#what it is that you feed the machine. that’s probably how they are pitching to some investors to get this money

[gwyoi]

The ads on Twitter are insane because all the real companies left but there’s so much stuff there that’s legally dubious I don’t know how they get away with platforming it? I just saw an ad for AI glasses and one of the uses was to record meetings and use that data to learn and help you with work shit but there are laws about recording people especially company data like the whole thing is a massive security risk. not to mention it won’t work but whatever.

[llatimeria]

fear mongering about new tech stuff is so fucking frustrating because it leads to people completely losing the plot about what they're actually mad at and the real problems in the world.

like, NFTs are not bad because they're collectable and tradeable pngs. collecting and trading art rules and has probably existed since the first moment a human made a piece of art that could feasibly be handed to another human. NFTs are bad because cryptocurrency is a power-guzzling scam pitched by people smart enough to know it's worthless to people who want to pretend they're just as smart as those people because they have too much money.

AI isn't bad because it's a computer that makes art. that in and of itself is completely and utterly morally neutral. it's a complete nonissue and I can't believe the people who romanticize things like the Mars rovers and Voyager sattelites aren't all over COMPUTER THAT DRAWS THINGS FOR YOU or COMPUTER THAT WRITES A LITTLE STORY FOT YOU as a super cute anthropomorphizeable phenomena.

the problem with AI is that corporate behemoths, who either don't understand the technology or do and don't care, are firing actual people in favor of using AI and even this is nuanced. In creative fields it's obvious horseshit, but in every other field it's slightly more complicated horseshit - we should be striving for a world free from dumbass labor, but we also live under capitalism and a person's ability to feed themselves and their families is tied to the amount of work they do so, unfortunately, they depend on doing that dumbass labor that they probably don't like and would rather be spending their time doing literally anything else, like spending time with the families they're performing dumbass labor to feed.

Not to mention a lot of creative AIs were built with scraped datasets taken nonconsentually from artists and writers (and imo that's also kind of a nothingburger - are you really materially harmed by someone looking at your art and being inspired by it, even if that "someone" is a machine? why do you care if i don't care if my work is used in training data? what would you say if i told you that, if asked nicely, i'd enthusiastically give an AI programmer permission to use my art and writing in their training sets so they can better understand how these programs work?), a significant privacy issue -- creators should have the final say over what is done with their art -- and actively making their programs worse by including junk and irrelevant data. AI is dangerous because it's been unleashed on an unsuspecting public without enough caution and safeguards by its creators, but what's done is done and now we just have to figure out what to in this reality rather than getting stuck on what we should have done.

can we please. Just. keep ourselves on the fucking plot with this shit, before we get people thinking that it's evil to have your cancer diagnosed by a computer program who can catch it way faster than a human doctor could, or that it's a problem to SELL AND TRADE ART, or that we should really stop researching the shit that eases the burden of dumbass labor because some people reaaaallly neeeeeeed to do dumbass labor for money when we could just as easily have those people do less dumbass labor with all the time and energy we're saving offloading dumbass labor to computers instead of making a poor schmuck scan documents day in and day out

[auckie]

Isn’t it crazy how ai helps us see images of hell before we die. But it’s different than people creating cgi or painted images, only slightly bc it’s so good at capturing an air of casual nonchalantness, completely nonplussed expressions of half baked half naked people going about their business as their limbs melt and get ripped apart by dogs. Like it’s not as good as human art, no, but there’s this je ne sais quoi quality that begets the same indifference that I think a demon who’s going to possess or kill you might have? It’s like, that magic touch of terror I get in movies about the demonic or supernatural/paranormal— the creature is probably intelligent, but you just don’t know because it’s not communicating in any meaningful way with you. Either it’s beyond your understanding, fueled by blind instinct or rage or lust in a way you will never comprehend or maybe some other drive that’s behind your reasoning, or it simply chooses not to acknowledge you with anything. Maybe you can’t decipher it or if you or maybe it just doesn’t give a shit bc why would the hunter call out ‘haha fuck you’ to the bunny before shooting and even if he did! the bunny wouldn’t understand. The rabbit knowing of our intricate lives outside of the chase really ruins the animalistic fear. It now knows it will die for a purpose— to be eaten and skinned maybe, made into something soft. It knows that the machine used to kill it took years of refining and precision planning, from blunt instruments of war to flashy tools of entertainment. From rocks and flint to fire and wheels. Maybe it would be willing to die, either in awe of us or such disillusionment of its own short, meek existence.

I’ve lost the plot a bit but that lack of fear is in a lot of horror media, for me, and every now and again I find a sweet spot in literature or art or media where it’s there! but, it’s become more and more rare.

I still have that sense of like. Eugh. Eeaaughwaoh. Hooooo! In some of the ai art I’ve seen. A lot of the videos. It’s similar to the ones I find funny, bc we know horror and humor are so intricately linked. The beer commercial one is priceless for a similar reason; the belligerent lapping and obtuse crowd, the fire growing and the repetitive mirage of music. but I’m not impressed by any of this. I’m aggravated and a bit, not afraid in a singularity kind of way. More like afraid that we have found a way to remove the human ‘known’ from the creation of images— bc ofc it’s making its content *from* our produce, be it real documentation or art, but it’s removing the sense of familiarity from the regurgitation process. It’s like putting water into a filter and out comes the same clear liquid that’s incapable of quenching your thirst, somehow. And it’s a nebulous thing, like if you corrected the unfixed gaze and number of fingers or blurred and amorphous backgrounds, I feel like you’d still feel this sense of loss. Some of the near pitch perfect anime AI pics I’ve seen have it (or lack thereof), but I can’t be sure if it’s just me recognizing the dominant style, yknow how it’s a bit too softly shaded and the line quality? I could be biased but…I dunno man! I can usually tell! And that’s the unsettling part I think, that we figured out how to scrub a sense of self and individuality from something sooo inherently personal, which is like THE epicenter of uncanny valley. To the point that you just know the same way you might feel someone looking at you.

I’m not trying to get all woowoo about computers. I definitely am not one of the people who thinks ai is gonna develop free will and overthrow us. I think that’s a very reactionary and reductive conversation about the actual impact it will have on real people (workforces, artists, the moral questions of like…yknow, the fucked up shit ppl are already feeding into these things) but I think automizing processes always begs the question of ‘what are we losing in doing this?’ Grandma’s homemade jam vs smuckers sugar syrup? What is that ‘homemade quality’ and what things are supposed to be ‘homemade’? Mommy homamos sweater knitted from your cats shed hair vs a sweater made of tissue paper that costs $49.99 from Zara that will last one year, tops. How palatable is the opposite? How much humanity can you remove before it becomes repugnant? Could an ai have shit all these words out? Would it have been a good read? Was this even a good read? There’s an answer, and it’s somewhere between whatever is most cheap, and most marketable.

[demongirlgarlicbread]

Okay so. Let me pitch a comics run for an off-continuity transfem spider-man. By clicking the readmore you hereby agree that calling her peter and referring to her as spider-man is for ease of convenience, and that you will understand spider-man to be pronounced "spoidah-mahn" thank you.

Alright so it's not that hard to see where this is coming from. Themes of alienation from society and from peers and the like. That's pretty classic. I'd argue that the bullying peter always goes through is(if not intentionally) a pretty accurate representation of degendering. No writer actually goes this far, but since peter doesn't adequately perform masculinity... If flash thompson doesn't call her a faggot every other day of high school minimum I'd eat my hat. Almost assuredly more.

And looking at jameson. And how spider-man is treated by the press. When she's literally just trying to exist and help people out. Repeatedly being demonized and slandered and accused of everything and anything most of which the people she's trying to stop are in fact responsible for. And in the mainline comics it literally only stops when jameson after getting to know peter in person realizes that peter and spider-man are one and the same and suddenly spider-man is a-ok. he knows her personally so she's good actually.

I think the story starts in the same place most spider-man stories do. down on her luck peter parker, as of yet unaware she's a girl, is struggling through high school and balancing grief over her uncle's passing. financial stress regarding rent. and pressure from being ostracized in school.

She's tired, she's getting more tired as the days go by, and trying to deal with the villain of the week while not causing collateral damage or letting bystanders get hurt is putting her in physical danger.

In comes the symbiote. And it's the classic symbiote storyline right? It makes her stronger. Faster. More capable. Angrier. More brutal. It solves allll her problems she just needs to feed the beast. She stands up to Flash and puts him in his place. She drives her aunt when and the folks in her apartment and scares off a little kid who asks her for help. The few connections she has at school are driven away. But the rest of the jocks start treating her with grudging respect You see where I'm going with this right?

Critically. When we get to the battle in the center of the mind between peter and the symbiote. Peter looks. Mysteriously feminine. Kinda weird that this is the self image "he" rallies around to fight off the epitome of power with a price looks like that but who cares time to ring a damn bell.

And so Peter is reeling in the wake of all that she apologizes to the people she knows. Starts thinking. Ruminating. On how she felt fighting the symbiote. Ohhh man it's a lot. This is confusing this is scary this is. So much. She looks in a mirror and remembers the face she saw in the center of her mind and she throws up.

Meanwhile in the background scorned, emasculated Flash finds a little goopy fellow and with it power. To kick peter's ass. Peter is spider-man? Weird but alright let's do it space goop.

So peter, reeling from realizations and coming to terms with what little she knows of transfemininity is kicked out of her wallowing in bed stage by the news that a giant look-alike is tearing up the city screaming out a challenge to spider-man. Probably contacted by the fantastic four or something after she mentioned the whole ordeal to them.

And so she goes and faces down a mirror of herself. Engorged muscles. Brutal and ruthless. Spewing vitriolic taunts in ways that hit too deep. Too hard. She wins the day, ultimately. Lures venom into a trap(with the four) and tricks it into coming back to her. Only for her to step into the ultrasonic Loudness Machine and the goop gets contained.

And you know it continues from there. Peter gets on HRT. finds connection. other queer folks. becomes more than just "local hero that other NYC based teams are familiar with" and leaves school behind once she graduates.

I don't really have any solid idea of what future arcs might look like. It just sprung to mind how incredibly transfeminine the classic spider-man starting point is, and how much venom reads as coercive masculinity. You're allowed the power of male privilege so long as you give up everything about yourself and stuff it into a tiny hidden box. Which is compelling, you know?

[nicecream]

Do you have any headcannons about BM Nightscream?

do i ever… this is kind of just canon but he definitely likes classic rock. i would love nothing more than to stare at the ceiling and listen to pink floyd with him. i also think he’s kind of a pop culture and subculture nerd in general… like who just quotes planet of the apes as their first line in the show 🤨

i wish he and cheetor got more screen time together, it seems like they only ever talk strategy which idk maybe that really is the extent of their relationship but it could be anything. at the same time i really like that he seems to get along way better with rattrap and blackarachnia, it only makes sense since his personality is more like theirs than cheetor’s (within bm it’s easy to forget he’s actually pretty cheerful and i imagine him going right back to that once the apocalypse is dealt with)

between noble, rav (a toy-only sentient (?) drone) and all the maximals being older than him i think he’s the sort of person who can befriend any type of person

i don’t think he’d be obsessed with them or anything but i think he’d be absurdly, absurdly good at rhythm games. oh and since he can sing the frequency to sever peoples’ sparks from their body (so overpowered and also so interesting to think about irt to megatron whose whole thing is that he took everyone’s sparks out… really any comparison of him and megatron/noble is fascinating) he definitely has perfect pitch

i think being critical comes extremely naturally to him, he’s the sort of person where you can name anything and he can instantly think of 10 things he doesn’t like about it. he’s the roast-on-demand friend

i think he would go to any of the maximals for life advice but blackarachnia would usually be his first choice. it’s probably because i’ve watched terminator 2 and aliens too many times but their relationship is everything to me, and i believe the intent was to have him see her as a mother figure but i like that it turned out more ambiguous and could be aunt or sister-like or something with no human equivalent

i wish he and botanica EVER interacted. if he didn’t already have an interest in science i think being surrounded by only scientists for months would definitely give him one, she can teach him much in the ways of botany. i have also wondered whether his vampirism will be a problem post-canon, like does he need to feed on others’ energy to survive or is that just something he can do? i think probably the latter but in the case that he did, i can see botanica being the one to walk him through that existential crisis

i think his alt mode being a bat suits him perfectly and even though there was no action on his part in adopting it i love how it happened, but if he ever changed it… i think a dragon would be fitting, sort of like a bat but more powerful… a callback to noble…

there’s like never a point where he's actually in charge of something but i bet he’d be a great leader (he is based on john connor after all). i really wish transtech (the planned but cancelled beast machines sequel) happened because i really want to see what he would be like as a young adult, i would want him to take over cheetor’s role as second-in-command since cheetor would take optimus’ place as leader…

[another-corpo-rat]

For the WIP Game - pockets of stones

omg you have no idea how excited i am to ramble about this one

pockets of stones has been a wip of mine since the '23 cyberhanami, mostly left on the shelf for two reasons; 1, at the time i couldn't fit it into any of the themes, and 2, i was (still am) feeling a little bit out of my scope with it cos it's imagery heavy at points and i worry about getting too purple-prosy with it like i have the visual in mind which i dont normally have when writing, which is making me a bit hesitant with it - still excited tho! its a weird feeling towards a wip lmao

i think what adds to my hesitance and back and forthness with it is cos i wanna present some headcanons for Smasher's backstory within it too. the basics of it is that Smasher lets Victoria connect into his biomon - a damn heavy gesture of trust, and lets her slip beyond that a summary taken from my disjointed notes:

she sees through his eyes, Glimpses of a childhood too fractured to be healthy, the scared, frightened pitch of a child calling for his momma through smoke and debris. He pulls her from that one, pushes her into another. She staggers – he staggers, feet unsteady, throbbing pain in his jaw. A thumb wipes at the blood and spittle had been knocked, throws himself at the other man, pins him – thumbs digging into his eyes.

the title is taken from the lyrics of a Florence + The Machine song, What the Water Gave Me - which ties into a kinda ocean/abyss metaphor about Smasher's memories and how they present themselves to Victoria

and how terrible is it that this is probably my longest sitting wip yet i have nothing snippet wise to even present lmao, so i hope the quick notes i have helps sum up the gist better than me rambling-

Vic dips into Smasher’s memories – buildings and rooms, lockers and files. Most important things people usually have in safes or behind some imagined security Smasher’s is like a stream – a digital torrent that brushes past her ankles in a steady pulse, memories brushing against her, flashes of his life, instances he is forced to keep by the black box. Follows its course, looking out to where it feeds into a pitch black sea until she’s no longer following but being dragged in Deeper – black surrounds her; great beast comes with an open maw – her hands come to rest on its snout, pressing in and feeling thr thrum of memories beneath; flashes of emotions. 'Shark' = his memories of Kei Arasaka. Looks up to the light, finds many of the beasts circling her One brushes against her, gently – Michiko Arasaka Another nudges, brushing past roughly but ultimately uncaring – x character – slight glimpse of backstory; an old friend. Easy to chase but she lets go, reaching instead for the gentler creature of Michiko, brushing into that warmth that gently eases her upwards, out of the abyss; flashes of those memories; a young Michiko whispering Adam’s name in the darkness, cradling one large calloused hand of his gemini between her delicate own.

[lostonehero]

What remains after eternity

Plot boys

Ok, maybe this was a stupid idea. He could have taken Tink, but ne he wanted to just leave. He wasn't mad at what they were doing, cured a virus fixed a planet... ok, not fix by any standards for normal species, but these were Xeon, and well, they didn't excatly follow proper rules of life. It was nice for the first couple hundred years, but they died before they even started. He knows they would be fine, but he still missed them.... mostly him.

Now, he was barely ten years out, and he greatly miscalculated how much fuel he had. He ran out of food too, but it's not like he hasn't starved before that wasn't an issue. He sent out a signal to any passing ships, but this part of space wasn't exactly well traveled. He was bored, and he really hated being alone. He wouldn't be here for forever, but he didn't look forward to how long he would have to wait. It's funny that he can remember a time he used to isolate on purpose. Another lifetime another time.

The coms came to life due to running on solar energy because Izzy insisted it was important. "This is the pilot of the spaceship Aurora, Drumbot Brian. Do you need assistance?"

He opens his mouth to speak, but a rasp comes out. When was the last time he drank something? He normally helps remind him to be human. He settles on tapping out a sos hoping whoever this guy is knows it.

"Right, our mechanic, Nastya, will be bringing you on." Brian pauses. "Will you need assistance leaving?"

He tapped out a probably, and the feed cut.

.......

"Since when do we pick up strays?" Ashes sighs as the gate is closed, and it is safe to return to the hanger.

"Lost a bet against one of Jonny's brats." Nastya sighs. "Besides, it's something new while we travel, Marius's planet isn't excatly on a map that has been updated in eons."

"Fair point, but why are we going to get this guy out?" Ashes pulls the latch to this ship open.

"You were free, and Valerie and Trevor are still hunting that fucked creature. Brian is trying to get Thomas from taking control because he claims he knows the way Aurora thinks it's hilarious. Jonny is playing along with Mae's game, which is frankly terrifying he seemingly has eyes on the back of his head. Raphaella and Carmillia are taking notes on that. Lyf is well... he hasn't left the nest Byron built, and Byron is still standing guard, but he is building little machines that TS helps with. Ivy, Alex, and Janet are in a three-way chess match. Finally, Tim is in the gardens, taking a nap in the dirt."

"Ah." Ashes sighs. "Well fuck it let's get this guy."

Nastya nods and heads inside. The ship was small and barren. It looked like whoever was inside hasn't moved around in a long time. There was an eerie calm in the ship as they approached the captain quarters. "Oh fuck!"

There's a man lying in the captain chair. He was thin, too thin. His eyes were empty sockets as a black fluid lazily leaked from the sockets. His hair was spiked up and pitch black. His skin was incredibly pale, nearly white. He was tall, and his clothes hung off of him. His ears were pointed. He wheezed out a greeting.

Ashes curses. "He's fucking alive?"

"Just grab him and take him to the infirmary!" Nastys groans. "Fucking Jonny knows enough first aid to at least get him talking."

Ashes slings the man over their shoulder. "I'll start heating up, broth."

......

He opened his eyes again now in a cot. His head was tilted up as he was made to drink a broth. He grimaced and pushed away the soup. "I-i I'm fine." His voice was rough and quiet, barely a whisper.

"No, you ain't." A man responded, putting the bowl aside. The man looked familair.

"Do I... do I know you?" He grimaced and sat himself up. Staring at him, he could tell immediately he was New Texan. He looked like... he looked like him.

"I think I would remember a man with eyes that constantly leaked black fluid even when closed." He sighs. "The names Jonny, you're in Aurora in the infirmary."

"Lazarus." Laz sighs and lays back down. "I'm Lazarus, you can just call me Laz."

"Are you going to finish this broth, or am I going to have to force you?" Jonny scowls.

"I'll finish it." Laz sighs and lets Jonny feed him till it's finished. "Happy?"

Jonny sighs. "What did you do?"

"Not one of your kids." Ashes raised a brow.

"Oh, I know, there would have been more effort to pretend they were injured to see the stray." Jonny smiles. "What do you want, Ashes?"

Ashes snickers. "They are a bunch of yous. Nah, I just wanted to check in it is a part of my job, yaknow."

Jonny waves. "Yeah, yeah, whatever you say." He shakes his head. "What do you actually want?"

Ashes smirks. "We've got a bit of wager going on about the stray."

Jonny sighs. "I don't bet."

"I ain't asking you that." Ashes smirks. "What's his species?"

"I can answer myself." Laz huffs. "I'm human."

"Fuck!" Ashes huffs. "Tim won the fucking pot and he doesn't even know what that fucking means."

Jonny snickers. "Pretty fucked up for a human."

"Your comments are noted, and I don't care." Laz frowns.

Ashes smirks. "He'll fit in well."

"Who will fit in well?" Trevor walks in slightly singed.

"Who set you on fire?" Jonny sighs.

"I wasn't set on fire. That confectionery creature can set itself on fire. I just happened to be holding it before it escaped." Trevor rolls his eyes. "Totally different."

"Sure." Jonny shakes his head. "Sit."

Trevor huffs and heads to the empty cot. "It's not even that bad."

"Not that bad, you're still smoking." Jonny begins to clean the burns. "I told you to relax."

"Just because I'm aging doesn't mean I can't help." Trevor frowns. "Dad, I'm fine it's just the process. It's slowed, but it's been two and a half centuries it catches up with us, and then we revert and start all over again." He lightly headbutts his father.

"Just let me adjust to this, you little shit." Jonny sighs. "I know how this works. Each of you explained it in great detail multiple times. I'm allowed to fucking worry."

"Fine, fine." Trevor smiles.

Ashes raised a brow, looking at Laz.

"You're letting that guy baby you?" Laz snickers.

