#but they're both using their middle names instead of their first

[scary-grace]

The Yawning Grave - a Shigaraki x F!reader fic

Tomura and his friends might look like a team of paranormal investigators, but they're actually professional hoaxers -- every episode of their hit show has been faked. The episode they're filming in an abandoned town in a temperate rainforest is no different. At least at first. Rated T trending M in later chapters, found footage horror tropes, filmmaker!Tomura. Title/chapter headings based on The Yawning Grave by Lord Huron.

omens and signs

Tomura wakes up slowly, but he’d rather not be awake at all – and what he hears when the grogginess starts to fade doesn’t do much to change that impression. “I’m not pulling over again, Dabi. Take your Dramamine.”

“How am I supposed to take my Dramamine if I can’t stop hurling long enough for it to work?”

“Maybe we should pull over long enough for Dabi to take his Dramamine and then digest it,” Twice suggests. “No, that’s a bad idea. Let’s make him throw up until he’s empty and we don’t have to stop again.”

“How about we don’t do any of that,” Toga says. Her voice sounds sweet, but Tomura knows just as well as anybody what she sounds like when she’s about to cut a bitch, and it’s a little too close for comfort. “Dabi, keep your mouth closed. Spinner, don’t floor it around the curves. Jin, don’t laugh. Tomura, don’t –”

Tomura pretends he’s asleep. Toga reaches into the backseat and punches him in the arm, at which point he sits upright in a hurry. “What?”

“Tell Spinner to drive slower,” she says, smiling at him, “and tell Dabi to stop talking.”

“Stop talking,” Tomura says to Dabi. Dabi gives him both middle fingers, way, way up. “Spinner has to drive fast. We need to be there and setting up camp by nightfall.”

“Yeah. Otherwise our nighttime shaky-cam breakdowns won’t be anywhere near as scary.”

“Right.” Tomura doesn’t need to be awake for this. He can film a found-footage documentary hoax in his sleep.

Tomura used to be into debunking this stuff. Then he realized that he could make a hell of a lot more money faking it, and have a lot more fun in the bargain. Now, instead of trying to prove that reality really is as boring as it looks, Tomura and his friends have turned their professional skeptic side-hustle into a full-time business faking the stuff they used to debunk. And because Tomura’s still a skeptic at heart, he knows how to skeptic-proof his hoaxes.

First step: Pick a spot that’s no more than locally famous. Find some local legends – there are always at least a few. Case the joint, figure out what type of haunting or infestation would be the most believable, and then make it look and sound as real as possible. Sometimes that means wholesale making shit up, which is fine. Tomura and his crew have gotten called out plenty of times, but they’ve never been caught before.

“I don’t know, guys,” Twice says as Spinner takes another curve at slightly less than warp speed. “I feel weird about this one. That guy at the gas station acted like we were nuts.”

“Gas station guys always act like that.”

“Not exactly like that.” Dabi sounds like he’s speaking through clenched teeth. “He said it was a paper town. Named after that book. But I looked it up before Spinner started auditioning for fucking Formula One, and it’s been on the map since before the book was published.”

The book – ’Salem’s Lot, by Stephen King. Tomura read it, liked it, and then, when he was scanning maps looking for a place to plan the next hoax, he spotted it. A rain-drenched dot on the map, in America’s Pacific Northwest, labeled Jerusalem’s Lot. Same as the town in the book that gets overrun by vampires. “So he named the book after this place,” Tomura says, and Dabi twists around to glare at him. “Come on. Don’t tell me you’re getting spooked.”

“Twice is right. There was something weird about that guy,” Dabi says. “We spooked him, not the other way around. There’s something going on here that –”

Spinner zips around another bend in the road, and Dabi scrambles to roll the window down. “He does have a point,” Toga says, like there’s not rain and wind whipping through the car and Dabi gagging like a cat with a hairball. “There aren’t legends about this place or anything. We’ve gotten the dumb-college-kid treatment a million times –”

“Which is dumb,” Spinner puts in. “We’re not in college.”

Toga ignores him, too. “But that guy looked surprised at first. Then he looked nervous. And he said something weird.”

“Play it back,” Tomura instructs. Toga digs out the camera.

Gas station guy looks like every other gas station guy they’ve encountered, but as Toga plays it back, Tomura watches the same emotions she named cross his face. Surprise, then nerves. “Salem’s Lot is a paper town.” There’s a pause. “Ain’t nothing living up there that’s human.”

“Nice work getting that line out of him,” Tomura tells Toga, who was doing the interview. “It’ll be great for the promos.”

“Nothing living up there that’s human. He could just mean animals,” Twice pipes up. “The more rural it is, the weirder everybody talks. Remember those old guys with the accents?”

Even the films Tomura’s made in rural Japan has featured old guys with accents. They’re practically a genre staple. “It’s true. People use different syntax in rural areas than in the city,” Spinner says. “Still, though. It’s –”

Dabi pulls his head back in through the window and rolls it up. “It’s easy to hear that line as meaning that there’s something inhuman in ’Salem’s Lot.”

“Which is why it’s perfect,” Tomura says. “Don’t crack up on me. Any of you. If something had happened here, there’d be legends about it. Local myths. Something other than an old guy at a gas station talking about paper towns.”

“There’s one reason why there wouldn’t be legends,” Spinner says from the front seat. “If nobody made it out alive.”

Tomura doesn’t expect that kind of shit out of his crew, and for a split second, he wonders if there’s anything to what they’re saying. Then he spots the blinking red light of one of their pocket cameras, and a mic settled down in the hood of Toga’s jacket, and swears. “You all think you’re fucking hilarious, don’t you?”

“You should have seen your face,” Twice wheezes. “We got you so good –”

“How much of it did you just make up?” Tomura snaps. “Did you bribe that old guy while I was taking a leak?”

“No, he just said it,” Toga says. “All the stuff we said is true. And if it spooked you for a second, Tomura-kun, it’s definitely going to spook the audience.”

She’s right. Still, Tomura doesn’t like ending up on the wrong end of a hoax, and he’s pretty sure he knows whose idea this was. “Did you fake being carsick, too?”

“Did I fool you?” Dabi asks – and then Spinner whips around a corner too fast, and Dabi lunges for the window again. The carsickness is for real. Tomura wonders if he can convince Spinner to drive even faster.

They make it to Jerusalem’s Lot just past four o’clock, which leaves them enough daylight to poke around, record some B-roll, and get a few exterior shots in. The guy at the gas station was bullshitting them – there’s clearly a town up here. Houses, a main street, buildings, streetlights, all of it well on its way to being swallowed up by the rainforest. “How fast do you think stuff like this grows in?”

“These are all native plants,” Spinner says from where he’s crouched down, examining a nest of ferns. “This is their optimal environment. So if nobody was cutting them back, this could happen in – a few years, maybe. Most of these buildings are wood. If we came back fifteen years from now, there’d probably be nothing left.

Which means it can’t have been abandoned for very long – well within living memory. Tomura rolls his shoulders, limbering up. “Let’s find an establishing shot and get this done.”

Tomura calls the big shots, but everybody else fills in with smaller ones they think they might need in the editing process. Tomura puts up with two or three extra shots from everybody before they refocus. He should have written a script. What’s going to come out of his mouth is probably going to be pretty stupid.

“I’m Shigaraki Tomura. We’re the League of Villains. Today we’re investigating Jerusalem’s Lot, an American small town – which, according to the locals, doesn’t exist.”

They asked one local. They’ll go back with the camera on the way out and bother some people until they pick up enough footage to make it look like they’re trying to hide something instead of just trying to get away. This is where they’ll splice in Gas Station Guy with his creepy comment. “As you can see behind me, Jerusalem’s Lot is very real – or it was. Join us as we try to figure out what happened here, and if there’s anything alive in Jerusalem’s Lot after all.”

“Nice, boss,” Twice remarks. It’s a good thing it’s cold out. Tomura gets sweaty when he’s on camera, and he needs to air his armpits out. “The mic might have gotten fuzzy because of the wind, but we can dub over it in post, easy.”

“I like the lighting out here,” Toga says. “There are some holes in the canopy where sun will get through. If it’s ever sunny.”

“It’s supposed to be sunny tomorrow,” Spinner says, shivering. “It better be. I’ll freeze to death.”

Dabi rolls his eyes. “Sure you will.”

“I will. And then you guys will probably use my body to jazz up a shot, because you all suck –”

Tomura tunes them out and goes picking his way up what was probably the main street of ’Salem’s Lot. He’s visited a lot of small towns, even more ghost towns, but there’s something different about this place. Maybe it’s all the greenery. Ghost towns in other places fall to dust. It’s not usual to see one that’s actively being eaten alive – or dead – by the woods. People lived here. People either got up and left or they died here. The former, almost always. Tomura identifies a couple houses that look semi-structurally sound as potential filming spots for tomorrow, then makes his way back to the others.

Coming to Jerusalem’s Lot was the right choice, and as they set up camp and build a fire, the League’s mood is good. Unusually good, given the conditions they’re camping out in. “I think this one is going to be awesome,” Toga says, the firelight glinting off her teeth. “This place would be spooky even without the buildings. All the moss and lichen – and the fog –”

“We could do a haunting for this place,” Spinner suggests. “Ghosts and stuff. We haven’t done that in a while.”

“Yeah, the last time was that mansion in New Hampshire,” Twice says. Then he frowns. “We didn’t have to fake that one.”

No, they didn’t. They all saw things in that house, enough for them to scrap the episode and not come back. Tomura has a strict hoaxes-only rule these days. “Ghosts are easy to do in post-production, but for a town this size, we’d need to fake multiple ghosts,” Dabi says. “And if we have that many ghosts, we have to explain where they came from.”

“Maybe an epidemic?” Toga suggests. “We haven’t done disease in a while, either.”

“That would be tough to pull off, unless we invented something,” Tomura says. “They don’t have the Ebola virus up here.”

Nobody likes it when Tomura mentions the Ebola virus. He sees their expressions and decides to pay them back a bit for their bullshit earlier. “There’s always plague, though. Pneumonic and septicemic plague could both kill fast enough that they wouldn’t have had time to get help.”

“Then we should keep an eye out for skeletons tomorrow,” Spinner says. “And somebody’s gonna need to hold Twice’s hand so he doesn’t freak out and drop the camera. Again.”

“That was one time!”

“We can’t fake skeletons,” Dabi says. “We can fake creatures.”

Tomura rolls his eyes. “You know how hard it is to fake creatures. What would we even fake around here?”

“Vampires,” Twice offers. “Like that book.”

“That would be really hard to fake,” Toga remarks. “Isn’t there some kind of cryptid that’s native to this place? Something tall and furry?”

“Yeah, it’s like a –” Tomura thinks back on his notes. “Sasquatch. Or a Bigfoot.”

“We can’t use that,” Spinner says at once. “It sounds too goofy.”

“Yeah, the airport kiosks were selling it on t-shirts,” Twice agrees. “No vampires. No big furry guys. So that leaves – uh –”

“We could try crawlers,” Toga suggests, and Dabi starts to argue. “I know we’ve used them before, but – why can’t there be different subspecies? Crawlers in a temperate rainforest wouldn’t look anything like crawlers in the Andes mountains.”

It’s quiet for a second. “If you guys are going to make me wear the crawler suit again, I want overtime,” Spinner mutters, and Dabi grins across the campfire. “So what are we doing tomorrow, then – film documentary stuff in the morning, crawler stuff in the afternoon?”

“Works for me.” Tomura yawns. “I’m tired. Don’t forget to put the fire out.”

Inside his tent, Tomura sets up his personal camera to record. He’s not sure if everyone else does, too, but they’re supposed to – to pick up any weird things that happen during the night, any inexplicable sounds or shadows, whether they wake up to it or not. Usually it just catches him tossing and turning, and he deletes the footage in postproduction. Tomura unzips his sleeping bag, shuts off his camping lantern, and closes his eyes. This shoot is going to go well. There’s enough here for a solid hoax. Aside from Spinner in a crawler suit, they’re not going to have to make anything up.

Tomura sleeps solidly, straight through the night. He wakes up without an alarm, better rested than usual, and fumbles for his phone, which he’s pretty sure he left on the pillow next to him. The phone’s not there, but something else is, something small and cold and metal. When Tomura blinks sleep out of his eyes, lifts it to inspect it, he finds that it’s a heart-shaped locket, clinging to life on a frail chain.

Tomura’s friends are going to be on their bullshit for this entire shoot, it looks like. Still, the locket’s a nice touch, and if they fuck with the shot of Toga planting it on Tomura’s pillow, they can make it look like it appeared out of nowhere. Even if they’ve decided on crawlers, it won’t hurt to wave a red herring about ghosts.

But when he shows it to Toga, he gets a blank look and nothing else. “I didn’t put that there. I’ve never seen it before.”

Tomura’s about to tell her to cut the bullshit when he realizes that Dabi’s camera is on. No way is Toga dropping the story while she’s being filmed, and Tomura might as well play along. “Take a look at it. Maybe it’ll give us a clue about what happened here.”

“Hmm.” Toga lifts the locket out of Tomura’s hand and starts inspecting it between sips of coffee. “14-karat gold – not bad, but not over-the-top expensive. It’s on a box chain, which is interesting. They’re not as common as other varieties of chain, but they’re sturdy. See how tightly they’re interlocked? Something like this wouldn’t break easily. And the clasp’s still intact. The person who owned this took it off on purpose.”

She glances up at Tomura, eyes exaggeratedly wide. “What’s inside it?”

By this point, they’ve drawn Spinner and Twice over. They and Tomura hover over Toga’s shoulders as she pries the locket open. “There are photos,” she starts, and then her shoulders slump, her voice going small. “This was a kid’s. A little girl’s.”

Toga’s the best actor on the team. The rest of them need to take lessons. “How do you know?”

“On this side –” Toga holds it up, and Spinner digs up his phone to zoom in. “There’s a picture of two people. Based on their age, I’m guessing they’re her parents. And on the other side – that’s her dog.”

“Right. An adult would have photos of their spouse,” Dabi says from across the fire. “Or their kids. Parents and dog says kid. How do you know it’s a girl?”

“How many boys do you know who’d wear a heart-shaped locket?”

Dabi starts ribbing Toga for being sexist, and she argues back that he wouldn’t wear a locket if she paid him, and under cover of an argument that’s only half-staged, Tomura inspects the locket a little closer. It’s definitely a dog on one side of the locket, some goofy mutt-thing with bright eyes and floppy ears, and looking at it pulls Tomura’s vocal cords tight. He’d maybe have worn a locket as a kid, if his sister or somebody else had given him one. And he’d definitely have put a photo of his dog in it.

But Tomura’s got a couple screws loose. His family made that crystal clear. He snaps the locket shut, then cuts off Toga and Dabi’s stupid argument. “Hey. How old do you think this is?”

“Um –” Toga studies it. “Not an antique. More than ten years, less than thirty.”

“That’s within the time frame,” Spinner says. “How did it end up on your pillow?”

Tomura’s getting tired of this bit. He waits a second or three, then calls cut. “We have a lot to do today. Let’s get going.”

They have an evidence bin for stuff that shows up on shoots, but since the locket’s a joke his friends are playing, Tomura doesn’t feel bad about pocketing it. They left it for him, anyway. Tomura wonders what’s gotten into his friends. They’re a lot more into this shoot than they’ve been on other ones, but maybe that’s a good thing. If there’s one thing Tomura’s work has taught him, it’s that every good hoax needs a small piece of truth at the center of it. The expression Dabi’s camera probably caught on his face when he opened the locket is a good start.

taglist: @shigarakislaughter @lvtuss @deadhands69 @xeveryxstarfallx @cheeseonatower @agente707 @warxhammer @handumb @atspiss @f3r4lfr0gg3r @shikiblessed @evilcookie5 @dance-with-me-in-hell @babybehh @boogiemansbitch @baking-ghoul @minniessskii @issaortiz @aslutforfictionalmen @lacrimae-lotos @stardustdreamersisi @koohiii

[itsmistyeyedbi]

the man in the mirror, the woman in the mask

Pairing: F!Detective and Rebecca | Word Count: 5,1k

Warnings: Angst, slightly suggestive comments and hints at child neglect.

Also on a03

Authors Note: This is basically Zuri's stream of consciousness throughout her morning in the office. About herself and her parents, but it mostly explores her relationship with Rebecca. This takes place in book 3.

-

She’s like her father. She knows she is. Everyone who knew him made sure to point it out and with him being the former detective of Wayhaven, damn near every resident of this tiny town did.

The colour of her eyes, the shape of her brows, the curve of her cheekbones and the bridge of her nose. The warm undertone of her dark brown skin, the small mole on her jaw and the even smaller beauty marks sprinkled on her face and body - one of them sits on her bottom lip.

Your smile lights up the room, you know? As much as your fathers did.

It does. It shines so bright that her mother couldn't bear it. She would wince and look away, turn her head, try not to be blinded by it. By the memories. A young Zuri decided to put a hand to her mouth whenever a smile made its way onto her face or her laughter filled the air, covering the mark and dimming the light that pained her. It seemed to help. She wouldn't look away anymore. But she didn’t stay long enough for her to see if it made her any less sad.

Her appearance isn't where the resemblance stops. Some things were harder to spare Rebecca from.

