#I don't know if she managed to eat it or not

[ckret2]

Chapter 49 of human Bill Cipher being such a miserable prisoner even the Pines are starting to feel bad for him: The Eclipse: Epilogue.

####

"The heck did you do to that poor woman?" Tate asked, staring out the window. Bill was sitting on the pier, legs dangling in the water, staring blankly into the depths. He was still muddy and trembling. "She looks more traumatized than when y'all left."

Ford couldn't meet Tate's gaze under the brim of his hat, but he could feel Tate raising a brow when he spotted Dipper pacing back and forth on the pier behind Bill, muttering furiously.

"We've had a very bad day," Ford said. 

"Uh-huh."

"Could I borrow your phone to call my brother?"

Outside, Dipper was oblivious to everything except the one line he'd managed to remember from the Axolotl, the words he'd picked out as they crossed the lake. "'Sixty degrees that come in threes,'" Dipper murmured. He knew that much. It was a poem. It was a rhyme. He couldn't remember the rest. What did it mean? He murmured it over and over to himself as he walked, trying to remember the next line, "'Sixty degrees that come in threes,' 'sixty degrees that come in threes'... breeze, freeze, ease, lease, knees—" He couldn't remember the rhyme.

Bill was considering grabbing Dipper by the ankle and dragging him off the pier just to shut him up when whatsisname, the younger McGucket came out of the shop. "Hello there? Miss Goldie?"

Human. Strange human. Human that Bill could get on his side. Be charming. He tried to remember how to be charming. He offered a feeble smile. "Yello?"

"I wanted to make sure you're all right," Tate said. "You look like you, uh... you've had a hard time."

Bill laughed ruefully. "Well, I've been dragged all over the mountain, I'm hungry, exhausted, and half-drowned, and I can barely walk—but I'm not currently dead. Allegedly. I'll take what I can get."

The corners of Tate's mouth twitched down in a concerned frown. "Is there anything you need? A..." He floundered for a moment, "A water, or...?"

"I've had enough water to last me a lifetime." He wondered idly whether he could claim he was too exhausted to make it all the way home—there was a sofa in the staff room, Tate would probably let the poor bedraggled "woman" take a nap, if Bill got that bit of distance between himself and the Pines maybe he could... maybe he could... do something with it? But he couldn't think of anything more definite than that and now Ford was coming back and the window of opportunity closed. He shrugged wearily. "Just need to get back to the shack. Thanks." He half heartedly used the lake water to wash the drying mud off his lower legs and knees.

"Stan will be here in about twenty minutes," Ford said, and tried to ignore the dirty look Tate gave him. 

"I'll be just inside if you need anything else," Tate said. "Watching." He headed inside—and then, indeed, stood at the shop window and watched.

Ford was never going to get on Tate's good side. He suspected Tate would be a little less sympathetic to the poor woman on the pier if he knew who he really was; but it certainly wouldn't make Tate like Ford any better for keeping him around.

"Nothing to do now but wait." Ford unloaded the rest of their supplies from the borrowed motor boat. He dropped Soos's Monster-Mon backpack beside Bill—it was heavy, Bill must have just shoved his clothes and bedsheet straight in without bothering to wring out the water—and the plastic bag of snacks Dipper had bought. "You ought to eat more while we wait." Ford nudged the snack bag.

Bill sneered at it. "I don't want that trash."

"What?" Ford examined the bag's contents. Jerky, chips, candy, cups of marshmallow cereal... "This is ninety percent of what you eat."

"Ninety percent of what I eat is what I can scavenge from the counters."

Ford looked through the bag again. Ah. Right. So it was. "If you want something else, you know you can ask us to..."

"Mac and cheese."

Maybe Ford had better stop talking. He sighed and glanced at Dipper to see how he was doing.

It didn't look like Dipper had even registered Ford's return, too busy pacing and muttering to himself. Ford frowned. "Dipper?"

"Axolotl," Bill explained. "He's obsessing over him. Didn't I tell you that meeting that thing would drive him insane?" He tilted his head toward Dipper. "Look at that, he's already mumbling to himself. Don't suppose you have his therapist's number, do you? I doubt that would save him, but it might slow the process—"

Ford shushed him.

Dipper had briefly tuned back into the conversation when he heard Bill say Axolotl; and now he grit his teeth and stubbornly tuned it back out. No. He was not going insane. Dipper would figure this out. If he just remembered the rest he'd be fine. He tried to go through all the potential rhymes alphabetically, "—bees, cease, d—deez?" That wasn't a word. "Fees, geese, he's..." and on and on, "seas, tees, uh... vees? Wheeze..."

"I've had enough of you trying to convince that boy he's about to go mad," Ford muttered to Bill. "What do you get out saying that? Even if you do convince him he's insane, it won't make him start trusting anything else you say."

"I'm not lying," Bill said heatedly. "You ought to know that, you've been in the multiverse, you've seen plenty of maddening sights. You saw them before you even left the Nightmare Realm."

Ford hesitated before responding; was Bill trying to persuade Ford he was insane? But he could still remember those first few moments of terror in the Nightmare Realm: the creatures that had seemed to move and shift in impossible ways as they swam in and out of dimensions Ford couldn't see, the lights and colors that throbbed like an inverted migraine, Bill himself seemingly suspended a million light years away and a foot in front of Ford's face at the same time. Until Ford had latched onto his quest to destroy Bill and let that focus him, his mind had felt like an unraveling sock. "You were chief among those maddening sights."

"I was," Bill acknowledged neutrally.

"But I didn't go insane."

"Because you knew when to look away." He cast a sideways glance at Dipper, an implicit unlike him. "I know you used to read cosmic horror. Do you know why the narrator always goes mad just from looking at some giant beast? It's not because it's too ugly to take. It's because once you meet something, you try to understand it; but if you want to understand the reality something like that comes from," he rolled an eye up toward where the invisible Axolotl had hung in the sky, "you have to lose your understanding of your own reality. They're incompatible. Like the lunatics who escaped Plato's cave and came back ranting about nonsense like sunlight and colors."

It was a twisted interpretation of the cave allegory. Plato had meant it as a metaphor for education: that learning about the true nature of reality was enlightening, but alienated you from your peers.

Perhaps to Bill, enlightenment and insanity were the same thing.

Ford murmured, "Once your eyes have been too dazzled by the sunlight to see the dim shadows, you'll never be awed by a candle again."

"You have been there before."

Ford didn't answer.

"Once you've seen something like that, if you let yourself dwell on the significance of it all, you're doomed. Better to tell yourself it's unimportant and try to forget it ever happened."

Ford thought of Fiddleford.

Bill twisted around to snap tiredly at Dipper, "So stop staring at the sun before you go blind, moron."

"Shut up." Dipper had been trying to mentally drown out Bill's dire predictions by grasping for more rhymes—"disease, unease, Socrates"—but enough filtered through to make his stomach churn with nervousness. What if Bill was right? What if he never remembered what the Axolotl told him—what if he drove himself mad trying? What if this turned into a lifelong obsession—but he'd be fine and could let it go once he remembered—was that the trap? Was whatever it had told him impossible for a human to remember? Was it something so incomprehensible a human couldn't remember it without going crazy?

But he'd seen plenty of stuff last summer that was supposed to make humans go "insane." Bill had to be messing with him. He remembered the first line—surely that meant he could remember the rest—but was that part of the trap? "'Sixty degrees that come in threes'... come on, there's something else, I know it, what is it? 'Sixty degrees that come in threes'—"

Bill sighed irritably. "'Watches through the eyes in trees.'"

Dipper stopped pacing. He hadn't realized he'd raised his voice enough to be audible. "What?"

"What?" Bill said.

"What's the rest of it?"

"What rest of it? It's a couplet. That's all," Bill said. "Is that what he told you? He gets rhymey when he feels self-important, it's no big deal. Maybe you're lucky. Put it out of your head and you'll be fine."

Dipper turned the words over in his head. Sixty degrees that come in threes, watches through the eyes in trees... "That's not exactly right," he said slowly. "It was 'watches from within birch trees.'"

"Is that how he translated it? I've never heard it in English before. I got close, though, I knew it'd rhyme."

Ford echoed, "'Sixty degrees that come in threes.' Like a triangle?"

Dipper gave him a perplexed look. "What?"

"You're taking geometry next year, aren't you? The inner angles of polygons always have the same number of degrees; and a triangle has a hundred and eighty degrees. Three angles of sixty degrees forms... an equilateral triangle."

Dipper and Ford stared at Bill.

Bill gave them a tired, unreadable look. "What?" he said. "Don't look at me. I'm not the only equilateral triangle in the universe."

Well, now Dipper was sure there was more to the poem than just a couplet. "How many other equilateral triangles spy on people through birch trees?"

"Lay off," Bill said crabbily. "I didn't have to tell you that line. Don't make me regret it." He planted his elbows on his knees, laced his hands together, pressed his forehead to them, and massaged his eyelids with his thumbs.

He tilted slightly to the right, keeping the weight of his head off his left arm.

####

"Nice shirt," Stan said, eyeing Ford's anger management t-shirt.

"If you like it, you can have it."

"What happened to your coat?"

"Somewhere at the bottom of the lake," Ford sighed.

"How...?"

"I'll fill you in later."

Bill's trembling was almost unnoticeable by the time Stan arrived. Or, at least, it was slight enough that he could stand and make the short walk from the pier to the car without an obvious struggle. 

He climbed into the back seat, slid across the bench, leaned against the door, wrapped his arms around his Monster-Mon backpack, fell asleep, and didn't wake up for the entire drive home.

Dipper and Ford fell silent when they noticed; and, sensing the heavy atmosphere, Stan followed suit.

####

The event organizers for Higher Dimensional Gate had arranged for the Magister Mentium's audience to surround him in a circle with as large a circumference as possible, so that as many shapes as possible could pack into the first few rows where they could see him. Even so, the crowd was much too large for everyone to be in the first few rows. Speakers had to be planted throughout the crowd so that they'd all be able to hear the Magister speak. Most of his audience couldn't see him.

But he, with his all-seeing eye, could see all of them.

The crowd extended back, row after row after row, in every direction like flecks of multicolor confetti filling the air all the way to the horizon. He'd never spoken to such a large crowd before. He didn't think he'd ever seen such a large crowd before.

Not all of them were his worshipers. He didn't have that many worshipers. The rest were drawn in by his boast—to be the first shape outside of legends to predict an eclipse, over six months ahead of schedule. They were here for a spectacle. He meant to give them one.

