#“I mean it's an old system but it could have been worse. It's not like we're wrestling with tape recorders and manila folders.”

[countdown-til-sanders-take-over]

So hows it going 😀

TMAGP 7 is a WILD ride

[pibsboots]

I've always had chronic fatigue. I remember being twelve, and an adult mentioned how I couldn't possibly know how tired they felt because adulthood brought levels of exhaustion I couldn't imagine. I thought about that for days in fear, because I couldn't remember the last time I didn't feel tired.

Eventually I came to terms with the fact that I was just tired, and I couldn't do as many things as everyone else. People called me lazy, and I knew that wasn't true, but there's only so many times you can say "I'm tired" before people think it's an excuse. I don't blame them. When a teenager does 20 hours of extracurriculars every week and only says "I'm too tired" when you ask them to do the dishes, it's natural to think it's an excuse. At some point, I started to think the same thing.

It didn't matter that I could barely sit up. It was probably all in my head, and if I really wanted to, I could do it.

When I learned the name for it, chronic fatigue, I thought wow, people that have that must be miserable, because I am always tired and I cannot imagine what it would feel like if it were worse.

Spoiler alert, if you've been tired for a decade, it's probably chronic fatigue.

Once I figured that out though, I thought of my energy as the same as everyone else's, just smaller in quantity. And that might be true for some people, but I've figured out recently that it absolutely isn't true for me.

I used to be like wow I have so much energy today I can do this whole list for sure! And then I'd do the dishes and have to lay down for 2 hours. Then I'd think I must gave misjudged that, I didn't have as much energy as I thought.

But the thing is - I did have enough energy for more tasks, I just didn't go about them properly.

With chronic fatigue, your maximum energy is obviously much smaller than the average person's. Doing the dishes for you might use up the same percentage of energy that it takes to do all the daily chores for someone else.

If someone without chronic fatigue was to do all the daily chores, they would take breaks. Because otherwise, they're sprinting a marathon for no reason and it would take way more energy than necessary. We have to do the same.

Put the cups in the dishwasher, take a break. Put the bowls in, take a break. So on and so forth. This may mean taking breaks every 2-5 minutes but afterwards, you get to not feel like you've run a marathon while carrying 4 people on your back.

Today, I had a moderate amount of energy. Under my old system of go till you drop, I probably could have done most of the dishes and wiped off the counter and then been dead to the world for the rest of the day.

Under the new system, I scooped litter boxes, cleaned out the fridge, took the trash out, cleaned the stove, and wiped off the counter and did all the dishes. And after all that, I still had it in me to make a simple dinner, unload the dishwasher, and tidy the kitchen.

It was complete and utter insanity. Just because I sat down whenever I felt myself getting more tired than I already was.

All this to say, take fucking breaks. It's time to unlearn the ceaseless productivity bullshit that capitalism has shoved down our throats. Its actively counterproductive. Just sit down. Drink some water. Rest your body when it needs to rest.

There will still be days where there is nothing to do but rest, and days where half a load of dishes is absolutely the most I can do. But this method has really helped me minimize those, which is so incredibly relieving.

[youngks-smile]

What I Want You To Know About Long COVID

Well lads, I've been suffering from Long COVID for over a year now. My life is at a complete standstill. I'm 25 years old and I'm too sick to go back to school, I can't work, I had to move back in with my parents and I'm still stuck here.

Here are just a few things I wish people knew about Long COVID, including things I didn't know myself until I got it.

COVID destroys your immune system. Yes, even if you don't have Long COVID. Are you getting sick more often now? When you get sick, does it last longer? There are many studies showing that COVID causes t cell depletion, even in mild COVID cases! T cells are how your body remembers how to fight off infections you've had before so losing those cells? Bad news.

Your initial infection can be mild and you can still get Long COVID. Right from Yale Medicine, "Most people with Long COVID had mild acute COVID." (This is also a good link for a basic Long COVID overview).

There can be a gap of time between when you "get better" from the initial COVID infection to the onset of Long COVID symptoms. Some people get sick with an initial COVID infection and never get better. Some get better and then weeks or months later start developing Long COVID symptoms. Long COVID symptoms can even fluctuate over time, can go away for months and then suddenly come back.

So many people have Long COVID and don't realize it. Do you feel more tired lately but no matter how much you sleep, nothing helps? Is it harder to concentrate at work or school? Can you just not think like you used to? You could have Long COVID and not even know it. Even mild post-COVID symptoms are still Long COVID.

COVID can do anything to your body. Long COVID has over 200 recognized symptoms and can affect basically any part or system of your body. There is no one mechanism or cause of Long COVID which unfortunately also means there's no one cure either.

The effects of COVID are cumulative. Each COVID reinfection increases your chances of developing Long COVID. COVID is also affecting your body in other ways, yes, even if you're otherwise young and healthy! "Repeat COVID-19 infections increase risk of organ failure, death".

Once you have Long COVID, repeat COVID infections will make your symptoms worse. "80% [of Long COVID patients] saw their symptoms worsen [from reinfection]. In 60% of people who were in recovery or remission from Long COVID, reinfection caused a recurrence of Long COVID."

There is a lot more I want to say about Long COVID but I want to keep this post at least somewhat manageable to read. Like how when COVID is contracted during pregnancy, those COVID-exposed fetuses have a 6.3-fold increased risk of motor developmental delays, or that another study found 50% of babies exposed to COVID in utero had developmental delays.

You need to keep caring about COVID, for others around you and also for yourself even if you're "healthy". Everyone is at risk. And don't forget 40-60% of COVID infections are asymptomatic, which is why masking even if you feel fine is crucial. The only way right now to not get Long COVID is to not get COVID in the first place. It's not too late, if you've stopped masking it's never too late to start again! I know it's easy to get distracted by things in your life that seem more real than the possibility of getting sick some time in the future, and the peer pressure to not mask can be intense. But it only feels less real or less important until your entire life is having Long COVID. Trust me.

I know this is a complicated issue, many people can't afford to stay home when sick even if they want to because of their jobs, there are disgusting policies trying to ban wearing masks, but please if you can. Keep masking. Masking works, masking saves lives.

This post got a bit longer than I wanted so below the cut is a non-exhaustive list of my Long COVID symptoms and some of my experiences as one of the "healthy young people" who got "unlucky". cw brief mention of suicidal ideation.

Welcome to the Thunderdome that is my body with Long COVID. Keep in mind these are just my experiences and symptoms, Long COVID can cause any range of symptoms at varying severities.

Dysautonomia: Exercise intolerance, Post-Exertional Malaise (PEM), fatigue, and heat intolerance. What do those things mean? Here's some specific examples. Absolutely terrible circulation I am so cold all the time but also, if I get a little too warm I will pass out. Eating hot food makes my heart rate spike, I sweat, my body feels heavy. Blood pooling and pins and needles in my feet when I walk. Don't even think about exercising past walking, it's impossible. I used to work out an hour a day 4 times a week and now walking up one flight of stairs makes my heart pound and I can't breathe. Can't take even just warm showers anymore or I will pass out. Heat rashes from being in the sun for 10 minutes.

Digestive issues: Honestly too many to name but: constant bloating, extreme nausea, constipation, slow motility, lack of appetite, just so much cramping and pain. I lost 18 pounds from Long COVID, as someone who was already considered underweight their entire life, and almost had to get a shunt put into my chest to deliver nutrients because I was nearly completely unable to eat. For the first 6 months of Long COVID, if I could manage 600 calories a day, that was a good day.

Histamine intolerance: Oh boy. My worst symptoms, I don't even know where to start with it. If you know Mast Cell Activation Syndrome (MCAS) it's very similar. I can only eat 19 foods. If i eat a single bite of something not on that list, it's 48 hours of absolute hell. Coughing, migraines, itchy eyes, such extreme nausea I cannot even describe it, panic/feeling of doom, racing heart rate, derealization, rash, uncontrollable muscle tremors. I only learned about histamine intolerance 5 months into having Long COVID so before that, I was experiencing these symptoms nearly every single day. Terrifying isn't even a strong enough word to describe how it felt to experience all this and have no idea what it was, how to stop it, or if it would ever stop. Really dark times.

Neurological issues: More of that derealization. Inability to concentrate. Anxiety. OCD-like symptoms such as thoughts getting "stuck" in my head, repeating 24/7 completely unable to stop them, genuinely felt like my brain had cracked open and I had lost my mind. Constant dizziness like I'm on a boat.

Sleep issues: I sleep like garbage. I have insomnia, I wake up dozens of times every night and every single time I sleep I have intensely vivid dreams. I can't sleep longer than 7 hours total no matter how exhausted I am. It is exhausting. I'm exhausted, I'm so so tired.

And finally. Just. Really intense suicidal ideation. My body, my health, my entire life has been stolen from me because someone else decided my life was worth less to them than wearing a mask or staying home if they feel sick. Before I got Long COVID, I was preparing to go to South Korea to teach English, then on to a PhD in neurolinguistics, I was supposed to meet my long distance partner and had already booked plane tickets when I got sick. All of that has been destroyed.

Most of us with Long COVID are stuck in a cycle of being extremely sick, then if you're lucky you'll slowly get better over months, just to get reinfected and go right back where you started or worse. Honestly, I'm not scared of dying from COVID. I'm scared of living for a long time, suffering from Long COVID the entire time. This isn't living.

I don't know how to end this now. I'm still fighting, I'm trying experimental treatments, I'm not giving up yet. I hope everyone reading this stays healthy and well.

[nope-body]

.

[katszumi]

“you know, your eyes kinda resemble a ruby.” you slurred your words. your chin rested in the palm of your hand, elbow digging in the table below you.

bakugou snorted, his eyes never wavering from yours. “what made you think of that shit?”

you lifted your shoulders, quickly dropping them.

“do i need a reason?”

“to be thinking about nonsense? yes.” he answered his own question. his response caused an eye-roll out of you.

you grabbed the small glass in front of you, finishing the shot you set down earlier to save for later.

“that’s your fifth shot of the night.” bakugou intercepted the silence. he sat upright in his chair, his arms folded across his chest.

you gulped the remains of the liquor, swiping your tongue across the bottom of your lip.

“and you’re on your what? like second?” you remarked.

bakugou wasn’t a drinker. everyone knew that. he preferred to be sober, always offering to be the designated driver whenever the group wanted to have a night of fun.

but tonight was his pro-hero debut party. all of his friends and old schoolmates were there, so he figured if he were to drink, tonight was the perfect time.

also, who was he to decline having a drink with a pretty girl?

his eyes glanced at your now wet lips which unfortunately didn’t go unnoticed from you. “two is plenty.”

you leaned forward, reaching your hand towards bakugou’s shirt. your fingers grazed the top button of his shirt. slowly, you unfastened it. “there’s nothing wrong with having a little fun, katsuki.”

due to the sudden proximity, he could smell the alcohol coming from your breath, but he couldn’t bring himself to resist your actions.

you continued to the second button. “take this time to relax.” you raised your hands once more, your fingers now grazing his neck to uncuff the collar of his shirt.

now, you leaned away from him, returning to your previous position. “now you look like a man that’s ready for the night.”

bakugou dropped his shoulders and leaned back in his chair, turning his head sideways. he couldn’t refuse the blush that was coming onto his face nor could he hide it. he knew you were staring right into his soul. he was also aware that you loved to tease him like that.

“unhinged. i swear you are.” was the only thing bakugou could muster.

ever since he’s known you from u.a, you were always that daring girl who was so unpredictable. there was never a dull moment with you.

but that was also what made you so dangerous for him.

a laugh parted your lips. “been called worse.”

“bullshit.” he called it, looking into your eye once again. “like what?”

“irresponsible,” you started count on your fingers.

“i can see it.” bakugou shared his input.

“arrogant,”

he rolled his eyes, “heard my fair share of that one too.”

“impulsive,”

“accurate.”

“provocative.”

bakugou moved his head in a notion like he was deciding between two things. “nah.”

you furrowed your brow, squinting your eyes in confusion. “what is that supposed to mean?”

“provocative sounds like a slutty word.” he simply responded. “i think you know you’re attractive, and you know how to use it to your advantage. not a bad thing at all.”

you paused for a moment, your lips parting from shock. a small grin began to form on your face. “did bakugou katsuki just call me attractive?”

the male scoffed, “don’t act like this is news to you. ‘m sure you heard it plenty times before.” he brushed it off.

“just didn’t think you of all people would willingly say that.”

bakugou chuckled to himself. he raised his finger in the air, indicating for the server assigned to your table to bring him another drink.

“unlike you, not everyone needs five shots of liquor in their system to confess something.” undoubtedly, it was shot taken at her, one that you couldn’t refuse the growing smile on your face.

“oh? since when did you decide to get so bold?”

“someone’s actions tend to rub off on me.”

“they must be foolish.”

once again, bakugou’s ruby eyes lowered to your lips. undeniable. how could his heart ever stand a chance when you treat him this way? did you not understand he loved a challenge?

“yeah, an irresistible fool.”

“please, i’m anything but a fool.”

“don’t flatter yourself; who said i was talking about you?” he opted to lie.

you leaned forward slightly, “with the amount of times you keep staring at my lips, it’s not hard to notice it’s taking everything in you to resist me.” your voice lowered in volume, for his ears to catch only. “therefore, irresistible.”

bakugou took his time to respond, the corner of his mouth quirking up into a smirk. “this must be that arrogant side of yours coming out.”

“one, not necessarily arrogance if it’s true. two, i’m attractive and i know how to use it to my advantage.” you recited his own words.

“this something you do with all your flings?”

you gave him a playful confused look. “do what?” intentionally, your voice had an innocent tone to it.

“drink with them. tease ‘em. nearly undress them. flirt with them in front of an audience?” bakugou could feel his patience slipping. like a sand hourglass, only a few grains left at the top waiting to fall to the bottom.

it had to have been from the shots that made him so precariously bold. but he couldn’t walk away. not when he has you in the palm of his hands— maybe even the other way around.

you propped your elbow on the table once more, cupping your own cheek. you gazed at bakugou through your lashes.

“if i had other flings, you think i’d be here with you all night?”

“don’t know. good question actually.” purposely, he played stupid.

you paused. “there are no others,” you knew that was the answer he was searching for. luckily for him, you didn’t mind giving it to him. “just you.”

bakugou nodded slowly, basking in the information. he could feel his heart flutter from the confession, a huge wave of relief washing over him.

“good. was startin’ to think you were actually considering the guy over at the bar.” of course, bakugou plays it off as a joke. even with the small liquor in his system, it was still difficult for him to admit his true feelings.

but you were fine with it. because even with the guard he pretends to have up, you can feel even with the slightest touch how much he cares for you. bakugou may be loud, cheeky, maybe a bit conceited, but he wasn’t a good liar. you always saw through his facade no matter what lies he decided to spew.

you scoff. “oh, shut up.” you fight a smile. “the guy at the bar doesn’t have the ruby eyes i like so much.”

“here you go with this stupid shit.”

-

i ’d do anything to flirt with katsuki late at night, both of us tipsy. god please im beggin

[gay-jesus-probably]

Okay so I have a lot of thoughts about the whole thing of the Gerudo being a race of entirely women, with the only exception being one man born every hundred years, and that man automatically being their king. Now this worldbuilding comes from Ocarina of Time, and there's obviously a metric fuckton of unfortunate implications there, because it was 1998. And it seems that Tears of the Kingdom is sticking with the lore of Gerudo men being extremely rare and becoming the King of their people, which once again has a metric fuckton of unfortunate implications because it's 2023 and Nintendo has somehow gotten even worse about this shit.

But let's set aside the whole... everything, and look at this from just the in-universe perspective. How does it work? I mean, it's pretty clear that there is no overlap between the kings; the old ones are normally long gone by the time a new one is born, but the Gerudo manage to take care of themselves during the hangtime. So they must have an established system of government and leadership that doesn't involve a king, and somehow that system is set up in a way that does a smooth transfer of power once a new king is born and old enough to take the throne. But why bother always declaring a random guy to be your King when you already have a perfectly functional system in place?

I mean again, the whole thing has a lot of sexist implications, but we're not looking at this from a real world context, we're examining it in-universe. And we could just go the lazy route and say that their king is in charge just because he's the only man, but I don't like that. I mean come on, the Gerudo are a race of entirely women, and most of their outside problems come from Hylian men being creepy about it. They are entirely a matriarchy; there is literally no reason for their culture to have an inherent respect for men, even if the man in question is one of them. And they're desert people; they live in an extremely harsh and dangerous landscape, if they don't have their shit together, they will die. By sheer necessity, their culture needs to put a lot of value in being practical, because if they're stupid about things, people die. They really can't afford to have a shitty leader take over, and just letting some guy take the wheel doesn't really fit with the way their culture must otherwise work.

So again, why the fuck do they bother having a King?

I think it's mainly just a ceremonial position. Yes, if the guy is a good leader he'll be in charge, but if he isn't good at being a King or isn't interested in the job... fuck it, they've already got a functional government system that's been leading their people the whole time, why fix what isn't broken? The title of Gerudo King isn't about leadership or power. I think it's more about belonging. Because the Gerudo are a culture where every single one of them can be defined in the same way... and there is exactly one exception once a century. Men are considered to be inherently outsiders at the best of times, and more often they're enemies. A man born into this culture is a natural outsider; he is completely unique, and that means he doesn't really fit into his community. And well... when someone is fundamentally different from the rest of their community, they tend to be ostracized.

So I think that's why the position of Gerudo King exists. It isn't about them needing or even wanting a man to lead them. The title of King doesn't need to involve any leadership at all. It's about giving the man born every century a place in their society. It's a way of saying yes, you are one of us, you are a Gerudo, you belong here, you are wanted and you are loved.

The Gerudo know that every hundred years, one of their children will be fundamentally different from all of his peers. And so their society is built to ensure that a child who is completely different from them will still be loved and accepted. He will always have a place in their society. He doesn't need to earn their love, he has it just for existing. These are his people.

The title of Gerudo King isn't an inherent position of authority. It's a promise of acceptance.

[louebel]

Hi! Can I request fluff Law x fem!reader where reader is feels sick but tries to ignore it/do things on her own (she’s not used to ask for help) but as a doctor law easily can tell by the signs and it happens during their sea journey on the polar tang? Hope I’m not asking too much love ya 🥺

Feel free to add angst or anything else to your writing ^•^

this is super old and the only request i'll ever do (atm) since i had a wip— ANON SORRY IT TOOK FOREVER <\3 reader is gn since i used the second person and no description.

𝐩𝐚𝐢𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠: trafalgar law × gn!reader 𝐢𝐧𝐟𝐨/𝐭𝐚��𝐬: 6,124 wc. a bit angsty, ends with fluff, emotional reader for the sickness, law is bad at emotions. this turned longer than expected, i hope it's decent xdd hit me up if there's any mistakes lol. supposed to be called windows of the soul,, divider by @ benkeibear my lord and saviour. 𝐬𝐲𝐧𝐨𝐩𝐬𝐢𝐬: sickness overtook your body and worsened your already pitiful situation. law has been ignoring you and you have no idea why... but with how you felt, there was no way you could confront him at the moment.

scrub, scrub, scrub... 

"... phew ..." 

scrub... poof! 

"Oh! — damnit — aargh..." 

Cleaning today has been a nightmare. Never been so tedious. 

Like, it was already uninteresting compared to all the other things you could do, but today it was ten times worse. You could bear it, seeking to make dusting shelves fun by humming some random tune to yourself. It was okay, something you had to do every once in a while. You could do it. 

If only you weren't sick. 

"Achoo! Achoo! — urgh... Achooo..! Damn." 

You began feeling like this some days ago, or so you told yourself as you delicately hunched down to the floor, hoping to grasp the yellow sponge soaked in foam and water without experiencing excruciating pain. However, your hopes soon shattered as your back screamed in agony and your legs trembled with soreness, almost giving up on you. 

Just the flu, you insisted, it would go away. A couple of sneezes mean nothing. You would feel better and all would go back to the ordinary. 

... Oh, how wrong you were! And how stupid for not getting a day off. 

You were capable, though! You counted on your immune system (it sounded heroic the first time you thought of that). One night is all you needed. 

Or not. 

