#Slow-Running System

[enhaflixer]

sjy - Chasing Ghosts - TEASER

a Criminal!Jake x Detective!Reader SEXY crime thriller

NOW POSTED HEREEEE!

🔹 SYNOPSIS: You spent years chasing Specter, the most elusive criminal the force has ever encountered. But every near miss, every failed case, every lead that went cold—it was never just bad luck. It was orchestrated. Because the real traitor wasn’t the man you were hunting. It was the one standing right beside you. 

🔹 WC: ~14.7K (full-length fic, completed)

🔹 TAGS: crime thriller, enemies to reluctant allies to lovers, morally gray!Jake, found family, betrayal & redemption, slow burn to inferno, high stakes, forced proximity, heavy angst with a soft landing, house on the hill trope, HEA, High stakes

🔹 RELEASE DATE: WHNV YALL WANT AYYYYYY

🔹 WARNINGS: violence, corruption, deception, heavy themes of betrayal & loss, morally ambiguous decisions, explicit language, slow descent into trust issues hell, eventual comfort but only after suffering, guns, sexual content MDNI, f! receiving.

🔹 TAGLIST: OPEN!

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⏳ Somewhere in the city, a chase was already in motion. But here, it was just the two of you—waiting for who would make the first move.

The lounge was dimly lit, the golden glow from the overhead chandeliers casting deep shadows against the walls. The air was thick with the scent of whiskey and expensive perfume, a low hum of conversation filling the space as people slipped into quiet corners, murmuring over half-finished drinks.

But none of that mattered.

Because across the room, he was watching you.

Jake sat casually at the bar, one arm draped along the back of the leather stool, a glass of something dark and amber in front of him. He looked too at ease, the kind of effortless calm that came with knowing exactly how much control you had over a situation.

And right now?

He had all of it.

Your fingers curled around your own glass, untouched. You weren’t supposed to be here. This wasn’t part of the mission. You should have already been gone, moving onto the next lead, following the trail of evidence that was supposed to bring you closer to Specter.

But for some reason, you weren’t leaving.

For some reason, you were still here.

A slow smirk tugged at the corner of Jake’s lips, and before you could second-guess yourself, he lifted his glass in a silent toast.

Cocky bastard.

Your grip tightened slightly. You had been chasing him for so long that it was unnatural to see him like this. Not a shadow slipping through alleyways, not a whisper at the scene of a crime.

Here, he wasn’t a ghost.

Here, he was just a man.

And that was dangerous.

Jake tilted his head slightly, an unspoken challenge lingering in his gaze. You’re already here. You might as well come say hello.

Your body moved before your brain could catch up, legs carrying you across the lounge with a steady confidence that didn’t match the pulse pounding in your throat. Every step felt deliberate, like walking across a tightrope with no safety net beneath you.

By the time you reached him, Jake was already setting his drink down, his smirk widening just slightly.

"Didn’t think you’d actually come," he mused, his voice smooth, easy—too familiar, like you had known him for years instead of knowing him as the man you were supposed to arrest.

Your nails dug into the palm of your hand. "I thought I’d see what kind of lies you’d tell me to my face."

Jake chuckled, shaking his head slightly as he reached for his glass again. "Lies? No, sweetheart." He leaned in slightly, lowering his voice just enough that it sent something sharp down your spine. "I only ever tell you the truth."

Liar.

And yet—

You stayed.

The city outside pulsed with movement, a chase still happening somewhere beneath the skyline. But here, in the quiet hum of the lounge, in the space between words neither of you were saying—

It was just the two of you.

Waiting.

Watching.

Seeing who would make the first move.

taglist: @jkslvsnella @vernorica123 @lillotus17 @wonnienyang @firstclassjayle @belle643 @ijustwannareadstuff20 @heelovesmeknott @heeseunggotrizz @jaeyunsbimbo @immelissaa @somuchdard

[stopbuggingm3]

finding a song that fits one of my ocs and letting it consume my life for the next three days has become one of my all time favourite activities

[millimononym]

I think I'm the only person who says no to "we should get a new computer" when the old computer I'm using is at least 13 years old

[c0nn0rb0t]

Hey Connor, run a diagnostic.

He attempted to, but his system is so sluggish right now, he can't seem to get the diagnostic function to work at the moment

[petluck]

long video, but here's a look at my minecraft build in progress! all of it was made in vanilla minecraft on console before i transferred it over recently to pc (thus the furniture mods ive started using for interiors)

i designed and built every building except 2. one of them is a scale model of 33 Thomas Street in New York City, which i did still build, and the other is a building that a friend made :-)

[fruit-snacker]

Frick this game

[sunlitmiracle]

smashes my current interest together with my old interest (aka yet another "what Dungeon Meshi but Gamers?" AU)

Once when I was a child I had a complete crying meltdown over Creatures, because the manual insisted that the complicated AI of the Norns made them truly alive and 10-year-old me was freaked out at the idea of being solely responsible for making sure these real animals wouldn't die. The funny part was that this was the Playstation version of Creatures, which has no biochemistry and very basic AI compared to the PC/Mac games where players actually were debating whether or not it was true artificial life. A PSX manual gave me existential dread and it wasn't even telling the truth.

