#which seems like a really long time but also puts her canon age closer to albas age

[charlie-os]

I’ve seen a lot of people trying to figure out the time dilation math in warrior nun and all getting wildly different answers so here’s my contribution as someone who’s in college for math

We know that for every 7.8 seconds that passes 107 minutes pass in the other realm so

107*60 = 6420 seconds

6410/7.8 = 823.077 seconds (per every second that passes on earth 823.077 seconds pass in the other realm)

So using the conversion 1 = 823.077 we can find pretty much any time difference

For 1 day on earth we know that 1 day = 86400 seconds so

86400*823.077 = 71113846.15 seconds or 2.25 years

My theory is that since there was so much jesus symbolism this season ava is going to spend three days in the other realm which for her would be 6.75 years

[ak-vintage]

Quarry - Chapter 19

Pairing: Din Djarin (The Mandalorian) x f!reader

Summary: Din Djarin is on what he expects to be his last bounty hunt for Greef Karga. After all, Nevarro is swiftly moving away from its previous reputation as a Guild member’s paradise, and Din has more important concerns now, like finding a Jedi to train his mysterious foundling. However, after capturing a wanted starship engineer who would rather go anywhere other than “home,” the Mandalorian is forced to reassess his priorities.

Your taste of freedom had been brief but glorious. Now you are a prisoner of the most infamous bounty hunter in the Outer Rim – it’s only a matter of time before he turns you in. There isn’t much you would not do to keep from being sent home, but as you find yourself growing closer to your captor and his strange little companion, you start to wonder whether escape is really what you want.

Set after Chapter 13: The Jedi but before Chapter 14: The Tragedy.

Chapter Tags & Warnings: 18+ MDNI! Reader is Mando's live-in starship engineer, dual POV, no use of Y/N, minimal descriptors of reader character, angst, character development, jealousy and possessive behavior, dominant Din, submissive reader, spanking (once), oral sex (m receiving), vaginal fingering, penis in vagina sex, accidental exhibitionism, overheard sex

Series Masterlist | Read on AO3

Note: Following along with the canon timeline, this chapter takes place at the start of Chapter 15: The Believer. You will notice some dialogue has been borrowed directly from the show.

---

As you had expected, Cara Dune had taken little convincing to agree to assist in your expedition. The moment she learned that Grogu’s life was at stake, she had put in for a temporary leave of absence with Karga, packed a small duffle bag, and boarded Boba Fett’s Firespray without a second thought. Using her leverage as a newly-minted New Republic marshal, she had managed to locate an ex-Imperial officer that Din seemed to believe would have the knowledge and access codes needed in order to locate Moff Gideon’s cruiser. Thankfully, you wouldn’t have to travel far to find him; he was serving time on the penal moon Karthon, which was only about 10 standard hours in hyperspace from Nevarro.

Regardless of the brevity of the trip, however, having Cara on board was a welcome addition to the Firespray. Throughout the week’s journey from Tython to Nevarro, the interpersonal dynamics of the ship’s passengers had been…odd.

Boba, you had found, preferred to spend the majority of his time in the cockpit behind the helm of his ship, and although he was always cordial and pleasant with you when you encountered each other in the makeshift mess or on the landing outside the ‘fresher, he was a man of few words, and something about him intimidated the kriff out of you. You weren’t certain if it was the age gap, the sharp, knowing glint of his dark eyes, or the competent, powerful way he carried himself, but everything about him screamed dangerous, and you couldn’t decide if that frightened you or if you were fascinated by it.

Fennec continued to be an enjoyable companion with which to pass the time. However, when she wasn’t actively kicking your ass during your daily hand-to-hand combat lessons, she spent a great deal of time in her bunk cleaning and maintaining her impressive arsenal of long-range blaster rifles, and you could only bring yourself to intrude on her solitude so often.

Din, of course, remained as elusive as ever. Although he had stopped outright avoiding you, you still got the sense that he would prefer to be anywhere other than in your presence, and any conversations you had managed to have with him since your emotional confrontation had been short and painfully shallow. He also still refused to share your bed, choosing instead to stand vigil in the navigation room while the rest of the ship slept, staring into the depths of space and catnapping for brief stretches during the day. You knew he had to be exhausted by now, running on fumes, but in spite of your concerns, you refused to say anything to him about it. If he was going to continue to hold you at arm’s length, you weren’t going to go out of your way to be his caregiver.

The warm, brusque, take-no-shit attitude Cara brought to the group was a comforting reprieve. She and Fennec got on like a house on fire, and once the latter had brought her up to speed on your training regimen, she was quick to shuck her armor and join the day’s sparring session. With a ready smile, she put you through your paces with a ferocity that had you pouring sweat in record time. If Fennec was a sleek, nimble vulptex in combat, Cara was a reek, and when you faced off against her, you found yourself so concentrated on keeping air in your lungs and your feet under your body that you didn’t have a single thought to spare for Grogu’s whereabouts or Din’s mental state. It was shockingly liberating.

By the time you arrived in orbit around Karthon, your body felt pleasantly wrung out, your heart felt lighter, and you had settled Cara into the bunk directly below yours. With Fennec across the way and Cara just below, the lower decks of the Firespray were starting to feel like a cross between the shipyard barracks and the sleepovers you had had with your friends as a child. Both recollections made something in your chest feel soft and tender.

You hovered at the top of the ramp as the others went down to the surface, choosing to watch from the sidelines as Cara, back in full armor, escorted the prisoner in question out of the chop fields and into the ship. A human male in a worn, yellow inmate’s jumpsuit, you could hear his bright, sharp voice carry across the distance, distinct and clearly aggravated.

“I mean, it’s-it’s common courtesy,” he was saying as he and Cara came into view. “A common courtesy to tell somebody where it is that you’re takin’ ‘em. I don’t think that’s so hard to ask, do you?”

He looked as though he was about to say more, like once he got going, he wasn’t going to stop any time soon, but then he caught sight of Boba and Fennec descending the ramp, and his words died on his tongue.

“Oh. You know, for a second, I thought you were this other guy,” he stammered after a moment’s silence, a look of relief coloring his pale, freckled features as he took in Boba’s freshly-painted sage green armor.

Then Din breezed past you to join the others, and that relief disappeared.

“Mayfeld,” the bounty hunter greeted him coolly. A ripple of tension traveled through the group, one that could be felt even from where you stood, propped casually against the doorframe, and for the first time, you wondered about the history of these two men – what had happened between them that had left such animosity behind?

“Hey. Mando. Long time.” The man called Mayfeld glanced down at his boots, looking as though he would rather be anywhere else. “So, what? You came here to kill me?”

Din said nothing, simply continued to size him up as Cara replied, “All you need to know is I bent a lot of rules to bring you along.”

Mayfeld scoffed. “Why am I so lucky?”

“Because you’re Imperial.” The venom in the ex-shock trooper’s tone could not be mistaken, the sound sending a chill up your spine even though her words weren’t directed at you.

The inmate didn’t seem to appreciate the reminder. “Hey, that was a long time ago, all right?”

“But you still know your Imperial clearances and protocols, don’t you?” Din asked pointedly, as though he already knew the answer. Something in the other man’s eyes shone like resignation at that, and you couldn’t fight the smirk that tugged at the corner of your mouth.

Gotcha.

---

Back in the navigation room, you lingered against the holoprojector console as Boba excused himself to begin the Firespray’s take-off sequence while the others each settled in a chair. Their eyes never left the suspicious face of the dust-covered New Republic inmate, the tension of the atmosphere steadily ratcheting up as they studied him wordlessly. He appeared to do the same, wary and hesitant, and you watched as his gaze snagged on you, seemingly noticing your presence for the first time. His sharp, blue eyes felt like a brand on your skin, trailing from the top of your head to the toes of your boots, and you found yourself crossing your arms over your chest in an instinctual, protective gesture.

Just as you thought he might speak to you, Din spoke first.

“We need coordinates for Moff Gideon’s cruiser.”

Mayfeld’s brows shot up, wrinkling his forehead as a shocked laugh burst from his throat. You got the sense that whatever reason he had imagined for being turned over to Marshal Dune, it hadn’t been that. “Moff Gideon? Yeah, forget it. Just take me back to the scrap yard, I’m not doing that.”

For some reason, his immediate, flippant dismissal struck a chord with you. You had never met this man before today, he did not even know your name, and yet it felt almost like a betrayal. He was supposed to help. You had come all this way for him…

“They have his kid,” you said sharply, the words on your lips before you could question them.

The antagonistic expression on the inmate’s face softened somewhat at that. “What, the little green guy?”

“Yeah. The little green guy.”

“So…” His eyes darted around the room, flicking from Cara to Din to Fennec to you. “I help you guys get him back, you guys let me go?”

Cara shook her head, a sneer on her lips. “That’s not how this works.”

“Well, then, what’s in it for me?”

“You get a better view,” she snapped, and you felt your eyebrows raise. You hadn’t seen this side of her before, the barely-restrained contempt and vitriol giving you your first glimpse of Cara the shock trooper, Cara the Alderaan survivor, Cara the Rebel. You would be lying if you said you weren’t impressed and more than a little intimidated.

Mayfeld, it seemed, had nothing to say in response to that. Sighing to himself, he said, “All right, but here’s the thing: I can’t get those coordinates unless I have access to an internal Imperial terminal. I believe there’s one on Morak.”

“Morak?” Din echoed dubiously. “There’s nothing on Morak.”

The other man waved the concern away. “It’s a secret Imperial mining hub, okay? If you can get me there, I can get you the coordinates.”

The Mandalorian scanned the room then, silently checking in with Cara, then Fennec, then you. Only after he had a wordless nod from each of you did he reach over to the console behind you and activate the internal comm system.

“Fett. Punch in the coordinates to Morak.”

There was a brief pause, and then the low, gravely voice of the older man replied, “Copy that.”

As the telltale streaks and spirals of hyperspace engulfed the Firespray, casting the navigation room in a wash of blue and white light, most of its inhabitants dispersed to their various corners of the ship. Now that he had agreed to assist, it seemed that the others had determined that Mayfeld was safe to be left to his own devices. There was only so much mischief he could get up to confined to the ship, you supposed. And, if he decided to do anything foolish, there were four warriors aboard who would all be perfectly happy to hand him his ass for his troubles.

For his part, however, the inmate appeared to be perfectly content with passing the time lounging in his chair in the navigation room, arms folded behind his head, eyes fixed on the swirl of passing star systems through the massive forward viewport. Some of the tightness, the wariness that pinched the corners of his eyes had relaxed since you had departed Karthon, and to you, he had the look of a man who had been on edge for so long that the concept of being allowed to relax for a moment was almost foreign to him. He looked like he had forgotten how, like he was trying to remind himself.

Approaching him cautiously, arms still folded over your chest, you offered him a wary half-smile and said, “So. You’re ex-Imperial?”

Mayfeld sighed heavily. “In another life, yeah. But like I told your shock trooper friend, it’s been a long time since I put on the old plastoid get-up.” Tearing his eyes away from the hyperspace horizon, he gave you another one of those head-to-toe looks that made you feel as though you were being examined under a microscope. You weren’t certain what he saw there, but when he was done, his impatience with the question softened, and he returned your smile. “But what about you? You look like you might be the only person on this ship who doesn’t wanna kill me.”

“Well, I don’t know you yet,” you quipped, leaning back against one of the nearby support beams. “Maybe I’ll change my mind.”

The man let out a surprised burst of laughter, his smile morphing into a sly, flirtatious grin. “Oh, she’s got jokes. All right, I see how it is.” Extending a broad hand in fingerless leather gloves, he said, “Name’s Migs Mayfeld.”

You accepted the handshake and introduced yourself in turn.

“Tell me somethin’, sweetheart. What the hell’s someone like you doin’ mixed up with this motley crew? Two Mandos, a Rebel dropper, and an assassin?” He scratched his short, ginger stubble, dragging his thumb across his bottom lip in a gesture that appeared both nonchalant and intentional. “One of these things is not like the others.”

You suppressed the urge to roll your eyes at the obvious line and instead simply shrugged. “Same thing they’re doing. Just trying to get the kid back.”

“Oh, you know him?”

“I’m his nanny,” you replied. His eyebrows rose dramatically at that. “Well, technically, I’m Mando’s engineer. But I did an…awful lot of child-minding on the side.”

“No shit.” Mayfeld studied you for a moment, fist tucked under his chin, a faint smile playing at the corners of his mouth. “Ah, I see. Huh. Wouldn’t have pegged Mando for the type to go after the babysitter, but…” His gaze flicked from your eyes to your breasts to your hips, and you willed yourself not to squirm under his blatant perusal. “…I get it. Don’t think I could say no to you, either.”

A flare of self-righteousness licked its way up your spine, spilling over before you could school it into passivity. “What is that supposed to mean?”

The inmate’s smirk widened, victory flashing in his eyes as he finally managed to get a rise out of you. “Means you are way out of his league, sweetheart,” he crooned, and you lost the battle with your better judgment and rolled your eyes at him.

“Don’t you think I ought to be the judge of that?”

“Sure, sure.” Snickering, Mayfeld brought up both of his hands in a placating gesture, palms out in surrender. “So what’s your part in all this? What’s an engineer gonna do for Operation Baby Frog Rescue?”

“Actually…” You trailed off, weighing the risks of what you were about to ask him. The thought had occurred to you the moment you learned that the individual you would be retrieving from Karthon was a former Imperial soldier, and you had been preoccupied with it since. It was a big ask, what you were considering, and so far, Mayfeld was proving that he might be a…challenging person to work with.

Ultimately, the question you really needed to consider was whether the benefits would outweigh the potentially unpleasant experience.

Steeling yourself, you continued, “Actually, I was hoping you might be able to help me with that.”

A look of pleasant surprise passed over the inmate’s face. “Is that so? Well, I’m all ears, baby. What can I do for you?”

“I want to learn everything there is to know about Moff Gideon’s ship. Layout, weapons and defense capabilities, power grid design, internal systems accesses, the works.”

“Ha. How much time you got?” Mayfeld scoffed, dismissive.

With a glance over to the flight path readout on the navigation console, you replied, “About…five standard rotations, give or take a stop for fuel. I’m taking hand-to-hand combat lessons from Fennec, but otherwise, it’s not like there’s much else going on.”

“…oh. You’re serious.” You watched as the cocky smile on his face began to melt away, his expression slowly becoming more hesitant and uncertain. “Look, you gotta understand, I was a sharpshooter. Not a whole lot technical about what I was doing on those ships. I was just stationed on one. If you wanna talk systems and schematics and shit, I’m probably not the best guy for the job.”

Now it was your turn to smirk at him. “Maybe not, but you’re the guy we have.”

“Oof.” In a dramatic gesture, the inmate slammed the side of one of his fists into his chest with a dull thud, as though he had been wounded. “Tell me how you really feel, sweetheart.”

“Look, I’ve been building and repairing starships since I was 18 years old. I’ve got enough technical knowledge for the both of us,” you insisted. “What I need is someone who has seen the inside of an Imperial cruiser first-hand. If I can get a good enough understanding of their systems, if I can figure out their vulnerabilities, their weak points, I can actually help when it comes time to face them.”

Mayfeld appeared to consider the request, though his hesitance did not seem to ease even after a beat or two of tense silence. So instead of waiting any longer for him to come to a conclusion on his own, you decided to press your advantage.

Drawing your brows up in the middle, you hit him with your softest, widest eyes and added, “Please, Migs.”

You could see the moment the sharpshooter folded, and you could see the moment he recognized what you had just done to him, what levers you had been willing to press to get what you wanted. With a grin that seemed almost to congratulate you, he said, “Fine. But only ���cause you asked so pretty.”

A surge of satisfaction swept through you, and you offered him your first real, genuine smile. Patting him once on the shoulder, you quipped, “Meet me in the mess in an hour. We’ll get started right away.”

“Yes, ma’am!” The mocking salute he gave you in return nearly had you chuckling on your way down the ladder.

Migs Mayfeld was definitely a skughole, but you had a feeling you might actually grow to like that about him.

---

Din Djarin had been given one task. One single, simple task. And he had failed.

Find a Jedi. Return the child in his charge to his people. And, until that time, care for and protect that child like his own.

He had done everything he could to complete this task. He had searched the galaxy for clues on where he might find a member of this mysterious tribe of sorcerers, following every lead, completing every tangential quest placed in his path with nothing to show for it but mere scraps of information. He had run the Razor Crest into the ground (quite literally on one occasion), spent every last credit to his name more times than he could count, and when he finally found a Jedi, she had wanted no part in the caring and training of the boy.

But even then, even when he was certain that he had found the last Jedi in existence only to be turned away, he did not relent. He took the child to the ancient temple. He placed him on the seeing stone. He fought until his body was battered and bruised to keep the boy safe while he broadcast his message through the Force into the vastness of space.

He did. Everything. Right.

Except it hadn’t mattered.

Except now the child was gone. And not into the care of a benevolent protector, one who could mold and shape his ever-growing powers, one who could help him achieve his greatest potential. No. He was gone into the hands of the Empire, of Moff Gideon. Din Djarin had failed the naur’alor, and he had failed Grogu.