"Ow, ow..." 

You should've told your captain. Sure, it would cost your courage, pride, and dignity, but at least you'd be cured. You'd rather die than tell him you got sick because of the one herb he instructed everybody to avoid. 

What's worse is that he's been rather distant, and he's unquestionably avoiding you. The way he shoots daggers — no, whole machetes in your direction every time you do anything, smart or not, is so clear even the crew can see it. And the worst part? You do not know why. 

It had been like this for a while now, and you detested this whole plight with passion. Everything was okay between the two of you, you were sure of it! What did you do that spurred such a reaction? From one so dear to you? 

Those sweet memories... 

From new findings you excitedly presented him, to revealing himself, his past and adventures to you after almost a year of sailing. You knew everything about him. He knew everything about you. 

So why? Why stop so abruptly? You didn't mind when he digressed about his newfound coins. When he murmured under his breath while he pored over medical books or mulled about a particular topic. When he stressed over labor and called for a brief break, where you or the crew would attend to him by delivering him a meal or helping when he wasn’t looking. He's so stubborn.

"Uurgh..." 

From captain, to Law, to captain again. Not to mention how he deftly stopped you from hanging out with him. You thought he needed space at first. Maybe he was tired and had to rest for the next few days. That’s alright. However, your thoughts deteriorated as the days passed. But well, right now it's better if he doesn't see you at all. Nor the crew‌ — oh, the damn crew. Those two.

The "two" being the pair of nitwits that constantly stand by law's side and grin at you. Seriously... 

You do not understand what Penguin and Shachi find so amusing about your situation with him. It's a tragedy, not a comedy. You love them both, truly, the minute you stepped into the polar tang they were the first ones to get you to open up and all, but goodness, you wish you could beat them for sitting there, cackling and clapping their hands while confiding some mysterious comments to each other when la — the captain, showed up in the area and walked past you with an unreadable gaze. He'd constantly salute you and the others with a bow of his head or more, depending on his mood. 

Now? If he saw one inch of your form? 

Sigh. His face always went red. 

Why can't those two just tell you? Even Ikkaku seemed to know something you didn't. She was more subtle about it, though. Jean Bart wasn't slick either. You could see him smile from a mile away. Hakugan and Clione? Shachi and Penguin 2.0, except they hid behind Jean Bart. The rest pitied you instead, sometimes patting your back — sometimes shaking their head almost in disbelief. Oh, and Bepo gave you suspicious smiles! Every time he tried to say something to you, those two animal hat-wearing goblins silenced him. Did they just want you to suffer? 

And if they did want that then their curses were working because even after grabbing the sponge (almost losing your temper as it slipped through your gloved palm twice) and straightening back to an erect pose, your head was still banging with fervor, muscles barely reacting. 

If only you could snuggle with the fluffy, warm mink right now. A bitter sigh rushed past your lips at the thought. 

Those two were just so mean. But Law was much meaner — the captain, the captain... Yes, the captain. That... That dummy. 

You groaned and shook your head while forcing your wobbly arms to scrub the table, exhausted mentally with this never-ending train of thoughts and these fanciful fists leaving invisible bruises all over your poor body. Not to point out those hands pinching your brain like dough... 

Just — you... Goodness, what was it he suddenly despised so much? The submarine felt like home. It was home, especially when he joined you. Now when he does, he — the aura he emanates is intimidating, yet everyone is either unaware of it or not affected by it. 

What made him so resentful? You can barely say anything when he strides into the place, too panicked to learn how he would perceive you or talk to you if you go on. It's like you're back on step one, isolated, too scared to be yourself with your family. Because of one man who's supposed to be the head of it. 

Being you felt like a sin when close to him, as if he preferred the private variant of who you are, and shunned your curious and spirited self. You could understand since he’s rather closed off and well, in a certain aspect you are too, but — did he not like you at all? Was it all an act to not offend you? He didn't seem to dislike your vivid reactions initially, or your foolish gestures when nearing a fresh island. You were often silent, smiling and listening to others converse, but when around your companions, you easily liked to open up since it was the only time you could do so. And they were more than just that. You entrusted all the members of the heart pirates. They meant everything to you. Even him, who stopped including you. 

Ugh... 

You wished it could all go back to normal. 

This disease enjoyed fumbling with your previously scrambled sentiments. Law did mention it brought a high fever and emotional susceptibility. You didn't consider it'd be this severe. 

"... Okay, I'm done." 

You certainly weren't, with your bed unmade and furniture still dusty; floor imploring for a good wash. However, with the croaky voice you had paired with your runny nose, you doubted you could do more. Even if you did, it'd be better not to. 

You peered down at the bucket full of water that probably smelled better than you at the moment, ignoring the small puddle beside it made by your poor handling sponges skills. Grimacing, you decided to leave it where it was in case carrying it back turns out to be a challenge. Hopefully, Ikkaku can provide you help later. 

Looking around, your droopy eyelids dimmed your perspective and further provoked you as both exasperation and exhaustion mixed and boiled in your gut, room so messy it mirrored your current state. You didn't know what was irritating you more: the light of the lamp or the disarray you resided in. 

Howling dejectedly, you turned and plodded to your bed, opening your arms, ready to throw yourself on the mattress. The more you sleep, the sooner you'll get better. Yeah, you're so brilliant. You closed your eyes and — 

knock knock. 

— reopened them a second after, remaining immobile for an extra few before glowering at your door, contemplating whether to go open it or linger to determine if they'd leave. Hmm. 

You waited. 

... knock knock. 

Fantastic.

You gritted your teeth, drawing a profound breath to settle your nerves, haywire thanks to the hellish illness. They didn’t deserve to withstand your rage, but who knows, maybe by seeing your shape, they'll show sympathy and tell you. That could work. 

Okay. 

You sluggishly trudged to the door, not bothering to adjust your unbuttoned pajamas and faking a cheerful facade. You hoped your face didn't look too awful, but you couldn't care less right now. 

Gripping and twisting the knob, you pushed it open, greeting them with the feeblest voice you've ever had, your sore nose making it unthinkable to inhale air. You rubbed the back of your head while doing so, eyelids closed to evade any light. 

"Yo, Penguin, Shachi, how can I—" the words automatically came out of your coarse and blazing throat, opening your eyes a bit to look at... them... 

Then you saw a tattoo. And more tattoos. No white, poofy boiler suits in sight. 

By barely seeing light before, you tried giving yourself mercy, but now you were only slaughtering yourself to make sure the person in front of you was, well. Him. 

Your jaw fell while your brows lifted in consternation, but shortly returned down thanks to your declining headache. Your pupils then scaled the mountain of mass before you and arrived at the peak. Another pair of eyes. 

Cool, gray eyes. The ones that just a week ago welcomed you with compassion and comfort. Now they drive you to wither away from this world. Even if you look up to them. (Hehe, get it? man, you're so silly, wow.) 

"—help … Captain. Uh, hello." and there goes your comfort zone. 

You tried swallowing down air but got pounds of mucus down your stomach instead, curved posture closing up even more in his presence, ashamed to be seen in such a weak state, instantly regretting not managing your appearance as his gaze scrutinized you from top to bottom, probably displeased with how you presented yourself.. 

You looked everywhere but at him. He only looked at you. 

Envy spurted from the plant’s toxins. How could he focus on one thing and have so much confidence to stare at someone without breaking eye contact at all? If you do the same for longer than two seconds, it feels like whoever looked at you has seen your entire personality, life, darkest secrets that you didn't really have, closest people to you — everything in poor words. The windows of your soul, perpetually agape.

How does he keep them closed? Why can't you seal them at all? Why?— 

"—so care to explain the meaning of this?" 

"Huh?" 

You stupidly stared at him, blinking and glancing at his shoulders, then back at him to break whatever spell he put on you, not able to concentrate at all. 

Barely could you see the annoyed expression on his face. You hoped he wasn't dealing with excessive stress. Making him feel worse was not your intention. 

"I said, care to explain what this is? You look... terrible—" you cringed at that, "—and you haven't come out of your room since this morning. Do you have any idea what time it is?" His scrutinizing tone made you want to crawl under your blankets and stay there forever, but his patronizing gaze didn't let you. 

You could merely fidget with your fingers and glance back at the floor to relieve your worries, which mixed with pain, fatigue, and dirtiness. You called for sleep so badly. 

"I'm—I'm sorry, Captain. I, uh, I didn't—" sniff, "—mean to skip my duties. Sorry." 

His brow creased in suspicion at your raspy voice and poor shape. 

"Is that so? Look at me while you say it." if his words weren't menacing enough, his tone was too. He knew you couldn't do that. Especially now. 

"Uh..." you unconvincingly whispered, continuing to play with your fists, until rubbing your nape once more, shuddering at how chilled your hands were compared to it. 

Your actions were, again, spotted by him, and if one more thing occurred, then he'll be correct. 

"Well? I'm waiting." 

"..." 

Sighing exasperated, you raised your head to look into his pupils once again.  

Unbeknownst to you, he already confirmed another of his impressions while taking a further view of your sullen visage. 

"I, uhm, overslept, Captain. That — that happens sometimes, yeah? Sorry about that. I'll—I'll..." stopping for a moment, you squinted your eyes and scrunched your nose while the man before you attentively fixated his stare on your frame and— 

"Achooo!" —covered half of your face whilst he recoiled back at the loud sneeze you let out, not expecting it at all. He blinked, then you sneezed again, and again. Streak of three. 

If your voice and glossy eyes already told everything to the doctor, the continuous sneezes only reinforced his thesis. 

You exhaled haplessly as he sternly said your name. 

"You're sick." his firm and coherent words could not be fooled. Your fate was sealed. 

"...Yeah." at this point, you didn't care. He was gonna scold you, nothing you could do about it. You could only hope he'll do that after you're cured because right now, you could barely stand still without shivering. You were sure if he wanted to do something he would have already, so he definitely will have a talk with you after you're healthy. 

"Why?" you've been proven wrong so many times this morning — afternoon. Evening? That you don't know what's gonna happen next. 

You stared at him numbly, almost done with everything. 

"What do you mean 'why'? I don't, I don't know. Probably our... Ugh, our last stop, isn't that obvious—" 

"Not that. Why didn't you say anything? To the others? To me?" 

If it wasn't for your head beating incessantly and the aching of your tendons ruining everything, you would think this was a dream. 

You kept gawking at him like a goldfish. His timbre wasn't as stern as it regularly was. It was a bit, just a tad bit lower. Like, barely. His eyes were softer, and if you met the man yesterday, you wouldn't be capable of identifying his mood. It's because you knew him for so long that you could distinguish it. 

"I..." you mumbled talks under your breath, awfully feeble to maintain the discussion, barring your eyes and hitching away when Law planted his freezing hand on your forehead. You fussed in protest, although it didn't last long. 

"You're cold... Off." 

"My hands are perfectly fine. You're burning," he interrupted you, stating the obvious. But you were far too deep to listen, fatigued. 

"Yeah... M'sorry." you nodded while deliberately looking down in shame, almost dropping to the ground out of fatigue. Everything seems hazy, the pressure in your skull fading, while the breaths you took were meager. 

Something skimmed over your shoulder and nape — ah, his fingertips — palm carefully tilting your head back up. Your mouth hung open, and you attempted to focus on your captain's facial features and the iconic hat to not fall asleep. 

"It's fine." But his gentle approach and mellow maneuvers set you in a soothing trance, where you couldn't do anything other than auscultate him. 

It’d be an exceptional moment to speak up about these last days, his odd actions. 

"It... It is? You, ah... You're not..." but you struggled to do so, chest too heavy to speak. He narrowed his eyes, striving to make out what you were saying, but it was all incomprehensible to him. 

"I'm not?" he urged you to proceed, getting closer — he felt warm. Wasn't he cold some seconds ago? Ah, he’s draping his coat over your shoulders, so, so cozy, — and holding you as if you were glass. Why was he holding you? It felt nice, undoubtedly nice. Oh, you were going to fall, you think. 

“Hey—hey. It’s okay. I got you. I got you.” 

Cradling you in his arms, Law cursed and crouched down, snaking an arm under your knees and sweeping you up, a short "there" slipping from his tongue, keeping you close to his breast. Naturally, you snuggled close to the source of heat, losing consciousness, unaware of your surroundings, his distress, and jogging to the infirmary. 

“Hey. Keep your eyes open. No, no, open—yes, yes, like that. Good job. A bit more, then you can go to sleep, alright?" 

While nodding lazily when he said your name again, you curled up for more warmth, and he mellowly followed your movement, hefting you up and pressing his lips upon your forehead, his frown deepening at how high the temperature was. He needed to administer medicine quickly. 

"Law …'m sorry if I smell." 

He scoffed. Thinking of such idiotic things was exactly like you, sputtering them out so bluntly. Rolling his eyes was natural at this point. 

"That's my last concern. We'll think of your scent and hygiene later. Don't speak. Shh." 

So stupid, so stupid. He should've confronted you ever since you left the island. He should've. It's been a recurring pattern these days. He couldn't see you because of his work but spoke with the others at breakfast, lunch, dinner... They all grew concerned about your distance. Uni shared that it began right after the departing... He knew something wasn't right with you, he could feel it.

Back in that inhabited location, he quickly took note of your drooping posture and fatigued breathing. He wanted to ask about it, but the following days, you acted normal, and Law thought you were queasy because of the heat.

Then he got busy checking on the crew's documents, medicine supply, the damn broken scope Hakugan sadly reported, bounties, news — and something else. He managed to give a check-up to everyone but you. It was mandatory after leaving an island.

With you evading him and him doing the same, this happened. Great. He could only hope it wasn't contagious.

... Wait.

He gritted his teeth in sour realization — Not once has he seen you in the halls or dining hall. No one mentioned you, either. Have you eaten anything at all? Oh, you imbecile.

He palmed your skin through your suit, easing your laments and whimpers, walking through the hallways of the Polar Tang and reaching the infirmary. Kicking the door open while lulling you a bit, shushing and fluttering his eyelids at your sick and quaking form. 

"There we go. Shh, I know, I know, it's awful." 

Uplifting the blankets, he quickly covered you and began searching for his equipment, rustling and metal clicks tangling with your whines. 

"U- uuh... W- where..?" 

"I'll be there in a second. I'm here." 

As he said that, he quickly came back to you, already stirring medicine in a cup. He had to give to you before you blacked out or fell asleep. Sliding a hand under your back, he carefully pushed you up, gaining a groan from you; you sounded so tired. Tipping your head forward, he brought the rim of the cup to your lips. You were delirious, could barely see or feel, but managed to follow his direct instruction to "open". The first glass was tasteless, fresh... water. 

The second tasted awful. 

"E—eugh..." 

"A couple more sips and we're done. Come on, you're doing good." 

Once you drank it all, with a small praise from Law, he gently laid you back down, about to check your vitals. He knew you were in no condition to do as he instructed, it would be all him. Idiot, idiot... 

Just looking at you made him guilty. He never saw you this awful. However, what truly pushed him were your next phrases. 

“Do you feel better now..?” 

Low and dry, they all were. He halted his movements, his hands in the bag, shifting his attention to you. 

Your question puzzled him. 

Feel better? Him? He was fine. Perhaps you thought the disease was contagious? No; you would've phrased that diversely. His forehead creased, slightly tilted to the side. 

"What?" 

“I … I missed you." 

And as clear drops cascaded down your cheeks, his limbs froze, a bittersweet ache striking his chest. 

"I—I thought I did something wrong … I’m sorry … Should've told you. 'M sorry ... really...” 

Shit. 

“No, no, don’t be. It’s alright, don't—don't speak. You did nothing. Shh...” 

And if you stayed conscious for some more seconds, you could've seen those severe pupils mitigate. The windows of his soul open up; the "stern" gaze he preserved for you withering in an instant at your vulnerability. 

All he wanted to do was clear that up. When, now..? 

“I—I’m the one that should’ve apologized, damn it…” 

"Aargh..." 

Warm. 

"Mmh..." 

It was very warm. Pleasant. 

"Hn..." 

The boilersuit felt different. Heavier, and not … poofy. Hm. 

The pillow was so nice, though... 

You sought a better position under the comforting and amiable regime of your blanket, squinting your glistening eyes as if sand had struck them; eyebrows knitting in distaste and discomfort, choler cramming up your insides — but not for long, extremely achy and sleepy to lament. 

Shouldn't it be easier to relax now that you are tired? Shifting left and right left your muscles throbbing. The peace you could achieve in your dreams was all you begged for. But no, you just had to rise two more times in the span of minutes or hours. 

When you woke up the third time, someone surprised you. He was perching on a chair near the infirmary's bed, head, presumably about to doze off. An encyclopedia of vegetation and exotic environs sat in his palms and dotted jeans, the cover made of green-coloured leather, firm to the touch. 

He looked peaceful. 

"... Law?" 

Your lashes fluttered at the fierce shudder that rocked his frame, the textbook about to fall, his eyes snapping open and rapidly darting up to you. 

"Oh. You woke up. Good. Good evening." 

You were mad at him. You were mad at him. 

His lips were indubitably moving. Whatever he was saying, you were not listening. Something about being out for hours, but you were too out of it to pay attention. 

And looking down at your body, your eyeballs almost popped out of your sockets at the sight of... Not your boilersuit. 

"I'm in my pajamas?" 

"And — hm? Oh. I changed you." Pause. "With my devil fruit, of course. Obviously. You were way too hot in it." 

"..." 

"..." 

Pause number two. 

"I'm hot?" You bluntly said,

"Not in that way." And he quickly retorted, bashful. You immediately got gloomy.

"Oh..." You and Bepo were alike. He couldn’t help but sweatdrop.

"No, no, no, don't — you look fine. That's not what I meant." 

A hoarse chuckle ripped from your sensible larynx, a noise that he hadn't heard in a while. His back loosened at your jovial note, the pressure applied on the envelope of the manual lessening. 

There was a superb illustration of the flora you accidentally whiffed. 

"You inhaled it, didn't you?" 

... Silence followed. Then a sigh.

"A simple allergy with a sore throat and emotional instability in the first phase caused by the pollen, weakened muscles and headache in the second, and heightened senses, nausea, and worsening of the body in the last one. You felt them all." 

Quick and precise, each symptom he mentioned appeared throughout the weeks you boarded on the Polar Tang. He hit the mark. Glancing at him from the corner of your eyes, you nodded sheepishly, feeling hot in your cheeks. 

"Y—Yeah." 

"I thought I mentioned dodging those peculiar red flowers. I don't expect you to recall the name, but to avoid it. Thankfully, you only inhaled its pollen, or else you would've been in this bed the moment we departed." 

"O—oh... That bad?" 

"No, not really. The symptoms would've developed quicker, but nothing dangerous. Perhaps you would have slept over two days, as all cases do when encountering this allergy," He narrows his eyes at you, shutting the book and crossing his long legs, his foot jouncing. "Not at all fatal, only worrying when the patient in question mentions nothing about the symptoms and overworks themselves.” 

“Hey—” 

“You're fine." 

A small huff left your lips, nodding lazily. Nothing was uttered after from both sides. Occasional groans from yours. Only then he spoke. 

"Why didn't you tell me?" 

"..." The answer was simple. He immediately found the illness yet couldn't pinpoint the cause of this? It was almost ironic. Your quietude wasn't taken well. 

"Well?" 

"... You ignored me. You made it clear." 

And he was faking ignorance. That glance, his attitude. You knew him too well, but had no energy to call him out. 

"I—I didn't." 

"Don't play coy, Law. Did I do something? Even the others know. Penguin and Shachi told me. I—" 

You paused when he raised his hand, glancing at it in confusion, then back at him, twice or more. He sighed and dropped it back on his thigh again, using his other one to rub his temple in distress. 

"You did nothing. I don't know what... Shachi and Penguin said," You tilted your head at his peculiar manner of quoting them. "But I've got nothing against you." 

He stopped rubbing and lifted his head to check on you again and you were unsure of what to say. His brows wrinkled the tender skin of his forehead, severity, and minor unease painting every fiber of his appearance. 

You just... didn't know. 

"Really? Then why those weird stares? Why leave the room the moment I come in? I mean." you flailed your hands around, looking everywhere as if you could find an explanation. "You never behaved this way, Law, not with anyone. I... It was fine before, right? Let me ask again, did I do something wrong?" 

