#why am I the first one to apply it here???

[makismei]

cw: pleasure dom toji!!!, overstim, he’s sweet, squirting. 18+ content, penetration, little hint of anal play, fingering, oral f! receiving, established relationship

“baby, chill out,” he scolds, grabbing you by the hips and dragging you back. he knocks your legs open and you whimper, resisting.

“tojiii,” you whine, all drawn out and pretty, “please, it’s too much, i can’t cum.”

he scoffs, wet fingers rubbing against your pussy. your body locks up and he holds back a groan at the tears in your eyes. “it’s only too much because you can’t stay still. you did this to yourself, doll.”

you shake your head, stubborn as ever. “‘s not my fault! you just suck!”

eye twitching, toji presses two fingers inside without warning. “i think i’ve been too nice to you, baby.” he hums, scissoring his fingers and relishing in the way your back arches. “look at ya, talking back to me.”

he thrusts his digits, forcing your leg to open wider, while his thumb massages your clit. he presses down, applying pressure and making out little shapes.

you wriggle, tears pooling in your eyes like the drama queen you are. “no! not like thaaaat!”

“why, baby?” he questions, “you cum so quick when i have ya like this.”

you whine loudly, legs starting to shake. toji licks his lips, eyes training hungrily on your cunt. you’re almost there, but you’re fighting the urge to cum, knowing it pisses him off.

it makes him regret the fact he used to make you hold back your orgasms, only letting you cum if he said so—because now look, you’re using it against him.

but toji is competitive and he loves to win.

so he crooks his fingers just right, hooking onto that one spongey spot that guarantees his victory every. single. time.

“yeah,” he goads, watching your body suddenly lock up and wetness spew from your pussy like a geyser, “‘s what i thought.”

he rubs your pussy, just to make your squirt splash around. it’s humiliating, how he toys with your body and forces you into endless pleasure until you go stupid.

but you love it, despite the fact you like resisting, toji knows all too well that it’s just an act.

you turn onto your side, quivering from the aftershocks of your orgasm.

wordlessly, he manhandles you onto your knees, shoving your face into the mattress. you moan at the feeling of his tongue lapping at your pussy, muffling a scream when his lips latch onto your swollen clit and suck, his tongue playfully flicking your little bud.

he alternates between nibbling and sucking, reducing you to a babbling, incoherent disaster.

“cumming!” you warn, more squirt splashing shamelessly onto his face and all over the sheets. you fall forward, head turned to the side and panting.

“what a mess,” he chides, clicking his tongue. “aren’t ya ashamed?”

it’s teasing, but you’re so turned on. you hike up your knees again, wiggling your ass enticingly. you look over your shoulder, pouting. “‘m sorry, toji. didn’t mean to be messy.”

“sorry?” he asks, frantically you nod. burly hand slides up and down his cock, catching your slit and using your fluids as lube. his gaze flits to you momentarily, “yer really sorry?”

you nod again, squirming, “i am! m’ so sorry.”

toji grins, watching his cock disappear into your cunt, “then cum for me again, c’mon, hurry.”

you yell, arms unable to hold yourself up.

he plows into you mercilessly, fingers digging into the plush of your ass. your eyes widen when you feel his thumb on your other hole, rubbing it teasingly.

“what if i put my thumb in here, baby? what do you think will happen?” you feel a line of spit hit your ass, his thumb collecting it before returning to teasing your other hole. “remember your little treasure chest? swore i saw some plugs in there..”

weakly, you try to support yourself on shaky arms, moaning incoherently. “i— toji, i… ahh, mmph!”

you fall back down, face first, and he just laughs, “s’ okay, you don’t have’ta say anything. ya know why?” he goads, thrusting just a little bit harder, teasing you. “‘cause your little pussy is telling me all i need to know.”

toji groans and it’s loud, feeling your cunt squeeze down, trying to milk him for everything he’s worth. “that’s right,” draping himself over your back, his hand sneaks its way to flick your bud, relishing in your squeals and they way your body squirms.