It was one thing to disappoint the expectations of the leader of his covert, his spiritual guide, the keeper of his culture. It was quite another to fail to protect a foundling. It flew in the face of everything he believed, every value he had ever held sacred. The care and the protection of children was the very foundation of the Mandalorian way of life. To harm a child was the ultimate crime, the cardinal sin. To be granted the privilege of being a caregiver to a foundling only to be found wanting? It was the deepest shame.

Watching the squad of Dark Troopers retreat through the atmosphere with Grogu in tow, Din had felt a helplessness the likes of which he had never known. It had been a fear that had rivaled the day the Separatists attacked Aq Vetina, the day his parents were slaughtered trying to save him from the invading battle droids. But then he had turned to see you, limp and exhausted and covered head-to-toe in dirt and ash, and somehow, the anguish had only grown stronger. Your skin glowed bright red and raw everywhere he could see, marring your smooth forehead, your sweet nose, your graceful neck, your capable hands. Blood spilled down the side of your face from a cut on your brow, and you were clutching your ribcage, curled over on yourself like it hurt to stand up all the way.

Gods. He had sent you to the Razor Crest, he suddenly recalled, horror washing over him in a cold wave that nearly had his knees buckling. You could have been killed. You could have been killed, and he wouldn’t have realized. His mind had been on keeping the Storm Troopers at bay, then on the loss of his ship, then on Grogu, where it had stayed, consumed. If you had made it to the Crest, if you had been on board during its destruction…

How long would it have taken him to notice you were gone?

The sickening thought kept him up at night, kept him standing vigil by the navigation room viewport and far from your bed. It had him fighting nausea every time you looked at him with your wide, bright eyes full of grief, every time you offered him your kindness. It had him recoiling from your touch, shunning your boundless empathy. He left you alone and cold in your bunk every night because the idea of allowing you to comfort him – him – made him want to collapse inside of himself and dissolve into nothingness.

You did not need him – Din Djarin, the failed buir. Din Djarin, the thoughtless, heartless riduur. You did not need him, and he certainly did not deserve you.

And yet…

Just as he was certain that you were too good for him, he perhaps was even more certain that you were too good for that slimy, ex-Imperial frag-head Migs kriffing Mayfeld.

From the moment he had come aboard, the two of you had been nearly inseparable. They were three days into their journey to Morak, and if you weren’t sparring in the middle of the navigation room with either Fennec Shand or Marshal Dune, you were holed up somewhere with Mayfeld, the two of you huddled together over a pile of datapads or clustered around a console, talking animatedly and taking notes. He had no idea what you could have to talk to him about or what the two of you might be working on together that demanded so much of your time. All Din knew for certain was that the sight had him silently seething behind the impassivity of his helmet every time he came across it.

Though he tried to take comfort in the fact that these conversations often devolved into arguments, the two of you snipping back and forth at each other at increasing volumes as you debated something or other, that surge of satisfaction could just as easily be overtaken by raw, roiling rage every time he heard you laugh. Mayfeld made you laugh. Often. It had him wanting to break the sharpshooter’s jaw before throwing him out the airlock. And, stars, the way he looked at you, something covetous in his eyes, something hungry. It was more than he could bear.

Didn’t he understand? Couldn’t he tell? You were his. Mayfeld may have thought he had seen what Din was capable of on that prison transport, but he hadn’t seen anything yet. If that Hutt spawn ever touched you…

Not that he thought you would allow it, not really. Even in the throes of his guilt and shame and grief, the Mandalorian knew that you loved him, knew that you were loyal to him. But did Mayfeld know that? Or perhaps he just didn’t care? Either way, the thought filled his chest with slick, black fury, nearly choking him every time he was in the same room as the ex-Imperial inmate.

Din Djarin felt at the end of his tether, his own self-loathing and his longing for you and his resentment of Mayfeld building up in his body like a pressurized tibanna cartridge in an overheating blaster rifle. It was only a matter of time before he exploded. He only hoped he could keep it together long enough to find Grogu. He knew himself well enough to know that if didn’t find somewhere constructive to put all of this emotion, there was going to be collateral damage, and he wasn’t certain he would be able to do anything to stop it.

---

“So.”

You glanced up from your datapad to find Migs studying you with interest, a sharp, antagonistic gleam in his bright blue eyes, and you swallowed a sigh before it could make itself heard. Three days into your hyperspace journey to Morak, and the same number of days into your unexpected partnership with the Firespray’s newest passenger, and you were getting rather good at picking up on his tells. This one – the significant shift in his tone of voice, the sparkle in his gaze, the needling look he sent you from his seat on the deck at the foot of your bunk – told you that any work you had been accomplishing moments before was going to need to take a pause. The man was bored, and his favorite pastime seemed to be taking the piss out of you.

“Hm?” you hummed, quirking a weary eyebrow in his direction.

The sharpshooter smirked. “How’s Mando feel about how much time you been spendin’ with me?”

Shrugging, you shifted atop your bunk mattress, bunching your pillow beneath your chest as you rolled onto your front and continued reading through your notes. “If he’s bothered by it, he hasn’t said anything,” you replied truthfully.

You thought you might have caught the Mandalorian in question watching the two of you on a few occasions, hovering on the outskirts of whatever room you had decided to camp out in for the day or passing through on his way to somewhere else on the ship. You could feel the tension radiating off of him in those moments, could tell that whatever he saw when he looked at you, he didn’t like it, but with the way he had been stonewalling you lately, you couldn’t bring yourself to be too concerned about it.

If Din had an issue with Mayfeld, he could grow up and talk to you about it like an adult.

Migs scoffed at that, setting his own datapad aside with a clatter. “That guy hates my guts, sweetheart. Trust me, he’s bothered.”

“Well, then, I suppose it’s a good thing he doesn’t get a say in who I spend my time with.”

“Ooo, feisty,” he groaned, eyelids lowering and a wide, lascivious smile spreading across his face. “I like that.”

You shot him a reluctant half grin at that, amused in spite of yourself. The man was relentless, had been flirting with you mercilessly since the moment he stepped on board the ship. You weren’t sure when it had stopped being gross and started being funny, but somewhere along the way, during the many hours the two of you had spent in each other’s company since then, you had started to find his utterly shameless, boorish behavior entertaining rather than disgusting.

Most of the time, anyway.

“Nice try. But I’m not interested,” you said, just as you had every other time he had come onto you.

“No? You sure?” From his seat on the floor, he shifted and rolled up onto his knees, bringing his face level with yours. He leaned his elbow into your mattress, the thin padding dipping under the weight of him. Cupping his stubbly chin in his palm, he encroached on your space without an ounce of regret in his eyes. “You know, I been watchin’ you two, and I gotta tell you. He sure doesn’t seem to give you a whole lot of attention. Nowhere near as much as you deserve.”

You pushed down the immediate pang of hurt at his words, too accurate for your liking, and reminded yourself that Migs didn’t really know you, he definitely didn’t know Din, and he most assuredly didn’t know your relationship. Choosing to ignore his presence weighing down the edge of your bed, you flicked your gaze back to your datapad. “His kid just got kidnapped,” you replied with a shrug. “He’s got a lot on his mind.”

“Maybe.” You felt more than you saw him lean in just a bit closer, and you fought the urge to roll your eyes. “Or maybe those pesky Mandalorian morals are destined to get in the way of bein’ able to treat you right.”

“Mando treats me just fine, Migs.” A flash of genuine irritation made its way into your voice, and you could have kicked yourself for the way just that tiny show of weakness had the inmate grinning like  a madman. He could see that he was getting to you, and it only made him push harder.

“Girl like you deserves more than ‘fine,’ sweetheart. Besides, how do you know he’s not repulsive under all that armor? And who knows what he’s got hiding under that helmet?”

You chose not to dignify that with a response. This topic had come up more than once over the last few days – Din’s helmet, his armor, his Mandalorian culture and practices. Something about them seemed to grate at Mayfeld in a way that felt deeper and more real than anything else that came out of the man’s mouth, particularly the helmet. You didn’t understand it yourself, but you knew that it made him distrustful of Din, that it put him on edge.

Of course, you would never reveal that you at least had some idea of what was under that helmet. The floppy curls you had run your fingers through, the scratchy stubble that had burned your cheeks and inner thighs. The soft, downturned mouth you had kissed so thoroughly, the strong, hooked nose you had felt dragging along your neck and collarbones. Under his helmet, he was just a human man.

Your man, and one you were convinced was devastatingly handsome, but still, nothing especially remarkable. Whatever image Migs had concocted in his head, you were sure it was far more extreme than the reality.

As you recalled those precious hours you had spent wrapped up together and felt your heart squeeze in response, something must have flickered across your face, some tell that you hadn’t been able to push down. Migs seemed to go still next to you, suddenly serious.

“Unless…you do know what’s under it,” he murmured, something like awe, like jealousy in his voice. “You seen his face, sweetheart?”

Too far.

You shot up onto your knees, finally putting some distance between the two of you and meeting his gaze with a cold, sharp look. “No, I haven’t. No one has. And no one will,” you snapped. Waving your all-but-forgotten datapad in his face, you added, “Now, can we please get back to the internal surveillance systems?”

The sharpshooter narrowed his eyes at you for a moment, seemingly studying you, before leaning back off of the mattress. A light, easy smile slipped back over his face once again, and you found yourself sighing audibly in relief.

“Yeah, sure. For now,” he purred, that insatiable, flirtatious tone back in a way that felt almost comforting after such a close brush with something real, something personal. “But I’d be stupid if I didn’t try my damnedest to turn your head while I got the chance, baby.”

A soft, breathy chuckle burst from your chest, and the sharpshooter sent you a wink, over the top, shameless.

“Mayfeld.”

You startled at the gravely, modulated sound of Din’s voice, suddenly so close, and your eyes flew to the entrance to your bunk. Tall, broad, and impossibly intimidating, the Mandalorian took up the entire narrow doorway, one of his gloved fists wrapped snugly around the bars of the open cell door.

You hadn’t heard him climb down the ladder, hadn’t sensed him on the slender platform outside your cell. How long had he been standing there? How much had he heard?

And why did those questions have your heart speeding up in your chest?

For his part, Mayfeld appeared entirely unbothered. If anything, the shit-eating grin that split his face grew even wider as he turned to take in the unexpected visitor. “Speak of the devil,” he said, and that kriffing tone was back, bright and joyfully irritating.

“Take a break. There’s caf in the mess,” Din said, taking a slow, measured step into your bunk. His frame loomed over the both of you in a way that made you feel a bit like running. A bit like prey.

The inmate frowned a bit at that, clearly not appreciating the idea of being ordered around by the Mandalorian. “Hey, we’re in the middle of a – ”

“I said. Take. A break.”

His low, rumbling words left no room for argument. Mayfeld glanced back and forth between you and Din, as though confirming that it was safe for him to leave, and you nodded once. He seemed to understand, and a smooth, practiced smile slipped back over his face as he got to his feet. “All right, all right. Three’s a crowd, I gotcha.” Tossing you a short wave over his shoulder, he added, “Catch up with you later, sweetheart.” Then he was swinging himself up onto the central ladder and climbing for the upper decks.

The moment you were certain Mayfeld was out of earshot, you were scrambling to your feet, tossing your datapad onto your pillow with a soft thump. “Din!” you hissed, wrestling a shout into something softer but no less venomous. “What the kriff is your problem?”

The bounty hunter seemed entirely unaffected by your indignation; if anything, it seemed to make him dig his heels in. Drawing himself up to full height and crossing his arms over his armored chest, he growled, “Mayfeld is bad news. You should keep your distance from him.”

Anger rose in your chest at the audacity of such a statement, as though the man before you hadn’t been skirting his way out of your presence for more than a week now, as though he had any right…

“Well, maybe you should have thought of that before you insisted we bring him on board.” You took a handful of quick, pointed strides, coming to stand directly in front of him, your chin jutting outward defiantly as you glared up into his visor. “Besides, you don’t get to tell me who I can and can’t be friends with. That’s not how this works.”

“Friends?” Din’s voice vibrated low and dangerous through his vocoder, and you suppressed a shiver at the sound. Goosebumps broke out along the back of your neck and down your arms as he tilted his helmet down another inch, bringing himself even further into your space. “You think you and him are friends?”

You swallowed thickly. “So far, yeah. He’s agreeing to help you track down Gideon’s cruiser, he’s been helping me brush up on my Imperial starship design. He’s been nothing but nice to me – ”

“Migs Mayfeld is not nice, not unless he wants something from you. And trust me, cyare, what he wants from you is anything but nice.”

And there it was. You knew it, had felt it in his burning gaze, seen it in his menacing body language. You had even heard it in his voice – that barely restrained fury, that primal possession.

Din was jealous. Acutely, poisonously jealous.

“Oh, yeah?” you taunted, biting back a grin. “And what does he want from me, exactly?”

A rasping, animalistic sound rumbled somewhere deep in his chest. “I think you know.”

You felt a smirk tug at one corner of your mouth, the heat of your anger suddenly morphing, transforming, racing along your nerve endings, pooling in your belly. Maker help you, but this was working for you. You could feel the apex of your thighs starting to throb, to dampen. How long had it been since he had touched you? You couldn’t remember anymore. Too long.

Your next words were barely a whisper against the cool beskar of his helmet, close enough now for your warm breath to fog up the reflective surface but still not touching. “Why don’t you enlighten me?”

At first, only silence met your taunting, needling question, and it was almost enough to drag you out of the moment, to have self-consciousness and shame rearing their ugly heads behind your ribs. But then you heard his breathing pick up, suddenly audible through his vocoder. A flush bloomed on your cheeks at the sound, spilling down your neck, darkening your chest. He seemed to follow the path of it with his eyes, his visor angling down to watch your breasts heave, to witness the way his proximity affected you, the way you had begun to ache for him.

Just as you opened your mouth – to curse him, to beg him, to whine for him – the Mandalorian tilted his helmet back up to meet your eyes, and you were certain you could hear it even though no words left his lips.

Can I?

You nodded weakly in answer to his unspoken question, and then he was on you, driving you inexorably back toward the wall of your bunk with the breadth of his body and the grip of his large, leather-clad hand on your jaw.

All of the air rushed out of your lungs as your body collided with the durasteel bulkhead, the chill of the metal and the force of the impact arching your back instinctually, and Din was right there when you did – pressing his chest into yours, driving an armored thigh between your legs, pressing the central ridge of that armor firmly, inescapably into your core. The hand on your jaw wrenched your head back, forcing your gaze up, up, forcing you to look him in the eye, to take in the image of your own reflection in the shining blackness of his T-shaped visor. His other hand came up to slam against the wall near your head, and just like that, in the span of a single breath, you were trapped. Pinned. Utterly at his mercy.

The realization had your stomach dropping, your knees going watery beneath you. A rush of heat washed over you, thick and sweet and addictive, and you watched your own pupils blow wide and dark in your reflection.

“Enlighten you? You’re too smart to be that naïve, gotabor’ika,” the bounty hunter growled, grinding cold, unforgiving beskar into the tender softness of your cunt. “He wants this.”

You let out a gasp, mouth dropping open, and fuck, you already looked wrecked.

Din must have thought so, too, because the next thing you knew, that hand on your jaw had shifted so that he could slip his thumb between your lips, pressing the pad into your tongue and groaning as you automatically began to suck.

“He wants this pretty mouth, too, cyar’ika. I see the way he watches you, how he stares when you speak. I see the way he follows you from room to room like a fucking shadow.”

He sounds enraged, his voice dark and his words heavy in a way you have never heard, but he keeps his emotions on a tight leash. You can feel it in the tension of his limbs, hear it in his panting breaths. He’s holding back, and the thought that this is somehow restraint has you trembling.

In his thick, leather gloves, his thumb felt huge in your mouth, and you felt saliva swell under your tongue at the sensation. Combined with the musk and the tang of the leather, it reminded you so viscerally of his cock in your mouth that it had you soaking your panties and grinding yourself harder against the press of his thigh.

If Din noticed your increasing desperation, the way you were melting beneath his hands, he didn’t comment on it. Instead, he simply thrust his thumb deeper, forcing you to suck in a breath through your nose as you fought back a gag.

“But he doesn’t get to have this mouth, does he?” Something hard and taunting crept its way into his voice, and you found yourself shaking your head around his intrusion, a whine trapped high in your throat. “No, he doesn’t. He doesn’t get to have this sweet little pussy, either, does he? Hm?” He pulled his thumb away, dragging a slick string of drool with him as he did. The orange leather tip of his glove had been stained a dark umber. “Answer me, cyar’ika.”

“No, Din, never,” you whimpered, breathless. Your body writhed of its own accord, dragging your clothed cunt against his thigh armor once, twice, three times, the ridge of it catching on your swollen clit with every thrust in a way that had you absolutely fucking shaking.

“Why not? Why can’t he have you?”

The words were out of your mouth before you had even formed them, spilling into the tight, humid space between you in little gasps and sighs. “Because I’m yours.”

Immediately, his hand was in your hair, weaving through the strands at the base of your skull, loosening your braid as he yanked your head back once more. “Yeah? You’re mine?” he ground out, his words rough and clipped like he was speaking through a clenched jaw.

“Yes. Just yours. Always, Din, always.” You tried to nod but instead pulled your own hair against the harshness of his grip, and your eyes nearly rolled back in your head at the feeling.

A pleased rumble vibrated through his chest, like the purr of an overgrown nexu, and he released your hair, instead placing both hands on your shoulders and bearing you down onto your knees. “Then prove it, mesh’la.”

