#(in this case it's a little more restricted)

[strayheartless]

Somebody told me you're excellent at AGSZC angst, so may I humbly request your angstiest headcanon?

Oh shit, hi! Totally didn’t scream seeing this. Nope. I’m assuming by somebody you mean a certain well seasoned bird bird we both know👀…

Angst huh? Ooo I know!

(Small warning ⚠️ for allusions to EDs and body dismorphia I don’t go into huge detail on either, but I don’t know your triggers so proceed with caution if needed.)

Genesis is far more similar to Sephiroth he knows or will acknowledge. It’s something that bugs Angeal because if they just communicated better they’d see there is no need to be covetous or jealous of the other. However, they are both traumatised idiots and it is a waste of time trying to force them to talk.

For all Angeal pokes fun at at Genesis about growing up rich, he knows he had a bad childhood. Like Sephiroth he was held to an impossible standard; one that to this day Genesis doesn’t know if he’ll ever be able to achieve. He was ignored by his father and his mother obsessed over vain things such as his weight and the shape of his facial features. Part of what Genesis hates about sephiroth is how beautiful he is, how muscular, how physically healthy and perfect he is.

To Genesis, Sephiroth doesn’t just represent the perfect soldier but the perfect son. So in the early years of being a soldier, Genesis restricted his own meals, read more and more to build a better vocabulary, planned surgeries for his face (that he thankfully never did) and talked obsessively about his looks. This manifests as the Genesis everybody knows and dislikes. The Genesis who boasts and pontificates and has the lexical field of a thesaurus.

Angeal knows that this is largely a cover up for just how insignificant Genesis feels. He knows that the minute Genesis is alone, truly alone, the hatred of himself seeps back in and he’d quite happily rip of his own skin and start anew. Sephiroth understands to some extent that this is the case, but he is too busy dealing with the emotional bruises Genesis’ jealousy and rage cause him that it’s hard to see past it to the hurting little boy underneath.

The fact that Genesis was an incredible inventor doesn’t even register to Gen anymore, but it’s the achievement that sparked the need for approval. His father had looked at him for that. He had said he was proud of him. His mother had not picked at his appearance for once, she had seen her little boy as brilliant… “a real money maker,”. Now Genesis sees the praise for what it was, self-involved. They were proud because it brought them profit, not because their son was clever. He’d felt so angry realising that.

He had everything he wanted growing up. Everything was perfect and just so…. His nannies put up with his silly games and crying over scraped knees, his mother at least existed in his world. His father didn’t hit him so he guessed he should be greatful. He wasn’t experimented on (that he knows of.) and he was safe (to his knowledge.). He shouldn’t want Sephiroth’s life!

And he doesn’t. But he wants his physical existence, the praise the glory. He wants for his mother to look at Sephiroth and say “look at what Genesis is doing, you could take a few pointers from him,”. He wants his father to be Glad it was Genesis they had and not Sephiroth.

He just wanted to look at himself and not want to tear himself apart. He just wanted to not have to be so careful with his physical appearance, his weight, the shape of his eyes, his hair, his… everything.

Hating Sephiroth was easier than hating himself… it’s a shame that hating Sephiroth meant hurting him.

You have no idea how much I have wanted to write that in long form lol. Thank you for the chance to get angsty!❤️

[questioning-culture-is]

Questioning culture is wondering why you feel uncomfortable being called woman, but girl feels nice. You really don't believe in gender and find it pointless, but you like you're fem identity. I'm wondering is it because I don't feel matured enough so woman feels like something a title/label I'll grow into at a certain age?

.

[rebelband]

class was making me sleepy, so I coped with something small

[kumomist]

been in a dcu/white collar kick lately so im rewatching wc and. i remember why i dropped this but also im seeing a lot more of the gay now

[trainsinanime]

I wonder: Do Americans know about american school buses? Not their existence in general, but how they're seen overseas.

Over here, they're one of the symbols of America, on par with the Statue of Liberty, the flag, the Eagle, and well ahead of any chain restaurant you can name. People won't know any US states, but they will know these vehicles.

The thing is, here in Germany, we don't have dedicated school buses. The general idea is that kids go to school on their own. When that's not practical, they're expected to use (and given free tickets for) public transit. Public transit is designed around this requirement; there are many places where there is a bus, and anyone can get on it, but the route and timetable really only makes sense for school children. In case a dedicated school bus is really needed, that's generally subcontracted out, and the lines either use something like a Sprinter Van for smaller routes, or a normal city or interurban bus (often a used one that's a bit older). School trips are normal public transit, or a rented bus, typically a coach or regional bus.

It's not a perfect system, in the past couple of years there's been an epidemic of people bringing their kids to school in their cars instead of letting them walk, which is less than ideal. It is what it is. But building a dedicated network of public transit lines only for students, and building dedicated vehicles only for that, has never occurred to anyone here.

Of course we know about these buses, from movies and such, but they're as foreign here as cacti or pick-up trucks (actually we're seeing more and more of these here) or yellow cabs (all europeans will assume all cabs in the US are yellow until they actually visit).

You do see these buses here at times, because people still generally like the idea of the US, even if they have a lot of issues with a lot of details, and so folks bring them over, along with stretch limos and stuff (also not really a thing here). And of course, if someone goes to all that trouble, they don't do it to haul school kids, they rent it out for city tours or as a party bus or whatever.

So you see these yellow things as a symbol of faraway places, scenic vistas, some vague undefined idea of freedom that doesn't necessarily hold up to any contact with reality, and it's just a huge part of the whole US aesthetic.

And then you go to a student exchange with the US, and you finally get the chance: You yourself get to ride in one of these iconic chrome yellow buses! It looks just like in the movies! You get in, you drive in them a little…

…and you realise they're shit. Just the worst buses in the western world. Terrible suspension. Uncomfortable seats with weirdly high backs (so they don't have to put seatbelts in, they just restrict how far kids can fly in an accident). Everything made out of the cheapest materials. Turns out the reason why the US uses school buses like that instead of normal modern city buses, which the US has, is to save money and because they just hate kids.

And then it hits you why US Americans say "as American as apple pie", a dish that is made and enjoyed literally anywhere in the world, instead of "as American as yellow school buses". Of course the Americans already knew all this. They got tortured by these things forever. It would never occur to them to see this as a symbol of America, it's just a normal part of life for them. It's a symbol of school and school life and sometimes normalcy, and tells us that these actors getting out of it are supposed to be teenagers, nothing more.

But most people in Europe have, of course, never ridden on these buses. So when they see them in movies and TV, that's a giant big yellow signifier that we're not in Hessen or Wallonia or wherever anymore. A symbol of a different world, one that may be at most a once-in-a-lifetime-experience for most people, just like a picture of a tropical beach, Mayan Pyramids, the Great Wall of China, or Hildesheim (there's no reason to go there twice). And I think Americans don't know that, and that's fascinating.

[reiderwriter]

Isn't She Pretty, Daddy?

Pairing: Spencer Reid x Teacher f!Reader

Summary: You're a little bit worried about one of your brightest students recently, so you call her Dad to come in for a meeting. Her absolutely adorable - and single - Dad.

Warnings: the birds and the bees as explained by a kindergardener. Some angst about being a single parent.

A/N: Here's another entry for @imagining-in-the-margins Kid Fic Challenge! Dad Spencer has my heart, and I've been in a really fluff forward mood this weekend, evidently! I think I have one more Kid Fic left to go before the end of the challenge, but we'll see what the will of the fanfiction gods is...

Masterlist

If you were to be asked what the hardest part of being a teacher was, you would, without question or even a second to think, have an answer. Parents. The worst part of teaching is talking to parents. 

Little kids were easy to talk to. They asked questions if they didn't understand things clearly, and they didn't typically say things they didn't mean. Adults were the opposite, and it just so happened that all of your kids' parents were adults. 

Including your most recent problem  child. 

You were used to the kids in your class having some behavior issues - for one, they were kids, it was to be expected that their little bodies couldn't quite handle all of the emotions they were feeling at once. But you were doubly struck by your school area being close to Quantico, meaning half the kids in your care had families with law enforcement backgrounds. 

Absent parents plus growing bodies plus normal kid stress equalled attachment issues, and your problem child Harper Reid was one of your more worrying cases. 

You really hoped everything was okay in the Reid household, so you'd called the little girls parents. She was lovely - honest to god - one of the sweetest little kids you'd ever met. 

Every day she came to school with some older kids and their mom, carpooling on the way in, so you had yet to meet her parents, but you thought that anyone who could produce something that sweet and cute and brilliant couldn't possibly be a bad person. 

You didn't know what to expect, so when her little pigtails peaked around the corner and she came running in, you were momentarily filled with anxiety. 

“MOMMY!” The little girl yelled, launching herself into your arms as soon as she spotted you behind your desk. 

“Hi, Harper! Hi, you must be, Mr. Reid-”

“Doctor, actually, um, but that doesn't really matter. I'm so sorry about this, Harper doesn't usually tackle people.” 

The 3ft tall ball of energy had managed to crawl into your lap and wrap her arms around your neck, so you had to pick her up when you stood to greet her dad. 

“Will your wife be joining us for the meeting today?” You asked, already used to Harper's hugs and general closeness. 

“Oh, no. No, she's not coming. She, uh, doesn't exist. Single father.” 

“Oh my god, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to assume, it's just not on my files-” 

“It's okay, it's a …bit complicated.” 

You took your seat at the desk and gestured to the man to do the same. Finally, looking at him for the first time now that some of your anxiety had died down, you couldn't help but think that Doctor Reid was incredibly attractive. It wasn't one part of his face that stuck out to you as being particularly pretty, just the entire ensemble of it together that took your breath away. Either that of Harper was gripping you so tight she was restricting your ability to breathe, and considering a five year old is not a boa constrictor, this was all dad's fault. 

“So, you said on the phone Harper's been having some problems at school?” 

You snapped your attention back to the issue at hand, searching for the relevant files and pictures you wanted to show the man. Harper turned herself around in your lap and looped her arms around your arm, pulling it in close to use as a pillow. 

“Isn't Miss Y/N so pretty, Daddy?” You froze and flushed in an instant, suddenly so aware of the man's eyes on you. You weren't sure if you were thankful or even more embarrassed that Harper's dad seemed to be even more flushed than you. 

“Daddy? Isn't she pretty?” Harper insisted, and you realized that you both weren't going to get out of this without him answering. 

“Yes, angel. Miss Y/N is very pretty.” The little girl smiled in triumph and nuzzled into your arm even more, happily curled up into your lap like a cat. 

“Hey, Harper. We got a new puzzle delivered yesterday. It's got My Melody and Cinnamaroll on it. They're your favorites, right?” 

The little girl nodded in glee, eyes shining as she hung on your every word. 

“How about you go over to the play area and get it started, and then me and your daddy will come over and help you finish it?” 

