#...man it's weird to be able to say that about things i've written

[makuyi13]

"The Least They Could Do" (Morpherine / Morph x Wolverine)

by @makuyi13

"The ways they could make him happy if they were Jean. But they weren’t. Logan was the man, the myth, the legend, and Morph was just Morph. And they were just friends.

And they hoped to God that was enough."

-

Author's Note: Alright guys I've gotten over an adequate amount of my fears and written a little one-shot after years and years of not being able to write fan-fiction! So anyways this is a really big step for me and I'm obviously very nervous, so please be nice. If I messed up on Morph's pronouns or grammar or spelling somehow, though, please do tell me so kindly. Anyways fellas enjoy I hope it's good :)

Oh I added some more edits, too. The ending is better now.

-

Logan was upset. Again.

It was like the guy was sentenced to be upset for life. There was always something for him to be frustrated about. There would be a few days, weeks if he was lucky, when there wasn’t, and all was well. But then something would go wrong again.

This time it was about Jean.

Again.

She was to have a baby with Scott.

And of course Logan was upset about it.

Morph felt bad about it, being such good friends with Logan and all, and caring about him and his happiness so much, but there was a part of them that was glad that Jean was with Scott. They didn’t know why, and there was always a bit of them that didn’t want to find out. And even worse (Morph felt horrid about this), there was always that part of them that hoped Logan would never have Jean.

It made them feel evil, wishing that kind of misfortune upon somebody, especially their best friend. And being evil was a wretched thing, they knew, but they couldn’t help it. They couldn’t help it at all.

Smart people knew better than to bother Logan when he was upset. But the good thing was that Morph didn’t necessarily consider themself smart. So that was how they found themself opening the front door and stepping outside the mansion to go find Logan.

It happened to be cloudy. All murky skies and chill, although there wasn’t excess moisture or cold. Morph walked down the slight slope, hands behind their back, looking around. Logan was slumped in the distance, staring off. Morph jumped and started, almost running, but caught themselves just in time. As they stepped nearer, they suddenly became painfully aware that they had hands. They tried to drop them by their sides, but they seemed too stiff. Crossing their arms seemed weird and hostile. Keeping them behind their back just seemed awkward and unnatural.

They shook their head forcefully. What was wrong with them? That coffee Jubilee made them must have had something in it. Morph shoved their hands in the pockets of their sweater after whatever fumble just went on. Ignoring it all, Morph opened their mouth to say “hello”.

“What’s cookin’, good lookin’?”

Morph cringed. Of course what came out instead had to be something dumb. They felt their face burn and suddenly felt a strong desire to dig a hole and die. God Almighty, why would they say that? Just why? Why did they always have to try and fail to be funny?

Logan didn’t look their way, but grumbled something under his breath instead. He didn’t say anything else, and Morph took that as an invitation to sit down next to him. They brushed their long skirt, gathering it as they settled. They began to have second thoughts about this. Maybe Logan didn’t want to see them. Maybe they couldn’t really make Logan feel better. Maybe Logan didn’t care if they were there or not. After all, who were they? They were just a friend. They weren’t even Jean.

But… that didn’t really matter, did it? They didn’t need to be Jean to have the kind of time that they wanted to have with Logan. Did they?

Morph realised they were staring and studying Logan a little too closely. Running their eyes along his brow, down his temple, his mouth… Ugh, they thought to themself. That was really pathetic of them. Ripping their eyes away and trying to shift a little to seem a bit more animated, Morph heard Logan sigh next to them. As if he had been tensing his muscles the entire time he was out here and had relaxed them just now.

“You know you don’t have to follow me around when I ain’t feelin’ well, right, bub?” Logan finally spoke, his voice gruff yet slightly defeated.

“It’s the least I can do,” Morph shrugged.

And yet it kind of was the truth. There wasn’t really anything Morph could do to make Logan feel better but this. They thought all the time about all the things they could be. Thought about the sweet songs they would play for him if they were some kind of musician. The long, heart-warming letters they would write if they were some kind of writer. The ways they could make him happy if they were Jean. But they weren’t. Logan was everything; he was the man, the myth, the legend; and Morph was just Morph. And they were just friends.

And they hoped to God that was enough.

They blinked a few times. Keep it together. Clear the mind. But now they’ve realised that Logan’s shifted his body so that they’re sitting across from each other, facing each other, and now their mind’s a little too clear. Blank, even. And then Logan’s reaching for their leg and their heartbeat’s getting loud and fast, fast and loud, and then that thick, rough hand of his is touching the fabric that’s swimming around Morph’s legs, and all they can think of is damn, all they can hear is the heavy, rapid thump of their heart. 

But all Logan does is touch the hem of the skirt and softly say in his tough, gravelly voice, “This looks good on you.”

And it suddenly means the world to Morph. Their heart squeezes tight and releases. He likes my skirt, he likes my skirt. They dare to look at his face. It's saddened, defeated, creased with age and worry and hardened with pain, and yet they can't find ugliness in it, because there's a sixteenth of a smile lingering on his chapped lips and an unbearably sincere look buried deep in his brown eyes, no matter how much Logan tries to hide it all and shove it under. And that's when Morph knows they would wear that skirt over and over just to see that kind of look in Logan's face again and again. A confusingly, maddeningly good kind of feeling is rushing through their veins, and Morph wants to push it away, tell it to leave them alone, but they can't. Because they do love that feeling, even if they don't know what it is.

"Thank you," Morph breathes, wishing they had more to say.

And then Logan avoids their eyes, turns his body away and it’s over. Morph could kick themself. But instead they silently swear not to say or do anything stupid while they’re with Logan. So they just sit. And so does Logan. Neither says a single word. Neither moves. It’s just Logan and the grey sky and the still air and the lawn and Logan and the silence and the sweater weather and Morph hoping with all their heart that Logan was feeling a little bit better at least. But then again, they didn’t really do much for him. They couldn’t really. All they could do was just come and be there and try their best not to fumble like an idiot (again). Even if Logan said they didn’t have to.

It was the least they could do.

[gendercriticalthinking]

The way that my friend felt disappointed when he found out as a kid that an androgynous character he idolized was a woman because he quote "couldn't relate to the character anymore" and the way that the creator of Celeste """discovered he was non-binary""" because he wrote a female character that he was able to relate to are branches off of the same vein of misogyny I think

[runnning-outof-time]

The Brother That Always Wins | Tommy Shelby x Reader

Request: yes by @kpopgirlbtssvt

Pairing: Tommy Shelby x reader, with hints of John Shelby and Arthur Shelby trying their hand at flirting with the reader

Summary: (Y/N) is oblivious to the fact that three of the most powerful men in Birmingham are interested in her. When it's all said and done though, the brother that always wins, wins.

Warnings: language, drinking, terribly written flirting

Word Count: 4350

A/N: this story turned into an absolute ride, one that I enjoyed much more than I thought I would. It’s a bit of controlled chaos…I hope you’re ready for it. Enjoy! :)

PLEASE LET ME KNOW WHAT YOU THINK!

Comment/Message Me if you’d like to be tagged in future stories similar to this one!

"The fuck are you grinnin' for?" John Shelby asked as soon as his brother, Arthur entered the snug. He couldn't help himself, his older sibling's grin was able to be seen from a mile away.

"I just helped the most gorgeous woman I've ever seen in me life," Arthur proudly answered, his chest jutting out slightly as he spoke.

"Helped in what way, eh?" Tommy questioned, his one eyebrow raised. He'd been reading the newspaper and keeping to himself, only half-listening as John talked away about whatever, but he couldn't deny that he was interested in what Arthur had to say.

"I bet you he just stood there and gawked at her!" John chimed in before Arthur could respond, a smug grin on his face.

"I did not!" Arthur snapped back at his younger sibling, sending a glare his way, "I had a bloody conversation with her and all!"

"What happened?" Tommy asked another question, slowly losing his patience as he waited.

"So she was walkin' with a box, right? A big ass box...one that's too big for a lady like her to be carryin’. But she was walkin' with it. And so I was watchin' her from across the road, because she was goin' the same way I was. We must've walked for some time, how long I don't remember. Anyways, she gets to this one stretch and she trips...loses her fuckin' balance or something. All of the things in the box go flyin'. So I did what any man does and ran 'cross the street to help her. We put all the shit back into the box and then when she looked up at me, I thought I was gonna die on the spot. She was so fuckin' beautiful, lads. Shy, and sweet, and just fuckin'...gorgeous. I swear to you that if she would've..."

"Get on with the story, Arthur," Tommy interjected into Arthur's tangent, making him snap out of the attraction-riddled daze that he was quickly slipping into.

"Yeah, right," Arthur nodded, shaking his head slightly as he tried to recall where he was. "She was actin' so shy and thankin' me for helpin' her clean the stuff up that I couldn't but just be, fuckin'..."

"Arthur," Tommy said in a warning tone.

"I'm gettin' on with it," he brushed his brother off before continuing, "I couldn't help but not want to leave her. So I asked her where she was goin' and she said to the school. That was out of my way, but I didn't fuckin' care. I carried her things to the school she went on with thankin' me again. She was so fuckin' gorgeous and...shit, boys, I think I might be in love," he finished up his story, continuing on with it despite the scoffs or stiffled laughter coming from his brothers.

"You said she was going to the school?" John asked a question once it was clear that Arthur was finished with his story.

"Yeah...she's a fuckin' teacher, mate. Even better," Arthur grinned.

"Did you get her name?" John asked another question.

"Course I did!" Arthur responded like it was obvious.

Silence fell in the snug then, the three men looking between each other. John waited on bated breath for a few moments before it became obvious that Arthur wasn't going to say it without being prompted. "What was it?"

"(Y/N), I think it was," Arthur recalled, his answer making John choke out a weird sound, one that seemed to be a mixture of a scoff and a laugh. "What?"

"She's Katie's fuckin' teacher, mate!" John exclaimed, his declaration making Arthur's eyes widen. "She is fuckin' gorgeous, I'll tell you that," he then agreed with Arthur, a wide grin now plastered across his face.

John and Arthur then went about talking about her after Arthur prompted his younger sibling to tell him all that he knew about her. Tommy sat in his chair, half reading the paper and half listening to their conversation. He couldn't deny that he was intrigued by his brothers' stories, and everything they said about her made him want to go and meet her for himself even more.

"Can I help you?" (Y/N) (Y/L/N) asked the man that she swore appeared in her doorway out of nowhere. He was dressed in an expensive looking three-piece suit with an equally as expensive looking overcoat over top of it, as well as a peaked cap atop his head.

"I'm looking for (Y/N)," the man answered.

"You found her," (Y/N) smiled, setting her book down on the desk to give the man her full attention. "Is there something I can help you with?"

"I was directed to you by the front office. They said you're in charge of the donations?"

"That depends...if you're looking to donate to the building, you'll need to speak with our headmaster, but if you're looking to donate directly to the children, you can speak to me," she explained with a smile. She was proud to have been named the head of the board that made sure the children in the school had the tools they needed in order to thrive in the learning environment.

"I'm looking to donate to the children."

"Then you're in the right place," she chirped, "you can come over here and we'll get into the details of it," she said then, waving him over to her desk.

He finally entered the room, and as he walked over, (Y/N) felt the commanding aura that swirled around him. It wasn't one that made her scared, but rather one that filled her with intrigue.

"Can I have the name for the donation?" she asked once she had a piece of paper and a pencil ready.

"It's Thomas Shelby," he answered her, watching as realization sparked in her eyes. He couldn't help but think that Arthur was absolutely right - for once in his life...she was absolutely gorgeous.

"Shelby? I have a student whose last name is Shelby."

"Katie?" Tommy questioned, even though he already knew who she was talking about.

"Yes!" (Y/N) happily answered, "Katie's such a lovely girl. Who is she to you?" she couldn't help but ask.

"She's my niece," he shared, his words making her nod in understanding.

"What sort of donation would you like to make, Mr. Shelby?" she asked then, the pencil ready in her hand.

"I'd like to make it so that all of the children in the year you teach have whatever they need to excel in their classes," he answered, speaking in a nonchalant tone.

"Oh...my goodness," she gasped, stopping what she was writing as the weight of his statement finally clicked in her mind.

"Is there a problem?"

"No, it's just that..." she trailed off, unable to put her thoughts properly into words, "no one has made such a generous donation before."

"I like to make sure that others benefit from the wealth I've gained," he told her in an assured tone. Well that was one of the reasons why he'd made such a donation.

"I...uh, goodness, I don't even know where to start," she confessed, still genuinely baffled by his generosity. "Usually I'd go through with the person donating and we'd make a list of where the funds can be allocated, but with your overwhelming donation, I'm not sure I know what to do first," she added, a sheepish smile present on her face when she looked up at him again.

"It's nothing you'd need to have done in a hurry," he told her, showing that he wasn't upset by her unsuredness.

"I'd hate to waste your time now and make you wait..." she trailed off, biting on the end of the pencil as she tried to think of some ways his funds could be used.

Spending time with you would not be time wasted, Tommy thought to himself just as an idea came to mind: "what if we go for dinner at the end of the week? You can have time to think of ideas and you'll share them with me then," he proposed, his eyebrows raising slightly as he awaited her response.

(Y/N) took a moment to think about his proposition. It'd certainly be a good idea for her to have more time to think about it, and she couldn't say that she'd be opposed to having dinner with this man. "Dinner sounds nice," she gave her answer after a few moments had passed, "I'll come prepared with good ideas," she assured him with a smile.

"I'm sure whatever ideas you'll bring will interest me," Tommy told her, nodding once before he took a step back towards the door.

"Thank you, Mr. Shelby. It's a great pleasure to have you working with us," (Y/N) smiled, still truly overwhelmed by his generosity.

"The pleasure's mine, (Y/N)," he couldn't help but let a smile break onto his lips as he looked over her one last time. They said their goodbyes then, and Tommy exited the school. He was genuinely pleased with the fact that she'd agreed to have dinner with him. It was certainly a step in the right direction with her.

John Shelby entered the school that his children attended two days after his brother did. He was unsuccessful in finding someone who could help direct him to the room he wanted to visit, but thankfully found the woman he was looking for as she walked towards the main doors from down a hallway.

"Miss (Y/L/N)!" he called to her, hoping to get her attention.

To his luck, she heard him. "Can I help you?" she asked with a smile, one that made John feel like he was going to go weak at the knees.

"Yes. You're my daughter's teacher. Her name's Katie Shelby. I wanted to ask how she's been doing in class," he told her the reason behind him being there. Truthfully he couldn't care less about Katie's performance. School wasn't something he was ever interested in, but if it meant he'd be able to talk to an utterly gorgeous woman, he'd give the performance of the century.

"Oh Katie!" (Y/N) answered, her smile growing wider as she recalled one of her students, "she's amazing...such a pleasure to have in class. She's always working hard and staying on top of her assignments," she then gave him a run down on his daughter's performance.

John nodded as she spoke. He had no shame in the fact that he was only half listening to her answer; being too preoccupied with drinking in her appearance. Silence fell between them then as that topic of conversation passed quickly. John didn't want her to leave just yet, so he scrambled for another talking point. "I heard that you met my brother, Arthur, the other day," he said then. It wasn't his best choice of topic, but he hoped it would keep her around. His hopes fell when a look of confusion formed on her pretty face. Shit, John...save yourself here! "He, uh...he told me that he helped you with one of your boxes...?" he ended his statement like it was a question, hoping that she'd show some sort of recollection.

Realization did appear on her face, but the sentence that accompanied it was one that left John confused: "oh...it seems I've met two of your brothers," she informed him, effectively making him wear the same expression she had moments ago. She took the time to explain then: "Thomas came in a few days ago to arrange a generous donation to aid the children who come here."

Fucks sake. John couldn't help but sigh internally. Tommy had already sunk his paws into the territory John thought he'd have a leg up in. "Oh he did?" he decided to play it cool, hoping that his aggravation didn't bubble up to the surface.

"He did. The other teachers and I are all so thankful for the contribution," (Y/N) answered, her smile telling John that he was doing well at masking how he was really feeling.

"Well I'm happy to hear that," John stated, running a hand over his face as he tried to think of a way to divert the conversation away from Tommy. "I can't say enough how happy I am that my daughter has a wonderful, smart, caring teacher like yourself," he said then, deciding to go the compliment route. There were many other things he wanted to include while referring to her, but he didn't want to overdo it.

