#sharp objects headers

[vroomvroomcircuit]

Plushie Kidnapping

(A/N): This one just ran away from me.

Summary: Max accidentally packed his girlfriends favorite plush toy. Now it's his chance to show her how good he can care for her loyalst compagnon.

Pairing: Max Verstappen x reader, Max interacting with other drivers

Wordcount: 2.2k

🏎Masterlist🏎 ___________________________

(Y/N) is on her way home from work when her boyfriend called her. She accepts the call through the car’s entertainment program, excited to hear Max’s voice after a grueling day.

“Hey Baby,” She greets him while steering the car along the streets. A smile takes place on her face, always giddy to talk to her love. “Schatje,” Max breathes into his phone, “how was your day?”

After some small talk and light banter, (Y/N) taxis her car into the parking space of her apartment building. “Are you home?” Max asks, hesitation in his voice. The young woman frowns upon hearing that. “Yeah, but we don’t need to end the call.” She assures him.

The driver hesitates again. “I made a… let's call it a moderately bad mistake.” He confesses, his voice quiet. (Y/N) stops in her tracks as she previously rummaged in her purse for her key. She looks up at the car’s display, as if it’s Max itself standing in front of her, wringing his hands with a nervous smile.

But he is not, instead he stands in a hotel room thousand of kilometers away from his girlfriend, staring at an object on his bed. She clears her throat, her little bubble of giddy having burst. “What?”

Her sharp tone makes Max wince. “This morning I did some last minute packing and - please don’t be mad at me - I may have accidentally, unwanted, really, by mistake… packed your little lion plushie.” Said toy stares back at Max accusatory. The Dutchman swears he is getting judged by it.

(Y/N) is silent for several moments. Max feels the weight though the line. He wishes for nothing more than to be able to turn back time to put the soft lion back onto her bed. Finally, (Y/N) sighs. “It’s” She starts and stops again, taking a deep breath. “You are on a triple header, right?”

That was more of a theoretical question. Of course she knows the answer. The date of his return, nearly four weeks away, is circled red in her calendar. Max doesn’t see the point in answering, instead choosing to keep quiet.

(Y/N) nods. “I- okay. You are sure you got Leon? The Leon who has been with me for most of my life? Who has been here before you?” She is waving her hands around as she is talking, still sitting in the car.

Max sits, pacing around in his hotel room. “I am so so sorry, Schatje. I- sending a package would be way too risky. We can’t have him getting lost somewhere. Or even risk it.” He paces a little more, knowing how much that lion means to his girlfriend. “I will have someone take my jet and fly Leon back to you.” At that (Y/N) lets out a humorless laugh. “Max, that’s too extreme. It’s okay. I will manage without Leon. Just… gosh this sounds pathetic. But please. Make sure he is safe. He means so much to me, even though he is just a plush animal.” (Y/N)’s voice gets quieter and quieter.

He stops in his tracks. “I promise you, Schatje. He is in the second best hands possible. No one can top yours, of course.” (Y/N) smiles to herself, albeit a bit warily. Okay. I trust you.”

Soon after, they end the call and the young woman finally leaves her car to enter her apartment.

For the remainder of the day her mind circles back to her plush animal. It was gifted to her some time during her early childhood days. (Y/N) doesn’t have a single memory or picture without that little yellow plush lion.

When she is making dinner, her phone pings. Max’s contact name with an attached photo lights the screen up. Curiously, (Y/N) puts the knife she used for chopping vegetables down and opens the messenger app.

The first thing she sees is Leon, sitting in front of an empty plate. Then the young woman spots her boyfriend, having taken a selfie of himself and her plushie during dinner, his own plate being filled. Leon is taking your spot during our dinner dates, I hope you don’t mind! Max texted her with the picture.

(Y/N) giggles to herself, her worries being eased for now. I hope you insist on paying like you do with me! Don’t let my best friend starve though. Love you two! After that, he sends her a picture of Leon sitting in front of a plate filled with a few peas. Not letting the little man starve, trust me.

And this is a common recurrence during the following weeks. Every day Max sends his girlfriend several pictures of him and Leon in different situations.

During the first weekend, Max brought Leon with him into the paddock, his little head looking out of his backpack. With a red bull can in hand and a smile on his face, he enters the paddock and is immediately greeted by different media personnel.

One of the red bull social media girls catch him on his hot girl paddock walk. “Hey Max. What’s up with the lion? Is this another opportunity to sell?” She asks, keeping up with his step and holding up the phone to film him for their instagram and tiktok channels.

He laughs a bit, tucking some hair behind his ear. “Oh no, he's my girlfriend’s most loyal companion in life and I accidentally packed him up. I promised her to take care of Leon during the triple header, and I felt like he would have been too lonely in my hotel room. So I’m showing him the paddock.” He explains, waving his arm around and pointing towards the plushie in his backpack.

That clip goes viral quicker than any video that had the word “inchident” uttered.

Soon enough, (Y/N) gets another photo of them, Leon being placed on a treadmill next to Max’s, “training” at the gym together. The picture has been taken by Rupert.

A few minutes later, the young woman receives a video of Leon bench pressing some very small weights, with Max spotting him. “He is very strong, I can see now why he is your actual protector instead of me”, he winks into the camera before the recording ends.

By the end of the first race of the triple header, the whole team has already been roped into the spiel of showing (Y/N) how good the Dutchman takes care of her stuffed companion.

Especially the red bull social media team jumped onto that wagon. They make clips of Leon getting a spa treatment at a place specialized on stuffed animals. They take Max and Leon to a zoo, showing him some actual lions. The team also ropes Leon into challenge videos with Yuki, who loses to the stuffed toy every time. (Y/N) gets the first view of course before the video hits all social media channels.

Every single video goes viral. Even other sports try to hop onto that train. But a person in a fursuit for a football team can never step up to be as iconic as a small plush lion.

Soon enough, Leon becomes some kind of mascot for the team, especially for Max.

“Schatje”, he mutters into the phone after turning another pole into a race win, still wet and sticky from champagne combined with red bull, “I think I need to bring Leon to all my races from now on.”

(Y/N) just gasps. “So it was deliberate of you! You packed him on purpose!” Ever since Max has told her that he took the stuffed lion with him, the couple has been bickering whether or not the Dutchman did it intentionally or not. The opinions on both sides are steadfast.

“Lies! Slander! I wouldn’t do such things. Maybe you just need to quit your day job and accompany Leon and me for the rest of the season. I have a championship to win and Leon has a championship winning driver to support!” (Y/N) groans at that. “Come home with my guy first and then we can do some talking. From what I saw, there were attempts to kidnap Leon. Your chances of being able to even have a conversation about my future as part of the workforce will be non-existent if something happens.”

This is true. After other drivers have witnessed the magic of the little lion, plans were made to claim that energy for themselves.

First and foremost the rookies under the lead of Kimi and Ollie tried to make some elaborate plan. In the end they didn’t go through with it, because between them all, they couldn’t agree who is allowed to keep Leon if their plan was to be successful.

Charles actually got close to getting his hands on the trophy in the form of a plush lion as he walked into the paddock with Max during the sunny afternoon for another day of media day. Staying in step with him, the Monegasque put his arm around his shoulder, acting friendly while his hand crawled towards Leon hanging out the backpack. “What is your opinion on the new soft tyre Pirelli introduced yesterday?” He tries to divert his attention.

But there is one thing he hasn’t accounted for, dealing with Max. His lightning fast reflexes. Quickly, Charles’ arm is pinned off Max. “Just touch Leon without my blessing and it’s not only my wrath you’ll get to witness, but (Y/N)’s anger too. And you don’t want to try her.” He warns the Ferrari driver. Charles backs off, a bit scared if he is being honest.

Even through all the evil attempts of commiting crimes, Leon also experiences the full mischief and chaos that comes with the other drivers and daily life in the paddock.

“Has Leon ever tried it?” Yuki asks during a fanzone appearance, gesturing towards said lion that is sat on the table on stage where they held some kind of building blocks challenge against the mclaren boys. The soft toy leans against a can of red bull.

Max is shaking his head laughing while Lando dashes to the front, his excitement barely contained as he puts his own can of Monster next to the red bull. “If he has to try something, it has to be the best energy drink in the world”, he speaks into the microphone. Their sponsors love him.

The Dutchman is quick to set the record straight. “Leon will not try any caffeinated drinks. He is like (Y/N), it would only upset his stomach and make him anxious.” Then he turns towards the crowd. “Especially some sugar water like that neon green piss.” Other sponsors hate him.

The interviewer has some work to do to calm the fans back down.

But also during drivers parades, the stuffed animal has become an icon quickly. It’s the only time where Max lets another driver hold him, since so many eyes and cameras are on them at that moment no one would dare to do something to or with Leon.

To everyone’s surprise, Oscar is weirdly possessive when he gets his fingers on him.

“I feel like it’s my turn to hold him now”, Alex whines as he makes grabby hands towards Oscar, who cradles the stuffy in his arms. He fixates the Thai with a dry look. “Too bad, I have him now.” The Australian successfully fends off everyone's advances of taking Leon from him with his witty remarks and mean glances. Up until the truck is back in the pits, where he gets approached by Max. With a sigh, he hands Leon over. “Ask your girlfriend if she also has a koala. This is weirdly soothing.”

Luckily, eventually all triple headers come to an end. The press later argues that Max’s drive to the airport after the race was faster than his actual fastest lap on track.

Finally, after three poles to wins, Max flies back to his shared apartment with (Y/N) in Monaco. He arrives in the middle of the night, rolling in his suitcase, his backpack slung over his shoulders and gripping Leon tightly in his free hand.

He dumps his luggage at the door quietly to tiptoe into the master bedroom. Max halts in the doorway, his eyes softening as he sees his love cuddled up in tshirt, clutching also one of his hoodies.

While trying to be as silent as possible, he changes out his plane clothes into some pjs before slipping under the blanket on his side of the bed. (Y/N) stirs slightly. Then turns around towards him.

“Did you-” Max already puts the small plush lion into her arms. “I did”, he reassures her with a gentle smile. He pulls her into his arms, before sighting satisfied. This is his home.

“He smells like you.” “Me?” (Y/N) hums, close to falling asleep again. “Like burnt rubber and victory.”

Max chuckles and presses a kiss to her forehead. “And you smell like home.” He whispers, knowing she has fallen asleep already. While he looks at her, wishing he can take (Y/N) with him like he did with Leon. Carrying his love in his pocket at all times.

[ahqkas]

“MILLION DOLLAR MAN — bruce wayne.

PAIRING! bruce wayne 𝒙 fem!reader SYNOPSIS! bruce met you through a dating app (his sons’ doing, really) and the temptation to invite you over for christmas is getting harder to resist WORD COUNT! 3.6k WARNINGS / TAGS! fluff, bruce is literally down bad for reader in this one, unedited + lmk if found! NOTES! for nat & based on this req. , header bellow belongs to @/v6que © ahqkas — all rights reserved. even when credited, these works are prohibited to be reposted, translated or modified

BRUCE WAYNE AVOIDED RELATIONSHIPS LIKE A SOLDIER DODGING BULLETS, each attempt adding yet another layer to the armor he wore daily. He didn’t need them, the women, or so he told himself. They entered his life easily — at his own charity galas, where one pretty bird thought she could get a kiss from him by the end of the night. Female admirers who ate up his charming smiles and sharp eyes seemed to flock around him at all times. And those countless girls who were lured in by the Wayne name, the status, the wealth.

And Bruce gave them the attention they craved from him.

The women served their purpose as brief districtions, companions who helped him maintain his public image, but none of them really mattered to him.

They kept the colder side of his bed warm, but never his heart.

It wasn’t that Bruce didn’t want love — some part of him did, but that part was buried under the weight of Batman. Allowing himself to lose the walls around him and find an attachment in a woman wasn't something his alter ego was okay with, not with the way he’d been living. And another part convinced him that his duties as Gotham’s protector, with all his scars and wounds, didn’t make him a possible object for such things. Love and vigilantism didn’t mingle together well.

Maybe that’s why his own sons and personal butler teamed up on him. Batman was a hero to many, but with how much it damaged Bruce’s internal beliefs, it would ruin him soon enough.

It started as something innocent (but it seemed the wolf was clothed in sheep’s wool): Dick, his oldest, had teased him about his non-existent love life during a training session in the Batcave.

The large space was full with flickering lights coming from the monitors and grunts from the fighting men. Sweat filled the air, masculine and strong, but that only indicated to the hard work they were doing. Training wasn’t easy, they liked to train with the maximum intensity ( it was kinda needed, too ) and it showed. From their damp hair and glistening skin to the rippling muscles underneath their clothes.

“You know, Bruce,” his son started when he blocked yet another strike coming from the man in question. A puff of air left his mouth upon the attack. Not fair. “for someone who spends his nights saving people, you sure are terrible at saving yourself from eternal loneliness.”

Bruce delivered another jab, this one directed straight at Dick’s weak point. “Not now, Dick.”

But his son was nothing if not persistent and he always got what he wanted, whether it was with or without serious consequences. “I’m serious. When was the last time you went on a date? And don’t try to tell me you had one on your arm during the last charity event. That doesn’t count.”

Both of them fully knew Bruce��s arm candies were way more interested in his name and money than in his heart and soul. The truth made his jaw muscles tighten at the realization.

“My personal life is irrelevant to my work.”

Dick took the opportunity and circled the older man like a predator catching the prey’s scent of blood. A sweet weakness, that one. He’d be stupid if he didn’t take the chance. “Is it though? I mean, sure, you’re great at taking down supervillains and brooding on top of high rooftops, but even Batman needs a little action sometimes. The different kind of action, of course. Or are you planning to spend the rest of your life married to the job?”

Bruce swiped his right leg toward Dick’s shins, trying to take him down like he was the said supervillain but the acrobat jumped right on time, avoiding Bruce’s attempt with a grin on his face.

He landed on his feet and crossed his arms at his chest, leaning the weight of his body against one leg. The playfulness disappeared from both his voice and expression and instead, seriousness graced him whole. “Seriously, Bruce, even Alfred’s worried. He brought it up the other day while we were decorating the tree. Something about how the manor feels colder than usual this year.”