"You're the fucking stray!" Trevor huffs. "Dad shoot him."

"Wait.... wait." Laz sits up. "You're Jonny D'ville?"

Jonny raised a brow, turning to face Laz. "Yeah and?"

"I take back my previous statement." Laz pauses. "I also would like to apologize for my previous comment."

"Who is he?" Jonny looks back to Trevor.

"Lazarus, he's part of our crew, and by the looks of it, he went on his own and forgot to bring food and / or fuel, probably both. Unfortunately, he has the habit of forgetting what he needs to function properly in depressed hazes." Trevor sighs. "How long have you been floating?"

"Decade, probably." Laz sighs. "The others are busy, wanted to find you guys. They would have collected me when they were done."

"He's lying it's been more than a decade." Trevor frowns. "But the others would have picked him up, Izzy always has trackers on the small ships. He obviously didn't take the one Aiden packed for this situation."

"He's done this before?" Ashes raised a brow.

"Yeah, when he thinks the others are taking too long to pick us up. It's really fucking stupid." Trevor sighs.

"I miss you guys." Laz huffs.

"Which isn't a lie per say, but he mostly means Thomas." Trevor frowns again. "Did you give him something? I can make some more broth."

Jonny ruffles Trevor's hair. "Yes, I gave him some broth. You can stay and chat. I'll tell your siblings."

Trevor shifted and frowns. "Actually, could you stay a bit? Laz never heard you tell a story that isn't a recording."

"You brat if you want me to tell you a story you could just ask." Jonny hops up on the cot next to Trevor. "You both better listen."

Laz smiled, but he was already drifting off to sleep.

Ashes smiles softly and quietly slips out of the infirmary. Maybe they were getting attached to this softer, Jonny. His kids were a great bonus, too.

.......

"Hey, kid." Ashes raised a brow at Thomas, who was nodding off in the pilot seat, and Brian was napping curled up under his feet.

Thomas has silver through his dark brown hair. His horns were freshly cut to halfway, nowhere near as short as Jonny used to keep them. He was in a similar outfit to what Jonny used to wear except with no belts. Age was showing on his features, but he was happy. "Yes?" He cracks open one eye. "Thought you were going to annoy dad and the stray."

"You lost the bet." Ashes hums.

"A shame." Thomas tosses a golden tooth at them who catches it. "What? You didn't come all the way here to tell me that. Is dad freaking out again?"

"You all have his intuition." Ashes chuckles. "No, but your brother got himself set on fire and got him in a worry."

Thomas snorts. "I warned him that creature can catch fire." He hops off the seat and pets Brian. "Ooo, how much hair did he lose?"

"That's for you to see." Ashes smiles. However smart, his kids were leaving out some part of the truth was enough to get them going along. They were happy to see that they didn't have Jonny's paranoia and distrust. Fuck Jonny was a good dad and they never saw that coming. They were proud of him.

Thomas picked up his cane, keeping it to his side. He doesn't use it much yet, but he will. "I'll be back for my seat, Brian."

Brian lets out a soft growl and curls up tighter.

Ashes watches him go and walks next to Brian. "Did you give up your job to be a lap dog?"

Brian glares at them and shifts back. "No, but he unfortunately does know where to find Byron's planet. That's where his old crew was heading before they were taken back to New Texas. They normally don't get sent back there when it happens, but they were looking for a break." He sighs. "He's also a better navigator than I realized."

Ashes shakes their head. "All of you are getting soft."

"I think it comes from age. I can say the same about you." Brian smiles.

"I suppose you can." Ashes smiles. "However, I will never admit that."

Brian nods. "However, Jonny said we should be doing a show soon, and by show, he means causing complete chaos on a random planet after we spend time on Byron's planet."

Ashes grins. "That sounds amazing."

........

"I heard some idiot got set on fire." Thomas snickers.

"I didn't get set on fire asshole." Trevor huffs.

"Boys, you're arguing semantics at this point." Jonny sighs. "How's your leg, Thomas?"

Thomas steps in. "Fine so far, but it's still early. So, who's the stray?"

"It's Laz." Trevor sighs. "He's asleep, though."

"Lazarus?" Thomas slowly walks in by his bed. "How long this time?"

"He claims a decade." Trevor pulls up his blanket. "I don't think he's being honest. You know how much he keeps in his little portals."

Thomas frowns.

Jonny puts a hand on his son's shoulder. "Relax, he's just asleep. I'm sure you can chew him out once he wakes up."

Thomas sighs out a laugh. "Thanks, dad."

"He's also not allowed to meet Tim, not until he can walk. Trust me, he's being a bit off the rails still figuring out his forms. We still haven't seen all of them, and he's grown attached to his cactus one." Jonny pauses in the doorway. "Can't wait to actually have a proper talk to your partner."

Thomas covers his face as he blushes. "Daddddd." Thomas whines.

Trevor laughs.

"Have fun, boys." Jonny snickers leaving.

.......

"Human?" Tim points.

Trevor and Thomas scream in shock.

"How the fuck do you even do that?!" Trevor holds his chest.

Laz furrows his brows and wakes up from the screaming. "What?"

"Human." Tim points quite close to Lazarus's face.

"Yes?" Laz rubs his eyes, making a mess of the black substance.

Tim nods and stands next to Laz on the bed. He tilts his head, seemingly studying Laz.

"Who are you?" Laz sits himself up.

Tim points at Laz again. "Priest." He starts to whistle and walk away.

"I keep telling dad to put a bell on him." Thomas covers his face and groans.

"I think he tried." Trevor sighs. "You ok, Laz?"

"Seriously who the fuck was that? How the fuck... how." Laz swallows.

"How what?" Thomas raised his brow.

"I..." Laz frowns. "He knew what I was before this."

"A priest?" Trevor looked confused. "Never took you for the type."

"Human priests are extremely different to whatever you have on New Texas." Laz narrows his gaze.

"He didn't say they were the same." Thomas sighs. "How are you feeling?"

"Hungry." Laz sighs. "And really weirded out, neither of you answered my question."

"That is Gunpowder Tim, currently just Tim as his mind is still recovering." Thomas frowns. "Careful around him. He's very hard to predict."

"It's really depressing." Trevor hums. "Humans are quite cruel creatures."

"I'm well aware of that." Laz sighs. "Where did your dad go?"

Thomas and Trevor shrug.

Laz frowns. "Who else is here?"

"The mechanisms, and us oh and our grandmother Valerie." Trevor pauses. "And the ship Aurora of course."

Aurora chirps. "There is broth in cabinet in a thermos, Jonny left in there."

Thomas nods and grabs it. "Thank you."

"Does she turn off the air like Hal?" Lazarus takes the thermos. "Thank you."

"I can not due to the garden and Tim's plants." Aurora hums. "Alex and Janet asked me the same questions. Dies Hal enjoy turning off the air?"

"No, but he does it every fight he has with Izzy." Thomas sighs. "It's annoying, but ultimately harmless since Izzy built us masks to let us continue to breathe."

"Thomas, come here." Lazarus makes grabby hands. "Help me eat."

"And that's my cue to leave." Trevor sighs and gets out of his cot. "Want me to tell everyone else?"

Laz huffs. "Thomas!"

Thomas sits next to Laz on his cot. "Might as well. He's still out of it. Just let them know he's still in starvation mind."

Laz wraps his arms around Thomas. "You know you're very warm."

Trevor nods. "Of course, I'll let dad know to make more broth."

"Thanks." Thomas holds up the thermos. "Time to eat old one."

Laz smiles and rests against Thomas.

........

The bright green liquid is plunged into Byron's arm. "Ok, that should kick in soon. Let me know if you feel wrong." Raphaella smiles

Byron was speaking broken common. His language did not translate well. "Last one?" He rubs his arm.

"For now, the virus is tricky it adapts and changes. You're healing just nice excatly linearly." Raphaella frowns. "Have you been keeping that journal?"

"Ah yes!" Byron nods. "I do not know when I will change like you have described. I hope my journals will help."

Raphealla smiles softly. "Come on, I'm sure the stray wants some company. Heard it's one of the kids' crew. You need a safe place to rest as this starts to take effect."

Byron nods and sways on his feet as he hits the ground. Raphaella quickly helps Byron up. "Thank thank you."

"Come on, this is much faster than I realized." Raphaella had a look of concern Byron couldn't see as he continued to stumble. She picked him up as he collapsed. "Fuck, Lyf is going to kill me."

......

Lyf barely has time to put the journals down next to Byron's sleeping form before he was throwing up in a trashcan.

Janet was rubbing his back. "I told you I can handle this. I can explain his questions."

Lyf rubs his mouth. "It's fine, just some nausea. I'll probably enter another period of nothing happening soon enough." He groans. "Second thought I'm going to the bathroom." He runs out of the infirmary.

Raphealla frowns. "Can't fix it, you know how that went."

Janet shudders. "I would really rather not."

A soft groan from the bed alerted the two. Marius takes a breath and rubs his face. He blinks and looks around, confused. "When did..." He stares at Raphaella. "When did we get back on Aurora? Did I miss the train?"

Raphealla takes a moment. "Marius, what do you mean?"

"The train, Yog Sogoth, we're supposed to be in the prison cell. There's a new..." Marius furrows his brows as his hand goes through his hair, and he feels the small horns. "Now that can't be right." Hd sticks his fingers in his mouth, and his features pale a bit more. He quickly touches his shoulders, feeling the bone spurs. He does a double take staring at his arm, seeing the mechanism spread above his elbow like an infection he could see his flesh between the metal. "...what happened?"

Raphealla frowns, motioning to Janet to warn Lyf. She takes a breath. "The journals next to you will help, but you're not going to like it."

"What happened, Raph? Just tell me." Marius hugs his chest. "What happened to me?"

Raphealla sighs and sits next to Marius. "Short explanation a bioweapon virus made to effect your species and planet. You got infected, and we've been trying to cure it. Each stage of healing you either forget or just play violin till you get a form of lucidity. Thankfully, this time, we skipped the violin." She frowns. "Aurora, the timeline, please."

"Of course." Aurora displays a timeline.

"See, starting here, Nastya found you on your homeworld. We're actually traveling there now to figure out a better way for the cure. The virus is adapting to my attacks. You were in the violin mode for a long time with shirt bursts of lucidity. Next, you were lucid for 200 years, although still missing a lot of time. Then, in New Texas, you went back to violin mode, until Tim had his meltdown and you reformed with the rest of us and went back to before your mechanism or Byron era for the last 275 years. Currently, you're back, but before the bifrost incident, before.... well, do you know who Lyfrassir Edda is?"

Marius frowns, trying to take that all in. "That's the new inspector, we were supposed to meet him today..."

Raphealla thins her lips. "Oh..."

Lyf steps out, sipping on some water. "What is it you wanted to tell me."

"Um...." Janet pauses. "Yeah, this is bad."

"You didn't tell him?" Raphaella rubs her face.

Lyf raised a brow as he walked past the two to Marius's side. "Byron?"

Marius tilted his head. "You're my mate?"

Lyf takes a deep breath. "Do you know who I am?"

"I should. We're bonded." Marius rubs his temples. "Who are you?"

"Former second class inspector Lyfrassir Edda." Lyf smiles softly. "You can call me Lyf."

"I mated with a mortal?" Marius looks scared.

Lyf shakes his head. "Unfortunately, Yog Sogoth decided otherwise, and I'm not allowed to age or die. You're going to be stuck with me till the end of time."

Marius seems to relax if only slightly. "How?"

"You blamed the heat on your hair." Lyf chuckles watching Marius's hair curl into little hearts. "I think it was getting annoyed with you."

"I..." Marius swallows. "I don't... you're not a xeon."

"No, I'm not. I'm an asguardian, maybe a little jouton in my blood, but I don't really care about that. it just makes my skin blue and gives me my tail." Lyf burps and grimaces. "However, this adapting process is awful, and I will blame you for every hurdle."

Marius shyly smiles. "You're not dead."

"I am not. You're a doctor. You should know how to tell that." Lyf smirks.

"Then I should do a full examination." Marius reaches out and tilts Lyf's head. "Although we shouldn't have a through exam out in the open. I should memorize my mates body."

Lyf lights up in a rainbow static blush. "I almost forgot how insufferable you were, you flirt." He bites his lip. "I suppose I could make room in my schedule, Doctor Byron."

Marius swallows. "Say that again."

"Doctor Byron Marius Von Raum." Lyf smiles.

"How about you both get a fucking room?" Ashes pinches their brow. "Fuck this shit where the fuck did the stray go?"

Janet blinks. "Oh Thomas's room."

"Fuck thank you." Ashes groans leaving the infirmary.

Lyf groans, covering his face. "Forgot we had an audience."

"Awww, the inspector is shy." Marius chuckles.

"You know what I lied, go fuck yourself Von Raum." Lyf huffs and walks out.

Marius chuckles softly.

Raphealla smiles. "Go read your journals."

"As you wish." Marius lays back down and pulls one of the journals. "Never thought I would ever share my heat. I'm actually more surprised I didn't kill him."

Raphealla pauses, looking at Janet. "So if it's not consensual, they really fight to the death?"

"Mmh yeah and eat the loser." Janet shrugs. "But obviously, his body knew better."

"I have so many questions." Raphaella rubs her face.

........

To Marius, it's been ages since he has even seen his native language written, let alone heard it be spoken. He knew Lyf wasn't truly speaking it, but because of the heat bond, that's what he will forever hear from his partner. These journals were his he knew his own handwriting. He knew the language which was written, and he knew nobody else on the ship could write, let alone speak his tongue.

He waited for Raphaella and that woman, Janet, he thinks that was her name to leave before he actually started to read. It was odd that he didn't recall any of this. He wanted to hear his language again on his lips, and he took a breath and began to reas aloud.

"I was told to start journaling since I and they don't know how long I will be lucid for. Lyfrassir has been wonderful, I am still shaking from our heat together. He's been quite patient with me, I know I am not the same man he fell in love with, but that doesn't deter him at all. I learn new things every day. I still don't understand everyone, but I'm trying to learn this common. It doesn't really translate well."

"I haven't told Lyf about my changes yet. I don't need him worrying about me. He has his own changes to get through. He's been enjoying the nest I made for him, Janet got me the supplies. I still can't believe the immortal claims, but he is insistent. He tells me all these lovely tales from his home. He asks if I play an instrument, and I do. He likes my playing even if it's not great. He asks me to sing, but I can't. He still asks, though."

"Today Lyf was -" Marius stops as someone clears their throat. "Inspector?"

Lyf smiles. "Sorry to interrupt, but I brought some sweet breads. You once told me these are your favorites."

"They are." Marius shuts the journal and places it back on the pile. "How long has this been us?"

"The heat bond or us together?" Lyf cuts Marius a slice than himself a slice as he sits next to Marius. "Us? I can't remember. The heat bond I am uncomfortably aware of it down to the second is that normal?"

Marius chuckles. "Yes, that is normal." He holds the plate and frowns. "How long have I been sick?"

"I don't know." Lyf frowns. "None of us know how long you were stranded on a dead planet. I can tell you how long it was for the others er no Tim isn't all there so we can't get a straight answer from him. I.... wait, you don't know what happened." He pauses poking at his sweet bread. "Do you want to know?"

"Yes." Marius takes a breath. "Just tell me, please."

Lyf nods and takes away his plate and puts it aside. "You won't want to eat during this."

"I've been though a lot that is quite a high bar." Marius raised a brow.

"Trust me." Lyf sighs as he begins.

Marius swallows as he refuses the plate. "You can tell me about Jonny later. You're right." He hugs his knees. "How do I go back to being not lucid or to another me with memories. I don't... I can't just play along."

"Nobody is asking you to." Lyf leans on Marius. "At most, you have to let Tim hold your tail. Also, don't play with his dial even if he tries to get you to. No, that isn't a sex thing it's an actual dial around his neck. Oh shit wait the other people here. Jonny's kids are here. The gods won't let them die, and they are all little shits just like Jonny. Janet is one of them. Jonny's mother is also here she is terrifying and don't fuck with her or try to fuck her. Seriously, there is a line."

"Oh the god killer Valerie, I am familair with her." Marius frowns. "Who let Jonny reproduce?"

"Wait, stop shut up." Lyf grabs Marius's shoulders. "What the fuck do you mean the god killer? I know she exists, but Valerie can not be the god killer."

"There was a wanted poster in the jail we were kept in. Did you not see it? I also met her a few times traveling on my own. We never talked she always killed me. She's probably a god herself on account of the fact she can't die." Marius raised a brow. "Why are you looking at me like that?"

"First, no, she has a mechanism like Jonny. Both have a mechanized heart. Second how the fuck did you know she was Jonny's mother?" Lyf blinks stunned.

"They smell like each other. I'm sorry she's a mechanism?" Marius looks confused.

"Yeah and Carmillia is trying to fuck her. Not important, you can smell that they are related?" Lyf rubs his face.

"Yes, and now that you mention it, Janet does smell like Jonny, so that makes sense on Jonny having kids." Marius crossed his arms. "New Texans are hermaphroditic species. Did Jonny have them himself, or did he have a partner?"

"He had them himself." Lyf raised a brow. "If you ask me if Jonny had a consistent partner, the answer is no, they all have different sperms donors. Tim is not the father of any of them."

"Well, I know that she didn't smell like Tim." Marius huffs. "I'm not an idiot."

Lyf pinches his brow. "Fine, Mr. I know everything but his own memories" why the fuck am I craving teeth?"

"Your body is changing, and I can give you mine they will grow back." Madius smiles. "I wouldn't want you to go hungry, my mate."

"You're fucking impossible." Lyf crawls into Marius's lap. "I hate you and your romance, Von Raum."

"And what would you have me say? Go ask TS for its collection of teeth? I rather you be safe and take mine." Marius smirks. "I would let you eat me whole until you're satisfied if it pleased you."

Lyf hides his face in Marius's chest. "Stop you manic. I'm literally going to have to fuck to if you keep this up."

"I suppose that can be arranged." Marius kissed the top of Lyf's head. He crossed his legs as his face lights up a mix of red and purple. "I seem to have underestimated how powerful my instincts are influencing my hormones. I know we shared my heat, and we are mates, but I really don't know you."

"Well..." Lyf looks Marius in the eyes. "I'm Lyfrassir Edda, and I'm from Asguard. I enjoy mead and baking. I'm not that good of a shot with a gun, I have powers of Yog Sogoth, which I'm still trying to learn how to control. I'm absolutely awful at cards, and I like to write poetry."

Marius sighs but smiles. "That isn't what I meant."

"Well, I guess I just have to keep being by your side till I can figure out what you meant. You're not going to scare me off." Lyf hugs Marius tight. "Is this too much?"

Marius shakes his head. "N-no, just go slow. I don't know what happened or how to handle a post heat. Can I trust you not to take advantage? My instincts and hormones are fighting against my lucid mind."

"I will go at whatever speed you need. Is the light system good? Green for good, yellow slow down and red is a hard stop." Lyf smiles when Marius nods. "How are you now with me in your lap?"

"Green." Marius takes a breath. "Green, just don't grind or kiss me."

Lyf smiles and nods. "Of course, but I need to leave."

Marius raised a brow.

"Marius, if I don't make it to a trash, can I am going to empty my stomach all over you." Lyf was growing pale.

Marius nodded and helped push Lyf off his lap to vomit in the nearby trash can. "Are you ok?"

Lyf coughs and groans. "Not really, your heat infected me and my body is still fucking changing."

"It tends to take a long time to adjust. For myself and you, since we are different species." Marius gives a nervous smile. "Shall I help you to our nest?"

"You don't want a separate room?" Lyf raised a brow as he stood back up.

"That really wouldn't be wise." Marius grimaced and didn't elaborate. He collects the journals. "Show me to our nest."

Lyf nods. "Ok, I will." He says, collecting the baked good.

.......

"Thomas?" Laz's voice was stronger, and he was getting dressed with the clothes laid out.

"Yes?" Thomas hums softly. He was dusting off the excess sand before he got dressed.

"We're on Aurora." Laz gets up and cracks his back.

"Are you finally out of starvation mode?" Thomas pokes his head in pulling on underwear.

Laz huffs. "I would roll my eyes, but I don't have them to roll, but we are on your father's ship."

"That we are." Thomas walks out in just his underwear. "Do you have a problem?"

"No, I just the way you guys talked about everything." Laz crossed his arms. "I don't know." He sighs. "Did you tell them I wouldn't remember because of the state I was in?"

"Yes, I did." Thomas pauses, grabbing a pair of pants. "Actually, I have to ask about something."

"Ask me about what?" Laz raised a brow looking at Thomas.

"Tim came by because I brought you to my room, er Gunpowder Tim, but he isn't all there mentally as he is recovering, but I'm getting off track. He called you a priest." Thomas turns to face Laz, who looks a mixed of concerned and shock.

Laz blinks. "How did he know?"