If he succeeded, all these spectators would become his worshipers, he was sure of it. If he didn't succeed, he lost everything. The whole nation knew about his bet. He'd be financially ruined. His worshipers would abandon him. There would be no fleeing to a new town and starting over; everyone everywhere knew who he was. His life would be over.

This would be only the third eclipse he could recall. There's no way to neatly map shape ages onto human ages. Different year lengths, different aging speeds, different mental and physical milestones. But approximately, compared to a human, he was scarcely over fifteen years old. 

But he wouldn't fail. He pushed all his fears aside. He didn't even want to think about them. He wouldn't, because he couldn't, because he could see what nobody else saw. He could see the eclipse's approach.

It was traveling across the vast empty gulf outside the world.

The only other third dimensional objects he'd ever seen were the sun—which looked to him like a circle—and the stars—which seemed to be mere points. He assumed all third dimensional objects were fundamentally just second dimensional objects, moving on a strange plane. He had no capacity to model a 3D object in his mind.

But the eclipse was a beast that twirled and gyrated around impossible axes, moving and rotating in ways his eye couldn't even comprehend. To him, it looked as though the living creature—he assumed it was a living creature, sometimes it manifested a couple of limbs or an eye—was constantly shapeshifting, its perimeter moving and altering. Its uncanny undulations had haunted his nightmares for months after he first watched it, so young he'd barely started school. It wasn't any less nightmarish now.

But as incomprehensible and terrifying as it was, he could see it, and nobody else here could, and that was all that mattered. He could watch it on the horizon and publicly announce that it would cross the sun in two weeks—and then in about three days—and then, to his humiliation, not tomorrow but today, guaranteed, as the creature sped up and threw off his estimate. His worshipers and bemused spectators had taken over the square to while away the time. They'd quickly gathered around him to wait after he'd declared it would arrive within the hour

That had been almost an hour and a half ago. The stupid thing had slowed down.

The triangle was terrified.

In every direction, shapes were staring at him. Waiting. His father was watching him—his stare seemed to grow heavier by the minute. He could see reporters in the crowd taking notes.

He had to fight not to pace, not to cringe, not to show any nerves in front of the hundreds of eyes.

Now. It had to be now. It was so close. Please don't let him be wrong. Every cord in his body quivered in terror as he grabbed his microphone and announced: "Lines, bis, tris—quads, quints, and more! My dear students and beloved believers, and my—" he cut off the urge to say something nastier, "—curious visitors, who I hope will join our quest for enlightenment. This is the moment you've been waiting for! The eclipse is upon us! In less than a minute, it will begin!" He had to keep his gaze forward as he spoke, looking at his audience. (His mother had always said the way his eye went white when he was looking at the third dimension unnerved people.) "Soon—you won't have to take all my claims about the third dimension on faith. You'll be able to see for yourself the effect of the third dimension on the plane."

The crowd murmured excitedly. He could see his father relax. He stared up-but-not-north, gnawing nervously on his eyelid until he caught himself. The beast above glowed a warm pink in the light of the nearby sun.

And the stupid thing. Slowed. Again.

He stared in disbelief.

"Sixty seconds," his father whispered, out of range of the microphone.

His stomach flopped. He was dead.

"One minute, fifteen seconds. What's going—?"

He held his microphone away and hissed, "The eclipse decided to zigzag."

"Eclipses can zigzag?"

"Shhh!" He'd already failed. He'd already shown everyone he was wrong. He could hear the murmurs. His eye hurt from staring at the sun and from straining for so long to turn so far upward-not-northward, go faster faster faster—

There! The snout of the eclipse was this close to kissing the perimeter of the sun. He cried triumphantly, "Now!"

The wretched beast did a loop-the-loop around the sun and missed it entirely.

The triangle felt the last strands of his fraying self-composure snap.

He howled in rage.

He could hear laughs from the crowd. They felt like daggers in his sides.

"ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!" He was bellowing into outer space as if he thought it might hear him, "Do your think this is a game?! Is this funny?! Are you trying to humiliate me in front of the whole world!" His father put a hand on his arm; the triangle shoved him away. "Get back here right now! You thick, brainless, blobby, pink, feeler-faced two-eyed freak of nature! GET BACK HERE and LOOK ME IN THE EYE!" He was a lunatic, everyone would know it, their leader raving in a direction no one could actually see about some big pink delusion, what did he care, no one would ever take him seriously again anyway—

And the thing in the sky.

Stopped.

And looped back.

And came closer, and closer, and bigger, and bigger—it just kept getting bigger, how far away had it been before, how large was it, how large was the sun?

He hardly noticed the crowd's gasp as the creature twirled between them and the sun—the light shone through its body, pink with blood—and then out of the way, and then in again, and out—until finally it was so close that its perimeter completely engulfed the sun. He'd taken a field trip to the planet's surface once—an enormous solid mass of stone and crystal. Until now, he'd never seen another solid objects so large. To his limited understanding of 3D objects, it looked as though there were no organs inside its perimeter—just a layer of solid, uninterrupted flesh. He didn't know how it could even move.

It stopped straight over him.

He was sure the two black circles embedded inside its body must be its eyes. His whole life he'd heard psychic powers—psychic powers like his own—described as having an "inner eye." But he'd thought the phrase was just a metaphor. An eye on the inside of a body instead of on its perimeter would be useless to most people. He'd never seen a creature with an eye literally on the inside of its body. But the eclipse had two.

And they were looking at him.

A giant ever-shapeshifting cosmic horror from outside of reality, staring through the veil separating the sane world from outerplanar space, and it was looking—at—him.

He was terrified.

He heard an alien voice in his head, vast and deep and slow as distant whale song:

"Hello there!" It was overjoyed. It was tickled pink. "I've never been spoken to by a shape on the wall before. I didn't know you could see off of it!"

Weakly, the triangle repeated, "'A shape on the'...?"

"Yes, this wall of yours." The eclipse gestured with its tail at—everything. A single sweep that took in an entire dimension. "I've probably commuted past this wall billions of times, and nothing's ever called to me before. I didn't know shadows could do that!"

"'Shadows'?" the triangle echoed again. That was all they were? An eclipse's shadows?

"I'm absolutely delighted," the eclipse said. "First contact from a lower-dimensional species! I've watched you for eons and never imagined. Isn't this exciting! How charming of you! Tell me who you are."

Him? "Me?"

"Of course. Who else?" It stared at him. Only him. A shapeshifting force of nature the size of a planet with two inner eyes, an eclipse that saw him as a shadow—and it was looking only at him.

Weakly, he said, "I'm... the Magister Mentium."

The eclipse thought that over. Its tone was a tad dubious and not terribly impressed (why should it be impressed? he was embarrassed at himself for giving his silly puffed-up title)—but it said, "Yes, I suppose that's true. I am the Axolotl. It's been a pleasure meeting you." It began to shapeshift again—its eyes slid sideways through its body, until one reached its perimeter and disappeared.

It dawned on the triangle, in its first immature understanding of third dimensional objects, that its eye had disappeared because the Axolotl was turning away. "Wait!" he cried. "Why..." Why answer him? Why focused on him so completely, if he was just a shadow? Why ask who he was like he mattered? He didn't even know how to put those questions to words in his own mind, much less out loud. "Why are you here so early?"

The Axolotl turned back to the triangle. "Oh! I had to go back for some documents I forgot at the office. Big case in the morning," it said. "You shadows know my schedule?"

"You... pass in front of the sun."

The Axolotl turned away, eyes disappearing and frills fluttering, to look at the sun. "So I do! How funny." It turned toward the triangle and gave him a strange, grotesque look that—by the tone of its psychic voice—he suspected was a smile. "I must get going. I'll be heading into the office a few hours late tomorrow, but perhaps I'll see you again then." And it turned away. It felt like it took forever for the enormous body to sail over-not-north-of the triangle—and pass, at last, out of the sun's path.

The triangle didn't look down-but-not-south until someone shook his side—his father. He lowered his dazed gaze to the crowd—the cheering, applauding crowd. Ma-gi-ster, Ma-gi-ster. A sea of multicolor confetti shapes that filled the air to the horizon.

Shadows.

His father shook him again—"Go on, say something. They're waiting"—and the triangle held up his mic as though he were in a dream. He tried to remember what he was supposed to say. "I was right," he said flatly. "Just like I always told you. I can see the third dimension. The realm of dreams—of colors, of light, and..." The lies left a sick taste in the back of his eye. He couldn't say them. Points of light in darkness and pink nightmares.

"I'm s— You'll all have to excuse me," he said, his voice childish and small. "I can't—I've had a... a... profound... spiritual experience. I must meditate on the revelations I've received." The words felt like woo-woo mumbo-jumbo. "The next eclipse will be a few months after the new year." It seemed important, for some reason, to pass that information on. Wasn't that what he always said he did? Share the wisdom of third dimensional spirits with his followers? "I... have to go now."

His father took his elbow. "This is your moment," he whispered. "Come on, son—you don't want to lose your chance to speak directly to them, do you?"

He shoved the microphone in his father's side. "You speak to them."

"But—"

"I can't," he said. "I can't."

He cut through the crowd as fast as it would part for him—if they were any slower, he'd have started stabbing his way through—haunted the whole way by their applause.

####

And that was it.

From the Axolotl's perspective, he had just had a brief pleasant exchange with a precocious tadpole in a sidewalk puddle.

From the triangle's perspective, he might as well have been standing on the boat deck watching as Cthulhu rose from his millennia of dead slumber at the bottom of the ocean, turned to the fragile vessel bobbing on the waves, and said, "Good morning! Glorious weather we're having, isn't it?"

And from the perspective of the Higher Dimensional Gate, their Magister Mentium had predicted an eclipse, been rightfully insulted when it didn't come the exact second he ordered it, and furiously summoned down an eclipse darker and swifter and longer than any in recorded history.

Up until then, he had been seen as, at best, an oracle. A prophet. A messenger to share the secrets of the third dimension, but that was all he could do. But now, he had commanded forces in an unseen dimension, creating an eclipse months before it was natural. He had made it flicker on and off like he had his finger on the sun's light switch. News reports and the most unimpeachable scientific authorities reported that the eclipse had centered on the location of the Higher Dimensional Gate rally, narrowed down to an inexplicably small radius around that point, and then remained unchanged for several long minutes, long enough for anyone in its shadow to grow fatigued from the missing sunshine. Nothing like that had ever happened before. It defied every known fact about the science of eclipses.

People around the gathering—even people who had known nothing about the Higher Dimensional Gate rally—reported that during the eclipse, they'd become inexplicably disoriented, unable to tell compass directions, and had felt themselves fall toward the darkness—as if gravity's pull had suddenly moved from the south to the epicenter of the eclipse. Public building inspections confirmed that somehow the entire town had shifted, ever so slightly, closer to the epicenter. Closer to the Magister.

