#without any rules they can do whatever they wanted
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screenshots of a portion of the linked work. reads as follows:
“I hated that essay,” he says to me, “about femmes who care for you when you travel; I really hated it.” And when I ask why he tells me that he thinks it sounds like all butches should be soothed by femmes, and vice versa; he says, “Why would those femmes have assumed that you were a butch who liked femmes?” He says, “Maybe you’re a faggot butch, did they even consider that?” He says, “I know you’re not just for femmes.”
That’s what he says, but I know what he’s thinking. And even though I know how dangerous it is to assume I know what someone is thinking, I know this butch maybe as well as I know myself, and he’s thinking, “Fuck you, for having it easy even in being queer. Fuck you for going along on your happy little way to San Francisco and finding a bunch of femmes who see you as a big stud-duck butch and just want to pour themselves through your fingers. It’s just as hard to be a faggot butch as it is to be any kind of fag.”
There’s all that masculinity to consider when you want to rub up against someone, like that old joke about porcupines:
How do porcupines mate? Very carefully.
He’s saying, “I want to show up at brunch someplace and assume that anyone who I want to flirt with will want to flirt back, and will do it, will want to, without fear of recrimination from hir community. I want you to put something in that book of yours for me. I am a butch whose identity, sexual or otherwise, has nothing to do with femmes. They are not my natural partners in this gender crime the way they are yours. I wake and sleep in the arms of butches like me, butches who understand a whole host of things about my life, my world, the way I see things, the way things affect me that no one else could understand. Write about us. Write that we have sweet, hot sex in which no one has to put on a pair of panties, or take them off; write about how good it feels when ze fucks me hard, so hard. Write about how it feels to fall asleep with the weight of a butch on you, one tattooed arm and one furry leg pinning you down and grounding you in your sleep.
“Write about all the ways in which butches care for each other, comfort each other. Write about how we understand all the shit that comes in the world for our partners and salve it as best we can, about how I have all the more respect for hir because of all I know it takes to survive as a butch.
“Write about how, as soon as butches were no longer the scourge of dykedom for aping masculinity, or whatever that baloney was, it became faggot butches who were scorned and derided. Everyone understands butch/femme because it seems familiar, like Ozzie and Harriet but with better hair and more pussy. Everyone understands femme on femme, even though you don’t see it all that often cause it doesn’t read queer, you know, but it’s in the first images of ‘lesbian love’ most of us see, in porn or on television. Two longhaired pretty girls smooching in a daring fashion wherever they happen to be. No one’s threatened by that, not the dykes, not the men, nobody, but if I want to kiss my butch anywhere, I’d better be damn sure of my audience, or better yet, be sure we don’t have one.
“I can be a butch without opening doors for girls,” he’s saying. “I can do it even if I follow while dancing, I can do it without spending my Saturday afternoons as a femme’s shopping bottom at the mall and do. I am. I am honorable, I take good care of the people I love as well as I possibly can; I watch out for my community. I have a butch heart full of love that I can express when I feel safe enough; I walk in the world resisting gender norms and transgressing gender rules, transcending them. I am fixing whatever I can, whenever I can, and I laugh, and play, and let the spaces in my masculinity show, just like you, just like every butch. I get all slicked up for a date in a suit and tie and I pick up my date, also in a suit and tie, and we just open the door if we get to it first and we take turns paying, and it doesn’t make me less a butch. It doesn’t make me less of anything. It doesn’t mean that I don’t think femmes are swell, I surely do, but they are not my salvation when I travel, they are not the North of my heart’s compass. That’s butches for me, and I will always go a little weak when I see someone who looks scared and hardened and delighted and ashamed and proud—proud, just like me.
“You’re writing a book? Of course, I’m glad, but don’t chicken out. Don’t write a book that speaks so many volumes about your adoration for femmes that it leaves out the ways in which I know you cherish butches too. Yes, not the same way as you cherish femmes, entirely differently, butches and femmes are different creatures, sure, but I don’t just mean how glad you are and always will be to have butch brothers, a butch tribe. I mean, make sure you don’t forget to mention that you put butches on their knees in front of you and enjoy them, that you kneel down too, that you sit sometimes stunned by how much you want to lick a buzz cut or a hot tattoo, that you know what a great grace it is to fall asleep next to a butch’s heart and muscle and skin and ink and fur, that you understand how wonderful it can be to feel butch arms around you. Make sure you mention me, make sure you give me and my lovers and my life the same benefit of some of your words, make sure you don’t write another book that leaves us on the cutting-room floor. Give us a place on the landscape, help us become visible. Say this: Say that when butches love butches they hold lightning between them, but that as much as it burns it also illuminates. That it’s the sweetest burn I’ve ever known in my life of searing pain, that it keeps me from feeling the flames of the world’s hate licking the soles of my boots, that I hold it in my heart and it fuels me every day. Say that it shows me things I could never see any other way, that without it I would grow cold and die. Say that there is nothing else I would rather be.”
/end id]
butch is a noun, s. bear bergman 2006
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sorry if this is too long but i really appreciate your perspective and would love some advice
i have a mixed gender friend group irl, however i am the only transmasc in the group (the rest of the group is queer transfems, queer cis women, and our token cishet guy) and ive run into a little issue in that im quite close to one of the cis girls of the group, and we occasionally have deep chats about our queer identities (we're both aro, im ace, shes bi) . these chats are great and i really appreciate her as a friend but one thing shes always bringing up, even in unrealted conversations is how much she hates men .
im not a transandrobro so this isn't gonna be one of those "im one of the good ones" or "i feel guilty for being transmasc" asks dw. the issue came up when i was discussing how i was going to start T pretty soon (i pass decently well without it already but as more of a butch/androgynous type look) and as we were talking about the changes she was acting... genuinley scared and disgusted??
especially when i talked about how i will likely grow more body hair, and how T affects scent and stuff. she was almost horrified. "yeah but you dont want that right? youll shave it?" . i already dont shave my body hair (she does) and i cant help but feel scared that one of my closest friends is going to find me revolting once i start transitioning medically.
i didnt even mention bottom growth after that because i was so scared of what her reaction to that would be.
idk if you have any experience or advice for this? or any reading on the subject? ive found that its only the cis women in my friend group who are acting this way as well. i feel like maybe its because theyve secretly been viewing me as "just" a masculine woman this whole time. i id as nonbinary with the group, but secretly i really do think im a trans man, but based on the disgust with those things im reluctant to come out again.
Honestly this is a really common way that cis women microaggress against trans mascs! Those two identities have competing privilege/oppression intersections and a lot of really wild shit can play out as a result, as well as due to the projection that can happen because both groups have shared a social identity at some point (whether we liked it or not). It may not be fixable, but I think you need to set the tone that this kind of negative commentary on your transition and body is NOT acceptable, and to do so EARLY, so that you are establishing ground rules for how you will be treated.
Example conversation:
You: So I started getting some hair on my neck around my Adam's apple.
Her: Ewwwww, but you're going to shave it right?
You: (pause and look at her seriously). Gender transition is something I'm very excited about and that's very good for me, you know. I am happy about everything that's happening and I hope that as my friend you would be happy for me too.
Let's say that she continues to be somewhat shitty about your transition multiple times. Here is how you might escalate without totally blowing your lid.
Her: Wow, your [voice is so deep/your acne is getting so bad/your hair pattern is changing/whatever thing she is being shitty about].
You: (stop whatever task you're doing if any to give this full attention. lock eyes with her, maybe even sigh). I have told you multiple times not to comment on my appearance. It makes me very uncomfortable. I don't enjoy spending time with people who comment on how I look.
I think your focus should be not on correcting her feelings, which she needs to go like stare at a pond and reflect about on her own, but instead reign in her shitty commentary completely -- and if she won't do that for you, then you will need start ending conversations/walking away/not inviting her to things/whatever other boundary setting strategy you like. I would prioritize nipping the personal comments in the bud over the "men are so disgusting and evil" kind of commentary, because I think that matters more and seems to bother you more -- but if it were me? I would also be pissed that she wasn't including me in the category of "men" when she was talking about them, and would say things like "I'm a man too, you know." Or "Yeah, WE can be kind of annoying/boorish/smelly sometimes." This isn't some transandrobro NOT ALL MEN thing, it's an anti-transphobia don't misgender me thing. And perhaps by taking accountability for all that manhood is -- the good and the bad, the euphoric and the just neutral, you will influence her in a positive way to think about these things more neutrally. If not, well, that's her fuckin loss.
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I like to imagine that because dick was a ball of energy and Jason was pretty well behaved as a child Bruce thought he had seen all sides of the spectrum when it came to kids and then he adopted Tim
“Tim absent parents drake” who spent so much time alone he essentially rejects any actions Bruce takes at parenting him
“Tim rules only apply if your caught drake” who appeared well behaved but was in fact not only worse than dick with his shenanigans but better at hiding it
“Tim I can fix him drake” who whenever Bruce isn’t looking gets parented by his seventeen year old
“Tim even if he doesn’t act like it is still very much a teenager drake” skateboarding down staircase banister
Over the years Bruce got a parental instinct when ever his kids are doing something they shouldn’t he get this itch and it is about Tim 63% of the time that causes the trouble
And when Tim isn’t the one who did whatever it was that set off Bruce’s parental sense he either orchestrated it to distract bruce to keep him from finding out he did something much worse Tim did or to distract him so he can do something he doesn’t want Bruce to know about
And whenever Bruce try’s to punish Tim for whatever the fuck he did this time Tim will just take it as a challenge
Tim’s grounded? Tim decides to sneak though all of the manors security systems without being caught
Benched as robin? Suddenly glitter bombs are found all over Batman’s patrol route until Tim is unbenched
This also applies to when his siblings are in trouble
Damian can’t keep another animal? a new animal sanctuary suddenly opens up
Dick and Bruce get into a screaming match? Suddenly Bruce only has left shoes
Bruce lectures Jason on killing? Suddenly all Bruce’s suits are bright pink when he has to attend a WE meeting while Tim smirks at him from his seat in the board room
#tim drake#he is an absolute terror#but we love him anyway#Bruce is so tired#so very tired#red robin#batman#batfam#my best ideas come at 2 in the morning when I should be sleeping
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have some reborn au. tori's second chunin exams arc
i think i've posted some of this before, and some of it i..... don't think i have? the beginning i'm like 90% sure i posted, so don't just skip the whole post if it seems familiar.
there's a [...] where there's missing scenes. also i think the reason i never posted sections of this are i didn't like certain details or wanted a few scenes to be better. however i'm in a Posting Mood
xXx
Tori was having a problem. Several problems, actually.
“I’m not even allowed to submit a proposal without some idiot chunin co-signing,” she complained, pacing back and forth in front of Deidara. He was seated on his bed, rubbing ointment into the pink patches of his feet and legs that his medic hadn’t quite healed all the way.
Deidara had… set a field on fire, or something, on his mission. Whatever. Kushina-sensei had gently hinted at Tori that she should go over and make sure he didn’t need help cooking or cleaning, as while Konoha hospital could fix up most things, Deidara had still landed himself three weeks leave with foot injuries.
Obviously, Deidara had yelled at her and set a clay flea off in her face for even hinting he might need help. Convincing him to let her ladle the big pot of her mediocre curry soup she’d lugged over into his own tupperware had been a whole ordeal filled with yelling and a couple minor explosions. But once she had that out of the way and a bunch of tupperwares in his fridge, she was taking his presence in town as an excuse to rant about her own problems in her new lab assignment.
“My new supervisor wants me on dish duty,” she went on, gesturing furiously with both hands. “I know every piece of research fuinjutsu better than anyone there, and I get dish duty? I wouldn’t mind cleaning my own dishes, or if everyone was cleaning dishes, but my ideas for projects just get ignored. Who cares that I’m a genin? I have more experience than any of the chunin in that lab.”
She’d complained to higher management and attempted to get reassigned, but it seemed she was being ignored. She was afraid she’d have to go through Kushina to get facetime with the Hokage. She didn’t want to play nepotism; she wanted to earn this herself.
Deidara looked at her like she was stupid.
“If it’s a rank problem,” he said, “then just go get promoted to chunin, yeah.”
Tori stared back at him, flummoxed. This idea hadn’t occurred to her. She was quite confident she could handle any task any chunin might encounter in a lab. She was reasonably certain she could perform better than some of the jounin in a lab, even, especially if she got to head her own projects in her own specialties. But… chunin were meant to lead missions. They had to be able to fight things, had to know some set number of jutsu, had to have all the rules and ordinances memorized.
“Do you think I’m qualified?” Tori wondered out loud.
She really only had a grab bag of jutsu under her belt, the product of only bothering to learn things that interested her. Her combat skills mostly revolved around hitting things with a stick, or irreversibly destroying flesh in an extremely slipshod way. It seemed like a vast overestimation that she might be qualified for a promotion.
Deidara managed to look even more unimpressed with her.
“What the hell do you think chunin are?” he asked.
“Squadron leaders?” Tori tried.
“Not the baby ones,” Deidara told her. “Anyone with two brain cells to rub together can make chunin. The only reason you’re not already promoted is that Iwa is filled with assholes, yeah.”
This seemed… wrong, somehow. She’d mostly just gotten as far as she did in the Iwa exam by relying on others. But, maybe, she could swing an internal promotion?
Tori went and looked up the official minimum qualifications for chunin promotion. She did qualify, it seemed. Apparently you only needed the Academy three ninjutsu to make chunin, although more were recommended. And maybe she should review all these rules and internal structures she was supposed to know…
The minimum mission requirement was also only one C-rank, which seemed too low. It also seemed like her various higher ranking missions maybe shouldn’t count. The Iwa fiasco had mostly just been her playing side-kick, up until she basically just lied through her teeth for a very stressful few hours. The Sasori fiasco wasn’t exactly a shining moment for her either. It all really depended on her being on a team with a bunch of monsters rather than her own talents, honestly.
Oh well. It wouldn’t hurt to try, she supposed. It wasn’t like the Hokage’s office didn’t know exactly who she was and the details of her on-paper accomplishments.
She filled out a form for promotion-by-mission and turned it in. Two days later she was called into the Hokage’s office. Minato was literally eating a sandwich while he talked to her, apparently on his lunch break.
“Right,” Minato said, swallowing. He picked her application off a pile of papers and slid it across his desk to her. “I’m not approving this.”
“Okay,” Tori said, having expected as much.
“Because I want you to go to the next exam,” he continued. “It’s in Kiri.”
“Oh,” Tori replied, surprised. So she’d have to prove her qualifications? Annoying.
“I think you should aim to win the tournament,” Minato said through another mouthful of sandwich. “Make it flashy. It’ll be a good showing for Konoha.”
“Wait—” Tori started. “I’m not—”
“I’m going to okay you to reduce lab hours if you feel like you need training,” Minato continued, unperturbed by the madness he was spitting. He passed another, stamped form across the desk for her, brushing sandwich crumbs off of it. “You have six weeks. Kushina said she’d register you. Let me know if you need anything.”
He dismissed her. Tori wandered out of his office gripping her exemption paperwork in both hands. Less lab time was the opposite of what she wanted!
Deidara laughed at her when she reported what happened. There was, she noted, empty curry-stained tupperware in his sink.
“I can’t win the tournament,” Tori bemoaned as he snickered. She was really more of a “promoted due to clever thinking” type of kunoichi. “Make it flashy? What is he thinking?”
“Probably that most genin actually just suck, yeah,” Deidara told her. “Do you think Kushina-sensei could convince him to let me go to the tournament?”
Apparently the idea of watching her fight was deeply funny to Deidara. He talked for a very long time about wanting to see her panic and melt a small child into goo in front of all their friends and family. Tori buried her face in her hands.
“Oh, then you’d get a pay raise,” Deidara said, eyes suddenly brightening. “We could move somewhere better, yeah.”
“Deidaraaa,” she whined.
xXx
The lab sink was already filled with dirty test tubes in the morning. The new chunin had mislabeled several samples the day before, and now the experiment was ruined, and Tori was in charge of clean-up. Tori listened to the chunin explain this, glaring at the sink.
“So I’ll be setting it up again while you clean,” the chunin said.
It wasn’t that Tori thought she’d never mislabel something. It was that she had enough experience to know to double-check, and if she managed to screw it up anyway, she’d clean up her own fuck-ups.
Plus, everyone had ignored that she’d pointed out their control for this experiment made no sense. There was a huge risk that whatever results they got, if this chunin could get it to work at all, would be totally uninterpretable.
“Actually, I have an exemption,” Tori told the chunin. “I just came in to say I’ll be out for a while.”
She fled the lab. Kushina’s office door was always open.
“Oh!” Kushina said when Tori knocked. “You’re getting started on training earlier than I thought. Donut?”
She had a small box of donut holes she pushed at Tori. Kushina always had snacks on hand, because she liked bribing people into see her in person.
“I talked it over with Minato,” Kushina said, twirling a pen in her fingers as she spoke. “Basically, we think it’d be a good PR move if you sort of showed off that Konoha is basically the best at fuuinjutsu.”
“Okay,” Tori said. She could do that, at least… probably.