That's so sweet of you. Though I really shouldn’t be surprised, you are your father’s daughter.

I should’ve expected Rook’s baby girl to be as persuasive as he is. 

You have some of his personality too. He could charm anyone into doing anything he needed.

She was a daddy’s girl from the moment she set eyes on him. At least, that was what Rebecca told her - a million years ago when she had to convince her daughter to put on a bonnet before bed. Back when they would all sit around the table after the sun rose for however long they could, eating whatever Rook cooked up for breakfast before having to spend hours away from each other. Work. School. Morning or evening practice for gymnastics.

The comparisons were something Zuri has grown used to. Something she was almost proud of. Despite her time with him being short, that's still so much of him in her. But sometimes…sometimes his shadow would loom so large that it became all anyone ever saw.

The pieces of him in her.

Even Zuri herself did. Every once in a while she'd find herself following in his footsteps, trying to make her feet fit into the prints of his own and feeling a little part of her grimace when they didn't. And if she strayed too far, that little part of her would crush her with guilt and shame. She's his daughter. She should be as good as him, kind and generous and honest.

Until she remembers that that isn't all she is.

No one is immune to the effects of the marks he left behind.

But he wasn’t the only parent she had.

Has.

Whether she likes it or not, Rebecca is her mother. Even if it’s just by blood now. It's the bare minimum. But she's her mother nonetheless.

Somehow she managed to leave her marks too, and she isn't immune to them either.

-

This man is shameless in the most obvious way possible. Oblivious too.

He had to have seen the change in her body language, the way she painted a pretty smile on her face as if his presence was a pleasant surprise rather than an inconvenience. Is Mayor Friedman really so arrogant to think Rebecca enjoys his company? She doesn't spend enough time with anyone to remember what it's like to enjoy company. 

Not anyone outside of the Agency anyway.

Zuri looks on as they exchange air kisses and-

God, did he just try to give her a hug? A kiss!? 

She glances to her left and meets Captain Sung’s eyes. He looks like a soldier with how stiff his stance is and the stony expression on his face. But there’s a dead giveaway to his discomfort, to her anyway. The slight downturn of his lips. How much closer his eyebrows have knit together.

He has the courtesy to try not to look disturbed by the mayor’s eagerness to see her mother. Zuri doesn't. His focus is solely on Rebecca, so she's going to shudder and gag to her heart's content. Hopefully it distracts her from the tension that built up in her shoulders when Rebecca entered the station.

Her dramatics earn her a glare from the Captain as if he wants to scold her, and maybe part of him does, but the amusement in his eyes say otherwise. With a brow raised, she tilts her head and gives him a knowing smile - because can he really blame her? He's being a creep, at best. There's no way he doesn't want to cringe as much as she is right now.

They turn their attention to the scene playing out in front of them just in time to watch Rebecca steer her way out of that sad attempt at affection. She does it like a woman who's had to do it for years - effortlessly. Not that it's an experience unique to her, she doesn't know a woman who hasn't had to deal with overly familiar men. But it looks like she has had to deal with it from him specifically.

She pulls off looking oblivious to his sad attempt at…extending that greeting, and makes her way over to her audience. The Mayor, well, he's tugging at his jacket, running a hand through his hair, clearing his throat. Flustered, maybe even embarrassed while composing himself.

At least he's taking the rejection well.

But he doesn't know that it was a rejection.

Nevermind. Not surprising at all.

Rebecca stops in front of them with the professional demeanour she usually has, the sparkling eyes and bright smile has been tempered into a more pragmatic expression. Zuri’s had changed just as quickly, schooling her features into something more neutral the moment her mother looked in their direction. 

“It's been some time, Captain,” her tone is nowhere near as enthusiastic as they shake hands.

“It has,” his response isn't either, but it rarely ever is.

This interaction is weird to watch too. Such short and monotone responses. She knows they don't talk much, but damn. They aren't strangers greeting each other before a business meeting. 

The Captain and Rook were close. She saw it whenever he had to work on a weekend - something that seemed absurd to her back then - and he let her tag along. Mostly because of her puppy dog eyes and the vice grip she had on his legs. She remembered the laughter they shared, the jokes that didn't seem all that funny to her when she abandoned the book she was reading to listen in on their conversations. The back pats, the hands on the other's shoulders, the hugs the Captain bashfully accepted but never returned. At some point, Rebecca walked in and joined in their banter before doing what she intended to do when she arrived - drag her daughter back home.

Why the distance now? Was Rook their only tether to each other? Was Rebecca actually as closed off then as she is now?

Is it because he just watched his late friend’s widowed wife flirt with the Mayor - a married man?

That's a fair reason for this to be awkward, but that's more the mayor’s fault than hers.

“What brings you here?”

Ugh, he's talking again. The three of them look at him and-

What the hell is he doing?

He really doesn't know when to quit, does he? He's now leaning against the front desk with his elbow on its surface and his head in his hand. And that smile of his is far past friendly. He might as well find something to recline on and ask her to paint him wearing only-

Ew, nonono. She shouldn't taint her brain or The Titanic by conjuring up that image. But still…

The person manning that very desk, a volunteer, is staring at him with wide eyes and furrowed brows, mouth agape. Then they proceed to slowly slide away from him.

A snicker makes its way past her lips.

All their eyes lock onto her but her hand is already in front of her mouth. She splutters and coughs to mask the laughter that threatens to expose her - shit, don't make eye contact - then clears her throat.

“Excuse me, I just choked a little,” on the sheer audacity Mayor Friedman had and the poor volunteer who is still eying him. But they don't need to know that. Her eyes briefly meet Rebecca's and she reduces her urge to laugh into a small smirk before lightly swatting at the air. “But do tell.”

She could guess why she's here. Some new mission she needs to know about, a supernatural that's being too obvious about their powers. Whatever it is, it's nowhere near as interesting as witnessing the effect she has on this guy. He unironically tried to display himself on the front desk and didn't spare a thought for who was there.

At least Douglas isn't here to see this. He wouldn't have even acknowledged him if he was.

Her amusement fades away and she almost frowns, but catches herself. It's probably best for her to focus on Rebecca for now.

Speaking of, her eyes are still trained on her. She gestures towards her with a manicured hand as if her stare isn’t answer enough. Maybe it isn't for her not so secret admirer.

“I came to see Zuri.”

“Oh,” he's visibly deflating, shoulders slumping and all, wow.

“Aren't I popular today,” she sighs with a wry smile. It's tinged with exasperation.

She's functioning on a few hours of sleep, with no one to curl up to in bed with but anxiety after the late night diplomatic mission went south. Finding out the reason it did wasn't helpful either: she has a bounty on her head. Something she spent the entire night trying not to think about. But her day job doesn't know or care about that. In the first few minutes of getting to work she had to deflect Verda from his concern for her (with Tina’s help, because she was apparently too out of it to tell a convincing white lie) and mediate an argument between two grown men who can't tolerate each other enough to make decisions without puffing their chests and yelling. Over a simple blood drive.

In another life, she would happily donate. But her blood is a hot commodity now and needles…

A chill runs down her spine, her hand wrapping around her right wrist before her brain can register the action. The deep breath she takes is much more intentional.

That's not happening-

“I guess I was just fortunate enough to arrive while you were here, Mayor,” Rebecca laughs, something as close to a giggle as she might allow herself to do, and it's like a melody being played on a piano. Easy on the ears, enchanting…but practiced. The cadence consistent, perfect.

Fake.

She's a good actor. She can wear whatever face is needed to guide an interaction to wherever she wants it to go. She is the tide and everyone else is a little boat bobbing along, blissfully unaware of the ride they are on. The direction they're going in.

Zuri crosses her arms, her fingers twitching when she stops herself from digging them into her arm. She doesn't have much room to judge.

You could make this so much easier for me, Zee.

Fine, I’ll bite. How exactly could I do that? I’m just a name and a face she hears about.

Exactly. She has her guard up with me and it’s making her overreact. But she doesn’t know you, how reliable a friend you are.

So you want me to befriend her just to get into this alleged club of hers? What if it’s not as interesting as you think it is?

I don’t think it, I know it. All you need to do is be your charming self and we’re golden. You’re almost as irresistible as I am.

Very funny…but fine. 

You’re an angel.

She's a good actor too.

Rebecca says her farewells with a gentle wave before leading her back to her office. Doing what she intended to do when she arrived. The click-clack of their heels on the tile floor are in sync, only accompanied by the mayor’s overzealous reply and the grimace she spies on Captain’s face.

She would’ve done the same if it weren't for the window in front of her; in it's reflection,  she could see how similar the build of their bodies are. Their height, the length of their legs, the way their blazers sit on their shoulders. And despite the difference in their hairstyles - Rebecca with her cornrows tied into a low bun with a hair tie, Zuri with her twists tied into a high ponytail with a headwrap - they both had to care for the same thick, deep brown hair.

It's nothing she didn't already know, but the reminder never fails to be jarring.

She is her mother’s daughter.

-

“That was…interesting to watch.”

“What was?”

Zuri leans against the front of her desk with a smirk and raised brow. She might be able to play dumb with people like the mayor, but come on. She can't expect her to not ask about her little performance out there.

But she isn't going to spell it out for her. She jerks her head in his direction, watching him through the glass that gives them a view of the station as he leaves. That's as much as she's willing to elaborate.

“Oh,” Rebecca sighs, and Zuri can't tell if it's because it happened or because she asked. Her voice is tinged with disdain when she decides to give her an actual response. “It's part of my job to establish and maintain a good relationship with those who are in charge of this town. Staying in Mayor Friedman's good graces allows us access to many things that would be denied otherwise.”

“I never would’ve guessed that those methods would get the Agency's stamp of approval. I thought they'd go for something closer to their,” she wiggles her fingers in the air, ���meetings and treaties.”

“The Agency doesn't directly involve themselves in these matters and prefer to have this done through their agents. They don't specify how we should keep people like the mayor on our side, just that we get the job done.”

She's making it less personal, addressing her as if she asked about agents in general and not about her. Funny. 

Zuri tilts her head and watches her mother with feigned curiosity. “So do you flirt with everyone who has some kind of power in Wayhaven, or just him?”

An eyebrow twitches, but that's the only sign that she pressed a button somewhere. That, and the way Rebecca shifts her weight to adjust how she's resting against the chair she drifted to when they entered her office. “I do what gets the job done.”

“Hm,” she turns her head, taking interest in the pot plants sitting on she shelf against the wall-

Pfft. Not really. She's more focused on pressing her lips together, trying not to grin in her face.

Rebecca hasn't moved an inch since they started talking. After slipping off her blazer and draping it across the chair she's assigned herself to, she's been as cool and calm as ever. As if this - her visiting and them chatting- is the norm for them. As if anything about their relationship could be considered normal. It hasn't been anywhere close, not after Rook died.

That and their similarities, that damned reflection she saw, makes her feel…wrong. In her mind, in her body, in the feelings she has whenever her mother is around. Her bones feel like they're out of place. She wants to roll her shoulders and wrists, crack her knuckles, massage her neck, as if that would fix it. Rid her of the unease creeping along her skin.

It isn't going to. But she doesn't want to linger on why she feels this way, not now. Too much has happened already, she doesn't want to deal with Rebecca’s lacklustre attempt at comfort too. 

There isn't much else to do but poke the bear. Just a little. Just enough to see how long she can keep up this stoicism. If she can affect her in the same way. 

“Well, you certainly have the mayor wrapped around your finger. Nice dodge, by the way. Very smooth.” She chuckles, and it gets a little louder when she receives a deadpan look on her face. Zuri turns and opts to lean on the desk with the palms of her hands. “But the fact that he thought he could get a hug out of you tells me he's looking to get access to some things too.”

“Yes,” she sighs, and - aha - there's a crack in her mask for a split second when her lips curl into a subtle snarling frown. “Letting him think that that's a possibility grants us a lot of leeway.”

“Oh, I'm sure he's hoping you'll be just as…flexible.”

“Aht aht!”

Zuri burst into laughter, a hand in front of her mouth as she cackles and keels over. When was the last time she's heard her do that? She really got to her enough to bring out the Nigerian mother in her.

Rebecca crosses her arms and sucks her teeth before inhaling deeply, as if she's trying to be all stoic again.

“That's tactless, Zuri.”

“You're the one flirting to gain ‘access’, not me,” her laughter tapers off into an airy giggle as she moves to sit down behind the desk. With a long exhale, she crosses her legs and gently swivels the office chair left and right with a playful shrug. Maybe it's wrong to find some kind of amusement and relief in getting under her skin, but she rarely ever shows emotion.

The last time she saw Rebecca have range in her emotions and actually express them was when her father was still in their lives. Everything changed. She didn't expect things to be the same, there would always be a gaping hole in their family, but nothing could reach her beyond the grief she has been drowning in. The work she buries herself in. The mask she wore day in, day out.

This is the first time in years that she's caught a glimpse of the mom she had. The woman she was. The one that died with her husband.

Her heart is squirming in her chest, with yearning and bitterness and wistfulness. Maybe she missed that. Missed her. Moments like this felt more…real. Better than the moments they have when she's in a hospital bed in the facility or preparing for a mission. It's easy for her to care - and to show it - when she's close to death or danger. But what about the person she is day to day? The person beyond that?

Beyond an echo of the past and the fear of history repeating itself?

…Would she even like that person?

Would he? If he was still here?

Zuri glances away from Rebecca and leans forward to turn on the desktop. She can feel her gaze burning into her as she types in the password and she couldn't help the way her eyes flickered between her mother and the screen. That gaze burned, then simmered, then softened into something warm in seconds. She could never stay mad at her for long, though she would easily outlast Rook. This seems different though.

The warmth within her light brown eyes was holding something else as well. The same wistfulness she was feeling. That, and a spark of hope.

It gives her pause.

Did she actually get under her skin or did she decide to play along? For the two of them to act out the mother-daughter relationship they don't have?

…Whatever gets the job done she said.

Her other performance was much more entertaining. But uncomfortable too considering the territory it's heading towards.

Zuri can't say she's never thought that though. She did, and acted on it more times than she can count. Back when her days were spent balancing partying, getting a degree… and pleasing Bobby. Being his angel, swooping in when he needed her and doing whatever she could to help him get his next scoop. Whatever got the job done.

But at some point, it caught up to her. It always does. People are more than what they have or what they keep secret. Manipulation, lies, gaslighting… anything of the sort are weapons as sharp as a knife, play with it too much and you yourself will be cut. But the cuts she has are nothing compared to the scars she left in her wake. The people who were in her life - from the ones she cared about to the strangers who believed they were friends and were nothing but kind to her - couldn’t look her in the eye anymore. Some of them hoped they never would.

The consequences of her actions resulted in a fractured reputation and loneliness; and that was just University. Rebecca’s playing in an entirely different league, and the stakes are…

Something in her stomach twists. 

Okay, enough. She's a grown woman. This isn't her first rodeo. She'll be fine.

“That isn’t what I came here to discuss.”

“I figured. I won't take up anymore of your time with that.” Zuri frowns. The password is still staring back at her. Whatever this is is distracting her and not addressing it isn't working. “But it's…”

She meets her eye for a second before fixing her gaze onto the screen. “Just be careful. Jokes aside, games like that can be dangerous.”

“You're worried about me?” 

She looks up again and what was supposed to be a quick scan of her mother’s face turns into a lingering gaze. The question hangs in the air. It was asked softly, as if her breath was stolen from her lungs, with her eyes wide and mouth agape.

Is she worried?

Zuri’s eyes go back to the desktop, the screen dark from inactivity. Great, she has to type in the password again. And she does, leaving the question at just that.

“You don't have to be,” there's fondness in Rebecca’s voice that makes her fingers slip past the required letters on the keyboard. “The mayor’s not even on the board, let alone playing in the same league as I am.”

She hears her smile before she sees it. Zuri swallows and nods and finally gets the password right. It's silly, really. She should be more worried about why she's here; that's more concerning than anything.

“So, why the sudden appearance?”

Rebecca decides to sit on the chair now instead of leaning against it, and crosses her legs. She's getting comfortable for someone who won't be here long.

“I merely came to check on you.”

She opens an email, does not look up from the screen. “Why?”

“Because no matter how you feel about me, I care about you.” 

“Hm.”

“I do.” There's more conviction in her words now and concern that almost sounds frantic, like she has something to prove. Zuri supposes she does.

“Very much so,” she continues. “And you're having to handle more than most people could manage: your job here at the station, being a liaison for the Agency, the life you have outside of work… how are you coping with it all?”

“Oh, you know. Coping.”

“I'm sure it's been a great comfort to have support from others.”

Zuri almost raises a brow in apprehension. Something about the way she said that feels like she's looking to confirm something. Like she knows something…

It can't be about Tina, can it? She might be eager to find out about the supernatural world but she wouldn't blab about something this important. She knows how to keep a secret.

She looks up at her, keeping her eyes trained on her as she nods, “Yeah, having Unit Bravo around has been really helpful. Especially with it feeling like I'm part of the team.”

“Yes,” the word is drawn out and Rebecca’s focus shifts to the window, where there's a clear view of Tina working at her desk. “I'm sure Unit Bravo has been supporting you as well.”

Shit.

