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imagine-darksiders · 3 months ago

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Angel of Highway 49.

Ch. 6 - Collateral.

Optimus & Reader. Bulkhead x Reader. Starscream x causing mayhem.

Summary: 'For the first time, your eyes meet his optics, and there’s not an ounce of recognition flickering in their glossy depths as they stare up at him in unmitigated terror.

No… not terror…. Horror.

You’re horrified by his presence, his appearance, his incomprehensible existence.'

-------------------------

On paper, the mission brief had seemed quite straightforward.

Investigate the substantial Energon signature that Ratchet's scans had turned up, get in, gather as much as they could carry, and get out again.

Optimus knew the likelihood of beating the Decepticons to the punch was minimal, at best. No doubt the only reason Ratchet's scanners had picked up anything was because raw Energon had been exposed where it wasn't before, say, by a mining operation that drilled straight into a fresh deposit laying deep beneath the Earth's crust.

The coordinates had been of immediate concern to the Prime, and as soon as the team was debriefed, he and Bulkhead drove straight out to the reference point with their pedals almost to the floor, though the latter couldn't fathom his Leader's sudden sense of urgency, and when prodded, Optimus only told him that the location was 'concerningly close to a human settlement.'

It was a mine, long-abandoned, sunk beneath the cliffs near a large agricultural unit.

They were to evaluate the subterranean passages, determine the level of Decepticon activity, preferably without engaging, and look for any opportunity to seize Energon from the enemy forces. Underhanded, perhaps, but if it secures his Autobots a few more months of precious fuel, Optimus isn't above resorting to clandestine tactics.

Of course, as it's been said before, even the best laid plans often go awry...

----------

The sturdy cables of Optimus’s neck buck and strain against their tubing as he wrenches his helm towards the Southern tunnel, his optical apertures spinning wide, blazing with a fierce, cyan light.

Hidden parallel to his leader, ducked down behind a stack of energon crates on the other side of the cavern, Bulkhead does the same, his colossal chin piece falling open with a dull ‘thunk,’ and his entire frame turning rigid with alarm.

Unfortunately for them both, so too do the frames of all four Vehicon Miners.

One by one, each of the energon drills wind down to sputtering halts as their wielders disengage from the deposits in the cave walls, pausing to turn their inexpressive masks towards the disruption.

And what a disruption it is.

A haunting, spinal-strut-chilling shriek is ringing out through the mine like an air-raid siren, more piercing than the drills and far shriller than the clanking of heavy machinery. The sound goes on and on, even when the source runs out of steam, and only the echo of a scream passes through the labyrinthian tunnels until that too falls silent, leaving every Cybertronian who heard it caught in a moment of temporary bewilderment.

Optimus is the first to recover.

Denta grit tightly behind his mask, he draws his slate-dark brow plates together and begins gauging the distance between his hiding spot and the tunnel.

Speed will be essential here… Because it’s to his utmost distress that he’s matched the vocal patterns of the distant scream to that of a human.

In the next instant, his private com-link scratches to life, and Bulkhead’s hushed, bassy voice is whispering into the Prime’s audials.

“That wasn’t Miko, Boss,” he defends his charge without hesitation.

Admirable, of course. But in this instance, unnecessary.

Optimus is well aware that the cadence of the scream doesn’t belong to any one of their charges. He has them logged, after all – though he often wishes he didn’t, if only because those audio logs serve as constant reminders that there have been times where the three younglings – whilst under his care- were in states of distress severe enough to cry out at all.

That aside however, Optimus is also confident that right now, the children are safe and sound back at the Autobot base with Ratchet, doubtless waiting anxiously for Arcee and Bumblebee to return from a routine scouting mission around Jasper’s outskirts.

But that begs the question; why would a human be down here in a defunct mine during the middle of the night?

It’s a question he doesn’t give much processing power to, not when there is a far more urgent matter at hand that needs addressing.

Loathe to wait even another second for something bad to happen to the unfortunate, wayward human, the Prime heaves himself out of his crouch and vaults gracefully over the energon stacks he’d been using as cover, barking a single, concise order to his comrade-in-arms.

“Engage!”

He’s barely cleared cover when he hears Bulkhead’s response.

“So much for the element of surprise!”

A necessary sacrifice.

If there’s a human down here in danger, they no longer have the luxury of scoping out the mine’s multiple chambers and trying to take things slow.

No matter.

What matters is getting to them before whatever – or whoever - frightened them can do any harm.

Optimus’s explosive arrival sends the Vehicons scrambling about to face him, and no less than two of the four manage to drop their handheld drills in shock.

“Prime’s here!?” one bellows, tripping over his own pedes in his haste to retreat towards the far wall.

“And he brought company!” his fellow growls.

No sooner has he spoken than an eruption of noise rocks the cavern as Bulkhead comes careening around the side of his hiding spot with all the unstoppable brutality of a runaway freight train.

“Head’s up!” he bellows, raising his hefty arm high into the air and charging for the first, unfortunate Miner.

Only one seems to have recovered in time to aim his plasma cannon at Optimus, who ducks smoothly beneath the first shot and skids along the ground on his knees for several metres, drawing up close enough to the Con to negate any space between them.

Before a second round can even charge in its chamber, one of the Prime’s enormous metal servos curls into a devastating fist, and with the struts of his forearm tensed and locked in preparation, he launches himself off his knees and –

‘CRUNCH!’

The knuckles of his servo connect with the Vehicon’s chin-guard with terrifying precision.

An uppercut, the power behind which is enough to send the dark, purple visor snapping backwards with an audible crack. Its wearer is quick to follow suit, crumpling over onto his back before Optimus’s fist has even finished its upswing.

One down…

Bulkhead has also reached his own Con, and Optimus is glad to see that he seems to have taken the Prime’s briefing to spark.

Incapacitate only, where possible.

These are miners, not warriors.

The wrecking ball perched on the end of Bulkhead’s arm is already swinging by the time the Con has his own weapon readied, and it’s promptly knocked aside by the Wrecker’s weaponised name-sake, who is quick to follow up with a single punch to the Vehicon’s helm.

One, hard wallop, and he’s down like a sack of bricks.

Two down, two to go…

The remaining pair, those clumsy enough to have dropped their drills, at least seem wise enough to recognise when they’re outmatched.

Bulkhead wheels about, shaking scraps of the miner’s visor from his fist as he glowers at the retreating taillights of two, purple vehicles fleeing as fast as their tyres can carry them down one of the adjoining tunnels.

“Aw, where’re you going!?” he taunts them as they vanish around a corner like jettisoned scrap, “I didn’t even break a sweat!”

Yet another turn of phrase he’s picked up from Miko, Optimus notes, thankfully one of her more palatable expressions. Primus knows that girl could be an honorary Wrecker through vocabulary alone…

“Leave them!” the Prime commands urgently, breaking into a loping run for the opposite passage and shifting the plates on his dominant arm to reveal his colossal, devastating barrage cannon, hoping against hope that it won’t be seeing any action beyond warding off a potential threat.

Setting off a detonative blast in this place could cause the whole subterranean structure to collapse in on itself, another reason he’d stressed the importance of melee before this mission.

Clunking footsteps soon fall into pace behind his own, rattling the shards of energon still wedged into the cave walls.

There’s little point in maintaining stealth now, not with time swiftly trickling away beneath their pedes and the deafening silence the drills have left behind.

Whoever remains in this cavern is bound to know of their presence by now.

There’s a sudden blip on his radar - an energon signature far more significant than the deposits in the walls. It’s large, and active, and at this distance, uncloaked.

With coolant pumping fervidly through his pipes, Optimus kicks himself into gear and swings around the curve of the tunnel, bringing into view a sight so gruesome, it nearly freezes his spark inside its chamber.

A surge of alarm - his very own - hits the airwaves before he can suppress it, and although he reels it back in microseconds, he knows Bulkhead has already felt it, even from several paces behind him. An answering jolt of panic crashes into Optimus’s field as the Wrecker stumbles, his armour flaring nervously.

Because if the Prime is worried, then…

Optimus doesn’t have time to reassure his teammate.

Starscream is looming up ahead, silhouetted at the tunnel’s end by an unearthly blue light.

Megatron’s second in command cuts an intimidating figure. A frame as sharp as his tongue is angled towards the oncoming Autobots, but his attention – and more horrifyingly – his missile arm is aimed near the ground at a comparatively small rock, behind which Optimus has already locked onto four human signatures.

Another surge, this time of unshackled indignation rattles the plating across his shoulders and sends his protective protocols careening into furious overdrive.

Taking point, the Prime charges from the tunnel and into the cavern first, cannon raised and whirring as he digs in his heels and slides to a halt, drawing up his colossal frame to stand tall beneath the rock ceiling, his optics narrowed to thin slits.

“Starscream,” he thunders, authoritative and unyielding. His voice booms around the cavern, drawing another short scream from one of the humans below, yet he doesn’t dare take his optics off the threat to assess their condition, not while Starscream still has his weapon aimed unwaveringly at them.

It seems his arrival was anticipated after all.

The Decepticon doesn’t balk at their presence, doesn’t raise a weapon to defend himself… Gradually, wholly aware that he has the advantage here, Starscream raises his helm and tips his chin back to flash the Prime a haughty smirk.

“Ah, ah, ah~” he singsongs airily, just as Bulkhead lumbers to a halt at Optimus’s side, “That’s close enough, Autobot scum.”

Letting out a choked sound of rage, the wrecker lifts an arm, and his ion blaster whirls to life, though Starscream is quick to nod at the rock near his pedes and add, “Surely you wouldn’t risk any collateral damage now, would you?”

The Prime’s optics flare brightly.

Collateral… A Decepticon’s preferred synonym for the children under the Autobots’ care.

As Starscream speaks, he bobs his missile tauntingly up and down, never letting it stray from the humans locked in his crosshairs.

Behind the battle mask, Optimus peels back his dermas by a fraction of an inch – the only show of frustration he allows himself.

He’s almost relieved that Bulkhead is, by contrast, able to express himself so freely.

A low, thrumming growl shakes its way out from between the Wrecker’s clenched dentas. “Bullying humans now, Screamer?” he fumes, chomping at the proverbial bit but held in check by the seeker’s threat, “Why don’t you pick on someone your own size for a change? Or are you afraid you might lose?”

Starscream’s smirk twists down at the corners into a sneer, yet before he can offer some cutting retort, another voice pipes up from below, shattering his concentration.

“Bulk!?”

Two of the three Cybertronians present feel their sparks drop heavily into their tanks.

Bulkhead’s jaw hits his sternum with a ‘clunk!’ whilst Optimus’s only outward display of shock is the slight jump of his optical ridges.

“Miko!?” the former exclaims in a voice so shrill that it might have been comical in any other situation.

At last, unable to resist tearing their optics from the Con, both Optimus and Bulkhead shoot twin glances down over the top of the rock.

The Prime only needs a nanosecond to process the faces of each human below him.

And it’s just as he’d feared.

There’s Jack, a tired face gone slack with relief at seeing Optimus tower above him. And Rafael, with his youthful features pulled taut in fright, yet those wide, brown eyes are still so full of trust as they silently implore the Prime for help. Miko in the meantime is gazing adoringly up at her guardian with a gleeful smile stretching the edges of her mouth.

But it’s the fourth human that Optimus finds his optics drawn to and struck by, locking onto a face not quite as familiar as the children’s but known and inexplicably fond to him all the same.

“Y/n?” he murmurs far too softly to be heard over Bulkhead’s sputtered sounds of dismay and increasing panic.

His last parting from you was... regrettable, and still weighs heavily on his spark and processor when he finds himself alone with his thoughts.

For the first time, your eyes meet his optics, and there’s not an ounce of recognition flickering in their glossy depths as they stare up at him in unmitigated terror.

No… not terror…. Horror.

You’re horrified by his presence, his appearance, his incomprehensible existence.

In your eyes, he and Bulkhead are no different from Starscream – the true and only threat. In your eyes, what is he? Not a protector, but an aggressor. An unknown you have no hope of overcoming.

It doesn’t escape his notice; the stance you’ve taken in front of the children. With your back to them, arms flung out wide, you’re a trembling bulwark of fear and confusion and bravery, and the only thing standing between them and the Decepticon’s missile.

An unanticipated curl of pride warms the spark in his chamber, though it immediately bucks when his optics register the discolouration on your back. From his elevated angle, he has a clear and uninterrupted view of your shoulder blades… and the distressing gradient of a deep purple shadow sweeping across them, hemmed in by a frame of diffusing yellow.

It’s a bruise - he distantly recalls the term – and it’s swallowing up a vast swathe of your fragile skin, disappearing beneath your shirt. He’s seen bruises on humans before, small ones on the children’s knees and elbows after a tumble, or underneath Agent Fowler’s eyes after one too many sleepless nights. And while those instances are disquieting enough to witness, none have quite matched the extent of this one.

He knew you’d been hurt but this looks…

The lights in his optics flicker.

… He should have put his pede down… He should have just driven you straight to the medical clinic in Jasper regardless of your protests - no ‘ifs,’ ‘ands’ or ‘buts.’

Of all the humans who could have ended up down here, it would be the one who implied quite categorically that they never wanted anything to do with him again. He supposes there’s something divinely poetic about that. Divinely comedic too. Perhaps right now, Primus is looking down on his creation with a knowing smile.

Optimus, however, finds himself wishing that you were anywhere else at all, that fate had not led you down here. That it hadn’t led any of you down here, where your life and that of the children’s hang treacherously in the balance.

The nanosecond ends when you blink – and Optimus’s intake stalls to see a shimmering tear break free of your lash line and trickle down your cheek.

It strikes him that not only do you believe you’re supposed to protect Jack, Miko and Rafael from Starscream, but now that the Prime has unwittingly added himself and Bulkhead into the mix, you think you have two more perils to contend with.

Optimus flicks his optics up to the Decepticon once more as a dozen differing strategies spin around inside his processor. He’s getting you out of here. You and the children. ‘Whatever happens,’ he sends a silent promise down to the humans under his charge, his solicitous field spilling all the words he can’t verbalise, ‘I will keep you safe.’

Bulkhead feels it – Optimus’s EM field is a powerful thing, like everything else about the Prime. And right now, the noble intent of his leader hits the wrecker’s chassis like there’s real force behind it, tangible and physical.

Starscream feels it as well, though he isn’t bolstered by it like Bulkhead is. In fact, judging from the sudden wipe of his smug expression, the Seeker may have just come to the realisation that he’s currently threatening the very young, very vulnerable wards of a Prime and his powerhouse of a soldier.

Optimus wonders, between flitting through tactics, what you might think of him if you could feel it too.

-----

This has got to be one of – if not the - most vivid and dramatic nightmares you’ve ever had.

Either that, or…. or there’s a buildup of… of gasses in this mine or something, causing you to hallucinate. Hell, maybe that’s why this place was abandoned to begin with. If those old miners found coal seams or shale deposits down here, you could be standing in a pit filled with methane right now. And those beams and timber that were rotting away over your head as you made your way down…? How long have they been decomposing? Long enough for the carbon dioxide to seep out and gather at the bottom of the mine, you’ll bet!

That has to be it.

Gasses. Hallucinations. A nightmare.

Because you couldn’t possibly consider the third option, could you? That this might actually be happening. That there really are three unfathomably colossal titans surrounding you and the kids on all sides.

It certainly feels real enough. The sweat slicking your palms and hairline, the blood roaring in your ears, and the heart in your chest trying to make a jailbreak are all about as vivid as it gets.

Rationale is telling you that this isn’t happening. Your body is telling you otherwise. And it’s very hard to try and listen to both at the same time.

When the tallest of them – the one that had shouted something in a voice that sent a ping straight to your brain – lowers its ‘eyes’ to lock you in its sights, you freeze in place, helpless as a butterfly pinned to a corkboard.

Awful, cerulean light cuts like frostbite through the dimness of the mine and sends a chill sweeping up the length of your spine.

You’re stuck fast by its stare, the light cold and calculating as it burns down at you from an otherwise expressionless face.

Your own eyes sting with the effort of keeping them open, too afraid to blink, too afraid to take your gaze away lest it decide to strike the moment it thinks you aren’t looking, like a predator, a hungry wolf with designs on the back of your neck.

It’s hard to believe that the giant is the first to look away, pulling those twin beams of light from your face and turning them onto the comparatively smaller monster, the one with a blood-red stare.

Battling down the temptation to collapse onto your knees, you instead suck in a deep, noisy breath through your nostrils and clamp your lips firmly together as your gaze flits across to the third and final titan, shorter yet somehow so much larger than the others.

It’s as broad as a barn. Broader, perhaps. Military-green from head to toe, and it too sports a gaze that’s just as blue as the strange quartz that surrounds you. It cocks its colossal head at you, what passes for a head on that behemoth anyway, and the lights set in its face blink off, then on again. Once, twice… until something in your brain clicks into place.

It’s blinking.

You’d almost begun to entertain the notion that you’ve unwittingly stumbled upon some kind of Government-built superweapon, and that Terry might not be the crazy bastard you thought he was. But when it blinks at you, when it tips its head to the side as if it’s curious… in some uncanny way, you recognise it for what it is.

That’s something humans do.

That’s something living things do.

… What the Hell have you found down here?

Or perhaps the better question is, what the Hell has just found you?

“I see you’ve added another little pet to your menagerie,” the first robot suddenly drawls, breaking the silent stalemate that’s been brewing between you all for the past few seconds and sending your attention snapping back towards its slender face, chest rising and falling as you remind yourself to keep breathing, “I’m beginning to think you don’t care much for humans at all, if this is where you bring them to play.”

‘Humans?’

Your racing mind latches onto the word and sticks fast.

Humans… It called you humans. Implying that the speaker isn’t one…

The revelation doesn’t help you much, you’re still very much in trouble here, regardless of whether there’s another person operating these things or if they’re powered by something else entirely.

The longer you stand there without a shift or a waver in the makeup of the figure ahead of you, the less confident you are in your hallucination theory.

“Who’re you calling pets!?” Miko’s voice abruptly blasts past your ear, reminding you quite starkly of the three children pressed to your back, “If anyone’s the pet, it’s you! Megatron’s little groupie!”

You don’t have a chance to wonder what in the world she’s talking about.

The robot’s red glare snaps to her and zeroes in with murderous intent, its strange, malleable lip curling with hostility. Somewhere below your elbow, you hear Raf hiss “Miko!”

Just like that, you realise with a start that it doesn’t matter if you’re hallucinating or not.

If you are, and the children are too, it just means that you have to get them into fresh air as soon as possible. And if you’re not…

If this is real, if this is happening to you, then there truly are lives on the line, more than just your own.

And if this turns out to all be some incredibly vivid nightmare, well�� you can nervously laugh about it once you’re awake. But for now…

“You dare address your betters, pest!?” the robot seethes, tilting its arm by a fraction, just enough to indicate that it’s aiming its missile point-blank at the girl. Behind you, there’s a mechanical whir, like a machine is being charged up.

Your stomach lurches. Somebody needs to do something….

….

………. Shit. Fine.

“Don’t!” you blurt out before you can put too much thought into your actions, taking a fumbling step forward and drawing the silver juggernaut’s furious glare, “Don’t point that at her! She’s just a kid!”

There are several intakes of breath from behind you, and one from somewhere high above your head, but your attention remains fixed steadfastly on the red-eyed robot, goosebumps springing up along your arms when it lets out a deriding chuckle and flashes you a glimpse of stark-white metal sitting just beyond its ‘lips,’ like a set of teeth.

“Oh? What have we here? Trying to play the hero,” it sneers the word with about as much sincerity as it might afford a dead fly, scoffing somehow through its gap for a mouth, “Pathetic. Ah-! Not so fast, Prime!” Quick as a flash, the robot lifts it gaze to the ones behind you, sharp red lights flashing dangerously, “Unless you want to be picking up the pieces of your little friend here for the next deca-cycle.”

You haven’t forgotten about the threats behind you, snatching a glance over your shoulder to see if the other robots are keeping their distance. To your horror, the green one is still subjecting you to its stare, blue lights brighter than ever as it observes you. The slab of grey metal stretching like a chin-guard across its face has fallen slightly to hang open, revealing a sliver of darkness behind it – its own mouth, you realise with a shudder.

Even more perturbingly, the tallest of the trio has definitely taken a step closer. You can see the indentation in the dust where its foot had rested only seconds ago, several metres back.

Your tongue sits like a lead weight in your mouth, dry as a bone.

At the silver robot’s words, it stills entirely, one of its gargantuan hands held up placatingly. Its compliance demonstrates that there must be some sort of hierarchy here. Despite the apparent size advantage, the taller robot had deferred to the one with red eyes.

That at least clues you in on which danger to prioritise, so you turn back to the first giant, your own hands unconsciously mirroring the same, appeasing gesture.

It’s an absolutely uncontested fact that you’re outmatched in size, numbers, speed, strength, and more than likely intelligence too.

So, what do you have in your arsenal?

What could you possibly have?

Think!

The toe of your boot slides forwards an inch, just an inch, just enough to bump gently into an obstruction that rolls slightly under the force.

A rapid glance down reveals the object; the torch you’d dropped earlier, sitting innocuously by your boot, dim and harmless…

… In a split second, you make a decision.

It could very well prove to be your last decision, but it’s better than staying paralyzed by indecision and fear. One option guarantees that you won’t be leaving here alive. The other… might at least buy you some time…

In one, darting motion, you dip down and swipe the torch off the ground, straightening back up just as hastily and holding it out in front of you with both hands, aiming the glass face up towards the scarlet ‘eyes’ leering down from above you.

“Back off!” is all you can think to yelp, arms and voice quaking, “O-or I’ll shoot!”

....

The silence that falls over the cavern couldn’t be any heavier.

It makes the rattling plastic of the torch that much louder in your ringing ears.

For several heartbeats, nobody moves, not the kids, not the robots, only you with your knocking knees and trembling, outstretched arms.

Then suddenly, sound floods back into the chamber, all in the form of a scratching, obnoxious cackle.