You put up no resistance, your legs folding easily beneath you as you collapsed onto the deck at his feet. Back still pressed to the bulkhead, your fingers went to his belt immediately, releasing the center buckle and catching the heavy weight in your palms as it loosened and then slipped from around his narrow hips. Swiftly discarding it onto the nearby bunk, you tackled his flight suit pants next, tucking your hands up under the bottom of the padded bib he wore under his cuirass to release the button and drag down the zipper.

The Mandalorian groaned at the relieved pressure, and you bit back a whine at the sight of his thick cock pressing insistently against the fabric of his underwear. Even in the narrow space created by his open fly, you could see how he tented the black cotton, how the impressive length of him nearly had his flushed, weeping tip poking out of the waistband. You squeezed your thighs together, feeling your walls clench around nothing as he watched him twitch. He was throbbing for you, and you for him.

You drew him out without preamble, too impatient now to tease, too desperate to draw it out any more, and then your mouth was on him, and you loosed a groan that would have embarrassed you had you been in you right mind. Dank farrik, he felt good – his skin hot and smooth, his musk slick on your tongue, making you drool, making your cunt drip. Din dropped a series of curses intermingled with warm, lilting Mando’a, and you snapped your eyes up to him, watching him watch you take him. His fingers returned to your hair then, cradling the bowl of your skull in his palm, pressing, pulling, drawing your forward.

“Shab, that’s it, cyar’ika,” he panted, thrusting shallowly. “Just let me use my mouth. Let me fuck it a little, hm?”

You moaned a muffled, affirmative noise, wrapping your hands around his hips to steady yourself as you relaxed your throat. Taking deep, steady breaths through your nose, you felt your eyelids start to flutter as he began to thrust into you. Dragging the underside of his cock along your tongue, probing past your gag reflex, the plush tip of him sliding along your soft pallet, bumping into the back of your throat. Tears welled at your lash line, a single one bursting the dam and tracking down your cheek, and you could tell that salvia was staring to pool in the corners of your mouth. Gods, he was so thick – hot and slick and smelling like salt, like man. It was making your mind fuzzy, your thoughts loose and sluggish. He was fucking them out of you, forcing them from your body with every hitch of his hips, and you felt all of the fear and the anxiety and the grief inside you soften as he did.

Distantly, you wondered whether he was experiencing that same relief, that same unburdening with the soft heat of your mouth, but before the thought could fully coalesce, it was gone, dissolved with all the others.

You felt him start to twitch on your tongue then, his balls drawing up and tightening against your chin, and then he was using his grip on your head to pull you off him. You whined in protest, feeling bereft, but he shushed you before you could put words to your disappointment.

“Shh, shh, mesh’la. On your feet now.”

You obeyed as quickly as you could, your legs feeling a bit numb after being folded up beneath you on the cold durasteel floor, but the moment you had your feet under you, his hands were back on your body. He yanked the zipper of your jumpsuit down with an urgency that nearly had the mechanism catching on the fabric, then he was working the sleeves down over your shoulders, shoving the fabric down your torso until it caught on the plush flare your hips. Tucking his thumbs into your panties, he dug his fingers into the undergarment and the jumpsuit and tugged them both all the way down to your knees, leaving you abruptly bare but for your thin, black breastband.

“Turn around. Hands on the bed,” the Mandalorian rumbled, and you stumbled to do what he asked.

Blood rushed to your face in mortification at the thought of how you must look right now, clumsy with your clothes around your knees, boots still on your feet, braid half undone, shining slick dripping from your pussy and coating the insides of your thighs. But your debauched helplessness only seemed to turn Din on more. The moment your palms hit the flimsy mattress, he landed a quick, sharp swat to the meat of your ass, and you gasped at the sting. The feel of his leather gloves on your skin in such an intimate place had you squirming, and you thought you heard him chuckle breathily as he watched you writhe.

“Oh, sweet girl.” With the tip of his boot, he kicked your feet wider apart, forcing you to spread your legs for him while you bent over the bed. Dragging two fingers through the mess between your legs, he groaned indulgently. “You get this wet just from my cock in your mouth?”

You sobbed out a sound that you hoped sounded like a yes, but Din wasn’t having it. Wrapping what was left of your braid around his fist, he pulled, making you cry out.

“Use your words now. Is your pretty pussy dripping like this because of me?”

“Yes!” you whimpered weakly. “It’s all for you, Din.”

Two leather-clad fingertips appeared at your entrance, stroking your fluttering hole with a gentleness that felt almost out of place in this high-intensity moment, but it had your thighs trembling nonetheless. “Not for him, though. Right, cyar’ika?”

You were shaking your head before he had even finished his question. “No, no, just you! I swear!”

“That’s right. You know why?” Those two fingers thrust forward then, filling, stretching, and you felt your mouth drop open on a moan. “Because no one else can make you feel like this, can they? No one else can give this pussy what she needs. You’re mine, mesh’la. Only mine.”

The bounty hunter continued to mumble lewd, greedy nonsense as he fucked you with his fingers, but you couldn’t make yourself focus on his words. That far-off, foggy feeling was coming back; with every thrust, every curl, every scissoring stretch, you felt yourself releasing rhythmic, involuntary moans, your slickness gathering at the base of his fingers and slipping down his palm. He was going to make you come like this, just with his fingers. It had been building since the moment you realized he was acting out of jealousy, since the moment he started bossing Mayfeld around in that wicked, possessive voice, and there was no stopping it now.

Not when you had been deprived of him for so long, not when he played your body and your mind like a finely tuned instrument.

“You going to come for me, sweet girl? S’okay, you can come.” Running a warm, soothing palm across your spine, Din drove you further forward, urging you to drop your upper body onto the mattress. “Come on my fingers, and then I’ll give you my cock and fuck this pussy the way you deserve.”

Shit. You would never get used to that – the way he talked to you, the way his low, rasping voice curled intimately around every word. The distortion of his helmet modulator somehow only made it hotter. It made it feel illicit, added a forbidden element that had you sweating under his touch.

With the promise of his thick, swollen cock lingering at the back of your mind, you fell apart on his fingers, your legs shaking so violently that Din had to tuck an arm under your stomach and hold you upright.

As you caught your breath, head resting on your folded forearms, you felt his fingers slip from your body, replaced instead with the wide, blunt press of his cock. Groaning low in your chest, you shifted your feet apart even wider and arched your back, presenting yourself to him in wordless submission.

“There we go,” the Mandalorian sighed. He wrapped both of his hands around your hips then, pulling you slowly, steadily back into him, splitting you open one perfect inch at a time. “Who’s pussy is this, mesh’la? Who’s the only one who gets to fuck you like this?”

“Just you, Din.” Your voice sounded foreign to your own ears – low and breathy and whimpering. You sounded completely fucked out, completely pathetic, and somehow it made you even wetter, made your cunt clench around him.

“Shaaaab, that’s right.” One hand slid from your hip to your spine, settling firmly between your shoulder blades, pinning your top half to the bunk. “Now all you have to do is take it. Just take what I give you.”

Then Din fucked you like he wanted to ruin you, and you thought he might have succeeded.

Deep, rough, and relentless, he pounded into you with utter abandon, no longer the focused bounty hunter, the unflappable warrior in complete control of his faculties. This man was just as strung out as you, and it lent a flavor of desperation to his thrusts that had you rocketing toward your peak with a speed that left you feeling lightheaded and dizzy. Burying your face in the mattress, you moaned and whimpered and cried out each time his hips connected with your ass, each time the tip of his cock kissed your cervix, each time he dragged himself across that soft, spongy spot that had you seeing stars.

“Such a good fucking girl for me, cyare,” he grunted, the sound coming out staticky and warped as he gritted his teeth inside his helmet. “Such a perfect little cunt. Love how she drips for me. So soft. And sweet. And fucking messy.”

“Stars, Din, please – ”

“That’s it.” Draping himself over your body, the Mandalorian wrapped one of his hands around your throat and tugged you up, bowing your body into a dramatic curve that had your head coming back to rest on his shoulder, your hips still pressed to his as he continued his merciless, reckless thrusts. “You want to come? Can feel her squeezing me.”

You nodded furiously. The constant, gentle pressure at the base of your throat as he held you in place was making you crazy. He wasn’t choking you, not really, just holding you, but even that was enough to have your vision blurring.

“I want you to ask me,” he said, just as breathless as you. His other hand wrapped around the front of your body then, the pads of his gloved fingers immediately massaging your throbbing clit, and you moaned at the sensation. “Ask me to come on this cock.”

“Can I come? Gods, please, Din, can I come on your cock?”

The cool press of beskar knocked against your forehead, and you got the distinct impression that if he had been helmetless, Din would have dropped a kiss onto your sweaty hairline as he replied, anguished, “Yes, mesh’la. Come for me.”

It was as though his words made it so. With an involuntary cry that might have been his name or might have just been a string of curses, your walls seized around him as a fresh wave of wetness soaked you both, every pulse sending you thrusting back against him, trying to take him deeper, harder, rougher. Your eyes rolled back in your head, your vision fading around the edges, and your hands flew up to dig your nails into the arm that held you upright. They skittered and scraped over his vambrace as you rode out your high, and just as you started to come back down, you felt the hot, wet bloom of his release deep inside you, making you start twitching and trembling all over again.

You slowly regained awareness when Din slipped his softening cock from your body, and you immediately swayed on your feet, feeling like a dugar dugar fawn, weak and wet and spindly-legged, unable to support your own weight. The Mandalorian was there in an instant, murmuring soft, gentle Mando’a as he guided you onto the bunk mattress. You sat heavily, boneless and bleary-eyed, and watched as he tore off a tattered corner of his black cape and used it to clean himself and then you, the worn fabric surprisingly gentle against your swollen, puffy cunt.

“Thank you,” you murmured hoarsely, and the softness with which he looked at you told you that he was probably smiling behind his helmet.

“Don’t need to thank me,” he replied just as softly, tucking himself back into his pants, adjusting his slick-stained underwear, zipping up his fly. “S’the least I can do after…all that.”

You offered him a small, tired smile. “Don’t feel guilty. I liked it. A lot.” Before you could second-guess the impulse, you reached out and ran your palm across his still-heaving chest, the beskar body-warm under your touch from where he had pressed against you. “And it felt like…maybe you needed it.”

Releasing a bone-deep, weary sigh, the bounty hunter covered your hand with his own, threading his fingers through yours. “I did. Maybe I should be the one thanking you.”

You squeezed his hand with a smirk. “How about you help me get dressed, and we call it even?”

Din was silent as he gently, tenderly helped put you back together again – bringing you to your feet, kneeling before you, tugging up your crumpled panties and your boilersuit, holding out the sleeves to help you slide them on. He pulled up the zipper slowly, careful not to snag on the soft curve of your breasts, and then he started unweaving your struggling braid, running his fingers from the roots to the ends as he detangled it as best as he could.

You reveled in the feeling of his care, savoring every gentle touch and caress after so many days without an ounce of softness from him. For the first time since leaving Tython, your mind felt blissfully clean and quiet, like you had been shut down and rebooted and you were back to running at peak efficiency. You thought he might be experiencing the same refresh.

Still, however, he surprised you when he took your face in his hands, cradling your cheeks in his palms, and said, “I’ve been unkind to you, cyare.”

You blinked up at him with wide eyes, murmuring, “Yes. You have.”

Sweeping his thumbs across your cheekbones, Din dropped his forehead to yours. “I…don’t know how to do this.”

“Do what?”

“Be…vulnerable. Let people in. Let them see me when I’m in pain. Let them help.” His voice dropped then, barely a whisper, as he added, “And I don’t know that I deserve it.”

You swore a fist reached through your ribcage and squeezed your heart at his words, and emotion welled in your throat. “Din. What happened wasn’t your fault. You did everything you possibly could.”

His reply was quick, as though he had been anticipating it. “But it wasn’t enough.”

“You don’t deserve to punish yourself because you were outnumbered and outgunned. You’re a powerful warrior, but you’re still only one person.” Bringing your hands up to cup around his, you stared into his visor with all the fierceness you could muster, silently pleading with him to hear you, to take your words to heart. “But we have help now. We have our friends. And together we are going to find him, and we are going to bring him home.”

“Cyare, I’m so sorry.”

You shook your head under his grip. “Don’t apologize. Just…I just need you to try. I know it’s hard, that it’s not something you’re used to. But you can’t shut me out like that again, Din. I hate knowing that you’re suffering, and you won’t let me help you.” That well of emotion threatened to choke you then, and you felt a couple of tears work their way down your cheeks, quickly swept away by his thumbs. “And I know Grogu was yours, but…but he was mine, too, you know? So was the Crest. I’ve been grieving, too, and I needed you.”

A shudder passed through the bounty hunter’s body, and the next thing you knew, he was gathering you into his chest, wrapping his arms around you and cradling the back of your head in one of his hands. “Dank farrik,” he swore, voice broken and rasping. “I know, baby. I know. You’re right.”

For a moment, you simply stood there in each other’s arms, holding one another, drawing strength from one another, and you felt something tight and tender inside you release at the contact. This was what you had needed, what you had wanted from the beginning – just to love on him and be loved in return. As his own muscles loosened and relaxed under your touch, you thought he might understand now.

“I swear to you,” he murmured, pressing his helmet into the warm crook of your neck. “I will do better. I will be better. And I will bring him back to us.”

You nodded and smiled into his shoulder. “I know you will.”

---

After you had both collected yourselves a bit, the two of you decided to make your way up to the makeshift mess deck. You both were desperately hungry after your unexpected tryst, and you found yourselves in need of a change of scenery, otherwise running the risk of falling back into the bunk, getting tangled up again, and not reemerging until tomorrow.

For his part, Din expected to simply grab a ration pack at random, heat it up, and then retreat back to the lower decks so he could eat his meal in peace. What he didn’t expect was that he would be greeted at the top of the ladder by all four of the ship’s other passengers, all of whom seemingly had similar ideas and were milling about preparing their own meals and chatting amiably. However, the moment the group spotted the two of you dismounting the ladder, all activity in the room ceased, falling into a weighty, significant silence.

“Oh,” you breathed, eyes wide, taking in the pointed stares of your crewmates as a flush bloomed high on your cheeks. “H-Hey, guys. Dinner time?”

From her seat at the table, Cara Dune snorted into her cup of caf, amusement rolling off of her in waves. Fennec simply looked you both over from head to toe, shook her head, and went back to preparing her portion bread with a smirk. Even Boba, stoic and serious as he was, seemed to be smothering a grin as he took a pull from his canteen, his dark eyes twinkling with good humor.

“What?” you asked as you looked from one face to the next. Your blush darkened instinctually, and Din resisted the urge to turn right back around and crawl back down the ladder.

Gods. You didn’t know.

If the crew had been here the whole time… If you had been as loud as he thought you had been…

Sound carried on a vessel this small, and this one had a central shaft that traversed the entire length of it. The bunk door had been open the entire time. And your friends had been right at the top when you had –

“Heeey, there he is!” Mayfeld crowed, a shit-eating grin splitting his pale, smarmy face in a way that had Din’s blood pressure rising instantly. “Damn, Mando! Didn’t know you had it in you! I’ll back off, okay, buddy? Don’t know that I can compete with whatever you’re packing under that armor, you know?”

Manda fucking take him.

Everyone’s restraint seemed to expire in the same moment, and the room erupted in raucous laughter – Cara nearly snorting her caf through her nose, Fennec’s shoulders shaking, Boba’s head dropping back on his neck as his deep chuckles rumbled through the mess. Din glanced over at you to see your jaw dropping open, your hands flying to your cheeks in mortification.

“Fucking hell,” you swore, palms sliding up to cover your eyes. “Oh my god, Din.”

The bounty hunter didn’t even flinch at the use of his real name in this context. Instead, he wrapped an arm around your shoulders, drawing you close to him, pressing his helmet into the top of your bowed head.

“S’nothing to be ashamed of, cyar’ika,” he soothed softly. His stomach dropped as he felt your body begin to shake against his, and he was quick to draw your hands away from your face, searching for any sign of distress, for the tracks of humiliated tears down your face.

But to his great surprise – and joy – instead he found your cheeks stretched in a wide grin, your shoulders shaking with laughter. Every bit of your skin he could see glowed with embarrassment, but still, you smiled, and happiness swelled in his chest at the sight. It was the brightest, purest smile he had seen from you in days, and Din couldn’t seem to stop himself from laughing right along with you.

---

Notes: There's some Mando'a that shows up in this chapter that hasn't been used in a while as well as one new term, so I have put a refresher here for your reference!

Mando'a Translations:

naur'alor - smith, craftsman, specifically a metalsmith that works with beskar. It's a title that's called out in the Kyr'tsad Mando'ad, a manifesto of the Death Watch and is later recognized in the book The Bounty Hunter's Code by Boba Fett. Given the Children of the Watch's connection to Death Watch, this felt like an appropriate formal title for the Armorer. buir - parent, a gender neutral term that can be used in place of "mother" or "father" riduur - spouse, a gender neutral term that can be used in place of "wife" or "husband" gotabor’ika - little engineer cyar’ika - darling, sweetheart shab - fuck manda - a collective state of being Mandalorian that is best described as an "oversoul." To become a part of the manda after death, a Mandalorian must understand their culture and act in a way that embodies Mandalorian identity. mesh’la - beautiful

[loregoddess]

sooo, because I don't have the Unicorn Overlord art book, I've been searching around to see if anyone's posted scans, or copied over character bio stuff, and found this list of ages, which is...hm! interesting. Mildly unsettling. Josef definitely has the "stress makes you go grey and then white real fast" gene or something, bc like, he's one of the oldest-looking characters (aside from Mordan who is? younger than Josef? what?) and yet he's only 52, which isn't as old as I was expecting him to be based on his design. Anywho, I arranged the characters into groups by age from youngest to oldest below, for viewing ease, so you can contemplate the ages too!