“The heating system is fine.”

With Jason gone, it was the truth. His second son had this strange relationship with all the members of the family. Off and on. Off and on. No one truly knew where they stood in Jason’s eyes but he made the effort and showed up on Christmas Eve the other year upon receiving Alfred’s invitation.

Bruce doubted he would show up two years in a row.

“That’s not what he meant, and you know it,” Dick pressed, and effectively added more salt into Bruce’s wounds. It stung and it fucking hurt. As much as Batman was ruthless, it didn’t mean the man under the mask was resistant against the pain his life brought. “You’re not getting any younger, B. It wouldn’t kill you to let someone in. And I don’t mean us. Try to meet someone who isn’t friendly with a criminal record.”

The older man could only stare helplessly at the other. Those words his son, partner, spoke were loud, crawling their way into his mind and much to his dismay, his heart as well.

Before he could voice his dismissal, a younger voice called out. It was familiar in a way family tended to be.

“You are wasting your breath, Grayson. Father has neither the time nor the inclination to entertain your nonsense,” his youngest son declared into the space of Batcave, his voice ringing out and echoing every single word. The blood son, Damian Wayne.

The father didn’t even flinch, just let out a deep sigh through his nose. It was as usual between those two, always bickering from Damian’s side and teasing remarks from Dick’s. You could mistake the blood running through their system as one, if not for the physical differences. They were brothers in all but red.

“Damian,” Dick started in that lecturing tone he’d always seemed to use with the younger boy, “when was the last time you saw Bruce here even try to have a social life?”

Damian rolled his eyes, the green disappearing behind his eyelids before they reappeared, rougher than they were. “The so called ‘social life’ you’re referring to consists of women who barely last through dinner. Why would he waste his energy on distractions when Gotham requires his full attention?”

“Because even Batman needs a break. You know, normal human things? Like dating, smiling, not dying alone in this cave surrounded by bats?”

“If Father is content with his choices, who are you to meddle? Unlike you, he does not require constant companionship to validate his existence.”

“Ouch,” Dick put his palm against his heart in a mocking manner, feigning hurt as his lips formed a pout. “You’ve got a real gift for the Christmas spirit, don’t you?”

The younger son narrowed his eyes at his supposed brother. The constant bickering was almost normal in their lives so far, and nothing seemed to be changing any time soon. He had to learn how to live with the excuse of a brother, although he started to form a light liking towards him. He wasn’t so bad. “I only speak the truth,” his green irises flicked to Bruce. “Though it is peculiar he tolerates your interference. Perhaps even Father has realized how pathetic his current romantic life—or lack thereof—appears.”

The object of the conversation let out another sigh, this one loud enough for the boys to hear. Their gazes snapped toward Bruce with accusingly great speed.

“If you two are done debating my personal life, there’s actual work to be done.”

He missed the glance his oldest threw at the youngest. He missed the look filled with amusement and a plan that was already brewing. He missed the nod they gave each other, although Dick’s was more pronounced and determined.

The next few hours were spent creating Bruce’s dating app profile.

The final result was the definition of real sugar daddy vibes. Every detail had been debated (mostly argued over though) and thought through, so to say the boys were satisfied with it was an understatement. The oldest prided in the work, saying how it would get so many women to reply which would eventually lead to the right one. The middle one Dick and Damian (only Dick) dragged into the activity beamed up once the profile was set while the youngest scoffed and scowled during the entire process.

During the next evening, the boys showed the main man his new account.

Bruce was left speechless upon seeing the bright screen flash before his eyes. Not a single word was muttered as he watched his boys showing him the app and explaining how exactly it worked (he’d never used a dating app before all this so bear with him). The main photo on the profile was a candid one of him, the one Cass had taken on a sunny day in the Wayne Manor gardern. He was dressed in a crisp white shirt, the long sleeves rolled up past his elbows as the muscles of his forearms bulged up. The faintest smile tugged at the corner of his lips, the sunlight casting shadows across his sharp features and Bruce had to admit they chose a good photo.

It wasn’t intimidating, but it wasn’t exactly friendly as well. The good old middle.

The boys knew he was convinced to give it a try when he waved them off with a deep sigh slipping past his lips.

The game was on.

It was past the midnight when he lied in his bed, propped against one too many pillows and wondered why he was still scrolling through the damned dating app. It was late—far past the time he should have been out on patrol, but Red Hood and Red Robin got it covered for him.

Bruce wasn’t looking for anything specific, really. If he were honest, this whole situation felt out of place for him. Swiping through the profiles was more like an exercise for his thumb.

First was Madison K. Her profile opened with flashy colors that immediately put Bruce into a doubtful situation. Were all these women going to be like this? Madison was beautiful and her looks screamed professionalism: her makeup was done flawlessly, adorning her bright eyes and full lips. She looked like she belonged on a cover for a fashion magazine, not a dating app. Her bio made his thumb swipe left.

‘Manifesting my best life. CEO of my own happiness. Looking for someone who’s successful, ambitious, and knows how to treat me like a queen.’

The next account’s bio made him grimace and swipe left once again.

‘Looking for someone who can keep me living the dream. If you’re successful, generous, and ready to spoil me, let’s talk.”

At this point, Bruce was ready to delete the dating app his boys set up and enjoy the rest of his night. Most of the profiles he swiped through were simply bland to him. Nothing felt genuine. Right. It was safe to say he was losing the hope Dick had set in him earlier in the evening. Until he stumbled upon your profile.

The account stood out among the others—simple, elegant, but with a certain amount of warmth that seemed genuine. Bruce’s heart skipped a beat once he scrolled further and came across your photo. The picture showed you in a cozy cafe, the one Steph adored so much for their cinnamon roll buns. A soft smile danced on your pretty face, highlighting the curve of your cheeks as you looked off to the side. You captured Bruce in a way the others didn’t.

You looked like a fawn surrounded by hungry wolves. You were admirable while they were craving wealth and status. Two different sides of a coin, but Bruce had already known his pick.

Your bio was sincere, a sight the man liked to see.

‘I enjoy the little moments — finding beauty in the simple things. I believe in kindness, and I’m looking for someone who values honesty and a deep conversation.’

His mind flicked briefly toward the countless hours he spends in the cave, surrounded by work and worries. You seemed like the one who could understand the balance between the quiet and the loud, someone who could exist in both of his worlds without losing that spark you held in your gaze.

Before he could overthink it, Bruce clicked on the “message” button.

Once the screen of your non-existent chat appeared, his mind went blank and all he was capable of was to stare mindlessly at the phone. His fingers hovered over the keyboard, but no words came to him. What did one say to someone like you? He wasn’t used to thinking ahead when it came to women. This was a new field. And he couldn’t screw up.

Finally, his fingers moved before his mind could think of whatever embarrassing thing it was capable of.

> Hey, I noticed your profile and wanted to reach out. There’s something about your words that struck a chord with me. I’d like to know more about you.

And that’s how the two of you started your relationship, or whatever you could call it. Neither of you voiced it as official, but that was okay. He hadn’t expected to feel this way, not so soon. And yet it came at him, crashing like a large wave of emotions every time you were around. You changed everything for him.

Your conversations became the highlight of his days.

His ears perked up every single time without a fail when he heard the soft ‘ping!’ of the notification, already convinced it was from you (and it 98 percent was). Whether it was early in the morning before he started working in the chaotic Wayne Enterprises or late at night when the Batcave was quiet and felt at peace. You were always there with him.

You were thoughtful, generous, and refreshingly kind. You asked him questions that no one else dared to: what he wanted from life, what made him happy, what kept him awake at night. You didn’t flinch at his silence. You didn’t push him to give answers he wasn’t ready to share. You understood him in a way only a few people did.

Piece by piece, he let you into his world — not that part filled with constant danger and threats, but that part that longed for something real.

By the time Christmas approached, Bruce was sure of one thing: he wanted you in his life.

The holiday was just around the corner, filling the air with joy and gratitude as it always did. The snow was blanketing the streets with white powder, and although many people were complaining about the cold, it had its charm.

Christmas had always been about family for Bruce, about gathering around the tree and full table with the people who mattered most. It was lonely at first, after the death of his parents, but over the years, Alfred had made it work. The table was always full of tasty food the kids adored and presents Bruce knew would make them more than happy were neatly waiting for them every morning after Christmas Eve.

This year though, Bruce wanted it to be a little different. He wanted you to be part of it.

You might actually fit into the chaos of the Wayne family — the teasing and playful banters between you, Dick, and Tim would be absolute gold to hear. You probably even could handle Damian’s wit which was something his father would like to see. He could picture you smiling, holding back your own remarks. The idea of you sitting beside him at the long dining table, sharing their traditions, made his chest feel warm in a way he wasn’t used to.

That night, he sent you a message.

> Are you free on Christmas Eve?

Your response came in quickly, as it always did. Bruce’s heart thumped against the bones of his ribs.

> I am. Why?

He hesitated for a bit, overthinking his decision.

> I’d like you to join me for dinner. It’s a family thing but I’d really like for you to be there.

> Are you sure? I don’t want to intrude.

> You wouldn’t be intruding.

Bruce could picture the light frown between your brows and a small smile tugged at the corners of his lips. You often did it unconsciously, never knowing how pretty you looked this way. But even as he pictured your face, a part of him was growing more nervous about the situation. Would you agree to an event this serious? Spend Christmas with him. And his family. Or were you coming up with excuses right now? He wouldn’t blame you.

> Then I’d love to come.

His heart skipped a beat and that night, Bruce went to bed feeling a little lighter than he usually did.

Snow blanketed the long driveway leading up to Wayne Manor and for once, Bruce wasn’t thinking about the pressure of Batman or the chaos the boys would definitely stir up tonight. His attention was entirely focused on the one making your way towards him. He stood just outside the grand entrance, dressed in a dark, perfectly tailored suit that fit him like a glove. The soft crunch of tires on the white powder alerted him to your arrival, and as your car pulled up, Bruce started to feel the nervousness. He adjusted his tie with a single hand.

When you stepped out, his breath caught.

You were breathtakingly beautiful. Dressed in an inky black that hugged your figure in all the right places, the fabric shimmered under the outdoor lights of the mansion. The smile you gave him when your eyes met melted all the nerves that had been harboring in his system. He was finally calm and composed, for what seemed like the first time in the evening.

“You’re early,” Bruce pointed out softly when you walked up the stairs to meet him in front of the door, and his eyes sparkled with little stars at the sight of you. How did he get so lucky? “You look stunning, by the way.”

“I didn’t want to keep you waiting. And thank you. You clean up well, too, Bruce.”

Your gaze held a playful edge in it as you accepted his hand, locking your palm around his bulging biceps and squeezing warmly. The touch added the missing piece of the puzzle Bruce was trying to solve while his cheeks warmed a rosy pink under your influence without any hesitation. The gesture felt natural, like it always belonged there.

The two of you approached the doors of the manor in a shared silence, although it didn’t feel a bit awkward. You took a moment to take in the place. It was like something out of your childhood dreams — tall, arched windows glowing with the soft light of a dozen garlands lining the entryway. The faint hum of holiday music and the occasional sound of laughter echoed through the manor.

It was Bruce’s home.

“Do you always go this big for Christmas?” you voiced a question that's been sitting on your mind since the moment you saw the large Christmas tree from the entryway to Bruce’s living room. Decorated with lots of ornaments, it looked lovely, accompanied by a heap of presents.

“Alfred insists,” admitting with a soft chuckle, Bruce rubbed the nape of his neck as he led you deeper into his home. “And the boys like the holidays. I want them to have the best.”

The scent of pine and cinnamon enveloped your senses the further you moved. The sounds grew louder, too. You awe made him feel lighter somehow. The dining room at Wayne Manor was nothing short of spectacular this night, with the long mahogany table adorned with a dozen of flickering candles and plates of food that looked like it belonged in a holiday spread for a cookbook.

You were sitting beside Bruce (he kind of insisted anyway), your hand occasionally brushing against his. He helped you settle into the chair which earned a teasing glance from Dick. Speaking of his oldest son, he was sitting across from you with an easy grin that told you some questions would come your way sooner or later. Tim was at Dick’s right, while Damian occupied the chair from the other side of his father.

The evening was more than successful in your opinion. Steph asked you about your favorite literature, while Tim quizzed you on trivia about Gotham (which you surprisingly got all right). Damian, after much persistence from Dick, shared a story about his latest art project, though he kept glancing at you as if trying to gauge your reaction.

Through it all, Bruce remained by your side.

When the night finally came to an end, and everyone drifted to their own space of the manor, Bruce walked you to the entrance with a gentle hand against the small of your back.

“Thank you,” his gaze met yours as he handed you your coat, effortlessly helping you slip your arms into the sleeves. “For coming tonight. For putting up with them.”

You gifted him with the most precious kind of a present; your smile, smaller hands reaching up to adjust the collar of his dark suit. “Of course. They’re wonderful, Bruce. I enjoyed myself tonight.”

For a man who othen found himself at loss for words when it came to talking in emotions, Bruce found himself smiling softly with his heart feeling lighter than it had in years. Because for the first time, Christmas didn’t feel like an obligation. It felt like a new beginning.

[sharp-silver4795]

Creepypasta Phobias

I came up with this idea after starting a different draft. This one will probably come out first tho 😅

I will link the post here when it’s done

Everyone is scared of something… even serial killers~

Social/Personal

Autophobia: fear of being alone

Ticci Toby

Liu Woods

Anthrophobia: the fear of any sort of interpersonal relationships

Jane the Killer

Nina the Killer

Dark Link

Ochlophobia: the fear of crowds of people

Wilsom the Basher

Kat Hunter

Proditiophobia: the fear of being betrayed

Jason the Toymaker

Nathan the Nobody

Environment & Nature

Claustrophobia: the fear of small or tight spaces

Masky

Lost Silver

Laughing Jack

Laughing Jill

Acrophobia: the fear of heights/high places

Hoodie

Bloody Painter

Agrophobia: the fear of open spaces

Rouge Proxy

Kate the Chaser

Xenophobia: fear of the unknown

Kagekao

Jeff the Killer

Ornithophobia: the fear of birds

Scarecrow

Phonophobia: the fear of loud sounds

Zechariah

Pyrophobia: the fear of fire

Any the Wight

The Body & Self

Hypochondria/Germophobia: the fear of being sick and/or germs

Neon Spike

X-Virus

Thanatophobia: the fear of death

Eyeless Jack

Puppeteer

Spectophobia: the fear of mirrors/reflections

Zero

Candy Pop

Candy Cane

Atychiphobia: the fear of failure

Judge Angels

Chest Master

Inanimate Objects

Trypanophobia: the fear of needles/sharp objects

Bloody Angel

Clockwork

Pediophobia: the fear of dolls

Doll maker oh the irony

BEN Drowned

Divider Creds: Sister-Lucifer

Header Creds: ME!!!

