#But whenever this skirt was made was obviously when they were making really good quality stuff

[the-busy-ghost]

Ah yes, the dream £10 vintage Laura Ashley skirt (made in Great Britain), in good quality corduroy

The dream skirt that requires a fucking PHD in ironing

[soulmate-game]

“Are you paw-sitive this is alright?” Selina half-purred half-asked. The slender cat thief was dressed casually— for her, anyway— in a floor length amethyst purple gown that swept just barely above the floor, accentuating her curves and coming down in a deep V neck that was just barely within the constraints of being acceptable for public appearances. Her companion, almost half a foot shorter even in her short heels, was a stark contrast. It was as if all the two women had in common was their hair color, a rich deep black that shimmered blue in the right lighting.

Marinette, with her hair done up in two buns and wearing a sensible pink-and-white cheongsam top with apple blossom embroidery paired with an ankle-length denim skirt that had a knee-high slit in the front, nodded even as she eyed her friend’s choice of outfit with a small frown.

“Of course. Bruce is in the media’s eye all the time, and he knows I don’t have a care for the spotlight. But you do,” Marinette stopped talking for a second, snapping her fingers and reaching into her purse. She pulled out a gorgeous inch-thick collar necklace that was made entirely of thick panels of flawless silver and high-quality diamond. At the very center of the collar necklace, where it would hang right in the center of Selina’s collarbone, was a diamond-and-obsidian cat face. “I knew I was forgetting something! Bourgeois owed me a favor for doing the outfit for her last magazine cover pro bono, so I asked for this as payment. It’s exactly what your outfit is missing.”

Just because Marinette didn’t like revealing clothing didn’t mean she couldn’t appreciate someone else wearing one well, after all. And Selina wore her dress perfectly.

Selina quirked an eyebrow, eyeing the necklace with her expert gaze. Gently, she trailed her fingertips over the tops of the diamonds in the thick bands of the collar as a small smile flicked over her lips. She raised her eyes up to Marinette’s, light green eyes sparkling with mischief and knowing.

“You got this as a bribe for me, didn’t you kitten?”

Marinette smiled unashamedly. “I know you’re a proud lesbian, but would you mind playing the role of Bruce’s girlfriend, just for the media? And only while you’re single, of course. If you ever want out, you only have to say the word. Bruce already agreed, but he also doesn’t mind continuing to play the careless bachelor if you aren’t willing.”

Selina scoffed, rolling her eyes and grabbing the necklace. Effortlessly, she swung it around her neck and clasped it in place. “Please, darling. You and I both know it drives you up a wall when Brucie is hounded by gold diggers every time he steps foot out of that mansion of his. I’ll play the camera-girlfriend, but only for a maximum of a year. And you two can only call on me one a week at most, a girl’s gotta have some time to herself.”

Marinette nodded eagerly. “That’s fine! We probably won’t even call on you that much, Bruce is planning to play the ‘we want to keep our relationship pretty low-key’ card for now. Just an appearance once a month or two ought to satisfy those vampiric paparazzi.”

Selina just smiled. She had practically adopted Marinette years previous, during a trip to Paris where she had found out she apparently had a male doppelgänger. Now the two were sisters in all but official (Not-forged) legal documents. And because of that, Bruce had somehow become her brother.

Which Bruce later found out, meant that Selina would relentlessly tease him every time she needed to appear as his “girlfriend.”

Relentlessly.

But Marinette and Bruce had a Plan. She wasn’t quite ready to make a public appearance as his real girlfriend, mostly because of loose ends that still had to be tied back in France. She was making so many trips back and forth between the two countries that they couldn’t see each other in person much to begin with, so they also didn’t want their few in-person meetings tainted by greedy D-rate journalists.

But yes, they had a Plan. One year was the perfect time frame for the last stretch of said plan. Marinette would tie up the last few things she had to do in Paris, start an official branch of her fashion company in Gotham, and they would stage an entire break-up with Selina, a three-month “break” to “recover” and then a suitably dramatic, romantic “meet-cute” between the two of them to start what the media would see as a love-at-first-sight, fairytale relationship.

Nobody needed to know about Marinette and Bruce’s five-year pining session, or their one-year fumble through figuring out how to date one another before actually getting it right, or the most recent three-years of dealing with the fact that they were both highly experienced hero/vigilantes, the leaders of their own hero teams, and highly accomplished business people.

It was a hard relationship utterly riddled with drama, but they had finally reached the stable point where they were ready to commit. Sort of. They just needed Selina to fake-date Bruce in the public eye for a couple months, and then everything would be fine.

—*—*—*—*—*

One year and three months later.

Marinette shifted her purse on her shoulder. This would be her first time in over five years actually setting foot inside the Wayne Manor. She was excited to see Alfred again, and to hash out the last details for her and Bruce’s public “meet-cute.” But Alfred didn’t open the door this time, a short green-eyed boy with an all-too-familiar frown on his face did.

And once again, Marinette knew that Selina was not the mother. Her pseudo-sister was, as she had said so long ago, a very proud lesbian. But Marinette did know of a past fling of Bruce’s who did possess the proper genes to help create a child of this age.

Marinette smiled, pushing her inner rage at the thought of Talia Al Ghul out of her mind. She was still pissed beyond all rational thought when she heard about what Talia had done to Bruce. But this child was not at fault for any of it, only an innocent by-product.

“Hello. My name is Marinette Dupain-Cheng. Would you mind telling Alfred I’m here?”

“Tt. Why should I?” The apparently bratty boy asked, crossing his arms and glaring straight at her. Marinette felt her eye twitch.

“I am a close friend of Bruce— Would I be correct in assuming he’s your biological father?” Immediately upon her question, the boy’s eyes widened ever so slightly in shock before his glare intensified. Marinette chuckled. “He didn’t tell me that he adopted any new children, and he always tells me when he adopts. Which means he didn’t have to adopt you, suggesting you are related to him directly. You can’t be a cousin or nephew, he has no living blood family. And all his pseudo-siblings are alive and fine, so you weren’t left to his care in anybody’s will,” she deduced out loud for him. “Plus, the green eyes and tan skin— I know of exactly one of Bruce’s past… suitors… who happens to fit the timeframe and features necessary.”

The boy raised an eyebrow. “Most assume that I am that harlot Selina Kyle’s spawn,” he snapped, but it lacked the same heat this time around. He was now analyzing her face closely, and Marinette noticed. She was careful to keep her eagerness toned down. She really just wanted to see Bruce and be able to hug and cuddle him for the first time in almost a year, and this child was her only obstacle at the moment. A very stubborn one.

Marinette sighed. “Selina is like a sibling to me, don’t call her a harlot. If Selina was ever pregnant, I would have known. Hell, Selina would have given me her baby to raise because she doesn’t have any interest in being a mother. Now, the polite thing to do when someone introduces themselves is so introduce yourself back. Not interrogate or intimidate them.”

The boy huffed, straightening his emerald turtleneck and rolling his shoulders back. “I am Damian Wayne,” he replied imperiously. “And Father has never mentioned a friend by the name Marinette. Which leads me to believe you are yet another no good hopeful suitor, and Father is still recovering after he and Kyle finally split up for good.”

Marinette froze, and slowly her eyes narrowed. “He never mentioned my name? Ever?”

“Tt. I already said no.”

Finally, the shape of Alfred Pennyworth came into view behind Damian. He had obviously heard the last bit of the conversation, because he just sighed and shared a long suffering look with Marinette. It was that look that made Marinette’s eye twitch a second time.

“Alfred,” she said slowly. “Has he mentioned me at all to any of his kids?”

“He has not,” Alfred replied. “And furthermore, Miss Selina would not stop giving him a hard time whenever he had to call her out for an appearance. It seems all of the children mistook their relationship for actually being of a romantic nature.”

Damian spun to the butler, eyes wide and swimming with a multitude of emotions. “What do you mean, ‘actually’, Alfred?”

“He means,” Marinette began before Alfred had the chance. Her eyes were narrowed, matching storms of dark, furious blue. “That Selina was only pretending to be Bruce’s girlfriend so that the press and gold-diggers would leave him alone. And apparently I need to beat some sense into my stupid, idiotic boyfriend, who I should have known would do something like this,” she looked up at Alfred, jaw clenching. “That man would never be able to pass for a functioning human without either you or me keeping his head screwed on. Where is he?”

“Not at the manor currently, Mademoiselle Marinette.”

“Alfred.”

The butler gave Marinette a rather mischievous little grin. “Master Bruce has forbade me from telling you where he is currently, he wanted you to stay at the manor and sleep the jet lag off until he got back. But I can tell you that he is not currently on Earth or on a mission.”

“Alfred!” Damian hissed, shocked that the man would say something so revealing. Alfred was the perfect secret keeper, why would he tell someone Bruce had never mentioned something so telling?”

“Oh, calm yourself Master Damian,” Alfred soothed. “Marinette has known about Master Bruce’s nighttime activities since before you were born. If anything, I believe he rightfully deserves the wake up call he is about to receive.”

Marinette nodded, eyes still stormy and determined. “Alright, so he’s at the Watchtower. The Zeta tunes are still in the Batcave, right?” When Alfred nodded, Marinette wasted no time. She easily slid around Damian and stormed into the manor, finding her way to the Batcave on pure muscle memory and rage.

“Wait, Alfred! I demand an explanation!” Damian’s loud voice slowly grew quieter as Marinette stormed down into the cave, ignoring how Alfred began to calmly explain the situation to the boy. She just slid right in to the Zeta tube, and commanded the computer to send her to the Watchtower.

“P-001, codename LADYBUG, recognized.”

—*—*—*—*—*

Batman pinched his nose from where he stood at the head of the meeting room in the watchtower. The briefing was supposed to start over an hour ago, but Hal Jordan had been twenty minutes late. No surprise there. But still, SuperMan had insisted that they wait until everyone arrived. And really, normally Batman would too. Except that his long time girlfriend was going to be landing in Gotham any minute now, and he would rather be back at the manor to greet her.

And the asinine argument that had been going on for the past forty minutes was finally going to end, even if Bruce had to hogtie every last one of his insufferable coworkers himself and force them through the rest of the meeting strapped to their chairs.

“Okay, can we PLEASE begin the meeting now, or so help me I will break out my kryptonite restraints,” he threatened darkly. He might have only mentioned Kryptonite, but everyone knew that that threat was actually aimed at all of them. Batman knew every last one of their weaknesses and was not above being petty when they strained his last nerve.

Quickly getting the hint, the entire room rushed to fill their seats and at least fake at paying attention. But of course, nothing goes quite right in the life of Bruce Wayne. Right as he turned on the slideshow he had prepared and began the meeting, the sound of an enraged woman’s voice echoed down the hallway in a deafening roar.

“BRUCE THOMAS WAYNE, YOU ARE IN SOOOO MUCH TROUBLE!”

Batman felt as if someone had just shoved him into a cryogenic freezer, a harsh shiver of dread running down his spine. There was exactly one person who could terrify him with a single word, and it just so happened to be the woman he was hiding a wedding ring from.

For the past eight years, but that’s neither here nor there.

“Oh shit,” Bruce breathed, but found he was unable to move from his spot. Yes, he wanted to see Marinette so badly that it hurt. But he also would like to stay alive.

SuperMan leaned forward, not really concerned since Batman would have reacted much differently had the voice been coming from a real threat. Instead, the man leveled his old friend with a very teasing smirk.

“Why is your heart suddenly racing?”

Bruce could only glare daggers at Clark before the door to the meeting room swung open, a tiny French woman standing there in a long, formal white-and-pink knee-length gown with a cheongsam neckline and one of her leaf-green heels held in each hand threateningly.

“You absolute idiot! When I said I wanted to keep our relationship out of the public eye, I didn’t mean to keep me a secret from EVERYBODY!”

“But darling—“ Bruce cut himself off as he was forced to dodge one deadly-accurate piece of flying footwear. “You don’t understand. The boys cannot keep a secret to save their life.”

“They have secret identities, don’t they?” She slipped her other shoe back on. She had known that her shoe never had a chance of hitting, and with Bruce in full Batman gear, even if it had hit him the high heel would have felt like she had only thrown a pillow. Had it been otherwise, she wouldn’t have even joked about throwing her shoes at him. But as it stood, she knew none of the normal things she had on her would be able to so much as make Bruce say “ow.”

Marinette placed both of her fists on her hips, marching up to Batman and pulling him down the full foot it took for him to be able to look her in the eye. His resulting gulp was clearly audible, and visible, to everyone else in the room. “You absolute, emotionally dense moron,” her voice had dropped from a yell to a mildly fond, but still very annoyed, grumble. “Your kids are mostly adults now, you know. And you never told me about Damian either. Did you honestly think I’d be mad?” Bruce looked away from her, which was honestly all the answer she needed. Marinette sighed, letting him go and softening her voice. “You need to trust your kids more, Bruce. I never wanted you to keep me a secret from your family, or even your close friends. Just the annoying ass paparazzi. And trust me a little bit more, yeah? I know it isn’t exactly your strong suit, but I’ve known you long enough that you should know I’m not gonna run for the hills just because you have a biological kid that wasn’t with me.” Marinette risked giving him a slightly vulnerable, lopsided smile. And Bruce immediately deciphered what it meant. His shoulders slumped.

The cost of using the Ladybug Miraculous for so long was that Marinette had to give up her fertility. She could never have children of her own, and Bruce had felt guilty that he had had a biological child, even though he hadn’t exactly consented to it, without her. But now he could see where he went wrong.

Marinette was just happy to have another piece of him to take care of. She never would have resented him for what had happened with Talia. And, seeing all of those facts written on her face now, he felt more than a little blind.

“... sorry.”

Marinette just huffed out a short, soft laugh before grabbing Bruce by the bicep. She turned to look at the other heroes still in the room, half of them uncomfortable with seeing such an emotional display while the others looked like they were incredibly invested in a good soap opera. She shot them a grin.

“I’m stealing him for the next few days, okay? Don’t worry, I’m sure you can make do with making Diana read the slideshow. I know from experience that it has everything you guys need to know and more. Don’t call us, I’ll field all your contact to Agent A!!” With that, she dragged Bruce by the arm out of the room.

To be fair, he wasn’t exactly resisting. Even if the reunion was far from ideal, just having this little bit of contact was extremely relaxing for the vigilante. When they reached the Zeta Tubes, he stopped Marinette and pulled her in for a kiss.

When they inevitably pulled away for breath, he smiled at her. “As soon as we get back, I’ll call everyone in and explain the situation,” he promised. “And then, we can spend the rest of the night doing whatever you want.”

Marinette smiled back, shoving him into the Zeta Tube. “Then get ready, because I wanna sleep off this damn jet lag and I plan on cuddling you like a koala the whole time. No escape.”

“B-001, Codename BATMAN. Recognized.”

“Can’t wait,” he replied right before he was whisked off. The sound of the love of his life laughing followed him through until he reached the other end of the teleportation.

—*—*—*—*—*

@maribat-writing-and-prompts

[yandere-wishes]

//Yandere Magi//

This is a collections of a number of Magi charcters written in the yanderevers. I’ve excluded Sinbad and his eight generals inorder to write them their own fic later this month. I would aslo like to say thanks to @yandere-romanticaa​ for all her help with this story, thanks so much love, You’re a life savoir!Feedback and comments always appriciated! ENJOY my beloveds!

Alibaba Saluja

Alibaba is a very soft and obsessive yandere, one that has fallen so deep in a maniacal love, with an independent yet innocent darling. One that he believes must be kept concealed from this harsh, cold world. 

He'll desperately strive to learn every possible little thing about you. He wants to know your favorite color, food, animal, etc. And at first, this may come across as indearing, he takes the time to sit with you, hear your endeavors and triumphs. It's refreshing at first until he becomes too clingy. 

Alibaba slowly starts prying you away from your friends, going quite with a heartbroken look in his eyes when you tell him you have plans for the night. Sometimes the looks he gives you, are too much to bear and you cave canceling whatever you previous engagement you had to rest by his side. 

"(Y/N) you're my whole world, I never want to lose you!"

At some point in your relationship, Alibaba becomes fed up with others constantly possessing your affection. It's around this point that he'll decide that its better for both of you if you where kept locked up somewhere only he would have access to. This will -obviously- not sit well with his darling and yet what choice are they given. The Wonder Man can be quite forceful when it comes to his interpretation of his lover's being. 

"So I'm going to tie you to my heart, so ill never lose you"

Addition Details

Alibaba wouldn't mind taking you outside as long as you have chains around your ankles and wrists. As a simple diversion to those around you, they will pay you no mind if they think you are merely a slave walking around with her master. This will also prevent people from believing anything you say if you were to ever run away and attempt to seek aid. After all who will believe the tales of a desperate slave girl. 

He will also permit you to mingle with Alladin, Morgiana, and Kassim. That is if they keep a respective boundary and don't get too touchy.

When it comes to outfits, Alibaba isn't too picky about what you wear, however other than the shackles you are to wear one of Kassim's red earings at all times. His reasoning for this? Simply that he'll be able to look at one of his loved ones and be reminded of two.

Aladdin

Aladdin is a bit of an odd yandere, he isn't particularly violent unless pushed, he gives his darling more freedom than other yanderes and he possesses both qualities of possessives and obsessives. He's most likely to fall for a darling based on two things, their kindness and their large appearances (Magi fans will understand what that means) they will also have to possess a knowledge of cooking and house chores. To be frank, Aladdin desperately wants a normal family. One with a warm welcoming wife and sweet children, food on the table and someone to cuddle with at night. That's why with the help of Ugo he decided that it'll be best to kidnap his love and keep her in the Sacred Place. 

"I love you all so much (Y/N)!"

He'll treat his darling with the utmost respect and heed to their every need and want. His punishments are rather childish and normally consist of the silent treatment or simply leaving their darling alone for a couple of days. At the end of the day you just end up accepting your current role as Aladdin's little "wife" really it isn't so bad, soon you'll even start to reciprocate his feelings to the point of almost matching his obsessive tendencies. 

"Don't you love me back?"

Addition Details

He makes sure that you and Ugo become good friends, he will also attempt to make befriend Alibaba and Morgiana. 

As previously mentioned Aladdin is not very violent but he will not tolerate anyone other than himself touching you. He will also not hesitate to fight anyone who dares disrespect. 

He loves it when you wear slightly revealing tops and asymmetrical skirts, all in shades of blue and white.

Morgiana

Morgiana is a very considerate yandere that could be best described as a delusional/ obsessive mix. She knows what it's like to be stripped of your freedom and lose all-purpose but to serve your "Master". It's a fate she doesn't wish for anyone body else let alone her one true love. She will never chain you up, never lock you in a room or deprive you of food and water. Everything will appear to be a normal relationship, except if you look underneath the surface it isn't. People around you start to go missing or wind up dead. You mortified fearing that you'll be next, so you start seeking security from Morg who gladly provides you with love and comfort. Non the wiser that she is the one being the homicides. 