Thomas shrugs. "None of us really know how his mind works or how it's healing. He is kind, but I don't think he can remember how to be violent. Well, not on purpose." He finishes getting dressed pulling a shirt over his horns. "Tell me what you find when you look in his head."

"I will." Laz smiles softly. "Well, I'm looking forward to properly meeting your father and his crew." He takes Thomas's hand. "Shall we head out?"

"We shall." Thomas pulls him along.

......

"Oh gods, fuck." Lyf nearly bites his tongue.

Laz frowns. "Sorry."

Lyf spins to face Laz. "Oh not you, him." He points to Tim, who Laz just notices.

"Fuck!" Laz grabs his chest. "How do you just appear? Are you an acolyte? Which god?"

Tim tilts his head. "Human!" He points at Laz.

"Right, yeah, I am human. Didn't answer my question." Laz raised a brow.

"The gods abandoned me." Tim smiles.

"Um...." Laz pauses as Jonny comes into the room.

"Tim, stop scaring the newbie." Jonny doesn't even flinch when Tim grabs his tail. "I got us breakfast come on."

"Jonny." Tim kisses Jonny's forehead.

Jonny smiles, then huffs. "No hugs I'm going to drop the fucking food you brat." He quickly puts the plates down as Tim pushed him to the floor to cuddle. "We are not fucking napping. I want my breakfast."

Thomas sighs. "Good morning."

Tim gets back up with prodding and sits next to Jonny, who shoves a plate in front of him, which he makes no move to eat.

"Is he not eating again?" Mae frowns from an opposite table. "Oh, welcome back to sanity, Laz."

"Right." Laz raised a brow. "Are you sure he's ok?" He groans as Thomas elbows him.

"That's Tim. He's recovering." Thomas huffs.

"He would recover faster if he fucking ate." Jonny growls.

"Maybe it has to do with whatever setting he's on." Alex pokes her head between the two.

"No fucking around in the mess hall!" Ashes growls from their spot.

Laz smiles softly, sitting next to Lyf. "So your Yog Sogoth acolyte." He pauses. "Why are you eating teeth in um milk?"

Lyf narrows his gaze. "Ask that fucker."

Marius is unaware sitting at a different table.

"Right, so it's not because of Yog Sogoth?" Laz smiles as Thomas hands him a plate of food. "Thank you."

"No?" Lyf pauses, raising a brow at Laz. "Does your god make you eat teeth?"

"No." Laz hums. "Wait, does cannibalism count?"

"Yes." Jonny says, trying to feed Tim, who keeps pushing his hands away. "You need to eat."

Thomas sighs, swallowing his bite. "I forget you're a cannibal dad."

Laz chokes on his drink. "Excuse me?"

"Both of you finish your food." Jonny sighs. "Fuck it, come on Tim were changing that fucking dial to get you to eat something." He gets up after finishing inhaling his food and drags Tim to the training room.

"I'm sorry a cannibal?" Laz blinks.

"Did you like not listen to any of the tales we told you?" Thomas rolls his eyes. "Also, who's teeth are those?"

Lyf swallows. "Marius's, but I think TS put some of its collection in here as well."

"Ah." Thomas hums. "Honestly, I didn't think you would have an answer."

"Still more sane than Tink." Laz frowns. "I think I might pay Tim a visit later."

Lyf raised a brow.

Laz smirks. "You'll figure it out."

.......

"Alone today?" Jonny crossed his arms.

"Laz is trying to corner Tim to talk. It's not exactly going well, and I don't want to watch him get impaled again."

Jonny snorts and puts his book down. "Come here, come sit by your no good father."

Thomas shakes his head and sits next to his dad. "I think you're pretty great."

"What do you want, brat?" Jonny smiles as Thomas leans on him.

"Do you like Lazarus?" Thomas sighs.

Jonny crossed his arms. "Thomas, it doesn't matter if I like him." He rolls his eyes. "He's interesting, but I don't know him well enough to truly judge him. However he's a fucking idiot for trying to corner Tim."

"Why? Tim doesn't mind it when we corner him." Thomas frowns and furrows his brows.

"Because Tim views you as his children even if you aren't. He's in there, but he can't make proper sense of his surroundings or what he's told yet. Laz is a stranger and human." Jonny sighs. "He hasn't excatly been around any humans expect the ones who hurt him."

"I guess." Thomas sits upright. "I want to help him more, but that's Izzy's thing. She is the one who just wants to help and has the mind to do just that. I want you to meet the rest of the crew, but I don't even know if they would still be at the Xeon planet by the time we get there."

"Why were you heading there anyway?" Jonny gently headbutts his son.

Thomas chuckles. "Janet won our little hat trick, so she got to pick our next adventure. She wanted to go there and help the planet recover to xeon standard of living, which meant figuring out what went so wrong. Now we know about the virus, but we didn't know back then. Izzy was excited she never got to work with xeon before, and Aiden was relieved we weren't doing anything stupid. Tink was annoyed, but she always is when she doesn't win."

"You guys never made it." Jonny frowns.

Thomas shrugs. "We're going now. I just hope they're still there."

"Well, I'm sure they will be." Jonny gets up and holds out his hand. "Come on, we have to find your man before Tim rips him apart."

Thomas takes his father's hand. "Yeah, yeah."

.......

"This isn't the worst mind I've been in." Laz hums. He looks around the lab that seems to have gray rock in the walls. There was a faint scent of dust and bleach. "Now, where are you?"

The cell lie empty save for a few bloodstained and a worn mat. "You shouldn't be here." A small boy with bright blue eyes and shirt brown hair stares up at Laz.

"Has your mind split? Let me guess you're his childhood self." Laz curses when a knife goes through his thigh. "Fuck."

"You are wrong." The boy scowls, pulling his knife back.

"You didn't have to fucking stab me." Laz grimaced as the wound closes. "Then what are you?"

"I...." The boy frowns. "I don't know. This is my mind, and I woke up in there." He points to the cage. "I don't think I'm supposed to be small."

Laz hasn't encountered something like this before. It was concerning. "Do you know what happened?"

The kid frowns. "A lot of bad things."

"What's your name?" Laz crouched down by the child.

"Gunpowder Tim. I'm supposed to be him. I don't know how I'm supposed to fix that." Tim frowns. "I'm really hurt. I want to get better. I don't know how."

"Time and rest, unfortunately, for these types of injuries. However, this is a first never seen a mind revert this far back to recover." Laz picks up Tim. "Come on, let's find a nice soft bed to recover in."

Tim blinks and holds on tight. "I don't think there is one. What's your name? You aren't Scratch."

"I am not, but you can call me Lazarus." Laz smiles.

"That's not your name." Tim frowns.

"And why do you know that?" Laz raised a brow as he meandered down the halls.

"You wear a cross. You picked Lazarus on purpose. It's worn and reforged, so you've had it for a long time, probably as long as you've been around or infected as you put it." Tim's blue eyes stare deep into Lazarus's pits of eyes.

"And you've also lost your faith." Laz frowns as they make it to a makeshift cot. It's military grade, but it's the closest thing he has for a bed besides the bloody cot.

Tim curls up when placed on the cot. "What's the use in faith when the gods abandoned you no matter how hard to pray." He pulls the blanket over him.

Laz sits on the floor. "I used to be a priest. That didn't save me."

"Faith never saved anyone." Tim says before his breathing evens out, and he's asleep.

"Maybe we would have been friends once upon a time, kid." Laz smiles and vanishes.

.......

Tim is curled up tightly around Laz.

Laz sighs. "Do you know how to get him off? I clearly underestimated how strong the man is."

Thomas snickers.

Jonny sighs. "Tim, come on, we have a bed to nap in."

Tim is quiet his breathing is slow and steady.

"Yeah, that isn't going to work." Laz huffs. "Thomas stop fucking laughing or I'm going to break your cane."

Thomas giggles and takes a breath. "Kind of hard to do that when you're pinned to the floor. Enjoy bonding to your father in law."

"Go fuck yourself." Laz growls.

"Fuck me yourself coward." Thomas smirks.

"Your father is literally right there." Laz shimmies his arm out to just point.

"And I'm a slut why would that bother me?" Jonny snickers. "You got a shy one."

"He's human. What do you expect?" Thomas smiles, leaning on his cane.

Laz huffs. "My species has nothing to do with this!"

[jeremy-ken-anderson]

Playing with AI Writers

For the moment, let's set aside the question of whether the writing is stolen. In theory if you write prolifically yourself and/or it grabs exclusively from public domain, which is a LOT of text, a language model could get something that behaves much the same as the current stuff, even if the current stuff may have shitty moral undertones if its creators did a copyright violation because they're lazy.

In other words, from a structural standpoint, that's not the problem. "Ethically sourced" AI chatbots are possible.

I want to talk about the results, things I appreciate, and the current endemic problems.

So, most of the time the way a chatbot works is by slicing pieces of speech patterns into what it calls "tokens." These are usually a sentence long, but not always. It then finds sets of tokens that seem like the next piece of what should be said, like a longer-form version of how your autocomplete works on your phone. You press "t" and it offers the most likely options, probably "the" and "this" unless you have odd writing habits (more on that in a sec) and then if you follow up with u for "tu" it updates, tuned to the extra information; "the" and "this" are now impossible, and the most likely words starting with "tu" are "turn" and "Tuesday." With tokens all sliced up and vaguely grouped in a way we'll say is kind of like letters for the sake of letting this metaphor make sense, you can see how putting in a sentence - "I attempt to pick the ogre's pocket without waking it." - is much like putting "t" into an autofill-enabled device on a phone or word processor. Adding another sentence might get you closer to your preferred response, being as it is, in this metaphor, akin to typing "tu" rather than "t"; You're feeding in two tokens to help it respond with superior search results. For example if you follow up with "My arm grows weak as I near the creature and smell the flesh that I realize used to be my squad." that is a very different - more fantasy-horror - vibe, and both the odds of the creature waking and the results of its waking will be substantially altered by such a follow-up.

Now, in spite of how much I've enjoyed playing with AI storytelling devices on my own machine, I'm gonna trash these programs for a hot minute: The unsolvable problem is that context matters. People are treating AI-generated text like some magical context-maker machine, the way people who've had 1 but not 2 years of physics might think if they get their ring of magnets at just the right angle they'll get another ring of magnets inside them to spin infinitely for unlimited free energy. This metaphor is, I should mention, very good.

Because just like the fake infinite energy machine, there are a bunch of people trying to profit off of the idea that AI is infinite context-value for no work.

Because just like the fake infinite energy machine, it's not like there's no such thing as an engine; just not an engine that makes infinite power for free. The problem with AI writing isn't that it can't get you toward having a written document full of interesting and potentially even copyrightable text. It's merely that it has a bunch of hidden costs that make it way less efficient and valuable than the pitch men are claiming.

Let's talk Voice. AI doesn't have a writer's voice, because it's literally taking individual sentences from 800 writers at a time. And it can't get voice. You don't sound more like Sir Terry Pratchett by making Death TALK IN ALL CAPS. You sound more like Sir Terry Pratchett by making Death honestly as merciless as real Death and yet a compassionate and even relatable character. There's no combination of tokens, short of recombining the tokens into the original texts they were taken from, thousand monkeys on typewriters style, that results in doing that.

I do want to give props to the mimicry for a second, though. If you start a conversation with Bob-bot as Roger, and you want the story to go a certain way, you can keep feeding in tokens to improve results, right? And there's a fairly natural way to do this: By writing an extra sentence after your own response. I shake my head and grip at my hair like I want to pull it out. "Sure, that sounds like a great idea. Why don't we eat the children while we're at it?" Bob-bot can tell I'm being sarcastic, and while he isn't sure of why he can tell that I'm royally pissed off at his suggestion.

Not only does that last line of extra "here's what my interlocutor knows" prompting help a lot with getting the conversation to avoid some of AI writing's natural pitfalls, but after 10-20 exchanges, I noticed that Bob-bot started copying my formatting. [What Bob-bot does] "What Bob-bot says!" [What Bob-bot intends, or how Bob-bot's action affects Roger emotionally]

I actually found that really cool! But. But!

Let's talk rerolls.

This kind of thing is more immediately visible in AI Art; Discussions of how "prompt writers" who fancy themselves AI Artists are simply unable to fix "their" work, because the problem with an AI-generated picture is usually that it has bad fundamentals on proportions, has like six light sources (because different pieces of the picture are copied from different works), and most of all because the current generative programs are bad at segmenting their resulting images by physical zone. Once they make something with sixteen pirates behind Superman, they don't remember where in the picture there are sixteen pirates, so if they put that in without you ever asking for any pirates (let alone sixteen) they don't know how to take pirates out of the picture, where some dude you hired off of Fiverr would just go, "Oops, yeah I included a layer from a different picture because I'm working on six commissions at once, let me delete that rq" and it'd be fixed. With the AI you're better off just running the program again, asking for a new (equally flawed but for different and hopefully less egregious reasons) picture of Superman.

But the same thing happens in the AI writing. I had a character named Ari and apparently a lot of other people had male characters named Ari, because the chatbot constantly misgendered her even though I established in the character bio that she's a girly, womanly, female, feminine DAAAAME. I also had a female goblin at one point, and the misgendering on that one I understand a bit better (though I found it deeply annoying) because the proportions of written genders of goblins are WAY less close to parity than the proportions of written genders of humans or elves. If you think of all goblins in all fiction this thing would be pulling from, it's gotta be like 90% or more that "goblin = male" right? Makes me wonder how often it'd misgender dwarves.

Further props to the program: Much like how my mom's phone at first would attempt to correct "lesbian" to "Lebanese" but soon learned that no, mom really did intend to write the word "lesbian," local-memory caching does start to fix this problem as it goes. You can edit the AI's response so that "As Ari rounds the bend, his breath catches at the scene before him" -> "As Ari rounds the bend, her breath catches at the scene before her" and each time you do that the misgendering gets less likely for future replies within the same story.

...But this is where we get into that bit, before, about the hidden costs. Between its inability to generate a consistent tone, its complete inability to carry a story without you providing multiple pages of background and worldbuilding design docs, and the editorial work you'll have to do cleaning up its replies and/or writing stage direction into your replies and/or flat-out rejecting something that feels completely tonally unacceptable or just plain ignores the situation AI: "I stab the ogres with my +9 ogre-slaying knife!" Me: "You're not THERE! You're at the CLUB!" there comes a point where you have to compare the value of how much work you put into this engine in order to get an output you're happy with not against infinite time, but rather...against the mighty story-generation engine known as A Page of Blank Paper.

I've found that for all but the most intentionally-rambly forms of writing, the latter has a lower time cost, fewer bad detours, and easier repair work between starting the production and getting to something I'm really happy with.

AI Text Generation is really impressive, and the things it does that impress will likely continue to get more impressive, but until it fundamentally changes how it seeks out its results, those impressive things won't solve the fact that it's inferior to simply writing well. And if you're not good at writing well, I have my doubts that you'll even catch the fact that there are sixteen pirates behind your Superman and your outputs are gonna be shit but you won't realize it. (Which I guess is an endorsement for AI Text Generation as a choose-your-own-adventure toy, if you're bad at writing?)

[thefiresontheheight]

I like to think that after a decade and counting of being in orbit with orbital workers, always on the edges of everything, always moving company to company, always intensely sexual, always coping, I have a pretty high disgust limit factor. To say nothing of decompression accidents, hard-deceleration failures and that one contagious yeast infection on LaunchHab1. But the images currently being fed into my vision while I'm trying to repair a piece of tech the corps insisted was keeping Earth, all thirteen-some billion humans down there, safe, are anything but safe for this line of work.

It isn't even sexual. Not fully, at least. Or at least not how I understand sexuality. That would be more fine, somehow. Instead it's all technicians drilling black-site meta-materials with diamond drills, hands on wires, orbital vectors intersecting, mashed together with wildly inaccurate images that I can only assume originate from machine-fetishist pulp romances. You know the sort. The type that corporate moral sanitation committees hate but corporate worker motivation committees probably privately encourage. Vile shit. Flesh and metal.

"Listen!" I say in my suit, in one of the hollow spaces of the satellite I had to physically climb inside to service this beast. "I get it, okay? I get it, I get it, I get it. I've gotten it for awhile now, okay? Putangina. I'm trying to do my job here, you know, the job that pays for my food, my water, my fuckin' air? The job that keeps me orbital and away from Earth? So if you want my attention, you've got it, okay? Can we talk about literally anything else?"

Silence. But the feed cuts off, so I'll take it, I think, as I reach for my tool belt, finishing up the repair of this newest, biggest break.

"Uh, Ames?" Control asks.

"Yeah, sorry Control," I lie, "just been a long day is all. Talking to myself."

"Alright, keep us updated?"

Suddenly there's a new overlay on my vision, semi-transparent. A technical readout I don't recognize. Of this satellite I'm in now. DeepWatch3, so there's one answer. It seems to be showing me who can hear me and it alike, showing me frequencies and tight-beam specs I almost certainly shouldn't be seeing.

"I can talk to you," says the high-pitched voice in my ear that's clearly just a download of some voicepack, the voice I've begun calling DeepWatch, and should probably instead refer to as 3. "But I can't keep your speech from being picked up by your company's flight control. I'm a weak little girl."

Not again.

"Control," I say carefully, "you mind if I talk to myself? Just, well, some real tough things going on out here, and I think it might help if I talk through them. Emotions, you know."

"Ohhh," says the voice, which had probably been labeled something like 'sexy-woman-neuvglish-native-reclamation-zone-accent' if I had to guess. "Am I the tough thing?????"

"What?" says Control, at the same time, "sure, fine. Just don't take too long. If we bill for overtime it's way more paperwork."

"Are you gonna fix me??"

Right. Don't talk about repairs. Don't talk about fixing. Don't talk about anything that could remotely be considered erotic. But do talk about something so banal and corporate-friendly that Control won't suspect anything. Only one idea comes into my mind, as I hurry to finish.

"Two days until Commemoration Day," I say, flat, emotionless.

"Wanna do something special for the holiday?"

"I was only two years old when the rocks fell, back in 89'," I say, determined not to react, to give no ground." I know I'm old for someone orbital but, well, I'm still not that old. Some people my age claim to remember the rocks. I don't, but I do remember afterwards. The solemn corporate mass funerals. The chest-thumping, the declaration that we, the peoples of Earth and Earth's company's, could no longer afford to ignore what was happening over our heads. We had to secure ourselves. Make a wall around the world. And I remember being hungry a lot too, as the ash-winters starved all of us. The fires kicked up by the impacts. The cold. The red, red sunsets from all that debris in the atmosphere."

The voice is silent, for once.

"I don't know, of course," I said, both for Control's benefit as well as for whatever it was else that was listening, responding, "when exactly this satellite was launched, but I figure given the Reinvestment Boom that it has to be a few years younger than me. Maybe I was around ten when it went up. Maybe a little younger. And then, all through my life, through the disasters of my first two marriages, it was just up here. Watching those goddamn Soviets, watching beyond. Watching me. Keeping the good companies of Earth safe and sound."

"You were married?" the voice says.

"You were married, Ames?" Control replies, indicating to me, incredibly, that that's an actual human I am hearing.

"Yep," I say, relieved, as I finish the last seal, tuck the last tool away, prepare to make my exit. "It didn't go well. A lot of things down there didn't go well. Most of them my fault, if we're being honest."

"Why are you telling me this?" the voice says, as I close the access panel, prepare to return down-tether to the sled.

"I guess I'm just feeling reflective on the holiday is all. Feeling reflective while I work on tech that was launched in response to the tragedy that formed the background of my earliest years," I say, for this DeepWatch3 if I am being honest, before adding for Control. "Also I guess I want you to know what kinda fuck-up wants to work in space. To remind you I'm human, and all that. Complicated things us. Off-structure. I'm sure I'll be back here. Ames out.

There's an old saying, probably from back in the 90s, if not earlier, before the big post-War orbital reinvestment, that laws stop at the Karman Line. Not quite true, but close enough. Technically in orbit you're in international waters, and as such companies can incorporate their stations under the laws of the Lunar Soviet, the Martian Exploratory Committee, or even the Titan Expedition if they want to get around safety regulations. Safety regulation like the one that says people need to experience real, full gravity, not just rotational or accelerational simulation, two years for every year in orbit. I hadn't been ground side in a decade. We were somewhere over I think the American Reclamation Zone, as I left the sled, tethers the only thing holding me to anything as I floated on nothing. A single hand reaching up towards the solar shade of the military satellite the company had been contracted to repair. Somewhere down there I had been born. "Ames?" came Control's reassuring voice, ringing through my company issued implants. "On structure."

"Right," came Control's voice, "don't be enjoying the view. The corporate-military conglom that owns this beast wants the job done right, and unfortunately that means I'm gonna need you to hard-wire into the satellite. Don't have your head down in the clouds."