Never mind prophecy; as far as the Magister's rapidly-increasing followers were concerned, he might have been a god.

It was the greatest triumph a baby cult leader could ask for.

He barely noticed.

####

For days, he could hardly sleep, speak, or think. He kept losing track of conversations to stare into space. Now, it awed his followers when his eye turned an empty white—he must have been communing with something in a higher dimension.

He didn't argue. It was better than letting them know he was losing his mind.

He spent his time alone locked in his room, pacing back and forth, trying not to look up-but-not-north and failing. Dwelling on the significance of it all. Feeling like he'd never figure it out.

He used to love cosmic horror stories, back when he had time to read. They followed a reliable pattern: the hero travels farther than any rational shape ever should, meets something big, and goes mad from the realization.

And what was it that the hero always realized? That he was a dust fleck in the firmament. That he was insignificant. That he didn't matter. That there were things out there he'd never seen before and would never truly understand, and that they cared not for mere shadows on the wall like him, and that in the grand scheme of the cosmos he was nothing. That he was utterly unimportant.

In moments of what felt like lucidity in between the shivering horror, the triangle  wryly acknowledged that it was no surprise he'd ended up in a cosmic horror story. He could see into another dimension. In the stories he'd read, that made it all but inevitable.

But all the authors had gotten the maddening revelation wrong. He could have handled knowing he was nothing. It almost would have been a relief. 

True horror was knowing he mattered.

He'd spent the majority of his young life selling the idea that he was oh-so-important, as part of a big con to trick gullible idiots into liking him and flinging cash at his rotten undeserving family—and he'd only been able to do it because when the guilt got to him, when his conscience asked what would become of the shapes forking over their life savings on false promises of divine secrets, he could look out into bleak black space and tell himself that nothing really mattered, nothing was important, nothing he'd ever do would really make a difference, and the people he manipulated didn't matter any more than he did. He meant everything to his worshipers, and nothing to the universe. He could do anything and it didn't matter.

For a moment, a vast mind-melting shape-shifting incomprehensible eldritch god had focused its full attention on him—of all the universe, of all the dimensions beyond the known universe, it had looked at him and only him—a mere shadow on the wall, and yet in that moment, it found him interesting. It found him worthy of notice. He had screamed into the cold uncaring void, and the void had cared. For a moment, he'd held cosmic importance. He mattered. His actions mattered.

He'd felt it see him as important, but why? What was so important about him? There had to have been something significant he'd done, something he showed it, something in what he said. He replayed their conversation in his mind over and over and over and over, trying to remember what he'd done that proved he mattered.

He didn't know what it was. He couldn't find it. All he could remember was just... being.

The writers were wrong. Cosmic horror wasn't when an elder god's eyes slid past you without noticing you existed. It was when the elder god gazed down at you at your lowest and bleakest, during your most petty and selfish act of mass swindling, from a dimension where not even slamming the door and shutting your eye could shield you from its gaze—and it decided you were worth caring about. Cosmic horror was when you encountered a colossal alien that planted the incomprehensibly alien idea in your head that you had an inherent worth just because you existed. Cosmic horror was when a force of nature asked the name of a shadow on the wall.

If it was true... if it all mattered... then what was he doing? How could he? What had he done?

####

He was lucky—he was lucky that his parents had raised him to think so clearly about issues like morality and money and easy marks. His only saving grace was that he was too rational to seriously entertain the Axolotl's mad ideas.

And yet, his mind boiled with mad regret. It blazed with insane guilt. The heat of it could burn him out. It was months before he could continue his public sermons without feeling sick—and even once he did, he could still feel the delusion that what he did mattered, festering in his mind.

It would fester for the next trillion years.

####

(And that concludes this plot arc! I hope y'all enjoyed it!! I'd love to hear what y'all thought of the whole thing—especially now that we've looped back to the original eclipse. 😁)

[effetsecndaires]

— 𝐭𝐨𝐤𝐫𝐞𝐯 𝐦𝐞𝐧 (+ 𝐬𝐞𝐧𝐣𝐮) + 𝐧𝐬𝐟𝐰 𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐤𝐬. (𝟑)

➺ INCLUDES: south terano, shinichiro sano, keizo arashi (benkei), takeomi akashi, mitsuya takashi, senju kawaragi (all of legal age, timeskip or bonten) x fem!reader

➺ CONTENT WARNING | this post contains explicit porn links!! you may need to have a twitter account or change your privacy settings to be able to see them. Please do not interact if you are under 18.

➺ NOTE | i’ll be taking a break from twitter links after this one. I want to focus on actual writing rather than straight up porn lol

SOUTH.

If there's one thing South loves more than pounding your pussy, it's shoving his cock down your throat. He’ll have you laying on your back with your head hanging off the side of the bed, his cock stuffed deep inside your throat. He’ll wrap his hand around the large bulge and jerk it before withdrawing just long enough to let you breathe, quickly going back to pushing himself all the way down your throat, watching as you swallow him down effortlessly.

↳ LINK ↲

BENKEI.

Benkei is always so gentle with you. Because of this, you’d think morning sex with him would also be gentle; soft whispers exchanged in each other’s mouths while he gently pushes his cock into you, his hand on your clit helping you reach your climax faster. While this scenario does happen, it doesn't always go the way you think it will. Most times when he's been awake for longer than you have - he'll have you laying down on your belly, one of your legs dangling off the bed as he takes you from behind, your face buried deep into the pillow to muffle your moans, fists twisting the sheets. His hands grip onto your hips and the plump skin of your ass as he chases his high, each thrust bringing the two of you closer to your limit.

↳ LINK ↲

SHINICHIRO.

Days where Shin has the house to himself are rare, but when he does, the two of you always make the most of it. Those days usually consist of cuddling, making out, and, well, lots of sex. It's the only time when you can be as loud as you want — and most importantly your only opportunity to fuck whenever and wherever you want. You’ll be preparing breakfast in the morning and Shin will have you pressed against the counter before you can even begin to light the stove, his hands pushing your skirt up so he can bury his face between your thighs, starting his day with his favorite breakfast.

↳ LINK ↲

TAKEOMI.

This man will lose his fucking mind if you give him head, especially if you do it out of nowhere while the two of you are relaxing in bed or watching a movie on the couch. It’ll start with you palming him over his sweatpants, teasing him just long enough to get him hot and bothered, his mind becoming too cloudy to focus on anything outside of you. He’ll lift himself up and push his pants down to his thighs, your lips immediately wrapping around his thick cock, sucking and stroking what doesn't fit in your mouth.

↳ LINK ↲

MITSUYA.

Mitsuya much prefers giving rather than receiving, which is why he always insists on eating you out before fucking you. You don’t even have to return the favor — he doesn't need it. Don't get me wrong, he does enjoy getting head and he obviously won't refuse a blowjob when you offer him one, but watching you moan and squirm as he coaxes orgasm after orgasm out of you has to be his favorite sight in the world. All he wants is to make you feel good, his hands resting on your ass as you circle your hips and hump his face, pushing his tongue deeper and fucking yourself on it as you sit on his pretty face.

↳ LINK ↲

SENJU.

Senju eats you out so good, it’s almost embarrassing how quickly she manages to break you into a moaning mess and pull multiple orgasms out of you with just her tongue. She knows exactly what you like, what to do and where to focus in order to get a specific reaction out of you or have you pull her hair just a bit tighter — your moans like music to her ears as she devours you.

↳ LINK ↲

[yandere-romanticaa]

I've had a very fun and fruitful conversation with @allfearstofallto and she had some very strong reactions for a story about yandere Diluc and Tartaglia that has been marinating in my mind for a while now. I'll just give you a brief version of my idea.

You and the 11th Fatui Harbinger are to be wed. With your freedom stripped away from you and with your wedding date fast approaching, you are working tirelessly to escape the Harbinger's grasp.

However, even with your freedom stripped away, even if you have no autonomy on your own, there's an inkling in your heart in which you cannot hate your captor. He is far too kind and gentle towards you, the way in which he treats you makes your heart swell with a plethora of emotions.

But enough is enough.

You need to leave. Fast.

One evening, you act sweeter, more submissive than usual. Your fiancee eats it up and is delighted by this change in attitude. His happiness is evident because now things can proceed without a hitch. Don't worry darling, you won't be anywhere near his work. He'll keep you safe, fed and loved.

All he asks in return is to be in your heart. Love him. Love him, please. It's a hard request, a selfish one even, he knows this.

He can make it up to you. He can and he will.

He promises.

You kiss him in bed, telling him that you understand. Your eyes shift towards the hidden suitcase in the corner as you feel the drugs start to kick in. Tartaglia is fast asleep, and you finally taste the sweetness of freedom.

The man wakes up the next morning in a daze. The bed is empty and cold.

His heart shatters into a million pieces. He roars out your name like a wounded animal, his throat sore and bleeding from the pain.

He must find you.

Meanwhile, you made your way towards the City of Freedom.

You settle in, find a job, a place to live in. It's hard but you manage.

You ignore the lingering presence that you feel behind you when you're alone at night. You're making it all up, you keep telling yourself.

No one is following you.

One evening, you enter a cozy tavern. You order a drink and it is prepared by a handsome, albeit stoic bartender. You manage to get him to open up. He introduces himself as Diluc, the owner of the fine establishment in which you sat in.

How neat.

Due to various different factors, after a short while Diluc takes you in. He is patient and strict. It's an improvement.

You don't know about his ever growing obsession with you. You don't know about the endless sea of portraits he has of you. He keeps it all hidden well under wraps.

Regardless, Diluc is still only human. It's only natural that his jealousy would bubble up and rear in its ugly head from time to time.

Dawn Winery is in a way, forced to attend a massive social gathering. Diplomats from the North are everywhere and, of course, Tartaglia spots you in the crowd.

Even if his eyes were to be plucked out, he would always manage to recognize you.

Tensions rise and the danger of bloodlust reeks in the air. Much to his chagrin, Childe cannot simply just kill Diluc and be done with it.

He is being forced to play Mr Nice Diplomat.

Oh the horror, being stuck between these two.

Now, since this has the potential to be long as fuck, I was thinking of making it into a multiple part story. The best name I could come up with it so far was "A Song of Ice and Fire". I'm open to title names, if someone has better ideas. An important note to add would be that this would be a serious commitment for me as I haven't done a story like this in years. Chapter updates would probably take me a long time due to my job and potential lack of energy, but this idea has been in my brain for years now, which is a clear sign that I'm passionate about it. And, my question is - would you like for me to make this story come to life?