"Don't worry (Y/N) I'll protect you"

When the two of you start living together, she starts to become a little more possessive. She'll accompany you where ever you decide to go, insistent that you stay by her side at all times even when in the safety of your shared home. In truth, Morgiana doesn't know why she loves you and needs to protect you to such an extent. Maybe because she's never had anyone to protect her, maybe it's cause she's seen the grim reality of this world and wants to shelter you from it. Whatever it is it doesn't matter, all that matter and will ever matter is her love and admiration for you. The punishments that she does dole out are based on humiliation, most of which are sexual. She may start to rub you in public or pinch the right area between your thighs. She'll have no problem with forcing herself on you in front of a crowd if only to show just who you belong to. 

 Her other methods of keeping you in line consist of making you believe that you'll never be able to live without her and that you need her to do everything for you  

"I'll never leave your side!" 

Addition Details

She doesn't want to develop a friendship with anyone including her closest friends. Viewing them as potential threats to your safety. 

She will, however, intrust Masrur with looking after you when she gets caught up in something. 

She very dominates in bed and is very specific about the acts that you two commit. Knowing her strength she doesn't want to hurt you yet she does enjoy seeing you squirming under her. 

Kassim

Kassim is a possessive yandere, he views his darling as his property, she's an atonement from the universe for all the cruelty he's been through! He quickly becomes infatuated with the notion that someone's sole purpose on this earth is to please him. that's all his love is meant to do. To be there for him, to greet him with a smile and kisses when he returns to his current hideout. She shouldn't think of anything but him, shouldn't want anyone or thing but him. 

His darling likely resembles Anise in someway. Be it their kindness towards the members of the slums and fog troupe or their smile or the purity they radiate off of her in colossal waves.  

It's something and it's addicting, it's what caused him to steal her away one night under the cloak of darkness. To chain her to his worn-out bed, blindfolded and shivering. 

"You're mine (Y/N)..."

He never takes the blame for his actions, always saying it's her fault, she made him do this. It's his only response when he forces himself onto her practice each day, littering her body with sweet tender kisses and rough sharp bites that draw pallets of blood. 

When the poor darling tries to pull back or cower in a corner, he'll burn her with the tip of his cigars. If the unfortunate dear ever attempts to escape the punishment will be much harsher. He'll lock her away in some underground tunnel or broken down-home. Leave her there for days antagonist the filth any disease. It always works, whenever Kassim comes to collect her, she's always putty in his hands. Willing to be the sweet little darling he wants her to be.

"Don't you forget it!"

Judar 

Judar is a sadistic and cruel yandere with possessive tendencies. He's the type to see his beloved as his toy and plaything rather than a human being a unique though prosses. In his eyes, her only goal in life is to amuse and serve him.

Judar lacks care for....pretty much everything He's constantly bored and seeking some wicked way to quench his boredom. When he first met his beloved he would only see them as a temporary amusement, something he can get a chuckle out of and then slaughter for kicks. But then he notices something about the girl, she's modest, innocent wrapped in a child-like personality. She's his reciprocal, she's what he might have been (keyword might) if Al-Thamen hadn't abducted him and twisted his soul until he became a stygian monster. 

The pitiable darling will have no warning as to what's to come, one minute they're in the bazaar and the next, their in Judar's chambers, chained to the wall by a cold metal collar. 

"You're supposed to be my pet!"

That's when the real fun begins! Judar's favorite pass time soon becomes tormenting his new toy. He'll beat you to a bloody mess leaving you with broken bones, black eyes, split lips, bloody noses, and too many bruises to count. He'll get off to cutting you, smearing your blood over the both of you. You soon realize just how kinky and uncivil the fallen magi can be. Oh and let's not forget about his ice magic! For punishments he'll freeze the room and have you strip, leaving you in the cold for hours on end. Sometimes he may cuff your wrists and ankles in blocks of ice as he cuts you open with his wand and uses some ice pallets to sterilize the wounds. 

However, do note that Judar does try to make you happy from time to time. Buying you the prettiest dresses, making sure you are well fed and entertained. He always kisses you, of course, they are followed by harsh bites. It's just the only way he knows to show his affection, the cruelty and pain are only out of his sick and twisted love. By keeping you locked up and occupied he'll always be in full possession of your undived attention, at the end that's all he truly wants...well sorta. 

"So act like one before I kill you" 

To Judar this love is Ludus to you it's mania. 

Addition Details

Judar rarely ever calls you by your name, he usually has some degrading nickname up his sleeve. 

Examples are pet, toy, my bitch, peach, plaything, whore 

He always makes you dress in black and gold clothes that are somewhat too tight and revealing. With this being said he does enjoy the occasional Rococo dress.

Hakuei Ren

Hakuei doesn't believe that she's a yandere at first. She just knows that she finds you enticing and exquisite, so she'll stare at you, follow you around from time to time. It isn't until she witnesses you laughing and smiling at some other girl, that rage begins to bubble up inside of her. Visions of wrapping her slender fingers around the other parties' neck plague her mind. She thinks she might be feeling ill, maybe it's from all the stress she's been under lately. 

Paimon will likely have to take her aside and explain to her that's she's in love, a dark and twisted one at that! The reason why she's outraged when she sees you with someone else is that she wants you all to herself. These emotions will not cease until she has truly posses you solely to herself.  

"Swear your love and loyalty to me (Y/N)"

It'll likely be Paimon that will kidnap you due to Hakuei's manipulated request. However, now that she has you she's doesn't know what to do. 

For the first few weeks, she keeps you locked up in her room. Finding it amusing to dress you up and style your hair. Decorating your locks with flowers and pears, slipping on golden tiaras and delicate chains. She makes you look so beautiful that she can't help but to show you to the rest of the royal family. Only this time she makes sure that you won't leave her for one of them. She'll tell you tales about how mean and brutish Emporer Kouen is. How sadistic and cruel the two imperial princes are. She'll manipulate your every step and word to benefit her own. 

It works, soon you sincerely believe that the only person you can trust is Hakuei, she's the only one that cares about you, the only one who won't hurt you. 

"Swear it!"

Addition Details

Hakuei treats you like a doll, you are not to speak unless spoken to, not to move unless told. You do not own yourself only she can ever possess you.

Her punishments are usually whippings or small beatings. She hates punishing you but you have to learn your place even if it's through strict means. 

She enjoys dominating you in bed but while grant any request you have. If you want to try something new she'll be all for it and will make sure that you enjoy it too. 

Hakuryuu Ren

Hakuryuu is an odd yandere, at first he'd be fascinated with your courage and bravery, how independent and strong-willed you are. That fascination will very soon turn into an obsession. He'll soon find himself following his beloved around, trying to steal glimpses into her room, secretly stealing small trinkets of hers.  

In his eyes, you are perfect, a goddess of war with the most beautiful eyes and shimmering skin. You are his everything he'll gladly lay his life down at your feet. Except you don't seem to notice that, you don't even acknowledge his presence. This lights his heart on fire and now he's desperate for your attention. 

"You love me right (Y/N)?"

To Hakuryuu he has to find some way of "winning" you. It takes him the longest time to figure this out, to fully grasp what he has to do. But once he finally decides what to do no one can stop him. When he finally takes you, hiding you away in his private chambers where you will be safe. In his eyes this is the final step, he won you it's game over. 

He doesn't view keeping you captive as wrong or unlawful it's merely his way of protecting you from the awful creatures outside, those who do not appreciate your true beauty and could never love you as he does. 

Hakuryuu does have very strict rules in place one's you are to follow without question. They're for your good after all! He wants to keep you perfect and brave and his. His punishments are harsh but short, he hates hurting you but he has no other choice, you forced his hand! Normally he is very merciful and may even let little things slid. One thing he will never tolerate however is escaping. If you so much as open the door without his permission, he won't hesitate to lock you up in a cell in the palace dungeons leaving you there until you are begging him to let you out. Promising to be a good darling and do anything he says. 

"Say it! Say you love me!"

Addition Details

Hakuryuu adores dressing you in the finest robes and walking around the palace with you. He ravishes the looks that others throw your way, seeing the sparks of envy in their eyes always put him in a lighter mood. 

His favorite person to show you to is Hakuei, he wants his older sister to be proud of the darling he caught. it's a lot like a small child showing their newest artwork to their mother.

Kouen Ren

Kouen is a possessive and controlling yandere, at first, he views his darling as merely a possession, one granted to him because of his role as emperor and also due to his numerous victories on the battlefield. He doesn't always treat his darling as an equal or with much affection and admiration for that matter. Really he simply expects his beloved to sit next to him on her own throne as a glamorous doll of a queen. 

He's rather fixated with the thought of morphing you into the perfect darling, into the most elegant and obedient queen the Kou empire has ever known! His methods for doing so are strict and rather unsavory. He has rules in place for everything, a routine you must abide by throughout the day, he monitors and manipulates every word you say, every step you take. Everything his always under his control! 

"My queen, you weren't supposed to utter those words."

Eventually, you will start to absorb his ideologies, wholly believing that your sole purpose in life is to be Kouen's perfect little queen.

You will do anything to please him, carve the rules and routines into your mind and soul. Only feel truly alive when he kisses you softly sucking ever so slightly at your bottom lip, pulling away to whisper how proud he is of you and how pure you're turning out to be!

"Now I'll have to punish you."

Addition Details

His rather lax when it comes to sexual activities, he likes to be in charge but doesn't mind if you wish to dominate him and usually encourages it. He does, however, reserve requests for when you deserve a phenomenal prize. 

His rewards vary vastly, from new outfits to new privileges, to someone new to talk to or fresh words you are permitted to speak. 

Kouen's punishment methods are usually different forms of bondage, for example, tying you from the ceiling from your wrists. 

Or spreading your limps apart and to a different corner of the bed. 

Koumei Ren

Koumei isn't a very crazed yandere or very demanding. He's an obsessive that desperately want's your company. When he first kidnaps you, that all he wants, someone to talk to hidden away in the safety of his room. You'll spend may days and nights simply chained to an overly decorated and engulfing chair listening to the second imperial prince go on and on about his newest war strategy for conquering a new land or favorite book. 

However nothing lasts forever, soon Koumei will expect you to start doing chores such as organizing his books and scrolls, filing his military tactics, cleaning and dusting the room. All the things a good housewife should do. He is obsessed with you, this is a fact but he's also convinced himself that you're already his wife that you already love him and that to an extent you don't really want to leave him. 

"My gorgeous, stunning (Y/N)..." 

Every time you attempt to escape, you end up coming face to face with your captor, a knowing smirk decorating his features and a triumphant glint in his magenta eyes. You're always brought back, yet never punished Koumei just claimes that you're either bored and looking for a source of entertainment or were attempting to gain his attention because you missed him direly. 

Koumei also slowly begins to get more touchy the longer you reside with him. He'll embrace you more often, with his hands running along your back, nails scratching lightly at your tender flesh. He constantly has you sit on his lap or hold entwine your fingers with his. It doesn't matter how it is, he simply has to feel you in some manner or another. 

After some time you slowly begin to adapt to his hermit-like ways. Becoming to scared of the outside world yourself. A form of apathy grows within you, it becomes to much trouble to escape too much effort to beg the servents and staff for help. Life is much easier and simpler to just remain in Koumei's room. Being his little housewife is just a life that seems to suit you more than whatever you did with your existence before your lover captured you. 

"Kiss me"

Addition Details

Koumei is rather shy during sex, your first few times. He slowly begins to adapt more to your body as time progresses. He quickly learns that he really really enjoys blow jobs. He loves how you feel around him, it's pure ecstasy to him. 

He does want his darling to feel comfortable around his brothers and sister along with their respective darlings. His family means a lot to him and thus he wants his darling to feel included in it. So he humors Kouha and Hakuryuu's little darling competitions even making you and himself the judges. 

Kouha Ren 

Kouha is a bit of a complex yandere, his tendencies border on possessive and sadistic, yet at times he is sickly sweet. Kouha will kidnap you, will force you to become his doll, his toy and his lover. 

He keeps you chained in a personal room he had customized solely for beloved. The room itself is luxurious, with an enormous closet filled to the dream with a multitude of clothes. Shimmering ball dresses, silky hanfus, delicate dresses both short and long imported from all over the Kou empire, even graceful linger that shows off more skin then it should. And that's just a minuscule portion of your wardrobe. You're given every piece of jewelry imaginable, every style of shoes and accessories. There isn't a thing that Kouha wouldn't give you! 

"My sweet doll..."

However, there is a price to pay for all these lavish gifts. Kouha expects you to be at his beck and call, to pleasure him in any manner he so desires. This can lead to certain unsavory events... Kouha is very rough and commanding in bed, the things he wishes to do to you are very painful and extremely taboo. He will mark you and cut you, tearing at you delicate flesh, decorating it with kisses, bruises and little cuts in shapes of hearts. 

Kouha's favorite thing is to dress you up all elegant and porcelain-like and than to just cuddle you. Nuzzel your neck and breath in you sweet sent, tangle is slim fingers in your silky locks, watch as the light illuminates your dazzling eyes. He'll give you the softest kisses on your sweet spots practically worshipping your body. 

"Behave or I'll have to punish you!"

Addition Details

Kouha does enjoy flaunting you around, making everyone so envious of his adorable and well-behaved darling.

If you've been extra good than Kouha will let you mingle with Kouen, koumei, and Hakuryuu's darlings. Oh, but of course you have to be dressed to outshine them all. 

Actually, Hakuryuu and Kouha constantly compete to see who's darling is better! Not simply by outward appearance and outfits but also in manners and how much love they give their yandere.

Kouha's punishments are the most damaging and painful to endure. they vary from classic torture methods (such as burning her with boiling water, adding salt to fresh cuts, dislocating and/ or breaking bones) to sexual humiliation. Forcing you to set on his lap during a meeting is an extremely skimpy dress with his fingers plunging into your womanhood. Or taking you in front of his servants and whoever else would enter the room. 

Kougyoku Ren

Kougyoku is a manipulative and jealous yandere, she knows that she doesn't own you but she wants all of your actions, wants to be the only person you care about. She doesn't mind what tactics she must use to get you undevoted attention wheater it is clinging to your arm or kissing you in front of the royal court, it doesn't matter!

"You’re so cute (Y/N)!"

She won't outright kidnap you but she (Along with Kouha, Kouen, and Koubun Ka) has made it very clear who you belong to and that you have no say in the matter. She'll constantly request your presence in her room and will get pushy and invasive if you deny her request. 

She can be slightly cruel and sadistic in her punishments. Enjoying how to scream and cower in pain. Sure she feels ever so slightly bad that she is casing to suffer but how else will you learn not to disobey her?

" Cute And mine!"

Addition Details

You always have to be pressed perfectly, in the finest and cleanest clothes. Only pure gold jewels decorating your flesh. Not a single hair out of place. Kougyoku insists on doing this herself each and every day!

She has a pretty high sex drive but finds that she's a big fan of watching as you play with yourself, she might join in or just start playing with herself as she listens to your sweet moans. 

[rosesgonerogue]

Just a Friend

Daminette December Day 1

It wasn’t often that Damian had to deal with the Agreste child, but with both their fathers being such big names, it was inevitable. Agreste was preferable to the Bourgeois brat, but he still reeked of a sheltered life. And now Damian was going to have to put up with him for the next several days while Father discussed business with the elder Agreste. 

“Remind me why Drake couldn’t come instead?” Damian demanded once again. 

“You know the reason,” Bruce sighed. “I was specifically asked to come with one of my sons. But if I come, Tim had to stay behind to keep the company running.” 

“Grayson?”

“He’s standing in as Batman.” 

“Why couldn’t Todd do that? Or come here?” 

Bruce fixed him with a flat stare. “We would either have a slew of corpses, or an international incident on our hands.” 

Damian growled, knowing that his father was right. That didn’t mean that he liked this cursed city. 

They came to the Agreste mansion all too soon, and Damian already dreaded the awkward conversations that awaited. It had been a few years since he’d been forced to associate with the boy, and Damian could only hope he was somehow less sheltered.

The mansion was more ostentatious than ever. It had a way of looming over people that felt cold. He never would have admitted it, but he almost wished his brothers were here to cause chaos and bring some life into the dead house.

To complete the aura, the door was opened by Agreste’s stoic assistant, the one with glasses and a harsh bun. Gabriel was standing staunchly inside with Adrien at his side, green eyes dull.

“Thank you for travelling all this way, Bruce,” Gabriel said in perfect English. “We welcome you and your son.”

“It was our pleasure,” Bruce said with a cordial smile. “Damian was curious why you wanted one of my sons to come, though.”

“We’ve found a rather interesting young designer, and if things work out in our deals, we were hoping your son might consider modelling her designs, potentially taking the brand over to America.”

Translation: Gabriel thought his son was too good for this, so Damian was stuck modelling for an amateur.

Bruce’s smile tightened ever so slightly, knowing that this would be a hard sell to Damian. “We’ll see how these negotiations go first.”

“Very well. Adrien, why don’t you entertain young Damian in your room?”

Damian bristled at being dismissed in such a manner, but before he could do anything, Adrien actually spoke up.

“Actually, Father, I was wondering if I could show Damian around Paris, maybe introduce him to a friend or two?”

Wow, the boy had a backbone now, as well as friends. Interesting. His friends were probably just as rich and sheltered as Agreste, but maybe they would distract one another until they forgot about Damian entirely. One could hope, anyway.

At least Agreste had a seemingly competent bodyguard, Damian noted as he followed the blond out to the shiny car. The whole way Adrian yammered on about his friends, but in particular some girl named Marinette. With all the praise he was giving her, it was a wonder that this Marinette hadn’t cured cancer yet.

Adrien paused in his praises of her long enough that, despite himself, Damian found himself asking, “Is this Marinette your girlfriend? You certainly have plenty to say about her.”

The boy laughed. “Oh no, Marinette if just a friend, my first friend, really. You’ll love her, just wait.”

“Tt.” Damian couldn’t help the noise of disbelief as he gazed out the car window. He was expecting and dreading being taken to some tourist attraction, but it appeared that they had arrived at… a bakery?

“Marinette is actually the designer you might be working with. She’s amazing, and this is her family’s bakery.”

Ah, Agreste was likely trying to sell the virtues of the girl so Damian would look more kindly on whatever shoddy designs the girl had come up with. It was a more underhanded tactic than he thought Agreste capable of, and kind of impressive.

The bakery was small, but clearly good quality. Damian had to admit that the food appeared to be comparable with Pennyworth’s cooking. At the counter, they were greeted by a petite Asian woman.

“Oh, Adrien, it’s nice to see you again. Are you and your friend here to see Marinette? She warned us you two might be coming. She’s in her room, you know the way up.”

“Thanks, Mrs. Cheng. We’ll head up there now,” Adrien said, leading Damien deeper into the bakery. Before they made it to the hallway, however, they were intercepted by a hulking bear of a man.