Zuri frowns and leans back in her seat, putting an elbow on the armrest and holding her head up with her thumb, index and middle finger. “So that's why you're here. Great. Can we discuss that later? I have work to do and I'm sure you do too.”

“I'm not here to reprimand you. That's something that isn't important right now.”

“Okay, is this supposed to be a check up then?”

Rebecca tenses before frowning and shifting in her seat. “I'm not here to check up on you, but to check on you. To see if there's anything I can do to help you.”

Silence. She doesn't know what to say to that, so she just looks at her. She's wringing her hands together - another similarity they have, except Zuri tries to hide it when she has company. It's easy when she's in company she doesn't trust or care for, but when she does? Not so much.

“I am trying…I want to be better at this,” she almost sounds timid. But she can't bring herself to take it any easier than her. There's still that feeling of wrongness in her skin. She's tired and agitated and the memories of the past aren't helping.

“At this?” 

“At us.”

She really doesn't want to do this. Not now. 

“I know things have always been tense between us,” she continues, and the first thought that comes to mind is that she's wrong. It hasn't. And it wouldn't be if she was there. “But I want to be one of the people you can turn to for comfort too, to be someone to support you throughout all of this.”

She wishes she wouldn't do this. She can't right now, she can't-

It's too much. Her chest is heavy with an amalgamation of emotions; longing, sorrow, anger, whatever else she's feeling is something she can't pinpoint and name.

This is what it takes? Forced proximity through the Agency and danger at every turn, that's what she needed to want to support her? This is the most she's seen of her mother in almost two decades, and it's only happening because the Agency was surprised that she didn't die after dealing with Murphy and her blood makes her opium to every supernatural walking the planet.

Yes, working for the Agency can be consuming. She knows that now. But Rebecca's been doing this for longer than she has and managed to balance it well enough when Rook was here. And Zuri, despite everything she has gone through, hasn't neglected her relationship or vanished from their lives.

Which means she chose this. She was capable of being there for her, of being her mom, and she chose not to. She chose her work and her grief over her daughter. But now that they see each other so often, it's more convenient for her to be her mother rather than a stranger she occasionally talks to over the phone.

Rebecca is slouching in her chair, still wringing her hands with worry and hope tugging on her features. Zuri holds her gaze for as long as she can before shaking her head and putting her face in her hands.

The way she's looking at her…she needed that before all this. When it wasn't easy or convenient. When it meant facing the pain she has to be there for her daughter after she lost her dad or holding her hand when she destroyed almost every relationship she had and the loneliness settled in. 

Don't cry don't cry don't cry-

She took a deep breath, then another and another until her eyes no longer stung and the lump in her throat shrank. The ache in her heart eases, her mind goes quiet.

She doesn't need this. Not now. Not anymore.

“I can't think about this right now.”

“Why not?” 

Zuri thinks back to every missed phone call, every birthday and holiday and anniversary that she wasn't there for. And the main excuse she would get when she did manage to reach her, when she lit up at the sound of her voice.

I'm sorry, Zuri. Things have been so busy, I just…don't have the time for it right now. But I'll make it up to you another time. I promise.

She only ever fulfilled a promise once. The hundreds of others fell to the wayside.

“There's too much going on. Like you said, I'm dealing with more than most people could manage,” she leans forward and rests her elbows on the desk, clasping her hands together before meeting her gaze. Her eyes and voice are hollow when she continues. “I don't have the time or energy for this right now.”

Rebecca stiffens and gives a small nod, pressing her lips together and staring at a spot on the wall behind her. 

“...Another time maybe,” she eventually responds, her voice quiet but thick with disappointment, with a hope that's been squashed.

“Mhm.”

She gets up and the disappointment is more obvious now; her posture lacks the professionalism and confidence she usually has. She looks smaller, her body having folded into itself. She grabs her blazer, slips it on and just like that, the mask falls into place. Back straight, shoulders relaxed, hands clasped in front of her. The only evidence of their conversation is in her eyes. Emotions are at home in the eyes, they're always difficult to control.

“If you need me, I'm just a phone call away.”

“Are you?”

Palpable silence. The air is heavy with tension. Rebecca is the one to fill it, but even then it's softly, as if she's trying not to break it - doesn't have the right to.

“I will be.”

The ‘I promise’ is absent, but implied. Maybe she thinks it's better not to say it out loud, maybe she remembers how many of them she has broken.

Zuri shifts her focus to the desktop, moving the mouse so the screen lights up again. The click clack of heels and the office doors opening and closing is all she needs to know that she left. She finally allows herself to let out a long sigh, feeling lighter already. 

There's a bitter satisfaction in throwing the words she heard for years back at her. It's not unwarranted. She's busy. Now isn't the time to deal with their issues.

But she isn't sure there ever will be.

She is her mother’s daughter, after all.

[nochd]

This was on @whatareyoureallyafraidof's post where they put up this:

And I responded with this image:

and promised in the tags to elaborate if asked. And, @frodo-the-weeb, I will. But it's going to get long and I'm going to have to split it up into several reblogs.

First of all, since not everybody in the world is a Silmarillion enthusiast, let me explain what we're referring to.

One of the stories in the Silmarillion, and possibly the one Tolkien cared about the most, is the tale of Lúthien and Beren; a highly condensed version of a narrative poem called the Lay of Leithian, which Tolkien began writing in the 1930s and tried to get his publisher interested in after the success of The Hobbit.

(Their readers said no, and they tactfully asked him to focus on his Hobbit sequel instead. "The result," in Tolkien's own words, "was The Lord of the Rings.")

The skeleton of The Lay of Leithian is as follows; I'm intentionally leaving out a bunch of information that weaves it into the overarching story of the Silmarillion but isn't relevant to the thesis I'm advancing here.

Lúthien, an Elven princess and enchantress, falls in love with a mortal man, a ranger called Beren. Her father, the Elven King Thingol, disapproves and sends him Beren off to fetch one of the jewels from the crown of the Dark Lord Morgoth. Lúthien tries to join Beren but her father imprisons her in a tower to stop her, only it's actually a treehouse because they're forest elves. Lúthien magically grows her hair long and uses it to escape. By the time she catches up with Beren he is chained in the dungeons of Morgoth's second-in-command, Thû (whom Tolkien later renamed Sauron). She rescues him with the help only of a dog, who defeats Thû himself in single combat. They then live in the forest together for quite some time, but Beren feels bad about being the reason she can't go home to her family, and still intends to finish his mission and get the jewel. He leaves one morning while she's still asleep, so as not to put her in danger, and then when he's on the threshold of Morgoth's underground fortress in the far North of Middle-Earth she catches up with him again and he accepts that she's not going to be put off. Together they enter Morgoth's fortress and make their way to his throne room. They are in disguise but Morgoth is not fooled and uncovers Lúthien in front of everyone, declaring his intention to make her one of his many slaves. Lúthien offers to sing and dance for him, which is the way she works her magic. She puts everyone in the throne room to sleep, including both Beren and eventually Morgoth. She wakes Beren and he takes the jewel and they flee, but as they get to the outer door they are stopped by Morgoth's guard-wolf, who bites off Beren's hand holding the jewel.

That's as far as Tolkien ever got with the poem, but we have the synopsis in the prose Silmarillion to tell us the rest of the story; again cutting it down to the quick, Thingol accepts Beren as his son-in-law, Morgoth's guard-wolf attacks Doriath, Beren goes and hunts it but is mortally wounded, his spirit goes to the Halls of Waiting in the Undying Lands where the dead in Middle-Earth go, Lúthien also goes there and, again through her magical song, persuades Mandos the god of the dead to let him come back. Mandos offers her a choice: live on immortally as an Elf without Beren, or return to Middle-Earth with Beren but both of them will grow old and die. She chooses the latter.

Tolkien created Lúthien as a portrait of his wife Edith, which makes Beren a picture of himself. We know this for a fact because he had LUTHIEN written on her grave when she died, and when he joined her in it two years later the name BEREN was written for him:

Now on the lower right side of my response image you'll see Pauline Baynes' illustration of the Lady in the Green Kirtle from The Silver Chair, one of C. S. Lewis's Narnia stories. A quick synopsis of the Lady of the Green Kirtle's part in the story:

The Lady is a witch who rules a gloomy kingdom underneath Narnia, accessible through a fissure in the earth in an old ruined city far to the North. Before the story opens she has enspelled and kidnapped King Caspian's son Prince Rilian, whom she intends to send leading an army to conquer Narnia in her name. For twenty-three hours a day he is her willing slave and lap-dog; to maintain the spell, he must be bound to the titular silver chair for the remaining hour, during which he is sane and aware of his imprisonment. The protagonists, Eustace and Jill and their guide Puddleglum, meet her and Rilian unawares on their journey to the North; she sends them astray and almost succeeds in getting them eaten by giants. Eventually they rescue Rilian from the chair, but she sings a magical song which very nearly puts them all to sleep but for Puddleglum's intervention. Foiled, she transforms into a serpent, attacks them, and they kill her.

It is my contention that the Lady in the Green Kirtle is Lewis's caricature of Lúthien, with the enslaved and befuddled Prince Rilian representing Beren; and further, that Lewis knew or recognised that Lúthien and Beren were a literary portrait of the Tolkiens, so that The Silver Chair is ultimately a nasty commentary on their marriage.

In forthcoming reblogs I will lay out my evidence for this thesis.

[unopposablethumbsao3]

Med school student and noted old man fucker Julian Bashir taking his daddy issues to get drunk one night and running into noted old man Curzon Dax--Curzon, of course, is like "oh hey, free twink", and fucks him in a bathroom stall before heading out to continue his evening of, I don't know, head butting Klingons and both causing and resolving interstellar diplomatic crises. Julian never actually gets his name, and continues with his hot mess express voyage to salutatorian and Deep Space Nine.

Years later, Jadzia Dax on a ship to her new posting, only half paying attention to the sort-of-familiar twink CMO who's very awkwardly hitting on her. She knows she's seen this guy before, she just can't quite figure out where, like, this is his very first posting, he's a brand new graduate from Starfleet medical, and Jadzia's never actually been to Earth herself, in fact the last time Dax was in San Francisco was ... Oh. Oh no.

And of course, at first this is just a little awkward for her--she doesn't like all the things Curzon used to get up to, but like, they were mostly pretty harmless, and she certainly doesn't begrudge him a quick hookup with a very pretty young med student, even if he was possibly a little drunker than she'd like. And of course, it's not like Julian's ever going to know--he was wasted, and Curzon never even told him his name, so really, it's not a problem for Jadzia to put it aside and just be a professional. He's a colleague! No worries! That's that!

Except then she starts to get to know Julian. And beyond the fact that he's a damn good doctor and, it turns out, a deeply loyal friend, the closer they get, the more she starts to see flashes of how vulnerable he is under all the bluster and bravado--he puts on a hell of a brave front, but there's something wounded about him, and a deep, deep need for other people's approval, especially from potential father figures. All of which adds up to Jadzia feeling worse and worse about what happened between him and Curzon. But of course at this point, it feels like it's a little too late for her to say anything. What would it achieve other than embarrassing him, and adding a layer of complication to what's somehow become one of her closest, most important friendships.

Which is why she instead quietly swears a Klingon blood oath that she will protect this twink with her life if it comes to it--that's her pet twink now and anybody messing with him in any way for any reason is going to have to answer to her.

And yes this also means that when Julian and Garak start dating, Jadzia turns up at Garak's shop at closing time with some very pointed questions and an even pointier knife, and refuses to leave until she's absolutely certain that Garak's intentions are honourable (insofar as he's capable of honourable intentions) AND that he knows that if he hurts Julian, she will in fact be carving out his heart and eating it in the middle of the Promenade. Which of course means that Garak figures out what happened between Julian and Curzon because you can't go off on him like that without him instantly clocking the ulterior motives, so now they're at mutually assured destruction, which of course is how they also start to become very good friends (yes Worf hates this).

Also, Jadzia does NOT die during the war--she's Julian's best man when he marries Garak on Cardassia ten years later (neither she nor Garak ever tell Julian about the whole Curzon thing, or the whole I-will-eat-your-heart thing, though he lowkey knows SOMETHING is up because they won't stop exchanging meaningful nods every time they get a little drunk together).

[burningcheese-merchant]

Alright, so. Now that we have official confirmation for how Awakened Hollyberry looks (she's gorgeous btw, slay queen), I'd love to take the time to talk about certain design motifs I've noticed in every Ancient - namely, that they all seem to incorporate aspects of their Beast counterpart into their appearances upon awakening.

Let's look at Dark Cacao first.

Obviously, he has an awful lot more white in his design now. "The balance of black and white is key," he says. And he demonstrates that with his hair as well as his attire: a pleasing mixture of black and white, perfectly split down his middle, in such a way that they mirror each other exactly.

Next, Golden Cheese.

It can be said that the reddish tones were added more to her surroundings than to she herself (fucking LOOK AT THAT BACKGROUND); however, it remains clear that the most important part is her Soul Jam. Upon awakening, it becomes a striking mix of gold/yellow AND red, both of which seemingly melting into each other. There are also red accents in her crown/headdress now, making it look like that red hue/glow that's in her Soul Jam is spilling outwards. (Not to mention the red triangle on her spear.)

Third is Pure Vanilla.

Smaller detail is how his brooch now more closely resembles Shadow Milk's, with those teensy little dual prongs (or whatever they're called) on the sides. Bigger detail is how the underside of his cape/cloak is not only a dark blue, which was previously nowhere to be seen on his person (but everywhere on Shadow Milk's), but there are eyes in it. Exactly like the eyes in Shadow Milk's hair.

And finally, Hollyberry.

Holly has adopted an even more unique and interesting change than the other 3 have: her Soul Jam has outright changed shape, now more closely matching the angular shape of Eternal Sugar's Soul Jam. Furthermore, there are wing shapes/designs not only in her helmet, but on the back of her shield, as well. (It can also be argued that the golden holly leaves on her helmet resemble a halo. Who else has a halo?)

Why do these details matter? What do they tell us? In my opinion, they demonstrate a specific aspect of the Ancients' enlightenment: their understanding and acceptance of their Beast counterparts and their vices. In being briefly touched by apathy, Dark Cacao remembered who and what it is he must be fighting for; it is thanks to it, and to Mystic Flour by extension, that he overcame his flaws and awakened. Through her battle with Burning Spice and the suffering he inflicted upon her, Golden Cheese came to see the merit in destruction, in that it is what she wanted and needed to carry out in order to defeat him and save everyone; destruction as a form of justice and protection, not aimless cruelty. In his time in the Spire of All Knowledge, plus his brief but willing descent into corruption and despair, Pure Vanilla came to truly grasp the meaning behind both his own actions and Shadow Milk's; embracing deceit in the pursuit of truth. And it will likely be that Hollyberry realizes the folly in her chronic desire to run away from and ignore her problems while trapped in Eternal Sugar's jewelry box, and remember who she raises her shield for and why, thus regaining her true passion while wallowing in sloth.

Resolution cannot exist without Apathy, Abundance cannot exist without Destruction, Truth cannot exist without Deceit, and Passion cannot exist without Sloth. While they may not explicitly state this understanding through words (minus Pure Vanilla), it is nevertheless conveyed through these other details. Dark Cacao, too, once knew apathy through his own bitter withdrawal from the world; he just retreated behind walls and not into a cocoon. Golden Cheese was also a victim of the cycle of change, and had everything she worked for ruined; instead of bitterly forsaking all life and letting everything go in acceptance of brtual nihilism, she just chose the opposite extreme of clinging too hard to what remained of who and what she loved and refused to let go, to the point of severe delusion. Pure Vanilla also knew the pain truth and knowledge often bring - most notably in learning what truly became of White Lily - and recognizes the desire to obscure these things in favor of amusing, comforting lies. The Ancients understand their other halves completely, their hatred and pain and sorrow, and the virtues turned vices they now stand for. And thus, they quietly embrace the power and importance of these skewed ideals, for it is they, and those fallen heroes that champion them, that finally made the Ancients become who they needed to be. They finally became whole.

In essence, they say, "you are a part of me, now and forever, for better or worse. And I accept that. I accept you."

I've been wanting to make this analysis post for a while lol. Thank you all for coming to my TED Talk, I look forward to when and how White Lily incorporates Silent Salt into her design

[tragic-ships-tournament]

Tragic Ships Tournament Semi Finals

Madoka Kaname and Homura Akemi (Madohomu) from Puella Magi Madoka Magika VS

Propaganda under the cut!

Chainshipping:

No propaganda submitted, but cmon. Pull out the giant essay.

"Okay so our buddy Jigsaw here, John to his friends, puts Adam and Gordon in a trap in the so-called Saw Bathroom.

Adam wakes up from unconscious in a full bathtub and gasps for air trying to get out. In doing so, he inadvertently pulled the plug. It is pitch black in the room. A voice calls out from the other side of the room.

The voice is Gordon. His name is Lawrence Gordon, he's a doctor. For a few moments his voice is all there is until Gordon turns on the light. They are both chained to metal pipes in opposite corners. They introduce themselves. There is a dead body in the middle of the room.

Neither man trusts the other. In attempts to escape, they find clues: a clock that is brand new and as such the opposite of the rest of the room; an envelope with a cassette in Adam's pockets; and a casette, a key and a bullet in Gordon's. The key opens neither man's chain.

