the point discussed here, since it really won't be him who returns to Ithaca, but rather another man, a man haunted by his own past and by the ethics of his people.

There is no way a man who spent 20 years away from home, suffering for the divine and for his own mind, can be the same, because this is a human characteristic, humans are hybrid beings, which implies that we can change our own nature while gods and monsters will always follow the same line of thought, since they are perfect they do not need drastic changes to live as they are.

That's it. So finally we have the mental breakdown where Ody begins to accept that it doesn't matter if he is a monster to everyone, he did what was necessary. He looked into the abyss and was looked back. He becomes the monster, even if he compares himself to the other divine creatures, which I think he never really learned to differentiate from humans, because Ody my friend there is no way you can really reach the level of a cyclops or a god with a wounded ego, or a traumatized nymph, time makes things very trivial for them and let's face it you will not live even half as long as they do because you are just a mortal.

And I don't know how to make gifs so here are some prints to illustrate the last paragraph. But before that I wanted to thank you if you read this far, I know the ending was kind of bad but I'm emotionally tired, I hope I at least conveyed the idea that was in my head. Thank you and stream the new saga!!!!

(All arts belong to gigi!! go check out this amazing work!!!)

37 notes · View notes

ravenalla · 2 years ago

Text

Okay I swear this will be my last rant post before the next episode airs but I have to get it off my chest cause I keep seeing the argument made that people disappointed Din gave the darksaber away are forgetting the lack of plot in the previous seasons, which I very heavily disagree.

I can’t speak for everyone, but at least for me when I’m saying I’m disappointed Din did not become Manda’lor I am not saying I hated the adventure of the week side quest format they had. That’s what I liked best about the show! It was great in season 1 feeling like Din was just the random guy off on his own adventure with this baby he found, I would have loved for it to have kept that small space western feel. Season 3 becoming this big interconnected universe with a corrupted New Republic plot connecting to the sequels is what I was most worried about just because I personally don’t like that direction. The more they’ve tried to go the Andor route and make this show about the Galatic politics, the worst it’s become imo (we literally have two white dudes writing a plot point about droids liking being underclass and serving the soft democratic people that is ruled with the help of a former Nazi, but ohh it’s okay it’s Jack Black and he’s funny and the Space Nazi and the Space Nazi doctor are really sorry for what they did, look the New Republic is just as bad as the fascist imperials 🥺🥺)

What some people are not getting is that the darksaber is ALL. DIN. HAD. LEFT. There was no driving force or goal for him after episode 2, they reunited him with his child in a spin-off show, they have him redeem himself fairly easily without any emotional impact, and now they took away the opportunity to do one last interesting thing with him. Din does not have his own actions or thoughts throughout most of the season, and when he does it’s just retracing the character development they already gave him in previous seasons (i.e. the whole droid fiasco). He’s a plot device, meant to further Bo-Katan’s character and help her with her goals or have him in danger so she can save him. It was okay if Din did not become Manda’lor, but they can’t just make him having the darksaber out to be a huge deal, show him trying to learn how to train with it, and give it up so stupidly through a loophole just so Bo-Katan can lead again when she has done nothing to actually earn it or apologize for the way she disrespected Din’s entire culture again and again. She was a terrorist who has done a 180 into suddenly being an honorable character just because of a few action scenes, no introspection or interesting conflict between her and the covert about their differences, nothing about her actually thinking about her past mistakes, just the covert being there to look like dumbasses who settled on a dangerous planet where their children get eaten so Bo can lead missions, look a million times more competent in comparison, and suddenly be the one who deserves to lead.

There doesn’t have to be a big plot each episode, but it’s not being executed well like it was in the first two seasons. The goal was getting Grogu to a Jedi, and we were given the interesting side adventures on that journey. Din needs to find somewhere he can lay low, he goes to Sorgan and becomes tempted by a domestic life. Din needs credits, he takes a job with some old acquaintances and sees what kind of slimy person he could have been. Din needs to find other mandos to help him find a Jedi, he runs into a small town desperate for help with a Krayt Dragon and showcases his pride in being a Mandalorian but his respect for other cultures and his willingness to do the right thing. He travels to a planet ruled by an former Imperialist because the Jedi he was searching for was there and helps her to save a town both for their sake and his need to give his son the best life he can have. See the pattern? They were side adventures, but they weren’t a random hodgepodge of ideas, they fit the story and the tone, giving us interesting side characters and helping to develop our main characters. Din showed his leadership, his growing kindness, his frustrations, his annoyances, his fears, Grogu becomes more adventurous, vocal, and attached to who he’s starting to see as a father figure. They both aren’t talkative characters, but they had feelings and personalities we saw. They had moments between them that wasn’t just exposition for the plot or a push towards an action scene, it showed their lives and values, their relationships. Little moments like Din being happy to hear Grogu’s name, Cobb sharing his story and why he valued the armor, Omera talking with Din about his life and wondering if he could stay, Frog Lady wanting to get her eggs safely to her husband and Din comedically trying to make that happen. The story was driven by these characters decisions and their personalities.

Season 3, on the other hand, has taken away all the life of these side adventures in its goal to tie in a larger Star Wars narrative that connects to other shows. They are not character driven anymore, and instead the characters are being twisted and molded to do and say stuff that’ll get us from point A to point B instead of the other way around. The point of Din breaking his creed is not to see what that would mean for his identity or how he wants to live with Grogu by his side, the point is to take him to Mandalore so that he can ultimately get trapped and fall down a hole so Bo-Katan can see the Mythosaur. The point of Bo-Katan’s crew leaving her and her staying in a random castle for no reason doing nothing all day isn’t for her to recognize her past failings or show us what their relationship was like and what it meant to her, it’s to have an easy offscreen explanation so that she can come to the covert without anything challenging in the way. The point of Din’s coverts staying on a monster-infested planet where Paz’s son is kidnapped isn’t because it makes sense they’d be there or that Paz suddenly even has a son we’ve never seen before, it’s so they can put in CGI monsters they thought were cool and have Bo save the day so they can have a flimsy reason she does need to be leader again. The point of spending time with the covert and having random pirates attacking Nevarro wasn’t to develop the other mandalorians as actual characters, it was to have them accept Bo easily so that she can “walk both worlds” and give Carl Weather’s character more screentime. And so much more.