[gavisfanta]

WHY I LOVE YOU - GAVI

summary: you and gavi are parents and its a normal day of driving your kids to school and finding out about your pregnancy...

warnings: none

"Pero papá, no quiero ir a la escuela." Ale cried out and Gavi let his head hang low while he exhaled deeply.

"No whining around, you're gonna be late." Gavi said and Ale threw his head back.

"But I don't wanna go!" He yelled and was on the verge of tears.

"I dont know how your mother does this every morning." Gavi mumbled in a low voice and then looked away for a second. "You know what, fine. But if you stay at home, you wont be going to practice tonight either." Gavi started walking towards the door and Ale immediately jumped up to get dressed.

"Thought so" He whispered and walked downstairs. He saw you standing in the kitchen, facing the stove while making scrambled eggs for the kids and Gavi.

You jumped a bit as his arms wrapped around you from behind and then put his hand on your lower stomach.

"That smells so good." He moaned out as he loosened his arms again and went to the fridge to pour himself a glass on cooled water.

"What time is it?" Ale came running down the stairs, followed by Ana who was still sleepily rubbing her eyes.

"You still have an hour and a half, chill." Gavi mumbled and then went over to the stairs to pick up Ana and spin her around.

She was about to turn 5 but you absolutely loved the way Gavi treats her. He treated her like she was still 2 and thats adorable in your opinion.

"Did my princesa wake up too?" Gavi smiled at his daughter.

"He splashed water over my face." Ana pointed at Ale who smiled while sitting on his chair at the dining table.

"Ale, I told you to stop waking people up with water." Gavi walked over to him and sat down Ana on her seat. Ale on the other hand was about to turn 7. He was more of the wild kid while Ana was calm and collected.

"It was an accident." He crossed his arms and Gavi raised his brows.

"If I throw you into the pool was it an accident too?" Your husband pointed outside in your garden where the huge pool was.

"No, that's mean!" Ana pulled the bottom of gavis shirt and he looked at her while he smiled.

"You're such a good kid." He leaned down to kiss her head before walking back to you into the kitchen. You were currently cutting some tomatoes while the scrambled eggs were already on the plates.

"You need help amor?" He asked but instead of replying, you put a plate between the two of you and nudged your head towards the kids.

"Okay boss" Gavi smiled while putting down the plate infront of Ale and soon you returned with all plates in your hand and put them down infront of each person.

After you were all done with eating Gavi stood up and walked over to you.

"Thanks babe, that was amazing." He kissed your temple and you smiled. "Okay kids, lets carry our empty plates into the kitchen and then brush our teeth." Gavi said and grabbed his plate and yours too. You smiled as he also took their forks out of safety reasons.

You watched all three of them go upstairs and then you went to the kitchen to clean everything up.

"You take this" Gavi told Ale and gave him his electric toothbrush that was made for kids and he sat down on the toilet seat and took Ana's toothbrush.

"Come here amor." He waved her over and she walked to him, she was still half asleep, her eyelids hanging heavily and she barely managed to hold herself on her own feet.

"Open up" Gavi told her and as she did he began brushing her teeth since she somehow still wasn't able to do that on her own.

"Why can't you just brush your own teeth?" Ale asked Ana after he put his toothbrush down on the edge of the sink.

"Did you brush your teeth good?" Gavi asked while he then reached Ana a plastic cup full of water and she then stood on the little staircase infront of the sink to spit out the remaining toothpaste.

"Yes, look!" Ale said and opened his mouth, showing his teeth. Gavi nodded his head while he grabbed a hair brush and then began brushing Ana's soft brown hair.

"What hairstyle do you want to do today?" Gavi asked as he took her hair into his hand.

"Can you make the one mom made yesterday?" Ana asked as she looked at herself in the mirror. Ale sat down on the toilet seat as he watched his dad and sister.

"What did mom do yesterday?" Gavi turned to look at Ale who smiled a bit.

"A braid, you should remember that." As soon as Ale said braid, Gavi made a face.

"I mean I can try but it wont be as pretty as mom's braid okay?" He looked at her through the mirror and she nodded her head.

"Why isn't mom doing it today then?" Ale asked Gavi as he began try to braid her hair. You had taught him once how to and he often tried to braid your hair and he got visibly better at it.

"Because she's tired, her cleaning the kitchen takes less energy then dealing with the two of you." Gavi answered, Ana yawned a bit to which Ale shook his head.

"Is she alright though?" Ale asked and Gavi nodded his head as he smiled. It was heartwarming to him to see that his children actually cared about the wellbeing of their mother.

And after Gavi was done with the braid he looked at it proudly. There were some parts that weren't perfect but he was satisfied.

"It's not that bad is it?" He turned Ana around so that she was facing Ale with her back. His son admired the braid and nodded his head.

"You did a good job dad!" He said loudly and grinned. Gavi brought down his hand a bit to mess up his hair.

"Okay, grab your bags and lets go to school!" He clapped his hands together and went downstairs while the kids ran into their rooms.

"Babe, you need some help?" Gavi yelled as he just walked into the kitchen. He saw you putting the final plate into the dishwasher and close it up. The kitchen looked clean, you turned around to face him and opened up your arms.

"No, I'm done, are you driving them to school?" Gavi hugged you as you asked that.

"Yeah I am, you go back to bed. You look a bit pale." Gavi moved his head back a bit while still standing close to you.

"I will. Thank you for driving them." You said and pulled him back to yourself again. He buried his face in the crook of your neck as he held you close.

Just a few seconds later you heard steps coming down the stairs. You opened your eyes and saw Ana smiling at the two of you, her bag in her hands.

"Okay, lets go dad." You patted Gavi's back who immediately raised his head and turned around. He crouched down infront of Ana and took her bag, she turned around and slipped her arms into the straps.

"Where's your brother?" He asked and just then Ale came down the stairs.

"I'm here, bye mom!" Ale just simply waved at you while walking to the door.

"Bye Ale" You smiled at him. Ana on the other hand walked over to you and you crouched down to give her a kiss.

"Bye mom, love you!" Ana smiled while she walked in front of Gavi to the door. However as Gavi looked back at you, he walked back to you real quick to give you a kiss.

"Go back to bed and try to catch some sleep yeah?" Gavi smiled at you and began walking backwards to the door.

"I will, bye!" You waved at him and he left.

"Okay, are you both ready? Last day of the week." Gavi mumbled while sitting into the car and fastening his seatbelt. He looked back at both of the kids sitting in their seats.

"Yes!" Both yelled in excitement and Gavi drove them to school. After he returned home again, he found you in bed, looking at the tv infront of the king sized bed.

Money heist was playing, so as soon as Gavi entered the room you stopped the tv and looked at him walking closer to you.

"How is my love?" He kneeled down next to your side of the bed and pressed a kiss on your lips.

"Can I be honest?" You turned your head to look at him, he nodded his head. "I think I'm pregnant again."

Gavi froze for a couple of seconds, he broke the eye contact and looked down at his hands which were on top of the mattress.

"Did you take a test yet?" Gavi asked while you looked deep into his eyes and shook your head. "Let's take one, come on." He stood up and you pushed the covers down from your body.

Gavi went into the bathroom first and grabbed a pregnancy test from the top of the shelf so nobody was able to see it. You kept two up there at all times incase anybody or you needed it.

"Okay, here" Gavi handed you it and you went to sit down on the toilet and Gavi sat down at the edge of the bathtub while looking at you.

You didn't mind him watching you doing whatever, he saw you from all angles already so there wasn't much to hide.

He smiled at you as you finished taking the test and put it down onto the counter so that the upside was facing the counter.

"What are you all smiley for?" You asked and walked over to Gavi to hug him. one of the things your friends noticed was that you two were still very affectionate with eachother. Some people grew apart after they had kids and you two didnt at all.

"It'd be so nice to have a third kid." Gavi mumbled and kissed your forehead. Gavi and you have talked about having more children previously. You both agreed that three was the max number of children.

"It would be amazing. I'm just not as excited for the actual giving birth part but whatever." You joked and Gavi chuckled.

"I braided Ana's hair today, did you see it?" He changed the topic to distract you from the test.

"No I didn't." You gasped and covered your mouth. He shook his head and parted his lips into a thin line.

"I did such a good job, also, I need to leave for practice at 11. So you'll have to pick up the kids." Gavi informed you ro which you only gave him a nod.

After enough time had passed which contained the two of you just chatting, you looked at the pregnancy test infront of you.

"I can't do it, you do it." You tokd Gavi and took a step aside, he took the pregnancy test between his fingers and then turned ut around slowly.

Pregnant.

"Oh my god, I'm pregnant." You jumped into Gavi's arms while you smiled widely.

"You're pregnant." Gavi repeats while a big smile covers his own lips. After he loosened his grip around you, he immediately grabbed your face and kissed a long and passionate kiss on your lips.

"Oh my god, we need to go and shop for the baby. Do you think it will be a boy or a girl? I'm hoping for a boy because then-" You talked way too fast, before you could continue Gavi crushed his lips into yours again.

"I'm so excited." He stated after the kiss. Gavi was so happy that he was gonna be a father of three. You and him had planned having three children even before Ale was born. Even tho you didn't try to get pregnant right now, it happened at that was so beautiful about it.

Things happen and sometimes they're the best things to ever happen.

[dixons-sunshine]

I love your Daryl x reader stories

I wanted to ask if you could write sth about Daryl x fempolish reader. Like maybe they meet in Alexandria and she made him some polish food he loved or just some love short story. I don't know it's up to you.

Have a great day

Just Try It | Daryl Dixon x Polish!Fem!Reader

*GIF and moodboard aren't mine.*

Summary: After finding all the ingredients needed to make one of your cultural dishes, you decide to make it when Carol invited you and Daryl over. However, you never suspected a man that ate snakes on the regular would be so skeptical when it came to food.

Genre: Fluff.

Era: The Commonwealth.

Warnings: Swearing.

Word count: 932.

A/n: Thank you so much for helping me with the translations @mawidixon! I hope you like this! (Translations will be at the bottom.)

➳༻❀✿❀༺➳

“Nah, it looks weird as shit. Ain't gon' eat it.”

You rolled your eyes at him, huffing in frustration. “Kochanie, I've seen you eat a snake before. We've had to eat literal dog meat before. How the hell are you picky about this? It's just Pierogi. I've eaten this many times before the world ended. It won't kill you.”