But there is a casette player in the hand of the dead man in the middle of the room.

With some difficulty, Adam is able to reach it so that he can play his tape which detailed his crimes (as according to John) and how he will either watch himself die or do something about it. This is a poetic trap on John's part as Adam is a voyeur and is paid by various people to follow others around and takes photos on them. As for Gordon? Well, first he sends his tape to Adam to hear first before hearing it himself. His crime is that as a doctor (his name is Lawrence Gordon, he's a doctor) he spends his days telling people they're going to die, giving them their death sentence. Now he must carry out that sentence himself. He must kill Adam by 6 o'clock or Gordon's wife and daughter will die.

The dead man in the middle of the room was one of Gordon's patients.

The recording gives them several other clues and soon they find a plastic bag in the toilet with two hacksaws and a bag of photos inside. Adam throws one to Gordon and immediately begins on his own chain. The saw breaks.

In anger, Adam throws it at the mirror which smashes. Gordon realises the saws are not for the chains but for their legs. This is when they realise they've been abducted by Jigsaw. Gordon mentions that Jigsaw had previously tried to frame him for murder by leaving his penlight at the scene of one of Jigsaw's crimes. Adam grows distrustful of Gordon because that's a weird detail to mention, huh? And in a fit of panic and anger, he takes the broken mirror shard and threatens to kill our boy Gordon (Lawrence Gordon, he's a doctor) unless he explains what the hell is going on. Then he notices that the mirror is a one-way mirror. He smashes the rest of it until he's cut through the glass and they see a camera.

A camera watching their every move. Adam soon learns that the camera is protected by another pane of glass, this one shatterproof.

Gordon, bless his heart, is able to calm Adam down and he begins to tell Adam about his family. He has a wife named Alison and a daughter called Diana. Adam asks if he wants more children, Gordon replies no as he doesn't think Diana gets enough time with her parents as is.

This nice conversation is ruined when Gordon tossed Adam his wallet so Adam can look at the picture of them in his wallet. That picture isn't there; instead, there's a picture of them tied up and gagged in their apartment. Adam doesn't want to worry Gordon so he quietly pockets it and just says the photo isn't there. This photo also has a clue that leads to Adam asking Gordon to turn off the light at which point they see a glowing X and are able to get the next puzzle in the trap. (It's a very drawn out trap compared to Jigsaw's more oftenly used one and one em traps) Gordon retrieves a box with a lighter, two cigarettes, a note saying the cigarettes arent poisonous (factually untrue consideeing lung cancer but John's an engineer not a doctor) and a phone. The phone can't be used to make calls so no 911 can save these white boys right now.

Adam, who doesn't know about the note, asks for a cigarette. Gordon says no.

Gordon asks Adam how he knew to turn off the light. Adam tries to lie, like a liar, and fails, like a failure, and is forced to reveal the photo. This is how Gordon (his name is Lawrence Gordon, he's a doctor) is able to come up with his big plan. He, having figured out it was poidonous, dips one cigarette into the blood of the dead man in the middle of the room. He turns off the light again. He explains his plan to Adam.

Lights come back up, Gordon gives Adam a cigarette and a lighter. Adam takes a drag. Suddenly what? Oh no? He's dying? Never mind, he's being electric shocked through his chain because boy howdy can that boy not act.

Also, when you turn off the lights, people can't see you. They can still hear you.

Gordon points his anger at Adam for the failure of the plan though again, he did just tell Adam the plan by talking. Like that's not that secure. But the electric shock triggers something in Adam. He remembers his abduction and having no one else in the room to talk to (besides the dead body), he tells Gordon about it. Their traumas are entwining. Then the phone rings. It's Diana. She begs her dad to save them. Then the phone is given to Alison who tells Gordon that he can't trust Adam and that they've known each other for a long time. Gordon confronts Adam. Adam admits that he's known who Gordon was for a few days. He'd been paid to follow Gordon around and take photos of what he was doing. Adam shows him the photos. Which photos, you ask? The ones in that bag that were in the plastic bag in the toilet. I'm sure you've forgotten about them now. They argue and Adam admits he followed Gordon to a hotel where Gordon was meeting up with one of his students, Carla. They were about to start an affair. Adam knows about this. As does John. That's the real reason Gordon is in this trap. A Welcome Home Cheater sign? No, no. This one gets the Saw Bathroom.

Convinced that whoever hired Adam must be Jigsaw, Gordon presses him on it. Adam relents. It's not Jigsaw. It's a detective who's convinced Gordon is Jigsaw.

They fall silent again. They figure out one of Jigsaw's henchmen is a guy called Zep who's an orderly at the hospital. The time runs out. The phone rings again. It's Alison! She's broken free! They're saved! Gunshots. Diana screams. Gordon cries. The chain electric shocks Gordon into unconsciousness. Adam immediately tries to wake him up, terrified Gordon is dead. He's not. But he's broken down. And when he was being electrocuted, he'd chucked the phone out of reach. Out of all other options, Gordon (his name is Lawrence Gordon, he's a doctor) uses his shirt to stanch his leg and begins to cut his foot off. Adam begs him not to and to just calm down, but Gordon's too far gone. When the deed is done (which you don't see in the film by the way, the first Saw was very tame when it came to gore surprisingly enough), he crawls to the dead body in the room and takes the gun out of the man's hand. He loads the gun with the one bullet he has. He shoots Adam. Adam falls back like he's in Looney Tunes. Gordon screams at the camera and begs them to save his family. And then Zep comes in. He was the one holding Gordon's family hostage. Gordon tries to shoot him. Gordon had one bullet in his gun. His shots are unsurprisingly ineffective. Zep is unimpressed with this. It is just a rapidly paling man missing a foot shooting an empty gun like he's in a water pistol battle in a county undergoing a drought. He decides to kill Gordon as he didn't kill Adam by 6 o'clock. And Zep is from the county over and has plenty of water to spare. He aims his gun at Gordon.

But he forgot about Adam. Like a Bugs Bunny reborn, Adam comes in from behind with the toilet tank lid. In his fear and pain and anger, he beats Zep over and over and over with the lid until Gordon is able to calm him down. They stare at each other like sad gay men. Gordon tells Adam that if he doesn't get out, he'll bleed to death here. Adam begs him to stay. Gordon promises to come back for him. Adam begs him not to leave him. Gordon crawls out the room. Adam is left alone, a bullet in his shoulder and his heart crawling away. He's all alone. Apart from John Kramer. He was the dead body in the middle of the room this whole time. He stands up. He tells Adam that the key to his chain was in the bathtub. The one that Adam had accidentally pulled the plug out of. He leaves the room. Game over.

Adam will die in this room. It was always going to end like this. One of them was going to die in that room. If Adam lives, Gordon must die. If Gordon lives, he must kill Adam. There is no way in the world for these two to survive, not together. There was always going to be a dead body in that bathroom."

Madohomu:

"madoka magica aired 12 episodes in 2011, with a sequel movie titled “rebellion” released in 2014. it’s been over 10 years since then, and these two have become the face of yuri. if someone makes a meme about loving yuri and makes a collage of example ships, madohomu are 100% gonna be present. video essays, fanart, fics, music videos and all kinds of fan projects featuring them are still wildly popular on all social media platforms.

but let’s talk about them (without going into too many spoilers, so this will be about the thematics in their relationship). they are light and darkness. the ying and the yang. forever intertwined. one would not exist without the other, yet they cannot exist together. for madoka has too much love for every living thing and too little for herself. and homura has too much love for madoka it blinds her to everything and everyone else, and she struggles with deep self-hatred. madoka has forsaken her own existence for the world, and homura has forsaken the world she created for her. the show has a lot of religious imagery, and madoka is akin to a god; there’s a shot of homura, who grew up catholic, kneeling at the feet of a gigantic statue of madoka, praying, but her hands stain her clothes. because if madoka is god, then homura is lucifer - specifically, iblis, the muslim version of lucifer, who loved god so much he betrayed him, for he’d rather defy him than bow to his creation, humans. and homura would rather defy the sanctity of madoka’s wish, rather than obey its laws, for she will take madoka’s happiness in her hands, if she refuses to. in the movie, dolls representing homura’s inner machinations yell, “gott ist tot”, for homura’s god, madoka, dies in the movie, when homura remembers that madoka was human first, and godhood was something she reached to save everyone, against her best interest and happiness. their relationship is one of love, kindness, obsession, devotion, hope, faith, worship - they are the thesis and the antithesis, the beginning and the end, the alpha and omega, an unstoppable force and an immovable object. forever locked in a struggle, never fully embracing, for madoka will always sacrifice herself for the world, and homura will always doom the world and herself for madoka."

[yumeka-sxf]

Japanese Linguistic Observations in Spy x Family - part 6

Part 6 – Supporting character musings – Eden kids

In the first three parts of this post series, I talked in detail about how each of the Forgers' specific ways of speaking in the Japanese version helps shape their character. Now I want to analyze the supporting SxF characters in terms of their speech and see what traits we can infer. I'll discuss the Eden kids first, and then the supporting adult characters like Yuri, Fiona, etc, in the next post.

I'm going to start with Damian since I feel he has the most complexity in terms of what can be analyzed from his speech. While there's nothing about his speech that really stands out to me, at least compared to the Forgers, there's still little telling nuances based on his choice of words and honorifics. He uses casual speech for fellow kids his age, and polite speech for (most) adults, which is normal…I say "most" adults though because, while he uses keigo (the standard polite form of Japanese speech) for Eden teachers and the adults in his family, he doesn't use it at all during his first encounter with Loid. He even calls Loid おっさん("ossan"), which is basically "mister" but for middle-aged or older men, instead of 兄さん("niisan"), which is the same, but for a younger man akin to Loid's age.

Later, as Loid's goody-goody act gets on his nerves, his speech becomes a bit vulgar. He adamantly shouts that he "won't hang out with that peasant girl," using the "crude" conjugation of "won't be friends with/hang out with", 相手にしねー! ("aitei ni shine!") instead of the casual 相手にしない ("aitei ni shinai"). He even says うるせー ("urusee") which means "shut up" and is even more rude than うるさい ("urusai"). I'm actually surprised he let himself talk like that in front of Donovan. I suppose it shows how passionate he is about his "aversion" to Anya.

Speaking of Anya, he's never addressed her by name in the Japanese version, opting instead to call her, at best, the casual form of "you," "omae" ("お前") and at worst, some rude name like "temee" ("手前"), the derogatory form of "you."

When it comes to his family, he addresses Donovan and Melinda as 父上 ("chichi-ue") and 母上("haha-ue") respectively. These are more formal terms for the standard polite ones typically used to address your father and mother, "o-tou-san" (お父さん) and "o-kaa-san" (お母さん). For Demetris though, he's more casual. Not only does he use plain speech, but he also calls Demetris 兄貴 ("aniki"), which is a term of endearment, like "Big Bro."

He uses casual speech with Jeeves as well, which makes sense since Jeeves is a butler and thus "lower" than anyone in the Desmond household.

To me, all of this implies that Damian is a fairly normal kid in terms of how he addresses those around him, with the exception being his extreme formality with his parents. Terms like "chichi-ue" and "haha-ue" are mostly used in uptight, flatulent families, and obviously families like the Desmonds match that description. But it also shows how this is forcing Damian to rarely get the affection and bonding he craves from his parents.

As a side note, I don't have much to say about Bill and George, since they're such minor characters and nothing about their speech stood out to me in the few chapters they appeared in. But I found it interesting that they both call Damian "Damian-kun," with "-kun" in this case being an honorific to show endearment for a male equal, similar to "-chan" for females. However, Damian doesn't use "-kun" with any of the other male students, which is another indication of his comparatively standoffish personality.

Ewen and Emile speak similarly to Damian, using casual speech for fellow kids and keigo for adults. The exception with them, however, is that they address Damian with keigo as well. Not only that, but they call him "Damian-sama," which is unusual among friends their age. The honorific "-sama" is more humbling than "-san" and is often translated as "Lord" or "Master." I wonder what Damian has done to make them think so highly of him.

Moving onto Becky, she uses feminine speech in most situations. This speech is defined by adding softening interjections at the end of sentences, like "ne" (ね), "no" (の), and especially "wa" (わ). She also uses a variety of honorifics for the other characters. She calls Anya "Anya-chan," with "-chan" being a term that shows affection between female friends. She uses the feminine "I/me" pronoun "atashi" as well.

Because of her infatuation with Loid, she calls him "Loid-sama," with "-sama," as I just discussed, being a very polite honorific used for someone you're subservient to, or at least someone you look up to immensely.   

She's actually never called Yor by her name – at first she calls Yor 奥さま ("oku-sama"), which is a polite way of addressing someone else's wife, typically translated as something like "honorable wife." But after she sees how strong Yor is and "officially" decides to be her mentee (in her mind anyway), she calls Yor 師匠 ("shishou") which means "master" or "teacher" in a trainee to trainer sense.

But despite her high social status as a Blackbell, Becky uses the most childish terms for her mother and father, "papa" (パパ) and "mama" (ママ) respectively.

It's not uncommon for very young kids to address their parents in such a way, but it is ironic that everything else about Becky makes her seem like she wants to be more "grown-up" than she actually is, but she's still just a kid deep down, at least when it comes to her relationship with her parents.

Continue to Part 7 ->

<- Return to Part 5

[ysrjune]

《 MAKE EVERY NIGHT

YOUR VALENTINE 𖹭 》

STEPHEN GLASS X READER FT. LITTLE BROTHERS!SAM & SCOTT

freaked out Stevie 😈🤑 #stayfreaks

It had been a while since you've visited Stephen's parents' house. It had been at least 5 months since there were no family events going on. Being there felt a little weird, especially since his parents weren't even there, and you were going to be baby-sitting his brothers. Well, he was gonna babysit. You were only here to keep him company. Scott and Sam liked you. Maybe a little more than they should, but that doesn't mean that both of them aren't annoyed that you would be there. They didn't need to see Steve cuddled up to you 24/7 while they're not allowed to have their girlfriends over.

"It's cute that your room never changes." You smile at how Stephen's childhood room was still the same even if he no longer lived there. Video-game action figures that were still in their boxes, posters from movies and bands he still loves to this day, old books and other things that were in storage on top of his closet in a box. "Mom doesn't want it to. She says she comes in sometimes when she misses me." Steve grins and begins putting his and your clothes away in the old dresser. "I always knew I was her favorite. Maybe it's cause I was never a brat."

—

What was the one rule that Stephen had for his brothers when their girlfriends were over when he still lived there a year ago? Don't be loud. The boys had turned 16 and had finally gotten permission to bring their girlfriends over, but they only did it when their parents weren't home. Stephen never cared if the girls came over. He just didn't need to hear his stupid brothers going at it in the middle of the night. He also never cared that his brothers were sexually active. Those two were (hopefully) smart enough to be safe.

But tonight, Stephen had broken that rule. It's literally the first night of staying there, and he was already all over you. Large hands groping at your tits through that bra he loves and his lips pressing small kisses to your tummy. He was quiet at first while engaging in foreplay, but once he was actually fucking you, he couldn't shut up. He's always been very vocal and loud while having sex. It's sort of weird to him. He could stay quiet while jerking off, but not when he's having some fun with your pretty body..

The other thing about him is that he acts so dominant while talking sex up. "I'm gonna fuck you so good right on this stupid creaky bed. I remember when we were first talking, I used to touch myself thinking about how it would be like to make you cry my name." He mumbled against your leaking pussy. "I'd get off on just thinking about fingering you." He sucks on your clit once more before sliding two digits in your wet entrance. "Just. Like. That." He's so good with his fingers. Too good. Long and warm.

"Do you fucking hear that?" Scott barges into his twins room. "Yeah, he's such a hypocrite." Sam rolls his eyes, pausing his game. "Wow, learned a new word?" Scott insults his brother and sticks out his tongue. "Shut the fuck u–" He was about to say before hearing a loud moan coming from across the hall. Sam slowly turns his head over there and raises an eyebrow. "How about you tell him to shut up." Scott huffs angrily and leaves downstairs.

Steve keeps his hands on your hips as you ride him. Not guiding, just there for him to grab onto. "Keep fucking me like that, oh my God.." He rolls his eyes back. "I need you so bad. I missed you so much." It had only been two days that you and Stephen hadn't fucked, but he swore he was dying. Seeing you walk around you apartment in only your underwear and then refusing to touch him was torture.

The blond forces his thumb inside your mouth, whimpering at the sight. "Fuck, you look so hot.." You swirl your tongue around his finger, making his cheeks go red. Then he pulled it out and shoved his ring and middle finger inside instead. You know just how pathetic he is? He came just as soon as you sucked on those. "I-im sorry! I just.. I—.. I couldn't help it. You looked so good.." He cries as you roll your hips, still trying to reach your orgasm and working him through his high.

He was being pushed into the headboard and the bed was creaking loudly. "cum for me? give it t'me, I dont.. I don't wanna leave you hanging.." His thumb finds your clit. He kept moaning loudly, and honestly, you felt bad for his brothers. Yes, they terrorized him all the time by doing the same thing but Stephen was honestly too much of a goody-two shoes to actually be doing this. Or atleast he was. "Shut up, your brothers are probably annoyed with you already." You slap his cheek. "Mmph.. s-sor—mmhh!! so-rry.." He whines in between words.