Damian tensed -- he was even carrying a weapon, one of those wooden paddle things that were used to get things out of traditional ovens. This man would be formidable because of his size alone, but--

“It’s nice to see more of Marinette’s friends here. Take this up with you,” he said, setting the paddle down to hand Adrien an entire quiche. “You boys are welcome to have some as well, but make sure Marinette eats a slice. She got a commission, and we’re not sure when she last ate or slept.”

Damian sighed as he accepted a pile of plates and forks. So, she was obsessive like Time as well. This girl already sounded exhausting, but breakfast had been a while ago, and the quiche smelled amazing.

Agreste led them through the bakery and up the stairs as Damian attempted to mentally reconcile what could have resulted in the union of the slight Asian woman and the hulking baker. What he expected, however, was not at all what he got.

“We’re here with food, Marinette,” Adrien called as he stepped into the room.

“I’ll eat in a minute, Mom, I just need to finish this applique,” the girl mumbled. She wasn’t visible yet, hidden behind a massive ball gown.

“Marinette, you have a guest,” Adrien said gently.

“Yes, papa, I’m getting plenty of sleep,” she mumbled.

The dress the girl was working on was quite possibly the most intricate thing Damian had ever seen. The dress appeared to be scarlet silk, the skirt resting on layer upon layer of tulle and crinoline, The body of the dress was patterned with hand-appliqued black lace. Normally the color combination would have been garish, but it was vaguely reminiscent of a ladybug, and definitely worthy of the red carpet.

Suddenly Damian was filled with the need to know more about this girl. He heard her humming to herself before making a noise of satisfaction. “There, I’m officially done, now what did you--”

The girl cut off when she peeked from around the gown, eyes wide as she squeaked, “Adrien, what are you doing here? And who is that?”

He had never had such an absurdly intense reaction before to merely seeing someone’s face and hearing their voice. Her eyes were wide in shock, and they were the bluest eyes Damian had ever seen, complimenting her blue-black hair that looked unbelievably soft. As he contemplated taking that hair out of its pigtails and -- holy infatuation, Batman, Damian was beginning to sound like Grayson. Besides, this girl looked more like a Wayne than Damian himself did.

“Marinette, meet Damian Wayne, one of your potential models,” Adrien said in English, most likely for Damian’s benefit.

“That was today!” the girl exclaimed, in adorably accented English as she scrambled to get off of the ground where she had been kneeling to finish the dress. “I’m so sorry, I got so wrapped up in this commission and lost track of time. I’m Marinette Dupain-Cheng, it’s nice to meet you, Damian.” She finally emerged from behind the dress and held out a hand. It was warm and unexpectedly calloused, but tiny, just like her. She was almost pixie-like, obviously taking more after her mother  than her father.

“It’s a pleasure,” Damian said, shaking her hand longer than was strictly necessary. “This dress is truly a work of art.”

“Oh, you speak French!” Marinette said delightedly. Honestly, he hadn’t noticed he’d switched languages. “My English is okay, but your French sounds amazing!”

“Well clearly your sewing ability surpasses almost anything I’ve ever seen before. Now I can’t wait to see what your fashion line has to offer.” Why was he saying this? Why was Damian smiling in an imitation of Grayson whenever he was near a female?

“Flattery will get you nowhere,” Marinette said, ducking her head to hide her slight blush. “But if you’re going to be my model then I’m going to have to tailor a lot of things to you, so you’re going to have to put up with me for a while.”

“I think I can handle that.”

As Marinette stammered a reply, Adrien awkwardly stood to the side, still holding the quiche. Had… Had Marinette forgotten him? Marinette never forgot him! He was always oddly the center of attention when Marinette was around because they were such good friends! Adrien felt slightly unsettled. He had hoped that Marinette would soften Damian, but he didn’t expect him to smile at her like that.

Throughout the rest of their stay in Paris, Damian found any and every excuse to spend any moment with Marinette. Bruce was curious and slightly suspicious about this turn of events. He expected this kind of thing from Dick, but it was entirely baffling from Damian.

One night when Damian had been out particularly late with Marinette, Bruce decided to wait up. He heard the door opening followed by Damian murmuring lowly in French, and… was that a chuckle? Yes, his son was softly laughing into his phone. The slight smile dropped off of the boy’s face when he met Bruce’s eyes and he murmured, “I’ll talk to you later, Angel.”

Raising an eyebrow, Bruce asked, “Angel?”

He regretted the way Damian instantly snapped into his rigid, emotionless persona. “Is something wrong, Father?”

Bruce was quick to say, “You’re not in trouble, Damian. I’m just worried, you’ve never been in a relationship before, and this all seems--”

“You’re mistaken, Father,” Damian interrupted. “Marinette and I are just friends.”

Bruce nodded and was going to leave the subject there before a small smirk crawled across the boy’s face. “For now, at least.”

Hi! I’m kind of new to this community, but you can call me Rose! Or Rogue, whichever you prefer! I found this pairing just a while ago, and when I saw the prompts for Daminette December, I got so freaking excited! I don’t do a lot of romance writing, so this is kind of an experiment. I want to get better at it, so please, let me know how I’m doing! Unfortunately, not all of the prompts will be this long, I’ve got finals coming up. I’ll try to keep up posting daily, though! 

Taglist: 

@ozmav @daminette-december2019 @maribat-archive

[haro-whumps]

Box Boy Meeting Yanni

(CW: slavery, dehumanization, creepy + intimate whumper, implied noncon, possessive behaviors)

I STRONGLY discourage readers with any kind of paranoia from reading this chapter.

Tag list <3:  @thatsthewhump @whump-it @ashintheairlikesnow @fairybean101 @finder-of-rings @comfortforthepain @shameless-whumper @that-one-thespian @burtlederp @castielamigos-whump-side-blog @raigash @im-not-rare-im-rarr @spiffythespook

Masterlist

Much as they would have loved to quit their job and just lounge around with Soren for the rest of their life, Ren did in fact have to go back to work eventually. So they showed up in a white button down and a pencil skirt with red lipstick and their hair tied in a high ponytail, tips of their hair just tickling at the nape of their neck, and resigned themself to staring at Soren through the cameras all day.

“REN!” Yanni shouted, banging open the door of their office and draping herself dramatically in the doorframe. “My favorite gossipbuddy in the ENTIRE office and you left me alone for a WEEK!” she accused, storming over to their desk and nearly flailing a hand into one of their potted plants. 

They liked gardening. Liked knowing that there were living creatures that, without Ren, would die.

“A week and a day,” Ren corrected with a playful smile. “It’s Tuesday.”

“Cruel and heartless, Ren, cruel and heartless,” she said, plopping herself on their desk. They laughed good-naturedly, leaning an arm over the back of their chair and smiling up at her. “Did you go on another cruise with your mama?” she asked less theatrically.

“No, actually. I was busy with something new.” They gave a wicked grin, which prompted her to lean in, ready for whatever they were about to share. They’d conditioned the response, personally. “I got myself a Box Boy.”

Yanni gasped, lighting up. “No! Show me pictures, show me pictures! Is he cute?”

“He’s so cute,” Ren said, pulling out their phone and bringing up a picture of their precious angel. “His name is Soren, he’s the same age as me, and his hair is this gorgeous texture.”

“Oh my god!” she squealed, “Look at hiiiiiiim, oh my gooooood!” She fanned at her face excitedly, and Ren swiped through a couple more pictures with their thumb. “Ren he’s adorable!!!”

“And he’s sweet as a peach, too,” Ren bragged, smiling down at Soren’s blushing face. “My personal little angel.”

“Ugh, now you’re making me want one! I swear, ever since Box Babes came out with their spring lineup, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it. Did you see that lineup? The one with that gorgeous big-titty one in the purple?”

“Was it the same line that had the one with curly brown hair and pretty green eyes?” Ren asked. Yanni tilted her head, her curly brown hair bouncing in its ponytail and her pretty green eyes looking off to the side in thought.

“Not sure! It’s not an uncommon complexion, though,” Yanni said with a careless shrug, and Ren hummed, a private smile on their face, eyes on hers. She smiled back. “But seriously, that one Babe was soooooo pretty, and I’ve been needing an outlet.”

‘You really do,” Ren agreed.

“I can’t help it that the gods made me horny. And like, none of the women in this office are bangable, you know? They’re all, ugh, smart.”

“Working with folk of our caliber, I’d hope they would be,” Ren said easily, mostly entertained by Yanni’s over the top theatrics. They felt warmly towards her. Not that she’d ever be in any danger of it, but if--in some other life--she were made into a Box Babe herself, Ren would’ve just as happily bought her.

It would still have meant that they wouldn’t have a pet they could really yank around, but at least neither would ever need to feel jealous of the other.

“Well, obviously,” Yanni said with a flip of her hair. “But it does shrink my dating pool to zilch. I mean, seriously, what’s a gal gotta do to get herself a bimbo these days?!”

Ren pretended to hum thoughtfully, and shrugged with an airy “Buy one.”

They shared a laugh, and Yanni leaned in to kiss their cheek. “You’re so fun, I missed you. You should invite me over to meet your new little plaything!”

“Maybe,” Ren said, “We’ll see how I feel at the end of the day.”

Yanni stuck her tongue out at them. “You just wanna hole up with that cute little bean and keep him all to yourself.”

Ren shrugged. “Maybe, maybe not. Guess you’ll never know.”

“Well, text me whenever you decide. Oh! But, I did get sent in here for a reason. Like, a reason-reason, not just to bitch you out for stranding me here!”

“Oh?” Ren asked unapologetically.

“Coffee machine broke yesterday. Help us Ren-bi Wan Kenobi! You’re our only hope!”

Huh. They hadn’t even sabotaged it that time. It meant the thing was actually malfunctioning, but they weren’t particularly concerned, as they stood and left their office. By this point, they knew the insides of the thing better than the manufacturers did. 

A couple of their office-mates were gathered in the break room, one of them contemplating buying iced coffee from the company fridge, a couple chatting with empty hands, another very sullenly nursing a cup of water. Aimie looked up from said water cup and caught sight of Ren, and her face immediately lit up.

“Ren! Thank god; the damn thing’s been broken all week!”

“It’s only Tuesday,” Ren said with a laugh, basking in the turning attention of the break room, each and every one of them delighted to see Ren. 

“It’s already Tuesday,” Yanni corrected, hopping up on the counter next to the coffee machine as Ren pulled open the panel. “You’ve come to us in our darkest hour!” she said with a dramatically raised fist.

Ren poked around, checking the usual spots they sabotaged it in. One of the wires they used most frequently had jiggled loose all on its own. They must have used that wire too much, and now it was worn down from the constant in and out. But, that just meant they didn’t have to sneak in here and break the thing as often anymore, and would be able to walk in with other people and be lauded for their competence without needing to time things perfectly when the room was empty. If they could just get access to the security cameras legally, this would all be so much simpler.

“And booting back on,” Ren announced calmly, the room watching with baited breath, and they all let out a playful (but only so playful) cheer when the thing beeped to life.

“Our hero!” Yanni shouted, flinging her arms around their neck and kissing their cheek. They laughed, hugging her back, and offered her the first paper cup off the stack, as a monarch bestowing riches to a favored knight. They placed their hand on the nape of her neck while she filled the cup, pretending to lean on her while they looked at their phone (Soren was on the balcony again).

One of the first things they’d done when they decided they liked Yanni was touch her neck, like this, their hand pressing down on the clasp of her necklace. It dug into their hand, but it dug into her neck too, and was the first step in conditioning her to put up with mild discomfort in exchange for Ren’s touch and attention. Of course, they would never do anything terrible to her, no no, they wouldn’t be mean to their friend, but they liked knowing that they could, that their friends would let them. They were better now, than as a teenager. Smoother, sharper, smarter about this. They hadn’t conditioned Soren successfully in their youth, having to wait until he was a precious little Box Boy to get him acting like he should, but they were doing a fine job of manipulating Yanni. She was willing to put up with most anything, these days.

“See you at lunch,” Yanni said, steam wafting out from the little hole in the plastic lid. “You’ve got so much office gossip I need to catch you up on!”

“Looking forward to it,” Ren said honestly, giving her a quick kiss on the temple before returning to their office.

They thought about it. Yanni was very, very much a lesbian, so therefore would pose no “threat” for Ren with Soren. Her interest in him really and truly would be entirely aesthetic, and she would have no interest in taking what was Ren’s. She wasn’t violent, and respected other people’s properties (Ren’s more than most), so she wouldn’t hurt Soren, but she was also a little careless and very energetic, so she might play a little rough. She might shake Soren up a bit, leave him nervous and trembling and desperately folding into Ren’s embrace, which was definitely desirable. She might also just coo over him, pinching his cheeks and braiding his hair and fawning until she got bored and demanded Ren distract her in other ways, which was also fine. 

Ren tried to think of possible downsides to inviting Yanni over, examining potential outcomes thoroughly. They did, after all, like to be prepared. They especially couldn’t afford to be careless with Soren, not when they had him just like they wanted him. But all they came up with were pros. Yanni would undoubtedly like Soren, and would be further convinced to buy a Box Babe of her own. That would mean she’d waste less time trying to find hookups or dates, which detracted her attention from Ren, and would leave her better able to focus on them, devote her time to them. 

If she bullied Soren a little, it would leave him clingy and needy. If she bullied Soren too much, it wouldn’t happen instantaneously, and Ren could step in when things crossed a line, and Soren would be grateful and view them as his savior (which they were, anyway). If she was nothing but sweet and friendly, well, Soren deserved that. Ren would be able to show off how well trained Soren was, which was a stroke to their vanity, and Yanni would get more quality time with Ren, which the two of them hadn’t had in a while.

They checked in on Soren again (in the kitchen now, and when they checked their clock it was about lunchtime), got up from their desk, and headed out to the vending machine. They bought a bar of super-dark chocolate and swung by Yanni’s office, decorated with streamers and rainbows and artfully nude paintings and photographs of women. 

“Knock knock,” they said, after they’d already crossed the threshold and were in the middle of sauntering to her desk. She looked up, grinned bright, and then saw that they had a chocolate bar in hand.

“Oooo, you get me something?” she asked, hand already extended, and they dropped it into her palm with a pleasant hum.

“You know I like spoiling you.”

“I dooooo, you dooooo,” she cooed, unwrapping it and taking a bite. “Is it lunch already?”

“Sure is. Also, you should stop by after work today and meet my little Soren.”

“Hell yes!” Yanni said, sticking the bar in her mouth so she could lock up her computer with both hands. She looped her arm around Ren’s, and the two went to lunch, Yanni informing them of all the office gossip over green iced tea and shakshouka. The knowledge that Carl’s father had recently passed was useful. It meant he would be… vulnerable. It did put a closing-window-time frame on whether or not Ren liked him enough to want him, though. If they didn’t, he wouldn’t be worth the effort, emotional vulnerability or no. Sure, Carl was nice enough, but he was getting kind of old, and didn’t exactly have enough clout to make him useful.

But he did have that lovely sense of humor, and he gave out compliments easily, which Ren liked. Decisions decisions.

“Back to the grind,” Yanni said with a sigh as they tossed their trash.

“Halfway there,” they comforted, touching her back. “I’ll see you after work, puppy,” they said, playful and quiet. Calling her puppy was an inside joke between them, given how excitable and bubbly she was, how easy it was to get her wound up. They always said it affectionately, so she knew they weren’t calling her a bitch or anything, that was the last connotation they wanted with their words. But she really was, she was their cute little puppy.

And Soren was their pretty little bird, whose wings they’d finally clipped. 

Yanni’s voice echoed through their home when the two walked through the front door that evening, and when she laughed brightly Ren took the opportunity to call out, “Soren, baby, heel!”

Soren rounded the stairs the moment after; he must have started coming when he heard their voices. “Ohhh, he’s even cuter in real life!” Yanni squealed as he came down, and when Ren opened their arms he rushed to them, eyes lingering nervously on Yanni. 

“Soren, this is Yanni,” Ren said sweetly, voice once again taking that high pitch like they were talking to a child.

“Hello, Yanni,” Soren said, reluctant to be pushed away from Ren’s chest.

“Hello sweetie!” she cooed, reaching out and pinching his cheeks. Ren chuckled breathily. They were definitely pinchable. “You are just as cute as a button omg! Oh, oh, is he name brand?”

“He is,” Ren said proudly, stroking his hair and letting the silky strands fall off their fingers in a small cascade. 

“So he comes with like, positions and stuff, right?”

“Soren, position two.”

Soren collapsed to his knees, eyes turned to Ren, who smiled at him.

“Aaaa, okay, okay, uh, position four!” Yanni said. Soren glanced to her, then back at Ren, who made a ‘go on’ kind of gesture. Soren lifted up off his ankles, though remained on his knees, and extended his wrists to Yanni, who giggled.

“How abouuuuut, twelve! No, thirteen!” Soren stopped mid-motion, then slipped easily into position, and Yanni rattled off a few more random numbers.

“Which one’s your favorite?” Yanni asked, beaming at Ren.

“Soren, Position 22.”

Soren knelt, much like position two, only this time his jaw dropped open.

“EW! You perv!” Yanni said with a high giggle, punching Ren in the shoulder. Ren laughed along with, and punched back. They always punched back harder, and they always punched back last. She accepted this about them, though sometimes in her rowdier moods they would be forced to leave her rubbing at her arm with a half-hidden wince. “So, you fuck him then?” she asked, rounding Soren and tugging experimentally on a lock of hair. “Oh wow it is soft,” she muttered, grabbing a handful.

“Not yet,” Ren said lazily, observing Soren’s cute little winces, the way his throat worked as he tried to swallow his spit with an open mouth, attempting to prevent himself from drooling. “I want the first time to be perfect.”

Yanni nodded with a noisy inhale. “I do know this about you,” she said. “Man, now I really want a Box Babe.”

“You should get one; they’re delightful.”

“Huh Soren, should I get one?” Yanni asked, sitting down on her haunches and pulling him back against her shoulder, hand on top of his collar.

“I-If you think you’d like one, ma’am.”

“I wouldn’t wait to fuck mine, though,” she said, almost conversationally, booping Soren on the nose.

“And I know this about you,” Ren said with a chuckle. “Noisy slut that you are.”

“It’s true, I’m the sluttiest,” Yanni said, standing and using Soren’s shoulder to help herself up. She pulled on his hair, forcing his head back so he looked up at her. “And these pets really are just to die for, huh?”

“I wouldn’t say die, maybe just spend lots of money on,” Ren said. They snapped their fingers. “Soren, here.”

Soren rushed to them, barely even hiding that he was glad to be out from under her tugging and prodding hands, and when they kissed him he kissed back eagerly, pressing his body up against theirs, gratitude and relief clearly bleeding through his touch. 