15: Yunifi

16: Chloe, Ridiel

17: Alain, Scarlett, Lex

18: Liza, Celeste

19: Travis, Auch, Nina (Millé is Nina's twin if I recall, so we can assume she's 19 as well), Melisandre, Umerus

20: Kitra, Tatiana, Leah, Gilbert, Govil

21: Sharon, Fran, Virginia

22: Ochlys, Primm, Dinah

23: Selvie, Miriam, Berengaria

24: Hilda, Gammel, Amalia

25: Monica, Aramis, Mandrin, Sanatio

26: Berenice, Adel, Gloucester, Raenys

27: Clive, Aubin, Rolf, Magellan

28: Bruno

29: Nigel

32: Fodoquia

33: Jeremy

34: Ramona

35: Morard

38: Bryce, Ilenia

40: Renault

41: Hodrick

42: Rosalinde, Eltolinde

43: Jerome

45: Colm

46: Bertrand, Gailey

47: Mordon

48: Ithilion

52: Josef

63: Railanor

82: Lhinalagos

85: Galadmir

88: Yahna

154: Alcina

Some interesting things here, it seems? that elves age at about 2.5x that of humans (if you divide any of the elves' ages by 2.5, and round to the nearest whole number, the "adjusted" age seems to match most of the characters as compared to the human characters of the same age, i.e. Rosalinde and Eltolinde would be 16.8 or roughly 17 in human years old which matches with Alain's age group fairly well).

But bestrals, despite the lore implying that owl bestrals live a long time and their shared ancestry with elves, don't...really seem to have spectacular age differences from humans, so perhaps something about the bestral anatomy puts them on an aging scale closer to that of humans.

Angels, unsurprisingly, seem to age at the same rate as humans, which makes sense given that they're just. Humans with wings. That most of them were childhood friends with Scarlett is wild though, there's an 8 year age difference between Scarlett and Sanatio and yet she was outrunning him on that bridge like it was no one's business (and yet Raenys was only a year older and serving as Scarlett's lady-in-waiting, I have so many questions about Albion).

Also I'm losing it at the implications that Ilenia had Alain when she was 19, girl what? Like okay, yeah sure, fantasy vaguely medieval setting, people had kids young, but 19? still seems so young...

Alcina though? Like, she looked that young in the prologue, before she teams up w/ local necromancer Baltro, so like? Did she cast an anti-aging spell on herself at some point? We know Yahna un-ages herself, and that this results in her looking young for the rest of her life, but did Alcina do the same spell? If so how did she manage to survive for...so long? Did Alcina somehow lengthen her own life with magic? From the rapports between Yahna and Rosalinde, we can assume that it's rare for even the most powerful of magic-users to live past a typical human lifespan (if Yahna's anything to go by, a healthy human in Fevrith can live well into their 80s, if not 90s, so we can guess healthy elves live about 200-225 years at their oldest). Alcina is an outlier, and her unhealthy obsession with Gerard does not explain anything about her weirdass aging, except maybe that she preserved herself as best she could so she could meet him again as he would remember her.

Anyhow local army is mostly not made of child soldiers which is, uh, nice compared to other srpgs, but the canon ages are...wild. Can't wait to get my hands on the heights and birthdates.

[kindlingkeen]

i am so sorry for the long ask but i am always thinking about bruce’s line in detective comics #790 before the 🤢 victim blaming “he loved cars and girls and getting into fights… neapolitan ice cream and the color green… and most of all the thrill of being robin.” i have turned over every part of this line in my head for ages but here is one aspect

girls: pre crisis? during robin days he did have a gf for a bit named rena, essence and isabel in rhato, rose wilson, idk about red hood: the hill. but even with non romantic relationships he has sasha and duela and kori and artemis and talia (ignoring you know what) and the no longer canon natalia knight motherhood thing vs like roy and bizarro as the guys he hangs out with outside of bats and he even points it out “i feel closer to that big white lump of clay than, well, any guy ive ever known. yeah i knew roy and dick since i was young. but since ive been back? from the dead? hes the first guy friend ive made.” talking about bizarro in rhato and i dont put too much stock in rhato but he really does seem to consistently get along better with women. i dont fully think it is that he finds them less threatening cuz in task force z he was happy to hold his own against multiple bat boys but the second cass showed up he was like oh shit shes scary, plus like sheila is the reason he died and you would think that her betrayal would be a huge part of any ptsd or trust issues he no doubt has. but he also has that line after he and artemis kiss where he says something to the effect that it was a good kiss for a girl and that just… what do you mean by that jason? because you have spent the past lord knows how many issues (with the same writer) kissing isabel and looking back somewhat fondly on your time with essence and while readers can think you have very little chemistry with them the story being told is that all that was cool and good and within the norm for you. so like what does that line in your narration mean jason? if it isnt something you are into than why have you been going around kissing women in multiple instances jason?

Okay, so Jason’s line (“But it was nice. For a girl.” in reference to his kiss with Artemis) comes from Red Hood: Outlaw #41:

Which is actually him remembering events that occurred in Red Hood and the Outlaws (2016) #25:

Here, Jason asks Artemis what she thinks of their kiss, and Artemis says, “It was okay, for a boy.”

Honestly, my (somewhat boring) interpretation of the line in RHO #41 is that Jason is referring tongue in cheek back to Artemis’ quip in RHATO #25. I don’t think it was actually meant to be commentary on his sexuality.

That said, imo, Jason Todd doesn’t really seem like the kind of person who would feel the need to limit their sexuality to artificially constructed binary categories of gender … YMMV 😏

[wutheringheightsfilm]

I'm wondering how the progression of wx will look in odd geometry compared to canon (as in, they get together sooner? different dynamics?), and if/how the elemental magic is used in complementing each other. sorry this is super specific im just like. what about the wangxian 👀

HOT DOG. well :) let me crack my knuckles here this is gonna probably be a long answer!! i'll go bit by bit here...

to be honest, odd geometry is a huge divergence from canon. i have four fundamental things that change the story in absolutely huge ways, being:

elemental magic (obvi)

wei wuxian wasn't raised in lotus pier/as part of yunmeng jiang

wei wuxian doesn't die at the siege of the burial mounds thus isn't dead for 13/16 years and have to be resurrected

i have the sunshot campaign begin later than it does in canon. at the start of the story, all of the characters are slightly older; as in, i've aged all of wei wuxian's generation up to be closer to my age (most of them are in their early 20s) and adjusted their older siblings/the older generations accordingly (so, for example, jiang cheng is 20, wei wuxian is 20, and jiang yanli is 22)*

*so this means that classes at the cloud recesses still would have happened when everyone was 15, but the sunshot campaign just doesn't begin until jiang cheng, wei wuxian, and lan wangji are 20

which, it is so fun to play around with the implications of all that but it's also challenging. SO, how all of this impacts wangxian...

so just by virtue of what's going on here (namely wwx not being dead for over a decade) they definitely do get together sooner. since wei wuxian wasn't raised in lotus pier, he doesn't attend the classes at gusu when everyone in his generation were teens, he doesn't meet lan wangji until they're both 20 at the wen indoctrination camp (which through a series of events, wei wuxian gets roped into sneaking into attend).

as for their dynamics, there's layers to this!

because of how wei wuxian has grown up, there are two things: 1) his personality is not the exact same as it is in canon--how could it be, when he's grown up in such different circumstances?--however, his core traits are the same: he's still inventive, clever, and creative, he's still extremely compassionate and cares deeply about justice, especially for those who are disenfranchised, he still has an extremely strong (to the point of, at times, it being debilitating) sense of duty and a habit of putting others before himself, and being secretive and at times repressive about his emotions. he just doesn't act as...idk, childish? as he might in the show or the novel. he's a bit more grounded, a bit more serious.

because of that, i think it's maybe a bit easier for lan wangji to be more open with wei wuxian, or to accept his friendship sooner. they aren't such polar opposites as they seem in early in the show/in the novel.

2) there are slightly different class dynamics here that actually make a huge difference: wei wuxian didn't grow up in lotus pier and was not raised within polite cultivation society. no matter how much of an outcast madam yu made wei wuxian feel by trying to alienate him from her "real" family, he still was generally accepted by Society at large and was looked at and mostly treated with respect. he still gets called gongzi, and within yunmeng jiang called da-shixiong,--though, of course, coming from some people it can be read as sarcastic... i highly doubt wen chao was calling him wei-gongzi out of any sort of respect--and is overall accepted. of course, people still try to ostracize him for his status, but the cultivation world at large doesn't actively bully him much (and in all honesty, they don't really bully him at all while jiang fengmian was still alive) until he does something they don't like. apart from a few scenarios, wei wuxian wasn't given the disdain that you might expect the son of a servant to receive---honestly, i sort of wish class was talked about more in regards to mdzs and cql because it really does fascinate me. wei wuxian occupies such an interesting space within the cultivation world and i wish people discussed it more.

in my fic, though, since he wasn't raised within lotus pier and was never brought into the yunmeng jiang sect, he doesn't have the fallback of jiang cheng and jiang yanli being able to officially call him their brother--not yet, anyway. he doesn't have a sect leader to point to and be like, "i've been accepted by someone of experience and reown" and have the support that can come from that. he and lan wangji have been raised in very different spheres, and it changes how they interact with each other. there's an extra layer of formality that they now have to chip through. it's no longer lan wangji being extra formal towards someone of exactly equal standing towards him, there's now an extra layer that they have to reckon with. of course, wei wuxian is still lan wangji's equal in every way that matters--they are still the same age, they are still both incredibly talented with their areas of cultivation and respective fighting styles, they both have a mutual respect (and eventually love) for each other etc etc, they just don't belong to the same circles of society and this has to be dealt with.

of course, when the sunshot campaign is over and wei wuxian will have assisted the rebellion against the wens in winning, his status changes. he will be respected, if not feared, because eventually the cultivation world will figure out what he's able to do and fear it being used against them.

which brings us to their elemental magic and how that affects their dynamic as well !! AHHH!!!

so, wei wuxian can control qi (i can clarify any questions you or anyone else might have about this if needed) and lan wangji's affinity is water. at the beginning of the story, wei wuxian pretends to also have an affinity with water, and claims he heals with it--this backfires on him hard during xuanwu cave, when he has to heal lan wangji's broken leg and obviously, as someone with an affinity for water, lan wangji would know what healing someone using water is like and this is not it.

ultimately, wei wuxian is a healer. that is his favorite thing to do, it is what he prefers to do---despite having the powers he does (which, for a while, even he doesn't fully understand), and the demonic cultivation he will be able to do, he doesn't actually enjoy using his qi controlling abilities negatively on people much. he will do it if he has to, and will definitely enjoy using it to enact revenge on people who deserve it, but at the end of the day, he just wants to help and heal people.

i honestly think this suits lan wangji's temperament quite nicely--they would make a very good team, what with lan wangji's habit of going "wherever the chaos is" and helping people out with resentful spirits and night hunts.

even in the original odd geometry from 5 years ago, they were never opposing elements--though that would certainly be interesting LMAO!!!

as a reward for getting thru all of that... i shall leave you with... A SNIPPET <3

(from chapter 5, time is the movement of grief. context: this is at lotus pier, post xuanwu cave) He looked up, and saw Lan Wangji. Wei Wuxian moved over on the dock to make room for him to sit, which he did, cross-legged so he wouldn’t get wet. They sat in comfortable silence for a while, listening to the crickets. The golden light of the setting sun made Lan Wangji look devastatingly beautiful. It took Wei Wuxian’s breath away. When Lan Wangji turned his head and met Wei Wuxian’s eyes, there was nothing Wei Wuxian wanted to do more than kiss him in that moment. It was a startling thought. He looked away as calmly as he could. 

THANK YOU FOR ASKING COR I REALLY LOVED ANSWERING THIS!!!!!

[cybertron-after-dark]

What are the humans like in wayward sparks? Are there any notable ones?

They're not necessarily as prominent in the story as they tend to be in any canon series that includes them, but they're definitely there. The bots spend the first arc just trying to survive on earth until they find a way home, and they have quite a few run ins with the locals. Most of which are relatively unhinged, many of which are not very friendly, because they crash in an itty bitty, rural new england mountain town called Ironwood, wayyyyy out in the sticks. Most residents aren't particularly afraid to fire at will when giant robot aliens decide to show up.

Least alien-friendly would be Rusty Williams, a local logger with one hell of a trigger finger for anyone and anything on his property he sees as a threat. Aliens, government agents asking a few too many questions, cops, whatever. All of them only get one warning.

Fortunately for the stranded Cybertronians, gunshots aren't really fatal or even particularly damaging long-term for giant robots that can put themselves back together if they sustain enough damage to fall to pieces. Unfortunately, they still do enough damage to tear through their outer armor layers and that tends to hurt like a bitch.

In the very least, there are plenty of humans around with their heads screwed on right that won't try to blast anything that looks at them funny. Like Rusty's Daughter, Crystal.

That said, Crystal is an elusive type. A middle schooler Going Through It, trying REALLY hard to be edgy so people stay away (hence the $2 Spirit Halloween horns headband), she'd really prefer to spend her free time hiding in the woods where nobody can perceive her. Thats been a little more difficult ever since a bunch of giant robots started stomping around out there and all they know about her is her dad is super cringe, so she's pretty scared of a bad first imprsssion.

She'd be lying if she said she didn't want to be friends with them (which she does lie about frequently because ew, genuine feelings), especially the Decepticons, because she thinks they're cooler, but she also knows her dad would flip his lid if he knew.

Also interested in approaching the Resident Aliens, is Marie Lambert.

Marie's only just recently moved into Ironwood. It's been a rocky transition to say the least. Her dad's a biologist, a real science-y type, and he moved out to the boonies to be closer to the wildlife. Marie's plenty used to being out in the sticks, camping trips with her dad were a regular occurrence before the move, but it's a little hard to get used to the new place when there aren't very many kids her age around. And the ones that are there aren't exactly very welcoming to flatlanders showing up taking over the place.

But in the very least, Marie makes ONE friend when she finds Crystal out in the woods. And a few more when they find what the adult residents of Ironwood have been telling them to stay the hell away from.

They don't approach them straightaway (mostly because their first encounter consists of watching Shockwave scare away Bumblebee, and Shockwave skulking off when he realizes he spooked the Autobot), but the next day at school they start Planning. They HAVE to know more about the robots, and they're willing to pool their resources and information to make that happen. They figure if there's two sides and they don't play nice with each other, it's easiest for one girl to pick one side and they tell each other whatever they can find out.

This begins several beautiful friendships

Marie chooses to gather info on the Autobots. Mostly because, well, they seem less scary and potentially friendlier. She tries the polite thing (which she's hoping will result in the least possible chance for things to go off the rails) and knocks right on their door. The bots aren't really sure how to respond to a very small, very shy alien critter that showed up right at their door to ask what they are and if she can hang out. Marie isn't sure if any of this was a good idea.

They turn out to be pretty welcoming, especially because organics that aren't actively shooting at them are a nice change of pace.

She gets especially close with Bumblebee. Hes comforting. Makes her feel like everything's going to be okay. She gets pretty anxious, and he's good at keeping her grounded. So far, anyway...

On Crystal's side, it's been... Well, it's been different.

The cons would not admit it on their deathbeds but good lord did Crystal scare the slag out of them when they first realized she was there. She snuck right on aboard their crashed ship and nobody noticed her for about 15 minutes.

After the initial scare, and a bunch of big bad giant robots scrambling around because there is a Tiny Squishy Critter in their Space and they do NOT know what to do about that, Crystal starts in trying to get answers. Answers most of the cons aren't particularly willing to give out (other than Shockwave, who is just very excited at the opportunity to make a new friend).

Megatron eventually deems her more or less harmless. She isn't really causing problems or hurting anyone, she doesn't appear to be hostile (other than hissing at Lugnut when he got too close), and he can't really fault the little gremlin for her curiosity. An ally in a foreign world can be very very valuable when you're stranded, so he lets her stay, "as long as she doesn't get in the way."

Marie and Crystal meet up at school during lunch to share notes. It gets confusing trying to keep track of everything when the two sides give conflicting information so often. The girls try to keep an open mind. Hard to remember things about someone you don't like, but they can't really figure out which version is true for any given story, but they're hoping if they spend enough time with their robot friends, they'll figure it out together.

Maybe they can even help the bots and the cons make up. It's just a silly fight, after all.

It's not like anyone's going to get hurt, right? They're all good people.

[curewhimsy]

A long time ago I read an all-ages, manga-inspired comic called Peach Fuzz. It was published by Tokyopop. I just read it again and it was WILD.