You shove your fingers in his mouth and he goes crazy. Deep throating them and bobbing his head. What a little freak..

His glasses fogged, and he set them aside on his desk. "Are you close? Please tell me you are.. I wanna fuck you in another position. pleasepleaseplease." He begs sweetly with his blue eyes and needy tone. It only took a couple more minutes for you to finish, and once you did, he flipped you around and arched your back for you. He pressed down on your middle and then gave your ass a smack. "Just staring at you could get me off." He eases into you.

Again, he was a pathetic whining mess. And again! with his fingers in your mouth. He didn't even realize how often he does it. He thinks it's so attractive. "Y-you know.. I was thinking mmh.. that.. that I could maybe do your homework for you so that you can get it done faster.. and you can give me all your attention.." What. An. Attention whore. You hum a 'mm' around his fingers as a yes. Maybe he wouldn't be this way had you never spoiled him with your attention. He deserves it anyway. He's always so nice, and he never really got much attention growing up.

"I'm gonna cum I'm gonna cum oh my God. Don't stop moving on me baby. aah.." Stephen whines, his thrust growing more sloppy but still feeling delicious. "Im—mm.. uh.." He spills himself inside you, feeling extra sensitive due to you cumming around him as soon as he was done.

But he doesn't stay dominant when you suck his cock or when he's in you. "Stroke it while you suck it..aah..aah.. auuhh.." His moans get higher pitched with every one that comes out of his mouth. "Yesyesyesyes," He closes his eyes and rolls his hips into your mouth. "Mmm, mhm.. y—es.. oh my God.."

Breakfast that morning at the table was.. surprisingly not awkward? It was more like.. you know, just a normal conversation. Well, for the boys, at least.

"It's not fair that you get to scream at the top of your lungs when you get head, but when it's ME, I get in trouble. I!! get called ANNOYING." Sam complains while chewing his pancake. "Or when the bed makes a bunch of noise and it's only a problem when it's because of me. Like, you're such a hypocrite." Scott rolls his eyes. "Hey, that's my word." Sam cocks an eyebrow at his brother. "You didn't know what it meant last week. Shut up." And then the boys suddenly forgot about why they were complaining the first place. They took their frustration on eachother in the living room, tackling eachother.

"We are so having sex every night and being loud to piss them off." Stephen smirks as soon as you wrap your arms around his neck from behind. "Because you wanna get back at them for those sleepless nights?" You giggle. "Yeah. And for all the picture frames that fell and broke." He scoffs.

@bxbyysstuff @anakinstwinklebunny @lovethestarrs @valloos @anisangeldust @xo-yaaaaaasxo @anakinca @dollfilmz @alexlovesysrjune @sockiess @sythethecarrot @speaknow-sw @loveamira @alealuvshayden @mvst4far

[kiame-sama]

I can already imagine the human giving the hatchling human names after hearing each name malleus gives. She knows it's a royalty thing but she just can't imagine all of them having names starting with Mal. So she gives them human middle names and calls them by that name. Sometimes the little ones won't even answer to their royal names just the ones mama gave them. (Also I can just imagine mc naming one Chad idk why but it makes me cackle) (or she names one after her parents)

Also I thought about mc putting her kids in burrito jail instead of air jail. She just wrapped them tightly in a blanket till they learn there lesson. Unfortunately her kids share a singular brain cell and they just stare at her, bleping, and blinking one eye at a time. They have no idea that they are in trouble they just enjoy mama holding them.

Also she definitely have baby leashes for them cause you can't tell me those babies aren't runners/flight risks. Like they see the outside and immediately try to get away. Mc nearly has a stroke the first time it happened and immediately bought fire proof baby leashes. Plus the leashes have cute little backpacks to store treats on them.

On another note when the babies do get their fae form would they look like babies or toddlers?

The names are primarily to honor Maleficent as the eldest of the lineage. I could also see all the babies getting fun middle names too. Mallechite's middle name is Thorn and he barely responds to Mallechite where he will always respond to Thorn even if they are talking about a thorn bush and not actually Mallechite.

Ya can't tell me these chubby little things burrito wrapped in a blanket aren't the cutest thing on the face of the planet. Slowly frog blinking as the try to stretch out their little forked tongues to give their Human parent a kiss or sniff their Human parent curiously. Not a thought behind those eyes as they squeak and purr to their Human parent that has since forgotten why the baby is in burrito jail and is just snuggling the clueless hatchling that trusts them so deeply and wholeheartedly.

The white one is 100% a flight risk and is energetic enough to run halfway across Briar Valley before tiring. They all mostly stay close to their Human parent- in part because the Human means safety, and partly because of that Human addiction they are also susceptible to- but they do like to explore and chase all the little critters that call the outdoors their home. Just make sure to have extra hands (Lilia, Sebek, Silver, and Malleus) if the plan is to take all eight out for an excursion. Don't put treats in the bags, they will rip them open for the treats and don't understand why they can't have those treats right now.

They will look like they are in between toddler and infant, because they are trying to look more like their parents- the Human and Malleus- so it will be their first conscious use of magic. Their primary scale color is their hair color in their fae-humanoid forms with the secondary scale color being their highlights and horn color. Their eyes are the same color between both forms. Their ears are a little more rounded than Malleus' ears and their eyes just a little bit bigger than normal for young Fae. They are almost as addictive to Malleus and other monsters as the Human is to everyone including the hatchlings. Their first adventure walking around in their Fae-humanoid forms will have the guards, the staff, the Hoard, the Royals, the citizens, and the Human cooing over them endlessly.

The Clutch is officially considered The Crown Jewels of Briar Valley the very second they hatch. Each one bright and colorful like a jewel and carrying the regal title of their lineage. Still zero thoughts- even as they tumble around in their Fae-humanoid forms- but they're working on figuring things out still and will take time to fully understand things.

[runningfrom2am]

the death of a doctor // LTPF

summary: with the snow heir on the way, your first son, your father wants to meet with you for the first time in years. your husband is not going to let that happen.

pairing: coriolanus snow x fem!reader

wc: 1.4k

masterlists / nav / requests

tags/warnings: capitol brat!reader, maybe slightly ooc coryo, idk i tried my best. use of poison with intent to kill, murder. also this takes place ten years after they returned to the capitol!

series masterlist // playlist

Your father is led through the extensive halls of the Presidential Mansion and out to the back gardens, into the rose garden where he is set to meet with you. Finally.

He's not met with you, and he should have anticipated that. His daughter, pregnant with her first child- a little boy, who should one day be heir to the President's fortune, born into a life of success and indulgences beyond imagination. Instead, he only sees his son-in-law.

"Please, take a seat." Coriolanus offers to him, a welcoming smile on his face as he gestures to the small tea table in the middle of the space. It was a fake smile, of course. Your father has seen it on the television or at events hundreds of times, but Coriolanus Snow would always try to be a good host- regardless of how much he loathed the guest in question.

"Thank you." Your father matches his polite grin, nodding to him before taking a seat. His eyes scan the greenhouse, taking in the abundance of roses and the patches of raspberry bushes that line the walls.

"It's beautiful, isn't it?" Coryo says proudly, carefully plucking one of the white roses from its stem to place in the centre of the tea table. "My wife takes good care of this garden, it's in honour of my Grandmother. They both love roses." He explains, not giving your father any chance to answer.

"It's lovely." He nods in agreement, watching as his son-in-law places the blooming flower in a vase on the table, sitting down himself and looking at your father expectantly. "Where is she?" Your father decides to get right to the point- no use dancing around it anymore.

"She's out." Coriolanus answers. "She's with Tigris. They're picking out colours for the nursery today."

"I was told I would be able to speak to her."

"I am capable of passing on a message."

Your father sighs, looking down and shaking his head. "Coriolanus, I appreciate everything you have done for my daughter over the years, I do, but that girl needs her family. Her parents. Especially right now. We just want to be able to support her during such an exciting and scary time."

"She has a family." Coryo defends quickly. He had never thought the situation to be scary, before. It was all excitement and parties and baby clothes and being together and enjoying the moments in which she carried his child. Suddenly, he's seeing it differently. His mother. His sister who was never even given a name. You were not free from that fate. He clears his throat. "And I assure you, she is well taken care of here. We have the best medical care the country offers available at the snap of my fingers." He says it more to remind himself.

"No, she doesn't." Your father argues, a smug smile tugging on his lips. She doesn't have him. The most renowned and desired doctor in the Capitol, in the country.

"She does." Coryo insists. "I know what you are implying, and I promise you are mistaken."

"I just want to make things right, Coriolanus." Your father adds. "I want to apologize so my wife can be there for the birth of her grandchild, so I can take good care of my daughter and ensure she is safe."

"She is safe."

Your father clocks the tenseness in your husbands jaw very quickly. "I know about your mother." His tone drops to make space for a fake form of empathy. "I knew her. She was an amazing woman and a wonderful mother. It's such a shame, what happened..." He ticks his head. "So easily preventable."

"Then where were you?" Coriolanus allows himself to lean into something more personal with the bitter question.

"I wasn't called. I wish I had been." Your father answers honestly. "Both of us know your family was in no position to pay for a doctor at the time, even with your father away working himself to death in Twelve."

Coryo chews on the inside of his cheek, looking down at the untouched drinks in between them.

"Maybe things would have ended differently for all of us."

"You speak as if you are some kind of angel." Coryo scoffs. "You still would have gone home from saving my mother and sister and beat your own daughter for being up past her bedtime, but you didn't come because my mother's life was worth nothing to you if you weren't going to be paid to save it." He picks up the teacup in front of him, taking a sip before removing it from his lips and looking down at the liquid. "My apologies, this one is yours. I asked for milk in mine." He says casually, carefully switching the cups. He can see it in your father's eyes he wants to fight with him on this.

"The war made it impossible to do any unpaid work, and like I said, I wasn't made aware of your mother's state. Besides, Y/N is my child, and you know nothing of what goes into being a parent. It is hard. You'll have moments of poor judgement and do things you will regret. You will make mistakes. That is all it was to me." Your father explains. "But I know better now. All I want is to help her."

"You don't want to help her." Coryo shakes his head. "I am telling you she has all the help she needs, and you are not needed. Your wife and son will be allowed in the mansion during the birth. It is my wife's choice when and if they will be allowed to see the child." He knew you would allow it, you occasionally had lunch with your mother and your brother found himself at the mansion quite often to use their library. They were welcome, he was not.

Your father takes a sip of his tea while he processes the information. "Is that her decision, or yours?"

"Like I said, I can pass on a message to her." Your husband replies, ignoring his question and popping one of the raspberries from the plate into his mouth and sitting back, hands placed patiently on his lap while he ignores the pain starting to bloom in his chest.

"Tell her..." Your father sighs. "That we love her, and we miss her dearly. And if she needs anything or feels unsafe, she can always come home."

"Unsafe?" Coryo asks, tilting his head with a slight, humourless laugh. "I know you don't care for me, sir, but I am the last person on this planet who would do anything to harm her. It seems you're not understanding that."

"I just want her to survive." Your father spits. "If you love her the way you say you do, don't you want her to be the one to successfully produce your heir? You would hate to have to find someone else, I know you would. Especially if the love of your life died in the same way as your mother, this time taking your child with her."

Coriolanus stands up abruptly, anger coursing through his veins alongside the poison as the chair slides back behind him. "You've never believed in her. Ever. Even now you assume that at the most natural struggle she will die. This is not about my doctors, it is about your ego and how little you respect your own child because of how you raised her. She has more fight in her than any woman I have ever met. You don't even know the extent of it."

"It's because I know her, Coriolanus. I..." Your father's voice trails off and he looks down at his shaking hands. He knows what Coriolanus has done, but there's nothing he can do to save himself now.

"You don't know her. You never have." Coryo argues. "You have never once reached out except to try and leach off of her success and my name. You couldn't care less if she lives or dies- you just want to be the one to deliver a royal baby. If you knew her, you would know that the last thing in the world she wants is to ever see you again."

He watches as your father's face goes ashen, the sentience behind his eyes disappearing. It brings a smile to his face. "You are a monster." He adds, and it's the last thing your father hears before he dies right there in your garden.

Coriolanus smiles in satisfaction, raising his hand and snapping for his security and his nurse to enter. Quickly, she reaches for his arm as he already rolled up his sleeve and she can inject the antidote.

"Dispose of him." He urges the security team, quickly pulling his red coat sleeve back over the injection site in his arm. "My wife will be home soon, this would be distressing for her. I need her as calm and comfortable as possible."

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[iamnotceleste]

Please carry me, carry me home

Pairing: Lewis Hamilton x reader Warning: Major character death, just a lot of heartbreak and angst in general, no use of anyones name just pronouns. A/N: Here is the first angst piece of mine. I'm quite proud of how it turned out. The ending is a bit sloppy. Let me know what you think. She's been there for him. Through the racing, through the highs of winning, lows of discrimination, critics of all kind, all the way to F1.

It hasn't been easy for him and she knows it. They're both from middle class families, both coming from a small town. Big names don't take people like them seriously. But he's proved himself. Again and again. She's been by him this whole time supporting.

That was more than enough he needed. To know someone believed he could do it.

"How do you have more faith in me than I do myself?" He'd ask her, knowing it must be tiring keeping up with all this pressure.

She'd just smile and say, "Because I see you. Working harder than any other racer. Even though life hadn't always been in your favour, that didn't stop you from chasing your dreams. Faith in you comes naturally to me. I just know you'll become a great if not the greatest racer in history."

He'd listen to her and smile. These small things she does for him makes him believe in himself a little more.

"I love you," he'd say.

She's been there for him.

For his debut in F1. He couldn't believe he'd made it. She'd just grin and give him a look as if to say I told you so.

After one of the greatest F1 debuts of all time, he'd kicked off his second season with a title fight. Media have started to look for anything that could be made in a headline. Not only on track, off track too.

He knew the team meant well. When they told him a rising name like his shouldn't be around an unknown girl like her anymore. They didn't know that he loves her too much to tell her that. They didn't know he'd already planned marriage, kids, growing old with that unknown girl.

So, he didn't tell her what the team told him. Instead, he said something about focusing on championship winning, needing a break from the relationship.

She understands. She always does. Or else she wouldn't have stuck around with him in this fast paced life.

So yeah. He didn't tell her the real reason, but she understood. Didn't hurt less though. It's okay. Real love hurts like that.

She's been there for him.

Not outwardly but in her heart. Still. He'd already started dating a singer. Someone who was on his level. Everyone started to call this woman his soulmate. Look how much support this woman gives him. Look at how happy they are together.

Alas. They forgot this woman was also an actor. And he did perform a few times in his primary school theatre club.

She's been there for him.

Even when an incurable disease hit her. The chemos were too expensive. Did you forget she was still the middle class unknown girl? Her family couldn't afford it. They wanted to call him. He was a big star now. Surely he could've helped her.

But she was too stubborn. Or maybe she loved him too much.

So she sat in the dimly lit dull hospital room with few months left in her. Still hearing about the records he keeps breaking. The name he's making for himself. She couldn't be more proud.

She's been there for him.

Unlike the woman his team keeps insisting is good for his public image. He's stopped caring now. His heart still belongs to that unknown girl he'd long since lost contact with.

One of these days, he plans to go back to her and apologize. He knows he's been selfish. Hopefully he'll win her back. He'll drop down on one knee with a ring that had her and his birthstone on it. He'll make her the mother to their children. He'll build a home with her. He won't care what the media or the team or anyone for that matter says. He thinks he still has time left.

He's in his head as he's jogging and runs into someone. He looks up to see it's her little sister. The one who used third wheel him and her on their dates. She's grown so much. He smiles.

She doesn't look very happy upon seeing him. He's confused but asks her how she is.

She reluctantly answers him. He ignores it and asks, "How's she doing?"

Her sister looks baffled. And suddenly very angry. What? Can't he even ask her that?

" I knew you were capable of hurting. Didn't expect to see you have lost every bit of humanity in you! you weren't there when she needed you! You think it's funny to joke now?" she almost screams.

He grows more confused by the second. "What are you talking about?"

Her sister goes to storm off but stops in her tracks. He genuinely looks like he doesnt know anything.

"You dont know?" she whispers.

He doesn't know what to say. His heart pounds as he's thinking of every single possibility.

"What-what don't I know?" He stammers out. She looks at him with pitiful and tear rimmed eyes. His insides churn.

"She died two years ago."

He laughs. He must've heard her wrong. Or maybe it's a joke. How ironic considering she was the one telling him on his inhumanity.

But she doesn't crack. Instead her bottom lip wobbles. It hits him she's not joking.

No, no, no. He's feeling nauseous. It can't be true. It isn't. He refused to believe it. What do you mean the love of his life is dead? How could God do this? The cross tattoo on his hand mocks him. He's been too selfish.

He breaks down on the sidewalk.

She's She'd been there for him.

But he hadn't.

And he has the rest of his life to carry the regret of ever letting go off his home.

