#you might want to ask about that tapestry just saying ;)c

[asktheisle]

Rue: "Wh-what in the world?!" She jolted with shock at not only the sound of reality tearing, but the appearance of the portal itself. Spotting the duo, she warily look at them; particularly at the human accompanying the Haxorus. "How are you doing that...? What is that?"

Normally, my dear Lamassu's Dragon Claw is simply more powerful than the average. But now... it's as if her ancestry was 'awoken', so to speak. It gave way to act as a Spacial Rend.

In simple terms...

[The light of the distortion illuminates behind the human, an eye accustomed to the dark surroundings could pick out what looks to be a tapestry. Several spots seem to sparkle as if painted over with a shining coat.]

[yzeltia]

send SWOONED for a scene from my muse's past in which they were infatuated with someone

:3

Somewhere through the meeting, Gelos gotten lost in Themis’s blue eyes through his mask as he spoke on the floor of the Convocation. Not that he paid much attention to most meetings, but as of late he'd had a fixation win over his mind wandering. Those deep cerulean eyes on him, he let out a soft sigh before realizing it wasn’t just Themis’s gaze on him. Sitting up, he cleared his throat. “O-Obviously I agree with what Themis was saying,” he said quickly.

“That’s Elidbus to you,” Emet-Selch hissed from his seat, Themis’s cheeks tinting a red as he recoiled back.

Gelos started to cough, face crimson as he avoided his crush’s nervous stare. “Sorry! I’m under the weather I guess and forgot myself. C-Carry on!”

“If you are feeling unwell, then perhaps you should return to your quarters, Azem,” Lahabreha suggested.

“Look who’s suddenly more paternal now that he’s been made whole,” Mitron said before letting out a haughty laugh.

Lahabreha scowled then crossed his arms. “If he is ill then he cannot contribute anything meaningful.”

“Not that Azem is one to offer up anything profound beyond the occasional impassioned plea,” Fandaniel mused.

“Y’know, I think I will rest. I am probably just a bit tired from my recent adventures,” Gelos said, pushing his hair from his mask and face before standing and taking a small bow.

He left the gilded chambers promptly, letting them return to whatever they’d be on about before pausing briefly to look back toward Themis as the other started to speak again. Once in the hall he pulled off his black mask and looked at it, thumbing gently over the symbol on the forehead before shaking his head with a deep sigh.

“Azem? Azem are you sure you’re not unwell?”

Gelos froze, Themis’s concerned words echoing in his ears. He scrambled to put on his mask, placing it only to have it fall to the floor. Nervous, he looked back as Themis knelt down beside him to pick it up. “Don't worry. It's not cracked,” he assured him.

“Thank you,” Gelos said in turn, gently reaching out for the mask. Their fingers colliding, he couldn't help but feel a rush of warmth come over him from the small contact. “Them- I mean Elidibus, you didn't have to come check on me.”

Themis recoiled a bit, holding his arm as he looked away. “Apologies for my pursuit then. The meeting ended and I could not shake the feeling that it was something I had said which made you leave.”

“No. I wasn't really listening,” Gelos breathed out before cringing at his poor choice of words. The footsteps of their fellow Convocation members approaching, hr panicked further. Not wanting to be seen without his mask and also not wanting to Themis thinking he had been bored by his words, he awayed them behind a large tapestry.

A finger to his lips, Gelos pleaded got a moment of silence while holding Themis close and around the waist. The Convocation soon passed by, talking amount themselves. If they noticed Gelos’s impromptu hiding spot, none bothered to comment on it.

As the two lingered in silence, Gelos found himself once more enraptured by Themis's gaze. His hand moved on its own, gently drawing the other's mask down from his face so that he could better look into his eyes. He might as well have disrobed Themis, the other's face heating up in the wake of such intimate vulnerability.

��Azem…”

“I could not hear your words because I was too preoccupied by my thoughts,” he explained softly, drawing his face in.

“I don't-,” Themis started in confusion before silenced by Gelos's kiss. He shivered, hand reaching into the other's robes as he felt himself lose balance and fall into Gelos’s arms.

The kiss was clumsy, Gelos teasing Themis’s tongue and the other reciprocating, yet neither confident enough in their first embrace to deepen it as much as their passion had run. “Do you understand now,” Gelos asked softly as he pulled away, unable to look Themis in the eye.

“I…believe so,” Themis panted. “I had thought it my imagination, but; Fandaniel had said you look at me the way Mitron looks at Lohgrif. Do you really find me that distracting?”

“A welcome distraction. I promise,” Gelos whispered. “I thought I had not been so obvious…”

“I could not be sure. So perhaps it was just a sharp observation on his part,” Themis said softly. “What do we do now, Azem?”

“Gelos…when it's just us…let's just be Gelos and Themis.”

Themis swallowed, struggling to restsart. “What do we do now…Gelos.”

“I am uncertain. Venat told me one day I might burn up inside for another, and yet I was still unprepared for you,” Gelos sighed, finding himself unable to resist running his hands through the other's white hair.

Themis smiled weakly, hand running down Gelos 's jawline, fingers memorizing the feel of his stubble. “A burning…?” he asked softly before taking Gelos’s hand and placing it over his heart. “Like from here?”

Gelos nodded then drew in once more. “That spreads through you so fast you've not noticed you'd been on fire this entire time,” he said before taking another kiss, one longer and more feverent.

Parting, Themis felt his head spin. Flushed, he leaned in, face rubbing into the other’s robes as he held onto him. “Then I find myself becoming naught but ash in your arms.”

[vixenpen]

You should DEFINITELY do a part 2 to the Dabi x teacher fic! Like it could be when they start taking their relationship to the next level and do some freaky things😏

Hot For Teacher pt.2 (Dabi x Black Reader)

Quirkless AU

(Friendly reminder in this Dabi owns a tattoo shop and is tatted and pierced up and reader is black and thiccccc🍑💦💦)

You were completely unaware of the turquoise eyes admiring your thick ass as you erased your last lesson from the white board.

Dabi’s dick flexed just imagining what sliding between those cheeks would feel like. The material of your conservative black dress clung to your juicy butt and round hips despite the loose material. He liked that.

After a while he couldn’t take it anymore and snuck up behind you, wrapping his strong arms around your waist and pressing into you from the back.

“Dabi!” You squealed.

“Sorry, Ms. Y/n,” he chuckled against your kinky hair, “I just wanted to come by and see if it was possible to get some private lessons.”

You giggled, shaking your head, “you’re so corny. What are you doing here anyway?”

“I wanted to see if you wanted to get dinner, but I’m hungry now.”

“What? What’s the supp-oh!”

The soft material of your knee length dress slid against your body and the next thing you felt were Dabi’s big, warm hands massaging your hips and a very familiar bulge against the crack of your ass.

“Damn, teach,” your boyfriend grinned against your ear, his deep raspy voice made you shiver. “You should have known better than to wear a thong with this little dress of yours. All those pervy male teachers probably haven’t been able to take their eyes off you.”

Your eyes fluttered shut as you felt strong fingers groping and massaging your ass cheeks.

“Dabi,” you croaked weakly, “not here.”

Dabi responded by snaking his pierced along your neck. You whimpered.

“D-Dabi..”

“Hmm?”

One his hands squeezed your full breasts beneath the material.

“Stop, I’m serious.”

“You know, you’re really hard to resist, right beautiful?” His hard on was massaging you through the jeans.

The two of you had been dating for a few months now, and had yet to go beyond kissing and heavy petting that always left Dabi wanting more. He wasn’t sure what you were waiting for, but he did know you were worth the wait.

And boy did you make him wait for it...and work for it. It was as hot as it was frustrating. His dick was so hard it hurt, and all he could think about was fucking you on your desk until you were screaming his name.

He turned you around to face him easily and scooped you up by those thick thighs of yours.

The next few moments were a blur. You saw pens and papers knocked to the floor before feeling your big bare ass settle against the cool wood of the desk.

“My lesson plans!”

Dabi’s lips cut off your protest, and his fingers worked the black dress off your body and over your head, exposing your curves to the cool air.

It was dizzying and exciting and sexy and...inappropriate! So inappropriate. This was your job!

“D-Dabi, wait!” You gasped between the feeling of his pierced lips nipping at you. “There might be students-“

“School ended an hour ago. Trust me. No kids are in this building.” He chuckled, amused.

“The janitors might-“

“I locked the door, beautiful. We’ll hear ‘em comin’.”

Turquoise eyes roamed your thick, dark body hungrily, followed by hands stacked with rings.

“Damn, I want you.” He muttered, diving down between your big breasts to lick and suck at them.

“Ahh~” you dug your fingers into his crop of black hair. “We can’t.” You gasped.

“Says who?”

“Da-ahh! Mmm.” His tongue was now snaking down your stomach. Kisses and bites being left on the melanated skin below your belly button. Fuck it felt so damn good.

He admired the glistening mess between your legs, parting the thick thighs to admire your creaming pussy.

“Fuckin’ delicious.”

And then he dove in.

“Ohh go—“

Dabi slurped at your clit gently. The flick of his pierced tongue combined with the warmth of his mouth sucking the sensitive pearl sent electricity tingling through you.

Your eyes fluttered shut and the muffled sounds of heels clicking down the hall as remaining teachers walked past your locked room was the furthest thing from your mind.

This was so wrong. This went against everything you stood for, and yet...

“Moan for me, y/n,” Dabi commanded against your pussy. “Don’t hold back. Or else I’ma stop holdin’ back.”

“Dabi~”

He smirked up at your pretty brown face and his fingers glided easily into the gripping heat of your cunt.

“Ahhaaa! Fuck! Fuck...” your hips bucked against the sensation.

Months of only being able to play in your cat had given Dabi plenty of time to get to know your weaknesses. He exploited every one of them now. Throwing your thick thighs around his neck he flexed his fingers while licking at your folds.

You could only squirm against him, one hand grabbing his head to push his face deeper while the other gripped the edge of your desk.

“D-Dabi, god yes! Don’t stop! Don’t stop. B-baby, f-f-fu~”

Those sweet moans were music to Dabi’s ears. Your cum coated his fingers and your juices sprayed his face. He opened his mouth greedily drinking every drop.

Then he laughed low in his throat.

“Wow, Ms. Y/n, you really are a naughty teacher aren’t you?”

You tried to glare down at him, but it barely registered. You were too turned on to be pissed.

Dabi continued to tease you. “Letting me fuck you on your desk. Right here where you have to teach all these innocent young minds.”

“Sh-shut up!”

Dabi pressed kisses against the chunky meat of your thighs, his piercings tickled and his lips felt so good.

“Or what, Ms. Y/n?” He asked. “You’ll make me stay after class?”

He snickered and got to his feet.

You couldn’t help admiring him. He wasn’t a big guy by any means, but he was lean and well toned. You wanted to see all of him. Feel all of him.

Snatching him by his shirt, you pulled him close and locked your thick thighs around his trim hips. Your lips pressed against his, hungry to taste every bit of him.

The two of you pulled his shirt over his head and you grinned admiring the colorful tapestry of tattoos and, your favorite part, the barbells piercing his nipples.

Dabi gave a smug smirk. “What’s up, babe? Don’t wanna stop anymore?”

You cocked a brow. “Real funny for someone who moans like a bitch when I do this.”

Pulling him towards you by the waist of his jeans, you trailed your tongue around his nipple, gazing up at him in that way that drove him fucking crazy.

“Oh my god~” he sighed. “Fuuuck, y/n...”

You giggled softly, switching to the other nipple. A deep groan welled up from your man’s throat.

Taking back control, your hand slipped beneath the waistband of his pants, squeezing the thick length trapped in his jeans.

Fuck his dick was so big. You had wanted to fuck your man for the longest time. And just feeling how hard his big dick was for you only confirmed that.

You pressed kisses up along his bobbing Adam’s apple, sucking at his studded earlobes. Your lips pressed to his ear as you purred out; “Now whose being naughty?”

That was about all the man could take.

He snatched you up off the desk once more to turn you around, laying you against it.

You heard the clang of his belt buckle as he snatched off his belt. Then you felt the leather and studs of it kiss your phat ass as he cracked it against you.

“OH FUCK!” You screamed.

“Yeah?” Dabi growled. “Since you wanna talk shit and be a little tease that’s what your ass gets.” He snapped back.

He spanked you a few more times, not caring about what straggling teachers may have heard the noise.

Your mouth hung open as you felt your boyfriend’s lean body press against your body, long dick rocking between the cheeks of your butt.

“I been wanting to fuck your fine ass up for a minute Ms. Y/n.” He chuckled. “This is gonna be fun.”

He stood up admiring the view of that big, perfect ass jiggling with all its dimples and stretch marks in front of him.

God. He couldn’t wait to dive in it.

You craned your neck and admired the long dick slipping between your ass crack. A trail of piercings forming a jacob’s ladder on the underside.

Dabi caught your eye and grinned, eyes flashing. “You ready, babygirl?”

“Fuck me.” You replied.

That was all the answer he needed. Dabi wasted no time plunging deep into that juicy cunt of yours and a strangled groan escaped you both.

“Ahaaa~ fuuuuck yesss, Dabi!”

It was an odd sensation. His piercings added another sensation of texture to your throbbing walls. Your pussy couldn’t get enough of it because you felt yourself clenching and flexing for more.

Luckily he was more than happy to give it to you. His hips rocked back and forth making you feel every. Single. Inch. Every bump and ridge of your tight heat got massaged as he long stroked inside you.

“Fuckkk, y/n, you feel even better than I imagined, babygirl.”

The Angle made your big butt squeeze his cock going in and out, adding an extra grip to his dick. He dug his fingers into the flesh of your ass massaging and squeezing it while he pummeled deep into you.

“You gonna let me cum in this fat ass of yours, y/n? Huh?” He ground out through gritted teeth, fucking you sonhard your booty jiggled and the desk creaked.

“Yes daddy. You-c-can cum-ahh~where-ever you-fuccck-want!” You managed back, throwing your ass back at him as best you could.

“God damn right I can. Fuck!” He sighed.

Dabi alternated between fucking you hard and rough and slow and deep. His hand landed against your ass again and again and again. The sting barely registered as anything other than pleasure.

“Fuck yes, fuck yes, fuck fuck FUCK! Don’t stop! Don’t stop. Don’t stop.” You gasped, drool drenching the desk where your mouth hung open.

“Got you baby-ah fuck! Don’t worry. Ima take care of you.” Dabi grunted back, eyes damn near closed in a mix of pure bliss and concentration.

The desk scraped as the force of your fuck session sent it sliding against the linoleum floors slightly. Neither of you stopped bucking and fucking.

If anything, you went harder. Dabi’s balls clapped your cunt with every stroke, and your ass jumped up to meet his pounding dick over and over until-

“AHAAA~”

“FUUUUCK!”

The two of you came so hard together it felt like you had ascended to another planet. Dabi Damn near collapsed on top of you. He pressed kisses against your curls and cooed about how amazing you felt. How amazing you were, as the two of you came down from your highs.

Finally, you were able to stand shakily to your feet—with Dabi’s help—and get dressed.

You sat back against the desk, panting and watching your very smug boyfriend pull on his shirt.

“I can’t believe we just did that.” You shook your head. “I knew you were trouble the day I met you.”

Dabi laughed. “Well, hey, if I’m so much trouble I could always come see you after class again.” He winked.

You threw a marker at his laughing face which he just barely dodged.w

“Shut the hell up and clean up my classroom.”

Still grinning Dabi leaned in for a kiss. “Yes ma’am, teacher.”

[contemplativepancakes]

there was only one bed, written for @whataboutthebard

Jaskier/Dandelion, G

Jaskier huffs as he slings his lute over his back. Second place. Again. He’s had quite enough of this Dandelion fellow. He wears ridiculous hats that had to have gone out of style at least twenty years ago, and his manner of speaking is insufferable, to be frank. Worst of all, he keeps beating Jaskier.

It’s one thing to win on merit alone, but Jaskier is sure Dandelion’s reputation has much to do with his wins. If Jaskier was more well known, that first place prize would be his, but the judges insist on giving it to Dandelion, over and over again.

Jaskier just wants to get into a room and bury his head into the pillow and not have to think of this particular day ever again. Unless he’s drawing on the spite for his next hit ballad, of course.

Jaskier steps up to the inn’s bar, clearing his throat to draw the attention of the innkeeper. To his dismay, he realizes they’re talking to Dandelion along the other side of the counter. He resolutely looks away, taking the time to take in the finer details of the inn. Well, to call them fine might be a bit of an over exaggeration. There’s smoke in the air that makes Jaskier wrinkle his nose, and the tapestry along the wall has scratches in it from gods know what.