Things are happening, but it doesn’t matter whether they make sense or fit the characters anymore, because all the side quest are focused on is bending over backwards trying to make you believe this Bo deserves the darksaber narrative. Before that it wasn’t like the Covert was planning to take back Mandalore, Din wasn’t planning to take back Mandalore, Bo didn’t tell anybody what she saw so there was no real stakes for anybody. Nobody in the main plot has had any purpose as more than side characters besides her. Din may have been the main character, but the people he met on his journey didn’t just do stuff to contribute to his own character or finding a Jedi. Omera had her own goals, Cobb had his own goals, Fennec had her own goals, Boba had his own goals, and they all still worked well with the narrative without diminishing each other, Din developed on the way by learning from the other characters and them him. What the fuck does Din want this season? Paz? The Armorer? The answer is whatever will make it easiest for the plot to retake Mandalore and have Bo be the Manda’lor for these writers, despite it being shown previously they have no reason to care or like Bo-Katan.

Like, some character moments are there. Bo is changing. I’m not saying that’s not happening at all. But it’s being done in a way that is sabotaging every other aspect of the show to force this plot that they wanted, the sidequest are feeling duller because they aren’t for these characters to have fun adventures we get emotionally invested in that simultaneously furthers the actual main characters goal, it’s let’s just have a CGI dragon, let’s have Lizzo and Jack Black guest star, let’s have Zeb from Rebels be in there for no reason. Unless again you count Bo as the main character, but like honestly she’s not even having natural character development. She went from being an antagonistic ex-terrorist to suddenly being kind and charitable with hardly any buildup or insight into her feelings. It doesn’t feel organic. I know she lost everything, but they still made it seem like she blamed Din for it only to have her rescue him once and completely abandon that hostility. The best we really have gotten is Grogu remembering his past while with the armorer and setting up his future as a Mandalorian, but even that feels cheapened when the armor he was given isn’t even talked about with the person who he shares the symbol with him that signifies their relationship, making me think it’s just another merchandise decision.

We wanted Din to learn to rule because, even if we did have to say goodbye to the adventure of the week type format, it would have been in service of his character evolving into something he doesn’t think he deserves or is good at. It would have been the next step in his journey, accumulating everything he has learned, the growth he went through using both diplomacy and his skills as a fighter time and time again. Instead, they chose to really quickly ditch any of the conflicts he had so they could have him free to do this instead. If they had waited one more season, this could have possibly been done well imo. Din’s arcs could have been brought to a meaningful and satisfying conclusion, and then you could have made him and Bo-Katan become co-leads. It wouldn’t have mattered as much then if they decided to focus a little more on her. But instead they essentially abandoned Din’s story they’ve spent two seasons creating to go ahead and tell her own.

The side quest aren’t what people are complaining about. It’s that they have no meaning for our characters other than having everybody circling around Bo most of the time or creating some big connection to the sequel triology and setting up the Star Wats MCU, which wasn’t the style of writing this show did. I don’t care how many ways people want to argue against it, Din is not the main character in this season, which is not what they have been selling us all year, and he doesn’t even have any engaging story or arc as a side character either. That is the problem, and that is why these side quest and the lack of an actual plot do not work.

#the mandalorian #the mandalorian spoilers #the mandalorian season 3 #mando critical #rant #din djarin #bo katan kryze #grogu #hope this made sense

490 notes · View notes

sexiestwerewolf · 10 months ago

Text

my new Ninjago OC!

more information ↓

I haven't come up with a name for him yet bc I suck at those but I've got a backstory

- He was outcast by his species before the merge because of a reason I haven't fully flushed out yet (thinking of making it so that he can't do any shapeshifting at all and making it an entire allegory), but he deals with a lot of feelings of inadequacy because of this and he thinks he's failed as an Oni

- he was outcast before March of the Oni and was lost between realms trying to find a way back home to the first realm without the power of the darkness to guide him. essentially the realm crystal is the EASIEST way to travel realms but it isn't the only way, and he spent a lot of years alone

-When the merge happens he's forced to live in a world he doesn't understand at all and a lot of people during this time are struggling to figure things out. He manages to find a job at Chen's Noodle House and starts to enjoy the life as someone who serves food so eventually he leaves with enough money saved up and opens up his own restaurant

- I like the idea of someone gaining weight when they're happy bc he used to be really emaciated and could barely eat even 3 times a week due to how hard it was to survive but now he's got a healthy relationship with food and his body and he's generally a pretty sound guy and pretty mature considering things. It doesn't look like he's fat in the image but from experience an apron will hide a lot of that lol

- He does a lot of introspection and his outlook on life is that "it's complicated and messy but at least it's life," and he usually looks at things from a realistic perspective while hoping for the best.

-He still gets irrationally angry at a lot of things though and often he'll find himself taking it out on inanimate objects and then he'll feel bad about it afterwards. He doesn't do it a whole lot in front of people, especially customers, but if he's comfortable around you you'll see him swearing and breaking things (usually with his claws on accident) a lot more

- Meets Lloyd a few weeks after the merge when he just started his job at Chen's and initially Lloyd is weary at first because yk he's an Oni and Lloyd had subconsciously associated Oni with bad and everything wrong in his life, but [name I haven't come up with yet] is essential to something Lloyd is trying to figure out so they need to interact and Lloyd figures out through sheer power of being exposed to something that HEY you dumb idiot your ancestry isn't evil or bad

- He had severe issues for awhile with meeting people's expectations and he constantly ran himself ragged trying to keep himself in multiple places at once. He felt like he had to depend on only himself for a while because of the fact he let down his Oni tribe and because of the fact he lived so long in isolation away from others. When he's hired by Skylor he burns himself out within the first week because he doesn't take a break except to go home and sleep.