[khywren]

❛ pairing: Astarion/f!Tav; Astarion/f!OC (Ysera) ❛ word count: 4.8k ┊ ❛ rating: 18+ MDNI ❛ tags/cw: pegging, submissive Astarion, rough sex, handjobs, rimming

‣ preview: Ysera swallows thickly, her heart stuttering in her chest. Astarion's eyes blaze with curious delight as he pretends to wait patiently for her response. She bites her lip, eyes darting around the room as if someone somewhere might overhear her if she speaks too loudly. So she leans in close to Astarion's ear and sheepishly whispers it to him instead.

“I want to know how it feels to be inside you.”

AO3 ┊ series masterlist

Ysera sneezes loudly, stirring up a cloud of dust motes. The old wizard’s tower they've found themselves in has been empty of any real treasure – not unless they count the dust, which is more abundant than anything else here. She and Astarion have made it to the top with barely anything to show for it but wasted time.

Ysera sighs heavily as she reaches for a worn, leather-bound book in the middle of an oak table, staring curiously at the cover. It has no title, but the golden embossed design of two elves engaged in a display of passionate lovemaking tells her enough about its contents. She chances a glance over her shoulder to ensure Astarion isn't looking and peeks inside.

The first several pages chronicle the author's fascination with the subject of sexuality and the nature of physical and emotional attraction. There's a passage about the importance of indulging one's own desires, but she scrunches her face and stops reading when the author begins to describe his own exploits in great detail.

“Ugh. No thank you.”

Flipping through the rest of the pages, she sees a catalog of names and details of equally explicit acts, growing more and more flustered as her eyes scan the parchment. She's so absorbed in what she's doing that when Astarion suddenly claps a hand on her shoulder, she lets out a yelp of surprise.

“What have you got there, darling?”

“It's –” she begins, then shakes her head. She's not certain how to describe it – or if she even wants to. “It's weird.” Astarion leans over her shoulder and begins to read. He snorts as he spots a particularly racy entry, then another, and another still, turning page after page to confirm that, yes, this is indeed the entire book.

“You think whoever wrote this watched all these people get it on?” Astarion laughs snidely. “What a freak.”

Ysera mirrors his laugh. “To each their own, I suppose.” She tries to close the book but finds that it suddenly won't budge, almost as if phantom hands have pried it open. A faint magical aura envelopes the pages, which begin to turn of their own accord, faster and faster before they're both staring at a completely blank page near the back of the book.

Try as she might to drop the book, her body refuses to listen to her commands, and even Astarion is helpless to pry it from her hands before a blinding light manifests above the pages and engulfs them completely. The last thing she hears is the sound of her own scream as Astarion grips her tightly.

When she opens her eyes, Ysera expects to see anything but the large, lavish bedchamber they find themselves in. A massive four-poster bed sits against the far wall, the sunlight that spills through an adjacent window casting shadows on the duvet through the canopy. The room smells faintly of lavender and clean linens, adding to the eerie sense of calm that fills the space and makes it far more intimate, especially considering its size.

Astarion and Ysera exchange curious glances.

“Where in the hells are we?” Astarion says, eyes narrowed suspiciously as he scans the room for any signs of danger. They appear to be the only ones here, no obvious traps or intruders lying in wait.

Ysera shrugs, equally as baffled. “I think that book sucked us up,” she hypothesizes, scowling when Astarion snickers.

“Your words, darling, not mine.” 

He turns away to investigate. The only door in the room is sealed shut, no amount of force making it budge even slightly. There are no keyholes for him to pick the lock, and he gives up on that fruitless endeavor with a sigh as he turns back to see if Ysera has had any more luck.

She's standing beside the bed, gazing out the window and illuminated by a beam of buttery golden sunlight. Birdsong fills the air, and she glances at him over her shoulder.

“I wish you could see this,” she says softly. “Wherever this is, it's beautiful.”

Astarion approaches her anyway, unable to see much without stepping into the sun. His curiosity gets the better of him, and he arches his back, standing on his tiptoes to catch just the slightest glimpse of the canyon that sprawls out beneath whatever clifftop this place has been built upon. But he leans just a little too far forward, his stomach lurching as he tumbles forward unexpectedly.

Ysera calls out to him, rushing to catch him. But she's too late, and Astarion stumbles into the sunlight, flinching as the warmth of the sun's rays wash over him. He grits his teeth, anticipating the searing pain he expects to feel… only to be met with the warm caress he remembers fondly from his time spent in the sun before their tadpoles were destroyed.

Time stands still as Astarion glances at Ysera, his pale skin almost glittering in the light. He hears her gasp in shock.

“It must be enchanted,” she says. “This whole place is some sort of illusion.”

“It certainly feels real,” Astarion murmurs. He straightens and slips his cloak off his shoulders, basking in the magicked sunlight. Palms upturned, he lets the warmth seep into his bones, banishing the natural chill of his undead body. Ysera smiles at him fondly, her golden eyes sparkling.

“I wish we could stay,” she says glumly. She had almost forgotten how incredible he looks in the sun.

“Careful what you wish for,” Astarion says dourly. “I don't think this book is keen on letting us leave any time soon.”

Ysera frowns, holding a hand to her mouth in thought as her brow creases. “There has to be something we're missing,” she says. “You enjoy the sun, I'll keep looking.” 

“Gladly, darling,” Astarion hums happily, laying back on the bed and stretching out like a basking cat. His eyes drift closed as he listens to Ysera rifling through the rest of the room’s contents, searching for any hint that might help them.

After a while, her footsteps become louder as she approaches him once more, and he exhales sharply when Ysera tosses a book onto his stomach. Astarion takes the book in his hands as he sits up, eyes drifting between it and Ysera as he waits for an explanation. 

“Don't you recognize it?” she asks, arms crossed. Astarion gives the book a closer inspection, realizing as soon as he opens it that it's an exact replica of the book they had found in the ruined tower.

“And?” he asks, lifting a brow. “I don't see how this is supposed to get us out of here.”

“Look at the last entry,” she tells him. Astarion does as he's told, flipping through the pages before something catches his eye. Sure enough, at the bottom of one of the pages, he reads the words aloud, scrawled in the same flowing script:

Astarion Ancunín and Ysera Whitlock:

There's nothing written below, and Astarion doesn't even have time to contemplate exactly how the book knows who they are or how their names have mysteriously appeared on the page before Ysera shifts on her feet and says, “You get it, don't you?”

Astarion stares up at her and shakes his head, waiting for her to continue.

“This book is like… some weird record of all those people's deepest desires, right? What if they were trapped here, just like us?” Her face grows red, and she stammers, “What if it wants us to, you know… add our own? That would explain this fancy room. The windows and doors are all sealed. I don't know how else we're supposed to get out.”

Astarion slams the book shut and tosses it on the bed beside him, huffing a wry laugh.

“Trapped in a lecherous old book… Wonderful. Now I've certainly seen everything.” He runs his hand through his hair and pinches the bridge of his nose, considering her suggestion. It does make sense, of course, once he looks past the bizarre notion of it all. It's not too far out of the realm of possibility, he supposes. He's seen his fair share of strange, enchanted tomes, but at least this one is mostly benign, provided Ysera's assumption is correct.

“All right,” he says, shrugging. They're stuck here anyway; might as well enjoy themselves in the meantime. “But there's just one problem, darling: we've done practically everything there is to do with one another.”

Ysera grows even redder, the blazing heat in her face spreading down her neck and beneath her robes. Astarion assumes she's simply remembering all the nights they've spent tangled up in one another, but it surprises him completely when she says instead: “Not everything. There's… there's something I'd still like to try, actually.” Her tail flicks two and fro behind her the way it always does when she's feeling anxious.

A wicked grin spreads across Astarion's face, and he eagerly gets to his feet and crosses the short distance between them. He leans close, purposely making Ysera squirm with embarrassment as he tries to guess exactly what it is she's thinking of.

She's adventurous enough in bed, to be sure, but she typically prefers more standard methods of lovemaking. Whatever this is must truly be something scandalous if it's getting her this worked up just thinking about it.

“Do tell,” he purrs, tipping her face up with a single elongated finger.

Ysera swallows thickly, her heart stuttering in her chest. Astarion's eyes blaze with curious delight as he pretends to wait patiently for her response. She bites her lip, eyes darting around the room as if someone somewhere might overhear her if she speaks too loudly. So she leans in close to Astarion's ear and sheepishly whispers it to him instead.

“I want to know how it feels to be inside you.”

Astarion's cock twitches immediately in response, already straining against his laces. Her suggestion ignites something primal deep inside him. He's been penetrated before, of course, but never by her. Never with a partner he actually wanted to be with. It hadn't crossed his mind before, but now he can't stop himself from thinking about it, about her pressed against his back as she thrusts inside him, being the one to hold him down as he writhes beneath her. Surrendering control to the person he trusts most of all. 

An exhilarating proposition, to say the least.

“My, my…” Astarion says slyly, “who knew you were harboring such wicked little fantasies all this time?” He smirks at her through his fangs, unable to conceal the hungry way his eyes rove over her body. Ysera seems to notice how eager her suggestion has made him, if the erratic racing of her heart is any indication.

There is, of course, one small caveat they've yet to address.

“I'm curious to know how you plan to accomplish that without a cock,” Astarion says as he tips his head to the side, studying her. “Not unless you've been very, very good at keeping that little secret to yourself all this time.”

Ysera laughs – almost confidently, none of her apparent nervousness lingering in her expression now that Astarion seems more than open to the idea of letting her fuck him.

“Oh, no,” she says, flashing him a smile as her lips quirk upward. “I have a spell for that.”

So she's been thinking about this for a while. Gods. His cock is almost painfully hard, and he wants nothing more than to rip his clothes off and let her ravish him.

Ysera elaborates further – much to Astarion's dismay, although he supposes he's curious to know exactly where she learned such a trick. He'd swear she was doing it on purpose just to torment him if he didn't know her any better.

“There's a spell for everything, if you know where to look. You know how I've been visiting Gale in Waterdeep, from time to time?” Her eyes narrow to match the mischievous grin that spreads across her face. In a hushed whisper, she says, “His private library has quite an array of books on all sorts of… interesting subjects.”

Astarion groans and finally pulls her into his arms, exceptionally tired of not being able to feel the curves of her body pressed against him. She feels his erection now, brows lifting as he bends down to kiss her firmly on the lips. He bites her lower lip with his blunted teeth and growls, “Remind me to thank that wizard the next time I see him.”

Within moments, the two of them have shed their clothing, tossing it into a pile behind them. They're both far too eager to deny themselves much longer, an unspoken understanding of their mutual desire for one another.

Astarion watches with rapt attention as Ysera casts her spell. The ease with which she speaks the incantation and the precise movements of her hands are enough of an indication that she's practiced this before, and he wonders just how far she's taken it. A faint aura glows between her legs, tracing the outline of the thick, heavy cock that soon materializes in its wake. It's clearly magicked, translucent and resembling one of her Mage Hand spells, but the way it bobs and sways as convincingly as his own makes his mouth water.

Astarion wets his lips and steps towards her.

“Does it –?” He tries. “I mean, can you feel it?”

“Mhmm,” Ysera hums pleasantly. “I only tried it out before to make sure the spell worked. I wanted to save the rest for you.”

Oh. By the gods, she spoils him.

His hand hovers over her cock, and he looks into her eyes. “Can I?” he rasps.

“Yes. Please.”

Ysera's breath catches when Astarion wraps his hand around her cock; it feels real enough, firm and slightly warm in his palm as he strokes it slowly, watching the way her face contorts as she holds back a moan. He clearly knows what he's doing, brushing his thumb over the slit on the upstroke, squeezing gently before he glides his hand back down to the base above her pubic bone where it molds to the shape of her body.

With its weight still in his palm, Astarion's fingers dip curiously beneath Ysera's legs, and he groans when he finds her wet and wanting, her slick folds dripping with arousal as the cock in his hand throbs and twitches.

“Hmm, what have we here?” He glides his fingers across her opening and teases her clit, using his spare hand to fist her cock and work her there as well.

“Astarion.” The effect he has on her is evident in the wanton way she moans and rocks her hips into his hand, electric pleasure singing through her veins. She doesn't know if she can come like this, how closely the spell imitates a real cock, but her legs begin to buckle and she doesn't know how much longer she can last if he keeps this up. 

She's used to him touching her, is familiar with how that feels, but this is something altogether unexpected. Her cunt clenches around nothing, arousal dripping obscenely down her thighs. Astarion reluctantly releases her, and she lets out a sigh, both out of relief and disappointment.

“I’m supposed to be the one pleasuring you, remember?” she pants breathlessly. She inclines her head towards the bed, still bathed in radiant sunlight. “Get on the bed. On your knees.” Astarion needs no further encouragement.

The plush mattress sinks beneath both of their bodies as Ysera makes herself comfortable behind Astarion, who's propped himself up on his hands and knees and lifted his hips towards her. His own cock hangs between his legs, hard and leaking. He looks remarkably handsome, swathed in the light, skin awash with warmth. 

If he's nervous, nothing in the way he looks at her suggests anything other than his eagerness to have her. His eyes are round and curious, lips curved in a small smile.

Before Astarion can ask if she's still certain about proceeding, Ysera places her hands on either side of his ass and delicately spreads him open. He arches his back beautifully, as if on instinct, breath hitching as she kneads his flesh between her palms and gives him a gentle smack with her hand. Astarion shakes his hips to taunt her, but he gets more than he bargained for when she nips him playfully, leaving the impression of her teeth in his skin.

“Why, you cheeky little –”

“I'm sorry, would you prefer my mouth somewhere else?” Ysera asks. “Perhaps this will be more to your liking.” 

She bends to flick her tongue against his hole, swirling it experimentally. Astarion groans wantonly at the first pass of her tongue, warm and wet as she laves it against his sensitive rim. Encouraged by his reaction, Ysera continues to tease him with alternating pressure, using the tip and the flat of her tongue to coax more breathy moans from him. She loves the way he convulses beneath her, completely at her mercy. 

It's not about having power over him, but the ability to make him gasp and plead for more as he forgets anything that isn't her, her, her. Nothing matters now but his pleasure.

“Ysera, darling,” he pants, fists bunched in the sheets. It feels good, better even than he had expected it would. Has she done this before? When she presses her tongue against the tight ring of muscle, his hips buck and he flutters open for her, teeth clenched as he begins to tremble. She uses the opportunity to slip her tongue inside, exploring and tasting him. A low groan rumbles in her throat as she feels his cock jump when she sweeps over a particularly sensitive place. She does it again, and Astarion trembles like brittle a leaf in the wind.

They both know they will be doing this again – often, if Astarion has any say in the matter.

“Please,” Astarion whimpers. His voice is small. Needy. Desperate in a way she's never heard him before. “I need you. Inside.”

Ysera releases him, gathering the arousal between her slick folds and spreading it over her cock, shuddering at the sensation that rips through her body. She adjusts herself behind Astarion, opening him to her once again as she presses the tip of her hard length against his rim and pushes forward. 

He's tighter than she expected, so she moves slowly, pulling out and pushing back in as she works him open with shallow thrusts. But she's slick enough, and whatever pain he feels is quickly overwhelmed by the pleasure and the newness of her inside of him. It's been far, far too long since he's been in this position. Astarion's walls clamp down around her cock and they both let out a strangled cry, but when Ysera stops moving Astarion begs her to continue.

“My love,” he struggles through gritted teeth. “Don't stop. I need more of you.” Ysera shushes him and slips a hand into his hair, stroking softly. 

“It's all right, Astarion. I'll take care of you. I promise.”

It takes a moment, but once she's fully seated inside him, Astarion exhales a long, drawn-out breath and flexes his fingers. “Ahhh, hold on,” he says, wiggling his hips to adjust around her. “Gods, you feel so good. So, so good. Remind me again why we waited so long to try this?”

“A mistake I am regretting with every passing second,” she admits, huffing a laugh. “You feel good, too.” It takes more effort than she would have initially thought to fight the urge to snap her hips forward and bury herself inside him with quick, needy thrusts. Is this what she feels like when he's inside her? Gods. It's no wonder he often struggles to hold himself back.

“I'm ready,” Astarion says after a time, looking at her over his shoulder. He sounds as though he's about to start begging her for more again, and as much as she would love to hear it, neither of them are in the mood for teasing. Ysera pulls out of him almost completely before rolling her hips forward, and when she glides against his walls with little resistance there's nothing more holding her back.

Hands bracketed on his hips, Ysera surges forward, plunging into him with quick, rough thrusts. His ass bounces every time their bodies collide, and she pushes him into the mattress. Astarion immediately begins to whimper with need, face pressed into the sheets as he loses the will to hold himself up any longer. His arms go slack and he sinks down onto his stomach, balling his fists in the sheets as he gives himself over to pleasure.

“Yes,” he mumbles, voice slurred. “Yes, ‘Sera, yes, yes, feels so – oh …!”

She's never heard him so incoherent before, fuck-drunk, wonderfully pliant beneath her hands, and absolutely breathtaking. His mouth hangs open, revealing his fangs, his eyes straining as he struggles to look at her. There aren't enough words in any language to do justice to the brilliant shades of ruby and carmine she sees reflected there. Ysera commits the image to memory, determined to remember every single second she has him beneath her.