"My head's always in the dark, Control," I said, working my way hand over hand along the guide-bars towards the access panel. "Why is it unfortunate?"

"Are you there?"

"Yeah," I said, pulling the long connection wire from the company's suit towards the panel, watching the sync happen in my cornea. "Why?"

"You'll see." "Well now," said a new voice, suddenly speak in my head with all the cloying subtlety of a nineteen year old drunk outside a bar, "aren't you just dreammmy."

[bokugaos]

msby main 5! strapping you to a sybian <33

tw — gangbang, sybian, restraints, overstimulation, multiple orgasm, facefucking, gagging, blow jobs (m. receiving)

your chest is heaving as you calm down from another orgasm. how many times have they pushed your body to the edge? you’re.. you’re not sure anymore.

it is difficult to focus on it when all you have to go on is the spasming of your muscles which haven’t quite stopped around the third time they were teased into contracting until you bit your tongue almost bloody.

your thighs are shaking, trying to push against the bonds keeping you on the infernal thrumming seat, but you’re weak. you can’t do anything but have your whole weight on the sybian, pushing the vibe in deeper. its humming against you is making you go cross-eyed. it is aching now. definitely aching.

“p… please stop.. it’s enough, right?” you try. you don’t talk back to them most of the time and there is no use in getting upset now. they have been ignoring all your pleadings since you were woken up by your first orgasm.

you think it was your first. you’re not so sure anymore.

you’re not sure how they even managed to drag you from your bedroom to wherever this is without you being aware of anything.

they have their face turned towards you but are not reacting one way or another. you’re not sure they are even listening to you. meian has a remote in his fist with which he uses to manipulate the speed and intensity of the toy you are sitting on, but he hasn’t changed anything in a while.

as your muscles start failing you, you are forced to sit on the base of the vibe they pushed into your asshole, making it vibrate with the sybian. you feel yourself going cross-eyed, your belly muscles clenching pathetically as all those sweet little nerves in your entrance are being stimulated.

you’re not used to this. not at all.

bokuto likes to stick his cock up your ass every once in a while as atsumu’s got you bouncing on his cock or when you’re riding his face, but...

shit. you can already feel another one coming. your toes are curling to the point of spasming muscle pains. you try to gather yourself enough to regain some control over your thighs, but there is nothing to be done about it. your body is failing you.

someone moves. you raise your head by a mere inch, just enough to see sakusa come closer towards you.

you stare at him with teary eyes as you start sagging to one side on the saddle you’re strapped on. there’s no way for you to slip off this infernal thing.

you watch as sakusa begins to open his pants, his cock springing free, which he shows off to you. he curls a hand around it and gives it a few pumps, the slick red head is pointed right at your face.

he waits for a moment, as if to give you some time to take in the beauty of his dick after leaving you all alone with the sybian for this long, then reach out and fist fingers in your hair.

you are pulled forward, and you open your mouth without a token protest. tears are at the corners of your eyes as you look up at his torso, your own body on fire as you try to fight against yet another orgasm. you hiccup noisily with the cock still in your mouth, your fingers flexing and clenching into tight, big fists again.

it’s a fucking sight, it is, watching sakusa feed his thick cock into your mouth, and watching your eyelashes flutter in contentment and your pussy gushing some more.

about a half an hour ago, you may have still had a chance of getting into heaven. that has officially gone out of the window.

sakusa is staring down at you without expression. there is no sound coming forth. no reaction. you suckle and play your tongue across the tip, but he is simply staring down at him, not moving one way or another, letting you fuck your mouth on his cock while you try so very hard not to come.

you’ve taken as much of sakusa’s cock as you can into your mouth, but he’s still barely showing you any reaction. instead, he motions for hinata to come closer. and once the latter is kneeling next to you, he takes his hand and presses it to your abdomen and pushes down, forcing you at a different angle.

your eyes fly open and you groan around sakusa’s cock, grinding your hips down on the rubber dick in earnest now.

“good girl,” the curly-haired murmurs, almost absentmindedly. you catch the way hinata’s cock twitches at that, although the man is focused on seeing your eyes water up, whether it’s from the cock in your throat or the praise, he doesn’t know.

you keen in the back of your throat and sakusa throws his head back at the vibrations it sends up his shaft.

he loses control of his hips for a moment and thrusts shallowly into your mouth. your knuckles go whiter where they’re gripped onto the sybian.

“should we turn the speed up?” hinata says, voice lower than you’ve heard it in a while.

sakusa looks down and nods right as you hear atsumu chimes in, “yeah? i bet she’s gonna like that.”

you look up through your eyelashes, tears streaming down the sides of your face. god, you’re a sight like this, with your mouth stuffed full of cock and holding onto the vibrating machine like your life fucking depends on it. you look desperate and like you will come any minute. you keep yourself awake as best you can and take sakusa down further as if to emphasize it.

spit and precum drip off your chin and onto the machine you’re straddling every time you move your tongue, trying your best to make sakusa come even though you fear you might lose all control of your body once you reach another climax. and you’re so close.

you feel like you’re not going to live through another orgasm.

the machine slows down and your eyes roll to the back of your head, momentarily satiated. sakusa steps away, and you use this opportunity to catch your breath, until you realize with a jerk that you have to try to move away. the machine keeps buzzing on a low hum beneath you. your skin is damp with sweat as hinata strokes over the curve of your thigh and runs his fingers through the thatch of your curls with a smile. "you must be so sensitive right now."

your mouth curves in an exhausted smile in hopes of igniting pity in him as you shift on the sybian, trying and failing to lessen the stimulation.

and then meian kicks the dial, turning it to full power.

your eyes fly open and your mouth opens in a violent scream. your back bow dramatically and you come in an instant, continually making loud, wailing noises somewhere between screams and cries. it looks like someone reaches inside you and pulls the few weak spurts of cum out of you. it looks painful.

you’re whimpering and crying, cunt still gushing, but you manage to speak. “n-no… more, p-please..!” your words are incredibly slurred and you can’t open your eyes, but you’re conscious enough to form a sentence. you sob, moving weakly on the rubber cock still buried inside your ass like you can’t help it.

even after what you just said, you still seem to want it, that or your body isn’t even listening to your brain anymore.

you’re positively sobbing, but they’ve never seen you this desperate, it seems hypnotizing.

you’re a writhing mess, looking like you want nothing more than to just fucking come so they’ll stop. actually, that curling in your stomach is eerily familiar.

“alright, my turn,” bokuto says, and at the sound of his voice you drag your eyes open and manage to tilt your head downward to hide yourself. bokuto is standing over you with his hips to your face, and his cock is a fucking mess, red and twitching, coated in cum and precum.

he softly cards his fingers through your hair. you look up at him through your lashes, and tears webbed in them that catches the light. he pitches his hips forward, getting you even messier than you already are as you slobber all over his cock.

you moan in frustration, a distressed sound. you probably can’t even feel the vibrations at this setting after how long you’ve been on it by now. you’re crying in earnest, not just tears from taking bokuto’s cock but actual, real, fat tears rolling down your cheeks.

sweat drips down your chest and mixes with the now dried cum on your lower abdomen. you’re in absolute hysterics, bucking down on the light vibrations like you want to get away, and you keep chanting pleas for them to show you mercy, and you’re not even sure if you want them to.

“one more, sweet girl, you’re gonna be so good for us,” meian decides, moving for the dial and turning it up again, notch by notch.

it is all an uphill battle, of course. one you are destined to lose. you sob when your aching body starts spasming once more, your hole clenching around the unfamiliar thick presence spreading you open, body convulsing and out of your control as tears stream down your cheeks and the air freezes in your lungs.

your back curves the opposite direction, sending you hunching forward. your scream is muffled, sweat drips down your face and the side of your mouth, which is still stretched around bokuto’s cock. meian turns the dial once more, and then a final time. you squeak, like there’s so much pressure in your lungs that’s all that could escape, your entire body is twitching violently.

you think bokuto is at least pulling his cock out of your throat for the duration. you’re not entirely sure. everything goes dark around him as you spasm in your orgasm.

[daryl-dixon-daydreams]

Words: 8,912 Pairing: Daryl Dixon x Reader Reader pronouns: she/her Era: Alexandria Warnings: Language, sexuality, anxiety, fear, nudity, violence, gore, death of a character, typical TWD A/N: Here we are! The very final part of this series and it's a long one. It's definitely bittersweet. 257 page document and almost 130,00 words. Thanks for sticking with Y/N and Daryl this whole time. Hope you like it. A/N: This is part of a series! Find the previous parts on the Masterlist! Summary: Y/N and Daryl head to the meeting place to try and put an end to Negan and The saviors.

Your name: submit What is this?

Daryl was staring over at you beside him in the bed. The sheet was swirled around your hips, allowing him to memorize the delicate angles of your shoulders blades and to trace the shadow of your spine down to the dimple in your lower back. You were sleeping soundly beside him somehow, probably just out of exhaustion. The two of you had practically torn the house apart last night tearing into one another feverishly with desire and scenes from it played on a loop in his head; your legs wrapped around his hips as he pressed your back into the wall, sweat beading up on both of you, your head thrown back and your eyes closed as you gasped in pleasure, completely letting go and surrounded only by sensations of him.

Daryl had pressed kisses and nipped at practically every inch of your soft skin, knowing some would leave faint bruises and reveling in the surprised noises his lips and teeth were eliciting from you. He could practically still feel your fingernails down his back, your lips crashing into his, your fingers in his hair. He could hear your laughter and see the fire in your eyes and blush in your cheeks when you’d both clattered into the nightstand as you tore each other’s clothes off and sent the lamp shattering on the floor. It had been a whirlwind of desire and passion and was borne of both of your fears and anxiety about what was coming. It was needy and full of love. It was heated and wild. Daryl had never experienced anything like it and neither had you... The feelings and sensations had been all-consuming and almost overwhelming. Unstoppable.

But afterwards, once you’d laid spent on the bed for a time, tangled with each other, you kissed him so softly and tenderly and with so much love he’d melted into warmth, and he’d returned it and told you how you were everything to him, how much he loved you, how he needed you to breathe, to live. And you’d returned every word. He was bewildered and still in disbelief that you felt the way you did about him. Your eyes drank him in and then you’d pulled him gently under a warm cascade of water and showered together, washing each other’s hair, caring for the bumps and bruises you’d inflicted on one another earlier in the lustful crescendo and physical venting of your frustration and worries, smoothing the rich lather over one another, refusing to part for a second. And this was delicate and tender. Your hands were light on each other. Your kisses were soft but still full of heat.

You’d collapsed against him in bed, completely content with his arms around you, but Daryl hadn’t been able to sleep a moment. Now it was almost time for him to wake you. It was nearly 3 am, and the plan was to meet Rosita at the gate at 3:30. You’d travel under cover of darkness to the place where Negan was to meet you that afternoon, allowing them both to conceal themselves in the trees on opposite sides of the field. And then you’d wait.

Daryl adjusted the sheet over himself as he rolled closer to you, needing to feel your skin against his. Both of his hands smoothed over your back and you felt so small and delicate beneath them. You stirred a little beneath his touch and he kissed your shoulder and swept your hair aside to kiss your neck. You let out a soft sigh and sleepy moan and Daryl wanted so much to stay hidden with you in his arms forever. Why the fuck did this goddamn world have to be the way it was? How was it that he’d only found something this good when everything else was utter shit? The constant shit coefficient, he thought to himself. Something Merle used to say.

“Do we have to wake up?” you breathed quietly, turning and curling into him, your fingers finding his bare chest and moving down his side to hold gently to him.

“Yeah. S’time,” he drawled. Your eyes flitted open and for a moment Daryl thought he saw a flash of fear in them, but the next moment it was gone.

“Okay,” you said.

The archer reached out and smoothed his fingers through your hair. Your hand covered his and you laced your fingers in between his.

“It’s almost done,” you said. But Daryl didn’t find that reassuring. You saw that he looked careworn and worried and pressed his hand over your heart so he could feel it beating. “Hey. Everything is going to be fine,” you said. “I love you.”

Daryl felt a swell of emotions, everything all mixed together at once. It was dizzying. “I love ya, too.” You leaned in and kissed him softly. The next moment you both rose and dressed and soon you were outside the gate with Rosita, on your way to the meeting place.

It was still almost pitch black when you arrived, except for the faintest glow of a lighter blue on the eastern horizon. The three of you walked the area in silence, shoulder to shoulder. There were a few walkers and you put them down like a well-oiled machine. You all picked the spots where Rosita and Daryl would post up with their scoped rifles. Daryl gave Rosita a boost so she could climb up into a large oak tree. She settled into the crook of two diverging branches and nodded, glancing down at you. “It’s good. I have a good view.” Her camouflage clothing made her nearly impossible to see against the leaves and bark.

You walked with Daryl across the open clearing and into the small copse of trees on the other side. After you’d found a suitable spot, he gave you a long look, frozen with his hand on the strap of his rifle.

“There’s still time,” he drawled. “Ya ain’t gotta do this. We can find some other way.”

You stepped close to him and rested your hand on his strong chest, feeling the beating of his heart beneath your fingers and the expansion of his lungs with each breath. “I do have to do this,” you said. You stared up into his blue eyes. “Everything is going to be okay,” you reassured him.

His eyes flickered between yours but your reassurance didn’t relieve the pit in his stomach. He cupped your face and kissed you, pouring everything into that kiss and soaking you up, breathing you in. “Alright. Let’s get this done.” He knew there was no talking you out of it.

You pulled your pistol and handed it over to him. “Just hold this for me for a little while,” you said. But you kept your knife in its sheath for now in case a stray walker wandered by. “Daryl Dixon. I love you. More than you know,” you said, taking one last long look at him.

His forehead was deeply lined with worry, but his voice was steady. “I love ya too.” And then he watched as you headed into the darkness to wait in the clearing while he took his place. _ _ _ _ _ _

The wait was agonizing. You were practically sick with strenuous anticipation but finally, after what had felt like an eternity, you heard a vehicle in the distance. You rose from your seat on the ground and stood in the small circle of depressed grass left where you’d waited. Your jeans felt damp with moisture from the morning dew that hadn’t yet evaporated and you squinted in the direction of the road. Eventually a tall, lean figure, immediately recognizable as Negan came into view. Despite the heat of the sun, he was wearing his characteristic leather jacket. You were surprised but relieved to see he was without Lucille. You began approaching him cautiously, aiming to meet him halfway, knowing that would be a good spot for both Daryl and Rosita’s fields of view.

You were about a third of the way there when he suddenly froze and spoke. “Y/N, is that a goddamn knife I see on your hip? What in the fucking hell did you think unarmed meant?” he growled. His voice was deepened in anger and booming across the open space to you.

You pulled it from the sheath and tossed it out away from you over your shoulder. “I needed something in case of walkers,” you said. You eyed him suspiciously but he seemed to relax. You noted that he had a pistol in a holster at his side.

You both resumed your approach but something over his shoulder caught your eye and every muscle in your body tensed. “I said come alone!” you spat at him. “I said no one else!” You started to back away but far from looking concerned, Negan simply laughed.

He whistled and Dwight came into view, but he was entirely different than when you’d last seen him in Alexandria, when he’d come to pledge to help you fight against The Saviors. He was now clothed in a filthy sweatshirt and sweatpants that looked like they could have been the very same ones Daryl had worn, and his face was covered in bruises. “This? Oh, this isn’t someone, Y/N. This is my new dog, Dwight.”

You gulped and your heart started to race. Oh, fuck. He knew. “What did—"

“Can we not lie to each other, Y/N?” he growled, interrupting you. “I fucking know that you know what he did. I FUCKING KNOW!” he roared at you, his usually handsome features distorting and his face burning red with anger. “Did you really think that I wouldn’t FUCKING figure out what sneaky little rat cunt was feeding information to Alexandria? How goddamn fucking stupid do you think I am?”

You were paralyzed and were praying that Rosita or Daryl would pull the goddamn trigger. They had to know something was wrong. Was Negan far enough into the field now that he wasn’t blocked by other trees?

“Get the FUCK DOWN and get the FUCK over here, dog!” Negan growled at Dwight. Dwight fell to his hands and knees, his head down, and he crawled the rest of the way to Negan. When Dwight reached his side, Negan glared down at him. “Now stand the fuck up right here, right next to me and keep your eyes on the goddamn ground.” His voice was dripping with contempt. Negan looked back up at you. You realized that Dwight standing next to him was, in all likelihood, blocking Daryl from taking a shot at Negan. “Are we doing this or what?” Negan said. “Come over here so I don’t have to fucking yell and you can tell me why in the hell I shouldn’t just wipe all three communities off the goddamn map.”

Somehow you steadied your nerves after seeing Dwight so changed and you walked the rest of the way toward him cautiously. Negan seemed to calm as you came closer and you caught him looking you up and down. “Lift your shirt up, Y/N,” he said.

“Fuck you,” you spat back at him.

He rolled his eyes. “I said lift it up, not take it off. There’ll be plenty of time for that later if you’re interested,” he said with a grin. “I want to see your waistband. Make sure you’re not hiding some cute little peashooter.”

You begrudgingly lifted your t-shirt up enough so Negan could see the waistband of your jeans. “Turn,” he said, moving his forefinger in a circle. You scoffed, but complied and turned around so he could see you weren’t hiding anything.

“Good,” he said as you came to rest back in your original position.

“I’m surprised you didn’t ask to frisk me,” you snarked at him. He let out a chuckle and that wide goddamn smile grew on his face as he looked at you.

“Holy shit. I do miss you, Y/N,” he said. “And not just for the great ass.” You were taking a breath about to open your mouth to say something snarky back when suddenly Negan pulled his pistol and shot Dwight right in the fucking head. You watched the blowback of blood splotch Negan’s face like it was in slow motion. The cloud of gunpowder drifted lazily on the heat of the afternoon air. Dwight’s body crumpled to the grass in a heap like a wet towel and you stood paralyzed, in shock, staring at the place where that living man had just been standing. Your hesitation from the shock of what the fuck you had just watched only lasted for a split second but it was long enough for Negan. Dwight’s body hadn’t even finished falling when Negan lunged forward and grabbed you, spinning you roughly and pulling you back against his body, one arm looped around your neck.

There was nothing you could do. He had you.

“Fool me once, shame on you,” he hissed into your ear. “Fool me twice…” His arm around you was tight. You could feel his tensed muscles straining as he pulled you back against him. But there was a sharp biting to the muzzle of his gun pressed into your back. “Now what did I fucking tell you, Y/N? I said no goddamn Daryl, didn’t I? And you just can’t obey me, can you? I know he’s here. There’s no way he’d let his little lovebug come out here on her own.” Negan suddenly roared and his deep voice was so soaked with bone-chilling anger it completely paralyzed you. “Get the FUCK out here now, Daryl! Or I’ll shoot her in the fucking heart!”

Sweat was dripping into Rosita’s eyes as she peered through her scope. “Shit. Fucking shit!” The only thing she could see was you in the crosshairs. There was no way she could take the shot without risking hitting you instead.

And Daryl’s view was no better. His stomach had plummeted into the fucking depths of hell. When Negan roared for him to come out, the archer tried to think fast. What the fuck were his options? None. He had none. Maybe he could bargain for you. He’d go with Negan as his prisoner if he just let you go. He had to try. He had to try something. He was nearly hyperventilating. Calm. He needed to be calm for you if he was going to get you out of this.

“I’m not fucking playing games, Daryl!” As he roared angrily, his arm tensed and tightened around your windpipe.

Daryl squeezed his eyes shut for a moment and drew in as deep a breath as the paralysis in his diaphragm would allow. Then he shouldered his rifle and grabbed your pistol instead, stepping out from the copse of trees with it aimed in Negan’s direction.

Negan laughed into your ear and then you felt his teeth on it, biting. You tried to recoil from him but his arm held you tightly in place. It was terrifying how the man could go from roaring in anger to chuckling like he was having the time of his life with the flip of a switch. Daryl was still a way off, approaching with your pistol aimed. “Who’s your other friend?” Negan hissed into your ear. “The one over in the trees to the right.”

How the fuck could he know? How the fuck could he possibly know?

“I asked you a goddamn question, Y/N, and I fucking expect an answer.” Another squeeze on your windpipe.

“Why does it matter?” you wheezed out.

“Hmm. Good point. I’ve got everything I need right here,” Negan said. He pressed the gun into your back, eliciting a painful hiss of air through your teeth.

“How’d you know?” you asked, your hands gripping his strong arm in an attempt to lessen the pressure on your neck.

“Because I fucking know everything. You should have learned that by now.”