Daryl peered over your shoulder, looking at the Pierogi that you were busy frying in a pan. His eyes were carefully following your movements, skeptical about the dish you were preparing. Carol had invited you and the kids over for dinner and had asked you to prepare Pierogi, and you had agreed rather ecstatically. It was rare for you to be able to make one of your traditional dishes, so you had jumped at the opportunity to do so.

“Why would ya boil it and then fry it? Seems fuckin' unnecessary if ya ask me,” Daryl replied skeptically, slightly scrunching his nose. “And the mashed potatoes? Why would ya wrap dough 'round it? Ya could jus' eat it as is. No need to go makin' dough outta flour and ruinin' mashed potatoes by wrappin' it 'round it. S'a waste of cheese, too, addin' it in.”

You clicked your tongue and carefully took the pan from the hot fire, and placed it onto a rag on the counter as to not burn the pristine laminate countertop. You turned to Daryl, your eyebrows raised questioningly. “Be honest with me right now, Dixon. Have you ever actually had Pierogi before?”

Daryl immediately shook his head. “Nah,” he told you, crossing his arms over his chest.

You hummed and nodded, turning to the bowl that had the Pierogi that you had made earlier. You grabbed the lukewarm Pierogi and extended it towards your partner, laughing at the face he made at it.

“Twój wyraz twarzy jest przeuroczy,” you mused, laughing harder at the confused face he made. “Before you ask what I said, it's not important. What is important, however, is you trying this. It's delicious and I can't have you thinking that eating squirrel meat is better than this.”

Daryl reluctantly took the dumpling, holding it gingerly between his fingers. “'Least m'familiar with squirrel meat. Know it ain't gon' taste any different each time.”

“Nie możesz zawsze jeść tylko wiewiórek,” you muttered under your breath, before shaking your head and sending Daryl an amused smile. “Daryl, stop being so stubborn. Po prostu spróbuj.”

Daryl grumbled something under his breath before looking at you again. “Nie chcę.”

“As impressed as I am that you understood me and that you managed to reply, saying something in my language won't sway me.”

Daryl shot you a small smirk. “Worth a shot,” he replied, before hesitantly taking a bite of the Pierogi.

You watched in amusement as a whirlwind of emotions played on his face. First skepticism, then surprise, and then he looked impressed. He practically devoured the rest of the dumpling in hungry bites, reaching for another one in the bowl, but you stopped him.

“Nope. I can't allow you to do that, misiu. The rest is for tonight,” you told him with a smile. “I can't disappoint Carol now, can I? She was eager about this the whole day. You only just came around about this. I'd rather give these to someone who's had faith in me from the start.”

“C'mon, tha' ain't fair,” Daryl groaned. “Merle once said tha' these things tasted like crap. Went into vivid detail 'bout how it tasted, too. Can't blame me fer not trustin' it.”

You giggled and shook your head. “You should've had more trust in me. I've been making these things since I was a kid. I'd never intentionally make you eat something bad,” you told him, before placing the lid onto the bowl and handing it to the archer. “Here, why don't you go ahead and take this to Carol? She's expecting us.”

Daryl took the bowl from you. “What about ya, robaczku? RJ and Judith are waitin' fer their auntie.”

You smiled at the nickname he had picked up from you, and motioned towards the dumplings still in the hot pan. “I'm just gonna wrap these up and put them away. I'll be right behind you.”

Daryl nodded and leaned forward to place a quick kiss to your lips. He soon pulled away and started walking away, calling to you over his shoulder. “Jus' so ya know, those are mine. Judith and RJ dun' need to know 'bout those.”

You laughed and called out to him. “So, are Pierogi's better than squirrel meat?”

Daryl paused at the doorway and contemplated on how to respond. He smirked to himself as he looked down at the bowl in his hand. “I'll let the kids decide tha', sunshine. I love ya.”

“I want an answer from you!”

The door shutting was the only response you got in return. You looked down at the pan and shook your head. There was never a dull moment with your beloved huntsman.

“Ja też cię kocham, you asshole,” you mused with a laugh.

➳༻❀✿❀༺➳

Translations:

Kochanie: Honey.

Twój wyraz twarzy jest przeuroczy: Your facial expression is adorable.

Nie możesz zawsze jeść tylko wiewiórek: You can't always only eat squirrels.

Po prostu spróbuj: Just try it.

Nie chcę: I don't want to.

misiu: teddy bear.

robaczku: love bug.

Ja też cię kocham: I love you too.

[sekhmetpaws]

Something I love about Bingqiu is that you could fit them under any fairy tale! AU imaginable.

Snow White? Shen Yuan objectively knows Binghe is the fairest of them all and sending him to live with a bunch of weird man is almost as bad as pushing him in the abyss and the kissing the unconscious princess is very stranger, thank you very much. He should just eat the poisoned apple himself.

Cinderella? Come on, the stepmother is not mean. It's not her fault that Binghe's ugly sister are useless and can't manage a household like she can. She is going to make stepmother so proud!

Sleeping Beauty? Shen Yuan was just trying to help Binghe and help him meet his one true love!

Rapunzel? Mother does know best. Nothing wrong with spending time with your mother. Nothing interesting to see outside.

Beauty and the Beast? Don't even need to say. Two words: Cool. Monster.

[pookietv]

helpful | george clarke

i just thought this was sweet, so have a little george looking after his drunk gf :3

as soon as you had said the words 'oh, it's just a casual little thing, haven't seen the girls in a while', george just knew the 'little casual thing' would end up with you plastered.

not that he minded, of course.

so when he recieved a call at one in the morning, it didn't quite surprise him. he had waited up for the 'got home safe' text, waiting patiently for you to get to your apartment safe.

"hiya, love, everything alright?" he spoke, his voice slightly thick, just coming with the fact it was a little later at night, but he wasn't too tired.

"hi george!" you giggled in response, "everything is fineee! i was just calling to see if i could come round.. was gonna uber home but then i was missing you and thought i could come pester youuu for a while," you spoke in between slight drunk hiccups.

he laughed a little down the phone in response, "sure, you can come round. you sure you're okay getting an uber, or you want me to come pick you up?" he asked, clearly a little concerned at her drunken state.

"no, no! i can uber fine, gonna share with one of my friends, just wanted to let you know before i just showed up," you murmured happily again.

"well, in future, you can show up at the flat whenever you want, you know i like your company, lovie, and i know the boys don't mind either,"

and so when half an hour later he heard stumbling through his front door, and soft laughs as he could hear her bashing herself against the wall for support, he left his bedroom, laughing at the sight of her, against the walls, trying to slip her shoes off with great struggle.

though, even plastered out of her mind, he thought she looked gorgeous.

"hey, you. need some help?" he jested slightly, and you giggled a little at the state of yourself.

"no, 'm sure i can... y'know, get em off, just these laces, who tied these damn laces?" you rambled as you slid down to the floor to try and untangle the laces that you had undoubtedly messed up earlier in the night.

george crouched down, unlacing the shoes with a lot more ease then you had, and once you had managed to pull the shoes off, you used him as a support to stand up, still giggling into the crook of his neck as you did.

"so, seems you had a good night?" he teased, and you rolled your eyes playfully with a nod.

"cocktails were two for one, so naturally i had eight," you laughed back, "don't even think 'm too drunk now, more just sleepy,"

george scoffed a little jokingly at that one, "i think you're still a little drunk, darling, but its fine. we'll get your makeup off and you into bed, hm?" he offered, and you nodded, letting him lead you into his room in the boys flat, where he had a bathroom attached.

as you stumbled through, rifling through the draw in his bathroom that had been claimed as yours for makeup remover, he laughed at the noise, before you produced it in your hands.

"i can help you take it off, if you like," george offered helpfully, and you looked at him with a drunken grin, a small nod as he gently helped you sit on the vanity, gently beginning to remove it with a damp cloth and the remover.

"thank you for being so helpful, george," you babbled out, your hands practically clasping against his arms for support as he checked to make sure all the makeup was gone.

"you've picked me up from enough pub golfs for me to owe you, trust me. plus, you know i don't mind looking after you at all," he smiled reassuringly back.

"did you eat when you were out? you want food?" he asked, but you shook your head.

"m good, got myself some drunk chips," you laughed a little, "just wanna go to sleep, to be honest,"

"thats fine, we can go to bed, don't worry, i'm just gonna get you some water, okay? you can go borrow a shirt or something to sleep in," he reassured, helping you down from the sink and watching you gently pad your way to his bed, whilst he headed into the kitchen.

when he returned, he found you, already spread on the side of his bed that had become classicly yours, in one of his shirts, head on its side on the pillow, giving him a slightly dumb smile as he placed the water on the bedside table.

"your bed always seems much comfier than mine," you murmured against the pillow, and he laughed with a shrug.

"i always thought your bed was more comfy," he said in response as he lay down, his arm going lazily to your waist, facing you as his head touched the pillow.

"yours is definitely better, it always smells like you and i like that, smells like... sweaty george," you giggled a little, and he grunted in a teasing response, rolling his eyes playfully.

the moment he was in the bed, he found it funny how you instantly curled into him, to be closer, and he pressed a small kiss against your forehead as you yawned softly.

"see? could fall asleep already, you just relax me," you murmured against his chest.

"so get some sleep then, night, love." he replied. though, he couldn't lie, the thought of him relaxing you filled his chest with a strangely warm feeling.

[httpsdana]

𝐔𝐧𝐬𝐩𝐨𝐤𝐞𝐧 𝐓𝐞𝐦𝐩𝐭𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬~𝐀 𝐅𝐞𝐫𝐫𝐚𝐧 𝐓𝐨𝐫𝐫𝐞𝐬 𝐌𝐢𝐧𝐢 𝐒𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐬 𝐩𝐭 𝟏𝟑

summary: Barça players and talented footballers. Souls meet and sparks fly. But there's always a twist when it comes to love isn't there?

pairing: Ferran Torres x Gonzalez!Reader

warnings: cursing, slight age gap, angst

previous part

Gavi didn't snitch. He actually managed to keep his mouth shut. But the guilt was eating him from the inside. He couldn't keep this kind of secret from his best friend, when his other best friend is.

If Pedri found out that Gavi knew and didn't tell him, he's not gonna like it. So Gavi decided he wanted to tell Pedri, but in an indirect way so that Ferran doesn't know it was him.

"Pedri! can we go to your house and play Fifa after training?" Pablo said, getting Pedri's attention

Pedri smiled and nodded. "sure invite Ferran too" he said.

"why don't you also invite your sister?" Gavi suggested. Pedri looked at him suspiciously raising his eyebrow for an explanation

"I-I didn't mean it like that . I meant that she seemed to enjoy her time with us last time so she might as well enjoy it this time" Pablo stuttered, looking everywhere but Pedri's eyes.