The sunlight is warm on Astarion's skin, but its heat pales in comparison to the raging inferno growing inside him, the way Ysera's hands leave a path of searing heat down the curve of his spine. Her hands linger on his hips when she reaches them again, struggling to hold onto his sweat-slicked body as she thrusts and thrusts and thrusts. She is both gentle and rough at the same time, reducing him to a babbling mess as he tries to tell her how wonderful she is. Somewhere in the back of his mind he knows the words don't quite come out right, but she smiles at him anyway.

Ysera's muscles ache with a delicious soreness, and as it becomes increasingly difficult to hold him up, her thrusts begin to falter and her rhythm breaks.

“Astarion,” she pants, sweat beading on her forehead and dripping into the hollow of her throat. “I want… to see your face, want to see you when you come.”

“Yes,” he answers immediately, almost as if he was anticipating the question. “Anything, anything. Oh, please, make me come.”

Ysera pulls her cock out of him just as long as it takes to help him roll over onto his back, shoving a pillow beneath his hips to prop him up. He's much easier to manage this way, some of her waning strength returning as she takes in the sight of him: hair disheveled, mouth agape, and utterly ruined. His cock hangs heavy against his thigh, flushed pink and weeping.

Hooking her hands under his bent knees and pressing his legs back towards his chest, she wastes no time folding him in half and slipping back inside his slick hole, pounding into him with enough force to tear a keening whine from his throat. She watches the way his expression changes with each roll of her hips, his jaw falling slack before clenching again when she hits a particularly sensitive spot deep inside of him. Memorizing the angle, she does it again and again, coaxing a series of broken, strangled cries from his lips.

He tries so hard to speak, but the words fall through his brain like water through a sieve. Within seconds he can no longer recall what it was he was even going to say or why it was important in the first place. It feels so good to give himself to her like this, to let her dictate his pleasure. He doesn't need to think – he only needs to feel . And by the gods, does he feel. Every caress of her hands on his skin, every inch of her cock as she thrusts inside him; every sweet nothing she murmurs to encourage him – he's already madly in love with her, but if he could fall for her all over again this would be the moment.

Astarion’s mouth falls open with a guttural moan when she lets go of one of his legs to wrap a hand around his neglected cock, slick with so much precome that she finds an easy rhythm, pumping him in time with each of her punishing thrusts. She works him diligently closer to the edge, pride surging through her when she notices the telltale signs of his impending climax. His thighs quake and his hips jerk every so often, the promise of an earth-shattering orgasm so close on the horizon.

Astarion wrenches his eyes open to find Ysera leaning over him, her face almost close enough to kiss. His body feels too light and too heavy all at once, floating in some nebulous void. But he somehow manages to reach out to cup her cheek, his quiet moans of “ah, ah, ah…” tickling her skin as his cool breath ghosts across her face. He loses himself in her golden eyes, the way she looks at him enough to make his heart ache. If it still beat, it would be racing.

Hells, he swears it just might be.

“That's it,” Ysera encourages him, her voice wavering as his walls pulse and contract tightly around her cock. “You're close, aren't you?” Astarion breathes something that sounds like “yes,” and she bends down to kiss him. The kiss is slow and purposeful, tender where the rest of her is rough and primal. Her lips coax his mouth open and he kisses her back, whining in protest the moment she pulls away.

“You've been so good for me, Astarion,” she murmurs in his ear, borrowing the same words that have unraveled her on so many occasions. Watching the effect it has on him is intoxicating; how he whimpers and writhes, hips bucking as he fucks desperately into her hand.

“You can come now, it's okay. I've got you.”

Yes. Yes, he can, he can and he will, he just needs her to –

His vision goes blank as white-hot pleasure rips through his body and he comes harder than he ever has before, painting her hand and his stomach with thick ropes of white. The sheer force of his orgasm is too much for her to bear, her hips stuttering violently as her toes curl and she comes just as hard for him. The last thread of her concentration on the spell snaps like a taut bowstring and Astarion feels suddenly empty as her cock blinks out of existence, mourning the loss of her. Ysera tumbles forward and collapses onto his chest, panting heavily and breathing in the scent of him.

Astarion folds his arms around her with what strength he has left and holds her against his chest. His body is so warm, and she melts into his embrace. Neither of them have enough energy to speak. Ysera props herself up on an elbow after a while, the curtain of her hair falling over her shoulder as she looks down at him. She smiles fondly before rubbing her nose against his. Astarion sighs, satisfied and thoroughly pleased with the outcome of their little experiment.

What feels like several hours later, the bedchamber creaks and groans as the walls begin to shake, rousing them both from their sleep. Ysera lifts her head groggily, wincing as her limbs protest her sudden movements. The same blinding light that transported them here engulfs the room, and the next time they open their eyes they're standing inside the abandoned tower as if they'd been there all along, the book still clasped between Ysera's open hands.

Ysera flicks her gaze questioningly to Astarion, but the soreness of their muscles and the weary sort of exhaustion they both feel confirms that whatever happened was most certainly more than a very vivid hallucination. Beneath their names on the final page, the book has written for itself a rather detailed passage about their exploits, and Ysera closes it with as much force as she can muster before throwing it clear across the room. Her cheeks burn a bright pink. The only thing that had stopped her from ripping out the page was the thought that a book powerful enough to transport them to an alternate reality might not take too kindly to being defaced, and she's not keen on finding out what else it might be capable of.

“We should go before anything else happens,” she says in a clipped tone, spinning on her heel and marching towards the nearest exit. Astarion's hand shoots out to grab her by the wrist, and when he pulls her back and convinces her to look at him, she finds a wolfish grin has overtaken his face.

“Oh no,” he purrs, slipping his arms around her back and caging her against his body. “Not so fast. This little library of Gale's you mentioned before… does he know you've been browsing those sorts of books?”

Ysera blanches, and the way her heart skips a beat gives her away immediately. “I thought as much,” Astarion says conspiratorially. “I'll tell you what, my dear: show me the other little tricks you've learned, and I promise your secret stays with me.”

Even after she twists out of his arms and storms off down the stairs to hide her embarrassment, his laughter still rings in her ears.

[silverynight]

The dark side of a hero

Bakudeku, dark fic, possessive behavior, obsessive love, yandere Katsuki. Mature (a bit of lemon in some chapters)

That which inspires us to our greatest good is also the cause of our greatest evil.

Chapter 1

Izuku

It's been just a week since his mother passed away, and going back to school as a teacher and pretending to be strong in front of his students has been more difficult than Izuku thought it would.

Now that he's outside of the building, he takes a deep breath and allows himself to crumble a little. But that's when he hears an explosion nearby.

The first thing he does is to tell all the students to go back inside; he stays out until he makes sure all the middle schoolers have followed his instructions. When he makes sure no one else is outside the building, he gets ready to walk in, but then another explosion draws his attention away from the school.

He only has time to see Dynamight, Japan's number one hero and his childhood friend, who probably doesn't remember him, knock the villain he's chasing out.

They both end up a few feet away from the green haired teacher.

"I'm glad to see you again, Izuku," Katsuki smirks, prompting the quirkless young man to blink at him in shock.

The pro hero actually remembers him? How?

"Kacchan!" Izuku blurts out, forgetting that they're not kids anymore. "Sorry! I mean Baku–"

"Don't," the pro hero cuts him off, grimacing. Since the villain is completely unconscious, he moves away from him to get closer to the young teacher. "I don't mind you calling me 'Kacchan' but don't you dare call me by my family name like you just met me."

"Oh! Alright, Kacchan!" Well, it's not like they're going to see each other again, but Izuku is glad to know he likes his childhood nickname.

"So... you work here, nerd?" Katsuki grins, getting so close to Izuku that they're just a few inches apart now.

"Yes! I'm a history teacher. I taught my students about the evolution of the quirks through history," the green haired man starts rambling happily, prompting Dynamight to smile fondly at him.

"So I was right. You're still a nerd," Katsuki says, pinching one of Izuku's freckled cheeks affectionately. "I'm glad you haven't changed in the slightest."

Even though Izuku is glad it feels like no time has passed since they last saw each other; Katsuki certainly was a difficult kid who always was a bit aggressive with others, but he never treated Izuku like that.

Actually, he was very kind to him. Which is something that still puzzles Izuku to this very day, although he doesn't remember certain things of their childhood.

However, that doesn't mean that things are going to be like when they were kids.

Katsuki has more important things to do than spending time with his childhood friend.

"Thank you for stopping him on time. I'll leave you to–"

Suddenly, Uravity descends from the sky and lands gracefully next to the unconscious villain.

"Nice one, Dynamight!" She grins. "Now we can take him to–"

"I have an injured civilian right here," Katsuki cuts her off, placing a firm hand on Izuku's waist. "Can you take care of the rest?"

She looks a bit surprised by the question, almost shocked.

"You know the press is going to be here any moment now, or perhaps they're waiting outside the police station, and you want my face to appear on the news instead of yours?"

"Yeah, I don't give a fuck," he says casually, confusing Izuku as well. The Dynamight who appears on the news looks like he loves to talk about his victories; it's part of being a pro hero.

Uravity seems even more curious now; she looks over his shoulder to lock eyes with the teacher and grins like she knows absolutely everything now.

"He's very cute."

That prompts a slightly concerning reaction from Katsuki; he basically bares his teeth at the other pro hero and hisses as he pulls Izuku closer to himself.

Even though Uravity doesn't seem worried about the aggressiveness she clearly sees in her coworker, Izuku shivers because Katsuki's eyes look almost murderous for a moment.

But then he realizes that he hasn't seen Katsuki in a very long time, so his coworkers obviously know him better than he does. Besides, Izuku has read in a couple of online articles that Dynamight is a great hero despite his explosive demeanor, so it's obvious that even if he looks pissed for a moment, that doesn't mean he's going to hurt Uravity.

"Fuck off!"

She laughs and throws Izuku another glance.

"He doesn't look injured."

Izuku blinks a couple of times as he looks from one pro hero to the other. Is he the injured civilian Katsuki is talking about? If that's the case, then he's completely mistaken.

"Kacchan, I'm not–"

"He is injured," Katsuki cuts him off, still talking to Uravity. "I'll take him to the hospital. Please, take care of the rest."

"Sure," she chuckles again. "But you owe me one!"

"Kacchan, listen..."

He gets interrupted again when the blond pro hero uses one hand to carry him and the other to use his quirk in order to propel them both to the sky.

A little bit nervous, Izuku closes his eyes and wraps himself around Katsuki.

"I would try to calm you down by swearing to you that I'd never drop you no matter what, but I'm enjoying the situation quite a lot."

"You're so mean, Kacchan."

Katsuki chuckles in response.

When Izuku realizes they're on the top of a building, he frowns, still confused.

"This is not a hospital," as they reach the door on the rooftop and start walking downstairs. Well, Katsuki is the only one walking because he refuses to let go of Izuku.

"It's not. I'm not going to take you to one because you're not hurt."

"I know, I told you so!"

"We're going to my apartment."

"Why?"

Katsuki smiles at him in a way that makes Izuku's cheeks turn slightly pink for a moment.

"Because I haven't talked to you in years and I've missed you a lot."

"Oh..." The teacher mumbles, very much flustered now. "I've missed you too, Kacchan."

His apartment must've cost a fortune, judging by how big it is and all the expensive stuff inside.

But, Izuku doesn't pay too much attention to any of it, instead watches as Katsuki makes an excuse, informing someone he won't be there to write his report and keep with his patrol until the next day.

Izuku feels suddenly guilty about it, even though he didn't ask his friend to do that.

"You should go back to your agency and–"

"I want to spend time with you, Izuku," the pro hero insists, looking at the other young man with a very determined expression on his face.

The teacher knows he won't be able to change his mind.

Katsuki makes lunch for both of them. How is he so good at cooking?

After a while, he starts talking about his hero job, and then he asks Izuku about his.

Even though Dynamight's job is way more interesting than Izuku's by far, he seems way too interested in every aspect of the teacher's life.

Then, the question Izuku started to fear comes out Katsuki's lips.

"How's auntie?"

They started calling each other mothers aunties because they liked to feel close, although Katsuki didn't like the fact that others could think they were related somehow.

Izuku never understood why because, at first, he thought his friend didn't want anyone to believe they were from the same family because he didn't actually like Izuku that much, but, even after saying that, Katsuki kept acting like his protector, almost like a guardian and followed the other kid around almost all the time, in fact, he used to become irritated and angry whenever Izuku didn't pay enough attention to him.

After the question reaches Izuku's ears, he starts sobbing; the amazing thing about his childhood friend is that Dynamight doesn't ask anything, he just pulls Izuku's into his broad arms and lets him sob against his chest.

"I'm sorry, I–"

"It's alright, Izuku. I'll always be here for you," Katsuki mumbles before nuzzling against Izuku's green curls affectionately. "Always. You can tell me anything or nothing, if that's what you want."

How did his explosive childhood friend turning into this amazing person? And he's the number one hero too.

"Thank you, Kacchan," Izuku whispers right before telling him the whole story about his mother's illness. "Now I feel a bit lonely without her."

"It's alright, nerd. You have me now whether you want me or not," Katsuki smiles against Izuku's cheek, prompting him to chuckle. "You won't be able to get rid of me."

"So that means we'll be spending time together like we used to do?" The teacher mumbles, feeling hopeful.

"Not exactly like that," the pro hero corrects him. "It'd be even better."

"My mother would've loved to see you again."

"Even though I'd like for that to be true," Katsuki says, pulling Izuku in his lap, prompting the teacher to gasp in surprise. "I don't think she liked me very much."

"What do you mean?" Izuku asks, confused. "Of course she did! You were my best friend."

Katsuki shakes his head, but he still looks happy, intensely so; it's like he's having the best day of his life.

"It would've taken me a while to win her over, but I would've had, I'm sure of it. I'm not the same stupid brat I used to be, now I know exactly how to behave."

Izuku is sure he's joking because honestly the way he says it sounds a bit weird, so he just chuckles, finally feeling way better.

He's sure his mother liked him, even though she never said it out loud.

***

Next--->

Patreon

[ziggyzolch]

Queen Bee-atch II (Regina George x Reader)

Warnings: Mentions of weight, implied eating disorder, Insecurity. No numbers mentioned.

✮✮✮

"Class isn't over yet, I haven't dismissed you!" The teacher's demands fall on deaf ears as the students pack up before the lunch bell rings, eager to see their friends. Your first three classes were relatively uneventful, the only entertaining thing being this ginger girl you've never seen before attempting to leave class without permission. Your eyes scan the hallways after you exit the classroom. Janis and Damien are the only people you can tolerate at this school, so they're the only people you ever seek out. There they are.

You make your way through the crowded hallway and purposefully shoulder-bump your target.

"What is wrong with you- oh you asshole!" Janis curses lightheartedly. She pulls you into a hug and kisses your forehead while you stand awkwardly with your hands at your sides. Instead of waiting for his turn, Damien joins in and wraps his arms around you and Janis. "I missed you guys so much!" You manage to get out while still in the bone crushing hug. "Where were you this whole summer? You went completely, like, radio silent." Damien asks with a suspicious look in his eyes. "Sorry, I got grounded for the whole summer. My mom found my cigarette stash." You confessed. "Idiot. Anyways, did you see that new girl?" Janis switches topics and Damien chimes in, "Yeah she's, like, a total disaster. We need to save her." Their words are background noise to you. You're staring through Janis, zoned out. Damien and Janis give each other a look.

Flick

"Hey what the hell!" You whine as you rub your forehead. "You weren't with us man, your eyes were drifting apart from each other and everything. Pretty sure I saw a bit of drool dribble out-" you lightly punch Janis before she can continue. "Yeah I was! You were saying something about that new girl. I think her name was 'Caddy' or something.", you defend. "She's a disaster, we should probably help her." Damien stares at you. "Babe, I just said that." Janis stares between you guys before interrupting. "Anyways...let's go look for her!"

Janis and Damien were your best, and only, friends. You wouldn't know what to do without them. As such, you basically stuck to them whenever you could in school. Following them to the cafeteria, you take your seats at your designated table. You spot female Ed Sheeran standing awkwardly in the middle of the cafeteria. She looks so stupid.

"Hey guys should we call her over?" You ask your friends. They stop their conversation and look at where you're pointing. Janis nods and yells out, "Hey ginger! What did you say her name was? Was it Caddy? Caddy!" The girl turns and points at herself, mouthing out a 'me?'. She comes over after we confirm and we all introduce ourselves. "...and that's Damien, he's almost too gay to function." Janis concludes. "So Cady, what do you think of the school so far?" You question. "Oh, I don't really know, I used to be homeschooled so I don't have much to compare it to." Cady replies.

You, Janis, and Damien all look at each other and back at her.

She raises an eyebrow.

You all begin going on about what to know about the high school: The best hiding places, teachers to avoid pissing off and such, and the various cliques in this school. "...and those are the sexually active band geeks. Don't walk too close, lest you get dragged into their never-ending orgy." You finish. Cady glances behind her and asks "What about them? They're kind of pretty." You all turn to see who she's looking at. "Oh honey, no no no, those are the plastics..." Damien goes on his little cautionary rant about how evil they are. You looked towards Cady and smiled while rolling your eyes.

While you're both giggling, your eyes lock onto Regina's...who is currently approaching your table. Perfect. "Hey, Gerard," Damien gives you a confused look at the name, "Who's this girl with you? Why don't I know you?"