"Awe thank you, Mr. Shelby. As I've said before, Katie is such a pleasure to have in class," (Y/N) accepted the compliment with grace, a bashful smile forming on her face.

Silence fell around them for a few beats before John spoke again: "you're probably wantin' to get home, so I should probably go," he stated, nodding his head back towards the main doors of the school.

"Oh yes, it's certainly been a long day," she answered with a nod.

"I'll see you around sometime then," John began to say his goodbyes.

"You certainly will," (Y/N) sent him one last smile before John turned and exited the school.

John was thankful to see the majority of his family sitting around the main table of the betting shop when he entered it that evening.

"Where've you been, John Boy?" Arthur asked, everyone's eyes following John as he made his way to an open chair.

"I just left the school," John answered, his face straight as he spoke.

"The school?" Arthur questioned.

"Something happen with one of the children?" Polly asked, her brows furrowed.

"No, everything's fine with them," John quelled her concern.

"Why were you at the school then?" Polly asked another question.

"Ah I know...you were tryin' to see the hot teacher, huh?" Arthur chimed in before John could answer, a grin now present on his face.

John shot a glare in his brother's direction, slightly annoyed by the fact that he was a little too anxious to know. But with all of the eyes in the room on him, he figured he may as well give up. "Yeah, I went to see her."

"Did ya talk to her?" Arthur eagerly asked.

John didn't miss Polly's eyeroll before he answered his brother: "yeah, I did...and I was told that Tommy already went and talked to her." He couldn't help but glance at Tommy from the corner of his eye, seeing if his statement roused any type of reaction from him.

"Why would you have gone to talk to the childrens' teacher, Thomas?" Polly was the one to ask, her eyes now zeroed in on him.

"She told me that he wanted to make a donation to the school," John offered more information, a sour tone still present in his voice.

"Tommy," Polly sighed, bringing her hand up to her forehead.

"We've arranged to have dinner one of these upcoming evenings to discuss it further," Tommy nonchalantly shared more details of his meeting with (Y/N).

"Bloody hell, Tommy," Arthur grumbled, a frown on his face as he shook his head. He'd have no chance in hell with her now.

"Why was this not brought up in a family meeting?" Polly asked a sensible question, seemingly unaware of the brothers' reason behind their responses.

"Because I have decided that we need to start putting back into the city," Tommy answered, an authoritative tone laced into his voice.

"And you thought that the school would be the most logical place to start?" she quirked an eyebrow.

"Why not?"

"You're putting yourself into places you shouldn't be...if this blows up in your face, I won't be here for it," Polly spoke in a firm tone, showing her distaste for his decision.

Tommy held his gaze on her, an uninterested look present in his eyes. He didn't quite care what his aunt had to say about this, he was going to continue on how he saw fit.

Polly held his gaze, waiting for him to say something. When he didn't, she rolled her eyes and let out a scoff before turning and stalking over to the door. She stopped before she could grab the handle, abruptly turning to look at the three men sitting at the table. "If any of you make her cry or so much as hurt a single strand of hair on her head..." she paused, pursing her lips as she shook her head slightly, "you will have hell to pay." Her voice was flat, but her tone was serious, and she let no one respond before she opened the door and exited the betting shop.

"Ms. Gray, it's so nice to see you again," (Y/N) said with a smile as she found the older woman standing in the doorway of her classroom. "Is everything ok with Katie? We missed her in class today."

"Katie's fine," Polly quelled the teacher's worry, "she was feeling ill so she stayed home."

"Oh, ok. I hope she gets better soon," (Y/N) offered her regards with a smile, one that Polly reciprocated. "Is there something that you need?"

"Yes," Polly didn't beat around the bush, "my nephew, Tommy, came to speak with you the other day..." she began, trailing off in hopes that (Y/N) would continue.

"Yes, he did!" she took the bait without question, "he made a very generous donation, and then suggested we have dinner to work the smaller points of it out."

"And how did that go?" Polly asked with raised eyebrows.

"Very well," (Y/N) smiled in response, "the children are already benefiting from the money he's given. It was very kind of him to do this."

Nothing Tommy Shelby has done was done just for the sake of 'being kind', Polly thought to herself as she mentally scoffed at the younger woman's statement. "I'm happy to hear that the children are benefitting from it," Polly said in response, keeping her thoughts on her nephew's intentions to herself.

(Y/N) smiled in response, completely overjoyed by the kindness of the Shelby family that she was oblivious to even the mere thought of Tommy having other intentions behind his decision to donate. Nothing else was said then as the women exchanged parting words.

(Y/N) smoothed out her dress as she reached the doors of the establishment. She hoped that the outfit she chose didn't make her over, or under, dressed for the occasion. With a deep breath, she grabbed the handle and opened the door, the sounds of chatter and music smacking her in the face. She entered the pub with a smile, hoping to quickly find a familiar face.

Of course one of the Shelbys quickly found her at the door. It was their re-opening party after all, and a beautiful woman like (Y/N) was most certainly not going to go unnoticed.

"Oi, you came!" Arthur was the first of the brothers to spot her, and a big grin was plastered across his face as he moved over to greet her.

"Yes! This place looks lovely!" she answered, smiling as she looked around the room.

"We made sure to get the best of the best," he boasted, his grin still present. "And speakin' of the best...can I offer one of the best women I've seen a drink?" he smoothly transitioned, his one eyebrow raised as he looked at her.

"I'd love one, thank you," she answered, smiling at his kindness.

"Come on then," he stated, offering her his arm so that he could lead her to the bar.

She accepted it, walking over to an open seat so that he could go around the bar and get her a drink. She thanked him again when he set it down in front of her, and just as he leaned up against the bar, ready to chat with her, Isiah came to him with a matter of business. He left her with a slight frown and an 'excuse me, love,' before going off with the younger man. (Y/N) sat by herself, sipping her drink and enjoying the revelry around her. She wasn't alone for long though.

"(Y/N) (Y/L/N)...I didn't think I'd see you here," shock was present in John Shelby's voice as he came up beside her.

"I decided to stop in and see what all of the talk was about," she smiled at him.

"Well we're certainly happy to have you here," he grinned at her, trying so hard not to give her a once over. "Say why don't you come and share a dance with me?" he suggested.

"Oh, I couldn't," she turned down his offer, her shyness creeping in.

"Come on...a quick dance wouldn't hurt," he didn't quite give up hope.

"I'm rather terrible at dancing."

"You've not seen me dance then."

(Y/N) bit her lip to conceal her giggles, surprised with how forward he was.

"Come on..." John coaxed her, hand outstretched in her direction. She was hesitant, but accepted it, allowing him to lead her to the floor. "Just follow my lead and you'll be fine," he said, assuming the position before he began to lead her in a similar dance to what the other partygoers were doing.

(Y/N) couldn't help but smile as she danced around the floor with John. She certainly was having fun, not really thinking about what she looked like or what others thought. John couldn't believe that he was dancing with one of the most beautiful women in the room.

They danced for about two songs before (Y/N) excused herself, wanting to go have a seat. John allowed her to go, deciding that he'd go into the snug and check on Finn - who he knew was sneaking stronger drinks than what his brothers originally told him he could have.

(Y/N) found a newly opened seat at the bar as soon as she came to it. She was bummed that her drink had been lost, but she didn't need to worry about that for too long.

"You made it," Tommy Shelby's voice came from her left, making her turn slightly to see him approaching her from behind the bar.

"I did, thanks for inviting me," (Y/N) smiled at him, "this party's amazing!" she commented, glancing around the room.

"It is," Tommy agreed once she focused on him again, "can I get you something to drink?"

"Please," she smiled kindly at the offer, watching as he went about grabbing a bottle from the shelf. "I wanted to also thank you, again, for the dinner and the donation. The children have already gotten some of the supplies that we've received, and they're loving them," she shared some information once he came back with a glass for her.

"That's good news," he nodded, taking a drink from his glass then. "You know I was thinking maybe...maybe you and I could have dinner again, without the need to talk about the donations this time," he proposed, watching her intently as he waited for a response.

(Y/N) couldn't stop her eyes from lighting up at his suggestion. She had a lovely time with him at their first dinner. "I'd like that," she answered with a smile.

"Figured we could get to know each other better."

"That would be lovely," she agreed, giggling slightly at the fact that he was practically reading her mind.

The two then went about planning the dinner, agreeing on a time and place. (Y/N) couldn't help but feel giddy when he suggested a restaurant that was far more classy than the first place they'd met. If she wasn't excited before...she certainly was now.

As they spoke more, Polly Gray kept a close eye on them from across the room. She'd been watching the brothers all evening as they tried their hand at her. It became clear to her, though, that Tommy had ended out on top as she watched them converse at the bar. She could easily tell from how (Y/N) was invested in their conversation, giggling and leaning closer to him when he'd speak, that what he was doing was being received well. John and Arthur wouldn't have much of a chance now.

-One Year Later-

Slowly, Tommy lifted the veil up to reveal (Y/N)'s smiling face. He draped it over her head and let his eyes dance across her features, a smile tugging at the corner of his lips as he felt the joy radiating from her.

"We are gathered here today to witness the marriage of (Y/N) (Y/M/N) (Y/L/N) and Thomas Michael Shelby," the officiant began, commanding the attention of everyone in the church.

Ever since the evening of the party at the Garrison, (Y/N) and Tommy found themselves wrapped up in a whirlwind of a romance. Tommy proposed after five months of them being together, knowing that he wasn't going to find another woman like her. They spent five months being engaged and doing a great amount of traveling - it was the summer holiday for (Y/N), so she was able to follow Tommy wherever he went. Now they were standing at the altar in front of a great number of guests who were anxiously waiting to see them pronounce their love for each other.

Well...two of the guests were exactly anxious. John and Arthur sat on Tommy's side of the church, watching as the ceremony commenced. Both were happy for their brother, but they'd be lying if they said that they weren't bummed that it wasn't them up with (Y/N).

Everyone stood up and celebrated as the officiant pronounced Tommy and (Y/N) 'man and wife', and they shared their first kiss as a married couple.

"As always..." John started, elbowing Arthur in the ribcage as they both clapped for their brother, "Tommy gets the girl, and we've gotta sit back and watch."

Arthur couldn't help but snort as he heard what John had to say. "You're right, John boy," he agreed, shaking his head but nonetheless continuing clapping.

No matter what happened, or how hard John and Arthur tried to get ahead, Tommy would forever be the brother that always wins.

Tagged: @mystcldydrms @the-anxious-youth @cloudofdisney @look-at-the-soul @elenavampire21 @mrsalwayswrite @julkaamazing @evita-shelby @lilyrachelcassidy @notyour-valentine @shelbydelrey @onlydeadcells @peakyswritings @just-a-blackhole @watercolorskyy @strayrockette @peakyduchesss @alexxavicry @captivatedbycillianmurphy @yummycastiel @dark-academia-slut @tommystargirl @stevie75 @lyarr24 @signorellisantichrist @zablife @anotherblinder @midnightmagpiemama @cillmequick @rangerelik @dandelionprints @letal-y-poetica @itscheybaby @gypsy-girl-08 @insanitybyanothername @depxiety @raincoffeeandfandoms @dragons-are-my-favorite @acewritesfics @forgottenpeakywriter @cljordan-imperium @areyenotfondofmelobster @little-diable @thomashelbyswife @iambored24601 @shaddixlife

MASTERLIST

[retroellie]

Submissive VS. Dominant daryl

Summary: How daryl dixon is like when he's submissive and dominate

A/N: I finally got a new laptop period and this was my first fic written on it so period. This does suck and I apologize but I've been nothing but busy these last few days omfg. Enjoy <3

Warnings: NSFW, mommy kink, submissive/dominate Daryl, Blowjobs

Word count: 1K

Submissive 

-First off, I’m a firm believer that Daryl Dixon is a switch… like girl it’s proven asf 

-His submissive moments are a lot rarer than his dominant moments just because he's a rough man okay, he likes to be in control 

-It does take a while for you to completely break him down and make him comfortable enough to be a bottom but when he does… oh lawd 

-He whimpers a lot when he the bottom, he will whimper out the most disgusting things ever 

-“wanna cum in you…” 

-“please, I wanna touch you..” 

-“Can I eat your pussy… please?” 

- He changes into a completely different person and you get such a power rush from it 

-His favorite position when he’s submissive is you riding him, he loves it especially when you wrap your hands around his throat 

-yeah… umm he likes to be choked in his submissive moments, not too hard but he likes the feeling of it 

-One time you actually were able to get him in handcuffs, both his hands cuffed to the bedpost as he sprawled out naked in front of you 

-he was beat red, whimpering for you to either let him go or just fuck him silly 

-You played with him, giving him feather light touches to his cock as he cried out for you 

- He likes being told what to do, meaning you have to tell him where to put his hands or where to put his mouth, how hard to fuck you ect ect 

-But a lot of the times you like to tease him, telling him to use his words even if he doesn’t want too 

-You gag him with your panties too often… but shit, he can’t deny he loves the taste of them

-He loves the pet names you have for him, like good boy, baby boy, and even you calling him your little fuck toy 

-It feels weird at first for Daryl to be so submissive because usually with anything… he’s in charge. Plus he feels so weird being such a big man but being such a slut for a person like you 

-But you say down with the gender roles and fuck the ”rules” to being a bottom

-You slowly got him into being okay with it like I said, but now he feels less weird with it

-He loves watching you touch yourself, like he loves watching your fingers disappear within you but he can’t do anything about it 

-Okay hear me out y'all, Daryl definitely calls you mommy…. It’s rare but he does 

-This maybe my mommy kink popping out but girl he definitely lets it slip sometimes, especially when his breeding kink is on full display 

-“God fuck… m-mommy!” 

-it sounded so pathetic coming out of his mouth that you had to let him bust his load right then and there

-Face riding is a must :) 

-He will let you ride his face for hours, pushing your hips down further on his face even if you're scared you’ll suffocate him. 

-He’s super soft with it though, like he’s needy and he’ll hold you down while lapping at your cunt but he’ll make sure he’s not squeezing you too hard or reach up to hold your hand as you balance on him

Dominant 

-okay so we all know this man is dominate, he likes to be in control 

-he’s rough and hard with you when he’s in a dominant mind set, he will quite literally fuck your into the mattress 

-He likes doggy style so he can slap your ass or pull your hair

-Speaking of spankings… he fucking loves them <3 

-He doesn’t want to encourage you to be a brat but he lowkey does just so he can go home and spank you 

-He likes bending you over his lap, sliding his fingers between your thighs before forcing his hand down on your soft ass 

-“gonna be a good girl? Or do you need more?” 

-“I-I’ll be good… I promise.” 

-He gets so rough that he will need a safe word, the safe word is important period but especially when he’s feeling super dominant 

-He loves toys!!! Like vibrators, dildos, handcuffs, whips 

-He’ll get so excited to go home and present you what he picked up on a run 

-He takes teasing to another level, like a whole other level to the point he’s damn near fucking you in front of others 

-You’ll be sitting on his lap in front of the fire next to everyone in the group, but his fingers are deep inside you 

-One time you gave him a blow job right in front of Rick and Rick wasn’t even aware of it. Like you were underneath the table sucking him off as Daryl held so tightly in your hair 

- He likes to fuck you on his motorcycle, like he’ll have you sit on his lap while on his motorcycle as his cock is deep inside you or have you bent over it while he takes you from behind

-Cock warming is something he does often, like he’ll have you sit on his lap for hours and if you move he’ll make you stay there longer 

-I said this before but I don’t think Daryl likes to be called daddy, like I feel like it makes him a little uncomfortable. If you call him it, he won’t mind obviously but it’s not his favorite thing 

-He likes you calling him by his name but if you're in the mood for a little more humph, he wouldn’t mind you calling him sir or something dominant like that 

-Mostly he likes being the one to call you names, he likes to make it so you can’t speak so your words don’t mean much in the moment

-He really likes your boobs, i think he's definitely a boob kinda guy so he will leave so many marks on them as he's deep inside of you 

-His favorite thing to do to you is tie you up, watching as you squirm underneath him... begging him to fuck you silly but you can't beg him properly since you are so overstimulated and far too horny to get words out. 

-In the moment he's super rough but afterwards he has the urge to take care of you and make sure you are okay... he's not a complete monster in bed I promise!! 