In a flash, she'd hopped up out of your lap and wriggled away, shouting a quick “You promised, right?” behind her as she went. 

“I'm so sorry about that, I don't know what's gotten into her, she's usually very shy and-”

“Doctor Reid, it's fine. That's just why I called you in today. Teachers and parents are a team, right, we work together to make sure the kids grow up well, you don't need to apologize to me for that.” 

The man seemed to take a deep breath and nod, to regain his wits about him for a second. 

“Is she… this attached in her regular classes?” 

“Well honestly, she was a bit like that at the beginning of the semester, but she grew out of it after a while. In the last week or so, she fell back into it, and now she's calling me ‘Mommy,’ too. I was wondering if anything happened recently at home that could've led her in this direction, or…”

The man looked a little bashful, but there was a twinge of sadness in his expression that you recognised all too well. 

“Harper, uh, doesn't have a Mom. I adopted her, and it's a long story, but... She's been asking me to get her one recently, because she doesn't really understand all that well? I'm sorry, I didn't know she'd do something like this. I should've done a better job at home-” 

“Doctor Reid, raising a child is hard. It's so hard that humans usually do it in communities, or at least in couples. You're doing it alone, and Harper is already one of the smartest and most empathetic little girls I know. You're doing your job as Dad just fine.” 

The man smiled at you and looked down, quickly wiping away a tear as you gave him a moment of privacy. 

“So. If nothing at home set Harper off, we should probably go and ask her why she's calling me mommy, right?” 

You stood, and he stood with you, leaving his satchel next to his chair and unbuttoning his jacket. 

“Great. Sure, let's go see.”

Walking to the back of the room, you both smiled quietly, looking at the small girl. The 100 piece puzzle you'd guided her to was neatly arranged on the desk, pieces split into edges and centre pieces as she slowly looked at each one with a quietly focused face. Each time she found the piece she was looking for, her smile was bright as she connected it to the small part she was working on. 

“Mommy! Daddy! I can't find the melody's face, can you help me?” 

“Sure, Harper, we'll help you.” You moved to sit beside her at the tiny desks, giggling when the older Reid on Harper's other side struggled to fit himself in the toddler sized chairs. 

Harper assigned you roles, and you all started quietly doing your jobs, waiting for Harper to focus again so you could ask her questions without agitating her. 

“Harper, can you tell your Daddy why you call me Mommy?” 

“Sure! You're Mommy because I want you to marry with Daddy.” 

If you weren't already still flushed from her earlier comments, you certainly were lightheaded with embarrassment now. 

“Harper, that's not how it works-” 

“Yes, it is, Daddy! Henry said so. He said his mommy and daddy were sad one day, but then they were together again and they had a big party called a wedding and now they're happy, and that's why we have Michael.” You didn't quite follow from all the names and the story events, but it was evident that Reid did, so you waited quietly for his explanation. 

“My friend. Her son was at her wedding a few years back. They have another son who is a couple years older than Harper, they come to school together?” 

Your mouth made a small ‘o’ as you slowly filled in the blanks. 

“Harper, you want daddy to have a wedding so he isn't sad anymore?” 

The little girl gave a big nod and a smile, like she was so happy that she was finally being understood. 

“Miss Y/N should marry daddy because he thinks she's pretty. Henry said that was important for a wedding, your mommy has to look beautiful.” You made eye contact with Doctor Reid awkwardly as she spoke, both of you looking away for fear of seeing the embarrassment on each others faces. 

“And Miss Y/N wants a baby. So I will be Miss Y/N's baby, so everyone can be happy!” Harper's kid logic was a little hard to find fault with, but you still had to push back a little. 

“Harper, why do you think I want a baby?” 

“Angie asked you, and you said," the girl pouted, almost frustrated woth habing to answer all these silly questions.

"She asked you why you don't have a baby, and you said that you can only have a baby if you're married and that you wanted to have a baby when you were married. So marry my dad, and I'll be your baby!” 

Harper's smile was so happy and content that you really didn't want to spoil her dream just yet. You continued putting the puzzle together for a few minutes in silence, the full picture nearly being complete now. Harper seemed to fidget a little in her seat next to you, pushing closer and closer to you before tugging on your sleeve. 

You leaned down and she whispered in your ear - though you didn't doubt that her dad heard every word. 

“If you really want, I'm sure we can get another baby like Henry got Michael. I'll ask my dad, but I think it's allowed.” 

The poor man on the other side of the desk had to cover his face with his hands to stop the blush from showing, devolving to just straight up resting his head on the desk when his daughter kept going. 

“A boy is okay, but my dad doesn't really know about boy stuff. Uncle Derek says that my daddy is just a pretty boy with a book brain. We should get another girl, so daddy can be not worry.” 

The more you listened to Harper's adorable family plan, the more you just wanted to squeeze her tight and say yes and give her everything she wanted. 

“Miss Y/N, once again, I'm so sorry for everything, I'll talk with Harper at home about this.” 

“It's okay, I actually find it all very sweet,” you laughed a little and smiled back at him. 

“No, I'm sure your boyfriend would be so uncomfortable if he knew that she was trying to marry you off-” 

“Doctor Reid, are you trying to ask me if I'm single?” 

The small grin that quirked his lips up was nothing if not unfair. He really was a very pretty boy. 

“It was that obvious?” 

“Yep.” You made sure the ‘p’ popped a lot as you both shared a small laugh. Harper looked up between you and smiled, too. 

“So, can you get married now? Henry said you can do it really quickly, like in Grandpa Rossi's garden, and then you can go and do the secret part at home while Auntie Penny looks after me.” 

“Secret part?” 

“To make the other baby, silly!” 

[muu-kun]

What Makes Your Muses Body Unique?

Simple premise. Give 5 (or more) headcanons about your muses' body. Hands, eyes, feet, birthmarks, tricks--anything! Tagged by: @tximidity

Features spanning across the ages: Past (bottom icon) and Present (top icon)

Heart shaped face seen in the detailing and relationship between the roundness of his face around his eyes and the angles of cheeks until they meet to form a pointed chin.

I've discussed it before, but I'm mentioning once more (as well as including an image) the fact he has what is known as clinodactyly. It is isolated to three fingers on each hand-- pinky, index, and ring-- with each one varying in severity from one another. All of which in that exact order. These fingers of his are also all double jointed. The bottom knuckles, however, in ALL of his fingers are bulbous in shape. They curvatures of them fit perfectly amongst each other like a puzzle. The same cannot be said about the top knuckles, though, as gaps surround his middle fingers on each sides.

He has a silly little scar at a place very few can see. One of which acquired from an injury sustained as a teenager as a result of doing something he had ought to not be up to in the first place. In an attempt to climb over a metal fence into an area he'd otherwise not been permitted into, and unsupervised at that, he managed to get comically stuck in his hurdle over it by way of his shorts getting caught onto a sticking out piece of metal. Rather than proceed with caution, he adamantly lunged downwards with all of his effort, slicing through his attire and that of the top of his gluteal cleft to the inches just above it. It isn't entirely noticeable unless one is truly looking in that area, and yet in knowing of it the male can't quite help himself from finding joy in its existence. Especially when considering the fact it acts as his nearly invisible tail each time he excitedly sways his hips as though he's wagging it via an energetic stim.

Another feature he finds to be a delight about himself is the fact he has an outie belly button. He's never wished to cosmetically change it in anyway as it has never caused him any pain or problems. He'll never be able to get a piercing there, no, but that's okay on account it looks cute as a button on its own already. It also rests perfectly within his softened stomach. It is where his fat cells deposit themselves most prominently, and has a tendency to consistently bloat forward due to a combination of stored negativity and a hormone imbalance. Muu always has, and always will, calls it his baby fat.

Speaking of body fat, Muu is otherwise rather lacking in that department as he is generally petite across the majority of his physique. Some of which is contributed to an active lifestyle dictated by consistently walking his dog, going on foot or by bicycle to places close enough to not require his vehicle, or public transport even, routine pacing in instances in which he's attempting to physically regulate out an intense emotion, a whole food diet centered on his entirely vegan lifestyle, and plenty, PLENTY of sleep. Muu's actively in bed by no later than 10pm an any given evening as he for one doesn't like to exist in the dark any longer than he has to, and also because he just is very invested in listening to his body for queues it needs an abundance of rest. Consider yourself lucky if you ever invite him to something taking place after eight pm, because by then he'd ideally like to already he in his jammies with the intention of unwinding and settling down for slumber. His slim frame is also a contribution of an underlying eating disorder centered on withholding food from himself whenever he's under the impression that he ought to be punished for his perceived failures of the day; however, he's growing more inclined to forget such a habit in favor of snacking on vitamin rich treats as hunger and hurt go more together than the version of himself who started up the habit in the first place knew about. He's also taking on the role of gentle parenting himself, which does sometimes mean sneaking himself vegan cookies to boost positivity while negative voice inside his head is distracted. All in all, he weighs an astounding 115lbs / 52kg. Already on the thin side, where one can notice it the most is in his teeny, tiny ankles. Them and his wrists are minute in their circumferences, which isn't entirely of any surprise as both his hands and feet are small for even a man of his stature. Fun fact: both his shoe size and his ring size are that of a size seven in traditional American sizing.

[sunderwight]

AU where there's no system (or a decidedly less restrictive one) and Shen Yuan transmigrates into an OC rogue cultivator before the start of the novel, and decides he's gonna steal the protagonist before Luo Binghe even gets to Cang Qiong.

The logic is sound -- he'll keep Luo Binghe from experiencing neglect and abuse at Shen Qingqiu's hands, raise him away from the pressure of the sects and the likelihood that anyone else might find out about his heritage and try to harm him over it, keep him fully away from the Immortal Alliance Conference, and then Luo Binghe's course will change trajectory because he'll have no reason to want revenge against the world and no access to Xin Mo. Shen Yuan will be able to spare Luo Binghe some suffering and possibly survive in a world less subject to the harrowing whims of a half-mad tyrannical overlord. Win-win!

However, the tricky bit is that he's not sure exactly how far ahead of the novel he is, and also Airplane didn't specify where Luo Binghe grew up. This means that Luo Binghe could be any age younger than twelve and in any number of places along or near to the Luo river.

Shen Yuan decides he's going to approach this by pretending he is looking for the long-lost son of his sister, traveling through the likeliest areas, asking after abandoned children who might fit the protagonist's description. It's a long shot, he knows, and he's mostly relying on the existence of Narrative Destiny. But eventually he is directed by several people towards a particular city, which is not as close to the river as he'd have expected Luo Binghe to grow up, but then again he only knows that was where baby Binghe was found, not where the washerwoman who took him in ultimately lived.

It becomes clear to him, though, that he's been sent to the wrong target. But also why he's been sent astray is apparent in nearly the same breath, because among the slave children living in this area is a little boy who could be his much younger clone.