Jaskier turns back around as the innkeeper comes to stand in front of him. “One room, please.”

She winces. “I just gave our last room for the night.”

Jaskier pinches the bridge of his nose. This is just spectacular. It’s made even worse when Dandelion saunters over to him. “I couldn’t help but overhear your plight,” he says, with his stupid voice that Jaskier swears has a fake accent. “We could…share my room?”

Jaskier gapes at him. Absolutely not. He would never sink as low as to sleep anywhere in the vicinity of someone like Dandelion. He learned his lesson with Valdo.

“It’s getting dark out,” Dandelion says helpfully.

Jaskier looks outside. He does have a point, and it is rather cold tonight. What else is he going to do? It’s too late to find other suitable lodgings for the evening. “I would…appreciate that,” Jaskier says through gritted teeth.

Dandelion beams at him, inordinately pleased. Jaskier hopes he’s not about to be suffocated in his sleep. What if Dandelion is just trying to eliminate his competition before he manages to beat him?

Jaskier makes himself take a deep breath as Dandelion beckons Jaskier to follow him to the room. Jaskier trails behind him with his bad of meager belongings slung on one shoulder and his lute on the other, certainly not paying attention to the way the fabric of Dandelion’s bright trousers cling to his ass with every step he takes.

Dandelion opens the door to his room, and Jaskier sets his things in the corner. Dandelion just stares at him for a second, and Jaskier shifts uncomfortably. “I was going to compose, do you mind?” Dandelion finally asks.

Jaskier shakes his head as he surveys the room, his stomach dropping to his feet as he notices there’s only one bed. Well, that’s fine. He’ll sleep on the floor. He digs through his pack until he finds his threadbare blanket and spreads it on the ground. Dandelion frowns at him from his seat at the desk, where he’s looked up from saying random words to himself and strumming his lute. “What are you doing?”

“Getting ready to go to bed,” Jaskier says irritably. What does it look like?

“The bed is plenty big enough.”

Jaskier clenches his jaw. “I’m fine.”

Dandelion stands up, walking over to him and taking his wrist in his hand. “Trust me, you have to start taking care of your back now, or one day you’ll utterly regret it.”

Jaskier idly wonders how old Dandelion is, taking note of the laugh lines at the corner of his eyes and the strands of white hair starting to grow at his temples. He’s…always had a thing for older men. He cocks an eyebrow at Dandelion. “Is that so?”

Dandelion nods, stooping down to gather Jaskier’s blanket and throw it over the bed. Gods damn it, can the man stop being so affable for one second?

Dandelion looks at him from across the bed. “I have a confession.”

Jaskier swallows, his imagination racing.

“I quite enjoyed your ballad today. Maybe even first place worthy,” he says, quirking a grin.

Jaskier scowls at the reminder that he was robbed. Dandelion takes off his shoes and starts stripping down to his small clothes to get into bed. Jaskier looks away, his face burning. When he glances back, Dandelion is studying him carefully. “Do you think you might play it for me?”

Jaskier gulps. He normally doesn’t turn down any requests to play, but he can’t help but think that there’s something nefarious to this. “I’ve already put my lute away for the night.”

“A shame,” Dandelion sighs as he slips between the covers, his lute and notes still strung across the desk in the tiny room.

Jaskier can’t believe he would just leave them there where anyone could look at it and steal his work. Obviously there must not be anything worth stealing.

“Lay down,” Dandelion says, finally a note of irritation bleeding through his voice.

Jaskier complies, and he tries not to notice the way Dandelion’s body plies him with warmth from its scant distance away. Resisting the urge to look over at Dandelion to where he can feel him staring a hole into the side of his head, he gazes up at the ceiling.

“You’re very beautiful, you know,” Dandelion says finally, his voice cutting through the silence.

Jaskier scoffs, but Dandelion continues. “Who is going to write ballads about you? But don’t worry, you still have plenty of time, I suppose, a spry young thing like you.”

Jaskier turns his head and sees the way Dandelion is staring at him. It’s not unlike the way Dandelion’s adoring fans were staring at him earlier, and it makes Jaskier shift uncomfortably. Jaskier pauses for a second, before he closes the distance between them and kisses him.

[dialux]

I’ve been going on a reading binge of all your Tolkien Women fics, and I cannot stop thinking about Indis. As a consequence I’ve created a headcanon that hurts my heart and I am going to inflict it upon you because this is clearly your fault.

Indis is one of those people just meant to be a parent, it fits her so well everyone knew it was just a matter of time before she became one. And once she gets married she tries so hard to be there for Feanor despite her own grief, but he won’t let her in. She has her kids and everyone congratulates her on having four (four!!) wonderful children, but in her heart she has five. Because Feanor might not have let her into his heart, but she certainly let him into hers, and she will always think of him as her eldest son.

It will haunt her to the end of all days and beyond, that he was always her son but she could never truly be his mother, and on her bad days she thinks that every catastrophe and death of the first age can be laid at her feet for not succeeding in the one thing everyone said was her speciality.

Okay, so a) fuck you, b) fuck you, c) fuck you. This story is basically just saying that, only in more euphemistic terms, anon.

...

Once, there were three: a woman with fair hair, a man with fair eyes, a woman with fair skin. 

...

The woman with fair skin is captured and taken by the Dark One to his fortress, where she languishes for long weeks in grief and agony. She is not turned, even as those captured alongside her become evil beings, twisted and gruesome and cruel. Melkor wonders why this woman- this limpid-eyed, weeping girl- can withstand what no other has managed.

He does not get the chance to find out.

The woman with fair hair storms Utumno. She drags her sister out alongside whoever is left of their people. But the fair-skinned woman collapses only a few days’ from the chill of Utumno, and she shows her sister the secret she expended all her fea upon: a child, a fair-haired, fair-eyed, fair-skinned girl.

Intyale the Fair-Haired buries her sister Indis in a cave of glittering light. Then she takes the child down to her people, and she bids her brother, fair-eyed Ingwe, to watch their niece. Indis he names her, for the mother she will never know, and he raises her as his own daughter, this girl who bears the brightest things of all his family.

...

She is the daughter of all three of them. Of Indis the Slain, and Intyale the Bright-Speared, and Ingwe the Grand. Indis bears one woman’s name and another woman’s steadiness and a man’s strength. She is the princess of the Vanyar. She will always be that.

She will always remember how desperately her mother fought to keep her alive. Hidden in Utumno, chanting song after song of hiding and cleaving and darkness, straining for one more moment- one more moment- to keep the little babe at her breast alive- defying Melkor himself- 

The Vanyar suffer the greatest of the losses to the Dark One before ever Orome comes to them. They- none of them, not from the eldest down to the youngest child- will ever trust Melkor ever again.

She was born in grief. 

The Doom that Namo places- it is shocking, it is pitiless, it is cruel. But then Alqualonde still rings with the laments of the Teleri. But then, Finwe is dead. Melkor has taken not just one from Indis’ life. 

She was born in grief, and, as one by one her children too learn that taste, she wonders: Perhaps the doom is my own.

...

When she is very young, she asks Intyale: What did I get from my mother?

And Intyale- this, Indis remembers very, very well- had paused, and considered, and then said, Her silence.

...

From Indis her mother, she receives silence. From Ingwe, she receives the knowledge of ruling and leadership. From Intyale- 

-from Intyale, she receives the strength of will to remain unbowed.

...

Indis loves Miriel with the kind of love of a calf for its mother: overwhelmingly, adoringly, all-consumingly. She spends hours with Miriel, learning to weave those tapestries, hands tangled in thread of silk and cotton and wool, eyes affixed to the wall just as often as she watches the silver spirals of Miriel’s hair.

The Noldor tend to craft to show their passion for the world, but Indis has nothing of that: she is a fair dancer, a well-versed scholar, a singer of surpassing talent. None of them call to her more than the rest.

She aids Miriel often, now that the building of Tirion is almost complete. Indis enjoys sitting with her and with Finwe, sipping a salty-hot tea as the light changes from gold to silver; she often falls asleep there, slumped over in her chair, and returns only at the second Mingling to Ingwe’s abode.

...

This is what they all forget about Miriel’s death: it was slow.

Slow and lingering and painless. She had dignity unto the end. Finwe clutched her hand until it could not be held. Little Feanaro is the only person in all of Aman, they say, who has lost his mother.

Indis bites her tongue until it bleeds, and does not speak.

...

Intyale dies upon the hills of the Ered Luin. Indis is still young in those days, not quite an adult and not quite a child. Three children are gamboling near the water, and there is- something. Not quite something, but not quite nothing either. Intyale realizes before anyone else, and flings herself forwards, bare-handed.

Bare-chested.

The water boar is driven backwards into the river. Indis grabs the children. Two maiar run, grasp the situation, calm the boar down with songs. Intyale emerges from the river dripping.

She collapses upon the sand, and Indis is there in heartbeats: Intyale is the only mother she remembers, distant and proud though she may be. When she dares to let her eyes drift to Intyale’s chest, everything tightens up inside of her. Her mother is rent open, from breast to belly. 

“No,” says Intyale, and reaches up, and grips Indis’ chin tighter than she ought to be able to, so close to death’s door. “Look at me, little one. We are more than our flesh.”

“You are dying,” whispers Indis, trembling.

“Yes,” says Intyale bluntly. “Call for Ingwe.”

Not for the maiar, who might save her. And not for the Valar either. Intyale has given up: Indis doesn’t realize this until later, but her mother- her aunt- would not have called for Ingwe had she not been determined to join the sister she watched fall.

Intyale forces Ingwe to swear to care for Indis as he would his own daughters. Then she asks for her spear, and to be burned until even her bones show no ash. She tells everyone who her sparse belongings must go to. And then, fingers clutching the bone-spear, she dies.

...

(Feanor, too, burns. Half her family burns to death, Feanor and Fingolfin and Fingon and Turgon and Maedhros and- and- and-

That fire is not of Finwe alone. Fire can be taught to catch, and Feanor never burned quite so brightly to anyone else as he did for Indis and her usurpation of his sainted mother. No: the fire is Indis’ inheritance, and Indis’ gift.)

...

Intyale does not tell anyone who her bone-spear should be given to. Indis finds herself holding onto it, and somehow never lets go.

...

This is what they forget: Miriel was the first to die in the peace of Valinor. 

The second is Finwe.

...

Feanaro has lost his mother, but Indis will become that mother if he will allow it. She would wish for nothing more. Of course she wishes for nothing more. 

But he does not.

Indis watches him when he does not realize. She can see it- the grief, the loneliness. He is a little boy, and Finwe is not half the father he would wish to be, and there are impossible things in this world that Indis wants- her mother, her Miriel, her peace- but most of all she just wants little Feanaro to be happy, to know happiness and joy and trust in it instead of fearing the joy will turn cold and dead in his arms.

...

Miriel had been- quickly angered.

So had Finwe. So do most of the Noldor. Indis is patient enough not to pay much attention to it. 

Well. She is patient.

...

Miriel had been easily provoked into greatness. A few insults, a carefree comment- Miriel would sit at her loom and weave, something ever-greater and ever-better. Even now, the finest gown in Indis’ keep is one that she received from Miriel the day after she spent hours insulting Miriel’s taste in fabric.

Indis would have done that to her in those awful weeks after Feanaro’s death. She would’ve gone in and insulted Miriel to within an inch of her life, made her so breathless with rage that Miriel would have levitated out of her bed to strike Indis about the face. 

But Este’s healers- called in when the labor lasted for more than two days- refused to hear of it, and Indis could only watch as Finwe’s face went whiter by the hour and all they heard from the sickroom were little Feanaro’s wails and the healers’ murmurs. She obeys the Valar: she watches Miriel fade into Lorien, and never return.

Little Feanaro is all that’s left of Miriel. 

She is certain that he’s very much like her, too.

...

Feanaro thinks that his dislike of Indis comes from her marriage to his father. Perhaps the dislike deepened into hatred then; Indis does not know. What she does know- for she’s ensured it- is that Feanaro hated her well before her marriage.

...

(“I expected better of you,” says Indis, once.

Feanaro is three years old. His eyes are Miriel’s in shape and size and beauty. Indis, determinedly, does not flinch. 

“I’m just doing with Rumil taught me!” he exclaims.

“In Valmar,” says Indis, “children learn their letters by the time they turn a year old.”

Feanaro flushes red. “I don’t like these letters. They don’t make sense.”

“Then make your own,” says Indis, careful not to let sympathy seep into her voice.

She does not smile when the news percolates through Valinor of Feanor’s Tengwar. She does not smile, but oh, oh: how she wants to!)

...

This is what they do not see: Feanaro is young, and while fire is forever dangerous, while fire is forever alluring, it is too easy, far too easy, to stamp it out. Especially when it is young. Especially when it is small.

Indis would have been the shelter to that little flame if he would have allowed it. But he will not, so all she can do is throw fuel onto the fire. Chaff and dross and dried straw: insults and backhanded compliments and petty slights. If Feanaro will not let her protect him, then she will build him so high that none will ever be able to strike him down.

(Letting him die was never an option.)

...

Finwe dies, and they leave, and then Feanaro dies, and then Findis disappears, and then Nolofinwe dies, and then Arafinwe comes to her, for the first time since his father’s body burned in Tirion’s courtyard.

“We have been given leave to go to Beleriand,” says Arafinwe quietly, solemnly. “Morgoth shall be defeated and thrown into the Void. The Vanyar shall all come, by King Ingwe’s decree.”

“Is there something you wish to ask me, then?” asks Indis gently.

Arafinwe swallows, one reflexive jump of his throat. “Will you join me?”

Indis rises. Steps away. Goes to her bedroom and plucks it from the wall, and returns in time to see her darling son’s shoulder slump with frustration. 

“I will not,” she says. Arafinwe jumps, startled. Indis steps closer to him and presses the bone-spear into his palms. “I will not return, Arafinwe, to that land. Already it has taken much from me. I will not offer it more.”

“But-”

“Take this,” says Indis. “It is your grandmother’s.”

Surprise glitters in his pale eyes. “I have a sword.”

“This has already held off Morgoth once,” says Indis. “There are tales that will never be told, of the courage of the elves that never saw the Blessed Isles. Intyale Bright-Speared was your grandmother named, and well-named was she! This spear held Morgoth back long enough to release prisoners in the depths of Utumno before ever Orome saw us, long enough to let Intyale’s sister flee. Long enough for Intyale’s sister to hand the child in her arms over to Intyale.

“The sister’s name is Indis,” says Indis. “I was that child. I was named for her.”

Arafinwe stares at her. “You speak so rarely of them.”

“I’ve no desire to relive tragedy for the rest of my life,” says Indis flatly. “Now come. You’ll need to learn how to use that, if you wish to hold Morgoth hostage!”

...

Perhaps she began this, when she chose this path.

Perhaps she could have averted this.

But Indis is the daughter of Intyale, and it will be her bone-spear held to Morgoth’s throat at the end of this awful, deathful road, and if nothing else- if nothing else- she has the will to remain unbowed, this girl born in the shadow of Utumno, this woman who watched all those around her fall as wheat before a scythe, this mother who would rather her children loathe her than die, this daughter who has lost both mothers and knows, bitterly, the whole of that unfathomable loss.

...

That is what she tells Feanor, finally, when he returns to life.

There is something thoughtful in his gaze. He nods, and returns, a week later, and when she blithely tells him that his sons have inherited his monotonous fashion sense, Feanor flushes, and then pauses, and then says, carefully, “I’d rather it be monotonous than Finarfin’s gaudiness,” and Indis drinks her tea- salty-hot, just as she likes it- and she says, smiling, “I am glad you can be taught.”

[rampanttheories]

More Weasley Squad vs the wizarding world

After my “how the Weasley siblings at Hogwarts could’ve reacted to CoS” post, I got to thinking on how that would affect the canon immediately post-CoS....

And then I received a wonderful response on that post inquiring if there was more. Thank you so much for your kind comment @transparentfreakpursepanda and this one’s for you.

In my opinion, the drivers of the big changes would be the twins. In their new protector-role I think they’d keep the map with them and have a close eye on it. They’d also inform Ron, Ginny, and Harry (and through them Hermione) of a) the map, b) whatever they know of Sirius Black, and c) of the most useful hidden passages in the castle.