“You weren’t really flashy with it in the Iwa tournament,” Kushina continued. “So we’ll have to come up with something. Maybe you can work on giving some speeches about how your jutsu works like some weirdos do. Oh, but don’t show off you can use nonhuman chakra; we don’t want that getting out until it has to.” Kushina frowned slightly. “And I guess you shouldn’t melt any other genin. That’d be bad for international relations.”
“Okay,” Tori repeated. That just severely limited her combat capabilities. “Um, Hokage-sama told me to… win the tournament?”
She waited for Kushina to say Minato was being ridiculous. Instead she beamed and said, “Well, of course! I want my team to be three-for-three, you know!”
Kushina then made her take the rest of the box of donuts and shooed her out of the office, with a promise they’d make a training schedule.
“It’ll only be like twice a week,” Kushina said as Tori gathered up her bag. “Don’t want to distract you from the lab!”
“But,” Tori started. She needed… more than that, if she was even going to pass, let alone win a tournament.
“Bye!” Kushina replied.
Tori walked out of Hokage Tower feeling completely unsure of what to do. She could go… think about combat fuuinjutsu? Except, she’d moved most of her materials to her desk in R&D in a bid for separate work and personal time, and she did not want to go back there right now.
Well, she knew Deidara was in town and not doing anything. She went and asked him if he wanted to train.
Deidara took at her in deep distrust. “Who are you and what did you do with Tori?”
“Come on,” Tori whined. “I brought you donuts.”
Deidara was walking with a slight limp, but he did accept the rest of the donut holes and then shuffled out the door.
“We can use my grounds, yeah,” he said, still sounding suspicious that she wanted to train at all.
Deidara had his own assigned training ground, out in a field away from anything else. It was filled with half-made sculptures covered in tarp that Tori had decorated in fuuinjutsu herself, to reduce the chance of random explosions.
The field was also completely riddled with potholes, blown into the ground by Deidara’s various experiments. Deidara wasn’t exactly quick on his feet right now, but he did spend the rest of the morning attempting to shove Tori into various holes and then close them over her, making fun of her the entire time.
So probably she was improving at… something. Getting out of death traps, maybe.
Kushina, at least, did get back to her with a schedule fairly quickly. Kushina had blocked off some time in the afternoons on Mondays and Thursdays, and gone ahead and made training ground reservations.
“Do you have anything you want to do?” Kushina asked while she tied her hair up in preparation for what Tori assumed was two hours of kicking Tori’s ass.
“I mean, I can come up with something,” Tori said. Then she added slowly, “But I’m not sure it would be… flashy.”
“Nah, flashy isn’t really your style,” Kushina agreed. “I figured I’d just give you something from the ol’ vault.”
“‘The vault’?” Tori repeated.
“An Uzushio technique,” Kushina clarified.
“But isn’t that…” Tori started, and then was unsure how to finish her sentence.
The Konoha school of fuuinjutsu— which was ultimately closest to what Tori had ended up teaching herself, since her main instructor at the very beginning of her convoluted journey was Orochimaru— was the most similar amongst shinobi villages to traditional Uzushio practices, due to generations of intellectual trade between Uzushio and various Fire Country shinobi clans, especially the Senju.
Konoha fuuinjutsu and Uzushio fuuinjutsu weren’t synonymous though. A lot of Uzushio practices had been completely lost. Kushina had immigrated to Konoha with an entire trunk of scrolls, and one of her long term projects as Konoha’s head of fuuinjutsu was hunting down and recovering Uzushio techniques for preservation. These techniques were highly prized and rarely taught even to Konoha ninja, and Tori was barely even Konoha.
“Isn’t that like… for your family?” Tori asked.
Kushina frowned down at her.
“What are you talking about?” she said. “You’re my student. Of course I’m teaching you my techniques.”
Kushina did proceed to kick Tori’s ass for the next two hours, except instead of just hitting things at her, Kushina threw in some “what do you think of THIS technique?” moves. The training ground ended up completely ripped to shreds. Afterwards, Kushina lined up a bunch of scrolls containing the techniques which had nearly just murdered Tori and went over the pros and cons.
“I want something more subtle,” Tori said, clutching her bruised ribs, because what the fuck?
“No,” Kushina chided, “it has to be big and flashy, you know! We went over this!”
Tori was assigned a scroll and sent off to study it.
xXx
Tori attempted to demonstrate it for Deidara. She dropped the sealing paper into a bucket of water. The water inside twisted into gentle swirls.
“Uh huh,” Deidara said, unimpressed. He held out a hand and a clay water strider hopped onto the water’s surface. It zipped around, not the least bit disturbed by the slowly moving water.
Tori frowned and made a hand sign, attempting to add more chakra to the seal. The water picked up slightly. The clay bug was still unperturbed.
“A whirlpool, you said?” Deidara said, a mean smile pulling at the corners of his lips.
“Shut up,” Tori replied.
xXx
[...]
xXx
The problem with doing anything with Kushina was that there was a small but very real chance the Hokage would just be there.
Tori had expected to speak to him. He was their ride to and from the beach. She assumed the necessity of his presence was why she was meeting Kushina at her house and not some more central location. Tori had also assumed that Minato’s presence would be temporary.
Instead, Minato was in swim trunks and holding a large straw bag. Naruto was behind him, also in swim trunks, swinging a shovel around like some sort of weapon and making whooshing noises with his mouth.
“Uh,” Tori said.
“Don’t mind them,” Kushina replied. She was also dressed for the beach, in a mesh dress over a one piece. A pair of sunglasses sat on top of her head. She held a second straw bag in her hands. “They’ll just be hanging out.”
“But…” the protest died on Tori’s lips. It was an extreme act of favoritism for her to get to go to a beach for training for a day. It would be rude to complain that Minato and Naruto also wanted to hang out with Kushina. “Okay.”
The beach Minato teleported them to was on an island, out in the middle of nowhere off the southern coast of Fire Country. Unlike a lot of his Hiraishin markers, this one was not here as the result of a war mission, because this place had seen no fighting.
The marker he took them to was in an old outpost building on the eastern most point of the island, left over from generations ago during the warring clans ers, when there was fear of an attack from the sea in this area. But since Konoha had unified all the ninja in Fire Country, all the in-fighting had halted. The only true risk of attack came from Water Country, and there were more and better placed outposts to monitor their waters. This building was abandoned and basically falling apart, and only good for providing shade.
“Remember when your dad abandoned us here,” Kushina was saying to Naruto, tone humorous, “and it stormed, and we had to hide inside for hours?”
“Oooh yeah,” Naruto nodded knowingly, “because he had an ‘emergency meeting’ about something dumb, and he said he’d come right back, but then he didn’t.”
“The fruit vendors’ union was in a state of extreme duress,” Kushina said solemnly.
“They’re never going to let me live that one down,” Minato said to Tori with a good humored smile.
Kushina led them down the beach and around to the side of the island that faced the mainland. There were barely any waves on this side of the island, and the tide was far in enough that there was only a thin strip of white sand between the water and the tree line. Naruto kicked joyfully in the shallow water, running ahead and then running back.
They hung their stuff in the trees, with Kushina pulling out a belt of scrolls and strapping it around her waist.
“Is Mom going to do something cool?” Naruto said, vibrating in place.
“We can watch,” Minato said, squatting next to him. “Here.”
Naruto climbed onto his back, giggling as he went.
Oh god, I’m their entertainment, Tori thought. She did not, actually, want the Hokage to watch her embarrass herself. She didn’t even want a ten year old kid to watch her.
(Maybe she especially didn’t want the ten year old kid watching her? Little kids could be mean and judgemental, and Minato had taught Obito. He’d definitely seen more embarrassing stuff than whatever Tori was about to fail at.)
They walked out over the water. It was shallow for a long while, and the water was clear enough that Tori could see all sorts of big rocks waiting to appear when the tide went out. When they reached deeper water, the water beneath them suddenly went dark.
“Don’t like that,” Naruto said, squinting down at it. It was kind of spooky, Tori privately agreed.
Kushina motioned for them to stop, then walked out further by herself. Then she turned to them and pulled a scroll from her belt.
“Okay!” she called. “Get ready!”
She then bounded backwards, putting even more distance between them, and tossed the scroll out from herself. It unrolled at her feet and across the surface of the water, and then ink rapidly crawled out from it. Tori squinted at it. It looked like the lines of characters crawled out from the scroll and then sank into the water.
There was maybe a thirty second delay between Kushina unrolling the scroll and then the water in front of them suddenly moving. It swept sideways, and then grew in velocity such that both Tori and Minato had to leap back to avoid being swept away. The giant whirlpool’s center dipped down into the water. If they’d started off closer to Kushina, Tori wasn’t sure she would have been able to escape being sucked in. If Tori hadn’t known exactly what was going to happen and not been warned, she probably wouldn’t have expected the attack to have this sort of range and not backed off quick enough.
“Whoa!” Naruto cried. “Mom’s so cool!”
“Right?” Minato replied.
Kushina skirted the edge of the whirlpool back to them.
“Ta-da!” she said, throwing her hands in the air. She had to pitch her voice loud over the sound of the water. “These used to be all around Uzushio, to keep people out. And we used to use little ones to fish. But I don’t see why you couldn’t use it for that very flashy attack you want, Tori, right?”
Tori hadn’t actually wanted a flashy attack, but she didn’t point that out with the guy who ordered her to be flashy standing right there.
“You’re going to use that in a fight?” Naruto asked, peering down at Tori from his perch on his father’s back. “I thought you were the lame one on your team.”
“Naruto,” Kushina scolded immediately.
“That’s the plan,” Tori told Naruto, unperturbed. “I’m supposed to convince everyone I’m cool.”
“I thought you were just going to win the tournament,” Naruto said. “Everyone would think you’re cool if you won.”
Oh god, what has Kushina-sensei been saying about me? Tori wondered. Outloud, she said, “Sometimes the goal of a fight isn’t to win.”
“Really?” Naruto asked, wrinkling his nose like this was perplexing. He aimed his question at the back of Minato’s head rather than Tori.
“She’s right,” Minato said. “You and I can talk about it more when we go make a sand castle.”
“She is going to win though, you know,” Kushina said, hands on hips.
“Just keep in mind the goal is to show off fuuinjutsu,” Minato said, turning to Tori. “You want the audience to see what you’re doing. Don’t be sneaky.”
“What?” Tori said. She pointed at the whirlpool. “That took like half a minute to activate. How am I supposed to use it without being sneaky?”
“Thirty seconds is pretty fast for a genin,” Minato said.
Tori chewed her lip, unsure how to answer. So he thought she’d be even slower? How did pointing that out help her?
“It would also be good for PR if you seemed…” Minato arranged Naruto on his back awkwardly. “I don’t know, peppy?”
“Peppy?” Kushina repeated with a barking laugh.
“I don’t know, what makes people want to hire a teenaged girl?” Minato asked.
“Coolness,” Naruto said immediately.
“Oh, you think she should be cute?” Kushina said, frowning slightly. She tapped her chin. “Tori, you can be charming for a couple hours, right?”
“No?” Tori tried, voice cracking. Well, probably if she was playing off a specific person. But she had no idea how to charm a whole audience and then also do all this crazy combat stuff at the same time.
“I’m sure you can manage,” Minato said, smiling at her with more confidence than his opinion deserved. “C’mon, Naruto, let’s go play.”
He left. Tori watched them, and when they were back at the beach, she asked:
“Did you give Deidara this many caveats?”
“Hm?” Kushina said. “No, of course not. You think Deidara could be anything but a screaming maniac in a fight? We just told him not to kill anyone and figured the explosions would make anyone want to hire him.”
Wow, Tori thought as Kushina turned to deactivate her whirlpool. I can’t believe marketability is this important to being a ninja.
Tori spent the rest of the morning squatting on the water with scrolls in her lap, making seals for whirlpools while Kushina stood over her with arms crossed. The seal required a certain amount of chakra manipulation from the user, which wasn’t the way Tori liked to design her own seals, and her misunderstanding of this was what had been causing her problems. It took several tries to get an actual whirlpool.
It was… very small, only the size of her palm. It was almost cute.
“Well, it worked,” Tori deadpanned. “Could I catch fish in it?”
“Absolutely not,” Kushina said, but her tone was good-humored. “You definitely got the jutsu down though; good job. You just need to put in more chakra to make it bigger.”
“More chakra?” Tori asked, peering up at Kushina. She did a few calculations in her head. If the amount of chakra was proportional to the size of the whirlpool… “I’m not sure I even have enough chakra to make a whirlpool as big as yours.”
“Eh, you probably won’t even have that much water,” Kushina said dismissively. “Do it again, and we’ll see how big you can make it.”
Tori went back to the shore for lunch feeling deeply dissatisfied and weak-limbed from chakra loss. Naruto ran over to them the second Kushina’s foot hit the shore, Minato following him.
“It’s not a big deal,” Kushina said as she unpacked their food. “Lots of jutsu have high chakra costs, and shinobi deal with that everyday. Minato, how many times can you use rasengan in one fight?”
Presumably because the limitations of a Hokage’s signature jutsu were state secrets, Minato took a long chug of water instead of answering.
“I don’t like it,” Tori muttered, accepting a bento box. “It doesn’t feel… safe. I’d rather use algae chakra or something.”
“Okay, this isn’t going to be life or death, you know,” Kushina said. “This is a perfectly safe opportunity to get comfortable with risk assessment for when you can or should use a chakra-heavy technique or not.”
“She’s right,” Minato agreed. “Our relations with Kiri are good. This isn’t going to be like your other exam. No one’s going to try and kill you.”
I don’t think that’s true, Tori thought. People were always trying to kill her. It was part of her charm.
“Are you worried about pushing through a fight low on chakra?” Kushina asked, settling down on a beach towel with her own lunch. Naruto plopped down next to her, immediately getting sand all over the towel.
“No, I’m confident I can handle that,” Tori said. She didn’t favor chakra-heavy techniques, but she’d definitely fucked up a lot of jutsu experiments and spent way more chakra than she meant, and being in Oto ment sometimes you just had to do a task post losing all your chakra to an experiment.
“Good,” Kushina said, nodding to herself. “Because I know you’ve been sparring with Deidara, and… well, I don’t think he or I are good for advice on that.”
Tori snorted. No, she didn’t think they would be.
“Do ninja have to fight a lot with no chakra?” Naruto asked, sounding concerned.
Minato, seated on his own towel rolled out next to them, poked Naruto’s leg with one foot.
“You probably won’t have that problem,” Minato said. “Because you’re your mother’s son. But yes, it’s normal to have to do a mission low on chakra, or tired, or hungry.”
“That sounds like it sucks,” Naruto said, frowning. “Why would you assign a mission that sucks?”
Minato grinned back at him. “Well, I try really hard to make missions as easy as possible, but sometimes things go wrong.”
“Like a storm during the fruit vendor union’s meeting,” Kushina said brightly.
“Er. Yes, like that…”
Tori sat on her own towel across from them, eating in silence as she watched the family tease each other. It seemed wild they were all being this nonchalant while she was freaking out. Then again, why would they care about her, when they had their own little happy family to concern themselves with?
The problem with practicing high-chakra techniques was that Tori had already spent so much chakra that not even resting and eating had recouped enough to make anything besides a tiny whirlpool. She was done with that training for the day, whether she wanted to be or not.
“I guess Minato can take you home, if you want,” Kushina said. “Or you can stay. Have you ever been on a beach before, Tori?”
Tori hadn’t seen a beach in years. Tori did actually quite like the beach; she probably would have been overjoyed if she hadn’t come here already stressed and upset. She agreed to stay.
The tide had gone out, leaving a wide stretch of wet sand that glinted in the sunlight, algae-covered boulders, and shallow tide pools. Tori watched the Namikaze-Uzumaki family walk out over it, led by Naruto’s screams of delight.
Tori stripped off her kunoichi dress, down to her bathing suit, and kicked off her sandals. She’d been swimming in plenty of rivers and lakes, but she’d missed the sensation of sand between her toes.
“Whoa!” Naruto cried. “Look at this guy!”
He held up a horseshoe crab. Tori jogged over to them, eager to look at it herself.
“They have blue blood,” she told Naruto excitedly. He looked up at her curiously. “Because their blood cells use copper as an oxygen carrier instead of iron. Isn’t that cool?”
Naruto’s face of wonder at the idea of blue blood shifted to confusion. Tori wasn’t sure this kid had understood a single thing she’d told him, possibly ever. Kushina laughed at them.
They spent the afternoon combing the tide pools for cool little creatures. Kushina knew the names for almost all of them, from the two different types of mudskippers they unearthed, to a bunch of different types of crabs, to a handful of sea cucumbers, to a rainbow of anemones and seaweeds.
“Tide pool hopping was my favorite game, back in Uzushio, you know,” Kushina told Tori with a hint of sadness in her voice. She held up the tiny hermit crab in her palm. “I used to keep a bunch of these. I was always hoping they’d move into the prettier shells I’d find for them. They never did, though.”
She laughed, but the sound was quieter than Kushina’s laughs usually were.