[pink-vacancy]

Hi ^^

It’s me, the creator of some gifs you like and the creator of many gifs you could’ve probably lived without. A few people have asked me for a giffing tutorial recently so I have made one documenting my normal process! I’m going to gif this Aespa stage in this tutorial because I am still pretty bad at coloring stages. So come struggle along with me 🫶!

Step 1. Getting Sources & Vapoursynth

The worst enemy of the tumblr gifmaker is tumblr itself. You will spend your time making the clearest gif imagineable only for the blue site to reduce it to pixels. But alas, we must gif on. The best way to get good results is have a good source and to precompress your gif with vapoursynth.

As far as downloading from Youtube the best app to use is 4k Video Downloader. 4kVD let's you get download your file as a .mkv which is how youtube stores their 4k quality vids. Only limitation is on the free tier you get only 10 downloads. There are other more technically dubious methods to get 4kvids but I've literally never hit this limit.

10 out of 10 gifmakers agree if you want those good good crystal clear gifs you gotta stick with 4k or 1080p sources. Although if you are a complete sicko like me you can gif 720p and still get pretty good (not great) results.

So now you got your source video but you won't actually be able to open that bad boy up in PS yet. This is where the Vapoursynth step comes in. Vapoursynth will blast that footage into a nice denoised, sharpened and resized little baddie of a video clip for us.

To download VS and get a more in depth explanation of the exact steps on how to use it please reference this post. The basic steps of Vapooursynth are:

Drop your source video on the "vapourscript (drop a video file on me).bat" icon and type in the timestamps

Crop your gif to your liking (I do a lot of 540 x405 or 540x335 for horizontal gifs. 268x480 for vertical.)

Apply the sharpness and denoise (these are the options I use):

copy the code from the white box and paste it into the script like below

I set my denoiser to 1.5 and my sharpening to .5. (I stole this from @hyeongseo lol)

Go to Script > Encode Video. Make sure on this screen to name your file and set the header option to 'Y4M'. (Sometimes this is the step where it crashes and all your dreams are ruined because it can't convert it unfortunately. But 99% of videos are good lol)

You will find your Photoshop ready clip in gifs/output

Step 2. Photoshop

You are now good to open up your clip in Photoshop.

if we export our gif at this moment it will look like this:

Which isn't too bad. They just are pretty washed out and a lot of times at this step you'll see a lot of grain.

Sharpening (again lol) and Noise:

This might sound weird cause we just denoised lmao but stick with me.

We are going to convert our clip to a smart object. If you want to slow down or speed up your clip make sure to do so before converting.

(Often times if i have 60fps clip I put it at half speed, but if the action of the gif is really jerky or flashy at 30fps a lot of times I'll set it to 85% speed)

Convert your video to a smart object by right clicking it in the layers panel and selecting the "Convert to Smart Object" option

Create a copy of layer 1 and arrange it so it is aligned perfectly on top of the first video in the timeline. You have to drag it outside of the video group to do this. It should look like this once you are done:

On the bottom clip (layer 1), select filters -> sharpen -> smart sharpen. Apply the filter with these settings:

Then on the same clip (layer 1) apply the same smart sharpen filter with these settings

Setting up the Sharpness like this makes sure the finer details with stand out with crisp lines in the final product. (Look at how the mesh on her arms is in finer detail now)

Your video might look a little crispy at this point and that is ok cause we are going to soften that.

Now on our top video layer (layer 1 copy) select filters -> Blur -> Gaussian Blur. Use this setting:

Finally apply filters-> Noise -> Add Noise to layer 1 copy with these settings

"Vacancy what the hell? It looks like shit now."

Yeah... But now we'll put layer 1 copy at 25% opacity and it will look less like the shit that it does look like right now I prommy. Here is the current output:

The idea behind all this blurring and adding noise is that it will help create smoother transitions between the colors of the gif and reduce large blotchy bands of pixels that can sometimes show up

PLEASE!!! Save your current step as a PSD file. You can skip having to apply all those filters and just drag the filter groups on to the layers after the smart object conversion step.

Step 3. Coloring

Now to the fun part! There is a lot of trial and error in this step since we only have 256 colors to play with.

Typically my goals for this step are:

Raise the black point (Make Giselle's outfit in this gif black so more color can be used on her hair, skin and the background.)

Reduce the overall contrast of the gif. (Darken the lightest lights if possible)

Saturate the colors enough so they stand out but not so much that everything looks gross.

Depending on how we do these steps we may need to subtract frames from the gif. (Which I hope not cause there is exactly 69 frames in the current version lol)

Here is an example of what my coloring difference can look like:

In this case the colored gif is actually smaller because I elminated a lot of the dark greys in the background.

Vacancy's Dumbass Original Recipe thing

This is probably the only thing different that I do from most creators

My first adjustment layer is usually a gradient map. The green and red one to be more specific.

I then change the blend mode to luminosity and set the opacity somewhere between 12 and 20% (Usually 15%).

This step brings all our shades closer together so we have more freedom with coloring later. Also when idols are very white wash this seems to bring out the shadows and skin tone better in later steps as well. If you overdo it though the person in the gif can wind up looking very orange or yellow so less is sometimes more here.

There's also probably a better way to achieve this but you know... oh well

My Other adjusment layers usually consist of:

Levels: With the gradient map applied you can darken the blackpoint of your gif pretty significantly.

Selective Color: This is the most useful adjustment layer. Make sure to expirement with adding to the black slider on the blacks and neutrals color options. Often times kpop vids are over exposed and darkening this can bring out a lot of unseen color.

Hue/Saturation: I use this layer to darken the blues of the background with the lightness slider as well. You can adjust individual colors with this layer and with selective color and that is a very powerful tool for coloring.

Start:

Finish:

Because I darkened the gif so much I was able to add around 6 frames!

Though I’m not 100% satisfied with this gif, this would be my process from the start. You can put those adjustment layers all in a group and save it to the psd as well to skip all the steps to apply them. I used all the same adjustment layers for the header gif of this post as well which saved me a lot of time ^^!

Since every video is different you usually have to play around with the sliders a lot between clips.

Step 4. It Flops…

Jk jk but it does happen a lot tho on this site so don’t get discouraged ☺️

Parting Notes

If you want a really nicely colored fancam to practice on I would see if MIRAI on YouTube has a fancam of your fave idol. Their videos are really nicely color balanced from the start where stages like this tend to be very bright.

I’ll probably make a follow up post with more coloring tips and my thought processes while making gifs but this is the very basics to making hq gifs hope you learned a lot.

You can always hit my dms or inbox with questions if you have them ^^!

[deathblacksmoke]

soft skin and soft lips

pairing: jolly karlsson x davis rider

summary: davis gifts jolly a free use arrangement for his birthday.

word count: 3.9K

content warnings: free use arrangement, somnophilia (brief + consensual), oral sex (m receiving), anal sex, rough sex, daddy kink (sorry), biting and slapping, mentions of safe words (not used), boys in love because it wouldn't be a moi fic without it

author's note: ringing a dinner bell shouting everyone come get your rare pair here!!! extra special thank yous to @darksigns-exe for the beautiful header (as always) and @concretejunglefm for the guidance and input as i navigated writing this thing that was so incredibly far out of my comfort zone. i hope everyone enjoys 🤍

dividers by saradika-graphics | tag list sign-up

Sometimes he can’t believe how lucky he is. 

When he opens his eyes every morning and turns over in bed to see Davis, sleepy and warm, he almost has to pinch himself to be sure he isn’t dreaming.

When he rolls over this morning, his heart sinks a little to see he’s in bed alone. Davis’ side of the bed is empty, but still warm to the touch, reminiscent of his soft, sleeping form.

There is a slip of paper, neatly folded, perched on Davis’ pillow. Just as he’s unfolding it to see what’s inside, he hears a loud crash echo from the kitchen.

Happy birthday, babe. I’m waiting for you in the kitchen :) Love, Davis

He tries not to feel too overexcited, but sometimes, at least when it comes to Davis, he can’t help it.

He slides on his slippers and pads out of their bedroom. He tries to walk quietly — the further he gets down the stairs, the easier he can smell the breakfast being cooked, the clearer he can hear Davis singing along to the song playing from his speaker.

He stands in the entryway of the kitchen, an impressive breakfast spread already laid out on the island, and still growing judging by Davis’ position in front of the stove.

His eyes pan over to the dining room table, where he sees the biggest bouquet of flowers he’s ever received, a big happy birthday balloon tied to the chair at the head of the table, and a prettily wrapped rectangular gift box sitting next to the place setting.

Having still not been noticed, he decides to make his presence known. He makes sure Davis isn’t wielding any sharp objects before sidling up behind him and wrapping his arms tightly around his waist. 

There is no startle, just Davis melting so easily into his hold.

“Good morning, sweet,” Jolly says into the skin of his neck as he peppers little kisses there.

Turning off the stove and twirling around in Jolly’s arms, his eyes are crinkled at the edges as he smiles. Jolly wonders distantly when he’ll ever stop swooning and quickly decides that he never will, and that’s fine by him. He leans in for a kiss and when Davis giggles into his open mouth, he melts.

“Happy birthday, baby,” Davis responds against Jolly’s lips, before squirming away and returning his attention back to the stove, and the breakfast spread. He moves the sizzling bacon from the pan onto the paper towel-lined plate, before he starts speaking again. “I made banana pancakes, strawberry pancakes, bacon, and sausage. I got fresh fruit and cinnamon rolls—”

Jolly wonders how long it took him to do all this, how early he crawled out of bed. He briefly recalls a kiss being placed to his forehead what feels like ages ago. He thought it was a dream.

“I could also make eggs, if you want—” 

“This is perfect, Davey,” Jolly interrupts, before Davis has the opportunity to offer anything else. He can’t imagine wanting anything more. “I couldn’t imagine wanting anything more, sweet, thank you.”

He’s sure his expression mirrors Davis’. When Davis’ mouth shifts into a pleased, relaxed smile, his own does much of the same. The hearts in his pupils must be clear as day.

He helps Davis carry plates to the dining room table, and when he sits down, he can hardly see over the massive bouquet. He moves it to the side to see Davis looking at him expectantly.

“I want you to open your present first, I can’t wait,” he says, awfully eager. “There’s a card.”

As he opens the envelope, he watches Davis chew on his bottom lip, his hands shaking. He’s a little nervous to see what’s inside, if it has him so anxious.

What he reads inside the card stops him in his tracks.

He hadn’t thought he was serious.

3 days prior.

It hadn’t felt like a real offer.

They were lying in bed together, enjoying each other’s quiet company — Jolly reading his book, Davis scrolling on his phone. It was said almost as an afterthought as Davis laid his phone down on the nightstand and curled himself into Jolly’s side, asking him what he was reading.

Jolly read him a few passages. Davis hummed happily from where his head was resting on Jolly’s chest. 

They’d fallen into a companionable silence for a few moments before Davis broke it again, clearing his throat and squirming nervously. Jolly put his book down and eyed his boyfriend curiously.

“What if for a day, you could do whatever you wanted with me?”

He had only been with Davis for a few months. They had become so close, so quickly, and everything had fallen into place effortlessly. Jolly attributed it to how long they’d known each other already, before the energy shifted and they felt they had no other choice but become something more. 

It felt right. He really sometimes cannot believe that he is the one Davis chose.

“Everyday with you is kind of already like that,” Jolly responded, not a complaint he could imagine having. “We want all of the same things — unless you’re just really agreeable.”

Davis smiled, pressed a kiss to Jolly’s bare chest, and snuggled closer. Jolly was sure that beneath Davis’ head, he could feel his heart threatening to thud out of his chest.

“I mean, like really anything. Anything you want, whenever you want it.”

Jolly didn’t know what to say. It didn’t feel like an offer, rather a hypothetical, but he couldn’t deny that he liked the sound of it. 

“I think I’d really like that,” he answered eventually, not thinking anything of it other than humoring his love’s hypothetical question with his honest answer.

At the time, the mischievous expression that painted itself across Davis’ face hadn’t meant anything.

So here’s your gift: Me. Today, I’m yours. No asking. No waiting. Just take what you want, when you want it.

Free use. No limits (unless I say my safeword). No shame. Just you, indulging. Me, obeying.

Jolly stares at the card for a few long moments. He sees Davis fidgeting nervously from the corner of his eye and knows he needs to say something, but for a minute, he feels a little frozen in place.

“You’re serious?” he finally manages to ask, hoping he doesn’t come across as uninterested, ungrateful. He’s just having trouble wrapping his mind around the offer — the suddenly very real offer sitting in front of him.

“I am,” Davis responds, his voice cracking just slightly at the end. Jolly doesn’t love the terrified look in his eyes, the worry, the way his brow furrows. “There’s another present there too, just in case you don’t want that one.”

As he slowly unwraps the gift, the overwhelming feeling of I don’t deserve him overtakes him again. It’s a special edition of his favorite book, that he’s been eyeing for months but hasn’t managed to convince himself to pull the trigger on. He doesn’t think he’s mentioned it, and he hopes Davis didn’t pay the full price that he’s been seeing. It’s perfect.

“Come here, pretty,” Jolly says, watching with his own relief as Davis heaves a pretty sigh and relaxes his painfully furrowed brow. Davis settles comfortably into his lap, the weight more than welcome. Jolly presses a lingering kiss to his cheek and feels the skin heat beneath his lips. “This is perfect, sweet. And about the other thing—” he continues, but doesn’t give Davis enough time to panic again. He holds him closer, nuzzling his nose into his neck, inhaling his scent. “You promise you want that?”