The manga is about ferrets, and a 4th grade girl named Amanda who gets a ferret named Peach, but Amanda’s single mother is very emotionally distant, and the ferret kinda hates everyone. And on top of that, Amanda doesn’t take the best care of the ferret. Volume 1 pretty much just felt like the family’s dysfunctional life being as dysfunctional as possible. I didn’t know who to be rooting for when I re-read it tbh. In Peach (the ferret)‘s point of view, she is a princess, and she sees the world through the lens of a character who doesn’t know how the world works. Through Peach’s eyes, human hands are 5-headed monsters who want to hurt her, and the world is her kingdom. I mostly skimmed through the wacky parts shown through Peach’s eyes, as I was more invested in the human drama of Amanda and those around her.

Volume 2 came, and was incredibly emotional and was a huge improvement from volume 1. Amanda seems to have severe low self-esteem, and possible rejection sensitive dysphoria.  Two boys in her class regularly bully her, making her cry all the time. One of the boys even brings a knife to school, which was very intense for an all-ages comic. I loved volume 2 as a kid. I related to Amanda so much, as a victim of bullying myself, with low self esteem and emotionally distant parents. This manga touched on some heavy themes and emotions in volume 2.

Then volume 3 comes. This is when it gets wild. One of Amanda’s friends (Mimi) is literally involved in a mushroom cult. Her religion and beliefs revolve around mushrooms. When one of her ferrets died, she believed that “the mushrooms took her away” or something (?) There was also a subplot where Amanda didn’t know what “fixing” (spaying/neutering) an animal meant so she brought her friend Mimi’s dead ferret Puffball to the vet, so the vet could “fix her.” In volume 3, Amanda buys another ferret out of nowhere. This ferret also has a very traumatic memory of being neutered while not being fully unconscious. There was a picture of a knife and blood which probably scarred some kids. The ending of the manga was so weird and sudden too, I skimmed through it and didn’t quite catch everything, but the ferret named Peach got very sick, and at first I thought she died. The ending was shown through Peach’s eyes too, and she is known to be an… unreliable narrator, to put it lightly. But the scene where I thought Peach died was just her nursed back to health and being in love with Amanda’s second ferret. I do have a slight feeling that maybe the end was up to interpretation too, and Peach may have POSSIBLY died?

So yeah. It was supposed to be a light-hearted work but I actually found it weirdly heavy, and half the characters hinted at having some deep issues that were never addressed, and if they did, the age rating might have needed to be raised.

There were also two instances of racism, one instance of possible racism 

-The bus driver being black, and speaking in a stereotypical vernacular

-Amanda’s friend Kim has a Chinese mother who acts really strict and emotionally manipulative which is negatively attributed to Asian mothers. She also spoke broken English. Also Kim is a Korean name (exclusively I think) but the comic states their family is Chinese.

-The only black girls in Amanda’s class were stereotypical “snobby black girls” and Amanda was shown as being much closer to other white girls, and Kim who is Asian. When I was young, I thought Mimi was supposed to be black. Volume 3 canonically states it’s just a tan.

[demigodsanswer]

You seems like your AUs of AUs. So, let’s say Percy’s father didn’t “get lost at sea” and did things like pay child support and Percy started dance with a better studio at like 7? Where do you think his career would have been? (And would he and Annabeth been at school together and Luke just straight up never have a chance.

I think that if Percy's father had been around, he might never have danced at all. The circumstances that lead him to ballet and keep him there are so specific to Gabe, how angry he makes Percy, and Percy's desire to stay out of the apartment as long as possible that without those influences, I don't know that he would have stumbled into dance.

But also because Percy is such a natural talent, if he had both parents around the whole time, and Sally didn't have to constantly be at work, they might have spotted his dance talent earlier, and put him in lessons earlier. He probably still would have started at SAB about 14 or 15, just because that's common age to enroll, but he might have a stronger sense of his own talent, which might have gotten him into the company earlier and promoted earlier.

In the fic, I chose to make Percy and Annabeth a year apart in age, with her a year older, rather than just a month apart because that works to keep them apart from each other throughout their careers. They're at different levels at the school; she's a corps member when he's an apprentice; she's a soloist when he's a corps member; she's a principal when he's a soloist. Even in an AU of an AU where Percy starts earlier, if I kept their story ages, they still might not have been that close emotionally prior to the story. But if I kept their canon age difference (only a month), that would bring them closer, I think. That would almost guarantee they'd've been friends at the school.

Ultimately, Luke got his claws in her so early. She started in the company in October, and by January he had her. I think the only thing that could have protected Annabeth (besides people just paying closer attention) would have been if she was taken into the company when she was little older. If she was a little more mature, if she had been taken in with friends she knew from the school (because she didn't really know Beckendorf at that point; he was a level above her in the school), she might have known to steer clear of him. Instead, she's thrown into rehearsals and 46 shows of Nutcracker at 16, and she's so lowest priority in the company that no one is noticing how much time she's spending with this much older dancer. And he's really able to exploit her desire to prove herself and her desire for love and attention.

I even think if she was taken at the end of the year, close to her 17th birthday, she might have been friends with Percy, maybe even into him at that point, or dating him, and might have looked twice at Luke.

[grokebaby]

I LOVE SUTURE SM?? How did she come to serve the Decepticons? What’s the story of her curse? Idk anything about tf but u have me wanting to look into it more just w/ ur characters

KIITOS I'm also quite fond of her, although she's in a weird place meta wise currently due to some irl events. And don't worry, I'll try my best to keep this approachable, you're always welcome to ask me about tf stuff... (please come closer I will NOT initiate you into the tf Fandom I will totally not pull you in come closer I'm certainly not desperate to have more tf fan friends come clos-) /silly

She's an older gal (I think of her as someone in her mid to late 40s) and already had an established medical career by the time the war broke out which meant the emergence of the two sides of course (Autobots and decepticons). She initially made her choice to join the decepticons out of ideological reasons; they came out of a sort of rebellious sentiment and advertised themselves as advocating for (positive) change. I won't open the can of worms on how canon handled all this, I will simply continue now. After a long while of working odd jobs and being carted around places, as tends to happen in turbulent times, she ended up being recruited for the Decepticon science guild (that is made up by me not canon afaik), since they needed a bunch of skilled people for evil experiments including surgeons.

This is the most major turn in leading her down moral atrocities, since If she refused to work they'd exile her into the middle of bumfuck nowhere and war torn cyberton was quickly becoming a dead uninhabitable planet, with resources already having been dwindling for ages so. Not an ideal option. But she did already lean towards unethical acts out of desperation and survival considering the rough circumstances she was put in, war is never easy and you can't always make the good "pure" choices no matter how hard you want to, so she had become desensitized to stuff like euthanising patients to preserve resources and illegal transplants to save lives. As you do.

As for her curse that's mostly bc I thought it would be sssooooooo cool to have The Mistress - yes, That One, visit cybertron and meet some of my tf ocs bc the most advanced tech hens ever seen is radios. Hen (poorly) disguised as a robot by wearing a fullbody metal suit and sticking to the most sociable seeming bot she found at a bar and following them around like a baby duck. This is how hen met one of my other tf ocs, Cloverdash. Long story short, there's the war and so hen got injured and brought to a field station and after Cloverdash went "PLEASE please please please please please please please please please please please please" at Suture long enough she agreed to help and brought out ~the welding tools~. For a deity like The Mistress, it is utter body horror to be medically treated the way robots are so hen freaks out and in fight or flight mode accidentally casts a curse on Suture. Nothing against the very, very helpful medical professional, just primal eldritchean fear.

So yeah!

Suture starts growing meat and having random monster mutations in organic ways. I did this all bc it would be really cool as a concept

[lokissuper]

Need To Be Safe| Carl Grimes x Reader

Summary: Carl doesn't want reader to get hurt during the bombing of Alexandria.

Request: from @hannahlovesfinnick​ I was wondering if you could do a Carl x my oc (Hannah) request, you don’t have to use the name, you can use y/n if you want. So maybe you can do something that takes place in season 8 where Hannah and Carl go out together and Hannah is there where Carl finds siddiq and gets bit in canon. But instead since Hannah is there because her and Carl are dating, Carl doesn’t get bit and Hannah helps Carl and siddiq fight the walkers off and no one gets majorly hurt. So, like in canon, Carl takes siddiq to the sewers along with Hannah. And while Alexanderia is evacuating, Carl and Hannah have an emotional goodbye after he convinces her to go with them after a small argument with her wanting to make sure he’s ok and him wanting to protect her. So Hannah goes with the others and the rest goes as canon. after the saviours bomb Alexandria, it can maybe end with Carl meeting them in the sewers and it can be fluffy with him holding her and trying to reassure her that everything will work out for them and that their ok

DISCLAIMER! I never really followed the timeline at the beginning of season 8, was just kinda confusing. So if there is anything wrong then I apologize, but thank you for the request. I also listened to Easy Street on repeat to write this for some reason. I didn't proof read this because I was too excited to get it out.

Living in a world full of zombies was kind of a pain sometimes. I mean you could probably guess that it would. But growing up in during an apocalypse isn’t what I though my imagined my future. 

Early on, my parents and I found a group and stuck with them. I found a boy my age and he became my best friend, Carl. His dad led us through the world of the unknown and protected us, especially me when my parents got bit. 

It was when we were finally settling at Hershel's farm and a herd made it’s way through the fields. I didn’t know what happened until everyone reunited after the damage and saw that they weren’t there, along with Andrea. The adults tried to put on a brave face for me but I had matured to much that I knew they were dead. But when we found Andrea again I had a little hope in me that they were still out there, until I overheard her tell Rick that she saw them get taken down by walkers.

From then on I had the whole group looking out for me, including Carl. 

Carl and I had been through a lot together, being there for him when he had to put his mother down, when it was confirmed mine were dead, and when Glenn and Abraham were brutally murdered by Negan.

I wasn’t there for the line-up, but just hearing about it made me realize that I couldn’t keep holding in my feelings for Carl. Especially in a world like our where something could happen to one of us any second.

So I told him and reciprocated. We’ve been dating ever since and continued to watch out for one another. 

We were always looking for people to bring back to Alexandria, people who could help us in a great deal. So when Carl came back from a run with his dad and told me he found someone I was onboard. I was a little hesitant at first because of our war with the Saviors, but if Carl was confident then I was too. We went out to find the mystery person hopefully in the same place as last time. 

We did find him. But surrounded by walkers.

So we helped him, Siddiq, with these walkers because he didn’t seem to know what he was doing. I killed the first one but then saw one cornering Carl and grabbed it off of him, pushing it to the ground. I then shot it in the head. 

Siddiq showed gratitude to us for coming back for him, we asked him our procedure questions and were on our way to Alexandria. We knew Negan and the Saviors were going to be coming tonight, and it wasn’t going to end well.

-

Carl and I snuck Saddiq into the boarded town, and to the opening in the sewers Carl found to keep people safe. Saddiq thanked us again before climbing down the ladder to the sewers in which Carl and I followed so we could get him settled. We grabbed a cot, pillows and blankets so he was comfortable and gave him food. Carl and I left him down in the Sewers for a few hours before the sun started to set, and we knew what was coming. 

Carl and I were standing watching the sun set from one of the watch towers when he started to speak.

“I want you down in the sewers tonight. I need to make sure your safe.” 

I turned my head to him and furrowed my eyebrows. I was confused since we always fought through these types of things together, looking out to make sure the other was covered. 

“No.” I said.

“It wasn’t a question. This is going to get out of hand and I can’t have you out here.” He said frustrated.

“Where is this coming from?” I asked.

Carl shook his head before responding,”You weren’t there that night. With Glenn and Abraham, seeing what Negan is capable of. We really made him mad this time.”

“Don’t you think I know that, I know he is a threat and dangerous. I know. I also wish I was there that night too. I wish I was there so bad it hurts, I know I shouldn’t but just the idea that something could’ve happened to you-” I cut myself off. “I’m not leaving you this time.”

He looked at me sternly, I could see in his eyes he understood where I was coming from but he still was standing with his choice.

“I don’t want to lose you either. But that is why I need you to be safe, where I know you will stay alive.” He said to me.

I fully turned to him now, growing angry with him.

“Not unless you come with me.” I said crossing my arms.

“I can’t, this is my show and I need to run it. Dad’s not here so I have to be.” He said.

I scoffed,”He’s going to kill you. If not you then everyone else, I understand where your coming from but if you die, then I die. End of story.”

Carl and I started to make our way down to the ground. Shaking his head on the way down, before he could say anything I spoke up again when I set my feet on the floor.

“I can’t lose you, your the only one I have.” 

He looked at me and saw tears welling up in my eyes. He knew I still mourned my parents death and that I felt incredibly lonely even though I had him. He walked closer to me and brushed a piece of hair behind my ear. 

“You have so many people looking out for you, so much family here. I can’t lose you either.” He spoke softly to me.

I looked him in the eyes and started to cry. I whispered, “Okay. I will go in the sewers. But as soon as things get hectic you bring you butt down there.”

Carl reached for my waist and pulled me toward him, smiling at me,”I understand.”

We walked hand in hand to the entrance to the sewers, everyone else had already been moved down there and I was the last one left. It was pretty dark out now and we had to hurry

I turned to Carl and brought him into a kiss, a passionate and loving kiss. One we hadn’t had yet in our relationship. I couldn’t go down there without kissing him, not knowing what was going to happen later. Our lips moved together and my arms were wrapped around his neck playing with the ends of his hair. Carl was slightly shocked with the power of the kiss but quickly wrapped him arms around my waist. I realized how much I loved him, even though we hadn’t said the three words to each other yet. 

I pulled away from him but Carl joined our lips together again in a long peck. He pulled away but only enough so he could whisper into my lips, “I love you so much.” I smiled.

“I love you.” I pulled away from him fully. I looked at him one last time before turning to the sewer and climbing down the ladder.

-

The ground was trembling and my ears were in pain because of the noise. I thought for sure there was no world anymore above us. 

The bombs were going off for a little bit now, I held Judith to my chest and hushed her to make sure she didn’t make any noises that could give us away. Not like they could hear her up on the ground especially with the sound of gunshots and grumbling of grenades.

Carl still hadn’t made his way down to the sewers yet, and it was far past safe from what I was hearing. Which meant Carl was either taken, dead, or just plain stubborn. I tried not to think about it to much, because Judith needed me right now. I was cooing to her when I heard the steel trapdoor to the sewers opened. We were told to be quiet when we heard to door open because we never knew if it was one of us or an enemy. But, when I saw my boyfriends sheriff hat I quickly get up to run to him but he out his finger over his mouth then pointed up. I quickly understood that there were saviors above us. He grabbed my hand that wasn’t holding Judith and lead my away from the entrance. When he deemed it far enough away he pulled me into a gentle hug, watching for his little sister in my arms.

I gently spoke in his ear,” We’re okay. Are you?”

He nodded. 

I pulled away and pecked him on the lips before giving him Judith. I was so happy he was safe.

[the-king-andthe-lionheart]

So this is definitely in response to that certain dark section of our fandom (you know exactly who you are) who are throwing a fit about the Arya and Daenerys fandoms enjoying the possibility of a canon Daenarya friendship in the future.  So let’s look at all the quotes that possibly foreshadow a future Arya and Dany friendship and put it into context.

It was very dark right now, she realized. She hugged her bare knees tight against her chest and shivered. She would wait quietly and count to ten thousand. By then it would be safe for her to come creeping back out and find her way home.

By the time she had reached eighty-seven, the room had begun to lighten as her eyes adjusted to the blackness. Slowly the shapes around her took on form. Huge empty eyes stared at her hungrily through the gloom, and dimly she saw the jagged shadows of long teeth. She had lost the count. She closed her eyes and bit her lip and sent the fear away. When she looked again, the monsters would be gone. Would never have been. She pretended that Syrio was beside her in the dark, whispering in her ear. Calm as still water, she told herself. Strong as a bear. Fierce as a wolverine. She opened her eyes again.

The monsters were still there, but the fear was gone.

Arya got to her feet, moving warily. The heads were all around her. She touched one, curious, wondering if it was real. Her fingertips brushed a massive jaw. It felt real enough. The bone was smooth beneath her hand, cold and hard to the touch. She ran her fingers down a tooth, black and sharp, a dagger made of darkness. It made her shiver.

"It's dead," she said aloud. "It's just a skull, it can't hurt me." Yet somehow the monster seemed to know she was there. She could feel its empty eyes watching her through the gloom, and there was something in that dim, cavernous room that did not love her. She edged away from the skull and backed into a second, larger than the first. For an instant she could feel its teeth digging into her shoulder, as if it wanted a bite of her flesh. Arya whirled, felt leather catch and tear as a huge fang nipped at her jerkin, and then she was running. Another skull loomed ahead, the biggest monster of all, but Arya did not even slow. She leapt over a ridge of black teeth as tall as swords, dashed through hungry jaws, and threw herself against the door. - Arya III AGOT

Here is the initial passage that has to do with dragons in Arya’s story.  She comes across the dragon skulls in the dark and feels afraid of them.  She feels as if the eyes of the skulls were watching her and did not like her. She also doesn’t recognize them for what they are.  She initially refers to them as monsters, but later she comes to realize they are dragons: 

This time the monsters did not frighten her. They seemed almost old friends. Arya held the candle over her head. With each step she took, the shadows moved against the walls, as if they were turning to watch her pass. "Dragons," she whispered. She slid Needle out from under her cloak. The slender blade seemed very small and the dragons very big, yet somehow Arya felt better with steel in her hand. - Arya IV AGOT

Now admittedly the first quote does sound like the foreshadowing could suggest antagonism between Arya and Dany, but the second quote doesn’t suggest this.  Arya thinks of them as if they are old friends.  That is the most notable sentence of the paragraph, not the fact that she slid Needle out.  But when you actually look at this paragraph you actually see a duality here.  The monsters did not frighten her.  They seemed almost old friends.  Yet she slides her blade out and feels better?  So for me this quote just seems to foreshadow that Dany will be Arya’s friend, yet Arya will remain wary of her dragons like anyone naturally would be.