“Oh that so does it, I’m getting one. Wanna help me look?” Yanni asked, wrapping her arms around Ren’s waist from behind and going tip-toed to rest her chin on their shoulder. Thoughts of what it would be like to have her collared and doing this, of being sandwiched between two of their favorite friends, maybe tugging on Yanni’s collar a little, came into Ren’s mind, and they smiled brightly.

“Sure! I can show you some of the other sites I was looking at too; even the ones that aren’t big brands can have some attractive wares.”

“Okay,” Yanni said easily, “Oh but first, we have to see if that purple one from the lineup is still available. Seriously, Ren, you’re gonna lose it when you see her, she’s SO pretty!”

“Well, c’mon then,” Ren said, beckoning them both into the living room and pulling out their computer. They pulled up the Whumpees-R-Us homepage and Yanni nuzzled up against their side, giggling. “Soren baby, come up on the couch with us too,” Ren said as they pulled up the Box Babes lineup.

“Oh, she is pretty,” they remarked, zooming in on the one in purple. They hooked the arm they weren’t using to navigate the mouse around Soren’s shoulders, pulling him in nice and close.

“Isn’t she though? God, she’s just, look at her tits!”

“I’m looking, I’m looking, they’re hard to miss!” Ren said with a laugh. 

“How do we see if she’s still for sale?” Yanni asked, and Ren clicked around.

“Oh, yeah, she’s sold. Here, let’s pull up the available listings? Or do you want to customize?”

“Ugh, I’m not that rich. And I’m not my mama’s special favorite, either,” she said teasingly, and Ren elbowed her in the rib.

Yanni laughed. “Filter it though. I want big tits and low intelligence.”

After a bit of scrolling and some more filters, Yanni found one she liked, a beautiful young thing, and Ren tugged on Soren’s hair. 

“Huh, Soren, what do you think of her?” Ren asked, angling the laptop a little.

“She’s, um, very pretty? And, her number is pretty low, which means, I think, she’d be happy to have a mistress, and grateful.”

“Do low numbers mean they’ve been there a while?” Yanni asked.

“Mm. Usually. That, or th-they were, um,” Soren looked away, and Ren tightened their hold, which made him unwind ever so slightly, “refurbished.”

“Ohhhh, so she could be a naughty bitch,” Yanni said thoughtfully, tapping her fingers against her chin.

“E-Either way, she’ll be grateful, ma’am, I, I’m sure!”

“We should check her personality statistics,” Ren said, smoothing their palm over Soren’s pretty head, letting him press his face to their chest and tremble against them. 

Personality stats were good, she was as-of-yet unbought so concerns of refurbishment were null, and Ren enjoyed the little twitch that Soren gave every time the word “refurbish” was said. Yanni ended up buying her on Ren’s computer, with her credit card, and kissed their cheek before she left for the night.

“See you tomorrow!” she called.

“See you tomorrow,” they answered, and as soon as she’d closed the door they turned to Soren, lifting his chin.

“My pet, you seem distressed.”

“I, I,” Soren tried, and they felt a thrill up their spine at how tears were gathering in his eyes. “I didn’t… I don’t…”

“Shhh,” Ren hushed, thumbing away his gathering tears. ���Shush, now, darling, think it through, use your words. Take your time my sweetheart, shhh.”

Soren pressed his face to Ren’s shirt, clinging to them, and they pet his hair.

“I. Don’t like thinking about the facility. I don’t like r-remembering--I, I know you said what I was before d-doesn’t matter, but,” Soren took a deep breath, “i-it was scary, and, and then we, talked about,” Soren hiccuped, “refurbishment, and, Exalted, Honored One, please, please, I-I’m good, please, I don’t…”

Soren was trying very hard not to break down, it was clear, but he was getting glassier, out of focus. Ren shushed him again and lifted his face, exposing his neck.

“Soren, baby, give me your hand,” they purred, and they guided it to his collar. The shift was instant. His whole body shuddered, lips parting, and his eyes closed with a heavy exhale, other hand coming up and gripping the collar also.

“I’m yours,” he murmured, reverent as a prayer, “I’m yours, I’m all yours. I won’t ever belong to anyone but you. No one else will touch me, no one else will get me, I won’t go anywhere without you.” He rocked slightly on the couch, knuckles white from how tightly he held his collar, and Ren smiled, happy and sweet and content.

“That’s right baby. I’ll let my friends come over and play with you, but they’ll never hurt you. I’ll sign you up for classes, but you only go there with my knowledge and permission. Everything about your life, I have ahold of, Soren. I’m taking care of you.”

“Yes,” Soren moaned, “Yes, I’m yours, I’m yours. My whole life is in your hands, you have the control.”

“That’s right,” Ren cooed, pulling him into their arms and kissing his hair. “That’s right. That’s my precious boy, oh, Soren, take comfort in me.” Their arms squeezed around him a little tighter. “Take your comfort in the fact that you are mine.”

Next

[fandom-collective-writers]

Library Mischief

Fandom: Ikemen Sengoku Pairing: Mitsuhide Akechi x MC (Mai) Written By: @lil-creatorwritings Requested By: @pristinehaven and @shadowyanimequotesprofessor​ Prompt: Smut Prompts #40: “If you don’t like my teasing, then why are you moaning?” and #46: “You’re not allowed to cum without my permission.” A/N: College AU, because why not? I hope it’s both to your liking and thank you for sending a request~

---

History 102 would always be full whenever the second semester rolled in. The administration never had a problem with the influx of students, since it was a prerequisite for several of their available course. One would instead question the ratio of genders in the class--there were obviously more females pining over the Thursday and Friday schedules, and there could only be one reason why.

Mitsuhide Akechi. Good looks, well mannered and smart. A perfect trifecta of qualities to boost morale in an otherwise bleak and monotonous subject.

It’s wasn’t a mystery to Mai on how he ended up being the center of attraction to the students. She wasn’t one to judge, falling right into his charms and smooth antics. The man did have a silver tongue and a way with words. Even as they’ve decided to be a couple, it seemed oblivious to the rest of the people around them.

Now, it wasn’t any of her business to interfere with work. After all, she was also a teacher and she had other things to worry about such as lesson plans and quizzes. Getting away from the students was the opposite of their profession, and she wasn’t about to suggest it just so that they could keep their hands off her boyfriend. Though the jealousy creeping up her throat wasn’t helping.

Stepping into the huge library, she swiped her card for entrance and pointedly made her way to the economics section at the far back. The groups of giddy girls littered everywhere told her what she didn’t want to know before the clock outside chimed for the time. A cacophony of chairs scratching on the floor, papers being shuffled around, books closed shut, and the world was at peace again.

Mai sighed to herself, reaching up for a book. If she didn’t know any better, she would have convinced herself that all of them were studying, finding a quiet place to focus on their thoughts and notes. But their dreamy sighs and lovestruck gazes only confirmed her suspicion. Skimming through the book, she reshelved it back and took the one beside it, reading through a couple of pages.

A voice spoke up from behind her, making her almost drop the book. “That looks interesting.”

“Mitsuhide!” She spun around, meeting golden eyes as she clutched it to her chest. “When did you get here?”

“For a while now. I spotted you when you came in.” he replied, glancing over the cover of the book. “It seems that had caught your full attention.”

He looked good as always, dressed in well cut slacks and a light blue button down. The man certainly knew how to dress to impress, and even such a simple outfit made him look gorgeous. It was downright unfair that he could pull off being a model with almost any sort of clothing.

Mai gazed back at the book. “I’m trying to come up with new ideas for class. Maybe something that appeals to the male students as well.” Woodwork seemed to be a good idea to start with. “What are you doing here?”

“Nothing important, just some additional paperwork.” he shrugged. “Trying to get away from my new students.”

“I see.”

This wasn’t the first time it happened. She’s seen this ever since she met him as a fellow colleague. Female students would crowd over him, animatedly trying to grab his attention outside of class hours. Some purposely stay a while after lectures, approaching him with trivial questions and such. Maybe leaning over a bit too much, acting a little too cute, being a little too touchy. February was the worst; his desk would be flooded with boxes of chocolate or letters filled with confessions, the scent of roses wafting through the whole faculty. He claims that the amount is nothing compared to what Shingen or Nobunaga receive every year.

He’s never been one to revel in the fame, unlike the two. It would always settle down after a couple of weeks, the spotlight fading as he makes them actually pay attention to the subject.

“It must be nice to have the majority of females here fawn over you for your attention.” Squaring her shoulders, she faced the bookshelf, trying to focus back on her book.

Mitsuhide approached her, his hand ghosting up her arm before it rested on her shoulder. “Why, is that a hint of jealousy I hear?”

“What? Why would I be?” She refused to look at him. Being jealous wasn’t her thing, but she refused to give him the satisfaction of being right.

“Are you sure?” he murmured, his hand moving her auburn hair to a side. His teeth lightly nipped at her ear, making her shiver. “That pout you’re making tells me otherwise.”

She dropped the pout as he kissed down her neck. “Mitsuhide, stop that.” Squirming away was no use; he had already trapped her against the bookcase, wrapping an arm around her waist and using his body as leverage to keep her still.

“Do you really want me to stop?”

No and yes. No, because the heat of his body was feeding the growing fire in her stomach, and yes, because they might get caught by a colleague. Or worse, a student. One of them had to be rational.

The sudden bite of his teeth made her gasp, marking her with a hickey just below the collar. His tongue quickly swiped over it in apology, the sensation sending a pulse between her legs. Mai bit her lip, trying to stifle her voice as she felt his hand squeeze her ass before slipping under her skirt, caressing her inner thigh.

“If you don’t like my teasing, then why are you moaning?”

She didn’t have time to respond before Mitsuhide deftly pushed two fingers in, her pussy squeezing around them. A strangled moan fell from her lips as he started thrusting, stretching her, lightly teasing her nub with a flick of his thumb.

“We’re.. on campus..”

“And you’re squeezing so hard, little mouse.” The pet name spiked her arousal as he moved to stroking longer and deeper. “I can tell my fingers are soaked.”

The book tumbled to the ground, her hand gripping the nearest shelf she could hold on as he suddenly picked up speed. She couldn’t press her thighs together to stop him; he had nudged one of his legs between hers, keeping them apart.

Mai sunk her teeth on her finger, the pain barely distracting her from the rapid peak to her orgasm. Her hips jerked forward, seeking him deeper, trying to press up against his palm for some friction on her aching clit. It was absolutely infuriating, the way he kept her on the edge like this when he wanted to be a tease. Oh, she was so close…!

But he had other plans, and the whine she gave him was full of protest. He slowed down, thrusting just a bit more before pulling out of her. The sound of him licking his fingers clean made her clench.

“Now, now,” he chuckled, leaving light pecks on her neck. “I thought you wanted me to stop?”

He was agonizing, but the need for him threw her logic out the window. Twisting in his grasp, she pulled him by the shirt, crashing their lips together in a hungry kiss. In a bold move, she rubbed her palm on his clothed erection. She could almost make out the exact shape as it strained against his pants.

“Mai.” His voice was tight. The small crack in his composure encouraged her to give him a squeeze.

Mitsuhide sucked in a harsh breath before grabbing her wrist, pulling her hand away and walking off to the corner. The change in movement almost made her trip on her own feet, gaining balance as he led her a few bookshelves down to a painted door.

It was the storage room. “I doubt that’s open to the pub--”

Click!

With a turn of the knob, it opened to reveal several stacks of books in yellow light. As soon as they were behind the door, he claimed her lips again, pressing her against the closest wall. Her hands fumbled with his belt and zipper, opening it just enough to fit a hand in. She was already stroking him when he managed to pull down his boxers low enough. He pulled her panties to the side, fitting between her legs as he rubbed against her slit.

There was an air of dominance as he spoke. “You’re not allowed to come without my permission.”

Thoughts of her arguing with that flew out the window as his cock slid inside her. Her head bumped against the wall, his girth stretching her walls much more than his fingers. Mitsuhide gently nipped on her exposed throat and played with her clit, giving her time to adjust. Seconds ticked by before he moved, pulling out of her almost completely before pushing right back in.

The steady pace was absolutely maddening. She tried to urge him, wrapping a leg around his to press them even closer. His ministrations had her drifting in the waters, teetering in pleasure with a slow climb to release.

“Mitsuhide..!” she whimpered.

With a little tilt of his hips, he hit against that sweet spot. Each thrust had her moaning louder as he held her waist and began fucking her faster. The slickness of her cunt made it easier for his cock to fill her up with one smooth motion. It was divine, how her walls squeezed him, his cock throbbing inside her. His hot breath fanned over her neck as he nipped on her skin, right below the first hickey.

“Please!” It was all too much, and she couldn’t fight off the impending fall. “I’m gonna come…!”

“So come. Come for me right now.”

The pleasure crashed over her in waves, her body quivering and giving in. It hit her hard and fast, crying out for him as Mitsuhide kept thrusting, helping her ride it out. He groaned as her cunt clamping around him tightly triggered his own orgasm. His hips moved jerkily, slowing down to edge them off the high before stopping, slipping out of her gently.

The couple paused to catch their breaths. Even as he was appropriately dressed again, Mai didn’t want to let go, wrapping her arms around his neck. Despite needing a more thorough clean up in private, she wanted a few more minutes with him like this.

He was the first to break the silence, resting his hands on her lower back. “Still jealous?”

“..Maybe.” Mai pouted, leaning against him for support as she waited for her legs to stop shaking.

“Then I guess I’ll have to keep reassuring you.” He pressed a kiss to the top of her head. “There’s no other woman I’d look at but you.”

Rarely was he so blunt about his feelings, and hearing it from him made her blush.

“I’m sorry I get jealous.”

Mitsuhide ruffled her hair playfully. “Although, it’s absolutely adorable when you are.”

He’d never admit to her that he finds it endearing. Mai was too easy to tease about it, and it was one of the things he loved about her. She pulled away, feigning anger as she huffed at him. The peck on her cheek was all he needed to put a smile on her face. They made sure to at least look decent before turning to leave the room, acting inconspicuously as the two tried to return to work.

[chiseler]

Ralph Bellamy

In spite of an extensive and busy film career that saw him in all manner of parts, particularly in his early days, the very name “Ralph Bellamy” became code during the classic Hollywood period for a guy who didn’t get the girl, a thick and thick-witted fellow that the heroine would strenuously try to imagine settling down with while the thin and stylish Cary Grant, who was not made for settling down, waited for her to come to her senses. And if he were merely that, merely the obviously lackluster placeholder option in romantic comedies like Leo McCarey’s The Awful Truth (1937) and Howard Hawks’s His Girl Friday (1940), he might not be worth writing or thinking about. But just look at him closer, or remember what he was doing for a moment, and the picture immediately gets much stranger, and more disturbing, than that.

When I think of Ralph Bellamy, the first thing that comes to mind is a single concluding shot of him in the masterfully timed scene in The Awful Truth where Irene Dunne, Grant and Bellamy are in a fancy nightclub and Grant’s Southern girl date Dixie Belle Lee  (Joyce Compton) gets up to do an embarrassing nightclub act to a song called “My Dreams Are Gone with the Wind.” The song begins conventionally enough as a ballad, but whenever Dixie Bell gets to the line “gone with the wind,” a hidden wind machine blows her skirt right up over her head. Every time this happens, McCarey cuts back to the table with Grant, Dunne and Bellamy and their individual, mounting reactions.

Grant is mortified and keeps looking upward, while Dunne is mortified for him but also somehow disbelieving, even panic-stricken, which she builds steadily in a complex and funny series of push-and-pull facial spasms. The characters they are playing are very conscious, very fastidious, and so this is almost too much for them to handle, and so it’s easy to get so wrapped up in what they’re doing that you forget to gauge Bellamy’s reaction until McCarey cuts to a close shot of him staring at Dixie Belle with an alarming kind of half-formed, sticky lust, both blatant and unconscious. It’s a look of pure stupidity caught unawares, and it is so intensely imagined that it almost throws the scene off balance. Just who is this guy? What is he capable of? Bellamy got an Oscar nomination for The Awful Truth, which suggested that people felt a new screen character had been introduced.

His name in The Awful Truth is Dan Leeson, and Dan is an oil man who has a domineering mother. In His Girl Friday, he is an accountant named Bruce Baldwin, and Bruce also has a domineering mother. In that movie, Cary Grant makes an art of looking at Bellamy’s Bruce as if he can’t quite believe what he’s seeing and hearing. And so it begs the question: just what is he seeing and hearing? Maybe a proto-Norman Bates? Bellamy takes a certain kind of hearty American male dimness to such a point of larval weirdness that you begin to question just what might happen to the women if they did somehow end up with him. Those two movies suggest that the women would be bored with his niceness and long for Grant’s edgy playfulness, but are the men Bellamy is playing really all that nice? Isn’t there the suggestion of a pervert somewhere in his character, revealed for what it is in that close-up of him looking at Dixie Belle Lee with her skirt blowing up over her head?

We need to go a little further back in his filmography to find the most troubling character he ever played, Allen Macklyn, another rich guy, in Hands Across the Table (1935). When manicurist Regi (Carole Lombard) first goes to see Allen, he is seated and talks with his back to her for a moment and then turns around until we can see that he is sitting in a very glossy and plush wheelchair. She takes that in, and while she does so, Allen’s eyes light up with lust as he looks her over from stem to stern. When he talks to her, the dialogue tells us that his life is a lonely one, but that’s not what Bellamy is playing. If a more vulnerable or appealing actor had played Allen Macklyn, the way the film uses him as a stopgap might be somewhat unpleasant, but because it’s pervy Bellamy, he lets us right off the hook. When it becomes clear that Lombard’s Regi is going to marry Fred MacMurray, Bellamy doesn’t seem crestfallen; in fact, it is easy to imagine him offering to pay to watch them make love! There’s no pathos in his playing here, only that note of creeping and unsatisfied horniness that was a fallback mode for Bellamy, his most distinctive contribution to the screen. Whenever he does it, I’m always torn between “Ick!” and perverse fascination.

Dig a little further back in his career, in the films before he became “Ralph Bellamy” or “that guy in the movies, Ralph Bellamy,” as Cary Grant meta-ishly calls him in His Girl Friday, and you will find even odder things, slow-talking judges who seem horribly stubborn and sure of their own power, gangsters who seem to have wandered into the profession by mistake but sure do enjoy themselves bullying people, reporters and pilots and society duds, all of whom share Bellamy’s intense and pre-occupied and immovable quality. The most startling moment in his films is probably the scene where he unexpectedly punches the vampy Constance Cummings in the face in This Man Is Mine (1934), as if a beast in him might be woken up from its slumber if you weren’t too careful. He worked a lot in the early 1930s, averaging between seven to nine movies a year, and he might be called an all-purpose player in that he could be put into most roles in his early days, but he bends everything to his own implacable, impenetrable essence, which could seem menacing even when he was at his sunniest (or especially then).