“Whatever you want, Jolls,” Davis says, curling a hand around Jolly’s jaw and bringing their faces together. His lips are soft against Jolly’s and it’s hard not to give in to them wholly, to not take him right here and now. “Whenever you want it. Whenever you want me.”

“I always want you, sweet,” he admits, figuring honesty is the best policy if they’re really going to do this. He sneaks a hand up beneath Davis’ t-shirt, his touch exploring his soft, smooth, warm skin. He can’t imagine not wanting him, all the time.

“Then take me,” Davis responds quickly, so desperate it almost sounds like a plea.

He thinks about it for a long moment. It’s awfully tempting, to just take him right here, this perfect pretty boy who’s handing himself over fully to him. But he has a big breakfast spread out in front of him, one that Davis woke up early to prepare just for him, all by himself. He can’t let it all go to waste.

With a hand on his cheek, he brings Davis’ mouth back to his, leaves a long, lingering kiss on his lips, then another, and another, before finally allowing himself to pull away.

“Maybe after breakfast, my love,” he tells him, Davis’ face not falling as he’d worried it would. His eyes crinkle again at the edges and Jolly loves him so much, adores nothing more than looking at him and being with him. “I’d like to get through your other present first. You made this all for me.”

Jolly’s every attempt to help clean up after breakfast is met with Davis shooing him away, swatting him with a dish rag, and finally ordering him out of the kitchen with a go away, you aren’t cleaning up on your own birthday.

He leaves him to it, decides instead to shower while Davis tackles the mess in the kitchen.

Under the stream of the showerhead, his mind wanders back to the card, to the offer. He grapples with how much faith, how much trust Davis must have in him, for him to offer such a thing. And it feels so nice, and it’s awfully tempting—

He doesn’t know if he can go through with it, is the thing. He can’t decide if he’s deserving of the privilege of having free reign over someone else’s body like this, even if it is his boyfriend who trusts him, and who can trust him. He would never dream of hurting him.

Once he’s clean and dressed, he comes back downstairs to a clean kitchen, and peers out the back door to see Davis on the back porch swing, snacking on the bowl of strawberries they’d left untouched with breakfast. He slides open the glass door, presses a kiss to Davis’ cheek and sits down beside him, steals a berry from the bowl. Just how it always happens when they’re with each other, Jolly feels a calm wash over him again.

Maybe he could do it. Everything else is right. It isn’t like he would take advantage of it.

His mind empties of all thoughts of that as Davis rests his head on his shoulder, letting out a pretty little sigh and inching himself closer.

“What do you want to do today?” Davis asks, before setting off on the pre-planned spiel Jolly knew he would have. “We can do anything you want, my treat. We could go to the botanical gardens, the book store, The Getty, the pier, anywhere you want for lunch. I did make dinner reservations for us later—”

As much as Jolly appreciates and loves Davis trying to make his birthday special, it’s not something he needs. They’ve been so busy in the studio lately, this day off feels so lucky. Nothing sounds better to him than a relaxing day in with his love, nothing on the agenda, for once.

“Why don’t we just stay in today?” Jolly offers, waits for Davis’ face to fall and is pleased when it doesn’t. Davis has been busy, too, tired — the twinkle in his eye indicates to Jolly that a day in is welcome. 

“We can watch a movie, and I’ll order us lunch and snacks,” Davis says — staying in doesn’t mean he’ll let the day go to waste, be any less of a celebration of Jolly. “Any movie you want. Even if I hate it.”

Jolly can’t help but laugh, yank Davis over closer, as close as he can manage to press a big, wet kiss to his forehead. He knows what even if I hate it means, it means if you want me to watch a rom-com, now is your chance.

He sneaks the hand around Davis’ waist up under his shirt, sinks his fingers into his skin, makes sure he’s pulled as closely to Jolly’s side as he can possibly get. He presses another sweet kiss to Davis’ forehead and he feels Davis push his head up closer like a cat, asking for more.

“That sounds perfect, pretty,” Jolly tells him, knowing just the thing to make Davis hum happily, squirm closer. “Let’s just relax out here for a little bit.”

The lunch spread is a little outrageous. It’s more than they’d ever get from chinese on a normal day, but he couldn’t quite argue with Davis’ arguments of but it’s your birthday. When Jolly mentioned they had plenty of snacks in the house already, he was met with the same argument. 

It covers almost the entirety of the coffee table, and he’s sure most of it will end up in the fridge for leftovers tomorrow, the next day —

But he can’t complain about being spoiled, especially as Davis without even a complaint tosses on Notting Hill, and even tries his very best to pay attention.

It’s more than halfway through the movie when Jolly notices he’s drifted off to sleep, his head resting a little heavier on Jolly’s shoulder. Jolly smiles. He was up so late last night, so early this morning to make sure everything today was perfect. He tried so hard to stay awake for the movie that he has never shown any interest in watching, but knows is one of Jolly’s favorites.

Jolly takes pity on him, wants him cozy, even if it creates distance. He gently rearranges Davis so he’s lying on his back, his legs spread out over Jolly’s lap. This way Davis can sleep well, and Jolly can enjoy the rest of the movie without any heavy breathing in his ear, not that he’d ever mind.

Some time later when the credits begin to roll and he shuts off the tv, he’s torn between taking the leftovers to the fridge and grabbing his book from the end table and reading, giving Davis a little more undisturbed sleep.

He chances a look over at him and decides he won’t be getting up just yet. He watches Davis sleep, soft and sweet, as the early afternoon light filters in through the blinds and casts the most gorgeous glow over him. It’s then that it finally sets in.

He’s allowed.

Davis’ leg rests across his lap and Jolly allows himself to graze a gentle hand over his skin. He stirs subtly, shifts from lying on his side to stretching out on his back. He stretches his arms above his head but doesn’t wake, and Jolly’s eyes glaze over.

He’s allowed.

His shirt has ridden up to reveal the smallest sliver of skin above his waistband. Jolly’s fingers have long memorized the way his skin feels, the slight give of his tummy, the sounds he makes and —

He’s allowed.

The explicit permission runs big and bold through his head.

Today, I’m yours. No asking. No waiting. Just take what you want when you want it.

As gently as he can, he moves Davis’ legs so he can crawl between them. He doesn’t stir for a moment, subconsciously lets out a happy little hum when Jolly presses featherlight kisses to his cheeks, his jaw, his neck, down over his collarbone, but he doesn’t wake.

He begins a descent back down Davis’ body, lifting his shirt up to pepper kisses over the soft, smooth skin of his tummy. When he slides down the waistband of Davis’ shorts, he’s met with no underwear — and he’s sure this was a part of the plan.

He wraps a loose hand around Davis’ still-soft cock, presses another kiss to his tummy, the faintest nibble. He sucks gently at the tip and hopes it rouses him, just a little. He doesn’t want to disturb him, per se. He’s happy to let him keep sleeping. He needs to hear green, just once. 

“Davis,” he whispers, tightening his grasp, needing just a moment of his attention.

“Yeah, baby?” Davis responds, almost subconsciously. His voice is thick with sleep but he stirs anyway, lifting his head only a little to look down at Jolly between his legs. “Oh. Good boy.”

The unexpected praise goes straight through him. Davis threads his fingers through Jolly’s hair, gets a handful and tugs, leads Jolly down to where he wants him, and he decides it’s more of a green than the actual word could be.

He loses himself in it, allowing himself to go brainless as the only thing on his mind is the weight of Davis on his tongue, his grip loosening and tightening in his hair as he loses himself to the pleasure, too. 

Davis squirms beneath him, pulls his shirt over his head and tosses it aside like everything is just too much, makes the prettiest sounds that Jolly doesn’t know if he could ever tire of hearing. He does the thing with his tongue that he knows Davis likes, and the grip in his hair tightens almost painfully, his eyes rolling into the back of his head.

He wants to make him cum, get him relaxed before he fucks him. He doesn’t know if he can be gentle like he normally is, doesn’t know when the switch flipped in his brain and this has made him crazy, doesn’t know if he can be careful, diligent. 

He’s learned two things since they’ve been together, after enough encounters on this sofa — always keep lube handy, and if Davis stretches just right, he can reach the drawer of the end table without anyone having to get up.

“Honey, get the lube for me, please,” Jolly requests, stretching one hand up Davis’ torso before returning back to his task.

Davis, presumptuous but correct, pours out some lube onto Jolly’s waiting hand. Jolly looks up at him and notices his mischievous expression back, and when his slick fingers travel down to where Davis wants them, he understands why.

Instead of the nothing that he’d expected, he’s met with a pretty glass plug with a rose at the end. He should have expected something like this, with the offer. His mind goes blank.

“Prepared, are you?” Jolly asks, and he’s sure his tone makes Davis go shy, with the way he seems more hesitant than normal as he nods. “You know that’s my favorite part.”

“I wanted to help out,” Davis responds, and if he didn’t know any better, he’d buy it. If he wasn’t very familiar with all of Davis’ games, he would find it sweet. He has once again found himself two steps behind his boyfriend’s mischief.

All plans to make him cum and get him relaxed before he’s inside him have gone. Any attempt he would have made to be extra gentle, extra thorough, have left. And he’s sure that’s what Davis wanted, what he planned for today. He knows him.

He has to get inside of him.

He removes the plug as slowly and as gently as he can. Davis squirms, whines Jolly’s favorite whine.

“I don’t think I can be gentle,” Jolly warns him, and Davis is quick to nod, an overeager look in his eyes. So it was his plan all along. “I need you to tell me that’s okay.”

“I told you whatever you—” Davis starts, cut off by Jolly’s harsh slap to the outside of his thigh.

“What I want is for you to tell me that’s okay,” Jolly demands, and Davis is nodding before he’s even done speaking, desperate.

“It’s more than okay,” he responds. “Of course it’s okay.”

There is an attempt, still, to go slowly with him. He said he wouldn’t hurt him. Davis welcomes him in so perfectly, just like always, and his brain shuts off completely. His hips snap and the final few inches are shoved in all at once, and Davis squeals the cutest little sound Jolly has ever heard. It doesn’t help.

Davis’ legs wrap around Jolly’s waist and it’s not quite right, the access not what he wants. He needs to be deeper, needs to hear those sounds over and over and over again. He maneuvers Davis’ legs over his shoulders, lays his weight on the backs of his thighs and— he didn’t know he could bend like that.

He captures Davis’ lips with his, sure he’ll ache for a few days with the way Jolly is using him, with the force behind each snap of his hips into Davis. He has to remind himself—

He’s allowed.

“You’re doing so well for me, sweet,” he tells him, Davis’ breath coming out hot and fast against his cheek. He whines as Jolly moves faster, thrusts harder, lets out the prettiest little gasp that goes right through Jolly. “You feel so good around me.”

He watches Davis’ face closely, as he tries to form words but can’t quite do it. He gets it — he’s been on the receiving end enough times to know how quickly your brain can shut off, how easy it is to lose yourself completely to the feeling. 

“Daddy—”

Jolly barely catches it. It’s said softly, in a breath, like he wasn’t even meant to hear it, said like a prayer. His expression shifts quickly after that, and Jolly can’t decide if it’s pain or pleasure, not until the splash of cum he feels against his belly and sees painting Davis’ chest and collarbones.

Davis goes boneless, sated, and Jolly’s eyes glaze over.

“Good fucking boy,” Jolly tells him, sinking his teeth into the meat of Davis’ shoulder, his grip into Davis’ thigh, folding him as far as he possibly can to get him closer, to get himself there.

It doesn’t take much.

“Fill me up,” Davis whines, tightening around him. It only takes one, two more thrusts before Jolly stills, does what he’s asked. His arms give out beneath him, and Davis is quick to move his legs out of the way, welcome Jolly into his arms.

“You did that on purpose,” Jolly says once he’s come down, peppering little kisses across his cheeks before Davis pulls him in for a proper kiss."

“Everything I do is on purpose,” Davis quips, earning himself another smack, but he still smiles. Everything he does is on purpose.

“I’ll clean up lunch,” Jolly offers when they’ve both gotten dressed again. He watches as Davis tries to argue, but stops him in his tracks. “Don’t argue — just go get pretty for dinner. Let Daddy take care of you.”

Davis’ cheeks turn a pretty pink. Jolly’s sure they’d be warm to the touch. He reaches out, presses a long kiss to his lips, and he’s right. His hands practically burn with it.

He shoos Davis off upstairs for a shower, but Davis returns to Jolly for one more message.

“Don’t forget, the offer is good until midnight,” Davis whispers in his ear, but the next bit is what stills him. “Maybe longer if you earn it."

tags <3

@circle-with-me @darksigns-exe @concretenoah @concretejunglefm @baddestomens @sitkowski @ladyveronikawrites @malice-ov-mercy @mysticdoodlez @somebodyels3 @sorrowsofsilence @collapsedglasshouses @fadingangelwisp @cookiesupplier @spicywhenspeaking @lacy1986 @agravemisstake @cncohshit @dominuslunae @poisongirl616 @iknownothingpeople @thisbicc @theanarchymuse95 @shilohrosechicken @blackveilomens @geminigirlfromfinland @lilgarbitch @renegadebirch @kenjipepsi1 @tosoundlessdarkistare

[sereg0re]

just wondering, do you think you might be interested in posting graphic tutorials for like promos or headers or icon borders or whatever? all your graphics are so cool!!

hello! and thank you very much! 😊 currently, the only full tutorials i have are these if you find them helpful !

recoloring icons/graphics to add skintone if it's washed out by one color. how to fix fried colors/color match fried effect on psd colorings. simple icon borders. * this is the main formula to all my borders, including the ones in my commission examples; once you're able to get yourself an icon and (if you'd like) blockquotes, you can just slap some pngs around ur icon however you see fit and add your psd and you've got the idea to make your own !

as for a tutorial, i'd have to put some thought into whether or not i could make a full fledged tutorial, since making graphics can be a little more complex than a step-by-step walk through...at least, for me. a lot of it depends on the images i use, the placement of those images && recoloring/balancing colors. it depends on what you're trying to accomplish. however, here are some quick tips i'd personally recommend. i will be referencing photopea tools, as i use photopea.