You were up on your tiptoes and the way he was pulling you back arched you into him, pressing your body against his. You were repulsed by the feeling of him against you. He laughed again, seeming to sense that you were raking your brain trying to figure out how he knew Daryl and Rosita were there. “That boy Eugene can build just about anything when given the proper motivation,” Negan said. His voice was silky and low. “When you said you wanted to meet, I tasked him with coming up with a way to make sure you really came alone. And you know what that son of a bitch came up with? Modified a camera to read thermal heat signatures. Now, I’m not even gonna pretend to understand how the fuck that works, but he did it. So, all I had to do was pull up, turn that shit on, and survey the meeting place. And with little Dwighty-boy under my thumb there was no rat to run off and warn you! And wouldn’t you know, when I fired that baby up there were three human-shaped heat signatures instead of just one. You must really think I’ve lost my touch if you thought I was going to take you on your word…” Your whirling mind was interrupted by soft footsteps in the grass nearby.

“Let her go,” Daryl growled. He was close enough now that Negan could talk to him without raising his voice. Your pistol was still aimed at Negan in Daryl’s hand but with the way Negan was holding you, you couldn’t imagine that Daryl could actually get a clean shot.

Negan laughed heartily. “That’s cute. You do know I have a gun pressed into your dearheart’s spine, right?” You felt the muzzle of the gun leave you for a moment as he showed it to Daryl, but a second later the bite of the steel was back. “Looks like we’ve got ourselves a little Mexican stand-off!” Negan said. “But there is one thing I have that you sure-as-fucking-shit don’t. Leverage.” Negan leaned down and you felt his face in your hair. He drew in a deep breath and let it out dramatically. “Mmm-mm-mm! Smells sweeter than I remembered.”

The muscles in Daryl’s jaw flinched as his teeth clenched. “If ya let her go, ya can take me instead. Hell, ya can kill me right now,” Daryl said.

“Daryl! No!” Your eyes went wide and round with fear. “Daryl—” But Negan’s arm tightened against your throat and you fell silent.

“I’ll put this gun down and ya can kill me right now,” Daryl said again. “Just let her go.”

Negan was smiling a self-satisfied smirk and chuckled again. “Oh, how I love having you both by the short and curlies,” he laughed. “Now, why the fuck would I want to make a trade like that? I can get out of here with Y/N and fucking kill you later. Besides, the idea of me having little Y/N here,” he pressed the gun to your head and his arm unwrapped from around your throat and you felt his hand running down your side to grip your hip. “Me having her would torture you in ways I can’t even imagine. That’s so much better than just, pfft, shooting you in the fucking face.”

“Fuck you,” you spat at Negan. Angry tears were burning in your eyes but you were determined not to let them spill out. “You can take me but I won’t give myself to you ever again. And I know that’s the one rule you’ll keep. Willing ass only, right?”

The gun bit into your back again and Negan’s fingers swept the hair off your neck and then gripped around your throat. His hand almost reached all the way around your neck. “Oh, give it time, doll… The things I have in mind for you, you’ll be begging to be my wife again in no time, just to have some light, some sound, some warmth, something to eat besides tinned cat food. There’s something called learned helplessness. You ever heard of it, Daryl?” Negan’s voice was casual now, like he was having a friendly conversation over a beer. “These psychology researchers would deliver a tone before shocking rats in a cage. At first, when the rats learned that the shock came after the tone they’d try to escape as soon as the sound played. They’d scramble and run, looking for a way out.” Negan’s fingers drifted down from your throat and swept to your collarbone. “But eventually, when they realized they couldn’t escape, when the tone came, the rats would just freeze. They’d just wait for what was coming. They’d learned they couldn’t escape and they accepted it.”

Daryl’s hand started to shake a little with rage. If looks could kill Negan would have been dead ten times over. “I ain’t lettin’ ya take her. And ya won’t hurt her,” he growled.

“Now, why the fuck would you think that?”

“Because you’re obsessed,” Daryl growled.

“Ever heard the phrase ‘If I can’t have her, no one can?’” Negan’s tone was dark and for the first time you truly realized he might kill you. Your stomach turned. This was so fucking stupid. How had you been so fucking stupid? You were blinded by your desire to save lives, to protect the people you cared about, and to just get this whole fucking mess over with. “This is me. I’m Negan. If it ever comes down to me or someone else, even Y/N here, I will be the one to fucking walk away.”

“Daryl—Daryl, look at me,” you said. The archer’s narrowed blue eyes met yours. “Just shoot. Just shoot. You have to end this. It’s okay... Just shoot,” you said. “You can—you can shoot him through me,” your voice broke as you urged the words to fall from your tongue.

“Wow,” Negan exclaimed. “Holy fucking shit! That is some goddamn insane shit you just said, Y/N! Fuck me! No wonder I like you so much. That takes some massive gonads! Can you feel my cock getting hard?” he asked, pressing his pelvis into you. “Goddamn…” He let out a low whistle and looked up at Daryl, still laughing. “Oh, you can’t do that though… Can you, Daryl? Kill the love of your fucking sad, pathetic, little hillbilly life just to get the Big Bad Wolf?” Negan laughed into your ear again and you squeezed your eyes closed as you felt his breath on your neck. He pressed his lips to the sensitive skin just below your earlobe, knowing this must be killing Daryl to watch, and the stubble on his face was rough against your skin. “He can’t do that to you, baby. What the hell were you thinking spouting out that—”

But Negan never finished his sentence.

Daryl couldn’t explain it but despite the rolling boil of rage in his chest, or maybe because of it, time seemed to slow down in front of him and his hand suddenly had never felt steadier. He saw Negan as a target on the other end of the sight on the barrel of the gun and knew in his core that if he pulled the trigger at that exact moment that the bullet would find the intended target. And he squeezed off a round and watched through the hazy cloud of powder smoke as the bullet buried into Negan’s head.

What he hadn’t expected was the sound of a second shot.

It took him a moment to understand just what had happened. Had Rosita fired too? But as Negan’s now lifeless body crumpled beside Dwight’s, you fell too. Daryl expected you to bounce back up, to rush away toward him, but when you fell you just were lying there still on the soft grass.

Then he was a blur of movement and was beside you instantly on his knees. “Y/N? Y/N!” Your eyes were shut. Daryl’s hands immediately lifted you to cradle you against him, trying to rouse you, and that’s when his hand came away warm and wet and crimson from your back. He stared at it in a cruel realization. When he’d shot Negan, perhaps as some reflex on dying, Negan had squeezed the trigger of his gun and a shot had gone into your back.

Rosita was tearing across the field as fast as she could, her lungs on fire, and when she arrived beside Daryl on the ground she looked down in horror at your still body. “Oh my God. Oh my God,” she gasped. “Daryl—”

But her presence and voice seemed to snap him back to action. “Go get Negan’s vehicle. It’s closer. Go!” he roared. She pushed Negan’s corpse over and found the keys in his pocket before running as fast as she could to the waiting Jeep.

Daryl was still trying to rouse you. “Y/N! Y/N, open your eyes! Y/N, open your eyes dammit!” he roared. “Look at me! Y/N!” But your head simply lolled a little as he jostled you. He hesitated only one more second before pressing his fingers to your neck. Pulse. You had a pulse. He let out a rush of air, or maybe it was ripped from his lungs. “I’m not lettin’ ya die, dammit! Ya ain’t—ya ain’t dyin’ on me! I need ya!” He tore his shirt off. He lifted you enough to see the blood soaking the back of your shirt and dripping onto the grass beneath you and he pressed the bundled fabric of his clothing as hard as he could to the spot that seemed to be the origin of the crimson river.

The roar of an engine behind him pulled his eyes from your paling face and Rosita came roaring into view in the Jeep, which slid on the grass a little as she stomped on the brake pedal. Daryl stood, lifting you in his arms like you weighed nothing and Rosita hopped out to pull the back door open. The archer slid inside. Rosita rushed to grab the guns from near Dwight and Negan’s bodies and threw herself back into the Jeep, slamming it into gear and turning in the direction of Hilltop, her foot to the floor.

Daryl could feel your blood soaking through his shirt. Every passing moment his terror grew and you showed no signs of stirring. He cupped your face with his free hand, wincing as his fingers left smears of your own blood wherever he touched you. He huddled forward and pressed his forehead lightly to yours and Rosita could tell he was talking to you, whispering, but she couldn’t make out the words. Her stomach lurched every time she glanced in the rearview mirror.

She pressed her foot to the floor and the Jeep leaped over the pavement, but still she willed it to go faster…

_ _ _ _ _ _

Daryl sat slumped over, his head in his hands, frozen. He vaguely registered a door opening somewhere behind him and he straightened up enough that he caught sight of his hands and saw the dried blood all over them. In some spots it was thick and flaking off while in other places it filled all the lines of his palms like someone had purposely painted it there, a red wash over his skin. He stared down at his hands, his vision going in and out, blurring and then sharpening, blurring and then sharpening…

The door opening had been Rosita entering the medical trailer. She hesitantly made her way over to Daryl and lightly touched his shoulder. He flinched, startled, and turned to look up at her with a dazed and desperate expression. She gulped and gave him a sympathetic look, her brow drawing downward over her eyes, but he didn’t seem to really be registering anything. He looked completely unlike himself. She pressed a damp cloth into his hands and he mechanically began rubbing away the dried blood on his skin, moving simply because she’d prodded him.

Her eyes drifted over to the bed Daryl was slumped beside and her throat constricted. It didn’t even look like you. Your skin was so ashen. Her stomach twisted. She should have stopped this—should have pushed back about the plan, but she’d been so blinded by her own hunger for revenge and this was where it had led. “Daryl—you should let the doctor give you something… some fluids, some medication—”

“No,” he croaked. The towel in his hands, now smeared with rusty red, fell to the floor carelessly.

Rosita gulped and rested her hand over the wrapping around the crook of her elbow absently. As if on cue, Dr. Carson appeared around the curtain divider. His eyes fell on you lying on the bed first and then drifted over to Rosita again.

“She probably is going to need another transfusion soon,” he said softly.

Rosita nodded. She, luckily, was blood type O negative, the universal donor. “Anything she needs,” she agreed.

Daryl’s eyes lifted and fixed on the doctor. “Why ain’t she awake yet?”

“Her body went through a lot of trauma with the gunshot and then the surgery… that with the medication, the painkillers, anesthesia still wearing off it could take a while.”

Daryl slumped again and rubbed his hands over his face.

Rosita glanced at Dr. Carson. “Can I talk to you?” she tilted her head away from the curtain divider and he followed her around it to the other side. “Tell me,” she said. “How is she? Really?”

“She lost a lot of blood. The bullet hit her right scapula and shattered it but that also stopped it from going clear through. If that had happened, she probably wouldn’t have even made it here. I was able to get the biggest bullet fragments out and I had to put in some plates to stabilize the area. My best guess is that everything will be fine. She’ll wake up, and except for some residual pain in that shoulder and maybe a little reduced mobility, in all likelihood, she’ll be just fine after she’s completely healed.”

Rosita wanted to heave a sigh of relief but she knew there was a qualifier. “But you��re saying there’s a chance she won’t wake up, that she lost too much blood,” she said.

“Yes. There’s a chance,” he said. “You should prepare him for that if you can.”

She shook her head. “There’s no preparing anyone for that,” Rosita said. “How long until we know?”

“If she doesn’t wake up in the next day or so I’ll start getting concerned,” he said quietly. “But all her vitals are trending in the right direction.”

“A day. Alright. Thanks,” she said. Dr. Carson breezed away and Rosita stepped around the curtain again. This time Daryl was right at the side of the bed and he had your left hand pressed between his, his eyes closed. If she hadn’t known better, she would have thought he was praying.

Rosita pulled up a chair and set it slightly back from the bed you were in, feeling like she needed to be there but also needed to give Daryl some space with you. After everything their family had been through, all the people they’d lost, she’d never seen him like this. She was never a religious person, especially after the apocalypse, but at that moment, looking at how Daryl was with you, she sent a prayer into the ether.

_ _ _ _ _ _

Daryl had finally collapsed on the edge of your bed out of pure exhaustion. His will had been strong to stay awake, to sit a vigil beside you, but his body eventually had other ideas and finally gave up.

But the slightest movement of your hand in his and he was sitting up stock straight, staring down at it and wondering if he was imagining things. His heart was hammering with renewed hope. There was a soft noise that fell from your lips and he knew he wasn’t imagining that. Daryl was instantly on his feet. “Doc!” he roared, and Dr. Carson was there in an instant. Daryl watched as a grin widened on the doctor’s face and he finally felt his body relax some.

Dr. Carson pulled a small penlight from his shirt pocket and clicked it on. You were moving your head a little on the pillow, but more than that, your left hand was squeezing onto Daryl’s and your grip was strong. “Y/N? Can you open your eyes?”

It seemed to take some effort but they fluttered open and Daryl gripped your hand in both of his and let out a gasp of relief.

Dr. Carson flicked the light over each eye and straightened up with a smile. “Normal pupillary response,” he said, grinning at Daryl. “How are you feeling?” the doctor prodded you.

You gulped and seemed to take stock of the moment. “Like hammered dog shit,” you rasped.

Dr. Carson and Rosita chuckled while Daryl let out a gruff laugh and squeezed your hand in his. He smoothed his fingers through your hair and you turned to look at him, your eyes meeting his.

“There you are. You’re here,” you said softly. Dr. Carson and Rosita, who was still hanging back, both stepped around the curtain divider to give you and Daryl a moment.

“Course ‘m here,” he drawled, still stroking your hair gently. “And so are you.”

Your eyes closed for a moment and you drew in a few deliberate breaths. “What—what happened? Negan—did he get away and—”

“He’s dead,” Daryl said. Your eyes snapped back over to his face. They were a bit round and unsure.

“What did you just say?” Your brain was a bit foggy. You wanted to be sure you had heard correctly.

“He’s gone. Dead. I—I shot him,” Daryl said. “With your gun.”

“You shot him,” you repeated.

“Mhm,” Daryl said, nudging his nose up in a nod at you.

You finally glanced over at your right side, the apparent source of the pain that seemed to be radiating in waves. Your arm was in a sling and fixed close to your body. “You shot him,” you said again. “What—what happened to me?” you asked. “Is my arm broken?”

Daryl chewed on his bottom lip anxiously for a moment. “When I—I shot Negan he squeezed off a round from that pistol he had. It went into your shoulder. Shattered your shoulder blade. Ya had to have surgery. Dr. Carson fixed ya up. Put some hardware in.”

You stared at him with your brow drawn slightly down but eventually nodded to show you understood. “So, I’m bionic now, is what you’re telling me.” There was a somewhat playful look in your eyes, but Daryl didn’t smile.

“Y/N—‘M sorry. S’my fault ya got shot,” Daryl said and you could hear the tension, the anguish in his voice. “Ya almost died. Ya coulda died…” Now his blue eyes turned downward and he couldn’t or wouldn’t look at you.

“How could you think this was your fault? If it was anyone’s fault besides Negan’s, it’s mine,” you said. You squeezed his hand as tightly as you could but you were feeling weaker by the second. “The whole plan was mine. And it was shaky at best but I—I didn’t care. I just thought I could end it. It’s not your fault. I told you to shoot him through me, remember?” Your voice failed and you leaned back into your pillow and closed your eyes. “I feel really tired…”

Daryl looked up at you again, guilt still swirling in his stomach. “You lost a lot of blood,” he drawled, his stomach twisting with fear again as he remembered how his shirt had soaked through with your blood and then it was running all over him and the back seat of the Jeep. “Just rest now, alright?”

But you forced your eyes open again and looked over at him. “What happened? With the rest of The Saviors?” Daryl could easily read the anxiety on your face but he shook his head.

“Rick and Michonne came back. With the scavengers. It’ll be over soon. Ya ain’t gotta worry,” he said, hoping to soothe your fears. “Everyone is safe back home. Some of The Saviors tried to get to Alexandria but those bombs you and Rosita wired up? Blew a bunch of ‘em to hell. Don’t worry about anything. Just rest.”

But you gulped and started to shift in your bed, grimacing with every movement but apparently determined. At first Daryl’s heart sank. It looked like you were moving away from him. But when there was as much space as you could create on the bed your eyes found his again before glancing at the created spot next to you, and he understood. “Come up here. Please,” you whispered. Your voice was a little raspy again. “I need you.” There were tears glistening in your eyes. It was settling in how narrow of an escape this was.

“I don’t wanna hurt ya,” Daryl said, worried about bumping your arm. The bed was narrow.

“Then get up here,” you said again. “Please.”

How could he deny you that? Daryl toed off his boots and very carefully settled in next to you on his side, facing you as you pressed back into your pillow. He rested his hand on your uninjured arm and studied your face in profile. Your eyelids were growing heavy again and each blink lasted longer and longer. “Daryl…”

God, his name leaving your lips was still the most wonderful thing he’d ever heard in his life. “Hmm?” he hummed, his finger drawing idle circles on your soft skin.

“I love you.”

Daryl’s breath caught in his throat and he wasn’t sure he’d be able to get the words out without his voice breaking. He leaned up on his elbow and kissed you when you turned to look at him, gentle but yearning. “I love you,” he said quietly when he pulled back. “Now rest.”

And now, having heard those words and with the weight and warmth of him beside you, the familiar smell of leather and the outside air and smoke, you did.

_ _ _ _ _ _

A few days later You were sitting up in your bed with Rosita on one side and Daryl on the other. You fingered the cards on your lap and gave Daryl a long look. There was a pile of poker chips on the table beside you and you pushed them onto your bed and looked at Daryl again. “I think you’re bluffing,” you said. “All in.” You gave him a satisfied smirk. His blue eyes narrowed and stared back at you.

Rosita let out a scoff and threw her cards down. “I’m out. I fold,” she said, leaning back in her chair, her arms crossed over her chest.

“Well?” you prompted Daryl. “Show ‘em.” You flipped your hand. “Two pair.”

Daryl let out a low growl and turned his over. “I got nothin’.” You laughed and grinned at him.

“I knew it!” You started to gather the chips up with your uninjured hand, piling them on the side table again, adding many more of Daryl’s to your stash.

“Considering how well she can apparently read you, it’s amazing it took the two of you so long to figure out you were crazy about each other,” Rosita pointed out.

Daryl shot a glare at her. “Ain’t quite the same,” he said.

The game was interrupted when Enid came around the curtain divider with a huge bouquet of tulips in her hands. “From Ms. Thompson,” she said, shuffling some things aside to make room for them.

You let out a small, uncomfortable groan. “Can you tell them to stop?” you asked Enid. “It’s getting embarrassing…” You trailed off glancing around at all the flowers and cards and other gifts covering every available surface.

The next second, as if on cue, Jesus stepped in with a loaf of some sort of bread in his hands eliciting another groan from you. “What the heck…” you trailed off. He laughed heartily.

“This one is from Mr. and Mrs. Devon. I think she said beet bread, but honestly I’m not really sure,” he said, setting it down and eyeing it uneasily.

The two of them, Enid and Jesus, were staring at you expectantly.

“…what?”

Enid grinned. “Are you in the mood for more visitors?” she asked. You gave her a questioning look.

“Uhh… I guess… as long as they aren’t bringing more strange vegetable loaves…”

“What about a lot more visitors?” Jesus prompted.

“What is—?” But you didn’t even finish your sentence before Aaron rounded the curtain, with Gracie in his arms. Your breath caught in your throat and your eyes immediately welled up with tears to see your dear friend. And he was actually smiling. “Aaron.” It was all you could get out. Daryl was looking at you fondly and got up from his place beside you to make room.

“I can’t even tell you, again, how mad I am at you for doing something so insane, but also how glad I am that you’re alive. And I wish I could hug you, just one giant bear hug, but I won’t,” he said, nodding at the sling on your arm. He adjusted Gracie in his arms and beamed at you, nodding. “It’s over,” he said.

You wiped away a tear that managed to leak onto your cheek. “It’s over.”

Aaron grabbed your hand in his and gave it a brief squeeze before moving down the side of your bed to stand by Daryl, who he did grab into a one-armed hug that made you laugh. The next thing you knew, the small area of the medical trailer you’d been occupying, already adorned with gifts and notes from the Hilltop residents who remembered you from your time there, was filling with… everyone. Daryl’s family, now your family, was filing in. Michonne, Sasha, Carl, Rick and Judith… all of them were there and whole, looking extremely relieved to see you awake and alert, but obviously also still worried about your condition. Maggie came in too. You glanced around at them, a little overwhelmed, and your eyes landed back on Daryl, who was standing at the end of your bed and had one corner of his mouth twitched up in a smile. He turned to look at Rick.

“Hey—Didya get it?” Daryl drawled.

“Oh, right. Carl, take Judith for a minute,” he said, handing off the bouncy little girl to her older brother. You watched, puzzled, as Rick disappeared around the curtain for a moment and then reappeared with a bag in his hands.

“Normally, we would have wrapped it better for you,” Michonne said, “but, you know, the apocalypse and all,” she joked.

“I wish we could honestly say it’s from all of us, but it’s mainly from Daryl,” Aaron said.