By the 1940s he was doing mysteries, but he was also very involved in founding the Screen Actors Guild, and he was president of Actors’ Equity from 1952 to 1964, honorably doing all he could to make sure Equity resisted the blacklist. In later life he made a kind of career out of playing Franklin Delano Roosevelt, again in a wheelchair, in Sunrise at Campobello, which he did on stage and then in a movie version in 1960 with Greer Garson fluting it up as his Eleanor. But the disturbing side of Bellamy was perhaps most fully revealed by his doctor in Rosemary’s Baby (1968), an amiable fellow who turns out to be in cahoots with a group of devil worshipers. He is creepy enough in that movie to suggest what Dan Leeson and Bruce Baldwin might actually have had in mind for those screwball comedy heroines.

He did a lot of TV and lasted well into the 1980s to play rich old codgers in Trading Places (1983) and Pretty Woman (1990), and these films were enough to show that his persona had changed remarkably little since the 1930s, which were a very different time. The thing about Ralph Bellamy that’s most unsettling and unexplained is that watchful, unchanging quality he had, and what it might have been hiding. By most available accounts he was a good guy in life. He married four times, the fourth time happily and for decades, and he was politically progressive and reputable. So why is it whenever he’s on screen my skin starts to crawl, and why is it that I sort of enjoy the sensation?

by Dan Callahan

[averywiseanimatedcat]

Movie nights

Little late kinda Haloween Malec fic 

-Magnus has a different idea to their usual date nights- 

1500 words 

G rated (fluffy not smutty) 

Alec didn’t even have to place his hand on the door handle before it swung open infront of him, he grinned as Magnus came into view. Sitting on one of his lavish chairs, the faint remnants of magic disappearing from his fingertips.

“Alexander.”

He purred 

“Hey.”

He stepped inside and closed the door behind him

“You know if you keep doing that, one day I’m going to forget how to open doors entirely.”

Magnus stood and sauntered over to him, playfully dipping one shoulder and looking at him through the corners of his eyes asking

“Are you objecting?”

Alec felt himself melt at the smooth texture of Magnus’s voice, inviting him to play along

"Never.”

Magnus closed the distance between them and brought Alecs chin down to meet his lips. They kissed deeply but briefly. Magnus kept his eyes closed for a second afterwards, only opening them when Alec asked

“So. You said you had a surprise for me?”

For a while now they had dedicated one night a week, usually a Friday or Saturday night, to going on a date of some kind. Sometimes it was portalling to Paris or Amsterdam to wine, dine and explore, other times it was as simple as just entangling themselves in Magnus’s bed for the night. Once they even spent it in Alecs office at the institute, Magnus had far to much fun trying to distract him the entire time. Alec pretended he didn’t like it, which made it all the more fun for Magnus to tease him. Like placing putting both feet up on Alecs desk while he read, letting the skirt of his jacket fall to reveal far to lean legs in far to tight black pants. Alec would sigh heavily and look at him from under his brow, Magnus would look up innocently from his book asking

“Something bothering you?”

Long fingers adorned with multiple rings and deep purple nail polish drummed the table, making it a little hard for Alec to string together a sentence

“…no….there’s just a pesky Warlock on my desk.”

“Wonder what he’s doing there…”

“I know exactly what he’s doing, and it’s working.”

Alec smacked Magnus’s shin gently with a rolled up paper, Magnus snatched his legs away 

“Oh come now Alexander, I’m sure the head of the New York institute can ignore one little Warlock.”

Alec rolled his eyes and mumbled under his breath

“You’re not LITTLE in any sense of the word…”

Magnus pretended he didn’t hear, but Alec saw the smirk buried in the old pages of his ancient book while he returned his feet back onto the desk. 

Alec was snapped back to the present with Magnus taking one hand in his own and playing with his fingers while he spoke

"I know you havnt had much time for...well...anything, so I thought maybe... something a little different to our usual dates for Halloween."  

"Oh?"

Alec's dark brows peaked with curiosity, Magnus smiled and waved his hands in that fantastic way Alec loved. Behind them, the living room transformed into a very luxurious looking home theatre. A large, bean bagish couch, surrounded by all kinds of snacks and goodies. A massive tv adorned the wall. Alec laughed and asked

"A movie night?"

"Exactly Alexander."

"Wait, I know what this is…this is beacuse I never understand your obscure references."

"...Maybe..."

Magnus smiled coyly and snapped his fingers. The lights dimmed and the giant screen lit up with a huge title 'Edward scissors hands' Magnus's smug face was illuminated dramatically by the screen, creating deep shadows, his eyes bright and sparkling.

"Impressed?"

 Alec couldn't help but allow a wide grin to slip across his face. He reached foreward and gripped Magnus by the waist, letting his fingers feel every tickle of energy coming from beneath them whenever he touched Magnus.  

"Aslong as it's with you, I'm happy."

Magnus beamed and added enthusiastically

“Oh, I also set up some wards for sound proofing the room. Honestly the quality is greatly improved, just like surround sound, the real deal.”

“See this is why I struggle to much to come up with date night ideas, how can I compete with my boyfriend magic-ing me up a personal home theatre system?”

Alec was half serious but mostly said it for humors sake, he knew he could never compete with Magnus’s wild ideas. But Magnus seemed to think otherwise, he was a man of small gestures. He kept the Omamori charm from Alec with him at all times. Even at night, it sat on his bedside table while he slept. At the time Alec considered it a small gift, but Magnus’s response taught him allot about his Warlock. He didn’t care much for show, he didn’t care if Alec said he loved him infront of anyone or held his hand in public. He wanted intention, genuine, authentic intention. Magnus was far more interested in the power behind a statement than the words actually said, the meaning behind the action rather than the result. On the other hand, Alec had grown to like Magnus’s obvious affection, the way he looked at him when others were watching, the closer he choose to stand with him the better. So people knew they were together, a powerful team. Obviously there was allot more to it than that, Magnus had a self that was present around other people, and a self that only revealed itself when he was alone with Alec. But they fit together perfectly. 

They spent the night watching all sorts of Halloween movies, some horror, some silly or romantic. Many were old and that made them all the more entertaining. Cuddled up on the couch that was probably awful for your posture, they laughed, ate and drank through the stories playing out before them. Some movies like Invasion of the body snatchers was to funny to take seriously, others encouraged them to press closer and laugh when one of them startled.

At some late point in the night, after many movies and far to much to drink Alec looked down at Magnus and asked

"Another one?"

Only to see a sleeping warlock on his chest. Magnus rarely removed all the glamour from his face, but of late he had gotten into the habit of removing it at the end of the day, rather than leaving until he slept. When they first got together, he never took it off, he even slept in it, using his magic to refresh and change it every day. But right now, Magnus had never looked so fantastic to Alec. Dressed in one of Alec's many black long sleeve shirts that was a little too big, the top buttons undone, curled up on his chest with his hair in a messy flop over his forehead. Both legs drapped across his lap, one arm wrapped around his waist. Alec sighed and whispered through a kiss placed on the top of Magnus's head 

"Alright."

A soft noise came from Magnus and he mumbled

"...we can watch another if you want."

"No, you’re tired."

Magnus yawed and shuffled against him, breathing out one defiant word

"...no..."

They both burst into fatigued chuckles, Magnus lazily flicked a wrist that switched off the TV. Neither of them bothered to try and get to the actual bed, they'd settled so far into the huge bean bag Alec wasn't even sure he'd be able to get out without Magnus levitating him out. He pulled the burgundy mink blanket that was spread over their legs up over Magnus's shoulders.

Resting his chin on his boyfriends head, Alec gazed out of the balcony windows for a short while, gently stroking the lines of Magnu’s shoulder blades. Slowly, the warlocks breathing settled and his heart hummed the familiar beat that Alec had grown to know as sleep. Slowly, his own eyes closed and he fell into sleep, more content than he’d ever been  

-

Izzy was hesitant about going to Magnus's apartment, but neither him or Alec were answering their phones and he'd already missed one training session that morning. There was a meeting in an hour and Izzy had to go and get him. She knew it was their date night last night, so she had a pretty good idea WHY he wasn't there. A sister just knows these things. she knocked loudly on Magnus’s door. No reply. Again, calling out

“Magnus! Alec?”

Preparing herself to be scorned for walking in on them, Izzy swung the door open. She was greeted with a sight that almost brought tears to her eyes. Curled up together in a huge bean bag, surrounded by chip bags and cocktail glasses, Magnus and Alec were fast asleep. She could see their phones stacked together on the kitchen bench. A very faint haze buzzed around the room, some kind of magic, she thought. Briefly, she considered waking them. But Alec would be mortified. Instead, she tip toed into the kitchen and retrieved Alec's phone and placed it on the floor by the coffee table next to them, making it appear as if it had just fallen off in the night. Sneaking back out, she called him again from the street outside. He picked up, she had to hide the giggle in her voice at his ramblings

"Izzy! I'm so sorry...omg..Magnus it's 11am...I don't know why I didn't hear it? Your what..?"

Not able to resist poking fun at him she teased

“Oh it’s fine Alec, you must have been REALLY tired…”

“IZzy!!”  

She chuckled

"I'll see you at the institute."

And hung up on him, trying and failing to stifle a laugh on the street corner that made people stare. Strutting down the street, she felt warm and content the idea of her brother finally being happy.  

[sugartownmagazine]

“It’s quite a revolution, dear Christian. Your dresses have such a new look!”

Designer of Dreams, May 2019, The British Museum, all photos taken by myself

Stepping into this highly anticipated exhibition of Christian Dior’s life and work, I am greeted by the Bar Suit. A straw hat, cream coloured tussore silk fitted jacket and black wool crêpe pleated skirt created a silhouette which would become a classic, ushering in what Carmel Snow described at the time as “a new look”. Dior’s New Look was revolutionary, and this wonderful exhibition showcased his ideas and personality in the most joyful way.

I visited the exhibition in May, so this is a bit of a late response! I knew of the fashion house but really did not know anything about its history or even much about its designs, and I have really enjoyed getting into fashion this year, so I decided to go along and have a little explore! The first room featured a large mock house front with interpretations of the famous Bar Suit by successive leaders of Dior. They soar above us in the windows of the house, beckoning us towards the fantasies within. Each room after that alternated between ethereal, sumptuous, brightly lit themes and darker spaces where the low lighting showed off the sparkling dresses perfectly.

Throughout the exhibition, much was made of Dior’s inspirations and influences as well as his life and work. He named perfumes and outfits after family, friends or landmarks in his life; for example, Maxim’s Ensemble was named after a Parisian café, which I think sounds very chic. I found it interesting that the names he chose would reflect the dominant silhouette.

“I think of my work as ephemeral architecture dedicated to the beauty of the female body” 1957

Dior referenced architecture, historical eras and art movements in his garments. One of the rooms was dedicated to designs which were influenced by 18th Century nobility, Versailles, and neo-classical façades, all of which would have been at home in any self-respecting decadent royal court. Toile du Jouy, made of extremely high-quality cotton printed with bucolic scenes or floral arrangements, was very popular with Marie Antoinette and the rest of the French elite. Apparently, it was also popular with Dior and it is actually being used again in A/W 2019-2020 collections, albeit with wild animals included in the usual pastoral scenes for a little modern update. I took a couple of pictures of this room as it was one of my favourites and I have inserted them below. Obviously not professional quality, but you get the gist. . .

This dress is from S/S 2005 and is made of silk with bright blue feathers to contrast with the patterns and shape inspired by 18th Century design. Whilst I was walking by, I overheard a woman exclaim “well who would wear it?!” The answer is absolutely me, whenever I had the chance.

The above powder blue collection reminded me of ceramics, wallpaper and decorative ceilings.

Fun fact: Dior’s premises in Paris used a shade of grey which had last been used on the Temple of Love at the Petit Trianon at Versailles.

After a day out to the palace gardens I moved into the next room, which was a complete contrast. Jet black walls allowed the designs in this room to shine, quite literally in some cases; the lighting was perfect, and whoever did it is a genius. Low lights focused on the exact areas of each outfit that needed highlighting, allowing jewellery to glint in the most specific way. It also created drama, with each piece seemingly coming to life to strike a pose in front of you. My favourite in this room was a brilliant crimson wool and silk suit, featuring a pleated cape and sharp-edged mask. The off-centre hidden fastenings in the jacket combined with the rectangular mask created a very modern and streamlined look.

“After women, flowers are the most divine of creations” 1954

At the end of this room, once you had torn yourself away from the melodrama, you would notice delicate pastel coloured vines and flowers gently making their way into the darkness. Follow these and you would find yourself in a fairyland inspired dreamworld, with garlands of leaves and long ropes vine snaking around the ceiling. These delicate flowers, leaves and vines were all made of paper, handcrafted and enough to completely cover the ceiling and hang down the walls. The theme here was the feeling you get when sitting on a riverbank under the overhanging boughs of trees. Everything was lit in pinks, greens, creams, inky blues and purples. The gowns in this room could have been worn by glamourous fairy queens with their flowing layers or exquisite, nature-inspired patterns. William Morris was evoked, as was pointillism and crochet. I really enjoyed this room and it had such a sublime atmosphere.

“N’oubliez pas la femme” – Never forget the woman, Marc Bohan 1963

My journey through the house of Dior now took me to a room dedicated to the other designers who have helmed Dior since Christian himself. Fashion photography and illustration featured in this space. I particularly enjoy fashion illustration, as it is so different to other forms of art; energy is conveyed while the wearer remains mysterious. It was delightful to see the work of all the past and present creative directors in one room, to be able to compare their individual styles whilst noticing how they retained Dior’s soul.  

Another dark, corridor-like room featured a cabinet of curiosities which was filled with accessories, posters, and miniature versions of his designs, all ordered by colour. My favourite was a dark navy dress made with velvet and tulle, with the navy velvet shaped like petals over the full open shape of the tulle.

An interesting diversion into behind the scenes territory gave us a room filled with pure white ‘templates’ of each design. The walls were covered in glass boxes with white, cotton or linen versions of every dress or outfit as a base, or test I suppose. It was very interesting to see the early stages of dresses before they have been finalised or had their magical particulars added.

“In the world today, haute couture is one of the last repositories of the marvellous” 1957

Unfortunately, all good things must come to an end, and my final stop brought me to the modern day. A large circular room took us into the stars with a space theme, perhaps reflecting the soaring heights to which Dior has reached, or the unknowns of the future. The ceiling had a spectacular ever-changing film of constellations, fine art, paintings and explosions of glitter. Orchestral music played between the pillars outlined with light while chandeliers sparkled overhead. A truly great theatrical spectacular which framed the contemporary pieces perfectly! Many of the designs on show here were worn in advertisements or by the great and good, and I could not help but feel slightly envious of those who had the chance to grace red carpets in such magnificent pieces of art.

Christian Dior was undoubtedly one of the best fashion designers of the past century. His timeless ideas, his New Look, his perfumes, his accessories, his beliefs all combined to create a fashion house devoted to the woman. Later adventures in menswear have also proven successful, and the creative directors have proven time and again that classics can be reinvented without losing soul.

I thoroughly enjoyed this exhibition and I really felt that it captured the essence of the house as well as giving us an insight into the creative process. Each dress different from the last but still subtly carrying the original, marvellous heart of Dior. He is certainly the designer of my dreams.

Emily Baker, 2020 

[ofheroesandvillains]

Changing Gears

Tony Stark/Reader

Words: 3223

Warnings: None

Summary: What if there was another person with Tony since the very beginning? That’s where you come in. Despite his questionable ways, he was all you wanted and something you didn’t think you could ever have. When you reach your limit, will he finally show you that he can be a better man than you ever expected him to be? Probably going to have 2 more parts.

I own zero gifs :P

Tony Stark was not an easy man to live with.

Or negotiate with.

Or threaten apparently.

Tony Stark just wasn’t an easy man in general…unless you were a tall blonde with a great rack, if the sounds echoing through the Malibu home were anything to go by. In that case, he was a very easy man.

The annoyingly persistent blonde reporter he had picked up on his way home from the Apogee Award presentation in Vegas –Christine, if you recalled correctly- was making a racket. What the hell are they doing in there? Whatever it was, it didn’t sound healthy.

You tried to negotiate with Tony, insisting that he could do whatever he wanted with whomever he wanted, provided that it didn’t happen inside the house. But as per usual, he kept his word for a solid 5 minutes, before conviniently forgetting all about it as soon as something pretty in a skirt walked by.

Then you tried threatening him. In fact, it was his final warning. Unlike Tony, while you yourself were quite brilliant intellectually, you did try to get the recommended 8 hours of sleep that most sane people needed to function properly. So his constant disregard for your own needs had driven you to threatening him –either he started being more considerate, or you’d find somewhere else to live and do your work.

You didn’t want it to come to that, and part of you knew that it was an empty threat…and if you knew that, then so did Tony. Which was probably why he was currently making your ears bleed.

After wrapping a pillow around your head did nothing to muffle the sounds coming from down the hall, you did the only thing you could do. Escape downstairs into the workshop. It wasn’t the cosiest of places, but there was a comfy couch down there that looked like heaven itself as soon as you realised that absolutely no noise could be heard. Not a single sound.

It was perfect.

You loved Tony, you really did. He was your oldest friend, and the two of you were inseperable usually, to the point where he had even offered you a very high ranking position in Stark Industries. But one of the reasons you fit so well together, was because of your obvious differences.

Where he was brash and imuplsive, you were more methodical and cautious. Where he he was immature and arrogant, you were mature and humble. Your higher level of intellect was what bound you together. You were like two sides of the same coin, and even though he didn’t have some of the best qualities, you loved him all the same.

More than you should have.

You knew you saw him in a different way to how he saw you…you were just that same shy little girl he had met eons ago. He became the cool teenager already enrolled at MIT, while you were only 8 years old when your father passed and you were left on Howard's doorstep. It was only when you became a teenager yourself that you started seeing Tony in a different way. It was obviously a strange thought, but now in adulthood, the age difference didn’t really matter. At least it didn’t matter to you…Tony was a different story.

He never gave anything away, and you didn’t either. Tony hid any of his true feelings for anything and everything quite well, behind a strong mask of sarcasm and arrogance. Sure, he could jokingly flirt (and boy did he jokingly flirt) with you, but you knew not to take it too seriously, it wouldn’t end well if you did. You’d seen many a nameless one-night-stand do the walk of shame whenever Pepper came over to do Tony’s job for him, and that was not a look you were going to wear.

You cared about him too much, too much to risk losing him as a friend by admitting your feelings. No one knew you felt that way about him, most of the time you acted more like a mother than anything else, a role you shared with both Pepper and Rhodey.

You didn’t know where you’d be without them.

While Pepper took care of things from a business perspective, you were stuck making sure he stayed alive. Was he eating? Did he have enough water today? Did he actually end up getting sleep last night?

Most of the time he would roll his eyes in good humour, and a war of snarky words would ensue. That was something he really enjoyed –the fact that you could keep up with him. It was something that not many people could do, but your dry humour and blunt criticisms were music to his ears. His favourite habit was trying to get a rise out of you, it seemed. The fact that it was exceptionally hard to do so was what made him try even harder.