Tori opened her mouth to say she’d always begged her parents for a hermit crab when she was a kid, because she liked the painted shells seaside shops sold with them. The story died on her lips before she could make a single syllable. That part of her life was way over. She only ever let herself think about it in the darkest part of the night now.
Instead she said, “Yeah, tide pools are super cool. I like reading about them. I’m glad I could see them in person.”
Kushina grinned at her.
“I’m lucky I can still share stuff like this with my family,” Kushina said, voice brighter now. She gently replaced the hermit crab on the edge of its tide pool. “If you ever want to join us again, sometimes we also go to a mainland beach in…”
Kushina babbled. At some point, Minato disappeared and reappeared with a bunch of popsicles. Tori found a spiral of shark eggs and attempted to convince a giggling Naruto he should eat them. They went back to their things only to discover biting ants had invaded all of their bags.
“We could put out food and draw them away!” Naruto said, a handful of chips from their lunch suddenly in his hands.
“Do not do that,” Minato yelped, grabbing for Naruto’s wrist.
They went home all covered in ant bites. Apparently not even a Kage could win against mother nature.
Tori walked home with a smile on her face, happy with her afternoon. It wasn’t until she was home and heating up water for instant noodles that she realized she hadn’t actually solved any of her problems. She could make a medium whirlpool now, but she’d only get one shot at it, and she had no idea how to approach that.
Oh god, she thought, heartbeat suddenly increasing. And I only have two weeks left!
xXx
Kushina and Deidara just spammed high-chakra techniques as much as they wanted. They wouldn’t be good for advice. But Tori did have another teammate.
Itachi was annoyingly hard to track down nowadays. He took a lot of away missions in ANBU, which Minato was tightlipped about with even Kushina, so that route of tracking his movements was limited. If Tori wanted to find him, she had to talk to his family, which she always felt super awkward about.
“He didn’t give us a return date, dear,” Mikoto told her when she answered the door, smile serene. Tori wondered if she seemed dumb in Mikoto’s eyes. Yes, she knew ANBU agents often couldn’t say when they’d be back. She just thought she’d ask on the off chance that he had!
Mikoto offered to let her stay for tea. Tori fled as quickly and politely as she could.
Tori started doing increasingly unhinged things, like watching the Academy when it let out because she knew Itachi liked picking up Sasuke and would prioritize getting home in time to do it if he could. She spent a lot of time haunting the outside of ANBU HQ and Itachi’s favorite bakery. None of these things, her anxiety-riddled brain pointed out, helped her train at all.
She didn’t even find Itachi doing this. Instead, Kakashi tapped her on the shoulder while she was sneaking into the ANBU breakroom after hours.
“Fantastically illegal activities you’re up to, my sweet ninja sibling,” he drawled.
Tori had basically jumped out of her skin, but she’d managed not to scream. God, Kakashi could hide his presence completely.
“I’m trying to find Itachi,” she said, voice strangled. Then she cocked her head to the side as she considered Kakashi. “Actually, maybe you can help instead. Got a few minutes for some mentoring?”
Kakashi was in full ANBU uniform, so she couldn’t see his face. He did lean back slightly, regarding her. She knew that, despite his posturing about calling Team 4 his “siblings,” Kakashi was pretty hit-or-miss about actually wanting to hang out with anyone at all. He liked privacy and was allergic to intimacy, and she had no idea if helping a genin out of the goodness of his heart was pushing it or not.
After a long, awkward silence, Kakashi finally said. “Alright. Give me twenty minutes to shower and change.”
He sent her to a nearby teahouse to meet and then didn’t show up for another forty-five minutes. The tea Tori ordered for them was lukewarm by the time he walked in.
“I became lost in thought in the shower,” he said dreamily.
“Gross,” Tori told him.
Kakashi blinked lethargically at her. “I did not imply that at all, my dirty-minded sibling.”
Tori cut to the chase, explaining her current mess of a situation to him. She was supposed to win a bunch of fights, act charming and cool while she did it, and on top of all that, she had to use a high-chakra fuuinjutsu technique she was unlikely to get comfortable with in the current timeframe.
“What… exactly… are you asking for advice on?” Kakashi asked when she was finished.
“You end up with chakra exhaustion a lot,” Tori said pointblank. “I guess I was wondering… I don’t know, how do you deal with not having enough chakra for your own techniques?”
“Hmm,” Kakashi said, drumming his fingers on the table between them. “You know, you’re right. Maybe being charming and ‘peppy’ is impossible for you. That was pretty mean.”
Tori kicked him under the table.
“I still don’t understand what you’re torn up about,” Kakashi said, his eye crinkling up in a teasing grin at her. “When I met you, you had no accessible chakra, and that didn’t slow you down at all. Why does the idea of spending it all on one technique upset you so much?”
“I guess…” Tori fidgeted with the cup in her hands. “If I just had to win a fight, that would be one thing. But I’m supposed to do a very specific thing, and I’ll only really get one shot at it.”
“Ah,” Kakashi said. There was a long pause. Then he said, “I am trying to think of a joke appropriate for a fourteen year old.”
“Gross!” Tori laughed.
“Maa,” Kakashi said. “Unfortunately I don’t think there’s a very good answer to your conundrum. If you screw up, you screw up. Any big technique is like that. If it helps, you’re at a normal part of any ninja’s journey.”
Tori wasn’t… she wasn’t a proper ninja, though. She felt like a pretender, a fake, a kid playing make believe. She had no idea how to communicate this to Kakashi without sounding completely insane.
“I think maybe,” Kakashi continued, leaning back in his seat, “you’re more anxious because it’s not your original technique, so you’re not as confident with it. You’re used to having done all the development and troubleshooting yourself, and the lack of control on that end is freaking you out.”
“...Huh,” Tori said. That… that definitely could be part of it.
“I’m not the person to ask about original techniques,” Kakashi drawled. “But I will say that the key to mastering someone else’s technique is to make it your own. You don’t have to use it exactly the way Kushina does. You have to figure out how to make it work with your style.”
“That’s actually really helpful,” Tori said with a weak smile. “Thanks, Kakashi.”
“Anytime,” Kakashi replied, and then disappeared into a puff of smoke, leaving her with the bill.
xXx
Tori felt slightly at peace for a few more days, spending time analyzing the jutsu scroll and cross-referencing pieces of it with her research materials. This seemed closer to who she actually was. It soothed her.
Then Deidara spiked her anxiety all over again by showing her a lease he’d signed. There was another line with an X next to it, for her to sign as well.
“I haven’t even seen the apartment,” Tori said, feeling hysterical. Why was everyone making all these insane decisions for her?!
“It’s cool, I promise,” Deidara said. “But we have to sign quick. The landlord only gave me a couple days to decide, yeah.”
Tori leafed through the lease furiously. The address was in a really nice neighborhood, the square footage was impressive, and the lease listed patio furniture among assets they’d be liable for, implying the existence of that outdoor space she wanted. Half the total rent would be a huge stretch even on a chunin salary, and she might not even get that.
“I’m willing to divide up rent proportional to our salaries, but I get the bigger bedroom,” Deidara said.
“Even if I stay a genin?” Tori snapped. She shoved the paper and the pen at him.
“You’re not going to stay a genin, yeah,” he replied, annoyed, and shoved it back at her.
“The average age of promotion is fifteen,” Tori said, her voice cracking embarrassingly. “Thirty percent of shinobi never even make chunin.”
Tori had less than a week to prepare before heading out. She felt like she needed months to practice as much as she wanted, and she didn’t have the time or energy to deal with this. And yet, she found herself skipping her training ground booking to take a tour of an apartment.
“Be quick,” the landlord said. “The current tenants only agreed to thirty minutes.”
The apartment was really nice. Nicer than she’d even ever considered an apartment could be, really. All three of the bedrooms and their own narrow balconies, not quite enough for furniture but enough for a potted plant and to step out onto in the morning, and there was a rooftop terrace.
“We could make this one an office,” Deidara said, gesturing at the smallest bedroom, which was the size of a very determined closet and currently done up as a baby room. The current tenants wanted an actual house for their growing family, apparently.
Deidara could easily afford a pretty nice apartment on a Jounin salary, even if he had zero savings to fall back on. Tori assumed his insistence on her rooming with him was the little income bump to get him something even better than “pretty nice.” He probably felt like he deserved it, after all those years as a feral forest child.
She certainly couldn’t afford anything approaching this good on her own. If she wanted anything bigger than her dorm room on her own, she’d have to either get incredibly lucky or look in one of the shittier outer neighborhoods, which was why she hadn’t done it.
When they were done with the tour, the landlord stared expectantly at them. Deidara cleared his throat and looked meaningfully at her.
Oh, so he’d gotten this last minute tour because he’d promised the landlord she’d sign.
Tori low-key felt like flipping them both off and stomping off. Her hand balled into a fist.
“The café on the corner is supposed to have the best coffee in Konoha, yeah,” Deidara said, eyes glinting.
“Fine,” Tori seethed. “I’ll sign.”
If she didn’t make chunin, her life really was going to turn into a shit show.
So long, take-out lunches, she thought as she signed her life away.
As they walked back to the dorms, Tori actually thought a little harder about what they’d just done. She’d never rented an apartment herself before, but Deidara had been working on moving out since he made chunin. She’d listened to a lot of rants about biases landlords had against younger ninja, even if they had high salaries. Usually ninja got charged high, multi-month deposits, to cover the landlord in case the renter should randomly die. It prevented younger ninja, who didn’t have savings, from renting higher-end places even if they could afford the monthly rent.
“There wasn’t anything in the lease about a deposit,” Tori said, confused. Was that a separate thing she’d also suddenly have shoved in front of her? “Or… key money?”
Deidara beamed at her. “I found a way around that! I just got a cosigner to cover us, yeah.”
“Cosigner…?” Tori repeated. “That wasn’t on the lease…”
“Yeah, usually that’d be in there and it wouldn’t get you out of a deposit,” Deidara agreed. “But turns out you can get away with anything with a letter from Hokage-sama, yeah!”
Tori stopped dead in her tracks. Oh good, now if she didn’t make chunin, the Hokage would know she couldn’t make rent.
“What?” Deidara said, putting his hand on his hip. “You wanted to read his note too? Tori, you're such a nerd–”
Tori resisted the urge to scream.
xXx
Itachi finally found her two days before she was set to leave. He found her setting up at the training ground she had booked for the morning.
“Both my mother and Kakashi-sempai said you were looking for me,” he said, eyeing the line of bamboo poles she set out in the packed dirt.
“Yeah,” Tori said, pointing accusingly at him. “You are impossible to find, asshole.”
“I apologize,” Itachi said, not sounding the least sorry. “I’ve been… increasingly uncomfortable at home, and have been taking longer missions.”
Tori squinted at him. She’d thought Danzo being gone would make his family situation better, not worse.
“Is something wrong?” she asked carefully.
Itachi, being an uncommunicative asshole, just shook his head. He didn’t look any more stressed than he usually did: he had killer bags under his eyes, but that was his normal state of being. His hair was recently washed and shiny, not gross from too much time on missions and not enough time with shower access. His body language was calm and lacked the weird twitchy movements he’d get when he was trying not to lose his shit on someone.
He was at least physically taking care of himself, then. She had no idea what went on in his messed up little brain, but Sasuke had seemed perfectly happy and sociable those days she’d clandestinely stalked him, which was a good predictor of Itachi’s anxiety levels.
“Did you want something from me?” Itachi prompted.
“Oh,” Tori said. “Kakashi ended up helping me out, actually.”
She briefly explained her current conundrum.
“Kiri?” Itachi asked, and Tori noted he brightened ever so much. This was basically the Itachi version of perking up like a dog hearing the treat bag rustle. It was almost cute.
“Yeah,” Tori said. “The other thing I wanted to ask was if you want me to tell you-know-who anything.”
“Hmm, no,” Itachi said, without the slightest hint of malice in his voice.
“Really?”
“If I had something to say,” Itachi said blandly, “I would simply send a crow.”
Tori’s lips thinned. Itachi was… not a very good friend, in her opinion. But it also wasn’t in her place to micromanage his friendship with Kisame.
“Perhaps you can ask how he’s doing,” Itachi said mildly. “I would like to know.”
That was… that was cute, actually.
“Sure,” Tori agreed.
Itachi next turned back to her bamboo poles.
“Is this for your mission?” he asked.
“Mm,” Tori said. “I’m making an overly complicated jutsu to look cool. Wanna help? I need someone to swing a sword at me.”
Itachi was happy to comply. He was, Tori abruptly remembered, a terrifying person to have swing a sword at you.
But she did get her jutsu working.
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For anyone wanting more here is a sneak peak for chapter two! (no editing done yet so excuse any mistakes)
“Just ‘cause Aeron Bracken is such a pretty boy doesn’t mean I have to be.” He grumbled at himself in the mirror, frowning deeply, he continued to adjust his shirt.
“Are you talking to yourself now?” Benjicot yelled from the other side of the door. “Dude can you have your breakdown or whatever somewhere else? I gotta piss!” Having his little cousin rush the same fraternity as him had seemed kind of fun, at first. His little cousin was now his little brother under fraternity rules and they’d always gotten along, only two years apart, growing up in houses next to each other. But now the little fucker had grown to be a goddamn nuisance to Davos. Benji had always been on the shyer side, he was more withdrawn and thoughtful than Davos ever was, but with those he was close with he was a cunning irritating little mischief maker. Benji was now plenty close with the Kappa Tau boys and didn’t shy away from being a pain in Davos’ ass whenever the opportunity presented itself. “Dude! Unlock the door.” The boy downright whined.
Davos practically ripped open the door to glare at his cousin. “You couldn’t piss downstairs? Or outside for all I care.”
“Ew. No. Move.” Benjicot shoved in past Davos, ignoring that he had not actually been let in.
“I wasn’t done. Asshat.” He grumbled, moving to put away the hair products that were scattered across the counter, those in the house who actually used any product mostly just shared, taking turns buying what they needed.
“Why are you being so weird anyway?” Benji asked, already unzipping his pants without a care.
“I’m not.” Davos turned the things he’d thrown off, stuffing jewelry in his pockets and draping his shirts and pants over his forearm.
“Yeah, you are. We’ve known each other for too long for you to pull one over on me, mate. You meeting someone?”
Davos cleared his throat, shrugged one shoulder. “Something like that.” He mumbled, finally leaving the bathroom.
------
“I was just thinking and looking in your general direction! It’s not that deep, Davos.” Truthfully Aeron had been thinking that he hadn’t seen the other boy look so…put together, in his own way.
Davos rolled his eyes, ashing his cigarette. “Fine, whatever, but keeping things from your boyfriend is a bad look.” When he smiled at Aeron it looked sharp and like it was all teeth, it made a shiver run through him. The way Davos said the word ‘boyfriend’ made Aeron’s stomach flip weirdly.
“I’ll keep that in mind.” He sassed back, trying not to seem affected. “Can we figure out this arrangement so I can go back to living my life?”
“Hey, I’m the one doing you a favor here.” Davos reminded him with a sneer.
“Right, well, we should probably get into that. That is why we’re here.”
“Yeah.” He agreed, sitting up in his chair and leaning forward, blowing smoke out of one side of his mouth. “So what is the set up for this? Want to invite me to the Bracken family dinner to piss off the old cunts?”
“Can you maybe be a little less- harsh? They’re still my family, not all of them are horrible.”
“Agree to disagree.” He snarked back, but cut Aeron off before he could respond to that. “But fine, I’ll try and reign myself in - for now.”
“Thanks.” Aeron grumbled. “So, it’s…well our original idea is a bit more involved than that.” He admitted. “If that’s okay with you, that is. We can scale it back if you want.”
Davos wore an amused smirk. “What exactly do you have in mind?”
“Well, my cousin Erwin is getting married in a couple months. It’s this whole big thing, of course, a big destination wedding.”
“Ohh, I see.”
“Yeah, Aly and I-” Aeron felt the need to bring up that another person had thought this was a good idea and he hadn’t cooked it up on his own. Which probably didn’t bode well for the plan overall; Aeron was choosing to ignore those danger signs. “-thought it would be pretty…- funny? Great? Eye-opening? - to sort of ‘trap’ my homophobic family members with my boyfriend as their guest. The Bracken’s are very proud and we value hospitality, especially for guests. But we also value how people see us and, of course, we value our faith.”
“It would be pitting all their principles against each other, all at once, constantly.”
I Know I'm Just a Phase Chapter One: The Deal
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Fandom: House of The Dragon
Pairing: Davos Blackwood x Aeron Bracken
Rating: Mature+
Tags/Tropes: Fake/Pretend Dating, Modern Setting, College/University, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, Pining, Angst, Vaction, Frat Boy Davos, Teasing, Banter, The Lads (Fire & Blood), Meeting the Parents
Summary: “What would I be getting out of it?” “Ah, yeah, that…well, I figured you might have fun wreaking havoc on the Bracken family and, uh, I honestly couldn’t think of something else you’d need from me so I thought you could tell me what you want in return?” “Like an ‘I owe you’ situation.” “Yeah, next time you need a favor you know I’ll get you, no matter what.” Davos hummed thoughtfully, “How about we go over the terms of this little arrangement and then I’ll tell you if I’m signing up for this nonsense."