The silver robot peels the plating around its lips back and laughs at you, the missile jerking wildly with the effort to stay trained on you despite the wielder’s convulsing frame.

“Oh~! Oh, that is rich!” it chortles, smirking maniacally down at you from twenty-something feet, “You’ll shoot, will you? You’ll shoot me with that little toy of yours?” You can see the guard dropping, there’s more movement behind you. You have to act now, before the other two monstrosities get the chance to intervene.

“This toy-!” you blunder, cutting shakily through the mocking laughter, “I-is an… um, a military… tactical… laser! It’ll blind you from fifty feet!” You have no idea if robots can be blinded. You have no idea why you’re bluffing like a gambler losing at poker. The torch, if anything, is about as bog-standard as it could possibly get. You know that.

But you’re hoping the robot doesn’t.

Apparently though, it does, judging by the fresh peal of laughter tumbling out of it and ricocheting around the mine chamber.

There’s a nervous hum of uncertainty from one of the kids - Jack, if you had to guess.

“Do you really think, human, that I don’t know a bluff when I hear one?” it remarks snidely, sweeping a slender claw beneath one of the red lights in a mocking rendition of someone wiping away a tear.

“You… you don’t believe me?!” you shout up at it, wedging your thumb underneath the switch and bracing every muscle in your body, praying that this works.

Splaying its free hand across what serves as a chest, it retorts, “Do you take me for a fool? Of course I don’t believe you!”

“Good!” you exclaim as a fresh cascade of adrenaline surges through your blood, shoulders aching with the effort of keeping them aimed up at the robot’s face which contorts from a smirk to a frown at your unexpected turnaround. “Then you won’t try to defend yourself when I do this-!”

On the final word, your thumb jams the switch into position, and a stalwart beam of light flies straight and true, crashing into the robot’s pale face and dousing those ominous red lights faster than you can blink.

The effect is as immediate as it is melodramatic.

The relatively quiet air of the cavern is suddenly ripped asunder by the robot’s jarring and unexpected screech of alarm. Reeling backwards, it wrenches its gangly arms up and flings them over its face, shielding itself from the little beam of your torch.

“MY OPTICS!”

You don’t stick around to see what happens next, all too aware that the same bluff never works twice.

The very instant that missile’s trajectory changes, you’re moving, aggressively stamping down on the instinct screaming at you to haul yourself to the far passage as fast as your legs can carry you.

There are three people who need to reach it first.

The front of Jack’s shirt is the first thing your fingers latch onto when you spin around and make a wild grab for one of the kids. His eyes are on stalks, bugging out of their sockets when you unceremoniously hurl him out in front of you and shove his back for good measure, shrieking at the top of your lungs, “RUN!”

He’s still getting his feet under him properly by the time you’ve snatched up Rafael’s wrist in one hand and Miko’s in the other, all the while chaos erupts around you when several-hundred tonnes of metal begins to move.

You almost wrench the poor kids out of their shoes as you take off, haring at breakneck speed towards the tunnel you’d come down like a fire has been lit under your heels.

----

Optimus has to admit, it isn’t very often that he can be surprised anymore, though he has noticed that the instances seem to be occurring with more and more frequency of late. That they happen to correlate with his arrival upon Earth is hardly coincidental, he’s sure.

Humans, as it stands, are just about the most pleasant surprise he’s come across in his extensive travels throughout the Galaxy, and there’s always something so refreshing about their ability to deliver.

Refreshing, yes. But somehow at the same time, spark-wrenchingly, tank-churningly alarming.

Even the Prime couldn’t predict that you’d resort to bluffing with a Decepticon, let alone that the bluff had actually worked, however briefly.

The only blessing he can latch onto is ‘thank Primus Starscream has never taken an interest in human electrical devices.’

Optimus had been waiting on the tips of his pedes for the opportunity to put himself between you and the Seeker, all he needed was an opening where he could be sure that missile wouldn’t be going off anywhere near you and the children… Easier said than done, of course.

Then, in a matter of moments, as Starscream lurches away from your ‘blinding’ beam of light and throws his arms up to defend his optics, the Prime finds himself mirroring Bulkhead’s astonishment. The pair of them gawk down at you as you take their youngest charges by the hands, drive Jack ahead of you and bolt for a tunnel across the cavern whilst your weapon of choice flickers weakly in the dust you leave behind.

However, Optimus doesn’t linger for long to marvel over your quick-thinking.

“I’m BLIND!” Starscream is shrieking, tearing his servos away from his optics and blinking down at them, faceplates screwed up in anguish, “YOU’VE BLINDED ME! YOU-!...”

Just like that, he goes utterly still, giving another series of rapid blinks as he flips his very-much-still-visible servos back and forth, wings slumping at the realisation. “Oh.”

Whatever relief he might have felt, accompanied by the swelling fury that he’d been a victim of blatant skulduggery is short-lived.

Motion from the corner of his optic alerts him just in the nick of time to Optimus Prime’s fist, hurtling on a collision course with his helm. Letting out a squawk, the Seeker barely manages to duck the first strike, feeling the air rush past his faceplates as he launches himself backwards, vying for some much-needed distance between himself and his adversaries, only for his efforts to fall flat when an even more devastating force catches him unawares.

With all the driving power of a siege engine, the Wrecker’s signature weapon buries itself into Starscream’s tanks. Hard.

“ACK-!” The garbled sound jumps unwillingly off his glossa, and he doubles over at once, yet still forces his pedes to scramble backwards, curling one arm around his stomach plating while the other flies up to aim his missile at the Prime, sweeping it back and forth in wild motions to ward them back.

To his shock, both of them fall still at once, glaring murderously down at him with their own weapons raised and cocked, but otherwise motionless. And there they stand, side by side; two bridling Autobots planted stoutly between himself and their fleeing pets.

Starscream’s denta grind together audibly, and he lets out a strangled growl, tanks roiling from the force of the hit.

He’s lost the upper-hand. Without the human meat-shields, he’s only too aware that he’s just lost any and all chance at getting something out of this. And to think, he’d been mere milliseconds away from calling in Megatron to inform him that his loyal and devoted Second In Command was holding Prime at gunpoint.

Bullet quite literally dodged, he concedes. Minor blessings.

It doesn’t escape his notice how the Autobots’ optics are locked onto his raised weapon, nor how they’d turned rigid at his flaunting of it.

And then, in a sudden moment of clarity, he realises why.

It isn’t the notion of his weapon firing at them that’s paused their advance.

It’s his weapon firing at all.

‘Of course,’ he comprehends with building anticipation, his processor firing rapidly as ideas cluster around inside it, ‘The mine…’

Structurally, Decepticon scouts had deemed it sound for the finer precision of their mining drills… but the impact blast from an uncontrolled detonation that targets one of the fundamental tunnels….?

Oh-ho! Now who has the upper hand?

A flash of movement between the Prime’s legs catches his attention, and he dares a glance through them to see the little pests making their escape. And there, leading the pack is the duplicitous human who cost him his advantage.

Starscream’s optics narrow as he tracks the humans’ path, noting their trajectory.

Perfect.

Whilst the Prime and his loyal hound are bodily blocking Starscream from taking aim at their humans, neither of them have apparently thought to cover the entrance to the tunnel those humans are currently sprinting towards…

He’ll have to be quick, so it’s a good thing he already knows which tunnel will lead him out of this doomed mine, and a jet’s speed is leagues ahead of the ground-crawling Autobots and their vastly inferior vehicle modes.

“Give it up, Screamer,” Bulkhead grinds out, shifting his weight restlessly from one pede to the other, “We have you outnumbered. And outgunned."

"So I see," the Seeker wheezes, painstakingly drawing himself to his full height once again and fixing his sights on the Autobot leader, “And there’s something else you have that I don’t.”

The line is cast, and to his unmitigated delight, Bulkhead takes the bait.

“Oh yeah?” the Wrecker grunts warily, glaring down the length of his poised weapon, “And what’s that?”

With a smirk plastered across his faceplate, Starscream angles his missile to Bulkhead’s left, relishing the twin looks of shock and realisation that spark in his adversaries' optics.

He grins, a fever coursing through his wires.

“Collateral,” he says, and fires.

#Transformers #transformers prime #tfp #Angel of Highway 49 #Woah #First time writing Starscream how'd I do?#Bulkhead #Optimus Prime #Starscream #Jack Darby #Miko Nakadai #Rafael Esquivel #Reader #Protective Optimus

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moonsaver · 1 year ago

Text

I cant stop thinking about being a possible singer from the Iris Family?? Their family is usually responsible for the major "talent" productions that practically are responsible for the entertainment... also Siobhan as hints to what the Iris family would be like.

You were a singer.

Barely a singer, to be fair.

It was for the sake of your little compartment of a family. Desperate times called for desperate measures, and you scraped out every last bit of your talents. The one which seems to be lasting the longest, seems to be singing.

You did what you had to. You sang until your throat was raw and hurt, practiced day and night until your ears were sick of your own voice, passed through every elimination tests that were conducted – all so you could have a stabilized, bolted place in the Iris Family, if it meant you and your parents and siblings weren't kicked out.

And, you weren't the best. And certainly not as good as Robin – the gem of the Oak Family. It was ironic, but it didn't matter. Not to you. As long as it kept your family secure, you endured. The comparisons, the hushed, barely pleased audience as they only took your performance as stalling time for the "real stars" of the show, the side-glances all of your other relatives threw your way. It was fine. You told yourself so. It was fine as long as you, your parents and your siblings were secured.

Risks weren't an option for you. Not when you had too much to lose.

Sunday has learned to appreciate frequency over output.

Times where schedules had to be rearranged last minute, performances strained and announcements elongated to squeeze out any extra amount of coverage for a missing show, routine dismantled and put together in real time as the neverending perfect show went on.

In all of those times, Sunday kept a usual eye on everyone. Their names, roles, status, popularity, preferences. And most importantly – their reliability.

You were an average performer. But your reliability was notable to Sunday. Oftentimes he found himself looking for you first and foremost for an improvised concert, whenever things even threatened to go awry. He knew perhaps you obliged out of self-interest or a simple fear of upsetting The Head of the Oak Family, but you were reliable in your own way. A simple glance your way and a nod was enough to signal you for advance preparation for improvisation, repeated song lyrics at the tip of your tongue.

If you were lucky, sometimes Sunday would repay you by scheduling you for an opening performance for a small-time event, or letting you in on the recent trends, the general public opinion towards your show, or even drop some personal hints for you to improve.

That was all you were. A reliable stand-in for when there were a disarray of clarity, disagreements upon disagreements, confusion stagnating the scheduling.

Until, you became so much more in a simple moment of disillusion.

A break is in order, Sunday believes. He clicks his pen continuously, the sound echoing in the vast space of the room, bouncing off of the sterile, empty walls.

Click. Click. Click. Click. Click.

5 times.

Click.

6 times.

Sunday's restless mind comes to a small halt when he inhales sharply, constraining his fingers. His shaking hand gently places the pen onto the flat, neatly organized desk, back where it belongs. He rests his chin on his hands. Thinking and listing everything on his agenda for the day.

A tandem of knocks resound from the smooth wooden surface of the door.

"Mr. Sunday?"

Ah. It's you.

He supposes his asisstants and servants don't realize he's noticed the recent pattern as of late. Whenever something changes in the schedule that could possibly threaten to dampen his mood or displease him, they send you in as some sort of collateral. He's gotten used to your presence enough to not mind it.

"Come in."

Short, quick clicks of your heels accompany the entering of your figure into the room. Your front is warmly illuminated by the yellow lighting of the room.

"Changes have been decided within the schedule again."

"As expected."

He gets up from the leather chair with a subtle creak, the steps of his shoes muffled by the carpet. He walks around his table, fingers trailing across the ridges of the masterfully crafted desk.

"Can I ask a favor of you, as always?"

"Of course."

His wings slightly flutter, pleased at the response. You can tell, despite his back facing you.

His fingers trail and come to a slow halt at the edge of the desk. His index finger taps on the surface.

Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap.

5 times.

Ah, you think. He's anxious.

"Mr. Sunday?"

"Hm?"

His finger stops, you note.

"I've heard guests have taken more to berry-flavored items as of late."

He chuckles a bit, softly.

"There's an uprising trend. Berry-flavored items have been on the rise, and as such, food follows."

Sunday half theorizes it could be due to the recent intreview Robin had. Strawberry flavored lipgloss was something she mentioned in particular.

"Ah. I see. So I suppose those colors may also influence the recent fashion trends?"

Sunday hums, in thought.

The moment is interrupted by an abrupt knock at the door.

"Mr. Sunday, there's a few tasks that need your approval to go ahead."

The male asisstant's voice resounds confidently through the previously quiet room. Sunday looks over at you and nods. You turn to take your leave. You can only hope it was enough of a reprieve for him.

"It seems fashion trends are inspired, aswell."

Sunday mentions, standing beside you. His eyes are watchful, analyzing the current performance from behind the curtains.

"I see."

You respond. Making conversation was not your strongsuit. Sunday smiles slightly at your awkwardness.

He continued the conversation after a few moments, talking about color palettes, scents, and general observable trends. Your usual,basic gowns and dresses will now see a noticeable change, due to Sunday's suggestions.

He admits, even at times, he looks forward to them. Sometimes, as foolish as it sounds, he slips in a mix of his own personal opinion, thinly disguised as the "general preference", which manages to then take presidence over your usual pick of gowns. He won't admit it, but he secretly does enjoy sometimes "picking out" your outfits. It's never harmed anyone in the long run, and Sunday's personal theories of whichever color would look good on you are confirmed.

"May I ask.. what this is..?"

The artificial, blue light of the Dreamscape softly highlights Sunday's face, as he stands before you with a pleased look. The same, usual smile on his face.

"I believe incorporating a few gold accents into your palette may help."

You look at the black, velvet bag; the ends of it scrunched into a closure. Your fingers gently pry it open and meddle around a bit, before they pull out a single, gold earring. It glimmers wonderfully under the soft, blue light. There's a flower at the very top with an encrusted diamond, from which a long, elegant thread of gold dangles, ending into a small golden stalk.

You curiously examine it, slightly dangling it to inspect the weight and movement of the accessory.

Sunday walks toward you with a few, short strides, and holds out his hand.

You look at his open, gloved palm, then him.

You inhale deeply, before taking off your current earrings and placing them onto his hand, and gently replacing their former stations with the new earrings. Sunday places your previous earrings into the velvet bag, and glances at your ears, then you.

"Consider it a.. company gift."

How fanciful.

"Thank you for your generosity."

Sunday's eyes linger on your ears, then trail down to the junction of your jaw. His eyes close as his smiles widens slightly.

To be fair, he wanted more.

‐

Sunday has been getting closer to you as of late.

Because you wouldn't imagine ever being this close in proximity to Robin of all people.

Her lips are glossy with a strawberry tint, and her eyes are a beautiful lake green, you note. You also take note of the fact she's much more warmer and approachable than she is appeared to be on digital surfaces.

Both of you engage in polite conversation, her taking the lead, noticing your awkwardness. She's sweet, and understanding. She discusses general things regarding singing and songwriting. You take her for a very warm individual. It's no wonder she's a well-liked popstar. Talent alone can take you so far.

What you also wouldn't imagine is her managing to entangle you within her daily affairs. She leads you to private rooms, asks for advice on outfits, practice, and all sorts of things, despite the contrast of your styles almost bizzare, you oblige anyway.

And it's almost brazenly obvious she's trying to get you and Sunday to spend more time alone outside of work.

It's of no coincidence that she suddenly has to leave and take care of a few things or shuffle around a bit outside whenever Sunday manages to pop in and check up on you two. It wouldn't have been so uncomfortable if for the fact, Sunday's eyes are always lingering on your ears.

Once, he'd taken note that you'd been wearing them more often to your performances and shows. It can't be helped – you've gained more popularity and as a result, keener eyes inspect your choice of practically everything. Including your earrings. Your fans aren't hesitant to point out how exquisite and specific the craftsmanship of your earrings are, and it's not long before your fans have understood it was gifted to you. By who, became the newest sensation regarding you. Petty rumors were incriminating, but you suppose if it brought you more fans, it was enough.

Sunday chuckles softly when you briefly touch on the subject.

It wasn't long before he'd gotten you another pair as a result.

You only worry about paying him back, more and more.

‐

There are a plethora of thorns on Sunday's side. Many, of which the public, and many members of the Oak Family aren't privy to.

One of them was currently busy darkening his doorstep;

The IPC.

Or rather specifically – Aventurine.

What he wasn't expecting, was for you to be an exclusive invitee to his mischief.

You were rather in an unlucky spot. You had always considered your luck to be rusty, having struggled so much just for average recognition and a barely tangible career that's keeping your family afloat.

On top of that, you were being heavily persuaded by Aventurine, who was persistent in his offer to you. His desperation was more than obvious, like a nervous dog waiting for the bone toss, holding you in place with a firm grip on your arm. It didn't help that he'd forced his way into your hotel room aswell.

And Sunday just witnessed the pinnacle of this forsaken deal.

...

"Aventurine."

"Mr. Sunday."

After a beat of silence, you pathetically try to step in,

"This–"

"I see you've taken to familiarizing with my employees."

Sunday's smile remains well plastered on his face. Aventurine only smiles back.

"I was actually in the middle of striking a deal. There's always opportunities in the best of places, right?" Aventurine side-eyes you. You shrink back a bit.

"My employees are unfortunately off-limits to contracts from unauthorized branches. I look for your understanding in this.. complicated form of approach."

You watch Aventurine's smile strain. Sunday continues.

"Perhaps, if you are in need of a singer, I may direct you to an appropriate employee from the Iris Family to search for someone."

"That won't be necessary. I wasn't looking for a singer. You don't think that's all they're talented at, do you?"

Sunday's eyes slightly sharpen at him. Aventurine's smile becomes more genuine.

"Oh, you've positively ruined the mood. I guess it's just not my lucky day, and it looks like I'm not getting a deal with you anytime soon."

Aventurine's eyes hone in on you. You stand stiffly, your arm tense from the uncertainty your body feels physically.

His grip loosens, languidly. You'd think he was doing it slowly on purpose if not to tick off Sunday more.

"I'll take my leave, then."

Aventurine breezes past Sunday, rounding the corner of the door. He casts one last glance to you as the turns.

His footsteps echo down the hallway. As soon as they fade, Sunday's smile drops slightly.

"Are you perhaps.. unhappy with your current circumstances?"

‐

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crosshairlovebot · 1 year ago

Text

enclosed intentions / crosshair gn!reader

pairing: crosshair x gn!reader (no y/n). reader has a nickname.

description: amid your growing feelings for the silver-haired sniper, you and crosshair are paired together on a mission that goes awry, which brings to light intentions you've been aching to know.

word count: 9,934 (pHEW!!)

warnings: near-death experience (everyone lives). landslide. heavy storms. enclosed spaces. minor injury. minor injury description. making out. light angst.

been wanting to write another crosshair fic for a while bc he's my GUY and i love him!!! season 3 is only fuelling the burning fire he stokes in my chest. i hope you enjoy this! strap in! it's a long one! (sorry if there are any errors, i've edited this but it's so long it's entirely possible that i missed some <3)

also posted this on ao3. feedback is welcomed, reblogs are appreciated.

More often than not, Clone Force 99 was sent on dangerous missions – missions too specialised for the regular battalions and squads that filled the Grand Army of the Republic. The missions that troubled Jedi Generals regarding the potential loss of men. But Clone Force 99 and their specialised skills took on those missions with ease, enthusiasm even.

You were about to embark on another one of those missions.

When you’d first joined the GAR as a medic, you’d heard rumours about the squad of defective clones and their enhanced skills, and you would be lying if you said you weren’t impressed by their reportedly unbroken mission success.

When Echo walked into your medbay after he’d been rescued from Skako Minor and you were the first to check over him – making him feel comfortable after years of prodding and inhumane treatment – it only made sense for you to join the team as a field medic to continue to treat him and the other members of the squad.

Though they were initially dubious of the idea of a nat-born joining their ranks, they had always been a misfit crew – you were only another addition to that, and it wasn’t long before your presence with the squad felt like being at home.

You got on with each of the members well, even if they grumbled and complained about your regularly scheduled medical check-ups after missions.

Tech was a great help in collating the medical files he’d made from when he acted as the informal medic. You joked along with Wrecker, who often used you as an alternate barbell, lifting you over his head to warm up before a mission. Hunter often conferred with you before mission briefings to go over any hazards that could harm them. Echo was probably your strongest bond, the trust that existed between you both created a level of closeness not shared with the other members of the squad.

But Crosshair…

You’d soon discovered that Crosshair was weary of anyone who wasn’t part of his immediate family, and you joining Clone Force 99 – and in such constant close quarters, meant your relationship with the sharpshooter was a little more distant than the others.

You tried not to let it bother you so much, but it was hard when you were joking with Wrecker, and you could feel Crosshair’s discerning enhanced eyes on you. You often ignored his gaze as best you could, but sometimes you would look over at him, and hold his eyes for a moment before he got up and walked away.

You wish you knew what those looks meant. You would lay in your bunk at night, and think about it, trying to piece together any patterns and figure out why Crosshair’s eyes never seemed to truly leave you.

Despite the distance between you both, it didn’t deter your intrigue about him. There was something about him that drew your attentions towards him.

If you didn’t feel his eyes on you, your eyes would find him. He was so fascinating to watch. Everything he did, he did with purpose; intention. Nothing about Crosshair was insignificant. Every word, every gesture, every look held meaning. You liked trying to figure it out, but you had yet to decipher much of it – especially when it was directed at you. He was like a puzzle that didn’t want to be solved, hiding all his answers in disappearing ink, you had to hold him up to the light to try and unravel him. You wished he would let you, but his terse demeanour kept you at bay - not wanting to disturb what balance you had.