You zone out looking at her when she turns away from you, gushing over Cady. You wish her attention was on you. Wait what- You're taken out of your reverie as Cady gets up and follows behind Regina towards her group. "Finally back to the present? What is up with you dude you've been out of it this whole day!" You shrug your shoulders at Janis and turn your gaze back to Regina. What's so great about 'Caddy' that caught the attention of Regina? You could look just as helpless if you wanted to, but you won't! Not on purpose anyways.

You get up.

"I'm going to the bathroom"

Janis replies while looking towards the plastics, "We'd come with, but we kind of want to see where this goes."

✮✮✮

The sounds of her friends taking Cady through the requirements to be a Plastic fade as she makes her way to the bathroom. She had forgotten her pocket mirror and had to re-apply her lip gloss, duh. A stench that can only be accomplished by a high school bathroom gets stronger as she opens the door. She stops in her tracks when she sees you reapplying your mascara at the sink.

"Hey Brendon Urie."

You hadn't even noticed someone walking in.

"God, that's actually worse than Gerard." You look at her through the mirror.

She moves a bit closer, "You look so familiar."

"Must've seen me in your dreams," You say while awkwardly winking at her.

She raises an eyebrow, "No, I know you. I swear I do!"

"Well yeah, I'm the one and only Gerard Way! Lead singer of My Chemical Romance-"

"Enough," She rolls her eyes.

You finish up and make your way out of the bathroom, cautiously walking around her with your arms up. "You'll figure it out. Don't worry, Blondie."

She watches you exit the bathroom.

✮✮✮

"Oh my god! Regina, remember this?" Regina glared at her mom as she continued trying to seem cool to her friends. She's known them for years! Why does she keep doing this? Cady looks at the book in Mrs. George's hands.

"What is that?"

"No way! We used this book to make fun of the freaks in our school. We'd tape photos of people then write down insults-"

"She understands, Gretchen. Can you get us some snacks, Mom?"

As Regina's mom walks out of the room, the girls are looking through the various insults in the book. They eventually land on a page with a picture of you and Janis.

'Janis, Pyro Lez' 'Y/N, puts in 110% effort because she takes up 110% of the room.'

Cady's eyes widen. "That's not even her." She says while looking at the picture of you.

"I think she moved schools, wait how do you know her?" Gretchen stops what she's doing to ask.

"I sit with her at lunch"

"What? There's no way, that Gerard Way girl?" Regina chimes in and moves from her spot at the mirror to look at the picture.

"Woah, did she just melt off half her body weight since freshman year?"

"I'm so jealous." Karen adds.

Regina stares at the picture of you. So that's why she knew you.

✮✮✮

You, Damien, Janice and Cady are all gathered around at your locker. "...and it's just a collection of insults, basically." Cady had been giving a summary of the events from the previous day.

Janice's eyes go wide. "Does it say anything about me?"

"Uhm, nope. Nothing about you."

"Ugh, those bitches."

You didn't want to ask if you were in it. You had an idea of what the insults towards you could be, and you'd rather not have your suspicions confirmed.

The bell rings, interrupting the powwow. You all bid each other goodbye, and make your way to your classes. PE was your next period, and you couldn't wait. It was a break from all the thinking you had to do.

You head towards the gym after switching into your exercise clothes. Most of your clothes were oversized and baggy, including your gym ones. You hadn't really upgraded your wardrobe since you lost weight. Everybody was already in, gathered in a circle, so you pushed yourself in, not paying attention to who you were standing next to.

"Alright! Today, we'll be playing soccer! Or football, as some of you may call it." The PE teacher announces, mumbling the last part of his sentence. "We will work in pairs today, so find a pair. Or partner, I mean. Whatever, just get moving."

"I can't believe they assigned that guy to teach us Sex-ed." Was someone talking to you?

You look behind you to find Regina looking down at you with a...genuine smile on her face? That can't be right.

"Right! He gives off the same vibe as those Reddit incels."

"That's so funny."

Are you having a normal conversation? With the queen bitch?

"What did you call me?"

Oh shit, you said that out loud.

"Uh-"

"Whatever, you wanna pair up? None of my friends are in this class, and you're the least annoying one here."

Thanks. You look around to make sure there are no other possible options. Regina rolls her eyes and grabs your arm, pulling you to an empty spot.

She was actually decent at football. You guys were practicing passing to each other while running and you were starting to feel lightheaded.

You waved to Regina, "Hey, I'm just going to get a sip of water."

"I'll come with."

"You should play football more often, you're more tolerable like this."

"Bold, are we?"

"I mean, I basically just called you a bitch and you haven't punched me in the face. So I'm right"

She laughed! What is up with her?

✮✮✮

Regina enters the locker room and spots you with your shirt halfway up. You really did lose half your body weight. Guilt pierces through her. Freshman year Regina was cruel. Somehow crueler than she is now, and fat girls were just easy to bully. Did you drop weight because of her?

Your shirt had gotten snagged on both your necklace and bracelet. After watching you twist and wriggle around for a while, Regina deems you sufficiently embarrassed and walks towards you to help you out.

You feel someone pull your shirt up and off of you. You had made sure to go into the locker room after everyone had already left. So when you were finally free of your cloth prison and came face to face with Regina. You felt nauseous. Of everyone!

She looks you up and down and suddenly you're more self conscious than you've ever been. Wrapping your arms around your stomach, you mumble out a 'Thanks' and put on your other shirt then hurriedly pack up and rush out of the locker room, leaving a guilt-ridden Regina behind.

✮✮✮

[freyafrida]

rilla of ingleside book club, chapter two

okay I'm already kind of over screencapping the text except for the chapter titles lmao. moving on!

"Her hair was ripely, ruddily brown"

Honestly funny that I'm not sure any of the popular editions of this book have managed to get this right. Rilla's a much brighter redhead on the Bantam cover, and even the unabridged, researched and lovingly restored Viking Press version looks like this:

I have...no real opinions about Miss Oliver; I think her ~visions~ tend to be a little too dramatic (especially once she starts predicting the outcome of the war with them, like come on), although the way she teases Susan and the Blythes is occasionally funny. I'd rather her role be replaced with an actual peer of Rilla's (lots of girls are mentioned as Rilla's friends in passing, but we don't see an actual friendship between them!), but I don't feel that strongly about it. (Actually, having read the rest of the chapter, I had the sobering realization that Miss Oliver is probably the character I'm most like, in that I am pessimistic over things going too well and a little superstitious and also Of An Age and unmarried. Welp. This has been an educational read.)

“Why couldn’t they have called her by her first name, Bertha, which was beautiful and dignified, instead of that silly “Rilla”? ”

This is so funny to me because I don't think there's a single girl in the 21st century who would rather be called "Bertha" than "Rilla." rilla/carl agenda time: you ever think about how they both go by shortened versions of their middle names and nobody ever uses their first names?

I do wish we got a little more of Marilla (Cuthbert) besides Rilla just casually mentioning that she died and Rilla hated her name :(

I def. remember thinking Rilla and Walter's relationship was eye-rollingly saccharine as a kid -- as the elder of two siblings I was like, "Start bullying her or get out of the older sibling club Walter", but thinking about it more -- while my brother and I fought constantly as kids, by the time I was Walter's age and my brother was Rilla's, we actually did get along really well! So, yeah, baby freyafrida was wrong there, lol -- I actually really love Walter as a big brother, reading this now. He's clearly so sweet and patient with Rilla's need for attention from her older siblings ❤️ (Also, while I have never shown my diary to anyone, I do wince in sympathy with Rilla showing hers to Walter, because I def. had that urge as a teenager -- the idea that showing someone you like/admire all your secrets will make them understand the Real You and open up in turn.)

The dynamic between Rilla and the rest of her siblings also intrigues me -- she seems...apart from them, in a way, almost like Shirley? I mean, part of it is probably that there are just no scenes of her spending time with them, and that she was too young to be part of their shenanigans in Rainbow Valley, but it does lend some...legitimacy, I guess, to her being upset that they're all hanging out without her -- while it's understandable that Jem is too old to really want to hang with her, the gap between her and Nan/Di isn't much bigger than the gap between them and Jem iirc. (Just speculating, but I imagine it'd be hard to be the only other sister to a pair of twins.) (That said, every pair of siblings I knew who were only 1-3 years apart in age got along swimmingly -- I really envied them when I didn't get along with my brother -- so Rilla and Shirley should've been besties!!)

Speaking of, love the mention that Shirley teases Rilla by calling her "Spider" 🥹 He's so nonexistent that it's easy to speculate he's not close with his family, so I love that he does have a teasing relationship with her.

“Wordsworth never wrote anything like Walter’s poems—nor Tennyson, either.” “I wouldn’t say just that. Both of them wrote a great deal of trash,” said Miss Oliver dryly.”

LMAOOO. I will say I did not particularly enjoy any of the poems attributed to Walter in The Blythes Are Quoted, apart from "The Aftermath" -- maybe it's a personal taste thing, although I do think part of it is that they're very much in LMM's voice, so they come off weirdly twee if you're trying to imagine that a college-age dude wrote them.

Ah, and of course there's Walter writing poems to Faith. Now, the way I jumped when I saw in Readying Rilla that the draft originally explicitly said Walter was in love with Faith! From what's actually published, you could read him writing sonnets to her as a poetic or aesthetic interest (although I do think he had a legit crush on her, see below), so it's v. interesting to see that the original intent was that he was into her, romantically. Also interesting suggestion that it might've caused conflict with Jem and Walter, although of course it didn't -- mentioned before, but it's funny that this whole Jem/Faith/Walter situation gets set up in Rainbow Valley and mentioned at the start of Rilla, and then it goes absolutely nowhere. There's never any drama between Jem or Walter because of it and it never comes up again.

Speaking of...is it too early for Walter Sexuality Discourse? LOL. Tbh I don't have much to say there; my boring Both Sides take is that I see the vision in reading Walter as gay and I don't think it's a reach -- on the other hand, I also think there's evidence that his thing with Una is meant to be a doomed romance where Walter was capable of reciprocating, and I roll with that reading because I love Una too much to think that Walter wouldn't love her back. Anyway, I bring it up because I do read Walter as being legitimately attracted to and interested in Faith. There's not much of it in Rilla, but in RV I do think he has a clear crush on her. ("Walter did not want to ride a pig through Glen St. Mary, but whatever Faith Meredith dared him to do must be done.") It jives a lot with his worship of beauty for beauty's sake and his Anne-like tendency to get swept away by ideals and surface-level perceptions (e.g. fearing the pain of getting his tooth pulled in RV even though having the chronic toothache is worse).

(Once again an interesting choice -- Faith briefly thinks Jem is handsome at the start of RV, and they get a brief scene together at the end of that book, then are nearly engaged in Rilla. And yet, much of RV is actually devoted to Faith and Walter's friendship -- although I think it's kinda obvious straight off that they wouldn't work as a couple, see Faith telling Walter to just suck it up re: his toothache and get it pulled. She'd get sick of his poetry and dramatics so fast, lmao.)

“I don’t half like that,” said Miss Oliver, with a sigh. “It’s ominous—somehow. A perfect thing is a gift of the gods—a sort of compensation for what is coming afterwards. I’ve seen that so often that I don’t care to hear people say they’ve had a perfect time. June has been delightful, though.” “Don’t wish it. Dramatic things always have a bitterness for some one. What a nice summer all you gay creatures will have! And me moping at Lowbridge!”

Miss Oliver, you don't have to respond to everything Rilla says with how moody and emo you are, lmao.

“I heard some one say once that the years from fifteen to nineteen are the best years in a girl’s life.”

I love how weirdly specific that is to encompass the years of the coming war. Like, haha, get it??

“Father says I toil not neither do I spin.”

This is interestingly exactly what Phil Gordon says about herself in Anne of the Island!

“And then,” continued Anne, “there will be a good deal of work to be done. Stella’s aunt can’t do it all. We all expect to have our chores to do. Now, you—” “Toil not, neither do I spin,” finished Philippa.

Although I have to wonder...if Rilla's not doing chores and not studying, what exactly is she planning to do every day for the next four years? Genuinely I'm not super up on what she would've been able to fill her days with (social calls all the time?), I'd be interested in any insight there.

Anyway, this is basically another chapter that sets up the idyll of Ingleside life before war invades it, this time setting Rilla's character up for us. I always liked Rilla -- she was a fave upon first read and I still like her now! Idk, I've always liked silly, frivolous female characters -- I think it's because growing up, I felt like such characters in children's/YA books were often portrayed disproportionately negatively -- I never felt like their behavior was offensive enough to warrant them having to be humbled, you know? (don't ask for examples because I can't think of any off the top of my head lmao, I'm just recalling Vibes from when I was young that shaped my opinion in this direction!) I think the fact that the narration has a sense of humor about her ("...sighed Rilla, a little importantly”) also makes her frivolity more palatable and even relatable -- who doesn't love a good self-important sigh every now and again, you know?

Readying Rilla stuff:

Rilla originally just refers to Walter having "the flu" (or, well "the fl", LMM apparently cut that idea off before it even finished lmao) instead of typhoid; interesting to think if he was meant to have nearly died from the flu, or if his illness was initially much less serious!

Walter is initially referred to as being 19 instead of twenty. Not sure if he was intentionally aged up or this is another example of "Shirley is eighteen for two years"-esque math.

Dog Monday's name was originally some variation of "Jink/Jack/Jacks" and then Rags.

[g1rld1ary]

lamest place in the world - trevor spengler x reader

wc: 835

cw: smoking, drinking, swearing kissing, trevor and r are implied slightly aged up because i want them to be but has no impact on plot, please don't get in the car with a boy you've just met xx

Summerville, despite the name's associations, was the lamest place in the world. Certainly not the endless summer paradise that was suggested on the tin. There wasn't much to do over the summer except go to work, sleep, or fuck around in one of the many dumb fields around. It wasn't even a farming town anymore, why were there still so many goddamn fields?

You were in Walmart, preparing for a quiet night in. A pint of ice cream, a face mask, some new nail polish; you were all set.

"No way, I, um, love that stuff," A voice said from next to you. You chanced a glance at the boy next to you, towering over the shelf and all gangly limbs.

"You love nail polish?" You asked, raising an eyebrow. The boy cringed, caught in his own ruse and exposed by his obviously untouched nails.

"I just mean, uh--"

"You just wanted a reason to talk to me?" The boy nodded, seemingly resigned to his awful failure. To his surprise, you introduced yourself instead. You figured he was new to the town, and couldn't be any worse than the people you already knew. "What are you doing tonight?"

An hour later Trevor was in your car, driving you both out to the outskirts of town. He'd begged you to let him drive, apparently he'd never been allowed or something where he lived, and you figured your ancient piece-of-shit car could handle one more reckless driver.

You turned the speaker all the way up, blasting whatever tape you'd last put into it. You hung out the passenger window, singing along as Trevor raced down the empty dirt roads.

The car was parked in the middle of another field. Far off in the distance, you could see a few artificial lights, but other than that you were alone.

"Why'd you come to Summerville?" You asked Trevor once you'd shifted positions so you were both on the hood of your car, staring up at the dark night sky.

"My mom's broke," He replied, "We got evicted from our apartment and all we've got left is that stupid horror movie house and a bunch of old dusty shit inside."

"Shit," You agreed, coming up with an idea, "You want one?" You offered him a cigarette from the packet inside your jacket.

"I, uh, haven't smoked before," He said sheepishly.

"Neither have I. Cigarettes are stupid hard to come by here, they're only sold at one place and he's tough on kids. These're my brothers from college." You brandished a lighter, hot pink that you assured your mom was just for candles, and got to work.

You counted down together, inhaling in sync. You both choked out coughs and splutters, laughing at each other's embarrassing moments. You stumbled through the process, giving each other advice on how to do it properly despite both of you making it up on the spot.

You figured it out soon enough, and fell into a peaceful quiet, listening to the cicadas and rustling grass.

"Do you hate it here?" Trevor asked to break the silence and you looked at him, considering the question.

"I used to a lot more, I think. I used to be so fucking angry that this was the lot I was given. I've grown up a lot now, make my own fun, and it's not so bad anymore. Now I only hate it every other day," You joked, uncomfortable with the serious conversation. Thankfully Trevor laughed and you were back to more playful conversation.

You'd been out there for hours, burning through a few cigarettes and whatever booze you had stashed in the trunk.

"It's not funny, Trev, we were in deep shit--"

"What'd you call me?"

"Trev? Is that not alright--"

"No, no I liked it. Really liked it." You look over at him, were you always this close? You could feel his breath on your face, hot even in the summer air.

You think you were the one to kiss him first, but it honestly could've been either of you. Something in the air between you was electric, pushing you towards the boy you'd only just met.

The kiss was kind of awkward at first, both of you craning your necks from your position on your backs. Trevor was the one to move, pulling himself on top of you and framing your face with his forearms. He tasted like a bizarre mix of cigarettes and beer but it didn't repel you, rather encouraging you to open your mouth for him, the two of you getting even closer. You explored his mouth, bringing your hands up to tangle in his curls, pulling on them slightly and giggling into his open mouth when he moaned.

Maybe Summerville wasn't all boring, and you were pretty sure you'd just sorted out your summer plans.