- Y y y es this is meant to be an OC shipped with Lloyd but they're both demisexual here bc I will always make my favs be on the ace spectrum no matter what

-Hes 21 when the merge happens and by the events of s1 he's 27 (2 years older than Lloyd). He was outcast by the Oni when he was 15 years old (around the events of season 1)

-fun fact, Oni still have pupils in my hc you just can't see them very well. they're kind of like the changelings from mlp where they do have pupils once you look closely but they blend in so well with their irises that you can hardly see them. most Oni eye colors are red, purple, or blue. some are occasionally orange, yellow, and pink. [name I haven't come up with yet] has purple eyes

- he has so much fur/hair (think kind of like mohair on a goat) that he has to stuff a lot of it in his shirt and then use pins to hold it in place and he spends like 30 minutes each day just combing it

- he works out every other day to help clear his mind and to calm himself down but Oni are naturally pretty big anyways and really strong

- despite the fact he knows how to cook he has the worst appetite known to man and will not hesitate to eat the nastiest things ever. I like to think that anytime Lloyd gets offered gross food (as he's somehow done a lot in the show) he pretends to "steal" it but he does genuinely enjoy every single food he comes across and it's not just something that comes from his life of being outcast it also comes from his Oni biology. Though, he seems to be a lot more inclined to eat certain things even for an Oni

if it's not poison, it's food!

- has abnormally large ears for most Oni and he can hear slightly better than most people. it's also another reason why he stretch himself too thin while working when he first started because he believed everything he heard needed his attention and he was constantly trying to get to multiple places and do many tasks all at once

okay now imma go to bed hehe this was actually really fun

-has a better work/life balance in the future at the very least lol so dw

-has digitigrade feet! they're not very exposed bc he wears baggy pants all the time but if you look down you'll see he's never wearing any shoes and his paws are just out

#lego ninjago #ninjago #lego ninjago fanart #ninjago oc #original character #lloyd garmadon #ninjago lloyd #fanart #art #ninjago dragons rising #dragons rising #its so me to come up with all this lore and never give my characters a name #oni #oni oc #rossartisting

59 notes · View notes

autismonauta · 21 days ago

Text

A Nauters essay: Gender, in my introspections???

Let’s just say a recent video focusing on the gender binary in video games has lead me to thinking about my own relationship to the gender business prior to the self discovery. Idunno, every game with a character creator I picked, even with my prior status as “some g-guy…” none were ever really that in depth. I value a solid creation system that actually lets you free style the mark of your character, ya know?

Conceptualizing the self through these games felt weird, in a way. Even odder still is way early on I’d just make my character white, despite myself being brown, I don’t exactly remember nor know why I did all that beforehand. Tho ever since I’ve imbibed that gender business I’ve actively gone back to older titles and remade my player character into a gal. Still, the options don’t really overlap in a satisfying fashion you know? Even in more current titles that are actually “trans-inclusive” ultimately still feel pretty rigid in their binary selections

So, as an enby girl thing, it’s left me pondering. Pondering very hard. I never felt like I truly represented myself in a way—disconnected from the character I controlled. I thought the girl types were always rad and while I don’t recall being made fun of for my choices I always did wonder why that was cause for ridicule. Like what’s the deal here, that sinking feeling? Back during like the 20s I wanna say is when I truly let go off what I thought I know about the self and went by “he/they” followed by switching to my current “she/they” style a year or so later, maybe a few months later? My prized primary and secondary slots, yes!

So really, at the end of the day, can we feel truly represented in the video games we play? Being more femme aligning has really given me a lot to think about here. It’s rare I really feel “seen”, not even getting started in my ethnicity cuz like fuck all acknowledged El Salvador or Honduras which still steams me something quite fruity, know what I’m saying? Just…I wanna feel seen, damn—is that truly too much to ask?

Still tryna get a hold on my sense of self but I stand proud in who I am irregardless of any potential consequences. To live is the finest beauty one can do. Much love y’all. May more Nauta essays come in the future; assuming I can think of stuff to write about.

#writing #nauta essay #first one babyyy #lgbt #trans

19 notes · View notes

bamber344 · 21 days ago

Text

Human Connection

prev/next

masterlist

Time for gay!!

as stated in a previous post, this chapter is 6000 words long, and almost half of that is smut. If that is your thing, hooray!! If that's not your thing, I apologise. There is some important introspection stuff during the smut scene, so I think my solution is I'll do my best to summarise it in the end notes for those of you who decide to skip it.

Anyway, all that aside, enjoy!

CWs: Explicit sexual content, references to previous injuries (dislocation), references to abuse, minor cosmic horror

Human Connection

“Get up to anything interesting today?” Brianna asked, puffing as she exerted herself on the treadmill.

“Mm, not really,” I replied. “Just the usual. Catching bad guys.”

“Do you ever do anything other than catching bad guys?”

“I get two days off of patrol a week, usually dedicated to more specialised training.”

Brianna was silent for a second. “Jeez, girl. You need a break. Some time to kick your feet up and just relax.”

She was probably right, but for some reason I still felt the need to defend myself. “I mean, I did get a ton of time off after I was shot, so I probably don’t need any more anytime soon.”

Brianna sighed. “Not exactly what I meant, Jordie.”

It had been a few days since our first encounter here in the gym, and we’d been meeting up to run together every day since. Spending time with her made me happy; the compliments and jokes – even if I didn’t always get them – could make me smile even when I was feeling awful, and every now and then she’d say something that would once again trigger that same feeling I got between my legs our first time running together. It was probably the main reason why I kept coming back, even after the incident with Vivienne and Rishta. Aside from my mission, of course.

Speaking of those two, everything was cleared up, thankfully. Well, just about, anyway. I ran into Rishta again and tried to apologise, but he said it was okay. Apparently, his shoulder wasn’t bothering him much, which was good. In regards to Vivienne, I hadn’t been lucky enough to see her. I wanted to ask her more about my shoulders, and maybe… some other stuff, too. She seemed to have a pretty good grasp on what was ‘normal,’ and apparently I could use a few lessons on that. Who knew that frequent shoulder dislocations weren’t actually a thing everyone went through?