---
or Aeron wants to get back at his family for not accepting him being gay so he decides to date someone who would piss them off for more than just being a boy - Davos Blackwood.
#davos blackwood#aeron bracken#davron#brackwood#brackenwood#davron fanfic#davron au#brackwood fanfic#davron fic#davron fanfiction#brackwood fic#brackwood au#davos x aeron#aeron bracken x davos blackwood#davos blackwood x aeron bracken#aeron x davos#fanfic#ao3#archive of our own#fanfiction#my fic#I know I’m just a phase
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#zelink#zelda#link#botw#totk#i am late#to the zelda hair trend#but the styles were so cute cant wait to draw them all!!#WIP#i like the disheveled style#it made her look free and happy and just chaotic just like link#a couple of gremlins#thats what they are#without any rules they can do whatever they wanted#and thats beautiful#they truly belong together in the wild i cannooottt
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What exactly are living gods in the blightseed universe?
Ok here's the (DANGEROUSLY vestigial at this point) Meta Deeplore:
There is a material form of energy that is utilized by biological bodies essentially as an animating force. This IS the vaguely defined, extremely ambiguous magic in the setting. It is what produces the actual experience of Consciousness and can be basically considered 1:1 with conscious experience. All life utilizes this energy (whether actually conscious life in the traditional sense or not).
It cannot be created or destroyed, and rather follows pathways of dispersal between one material plane and a parallel plane. This parallel plane is 'the ether' 'the dreamlands' etc, and has its own matter. Discrete entities from the dreamlands are essentially formed as a byproduct of consciousness and, when interacted with, are deeply susceptible to the influence of conscious Thought (they are essentially matter organized By consciousness and can be reorganized by consciousness)
These are the entities that can become living gods. Dreamlands fauna occasionally slips into prime material reality, at which point they are directly under the influence of consciousness and can be transformed. Dreamlands fauna in of itself is not directly perceivable but produces a sense of Presence, like the feeling of being watched when alone in the wilderness, a 'third man effect', a sense of inexplicable awe or fear, seeing shadows from the corner of your eye, etc. The combination of their tangible effects and their susceptibility to consciousness creates a self-reinforcing cycle that produces living gods.
IE: if one is on a forest and people experience the sensation of its presence, belief that there is some entity there may develop. This will follow the lines of the cultural worldview- say there are already beliefs in spectral hounds that encounter travelers at night, it might be interpreted as a location-specific hound, given a name and identity through stories. This in turn causes the dreamlands fauna to physically embody that form and the assumed qualities, and people will start having absolute materially real encounters with it, thus reinforcing the initial beliefs that created it and generating new elements of the mythology. This is what a living god is.
They need persistent, localized, and coherent beliefs to hold their forms. If a village creates a living god and is then wiped out in a disaster, the god will gradually lose its form and return to its initial state of a sense of Presence. This is also a limiting factor on the 'size' and power of a living god, if an entire religion formed around it and became a widespread phenomena, the living god itself cannot 'keep up'. It is sustained on direct and localized interactions, so belief becoming widely dispersed (especially if the localized belief is lost) will cause it to gradually become less discrete. The effect of this property is that living gods are almost always minor deities or spirits tied to a specific location by a specific nearby culture. A lot of deities in larger religions may have once had a living god component that is now indiscrete.
The living god of the Ur-tree is an unusual exception in that it was created over millennia, basically by the survival instincts of the Plants it interacts with, and has held its form over hundreds of millions of years due to this being ubiquitous and un-susceptible to cultural change. The only thing that could 'kill it' is if its forest was entirely destroyed.
So 99% of living gods can be described as thoughtforms created by the process of folkloric/religious development. They are created BY people and not the other way around, and nothing about their nature confirms or denies the existence of other deities or etc.
And yeah I'm going to be 100% real I am REALLY tempted to dump even this extremely ambiguous magical element like it is soooooooooooooooo fucking NOT important to the setting at this point. I've kind of allowed 'literal god entities created by mortal belief' to be just a tiny part of the world's fabric by their nature, like it works within the worldbuilding for such a hugely significant concept to ultimately be insignificant in the overall framework, so I COULD just Leave It but idk. If it were not for me wanting to still have my big fucking god tree and a talking dog as an actual character it would be out of here soooo fast..........
#And see I can see ways out of it without fully destroying the concepts like. I would fully lose my talking dog but could still#have the Ur-Tree exist in a similar (but perhaps less cool) capacity with like a Very Special Fungus that has maintained#a stable ecosystem over a very long geological scale.#Most of the established lore of specific living gods could continue to exist as folklore. It's already a thing that I avoid#confirming or denying any religious outlook and don't want to establish religions that are 'More Correct' than others#(I kind of don't like that dichotomy that sometimes comes up in fantasy settings with Confirmed deities.)#Just gonna say if the concept stops coming up altogether do not be surprised.#Like initially this setting was just a mass dumping ground for ideas but now that it's pretty heavily developed it has too much of its own#identity and rules for me to just do whatever. And 'canon' supernatural elements don't really have a place.#Every supernatural component of this setting getting whacked 1 by 1. The outro to 'Layla' playing in the background.#Press F.
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it's not sinking in that today might be the last day in my house and town for many months to come
#like how do i even feel#on one hand im excited because like now that i finally agreed to dads stupid whims he technically will have to give in to things#ive been wanting since FOREVER like going to the gym#plus it's impossible to eat junk food when he's there he won't even let me kacchi maggi because maida hai bimar ho jayegi#and aadhe se zyada din toh pyaaz ye sab nahi kha sakte so it rules out any outside food#which is so good because like i just found out im pre diabetic lol#like borderline sugar like ab kuch nahi kiya toh seedha type 2 diabetes#so i need to eat healthy or ill literally die#i mean eventually but whatever being diagnosed with this in my 20s would kill me#also simply the fear of living with him is so much that i HAVE to study#and i want to now it's high time#but yeah want doesn't really work for me#i read a quote somewhere that 'goals' don't mean anything because winners and losers have the same goals#and i was like WOAH. like the person who gets an all india rank had the same goal as me: to pass the exam with good marks#but they succeeded and i didn't so it's isn't our goals that differentiate us#which ik is obvious but like still idk put things in perspective#anyway yeah that way my life MIGHT be fixed#but there's also living ALONE with my sociopathic FATHER who has more mood swings than me on pms#and being cut off frm the rest of civilisation and yk developed roads and buildings and ice cream shops#i guess it is mostly food ig :( which is good like the most junk food i can eat there is a burger from a nearby stall and that's pretty#much it they literally do not even have havmor or anything in walking distance forget scoop wali ice cream#but i like my bed and i like my ceiling with the stars and i like looking out of my window and knowing that the first ever crush of my life#lives right next to me and i like knowing that ill meet my bestfriend atleast once a month#i don't really love my mom or my brother tbh but idk maybe ill miss them it's weird ive never lived without them#i don't know i really hope that this is like a boot camp kota types experience rather than so much isolation that i sink deep into#depression. but then ive hit pretty shocking lows this year so hopefully i can handle it#my sister did say that when she lived alone with him for a month it was quite peaceful and okay because he usually gets more angry when mom#is around warna mostly he's fine#i don't know i don't know bhagwan ji please ab aur mushkil mat banana life bohot jhatke de chuke ho already ab pls#mujhe apni galtiyo ko sudharne ka mauka dena 🙏
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Boys we did it somebody reposted my art on reddit under a dissing abt Saint Seiya 🤣😂😭
#wren text tag#art goals fr or whatever 😂😭#to be fair it's just the picture without any “credit to” or “found this on tumblr”#my watermark is still visible. However according to the subreddit rules any fan art posted should be credited#don't know if I should comment with a “I don't want my art reposted. Can you please take it down?”#anyway I have to say. This is one of the funniest possible outcomes since I've started posting my StS fanarts#I would have guessed it was going to be... idk... Aldemu fanarts in a rant about StS ships#in any case guys. I find this very hilarious but please do not repost my art#or if you really have to. Like in a matter of life or death kind of situation... please add a “Art by @doodlingwren on Tumblr”#AND I'm being SARCASTIC. I DON'T LIKE my art being reposted around. (I'm surprised it took so little time tho)#btw I do have a reddit but I don't post art there. Just so you know
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the other day, a friend of mine invited me over to testplay a paper-and-pencil storytelling game he's been working on for a while and feels like he's finally got a workable version of and one of his mentioned reasons was that "you're a fellow storyteller, I want to see what you'll do with it"
I promptly created a character which violated exactly zero (0) rules but nonetheless obliterated one of the core intended mechanical limitations of the game and I didn't even do that on purpose
after the game, when we were laughing about this, he admitted that one of his other reasons for asking me specifically to testplay was because he knew that "if there was anything that could be broken, you would find it and break it"
#me#so basically there are two categories of player character that you either control both of#or you play as a team of two and control one each#one character exists within the context of the setting and the other is a reality warper#the rules for these characters are very very simple. the in-context character MUST exist within the setting and understand it to be reality#and the reality warper can do whatever they want to the setting SO LONG AS it does not break the in-universe character's understanding of i#you are. to borrow my friends' phrasing. not allowed to break the fourth wall for the in-context character#how did I completely break this situation without actually violating any rules you may ask?#I made my in-context character be a random guy that my reality warper zapped into existence at the start of the game#thus. his understanding of reality was still forming.#and reality warpers could interact with him at will because HE DOESN'T KNOW THEY'RE /NOT/ SUPPOSED TO BE THERE#again. I did not do this on purpose. I wouldn't even have realised it if he hadn't pointed it out#I just thought my guy being created by the reality warper for the purpose of the game and being like five minutes old while he saved the wo#*world#was REALLY funny
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{Hero Archetypes: The More... something version}
The Fallen Hero You are the Fallen Hero, a tragic embodiment of betrayal, vengeance, or perhaps a heart-wrenching love story turned awry. Whether exposed to corrupting influences, manipulated by deal-makers, brainwashed, extorted, blackmailed, or witnessing the destruction of sacred bonds, your descent into darkness is marked by profound sorrow and loss. You might have turned for the sake of greed. Yet within, a lingering spark of hope remains, compelling you to reluctantly extend assistance to the newcomers. Motivated by the sincere desire to shield them from the same tragic fate you endured, you find yourself driven to guide and protect, despite the shadows of your own past.
tagged by: @tarnishedxknight tagging: anyone!!
#quiz#((*taps fingers together* I have;;; thoughts on this#so this isn't. quite accurate for Gylfie as she does have morals and does act for what is good#which is going against Vayne and fighting for all of Ivalice instead of continuing to blindly go with Archadia's expansion#because she knows Vayne will destroy Ivalice in his constant need for power and Archadia will devour herself before she's full#so Gylfie never fell in the sense of turning on what is right and following Vayne without question#or continuing to believe that it was the destiny of the Empire to conquer all#with that all said - I can see her having a corruption arc and I think that'd be fun to explore heh#but also this is accurate with how Gylfie sees *herself*#I really should write a post about this at some point lol#but Gylfie doesn't believe herself to be a good person whatsoever. She used to believe Archadia was the best of the best for *years*#and felt it appropriate for the Empire she loved so much to continue her expansion and that Rozarria was 100% the enemy#and... never thought twice about the smaller kingdoms caught in the warpath#her mother's criticism of Archadia slowly began to chip at that but she wasn't disillusioned until Nabudis because *that*#was something she absolutely couldn't get behind no matter how she felt about the Empire. it was a horrific and brutal act that greatly#disturbed her and really snapped her out of it#also Ffamran leaving did make her start to question things a bit but not quite enough#anyway my point is: Gylfie doesn't believe herself to be a good person. she believes herself to be a *product* of war#to be too much like her father to be a good person#and that she's done so much harm that there is no room for her to be good#with that said she doesn't necessarily see herself as a horrible person but. definitely not a good one#and ABSOLUTELY doesn't see herself as *any* kind of hero - she'd honestly just laugh if someone called her one#but she had been brainwashed essentially and she had witnessed destruction of sacred bonds#and she has acted selfishly and she has done horrible things in the name of the Empire#but she also tries so hard to do *right* despite it all. she *wants* Archadia to be better#she *wants* Ivalice to remain whole and she does what she can to see Vayne defeated and Archadia changed for the better#her goal of becoming Judge Magister changes from her believing it was her birthright to her wanting to be one to make sure Archadia#stays on track and continues to do better under Larsa's rule because she knows he'll make the Empire *better*#and she's willing to do whatever she can to protect him and protect Archadia's future#but with that she may have to do things that wouldn't necessarily be considered *good*
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Another mainstream Fallout game without mulchable human enemies. Instead, there is a tight intercommunity on a much smaller map, where the player begins in long stretches of isolation. The first NPCs the player see is through the scope of their trusty rifle, with names like Bandit and Raider. It's a Fallout game.
Do you take the shot?
#it's just that like on a meta level the newer games kind of condition you to kill whatever you come across#with no special emphasis on any kind of life. and it definitely rewards you for doing this#raiders without names. it's become mindless fodder for the player#and that's all good and well. it's a video game and the player isn't mindless at all and neither is the combat#personally i don't want to kill people and see them explode. but i understand this is part of some huge appeal#what i want is just like. a little nuance to these things. named enemies and less radiant quests and fewer things to do with more impact#it's just interesting because by the game's own rules these NPCs above should be shot on sight (this is mostly about Fallout 4)#and I'd like a game where no life should be taken automatically. where everyone has something to say or something to lose. a story that is-#being told whether we the player are in on it or regardless of if we ever even know (or if we care to pay attention)#the distinct horror where you've killed someone without considering their life. i don't want to trick the player. these NPCs won't be-#dressed in raider gear. it's just an interesting option that comes up. it's been 20 minutes. these are the first people you see.#what do you do?#and now using mutants or ghouls as a backup enemy option is just for fools. they should be treated with the same respect. you know?#it's just that this is a game about post apocalyptica. haven't we lost enough?#when do we stop burning down our world and start fixing it?#maybe it doesn't have to be mainstream. maybe it's the equivalent of a Working f4 settlement builder and we can romp around saving people.#hunting things.#the franchise business#fallout
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please help me- i used to be pretty smart but i’m having so much trouble grasping the concept of diegetic vs non-diegetic bdsm!
gfkjldghfd okay first of all I'm sorry for the confusion, if you're not finding anything on the phrase it's because I made it up and absolutely nobody but me ever uses it, but I haven't found a better way to express what I'm trying to say so I keep using it. but now you've given me an excuse to ramble on about some shit that is only relevant to me and my deeply inefficient way of talking and by god I'm going to take it.
SO. the way diegetic and non-diegetic are normally used is to talk about music and sound design in movies/tv shows. in case you aren't familiar with that concept, here's a rundown:
diegetic sound is sound that happens within the world of the movie/show and can be acknowledged by the characters, like a song playing on the stereo during a driving scene, or sung on stage in Phantom of the Opera. it's also most other sounds that happen in a movie, like the sounds of traffic in a city scene, or a thunderclap, or a marching band passing by. or one of the three stock horse sounds they use in every movie with a horse in it even though horses don't really vocalize much in real life, but that's beside the point, the horse is supposed to be actually making that noise within the movie's world and the characters can hear it whinnying.
non-diegetic sound is any sound that doesn't exist in the world of the movie/show and can't be perceived by the characters. this includes things like laugh tracks and most soundtrack music. when Duel of Fates plays in Star Wars during the lightsaber fight for dramatic effect, that's non-diegetic. it exists to the audience, but the characters don't know their fight is being backed by sick ass music and, sadly, can't hear it.
the lines can get blurry between the two, you've probably seen the film trope where the clearly non-diegetic music in the title sequence fades out to the same music, now diegetic and playing from the character's car stereo. and then there are things like Phantom of the Opera as mentioned above, where the soundtrack is also part of the plot, but Phantom of the Opera does also have segments of non-diegetic music: the Phantom probably does not have an entire orchestra and some guy with an electric guitar hiding down in his sewer just waiting for someone to break into song, but both of those show up in the songs they sing down there.
now, on to how I apply this to bdsm in fiction.
if I'm referring to diegetic bdsm what I mean is that the bdsm is acknowledged for what it is in-world. the characters themselves are roleplaying whatever scenarios their scenes involve and are operating with knowledge of real life rules/safety practices. if there's cnc depicted, it will be apparent at some point, usually right away, that both characters actually are fully consenting and it's all just a planned scene, and you'll often see on-screen negotiation and aftercare, and elements of the story may involve the kink community wherever the characters are. Love and Leashes is a great example of this, 50 Shades and Bonding are terrible examples of this, but they all feature characters that know they're doing bdsm and are intentional about it.
if I'm talking about non-diegetic bdsm, I'm referring to a story that portrays certain kinks without the direct acknowledgement that the characters are doing bdsm. this would be something like Captive Prince, or Phantom of the Opera again, or the vast majority of bodice ripper type stories where an innocent woman is kidnapped by a pirate king or something and totally doesn't want to be ravished but then it turns out he's so cool and sexy and good at ravishing that she decides she's into it and becomes his pirate consort or whatever it is that happens at the end of those books. the characters don't know they're playing out a cnc or D/s fantasy, and in-universe it's often straight up noncon or dubcon rather than cnc at all. the thing about entirely non-diegetic bdsm is that it's almost always Problematic™ in some way if you're not willing to meet the story where it's at, but as long as you're not judging it by the standards of diegetic bdsm, it's just providing the reader the same thing that a partner in a scene would: the illusion of whatever risk or taboo floats your boat, sometimes to extremes that can't be replicated in real life due to safety, practicality, physics, the law, vampires not being real, etc. it's consensual by default because it's already pretend; the characters are vehicles for the story and not actually people who can be hurt, and the reader chose to pick up the book and is aware that nothing in it is real, so it's all good.
this difference is where people tend to get hung up in the discourse, from what I've observed. which is why I started using this phrasing, because I think it's very crucial to be able to differentiate which one you're talking about if you try to have a conversation with someone about the portrayal of bdsm in media. it would also, frankly, be useful for tagging, because sometimes when you're in the mood for non-diegetic bodice ripper shit you'd call the police over in real life, it can get really annoying to read paragraphs of negotiation and check-ins that break the illusion of the scene and so on, and the opposite can be jarring too.
it's very possible to blur these together the same way Phantom of the Opera blurs its diegetic and non-diegetic music as well. this leaves you even more open to being misunderstood by people reading in bad faith, but it can also be really fun to play with. @not-poignant writes fantastic fanfic, novels, and original serials on ao3 that pull this off really well, if you're okay with some dark shit in your fiction I would highly recommend their work. some of it does get really fucking dark in places though, just like. be advised. read the tags and all that.
but yeah, spontaneous writer plug aside, that's what I mean.