But even more interesting is when and how they’d inform the younger kids. Maybe once they are all at Hogwarts, because that is when it starts becoming relevant. Maybe they check the map thoroughly for potential eaves-droppers before joining the newly established quartet in the remote classroom. Maybe they spot “Peter Pettigrew” among the cluster of names and decide to hide the map for a while longer after all. Not seeing a person whose name shows up on the map is.... disconcerting to say the least. They dislike invisible potential threats and bodyless things with names after the Diary.

Instead they show the others some hidden passages. Every once in a while, either draws attention and the other checks the map. Peter Pettigrew stubbornly stays with them.

Percy researches Sirius Black with more ferocity than even his essays and keeps the twins and the quartet, albeit a little muted, informed of his findings. The twins get one of the Prophet editions detailing Black’s crimes to get a feel for his MO and find Peter Pettigrew listed as the magical person Black allegedly murdered.

They panic a little. Alright, they panic a lot.

And then they show the map to Percy. More specifically, they show “Peter Pettigrew” next to “Ron Weasley”, “Hermione Granger” and “Harry Potter” in the middle of the Gryffindor common room. In their frenzy they miss the tag reading “Sirius Black” near Hagrid’s Hut.

Percy gets George banned from the library for two weeks by blaming his impressive flood of cursing on him. Fred and George learn three new terms they absolutely are going to use. And then Percy doubles down on Peter Pettigrew as well as Sirius Black.

The Halloween Break-In happens. They scour the Map for any trace of Sirius Black, but he has long since disappeared, and when they check again the next morning so has the tag “Peter Pettigrew” and Ron is mourning Scabbers. That sparks a horrible idea. They know about animagi, having been taught by one for years. And the Professor shows up on the map no matter her current shape, they had tested that extensively back in first year.

So they gather Percy and Ron and Harry and Hermione and Ginny and after checking if Peter Pettigrew is REALLY not with them, they share both the map and their theory on Scabbers.

Percy shows the record of students graduating in 1978 he found deep in the Deputy Mistress’ archives, including the names of both Black and Pettigrew, but also Potter, Evans, Snape, and Lupin.

Harry pipes up that apparently Black and Pettigrew both were close to his father and so was the Professor. (”which one?” - “Snape obviously. Seriously George”) So if he asks about his parents, maybe he could find out more about Pettigrew, including if he was an animagus.

Percy and Hermione compare notes on what they know of animagi-related spells. Eventually they decide Hermione should ask Professor McGonagall about them, in relation to the werewolf-lecture they received from Snape Ron jumps into the planning. By comparing ways and methods of transformation Hermione has a reason to be curious and turn to McGonagall in particular. And approximately 73 tangents to go off on after she got her answers to hide the particular interest in forcing animagi to detransform.

Said and done. Two days later Hermione has a list of books on animagus spells and with Percy’s access, the bookworms dig up both a reversal spell and a general checking charm if an animal is an animagus.

By late November, the eldest three assume they have the spell down, it’s a bit hard to test without an animagus at hand and McGonagall is NOT to be included, and the younger students have checked every pet in Gryffindor tower and the owlery for animagusery. The transformation was judged to be a bit too advanced for them after all, they do want to have Pettigrew identifiable. They also all know Stupor and the countercharm.

In early December, Hagrid invites the trio down for tea and during that conversation they find Scabbers. Ron is good with voices and he forces himself to sound “appropriately” happy instead of showing his distress.

As soon as they are out of sight of Hagrid’s Hut, the rat is stunned, knocked out, petrificus totalused and checked for animagus within seconds. The light glow settles into the fur and for just a moment human features are visible-it is an animagus.

They bolt to the remote classroom that became their main base and are met by Fred and George, who had seen Peter Pettigrew show up on the Map again with the trio and gathered Percy and Ginny.

That is the moment they realize they have no plan for AFTER capturing Pettigrew. They stunned him, so he knows they are aware of some parts. Just going back to normal is not an option. Is he guilty of any crimes? How would a bunch of teenagers go about following that up? How would they explain how they knew something was up?? They had an adult, supposedly dead wizard stunned in their hands!!!

Fred and George look at each other, shrug, and suggest making sure nobody knows they were involved. Considering Harry stunned Pettigrew from behind even he might not know if all of them were attacked or if it was just him. After all, Black might have been after Pettigrew as well, considering he tried to kill him. So just leave him somewhere he will be recognized and let the adults deal with the mess?

So they check the map and find most professors in the Great Hall at dinner. Including Lupin. Who always returns to his office to grade after dinner. And offers students to come ask questions then.

So they break into the Defense Office and detransform Pettigrew on the desk, just as Ginny warns that Professor Lupin is leaving the Great Hall at speed. Five minutes if he sticks to the corridors, two if he knows the secret passages.

They don’t take chances and fire of another stunner before pulling the door closed and hurtling towards a passage that’ll take them to a lower floor and safely out of the path of Professor Lupin WHO REALLY KNOWS THE PASSAGES SWEET MERLIN HERMIONE GET IN GET IN AND CLOSE THE TAPESTRY.

Not a moment after they are hidden from sight, they hear first footsteps and then an unholy shout. They bustle through the passage and then double back towards the Hall, just to nearly fall over the railings of the Grand Staircase when Professors Dumbledore and McGonagall come sprinting up the stairs, the entire structure snapping to attention and creating an immediate path for the Headmaster and Deputy.

They grab some easily transported foods from the tables and rejoin the curious stream of students towards Defense.

An hour later Aurors Bones, Moody, and Shaklebolt are seen in Hogwarts.

The next day sees rumours of somebody returning from the dead and the Minister of Magic nearly defacing his bowler in the corridor leading to Charms.

A week later Sirius Black’s name is cleared.

Oh right, he was around too. The seven had completely forgotten the mass murderer. Correction, alleged mass murderer.

[shimyereh]

Tagged by @huntercombe — thank you!

Rules: Share the titles of each of your current WIPs and if your followers ask, share a preview of the one that sounds the most interesting. [Not publicly sharing material from the Onegin translation itself at this point in time, sorry! And other parts of the project can be a little harder to share without context. I’m always happy to talk about my research, though!] Send this on to some mutuals who you are curious about what they’re working on.

I did a bunch of re-formatting, re-indexing, and other housekeeping in my project last weekend, so this is good timing to ramble about the current state of things! :)

For the past three years, I have been working on a passion project that started out as a translation of Onegin, and has since evolved into a lot of other things. The project as a whole is titled Materials toward a translation of Yevgeny Onegin — sort of a riff on the name of one of the first biographies of Pushkin, P. V. Annenkov’s Materials toward a biography of A. S. Pushkin [Материалы для биографии А. С. Пушкина, 1855]. In addition to the Onegin translation itself, my project is also a gathering of materials that have informed my approach to this work, and that give a window into the world in which Onegin was written.

My work is divided into three volumes:

Vol.1: Yevgeny Onegin — My translation of the published Onegin, plus discarded materials (the surviving fragments of the two discarded chapters, discarded stanzas from the published chapters), and some additional Onegin-adjacent poetry content (the original preface to Ch.1, the poem Pushkin wrote the night he finished Ch.8, his snarky responses to friends who kept pestering him for a sequel, etc.). This volume is *mostly* complete. One of the discarded chapters needs more footnotes, and I have one significant side translation still in progress for the Other Related Materials.

Vol.2: The novel in letters — A “found novel” compiled (and translated) from surviving personal correspondence among Pushkin and his contemporaries. I first started poking around in Pushkin’s letters because I was curious about contemporary reactions to Onegin. What were people saying about it when it was still being published chapter-by-chapter, and even Pushkin himself didn’t know what would happen next? Pretty soon it became clear that the letters were interesting in a lot of other ways, too. They give vivid insight into the early 19th-c. Russian literary scene, the shape of Pushkin’s creative life, what was going on around him while he worked on his novel, and the bits of reality that would end up reflected in his work.

In addition to working with Pushkin’s own letters, I’ve also done a huge amount of research into other archives of letters between his contemporaries, to add richness to my tapestry. (The other day I started sketching out a proper bibliography, and was kind of boggled to realize just how many sources I’ve been working from.) In its current state, the “novel in letters” is looking more like a broader biography of Pushkin — but perhaps one of my underlying theses is still, in a way, that Onegin, more than any of Pushkin’s other works, would go on to cast a long shadow across his whole timeline.

This part of the project has been my main focus since mid-February (when I finished translating the last stanzas of Onegin). It has evolved a lot since then. I keep reminding myself: listen to the material, trust the material, let it find its own shape.

Vol.3: Experiments and explorations — Other side work. This volume has three sections: 1) a collection of stories translated from contemporary memoirs, 2) a collection of poetry (side translations of other things from Pushkin’s canon, original poetry reacting to the material I’m working with and commenting on the translation process), and 3) some original work briefly exploring a few things that *might* have happened next after the events of the novel.

Everything in this volume is still in progress. The first section is mostly done: I’ve identified one or two more memoir excerpts I want to translate, some footnotes need to be tidied up, I’ve got a pretty good indexing system established. The second section will be ongoing for as long I’m working on other parts of the project — it’s my diary/scrapbook. The third section will be more of a focus later. For now, I’ve got the basic concepts sketched out, and a few early stanzas that I may or may not end up keeping.

…This got a bit long, so I’m hesitant to tag people. If you see this and want to do the meme, consider yourself tagged!

[ceterisparibus116]

Daredevil scenes / plot points you would have done differently? (I get a suspicion a lot of them have to do with the law stuff, Frank Castle's trial especially. 😉 )

Aaaaa I love this question! Warning: VERY long response:

DEFINITELY the Frank Castle trial. Man, it could’ve been SO GOOD. I have a lot of issues with it, obviously, but the main one is that Matt treating Frank as a hostile witness could’ve been amazing (character-driven, emotionally-charged, also at times hilarious), and we were ROBBED.

 I also wish Matt could’ve been involved in more trial prep. The show makes it seem almost like Matt’s skill is limited to courtroom antics, but charisma and the ability to think on your feet in the courtroom mean next to nothing if you haven’t laid a foundation with good legal research and legal writing. I would’ve loved it if the legal plotlines showed us more of that. Like, you know Matt and Karen’s date night in S2 where she helps him come up with witness questions? I would’ve loved it if: a) they’d gotten, like, ANY part of that scene correct from a legal standpoint, and b) if we could’ve gotten MORE. I know that kind of thing might seem boring, but I don’t think it would be. You can really show off characters’ personalities in that kind of environment, and then the audience gets the reward of seeing that hard work pay off at trial.

 Speaking of, I know we’ve talked before about S3 splitting everyone up. I still think that could’ve maybe been worth it if we’d gotten a S4 where we could see how everyone learned from how disastrous the S3 isolation was, but without S4, everyone’s isolation in S3 is really unfortunate. I would’ve loved to see Nelson, Murdock, and Page working together for at least half of the season, instead of just the last 3-ish episodes. It would’ve been fascinating to watch, since Matt would still not be in a great headspace, and Karen would still be hurt, and Foggy would be just Trying To Deal with his idiot best friends. (But since we don’t have that, at least we have my S3 canon-divergent retelling thing: Take A Deep Breath – shameless plug.)

 I also would’ve generally kept the stakes lower in S2 and S3. I think you agree with me that both seasons would’ve been more powerful if we’d had more lower-level villains. But one of my favorite things about S1 is that we get to know the people who are at stake. Unlike in the Avengers where it’s just “the world” or “New York” or something, S1 showed us a little boy who wanted to go back to his dad, and Elena, and that one juror who was being exploited, and Melvin, and even a bad guy like Vladimir, and they’re ALL sympathetic. We really understand who Matt’s fighting for, but with the exception of Grotto, Jasper Evans, and Julie Barnes, I don’t feel like we really get that in S2 and S3.

 Related: our S2 ninjas needed a clearer motivation. (That goes for Defenders, too.) Imo, they needed personal stakes. Fisk’s mission to clean up Hell’s Kitchen was personal. Frank’s mission to take out bad guys was personal. Everything about Elektra was personal. Dex’s desperate attempt to find a place for himself and find people who care about him was VERY personal. But the Hand? Not personal at all.

 With Elektra…I’m torn. Part of me really wishes Matt could’ve told her no and maintained his boundaries all along, because a) I hate love-triangle-type drama and drama that could be resolved if people just stopped keeping secrets, and b) it would’ve been so refreshing to see the femme fatal trope subverted, and c) it would’ve given Elektra more agency. That being said…that might be veering too far away from comics canon. Matt is canonically a disaster with relationships, and he and Elektra have this whole…epic…magnetic…thing. I personally would argue that the show isn’t beholden to the canon in this specific way, but I can see how people would be upset if Matt and Elektra hadn’t turned out the way they did in S2.

 I would’ve liked Marci to have a smidge more character development. She was so sweet and supportive in S3and I don’t…quite…know where that came from? Oh, well.

 Speaking of character development: I wish Matt and Foggy could’ve had some real conversations. Aside from when Foggy found Matt at the gym in S1 and they talked about moving forward, I don’t feel like they had deep conversations that weren’t arguments. Matt’s S3 apology is good, but I would’ve loved to see Foggy apologize for how he contributed to the problems in their friendship. I also wish we could’ve seen Foggy explicitly thank Matt for, y’know…SAVING HIS LIFE.

 As for Karen, I wish her revelation scene to Matt had been more about HER. It says a lot about how selfless she is that she used her own pain to try to convince Matt not to kill Fisk. But even though I know Matt’s super depressed and everything, I would’ve loved to see him put his own angsty issues aside for a sec and just be there for his friend and the woman he loves. Even the fact that she is the one who crosses the room to be close to him is telling; he should’ve gone over to her when she started crying and been there for her.

 Although if I’m talking about Matt’s romantic relationships, I wouldn’t have minded if the show went a Clairedevil route. Although that would require A LOT. I do wish, if I’m being really fanciful, that we could’ve seen Claire in S3. Or, at minimum, seen Matt and Claire interact in Defenders.

 FATHER LANTOM TELLING MATT THAT GUILT IS A SIGN THAT HIS WORK IS NOT DONE. I cannot with that scene. I love Father Lantom, but that? Really? I mean, I get it. That’s a common way that Catholic doctrine is interpreted, and it’s what Matt basically wants to hear anyway, but it is SUCH a dangerous thing to tell Matt (and I feel like Father Lantom should’ve known that???) and it’s also, as I understand it, not even the technically correct Catholic interpretation of guilt. Like, that’s literally not what guilt is or how it’s supposed to work. (Although who knows. I’m not Catholic, and as I understand it, Catholics themselves vary a lot in their interpretations of doctrine. So idk.) If I were writing that scene, I would definitely not have written Father Lantom to say that.

 On the religious theme, I wish S3 had circled back to Matt’s original objections related to the book of Job. He gets quite a few things wrong in his recap, and I’m not sure if Maggie didn’t correct him because she didn’t know better, or because she didn’t think a Biblical literacy lecture was what he needed at the moment, OR because the writers couldn’t be bothered to read the book. (In fairness…it’s a long and complicated book. But they couldn’t have been bothered to read a commentary on it?) I wish S3 had not stopped at giving Matt an abstract tapestry analogy to heal his faith when it also should’ve addressed his specific complaints.

I wish we’d had more time to see Matt and Maggie repair their relationship, or start to. And I wish she’d hugged him at Literally Any Point.

I wish the whole Matt-hallucinating thing had been clearer. Was he actually hallucinating? Or was that just his internal monologue manifested through other characters? If he was hallucinating, did he just...stop? Is he not freaked out about that? What was going on????

Oh, and if only they could’ve gotten Dex’s psychological diagnosis right.

 Other than that, there are a couple scenes that I feel like drag on way too long (S3 especially has an odd amount of monologues that generally strike me as OOC anyway—except with Fisk; he’s just Like That) but I don’t want to go into all of them. It would be hypocritical, given how long this reply is. :P

 So yeah, I think I’ll stop there, although I’m sure there’s more, haha. Thank you again for the ask and the excuse to ramble about Daredevil! I look forward to your thoughts as well.

[guileheroine]

a sky full of song, chapter one

Korra, princess of the Water Kingdoms, receives a gift from her blacksmith friend on the auspicious winter festival / Korrasami royalty AU / ao3 / My piece for the @korrasami-valentine-exchange (assignment: Date A) (reposting with cover!)