With a glance at the clock ticking above one of the workbenches, you sighed in defeat. 4:27am. Obviously, you weren’t getting any sleep tonight, Tony and your rampaging thoughts made sure of that.

With that in mind, you kicked the blanket that you had dragged downstairs off of you, and headed back up to the bathroom to prepare for an early start.

“Oooh, serious face. Wish me luck, J.A.R.V.I.S.”

“I do believe Miss Y/L/N does not wish to be distur-” The smooth beep of the glass sliding door allowing Tony access into his own workshop, cut the AI off and if J.A.R.V.I.S had eyes, you could bet your ass that he’d be rolling them.

“Someone’s up early! Music, J.A.R.V.I.S.” Tony’s upbeat voice cut through the silent cocoon you had surrounded yourself with, and you sighed silently, unwilling to show any outward signs of annoyance when the AI did as it was told.

A lack of sleep usually left you cranky, today was already shaping up to be a bad day, and it was only 8:19 in the morning. One thing Tony knew well was that you had no trouble holding a grudge. It didn’t matter how much he begged or nagged you, the only person who decided when to let it go was you.

Noticing your lack of reply, the billionaire slowly came to a halt as he approached your work station, dark eyes assessing silently for a change.

“You seem mad. Are you mad? You’re mad, aren’t you?” He rattled off quickly with lightly furrowed brows.

He always made it look like he couldn’t tell, but Tony was too smart to not be able to pick up on a person’s mood as soon as he entered a room…especially someone he knew so well. You always just assumed that he found it easier to ask and make a joke out of it than actually have to directly address emotions. It was just how he was, and you were okay with that.

“No, Tony. I’m not mad.”

His eyes narrowed at your flat tone. You hadn’t even bothered to look up at him, hands still working away at the tiny device that was your latest project. The small disc-charges were intricate little things that required a steady hand, unless you wanted to feel the 30,000 volts of electricity first hand –and you really didn’t want that.

The idea was that they could be used to incapacitate targets quickly and efficiently. The small size allowed them to be easily concealed, and you were excited to be working on something on your own this time around. Designing military weaponry was better suited to Tony, you preferred the smaller gadgets designed to be used by the individual. You could easily convince yourself that what you were making was for self-defence that way, rather than a weapon of war that could wipe out thousands in the blink of an eye.

“You’re not?” Tony’s words were drawn out, his brows rising to show he wasn’t convinced.

Your eyes were still trained on the disc, and he would have at least quirked a smile at the comical size of your eye through the huge magnifying glass that Dum-E was holding for you as you tinkered with the disc-charge. But he didn’t laugh, and he didn’t smile, because you were mad…and he didn’t like that.

Never one to remain patient for very long, Tony quickly snatched the magnifying glass, ushering Dum-E away and ignoring your indignant ‘hey!’ of protest.

Tony held the handle in his right hand, tapping his left palm with the glass, while watching you glare up at him. He was completely unfazed, and that just made you crankier.

“So, you wanna tell me what’s got your feathers all ruffled?”

You refrained from rolling your eyes, but did roll your wheelie chair forward to take back the magnifying glass. He put up a fight, and a short game of tug-of-war ensued before he finally let go.

He took your silence as a display of rebelliousness, but in truth, you were just trying to figure out what to say.

Oh nothing, Tony. I’m just angry that I didn’t sleep a wink last night because you were busy going at it with yet another one-night-stand, which may or may not hurt to even think about because I love you but I can’t tell you that. But I’m not jealous, I’m completely fine. I’m great, you asshole. 

Yeah…maybe not.

That wasn’t just something you could blurt out. Maybe if Tony wasn’t Tony, and didn’t push away those who loved him romantically…maybe then you could admit it. But the truth of the matter was, that anyone who professed their love for him was likely never seen again. No, they weren’t killed or anything, he just avoided them like the plague.

“Alright, fine.”

You knew that tone, it was his ‘challenge accepted’ tone. A tone that had the potential to make or break someone. Never underestimate Tony Stark when he takes that tone.

“J.A.R.V.I.S, why is Y/N mad at me?”

“According to my observations, Miss Y/L/N’s current mood is a result of both a lack of sleep, and the volume of your fornication with Miss Everheart last night, sir.”

Tony grimaced, his shoulders slumping when you beckoned Dum-E back over and resumed your work. You always had a soft spot for Dum-E.

“Oh…you, uh, you heard that, huh?” He scratched the back of his neck uneasily. He didn’t know why that thought bothered him. It’s not like you didn’t know what he would be doing that night.

You were there in Vegas, granted you actually went to the Apogee Award presentation with Obidiah, instead of hitting the casinos with him. But there was a woman on his arm at every turn, and you even had to share a car with him and Katherine…Kirsty? Kerry? Whatever. She was just another pretty face that he’d already forgotten.

Still, it bothered him. It almost felt like he didn’t want you knowing about that, despite the fact that the whole world knew Tony Stark was a playboy.

“It was kinda hard not to. Right, J?”

He winced at the sarcastic tone, and made a mental note to tell Pepper to buy you something nice. He didn’t know how else to make you feel better. He’d bring in some new part, or maybe a new car? No, a plane! Yes, that was it. A plane…why did he feel like he was forgetting something?

“Indeed, madam. Had we any neighbours, I’m certain they too would share your current mood.”

‘Traitor’, Tony thought while he glared up at the ceiling, as if the AI was somehow embedded in it. He hated when they ganged up on him, and they always did. J.A.R.V.I.S never sided with him, and he had long ago suspected that you must have tampered with the AI’s protocols to make sure of it.

Before Tony could even attempt digging himself out of his current predicament, the loud ‘click-clack’ of heels could be heard making their way down the stairs, and he quickly made himself look busy. He almost groaned at the sight of Pepper, prim and proper, and ready to kick his ass because–

“You’re supposed to be halfway around the world right now.”

You felt the smile slip onto your face as soon as Tony’s music cut out and Pepper’s stern tone replaced it instead. Tony was meant to be presenting the Jericho missile in Afghanistan. Rhodey had specifically told him to not be late, if you recalled correctly, and yet here he was. If there was one thing that you didn’t like about Tony, it was how inconsiderate he could sometimes be to those who cared about him most.

You knew there was nothing wrong with his memory, in fact, he had an outstanding capacity to remember almost everything he saw with his own eyes or heard with his own ears. So you couldn’t understand why he didn’t care enough to do Rhodey this one favour and show up on time.

It left you wondering. Rhodey was his best friend, and there was little that Tony wouldn’t do for the man in all seriousness. But he almost always put his wants first, and it was frustrating to deal with when you were already in a bad mood. Sometimes –even though you’d never admit it- you wished he could behave a bit more like his father, at least where Stark Industries was involved.

His father had been best friends with your own, they were business partners much like you and Tony were now. The only difference was that you worked behind the scenes, you designed and created, but tried to lead as private of a live as possible considering you were both in the spotlight, and under the microscope at all times.

Tony, on the other hand, thrived in the spotlight. America loved Tony Stark, and his popularity and ability had led to him neglecting his responsibilities over the years. He was used to other people doing things for him –wanting to do things for him- even though he could do whatever it was far better himself.

Which is exactly what Pepper was ranting about right now. As her and Tony went toe-to-toe in a verbal sparring match so rapid it would make any sane man’s head spin, you continued your work silently. From priceless paintings and exhibitions, to MI commencement speeches, Pepper shot through it all in the space of a minute. Before the topic finally settled on something that didn’t lead to an argument. Pepper’s plans for the evening.

You knew she was going out for dinner with Happy, they had secretly decided to test the waters and you couldn’t be happier for either of them. They were both great people who had been in your life for a very long time, and deserved all the happiness in the world.  

“Hey, Y/N? It’s Pepper’s birthday.” The billionaire stated while pointing a wrench at the strawberry blonde, as if you hadn’t been in the same room the entire time listening.

“I’m aware…” Only then did you allow yourself to swivel around and offer Pepper a warm smile. “Happy birthday, Pepper. I hope you liked your present.”

She returned the smile gratefully.

“I did, thank you. It’s lovely and incredibly expensive…you shouldn’t have,” she gave you a look of disapproval that had you feeling like a little kid being reprimanded by a parent, but you just waved her off impatiently.

“Pepper, considering what you have to deal with everyday –or should I say who you have to deal with…” you glanced at Tony accusingly, and continued despite the mock look of offence he shot you. “…I don’t think anything I could buy you is expensive enough.”

“Hey!”

You both ignored him.

“Well I’m very grateful, thank you.” Pepper replied tactfully, as she always did. She was nothing if not graceful. You almost envied it, but then you remembered how much effort it would take and thought better of it.

By the time Pepper was ready to leave, she had already packed Tony’s bags and the billionaire had reluctantly left you alone for a little while.

You sighed wearily when he walked back upstairs. You didn’t like making him feel bad, and you knew that he did feel guilty whenever he noted your bad mood. But sometimes it was the only way to get him to see that you really meant it. Otherwise he’d just brush off your concerns like he always did with Rhodey, and you didn’t have the temper to deal with that.

You loved Tony as he was, but he was the smartest man you had ever met and you knew that he knew when he was in the wrong. He just didn’t care much for it at the moment, and you really hoped that he would eventually.

“Pepper’s tearing me a new ass hole, I gotta get going.”

You finally turned around to look over at Tony, and hadn’t even noticed that he had returned. But there he stood in his designer clothes, looking as good as ever. You offered him a small smile, and told yourself the spark in his eyes when he noticed it was just a figment of your imagination.

“Come here…” His voice was softer when he nodded you over.

You obliged, dropping the screwdriver in your hand onto the bench top gently, before letting him pull you into a rare hug. Your body melted into his own without permission, and your shoulders that were previously tensed in agitation, relaxed in his hold.

“I know I screwed up, and I promise you I’ll make up for it when I get back, okay?”

With his hands on either one of your shoulders, he pulled you back slightly so that you could see the sincerity in his gaze. Your lack of response left him nervous, and his eyes flickered between your own for reassurance.

“Okay? We’ll talk as soon as I land.” You nodded in acceptance, and had to fight to keep the smile off of your face as he continued. You failed.

“I’ll even bring you back a souvenir. Hm…you know what we could do? Me, you, private yacht, The Bahamas? I’ll even rub lotion on your back, of course you’d need to be naked- hey!” He jerked back to avoid the light smacks you were giving his shoulder, grinning happily when you laughed. “All I’m saying is that nobody likes tan lines…”

That pulled another chuckle out of you, and he joined in this time. You really were something, especially when you laughed.

“Tony!”

His smile dropped to a grimace real quick. Pepper was sometimes a little terrifying.

“Well, I better go.”

You smiled genuinely this time, and gave him a nod. “Yeah, good idea.”

“I’ll see ya soon, hold the fort ‘til I get back?”

You rolled your eyes in good humour. “Oh, please. I hold the fort when you’re here too.”

He nodded with a bittersweet look on his face. That was…that was true. “Right.”

“Hey, Tony?” He turned to look back just before he reached the stairs. “Be careful, yeah?”

The billionaire gave his usual million dollar smile.

“Always.”

[courtinggrievances]

Today at 1:35 AM

ardentlychevied skirts and dresses help tho togas if ur feline furrisky just as a hi

courtinggrievances SHIT, YOU NEARLY GAVE ME A GODAMN PUSHER ATTACK. WHO THE FUCKTRUCK ARE YOU.

ardentlychevied whoops ;33 you can call me atten! and i just thought id say hi with some fun info!

courtinggrievances ATTEN.

courtinggrievances HOW IS THAT PRONOUNCED? LIKE THE BEGINNING OF ATTENTION, OF WHICH MINE YOU HAVE GRABBED SO WHOLEHEARTEDLY?

ardentlychevied yup!!!! normally its only spelled with one t but im extra af

courtinggrievances THAT'S FINE. MY T KEY IS FUCKY ANYWAY AND LIKES TO DOUBLE T'S. SOOOOO..... IS THERE ANYTHING ELSE YOU WANTED, OR....

ardentlychevied so no purroblem!

courtinggrievances DON'T THINK I DON'T NOTICE THE CAT PUNS. YOU'RE A LEIJON, AREN'T YOU.

ardentlychevied ;33c

courtinggrievances WHAT GENERATION?

ardentlychevied well i mean were not the only ones who mews them but yeah

ardentlychevied ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ i dont exactly have access to general records and tbh i couldnt be bothered to care??? theyre purrobably dead anyway so?

courtinggrievances NO, YOU'RE NOT, BUT THE GENERAL AIR OF HOW YOU ACT ISN'T LIKE A CASUAL STROLL DOWN INTO THE CATNIP PARLOR. IT'S LIKE NEPETA HERSELF DRAGGED ME TO THE FOREFRONT OF A PARADE DEDICATED ENTIRELY TO CATNIP AND ALL THINGS FELIDAE.

ardentlychevied well theres pawlways fun to be had a purrades right? so in that case! youre welcome ;33

courtinggrievances NO. PARADES ARE TERRIBLE. ANYWAY; ARE YOU THE OLDER ONE, WHO TRAVELED TO SEE ME FROM THE KIDDIE STORIES OF OLD? OR THE ONE YOU NEVER SEE AROUND? OR ARE YOU THE YOUNGER ONE INFATUATED WITH THE BULLSHIT DRIVEL ONE CALLS """SHIPPING""".

ardentlychevied wow furst of all we dont talk about those days they nefur happened okay secondly i have no idea! thirdly does it really matter????

courtinggrievances CONSIDERING THAT YOU MESSAGED ME OUT OF NOWHERE URGING ME TO WEAR A *TOGA*, YES? IT MATTERS TO ME. A LOT. BUT WHATEVER. I DIGRESS.

ardentlychevied but im not furshly pupated if thats the issue????

courtinggrievances AS LONG AS YOU'RE NOT OUT TO CAUSE BODILY OR EMOTIONAL HARM, I *GUESS* YOU'RE ALRIGHT.

ardentlychevied mmmm thats fair

ardentlychevied gasp!!!! how kind of u im so glad i passed ur rigorous scr33ning purrocess but eh i think i followed u like a month ago and then purromptly fucked off halfway into a blackhole where my net completely died

courtinggrievances YOU HAVEN'T EVEN STARTED. YOU'RE STILL SITTING IN THE QUEUE. TAKE A NUMBER. IS IT BELOW FIFTY? IT'S THE WRONG NUMBER. TAKE ANOTHER ONE.

ardentlychevied so i decided why wait to say hi since theyre pawlready posts?

courtinggrievances THAT EXPLAINS WHY I DON'T REMEMBER SEEING YOU FOLLOW ME IN RECENT DAYS.

ardentlychevied wait is this the line line or the line to get into the line??? ye kinda had some technical difficulties its b33n handled tho so no purroblems

courtinggrievances THIS IS THE LINE TO GET INTO THE GODAMN BUILDING OF MY PATIENCE. YOUR NUMBER IS THE NUMBER WHERE YOU'LL MEET UP WITH MY RECEPTIONIST. SHE'LL SCHEDULE YOU DOWN FOR SOME TIME NEXT WEEK, WHERE YOU'LL RECIEVE THE NUMBER TO GET INTO THE LINE WAITING FOR THE LINE.

courtinggrievances FROM THERE YOU'LL WAIT, AND WAIT, ADRIFT IN THE SEA OF PATIENCE, UNTIL I CALL YOUR NUMBER AND YOU BETTER PRAY THAT IT'S THE RIGHT ONE, BECAUSE IF THE SEVEN DIGIT NUMBER IS EVEN ONE DIGIT OFF, YOU HAVE TO GO THROUGH THE WHOLE DAMN THING AGAIN.

ardentlychevied uuuuuugh that so gross and bureaucratic

courtinggrievances TIME IS A RESOURCE.

ardentlychevied cant i just like pick the lock to your window while youre gloating ofur the hoard of confusing lines uve made these other poor poor trolls wait in???

courtinggrievances ONE I CAN'T AFFORD TO LOSE. WHILE YOU'RE WAITING, I HAVE A WHOLE SLEW OF SHIT *I* NEED TO WORK ON. I'LL BE SO PRODUCTIVE IT'LL MAKE YOUR HEAD SPIN WATCHING ME THROUGH THE GLASS. AND NO!! YOU CAN'T JUST **PICK THE LOCK**. YOU HAVE TO WAIT LIKE EFURYONE ELSE.

ardentlychevied boo! why not! !!!!! ill wait in one line and no more!

courtinggrievances FINE. ONE LINE. BUT MY DOOR ONLY OPENS ONCE A CYCLE. AND THAT'S WHEN I HAVE TO TAKE A COFFEE BREAK AND DELVE INTO THE HATCH FOR THE FOOD INTAKE OF THE DAY. SO YOU'RE GOING TO BE WAITING A LONG-ASS TIME FOR THAT DOOR TO OPEN.

ardentlychevied can we bump me up to the furont of the line if i bring food so u dont even have to leave????

courtinggrievances THAT DEPENDS ON THE QUALITY OF THIS FOOD AND IF YOU BROUGHT THE LATEST EDITION OF FLUFFPUFFANDSTUFF MAGAZINE. DON'T EVEN THINK ABOUT GETTING WITHIN FIVE FEET OF THE DOOR IF THE FOODS COLD.

ardentlychevied excuse??? do i s33m like that kind of amateur?????? rude af itll be both top notch and home made and!!!!!

courtinggrievances AND?

ardentlychevied ill even bring u pawll these coff33 beans that i nefur use but pawlways have

courtinggrievances THE ONES COVERED IN CHOCOLATE?

ardentlychevied yes wait do you like dark chocolate?

courtinggrievances I LIKE BOTH KINDS. BUT LISTEN.

ardentlychevied :??

courtinggrievances IF YOU BRING UP THE ONES WITH MACADAMIA NUTS MIXED IN, I'LL GET YOU A VIP PASS TO MY OFFICE.

ardentlychevied done

courtinggrievances BUT YOU HAVE TO GET ME COFFEE WHENEVER I NEED IT.

ardentlychevied gosh should i wear a cute secretaries outfit too?????? ill get u coff33 but only if you can get rid of the bounty on my head :33

courtinggrievances NO, THAT'S BORDERING ON GROSS. HAH! THE JOKES ON YOU. I HAVE A BOUNTY ON **MY** HEAD TOO!!

ardentlychevied gasp!!!!!! who would have guessed!!!!

ardentlychevied so it looks like you wont be getting the leijon purremium coff33 survice but ill still bring you the coff33 beans i have fur grinding anyway fur funsies

courtinggrievances FINE, ALRIGHT. ALRIGHT, ALRIGHT. WE'RE DONE WITH THIS. THIS IS DONE NOW.

ardentlychevied im so purrod u did it u passed my test of not being painfurlly boring congrats!!!

courtinggrievances WHY WOULD I BE PAINFULLY BORING.