So you were content to watch him from a distance. He was methodical about everything. Cleaning his rifle the same way after every mission, never missing a step, always performing each of them in the same order. His armour went on the same way. You would watch how his toothpicks would always dangle from his lips as he cleaned his prized weapon, and you would almost be hypnotised by the way he moved the wooden stick between his teeth. You spent so much time staring at his mouth, that you could probably draw it from memory.

He was magnetising.

Whenever you needed to perform a medical check on him, you would do so quietly and draw it out, as if trying to soak up every moment of the closeness to him, catalogue it all.

When it came to checking his hands, you would gently hold them in your palms and gently massage the joints that could get cramped from holding the rifle tightly. You would check the nerves with a light prick on each fingertip and around the palm. Those examinations were so tense, his eyes on you the entire time watching your every move in the tiny medbay on the Marauder. You could barely focus in that room, there was nowhere to hide from his sharp eyes. And when you dared meet his gaze, his eyes would hold yours in a way that left you breathless and you were never able to look him in the eyes for very long. They’d look right into yours, an expression dancing in them you could never place.

But he never said anything to you – not unless you asked him a question about pain. But you’d think about each interaction for days afterwards.

Your silent exchanges filled your head at night, spilling over into your dreams. Dreams where those hands you’d just inspected in the waking world would be holding you tightly, that mouth you’d stared at brushing against your cheek and neck, whispering things you pretended not to remember once you woke. You’d wake up from those dreams confused, still feeling the ghost of his touches on you. It didn’t hit you until several dreams later that that initial intrigue had given way to feelings much deeper; to an intense crush that only seemed to build the longer you spent with Clone Force 99.

If anyone else noticed, they never said anything. You carried on as normal and hoped Hunter’s heightened senses didn’t pick up on the way your face heated or your heartbeat increased when Crosshair was near.

Except the silence between you broke a few days ago.

After the last mission, you were scheduled to do the weekly checks on the squad. You always left Crosshair until last, knowing he liked to clean his rifle as soon as the mission debrief was over. When you called him into the tiny room, he sat down on the bench, and you completed the first part of the check-up smoothly.

It was when you were massaging one of his hands, loosening the stiffness with your own fingers, that you felt his close around yours.

You had stilled and slowly looked up at him. His brown-eyed gaze met yours and you felt the air get sucked out of your lungs. You watched his eyes flick between yours, his throat working as his fingers were warm around yours. He was holding your hand, and it was warm and strong despite its slenderness. It was such an innocent gesture, and yet the sensation of his touch made your face burn and heat unfurl in your chest as your feelings for the sniper were unleashed in full force. You didn’t know what to do, but you would be lying if you didn’t like the feel of his fingers around yours. But this was Crosshair – the Crosshair who barely spoke to you, who watched you like he was analysing your every move.

“A-am I hurting you?” you managed to stammer out.

Crosshair blinked, seemingly jolting himself out of a trance and pulled his hands away roughly, frowning. “No.” His voice was like gravel, and he stood up and quickly left the room, check-up unfinished.

You had no idea what had happened, what you had done, what he had done, but you stood in that room trying to quell your racing heart for ages before you worked up the nerve to emerge. You spent that night thinking about the warmth of his fingers around yours and the way his throat bobbed like he wanted to tell you something.

What was it that he wanted to say? You knew Crosshair was always intentional in everything he did, so what was his intention with holding your hand like that?

Now, as the Marauder flew into a planet you couldn’t remember the name of, you felt those brown eyes on you from where Crosshair sat in one of the seats in the cockpit, his arms crossed and toothpick between his lips. Echo helped Tech guide the ship as Wrecker bench-pressed Gonky in the corridor. Hunter stood nearby as you held onto the back of Tech’s pilot seat as the ship flew into the planet’s atmosphere.

Since joining the squad a mere two months ago, you had been to more planets than you ever thought you would visit in your entire lifetime, but you had never seen anything like this.

The sky was full of enormous floating rocks, with thick greenery on top. You didn’t know how they stayed floating like this.

“This place is unbelievable,” you murmured. “How is this possible?”

“The rocks are held up by the planet’s unique gravity, creating a balanced pull that tethers the rock to its place. Think of them as miniature planets that exist within the atmosphere,” Tech explained.

You hummed in amazement as Tech flew past them all and steered towards the planet’s surface, which lay beneath a thick bank of dark clouds. The clouds gave way to rocky terrain, with a mountain range that jutted up from the ground haphazardly, not unlike their floating counterparts, as well as canyons and valleys. The whole planet seems to be rocks in various states. Tech landed the ship in a clear area and then everyone turned to Hunter.

“So, what’s the plan, Hunter?” Wrecker called out, finally giving Gonky a rest and placing him back on the ground.

Everyone gathered around a holomap Hunter had brought up. You felt Crosshair slide in next to you, his crossed arms grazing yours. Heat prickled your skin, the memory of the warmth of his fingers coming to life again, and you shifted slightly, drawing your arms closer to your body. You looked up at him but for once, his gaze wasn’t on you, but on the blue graphics in front of him. Your face burned. It was embarrassing how much of an effect he had on you, and even more so now after that moment in the medbay. He seemed to have completely forgotten about it, and here you were still having phantom feelings of the way his fingers wrapped around yours.

“We divide our squad,” Hunter begins. “Break off into pairs. The mineral we’ve been sent to recover is located across this entire sector, but according to Tech, not all of it will be viable.”

“There is a very narrow window in which the mineral is usable, and it will be difficult to find. But we will need to be cautious. The viable mineral is highly volatile when handled. And there’s an incoming storm headed this way, and due to the unique gravitational field on this planet, the storms here are quite lethal,” Tech tapped on his datapad.

You took a deep breath in. It appeared there was a lot that could go wrong.

Hunter nodded. “I can feel it. We’ll need to move fast, so let’s get going. Echo, you’re with me in the Badlands. Tech and Wrecker, you head west for the Valley. And that leaves Crosshair with N’edee up in the Mountains. Comm if you find any viable mineral and triangulate your position as best you can for reference before extracting as much as possible. Then head back to the Marauder where we’ll reconvene. Questions?”

Everyone shook their head. “The terrain is tough out there, so let’s try to avoid N’edee having to patch up any injuries,” Hunter added, sending you a smile. Everyone nodded before Hunter signalled everyone to move out.

N’edee was the little Mando’a nickname they’d appointed you. It meant ‘no bite’. After you’d first joined, you’d witnessed your first ever disagreement between Crosshair and Hunter and, not used to their scuffles yet, tried to mediate between them. They were so amused it stopped the argument and earned you the name �� since you’d rather try to keep the peace instead of letting them fight it out.

Now, you knew better, but the name stuck. You wished you hated it, but Crosshair’s smirk as he called you it the first time was the first time he ever sort of smiled at you.

And the last.

The squad grabbed their gear, and you strapped your med pack to your back and holstered a blaster you barely ever used. You felt your whole body go into overdrive, not only because of the risk of the mission but also because you were paired off with Crosshair. The thought of being so close; just the two of you sent nerves running through you. If it was anyone else, you wouldn’t hesitate to ask what happened in the medbay, and try and sort it out and move forward, but you didn’t have that kind of closeness with Crosshair. There was no way you felt comfortable bringing up the way he held your hand – this was an important mission, and you didn’t want to risk ruining it by making Crosshair uncomfortable and clam up so tight you’d lose the modicum of trust you had.

Whenever intention he’d had, you weren’t destined to ever know what it was. So, you’d just have to take a page out of his book and pretend it never happened.

You made your way down the Marauder’s gangplank to find Crosshair waiting for you, helmet under his arm and holding the barrel of the sniper with his free hand as the hilt rested on the ground. He was the only one there, the others had already started their treks. You quickened your steps down as he looked over at you, heat blooming up your neck.

“Sorry,” you told him. Crosshair shook his head, either dismissing the apology or disappointed in your slowness to get ready – you couldn’t tell.

“Let’s go, the storm’s moving quickly,” he informed in that way of his. He placed his helmet on and started walking. You watched him walk away, not looking back at you as his long legs carried him quickly through the rocky ground in the direction of the mountain range.

“Try and keep up,” he called back, and you huffed, adjusting your med pack and jogging after him.

Crosshair kept a quick pace as you both walked, and his height didn’t help. The rhythmic beeping of the scanner Tech provided you with and your footsteps were the only sound between you both. You tried to keep up as best you could as you approached the base of the mountain range, but you were still lagging a couple of metres behind him.

You had been worried about the awkwardness a conversation about what happened in the medbay would bring, and yet you were not even close enough to have one.

You huffed, a light sheen of sweat covering your brow, as you stepped over a bunch of rocks, moving between them as best you could, looking down at your feet to ensure you didn’t fall. The weather was beginning to change, and you knew the storm was getting closer as the wind picked up and nearly knocked you off balance a few times. But you had still to find any viable mineral. You looked at the scanner and saw it was indeed picking up signs of the mineral, but none of it was suitable – either too old or too young a sample. You sighed. This was going to take longer than you thought, and you only hoped you had more luck once you reached the mountains, and that the storm would hold off.

“Watch your step,” Crosshair called back to you. You looked up to watch him as he stepped on a boulder and jumped down into what must’ve been a small ditch at the foot of the mountain range. You frowned and kept walking. As you got closer, you were surprised as you realised he was waiting for you. His helmet was trained on you as you reached the rock and you tried to pretend like it wasn’t a big deal to you. You stepped on top of the boulder, the wind whipping around you as his gaze tilted up at you. For once, you towered over him. You couldn’t help but smile playfully at him.

“So, this is what the world must look like for you,” you joked, trying to ease the tension that was still thick between you.

Crosshair let out a small scoff at your joke before holding out his hand. “Hurry up.”

You widened your eyes at his extended hand, your eyes flicking to it and then back to his visor. After the medbay, you hardly imagined he’d be offering a hand to you again in a clinical setting, let alone to help you descend a boulder. You looked at his outstretched hand, letting a moment pass as you waited for him to retract it, but he didn’t.

This gesture was intentional.

You slowly placed your hand in his. His hand was as warm and strong as it was several days ago, and the familiarity of it made your insides jolt as you felt it wrap around your palm. The nerve endings in your hand tingled in excitement as they ignited from his touch. Heat coiled its warmth through your whole body as you crouched down to a sitting position, doing your best not to topple over not only from the wind. He helped you slide off the edge down to where he was standing, his hand steadying you.

You wobbled on your feet slightly as you landed, and you looked up at him, wishing he wasn’t wearing his helmet right now so you could discern his steely gaze. Though you had a feeling his bare face still would not betray anything of what was going on in his head.

Was he acknowledging what happened? Or was he just being considerate of the terrain?

Before you could open your mouth with a ‘thank you’, he let go of your hand and started walking up a pathway that seemed to wind up the mountain.

You guessed it was not the former.

You took in a shaky breath, body tingling with the remnants of his touch as you felt its cold absence and started after him; scanner poised as you walked.

The pathway up the mountain was wide enough to walk on, but too narrow to walk side by side comfortably without worry of falling over the edge. So, you trailed behind Crosshair once again, who had now slowed down that the route had grown more precarious. You clenched your jaw as you followed his steps carefully, avoiding any loose rocks as you walked. You tried not to think about the increasing ascension of the mountain, the ground below getting smaller and smaller the higher you both trekked as you continued to scan the side of the mountain for any trace of a viable source of the mineral, but still, there was nothing.

The higher you moved the wind that whipped around both your bodies increased as the clouds rolled in. You had to move your hand alongside the mountain as you waked, too afraid you’d blow away as the gusts of wind threatened to knock you over.

You’d been walking for a few hours by now and with the weather getting worse, the constant pace was starting to wear on you; arms and legs sore and feet aching, face stinging. You looked out over the cliff and saw you were almost halfway up, and the sky was getting darker as the storm continued to draw closer. Every time you looked, it seemed to be moving towards you quicker, so as much as you wanted to stop and rest, you knew that you couldn’t – especially when you looked ahead at Crosshair and saw he didn’t seem to show any signs of exhaustion.

Though you knew clones had been engineered to withstand increased levels of physical exertion, you still felt inadequate not being able to keep up. Even after two months with the squad, you still weren’t used to the physicality of the missions. You weren’t initially trained as a field medic, but you still didn’t want to look like you couldn’t handle this simple mission – even if it was more gruelling than you anticipated. So, you gritted your teeth and kept walking, despite the way your body protested with each step.

Crosshair began to slow before he stopped and turned to look at you. “Picking up anything?”

You shook your head and hoped you didn’t sound as puffed out as you felt. “Nothing viable. Not even a false read.”

Crosshair grumbled. “Another wild bantha chase.”

You tried to sound upbeat, but you weren’t fooling anyone. “Maybe the others have had more luck?”

“Maybe,” Crosshair said, his helmeted face drifting from you to the sky. He removed his helmet and scowled as the storm drew closer and closer to your position on the mountain. It was close enough now that you began to see flashes of lightning strike within the clouds, and you jolted when a crack of thunder sounded like it was almost on top of you.

“The storm is too close,” he said, shaking his head in concern.

“I know. Should we head back to the Marauder?”

“There’s no time. We need a pickup,” Crosshair sighed and placed his helmet back on, pressing the side of his helmet. “Hunter, do you copy?”

You watched him, hand gripping the mountain as the wind grew stronger with each passing second. You were starting to feel spits of rain hit your skin as more thunder and lightning struck. Your body was shaking with exhaustion and all you wanted to do was lie down in a safe place and fall asleep.

“Wrecker? Do you copy? Tech? Echo? Hunter, are you there?” Crosshair spoke into his comm, his voice getting harder with every word. He let out a frustrated sigh.

“I can’t reach them. There’s too much atmospheric interference with the storm, maybe even the gravity too.”

You looked at him and tried not to sound panicked, but you knew your face betrayed you anyway. “What do we do?”

A crack of thunder sounded, and it was like the sky was splitting open. The mountain shook under your feet, and you fell to your knees, yelping. You felt Crosshair crouch next to you, a hand on your back to steady you. You looked up at him as the rain started to pelt down heavily on you both. You tried to shield your face, but the rain was so heavy it felt like knives cutting as it hit the skin of your face.

Crosshair hooked a hand under your arm and hauled you up. “We have to move.”

“We need to get off this mountain!” You shouted over the rain.

“We need to find shelter. Come on,” Crosshair skirted you in front of him and you both started to run up the path in the pouring rain. You held a hand against your brow to try and see, but the rain and wind intensified more than you thought possible, blurring your vision.

“Crosshair, I can’t—”

You slipped on a rock loosened by the wet ground. You cried out and fell forward, landing on your hands harshly. You felt your palms sting as you tried to get to your feet, but Crosshair slid his hands under your armpits and lifted you just as there was a flash of bright light, and the mountain shook again, this time more violently. It felt like the lightning had hit the mountain this time, and when you tried to look up to check, your worst fears were confirmed as the sound of rocks tumbling began to get louder over the heavy rain. Panic coursed through your veins.

“Go!” Crosshair yelled, hand steady on your arm as you both ran, him pulling you forward. You could feel rocks landing behind you and you tried to run faster, skin numb from the rain.

“There’s a cave up ahead! Hurry!” Crosshair shouted as he led you towards the mouth of the cave. Your thighs and calves burned, and Crosshair pulled you inside just as rocks fell and covered the entrance of the cave, trapping you both inside.

You fell to your knees, catching your breath as you looked around and realised how dark it was. You’re eyes hadn’t adjusted yet, so could barely see anything, but you heard Crosshair’s body hit the ground nearby as he sat down, grunting as he took his helmet off. His breath moved quickly too as you blinked and tried reaching out to see where he was.

“Crosshair?” you said, patting the hard ground next to you until you found his knee.

“I’m here,” he said, placing a hand over yours. You sucked in a breath as his fingers curled around yours. “You okay?” He asked, his voice raspy.

Your heartbeat which had only just started to slow, picked up again as he held your hand again. How many more times was this going to happen? Would you ever not freak out when he touched you now? Was that his intention?

You swallowed. “Yeah, I’m okay. Are you?”

You felt the muscles in his hand flex. “Yeah.”

You took in a shaky breath and let him hold your hand again, relishing in the feel of his fingers wrapped around yours for a moment, so warm and solid. The feel of his knee under your palm, a part of the body you had originally thought completely savoury until this very moment. After a moment too long of no sound except the roaring rain on the other side of the rock, you cleared your throat before you felt around you with your other hand. “I can’t see.”

“I can.”

You blushed profusely and hoped to the Force you didn’t look as bewildered as you felt. “Right. Of course.”

Crosshair slowly let go of your hand but made a point of keeping your empty palm on his knee, like he knew you needed to feel him close by.

The word intentional flashed in your mind.

Your stomach turned over at the gesture and you wiped your face with your other hand, shoulders beginning to shake. You heard Crosshair take off his pack and scramble through it, pulling out a small light that he usually placed on the end of his rifle. He clicked it on, and you shielded your eyes, before blinking your vision clear. Now you could see Crosshair’s face half illuminated, his brow was creased as he held out the light to you.

“Thanks,” you said, taking it from him. You pointed it around the cave and realised it was not so much a cave, but an oversized cavity in the side of the mountain. It wasn’t very deep, and it looked like its width was only a little bigger than Crosshair was tall. But it had saved your lives. You looked behind you, at the rocks that had fallen there.

“How are we going to get out of here?” you asked, running the light over the edge of the cave to see if there were any openings, but there were none substantial enough for you to try and get leverage to move the rocks that blocked you both in. Some rain fell through the cracks, the water landing on the rock as the storm carried on outside. That was good – at least you had some airflow.

“We need to wait for the storm to pass before we can see if comms will work to call the others,” Crosshair explained. “If we can’t contact them, we’ll have to wait for them to find us.”

The thought of being trapped in here for an undetermined amount of time made your heartbeat begin to race. “And if they can’t find us?”

“They will.” Crosshair’s conviction was comforting. You’d learnt that his belief in his brothers was unwavering, and never misplaced. If he believed that they would find them, then you did too.

You looked at him, careful not to shine the light in his sensitive eyes. His gaze was on you, and this might’ve been the first time you didn’t feel the need to avert your eyes. As intense as his gaze was, it was soft, and the brown of his eyes shined in the low light. Your hand was still on his knee and your eyes flicked down to it. You didn’t know if removing it would make it more awkward, or if leaving it there would. In the split-second moment, you were debating it in your head, with your body still shaking when Crosshair interrupted your thoughts.

“You’re shivering,” Crosshair said. “You need to get dry.”

You looked up at him and realised just how much you were shivering, now that the adrenaline had worn off. Your clothes were soaked through from the downpour, and the chill was sinking into your bones. You knew that if you didn’t get dry, you would get hypothermic.

You held out the light to Crosshair to take, which he did wordlessly. With shaky hands, you pulled your med pack off your back and placed it in front of you. Crosshair shined the light where you needed it as you searched through the items for a reflective blanket and when you found it, you pulled it out, the light bouncing off the shiny fabric. You looked at Crosshair, heat crawling up your neck.

“Um, I need to…”

Crosshair turned his head immediately but kept the light pointed in your direction. As quickly as you could, embarrassment flooding your trembling frame, you removed the layers of clothes you had on. You kept on the black GAR issue bodysuit you wore under all your clothes, even if it was slightly damp – you weren’t going to be completely bare with just a blanket between you and Crosshair. As you stripped everything off, you noticed the palms of your hands were grazed from the fall, and it hurt to move them as the skin stretched. You would deal with it once you weren’t shivering anymore, but the priority right now was to get warm.

Once you piled all your clothes together – there was no hope in everything drying whilst you were stuck in here, you pulled your knees to your chest and wrapped the reflective blanket around you tightly.

“Okay.” You said and Crosshair looked over and he squinted as the light bounced off the blanket, gaze searching your frame.

“What about your hands?”

“My hands?”

“You fell. I saw your palms are grazed.”

He was so perceptive, you wondered what else he saw that he never acknowledged. “I’ll patch them up after I stop shaking,” you told him, wrapping the blanket tighter.

Crosshair shook his head. “Aren’t you always telling us that injuries should be treated as soon as possible? Give me this—” he pulled the med pack in front of him and pointed the light inside.

“Crosshair—” You said as he dug around your pack, pulling out some antibac wipes and bacta patches. “You don’t have to. It’s not your job.”

Crosshair sent you a withering look before he placed the light between his teeth and gestured for you to show him your hands. You sighed and pulled your hands out of the blanket as best you could without it slipping off your shoulders. You turned your palms up, still slightly tremoring. They weren’t bleeding, but they were red and rubbed raw from the gravel you landed on. And they stung, but you were trying to be brave about it.

They were easily treatable, but your hands didn’t look pretty, that’s for sure.

Crosshair looked at them, adjusting the light in his mouth so they were completely illuminated before he shook his head with a frown, ripped open an antibac wipe, and cradled one of your hands in his.

He met your eyes, a silent question in their gentle expression as his hand was poised, wipe ready to be drawn across your palms. You’d never seen him look at you like this before; this softly. It was so easy for your crush to bloom when he looked at you like this. You looked into his brown-eyed gaze, cheeks heated, and you nodded.

Crosshair gently placed the wipe on your palms, and you sucked in a breath as it stung the exposed skin. You felt the hand that cradled yours tighten and then he slowly began to clean the wound. With his attention on your hand, you could watch him unabashedly. The roles between you had now reversed. He was treating your hands as attentively as you treated his. The way he held your hand in his large palm was so gentle that your heart fluttered. You could feel the heat permeate from under his gloves into your skin, and you felt your hand slowly begin to still, the warmth returning to you with his touch. You were so touched at the way he was doing this for you, without you even asking. The way he insisted upon it. You hadn’t expected it after the medbay, and you ignored the little voice in the back of your head that asked what his intention was and simply savoured this moment of kindness from the man you were hopelessly crushing on.

He was as methodical as he was when cleaning his rifle, wiping the wound on one hand in even strokes that coated all the raw skin twice before he moved to the other hand, a new wipe this time.