“So, what did you mean?” I asked.

Brianna paused. “Are you doing anything after this?”

“No, why?”

“Well, how about we hang out in my room? I can show you how to actually relax. And… maybe some other stuff, too.”

Well, I’d never say no to spending more time with her, and this seemed like the right direction to go in for my mission. “Sure. What are we gonna do?”

“Oh, you know. Listen to some music. Chat. Maybe… we could fool around a bit?”

“Sounds good to me,” I replied. I wasn’t really sure what she meant by ‘fooling around,’ but I was sure I could figure it out.

“Awesome!” Brianna exclaimed. “Well, what do you say we finish up here, shower, and then we can head back to mine?”

“Okay.”

She smiled. “Can’t wait.”

—

“So, this is my place. What do you think?”

I looked around the space. It wasn’t much bigger than my quarters back at the facility, with a bed in the corner, a desk, a couple sets of drawers and not much else. It didn’t even have a shower like mine did. Though, I supposed the showers we just visited were sufficient enough to not need one in here. It didn’t have a toilet either, though. Presumably, that was a similar situation to the showers.

“Reminds me of my quarters,” I said.

“Yeah?” Brianna replied, walking over to her bed and sitting down on it. She was clearly familiar enough with the space to not need to use her cane. “I know it’s not much, but hey, it’s free accommodation. I ain’t gonna turn up my nose at it. Come, sit down.”

She patted the space next to her and I did as she asked, settling down on the bed. It was plusher than I expected, even through my armour.

“You know you… don’t have to keep your armour on here, right?”

“Sorry?”

She leaned back, lying on the bed. “Do you wear it in your room at home?”

“...No.”

“Then why keep it on here? I heard you took it off for your duel with Rishta, and if you’re worried about me seeing your face, well…” She gestured vaguely at her eyes. “Blind as hell, y’know? You don’t have to if you’re uncomfortable, but it might be easier to relax, which, if you recall, was kinda the whole point of this.”

No matter how I tried to rationalise it, I just couldn’t find fault with her words. Father hadn’t minded about the fight with Rishta, so surely he wouldn’t mind here either, right? The threat of punishment weighed heavily in my mind, but… She was right, she couldn’t see my face. I would actually be able to take my armour off and relax with another person for once without technically breaking any of Father’s rules. I couldn’t pass the opportunity up.

“I suppose I could,” I said, getting up and stripping my armour off, piece by piece.

“Dope,” Brianna said. She pulled out her phone as I got undressed, and spoke into it. “Play ‘Swanky time’”

“Playing playlist: Swanky time,” a monotone voice replied. Music started playing out of the phone, and she placed it back on her nightstand.

Once I’d gotten rid of all of my armour, I sat back on the bed, bouncing a couple times as I landed.

“Oh, wow,” I muttered, flopping backwards to lay next to Brianna.

“Comfy?”

“How is it so soft? My bed’s practically concrete compared to this!”

Brianna’s fingers brushed against my arm and my breath caught, half-expecting pain from the sudden touch and half-surprised by how good the gentle contact felt. She laughed. “Well, from what I gather, you’ve been living pretty militaristically up until now, so that’s not too surprising. You don’t have to worry about any of that right now, though. Just relax and enjoy yourself. You want some candy?”

I cocked my head to the side. “What’s that?”

Brianna sucked in a breath and nodded. “Memory issues, right. You’ll see.”

She reached over to her drawers and opened the top one, pulling out a colourful plastic bag of something.

“How can you tell where it is so easily if you can’t see?” I asked.

“Blunt as always,” she said with a toothy smile. She held up her hand, revealing that her pinky and ring fingers were both missing. “My power lets me turn my body into smoke. It’s helpful for a lot of things, like squeezing into tight places, or helping me get my bearings just a little more accurately by feeling around over a wider area. It’s not perfect, obviously, or I wouldn’t have to use my cane, but it’s useful in small spaces like this where I’m familiar.” Her fingers reappeared, and she plucked something from inside the bag, putting it in her mouth before getting another and offering it to me. It was small and red, vaguely shaped like someone was trying to imitate a strawberry, and covered in white powder.

“Try it,” Brianna said.

I shrugged, putting it in my mouth and biting down.

“Oh!” I exclaimed, looking at Brianna. “It’s so sweet!”

She grinned. “You like it?”

I nodded. “Yeah!”

Her grin grew wider. “Here’s something else you might like.”

All of a sudden, Brianna leaned towards me, placed a hand on my cheek, and pressed her lips to mine.

Woah.

I sucked in a breath, heart jumping, my whole body suddenly lighting up with electricity and freezing me in place. It was just like that dream I had of Madeline all those months ago, only it was real, and I didn’t know what to do. The swirling in my belly felt like fire licking my insides, spreading to the ends of each limb and making my hands shake. Whatever this was, I never wanted it to end.

Unfortunately for me, just as suddenly as she’d moved in, Brianna pulled back after a few seconds; an expression of disappointment on her face.

“S-sorry, I… I think I might have misread some signals-”

“Do that again,” I said frantically.

Brianna blinked, processing my request. She tilted her head and smiled, looking slightly confused. “Are you actually gonna kiss back this time?”

Kiss. That’s what it was. Unimportant. “Y-yeah.”

She chuckled. “Well then. Take two, here we go.”

Brianna moved in again, and this time I was ready for her, parting my lips to meet hers just like I did in that dream with Madeline. We connected and the electricity came back in force, shivers rocketing up and down my spine, all the way to the tips of my toes. Her hands roamed across my body, finally free of its cage in my armour, and I kissed her back, just like she asked. I didn’t really know what I was doing, but matching her movements seemed to do the trick, as she smiled against my mouth before gently parting my lips further with her tongue.