[sdr2lovemail]

Could you write something about Sun and Moon being irritated/jealous that they can't kiss the reader (the maintenance worker one) with their mouths like a human can so the reader shows them about all the other ways to kiss? Like kissing Sun's hand up his arm to his cheek until he is giggling so loudly Vanessa thinks he's gone off his rocker, or gently kissing Moon's forehead all the way down to where his heart would be? Even better if the maintenance reader leaves behind little lipstick marks on their face for Monty and the gang to laugh about :D

Inspired by that one tumblr post about a guy walking out with a few lipstick kiss marks and then saying "you should see what they did to the other guy" in a stereotypical mobster voice before said other guy drunkenly walks out absolutely covered in lipstick marks, sfw of course I want Fluff I want Affection I want Lovey Dovey-ness if you think you could swing it, just the softest silliest thing you can write, and keep up the good work anywho :')

I have no mouth, and I must kiss. (GN Reader but they do wear lipstick) Synopsis: After a play full of heartbreak and tragedy, Sun realizes that he'll never be able to kiss you. You remedy the situation.

Notes: It's been almost 2 years since I've written a fnaf fic, I feel rusty. Help wanted 2 got me calling my old mans' numbers. That's a joke they never left my phone. Anon if you're still out there, I hope you enjoy the fruits of my labors.

Requests are open!

Children are very persuasive. While you originally came to the daycare to fix a broken screen, you’ve ended up in a play. Decked out with a foam sword, you act as the story’s brave knight. Once you’ve slain the dragon, a kid wearing a Monty hood, your princess awaits.

“My dear knight! You saved me from the evil dragon!” Sun swoons. Instead of his waist frills, he’s worn a bright yellow skirt. Dangling from a few of his rays was a princess cap. The bells on his wrist jingle as he clasps his hands. “Is there any way I can repay you?”

You press a hand against your heart and bow your head. “There is no need, Princess. Protecting you is my sworn duty.” You’d say your acting wasn’t half bad for an underpaid maintenance worker.

“The princess has to kiss the knight!” A kid called from the audience.

Sun felt rigid like his joints were locking up. He hoped you couldn’t hear his fans kicking on as his body temperature rose. He would love to kiss you but wanted the moment to be perfect. “N-now friend, we don-”

“Mr. Sun can’t kiss them! He doesn’t have a mouth!” Another kid argued. Something about what they said made Sun feel weird.

“Yes, he does! It just can’t open.” 

Sun lets out a huff, turning to you. “They’re getting cranky. It must be snack time. I’ll pass them out quickly. That way, we can spend time together!” He bounced on the balls of his feet, eager for you to stick around.

Your fazwatch pings with an alert: a S.T.A.F.F. bot got stuck in Monty Golf. “Oh, sorry, Sun. I have another job to do. I’ll see you later, okay?”

Sun would be frowning if his faceplate could move. He quickly perks up and sets his hands on your shoulders. “Right! Right, right, right, you have a job. Responsibilities! I’ll- I’ll see you at closing. Buh-bye, friend!” The jester waves you goodbye before sighing, hurrying to pass out snacks before someone throws a tantrum.

The rest of your day goes as smoothly as working as the Pizza Plex could be. It was after closing time, and you were doing your final tasks. The glamrocks were in their rooms, the S.T.A.F.F bots were on their set paths, and nothing on the floor needed fixing. The last place you needed to check on was the daycare. 

Walking through the big wooden doors, Sun is nowhere to be seen. You call his name, followed by Moon’s, but still nothing. Shrugging it off, you make your rounds, checking everything is in place. During the sweep, you could hear muffled words from a storage closet.

“Do you think they’ve kissed anyone, Moon? We can’t do that…” That was the unmistakable voice of Sun. “I wonder what it would be like. Hmph, even the glamrocks can move their mouths…” He grumbles.

When you open the door, Sun jumps like he’s been shocked. He scrambled to stand up. “Ah! Oh, hi! You’re here early!”

“It’s almost eleven. I’ve been here for almost thirty minutes.” You say, checking your watch. “What were you talking about?”

“Would you believe me if I said nothing?” The daycare attendant tilts his head, his faceplate spinning a bit.

“No, I would not.”

Sun sighs as he sits back on the closet floor, his legs crisscrossed and his hands holding his face. Taking a seat next to him, you ask him what’s wrong.

“I was just thinking about some stuff after our play. Moon and I can’t kiss you!” He flops over dramatically as if he’d heard tragic news. “Our face is stuck in this stupid smile!” He tugs on one of his rays, angry at his lack of facial mobility.

“Hey, I don’t mind that you guys can’t kiss me. There’s more to a relationship than that. Besides, there are other ways to kiss.”

This breaks him out of his kissless stupor. “There are? Tell me, tell me!” Sun practically shakes where he sits. “Better yet, show me!” He opens his arms wide, inviting you to do as you please.

Taking one of his large hands in your own, you place a kiss on the back of his hand, leaving a lipstick mark on the shiny plastic. While he didn’t have pupils, you could feel Sun’s eyes burning into you. He didn’t want to miss a single second!

The touch sensors in his arms and hands weren’t that sensitive. Kids sure did like to scratch, kick, and bite. But even so, he could still feel your lips pressing fluttering kisses to his casing. Laughter bubbled up in his voice box. 

Kiss after kiss lined Sun’s arm. Even if it left stains, this is one mess he could let slide. You took his other arm in your hands, mimicking your previous affections. Kissing back up his arms, you reach his faceplate. Sun’s giggling gets louder as your lips kiss the hard surface of his cheeks.

“Hey, your shift’s almost over. Get ready to clock out.” Vanessa’s voice rings from your watch. 

When you pull away to answer, Sun tries to follow your lips. “Alright, I’ll be at the office in a moment.” Sun lets out another round of laughter.

“Oh, you’re with him… Your pay gets docked when you stay overtime, you know. Make sure to leave before the shutters close.” With that last sentence, Vanessa cuts off her line.

With excited, shaking hands, Sun brings your face closer to his. “Keep kissing me! Please, please, please!” His begging is cut short as he listens to Moon say something. “Awww, but I’m not done!” Sun still gets up to turn the lights off, moping the whole way there.

Bright red optics suddenly appear in front of your eyes. The lights glow against your skin. Moon clicks a flashlight on, making his faceplate look more menacing than he probably intended. “You weren’t thinking about leaving, were you? Not when you haven’t given me the same attention Sun got, right?” 

“Oh, of course not, Moon!” Cupping his face in your hands, you leave a kiss mark on his forehead.

You bring your trail of kisses down to his nose, trailing along the curve, up to the corner of his eye. Moon lets out that raspy laugh of his. He tugs you closer, craving the warmth of your skin against the cold of his plastic.

He watched as you kissed down his face and neared his chest. “Sun was whining all day, worrying over us not being able to kiss you.” Moon snickered. “He was fretting over nothing, as usual. But I must admit, he’s right about some things.” 

His ‘breath’ hitched as he watched you kiss right where his heart would be. The fans in his chest cavity kicked into overdrive as they tried to cool his circuits, trying their best not to overheat. “Kissing you would be a dream.” 

Letting out a laugh of your own, you press another soft kiss on Moon’s chest. “I guess I’ll have to do the kissing for all three of us.” Punctuating your sappy sentence, you kiss their sculpted-on smile. An audible puff of air leaves the daycare attendant’s chassis.

 “Attention Pizza Plex Guests and Staff. The Pizza Plex’s doors will close in ten minutes.” An automated voice rang over the building’s speakers.

More alert than before, you get up from the closet door. “I gotta go!” You were not trying to spend the night here. “Bye, Moon. Bye, Sun. I’ll see you tomorrow. Don’t forget to wash that lipstick off!”

They weren’t really listening, absolutely high on kisses. For a few hours, they simply rest in the daycare’s storage closet, gushing to each other about you. Well, more Sun than Moon.

Once it was time for Moon to do his rounds around the Pizza Plex, he’d forgotten about the lipstick covering his exoskeleton. It wasn’t until Monty knocked on the glass of his room.

“You having a good night, Moon?” It was like the smirk in Monty’s voice was audible from his voicebox. “Seems like you had a lot of fun.”

Seeing his reflection in the glass, Moon lets out a growl. How could he forget to wash off all this lipstick? “Not a word of this to anyone.” Moon scratched his fingers down the window, leaving marks behind. He turns tail to head back to the daycare and wash the stains off of himself.

Unknowing to the lunar animatronic, Monty had already sent a message to all the other bots.

[themoonchildwhofell]

the elevator

pairing: Spencer Reid x reader

content/warnings: fluff!!, soulmate!au

summary: an AU where you'll see color once you meet your soulmate.

note: hey!!! really wanted to have this written since I've been obsessed with Lizzy Mcalpine's recent album.

"Fuck!" You curse at yourself for sleeping off the 5 alarms you set today. You we're set to meet the head of the Behavioral Analysis Unit for a job opportunity. I mean it wasn't everyday the FBI would offer you a job especially since all you did was login to their server. Okay. I guess "logging in" was a better way of saying it. More like you hacked your way in to gather some information about this weird unsolved crime you listened to in a true crime podcast. It's not your fault you we're wickedly good at coding and that their firewall was ass.

You ran as fast as you can, navigating your way through the horde of people coming and going. Since the world started having soulmates, it was kind of a bummer for you. It started when you just got a pretty mini cooper that you bought with your own savings and was so excited to drive it. Suddenly, the world turned black and white. Everything was dull. You we're kinda expecting it to come when you turn 18 and was shocked that it was 3 years early. Your mom had already told you what will happen and what you needed to do to get back the colors. Since this was an established thing now, a lot of laws were also placed to make sure everyone is safe. One of that would be driving. Since you're now not able to see color, you we're not allowed to drive until you see your soulmate. 10 years later, you still have to push your way through the horde of soulmate-less people the same as you are.

You finally get to the FBI Building in Quantico. As you open the doors, you notice that the elevator was slowly closing in. "Wait!" You shout. Trying to see if the person inside the elevator would stop the doors and wait for you. You sigh a breath of relief as you see the elevator slowly open. You quickly grab your things that you didn't notice fell on the floor when you ran towards the elevator. And ran inside the elevator. You check your phone for the time and see that you still have at least 5 minutes before the meeting starts. You breathe out the air stuck in your lungs not noticing you were holding your breath. You turn to the person who stopped the elevator to thank them.

As soon as you look at the guy beside you, you feel warmth surrounding your whole body. Everything felt like a blur however you didn't feel dizzy. Your eyes start to focus on the most beautiful shade of brown eyes you've ever seen. You try to look around to see if you we're just having a stroke or if this was just a dream. But everything seems to be a lot more vibrant. You we're seeing color again.

"Hi." The man greets you. You turn your head towards him to see the prettiest man you've ever laid your eyes on. He had light brown wavy hair, beautiful eyes, and the nicest smile. "I'm Spencer. I guess we're souimates?"

You smiled back at him and introduce yourself. I guess this wasn't such a bad day after all.

[industrations]

will you ever draw masc sirius? not to compare artists but recently i've just noticed masc sirius pics get more notes and ppl get more pissed off bc of fem sirius. it's ok if you draw fem wolfstar (fem sirius AND fem remus) but it's kinda weird you only draw remus masc. kinda heteronormative. when wolf is gay. plus canonically sirius was masc and remus was fem (sirius was the biker and remus was short.) it's ok you're more into fanon but canon is real so i'm just curious if you will ever draw masc sirius. if you will it'll be very cool and i'm sure you'll get more notes too.

This is the LAST time I'm going to be talking about this because I'm so TIRED of this debate.

Firstly, the "canon" you speak of is written by this person. So think before you start arguing anything about canon.

Then, since apparently some of you still cannot read. I DO NOT DRAW FOR YOU; I DRAW FOR ME. I could not care less about notes or likes or popularity. I'm just here to have fun and enjoy my time. That you are so concerned about notes is your own problem, not mine, but I suggest you change that because notes do not equal any sort of value, and this mindset is just going to be bad for anyone's mental health.

My favourite thing as a person whose gender is literally all over the place is getting to express that through the characters I draw. For ME, this mainly happens through Sirius because his "canon" is this very HETERONORMATIVE man. The freedom of him being able to step away from that and to be allowed to be whatever he wants to be on that day is just wonderful. Sirius, for me, is a reminder that no matter what you're born as or whatever people say you should be, it does not say anything about how you feel or express yourself.

Remus will forever keep evolving for me. He's also allowed to be whoever he wants to be. When I read fics he looks different in every single one. And if you actually paid attention to my art, you can see that he does not always look the same. For me, Remus is a comfort. He will always be a long, wet noodle with bad knees to me. He will always have his scars and his freckles, and those are what make him beautiful. I'm not sure why people immediately assume this is something that makes him "the man" or "the top". If that's what you're thinking when you see them, then there's something gone wrong on your side because you are deciding what a queer relationship is supposed to look like, when in fact you are the one being homophobic and heteronormative.

Also that my Sirius is shorter and more gender-y so to say, does not mean he can't kill a bitch on sight. He could break Remus in half in a second if he wanted to.

Anyway, I'm off to draw some dead gay wizards in whatever way I want to <3 love you guys. Truly the majority of you make me feel safe and seen, and I couldn't have wished for a more supportive community

[saturdaynightspecialpresentation]

Poor Things

First of all, Emma Stone’s performance is as good as everybody is saying. Stone takes a very difficult role that easily could have gone very, very wrong and makes it look like the most effortless thing in the world.

I have been looking at the reviews, good and bad, and I think that the minority of people who didn’t vibe with this movie had slightly skewed expectations.

Poor Things starts out at Tetsuo The Iron Man levels of fucked up, but by the end it has dropped to Edward Scissor hands levels of fucked up. This is probably plenty of weirdness for the average movie-goer, but true connoisseurs of mondo cinema should calibrate their expectations.

Second, apparently this is being talked up as a sort of feminist coming of age fable chronicling an everywoman’s sexual awakening and liberation, and it really isn’t that, and I think if you are hoping for that you’ll come away disappointed.

Better, I think, to look at it as an autistic coming of age fable and power fantasy, which I think it does a tremendous job at.

Very minor spoilers under the cut; really, this is more an essay about what I thought the film was about than a review, my review would be that it's somehow simultaneously a feel-good crowd-pleaser AND a movie where an adult woman with the brain of a toddler stabs the eyes out of a corpse with a scalpel and then plays with its penis (I wasn't kidding with the Tetsuo comparison)

Honestly now that I've actually written that out I have maybe underestimated how impressive it is that Yorgos Lanthimos made a movie where that happens on screen but somehow basically everybody loves the movie.

In terms of sex, we do watch Bella discover sex, but she very quickly comes to a conclusion about her relationship with it which never once changes throughout the rest of the movie:

She likes it, she likes it more with an attractive partner, she is utterly lacking in any kind of sexual jealousy, and she doesn't attach too much more to it than that.

This is an odd comparison, but Bella treats sex the way Joey did on Friends. A man acting this way is a sitcom cliche, but a woman acting the same way…

This is a film that is really, really not interested in the real-world consequences of this kind of sex; in fact, given that a pregnancy is the inciting incident of the film, it came off a little weird to me that the possibility of a pregnancy or STD was never really addressed (unless there was a line or two that I missed while I was in the bathroom).

For the most part, though, I was able to get past it by just thinking of it as a heightened world. The sets and settings are extremely artificial, and ultimately I figured, “Hey, if I can buy this kind of thing as harmless and fun in a sitcom, I can buy it in this other kind of heightened reality.

I will say, I don't think Bella is meant to be an every-woman, and that there's textual support for this in the film itself.

All of the women Bella deals with in some way question her approach to sex, making it clear, sometimes through explicit dialog, other times more reading between the lines, that her approach to sex is not for them.

If there’s any particularly feminist message in the film, it’s that when confronted with Bella’s bizarre approach to the world, none of the women get angry at her, and most of the men she meets do.

But Bella’s relationships with other women aren’t really the meat of the film, that’s more about her relationship with men, and particularly the way that they feel, deep in their bones, that they should have control over any woman that they have sex with.

Duncan Wedderburn, when he first discovers Bella and convinces her to go away with him, thinks he is tricking and seducing a beautiful naif who he can use and then discard when he tires of her. Their relationship disintegrates as it becomes clear that Bella hasn’t been tricked at all; she wanted exactly what he was able to give, a chance to sow her wild oats by having some no strings attached sex with an attractive, likable person in an exciting foreign city.