“The wedding of the Earth Prince, yes, on the solstice. But it’s an opportune moment for a longer tour, we don’t want to waste the journey. I’m afraid your father can’t afford it, and before you ask, I’ve been conferring with your mother’s office. And frankly, I’m loath to request it of her after…

Councillor Panak trailed off as Korra hurried him along with a gesture of the hand. He pushed his eyeglass up his nose and took her eye seriously. “To the point, then—what do you say?”

Korra was tapping her foot under the meeting table. Prince Wu, if she recalled, was equally as intolerable as old Hou-Ting, the spirits bless his poor betrothed. But the prospect of a fortnight around the Earth Kingdom, with its delicious fare and diverse landscapes… that made her much more amenable to the whole idea.

“Around the solstice, huh? Alright. Why not.” It was a way off. She had time to arrange her retinue and her schedule as efficiently as possible for maximum enjoyment.

“…That means a tour to the Earth Empire in the spring—or summer, if Her Royal Highness prefers it?”

“Oh, spring,” Korra said in a rush. “Spring. I’m not sure I can do Earthen summers.”

Panak smiled quite kindly at that, and nodded at his scribe to jot it down. Korra returned his smile. They really were getting along better. It was nice. This meeting was also stretching much farther into the evening than she had understood it would.

The Lotus Guard at the doorway didn’t so much as blink as she pushed the heavy door open and went out. He was one of the older men, having been here long before the war, and quite accustomed to her ways.

Once Korra was out in the foyer, she raced. Her quarters, and her next appointment, were in the other wing of the palace, but she had promised to go see her mother first for a few minutes before the Queen went to bed. The winter sun was long gone; all the windows she skipped past were dark, torchlight gleaming on the icy sills. In the halls, on the other hand, the air was bright as frost, festive. She wove around decorators from all over Agna Qel’a hanging new crystalwork along the old bead tapestries and tying berry wreaths around the tall pillars. Down the stairs, in the main hall, the humongous fires that burnt uninterrupted over the winter lit the place generously. As she sped through, headed for the opposite staircase, Korra caught the eye of one of the housekeepers.

“Mina! Mina, are you busy?” She took the girl’s arm, whose eyes goggled, alarmed only at the princess’s sudden appearance but unperturbed by her familiar ways. “Could you go to the kitchen and send for some tea to my apartment? Milk and honey for me—and some of whatever black blend is left, what my blacksmith friend likes. They’ll know. Thank you!”

When she turned to continue, she was immediately waylaid by one of the ice sculptors.

“Your Highness! A moment.”

Just a moment to breathe was exactly what it took for Korra to finally notice the centerpiece of the hall: an elaborate sculpture-fountain of Yue. The moon and ocean spirits hovered above each of her hands, water pouring in gentle arcs out of their gaping mouths.

Korra’s father was pulling out all the stops for Yue’s Day. She knew, for her part, that it was a private gesture for the Queen, newly returned from a long diplomatic engagement with the northern Air court. Korra stood at attention for the sculptor, whose fingerless gloves allowed him to bend with especial precision.

“Should her hair run—” he said, bending Yue’s locks of ice into free-flowing rivulets, “or stand arrested?” Another curl of his palm froze them again.

“Freeze them. More volume!” Korra said, thinking of her mother, who always grumbled about her limp hair. Then she was on her way to the Queen’s chambers, and then her own.

“I got your tea. Hi, princess.”

Korra’s blacksmith friend took a pointed sip when she finally entered her drawing room. Asami’s smirk was hidden behind the glassy cup, and her hair was wet. One of Korra’s towels was slung over the back of her seat—one of the nice ones with the finely embroidered monogram.

“Asami. Sorry I’m late!” Korra slumped onto her divan, sending one of the cushions flying onto the carpet. “It’s good to see you.” She took a moment to catch her breath before picking the cushion up, sitting comfortably and grasping for the tray on the table.

“Don’t worry about it,” Asami said, moving the cup from her mouth, the smirk finally melting off. She pushed the tray into Korra’s reach. “I’m done for the day. A couple of the apprentices are closing up shop for the very first time.” Her brows waggled.

“Impressive! But still, thanks for coming. I know you’re working hard.”

“We had an appointment, right? And—” Asami grinned and stretched, pulling her warm wools tighter around her “nothing like the thought of a royal shower at the end of the day to get you through it, you know?”

Korra rolled her eyes. The staff knew to let Asami into Korra’s apartments, and even if she could tell they were a little reticent about her using the princess’s bath and vanity, they of course said nothing. The dogs more or less dragged Asami in through the gates every time she came by the palace, and by order of the princess, they were the ones that decided things in her absence.

Asami scrutinised the tray from the kitchen carefully before picking out a little moon pastry. “How was your meeting?” She took a bite, attentive both to the pastry and Korra.

“Looks like I’m going on tour to the Earth Kingdom in the spring,” Korra told her. She wasn’t surprised to see Asami’s brow spring up, and her taste-testing pause.

“What, all over?”

It was a town in the Earth Kingdom that Asami originally hailed from, before she travelled to the Fire Empire with her father, an innovator in the art of war. After the war’s end and the subsequent reunification of the Water Kingdoms, the newly humbled Sun Emperor had gifted King Tonraq an ancient forge for the royal armoury as a token of good faith and cultural exchange. Korra remembered how it had taken several pulleys, and days, for it to be transported into place in one of the main avenues in the city. They had set up a house around it for a new smith to eventually train locals in the foreign art. Asami—skilled as a metalworker, but bereft of a livelihood and a family after her father’s foundries were shut down—had decided to venture north to start afresh. She vied for the position and won it handily.

Korra glanced at her long. “You could come with me, you know. Take a vacation, if you manage to get this new shop set up in time. I’m sure you’ve trained all your underlings well.”

“We’re getting there,” Asami said vaguely. “But I’ll keep it in mind.”

Korra was musing, recumbent with her feet up now. “I must warn you, t’s for the wedding of the Queen’s nephew. They’re a lot stuffier in the Earth kingdom. All the pomp and pageantry,” she clarified. “I’m not looking forward to that part.”

“I’ll bet.” Asami gave her a sympathetic smile.

Sitting pretty in formal assemblies, she did not enjoy. Peace was harder than war, in a lot of ways. At least it was for Korra, who had been right at home as a strategist commanding the bending battalions in the few Fire Empire skirmishes that had reached the north. Or as a captain fending off the marauding warlords and shaman-kings in the southern fiefs who took advantage of the chaos to arouse the spirits and stage deadly rebellions. Her leadership, covert though it was, had played no small part in subduing the northern theater and paving the way for all the ancient Water tribes to be reunified under Agna Qel’a and her father’s leadership. The lasting peace of the years since had proven they were stronger together. Just as it had proven that the Princess’s patience for peacetime bureaucracy needed a good deal of practice.

“You should come. We’ll do you up as my retainer so you get a salary. I might need you to keep me straight.”

Asami was good at that, blowing off steam after long, boring days. The mellowness of the warmth, nothing like that of her forge, evened Korra’s mood like little else.

“Oh, so you want me to drop everything and trail you around as a handmaiden?”

Korra scoffed, embarrassed. “Well, don’t put it like that.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Asami sat up. “An Earth royal wedding, huh? Think they’ll let me in?” She picked at the cushion in her lap.

“They will if I have anything to say about it.” Korra yawned. “It’ll be my turn soon enough.”

“How’s your mother?” Asami said, following her train of thought seamlessly—it was always the queen that pestered Korra about finding a match, good-natured but more earnest than she ever realised she was appearing.

“Sleeping. She had a long journey back from the Northern Air Temple. Dad’s happy, though. Just casually planning her a ball this weekend for Yue’s Day.”

“Hey, is that what that business down in the hall is?” Some forgotten curiosity clearly jolted Asami. “There were all these new kayaks moored around the drawbridges when I came through, too.”

Korra nodded, while tentative recognition continued to filter into Asami’s expression. It was easy to forget Asami had been here nary a year. But she had, and it had been a busy year too, with little time for exploration, per her own frequent complaints. “You know about it, right?” When Asami shrugged evasively, Korra explained, “It falls on the day of the first full moon after the winter solstice. Yue was a princess of legend—our ancestor, apparently—who became the moon spirit.”

Asami sat forward. She loved tales like this, and listened to them like she was being entrusted a secret.

“We’ve celebrated it as long as anyone remembers, but the festival is supposed to usher good fortune and fertility. I think that’s why it became a couples thing.” Korra didn’t think much of that. “But, well, the idea is to spend the evening under the full moon, which is why all the kayaks are out. Really, everyone just needs an excuse to liven up the winter!”

“That I understand,” Asami said wryly, ill accustomed to the polar night. “Yeah, I went to the market in town to pick up some new gloves and they had stalls and stalls of new fare. Jewelry, wind chimes, furs.”

Korra sat up, conspiratorial. “I bet at least one of your new proteges will sneak you a little gift. I get messages every year. Mostly upstarts, but some cute ones, too.”

When Asami had first been appointed as the blacksmith, Korra was uncertain what a girl her age was doing heading up an official royal undertaking like that, with all its bells and whistles. When she arrived at a welcome dinner with her family, Korra found her altogether too precious, and definitely not deserving of the private summons and the White Lotus escort. Especially not when the whole rigmarole was keeping Korra from her planned retreat to the kennels for the evening, where, in the end, the strapping night guards were giggling and blushing about the new blacksmith.

At her father’s behest, Korra had put on her most functional anorak and taken Asami some cakes, conserves and newly dried jerky from the palace a couple weeks after their meeting. He insisted it was a part of the Princess’s duty to look after someone in their employ so new to the land—a girl her own age no less. Down in the city, the townsfolk were pleased to see Korra as she made her way to the workshop, but no one made a fuss (unless they were young and excitable already), unlike what she had heard of the other Kingdoms, larger and loftier as they were. She wondered if Asami the Blacksmith liked that about here, or found it lacked decorum, as Korra knew some folk abroad definitely did.

Asami had a study above the forge, from which she dealt with its administration, and living quarters on the next storey. These were yet lonely and sparse, but not completely devoid of homely touches, as though she would have spruced them up if she only had the opportunity. Korra noticed well-kept shrubs and a vivid landscape on the wall; then Asami came and curtseyed deep and pulled off her apron.

She was willowy and beautiful under the gear and the soot (over it, too, to be honest), which endeared and repelled Korra in fairly equal measure, ultimately leaving her as indifferent as ever.

“My parents and Lord Arnook want to know how you’re getting on.” Lord Arnook was the esteemed keeper of the royal armoury, and he liked Asami just as much as everyone else did.

A flicker of sadness—shame?—crossed her face, then she put her hand on the table. “Won’t you sit? Your Highness. Let me bring you something hot first.”

Asami lit the fire in the blink of an eye and stoked it without watching, like it was the back of her hand. She had some bread in the pantry, over which she spread the aqpik jam Korra had delivered her. Korra watched her as she boiled the water. Her skirt was heavy, probably to insulate from the heat and cold alike, but it fell flatteringly from her height; and her long hair, which had flown in waves in a foreign style at dinner, was pinned into a practical bun. She made a sharp, fragrant tea she had brought from the continent. Her eyes lit up unexpectedly when Korra bent her own cup to cool it.

“Ah, I love seeing that,” she cooed. “I suppose I’m still not used to it. The other elements don’t bend like that. And I hear you have great skill.”

Korra’s own smile came too quick for her to suppress. “Who told you that, the King?” Then she regarded her keenly. So, how are you… Do you need anything? Do the men from the quarry treat you okay?”

“Oh, everyone here is… They’re very warm. Makes up for the chill,” Asami laughed.

It was a line so hackneyed that gritting through it was itself a country-wide inside joke. But this calm and rosy girl injected fresh, charmless charm into it. Maybe everything was charming if someone this winsome did it. After that, Korra softened considerably.

“They are,” she replied, with no small amount of pride. A sudden shame crept up her chest, that she probably couldn’t count herself among those nice people that had made Asami feel welcome.

Then Asami swallowed and the colour of her voice changed. “I miss my home, though. I know this job is more kindness than I deserve, after what we did but… It is a little lonely here.” She confirmed what Korra had already deduced, mostly because she knew the feeling all too well. “I guess I just don’t have a lot of time to go and make friends after work.”

Korra didn’t doubt that; it was hard, physical work. The one or two times she’d witnessed it, the clang rang in her ears for hours afterwards. She wouldn’t have pegged a girl like this for it. Asami reminded her more of some of the young ladies she knew from her old classes, when all the children around the court would be dumped into the royal healing hut together for some hands-on learning.

“Have you been beyond the city yet? The land out there… that’s our land. This is just a fortress.”

“Oh, I’ve been wanting to,” Asami said, wistful. “Pretty sure I can’t go on foot though.”

“Well, if… if you don’t know anyone else, I could take you. I have the best dogs in the Four Kingdoms.”

Before the month was up, Korra had sent a commission to the Queen’s personal seamstress for some sealskin gloves and winter-grade furs. She gifted them to Asami on her birthday. “You need these anyway, I think, but you’ll definitely need them where we’re going.” And that night, Korra took her to see the aurora.

There was a hamlet a few miles north of Agna Qel’a where Korra knew the elderly chief and had asked her for passage to an outcrop in their territory, after divining the well kept secret that it was one of the prime spots for watching the sky dance. Asami, enchanted, never took her eyes off it—so unflinching that Korra almost began to feel envious of the lights.

It became a routine. Korra knew every inch of her realm. If a diplomatic mission sent her to one tribe or settlement, she would be sure to take a day or two exploring the local country before she returned to the capitol. It had been a great boon when the southern tribes first came under their stewardship. The Princess spent time in every village, took interest in their land and in their lore; met challenges of the wilds and the weather with hunger, and any unknowns thereof with abiding curiosity. She knew what to wear, which sled or boat to take. When to find the rarest whale pods before they went south; where the starriest cliffs were, and the sunniest lakes.

All of which impressed Asami a great deal, and that made Korra happier than most things. And no worse were the days they spent in her apartments going over the sordid palace gossip, or in her apartments tracing old scars by lamplight, healing them word by gentle word.

On Yue’s Day, Korra stopped by to see various palace aides located around the city with customary gifts. In a castle town, there were plenty with such connections, and she relished the ruddy smiles, quick drinks, and flustered curtsies she received in turn. She saved Asami for last, because Asami had asked for some time together. Korra entered the smithy by the front, her senses clogging with immediate heat. Two of the apprentices were there: one of them gaped while the other barely blinked.

“Asami? I come bearing punch… and those moon pastries you like!”

She commenced the usual ritual of announcing her presence over the steam and noise while peeling off all but a couple of her layers, when Asami emerged out of the back. She was squeezing her hands together in excitement.

“No, no, no, don’t,” she urged, a gleam in her eyes like the blades that hung behind her, “we’re going somewhere.”

A few minutes later, they were walking along the main canal under the sparkling lights, milling through the townspeople. A fresh drift crunched beneath their boots. In a few more, they were alighting one of the kayaks in the dock.

Asami faced her and paddled like a natural; and naturally, Korra gaped.

“Do not tell me you haven’t done this before!”

Asami’s tongue stuck out in concentration as she suppressed a giggle, but her limbs moved with finesse. “Just the once. So far. Don’t be distracting me.”

“I won’t let us capsize,” Korra assured her.

Eventually, Asami settled into her rhythm, and the canal carried them out of the city, past all the lights. The banks of glass-cut brick gave way to a more jagged channel littered with pack ice at its mouth, floating blue and still. Korra gripped the edge of the kayak, not for any physical comfort. A crackling anticipation, and an unnameable fondness both, were welling and welling in her with every mundane word they shared.

When they disembarked on the lake’s other edge, the ice was landfast: a ghostly field glowing under the full moon.

Korra knew this place, but she had scarcely been here in the middle of winter, when the ice field extended endlessly, as vast as the sky. As they tramped across the snow, she began to wonder what Asami’s surprise was. There wasn’t much for a mile in any direction.

“We should sit for this,” Asami said, pointedly ignoring Korra’s prying questions.

The wind had kicked the snow up into berms along the field. Korra froze one so it was sturdy enough to perch on. Then Asami took her pack, and pulled out some plain tubes of parchment; nothing Korra would have looked at twice, although she didn’t know what they were.

“What’s in there?” She said.

“Some of my metals, some of my salts,” Asami replied enigmatically, almost sing-song. “Wait here.”

She heaved herself off the berm, ran several yards towards the horizon and stooped. She planted the tubes, and did something else Korra couldn’t see, though she thought she recognised the bright filigree on the cover of the pocket matchbook Asami carried everywhere.