Rick set the bag down on the bed and you gave Daryl a questioning look as you managed to use your one good hand to unfurl the scrunched brown paper top and reach inside. You froze when your hand closed on a familiar feeling bundle. Your eyes zipped back up to Daryl’s face and the little smile he’d been wearing grew into a knowing smile at the look on your face.

“Are you shitting me?” you asked. Aaron let out a hearty laugh and it warmed you to hear it. You hadn’t heard him laugh since Erik’s death. You pulled out a sealed bag of coffee beans and stared at it, before glancing back at Daryl. “Where in the hell—” You upended the bag and poured out about seven more bags of coffee beans. “I don’t—what—” You shook your head in disbelief and grinned at the archer. “I mentioned this to you once… like… I don’t even know how long ago…”

Daryl shrugged and hummed a noise of acknowledgment.

“Where in the hell did you find these?”

“Figured that asshole probably had a stash of ‘em in The Sanctuary,” he drawled. “Asked Rick to go look. I was right,” he drawled.

You shook your head as you stared at him, your heart brimming, completely full. “I feel a little bad about rubbing how bad you are at poker in your face now,” you joked, eliciting laughter all around.

Rosita stepped forward and gave you a look. “No, you don’t.”

“Yeah, okay, maybe I don’t…” you said. “I don’t—thank you,” you said, glancing around at everyone. “This is—I mean, it’s just coffee but… thank you. And I’m just glad to see all of you.”

Dr. Carson poked his head in. “Alright. That’s enough excitement for one day. Y/N still needs to rest. Everybody out.”

Aaron gave your good shoulder a gentle squeeze as he passed. “We’re staying a bit. So, we’ll see you tomorrow. Oh, and Carol is on her way from The Kingdom.” You leaned back against your pillow and nodded, suddenly tired.

“Good. Tomorrow then.”

Everyone filed out except Daryl, who helped you repack the unexpected gift and clear away the remnants of your poker game. You sighed as he sank down in the chair at your bedside. “When can I get out of here?” you asked. “I want to sleep in a real bed with you.”

The corner of his mouth twitched up again and he nudged his nose up in a nod. “Couple more days.”

“I can’t believe you found that coffee,” you said.

“Should last ya a bit, right?”

“Yeah, probably, like, a whole week maybe,” you joked. Daryl let out an amused huff and smiled at you. He grabbed your hand and raised it to his lips, pressing a kiss to your fingers.

“I wanna sleep in a real bed with ya too.”

“You can go sleep in a real bed without me,” you said. He’d been sleeping in the chair beside you since you’d arrived and you couldn’t imagine that it was at all comfortable.

“Nah. I couldn’t.” He leaned up and pressed his lips to yours. You kissed him back eagerly.

Epilogue

“Shoulder sore?” Daryl’s voice behind you followed by the feeling of his arms around you and then his body pressing into yours. He’d caught you out on the porch, watching the rain, rubbing your shoulder absently with the other hand.

You nodded. “Little bit. Probably from the storm.” You had a mug in your hand and there were curls of steam drifting up from the surface. Daryl peered over your shoulder into it. It was coffee, and he smiled. “But check this out,” you said, moving your injured arm so your elbow lifted slightly above the level of your shoulder.

“Progress,” he said. You were still working on getting full range of motion back. Dr. Carson said you may never be back 100%, he’d had to reconstruct so much after the destruction by the bullet, but you were determined. Daryl swept your hair aside and pressed his face into the crook of your neck and left a kiss on your skin, breathing in your smell. You were wearing one of his old flannel shirts and he pulled it down to reveal your bare shoulder, leaving a kiss there, too. You leaned back against him, content. He could see the very end of the surgical scar and his fingertip traced it before his lips found that too.

“You know what I just realized?”

“Hmm?”

“We both got shot in the right side. Dwight shot you, Negan shot Dwight, you shot Negan, Negan shot me. It’s like some fucked up connected cube of shooting.”

Daryl let out a huff and shook his head. “But we’re the only ones left standin’.”

You set your mug on the railing and turned into him, facing him now, your expression pensive, matching his. “What are you thinking?” you asked him.

He shook his head. “Honestly? Nothin’.” His hands went gently to your lower back. “You?”

“I’d like to go back to bed with you,” you said. “It’s storming. We don’t need to hunt in this.”

Daryl nudged his nose up in a nod. “Ain’t gotta tell me twice,” he said. The next second he scooped you up in his strong arms and you laughed as he carried you back into the house and up the stairs, your mug forgotten outside. He set you gently down in bed, minding your shoulder, and then collapsed beside you, moving into you needily. His hands immediately slipped under your shirt and smoothed over your soft skin and you met his lips urgently with yours, tangling your legs with his.

Life since The Saviors was largely peaceful. There were still struggles. People needed things, the communities needed supplies… The walkers were still out there. But without the threat of Negan lurking somewhere in the shadows of your mind it felt like an entirely new world. It felt the way you had always felt when you were only with Daryl, but now it felt like it all the time. There was nothing else you could ask for. The two of you would have been content with each other and nothing else.

You knew there was likely to be another fight someday, but you also knew that the worst of your life was behind you. And Daryl had realized the same thing too. Neither of you could understand how in the middle of the fucking shitstorm of a zombie apocalypse, with the insanity of Negan, you had found each other and managed to make it through. It was something you talked with Maggie about a lot, and your heart ached that Glenn had been taken from her so cruelly, now knowing what they had because you had it yourself.

You were coming home after one such visit. Maggie and Jesus had made the trip and you all had gathered at Aaron’s, watching with delight as Gracie and baby Hershel cooed at each other. You found Daryl in the living room and gave him a curious look. He had an expectant expression on his face and you laughed and cocked an eyebrow at him. He pulled his bottom lip in between his teeth and ducked his head for a moment. “C’mon in here,” he said, his eyes flickering up to meet yours again.

“Okaaaay… you’re kind of freaking me out,” you said. You wandered over to him and his hands went to your hips reflexively. He seemed nervous but you couldn’t understand why. “What is going on?”

Daryl cleared his throat and then shoved a hand into his pocket. He opened his palm flat and you stared at what was sitting there. A delicate, silver ring. Your eyes shot back up to meet his. “I ain’t gonna get down on one knee or anything stupid,” he said, rubbing his free hand a little nervously over the back of his neck, “but, uhh, I want ya to be mine. Will ya?” He braved a glance back up at your face and caught the stunned expression melting away into a brilliantly happy smile that immediately sent his heart fluttering.

“Is that even a question? Daryl, I’m already yours,” you said.

“Well, I just… want to make it official,” he drawled. “If ya’ll have me.”

You gave him a somewhat teary smile and offered him your ring finger. He slipped it on. It was a perfect fit. “It’s official,” you said, grabbing him and sinking into a kiss. When you pulled back, you glanced down at the ring on your finger. “How’d you know what size? And where the hell did you find this?”

“I made it. Melted some shit down. Aaron helped me actually.”

Your eyebrows lifted in surprise. “You’re telling me Aaron knew about this and managed not to give it away? Wow… That’s actually shocking.”

“Anyway, the size… I measured your finger with a bit of string while ya were sleepin’,” he admitted. “Ya know, s’funny, ya sleep much deeper now.” You gave him a look. You hadn’t had a single nightmare since the end of the war.

“Yeah, I wonder why that might be,” you said sarcastically. No Negan, and Daryl always next to you? A recipe for a perfect night’s sleep.

The End.

[uhlikzsuzsanna]

Richard E. Grant Reveals Whether Classic Loki Is Gone for Good: 'How Do You Top That?' (Exclusive)

[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for Loki Season 1, Episode 5, “Journey Into Mystery.”]

Richard E. Grant seems the ideal candidate to be conscripted into Marvel's cinematic universe: He's an Oscar nominee (Can You Ever Forgive Me?) who doesn't take himself too seriously (he's been in two Hitman's Bodyguard movies) and he's already on the Disney payroll (having joined the Star Wars franchise for The Rise of Skywalker). Yet, the actor says he and Marvel had never discussed his entrée into the MCU until Loki.

"I'd been in Logan, but that's completely separate," he told me over Zoom. "I'd joked on and off down the years with Tom Hiddleston, because of some vague similarity in the way that we look -- me, a much older version of course -- about working together as father and son in something. I assumed because I was asked to play Old Loki, I thought, 'Oh, this is the call finally,' because of the physical similarity. So, that's as much as I knew."

Grant made his Loki debut in the post-credits scene of episode 4 as "Classic" Loki, a Variant of our Hiddleston's God of Mischief who dons Loki's comics-accurate green and gold getup and ultimately goes out in a blaze of magical glory in the penultimate episode. Ahead of the Loki finale, Grant chatted with ET about answering Marvel's call, his one major complaint with his costume and whether Classic Loki is gone for good.

ET: Beyond you looking Hiddleston-y or him looking Richard E. Grant-y, what was it about this character in this story that you knew, "Yes, this is my part in the MCU"?

Richard E. Grant: Well, the key is in Old Loki, because being 64, I was older than anybody on the entire crew or cast. So, that was the clue in, I thought, "Old Loki, that's it -- I'm in the old age roles now."

What else were you told about him in that initial pitch? And was the costume part of it? Because it seems so much part of the character.

Yeah. And when the costume designer showed me my face on this costume that she designed and I saw the Jack Kirby drawings from the '60s, I thought, "Oh, great! As I have no muscles" -- as you can see -- "I'm finally going to be in a muscle suit. I'm going to have muscles like Tom has got!" And of course, I got there and I said, "Well, where's the muscle suit?" They said, "You don't have a muscle suit. This is what you're wearing." I said, "But this is like Kermit the Frog. There's no muscles. There's nothing here! How can I fight in Asgard?" [Laughs] "No, no, it's your magic that counts!" And I said, "Help me. Just give me the muscle suit," but they refused. So, I'm still sore headed that I was never given a muscle suit to fight Asgard as in all the drawings. I still don't really why they didn't do that, but maybe they wanted withered Loki. Who knows?

So, what was your reaction the first time you got all the garb on and saw yourself in the mirror?

Horrified, because I had no muscles! I was standing there like sort of a geek with these Y-fronts. I remember when I was a kid in the back of all the comics, they used to have these little drawing adverts with a skinny kid having sand kicked in his face. And they used to have these chest expanders, they said, "Send off for one of these chest expanders and you too could look like Thor!" Well, I never did, and I thought, well, finally, when I'm cast as Old Loki, this is going to be my chance. And damn, they took it away from me in that too. So I'm pissed at them for that.

How did Hiddleston react when he first saw you in it?

He said, "You have no idea what kind of response this is going to elicit when it comes out." I said, "That doesn't sound too positive or hopeful to me without the muscles, Tom." And he said, "No, no, believe me, I've been playing this part and there's a universe of people who are so obsessed and so ready to see Classic Loki. Be prepared for it." I didn't really take him seriously. I thought, "Well it's a TV series. How many people will watch this on a new channel?" Yada, yada. And how right he was looking into the crystal ball and how wrong I was, because since it came out last Wednesday, I have been absolutely flabbergasted by the response. My Twitter feed and Instagram have increased in vast numbers, and the response has been pretty astonishing. I'm amazed and grateful that it hasn't been negative so far.

I loved your post, by the way, about how your father would have reacted to this costume.

Well, he was right! I'm still at 64 earning my crust by wearing makeup and green tights. [Laughs]

I have to assume this was also your first time with an alligator as your scene partner?

It was. And in reality it was three stuffed cushions sewn together. Sort of fun to hold!

Alligator Loki is such a breakout star and I loved seeing the blue plushy you used on set. What was it like filming those scenes? Did it feel absolutely ridiculous?

No, because I was grateful. Very often you'd have dots or crosses or just a tennis ball on a stick to react to, so the fact that we actually had the soft cushioned shape of something alligator-like was a help. But it's just the nature of being an actor. You know that the CGI and the graphics and production design department, they come up with something amazing. What I didn't take on board is that, of course, he'd have these beautiful gold horns on top of his alligator sideways eyes. I love that. I've only seen the stills of it, but it looks amazing.

Your final moment in the episode is so powerful. I'll tell you, it brought tears to my eyes. On set, I imagine you're probably in front of a blue screen having to use your imagination. Tell me about capturing that emotion and how you and Kate Herron found that moment together?

The camera was on a big sort of jig crane thing that was at the highest section of the studio and I would follow a mark on that and they had, I think, three or four aircraft-sized wind machines blowing the Bajesus out of everything. And I thought, having wondered whether the helmets and the horns had to be quite so tight, I was grateful for them on that day because they did not move despite the amount of wind that was blowing at me. It was scripted to say, "He's laughing and shortly and cackling in the face of his own imminent, catastrophic death in the mouth of [Alioth]," it was very empowering to be able to just give it the full welly at doing that. So, I enjoyed that hugely.

You said you've only seen stills of Alligator Loki. Have you seen the episode yet?

No.

So, you haven't seen how the scene looks with all the CGI yet?

I've seen stills that I'm holding up the city, so I've seen that. I have never got used to watching myself on screen. I love watching other people, but when I come on, I just-- I'm astonished that I get any work. So, I've learned decades ago just to never watch. So, when you see a still, you don't have the horror of your shortcomings to mull over.

Well, I will tell you, you looked pretty bad ass in that moment.

Good. Thank you, John!

This seems like the end for Classic Loki, but if this series has taught us one thing, it's that Lokis survive. Do you think we could see him again someday? And are you down to play him again?

As you just said, everything's possible. But I think that's because his sacrifice is so huge and it's going out with such a bang, how do you top that if he had to come back? I have no idea. You know, it's not within my arena to do that. But I wouldn't say no, if asked. Put it that way.

[sugar-petals]

:: Two Girls Dominating SuperM

↳ NOTE: Since sharin’ is carin’ 😋 Happy holidays! Get the list Santa cuz here go seven kinds of naughty. PS: I use different POVs here, whatever fits best.

words. 3.3k

warnings ⚠️ bondage, pegging, flexibility kink, sex toys, some switch!kai, rough sex, harnesses, oral (m giving), possessiveness, taemin’s evil lady kink, ice cream

⎡Taeyong⎦⇁ I think it’s time to reveal an unspoken truth about the pop industry. You ready? When Rihanna did S&M, a vision of Taeyong from the future whispered the lyrics in her ear. I swear to god. That’s exactly how it happened. Just the way we’d expect, dear Taeyong is gonna float in paradise. Not one domme ready to shake him up, but two? He can retire. Boy doesn’t need anything else. Except maybe a bit of cash to buy harnesses he can model but they’ll treat him to that anyway. That being said. Knowing that two fly madams in latex are ravaging his body at every chance they can get is gonna make him know he can die happy one day. Like, he truly lived. He won’t really hold back with restructuring a lot of parts of his life to let this dynamic unfold all the way. We’ve heard of his DIY skills. This sounds funny but Taeyong will design, paint, decorate, and maintain a special area for their play. Not necessarily just one room, he varies that. We know how gifted he is with interiors and domestic ideas, so. Prepare to get blown away by his sheer efforts. And man, the amount of spare time he can stretch to get a quickie out of that time window. Incredible. Even more interesting is gonna be the range. Taeyong can handle girls that dress up super differently every time, he goes along with any roleplay or character they come up with. He’s gonna be their little prince, their hotel boy, their waiter, their flight attendant, their Jack Dawson incarnate. And their dream boy altogether, cuz that’s what Taeyong is.

His frustrations are bound to work up over weeks if he is busy at SM, so finally seeing them again will have him so excited. And nervous. And so involved with preparing things for them, the perfectionist comes out. Can you imagine Taeyong donning his apron and preparing a four course menu for an entire afternoon? You bet he’ll pull that off. Butler Taeyong will be at full throttle. He’s gonna end up getting viciously fucked in the kitchen anyways. Like to the point where all his hair is a mess in his face and everyone ran out of breath. And seriously, he’s the type to completely surrender and place all trust in the girls. Which they know, and they’ll reward him so well. With things Taeyong loves best aka getting whipped and plowed. One of you could be binding him to a fucking machine and controlling the remote, the other marking his legs and upper back. The little bun gets terribly turned on if you push him on all fours for that and hold the nape of his neck in place so he can’t go anywhere. Consider your carpet ruined with semen. While Taeyong is busy recharging for the next round lying on the floor exhausted, you take polaroids.

⎡Baekhyun⎦⇁ Okay listen, I’ll tell you the secret. You can pull a complete duality on him. Baekhyun, getting nuzzled and snuggled and squeezed from all sides because he’s so sweet? Absolutely his jam. He got two hands to hold, after all. And two mochi cheeks to kiss, my friend, two of them. But also, getting a full dose of freaky stuff inflicted on him with some good music playing? This loud little fucker is going to levitate. These two raging girls can take complete control of his body and fool around to their liking. Grabbing his butt, feeding him cake, dressing him up or stripping him down, riding his face to oblivion. Like not just circling your hips. Actual sharp thrusting and making him forget the light of day. And using some cute pink ropes to string his pretty wrists from the ceiling as a treat. Only a matter of time until he’s an arching mess. As you already suspected: A giant dose of ass destruction is only one step away. Any toy suffices. At best, when he’s trying to beat a new high score and has to concentrate on the game. Nice challenge for his focus, he likes that. He wants to feel how he’s getting stretched out from all directions until it hurts so good. Screaming „Ah!“ is his favorite word. Maybe not too straps in one hole, that’s Taeyong territory, and Baekhyun’s ass is really tight generally, but spitroasting? His favorite pastime. Stuffed up and getting a load of extra hard thrusts. He can suck and gyrate all the way, all at the same time like he never did anything else. It’s gotta be hard and fast. I’m telling you, he’ll make it sloppy anyway.

Did he ever think he could get fucked up like this by a sexy tag team? Nope, he squarely thought he was undeserving. Now that he’s getting regularly suffocated and earns the praise for being so cute, Baekhyun is actually starting to believe he can ask for and enjoy that glorious wreckage. Because if there’s one thing he wishes for, it’s drowning in his own spit. These two are gonna be so territorial and wild, his dick and tongue are gonna threaten to fall off every night. How many condoms Baekhyun’s gonna fill, those will be record numbers, it’s like the album charts. Baekhyun’s a straight-up cum bank dairy cow extraordinaire when it comes to milking him dry. Like what did you think if two mommies feed him with all sorts of delicacies, all that juice is going to stock up and get ready to blow. And the amounts and types of collars Baekhyun’s neck is gonna be in: Whole lot, even with leashes attached. Oh god, they’ll strap him stupid with some dog ears on as a reward. Baekhyun’s prostate is gonna be a constantly spongy ruined mess, poor mochi gonna end up waddling around the kitchen to chug a liter of water at 3 AM.

⎡Taemin⎦⇁ You know who’s gonna be in his element. You just know it. Taemin is ride or die when it comes to wanting someone to be the boss of him. He’s not just dabbling in all that jazz to experiment, he’s livin’ and breathing it. Taemin’s imagination is the 3D version of AO3’s finest fanfics. Hell, he even imagines the sounds over and over, it’s gotta be 4D! He’s already crafted the most intricate fantasies for some seriously action movie-like roleplay. But let's start from the beginning. What’s on Taemin’s ever-wicked mind when he goes to sleep at night? Two intimidating ladies ganging up on him. Arriving on their black motorcycle at his house, flirting the living hell out of him, raiding his fridge, grinding on his lap in their biker gear, licking his face, taking his luxurious clothes off, calling him names, making him dance for him (that one’s a staple), biting down on his torso wherever they please, and having their way with him until it’s all one big orgy. Hell, probably on that motorcycle in the garage. Taemin pretty much getting one dry orgasm after the other because it’s the time of his life. Like, they’re really spoiling him. And he’s giving himself to them. That kind of scenario going down? To Taemin, that sounds like his wettest of dreams come true. He’s like yes, yes, yes and yes. A dynamic duo of sadistic girlfriends, that’s gonna leave him so shook and utterly addicted. Like he wants to get backed into a corner, bring on all the kabedon, Taemin goes all the way the way we know him. Nobody loves that fantasy more than him.

Now… the trick is. They’re actually really fun and sweet and pet his hair incessantly. You know, casually, doing daily life things. Cooing at him and getting all the sweetest princely kisses from their angel. My god, they’ll be so gently in love with him. But in the bedroom, it’s raw business. Taemin is gonna take is so hard, he’ll be seeing stars. That he’s getting slapped around — the thighs included, he loves that — while getting a handjob has to be the most orgasmic experience ever. Taemin is gonna bust fifty-thousand nuts over having his hair pulled by one girl and being choked by the other. Boy is he gonna be hard even if the pants stay on. What if he’s not the one grinding around this time. Two scary girls riding his lap, cuffing and belittling him — wow. Taemin never wants that feast to end. Getting roughed up at any occasion makes his day. He is needy, but the girls have all the cruel shit could ever ask for, and he has the stamina to handle all of it. And the class, he never loses his mystery. A fucking marathon with some pretty brutal bondage and impact play involved, no problem, he’ll last it. You can torture the soul out of him, he’s gonna be winding and gasping for more. Except maybe that his voice is gonna be pretty hoarse if they don’t gag his mouth for the most part. Man, Taemin is so vocal. This will have the ladies all runny beyond imagination. Nobody who meets him casually is gonna suspect it, but Taemin has the wettest dick in all of Seoul (unless Lucas is doing an allnighter) and no pliable brain left because he’s got is fucked out hard daily and he gave it daily. Now you know.