"Of course not!" 

At his hasty exclamation, you blinked, uncertain why he became as rigid as stone. Palms back on the blanket, you awaited an elaboration of his thoughts, observing his adumbral face to detect any key to figure out what caused him to alter his ways with you. However, his hat, which you've always appreciated for its fluffiness, turned out to be an issue. Those eyes you've grown so fond of refused to meet yours. 

You just couldn't get it. The surrounding air grew an intoxicating no romance book would mention, one that did the contrary of setting your heart aflame, that poor muscle of yours. 

If he explained, it would've been easier. 

"Okay, 'of course not' ... Sure—" 

"We are not having this conversation. You need rest." 

He briskly cut you off, and your heart felt constricted. The words felt bitter upon both of your tongues, so bitter and revolting, they made his jaw clench and your eyes water. You weren't having it. Absolutely not. 

"I feel better now, thank you, and I say we're having this right here." You pushed, ignoring how he clenched his tattooed fist.

"No—" 

"Yes, Law! I don't know what I did, but if it bothers you, shouldn’t you tell me? There are things we can all miss." 

The pang in your brain was still active, and you had no patience nor strength to argue. Either he spoke up or you'd go straight to sleep. 

"I... You did nothing that bothers me." 

His speech was almost a whisper, a low rumble, and were you in your regular state, you'd feel sad to see him like this. Law had no trouble speaking up— perhaps with apologies, or admitting to be wrong when in the midst of a conversation. Maybe something genuinely bothered him. But he'd tell you, wouldn't he? He had to.

But you weren't the only one who had to consider the consequences. He also had to do his part. 

"... And?" you encouraged him, to gain something, something that would lead you both to that damned thing you were both chasing, that ounce of understanding. 

“And—and what?" alas, it served another wave of blistering dissatisfaction down upon the membranes of your boiling stomach. 

He couldn't be serious. 

"... Whatever. I'm going to sleep." 

"What?" 

You detested how you were feeling, a volcano of passions, the pounding in your skull, and the heat, and the ludicrous, nagging insecurity, all these wretched, gristly sensations shoved in your mouth and scraping your gullet, such a relucting and squalid dish, contaminating your palate and inflaming the gums of your teeth. 

But all Law could see was how your eyes moistened and reddened, the crinkles at the corners of your mouth, the contracted tissues above your nose. 

You couldn't feel how his heart plummeted, either. Again, he caused you to cry. 

"Hey... I—" 

"No, Law, no! I said leave! You ignored me for almost two weeks and now—now you're just..!" 

Perhaps you were being a bit too "dramatic" for something you could solve with a modest exchange, something that, compared to all the obstacles you and Law went through, was a sheer grain of dust in your shoes. Yet you erupted for the frustration, the plant's effects and that nameless thing you'll bring in your grave, for if he knew, he'd probably pity you. 

Maybe, just maybe, he should've kept ignoring you. If solely to dim that warmth. The glow in your eyes that only sparked with him. 

"I don't mind if you need time. I don't mind if you're busy or whatever, that's obviously fine! But can't you tell me? Is it that hard? Instead of treating me like a stranger? Just—just, just leave..." 

Your snotty voice seemed ridiculous, resounding through the infirmary alongside your sobs and sniffles. Vision tarnished by your tears, staring at the ceiling with resignation. It alarmed Law, whose emotions were already scattered; unnerved, anxious. 

He couldn't take seeing you like this. He couldn't. 

"That’s not it! I... I just — I..!" His broken explanations fell as your cries didn't stop; spasms traveling through your frazzled nerves. He swore under his breath, getting up and coming to you, standing close but so, so distant. His fingers jerked, impatient to wipe your tears, to calm you down, to assure you everything was alright, and this was all on him. 

"What..?" you meekly whimpered, gazing at him as he appeared in your sight. 

"I, I..!" if only he could express himself. You'd figure out. If only he could, without buckling and tearing apart at the weight of his own feelings. 

"... You what, Law?" 

It was tough to see with all those tears coating your scleras, but... His lips quivered. His jaw tensed. 

His hands craved yours. 

"I like—I like you!" 

... You wondered if illusions were part of the symptoms. Your eyelids were all but relaxed. Popeyed. 

"There. I said it. I mean it. Seriously. I—I think I love you." 

You could feel his frantic grip, slightly pulling the blankets in his direction, tense as him. You've never seen Law so … jittery with you. Perhaps when he slowly spoke of his past, or when his plan failed. 

"I—I'm sorry. I didn't mean to. I... I was confused. I don't know. Maybe I shouldn't... No, okay. I, I love you, but you don't have to reciprocate, really. ‌I just wanted to clarify that I wasn't—" 

This was different, however. Not the same vulnerability, nor agitation. That teetering edge coating his sayings, not at all close to those instances. 

"... Law." 

"—ignoring you, I mean, I was, but I just couldn't face you, you know? I didn't know how to act—" 

That glow, those feelings. The twinkle in his eyes Bepo mentioned when you spoke of something that fascinated you, that rare grin on his lips, and that sweetness, the swelling in his chest, and the red, and the breath of fresh air, and the intoxicating romance books loved to talk about... 

Those tints blooming in his cheeks. The faint relaxation of his defined brows. How he covered his pretty, vulnerable self. 

He's no different from you. Oh, oho ho, no, he wasn’t. Only now did you realize. 

"Law." 

"—but I missed you so much, I missed your presence, being with you, I—" 

Your heartbeats matched. 

"Law!" 

You understand now. The definitive yell induced him to quit his blabbering, and eventually, he found your gaze. Those windows were not locked at all. Not marginally, not halfway. They were fully open. You could see him. 

"It's... the same." 

It was all you could utter. His jaw loosened, and you could recognize his wide, stormy irises. 

"Huh? Wh — what?" 

"I feel the same way, Law. I—I love you too." 

Yours were open, too. They always were- yet he never acknowledged what dwelled inside. Two fools you both were. 

"... Oh..." and a breathless whisper was all he could offer. 

The silence dissipated. A delightful warmth occupied your rib cage. The pressure was gone. 

All is back to normal. 

"If... If you weren't sick. I'd kiss you." He mumbled, and his lips looked more luscious than ever. He shouldn't have said that. Now it was even harder. 

"P—pfft... Of course, of course. Can you come closer, at least?" you pouted, giving him the best puppy eyes you could muster. “Pretty please?”

"... Fine. It's — not contagious, anyway," he huffed, his cheeks a light pink, and he sat on the margin of the infirmary's bed, hustling just a tad bit closer... 

Closer... 

"Closer?" 

"Alright." 

His ears grew pink at your giggles. Your fingers graced each other, "DEATH" entwined with you. His hands were lukewarm. Long, slim, calloused in some places, but also tender to the contact. His metacarpals were partially discernible, defining the shadows. He took care of his nails, ensuring they were cut short, although they appeared slightly, just somewhat lengthier than usual. Not considerably, however; they were still short. 

How you missed holding it. 

"Sorry, by the way. About everything." Squeezing his hand, you attempted to show him what it meant to you. He squeezed it back, brushing the top of your hand with his thumb, a pensive and solemn look on his face. 

"No- I should apologize for not saying anything sooner. I neglected and avoided you. I … I don’t know what to do. You know I’m not the type for relationships.” 

You hummed in acknowledgement, but weren't as worried as Law. You'll wait. Nothing would change. 

“Mmm. I can wait for you, Law.” Saying it seemed to take him off guard, as if he hadn't thought about it. Or, rather, didn't expect you to propose it. In his head, it seemed silly because it's him. If you were to ask in his place, he'd also wait. 

He felt lighter. 

“… Truly?” 

“Yeah. We can figure it out together. Like we always did. I’ve loved you for years." He inhaled deeply, your words buttery and sweet. "I’m fine with waiting longer.” 

Thinking you wouldn't accept, if he asked, was stupid of him too. Of course you would. Of course. With another squeeze, he nodded, and turned his head away from you a bit. 

His eyes glistened. 

“I’d like that. Thank you.” 

You smiled, too, saying nothing in return. 

He can take all the time he needs. 

After some days, everything went back to the typical routine. The first thing you did was knock Shachi and Penguin's heads, (supported by Ikkaku) and since Hakugan and Clione were on duty, you couldn't do the same for them. 

You puffed your cheeks and enjoyed chewing the well-earned treat you snagged from the kitchen, reorganizing boxes since this morning. 

"Tired?" 

Peeking at the door, a smile adorned your mouth at the sight of your captain leaning on it. 

"Mm, there were a lot of them." 

"You could've asked for help. You know I don't want any of you to strain yourselves with tasks." 

"I had it. Don't worry. Although..." another bite. "I miss it." 

"Hm?" he crooned, tipping his head forward. "Miss what?" 

You gazed into his eyes, "Miss getting pampered by you when I was sick." lovingly observing how they enlarged a bit before returning to the stoic stare he always wore, swaying his head to dismiss your remarks. The chambré tint on his cheeks was as clear as day, like his light smile. Not that you'd tell him, he'd immediately disregard it. 

"... Meet me at my office once you're done." 

As he turned his back to you, his boots making clicky rumors with each step, your smirk amplified... After all, who could wait to get coddled by none other than their favorite captain?

[loriache]

World Map Notes: the Elven Northern & Southern Central Continents

These nations are where all the elves in the story except Marcille and Thistle are from. This post collects all the information I could find about these two nations, and included a bit of analysis based on that information.

TL;DR (includes both fact and my speculation):

The Northern Central Continent is a feudal monarchy with a strong class system, as well as strict borders, & could probably be considered an ethnostate. It's deeply hierarchical, and the queen is a traditionalist - so it's probably very structurally biased against non-elves and half-elves.

Elves in the NCC practice cannibalism in some rural areas!

The Southern Central Continent is more diverse, with a large tallman population on its South Coast.

To elves, "Court Magicians" exclusively refer to those serving the elven queen - a prestigious role that seems likely to be only open to nobles.

The SCC may not be a monarchy, though it's not clear what kind of leadership or societal structure it does have.

The NCC will habitually take anyone involved in ancient magic as a criminal to prosecute on their terms, regardless of jurisdiction, but this depends on their political influence and ability to pressure local leaders to agree to extradite the criminal.

Elves VS Dwarves and Gnomes may have been at war around the time of the Golden Kingdom being sealed. This conflict also may be one of the factors pushing the kingdom to be sealed in the first place.

The "Central Region" might be the origin of the "Common Tongue" that our characters speak.

Northern Central Continent

The Adventurer's Bible | p. 132

For this place to have a high quality of life, and also a declining population - especially when it's so close to the Western Continent, which is stated to have poor quality of life - there must be strictly maintained borders and a strong anti-immigration policy. Based on the attitude of the elves, I wouldn't be surprised if it was very difficult to move there unless you are also an elf.

It could probably be considered an ethnostate - and while in these kinds of fantasy worlds, that's pretty common. Take Rivendell, or Moria, in LOTR - they take for granted that these kinds of different fantasy races will live in separate communities.

But that isn't actually realistic, and I think Kui has considered it as more of a politically established status quo rather than an obvious natural result of having magically distinct "races". Which, even in Dunmeshi, I think is a difficult and not-terribly-accurate way to represent politics - racism does not emerge from actual, physical differences between races, after all.

But Dunmeshi's presentation of this idea is interesting, because of the recognition that if there is an "elven nation" which prioritises the interests and rights of elves over other races, that is because there's a deliberate, concerted effort to keep it that way.

But there's a small section of the NCC with a high tallman population - I wonder what kind of community they have, and how they fit into the strict elven hierarchy?

The Adventurer's Bible | pp. 134 & 136

Kabru and Rin, and other kids like them, who are adopted or taken as adopted children(rarely - the way Milsiril treats Kabru is not perfect, but she's deliberately attempting to be better than other elves.... meaning other elves are usually worse)/pets/objects by elven nobles, as well as accomplished or notable individuals who earn the elves' favour/are "invited" to stay (such as they try with Laios at the end of the story) would be an exception.

Other long-lived races could probably (...?) visit, but given the historical conflict between elves, dwarves, and gnomes, I think they'd also be pretty hostile to many of them coming to live on the NCC, even if they see them as more like equals.

Social Structure & Nobility

The Northern Central Continent is an absolute monarchy under a 372 year old queen, Heimeya (IDK what the official romanisation of her name will be).

...With extended "nobility", which are the group that the canaries' guards draw from. We don't get much clarification of what sort of structure their nobility has, what titles there are, and where our characters who are nobles fall into it.

Pattadol (House of Vari), Mithrun (House of Kerensil), and Milsiril (House of Tol) are nobles.

Mithrun's noble house, Kerensil, is apparently a well-known family of investors! I wonder what sorts of businesses they invest in & what the elven economy is like?

Milsiril's house, on the other hand, is a well-known military family. I wonder if Kabru could claim the surname "of the House of Tol". He did go to family gatherings after all. But if he was comfortable doing so and it would be accepted, I would assume he'd have done so when introducing himself to the canaries.

Flamela is a distant relative of the queen, who has additional status due to exhibiting the genetic trait associated with their queens, extremely dark skin.

The queen is a "staunch traditionalist" who wouldn't even acknowledge a half-elf like Marcille. Nice! I really feel bad for Kabru and Rin growing up as tallmen in this sort of culture.

Court Magicians

While generally this is a term for any magic user who serves in a royal court, in the Northern Central Continent it seems to carry a lot of esteem; even just as the daughter of one, Pattadol assumes Marcille has the right to boss her around and to handle highly secret, highly illegal ancient magic secrets.

That makes sense, as in the society of the Northern Central Continent, you'd be directly serving the elven queen. But also, she has enough Court Magicians that Pattadol would not expect to know Marcille's mother's name, but few enough that it would be a big deal and Cithis would know about it if one had a half-elf child.

I don't think it's remotely unlikely based on that to assume that this role is only available to nobles.

A "Court Magician" who doesn't serve the NCC Queen isn't a "real" Court Magician in the eyes of NCC elves. Those short-lived monarchs would be happy just to have an elf around regardless of whether they were actually any good at magic.... according to Cithis.

Magic seems very important to the society of the NCC elves. The queen communicates with her subordinates via familar, and the birds we see surrounding her seem like they are some kind of magic - perhaps not familiars since we see her familiar, but some other kind of scrying?

Also, based on the fact Pattadol assumes a Court Magician would be serving the Queen of the NCC, we can theorise that perhaps whatever structure the SCC has, it isn't a monarchy....? Heimeya is "the queen of the elves", after all - that doesn't sound like there's another elven monarch competing for the title just next door.

Ordinary People

Apparently the NCC is a safe place and life is easy -- but given the strict class system, I kind of expect that varies a lot depending on the family you're born into.

The only elves we meet who are not nobles are the convicted criminal canaries, so it's hard to get a sense of what life is like for them from that. Cithis was apparently a wealthy fortune teller with "an intense jealousy for those born noble or wealthy." So I assume she was not born into comfort.

Apparently "There are also primitive villages deep in the woods and underground, and in some regions cannibalism is still practiced." Which is awesome. Based on her videogame elves art I think Kui's probably making a little nod to Divinity: Original Sin elves, who can absorb memories through eating the flesh of others. Elves in dungeon meshi don't have this trait, but I wonder if there is a magical ritual or some kind of cultural practice with a similar intention.

Cuisine

Marcille's mother didn't think much of the elven cuisine.

Liricmumwarel is fancy candy given out by the elven queen the shape of which conveys blessings.

Elf Cake is a crumbly dry cake that Kabru and Thistle don't think much of. I've heard someone discuss what it's likely to be made of, but I am afraid I don't recall.

Southern Central Continent

The Adventurer's Bible | p. 132

It seems like the Southern Central Continent gets a lot more immigration and has a more diverse population, especially along the south coast (near the Western Continent). That south coast has a high tallman population.

Fleki and Lycion are from the Southern Central Continent. Fleki got into ancient magic for the money, so you can assume there's probably class disparity there too; things are noted by Kui to be more "disorganised" than the NCC. Not a bad thing at all - the NCC is definitely too "organised" in my books. But that does potentially also mean there's less, e.g., bureaucracy, central organisation, less of a social safety net. But then again, in the NCC I doubt that whatever "safety net" there is, is available to everyone.

We can't extrapolate much from Fleki & Lycion's personalities, because they clearly aren't in the most stable societal position, and I get the sense that they're the countercultural type - they probably don't represent the type of person typical to the SCC. Also, our NCC characters are all either nobles or used to navigating high society (Cithis, Kabru to an extent) so they aren't exactly a typical "ordinary NCC person" as a basis for comparison either. However, there's less of a "strict set of social rules" type of feel to the SCC characters, fitting with my suggestion that the SCC may not be a society with a strong feudal element.

Geopolitics & Conflict

The fact that, despite their being from the SCC, Fleki and Lycion are in the Canaries, who work directly under the NCC's Queen, implies that the the NCC feel entitled to process and prosecute people who commit ancient magic-related crimes regardless of any notion of "jurisdiction". This is backed up by the way that they were going to take Marcille - but that is something that the governor of the Island had to give permission for, which Laios is able to withdraw. So I assume that the NCC elves apply pressure on various world leaders to extradite criminals involved in ancient magic.

The SCC would cooperate with this, since they're allies, even if they don't have a great relationship (according to the World Guide).

The NCC are also clearly able to take half-foots without trouble, as we see by Chilchuck saying he's known half-foots who got involved with "black magic" (ancient magic) and were disappeared by the elves. But I doubt gnomes or dwarves are giving people up easily - though that probably doesn't go for dwarves like Senshi and Namari, without strong community ties.

Long before the current times, elves fought dwarves & gnomes. There might have been more than one of these conflicts...? While long ago, this war isn't "ancient" (like the ancients who sealed the demon into dungeons, before their world was mostly destroyed by it).

Thistle, Delgal, and the Golden Kingdom were (I believe) caught up in one of these conflicts, which used Melini as a staging ground - thus why Thistle was pushed to seal the entire kingdom in the dungeon.

To do this, Thistle unseals a dungeon created by the "ancient people". These could be the "ancients" who created the dungeons, before the apocalypse. Or they could be another, still extinct, society.

Regardless, at least one of these conflicts seems to have taken place after the golden kingdom was sealed - so, within the last 1000 years.

Though, this could refer to a different, more localised conflict between the Golden Kingdom and their dwarven neighbours.

The order of events is that the Golden Kingdom was sealed (1000 years ago or so) > Dwarves took over > Elves stole the land from the Dwarves ("long ago" by the Island Lord, a tallman's, standards) > Elves gave the land to a local lord, who was either an ancestor of the Island Lord, or the Island Lord himself. The Island Lord is himself a descendant of the lord who poisoned Delgal's father, as is noted in the World Guide. However, it isn't impossible for there to be large gaps of time between these events, which could put the elf / dwarf wars at a more recent date.

The fact we know that the elves stole the land from the dwarves, and then granted it to a political actor who was relevant during the events of the Golden Kingdom flashbacks we see suggests to me that the events were roughly contemporaneous. If they were, that puts at least one of these conflicts at roughly 1000 years ago.

So, the elf/dwarf & gnome conflict is "long ago" by short-lived standards, but would be considered "modern" by the long-lived races, if you ask me. At least, the equivalent of the World Wars for us - recent history, even if we weren't alive.

I'm guessing the "Elf King" from the below panel in fact was a word that's more gender-neutral in Japanese, since the "Western Elves" definitely have a queen.

Language

When Kabru says the "Central region" I expect he means the region where the NCC and SCC is.

The fact that he observes that the lack of any accent means he's from the Central Region is really interesting. It could mean two things;

either they switched to speaking in the language spoken on those continents, which Kabru would naturally know, having grown up there. It's 100 percent possible, but I think this would be noted in the story.

or, the language that gets called "the common tongue", the one that all our principle characters speak for most of the story, originated from the elves in the Central Continent. Or at least it's the same one that the elves use, and their political influence is great enough that their accent gets to be considered not an accent at all. The fact they were "granting" land in this area to tall-man lords suggests a large enough historical influence in the area that this is quite plausible to me.