Pedri nodded slowly, shaking the bad thoughts from his head.

"yeah I'll tell her too. Oh Ferran! down for some Fifa after training?" Pedri said, as soon as he saw Ferran

Ferran was about to nicely decline, when Pablo spoke up first

"y/n is gonna be there" he said. Ferran glared at him, before he looked at Pedri who was giving Gavi a weird look

"um...yeah sure" Ferran couldn't refuse a chance to see his girlfriend who he only lastly saw once after their breakfast.

"great. I'll take you with me then" Pedri smiled, before walking away on the pitch

"what are you trying to do?" Ferran said to Gavi, stepping closer to him

Gavi took a step back and shook his head.

"nothing. i just knew you wouldn't have came if y/n wasn't there am I not right?" he raised his eyebrow.

Ferran rolled his eyes, walking away too.

•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•

"I'm here. where are you?" y/n asked, rolling her eyes at her twin brother.

"we just got out of training. we'll be there in about 5 minutes only. just wait" Pedri said annoyed through the phone.

y/n hung up, and waited for Pedri to arrive so she can enter his apartment.

After waiting for a while, Pedri finally arrived with Ferran and Gavi trailing behind him.

y/n smiled at them, giving each a hug before Pedri opened the door and they stepped inside.

"what's with you inviting me to every hang out with your friends anyways?" y/n asked Pedri when Ferran and Gavi entered to the living room

"they enjoy your company, and seems you are too so why not" Pedri shrugged, before following his friends to the living room.

y/n went to the kitchen to grab a cup of water. With her back turned to the door, she filled up her cup, not noticing Ferran arriving behind her, until he wrapped his arms around her waist from behind. y/n almost yelled before she noticed the rings that made her know it was Ferran.

"Fer, you scared me" she giggled silently, turning to look at him. He smiled, leaning down to kiss her lips softly. As soon as their lips touched, y/n pulled away, making Ferran pout.

"Pedri might come here any second" she said in a low voice. Ferran's pout deepened, making her heart melt at his expression.

His puppy eyes were irresistible, so she pecked his lips a few time, making him smile.

"just go. Pedri is here" she pushed him away. He grinned before kissing her quickly and running back to the living room

She shook her head with a smile, drinking her cup of water before following him to the living room.

They played some Fifa, making teams of two, with y/n and Ferran on one team, and Pedri with Pablo on another one.

"you're such losers" y/n chuckled, as her and Ferran beat the other boys in another game

"you two play Fifa the best, it's not even fair to have you on the same team" Pedri complained, y/n stuck her tongue out at him, making him push her shoulder.

"I'm gonna use the bathroom, try to find a team that you can beat us with" y/n grinned, before getting up from her seat

Ferran waited for a while, before he spoke up

"I'm gonna get some water" he said.

Pedri hummed, while he was too focused on the game, and Pablo nodded his head, watching Ferran's moves. He saw that he didn't go in the direction of the kitchen, and instead to the hallway where the bathroom was.

Pablo wanted to think quick of a way Pedri can follow the other two without making it obvious.

Meanwhile, Ferran knocked on the door of the bathroom. "just a second" y/n said from inside.

Ferran waited until she opened the door, and when she did, he didn't let her out and instead pushed her back inside and closed the door behind him.

His hands quickly reached down to her waist. y/n giggled silently, when Ferran lifted her and sat her on the big bathroom sink, getting between her legs while she wrapped her arms around his neck.

"what's are you doing?" she said, still grinning at his movements

Ferran didn't reply, only pressed his lips against hers, kissing her deeply to stop her from talking. y/n was taken back by his sudden action, but soon started kissing him back with the same force.

Pablo wanted Pedri to get up immediately without him knowing why. So he got up to kitchen and grabbed a knife, he cut his finger a bit until there was blood gushing out of it.

Pablo winced, walking back to the living room while holding his bleeding finger

"hey Pedri, can you get me a bandage, my finger is bleeding" Pablo said in a pained voice.

"y/n is still in the bathroom, just wait until she's out, the first aid kit is in there" Pedri said, not tearing his eyes away from the game he was playing

"she's out already, come on my finger is actually hurting" Gavi said.

Pedri looked at him, and noticed the blood on his finger. He got up and walked to the bathroom, without even knocking, he barged through the door.

y/n and Ferran jumped at the sudden opening of the door, then realizing Pedri's presence when he yelled.

"what the actual fuck is going on here?!" he yelled. He pushed Ferran off y/n, making him hit the wall.

y/n's eyes widened at Pedri's anger, feeling her heart beating rapidly as she stood back on the floor

"Pedri it's not what it looks like" she raised her voice, while Pedri looked at her with pure anger and hate.

"you're fucking making out with my best friend, what the hell y/n?!" he walked closer to her, while she stepped back.

Gavi now appeared behind Pedri, glad his plan worked but he also hated that he had to ruin many things like Ferran and Pedri's friendship, and most likely the relationship of Ferran and y/n

"mate just calm down so we can tell you what happened" Ferran said, stepping closer to Pedri.

Pedri glared at him, raising a warning finger at him.

"if you take a step closer I'm punching you in the face. get the fuck out of my house" Pedri said through gritted teeth.

y/n motioned for Ferran to go, knowing that Pedri would actually punch him.

At this moment she wish she could just go back in time and tell Ferran no. She ruined her brother's best friendship, and she hated herself for that.

"and you, you better not appear in front of me again. I don't ever wanna see your face fucking again" he said to y/n.

y/n swallowed the lump in her throat, feeling the tears that were threatening to fall.

"Gavi take her away from here" Pedri said

Gavi nodded, and Pedri left the bathroom. y/n felt her tears starting to fall,dropping to ground, and soon started sobbing. Pablo felt guilty, for making the twins fight.

He walked closer to her, putting his hand on her shoulder while she was sat in the ground of the bathroom. She looked up at him, seeing his bleeding finger. She wiped her tears and got the first aid kit, helping him clean his cut and put a bandage on it.

"let me take you home yeah?" he said softly.

y/n nodded, walking to the living room where Pedri was. He looked up at her with despise. y/n wanted to start crying all over again at the look on his face. She never thought she'd see her twin hating her like he did at this moment.

She grabbed her phone and keys, before walking out the door, with Pablo behind her. He took the car keys from her, telling her that he'll drive instead.

The drive was silent, while y/n was trying her best to keep her tears in.

"I'm sorry y/n" Pablo mumbled, making y/n shake her head. He was apologizing for what he did, while she didn't know it. She thought he was just being sympathetic.

"it's not your fault, I should've seen it coming" she mumbled back, wiping her tears with the back of her hand.

Gavi sighed, only hoping that the friendship and siblings relationship that he ruined will be fixed soon enough.

[theirishwolfhound]

I do love the idea of an unhinged reader. Not like brutally unhinged but... like the kind that is harmlessly annoying and is just a brat to Task Force 141.

Like the mother fuckers nickname is Menace and they're somehow still alive after everything so they make it everyone's problem.

They're great at what they do, amazing even— but no team wants menaces like Menace, not even the heavens nor the hells want the damn person.

This is the same Menace who wears a devilish half-mask, but only above their mouth so people can see their shit-eating grin (think similar to the ghoul mask above) as they leave small firecrackers under the lids of toilet seats, or so people notice the way their lips curl up in mock disgust when someone is talking.

Menace who only goes through with the SAS training to one up another soldier they despised, enough to have sicked a pack of squirrels on that they personally hand fed a few days after— they even bonded enough with the little fuckers that when they were finally transferred out to be someone else's problem, the squirrels would steal the remaining soldiers foods.

Laswell, whose grand idea of knocking the boys down a peg since she's tired of their shenanigans includes getting this Menace of a person to join 141 with faint threats of blackmail— to which Coporal Menace respects, leading Kate to being the only one who is not subjected to the dumpster fire that is about to happen, but is only encouraged by her wife.

Price, who in his right mind, nearly rejects the idea of this misfit joining because of their turnover rate but gives in when Laswell tells him it would be worth it— that her wife likes them and they're an excellent solider after all.

Immediately upon arrival, Menace lives up to their name— pissing on the side of the building as if to mark their new territory before deciding it would be a good idea to rile up the behemoth of a man by asking Price: "Didn't anyone tell the poor bastard that Halloween was four fuckin' months ago? Look at 'em he looks emo."

It wasn't until then that the poor Captain realized how much of an untamed brat his new corporal was— only to be further set in after the first two weeks on base.

Sure Menace got along with Soap, but they were far too alike for Menace's likings and Gaz, sweet sweet Gaz, gave them a few too man odd glances and playfully snide remarks for their liking— meanwhile Ghost had made them scrub the bathroom from top to bottom with a small sponge, and well they could already see the forming regret in Price's eyes.

So Menace did what they did best.

It started out simple: silently attaching balloons on strings to the back of their clothes without them noticing, flipping all of the furniture upside down during the middle of the night, purposefully mocking every single move of one of the operators for a full day, sugar in the salt shaker or salt in the sugar dish, you name it they did it.

Glitterbomb the captain? Oh yeah, and there's still glitter in his mustache.

Tied the two sergeants' doors together so that neither could open it? Done and done, they were locked in their rooms for a good hour until someone cut the rope.

Move the lieutenant’s furniture two inches to the right so that he would constantly stub his toe? Yeah, you can practically see him fuming after every trip to his office.

And what irked the lads the most? Menace kept getting away without being caught— managing to even out sneak Ghost, which the only reason for it is: Menace knowing they don't know what they look like without that mask. So obviously they take it off and blend in with the many other people on base.

They made a fool of their sergeants, their lieutenant, and their captain and it was time to get back at the cunning prankster— but Menace grew suspicious. Usually they would have been booted out by a normal team by then, but what Menace came to realize a bit too late was that Task Force 141 was not normal.

And reality came to a head when Menace was called to Price's office to collect something— only for that something to be a bucket of ice cold water falling onto their head and for the captain to tell their now soaking wet and cold Coporal: "Game's on, brat."

[lavendersartistry]

Family

Space Riders AU - @onyxonline Eve Ewe, Aurora, Felicite, Melanie - @lavendersartistry

This fic is more of a fun fic for onyxonline's Space Riders AU! This is mainly centered as the headcanoned sibling dynamic between Eve Ewe and DogDay! Please check Onyx out, their work is super cool!

DogDay felt emptiness. His mind was dulled as he tried to wake up. He felt like he was floating in the cosmos, the faint sounds of whispering angels ringing in his ears.