This makes Wedderburn increasingly unhappy and unhinged (He says at one point that he has become what he hates, a “grasping succubus”) much to Bella’s growing consternation. She has no idea why he can’t simply be happy having sex with her and otherwise letting her do what she wants, and he is so committed to a certain vision of gender roles that he can’t even begin to explain it, he can only lash out in frustration.

And that I think is the meatier part of the film; Bella doesn’t so much flout social expectations as she is simply totally unaware that they exist. 

Honestly I think the character isn’t so much coded as autistic as she just is autistic. Bella is a woman who is basically totally unaware of social expectations and constantly taken aback to discover that they exist.

More than that, she has to figure out a way to work around the fact that many of the people who become most enraged by her are also so totally lacking in self-reflection, and view their social situation as so normal, so self-evidently obvious that they cannot explain to her why it is she has made them angry. They suddenly fly into rages that clearly perplex Bella and which they themselves don’t even bother to explain, because they regard their own ideas as self-evident.

Bella is an idealized autistic hero; personally as outlandish as she is I don’t really think the film expects us to take the side of anybody else, and I think there are some fairly subtle and accurate bits of autistic behavior on her part.

She responds to life as a kind of social experiment, attempting to parse out a set of logical rules and, especially in the latter parts of the movie, she often justifies her actions with a perfectly sensible internal logic that the emotional men in her life can’t parse out. Late in the film, when she and Wedderburn are destitute, she prostitutes herself for 30 francs, and with implacable logic, explains the two reasons that Wedderburn ought to be quite happy she has done so: First, her john was much worse at sex than Wedderburn, which ought to satisfy his ego, and second, they now have 30 francs and the potential to earn more.

Wedderburn does not appreciate her logical approach.

Another thing that strikes me as very true is that Bella has a very odd theory of mind for other people. There’s a scene where, traumatized by the unspeakable poverty and suffering she sees in Alexandria, she puts all of Wedderburn’s money in a box and rushes out to give it to the poor. Unfortunately the ship is leaving, but two port attendants tell her that they will be staying on the island, and would be happy to deliver a package. She tells them that she has a big box filled with money and they should give it to the island’s poor, and they agree to do so. Now, the film never tells us one way or another whether they keep their word; but Bella herself retains an iron certainty that they did exactly what she asked them to. Now, we know Bella understands what lying and deceit are, because we’ve seen her trick people before, like when she chloroforms McCandles to run away with Wedderburn. But it never once occurs to her that these sailors might do something similar. Call it paradoxical, but that kind of thinking is common in autistic people.

There’s also the scene where the self-professed cynic Harry Astley shows her the suffering in Alexandria; he admits, when he sees how terribly it has affected her, that he didn’t tell her simply because he thought it was the truth of the world, but that her attitude made him angry, and he wanted to hurt her. A very common part of the autistic coming of age is the slow realization that not everything people tell you is part of a dispassionate, scientific search for the truth.

There’s also a scene in a whorehouse in which Bella argues that it would make more sense to have the women decide who is to sleep with the johns, so that then the john could be more confident that the girl was attracted to him, which he must doubt if he chooses. You can tell I’m autistic because I immediately had the thought, “Well, but the johns would probably be worried that nobody would choose them.”

One of Bella’s fellow working girls instead tells her, “Some of them like the fact that we don’t have a choice”.

[capslocked]

KINKVEMBER DAY: 9

[prompt: problematic relationships]

male reader x nana

10k words

"Do you have any idea how long I've thought about it?" Nana slips a finger between the buttons of your shirt. "You, me - us?"

And here, you actually, truthfully do not want to know.

So, go ahead, cue up the sound of a mental rolodex spinning out while you start to list the very real, very valid, very adult reasons you should never, ever put your hands on her. (1) She's too young for you, (2) you're kind of a community figure, or at least someone who has to appear to be one, and more pertinently (3) she was your student not long enough ago - in your ethics class, the irony of which is not lost on you - and that makes it the kind of dirty, low thing you'd feel guilty for even masturbating to. Let alone actually attempt to live through, no matter how insistent some parts of you might be to the contrary, a point emphasized by the pressure of her finger against the dip just below your sternum.

"These... oh, how should I call them." Nana hums softly just before easing a bit of distance between the two of you, head tilting like she's in a trailer for this summer's romcom, and not, you know, trying to drag you into hell. "Filthy little fantasies?"

-

You're a high school teacher, interdisciplinary. Sometimes history, other times philosophy, you've also taught math - and once, egregiously, home economics when the faculty member whose usual duties consisted of teaching the class was out on a very sudden and scandalous maternity leave. But it's your love of literature that finds you in a bookstore near enough to the high school to sell more used copies of intro textbooks than actual novels.

You're paging through a book you'd say you're considering buying - if any of the store staff were to push the question onto you - when she appears at the other end of the fiction aisle.

You catch the look first of her dyed hair, this perfect shade of chocolate, to the edges, the fade-to-brown, cascading over where a more formal shirt would ostensibly have shoulders.

She smiles; it's pretty.

Then, you make the mistake of glancing down and seeing the modest rise of her chest beneath a crisp-collared sleeveless top; all your typical college-age tells but for the red flannel, rolled back down around her waist. Her fingers, long and thin, dangle from where a uniform button-down would taper off around her wrist, thumb rubbing lazily at her forearm. The briefest glimpse of her nails, all done up in acrylic - perhaps the most potent way to show contempt for an old dress-code.

You have, admittedly, also noticed the length (appropriately, the lack thereof) of her pleated skirt and those frilly stockings that ride so far up the creamy curves of her thighs that it has your stomach rolling and tightening when she shuts closed the book in her hands and says -

"Isn't it weird how most of the novels in the romance section are written by women?”

- she speaks with a slow deliberateness, like she'd only ever hoped to find one of her old teachers alone and slightly vulnerable in a used bookstore -

“Like, how do you think a man would even go about writing those kinds of stories?" She grins, because maybe this isn't really a question at all - not one meant for you, certainly. And for one wild moment, the rush of relief (she's not actually talking to you), then panic (she's actually talking to you.) surges through you.

But then the girl pushes another couple books along the shelf and continues.

"Because I'll tell you what, Professor - all this stuff," a flip-flip-flip of her fingertips against a leathery dustjacket, "about just feeling it, not being able to control it. It's all women, always women." Another wave of her hand to set another row of spines a-shuddering. "Do you ever think maybe people will get tired of listening to girls talking about feelings when what they really need to see is what guys would do?"

There are so many reasons you should turn and run. 

So many little flags, flickering wildly in your mind. This is one of your students. Was it this fall? Maybe the last; she had sat front-center. Never slept in, was one of your best by several measures - not simply in regards to the simple repetition of classroom work, but by her insistence on getting in the kind of heated discussion where one might dig their fingers through the innards of your lectures. Not just good - fantastic.

"Nayeon," you end up saying, flat as your suddenly paper-dry mouth can make it - with just the tiniest hint of unease. "It's been a while, hasn't it?"

And almost as if she knows that you're trying not to let your eyes dip any lower than the collar of her shirt, her shoulders do that lilting little move (hiking up and away just so), the one that your girls tend to learn a long, long time before your boys ever manage to figure out. She laughs out this pleasant sound, adds: "not that long, sir."

"Well," you're clearing your throat, looking around the bookstore like it might contain a way out, and eventually landing somewhere on her skirt, "you know how fast it all goes."

"Nana, by the way."

“I’m sorry?”

“Nana,” She gently corrects you again with this mischievous slant to her smile, and you start remembering: all the gossip and rumors, how she was being courted by these talent-scouts and labels. A prodigy, or as close to it as anyone from this town could ever get.

Your eyes are starting to sting again when she, this perfect-fit model of your worst impulses, runs her hand through her hair, tugging at the roots a little bit, a silver wristwatch falling slightly down the perfect length of her forearm. It almost hurts not to reach out and steady her. And it definitely shouldn't, but it has you breathing a bit faster. The rationalization: you are a man, and there is a perfectly ordinary part of you that might be aroused by any amount of smooth, inviting skin. That's fine. You're fine.

"Just for the record," Nana starts, still looking like she wants to put a hand forward and hook one long fingernail into the buttons of your shirt. "You were, like, absolutely one of my favorite teachers."

"I guess it's nice to hear I'm not a complete lost cause," you say.

She snorts. "Oh, definitely not." And maybe because, after all of the years you have been teaching these soon-to-be lawyers, politicians, and doctors, you've come to not look down on them for saying the wrong things so much. Though you do envy their absolute ability to say the wrongest of things - just so - just on purpose.

"Are you," you nod at the thick stack of paperback novels that she is still holding, and with which, suddenly, she's bashful and flustered - this perfect shade of pink blossoming through her cheeks. "Actually here to buy those?"

The response: a demure little shrug. A drawl. "We all have our vices, professor."

"I'm not your teacher anymore," and remembering at the last moment, "Nana, you can drop the honorifics, please."

She holds a book out, cover turned toward you, and your mind stalls - even your fingers slip a little where they are resting on the spine of your own paperback purchase. The title is an affront to literacy, and the art on the cover seems to have been produced only with stock photos, gaudy.

"Have you heard of it?"

"Can't say that I have."

"Well," she laughs and has the courtesy not to lay it at your expense, "it is so good." Then, without missing a beat, she twists her lips together, and finds the book flush against your chest. "I'm sure it beats reading textbooks and essays about the merits of Locke and Hobbes' life-after-death stuff all day, anyway. An hour if you can spare the time? I'd love to hear your thoughts on it"

And - ah, there it is. The push.

-

There is a zero percent chance that, after any of this, things will end neatly for either of you. 

You still wonder, slightly, how long Nana will keep up the charade before breaking character - because there's no way in hell she doesn't see what she's doing: wrapping you around her pretty fingers, her shiny, manicured nails, twisting every chance you get to reject her into an excuse to linger that little bit longer.

But it's well over an hour spent at the cafe-end of the bookstore, where she orders an iced-coffee and fills you in on the details you don't really need to hear, what she's been up to these last couple semesters - playing twenty questions; questions about other faculty members, the school, if the school newspaper is still anything like it used to be (for the record: no), then coming back to if you've been seeing anyone lately. That last one slips in so naturally you can't stop yourself from taking a slow drag off of the straw in your drink and answering: "not recently."

Because no honest deed goes unpunished, or however the saying goes.

"Hey," her hands splay out over the tabletop, pushing the cold, condensing water of her glass, smudging where a finger drags a line through the pool.

Maybe she knows. How you're already caught, and there's no going back, which is to say you're perfectly free to watch, hungrily, where her throat moves, and then where her lips part.

"I’ve got the perfect thing for that," and for one unhinged, hysterical moment you picture it, Nana: lying back against a counter or maybe in the cushions of a sofa, panties thrown carelessly over her shoulder; heaving out this soft, heady gasp. You: pushing inside of her for the very first time, both of your legs bracing, the heel of her foot pressed into the small of your back - but before you can convince yourself that she can't be talking about that, and just barely before the air gets stuck in the back of your throat and you realize that you might be so thoroughly, tragically fucked -

"Read this." A snap back into the here and now. She is looking at you very pointedly, not naked - but beautiful and perfect as she leans a bit into the table and crosses those lovely, lovely legs of hers, and tilts the copy of that awful, awful filth at you.

"Nana, respectfully, this is drivel," you say, immediately and plainly, listening to Nana laugh out loud as you glean more than you need to know from the info on the inside cover. "They've crossed like five major genre boundaries for a hook-up. Why should anyone bother?"

"Come on." She waves it off with a careless gesture of her hands. "There's plenty of things to like. Maybe you should give it a chance - broaden your horizons, teach. Besides - the sex scenes?" She rolls her shoulders with the same shrug you remember watching so carefully all those times she made her way, out of the hallways and back into that front-and-center-seat she was always occupying whenever the bell rang. "So filthy. I can show you one of my favorites."

"Doesn't really seem like appropriate reading material for -"

"You said it yourself," her voice has a bright, saccharine tone, just on the right side of strained. And between sips of that straw stuck in the purse of her pert, little mouth, she draws that next sentence - the ice cracking, thinning under your feet -

"Not my teacher anymore."

Nana smiles; this brash, cock-sure thing that reminds you, as you try to clear your throat of the nerves making a bed there: you are actually so, so fucking gone on her. So far gone it hurts, when, with a flourish and a bounce and a complete, reckless lack of discretion, she starts paging through the first chapters.

"Who says you can't study these kinds of stories on an academic level? Think about it: sex sells. Whoever ends up writing, it's a whole lot easier and a hell of a lot cheaper than trying to do it all yourself." She looks up, this mischievous twinkle in her eyes, as she angles her fingertips down on the book and opens it - page after page of very obviously poorly-written sex. You look, not even consciously.

But of course, her fingertips drift lower and lower along the pages until it's evident: she doesn't have an exact page in mind, but only a particular passage -

"Here. Let me show you, just one."

"Alright, fine," you start - trying for an effect of exasperation, something to mitigate this god awful throbbing, "whatever - you get one, one sample paragraph and I'll, you know, whatever."

"Yeah, you'll definitely see. Just trust me. Just the one."

She drums her long, gorgeous nails against the table, then eases back with a finger highlighting the text.

You're screening and scanning the words as she tells you about the heroine in the story: a pretty girl who comes down with a bad case of infatuation for her teacher - unrequited, of course. And then, into a passionate affair, of course; all the most raucous, explicit details laid out over the table for everyone else to hear. She says it is about as nonchalantly as though she had been reading you the daily weather forecast and not an elaborate metaphor for - and here, you stop her.

"He cums on her desk?"

"Fucking hot, right?" She nearly snorts and gestures you onward, her eyebrows jumping - go on, go on.

So, you skim along: a heavy rush of nausea (alongside another) pulsing down around your gut at the thought of actually doing such a thing, your ears going hot and your legs crossing on instinct. There's not so much a breath of hesitation as Nana, cool, unfazed, and utterly unaware of the uncomfortable churning of your stomach and the simultaneous thrumming in your cock, takes another deep swig of coffee.

She hums, thoughtful. "Honestly? Kinda wished it happened to me like that. You were a good, good teacher, professor. I wouldn't have minded your hands all over me." You hear her laugh, and the entire universe collapses like the end-days. You are struck down with feverish conviction: this girl is the worst. 

"Anytime you wanted," she adds, so carelessly.

There's a clunking sound, of glass on wood; a half a second where you almost lose control over yourself.

“Nayeon,” you let slip, the old name - a mistake of an invitation she grasps like a weapon. All coming to a glint in her eye that says she knows how you see it, how you can still picture her sitting with her hands folded over the skirt of her uniform, chest rising and falling beneath her cotton shirt. Studious, taking notes, acting every bit the naive sweetheart everyone believed her to be.

You shudder out some pretense of composure and settle back a few inches as she continues to coax a reaction out of you, prodding: "how many girls did you make confess back then, hm? Did it ever do them any good?"

"Dial it back, Nana."

Her expression is all feigned, gentle surprise. "But sir," she looks at you so innocently, "you said I should drop the honorific."

You want to argue that, you also want to tell her off for being such a brat - to demand that, instead, she cut the shit, sit back, and remember who you both are, but when, with a wink and a smirk, she's getting up out of her seat, Nana sets a gentle, reassuring hand on your shoulder as she pushes her chair back beneath the table. You get onto your feet, and when the two of you are stood close together like this - she's really and truly that much smaller than you remember. Waist so tiny you think you could almost, almost wrap two hands all the way around her; skirt rising all too easily when she tosses her weight between her heels.

"I hope you know what you’re doing," you tell her, sternly - the voice of a teacher whose patience is running thin.

But no matter where you look, the consequences are dire and immediate: an abject fascination, a kind of debilitating greed; the absolute fucking loss of ability to look her directly in her eyes. Not like Nana isn't staring right through you. There's no doubt some part of her relishes the feeling.

"Hey, what do I know?" This sweet, demure-like chuckle follows. "It's just porn, right?”

-

Eventually, Nana says to call it a night because the sun's long set into the horizon and the chill starts getting at the both of you.

She tells you while you're packing up your belongings to come by again sometime, her voice teasing as she explains that you should pick out a new novel to read for your benefit.

Which is possibly the ideal outcome, all things considered, if it wasn't for the way she found herself in your hands just a few paces into the parking lot - no one around to catch you, where you're gripping fast onto her wrist and pressing the lines of her body into door of your car, looming and ready to give a piece of your mind.