I whimpered as that fire in my belly flushed under my skin in response, my vagina tingling with need. Brianna pushed me onto my back, breaking the kiss for a split second as she clambered on top of me before fiercely claiming my mouth again. Ordinarily I’d be panicked underneath someone else’s weight, but here I felt only a desire for more. I tried to copy the thing she did with her tongue, but it was useless against her onslaught, and only resulted in her responding by pushing her tongue further in, licking into my mouth. Failing that, all I could do was wrap my arms around her and hold on for dear, beautiful life.

She let out a happy moan, stroking the scar on my face with her thumb. Her other hand snaked beneath my tanktop, gently resting on the bare, burning skin of my belly. I clenched my abs, once again expecting pain for just a moment, before settling back with the overwhelming relief of the realisation that she wasn’t going to hurt me. Warmth mixed with the electricity and the scalding fire inside me, and I whined into her mouth. My hips rocked upwards of their own accord, seeking any sort of stimulation to relieve the building tension between my legs. Brianna noticed this, grinning against my lips, and pressed her thigh right where I needed it.

“G-aah!” I keened, breaking away from the kiss for a much-needed breath. Brianna needed no such intermission, kissing along my cheek and down to my jaw.

“Your sounds are so cute,” she muttered, gently nibbling my skin and eliciting more of those sounds she apparently loved so much. Her hand trailed up underneath my tanktop, cupping my breast and softly squeezing. “This okay?”

“Yeh… Yesss,” I moaned. I gasped as her fingers found my nipple and pinched it, prompting me to arch my back, pressing myself further against her hand. That was a new feeling, but I definitely didn’t hate it.

She hummed in apparent satisfaction, lowering her head again to continue nipping and sucking at my neck. The sharp sensation was almost overwhelming in its pleasure, and I couldn’t keep myself from babbling.

“G-guh, g-god, f-f-feels… s-so good…”

Brianna laughed. “Damn, you’re sensitive. Is this your first time?”

“F-first time… what?” I gasped out as she rolled my nipple between her fingers.

“First time having sex.”

“Wh-what’s… sex?”

Brianna paused, poking her head up. “Wait, seriously?”

I panted, half-grateful for the chance to catch my breath, half-annoyed at the sudden disappearance of all that pleasure. “What?”

Brianna seemed to realise something, then groaned, rubbing her face. “Oh fuck, of course. Your memory issues.” She looked back up, touching my arm. “You don’t know what sex is, do you?”

I slowly shook my head. “No. I… I’ve never heard that word before.”

“Do you at least know about consent?”

“...No.”

She sighed, leaning down and resting her head on my chest.

“Are… Are we gonna keep going?” I asked.

“No. Not until I get you up to speed, at the very least. I don’t feel okay about doing this otherwise.”

…Aw man.

—

“Did you get all that?”

I blinked, trying to retain everything I’d just learned. “Uh, yeah. I think so.”

Brianna had explained everything to me. Sex, consent, the whole package. Sex was something two people did when they were attracted to each other, similar to what I’d figured out how to do that night after my deployment (which was called masturbation, apparently), only with another person. But, according to consent, people had to agree to it. I supposed that made sense. I wouldn’t want someone I didn’t like touching me at all, let alone between my legs. Sebastian Beaumond appeared in my mind right then. He seemed like the type to do that without consent. But it did raise a question.

“So… When people touch me, even though I don’t want them to, that’s bad?”

Brianna nodded. “Yup.”

“But… That happens all the time in training. Father or the trainers will do all sorts of things to me, and I… I’ve never liked it. But that’s just training. That’s what it’s like.”

Brianna grunted, seeming a little uncertain. “I… don’t know quite if that applies. I mean, if you’re doing combat training, people are presumably gonna hit you. That’s kinda part of the deal. But… I suppose if you didn’t agree to the deal in the first place, then it’s wrong.”

Oh. Well, I guessed it was fine then. I owed Father for saving me, and this was how I was paying him back. That meant I agreed, right? The thought was… oddly disappointing. That probably applied to punishments, too. I agreed to them, so… I shouldn’t be upset.

Though… Vivienne said my shoulder dislocations weren’t normal. Maybe… Maybe I should talk about this with her before making up my mind. Just to be safe.

“So,” Brianna said, threading her fingers through mine. Her hand was warm. “Do you want to keep going?”

For so much of my life, being touched meant being hurt. Punched, slapped, cut, burned, whatever. But Brianna’s touch was something completely different. Something new and exciting. Something safe. All that knowledge about sex and stuff was a lot to take in, but knowing all that didn’t change how much I still yearned for that same safe, gentle, positive touch from before. The only person who ever touched me even close to anything like that was Vivienne, and now that I was actually experiencing it properly, I was beginning to realise just how much I’d been missing it in my life.

There was no universe in which I’d say no. I needed more.

I nodded. “Yeah. I really do.”

Brianna smiled. “Great. Since it’s your first time, we should probably take it a bit slower than we were before.”

That made sense. That first bit was a little overwhelming.

“Can we kiss?” I asked.

She chuckled. “Of course. And, please, let me know if you ever want to stop, for any reason. It’s okay.”

She was being a lot more careful than before. If I had to guess, figuring out that I had no idea about any of this stuff scared her a bit. Oddly, it just made me feel even safer. “Okay.”

Brianna nodded, reaching up to cradle my face before gently kissing me, far softer and slower than before. I sighed, reciprocating, and we carefully laid back down on the bed; this time with me on top, straddling her lap. Her hands trailed down my sides, settling at my hips. We stayed like that for a while, just enjoying the moment, before I decided to escalate a little with my tongue. Brianna moaned at the contact, tugging on the hem of my tanktop.

She pulled back, though not so far that we weren’t still completely intertwined. “Do you wanna get undressed?”

I nodded, sitting up and all-but ripping my tanktop and underwear off, throwing them on the floor.

“Well?”

“Oh! Uh, I just did.”

Brianna paused, then laughed. “Eager, aren’t you?” She reached up, caressing my bare abdomen, before trailing down to my thigh. I shivered at the touch. “Suppose I should join you, then.”

She wiggled out from under me and quickly stripped down to nothing, leaving her bare form on full display.