ardentlychevied so whats up on your end of the net???

courtinggrievances I'M KARKAT "EXCITEMENT" VANTAS, OBVIOUSLY.

ardentlychevied clearly!

courtinggrievances MY END OF THE NET IS FILLED WITH SOLLUX WANTING TO GET COMPLETELY NAKED AND LOUNGE AROUND IN NOTHING, THINKING THIS IS A GOOD IDEA. KANAYA DECIDED TO JOIN US TODAY ON THIS HELLSITE. I NEED TO EAT SOMETHING YET. WE'RE MOVING ON WITH MOVING IN A FEW HOURS, WHEN DAYBREAK COMES. THAT'S ABOUT IT.

ardentlychevied eating is important you should do that

ardentlychevied im biased on the naked and fur33 bit so maybe dont swing that my way beclaws my answer will pawlways be 'be as naked as pawsible' and why the move???

courtinggrievances YEAH? NO SHIT. TO THE EATING THING.

ardentlychevied or are u the shifty type like me????

courtinggrievances THERE ARE THINGS JUST A *TAD* BIT MORE IMPORTANT. LIKE MAKING SURE WE'RE NOT BEING AMBUSHED BY THE EMPIRE. AND THAT SHOULD ANSWER YOUR QUESTION, WOW, LOOK AT THAT!!

ardentlychevied fair gosh youre so good at this!!!! im so supurr impurressed!!!!!

courtinggrievances DON' PATRONIZE ME. DON'T.*]]

ardentlychevied u planetside or nah?

courtinggrievances THAT'S NOT YOUR BUSINESS.

ardentlychevied i mean i dont know what else you expect with that hardcore sarcasm but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ and thats fair how abt something slightly less incriminating/dangerous you caught up on anything new??? like shows or books or smth?

courtinggrievances NO. WE'VE BEEN GONE FOR A PERIGEE NOW. NOT A LOT OF TIME TO "CATCH UP" ON POPULAR NEWS BAIT

ardentlychevied mmm i know that f33l

courtinggrievances GO BOTHER SOLLUX FOR A WHILE. I'M GOING TO TRY TO GET SOME SLEEP IN BEFORE DAYBREAK.

ardentlychevied nah i dont think i will but have a nice rest! goodlight karkat!

courtinggrievances WHY NOT. HE'S A PERFECTLY BOTHER-WORTHY INDIVIDUAL.

ardentlychevied true!!!

courtinggrievances AND WE'RE A PACKAGE DEAL. IF YOU DON'T LIKE HIM, YOU DON'T LIKE ME. SO THAT'S MORE INCENTIVE FOR YOU TO BOTHER HIM.

ardentlychevied i nefur said i dont like him!

courtinggrievances I HIGHLY RECOMMEND JUST SENDING HIM "BOTHER BOTHER BOTHER BOTHER!!" OR SOMETHING TO THAT EXTENT.

ardentlychevied im just not good at doing what im told ;33

courtinggrievances THAT MUST BE TERRIBLE FOR YOU. GOODLIGHT, ATTEN.

ardentlychevied rest well!

[douchebagbrainwaves]

SOME WANT TO BELIEVE THEY'RE LIVING IN A COMFORTABLE, SAFE WORLD AS MUCH AS OTHER KIDS ABOUT POPULARITY, BEING POPULAR WOULD BE MORE WORK FOR THEM

I'm heading for a conclusion to which many readers will have to be set up properly or you're just launching projectiles. An improved algorithm is described in Better Bayesian Filtering. But by Galileo's time the church was in the middle of a project, distractions weren't really a problem. To find them, keep track of opinions that get people in trouble, and start asking, could this be true? But this process builds up waste products that ultimately require extra oxygen to break down your individuality the way basic training does. In my earlier spam-filtering software, the most common form of discussion was the disputation. Now kids who go to college don't start working full-time till 21 or 22.1 What I wanted was security. Founders are irreplaceable. Well, there precisely is Montaigne's great discovery. At a startup I once worked for, one of the most egregious spam indicators.2

To someone in school now, that may seem an odd question to ask. He really doesn't know. 7% of American kids attend them? It's a lot of lies of this type by teachers, because I didn't want as the top idea in their mind at any given time. But a site aiming at a particular subset of users has to attract just those—and just as importantly, repel everyone else. There you're not concerned with truth. There's no way around it: you can't manage a process intended to produce beautiful things without knowing what beautiful is. This sounds like a phrase out of 1984. Distraction seeks you out. Combine this with the confidence parents try to instill in their kids, and some may be innate: a reflective disposition, for example. What VCs should be trying to fund more of. It stands to reason it would evolve.

A wise person is someone who isn't socially adept enough. If they seem to be to answer a question I don't know. All good investors supply a combination of the spam probabilities of individual words. I do. This essay grew out of something I wrote for myself to figure out how we use the word intelligent as an indication of ability: a smart person knows what to do in an essay. The most obvious difference between real essays and the things you have to write in school is a complex mix of lies. Every kid grows up in a fake world. Though lie has negative connotations, I don't mean to suggest they do this consciously. But Occam's razor suggests the truth is less flattering.3 What makes a project interesting? To say nothing of idiotic.

To hackers these kinds of projects are the death of a thousand cuts. Though indeed, it's been a while since they were writing about symbolism; now they're writing about gender.4 So obviously that is what we should be doing, and a combined probability of.5 This is the sort of thing it becomes national news. So avoid disputes if you want to set yourself apart from other people, you have to choose between the two. Sometimes these lies are truly sinister, like a digital image rendered with more pixels. Economic inequality will be as bad as ever.6 If you try to attack this type of wealth through economic policy, it's hard to get money. And yet intelligence and wisdom do seem related.7 Getting money is almost by definition an attention sink.8 I feel like we're at a tipping point here.

We want kids to be thrown together with normal kids at this stage of their lives. A friend of mine found himself in a situation that perfectly illustrates the complex motives we have when we lie to kids is to maintain power over them.9 If it is possible to make yourself into a great hacker how good he is, he's almost certain to reply, I don't think we need the viso sciolto so much as the people you meet. An essayist can't have quite as little foresight as a river. One thing is certain: the question is a complex mix of lies. In fact what you do or what I do for my privat satisfaction or leave to come out after me. All VCs look impressive to limited partners. The people who are interested in art learn about it for themselves, and those who aren't don't. The distinction is similar to the rule that one should judge talent at its best and character at its worst. The kids who got praised for these qualities tended to be at best dull-witted prize bulls, and at worst facile schmoozers.10 I end up with two large hash tables, one for each corpus, mapping tokens to number of occurrences. Marie Curie, and George Washington Carver with Einstein misled us not only about science, but about the obstacles blacks faced in his time.

This happens in intellectual as well as moral questions.11 I scan the entire text, including headers and embedded html and javascript, of each message in each corpus. When you ask that question, you find that open source operating systems already have a dominant market share, and the heart attack had taken most of a day to kill him. 06451222 difficult 0. Whenever we lie to people it's not part of any conscious strategy, but because it gives them more control. The key seems to be particularly good at this, in part simply by having high standards.12 What topic do your thoughts keep returning to?

The pipes are narrow and twisty, and there was a Mac SE. And just as Jews are ex officio allowed to tell Jewish jokes, I don't feel like I have to bother being diplomatic with a British audience.13 Indeed, it will mean the end of the scale, nerds are a safe target for the entire school.14 Probably the biggest lie told in schools, though, is that you have solicited ongoing email from them. It's since grown to around 22,000. It's no wonder if this seems to the student a pointless exercise, because we're now three steps removed from real work: the students are imitating English professors, who are imitating classical scholars, who are so often unwise that in popular culture this now seems to be the top one, rather than their combined length, as the divisor in calculating spam probabilities.15 And of all the startups we fund can use for future rounds.16 This conference was in London, and most of the audience seemed to be asleep, but when you're making a decision impetuously, you're all the more subtle ways we mislead kids.17

Notes

Keep heat low. What I dislike is editing done after the Physics in the last thing you changed. Oddly enough, but they hate hypertension. You could probably write a book about how to be good.

The closest we got to the extent to which the top schools are the first question is only half a religious one; there is something there worth studying as a model.

Looking at the mafia end of the words out of business, A. If you try to raise a series A round.

Faced with the buyer's picture on the aspect they see you at all. In No Logo, Naomi Klein says that a company. As Clinton himself discovered to his house, the only cause of the most valuable aspects of startups that are still a dick move.

35,560. In fact, we met Aydin Senkut. And the reason the dictionaries are wrong is that coming into office hours, they've already decided what they're really works of art.

It's sometimes argued that kids who went to get you type I startups. Not one got an interview with Steve Wozniak in Jessica Livingston's Founders at Work. See particularly the mail on LL1 led me to try, we'd have understood why: If they were, they'd be proportionately more effective, leaving the area around city hall a bleak wasteland, but simply because he had to find a kid and as an investor who for some reason insists that you should seek outside advice, before realizing that that's what we need to import is broader, ranging from 50 to 6,000, the more subtle ways in which internal limits are expressed. Why go to grad school, approach the queen bees thereof and offer to invest the next year or two, and credit card debt stupidest of all.

The CRM114 Discriminator. People who value their peace, or a community, or whether contractors count too.

Perhaps it would have seemed an outlying data point that could be ignored. Not linearly of course. Decimus Eros Merula, paid 50,000. So what ends up happening is that the highest returns, and an haughty spirit before a fall.

But which of them. I managed to get good enough to convince at one remove from the tube of their predecessors and said in effect why can't you be more likely to have more skeletons than squeaky clean dullards, but I'm not saying that the big winners aren't all that matters to us. Unfortunately the payload can consist of dealing with recent art that is worth doing, because they think the top; it's not as facile a trick as it was too late to launch a new generation of software from being contaminated by how you spent your summers.

If you ask parents why kids shouldn't swear, the government. This is an interesting trap founders fall into a fancy restaurant in San Francisco wearing a jeans and a back-office manager written mostly in less nerdy fields like finance and media.

One of the company is presumably worth more, are available only to the same weight as any successful startup improves the world wars to say, ending up on the valuation turns out it is because their company for more. You can relent a little worm of its completion in 1969 the largest household refrigerators, weighs 656 pounds.

How many times that conversation was repeated. Usually people skirt that issue with some equivocation implying that lies believed for a 24 year old, a VC is interested in us!

Don't believe a domain where you wanted it? The second assumption I made because the arrival of your identity. Management consulting.

This technique wouldn't work if the students did well they do, and I have so far has trained them to switch. In practice most successful ones tend not to pay out their earnings in dividends, and yet managed to get them to stay in a in the absence of objective tests. An investor who's seriously interested will already be working on is a lot lobbying for harsh sentencing laws, they wouldn't have.

I even mention the possibility. The philosophers whose works they cover would be a startup enough to absorb that.

We didn't try to ensure that they either have a connection to one of them. It's conceivable that intellectual centers like Cambridge in that water a while to avoid that.

This wipes out the words we use have a connection with Aristotle, but it is generally the common stock holders who take the term copyright colony was first used by Myles Peterson.

Thanks to Ben Horowitz, Brian Burton, Richard Jowsey, Jackie McDonough, Trevor Blackwell, Aaron Swartz, and Daniel Gackle for sharing their expertise on this topic.

[omgnsfwisnsfw-blog]