“cum, pretty, c’mon,” he breathes, leaving spit-soaked kisses on your back, “need ya to feel good for me.”

he sings praises in your ear when he hears you gush all over the already damp sheets, moaning into your skin as his thrusts grow sloppy, before he’s dumping wads of hot cum into your battered pussy.

“fuck me,” he sighs, dragging his lips along your shoulder blades and nape, hips still pushing into your ass.

you’re whining, tears blurring your vision as you ride out the pleasure toji relentlessly gives. you’ve fallen into prone bone, too fucked out to utter words besides incoherent babbles.

his hands find purchase beside your head, dropping to his forearms, but refusing to pull out but littering your skin with feverish kisses, “did so good for me, sweets.”

he’s reassuring, knowing it’s intense for you. but toji has a mean streak that he likes to keep up, so naturally he’s teasing. “my baby, so fucked out, huh? it’s okay, you’re so cute like this. always so sweet after i dick you down enough.”

he pulls out, knocking your legs apart to watch his cum drool out of your slit. “mm, yer perfect, baby.”

you flop onto your back, pinching toji’s arm and refusing to look him in the eye. he grins, “what? you want a kiss?”

you nod slowly, cheeks burning. he just knows you too well.

but he complies, all too easily. it’s you, after all.

swallowing up your little moans, he devours your lips, pushing his tongue into your mouth. burly hands cup your face, opening his eyes to see yours squeezed shut. he grins, biting your lower lip when he pulls away.

rough thumbs wipe your teary cheeks. “there’s your kiss, baby. you happy?”

“yeah…” you mutter, eyelashes fluttering as you look up at him. “another one?”

he smiles and it’s warm and full of love, leaning down, toji brushes his lips against yours. “sure doll, anything you want.”

[eyrieofsynapses]

so uh, I am brand-new to Star Trek (as in not even finished with the third TOS season), so I don't have much background here, but I have thoughts? I am also not a biologist, mind you, just researching online and using what I remember from gen-ed classes. I may have lost myself down the rabbit hole for… er. a while. a long while.

For the record, this is me trying to apply Earth biology and logic, which I know is not actually applicable to literal aliens or fiction. The joy of writing is being able to say "fuck it, this is fiction, I make the rules now."

But. Science is fun. So here's me trying to Science it.

First: points of consideration! Vulcan is a desert planet. It's close to its star with a thinner atmosphere, and notably hotter than Earth. A thinner atmosphere makes it harder for a planet to regulate temperature and may block less solar radiation. We also know, thanks to Amok Time, that humans can't breathe as easily there, probably due to lower oxygen. So, this means: 1) The temperature difference between day and night is probably more significant than Earth's (because desert and thinner atmosphere). 2) Less oxygen is available.

(For the record, I don't think humanoids would develop on a purely desert planet, but my tangent on this got so long that I'm cutting it. Also sci-fi hand-wavey suspension of disbelief.)

Second: what we already know! …or what I know from the first and second seasons of TOS, what y'all pointed out in the thread, and what I looked up via wikis. The links on episode titles go to transcripts.

Copper blood: Vulcan hemoglobin (the protein used to carry oxygen around) is copper-based, not iron-based (TOS "Obsession"), hence the green blood.

Blood pressure and heartrate: They have significantly lower blood pressure than humans, but a much, much higher heartrate—assuming Sarek's stats during surgery in "Journey to Babel" are applicable, anyway. (Again, I am very new to Star Trek, so that definitely could contradict something newer.)

Cool blood (and low metabolism): Their blood is cooler than humans', possibly implying a lower body temperature. McCoy also comments on Spock's nigh-unmeasurably low metabolism (TOS "The Paradise Syndrome").

Temperature tolerance: They have a considerably wider range of temperature tolerance than humans. (This is implied by their planet's natural temperature range, and by the fact that Spock is usually okay at human temperatures, but, when he can't regulate his temperature so well, apparently finds 125 degrees (presumably Fahrenheit) "tolerable" in "The Deadly Years").

(…also. According to Memory Alpha, a fan-made medical reference text provides some stats. But it's not considered canon, doesn't reference Earth science, and I spent way too long researching this to end it at that.)