So putting these two quotes into context, it tells us that if Arya and Dany will meet they will initially be antagonistic and wary of each other (most Daenarya fans I’ve seen acknowledge this will likely be the case).  However it also suggests that this wariness will eventually fade and they will become friends.  Arya doesn’t need to think she is wholly safe from the dragons to have a friendship with Dany.  EVERYONE is wary about the dragons, just like most people would be unsure and most likely afraid if they were in the same room as a large cat or a bear. 

But this isn’t Arya’s only dragon connections in the narrative.  Arya’s closest relationship is with Jon, who is half Targaryen.  In Braavos Arya is fascinated by the courtesans and the Black Pearl in particular:

"The Black Pearl," she told them. Merry claimed the Black Pearl was the most famous courtesan of all. "She's descended from the dragons, that one," the woman had told Cat. "The first Black Pearl was a pirate queen. A Westerosi prince took her for a lover and got a daughter on her, who grew up to be a courtesan. Her own daughter followed her, and her daughter after her, until you get to this one [...] - Cat of the Canals AFFC

The woman with him could not have been more than a third his age. She was so lovely that the lamps seemed to burn brighter when she passed. She had dressed in a low-cut gown of pale yellow silk, startling against the light brown of her skin. Her black hair was bound up in a net of spun gold, and a jet-and-gold necklace brushed against the top of her full breasts. As they watched, she leaned close to the envoy and whispered something in his ear that made him laugh. "They should call her the Brown Pearl," Mercy said to Daena. "She's more brown than black."

"The first Black Pearl was black as a pot of ink," said Daena. "She was a pirate queen, fathered by a Sealord's son on a princess from the Summer Isles. A dragon king from Westeros took her for his lover."

"I would like to see a dragon," Mercy said wistfully. - Mercy TWOW

There is even foreshadowing that Arya will form a closer relationship with the Black Pearl in the future by becoming an apprentice for her so Arya can refine her highborn manners so it’s easier for the FM to place her into highborn society to do their work, because why not utilize a highborn girl in this way?

But also notice that Arya/Mercy is friends with a girl named “Daena” which is ridiculously close to the name Daenerys.  And in the same conversation with Daena (Daenerys) Arya/Mercy also said she wished to see a dragon.  And no this isn’t “Mercy’s” wish, this is Arya’s wish:

As Arya crossed the yard to the bathhouse, she spied a raven circling down toward the rookery, and wondered where it had come from and what message it carried. Might be it's from Robb, come to say it wasn't true about Bran and Rickon. She chewed on her lip, hoping. If I had wings I could fly back to Winterfell and see for myself. And if it was true, I'd just fly away, fly up past the moon and the shining stars, and see all the things in Old Nan's stories, dragons and sea monsters and the Titan of Braavos, and maybe I wouldn't ever fly back unless I wanted to. - Arya X ACOK

Doesn’t really sound like Arya hates dragons or have any issues regarding them.  She wants to see them irregardless of any fear they may inspire within her that everyone would naturally have upon seeing a dragon.

Arya also expresses a wish to fly throughout her narrative and she also has wing symbolism in her arc:

If I was a crow I could fly down and peck off his stupid fat pouty lips. - Arya X ACOK

If I had wings I could fly back to Winterfell and see for myself.  And if it was true, I'd just fly away, fly up past the moon and the shining stars, and see all the things in Old Nan's stories, dragons and sea monsters and the Titan of Braavos, and maybe I wouldn't ever fly back unless I wanted to. - Arya X ACOK

I wish I could change into a wolf and grow wings and fly away. - Arya XIII ASOS

She might be bald and skinny, but Mercy had a pretty smile, and a certain grace. Even Izembaro agreed that she was graceful. She was not far from the Gate as the crows flies, but for girls with feet instead of wings the way was longer. - Mercy TWOW

Also lets not forget how similar Arya and Dany are to each other and how many parallels they share.  They are both lost princesses exiled and sent to Essos, specifically Braavos, after their father's deaths at the hands of Lannister's.  They each know what it's like to be bought and sold and to be enslaved – Dany as a child bride and Arya as a child soldier.  And they both have pretenders trying to take their claims.  Both have been forced into becoming smallfolk, living in poverty and starved.  And they both know what it's like to be hunted and scared.  They adapt exceedingly well into other environments and cultures, and their morality and sense of justice are very attuned, as they seek to protect those that can not protect themselves.  Very protective, they are both empathetic and maternal and care for the sick, ailing, and dying.  Both of them are survivors and have both suffered abuse and sexual assault (more so for Dany, but it's still there).  They are both clever and know how to manipulate people.  They are both polyglots and both of their deepest desires are for home and family/pack.  They both try to live up to the image of their older siblings (ie Sansa and Rhaegar).  Arya is said to look and act like Lyanna and Daenerys is compared to Rhaegar by the people that knew him.   They are both very close to their house sigils and even dream about them and the mystical beasts they both own.  They both love horseback riding and they both have encountered mystical prophets.  Wanted/considered becoming sailors and they both have fantastic people skills.  Not to mention that it was Arya who said that the slaves should have killed the masters, while Dany is leading a slave uprising to overthrow and yes, execute the masters.

Dany is also not some “mad queen” and she does listen to the people who knew her father and Rhaegar.  She is learning the truth about the monster her father was and learning to accept that.  So there is no reason why Dany should continue to feel antagonistic towards the next generation of Stark’s for something they didn’t do.  

I’ve also seen comments about how the fire devastation that is within Arya’s story must clearly mean “Dark Dany” and that Arya and Dany will be antagonistic towards each other in canon when they meet.  I’m assuming these people are referring to the burning barn scene:

"You take her!" she yelled. "You get her out! You do it!" The fire beat at her back with hot red wings as she fled the burning barn. It felt blessedly cool outside, but men were dying all around her. She saw Koss throw down his blade to yield, and she saw them kill him where he stood. Smoke was everywhere. There was no sign of Yoren, but the axe was where Gendry had left it, by the woodpile outside the haven. As she wrenched it free, a mailed hand grabbed her arm. Spinning, Arya drove the head of the axe hard between his legs. She never saw his face, only the dark blood seeping between the links of his hauberk. Going back into that barn was the hardest thing she ever did. Smoke was pouring out the open door like a writhing black snake, and she could hear the screams of the poor animals inside, donkeys and horses and men. She chewed her lip, and darted through the doors, crouched low where the smoke wasn't quite so thick.

A donkey was caught in a ring of fire, shrieking in terror and pain. She could smell the stench of burning hair. The roof was gone up too, and things were falling down, pieces of flaming wood and bits of straw and hay. Arya put a hand over her mouth and nose. She couldn't see the wagon for the smoke, but she could still hear Biter screaming. She crawled toward the sound. - Arya IV ACOK

Arya rolled headfirst into the tunnel and dropped five feet. She got dirt in her mouth but she didn't care, the taste was fine, the taste was mud and water and worms and life. Under the earth the air was cool and dark. Above was nothing but blood and roaring red and choking smoke and the screams of dying horses. She moved her belt around so Needle would not be in her way, and began to crawl. A dozen feet down the tunnel she heard the sound, like the roar of some monstrous beast, and a cloud of hot smoke and black dust came billowing up behind her, smelling of hell. Arya held her breath and kissed the mud on the floor of the tunnel and cried. For whom, she could not say. - Arya IV ACOK

This chapter does not mean that Dany is going to go “evil” or “mad” and start burning stuff to the ground.  You guys do remember that Dany has three dragons right?  And that Dany is only the dragonrider to Drogon?  That leaves two other possible dragons that could be stolen from Dany.  We have Euron/Victarion who has the dragon binder horn and then we have Aegon who may or may not be able to claim one of those dragons for himself.  There is also the possibility that Euron dies or Aegon dies and someone else will take their places as dragonriders via Targaryen blood or use of that horn.  So besides Dany we have Aegon, Jon, Euron, and Tyrion who may all ride dragons within the story as they all have the proper set-up and foreshadowing for it to be a possibility.  So why is it the automatic assumption that it will be Dany burning shit down?   

Not to mention, wildfire has the same types of language used as the two quotes above:

And then some vast beast had let out a roar, and green flames were all around them: wildfire, pyromancer's piss, the jade demon [...] From bank to bank there was nothing but burning ships and wildfire. The sight of it seemed to stop his heart for a moment, and he could still remember the sound of it, the crackle of flames, the hiss of steam, the shrieks of dying men, and the beat of that terrible heat against his face as the current swept him down toward hell. - Davos I ASOS

So considering there not only is there a ton of foreshadowing that it will be Cersei who destroys King’s Landing with wildfire, but also there is foreshadowing that Jon Connington will do something incredibly drastic to win and keep the Iron Throne for Aegon.  And may I remind the audience that the fires Arya went through and experienced in the Riverlands had zero to do with Dany.  They were the direct result of the Lannisters.

So if Arya IV ACOK is foreshadowing a future fire she is stuck in, there is no evidence that the fire will be caused by Dany nor that the fire is dragonfire.  And if you are going to point out the show as evidence, let me tell you something, go to the youtuber The Dragon Demands and watch his videos dissecting everything about the scene of Dany burning King’s Landing by using the script, listening to BtS content, looking at the storyboards, actually noting that a scene of Cersei looking out the window, depicting her watching people put barrels of wildfire on the battlements, etc.  Because the compilation he makes proves that Dany burning KL the way that she did in 8x05 was a last minute change.  It was supposed to be an accidental wildfire explosion before they changed it so they could justify Jon killing her.  But I’m sure even with the evidence you’ll still cling to the idea of Dark!Dany because you are incredibly insecure about your fictitious ship and your blatant mischaracterization of your favorite “pure as the driven snow /s” character, because there is literally nothing in the books that foreshadows Dany going “mad” or “dark”.  So why don’t you take your jealousies about Daenerys and Arya and the very possible Daenarya friendship somewhere else.

[cryingoverafictionalcharacter]

We Have A Pool?!

Summary: There’s a secret swimming pool at Hogwarts. Y/N discovered it purely on accident in her first year, and it has become her safe place, that is until a particular Weasley find it as well.

Warnings: SMUT! (fingering, vaginal, etc) SMUT WITH PLOT IN A POOL YALL (ok I heard pool sex can be not great for everyone, so maybe don’t try it unless your into that then go off) Swearing, no proof reading, an irrational amount of commas because the public school system failed me. The end

Word Count: 2.3K

A/N: OK so IDK if there's canonically a pool at Hogwarts, I just heard it in a starkid play and was like “Hey, I like that” So I made it all up so if there is/isn’t actually a pool pls don’t come for me. Also HAPPY NEW YEAR! I hope you’re all happy and are making progress to becoming even happier.

Your elbows rested on the desk in front of you, your fingers rubbing circles into your temples as you tried to pay attention to the class in front of you. This past week had been stressful to say the least, you had three different essays, all needing to be at least four pages long, as well as a potions exam and a herbology quiz. To say you were excited for the weekend was an understatement.

And you knew just where you were going to spend it.

As soon as class was dismissed, you started packing your bag as quickly as possible, wanting to get to your room to finish your homework and change before going to your favorite spot for some much needed stress relief.

You practically ran out of the class, heading straight to the Gryffindor common room, but before you could get far, two tall bodies appeared at your left and right sides.

“Someone seems to be in a hurry” Fred said, looking to George who nodded in agreement.

“Indeed, where are we off to Y/N?” George asked.

“Oh, its a wonderful place, I don’t think you would have head of it. It’s called nun ya” You said, causing the boys to raise an eyebrow at you.

“Nun ya?” Fred asked

“Nun ya business” You joked, causing the older red to head to gasp in feign hurt, while George tried to stifle a laugh.

You and the twins had been friends since you were children, being next door neighbors and being the same age meant you spent a lot of time together, especially when your parents went on business trips and left you at the burrow. You had grown to become really close to them. However, over the past few years George and Angelina had started hanging out more, leaving you and Fred to get closer. 

This wouldn’t have been a problem if you didn’t have a giant crush on him. 

“Wow, were your best friends in the world and you wont even tell us where you’re going. I’m hurt!” Fred cried, making you laugh a bit. 

“I’m just going back to my room to do some homework. I’ll see you guys at dinner yeah?” You asked, turning to wave at the two boys, who stood in confused silence as they watched you walk away.

“Well, she’s hiding something” George said.

“Definitely” Fred agreed.

A few hours later, you had gotten dinner, finished your homework, and were currently laying in bed, waiting for Angelina and Katie to fall asleep. After a while, their breathing evened out, and you quietly got out of bed, putting your pillow under the covers to make it look like you were still sleeping there just in case one of them woke up.

You tip toed out of the room, making sure to close the door as quietly as possible before making your way down the steps, and out of the common room. Once you were a bit farther away, you cast lumos to navigate better through the hallway. You took a right, then a left, then another left, before finally finding your way to the empty arythmancy classroom.

You made your way to the bookcase on the far left side of the room, running your finger along the spines before landing on a familiar blue cover labeled The Geometry of Liquids. You pulled the book back until you heard a click, pushing the bookcase forward which easily swung open to reveal a hallway.

You couldn’t help but smile as the smell of salt water filled your nose, quickly stepping behind the book case before closing it behind you. As you walked further down the hallway, you began to see a blue light, finally turning the last corner, you found yourself in an abandoned dungeon, with a large pool in the middle of it. 

You had accidentally stumbled across this room in your fourth year. You were bored, all of your friends either at Hogsmeade or detention Fred and George, and had found the abandoned classroom. You started going through the books, and the rest is history. You had been coming here at least once a week ever since.

You muttered the spell to stop the light coming from your wand, the pool somehow giving off its own soft blue light, before removing your shirt and sleep shorts, exposing the green bikini you had put on earlier. 

Walking closer to the edge, you took a few running steps before plugging your nose and jumping off the pool wall, landing in the water below. 

You sat there for a moment, allowing the cool feeling to sink deeper into your body. You had gotten a lot better at holding your breath over the years, still eventually you had to come back to the surface for air, which you did. You wiped the water off your face, opening your eyes to find a pair of dark brown ones looking back.

“Fred!” You screamed, surprised by his sudden presence. He stood at the edge of the water in a pair of jersey shorts and a t-shirt, his jaw on the floor as he looked at you, then to the rest of the room. 

“What are you... who’d you get here?” You continued, his silence making you a bit nervous.

“We have a pool?” He asked looking back to you, causing you to nod.

“Yeah...” You said, feeling a bit guilty for not telling him before. 

You had planned on telling him, along with the rest of your friends, but you were worried that word would get around and it would become a new party spot, which meant it would only be a matter of time before a teacher found it and blocked it off. 

“How long have you known this was here?” Fred asked.

You sighed, swimming to the side wall and pulling yourself out, ringing out your hair before crossing your arms in front of you.

“A while” You mumbled, feeling a bit ashamed.

“And you didn’t tell us because...” He started, wanting an explanation.

“I didn’t want everyone to find out, because then the teachers would find out-”

“And then nobody would be able to use it” Fred finished, causing you to nod, still refusing to meet his eyes, your own question suddenly popping into your mind.

“Wait, how did you find it?” You asked, finally looking up to meet his gaze, your heart beating a bit faster at the eye contact.

Now it was Fred’s turn to look guilty. “I followed you”

“You fo- why!” You shouted

“I’m sorry! It’s just, you were upset earlier and you seemed really excited about something, and then I saw you walking around and I don’t know I just followed you.” Fred blurted out, looking at you with a nervous expression.

“Ok fine, I’m not mad at you if you’re not mad at me” You tried to reason, wanting a truce.

“Deal” He said smiling, holding out his hand for you to shake, which you did. Unfortunately this made it so you didn’t see his other hand quickly come around to connect with your shoulder, pushing you back into the pool.

You quickly got your bearings, kicking back to the surface to find Fred keeled over with laughter. 

“You dick!” You shouted, which only made him laugh harder. You began laughing as well, before ducking under the water to move your hair away from your face, popping back up to see Fred walking over to where your clothes and wand were laying.

“What are you doing?” You asked suspiciously, you eyes widening as his hands went to the hem of his shirt.

“Getting in, duh” Fred stated, before pulling his shirt over his head to reveal his toned chest, making your face heat up in the process. 

Before you could say anything, Fred was running towards the pool at full speed before jumping into a cannon ball and landing right next to you, sending buckets of water flying into your face.

Your mouth fell open in shock, watching as Fred came back up to the surface, laughing once he saw your expression.

“Oh nuh uh” You grumbled, shooting out your hands to send water flying back at Fred, abruptly cutting off his laughter.

“Oh really?” he asked mockingly, sending a wave of water back at you, only for you to return a wave as well.

Soon enough, water was flying in all directions as you each tried to splash each other as fast as you could, the sound of both of your laughs echoing off the walls. 