Seriously, this kid looks just like him! Or, well, close enough. He looks a lot like Shen Yuan's actual nieces and nephews from his past life. It's uncanny.

Also, because of his search, the slave kids get wind of what he's looking for (his long-lost nephew) pretty quick. The boy with the obvious resemblance to him greets Shen Yuan's own assessment with wary cynicism, but he's just a little boy. So it's not difficult to notice the way he's also practically vibrating with hopefulness, half-hiding behind a protective older kid and looking at Shen Yuan with big dark eyes like he expects to be rescued or destroyed with whatever he has to say next.

Shen Yuan has a big problem now. He just knows that if he says something like "actually no this boy is too old to be my nephew" or whatever other excuse, no one will believe him, and also this poor kid is going to be permanently scarred by it. He's going to think Shen Yuan is lying just so that he can reject him. On top of that, he's not in a good situation here. None of these children are even remotely well cared-for.

Shen Yuan's rogue cultivator self isn't rich on the level of being like a wealthy sect leader or anything, but he's made some money since transmigrating by doing random cultivator jobs and quests along the way here. He uses it all to purchase two little slave boys (Do Not Separate), then takes another job and uses that coin to acquire a somewhat rundown manor which used to belong to the local gentry. The Qiu family (rings some bells but that's not exactly an uncommon name) kept it up for a while in case a branch family sprung up in need of a residence, but they've been in decline and the place is downright decrepit, so they had been looking to sell it instead. It's too big for a wandering bachelor like SY to ever need on his own account, but that's sort of the idea. He makes more money taking on cultivator work, at first taking his boys along with him for lack of any alternative. Nerve-wrackingly dangerous! Eventually he hires workers to start restoring the manor, particularly setting up a yard to be a school area, and then starts taking on any freelance jobs he can get in order to steadily buy out the contracts on all the other kids. He gets it nice enough to house and care for as many orphans as he can acquire.

Not because he's a big old softie though!

His story of looking for his nephew is a bust now, since he's apparently "found" the kid. So he's got to change tactics! If he can't find baby Binghe and the washerwoman, the next best approach is to create an opportunity for them to come to him. So once he's got his new household established, he starts offering free lessons to all the local kids. Not just the ones he's taken in, but also any who come by and want to learn some things. It's a tempting setup for anyone who wants their child to get education but can't afford a tutor, and Luo Binghe's mother had been entirely the sort of person who would have packed up and left her situation if there had been an opportunity for it.

On that note, SY also starts hiring single mothers to help look after his new gaggle of children and do the work he doesn't know how to do in these times, like keeping house, laundry, cooking, actually raising kids, etc.

His "little school" is not universally popular. A few groups try and ruin him, because the poverty in the region provides a basis of business for them. The ringleaders of the human traffickers in the area don't want their trade to dry up, even if it means selling all of their merchandise for this round, so when they find out that their underlings let Shen Yuan buy off all the kids they try and intimidate him into returning them (it doesn't go well for them). The Qiu family also isn't thrilled after it becomes clear what he's doing, and get him investigated by the local authorities (read: use their bribed officials and local goons to try and interfere.)

When that doesn't work either the sects get involved, because the Qiu go crying to Huan Hua Palace that Shen Yuan is sketchy and is trying to establish his own sect. So Shen Yuan talks his way around the matter, and frankly the Qiu are small fish even if they're the biggest ones in the local pond, so HHP doesn't care to pursue things much further. (Read: SY could mop the floor with the disciples they sent to investigate him, and it's not worth it to piss off someone this mysterious and powerful just to bully some impoverished children.)

Shen Yuan is appalled by all this bullshit though. Trust the world of PIDW to make it so hard just for a guy to teach some poor kids how to read and do math!

It makes him dig in his heels about it, because he is at heart a stubborn bastard. The fires that once fueled a thousand angry screeds on zhongdian literature site is now aimed at the local magistrate. One of the women he's hired on has some dirt on the Qiu family, which leads SY to dig up some more until he eventually has enough to turn the tables on them. Local officials won't investigate because they've all been bought, but that in and of itself is of some interest to their superiors closer to the palace, and so SY arranges an investigation of his own that goes way further than he thought? Turns out there are some ugly skeletons in the Qiu closets, and the imperial investigator comes down on them hard.

Well, he can't say they didn't have it coming? Though he does feel bad for the children in the family, especially the oldest son, who gets hauled off to jail along with his father. At least the girl is sent to live with relatives. Maybe he should have done more to shield the minors in the situation...?

His kids tell him not to worry about it, though, that apparently young master Qiu was known to run people down in the streets and beat his servants and do other cartoonishly awful things. SY's not sure how much of it is true and how much of it is his little flock of fluffy sheep trying to ease his conscience, though they do all seem to take a lot of vindictive delight in the whole affair. Especially Nephew, who clings to his sleeves and loudly declares that the investigator should have publicly flogged the discredited nobles so that everyone could go watch, and then begs him for sweets as if that wasn't a creepy thing to hear come out of an eight-year-old's mouth. SY just sighs and tells him he can have something good when he finishes his calligraphy practice.

Of course, it's not exactly easy running what is basically an orphanage-slash-school (and maybe a budding sect...?), especially when pretty much all of the kids have been traumatized and faced stuff like rampant dehumanization, food insecurity, abuse, and neglect. Hiring single mothers soon becomes not only a plan to try and lure in Luo Binghe's mom, but an absolute godsend of an idea because SY has no clue WHAT he would do on his own about the discipline issues or emotional breakdowns or acting out that some of the kids get up to once it registers that they're in a safe enough place to unpack their baggage.

Apart from Nephew, SY's favorite kid is the one who came with him, the oldest of the flock of former slave children. He's the big brother of the group, the one who tries his best to look after the others and to not make any trouble himself. But even poor Little Yue is still just a kid who has been through too much, and he also eventually starts having some meltdowns and struggles with processing everything that has happened to him as a vulnerable child in an unkind world.

SY really didn't mean to start a trauma center for mistreated children!

Though, that's still not necessarily a bad thing for Luo Binghe to one day come across, provided he ever actually shows up...

Eventually, Shen Yuan does figure out that he must be ahead even of Luo Binghe's birth, though he still doesn't put together that he's interfered in the scum villain's backstory. Probably something even more amusingly obscure, like the creation year of some random artifact Luo Binghe used in some wife plot or other, tips him off and he mentally throws his hands up in the air. He's got to wait DECADES? Maybe he ought to try and find Luo Binghe's biological parents and just follow them around at this point!

Not that he can, now, though, because he has to make sure no negative IQ villains (who will probably just be cannon fodder for a subplot one day) decide to send goons to literally burn down his orphanage. Also if he's gone for too long his kids get upset. Probably because no one else is as weak to their puppy dog eyes and pleas for treats and toys as he is.

At least it gives him time to shore up his position, and train Nephew and Little Yue more extensively in cultivation. Despite his initial assurances to HHP that he was but a humble orphan wrangler who was only incidentally a cultivator, Shen Yuan does also teach the other kids some basic cultivation exercises. There are a few reasons for that.

One is just the principle of the thing. No, these kids don't all have the potential to become great immortals or anything, but they can still learn some of it and it's good for their health if they do. The only trouble is if they try and push too hard or attempt things beyond their range, and that's a risk with everyone who cultivates. Or even just exercises!

Another reason is that it helps stave off the jealousy that some of the kids have towards those with more cultivation potential. Teaching a lot of the basics all around makes it into just another topic at school. Some kids might not be as good at it as others, but those kids might also be better at math, or memorization, or board games, and while cultivation can open more doors to people as adults, for the children this is generally enough to satisfy their sense of fairness. Or at least reduce outbursts and fights.

Finally, the impression that any of SY's kids might be a cultivator also makes wicked people more reluctant to try and abduct or interfere with them. Cultivators are revered and nearly mythological figures in the public consciousness. It isn't difficult to see why, if even a rogue cultivator NPC like SY* can mop the floor with most random muggers (*Shen Yuan is not a normal rogue cultivator). Not many people want to risk bringing SY's ire down on them, but of those who might chance it if he wasn't around to immediately react, even fewer want to risk that the kids themselves could kick their asses.

Not knowing that only two of the orphans probably could in fact mop the floor with them helps keep all the rest safer, and is more believable when all of them can conduct themselves enough like disciples to fool anyone who doesn't know what to really look for.

Developments that surprise Shen Yuan but wouldn't surprise anyone else who is paying attention:

People start leaving unwanted babies and younger children on his doorstep. Not all the time, but more than once has he had to frantically find wet nurses and worry that he's changed things enough that some fishermen might just randomly drop the protagonist outside his gate, and he wouldn't even know because Binghe would be a literal infant??

Nephew (SJ) and Little Yue (Yue Qi -- only Shen Yuan calls him "Little", especially when he gets taller than SY by the time he's sixteen) are prodigies who get really good at cultivation, really fast, and between that and Shen Yuan's OP skills they completely warp Shen Yuan's ideas for what normal cultivation potential looks like. This would probably cause more problems if he wasn't teaching all the kids how to cultivate anyway, but means his students actually do kinda run the usual range of skills for a small sect.

SJ and YQ swiftly reach the point where they need more advanced equipment than just SY's teaching can provide, if they're going to keep building their skills. Gaining access to certain tools, aids, and materials (like spiritual swords) is a real hurdle though, and usually is for rogue cultivators (one of the major disadvantages of no sect affiliation.) Shen Yuan is hesitant to use stuff from the plot, since it's For Binghe, but he eventually caves and starts going after some things that he doesn't think the future protagonist will miss much. He also ends up buying stuff from HHP, since they're willing to sell things like spiritual tools and weapons if the price is right, whereas most other sects like Cang Qiong reserve them for members only.

They get an invitation to the Immortal Alliance Conference. Not the one where the Abyss opens up, obviously, the one where (originally) Shen Jiu reunited with Yue Qi and killed Wu Yanzi. Shen Yuan debates on going but the boys really want to, and things have calmed down enough that no one's trying to burn down the school whenever he leaves these days, so eventually he figures it'll be interesting to see some of the Cang Qiong characters and should be safe enough if he keeps his disciples close.

They don't run into young Yue Qingyuan or Shen Qingqiu on the trip, but Wu Yanzi does show up and get killed, and SY only hears about it and assumes they just missed all that action. (WYZ just got caught by some senior cultivators who recognized him and killed him to avenge some disciples he murdered.) Nephew and Little Yue do meet young Liu Qingge, Shang Qinghua, Mu Qingfang, and Su Xiyan though! Which gives Shen Yuan the opportunity to tell them all (mostly Su Xiyan) that if they're ever in trouble near his school, they can come to him for help. Hint hint.