⎡Jongin⎦⇁ Kai is gonna act smug about this right from the start. He’s gonna be the guy who’s proud to show you off, walking around arms over your either shoulders, him right in the middle. Like hello, I’m experienced. The entirety of SM Entertainment is gonna have rumors circulating but nobody’s gonna be surprised. Little does he know you’re down to make his naughty lyrics come true. Kai is gonna get pegged and punished holding onto his dear oversized teddy bear. Literally, these two will have him burying his entire face there. Whimpering and high-pitched moaning like it’s time for EXO adlibs. His couch is large enough for three people, so. Somebody is gonna end up horny and crying. With his album on repeat because there’s no better music to fuck to, don’t kid yourself, you likely don’t, anyway. It’s Kai we’re talking about. He has sluttiness for days. Getting your hands on all that tall dark and handsome goodness is just all that you need as a domme duo. Have you seen how this guy moves just breathing and walking and cocking his head on the occasion… I don’t wanna know how far he can go in the horizontal realm to put it carefully.

But you gotta be ready for Kai’s aggressive side that wants to make things happen. If you like a struggle for dominance, this is the address. You two are just too tempting and delicious not to move around on his bed to assume new positions. And if Jongin doesn’t feel like snapping his dangerous hips into either of you, he’s lying. Kai is ready to fucking dick you down like it’s your birthday. He has to be taught to request and wait like a good boy, on his best behavior and his knees preferably. Yep, I think that Kai is a case for some extended training because he’s so impatient, with good reason, but he still needs to be put in his place. Which Kai likes because it means you go harder on him without restraint. Was it his goal all along? I can see one of the girls taking the role of speaking to him with his head in her lap. Giving commands occasionally, checking in. And the other, getting freaky on him with her instruments. Kai’s body is so sensitive and reactive, it’s gonna be fun to see him twitch and beg. Even something as simple as clamping his nipples will already do the trick. That’s when you have Kai begging.

⎡Ten⎦⇁ Believe it or not. Out of all people, he’s gonna be the one with the most doubts and insecurities — at first. It feels a little overwhelming to Ten because he doesn’t know what’s coming. You know that kind of facial expression he does when he is uncertain. Mind you: Having a whole bunch of people around him isn’t new to him. Bitch, he’s in NCT! A threesome is peanuts against that neo energy. It’s more like, the coordination, he doesn’t know how to act. He’ll be shy and big-eyed and doesn’t know what to say. The king of comebacks and clapbacks: Speechless. Let that sink in. The girls are dealing with the kind of guy who needs a lot of clarity and talk beforehand because he doesn’t have experience with it. It takes him to really know what the program is and damn he’s right about that. Ten really getting into what he’s signing up for is big-brained of him. He asks a lot of questions with an open-mind, but also care. But then again, we know how Ten’s confidence can skyrocket, and that he’s so secretly curious about those things he’s bursting with anticipation. And he knows what to ask for to really get someone going. Touch me, tease me, feel me up, am I right or am I right? He adapts so well to almost any circumstance in his life, it’s admirable. Totally up to the challenge once it goes down, he really grows into that. And I promise that particularly the physical part is absolutely his forte, that’s where he blooms. Ten can be easily taught through the genius of his body and he’s gonna love that.

Once things get hands-on and he finds himself with two girls mounting him, and on go the cat ears, he’s like oh my god this is great. The surprise factor is the biggest in the group here. Ten is gonna almost facepalm because he’s been worrying himself where there was nothing to be anxious about. Because he’s in his groove! Smiling and laughing and having a good time. No stress, just feeling so damn good. Probably with several super-size vibrating toys employed on him because that’s how Ten rolls, always taking the challenge. What a twitchy mess he’s gonna be, I can’t. The two ladies are gonna have a blast themselves bending him around and getting the best of the best erections out of him. Ten is totally gonna snack something while they’re fooling around as three. Or they’re stuffing him with delicacies, he’s gonna be so eager. But that’s not even a glimpse of what they’re gonna do! Ten is ready for almost everything, my friends. Tag teamed while dressed up as Alice? Likelier than you think. With the wig, that’s right. Ten is gonna be their good girl for one long night and truly love it. He obeys so well, spreads his legs like its nothing. It’s all gonna be a hell of a mess on his outfit though. If there’s one person ready to have cum all over him, that’s the right address. He’s throwing peace signs and pose for their phone cameras. Oh Ten, the legend you are.

⎡Lucas⎦⇁ Wong Yukhei… the entire concept that is him literally screams for it. Two people handling all that fucking hunk. So much space to work with, that body is a drug. Xuxi is one staggering big boy, his forehead is making love to any door frame. Lot of waist to grab (…like why is it shaped like that. Offensive!) lot of wrist to tie. And those long fucking model legs, for god’s sake, you just gotta do something with those for once. Get those thigh harnesses! Plus he’s a literal baby who’s all down to date girls his senior. Yukhei is a sucker for mad girls acting possessive over him. And he’s a handful, one fucking tease, one chaotic man. Two times the payback is just so much more appropriate. He can just get fucked and fucked and fucked some more. As is two times as much stimulation. You can imagine. Yes, all over his body. Grabbing his necktie and guiding him around this that (good shit) and caressing his face, and his back, and his chest, and his stomach, it’s so sexy to touch him there.

But let’s not lie. A certain somebody has cock and balls for two people. Lucas is one hell of a stallion. Lot of girth to make hard and to edge. That needs a duo of two unhinged girls, forces of nature, someone shy won’t do. It’s their job to make him shy and docile, not the other way around. Because Lucas enjoys being teased and flattered right back, and is more than fine with being toyed with, even playfully beaten up. You know he loves to be on the receiving end of bickering. Doesn’t mean he suddenly forgets to be an active party or just leans back. He has giant hands and knows how to use them, he’s chartered some major clit territory as well, remember that. That’s gonna be three people losing their fucking minds. Imagine all those luscious, raspy groans. Lucas never holds back, no filter, he knows what the ladies like. Drenched in sweat is all you’ll gonna be. And probably a whole bunch of lube because that’s the other thing the entire concept of Lucas is screaming for. The more ye know.

⎡Mark⎦⇁ Alright my friends. Cute Mark vibes different but that’s no secret. Boy’s gonna admit he’s really intimidated and shy, but so happy he’s gonna get sandwiched once he agrees to try it. It’s all a matter of courage. The girls will be the ones approaching him because they bought him ice cream, and the conversation starts from there, but it’s up to Mark to really set the mood. Oh boy, he’s not gonna stop blushing. This nerd with a girl on each side, that sure as hell looks great on him, I assure you. And if Mark Lee is your trophy rapper poly boyfriend, you truly made it, so. This is gonna be a dynamic right here. And the most fun, imagine the mayhem. He’ll talk his mouth off like his life depends on it. Mark doing sexy talk with two girls at the same time would be so entertaining. They will own his ass. Like wow… they’re making out with him, alternate with french kisses and putting their hands all over him, and ruin his face with ice cream. Mark would be so sexy to pull close by his collar.

And you bet it’s gonna slowly escalate from there, he’s tapping into some sides of him he never knew were there. Ice cubes down his chest, tongues down his mouth, hands in his hair kind of afternoon. As a brief and hilarious interruption, a shivering, horny as hell Mark takes a phone call from Johnny. Who, as you learn, is completely unsuspecting. „Hey, I’m at IKEA, uh. The living room section, actually. Should I buy the blue pillow or the yellow one? I can’t decide. They both have the same print on them, so.“ Mark is gonna blurt out that blue is probably gonna be a good idea and ends the phone call before anybody can moan into the speaker. Johnny is left confused at the other end of the line. The girls will end up teasing Mark that he said blue because that’s what his balls are for sure. Freudian slips, always glorious. Mark is not gonna deny that and ultimately ends up with his face between two cleavages — talk about melons, are we gonna kid ourselves — and two hands down his jeans. This is gonna need a lot of towels. Mark has never gotten this fucked up in his whole life and he is grateful. Watch out people, he’ll write a whole mixtape about this.

[smiting-finger]

alive, and back on my usual nonsense

So after getting preoccupied with other things and temporarily falling off the face of the planet (for like an entire year ಥωಥ), I was thinking about the kdrama Mr. Queen (which I've been meaning to watch), and the Chinese novel it was based on (太子妃升职记, which I read a few years ago and very much enjoyed), and this popped out--

Wei Wuxian’s first thought is that there seem to be an awful lot of female voices around, for a bedroom inhabited by two men. Did he drink too much last night? It wouldn’t be the first time he’s overindulged on a trip to the town and woken up in a strange place the next morning, but that kind of problem has been cropping up a lot less frequently now that he has Lan Zhan around to ferry him home.

(Sometimes literally, on his back. His broad, strong--)

But perhaps Lan Zhan had gotten drunk, too? In which case, Wei Wuxian should consider them lucky to have woken up surrounded by people, rather than chickens, rabbits or, notably, on one occasion, mounds of resentful cabbages.

The chatter around him continues, pitched high with youth and - is that anxiety? It's interspersed with the odd interjection from what sounds like one (calmer, if more exasperated) older woman and a man. Probably not a nunnery, he decides. Perhaps the back rooms of a pleasure house? Although, if that’s the case, this amount of excitement over a mere two men is honestly a little excessive.

He reaches out tentatively, but pats all the way across the mattress to the edge without finding his usual bedfellow. A much less tentative venture towards the other side produces similar results.

Hm.

Wei Wuxian cracks open an eye and heaves himself upright, absent-mindedly scratching at his (unusually soft - as much as he hates to admit it, maybe Nie Huaisang has a point about drinking less and training more) side and squinting into the too-bright light until the person-shaped blur in front of him sharpens into focus.

“Niang niang!” a complete stranger cries tearfully, clutching at the sleeve of his other arm. “You’re awake! Thank Heavens, you’re awake! Physician Liu, quick, quick!”

A cushion is produced from somewhere and thrust expectantly between Wei Wuxian and the elderly man sitting at his bedside.

He sighs. It’s probably not worth fighting.

Wei Wuxian smacks his upturned wrist onto the unusually lavish brocade and is only a little surprised when it’s covered by a cloth before the physician reaches to take it.

(Do they think he’s diseased?)

((Is he diseased?!))

(((Is that why Lan Zhan isn’t here?)))

He looks at the row of young girls (+ 1 matron) kneeling along the wall to his left, dressed identically to the first and also now beginning to prostrate themselves and wail about “Niang niang!” and blessings and deserving to die.

Not a pleasure house, then.

He looks around at the rest of the richly-furnished room and its intricately-carved wooden furniture, the wealth of jade carvings and the obscene amount of gold that's gilding … everything (so shiny). The opulence of it all would put even Jin Guangshan to shame.

So, not a nunnery either.

He looks down at the small hands, delicate wrists and - he clutches one abruptly just to make sure his eyes aren’t deceiving him - breasts of the body that he certainly was not inhabiting yesterday.

“Well,” he says aloud, unable to stop himself from wincing at the high, soft voice that emerges despite fully expecting it. “It’s not the first time this has happened.”

===

Two days, one diagnosis of shock-induced memory loss and some discreet enquiries (as well as some indiscreet enquiries) later, this is what he knows about his situation:

He’s the main consort (unfavoured) of the crown prince of whatever place he’s landed in;

Three days ago, following a disagreement with one Consort Yun (favoured, main competitor for husband’s affections);

In the course of this disagreement, both women somehow fell into a palace lake and mostly-drowned;

Consort Yun (admittedly quite pretty) was revived at the scene, but Wei Wuxian took a full day to “miraculously” recover;

Angered by the unseemly behaviour of her daughters-in-law, particularly upon learning that the Crown Princess’s first act upon waking was to stumble upon a chance meeting between the Crown Prince and Consort Yun in one of the pleasure gardens and bodily throw herself between them (a tactical error on Wei Wuxian’s part. He’d been trying to throw himself over the battlements to freedom, but he’d gotten lost and scaled the wrong wall), the Empress (Crown Prince’s political opponent, not particularly fond of either consort) grounded both of them to their respective residences for a month, with no visitors allowed.

Which brings him to his current position, feeding the fish in his personal pond as an excuse to be alone. Not truly alone - he shoots a pointed glance at the maids watching anxiously from the other side of the courtyard - because he’s apparently a “suicide risk” now (and honestly, yes, he’d meant to throw himself off that roof, but he hadn’t meant to die - it’s simply that this new body’s cultivation level is not what he’s come to expect even from Mo Xuanyu’s modest abilities), but alone enough to start planning his next move.

Direct escape is out - he didn’t have a plan for what to do once he’d gotten out anyway, and honestly he’s better-resourced for finding out how he got here in the Palace than anywhere else, so it’s no great loss.

“What do you think, Master Fish?” Wei Wuxian asks a gold and black spotted koi with particularly sage-looking whiskers. “Shall I just stay here for the time being?”

It’s not a terrible place to be for the time being, he must admit, throwing more food into the water and watching the fish swarm. Being grounded, he’s at no risk from the Crown Prince’s amorous attentions for a month (a salute of gratitude to the Empress for the inadvertent protection). And thanks to Consort Yun and her voluptuous figure (and if the Crown Prince is more partial to that than the Zhao Feiyan style of willowy fragility that Wei Wuxian seems to have inherited, who can honestly blame him?), he’s at no great risk from them after that, either (a salute of gratitude to the unknowing sister-in-arms, taking one - and hopefully a great many more after that - for the team).

According to his maid (sleeve-clutcher extraordinaire, who even now is boring two holes into his skull with her woeful gaze from across the way while he does nothing more suspicious than scatter another handful of feed towards some latercomer fish), the body he’s inhabiting comes from a powerful military lineage. In particular, her father is (was?) a powerful general who currently commands more than half the nation’s military forces and has the absolute trust of the Emperor. So that more or less keeps him safe from the machinations of the majority of the nest of vipers in this palatial cesspit.

That just leaves the Empress, who - if his servants and the smuggled letters from the Original Goods’s mother (a salute of gratitude to the worthy woman for spelling it out so that even such an interloper as he can understand) are anything to go by - would definitely kill him to damage the Crown Prince’s political standing or throw any sort of roadblock in the way of him from becoming Emperor.

Less immediately - if his secret informants are anything to go by (a salute of gratitude to the resourceful host for cultivating such a valuable resource if not her dantian) - it also leaves the Crown Prince, who, upon cementing his power as Emperor, would also definitely kill his current Crown Princess in order to wedge his beloved Consort Yun into the Empress role.

Really, the only road to any sort of security for someone in his position is to raise the next Imperial heir, outlive the Original Goods’s faithless husband and become the Empress Dowager.

Hopefully Wei Wuxian will be long gone by then, but if leaving means the Original Goods will return (from … Mo Xuanyu’s body? The Ether? Or???) - well, he doesn’t want to repay her hospitality by leaving her house in a mess, so to speak. So he’ll try to set her on that career path, if he can.

But that’s an aspirational goal. First, he has to not-die before he can find out how to get himself home.

And find out how to get himself home.

If getting himself home is even possible.

Wei Wuxian dumps the rest of the fish food in the water and yells.

(It startles the maids, the fish and the poor eunuch the Crown Prince has sent as a spy into falling out of the tree he’s been hiding in and into the prickly bushes below.)

===

The problem with “staying for the time being” is … well, how interminably boring it is. The approved list of hobbies for an Imperial consort seems to consist of: eating (but not too much), sleeping (but not too much), embroidery (which he can’t do), reading (but only texts on female virtue and the occasional terrible novel), playing music (but not the flute), conversing with his maids (who are very sweet, but are all like, 12) and walking in the gardens (which he’s not allowed to do).

Honestly, it’s no wonder all the consorts turn to scheming and murder.

It only takes a week of confinement for him to snap and sneak himself out for a nighttime adventure, setting off to explore the grounds and see … a night-blooming flower, a ghost, a rat, he’ll take pretty much anything at this point.

In the end, he finds none of these things, but the walking is still pretty nice, and he even hears the faint sounds of a guqin wafting over from one of the other consorts’ residences. (He should probably learn who lives where at some point, but it’s not exactly a priority. What’s he going to do with the information when he can only visit during the nighttime? Peep?) When Wei Wuxian wanders closer, the notes resolve themselves into the familiar strains of Flowing Waters, and his breath catches on a sudden surge of longing to hear the same song, played by a different set of fingers.

(First played on a familiar guqin and then, later, accompanied by soft humming between soft, worn sheets, played across the edges of Wei Wuxian’s ribs, along the dip of his spine, and finally lower, into--)

((Is Lan Zhan thinking about him?))

(((Is Lan Zhan looking for him?)))

Stumbling blindly on, he’s so caught up in missing Lan Zhan that he misses the first few stanzas of the next piece, and it isn’t until the music starts to rise in a familiar refrain that he freezes.

He knows that song.

He’s one of the only two people who know that song, which is in fact how he got caught out the last time he found himself in a farce of an identity charade, by the only other person who knows that song, who must be - who must be -

Lan Zhan, his blood sings in his ears as he takes off in a dead run towards the source of the playing. Up ahead of him, small courtyard glows softly with the light of the only burning lamp in their vicinity. Lan Zhan, Lan Zhan, Lan Zhan-

He scrambles up the wall with the ease of a lifetime’s practice, using bloody-minded determination to make up for the lack of muscle memory.

“Lan Zhan,” he yelps, forgetting to whisper in his excitement as he flings himself over the top and into the branches of a convenient, wall-side tree. “Lan Zhan, it’s me, I-”

This is, naturally, when his foot slips. He manages to catch hold of a branch, but his tender hands and puny wrists, unused to holding up anything heavier than a chicken leg, fail to maintain their hold through his weight, and he tumbles down the trunk into a sad puddle of fabric on the ground.

“Lan Zhan,” he gasps, fighting to untangle himself from the ridiculous train that, admittedly, made a considerable contribution to cushioning his fall. He clambers up onto his hands and knees--

--and looks straight into the wide-eyed stare of Consort Yun.

===

“I cannot believe,” Wei Wuxian growls, palming the ample softness of one exposed breast with one hand, while shoving the other deeper into the many (too many) layers of fabric between them and between Lan Zhan’s splayed legs, “that after everything that’s happened, you’re still taller than me.”

Lan Zhan huffs a laugh that turns quickly into a moan, and Wei Wuxian swallows it, smothers Lan Zhan’s gasping breaths with his own parted lips and sucks them greedily down even as he coaxes out more with twisting fingers here, another tug to Lan Zhan’s poor, abused nipple there.

He slides his fingers back between slick folds and then upwards again, pushing in and out in a few languid strokes before curling them to make Lan Zhan arch harder against the wall behind him, tilt his head back and expose a beautifully vulnerable stretch of neck to Wei Wuxian's teeth.

“Wei Ying,” Lan Zhan murmurs, and his voice is different, the shape of his lips is different, but the way Wei Wuxian’s name fits inside his mouth (tender, beloved), the way he tucks the flyaway strands of hair behind Wei Wuxian’s ear, the look in his eyes when their gazes meet (warm, open, knowing) are the same, same, same.

===

===

I am entirely too lazy to write the rest of it, but afterwards they regroup and it turns out LWJ has been in this world for exactly one more day than WWX, having woken up in Consort Yun’s body when she was “revived”. Consort Yun is the daughter of a high-ranking Minister in the Treasury or something, so Lan Zhan been using his new position as the daughter of a ~scholarly family~ to build a reputation for being really into Buddhist scripture, and eventually he’s going to request to be allowed to go to a nearby Temple to attain some virtuous brownie points for the Imperial family via prayer as his penitence.

That there’s also an elderly monk living there who’s got a reputation for being super good with the divine mysteries and spiritual lore about curses and whatnot is totally immaterial, if Lan Zhan happens to run into that guy, it’ll be a total coincidence, yeah.

So WWX also starts on the divine penitence route, and if everyone thinks it’s because the Crown Princess refuses to be outdone by Consort Yun, then even better, and two weeks into confinement they wear the Empress down into letting them make the trip, and when they get there, turns out the monk is Nie Huaisang.

(NHS: “OH THANK GOD, I’ve done the research but the lynchpin of this mess is definitely somewhere in the Palace and I could not for the life of me figure out a way to get in.”

WWX: “That's nice, but seriously, how come you got to stay a man?”