SO. Let's go through those "what we already know" points.

Green blood and copper-based hemoglobin: This is a real thing! Some animals DO use copper instead of iron to carry oxygen around! Except they're invertebrates (ex. octopuses, some spiders), the blood is blue, it's not called hemoglobin, it's in an open circulatory system, and it's not like vertebrate blood. It's called hemocyanin, and it free-floats in the invertebrate equivalent to blood (hemolymph) rather than being shipped around by red blood cells.

(For the record, there are other types of blood that are green, but they don't use copper. But blood color varies for other reasons too. I'm handwaving this one.)

Vulcans clearly have closed circulatory systems (closed = blood pumps through vessels, open = sloshes around organs freeform), so they'd need cells to carry oxygen around, so they probably don't use hemolymph.

If you're wondering "but we evolved from invertebrates, so why don't we use copper?" like I was, it's because COPPER SUCKS AT CARRYING OXYGEN. At least in comparison to iron. (Unless you're in deep sea environments, which the desert is not.) So presumably, Earth vertebrates started using iron somewhere along the line. Vulcans did not.

My conclusion: Vulcan biology uses copper in a way that's analogous to how humans use iron, but somehow finds a way to make it efficient enough to match said iron's oxygen capcity. Also, considering that Vulcan seems to have less oxygen in its atmosphere, I'd guess their systems use oxygen more efficiently overall, or they just don't require as much. So maybe it doesn't even need to be quite as efficient. (Coming back later: to my gratification, Memory Alpha also notes the oxygen issue, although in this case it notes that Vulcans have more efficient respiratory systems to get the oxygen needed.)

Lower blood pressure, higher heart rate: I think beastlyanachronism is right about this one. However, circulatory systems are extremely complex and I know nothing about them (I'm a communications person, not a doctor, Jim!), so I'm not really the person to ask. I did some reading to try to educate myself for the sake of this question, though. Anyway: lower blood pressure implies that the Vulcan heart doesn't beat very hard, but it seems to beat faster to make up for the lower pressure. This clicks with the idea that Vulcans use oxygen more efficiently/need less oxygen than humans, since the heart doesn't have to do so much work.

Finally! Body temperature. I'm combining "cold blood" and "wide temperature tolerance range." And I did Much Research. I'm going to explain some biology stuff that some folks probably already know, but for those like me who don't remember the nitpick bits of biology class, I figure this might be useful.

Generally speaking, there are two types of animal when it comes to regulating body temperature: ectothermic (i.e., primarily relies on environmental heat sources and produces little internal heat; e.g. reptiles, amphibians, fish), and endothermic (i.e., generates internal heat and maintains a more-or-less constant body temperature; e.g. mammals and birds). It's way more nuanced than that, but we're talking broad strokes. (More reading: 1, 2, 3)

(Side note, the ducks kedreeva mentioned are maybe using regional heterothermy.)

Colloquially, you would hear these referred to as "cold-blooded" and "warm-blooded" respectively, but science doesn't use those terms anymore because it's not how they technically work; e.g., lots of active ectotherms keep their body temperature in mammal-range. There are others that conform to their surrounding environments, like fish, but as far as I can tell, they need a fairly consistent environmental temperature range. Endotherms, meanwhile, rely on their internal heat source: the excess heat energy from their internal functions.

Heat's important to animals for… well, multiple reasons, but a big one is chemical processes, because they're fiddly and need specific temperatures. Life itself is basically just a bunch of chemical processes.

The problem with ectotherms is that they're reliant on their environment. Their activity is tied to temperature, and the colder it is, the more they slow down. If it gets too hot, they overheat. Also, they have slower metabolisms, and don't necessarily store energy the way endotherms do. Long, extended periods of high activity are harder—if not impossible—for them to maintain, and they can't support big, energy-hoarding brains like endotherms can. (More on intelligence and endo vs ectotherms here.)

Overall, I find it hard to match this with Vulcans, because they seem to perform consistently across a wide variety of temperatures, their brains are very complex and probably need a huge amount of energy, and they're a lot like mammals (hair/fur, similar physical build, etc.), which are exclusively endothermic. Plus, I'm not sure an ectotherm system would be fully compatible with an endotherm, and humans are endotherms, so… I'm not sure Vulcan/human hybrids would work.