You were splashing as fast as you could, looking away to avoid getting hit in the face as you aimed blindly, only stopping when you suddenly felt arms wrap around your middle and spin you around.

“Got cha!” Fred yelled, your arms landing around his neck to stabilize yourself as you shouted in surprise.

Fred stopped spinning, allowing the both of you to calm down and catch your breath, which made your heartbeat pick up at the realization of the position you were in. Your bodies pressed together as his arms remained around your waist, and yours around his neck.

You pulled back a bit to look at him, meeting his gaze before his eyes wandered down to your mouth, yours doing the same before he finally pulled you closer, and connected his lips to yours.

You responded instantly, moving your lips with his as you wrapped your legs around his waist. His arms moved downwards to hold you by your ass as he walked you over to the side of the pool, pressing you up against the wall.

He tugged at your bottom lip, making you moan into the kiss and allow his tongue to explore your mouth. You moved a hand up to his hair, weaving your fingers through the wet, fiery strands, and deepening the kiss even further. His hard length pressed against you, and your hands began traveling down his chest.

He suddenly pulled away making you open your eyes to look at him.

“Are you sure?” He asked, a soft look in his eyes.

You nodded.

Fred moved his lips to just below your ear, hovering just over the skin. “I need to hear you princess”

“Please, I need you Freddie” You whined, gasping as his lips came in contact with your neck.

He continued his attack on your neck as his hand moved in between you, dipping into your bikini bottoms before sliding his fingers through your folds. Your breath hitched as he slid two fingers into you, slowly pumping them in an out as his thumb drew circled over your clit, the coil in your stomach tightening as he began to speed up.

“Fred, I need you inside of me” You sighed, whining as he removed his fingers. His hands moved to lower his shorts a bit letting his cock spring free, moving your bikini bottoms to the side before gliding through your folds.

"You ready?” He asked, causing you to nod. “With your words princess”

“Please Fred just fuck me” You practically begged, before moaning as he slowly filled you up, his size stretching you out slightly.

He waited a moment, allowing you to adjust before you finally nodded, allowing him to move. He slowly pulled out half way, before thrusting back into you, repeating the action and picking up speed with each thrust.

You bit your lip to try and suppress your moans, but Fred wasn’t having any of it.

“None of that princess” He said, stopping his movements and making you whine “I want to hear you screaming my name when you come, got it?” He asked, still refusing to move.

“Ok fine, please just move-ah!” You gasped loudly as he started thrusting into you, much faster than before.

Water sloshed around you as he pounded into you, your back scratching against to tile with each thrust but you didn’t care. His cock hit that one spot perfectly with each stroke, tightening the coil in your stomach more and more. 

“You’re so perfect, taking my cock so well” Fred breathed into your ear, causing you to let out a soft moan. “I can’t hear you princess”

His hand slipped in between your bodies, beginning to rub fast circles around your bungle of nerves, causing the coil in your stomach to finally snap, sending you over the edge, while screaming Fred's name over and over again.

Fred continued to thrust into you, riding you through your orgasm, his thrusts eventually becoming sloppy before he stilled inside of you, painting your walls as he came.

You sat like that for a moment, catching your breath as you came down from your high. Fred pressed his lips to yours as he slowly pulled out, causing you to sigh at the empty feeling before moving both of your bottoms to their original place.

A wave of insecurity suddenly washed over you. Was this a one time thing? Was he still mad that I hid this from him? Does he want to just be friends with benefits? does he-

“Hey, what’s happening” Fred asked, snapping you out of your thoughts, a curious expression on his face.

“Um...” You started, setting yourself up for the possibility of rejection. “Was this a one time thing? Because, if it is I don’t want to-”

Fred cut you off by gently grabbing your face in his hands and pressing his lips to yours, silencing all the insecure thoughts running through your mind.

“Y/N, I’ve liked you since fourth year, I really hope this isn’t a one time thing” He said, making you smile.

“Since fourth year?” You asked, causing his face to blush a bit.

“Well, yeah” He replied sheepishly.

“Well, I’ve liked you since third year, so I guess I like you more” You joked, causing him to let out a gasp.

“Not possible, I like you way more than you like me” He argued, to which you shook your head.

“Nope, I win, hands down” You responded, folding your arms matter of factely.

“How about, we go shower off, and I show you how much I like you?” Fred asked, pressing a kiss to your neck.

“Challenge accepted” You replied, all the while you couldn't hide the smile on your face.

__________________________________________________

A/N: UMMMM ok??? Pool sex. With Fred Weasley??? Am I obsessed with this concept? Yes. Is it healthy, probably not but its not hurting anyone so I’m a keep doing it. Anyway, I hope you guys liked it, feel free to leave any suggestions or feedback. I love you all! ALSO IF YOU KNOW OF ANY FRED POOL SMUT PLEASE TAG ME OMG

[carryonsimoncarryonbaz]

Some random morning thoughts:

Ok so I’ve been thinking a lot about parents in this series (as I often do) and about Malcolm in particular and some canon info we have and how it might shape his story.

Natasha was pregnant while headmistress (we know this from Nico in CO). She brought Baz to Watford with her during the school year and he would spend time in the nursery while she worked (info from Baz in CO).

Malcolm would come to Watford most weekends and they’d all be home together in the summer.

So Malcolm probably didn’t have much child care responsibility before his second family—Baz was primarily with Natasha 9 to 10 months out of the year and during the summer Malcolm and Natasha would have tag teamed taking care of him. Then Natasha died and Malcolm fell apart and Fiona moved in and perhaps that’s when they hired Vera, Baz’s nanny.

So how much bonding/attachment did Baz and Malcolm actually get when Baz was young? Before Natasha’s death? Not a huge amount, likely.

And after Natasha’s loss Malcolm was lost himself for quite awhile, I think (not to excuse him, but I do think the loss broke him for a period of time. Changed him.)

He’s a bit over his head managing the four children on his own in AWTWB because he’s probably never had to do that. He knows what to do and is capable of doing individual things (nappies, meals, bedtime, stories, dispute arbitration) but he’s likely always had some help/backup—Daphne, Vera, Baz. (Four kids is a lot—the change from having one kid to two kids is an exponential change, not simply a doubling. And he has four under age 8.)

I think Malcolm missed out on a fair bit of early bonding with Baz due to their family living arrangements, then he was a deeply traumatized man with a dead wife and a very young vampire son he had to protect at all costs, and he put up impenetrable walls to protect himself instead of reaching out.

(He does appear to be a romantic as far as his wives go. When Malcolm falls in love he really falls in love.) (Hmm, sounds familiar.)

But he’s not found his footing with Baz, I don’t think. They likely hadn’t had a chance to become very close before and the loss of Natasha does not seem to have brought them any closer together emotionally.

He loves Baz. I don’t question that. It’s there. But he sees Natasha in him primarily and that affects his perceptions. He focuses on the Pitch side of Baz even though Baz is half Grimm. It’s Natasha’s legacy that seems to primarily concern Malcolm (and Fiona amplifies that).

Malcolm is proud of him (leavers speech), he listens to Daphne’s advice and talks to Baz about a therapist, he tries to keep him home after the numpty incident, he does seem to shield/deflect Baz from direct involvement in the “war”, he provides for him at the estate, but the two or them don’t seem very attached, if that makes sense.

Malcolm can love. That’s clear. He appears to have a hard time verbalising it and allowing himself to be emotionally vulnerable. Vulnerable in any way. He has cultivated a presence, an external mask/persona that’s detached—it’s what Baz tries to emulate in CO. In some way it’s understandable, as Malcolm has been greatly hurt and has suffered significant traumatic loss. This is his coping mechanism, flawed as it may be—shaped by upbringing or trauma, or both.

It’s also a bitter pill to swallow, to discover the Mage not only targeted his family with raids and tariffs but was instrumental in the death of his wife and the Turning of his only son (which seems a bit premeditated, as we now know Turning is done with intent, not something that happens every time someone is bitten. But we can discuss that another time.) Malcolm’s animosity to Simon is unfortunate and misguided but he’s associated Simon with the Mage for a long time and he’s not had a chance (Malcolm’s own fault!) to get to know Simon as he truly is.

My hope is that this experience with Daphne will teach Malcolm something—about her, about himself, about his relationship with Baz, about what matters to Baz, who he cares about, who he loves. That perhaps Malcolm can talk and listen and reach out and let some of his walls down, even a little. He let himself cry in front of Baz in AWTWB and I think that is meaningful. It was a moment of great vulnerability.

There is no question Baz was there for Malcolm when he needed him and was so pivotal in getting Daphne back. As was Simon. I have hope that this is a step forward for them all.

Malcolm has been shaped by circumstance, tragedy and his own shortcomings/trauma response, as well as his somewhat truncated bonding with Baz when he was very young. He’s a flawed man. But there’s possibility for him, once he lets go of “what was” and “what could have been” and lets himself lean into “what is” and “what could be.”

(NB: I am not judging or casting any shade on Natasha and Malcolm’s living arrangements. They did what they had to do. Youngest headmistress, Malcolm with his own work. You find a way to make it work. I’ve done long distance, my husband travelled a lot for his job for awhile, we had to have reliable live-in child care when he was overseas and I’d have to go do surgery in the middle of the night on call.)

tl;dr: Malcolm and Baz may not have had much bonding/attachment prior to Natasha’s death, and combined with Malcolm’s breakdown after and post-trauma response, they may not have strengthened what bond they had in the years after, making communication and emotional intimacy difficult for them now.

[clownpi]

CLOWN CLOWN CLOWN, I HAD THE BEST IDEA IN THE WORLD

Lightcannon au, but Lux was raised as a Noxian

Like when lux was a baby she was kidnapped by noxus coz why not and before they kill her she shows she has magic and noxus is like new weapon pog? And raise her as like an assassin with Swain personally looking over her training coz like us noxus using a fucking Crownguard as a weapon that hates Demacia against Demacia, fucking hilarious, imagine what the Crownguards think when they find out there Luxanna was raised as a Noxian and fucking hates them

I don't know how Lux and Jinx meet but God just think about the fucking angst here, the Crownguards being thrown into a frenzy coz precious Luxanna has been kidnapped and with nobody asking for a ransom they think she's dead, whilst noxus over here is like Lux you gotta hate Demacia! Why? Coz your a mage, you where born there and we rescued you before they could kill you!

What do you think

I jest (like the clown I am) given my recent track record of stories featuring them.

Actual thoughts below since I rambled too long.

Think it's a pretty neat idea, especially depending on what kind of relationship you'd make Lux have with Swain. Personally, as I'm a sucker for found family and "Evil person has a small soft spot if you squint", I'd probably have Lux view Swain basically as her adopted dad who 'saved' her from a life of misery being a Mage which would make her fiercely loyal to his cause. It would make her excuse (or even praise) the less than 'moral' things he'd do.

On Swain's end it would be far harder to determine his feelings towards her, but I think there'd at least be some affection in that he has a loyal (powerful) force that he's raised from a young age. It might be gruff or hard to really tell the truth, but I always kinda like those characters. Full how he would act would depend on after research tho since I honestly don't know that much about Swain (besides him kicking my ass multiple times in PoC).

Also just love the idea of the two having quiet private talks sometimes, Swain idly playing with his birds while Lux voices her worries or just opinions as he offers cryptic comments that always seem to put her at ease. Feel like their relationship would be an important part of the fic because it would act as the main lynchpin for why Lux was so fiercely loyal (and also somewhat mirror Jinx's feelings for Silco).

As for how Jinx could be added, it depends on how AU you wanna make it, few off the top of my head:

-(Really AU) Jinx is a demon that Swain helps Lux summon after she pleads with him desiring to be more useful. Make her personality more of jokester to counter Lux's likely angst no nonsense one.

-(Post s1) Have Piltover catch Jinx and in an effort of increasing positive relations have Demacia offer to imprison her with them, far away from any Hextech and under heavy security. Lux could then end up breaking her out while rescuing some imprisoned Noxian operatives. Likely this would be the angstier option given how Jinx was by the end of s1 or it could have a Jinx that doesn't give a shit anymore and is just having fun at everyone else's expense (no 'chains' to bind her anymore).

Those are at least the two I can think up at the moment, I'd lean towards option one for the fun of it plus it gives me a chance to slip in monster girl Jinx again and personally I can only take so much angst and there's already plenty promised with the whole crownguard stuff.

If I ended up going with the more canon complaint I'd go with the "doesn't give a shit anymore" Jinx, again for the fun of it. The few times she does get serious could be key moments of Lux better understanding her as a person and growing closer.

Could also have a lot of fun building Lux's relationship with other notable Noxians too.

Katarina -Rival? Big sister? Battle companion?

Darius - Honestly be great to have him be the big brother stand in to replace Garen.

Draven - Annoyance

Would also look into neat little lore tidbits that Legends of Runeterra puts in, lots of Noxian characters there. If you throw say Vladimir in (having him work with Swain in Noxian conquest while neither actually trusts each other, a shaky alliance at most) you could bring in The Lady of Blood (Faris Noradi) and all the 'fun' stuff she does with corpses. Which could open up even more fun by having Lux interact/be friends?/rivals/begrudging allies with Ophelia Noradi (Crimson Aristocrat in game) and Clara (Crimson Discipline).

That's not even going into all those specifically under Swain in that game which Lux could interact with. Like Aurok Glinthorn, Arrel the Tracker, Captain Farron (Since he's originally from Zaun you could have him and Jinx end up as surprise friends if you go with a more canon focused Jinx), etc. Just looking through the Trifarian Legion in general could prove useful.

With Draven, you could have him taking Lux to the arena to show off or something which then opens up bringing in characters specific to that (Kato the Arm, Shiraza the Blade, etc). Also, for some reason I just imagine Draven and Jinx would get along. They'd go to the area together and drag Lux along.

This is just me quickly running through the wiki for Noxus region cards.

Lots of stuff you could do with the idea since it's like a neat character reversal, like how Poppy has a Noxus skin in lol.

idk, all this is just be spitballing :) I still think Lux's relationship with Swain would be an important core to the story, but that's just me.

Rambling too long lol.

[gb-patch]

Ask Answers: June 6th, 2021

I’m back with more ask responses! You can also check our Frequently Asked Question sheet if there’s something you’re wondering that’s not answered here.

FAQ   Also, if you prefer to just see the main posts without all the asks/reblogs, feel free to follow our side account instead: GB Patch Updates Blog

Thank you for the patience with these questions  ♡

Hey in very beginning of step 3 in the scene where Mr.Holden had a thought dancing on the tip of his tongue but he kept it to himself after MC and Cove were being cute (idk if it makes a difference but this is when they're dating)... Can we know what he was thinking/ wanted to say? It's been bugging me lol 

He would’ve gone into a “look how much you’ve grown”, “your dad is so proud of you”, “I’m so glad things worked out with the MC”, and etc spiel, haha. But he resisted the urge to fawn on his baby boy, at least for that scene.

If we planned to move away for college/future plans in step 3, is it implied that MC and Cove would have a long distance relationship for sure? Could MC have convinced Cove to come with them? How is the dynamic of their relationship going to be addressed in Step 4, if that makes sense? 

Cove is willing to follow the MC where they went after everything is settled for them there, and if they’re sure they want him to come! You’ll get to decide how things shook out during those transitional years just by making choices about it during the opening prologue of Step 4.

Hi! First off, how does it feel to have created one of the best games when it comes to inclusion for lbtq+ peeps? I've never felt as validated with my identity and sexuality when playing a game and I'm seemingly not alone ♥ Second, and this might be a little too specific, but what kinds of drinks does Cove like as well as dislike? Thank you, you're the best ♥

Thank you for very much! It’s really nice to hear the game felt inclusive. Cove likes regular water and fruit juices/smoothies most! He dislikes coffee and cola, and he’s not super into most teas either.

Hi, may i ask what gb patch stands for? Specifically the gb part lol

It stands for my old, silly username I used in places like Neopets as a kid, aha. The company name wasn’t super thought out since it was originally just me making VNs as a hobby. Luckily, “GB Patch” kind of seems like it could mean something reasonable, so I didn’t have to rebrand when it did become a more serious, commercial group.

If we chose to not propose to cove in the step 3 dlc would he propose or would the mc propose in step 4 or the wedding dlc? 

Yeah, you or Cove can propose in Step 4 if you’re not already engaged! The Wedding DLC takes place after the engagement so the proposal scenes aren’t there.

will you guys announce if the early access for the new game is out on patreon ? 

When beta builds of Step 4 or whatever start coming out on the Patreon we will mention it here on social media too.

Heyy I just had a quick question about Baxter if that’s okay :)?

I saw in an ask+answer that it’s possible to casually date Baxter In step 3, but what leads up to that? I have the step 3 dlc and I’ve tried playing them In a different orders and ways but it doesn’t seem to get anywhere ^^;

The Step 3 DLC is Cove-based because he’s the default guy. There’s a separate Baxter romance DLC that’s not out yet. That’s where you can get him to date you. I’m sorry for the confusion!

Will we ever get any LI's or side characters with physical disabilities or deformities? I think your games would be a great place to have them in since they're always so accepting and safe! 

Yeah, we do hope to have representation for that in future projects ^^. Thank you for the confidence in us.

Is it possible to get Cove to take the bed and MC to sleep on the floor? 