You watched the way the light was poised between his teeth, and when his eyes flicked to yours for a moment, you averted your gaze back to your hands reflexively. You heard him breathe out through his nose harshly as he discarded the wipe and grabbed a bacta patch, pressing it between his palms to warm the liquid. You watched him, your eyes meeting his tattooed gaze once again as your hands remained suspended between you.

You thought back to the medbay, at how his fingers had curled around yours so naturally like it was instinctual; at the way he pulled his hands away so quickly and so forcefully it was like your hands had been burnt; at how fast he’d left you standing there, reeling from his actions. You tried to think of what his intention had been, and what you had done that had made him retreat.

“I’m sorry…for the other day.” Your voice was quiet in the small space. The storm continued to rage outside, but there was no way he hadn’t heard you. Crosshair looked at you, knowing exactly what it was you were referring to, and placed the bacta patches in one hand before removing the light from his mouth to talk, confusion etched into his brow.

“Why?”

You brought your lips between your teeth as your eyes flicked between his. “Because I upset you.”

Crosshair looked at you for a moment, an undiscernible expression passed over his half-shadowed face as your eyes stayed locked on each other. What you would give to know what he was thinking, what thoughts swirled in his head. Two months of watching him had barely scratched the surface – you wanted to know everything, to be privy to the innermost workings of his mind.

Crosshair was the first to break his gaze, shaking his head.

“You didn’t upset me.”

You frowned at him, but before you could ask him what he meant, he had placed the end of the light back between his teeth and started applying the bacta patches to your palms, activating the adhesive and smoothing them down over your hands with his thumbs. He held one of your hands in both of his, his fingertips touching the back of your hand as he ran his thumbs along the edges of the bacta patch. He pressed them gently down, and you could already feel the bacta doing its job. He did the same thing to the other side.

You watched him and you realised you’d never felt so cared for before. Never had you been held so gently, treated with such practised methodical hands that were also so soft and caring. Your heart swelled.

He took the light out of his mouth. “Bandages?”

You cleared your throat. “They’re in the side pocket.”

Crosshair took some out and started wrapping your hands up so the bacta patch would be more secure. He was so good at this. With the light dangling from his teeth, he circled the bandage around one hand, before he tied it off and tucked the end, and then the same on the other side.

When he was done, he dropped his hands from yours and removed the light from his teeth for the final time.

You looked at your hands. You couldn’t have treated them better if you had done it yourself. You hadn’t even had to coach him through what to do, and that impressed you. It only made the warmth in your chest grow, that hopeless crush in full bloom and only growing more hopeless by the minute.

“Thank you,” you told him and pulled your hands back underneath the blanket.

Crosshair hummed and then placed the light up on its base between you both and leaned it against the rocks behind you, so the beam of light shined upwards and illuminated where you at. You watched him then sit back against the rock, stretching his long legs out in front of him and closing his eyes, sighing. You sat facing him and brought the blanket around you tighter. You no longer shivered, but you still wanted to be warmer than you were. You stared at the side of his face, Crosshair’s profile half-lit in the light. You gazed at the brown of his skin, the sliver of his hair, the slope of his nose, the purse of his lips. You noted the stubble lining his angled jawline, and wondered what it would feel like against your lips. He was beautiful.

“Crosshair?”

He only hummed again in response.

You tightened your hold on the blanket as you worked up the courage to ask the question that was burning inside you. You couldn’t sit here anymore and not know.

“If I didn’t upset you…what happened?”

Crosshair opened his eyes, but he didn’t speak straight away. It was like he was searching for the right words, the best way to explain what had happened. You waited patiently for him to answer, your anxiety only building in anticipation.

Crosshair scraped the sole of his foot on the floor of the cavity as he brought one of his knees to his chest, resting his elbow on it. You swore you saw the tips of his ears turn pink, but you weren’t sure in this light. “I…crossed a boundary, and I shouldn’t have. I’m sorry for acting the way I did.”

You blinked at him, confused. That was the last thing you expected him to say, especially his apology. “Boundary? What boundary?”

“Does it matter?” Crosshair grumbled, his voice scratching.

“It does to me,” you told him gently.

He turned quiet again. He avoided your eyes, instead choosing to focus on a spot on his knee, frown etching deeper into his brow. You wished he would look at you. All those times you caught him watching you, now you willed him to meet your gaze. If he looked at you, you would be able to tell him with your eyes that he could trust you with whatever it was he was having a hard time verbalising. That you wouldn’t judge him the way you knew so many people did. That you saw him, how underneath all that surly exterior was a kind heart who’d been wounded too many times. But he pointedly didn’t look at you, and all you wished to say would remain your secret.

Crosshair sighed, breaking the silence. “You’re our medic, that’s more important.”

That only puzzled you more. “More important than what?”

Quiet descended again, and after several moments, you tentatively reached out and placed a bandaged hand on his shoulder pauldron. His eyes darted to you, wide like they were before in that medbay, and he shrugged you off, his voice hard and frustrated, and his cheeks tinted pink.

“Just forget it. It won’t happen again.”

You watched him, and the way his hands were clenched on his knees. The way he wasn’t looking at you anymore. You recalled the panic in his eyes that you saw in the medbay when he allowed himself the comfort of holding your hand, and how he’d had that same expression just before. You thought back to all the times you caught him looking at you, the way his eyes never left you – even when it was just the two of you during check-ups. The way he brushed up next to you when standing in mission briefings. The way he didn’t hesitate to touch you when he was helping you or keeping you safe – because it was easier to hide behind those gestures than the curling of his fingers around yours alone in the medbay.

Intentional. Intentional. Intentional.

Oh. Oh.

You felt your heartbeat increase as heat rushed through your body, your stomach flipping over at the realisation. You bit the insides of your mouth to stop yourself from smiling before taking a breath. It all made sense now.

Crosshair wasn’t upset at you, he was embarrassed. The man who was so careful about everything he said and did, had one moment where he allowed himself to do something on a whim, and it had made him vulnerable. The impulse had revealed a secret part of himself he had always intended to keep hidden, and now it was out there, and he was embarrassed about it.

He was embarrassed because he thought you didn’t feel the same.

What a fool. A beautiful stupid fool.

Nerves rattled through your body, but you couldn’t sit here any longer and not let him know how you felt too. “Crosshair…” you said his name softly, barely above a whisper.

Crosshair didn’t move, his eyes stayed glued to the middle distance, his hands still clenched into fists. You let out a breath and held out your bandaged hands. At the movement in his periphery, his eyes slid towards your hands and then up to your face. You flexed your fingers, a silent signal to place his hands in yours. His mouth turned into a line and just when you thought he wouldn’t, he slowly placed one of his tight fists in your palms.

You cradled his hand, the back of it resting in your bandaged palm. As best you could with your other bandaged hand, you began to manually unfurl his fingers, spreading them out slowly against yours. He let you, his hand as pliable as it usually was when you did this – there was no apprehension in this moment, only trust. You began to slowly massage his hand, pressing and kneading the joints of his knuckles and the centre of his palm. Neither of you spoke, and the storm continued its fury on the other side of the rock, but it very well could’ve been a parsec away with how intimate this moment was. All you could focus on was him. You could feel him watching you, wondering what you were doing, but you didn’t let his intense gaze pull you away. Not anymore.

Once you reached the end of the massage, you slid your palm over his, fingers lined up. You moved your hand slowly like he was a baby tooka you had to coax into your lap, you were giving him time to pull away. You let your fingers fall between the gaps of his and then curled your fingers down, so you held his hand.

You felt him tense as he realised what was happening, and you looked at him, but his eyes were locked on your intertwined hands. You waited to see if he pulled away, but he didn’t. His hand stayed firmly in yours, his fingers still splayed out – but his palm stayed pressed into yours. You heard him take in a shaky breath as he finally looked at you.

His eyes had softened on the edges, but his shoulders were still tense, and he had an expression that looked like he was pleading with you; begging you not to play with him like this.

You wouldn’t dream of it.

“Is…is this the boundary?” you asked. You felt Crosshair shift, and his voice came out in a rasp and his ears were definitely pink in this dim light.

“Yes.”

You looked down at your intertwined hands and squeezed his gently. “And me being your medic is more important than this?”

His reply came a second and a half later, all strained and breathy. “Yes.”

You looked at him, his tattooed gaze boring into your face. Ever the perceptive one, you could see he was trying to figure out what you were doing, and why you were doing it. You offered him a smile as you gave him the answer.

“This…this isn’t a boundary for me. Me being your medic has never mattered when it comes to this with you, and never will.”

You watched his eyes widen minutely, and if you didn’t know his face so well, you wouldn’t have noticed anything. But other than that almost indiscernible change in expression, Crosshair remained unmoving, his shoulders still rigid and his fingers still splayed out, not touching the back of your hand.

You searched his face and suddenly felt like you had completely misjudged his actions. Maybe he didn’t have the same crush on you, you did him. Maybe he had just held your hand by mistake, that what you thought had all been intentional, wasn’t actually intentional at all.

Your face burned and embarrassment flooded your body. You started to pull your hand away from him.

“But if it’s a boundary for you—”

But Crosshair’s fingers came down before you could rip your hand away, and he held your hand to his tightly, stopping your palm from leaving his. His hold was secure, warm and purposeful. There was nothing to hide behind anymore.

“It’s not,” he told you, his voice as soft as you’d ever heard it. He looked at you, and he was more vulnerable than you’d ever seen him. You felt your heartbeat flutter. You knew this was hard for him, vulnerability of any kind wasn’t Crosshair’s comfort zone. You smiled at him as reassuringly as you could.

“Good.”

You felt his shoulders drop as his whole body relaxed. Your heart almost burst when you saw the corner of his mouth turn up at you – a smile that was yours and yours alone. You smiled at him, that warmth in your chest glowing brightly, making you feel so at home, you almost didn’t mind you were trapped in this space. You were with Crosshair, and that was enough.

You both sat there, holding hands in the torchlight. It was such an innocent kind of intimacy, but for you both, it held so much. So many unspoken feelings now known through the feel of your palms against each other. You never wanted to let go, and you suspected he didn’t either. You felt his finger muscles flex and you squeezed his hand. He lifted his thumb and placed it on top of yours, stroking it gently in a ministration so comforting you could’ve sobbed. You smiled at him, and he returned it.

A genuine Crosshair smile was a rare gift so few received. He kept them, saving them for the people he trusted and loved. To get one now, to see the corners of his eyes crinkle and the smile lines in his cheeks stretch in a closed-mouth smile, you felt honoured. You never imagined you would ever see Crosshair smile at you like this, to let you close like this – to let you close at all. The dim light of the cave had revealed the disappearing ink of his feelings, and it was extraordinary. You would tell him the full extent of what you felt for him in time, but for now, your feelings were wordlessly exchanged with just you two for witnesses.

You watched as Crosshair tentatively and wordlessly brought the back of your hand to his lips. With his tattooed gaze on you the whole time, he placed a lingering kiss there. You inhaled sharply at the gesture and the skin tingled under the bandage where he kissed you. The rain outside was heavy, but your heart felt light – like if you weren’t trapped in this space, you float away and join those rocks in the sky. You watched him pull away, brushing his lips on the spot for a moment before he let your hands drop between you.

“Was that okay?” he asked, his husky voice asked softly.

You chuckled, a grin stretching across your face. “Yes. More than okay.”

Crosshair hummed, his eyes smiling. “Good.”

The mountain shook again, and you looked around you frantically as dust from the cavity began to fall on you both. Crosshair pulled you against him, arms going around you as he shielded you to his chest. You held onto the edge of his chest plate so tight it dug into your fingers, your face pressed into his chest as he held you tightly. You squeezed your eyes shut and tried to focus on the mixed smell of soap and wood of Crosshair instead of the panic that coursed through you. When the tremor stopped, you looked up at him, and him at you.

“You okay?” he asked

“Yeah,” you lifted your head but didn’t dare untangle yourself from Crosshair’s arms.

Crosshair adjusted the blanket on your shoulders, pulling it tighter around you. “The longer this storm goes on, the more danger we’re in.”

“Should we try the comms again?”

Crosshair let go of you briefly to grab his helmet and put it on. “Hunter, come in. Tech? Wrecker? Echo? Do you read?”

You waited. Crosshair’s arm tightened on you, but he let out a frustrated sigh and pulled the helmet off roughly, setting it down next to him. “Still nothing.”

You let your head rest on his shoulder as you sighed. “What do we do?”

“Wait.”

You groaned. Crosshair chuckled and you felt his hand run up and down your back soothingly. It was a simple gesture, but one that conveyed how much he cared for you. A man of few words, he let his actions show his feelings for you. And you had no doubts about it.

After a minute, you lifted your head to find him looking down at you intensely. You felt his arms tighten on you as this hand travelled down to your waist and stayed there. You blinked up at him, drawing your eyes across his face before they landed on his lips.

They had been so soft when they touched the back of your hand, what would they feel like pressed against your own? You’d dreamt about it, but you had a feeling that it would be nothing to the reality of it.

“N’edee?” His voice was quiet, but you feel the weight on them in your stomach.

“Hmm?” you hummed innocently, but there was nothing innocent about what was running through your mind right now.

“Can I test another boundary?” His tone was hesitant, careful as he leaned in a little closer to you.

Your voice came out in a whisper. “Which one?”

“This one.”

Crosshair slowly closed the distance between you and pressed his lips to yours. It was like your whole body lit up inside, igniting you so completely you were aware of every nerve ending you had. Your fingers tightened on his armour just as Crosshair languidly pulled away after too brief a moment. You stared at him, dazed with your mouth parted slightly, and in need of more.

“Well?” he asked, his voice like silk.

You were breathless. “Not a boundary. Kiss me as much as you like.”

“If you insist,” he smirked and pressed his lips to yours again.

Kissing Crosshair was an all-consuming kind of feeling. That magnetic pull he already had on you only seemed to intensify the minute his lips descended on yours. You wrapped your arms around his neck as he hoisted you onto his lap, your thighs falling on either side of his as you straddled him, and the blanket slipped off your shoulders – not that you needed it anymore with the heat that thrummed through you.

You melted into the kiss, and you were right – your dreams of his lips were nothing compared to the real thing. You felt the tickle of his breath on your cheek as you arched yourself closer to him. With just your body suit on, you could feel every hard ridge of his armour against you. His arms moved across your back, and you could feel his fingertips searing along your shoulder blades. His hot mouth moved against yours and you allowed yourself to nip at his lips. You felt him flinch before his lips stretched into a smile against yours, a chuckle vibrating his chest.

“Guess you do have some bite, N’edee,” he mumbled against your lips.

“Just for you,” you breathed, and he groaned into your mouth, kissing you deeper.

He was just as starved for you as you were for him, and you wondered how long exactly he’d been feeling like this towards you, but you’d ask such questions later. His mouth was heavenly, his lips like a caress against yours. Your lips parted and he took the chance to deepen the kiss as you dragged your hands up into his buzzed hair, feeling the short strands against your fingernails. And you felt just how skilled he was his tongue as it slid against yours, and you silently thanked his toothpicks for giving him the practice.

You’d never been kissed with such passion before, with such intention. Now, he was no longer embarrassed, he did not hold back his kisses and touches. That knowledge made it all the more thrilling as Crosshair pressed you into him, pulling your hips against his with hands that you knew to be tender, but now held with you with such desire you felt dizzy.

He moved his lips down your jawline to just below your ear, and you panted as you tightened your arms around him, rocking into him. He sucked the skin there, his tongue darting out and wetting the area. It made you moan so loudly you were glad no one else could hear how desperate you sounded.

“Crosshair,” you moaned.

You felt him smirk against your skin before he made his way back to your lips. Groaning into your mouth again, you felt his hands move from your hips to your ass and back up again, and you felt your body go into overdrive, pulsing with a wanting need. Where did he learn to kiss like this? You wanted to thank whatever Kaminaon training module taught him, or the illicit holos you knew Tech had stashed on the locked-down data drive you found a week after you joined them – whichever it was.

You were so lost in his kisses, the way they grew in fervour with each press against your skin, you almost didn’t hear the beeping of Crosshair’s comm in his helmet.

“Crosshair,” you said when you finally heard it, pulling away, but his mouth just found your neck instead. You patted his shoulder. “Crosshair, the comm.”

“What?” he said raggedly. His lips ceased their attentions, and he pulled back. His lips were all swollen and you smiled at the knowledge that was all you. You stayed perched in his lap and he grabbed his helmet and put it on. You could hear the other voice when you were this close to him.

“Crosshair, come in.” It was Hunter.

“Copy, Hunter,” Crosshair said, and you mentally applauded him for not sounding as breathless as you would’ve.

“Are you and N’edee okay?”

Crosshair’s hand squeezed your thigh, and you squirmed on top of him, smiling. “For the moment. We’re trapped on the mountain. The storm caused a cave-in, and we can't get out.”

“We’ll lock in on your signal and fly to your location. Stand by.” You realised then the rain and thunder had stopped, and that the storm had now passed.

“Copy,” Crosshair said before he removed his helmet and placed it next to him again, and you both looked at each other. He gripped your hips. “They’re on their way in the Marauder. Wrecker will be able to push the rocks out of the way, and we’ll be free.”

You breathed in, relieved help was coming. “I didn’t even realise the storm had passed,”

“Well, we were busy,” Crosshair snided.

“Right,” you laughed lightly.

Crosshair looked away from you for the first time since everything changed between you, and his hands on your hips loosened. You frowned as you watched his once open expression, slowly begin to close off again in the dim light. He looked uncertain, all in his own head again and you realised that he was worried – worried that this moment together was but a brief interlude in which you got caught up in the danger of the situation. You wanted to shake his shoulders and tell him he was being absurd, how he could think such a thing after all you just said and did. But you didn’t, because like baby tooka, Crosshair needed gentle reassurance; that his vulnerability and his feelings were not being played with.

Later, when you had more time and were back on the Marauder and tucked away in the medbay just the two of you again, you would tell him just how much he had nestled his way into your heart. That your crush was much more than that, that you saw all of him, and though you were still learning to decipher the riddles he was made of, you never wanted to stop. That you saw all his intentions, and now yours was to hold his heart in your bandaged hands the way he held yours.

But for now, in your final moments alone with him before his brothers rescued you both, you locked your eyes on him and gently grabbed the hands that had slackened on your hips, linking your fingers together once more. You watched his eyes find yours, his brows slanted at the ends as he looked at you with all this apprehension. You brought his knuckles to your lips and kissed them, lips lingering there as you let the gesture convey wordlessly your intention to keep nurturing what was between you for as long as he let you. That this didn’t end once you were both bathed in sunlight again.

“I hope we’ll be busy again later? And many laters after that too?”

Crosshair’s shoulder relaxed and you smiled as the corner of his mouth twitched into a smirk, his eyes smiling as he squeezed your hands once more. “Oh, I’m counting on it.”

banner art by @vimse thank you reading! if you made it this far, thank you! i appreciate it so much! this is the longest standalone fic i've ever written!

🏷️ @starrylothcat @sinfulsalutations @moodymisty @nahoney22 @freesia-writes @nobody-expects-the-inquisitorius @bobaprint @crosshairsnose @jesseeka @thegalaxys-edge @chopper-base @shredderwest @leavingkamino @r2d2staser @beckbucket @pb-jellybeans @mylifeisactuallyamess @padawancat97 @littlecrowtime @jedipoodoo @ezras-left-thumb @lovelycurls @fruitsaladtree @literallydontlook @burningfieldof-clover @queencousland101 @clonethirstingisreal @skellymom @hopelessromantic727

TAGLIST FORM

#larissa writes #crosshair x reader #crosshair x reader fic #crosshair fluff #crosshair angst #soft crosshair #tbb x reader #the bad batch crosshair #tbb crosshair fic #the bad batch fic #bad batch crosshair x reader #tbb crosshair x you

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hydrus101 · 2 months ago

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Yog Sothoth,,,,

I will be taking this opportunity to finally post about my Yog-Sothoth endgame theory for malevolent. (The discord already knows I’m crazy but now the tumblr folks get to know it too)

The Belief:

Yog-Sothoth is an ever-present part of malevolent, but not an active force in the way Kayne or Lillith may be. He is not the player or the keys, he’s the whole goddamn piano. (Figuratively)

Yog-Sothoth, all in one, the key and the gate, as his name states, has deep ties to gateways and temporal passages. Malevolent begins with a gateway gone awry, opened by Antoine for Shub Niggurath—and co-opted by the King in Yellow—the results of which killed one and fragmented the other. Gates are a recurring theme in Malevolent, most notably this first instance and the “Tear” which was tampered with by the man posing as Edward William Allan.

The famed Yog-Sothoth summoning chant from the Necronomicon is present in Part 8 (19:50) right after John reads out “The King in Yellow” from the book annotated by Sarah Cummings, accompanied by what sounds like a PA chime. The text reads as:

Past, present, future, all are one in Yog-Sothoth. He knows where the Old Ones broke through of old, and where They shall break through again. He knows where They have trod earth's fields, and where They still tread them, and why no one can behold Them as They tread.”

Charon is mentioned briefly in Season Four, and Charon is one of the names/personas attributed to summoning Yog-Sothoth in the Grimoire. (CoC Grimoire pg 38).

Notes: I don’t believe the “Charon” mentioned here is Yog-Sothoth, proper merely that the “Charon” we met (Aldrich Ward) was a follower and took his name from Yog as a moniker.

Yog-Sothoth is not involved with the Order directly, (as is standard in his lore, he is not often solely worshipped, but frequently called upon in the pursuit of other ends) beyond being a patron of moving things from location to location or possibly the deity of Aldrich, personally.

There is also potential for a deeper connection here, as “Charon” is revealed to be Aldrich Ward, possibly named after the character Charles Dexter Ward from the short story of the same name, which is the first of Lovecraft’s works to introduce the Yog-Sothoth chant.

It’s possible, albeit unlikely, that the Dark World might be a domain of Yog-Sothoth’s. The Dark Ages manual (pg. 140, which contains information on Horig) tells of a place called Limbo spawned of Yog-Sothoth and described as “a living yet mindless…..land of gloom and chaos, where light is like darkness.” Very similar to how John describes the Dark World.