The one exception is metabolism, because McCoy does say specifically that Spock's "Vulcan metabolism" is low. (Unfortunately I overlooked that part until after I'd written most of this post.) And, well, Vulcans are aliens, so they COULD be ectothermic-like and just have other things going on that make hybridization possible. And the boundary between ectotherms and endotherms isn't firm; there's plenty of crossover. Or they might be something totally different! So YMMV.

Meanwhile, endotherms—mammals and birds, basically—maintain a stable internal temperature. This comes with trade-offs: we have a higher metabolism (part of what generates our internal heat) and therefore require more food, and we have to be much more intentional with our temperature regulation. 

But. Because endotherms have a consistent internal temperature, we're actually MORE resilient to temperature changes: we can maintain the same activities at warmer and colder temperatures. We can also support bigger and more energy-intensive brains. (Well, mostly; it's more complex than that, but this post is too long already.) I'd argue that Vulcans kind of have to be endotherms, or at least endotherm-like, in order to function across the vast variety of environments we see them in.

…exceeept there's the matter of the cold blood, and their temperature range is still giant (not to mention the accidentally overlooked metabolism issue). BUT. I have a THEORY.

CAMELS.

Camels let their body temperature range between around 34°C (93 Fahrenheit) to over 40°C (104 Fahrenheit). As desert-dwellers, they'll let their body temperature rise over the course of the day and drop during the night. That also helps them conserve water. They have a multitude of other useful adaptations, of course, but what I'm saying here is: they're desert endotherms that change their body temperature according to their environment. So I figure: why not Vulcans, too?

My pet theory: Vulcans are endotherms (or whatever passes for their evolutionary equivalent), but their internal temperature range varies dependent upon their environment. In human-comfortable room temperature, their body temperature might be several degrees below normal human body temperature, thus sparking Dr. McCoy's "ice water" comment. But once you start getting well over a hundred degrees, their body temperatures may come close to a human's, or even go much higher.

(This still doesn't address the metabolism part, but this is what I get for not reading the transcript line thoroughly until I've written a whole post. Bleh. Maybe I'll figure it out later and add a note.)

I also like to think that, assuming evolution already optimized their systems for less oxygen and somehow got copper to be an actually viable oxygen-carrier for vertebrates, maybe the various temperature-dependent chemical reactions in their bodies are more flexible or have other methods of temperature regulation.

…ANYWAY. there's six hours of my life I'll never get back! biologists, my deepest apologies for anything I got wrong, please feel free to yell at me.

Plus one last fun fact: when we look at climate trends on Earth, animals tend to become bigger when Earth cools (ex. mammoths during the latest Ice Age) and smaller when it warms (ex. early horses became teeeeeeny when our climate rapidly warmed back in the Eocene, and then got bigger when things cooled down). This phenomenon is known as Bergmann's rule. Basically, the bigger an animal is, the better it retains heat, and vice versa.

These are Earth rules, of course, and probably there's large Vulcan fauna that evolved to deal with extreme heat, but. look. I find the idea of Vulcans being giants in a world of miniaturized critters amusing, okay?

Okay, I'm all over the place with my physiological grasp of Vulcans. Are they hotter or colder than humans? Why? Does that make them feel the heat more or less than humans? Is their heartbeat faster or slower?

Also if you have a strong opinion or an explanation or anything to say please tell me! I wanna get a grasp on this one

[outerwilds-events]

(The full piece is on ao3, it ended up a little longer than expected!: https://archiveofourown.org/works/61783735)

(I applied for this gift exchange with my art blog @ria-starstruck, and got @lutiaskokopelli as a giftee! I had a lot of fun writing Hal and the hatchling and some timeloop shenanigans :D hope you enjoy!)

“What if…I was in a time loop, and I could bring you along. Would you want to be in it as well?”