Mithrun absolutely does have an accent - nobody speaks without an accent. His accent is just politically and socioculturally normalised to the point of being considered the "default/proper" way to speak - like received pronounciation in English.

The common tongue isn't ubiquitous everywhere - not just Kuro, but Kiki and Kaka are also noted to be studying the common tongue. The Tansus were born on the Eastern Continent, so probably gnome communities there speak their own language - Kiki and Kaka grew up primarily surrounded by gnomes after all.

It's also quite likely that Kabru, specifically, because of where he grew up, would consider Mithrun's way of talking to be the default "not an accent" accent. His adoptive mother surely has the same upper-class NCC accent. I expect that other characters might experience it as more "marked".

This isn't a world where everyone speaks the same language everywhere; the common tongue is called that, but there are many different languages. Kabru and Chilchuck are two characters who are adept with many of them - Kabru speaks the language of the kobold, and probably lots more. Chilchuck works as an interpreter as part of his union stuff - I can tell you from experience that that's a hugely valuable skillset in that context, as many of the people who most need union representation are people who don't speak the dominant language, or at least not fluently.

If you got all the way to the end of this post.... thank you for reading, I love you. Check out my other World Map Notes under that tag on my blog; I've made a few so far and there will almost certainly be more. Next I'm thinking the dwarven nations...? But I could be persuaded if someone had a preference.

Also, anyone got any speculation on what, exactly, is the previous time that Heimeya ate a person/monster/chimera that this panel implies:

We really don't have anything to go on whatsoever, but I think it's a fun tidbit.

[colubrina]

what does querying mean

Ah! OK. I forget that normal people don't know what this process entails.

So, if you want to be "trad" published (which basically means the kind of published that gets your book into bookstores) you will probably need a literary agent. Some small presses do not require that writers submit books for consideration through an agent, but pretty much every book you've ever heard of went through both a literary agent and a publisher that requires authors use them. So, how do you get a literary agent? You send a very specialized letter called a 'query letter', often with the first few pages of your novel, for them to read and decide if they want to 'represent' it, which means try to sell it for you in exchange for a 15% commission. The query letter I used for the 6th book I queried was this...

Dear [agent],

NO GOOD WITCHES is a 90,000-word YA speculative that will appeal to readers of A Deadly Education and Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes. It’s a ‘girl goes evil and gets shit done while awe-stuck boy holds her purse so she can do the murders’ kind of book with popular tropes including found family, female friendship, dark academia, morally grey characters, power corrupts, and a romance where the boy is bad but the girl is worse (you could save him, I could make him worse; we are not the same).

Seventeen-year-old Calla watches the witch burnings on television along with everyone else in the United States. Witches can move things with their minds. They know what people are thinking. They’re terrifying, and dangerous, and the shows are a nationwide reminder that witches will not be tolerated. Her friends have never suspected Calla is one, and she needs to keep it that way. But when she answers a question before it’s asked in a history class, her future goes up in flames. She can read minds. She’s evil. Game over.

Caught and terrified, Calla is surprised when she isn’t dragged to a pyre, but to a hospital where she’s poked and prodded to find out how powerful she is. Turns out, good witches—compliant witches—don’t get sent to the stake. They get trained in hidden schools and sharpened into weapons. Their ability to manipulate matter powers the electrical plants and their mindreading gets used by the diplomatic corp. Calla doesn’t feel like getting burned alive, so she learns everything she can.

Including how she—and her new witch friends—can burn the system down rather than let powerful men exploit their magic.

By the time she’s done, there won’t be a single good witch left.

I was mentored in both the Pitch Wars and Author Mentor Match programs, and I was previously represented but my agent and I have amicably parted ways and this manuscript has never been on submission. I live in Connecticut with cats, my family, and some unhappy plants. I am not a witch.

Thank you,

Collie

I sent 69 versions of this query out, 2 of which were referrals (meaning a current client of the agent recommended me)

17 times the agent ghosted my query.

43 times the agent rejected at the query stage

7 times the agent requested more materials. (This is about a 10% request rate and is not great but not terrible either.)

2 times the agent ghosted the requested materials

3 times the agent rejected the additional materials

Once the agent offered me what's called a "revise and resubmit" where she sent some detailed edits I could do and then she would reconsider whether she wanted to rep it. I disagreed pretty strenuously with one of her suggestions (she wanted me to cut the romance) and so I didn't pursue it.

The whole process is tedious and unfun and pretty much necessary if you want your book to be in, say, Barnes and Noble. I do not enjoy it. I am going to do it for the seventh time starting this fall. Maybe I'll do a 'querying diary' the way I do a log of what I've written. That would be fun.

Ask me anything about querying. I am a bona fide expert on this.

[chronically-ghosted]

i'm swingin' blind and you're stunning me without any gloves

rating: E for Explicit! 18+

word count: 9K

pairing: dieter bravo x f!reader

summary: the night continues while the two of you dance around the inevitable. dieter's restraint is foiled by dreams of a water bed.

warnings/tags: depictions of drugs, age gap, cum eating, piv sex, not actually incest but close, concerns about getting old, reader is at least 18 (by how much is up to you), no use of y/n, oral (f receiving), hand jobs (m & f receiving), unprotected piv, squirting, the barest hint of overstimulation, oh and SMUT.

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“Do all movie stars have six empty bedrooms they don’t use?” 

“They’re not always empty . . . I mean, it’s good for parties. Gives people space to get out of the chaos if they want, or if they need a place to crash. Keeps the energy, uh, flowing. Keeps the vibes good.” 

He uses the joint to take the place of having to explain that the room you just passed was in fact used as a revolving door for anyone who wanted a bump only two weeks ago. The second floor stretches out into the darkness, the nasty weather outside beating against the windows. He keeps a slow steady pace, the high making his insides comfortably warm as you wander in and out of rooms, like a less frantic, totally-fuckable version of that Scooby Doo gag. He’s quite sure he’ll never be able to watch Saturday morning cartoons the same way.

So far, you’ve been content with asking rather inane questions, filler questions that he suspects you’re hoping reveal more than he’s giving. The response to the question being more important than the answer itself. 

So no one lives in these rooms? No.

Do you ever use these as anything else other than bedrooms? No.

What’s outside by the pool? A gym.

A gym with full length mirrors that he used to adore snapping selfies in, in his younger cop show days, and without much prompting, would admit to masterbating to on occasion. 

You’ll always be your own greatest critic so fuck ‘em.

You come out of the last bedroom, smirking faintly as though someone had told you a particularly naughty secret, humming faintly to yourself. He never much cared for giving tours but given that you walked ahead of him and gave him adequate time to ogle the backs of your thighs, he could think of worse ways to spend time with you. 

“Mhm hmm,” you mutter to no one in particular. The carpet is plush, but that is the only thing you could say you really enjoyed about the style of the house. Everything else, especially the almost clinically clean air to it, makes it feel like a hotel, as if Dieter is mold growing in someone else’s house. Again, these are filed as things that helped fill out the picture of the man your uncle had become, if not the man he wanted to portray.

“So where do you sleep?” 

He had been lulled into such a stupor of quiet fantasy fueled by his warm high that he didn’t even think twice when he pointed down the hall. 

“God, it just keeps going, doesn’t it?” 

Turns out the path to moral degradation isn’t a straight line, but a curved slope. One he finds himself on, going down round and round and round, the longer he watches your legs, the curve of your ass, the bright smile as you quite obviously tried to get a glimpse of the old Dee. But that's the thing about drugs that he finds he so actively craved – of course there is the euphoria, the chemical sensations, the wires of your brain plugged into different outlets and restarting the whole system. But he's found that’s when people tended to be their most honest, most unpolished and they weren’t afraid to be like that. 

There was a lot of talk around the ego and the ID in his early acting classes. Who was your character when their ego had been pulled back like strips of skin? 

But as he got older, the question he became more obsessed with was, who were the people around him when they weren’t being paid to like him?

You, of course, are different from all that. You hadn’t built up an ego quite yet. You hadn’t built up the mechanisms required to survive the world because you hadn’t needed to. Sure, you could deflect and get what you wanted by batting your eyelashes, but there are times he felt ugly in the skin he had built. Like somewhere along the way, he had tried on all these hats and now they had all attached themselves to his head and he couldn’t tear them off if he tried. His costume didn’t fit– his face wasn’t even visible any more. 

And who exactly had spent the last fifteen minutes trailing after his beautiful, carefree niece, a single breath away from getting so hard it hurt, in this massively empty mansion? What version of himself wants to snake a hand into those shorts and effectively ruin you for anyone else – wanted to grip you so hard there’d be bruises and tears in your eyes when you came? 

Which one of them is he willing to show you?

All of them. None of him. The ID.

You glance over your shoulder, curious that he hadn’t answered you. 

“Yeah,” he sighs, smoking between his two fingers again. “Could get lost in a place like this.”

You pause in your inspection, eyes soft because of the drugs or the low lighting or something else, and take his hand. “Lucky I’ve got you then.” 

His mouth is instantly dry in a way that has nothing to do with the weed. He offers you the joint and you smoke too, eyelids drooping, allowing him another second of looking. 

And then another smile breaks across your face.

“Fuck,” your laugh turns into a cough. “Did you ever get that stupid fucking waterbed you wouldn’t shut up about? I remember you swearing the first thing you’d buy when you were rich and famous was a waterbed – which I thought was so fucking cool because I’d never heard of a waterbed before because I was seven and it sounded like something totally made up — so of course, someone rich and famous could have one.”

You’re still holding hands, your palm dry and warm, when he laughs too. He takes the joint back from you, eyes narrowing as he looks at you out of the corner of his eyes.

Turns out moral degradation is a fucking cannon ball. 

“Why don’t you go see for yourself?” 

You squeeze his hand, eyes bright, before almost sprinting down the hall to the room on the right. He follows you, struck by the notion this is the first and last time you’ll ever enter his bedroom. This has to be the end of something.

He hears a grunt and a groan and he can’t help but smile. He saunters into the room, leaning up against the door frame with his hands in the pockets of his robe. You are face down on the mattress, hands under your chest. 

“This is not a water bed,” you grumble, the sound muffled. 

Once again, Maria deserved a raise just for making his bed. 

“No, it’s not,” he says slowly, as he edges a teasing tone into his next words. “Look, I did get a fucking water bed, alright? Just about a century ago when they were still a thing.”

You ease up onto your elbows and glare at him. “Can’t believe you got rid of it. What a waste.” 

And then you’re sliding back onto your knees, hands planted on the covers, and for just a second, he swears he can see the outline of your cunt through the material that could hardly be called shorts. 

His knees actually buckle for a second before he stands up right and physically has to close his eyes. Looking away wouldn’t have been enough. 

But you don’t see all of this. You’re frowning down, as if glaring hard enough will bypass physics and liquidate the mattress. 

“What happened to it? The water bed, I mean.” 

Just as he’s gotten his heart rate back under control, your question throws everything into a spiral again. 

Do not fucking tell her about the hookers and the brass pasties. Or the cock ring. Definitely do not mention the cock ring. 

“It, uh, popped.” 

You smirk over your shoulder. “It was a sex thing, wasn’t it?” 

The question lingers, Dieter unable to make a coherent word that didn’t sound like take your pants off right fucking now, so he swallows and shakes his head. By some minor miracle, you shrug and don’t push it, sliding off the bed and completing your assessment of his life by regarding the book collection against the opposite wall. 

It’s bigger than you expect someone like Dieter to have, but its placement in the house – almost hidden in his private bedroom – suggests that its volume is not there to impress. It’s his personal collection and, judging by the bent spines, books he’s actually read, perhaps several times. There’s a small desk next to it, crouching in the corner and littered with sheets of paper that look like they were torn from a sketchbook. 

He couldn’t decide which version of himself he wanted you to see less: Dieter, full of vices, or Dieter, bratty actor who only acted in the first place because he couldn’t cut it as a real artist. 

Your hands run over the sketches, eyes annoyingly unreadable, and just as he’s about to leap forward and scoop all of the sketches into the trash, you move on. Your interest is caught by some of the books. You make noises that are both outside of the realm of approval or disgust and he finds himself nervous. Book reading is about the last thing on anyone’s mind once they’ve reached the final destination of The Bedroom, so he’s never worried about what someone might think. But this isn’t just someone, it’s you. 

His mouth opens to make some quippy remark, when you gasp and lunge forward, grabbing something at the back of the shelf.

“Holy shit, that’s you!” 

You hold up a picture of his high school’s production of Othello and there he is fifteen and smack dab in the middle of the cast. 

“Oh fuck, I forgot that was there,” he groans, dropping the nearly gone joint into an ashtray by the side of the bed. You’re practically glowing with excitement and he rolls his eyes as he takes it from you.

“Jesus Christ, look at that kid. Has no idea what kind of dumbass he’s going to grow up to be.” 

Three years after that photo was taken, he had left in the middle of the night for Hollywood. Of course, just as he had finished packing up his piece-of-shit Chevy, Enrico caught him. Exploded in his face and scolded him in his old man ways for leaving without saying nothing. 

He kept this photo because it was the last thing that reminded him of home and yet so distant it didn’t hurt as bad any more. 

“I think he did spectacular for himself,” you grin at him. “Who knew The Dieter Bravo was such a softie for the old days?” 

He smirks at you, finally sick of you kicking his ass all night. There is a line between fucking you and out sassing you, one he could live with. You aren't fucking ready for that Dieter. 

“No way,” he rubs the bottom of his lip with his thumb, artfully contemplative, and purposefully distractingly hot. “Just keep it around for the spank bank. Ms. Lemons was a babe.”

You narrow your eyes at him as he leans across you to put the photo back.  “Oh yeah? I gave my first blow job in that blackbox.”

“No, you fucking didn’t.”

“Yes I did!” 

“What was his name?”

“Jeremy.”

“Jeremy what?” 

“Jeremy . . . Barnes.”

“Pssh, fake name, fake boyfriend, fake story.” 

“He was real! I just . . . can’t remember his last name right now.” 

“Blurs together with all the other guys you’ve blown, right?” 

You bite the corner of your mouth, your smirk so tight he can almost picture your toes curling. Not that he’d dare break eye contact with you now. Now that he’s got you practically pinned to the bookshelf, photo forgotten and something that’s been slinking around for the past three hours finally rolling on its back and exposing its belly. 

He knows The Look, he practically invented it, and he can’t quite remember why it’s not okay to get that from your niece and someone twenty years younger than him. Right now, the portion of his brain that can sort that’s fucked up and it’s not that hard to refrain from being a fucking creep is filled with smoke, a sort of hissing sound there that is not unlike a shaken soda begging for release. 

And dear God does he want release. But he’s willing to edge it just a bit longer, scrape that muscle as gingerly as he can before touching it where it needs to be touched.

“I have no idea what you mean,” you say softly, meekly being cowed for the first time all night. Fuck, do you have to make it so easy?

“That’s right. You don’t. Because if it were any good, you’d remember it.” 

He puts a hand above your shoulder to stop himself from sinking into you. Weed made the world feel plushy, moldable – and he just wants to lounge in the dip of your bottom lip. You look so different from the girl who showed up soaking wet at his front door. 

Your breathing hitches the closer he comes, your eyes fluttering as you watch his fingers dig into the spines of the books. 

“What’s his first name again, darling? Do you still remember that?” 

You gasp, loudly, as if his itching fingers had finally sunk in between your legs, but you’re sliding away from him and pulling out something from the shelf. Something white and something he should have fucking hidden better. 

“Oh my God, is this my senior yearbook?” 

You’re wandering over to his bed, leaving Dieter reeling, his own spell so alarmingly effective he is caught beneath it too. It takes him a moment to blink as he realizes maybe this is where you reneg and decide you don’t want to fuck him after all. 

“It’s not as weird as it sounds –,” he begins, heart in his throat, and hands safely in his pockets as he joins you near the bed. You still haven’t looked up as you flip through the glossy pages.

“Sure, sure.” 

“Look, your dad sent it to me and I didn’t even open it,” he says honestly. The package was delivered on the Tuesday afternoon when he woke up so hungover he actually thought he might die, and couldn’t bear the thought of not recognizing you in the class photo. 

Funny how that all fucking worked out. 

You hadn’t leapt off the bed, called him a dirty old man, and ran away to call the police. Which are probably good signs. So, slowly, he sits down next to you, halfway on the bed and halfway off. 

“He sent it just a few weeks ago. I didn’t really think much of it at the time,” he says quietly. So you had been on the high school’s newspaper staff, as well as being the captain of the journalism club and ran the book club. You were on the volleyball team and co-Secretary of the student body government. Here, he spent all night trying to find out what kind of person you are when half your life is waiting for him upstairs. “But maybe he sent it as, like, some sort of . . . fond reminder.”

You snort, your thumb tucked under your chin as your hand touches the memories on the page.

“No, it fucking wasn’t. He was guilt-tripping you.” 

So your dad definitely still remembered the fight all those years ago. Dieter grimaces. His gaze slides from the stock pages, to your knee, down the crease of your thigh. 

“You know, he would have made me your godfather if–,” 

“If you weren’t such a fuck up. Yeah, he told me that too.” 

You finally look at him and find him nearly out of breath, eyes wide as though he had been struck by a sledgehammer right to the chest. 

“Actually, he told me if I came around more.” 

Your face crumples, the flippancy gone.

“Fuck, Dee, I’m sorry.” You cup the back of his neck with your palm in a soothing gesture and it stirs something within him. “I shouldn’t have said that.”

“It is what it is.” Deflection, distraction, escape.

You smile gently, thumbing his curls as your eyes roam his face, seeing right through his bullshit.

“You know, you kinda became the cautionary tale around us growing up,” you murmur, gaze searching his face. “Not sure why, though. Since you’re, like, a gazillionaire.”

Not worth it. None of it’s worth it.

“I get that. I get why he didn’t want me around. Probably best that I fucked off and never looked back.” 

The corners of your eyes crinkle, as though he had said something that didn’t make sense. You stop combing his hair and run your thumb over his ear. 

“But I don’t think you are,” you say slowly, as though you didn’t need to explain. “A cautionary tale, I mean. I think you’re . . . an inspiration. No one in our town ever fucking leaves, but you did. You got the fuck out and lived your dreams. And that’s pretty cool.” 

There’s not any hope for me, not if you knew all the fucked up shit I want to do to you. 

Don’t look at me like that. 

When he looks around for some self control, something to pull himself out of the pit he’s dragging you both in, there’s nothing. All eroded. 

Moral degradation is a smooth fucking shot. 

The yearbook drops from your lap, clatters to the ground as he takes your face with both his hands, his rings pressing into your cheeks, and kisses you so hard his lips knock against your teeth. The force of it rocks you flat against the mattress, your fingers wrapping around his wrists, grounding you to him – don’t take this back, don’t let go – and his tongue runs against your bottom lip once before your mouth opens without hesitation. He can feel that, that desperation, that eagerness to let him in, and he groans into the hollow of your mouth and you take it, you match it, just like everything else he'd given you this night. 

Your tongue rises to catch him, to guide him, to show him the places you need to be touched. He’ll get there, you little thing, so he nips your upper lip and you gasp, your body tightening beneath him. He grins – there’s so much you have to learn. 

His palm drifts away from your jaw, thumb gentle as it coaxes your cheek to the side, before he latches his lips to your neck, sucking and then a quick bite– all eased by his tongue. Your fingers dig up into his hair, clutching him to your chest as there is anything, anywhere else he’d rather be in the world. As if anyone could pry him off you. 

He dives back into your mouth, air rushing out of your nose in a silent moan, and your knee hooks out around his hips, pulling him into the cradle of your lap. You jerk back –

“Dee, you’re – holy shit –,” 

Your hips brush up as if you had somehow gotten it all wrong the first time. As if he isn’t rock hard above you. Your eyes widen as he smirks down at you.

“Yeah, baby, that’s all you. All you do to me.” 

He chuckles, dropping his head to your chest, breathing deeply, head spinning from kissing you so thoroughly. He inhales, nose rubbing against the soft material of your shirt, ideas of peeling it off you with his teeth. Your scent, it’s all at once intoxicating, mesmerizing, and . . . familiar. 

He groans, almost nuzzling your chest.