He then found himself at a magical place, something similar to Eden's outskirts. The sound of an owl echoed as it flew above his head and landed on the branch of a weeping willow.

"Captain DogDay. My, how you've grown."

DogDay flinched at the sound of his title as captain, quickly turning his head to whoever said.

A tall, roughly 11ft, woman sat in a bark throne made from the tree behind her. Her hair glided against no wind as her piercing teal eyes stared down at the captain. Owls perched around her like pets, waiting for her call to either attack or to befriend.

DogDay took note of the teal eyes and immediately bowed.

"Q-Queen Aurora!"

The queen lightly laughed and leaned forward, her finger under his chin. Despite her tall stature after death, she still had her benevolence.

"Now now, captain. No need to bow, not anymore. Save that for my little Eve."

DogDay nodded and stood up nervously. He didn't really know how to react, meeting Eve's mother like this in what seemed to be a dream to the afterlife.

The queen calmly scooped him up with her gentle hands, the captain being so small compared to her size.

"You have protected my little Eve very well after me and Lucien's passing. I give you my appreciation for it. But I have noticed something in particular."

DogDay went silent for a moment. He didn't understand what she was implying, it was almost scary. Yet he let her continue on.

"I give you my blessing, DogDay Solaris, to become my little Eve's older brother and my son."

DogDay then went to a stunned state. Her son? But she was a demon, a demoness at a very high rank in her hierarchy. Was it logical? What if the council in Eden found out? All those worries filled his head.

"Your Highness, I don't get it. What of the council? What about the other demons? Is this all even safe?"

The queen giggled, a ghostly aura to her.

"My dear, Lucien does not tolerate such of that. If those old kooks decide to harass you for being my son, he will not hesitate to send a little lightning their way as a warning."

DogDay slowly nodded, trying to peace everything together. As he did so, Aurora comfortingly kissed his head.

"Go now, my little shining sun. Your sisters will miss you."

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

"DogDay! DogDay, this is no time to be napping! It's mission time!

DogDay suddenly woke up in his room, hearing the youngest sisters Felicite and Melanie in his ears as he was shaken mainly by Felicite.

"Wha- what do you two mean by a 'mission time'?"

Melanie lightly shrugged and plopped onto his bed.

"'Mission time' is when we go steal tarts from the kitchen. And you have to stand guard so we can steal them!"

DogDay sighed yet chuckled and shook his head.

"Alright, you rascals. But you have to eat only three. You two can't really manage sweets like that."

The little ferret and mink princesses groaned and ran out of his room for the kitchen downstairs of the palace.

DogDay looked out the balcony, the stars behind the forcefield that shielded Eden still glowed beautifully. As he smiled, a certain big and bright star twinkled in response.

Aurora was watching. His new family was watching him.

[trivialbob]

This afternoon I used some PTO. Work has been a little stressful lately, so it was nice to start the weekend early. Financially I'm in a position where if I got fired or laid off I could say, "Okay, cool. Nice knowin' ya. No take backs." I don't hate work or my coworkers, but I'm a little weary of all of it at the moment.

Sheila and I started the afternoon playing pickle ball at a newish club in downtown Minneapolis. I like the place. The building used to house a data center. There's a large old photo on one wall, showing people working at terminals in front of large computers. Thanks for making me think of work! But I quickly got over that.

Sheila plays fairly often there; I just go with her on a guest pass from time to time. She said the intermediate leagues have some Karens. Today we played in the rec league. The people were wonderful. I liked the other players enough that I got to know (and even remember!) their names. Sixteen of us took turns rotating through three courts for almost two hours. I'm going to do this more often.

After that we drove over to Hopkins to use a page from our Hop Passport. It's a buy one/get one at a large number of Minnesota Breweries. This little book is a great incentive to try new places.

We were not disappointed in today's brewery. At 2:30 PM on a Friday afternoon the place wasn't yet busy. The manager took some time to chat with us, which we liked. The beer selection (pour your own) was extensive. I tried two small servings and thoroughly enjoyed each. One was a stout made with baker's chocolate, caramel and dried fruits then infused with bourbon infused oak. Would definitely get it again. Sheila had a pear cider she really liked.

The kitchen was (figuratively) on fire. We split a piadina sandwich. Often we share at restaurants, so we don't get overly full. This flatbread sandwich with burrata, pesto, prosciutto, salami, artichoke and olive relish, and arugula was so good I came close to ordering a second one -- just for myself. We watched some pizzas come out of the huge oven. I thought about getting one to go. But I avoided gluttonous tendencies and arrived home not feeling gross from eating too much.

Today it's cold, damp and gray outside. For me this is terrific napping weather. Even better after drinking beer at lunch. Seeing these three lined up confirmed for me that a nap was going to happen. (Only one of them stayed on the bed for the nap.)

[jo-harrington]

Gratia. (An As Above, So Below Story)

Gratia. Charitas. Solamen. Grace. Charity. Peace. The oath of the Knights of the Holy Order.

Summary: You and Eddie-- separated by time and endless suffering--don't realize how many strings keep you connected on the web of fate. What players are there trying to cut those strings? And when will you both find out that they are unbreakable?

Word Count: 2.1k

Pairing: Eddie Munson/Fem!OC (The Knight - Written in 2nd Person POV - You/Your - No Use of Names of Physical Descriptors)

Warnings/Themes: Soulmates, Kas!Eddie, Angst, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Grief, Minor Character Deaths, Manipulation, Transformation, Corruption, Supernatural Encounters, Religious Elements, Criticism of Religion, Biblical and Other Literary and Pop Culture References

Note: So...originally this was going to be one long thing. A tale about the Knight and Eddie and their unbreakable bond. And I wavered about how relevant it would be to the larger story. How relevant are any of these blurbs to the larger story? But if there's anything I've learned writing AASB, it's that I'm really writing the whole thing for myself. And after finding myself in an odd state of grief that kind of just keeps getting worse over the weekend, I know that this little fic...and the two that follow...really are only going to just be for me to help me get through it, so I need to be true to myself and write them anyway. **So if you do read this, please know it can be read in tandem with As Above, So Below. And you should have at least read the Prequels, with maybe some bonus points for Genesis. Iif you've read the Hymns, this is set before Nachzehrer.**

You can find my masterlist here.

Please do not interact if you are not 18+.

“God is a comedian playing to an audience that is too afraid to laugh.” ― Voltaire

November 10, 1986

"I'm sorry for your loss."

"Thank you."

"She's not suffering anymore. Tranquilla."

"Thank you, I know. She's been sick for a long time. She's at rest now."

"Mom brought mostaccioli. And chicken cutlets. She's setting it up in the other room then she'll be over. You should get some, you need to eat."

"I'll be alright, thank you for coming."

Today was the final day that you would spend with your Nonna.

Well, a more accurate description was that they let you have it.

Let you.

Let you have one day to sit on that stiff funeral home sofa. To stare at her, unrecognizably still in her casket, as friends and neighbors swarmed to offer their condolences. To mourn with you.

But somehow also separately from you.

And tomorrow, after she was behind a cold slab of marble, you'd be off again. Creeping closer to your own death until one day you might be placed in a plot adjacent to her.

Together.

But not really.

If there was anything left of you.

It wouldn't do to think of that today though.

Today, you would sit here. Enjoy your break and bask in the remnants of her soul that still lingered in and around her body.

It brought you some comfort to feel it move the way she did.

It danced like she danced around the kitchen, the boundaries of it crinkling like the wrinkles at the corners of her eyes and mouth. A phantasmic remnant of her lovingly worried gaze was on you every now and again, creating the urge to say "I'm ok Nonnie." To lie to her, like you always did. And whenever one of her friends knelt their own aging bodies to pray at her side, you could practically see the softness of her cushion their jagged edges, comforting them.

You didn’t dare go up yourself though.

Not yet.

Not unless you wanted the Funeral Director to haul you out of the casket because somewhere deep down you just wanted to crawl into it with her and scream,

“Take me with you. Don’t leave me like I left you.”

Because you were not ok.

You closed your eyes as a phantom hand touched your shoulder, as it attempted to soothe the pain deep inside you but only managed to stir up another kind of pain. Another kind of mourning.

If only he was really there, you could ask him to take you with him too. Take you away from here to wherever he and Nonna would wait for you.

An impossible request.

The weight of the sofa shifted beside you and you opened your eyes. You expected to find Fortunata or Antoinette—two of Nonna’s closest friends who could claim a spot beside you if they truly wanted—but instead you found Gabriel’s stiff inhuman posture and expressionless face staring ahead of him at the casket.

“You could have helped her,” you said instead of a greeting. What good would a greeting do? “Healed her.”

You briefly wondered if you'd imagined the corner of his mouth quirking before he spoke.

“And if I told you I had? If I spared her a worse fate? Lessened her pain? Lessened yours?”

“I wouldn’t believe you.”

“Then I won’t tell you.”

You turned back to watch the casket with an unsatisfied hum.

Time passed and you sat silently together as you fought to keep your emotions in check with Gabriel's presence. You weren't nervous, per se; more annoyed. Angry, even. Questioning why he was here on this day out of all days.

All your life, you explained away his presence as a guardian. Unseen and unknown to everyone but you. He used to protect you or so you could recall, but as you got older that seemed to stop.

And he was more of a harbinger of doom than a deterrent of it.

Well, not doom.

Fate.

Or God's will or some shit like that. You didn't know anymore. Didn't care. You only cared about getting to the finish line. Freeing your soul of this curse. Getting your prize.

Heaven. Home. Peace with the ones you loved.

With Nonna.

With Eddie.

So if Gabriel was here, it meant something was about to happen. Something unsavory. Something...

You blinked and he disappeared from your peripheral vision suddenly, and just beyond the space he had previously occupied, stood a man in a black cassock.

Jinette approached you but you didn't give him the satisfaction of your attention until he said your name and offered his condolences.

"May I sit?" he gestured beside you.

"Seat's taken," you responded coldly.

"Ah, your mother, yes," he nodded in realization, and you watched him pull a chair up from one of the rows behind you.

You wouldn't be the one to tell him that your mother hadn't shown her face since you arrived back in Chicago late last night. She had done her duty, arranged the funeral and called you home. Beyond that her obligation was almost over; she could be free.

There had been a brief moment between the two of you when you let yourself into Nonna's flat and found her at the table surrounded by paperwork and old pictures, and you thought for the briefest second that this might be a turning point. That she might exhume whatever love she used to have for you, buried so deep in her heart, so you wouldn't have to mourn alone.

Instead she said she was sorry, then kissed your cheek and left.