When Asami had trundled back and sat again, Korra crossed her arms and laughed, bemused, her humour ebbing. “Are you going to tell me what’s going—”

BOOM!

Korra gasped, startled out of her words. She would have fallen from the perch if Asami didn’t catch her around the waist, giggling blithely all the while—

A wheel of light bloomed in the sky like a flower, dazzling and surreal. All the colours of the aurora—except they were peals of crystal fire, pouring out like diamonds before disappearing into the smoky air. Another wheeled up after it with a strange whirr, before it exploded into a glittering shower, and more in succession.

They reminded Korra of the spirit hales in the heart of the wilds, and even deeper in a buried memory, of the Fire explosives some of the raiders had once set off on the Southern Sea. Except these were brighter—and safer, because Asami had made them.

Korra looked to her when they had died, beaming under the mitten that covered her mouth in shock. “Are there more?”

To her eternal delight, there were more. New flowers sprouting on the celestial vault, they would be burned in her memory forever.

“They’re no aurora,” Asami said, while Korra scoffed and slung her arms around her, huddling for the cold and the buzz. Under her embrace, and half her weight, Asami looked chuffed. “But I thought they might liven up your night.”

Korra cupped her earmuff, then her cheek. “Thank you. This is the best day I’ve had all winter.”

Asami’s pyrotechnical skills didn’t even surprise her, but that could hardly diminish the sheer majesty, and novelty, of the display. Even minutes later, Korra could hardly believe what she had seen.

“Well, I couldn’t let you be the only show-off around here.” Asami smiled. Then the smile dropped from her eyes and she hesitated, like she couldn’t let that sit for an explanation. “Korra. I wanted to do something special. You’ve made me feel at home here in a way I never imagined. And I’m just a smith, from the Fire Empire!”

Korra felt her eyes water and blinked the tears back quickly, because they would ice and sting in the bitter air. She bit the smile off her lips. “You’re not just anything. You’re a terrific handmaiden.”

She snorted as Asami shoved her off and reached for her pack again.

“One more thing. I thought it might be too smokey for this after all those incendiaries, but it’s worth a shot anyway.”

This time Korra recognised the device she emerged with. It was made of two cylinders, and the mechanism that held them together spun smoothly like the spokes of a wheel. She handed it to Korra, who held the spyglass up.

A field of stars materialised. Korra held her breath.

The stars were luminous at the poles, but she had never seen them like this, and for the first time they felt close enough to touch, invoking a bracing, irrepressible wonder. In silence, she gazed.

“The moon spirit leads all the stars out tonight, right?”

Asami had done her research. Korra turned back to her. “So they say.” She hooked her arm through Asami’s, and held her hand. With the spyglass still to her eye, she let her head fall against Asami’s bundled shoulder.

“Tired, princess?”

Korra rustled her breath, long-suffering. “Why do you call me that!”

The way Asami said it—like it was something of her own decree, and not that of ten thousand years of tradition and some profoundly sacred doctrines. There was a sweet and strange tug in Korra’s belly whenever it happened, and this time, tonight, it lingered longer than ever.

“‘Cause you’re a piece of work,” Asami said, trying to interlace their thick, mittened fingers, which required some effort.

Tentatively, Korra turned the spyglass to the moon herself. She winced— it glared straight back, too bright. Maybe another night, when it wasn’t Yue’s Day.

Yue’s Day. She now held the thought delicately in her chest, as if she wanted to guard it from the wind and chill. If Asami loved her—were to love her—there were several reasons not to say it. They both knew them, whether they had turned them over consciously or not.

But the risk of showing was low. And the reward, as her own euphoric mood tonight proved, was magnificent.

[pog-through-the-suffering]

it occurs to me perhaps i should elaborate on “you think tommy is theseus? no, tubbo is theseus.”

i probably don’t have to because this is tumblr and the greek mythology nerdery came free with your xbox but... i want to :)

why you’re always stronger than a greek hero

they’re always doomed to fail :)

or: karo spends wayyy way way too much time thinking about greek mythology, parallels, and block men, because she’s a nerd.

the first part is easy to explain: techno’s saying this speech to tommy, but while tommy gets nominally/officially/physically exiled, tubbo gets emotionally exiled. and that’s maybe even a greater tragedy than tommy’s.

sure, tommy has to spend time away from war. boo hoo. he still has his brothers he can talk to, and his friends back in new l’manberg believe in his cause—the only reason it didn’t work out was because tubbo shut it down before it could massively fudge over new l’manberg.

but tubbo - tubbo has very few people. first, as his position as president, he is automatically a little detached/isolated from everybody else. second, because tommy (like wilbur) deftly manipulated the narrative so it seemed like he was completely reasonable in declaring war against a near-god over some fudging music discs and “dignity” was a good idea. and so people come to view tubbo as a traitor and the second coming of jschlatt.

who else can tubbo talk to? niki - but she might still take tommy’s side, what with her connection to ranboo. and everybody else trivializes him a little.

he is - if not a hero, at least justified and trying to do the best for new l’manberg. and what does he get? exiled, emotionally.

tommy is a classic greek hero plagued by hubris, no two ways about it. the whole time he was like “dream you have no power over me” i was just mumbling “wax wings, tommy, you’re on wax wings.”

because it has historically never been a good idea to challenge a god. arachne, one of the classic examples of hubris, challenged athena and was turned into a spider. if you read into the interpretation that dream lashed out over feeling helpless, then there’s a version of the arachne myth where athena turns her into a spider because arachne weaved a tapestry depicting all the faults of the gods. if you read into the interpretation that dream simply wanted to punish tommy for his hubris, athena does this in countless other interpretations.

which is why it bothered me that people wanted techno’s welcome to tommy to be “welcome home, theseus.” the aesthetic is wonderful, i admit, but tommy is not theseus, not the version techno projects at least. he is a greek hero born of hubris, he deserves to be laughed at and scorned. he is a cautionary tale embodied, but because he’s so good at appealing to the narrative and his main character syndrome, the audience views him as a theseus rather than an icarus.

on that note about the version of theseus techno projects-

you know... when techno did his whole speech about theseus being a hero but still being cast out, like of course i love the drama of it—never stop—but it occurs to me now that he’s misquoting (at least of what i understand) theseus’ story to be.

theseus (of what i remember, and also a quick wikipedia search) never gets exiled. his father is initially suspicious of him (because his father abandons him at first) but learns he’s theseus and accepts him with open arms. he never gets exiled, what??? on a meta level i’m pretty sure techno just changed it around for the drama (and if phil is to be believed, the improv might’ve just shut off his memory of the myth itself), but i choose to believe in the power of happy accidents and deeper meanings.

theseus never gets exiled: in fact, he’s celebrated as a hero. in fact in fact - theseus never really has some huge tragedy. sure - his father commits suicide after thinking his son died, he has a couple tragedies of family. but none of it is a real Greek Tragedy, you know? achilles has a Greek Tragedy because the love of his life dies (and is striken by grief, you’ve all read song of achilles), narcissus has a Greek Tragedy because he’s his own undoing, but theseus doesn’t get that.

which: makes me wonder whether it was intentional. techno, the character, makes theseus’ tragedy seem all the more important, all the more apparent, when in reality theseus didn’t really have anything to his name. is he, in a weird meta kind of way, creating a dialogue about how c!tommy really doesn’t have Tragedies?

his life is tragic for sure, but what c!tommy is focused on is the discs. something that ultimately doesn’t matter—and what people focus on is what ends up getting told in stories.

and despite the fact that theseus literally does scummy stuff like try to kidnap persephone (and in some interpretations try to force himself on her), but his heroics (his killing of the minotaur) overshadow everything else. so the scummy stuff tommy does—trying to coerce his friend into not punishing him, separating from the smp to sell drugs—all gets overshadowed by tommy’s crippling main character syndrome.

but i’m probably just reading too deeply into an improv-induced slip-up.

EDIT: an anon has informed me that theseus does in fact get exiled, but not for no reason - he gets exiled because he kidnapped women and started a war. i answered their ask... so if you want elaboration on my thoughts on that go read that one :)

[stevenbasic]

“Oooo look at that one! And ahahah that one!” she sang, as we sat next to one another on the empty beach, “They look the same! You’re really just as good as any of the photographers I used to work with!”

“Oh, I don’t know…” I replied, trying to keep the silly delight I was feeling, being lauded by Melissa, out of my voice, “i-it’s probably just these better cameras, on these phones, these days…”

“No, no, you’re really good!!” she flattered, scooching herself closer to me. We had been sitting like this, next to one another on her towel in the sand, all alone, for a while now. We were going through the pictures of the day, the little “modeling shoot” she’d asked me to do for her, this afternoon after our morning classes at the conference. She was flipping through them on my phone - which she insisted we use - in trying to duplicate some of the shots she’d done at a photoshoot on this same exact beach, this little nature reserve, six or so years ago. Or was it two, or three? I had trouble pinning her down, on that one. Anyway, she wanted to put the pictures up on Instagram, she said, for a joke. Melissa had tossed the gauzy tapestry of her sarong over our heads, to keep us shielded from the late afternoon sun and able to more easily see the pictures on my phone's meager screen. The moment, thus, was intimate, the space between us tight...

“C’mon…” I deferred. It was disconcerting, how excited I was by her plaudits, how eager I was for her praise, even if it was just for my photography skills. We had been so friendly, here, all alone on our basically private beach over these past few hours. With no one else around, I had no airs to keep up, no appearances to maintain, and my guard had come down without a fight. I had allowed myself to both relax and give in too easily and too fully to the temptations of her flirty friendship. “I’m no photographer, really…you’re obviously just a really good model...”

“Ahhh, I was never really a ‘model’,” she deferred, “just a girl with the boobs some energy drink company wanted in their ads. But thank you...” She giggled, and nudged me with her bare shoulder. “...and you should learn how to take a compliment,” she told me. 

My heart fluttered.

I also can’t begin to tell you how fucking turned on I was. I’d just spent the better part of the afternoon following her around as she posed here, posed there, once in a while disappearing behind boulders or bushes to change in and out of multiple swimsuits for this, our ersatz modeling session, trying to duplicate the last time she was here. “Before” pictures stored on her phone, “After” now on mine…

I must have looked like an overeager simp, a wide-eyed supplicant, when she - with demure giggles - had initially peeled off her beach dress to reveal her first bikini, a little, overmatched yellow thing, and asked me to start snapping. 

She had framed it as a chance to see if she still “had it”, now that she wasn’t nineteen years old. Oh, she had it, I’d quickly and convincingly been shown, and in spades. In fact, the afternoon quickly became a study in how much bigger her tits had grown over the last few years, how much more Melissa there was everywhere, what kind of womanly body she was - if she's to be believed, god help me - still growing into. Our first looks, comparisons of the previous shots to today’s, were ample demonstration of that - it actually made her laugh: “Omigod I look huge in that one!!” or “I’m like twice the size I was then!!”  To her it was a joke but in all honesty it actually was quite dramatic, sitting here with her now, looking at these pictures.

It was also quite dramatic how soft her skin felt. 

She was leaned into me, under the canopy of her sarong, the skin and supple flesh of her bare left arm, shoulder, hip, thigh pressed abundantly against my sallow side. The day had cooled as evening approached, and her warmth was pleasant, the scent of her beach-sweetened body saturating our little space with its luxurious richness. My view - even notwithstanding the bikini pics - was equally enthralling. She had changed, after our shoot was done, back into her burgundy suit, because I had told her - when asked, pressed on the matter - that it was “my favorite”. So now our private world under the shade and shelter of her skirt was filled with her lap, her hair, her big, soft breasts in her string bikini. Sunlight dappled in, shadows emphasizing everything. 

I was so fucking hard. 

“I, uh, did take photography in college…” I conceded, bathing still in her praises and painfully aware of my erection, which was nearly a third person in our little makeshift tent. 

“Seeee??” she squealed, bumping me with her shapely hip, “I knew it! You were so good, too, making me feel comfortable, like a real professional.” She flipped to another photo, nonchalantly zoomed in on a little detail...

“How do I always seem to manage to get sand on my boob..?” she asked, more to herself in an aside. If she heard me chuckle I’m lucky; I was worried it sounded like a whine.

“It is a little weird traipsing around in front of your boss in a bikini,” she said, now casually flipping to the next picture, “but you were such a gentleman.”

Ha - ‘gentleman’. If only she knew the battle I’d been fighting all afternoon, trying to keep my composure, trying to look at ease as she giggled and bounced and posed, rolling in the sand, playing in the surf, smiling - or seething - for the camera.

 I saw sides of Melissa I’d only seen in the countless images of her I’d surreptitiously collected on my pc at work, from her Instagram, ones I’d scoured from the net.  But here, in person, in the flesh, she looked bigger and more voluptuous than ever, and it had been all I could do to keep from outright groaning at times, when she would emerge from behind a bush, or a boulder on the beach, in a new bikini or one-piece. I might be kidding myself but I hope I made it look like I was keeping my cool and snapped pic after glorious pic. I was doing the best I could but in the end I knew I was not made for this; my heart is too weak and I was honestly afraid I might pass out.

And these photos are all on my phone, I thought to myself, in a lurid anticipation.

“Well, you really look beautiful, in all of them,” I said, nodding but immediately knowing I’d said someth-

“Oh my god thank you!!” Melissa gushed, turning my way in our little shelter and dropping the phone, forgotten, onto our towel. “You are so nice, so great..!”

My heart nearly stopped as I looked at her, our faces inches away. Eyes made up, makeup heavy and dramatic for the camera. Her hair a huge soft mess of deep brown abundance, her dimpled smile and perfect cheekbones riveting and...

Fuck. She is so fucking gorgeous. 

“Uh…” 

She inched in closer.

Omigod is she going to..?

“I could just kiss you right now!” she laughed, her smile growing wide and her eyes dancing, playing over my face and then flashing as she read my reaction, the moment between us suddenly wired, charged. 

I can’t let this explode, I can’t I can’t I c-

“I-it’s true…” I mumbled, dropping my gaze away from hers back to the phone, laying beneath her thighs. I knew I should stop, stop. “I m-mean...the pictures came out g-great…”

Looking down, my eyes could not help but be drawn to her great breast, tanned and huge and swollen in her taut burgundy bikini, stray grains of sand the only imperfection on the smooth expanse of its skin. She was for the moment quiet, and breathing. Oh god I just stared. 

“D-Doctor J..?” she finally began, her voice dropping, cracking, sounding - for the first time - like she was unsure of something, “Do you like spending time with me?”

Oh jesus.

“Y-y-yes, of course,” I replied, unsure of what to do. 

“Okay...okay,” she continued, her voice still shaky. She was obviously trying to gather herself. “I was worried that I was maybe being too...pushy, that maybe you didn’t really want…”

Her words trailed off, and I could feel her looking at me, watching my face. I hoped to god she couldn’t tell that I was just staring at the swell of her big left breast, that rather she took the downturn of my gaze as just an inability to hold hers. 

“N-no, really, it’s...fun. Y-you’re fun,” I said, dumbly, too meek of course to tell her that every moment with her had been like a fantasy come true, that I would kill to spend every last second of mine just staring at her, ogling her, my only air the tanning oil and perfume from her skin of this moment right now. 

I had to hold my tongue, before saying anything else stupid. 

“We do have fun together, don’t we?” she continued, her voice dropping, familiar, “it’s been great, down here, watching you relax.” The slow, rhythmic burgeoning of her chest, how each of her strong breaths inflated her breasts into the tautness of her swimsuit, soft flesh bulging against its confines, had me hypnotized. “I like seeing you loosen up, enjoy yourself. I like seeing you have fun. I like helping you do that. In fact...I guess I should tell you. I have a little surprise for you…” she said. 

“A...a surprise?” I asked, witless at this point, eased into a tranquility of sorts by the closeness of her body, by her calm, even voice.

“MmHmm...a surprise,” she answered, gentle giggles sending jiggles through her boobs, “you lucky boy, you get another two days down here. You needed a break, you needed to relax, so I had Randi change flights for us, get another couple days away, another two days of vacation…”

“T-t-two days?” I asked, suddenly confused. I was going to...what? Be away another two days from the office? But the conference would be over, everyone else long gone. Except...wait. “Y-you too?” I asked, eyes up to meet hers for the moment, “You’re staying too?”

“Of course…” she purred, watching my eyes drop again, seeing my anxiety quickly assuaged, “If that’s alright? We can stay longer, just you and me. So we can relax, maybe talk about some of the stuff I learned, changes we can make in the office. Is that okay?”