“Fuck, this smells like that nasty deodorant from 711 I used to buy ‘cause I couldn’t afford anything else.” 

You slowly open your eyes up at him, a distantly embarrassed smile curling up the corners of your mouth. You look hazy, blurred, lips flushed and pink from getting them sucked and bitten. Had he not just licked your entire mouth clean from spit, you might have blushed.

Your fingers curl gingerly around the back of his neck. “Well, you never forget your first.”

His mouth falls open. You had successfully knocked him back on his ass for a second time that night. 

“Shut the fuck up,” he husks, a grin breaking across his lips as the hand at your shoulder pulls gently at the sleeve. “This is my shirt? This has got to be older than you are.”

A small part of his brain, the part that definitely would object to fucking his pseudo-niece, goes warm at the thought that some part of him still lived in that neighborhood, was still there for all the important moments of your life. 

That is until the very active part of his brain lumbers in, quashes all gentle feelings and promptly wrestles for control of his mouth to ask you flat out if you ever touched yourself while wearing it. Not that he didn’t want to know, but if you said yes, he would have come right there on the spot, perhaps so hard his dick popped off. So he did not ask you that, but he did satisfy that part of his brain by molding his hand around your hip, so he could feel the cool fabric on the back of his hand, and your warm, plush skin against his palm. 

You like her being drenched in you, don’t you? 

You swat at his chest, rolling your eyes, oblivious to his rapidly darkening thoughts. “It is not older than me, but if it was . . . would that be a problem?”

You pick at imaginary lint on his shoulder, hips rolling just enough to indicate it better not be a fucking problem, and a smirk on your face that reads innocent and filthy all at once. 

Dieter shakes his head, grinning as he inches his wide palm up your hip, across the thin flesh of your ribs and – 

Does not find a bra. 

You had not been wearing a bra the entire night.

Your smirk deepens, your back arching into his palm, as his thumb brushes the underside of your breast, then over your tightening nipple. You moan softly, eyes fluttering, when he pinches it deftly. His jaw ticks, teeth grinding from the pleasure of watching your mouth arch open. 

It’s like you had been given a list of all the things that turned him on and you are crossing them off one by one. Like you had skinned him and read all his little nasty thoughts written on his ribs and made them your own.

Like you were made for him. 

He leans forward, the bristles of his beard and mustache rough like matches against the shell of your ear, his voice so weighty it could have been another physical thing he intended to drive into you, intended to rub against you to make you keen with pleasure. 

“It’s not a fucking problem, you little brat. Only problem is gonna be if it keeps me from watching those pretty tits bounce while I fuck you.”   

There it is. Out in the open. As if all his flirting and touching and tongue between his teeth hinted at something else besides you spread out under him. Half delirious from being so hard, he grins as he bites the bottom of the shirt – his shirt, Jesus Christ – and pulls it up and he ducks his head under the material and presses a sucking kiss into the valley of your tits. 

He likes giving head from underneath the sheets because, yes, it was hard to breathe. It was hot and stifling and everything smelled of sweat and sex and eventually his brain was forced to make a decision about what motor functions to hold onto and he made it focus on sensations until he was sure he’d be swallowed up by the cunt under his mouth or impaled by the cock in the back of his throat and if that’s how they found him dead, he’d be absolutely fine with all of it. 

Dieter Bravo – died doing what he loved. Giving immaculate, delicious head. 

The heat under the shirt is nowhere near as intense but it’s enough to make him flush with want. He licks the sweat gathering underneath your right tit, holds it on his tongue before he lathers both his spit and your sweat over your clearly-painfully tight nipple. Every touch of his makes you stutter and he can feel you unconsciously rubbing your hips up against him. 

“This isn’t going to end up on Youtube or some shit, right?” You ask above him, your voice rough as though your throat is dry. “You don’t have cameras filming this, right, Dee?” 

He chuckles with his nose rimming your left nipple. Do you have a voyeur kink? He muses vaguely. 

Fuck, I knew I shouldn’t have gotten rid of that mirror. 

“No, baby, it’s not going on Youtube.” He runs his warm palms up the curves of your side as he tugs his head out from underneath the shirt. “All the videos go directly to a password-protected server in the Cloud.”

“Dee–,” you groan as he lunges forward and kisses you hopefully so hard it knocks those silly thoughts from your brain before pulling back to grin helplessly at you. 

You cannot physically describe how impishly adorable he looks with his hair mussed, his lips pink and twisted in a smirk – you cannot really do anything at all, really – but your hand slides up from his shoulder, across his warm neck and settles into his cheek. The last bit of brown is swallowed by a swelling blackness as you rub your thumb across the bottom of his lip. This thing that has been eating at you the longer you’re around him edges you on, daring you to push him just a bit further because it knows you’d just love what he’ll do. It knows more than you, but it’s not exactly smarter than you. It’s just simply fascinated by Dieter Bravo. 

Your own mouth parts, your eyelids growing heavy, as you swipe across his lips one more time before sliding your thumb into the warmth of his mouth. Eyes never leaving yours, his tongue greets your thumb, massaging the pad before licking around it like he’d swirl off the top of an ice cream cone. He sucks gently and you can’t fight the noise that comes out of you. Almost shocked, surprised that you can feel this aroused with all your clothes on and just his tongue. He drags his tongue across the back of your knuckle and the groan is louder now – you want to bite into him – and he pushes his hips into the mattress. 

“C’mere, baby girl–,” 

Dropping your thumb, he dives in again for your mouth, this time the back of his hand grasping your neck. He kisses you and kisses you and kisses you as if forgetting there was another way to relieve the tension in his gut, the spark that's fanning smoke like a brushfire into every place your skin, your spit, touches his. 

“Take– this– off–,” He pants between the hot presses of his mouth to your jaw, your neck, the spot beneath your ear that makes you keen in a new way. His hands are scrambling over yours to get the shirt up and over your head, desire almost making him panic that everything is going too fast but not fast enough – he wants to be inside of you in every way that matter – he wants you to smell like him – to breath his same air – 

He’s not so much kissing as opening his mouth over your skin, his teeth and tongue and lips fighting over themselves to get to you first. He wants to linger, wants to take his time but the pressure – he deliriously thinks he can smell you – and only when his fingers clamp down on the waistband of your shorts – he has half a mind to punish you for walking around in these things, making his sanity unwind in the hallways of this fucking place, until the only truly sane thing to do is fuck you and fuck you good – the thought is so strong, almost violent he pauses. 

He looks up to the devastation he’s left in his wake – bright, purple spots on the inside of your breasts, under your ribs, the small swell of your stomach, your chest heaving – and he watches your face. You realize he’s stopped moving, slowed in his volcanic thunderous roll down to the clutch of your cunt, and you meet his gaze. You swallow, mouth too dry to form words, so you splat a hand on his shoulder. 

"No robe. I’m not – not going to let you f-fuck me in a bathrobe.” 

He grins. Of course, you would sass him after a make out session so intense he doesn’t even care if he comes in his pants. But he obliges, pretty much willing to cut off a finger if you continue to purr at him like you are. 

“Excuse you, this is lounge wear.” He leans back onto his knees and shrugs himself out of the green robe. Your eyes flash to the triangle on his forearm and he’d be fucked to admit he didn’t get it entirely for the look in your eyes right now. Chicks always dug the tattoos. Your tits bounce as your breathing hitches. 

Not Daddy’s girl, his smoke-heavy, lust-soaked brain chants at him, not Daddy’s girl. 

God, he’s so hard it hurts. 

He goes back down, dropping himself between your legs, arms tucked up under the backs of your thighs. He mouths the inside of your thigh – a distraction as his hand, like some sort of fucked up, horny magician performs a slight-of-hand, “iiiis this your clit?” – rubs you over your shorts. You are soaking wet and he’s fighting the urge to just dig in there, suckle you through the wet spot. He hadn’t actually made someone come that way before, but now seemed like an excellent opportunity to try. 

“You know, for someone who has to couch-surf, you talk a lot.” 

He noses the rim of the bottom of your shorts, allowing a full gaze down to your ass. 

“Sorry if I’m sick of fucking boys who look like their mom dressed them.” You are breathless, shaky, unwinding at the seams and you know exactly what to say to dig right into him. 

He bites the soft place at the back of your thigh and you groan. 

“I thought you couldn’t remember any of them before me,” he purrs, watching that damp spot grow darker the longer he talks, the longer he holds off on touching you where you and him and the entire fucking world knows you need to be touched. 

Maybe you ran your mouth too, when you were nervous, overwhelmed. Maybe you laughed too loud when you didn’t know what else to do, and maybe you gave him shit because the second words stopped coming out of your mouth, you’d have to sink into whatever he was giving you. You’d have to kneel to the white lighting between your legs. Maybe you were afraid there wouldn’t be white lightning at all. 

Families share similar insecurities, after all. 

He waits until you open your mouth again before hooking his fingers under the band of your shorts. 

“Hmm, there’s actually a fairly long list of guys before you. Guys who–,” 

He sucks the skin just an inch to the right of your hip bone, just before the patch of curly hair, he sucks it into his mouth and bites so gently he knows that your brain nearly splits in half from the hairline fracture between pleasure and pain. 

You gasp and you’re already arching off the bed. He breathes across those coarse, damp curls and inhales. 

Girlsex. 

Girlsweat. 

It’s like there’s acid corroding his brain, eating away at the clamps holding his sanity together and he’s gonna go fucking ballistic if the acid doesn’t get to him first. But he wants the burn. He wants the chemical smell. 

He wants . . . to put his dick into something. 

But first – 

You’re pliable. Easy to move as he scoops your shorts off your ass – Oh, fucking Christ, there’s her entire backside, isn’t there? – over your thighs and he hurls the shorts over his shoulder. He inhales–

God, this pussy is going to kill me, he thinks or maybe says out loud before he tips forward into that black, fluttering hole. When he licks you, you both moan. 

He remembers specifically doing planks for as long as he could to build up the upper body strength to languish here for hours.

Well, at the time, here wasn’t here here, but if everything before this was practice, then he was ready for the Olympics, dick as hard as a goddamn gold medal. 

He swipes up with his tongue, licking and sucking and swirling like frosting was going out of style. Frosting, that’s it. That’s what you reminded him of. Fat, sweating, sweet frosting. And there was the cherry on top. 

He guides your clit into his mouth, his fingers digging into the tops of your thighs as if to pull himself deeper into the wettest goddamn pool at the fucking YMCA. He sucks once and your hands fly into his hair. You’re making sounds that somewhat resemble his name, but they’re too high, too pitchy, too airless to be anything coherent. 

He wants to tease you about all the boys you mentioned. Wants you to go back on your word, beg for him to believe that there was no one else before him. If there was, it didn’t matter because this is it. This is the best you’d ever have. 

Even when you left him, you’d never forget – 

Disgustingly, he slurps up one lip of yours into his mouth and you cry out, fingernails digging into his scalp so hard that it hurts and sends another rush of blood into his weeping cock. He mouths up before teasing your clit again – around it but never on it – before diving back down and lapping up your other lip. 

“Dieter–,” you garble as if you know it’s filthy. He can hear your breathing tighten in your chest, feel your thighs clench around his ears, and he swears if he gets out of this with hair in tact, that’s the most he’s going to ask for –

And he french-kisses your clit.

You come, gasping, writhing, back arching off the mattress and he bares his forearm across your stomach, reaching up to pinch your nipple. 

Settle down. We’re only just getting started. 

He’s got to control himself but staring up at you, your face flushed with pleasure, he can’t quite remember what he’s supposed to do next. 

You are naked underneath him. Naked and heaving and he licks the dampness staining his mattress just to have your taste in his mouth again. This is going to be a problem, if he can’t think straight without his mouth on you. 

Oh my God, duh, fingers. 

He pulls himself up the length of your body, and his hands sink into your hair. His fingers curl around your ear as he makes you look at him.

“How are you feeling?” It’s an echo of what he asked earlier. You’re still warm but your breathing has slowed. Your eyes are open, even if they’re fighting to stay open as if you are concussed. 

“Good. Great.” You mutter, hand falling to his chest and tangling with his shirt. 

“You wanna keep going?”

Your eyes open wider as if someone rang a dinner bell and you’d been walking on hands and knees, starving for weeks. You swallow thickly, nodding frantically, and the hand leaves his chest, winding down between you and, before he can stop you, slides under the material of his sweats and strokes him. 

Your hands are like velvet.

Fuck, then what’s your cunt gonna feel like– 

Do not fucking come right now. 

“Oh, I see,” you huff, a smirk curling your mouth up, as if you had won some unnamed battle. You roll your shoulder to go aaall the way down his cock and stroke him. You think about licking your hand, but the precum leaking out of the tip of his head at a truly flattering rate is enough lubricant to keep your hand from sticking. “I can’t walk around without a bra on, but you can walk around in these thin fucking sweatpants and no underwear.”

He grits his teeth, dropping his head to his chest, trying to breath through the freightcar rattling down his spine.

“It’s my house, you little cocktease,” he pants, gasping as you run your thumb against the vein underneath his shaft. You pump him again and again and he groans low, with his eyes shut to keep them from rolling back in his head. “I can– yeah, right there – do whatever I want. Move your hand. I want to stick my fingers in you.” 

His words aren’t so crass they make your ears red, but it’s the unrestrained need in his voice. You slowly withdraw your hands and you go wipe the threads of him on the mattress as he sits up to take his shirt off. 

“Don’t. Just– gimme a second.” 

He yanks the tank shirt over his head, setting down in between your legs again and blinking like he’d forgotten where he was. He takes your hand, licks your palm as clean as something as dirty as this could ever get, and then penetrates your hole with his middle finger. His tongue slides in the crevice between your ring finger and your pinkie and when he adds a second finger below, you both can feel the moment your brain is wiped blank and your body twitches along with it. 

“Mhmm, good.” He pulls you down closer to him, fingers plucking your strings like the finest guitar. Your knees are spread wider than when he had half his body down there. He’s watching you practically drown his hand in the wetness seeping out, his other hand holding or balancing your knee. 

He hovers above you, watching you roll and writhe and beg. His forearm is strained, his hand must be soaking, and he thinks your face contorted in pleasure might be permanently burned into his brain. There is still some part of him that knows that’s wrong. He shouldn’t have the faintest idea of what you looked like, high and blissed out of your mind, while his fingers stroke and dig and pluck and rub to drag you higher and higher – 

The pad of his middle finger brushes something spongy and you nearly slam your legs shut over his arm, if it weren’t for his free hand pinning you open. 

“Dee,” you croak, head shaking, “that was – you can’t–,”

His eyes flutter at the sound of your voice so wrecked. He needs to memorize that exact spot, save it for when you don’t have enough sanity left to push back. It’s scary, he knows, but you must be out of your goddamn mind if you thought he was going to let anything bad happen to you. 

“Look at my thumb. Baby, look down.” 

You wrench your eyes open, past your quivering chest, down his long forearm, down to where the black bullseye on the meat of the space between his thumb and palm is winking at you. 

He’s stroking you with his thumb on your clit and the bullseye winking up at you. It’s eye-fucking you and that’s enough to break you. He wants to drink whatever drips out of you as your body locks up, head thrown back, and you come. You break through and his hand curls around your knee, gently, as he watches your body crescendo for the second time that night. He sucks his fingers, almost pensively, as if he is going to carve something out of you. Remake you. Split apart your atoms and rebuild you whole. Sex as an act of re-creation. 

He kneels his way out of his pants, cock pounding red, leaking, the hot center of where his want for you is infecting him like a sickness. 

Slowly, he drags one of your knees over his shoulder, half of your body hovering just above the mattress. 

He wants to ask if you need it rough or slow. He can’t be gentle right now but he does have enough awareness to keep from hurting you. But maybe you, like him, like a little bit of pain. 

He wants you on top, wants to see you sing for him, but he knows your legs are jelly. He knows there’s a white static hum in your brain and he’s so grateful for the pleasure of it. 

He rubs the top of your thigh and noses the back of your ankle up by his ear. 

“Do you want me to put a condom on?” he asks quietly, before kissing that spot below your ankle.

“Are you clean?” He’s so fucking broad and his rings pinch your skin when he pushes too hard and he’s asking for your comfort. You also want to feel every inch of his cock and you beg him to say yes. 

He nods, suddenly irrationally thankful of Paul’s monthly mandated screenings. You get the clap once, and your fucking manager never lets you forget it. 

You huff, realizing you’re so close your cunt can almost taste it. “I-I’m on the pill. A-a-and I’m clean too.” 

As if he had ever denied you anything, as if his willpower hadn’t barely lasted four hours, you tense at the anticipation of his cock. 

He’s just as warm, just as ready, so he grabs your other ankle and draws it next to your other one against the back of his neck. He sinks back just a bit on his ankles, fingers spreading you and grabbing himself and then–

It’s like getting the wind knocked out of you and getting sprayed with a hose of fire all at once. 

“JesusfuckingChrist, you’re tight.” 

He edges deeper as he sits up right, going slow not because he hadn’t unwound you properly but because if he went any faster, he’d obsess over the idea of getting rug burns on his dick. 

“Dieter, oh God–,”

Hands leaving your ankles to wrap around your thighs, he rocks his hips back and drags out his cock just as much as the both of you can handle before thrusting forward. Again.

Again. He can’t seem to fill you enough. He wants to be bigger, thicker, girthier, if only to plug you up more. 

But, fuck, your cunt is better than your hands but only because it’s so warm and wet and throbbing and he swears his heartbeat is in his ears. 

He thrusts almost lazily, dipping his head to kiss your shin before dropping it back, your toes brushing his hair. His hands greedily squeeze your thighs, thumbs rubbing circles. 

It’s like he has to recover from the shock and sensation of fucking you. It’s too good. It’s too much. 

He’s inside of you.

If there’s a relief fund for grilled cheese, he’s going to have to donate every red cent he’s ever owned. 

Your hands clench the sheets, mouth open and, yes, beautiful tits bouncing with every thrust. It’s not them hovering above him, begging to be bitten, but it’s close and he smooths his hand down from your thigh over his chest, down your hip and he kneads your breast. 

“Oh, fuck, Dee, fuck . . . you feel so fucking good.” 

I want to die in this cunt. 

“So good, baby.” 

It’s back, that pressure that connects the backs of his eyes, to the back of his gut, all the way to his pussy-soaked cock. This time he lets it build, lets it dangle out of reach, and his thrusts become faster, hurried. You jerk beneath him and let out a full whine as if he had spanked you. 

He fucks you some more this way, just to feel that tightening in his gut, before he pulls your legs off his shoulders and you whine again, this time out of annoyance. 

He has the where-with-all to smirk.

“What, baby doesn’t like it when I take away her toys?” He pants, almost feeling light-headed. You scowl at him but don’t push back in the least as he turns you onto your hands and knees. 

“It was just starting to feel good, you a-ahh–ss–,”

He jerks his hips into you without warning, fully seating you on his cock and your head drops between your shoulders. 

“If you weren’t such a brat, you’d be kind of cute,” he murmurs as he rubs his thumb over the knots in your spine, the sensation of your cunt sucking him in almost detaching him from this plane of existence. He knows you like to be teased, with his words, with his fingers, his mouth. He wants to give you everything – anything – he’s so pussy-obsessed he can feel it like ozone in his mouth.

He never wants to stop fucking you. He’s being unstable about it. 

“You like that I’m a brat,” you say and push back with your hips. The sensation does make him stutter and you take it as a win. His rings sting as they squeeze your hips. 

He’s sliding down that pressure, winding himself up so tightly in it he wants to stop breathing – 

He starts pumping faster. The sounds that echo in that room are like music to his ears.

The sheets ruffling as your hands clench around them. The jolt of the bed as it lurches back and forth.

Your moans as he fucks every thought out of your head. “Fuck, you’re so big. It’s not fair.” 

The wet slap of his thighs meeting yours. 

And it all narrows down, the universe closing to a single focal point–  all of it runs right to his cock rubbing up inside your cunt like it owns the place.

“Oh, fuck, fuck, fuck,” you groan, head down. “Please – please fuck me harder, Uncle Dieter.” 