Your best friend on the planet, in the solar system, in the whole entire universe, is currently all geared up and ready to go to space—somehow having gotten the launch codes from Hornfels without you noticing—and yet, they’re still on the ground, leaning on the little outcrop of dirt just outside the museum, next to you, speaking to you.

“Where in the universe would you even get yourself into such a situation?” You snort. “Don’t answer that. Of course you’d manage it, somehow.”

“Hey!” They shove you, lightly.

You lean back into their hand. “’Hey’ yourself. Would you want me to bail you out of your hypothetical time travel problems, too?”

“Since when do you ‘bail me out’ of anything? I’m usually the one bailing you out.”

“Yeah, and who was it that had to distract Mica the last time you got their model ship stuck in a tree?”

“And that was so nice of you to do, Hal.” They blink pleadingly at you.

But it’s rare that you get even close to having the upper hand in your little bouts of bantering. “I am so nice.”

“The nicest.” They tilt their head at you.

You rub the back of your neck. This is a fun change of pace, but you’re a little too unused to it. “What do you want?”

“What?”

“I mean, why are you still here? You could be…anywhere. Trying out the translator. Finally finding out what the Nomai have to say…”

Their ears twitch. “I wanted to find out if you’d want to get stuck in the same time loop as me.”

“You could ask me that any time though.” You turn to look them in the face, but they avoid your gaze. “You’re…not nervous about finally heading to space, are you?”

“No!” They cover up their sudden exclamation with a breezy laugh. “Done it a hundred times before.” They wink at you, and you roll your eyes at their obvious fib.

“Sure, sure, if you say so…” You sigh. “And…yeah, of course I’d want to be in the same time loop as you. I couldn’t figure that out without your help.” You nod at the translator. “How could you get out of some time loop without mine?”

They beam brightly at your response, but just as quickly, their ears droop and their grin disappears. “Hal, would you really want to be?”

You’d thought they were talking about some hypothetical situation before, but the lightness in their tone is gone entirely now. You don’t laugh as you answer in kind: “I really would.”

They sigh, and pat you on the shoulder once, heavily. “Good. That’s good to hear. Thank you, Hal.” Just as you’re about to ask them what’s going on, they smile again, the solemnity lifted. “So, I’ve been thinking of heading to Giant’s Deep and checking out those statues…”

It’s useless to try to pry things out of them before they’re ready to talk. So, you match their response, say something about the statues, about the one in the museum—you offer to go get Hornfels so you three could have a proper discussion, but your friend declines, says they just wanted to spend some time with you. You circle around the topic of their first launch a few times, but neither of you quite touch upon it.

And then, out of nowhere, so casually that at first you don’t parse the meaning of the words, they say, “Oh, and the sun’s going to go supernova in about five minutes.”

“Okay,” You say at first, and then it hits you. “Wait, what?”

“The sun,” your friend says patiently. “It’s going to explode. Supernova.”

You frown at them. They’re studying you with a careful sort of nonchalance—a little too careful.

Is this really a joke? You risk squinting directly at the sun with your lower eyes.

Wasn’t the sun once smaller? Was it always so red, so dim, with only its core glowing luminous white? Weren’t the stars once fainter during the day?

A sentence from the museum’s exhibit on a star’s life cycle drifts through your mind: the sun’s core has contracted, and its outer layers expanded. It’s a red giant now. Ultimately, it will collapse under its own gravity…

The exhibit feels inappropriately glib now.

“The sun looks…different.” You venture cautiously. This isn’t a prank. Right? No way. You rub at your eyes—it still looks the same. And that “same” is different than it’s looked for all your life. You think.

“Yep. So. Are you sure you’d wanna hop in on this time loop with me?”

You stare at them, stricken. “This is…real? You’re saying…in less than five minutes, we’ll all be…”

“…Yeah. But, time loop, remember. You’re not really dying.”

You lean heavily against the outcrop of dirt behind you, and slide down to the ground. Your friend joins you, squatting by your side.

You want to sink into silence, but…five minutes? Less than that? This couldn’t be a prank. It isn’t a prank. Your friend wouldn’t be looking at you with such a grave expression if that were the case. “Why…” You whisper. “Why is it happening? Why now? It’s your first launch day. We only just finished the translator…what about the Nomai?! How could we not have seen the sun starting to…”

“Oh, the sun exploding is because of them, I think! The supernova powers the technology they set up to create these time loops.”