#I found their original stuff while I was researching various waterhorses and their folklore for no reason#because one of the characters in their original work happens to be an each uisge#and then it turned out it ALSO included a lot of figures from welsh folklore in general#so yknow if you happen to have my incredibly specific hyperfixations you'll love it but even if you don't it's great#I didn't mean to bring up phantom of the opera so much it just happens to be very relevant to a lot of my talking points#I haven't actually seen it in years
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despicable
updates as of 22 oct
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Travis Dermott knew that he would draw attention with his actions in the Coyotes’ home opener against the Anaheim Ducks at Mullett Arena on Saturday. The Arizona defenseman just hoped that the spotlight might shine on the issue that he was addressing, not on him.
“You don’t really want to go against rules that are put in place by your employer, but there’s some people who took some positive things from it,” Dermott said. “That’s kind of what I’m looking to impact.
“You want to have everyone feel included and that’s something that I have felt passionate about for a long time in my career. It’s not like I just just jumped on this train. It’s something that I’ve felt has been lacking in the hockey community for a while. I feel like we need supporters of a movement like this; to have everyone feel included and really to beat home the idea that hockey is for everyone.”
“I won’t lie,” said Dermott, who is playing on a one-year, two-way contract. “From the outside, it’s easy to see that I’m putting my career on the line for something. I definitely went through some emotional ups and downs that night, not regretting anything by any means, but I’d love to have maybe done a couple of steps a little different by making sure that everyone was aware of what was going on before I did it.
“I don’t want to put my teammates or my coaches or my GMs or the equipment managers in any kind of bad light when it’s their job to kind of look out for something like this happening. It was definitely something that I did just by myself and was prepared to kind of deal with whatever repercussions the league decides to push towards that. I’m not going to back off and say that this battle is won, but we’re going to find better ways to do it.”
As Dermott noted, LGBTQ+ inclusion is an issue that he has supported for a long time. Without getting into specifics, Dermott said the issue is personal for him because it impacts people close to him.
“I’d be lying if I said I haven’t shed tears about this on multiple occasions,” he said. “So yeah, it’s something I’m definitely very passionate about.
“I’ve met a lot of people that from the outside, it looks like they have everything going right in their life and they have a smile on their face every time they talk to you. But sometimes when we get closer to people and get comfortable enough for them to open up to you, you can see that there’s some pretty dark stuff happening to some good people. It doesn’t take too many times encountering something like that for it to really change someone.
“I’ve been blessed to have some of those opportunities put in front of me to really change my view of what being a good person means; what being a good father and a good example and role model means going forward. You really see how people are hurting and it’s because of a system that maybe no one’s intentionally trying to be malicious about, but until you’ve really had that first-person experience seeing people hurting from it right in front of you, it’s tough to kind of take steps.”
It would be a surprise if the league handed down any sort of punishment. The optics alone would add to the public relations damage that the original ban created. Even so, Dermott reiterated his desire to bring the entire franchise into the fold before he takes similar actions in the future, but he also made it clear that he will not be silenced on the topic.
“It’s not like I’m shutting up and going away,” he said. “I know more questions are going to be coming. We’re just going to be as prepared as we can be to just spread love. That’s the thing. It’s gay pride that we’re talking about, but it could be men’s health. It could be any war. It’s just wanting world peace. Everyone’s got to love each other a little bit more.
“Like my parents said growing up, ‘How awesome would it be to be the guy that people look up to?’ That’s what really hit home when I was a kid, especially from my mom. You want to grow up and be that guy. You want to be the guy that’s having the impact on kids like NHL players had on you. If they had been racist or bigoted, that’s going to have an effect on you.
“With how many eyes are on us, especially with the young kids coming up in the new generation, you want to put as much positive love into their brain as you can. You want them to see that it’s not just being taught or coming from maybe their parents at home. They need to see it in the public eye for it to really make an effect.”
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You're more important than unemployment
Wanted to make a mechanic called "Omen" and made this
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#asks#custom cards#ordinarily i would've thought that making a morph variant would require casting it as a 2/2 for 3#so that it would work alongside morph cards and retain the mystery#but then disguise came along with ward so that means we just get to do whatever we want#also i just realized the puppeteered scarecrow could've been hybrid on the omen cost#that would've been neat#oh wait shit i broke a rule of morph design#Curious Ghost can be cast face-down on turn 2 and then flip on turn 3 to kill a face-down 1/1 and survive#that's not allowed#like if you look at all the disguise cards all the ones that are 2/3s or have first strike or whatever#they all cost at least 5 to flip#because otherwise it could go “for my turn 3 i play a face down” “okay for my turn 3 i also play a face down”#“for my turn 4 i attack with my face down” “i block it with my face down to trade” “i flip it and kill your face down without losing mine”#and apparently that was a big problem when morph was first used so in khans of tarkir they made any 2/3s or whatever cost 5+ to flip#anyway idk what to do with Curious Ghost#maybe make it a 2-drop 2/1 that flips for 1?#oh well these aren't real cards anyway lol
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Too Close for Comfort
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Pairing: Joel Miller x Babysitter!Reader
Summary: You’ve been babysitting Sarah Miller forever. One day, you’re surfing the web on her dad’s computer, and you find some…unusual things in his search history.
Or, Joel likes to jerk off to your lookalike on PornHub. It’s time you showed him what the real thing is like.
Warnings: 18+. Unprotected p-in-v. Oral (m!receiving). Creampie. Mommy/Daddy Roleplay (HEAR ME OUT!!) Brief boot humping. Squirting. Perv!Joel. Breeding kink.
Note: ‘Just call me if anyone else checks in…and by anyone, I mean any swingin dick’ is a line from No Country for Old Men
Word count: 12.7k
Purple slime had been Sarah’s idea.
It was an innocent thing, really. The four-year-old had practically been bouncing on the balls of her feet, eyes wide and shining with excitement when she’d begged—‘Can we pleeeeease?!’—and who were you to tell her no?
You’d only be breaking one small rule of Joel’s, after all. One silly little admonition he’d made before leaving for work the first day you’d started babysitting for him. That had been over a year ago, and he hadn’t even sounded that serious when he’d said it. He probably wouldn’t mind if you bent the rule this one time at Sarah’s behest.
‘Don’t go in the computer room, please.’
Don’t use Joel’s desktop. Don’t rifle through any of the drawers in Joel’s office—it was a mess, but everything was in its place, according to him. Just don’t go in there.
But in exchange for Sarah agreeing to take her nap that day without protest, you’d promised to order her slime.
Purple, gooey, glittery, sticky stuff for her new collection.
You weren’t sure when the fuck putty had become the plaything of choice for kids in Pre-K, but you hadn’t been in a place to judge; whatever Sarah wanted to do, so long as it was safe for her to play with, was totally fine by you.
It was just one rule.
Surely if Mr. Miller knew how badly his daughter wanted the slime, he’d be fine with you booting up his computer once. That was what you kept telling yourself, anyway.
What kept humming through your mind as the desktop came to life and you toggled straight for Google Chrome.
Be quick, be quiet, it’s fine. It’s fine.
Purple goo—it was safe. Innocent. Completely justifiable.
What could the sweet, old, forty-something and forever polite Joel Miller possibly have to hide on this machine that made it wrong for you to buy this one simple toy?
You reached for the keyboard and inhaled a quick breath.
Then you typed one letter, and your heart nearly seized.
P…
…ornhub.com
It was the very first thing that appeared in the search bar.
You couldn’t unsee it. Instinctively, your hand clamped over your mouth, and your eyes widened. You couldn’t help but read the four URLs that immediately dropped down below the first; they were just so garishly inviting.
Hot, Naughty Babysitter gets POUNDED by her Boss!
Slutty Babysitter Gets Railed from Behind and Loves It
Big Dick Boss Gives Babysitter a Passionate Raw Fuck
‘I’ve Never Done This!’ Babysitter Deepthroats Cock
“Oh…my gosh,” you said, words muffled by your palm.
You couldn’t believe what you were seeing. It was just too bizarre, too far out of character, too unlike your boss.
The man had scarcely said ten words to you altogether that didn’t relate to your job in some way or another. He rarely ever engaged in casual confab, and he certainly wasn’t the type to flirt, or make you uncomfortable in the slightest. Frankly, in all the time you’d been babysitting, you always thought you were just…invisible to Joel Miller.
Not this. Never this.
You were still staring at the screen when you realized that you’d missed one URL title from the list. It was long.
It was the most unnerving one of all, you came to see.
Babysitter Lounging Poolside in Hot Red Bikini Gets a BIG Surprise—Her Old Boss Teaches Her How to FUCK
Your hand lowered from your face. It trembled, contemplating, before coming to rest atop the mouse.
Something about this seemed familiar. Strangely…off.
You couldn’t explain it, but your head and your heart and your hand gravitated to that one odd link in particular. You hadn’t even meant to move the mouse. Or press it with your finger. But there you went, following your instincts like some dumb, brainless ditz, and then the screen was changing. Going dark with the shift to an adult site before brightening anew with the thumbnail.
It was paused on one frame. Your jaw slackened.
The girl staring back from the scene was you.
Or looked exactly, uncannily like you anyway.
It was then that you noticed what she was wearing, too—what you guessed wouldn’t be on her body for long—and you glanced down to your own shoulder. Just like your on-screen doppelgänger, you were wearing the same bikini in a bright, cherry-red hue beneath your tank top.
You wore it under your clothes damn near every day, indulging in the Millers’ backyard pool more often than not, and even being allowed to swim there on the days Sarah had summer camp—Joel had been so obliging.
So accommodating and sweet.
You never thought he’d be seeking your fucking twin online on a porn site after watching you traipse around his property wearing it. Your gut clenched; you clicked.
“Hey, sweetheart! Everything go OK?”
The voice that rumbled through the speakers was low. Male. Vaguely paternal and with a hint of a Southern lilt.
You swallowed, knowing exactly where this was going.
You weren’t sure why you were even watching when you could already predict what would become of it. The camera panned over a body identical to yours; it landed on a face that was smiling and sweet and so like your own you almost had to question whether it might not be you after all. Had you somehow forgotten this secret porn alter ego in a bout of amnesia? You kept watching.
The girl bit her bottom lip and let out the phoniest giggle.
“Yes, sir. Perfectly fine. Do you like my new bikini?”
Be so fucking serious, you thought, critically.
Then you remembered it was porn, not an Oscar-winning film. You saw the camera tilt down to her tits, and you had to admit, she had a great rack. A bit nicer than yours.
For a beat, you wondered if Joel had thought the same.
You had to batter those thoughts away, because the next second brought a big, burly hand onto the screen. It reached for the girl with her perfect, perky breasts and it kneaded them softly. No further pretense or prelude was needed—they just jumped right in and let it happen, like this was a normal thing for a babysitter and a boss to do.
Maybe in some other universe it was. In a world where a girl your age could just smile, and bat her eyes, and let them roll back gently as a whimper crossed her lips and she begged him, ‘More, daddy, more!’ this was all okay.
The man squeezed the flesh harder. She whined, and he proceeded to push the red nylon aside and expose the whole expanse of her breast—and holy shit, even the nipple looked like yours. Your mouth opened wider, and for a moment, it was like you couldn’t breathe as you watched that old, sun-kissed hand fondle the breast of a girl who looked just like you. Who was peering up at a man who sounded almost like Joel, murmuring, ‘Attagirl.’
You’d heard your boss say that once.
It had been such a silly, off-handed thing that you doubted he even remembered saying it. But one time, you’d struggled to open the passenger door to his truck before he drove you home. Once you’d narrowly managed to pry it open and slide into your seat, he’d laughed and rumbled: ‘Attagirl.’ Your face had warmed.
Just like your cheeks were doing now, all hot and bothered and desperate to hear more. Presently, the man slid the top off of the girl’s chest, and her breasts hung freely. You could hear him groan behind the camera at the sight, and not too long after that, before he could reach to touch her tits again, she was crawling on her knees toward him. Shuffling easily and expertly across the lawn chair and undoing the belt, button, and zip of his pants in a matter of seconds. A hand smoothed over her head, and you could see her preen beneath his touch.
Before she’d even wrapped her lips around his cock, your stomach was churning. Your fingers were stirring from the mouse and moving gently—again, of their own volition, it seemed—toward the waistband of your own bottoms. It was sick, admittedly. So wrong to be wanting to touch yourself to the very same video your boss had indulged in himself, in the very same chair he had done the deed. But you couldn’t help it. Your fingers slipped under the the fabric of your shorts, then your bikini, then your throat let out the tiniest noise upon seeing a cock appear on-screen. It was abnormally large, of course.
Silently, you wondered if Joel’s might not look the same. Your stomach flipped as soon as the girl took it in her mouth, and your index and middle fingers landed on your clit. You barely needed to touch to feel a jolt of pleasure.
Her head bobbed up and down. You felt powerless to do anything else but rub. And circle. And moan the slightest bit when you saw her coat his length with her shiny spit.
You heard that your noises mirrored hers. You didn’t care. Really, it felt as though you were in a trance, and you couldn’t stop watching, or touching, until you’d had your fill. Like Mr. Miller had done himself. It was all too much.
Before you even realized it, five minutes had passed, the man and woman on-screen were shifting from oral to raw, penetrative sex, and you were nearing your peak. Right before the cock that had been lodged down the girl’s throat could slide into her wet, glistening cunt, you felt your stomach lurch. You rubbed harder, watching the fat and leaking tip of the man’s cock tease through her folds, and just as he was about to slide in and you could finally find your release…a door banged open downstairs.
You almost screamed.
As quickly as you could, you yanked your hand out of your pants and clicked out of that browser even faster. The second you heard footfalls on the steps, you scampered out of there. Half-sprinting, half-tip-toeing down the hall and toward the bathroom, before halting at the door. You made your presence known with one light stomp of your foot, pretending to be turning and walking out, and as soon as you did, Joel was right there. Staring.
Sweating.
Scrubbing at his face with one weary hand, before taking a rag and wiping it through his beard. He sighed heavily.
“Long day?” you chirped while trying to mask the panic.
“Like you wouldn’t believe,” Joel answered, voice wan, “How’s my little terror? Asleep? She give ya any trouble?”
Just asked me to buy her a toy online and inadvertently led me to find your internet Spank Bank archives full of women who look like me. Other than that, it was fine.
“I put her down about an hour ago. She was great.”
You forced a smile, and Joel seemed to believe it.
“Perfect. Need me to give you a ride home?”
“No, no, you should stay here with Sar—”
“‘S’alright. Tommy’s right downstairs.”
Of course he’d brought him home.
“No, really, I can walk. It’s fine—”
“Don’t be silly. C’mon, kiddo.”
Kiddo.
Kiddo.
The man had been jerking off to the thought of you for who knows how long, and now he called you ‘kiddo’?
You hated how arousing the nickname sounded from him
You despised yourself for rubbing your clit in his office.
Most of all, you loathed the way your panties had gotten wet the last time you’d climbed into his truck and heard that word crawl off of his old, drawling tongue: ‘Attagirl.’
Reluctantly, you nodded your head. You followed him downstairs and hoped the car door wouldn’t stick again.
He had to stop.
It was no longer a matter of ‘if’ but ‘when’ his dick would lead him straight off a cliff, and today, Joel was starting to think that precipice was looking extra nice. Tempting.