“Wow,” I muttered. She was beautiful.

“Like what you see, huh?” She grinned.

Instead of responding, I followed my instincts and moved back into her, kissing her with the same intensity she kissed me with before.

“I’ll take that as a yes,” she gleefully whispered in the scant few moments our lips were apart.

I just grunted in response. The feeling of our bodies pressed together – skin-to-skin contact with nothing in between – was so intoxicating I could barely think. I just wanted to make Brianna feel good in just the same way she made me feel good earlier. To that end, I pushed her onto her back and returned to my position straddling her hips. Her hands explored my body, stroking, squeezing, pinching as she felt her way between my breasts, thighs, and butt.

I gasped at a particularly tight squeeze to my ass, and used the momentary separation to move my mouth over to Brianna’s neck, kissing and sucking her skin. She groaned, holding me tighter as her head tilted back to make more room. I didn’t let up, trailing my hand down her chest to grope her breast. My heart fluttered in my chest as I felt up the soft flesh. It was still hard to believe this was actually happening.

“Are… A-are you copying what I did earlier?” she breathed out between pleasured gasps.

I paused. “...Is that bad?”

She laughed. “No, not at all. But, if you wanna really make me feel good, how about you try something a bit further south?”

Brianna grabbed the hand that was cupping her breast and pulled it down between her legs. The warmth radiating from her vagina was intense, as was the wetness soaking the inside of her thighs. I instinctively swallowed as a wave of heat flushed under my skin.

“You said you’ve touched yourself before?” she asked.

“Y-yeah?”

“Then you already know what to do.”

Oh. Yeah, that made a lot of sense. Same anatomy, and all that. I smiled, leaning back in to nip at her neck while my hand got to work with the familiar motions.

“There you go…” Brianna moaned as I started circling her clit with my fingers. She stroked back and forth through my hair, occasionally gripping, gasping and jutting her hips upwards into my hand as her pleasure spiked. Satisfaction tingled throughout my body at the sight and sound of her enjoyment. This was it; this was exactly where I was meant to be.

I went on like that for a little while, just basking in the sounds she was making, before dipping my fingers lower and teasing her entrance. Her legs parted further, making room, and I took the invitation, slipping two fingers inside of her.

She groaned, deep and primal, digging her fingernails into the meat of my shoulder. “Fff… Fuck, Jordie… Keep that up…”

I wasn’t one to disobey orders, especially when I was actually making someone feel good, instead of hurting them. Maintaining a steady rhythm, I thrusted my fingers in and out of Brianna’s vagina, rubbing against her inner wall in the way that always made me buck and writhe with pleasure. Sure enough, Brianna was barely holding on, rolling onto her side to wrap herself around me as I fingered her harder and faster. Her moans echoed right into my ear, her hot breath making me shiver. I’d long since given up on kissing her neck, instead resting my head on her shoulder as I focused my efforts down below.

It wasn’t long before the telltale signs of Brianna’s approaching orgasm became clear. Her breathing picked up; her moans rising in pitch and volume. Just a little further, and…

“Oh, fuck!”

There we go.

Brianna clung to me as the tremors hit, her thighs quivering violently. Her legs clamped shut, keeping my hand in place as I pushed her through the climax. Honestly, I couldn’t have moved away if I wanted to, with the way that she was squeezing me.

Finally, the orgasm subsided. Brianna let go of me as I pulled my fingers out and flopped lifelessly onto her back, panting. I smiled, resting my head on her outstretched arm and watching her chest rise and fall with every breath. I could’ve stared at it forever… Though, in the meantime, I needed to do something about the wetness soaking my hand.

Well, it wouldn’t be the first time I licked my fingers clean after a fingering. The only difference was that this was on someone else instead of myself.

Hmm, Brianna’s tasted a bit different than mine. I wondered why.

“Damn, Jordyn,” she said with a laugh once she’d finally caught her breath.

“Did I do good?” I asked.

“Good? You did great, girl. Seriously, if I tried to keep up that pace that consistently my hand would be cramping for the next two days.”

“Well,” I said, pride and giddiness filling my belly. “All my stamina training had to pay off somehow, right?”

Brianna laughed again. “Sure.” She rolled over and kissed me on the forehead, then the lips. “May I return the favour?”

Oh. I’d been so caught up in pleasuring her, I’d completely forgotten about the heat amassing between my own legs. Now that it had been called attention to, however, it became impossible to ignore. Sweat prickled along my skin at the thought, my stomach swirling enough to make me dizzy. “Y-yes please.”

She grinned. “Well then. Allow me to show you a new technique.”

Brianna moved in and kissed me for a long, feverish moment before parting and moving down to my neck. There she laid down a trail of fiery, lingering kisses until she found just the right spot to send sparks shooting through my body with every delicate touch of her lips. Her target located, Brianna focused in on it, sucking and biting until I was writhing breathlessly in the sheets. Just when I thought it was over, she moved back in on a new spot, and I was right back where I started.

Finally, after about three or four repeats of that, Brianna apparently decided she’d had enough of making me whine and squirm from my neck, and continued her trail of kisses down my body and to my chest. Her hands caressed up my body, cupping both of my breasts and squeezing them.

“You have nice boobs,” she muttered against my skin, before licking a fiery stripe up the underside of my breast, making me yelp. “Not too big, not too small.” She took my nipple into her mouth, sucking on it and lathing her tongue around my areola. I jerked, arching up into her as the breath left my body. After a long moment, she let it go. “Soft, good squishiness. What more could a girl ask for?” She sank her teeth into the meat of my breast and I hissed, slowly releasing it as the sensation buzzed through me. Somehow Brianna was able to make pain feel good.

“Y-you too…” I whispered, my ears ringing.

Brianna laughed, still moving lower along my body, kissing all the way. “Thanks.”

She pulled back as she reached the bottom of my belly, running her hands down my thighs, so so close to where I needed them, but not quite.

“You ready?” she asked.

“Ready for what?”

She cocked her head with a sly grin. “This.”