“Wait—what? Why?!”

“It’s…a long story. And we have a lot less than five minutes now.”

Without you noticing, the sun has set, and night fallen with it.

“I’ll tell you everything once you’re in the loop with me—or! If you don’t want to join, I’ll tell you as much as I can now—or promise to tell you next loop—“

“I’m joining you,” You say firmly.

Your friend’s eyes gleam—with joy, with sorrow. “I didn’t know if you’d believe me,” They say hoarsely.

“Well, if you say it’s true…then I guess it is.” You respond. “Something…seems a little off with you, anyway.” From the minute they’d pulled you outside, actually, but you didn’t want to admit it. You look away and scuff at the ground with your shoe.

Your friend breathes out shortly. “That obvious, huh?” Their grin falls, their ears droop. “I don’t know how to stop the loop, how to stop the sun from exploding. I keep focusing on just…different things I don’t know…I keep reaching dead ends. There’s so much I’ve translated, so much I want to show you…I wish I could. I wish you could remember. And…” They inhale. “…And I miss you, Hal.”

You sniff. “I miss you too.”

Their laugh is watery. “From your point of view, you saw me just yesterday.”

“Sure, but…hearing the way you talk about it…I wish I could be there.”

“Well…I’ve got something new to focus on. Soon enough, you will be here with me.”

“Yeah…yeah.”

The trees and houses below the path from launch tower to museum are suddenly engulfed in pitch darkness, the kind you’ve never seen before. Rooms are this dark. Caves are this dark. Outside is never, never this dark, to the point where you can’t distinguish the horizon from the black of space. Only the little lanterns throughout Timber Hearth provide any light.

“It’s happening,” your friend says quietly, and you inhale. “It’ll be ok. It’s…the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”

You swallow, throat thick, and hold tight to their arm, watching the place where the horizon should be.

You swear you hear something—an impossibly dense, impossibly loud, ever-so-faint whump. A current of faint blue ripples past you, through the sky, and some distant burning begins to flare, coming closer and closer. Your scales feel dry—or is it only your anticipation of some intense heat?

Then you see it, the foam of some blue-white fire, spraying up like a glowing geyser, followed by the entrails of the only sun you’ve ever known.

Sparks of blue light streak past you. Everything ahead is silhouetted and consumed in turn by that light. Your friend was right—it is beautiful, but you cry out and hold your friend close as it swells towards you. Your eyes water and smart.

“ARE YOU SURE?!” Your friend shouts to be heard above the roar of your dying sun.

The ground rumbles beneath your feet, from the force of a star’s death. “YES!” You pull them towards you, hug them tight, shouting again into the side of their helmet, and in response, your friend’s arms come up and wrap tight around your burning body as your world ends.

[tleeaves]

I'm really bad at law school 🧍‍♀️

[al-luviec]

still haven't moved on from zane in this episode (aka I hit tag limit again and am unhappy about it)

[snapbackslide]

if anyone got tips pls share with the group 🫶🫶🫶🫶

[unproduciblesmackdown]

another day another "applying the concept 'disposability' to 'someone withdraws from a personal relationship, & that wasn't signed off on by the other'" kill me

[inspired-lesson-plans]

Do Now:

Turn and Talk.

Apply your knowledge of Color Theory to the composition of this portrait. What does the red signify? Why is there so much of it?

i cant get over the king charles portrait. they made that thing to age in his place. that painting hangs in the house of a too-friendly family you find in the post apocalyptic wasteland who inexplicably has a ready supply of fresh meat. if mario jumped into that painting he wouldn't find a charming platformer he would be flayed and hanged like a medieval criminal by an unseeable force in a droning red void. that painting is a color blindness test for people who work in IT but believe in the divine right of kings. that painting is going to weep the sequel to blood. after he dies charles is gonna crawl outta that thing like sadako.