Almost as inviting as the divot he could see at the small of your back, glimmering with a couple hot beads of sweat under the midafternoon sun. He swallowed.
Sarah was at camp today. You’d had the time to yourself, and the weather was blistering hot, and of course, where else would you be but his backyard? He’d told you ad nauseum, ever since you started babysitting his kid, that his pool was open to you whenever you so chose to go.
Presently, Joel wished he could revoke that invitation.
Seeing how you were flipped on your stomach, body all soft and warm and splayed out on one of his deck chairs—wearing that fucking red swimsuit, of all things—Joel was left to ogle from his office window, and inside, he felt like a certified pervert. Arguably, he was. His old, worn hands had all but glided to find his mouse as soon as he’d sat down at his desk and saw you out there, and no sooner had his cursor found Chrome than his cock started to stir. He’d wanted to watch. If not you in all your bare, sun-baked glory, then surely the woman he could see getting her throat and cunt stuffed on his screen.
What the fuck was wrong with him?
Was he really that much of a gooner he couldn’t let his kid’s babysitter lounge outside without stroking his dick?
Shit. He had the bottle of lotion in one hand and the box of tissues in the other in no time at all. He ripped three free Kleenex aside and reached for his mouse once more.
He was pissed at himself. He toggled over to the Hub with a grunt, and in no time at all, had you pulled up.
Joel liked to pretend it was you, anyway.
If he couldn’t have the sweet young thing every swinging dick in this town would’ve killed to have himself, he could rub one out to a girl exactly like you. He could fantasize.
He could skip the video to 8:53 on the dot, as he always did, and he could rub himself raw. It wouldn’t take long.
He always fast-forwarded to that exact part, without fail, because she moaned like you then. He’d never forget it.
It had almost been six months since it happened, and he still remembered that sound as clear as day. You’d been hauling your backpack off the couch in the living room, having stuffed the thing full with more school supplies than you could feasibly carry, and Joel had been in the kitchen, unseen. You’d lifted the bag with effort, and once you had, you let out a soft but audible whine. You dropped the bag back down to your feet, and when you bent to try again, you’d moaned fully. It was like the stretch had made you feel good, or something. You’d huffed and managed to get the weight slung over your back with modest success, then left, but Joel had been changed. Too quickly had he retreated to his office and swore to find any clip where a moan sounded like that.
“Please! Feels like a fucking dre-e-e-e-e-eam—oh, OH!”
Granted, the dialogue was cheesy, but the sound after it was identical to the one you’d made. Joel repeated it.
He hadn’t even noticed, but he’d already lathered his hand and cock with lotion. He was scrubbing vigorously while your twin wiggled her hips and begged her co-star to put it in, to quit teasing her pussy like that, can’t you see I’m practically dripping for you, daddy? Look at it!
Unfortunately, Joel’s head was turned the other direction—away from the screen, and toward the window—watching you where you sat out on the lawn.
He stroked harder. He groaned.
You had just turned onto your back. Your tits looked incredible. Joel reckoned they’d look even better with his dick pushed up between them, and at the thought, his mouth watered. His lips were slightly parted, and he feared he might drool. What a sight he must have been then: jaw slack, lids heavy, cock in hand, and moan after moan bubbling out of his throat. He got closer to climax.
“Gonna teach ya, honey. Teach ya how to please a man.”
It wasn’t long after that that Joel heard the girl whine in pleasure—the man behind her had notched in the first inch and told her to behave—and meanwhile, he watched your chest rise and fall, rise and fall outside. It was calm. Unlike the girl being taught how to fuck poolside, you remained untouched. Spotless. Placid and serene while your hands picked up a magazine and began flipping through it. While Joel’s orgasm crested inside him, he wondered if you’d ever want to try something like that. Roleplay. Or would it be fake at all? Had you ever been touched by a man, shown the best ways to give and receive pleasure, or was it all brand new, like it was supposed to be for the woman on his screen? Joel panted, and he fucked his hand harder. He groaned.
“Oh, daddy, it’s so big! Feels so good going inside me!”
“You love gettin’ fucked by an older man, don’t you?”
“Yes, daddy, yes! Please don’t stop—oh, OHHH!”
Joel wanted to be the only older man you had.
If he wasn’t the first, he sure as fuck could be the last. Give you all the dizzying, euphoric feelings your body deserved and stretch you open gently for the taking.
He could teach you so much, ruin you for any oth—
Shit.
What the fuck was this asshole doing here?
At the back gate, he saw his neighbor Dieter.
The man strolled across the lawn, and Joel’s orgasm receded in a blink. He was walking right over to you.
No. No, no, no. Joel released his dick from its vice grip and felt the thing twitch in indignation. Meanwhile, the sound of skin on skin continued to flood his eardrums from out of the computer speakers, where the happy babysitter-boss duo was hitting a brutal pace. The girl let out one over-the-top shriek of pleasure, and Joel clicked pause. He toggled out of the browser. Then he redirected his gaze out the office window, where his own girl was being accosted by Dieter. His blood boiled with anger.
Who did this creep think he was? The man never so much as looked Joel’s way or approached his property unless it was to ask to be ‘lent’ some booze or else ask after some friend, relative, or coworker Dieter wanted to be introduced to—he was perennially unemployed and a fuckboy bachelor to his core. The last Joel had heard, he’d spent the last year in Los Angeles, or Paris, or some other too-big city to chase his singing and acting dreams
And here he was now, hitting on his poor, defenseless babysitter. Joel wouldn’t stand for that in any world.
Though his dick was still erect, it had softened some, too. His rage facilitated that, and him shoving his length back in his jeans, zipping it up, and all but punching the desktop off made it spongier still. He walked like he was mad at the floor beneath his boots. He wasn’t sure why he was feeling so defensive—he had just been rubbing one out to the sight of you less than five minutes ago—but now wasn’t the time for thinking. He had to act.
Protect, if he had to.
What if his neighbor wanted to go for a swim, too?
Joel would drown the man with his two bare hands if he so much as reached for your bikini-clad form. He stalked loudly down the hall and searched for a less sweaty shirt to wear, then some deodorant, then a comb. He peered in the bathroom mirror and saw his black-and-grey locks all out of sorts, and for a second, he contemplated taking a shower. You’d probably be able to smell his unsatisfied desire from outside. He looked, and felt, a bit unhinged.
Joel decided he didn’t care, before plodding downstairs.
Outside, you lay in the same position he’d seen you last. Your hand was shielding your face. You were smiling.
And beside you, Dieter was grinning even bigger.
Joel made a beeline down the porch steps, then across the lawn, like his life might’ve depended on it. Scowling.
“—but getting cast in Gladiator II would’ve been wild—”
Of course Dieter was yapping about his failed acting career. Of course. Joel could hear him drone on as he approached, though he didn’t register a word of what he said. Instead, he waved a hand. He feigned a calm tone:
“Dieter! How’s it going?”
And he slowed down, too.
Just as he drew in, his neighbor volleyed a look his way. Joel couldn’t miss how his smile twitched down a little.
“Joel.”
Accepting a cordial hand in greeting.
“Doing alright, how ‘bout yourself?”
Joel nodded fine, just fine and offered some offhand remark about not having seen him since last summer, and Dieter couldn’t resist the chance to puff up and mention a school he’d been attending. Joel didn’t hear it, or give a shit. His gaze was already trained on you. Your own flitted from Dieter, to Joel, then to Dieter again, and your lips were smiling kindly enough. You seem humored.
“Mr. Bravo just got back from Berlin,” you beamed.
Then Dieter met your look and shook his head.
“Dieter, sweetie, Dieter. Or Dee, if you want.”
Joel almost wanted to vomit in his mouth.
“Germany, huh? What brings you here?”
No sense in beating around the bush.
Joel meant to ask why Dieter was here, in his backyard, with his babysitter, of course. Why the fuck he was eyeing you like that, like your tits were two Emmys and the only way to earn it himself was to stare as long, and as hard, as possible. Joel cleared his throat instinctively.
Dieter blinked and cast a glance back to him.
“Oh, here. Yeah. I, um…I just wanted to see if you had that— that—” He snapped his fingers, “That leafblower.”
Leafblower?
He was so full of shit.
“My leafblower,” Joel repeated.
It was fucking July, for crying out loud.
Evidently, his neighbor didn’t seem to care. He met Joel’s gaze with an even look, and he nodded his head.
He doubled down: “Yeah, the leafblower. I’ve had some debris pile up in my yard since I’ve been gone, y’know.”
“Are you gonna be in Austin long? Or are you going back overseas once you’ve had that casting call?” you asked.
You cocked your head with genuine curiosity. Joel grit his teeth, but he tried not to let his discontent show anyplace else on his face. A muscle might’ve jumped when he saw how smugly Dieter smirked at your intrigue.
“Oh, I’ll be here long enough, don’t you worry,” he said.
That was it.
Joel gestured to the shed in the back corner of the yard, about to tell Dieter that the leafblower was in there, go knock yourself out, when his neighbor cut in once again.
“In the meantime, maybe I’ll have you babysit for me. I hate to steal Sarah’s pal, but maybe you can split your time between my place and Joel’s. What do you think?”
You blinked a little quicker, like you weren’t quite sure what to say at first. Joel took the chance to interject.
“You don’t have any kids, Bravo,” he practically growled.
“I know. I’ve got cats, though,” Dieter just grinned back, flitting a cheeky look to you. “And you have no idea how naughty those pussycats can get while a man’s away.”
That was really all Joel could take. He didn’t even let you answer; he just pointed to the shed and made a fist with his other hand at his side. His chest was heaving breaths.
“You and her can chat when she’s off the clock, how ‘bout that? Leafblower’s in the shed. Door’s unlocked.”
His words didn’t invite protest of any kind. Dense as he was, Dieter probably sensed that he’d ticked his neighbor off with the suggestive comment to his babysitter, and he backed away, both literally and figuratively. He bid a quick, cavalier goodbye with a shit-eating grin stretching his lips, and then he went to the storage shed and left.
You were still blinking, still creasing your brows tight, by the time the back gate had slammed shut behind him. You watched after him, teeth gnawing at your cheek.
“He seemed like a funny gu—”
“What do you think you’re doin’?”
Joel’s words appeared to sting like a slap in the face. You jerked your head back to him, seeming to say, ‘What?’
“You know what. Don’t play innocent now,” Joel griped.
You continued to stare, then started to shake your head.
“Mr. Miller—”
“Don’t Mr. Miller me, either,” he snapped, far shorter than he’d ever spoken to you before. His nostrils flared, “You’re old enough to know better. You did all of that.”
“All of what?” you shot back.
“Attracted men like Dieter into my yard.”
“He’s your neighbor! What do you expect?”
Offense marred your tone. He didn’t entirely blame you.
“No, no—he never sticks his nose over here unless he sees something he wants. You were flaunting yourself.”
At that, your mouth fell open.
“Are you fucking kidding me, Miller? Are you serious?”
“Language, young lady—”
“I don’t give a shit.” You stood up from your chair. Your eyes flashed with ire. Just like his hands had before, yours curled into fists. You stood your ground with him. “You invited me to come swim here whenever I wanted to. You did that, asshole. What did you expect me to sunbathe in, army fatigues and fucking combat boots?”
Joel blinked hard at that. He didn’t like being mocked.
“Still shouldn’t be that damn skimpy. And I said lang—”
“Yeah, yeah. Thanks, dad. Don’t act like you’re mine.”
Don’t act like you’re mine.
Joel’s chest tightened. His gaze seared into yours, almost as though he were as angry as you were now, but deep down, the man only felt remorse. Resentment. Whatever rage he harbored now was reserved for himself
He shouldn’t have gone there.
He shouldn’t have masked his own jealousy with pseudo paternal scolding. He looked like a dickhead doing that.
And you weren’t shy to let him know it in the slightest.
Presently, your finger was jabbed in his face. You were planted less than two feet from where he stood, and though you were noticeably dwarfed by his size, your next words had him beat by a foot, if he’d had to guess.
“I watch your kid, Joel. I am not your daughter. If you don’t want me hanging around here in my hot red bikini, then you can just say that. But don’t blame me for him.”
Joel bristled at your words, though he wasn’t sure why. When he opened his mouth to speak again, you added:
“And don’t blame me for that, either.”
Suddenly, he realized your finger was pointed at his legs.
Or, rather, what was poking up stiff between them.
Joel’s cheeks heated up to a thousand degrees.
You’d just caught him. You’d seen his arousal.
And you were turning on your heels again.
Before Joel could even try to summon the words to his tongue, you were grabbing your things. Shoving your shoes onto your feet. And Joel had only to stand there.
Feeling stupid and inert beside you.
As you went to the back gate, he somehow managed to call that you didn’t have a car, let him drive you back.
You didn’t even dignify his words with a verbal response.
You just raised your middle finger over your shoulder.
And then the gate crashed shut behind you.
You would be walking home that day.
Two big eyes and round cheeks were all you could see.
Then, they darted beneath the covers and were gone.
“Oh no, where’d sweet Sarah go?” you wondered aloud. Sitting at the edge of the bed and pretending not to see where she’d just dipped her head under the blankets, you furrowed your brows and proceeded to pat around you.
Everywhere you felt with your hands, you completely ignored the big lump under the duvet. It was a game.
A silly one at that—hide-and-go-seek was generally best left to places where you couldn’t figure out her location in the blink of an eye. But you played along. You heard a soft giggle. You continued feeling around the twin-sized mattress like this was the most bewildering puzzle of all.
“Whe-ere’s Sarah?” you sing-songed.
You heard a shuffling of limbs, a sniffle.
Your palm tapped right by those little feet.
And as soon as you did, she screamed. At four years old, Sarah hadn’t quite mastered the art of being stealthy.
You’d cut her some slack. You always had.
Blindly passing where her body lay, you glided to the opposite side of her bed and tapped inquiringly there.
“Is she…here?” You got a pillow.
“No!” Sarah shrieked back.
Such a helpful, obliging kid. She’d make a terrible spy.
“Is she…up here?” You rapped the headboard twice.
“No!!” she squealed.
You glanced over at the clock on her nightstand. It was approaching bedtime. Taking note of this, and knowing you couldn’t keep up with the charade for much longer, you let out a sigh. You stood from the bed, looked around the room with dramatic éclat, then started to walk away.
“Okay…I guess if Sarah’s not here I’ll have to leave…”
The second you said that, Sarah threw the covers back. She jumped up in bed, and she stomped her little feet.
“No! No! I’m here! I’m here!”
You spun on your heels, eyes wide with faux surprise.
“Sarah!”
And then you rushed back over, just in time to watch her drop to the bed and flash you a wide, exuberant smile.
“Your Sarah,” she corrected.
She adored it when you called her that. Your Sarah.
You nodded your head in agreement, “My Sarah. Sorry.”
She nodded too, like she’d just reminded you of the most important thing, and then she slipped back under her covers. She let you drag the purple duvet over her frame, all the way up to her chin, and when she was all snug inside, she gave another smile. She kicked her feet again.
“Stay,” she commanded, tone still sugar-sweet.
“I will, baby. ‘Til your daddy gets back, I’ll be here.”
“I mean forever!” Sarah dragged out the last syllable, and, not yet content with the answer you’d proffered, tried swaying you again, still more emphatic, “For-ever!”
If your daddy wasn’t such an ass, I might consider it.
Instead, you smiled back at her and shook your head. You smoothed the hair away from her face, then you leaned in and kissed her forehead with a gentle peck.
“Then my family would miss me. I gotta see them.”
“Says who?” Sarah’s pout was unmistakable.
Before you could reply, she cut in again.
“You can be my family. My mommy.”
Your throat constricted at those words. You weren’t sure what to say, or how to assuage your sweet Sarah then.
Again, you were about to open your mouth to speak, when your pint-sized companion piped up again. This time, her voice was softer. Surprisingly delicate and low.
“I want you to be my mommy,” she told you quietly, “Then you’ll live here. With me and daddy. And you’ll never have to go home again and we can play all day!”
Your heart ached. You kissed the tip of her nose and turned away, momentarily, to hide the hurt on your face.
Sarah Miller deserved much more in a mother than you.
When you looked up again, her grin was big. Hopeful.
“Don’t you wanna be my mommy too?” she asked.
“‘Course I do, baby,” you answered without hesitation, “But…don’t you think your daddy should have a say too?”
Somehow, her face got even brighter.
“He will! He— he…”
Sarah trailed off a second, as if considering her words. She didn’t understand what marriage meant. You’d help.
“Your daddy,” you finished for her, speaking slow and soft as you leaned in close, “is a good man who deserves a good woman to make your mommy. Don’t you agree?”
She bit the inside of her cheek.
“Yeah, but—”
“And a mommy’s gotta be someone he really loves.”
“But he…”
She was thinking again. You could tell. You pressed on.
“He is gonna find someone great someday. He’ll love you and her to bits, and y’all will get to play together all day.”
“But he loves you!” Sarah cried, at length.
A beat.
Your breath faltered.
The girl’s words had scarcely hung in the air for more than two seconds, and their meaning hardly registered in your brain before your own were coming out fast. Certain
“Your daddy doesn’t love me, baby. I’m just his friend.”