“Uhhh…” I began, as the complications started to rise in my head. There were patients to be seen, things to do, and then there was- 

“I already okayed it with Sheryl,” she answered, as if reading my thoughts, “And we moved your patients. We took care of everything. It’ll all be fine, it’ll be so nice…”

“Y-yeah…” I replied, apparently agreeing to all this. Two more days? Just with Melissa? With Melissa, the beach, and her...her...

”Good..!” she chirped, jiggles again through her chest, “because I wayyyy overpacked. I have so many outfits I haven’t been able to wear yet...” Casually, she brushed a few grains of sand off her left breast, sending more seismic ripples through her tit. “And now I get to wear them just... for... you!”

She booped me on the nose.

She booped me on the nose?

<giggle!>

I looked back up at her for a second, then down again, my eyes once more drawn helplessly back, surreptitiously askance, by the gravity of her breast. My view settled; I’d never seen those little freckles before, emerging from her tan.

“Do you want to look at any more pictures?” she asked, softly, obligingly. My phone, with our photoshoot, laid forgotten under her.

“n-n-no...thank you...” I squeaked, eyes now absolutely plastered on her breasts. Somehow I still held onto the hope that she didn’t realize I was all but outright gawping at her tits. Her cleavage was incredible, her big breasts squashed just enough between her arms to make them swell voluptuously together. I imagined, right then and there, what it must be like to slip in between them, slide into there, disappear, live in there, lost in her abundance...

”So we’ll leave late on Sunday morning, instead of early Friday,” she began again, satisfied, “Randi moved our flight to Sunday morning at 11:15. We’ll get a taxi from the lobby at nine, so you’ll need to be packed by…”

She paused.

“Dr J?” she asked, “Were you listening to me?”

”w-w-what?” I stammered, as my gaze shot back up.

”I said...were you listening to me?” Her eyes bore into mine, sternly.

”y-yeah...I was listening?” I felt like a schoolchild, caught daydreaming in class by his teacher. His huge, supermodel teacher with the ginormous tits.

“Really? You were listening?” Melissa retorted, the smile cracking her cheeks disbelieving me already, “Or were you just lost in my boobs?” 

Suddenly, she tossed her sarong, our shelter from the sun aside. My eyes were assaulted by the late afternoon sun; I squinted, shied back. Aside me, she sat up straighter. 

!!!

I was gaping, speechless as Melissa looked down at me, brow arched in already-final judgement. “Hmmm?” she hmmmd, “Were you? Anything to say?”

My mouth was open, my jaw slack, but I had no words. 

Firmly, she trapped my chin in her hand and - looking me straight in the eye, began to nod my head for me. “ ‘Yes...yes I was Melissa…’” she said, dropping her voice two octaves and moving my jaw like a marionette dummy, speaking for me, imitating me with the voice of a doofus, “‘I was looking at your boobs…’ ”

“N-No! Really I w-w-wasn’t…!” I pleaded, as she already began to laugh, releasing my chin. I was flushing hard, my heart and stomach having dropped themselves onto the sand, out of my body. “Please, Melissa, I was just-“

“Haha omigod  don’t be embarrassed! I’m joking!” she laughed, reaching her hands behind her to gather her hair - and of course casually present her magnificent chest, “I know they’re totally a distraction. Kinda hard to ignore.” My eyes flitted between her face - keeping eye contact - and her chest - trying not to ogle. What did she want me to do?!? “And you’ve been such a gentleman, doing your best not to, like, stare all afternoon.”

Oh, if she only knew...

“uh no, I uh…” Holy shit this was terribly humiliating.

”Shh it’s okay, you’ve been a good boy, you’ve earned it, taking all these pictures for me...,” she laughed, tossing her hair out again, in a voluminous wave behind her back, “stare all you want..!”

“oh my god…” I groaned, writhing in silent humiliation, overwhelmed by the indignity of the moment, and trying to look anywhere but at her chest.

To that, she just laughed. “Oh shush,” she insisted, “We both know you’re married, you and I both respect that.” She reached out to push a stray lock of hair, windswept, off my forehead. “But I know you’re just a man, and they’re boobs. It’s just a natural impulse.” She smiled at me, munificently. “So it’s okay, really…it happens all the time.”

“B-b-b-but, Melissa…” I began, stammering. I needed to...I dunno! Tell her I was...better than that! 

“Are you just not used to being with girls in bikinis, is that it?” she asked

“Uhhhh…” what?? “M-maybe…?” I answered, my voice trailing off. 

”Omigod look how embarrassed you are!” she cooed, “That's sooo cute!”

”No, r-really, M-Melissa, I, uhhhh…”

”Shhhhhh...it’s okay, really, I’m used to it” she said, her voice reaching out to soothe me, her eyes drawing me to her in their own embrace, “You don’t have to be a gentleman all the time…”

============================================================

I had a lot of help on this one, from readers here at tumblr to my normal supercharged band of miscreants (DB20, Beetle, Antares). And huge props out to the morphers whose original images I used - MagicGrowthHormone, Stella5945 and @iphotoshopu​..I hope I'm not missing anyone.

[alice-angel12x]

☁Pt.2 Vil X Winged! reader X Rook

It was 11 months into the school year, and Y/n was definitely the odd one in Pomefiore. They walked around with no shoes, at his food in the tree's, and was very rough in sports. They didn't exactly fit Pomefiore's image of the refined and proper. So you can imagine all the headaches this gave Vil, while Rook was having a field day with them. Rook being Rook followed Y/n around the school and watched them from afar, snapping photos of them from the shadows. 

One day Rook was doing his usual stalking spree and decided he needed a few more photos of Y/n. As he silently followed them through the forest, he was blissfully unaware that Y/n was very much aware of Rook's presence as they walked through the woods. 

"You know, if you wanted pictures and or learn about me, you could just ask," Y/n  said as they turned to rook.

"So you knew I was here?"Rook asked as he stepped out of the shadows.

"I'm a hunter as well," Y/n smiled as their pupils turned to slits.

"Well, forgive me for underestimating you," Rook chuckled, " but what are you doing with all those feathers?"

"Oh, I'm gathering feathers for a gift I'm going to make for my folks back home," Y/n said.

"Oh?"

"Yeah, you know the tapestry in the main hall in Pomefiore. Our tradition is to weave our beautiful feathers into beautiful art," Y/n explained.

"So why don't you use your own feathers, there large and very lovely. Surely it's enough to make a tapestry?" Rook asked.

"Well if we were to pluck out our feathers, there's a chance that they might never grow back. And when our feather our pulled out by the owners of some other party, it's extremely painful," Y/n shuddered.

"What does it feel like?" Rook frowned.

"It feels like being skined alive, and if a still healthy young was plucked It can draw blood. So we only use old feathers that we shed naturally

"Ahh, so that's why your're gathering other feathers to make a tapestry. That's lovely, oh and I also have another question for you?" Rook smiled.

"Yes?" Y/n asked as they looked through their haul.

"Is it true that sirens used to use their voices to lure victims away to their deaths? Like the legend say?" Rook asked.

"Yeah, we had a pretty dark history. A long time ago a soothsayer told our people that one day humans would rise to kill us. So in fear, we did all those things and in the end, the warning came true," Y/n summarized quickly.

"I would like to hear your singing. Please serenade me with your voice?" Rook requested.

"What?"

"I would like to hear the siren's legendary voice. Please, I would like to witness such beauty," Rook smiled as he sat down.

Y/n chuckled and rolled their eye's as they sat down and began to sang.

As Y/n sang, Rook could feel himself slowly lose control of himself as he slowly moved closer to the siren. As Rook stared into Y/n's e/c, he could see a forest, and a bunch of other sirens was standing there staring back at him. Suddenly everything went black as a wave of sleepiness washed over him.

_________

Rook gasped awake, only to find himself in his room. And waiting paisently at his study was Y/n.

"Oh your awake that's good," Y/n said as they presented Rook his dinner he missed.

"What happened?" Rook groaned.

" You fell asleep because of the siren song. So I carried out back to your room,and Dorm leader Vil wasn't happy," Y/n explained as they sat at the edge of the bed.

"He was," Rook chuckled.

"He said that I would be introuble if you sleep through the entrance ceremony," Vil smiled softly.

Rook's heart soared at Y/n's gentle smile, but then gasped in horror as he relieazed today was the entrance ceremony. Rook and Y/n hurried as they got into their robes as they made their way out the dorm. As they ran Rook tried his hardest to straighten out Y/n's robe as their wings refused to coapperate.

"Let's hurry, your wings are fine. Their beautiful as ever," Rook smiled as he grabbed Y/n's hand.

Y/n's heart fluttered slightly as he let Rook guide them to the mirror chamber.

[cuubism]

Rouge

a sequel to Violet | (read on AO3)

Malec | h/c, fluff & angst, domesticity | cw: depression and references to past suicide attempt

Summary:

Shadowhunters are not made for precious things. Their spaces and belongings are built of violence: if Alec punches a wall in the Institute he’ll only break his hand, he could hurl his bow across the training room with all his strength and it wouldn’t snap.

Shadowhunter hands are not made to handle precious things, but Magnus is the most fragile strong thing in the world, so Alec’s determined to learn.

*

Magnus has a tendency to leave his coffee mugs everywhere. Alec often finds them around the loft, the dregs of the coffee long since cold, rings of condensation soaking into the nice furniture. It could have been an annoying habit, but Alec mostly finds it endearing, that Magnus gets so caught up in his thoughts and projects that he forgets about the mugs he’s literally drinking from, even though he only has to snap his fingers to banish them to the sink.

Alec’s certain there are at least three half-finished drinks on various tables around the loft, even as Magnus pokes his head into the kitchen and asks, “Is that coffee you’re making?”

Alec regards him with a smile as he points to the mugs sitting on the island. “You have two in progress, you know.”

Magnus frowns at them. “Oh. I forgot.”

He starts to reach for them, but Alec places a fresh cup in front of him before he can pick one up and, Angel forbid, drink it.

Magnus beams at him, cradling the warm mug in his heavily-ringed fingers. Alec still doesn’t know why Magnus wears so much jewelry when he’s just hanging around the house, but he won’t complain when it makes every flutter of his fingers look so ethereal.

“Thank you, darling,” Magnus says, and disappears with his prize, again forgetting to snap his half-drunk mugs into the sink.

Shaking his head, Alec laughs to himself and puts them away.

*

He would have thought it would bother him, the clutter and chaos of Magnus’s loft. But it doesn’t. Alec was raised in precise order and adopted it as his own—rules are necessary for safety in demon hunting, after all.

It wasn’t until he let a certain warlock crash into his life that Alec began to think that order might not be quite as intrinsic to his being as he’d once thought. That what was a comfort and a tool in moderation had become a straitjacket.

Alec loves the organized chaos of the loft, how it breaks every rule he grew up with—'put things away when you’re done with them,' 'things should be utilitarian before all else,' 'don’t spoil yourself or live in excess'—and still somehow circles around to being a haven, a space of peace where Alec doesn’t have to worry about treading right through a glass floor.

Magnus has decided he wants to redecorate it. Or at least, in his words, 'rearrange it.'

“The place needs a new energy,” he'd said.

He’d asked for Alec’s opinion, but Alec didn’t much care what Magnus did with the loft, so long as it was Magnus who did it. Alec doesn’t really know anything about interior decorating, after all, he just likes living amidst the remnants of Magnus’s touch.

So when Alec comes home from the Institute, the place is in an uproar—furniture shoved aside, paintings leaning against the wall, rugs and tapestries rolled up, books in chaotic stacks on every available surface. Magnus stands in the middle of it all, fingertips sparking, deep in thought as he tries to figure out how to put this back together now that he’s taken it all apart.

It makes Alec smile, that Magnus had decided he wanted to redecorate and had just—jumped right in, without even planning what he was going to redecorate to.

“You have time for a break?” Alec asks, lifting the box in his hands. “I brought pizza.”

Magnus looks up at him and smiles. “My hero! From the place down the street?”

“Yup, your favorite.”

Magnus spins in place, fingers twitching. Then he frowns. “Oh no. I seem to have misplaced the kitchen table.” He examines the loft further. “…And the chairs.”

They end up sitting on the floor amidst the wreckage, plates cradled in their laps. Magnus stretches one leg out to prod at Alec’s thigh, and Alec lays his free hand on his ankle. The silk of Magnus’s lounge pants feels smooth and cool over the hard bone of his leg.

“So, is this our living room now?” Alec asks him, raising a playful eyebrow. “You’re going for a sort of post-explosion aesthetic?”

One day he’ll manage to catch Magnus off guard with his teasing, but it’s not today. Without missing a beat Magnus replies, “Just trying to externalize how you make my heart feel, darling.”

And it’s all Alec can do to swallow his bite of pizza without choking on it.

Magnus takes a sip of his drink, a smile playing on his lips. But then his expression turns slightly hesitant.

“Don’t worry,” he says, “it’ll be back to normal in a few days.”

Alec scoots across the floor to press up against him, thigh to thigh. “It’s okay. Take as much time as you want.”

Magnus’s expression eases.

As soon as Alec sees it, he nudges him with his elbow. “Wouldn’t want to interrupt the creative process, would we?”

“Hey!” Magnus banishes his drink and both of their plates to the sink and climbs unceremoniously into Alec’s lap, poking him in the chest. “I’ll show you the creative process.”

“I have literally no idea what that’s supposed to mean.”

Magnus leans in slowly and presses his lips to Alec’s jaw. “I think you do,” he murmurs.

Alec knows what he’d like it to mean.

He takes gentle hold of Magnus’s chin and tilts his face up so he can kiss him. Magnus tastes slightly sweet, like whatever he was drinking, and Alec loves it, loves the weight of him on his thighs, the heat of his body, the way the warm lights of the loft catch in his hair.

He is so incredibly precious, and Alec still doesn’t know how he’s allowed to have him.

*

Shadowhunters are not made for precious things. Their spaces and belongings are built of violence: if Alec punches a wall in the Institute he’ll only break his hand, he could hurl his bow across the training room with all his strength and it wouldn’t snap.

Shadowhunter hands are not made to handle precious things, but Magnus is the most fragile strong thing in the world, so Alec’s determined to learn.

“Am I hurting you?”

Magnus shakes his head, but his face is scrunched up in pain. He had stumbled out of a portal and into the living room late that night, bleeding from his stomach after a client meeting that had ‘gone wrong.’ Alec thinks that if he ever learns exactly how it 'went wrong,' someone out there will end up sporting an identical wound to Magnus’s.

Alec presses more gauze to the wound to stem the bleeding. Magnus assures him that his magic will recover enough overnight for him to heal it himself in the morning, but for now, they’re left with the Mundane way.

Magnus is shaking, and Alec hates himself when he says, “Try to lie still.”

Alec wishes he were gentler. He wishes every brush of his fingertips didn’t make Magnus flinch. He wishes he were raised to care instead of just to kill. He wishes he wishes he wishes.

“I’m sorry,” he says as he tapes off the bandage and removes his hands from Magnus’s trembling form. He’s done enough. “I’m sorry I’m hurting you.”

“You’re not hurting me,” Magnus insists. “The wound is hurting me. You’re making it better. Kiss it for me?”

As requested, Alec leans down to kiss the top of the bandage. Magnus shivers under his touch.

“Thank you, darling. Now, I suppose I should be off to bed. Join me?”

Alec nods. “In a minute.”

Magnus heads off, clearly still exhausted, and Alec cleans the blood from the couch cushions, staring at the way it soaks into the washcloth. Magnus’s blood.

He stares at his hands, at the roughness of them, thinks of Magnus shaking under their touch. He feels sort of ill.

But eventually, he gets up and follows Magnus to bed.

Alec doesn’t sleep. At some point in the night, he feels Magnus partially wake beside him and shift over so he can curl against Alec’s side. Without thinking about it, Alec moves away.

Then Magnus wakes up fully.

“Alexander?” he calls. “Is something wrong?”

Alec takes a shaky breath. “I don’t—” he tries to say. Sucks in another breath. Continues. “I don’t… know… how to do this.”

He can feel Magnus frowning. “How to do what?”

How to hold you like the most precious thing that you are. How to make sure you’re safe in my hands. “How to not— hurt you.”

“Hurt me? You’ve never hurt me. I’ve never been afraid that you’ll hurt me.” A pause. “Are you afraid that you’ll hurt me?”

“No! I just—” Alec squeezes his eyes shut. When he opens them again, the bedroom is just as dark as it was behind his eyelids. “—it’s all I know how to do.”