PSD/COLORING. if you plan to use a psd on your graphic, add it first so you can see your progress as you go forward with your edit. // to add a psd (file>open) // when your psd is open, right click on the psd layer, layer>duplicate into and you'll see 'destination' with a dropdown. select the tab that your edit is taking place in.

even if you don't use a psd, there are several ways you can color match or adjust images if they look out of place. i personally use image>adjustments>selective color because i find it to be a major help; other helpful adjustments are image>adjustments>color balance // image>adjustments>channel mixer // image>adjustments>hue/saturation // image>adjustments>brightness/contrast // image>adjustments>levels // image>adjustment>curves // image>adjustment>exposure. really, just play around with it, psd or no psd—you can always come back to this step if you decide to add more imagery or balance something out later.

SHARPNESS/QUALITY/NOISE FILTERS. adding sharpness to an image can improve the quality of an image; though, it's best to stray from images with too poor of quality. ways to adjust sharpness are filter>sharpen // filter>smart sharpen // filter>unsharp mask. noise && grain filters can also add a sort of 'coverage' to any quality issues && you can do this in two ways. filter>noise>add noise // as is or monochromatic or filter gallery>film grain—lower the intensity or mess with the toggles as you please. you can either do this directly to your image if you're not worried about undoing it, or you can add a layer; if you're only trying to apply the grain layer to one object/png, you can turn that layer into a clipping mask. layer>new>layer, fill your new layer with white or black(or a chosen color, if you wanna experiment) && pick a blending option from the dropdown(it should say normal by default) i usually add a white layer && choose multiply or soft light. make sure to adjust your opacity toggle as you see fit && add noise/film grain as you see fit.

OVERLAY IMAGES/BLENDING. to blend overlay images (this can be texture overlays or simply adding another image), play with the blending options && opacity of your layer like you did with the noise/grain layers. this one you'll have to play with because it all depends on the lighting of your images && whatnot. you can also erase pieces that you don't want in frame if you need. to erase a corner or part in a way that doesn't look too harsh, i'd recommend lowering the hardness of your eraser brush.

TEXT. there are a variety of free fonts out there; here are some sites i use: one. two. three. // to make your text more dynamic, click the 'warp' button at top right, and you'll encounter a popup. you will go to where it says: style && choose from the dropdown (default is set to none). you can just play with the text until you're satisfied. you can also use the blending options on your text, if you so see fit.

additionally, you can duplicate your text layer; under the opacity of your text is a option that says 'fill'. switch the 'fill' to 0% && once you've done that, you can now right click blending options && check 'stroke'. adjust the color and size of your stroke and move the stroke layer around to add dimension(i usually move it back && downwards slightly). you can click your original text layer, right click it, go to blending options and check '3d'. you can change the color && distance && adjust the "darken" toggle to 0%.

PNGS. THESE STROKE && 3D EFFECTS LISTED IN TEXT ALSO WORK ON PNGS TO ADD DEPTH. png/cutout sites i use: one. two.

CLIPPING MASKS. if you want to put an image(lets say a image of a fc you have) inside of a shape(like a heart or circle), you can use clipping masks. you can refer to this tutorial i've made to see how clipping masks work for borders/icons. to get your desired image inside of a shape, right click your image>clipping mask && your image will be within the confines of the layer beneath it—the layer beneath it should be whatever shape/png you have in place.

that's all i can think of on the spot ? hope this helps !

[andsewingishalfthebattle]

SiliNOT! Testing and Review

Since I run a lot of casting workshops, I've had several people in the costuming/maker community ask me my opinion on SiliNOT!, a relatively new product advertised as a budget- and eco-friendly moldmaking alternative to silicone, urethane, and other single-use materials.

I finally bought a couple of bottles to play with, so I did a test project. My experience and findings are below! (It's not a recipe blog, but if you want to skip the play-by-play and get to the TL;DR, it's under the big "In Summary" header near the bottom.)

First, if you aren't familiar with this material, SiliNOT! is a remeltable, reusable medium for making molds. Though its exact ingredients are not disclosed, it purports to nontoxic, food-safe, and compostable. It melts in a household microwave or double boiler and solidifies at room temperature (or in a refrigerator/freezer for faster results). The website is https://silinot.com/.

(I am not an affiliate, and have no connection to this company apart from having made one retail purchase from them. I just have a lot of casting experience and like trying out new products.)

The Positive Original

I’m still in the middle of a Vincent Valentine build, so I decided to test the SiliNOT! on his custom buttons. My original is a stack of various nonporous materials: an antique (probably Bakelite) coat button, an epoxy resin dome I cast using a mold I already had in my library, and some engraved Worbla’s Pearly Art for the raised detail. The button shanks won’t be added until the final casting, so the original can be mounted flat for the moldmaking process.

Sample Worbla on the left; completed button stack on the right:

The Mold

I built the mold container the same way I do for silicone pours, with the flat back of the button fixed to a styrene plate and a cylinder (actually a small paper cup with the bottom cut off) surrounding it for the walls. The lip of the cup is sealed all the way around with Monster Clay to prevent leaks.

Heating and Pouring

The SiliNOT! didn’t take long at all to heat up; I did maybe four or five 20-second bursts before it was completely fluid. The bottle does get rather warm, so hand protection isn’t a bad idea. If you have heat-resistant gloves, you can use those; I was working in my kitchen (yay for nontoxic stuff!), so I just grabbed an oven mitt with a silicone grip.

The melted SiliNOT! looks a bit like Luke Skywalker’s blue milk. It’s about the consistency of a yogurt smoothie and likes to pour in a thicker stream compared to silicone. While silicone can be stretched into a thin ribbon for delicate pours or chemically thinned with solvent for really tricky jobs, SiliNOT!'s viscosity is dependent on temperature and never seems to get quite as thin as silicone.

I’d automatically made my mold compact to conserve material (not really a concern with a reusable moldmaking material like SiliNOT!, but after using silicone for more than a decade, I’ve trained myself to be as efficient as possible), so the walls of my mold container were only about half or three quarters of an inch from my object. Because the target was so narrow, I found it difficult to accurately fill from the lowest area of the mold with the SiliNOT! The heavier pour also means more air can get trapped in or under the material.

Bubbles are one of the areas in which SiliNOT! is decidedly inferior to silicone. SiliNOT! has higher viscosity, so bubbles don’t want to rise to the surface without vigorous tapping, which can distort the mold edges or affect leveling depending on your mold container. The bubbles that do make their way to the surface are difficult to pop, even when poked with a sharp implement. Heat gun degassing doesn’t have much effect.

Since the bubble surface cools and skins over quickly, I actually had to use a tool and scoop some large bubbles completely out of the mold to allow the surface to level. Critically, the SiliNOT! is opaque, so you can’t spot bubbles clinging to the surface of your original. (This is why my first mold was a reject, and I had to repour. More on that below.)

Hardening

Once the surface had set, I carefully moved the mold into the refrigerator to cool faster. Here’s another area where some types of silicone can have an advantage: I typically use fast-curing Smooth-On products (because I always have random quantities left to use up after our casting workshops), so I rarely have to wait more than half an hour for a silicone mold to cure, regardless of its size or mass.

The SiliNOT! has to chill completely before handling, though, and discharging that amount of heat requires a fair amount of time even in a cool environment. My mold was pretty small, maybe 2 1/2” wide by 1” deep, and it still took around 40 minutes to cool completely. A larger, deeper mold could hold considerably more energy in the center, and might have to be left in the freezer for a couple of hours before use.

Demolding the Original

When the mold was completely chilled, I removed it from the refrigerator and popped it off the plastic plate I’d used for the base of the mold. The texture was very different from what I’d expected: Unlike other meltable materials (Monster Clay, et al.) that have a firm surface when cool, the SiliNOT! remains tacky, which means it promptly collects any debris that crosses its path. In my case, this meant I had to pick dog hair off the surface throughout the casting process (and I don’t want to think about what would happen if glitter had contaminated the work space).

I’d used a paper cup for my mold walls, which usually works fine with fast-curing silicone. But the SiliNOT! must have a high oil content, because the cup absorbed some of it:

Lesson learned; use only nonporous containers with this stuff.

The SiliNOT!! really wanted to cling to the edges of my original, so I had to go slow at first to avoid tearing the thin flanges of the mold off. However, it did demold nicely from the smooth surfaces, and preserved texture very well. You can see the Worbla pebbling and the engraving channels clearly in the mold (as well as some dust and dog hair, because I made the mistake of setting it down briefly):

Unfortunately, as you can see, a large bubble had stuck to my original and created a pit in the mold, so I decided to do a second mold pour. I figured I’d tear up the failed mold and put the pieces back in the bottle to remelt… and discovered I couldn’t. The mold would stretch and twist, but not tear. It also seemed to return to its original shape relatively faithfully. Here’s a video of me manhandling the mold:

As you can see, the SiliNOT! has much better stretch and recovery than many silicone products (there are silicones that stretch well -- some of the Dragon Skin products come to mind -- but they’re not typically marketed for moldmaking). This means it’s likely well suited to casting objects with moderate undercuts or oddly-shaped bits that need the mold to stretch during demolding.

You can cut the SiliNOT! easily with scissors, which is the recommended method for getting it back in the bottle when you’re ready to remelt.

Take Two

Using what I’d learned from the first pour, I did the second one inside a hard plastic ramekin. This gave me a bit more room to pour into the floor of the mold, reducing the bubble risk, and also eliminated the porous paper cup that had absorbed oil. I still had the issue with bubbles that didn’t want to pop, but there were fewer of them this time.

The ramekin made for a much cleaner mold, buuuuut there was ANOTHER BUBBLE right in the middle of the design. >.<

Take Three

Lather, rinse, repeat. Or in this case, melt, pour, chill.

This time I heated the SiliNOT! as much as I dared and did the absolute slowest, narrowest pour I could manage, giving the air extra time to escape as the mold was filled from the bottom. The risk with stringing out the pour like this is that in a thinner stream, the heat escapes faster, leading to uneven viscosity as the liquid fills the mold. I don’t think that’s a major problem for this particular piece, but it’s something to pay attention to as regards leveling and degassing, especially for larger molds that will take longer to fill.

The result of pour three:

/siiiiigh/ Well, at least the bubbles are smaller, this time. They may not show up enough to matter in the final cast. I’ll give it a try.

Casting

I had leftover workshop resin that was getting on toward the end of its shelf life, so I used Smooth-On Smooth-Cast 300 for my initial resin trial. It’s an opaque white resin with about a 10-minute cure time (the fast turnaround is why we use it for workshops).

Before pouring, I had to do a little mold cleanup where the SiliNOT! had managed to sneak under the edge of the Worbla (I think I’d loosened the corner of the star from prying it out of so many molds), but since the SiliNOT! stretches so well, it was pretty easy to invert it to get little scissors down into the bottom of the depression.

For the first cast, I didn’t use anything but the resin in order to get a baseline. Ideally I’d like to cold cast or dye the resin so I don’t have to worry about paint chipping, but since I’m doing a trial here (and need multiple buttons anyway) I figured some plain white extras wouldn’t hurt.

So, my first cast…

…smacked into a big problem, which I probably should have seen coming: The resin I’m using is a fast cure formula, which means it discharges a fair amount of heat as it's going through that rapid chemical reaction -- enough heat to melt the SiliNOT!, as it turned out. When I tried to demold it (after giving it a few extra minutes beyond label time to be sure it was done), the surface of the mold had melted to the resin and even embedded itself in a few places. It’s difficult to see the resin detail in the photos (my camera went into white balance panic mode with all the shades of white and blue), but you can see how pitted the formerly-smooth mold surface is.

In fairness to the SiliNOT!, the bottle does say that you should put the mold in the freezer for half an hour before casting high-temperature materials. But I assumed high-temperature material was something like candle wax or melted chocolate, rather than ordinary resin. (And the mold had just come out of the refrigerator.)

So, on to pour FOUR of the SiliNOT! mold…

Take Four

NGL, this is getting a little old. >.<

Fourth mold definitely needed some cleanup around the edges, and there are still a couple of tiny bubbles I can’t seem to get rid of, but it’s good enough for a test. (I’m starting to despair of using these for actual production, given how many times I’ve had to redo the molds because of bubbles...)

Deep in the recesses of my basement, I found some transparent epoxy resin with a 24-hour cure time -- much slower and lower-temperature than the Smooth-Cast. Since it cures clear, I went ahead and mixed in some metallic powder pigment on the off chance that I get a usable button out of this one. I had excess resin after mixing, so I poured that into my first mold, which has a bubble in the design but is otherwise fine. Two test pieces are better than one, right?

Results

Here are the results of the slow-curing resin out of mold #4:

Finally, a (mostly) clean cast!

As you can see, the detail reproduction is excellent -- certainly on par with the pulls from the silicone mold I ended up making while waiting on this set to cure (purely for time reasons; I couldn’t afford five days to cast the buttons using slow-curing resin, and with a silicone mold and fast-curing resin I could get them all done within a couple of hours).

However, you can also see a few spots where bits of the SiliNOT! embedded themselves in the final cast. Part of that may be due to design flaw in the original; I didn’t want to glue anything permanently to the antique button, and that resulted in a tiny gap between the button and the resin hemisphere. Silicone has enough strength to resist tearing out in that kind of area, but apparently the SiliNOT! doesn’t. The bits of mold around the outer edge seem to have stuck just to be difficult, as there was no structural reason for those to have become embedded in the resin. This means the mold could be damaged by successive casts, reducing its usable life and accuracy.

Still, the mold definitely produced decent results for a first cast, and a different shape might not have had as much of a problem with tearing off mold parts. The slow-curing resin is a bit of a limitation, but not a unique one (I use this same epoxy resin for any glass-clear casts I do, and only use the Smooth-Cast 300 for opaque items or things I need very quickly). I don’t personally use UV resin, but I’d be curious to learn how it performs with the SiliNOT!

IN SUMMARY:

Here’s the TL;DR on SiliNOT!