And really you only had yourself to blame at the disappointment that punctuated the interaction. How could you have expected anything more than that when the bar was already set so low?

"California is a long way to come just for funeral rites," you said once Jinette was settled.

"I'm afraid that's not what I'm here for."

"Then to attend a funeral of a very devout woman," you amended.

"I'm not here for that either." You would give it to him, the remorse plastered on his features almost looked sincere. "Unfortunately, there is a very dire situation and the Order is in need of your experti--"

"No," you cut him off swiftly. "Tomorrow. You can ask me to go tomorrow. Not today."

The usual coldness of his gaze returned and he addressed you stiffly.

"You cannot refuse. Must not. This is your duty."

You turned to him, hand shooting from your lap of its own volition to grab his robe and pull him close enough that your noses practically touched.

The funeral goers around you began to murmur--your Nonna's friends whispering in fear and shame, saying a prayer to spare them of whatever wrath would befall you for defying and possibly harming his eminence--but you ignored them.

You knew you might pay for it later, but for now your rage was warranted.

"Don't lecture me about duty," you hissed at Jinette. "My entire life has been about duty. Her life too. If you want me to go? You'll beg me. Not guilt me. But I promise that the answer will still be no."

Something wicked flickered inside of you, and you wondered if you could smite Jinette. Just a little bit. If you could channel the deep-rooted grudge against your plight and let him feel the consequences that waited to befall someone who had nurtured it.

Then you felt a slight disturbance in the room.

The calm of Nonna's soul was shaken from its bliss, and you could practically hear the sharp, punishing clicks of her tongue as you fisted Jinette's robe tighter and tighter. The flame of the candles beside her casket flickered, the leaves on the flower arrangements that filled the room began to wilt, and the whispers around you got louder until they roared in your ears.

Your eyes burned with unshed tears as the feeling of Nonna's disappointment surrounded you--filled you--and you fought it for as long as you could.

But if anyone here was going to reprimand you in this room, in this world, it would be her.

You let Jinette go and fell back into the couch with your arms crossed tightly over your chest. He heaved several heavy breaths and patted his chest pathetically.

"Tomorrow," you told him as Nonna's soul and the murmurs of the people around you settled back down into a serene silence.

The tears finally fell after he left, and you closed your eyes as Eddie's ghostly touch softly wiped them away.

"Tomorrow..."

November 6, 1983

Twang.

He enjoyed it.

Twang.

Enjoyed plucking the guitar strings and letting the reverberation travel along his fingertips and into the very core of him.

Twang.

Deep down in that dark pit where you seemed to hide, every note was like a starburst of brightness and good feelings. Things so foreign and forgotten to him now, yet still so integral to Eddie Munson.

He wasn't Eddie anymore though.

So he resented the fact that he enjoyed it so much.

"Play something," you would whisper in those hidden depths, like a devil on his shoulder, and he constantly fought the temptation to follow that urge. "Play me a song, I know you know how."

He never gave in though.

Could never give in.

It was bad enough that he hid you from Henry, that he even listened to you at all. But feeling something--doing something--was better than feeling nothing in the boring, timeless eternal void of the Upside Down. So he would allow himself these brief visits to the trailer, he would tolerate your soft words and the ever-present softness of the ghost that seemed to haunt him here, so he could pluck a few twangs of the guitar strings and bask in the sparks of euphoria they would bring.

And it was enough. It had to be enough.

Then, when he got bored or hungry or irritated by you, away he would go again.

"I would argue that me being annoying is the reason you still keep me around."

He hissed at you and pulled his hands away from the guitar spitefully.

Twang.

He watched as one of the strings seemed to pluck itself and debated whether he could reach out and take a swipe at you, but there was a sudden pain beneath his sternum. Odd, seeing as he barely felt pain in this body now. He clicked his claws together contemplatively, then hesitantly rubbed at it to soothe the ache, and as he did, he felt the echoes of your soft sigh somewhere deep inside him.

He faltered for a moment, unsure if he should feel some sort of satisfaction that he had comforted you, or resentment that he had fallen for it.

He hated you. Hated your presence there. Hated that you were somehow here when you left him to this fate. Hated that you made him weak again when Henry had remade him to be strong. Infallible.

You might very well be his downfall one day.

And still he couldn't fathom being without you again.

He growled deeply and, unexpectedly, the trailer shook around him, walls clattering, remnants of knick knacks falling.

For a moment, he watched it in awe. Believed that he was the cause of it. That the power Henry had helped him unlock had been activated with his spite.

Until everything started to shake.

The Upside Down became unsettled, the very ground beneath him shifting with some seismic agitation. Roiling and churning, changing.

There was a cacophony of restlessness through the collective consciousness as all of the creatures of the Upside Down felt the disturbance. As Henry felt the disturbance and questioned its origin, because it had not been of his design.

Almost immediately, he was singled out amongst the masses, ordered to his Master's side.

Who else could find the cause of this turmoil than Henry's right hand? His loyal servant? The Beast he created to strike on his behalf, to herald in the end?

Eddie didn't hesitate.

He left the trailer and took flight swiftly and dutifully, beating his wings powerfully to get to Henry as quickly as he could.

To get away from you as quickly as he could.

You and your comfortable constant presence in the respite of the trailer.

“Do not be afraid. Our fate cannot be taken from us; it is a gift.” ― Dante Alighieri, Inferno

[sclfmastery]

Quickfire hot take but, even though I totally grasp each of us having favorite regens of the doctor and the master, both individually and together, as symbols of their ever-evolving positions along their personal and relationship journey.... I will never ever understand fan (or canon...) portrayals that draw such a sharp line of favoritism from the characters themselves.

Missy said "they're all the Doctor to me" when recalling a memory to Clara, and to me that encapsulates the enduring nature of their intense bond. To me that is THE line. Regeneration is a form of death and rebirth, but certain core traits are immutable, particularly to two people who are narrative foils, who have known each other for centuries (or possibly millennia) and keep being thrown together by fate again and again and again.

Bottom line is, every Doctor is the same person, and so is every Master. Acting as though one of them only cares for select versions of the other is just so strange to me. They aren't us. To them, it's just like loving (or hating, or both) someone through the eras of their life. Their same life, broken down into stages od evolution and devolution. It's the same person.

I can point to the exact episode (a lol very polarizing episode in Series 10) where I think this "they're not the same person from face to face" trend got exponentially more pronounced, but anyone who knows me knows what that episode is. I truly believe it's a disservice to every version of every Doctor and Master involved.

And I really don't think that Spydoc, which came soon thereafter, is just the playing-out of the consequences of a MASSIVE miscommunication between soul mates. It IS that, but not JUST. I think all of the writing about Thoschei that followed the exacerbating episode was trying to force this inaccurate distortion, this illusion of separateness, which is part of what made the events in Power of the Doctor so painful to Thoschei fans. The Doctor walked away from the Master (literally and figuratively, ironically inviting his inevitable despair--and her own demise) partly out of understandable hurt and rage and caution, but also out of a cold, repulsed misunderstanding: "Missy was willing to change and you regressed, you're a different person than she was, and you have angered me to the point of indifference; I am able to turn off caring about you because you are unrecognizable from her, the version of you that I could control save."

Maybe Whittaker's response is intended by Chibnall: we're supposed to recognize that she's wrong but HAS to be in order to survive another betrayal by the Master, which is what makes it all so tragic.

But I think fan reception has taken the whole thing ( "each Doctor and each Master is an entirely discrete self-contained being") too far, and it bothers me, so much, I think, because it's a trope that enforces the idea that love is transactional and contingent (in such a way that also perhaps unwittingly targets the socially, culturally, and economically marginalized). If you're the "good, small, manageable version" of yourself, then you're easier to love, and it's worth the investment. Otherwise, "you gambled and you lost," and you deserve to die lying in the filth of your own poor decisions. I get why that's an appealing, vindicting plot device, from the POV of an audience member who has felt hurt or even abused IRL. I understand it, I've BEEN the Doctor many times. It just doesn't sit well with me. Maybe that's just me. I could be at peace with that, as a Whovian :P.

But, in-universe, it's based on a premise that's factually erroneous! Dhawan's Master IS Missy IS Delgado IS Simm IS Jacobi IS Ainley IS Roberts IS Beevers etc etc etc. Just as Whittaker's Doctor is a RESPONSE to Capaldi's, but ALSO still IS Capaldi's. And Tennant's. And Baker's (x2). And Eccleston's. And Gatwa's. And Pertwee's. Etc etc. Dhawan's Master was the Prime Minister of the UK and also made chairs that eat people and also cried remembering the names of people she killed. It's the SAME PERSON.

Lol, not quickfire at all. It's an old bone to pick, I know. I just can't stop finding the whole trope...very itchy.

(ok to reblog...dunno if anyone would, LOL, but feel free to reblog and to comment).

I'm gonna tag some ppl I know I've chatted about this with before to see if there are new insights. And feel completely free to disagree with me on any count. @natalunasans @mostincrediblechange @drummingncise @modernwizard @nickcagestrufflehog @rearranging-deck-chairs @koschei-no-more @likeacharacterinamusical

[kedreeva]

These little fuckers are round gobies. They are a freshwater goby that's invasive in Michigan, and they're in the nearby lake. They're distinct from the four native species due to their fused pelvic fins (middle pic) and a big black dot at the rear of their front dorsal fin. Though some other gobies have spots on their fins, NO Michigan-native species has a fused pelvic fin. These guys are very aggressive feeders and are very good at outcompeting native gobies.

They're also extremely good at stealing bait off big hooks as people on the docks reel in their lines. In particular, the bastard in the bottom photo stole my bait two days ago, so I caught him and filleted him for Bug.

Today, after acquiring smaller hooks, I went back and got 16 more, and educated several other fishers about their invasive nature. I got two turned over to me by others, and caught 14 more myself.

One man wandered over and asked why I was catching them on purpose. It was too much trouble to explain my feelings about invasive species, so I just told him, one of them stole my bait two days ago. He stopped watching my bobber and boggled at me and goes:

"You're doing this for revenge?"

So now there's some guy in town that thinks I am exacting revenge upon fish kind for a single stolen worm.

[catkin-morgs-kookaburralover]

see sometimes I try and think about it all more logically. what if it was all happening to a friend. my friend!! you completely forgot to feed your kitten his wet food for five days? you haven't drunk water for a couple of days? you didn't shower or change your clothes for four days? you've only eaten two actual meals in the last two days? your average sleep in the last week is around five hours? my friend, you need help.

since it's me, I don't need help.

[insignificantfailure]

Can I please just stop inconveniencing everyone?