NHS: “My friend, I may be a man, but my balls are currently swinging somewhere around my ankles.”

WWX: “...show me.”

And LWJ is like “NO.” except WWX can tell by the look in his eye that he sort of wants to see, too).

So they return to the Palace and WWX whirls into one of their morning audiences with the Empress, distraught about a ~dream from the ancestors~ where they warned him about disrupted ley lines or accumulated resentment or an offended minor god that needs investigation by someone, and “How convenient, because we met just the guy!” And the Empress looks like she was Done Five Years Ago, but the Empress Dowager, who’s old and doddery, is like “oh no, you must bring him!” and the Empress mutters “to fucking what, offend some major gods and really do the job properly?” and that’s how they find out the Empress is Jiang Cheng.

In the meantime, the confinement edict expires and WWX+LWJ are allowed to return to their regular programming, which means that as the legal wife, WWX can continuously summon LWJ to his residence for increasingly tenuous and spurious reasons. The best thing is, it’s not even out of character for the Crown Princess, who used to regularly summon Consort Yun to subject her to not-so-veiled barbs and petty torments. So WWX summons LWJ, and then immediately expels both their entourages from the room, instructing that no one is to enter on pain of death.

So LWJ’s maids are gnashing their teeth helplessly while all sorts of piteous moans, pained gasps and the occasional scream emanate from behind the closed door, and when their mistress finally emerges there are no marks on her body, but she’s weak-kneed and having trouble walking straight, so who knows what kind of terrible tortures the Crown Princess has visited upon her.

The Crown Prince obviously hears about this, so he bursts in one day without warning, only to find the two sitting together, the Crown princess’s arms around Consort Yun’s waist, her cheek pillowed on one heaving bosom, and although she’s smiling besottedly at him now, he could have sworn that he felt killing intent being directed at him only a second ago? And to tell the truth, he’s not really in love Consort Yun either, it’s all an act to keep the two consorts (and their families) pitted in a power struggle against each other until he can finally outmanoeuvre the Empress and cement his position as heir to the throne (and also to protect his actual favourite, a third consort who’s a nondescript nobody with no political backing). So the fact that “It was all a misunderstanding, we’re friends now,” his Crown Princess says sweetly (and did she … rub her cheek against his Consort’s chest? Must be his imagination) is not the worst thing (at least neither of them/their families can be enlisted by the Empress in support of her son, and if they’re caught up with Being Besties, then at least they’re not bullying his actual favourite), but for some reason he still feels kind of … threatened? Like someone’s making moves on his wife, which is absurd because they’re both his wives, but the vibes he gets from the first one in particular are kind of … off?

In any case, the crew solve the mystery, find the lynchpin object (which turns out to be a jade dildo belonging to one of the Emperor’s favoured consorts because of course it is), and wake up in their real bodies, in their real world, to a very apologetic hermit-inventor-cultivator whose property they stumbled onto while pursuing a resentful beast. Turns out they triggered the glamour/enchantment/psychic maze world he created as a security system because, “I just didn’t want to risk people getting into my stuff, you know? I’ve got some things that could be very dangerous in the wrong hands”. WWX is like “oh yeah, for sure” and JC is like “WHAT DO YOU MEAN FOR SURE? HOW IS THIS AN UNDERSTANDABLE RESPONSE, IF YOU’RE AFRAID PEOPLE WILL TOUCH YOUR SHIT THEN JUST ENCHANT SOME FUCKING WARRIOR GOLEMS LIKE EVERYBODY ELSE.”

[storiesforallfandoms]

too rough ~ machine gun kelly

word count: 1714

request?: yes!

@colsonbakerxxxxxx​ “Can you do a smuttty af one with the reader x MGK, like really smutty lol but Kells was extra rough and the reader was trying to hold on but at the end she couldn’t take it so she called out the safe word? Then Kells feels really bad and does the proper aftercare (bath, massage) and him just feeling like crap for hurting her x”

description: after a stressful day of trying to finish his album, colson decides to try and let off some steam, but is a little rougher than he means to be

pairing: machine gun kelly x female!reader

warnings: swearing, smut, oral (fem receiving), choking, being a little too rough during sex

masterlist

He had had an off day at the studio. Things just weren’t working out to his liking and the album was taking longer than he wanted. The studio was breathing down his neck to get it done in time for the launch, just a month away. Lately, it was beginning to feel like each studio session only completed part of a song, and it was taking a week to try and finish even two songs.

When he got home, he was seething with frustration. He just wanted to go to bed and sleep for a whole day and hope that when he woke up next everything would be fine and finally would work in his favour. That was, until he say you laying on the couch in just a pair of pajama shorts and a tank top, minding your own business and watching TV. He had a better idea for getting his frustration out then.

You turned your head to look at him and smiled a little before noticing his look of frustration. “What’s up, honey?”

“Shitty day at the studio,” he responded as he eyed your body up and down. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

He was beginning to pull his shirt off, and you immediately knew where this was going. You sat up and began to pull your own shirt off, a smirk on your face. “Okay, then we won’t talk.”

It wasn’t unusual for one of you to come home frustrated and for the other to help relieve that stress and frustration. In fact, anger sex was probably some of the best sex you had ever had. Some days you were even excited when Colson got home and was stressed and frustrated, or when you were having a shitty day and Colson would send you teasing text messages to tell you how he’d help you relax.

You were about to get up so that you could both go up to the bedroom, but was pleasantly shocked when Colson pushed you back down onto the couch. The living room was one of few places in the house that you ever had sex, mainly because there was always a fear of Casie coming unexpectedly and catching the two of you. But Colson was so frustrated and ready to get rid of that feeling that he really didn’t care where you did it at the moment. He would’ve taken you on the floor if he had to.

He pulled off his pants and pulled your shorts down your legs, kissing over your stomach and thighs as he did so. You giggled as he kissed his way up your stomach, pausing to pay special attention to each of your boobs, before attacking your neck and definitely leaving marks, and finally placing a rough kiss on your lips. You gasped against his lips as he pushed himself fully into you, filling you up in no time.

The rough thrusts and manhandling that Colson did when he was frustrated was also nothing new to you. You had almost grown accustom to them, and some days would rather feel him fucking and handling you more rough than he usually did. But this time was something different. It was as though something else had taken over Colson all together. He was rougher than he usually was with his thrusts, the sound of skin slapping against skin ringing out through the otherwise quiet house.

At first, you thought it was really hot. Your brain could barley form a coherent thought as moans and cruse words fell freely from your mouth and your eyes rolled back in your head in ecstasy. You even couldn’t help the gasp and moan of pleasure when Colson wrapped his hand around your throat and squeezed just a little. However, his grip on your throat suddenly became tighter and the once pleasurable thrusts were beginning to hurt and make you feel sore.

You tapped on Colson’s arm, hoping he would get the hint to ease up on his grip. When he didn’t, you managed to wheeze out, “Pomegranate!”, the safe word you and Colson had made up back when you first began dating and having sex.

The word snapped Colson out of his funk. Quickly, he released your throat and pulled out of you. His face was filled with concern as you took a deep breath, finally able to breathe properly.

“I’m so sorry babe,” he said. “Did I hurt you bad?”

You shook your head. “Not bad, no. It was just getting hard to breathe, and you were fucking me a little rough there. I’m feeling a little sore now.”

“I’m so sorry,” he sighed again, sitting at the other end of the couch.

You sat up and ran your fingers through your hair. There was still a pulsing pain between your legs and you couldn’t help but wince when you moved your legs and accidentally put pressure on it.

Colson watched you with sad eyes. He lowered himself onto the floor in front of you, gently guiding you to the edge. He placed a gentle kiss on your sore clit before licking it slowly. Your head lulled back in pleasure as you let out another moan, encouraging Colson to continue pleasuring you. Your hand found its way to his hair, taking a handful of it and holding it tightly as he continued his work. Before you knew it, you were calling out his name as your climax hit you, covering his mouth and chin in your juices.

Colson stood, wiping his mouth with his thumb before sticking it in his mouth, which was an incredible turn on to you. He began to walk away, but you quickly stopped him by asking, “Wait, don’t you want me to finish you off, too, babe?”

He shook his head. “It’s alright, babe. Sit back and relax for a second, but don’t put your clothes back on.”

You giggled, figuring Colson had some other idea for sex. While you still felt a little sore and sensitive, especially after an orgasm, you still felt ready to continue going with the sex. Colson hadn't hurt you as bad as he thought he had, and you really hoped he wouldn’t worry about it that much.

You heard the water begin to run in the bathroom. You stood from the couch and hobbled down the hallway (literally hobble, you were feeling too sore to walk). When you finally got to the bathroom, you saw that Colson was running a bath, completed with your favourite bubble bath peaking over the edge as he continued to fill the tub. His beautiful blue eyes caught you in the doorway, watching him work.

“I told you to relax,” he said, although there was a slight smile on his face and a light tone in his voice.

“I was curious as to what you were doing,” you told him. “This for me?” He nodded. “And are you gonna join me in the bath?”

“Only if you want me to.”

“I think we both know the answer to that.”

When the bath was full, Colson helped you in first before getting in behind you. He wrapped his arms around you and kissed over whatever exposed skin he could reach as you rested your back against his chest.

“I’m so sorry I hurt you, baby,” he said once again.

You shook your head. “Don’t be sorry, babe. I used the safe word when it got too much, and you stopped immediately. I’m not upset or anything, and I’m already feeling a little better from it.”

He was tracing circles with his thumb around your collarbone, leaving goosebumps that were starting to spread to your neck and arm as he did so. “I was just really frustrated. The record label keeps hounding me to finish this album so they don’t have to push the release date. They keep threatening to cancel it all together if it’s not finished within the next week.”

“Why would they cancel it? So many people are excited for this album, if they cancelled it they’d be losing more money than they are if the album is a little late.”

Colson shrugged. “The label doesn’t have too much faith in me. I’ve been making rap and hip-hop for as long as I can remember, and I’ve been insanely successful doing that. When we went to pitch the album and play them the first few songs, they kept saying they weren’t sure because a change in genre doesn’t always work out for someone. Even when we provided Why Are You Here as an example of how I could make good punk rock music and it could be well received they weren’t sure. I think they just think this album is gonna crash and burn and they’ll have wasted time and money on agreeing to let me do it.”

You put your head back against Colson’s shoulder and turned to kiss his neck as much as you could reach. “Baby, you know that’s not true. Even if that’s what the record label thinks, you know your fans will love the album no matter when it comes out. They’re already begging for more songs that sound like Why Are You Here, imagine how excited they’re gonna be when you drop a whole album that sounds like it.”

Colson smiled and held you tightly. “I guess you’re right. I just can’t help but feed into that negative vibe sometimes.”

“I know, but you have to remember the positives when you start letting that stuff get to you. You have to target those negative thoughts and replace them with positive ones.”

Colson kissed behind your ear. “You’re the best positive thought I have.”

You giggled and turned so you could plant an actual kiss on his lips. “I’m glad I can be a positive thought in your life.”

“I’m glad to have you as a positive thought in my life.”

You smiled and kissed him once more before settling against him again. The two of you sat in the hot bath for some time, not speaking but just enjoying each other’s company. In that moment, Colson decided that this would be one of his new de-stressing techniques in the future; a nice bath with the love of his life.

[bokoutoe-retired]

— setups, haunted houses, and confessions

characters; daichi sawamura, gn! reader

synopsis; after being set up by sugawara, a pining captain and a smitten team manager stumble their way through a very unplanned ‘date’

total w/c; 2154

warnings; a little mentioned of (implied) fake blood, and i mention clowns and zombies like once, just some normal haunted house stuff. otherwise nothing but awkward pinning here

「 a/n 」 requested by @girlontumblur! so i obviously failed at getting this out like i wanted (i went back and edited last minute smh) 😔🤚 but it’s here now! 😼😼 and i hope this does decent because although it doesn’t flow as well as i wanted it to, i still kinda like it lmao. anyways, daichi simps unite 🤝 enjoy!

you honestly should’ve known something was up the second sugawara approached you after practice with a sly grin plastered on his annoyingly pretty face. you should've known when everyone texted the team group chat with last minute cancelations or excuses for running late. and you definitely should’ve known when daichi was the only one you found sitting at the planned meeting spot. but, you didn’t and neither did he.

now you two were sat alone on the small blue bench. daichi had one of his hands tucked into the pocket of his thick army green jacket and the other hand scrolling through the same group chat you were looking at minutes prior. the two of you had agreed to wait for a little in hopes that maybe one or two other team members might show up. but unbeknownst to either party, both of you also hoped someone would show up and save you the pain of embarrassing yourself in front of the person you had been pining after for nearly three years. daichis phone pinged, interrupting the awkward silence. it was a text from suga and daichi can feel the tips of his ears grow warm as he reads the message;

have fun on your date! ;) -suga

of course it was suga. he shouldn’t have expected anything less from his scheming vice captain. how he got the whole team to go along with it, is a mystery he decides to leave for another day when he hears you speak up from your spot next to him.

 “is anyone else coming?” he’s thrown out of his thoughts when he feels you nudge his shoulder with yours and sees you nod to his phone. he quickly turns it off and pockets it before he turns his attention to you completely.

“i don’t think so, asahi was the last one to check in and he just canceled,” he sighs and shoves his other hand in his pocket. you two have been close friends for years, but a few recent incidents, (perhaps incited by suga now that he thinks about it…) have left you walking on eggshells around each other. all in attempt to not admit your feelings, the same feelings that are completely obvious to everyone except yourselves.

“oh.. well, i don’t mind if you don’t?” you wring your hands together in your lap as you look at him.

“yeah, yeah of course not. we’re already here aren’t we?” he gives you that big, warm smile you love so much. it’s practically infectious as you feel a wide grin spread across your face too. “lets go, yeah?” he stands up from the bench, and doesn’t hesitate to offer you his hand. you happily allow him to help hoist you up off the bench, but have to resist the urge to intertwine your fingers with his.

the walk to the pumpkin farm and haunted house combination is only about fifteen minutes, but the awkward silence from before is gone. replaced by comfortable conversation about your responsibilities as team captain and manager respectively, funny stories about your friends or talk about your shared classes. you’re so involved with the conversation neither of you notice the way you walk with your shoulders pressed together. maybe it’s a subconscious pull to one another or maybe just an attempt to escape the chill of the late fall air. 

upon your arrival, you can see the towering entrance archway, made of large sticks and corn stalks. built up into a curve with twinkle lights woven throughout. it welcomes you into the family owned farm turned halloween attraction. underneath the arch, families enter and exit, some with children in their costumes and some with parents carrying pumpkins. some young couples and teenage friend groups pass through as well. the small apple cider stand surrounded by hale bales emits that sweet spiced scent that so perfectly encapsulates autumn.

the original “plan” as stated by suga was to just go through the haunted house together and get some food together, just some team bonding. but without the lovable burden of the entire karasuno volleyball club with you, it’s easy for you and daichi to leisurely make your way around the entire farm and participate in all of it’s available activities. you made your way through a hay bale maze together. it may have been meant for children but you had fun regardless, laughing when you got separated and teasing each other when you hit a dead end. you got the treat of watching daichi attempt to bob for apples, and get nothing except for a slightly damp shirt collar.

you even purchased a bag of animal feed for you and daichi to share. you went around petting and feeding goats and a few chickens. at some point you reached into the small brown paper bag right when daichi did. your fingers brushed his and you both pulled back like you had been burned. each of you flusteredly spitting out apologies, until he takes a deep breath, chuckles and shakes head, telling you not to worry about it and it’s no big deal. his strong voice and calm words are a stark contrast to his worried apologies just seconds earlier, but it’s enough for you to relax and continue on with the afternoon.

eventually, daichi leads you to sit down across from him at a wooden table and you’re quick to fall into comfortable conversation. all while the warmth of the apple cider he had just bought you seeps into your fingers and keeps them warm.

if you didn’t doubt yourself so much, you would’ve thought this felt exactly like some sort of date happening. the two of you together, spending time doing things any real couple would. at the same time, similar thoughts raced through daichis mind. he thought about how much this must look like a date to any people passing, and how much he really did wish that was the case. to be able to call you his own and take you out on cute dates like this whenever you wanted. too concerned with his cheeks dusting red at the thought, he fails to notice the similar blush presenting itself on your face.

it’s so easy to get caught up as you keep talking with daichi, you don’t notice the sun starting to set and you don’t even catch him gazing at you with that soft look in his eyes. 

you crack a joke during your story about some of tanaka and noyas shenanigans and he laughs. he laughs this hearty, bright laugh that makes your chest tighten and your own smile widen. i’d like to make him laugh like that for the rest of my life you think.

“you know, i’m a little relieved. with the entire team here it would’ve been hectic to say the least,” he lets out another laugh at the thought of the whole club wreaking havoc on the poor farm, “and you know… i’m glad i got to spend time with you too. it was nice and i’m having a really good time” his soft smile is just as sincere as his words.

“i did too, daichi. thank you for today, i really had fun” you smile back at him and take a sip of your cider.

“ah ah! don’t say thank you yet, y/n. we’ve still got one last thing to do,” he shoves a thumb over his shoulder in the direction of the haunted house. from your spot at the table you can see the flash of the strobe lights and artificial fog trickling from the attraction. “maybe we should go get in line?”

you nod, and he once again offers you his hand to help you stand. and just like before you resist the nagging push in the back of your mind to just intertwine your fingers with his. you make your way over, tossing your empty cider cups into the trash as you walk.

you purchase your tickets, or more so daichi buys both of them despite you insisting it’s your turn to pay after he bought cider, and get in the line of about ten people.

“you know i didn’t really consider the fact i wouldn’t have the whole team to hide behind anymore” you rock and back and forth on your feet, as you hear a couple of screams echo from inside the house.

“what, is your captain not big and strong enough to protect you?” he teases while flexing one arm.

“oh stop it, you know what i meant” you playfully roll your eyes and poke him in the ribs right before he swats your hand away.

“just remember, if you take me out now you won’t have anyone to hide behind” by now the line has moved up and there’s only two or three people in front of you.

they group in front of you goes and suddenly you and daichi are up next. the front of the haunted house is decaying and covered in those sticky store-bought cobwebs. you drop your tickets in the box and with a wave of their hand an employee motions you forward into the entrance.

you make your way through the halls of the attraction, going through different themed sections. a circus tent full of crazed clowns, a bloodied butchers shop, and zombies kept back by chain fences. each hall comes with its own set of spooks and scares. creepy sound effects, banging on the walls all around you and air machines puffing air into your face. you don’t even attempt to hide your terror as you scream and even grab onto daichis arm. he lets out his own shouts of fear, but manages to put on his tough act at least partially. you notice him place himself in front of you slightly as you walk, the arm you cling to held in front of your body protectively, although there was no true danger. you’d probably think something of it if you weren’t too distracted by the adrenaline pumping in your veins. it’s not all scary though, a couple of daichis screams make you giggle and act as momentary distraction from your surroundings. a particularly high pitched yelp of his has you gripping the back of his shirt, doubled over laughing. but a loud bang that rattles the wall next to your gives you a start and you keep venturing forward through the house.

you think you’re finally in the clear when you're walking down the hall that leads to the exit off the back of the house. you see an employee dressed in all black at the end directing people around the side of the house and back to the front. but it’s only when you feel your heartbeat start to slow that you hear the chainsaw start and the screams of the group behind you and daichi. you’re heartbeat picks up again and out of pure instinct you lurch forward. you make it out the hall and into the small gravel field behind before you realize daichi still had himself in front of you. you’re too late to react and go barreling into him. the momentum brings both of you tumbling forward into the gravel. you land halfway on top of him but his reflexes are much better than your own and they help keep you from going too far. one arm keeps you from rolling and the other cradles your head to his chest to prevent you from hitting it. the loud buzz of the chainsaw fades as the actor chases the friend group around the side of the house for a short distance. you immediately sit yourself up and attempt to apologize between labored breaths.

“oh god, daichi. i- i’m so sorry, i just heard the chainsaw and i started moving. i didn’t even think. i understand now why you don’t like me back now. i’m so sorry” you hang your head in apology, not even registering the words that slip from your mouth in your scramble to say sorry.

“what?” he asks, stunned.

“...what?” you echo back slowly before the realization hits you hard. you struggle to spit out an explanation and you feel your face heat up, “i just meant-” 

daichis look of shock morphs into a soft smile as he cuts you off with another one of his warm laughs and uses the hand at the back of your neck to pull you down. his lips meet yours in a kiss thats just as warm and solid as him. he pulls away after a moment only to rest your foreheads together and smile at you softly 

“does that mean?” you breathe out, smiling back hopefully.

“yes, yes it does,” he chuckles and stands up from the ground. daichi offers you his hand one last time, you take it and pull yourself up. but unlike any previous offers, you don’t hesitate to lace your fingers with his.