This open invitation ends up being accepted broadly by a lot of traveling cultivators after the conference, who from then on treat Shen Yuan's school like a free motel whenever they're passing through. Plenty aren't even people SY met, but it seems his statement was taken as a general one to fellow righteous cultivators all around! Luckily, this has some advantages. Shen Yuan has no qualms running off anyone who tries to take unfair advantage of him or especially his kids or staff, and no shame in conscripting anyone who is decent enough to help teach his students, even if it's nothing to do with cultivating, and somehow word gets around and people start bringing school supplies, medicine, food, or other useful things along with them as gifts to help repay the hospitality. Young Liu Qingge comes by a lot on his way to and from various quests, or even seems to just turn up randomly sometimes (he comes to challenge YQ and SJ to fights), and SY's just like "I guess this is happening now" and teaches him to recognize the early signs of qi deviation and advises strongly against meditating in caves.

At one point a young Shang Qinghua turns up in one of the spare rooms, very obviously hiding an ice demon. Shen Yuan again is just like "I guess this is happening now" and shelters them until Mobei Jun has recovered, and sends a message to Cang Qiong that one of their An Ding caravans was attacked and their disciple is recovering under his roof but isn't well enough to travel yet. Much less stressful situation for Airplane (who is desperately trying to figure out what he did to manifest SJ's benevolent uncle from somewhere???)

Su Xiyan seems like the only person they met at the Immortal Alliance Conference who doesn't turn up at their door in a state of emergency at some point.

A few years later, there is a big scandal involving her and the demon emperor. Su Xiyan disappears, Huan Hua Palace accuses Tianlang Jun of plotting against the righteous sects, and Shen Yuan is even invited to the meeting where they try and rally everyone to go kill Binghe's dad. Naturally, he declines to participate in the witch hunt, but the major sects agree to it. By luck (or narrative fortune) Shen Yuan comes across Zhuzhi Lang on his trip back home, and mentions the ambush and his distaste for it (not knowing who ZZL is). ZZL warns Tianlang Jun and the confrontation goes very differently, especially since there's no Yue Qingyuan wielding Xuan Su.

It doesn't go well for the sects involved. Huan Hua Palace gets decimated. The Old Palace Master gets killed. Shen Yuan is like uhhhh that's... whoops? Didn't Luo Binghe need that in the future?? Fuck.

But the sect isn't wiped out completely, they just take a massive beating. Some of their younger disciples end up leaving and turning up on Shen Yuan's doorstep, for some reason. The manor house is becoming too small to account for all of these foundlings! They have to expand. Though the expansions would be a stretch to term a "palace" they end up occupying a much larger chunk of territory, and even investing in farmland and some storehouses to help support the sect. That's still not really a sect, of course. Even if a lot of the business that would have normally gone to Huan Hua Palace starts coming to them instead. Once HHP is back on its feet the stream will probably dry out. Probably?

Zhuzhi Lang starts hanging around. He's actually looking for Su Xiyan or their baby, dead or alive and per Tianlang Jun's instructions, but he uses Shen Yuan's school as base camp for his kind of hopeless efforts to find any traces of them, while also looking for ways to try and repay Shen Yuan. All the kids are just like "oh great, another weird man has fallen in love with Shizun -- someone go run interference" about it.

Some years later, an older woman and her young son turn up. Shen Yuan's off on a quest at the time, so SJ receives them. As is standard procedure he gives the woman a job and places the boy in classes, after giving him the aptitude tests. The kid is cute and precocious, so SJ uses him to distract YQ while he himself sneaks out to go join LQG on a monster hunt (and claim the valuable parts of the beast's remains for himself), and neither SY nor ZZL notice anything until SY's going over the paperwork for stuff he missed while he was gone. Since he procrastinated, it takes him like a week to find out that Luo Binghe is finally under his roof. He's going over the admission form right when SJ arrives with The New Adorable Child to try and distract SY enough that SY will let him go on a solo hunt -- as far as being distracted goes, it is way more effective than even SJ anticipated.

Then he has to figure out how to let ZZL know, so that ZZL can let Tianlang Jun know, so that Luo Binghe will have more family than just his mom and more resources than just a shabby little not-sect! But even once he figures it out and sets up the dramatic reveal, TLJ is just like "great! so can he just stay with you? he's probably fine there" which... irritates SY.

SJ fully conscripts Luo Binghe as a minion in his many cons. He never lost his street kid conman tactics, although he now uses them less as a ruthless survival tool or weapon and more to just get things to go his own way. LBH has the face and disposition of a little angel, which SJ no longer can pull off as a full grown adult, so he fills a gap. LBH also knows full well what's going, especially since a lot of SJ's tactics involve throwing LBH at SY like a smoke bomb.

Luo Binghe inevitably still develops a big fat crush on SY, so this is fine by him. Especially when he gets older, he starts bringing SY tea and making him breakfast and running his errands until even SJ is like "wait a minute, this little brat's stealing my job!" and by then it's too late. Luo Binghe is SY's personal assistant, the disciple at conman puppydog eyes has surpassed the master! While SJ was busy being like "I'm going to trick this idiot into doing my chores" LBH was going "I'm going to trick this idiot into giving me his job".

SY takes too long to officially name his school so everyone calls it the Shen Sect, much to his embarrassment.

[redafi]

Turns out the secret to comfortably wearing bras is crank up the AC, grab a wired bra thats a little too big and an old bra that offers nothing except fabric (which is very loose because its origins are somewhere along the lines of “somehow migrated into your laundry from your moms”), and wear both. Too loose to impact breathing (at least impact it any more than laying on my back does), does the whole support thing bc wires and the straps have that thing where you can hook them into being a racerback, but doesnt start poking after wearing it for a few hours because of the extra fabric

[gremlingottoosilly]

König baby trapping his online girlfriend on their first meeting in person.

Now, it's not like you wanted to fuck him on your first real date. You're a good girl who knows about the rule of three dates and how to not be a slut on the internet - and in real life, kinda, too. You aren't entirely sure what the policy is if you already had at least ten dates in various games and video chats where you already saw his dick more times than his face. It should count, right? You're not a slut, you're just...a bit assertive. Maybe not that confident. Definitely really, really into him and you wanted to meet for the longest time, but just didn't had time and everything felt so weird at first, so you just began to... He is just so tall in real life, you feel weird even looking at him. He is cooler than he was describing himself before - for starters, he really is huge. Gigantic. Muscular and bear-like, it didn't surprise anyone when you basically jumped on top of him in the first few hours of finally seeing him in person. No one could blame you - he is handsome, rough, and kinda extreme. You finally saw the guy who was showering you in money for the past few days and, really, you don't want to miss out on anything from that experience. You need him carnally, and your lack of dating experience allowed him to go past your alarms when he asked if you really wanted to use the condom. He said it's really hard to achieve orgasm while wearing something as restricting. He said he doesn't really like the feeling of rubber on his cock, and that he is way too big for this. Honestly, his cock does look a tad too big for a condom. You weren't on any pills, but he said it's fine - there is not a chance you'd get pregnant from just one time. He is sure he is like 80% infertile from the service chemicals. He will pull out. Buy you a morning-after pill just in case. The feeling of his cock filling you up with cum is just too much to bear, to be completely honest. You wouldn't exchange it for anything - you love it way too much. Want him to cover you up completely, to take you with him...little did you know that it's literally his plan. When you text him in panic, saying something about missing your periods and asking about the possibility of pregnancy, he would just tell you he is totally fine with being a father. Was preparing his whole life for this. Already bought you a ring and started working on a nursery in his house...oh, you're moving in with him, by the way.

[fiapple]

not to be mean, but if you've never had a restrictive ed or bdd then maybe just stop talking about body checking? 90% of the time you lot have no clue what you're talking about, and as someone who's struggled with those issues a majority of my life, the misinformation it spreads can be really damaging to people who are sick regardless of their recovery status.

(please read op tags before you decide to argue, thanks)

[peachesofteal]

Simple Math / Part Seven

Simple Math masterlist

Ghost/Soap/female reader 4.8k words - AO3 Warnings-tags: 18+ MDNI. Brief suggestive content, sex dream. Mentions of domestic violence, stalking. Hospital setting, nurse!reader. Feelings of fear, anxiety. Mentions of stress and weight loss. Soft dads. Little bit of flirting. Simon is... Simon. You get caught in a spell.

Johnny knows this is a dream. 

It’s an odd thing, to be conscious of it, to know you’re dreaming but still unable to control your actions. It’s like watching a movie of yourself, but also being yourself, directing your body without having a say in what it’s doing. 

He knows this is a dream, because you’re in it. You’re in their home, in one of Simon’s oversized sweatshirts, boy shorts rucked up over the little lightning bolts that arc across your hips, the underside of your cheeks. You’re smiling at him too, like you belong in there, like it’s yours too, and his heart swells, growing to a preposterous size.

“There’s my bunny.” He pulls you into his chest, mouthing up your neck and over your jaw. Your skin tastes like sugar, and when he gets to your lips, his hands shift, sliding down your back to grab two fistfuls of your ass with a groan. “Missed ye.” 

“We missed you too.” His fingers trace the edge of your panty line, barely dipping into where you drip for him. “Come to bed, Si’s waiting.” You whisper, stifling a moan. 

“Johnny.” Simon calls him, too loudly. He wants to hiss, snap at him about not waking the baby. “Johnny!”

His eyes blink open. White ceiling stares back at him, and he turns his head, finding Simon with a bemused look on his face. 

“I was havin’ a great dream.” Johnny grumbles, latching onto him. Simon scoots closer, lifting the back of his hand to his lips with a secretive smile, dotting kisses down to his wrist. 

“I know.” 

 “- and he has access privileges, as long he’s not interfering with care, he’s allowed to be in the room whenever he deems fit. Obviously, in cases where he shouldn’t be, like burn debridement, he’s fine with stepping out, but you should expect him to sleep here.” The nurse nods, nervously peeking over your shoulder at Simon, who’s lurking in the hallway, staring through the glass at the transport techs getting Johnny settled in his room. You catch her eyes, motioning to redirect her attention, and she mumbles a meek apology. “They have a daughter, who Johnny has been mostly separated from since he got here, and he’s hoping to see her often, since she’ll be allowed to visit more freely now. I told him it wouldn’t be a problem.”

“Okay.” Her toes tap against linoleum, weight shifting from foot to foot, and you resist the urge to sprint back to her boss and demand someone else. Fuck. Why does Nora have to be on maternity leave? 

“This is my favorite patient.” You warn her instead, dropping your voice low, pitching it brazenly serious. “I don’t ever want to see him back upstairs again, and that’s going to depend a lot on you.”

“Okay, okay.” Her work phone rings, and you jerk your head in dismissal, not quite finished, but not seeing a need to continue to harangue her, either.