Not in Step 3, I’m afraid.

So, I have played the prologue of Our Life countless times and I haven't gotten the [Your Life] achievement, why is that? 

Steam sometimes isn’t connected properly when an achievement unlocks and so it remains locked on your account. If that happens, unfortunately getting the scene again won’t unlock it. The achievement becomes inaccessible because the game thinks you already have it. Playing with the same Steam account on a different device or fully deleting your game data (more than the only the save files) are the only work arounds we’ve found.

Since when you talk with Jeremy in step 3 it's mentioned he goes on dates with someone (which assume is JB because who else would take this boy on dates) that makes him happy, does that sort of make JB and Jeremy the canon relationship in the first game?

The default for XOXO Droplets is that JB casually goes on dates with each of the jerks! Shiloh would’ve been harsher if Jeremy was the only guy getting her attention, haha. But the player can change that default by dating just one person the whole game for their own story and who she ends up with for real has no default.

Hi, hello! Huge OL fan, thank you so much for the wholesome content, it was very much needed during these times. Managed to get several people to join team Cove, so that's very exciting, I always have people to fawn over him with. I have a little question and I'm sorry if it was asked before, but does it ever come up in the game what Cove has told his mom about us? (who knows, with so many options, one can miss it) Or, alternatively, will it come up in the Step 4 DLC? 

Thank you very much for sharing the game with people <3. It’s really great to hear people are liking it. Right now that doesn’t come up in game. Kyra is willing to keep her mouth shut and Cove isn’t gonna have that conversation either. At least not when he’s younger, but yes, perhaps when he’s a fully grown big boy in Step 4 you can ask him about it.

I’ve been thinking about this ever since it has been confirmed that there would be two love interests for OL2, would there be the possibility of forming a polyamorous relationship with both love interests? I’m sorry if you answered this previously, I’m just curious. 

We are considering it, but it’s not a guarantee yet. It’d be really great to have but it’d add so many extra alterations that’d need to made, aha.

Hello! You mentioned how Cove would be uncomfortable with kids at 23, but how old would he be when he’s comfortable with having/adopting kids? (Same goes for the other LI’s.) btw, love your game!! 

He’d want to be at least 25, but even older would be good. Derek would want to have kids when he and his partner could reasonably support them, the age itself wouldn’t matter. If they were doing good at 22 and wanted kids, he’d be up for it. Or they could wait until their 30s or whatever. Baxter is also more of a “when it feels right” guy rather than having a specific age requirement. Cove is just especially wary of being a young parent because of his own parents. I’m happy you like the game!

does step 4 immediately play after you press "end summer" in step 3? or is there another button/transition (like the story text thingy) before the epilogue begins? what happens after the epilogue? roll credits? 😂 

Step 4 will have transition section always and there will be an extra button, if you own the Derek or Baxter DLC. By default the Cove-based version of Step 4 just plays once Step 3 is over. However, having the other guys’ storylines will mean you get to pick which version of Step 4 plays; Cove Step 4 (the basic one), Derek Step 4, or Baxter Step 4.

Happy pride, thank you for all you do for us🥰

I have a quick question though, I recently got a MacBook after my old windows computer broke, and now steam says I cannot download it, but it has no issues with other games, what can I do to download it?? I’m sorry if my English is bad

Happy pride month! Unfortunately, Our Life isn’t available for Mac on Steam right now. To be an approval application Apple requires having special notarization and we as a small group haven’t gotten that. Itch doesn’t care and lets us release the game for Mac there anyway, Steam does care so we’re locked out of putting the Mac build up on their storefront. Feel free to email us and we can try to help the situation out further!

support@gbpatchgames.com

Hello! I was jus wondering if the Baxter and Derek DLCs are still happening? I haven’t heard anything about them on here or patreon in a while so I just wanted to make sure ^^

They’re still coming and we just released a new sprite sketch on the Patreon for the Derek DLC c:. But right now Step 4 is still much more of a priority. Once that’s closer to being done we’ll focus way more on sharing previews for the other guys.

is it possible to tell cove you love him (platonically) at step 3 fondness/selecting him as basically family? i just love the mc and liz sibling interactions and it got me wondering about it (especially if you've selected that option)

You and Cove can be as close as family, but there’s not a specific scene in Step 3 where you say “I love you” in a family context. But there’s always Step 4~

do you intend on ever adding a collectors mode to Our Life? Like a way to collect achievements and CGs for the gallery without it effecting any save files? 

We weren’t considering it before. But if a lot of players would find that helpful, we could start thinking on that!

Sorry if it's a silly question haha, but (in crush/love) is Cove really aware of how cute and cuddly he seems to MC? If so, what does he think or do about it? Or does he just ignore it? 

He isn’t particular aware. Cove never truly stops being surprised that the MC is interested in/attracted to him, haha.

Would you say that the alone ending of xoxo droplets is worth playing again to get? 

Nope, haha. The goal is to make friends/get a boyfriend and so the alone ending is kind of the bad ending for the game. Though there is a consolation prize if you get it by accident.

Is there any possible situation which would ever prompt Pran to bake for his girlfriend? Like I know it's unlikely I mean even if JB broke her leg somehow I'm pretty sure he'd still be like "I considered baking you a cake and doing the frosting the way I think looks interesting but you don't deserve a cake, no one does." right but also ahhh it would be super nice if some day he just surprised her with baked goods one day out of nowhere. JB would be so shocked it would be cute. So is there any possible situation where that could/would be a thing that he would do? 

He might bake out of spite, like if he felt he had to prove her wrong on something. Or if JB used some good reverse psychology on him. Or he might do it in a relatively nice way if he could make his GF so shocked by the kind gesture that his amusement with that overrode his insistence on not being sweet. Pran is very difficult in high school, aha.

Is the "one route (where) it can be seen that Everett will drop his seemingly eternal waging with Jeremy pretty easily and can start getting along without thinking much on it" the Lucas route? I'm curious! 

Yep! Everett will side with Jeremy if it’s between him and Lucas.

Hi I hope you guys are having a great day :) I just had to ask how Cliff would feel about Cove's partner/fiancé Mc calling them dad whether it be accidental or otherwise and secondly I also wanted to ask how he would feel about being asked to be the one to give the mc away at their wedding. 

He would be very touched and excited! I hope you have a good day too :D

Hello! I saw an ask relating to whether Cliff "moves on" after Cove's grown up and stuff (and he stays single), but what about Kyra? Will she be with anyone else or will she stay single? 

She does start dating again, but she takes it slow.

Hi! I absolutely love the art for characters in OL and I wonder is this fine to draw my MC in same drawing style and upload online later? Is this something artists would be okay with? Thank you! 

Yeah, you can certainly do that C:

Hey there!

I wonder if I'm just being stupid here.. Is Step 4 a DLC? And if so, where can I find it? I can't seem to find it on Steam :< Thank you!

Step 4 is a free epilogue! It’s not done yet, but once it is finished you’ll just update your game file and Step 4 will be there after Step 3 ends.

hi! are step 4 and the wedding dlc two different things?

They are. Step 4 is a free epilogue that’ll be a default part of the game once it’s done, the wedding DLC is an optional paid expansion that takes place after Step 4.

Why did Baxter not receive a step 2 sprite seeing how he shows up later

Sprites are time consuming to draw and take money out of the budget that could’ve gone to other things. His tiny appearance in Step 2 wasn’t worth all the effort to make a sprite, aha.

I just realized, what happens if if you get the patreon exclusive moment but at a later date, when you don't have the membership anymore, it's updated (like a bugs fix update for example)? Would you have to get the membership again? 

You would have to get the membership again to redownload the build. But there’s very little chance there’s going to be an update once it’s been out for over a month. If a build gets released with errors, players catch/report them within the first few days. So by the time the first subscription period ends, any problems that were noticeable would already have been fixed. And we’re certainly not gonna be adding new content to it once it’s been released for a long time. There’s no need to worry about missing out on something worthwhile in the future if you cancel your membership. It’s being made with the idea in mind that many players are gonna be getting it and then going.

Hello! Wanted to ask about gaming choice in step 3? Once upon a playthorugh I got the option to buy Cove a bracelet for his graduation present. I played the same basic character again and that option wasn't there anymore. I'm not sure where I went wrong. My Cove wears a bracelet on each hand and my MC is into fashion and jewelry. Do I need to put an earring on him or? Sorry, love your game so much. 

He also needs to have liked bracelets in Step 2 for that to be considered a good gift option for him. Sorry for the confusion! I’m happy you love the game :)

Is Step 4 being released at the same time as the Wedding DLC or will the first come before the latter? Thank you! 

I’m not sure. Ideally they’ll come out at the same time, but the wedding DLC has a lot of art to get done and we may have to release it after Step 4.

Can mc still get confession from Cove at the end of step 3 even if mc casually dates Baxter in step 3? Such as in crush mode? 

I don’t think so. Maybe that’ll change, but generally there’s differences to the Step 3 ending if you were dating Baxter and those differences likely will conflict with getting the Cove confession.

For the patreon moments/dlcs, will it be available for all tiers? 

It’ll be available for tier 2 (Fans) and up!

[misseffie]

Is Gendry illiterate?

Short answer: Probably not. 

Long answer: 

I’ve noticed a lot of fanfiction trying to address Gendry’s illiteracy once he becomes a noble. Most fics depict him as being completely illiterate. Some depict him as having some level of literacy, but not enough for his new position. So let’s try to figure it out, shall we?

Part 1: Literacy

We have this assumption that in medieval times no one could read or write unless they were part of the nobility. That is not quite true. Firstly, we have to understand what it meant to be literate by medieval standards: 

“In Medieval times, “Literate” actually meant able to read and write in Latin, which was considered to be the language of learning. Being able to read and write in the vernacular wasn’t considered real learning at all. Most peasants prior to the Black Death (which really shook up society) had little chance to learn - hard labouring work all of the hours of daylight does’t leave a lot of energy for reading or writing.

It’s worth noting, however the panic amongst the ruling classes when translations of The Bible started to appear written in English. This really started in the late 14th Century (about 30 years after the Black Death). The level of panic suggests that the Ruling Classes knew that the numbers of people who could read and write English was far greater than the numbers who could read Latin.”

However, there is no language quite like Latin in Westeros. The closest we come to something similar is High Valyrian. Which noble children seem to have a basic understanding of. We can safely assume that Gendry doesn’t have extensive knowledge of High Valyrian - so he is illiterate in that regard. But I don’t think High Valyrian is as widely used as Latin was in the Middle Ages. It’s also not a language with religious significance. As the Faith of the Seven doesn’t use High Valyrian the way that the Catholic Church used Latin.

So… taking that into account. What I assume that is meant by “literate” in Westeros is being able to read and write in the Common Tongue. 

I will say that even by those parameters I don’t think most of the commoners would have been literate. However, Gendry was not in the same situation as most of the commoners.

Which leads me to... 

Part 2: Socio-economic class in Medieval Times

The level of literacy among the commonfolk has to be examined on a case by case basis.

Literacy among “peasants” varied a lot depending on circumstance. So, for example, it’s not strange that Davos, who was a smuggler prior to meeting Stannis, was illiterate. Or Gilly, who was completely isolated from the world and in terrible conditions.

But Gendry is in a different situation.

As @arsenicandfinelace pointed out in this cool meta:

Gendry was definitely born low-class, as an unrecognised bastard whose mother was a tavern girl (read: one step away from prostitute). But the whole point of apprenticing with Tobho Mott is that that was a major leap forward for him, socially.

As Davos put it in 3x10, “The Street of Steel? You lived in the fancy part of town.” Yes, a tradesman of any kind is leagues below the nobility, and could never ever be worthy of marrying a highborn girl like Arya. But Tobho Mott is a master craftsman, the best armourer in the capital city of a heavily martial country. As far as tradesman go, he’s the best of the best, and charges accordingly.

There’s a reason Varys had to pay out the ass to get Gendry apprenticed there. If he had stayed, completed his apprenticeship, and eventually taken over the workshop, he would have been very wealthy (by commoner standards) and respectable (again, by commomner standards), despite his low birth.

Tobho Mott is a tradesman and a craftsman. He is part of the merchant class. * Merchants are often referred to as a different class from the rest of the population. The merchant class in Medieval Times was closer to the middle class of contemporary times.

“By the 15th century, merchants were the elite class of many towns and their guilds controlled the town government. Guilds were all-powerful and if a merchant was kicked out of one, he would likely not be able to earn a living again.”

Mott would be considered to be part of the merchant class - and not even a common kind of merchant either. He was the best Blacksmith in all of King's Landing, the capital of the Seven Kingdoms. So we can assume that Tobho Mott was a very wealthy and powerful craftsman and merchant.  

“That many 'middle class' people (tradesmen, merchants and the like) could read and write in the late middle ages cannot be disputed.”

I’m not saying that all tradesmen/merchants/craftsmen were literate back then. It was still a smaller percentage than the nobility. Only the richer and more influential of tradesmen would learn Latin. But I think most of them would be literate enough in the vernacular to run a business. Considering Mott’s reputation and his clientele I’m certain that Mott is part of that literate percentage.

In season 2, Arya accidentally reveals to Tywin that she can read. Realizing her mistake she covers up by saying that her father, a ’stonemason', taught her. Of course, I don’t think that completely fooled Tywin but why did Arya say her father was Stonemason. Why did his profession matter at all? Surely it wouldn’t have mattered if he was a fisherman or a farmer... a peasant is a peasant, right?

Wrong.

“The Medieval Stonemason asserts that they were not monks but highly skilled craftsmen who combined the roles of architect, builder, craftsman, designer, and engineer. Many, if not all masons of the Middle Ages learnt their craft through an informal apprentice system”

“Children from merchants and craftsmen were able to study longer and continuous, so they were able to learn Latin at a later age. This way, everyone learned to read and write (some better than others) sufficiently for their trade.”

Stonemasons were the architects of the time and no doubt the top tier was literate.

Many trades (by the 15th C) required reading and writing, so it was taught to apprentices by the masters. We know from apprenticeship agreements that many masters were expected to continue the apprentice's literacy or start it, which makes sense for the wider viability of the trade.

The War of the Roses took place in the late 15th Century. So I’m guessing that that’s the time period that ASOIAF is mostly based on.

Part 3: Level of literacy

I think it’s safe to say that Gendry has some level of literacy. However, his “level” is pretty much up for debate. If he’d finished his apprenticeship it’s likely he’d have a decent level of reading/writing comprehension. However, near the end of his apprenticeship he was kicked out.

I’m not sure how much Gendry could read/write by the time that he was kicked out by Tobho Mott. But he’d already been his apprentice for 10 years (in show canon). More than enough time to get some basic reading/writing/basic math lessons. 

It seems that show!Gendry is more likely to have a higher level of literacy than book!Gendry. In the show, he leaves Tobho Mott at 16, while in the book he is 14. This is just my own impression, but I think his education would be more complete by age 16 than age 14.

Not to mention that book!Gendry is still in the Riverlands and working for outlaws. But in the show we can assume that Gendry has been smithing in King’s Landing for years and it is insinuated that he owns a shop. Meaning he might have reached “Master” status and can take on apprentices of his own. It might seem like Gendry is too young for that. But it’s actually not that strange. 

“Apprentices stayed with their masters for seven to nine years before they were able to claim journeyman status. Journeyman blacksmiths possessed the basic skills necessary to work alongside their master, seek work with other shops, or even open their own businesses.”

Considering that Gendry has been with Mott for 10 years in show!canon, it’s possible that Gendry was a “journeyman” and not an “apprentice” by the time that Ned meets him in season 1. But he might be nearing the end of his apprenticeship in the books.

Guilds also required journeymen to submit work for examination each year in each area of expertise. So, a journeyman who perhaps crafted swords, locks, and keys would need to submit each item to his guild annually for inspection. If the guild approved the craftsmanship of the products, the journeyman could eventually move up to master status.

The process of becoming a master could take from 2 to 5 years. Considering that Gendry is regarded as talented, it’s likely that he achieved this in a shorter period of time. As a journeyman he also needed to work alongside a master for 3 to 4 years before he could obtain master status. Which would still explain why he was so upset at being kicked out by Mott - it’s like someone getting kicked out while they’re trying to obtain a PHD. 

By the time we meet him in season 7 it’s very possible that Gendry is now considered a master of his trade.

He also seems to be making armour and weapons for “Lannisters” which means he has a mostly noble clientele. He probably has plenty of fancy clients asking for custom-made products. With sketches and measurements and all that shit. Which is not surprising since he probably has a de facto reputation simply by merit of being Tobho Mott’s apprentice (lets ignore how dumb it is that no one discovered that Gendry was in King’s Landing since he made no effort to hide who he was or try to hide from the nobility lol).

Conclusion: 

It’s safe to say that Gendry had some access to higher education. He can probably read and write enough for his line of work. It’s likely that his level would still leave much to be desired once he became a noble though. For comparison, imagine if someone left school at age 11 and was then required to write a college-level thesis. So he’d definitely need some “lordly” writing lessons and further education.

Gendry is still wildly uneducated for what he needs to do. So...

This meme is still gold 10/10

* Correction: Though Mott would be considered part of the same socio-economic class as merchants he is primarily a tradesman/craftsman, and would be referred to as such. Since merchants didn’t produce the goods they sold. However they could belong to the same guild, along with artisans and craftsmen.