Pros

Cost effectiveness. This is the most obvious advantage of SiliNOT! over silicone; it’s (theoretically) infinitely reusable, and even with natural attrition/inevitable contamination from use, you can likely get over a hundred pours out of a bottle. That's a lot cheaper per use than silicone.

Non-toxicity. SiliNOT! is touted as food contact-safe, so you don’t have to panic if you get it on your skin or kitchen counters. While platinum-cure silicone is also relatively harmless (some varieties are labeled for food or life casting), other common moldmaking materials such as tin-cure silicone or urethane are not. (NOTE: Since the company is very hush-hush about what actually makes up the SiliNOT! secret formula, I do not know if it might release any vapors or fumes that would be irritating or harmful to pet birds. In general, I advise not doing any kind of casting around birds.)

Eco-friendliness. This is the biggest draw for me personally: Given the number of casting workshops I run and all the things I sell commercially, I have constant guilt about the amount of waste I generate for creative projects. In most areas of life I’m an aggressive reduce/reuse/recycler and try to use organic materials instead of synthetics whenever possible, so a mold that’s reusable and compostable is very appealing.

Ease of use. It’s honestly pretty hard to mess this up -- just microwave according to the directions and pour. No measuring, no A/B mixture, no concerns about chemical contamination from latex or sulfur, etc.

Shelf life. Unlike silicones, which have a shelf life of anywhere from six months to three years depending on storage conditions, the SiliNOT! purports to be shelf-stable. It's compostable, so don’t bury it in your yard, but otherwise it appears that it could be kept on hand for years.

Cons

Bubbles. Honestly the most irritating thing about this stuff for me. I’m used to being able to see bubbles forming as I pour, tap them to the surface, and remove them. The fact that I poured four molds of the same object and never once got one without bubbles is super irritating.

Stickiness. I’m not a big fan of the tacky surface texture, and while I haven’t done any cold casting yet, I can imagine that it would be very difficult to clean out any pigment or mica powder that got where you didn’t want it. I probably wouldn’t use this for any kind of cold casting that required isolated colored areas or changing colors between casts.

Set time. The SiliNOT! may take longer to cool than a fast silicone would to cure when dealing with larger molds, so it’s not ideal for projects with a really tight turnaround. (But cosplayers would never be casting something the night before a con, right? We always plan ahead and never, ever procrastinate!)

Library life. The SiliNOT! may or may not structurally degrade over time the way urethane, latex, and tin cure silicones do, but I noticed even in my very limited casts that it was prone to having tiny bits of the mold (particularly at edges) stick and pull off. While I keep most of my platinum silicone molds for years and reuse them, I don’t feel that the SiliNOT! molds would hold up to repeated casting, and they’re far more sensitive to ambient temperature, so they’re probably best used for short term only. (I also wonder about the possibility of oil leaching out in long-term storage.)

Comparative Ranking

Ranking it against other mold-making materials, I’d place SiliNOT! below platinum-cure silicone in terms of performance, but maybe somewhere in the neighborhood of urethane and tin-cure silicone. It's definitely superior to latex. (Though to be honest, I'd rank Play-Doh above latex. I hate working with that stuff.)

Factoring in cost and environmental impact, it beats out urethane and tin-cure silicone. I'm still not sure if I'd rank it above platinum-cure silicone, though... Silicone costs much more and isn't eco-friendly, but the performance and lifespan is significantly better, so it still makes more sense for some projects.

Alginate is another type of material entirely, but in some ways SiliNOT! is comparable to it -- both are more cost-effective than silicone, both are biodegradable, both are skin safe, and both have long shelf lives. But SiliNOT! is easier to use for beginners than alginate, which has to be mixed to the right consistency and has an extremely short lifespan once poured.

Overall, I would recommend SiliNOT! for:

People who want accurate, non-shrinking molds but don’t have the budget for platinum-cure silicone

People who are committed to eliminating waste from single-use materials, and are willing to trade off a little performance for a more eco-friendly material

Projects with smooth surfaces and no indentations/sharp edges/undercuts where bubbles might stick (e.g. cabochons; simple geometric forms)

Projects where you need only one or two casts of something, rather than many casts from the same mold

Casting oddly-shaped pieces around which the mold needs to stretch in order to demold

Use with slow-curing resins that do not generate much heat

I would NOT recommend SiliNOT! for:

Extremely complex or detailed pieces, or pieces with a lot of surface texture that bubbles might stick to

Two-part molds

Projects requiring many identical casts out of the same mold

Molds that you intend to add to your library for future or repeat casting

Use with fast-curing resins, melted wax, melted Monster Clay, or any other material that emits heat

Cold casting with precise color application

My Overall Opinion

It's... okay? I will almost certainly keep SiliNOT! in my toolkit for certain specific applications. It's MUCH cheaper over the long term, I love the idea of recycling mold material, and there are some projects for which it will likely perform very well (those listed in the above bullet points). I will also admit that three days of working with it does not constitute a comprehensive familiarity with the product, and it might be the sort of thing that you get better at working with after more practice. (Just learning how to eliminate bubbles would go a long way toward making me adopt this for more projects!)

However, I don't quite buy the "better than silicone" tagline. It's definitely more difficult to get a perfect result, and there are some projects for which platinum-cure silicone is always going to be more reliable (e.g. high-temperature casting, mass production, large-scale life casting).

For those looking for a recommendation of whether or not to buy, I'd say look at your project budget and the applications for which you're going to be making molds, and let those factors guide which mold material you go with. People doing some kinds of projects are likely going to find this a godsend, while those doing different projects would probably hate working with it.

[moogleboogles]

Fuck it. Birdposting. Everyone say hi to Ferdinand's bird daughter he was forced to adopt post-endwalker. Her name is Elegeia. She's a lil phoenix. She's deeply Pollyanna by Catherine Warwick and Birdhouse in Your Soul by They Might Be Giants coded. Bird up. Cringe is dead.

She's one of the many Meteia that made up the Endsinger. In my canon after the Endsinger was vanquished all the birds were able to shed their despair and regain individuality and their color and they all flew off into space. Imagine the end scene of FFX with all the pyreflies but its rainbow birds

I consider her an older sister to the Meteion (and by extension, the rest of the Meteia) we meet in Elpis, as Elegeia was made as a prototype of sorts by Hermes and (my) Azem before Hermes took the bird in the divorce and created her sisters. She was made to basically be an ESA, but still succumbed to despair with her sisters. After she was freed from despair she saw Ferd's dead body and was like "damnnnnn Azem looks more washed up than I remember" and then convinced him + the scions that she could be trusted with sharp objects. She's been hanging around Marimo too much.

I love her idgaf if making a meteion/meteia/whatever oc is considered cringe or smth. i think we need more weird birdgirls. do what you want always forever. me and my wild ass ferdiefantasy xiv wol lore.

i'll make her webpage on my oc website eventuallysoon i just need to finish drawing the header for the webpage. which im drawing myself instead of using a stock photo or xiv screenshot or smth like i normally do because i couldnt find anything on unsplash that fit the vibe and pinterest/google images is full of Slop and I Don't Use Slop. please look forward to it

[raven-at-the-writing-desk]

miss raven 🐦‍⬛ you like shiny things right?? what are your thoughts on rollo’s ring. didn’t you call it chunky before

Many times, yes— I find it super ugly, chunky (as in, it’s a weird shape and takes up a lot of space) and hard to coordinate with a look, but it works fine on Rollo.

There are a few Raven-Rollo interactions I've received; these will be differentiated from the usual Rollo at the Writing Desk interactions by a different phrase in the header. "Will today be the day?" is a reference to the opening scene in Hunchback of Notre Dame; Quasimodo asks a bird (nesting in a gargoyle's mouth) if they're ready to fly yet.

Will Today be the Day?

“… You’ve been staring at my hand for quite some time now.” Rollo’s observation was abrupt, an accusation with a sharp point. He casted Raven a suspicious look as they walked side-by-side. “Crowley-dono is your guardian, is he not? I would have thought him to instill better manners in his kin.”

She leapt, frazzled by the truth he bore. “Y-You’re absolutely right! My apologies… I will avert my gaze.”

Rollo scoffed. “What is it that you are planning, hmm? Do you intend to make off with my possessions the instant I lower my guard? Perhaps you’ve picked up a habit for pilfering from Ruggie-kun. It wouldn’t surprise me—you Night Raven College mages are all the same.”

“No, it’s not like that!!” Raven shyly brought her index fingers together, her eyes cutting away from him. She suddenly found the sidewalk to be of great interest. “It’s, erm…”

“Don’t mumble. Spit it out already.”

“Corvids—ravens, crows—have a penchant for shiny objects. I can’t help that my eyes are drawn to them. It’s in my nature.

“Hmph.” Rollo made to cover the crimson gemstone that crowned his finger. “You have surprisingly juvenile interests. At the very least, it appears to be harmless so long as you control your desire to acquire those trinkets for yourself.”

“I’m telling you, I don’t have such a desire in the first place! Besides, things that sparkle look their happiest when they're with their true owners."

"... Did I hear that correctly? Things that sparkle look happy?"

"Not literally, of course. I took creative liberty with the phrasing." Raven cocked her head to one side. "But don't you think when a piece of jewelry catches a stray beam of sunlight, it looks like the jewel is winking at you? That's what I mean when I say they look happy with their owners."

"Not ever," Rollo replied stiffly, "and your comparison doesn't work. Ownership means nothing; a jewel would shine all the same regardless of who wears it."

"Now you're just sucking all of the romantic lyricism out of it."

"It didn't need that to begin with."

He turned away—as if that were the end of the conversation—and elicited an excited squeak from Raven.

"Oh...!" She fixated on the gleam of gold and scarlet that peaked through a crevice between his fingers.

The ring smiled at me.

Her heart leapt, and she smiled back at it. (Rollo scowled, his displeasure obvious.)

“If you don’t mind, may I see it up-close?” Raven asked. “Just this once. I promise I won’t bother you again about it after.”

“… You may, but you’d better keep your promise. I don’t want to hear another word about this later.”

With that, Rollo offered his ringed hand to her. His fingers splayed out to allow for a good glimpse of his accessory. Raven bowed her head—a sign of thanks—and gingerly took his hand in her gloved ones.

She had expected him to be frigid—his fingers were so long and bony. But no, he was flesh too. Warm and pliant.

Of course he is. I don’t know why I was thinking of anything less. He is only human too.

Raven slowly guided his hand, watching the way the sunlight gathered on the ring’s facets at different angles. The band and prongs were golden, and the center stone was a gorgeous red.

Ruby? Garnet? Or something else entirely…? Cut into a lozenge shape—diamond-like prism, with additional flat faces she could see herself in.

“Oooh, pretty,” she cooed, sounding slightly dazed.

As Raven did this, Rollo inspected her.

She was a small thing, no taller than his shoulders. Dressed in black (like a certain lizard he loathed), perhaps she would have registered as more of an enigma had there not also been a sort of… fluffiness to her, thanks to her voluminous feather shawl and skirt. The top hat skewed at a jaunty angle really did make her look like a childish miniature of NRC’s headmaster.

He honed in on her ears. They were pointed, certainly not the shape of a typical human’s. She had mentioned her tendencies as a corvid earlier, implying animal heritage—but the ears suggested fae, not beastman.

He took in the rest of her face. With her eyes cast downward like this, her thick lashes shaded honeyed amber colored irises. Sun dappled raven hair, highlighting the small, mysterious smile at her lips as she regarded his ring.

Such a simple-minded girl, he sneered. It’s no wonder she’s so easily manipulated by mages and sympathizes with their cause.

A creature captured and tames to be in service to vile villains—Rollo would be lying if he said some part of him vaguely felt pity for her circumstances. Perhaps if she was removed from NRC and given the proper guidance and instruction, she could see reason. (… despite how annoying he found her to be.)

No, she’s too far gone to be rescued, he argues with himself. Draconia has already sunken his claws into her feeble mind.

What a shame, the voice in the back of his head simpered. She could have been saved from sin. We could have understood one another.

Her eyes suddenly fliicked up. “… Rollo-senpai? I think I’m done. Thank you for letting me look.

He quietly gasped—he had been caught staring. Cheeks heating, Rollo hastily pulled his hand away. His shame was masked with a stern frown.

“… That is enough. Let us never speak of this again.”

“Hehe, it’s the very least I could do for you.” She grinned in an irksome manner, the snaggle-toothed smile reminding him of the less savory smirks sent his way by other NRC students. “It can be our little secret.”

"I do not wish to share any sort of a secret with you."

Raven raised her brows. "Were you not the one who requested that we no longer bring up this incident? So it's our little secret, whether you want it to be or not~"

"Which I don't," he clarified stubbornly.

That was the truth--wasn't it?

[gamerwoman3d]

Oops. You can’t unlock the Arktican Prince skin in game without comitting royal incest.

NOTE: I don't care.

I don't care if you're squicked, or you're pissed, or you're delighted, or you're super into it and wanna share - I don't care, go live your life, it's the day after Christmas, go play with your lump of coal, don't bother me lmao

Just in case some of you are wondering "how" well - I made some instructions.

At the Fire Temple, after you unlock the bonus areas with the Cryomancer Heart, a challenged titled "Whispering" has a Klue: LAHTEL SPIL { Lips Lethal/Lethal Lips }. The opponent is Empress Sindel. Using Sonya Blade's "Kiss" fatality does nothing - trust me, I tried. You MUST use Kitana's second fatality on her own mother to proceed to the rewards chest.

So yes, this game technically does reward players for acts of incest, but hey, it also rewards them for splitting people in half crotch-first with various sharp objects. Have some perspective.

Photo mode at this link if you wanna check out the skin.

Wanna use / re-use my play footage, clips, or screenshots? Full permissions are in the about page and some under the cut!

Permissions summary: YOU HAVE MY EXPRESSED PERMISSION TO USE ANY SCREENSHOTS, GIFS, ASSETS OR CONTENT THAT I HAVE MADE OF THE GAME MK1 [MORTAL KOMBAT 1 (2023)].