Simon glances at you from down the hall, head turning once you’re alone. He doesn’t speak, doesn’t call to you, or say your name, but you’re helpless to the magnetic yank of his presence, a beam of gravity dragging you closer until you’re shoulder to shoulder, looking into Johnny’s room. He’s asleep, dark lashes feathered against his cheeks, blissed out and nearly snoring. “This will be great.” You say quietly. “He can see Penny almost as much as he wants down here. There are far less restrictions, and he’s doing so well, there’s nothing to worry about it.” He doesn’t say anything, just watches you with the x-ray vision that peels you open. Like he’s digging around in your head again.

“D’you have a minute?” You blink at him, graceful words dried out and missing.

“Uh, I… yeah, I’m technically off now so. Sure?”

“Have a tea with me? I’ll meet you outside the café, on the patio. Ten minutes alright?” Have a… have a tea with him? 

His eyes are heavy. They’re lasered, locked onto yours, brows knitted together in something soft, some form of emotion that you don’t understand, framing his face above the mask. How can you say no? 

“Okay, sure. Ten minutes.” You try to hide how your hands shake, tucking fingernail to palm, squeezing tight.

It doesn’t escape him.

You grow more afraid with each day, that nothing does.

The paper cup cradled in Simon’s outstretched grip is like every other paper cup you’ve seen before, drank from a thousand times, with steam wafting from its rim and aromatics spilling out into the air. “Sorry.” You blurt, reaching. His fingers brush against yours, warm contact momentarily stunning you. ‘Thanks.” You lift the tea to your nose, inhaling deeply.

Irish breakfast. With milk. Your favorite. 

“How do you know what tea I drink?” You don’t mean for it to sound so suspicious, or aggressive, but it does. It’s nearly accusatory, but doesn’t affect him. He merely shrugs in response.

“I pay attention.” An engine turns over in the carpark, a small car sweeping across the lot as it turns out onto the street. You watch, feigning mild interest, trying to get a closer look at the driver without appearing too fixated. “So.” He sips, and then removes the lid, vapor rising from the top in a delicate little dance. “How long have you been at Addenbrooke’s?”

“A few years.” The answer is effortlessly supplied, like you’re under a spell. Your eyes go round. What are you doing? Crow’s feet crinkle at the corners of his own, and you manage a shaky smile.

“What brought you across the pond?” He jokes, velvet, soothing lilt in his voice.

“Work.” It’s easy to lie about this, the fabrication usually used in casual conversation almost every day with patients and new coworkers, people who are interested in you being from somewhere else, having a different accent, different education, customs, the whole lot. His jaw moves behind the mask, and before he can push the question further, you rush out your own interruption. “Simon, I want… I want to talk to you about something.”

“Sure.” He nods. “What’s on your mind?”

“It’s… the other night Johnny said something about,” Your face is nearly scalding, embarrassment laden lump stuck in the back of your throat. “about you and him, and… me, I guess…” you trail off, eyes darting down into the tea.

“Go on?”

“He said that you guys think I’m special, and you- you said-“

“That we’re here for you.” He finishes, nonchalant.

“Right.” You breathe a little easier, knowing he knows what you’re talking about, words picking up steam. “I want you to know that it’s totally normal to feel this way. It happens a lot, you know. Patients and, or their family members, loved ones, they get attached. This affection starts to happen towards a member of the care team because we become that person who… provides care, twenty-four seven. So, you and… and Johnny, feeling like you have this attachment towards me, it’s very normal. Not a big deal.” You finish in one big breath, cutting your ramble short. His cheeks swell behind the fabric, like he’s smiling, eyes squinting again.

“That’s not what this is.” That’s not… what this is? What does that mean? 

“What?”

“Transference. That’s not what is happening here.”

“How do you…”

“I’ve had years of therapy.” He sighs. “Are you uncomfortable?” Say yes, the girl in your head screams. Tell him you need it all to stop. That you don’t like them, that it’s inappropriate. You know how this will end. 

“No.” You don’t know why you don’t acquiesce to your own good sense, why you ignore the very clear boundaries and rules that have kept you alive this long.

“Bunny, I need you tell me, honestly, if you are uncomfortable.” He levels you with an intense look, seriousness bleeding from his irises to yours. You press your palms flat on the table, quelling their trembling.

“It’s not… it’s not you. Or Johnny.” You whisper, eyes slipping shut. It’s easier that way, to just close them, to hide. To pretend you’re somewhere else, to block everything out.

What the fuck are you doing right now? Your brain screams, but your heart wails.

What is it like, to be loved like that? To be known like that? To be held in someone's heart, cherished and protected? 

“Sweetheart,” Simon’s voice is low, calming, and when you don’t answer, one of his hands folds over yours. “are you with me?”

“Yes.” You peek at him, and then fully let yourself look around, steadying the rancid fear that permeates through your body. “Sorry.”

“You don’t need to apologize.” He hums, hand still over yours. It’s warm, and broad, big thumb stroking a slow circle into your skin. “Is today your Friday?” You nod.

“It is, yeah. I’m… I’m looking forward to catching up on some sleep.” He straightens in the chair, shoulders and torso so unbelievably wide, like a long forgotten mythological god. Or the trunk of a massive tree.

“Will you have dinner with us, tonight?” The last of the orange red dawn spills over the crest of the buildings, and the world spins, cold sweat breaking out down your back. 

“What?”

“Dinner, with us. I’m picking up takeaway for Johnny from his favorite place as a celebration, for graduating the ICU. We’d love to spend some time with you. Get to know you, if that’s alright.”

“Oh, I…” Say no, you have to say no, shut this down. It’s too much risk. 

“No pressure. Just, hanging out, talking. As friends, if you like.” Butterflies thrash in your stomach so violently your knees bounce, and your heart leaps, pitching itself off a cliff like it wants to die.

“Okay.”

“Great. I can pick you u-“

“No! No, I’m fine. I have some errands to run after I get up for the day so, I’ll just meet you here.” It will be just like going to work. No harm, no foul. You can hang out with them, and go home, just like you’re at work. It doesn’t mean anything. It won’t. 

You barely sleep. You pace, you nap, you thumb through endless craigslist listings in faraway cities for apartments, you read. You take the long way through the city back to your flat and slowly sift through pieces of your life that you want to keep. Your quilt from home, that’s been tucked away on a shelf. A sentimental trinket that belonged to your mom, also hidden in a drawer. These things that can be removed, without being noticed.

Not that it matters.

He hasn’t been here. Not since the sick shit he pulled with your underwear. It makes you curious when you inspect the undisturbed tape on the back side of the door, the light dusting of baking powder on the bedroom carpet, but not surprised.

It’s not unlike him, to make himself known and then suddenly disappear, the endless mind games partially intentional, and partially something not even he can control.

After all, duty calls.

He could still be in the city. He could still be watching. You don’t know anything for sure.

“Three things you cannot outrun in this world, babe. Death, taxes, and… me.” You mumble it to yourself, the same words that live in your head, in his voice, repeated, pulling a pair of scrubs from your dresser.

But you had been running, and still had your life to show for it.

It doesn’t matter, you know how this will end. 

You’ve changed your clothes five times. You hem and haw in front of the mirror, trying not to look too closely at any one piece of yourself, switching shirt and pant combos until you finally settle on your usual, a pair of jeans and a long sleeve shirt. They’re high waisted, because low rise is not even within the realm of possibility for your hips, and you appreciate how they fit, even if they may sit a little loose right now, given your recent stress levels.

You look fine, you decide. You look professional. You don’t really look attractive, in any way, but the scars on your torso are hidden, and with a little bit of make-up, you think you look presentable. At the very least, you don’t look like you’re half asleep, which is exactly how you feel.

Not like it matters, you chide. This isn’t a thing; it’s just hanging out. You’re going to put an end to this entire charade, tonight.

The train is quiet, and you’re extra watchful. Every face, every movement is logged, every jacket or hat or hood is inspected. Posture, skin tone, height, of every person you pass or see is tabulated and run through your mind. Your brain, a supercomputer in its own right, does it all, seamlessly. It wants to protect you, it keeps you on guard, it can look at a crowd of twenty people all facing the opposite direction and locate a potential threat, just by the shape of the shoulders.

You don’t see him, you don’t feel him, your skin doesn’t prickle, and you let the lack thereof bring you peace, if only for a few moments.

Johnny’s floor is bustling. You wave hi to those you know, checking in with his nurse for a moment, letting her know you’ll be hanging out for a bit. She doesn’t even bat an eye, thankfully, and you try to settle yourself as you turn down the hall.

You’re not prepared for what you find when you knock on his door and slide it open, breath catching for a moment, and you scramble to cover your initial balk.

Their daughter is here. She’s cuddled up on Johnny’s good side, the one without the burnt tissue or recovering surgical wound. She’s asleep, wearing a black onesie covered in skulls, her head tipped back and mouth open, chubby cheeks and sweet little face perfectly content. She’s got her entire fist wrapped around one of Johnny’s fingers, holding it right under her chin like she’s afraid he might vanish while her eyes are closed. “Hey, bun.” Johnny whispers, smiling so wide, two fingers stroking through the wispy curls on top of her head. “We snuck in a visitor tonight.”

“I see.” Your heart trembles.

“Fell asleep right away, next to her Da. Been missin’ him these past few nights.” Simon chuckles, patting Johnny’s leg gently, affectionately. There’s a bag of take out on the table behind him, as well as what looks like an overnight bag, a purple duffel stuffed full. “Price is on his way to pick her up.” Penny gurgles, eyes blinking open in a sleepy daze like she knew they were talking about her.

“Ye’re alright, sh-shh, wee lamb.” Johnny coos. She’s half soothed by his words, but the lights in the room are far too bright, and her small noises waver into a cry, frustrated and tired. He tries move her, cradler her higher up his chest, but his face falls with pain, and Simon swoops in, pulling her into his arms. “Bunny, could ye-“

“Would you-“ They both try to ask at once, and you flounder once you realize the intention, a cranky, sleepy Penelope being pushed into your arms.

“I-“ she wails, interrupting you, bending you to her will without fuss, and you hold her closer, rocking side to side, humming above her ear. Just like the NICU, like a patient, like your stint in L&D, it’s fine, it’s-

“Sorry, sweetheart.” Not fine. It’s not fine. Heat burns in your belly. He can’t call you that, not when you’re holding their baby. “Thank you.” Simon says over his shoulder. He’s moving Johnny, lowering the bed slightly to help reposition him, and they speak quietly to one another, voices low enough you can’t make out any of the words.

“I can help you with him, if you want.” He waves you off.

“I need the practice, won’t have you around all the time anymore, yeah? And once he gets home…”

“Ach. ‘m not paralyzed. Jus’ uncomfortable.” Johnny glowers, pouting, and you roll your eyes, rhythm steady, gently bouncing, letting Penny cuddle into your chest, snuggling her face against your arm and side. She’s beautiful, precious and sweet, cooing herself back into a light slumber, and you smile despite yourself, still rocking after her eyes start to shut. “Knew she’d like ye.” He says softly, and you glance up, surprised by the intensity of their focus, heavy gazes fixed on you.