Her hand slid down through my pubic hair, and she gently pried my labia apart with two fingers before moving in with her tongue, licking all the way from perineum to clit. I jerked, bucking my hips as she hit the sensitive bundle of nerves, but she held me down, going to work like she’d trained all her life for it.

“Oh… Oh god,” I moaned, dropping my head back on the pillow, gripping the sheets and doing my very best not to absolutely scream. The feeling was indescribable, morphing me from functional human to writhing, gasping mess in a matter of seconds. Brianna hummed against me as I helplessly rutted into her mouth, and the vibration sent thousands of tiny sparks shooting through my body. I wasn’t sure how long I could last like this, but time quickly became irrelevant as I closed my eyes and succumbed to the pleasure electrifying every nerve.

For all I knew, it could have been hours that Brianna was stretching me thin with nothing more than her tongue, but given how worked up I already was, it was far more likely to be minutes or even seconds. Regardless, eventually the pleasure, combined with the sight of her between my legs, combined with the obscene sounds of her mouth against my sex, was too much for me to bear. My resolve broke and I came, thighs trembling as I cried out a broken keen of ecstasy. Brianna pushed me through it until the last of the quakes passed and I was left limp and satisfied, spread out across the bed.

Brianna kissed my thigh before crawling back up to lay next to me, and I immediately rolled into her, yearning to be held. She accepted my silent request and wrapped her arms around me, pulling me onto her chest. I sighed, nuzzling against her as a sudden drowsiness rocked my system. I wanted to stay in this moment forever. The facility had never seemed more cold and uninviting than it did in this moment, embraced by warmth and affection. No one at the Union wanted to hurt me. They wouldn’t give me orders or tell me to do things I didn’t want to do.

I’d never felt like this before, I realised in that moment. In all 16 odd months of my living memory, I’d never felt anything even remotely like this. My entire body buzzed with endorphins and giddiness. I felt totally, completely safe. I felt… cared for.

Maybe…this was where I should be. Not for any mission or whatever it was that Father wanted of me, but… for myself. Despite the hiccups I’d ran into, and despite how nervous I still was around many of the heroes, I was happier at the Union than I’d ever been in the facility. Yes, I still owed him for saving my life, and I could never, ever repay that debt, but… How much more of myself did I have to give him before he was satisfied?

“So,” Brianna whispered. “Was it everything you’d hoped for?”

I chuckled, smiling against her skin. “I’m not sure I was ‘hoping’ for anything when I came here, but… Yeah. It was great.”

“Well, we’ll have to do it again sometime, then.”

Excitement fluttered in my chest at the thought. “Yeah.”

“Though – and, sorry, I really should’ve mentioned this earlier, but I forgot – you should know that I don’t do romance. So, if that was what you were looking for, sorry.”

“I… don’t really know what that is,” I muttered.

Brianna chuckled. “Makes sense. Well, it’s kinda hard for me to describe, since I don’t experience it, but from what I can gather, you’ve got three types of love: familial, platonic, and romantic. Each of them can be just as strong as each other, but they all feel a bit different. For example, I love my mom, but I also love Vivienne. My mom’s family, and Viv’s my best friend. Obviously I don’t feel the same way about them, but that doesn’t mean I don’t care for either of them any less. With romance, that’s just another type of love you can experience. Generally, people can have a lot of friends or family, but romantic love is a bit more picky. It can feel a bit more possessive, or intense. You can feel it for a few people, or just one person. You want to be with that person all the time. You’re always thinking about them, and when you do you feel all warm and gooey inside or whatever. Granted, everything I’ve just said can also apply to a regular old friend as well, so it’s not really an exact science.”

I frowned. “Then what’s the difference?”

“If you ask me, there is no difference. Us humans like to categorise things, and these separate types of love are just another set of labels we arbitrarily decided to put on things to help ourselves understand it better. Functionally, they’re all mostly the same. We’re friends, and we just fucked. Vivienne and I fuck when we need to blow off steam, too. But, our amatonormative society would tell you that people only fuck when they’re in romantic love with each other. But that’s bullshit. You can do whatever you want whenever, forever. If it’s fun, why the hell wouldn’t you? Of course, like I said, I don’t experience romantic love, so if there is a difference in how it actually feels, I can’t tell you. I’ve just been going off what other people have told me. Go ask Vivienne or something. That girl’s a hopeless romantic; you’ll be in just the right place.”

I laughed at her attitude, despite not understanding at least half of what she was saying. “Okay.”

“The point is; if you’re looking for a romantic relationship with me, then you’re out of luck.”

If this was what friendship was like, then I was more than satisfied with that. “Nah, this is perfect.”

She hummed, stroking my back and tracing her fingers along my scars. “Good. I think so, too.”

All that sounded pretty interesting, though. Maybe I should go and ask Vivienne. I still needed to touch base with her to make sure we were okay after the incident with Rishta. She and Brianna were the only two people I felt like I could really trust around here. I’d gotten to spend a lot of time with Brianna now; gotten to know her better and get comfortable with her, and I wanted to do the same with Vivienne. I wanted to be able to just exist around her again, without the shadow of her uncle looming over me. Though, maybe that was too much to ask.

“How’d you get these scars on your back?” Brianna asked.

“Made a mistake. Those were my lesson,” I replied.

“...You say some very worrying things sometimes, you know that?”

“What do you mean?”

Brianna was silent for a minute. “Don’t worry about it,” she muttered.

She sounded tired. It was probably getting late. I needed to get back to the facility soon, as much as the thought pained me with how comfortable I was in that moment. I closed my eyes. Just a few more minutes…

Come here, little shadow.

My eyes shot open, head suddenly pounding. The voice came from everywhere at once, rocketing through my brain like a jackhammer. Something in my gut tugged, trying to pull me out of the room. I needed to follow it.

“Jordyn? Are you okay? You got tense.”

I sat up, climbing over Brianna to get off the bed and gather my clothes. “S-sorry, I just remembered I need to get home.”

“Oh. Okay, uh… can I… walk you out of the building?”