Yog Sothoth is also a deity of time, which might explain the time dilation John and Lillith have both experienced at the hands of the Dark World and wherever Lillith was trapped beyond a gate. (Lifetimes for John, in a span of ten years, and two hundred years from Lillith’s point of view).

The symbol found on the floor of the secret room at Marie’s (which contains the desiccated body of the man that was posing as Edward William Alan) is described as a “circular, with a pattern that repeats into its center” (Part 32). This symbol is also found on the bestiary, (which also sports Shub’s symbol, among four others) as well as the floor of the barn at the farm where the Tear is. This, in my eye, essentially confirms that the Circular Pattern is Yog’s, and not Lillith’s, as has been hypothesized. Lillith herself wasn’t being summoned in both locations, but a gateway was.

Larson’s child, the mines monster, was said to have been gifted to him from the Outer Gods, and children begotten from Yog-Sothoth have the tendency to be invisible, and may only be observed through magical means. (Malleus Monstrum p165) This doesn’t effect the plot so much, but is another piece of evidence towards his overall existence.

Kayne mentions in Part 52 that Charlie is “standing at the… threshold”. This could be a number of sites, most notably the site of the ritual at the house at 58 Pelican Lane, (CoC Game One) which housed the gate that initially severed the King in Yellow. Yog-Sothoth is often known as the Lurker in the Threshold, and frequently intercepts people who are cast haphazardly through gates. It’s possible Charlie is currently in his care, so to speak. We know for certain that Malevolent’s storyline doesn’t end here, giving rise to (hopefully, fingers crossed) a Charlie spin off series (maybe involving Yog ((fingers crossed again)).

#malevolent #malevolent podcast #I’m crazy insane about this

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detachedminxsfics · 5 days ago

Text

Strong Heart

Masterlist

Characters: Ike Evans x F!Reader

Summary: When Ike comes home unexpectedly after a meeting gone awry you suggest taking a bath together to lift his spirits.

Word count: 2.8K

Warnings: NSFW - Vaginal sex, riding, creampie, praise, brief feet appreciation (it's canon, what do you want from me)

A/N: Popping in with what might as well be my yearly smut drop because I somehow managed to fight the writer's block. The scene of Ike in the bath is just too hot, this had to be done.

The sun beams down on your bare skin in balmy caresses as you lie on the sun lounger situated on the balcony, eyes closed while you try to bask in this rare moment of peace, something you weren't sure you could truly recall for a life with Ike Evans was not always an easy one. Yes, it was lavish, fulfilling, and far more exhilarating than what your life was like before him, but never easy. It always felt as though the safety provided by everything your husband had built could be ripped out from under both you and his children in a moment, and Ike knew it too. The success of the Miramar Playa hotel had placed a target on the man's back, a target that was met with a sea of vultures that wanted to take the empire he built from nothing but sand and mosquitoes for themselves. You knew it was a possibility that you could lose everything; it would be foolish to pretend that it wasn't. But you also knew that Ike would do whatever it takes to keep that from happening, come hell or high water.

Your thoughts were interrupted by the distant sound of the front door to your suite being opened, a noise that had you scrambling from the lounger to retrieve the beach towel you'd tossed on the floor beside you to cover yourself with. Considering you and Ike lived in the penthouse suite, which you had all to yourself since he had some business to attend to, and your stepdaughter Lauren was having a sleepover at a friend's house, you figured there was no harm in being nude in your own home; a sentiment that you were currently regretting. Peeking your head through the partially open sliding door, you look down the hallway to see who the unexpected visitor is. The sight of Ike standing by the door and running his hand down his face as though something was bothering him, takes you by surprise.

“Honey?” you call out, still holding the towel against your body but a little less mindfully than you were before.

He glances up to meet the source of the sound, eyes filled with bemusement as he realises that you are not only home but that you are also in nothing but a towel.

“Sweetheart? I thought you were supposed to go for lunch today with your friends,” he reminds you as he approaches you, his leather dress shoes tapping against the patterned marble flooring as he does.

When you reach him you decide to concoct some excuse for why you had cancelled, though you knew it was an answer he wouldn't be thrilled with. The truth is that they were shallow she-devils who only felt obligated to be nice to you or to do things with you because they knew your husband owned the Miramar and were probably hoping to score some kind of friend discount, especially since some of their husbands often enjoyed staying in the cabanas by the poolside.

“You know what I'm like when you have these big meetings. I like being present and in the know, so some silly little lunch that I can easily reschedule can wait.”

He opens his mouth to interject the way he usually would, but you hush him with a quick peck to the lips and offer to help him take off his suit jacket instead, draping it over the chair adjacent to your glass dining table. Ike always encouraged you to do other things to take your mind off business. Whether it be shopping, going out for a meal or even relaxing by the pool, he wanted you to do whatever you could that would stop you from being cooped up in the suite waiting for him to come home at some ungodly hour; god knows he would rather if he had the choice. You didn't mind it much, especially considering it allowed you to spend time with Ike's daughter Lauren when she wanted to come with you, but today was one of those days when you would rather be as involved as possible.

“Now, what's wrong? Because you wouldn't be up here unless you needed to get away from whatever is happening downstairs, it's written all over your face,” you observe as you return to him and reach out to stroke his cheek whilst the other hand remains planted on your towel, the gesture drawing a heavy sigh from his lips as he faintly leans into your touch.

“The meeting was going well until we were finishing up. I was walking them out of the office when Jack Klein showed up and started making threats about how he was gonna put me behind bars. Florence had tried to stop him but the damage was already done. Fucking asshole humiliated me,” Ike explained disappointedly, though bitterness began to creep in as he recalled that last part.

Jack Klein was Miami's district attorney, and he'd been goading and harassing Ike for weeks. He was convinced that he could find something that would incriminate him enough to land him in jail and destroy his reputation for good, and though you sensed that Ike was sparing some of the details of that fiasco, you knew better than to pry. He would tell you when he was ready, or when he was sure that the information wouldn't endanger you in any way. You knew he was probably just trying to protect you or keep you from worrying about him, not that that stopped you anyhow.

“It's just empty threats, Ike. An intimidation tactic to throw you off your game. But you listen to me now,” you start, placing your hand on his chest as you speak. “You're Ike Evans. You built this place from nothing, and you made it successful. And no one can take that away from you, not even Jack Klein. So call those people and apologise for the drama, but tell them exactly what they'll be missing out on if they pass up on your offer, and they'll be begging to host their event here before you know it.”

Ike places his hand over yours and guides it away from his chest, lifting it towards his lips and planting a tender kiss on the back of your hand.

“What would I do without you?” he replies with a small smile, totally captivated by you and your ability to always know exactly what he needs to hear to get his head screwed on right.

His hands find their way to your waist whilst yours gravitate towards his tie, your fingers grazing the end of his tie and dancing up towards his shirt collar until you grasp it and use it to promptly pull Ike towards you, lips smashing against his. Tightening your grip on his tie, you use it to deepen the kiss which draws a small, pleased groan from him. Eventually breaking the kiss just enough to the point where you could speak, you whisper against his lips.

“I'm gonna take a nice, long bath. You should join me. Don't want you all stressed when you make that really important call,” you tease as your lips lightly brush against his throughout your proposal, then boldly drop the towel you had been keeping wrapped around your body to the floor leaving it pooling at your feet.

Ike chuckles and leans back enough to look you up and down, taking you in and practically eating you with his eyes as they shamelessly trace every inch of your skin.

“God, I love you,” he says earnestly, a declaration that leaves you aflutter as you smile and start leading him to the ensuite bathroom by his tie.

Once you reached it you let his tie go and made your way over to the bath, the coolness of the flooring nipping at the soles of your feet as you bent down to turn on the faucet. Just as the water started to run you felt his hands take hold of your hips as he pressed himself against you, the bulge straining against his dress pants firm on your backside. You bit down on your lip as you leaned up until your back was pressed against his chest, the movement only encouraging him to bury his head in the crook of your neck and pepper it with tender kisses. A shaky breath escapes your lips as you focus on the way his mouth feels against your skin, your body melting into him as he wraps his arms around your waist.

“At this rate, we're not even gonna make it to the bath,” you joke breathlessly, the comment drawing a chuckle from Ike.

“Well you're just so beautiful, how am I supposed to keep my hands off you?” he retorts in a husky whisper, lips teasing against the shell of your ear all the while.

Just when you're tempted to forgo the bath entirely, the water reaches a comfortable level, leaving you to slip from Ike's arms and add enough cold water to adjust the temperature of the water. By the time you'd adjusted the temperature Ike had stripped and discarded his clothes, leaving you to climb into the bath at one end whilst he took the other. The warm water draws a sigh from both of you as you sink into it, your eyes closing for a moment as you try to savour the tranquillity. You feel Ike's hands dip into the water to grab one of the feet that you were resting at his side and move it to his chest, placing a quick, affectionate peck on the side of your foot and unconsciously running his hand up and down your ankle. With the gentle rustle of the sea breeze blowing softly outside the window, the steam hanging in the air, and the heat of the water that wrapped around your body like a soothing embrace, you felt your mind beginning to wander to your lie earlier. It was nagging at you and you knew it wouldn't go away unless you got it off your chest.

“I wasn't entirely honest with you when I told you that I rescheduled that lunch because of your meeting,” you admitted diffidently, not opening your eyes at first until you felt him shift slightly.

The concern in his eyes that you were greeted with prodded you to continue, to which you reluctantly did.

“Those ladies don't like me, Ike. They pretend to be nice but I know they all talk badly about me. And I know that part of it is because I'm married to you, I've seen the way they look at me when we're together.”

The confession came pouring out, though it felt good to finally share with him after putting up with it for longer than you probably should have. It was stupid, but you thought that once they got to know you and realised what you were like that you would be able to win them over. But it was no use.

“C'mere.” Ike beckoned with a sigh and straightened up slightly, letting go of your leg.

You sit up and crawl into his lap, the movement disturbing the calm of the water and creating small waves. One of his hands settles on your hip whilst the other moves up to push your hair out of your face and behind your ear.

“If I had any idea that you felt that way, I never would've encouraged you to go out with them. You shouldn't have to put up with that, baby,” he says before pausing to gaze into your eyes, completely enamoured. “Besides, what do you say that next time they come here, we give them a little show and make the kiss real long?” he offers with a wolfish grin, running his tongue over his bottom lip.

His proposal to get back at them makes you snort your laughter just imagining the look on their faces, and you can tell you that he is envisioning the same.

“Well, why don't we practice right now?” you tease as you coyly bite down on your bottom lip, your boldness making him raise his brows as the hand on your hip squeezes slightly.

“Gladly.”

He presses his lips against yours, the movement of his lips slow and impassioned as though he wanted to savour you. His hand palms over one of your breasts, softly kneading it in his hand and eliciting a pleased hum that vibrates against your lips as he did. His other hand wanders into your hair, running his fingers through it and using it to deepen the kiss as though the man could hardly get enough of you. It was intoxicating, the duality of his touch. His hands were gentle but unyielding, his kisses hungry but unhurried. When you finally pull away in search of air Ike wastes no time urging your body closer and taking your breast into his mouth, tongue circling your nipple before lightly sucking it, the sensation causing you to throw your head back and let out a surprised gasp. You instinctively wrap your arms around his neck as your hand gets lost in his hair, slightly tugging it. He removes his mouth from your breast and mumbles against your skin while placing a few more sloppy kisses from your chest to your collarbone.

“You're breathtaking,” he rasps between kisses, lifting his head and running his hand through your hair before capturing your lips again, his tongue slipping into your mouth and allowing you to taste the tobacco on his tongue as he did.

“Isaac,” you whisper, the desire to be so full of him that you could hardly think overtaking the urge to drown in his kisses. “I need you inside me.”

It was a vulgar and desperate plea to relieve the aching between your thighs, but if the man teased you any longer you were certain you were going to explode. As though he was just waiting for you to say it he reaches down to line himself up before bucking his hips, a satisfied whine spilling from your mouth as you sink down onto his cock with ease, taking him to the hilt. Steadying yourself by placing your hand on his chest, you start to rock your hips and bite down on your lip at the feeling of fullness, running your hand down his chest and enjoying the way the chest hair decorating his sun-kissed skin feels against your fingers.

“What did I do to deserve you?” Ike groans, hands moving to your ass and cupping it firmly as you ride him, his hips beginning to eagerly rut in time with your movements.

You rest your forehead against his, utterances of his name getting lost in breathy whimpers as you become enthralled by the lust in his stare, something carnal about the way he gazed at you as though the whole world around you had faded leaving nothing but you and the way you were clenching around him. His mouth finds its way to your neck again, lightly sucking at your skin just enough to make your breath hitch but not enough to leave marks. His affections move from your neck to trailing along your jaw, then to your lips allowing your needy moans to bleed into the kiss. The sensation building in your abdomen only spurred you to roll your hips faster, tepid water splashing at your thighs and leaving droplets trickling down your ass as the sound of skin slapping against skin echoed throughout the bathroom.

“Ike–” you cried out, desperately teetering on the edge of pure ecstasy until Ike firmly grasped your hips and plunged into you with a particularly hard, deep thrust.

Your legs quiver as you cling to him tightly, shuddering as your orgasm overwhelms you. The sounds you were making and the blissed out look in your eyes was enough to bring him to his own climax, his groans permeating the steamy air as he fills you with his release. Still trying to catch your breath you let your head rest on his shoulder, his arms wrapping around you and embracing you as you did. A beat passes, marked only by the sound of each other's breathing. Then, Ike takes your hand and places it on his chest, his heart pounding fast beneath your palm.

“You feel that? That's what you do to me,” he points out with a chuckle and plants a kiss on your forehead, though you just found it all the more endearing that he got so worked up over you.

“Such a strong heart,” you tease, giving him a quick peck on the lips while he draws circles on your lower back.

“Besides, would you rather have it any other way?” you inquire softly after pulling back with a knowing smile, running your hand through his hair.

“Never.”

#jeffrey dean morgan #jeffrey dean morgan smut #jeffrey dean morgan x reader #jeffrey dean morgan x you #ike evans #ike evans smut #magic city

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cyberclouddream · 1 month ago

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Transit Sidereal Venus in Pisces & Aries

Venus is transiting into Aries on May 31st in the sidereal system. Here’s predictions for this past month and for this upcoming Venus transit! Enjoy babes :D

Keywords

Venus - harmony, complacency, pleasure, indulgence, attraction, seduction, relation

Pisces - confusion, fantasies, escapism, submission, delusion, sacrifice, dependency

Aries - competition, separation, selfishness, conflict, impulse, urgency, disruption

Note: this is for SIDEREAL rising signs. If you have your tropical ascendant/first house in 24° or below, I recommend checking for the sign before it.

Pisces Rising

Venus Pisces - People have been idealizing you, people projecting their fantasies onto you; self-sacrifice feels like a reflex, “yes” becomes your default; giving off romantic signals w/o realizing it

Venus Aries - May splurge and regret it fast, buyer’s remorse; self worth is reactive, highly sensitive to compliments and criticism; jealousy or envy towards other people’s success

Aries Rising

Venus Pisces - Falling in love with someone unavailable (secret, long-distance, spiritual, or delusional); you’re enabling your own emotional avoidance patterns; you feel inspired but don’t act

Venus Aries - people are drawn to how bold or seductive but are pushed back by aggressive behavior; you flirt/attract others but lose interest when someone gives in; self love turns into arrogance or bodily indulgence, confidence is fragile and impulsive

Taurus Rising

Venus Pisces - Fake friends feel real; giving too much to groups, like volunteering and donating and may be exploited in silence; delusional goals, chasing ungrounded purpose or dreams

Venus Aries - Catching feelings for unavailable people or sabotaging stable relationships; crave independence but isolate too hard; passive aggressive behavior, claim you’re done giving to others even when didn’t really ask for what you want in the first place

Gemini Rising

Venus Pisces - you look good to the public but feels fake or unsustainable image; bosses/authority treat you better but thin boundaries; chasing a fantasy job

Venus Aries - Joining groups for clout not connection, building friends for influence rather than loyalty; push you dreams out without a plan, making it about winning rather than building; friendships/ideals networking become an ego contest, misjudge who’s on your side

Cancer Rising

Venus Pisces - Falling in love with belief (conspiracy, philosophy, religion); idealize someone from another country or background; using spirituality to escape, all soothing no grounding, no discernment

Venus Aries - People start to notice you but maybe not for the right reasons; relations with authority turn awry because of vanity or lack of restraint (the intent is obvious); impulsive sweet talk, acting like you care in public but it’s for image than depth

Leo Rising

Venus Pisces - Romanticizing toxic bonds; feeling “blessed” with loans, shared money, inheritances but may vanish or get misused; sudden obsession with spiritual death

Venus Aries - Thinking your way or beliefs are best and shutdown other people; impulsive or flaky travel, spiritual, or educational decisions; having a guru complex, acting like a free spirit but really want to dominate other people’s worldviews

Virgo Rising

Venus Pisces - Projecting ideal traits onto others, not seeing partner clearly; attracting needy people, want to heal them yet resent them; love feels magical until it doesn’t

Venus Aries - Strong urges for desires and where there’s danger (like manipulation, secrets, obsession); arguments about loans, debt, or inheritances come out of nowhere, power games; confuse lust with healing, when it’s probably trauma bonding

Libra Rising

Venus Pisces - Work becomes an emotional sponge, end up drained or resented after doing favors; health warning signs ignored, using your “intuition” to say you’re fine; zero boundaries at work, romanticizing being of service to others

Venus Aries - Attract bold/selfish partners or “mirrors”, those who don’t stick around or play fair; picking fights in the name of connection; jump into love, sex, or commitment, and regret not long after

Scorpio Rising

Venus Pisces - flirtation feels like destiny, but they just wanna hookup; overindulgence in pleasure (sex, romance, drinking, art becomes escapism); idealizing children or your creative work and miss flaws

Venus Aries - Want appreciation at work/service but come off demanding or entitled; go all out in health habits until you crash and binge, no middle ground fr; burnout from people pleasing rage, helping until you snap

Sagittarius Rising

Venus Pisces - Domestic drama swept under the rug; romanticizing your childhood or parents; spending money on decorating or turning your home into a sanctuary

Venus Aries - Crushes flare fast but burn out faster, you’re bored once it’s not a challenge; you want to be the best lover or artist but lose interest when no one’s watching; overindulgence risk-taking, like in gambling, risky hookups, or reckless creativity

Capricorn Rising

Venus Pisces - Charming people with words or ideas but even you don’t believe it; siblings, peers, or relatives may manipulate softly, may think you’re being support but their may be guilt trips; mental fog masked as intuition

Venus Aries - Beautifying home to signal status yet may regret investments later; disputes over land or family valuables, more for ownership or clout than legacy; rejecting your roots impulsively, romanticizing being self-made

Aquarius Rising

Venus Pisces - Spending money on aesthetic purchases, gifts, or charity; self-worth tied to being seem as kind, artistic, or spiritually generous; financial illusion, like thinking you’re fine but may not be

Venus Aries - Everything you say sounds like a dare or unfiltered, whether it’s flirting, arguing, or compliments; may have petty communication tension with coworkers, neighbors, peers, or siblings, disagreements for ego points; scattered attention span

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cyb3rtarot · 1 year ago

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Pick a Pile: Your Archetype & Career

Disclaimer: readings are not replacements for professional advice. Take what confirms, not confuses. You make your own life, not a reading. I’ll be looking at what traits you embody when working and what kind of work may fulfill that!

Help a Palestinian family!: 1 2 3 4 5

pile 1 🔗 pile 2 pile 3 🔗 pile 4

✎﹏﹏ˏˋ°•*⁀➷✎﹏﹏ˏˋ°•*⁀➷﹏﹏✎﹏﹏﹏

Pile 1

Your archetype [High Priestess, Ace of Pentacles]: hi pile one! You guys do things from an intuitive place, naturally getting ideas of improvement. This is helpful to a group dynamic, the person that invents, creates, or comes up with the next venture. You may not know where this inspiration comes from, but this is your intuition or senses bringing things subconsciously perceived to the forefront of your mind. For example, you may have good pattern recognition with trends, or you may be able to blend many influences from others into an original style. If you’re spiritual, your inspiration may come from your practice. The ideas you come up with can be very fruitful; you know what will work. You could contribute a lot of plans to something you just joined even if you aren’t familiar with it. Whereas some are driven by passion or desire, the quality of what you produce doesn’t necessarily depend on whether you’re “into it” or not, because your intuition helps you rather than conscious thought or emotion. This inspiration may also guide you directly towards opportunities when you need them. You might be much more into the initial thinking process rather than the work itself. You can easily give ideas to others, but you yourself could take a long time or not be interested in implementing your own good thoughts and advice. Like offering others the seeds because you prefer not to grow them yourself. This could manifest as roles where you delegate a lot, give someone a concept to make reality, or provide the beginning material to a project. You may struggle communicating ideas though, whether this is difficulty being understood or a desire to withdraw. A lot of chaos you experience happens once you bring other people into the equation. It’s like you produce these amazing blueprints, but when you've had to share them, have conversations at work, or begun working with others, things have gone awry. You may have a cycle of negative experiences working with others. Something about the whole process keeps you trying to make it work, but still having some kind of burn or crash at the end. So, some of you may job hop or do more eccentric work.