“She’s very sweet.” Your lips twist.

“She is.” Simon agrees. “We were happy to get her some time with her Da. Good for both of ‘em.” His fingers find Johnny’s cheek, and then their hands meet, a palm pressed to lips, a whispered a I love you. 

An intimate moment, as you stand there with their baby in your arms.

“Alright, now that ye’ve done the hard work by gettin’ her back down,” Johnny gestures, urging you to step forward, and you carefully place her back in his arms. For a moment, your faces are level, and you get caught in his eyes, nerves strung so tight they could be a tightrope. “I’ve got her.” Weeks in the hospital, and he still smells like cedar and oranges, woodsy citrus that envelopes you, your lashes fluttering on the inhale. “She likes ye.” He murmurs, breath warm and tickling over your cheek.

“Well, she’s...” you straighten, hands smoothing down the front of your top. They’re moist, somehow, and you tuck them behind your back. “She’s a good judge of character, I guess.” Simon’s phone vibrates, Johnny’s plush smile turning dour, and he sighs.

“Okay baby girl. It’s time.” She cries a little, readjusting to Simon’s hold, and he slings the purple duffel over his shoulder, promising to be right back. Johnny nods, eyes downcast, and his face twists once the door shuts, cheeks turning red, staccato, hiccupped breaths coming fast.

“Hey.” You whisper. “Hey, Johnny.” The chair at his bedside creaks under you, and you lean forward, fingertips lightly caressing the tape residue that still sticks to his skin. You should clean that off. 

“’m alright.” His shoulders roll, chin jutting out, brilliant blue gleam in his eyes returning, like storm clouds rolling off after rain. He’s silent for a beat, pinky finger folding over yours. “How was yer day?”

“Oh, it was… fine.”

“Simon said ye were goin’ to catch up on some sleep?”

“Yeah, I didn’t.” You laugh, and he smiles. “I feel okay though. Still awake at least.”

“I’m glad… ye came. I’m sorry if the other night, I was too… forward.”

“That’s okay. You’re just… so flirty, I don’t even know what to do with myself.” You tease, expecting to get a lighthearted quip in response, or a laugh, but he gives you neither, only a serious, sympathetic expression.

“I didnae mean to make ye uncomfortable. Felt terrible, when ye ran off, I-“

“I’m fine, Johnny. You… you didn’t. I mean, it was just… confusing, this is… this is a lot.” He nods.

“I know it is.”

“And you don’t even know me.” His brow creases, focus narrowed in so tightly on you, white walls, white hospital blanket, white everything falling away in a spiral of color.

“I know ye better than ye might think." He cracks a smile. "We want to, if ye’d let us.” No, you don’t. You almost say it. Almost promise him that knowing you would be the stuff of their nightmares, that they have no idea what they’re trying to bite into, or bite off, a near guarantee that it would be than they could chew.

“Well, no harm in making new friends, right?” You entreat weakly, and his eyes flash, ethos of an entire life that you have no knowledge of slipping through, and the dark severity rumbling in his gaze sends a shiver down your spine.

“Aye, bun. Especially when they look like ye in a pair of jeans.” 

Dinner is an idyllic affair. Johnny’s favorite takeaway turns out, is Indian, like yours, and the three of you talk for hours, trading bites back and forth, laughing and listening to stories, discovering little bits and pieces about their lives while running interference on personal questions about yourself, allowing them to dip in skin deep, skimming off the top but never getting further. They tell you about themselves, Penelope, their jobs, how they met, and Johnny confides in you about his sketchbook collection, pages upon pages of charcoal and pencil line work, portraits of Simon and Pen covering each page, landscapes, and the occasional cartoon. Your spine eventually starts to wilt, muscles liquifying into goo that can barely hold you upright, and you curl up in the armchair, chin on your palm, listening to the ebb and flow of their voices as they tell you a particular story about how they came to find their current home, a near slapstick comedy about an interaction with the previous owner. Their voices soothe your restless mind, wrap you in a cozy embrace that feels so safe, so comfortable that you can’t fight the languid, siren call of sleep, eyes drooping into darkness, drifting away on their melodies, content and too tired to rationally put together what’s happening. At some point, something covers you up, knit warmth that is tucked in around your shoulders, your feet, a tender touch on your neck and cheek. A whisper of affection soothes the unease that lurks in the background of it all, and you fall into it lazily, farther into the hold of sleep, something your brain and body are desperate for.

When the lights go dim, you don’t even realize, already lost to the sand of slumber.

Around midnight, you wake with a start. Your heart is racing, triple timing in your chest, and you squint in the dark, trying to parse together where you are, what happened.

Oh no. Oh god, did you fall asleep on them? Did you fall asleep in Johnny’s room? 

Simon calls your name. He’s settled in a recliner, head turned your direction, mellow light from the little lamp spilling across his features. “Are you alright?” Your mouth is dry, the web of sleep that holds you in suspension finally starting to wane, fuzzy clouds in your head trying to clear without much luck.  

“How long was I out?”

“Four hours.”

“I’m so sorry.” He shakes his head.

“Wanted to let you sleep. I know you were tired, and Johnny was out almost immediately after you.”

“Th-thanks.” Your back groans, muscle and bone grinding together, stiff from sleeping in a cramped position for hours, and you’re surprisingly unsteady on your feet. Simon’s out of his chair in a second, turning around the end of Johnny’s bed to offer you a hand, his other lightly resting between your shoulder blades.

“Easy.”

“Sorry… just… think ‘m more tired than I realized.” It’s dark, and you’re disorientated, woozy, tongue stuck to the roof of your mouth, limbs and lids still heavy and desperate to fall back asleep.

“I’ll drive you home.” His keys jingle, and you know you should reject him, refute this presumption, push him off, but you can’t string the right words together in your mind, can’t bring yourself to truculently pull away.

So, you don’t. And to your surprise, your shock, it feels… nice. You let him open the door for you, get you settled, you listen to his music on the way, city flying past outside the window, quiet hour of the night crawling by. You let him help you out of the car when you pull up to the curb, and when he asks if he can walk you up, your rational pugnacity is nowhere to be found.

“This is me.” You gesture to the door, fumbling in your wallet for your keycard.

“How long have you been in the hotel?”

“Oh, not long. Reno just started so…” His head turns, surveilling the hallway. You’re in an end room, far from the elevator but close to the stairs, as requested, and there’s a camera that sits on the ceiling, green dot consistently blinking. He glances at it, then back to you, head tilted.

“Are you safe here?” The world goes cold. Your stomach roils, blood draining from your face, and you try to hold yourself steady, mind turning over a million times. You’re overreacting. He’s just asking in a general sense. He doesn’t know. He couldn’t. Breathe. Deep breath. 

“I uh, yeah. It’s got a deadbolt.” Along with a door stop alarm, and a security bar. He steps closer, so close that you can smell him, fresh laundry and musk, something spicy lingering there, something dark and enchanting.

“Are you in trouble, little bunny?” You’re in his shadow, beneath the stretch of a mountain, shielded by it, by a monolith so large it could blot out the sun. It overwhelms you, slows the racing pace of your mind, and you try to sort through the merry go round of feelings that are all trying to push their way out of your mouth.

You’ve never felt this. Never felt this… desire, to entrust someone with your life. Never felt this… attraction, this hold that the two of them have on you.

It makes you want to trust them. Makes you want to lay it all out and beg them to help you. Makes you want to close your eyes and leap, praying they’ll catch you.

It’s wicked. It’s dangerous. It’s a fool’s errand.

It’s unfair. 

“No.” You whisper. You can’t look at him, and time slows in the silence, your anxiety piquing. Of course, he would assume something is wrong, after witnessing the panic attack. Don’t read too far into it. 

“But you wouldn’t tell me if you were, would you?” He’s pragmatic, yet still kind, watching you with intent. It doesn’t allay any of the stress that’s building up the back of your throat and closing it, cutting you off from the oxygen you desperately need.

After an eon, he sighs.

“Okay, sweetheart. You can keep your secrets. For now.” You choke. 

“I… I should probably-“ you jerk your head towards the door, half turning away to swipe your keycard.

“Alright.” He moves carefully, dipping low, and you stand immobilized, confused and quivering as his cloth covered mouth presses a slow kiss to the top of your head. It’s like he’s bewitched you, cursed you, and you can’t do anything but stand there, stunned. “Thanks for coming tonight.” You’re a deer in headlights, a rabbit in a scope.

“Simon.” His name is the only thing you know right now, and it comes out reedy, almost a squeak.

“Get some rest. We’ll text you tomorrow.” He pushes the door wide, arm snaked behind your shoulders, and when you don’t move, he urges you forward, an encouraging hand on the small of your back. Your feet blindly stumble through the motions, searching for the light switch, for your sanity. “Goodnight, bun.” He hums, and the door clicks shut, leaving you alone, staring at the beige-yellow paint on the wall.

The afternoon trains are packed. It makes your skin crawl, not because you dislike busy or hectic places, but because there are too many eyes. You force your head to stay up, casually scrolling past the faces that are turned every which way, keeping your back to a corner or window as often as possible. You’re not sure you even needed to take this route, the one where you loop around and change trains twice, but… old habits die hard.

You’re lighter today, mentally. It’s in your steps on the stairs, the way you tilt your face up to the sun, how you bounce and bob a little along to the rhythm in your headphones.

You try not to read into it, too much. You tell yourself it has nothing to do with the good morning text messages from Johnny and Simon, or the hilarious back and forth between them after Simon sent a god-awful joke to the group chat. It has nothing to do with the heat that spreads through your fingers to toes when you think about Simon last night, kissing your forehead.

You slip inside your apartment, popping your headphones free, glancing at the tape and the door jam, before setting your bag on the counter. You idly sort through some mail you left out the other day. Junk, junk, junk, nothing taxing or important, nothing work related or-

A shadow moves. It flickers against the wall by your bedroom, growing larger, stalking closer to the kitchen, to where you stand, frozen, heart pounding in your ears. 

This can’t be real. This can’t be happening. 

“Hey there, sugar.” He croons, the thick, Texas accent unmistakable, and you breathe his name in horror.

“Phillip.”

[psychoticallytrans]

There's this idea, fairly common in society, that mental illness is for teens and up. Children are happy little creatures, generally, right? Sometimes they're abused and the trauma can make them mentally ill, but that's not common.

There are two fundamental problems with this attitude. One, it's incorrect to assume that trauma is the only reason a young kid can be mentally ill. Two, trauma is more common than people think. I'll be covering the first problem in this post through the lens of my particular experience.