EVERYONE has my enthusiastic consent. You don't have to make something I *enjoy* with those assets. You're under no obligation to please me with your content, even if it's made with bits of my content. Enjoy yourselves, go wild! Any MK1 screenshots or gifs that I make can be used for your fanworks as long as you have the legal rights to do so. [I'm pretty sure you all have the legal right to make any fanart/icons/reposts/headers/photo edits/collages/parody that you like, but I do not know every single law for every country. You're on your own to research whether you'd get in trouble for SubScorp art in Indonesia or the PRC or Alabama or wherever you are where all the rules get weird. But as long as you're not getting punished for using my MK1 gameplay in your work, go nuts! You have my permission to use the assets I've made from the game.]

[beckyslynchs]

previously known as naylor and niallschesthair

hayden mae • 28 • he/they 🏳️‍⚧️ • bisexual • mexican

autistic. former sex worker. law student. journalist. dude who is a girlie sometimes. swiftie. pro-ship. hater of hot weather. shit talker. catholic. football fan in a way that's completely unrelated to being a taylor swift fan. chiefs kingdom. becky lynch apologist.

→ sideblogs: @bisexualeddies @njhcreators @haydenxchristensen @wolvesqveen

╰┈➤ currently reading: sunrise on the reaping by suzanne collins & catch and kill by ronan farrow (3/24 reading goal)

╰┈➤ currently watching: 9-1-1, yellowjackets, suits LA, SWAT, daredevil: born again, severance

header by @kiinard || icon by @punksrhea

╰┈➤ interests: filmmaking. photography. journalism. american football. horror. sci-fi. wrestling.

╰┈➤ music: taylor swift. niall horan. jade. hozier. olivia rodrigo. djo. ethel cain. florence + the machine. noah kahan. thomas rhett. miranda lambert. caylee hammack. orville peck. willow avalon. shaboozey. anderson east. johnny cash. bruce springsteen. bob dylan. robbie williams. def leppard. motley crue. judas priest. bon jovi.

╰┈➤ books: IT. the shining. pet sematary. the stand. the noumena series. the martian. artemis. a song of ice and fire. interview with the vampire. dune. red white & royal blue. the hunger games. the strain. sharp objects.

╰┈➤ people: joe alwyn. joseph quinn. joe keery. ayo edebiri. jeremy allen white. paul mescal. patrick mahomes. josh allen. isiah pacheco. lou ferrigno jr. cm punk. becky lynch. tiffany stratton. solo sikoa. bianca belair. penta.

«feels like every time i turn a corner you're standin' right there over my shoulder, you're everywhere. i swear it's hard to think, it's hard to breathe when you're in the air, i try to run, but you're everywhere i go. when i think i'm all alone and my heart's under control, why is lovin' you not fair? you're everywhere» everywhere, niall horan

© dividers by @enchanthings

[horrorgirlhood]

horror movie recs? i trust you

i'm so honored by this <333

so my header is from Raw, which is one of my absolute favorite horror movies.

following that vein of girlhood/monstrosity:

- Ginger Snaps

- The Craft

- Jennifer's Body

More artsy/psychological movies:

- Saint Maud

- Suspiria (both versions are great honestly)

- Lake Mungo

Other?:

- The Descent

- Parasite

- It Follows

- Crimson Peaks

Movies that are just a great time:

- Ready or Not

- Happy Death Day

- Scream (the first one mainly, I also enjoyed the reboot but they did fire their main lead for speaking out about Palestine so I probably won't watch the next one)

I'd recommend all the mini series Mike Flanagan has done with Netflix pretty much, but Midnight Mass is my favorite. I also really love the Sharp Objects mini series but that might be more of a thriller than horror.

Some of these are probably obvious and this got long sorry lol but I'm always happy to give more!

[corpse-partyx]

☆ About me ☆

Sideblogs: Jojo’s blog- @babybruno (more to come lol)

Hi !! Welcome to my blog ! I’ve had tumblr for a very long time now, probably around 8 years now (wow). I’ve been getting back into tumblr because tik tok sucks and Instagram is boring lol. Here’s a small about me:

I love my chemical romance ! You’ll notice I post a lot about them, but I also love motionless in white, black veil brides, ice nine kills, deftones, kittie, slipknot, rob zombie and pierce the veil

I love anime too ! I love Jojo’s bizarre adventure, attack on Titan, demon slayer, Hunter x Hunter, and Jujuitsu kaisen. I have watched a lot more than that but those are the main ones I like (currently very fixated on jojos)

I love to draw, read and write !

My favorite books are The bell jar and Nightbitch

My favorite colors are red and black, second would be pink and neon green

My star sign is Gemini, my personality type is INFP

I’m not the biggest movie fan, but I do love Jennifer’s body, Corpse Bride, Black swan, and Raw

If you can’t tell already I’m gay asf

Some things to know about my blog:

I may post some sensitive content, so please be warned (things like pills, blood, sharp objects, some nsfw content, etc.) everything reblogged is simply for the aesthetic and I do not condone anything I post

My aesthetic tag is “2004” (the year three cheers for sweet revenge by mcr was released), fashion stuff is respectively tagged “fashion”, posts that are just me talking are tagged “m;txt” and anything else that is tagged is mainly me rambling lol

If I reblog content from a blog that is problematic please know I sometimes just find cute pics and reblog without digging through the blog first

I would greatly prefer that minors, terfs, anti feminists, and bigots to not interact, but I also know that most people ignore DNI’s so just please leave me alone if you’re an asshole or a child (minors especially do not follow me or interact with me)

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE send me asks, messages, anything ! Talk to me about music, anime or poetry !!! Tell me something fun or funny !!! I love chatting :)

I also love mutuals ! Follow me and I’ll follow you back if I resonate with your content :)

@menschenopfer bottom header

@anarchysin top header

[buffer-subroutine]

Defects, this is probably going to be the only time ever that I post something bummer like this, but I feel as though I can't keep it bottled up anymore. Only read if you're not easy to make sad.

I miss having a future, Defects. I really do. The moment I got seizures, my entire life flipped from almost being complete into stepping into an amazing phase of my life, having completed college and using the skills I was insanely (and rightfully) confident and sharp in. Fuck, I was amazing.

Then boom. Stress-enduced seizures. Trapped inside due to covid lockdown too. Family and College - two insane stressors, now dangerous for me. I lost so much from that.

I had to move out early and never got to finish the degree I spent *two years of my life* working toward.

Even if I pick it up now, I'm pretty sure most of my credits have expired. I'm fucked, and I owe student loans now, too, on top of barely making enough money to live, so I get to just be more terrified and hopeless every second watching the interest keep piling up. And I can't get a job that pays well because of a STUPID PIECE OF FUCKING PAPER.

I WAS EXCELLENT AND WOULD HAVE BEEN GREAT AT IT BUT NOONE GIVES A RATS ASS WITHOUT THE PAPER.

Now here I am, living on my own in IT because it was an easy fallback that was supposed to be temporary.

I don't like this, Defects.

You, Defects, as well as my loved ones online are... Well, the only things that I look forward to each day.

I keep trying to get better. To dig myself out of this pit. I started hormones finally - and I am so happy about it, so I guess I have a third thing since it's helping me feel a little more, well, girl.

But I sure as fuck don't quite resemble one beyond the cute eyeliner and hair. I wear a purse recently, which helps. But I feel like a fake.

I can't escape facial hair. No matter how much I shave, it's so fucking thick and grows so fast that even if I got it completely smooth, it'd just regrow and be visible in maybe a couple hours at most.

I want to program again, Defects. I want to make games. I want to have a future and go back to my original goals. I want to make games and make people happy.

I want some of it back. Any of it back.

It fucking hurts.

I can't even get myself to program. No matter what I do, I can't get myself to just... Do it. I will install the editor and go through all the setup and... Be overwhelmed. Overwhelmed by the new ui, by having to relearn so much. By NOT BEING ABLE TO DO THE ONE THING I SPENT MY LIFE LEARNING. It really is a use it or lose it skill I guess. And I have not been using it Defects.

It's almost like a fear of acceptance too, I think. Deep down inside, I know I still have some of it left. I bet I can relearn, even if I will fucking suck. Even if I will never get it back fully.

I want that so much. Please. I don't know how to start. I don't know what to do. I touch the editor and try to do stuff and it won't fucking compile. I can't get the header dependencies right.

I can't remember how to do anything. I got so SO fucking proud of myself for making A FUNCTION THAT CHOOSES A RANDOM NUMBER IN A RANGE AND PULLS A VALUE FROM A LIST OF STRINGS AND PRINTS IT TO HELP ME CHOOSE WHAT TO STREAM WHEN I AM UNSURE. IT TOOK ME SO LONG AND IT IS FUCKING HUMILIATING.

IT SHOULD TAKE ME LIKE 5 MINUTES MAX NOT 30. NOT AN HOUR. NOT. Fucking. Ugh.

And then I couldn't get myself to program again. I thought I broke free from it. I really did. I forced myself to do it but why do I return to being unable to do it?

Is it because I don't have an objective? A goal? I like making things for people. I want to help and make them happy.

I don't really have a use for making things for myself. Maybe that is why. Making stupid useless tutorial projects.. feels both demoralizing and useless. A waste of time, DESPITE that it will help me gain something back.

I don't know what to do.

Sorry for you having to read all that.

Maybe one day we will program again.

It's why I did the game design document with Duckolium. Maybe if I stream it, I can force myself to program. Well, more like *be* forced to.

This is my last hope.

I hope it works.

- Buffer

[sktthemes1]

How Can the SKT Marketer Theme Help Boost Your Marketing Business Online?

For digital marketers, online consultants, and advertising professionals, a website isn’t just a formality—it’s a core business tool. But building a site that not only looks professional but also converts visitors into clients requires more than a pretty design. It needs strategic layout, optimization, responsiveness, and flexibility.

This is where the SKT Marketer – Online Marketing WordPress Theme steps in. Developed with marketing professionals in mind, this theme blends aesthetics and utility to help you grow your business online. But how exactly can it contribute to your success? Let’s explore.

Establishes Authority with a Polished, Professional Design

First impressions matter. When a potential client lands on your website, they immediately assess your credibility based on how your site looks. A dated, cluttered, or slow site can erode trust before you even have a chance to present your services.

The SKT Marketer theme gives you a sharp, modern design that signals competence and professionalism. Its clean layouts, structured sections, and well-chosen typography make your services easy to browse and your message clear. Clients will feel confident that they’re dealing with an experienced marketer.

Showcases Services Clearly and Effectively

Online marketing is broad—ranging from SEO and email campaigns to social media and paid advertising. Your website needs to showcase these services in a way that’s informative, easy to navigate, and persuasive.

With this theme, you get ready-to-use sections for:

Detailed service listings

Results and case studies

Testimonials and client logos

Feature comparison charts

Calls to action

Each element has been thoughtfully placed to highlight your value proposition and gently push visitors toward contacting you or requesting a quote.

Responsive Design for Today’s Mobile World

Today’s audiences are on the move, accessing websites through mobile phones and tablets more than desktops. If your site doesn’t adjust seamlessly to all screen sizes, you risk losing leads and damaging your brand image.

The SKT Marketer theme is fully responsive, ensuring your content looks and functions perfectly across devices. Whether your visitors are checking your site on a smartphone in a meeting or browsing on a tablet at home, their experience remains smooth, fast, and intuitive.

Optimized for Fast Performance and SEO

Speed and search engine visibility are foundational for any digital business. A slow site can frustrate users, while poor SEO structure can keep your website buried on page two.

This theme is built with lightweight code, clean structure, and best practices in place for both speed and SEO. It’s compatible with popular SEO plugins and is optimized for fast page load times—critical factors for improving search engine rankings and user experience.

Flexible Customization Without Coding

Every marketing business is unique. Your website should reflect your brand colors, tone of voice, and business objectives. Fortunately, this theme gives you extensive customization options.

You can:

Change colors, fonts, and layout styles

Use Elementor or other page builders for visual editing

Customize headers, footers, and menus

Add widgets and shortcodes to tailor every section

Control section visibility without touching any code

Whether you're running a personal brand or a full-scale agency, you can build a website that aligns with your visual identity.

Built-In Lead Generation Elements

Converting traffic into leads is the goal of every marketing website. This theme includes several high-converting components designed to improve engagement and capture contact information:

Lead capture forms

Pop-ups and sticky headers

Call-to-action buttons

Newsletter signup sections

WooCommerce integration for digital product sales

You don’t need additional plugins or complex setups to start collecting leads right away.

Blogging for Visibility and Thought Leadership

Marketing professionals thrive on visibility. Blogging not only helps drive organic traffic but also builds authority in your niche. The SKT Marketer theme includes a professional, content-rich blog section where you can regularly share tips, news, strategies, and insights.

A consistent blogging effort can help:

Improve your SEO rankings

Showcase your knowledge and expertise

Build trust with potential clients

Generate backlinks and traffic from social media

Whether you post weekly or monthly, the blog will quickly become one of your most valuable digital assets.

Integration with Tools That Matter

Digital marketers use a wide range of tools—analytics platforms, email marketing services, CRMs, social feeds, and more. The SKT Marketer theme is built for integration, giving you the flexibility to add what you need.

It supports:

Google Analytics and Tag Manager

Yoast and Rank Math SEO plugins

Mailchimp, ConvertKit, and other email platforms

Live chat widgets and contact forms

WooCommerce and eCommerce features

This means you can scale and automate without switching themes or adding unnecessary bloat.

One-Time Cost, Long-Term Value

Many professionals hesitate when investing in premium themes. But unlike expensive custom development or monthly website builders, this theme is a one-time purchase that gives you long-term control and value.

It’s frequently updated, supported by a reliable development team, and designed to grow with your business. You’ll save time, avoid technical headaches, and own your digital real estate.

Final Thoughts

Your marketing website is a reflection of your skills, your strategy, and your standards. With the Online Marketing WordPress Theme, you get a powerful, customizable, and conversion-focused theme designed to help you stand out, generate leads, and scale your business online.

Whether you’re starting out or optimizing an existing site, this theme provides all the tools you need to create a professional, high-performing marketing website with confidence.