What kind of work might fulfill this part of you?: It’s important for you to rest and not force yourself to be one way or the other. There’s opposite energy, where your ideas provide promising routes to take, but your sensitive & intuitive self suffers when you throw all your energy in. There may be a strong urge to isolate or work at unconventional hours. You may find success in supporting these parts of yourself, such as through remote or hybrid jobs. You could enjoy working at night or in another environment where the amount of people around decreases, including but not necessarily working by yourself. This doesn’t have to be your own home. Working with others through private consultation or in their home may be an option, or being something like a digital nomad. Anything with more intimate, cozy, or peaceful feelings. That doesn’t mean working in an office is out, but struggles in communication or processing ideas may improve in personal settings, or when you speak with consideration to emotion. Work that’s emotionally satisfying or requires a bit of sympathy may be fulfilling. When working with others, you may over-compromise or offer too much which leaves you drained, since you offer things that come from your deeper, intuitive self rather than passing thoughts or emotions. Work that can be done with less contact (for example, less big groups and more individual interaction), or work that can often be done at your own pace both may address this. Many of you may really enjoy physically making things; I see someone making pottery. You’re able to physically create things that are healing, or this process could be healing to you, even as a hobby. In general, jobs that require physical effort versus just mental effort get you out of your head. They allow you to work on tasks that depend on effort rather than navigating mental and social demands or office politics. Even being a healer, especially someone who goes to others’ homes and provides personal care, or working with medical equipment, could be one application of this. Contract work—something with a definite start and end—or something that guarantees work within a specific time may be compatible. This could also be presenting or writing contracts for others. Some of you could find fulfillment working with the government or an organization, especially something that requires you to physically go do work (like working inside and then working in the field or going to meet people), or something with a quiet environment. You may excel in giving others ideas or tasks and supporting them as they work on it, giving ideas for businesses, giving prompts of some kind or ghostwriting. You may also heal outside of the physical; some of you could feel fulfilled in helping people start a new phase of life. This could be coaching, social, or community work; I get personal vibes. If you’re religious, you may enjoy working at a place of worship or religious organization. Even providing religious or spiritual services from your home, bringing these to others, or providing support in a place of worship.

Extra Details: the moon/full moon (Capricorn full moon may be significant), hermit/isolation/shut in, late night, yellow, orange, space interest, gaming, Mercury/ Mars in difficult aspect to Sun/Saturn, natal oppositions, heavy Cancer or Capricorn placements, Earth stellium, 4th & 10th house, social/speech difficulties, cycles of burn out or broken partnerships, worked with (relationship) partners, working in fields you have no passion but no conflict with. If you don’t merge work & interests, you may have success incorporating more emotionally satisfying things into work—you guys should acknowledge emotional whims. You may divorce yourself from pleasure and ignore what you like. Balance is needed. If something like work takes up a lot of time, create reminders or pieces of space/time where you can engage with something that brings you joy/amusement, especially if you sacrifice satisfaction for others. Check in with your logic + emotions more, as intuition is just one part of the picture. Spiritual counseling or business, less traditional medical jobs (again I see something with med equipment such as hospice, or care for conditions that require devices), neurodivergence, sacrificing self to support a partner/ team (burn out!), (potential) catalyst for societal change, mothering tendencies. If you already felt drawn to pile 2, it may resonate

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Pile 2

Your Archetype [7 of cups rx, Queen of Swords rx]: hello pile two! You’re adept at making important & deep judgements. You get to the root of the matter and cut through BS. You have a sharp, investigative mind or are very knowledgeable in your fields of interest, and that allows you to see things others can’t always see, to evaluate, research, and bring clarity. You could excel in teaching or training. Your mental abilities also suit roles with objective judgements, such as a researcher, investigator, lawyer, or a decision maker. You could be someone who always knows things can be far better even when it seems like a far possibility (though some of you struggle with excessive pessimism), and from this you can create a real plan. You may enjoy presenting facts or ideas more than completing the project. These are not just academic or professional roles, but also you as a person. There’s air and water, logic & emotion, but rather than combine them I think you use logic to cut through emotion. You might be the friend who people complain to and you give simple advice on how they can fix their issue, but they just wanted to complain lol. The Queen of Swords is reversed like the 7 of cups, able to see things how the cups figure does, however the figure is still turned towards the many dreams in the cups. She can’t really offer her sword of truth because they can’t see her. You may struggle to communicate what you know or make connections due to finding it difficult to meet people where they are in their emotions or knowledge level. Some of you may have physical difficulties communicating like language barriers or speech disorders. Some of you are also pursuing something but hit a wall, for example, struggling to continue studies, or relationship stagnation, so it’s your own dreams that feel out of reach. There’s energy of being unable to accept something, though ironically you may dislike this trait in others. You have all the knowledge and skill to bring order in whatever role you pursue, but you need to ground yourself mentally. Give yourself space to process emotion in conjunction with thoughts instead of always handling them separately, especially if you know you’re not being honest with yourself. Try to imagine things from others’ perspectives. All the sense, fact, or skill in the world cannot get through a stubborn emotional wall. Many people are looking at things from feelings rather than objectivity, so if you want to communicate with them through the latter, try identifying what may be on their mind or how emotion could impact their judgment. It’s not that you’re invalid when trying to communicate, this just may help you handle emotion more smoothly. And, the same applies for logic. We have to accept when people aren’t ready to face something, grow, or learn; we cannot chase after them forever hoping they’ll change. You may feel yourself to be the one in reality while they’re lost in illusion, but by continuously chasing someone with words when they’re not listening, you have also placed yourself in illusion. Knowing logically something can change or knowing facts does not mean that's what will play out in reality, and reality does not always bend to our sense of what's right.

Your details remind me of pile 1, if you already felt drawn.

What kind of work might fulfill this part of you?: you may excel in working with children, families, married, and vulnerable people. You may find this confusing if you struggle with connecting to others’ emotions, but your mental nature may help you. Because, specifically I see a role where you solve issues. This could be being a teacher like I said, especially someone who teaches fundamentals, like a teacher to young students who helps them get a grasp on the world, or a tutor. You could show people what's possible after issues or stagnation, reintroducing people to life, giving a “new lease on life.” As one example, helping to overcome trauma. You may feel fulfilled in helping to give new starts through government, social work, or especially the adoption/foster care system. Some of you may be really good matchmakers or good at matching children to appropriate homes & schools. You’re capable of showing people a bright future through overcoming, introducing new phases, starting new things, or pointing people to resources. If you're interested in medical work, this also reminds me of rehab (any kind of rehab, including physical), and some of you may enjoy medical work that involves children or fertility. If you’re interested in legal, you could find jobs where you investigate and brings things to a close, such as finding missing people or helping people get away from abuse. There’s an emotional aspect to things that fulfill you, but rather than needing your emotions to make it work, more so you’d find fulfillment where people would appreciate you or you create a lot of hope for them, because these situations would require your intellect. There’s an energy of making promises and this could be contracts, such as a teacher’s contract, or I’m not sure exactly what this is but you may present contracts to people. And this is something I picked up in your archetype—you may drift into roles where you have the power to “let” people into an organization or unit. So, you may decide on others and see what places they’re suited for, whether this is organizing students, children, or some kind of recruiter, evaluator. Essentially, the work that seems fulfilling to you requires problem-solving skills and passing judgements for improvements, especially for those who don’t have anyone else who can do this for them.

For many of you there’s already something specific that’ll bring you a lot of emotional fulfillment but you're resisting it because of the difficulties I mentioned above, or because your family is trying to turn you away from it, and this seems to be some kind of passion project, hobby, or business you want to run (something about food or nature)? You either need to sit with yourself and separate your thoughts and plans from family, or try to approach it from a new angle, such as taking a non-traditional route rather than what you’ve already tried. It’s okay to decide not to, but it should be your decision. For others, if that doesn’t resonate, you could find success in running your own business, but especially if you incorporate a hobby or passion into it, even if it’s not traditionally how it would be done. This pile may find more success if you allow yourself to go towards things that make you feel good rather than just what logically makes sense.

If you really struggle working closely with others, you may like offering remote services. For example, chatting with people or sending emails—rather than speaking face to face where you may be uncomfortable relating emotionally & spontaneously.

Extra details: internal work like meditation or therapy, hard time mentally accepting something or mental dishonesty, neurodivergent, stubbornness, something about academic dishonesty—I feel you would be able to discern when someone’s work is not authentic or you’d be good test proctors or something. Farming, culinary, cafes. Neurodivergence. Helping people who are separated from reality, or finding yourself in that situation even though you were careful. Uncanny intuition and/or divination. Blueberries and/or the color blue is significant, blue moon?

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Pile 3

Your Archetype [Strength rx, 5 of pentacles]: hello pile 3! You have amazing strength and courage, but it’s hard for you to feel this for what it is. At your healthiest expression, your archetype shows up as no BS. You have the ability to remove yourself from harmful situations even if it means enduring loneliness or hard times. You’re not the one who is going to self-sacrifice constantly hoping to turn the situation around with the power of light and friendship, you’re the one that says I’m out of here lol. “My ride’s comin I’m leavin’ 🤨.” In less healthy expressions, you feel disconnected from your own bravery, feeling weak or cowardly. You may flip extremes, running away from anything a little scary, to clinging onto actually scary things & people for a sense of security.

There’s two different main groups in this pile. Some of you became this way because you had to already endure or leave a messed up situation. For a lot of you, I’m seeing someone played games with your mind or exploited your friendship, or innocence? I get this hopelessly in love energy from a lot of you and I think you learned a hard lesson through relationships, especially some of you mixed work and relationship (which is not always bad but always potentially messy). So, you’re currently in a vulnerable energy and that reflects in how you express yourself in all areas. If some kind of work or passion starts to sting, you may retreat quickly and move to the next thing even if it seemed promising. The other group needs to hear a message about moving on. This is for those of you who know you’re being mistreated or in a harmful situation, even sacrificing material stability and peace to have someone by your side. Of course, that’s going to reflect in the reality you manifest. On the top of the deck I saw the Devil and 6 of pentacles, but the Sun was behind the 6 of pentacles. It’s like you’re purposefully feeding something to hurt you, knowing it will hurt you, and then expecting a different outcome. Why? You’ve seen the result; initiate the choices needed if you truly want something different. Whatever vice or harm you’re allowing towards yourself is very tied to stagnant financial energy or lack of ambition you may be experiencing. The larger message for everyone is to believe in your own strength. Being in 5 of pentacles energy is not all bad; the lights behind the travelers remind us help is closer than we accept. But, you don’t have to take every shiny pentacle that rolls your way; it’s fine to endure a journey to find what’s right for you. Maybe you feel you’re not that strong because you don’t endure things other people do, or you haven’t gone through certain things, made certain choices. Even feeling childish. But there's vibrant strength radiating from you like the Sun. And if you do feel more child-like than your peers, that’s one of the good qualities of The Sun, not a bad one. It takes a lot of courage to choose less convenient paths. And if you have stuff poking holes in your energy, that impacts your life negatively! If only you don’t give your Sun away to things that leech off you; your energy is a lot stronger and more organized than you think.

What kind of work might fulfill this part of you?: I'm getting a message rather than specific jobs. The work that fulfills you will be more apparent as you do more inner work. This work (that fulfills you) is a marriage of your shadow side with your tranquil side. There’s a need to go deep into your pain & shadow, and to accept or show compassion to these. I’m not sure if there’s a disconnect between your conscious mind or external life and your pain, for example, maybe you have a lot of trauma you’ve not really reflected on or have only scratched the surface of. Maybe you aren’t really sure how to reconcile your agony and hard times with other parts of your life and self. There’s two polarities, and your message is about bringing these in union, meaning not fully merged as one. It’s okay if your shadow side, trauma, agony, pain, or dark emotions don’t fully make sense or can’t be perfectly merged with other parts of yourself right now. When people do shadow work, a lot are trying to eradicate their shadow because it’s associated with pain. We see shadow work as our way to triumph our trauma, to destroy it. When we speak of healing, people usually mean controlling their shadow, to get rid of it through merging it or turning it into light. I believe we’ll all keep running into the same problems collectively until we stop trying to kill the shadow. The shadow is not pain, it forms in response to pain. It’s a proof of existence, of an experience having happened, but not the experience itself. Work that fulfills you will come out of allowing this shadow side to exist with the creative, productive, enlightened etc parts of yourselves. By doing this, things you produce will naturally speak to others, or your impact will be farther reaching. For example, if you worked in the medical field, you’d excel in providing true comfort to patients, especially as some kind of doula or even a death doula. If you created art, your art would really speak to people since you could incorporate your shadow instead of only light & fun. If you did spiritual work, you could relate more or provide more accurate service. Basically, acknowledgement of your own shadow gives a platform for the same to happen in others, and in this process lies something that speaks to your soul.

A lot of you are struggling in mental anguish, or a feeling like never waking up from a bad dream. I understand how you feel, and I wish I had a better answer for you. No matter how much we speak about inner peace or life advice, real life and brain chemistry is not that simple usually. In spiritual communities, I think we’ve regressed in accepting the shadow, partially due to ideologies that rely on never acknowledging what we don’t want to be true. I think you should feel whatever negative emotions you have without self judgment. Even without mental judgment; try not to extrapolate your pain, like saying your life will always be terrible because you’re in pain now and have been. Even if you think that, try to let the emotions pass through without telling them what they must mean or be, like a passing stranger you’re observing. Pain tends to blur clarity, but we think this is not true for mental pain even though that can be the most confusing kind. I’m not saying doing this will fix your life problems, but someone needed to hear that. I always encourage you to take advantage of mental health resources that are accessible if needed.

There’s also a repeating theme about awareness or alertness. Pain is pushing you into an unalert phase? You’re encouraged to not over-analyze your pain or anything else. You may benefit a lot from an activity or routine that forces you to be wholly present or engrossed for an amount of time. Something physically engaging or a sensory experience especially, even just making yourself stand in the Sun for longer than you normally would (and wear sunscreen lol) ((although I’m really talking about something even more engaging, something that fully takes you out of your head like a martial art? Physically crafting something, walking outside, etc. Stuff like standing in the Sun is okay, but the point is to not be in your head or on devices for a set amount of time. Mental activities or devices may keep you too close to your thoughts and not as aware)).

Extra details: work relationship or friends with benefits, relationship or feelings for childhood friend, or a childhood friend going through relationship troubles, love triangle or 3-person relationship. Varied job interests or no specific interest in one field. Bright eyes, beautiful eyes, or intriguing gaze. Need for inner child work or acknowledgment, especially if having issues with peers from childhood. Spiritual art, or the process of exerting effort can be a spiritual experience for you, even exercising, anything you throw yourself into. For some of you, creating art that makes you feel nostalgic or is based in your nostalgia might be rewarding. Dark circles or lines under eyes, tiredness on face, financial struggle.

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Pile 4

Your Archetype [9 of cups, the Magician]: hi pile 4! Your archetype gives self-assured or self-reliant energy. I’m not saying this is your personality, but these parts of yourself shine through energetically when working towards something meaningful to you, and these are the personalities of the figures in the cards (so, this may be an energy you're developing if you currently feel like the opposite). There’s a sense you hold yourself responsible for your fate, or that by your own hands you can create your success. The Magician is not waiting for someone to come and give him something—in Magician energy, you yourself bring the magic. Maybe it’s been necessary to be self-reliant as there was no one coming to hand you a pentacle or comfort, and the cards on top of the deck suggest this has been a difficult life for many of you (6 of wands rx, Chariot rx..). There’s a sense of taking something within yourself and using that to create more of what you want, though I’m not sure if this is using your talents or just being resourceful. You could be very skilled in emotional alchemy, taking your own struggles and turning it into another situation, though due to lack of support it can be difficult for many of you to reap your just rewards of this effort. I feel intuitively called to say that anything worth having begins in yourself; I feel your life demonstrates this. You’re able to enjoy what you have or what results bloom because of your inner nature, because there’s fullness in you that allows you to project that externally. It’s the opposite energy of someone who can't appreciate or multiply a blessing because of feeling fragmented inside, so they keep getting more things to fill the fragmentation. Rather, you’re able to take what you have inside and make something from scratch. You yourself are enough to make rewards, and you can recognize a blessing when it comes. This pile also loves to have a good time or indulge a bit, so you may be drawn to work where you can keep your fun-loving energy going, for example many of you may enjoy an environment where coworkers regularly go out after work, or you may like mixing social life with work.

What kind of work might fulfill this part of you?: you may find a lot of fulfillment in community work. Rather than being the boss or someone who has control over others, you may enjoy being on the same level as those you’re working with, forming connections directly rather than operating within hierarchy. This pile has very social & communicative energy. That may help you find enjoyment in people-based work, or people will find a lot of enjoyment in you. Earlier when I was pulling my homemade oracle, “spiritual protector” came out. I thought maybe it wasn’t relevant to your reading, but I see you guys are spiritual protectors for the collective. Some of you exude energy that makes people want to run to you or be comforted by you? Or the way you are when socializing is pleasant or life-changing for those in your energy. You guys may particularly find fulfillment in work that deals with messier parts of life. There’s elements of pain, sorrow, hurt, but not from you. I think you may find fulfillment in working with vulnerable people, such as the homeless or people with addictions. I noticed this in other piles too, but for you guys it’s the most direct as your work may find or bring people who are in the midst of that pain. Whereas other piles seemed to offer care after the trauma, your cards suggest not necessarily giving rebuilding material, but meeting them in the storm so they can get to the other side, like a rescue. You may like working with people who just lost everything or were exploited—reaching these people when the hurt is still new may be meaningful to you, or even literally going to them while these situations are taking place such as disaster rescue. What stood out to me is when I read your archetype, the 6 of wands was reversed on the top of the deck. But for this part, the 6 of wands is upright on the bottom of the other deck. You might be motivated to help others directly because of hardships you went through. But also, the support you’ve lacked may be found through those you meet in work, hobbies, or those you help. It reminds me of the typical story we enjoy—the hero is rejected by their origin, but is loved by the community they find and save. I’m not saying you need to save anyone to be loved, but you may find a lot of the social and emotional fulfillment that was withheld from you through your continued efforts or passions. This process may be healing or bring enjoyment—and definitely could be healing to whoever gets to know or support you. You could be a literal protector—you may find fulfillment in work where you help people not make bad decisions, avoid a wrong turn in life, or just offer a helping hand and shoulder to cry on. Even physical protection or aid. You would be that person who shows life is not so bad, and even when it is, it’s not hopeless. You'd be the school counselor that makes a difference in a student’s life. If you did any kind of counseling, your office would be a safe haven. This does not have to be the literal job itself; this is a role you could embody in any environment. Community, social, or volunteer work may just be the most obvious application. I see some of you would enjoy being bartenders or working in a similar environment, one that will listen to patrons and be a kind face. You could have this effect through whatever you create; some of you may enjoy gardening or working with plants? With that example, the effect you had on the environment, or the artistry you create would then create joy and healing in others. Your energy shines through what you produce even if you’re not physically present.

There’s a lot of bold energy, but I pick up on feeling like it’s a facade, or a nagging feeling that you’re of lesser value. The things said throughout your life to oppress and demean you are not a reflection of you, and neither is the nagging voice. Your emotions alone don’t have the means to show you all that you are, so don’t rely on just feelings to measure your self worth.

Extra details: found family, a lot of drinking especially something blue? Or going out with friends a lot, hanging around water like a stream, gin, birds, very chatty personalities! Mercury may be a prominent planet in natal or solar return charts. Bullied in school or by family, or both at the same time. I heard salsa, not sure if the food or dance is significant. Partier. Gardening, farming, working with the natural environment may be significant, including water, some of you could enjoy or benefit from cleaning up locally for example, or spending more time near flowing water and lots of vegetation if you don’t already. You may find some kind of inspiration, or being near flowing water may help you to think through things, have a eureka.

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aventurineswife · 4 months ago

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A Refuge Beneath the Waves

Summary: Sunday seeks solace after a stressful day of diplomatic negotiations. You, a cecaelia with a penchant for playfulness and wisdom, guide him to your secret undersea sanctuary. Amid bioluminescent waters and coral cove serenity, you remind him of the beauty in stillness and the importance of connection, fostering a moment of quiet intimacy between two kindred souls.

Tags: @spinnyboination, Merman!Sunday x Cecaelia!Reader, Fluff, Comfort, Gentle Intimacy, Slow Burn.

The ocean was a symphony, humming its ancient melodies as bioluminescent trails wove through the undersea world. The water shimmered with life, flickering gold and silver as creatures danced through coral and kelp.

Sunday swam with fluid grace, his tail glinting faintly in the dim light of the abyss. His halo, glowing faintly behind his head, illuminated his features in ethereal hues as it pulsed in rhythm with his thoughts. The weight of the day lingered in his mind—a diplomatic encounter gone awry with a neighboring pod, his efforts to broker peace once again met with mistrust. He sighed, pausing mid-swim, his wings twitching faintly in frustration.

"Trouble in paradise, little dove?"

Your voice, warm and tinged with mischief, echoed through the currents. Sunday turned, his eyes meeting yours. You drifted closer, your cecaelian lower half—moving effortlessly through the water. Your eight tentacles, each tipped with bioluminescent patterns, shifted lazily as you watched him with a crooked smile.

"Nothing unusual," Sunday replied softly, his wings fluttering slightly behind his ears. "Merely the usual dance of ideals and realities clashing."

"Ah, the plight of a dreamer," you teased, circling him playfully. "You're far too good for them, you know. Not everyone appreciates the grandeur of harmony."

Sunday chuckled, the sound soft and lilting. "And yet, I cannot abandon the dream. It's... complicated."

"Complicated is just another word for interesting," you countered, stopping in front of him. "Why don’t you let me distract you for a while? You look like you could use a break."

"I—" Sunday hesitated, but your warm gaze melted away his resistance. "Perhaps you're right."

You beamed and reached out, gently taking his hand in yours. Your fingers were webbed, the faintly translucent membrane between them glimmering faintly. Sunday’s touch was cool and calming, and you felt the faint hum of his energy through your skin.

“Follow me,” you said, tugging him along.

The two of you swam together, weaving through the towering kelp forests until you reached a secluded cove. Here, the ocean floor was a mosaic of colorful anemones and gently swaying sea fans, their hues amplified by the glow of the moonlight filtering through the water’s surface above. You guided Sunday to a smooth rock outcropping, settling there as your tentacles curled beneath you in a comfortable nest.

Sunday joined you, folding his tail beneath him. "This is lovely," he murmured, gazing around.

“Isn’t it?” you said, leaning back on your arms. “This is my little sanctuary. A place to just... exist. No politics, no expectations.”