You know what you ought to say - things like don't bother, you've enjoyed her company, she's fun and sweet, and in a dozen different ways: be a good girl, and go home. You had your fun, didn't you? But she's practically begging, those huge, wide doe eyes that stare straight up into your soul.

"C'mon,” her voice lilts into a deeper, more purposeful register, “you wouldn't turn down a student on her way home, would you?

(This fucking girl.)

She speaks of propriety, like you aren't a man of your own principles - like you aren't reaching down to press a kiss to the swell of her lips like she undoubtedly deserves. To lick into her mouth and pull and kiss and bite until she's trembling, teeth caught in a delicate whimper. Or, that you aren't running your hands down her sides to find the backs of her knees and draw them upward, hooking your hips flush against hers.

She's all too breathless, watching you draw off her lips, fingers fast in your shirt, your hair - holding you close.

Then finally, a true, honest reflection of your heart. Nothing less than sheer and utter capitulation: "let me take you home."

Nana just nods before wrapping her arms around your neck and kissing you again.

-

It's definitely on you for expecting anything different, but Nana fucks like she talks.

Conceited. Brash. A little selfish.

The girl's sitting there on her kitchen counter with one leg hooked over your shoulder. She's stripped herself down to near nothing save for those fuck-off ridiculous panties: slick, shiny with a thick strip of satin between her lips, complete with white lace frills and all; the same ridiculous pattern as the thigh-high stockings clinging tight around the soft-gentle fat of her legs and the lace top of her garter. Her pussy - all tight and pink and soaked - has left this shimmering, shiny mess that's trailing down the insides of her thighs.

Your fingers are in the elastic of her panties, near bruising the curve in her waist where she's rocking, flushed and keening against your grip.

You tell her, "take these off."

"Off?" She repeats it back to you with the same little grin: playing dumb, the smart, charming ass she's been all night.

"I'd tell you what I really want to do to you," you start, pushing your fingers in a little harder, eliciting another pretty moan. "But I'm really, really sure you can fill in the blanks yourself.

"I hope you're not planning on being rough with me," she teases, running her hands all through your hair as she pulls herself against you - and of course, it's her audacity to insist, "no marks." She drops a chaste little kiss along the underside of your jaw. "At least, nothing that might show up on a camera."

Someone with a little less baggage might have done just that. Might have jerked her panties down a couple inches further - ripped the cloth, exposed her even more. You might have followed the waistline further along the perfect round of her ass, found those dips and dimples that, maybe, no one else has ever gotten to explore. You may have grasped at the ends of her hair and gotten your fingers in her pussy without ceremony - driven Nana to the very brink of her climax just before palming two greedy handfuls of that ass - shoving yourself right there between her lips and, lost to shame, put a fucking kid in her.

All the things she must be dying for you to do.

"Something the matter?" She pushes her mouth into yours for a kiss that has all the urgency of a lazy Sunday morning. Your tongue against hers, languid and gentle at first; wet-sloppy, kissing and sucking on her bottom lip. You can feel her smirking when she says, "don't tell me you've forgotten how."

It's a lot, the effort you're putting in not to crumble - to crack at her taunts, snap your restraint, the temptation. You just wanna grab her pretty tits in both hands, shake her, and say: "shut the fuck up." But no - even in your wildest fantasy, you want to hear her first - beg you to make a wreck of her. So you force the words between your lips, dry and cracking:

"Not a fucking chance."

A laugh. "Guess I'm in good hands, then. Have to admit," Nana slides her hands down to hook under your own, bringing them lower. She grinds your fingers in slow circles over that one, aching, perfect little bud - a shock that has her curling tight inward until she's whining, clutching at her waist. "Not the - not the situation I had in mind."

Nana shifts her weight a bit more on one hip, guiding you through rubbing along the entrance to her slit - sloppy with precum, silky and aching - and when you place just the lightest pressure over all that hot skin, she opens her mouth: 

"Ah."

Her eyes, her hair, her fucking mouth - you can’t look away - she’s so gorgeous it hurts.

Even the way she pants; the perfect furrow between her brows. And then, you dip a finger inside her, just to the first knuckle. It’s enough to make her whine, all shaky and high.

"Go on then, with how you’d pictured it," you press, already easing your digit in and out; slow, slick pumps that she is growing hotter, needier around. "I'm sure you've touched yourself to it more than a few times. The details and - stuff - must have been vivid."

"You haven't the slightest clue."

A brief kiss. You coax another shy sound from her, drawing a long sigh against her mouth -

"Try me, Nayeon."

"This is a lot closer to the truth than you’d think, professor." This time, no correction, she just smiles wide and tosses her head back, asking, sweetly, as if to absolve you of the responsibility. "Do you have any idea how long I've thought about it? You, me - us?" 

Nana slips a finger between the buttons of your shirt and starts to pull.

On that detail, you actually, truthfully do not want to know.

"These... oh, how should I even call them." She hums softly just before easing a bit of distance between the two of you, head tilting like she's in a trailer for this summer's romcom, and not, you know, trying to drag you into hell. "Filthy little fantasies?"

"You know," you start. And by this point, her cunt's that much tighter. You've managed two fingers now, but no further, and she's making these desperate, punched-out gasps. Her clit's a swollen pink nub, jutting out from its soft hood. "I really had you pegged all wrong."

"Not - not at all. You can fuck me just fine, trust me - ah. Please, you can fuck me anyway you want."

And here, you grab a little higher on her hips, pinching her on the outside of a thigh, and begin working your fingers fast. You've never cared much for teasing, not really, but something about the way she squirms in your grip, tries to lean up and grasp onto your shoulders with shaking hands, it gets you smiling. It gets you grinning, even, especially the way she makes these pretty noises: a long, desperate little, "ah," at each press and thrust, her breath going high and uneven. 

"Listen, Nana -" She squeals out loud when you push your fingers just a little deeper, a little bit harder. "I'm not going to talk about what a slut you've been today or how badly I want to spread you wide open," you can already tell it's affecting her: the sudden change, the subtle hitch in her breathing, the tremor where her thighs press together. "Tell me about you, about your little ideas. Let me help."

"Wouldn't be fair." Her pussy's getting tighter, urgent with want. And still:

"C'mon now. Humor me a little. There was probably-" you say, sliding down that ridiculous pair of underwear along her ass, tugging them over the curves of her legs - so slow and easy, all while you're not bothering with easing off. Nana moans again; voice pitched. "Lots. Lots and lots of dirty things - and, I'm willing to bet my career that they made you a hot, mess - an awful, soaking fucking wreck. Who could've guessed? You, of all people, with just the right kind of teacher's-pet-appeal, hm?"

And you meant it to be a joke, just some ribbing. But the question has her immediately tensing, looking at you very intently, no trace of shame as she snaps back -

"Your mouth." She rocks forward. "Your fucking mouth."

You shouldn't keep touching her, you shouldn't keep staring, you shouldn't push her flat on her back and shove your face right into her cunt, you should pull away before this goes too far - it shouldn't be your fingers drawing out sopping-wet gasps out of her pussy, nor should you press your tongue to her cunt, your mouth to all that delicate flesh and, at your first taste, shiver.

Nana laughs: shaky, nervous. Then, your fingers sink back into her pussy alongside your tongue, your lips, the way even your hot breath against her aching pussy has her all stunned, breathless - and -

"Please."

- right before she breaks off into a beautiful sound that catches her hard in the chest.

(A sound like you’re all she could ever want in this life, maybe the next; it’s this wordless plea.)

"Hah, I had - ah, had so much - hah - dirt on you, used to masturbate thinking - ah," and there, she arches her spine, forcing a sigh out, "thinking about how you might punish me." She laughs - nearly choking. "How you might break down all your veneer of being a good, moral man and fuck me raw and rough and - ah - fuck. Oh god, fuck."

You twist your fingertips up just so, right against this perfect spot in her, and all the sudden the entire line of her body seizes - stiffens up, the muscles in her thighs twitch as you both moan through the moment, the spasms reverberating in your own ears, loud and unashamed, right against her wet, wet clit. Your fingers are fucking and fucking and fucking away in her cunt, harder and faster and sloppier, every word, every groan, every gasped breath only making it easier to forget. To give in. And with every heavy slap and squelch of your fingertips digging in as deep as her body allows - you're sending her that much closer.

You pull back long enough to bite out: "cum whenever you want, Nana.”

She can’t, she can’t, she can’t, is what she’s trying to say, bracing against how your tongue moves around her clit, and she knows, there’s no use fighting it.

A kiss against her swollen mound and she writhes. “There you go sweetheart, cum for me.”

Nana comes undone. Gradually at first, then vaulting over that edge all at once. She lifts and lowers her hips - pushing your fingers into the smooth, velvety muscles of her cunt; rocking up and up again. It's a torturously slow kind of grinding, and her feet find purchase on either side of you as her toes curl, one heel digging into your shoulder. An assurance; a promise; a lifeline; that she might tremble and shake through it, moaning.

“Fuck,” and, “god,” and, “you’re gonna make me-” slip past her lips alongside all the assured gasped-out cries for relief - the orgasm sweeping through her, tearing her apart.

Back pitching, shoulders narrowing, face twisting, cinching tighter and tighter -

Until she collapses.

Until it’s over.

As she lays there, chest heaving, arm draped carelessly across her forehead and half over a kitchen cutting board - her thighs splayed open, fucked and spent - she's so, so beautiful.

And it’s in that sort of fucked-up-noodly-state where she just slides right into your arms - those long, slender legs wrapping tight around your middle. "Here's the deal," you say, grabbing hold of her hips and steadying her, as best as either of you can.

"Hm." This lazy, sated look, the way her tongue's dragged out - slow and slick - across the top of her teeth and bottom of her lips. "Go ahead, sir. I'm listening."

The lip service - that coy little appeal to authority that maybe you’re actually plenty fond of - it makes you stop for the barest of moments. This girl, she's unreal. How hard could you ever be asked to resist her?

She lifts a brow. "Professor."

So you continue:

"I'm going to get out of these clothes, and we are going to see what happens after that - if you have a preference for the bed or the sofa, now's your chance to pipe up. Or else -"

"Or else-" She repeats, shifting her weight around again. You can feel how she adjusts her heels to hang higher up your ribs, rocking her weight against your abdomen, against your cock - and the instinctual twitch that runs through your spine is turgid and rough. Like a shot. If it had a smell, it'd probably remind you of gasoline.

And then, maybe just to rile you up even more: "the dining room table makes a good impression of a teacher's desk, no?"

You slide your hand along the backs of her thighs until you have a good, tight, high hold on them and pick her up, leaving the panties, the stockings, all of it down where they can gather dust or whatever - she giggles, and tightens her hold around you like she doesn't need to worry about falling.

"I'd rather fuck you into a mattress to be perfectly candid."

Nana throws back her head and laughs - this real, honest-to-goodness peal of laughter, a hint of playfulness where there was usually just a practiced ease. "Oh. So forward."

(In all likelihood, you're both going to hell, and on the off chance you meet down there, you figure you'll fuck her then, too.

You've read the myths, the Greek tragedies, the ones that have these gods descending from the heavens on human women, for pleasure and nothing but, you've read those stories and plenty more - the details don't matter: it's always a bad, bad end for everybody involved.)

She takes you upstairs. And the two of you fall through the doorway to her bedroom, stumbling all the way.

Her apartment is simple and clean in the way all young adults try to emulate, all white countertops, but with pictures hanging in little, neat rows on the walls and the space void of anything with some sort of character or history.

You know because you're fumbling toward a dresser or desk or bookshelf in an attempt to orient yourselves, bumping and tussling, half-blind, on your path forward and all of a sudden there's a goddamn framed photo in your hand - not of her family, thank god. Though just about every other person in the picture is familiar to you, you remember every single one - but all you're capable of focusing on is Nana, Nayeon: not quite the same. The same glint in her eyes, the way her smile has a timeless kind of quality, the faint dimples in her cheeks. 

And some wicked part of you is all too willing to ignore the whole timeline of events that has led up to you, Nana, like this: you want to pull her hair. You want to shove her around like she doesn't matter - is in any way disposable or replaceable; the most selfish parts of you wishing you could keep her pinned down by her slender neck; pressing a palm, bruising, into her collarbone as you start to work at your belt buckle and slacks with your other hand.

It's hard, getting a grip on yourself as Nana, sliding onto her bed and rolling across the sheets, pulls her stockings down the length of her legs - only stopping herself long enough to meet your eyes. Her throat bobbing.

“Of course,” she says, because your cock is hanging out by that point, straining and a little pent-up. "I fucking knew you would have a perfect cock."

"Flattery or sincerity?"

"Um, let's say both." She shifts around the pillow - that sweet little pout on her lips. Her gaze dropping from your mouth and running all along the length of your torso, lower and lower. Like her hands. And when her eyes flick up to meet yours, just when you're stroking at your cock, base and shaft, teasing yourself, well past the point of pretense, a devious smile spreads wide across her pretty, beautiful face. The implication: you aren't leaving here until you're cumming inside her.

And with a glimmer in her eyes, the sheer audacity, her fingertips ghost the underside of your cock as she draws up toward the head, "you're going to ruin me with this thing. You know that right?"

"A bit dramatic."

Nana moves to rest with the tops of her knees at the edge, her chin resting against the insides of her wrists, elbows propped up - poised, playful, everything she should be as the both of you regard each other a moment longer. "Can you blame me? It's not just that it's huge, I mean - I've barely even gotten a hold of it, and yet... god," she snorts. Her eyelids are heavy, mouth curved, almost a snarl as she drags her bottom lip through the grip of her teeth and sinks down onto the mattress.

"Say something filthy again," and this is a test, this is Nana testing you to see what exactly you'll get away with.

(Hint: it's a whole lot.)

She sighs. The image of indigence, innocence, everything pure and good you couldn't hope for. "Should I suck it or not? Or maybe, I don't know. Would you prefer me to beg for it first, ask if you'll put it in? Like, I think if you ordered me to put it in my mouth, right now, I wouldn't be able to say no."

"Really," the most sarcastic answer.

"Really," she continues. "For instance. If you came over here right now and guided me up and onto your dick and told me, specifically, that you were going to face-fuck me? I couldn't say no. No sir."

You could have her any damn way. You could have her, and you both know it.

"So tempting," you tease, mostly in earnest, "maybe another time, when my self-control isn't quite so lacking."

Nana hums a low, flippant sort of noise - like: whenever you're ready - and just how much trouble it gets you in, the mere suggestion, is what she is banking on.

"Hey," is her invitation, "I won't beg yet. You still want me to put my mouth all over it," and to emphasize, she slips her fingers between the plump pillows of her lips, smiling at how that makes you reach over the nightstand, accidentally pulling open a drawer, possibly reaching for the first aid kit, "or would you rather watch me stuff all these fingers in my wet, little hole."

A sharp inhale: it really would be fun, probably, but you can't take it.

"Nana," this voice, gravelly-ragged and harsh, "if you're planning to make me snap, you are, without question, on the right track."

"Then before that happens," she says, pulling you down into the bedsheets beside her. Your body flush against hers, the beat of her heart loud against your own; this gorgeous, pristine girl, so nakedly giving - this is an honor and a curse all rolled up together, no doubt.

And after a hot, wet kiss: "fuck me like I always thought you would."

(She was made to be like this; it's the only explanation.

Made for wanting. Made for fucking. Made to be loved and made to have her cunt fucked full - ruined by your fingers, your tongue, your cock. This absolutely perfect body, and all the delicious parts of her; this thing of desire, bashful and coy and that deserves all the world and, having none of the grace or courtesy to actually beg, orders, like she always knew she could:

"Like, right fucking now."

Or else.)

Then you're there - her hot mouth, her cunt, your fingers digging in bruising-tight all along the curve of her thighs where they meet her ass, hips, thighs, waist. She's pumping her soft palm and delicate fingers, slick with her spit and yours around the length of you and this isn't going to last long; not that there's any doubt you're going to leave her sore. But still, you drag the head of your cock across the swollen lips of her pussy, down through the plump swell of her clit until it rests where the ridge just begins and every slide, every pressure along every inch of your cock, the thought of being enveloped entirely in all that silky warmth is nearly the end of you.

A whimper, "professor."