[jaws-and-canines]

A look at Enemy to You - Book One of the Zero Quartet - "Finding Frequencies" - Part One.

This is a small snippet of a scene from this novel-in-progress, presented in it's incomplete form, because I think it's cool and I like sharing things as I'm working on them. In total it's about 4k words. This is part ONE of two.

---

The walls of the room look like weathered concrete, the ceiling designed so that the room’s inset ambient light is overshadowed by a square illuminated with a sharp beam of bright white artificial daylight. It’s an architectural choice- not specifically for intimidation, just a style that was popular about twenty years ago. Ignis-Mellins was super big on it, though they used to kit the places out with ambient-temperature tatami matting, a small traditional Japanese tea set and pipe the smell of jasmine into their rooms. The extent to which their property was micromanaged always feaked me the fuck out, even before we got into the nitty-gritty of what the psychosurgery the Company had offered to fund for me would entail. I left very quickly. 

This room seems a little more lived-in than the Ignis-Mellins showrooms, just with the same architectural flair. I think it was called the post-brutalist revival or some shit. It isn’t unpleasant in here, nor uncanny. There’s just not a lot to see. No furniture. Just me, a table, and then two chairs over the other side of it.

The door is flush with the wall, except for a small seam, which I stare at for what feels like forever, wondering if I could get something conductive into it and short the lock. Except I’m in a pair of jeans and a T-shirt and don’t have anything to do that with. 

At about the three hour mark, I find myself nodding off to sleep. You’d think it was hard to do with your hands awkwardly zip-tied to a chair, but I can’t really feel the pain anymore, moreso a muted throbbing of bruising to come later. Sleeping anywhere is also a skill you pick up in the corps-espatiers. Wedge yourself between two solid objects and catch a few hours of sleep when you can. I’m just shifting around to get comfortable without accidentally dislocating a shoulder when I hear the beep of an electronic lock and someone walks through the door.

“Davies,” he says, by way of greeting, and drops a carry-case onto the table. “Good to see you’re awake.”

It startles me a little that he comes right out with my name. “Were you expecting me to be asleep?” I raise an eyebrow.

Oh. That’s an ex-T-F security guy. I squint at him, trying to place him.

Transatlantic accent. Short-shaved red hair, a crooked nose, unused cartilage piercings. I know this guy, I’m sure of it. “I was expecting you to still be groggy. Taking a ‘caster shot like that isn’t something you just shrug off.” I don’t remember his first name but I do remember his surname- Gallagher. We’d met, very briefly, at the corporate expo about two years after I’d joined the Company.

Stockholm had given him a smile- as best as he could with the mess of scars on his face- that was less friendly and more I would kill you if we were alone. Didn’t know what had gone down between them in the past but it clearly wasn’t pretty. 

And wouldn’t you know it, a few months down the line, we got a red-header faxed with his name and face down as flagged for defection, EHC and treason. “Fuck, I know you. It’s Gallagher,” I say. “They weren’t kidding.”

“No, they weren’t,” he says. He opens up the case with a swipe of his keycard. I peer over, trying to get a glimpse of the logo on it. It doesn’t have one. Just a photo on white plastic, his name- Mercurio Gallagher -in nondescript font, a barcode, and a beige strip up the long side. No company logo, no job title. I don’t recognise the colour either. 

I give him a sad smile. It’s forced, but then again a good amount of my facial expressions are. They don’t come naturally. “You know what turning EHC means if they get their hands on you.” That small print about termination of personhood in the T-F sign-on contract, or sending him to an Alligo cruiser for profit-loss retrieval, or worse. Because there’s worse. “Who got you?” I ask. “More to the point- who got me?”

The other beauty of the red-header out on his name is that I wouldn’t be punished if I killed him whilst trying to apprehend him. But I’m not in a position to threaten Gallagher, so I don’t. “That’s not for me to answer.” He looks at me, and moves over to brush my hair back from my face. “I’m surprised that the Company never made you neaten up.” He points to my cheeks. “You’ve not even shaved properly.”

“I was on holiday,” I say. They interrupted my first proper time off in a year with this shit. 

Gallagher shakes his head, chuckling to himself. Asshole. “You looked like this when we first met.” I’ve never been particularly neat, no. He’s right there.

“What do you want, huh?” I ask him.

He takes a scanner, a heavy, black thing with an analogue keyboard and two frequency dials on its side from the carry case. “Checking you for trackers.”

Oh, I know this one. “Great. So what you’re doing is anonymising my future corpse.”

He tuts. “I said the first time. I’m ensuring you can’t be tracked.” He turns on the scanner. It beeps three times, flashes up a logo I don’t quite catch. “They’re not planning to kill you right now.” 

I look at him and roll my eyes. “I’m so reassured.”

He starts at my shoulders, under my collarbones. Moves behind me and checks my lower back, and then back to my collarbones. He’s not very systematic about it. As he moves the scanner around the back of my neck to check the other side, there’s a brief beep from it. He stops, looks at the screen, and dials one of the knobs down, and waves it around the back of my neck again. Nothing. I bet that’s annoying. “Why don’t you just tell me where they put them in? Emergency beacon? Biomonitor?”

“I haven’t got either.” He waves the scanner up and down my spine again. It chirps once as he nears my head. He presses it right against the back of my neck, only for nothing to happen. “I don’t know why it's doing that, but it isn’t right.”

He shows me the screen, jabbing at it with a finger. “This is a Prometheus CareRite frequency, David, don’t mouth off to me. You won’t win here.”

I know exactly what he’s referencing, and it’s a dick move. “I didn’t win against the Director of Security, in case you missed it,” I say. He pokes me in the back of the neck again, and then whacks the scanner against the edge of the table. “He overruled Stockholm’s good reference and had me re-assigned to buttfuck nowhere with what was ‘technically’ a promotion.” I gesture quotation marks with cramped fingers, but you can probably hear them in the way I say it as well. Am I still annoyed about that?

Yeah. Kind of.

Gallagher’s face twists into a bitter pursed-lipped expression of vague irritation. “Is that old man still alive?”

“You think someone would manage to kill him?” I laugh. Stockholm will drop dead of a heart attack on the job one day. Stress is the only thing that would manage to kill him. He holds the record for the most unsuccessful assasination attempts in the entirety of the Company’s Security division. “He works for IA now. I’m surprised he hasn’t said hello to you.”

Said hello? I mean that I’m surprised he hasn’t had Gallagher killed. IA aren’t friendly at the best of times. Stockholm has a cruel streak on top of that. One of the more recent deaths I heard of- which word on the wind was that it was arranged by IA- had his name written all over it.

A wedding cake contaminated with industrial pest control poison- strychnine- but the cost-cutting sort where there’s one slice in a fake fancy tiered cake for the bride and groom to eat, and the guests get something from a less extravagant-looking cake. Only the couple died. The paperwork and forensic trail all lined up with accidental cross-contamination, but when a whistleblower dies like that, it’s no accident. And I’ve never believed in coincidence.

The scanner continues to elude Gallagher. He thumbs through each of the frequencies on the coarse frequency knob and then slowly turns through the fine frequency finder, running it over my head and shoulders. Another chirp as he passes over my jaw, and then he rushes back to try to find it, to nothing at all. “I bet that’s starting to grate, huh?” I chuckle to myself. My ribs are starting to cramp again. I think the hydrocodone shot they gave me earlier is wearing off. I shift about in the chair, grimace, and then go back to trying to get under Gallagher’s skin. “Isn’t that annoying?”

“Oh, shut up.” He sounds pained. “I know T-F has CareRite coverage. Where’d they put your biomonitor?”

Oh, my god, doesn’t he realise his stupid scanner would light up like a christmas tree if I had a biomonitor? Those things leak frequencies so bad there’s a class-action over the early models giving people brain cancer. “I told you, I don’t have one. T-F only covers the CareRite Silver package now.”

He presses the scanner flat between my shoulderblades for a moment, before going back to waving it over my shoulders. It’s almost comical to watch him try the same thing over and over. “Where’s your subdermal?”

“I don’t have one. It’s all done with my ID card and biometrics. Again, CareRite Silver, and T-F doesn’t provide subdermals.” I’m pretty sure this is exactly the definition of insanity.

Gallagher mutters something I don’t catch. It sounds angry, anyhow. He smacks the scanner on the table again and runs it over my head. It chirps. He backtracks, pokes me behind the back of the ear. It remains silent. His face goes red with frustration. I’m getting a nasty feeling that the scanner’s picking up my hearing aids. Which means he’s going to want to cut them out. The external part got left… somewhere, but that’s the amplifier and battery. The bits inside my head, under my skin, is the passive neuromodulator, the thing that dulls down the tinnitus. Without the externals I can still hear, just muffled. If he takes out the internals I’m going to be just about deaf.

“Something’s picking up on this,” he says, brandishing the scanner. “Are you going to be a smartass with me?” 

“No.” I smirk, tipping my head towards him. “Are you going to be stupid?”

I have about half a second to register the anger that flashes across his face. He punches me in the liver. I double over, coughing as the searing pain tears through my ribcage. “Alright, cut it out,” I gasp. “Fuck! I don’t have one, I told you!”

“Has it got an encrypted signature?” He waves the scanner over my head and shoulders again. Something briefly flares up on its screen, and quickly fades.

I groan, still bent double. “I told you, I don’t have a subdermal or a biomonitor.” Though the easy answer would be to just tell him about them, I can’t let him find out about my hearing aids. I can’t. The tinnitus will drive me to insanity if he breaks them somehow. I don’t even want to think about how he’d do that. They’re under my skin.

“This is telling me that you do have something with a very, very specific CareRite frequency. I’m betting it’s an encrypted subdermal. Because this. Is never. Wrong.” He shoves the scanner in my face for a moment, so close it forces me to sit up straight again. “So let’s see, shall we? Give me your T-F encryption keys.”

Fuck no. IA will have my skin for that. “I can’t.” I’d rather die here and now than spend the next year going over the facts for ten hours a day in an inquest and then be sent off to god-knows-where. “I can’t give them to you.” I shake my head.

Gallagher stoops down to be at my level. I see him hesitate, and then force another spur of anger out of himself. “No, don’t pull this shit. Give them to me!” He hits me around the head with the corner of the scanner. A spark of white flies across my vision, my head lashing to one side so hard I feel something pop in my neck. 

Fuck me. His heart might not be in it but he has one hell of a punch.

“I cannot give you the encryption keys,” I say again, slower, tasting blood. Really dumbing it down.

Another punch. Thankfully not with the corner of the scanner in his hand. I don’t really have time to be relieved about it. He puts his whole body weight behind this one. I see white again. To the other side, this time. My head snaps back. Air gets knocked out of my lungs.

So hard I smell aerosol deodorant and deep-fat-fryer grease, lying on my back on the floor of the ring back on Earth. So hard I’m scrunching my eyes shut, jaw clenched, chest seized with pain, black spreading across my vision like blotter ink- and I hear those same words again. Echoing right back at me from the past.

Roll with it, David. 

It’s hard. I roll with it. Let myself be present in the moment, slumped over in the chair, shaking, reflexively trying to gulp down air, unable to really put two and two together. Jumbled thoughts gradually return to order. Slowly, surely, the blackness over my vision starts to bloom back into colour. One side of my temple and the other cheekbone aching, both sides of my neck strained. I involuntarily let out a little whine and then gasp for air as the stunned feeling wears off. Blood drips from my mouth in a congealed trail, leaves a stain down my t-shirt and onto my denim jeans of saliva and blood. Great. That’s disgusting.

Gallagher’s standing over me. “Give me the encryption keys,” he says, very quietly. He’s cradling his hand now. Probably broke his fingers against my face.

I shake my head again, feeling blood well up in my mouth, beading onto my lips. I’ve cracked a tooth. There’s a bit of enamel still stuck in there. I’ve probably swallowed the rest. “I can’t.” Not the first tooth I’ve had knocked out, but usually the other person comes off worse than me. Not this time.

Gallagher lets out a noise halfway between a laugh and a furious scream. “It’s not impossible, you dick, you just have to do it!” Oh, he’s really frustrated now. He doesn’t hit me again.

He has broken his hand, I realise. His knuckles are going purple, spreading up one of his fingers. That’s a delight. I mean, he’s probably cracked my cheekbone, but it’s infinitely more embarrassing for him, and he knows it. 

I laugh, turning my head to one side, picking the bit of enamel free of my gum with my tongue. I spit it onto the floor. “It doesn’t work like that. You don’t get to demand shit from me. Not like this.”

“So how do I demand it?” he asks quietly. He grabs me by the ear, leaning down to whisper in it- and then he stops. “What the fuck is this?” he asks, and the tone of his voice changes. Less frustration. Now verging on outraged. I feel his fingers against the magnets under my skin that my hearing aids snap onto.

Fuck. It’s over.

“Hearing aids,” I say quietly. “They’re the internal bits of my hearing aids.”

“You’re deaf? You never had these before.”

“Hard of hearing.” I stare at the floor. “I was too close to a battery explosion about a year and a half ago.” Something’s in my eyes. I think it’s blood from somewhere on my head, dripping down my brow. Did he break skin when he hit me? I don’t know. I’m covered in sweat and blood and spit. It burns and beads up on my lashes. 

Maybe I’m crying, but I don’t cry. Or at least I don't think I do. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

Gallagher looks in the carry case again. I see him find a single-use medical scalpel, plastic-and-paper packaging. He hesitates, and then rips open the packet. “I’m sorry. They have to go.”

I shove the dread away, violently knocking it to the floor. No time for that. “Fucking bitch,” I say, and spit blood at the floor. I look up and glare at him. “You know those aren’t going to give anyone my location.”

“It’s the radio signals. They could be detected-”

I interrupt him. Blood is running down my chin like liquid now. “Bullshit.”

There’s a nasty, long pause. I look at him like I could kill him with the sheer anger in my eyes. He tries not to look at me, tugs at his shirt collar, and fumbles with the scalpel, snapping the blade on with shaky hands. He's trying to ignore me. He's trying to pretend that I'm not here, not looking at him and imagining how I'm going to kill him. Maybe I will. Maybe I won't. But he can certainly feel it in the air. Look at me, I think. Look at me. Look at me.