Anyway, kid!Marcille would also have a meltdown over the Creatures series, especially if she had the computer games and got to see how vastly different some breeds' lifespans are. Like in C2 where you have Norns that live for around 5 hours and Norns that live for 10, both of which are vastly more than Ettins who don't even live for 1.5 hours (and usually less due to radiation or starvation).

Lucky for her, having the computer version means she could download modified genomes made by other players that make creatures live longer or even outright remove certain death triggers. However I think she'd have more fun learning to read and edit the genomes herself, to get a better understanding of how the game works and how to change it to suit her own tastes. And because she could pretend she's one of the mysterious ancient Shee who created the Norns, Grendels, and Ettins and then vanished, leaving behind relics of their old society.

(Speaking of Grendels, she would unfortunately dislike them because they're the Designated Evil Species and she'd hate how they harass and attack her Norns. I think she'd also pity them though, because they get sick a lot and have short lifespans. Likely she'd just end up downloading/creating a genome without the aggression towards Norns. Ettins she'd like except for in C3 when they dismantle her meticulously-placed gadget setups, so she might mod out their hoarding compulsions too. Both of them would of course also live for however long her Norns would live.)

Also. While standard creatures' lifespans are counted in hours, if you modify the half-lives in the genome editor you can increase it to centuries. Or even just over a millennium if you set the half-lives to their max length (assuming you also leave the old age death trigger at its vanilla value).

and I like to think that elven Creatures players would pass around copies of what they consider a template genome that's appropriate to their own lifespans. Something that would make their creatures live for weeks or months of continuous play. I also like to think the Creatures DS Warp is still active in this AU because of the hilarious frustration when these long-lived Norns travel to worlds run by short-lived players whose Norns have vanilla lifespans, and vice versa.

(Most of the time in Creatures, offspring of parents with different lifespans will just have one or the other, but there's a chance the genes cross over right in the middle of the various age triggers and cause unstable aging rates. Like a Norn that goes through the childhood stages in hours but then has a very extended adulthood. Or a days-long childhood followed by suddenly dropping dead of old age once the vanilla adulthood genes kick in. Or, if the child has one parent's half-life decay rate and the other parent's age triggers, all sorts of odd things could happen. I once had hybrid Norns who lived for 20 hours and would die of organ failure before reaching the old age threshold!)

(Now that I think of it, Marcille would absolutely hate fast-agers. The first time she watches a creature hatch, turn old, and die in just one brief minute of life, she would be sobbing for days. One of the first things she'd learn to mod out would be mutations that cause the Ageing/Life chemical to decrease unusually fast.)

On a lighter note, while I don't know what her favorite designs would be I think she'd love choosing cute breeds to use in her world. Once she figured out how to give her creatures the comfortable life she wants them to have I can see her redirecting all her gene-editing efforts into changing color expressions. She might even learn to sprite or model her own custom designs.

[mzcain27]

I hope whoever decided planned obsolescence was a good idea rots

[illithiddies]

wait wyll/astarion is called bloodpact? THATS AMAZING

[pumpkinwastaken]

This is posted successfully using a newly built pc!

I did it everyone, i shelved the project for a few years but i finally finished building my first pc from scratch. it's incredibly slow but wow. i can say i build a pc! Maybe i'll buy a gpu for it. mmmmaybe..

[vounoura]

the maister system and the new 'find vocations out in the world' system is...ok, but I prefer the old colour system

[night-dark-woods]

ughhh <sound made by a guy (lesbian type) who wanted to spend the next 3hrs playing dress-up in destiny but theres maintenance at 5pm on a sunday so they CANT and there are no other games they want to play that their shit laptop (surface pro 3 from 2016) can play.

[blacktailedfawn]

paradox really said "how can we make victoria 3 unplayable" and then did it

[the-casino-doctor]

hehe my headmates let me front again, time to be a menace online

[tarmac-rat]

.

[5tomatoes]

err dramatic laptop rant?

guyesss i just shut off my laptop for the first time (apparently it just went into sleep mode? and was not shutting down??) and it launched itself into a windows update without asking and got stuck on a black screen for 10 minutes. i was soo scared but i managed to shut it off properly (takes. longer than i thought.) and it continued fine it got stuck on a reboot. that was scaryyy whyd it do that i didnt even know it had an update queued. i also didn't know i wasn't holding the power button long enough but like. spooky