Where I live, you can be diagnosed with bipolar disorder at 18 years old. You cannot be diagnosed with bipolar disorder as a minor. This poses a problem because my age of onset was in first grade, roughly six years old. Because of the fact that I was very young and new to the world, this was also the age of my first suicide attempt. Thinking I wouldn't be able to pass a spelling test genuinely felt like something worth trying to die over. So, I ate some hemlock, since I'd read about Socrates being killed with it. Luckily, I ate western hemlock, an unrelated species, and just felt kind of sick.

I'm not recounting that for fun or pity. I'm recounting it because children with mental illness are in genuine danger because they have little to no experience with managing their emotions, have little to no concept of the idea that their life can change and improve, and are dismissed by adults. I told a teacher that the test made me want to die, though not that I'd attempted to, and it was brushed off as little kid hyperbole. If I had used a method that was effective rather than one I thought would be, I would have been dead at six years old.

I would not receive medication that worked even a bit for another two years. I would not receive treatment for bipolar disorder specifically for ten years, and that required my PCP fudging the reason for the medication because she was afraid I would die if she didn't, and diagnosis was still two years off at minimum. I received a formal diagnosis at age 19, thirteen years after onset.

But surely that's uncommon, right? This story is a huge edge case, right? I actually have no idea, because age of onset and age of diagnosis are massively conflated for most disabilities. Policies like the one in my area that restricted bipolar diagnoses by age can artificially raise the age of "onset", in my case by thirteen years. The general idea that children are somehow immune to mental illness can also delay diagnosis by several years, perpetuating the idea that young children can't be mentally ill. The data on when people start experiencing mental illness is inherently skewed upwards, and I frankly don't have a good estimate on how bad that skew is. If anyone does have that data, please chime in.

Listen to children. If they're saying they're sad all the time, that they don't care about anything, that they don't see a future for themselves, those are signs of depressive symptoms. If they say that tests make them feel sick, that they can't do anything because they're scared, that they can't breathe and freeze up, those are signs of anxious symptoms. Many children talk about imaginary things, and that's just fine, but slip in a question or two about them to make sure that the kid is just playing, and not experiencing psychosis.

Children are new to the world and vulnerable, and they don't know what's normal and what isn't. They need people who are more experienced watching out for problems they might be having, and listening when they talk about having problems. If you can, try to be the person who perceives them, and tells them that things can be better.

[crispy-armpit]

✧ 𝖒𝖞 𝖕𝖊𝖆𝖗𝖑 ✧

ʏᴀɴᴅᴇʀᴇ ꜱᴇᴀ ɢᴏᴅ x ʀᴇᴀᴅᴇʀ

𓇼˚₊‧꒰ა 🫧 ໒꒱ ‧₊˚𓇼

⭒ 𝘴𝘶𝘮𝘮𝘢𝘳𝘺: 10 dollars on a dare leads you to break one superstition that changes your life forever. you begin to learn secrets tied to your family and upbringing, at the cost of your freedom. who is this mysterious Anshumat, and why does he want you?

⭒ 𝘤𝘰𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘯𝘵: 𝘨𝘯 𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘥𝘦𝘳, 𝘺𝘢𝘯𝘥𝘦𝘳𝘦, 𝘪𝘯𝘧𝘭𝘪𝘤𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘰𝘧 𝘪𝘯𝘫𝘶𝘳𝘺, violence, implied stalking, kidnapping, choking, reader gets called a bride once

⭒ 𝘸𝘰𝘳𝘥 𝘤𝘰𝘶𝘯𝘵: 1,418

⭒ a/n: yan sea god was inspired by an Indonesian myth called Nyi Roro Kidul! it's a really interesting legend if you want to learn more abt it ^^ also.... man tits...... meow..

will you venture down this path?

growing up, you would stay over at your grandmother's house every summer. her beautiful seaside cottage made the perfect accommodation for a family getaway. throughout your childhood, the superstitious old woman restricted you from doing specific things. rules like never whistling at night, don't open an umbrella indoors, etc.

you'd eventually found out that these were just scare tactics for children to make them listen. but there was one rule that your grandmother seemed to fear the most, a rule that never made sense... never wear white to the local beach. and when questioning her about the rule, she'd tell you the same story every time.

"long ago...

a cruel serpent god who once ruled these waters would rise from the ocean and into the islands, devouring innocent villagers and destroying temples along its path.

the gods and humans were furious at its actions. fed up with the destruction and death, they prepared a plan to thwart the serpent; a binding curse.

the serpent was cursed to spend its days rotting in a hidden island, where it was accompanied by its servants. it was also tasked with granting blessings to sailors passing through the rocky tides, where it weighed the sins of each individual to seal their fates.

but over the decades... the serpent grew bored and lonely. through a loophole, the serpent found a way to abduct humans. you see.. the serpent loves the colour white and pearls. so much so, it would use its voice, so alluring, to lure the poor victims who happened to wear such things. and once in the water, the serpent would drag the human to its temple where they would become its slave.. or worse...

its spouse."

here you are today, telling the same tale in front of your young niece and nephew. "well, that's one way to get bitches." your nephew, Keona laughs. a scoffing Kehlani adds on, "nah, who would want to marry an overgrown slimy snake?"

"hey now, take that shit to grandma. she just assigned me to be your storyteller," you shrugged. "and this story has a real reasoning behind it, ok?"

"what? sexy sea snake destroying villages?"

"no, it's so that little rascals like you..." you drill both your index fingers onto their foreheads, "are easier to find if you ever get lost at sea."

how did i end up here...

facepalming yourself, you sigh. you were disappointed in yourself. how'd you let those little punks reel you in a dare? where was the self-respect? the dignity? seriously, breaking your grandmother's number 1 rule for what? 10 dollars?

you walk along the shore while wearing a flowy white shirt and neck encased in one of your mother's pearl necklaces. the dare was simple: successfully walk down the shoreline without chickening out and boom— an extra 10 dollars into your wallet.

you'd prove to the twins that you weren't scared of a little bedtime story. buuut just in case you did happen to go missing (for reasons that are totally not hungry sea serpent related), you brought essentials in a bag, left a letter for your family, and are currently being watched by the twins.

laughing at yourself for the paranoia, you nearly reach the edge of the walk until you hear a feminine wail from between the hidden rocks. is someone hurt? the sound was coming from beyond your finishing point so it wouldn't hurt to check, right?

signalling the twins to come over, you bend down to their heights, "listen, it sounds like someone's in trouble past those rocks. so I want you both to go grab the first aid kit and call Officer Holden over, 'kay?" they nod and scamper off into town.

approaching the rocks, you peek in to find a naked... mermaid?! observing her, you notice the torn skin on her iridescent tail and warily walk over to her. "uh... hey? hola? salve? hallo? i'm ah— good human! no... nooooo bad.."

you notice the air seems to smell... sweeter?

the woman looks up at you from the sand with pleading eyes, "please— please help me! my name is Coralie, my master, he—"

"woah, it's ok! you're safe, help is coming. uh, your master? did he do this to you? are you an underwater criminal?!"

a distant melodious voice interrupts you. Coralie's previously pained face now warps into a sinister grin as her wound disappears. she crawls towards you as your vision fogs up and your knees buckle to the soft sand. the song lulls you into a deep sleep, your body now being pulled into the shallow waters.

you awake to the bright rays of sunshine and lungs filling in with fresh air. but the next in your line of sight knocked all the air out of your body again.

the luminous, barely-clothed body of an unknown man sat above you. his 9'7 self relaxed on the marble throne, with 2 pairs of eyes fixated on you. what the fuck is that?

you gawk at him, "holy mother of god..."

i'm not dreaming, am i?

his gaze shifts into amusement, "wrong. we gods do not have mothers. we were created."

"you're a... a god?"

"is it not obvious enough from my appearance? would you like to see another version of me?" the towering deity begins to warp into a feminine body as if it was melting and moulding itself. "is this preferable?" her new voice is flirtatious, genuinely curious.

then, she tries to warp into a third body. the transformation looks more painful than the one prior, it barely shifts halfway into a gruesome beast before returning back to its first body. he huffs while grasping his golden collar, "this... is not my original form. I have been cursed, long ago, to never set foot on human lands. this island is both my kingdom and prison."

you shakily stand up the marble floor, now noticing Coralie standing beside the throne with a pair of legs. slowly processing his words, you piece together the clues from his story and your memories of the abduction. this couldn't be...

"you are.. you're the sea serpent god! I can't believe grandma was right— shit, shit shit—"

he smirks at your panic, "correct. I am Anshumat; shapeshifter deity of the raging tides, granter of safe travels—"

"murderer and enslaver." you complete.

Anshumat roars, "correct again! you're on a strike, dear y/n. though trust me, my servants are treated well."

"..how do you know my name?"

"oh you poor thing, granny never told you? I know everything about you— a name is barely anything."

"told me what?"

"she used to be my cupbearer. until she escaped with that bastard traitor. isn't that right, Coralie?"

she nods, "yes, master."

"please sir, let me leave. my family— they'll search for me! I have a cat at home! I haven't even finished my favourite show.. so please..." you try to list more life goals.

he chuckled, "oh you are so amusing. and why would I do that? we've barely just been engaged, dear."

"what do you mean engaged?"

"I've been watching you since you took your first breath on earth, y/n. so imagine my surprise— to see you wrapped up in my favourite colour, like a pretty bride. you're my sacrifice."

fear tingles your spine, "wait, that was just a dare! i didn't really mean it!"

"doesn't matter. you will be my pearl."

"no! I have a family, a partner—"

"i said... it doesn't fucking matter." he slams his fist against the throne arm, "and you'll be seeing the head of that twat soon enough."

you don't give him a glance before you're turning your back and run down the staircase of the grand temple. careful not to trip, you focus on the flight of stairs, painfully aware of the loud footsteps approaching behind you. it doesn't take a second for Anshumat to pull on the collar of your shirt and slam you onto the staircase.

he sits atop you, lower region heavily grinding against your stomach. "get off me! don't you have hundreds of other options?! why me?!" you scream.

his bedazzled skin blocks your view of the sun, furious eyes glowing under his shadow, and sharp teeth bared into a snarl. "you do not get to leave me again. you will stay, and worship me. this island will be our eternal paradise."

large hands pressing against your throat, you struggle before darkness begins to cloud your vision.

"this time, you will live."

[sugarcoatednightshade]

thinking about how Humans Are Space Orcs stories always talk about how indestructible humans are, our endurance, our ability to withstand common poisons, etc. and thats all well and good, its really fun to read, but it gets repetitive after a while because we aren't all like that.

And that got me thinking about why this trope is so common in the first place, and the conclusion I came to is actually kind of obvious if you think about it. Not everyone is allowed to go into space. This is true now, with the number of physical restrictions placed on astronauts (including height limits), but I imagine it's just as strict in some imaginary future where humans are first coming into contact with alien species. Because in that case there will definitely be military personnel alongside any possible diplomatic parties.