A long pause, and then, “I don’t understand.” Magnus sounds truly apologetic about it. “Can you try again?"

No one’s ever really asked Alec to elaborate on how he feels before. He’s not sure he knows how to do it. “Shadowhunters— we’re only taught how to kill. And I don’t want to do that anymore, I want to— hold you, like you deserve—and I don’t know if my hands are capable of it.”

Magnus shifts closer then, pressing himself up along the line of Alec’s body, his skin warm in the cool darkness. Alec aches for his touch. “Oh, my darling,” Magnus says, “please don’t say that about yourself. You have the gentlest hands. I always want you to hold me.”

“But I haven’t—”

Magnus places a finger over his lips. “You don’t have to be taught it. It’s already who you are. I could see it in the way you held me when we first met. I can see it in the way you look at me. When I’m hurting, your touch comforts me. It doesn’t matter how you’ve been trained, your hands could never hurt me.”

As if to prove it, Magnus raises one of Alec’s hands to his lips and kisses his knuckles.

Alec pulls him to his chest, needing the weight of his body against his, needing to crush him in his arms. Magnus hums and lets himself be held, nuzzling into Alec’s collarbone. His breath is hot, his hair soft where Alec tangles his fingers in it, and Alec thinks, I love you, and also, if you’re right, and I am gentle, then the purpose of it is this: to cradle you between my hands, to protect you, and in doing so, to let you protect me.

*

It’s just past dawn when Alec gets back from a late patrol, the sun breaking in red streaks over the skyline. When he slips through the doorway, the loft is quiet and dark, which isn’t unusual for the early hour. But something about the quiet strikes him as wrong.

Nerves coiling in his chest, Alec makes his way to the bedroom, where he finds Magnus curled up around his pillow. Somehow, Alec can tell he’s awake.

He crouches in front of him and lays a hand on Magnus’s blanketed shoulder. “Hey.” He keeps his voice soft, hushed in the tenuous dark. “You awake?”

Magnus nods, but scrunches his eyes shut tighter like he doesn’t want to think about it.

“Having a bad day?”

Another nod. Alec rubs his palm up and down Magnus’s arm, heart squeezing in sympathetic pain.

“You wanna stay home today? I’ll stay with you.”

“Can’t.” Magnus’s voice is hoarse. He doesn’t open his eyes. “I have a client in an hour. S’important. Can’t be rescheduled.”

“Okay. Let me just get changed out of this gear and I’ll come join you until you have to get up.”

Alec silently thanks the Angel that the patrol was uneventful and he isn’t covered in ichor or some other disgusting substance. He quickly strips and pulls on a t-shirt and sweatpants and crawls into bed behind Magnus, wrapping an arm around him.

Magnus turns in his arms and tucks his face into Alec’s neck. His nose is cold, as are his hands when he slips them under Alec’s shirt to press against his chest. Alec wraps his arms tighter around him.

“You should sleep,” Magnus whispers. “You’ve been out all night.”

“Nah, I’m okay.”

He does end up dozing a bit as the sun keeps rising and warm red sunlight spills into the bedroom. Magnus stays curled against his chest, still where he would normally be shifting about and waking Alec up in his attempts to get comfortable, and it’s a little unnerving, but as long as Magnus is in his arms, Alec figures it’s okay.

Far too soon, Magnus’s phone buzzes, indicating it’s time to get up.

“Magnus.” Alec runs a hand through his hair, guilt stirring in him even though it was Magnus himself who insisted he had to take this client. He wouldn’t have done that when he was feeling this way if it wasn’t truly important.

Magnus whimpers against his throat, and Alec almost can’t bring himself to make him get up.

But he has to. So he slides out of bed and pulls Magnus upright so he’s sitting on the edge of the mattress.

“Come on, I’ll help you get ready.”

He passes Magnus a shirt and Magnus mechanically pulls off his sweater and slides his arms into the shirtsleeves, staring at his toes. They’re painted pink, but the nail polish is getting chipped. “What did I ever do to deserve you?” he murmurs.

“You don’t have to do anything to deserve me, you just have to exist,” Alec tells him. He passes Magnus his pants, and Magnus pulls them on. Alec crouches between his knees to slip his socks and boots onto his feet and tie the laces. “But to answer your question: you’re the kindest, most generous person I’ve ever met. You’re incredibly powerful, but you only ever use it to help people. You’re literally getting out of bed despite not feeling well right now just because you want to help someone. Also, you save my life every day just by being here.”

Magnus blinks at him tiredly. “I’m not powerful,” he says. It sounds like a plea. “I’m falling apart.”

“Just for today,” Alec says. “We’ll put you back together tomorrow, okay?”

Magnus cups his cheek and finally offers him a pained smile.

Alec slips away to rummage in the bathroom and returns with Magnus’s hair gel, which he uses to spike Magnus’s hair in soft swoops. Magnus leans into the touch, humming.

Alec’s watched Magnus’s morning routine enough times to have it down pat, even if today it’ll have to be a bit abridged. He washes Magnus’s face with a damp cloth, then rubs his favorite moisturizer into his skin in soft swirling motions. Magnus lets Alec cradle his face without moving, without commenting, taking Alec’s energy where it’s offered and conserving his own.

When Alec pulls out his makeup bag, Magnus raises an eyebrow. “Do you even know how to do that?”

“I’ve watched you,” Alec says. “I’m a quick learner, and I have a steady hand.”

“Mmm, that you do,” Magnus teases, but it’s half-hearted.

The amount of makeup Magnus wears varies a lot depending on the day and his outfit. Today, Alec wants him to be able to go right back to bed after his client, so he’s doing the minimum required to let Magnus feel like himself. To let him be shielded when he feels like he’s crumbling inside.

And that minimum is eyeliner.

Alec slips closer between his legs, and Magnus leans down to let him reach, and Alec draws a strong line with the kohl along his eyelashes. It’s a declaration: I’m okay, and a warning: don’t mess with me, and Alec hopes it’ll keep Magnus protected when his heart and brain can’t do it.

It’s hard to keep his hand steady with Magnus so close, his warm breath on his cheeks, but he manages, and moves on to the other eye.

And out of nowhere, Magnus says, “I’m pretty good at falling apart, hm?” and Alec stills his hand to listen. “I’m pretty good at falling apart,” Magnus repeats. He sounds bitter and sad, and kind of hopeless. “But I haven’t really figured out how to put things back together again.”

Alec continues his work with the eyeliner, hoping to create a sense of calm, and says, “That’s okay. I’ve gotten pretty damn good at putting things back together. I’ll teach you. And you have to teach me how to fall apart, okay?”

It’s not just an idle comfort, he’s serious. About helping Magnus, and learning from him, too. Alec’s gotta figure out how to let himself fall apart sometimes or he’ll end up back on that bridge, he knows it.

But that’s for another time.

Magnus looks at him, wide-eyed, and then he lunges forward. Alec barely gets the eyeliner pencil out of the way fast enough to avoid smearing it across Magnus’s cheek, and then Magnus’s lips are on his and he’s kissing him, hard and fast like he won’t get to do it again.

Alec presses in between his legs to get closer, one hand braced on a strong thigh, the other wrapped around the back of Magnus’s neck as he drops the eyeliner he doesn’t even know where. They kiss, and Magnus seems to brighten a little, moving more freely against him, his lips twitching up into a smile.

They pull apart to catch their breath, and Alec looks at him, lit pink and red by the sunrise, the lines of his face happy and sad at once.

“You’re so beautiful,” he tells him, and Magnus actually blushes.

“We will have to do this again,” he says, grinning a little, “the makeup thing. Another time when I can properly appreciate the sheer sensuality of the experience.”

Alec laughs, and Magnus laughs too, finally, leaning his forehead against Alec’s, and they kiss lazily for a moment in the heat of the rising sun.  

Then the doorbell rings, and Magnus gets up, and Alec must release him from his arms to the harsh light, but it’s easier knowing that he’ll get him back. Maybe not every time, maybe not forever, but for now.

For now.

[brooklynislandgirl]

📝 for the answering of applicable questions, please!

~Quietly, in the Lower Garden District~

~Colour~

The man behind the counter is ready to reach over and strangle her. She can see it in his expression, so put upon by each time she shakes her head and asks if she can have another sample made. She almost wishes he would try, he'd lose more than the hour that she's been at this. That might be uncharitable of her but the man reminds her of the kind of person who, when not wearing his little vest, is exactly the kind of person who sees Beth and Anakin walking down the street together and curls a lip, makes passing commentary to other middle-age white guys. Too poor, too weird, too questionably ethnic to suit them. The kind of person who would walk faster when it got dark, or would lock up before they could make it to a door. There's more of those than either one of them care to acknowledge, and the irony is almost delicious. Except that sometimes Anakin cannot help but to be very aware of that kind of prejudice and it really takes another chunk out of his self-confidence.

"Allow me to explain again," she says softly, in crisp and enunciated haole. "I said I want a very specific shade of blue. A hint of royal with a tinge of cadet number five. Then mix at the edges a touch of Prussian and just enough Turkish Steel to give that depth soft edges. Then overly sky atop it all. Or better yet, please find me a customer service specialist who can, in fact, understand what I am looking for because clearly? You're not it." That might be her fault, she does want to paint the living room the exact shade of Anakin's eyes.

~Song~

She doesn't play as well as Andy could, and she would never be a singer though she enjoyed it maybe because it was more about intent than execution, one of the few things that held true in absolute. And sometimes neither one really mattered when he folded himself up like an envelope just so he could rest his head against her chest and instead of plucking strings, she only ran fingers through his hair. He closes his eyes and she focuses hers across the back yard. Beyond the pool and past the grass. Colours blur and fade and there's a ripple of dissonance within the Tapestry to make a boundary between what is solid and inflexible and what is hidden in a space outside of the Tellurian. Words they don't use in every day conversation. She isn't quite singing now instead humming a tune that would reveal more than maybe they're ready to dive into. Other words they don't use, either. Her palm comes to rest on his brow as tender as she knows how. The other reaches around him to tuck one of the knitted blankets around him. He doesn't seem to mind the combination of warmth between herself and the acrylic, is maybe the only other person who could be cold in anything else less than 80 degrees and 90% humidity. It takes an infinite amount of patience, skill, and mana to redirect the rain to a different part of the city. He'll forgive her weariness even if he doesn't understand why she will go to bed early, sleep in late. And that's okay. He doesn't need to know. It's better if he doesn't, it would spoil the gift. 'Cause I'm gonna make this place your home.

~Scent~ The balcony door is open letting muggy air move sluggishly in through the French doors. Beneath her the bed is a little too stiff for comfort. Her laptop almost too warm as it rests on her thighs and only serves to remind her that she should probably get out of the charcoal grey suit she's wearing. She closes the screen and pulls her glasses off, raising them so they rest in her hair. Takes a sip of the wine she'd bought at...some store she won't remember the name of... but that came recommended by the bellhop.

She didn't have the forethought before leaving for Baton Rouge to steal borrow something to bring along. For reasons that she didn't want to explain because there's no very polite way to explain she's grown used to having him sleep beside her. That there's something soothing that comes wafting up from his skin the closer he gets, arm wrapped around her, leg half thrown over. At the end of a day there's his natural chemistry that mixes with clean laundry and cigarette smoke, something sweet and spicy from his preferred night cap. Sometimes there's blood. Sometimes the distinct smell of wood or metal from something he's working on for himself, the kind of tinkering that seems to bring him peace like nothing else can. There isn't an exact name for it but she can recognise it at a thousand paces. It makes her want to burrow furtively into his chest cavity and find some way to live inside of that newly hollowed out space. Maybe just thinking about it was all she needed. Maybe it's some new kind of magick trick. Regardless, she'd managed to doze off just long enough to be startled when the door of her hotel room clicks shut and he's there. Pulled out of her day dreams and turned into flesh. With exactly the kind of apologetic grin she's become as familiar with as she is the smell of him. "Guess, I jus' couldn't sleep." And she knows there's more going on behind the sheepish look, and the way he stands at a polite distance away, maybe waiting for permission. She doesn't say a word. Only turns down the previously pristine other side of the bed before slipping from hers. The white silk blouse hits the floor seconds before she disappears into the bathroom.

~Meme~ She eyes Anakin. Looks at her phone. Back and forth for five solid minutes before she just starts giggling. Which turns into a laugh.

~Sound~ It's those little sub-vocalisations that get her. Every near guttural groan, every single one of those breathless whimpers that cling to the edges of her senses soft as cobwebs or hard as thunder. There are so many layers between them, so much context to be drawn from even a half of a sigh. They are a siren song even if she doesn't know what rocks he wants her to dash herself on.

~Setting~

She cringes. "I don' wanna tell ya." He's helping her work on a psychological profiling assessment that's required of her continuing education class, which is all part of her professional development. But she's worried because it's going to sound incredibly racist, coming as it is not from a white-passing woman of colour but one of incredible privilege who absolutely knows what it's going to sound like. But she cannot resist the look of self-accusation and anxiety that creeps into his micro-expressions and doing anything else would feel incredibly dishonest. Something she doesn't want to foster in him. "Somewhere 'round sunset. Da bayou waddah look like it on fire. Dere's some soft Zydeco music goin' on in da backdrop. Air's hot an' heavy like steam 'tween lovers an' if ya real quiet, can hear da bayou jus' come alive wi' oddah souls. Dere's pirogues bobbin' along, an' you can smell some ono grindz cookin' somewhere. Spanish moss all hangin' down from cypress an' willow trees. A mixture of old spirituals an' dat beautiful, melodic pidgin dat get spoke down dere...I know is nevah really li'dat.... also make me t'ink of witch blood an' Mokole dat pass as gators... all dem ghosts an' da kine ya nevah can put ya finger on but dat give ya chicken skin jus' t'inkin' 'bout..." ~Fashion Style~

Clothes litter her floor. Flung without a care to their resting places. Some on the edge of her bed or the arm of a chair. Suits and jeans and tee-shirts. Undergarments and socks. Like some small hurricane exploded out of the closet, just with less water. There's sarongs too. Luau shirts that just aren't him. Shoes too. Finally, she steps back and examines her handiwork. A frame work of satin boxers that will caress the most delicate parts of him without bunching or pinching. An accent of which are picked up in the suit lapels and bow tie. White shirt, black buttons. Silver cuff-links. Socks that are thin as a Friday night prayer, and absolutely voluptuous Paolo Scafora oxfords in a blue so dark they look black at first glance, polished to a mirror gloss. Dior and Stefano Ricci. Famous labels from famous houses of style.

If the gala wasn't required...Anakin wouldn't be seeing the light of day and there'd be very different reasons the clothes would be laying scattered about.

But she kind of also misses that scruffy plain, slightly tattered tee-shirt and skinny jeans even she would have a hard time getting up past her own hips, and questionably aged converse. Aesthetically speakin, Anakin is ever clothing designer's wet dream and she has never wanted to be a circular scarf more in her life. "Wow. Jus'....wow." ~Feeling~

"Belonging."

It's all she says before she kisses him. Softly and sweetly, a little wet from a stray tear that slips down between their lips. Admitting this is admitting that maybe, just maybe, she loves him, too. Which puts a countdown on everything. Which means that he's going to find the wherewithal to leave her and to take with him every that makes her feel even the littlest bit real. She doesn't know if she'll survive the loss, so it's best that she make the most of it before he goes. ~Animal~ "If you were one dem changing breeds? You'd be a were-fossa. Dey are dese medium sized ....well. Dey kinda look like cats, but also...dey don't. Related to da civet but also like...mongooses. Mongeese? Wha'evah. Dey from Madagascar. Da Malagasy got kapu of a kind an' actually are sorta afraid of dem, an' wi' good reason...dey carnivorous ay-eff." She glances over. "Don' laugh! Dey beautiful an' rare an' I really like dem a lot. An' I'm not gonna tell ya any more about dem. Gonna make a new animal, an' call it a' Anakin." There is every possibility that she will do this. Some day.

~Holiday~ Christmas. It will always be Christmas. Not the lights and snow and carollers, though there's plenty of that to go around. Not the chill and dank air, not the interminably long night, not even because of gifts. It's not a childhood of Santa surfing or canoeing, and it isn't sandcastles and malasadas left by the lanai doors from Hawai'i, either. Maybe it's a touch of the peace and goodwill often associated with the season, and how he came to find her when he needed her the most. But if she had to give just one reason, it's that he brought her back a sense of wonder that she'd thought was lost when her world had shattered. He took something terrible and turned it into something beautiful. That isn't an ordinary, every day kind of magick and she doesn't know how she will ever be able to express her love and gratitude for him.