Sunday sighed, his wings relaxing as he mirrored your posture. “I envy that simplicity sometimes.”

You glanced at him, the golden glow of his eyes softer now, contemplative. “You should visit more often,” you suggested. “You don’t always have to carry the weight of the world on your shoulders. It’s okay to just... be.”

For a moment, Sunday was quiet, the rhythmic sway of the water filling the silence. Then, he gave you a small, genuine smile. “You always know how to bring me back to myself,” he said.

“Someone has to,” you quipped, bumping his shoulder gently.

The two of you stayed there for a while, talking softly about everything and nothing. Sunday’s voice was like the melody of the ocean itself, and you found yourself drawn to his thoughtful words, the way he painted pictures of his dreams and fears. In turn, he listened intently to your stories, his eyes never leaving yours.

As the hours passed, the tension in Sunday’s frame seemed to dissolve. He leaned back against the rock, his wings fluttering faintly as he gazed at the play of light on the water above.

"Thank you," he said softly, his voice barely audible over the gentle hum of the ocean.

"For what?" you asked, turning to look at him.

"For reminding me of the beauty in stillness," he replied, his gaze meeting yours. "And for always seeing the best in me, even when I doubt it myself."

Your heart fluttered at his words, and you reached out, brushing a strand of silver hair from his face. "That’s easy," you said with a smile. "There’s so much to see."

Sunday’s halo pulsed faintly, its glow a soft, warm gold. He reached out as well, his fingers grazing yours, and for a moment, the ocean seemed to hold its breath.

And in the quiet, beneath the dreaming waves, you found something more profound than words—a connection that needed no explanation, only the quiet truth of its existence.

#x reader #honkai star rail #hsr #honkai star rail x reader #hsr x reader #sunday x reader #sunday #sunday x you #sunday x y/n #sunday hsr #sunday honkai star rail #merman!sunday x cecaelia!reader #fluff #comfort #gentle intimacy #slow burn

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eggcats · 1 month ago

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Adding Lucifer into the Housewife Vox AU is so funny, because now this man has to not only suffer Alastor but Vox TOO - and he can't even DO anything because they're the financial backing for the hotel! They, at this moment, have a stronger claim to supporting Charlie than he ever can.

Hysterical.

Anyway, Lucifer decides to dress a bit differently for once. He summons (what he thinks) is a nice dress with a cute duck pattern.

Alastor, immediately grimacing behind his smile: Did you not only get dressed in the dark, but you had also gouged out your eyes at the same time, your Majesty?

Lucifer is CONVINCED Alastor (old-timey looking deer) is being bigoted because he's in a dress, and goes to tell Charlie, who only awkwardly laughs and tells her dad that there is no way Alastor's issue is with him wearing a dress.

Lucifer is not convinced and he's DETERMINED to get that red bastard kicked out for good. It'd also be hysterical if somehow he gets convinced Alastor is homophobic or some shit, like Lucifer watches Alastor notice Angel and Husk flirting and be disgusted by it (the only person Alastor tolerates such romantic nonsense from is Vox, everyone else is disgusting and should stop immediately)

His plans run awry when Vox returns to the hotel.

Vox, bursting through the door, pissed off to no end: I will DESTROY those fuckers for trying to steal from me. FROM ME?!?! I'll show them who they're fucking with!

Vox, as he storms past Alastor and Lucifer who were still arguing about something: I fucking NEED a relaxing bath or some shit, before I blow out a city block.

Vox, stopping by the elevator before irritatedly turning towards Alastor: Um. Did you NOT hear me!?

Alastor: I thought you said you needed a relaxing bath, dear?

Vox: Yeah, and I'll be super fucking relaxed after you eat me out and shove your big co-

Charlie, bursting in: HO-OKAY THAT'S ENOUGH FOR TODAY!

Lucifer, wide-eyed and in shock (because this oblivious mess of an angel somehow missed that Alastor and Vox were together, lmao) watches as Alastor immediately abandons their argument to follow the pissed-off television into the elevator after being angrily told to fuck him.

When they return hours later, Vox is a LOT more relaxed and is wearing some kind of dress (or skirt). Lucifer, upon noticing this and how Alastor is still following him around, hand at his waist, is like okay. What the actual fuck then.

Lucifer, pointing at Vox: HE’S IN A DRESS?!

Alastor: Well spotted! Indeed, you can identify things at a preschool level now, sire!

Lucifer: No, fuck you, if he's in a dress then what was your issue with me in one?

Alastor: It was an eyesore and an affront to common decency.

Vox: It was kinda ugly, to be honest.

Lucifer: Fuck you both, actually.

#housewife vox au

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dcdreamblog · 4 months ago

Note

so You Have talked a bit About Shadow ORGANIZATIONS ON The past and There One i Want to Know a bit more About

CHECKMATE

What Was Up With Them?

What did They Have to do With That Waller Lady How Feels like She Had a part in Every Shadow org and That Maxwell Lord Guy?

and Why did Everything About Them Have Something to do With Chess? i just NEED to know

"Checkmate" known in official documents as the "Metahuman Monitoring and Defense Directorate" (when it was forced to come up with a real name after being dragged into the spotlight after the OMAC mess) was originally an American espionage organization created by infamous politico Amanda Wallter as a more intelligence based branch of her Task Force X directive.

(The organization's logo, showing a knight chess piece in a crosshair half filled with a chessboard pattern)

Its original mandate was to support Task Force X through the collection of intelligence and to undermine metahuman or extranormal threats through the use of targeted assault, cyberattack or assassination. Its internal bodies are all named after chess pieces. King/Queen (Co-Head of Operations) Rook (Intelligence Correlation and Planning) Bishop (Communication and Mission Overwatch) Knights (Field Operations) Pawns (Logistical or Mechanical Support)

Basically from the instant of its foundation it fell back into the same bad habits anything with Waller's name on it does. Paranoia surrounding superheroes leading to alliance with untrustworthy partners that then lead to deadly outcomes. It and every other spy agency like it at the time from the Force of July to the clandestine project that produced Captain Atom were all turned against one another by the terrorist group Kobra through a very simple false intelligence scheme that nonetheless wiped out more than 2/3rds of Checkmate's manpower and its original base of operations. The organization hung around for a few years after that playing cops and robbers in the shadows until eventually it was co opted by a madman by the name of Maxwell Lord who had taken governmental paranoia of superhumans to a violent extreme and planned to use Checkmate as a cudgel to destroy all metahumans on the planet. Unleashing the OMAC virus as the climactic assault on the superheroes of the world in a pointless tragedy that left both Lord and the beloved second Blue Beetle dead. It was THIS even that unveiled Checkmate to the world, acting FAR beyond it purview and having been taken over by a murderous con man with a bigoted grudge it was disbanded by law after a several hour private conversation between the then president and the Martian Manhunter that revealed just how deeply rotten the organization was. Never one to waste an opportunity to throw good money after bad the organization was then REconstituted by the UN Security Council in an attempt to create a body that could police and corral the metahuman population (which always goes SO well). The intention was to balance out that directive by including experienced superheroes within the organization including Alan Scott, the second Mister Terrific and Fire to name a few balanced out by a human counterpart for each superhuman agent. As one can imagine this almost INSTANTLY went awry, within days of the organizations refounding it had invaded the sovereign territory of the French Republic seeking a domestic corruption scandal in an attempt to strong arm the nation into supporting Checkmate in the general assembly. Directly after THAT the organization nearly came to blows with China's Great Ten when a clandestine infiltration of a Chinese facility turned out to be an invasion of the Ten's secret base of operations. While that mess was deescalated before it got bloody, the act of deescalating with his Chinese counterparts saw the United States forcing Alan Scott to resign because he had saved the Chinese government from a public embarrassment. Showing that the organization was going to spend its time getting dicked around by international partisan interests despite its charter as an international peacekeeping force. Gaff and scandal were layered on top of gaff and scandal as a scheme to blackmail former Justice League member Fire into committing assassinations for the organization lead direction into laying groundwork for Operation: Salvation Run a HORRIFICALLY inhumane plot to deport Earth's supervillains to an uncharted planetoid in a distant galaxy without trial. This final, MASSIVE fumble lead to every superhero within the organization resigning in protest and to force the resignation of Waller from all of her government posts pending criminal investigation and government court martial. Checkmate is just one more attempt at the governments of the world to play Mutually Assured Destruction with the global superhero community that falls apart because superheroes have no leverage by which to be blackmailed and any wider worries about a superhuman takeover always end up being so much hot air and paranoia. Government doesn't like superheroes because superheroes don't answer to government. And stories like Checkmate's are a good example of why that is a 100% positive dichotomy

#dc #dcu #dc comics #dc universe #superhero #comics #tw unreality #unreality #unreality blog #ask game #ask blog #asks open #please interact #worldbuilding #checkmate #amanda waller #maxwell lord

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antiporn-activist · 1 year ago

Text

I thought y'all should read this

I have a free trial to News+ so I copy-pasted it for you here. I don't think Jonathan Haidt would object to more people having this info.

Tumblr wouldn't let me post it until i removed all the links to Haidt's sources. You'll have to take my word that everything is sourced.

End the Phone-Based Childhood Now

The environment in which kids grow up today is hostile to human development.

By Jonathan Haidt

Something went suddenly and horribly wrong for adolescents in the early 2010s. By now you’ve likely seen the statistics: Rates of depression and anxiety in the United States—fairly stable in the 2000s—rose by more than 50 percent in many studies from 2010 to 2019. The suicide rate rose 48 percent for adolescents ages 10 to 19. For girls ages 10 to 14, it rose 131 percent.

The problem was not limited to the U.S.: Similar patterns emerged around the same time in Canada, the U.K., Australia, New Zealand, the Nordic countries, and beyond. By a variety of measures and in a variety of countries, the members of Generation Z (born in and after 1996) are suffering from anxiety, depression, self-harm, and related disorders at levels higher than any other generation for which we have data.

The decline in mental health is just one of many signs that something went awry. Loneliness and friendlessness among American teens began to surge around 2012. Academic achievement went down, too. According to “The Nation’s Report Card,” scores in reading and math began to decline for U.S. students after 2012, reversing decades of slow but generally steady increase. PISA, the major international measure of educational trends, shows that declines in math, reading, and science happened globally, also beginning in the early 2010s.

As the oldest members of Gen Z reach their late 20s, their troubles are carrying over into adulthood. Young adults are dating less, having less sex, and showing less interest in ever having children than prior generations. They are more likelyto live with their parents. They were less likely to get jobs as teens, and managers say they are harder to work with. Many of these trends began with earlier generations, but most of them accelerated with Gen Z.

Surveys show that members of Gen Z are shyer and more risk averse than previous generations, too, and risk aversion may make them less ambitious. In an interview last May, OpenAI co-founder Sam Altman and Stripe co-founder Patrick Collison noted that, for the first time since the 1970s, none of Silicon Valley’s preeminent entrepreneurs are under 30. “Something has really gone wrong,” Altman said. In a famously young industry, he was baffled by the sudden absence of great founders in their 20s.

Generations are not monolithic, of course. Many young people are flourishing. Taken as a whole, however, Gen Z is in poor mental health and is lagging behind previous generations on many important metrics. And if a generation is doing poorly––if it is more anxious and depressed and is starting families, careers, and important companies at a substantially lower rate than previous generations––then the sociological and economic consequences will be profound for the entire society.

What happened in the early 2010s that altered adolescent development and worsened mental health? Theories abound, but the fact that similar trends are found in many countries worldwide means that events and trends that are specific to the United States cannot be the main story.

I think the answer can be stated simply, although the underlying psychology is complex: Those were the years when adolescents in rich countries traded in their flip phones for smartphones and moved much more of their social lives online—particularly onto social-media platforms designed for virality and addiction. Once young people began carrying the entire internet in their pockets, available to them day and night, it altered their daily experiences and developmental pathways across the board. Friendship, dating, sexuality, exercise, sleep, academics, politics, family dynamics, identity—all were affected. Life changed rapidly for younger children, too, as they began to get access to their parents’ smartphones and, later, got their own iPads, laptops, and even smartphones during elementary school.

As a social psychologist who has long studied social and moral development, I have been involved in debates about the effects of digital technology for years. Typically, the scientific questions have been framed somewhat narrowly, to make them easier to address with data. For example, do adolescents who consume more social media have higher levels of depression? Does using a smartphone just before bedtime interfere with sleep? The answer to these questions is usually found to be yes, although the size of the relationship is often statistically small, which has led some researchers to conclude that these new technologies are not responsible for the gigantic increases in mental illness that began in the early 2010s.

But before we can evaluate the evidence on any one potential avenue of harm, we need to step back and ask a broader question: What is childhood––including adolescence––and how did it change when smartphones moved to the center of it? If we take a more holistic view of what childhood is and what young children, tweens, and teens need to do to mature into competent adults, the picture becomes much clearer. Smartphone-based life, it turns out, alters or interferes with a great number of developmental processes.

The intrusion of smartphones and social media are not the only changes that have deformed childhood. There’s an important backstory, beginning as long ago as the 1980s, when we started systematically depriving children and adolescents of freedom, unsupervised play, responsibility, and opportunities for risk taking, all of which promote competence, maturity, and mental health. But the change in childhood accelerated in the early 2010s, when an already independence-deprived generation was lured into a new virtual universe that seemed safe to parents but in fact is more dangerous, in many respects, than the physical world.

My claim is that the new phone-based childhood that took shape roughly 12 years ago is making young people sick and blocking their progress to flourishing in adulthood. We need a dramatic cultural correction, and we need it now.

1. The Decline of Play and Independence

Human brains are extraordinarily large compared with those of other primates, and human childhoods are extraordinarily long, too, to give those large brains time to wire up within a particular culture. A child’s brain is already 90 percent of its adult size by about age 6. The next 10 or 15 years are about learning norms and mastering skills—physical, analytical, creative, and social. As children and adolescents seek out experiences and practice a wide variety of behaviors, the synapses and neurons that are used frequently are retained while those that are used less often disappear. Neurons that fire together wire together, as brain researchers say.

Brain development is sometimes said to be “experience-expectant,” because specific parts of the brain show increased plasticity during periods of life when an animal’s brain can “expect” to have certain kinds of experiences. You can see this with baby geese, who will imprint on whatever mother-sized object moves in their vicinity just after they hatch. You can see it with human children, who are able to learn languages quickly and take on the local accent, but only through early puberty; after that, it’s hard to learn a language and sound like a native speaker. There is also some evidence of a sensitive period for cultural learning more generally. Japanese children who spent a few years in California in the 1970s came to feel “American” in their identity and ways of interacting only if they attended American schools for a few years between ages 9 and 15. If they left before age 9, there was no lasting impact. If they didn’t arrive until they were 15, it was too late; they didn’t come to feel American.

Human childhood is an extended cultural apprenticeship with different tasks at different ages all the way through puberty. Once we see it this way, we can identify factors that promote or impede the right kinds of learning at each age. For children of all ages, one of the most powerful drivers of learning is the strong motivation to play. Play is the work of childhood, and all young mammals have the same job: to wire up their brains by playing vigorously and often, practicing the moves and skills they’ll need as adults. Kittens will play-pounce on anything that looks like a mouse tail. Human children will play games such as tag and sharks and minnows, which let them practice both their predator skills and their escaping-from-predator skills. Adolescents will play sports with greater intensity, and will incorporate playfulness into their social interactions—flirting, teasing, and developing inside jokes that bond friends together. Hundreds of studies on young rats, monkeys, and humans show that young mammals want to play, need to play, and end up socially, cognitively, and emotionally impaired when they are deprived of play.

One crucial aspect of play is physical risk taking. Children and adolescents must take risks and fail—often—in environments in which failure is not very costly. This is how they extend their abilities, overcome their fears, learn to estimate risk, and learn to cooperate in order to take on larger challenges later. The ever-present possibility of getting hurt while running around, exploring, play-fighting, or getting into a real conflict with another group adds an element of thrill, and thrilling play appears to be the most effective kind for overcoming childhood anxieties and building social, emotional, and physical competence. The desire for risk and thrill increases in the teen years, when failure might carry more serious consequences. Children of all ages need to choose the risk they are ready for at a given moment. Young people who are deprived of opportunities for risk taking and independent exploration will, on average, develop into more anxious and risk-averse adults.

Human childhood and adolescence evolved outdoors, in a physical world full of dangers and opportunities. Its central activities––play, exploration, and intense socializing––were largely unsupervised by adults, allowing children to make their own choices, resolve their own conflicts, and take care of one another. Shared adventures and shared adversity bound young people together into strong friendship clusters within which they mastered the social dynamics of small groups, which prepared them to master bigger challenges and larger groups later on.

And then we changed childhood.

The changes started slowly in the late 1970s and ’80s, before the arrival of the internet, as many parents in the U.S. grew fearful that their children would be harmed or abducted if left unsupervised. Such crimes have always been extremely rare, but they loomed larger in parents’ minds thanks in part to rising levels of street crime combined with the arrival of cable TV, which enabled round-the-clock coverage of missing-children cases. A general decline in social capital––the degree to which people knew and trusted their neighbors and institutions––exacerbated parental fears. Meanwhile, rising competition for college admissions encouraged more intensive forms of parenting. In the 1990s, American parents began pulling their children indoors or insisting that afternoons be spent in adult-run enrichment activities. Free play, independent exploration, and teen-hangout time declined.

In recent decades, seeing unchaperoned children outdoors has become so novel that when one is spotted in the wild, some adults feel it is their duty to call the police. In 2015, the Pew Research Center found that parents, on average, believed that children should be at least 10 years old to play unsupervised in front of their house, and that kids should be 14 before being allowed to go unsupervised to a public park. Most of these same parents had enjoyed joyous and unsupervised outdoor play by the age of 7 or 8.

2. The Virtual World Arrives in Two Waves

The internet, which now dominates the lives of young people, arrived in two waves of linked technologies. The first one did little harm to Millennials. The second one swallowed Gen Z whole.

The first wave came ashore in the 1990s with the arrival of dial-up internet access, which made personal computers good for something beyond word processing and basic games. By 2003, 55 percent of American households had a computer with (slow) internet access. Rates of adolescent depression, loneliness, and other measures of poor mental health did not rise in this first wave. If anything, they went down a bit. Millennial teens (born 1981 through 1995), who were the first to go through puberty with access to the internet, were psychologically healthier and happier, on average, than their older siblings or parents in Generation X (born 1965 through 1980).

The second wave began to rise in the 2000s, though its full force didn’t hit until the early 2010s. It began rather innocently with the introduction of social-media platforms that helped people connect with their friends. Posting and sharing content became much easier with sites such as Friendster (launched in 2003), Myspace (2003), and Facebook (2004).

Teens embraced social media soon after it came out, but the time they could spend on these sites was limited in those early years because the sites could only be accessed from a computer, often the family computer in the living room. Young people couldn’t access social media (and the rest of the internet) from the school bus, during class time, or while hanging out with friends outdoors. Many teens in the early-to-mid-2000s had cellphones, but these were basic phones (many of them flip phones) that had no internet access. Typing on them was difficult––they had only number keys. Basic phones were tools that helped Millennials meet up with one another in person or talk with each other one-on-one. I have seen no evidence to suggest that basic cellphones harmed the mental health of Millennials.

It was not until the introduction of the iPhone (2007), the App Store (2008), and high-speed internet (which reached 50 percent of American homes in 2007)—and the corresponding pivot to mobile made by many providers of social media, video games, and porn—that it became possible for adolescents to spend nearly every waking moment online. The extraordinary synergy among these innovations was what powered the second technological wave. In 2011, only 23 percent of teens had a smartphone. By 2015, that number had risen to 73 percent, and a quarter of teens said they were online “almost constantly.” Their younger siblings in elementary school didn’t usually have their own smartphones, but after its release in 2010, the iPad quickly became a staple of young children’s daily lives. It was in this brief period, from 2010 to 2015, that childhood in America (and many other countries) was rewired into a form that was more sedentary, solitary, virtual, and incompatible with healthy human development.

3. Techno-optimism and the Birth of the Phone-Based Childhood

The phone-based childhood created by that second wave—including not just smartphones themselves, but all manner of internet-connected devices, such as tablets, laptops, video-game consoles, and smartwatches—arrived near the end of a period of enormous optimism about digital technology. The internet came into our lives in the mid-1990s, soon after the fall of the Soviet Union. By the end of that decade, it was widely thought that the web would be an ally of democracy and a slayer of tyrants. When people are connected to each other, and to all the information in the world, how could any dictator keep them down?

In the 2000s, Silicon Valley and its world-changing inventions were a source of pride and excitement in America. Smart and ambitious young people around the world wanted to move to the West Coast to be part of the digital revolution. Tech-company founders such as Steve Jobs and Sergey Brin were lauded as gods, or at least as modern Prometheans, bringing humans godlike powers. The Arab Spring bloomed in 2011 with the help of decentralized social platforms, including Twitter and Facebook. When pundits and entrepreneurs talked about the power of social media to transform society, it didn’t sound like a dark prophecy.

You have to put yourself back in this heady time to understand why adults acquiesced so readily to the rapid transformation of childhood. Many parents had concerns, even then, about what their children were doing online, especially because of the internet’s ability to put children in contact with strangers. But there was also a lot of excitement about the upsides of this new digital world. If computers and the internet were the vanguards of progress, and if young people––widely referred to as “digital natives”––were going to live their lives entwined with these technologies, then why not give them a head start? I remember how exciting it was to see my 2-year-old son master the touch-and-swipe interface of my first iPhone in 2008. I thought I could see his neurons being woven together faster as a result of the stimulation it brought to his brain, compared to the passivity of watching television or the slowness of building a block tower. I thought I could see his future job prospects improving.

Touchscreen devices were also a godsend for harried parents. Many of us discovered that we could have peace at a restaurant, on a long car trip, or at home while making dinner or replying to emails if we just gave our children what they most wanted: our smartphones and tablets. We saw that everyone else was doing it and figured it must be okay.