[mullets]

im not joking but if one more relative in fucking bangladesh sits me down and warns me about the dangers of pride month and whatever the fuck since im moving to canada im going to kill myself im going to kill myself im going to kill myself

[seilon]

yet again I am whimpering and sobbing at hyatt to give me a job at the big fancy hotel. this is like my 7th application to a job at this one hotel specifically. i should really get the job from sheer dedication to applying over and over again for 7 months alone

[exopelagic]

why do applications feel like your soul is being lightly roasted at 180C

[thebrokengate]

Am I ever gonna get out of my hometown

[ourceliumnetwork]

y'know. i don't often hate the way my brain is and how difficult it makes certain things for me.

i do a little today though.

[kimmkitsuragi]

dangling "you can play bg3 tonight if you finish your application" over my head but also not doing anything the whole day

[rubys-domain]

the mood of the day is watching videos on nostalgic girly media from my childhood to Feel Something

[redsray]

i do love the idea of the wayne kids giving bernard shovel talks about taking care of tim and all that but also give me batfam who are just as protective of bernard as they are of each other.

give me bernard, attending his first wayne gala as tim's significant other. having a suit custom tailored and funded by bruce even if bernard insists it's not necessary because he already has one. arriving at the gala anxious because of course he is, it's a goddamn socialite event, but being protected from every side by the wayne kids even when tim is dragged away.

Socialite: Oh, and who might you be?

Bernard: Oh, um, hi. I'm Bernard Dowd, nice to meet you.

Socialite: Dowd? I've never heard of your family before. Who...?

Bernard: I'm not here with my family, miss, I'm here with my boyfriend.

Socialite: ... Boyfriend?

Bernard: Yeah, I'm here with Tim.

Socialite, frowning: Tim... as in Drake-Wayne? He has a boyfriend?

Dick, coming up next to Bernard: He sure does! Bernard here is practically one of ours now, aren't you? He matters to Timmy, so he matters to us.

Bernard: Dick—

Dick: C'mon, let's get you back to Timmy. Farewell, Mrs!

Bernard: I could've handled that.

Dick: All the rules that apply to my siblings during galas apply to you too. I'm sure you could've, but you shouldn't have to. I've got your back too, now, yeah?

Bernard: ... Yeah. Thanks, Dick.

Jason, coming up to Bernard at the bar: Not to freak you out, kid, but there's a guy starin' at ya from the other side of the bar. Y'know him or should I encourage him to look away?

Bernard, startled: Huh? (looks around) Oh. No, I don't know him. Why... is he looking at me like that, actually?

Jason, scowling: 'S just how the slimy fuckers at these events are. Can't keep their eyes off anything that's small, young or pretty. Disgusting. I'll deal with him— where's your annoying other half gone, inferior blondie?

Bernard: Tim? He got pulled away for quote; 'something important' by some lady. He said he'll meet me here after he's done, so I've been waiting.

Jason: Huh. If I see him I'll point him yer way. Hey, don't be 'fraid to ask any of us questions or for help if ya need it. We know the best how daunting this shit can be.

Bernard, genuinely touched: ... Thanks, Jason.

Jason: Yeah, yeah. Don't tell Timmers I said that, though, he'll call me a loser.

Bernard, laughing: I won't.

Bernard, being talked to by several people at once and a bit overwhelmed by the attention: Uh— I'm—

Damian, stepping between him and the socialites: Dowd. I require your assistance.

Bernard: Um— hi, Damian— with what?

Damian: You will see when we get there. Follow me, Drake's more tolerable half.

Bernard: Okay... so what do you need from me?

Damian: Nothing. You seemed to dislike the attention from all of the nosy adults over there. It was the most efficient way of extracting you from the situation.

Bernard: Oh. Thanks, Damian.

Damian: Tt, don't thank me yet, Dowd. I am still criticising your choice in romantic partners.

Bernard: Didn't you threaten me with a katana to not dampen Tim's mood in any way shape or form?

Damian: Slander. I said quote 'if you make Drake more annoying by breaking his heart I'm going to maim you.' I don't see how you got the message you did from that.

Bernard, grinning: Sure, Damian. Sure.