You wrap your hands tighter around the smooth, firm muscles in her thighs; dragging your fingers back and forth across the supple skin there - just firm enough to elicit a reaction from the tension in her legs, until you have her flipped over on her stomach. Because if you're going to fuck her properly, it's going to be with her face buried deep into a pillowcase and you perched above her, holding her down against the sheets.

You watch her get her elbows underneath her, laying almost flat. Watch her trace the shape of her own jaw, her nose, her neck - the smooth expanse of her chest - as you straddle her thighs. With her ass pointed right up at you and the heel of her ankle gently grinding into the underside of your leg, you groan, placing both hands just above her ass. And once you're gripping the whole shape of her, you push your cock into her, just an inch, listening to the shift in her breathing.

She shudders, "don't tease - oh, please, sir-"

"Is this what you expected, Nana?" You grab onto her hair. Then again, when she tries to get her hands on herself. Her shoulders are high, tight. You just don't give her a chance; pushing yourself another inch, a couple. The pace, so gradual she starts making these soft, little breathless sounds as you stretch her tight pussy open. A few moments when she stops trying to bury her noises, her gasps - stops trying to angle her hips or squeeze or resist the thick shape of your cock where it is so, so hot and full inside of her - and there you stop. "What is it you had in mind, hm?"

"Ngh - oh."

Her cunt's clamping tight around just the first few inches of you. The tightness, the wet heat is staggering; how it pulls and begs with the words she seems reluctant to spill out.

So - you lift a hand, bringing it back down again onto the pale, rounded flesh of her ass with a smack, a gasp, and this wet sound from the sopping heat of her pussy, all aching and sobbing, "don't, fuck, stick it - fuck, put it - just. Just fucking get on top of me and pin me down - make it hard for me to breathe - do it, just. Like I, fuck, like I always wanted, sir, please-"

And you sink all the way in.

"Fuck." She bites into those consonants, a whole-body motion that pulls at the tension in her spine, the muscles in her legs. But her hips angle right up, and she presses her ass into the hollow of your abdomen and says, "thank you. Thank you. God."

"Don't get lazy on me," you say, grinding the tip of your cock in little circles; pulling it out and angling it down until it's prodding at all the right places to make her arch and shiver.

"Please," she says again, louder this time, almost a moan. "That. Fuck. Yes. It's."

"Yes, yes, I know. Nana, you-"

"Just use me. Whatever you like," she pants; then, once you've pulled yourself out to the tip, slowly filling her again, "use me like a fucktoy, alright. Because - fuck," Nana shivers, pushing her hips into yours. Her shoulders lower, as if by degrees, "please. Use me. Make it rough. Please, professor - use me however you want, I don't care - anything's fine with me - use me, as long and as much as you need, I. Please."

The real difference here, beyond anything else, is that this is no longer the game it was; the very instant she was sprawled across the mattress with a line of drool dripping into the sheets, all her bright, polished glory has vanished, leaving this bare edge of her exposed - the girl who lives solely to be fucked and used by your cock, her cunt leaking, begging for more. Reduced to the basics and nothing else.

"Your fucking cunt, Nana, the goddamn clench - you feel - it's-" (So fucking good, is what you can’t quite say, because she’s tight and wet and her tiny pussy is quivering like mad every time you bathe your cock in its scorching heat. Over and over.) It’s hard to think; you’re truly - truly - fucking her, but you can’t ignore the tautness in her spine either, bent below you. There are probably tears beading down her cheeks, but there's no helping the raw instinct screaming through the core of her being, pleading with you to pull yourself free, before sinking hilt-deep into her again, again, again - to a chorus of sloppy, loud, nasty, fucking whimpers and moans.

Like music. 

It's easy after all, how her pussy gives way to you. How she molds around you - sleeves onto you like a glove - like there was only one cunt in the world you should ever be fucking up and fucking apart. 

"It's incredible. Fuck. Just that perfect."

Nana, as best as she can, trying to stay steady, braced against her hands and knees, is raising her hips.

But it's clear with the way she's slipping all over, slicking the sweat off her palms and rocking her ass back into your thrusts, a cry falling out of her, unbidden, when she speaks and not.

"Please," she pants, through tears probably, this breathy-shivering. A renewed enthusiasm for your grip on her - where, in another place, you'd worry about leaving marks behind - for the feeling of your weight slamming down into her, driving the air from her lungs.

The sheets are a crumpled mess, pillows knocked from the mattress, where the two of you are shaking it apart.

You're pulling her apart, slowly, thrust by thrust into her sopping cunt, and in a promise of how you'll put her back together, you get your mouth on her shoulders, her neck, kisses in her hair, behind her ear - Nana just whimpers, curling her toes and ankles along the backs of your knees, her face against the pillow and gasping, "thank you - thank - thank-"

And when your palm smacks against the generous swell of her ass, again, she keens so perfectly for you.

It's a breathtaking sight, so good, so perfect: her flawless ass pitched high, round and flushed pink. The flutter of her eyelashes and the tears and drool. The outlines of her pale white cheeks sent into ripple after ripple, and then the way you can slide one hand forward between her shoulder blades and slip it into her hair, nails raking her scalp, grabbing a handful of hair in your fist and tilting her face - to the side, enough for her cheek against the pillow and the way her hips try to press against yours; try to chase the pleasure; this brash, gorgeous, slim-waisted, well-curved, exquisite young woman - like everything.

"Please," is all she says as you fit your chest up tight to her back and mouth at her neck - lick all along the sweat. "Please."

You can't take it anymore, can't keep watching this masterpiece, can't stand the molten heat wrapped around your cock every time the drag in and out of her pussy pulls sets every nerve on fire. Right in her ear: "I'm cumming, Nana, I'm cumming inside this tight, little pussy."

A short gasp, "yeah."

"Yeah. Inside, Nana. Cum inside, you -" You twist your fingers against her scalp and find purchase, an excuse - a means to yank her head around and lean into her, teeth against skin, that familiar coiling in your gut and the burning sensation that flows right alongside every slap and smack of her hips on your skin.

"Fuck me." You watch her bite down, swallow a sound, try to say: "fuck your load so deep inside me it’ll be all I think about for weeks, let me feel it, all that hot, all that sticky, fucking cum"

And you drag your hips, these final, punishing drags through her drenched cunt. Her fingers are white knuckled and fisting the sheets, until the very second you've pressed every ounce of your own body's worth into her own, when you're collapsing her spine and pushing her face into the bedspread, this wave rushes through your ears like the buzz and hum of insects and waves and things out of sync - the high, the peak -

And then:

Sobering, subjugating silence.

In fact, you're shuddering; You're cumming, spilling pools of thick cum deep inside of her. It's all in that warm, filthy sensation, a heady, hazy, desperate thrill when her own cunt seizes in its climax around you, trembling, throbbing, quivering, clenching; drawing everything out and taking your cock deeper - even while the whole of her is thrashing and bucking, all of this messy with her pleasure and her voice caught up, writhing and breathless.

"God-" is the last thing out of her mouth before you can kiss it quiet, tug on her lower lip and open her up like a present - messy and breathy, crying out, you're making this mess inside, this beautiful fucking mess - as the whisper you feel against your lips:

"Inside me, like that."

As you groan, deep and hot, "filthy fucking cumslut-"

Right on the verge, riding out every twitch of your cock and each flex of your hands at the skin around her ass, her waist, back and shoulder blades; even after you've caught your breath, you keep pumping more and more inside of her, you don't stop, won't, and even when you manage it, pulling out the head of your cock - you can feel every slick detail - just the slit and rim, resting the throbbing head of your cock at her swollen little mound, feeling the length of her fucked-out pussy spasm at the emptiness and trying to grasp around nothing - empty, tight and aching, sopping.

There's her hips, just this, right there; the line, the silhouette. Her thin waist and the curvy swell of her ass, jutting out straight - the cream-colored flesh dusted pink. The lithe, soft line of her stomach and the insides of her thighs a little farther along, sweaty and inviting.

She's so pliant in your grip, even though she's trying her best to curl herself backward - to angle your spent cock back into the ready, welcoming warmth of her slick, wet pussy - and once the afterglow has begun to wear away, that same greed and yearning takes its rightful place. A glimmer in her eyes. The unmistakable need and drive.

"One more," she says, wiggling her hips back into your stomach. "For me."

(The truth: you can't refuse her, not as she bites her lip and twists, all that soft hair splayed across her face, stuck to her tear-damp skin.

One more, because you both still want it. One more, because in the dim glow and evening air of her bedroom, everything that happens now matters just as much as anything that happened before.

One more, because you need her again.)

-

When she wakes in the dark, you figure her bed will be empty.

Nana will realize that you're gone. Of course you’ll be - it was never going to go differently; the sex had to end at some point. After all, if you stayed, eventually she'd start saying something you'd find a fault in or your skin would be so sensitive she couldn't stand not running a finger up your spine and maybe kissing your hip.

The reasons to go always outnumbered the reasons to stay.

The world would catch up and someone would find out and that's the sort of gossip that might leave both of your careers in shambles. Or else, you'd do something you couldn't come back from, the moment the heat of the sex left your body and her cunt, god, her perfect little cunt was spent - slackening - and the moments-after-haze, her legs locked up and her arms a bit sore, would clear up. Then you'd look at her, or else the shame would win out - the guilt and you'd call it quits. She won’t blame you. She can't.

-

But then again,

Her heart won't fall completely to pieces, because:

You've stayed. And it isn't an easy position, even if she is easy.

Here she is, though: sleeping on her side with her wrists crossed in front of her face - peaceful and quiet, probably tired enough to sleep without dreams. The dark has long since settled across her bedroom, save the pinpricks of stars in the sky out her window and a sliver of moonlight. You can see her, or you could reach out and run your hands all along her calves and thighs, but you don't.

Nana's shoulders slump forward in the faintest of sighs, and there it is - the slow, gentle swell and fall of her chest.

-

Here's how you got here:

In this scandal-in-waiting of a relationship. Here's the stupidest possible path, where a bright-eyed student with a crush fucks her older professor just once, and somehow you both find yourselves coming back for more, like maybe your very, very bodies belong together - a maddening compulsion.

Even once you've managed to work through the idea of your cum all inside of her, a seedy, twisted corner of your mind murmurs how it makes the most sense. To stick your cock inside of her again.

Where she can show you the way it can look; the mess and the texture of the slick, white spill - dribbling out of her pussy in the afterglow, onto her palm, and down the crevice in her ass and lower.

It's the phone calls probably - and not just the phone sex - late-night talking, conversation and every once in awhile, the kind of hot, hard fucking that gets you in trouble, but also a reason to be with each other again. Not just the quick fucks but the nice ones - the days, the late nights and mornings and what have you: all the casual intimacy of it. All the sweet nothings exchanged.

The after-sex cuddling, with her straddling your lap;

The sensation of her thighs sliding into place around the tops of your legs, her arms tucked around your neck;

The kisses you don't take and kisses you'd be okay with, all the promises made to love you as many times as necessary, however necessary, wherever.

That's all here too.

Again:

She is young. But, who the fuck are you to say? Who the hell can tell you she doesn't deserve the least rotten, least painful, most promising love she can find in this particularly fucked-up world?

Who else is going to keep the both of you safe and hidden?

And who else, despite everything, seems to like having a secret that they're sure only you know; every glance or accidental touch with her eyes brimming, alive, and the whole of her bent like a bow-string - all held back and wound-up tight.

To the point her spine will shiver and shake; you know how it can be.

-

"Are you actually going to buy those?" Nana asks one day, dangling on her toes, chin rested comfortably in the sweep of your shoulder.

When she crowds the swell of her hip and her breasts and her entire body into your back and snakes her arms around your shoulders, you think there's nothing else in the world you need.

"You called them drivel," she adds, almost pouting - which is a look you're slowly trying to inoculate yourself against because the moment it comes up, you have a knee-jerk reaction to drop anything and everything and carry her off someplace else. To have a place where she could, could, could -

"Hah," you roll your eyes, not taking the bait. There's a shelf-full of campy, smutty romance novels in the dollar bin. "It is. The story was less than complicated, but I couldn't figure out what the hell two or three characters' plotlines had to do with one another, and sometimes you just want a little guilty pleasure, you know?"

"Ooh. So," Nana smiles, the devious sort. "I guess there is some honesty in you after all."

"Come on, this one at least has an original story," and it is a shameless attempt, "plus-"

"I know, I know. Fine. And if it is so terribly bad, well, I suppose I can use your chest as a pillow to take a nap," she says, before throwing this particular glance over her shoulder.

The cashier doesn't need to ask if the two of you want your copies of 'Wild West of the Heart' or whatever-the-fuck this one is titled, scanned separately.

All of that, those paperback-cover love stories and TV drama plots, these are the sorts of things you do just for Nana; as the two of you wait in long lines, get carried along, get bumped and pushed, like every other ordinary-person thing you've done for her ever since.

("Honestly, this isn't my kind of thing either," you tell her in the aisle of a grocery store once. The fluorescent lighting only accentuates the blush high on her cheeks. "don't make me fuss over something like this."

"Have a little sympathy," she insists, nudging the handle of the shopping cart against the inside of your shins. "A girl like me isn't good for much else.")

It's not romance, really, that's such a fucked up way to go about describing any of it, but then there's Nana, bouncing on her heels and prattling on, this girl in the spring of her life who is full to the brim and bursting with the most chaotic and eclectic sorts of thoughts and passions -

So, what.

"Really," she adds - another side, another angle on an issue the two of you had an hour ago while cooking breakfast. "Just, think about it. Would you honestly put all this effort into somebody who doesn't make you laugh at least as much as they irritate you? Because like, you would never tolerate some self-obsessed jerk long enough to eat their burnt, terrible pancakes every day of the week."

"Fine. Maybe." You sit across the table. "You're right."

Nana blinks and this look of wonder crosses her face as she grins. A moment of triumph for her and that was more than the honest truth. It's still strange, admitting defeat in any argument here or there, or that the two of you make an actual decent couple - together. The kinds of things that come naturally to other people.

"Any more caveats to all of this, professor?"

"You’re gonna end up bent over that counter again if you keep pushing it, kid."

The both of you break out laughing and then you finish your coffee, or she stabs the last few pieces of cantaloupe on her plate, or you kiss her neck, and just -

Everything.

[yukishirostar]

So people are talking about a post in the Zolu tag by a certain tumblr user in regards to their issues with Zolu as a ship. They shall be unnamed because i dont wish to bring attention to them and instead just want to focus on their arguments because they're not the first people to make some of these points and so this is also an opportunity for me to talk about these things (a tweet is going around on Twitter containing these screenshots with the username so you can find it there if you need to anyway).

The way this person dismisses the relationship between Zoro and Luffy as a result of needing to pair gay Zoro with someone is too laughable, they must be very fit in order to be able to do these mental gymnastics. I believe that many people who are going on about the Zolu scenes in the OPLA were already Zolu shippers who were familiar with the original story and are enjoying the moments because they were well, really good Zolu moments? And there is actually, shockingly, many good Zolu moments in the original story too which is why many people ship them. Wild, I know.

Then there's 'straight-washed Sanji'. Equally if not more of a bizarre thing to believe. I might make some people mad especially the Sanji stans out there who constantly insist on the 'repressed queer' narrative with his character, but Sanji is written pretty explicitly to be seen as a cisgender and heterosexual character. The way you say with your whole chest that Luffy is 'canonically' aroace but don't acknowledge that Sanji is 'canonically' cishet is beyond hypocritical. If you believe Sanji looking like a 'misogynistic straight man' is different from the way he is written in canon then maybe you should go back and reread/rewatch series with your eyes open this time. If you wish to headcanon him with the frankly offensive repressed bisexual/transgender cliché then go ahead, but that is clearly not the intention Oda has with his character.

There's also the fact that aroace people can uh. Be in relationships. Get married. Have children. Did it occur to you that many people who ship Zolu ship them as an ace couple or-

First thing I want to say here, as a trans man who is 'mlm', can other dudes stop with this idea that women or fem-aligned individuals enjoying homosexual relationships between two men is inherently fetishising or that as a masc-aligned individual your enjoyment of a ship is morally superior in some way. Stop pulling out your 'mlm/ transmasc / cis gay' card in order to justify why your ship is superior. Its cringe af.