"Wha'ya t'ink about mebbe da Bahamas dis year? Get out of da city for a lil while, I promise I won' make ya go for da beach."

~Season~

When Beth thinks of seasons, she thinks of it being a mainland phenomenon. Her own islands only really have two: Kau from May to October, where everything is beautiful and averages about 85 degrees give or take, and Ho'oilo from November to April when the best tides bring in the biggest waves. It's only cooler by about ten degrees. Which is maybe why she always feels so cold so far away from home. And why she likes it here so much. She knows other places have as many as six seasons, broken up into more agricultural and solar tied patterns of weather and climate and sometimes even just spiritual nature. But taking all of Anakin into account, she would have to say... "Monsoon. It's da time of life-giving rains. But also it can be dangerous for the same reason. Cool but lingers along your skin. An' it's somet'ing I keep wi' me always, waitin' for it."

[oopshidaisyy]

July Fic Recs

a little late but here we go!

praying for sparks in the dark (in the heart) by susiecarter "Him," the Bat repeats, in a low and deceptively soft growl. "I don't know who he was," the man says immediately, taking this cue and running with it. "I don't, honest. Honest, I swear to god. Nobody did. He just showed up, that's all. Asking about you, asking everybody what they knew, if they'd ever seen you, what you'd done. Metropolis," the man adds belatedly. "He had that look, you know? Clean. Said his name was—Carr, or Kemp, or something. Something like that." (Or: in a universe where Bruce becomes aware that someone's looking into the Batman, he goes to the effort to track down Clark Kent. It doesn't play out quite the way either of them expected.) Clark/Bruce, 20k, E

having let go forever the fallacy of ever being alone by gyzym This time there are shitty dogeared paperbacks Arthur wouldn't be caught dead reading piled on the coffee table, and half-finished crosswords tucked into the bookshelves, and the far wall is hung with that tapestry they'd bought in a shit part of London on a whim. This time they've spent all day fixing their sink and there's a mug of yesterday's tea sitting on top of the television and it's not just Arthur's living room at all. Arthur/Eames, 16k, E

A Sure Thing by lightgetsin "Okay," Peter says, and there's a rasp in his voice. "Repeat after me: theft is not foreplay." Neal/Peter, 3k, E

perfect strangers by susiecarter Batman and Superman are fucking. Bruce Wayne and Clark Kent are a great cover for fighting crime, and also might be dating. Bruce and Clark have no idea what they're doing; but they definitely aren't going to be able to talk themselves into stopping. Clark/Bruce, 15k, E

run to the river (dive in) by susiecarter MoS AU: With one successful fishing season already under his belt, Clark's finally getting comfortable on the Debbie Sue. He just wishes this guy Dixon hadn't signed on with them, because the way he watches Clark is really starting to give Clark the creeps. (Or: Bruce goes undercover looking for enhanced individuals before BvS instead of after—and finds one.) Clark/Bruce, 5k, M

Took Me By Surprise and Then by thehoyden After the second surgery in New York, Charles doesn’t anticipate anyone keeping vigil by his bedside — and certainly not Tony Stark. Charles/Erik, 5k, T

as to which may be the true by susiecarter It isn't difficult to go on in the wake of Superman's death. His resurrection, though, poses a problem—especially when it turns out there's no such thing as the right moment to explain that Martha Kent's obnoxious billionaire friend? Is also the man who tried really hard to shove a kryptonite spear through Clark's face. Clark/Bruce, 53k, M

Blue Devils by VillaKulla /blo͞o ˈdevəl/ noun, inf: a feeling of despondency, depression, or low spirits origins: Old American West Billy/Goody, 4k, M

Spree by thingswithwings "So, okay, Britta," Annie says, "this thing you gave me is seriously just a scrap of ripped looseleaf that says 'IOU one shopping spree at A Woman's Touch.' I do not even know what that is." Britta does an excited little leap in the air and claps her hands. "It's me deciding to help you discover your true womanhood." Britta/Annie, 4k, E

embroidery appreciation by Annie D Written for an anon on tumblr who requested Natasha and Tony as brotp, or Steve/Tony being schmoopy in love. This is a bit of both. Tony & Nat, 1k, T

and every map is blank by gyzym It's -- topography, Carlos thinks, of a person, of two people, it's so complicated, it's so much easier to just go it by yourself. He doesn't want to hurt Cecil but he doesn't want to keep any part of himself from Cecil, either, and it scares him that that's true, and it scares him to know it's what Cecil wants. Carlos/Cecil, 7k, T

trothplight by arriviste “What a metaphor,” Grantaire said bitterly. “I may dress your windows, but no more. We’ll greet each other in the streets, but you won’t admit me to your chambers or your hearts. I know all the words, all the empty speeches one needs to mouth for membership – I can rattle them off as well as you. Want me to prate Hébert or praise the Supreme Deity? Quote Rousseau or Marat? I can mum them; I don’t, because I don’t mean them, and because I’m an honest sceptic, I’m untrustworthy.” Enjolras/Grantaire, 4k, E

A-Wing, X-Wing, Y-Wait, B-Mine (Please) by ester_inc Finn keeps finding himself in situations where – no, wait, let's start over. Poe keeps ending up shirtless, nearly shirtless, or soaking wet, and somehow Finn is always there when it happens. The universe is either taunting him with what he can't have or rewarding him for good behavior, and Finn can't decide which is more likely. Either way, he's emotionally unprepared for, oh, let's be honest here: Poe's entire existence. It's fine. No big deal. He's working on it. Finn/Poe, 7k, E

Just Give Me Moments by barricadeur Enjolras comes home from a protest to a not-empty apartment. --- "What happened?" Grantaire says. His other hand grips Enjolras's shoulder, as if to keep him from pulling back, but Enjolras is so tired that the energy necessary to break away seems monumental. He lets Grantaire inspect him, says only, "I hit my head." "On someone's fist?" Enjolras/Grantaire, 1k, T

The Rare Gift by triedunture The prompt was "Dean receives an . . . unusual . . . Christmas gift from Castiel." The gift turns out to be wings. Dean/Cas, 4k, M

i love you now like i loved you then (this is the road and these are the hands) by theappleppielifestyle Somewhere in their phone calls after Derry 2.0, Richie and Eddie had decided to finally take that road trip. Richie would fly in from LA, then they’d drive back there from New York. It’ll be just like it could’ve been, Richie had said once. (Or, Eddie and Richie resume.) Richie/Eddie, 6k, M

i guess i should say thanks or some shit believe it or not, charles has a well-thought-out moral philosophy. he doesn’t follow it. but he has thought it out. alternatively: charles and erik douche it up in amsterdam. Charles/Erik, 17k, M

this is your sword, this is your shield by susiecarter Post-BvS, Diana and Lois start to develop a habit of protecting each other. But sometimes habits become ruts, and every now and then it's a good idea to break out of them. (Or: a whole bunch of times Diana and Lois looked out for each other, plus the time Lois ended up feeling like it might be worth it to be just a little less careful.) Diana/Lois, 9k, T

Family Portrait, c. 1840, oil on canvas by littlerhymes Lestat's latest favourite is a painter. Lestat/Louis, 2k, T

get religion quick (cause you’re looking divine) by brinnanza So it was fine. Even if Crowley couldn’t love him, he clearly liked him well enough, and that was almost the same thing. It no doubt would have continued to be fine, or at least fine-adjacent, were it not for a narrowly averted apocalypse and several bottles of a really quite nice Riesling Aziraphale had found in the back room of his newly restored bookshop. Aziraphale/Crowley, 4k, G

[choices-and-voices]

hi sorry if this has already been asked somewhere but im was wondering if you had any tips on how to get the best experience without having to pay ?

Hi there! Don’t worry, this question hasn’t been asked before, and I am honestly super flattered that you value my opinion enough to ask it ☺️ I’m not sure how helpful my tips will be because I don’t exactly consider myself an expert in this, but here are some things that came to mind! I’ve gone into quite a bit of detail, but if you want a quicker overview, just stick to the bold headings. Also, if any of the people reading this have good tips of their own, please lmk! I’m always learning new things about how to do this too 💕

1. This one’s a bit obvious, but still – take the opportunities that the game gives you to earn free diamonds. That means watching the bonus ads every day (5 diamonds/day), playing through chapters as often as you can (including replaying old books if there are no new releases – 2 diamonds/chapter), and watching ads at the end of book chapters for an extra diamond. Obviously, all this is a bit of a balancing act – you want to be playing Choices often enough to build up your diamonds, but not so often that it takes over your life and makes you feel frustrated, because what’s the point of it if it’s not fun anymore, y’know? So I’ve always been careful not to overdo it. Even if all you do is watch the bonus ads every day, that’s 35 diamonds/week – basically, one big diamond scene a week – which is honestly not too shabby.

2. At any one time, only play 1-2 books that you’re really invested in, and try to supplement that with another 2-3 books that you’re not really invested in or are replaying just for diamonds. As tempting as it can be to rush through every good-looking book in the app all at once, that just leads to a situation where a) you’re trying to divide your free keys between waaay too many releases, and b) there are so many demands on you for diamonds, you never get to consistently spend them on anything. So I personally think it’s best to only read a couple of good books at once, and instead of marathoning them, break them up with chapters from less-good books – this builds up your diamond stash for spending on the good books. Which leads into my next point:

3. Don’t zip through books too fast – even if most of the chapters are already released, spreading them out helps you earn more diamonds for them in the meantime. I’m really lucky to have been playing Choices for so long that almost all the books were presented to me in weekly release format – if I downloaded the app for the first time today, and saw all the fully-released books on there, I feel like I would be way too overwhelmed to play. So I reckon that, even if a book isn’t technically a weekly release for you, make it a weekly release! You might decide to play all the books you’re really invested in on a particular day when you have more free time – say, a Sunday. Then, you have Monday-Saturday every week to earn diamonds for those books, and something to look forward to at the end of it all. As for what you do with those diamonds:

4. Be smart about what you spend diamonds on. There are a couple of different components to this tip – it involves things like a) figuring out which types of purchases are worth diamonds in general, b) figuring out which types of purchases you want to prioritise in certain books, and c) planning ahead before you start playing a book chapter about where you might want to spend diamonds. To address each of those things one-by-one:

a) Figure out which types of purchases are worth diamonds in general. Off the top of my head, there are 6 main types of diamond purchases in Choices: ‘friendly’ scenes with LIs (12-25 diamonds), ‘steamy’ scenes with LIs (25-30 diamonds), scenes with your whole friendship group, collectible items (e.g. the tapestry pieces in Bloodbound, the clues in Veil of Secrets, etc.), outfits, and pets. Your mileage may vary a lot on which of these are most important to you, so take my opinions with a grain of salt. But my general advice would be to i) prioritise group scenes above LI scenes, ii) prioritise ‘friendly’ LI scenes above ‘steamy’ LI scenes, iii) avoid collectibles, and iv) go for outfits and pets only if you really like the look of them. This advice is based on the fact that, firstly, I think you get a better experience of immersion in a book if you know a bit about all the characters around MC, rather than just about one LI; secondly, ‘friendly’ LI scenes tend to tell you more about the LI than ‘steamy’ scenes, which are often 80-90% copied-and-pasted erotica despite being more expensive; thirdly, collectibles are a massive drain on diamond stores, and almost always unlock quite short, generic scenes that it’s easy to find on Tumblr or YouTube; and fourthly, both outfits and pets don’t do much except appear in the story at key moments, which can be a really nice touch but is still only needed in moderation. Of course, there are exceptions to these rules, and you might find that those exceptions are sometimes book-specific. Which leads me to Part B of this point:

b) Figure out which types of purchases you want to prioritise in certain books. It’s all well and good for me to say that group scenes are usually better than LI scenes, but when I’m playing a book with an amazing LI but a pretty meh supporting cast (*cough cough* Myra Dixon carries Baby Bump on her shoulders *cough cough*), I obviously may need to adjust my spending habits slightly. Moreover, by focusing all your diamond spending on just one main thing per book – like Myra’s romance in Baby Bump, or the party’s side-quests in Blades of Light and Shadow, or the posse in Queen B – I think you end up with a much better playing experience, because you feel like you’re seeing at least one facet of the story in-depth instead of getting a patchy surface view of lots of different facets. For the most part, the purchases you prioritise in a book can mostly depend on personal taste, but there are a few books where some background knowledge might be helpful in the decision. Four things that I think are worth flagging are that i) the ‘competition books’ (America’s Most Eligible, Queen B, Hot Couture) do require regular outfit purchases to win, although winning isn’t that much better an experience than being runner-up; ii) Veil of Secrets and Nightbound are two books where it’s worth saving 30-35 diamonds for the final chapter, because your MC is forced to leave the small-town setting if you don’t; iii) Across the Void is a book that frequently invites you to spend diamonds to save characters’ lives, but their death arcs are honestly much better-written and more sensible than their survival arcs; and iv) the It Lives series is the only one where characters can die due to an accumulation of choices you make throughout the story, so maybe it’s worth keeping some diamonds in reserve for that one. Which just leaves us with one more sub-point:

c) Plan ahead before you start playing a book chapter about where you might want to spend diamonds. I want to take this opportunity to thank whichever people in the fandom maintain the Choices wiki, because oh my gosh, they are lifesavers. For the last year or so, my response whenever a new Choices chapter is released has been to wait a few hours, Google ‘[book name] choices’, open the wiki result, and skim through to check how many diamond choices are available & how much they cost. Because all the wiki includes are the possible responses to every choice presented – it doesn’t even state the wording of the choice itself – this is a relatively spoiler-free technique that helps a lot with big picture planning. For example, you might decide not to buy an early group scene because there’s a nicer-sounding LI scene later on, and come to think of it, you should replay a few more chapters of another book first to save up the diamonds for that scene. If you don’t mind encountering just a few more spoilers before you play the chapter, you can also scout out its diamond scenes in more detail by searching the relevant book or character tags on Tumblr, or by looking for a chapter stream on YouTube. You may decide that you don’t need to buy a diamond scene if you’ve already seen it played through by someone else, or alternatively, you may decide whether or not to buy a diamond scene based on how good it looks in an existing playthrough – in either case, these techniques can help you thoughtfully ration out the diamonds you have, instead of being caught off-guard whenever a diamond choice comes up.

5. On the subject of the Choices wiki, it’s also a great way to maximise your success in books without using diamonds. Whenever there’s a ‘right’ option to a choice that gives you a better outcome later in the chapter, that’s indicated in the wiki. So with a bit of pre-reading of the wiki before you play the chapter, and/or with the wiki open on a separate screen as you play, you can get the best outcome without having to buy that outfit or bonus scene that promised you ‘an advantage.’ Obviously, your mileage may vary on whether this method is actually worth it, or whether it takes all the fun out of Choices by ‘cheating’ at the gaming aspect. I personally view Choices as more of an interactive story app than a game I’m trying to beat, so I have no issue with this method, but opinions may differ and that’s okay.

6. If you’re really feeling like a lack of diamonds is limiting your playing experience, it may be best to start out with ‘cheaper’ books until you have more diamonds stored up. In this case, I’m using ‘cheaper’ to mean books where there are fewer diamond scenes, where diamond scenes are less expensive, and/or where diamond scenes don’t play as big a role in the plot. It can be hard to identify which books fit this bill, but as a general rule, it’s more likely to be the earlier-released ones or less-popular ones. Some which I’d recommend are the first few books of the Freshman series, the #LoveHacks series, the High School Story series, the Perfect Match series, Most Wanted, The Heist: Monaco, Wishful Thinking, Bachelorette Party, and The Royal Masquerade.

7. Finally, a really quick tip for making the most out of free keys – keys are used up as soon as you start a book chapter, and refresh ~every 3 hours. This means that, even if you don’t have time to play chapters every 3 hours, you should try to open the app roughly that often and just click to unlock a chapter. When you finally have time to play, you’ll have a whole lot of chapters ready to go plus another two refreshed keys, and you can power through them at whatever speed you need to fit in them into your break time or to earn diamonds for an upcoming release. Once again, this is a tip that may need to be practised in moderation, because you don’t want to be constantly interrupting your life to load up an app on your phone. But even if you just log in and unlock chapters every 6 hours, or every 12 hours, that’s still 2-4 extra chapters ready for you at the end of the day plus your two free keys.

I think that’s about all for my tips! Thanks for reading, and I hope it helped at least a bit ❤️