It was the same for older children, desperate to join their friends on social-media platforms, where the minimum age to open an account was set by law to 13, even though no research had been done to establish the safety of these products for minors. Because the platforms did nothing (and still do nothing) to verify the stated age of new-account applicants, any 10-year-old could open multiple accounts without parental permission or knowledge, and many did. Facebook and later Instagram became places where many sixth and seventh graders were hanging out and socializing. If parents did find out about these accounts, it was too late. Nobody wanted their child to be isolated and alone, so parents rarely forced their children to shut down their accounts.

We had no idea what we were doing.

4. The High Cost of a Phone-Based Childhood

In Walden, his 1854 reflection on simple living, Henry David Thoreau wrote, “The cost of a thing is the amount of … life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.” It’s an elegant formulation of what economists would later call the opportunity cost of any choice—all of the things you can no longer do with your money and time once you’ve committed them to something else. So it’s important that we grasp just how much of a young person’s day is now taken up by their devices.

The numbers are hard to believe. The most recent Gallup data show that American teens spend about five hours a day just on social-media platforms (including watching videos on TikTok and YouTube). Add in all the other phone- and screen-based activities, and the number rises to somewhere between seven and nine hours a day, on average. The numbers are even higher in single-parent and low-income families, and among Black, Hispanic, and Native American families.

In Thoreau’s terms, how much of life is exchanged for all this screen time? Arguably, most of it. Everything else in an adolescent’s day must get squeezed down or eliminated entirely to make room for the vast amount of content that is consumed, and for the hundreds of “friends,” “followers,” and other network connections that must be serviced with texts, posts, comments, likes, snaps, and direct messages. I recently surveyed my students at NYU, and most of them reported that the very first thing they do when they open their eyes in the morning is check their texts, direct messages, and social-media feeds. It’s also the last thing they do before they close their eyes at night. And it’s a lot of what they do in between.

The amount of time that adolescents spend sleeping declined in the early 2010s, and many studies tie sleep loss directly to the use of devices around bedtime, particularly when they’re used to scroll through social media. Exercise declined, too, which is unfortunate because exercise, like sleep, improves both mental and physical health. Book reading has been declining for decades, pushed aside by digital alternatives, but the decline, like so much else, sped up in the early 2010s. With passive entertainment always available, adolescent minds likely wander less than they used to; contemplation and imagination might be placed on the list of things winnowed down or crowded out.

But perhaps the most devastating cost of the new phone-based childhood was the collapse of time spent interacting with other people face-to-face. A study of how Americans spend their time found that, before 2010, young people (ages 15 to 24) reported spending far more time with their friends (about two hours a day, on average, not counting time together at school) than did older people (who spent just 30 to 60 minutes with friends). Time with friends began decreasing for young people in the 2000s, but the drop accelerated in the 2010s, while it barely changed for older people. By 2019, young people’s time with friends had dropped to just 67 minutes a day. It turns out that Gen Z had been socially distancing for many years and had mostly completed the project by the time COVID-19 struck.

You might question the importance of this decline. After all, isn’t much of this online time spent interacting with friends through texting, social media, and multiplayer video games? Isn’t that just as good?

Some of it surely is, and virtual interactions offer unique benefits too, especially for young people who are geographically or socially isolated. But in general, the virtual world lacks many of the features that make human interactions in the real world nutritious, as we might say, for physical, social, and emotional development. In particular, real-world relationships and social interactions are characterized by four features—typical for hundreds of thousands of years—that online interactions either distort or erase.

First, real-world interactions are embodied, meaning that we use our hands and facial expressions to communicate, and we learn to respond to the body language of others. Virtual interactions, in contrast, mostly rely on language alone. No matter how many emojis are offered as compensation, the elimination of communication channels for which we have eons of evolutionary programming is likely to produce adults who are less comfortable and less skilled at interacting in person.

Second, real-world interactions are synchronous; they happen at the same time. As a result, we learn subtle cues about timing and conversational turn taking. Synchronous interactions make us feel closer to the other person because that’s what getting “in sync” does. Texts, posts, and many other virtual interactions lack synchrony. There is less real laughter, more room for misinterpretation, and more stress after a comment that gets no immediate response.

Third, real-world interactions primarily involve one‐to‐one communication, or sometimes one-to-several. But many virtual communications are broadcast to a potentially huge audience. Online, each person can engage in dozens of asynchronous interactions in parallel, which interferes with the depth achieved in all of them. The sender’s motivations are different, too: With a large audience, one’s reputation is always on the line; an error or poor performance can damage social standing with large numbers of peers. These communications thus tend to be more performative and anxiety-inducing than one-to-one conversations.

Finally, real-world interactions usually take place within communities that have a high bar for entry and exit, so people are strongly motivated to invest in relationships and repair rifts when they happen. But in many virtual networks, people can easily block others or quit when they are displeased. Relationships within such networks are usually more disposable.

These unsatisfying and anxiety-producing features of life online should be recognizable to most adults. Online interactions can bring out antisocial behavior that people would never display in their offline communities. But if life online takes a toll on adults, just imagine what it does to adolescents in the early years of puberty, when their “experience expectant” brains are rewiring based on feedback from their social interactions.

Kids going through puberty online are likely to experience far more social comparison, self-consciousness, public shaming, and chronic anxiety than adolescents in previous generations, which could potentially set developing brains into a habitual state of defensiveness. The brain contains systems that are specialized for approach (when opportunities beckon) and withdrawal (when threats appear or seem likely). People can be in what we might call “discover mode” or “defend mode” at any moment, but generally not both. The two systems together form a mechanism for quickly adapting to changing conditions, like a thermostat that can activate either a heating system or a cooling system as the temperature fluctuates. Some people’s internal thermostats are generally set to discover mode, and they flip into defend mode only when clear threats arise. These people tend to see the world as full of opportunities. They are happier and less anxious. Other people’s internal thermostats are generally set to defend mode, and they flip into discover mode only when they feel unusually safe. They tend to see the world as full of threats and are more prone to anxiety and depressive disorders.

A simple way to understand the differences between Gen Z and previous generations is that people born in and after 1996 have internal thermostats that were shifted toward defend mode. This is why life on college campuses changed so suddenly when Gen Z arrived, beginning around 2014. Students began requesting “safe spaces” and trigger warnings. They were highly sensitive to “microaggressions” and sometimes claimed that words were “violence.” These trends mystified those of us in older generations at the time, but in hindsight, it all makes sense. Gen Z students found words, ideas, and ambiguous social encounters more threatening than had previous generations of students because we had fundamentally altered their psychological development.

5. So Many Harms

The debate around adolescents’ use of smartphones and social media typically revolves around mental health, and understandably so. But the harms that have resulted from transforming childhood so suddenly and heedlessly go far beyondmental health. I’ve touched on some of them—social awkwardness, reduced self-confidence, and a more sedentary childhood. Here are three additional harms.

Fragmented Attention, Disrupted Learning

Staying on task while sitting at a computer is hard enough for an adult with a fully developed prefrontal cortex. It is far more difficult for adolescents in front of their laptop trying to do homework. They are probably less intrinsically motivated to stay on task. They’re certainly less able, given their undeveloped prefrontal cortex, and hence it’s easy for any company with an app to lure them away with an offer of social validation or entertainment. Their phones are pinging constantly—one study found that the typical adolescent now gets 237 notifications a day, roughly 15 every waking hour. Sustained attention is essential for doing almost anything big, creative, or valuable, yet young people find their attention chopped up into little bits by notifications offering the possibility of high-pleasure, low-effort digital experiences.

It even happens in the classroom. Studies confirm that when students have access to their phones during class time, they use them, especially for texting and checking social media, and their grades and learning suffer. This might explain why benchmark test scores began to decline in the U.S. and around the world in the early 2010s—well before the pandemic hit.

Addiction and Social Withdrawal

The neural basis of behavioral addiction to social media or video games is not exactly the same as chemical addiction to cocaine or opioids. Nonetheless, they all involve abnormally heavy and sustained activation of dopamine neurons and reward pathways. Over time, the brain adapts to these high levels of dopamine; when the child is not engaged in digital activity, their brain doesn’t have enough dopamine, and the child experiences withdrawal symptoms. These generally include anxiety, insomnia, and intense irritability. Kids with these kinds of behavioral addictions often become surly and aggressive, and withdraw from their families into their bedrooms and devices.

Social-media and gaming platforms were designed to hook users. How successful are they? How many kids suffer from digital addictions?

The main addiction risks for boys seem to be video games and porn. “Internet gaming disorder,” which was added to the main diagnosis manual of psychiatry in 2013 as a condition for further study, describes “significant impairment or distress” in several aspects of life, along with many hallmarks of addiction, including an inability to reduce usage despite attempts to do so. Estimates for the prevalence of IGD range from 7 to 15 percent among adolescent boys and young men. As for porn, a nationally representative survey of American adults published in 2019 found that 7 percent of American men agreed or strongly agreed with the statement “I am addicted to pornography”—and the rates were higher for the youngest men.

Girls have much lower rates of addiction to video games and porn, but they use social media more intensely than boys do. A study of teens in 29 nations found that between 5 and 15 percent of adolescents engage in what is called “problematic social media use,” which includes symptoms such as preoccupation, withdrawal symptoms, neglect of other areas of life, and lying to parents and friends about time spent on social media. That study did not break down results by gender, but many others have found that rates of “problematic use” are higher for girls.

I don’t want to overstate the risks: Most teens do not become addicted to their phones and video games. But across multiple studies and across genders, rates of problematic use come out in the ballpark of 5 to 15 percent. Is there any other consumer product that parents would let their children use relatively freely if they knew that something like one in 10 kids would end up with a pattern of habitual and compulsive use that disrupted various domains of life and looked a lot like an addiction?

The Decay of Wisdom and the Loss of Meaning

During that crucial sensitive period for cultural learning, from roughly ages 9 through 15, we should be especially thoughtful about who is socializing our children for adulthood. Instead, that’s when most kids get their first smartphone and sign themselves up (with or without parental permission) to consume rivers of content from random strangers. Much of that content is produced by other adolescents, in blocks of a few minutes or a few seconds.

This rerouting of enculturating content has created a generation that is largely cut off from older generations and, to some extent, from the accumulated wisdom of humankind, including knowledge about how to live a flourishing life. Adolescents spend less time steeped in their local or national culture. They are coming of age in a confusing, placeless, ahistorical maelstrom of 30-second stories curated by algorithms designed to mesmerize them. Without solid knowledge of the past and the filtering of good ideas from bad––a process that plays out over many generations––young people will be more prone to believe whatever terrible ideas become popular around them, which might explain why videos showing young people reacting positively to Osama bin Laden’s thoughts about America were trending on TikTok last fall.

All this is made worse by the fact that so much of digital public life is an unending supply of micro dramas about somebody somewhere in our country of 340 million people who did something that can fuel an outrage cycle, only to be pushed aside by the next. It doesn’t add up to anything and leaves behind only a distorted sense of human nature and affairs.

When our public life becomes fragmented, ephemeral, and incomprehensible, it is a recipe for anomie, or normlessness. The great French sociologist Émile Durkheim showed long ago that a society that fails to bind its people together with some shared sense of sacredness and common respect for rules and norms is not a society of great individual freedom; it is, rather, a place where disoriented individuals have difficulty setting goals and exerting themselves to achieve them. Durkheim argued that anomie was a major driver of suicide rates in European countries. Modern scholars continue to draw on his work to understand suicide rates today.

Durkheim’s observations are crucial for understanding what happened in the early 2010s. A long-running survey of American teens found that, from 1990 to 2010, high-school seniors became slightly less likely to agree with statements such as “Life often feels meaningless.” But as soon as they adopted a phone-based life and many began to live in the whirlpool of social media, where no stability can be found, every measure of despair increased. From 2010 to 2019, the number who agreed that their lives felt “meaningless” increased by about 70 percent, to more than one in five.

6. Young People Don’t Like Their Phone-Based Lives

How can I be confident that the epidemic of adolescent mental illness was kicked off by the arrival of the phone-based childhood? Skeptics point to other events as possible culprits, including the 2008 global financial crisis, global warming, the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting and the subsequent active-shooter drills, rising academic pressures, and the opioid epidemic. But while these events might have been contributing factors in some countries, none can explain both the timing and international scope of the disaster.

An additional source of evidence comes from Gen Z itself. With all the talk of regulating social media, raising age limits, and getting phones out of schools, you might expect to find many members of Gen Z writing and speaking out in opposition. I’ve looked for such arguments and found hardly any. In contrast, many young adults tell stories of devastation.

Freya India, a 24-year-old British essayist who writes about girls, explains how social-media sites carry girls off to unhealthy places: “It seems like your child is simply watching some makeup tutorials, following some mental health influencers, or experimenting with their identity. But let me tell you: they are on a conveyor belt to someplace bad. Whatever insecurity or vulnerability they are struggling with, they will be pushed further and further into it.” She continues:

Gen Z were the guinea pigs in this uncontrolled global social experiment. We were the first to have our vulnerabilities and insecurities fed into a machine that magnified and refracted them back at us, all the time, before we had any sense of who we were. We didn’t just grow up with algorithms. They raised us. They rearranged our faces. Shaped our identities. Convinced us we were sick.

Rikki Schlott, a 23-year-old American journalist and co-author of The Canceling of the American Mind, writes,

"The day-to-day life of a typical teen or tween today would be unrecognizable to someone who came of age before the smartphone arrived. Zoomers are spending an average of 9 hours daily in this screen-time doom loop—desperate to forget the gaping holes they’re bleeding out of, even if just for … 9 hours a day. Uncomfortable silence could be time to ponder why they’re so miserable in the first place. Drowning it out with algorithmic white noise is far easier."

A 27-year-old man who spent his adolescent years addicted (his word) to video games and pornography sent me this reflection on what that did to him:

I missed out on a lot of stuff in life—a lot of socialization. I feel the effects now: meeting new people, talking to people. I feel that my interactions are not as smooth and fluid as I want. My knowledge of the world (geography, politics, etc.) is lacking. I didn’t spend time having conversations or learning about sports. I often feel like a hollow operating system.

Or consider what Facebook found in a research project involving focus groups of young people, revealed in 2021 by the whistleblower Frances Haugen: “Teens blame Instagram for increases in the rates of anxiety and depression among teens,” an internal document said. “This reaction was unprompted and consistent across all groups.”

7. Collective-Action Problems

Social-media companies such as Meta, TikTok, and Snap are often compared to tobacco companies, but that’s not really fair to the tobacco industry. It’s true that companies in both industries marketed harmful products to children and tweaked their products for maximum customer retention (that is, addiction), but there’s a big difference: Teens could and did choose, in large numbers, not to smoke. Even at the peak of teen cigarette use, in 1997, nearly two-thirds of high-school students did not smoke.

Social media, in contrast, applies a lot more pressure on nonusers, at a much younger age and in a more insidious way. Once a few students in any middle school lie about their age and open accounts at age 11 or 12, they start posting photos and comments about themselves and other students. Drama ensues. The pressure on everyone else to join becomes intense. Even a girl who knows, consciously, that Instagram can foster beauty obsession, anxiety, and eating disorders might sooner take those risks than accept the seeming certainty of being out of the loop, clueless, and excluded. And indeed, if she resists while most of her classmates do not, she might, in fact, be marginalized, which puts her at risk for anxiety and depression, though via a different pathway than the one taken by those who use social media heavily. In this way, social media accomplishes a remarkable feat: It even harms adolescents who do not use it.

A recent study led by the University of Chicago economist Leonardo Bursztyn captured the dynamics of the social-media trap precisely. The researchers recruited more than 1,000 college students and asked them how much they’d need to be paid to deactivate their accounts on either Instagram or TikTok for four weeks. That’s a standard economist’s question to try to compute the net value of a product to society. On average, students said they’d need to be paid roughly $50 ($59 for TikTok, $47 for Instagram) to deactivate whichever platform they were asked about. Then the experimenters told the students that they were going to try to get most of the others in their school to deactivate that same platform, offering to pay them to do so as well, and asked, Now how much would you have to be paid to deactivate, if most others did so? The answer, on average, was less than zero. In each case, most students were willing to pay to have that happen.

Social media is all about network effects. Most students are only on it because everyone else is too. Most of them would prefer that nobody be on these platforms. Later in the study, students were asked directly, “Would you prefer to live in a world without Instagram [or TikTok]?” A majority of students said yes––58 percent for each app.

This is the textbook definition of what social scientists call a collective-action problem. It’s what happens when a group would be better off if everyone in the group took a particular action, but each actor is deterred from acting, because unless the others do the same, the personal cost outweighs the benefit. Fishermen considering limiting their catch to avoid wiping out the local fish population are caught in this same kind of trap. If no one else does it too, they just lose profit.

Cigarettes trapped individual smokers with a biological addiction. Social media has trapped an entire generation in a collective-action problem. Early app developers deliberately and knowingly exploited the psychological weaknesses and insecurities of young people to pressure them to consume a product that, upon reflection, many wish they could use less, or not at all.

8. Four Norms to Break Four Traps

Young people and their parents are stuck in at least four collective-action traps. Each is hard to escape for an individual family, but escape becomes much easier if families, schools, and communities coordinate and act together. Here are four norms that would roll back the phone-based childhood. I believe that any community that adopts all four will see substantial improvements in youth mental health within two years.

No smartphones before high school

The trap here is that each child thinks they need a smartphone because “everyone else” has one, and many parents give in because they don’t want their child to feel excluded. But if no one else had a smartphone—or even if, say, only half of the child’s sixth-grade class had one—parents would feel more comfortable providing a basic flip phone (or no phone at all). Delaying round-the-clock internet access until ninth grade (around age 14) as a national or community norm would help to protect adolescents during the very vulnerable first few years of puberty. According to a 2022 British study, these are the years when social-media use is most correlated with poor mental health. Family policies about tablets, laptops, and video-game consoles should be aligned with smartphone restrictions to prevent overuse of other screen activities.

No social media before 16

The trap here, as with smartphones, is that each adolescent feels a strong need to open accounts on TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat, and other platforms primarily because that’s where most of their peers are posting and gossiping. But if the majority of adolescents were not on these accounts until they were 16, families and adolescents could more easily resist the pressure to sign up. The delay would not mean that kids younger than 16 could never watch videos on TikTok or YouTube—only that they could not open accounts, give away their data, post their own content, and let algorithms get to know them and their preferences.

Phone‐free schools

Most schools claim that they ban phones, but this usually just means that students aren’t supposed to take their phone out of their pocket during class. Research shows that most students do use their phones during class time. They also use them during lunchtime, free periods, and breaks between classes––times when students could and should be interacting with their classmates face-to-face. The only way to get students’ minds off their phones during the school day is to require all students to put their phones (and other devices that can send or receive texts) into a phone locker or locked pouch at the start of the day. Schools that have gone phone-free always seem to report that it has improved the culture, making students more attentive in class and more interactive with one another. Published studies back them up.

More independence, free play, and responsibility in the real world

Many parents are afraid to give their children the level of independence and responsibility they themselves enjoyed when they were young, even though rates of homicide, drunk driving, and other physical threats to children are way down in recent decades. Part of the fear comes from the fact that parents look at each other to determine what is normal and therefore safe, and they see few examples of families acting as if a 9-year-old can be trusted to walk to a store without a chaperone. But if many parents started sending their children out to play or run errands, then the norms of what is safe and accepted would change quickly. So would ideas about what constitutes “good parenting.” And if more parents trusted their children with more responsibility––for example, by asking their kids to do more to help out, or to care for others––then the pervasive sense of uselessness now found in surveys of high-school students might begin to dissipate.

It would be a mistake to overlook this fourth norm. If parents don’t replace screen time with real-world experiences involving friends and independent activity, then banning devices will feel like deprivation, not the opening up of a world of opportunities.

The main reason why the phone-based childhood is so harmful is because it pushes aside everything else. Smartphones are experience blockers. Our ultimate goal should not be to remove screens entirely, nor should it be to return childhood to exactly the way it was in 1960. Rather, it should be to create a version of childhood and adolescence that keeps young people anchored in the real world while flourishing in the digital age.

9. What Are We Waiting For?

An essential function of government is to solve collective-action problems. Congress could solve or help solve the ones I’ve highlighted—for instance, by raising the age of “internet adulthood” to 16 and requiring tech companies to keep underage children off their sites.

In recent decades, however, Congress has not been good at addressing public concerns when the solutions would displease a powerful and deep-pocketed industry. Governors and state legislators have been much more effective, and their successes might let us evaluate how well various reforms work. But the bottom line is that to change norms, we’re going to need to do most of the work ourselves, in neighborhood groups, schools, and other communities.

There are now hundreds of organizations––most of them started by mothers who saw what smartphones had done to their children––that are working to roll back the phone-based childhood or promote a more independent, real-world childhood. (I have assembled a list of many of them.) One that I co-founded, at LetGrow.org, suggests a variety of simple programs for parents or schools, such as play club (schools keep the playground open at least one day a week before or after school, and kids sign up for phone-free, mixed-age, unstructured play as a regular weekly activity) and the Let Grow Experience (a series of homework assignments in which students––with their parents’ consent––choose something to do on their own that they’ve never done before, such as walk the dog, climb a tree, walk to a store, or cook dinner).

Parents are fed up with what childhood has become. Many are tired of having daily arguments about technologies that were designed to grab hold of their children’s attention and not let go. But the phone-based childhood is not inevitable.

The four norms I have proposed cost almost nothing to implement, they cause no clear harm to anyone, and while they could be supported by new legislation, they can be instilled even without it. We can begin implementing all of them right away, this year, especially in communities with good cooperation between schools and parents. A single memo from a principal asking parents to delay smartphones and social media, in support of the school’s effort to improve mental health by going phone free, would catalyze collective action and reset the community’s norms.

We didn’t know what we were doing in the early 2010s. Now we do. It’s time to end the phone-based childhood.

This article is adapted from Jonathan Haidt’s forthcoming book, The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness.

#phones are bad #childhood

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