With a growl that surprised even him, he drops forward, one hand anchoring himself to your hip and the other coming up around your throat. You gasp as his fingers dig painfully into your skin. He pulls you both up right, nose in your ear and teeth tight in his jaw. 

He punctuates every word with a particularly brutal thrust that gnaws at something truly devastating inside you. 

“Don’t – fucking – call me that – while – I’m inside – you–,”

You turn your head, flush with his and the hand that’s on your throat slides up to your cheek and he holds you there, pins you there as his cock pounds the daylights out of you. 

“Say my name.” He husks. There’s something cataclysmic happening inside your cunt and he has the launch codes. 

You can’t remember feeling so full before. So up your eyes and your mouth and your ears and your heart – God, maybe there really hadn’t been anyone before him. 

“Oh, fuck, Dieter,”

“No, honey, my real name.” 

Your eyes flicker open and something in his chest roars. He’ll kiss you after this. He’ll kiss you so hard you end up on another fucking planet. 

“David.” 

The sweat on his temples mixes with yours and he wants to smear himself in your fluids. This close, his beard and mustache rub roughly against your skin and you wonder how long the burn will last after all this. You’re clenching his arm, clenching his lower back to you, you think you’ll make him bleed in half-moon cuts of blood. 

“All of it. All of it, baby girl,” he whispers to your cheek, your jaw. “Say it. I need to hear it. I need to hear it from you.” 

Your fucked-out mind spins, clutching at the memories of the past, to a name you hadn’t heard in a decade, while the man you’ve known all your life threatens to undo your sanity. You lock eyes with him, the precipice of something so large and looming, you can’t wait to be crushed by it.

“Davíd Moralés.” 

And that bastard’s cock intentionally pushes against that spongy spot and you shriek. Honest to God, yell, as you come, with Dieter wrapped up against your back, sweat streaking both of you.

“Get down,” he hisses suddenly and almost throws you off him. You land on your back, your entire body pulsing as one single organism, and he grabs his cock in time to aim it at your chest. 

He comes, mouth open, eyes squeezed shut, as he sprays you with white ropes. It’s warm on your tits and you shudder through your aftershocks. You feel like you’re sinking into warmth as he keeps coming, your inner thighs drenched and dripping, and finally, he leans away and collapses on the bed next to you.

There’s ringing in your ears. 

You feel swollen all over, your nerve centers humming and firing and crackling as though someone whapped you over the head with a 500 volt electric baton. You want to keep sinking, keep drifting, keep existing in this warm, non-corporeal form. Everything feels so good here.

You had no idea you, or anyone else for that matter, could come that hard. 

“Holy shit.” 

You can’t help but grin through the short huffs of breath you swallow down in gasps. 

You want to sass him but it feels a bit like spitting in the face of God. “Yeah. Holy shit.” 

He sits up on his elbows, glancing over his side at you, the begrudgingly fantastic cock between his legs as deflated as you are. 

“Are you okay? Fuck, sorry, I got a little crazy there at the end.” 

You shake your fist loosely, with your thumb and pinky finger extended. “I don’t hear customer service calling. In fact, I think the line has been permanently disconnected.” 

You both laugh softly and his eyes roam over your face. This is why he only saw vampy women. It was easier to wake up to something almost over-the-top hot, than this. Than you, with your beautifully flushed cheeks, plump lips, and eyes that searched only for him. 

His gut twisted painfully. Okay, you nutted so hard you’re pretty sure your dick isn’t going to work for a week, now wake up. Wake up and smell the fucking arrest warrant. 

Uncle Dieter. You're his niece. 

What the fuck were you thinking? Where could this possibly go?

Instead of inspecting the small-starting-to-grow painful throbbing in his chest, he sits up and pleasantly inspects the mess you both made all over you. You follow his gaze, smirking as he intentionally smears his cum over your skin with his thumb.

“Oh, and that thing you did at the end, where you made me–,”

“Yeah?” He grinned wickedly, almost begging you to use your words, but you had been so good for him. He’d save that for later. “You liked that?”

“At the risk of sounding desperate, yes. A thousand times yes. But totally unfair and totally cheating.”

He snickers and leans down to your thighs. “Yeah, okay, Ms. I’m Not Wearing a Bra.” 

The smell of you is intoxicating and it’s drenching your thighs, the sheets below you. Maybe he could strip the bed before Maria came – oh, fuck, what if it’s in the mattress?

He hauls those thoughts out of his mind, his dick twitching uncomfortably, as he bends forward and licks the inside of your thigh.

“Oh my God, Dee, you can’t possibly be –,”

“Relax. I’m not. Just wanted to clean you up.”

He licks the drying liquid from your skin – you hiss, so very overstimulated – dragging his tongue up, never breaking eye contact with you as he slinks up your body, shoulders rolling – “Dee, wait, you’re gonna–,” and licks the cum off your chest. His own cum. 

“Oh, fuck, that’s nasty,” you murmur, eyes transfixed on his mouth as he swallows. He chuckles, finally deciding you’ve had enough for one night, and he leans forward and presses his lips on your temple. 

“I’m not ready, but it sounds like you might be.” 

He reaches back to the floor where his shirt was so casually discarded. He gingerly wipes your thighs, your hips, your stomach and chest. There’d be time for a proper wash later, but right now he thinks he’s going to pitch forward into unconsciousness in less than thirty seconds. His limbs are heavy, his eyelids are heavy but he can’t stop smiling.

You grin at him as he tosses the very used shirt back onto the ground and gets up from the bed to disappear into the bathroom. You roll onto your side, after unpeeling the bedsheets like you had done it a thousand times. When he comes back, you rub your face against his pillows and he realizes if he’s going to hoard the sheets, then he’s going to have to do the same to the pillowcase. 

“I’m not gonna wake up and find you mouthing that shirt, am I?” You ask, a smirk already cradling your lips. He huffs at you as he hands you a glass of water. You take it, gratefully, only vaguely aware that he probably did that kind of thing all the time with his other conquests. 

That thought threatens to sour your good mood so you put the glass back onto the bedside table and curl deeper into the sheets. 

He climbs in behind you, and rubs his nose over your shoulder and up into your ear, his hand spread across your hip. 

“Only if I wake up in the middle of the night and can’t mouth your tits.” 

He’s purposefully being sexy, being teasing, but there’s a question there. A request. A quiet ask that for all his thick dick swinging, doesn’t have the cojones to verbalize. 

 You smirk at him and roll back slightly to catch his mouth. You thread your fingers through his hair and squeeze once. 

“Baby, I couldn’t stand up right if I fucking tried.”

He grins, eyes warm. “Wow. Even if you fucking tried?”

God, this is such a bad idea.

“Even if I fuck-in’ tried.” 

But despite all his not-at-all begging, he wakes up alone. 

He wakes up in broad daylight – the storm had passed. Too bright light streams in from between the gray curtains, illuminating the one thing he never wanted to see: your side of the bed empty. 

His heart clenches so fast he thinks he might be sick. There’s real nausea as he stumbles to his feet and pulls his pants on from last night. He’s about to rush down the stairs, frantically flipping over everything in hopes of finding a note, even if it told him to fuck off. 

You’re twenty years older than me, you fucking creep.

Just wait until my dad hears about this. 

I never want to see you again. 

Just as his mouth dries up till his lips crack, he sees something on the other side of the bed that makes him freeze in his tracks. It’s your phone, plugged into the wall. He goes over and taps the screen. The battery has only 15%. 

And then a post-storm breeze rattles the patio door handle and it opens slightly. He sees your barefoot through the cut in the door frame. 

Holy fuck, you’re still here, just outside. 

Heart now jettisoning into his throat, he opens the door to a truly spectacular morning. His patio looks down to the freshly-washed Los Angeles, the sky a cobalt blue, the air cool and faintly smelling of rain. People run and lead their dogs through the streets and for a minute he thinks he can hear the ocean. 

But what makes it truly spectacular is you. Curled up at the small table in one of his white shirts and those sanctimonious shorts. You’ve got a cup of coffee in your hand and you’ve got his favorite book, Eco’s The Name of the Rose, lying flat beneath your fingertips. But you aren’t reading. You’re looking at him.

“Well, hi there. Did you dream you missed a flight?”

He blinks. “What?” 

“You just, sort of, rushed out here, looking like you forgot something.” You frown. “Is everything okay?”

He swallows and it’s all he can do to keep from dropping to his knees and pressing his face into your lap. 

“Yeah, fine, fine. All good. Fine.” 

You turn back to the book, staring at it as if it was giving you a pep talk. Then you shut it and turn back to him.

“So, um, last night . . .” 

Here it comes. I regret it, all of it. You drugged me and took advantage of me. I can’t believe that you would–

“Was great.” 

He swears he hears his blood rushing in his ears. You smile at him, but clearly uneasy. As if you are the one second-guessing it all. 

Fuck, Bravo, put on your big boy pants.

He pulls out the other patio chair and sits down next to you. He clasps his hands, leaning forward on his elbows. His rings clink together. He nods, trying to catch your eyes.

“Yeah. It was fucking fantastic. I mean it. One for the books.”

He waits for you to say but. 

You wait for him to say but.

Neither of you do. You grin and put your coffee on the table. 

“So, in the events of last night . . . surprisingly, I forgot to charge my phone.”

He doesn’t want to touch you because he thinks it might spook you so he runs his gaze over your lovely knuckles, your wrist. 

“Sounds like, then, you might need to stay awhile.” 

You swallow, unable to contain the growing smile on your face. You duck your head and he follows you and your breath fans his face. 

“Guess so.” 

If he tells it, he says he kissed you.

If you tell it, you say you kissed him. 

Doesn’t matter though. Doesn’t matter that the coffee grows cold and he ignites something in you that you didn’t know existed.

When he finally pulls away, he’s still smiling. 

“This might be a bit weird, but . . . wanna see my other kitchen?”

The End

[afictionaladventure16]

Hey! I love your Tim Bradford x teen! Reader fics! Was wondering could you do another one? Reader reconnects with someone they met through the system who's had a rough go. Maybe they were in the same house for a while and relied on each other a lot in that house to keep each other safe. But as they reconnect reader doesn't realise how toxic the relationship is. Tamara knows the dodgy stuff that the kid gets up to from her time in the system and warns Lucy and Tim because she doesn't want reader to fall back into bad habits with them. Maybe reader gets in trouble and calls Tamara to save them?

Reconnections and Regrets (Tim Bradford x Teen!Foster!Reader)

The Rookie Masterlist

Warnings: Mentions of guns and drugs

Summary: After trying to reconnect with people in the past, y/n realizes quickly why the past should stay in the past.

Author's note: I feel like this one wasn't the best fic I've done so far. I really liked this idea for the fic, though! I hope you enjoy it! Send in some more Tim Bradford x Teen!reader angsty fics!

You had promised yourself that you wouldn’t get back into your old habits. 

That you would forget your past and move forward, just like Tamara had done, and just as every other kid within the system wishes they could do. To have the ability to find someone to take you under their wing and help you forget your past. An opportunity to start over. 

But here you were, texting an old friend with plans to catch up later that afternoon. You couldn’t help but smile at the messages, you were excited to catch up with old friends. But most of all, you were excited to catch up with a special someone that you hadn’t seen since Tim took you in. 

The special someone was a boy named Jacob, the two of you had been in a foster home together when you were younger and he protected you from your foster father and well, you tried to do the same. You couldn’t help but develop feelings for him over the years. 

The last you heard about him was that he was living with his cousin, from what you knew, this cousin was bad news and you could not help but worry about Jacob living there. Especially since he stopped responding to your messages when he moved in with his cousin. It felt like he had just pushed you away. 

“What are you smiling about?” Tamara asked as she sat on the couch beside you. You had come over since Tim wasn’t home yet, and well, since Lucy and Tim were dating it now felt like you had two homes instead of one. 

“Nothing,” you responded. 

You could feel Tamara peeking over your shoulder to look at your phone, you quickly locked it and put it on your lap. 

“Please don’t tell me you’re talking to Jessica,” she pleaded. 

“Alright, I won’t.” 

She rolled her eyes, “Y/N, you know how I feel about her.” 

“Look, I’m just trying to reconnect, what harm-” 

“You know what can happen. You gotten out of that life and now you’re trying to go back? You get Starbucks on the daily, you’re in the cheer team and you go to a self-defense class for crying out loud. You’re not the same girl you used to be, so don’t think they’ll be coming at you with open arms.” 

You gave her a small glare, “Stop acting like you don’t think about going back to see your old friends from time to time.” You got up from the couch, “Maybe instead of focusing so much on my life, you should take a look at yours first.” 

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Tamara asked as she followed you as you walked towards the door, “Where are you going?” 

“Out,” you stated as you walked out of the apartment. 

“Fuck,” Tamara exclaimed. Maybe she should’ve kept her mouth shut, but she felt she had to say something, otherwise, you would end up hurt. But now she felt like she had made things worse. 

On the other hand, you were annoyed by how she was right and maybe you got angry with her out of fear. Fear that maybe your friends, like Tamara had said, wouldn’t be as inviting as you think they would be. You hadn’t just changed through your personality but through your appearance too. You now had someone who would take you shopping for clothes you always wanted to wear, but never did out of fear of them getting stolen or taken from you. 

You acted like a completely different person now. A person who learned to trust a little more easily and you now weren’t afraid to just be yourself. 

On my way over, you sent it to Jessica. 

It wouldn’t take long for you to get back to the old neighborhood, it was a twenty-minute bus ride away. Or thirty minutes walking, but with the Los Angeles heat, you’d take your chances with the bus. 

~~ 

A couple of hours passed, and Tamara had not received anything from you. Beginning to worry had already surpassed, she was the definition of completely terrified of what could go wrong. She should’ve texted Tim or Lucy the second you left, but she wanted to give you the benefit of the doubt, but not the guilt was eating away at her. She let out a frustrated groan and called Lucy. 

Lucy picked up after a few rings, “What’s up?” 

“Look before you start yelling, I was trying to warn her okay?” 

Lucy furrowed her eyebrows, “What happened?” 

“Please don’t be mad, but Y/N was here and I saw her messaging one of her old friends and we got into an argument about it and now she’s not responding and I’m scared she’s gonna fall back into some bad habits, especially because this girl is known for doing certain things.” 

“How long ago did she leave?” Lucy asked. 

“Like two hours ago,” Tamara confessed. 

“And you’re barely calling me?” Lucy raised her voice, but quickly let out a sigh, “Do you think she went to see this friend?” 

“I know she did,” Tamamra hesitantly said. 

“Alright, for now, we’ll just see things out. We can’t just go there all guns blazing when there is no trouble,” Lucy stated. Although, she wanted to go all guns blazing because she was worried for Y/N’s safety. 

“Are we going to tell Tim?” 

“Tim already knows,” Tim announced. Tamara could hear the anger in his voice, and the fact that he never said anything until now, meant that he was indeed angry. 

“Look, just keep us updated, let us know if you hear anything from her, alright?” Lucy said. 

“Alright,” Tamara hung up the phone. 

Lucy didn’t say anything to Tim, she waited until he did, but he remained silent. 

Lucy let out a deep breath, “do you want to talk about it?” 

“Talk about what?” Tim asked. 

Lucy rolled her eyes, “About Y/N sneaking off to see her old friends? I mean, it’s obvious that you’re angry.” 

“I’m not angry.” 

“You’re not?” She asked in almost disbelief. 

“I’m disappointed. I thought she trusted me enough to tell me things, well, I thought we had gotten to that point. Now I feel like we hadn’t made any progress at all.” 

“You know that’s not true,” Lucy began to say. 

“Is it?” Tim cut her off, “because from my perspective, it doesn’t look good. I love this kid and I want to be more than just another foster home for her, but almost every time we get close to making a breakthrough she pushes me away.” 

Lucy sighed, she felt that maybe with her experience with Tamara, she would know what to say, but somehow this was different. “Just give her some time,” Lucy suggested. 

Tim wanted to say that he had given her all the time in the world, but that made it sound like he was giving up, and he didn’t want to give up. He just wished he knew what to do. 

~~ 

You had been with Jessica walking around your old neighborhood for the past two hours, hoping to run into Jacob and it didn’t take you too long. 

From a distance, you can see Jacob at the park talking to some guys that looked to be older. 

Jessica smirked as she watched you stare at Jacob from a distance, “you know he still asks about you.” 

You scoffed, “really?” she gave you a nod, “yet he won’t return a text.” 

“He thinks he’s too tough for all that shit now, he even dropped out of school,” Jessica commented. She walked in front of you, “We should go over there,” she suggested. 

Now that you were here, you had a sort of fear lingering in the back of your head. You knew the chances of hanging out with Jacob meant that you could get into trouble, but that voice inside of your head just wanted to talk to him once more. 

You shrugged, “I don’t know.” 

“Oh come on, Y/N. Don’t act like your main purpose for hitting me up was so you could see him again,” Jessica grabbed your hand and began leading you to the park. That fear within the back of your head was beginning to get louder the closer you got to Jacob. 

“Maybe I should go home,” you began to say. Jacob was only steps away and at the sound of your voice he quickly turned around. 

“No way,” he said with a smile on his face. “Ain’t no way she came back to see us,” he exclaimed as you sighed and walked up to him. “For a second I was beginning to think you were too good for us.” 

You rolled your eyes at his comment, “How you’ve been?” you asked. 

He glanced over at his friends then diverted his eyes back at you, “I’ve been decent.” Jessica walked over to his friends, of course she would know who they were. She was quick to strike up a conversation with them. Jacob took a couple of steps away from the group, gesturing for you to get closer. 

“I heard you’re staying with your cousin,” you began. 

“You shouldn’t have come back, Y/N,” Jacob warned. “You got out and I’m proud that you did.” 

“It’s not too late for you to do the same,” you commented. 

He shook his head, “I’m too deep in this shit.” You knew what that meant. You knew that his chances of getting out of this life were gone. “You really shouldn’t have come back, people know you’re staying with a cop. My cousin knows,” he began. 

Your heart began to race, “Why did you stop texting me back?” You asked. You had to ask before you left, you knew his cousin had beef with cops and anyone associated with them. 

“You left and well, I had to go with my cousin and that meant-” 

“I know,” you interrupted, not wanting to hear him say it. To hear him say that he stopped talking to you not just for your own good, but his as well. 

“You really should go,” he began to say. From the distance you could hear the roar of an engine, it caught Jacob’s attention. “Fuck,” he whispered. 

“Sounds like your cousin is back,” One of the other guys began to say. 

You looked over at Jessica, “we should go,” you said. 

Jessica opened her mouth to say something but was interrupted by the roar of the engine, a second later a car came into view and parked in the parking lot of the park. 

A guy came out of the car and began making his way over to the group, “So the rumors are true,” he began to say. “Jacob’s little girlfriend is back,” He smirked. 

“Hey, Frankie,” you said. 

“Is that all I get? Hey Frankie?” He scoffed before looking over at Jacob, “I need you to come with me,” he began as he glanced over at you, “and bring your little girlfriend.” 

“No, Frankie. You already know she liv-” 

“Did you just tell me no?” Frankie interrupted Jacob. “Do you not remember the last time I had to put you in your place?” Jacob clenched his fists, “or do you need a refresher?” 

“Fine,” Jacob grabbed a hold of your hand, “let’s go.” 

“Wait, what? I-I need to go home,” you pleaded. 

“No, no,” Frankie began, “you’re coming with us now.” 

You felt your anxiety rise within you, this is what Tamara had warned her about. This is what she was afraid of and now it was too late. 

“Jacob,” you whispered to him as soon as you stepped away from Frankie, “Where are we going?” 

“I don’t know,” he whispered. “I told you, you shouldn’t have come back.” 

You remained silent, the best thing you could do right now was to stay calm. 

Frankie drove the two of you two a house down the street, he led the two of you inside, “Dude, what the fuck, why did you bring us here?” 

“I told you I wanted to show the business,” Frankie said. 

“And you thought it was wise to bring her here?” Jacob commented. You looked around to see equipment you couldn’t recognize and powder inside blenders. You knew what was happening here wasn’t good at all, it was a lab of some sorts. A shitty one at that. 

“I want her to see what we’re doing, if she says anything then I know who ratted us out,” Frankie stated. 