“Yes, he does! He told me so himself!”
Again, you shook your head.
“You misunderstood him, sweetie.”
You tried to smooth her hair back again, but Sarah’s head bucked away. She scrunched up her nose in clear protest and refused to let you cradle her face until she’d spoken her piece. When she did, her voice was pleading all over:
“Daddy loves you, he told me. You can be my mommy.”
And for what seemed like the hundredth time that night, you felt your heart balloon in your chest. Your gut clenched—but not for the reasons she or you wanted it to. The truth was that you didn’t have the words to tell a four-year-old girl that her father didn’t love you like that at all, that his head and his heart were anywhere but with you, and that, if you were being honest, you were furious with him. How he could so much as hint at such nonsense was beyond you. His little girl dreamed of having a mother. It was stupid and senseless and cruel to even suggest that that woman could be you. You sighed.
But, despite your every thought and feeling to the contrary, you knew you had to soothe the girl with some small semblance of hope. Something to hold her over for the night, so she didn’t cry herself to sleep thinking that you didn’t want to be her mommy. Gently, you leaned in.
You lifted the covers back up from where they’d fallen. You tucked them snug around her torso, and you paused.
Your tone was measured and soft when you spoke next:
“I don’t know about your daddy, baby. What I do know is that I would be the luckiest lady alive to get to be your mommy, alright? I’m not going anywhere, I promise.”
And you meant it. You saw one look light up her face, and every ounce of anger that had been provoked by her father was forgotten in an instant. Her grin ensured it.
“Anywhere,” she parroted back.
“Anywhere,” you said, again.
Then you kissed the crown of her head, wished her sweet dreams, cut the little light off. You left the room quietly.
It was only when you were out of there and far enough away down the hallway that your skin started to burn.
You couldn’t help it. Anger was fast to trickle back.
This feeling was only compounded when the next moment brought a sound to the landing on the stairs. You glanced over down the hall, muscles all tensing at once, and when you saw him there, it was as though your rage just bubbled over. Your jaw clenched; your stomach flipped in a way so decidedly unlike how it had done for him two days ago, in his office, and suddenly, your throat was working again. You kept your voice low this time, keen not to draw Sarah’s attention out there, but the words you used were clear. Quiet. Doubtlessly effective.
Even in the dark, you saw his brows jump when he heard:
“Joel, we need to talk.”
It had been two years since he’d had a woman in here.
Joel wished it were under any circumstances but these.
Presently, your eyes were ablaze. The two of you had just stepped into his room and shut the door behind you, and with the click of a latch, you hadn’t thought to hold it in:
“What the hell is wrong with you?”
He blinked.
Well, many things.
Joel wouldn’t have had the space to explain it all if you’d given him a week, and still, he had to say something. He blinked again, made a sound in his throat as if to clear it, then shook his head. His shoulders sagged in his jacket.
“I…I’m sorry.”
For the other day. For getting caught up in his own anger and taking it out on you. He wasn’t exactly sure what he was apologizing for now, or what he should say, but he thought it best to start there. He shrugged his jacket off and set it over the back of the nearest chair. He turned to you again, where you were standing with a warning look.
“Don’t say sorry to me,” you said. “Say sorry to Sarah.”
Sarah?
Before he could speak, you went on.
“You’re just setting her up for heartbreak, you know that? I mean how selfish— how stupid could you possibly be?”
You pursed your lips like tears might threaten if you didn’t. This caught him off guard—his daughter? What could he have said or done to hurt her in any of this?
“What are you talking about?”
“You said I’d be her mom, Joel!”
He winced. You furrowed your brows and set your mouth in a line—really trying to fight the emotion behind it—and, while all the rest of you bristled in anticipation for what was to come, Joel softened. He didn’t mean to. He didn’t want to be the guy who lost his head at the thought of seeing you cry and forget the whole reason you were upset with him in the first place, but he couldn’t help it. Though you looked like you wanted to kill him right then, Joel drew closer. He shifted toward you.
“Did— did she, uh…call you…mommy?” he said, pained.
“Yeah. And you let her believe she could,” you spat.
He hadn’t meant to do that, either. Sarah had been calling you that for a while when you weren’t around to hear, and after enough times telling her otherwise, he’d just stopped correcting her on it. Sarah wanted a mother. You were the closest thing she had, and who was he to sabotage that? At the time, he’d just wanted to…pretend.
That was a running theme he had going with you.
Right now, you didn’t seem to care about that.
You just rolled your eyes in that cool, juvenile way when you didn’t hear a response from him, and he had to bite his tongue from saying something worse. He hated when you did that. It made him remember your age—the reality of you being his kid’s babysitter and how guilty he should feel for wanting to do something more about that eyeroll.
He wasn’t your father.
You weren’t Sarah’s mother, either.
You most certainly weren’t the girl on his computer screen, as much as he would’ve liked to see you that way, and even though you were standing here in his bedroom.
That was all fantasy. Make-believe. This was his reality.
You were visibly pissed and wouldn’t budge an inch.
“Is it really so bad if she says it?” he grit out.
Your eyes widened. You scoffed.
“Of course it is, Joel!”
You backed away.
He hated seeing that, too. He hated having you move from him, not toward him, wearing that scowl on your lips as you did. His fingers twitched—itched—at his side.
“Sarah’s young. She doesn’t…mean anything by it. She’ll grow out of it soon enough. And I don’t want to hurt her.”
“You’ll hurt her even worse by not telling her the truth!” you snapped. You sounded exasperated saying it now. “We’re not a family. I’m the goddamn babysitter, and— and— you’re Sarah’s father. Act like it, for Christ’s sake.”
That set his teeth on edge.
Joel felt the urge to fight back, but narrowly refrained. He flexed his fingers, and he bit down hard to keep the vitriol at bay. Because that was exactly what fathers did. They controlled their anger; even when faced with a smart-mouthed babysitter who wore his patience out.
Even when your arms were folded over your chest in that impossibly tight, white tank, and your tits looked like they might spill from the fabric at any given moment. Joel swallowed and refocused his gaze before going on.
“Don’t tell me how to be a father.”
Something flared in your eyes.
“Why? I’m fucking right.”
“Language, young lady.”
That only seemed to irk you worse; your hands flew up.
“Yeah, well,” you started, accusing, “If we’re playing house, I might as well be allowed to say what I like.”
“We are not playing hous—”
“But you want to, right? That’s why I’m always here.”
“No, I need a—”
“Maid? Mommy?”
You paced closer. Joel’s jaw clenched.
“Obedient little housewife?” you sneered.
Your eyes were shining like two derisive pools. With every blink, you seemed to mock him more. Goad him on and beg for your reward, though you hardly knew what it was.
“C’mon, Mr. Miller,” you chided, voice low, “What is it?”
What he was, or what he’d stand to take. It wasn’t this.
“Keep runnin’ that fuckin’ mouth, I’ll show you what.”
The words flew off his tongue before he could stop them.
It was a reflex—something that had been stewing in his mind since the second you’d set foot in his room and went on provoking him. But it was wrong, of course.
He was wrong for even thinking it, much less saying it.
Now your eyes were round, and your mouth was slightly agape, and your brain was likely working a thousand miles a minute to process what had just been said.
Joel had to fix it.
“That— that ain’t—” he began, already hating himself.
To his surprise, and embarrassment, a laugh rang out.
Its sound was explosive and short. It split the air with such hot, bitter force that his words dropped off. His gaze had no choice but to remain plastered on yours.
“Oh, I bet.”
You grinned, humorless.
You didn’t appear shocked in the slightest. In fact, his remark seemed only to embolden you then, as you teased that smile wider, drew yourself closer, and tipped your chin up. You looked doubly enlivened by his last admission. Vindicated in some strange, inexplicable way. Your breaths were warm, and the swell of your breasts came to hover just inches from his chest when the last thing he needed to happen, happened between you next.
You pointed again. Joel didn’t need to look down.
“‘Don’t tell me how to be a father,’” you repeated his words from before, voice taking on a low, faux baritone.
Your amusement was clear. His cock was hard.
It seemed you’d never let the latter slip past you.
“Is that what we’re gettin’ at here, Mr. Miller?” you asked, tone now precocious. Probing, “You showing me what a great daddy you are, and me being the mommy you al—”
“No.”
Joel pushed off. He didn’t want to hear another thing.
He headed straight for the door, prepared to usher you out of it. This conversation had taken an irreparable turn.
When he reached for the handle, though, he had to stop. Your voice made him stop, echoing from the opposite end of the room. Joel turned, and he saw you on his bed.
“I’m just curious. Is that really what you meant?”
You were sitting at the foot of it, legs casually hanging off. Your look was innocent, and still more knowing than Joel could bear. The heat left to swirl in his groin nearly suffocated him below the waist, and he inhaled deeply.
“Mean what? I didn’t…mean anything.”
His touch fell from the doorknob all the same.
Your feet were swinging when he faced you completely.
“Just like you didn’t mean for Sarah to call me mommy?”
Maybe he had meant it more than he let on. He couldn’t answer. Joel felt every bit the creep he knew himself to be—decades your senior and letting you rest on his bed, soft, smooth legs kicking back and forth as he watched.
He was good at that, wasn’t he? Watching. Waiting. Aching from the comfort of his home office while he watched those filthy clips on repeat, images of you flitting through his mind at every stretch, moan, and whimper. His will was powerless to his perverted needs. He had only to defend himself against their influence by planting his feet firmly in place and refusing to move.
“You wanna teach me, though. Don’t you, daddy?”
It was as though your words reached him from another place. Somewhere deep within the recesses of his mind—his memory—and the tone of it stirred him. It was familiar, in ways you couldn’t have possibly understood. Unless you were living in his head, there was no way in hell you could’ve known what those lines meant to him.
‘Gonna teach ya, honey. Teach ya how to please a man.’
It made him ache.
Joel still wouldn’t move, but you could come to him.
He blinked once, and you were there. Off the bed. Walking to him. Down on your knees in front of him.
This had to be the work of his own sick imagination.
He groaned at just the sight of your smile, curving slow.
And then you peeled off your top, revealing the bright, nylon, cherry-red fabric he’d seen far too many times on his computer screen and off it—on you, by his pool. Joel sucked in a breath and shook his head, gaze darkening.
“Thought you didn’t wanna play mommy,” he growled.
If this was all just in his head, he could talk as he wanted.
“I don’t,” you answered him soberly. Suddenly, your chin was in his hand. Your eyes were still glistening up at him. “But you need to get this out of your system. Just once.”
Out of his system.
Joel was out of his fucking mind with desire.
“Just once?” His voice cracked as he said it.
Only one time. That was alright. Forgivable.
From what he half-believed to be a figment of his own perverted mind came the word from your lips: ‘Once.’
The next had the thumb that was cupping your chin slipping between those same lips. Still smiling while your mouth slid down to his knuckle. You sucked him gently.
And in just one glimpse, one fleeting second on that lone, thick thumb, the sight below him had every other obscene thing entrenched in his memory beat by a mile. You were better than everything else he’d seen or tried to dream up. You were real, he hoped, sliding your shiny wet lips up and down the surface of his skin, and when you pried them off, and you asked for his cock, he had no choice but to oblige. He had to rack his brain for words.
This was his babysitter, his daughter’s companion, his—
“Sweet fuckin’ girl,” he said when he first felt you there.
Before he even knew what became of his belt, buckle, and zip, the base of his cock was in your hand, and your lips were hovering precariously over the tip. Your breaths were soft and hot. Your graze drank him in with curiosity.
“Should I kiss you here, daddy?” Your mouth lowered.
“Right there, sweetie,” Joel breathed out.
He truly couldn’t believe it when the warmth of you enveloped his tip. When the first lick of your tongue came to collect the bead of precum sitting at the slit and he damn near bucked his hips up. You licked at it again.
And again. And again. And again.
You whimpered lightly, enjoying the taste.
The second you pulled your mouth away, Joel hissed.
“Baby, please—” he started, tone strained.
“What? Where does daddy want it?”
The question was so innocent.
It was clear you wanted to hear him guide you through it, as evidenced by the way your lips twitched at his hand smoothing down and over the crown of your head. Joel held it like he might never get this chance again, and, at once, his voice lowered along with it. He scarcely recognized himself with how gently he spoke then.
“Let daddy show you,” he said, “Open your mouth.”
And you did.
Your jaw fell slack, your lips split apart, and your eyes peered up with a wide and open stare. In a look, you seemed already to say that you trusted him to fill it.
No sight on a screen could’ve made him so hard.
He fed you an inch, eyes locked with yours as he did. His cock slid in another, and another, then stopped. He pulled back. The wetness and the warmth of your mouth nearly did him in, and the way you whined for more had him fisting your hair tight. Trying to keep his composure.
“That alright, honey? Feel…nice goin’ in?”
“Yes, daddy,” you hummed obediently.
Your mouth opened wider.
“More, please?”
Your tongue was flattened in a second. Joel slid back in, and his shaft was greeted by the slick, shiny cushion of the muscle underneath. He sank in. He invaded every inch of your mouth he could find, and he breathed out.
“Just like that, sweetie. Takin’ daddy so well.”
What little gurgles he heard stifled between your lips at that, spit drooling gently from either side, he only found more endearing. When he pulled back and saw strings of your spit trail after its path, he felt delirious. You were real, coating the whole throbbing length of his cock with your saliva and your precious soft whines, and you were sweet for him. Pliant for his cock. Jaw obliging and inviting and hanging wide open for him to fuck again.
He let you have it. He slid in once, grazed your throat, slid out again. He cupped your face in his hands and thumbed your cheeks. He coaxed your lips wider for him. You took it all well; you responded to every tender little directive from the man who was stuffing your mouth, ‘Faster now, atta girl’ and ‘Take daddy deeper’ and ‘Keep that pretty mouth open and those eyes on me.’ Joel was so caught up in the feel and the friction and the intimacy of every passing moment that he almost didn’t see when you started to shift your legs. Parting them.
And, right when the head of his cock had reached the back of your mouth and was teasing down your wet, open throat, he felt it fully: your whimpering plea.
You grinding your cunt against the toe of his boot, and peering up at him with eyes all wet, wide, and needy.
You rutted your hips. It looked like you couldn’t help it.
It seemed as though it were a mere spasm of the body that you couldn’t control—like his cock down your throat was too good for your sense or your oversexed mind to handle. He’d scarcely stirred in place when he felt you humping him, whines rippling down his length with every bob of your head as you keened for some kind of release.
Joel had never seen anything like it. He didn’t know what to say or do except stroke his hand over your scalp and pin you with a look. His cock twitched in your mouth.
“Is that how we ask to get fucked in this house?”
His tone surprised him with how steady it stayed.
Your mouth still full of him, you tried to shake your head.
What came next was more instinct than logical thought; Joel pulled you off his cock and onto your feet. His touch on your body was soft. He couldn’t pinpoint a reason for his being so gentle, but every second that elapsed now seemed to demand it. He was teaching you to please. There could be no better place for kindness than here.
He’d lead you to the bed and guide you down himself. He’d tell you to open your mouth and then he would kiss it, and lick inside it. Maybe spit inside it, too. He’d tug at your bikini straps, watch your breasts give way to the pressure of the pull before bouncing right back in place. He’d take off your top. Latch his mouth around a nipple, swirl his tongue across the skin, and he’d kiss you again.
Joel did all these things, and you let him. You met him with whimpers, with wide open legs, and eventually, with your feet digging into the covers beneath you, begging, ‘Daddy, please put it in.’ Your gaze was febrile as you did.
Whether you meant it, or were simply pretending for him, gave Joel pause. Just as you’d tried to yank your jean shorts down your legs, he dropped his hands to your own. He stopped them in their path. He leaned closer.
“Do you know what you and me are about to do, hm?”
His question was barbed but sweet. Testing the waters.
Were you game to keep playing house? Did you want it?
These things mattered to Joel; whether the wetness between your legs was meant for him and him alone. Whether you needed him there, like the breath in your lungs. He wouldn’t fuck you if he wasn’t. He might feel lonely at times—desperate to feel your cunt squeeze his too-old cock like your life depended on it—but he was a man who wanted to be wanted, too. An instant of clarity hit, and suddenly he was asking it, plain and in your face:
“Do you wanna do what mommies and daddies do?”
Your mouth fell slack. Again. You nodded.
Either you were the single best actress, or you wanted it. Hoping desperately for the latter, Joel kissed the side of your face. You turned your head, quickly, and captured his lips in yours instead. You pulled him down to you.
“Like this?” you murmured, words muffled against him.
You wrapped your legs around his waist and then ground your clothed lower half with his—Joel’s cock was tucked haphazardly back in his boxers, and his jeans, unzipped, hung just underneath them around his hips. He felt like a teen again, clothes thrown askew and hormones all wild.
Except he wasn’t. He was a grown man, in his own bed, with his child fast asleep down the hall. He thanked his lucky stars that their rooms were as far apart as possible, and that he no longer had to worry about the prying eyes of his mom or dad trying to catch him out after curfew. This wasn’t high school, or a night out in college, or the time a condom had split and Sarah had been conceived.