But if we are to insist that 'cishet female gaze fetishising mlm' is going on then ironically Zosan fits that the better than any ship in the fandom. It being by far the most popular mlm ship means there is likely a higher proportion of people who identify as cishet women who ship it. Its also the classic 'two men who dislike/hate eachother and have a toxic relationship but hot sexual tension' slash/yaoi stereotype. Majority of Zosan I've come across is depicting Zoro as the masculine male man in the relationship while Sanji the effeminate twink that Sanji stans project themselves onto and they go crazy for the bickering that is apparently reminiscent to them of a toxic heterosexual marriage. Meanwhile every Zolu/Luzo shipper I've interacted with has been some flavour of queer and Zolu is closest to the 'falling in love with your same sex bestie' narrative that the majority if not every non-heterosexual person has experienced at least once in their lifetime. This is just my personal view of course, but I think noting a difference in perspective on this topic is interesting and reveals that at the end of the day this is totally subjective and based purely on anecdotes.

Also it's just a very weird point here that apparently OP has 'plenty of varied queer rep' (it actually doesn't have that many canonical queer characters in relation to its cast size but anyway) and other media doesn't so shipping aroace characters in gay relationships is valid in those but not in One Piece … HUH???? So you're saying if One Piece had 'less' queer rep, then Zolu would be fine to ship? Idek my brain hurts.

"I have black friends so I'll speak for the black community and get offended for them" (btw this person then proceeded to block aroace people who had issues with their depiction of aroace people).

Also if we're talking canonical depictions, the only thing Zoro has been canonically depicted as is also aroace, equally if not moreso than Luffy. So by your own rules, you can't ship a cishet (sanji) with an aroace (zoro), therefore Zosan is now invalid. Stop erasing Zoro's aroace identity bigot.

'Categorically wrong' makes me laugh. I don't ship Zoro and Nami but like, people can ship what they want to??

'The general public is aware enough of gay people and how to spot them these days' uh... firstly this sounds very homophobic. Secondly the general public (cishet ppl) are famously bad at recognising queerness even when its in flashing lights before them. Thirdly you make it sound like Zoro was going around on roller skates and booty shorts listening to YMCA and Madonna in the show. I do agree he was gay-coded but it was mostly because he had sexual tension with every man he interacted with, not for the strange reasons you pointed out...

Its kinda the elephant in the room too but like. These are just headcanons. You can have multiple headcanons and interpretations of a character's sexuality. I can see Zoro as aroace virgin one day and a gay h*e the next. I'm actually allowed, legally, to do that.

The way they think shipping Zolu is harmful to aroace representation when BOTH characters are closest to being canonically aroace than anything yet ship Zosan, label being anti-Zolu as some kind of pro-ace activism, and then proceeded to block aroace people for criticising their incorrect depiction of what being aroace is...

This was a lot of words to say that you don't like a ship. Just say you don't like it, and it gets in the way of the ship you like, instead of writing a virtue signalling essay to justify your reasoning. Please.

They had some more to say on future posts I'll just pick my favourite bits

They really have this narrative that Zolu is only popular because of OPLA and can't fathom that its just a popular ship in general and always has been huh. And they couldn't make it more obvious that they're totally salty about it ranking in the top 100 most popular tumblr ships, lmao.

Your classic case of 'self-identifying ally who speaks over the people they are supposed allies of'. Its a general rule that you feel the need to declare yourself an ally you're probably not an ally, actual allies know they need to just shut up and do the work. Saying 'this character's aroace' and 'I have aroace friends' actually isn't what allyship is, thats just accepting that ace people exist which is like... the baseline.

Calling a wholesome loving ship like Zolu an icky ship is a severe consequence of online brain (this person is 26 years old btw)

[ijustwantogohomehogwarts]

e y e b r o w s

e y e b r o w s

Tim and Reader are debating the only part of his face that needs some...help

Warnings and such: one swear word? Otherwise absolutely nothing! FLUFF!!

This is one of the fluffiest things I have written and pulled outta my drafts! There's 154 more and they'll be coming!!

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

"It's not weird! You see me do it all the time!" I laughed, jumping up on the bathroom counter. I had just gotten out of the shower and thought i'd be able to go 5 minutes without my stage-5-clinger of a boyfriend. Of course, I was wrong, though Im not complaining....

"But you're a girl, it's different."

"It is not!"

He groaned, leaning across the counter to look at himself up close in the mirror. I watched him make faces, studying every part of his reflection. Even when he was being stupid, he was beautiful.

"Let me see," I smiled, grabbing his shoulder. He huffed and stood between my legs, hands on my bare thighs.

"You're soft," He cocked a smile, looking down at my skin.

"I smell nice too-" his face nuzzled into my neck before i could say anything else. "Tim!" I laughed as he inhaled deeply.

"Yeah, you do."

"Focus! Let me see." He stood up and rolled his eyes, looking at me with the upmost level of sarcasm. I grabbed his chin and tipped his face into different angles, eventually being overly dramatic just to make him laugh.

"Yeah, looks like your out of luck."

"Oh come on!" His gaze drifted back to his reflection in the mirror.

"What are you complaining about? You've obviously done it before!"

"It hurts! Why else do you think I dont stay on top of these things- dont!" He pressed a finger to my mouth.

'Because you're lazy,' I thought to myself.

"Let me do it."

"No!"

"It's not going to hurt!"

"Yes it is!"

"Fine, let the hair and make up people do it." I could see the thoughts spinning in his head. "They're going to be super busy, mad they have to spend more time to fix it, and you're gonna start your day pissed off and bright red!" I patted his cheek and made to get off the counter. "Sounds like a good idea!"

"Wait..." I smiled, hands holding his elbows. Even sitting on the counter, I had to look up at him. "Promise it's not going to hurt?"

"Would I ever lie to you?"

"About this, maybe." I gasped, slapping his chest playfully.

"You ass!" His hands grabbed my wrists, holding them gently. He pressed his lips to mine and let the kiss linger for a moment. I could feel the heat rising in my cheeks. The things this man does to me!

"Are you sure?" He finally spoke, dropping my hands and resuming the facial expressions he was making in the mirror. Well, that moments over.

"Tim, you're 3 hairs away from a unibrow! It'll take me 5 minutes, 10 tops and you won't feel a thing!"

"Fine!" he sighed, out of arguments. "But if you mess any of this up," he gestured to his entire face, "you're gonna have a lot of people coming for you!"

"Too bad I'm still the one that's gotta look at you all day!" I kissed him quickly before he could pout- The same kiss he gave me moments ago.

I got out my supplies and went to work. I'm not sure what those hair and make up artists are doing to him- he flinched like crazy at first, but quickly relaxed into it. He stood quietly between my legs, eyes closed, and obliged me when I tipped his head this way and that way.

I took my time, giving myself the pleasure to look at his face. I live with him, I've been dating him for 3 years, I've known him for 20+ years, but it never feels like I get to look at him- not in this way. His skin was perfect, freckles were adorable, his lashes fluttered slightly as I pulled the last few hairs. He sighed heavily, pulling me from my thoughts. I set the tweezers down, put a hand on his shoulder and asked him to squat, just a little. His knees gave a light thud to the cabinet as he did.

I held the side of his face, turning his head each direction one more time before running my thumbs softly across his eyebrows. He sighed heavily again, a smile tugging at his lips.

"Impatient are we?" I whispered, "Do you have somewhere better to be?"

"In bed with my girl." The smile spread across his face. "All done?" He asked, opening his eyes.

"All done!" I smiled. He looked at me for a moment before standing up straight and stepping out from between my legs, leaning over the counter once more.

"Oh wow!" More silly faces. "I look good!"

I hopped off the counter, put everything away and stood behind him, arms wrapped around his torso. He had to lift an arm to be able to see me behind him.

"You always look good...but I like you better with two eyebrows instead of one."

"You're hired!"

"Hired?"

"Oh yeah! It's one thing if those hair and makeup people wanna beat my face with makeup," I couldn't help but laugh. "But when they go for the eyebrows- they're out for blood! Literally!"

"I'm glad you're happy!" I stepped in front of him, arms still around him as I pressed my chin to his chest, looking up at him. "Timmy?"

"Yes mon amour?"

"Will you let me shave your face?"

"One thing at a time, crazy lady!"

[swarmishstrangers]

i’ll give you my entire left tiddy for some more mspar alien difference fluff. written or drawn, with mallek or marvus or pretty much anyone else. warm blooded/cold blooded cuddles with marvus. mallek purring and being embarrassed abt it. mspar not realizing they’re being flirted with til someone spells it out to them. just any troll/human (??) difference shit or any of your hcs please i’m starving

Starve no more!! I'll feed you AND me cause I honestly fucking live for alien differences between trolls and humans like? Omg...I'll try to sneak some Mallek and Marvus for ya since you seem to mention both of them (and I'll throw in some other ones for more comparisons >:])

So for general troll temperature headcanons, let me tell you, you'd better enjoy being cold/not be too bothered by it cause the higher on the spectrum, the colder the blood you're touching and cuddling. The warmest a troll will ever be is if they're a mutantblood, the closest thing to getting to normal human body temperatures and the ones with any real warmth to them. Rust bloods being the lowest on the hemospectrum that aren't mutants don't have as much warmth but still tend to run warmer than other blood types on the hemospectrum. Not exactly lukewarm, little bit warmer than that. When we hit the goldbloods, that's when it starts getting lukewarm temperatures. Smack dab in the middle of the spectrum, the Jades, aren't very warm or anything, but it's a few hairs away from being able to consider them cold feeling. Anything above the jades is when things start getting cold.

Teals you could say are cold, maybe not unpleasantly so, you could feel such a difference that you would no longer feel any real warmth. Cerulean is when the temperatures could be so stark as opposed to human warmth that coming into direct skin to skin contact with it could definitely shock your skin and make you flinch initially. Purples are. Man. Remember how I said you'd better like being cold? This is where the cold could be the brink of being unpleasant for some who can't handle it very well, it really starts setting in the longer you choose stay in physical contact with them. Violets, I'd argue, would be downright unpleasantly cold to the touch, like, you know how if you go outside in the snow and your body feels numb and face would be stinging? Like that.

With that general stuff of how perceive the coldness of some trolls established. Um. Mallek and Marvus :} I'm going to apologize in advance, Marvus is a character I've always been intimidated by in terms of writing. I feel like I just don't get him enough, and I'd hate to mischaracterize him :(( but I'll do my best!! (Putting a break here cause I type a lot)

Marvus and Mallek I feel like have a tendency to be mischievous little shits sometimes, once becoming aware and acquainted with the warmth Mspar emits and how cold they are in comparison they like to have fun with it. Mallek likes to do that thing some people do, ya know, where people take something fucking cold like a thing of ice cream or an ice cold drink and fucking PRESS it against your skin and it makes you scream? That. But no ice cream, it's his hand touching their bare skin (which still makes them shriek and jolt in surprise). They turn around and playfully smack him on the shoulder in retaliation.

Marvus likes doing the same thing but for him GOD FUCK the cold feels so much worse than Mallek. Bitch IS the ice being pressed against your skin. He doesn't even need to use his whole hand, he could press a finger to them and get a reaction. Punching doesn't do much to Mallek anyways, trolls and their thicker skins, but Marvus doesn't have a lot of squish to begin with. It's weird punching someone who feels so..solid? Not to say he's got absolutely no squish, but he has very little of it.

Cuddling... ahehhehehe cracks knuckles.

Since I'm already talking about Marvus lemme get to him already. Since he is a freezer, it'll take a bit to get fully comfortable laying against him. Warmth can overpower or balance out a trolls temperature, this is something that's very hard to do with bloods higher than indigo. Something like either them or Marvus wearing a good amount of clothing to separate makes it to where they don't feel immediately uncomfortable with the chill of his skin. Marvus I feel like is kinda finicky when it comes to touch or laying for long periods of time?? It's kinda funny, you could hug him, and he'd allow it for just a few seconds before he'd wiggle his way out of it, a playful look to his eyes. Or allowing you to rub his skin for a bit before pulling away. Only when he's tired or is ready to be settled in completely is when you can really, for real, cuddle him without him squirming out of it.

Now Mallek? Umpfh. Touch starved. Mspar too actually, I headcanon that they are a touched starved person themselves. So how about two touched starved people help another out..by cuddling. And everything else that involves touch under the moon really.

For him, he kinda loses it when he's in physical contact with them. It's the warmth! It really gets to him, and it makes his brain go nuts. He used to fight the overwhelming urge to wrap them up really tight in his arms cause ya know. Snake brain, cold, friend/flushcrush is warm, curl around the warmth. He didn't fight it anymore when they actively sought out physical touch from him themselves and was actively encouraging him and letting him know it was okay to search for it back.

It was through being around him that they discovered the most surprising thing they never thought of a troll doing. Purring.

They have never heard of a sound as soft as purring coming from a troll.

Trolls only purr in the presence of those they feel the utmost comfort with. To feel the safest with, to trust them the most, and to be at your most vulnerable with. It's super intimate stuff in troll culture. Hearing that anywhere out in public could make trolls snap their head in that direction and make them flush in the face. Get a room!!

I imagine it was one of those many days where they stayed over at his hive. They had just decided that they were done playing video games and it from leaning against each other in silence while the game systems powered off, then it transitioned into Mspar coaxing Mallek to lay on then while they had their back laid down on his lounge plank. His weight against them was comforting to them.

They were just nuzzling his shoulder and rubbing their hands all up and down his back and sides, all with no patterns to it. He had his face pressed against their chest, his arms pushed underneath them to wrap around them. They could feel his smile against their skin, and they were all smiles and happy, too. Then they, well, they felt it before they heard it.

It was something they didn't even notice at first, the rumbling, the small vibrations emitting from his throat and chest. When it was growing stronger and the purring became audible, they still didn't question it at first. They were just so comfortable, and the cuddling was just so nice, his purring could put them to sleep and...wait. Purring?

When the realization of Mallek purring hit them, they temporarily halted their hand movements. Mallek stayed put for a bit before his purring stuttered a little, and he cracked an eyelid open to gaze at them, wondering why they stopped. He finds them kind of staring at him, their hands still under his tank top just stopped on his back.

"you okay;"

This snaps them out of it and they and they lean in to kiss his forehead, Mallek snorts in response and immediately relaxes against them again.

They kindaaa wanted to point it out at in the moment but ultimately decided against it so that he didn't get embarrassed or shy and stops. They think it's SUPER fucking cute.

As for general differences between troll and human romance? Cracks fingers. Obviously it depends on what quadrant a troll is interested in having you in. I'll go with red romance for now unless someone later wants the other quads too lol.

I talked about purring before and purring is a BIG one. Purring is how trolls communicate that they feel absolutely safe and comfortable in their partners presence along with purring being a form to heal when their partner is hurt or isn't feeling well. It leaves them very open and vulnerable and so it feels very intimate for most trolls. A troll purring in the presence of human they're interested in a human may not pick up the significance of it so they just see it at its simplest until explained. Some trolls may feel a little hurt when their human partners don't pick up on their purring and they don't purr back in response, again, until explained that humans aren't capable of making sounds such as purring. Make no mistake though! Troll purring does not sound like how a cat's would. It's sounds like how you would imagine an insect purring would sound like.

Sleeping in the presence of a person you're interested in or around your partner is another big thing trolls do. Sleeping near other trolls is again, a vulnerability thing. To sleep near someone? To be so open and let your guard down like that? To trust someone that much? Wipes sweat from brow. Humans being able to do this with trolls they're even a little comfortable with is absolutely flabbergasting to most trolls.

Okay there's sleeping when someone is nearby...then there's sleeping WITH someone. No not like that ya nasties. Sleeping with someone, in their recuperacoon, it's a vulnerability thing again woo boy. It's the HIGHEST form of trust a troll could show their partner! The significance of this can really go over a human's head, they truly don't understand the gravity of trust at play here.

Here's something not sleep related. Scent marking. This one is more subtle than just. A partner wearing their sign or typing the way their typing quirk is. This one is when a troll leaves something, take a shirt or their socks or something, at their partners hive. It leaves a bit of them, their scent, there and it's meant for their partners + any other trolls that are over know. Humans tend to also seek their partner's scent/how they smell (think stealing your partners clothes), it's another thing that means more deeply than they originally think about.

[ceescedasticity]

Someone somewhere has probably done a paper on the "not that there's anything wrong with that" stage of prejudice.