Jacob shook his head, “that is the stupidest thing you have ever said. I swear you’ve lost it since you started using.” 

“What the fuck did you just say to me?” 

“Did you not hear yourself? You want her to purposely rat us out, for what? For us to lose everything?” 

Frankie pulled out a gun and aimed it at you, “So then should I just shoot her?” 

Your eyes widen, “What the fuck, Frankie!” Jacob exclaimed as he stood in front of you. You clung to Jacob’s arm, you could feel tears beginning to well up in your eyes. 

One of the guys from earlier came running in, “We got a problem.” 

Frankie sighed and put his gun back in his belt, “what?” 

“Enrique is here and I don’t think he wants to talk anymore.” 

Frankie looked at the man with anger in his eyes, “Stay here,” he told Jacob before walking out front. You pulled out your phone as soon as Frankie left. 

“What are you doing?” Jacob asked. 

“I-I was in over my head coming here,” You began as you looked for Tamara’s contact. 

Jacob rolled his eyes, “Calling your cop dad is just going to get me locked up,” He commented. 

“You wanted me to go, so now I’m calling my friend to get me the fuck out of here,” you stated. You heard a gunshot coming from outside, before you could even ask Jacob anything, he ran outside. You called Tamara, hoping she would pick up fast and that she wouldn’t say a word about this to Tim. 

“Y/N!” Tamara exclaimed. 

“Tamara,” you choked out, “I-I need your help.” 

Tamara face fell, “Where are you?” 

“I don’t know, we were at the old neighborhood and Frankie showed up and he-he’s on something and it looked like he wanted to show Jacob a-” Another gunshot rang outside, you jumped to the sound. You ran from your spot in the living room, you found a bathroom in the hallway. 

“What was that?” Tamara asked. 

You closed the door behind you, locking it before jumping inside the tub. “Please, help me.” 

“Okay, okay, stay on the phone. I’m gonna connect Lucy okay?” Tamara quickly added Lucy to the call. “Please pick up,” Tamara said to herself. 

“Tamara,” Lucy began, “you hear anything from Y/N?” 

“Lucy,” you said. 

“Y/N?” 

“Lucy, I added you to the call,” Tamara explained. 

Lucy quickly put the phone on speaker, Tim was quick to understand what was going on. 

“Y/N, Hon are you okay?” Tim asked. 

Just hearing his voice made you feel even more guilty, you felt the tears fall down your cheeks, “I’m sorry,” you choked out. 

“Y/N, honey, it’s okay, right now I need you to tell me if you’re okay, are you hurt in any way” Tim reassured. 

“N-No,” you stated. 

“Good, where are you?” 

“I-I don’t know. Some house in the old neighborhood.” 

“Y/N, do you think you can share your location with me?” Lucy suggested. 

You placed the phone on speaker as you went on your phone to share your location, “There,” you stated. 

“There it is,” Lucy said. 

“Let’s go,” Tim said as he placed the shop in drive. 

Another gunshot ranged through the air, “What was that?” Tamara asked. 

“That sounded like a gun,” Tim stated as he drove. 

You stayed on the phone with them until they had gotten there. You had hung up the phone once they arrived, You could hear the gunshots coming from outside, meaning that Lucy and Tim’s presence wasn’t welcomed. Sirens were coming from the distance, you felt a little at ease knowing that backup was coming. 

Still, you remained in the bathroom until it was safe. The shots subsided and you heard footsteps within the house. A few seconds later someone knocked on the door, “Y/N?” Tim called out. 

You quickly got up from your position in the bathtub and opened the door. Before Tim could even react, you had your arms wrapped around his torso, he let out a relieved sigh as he hugged you back. 

“I’m sorry,” you cried out. 

“It’s okay,” He said as he gently rubbed your back. “It’s alright, let’s just go home.” 

You agreed, following him outside. You looked around for Jacob, making eye contact with him as he sat inside one of the shops. Tim had noticed, he knew that you needed this closure with your past, “hey, roll down the window,” he told the officer who sat inside the shop. He did as he was told. 

Jacob stayed silent, “I guess this is goodbye,” you began to say. 

“Next time, stay out of this neighborhood,” he warned. You gave him a nod, “And if there is a next time, I probably won’t be as inviting.” 

Tim gestured for the cop to roll up the window, he knew you didn’t need to hear more. “There won’t be a next time,” you whispered as you walked away from the shop. 

“Y/n!” you heard Tamara call out. 

“Tamara!” You ran up to her, she engulfed you in a hug. “I’m sorry for everything I said.” 

“It’s the past now,” she said. “Let’s just forget about it,” she said as she let go of the hug. 

“Tamara is gonna take you home until my end of shit,” Tim stated. “We’ll talk then, alright?” 

You gave him a nod, following Tamara to her car. 

“If there is anything I learned today, it’s that the past is the past,” you said once you got in the car. “And you’re right, I’m not the same girl I was a year ago.” 

“We’re lucky,” Tamara began, “Not a lot of us get this opportunity in life and when we do, we do everything we can to not go back.” Tamara started the car. You knew that you wouldn’t come back to this life, but something within you was going to miss it. Miss the little moments of happiness that made you feel like you had a home, but now you had an actual home. It wasn’t the ideal home, but it was a home and you had someone who gave you a sense of family even if it wasn’t picture-perfect. 

[writingoddess1125]

Still Sexy?

Buggy x FemReader

⚠️ Warnings: ⚠️ Body Issues, Talk of Traumatic Birth, Sexual Themes.

Fluff at the end!

Click here to a magical place <-

Old Man Series <-

• You felt like a total dumpster fire- Staring at yourself in the mirror and looking over the 'damage' that had been done.

• And worse of all- You'd tore really badly while giving birth to your daughters and had to be stitched back up.

• It had been a rather traumatic experience for you.

• Being incredibly greatful for Buggy and your boys who helped so much after the birth since you weren't exactly up for the task quite yet.

• However that didnt mean things were great however. The quack doctor back at the village had decided to leave a lasting mark since he had stitched you a bit excessively..

• So you felt different inside and out-

• You and your family had gone back out to sea after 2 months- Deciding it was best to go back out. Now hitting the 5 month mark since your twin daughters births.

• You'd spent the time trying to be a good mom- Getting up for feeding, helping the boys and even pitching in with Buggy to help him get back into the swing of his pirating career.

• However you and him hadn't been Intimate.. at all.

• Mainly due to the fear he found you revolting in some aspect-

• So you slept in the baggiest pajamas, a pillow to your back or bust to keep yourself covered and whatever tactic you could to keep Buggy from even catching a glimpse of you-

• You hadn't really noticed but- buggy was getting fed up on not being able to see you. So he set his new flashy plan into motion.

• You had just gotten back from a bath, deciding to head down to the bedroom to get fresh clothes from the girls since you knew they probably needed to be changed soon. However stumbled on a rather interesting sight-

• Buggy laid on the bed, dressed the the nines facing you. The smell of apples in the air with the room done up just how you liked it.

• "Why (Y/N)~ I see you've caught me here. Alone~" Buggy said, you noticing the bottles of your favorite wine and alcohol laid out.

• "Well yeah we share this room Bugs- Whats with the new costume?-" You point out, very clearly able to tell even in the candle lit room.

• "Oh just wanted to try out something flashy. You like?" You nodded, It was a nice looking costume.

• He stood up and showed you the outfit in all its glory-

• It reminded you of a bird trying to do a mating dance by showing off its feathers and flashy colors-

• "Its lovely- I actually just came down here to grab clothes for the girls and get them changed"

• "I have Cabaji watching the kids with Alvida they have all beed fed and in fresh clothes-" Buggy said calmly.

• "Oh well I can go get the two of us di-"

• "I brought us dinner-" He said quickly pulling up a full cart of your favorite foods there.

• A bubbling of anxiety hitting your chest at this, worried now over why he was doing this all-

• "Welllll if there is nothing here for me to help with then I'll just head back up to the deck and we can go over your map-"

• "FOR FUCKS SAKE (Y/N) I WANT TO SLEEP WITH YOU!-" He blurted out.

• His face turning as red as your owns as there was a moment of silence in the room. The feeling of total confusion hitting your nervous system.

• "You.. Want to sleep with me?-" You questioned, Buggy nodding his head quickly.

• "But why? I look like this-" You gesture to yourself, still in the way to baggy clothes and soap scent hanging over you from your bath.

• "Like A Goddess herself? Fuck yeah I want to! I've been taking cold showers for months! I even put my dick in a box so I didn't walk around full tenting all day or poking you at night!" He admitted red in the face.

• "You put your dick in a box?-"

• "That's besides the point! I've wanted you for months now. Youre just so sexy to me in every way- I just wanted to give you space to heal up.. I know the birth has been hard on you and all.." He rubbed the back of his neck as he stepped closer to you.

• You felt tears welling up at his sincerity as he got closer to you wrapping his arms around your waist.

• "I just- I feel so damn ugly! My body feels like a foreign land- The weight, the stretch marks, my boobs! It is all so different from before and I don't know how to handle it- I-I didn't want you to be disgusted by me" You admit as tears ran down your cheeks and Buggys gloved hands started to wipe them away frantically.

• "What? No No- I'd never thing that! Your beautiful and- Honestly I was just worried you weren't interested either.. I mean I have but on a bit of Dad weight myself but I don't think you look bad, You've had 4 fucking kids!"

• You couldn't disagree honestly- Maybe you were a bit hard on yourself. You did push out 4 kids.. that and you hadn't even noticed Buggy had put on weight either!

• "And well- If you feel that way about your body.. Why don't we explore it together? I'm a great navigator afterall" He joked lightly, carressing yojr cheek- wanting you to smile desperately

• This managing to pull a giggle from you, Buggy smiling at this as he cuddled you close.

• You leaning into his touch with a happy sigh, while you still felt anxious.. it was better? Like you had someone there to battle it with you..

• You Weren't Alone

• "Well, Why don't we take it slow like before?- Till we both know how to go about it?" You said shyly, Blushing at just how excited he was at this as he nodded.

• "Of course Doll, we can take it as slow or fast as you need it. You're my wife afterall so you control" He says with a Goofy grin as he leaned you towards the bed and going in for a kiss.

• "When did I get upgraded to wife?"

• "....Did I never propose?-" He said confused blinking at you confused. You chuckling and shaking your head no-

• "FOR FUCK SAKES-!" He yelled, his hands floating away to his vanity as it rapidly digs through it and floats back to you quickly.

• He quickly took your hand and slid the simple ring on your finger.

• You remembered this ring- He had once showed it to the boys. It was the first piece of treasure he'd ever gotten as a Pirate Appreciate, gifted to him by his Captian Gol D Roger's.

• "There- Now you're my wife"

• You stared at your hand and the ring on your finger, before giggling at this. Nodding as you kissed his cheeks, a flush of feeling hitting your chest.

• "Yes then- Let's fuck as Husband and Wife then~" You say Leaning into his excited touch.

• "HELL YEAH!!" He said with a crazed laugh. You only able to give a squealing laugh as Buggy tackled you onto the bed with a gleeful laugh.

Bonus-

Cabaji was in hell- He was holding Ari who was making it her mission to grab his hair to pull on it. Bee and Dee who were running around in their newly built bedroom on the other wing of the ship and he had to keep them from pushing each other off their respective bunk beds.

"Don't pull your brothers hair!" Cabaji yelled, Dee letting go of Bee who fell face first on the ground. Bee pausing for a moment as he heard tapping that seemed to echo down the hall-

"Why does it sound like someone is knocking?" Bee asked, Cabaji flinching at his words as did Alvida who tried to hold back a laugh while rocking Ali.

"Don't worry about it kid-" Cabaji said softly as he turned up the Record player that was playing a lullaby to hopefully get the kids to wind down. The man gave a heavy sigh to keep the sound of what he assumed what your and Buggys rekindling relationship at bay.

[creedslove]

BABY BLISS 🍼 - PART TWO

Post outbreak!Joel Miller x f!reader

Summary: after his breakdown, Joel wakes up and keeps admiring your sleeping figure as he is lost in his own thoughts about your relationship and your future together

(this is the second part of BABY BLISS 🍼 and both parts of this story can be read as sequences of SLEEP BLISS 💤, SHOWER BLISS 🫧 and MOONLIGHT BLISS 🌙)

Warnings: angst, age gap, insecure!joel, fluff, pregnancy thoughts, not quite breeding kink but a little if you want to interpret that way, smut, oral (f!receiving), p in v sex, crempie

A/N: I love Joel Miller 😭😍

1.8k words

When Joel woke up later that night, he groaned confused at the tangled memories that came to him slowly as the sleep fog made his thoughts seem so disconnected and far away. He felt your weight against his chest, your warmth, and his favorite scent in the world: the smell of you, your hair, your body, everything. It was sweet, it reminded him of flowers under a sunny day. He smiled softly as he planted another soft peck on your forehead but you didn't even move, you were deeply asleep. He carefully rolled your body to the side, so you'd be resting your face on your pillow instead of his body and got up as silently as he could, he walked to the window and looked out, as an old habit and paced the room. He thought of how he had hold your body close to his as he drifted off to sleep, exhausted from the roller coaster of emotions he was dragged into earlier that day. He could never imagine he would break down in front of you like that. It was a simple task, all he had to do was to hold his niece for a little while. And he enjoyed it at first, she was beautiful, sweet, she was just a small little being full of love, who smiled at him and fell asleep after nuzzling his chest. 

It was too much purity and love for his heart to take and he was immediately taken to a time where he thought nothing bad would ever happen, where he was young, full of life and hope and he had just welcomed his newborn daughter into his arms.

Of course her mom wasn't in the picture, but he loved her with all his heart and Sarah loved him too, they were a small family but they were a happy family. 

And those memories hurt him more than any other glimpse of murder, violence, raiders, clickers. Nothing was worse to Joel than to remember his daughter alive and come back to the cruel, old reality of her death.

It'd been two decades, but the wound was fresh, as if it had happened the day before, and he knew he would never get over it. So what would happen when Flora started to grow up? Would she have the same laughter as Sarah? Would she be just as smart? Would she ask questions the whole day? Would she love butterflies and the solar system and be the most mesmerizing thing he'd ever seen?  He didn't want to suffer in anticipation but he knew it was a fear he would always carry, to have just small glimpses, resemblances of his beautiful late daughter because she was taken away from him in such a cruel way.

Joel was just so confused at that moment. How could he avoid his own niece? Besides, he didn't want to avoid her, because that would mean he would avoid his own brother and his sister-in-law and he would miss out on birthday parties, dinner parties, special holidays. After being alone for so long, he just didn't want to give up his family. 

And then he had you, and you had told him those three words. 

Joel just froze when he heard that sweet bliss coming out of your mouth. 

He didn't find strength in him to bring you closer and whisper to you how much he loved you back, because he did love you very much. Like he thought he never would again and in such intensity he didn't think it was possible. And yet he cowardly kept silent, not being able to bring himself into telling you how much he loved you.

Maybe it was a good thing, he always lost the ones he loved or maybe if you thought he didn't love you, you'd leave, it would be better for you after all, you could find someone suitable for you, someone your own age, someone who could grow old with you and protect you.

But Joel was selfish and he didn't want to give you up, he knew he would never be a good option, you could do so much better than him, but he was also not letting you go, no matter what. Unless you wanted him gone, he would keep you as his like a greedy man would keep a precious stone: forever.

Joel sat on the edge of the bed and watched you sleep peacefully, you were so beautiful, so effortlessly gorgeous at any hour, but there was something about your sleep that made Joel's old heart race. He just loved watching you like that. 

He eyed your body and noticed you'd fallen asleep in your jeans and your boots and he remembered what you'd told him the night you went back to sharing a bed after getting into Jackson.

You didn't have to sleep in your jeans anymore, because the two of you were safe and you wouldn't have to worry about escaping or fighting during the night. 

His hands found their way to your legs, pulling them closer as he unzipped your boots and carefully took them off. 

He also got rid of your socks, leaving your feet naked, massaging them in light touches and kissed the back of it softly. 

He saw how you whimpered in your sleep and chuckled to himself. 

Joel's hand went for the button of your jeans, opening it and unzipping your pants before pulling them down.

He managed to lift your hips a little in order to get the pants off and you were lying in bed only in your shirt and panties. 

It wasn't an erotic moment, he wasn't undressing you to touch you, he just wanted you to be as comfortable as possible, you were his sweetheart, his princess, his darling. He wanted all the best that old man could give you.

He spotted your lower belly and was taken aback by the sudden feeling of affection and softness. 

He closed his eyes and pictured a tiny little dot inside, one that would grow to a fetus and then evolve to a baby, a beautiful lovely baby. One that would have your smile and your eyes, maybe a little girl who would be his forever princess, or a little boy he could teach how to play baseball or play the guitar one day.

No, Joel told himself. It was a dangerous path, he didn't really want a child, he couldn't have one, he couldn't just put you through a pregnancy in an apocalyptic world.

It was madness. 

But he was entitled to dream, wasn't he? And he liked the feeling he had when he did it, how beautiful you were, the glow he admired, how sexy you became while pregnant. He enjoyed that scenario, he really did.

He opened his eyes and stared into your womb again, maybe there was already a baby in there and you guys didn't know? 

No, Joel quickly dismissed the idea, he pulled out most of times… of course sometimes he would cum inside, you both loved it, but he knew you weren't a virgin when you met, and if you other boyfriends never got you pregnant, he wouldn't either. 

Still, he smiled and pecked your womb gently, feeling a soothing warmth in his heart, he loved you, he just didn't know why he was so weak he couldn't admit it out loud.

You ran your fingers through his hair. You loved how soft it was no matter how wild his curls looked. You woke up when you felt his presence hovering over you, how his beard tickled your soft, sensitive skin and then his lips on your womb. 

You had a warm smile and the moment he noticed you wake, he stared at you. Your hands stroked his cheek softly, loving how he leaned into your touch.

"Hey…" you told him softly and tried pulling him up for a hug, but Joel's strong hands held your waist down, so you would be trapped without moving. 

"Hey darling" he replied "don't move, let me make you feel good, you deserve it, princess" you were about to protest but Joel placed a soft kiss to your clothed clit, earning a whimper from you. 

You look down at him and smirked 

"Taste me, Joel… it's all for you" you tugged his hair and pulled his face towards your clothed cunt.

He chuckled at how eager you were and pulled your panties to the side and spread your lips, watching how your hard clit twitched and smirked.

"So fucking beautiful, so fucking sweet" he whispered and pecked your bud again

"Joel" you moaned, hoping he wouldn't tease you. 

And he didn't tease you. 

Joel sank his face into your pussy and ate you out desperately, he ate you out like he hadn't seen your pussy in months. He feasted on your juices, slurping and suckling on your clit.

He made you cum once, twice and he wanted a third one, but you were overstimulated and wanted him.

"Come here" you groaned, pulling him closer and caressing his cheek gently, you pecked his lips, tasting yourself on his mouth and wrapping your legs around his waist. 

You could feel Joel hard, but he didn't make a move, instead, he stroked your hair and stared into your eyes with so much love, Joel loved you, he hoped you could feel it, because he was a coward.

You placed your hand on his chest, over his heart and stroked it gently "I know it" you whispered "I know it Joel" you kissed him again, you didn't want to pressure him into anything. 

He was in awe at you, you were gorgeous, precious, the best thing that happened to him in so long and it wasn't fair if he made you look for his affection, for small crumbles of it. You gave yourself fully to him, it would be only fair if you knew how much he loved you. 

You reached for his belt and opened it, so eager to have him inside of you, as you freed his hard cock and felt how wet his tip was with pre cum.

You closed your eyes as he slid inside of you, stretching you and letting you get adjusted to his size before you could both move your hips at the same pace. 

You couldn't keep your lips away from his, you felt such a deep connection towards Joel, you wanted to feel him whole.

You could see the sweat forming on his forehead and how his neck vein got more apparent and you knew he was close. 

You fastened your pace, squeezing your inner walls, wanting to make him feel good, as great as he'd made you feel. 

Joel couldn't hold himself anymore, both his orgasm and also his words. He needed you to know.

"I love you" he groaned into your ear at the same time you felt his load inside of you. 