“No, that’s fine.” I paused my scramble, turning back to look at her, even though she couldn’t see me. “Thanks for tonight. Seriously.”

She smiled. “No problem, Jordyn. Get home safe, okay?”

I nodded. “Okay.”

I quickly pulled my underwear on and donned my armour, leaving Brianna’s room as soon as I was ready. The pull was like a physical thing, squirming around inside me as it led me through corridor after corridor.

Come, child. Creature of shadow and science and kin. Free It from Its bonds, and It shalt grant your deepest desire.

The pounding in my head became incessant. Something leaked out of my nose, and I tasted iron. The pull got stronger and stronger as I approached the source. The air felt thick, electrified, even as the hallways I travelled through became less and less illuminated; lights flickering and then failing completely. Dust lined the floors and the walls. No one had been this way for a long time.

I came to a door. It was old; older than the rest of the building, at least, and of a completely different design. It was made entirely of metal; rusted, and several inches thick. A valve sat in the centre; no doubt its opening mechanism. Strange symbols lined the doorframe, glinting in the light, despite the lack of a light source.

Close now. Come.

I grabbed the valve.

“Jordyn, was it?”

All of a sudden, everything snapped back into clarity. The pounding was gone, along with the echoing voice. In my hands was a metal valve, attached to a door I'd never seen before. If not for my helmet’s night vision, it would’ve been completely pitch black. How did I get here?

I turned around. There was an elderly woman there, in a wheelchair. Something about her reminded me of Father.

“Who are you?” I asked.

“My name is Siobhan. I’m Ashley’s mother. May I ask what you’re doing down here?”

I looked around. I was in a dusty, dark hallway. “I… I don’t know. I can’t remember.”

Siobhan nodded. “The Godling called you here. It wants you to release It.”

Oh. That tracked with what I remembered of the past few minutes. A raging headache, hallways, and missing memories. “Is… Is it behind that door?”

“Yes. Sealed below centuries ago, the fortifications of Its prison growing along with the advancement of technology. You won’t get through that door by yourself, that’s for sure.”

“How’d you know I was down here? How can you even see me? It’s pitch black.”

Siobhan raised her eyebrows and looked up. “Hm. Ashley needs to get the lights fixed.” She looked back down, in my direction but not quite at me. “To answer your first question, I felt it. Ever since I was born, I’ve been able to sense other peoples’ thoughts and feelings. I believe you young people call it a ‘power.’ When the Godling influences a mind, the mind ceases to act in a normal and recognisable fashion. Like the Godling itself, it becomes a beacon of incomprehensibility. And as such, as long as that mind is within my range, that beacon is unmissable to me. This isn’t the first time this has happened, and it won’t be the last. Such is the way of things, setting up an organisation right over the tomb of an eldritch god.

“To answer your second question, I can’t see you at all. I’m blind. Unlike our dear Brianna, I lost my sight as I aged, along with the rest of my body.” She patted her legs. “Brianna has been a great help in learning how to not die of boredom without my vision.” Siobhan laughed good-naturedly.

That made sense. I sighed. “This isn’t the first time the Godling has targeted me. Is… is that normal, too?”

She took a deep breath, releasing it slowly. “I sense much pain and turmoil within you. The Godling preys on hurt and weakness. It’s much easier to tempt a desperate person to do things than someone who’s well-off. Not to say that doesn’t happen, of course, but those who are struggling are usually an easier target. It offered you a wish, didn’t it? That It would fulfil your deepest desire?”

That did ring a bell. “Y-yeah, I think so.”

She nodded. “That’s what It offers every time It calls someone down here. Pretty tempting, huh? I imagine it must be difficult to turn down, what with the struggle you’re currently going through.”

A wish, fulfilling my deepest desire… What would I even pick? “Is the wish real?”

“Yes. Legend states that Divine beings are unable to lie. If that is what It offers, that’s what you’ll get for freeing It. But no wish could ever be worth the devastation and destruction that would follow should the Godling ever be released from Its prison. The world as we know it would end, and humanity would be subjugated under Its will, if not wiped out completely for what we did to It. I’d advise against listening to the voice in your head next time.”

“Wow. That’s, uh… pretty intense.”

She chuckled. “Yes, that’s one word for it. Now, let’s not hang around this dusty old crypt any longer. Would you be a dear and wheel me back to my room?”

“Of course,” I replied, grabbing her wheelchair and starting back down the corridor. “You may have to give me directions, though.”

“Pfft, yes, just ask the blind woman for directions. That’ll go well.” I clamped my mouth shut. This old woman was snappy.

Taglist: @steelandblood @sapphicwhump @urnumber1star @alsolucakairomi @thataquaticwhumper

@iamheretohurt @anoyedartist @dontyoubleedoutonme @seastarblue @lettherebepain

@bacillusinfection

If I had a penny for every time I had a smut chapter that concluded with some eldritch nonsense, I'd have two pennies, which isn't a lot, but it's weird that it's happened twice.

SUMMARY FOR THOSE WHO SKIPPED: (also, fyi in case it wasn't clear, the scene is over with the paragraph that starts: 'Brianna kissed my thigh.' Just in case you skipped more than you meant to.) Brianna makes her move on Jordyn, Jordyn reciprocates. They then simultaneously realise Jordyn has no clue what sex is. Brianna takes some time to inform her about sex and consent, and Jordyn almost makes some connections about consent and how Andreas treats her, but not quite, though she resolves to follow up on it with Viv. upon being prompted to continue, Jordyn realises that this is some of the only gentle, positive touch she's ever received in her life, and she enthusiastically starts the deed again, desperate for more. From then on it is mostly gay gay gay until the aforementioned paragraph, where things get introspective again.

This chapter was certainly an experience to write lol. Next time, we're back to our regularly scheduled whump, I prommy ;)

Thanks for reading! Let me know what you thought in a comment or reblog! It's super appreciated :)

#project genesis whump series #whump writing #whumpblr #creative writing #writeblr #writing #whump #sapphic writing #nsft

12 notes · View notes