You know, the one that goes "There is nothing wrong with X. X-people should be able to live their lives publicly and unmolested. If someone is loudly declaring that X is wrong then they are breaking social rules. But: Anyone who is not X is expected to object to being identified as X. There are presumed to be some people around who are not okay with X; this isn't a positive character trait but is often blown off or played for laughs."

This was more or less the attitude towards queer stuff in my environment when I was a teenager. It seemed really normal to me — right, yes, there's nothing wrong with it, but some people are going to be weird about it.

Then I ran into this joke — I don't know when it was written down, I found it on a personal website of academia-themed humor. I want to think it was old, but I don't know. It was one of those "student opens letter to parents with stories of a bunch of wild stuff they did, then takes it back and says 'bet that D doesn't sound like a problem now, does it?'" jokes. And one of the things in the spiel of wild stuff was "I know you're very cosmopolitan, so I'm sure you won't have a problem that I'm marrying a Black man".

Unfunny and uncomfortable! Which just hit me like a brick, because it was exactly doing the "not that there's anything wrong with that" thing, but with a prejudice I'd grown up believing was utterly unacceptable and not to be joked about.

I don't know, is "not that there's anything wrong with that" itself a form of prejudice or is it the product of a society at a certain point in dealing with a prejudice? I've only noticed it with prejudices which were on a decline; does it also show up when prejudices are developing?

I don't know that I was going anywhere with this. Just, it was an interesting revelation — oh, if you make that joke with this other objected-to-by-bigots behavior it's not funny at all, why is that.

[yourtoradorasextendedwarranty]

So I didn't want to involve the people on this post in my shenanigans. Mostly because I don't want to see a dogpile, or because I don't want to deal with the ignorance that will come from the responses.

So this showed up on my dash

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And honestly I don't think they understand what's really going on. There are a lot of people living in a bubble and it kind of annoys me a bit.

People are not pissed that LGBT people exist. Contrary to popular belief. Nor are they mad that LGBT products exist. What they are mad about is that June has become, "Worship the LGBT or else" month. And while many don't think that's true, it very much is.

I've seen pride parade over the last 6+ years with HEAVY kink involvement IN PUBLIC in full view of kids. Also in full view of people who really don't want to see it. People who can't close their businesses. People who have appointments to keep at offices. Dick shaped lollipops. Near full nudity. What used to be SUPPOSEDLY a celebration of love is now a degenerate (and that's coming from me) fetish fest. More over, if you don't brandish your cult symbol, people get mad at you. And now a days threaten to destroy your livelihood.

(And before you continue reading. THIS MAY well ruffle some feathers. And while you may not agree with my sentiment, this post is not hateful. It's observations and ideas based on people I've talked to both in and out of the LGBT, things I've experienced in my own life, and stuff I've read up on over the years. And while I'm not as articulate as a used to be, it's written not in anger, but with the intention of explaining all of my thoughts. And while they may not get across the way I want, I mean no hate by them.)

Pride hasn't been about love in years. It's been about how degenerate and fetishy can we get in public until they start putting us in jail. Except we can't even do that anymore because protected classes get an absolute pass to break the laws now. And you might not see that but everyone else does.

What's more, what LGBT means now isn't what it used to mean. It's some weird amalgamation taking every sex based thing and non sex based thing and shoving it all under the same umbrella. Hell, most modern trans activists want to get rid of gay people. And no that's not some joke or conspiracy.

Consider this. A lot of modern "LGBT" people claim that gender is a social construct right? Ok and now they are trying to say there is no difference between men and women. In the biological sense. Now you have, "Lady dicks and man pussys" and what not. Except it's not a joke. And I'm not joking. I've been seeing a hard push from trans activists in the modern day, to claim that biological sex does not matter (to the point they want to be able to change their birth certificates), and that if you are a Female dating a male, so long as they SAY they are a woman you are still somehow a lesbian.

THEN you have the now famous Tim Pool clip where the guy from The Serfs claims that if a woman sleeps with an effeminate man, she's actually a lesbian. Or vice versa, if a man dates a non feminine woman, he's actually gay. I don't think most of you realize right now but modern activists are hell bent on erasing gay people. Gay in it's ACTUAL meaning. Which is sexual attraction to the same SEX. Not the same gender. Which both were interchangeable for years. Now it's a clusterfuck of what ever either side wants it to mean. And that's devastating for society. It's devastating for communication between people. And it's devastating for relationships.

Things are breaking down at the seams. People who have been gay their entire lives now have to contend with being called bigots by self righteous, narcissistic, young, dumb people trying to tell them THEY are the bigots. When arguably they had it much harder in society. Hell the middle east STILL gives you 2 options if you are gay. Transition so you are not a monster, or die. Because at least if you appear like the opposite sex you can't participate in your debauchery. That's how they view it. And activists in the west are doing the exact same in their own way. It's pretty fucking scary.

But to the original point. It's not just about Trans this, Gay that, Lesbian this, or anything. People are just tired of the celebrations. Because it's moved way past that into glorification. To a point that among the people that support it, they are deifying it. That's not exaggeration. You are now considered boring if you are straight. You are considered an evil racist monster if you are "cis". And don't get me started on the rant that is talking about that term. Kids are now being indoctrinated into being something other than straight and their own sex/gender. Because according to this hell site and others like it, "Straight people are so boring and stupid and violent and and and and and~" Fuck you.

You don't get to shit on straight people with impunity and then get upset when they say enough. You don't get to tell people that "every day is straight pride day" meanwhile smearing your privates in their faces for a full month. No criticism. No conversation. Just mindless worship. And don't tell me that's not what it is. That is fully what it is.

And before anyone decides to come at me telling me I'm transphobic or homophobic, Plenty of LGBT people agree with me. Some even have more extreme views on all of this than I do. Mine seems to be the very mild view on all of this considering.

But we don't need a pride month anymore in the US. The initial movement was about not just getting the right to marry, but being able to be seen as human just like everyone else.

Well guess what? It has not been like that since 2012. Now it's about, "Call me my pronouns or I'll cut your head off" and "If you don't celebrate pride then your a bigot, a monster, and a nazi", or, "I can't believe this old woman called me young lady, WTF, I'm clearly a man" or my personal favorite, "Kink needs to be in front of kids so they can grow up and understand good sex". Yeah. I've actually heard every one of these IN PERSON and wanted to call the cops on the last one. And fringe or not, these ARE the views being pushed to the forefront.

And more than that even. A school quite literally said, "Memorial day weekend? What's that? Pride month though. Let's dress all these kids in pride stuff and parade them around to prove how virtuous we are."

Yes this DID actually happen. A school opted to not recognize or celebrate our fallen, and instead opted into worship. Modern pride is a cult. I'm not sorry for saying it. Most of you pushed to see how far until it was too far. And now you WILL see people walk back acceptance of the LGBT as a whole. You waved your crotches in their faces for long enough and they've had it.

And that makes me pretty upset honestly. Because my LGBT friends may likely have to suffer through widespread discrimination again because you didn't understand how far is too far. And then when you were told how far too far was, you opted to take it further than that.

Now let me cool the pot as it were. I'm not putting this on the LGBT people who've been nothing but good people, who just have been trying to live and enjoy their lives. And I don't want to see an overreaction to all of this. But the issue is not enough people smacked these activist types down. Their fringe views were allowed to flourish and be the dominate idea. And now we have people boycotting LGBT stuff aimed at kids, and parents are pissed. Kids are already confused enough growing up. Hormones, School, Friends, Parents, figuring out life, etc. It's a confusing time in their lives and they frankly don't need more stuff to be confused about. More over, they don't need to be focused on sexuality (which again is a concept based on SEX based attraction) at 10 y/o. Will they figure that stuff out? Yes. Do they need a LGBT teacher teaching them how to be gay? No.

Do they need books teaching them how to get on gay dating apps at 14 for anonymous hookups with gay men? ALSO no. Do they need to learn how to use butt-plugs at 13-14? FUCK no. Do they need to be taught in gay books how to give head to other boys? NO! THEY DON'T! Do they need drag queens, wearing thongs and a miniskirt twerking in their faces at 6? *cocks shotty*. And before I get the onslaught of, "That's not happening", yes it is. There's proof of it all over the US. Happening in more and more frequency. Including librarians suggesting books featuring explicit content to very young teens.

The final straw was kids. And when you told parents they were not allowed to defend their kids, parents said, "Excuse the fuck out of me". And now here we are. In a country were if you are LGBT and you rape someone, it's perfectly fine. And calling it out is actually bad. If you call out biological men, claiming to be trans so they they can rape women in prison an issue, THAT'S somehow calling all trans people rapist? If you point out that a gay man or a trans woman is grooming kids and or has sexually assaulted them, that SOMEHOW all gay men and trans women are predators?

No one said that. YOU said that. And your fighting tooth and nail to defend people who do those things, is a problem. And it's why people are fed up.

This is not and has never been about anti-LGBT sentiment. But it will become that if people who've done this stuff continue to be shielded. It will become that if normies get even more fed up with the cult like worship once a year of Pride. I don't want to see it become that. It will however, if things don't come down from a boil. Leave kids alone, call out groomers and predators, and stop featuring kink and fetish at pride parades. Put on a rainbow shirt hold hands with your S/O Hold up a sign saying "Love" and that's it. It's super simple. And for the love of all that is holy, stop shaming straight people. Because if you don't they WILL come to resent you. More than some already do.

And just to wrap things up. I don't want to see things get worse for LGBT people. What I do want to see is certain LGBT people stop acting like being LGBT is their entire personality. Because it's not just grating to me. It's grating to other LGBT people. And worst of all it's grating to normies. And they are the people you need to be worried about.

[blackdxggr]

Stop this “Nigga Eren” Arguments

Do you guys not get TIRED every week coming up in the tags to make a ‘NiggaEren’ argument?? We get it you don't like it, but there are several eren x black reader fluff or whatever you’re looking for that isn’t surrounded about the things you’re complaining about, I've literally read them myself, this is coming from a person who mostly reads them, it's like most of you guys are actively ignoring them and just adding on to the discourse already made.

And let's not get started on the 'black persona' some of you want to speak about, you're acting as if white people are all the sudden not able to be drug dealers, rappers, baby daddy, shitty boyfriends or hypersexualised?? White people are not all the sudden absolute saints and we all know that, just like there is no 'black persona. You are quite literally enforcing stereotypes by saying this, a German white man has no specific way to be written, and yes obviously eren has his personality in the show and manga, and I'm sure most people would prefer it to stay like that, buts that's a whole different thing that can be said for a lot of work in the eren × reader tag.

But on a honest note, if you're honestly THIS bothered about it that you have to give a big rant, go on and write them, reblog those posts, or you know just move past them, cause there are many fics you're looking for, for you to enjoy on. The slur thing, it's wrong we get that, but a lot of you know for a fact that those are and are from the weird bunch.

Plus there are several eren x reader toxic' and or 'shitty boyfriend' fics, but instead there's a wider discourse in this community from the ones specifically written by black women, a community that took time to build.

One last thing, the reason why there are a lot is because they get attention, meaning people LIKE them, a lot of writers write what gets them the most interactions and or what people request and ask them to write, they're going to continue unless you want to specifically request them. At the end of the day this entire thing is just putting down black womens work and we don't need any of that. 🤷🏾‍♀️

[elumish]

What Medical Stuff Feels Like (Scans and Stuff)

Content warning for general medical stuff, mention of IVs.

Also strong caveat that all of this is exactly one person's experience (mine) and so 1) may not be what you experience, 2) may not match up with other descriptions you've read, and 3) is not being written by a medical professional.

Ultrasound: For an ultrasound, they take an ultrasound wand (a one-handed thing with a smooth end and a wire attaching it to a machine), stick a bunch of goo on it, and then press it to whatever they're looking at and then have the machine collect images. The goo is usually cold, and they will usually apologize for it.

All of my experiences with this have been below the neck and above the pelvis. Depending on where they're pressing, it can hurt quite a bit--imagine having someone press something hard into your breast tissue or your ribs. How much it hurts definitely depends on what they're pressing on--things like the sternum and ribs hurt a lot more than places with a lot of fatty tissue.

You may or may not be shirtless for this--it depends on what they're looking for. For breast tissue or things in that range, you're generally in a patient shirt that you have either open over one breast or over both, and the other will sometimes be covered with a towel. For the rest of the abdomen, I've done it with my shirt pulled up and my pants down low enough for them to get to everything.

Once you're done, you wipe the goo off, but it also doesn't stain clothing (at least from my experience) and it doesn't irritate my skin. it just feels kind of weird.

I had to fast before an abdminal ultrasound but not a breast ultrasound, so it really depends.

My extremely hot take is that getting an abdominal ultrasound is my least favorite form of scan.

Echocardiogram: This is basically an ultrasound of your heart. That means the focus is on your left breast area, and if you have a lot of breast tissue, it means the tech is going to be awkwardly maneuvering it around/pressing on it pretty hard to get to the heart. I've had these twice--once, the tech was with a couple of doctors (or other techs? it's been like 8 years since then) and they were all making comments that I didn't understand about various parts of my heart. The second time, it was just the tech, and we occasionally made awkward small talk while he mashed an ultrasound wand into my breast.

Both of my echocardiogram techs have been men, and I will say that this is basically the least sexual experience you can have with a man while shirtless having them touch your breast. I think basically everywhere in the US you should be able to have an advocate in there with you, but I've never personally felt uncomfortable re: the shirtless in front of a male tech situation.

3D ultrasound: I once described a 3D ultrasound as if a dentist lamp was also a scanner and hated you. At least from the ones that I've experienced, they're essentially this weird giant thing that looks a lot like a dentist light on one of those moveable arms, and they cover everything with goo and then squish it against what they're taking scans of and then take the scans. It's less targeted than handheld ultrasounds but can get larger areas. I think there are also live 3D ultrasounds for things like pregnancy but I've never had that.

MRI: My favorite of the scans (unironically). For an MRI, you basically lie on a slab in a giant tube that makes horrible clanking noises for 45 minutes to an hour. Because they work using magnets, you can't have metal in or on you, so you have to take off all jewelry, earrings, etc. and then they ask a gazillion questions beforehand to make sure that there's nothing the magnets will disrupt (e.g., pacemaker) or will pull on (e.g., magnetic eyelashes). Twice, they had me change at least partially out of my street clothes; the last time I did it in my street clothes minus my bra, which felt vaguely illegal.

It's decently cold, so they generally offer a warmed blanket. At least for MRIs of the abdomen, there is a heavy thing that gets draped over your abdomen to basically make it pick up the images there (I don't really know how that works). To me, it feels kind of like a weighted blanket.

All of my MRIs have been since COVID started, though the first one was pre-masking; I wore a KN-95 in the MRI for my last one and had no issues re: the magnet.

Once you go in the tube, you basically just have to lie still for as long as the MRI goes. They will ask you if you are claustrophobic beforehand. It doesn't set of my claustrophia, but I imagine it happens a lot. They stick a ball in your hand for you to squeeze as basically an emergency stop/to notify them that you need out before it's done. They're also really bright, and at least from my experience, sometimes the paint is peeling a little. That doesn't matter, other than as something to stare at.

There are also headphones so they can give you instructions. For two of the three MRIs, they also played music (I listed to Taylor Swift for the last one). The headphones are kind of noise canceling, but nothing can block out the clanking, of which there is a lot, of various types, very loudly. The instructions will vary; one of the things they have you do for abdominal MRIs is hold your breath out, which feels very weird and is actually surprisingly hard--basically instead of inhaling and holding your breath, you exhale and then don't breathe back in until they tell you to. I can never hold it for as long as they say to, but it's never been an issue (at least as far as they've told me).

For some MRIs, they use contrast. Generally (maybe always?) they say that it's "with and without contrast" which means that they do the majority of it without contrast, and then they put the contrast in and take some more images. To get contrast, you need an IV, which they put in before you get in the machine. They attach the IV to a coil-y tube, which extends when you get moved into the machine. They generally hook it around your hand so it stays in place/doesn't pull against the IV site.

Contrast feels very weird. Someone mentioned this in one of the reblogs for the stabby stuff post, but basically it gets processed by your body really quickly so it goes to your bladder really quickly and also feels warm so it sort of feels like you've wet yourself. They warn you before they put it in.

Unironically, I find MRIs kind of relaxing, because you just lie still for like an hour under a weighted blanket. 4/10 would pick over the other options.

I have had a CT scan done but don't really remember it so would love someone to weigh in on those.