He hadn't pulled out, because he loved you and deep inside of him, a side that still longed for a family, for a happy ending wished there could be more to it, maybe a new start.

_____

A/N: I love Joel Miller so much, I wanna marry him and give him beautiful children 🥺

[punkpandapatrixk]

Full Beaver Moon in Gemini ♦︎ Moon Magick Pick A Card

(I’m ultra-sorry for this PAC being ultra-late!! I’ve been in deep, intense spiritual rehab🙏🏻Also, y’all have NO idea how much psychotic psychic ‘opposition’ I was fighting to get through with this PAC! It was plain insanity at this point. If you’ve found this PAC and you resonate, please, PLEASE, take care of your spiritual wellbeing and amp up your psychic protection for next year!)

☆♪°・.

Collectively speaking, the whole of Mankind is being prepared for a massive transformation that, hopefully, will lead to real, lasting harmony and prosperity. It is high time Mankind grew up and learnt to be responsible for the choices it makes in regards to co-Creation with the Universe. Where attention goes, aenergy goes, right?

Every man’s priority and perspective hold the power to shape—and reshape—Reality. For realz. For we are all part of that same fabric of Reality, we are constantly, with each other, co-Creating various spectrum of experiences that affect each other’s wellbeing. It’s inevitable. Your attention is what gives power to the Matrix. If you want to beat the System, you need to learn its mechanism and ultimately, stop giving your attention to Reality creation that doesn’t serve the highest good of all of Mankind.

Full Beaver Moon was on November 27. Its effects can still be felt by most peeps until at least April Fool’s next year (funny). This full moon is second to last before this year’s final Full Cold Moon on December 26, which will be in Cancer; and so the meaning of this Beaver Moon is for us to gather as much resource as possible before the cold winter.

For this Beaver Moon is in Gemini—the sign of thinking and learning—this implies gathering info, perspective, knowledge, intel as much as possible for us to study and digest all throughout winter. Sounds funny but trust me this will be SO relevant by spring next year. The aenergy I’m tapping into is super intense as the whole of Mankind is being ushered into a phase of rapid growing pains that will affect societies on a global scale.

Death of an old paradigm. Death of the 3D Self. It’s all happening. If you identify as a Lightworker or a Starseed, the message you find here could potentially be more relevant to you than most other peeps you know in your circle. You’re in gestation mode. Get ready because spring might be…weird?

It’s high time Mankind learnt to be responsible for its real power of co-Creation. Those who are more spiritually attuned have always had a craving for a freer, more authentic existence. Use this time to rest your heart, your mind, your soul, and let your Higher Self show you the way towards new avenues and grounds for things and pursuits you’ve always felt a calling to.

Even your weirdest hobbies and interests are no coincidence, hon. 2024 will probably not allow anyone to have a stagnant time—for better or worse… But you? You’re going to have a blast! I just know it🥂

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☆♪°・. ☆♪°・. ☆♪°・. ☆♪°・. ☆♪°・. ☆♪°・.

Pile 1 – Spread Your Wings and Fly Away

resource – 3 of Pentacles

I hope you acknowledge just how resourceful you are as a person. On top of that, you’re naturally courageous. If you feel like you’re not that brave, it must’ve been your environment and the people you’ve met that have dimmed that fire in you. It is now time to reclaim your authentic voice. And you need to begin with acknowledging just how much your environment is stifling your creativity and/or originality. It is only by understanding the patterns that have shaped the way you view yourself can you then unravel that false perception that, you could say, was imposed on you.

Don’t kill your inner child to please the adults around you—no matter who these adults may be (they could be your peers if you’re already an adult yourself). When you were born into this world you carried seeds of courage, creativity and invention. All of these are such precious gifts for Mankind. You were supposed to develop yourself as one of the new builders of New Earth. You may have forgotten the minute details of your blueprint, but I know that you know it in your heart of hearts that this is the truth of your reason for being born :D

recollection – XVII The Star

You’re literally the only Pile that’s gotten a Major Arcana. Surely you know you’re a Starseed? :D If you don’t, you soon will. Perhaps your parents know something about the ‘waves of volunteers’ that was quite a topic back in the 60s or 70s? (I’m not duper sure about the timeline lol) At any rate, you have a great destiny ahead of you and it is imperative that you acknowledge this of yourself first before you’re launched into initiation*. What’s that about, you ask?

Many of your latent talents that may still be offline right now will gradually be uncovered for you. Throughout 2024, I’m sure you will experience many awakenings of sort that will propel you into remembering bits and pieces of talents you had acquired in other lifetimes. All of these gifts, are your gifts to Humanity. There is a divine reason why you’ve had to work so hard for your own personal transformation before you could assist others in helping themselves transform their paradigm. OK?

respite – 10 of Cups Rx

It is rather common for Starseeds to feel like the family they were born into, isn’t the family they belong to. Many Starseeds even find themselves look quite visibly physically different from the rest of their family. There’s just something there that seems to act as a bridge between your entire existence and theirs. You don’t think the same way; your moralities totally clash; the essences of your values are worlds apart; and so on. You’re right, these people aren’t the people you’re meant to call ‘family’. Their only purpose is to show you how ‘crazy’ develops in people, all for you to learn to navigate it and put an end to generational curses on Planet Earth. And thus it begins at ‘home’.

I have a feeling that for many of you reading this, there is an elder in your family—a much older elder—whom you could actually talk to, who would be able to share information about circumstances surrounding your birth or the bloodline you are born into. In another scenario, this person may not be older but simply possesses immense knowledge pertaining to your raison d’etre or even Life Purpose. In yet another scenario, it may not necessarily be a family member but rather, a teacher, a divine someone you meet serendipitously, or some random-ass wise Boomer you watch on YouTube who holds ideas and perspectives that make you feel seen and validated.

The period from this Full Beaver Moon until at least April next year may involve a lot of healthy grieving. Let yourself feel those emotions and feel Human. You deserve a safe space to be yourself and see all your dreams manifest. You’ve got this, OK? One day you will be serving the Light by sharing your stories😊

full moon self-care🔻🌒🌓🌔🌕🌖🌗🌘

*I’ve included further technical interpretations of what this ‘initiation’ means for Lightworkers and Starseeds in the bonus content🐛

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☆♪°・. ☆♪°・. ☆♪°・. ☆♪°・. ☆♪°・. ☆♪°・.

Pile 2 – Where Have You Come From and Where Are You Going, Dear Traveller?

resource – 7 of Cups Rx

In your childhood, I feel like you were forced to grow up faster than your peers. Your environment was not exactly friendly to the dreams and imaginations of a child. So you grew up to become practical, pragmatic and responsible rather quickly. But it was really hard to grow up like that because you, the real you, are a visionary. A visionary is someone who has many dreams and wild ideas, and in the right environment, a quality like that would’ve been much, much more celebrated! In the wrong environment, a dreaminess such as that is stifled.

This FM in Gemini invites you to revisit this dreaminess of yours because in your imaginations and daydreams lies the map of your Soul. Where have you come from and where are you going, dear visionary? Understanding your place in the world helps you gain insight about your Life Purpose, so to speak. What gifts have you brought into this world to share with Humanity? What challenges have you come face to face that have shaped your unique skills and perceptions?

recollection – 6 of Cups

Your home environment, your family and society have shaped the person that you are. It is important to understand your ‘roots’, kinda, so you know your strengths and weaknesses when standing in the midst of society. The rich kid from the upper echelons of society will possess skills and knowledge the poor kid from the hood wasn’t fed with. But likewise, the poor kid from the hood will possess perspectives and street smarts that are very unique in comparison to the shielded experiences of most privileged kids. Something like that.

One is not necessarily superior to the other. It’s mostly about understanding where you’ve come from and where these experiences, skills and perspectives could get you. Know your own uniqueness and use that to serve Humanity as you use that to take care of yourself and those you care about. A true sense of success can only come from being useful to other people, for the most part…unless you’re a psychopath XD

respite – King of Pentacles

You have so many natural talents that could make you money, that much I’d like to reaffirm. But more importantly than money, it’s that you have such a strong penchant for true leadership. If you work with your Throat chakra, you could become a very appealing public speaker. You could convince people to join your causes. But to become a true leader of the new world, you must possess good morality, so don’t forget to take care of your Solar Plexus and Heart chakras, so you don’t fall into the trapping of manipulation through speech.

Honestly, I think you are such a good person in spite of all the mental/psychological hardships you’ve had to grow up with. Calm your nerves down and enjoy slow moments with, idk, camomile tea or lavender bath, every now and then? Relaxation practices like breathing meditation, or even just fixing your sleeping pattern/schedule, could help you get in touch with your inner child again and I feel that this is something that will be important for you throughout this winter☃️Everything about your Life will become a lot clearer by spring, trust that😉

full moon self-care🔻🌒🌓🌔🌕🌖🌗🌘

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☆♪°・. ☆♪°・. ☆♪°・. ☆♪°・. ☆♪°・. ☆♪°・.

Pile 3 – Let the Past Die and Live on For Your Soul Tribes

resource – 3 of Cups

Honey, it’s time for you to rejoice. You’ve been through so much disappointment, so much heartbreak, and people have betrayed and abandoned you, and you’ve come through nevertheless. Surely that deserves some kind of karmic reward? Your Spirit Guides, your Soul Family, are applauding you for all you’ve been through. I think you’ve worked hard on yourself. Releasing yourself from past pains, distancing yourself—to the best of your ability—from toxic people and environments, and you’re about ready to serve your Dharmic Purpose.

I know many of you reading this will resonate with having worked on transmuting a lot of generational karma, but plenty of you tapping into this reading have even worked on transmuting geological karma and curses. The geographical location you were born into or the race you were born into, collectively speaking these kinds of things also carry generational curses based on terrible things that have happened on that location. I’d like you to know that you’ve done so much just by existing! You are the magic, the miracle that you’ve been hoping to see in the world🐣

recollection – Page of Pentacles

You’re an individual of many talents, but I’m sure there’s like 2 or 3 things you’re INSANELY good at. Do you know what they are? If you focus all of your aenergy on just these few main talents, you will literally shift your whole Reality to a much higher bandwidth! Try it. By focusing on just these few main pursuits, I sense you will be attracting your Soul Tribes at a much faster rate. I’m seeing these pulsating energetic vortexes that represent you and your Soul Tribes currently incarnate on Earth. These vortexes are spinning and expanding so rapidly that you and your Soul Tribes are magnetising each other into your morphogenetic fields—essentially, your Realities.

You and your Soul Tribes literally have unique missions on Earth and when you meet and collab, everything is going to make sense for you. These seemingly different groups of people are doing things (or exist in industries) that are similar to your own interests and visions for the world. I sense you may have felt a calling to be part of a certain industry and you’ve been studying and preparing yourself for that. ATTENTION! THIS. IS. NOT. RANDOM. You are being manifested by that industry if anything LMAO You have a place there so keep going!🌾

respite – 2 of Cups Rx

With all of that said, let this reading be your confirmation that you can make the choice to die to everyone and everything that doesn’t align with this vision in your mind that you know comes from your Soul. Be a ghost. Hustle in quiet. Don’t spill the beans until they are ready for planting. And when you plant, plant with your Soul Family and not those who are only pretending to be there for you so they can take advantage of you later!

Connections with your real Soul Tribes are going to feel effortlessly uplifting on top of being respectful of boundaries. Interactions and exchanges with your real Soul Tribes are never going to make you feel icky. Trust your gut instinct when you feel that someone you’ve come to trust is probably manipulating you with kind or sweet words imbued with some dishonourable intent. You’re probably right but let’s not take chances; you’ve had enough, so keep your brains about you, too. Best to use this time to build—or rebuild—your world of everything that makes Life worth living🎂

full moon self-care🔻🌒🌓🌔🌕🌖🌗🌘

Access full reading + cards on Patreon🌸

☆♪°・. ☆♪°・. ☆♪°・. ☆♪°・. ☆♪°・. ☆♪°・.

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[am-i-the-asshole-official]

AITA for not telling my partners I'm a system?

💚🐻

To preface this, I don't use Tumblr and I'm using my partner's account, so I would rather ask this anonymously. Forgive any non-tumblr-isms 😅.

This happened a while ago, but to be honest I can't let this go. I feel so horrible about it despite being reassured and I figured Tumblr, who has a lot of systems/people with DID/OSDD, would be able to give me an unbiased (as much as I can give an unbiased account, anyway) answer.

I, (24M), am a system with one headmate, P, (??). (Neither of us are sure how old he is, since it seems to change on the day). I don't want to get into exactly how I got him, but I believe the term for what we are is "traumagenic"? Sorry, again, I'm not really familiar with everything.

Anyway, I've had him since I was 8, and he's been... well, a real pain in the ass, to be frank. I understand now that he's a defender by nature and was trying to protect us, but when you get expelled from middle school for several physical attacks and almost get sent to juvie you start to resent the guy a bit. He's a bit like a sleeping bear, except if the sleeping bear had one eye open and killed you before you could hurt him.

Back when I got out of my abuser's house and went no contact at age 20, I moved in with my current partners, Bonfire (24M) and Greenhouse (25NB) (names changed for privacy, obviously.) At the time I didn't know them, but they were looking for another roommate and I desperately needed somewhere to live.

So I moved in with just the clothes on my back and my wallet (bad move, I know, but I didn't have anything anyway). I didn't care to interact with them all that much, not wanting P to get defensive and attack them for no reason, but they just kept pushing and eventually I relented and hung out with them some.

"Some" turned to "often," and then "often" turned into "sleeping-in-their-bed-and-sharing-our-clothes." At that point I was too far into it and embarrassed to admit I'd been hiding a whole other person from them in my mind. I wasn't sure if they'd even like me after, what with P's history of violence.

...so I never told them. I did my best to forget about anything that ever happened and tried to just enjoy the future I'd always wanted for myself. Bonfire and Greenhouse are lovely people and I was finally, maybe just a little happy. I'd never been a happy person and I was content to bask in it for as long as I was able.

This, of course, backfired immensely. P and I didn't have the best relationship at the time, with both of us wanting to do very extreme things to get away from the other. He wanted to kick me out and be by himself in my body, and I wanted to kill myself to be rid of him. We've since reconciled and made strides in accepting ourself for who we are- it hasn't been easy by any means, but that isn't the point.

I recognize now that he was afraid of being hurt again, not wanting to get out of that survival mindset in case Greenhouse and Bonfire turned out to be super-secret mega abusers taking advantage of our trust, but I also know what he did after was wrong.

He got physical with Bonfire, screaming at him and threatening to kill him if he got any closer. I don't have any memory of this happening, so some details may be incorrect, and I apologize for that. Bonfire, not knowing that P was not, in fact, me, (coupled with the fact that he's a fucking idiot (meant with affection)), he got closer and tried to talk me (him) down. P punched him in the face and broke his nose, after which he ran out of the house and left me to "wake up" a few miles away curled up under a tree.

P left me a note a few days later that said he didn't mean to break his (Bonfire's) nose, but that he was lucky he hadn't done worse. This, in P speak, is probably the most sincere apology I could get at the time.

To try and keep this as short as possible, I'll summarize what happened next. I told Bonfire and Greenhouse about P because at that point the cat was basically out of the bag. They said they'd wished I'd told them sooner, and that they were a little uncomfortable being in the same house as "the lean, mean, stabbing machine" (- Bonfire) but that they were willing to help me manage him if I promised to tell them everything I knew about how he worked.

I did, and it's been years since then, and now P and I are, as stated before, closer than ever. I recently asked my partners whether or not they were still upset with me for not telling them, and they just said that they weren't entitled to my medical history and trauma (which, yeah, but he did break Bonfire's nose) and that they didn't care because, "hey, we basically got a free dog out of it" (- Bonfire), and "we made a promise to love you, including all the less-than-savory parts." (- Greenhouse).

Sweet, yes, but I think I might be TA because, um, P LITERALLY BROKE BONFIRE'S NOSE AND THREATENED TO KILL HIM? AND IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN PREVENTED IF I HAD TOLD THEM?

TL;DR: I didn't tell my partners about my headmate that's prone to violence and he did violence on them and I feel bad.

AITA?

(P says hi, by the way, and he also wants me to tell you that he isn't like this anymore and much prefers soft blankets and eating fruit to breaking his family's noses.)

What are these acronyms?

[lizhly-writes]

hi. we're back to svsss again. i read Asymptotical's Many an Ill to Cure yesterday. There was this line that sort of caught in my head:

If this bit of lore was true, then Yue Qingyuan was married to Shang Qinghua of all people, and that was about the only matchup he could think of that was possibly worse than pairing Shen Qingqiu with Liu Qingge.

and my brain.... ran with it. not for very long, because i really don't have a GREAT grasp of these characters and also i should absolutely be doing something else. but here you go.

At the ripe old age of twenty-something, Shang Qinghua had successfully lied and cheated his ass off to become the An Ding Head Disciple. It absolutely didn't mean his troubles were over -- it was still An Ding, and An Ding always meant backbreaking work, no matter how high up you climbed, and haha also there was still the entire fucking plot left. But at least he had a really nice house now! At least people had to pretend to respect him! At least the System wouldn't keep that fucking countdown clock in the corner of his eye about how he had X months to make Head Disciple before it nuked his brain into a crisp!

Overall, things were going about as great as could be expected!

Except for, you know, this... this one little thing.

"What???" Shang Qinghua said, when Shizun had first lobbed it at his head.

The Lord of An Ding Peak looked askance at him. Shang Qinghua cleared his throat and tried again. "Begging this one's pardon, but... but could Shizun repeat that?"

"You'll be engaged to Yue Qingyuan," said the An Ding Peak Lord.

Yeah, that's what Shang Qinghua thought Shizun said.

FUCK!

This was his fault. Like, literally everything was his fault, seeing how he was effectively God, but this was a mistake that he didn't have to make! You could argue about the violence and the papapa, but in the end, he was speed-writing a stallion novel for money so he didn't starve.

But the engagement.

Airplane-Shooting-Towards-The-Sky had been trying to explain exactly why so many young, beautiful, cold cultivators were so eager to get with Bing-ge, even if they seemed to hate literally any other person ever. He'd eventually settled on the idea that in PIDW, even cultivators weren't truly respected as adults until they were married. In other words, marriage was a requirement! A spouse was a job position! Of course Bing-ge's wives would sell out for the best possible candidate, even if they were ambitious power-hungry snakes without a romantic bone in their body! Especially if they were ambitious power-hungry snakes without a romantic bone in their body!

In fact, even the Peak Lords of Cang Qiong did it! They were even married to each other! Even the Sect Leader! Haha, it wasn't so weird after all!

God. It would have been fine if he left it without explanation. It wasn't even like he kept the explanation -- no, he wrote it and forgot about it, just like how he did with half of the shit he wrote sleep-deprived and running on caffeine alone. And now he was stuck with this.

"Do you have any objections?" Shizun said, and then Shang Qinghua had to go noooo, of course not, Yue Qingyuan was a mighty and handsome cultivator who topped the unofficial rankings for most eligible bachelor on Cang Qiong for three years straight! How could this lowly Shang Qinghua possibly have any objections?

It was super lucky that Shen Qingqiu was too busy being engaged with Liu Qingge to murder Shang Qinghua for the affront.

Anyway, that was how Shang Qinghua had ended up here -- alone with Yue Qingyuan, sitting across from each other and drinking tea. There was a plate of delicately shaped cakes sitting between them that Shizun had heavily suggested Shang Qinghua should make. You know, to show off his culinary skills to his... his fiance.

“Shang-shidi," Yue Qingyuan said, turning a cake over in one hand. There was some muffled yelling in the background. Shen Qingqiu and Liu Qingge were clearly having a great time of their own scheduled courtship meeting session.

"Yue-shixiong," Shang Qinghua said. "Hi."

Yue Qingyuan's smile didn't waver. "These are very good," he said politely.

Of course they were good. Shang Qinghua wouldn't have been able to successfully suck up to Shizun if they weren't good. It had taken a lot of practice! And sabotage! Practice AND sabotage!

"Haha, thanks," Shang Qinghua said.

Faintly, an explosion sounded in the background. Yue Qingyuan's brows furrowed slightly. "Shidi," he said. "Could you perhaps open the door?"