And I imagine that all interactions aliens have ever had up until this point have been with trained personnel. Even basic military troops conform to this standard, to some degree. So aliens meet us and they're shocked and horrified to discover that we have no obvious weaknesses, we're all either crazy smart or crazy strong (still always a little crazy, academia and war will do that to you), and not only that but we like, literally all the same height so there's no way to tell any of us apart.

And Humans Are Death Worlders stories spread throughout the galaxy. Years or decades or centuries of interspecies suspicion and hostilities preventing any alien from setting foot/claw/limb/appendage/etc. on Earth until slowly more beings are allowed to come through. And not just diplomats who keep to government buildings, but tourists. Exchange students. Temporary visitors granted permission to go wherever they please, so they go out in search of 'real terran culture' and what do they find?

Humans with innate heart defects that prevent them from drinking caffeine. Humans with chronic pain and chronic fatigue who lack the boundless endurance humans are supposedly famous for. Humans too tall or too short or too fat to be allowed into space. Humans who are so scared of the world they need to take pills just to function. Humans with IBS who can't stand spicy foods, capsaicin really is poison to them. Lactose intolerance and celiac disease, my god all the autoimmune disorders out there, humans who struggle to function because their own bodies fight them. Humans who bruise easily and take too long to heal. Humans who sustained one too many concussions and now struggle to talk and read and write. Humans who've had strokes. Humans who were born unable to talk or hear or speak, and humans who through some accident lost that ability later.

Aliens visit Earth, and do you know what they find? Humanity, in all its wholeness.

[krummholz-go]

The Final 15 - Aziraphale’s Perspective

I see a lot of empathy for Crowley’s experience during the final 15 minutes of season 2 and it makes sense that we feel deeply for him. What he is experiencing is very human - acknowledging the depth of his own feelings, plucking up the courage to say something, having it come out all wrong, feeling utterly rejected, and then walking away in a mix of pain and anger. Who among us hasn’t been there?

But Aziraphale is experiencing something more complicated, something fewer of us have analogs for. Aziraphale has internally acknowledged his feelings for Crowley for some period of time, probably at least since 1941. Michael Sheen confirms this mental state in a NYCC 2018 interview:

“I decided early on that Aziraphale just loves Crowley. And that’s difficult for him because they are on opposite sides and he doesn’t agree with him on stuff. But it does really help as an actor to go, ‘My objective in this scene is to not show you how much I love you and just gaze longingly at you.’”

Unlike Crowley, Aziraphale’s struggle isn’t acknowledging his feelings. His struggle appears to be two-fold: 1) believing that Crowley could ever love him back and 2) even if Crowley did love him, believing a future for the two of them together could exist within the restrictions of his larger world view.

Can Crowley love?

Angels are, traditionally, beings of love. We see Aziraphale embody this time and again, showing kindness and support to almost everyone he meets, including the amnesiac Gabriel who has treated him abominably in the past. He is attuned to love, remarking on how the area around Tadfield “feels loved” twice in Season 1. As for how Aziraphale personally understands and expresses love, he shows his love to others through verbal affirmation and, to a lesser extent, physical touch. There are many examples of Aziraphale expressing his love for Crowley through positive verbal affirmation, typically by praising him for instances where he has been kind, nice, or good. And on the rare occasions when Aziraphale receives verbal praise, he absolutely interprets it as an expression of love, blossoming with happiness.

But from Aziraphale’s perspective, it may be unclear if Crowley can feel love in the same way. Can demons love? Did he lose that capability when he fell? Crowley can’t feel the aura of love in Tadfield that Aziraphale remarks on, and his reactions to Aziraphale’s praise are always to shrug it off, tell Aziraphale to “shut up,” or in the most extreme case to physically slam him against a wall and get in his face about it. In this last instance he tells Aziraphale, “I’m a demon, I’m not nice. I'm never nice. Nice is a four-letter word.” A four-letter word, like love, that is not in Crowley’s self-defined vocabulary.

If Crowley can feel love, does he love Aziraphale?

Even if Aziraphale believes Crowley is capable of feeling love, he does not always recognize how Crowley expresses it in the moment. Crowley shows his love for Aziraphale through actions, but Aziraphale often misconstrues Crowley’s motivations. In 1793 when Crowley rescues him from the Bastille, Aziraphale initially assumes Crowley is only there because he is responsible for the Reign of Terror. Similarly, in 1941, Aziraphale’s reaction to Crowley’s appearance is to assume he’s just part of the Nazi gang, saying,“I should have known. Of course. These people are working for you!”

Crowley doesn’t help matters in this regard because he is constantly muting and undercutting his signals to Aziraphale. Every time Crowley expresses his love for Aziraphale through actions - rescuing him, saving his books, even taking him to lunch - he does so in a nonchalant, dismissive manner, indicating he ascribes little value or importance to the actions he has performed. “I just didn’t want to see you embarrassed,” he says when he appears in 1941. And when Aziraphale positively glows with happiness about his books being saved, Crowley tells him to “shut up."On top of these confusing signals, Crowley is almost pathologically incapable of expressing his feelings in the verbal love language that Aziraphale can understand. This is heartbreakingly demonstrated in this scene after the bookshop fire:

Crowley can’t even say “I lost you.” Instead he speaks of Aziraphale in the third person while sitting in front of him, saying, “I lost my best friend.” The little hitch on Aziraphale’s face when he hears this is just devastating. Who is Crowley talking about? The last conversation they had before this scene was when Aziraphale called while Hastur was in Crowley’s apartment and Crowley said, “Not a good time - got an old friend here.” Aziraphale is left to wonder - is that who Crowley means when he says "best friend?" Crowley is everything to Aziraphale, but what is he to Crowley?

How Would It Even Work?

Even when Aziraphale does get flashes of the possibility that Crowley may care for him he immediately runs up against his second mental block - there is no world he can imagine where they could be together. When Crowley first suggests running off together in the bandstand scene in S1E3, Aziraphale collapses under the thought: “Friends? We aren’t friends. We are an angel and a demon. We have nothing whatsoever in common. I don’t even like you.”

While he is obviously in denial, Aziraphale is also under tremendous stress in this moment and is desperately trying to hold onto some stability by falling back onto his world view and ideology. In this state he backpedals all the way to “I don’t even like you.” In his understanding of the way the universe is supposed to work, he and Crowley are hereditary enemies and should not even be friends, much less in love. Aziraphale expresses this core belief throughout the series. What kind of existence could they ever have together in reality?

The Final 15

With this as a background, we can better understand what Aziraphale experiences in the final 15 minutes. Even before the Metatron enters the scene, Aziraphale begins to have his fundamental beliefs challenged which puts him off his footing. The revelation that Gabriel and Beelzebub are in love is deeply impactful. When Beelzebub says “I just found something that mattered more to me than choosing sides” and takes Gabriel’s hand, Aziraphale immediately reaches out to make contact with Crowley, a look of incredulity on his face. Here is proof that demons can feel love and that an angel and a demon can carve out a space together. The road may be difficult, but it is not impossible.

Before Aziraphale can digest this revelation the stakes are ratcheted up: Michael threatens to erase Aziraphale from the Book of Life due to his part in hiding Gabriel. The future that Aziraphale has just barely glimpsed is already under siege. It is at this point that The Metatron enters, offering Aziraphale not just survival and protection, but a version of everything he has ever wanted.

If Crowley is reinstated as an angel, Aziraphale will no longer have to wonder whether Crowley is capable of feeling love. And if they are both angels, there will be no conflict inherent in having a life together. In one fell swoop, the Metatron entices Aziraphale with a future where there are no remaining blockers to an eternal, loving existence with Crowley. It will be “like the old times, only even nicer” because they now have millennia of their shared history to build on together. Of course this logic is horribly flawed and does not take into account at all what Crowley wants, but in the moment it must feel like an enormous gift to Aziraphale.

Unfortunately, not only is Crowley’s reaction to this “incredibly good news” not what Aziraphale expects, the conversation quickly takes a baffling turn for him. Crowley shuts down the talk about returning to heaven and attempts to say what he wants to say. Sadly he once again utterly fails to speak in a way that Aziraphale can understand.

The audience knows what Crowley is trying to say because we have the context of his earlier conversation with Maggie and Nina. But Aziraphale lacks that and thus can’t understand where this is coming from or what it means. Rather than expressing his feelings as Beelzebub and Gabriel did, Crowley recites facts: we’ve known each other a long time, we’ve been on this planet a long time, I could always rely on you, you could always rely on me. He can’t even say the word “couple” when he describes them, referring to them more as colleagues with words like “team” and “group.” And the one time he does try to express his feelings and desires he is physically unable to get out the words: “And I would like to spend—.” He then retreats into his old plea to turn away from heaven and hell and run off together. Nowhere in Crowley’s confession does Aziraphale hear “I love you” or even “I want to be with you.” What he hears instead is what he’s heard multiple times before - Crowley wants to abandon both heaven and hell and default to just the two of them. From Aziraphale’s perspective this will not solve anything for them. They will still be an angel and a demon, at some level fundamentally separated by their very natures.

Having failed in his speech, Crowley then does two things in rapid succession that must be excruciatingly painful for Aziraphale. First, he does the opposite of verbal affirmation by calling Aziraphale an idiot. We have seen Aziraphale become physically radiant in the rare instances where Crowley has praised him, so a direct insult like this must feel poisonous. Then Crowley makes a last desperate attempt to communicate through Aziraphale’s other love language - physical touch - by initiating the kiss. But without context or understanding of what is behind it, Aziraphale can initially only experience it as forceful, angry, and shocking. With more time to parse it I think Aziraphale will come to understand Crowley’s meaning, but in the moment it must feel manipulative and borderline cruel.

The Results

In a very compressed time frame, Aziraphale has to move quickly and radically through multiple mental and emotional states. For 6000 years he has believed he and Crowley cannot be together. Suddenly, with the revelation of Gabriel and Beezlebub, that foundational belief is challenged. Before he can work through what that could mean for him and Crowley, the Metatron offers an even cleaner solution - they can be protected from retribution and be on the same side again. When Crowley rejects reinstatement wholesale, it makes Aziraphale feel that he and his loving offer of a life together have been personally rejected. Then that rejection is further confused through the shocking experience of the kiss which Aziraphale does not have adequate context for or time to understand and integrate. In his emotional turmoil, Aziraphale falls back on his default crutch for dealing with sadness and anger - forgiveness - which further cuts him off from Crowley. Taken all together, this is a tumultuous rollercoaster of whiplash emotions that pull at every part of Aziraphale's self- and world-views.

Compared to what Crowley is going through, I think Aziraphale is going to have the tougher road in Season 3. Crowley may still need to better reconcile and integrate his feelings for Aziraphale, but Aziraphale has 6000 years of foundational ideology to challenge and evolve to reach a place where he and Crowley can be together as their authentic selves.