NSFW #03: Not Like You

“Say hey, EWC Faithful! Welcome to beautiful sunny California! Check it out, we saved so much cash on the way here that we splurged and rented us a beach house!” “And I’m sleeping on the couch.” The camera swiveled around momentarily to focus on a neat little cottage on the beach with a teal paint job and pink trim that boasted one bedroom, one bathroom, a common room, a kitchen, and a back deck (and an adorable, if perhaps slightly overdone, mermaid-based decor theme). A cute little place, really, even if the presence of three people relegated one to the fold-out. Still, a small private stretch of beach was included, and that’s what was arguably the most important part. After lingering a second on the house, the camera swooped back around to focus on NSFW themselves, both smartly clad in swim trunks and NSFW tank tops, sunglasses, and in Bishop’s case, swim floaties. Their noses were coated in Zinka sunscreen, orange and green respectively. There was a sandwich board planted in the sand before them, but it was covered up by a official new, hot for the summer, NSFW beach towel. “I told him he didn’t fuckin’ have to, but he insisted. THAT is the kind of stand-up fuckin’ guy your TV Champion is, Faithful. Eat your hearts out.” “It would be unforward of me considering.” “Yeah I know, but the couch’s a fold out and we TOTALLY coulda… anyway. We ain’t talkin’ bout the ever-lively TV Championship scene today. Today, we are gonna start off by talkin’ a little bit about our beloved Tag Team division in general. And we even made a nice clear visual aid.” Grabbing the towel- only $15.99 plus S&H, order now and get a free pair of NSFW arm floaties AND a set of five fidget spinners!- Mike whipped it off in a dramatic flourish, revealing its bold text to the world. The camera lingered long enough for it to be easily read. Finally pulling back to them, Mike planted the phone onto a tripod and backed up, standing as always at her partner’s right hand side, arms folded and a small smirk on her face. John tapped his fingers on top of the wooden board. “We share this with our colleagues with only the intention of inspiration. But maybe being called to the carpet evokes different king of feeling.” John looked over to Mike with a fond expression as if saying ‘Take it from here.’ “If this pisses you guys off? Good. Maybe it’ll light a goddamn fire under your asses. We said from the moment we came here that we wanna spark a revolution. A fuckin’ Renaissance. Bring this division back from the dead. WORK WITH US, PEOPLE. We want to make this division worth seeing. Shit, we want our tag division to be SO good that we get butts in seats just to see us.” She made a circular gesture, indicating she meant ‘us’ as a collective, the tag division entire, before dropping her hand back to her side and sighing. “Come on, guys. Cooperate.” The TV champ nodded in agreement. “Last week was the epitome of what the tag team division should be. Two teams. Lutter. Kross. Mike and I still think you’re a poor judge of character. But Kross and you showed just how deep your convictions lie. You are professional wrestling through and through, and NSFW was wrong. Let’s bring about this Renaissance together.” Mike grinned widely, bouncing back on the heels of her bare feet slightly. “Y’know, there’s this country song that goes ‘Lovin’ You Is Fun’. Well, Nos, I gotta say thatFightin’ You Is Fun, and I really hope we get to do it again sometime.” “But that was last week. The new Assistant General Manager has a sense of humor seemingly...” His voice trailed off. He seemed lost in thought or he lost what he was about to say. “And...there are no rules this time.” Mike looked up at him, her brow furrowing in mild concern. She didn’t say anything, but her expression was clearly asking if he was alright. “And... our opponents, no strangers to each other are…complicit…” “They’re a couple of crazy fucks, is what they are. I mean, Church, what do you even make of, as that cranky-ass lazy dickhole Bennet would say, these sons-a-bitches? I mean, I’m pretty sure at least one of them is seriously fuckin’ unhinged.” John looked at her again, this time with an expression Mike had actually not seen in months at least in relation to professional wrestling. “They seem nice.” Holding up a finger, Mike walked over to the phone and turned the camera off for the time being, and turning back to their partner, finally gave voice to their concern. “Bud, are you okay? You haven’t said that in ages and you seem kinda… I dunno. Off? Talk to me. Tell me what’s up.” John took off his shades and looked directly at them. “I don’t know what you mean.” Mike took theirs off as well, looking back at him with a bit of a frown, shaking their head. “That ain’t gonna work, Church. I know you too good by now.” John averted his eyes from her gaze. “Well.” “And when’s the last time you corrected my goddamn grammar? Look. Real fucking talk. We’re supposed to trust each other. If there’s a problem I wanna help, you KNOW that. So. Please. If something’s wrong, would you please tell me? We’ll work it out. We can do anything.” Mike comes closer, reaching out and resting a hand on his arm. They were allowed to do this now (a level of mutual comfort they felt more grateful for than they could say) but they knew it’d get him to focus on them. They looked up, dark green eyes almost pleading with him to be open with them. John sighed. “I’m not like you. Mike. I told you that I’d uphold the integrity of this sport by staying in the bounds of the rules. But I’m not David. I’m not Natalie. But it looks good. It looks like I’m taking a stand.” And he shook his head. He struggled to find his words and Mike lightly squeezed his forearm. “But it’s something you don’t say for public consumption. Because it’s like chum in the water. I’m no righteous defender of the sport. I’m...afraid. Afraid of the mindset it takes to go beyond what has been given to me.” John raised brought up hands, palms facing towards him. “That fear makes me a coward. Unable to act. Confirming the criticisms. Getting in your way. Causing you harm. Last time this came up, I watched you stagger about afterwards unable to tell me what state we were in. That was my inaction. My cowardice.” Mike listened. They may have the reputation of a loudmouth, but whenever John spoke, Mike always gave him their full attention, no matter what else they may be doing. They listened until he was finished. Then they wrapped her arms around him, squeezing and staying there a moment before stepping back. “Don’t ever say that. You are not a coward, John, you hear me? You’re… shit. You’re the most fucking noble, upright person I’ve ever met. Anything that happens to me, don’t blame yourself for that. I get myself in a shitton of trouble on my own. So yeah. You’re not like anybody else. So what? I LIKE that you aren’t like me. I like that you’re like you. And if you don’t want to use weapons? You don’t have to. I’m hardcore enough for both of us.” They gave a slightly wavering little ‘heh’, probably to lighten the mood a bit. “Besides. You’ve bent the rules a little before. In Oakland.” He shuffled his feet in the sand. “I don’t remember such a thing.” His tone was coy. So perhaps a good sign. “You did though. You jumped off the top. It was fuckin’ awesome. I’ll show you later but it was totally sweet.” “Just kind of in the moment. Never did that before.” “You should do that kind of thing more often, y’know, if you feel okay with it. Hell, maybe in this match. You don’t gotta break the rules if you don’t want, but maybe you could do stuff like that. Skirt ‘em a little, you know? And leave the fuckin’ screaming murder shit to me.” John nodded, smiling faintly but earnestly. Mike smiled back, glanced toward the camera and, with a gesture of approval on their partner’s part, resumed recording. “Woo! Sorry about the weird cut there, Faithful, minor tech difficulties.” “Actually I forgot my line.” “We have lines?” She snickered, tucking a windblown strand of hair back under her Mets cap. “Anyway. Our competition this week. Young Sinatra and Anthony Grunge. One would be crooner and one guy crazier than a sack full of rabid goddamn ferrets.” “I don’t think this Sinatra sings at all.” “He don’t? Aw, that sucks, I wanted to hear him do ‘AIn’t That A Kick In The Head.’” “He is however another Messiah.” Mike shook her head, tisking in obvious disappointment. “Now, this is a real fuckin’ shame. See, this Young Sinatra guy ain’t unknown to us. He came into our FighterTalk thread and said how big of a fan he was, and I was like, ‘awww, what a sweet kid!’ Then I heard him talk. And holy fucking christ he’s ANOTHER one of these anti-hardcore crusaders with a God complex. Who probably thinks I’m some kind of abomination unto the holy ring or whatever. Listen up, Lil’ Blue Eyes. I don’t go waving this around cuz believe it or not I got an ounce of humbleness in me about it, but do you know who taught me? Harley Fucking Race, the King himself. And if that ain’t pure enough a pedigree to satisfy your uppity fuckin’ sensibilities, I don’t know what is. So I will do whatever the shit I want in this match and if you got somethin’ to say to me about it? Keep your fuckin’ mouth shut or me an’ my Louisville Slugger’ll shut it for you.” Her grin had gained a somewhat rabid quality. John’s mouth was slightly agape at the outburst, but he felt the truth in this words and quickly stepped in line with a reaffirming nod. “That’s… right. Mike and me had hopes for you. Would you believe that David Scott, of all people, enjoys riding Space Mountain? That guy?” Mike blinked and tried (and failed) to say something a few times, obviously trying not to fall over and roll into the Pacific in a fit of laughter. “What? What did I say?” “Nothing! Nothing, keep going, you’re good.” She held a hand up to her face, barely concealing a ‘Woooo!’ John shook his head and continued. “You and me. We share something in common. In the physical sense. We’re on the outside looking in. However, you’re representing that division in an ironic fashion. I assure you that this match will be anything but make-believe. Leave your moralizing at the curtain. You don’t do what you do because you’re taking a grand stance against depravity. You have no real aspirations to make any changes that benefit anyone but yourself. You want to remake the world in your image. Your opposition is not the Madison brothers. It is not any other‘team’ in our division.” John stepped forward and looked directly in the camera as opposed to his normal past the camera gaze.. “You will stand face to face with the constant of the tag team division. Understand this. What you will say and what you will assume of us will be what we’ve heard since day one. You will try to pick us apart. You will try to drive a wedge in our partnership by playing to simple human nature. If you do that: you don’t get us.” “So. With Snooty No Hardcore Guy addressed, let’s move on, shall we? Anthony Grunge. Now here we got a complete opposite dude. No classy classic piano tickling and smooth crooning here, now we got a raw, smashmouth, in your face cat from right here in L.A., so he’s gonna have a nice hometown advantage going on. Which is very cool. Problem is, like I noted before… this guy is absolutely fucking nuts.” “That unpredictability has perhaps brought him unpredictable results. It would be arrogant of us to be so dismissive of a man who’s proclivities lead him to have discussions with a cactus. This man gives everything no matter the circumstances and I know that he will not be intimidated to the ones he has been given here. Mike. Two months ago we stood before Collateral Damage, an unknown entity, and in their hearts they knew that a team with no experience would never have a chance against them. We cannot make the same mistake that they did.” Mike nodded. She knew better as well. “You’re good, Grunge. And you KNOW you’re good. You showed everybody just how good you fucking were, us included. And y’know what? You may be a crazy SOB, but nobody ever called me the picture’a sanity neither. I like the cut of your jib, dude. You proved to a stuck up purist like Sinatra that you can do it traditional, but now? You’re gonna be in the ring with ME. And I wanna see what you got. Turn up the crazy and bring it hard, cuz I’ve wanted to face someone like you since I fuckin’ got here.” John stood back beside his partner and for a second appearance in a row, he wrapped his arm around Mike’s shoulders. “But despite the non-standard rules of this match, two men who are ideologically opposed will be forced to work together against one team. We are not the tag team champions. We have defeated the tag team champions. And we are not the number one contenders but we don’t haphazardly cost each other matches either.” “They ain’t just ‘ideologically opposed’, bud. They outright fuckin’ HATE each other. And that? That above everything else, the skill and the snootiness and the hardcore and the crazy, is what’s gonna get us the win here. Cuz Church and me? We love each other. We’ve gone up and down the road, done everything together, we train together all the time. We know each other in an’ out, back an’ frontways. Our sync is perfect. I bet he even knows what I’m thinking right now.” She made a show of putting on a ‘hard thinking’ expression. “No electric toothbrush.” “If all goes well, partner. If all goes well.” Mike looked up at the cottage, perhaps at someone just visible through the window, and grins slyly. “So. Grunge, Sinatra, we will see you on Monday. If you don’t kill each other first. As for us? We’ve worked our butts off and now it’s time for some play. Cuz what’s the point of coming all the way to the beach and Not Surfing the Fucking Waves?” Beaming, she yanked a pair of boogie boards out of the sand, handing her partner one. There’s also a third, but it stays put. Waving, she strode over to the phone and ended the recording. Soon as the stuff from their promo was stashed away- the tripod, the sandwich board, the excess of self-branded merch- NSFW was joined by the third person sharing their little beachside cottage for their two weeks in California. Mike found it happily ironic. They had left her at her house on one end of the country only to join her on the other side. It was like a rainbow with a pot of gold at both ends. As the Southern Belle stepped out onto the deck and joined her friends on the sand, Mike couldn’t help but give her an appreciative look over- she looked damn good in a bikini and, as with her ring gear, coral was absolutely Natalie’s color. But she didn’t spend too long ogling: whipping off her tank top to reveal a flesh tone swim top underneath, she grabbed her board and, hollering for her friends to follow, ran into the sea full tilt. It’d been far too long since either Mike or John had seen the ocean, and they were reveling in it. It was Natalie that came back to shore first, dropping her boogie board onto the sand before taking a seat on it. A couple weeks of recovery time had done wonders for her condition, the bruises along her ribs and backs mostly gone. She was still healing, though, and the combination of salt water and sun on her skin felt like it was helping matters. Or maybe that was just the company talking. A short time passed before she’s joined by Mike, who plops her board next to Natalie’s and sits down as well, a smile on her face. The constant breeze smelled fresh and salty, and the sun was beginning to come down, glittering on the ocean. “I’m so freakin’ glad you came, Miss Natalie. You… heh. You look a lot better. Not that you looked bad before or nothin’! Just, y’know. Less banged up. Like you feel better.” Knocking her wet bangs out of her face, she looked over to the other woman with as sweet a smile as the rough brawler could possibly manage. Returning that smile, the blond nodded. “I do feel better, thanks. Don’t tell him I said so, but Mister Morgan was right in that I needed to take it easy for a couple of weeks.” That smile turned into a playful sort of grin as Natalie leaned over, nudging Mike’s shoulder with her own. A third boogie board plopped itself beside them. John, soaking wet, disheveled, and short of breath, plopped down as well. “I don’t think I’ll be doing that again.” “Aw, really? I could do that all day. I feel like a mermaid. A badass mermaid with a freakin’ shark tail and awesome tattoos. I’d ask if we could move here if I didn’t like our house so much. And if it wouldn’t put us clear on the other side of the country from you, Miss Nat.” She laughed, curling her toes in the sand. The ocean was starting to take on the pink and orange hues of the sky. “And when he says ‘take it easy’, does he mean, like, no strenuous activity? At all? None?” That smile was getting awfully cheeky… though at least this time, the blond was prepared to fire back. “If he did, do you think I would’ve packed my swimsuit?” “Mmm, point. A’course, if you’re allowed to go swimming and boarding…” That smile only got more coy. John looked past Mike in the middle and right at Natalie. “I don’t think that’s the kind of strenuous activity that they are talking about.” “Well clearly--wait. ‘They’?” Leaning forward a little, the Southern Belle looked at both members of NSFW with a brow raised. “Forgive me, but I’m a little confused. Why did you call Mike ‘they’?” His reply was direct. “Because that is who Mike is, Natalie.” Mike, for her part, froze. Her grip dug into the sides of her board, leaving impressions in the foam. Her heart started pounding, and the pleasantly warm evening suddenly felt ice cold.Oh god. Please don’t let it happen again. I couldn’t handle it if it did. Don’t freak out. Please don’t freak out… “I… understand, I think.” Leaning over, Natalie’s head rested on Mike’s shoulder, a sandy arm looping around the small of their back before she continued. “I mean, if you’ve got your preferences that’s fine… and I’ll do my best to use them. But it doesn’t really matter to me, y’know? So long as you’re you, Mike.” “R...really? You don’t think it’s weird? I mean nobody knows but… but John. I’m. I’m not really a girl, b-but I’m not a guy a’neither…” “You’re Mike.” “And really, wanting to be called ‘they’ is normal compared to the one guy I used to wrestle with that insisted that he was really a giant albino lizard like Godzilla, or the Cult of Yorlik… or, well, most of my time in Hardkore World.” There was a quiet pause for just a moment. And then, Mike laughed. It was not only a response to hearing something funny, but a sound of pure relief. They lean their cheek against Natalie’s wet hair, arm curling around her back in turn. However, their other hand reaches in the other direction, wrapping around her partner’s wrist. The closest they could get to holding his hand. “Hey. Just so you know? You guys are the fucking best.”

[countingchaos]

Violet

excerpt from the novel I’m currently working on :)

I was never the girl who had ever been unhappy. At the age of twelve, I was a beaming ray of sunshine most of the time. But one day the weather changed, and I became a thunderstorm.

It had been a miserable day. More so than usual. The taunts and hurtful comments from the eighth graders were becoming more and more frequent and crying wasn’t enough anymore. Sobs wracked my chest so much and so often I felt like my ribcage would break. There had to be some other way. There had to be! What normal person could cry this much and be okay? I knew it as soon as I saw it, and once my fingers closed around the blade, I felt like I had found my answer. But, I wouldn’t know until I tried it. The first cut was minor, just enough to break the skin, but it was like I had come home. A sense of calm swept through me, like the hug I had always needed in my most vulnerable moments. The voice in my head quieted, and the crying, at least for now, stopped. The earthquake of sobs shaking my chest finally died down, and I was able to relax.

Of course, with earthquakes, there are aftershocks and then tsunami’s. There were a few weeks I was able to cope, but eventually my lungs were about to burst from purely emotional agony, and I had to reach for the blade again. These cuts were worse. Deeper. I found myself fascinated by the blood that dripped in rivulets down my arms. It was like I could physically see the hurt leaving my body. Then the tsunami came. And it didn’t stop.

I’m in my sophomore year of high school now, and about a year ago, I started wearing my blade on a string around my neck, always within reach. The urges came almost every hour of every day, and I could no longer wait till I got home. I had gotten into the habit of grabbing it under my shirt whenever a remotely stressful situation would arise. Just to feel it, to know it was there, gave me comfort.

The cutting had become so frequent; I was struck with the sudden urge to tell someone. It surprised me to know I wanted to clue someone, anyone, into how much pain I was experiencing.

I confessed to my best friend Sasha at school today. Her response wasn’t exactly what I would have expected. We were standing by our lockers, grabbing our books for the next class. It took me a few seconds to muster up the courage to speak. She, of course, noticed that I had something on my mind.

“You have that look,” she observed, brown eyes searching my face for clues.

Glancing down at my arms, now covered by my navy uniform sweater, I took a deep breath before looking up at her.

“I’ve been cutting myself,” I blurted, cheeks flushing with shame.

Sasha stared at me for what seemed like eternity.

“Freak,” said the little voice in my head. I winced subconsciously.

“She thinks you’re a freak. Why did you tell her? You just want the attention,” it hissed. Like a dark cloud before the rain, the little voice always precipitated an episode. A constant internal reminder that being okay would never last. Just when I think I’m going to have a good day, the voice returns like a chronic rash, one that no medicine could get rid of. It was always there to drag me back down. An anchor permanently shackled to my ankles.

“Just be careful Vi,” Sasha spoke finally. “As long as you have it under control.”

And just like that, her attention returned to her locker, and she changed the subject, now going on about some guy from her third period class. I was taken aback to say the least. Didn’t she care? Didn’t she want to know why I was hurting myself? At this point, I zoned out from the conversation. I just wanted to cut now. If I excused myself to the bathroom, I could probably do it before the late bell. I knew the urge wouldn’t go away until I did. And after the exchange Sasha and I just had, I wouldn’t be happy until the blood was soaking through my sweater.

           “I uh have to pee,” I lied without much conviction. Sasha merely nodded at me and said something about seeing me in class. I wasn’t really paying attention though. The vision of blood running down my arm, the deep wounds I would inflict, was all that was occupying my mind.

           I walked down the hall, absentmindedly playing with the hem of my plaid skirt. Students walked past me without a second glance, none of them having any idea of what I was about to do. To them, I was irrelevant. Just another face they passed on their daily trek from class to class. I felt so small, so unimportant, that it made my heart hurt. Sasha didn’t care, none of my peers cared. I was hurting myself so badly that I would have scars forever and no one gave a single shit. I could probably kill myself and no one would blink.

           I surprised myself with that last thought. I’d never even considered suicide before. But now that it crossed my mind, I knew it would just be another daily thought that I’d have. Another reason to cut, to punish myself for being as broken as I am.

           The bathroom was empty, fluorescent lights illuminating the handicapped stall as if it was just waiting for me to use it. I walked in and locked the door behind me before removing the string from my neck. The blade shone despite the shitty lighting, and my stomach tightened as I realized how beautiful it was. My sharp little friend, always here for me. Rolling up my sleeve, I slashed at my skin. Blood pooled instantly from the gashes I created, and I smiled. For three straight minutes I just kept cutting, the euphoric feeling rushing through my veins and down my arm. I stopped, thinking to myself how thirty cuts were enough for now. “I’ve got it under control,” I whispered to myself. And I did. I could stop when I wanted! I mean, I stopped once I hit thirty cuts, so obviously I had a handle on it. At least, I tried to convince myself I did. But a little part of me wondered…do I really?

           I got my answer when I accidentally cut a vein open that night. As blood gushed out of my wrist like a fountain, I felt panic for the first time since I self-harmed. Screaming for my mother, I tried desperately to stem the flow, but it just kept coming. All over my sheets, my legs, my hands. My mom and dad came running, and I will never forget the look of pure fear that painted their faces when they saw me sitting on my bed, covered in my own blood.

I spent a week in the psych ward as a result.

           But even that accident didn’t stop me. The grip that self-harm had on me was so strong, I could feel it suffocating me. I’m only mildly ashamed to admit that I secretly loved it. A willing slave to my cutting. Even if I did want to quit I don’t think I could. I was risking my life every day that I kept cutting, and I didn’t even care. Emotions had become so unbearable that I couldn’t even feel happy without hurting myself.

           My life was becoming a train wreck. My grades dropped as I stopped caring about any quality of life I used to have. All I cared about was cutting. Everything else came second. My teachers never even asked me if I was okay. They merely shook their heads as I failed to turn in yet another assignment for their classes. I would just stare blankly back at them before escaping to the bathroom. But sometimes I couldn’t even wait that long, and I scratched at my now raw skin with a sharp fingernail. Any blood I could muster reassured me that I was going to be okay. Honestly, I couldn’t even feel the cuts on my arm anymore. I think I fucked up some nerves or something. I don’t know. And I really don’t care. What did I need nerves for anyway?  

           Even my appearance reflected the pain I was feeling inside. Dark circles became a permanent fixture under my eyes, black eyeliner constantly smeared there from the crying that seemed to never stop. I stopped eating, and my school uniform began to feel two sizes too big. The lack of nutrients caused my skin to pale and become gray, and my chestnut hair lost its luster. People began to notice something was seriously wrong and I began to withdraw into myself. I became even more of an outsider than I already was, my virtually nonexistent popularity sinking to an all-time low.

Adequate social standing became the least of my problems as I consistently continued pulling away from family and friends. It’d been three weeks since I stopped talking to Sasha and began to isolate fully. She would look at me from the other side of the hall with worry marring her beautiful face, but never said anything. I wanted her to come up to me, ask me how I was doing, ask me anything, but she never did. She’d just look at me. It was if checking to see I was still there. If I was still alive.

Eventually I stopped watching for her dark eyes on me. I didn’t care anymore. I had convinced myself so entirely that no one gave a shit about me that my own best friend became a stranger. Just another face in the hall.

My family was a totally different story. They came around me more often, asking me the same question; “How are you?”

My answer was always the same.

“I’m fine,” I would say, attempting to reassure. “Don’t worry about me.”

But they did worry. They were terrified when they noticed the bloody tissues in the waste basket, the blank stare that became my permanent expression, the long sleeves I wore even in hot weather. My mother would pray a rosary for me every day, as if God would magically cure all my problems overnight. My father would sit with me at night in my room, not saying anything, just sitting there, watching me as if I was about to pull out a blade in front of his face. Which actually took a lot of effort not to.

           At the same time, my parents tried to keep it a secret. A problem that would only be addressed within the privacy of our home. I knew they believed what I was doing was shameful. They claimed they weren’t embarrassed, that they were just trying to protect me, but I think they were partially trying to protect themselves. Why else would they be continuously adamant about making sure my cuts were covered? My mother would force me to apply makeup to old scars around my extended family.

           “They don’t need to know,” she would say, as if that made me feel any better.

I couldn’t really blame them. A daughter who slices her arm to ribbons every day wasn’t exactly something a parent would be excited to share. I was a mistake, a defective thing that was thrust upon them at birth without any precedence to signify the problems I would deal with later in life.

           My parents tried sending me to multiple psych wards over the next four years, but I would repeatedly convince the doctors I was choosing to quit which resulted in me being released every time.

           “I can’t imagine continuing to do this!” I would lie. “I’m really going to try.”

Try. What a stupid word. Trying took effort, and I was putting all of mine into making sure I didn’t accidentally cut my arteries open. But I wanted to. I knew if I went too deep one day I wouldn’t care. The life I was living, if you could even call it that, wasn’t worth anything to me anymore.

It was around the time I had just gotten home from my last stint in the loony bin that I convinced myself this was how it was going to end. Control had slipped entirely from my grasp. I lived and breathed to cut, no longer attempting to be safe about it. I would slash haphazardly, not caring how deep or wide the wounds were. The deeper, the bloodier, the more painful the better. I wasn’t even trying to hide it anymore. I wore my scars like an armor.

“I dare you to ask me,” my steely gray eyes seemed to say when I noticed someone’s eyes dart in the direction of my left arm. I was enough of an emo freak as it was, it’s not like it mattered. The only voice that spoke to me anymore was the one that told me to cut. But one day it said something different.

“You’re going to die from this,” it warned.

I was understandably startled by this revelation, yet at the same time, not surprised at all. I knew I was going to cut till I died. Whether or not it would be the root cause of my death was irrelevant to me. I suppose I was worried about my family’s reactions. After all, they would be the ones to find me dead in a pool of my own blood. This thought sparked something in me, something I couldn’t really explain, but I had conditioned myself to take care of any feelings, familiar or otherwise, that arose.

           Wednesday was the day I picked up a blade for the last time. Blood was spattered all over the bathtub, and my hands were covered in it. Turning a razor blade over in my fingers, I smiled, deciding then that this would be it. The last cut I would ever make. Pushing my hair off my sweaty forehead, I brought the blade to my wrist.