Now if he could just make sure she didn’t get a sibling…
Kidding.
“Pill,” Joel choked out, just as your legs drew him in to meet your movements, “Are— are you on the pill, or—”
Am I going to have to hit up a Texaco at 10 PM to get some rubbers and admit I haven’t gotten laid in a year?
You grinned.
“IUD.”
That works, too.
Joel probably shouldn’t have seemed so eager. He probably shouldn’t have taken your face in his hands and kissed you so hard, either. But his skin was ablaze; his eyes were wild; his limbs were molten; and his head—you didn’t want to know where it was. What he was thinking.
What he wanted to tell you while he tugged his cock back out and started working his hand up and down it. It felt too intimate, too depraved, to be spoken aloud.
Then, to his shock, you said the words yourself:
“Show me how you’d make me a mommy anyway.”
If not for protection. If not for common sense. If not for that thrumming, pulsing, warning repetition in his head: Do not get her pregnant. Do not give your kid a sibling.
But this was all pretend, wasn’t it?
Joel yanked down your shorts, practically tore them from your legs, and situated himself between them, breathing hard and fast, before he nodded his head and kissed you. With his one free hand, he held the base of his dick, and he guided it closer to your slick, puffy, aching entrance through the barrier of your red bikini. He rutted his hips.
You were bare beneath him, save for that one scrap of fabric between your lower half and his. You smiled, and you wriggled your body against his, and you drew him in. Joel groaned when he felt you slide your bottoms to the slide and let him feel, for the first time, how wet you were. How warm, inviting, and tight that cunt must be and how badly he needed it. How desperately he had to be buried inside that heat—he all but panted the words:
“Can daddy put it in?”
You spread your legs wider. You nodded.
Then he did. Without one breath of a thought to the contrary, he pushed the head of himself past the fabric, through your folds, into that wet and precious spot he’d only dreamed he’d ever feel, and he let out a full-throated moan. He felt your walls contract, heard the tender little squelch of your body making room for his length, and he damn near blew his whole load right there. You felt good.
Your chest rose with a breath, and your eyes widened.
Like you hadn’t just had him down your throat, drenched in your spit and gliding in and out: “He’s so big, daddy.”
Joel’s lips kissed your cheek. His tip kissed your cervix. You whined a little, and he pulled you in closer to him.
“I know, honey, I know,” he cooed, rocking you with the softest motions, “Ain’t that what mommy likes, though?”
Your lips parted again. A strangled whine of assent slid out, just as his hips withdrew himself back to that shiny, bulbous head, and then he fucked back in. Back and forth, back and forth, Joel sent your body bouncing with every thrust. He felt you clench, and the strokes sped up.
The bed creaked underneath. It seemed to shake the whole room. In truth, there wasn’t a thought in Joel’s head except for the ones relating to you and how good you took his cock, but somewhere, not far off, there was the instinct of a father idling too. With every stab of the headboard against the wall and every moan of yours under him he had to smother with his lips, he was reminded you two had to be quiet. He leaned in.
Grazing your ear with a stubbled chin, and fucking you gently into his bed, Joel sank his weight even lower.
“Can mommy stay real quiet for daddy? Can she try?”
From the way your eyes were glazed, he expected you to nod. And you did, just barely, heels digging in the mound of his ass and your fingers finding his sides. But then you slid a touch up his ribs; you squeezed the flesh. You let him pound your cunt for a few more precious seconds, and just when he thought that was the end of it, you tilted your head to him. Your nose bumped his, and you grinned, flashing the single most pretty, fucked-out look.
“Feels like a fucking dream, daddy,” you breathed.
Joel balked. He almost stopped right then and there.
Please! Feels like a fucking dre-e-e-e-e-eam—oh, OH!
Oh.
You couldn’t have known that.
There was no shot you knew where the fuck those words were from. Or what they meant. Joel furrowed his brow and kept rutting his hips, hands tightening in the sheets beside your head as the scene from his naughty all-time favorite film flickered briefly through his mind. No shot.
Then your legs wound around the backs of his even tighter, and your eyes were all but shining with a fresh, twisted glint. With a measured tone, you went on for him:
“He’s so big, daddy. Feels so good going inside me.”
You even mimicked her tone. Joel paled above you.
His hips stalled a moment, and your cunt hugged him tight. Your teeth nipped at his chin, playfully, and before he could even try to speak again, your lips were there.
At his ear, whispering what he’d dreaded hearing most.
“You should really clear those PornHub searches after you’re done. Or at least lock your office while I’m here.”
Joel’s thrusts stopped completely.
He was about to search for his voice again, when your walls clamped down around him, and his vision went swimming. His cock pulsed inside you, and he groaned.
Then his hips picked up; it wasn’t a conscious decision. He just needed to fuck, needed to finish, needed to see the light twinkle and burst behind your eyes while he stuffed your cunt full. It didn’t matter what you knew—your lips were curled in such a sweet, smug smile below him, there was likely no use in trying to explain himself now. Joel just gritted his teeth, and he tried smiling back. He fucked you faster, and harder, than he’d done before.
When you clawed at his back, the pace grew merciless. Every inch of the space around him, it seemed, was filled with the sounds of skin slapping skin, whimpers, and moans. As before, Joel almost didn’t recognize his voice.
‘That so?’ was all it could manage to get out at present.
With your cunt fluttering repeatedly, hips rolling with his own, and those lips letting moans spill out one after the next, it was all he could do to try to keep his composure.
Joel kissed you, and then he flipped your body around. He moved back to find the headboard and rest himself against it, got your legs straddling his, and slid you down
Down, down, down on his cock. Stretching you out. Then moving you back up again. Making you bounce in his lap and have your hands fumble to find his shoulders. You squeezed his biceps and moaned, and at the same time, his slick-smeared lower half rutted to greet yours. Your essence drenched him; he could feel it soak straight through the black-and-gray hairs at the base of his cock.
You looked perfect like this—better than any girl on camera could’ve been. Your hips rolled, and you moaned while sliding up and down on his dick, again and again. Joel felt the trembling pulse through your body and his, groaned at the grip of your cunt around him, and helped you ride him. With one hand at the small of your back and the other cupping your face, he held you close to him. Your pace quickened, and the hand at your chin made its way to your throat, to hold you firmly there.
Joel had a thumb on your pulse and his eyes raking over your writhing form when he felt compelled to talk again.
Share a truth, since all the rest was coming out anyway.
He didn’t think so much as feel it flow from there, like the blood rushing through his veins. Joel winced at a fresh influx of pleasure and let you grind on him twice more. Then he was gripping you tighter, fucking up into you harder, and he was skimming his teeth along your skin. As a knot coiled deep within his stomach, he let it out:
“Wanna cum inside this pussy, baby. Fill her up with me.”
The head of his cock struck a dizzying blow to someplace close to your cervix, and you held him tighter.
“Yeah, Mr. Miller?” You couldn’t help the teasing tone.
You fought a breathless laugh, then were forced to suck in a gasp of air just as quick; his length sheathed itself inside you completely, and Joel’s grip constricted on your throat. He kissed you. He lapped his tongue into your mouth while he fucked up into you, again and again.
You whined, and he mumbled against you, “That’s right.”
You hissed at him deep in your guts, and he went on:
“Gonna stuff her full. Make her wet and messy and drippin’ with me. Show mommy how much daddy lov—”
He cut himself short. His balls were heavy, full, and ready to paint you white, but that line was a touch too far, even now. He couldn’t say it outright and not sound like a fucking creep, no matter how deep in this roleplay you happened to be. Joel squeezed your hips and grunted.
And, for what felt like the fifteenth time that night, you surprised him. Your chin tilted to his, your lips brushed against his mouth, and you smiled, again. It was tender.
“How much does daddy love me, hm? Show me.”
Your walls clenched at the end of the last sentence, and Joel couldn’t help but groan in your mouth. His eyes lifted to yours, and in your gaze, he found anything but incredulity—you already knew what he felt, somehow.
“Sarah tell you that, too? That I love you?” he growled.
He’d said it once. At the time, he hadn’t thought he’d meant it at all, but the words just sounded so good when it came to you. Sarah had asked him if he’d wanted you to be her mommy someday, if he loved you like a daddy loves a mommy, and he’d said he did. Looking back, it hadn’t felt half as good as it did right now: peering into your eyes, feeling your warmth swallow him whole, and sensing you were nearing your climax, all because of him. It made him want to say it over again, now face-to-face.
Be it roleplay, fantasy, fixation—he needed to say it now.
“Daddy does love you,” he went on, before you could even respond. His pelvis rutted against yours, and his gaze stayed steeped in desire as he felt you grip harder, “Loves you so damn much he wants to stuff a big load in that pretty little cunt. Make you his. That alright by you?”
Your gaze went blank in an instant. Your lips twitched.
Something delectably wet, tight, and far too tempting shuddered someplace inside you, and with pride, Joel sensed the remnants of it leak out and smear his tummy. You liked that idea. Still, you seemed hesitant as your teeth snagged your bottom lip between them. You drew one steadying breath, and you slowed your movements.
“I’ve never…had that,” you admitted quietly.
Then that sticky-sweet embrace your cunt held him in got even wetter. Like your mind wasn’t fully on-board, but your body was all in. You were close, by the feel of it.
But Joel would only give what you were fully ready to take. At length, he lowered one hand to the small of your back, and his thumb rubbed at the skin. He let you feel him in only the shallowest of strokes, bouncing you softly
“Ain’t gotta be inside, then,” he murmured, assuring, “I’ll shoot this load wherever mommy tells me to go, alright?”
That made you whimper.
From there, your mind seemed to be decided all at once.
“Cum inside. I-I want it.”
Joel swallowed thickly.
“You sure, sugar? I can—”
Suddenly, your hips were stirring. They started up quicker than before, and your hand was swift to plant itself flat on his chest, as though to stabilize yourself.
“Cum. In. Me.”
It was the most decisive, and desperate, you’d sounded all night. Your gaze flitted to his, and in it, he saw a plea.
With a look like that, Joel knew he couldn’t make you wait. He wouldn’t make you wait. Trying not to smirk as he did, he leaned in and kissed you, and felt you drip more arousal as something knotted in your belly. He smoothed your hair away and delivered the gentlest thrusts from below—he knew it wouldn’t take much.
“Mama goes first,” he prodded. He felt you tense, and clench, and leak a little more down his front, and when the head of cock nicked a soft ridge, he groaned, too. “Cum for daddy now and he’ll give you his load, OK?”
Then his touch slipped between your legs. You keened.
“Daddy, I—” you hiccuped, grip tightening like a vice when his thumb found your clit and started rubbing.
Joel circled faster.
“Breathe, baby. Breathe.”
“I can’t,” you cried, “Feels too—”
Good. Your body seemed to finish for you.
It started with a pulse. Then a pinch. A trickling warmth. Joel hardly knew what else to do but keep rubbing that little pearl between your folds, even when you started to gush around his hand. It wet his tummy; it drenched all the hairs around the base of his cock, and still, he kept thumbing your clit and rocking you back and forth above him. He let you cry out and bite his shoulder while your climax tore through you, and though he knew you had to be quiet, he couldn’t help but relish the sound. He smiled
“That’s it. That’s my girl. Give it to daddy.”
And, while he also told you to keep breathing and let him have it all, he was right here—in a matter of seconds, he was slipping off, too. He couldn’t hope to try and stop it. With one more pulse of your walls, you groaned and got your wet, spent, needy hole stuffed full of him, just how you’d asked. Joel flooded your insides with his seed and kept you fucked straight down to the hilt so he wouldn’t see a drop of himself escape. He hugged you tight and heard you whine at that primal sensation, getting pumped with rope after rope of his cum, then he felt your limbs go limp. Joel kissed the side of your face. He cradled you, held you securely in place, and let the last of his spend paint your walls in a couple more gentle spurts
When it was over, he stroked your back. He sensed the aftershocks of your climax pass through your tired frame, and he made sure not to rock you too hard against him. He just wanted you to feel that he was there, if the heft of his cum and his cock still deep inside you wasn’t enough.
His head grew clearer, too. While still drawing short, ragged breaths in time, he managed to find the words that had evaded him before—what he should’ve said.
“‘M’sorry,” he mumbled into your hair.
You just nuzzled your face deeper.
“Don’t be.”
“But I—”
Then you tilted your head—enough for your gaze to meet with his, briefly, and tell him all that he needed to hear.
“You’re a good dad, Joel.”
He opened his mouth, but you were already pressing on.
“And I don’t…mind if Sarah calls me what she wants for now. I’m sure you’ll find someone great to be her mom someday, and then this whole thing won’t even matter.”
For some reason, the sound of it made Joel wince.
He couldn’t quite place the feeling, but he knew he didn’t want you thinking that. His grip constricted around you.
“No,” he muttered, indistinct. Defiant.
“No?”
You almost laughed.
It was insane, admittedly—just last night he’d been dreaming of the feel of you in the grip of his fist, wishing for nothing but his own release and a fleeting thought of your body underneath him, and here he was, doing this.
You’d said it was a one-and-done deal, and maybe it was.
But for him, maybe, it wasn’t. He’d be remiss not to try.
If you shot him down and left him to pine and meander through the manifold archives of PornHub for the rest of his horny life, that would be alright. At least he had tried.
With these thoughts thrumming through his brain, Joel was about to pull you closer and venture to speak again, when, for the second time, his words were cut short. His voice was presently supplanted by a sound that startled you both, and in a moment, he recognized what it was.
A knock.
“Da-a-a-a-a-a-addy?”
Shit.
He nearly caught a knee to the gut with how quickly you tried scrambling off his lap, limbs revived and frantic and desperate to get your clothes back on before that tiny voice could resume its speech—or get a hand to the door
“Yeah, sweetie? Give— give daddy a—” ‘Fuck!’ he cursed under his breath as he tripped over your shorts on the floor, “—a minute. I’ll be right there. Just gimme a sec.”
Joel fell. You floundered. His hand snagged the edge of the bed before he hit the ground fully, while you set off across the room to fight the strings of your bikini top and wrestle the thing on. The second you sensed that battle was lost, you grabbed your shirt instead. You were just yanking it on, and Joel was just regaining his bearings and about to chuck your shorts your way, when a voice through the door stopped the two of you cold—again.
To your horror, it was hopeful. Too sweet to be real.
“Can I sleep with you and mommy tonight?”
You could’ve soundly beat Joel’s ass with that pretty, skimpy swimsuit in your grasp and not regretted a thing, if he had to guess by the look you were flashing him now.
He didn’t blame you. His hands shot up in silent defense.
“Mommy— mommy’s not here, honey. She went home.” Joel shortly tried, and failed, to keep the pretense of innocence alive, all while dodging the first swing of your bikini’s bra at his head. He ducked; you struck a lamp.
He jumped back, a wordless grin stretching his lips as he righted that fixture fast. With one look, it seemed to say:
I’m so, so sorry, baby.
But inside his head, he couldn’t help but admit this was a little bit funny. Probably sensing this, you swung again.
“Yes, she is! I heard her,” Sarah huffed outside.
Joel was sliding up his jeans. Apologizing with his eyes and also trying not to crack an even bigger smile at you.
“Don’t be silly, Sar—”
“You’re having a sleepover!” she accused.
Well, in a manner of speaking.
Joel had just buckled his belt and redid his zip when a flash of red nylon smacked him in the face. Playfully.
You were evidently beginning to fight a grin like his, dropping the feigned indignation and pacing closer.
“Sleeping my ass—” you started in a whisper.
And you were about to chase him again, or else propose jumping from the window to get out now and save face, maybe, when Joel felt an old, familiar feeling crop up inside him. Like before, it wasn’t the kind of urge he could fight; his instincts took over, and he did it swiftly.
Admittedly, the timing was terrible—but he kissed you.
He pressed his lips to your own and relished the feeling. He grabbed both sides of your face and walked you back to the bed—the same one drenched in sweat and your release, which he’d definitely need to change in a minute—and for a fleeting moment, it was all he needed. Your mouth was on his, grinning a little and promising silently that if Sarah ever does walk in on us, I’m gonna kill you.
Against his better judgment, he pushed you back on the bed. He dropped his weight over your body and kept the kiss ongoing, feeling need surge inside for something far beyond the physical. It couldn’t be ‘one-and-done’ here.
But for now, at least, in spite of his feelings, it had to be.
Joel didn’t want to let go or stop kissing, but the next second left no room for much else, unfortunately. His daughter’s voice returned, and the words that followed proved impossible to ignore, for either one of you then.
All color drained from his face, and your eyes widened.
“I heard mommy screaming before. Is she alright?”
#THE WAY I’VE NEVER WRITTEN A NCFOM-INSPIRED FIC IS INSANE#IT’S ONE OF MY ALL TIME FAVORITE MOVIES AND THE TITLE IS SOOOOO FITTING FOR JOEL 😪#joel miller smut#joel miller x reader#joel miller x you#joel miller#joel miller fanfiction#joel miller imagine#joel miller one shot#joel miller tlou#the last of us fic
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